Customer Experience, AI, and Cloud Security With Mikhail Ruchkin
- Quik! News Team
- 1 day ago
- 25 min read
Mikhail Ruchkin is the CEO of Innovative Digital Transformation, an AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner that helps organizations modernize their technology through cloud migration, cybersecurity, AI, and digital transformation solutions. He has more than 15 years of experience leading cloud strategy and security initiatives for startups, mid-sized businesses, and Fortune 500 companies. Before founding Innovative Digital Transformation, Mikhail held leadership roles in cloud security and IT, including serving as Director of Information Technology and Security at AWS consulting partner ClearScale. He is passionate about building long-term customer relationships, helping organizations innovate securely, and developing high-performing teams.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
[2:06] Mikhail Ruchkin discusses Innovative Digital Transformation and the importance of treating customers the way you want to be treated
[3:34] Helping organizations with AWS, AI, and digital transformation
[5:19] Why customers need trusted cloud experts, not just technical expertise
[8:42] Investing in people and developing future technology leaders
[12:36] Mikhail talks about turning a high-risk AWS migration into a successful partnership
[17:50] Delivering exceptional service on the most demanding customer projects
[24:48] The growing cybersecurity risks of AI-powered development
[28:39] Making security a continuous process with AI assistance
[31:35] Leadership lessons from a mentor who emphasized accountability and delivering on promises
In this episode…
Many organizations invest heavily in cloud technology and AI but still struggle to deliver the business outcomes they expect because they focus on tools instead of people, trust, and long-term partnerships. As AI accelerates innovation, balancing rapid development with strong cybersecurity practices has become even more challenging. How can business leaders embrace new technology while building lasting customer relationships and maintaining security?
Mikhail Ruchkin, a cloud strategy, cybersecurity, and digital transformation expert, explains that successful technology projects begin by understanding what customers truly need rather than simply delivering what they request. He shares why investing in people, mentoring future leaders, and treating every customer as a long-term partner creates stronger business outcomes. Mikhail also discusses practical ways organizations can adopt AI responsibly by implementing security guardrails, continuously reviewing their security posture, and educating employees to innovate safely without slowing progress.
In this episode of The Customer Wins, Richard Walker interviews Mikhail Ruchkin, CEO of Innovative Digital Transformation, about building customer trust through cloud technology, AI, and cybersecurity. Mikhail discusses developing high-performing teams, knowing when to walk away from the wrong customers, and creating security-first AI practices that enable innovation without sacrificing long-term success.
Resources Mentioned in this episode
Quotable Moments:
“Try to understand what they really need. Just be yourself and try to treat them the same way you want to be treated.”
“I want smarter people to be around me. I want you to grow higher than myself.”
“It's not only about reputation, it's to show those customers that there's another way to do business.”
“AI will be part of our life. And that's absolutely normal. But in the meantime, AI never and ever will be able to be a human being.”
“Security is a process. So just review it again and again. Use new frameworks, new approaches.”
Action Steps:
Focus on understanding what customers truly need: Taking time to uncover the real business problem instead of simply fulfilling requests leads to better outcomes, builds trust, and creates stronger long-term customer relationships.
Invest in developing your people: Mentoring team members and helping them grow professionally creates a more capable, engaged, and loyal workforce that delivers better customer experiences and strengthens the organization over time.
Choose customers who align with your values: Evaluating whether a prospective client is a good long-term fit helps avoid costly partnerships while fostering healthier, more productive relationships built on shared principles.
Build security into every AI initiative: Establishing guardrails, educating employees, and continuously reviewing security reduces risk while enabling organizations to innovate confidently without compromising sensitive data.
Keep your promises and deliver with accountability: Consistently following through on commitments builds credibility with customers, colleagues, and partners while creating the trust that is essential for lasting business success.
Sponsor for this episode...
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Episode Transcript:
Intro: 00:02
Welcome to The Customer Wins podcast, where business leaders discuss their secrets and techniques for helping their customers succeed and in turn, grow their business.
