The Art of Stepping Away: Building Systems That Let Your Business Thrive

What You Will Hear:

02:30 Choosing a small-town location for starting and growing a business can provide personal and strategic advantages, such as faster community integration and quicker business setup.

• The decision to run the business in a small rural town was based on lifestyle preferences rather than pure business strategy.
• There was a belief that becoming a known member of the community and growing connections would happen faster in a smaller setting.
• Starting outside of a major metro area helped establish initial relationships and business momentum.

37:00 Changing one’s physical work environment after years in business can lead to more focus, creativity, and less day-to-day distraction.

• The decision to move the primary office away from the main operations center created a quieter and undisturbed space for deeper work.
• Removing oneself from frequent interruptions contributed to increased productivity and strategic thinking time.
• Maintaining an open-door policy allowed for necessary contact but preserved the benefits of the separated workspace.

27:20 Optimizing meeting participation by leveraging technology and questioning routines can improve efficiency without sacrificing team communication.

• Utilizing AI-powered meeting notes has helped streamline information sharing and reduced the necessity for everyone to be present in every meeting.
• Evaluating the real need for recurring meetings prevents time from being wasted on unnecessary gatherings.
• Encouraging quick, solution-focused calls instead of lengthy email exchanges has helped maintain clarity and speed problem-solving.

37:00 Proactively reserving personal time and wellness breaks in the calendar not only sustains leadership performance, but also models balance for the team.

• Setting clear calendar boundaries for both operational work and personal time was seen as essential for well-being and business sustainability.
• Intentionally wrapping up the workweek by Friday and keeping weekends for oneself fostered a healthier work-life balance.
• Prioritizing the delegation of decisions, rather than just tasks, empowered others and allowed leadership to step back when appropriate.

39:07 Cameo: Kim Bohr, CEO at SparkEffect talking self-trust and the shift from bad goals to strategic space.

• Slowing Down is Strategic: Taking the time to reflect and develop frontline and mid-level managers isn’t a luxury; it is a vital requirement for long-term scalability and building a high-trust organization.
• Clarity, Fairness and Care: The Secret to High Trust Organizations

45:55 Sustainable business growth hinges on consistent reinvestment, managing resources thoughtfully, and pacing expansion in alignment with company capacity.

• Reinvesting in the company, whether for long-term outcomes or immediate needs, has been crucial to competitiveness.
• Not all investments yield immediate financial returns; sometimes growth includes less tangible gains, like goodwill or customer satisfaction.
• Rapid scaling is avoided in favor of healthy, manageable growth that won’t overstress employees or jeopardize business health.

48:30 It is BOLD to step away from the daily operations of a 16-year-old business and trust the repeatable systems built.

48:45 Being able to step away from daily operations demonstrates successful delegation, strong trust, and the maturity of business systems.

• Knowing systems and staff are reliable creates the confidence necessary for leadership to temporarily step away.
• Trust is treated as something intentionally given, forming a foundational part of business culture and smooth operations.
• The sense of calm when away from the business is a sign that operational frameworks are functioning and that the team feels supported.

Resources

• Connect with Tim Whitt
• The two word strategy that grew my small business by 30%
• Infested: End Workplace Drama, Stop Toxic Employees, Build a Thriving Small Business

Transcript

Tim Whitt 00:00
If you’re not careful, it’s very easy for you to swoop in to fix problems. And it can really develop a team that will either A, create fires for you to swoop in to fix, or not do anything and wait for you to swoop in to fix it. And either one of those are going to wear you out.

Announcer 00:27
This is the Bold Business Podcast, created for companies running real revenue. Your host is Strategic Growth Advisor Jess Dewell. Here, we drop the I’m fine mask. Here, we face today’s market demands together. Here, we build business instinct. Because the action we take today creates our company’s future relevance and the room for our teams to grow. Now, grab your tea or coffee and get ready to build your business instinct.

Jess Dewell 01:05
Here’s what to listen for in today’s Bold Business Podcast with Tim Whitt. I’m your host, Jess Dewell. And Tim is an entrepreneur, an operations-minded leader, with 45 years in the pest control and lawn care industry, and 30 of those in corporate leadership, and 16 now building his own thriving company. He founded Pied Piper Pest and Lawn from the ground up and is focused on prevention first relationship driven service and has a 4.9 star reputation. Today, he’s a speaker, coach, author and offers field tested wisdom and practical business tools for businesses. So in our conversation today, we talk a lot about early days. We talk about the changes we had to make. We had to do, we talked about what’s, um, what’s unexpected in our reflections of ourselves. And Tim really brings it in this conversation. As you’re, as you’re listening, you’re going to hear three main areas that we’re going to talk about. Number one, giving customers a choice in how they interact with you. Number two, delegate decisions, not tasks to your team. And the third thing to listen for is the strategic time you take is what allows you to scale and give you both short and long-term returns. Let’s get to the conversation. You have made a conscious choice to not be in big cities for your business. What’s behind that?

Tim Whitt 02:38
Well, it really wasn’t by design for business-wise. It was more personal than anything. It was just more for where I chose to live, really. I was blessed to be in the Dallas-Fort Worth area for business in the beginning, but when I started my business, I relocated to a very small town. So that’s kind of how it started. I think being in a small rural town, I think it was more by choice. I think I could probably get started quicker and just get to know people faster. I was just drawn to that mainly to begin with.

