Rick Goings and Keri Laine Interview
Transforming the business world through impactful leadership:
Keri Laine Interviews Rick Goings, Chairman & Co-Founder World Federation of Youth Clubs, Chairman Board of Trustees Rollins College, Chairman Emeritus Tupperware Brands.
Transcript
Welcome to INRoads, Rick. I am so honored to have you here. You have such an incredible
story. You have really shaped so much of the way that the world views, leadership, enterprise
women, you were as a part of your service in the military. Thank you for that, by the way, also,
knowing that you are a petty officer seeing that that is a role that is very largely entrusted and
connected to helping be in the trenches, working with people, right, building them up and
making sure that their personal missions tie to the objectives, and you were front and center for
that, then you were working for Avon leaving Avon, then Tupperware and I think that some of
the impact that you've had is what we would love to be able to hear about on this podcast, your
journey, why you chose some of the paths that you chose what you think success means, and I
can't wait to uncover all that. So thank you for being here.
Rick Goings:It's good to be here, too.
Keri Laine:So take me back to you at five years old.
Rick Goings:Yeah.
Keri Laine:If you were driving in a car with your five-year-old self right now, what would your five-year-old
self be most surprised by to see where you are today and what you've done?
Rick Goings:Well, firstly, this sounds really shallow. I was the second shortest kid in my high school
graduating class. And I'm six-one now. And I had an eye that turned in up until I was oh, seve
eye operations all through my teen. So the first thing that would surprise me is, Oh, my God,
physically, you're a little different than then you were there. Yeah. But that's I mean, it's very
superficial. But it's, it's it was a blessing.
Keri Laine:Yeah. Yeah. I can imagine that. If, if you were to ask back and you were to look back at that
point is, are you doing what you always thought you would do? Did you want to be this impactful
to this many people across the world in this way?
Rick Goings:I didn't have that early on, was raised in the lower middle class, fought in the Second World
War, etc. I left home early, left home at 16. It was difficult and challenging with regard to issues
there. And I would tell you, it was early on it was Maslow's hierarchy of needs, food, clothing
and shelter. Because when I was, you know, I lived in a rooming house my senior year in high
school. And that was kind of unusual for most kids, particularly in Wheaton, Illinois. So I got very
much used to early on accepting responsibility that it was going to be, it was up to me. And it is
it's wonderful. Once you start to take care of those things, then you as they move up, you can
start really caring about other people, pretty much like they say in the airlines, put your mask on.
Yeah. But then help others. Yeah. So that once that really started to happen, and it's interesting,
you mentioned Navy, first time I ever had leadership responsibility was in basic training. And I
was made the platoon leader. And I really started to grow by that time. And then I was sitting
there doing training of guys swimming across long swimming pools with the surface on fire. And
I said, Well, how did it get here? Yeah. And it started the momentum of every position I ever
had. after that. I had responsibility for other people, and I cherished it.
Keri Laine:What did you cherish most about it?
Rick Goings:The idea of having an impact on somebody else's life. It is interesting. I have just a Saturday
morning again, during COVID. One of my key guys, he's now in his mid-50s. His family, he's
Chinese, and because of COVID locked down, he didn't see his wife and children. For two
years. They were in Australia and there was no allowing of it. And Saturday, so every week,
Saturday morning, 8 am it was in Guangdong Province, it was Saturday night for him. So for,
really more than 100 weeks, every single week. The joy you get from having impact on
somebody's life is just wonderful. And I would look at the people. You know, we did a study we
added the global fairness initiative, which is a nonprofit in Washington do a study of our
Tupperware businesses in the impact on women in we pick two very different kinds of countries,
okay, Mexico Catholic, okay. But you know, other than a few rich at the top poor, and Indonesia,
Muslim 85% Muslim. Both of these were huge businesses for us more than 200,000 women in
each, we wanted to see what would be the impact of what we were doing. Yeah. And the only
prerequisite as they had to be with us three years, okay? We found four things happen, or they
did that was an independent number one, her attitude changed about herself. She used to have
an attitude of I'm not good enough. And now she had an attitude, I am good enough. And 1/3
even said, I'm a leader. Wow. Second, she moved from lower class to middle class. Third, she
became connected to other women with smartphones, computers, and when women are
connected, it's power. Yeah. Last, the thing I'm most proud of, in a world where one out of every
three women is abused. Sometime in her life, he went from a belligerent attitude, demand her
life, sir, to actually supporting and being behind her. So the point I'm saying is, How can you and
I feel good about that, that you left something behind and do something? Yeah, that it adds
benefit other than shareholder value?
