The Major Differences Between Struggling & Successful Companies with Tim Redmond

Andy Splichal 0:00

Welcome to the Make Each Click Count podcast. This is your host, Andy Splichal. We are happy to welcome this week's guest to discuss today's topic, which is the major differences between struggling and successful companies. This week's guest has spent the last 35 years helping grow highly successful businesses, including his work with PriceWaterhouseCoopers growing a software company from two to 400 employees before selling it to intuit Incorporated, and helping 1000s of business owners gain time and valuable freedom. He is an author and speaker whose leadership maxims have been featured in John Maxwell's 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. A big welcome to Tim Redmond. Hi, Tim.

Tim Redmond 0:43

Andy, good to be here my friend and let's rock and roll and let's deliver some value to these great people listening in on this.

Andy Splichal 0:52

Great well, let's do it. Let's let's start here. Let's start with your leadership maxims that were featured on John Maxwell's 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. What are leadership maxims? And what were what were yours that were featured?

Tim Redmond 1:06

Well I, I gave a friend of mine who quote him in in a number of his books, and he had actually provided a number of quotes to Maxwell's writer, which somebody I went to college with. And so they, they ended up putting in one on Maxwell's 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. He's got a chapter on priorities. And the quote that I wrote, which I wrote way back in college is, there's a lot of things that catch my eye, but very few things that catch my heart is those that I consider to pursue. So it's just getting narrow in your focus and what you're really going after. Very few things get accomplished with a half arced effort. It takes a full arced effort, right. So it's just requires an intense level of focus over a period of time that good stuff happens.

Andy Splichal 2:06

Well, let me ask you, through your 35 years of experience, what what are some of the biggest mistakes that you see business owners making that that stops their growth and cuts?

Tim Redmond 2:17

I've done them all myself, first of all, okay, so I, I've learned by looking at my own life. So I'm not coming from any point of I know at all, I've learned at all. And I've coached over 2000 businesses. So we've learned some lessons are one of the one of the main things I see here is we we failed to identify our Purple Cow in our business. And what's the Purple Cow? Well, you and I read that book years ago from Seth good, and called the Purple Cow. And it's like when you're driving by a farm, you'll see some black and brown and white cows. If you saw a bright, shiny purple cow in the middle of them, if you saw it 20 years ago, you'd still be talking about it today. It's what things about a business that makes them really stand out. So like we we work with contractors, plumbers, electricians, home builders, we also work with health care, urgent care centers, specialty dogs, chiropractors, we also work with online retail manufacturing, we work with everybody, because most businesses are I consider every business about 98%, the same. But in these in these contractors, like in the Tulsa area where I'm at, we've got 1000s of plumbers, and I had a client come on board, he drove up his car into my office, and he had on this sign this true story, Andy had to say we wear belts, I'm like, Well, why do you have that we wear belts? Well, he said, Because plumbers are notorious for just showing off their butt crack when they work. You know. We actually made that part of his Purple Cow. We actually had the no butt crack guarantee as part of his Purple Cow. Meaning it says it there in the literature. If you see our butt crack. When we're working on your job, then it's free labor, you know, and so people are like calling up laughing on the phone saying you're the no butt crack company, right? Yeah. Well, we want to hire you, you know,

Andy Splichal 4:23

That definitely helps distinguish from the crowd. You have any? You have any examples for most of my listeners are ecom. Yeah. What is an example that you could do with a store where they normally don't even see your butt crack?

Tim Redmond 4:40

Yeah, well, we can have virtual butt cracks here. There's maybe something going on that make it one of those. Those images you sell for high prices, anyway. Yeah, for ecommerce. There's I'll go from a Purple Cow and I may verge into what we call a no brainer offer. So you may have a guarantee, that is like an outlandish guarantee, like you double your results in the first 30 days or money back. Or, you know, when we provide this, the first three months and support are absolutely free, we get you up and go and you don't just buy it, but we get you up and running to make sure it's actually working in your office is going the extra mile on that. You know, and it may be it may be on the level of experience you guys have and may be on a money back guarantee, it may be a service level that or maybe you know, when you buy this, you've got you can also get this free. And so it's there's there's a lot of I mean, look at look at what online retailers I mean, you think about who was a shoe company that was purchased by Amazon

Andy Splichal 6:06

Zappos, Zappos?