Jess Dewell 03:19
And these days 16 years later 86 percent of your revenue is recurring yes yes yeah so how do how would you tell somebody starting today who has to be hungry and is building a client base um do you think that you have a competitive advantage over them and what would that be?

Tim Whitt 03:40
Well I think you just mentioned the right word, you know, right word is competitive advantage okay because that is for us, if it’s not a competitive advantage, we’re not going to do it. Okay. That’s the key. You know, we’re always looking at something that gives us that little leg up. You know, there’s so many different layers to this one, but just to give you an idea, we are very much into putting our brand on everything we can get in front of a client. I’ll give you an example. In pest control, there’s a device that we leave in a home that it’s called an insect monitoring device, but it’s actually just like a little glue board device. It’s got a little sticky compound on it. And it basically insects crawl in it and they get stuck. And, you know, it’s a nice, easy way to get rid of them in a home. But it has our brand on there. It has our company name, phone number and website. OK. But what’s unique about that is when we leave that in a home and we might put, you know, six to eight of those, you know, in strategic areas in a home. Well, if a customer was to cancel our service and move away and a new homeowner goes in and finds one of those in a heating closet or in a garage or something, they see that and they go, oh, I wonder what this is. I maybe need to call these people. It’s just something that’s left behind that really gives us a lead source. So it’s just simple things like that that has gave us a leg up. Looking at competitive advantages, you know, any industry, any service business can find that. You know, whether it be extended service time, you know, are you an hour? Are you working an hour later than your competitor? Are you starting an hour earlier than your competitor? Are you open on Sundays? You know, there’s just so many different ways that you can do that to set yourself apart. You know, I’ve got a friend of mine that’s in the pest control business and his trucks are a very unique color just to give him that different, you know, that different appeal to the public. So there’s always a way to do that. If you can be different than your competition, you know, you might want to rethink that one.

Jess Dewell 05:55
How do you feel like technology today is impacting the way you do business in the pest control industry?

Tim Whitt 06:03
Yeah, we embrace it very much so, you know, of course, with AI, you know, on the forefront with any business, technology is the leading front for us. You know, we are a AI first company. We ask ourselves if AI can do it. Why would we not do it? It’s very unique. When you look at what we’re capable of doing in our service sector with it, looking at helping us with automations with scheduling enhancements, with optimizing routes, even with helping us with just generating proposals and contract and just looking at all the different ways it can help. What’s unique about it is you can even make it customer facing, you know, where I actually use some today where I use it to help me script some documents for a restaurant that needed some help on sanitation and maintenance. So, you know, it’s such a unique way. It’s such a helpful tool today. But I think what you also have to do is look outside of the box and see what other technologies that other service or other industries are using that you could bridge over into your service side. Because I think, again, it goes back to giving you that technology leap that maybe your competitors aren’t using. Because there are so many different types of technology pieces that would maybe bridge into your service that maybe other service industries are using. You know, like I give you an example, I use cameras that a lot of plumbers may use, you know, in their business, you know. So, you know, that’s just, you know, there’s a lot of cool technology out there, you know.

Jess Dewell 07:52
There’s a lot of cool technology out there.

Tim Whitt 07:54
For sure.

Jess Dewell 07:55
What are a couple of things that are noticeably different in technology from when you started 16 years ago to today?

Tim Whitt 08:03
Well, I’ll give an example. I think it’s in the software side. You know, the software’s changed. You know, the, of course, one of the biggest mistakes that I made in business when I started my business, I didn’t start soon enough in software. You know, I pretty much was keeping, you know, customer records manually, you know, and I shouldn’t have done that. I should have started around how they get with customer one and put her in a computer base somewhere. and then because later on in life it just became really hard to to schedule more efficiently and and have customers where they needed to be so it was a really hard painful process to do that later but the routing and scheduling has really changed quite a bit the pre-notifications you know notifying somebody in advance of arrival the digital documentation being able to send things back electronically, you know, um, what’s really unique in our industry. We actually can do trending. We can trend and actually forecast, uh, pest, uh, populations and all kinds of unique things. So it’s just amazing. And what’s really, what’s really helpful now. And I see it on the horizon is what AI will be able to do with that data that we’ve collected for so many years is how it might be able to help us in predicting models to, to even help us in that area too. So it’s just, It’s just overwhelming of what the potentials are as we move forward.

Jess Dewell 09:35
So are your competitors, other businesses smaller than yours or the same size as yours? Pete, I don’t know if I want to call them, I kind of want to call them portfolio companies or something like that. Are there like big guys out there that you’re also competing with on a regular basis?

Tim Whitt 09:53
Yeah, for sure. I think the relevance between all of the companies, if you go, you know, I’m probably mid-size, if you would say. I’m in the mid-spectrum.

Jess Dewell 10:06
Right.