Keri Laine:Yes. So I'm going to come back to that shareholder value because I have a very specific
question about that as it relates to the impact that you've had. But I'm going to take it back to the
women part, I'm imagining that you came into Tupperware at a point where it's a
manufacturing-type distribution company, and there's a lot of metrics and KPIs and processes
and compliance. And that's how it was run previously. You chose to elect a very different model,
meaning you put people first, especially women, and it soared from that point. Am I recalling
that correctly? Is or is that a good summation of the story in the journey at the beginning, when
you first came into Tupperware?
Rick Goings:Yeah, that is correct. I mean, you, you got it. That's one of the, you know when you come into a
turnaround situation, the first thing you've got to have to look at is what have I got to work with
here? Then you ask yourself the question, what, what differentiates this company and gives it
competitive advantage? Making burping bowls, that was a main Rubbermaid really got into a lot
of a competitor of Tupperware by the time I got there. And a lot of people said to me, Well, you
gotta go head to head with Rubbermaid. And I said, I think not, we're gonna go where they can't
go. And what we found out what differentiated Tupperware, firstly, was our selling method was,
we didn't have to spend over value chain from, from Cost of Goods Sold to retail bunch of
money on giving it to a retailer, or, or on advertising. That's where we said we're going to spend
that will go to showing women how to be entrepreneurs and building her own business so that
she would share the product with her friends, neighbors and relatives. And you know, when
people have asked, you know when I asked even as I left, they said, Are there still Tupperware
parties?
Every 1.1. second, there is. And what it is, is she would share the product with her, with her
friends, neighbors, she would demonstrate how it works. And she would receive the
compensation that usually went to a bricks and mortar in the store or the went to the network's
and in advertising. So it was a redeployment to her. And that's what really helped her start to
say, oh my goodness, I can do this, I can do this. Now. At the same time, we really had to
differentiate products. So I had our product development people focus was when 25% of sales
to be from new products every single year. So I said do products that need and should be
demonstrated so that use shows results. And we created more of those and well, Rubbermaid
could knock off those kinds of products. But they were sitting on the shelf of a Walmart and
people didn't know what they were so we could go and we could go to more expensive
ingredients sounds like Papa John's, but we would to highly engineered resins. That's why when
they were doing the International Space Station, they came to us about how would you do this?
How would you adapt this so that we could grow things in outer space? So that so and what it
did was it helped her because she had something unique, okay.
Keri Laine:High quality?
Rick Goings:Yes, really? And you know, you never see Tupperware in a garbage dump.
Keri Laine:Yeah, yeah, there's there's something that, that you did. That Rubbermaid or others often either
miss or can't do or undervalue. And that is leverage the power of connectivity of people
alignment among them, and how when they share it with one another, there is a force multiplier
there. And so they couldn't buy that network or they couldn't buy those relationships. They
couldn't compete with what has otherwise been created among those groups of women. That is
a definite unique differentiator. And so why women?
Rick Goings:Firstly, they're the ultimate communicator, their primary consumer out there everywhere in the
world. It's interesting, too. That's what people have asked me. Well, why why do you invest
more in women? I said, if you show a woman how to make income, she spent 90% of what she
makes on her family in her community. Men spend the bulk on themselves.
Keri Laine:Interesting. Yeah, I can see that.
Rick Goings:He thinks we, he normally it's a, you know, much useful mindset. He thinks me. And so I've got a
friend. He's back at that New York Times. Nick Kristof, who's one of the great writers in this
country. He and his wife, Cheryl Wujiang, wrote a book called Half the Sky. And the whole
concept is Women hold up half the sky. And so it really became important to me early on to
leverage the power of women, because and not for social justice. Because the moment you just
say that you're saying, Well, it's because it's not fair. No, how about it's dumb not to leverage the
power of women. And that's what I would promote. At many years, I was involved leading that
effort at the World Economic Forum at Davos.
Keri Laine:Oh, yeah, that's right. That is a such an incredible conference and wonderful stage for you to be
on sharing your story to I imagine, with the idea that you raised entrepreneurial women, there
was development succession planning, were you acquiring locations? Or were you building?
How were you helping them with their point of entry and the leadership of their distribution
areas?
Rick Goings:Well, we basically the key is come up with a formula, that is a replicable formula where she can
go out there and become a reader repeater station. Okay. Now, my first focus was getting the
US business back on track, again, getting because they had manufacturing people running the
company.
