IAM008 – Entrepreneur Develops an Active Solution for Deskbound Employees

Patrick Harrison is a Kinesiologist and designer of the CoreChair. His first successful business focused on the design of specialized seating solutions for individuals who were dependent on wheelchairs for mobility. In 2008, Patrick leveraged this experienced-based knowledge to create the CoreChair, an active sitting solution for deskbound employees. He has become a source of knowledge for individuals and corporations to identify health risks manifesting as back pain and metabolic disorders and to implement solutions in the workplace. Patrick is a classic serial entrepreneur who chooses to run his own ventures as a CEO rather than larger entities. Previous business successes have resulted in acquisition events that have freed Harrison up to pursue new opportunities.

• CEO Hack: Peer network especially on LinkedIn, Google and Thriving on Chaos: Handbook for a Management Revolution and Tom Peters
• CEO Nugget: Take really good care of customers and they will take care of you
• CEO Defined:  Serial entrepreneur who understands to make key decisions and has the ability to make decisions and pivots.

Website: http://www.corechair.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/corechair/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CoreChair
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/corechair/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickharrison2/
Blog: https://ca.corechair.com/blogs/blog

TRANSCRIPTION:

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place, Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I am CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:26

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I am CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today Patrick Harrison from CoreChair. It's awesome to have you on the show, Patrick.

Patrick Harrison 0:38

Hey, Gresham. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me on.

Gresham Harkless 0:40

No problem, no problem. Well, what I wanted to do was just kind of read a little bit more about Patrick so you can learn a little bit more about all the awesome things that he's doing. And Patrick Harrison is a kinesiologist and designer of the core chair. His first successful business focused on the design of specialized seating solutions for individuals who are dependent on wheelchairs for mobility. In 2008. Patrick leveraged this experience-based knowledge to create the core chair and active sitting solution for deskbound employees, he has become a source of knowledge for individuals and corporations to identify health risks manifesting as back pain and metabolic disorders and to implement solutions in the workplace. Patrick is super awesome to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Patrick Harrison 0:40

You got it

Gresham Harkless 0:42

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, the very first question that I have is just to kind of introduce yourself and kind of build a little bit more upon the background that I read about you. So could you tell us your CEO story and give us a quick peek into your story and what allowed you to start your business?

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Patrick Harrison 1:36

Well, for sure, I think I'm one of those people that has been identified as a serial entrepreneur. And that would have begun pretty much after I left university, maybe even before that, but I started the business, designing seating solutions for people in wheelchairs. And for people who got up in the morning and settled until they went to bed at night with a variety of different physical challenges, built that business up had international distribution and then sold it in 1995, to US-based Invacare Corporation, then as an unemployed retiree, too young to settle down in those ways. I got into a lot of different projects like land development, and alpaca farming, doing business consulting and investing in different companies, and working on boards and such. And then this whole thing came up with the sitting disease, and I saw people taking balls to their office. And so that's how I kind of got inspired by the need to have movement in healthy workplaces. So that's the current venture that I'm engaged in as a CEO.

Gresham Harkless 2:45

Awesome, awesome. Awesome. Yeah. I mean, definitely, it's something that's needed. And as I, you know, record this, I'm sitting in my chair, and I'm always trying to sit up straight and make sure that I'm doing what probably the CoreChair already does. So could you tell us a little bit more about what the CoreChair is and what exactly you do with our business?

Patrick Harrison 3:01

Yeah, I mean, the basic, in the world of ergonomics office chair seating, in particular, the chair designs have not changed dramatically in terms of function. In probably 150 years since they first became available. Obviously, they look much better, they function much better. So we set out to design a mechanism that would act much like the stability ball, and that would move and create a more healthy environment for people over a long duration to minimize back pain and stimulate their metabolism. But in the course of doing this, we had to decide whether we wanted to confirm and do whatever our other office chair did and look like. Or if we were going to come up with what we now refer to as a disruptive innovation. I think as a CEO in this setting, with a product like this, it's actually pretty exciting because a lot of people are really resistant to change. So it really kind of leverages your skill sets and your creative imagination and overcome objections and resistance to change.