Tim Whitt 10:07
On either side of that, you’re going to have probably a 10% to 15% price swing either way, up or down. You know, and the services are going to be very comparable of what’s given. You know, so it’s not, it doesn’t flex much, whether it be frequency, you know, whether it be someone arriving monthly, quarterly, whatever it is. So the services are very, very much similar in the way. So it’s not a lot of differences in that area.

Jess Dewell 10:36
I have been in an industry like that, and it is amazing than what makes competitive advantage. So you were talking about some of those small things about getting the name out. You were talking about how you’re using technology. And that comes down to customer experience. And that customer experience doesn’t happen necessarily overnight. And it also doesn’t happen without thinking, does it?

Tim Whitt 11:01
No.

Jess Dewell 11:03
There’s this, we got to stop and think, is there an expectation? And I mean, we could quote Steve Jobs on one say and say, customers don’t know what they want. And we could quote somebody on the other side saying that there’s, I wish I had a name to go with this. I know many people say this. There’s so much information out there. customers know exactly what they want. And so bridging that gap and finding that place to be sustainable and have a business that can last three years, five years, over a decade, 16 years, it doesn’t happen just in spite of ourselves. It actually happens on purpose. And what are some of the things that you do to be on purpose with how you think about experience, how you think about advantage? What is going to allow you to remain not only mid-size where you are today, still have that growth path that you want? And we’re going to get into your growth path a little bit later, but I’m just, this is kind of like the setup for that later. Yeah,

Tim Whitt 12:06
Sure. So I think we all understand the sales process for most people, right? They have a need, they call you, they explain their need. I think the uniqueness behind what we have done and how we’re different is we’re very customizable to the need. Okay. And that’s where most companies fail because what they’re going to try to do in most situations is fit you into their box. Okay. And I think that’s where some companies fail miserably and especially on the larger side or the bigger company, right? Because as you scale and as your company grows, you know, it can be challenging to customize every plan to every customer, right? Because there’s cost associated to that, right? So I think early on, you know, in business, owners are more, you know, readily able to maybe do that little extra for somebody, right? And it may cost you a little bit more to do that. So you have to be cautious of how much you can do of that, right? But I think if you have a service offering that really encompasses the majority of those major ticketed items or problems, you’re going to do well. I think the other thing is really important is the response time. You’ve got to be positioned to be able to get there quickly. You know, I’m amazed at how many times we have people call us that just say, you know, oh, you answered the phone.

Jess Dewell 13:40
Right.

Tim Whitt 13:40
You know, I can’t believe that, you know, it’s like, okay, well, yeah, that’s what we do, you know. So I think, I think if you are able to answer the phone and then have somebody, you know, speak to that individual and understand the product or service that you’re offering and be, and communicate well, you know, that’s critical. And then I guess the other thing would be is just simply, hey, would you like for us to come out tomorrow? You know, that’s not even done most of the time. You know, it’s more exchanging information than it is asking for the work. You know, if we can go do the work.

Jess Dewell 14:14
Right. Exactly. OK, so I have a question about the responsiveness. How many of your inquiries now are non-voice versus voice?

Tim Whitt 14:24
Well, we really haven’t dove off on the AI side as offering it to AI or just virtual offerings really aren’t quite there. We still do more human interaction with the sales offering than that. But you can go on our website and get a lot of information yourself. But as we move into that AI side, we will have more of that presented to you pricing wise. You can get pricing kind of on our website now, but we’ll have more of that information available for you. But I guess it’s that interaction that we try to establish in the beginning. You know, I think that I think in the back end, the question piece is like, you know, you know, can you come out tomorrow or schedule something or make a, you know, make a payment? All that can be automated. Right. I mean, that’s all easy to do. But I think in the beginning, some of that human interaction is important. But I think making that offering, I think one of the pieces, the success factor for us will be this, okay?

Jess Dewell 15:26
Yeah.

Tim Whitt 15:27
If an AI picks up and speaks to you, some people may want that, some people may not, right? So we’re going to give you that offering to be able to go either way.

Announcer 15:35
When meetings and interruptions dominate your day, decision fatigue is inevitable. That noise buries your ability to think three steps ahead and discern the right work. Imagine stepping away for just two hours a week to sharpen your business instinct and cut decision time in half. That’s the present retreat, a weekly protocol that shifts chasing milestones to compounding strategic outcomes. Click the description link to activate your business instinct. Now, back to the Bold Business Podcast.

Jess Dewell 16:12
That’s kind of neat that you’re already thinking about that and where you’re going. And I appreciate you sharing how you’re integrating it. I find this fascinating because I know, okay, we’re going to take a little tangent here because this is not part of what our initial conversation was about. And that’s okay. By the way, the listeners of the Bold Business Podcast know this.

Tim Whitt 16:32
Yeah, it’s fine.

Jess Dewell 16:32
We don’t know where we’re going to go, Tim. We don’t know where we’re going to go.

Tim Whitt 16:35
That’s okay.

Jess Dewell 16:35
This is about the cost of customer service.

Tim Whitt 16:38
Sure.

Jess Dewell 16:39
So I keep hearing you talk about competitive advantage. I keep hearing you talk about ways to automate and utilize technology to find that competitive advantage, optimize and be efficient as possible so that you can actually have the interaction with customers that best serves you and the customers. And then, of course, the end result, the problem is solved. How much across your business, across all of the years, has the human interaction for that service maintained or has it ebbed and flowed and changed with the technologies that you’ve used? And if you’re willing, would you share where you’re at today in terms of your person power and dedicated to people and answering phones and things like that?