Keri Laine:Yeah. Right.
Rick Goings:And, and what builds a direct selling company, particularly a company of women, contact,
competition and recognition, and we brought back, gosh, it was fun again, I've got a mission, I
started to earn money again, I got to goodness, I never had a passport. And look at all the
places now that I've been. So the, the key elements that support that, we did it here, but
simultaneously for me living and working in Europe, during my Avon years. And in Hong Kong
and Asia, and having responsibility for all that. I said, there's less than 5% of the world's
population lives here in the US. Let's get this. Let's get a focus elsewhere in the world. So I
mean, that's why as I left Tupperware where it was, I think 93% of our sales were outside the
US, because that's where the people are.
Keri Laine:Yeah. Wow. That's fascinating to think, I mean, imagining you coming in, you've got this
environment, that's manufacturing, you are uncovering and recognizing not only location and
market implications or advantages, you're breaking into them. You're taking the recognition and
the focus on the employee, you're also then therefore focusing on women empowerment and
the distribution of their own wealth into their families in the community. That's a lot of change
and a lot of headwinds. What were the conversations like in the boardroom? Was your team
aligned with you? Did you have to make some tough decisions? Tell me about those
conversations when you were making these moves.
Rick Goings:Well, firstly, I've got to say I was blessed by those years, having an incredible board and we
brought on people to really help it really experience people who got it. They said, Gosh, this
really does make sense very, very bright people. I started to make a diversity on our board a
real key. So there's as I left 50% of the board were women as well, and they came in from
different areas. But what I'm really proud of is the years before I got there, the company was
stumbling, and not cuz they had people that were incapable. I had to replace very few people.
Wow, they just needed to direction and leadership and hope for right. So, I mean, that was,
gosh, I remember when I did the turnaround for Avon in Germany, the only person I had to
replace of my senior management team was the lawyer, the corporate lawyer, the other people
had been there, they were tired of losing. We and you know, initially I couldn't speak German.
And some of them one of my former CFO just passed away this last year, Fritz Huston Mueller,
he wrote me an incredible note, and he said, Rick, those two years were the best years of my
life and of my business life, because what we did is we took a company that was 100 and some
million we first got there, but it was declining like mad. And within, within a year, we were going
from down 20%, to up 25%. And then another year of up 25%. It feels good to be on a winning
team. And they were good, those people weren't, I mean, our remember the slogan and in
German Stolze Tradition, strahlende Zukunft, which means proud tradition, bright future. And it's
those same kind of elements that it's easy to come in and criticize that. It's the people that are
that are here, I've often believed this, there's no such thing as a lazy person. There were
uninspiring people. Ah, I like that. Yeah. And people, all things being equal, they'd rather see
trips fly. And they'd rather say, I can make a difference on it. So that, you know, I got great
support at Tupperware, you know, coming and, and those people and they grew. And then I've
shipped them all over the world.
Keri Laine:Yeah. So you tapped into what was inherently already a very raw potential. And you aligned it
and you created this more of a visual path to what their success would be. They saw it, they
bought into it, you encourage them, you rewarded them. And so focusing on that alignment of
the team connected to your strategy seems like it was one of your winning methods of going in
to do that.
Rick Goings:Yeah. What do you know what's interesting on that, Keri? It's a great point. Business formulas.
Yeah, templates matter. Look, all through the 20th-century people, Americans particularly were
eating hamburgers, okay, why didn't Dairy Queen or tasty freeze? Why didn't they become
McDonald's? And what Kroc figured out? As he watched these two brothers in San Bernardino
and Riverside, they had a formula. And it was consistency. So that, they have often said, you
come up with a, what you think is the strategy or plan, you launch it in a learning laboratory, you
then fix it, refine it, and then you scale it. What Kroc was able to do was to get that template.