Richard Walker: 00:16
Hi, I'm Rich Walker, the host of The Customer Wins, where I talk to business leaders about how they help their customers win and how their focus on customer experience leads to growth. Some of my past guests have included George Swetlitz of RightResponse AI, Ian Karnell of VastAdvisor, and Josh DeTar of Tyfone. Today, I'm speaking with Mikhail Ruchkin, founder of Innovative Digital Transformation. In today's episode is brought to you by Quik!, the leader in enterprise forms processing. When your business relies upon processing forms.
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Visit Quickforms.com to get started. All right. Mikhail Ruchhkin is a technology executive, cloud strategist and cybersecurity leader with more than 15 years of experience helping organizations modernize, scale, and innovate in the cloud. Mikhail began his career in cloud security and has spent the last decade working with organizations ranging from start ups to fortune 500 enterprises. Today, Mikhail serves as the CEO of Innovative Digital Transformation transformation, or IDT, who is an AWS Advanced Tier Services partner.
Mikhail, welcome to The Customer Wins.
Mikhail Ruchkin: 01:45
Thank you. Rich. Glad to meet you.
Richard Walker: 01:48
All right. So for those who haven't heard this podcast before, I love to talk to business leaders about what they're doing to help their customers win, how they built and deliver a great customer experience and the challenges to growing their own company. So Mikhail, let's understand your business a lot better. How does your company help people?
Mikhail Ruchkin: 02:06
Well, that's an interesting question. The whole idea of our business is really to help people. And that all started a few years ago, when I already have been in business for quite a bit. And helping for me was probably the primary goal helping people, helping customers. And now how we look at this, you know, it's really to try to treat your customers the same way you want to be treated.
I think it sounds pretty common, but what I really tell my people when you meet with the customer, when you look at the customer, try to understand what they really need. Sometimes they want a lot. Sometimes they like, say, I want this or that technology or, you know, I want, I want this modern fancy thing, but really try to understand and then try to give them what they really need. Just be yourself and try to treat them the same way you want to be treated. So I think this golden rule is what I've been teaching.
You know, my people, my colleagues, and that's been that's been my motive through years. Yep.
Richard Walker: 03:15
I love that. I mean, I think life's too short to do business with people you don't like. And so that to me is part of that path. If you aren't treating people well, they're not going to treat you well and you're not going to attract people who treat you well. What are the types of problems that people need your help for?
Mikhail Ruchkin: 03:34
Well, since I'm in the technology business, usually that's really, you know, they, they, they come up with the needs either to improve the effectiveness of their, you know, business through digital transformation. Since we are AWS advanced tier partner, it's more like, hey, we want to save on cost or we want to be more productive. And nowadays everybody, you know, use artificial intelligence technology for that. So it's one, one option. And you know, those requests like effectiveness or cost optimization, or they need to, let's say, build a new service or product and they need experts who can give them not only the, you know, the technology.
There are a lot of experts on the market, but an important thing here is that people who you can trust, who you can really trust, not only just to do the job, but to get some sort of not only support, but like it's a long term long term relationships that they can rely on when they either need to, let's say, move on with the, with the product they built or they need something new. So yeah, that's, that's, I would say the most things that we hear.
Richard Walker: 04:46
You know, I, I met you many, many, many years ago when you were working at another firm and you helped us with security implementation within our Amazon environment. And I will attest, I mean, it just felt like you were part of our team. You truly cared about what we were doing and how it could work. And the thing I want to say, though, is that it is hard as a small business to have the AWS skills in-house. And so we look to companies like yours who have the expertise to do it.
Why is Amazon so hard? Why does it require such a high level of expertise?
Mikhail Ruchkin: 05:19
Well, the competition is very high. And, you know, the technology itself is, is constantly, I would say, evolving. It's like a, it's, it's really about learning new stuff all the time. I mean, and, you know, there are several companies on the market that offer cloud, cloud platforms, you know, other than Amazon. And I'm sure that all of them, they require highly skilled people, you know, to provide services on top of their, their products and their platforms.