Tim Whitt 17:27
Yeah, I would say it is very consistent to how it has been in the beginning. And that’s by design. But what has improved is the efficiency of the staff within the building or the CSRs or the technicians, the efficiencies that you gain there because of digital reporting or processing of paperwork. That has improved hand over fist. I mean, it’s gotten so much faster and better and easier for them. And I think the other thing, too, is giving customers choice. You know, if I said to you, how would you like to have this information shared back to you? Would you like for us to email this to you, text to you? You know, giving people choice of how things are received back is so vital because so many companies just say you’re going to get it this way. And some people may not like information shared a certain way. Right. If you can provide information back that way and let people choose, it’s a benefit. The other thing, too, is access through web portals, customers being able to view things. And that’s pretty standard today, right? Everybody has something of some way, right? But you’d be surprised how many companies don’t.

Jess Dewell 18:39
Don’t.

Tim Whitt 18:40
Right?

Jess Dewell 18:41
I was going to say, I’m shaking my head, but I’m thinking to myself, hang on. I talk to companies every day that don’t.

Tim Whitt 18:46
Yeah, right.

Jess Dewell 18:47
And you are, too.

Tim Whitt 18:49
Right. Or demand you to go there. You have to go do this.

Jess Dewell 18:52
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. that’s true.

Tim Whitt 18:54
Right, you know.

Jess Dewell 18:55
Or, or our only path.

Tim Whitt 18:56
Right. Or, or penalize you and say, if you do this, this can’t happen, you know, or this is the only way you can do it. I mean, I’m not up for all that. Right. So.

Jess Dewell 19:03
There’s some experientialness in there and there’s this word it’s showing up for me a little bit now. And again, um, Winfinity, actually, it’s a word that I learned over 10 years ago in my last audio video program, uh, called the Jess Plus Scott Plus You Show, we had some people on that wrote a play. And in that play, they were trying to get the word out about this play. And one word that came up in our conversation was Winfinity. And I stopped and I looked at them and I said, I need you to explain this to me. And I have been using it ever since. It’s the win for you. It’s the win for me. And it’s the win that other people experience because of our wins.

Tim Whitt 19:44
Yeah, it’s wonderful. Yeah, it’s great. Yeah.

Jess Dewell 19:46
And I hear that being a big part of what you do. So now my question is, we’re going to shift a little bit and come back. And I’m curious, you’ve gone into a lot of locations and you have fixed a lot of problems and you have learned a lot about the dynamics of the people. Yes, we’re talking a lot about customers and we’re talking about processes now, but let’s talk about the people that actually create the processes, block the processes, enable the processes, empower the processes, whatever it is, right? And then the interaction for the Winfinity internally. It’s a win for me doing my job. It’s a win for the company because the company is able to be of service and it’s a win for the customer because their problem is solved, right? How, what’s your approach? I’m guessing you have a system now. You can walk into a failing problematic location and fix it.

Tim Whitt 20:40
Yeah, so early on in my career, in that 30-year time period in the beginning when I worked in a very large corporate pest control corporation early on, I had that transition where early on I went to the locations and was Mr. Fix-It. And that was by design. That’s what my job was to do. And I was very blessed for them allowing me to do that. If you’re in that role out there and a company is allowing you to do that, you’re blessed that they allow you to do that. But there is there’s good there’s good and evil to that. OK.

Jess Dewell 21:21
Sure.

Tim Whitt 21:23
Right? But, you know, what I found when I when I went into those locations is what there was always a common theme to something. You know, it was either lack of training. People weren’t properly trained in the beginning. There were quick hires, you know, they were just brought on board because budgets might have not been met, you know, and there was just a lot of different things, you know. So I always had to really first take a moment, take a pause, take time, take a week, evaluate, try to figure out why this was in the situation that it was, and then just start making decisions of why these problems were occurring. You know, I never was fast to, you know, try to resolve something right away. but not all problems were the same you know and what the main thing was is that what was unique is I would always make phone calls out to the customer to get a feel for how our services were you know and it was amazing what I would hear of what we were doing right and what we were doing wrong and what we also could improve on and and it was bringing it all together after about 30 days of observation and dealing with either the people that we had and whatever it may be, you could really start seeing a pattern of what needed to change. It’s not firing everyone or replacing everyone. That wasn’t it. Sometimes it was a reset of just what we were doing with the people we had. So it wasn’t going and replacing everybody most of the time. Now, there were times that I had to do a complete sweep. I remember one time a regional director handing me the keys and you’re going to replace everyone that’s in that building. I mean, it was that tough. That was a very, very hard, hard situation. Right. But it had to be done. But, you know, I think, I think the value behind going in and doing that, it taught me a lot, you know, here’s the drawback behind that. Okay.

Jess Dewell 23:18
Yeah.

Tim Whitt 23:19
It’s when you’re in that position for that long of time, I was dead, did that for 10 years. You, you can also get in, you can also get into a position where the calm is suspicious.

