Wendy Risch

I attribute my success to all of those values that I hold dear - being an authentic person, having integrity, and being a servant leader. I will let people know transparently what I'm thinking. Sometimes it's hard to hear, but if people need to hear it, I'm gonna let them know. I'm also empathetic to the person across from me. My foundation in timeshare sales taught me how to truly close a sale and read people, which has given me a competitive edge throughout my 25 years in this industry. I've found that a lot of people in sales are just order takers - they're friendly and nice, but they don't necessarily have the techniques to actually close the sale. The intensive training I received early in my career, learning to read body language, understanding personality types, and knowing how to talk to different people so they can actually hear you - that's what set me apart. And doing what you say you're gonna do, when you say you're gonna do it - that integrity and follow-through has been the foundation of everything I've built.

The best career advice I’ve ever received is, “Be yourself—people buy from people they trust.” I’ve carried this guidance with me throughout my career, and it has shown me time and again that building strong, authentic relationships always outperforms short-term tactics.

My advice would be, go after whatever you're passionate about. I was passionate about sales, and when an opportunity was in front of me, I seized the moment. There were times that I needed an opportunity and I took a chance on something - a channel of the industry that I wasn't familiar with - but I went after it because I knew that if I didn't try, I would never know. So my advice is, when you know that you have a passion for something, don't second-guess yourself, just go for it. It's been really exciting to see how the industry is evolving. I was just at a Home Depot line review meeting, and there were 14 people from Home Depot in the room - we were talking about caulking products, and you'd expect to see an elderly man, overweight, kind of burly. But there were 7 women in the room, probably in their 30s to 40s. When it comes down to business and what has to be done, a man or a woman can do that job. There are still a lot of meetings where I'm the only woman at the table, but I certainly have the experience level to sit at that table and have just as much insight as the men. I do see that evolving and changing in the hardware industry.

The biggest challenge right now is slow consumer traffic at store level. In my specific role, during COVID, people were locked at home so home projects and renovations were at their height, and the company realized enormous sales numbers. But when COVID ended and people were freed up to do other things, the sales declined year over year because people had transitioned to travel and spending in areas like health and beauty where they weren't spending during COVID. There was a level setting of the hardware industry in general - retailers like Lowe's and Home Depot had, for the first time in 20 years, seen decreases in comp sales. Those have been the toughest challenges. But the opportunity is that everything is cyclical, and we're already seeing increases. The company I work for had never had a down year until 2022, and they started in 2011, so it was shocking to them. I came into the company at the right time to help them tighten their belt and look at what we're spending. As an organization, we increased our net profitability by 7% in one year - I had never seen that in my career, maybe a half percent or a percent, but we hit 7%. Now this year, we've all said okay, we've done a great job of being cost-conscious, now let's look at top line and go after a goal that is top line driven again. We actually set a really unrealistic goal for ourselves to shake us all up and come to the table with out-of-the-box thinking as an organization.

The values most important to me are integrity - doing what you say you're gonna do, when you say you're gonna do it. Authenticity is huge for me - just be yourself. And being a servant leader - getting joy out of seeing others succeed makes me happy. I'm an authentic person who will let people know transparently what I'm thinking. Sometimes it's hard to hear, but if people need to hear it, I'm gonna let them know. And being empathetic to the person across from me is essential in everything I do.