Open Office: Valuable Lessons from RYCOR Vice President Sales and Marketing

Our new Open Office Series showcases conversations with the RYCOR Team. This month’s featured RYCOR Team Member Ron Bertram shares on his past experiences and gives us leadership advice.

Ron joined the company two years ago with a vast amount of valuable experience in business development and marketing, highlighted by his time serving as the VP & General Manager of Nintendo Canada. With a proven track record as a sales and marketing executive, Ron successfully leads RYCOR to exponential growth in the educational software sector.

We sat down with Ron to get to know him and find out valuable lessons he has learnt throughout his career.

What makes a good company?

I personally don’t focus on companies, but rather on working with good people. If you work with smart, curious, industrious, positive people, then the company will be great as a result.

Describe your favorite type of boss!

Someone who wants you to do well and empowers you to do the things you need to succeed. They should also be straightforward, unambiguous people and guide rather than direct. Lastly, they should be smart enough to let you figure things out on your own and allow you the freedom to succeed and fail sometimes because that is how one learns best.

How did you get started in the marketing industry?

I had no idea what I wanted to do growing up, but I ended up working at an event marketing agency right out of university. It was a growing young company and I worked my way up through various great projects, including the Coca-Cola account. After that, I wanted to live in Vancouver, and joined Nintendo, a new company at the time. I had invaluable exposure to executives and impressive marketing people and learned so much just from watching them run meetings and interact with people.

How does a successful business build trust?

Trust is built over time and can be lost in an instance. Businesses need to keep senior management up to date on the status of all projects so there are no surprises. Accepting responsibilities for failures and bringing up problems sooner rather than later so that solutions can be found, is also important.

What is the number one piece of advice that you would give to someone in business?

The most important thing in being successful in business is problem-solving. What matters is how good someone is at moving projects forward; not how hard they’re working. I also need to add in that progress is not linear, so it takes some resiliency to recognize that adjustments sometimes need to be made.

As someone with years of experience working in senior management at some of the most celebrated firms in the world, what did you enjoy the most?

When I used to run Nintendo Canada, I enjoyed two things the most. Watching and helping my staff succeed and seeing the passion of Nintendo fans. I’ve always hated losing, so putting in my absolute maximum effort possible and seeing others do the same was great.