Jess Dewell 23:36
So you feel like you have to stir the pot because there’s not enough problems.

Tim Whitt 23:39
Why is it so quiet? Why is it so quiet? You know, it’s almost like, I think firemen are great, but they’re waiting for that alarm to go off. And it’s hard to rest because you don’t know when it’s going to happen, you know? And it was really, it was really, uh, challenging for me, even, even counterparts that did similar to what I did. There were some of those guys and gals that were really unique because they would actually go dig into what they fixed to make sure they fixed it correctly. So they would stir the pot. Right. So, you know, it was very, it was a very, uh, chaotic in some points. But the whole point was, though, is I earned respect from those that I helped. But here’s the other drawback to that was, is I always set the path for those that came in behind me to always earn a lot of money because they always bonused out. I never got to see the benefit from the hard work that I did for that period of a year.

Jess Dewell 24:39
Sure.

Tim Whitt 24:39
But, hey, but I got really good at fixing things. And what was good is that it really helped me today to be able to predict or see, you know, in private ownership of business, be able to see what potential problems could arise because I saw all the patterns and traits and everything that would come together, you know, possibly come together today. So.

Jess Dewell 25:00
Interesting. So would you say what we just talked about, that inability to rest because you’re always looking for those problems, Does that make you the hero at the last minute and that kind of a habit start showing up in other ways too?

Tim Whitt 25:17
If you’re not careful, if you’re not careful, it’s very easy for you to swoop in to fix problems. And it can really develop a team that will either A, create fires for you to swoop in to fix or not do anything and wait for you to swoop in to fix it. And either one of those are going to wear you out.

Jess Dewell 25:41
Yeah.

Tim Whitt 25:42
So yeah, you don’t want to be on either sides of that.

Jess Dewell 25:46
No.

Tim Whitt 25:46
It’s not healthy.

Jess Dewell 25:48
What are some outside of those two extremes, right? Because that’s your scale, one end and the other end.

Tim Whitt 25:55
Sure.

Jess Dewell 25:56
What are some clues if somebody were to do it, listening to this, wanted to do a quick self-assessment. I feel like I never get to rest. I always feel like I have to solve the problems. I’m the one that actually is saving this. Are there some questions that they might ask themselves to do a take stock and go, where am I, am I on this scale? And then where I might be if I am.

Tim Whitt 26:20
Yeah, I think, I think the question is, is why, why are you doing what you are doing?

Jess Dewell 26:28
Okay.

Tim Whitt 26:29
And is there one, is there one, is there anyone else that can do this job? I didn’t say as good as you are doing it. I didn’t say that. Can somebody else do what you’re doing? Okay. I think that’s the first question. The second thing is, is that, you know, the next time you go into, maybe you go back to maybe last week’s calendar and see how many meetings you were involved in and ask yourself, were you the highest paid person in that meeting? And did you provide any relevant information in that meeting? And if the answer is no, then ask yourself, why were you there? Because you might have been the most expensive bottleneck tax that might have attended that session. You know, I don’t, you know, because that happens a lot, right?

Jess Dewell 27:19
Yeah.

Tim Whitt 27:19
Happens a lot.

Jess Dewell 27:21
Over and over and over again. That is something I find. Tell me, you might have a different experience, both private and being part of a bigger organization. We share those experiences, right? So I’m talking from both sides. So it doesn’t matter which way we go in the sense that at a certain level, we feel we’re supposed to be accessible as leaders. So we overcommit to things like meetings. We overcommit to things like removing the obstacles so somebody else can do it becomes the work to get it done. And your two questions are really great questions. We’re going to call those out because they’re really important in that sense. And I know it’s hard to shift. How do we be accessible without being in the meetings we don’t need to be in, for example?

Tim Whitt 28:19
Yeah. So, you know, I think it’s important if you know what the subject matter is, what the meeting is going to be about, you know, one of the things that we do is, you know, some technology. Right. But what we do is we we use Google notes, you know, meeting notes that are taken for us through AI. And that’s archived. And that’s archived forever. Right. And so we know from one week to the next what is on the agenda. And a lot of times we’ll be able to view that and know whether who needs to attend. It’s a huge time savings, right?

Jess Dewell 28:53
Yeah.

Tim Whitt 28:54
The other thing, too, is because you have a meeting every Tuesday, do you need to have a meeting every Tuesday? Okay. I think that’s a time waster. You know, when our meetings need to really be held. Um, I, I believe here, here’s one thing that really helps me and even helps me today. Give you an example. I have technician, you know, Bill who’s out in the field and I have, I have Sally, the CSR in the office. And Sally has a question about what Bill may have done yesterday. Sally will call me and I’ll go, what they do now is Sally will call me with Bill on the phone and they, Sally will ask me the question and Bill is there and I’ll say, okay, Sally, what’s the question? And Bill, Bill will explain what he did. And I’ll say, okay, what, how did, what do you think we need to do here?

Jess Dewell 29:45
Yep.

Tim Whitt 29:46
And they’ll, they’ll communicate and I’ll say, that sounds great. So I’m giving them the approval to move forward without making the decision. That’s a great. And they’re, and they’re both learning.