Tim Redmond 6:07

Yeah, Zappos to you you even remember what it was just by boom, alright, what did they do? They I mean, they just, they went over the board on customer service almost to a point of ridiculousness. If you had any problem with your shoe, after how many weeks or months awareness boom, they just no questions asked, they just delivered, they over deliver,

Andy Splichal 6:31

I think they're the ones that popularize the free returns in the ecommerce

Tim Redmond 6:36

returns. And look at Tom shoes, you know, now he does a lot in retail, he's gotten a lot of online, but you know, buy a shoe for yourself, buy a shoe for somebody who doesn't have shoes, you know. And so it may be caused based, there may be some kind of cause base for, you know, for every dollar you spend with this, we help the veterans or we help girls that have you know, been caught in human trafficking or whatever it may be, whatever may be a cause, there may be a service level, you guarantee or you promise, it may be a guarantee, you get an x result. Or you get boom, back, you know, so it's really standing behind what you do and doing the unusual and over delivering. Now we do have online retailers like WalMart, well, they their real strong physical presence. But I mean, their, their online presence is really starting to kick butt. And it's got that same, you know, return for any reason, you know, kind of deal. Having super cheap prices, you know, that's, I don't recommend people going there, because people want to buy experience, you know, people want to pay a premium for an experience. And so it's hard to make it when you're competing with the Amazons and the Walmarts. If you want to shop price, so you want to give them some

Andy Splichal 8:04

Yeah, I really think that's the key is the experience when you are trying to go up against Walmart and Amazon is a small business, we have those. Hey, let me ask you. Are there any traits that you have found, or habits that a successful entrepreneur does on a regular basis that a struggling entrepreneur might be ignoring?

Tim Redmond 8:25

Well, I'd tell you focus is key, we kind of started with that. And Andy, almost every successful entrepreneur that I'm aware of has a ritual usually in the morning. I mean, before the cock crows thrice, before Jesus wakes up, before the whole world lights up and starts drinking their Starbucks. And that is they they get up and they have what I call a plan, power session, power planning session. So they you know, and I have my own ritual where I've got open, I've got my calendar, my Google Calendar, I've got my Google Sheets or Excel file out with a master to do list. And I'm going through all my emails, I'm going through my taxes, I'm going through the the scratchpad from the day before, where I printed out, you know, my master to do lists on my calendar, and they take time to update every day. And I work with my clients to help them create five to eight questions that help sound think about every aspect of their business and is there anything that shows up during their power planning time that they got to address that day

Andy Splichal 9:42

Interesting what are what are those questions?

Tim Redmond 9:45

Well, it's different from every business, but you know, working with a contractor we're looking at you know, do we have incoming quotes that we haven't released yet? You know, it's the first phase is always about the pipeline, what's going on with a pipeline. So every company has a pipeline, even the electronic folks here, ecommerce, they may have lower price stuff that people come up there and just buy all the time, I'm just talking to one guy may may even help consult, he wants me to consult him. And I'm been a little bit slow at doing it. But he's got a $50 million online business. And he's wanting to sell it for x amount of millions of dollars. And he wants me to help them get ramped up with that. So. So, you know, the idea is, let me make sure I kind of got lost in this, this $50 million company I'm thinking,

No worries. Yeah, no, the question was, we're talking about habit that a successful entrepreneur might...