But I would say that. All the time we need to learn the new technology. But an important thing, and I'm just coming back to our, you know, original, original topic that we need to keep in mind that technology is just part of the game, and we really need to give people the best result within the budget and timeline where we bring the best quality. And in the meantime, what they really need is like, I can tell you that very often. I wouldn't say that people need what they ask for.
That's the that's the truth of life. You know, sometimes sometimes customers show up and they say like, build us a spaceship, but we really understand that they don't need it. And we understand that in order to reach their goal, it's just a simple thing and it's much cheaper and it's much faster. And instead of just, you know, giving them what they need, which is sit and talk and explain. Sometimes it's like parents and children and you need to explain.
I'm a father of four girls, girls. I don't know what it is to have boys, but for girls it means that you need to talk. Five women in the household. You need to talk a lot. You need to be able to explain.
You need to know how to convince. You know how to listen. Because that's that's the hard thing with women, right? So you need to listen. You need to explain.
And in the meantime, you're responsible for everything. So my business is, I wouldn't say it's the same, but it's something similar. You need to treat them like your children and not always give them what they want, but just sit and explain what they really need. And that's why my customers, they are thankful because, you know, the way we do business is really about long term success. It's not about just doing the project.
It's not about just giving, giving them what they asked. Yes. Sometimes when, when customers say like, just give me what I need. I always give options and I say what is the best for them? From my experience, from the experience of my teams and departments.
So yeah, that's, that's the way how, how we how we do this.
Richard Walker: 08:04
You know, Mikael, I, I think most companies rely on their people. They think that, that people are definitely part of the product and definitely part of the customer experience. And I would even offer to my own customers that you're buying a relationship, not just a tech, not just the ability to fill out forms, not just because APIs keep running. You're buying our ability to work with you, communicate with you effectively, etc. but in your world, it is all people. I mean, yeah, you're building a product for the customer that they want built, but your entire product is people.
So how do you make sure that you're creating a consistent experience with all the people on your team?
Mikhail Ruchkin: 08:42
Well, that's an interesting question. It was many years ago when I was a child and my, my, my dad, he brought me in the field, in the soccer field. And he said, hey, listen, I was a goalkeeper. I want you to be a goalkeeper. So I was 8 or 9 years old and that was scary for me.
It's like, you know, 11 people on the field and you need to you're in charge. You're you're not just, you know, forward or defense. You're the last person on that field who protects the gate. And that's, I believe, where I started learning the responsibility not only for yourself, but for the end result and for the entire team. So when I grew up, you know, I always, I probably that helped me to promote myself in the way that I really kind of started becoming the type of leadership where I take responsibility on myself.
So in business, I pay a lot of attention on people who I work with. So people means a lot for me. And I, when I hire somebody, I meet with each person and I see if he first of all, if that's the right for that person. This, you know, position, you know, this department or this project. And I try to find the best fit for both, like customer teammates, the company and I grow people.
That's, that's one of my goals. You know, it's not only serving customers, but I, I feel so happy when I see the success of junior people and see how they progress and how they really grow professionally and as people. And I see how they become mature in some areas. And I have that examples like I cannot tell you the exact number, but at least I think five plus people that I have in my head right now that I was able to grow from, like, I don't know, 15 years old young bucks to really, really great engineers and professionals. And that's how I think that's at least my opinion.
People should invest, leaders should invest. It's not only just, you know, building something, providing services, but that's about life. What I usually tell my, my guys, hey, we spend, we spend a lot of time at work. We see each other, we see our customers, we work with each other. Sometimes we see ourselves more than we see our wives.
And that's not the right thing. And sometimes it's hard projects and we really need to pay attention to something. But it happens. And what I say that we leave our lives, and it means that we need to influence the way that that we help each other to grow. Not only not only as professionals, I mean technology wise, but also as people.
