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Helping entrepreneurs, executives, and organizations grow their businesses by transforming their workplaces from within

Joe Mechlinski is the CEO and co-founder of entreQuest, a business consulting firm based in Baltimore. Since 2001, eQ has driven growth for entrepreneurs and organizations of all sizes, industries, and economic environments. Joe is also the Founder of SHIFT – a localized membership group for entrepreneurs and executives – and the author of Grow Regardless, a New York Times, USA Today, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.com best selling book about organizational change. He has served on the boards of Betamore, Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Greater Chesapeake, Conscious Venture Labs, and others. Joe and eQ have won numerous recognitions and honors, including Baltimore Business Journal’s “Best Places to Work” (for five consecutive years) and The Daily Record’s “Successful by 40” and “Most Admired CEOs” lists.

Q. You’ve had enormous success with your book, Grow Regardless. What inspired you to write the book and put it out there?

JOE MECHLINSKI: The book, for me, was all about getting this message out of not only me but also all of the things that we had done over the last—in that time—about 10 to 12 years in business. I thought it was time to memorialize it. I thought it was time to put this message, this methodology, in a bottle that would have a bigger impact than just the companies that we could physically touch and physically reach. And so, we decided to take the exact methodology in which we work with companies from a consultative standpoint and put it in the book in a way that didn’t tell how great we were. In fact, I thought it was a pretty “humble warrior” approach of saying “we screwed it up this way, learned from our mistakes, and if we can do it, you’re likely able to do it too.” I thought that the world needed a book that wasn’t about how to be super successful, but was about being a human being. Growth Regardless was almost my personal manifesto about my life, but also about how eQ I think has impacted the world and can continue to do so through that methodology.

The book was written that business is this pure sport, and so regardless of the conditions, regardless of your circumstances, regardless of where you start in this world—it’s not about where you start, they say, it’s about where you finish. For me, it was about igniting that fire in people post-2008. I mean, the world was a big glum in 2009 and 2010 as banks weren’t lending to small businesses, as the government was in sequestration, as we can’t get anything done in Congress in terms of passing a bill that would be helpful for small business. For me it was “how do we lift up and really re-inspire the small- to mid-sized business community?” Small business is the largest employer in this country. We’ve created two-thirds of the net new jobs in the last ten years. It is a big deal. And so, we put this methodology in place that basically states this: Tour company has to have a big vision, a big story. It has to have a story that is touching people here—here, in the heart—and if you can touch people here in the heart, can you then take that as a promise to both your employees and to your customers, and to the community? If you can find a way to do that—you’ll look at companies like TOMS Shoes, Whole Foods, Zappos, Starbucks: not only do they have great customer service, and people have written books about them, but they’re also some of the best places to work, which I think is not a mistake. It didn’t happen by accident. What we try to do for small- and mid-sized businesses is take all of these things that big companies do, and how do you boil it down so it’s applicable and it’s actionable for them?

Q. How has it affected your business?

A. The book impacted my career probably the same way going from Patterson High School to Hopkins impacted my career. It’s given us the ability to have instant credibility. I mean, it’s a thing we take a lot of pride in. It hit the New York Times bestsellers list, it was number one book in Barnes & Noble for a few days—even so much so that we beat Fifty Shades of Grey for those three days, which was kind of funny for us. It allowed us to start working with more enterprise-level accounts. I had billion-dollar companies call us to want to do business with us because of the kinds of things they read. I think it really did inspire people that they could treat their employees differently, that they could treat their clients differently, and they could treat their community differently. There’s been great speaking opportunities, there’s been great consulting opportunities—in fact, I look at some of the people that have joined our company to help serve our greater mission, and I would say the book has helped us from a recruiting standpoint. It’s been a humbling experience. I still get notes from people who have read the book and I have no idea who they are. I’ve gotten FedEx packages from people who want to work with us, that have totally blown my mind in terms of the impact they say it’s had on them. It’s a proud moment but it’s also a humbling moment.

Connect with Joe on LinkedIn

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