That's what I, early on, I observe what's working, what gives us competitive advantage. And
then all you had to do that is replicate that in France, replicate that in Germany, take it to China,
but you had to also adapt and adopt to what those cultures are. France is a baking country,
Germany's cooking country, and to so we, we adapted and adopted and we did some things that
Steve Jobs did. When he came back to Apple. He basically you took the hub of, of what he had
in back then just the laptop, and all he could make early on was design changes. But then he
had if you took a hub and spokes flanker categories, that new year the rest is history of it took
five years and he had the head, the iPhone, the iPad, the blah, blah, blah, blah, okay, we were
food storage, mostly when I got there. I looked for the were the flanker categories, people who
were product development who worked with us, just I mean, they're the ones who made me look
smart. It’s interesting, I got to know Fred Smith, who started that express and Fred once said to
me, the way to really look smart, is find a good parade and get in front of it. So I had these great
people. So we started to say, microwave. Only thing people are using microwaves for right now
we're heating liquids, or reheating something. We said there's a whole way to do it, and new in
different ways. And we said huh, we came up with a whole new category of things. Eco, God
water bottles, this is the in Asia the biggest clue. These are blow molded water bottles, the
these don't disintegrate for:Indonesia, with bottles like this floating. We said, Hey, we're going to come up with bottles that
people don't throw away. And we don't believe in single use of plastic. So the different
categories that we went into, it was amazing. And people loved having it from Tupperware.
Wow, we'd like to have that.
Keri Laine:So that was the brand recognition at that point to how when you think about other people like
you brought up Rubbermaid. And there are other companies that try to compete in whatever
space they exist in. Where do you think leaders get it wrong?
Rick Goings:Yeah, well, I think one place they get really wrong is low-cost supplier is generally you'll bring in
somebody who's got, you know, they've got the right degrees, and they come in there, they
started at from product manufacturing, and they are going to come out. And rather than product
differentiation, they'll go to a low-cost supplier. That is an expensive strategy, and it doesn't last
long, because there's always going to be somebody else that's going to come in and do it a little
bit cheaper. Yeah. And that I believe, where they get it wrong is they don't differentiate their
products in areas where people really will pay the difference for it. So it's interesting, though, is
we look at Amazon was saying this graduate business schools early, early on, when they were
just initially just doing books and opening it up, I basically would talk to people, I said, they are a
logistics company. And watch what happens with this. So they got the distribution model down.
And so they won by distribution of it. And that's where in the other booksellers started to go
broke because it was distribution was what their leverage was. for us. It was product
differentiation, demonstration, and then driven by the power of women.
Keri Laine:Yeah, I see. This is the quote that I read that I wanted to expand on a little bit or ask if you would
expand on that you were an early proponent and outspoken advocate and redefining the role
and purpose of business from the near myopic focus on shareholder value. Tell me more about
that.
Rick Goings:There was a subject that there were some arguments with certain members of our Board, who
basically say, hey, as board members were paid by shareholders, we want to, we believe
everything ought to be first for shareholder value. Early on, I felt that was wrong. It's interesting,
a group of us, I think they had we had 60 of us Fortune Executives,. Francis had just been made
Pope, we convened a meeting and I'm we're Buddhists than anything else. So this isn't, I'm
Catholic. Okay. But what a lovely man, and he was talking about the responsibility of all of us to
help others. So we convened a meeting at the Vatican that really talked about the shift from
shareholder value, which really came out of University Chicago, and Kellogg business school in
the 60s. Okay. It's got to be stakeholder value because stakeholders are starts out with Mother
Earth, okay? Nothing matters. If we don't take care of this ball. We live, we live on the
communities we serve the individuals who are consumers, the sellers deep, so the whole
responsibility of that. And so we, we met and he actually, he sat there with us for an afternoon,
as we discussed this whole thing, and it came out within two years ago, that business is shifting
now to stakeholder value. Let me tell you why that makes so much the act when and all that
came out in the 60s shareholder value. The average holding period for a share of stock and a
public company was between seven and eight years. The average holding right now, six to
seven months. Wow. Why would you be answering to somebody who's a temporary, who's a
renter of your stock. What do they want to do? They want to maximize. Now, yeah, now, which
means taking bad decisions, not caring as much about making short-term decisions that can
have long term negative impact. It's a balance.
Keri Laine:So if I am an investor right now, and I am looking at acquiring a company or looking at putting
my money and beliefs into something, I think a lot of people do think in terms of return or return
on that investment or what the inherent value is, or you know, where that's going, and when
that's going to come back to them. How would they feel about this kind of a shift? From your
perspective?
Rick Goings:Well, the really smart ones, if you look at Warren Buffett, he got it, you know, he, his investments
had been with companies with often products he liked to use, where they weren't a spike on
what they were doing. Because what happens with companies that are more short-term, in their
thinking, with regard to this, you have to make two decisions, when to buy the stock, and when
to sell it. If you make the right decisions and get into the companies that have a foundation of
these kinds of values, and the tone of the organization, then the, then the power of
compounding takes place. You know, I often tell young execs that are 30 years old, they say,
well give me an example of the power of compounding investing. I said, rather than stock
picking, I said, the 30 years, I'll start putting away 15,000 a year just figure out a way to 15,000 a
year, do that for 30 years, you'll have 450,000 that will be put away. But in normal returns in the
market out there, what will your investment portfolio be, be worth 1.5 million, the other million
came from power compounding off that that's what smart investors do asset allocation
approach. And they diversify. And they pick companies that have sustainability to them. So it's I
think it's only smart.