And that works. And I call that the greatest investment investment in people. Sometimes I tell them, listen, I want smarter people to be around me. I want you to grow higher than myself. I want you to become more successful.
So I'm just, I just share with you what I have. And I want to not only empower you, but encourage you to grow and and see how you will do. That's like about having great teachers. I was lucky to have great teachers, you know, who taught me pretty much the same.
Richard Walker: 11:59
Now, I love that philosophy and mindset because I don't want to waste a moment in my life not improving, not not growing, not moving down the path. And it's frustrating when you're not changing and you're not moving forward or even going backwards because you're not making good decisions. So to have a leader on the team who's, who's caring about that for their their team members, I think is just phenomenal. Let's switch this around. I might be potentially asking you a hard question because as entrepreneurs, we want to help everybody.
Sometimes we need to make money. So we try to take the business we can take. But how do you say no to customers if they're not the right fit? Because it's a two way street, isn't it?
Mikhail Ruchkin: 12:36
Yes, absolutely. And that's that requires some sort of, I would say practice and I can acknowledge that I did mistakes in the future, in the past. Sorry. And where I worked with customers that were not the best fit for our company and for, you know, for that. And I can tell you that what I, what I learned from that, if you said, yes, you need to, you need to do what you promised.
And with a couple of examples in my experience. So even though the customers were not the greatest for us, we completed the work even financially, I can tell you that it was not the best result, the best outcome that we expected. Still, I explained my team that it's not only about reputation, it's to show those customers that there's another way to do business. And through those, you know, hard projects, I trained my team and showed my team that even if you are not treated well, you still need to deliver the best result. And again, it's more than about just reputation.
It's about like it's about teaching other people to do, you know, to do their life better. And on the other hand, that helped me to learn that if I see that the customer is not the best, it's not the best fit for us. I mean, not about it's not only about like. It's not about financial stuff. I think it's more about looking at customer as a partner, as a friend.
Right? And if I see that their goals, their intentions, their principles, their ideas, they are different. I say no, I say no, even though if we can help them technically help them. But I understand that long term it will be difficult for me, you know, to bring this customer and turn that into some sort of long term positive relationships or friendship. Well, I never know for 100%.
And sometimes, as I mentioned, I remember I remember a difficult project that I had a few years ago where I was participating. I was not in this position and with this company, but I was participating in a large, massive migration to AWS for one of the customers of my previous previous employer. And I remember at the time, and as you mentioned, I'm with from cyber, with cyber security background. And I remember the time when the customer said that, hey, listen, we're ready to stop this project because there are some security aspects of that. Like you guys are doing great job.
But we think that, you know, it requires some more attention. It was not it wasn't anything critical, but that was, you know, critical enough for the customer to say, like, we are ready to stop that multi-million project right now. And the question was to me like, do you want that to happen? And that's like hundreds and hundreds of people who, who were participating at that time. And I was like facing like that question.
It's like, wow, do you really want that? I said. Well, just to say no. And you cannot escape and you cannot, you know, you you're the frontliner. You're the goalkeeper, as I mentioned.
Yeah. So literally I took the firing myself and just asked for like 48 hours, gave the plan and I had to just to burn it on the fly to, to give them the plan, steps, outcomes, everything. And they said, okay, yeah, we give you 48 hours. Well, that's an example where that difficult project and difficult customers, difficult customer, the people on that project, they became my friends. I tell you, we, we literally turned that into success together and without any issues, we successfully helped to, you know, deliver all of the projects under that portfolio successfully.
And now today, like those guys are not with that company anymore. It was few years back, but we really are friends. We talk with each other and, you know, we share news and we just we just have good relationships. So that's an example how to we could turn that.
Richard Walker: 16:45
I love the entrepreneurial spirit that's spoken inside of that, because you have to be willing to take risks as an entrepreneur, which sometimes means I'm going to hit this out of the park and we're down and we're going to lose if I don't. So we're just going to go for it. And to me, that's one of those stories. But, you know, I didn't say this out loud. There's an underlying assumption here.
