Richard Hoehn, The Founder of Turtleback Asian Food Supply, is a Friend, Son, Lifelong Learner, Asian Food Seller, and Aspiring World Traveler, among many other titles and qualities. His passion to successfully build, run and grow Turtleback is shaped by this list.
Richard lives his life by embodying many values, but his top three guiding values, and the backbone of why he built Turtleback, are the following:
1. Service Above Self
Richard believes that serving others is one of his biggest purposes in life. He puts importance on giving back to the community because they are the people who backed him in the first place. Ever since he was a kid, his parents, grandparents, and other influential people in his life, instilled in him to always give more than you receive. In college, he became a lifetime member of the National Society of Leadership and success, as well as a program called Service On Saturdays, where he volunteered at a different non-profit each week. In his free time now, you will find him involved in community service activities, mostly through Rotary Club International. He is on the board for Vocational, Website, and Fundraising roles. His favorite volunteering commitment is at St. James Catholic Church in Southside Chicago where he and his family have been serving at their Christmas Day Homeless Luncheon most years since he was in High School. This guiding value has helped him understand that he must use his company to be a vessel to do good for the community.
2. Carrying On Legacies
From tragedy, comes beauty. One of Richard’s main goals in life is to help carry on the legacies of those who has passed away before him. One guiding saying for
him has always been “live a life that will outlive yourself."
The reason why Turtleback is called that is because of a close best friend who passed away a few years ago. His family was gracious enough to give him one of his friend’s favorite items: a carved turtle made by his grandfather. To this day, Richard keeps it on his desk to honor him. When he was thinking about what to call the company, he looked down and saw the turtle. He decided that it was his mission to carry on his friend’s legacy of caring for the community, so he named his company after him.
The making people smile part of Turtleback’s business also comes from carrying
on a legacy; his aunt’s, who recently passed away. She always smiled no matter
what, even when she became ill. Since that is one of his favorite people of all time, a lot of his operational philosophies comes from her.
He also wants to live a life that will outlive him. He puts so much importance on
care, community, learning, and family because in hopes that he will pass the
torch to someone else someday.
3. Lifelong Learner
To Richard, embracing the idea of being a lifelong learner is very important to him. Trying to gain as much knowledge as you can, is a life well lived, in his opinion. Talking to people across all walks of life, reading books, spending time with family and traveling helps you understand the world more every day. Once you learn one thing, you realize there are thousands of more things you can learn just on that one subject.
To him, learning is a good way to humble yourself and remind us that none of us know everything, and there is always space to grow and learn. Living an open-minded life is what it's all about!