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Robert Richman Profile

  • One of the world’s authorities on employee culture and customer experience.

  • Worked at Zappos.com before, during, and after the Amazon.com acquisition and helped the company grow from 1,200 to 1,700 people, resulting in 50% growth.

  • Monetized culture, turning it (culture) from a cost center to a $9mm business.
  • Robert Richman is a culture architect and the founder of Zappos Insights, the Zappos Family company that helps business leaders, managers and entrepreneurs discover how a workplace can help people grow, inspire amazing service and drive revenue. Zappos.com currently helps over 1,000 people every month.

    Robert began his career developing digital marketing strategies for brands like Tony Robbins, Sony, Billboard and best-selling business authors. He co-founded Affinity Lab, a collaborative workspace for entrepreneurs.

    Robert is the author of The Culture Blueprint and a Georgetown-trained leadership coach. He delivers keynote speeches on company culture and advises leaders how to create self-sustaining cultures in their own organizations.

    • View Extended/Alternate Bio

      Robert Richman is a culture architect and was Culture Strategist at Zappos, and author of The Culture Blueprint, a systematic guide to the high-performance workplace.

      Robert co-created Zappos Insights, a Zappos subsidiary educating companies about the secrets behind Zappos’ amazing employee culture and world-class customer service. He took the proof of concept from a small website to a multi-million dollar business teaching over 25,000 students per year.

      As one of the world’s authorities on employee culture, Robert is a sought-after keynote speaker at conferences around the world and has been hired to teach culture in person at companies such as Google, Toyota, Westin, Salesforce, Anthem, Bridgestone, and Eli Lilly.

      Robert helps companies build culture through experiences. Using principles of high performance and self-organization, Robert creates an event called Open Space that lets the group focus on what they are most passionate about then follows up with recorded insights and action items. He works with companies both virtually and in-person to tap into the full potential of their teams.

      Robert graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in film, as well as from Georgetown University’s Leadership Coaching Program. He is a member of the Transformational Leadership Council, and he is based out of San Diego, California.

    Robert Richman Speaking Videos

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    Robert Richman's Speech Descriptions

    Robert’s presentations deliver an engaging, exciting experience with cutting edge information on culture, engagement and customer service. His programs cover topics like how to unleash untapped energy and build agility, creating immediate and long-term culture change, wowing with customer service, and many more. He shares stories from his experience with Zappos.com, and provides tools that motivate audiences to create culture in their organizations, engage employees and ultimately improve their bottom lines.

    XPILL KEYNOTE

    This is a keynote that goes beyond the "sage on stage." It's an immersive experience that people say is the equivalent of a 3-day self development workshop in one speech. This highly engaging and interactive experience wakes people up with something completely different than they’ve ever seen before. After an origin story based on the movie "The Matrix," Robert uses a ritual to help people discover their blocks, and connect their goals to their subconscious mind. The result is a total breakthrough in results.

    BUILT FOR GROWTH: THE VALUES BASED COMPANY

    Engaged employees are productive, efficient, and have a great time. This means low turnover, and highly motivated employees you don’t have to micromanage. Values-based companies have employees who manage and motivate themselves.

    Robert shares stories of the strength of the core values at Zappos.com (A company that became the #6 Best Place to Work in America and #1 in Customer Service), then shares the science behind why they work so well.

    Once you learn the secrets behind how values work, you will know how to shape culture. Robert gives the group a process to use in discovering and then implementing the values across the organization.

    IN THIS KEYNOTE, YOU’LL GET:
    - Inspiring stories about how companies shifted their industries.
    - Counter-intuitive principles to actively create disruption (rather than getting disrupted!)
    - How to create stability in your organization, so that it’s safe to disrupt without jeopardizing the company.
    - Techniques for shaking up jobs and careers in a way that enlivens people and reinvigorates their passion.
    - Activate demonstrations, Q&A, and live disruption.

    SURPRISE AND DELIGHT YOUR CUSTOMERS AND EMPLOYEES

    Warren Buffett said there is one determining factor for successful brands: They delight their customers. Inspire your people to deliver outstanding service in this energized experience about surprise and delight.