When you're in a people business and your product is your people, the customer experience is largely dependent upon the customer themselves. Because if it's a product, they self-select it's product for me or it's not for me. And I don't mean that perfectly black and white. It's not. But oftentimes you can choose a product because it's the right thing for you and it works brilliantly.
So part of the definition of customer experience that I'm kind of working through here is that it has to be a marriage of both parties. And I'm sure you experienced that to a lot of degree with people. Do you do you have those moments where you're where you're in the sales process and you're just like, no, no, no, no, no, this is never going to work. And it's so obvious. Or does it skip by you?
Mikhail Ruchkin: 17:50
Well, sometimes it happens right through the when we go through sales process. But as I mentioned, I have five, five women in my household. And when you have especially four daughters, you know, it gives me a very good training for that. So when, you know, when I asked my wife, like from your experience, and when you look at other like families and other men, like, do you see that, you know, men are different, some are active, some have not. Some want to spend time with their wives, some not.
And she always tells me like that, you know, how you treat your family and your wife. Look at your daughters and at me and you will see how well you do the job. So in other words, with customers, when it's pretty pretty much, I wouldn't say the same, but something similar to me. So when I go through sales process and I see that, oh, maybe that's not a good fit for me. As I mentioned, you never know.
And one of my partners last year, we were supporting like a large organization with their customers. They were doing a lot of artificial intelligence and also cloud migrations and data analytics projects. We built for BI systems for them, many different projects. And security was also an important part for that. But the interesting fact that what they told me, we give you the most difficult projects.
And it was it wasn't sad. Like, you know, loudly. It was like, oh, you know what, guys? We use you, we invite you where we have like really difficult cases and difficult, difficult technology part, but also projects in terms of like customers, customers for difficult communication had to be, you know, just perfect. And the C level people on the other end were demanded a lot.
And we had to be not only confident but to deliver things. And I was really proud of my teams where at the end of the year, I was in a position where I had to send out an email just stating, guys, we did it. We delivered in time. And when I say within the budget, it doesn't always mean that it is within the budget of the project. But if I promise something to people, if I said that I will build this product for you or do this service for you, you know, within this time and this amount, I will do it, whatever, whatever it takes on my end, I'll just deliver that.
So that's probably, that's probably my role, you know, the most, the most critical projects and special customers that what I, I'm having right now, I can tell you that I have customers and they're special, special means they demand a lot. And in the meantime, They are sometimes customers, you know, and you know that I'm sure for sure they're not always nice with you. And what I tell my people never respond back in the way that you want, you know, to be responded. You must be perfect. And that's the rule.
I always use this example in my partners, my teammates. They smile when I say that like you're like a waiter at the restaurant in the best sense of that word. Like you invite people, they come and then you need to treat them the best way. But you know, my experience many, many years ago, I was working for one restaurant. I was doing like it work for them, the automation of their business processes.
In the meantime, I was offered by the owners to train their teams. Can you imagine? Like I was doing it, they saw how I was treating people and how I was playing with engineers. I mean, how we were doing the job for them. And they invited me to train their waiters and bartenders and all of those guys.
And I said, really? Well, that's that's great. But they said like, just train them. And, you know, I spent, I was doing my projects with them. But in the meantime, I decided to help and I spent, believe me or not, one year I was doing, I was doing, you know, some project for them.
But I, throughout one year, I talked to them, I explained them the principles. And I was so happy to see in a year how that team of about a dozen of people did the job. That was a small restaurant, but that was just like, like a theater. I explained to them, like, if you invite somebody, you know, to visit you at home and that's your friend, you would give that friend the best cup, the best place, you know, you would treat that person in the best way. Do the same for your guests at the restaurant.
Now in technology business, I say when you are at the restaurant. Be the best waiter you know when you. When you have people at your in your restaurant, please treat them the same way that they would want to come back. So it's a lot of philosophy. But I tell you, in our technology world, especially in the AI era where a lot of functions are automated and, you know, we really see that it does the job.
