This year Price Associates celebrated 15 years of serving customers and helping leaders grow and change their worlds. Founded by Ron Price in 2004, the company has grown and evolved as seasoned advisors joined the team—and brought their expertise to clients.

We sat down with Ron to talk about the early years and some of his favorite memories.

How did Price Associates start?
In January of 2004, Tim Eckstrom and I attended the TTI Success Insights Conference. We wanted to learn more about TTI, their assessment products, and to see if we identified with their people. At that conference, we were inspired to start the business. When we incorporated in March 2004, we thought it was going to be a coaching business. Of course, business coaching was not very common in the Treasure Valley in 2004. We quickly learned that people wanted much more from us: strategic planning, all things HR, leadership development, innovation, systems and process improvement, and more. We spent a lot of time in those early days listening to customers and developing solutions for their needs.

What are a few of your favorite memories of client work over the years?
There are so many! Pacific Steel & Recycling stands out. They truly engaged us as strategic partners for succession planning and we were able to help them with a long list of projects that included a lot of very impactful work. We have also been fortunate to partner with Wada Farms in many of the same ways, working on projects that span multiple generations. Some of our most meaningful work recently has been with BBB Northwest-Pacific, CBI Health, and Zoetis Animal Health doing leadership training with The Complete Leader and innovation projects with The Innovator’s Advantage.

Doing work in 18 countries has created a multitude of unique memories. I’m humbled to say that more than 25 businesses have given us repeated opportunities to be true partners in growing leaders and changing their worlds over this past 15 years. In addition, we have been privileged to work with more than 1,000 leaders through development programs and innovation initiatives, all with the goal of helping them grow themselves and their organizations.

And TTI assessments have been a powerful tool through the years, helping our clients understand themselves and their teams better, and learn to communicate and work more effectively. We have executed more than 10,000 TriMetrix HD Leadership Profiles over the past 15 years, and more than 25,000 reports overall (this includes DISC, Emotional Quotient, Stress Quotient, and more).

What have been your biggest lessons over the years?
I think there are four significant ones:

1. We are here to help based on what our clients need and are ready for. Sometimes we have to slow down because they aren’t ready yet for everything we want to give.
2. The clients who push us because of their commitment always create the best results, which means they get more credit for the results than us.
3. We are never finished learning ourselves.
4. The community of fellow advisors we have around us (TTI Success Insights, etc.) has been an amazing and continuing influence on our success.

Looking back over these past 15 years, what are you most proud of?
It has been nice to reflect on these last 15 years, and I can definitively say that I’m most proud of making a lasting difference through our work. We are fortunate to work in a field where we get to help organizations experience improved performance, clarity, harmony, momentum, and success. These are impacts we have been privileged to be part of.

Maybe more important are the people who tell us that we have changed their lives and they continue to grow because of something we did together, even if it was many years ago. This is the most satisfying. It is more a feeling of humility than pride because we are just a part of a much bigger picture.

I’m particularly proud of the thought leadership of our wonderful team: the number of books, programs, webinars, trainings, podcasts, articles, videos and blogs that have been created by our team members coupled with the responses and encouragement from clients, colleagues and friends. The impact of these efforts can be measured in the millions after 15 years. That is something that transcends pride—it produces an overwhelming gratitude and humility.