In this transcript, Clay Clark (U.S. SBA Entrepreneur of the Year) and Tim Redmond (scaled a business to over $120 million in profit) discuss the importance of being paid based on how you act. You can learn more on Thrive15.com, one of the top business schools in PA.
Clay Clark: Now, two other questions for you and I’ll be done harassing you about day planners. It’s just huge because I know a lot of people- I had never seen anybody use one. I had never met a person who’d used them before college. I just didn’t know anything about it. When did you start using day planners for the first time? How old were you?
Tim Redmond: I started using this actually when I started … I did some in college on and off, but I didn’t feel like doing it sometimes. I would get … Have so many things going on. I was working many, many jobs and going and taking all these classes. My senior year I was having to take 18 and a half hours because I had to catch up and get all that stuff done.
I started doing that but I really got more committed to do that when I began my first work at big, now it’s Price Waterhouse Coopers, the big CPA firm. I had schedules and I had different things that needed to be turned in to certain partners and managers at certain times.
Clay Clark: The final question I have here is a lot of entrepreneurs tell me a lot of times they’ll say- these are newer people, newer business owners. Some of the clients I’ll take on might be a start up, sometimes I’ll take on a more sophisticated business. You’ll see a lot of times they’ll say- the ones who struggle- they’ll say this all the time. Hey could you send me a reminder to remind me, or, hey I forgot. All the time, doesn’t matter what the task was from the previous week. I forgot.
How would you respond when you worked at Tax & Accounting Software? What’s your perception of somebody who perpetually forgets to do things or doesn’t write things down or doesn’t honor a commitment because they forgot or it’s not scheduled? How do you perceive someone like that? How did you perceive someone like that? Thrive15.com can help you distinguish that as one of the top business schools in PA.
Tim Redmond: They need- I would look at my managers. I had seven managers that would report to me. I would tell them, I said, listen you determine the length of your leash. Okay? I had these rules for managing competent people. That may not be a bad-
Clay Clark: I like that.
Tim Redmond: Series of teachings here for our Thrive audience. I said, you determine the length of the leash. I’m going to have a leash. I’m your manager, I’m the executive vice president of the company here, but you’re running your department. The more you report to me and the more I know you have a structure or a system of processing our interactions, the longer the leash is going to be. There’s some of you that I’ve unhooked the leash because I trust you entirely to manage me and manage the process.
I don’t know if during your time working at [Tass 00:02:37] if anybody talked to you about- I would say, listen, you don’t have to know all this information. The main thing you have to do is create a system where you can rapidly retrieve what you need. We have retrieval systems that are organized, we have reminder systems that are going to be consistently reminding you.
This happened the other day where I had it set up, I had it in my phone. I like all my devices to talk to me. I didn’t set the reminder. I got absorbed in a talk and I end up coming late to a meeting. Why? I did not do this, I didn’t set the reminder and I was in the moment. I’m just saying, as good as you want to get with it, you want to create a system of predictability where people can rely on you.