Jess Dewell 29:57
Yeah.

Tim Whitt 29:58
All they needed to do is they just needed some guidance or some authority or, or just to feel that what they’re doing is okay. you know, and without them email, I don’t, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not against email, but email has no emotion. Text has no emotion. I just wanted to hear, I just, maybe I, maybe if I had a question, I could ask Bill, Hey Bill, what did you do there? I need a little bit of information or Hey Sally, let’s bill them this way. Or, you know, it just saves time.

Jess Dewell 30:26
Sure.

Tim Whitt 30:27
It’s just something Yeah.

Jess Dewell 30:29
It does. Okay. So I want to know, I know in your work over the years and the things that you’ve identified, you’ve identified a lot of toxic habits. What I’m really curious about in the workplace, I’m really curious, which ones were you guilty of?

Tim Whitt 30:47
Toxic habit.

Jess Dewell 30:49
Maybe the early days, maybe today. I don’t know. I know we’re all learning, right? We’re peeling back the onion.

Tim Whitt 30:54
I would think early on as an employee, I would say as you gain experience in time, and in this business, you have licensing categories that you bring on. I think it’s easy to not respect leadership because they don’t have the experience or time or tenure. And I think that because of that, it was people that would come in that would oversee me that didn’t respect me because of that and would not acknowledge. Maybe it was because they didn’t acknowledge that.

Jess Dewell 31:39
Interesting.

Tim Whitt 31:39
And what I’m saying is they didn’t come in and acknowledge that time and tenure just simply by saying, hey, Tim, thank you for your time. Thank you for your tenure. Thank you for taking care of this multimillion dollar account. Thank you for keeping our production high. Thank you for this. Thank you for a clean truck. Thank you for this. Never, never, never did that happen very often. But yet they would come in and maybe either hold a threat or, hey, if you don’t do this, this is going to happen, or you may not be here tomorrow or whatever it may have been. So that to me was very difficult. It was very difficult for me to respect that, right? So I would have that guard or I wouldn’t say toxic, but I would not be very receptive to change.

Jess Dewell 32:24
Makes sense. Yeah. Makes sense. And what was the trigger that allowed you to acknowledge it and change it?

Tim Whitt 32:31
I think when I got on the opposite side of the desk.

Jess Dewell 32:35
Fair. Fair.

Tim Whitt 32:37
And realized a better way of doing it, you know, and I think that effective leadership is being on the other side of the desk or chair and understanding both sides of the feeling and doing something differently. You know, and understanding the impact for sure.

Jess Dewell 32:54
You know, we were talking about calendars earlier and you’re like me about time, it seems. I don’t mind being in meetings, but I don’t want to be in meetings that I don’t need to be in. My time has better use and I need more space to be able to do deep work and think bigger picture, even between my cadence of strategic, deep strategic sessions that I call present retreats. And so I’m going to ask you some questions about what your process is, because it’s always fun to learn. And I want to start with the calendar. How do you know when your calendar is full and what do you do about it?

Tim Whitt 33:35
Yeah, I think calendars should become full when the opportunity is weak.

Jess Dewell 33:43
Yes, that makes sense. Yes, hi, use your time.

Tim Whitt 33:47
Yeah, I have plenty of time depending on what I’m being offered to go do.

Jess Dewell 33:53
Okay.

Tim Whitt 33:54
Okay.

Jess Dewell 33:55
Yeah.

Tim Whitt 33:55
So my calendar is always open depending on what the offering is.

Jess Dewell 33:59
Yeah, I think that that makes sense. I know I have to go into it. So in my world, right, I go into a week. I do my deep work sessions on Monday. And every Monday afternoon, I am looking at this week’s calendar and next week’s calendar. And my job is to make sure I have 20% of my time free. It cannot be 100% booked. Because then I know I’m mostly doing the highest impact work and the right work for my role and what I’m doing for the Red Direction team. I also know that I have 20% for problems that come up internally, opportunities to have conversations with new potential clients, challenges that come up for any of our current clients that need some extra space. If I fully book out my time, there is no flex. And it’s easy to be ruled by meeting, appointment, appointment, appointment, appointment. And we don’t even get any time to breathe. We don’t have time to process what we did before. We have no time to process and prepare for what’s next. And so I was like, okay, this is going to be one thing I tried. And I benefit greatly. And it’s one of the things that I bring to every company I work with. I’m like, well, where’s 20? I need to see 20% free time on your calendar, in your work time, 20% of your work time free. And it’s hard to get to. And it doesn’t matter if we’re one or three years in. It doesn’t matter if we’re 16 and 23 years in. I still, I’m in the 20s for red direction and I still have weeks. I’m like, well, how did that happen? Which is why I look two weeks ahead because theoretically two weeks ahead, it’d be fine. But every week on Monday afternoons, I am pulling things out of my schedule. Wild after all of these years. However, now that that habit is there, it’s a little harder because it’s all really good stuff that could be done. It’s just a matter of how do you narrow it in? What is the focus right now? Can it wait? Is it exciting, urgent, or important? Really, right?

Tim Whitt 36:10
Yeah. So do you really want me to go into the weeds for you? I would love.