    Zappos became known for being the #1 Customer Service brand according to American Express customers. Zappos delivers a 90% NPS average (Net Promoter Score).

    Learn the secrets of creating a great experience from Robert Richman, the Culture Strategist from Zappos.

    IN THIS KEYNOTE, YOU’LL GET:
    - A highly entertaining and engaging experience.
    - The principles of outstanding customer service.
    - Why customer complaints are gold.
    - How to create a culture of surprise and delight from within.
    - Key hacks to put to use, immediately.

    CULTURE HACKING

    Culture Hacking is a way for anyone at any level to shift the culture. As Culture Strategist for Zappos.com and the manager of Zappos Insights, Robert learned how to create change fast by using the power of hacking for good and applying them to culture. Robert leaves the group with three high leverage tools that can be used immediately to create long-term change.

    Audiences are excited to become culture hackers and often report making changes the very next day.

    IN THIS KEYNOTE, YOU’LL GET:
    - How Hackers exploit networks, and what we can learn from them to shift the network of people.
    - Why it’s better to destroy what’s not working than to spend time and money on initiatives that may not work.
    - How to turn customer and employee complaints into innovation.
    - Prefabricated culture hacks based on years of testing.
    - Why standard feedback mechanisms don’t work, and how to hack them.
    - The secret to learning what it is that you don’t know that you don’t know.

    THE DYNAMICS OF DISRUPTION

    Change is the new normal. Entire industries are being disrupted. Simply having a great product and service does not guarantee market leadership. And employees who are simply doing a good job are no longer the standard for a world-class company.

    In this talk Robert shares stories about disruption, and the principles behind it. It then gets really exciting when he shows how they can be applied to your business in a counter-intuitive way. People at all levels of the company will benefit from learning how they can out-do themselves, increasing both performance, as well as people’s passion for their own jobs.

    IN THIS KEYNOTE, YOU’LL GET:
    - How the best organizations in the world keep their people inspired.
    - Why most culture work is actually the equivalent of spoiling children.
    - How to take the principles of online gaming and apply them to create the most engaging experience for employees.
    - What to look for in new employees and questions that will help you learn the truth immediately.
    - The #1 metric to measure culture and how one small shift can create massive engagement.

    Robert Richman on Speaking

    SPEAKING.COM: What do you want people to learn / take away from your presentations?

    RICHMAN: I love when people see my presentations and realize that they are the real culture change agents. They understand that they can hack culture, and they can begin immediately. I love hearing how they made changes the very next day. Culture doesn’t have to be a big change initiative. It can happen right now and you don’t have to be the CEO.

    SPEAKING.COM: Do you do any special prep work prior to an event? How to you prepare for your speaking engagements?

    RICHMAN: I customize every engagement for the client. My favorite question to ask is “What would a home run look like?” I want to know what they want the audience to know, feel, and do.

    SPEAKING.COM: What types of audiences would most benefit from your message?

    RICHMAN: Companies (or leaders from companies) that are going through big changes, massive growth, or at a critical inflection point. Also, companies that are doing something so innovative that their product or service is actually creating a culture shift.

    SPEAKING.COM: What inspired you to become a speaker?

    RICHMAN: >My first real speech was addressing the entire company at Zappos.com. I felt so comfortable on stage. It felt like home. Since then, I’ve found it to be an excellent platform to empower many people at once.

    SPEAKING.COM: Which of your keynote topics are the most popular?

    RICHMAN: The most popular one right now is on Culture Hacking – how we can use the power that computer hackers have and use it to positively impact culture, very fast. I focus a lot on energy and connection during the speech. So much of communication is non-verbal and I’m paying attention to the culture of the room. The best content can fall flat if the audience and speaker are out of alignment.

    SPEAKING.COM: How much do case studies, personal stories and or humor factor into your keynote speech content?

    RICHMAN: It truly depends on the audience. In some, we’re laughing half the time. Others are more grounded. Once I had planned an energizing speech, but I noticed most of the audience was hungover from their party the night before, so I needed to change it up.

    SPEAKING.COM: What other projects are you working on currently?

    RICHMAN: I just launched my book, the Culture Blueprint, on Amazon. Speaking.com readers can get the entire free audiobook at: http://www.cultureblueprint.com/audiobook.