Gresham Harkless 4:02

Yeah, I would definitely, you know, agree with that. And especially anytime you're doing something that's disruptive, something that people are not kind of used to. So they have to kind of wrap their minds around it, to kind of take it in and understand and understand that it's a better way. So I guess, could you talk a little bit more about like, what makes you guys unique and what's unique about what it is that you're doing?

Patrick Harrison 4:21
Yeah, well, I think you know, probably the elevator talk is this is a chair that optimizes sitting posture. And it also introduces movement, which is important for our bodies. Our human bodies. We're not meant to be sedentary as they are going from hunters and gatherers many, many generations ago to now hooked on our technology, we don't move and we really do need to move the company. We spent seven and a half years developing this product, which at times was a scary journey because it was a significant investment in both time and money. And it was recruiting shareholders and investors to believe in what this was really all about it kind of carried the day to get this product to market. So we've been a market now for just about three years, and our main focus has been North America trying to build a team that can help to build the market presence and awareness. Unfortunately, we've actually attracted a lot of international attention. So we're working with a potential distributor for Europe, based in Germany. And we're also working with another company out of China for distribution in China, which wasn't originally on the radar screen. So sometimes you make plans, knowing that it's your starting point, and at the end of the day, you might end up somewhere totally different.

Gresham Harkless 5:34

Yeah, I think that's the funny and awesome thing about businesses that sometimes you expect you to, you know, a to go to B, but sometimes a goes to D, and D goes to z, and then it comes back to V. So you never know how things will take you exactly. Now, one of the awesome things that I get to do is just to ask any CEOs and entrepreneurs that are on this show for a CEO hack. So that might be like a resource that you use on a daily basis. So it could be a book, it could be an app. But what CEO hack to use and feel like feels like makes you more efficient as a business owner?

Patrick Harrison 6:03

Well, I'll tell you, stepping back a few years, when I had my previous company, special health systems, I was a junkie for learning things. Because at the time, I remember trying to build a business plan. And my real challenge at the time was trying to figure out who I could talk to that could help me build my business plan. And then when I found that person, what would I ask? So I was a junkie for all kinds of different kinds of leading-edge things. And at the time, there was an author by the name of Tom Peters, and he wrote a book called Thriving on Chaos actually wrote a number of books, but you may have heard of them or read them. But I remember that his work just kind of blew me away because his underlying message was all about your customer is what you're here for. And your customer's always right. If you take really good care of your customers, they will take care of your business.

So our customers, we offer a 12-year warranty and a 60-day satisfaction guarantee, if somebody has a problem, we just take care of it. And that was kind of the moral of that whole message. In today's age, what I think I lean on a lot of is my peer network to kind of share what some might describe as horror stories at times, but you know, kind of sharing successes, failures, challenges on a day-to-day basis, staying connected through some awesome platforms like LinkedIn, where there's, you know, perfect pearls of wisdom that are shared on a regular basis. And, you know, just trying to kind of stay on the forefront of new thoughts. I would say I use Google quite a bit from time to time.

Gresham Harkless 7:37

Yeah, don't we all but no, it's really awesome that, you know, you're able to, you know, take a book that you read, and then you're able to implement it in your business. And you can see how that kind of translates over to that. So I think that's super awesome that you've been able to do that. Now, I know, you said that you've gotten a lot of pearls of wisdom or words of wisdom from you know, the groups that you've been a part of, and been able to kind of collaborate with. So I wanted to ask you if you had maybe one or a few things that you can give as a quote-unquote, CEO, nugget, which might be kind of those words of wisdom that we can carry on to help us out our businesses?