You know, it does the great job. So business processes, people's function. And people are what I hear in the industry. They, they really kind of are concerned, like what will happen in a half a year or in a year, right. So that's what we see in the software development field in, in, you know, in the infrastructure and other areas in security the same way.
But what, what I tell my people, AI will be part of our life. And that's absolutely normal. But in the meantime, I, I never and ever will be able to be a human being. I mean, in the way emotionally, you know, support people. Again, treatment of your customers.
It's very important not only to it's not it's very important not only to basically automate everything with AI, but, but in the meantime, be a person. Yeah. So that's, that's, that's the way. Yeah.
Richard Walker: 23:52
It's the timeless values of humanity that are filtering through with all of this. You're 100% right. And a lot of people I talk to, especially in financial services, they're like, no, the human will never be replaced by AI, especially in a time of need. Could you imagine an AI robot sitting with somebody who's grieving their loss of their spouse? I mean, that's just not going to happen.
All right. I want to switch topics before we run out of time, because I would be remiss not asking because you're a security expert by background, you're doing all these different projects with AI. One of the biggest, I think, risks right now is security with AI. And I don't simply mean mythos or hacking. I just mean the implementation of product and services and and building software without a focus on security.
So I'm curious your view of this. Do you think we're. Do you think things are building being built the right way? Do you think people are missing the boat on security? What's your view of it?
Mikhail Ruchkin: 24:48
Yeah. My view the risk is growing. And that's what I follow several sources. You know, just seeing that statistics and, you know, the security companies, they kind of publish their the results of their analysis. And yes, you are absolutely correct.
So the risk is growing nowadays, you know, that like non-technical people can build many things, chatbots, MCP servers to connect different systems. And that happens. And when I say non-technical people, I really say that like if we talk about software development, it's a technical person. He has some security, at least in mind the basic security. But it's like every everybody really can do that.
So my perspective on that, that it's time for security people, definitely not to try to prevent means that prevent people from new inventions, from new integrations, new operational processes. It's more about very. The need here is to try and succeed in building a safe security environment, in the sense that we need to use the modern frameworks to really implement them in companies and educate people. So basically let them do what they are doing, but put the guardrails, the safeguards, safeguard them by putting the guardrails and educate them. Don't tell them no, tell them how to do it right.
And that's what requires a lot of, I would say, time on the security, on the security side of to. Yeah, to implement that. It's not about implementing the technology or a firewall or a safeguard. We're in a different era. It's more about sitting with people and say, yes, you're doing a great job, but here are the three simple steps how you should do that.
You do it here in this environment. Take these three steps, you know, and educating them that way. What I think works the most right now, otherwise absolutely like AI, you know that everybody knows that can be used in a good sense and in a bad sense. So definitely, yeah. Go ahead.
Richard Walker: 27:03
Do you think AI should have the best practices of security built in? So if you go Vicodin app, because you're doing a marketing project, you're building a prototype, whatever, do you think AI should be responsible for building and security?
Mikhail Ruchkin: 27:17
Well, I think it's a combination. But again, we're we're being given with tools, right. And the security on their end is to, you know, the security job of of those companies is to build guardrails and safeguards inside of their products. I think that the way how we use the products and what we do, it's more on us on users and that's more on our end.
Richard Walker: 27:41
I mean, look, anecdotally, in my own experience, first of all, I find security to be one of the hardest things to implement in software with AI driving the wheel or steering the car. So it is a lot about controls and guidelines and really pushing it in the direction you want it to go for a security standpoint. The second thing is, look, this is out of context, but I have actually broken Opus Cloud opus. It's a high end model. It couldn't do the security things I needed it to do.
It was too complex for it and I had to change my approach. So I have this view that AI is not doing the security, even if it knows how. It's not doing it until you tell it to do it specifically, which means you have to have some sense of what problems are out there and what standards should be applied. And that brings in the security experts. So how do we get everybody to actually understand the security problem if they don't have the background in it?