What they do. So some questions now they'll have is, you know, what am I doing to generate leads? What am I doing to generate quotes? What am I doing to to start the process and people in there that are thinking about getting a quote, What can I do to get them to get that quote from me? And for those that already have a quote? What kind of follow up? Do we have always send it out enough testimonials of videos, YouTube videos of clients that just bragging about your company? You know, we were doing that follow up here? You know, what kind of follow up? Do we have to get them close? For those people that we've closed here? Do we have that delivery of our services? Are we on top of it? Are we over delivering? Are we are we managing their expectations when when they expect it to when we deliver it, taking a look at the actual delivery itself? So there's questions on that there's questions on my key employees, who is absolutely rockin and rollin, that I just need to slip $100 a CBl to just to say good job, you know, or who, who needs a good kick in the butt that they maybe they just need some encouragement, there's a lot of people come to the workforce, Andy, and they've been beat down by their parents or their parents maybe hadn't been able to stay together. And so there's a lot of challenges they've got there. And they've really had nobody really talked them up. And they're, they're already building the case against themselves within themselves, right. So you're gonna project whatever's on the inside, if you're, if you're against yourself. And if you're arguing and meditating on how bad you are with certain things, maybe that's what's going to come out. So sometimes they just need a good, you know, a helping hand encouraging word, talking about not where they're at, but where they can be. And so, you know, I'm thinking about my staff, I'm thinking about, Okay, so what's going on? When I climb that high tree? What do I need to be focused on? I also have a question on what major projects am I on? And what status on each of these projects? are? You know, is it red holding the staff? Is it right? Hold on my office? On my desk here? Is there anything getting in the way of making progress on these key projects, making sure that there's they don't go sideways, or they don't have this project shift going on? So I'm just reviewing every major important part of my business every day.

That's a lot of stuff to go through. How long do you think that typically takes a business owner? Or how long do you recommend that?

Half hour, maybe an hour? If they do that, they're going to save at least the time they put into it. Now, sometimes I was taken two hours on that sometimes I've done it in 15 minutes. Sometimes I won't cover every aspect of it, but I'll get through, you know, important emails that need to be response on it. You know, we think it's a big long thing. But when you really focus, you don't have the TV on you don't have your your phone is not beeping for every you know, Tom, Dick, and Harry, that leaves a comment on your Facebook wall, you know, turn that crap off, get focused, right. And so you really get through it a lot quicker than you think people don't do it because they think it's too much effort. But they say you know, it's kind of like, measure twice, cut once you know, spend, spend the first hour sharpening the saw and then you'll cut down the tree a lot quicker as as kind of what we're doing on that. You start thinking you start managing you start leading your organizations and a lot more intentionality. You spend a lot less time in the fire room in the emergency room. putting out fires, is every day. Another thing that's really important is you want to visit every aspect of your business every day and you're planning thinking about it. And you also want to be able to connect with every aspect of your business at least once a week. So once a week, I work with my, I meet with my accountant. Boom we go over things. Sometimes it's a five And that means sometimes it's a 45 minute meeting, we scheduled for a half hour, you know, and, and we're just always moving along on things and know what cash flow is we use Profit First. cash flow management on it, we do that with all of our clients as well. And so we do that I meet with my COO, I have two meetings a week on that schedule. With every one of these meetings, I have a Google Doc or a or an ongoing document that both of us can get access to. And when we're talking through it, we're looking for the three big W's. Andy,one of the action items and and the three W's are what is it we need to get done, who owns it, only one person can own it, you can't have a committee on it, nothing will get done. One person owns it. And then when's it going to be done by so what by whom, by when, you get that nailed down when you visit the next week? Or the next Monday? You review that? Are we making progress on that? Is it red? Or is it green? Are we are we making progress? Or is it been rad hold somewhere, let's get off our butts, just let's keep going on this thing. And you do that whether we meet with our salespeople twice a week, we meet with our coaches three times a week, because we're dealing with specific client issues that we're coaching got 150 clients, you know, businesses all over the world and these business owners a lot of them are waking up with their hair on fire and they're trying to make it through the day just trying to stay alive you know? So

So it seems like organization is really key there?

