Steve Rigby

Kindness is at the heart of everything we do and teach. Zig Zigler understood its importance, “People don’t care how much we know,” he said, “until they know how much we care.” I learned caring and kindness from my mother who applied the ABC’s of selling at the age of six. During the Great Depression, she went door to door selling hairbrushes, cosmetics, and toiletries she carried in a black briefcase from her father’s barber shop. She was the Mary Kay Ash of 1938. At six, no one knows anything about selling—we only know kindness. And that’s all she needed to know to help her younger brother, and parents, survive those times. Months before her passing, she gave me that briefcase. It is a cherished keepsake we display at our Education Center. Oh, Mother’s ABC was not “Always Be Closing.” It was “Always Be Caring.” She spoke the language of kindness Mark Twain understood. It served her well.

I spoke that language selling sawmill machinery and equipment, automobiles, real estate, and new homes. It served me well. It also helped me during the two decades I managed and built sales teams as the National Director of Training for three of the nation’s top-ten homebuilders. Kindness and caring are woven into three books I’ve since authored that are FUNdamentally changing the way products and services are being sold and how people are being managed.

On the personal side, I’m celebrating 28 years of marriage to my bride, my Susan. She had over ten years in the mortgage industry when we met. Ten years later we spread our wings by founding NewWings Consulting. Not that the world needed more consulting firms—they were a dime a dozen. Sadly, they all taught the old way of transactional selling and micromanaging. It needed a firm that understood how buyers want to buy, salespeople want to sell, and people want to be managed. Kindness and caring were paramount, along with: showing respect, truly listening, gently guiding, humbly serving, and putting the needs and interests of others first. Over these two-plus decades, staying true to those principles and values have allowed us to triple in size and expand to a dozen industries . . . and counting.

Speaking of growth, our family of six children has grown to include six grandchildren. We’re pleased to share that over those same years our “extended” family has grown by the thousands! All the people we have served have become family. At NewWings, we don’t refer to those we’ve served as “clients” or “customers.” Those are business terms. Since we’re in the people business, we use people terms. Our philosophy is guest . . . friend . . . family.