Jess Dewell 36:14
Well, I kind of did. So I would love for you to. Yeah, this is great.

Tim Whitt 36:17
Yeah, yeah. So number one, my leadership team, my CSRs in the office all know when I’m on vacation. I share my calendar.

Jess Dewell 36:27
How often do you take vacation?

Tim Whitt 36:29
Last year I was out for three and a half months.

Jess Dewell 36:35
Listen, people, we can all do this too. Three and a half months. Yeah. Okay. Now,

Tim Whitt 36:40
I didn’t go a month at a time.

Jess Dewell 36:43
Sure.

Tim Whitt 36:43
I went weeks at a time, right?

Jess Dewell 36:45
Yes.

Tim Whitt 36:45
But I share that. They know that I’m out. I think it’s, I don’t think there’s anything wrong to share that. Some people don’t do that. Some owners don’t do that. They don’t tell when they’re leaving. I think it’s important that people know when you’re not around.

Jess Dewell 36:58
Yes.

Tim Whitt 36:59
There’s safety behind that. It’s a whole different conversation. So I think blocking time for your wellness is important. I think as an owner or a leader, you have to take care of number one because you can’t take care of others if this fails. So that’s important. Secondly, you have to book things in your calendar that is operationally important. Block times for those things. If you want to call it timeout, personal timeout, whatever you want to call it, that’s fine. And, you know, this is the 16th year that we’ve been in, that I’ve been in private ownership of a business. And it was up to 10 years I was in a, I worked in the building which our operations were in. In the 11th year, I actually purchased a building that was less than a quarter of a mile from that operations center. And I moved my private office out and moved into a different location. Now, that was made a world of difference because there is no distractions here. I don’t have phones ringing. I don’t have employees coming in and wanting to speak and all that. Now, my door is always open and they’re more than welcome to come in. They know that. I never made it to where they couldn’t come. But that separation from me being in the building every day is a world of difference. So that gives me that creative time, that time to be able to work in the business and do what I need to do. So that’s important to have as well.

Jess Dewell 38:44
What Tim is doing here isn’t just changing locations. It’s a deliberate pause to choose long-term strategy over daily firefighting. Making that shift requires a specific leadership muscle, self-trust. Organizational strategist Kim Bohr breaks down why leaders struggle to take that space and what happens to the systems and the teams when you don’t.

Kim Bohr 39:07
You definitely have to have that self-trust of giving yourself the space and thinking through things. I think they’re very interconnected, though, too, because you can trust how you’re thinking about going about stuff. But if you can’t trust your colleague to have your back or to look out for the best interest of what the team is trying to accomplish, it’s all going to break down. We think of ourselves as authorities on how to build really healthy trust inside organizations that’s actually measurable, not the squishy kind of stuff. And I don’t mean that and that I’m dismissing trust. That’s how it is often been thought, of course. But if it only can be measured, it’s like, well, actually I can. So I think that self-trust is absolutely the foundational starting point. And am I trusting my decisions? Am I trusting the way I’m thinking? Am I trusting somebody to help balance it off if I do have some doubt? And if you don’t have that, then it really is a matter of, I would wonder, how do we get the right systems in place for you? Are you in the right leadership kind of role?

Jess Dewell 40:04
Systems aren’t just efficiency tools. They’re the infrastructure of trust. When you give yourself room to think, you build systems that empower your team to own their roles rather than waiting for you to save the day. Notice how Tim puts that exact self-trust into action as he moves from delegating tasks to delegating decision making.

Tim Whitt 40:30
I don’t think you delegate tasks. You delegate decisions to people. Okay. That’s the key here. You have to be able to be able to have people that you entrust that, that you have to teach them how to be able to operate properly. You have to have good systems in place. You know, the old saying, trust, but verify, you know, that’s, that’s great. But how are you verifying and what methods are you using? Those are things that you just need to make sure that you’re doing in a right way and proper way. You know, I know my people believe my leadership is fair and honest. I think all of those things all have flavor and they always work well. You know, so there’s things that really will get the traction going and the engine running and the business moving. And when your people believe that, they’re going to relate that to the customers they serve and the customers are going to feel good about it. But I think what’s unique here is that when we get any kind of negative review, we’re all devastated. We’re all taken back. We’re shocked. We’re like, what happened? What did we do wrong? What failed? That’s a good place to be.

Jess Dewell 41:45
It’s a great place to be. So I want to circle back from the beginning. We took a pause on how your business was running, what was different about now, all of the things that you had learned and mistakes that you had made. And you’re scaling. You’re still finding ways to grow. Being competitive and growing. And that requires a different kind of thinking and massive time investment for not only just recreating everything you already have, but also being able to, to your point, delegate decisions. right and so tell me tell me about how you’re growing your business these days and what are the types of decisions that you’re actually delegating so that you’re maximizing the return.

Tim Whitt 42:32
On the other end of that onboarding process so when it comes to the two decisions and having people make those for you in business. First, you need to, whoever you select to make decisions for you, you need to explain to them why that decision is important. Number one. Number two, you need to explain to them what you’ve done in the past that didn’t work.

Jess Dewell 43:08
That’s important. Yeah. I don’t often think about that.