Patrick Harrison 8:10

Well, I think probably just to reiterate the point about why we're in business, if we didn't have customers, then we wouldn't be here. So I just feel very strongly that if we take really good care of our customers, they will take care of our business. And if we've got one customer who's unhappy, it's kind of the old adage that we've heard for many, many years is that one person who's unhappy is going to tell 10 people, and the one person who is happy might only tell one or two or three people. So I think it's really important that we make sure that even at the end of the day, if we can't resolve a customer's concerns, or whatever the issue might be, at least if we make a sincere effort to do so and don't burn bridges and keep building the business towards the future. You know, there's a whole bunch of other things that we could probably dig into of day-to-day things that you could do to make your business better. But I think the highest priority is the customer. And in saying that, I think we need to look at customers and suppliers within our organization that we need to make sure that our team is buying in and part of that whole philosophy so that you're not just kind of feeding fodder to the frontlines people who actually have to deal with the customers they need to buy into it and understand it and be treated similarly.

Gresham Harkless 9:27

Yeah, I love that. I love that. Yeah, I think often, you know, with all the different things that you have to do the marketing, the sales, the running the business, the management, sometimes there's technology, there are all these different things that sometimes you just forget about why you're in business and why you need to have a business which is to have customers and making sure that you take care of them. So that's insanely important to kind of have at the forefront and it's great that you guys are doing that one of the next questions I have which is one of the reasons you know for this podcast is whether we're hoping to have like a range of different quote unquote CEOs on this podcast. So what I wanted to ask was specifically for you, obviously, being a serial entrepreneur, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Patrick Harrison 9:27

Well, I think going back through my history of being a serial entrepreneur, with, fortunately, more successes than failures, but still some failures, being the CEO really means that you don't have to make all of the decisions, but you can make the real key decisions, and you're not kind of limited in what you can do. So the biggest challenge I see with a lot of organizations is that when they make a plan, they're so hard and fast on that plan, that it doesn't allow them to flex and deal with the waves that are coming and going on a day-to-day basis. So as a CEO, if I've got some really brilliant idea that somebody on the team brings forward, we can change our plan in a heartbeat. And I'm all over that. If I wasn't the CEO, I might get frustrated that I couldn't do that. So probably why I think I'm probably not employable by somebody else. But it certainly is nice to be able to make decisions that you can act on right away.

Gresham Harkless 11:02

That's fine. Yeah, I often hear that sometimes the best, especially serial entrepreneurs and business owners are often the worst employees because they want to just be able to make the changes. And when they can't, that becomes a frustration.

Patrick Harrison 11:10

For sure

Gresham Harkless 11:12

Awesome, awesome. awesome. Well, Patrick, I'm super appreciative of you taking some time out of your schedule to kind of speak with us, what I wanted to do was just kind of give you the floor to see if there was anything additional, you want to tell our readers and our listeners. And then finally, like, if people want to learn more about CoreChair and get a hold of you, what's the best way for them to do that?

Patrick Harrison 11:32

Yeah, I appreciate that Gresham. And, you know, I guess the wisdom that I would note to young entrepreneurs and young CEOs of startups, in particular, is that it's so important that if you have a dream you chase it because you'll spend the rest of your life regretting if you don't and to be able to take charge and take the risk and get out there. And yeah, sometimes you're going to fall down and bruise your shins and knees and elbows. But what you learn from doing that is immense, not just for your business potential and success, but also as an individual to really test what you're made of and make you feel really good about what you've accomplished.

Gresham Harkless 12:10

Awesome, awesome, awesome. And those are obviously very great words of wisdom. And for anybody that might be listening, what's the best way for them to get a CoreChair or learn more from you?

Patrick Harrison 12:21

Well, we're always happy to make a CoreChair available. We have corechair.com. And we're located just above the city of Toronto, in Canada, and we're distributing internationally. So you can probably the easiest way to connect with this is on our website.

Gresham Harkless 12:41

Awesome, awesome, awesome. And we will definitely have that link in the show notes just in case anybody wants to link go directly to your site. But Patrick, thank you so much again for taking some time out of your schedule. I truly appreciate all the awesome things that you're doing and the words of wisdom that you gave us today.

Patrick Harrison 12:55

Well, thanks, Gresham. I love what you're doing so keep up the great work.

Outro 12:58

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I am CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless Thank you for listening

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