Keri Laine:Yeah, absolutely. And I hear a theme also of the people, whether it's the consumer, whether it's
the leadership team, whether it's the talent within the organization when you talk about the
foundation, the people are a cornerstone of that, right? And so you can have a business plan,
you can have a certain P&L, you can have a certain process, that's operations, you can have
certain, you know, compliance and legal regulatory aspects that are valuable. But if you don't
get that foundation of people right.
Rick Goings:It's everything at the core of it all a company is such an important point you've made carry all a
company is, is a collection of people that's at its core, forget where it's got manufacturing, and it
makes this and does, does that, that that can change and will change. If you have the right
people and they're empowered, I've got to tell you, probably one of the most important personal
feelings of satisfaction that I had is I never had a direct report at Avon or a Tupperware, quit and
go somewhere else, ever. And call it luck, but I will tell you, what we tried to do is create an
operating environment where they were empowered. Firstly, because when we recruit
somebody good, I believe that stars can't shine until the sun goes down. So I don't
micromanage. We agree on the strategy, empower them, give them responsibility, reward them
and keep moving them up in the organization. And so I look back and, and the ones who got to
certain points in their life, they said I never believed I would be here. Yeah. And I didn't do it.
They did it.
Keri Laine:They did it, right?
Rick Goings:All I tried to do was working with them, facilitate, creating a culture. You know, Peter Drucker,
I've been on the Drucker was a an Austrian, although he wrote in this country and taught in this
country, the most important thing Drucker ever said, was that culture eats strategy for breakfast.
And you try to create that.
Keri Laine:So what's fascinating I've been curious, as I think a lot of leaders is are looking at their strategic
plans, looking at the economic state of the world, and watching what's happening to the stock
market, watch what's happening in the investor capital space, the alternative capital space,
looking at what's happening with m&a with companies that are trying to raise capital in various
stages. There's a lot happening with money shifting around the world, certain industries and
sectors that their sustainability, for example, the ESG, they're moving into these areas that are
somewhat recession-proof. My question for you is, oftentimes the diligence process when there
are decisions being made about where all this money is gonna go, which impacts all of us our
whole future, right? depending on whatever company it is that they're going to buy grow scale,
that impacts all of us just the same way you did through Tupperware. When they do the due
diligence process, and they're making their investment thesis and or their investment decision.
They're focusing on the finances, and they're focusing on the operations. Why, in your opinion,
do you think they, Iit's not often talked enough about the people?
Rick Goings:That's changing. I am so happy that it's changing. And it's interesting Google technology
company, alphabet, and it's interesting, they did a study, I think it's been four years. And they did
this study, it's called Oxygen, okay. And they wanted to study our growth of managers at
Google, they know, that's what gives them competitive advantage having really competent
managers and people. And they tried to distill it down to what are the ingredients that are
important to us, you would think as a tech company, that would be all these technical aspects,
you had to get to number eight before rank and file associates at Google started to say, My
manager was good at teaching me technical aspects of my job. Everything else was about
things that we often talked about soft, were soft, but they're not soft. If you, I mean, you show
individuals how to become the best version of themselves. Yeah. And to become invested in
them. That's going to be more powerful, particularly if you, if you buy into the notion that all
accompany is, is a collection of people, then you say, Okay, I'm going to attract the best people,
empower them, give them, you know, development opportunities and reward them. Voila, that
becomes a formula, I think more and more, but it isn't, it generally isn't talked about enough. But
I will tell you in business school these days, it's getting talked about a lot more.
