Businesses that listen succeed, say these three experts

The secret to a successful business? Listen to your current—and future—customers. That’s how three speakers recently put it for students at Golisano Institute for Business & Entrepreneurship.

Nate Gibbons (Chief Experience Officer, QuickFi), Peter Parts (Founder, Peter Parts Electronics Inc.), and Van Stanley (Owner, People’s Choice Kitchen) were guest speakers for Speaking from Experience, a weekly series at the institute. Each event gives students the chance to not only hear from successful business leaders from across industries, but to engage with them directly to learn and build their network.

Our goal is to continually refine the user experience.

– Nate Gibbons, Chief Experience Officer, QuickFi

Disruption happens when businesses dramatically improve customer experience. And that, according to Gibbons, can only happen by listening to people to learn what they are thinking and feeling.

“Underserved markets are the best environment for disruption,” he said, showing how the fintech startup he co-founded in 2018 found success by completely rethinking an overlooked but vital industry—commercial-equipment financing—to build presence in a market with an annual value of $1T.

QuickFi completely transformed a very long and complex experience for businesses financing capital equipment. The embedded-finance company uses advanced technologies—namely blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI)—to reduce a process that usually takes hours, days, or weeks to just a few minutes.

“We wanted to remove the waiting and friction that happens in the traditional process,” Gibbons explained.

I don’t learn anything when I talk.

– Peter Parts, Founder, Peter Parts Electronics Inc.

Peter Parts launched Peter Parts Electronics when consumer electronics took off in the 1980s and U.S. manufacturers sought high-quality components at a better price point. From 1986 on, he travelled to burgeoning Asian economies—first Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, then China, Malaysia, and India—to inspect over 1,000 factories.

“Not listening well is the biggest mistake I ever made,” Parts shared.

Parts quickly became a good listener. He successfully connected many Tier-1 customers, such as General Electric Company and John Deere, to suppliers in Asia that met their stringent expectations.

During his talk, Parts advised students to listen carefully to customers, even after the sale. He recommended a “magic” question: “If there’s one thing we can do to make the product better, what is it?”

Listening is critical to business relationships, Parts added. “Get together with people, find out what’s important,” he said. “It’s a lot easier to do that over a beer than it is over a conference table.”

My culture is reaching out into the community.

– Van Stanley, Owner, People’s Choice Kitchen

Customer loyalty is everything to Stanley, owner of People’s Choice Kitchen, a restaurant serving Jamaican cuisine in Rochester, New York. “It’s imperative to have great reviews—it’s make or break,” she said.

But how the social entrepreneur builds loyalty is different: Customers are invited to pay what they can. Sometimes it’s less than the price on the menu, sometimes it’s more and they pay it forward.

A 2022 News 8 Remarkable Woman of Rochester, Stanley’s organizes the Angel Tree Giveaway, an annual event that gives toys to kids while bridging gaps between the community and law enforcement. She has also run a bike drive that saw over 300 bicycles go to kids who need them.

“I’ve never given up on the community and the community never gave up on me,” she explained.

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Gibbons, Parts, and Stanley were guest speakers for Speaking from Experience on April 9, April 16, and March 26, 2025, respectively. The series gives students at Golisano Institute the opportunity to hear from and interact with some of the sharpest minds in business today.