As announced last month, Quest has been acknowledged as one of the fastest growing companies in the Inc. 5000! It took way more than one office space meeting to get us there. This was no small accomplishment and the growth tactics we used to achieve this feat are noteworthy for other companies, both small and large, that endeavor for similar success. Here are the 4 major reasons we were able to reach this height of business growth.
#1 Total and Utter Commitment to Client Goals
Our clients, past and present, have said it. Quest is so committed to the client’s goals that our Questers and their business counterparts, see little difference between Quest and their own staff.
To quote Steve Turk, a former Quester, in his narrative on the Quester experience:
Quest answered the phone with our company name and when interacting with our clients, they acted like they were our employees. They actually thoughts that Vanessa was a member of Vida.
I guess you could say we “faked it until we made it.” The look and feel of our office space had the same upscale feel as our website, and it just went with our brand and made us unstoppable time and time again in winning over luxury clients.
People would come there and say, “Geez, Steve, you have this whole space?” Sometimes they didn’t ask and went away thinking we had the whole place.
You can see from Turk’s experience that having the Quest front office staff support his office space meeting activities was very helpful at a pivotal moment in his business. Quest’s goal is to help our Questers growing companies make a big impression. It’s this approach of total hospitality that made the difference between Quest and the other options in the Miami office rentals market.
According to Cesar Ravan, CPA, being at Quest facilitated the acquisition of several new client relationships.
One of the fantastic things Vanessa Vega, the center manager, has done for me is always try to promote my business within the floor. She’s always thinking of ways of doing a luncheon or a presentation.
Quest’s motto is to give clients the freedom to work the way they want. And we realize that no two businesses have the same needs. We make a conscious effort to understand what it is that we need to do as service providers to offer the maximum foundation for business growth for our clients. As you can see, the results are evident not only in their business growth but also in our own.
#2 Creation of a Supportive Culture and Community
Quest’s goal is to make the coworking experience as collaborative as possible for our members. Whether clients have a virtual office, an executive suite, or are just using Quest for an office space meeting, we want them to experience the positive energy that our interconnected network of clients bring to each other. We want their time with us to go beyond the typical office space meeting or Miami office rental.
We’ve made it possible for our clients to find in each other an invaluable source of support in so many ways, whether it be knowledge, motivation, accountability, or even a resource to bounce an idea or two off of.
This connectivity spans the digital as well as the physical. Earlier this year we debuted our Flitter platform, an intracenter online network that connects all staff and clients across each of our 9 locations nation wide.
We’ve even given our clients a special name: Questers, to lend a unique brand to this network.
#3 A CEO with High Integrity
The company values trickle down from the top. Quest’s CEO Laura Kozelouzek takes a virtuous approach to serving clients, one that her staff emulates.
Laura believes that integrity brings out your best work. To quote from her book Laura K’s Quest, due out in early 2018:
Integrity impacts your ability to do your best work and strive for excellence. If you’re being truthful with yourself about what you’re doing, it’s going to become clear when you’re becoming complacent or trying to take shortcuts. An idea that is very strong in our company is this idea of never ending improvement. I think the basis of that is really integrity.
Take a good hard look at your business or how you are performing professionally, be really honest about how well you’re doing.
Ask yourself, are we delivering to our customers what we should be delivering?
Are we delivering to them what we think we are delivering?
And constantly check it, holding yourself to that high level and the loftiest of standards. Integrity is a catalyst for excellence and for being your best.
Integrity isn’t just some hokey pie-in-the-sky concept. When you truly are geared towards doing right by those you serve, it’s evident to those you do business with and a huge motivator for them to feel positive about the relationship. This can only lead to growth.
#4 Strong Mission That Drives The Brand
As business has its ups and downs, it’s important to have a unifying message, a mission that inspires all team members to deliver despite what the path may hold. Employees are a critical part of company branding, just as much as a logo or color scheme. The people who deliver the experience have to be aligned in a common system of beliefs, which is why Quest has written down its mission statement. We constantly review it with our team to drive the mission and the brand. Its this brand that impacts the customer experience, creating a different kind of office space meeting for our clients.
For example, Quest is inspired by giving, and as such we pride ourselves on being a culture of givers. We partner with local charities, with some of our team members even volunteering some of our PTO compensation to assist the victims of Hurricane Harvey. We have even organized our volunteer efforts into a formal initiative called QuestCares.
Summary: The Path to the Top
There’s no tangible reason why the best rise to the top. The driver of superior performance is often the intangible values that an organization has. Quest’s brand, mission, the integrity of its leadership, and its client service philosophy have created the results that were recently acknowledged by Inc. Magazine. It’s been responsible for our drive to the top of the Miami office rentals market and beyond. Our paradigm for success serves as a model for startups, entrepreneurs, establish companies and any organization with the ambition and drive to get to the top.