Keri Laine:So we'll make this the one of the final questions. But I want to give you a little bit of context
because I think I could really use your advice on this and expect to take it this way. But I'm just
going to be back to voter building, I'm just going to ask, okay, I've gone through very early in my
career working in manufacturing technology, software, a lot of male-dominated industries. I've
often been the youngest and the only female to imagine what that was like in those spaces. But
I learned that even though my skill and gift and education was in HR, I had to learn the finance
piece and the operations piece because I had to lead with credibility so that I wasn't judged on
being the only female or being young, I also had to work on relationships and influence in order
to be able to rise, I accomplished that I was able to also get to the sea level pretty quickly, I
brought three companies public have done international mergers and acquisitions all over the
world. What I found is in entrepreneurial companies, there is a magic, there's some kind of
magic when it comes to if you can take the talent like we've been talking about of the
organization, and you can structure them and the ways that we've been talking about the value
to the communities, to the company to the industries overall, it's profound. And as I've gone
through my journey, I realized those that are putting money into other companies, or those that
are acquiring other companies. Every time I was at a deal table, they, nobody talked about the
talent. Nobody talked about how they work together, nobody talked about and ask questions
about the succession plan, or the high potential of who's next once the founder or CEO wants to
move on. And so I started Carolyn Executive Solutions on the idea that in this space, there is a
lot of opportunity to make a very big impact in difference, if I could change the way investors see
investing. If I could get them to focus as a core part of the due diligence process, people
relationships, connectivity, alignment, execution, as well as finance, and operations. So if you
were me, and this was your mission, you wanted to go change the way people saw investing so
that you can impact all of those people that are out there that have such wonderful teams or
needing to have emphasis on building strong teams so that they can have happy employees
that have happy communities. What, what would you, what would you, how should I look at
that? What would you say or what would you do if you were me? What advice do you have?
Rick Goings:Well, it's interesting, going back to the book, Good to Great. Yeah. And one of the things he
really is a good guy. One of the things he dissected though, was the operating landscapes and
in companies and I think communications is a key piece. It is interesting when you talk about not
only women's empowerment, but for HR, it was, for years, the only ways to get to the top four,
but not the top to get to the SES suite was through one of the our jobs. HR, PR, IR Oh, those
are jobs, the machismo with those are jobs for women. And they generally don't. But more and
more are starting to understand, Oh, my goodness, particularly, particularly HR, at the very core
of it is it's understanding the role of people. And if that's why I would tell you what I tried to do,
and then I'll get to your question early on, and leadership development is when I would see
somebody in there, call it their early to mid-30s. And they were in a functional area, let's say HR,
I would try to pull them out and get your ticket punched in other areas, marketing in general
management, sometimes in general, I wouldn't put them in finance, though. But it was not
because they weren't capable. I felt they were front facing. If they were in marketing, or in
strategy, I want this one dynamic. And one machine, I was just so she used to be with us
interpret where most of the people are gone, who were there with me. But she's now been made
a senior VP in strategy with a huge company. And I'm so proud of her. And I remember when we
did the pivot, I think you really need to use case histories of the sustainable companies. And
what were the ingredients that you used, that made it work for them. You can say it'll see it a lot
on Wall Street to that the ones that are able to keep people for the longest, it isn't the firm's that
grind them out, because they usually leave and go try to start with their own things. I just think
you've, it's got to be brought more forward. We have more examples of it. I can tell you, I'm on
the board of about got five Bessemer trust funds. Bessemer trust, by the way, the money behind
early on, he was the CFO, Henry Phipps, for Andrew Carnegie. And it's a private bank. We were
the money that went to Bain that was behind Google allow Facebook, Uber, we were the early
investors and that. And we, we make investments and those kinds of things. We're looking at
people because they're small, then you start to look at the operating styles of those kinds of
people. For sustainability it's going to be critical in the future to find those cultures, in fact, that
put the right emphasis on people.
Keri Laine:Yeah, I love it. I and that is very encouraging for me, thank you as somebody that's starting out
in this, I sometimes wonder I get nervous, right? And I think I just, I don't want to give up
because I believe in the mission. And I believe in the impact. And I know I'm doing it still in a
male-dominated space. So I'm still shaking trees, like elbow in my way. And but I believe in it.
And that's why that whole team is out there. They believe in it. And I think that there is such a
difference and an opportunity. And so it is very encouraging to me to hear your stories in
real-time.
Rick Goings:Your time in, in HR training was not a waste. It was a foundation of it. You can hire people to run
the numbers. But you got to have the people, to do it. That's the great replicator out there. It
sure it worked for me.
Keri Laine:That's awesome. And you have such great evidence of that to your point, the case studies, you
are a great example of what can happen when you do that. So thank you. Thank you for joining
us and for being on.
Rick Goings:It was a pleasure.
Keri Laine:I really love having you here.
Rick Goings:A fun conversation.
Keri Laine:Yeah, absolutely. Okay, thank you.
