I’ve hired Rick as my executive coach across two companies. He’s masterful with a diverse and wide range of situations and people.

 

I first engaged Rick after being brought in as CEO of a seed-stage startup. The company was in an incredibly intense and stressful scenario that exceeded the tools, experience, and capacity I had as the leader to navigate. Rick showed up as an ER doctor, helping to diagnose the right issues and provide the right tools for change to the team. With a clearer picture, shared awareness, practical methods, and hope, we could change the team dynamic and set ourselves up for posting big growth numbers over the coming years. It required commitment and persistent hard work for the entire team but was some of the most important and rewarding work that we did. Rick entered into the heat and stayed there with us, changing roles from an ER doctor to a personal trainer as we got fit.

 

The benefits of Rick’s coaching were abundant. I was personally making years of progress in a couple of quarters, the people I led were growing faster, and we were producing better business results. As I transitioned to a new role as Director of New Initiatives at Remitly – acting as an entrepreneur inside a very successful late-stage startup – there was no question Rick was now part of my team and that I’d continue to work with him.

 

In that role, I got to identify and build completely new, big financial services business, for Remitly’s immigrant customers. Not only did we have to identify and build the right business, but we also had to figure out how to do so while maintaining high velocity for our own team and for the core remittance teams inside the larger business. 

 

The business is complex. The political environment is complex. Figuring out how to navigate is complex. I needed my own strategic management process and thought partnership at the highest level. This is Rick’s sweet spot. 

 

During our first engagement, I needed to grow as a leader to manage a 10-30 person organization. Now, I needed to grow to lead a 100+ person organization. Plus, I had to adapt to a more demanding environment with higher stakes, higher dollars, and extraordinarily experienced executives inside a much larger organization. 

 

He helped me show up in ways that multiplied the team and created high impact work done in an environment that people loved being part of. 

 

In addition to the “how” of getting things done, Rick’s experience as a Naval officer, engineer, and leader at Microsoft, allows him to seamlessly transition to provide critical thought on “what” needs to be done.  

 

He is a fantastic strategic planning consultant who can quickly help diagnose issues and create an effective strategy to put into play. Rick’s magic is his wealth of frameworks and experience in business that is different from a coach trained in psychology. He has operational knowledge of what I’m going through and that is rare to find. His questions are always on point and great instigators of productive debate. Plus, with his intense intellectual horsepower, he can stay in complex conversations for a long time and hold his own and make an impact with personalities who are used to being the smartest in the room. 

 

Today, I owe so much of my growth and my teams’ growth to Rick Maguire. The growth has led to more rapid career advancement, responsibilities I’m entrusted with, compensation level, and the fact that my team can confidently and more effectively get after and take advantage of business opportunities.