    SPEAKING.com Exclusive Interview with Robert Richman
    Interview with Robert Richman: Culture Hacking, Relevancy and Values
    In this interview Robert discusses:
      • How to develop a culture that engages employees.
      • How people can embrace a value based company.
      • Innovation trends.
    Read the Full Interview

    "The big challenge is to develop a culture that is strongly aligned but also has the freedom to be autonomous."
    - Robert Richman

    What People are Saying about Seeing Robert Speak

    Rating Entries

    “I originally hired Robert to come in as a consultant at Zappos to explore helping build out the model for Zappos Insights. Based on his great start and deliverables, we then brought him on full time to lead Zappos Insights. He helped develop the business strategy, the web site, the content, and the marketing. The result was a B2B culture consulting profit center within the Zappos Family of companies with participants from the likes of Google, Eli Lilly, and Toyota. Through the process he overcame the major challenges of managing a team of 20, consulted for Fortune 500 companies, and acted as a spokesperson for Zappos by speaking at conferences around the world. Overall, our ROI of working with Robert was staggering and I highly recommend working with him.”
    Aaron Magness, Senior Director of Brand Marketing, Zappos.com

    “Robert Richman is AMAZING! He was a great presenter, very engaging, and I know the group learned a ton from his keynote. Robert definitely fit our goals and we have heard tons of positive feedback from our attendees. Please thank you him again on behalf of the entire NHRA Board and HR community here!
    National Human Resources Association
    (Engagement booked by SPEAKING.com)

    “When we sent our team of ecommerce and customer-care managers to the Zappos Insights training, the experience was simply transformational. Robert and the Zappos Insights team deliver fast-paced, fun, thoughtful, challenging, and deeply impactful sessions on building and sustaining a high-growth, values-driven company like Zappos. Core values, customer service, hiring, benefits, dress code, meeting culture, team-building, leadership, a higher calling — it′s all covered. And importantly, Robert takes care to ask probing questions and ensure that his audience takes home real lessons they can employ to improve their own businesses.”
    Tom Funk, Senior Marketing Manager, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters

    “After Robert Richman delivered his keynote speech to our manager’s strategy session we realized it was really BEYOND great and more like WOW!… Robert not only shared the Zappos culture, but also deeper insights about how culture and service work together. Our team was highly engaged and we had to cut people off because there were so many questions. While Toyota already has an excellent culture and award-winning service, Robert′s inspiration gave us ideas to take it to the next level.”
    Clay Cosse, Manager, Toyota

    “What a fantastic experience it was learning about Zappos culture from Robert Richman. He gave tremendous insight into what makes their culture work and also gave practical applications of how we could be even more effective at Whole Foods Market. And our culture is very deep already! His examples of service and how to make immediate impact on the team were awesome… I can’t recommend Robert enough!”
    Richard Findlay, Vice President, Whole Foods Market

    “We have been working together for 3 years now. You pushed me in ways that I was uncomfortable with, but in hindsight it was exactly what I needed. You taught me how to ask the right questions and to look at the business in a very different way. You have helped me become a better leader than I already was. And my success is in no small part due to what we′ve done together.”
    Jonathon Green, Director HQ Customer Service Operations, Verizon

    “Thank you so much for speaking at our conference. In 8 years of the “Facilitating Leadership in Excellence” event, you were the BEST! I will be getting your information and I will work on making a cultural paradigm shift with our dealership teams! Your energy and passion stirred up revival! BRAVO!!!”
    Cheryl Bauman, Facilitator in Standards for Excellence, General Motors

    “I was one of 4000 store managers and corporate employees who saw Robert Richman speak and I was blown away. His insights and humor were so engaging, and he surprised us by giving us the entire Culture Blueprint audio book for free. I immediately listened to it on the way home and I’ve already started thinking like a culture hacker. I realized the importance of leading by example and I’m empowering my team to act as culture hackers, with the culture hacking framework… The Store Managers in my area who are listening to the book are sharing stories about how we’re putting our company’s values into action.”

    Suzanne Sully-Pniewski, Lowe’s Store Manager, Buffalo, NY

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