Huge, it's huge. Even if you're solo by yourself you think well gosh don't be you know, whatever your casual let me just say this three words are going to be worth this podcast Andy I hope I hope I didn't overplay it here's these three words casualness causes casualties. Casualness causes casualties. Yeah. So if you're casual about it, you know it's like your neighbor down the street that's competing with you they're not casual about it. They're they're going out thank you not work yeah. You know don't think that you because you got a handful of sales coming in your somebody's just been on it, you know, if you can provide that much better service or that much better product here. You know, we want the whole world to know what what you have and buy it from you. Let's continue to grow this thing.

Now. Let me ask you, Tim, for those listeners who may not know you, what, what qualifies you to be so effective at getting quick and lasting results with with business owners.

Okay, well, I was a I studied accounting and finance in college. So you know, when time I was a practicing CPA, you know, CPA is a constant pain in the abdomen is what that there's other body parts that I've been referred to as well, but anyway, so I worked at PriceWaterhouseCoopers. I grew a business from two of us to over 400 employees. We sold it to intuit, Quicken, QuickBooks TurboTax people, we sold our business to them for millions of dollars. I travel around the world training leaders in all kinds of countries and continents and cultures. And I've been growing businesses been coaching full time for about eight years. And we've helped we've personally worked with my team and I worked with over 2000 businesses, we have solved problems they haven't run into yet. So that's what we do all day, every day. It's why I get up. I mean, here's here's what I get to do here, Andy, I mean, there's a there's a there's a plumber I was talking to not too long ago, when I first talked to him, he was barely able to pay the mortgage, making 3000 $4,000. Net a month, barely able to provide for his family. Now a couple years later, he's got nine trucks, he's making $35,000 profit a month plus paying himself a really good salary. Got another guy that was you know, breakeven not making any profit whatsoever, he just starve and working his butt off. Well, we've increased his revenue by five times and now he's making a million dollars a year in profits. I mean, I get I get up early in the morning for those kinds of to help create those kinds of stories. I mean, this is a this is not some kind of a poof, you know, just crappy, you know, we're gonna get these results. I mean, that we're in the trenches with these guys working with them. We weren't most with brick and mortar companies. I mean, we work with a lot of E commerce as well. You know, they're there. That's a valid business. It's It's huge, huge stuff going on with that, and, you know, but we've got to get really concrete actions and and making sure you're, you're holding that to yourself and your team to make sure crap gets done on a timely basis.

So let me ask me talked about the Purple Cow theory and when we talked about the importance of organization, but what would be like a single piece of actionable advice that you would give listeners that would be kind of easy to implement that, after it was implemented would immediately affect their, their bottom line.

Okau, so one thing here is we'll call it the no brainer offer I mentioned a little bit earlier. But a lot of times people are like, you know, they just think a cheap price is going to make it work. All right. Now, I don't know, on your ecommerce, I'm hoping that most of them have a renewable source. So sometimes, you know, when you sell, like, underground storage units, that's kind of a one and done deal, right? Oh, what, what kind of maintenance is on that. But, you know, with with a lot of E commerce, there's renewable licenses, there's a lot of different things. And so a no brainer offer, you know, maybe, hey, the first month is $1. With us, then after that, boom, make it super easy to get busy with you make it super easy for them to take the next step, okay. And, you know, dollar, or just, you know, 75% off for the first month or the first year, whatever, just get them in the door experience in you, especially if they're just ramping up right now, you just need to get, you know, testimonies are probably more important than your cash. Cash is important. I'm not, you know, don't get me wrong on that. But you want to make sure you get as many people just singing your praises. Now, another real really important aspect of this here is get endorsements on public, on like, public venues like Google My Business, we got almost 400 5 Star Google reviews, and these are from business owners. Okay. Now legitimates. You know, the gentleman is what we're doing here. I mean, there's people I talked to, when we talked to him, he's like, Yeah, I read through like, hundreds of these reviews, you must be the real deal. You know, tell me what's going on. So there's some credibility there. You know,

Social proof

Getting social proof is really where it's at. You know, that's, that's the formal word for, you know, it's nothing like getting somebody say, Hey, if you're so pleased with this, you know, you asked me if you do anything, just take 30 seconds and answer these four questions, you know, you know, who are you and where are you at? And what did you buy from us? What do you like most about what you bought from us? And why you bought from us? And why would you recommend this and other people, boom, boom, boom, send it in, you know, and you get that out there and you just get that on your YouTube channel and get that all over your website. And you know, that's,

That's great advice.