Tim Whitt 43:12
That way they don’t try to circumvent the process and come up with their own creative way of changing it. Okay. The next thing is that you want to ensure that you have a way of knowing that it’s being done. Okay. Trust but verify. So how do you do that? You know, do you just trust them? You can, but your process should have some way that, you know, it’s getting completed. You know, we have a bank deposit that’s made every day. Well, Tim gets email notification from the bank. That’s how I know.

Jess Dewell 43:49
Yeah.

Tim Whitt 43:50
Right. That’s an easy one. Right. So there’s just things like that. Right. So decision making can be that simple. Right. So there’s technology that can help you with a lot of these decisions that are made. Right. But don’t be too free on all of the decisions, right? Some of those need to be made by you. I know of owners that sometimes get so disconnected in their business where they don’t want to do anything. There’s a difference between stepping away from your business and stepping out of your business. It’s okay to step away for three and a half months. I never stepped out of my business, for three. I didn’t do that. I just stepped away. Okay. And that’s the key here. Don’t step, don’t, don’t step out of it.

Jess Dewell 44:41
You know, I think that’s an important, I think that’s an important distinction to make, Tim. Some people buying a franchise or a business may be doing it so that they can have a portfolio of passive income without actually running the business. That is a very different conversation than the one that we are having today, which is, I’m going to say boots on the ground in the sense that we’re the North Star. We’re the vision holders. We’re the ones that are making sure the communication is clear, straightforward. Everybody knows what’s going on. If there’s problems to solve strategically or otherwise, we have the ability to take the time and do that and come back and get the right people in to see what they’re going to do and how they might do it within the work that’s already been given to them and their experiences that’s very different and I want to point that out because I agree with you working stepping away from the business is different than stepping out of the business and you have to i think getting out of the center of the business is what I call it some people work on the business instead of in the business and I think some without on versus in the on piece is what you were delineating about.

Tim Whitt 45:55
Right [here i’m involved just in a totally different way] right you know the the captain of the ship may step away from the helm but he doesn’t leave the ship that’s right right yep and you know even with my my leadership team they know that i’m available and that i’m there i’m in the background i’m there to support them and whatever it may be yeah now when when you look at scaling a company You know, you look at, you know, what is the competitive advantage? What have we done to get to there? You know, it’s that constant reinvestment back into the organization in some given way, right? You know, if we can’t, you know, it comes down to what is that return for that investment? What is it? Is it short-term return? Is it long-term return? You know, those are the decisions that we try to make, you know, on a regular basis. What is the net? How is it going to come back? And sometimes the return may not be financial. It may be a goodwill gesture return that we’re getting back in some way. There is monetary return to that as well. And what is scaling? What is the healthy scale? That’s the thing for me is I want to scale at a reasonable rate. You know, I don’t want to go faster than the business can sustain because it puts hardship not only on my employees, but it can be on the overall health of the business. You know, I mean, we could go we could grow at a very rapid rate if I wanted to put more money into marketing and sky’s the limit. But, you know, it’s kind of like running a race. Right. I mean, you’ve got to pace it. Right.

Jess Dewell 47:44
And you’re pacing it based off of the end goal. And that’s another thing too, that I think people forget. If we don’t think about the end of mind when we get there, and in our case, where we’re both over 15 years old in our companies, what we’re looking at next might change year to year. It might change every three years. I’m not sure. Do you do a three-year forward-looking planning cycle. That’s what I do.

Tim Whitt 48:09
Yeah. And what we do is we do a one year budget. We’ll do a one year.

Jess Dewell 48:13
I do a one year budget, but then I have a three year outlook.

Tim Whitt 48:16
Yeah. And then, you know, budgeting out, if we do a five year projection, we’ll try to look at a five. I will go out of five at my, I will look at a five year, but we would do a one year with the leadership.

Jess Dewell 48:27
Makes sense. With the team. Yeah. Okay.

Jess Dewell 48:30
Oh, we could keep talking about this stuff all day. So I’m going to take another little tangent because I really want to know what makes it bold, Tim. What makes it bold to step away from the daily operations of a 16-year-old business and trust the repeatable systems that you’ve built?

Tim Whitt 48:46
Well, I think what you have to do is at some point you have to see if what you’ve put into play is working, right? And it goes back to what I said earlier, the calm, the cautiousness and the calm. And I’m thankful, more thankful for that when I step away that there’s no call. It’s calm and I’m not worried. And that’s the beauty behind the business is to work really hard to get it to where it’s growing and where it’s at and know that the people that you’ve entrusted, trust is a document. It’s a document. It’s given. And that’s what I enjoy so much about it. people that I have, I trust and they know that. And to be able to step away and know that the business is running well and that people are doing well and they know that if I’m needed, they can call. But that’s a great feeling to be.

Announcer 49:49
Future relevance isn’t built in theory. It’s built on the actions we take today. Don’t let what you heard today stay in this episode of the Bold Business Podcast. For full show notes, transcripts, and over 500 episodes created for companies running real revenue, visit reddirection.com. To continue the conversation with Strategic Growth Advisor Jess Dewell, reach out directly. Thank you for joining us. Keep building your business instinct. Produced by The Scott Treatment.