Oct 29, 2018
Tyler Best is the President/Owner of Abadan. Fun fact about
Tyler is that he is an Alumni of Whitworth
University where Paul’s son attends college, is also an avid sports
fan, and he says he is going to have to
start scaling that back as he gets older. Paul met Tyler at the
Edge events that he and Preston House
hosted where they brought 4 speakers in to inspire audiences with
mini talks on leadership.
Tyler was born into Abadan. His father worked there for years and
then bought out the Tri-Cities branch.
From a young age Tyler would come down to the office where he would
run the halls, make a mess and
then having to clean it up because his father doesn’t like messes.
He would do janitorial work, cleaning
the building, organizing, and started working in the copy center
where he was mentored by another
manager. Throughout high school he did odds and ends jobs at
Abadan, and every summer during
college he would learn different skills. He would learn to fix the
copiers which did not come naturally to
him. The summer he enjoyed most was when his father was in between
managers; so his father taught
him service-managing, dispatching, and while his father was in the
hiring process, Tyler took over some
of those duties. When he finished college, he didn’t want to work
for Abadan, and instead he took a job
at Circuit City, which wasn’t exactly what he wanted to do but he
liked to have money. His father offered
him a temporary position which he took. He then became a salesman,
which he did for 2 years. After
that he became a manager. It’s during that time he learned that he
wanted to stay at Abadan for his
career. His father started to phase out and Tyler took over. He has
been very blessed that his father was
there to teach him and guide him. God had a great plan.
He learned that his father’s succession plan was to have him take
over as the owner. He learned that
you have to start the succession plan early on. Whether his own
kids work at Abadan or not, he wants
them to learn a good work ethic, that there is always an
opportunity there. He is always thinking about
another route in case his kids don’t want take over the
business.
He would tell his 20 yr old self, to listen first, ask questions,
and take advice better. He has learned from
his father a lot of information--even when his father didn’t think
he was paying attention. He realizes
that he doesn’t know everything; so, he goes outside his own
industry to learn from others.
His strength is caring about people. He focuses on his staff,
employees, and customers. His father always
said if it’s good for the customers, if it’s good for the
employees, then it will be good for the company. If
you are focused on taking care of people and doing the right thing,
you will end up with the right result.
His strength is knowing that. He is organized in what he does. One
of his weaknesses is asking the right
questions and getting more out of his employees. He is reading How
Successful People Think by John
Maxwell. He is trying to lean in with questions and get a good
point of view from what the staff thinks.
Best ideas come from your team.
He starts his mornings with exercise, even if it’s walking circles
in the house while listening to an audio
book. It gets him motivated and he is listening to amazing books
through the Mid-Columbia Library.
When he gets to the office, he walks around to see how everyone is
doing and makes sure that his staff
sees him walking around--and then he heads up to his office to plan
out his day. He checks his inbox,
organizes his tasks in categories of urgency, and puts them on his
calendar and tasks list. He uses
ToDoist and Zapper to cross-reference his tasks and outlook.
Then he can prioritize his tasks by color of
importance.
He keeps himself out of ruts by reading books, and continues to
learn from other people. He loves to go
to seminars and classes. Their manufacturers put on
industry-specific seminars so that they are learning
and growing all the time. He believes that the investment to go to
conferences and seminars is worth it,
staying on top of industry development and trends. The more they
learn, the easier it is to stay out of
the ruts. In 7 years, they have doubled in size from 20 employees
to now having 40 employees.
Tyler’s greatest challenges as a leader is dealing with conflict.
He tends to shy away from conflict but is
learning to hit it head on. He has amazing managers and he is
learning to rely on them and work with
them through different situations.
As he has gone through failure and making the wrong decisions he
has learned how to continue moving
forward, to vet the products first, and talk to others in the
industry so that they can avoid any pitfalls.
Failure has also taught him to have a better plan when entering
into things. Sometimes he has rushed
into things without getting outside input, which wasted time and
money. He has learned that slowing
things down a bit is a better strategy.
He is very enthusiastic about celebrating his staff. Every couple
months, they plan events for their
employees and a few customers. They also plan a couple bigger
events throughout the year, one of
them being Water Follies. It helps a lot with morale.
His book recommendations are:
Permission to Speak Freely—Matt Kincaid
Traction
Good to Great-Jim Collins
Built to Last-Jim Collins
Eat that Frog-Brian Tracy
5 Dysfunctions of a Team-Patrick Lencioni