I'm really really, really quick.

Now let me ask if you had a crystal ball somebody gave me a crystal ball.

Oh, Jesus

How do you see operating a business changing in the next short term? 12 to 18 months?

Well, I'm thinking in terms of ecommerce

Well, I mean, anything we could talk to the we got the great in the employees wanting to stay at home we got I mean, how do you see everything coming together after...

Yeah, you know, there's there's that there's going to be companies do really well, the companies are going to do really well, that if their team is virtual all over the place, whether they're down the street from the company, that they're not coming in anymore, you know, there's got to be a means of measuring productivity and holding people accountable to KPIs key performance indicators. And so you know, that's going to be really important on that. I believe that the businesses that really focus on giving people an experience of just doing a little something extra that a lot of your competitors aren't doing and don't play your people with God Almighty, I do business with some people and they give me 34 different evaluations I say I regret buying from you stop tormenting me with this insecurity you know of having to get feedback so much we want to get feedback I know down that Andy, I don't doubt that but ecommerce companies, they can set it up and it just bothers you into a torque wrench and just don't be you know, just just deliver just make sure you're delivering you don't have to get feedback, the feedback is can be a kind of reversal kind of exceptional basis or exception basis of how many people are buying from you versus how many people are bitching about love have you ever service or love your product, you know, and, you know, how often do they can they buy? Do they renew? How often do they expand their you know, buying into your offer? even more of your products or services, right? So the people are looking for an experience. So you really need to think through, how can we deliver an experience where they go, Wow. They're so impressed. They say, Wow, backwards, you know, as a joke, I'm sorry. Anyway, you know, it's, it's, you know, people are still looking for an experience. And, yeah, they know, that's really, really, really important. For you bosses out there listening to this.

Now, let me and I'm really curious...

Hold on, let me just let me finish this thought here. You bosses, Jack up, your people don't think you're gonna like, compliment them too much. And you get a fat head. Make sure you create a positive environment because people react to their environment. So be positive and build your people up huge, huge, especially if they're spread all over. Go ahead. I'm sorry, Andy.

No, I'm really curious this next question I asked all the guests but you know, you've talked about a lot of things. You mentioned a lot of theories from from different places so far. But are there any business books out there that you could really attribute to your journey as an entrepreneur and as a coach?

Yeah, I got a number of books. I love reading books. I mean, I, I rip off a bunch of them. I like Ben Horowitz The Hard Things About Hard Things. There's a phenomenal CEO book, especially for E commerce company that's just read anything at Ben Horowitz writes, the guy is brilliant off the charts. I like Don Miller, Donald Miller, storyboard and hero with a mission are awesome books going on there. I like Mike Michalowicz, The Profit First and a lot of his books are great on just the just the functioning the fundamentals of running your business. And, and then I love everything that Patrick Lencioni writes here, Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Death by Meetings, Four Obsessions of the CEO, there's all his books are just off the charts. And they're super easy to read.

Well, let's, that's a great segway into let's talk about your book, you wrote a book called Power to Create? Yeah. Can you give us a brief summary of that?