How do they get your knowledge?
Mikhail Ruchkin: 28:39
Well, yeah, that's that's what you mentioned, right? AI gives us what we ask AI to give us. Everybody knows that today. And you're correct that by default, security is I wouldn't say it's part of every project. That's absolutely correct.
But on the other hand, AI is the technology that now gives an opportunity to everybody to get any information. So you can have my knowledge, you can have the outcome of, you know, experience that I have using AI. Ask the right questions. And if you have this intent to build, I don't know, service or product securely, you really just have to properly use the tool to give you the right answers. And as you know, it can give you the answers as an information, as code, as you know, integrations, everything you need, the tools to check, to test, to remediate.
And I would say that the biggest what I see, not a problem, but an issue right now that people basically treat security. It's is very often, I can tell you very. I saw that many times in the past. They just don't think about security. They just run, run, run, and they deliver and they want to show the outcome and results and numbers.
So security first is what I say is very important. Like whatever you do, whatever you build or provide a service, put like the, the, you know, the let it be generic, some common security rules, guardrails. And what is very important for companies to basically reiterate this process of reviewing their security posture. It's like the, you know, the life is, is changing so fast. So it's very important to not not only to build the security posture and say, we have it, but it's a process.
Security is a process. So just review it again and again. Use new frameworks, new approaches. And with the I, it's so easy to do for people who don't have, you know, security background, if you have this in mind that it's important, you know, nowadays you can, you can reach the outcome you want.
Richard Walker: 30:54
Yeah, man, I, I have so many more questions, but I'm out of time to keep asking all these questions. So I'll have to call you and have private ones just to, just to share later. So, Mikhail, before I get to my very last question, what is the best way for people to find and connect with you?
Mikhail Ruchkin: 31:11
Well, you can easily find me on LinkedIn, right? My email, mikhail.ruchkin@i-d-t.com, is also the way to contact me. So yep, I would be happy to talk.
Richard Walker: 31:23
Awesome. All right, here comes my last question, which is always one of my favorite ways to end a show. Who has had the biggest impact on your leadership style and how you approach your role today?
Mikhail Ruchkin: 31:35
Oh, that was my manager at Profitability of Hawaii. Warren Kunimoto. He's the great guy. And you know, we have great relationships. And he was the person who I worked for, I think about four years around that, three and a half, four years.
And that was the time when I really was learning from him, a great professional human being who taught me step by step. And he once told me the, you know, the phrase that I was thinking like what he was talking about. He said, listen, Mikhail, one day you will be leading a big team. Many people, you will have to show them how to work. You will have to really stay till 10 p.m..
Sometimes at work. First to really kind of take care of your people and then do your own work. But you need to learn this three simple things he told me. Be diligent. If you promise something, do it.
And that's, you know, and that's three simple things I would say was the really one great example, one great thing, if you promise something, you must do it, do it in time and within the budget. So that's what he, you know, constantly was telling me, you know, if you promise something, you must deliver that. Yeah, he's a great guy. He or he retired already. And you know, and I'm actually going to meet him I think today.
Yeah. We have a we have a call with him. So yeah, he's a great guy.
Richard Walker: 33:05
I love hearing these stories because these people, they don't know, they often don't know the kind of impact they're having on us as at that moment in time. And then what we become. And there are so many people I wish I could reach it. Reach out and find and say thank you to. So thank you for sharing that.
I hope you tell them about this today. All right, so to wrap up the show, I want to give a big thank you to Mikhail Ruchkin, CEO of Innovative Digital Transformation, for being on this episode of The Customer Wins. Go check out Mikhail's website at i-d-t.com. And don't forget to check out Quik! at quickforms.com, where we make processing forms easy. I hope you enjoyed this discussion.
We'll click the like button, share this with someone, and subscribe to our channels for future episodes of The Customer Wins. Mikhail, thank you so much for joining me today.
Mikhail Ruchkin: 33:55
Thank you for inviting me. Thank you.
Outro: 33:59
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