Yeah, sure. I wrote it for business owners. And I wrote it for pastors of churches, because I use a faith based angle on it. So I've got like, their main book that the go to is the Bible. And so I use kind of a treaties on on different bible verses on it, but they're, they're all way in the back. They're not, you know, it's not. You know, they're they're kind of built in the end of the paragraph. So it's not like reading the Bible book. But I basically have my coaching philosophy in there of what the role your relationship with money, wealth, work, and purpose and how all those tie together. The premise of the book is redefining what wealth is, wealth isn't a matter of grabbing and getting as much money and stuff there. Well, the true wealth process is a creative process. It's something that doesn't come to you, it's more that flows from you. And I define wealth very simply as creating value to serve others. And the more value you create, and the more you serve others, the more you're going to attract of the wealth that we know money, possessions, promotions, properties, you know, things, things that we can put $1 value to that appreciate. So it's really getting your mindset and getting your rituals and life lined up to create increasing levels of value. And I'm taught this on the outskirts of Accra, Ghana, on the back hills of Cagayan de Oro in the Philippines in Mindanao, you know, in Sweden, in Moscow, Russia, Ukraine, and England and all over the United States and Canada, down in central South America and Bolivia, are the most corrupt, known as one of the most corrupt nations in the world just teaching this stuff with, with some pretty huge results.

Well, that sounds great. I can't wait to give it a read. Now, I just got a note here that said you wanted to give each of our listeners who are business owners a gift worth $2,500. What is a gift and how do they ask for it?

Okay, great segway. Yeah, what we do is we do a process once we find out that there might be a fit between us and the business owner, you have what we call a growth plan, where we evaluate where they're at their current level of their current level of productivity, their capacity of what they can do, then we look at their three year revenue goal and profit goal. And then based on all of that, we map it all out. And then we give them at least eight to 10 concrete action steps, that if they'll take those on their own or work with us, we're a do it for you coaching company, so we'll actually implement will do most of the work to implement all that. And if they'll, if they'll implement those eight to 10 things, they'll add at least $100,000 to their profits in the next year. And there's really, it's almost impossible not to hit your three year goal is as wild as that may be a very valuable thing that if they if they if they will write in says I love Andy, and you know, I love this podcast, then we will waive that $2,500 fee, free audio growth plan.

Andy Splichal

And what do they need to qualify? Do they need to be at a certain level? Have a certain revenue, employees, benchmarks?

Tim Redmond

No, any business. If you're not yet making $100,000 in profits, we need to know that you can get there in three months.

Andy Splichal

$100,000 in profits annually?

Tim Redmond

A year. Basically $8 - 9,000 in profits a month if they're atleast at that level or they can get to that level within three months and if it's doable we actually get them there in 3 months. In our first product we have a 3 month process where we get that blueprint with the establishing the growth plan and we do the work to implement it they're just huge results even the first 3 months.

Andy Splichal

That's great. How can an interested listener learn more about it and learn more about working with you?

Tim Redmond

They can reach out to us, they go to redmondgrowth.com, they can go to our website and call the number, or they can email me directly, tim@redmondgrowth.com just email me and say, the growth plan, I love Andy. And even if they're just kidding, no I'm sure they're serious about loving you, loving your sure. If once they do that, then my staff will qualify and make sure that it's gonna be worth their time and walk them through the process. People love, love, love the process. They love it. It has been great, Tim.

Andy Splichal

Is there anything else you would like to add before we wrap it up today?

Tim Redmond

Let's see, closing thought, you know, with these great people that are listening here, Andy. It's time today to tak action on that thing you've been putting off. Get off that beautiful skinny thing you're sitting on, get off it and just get after it and get it done. Just start taking action on it and some amazing things will happen, I promise you.

Andy Splichal

Great closing words. Well, thanks for joining us once again today, Tim.

Tim Redmond

It has been great, Andy. Thanks.

Andy Splichal

For listeners, remember if you liked this episode, please go to Apple podcasts and leave us an honest review. And if you're looking for more information regarding Tim or his agency Redmond Growth Consulting, you will find the link in the show notes below. In addition, if you're looking for more information on growing your business, check out our all new podcasts Resource Center available at www.makeeachclickcount.com. We have compiled all the different past guests by show topic and included each of their contact information in case you would like more information on any of the services I have discussed during previous episodes. Well that's it for today. Remember to stay safe, keep healthy and happy marketing. And I will talk to you in the next episode.