Business Coach : Tips From Tim
-All right. Tim Redmond, how are you doing, sir?
-I am doing great. Clay, I am so excited about today.
-Well, I obviously have got the chance to know you over the last couple years or last year or so, but can you describe who you are for Thrivers watching?
-That is a good question, and I’m going to give you the brief version of that. It’s just going take 90 minutes.
-OK, I’m ready.
-I’ll just do the highlights. I am a husband and a dad, first of all. I love my wife and love my kids. We’re celebrating our 25th anniversary this month.
-Tricked her for 25 consecutive years.
-And now we have produced four offspring that I’m aware of– three boys and a girl. I just love my kids, and they’re from 15 to 23. That defines a lot of who I am.
-Well, now I’ve met your kids, and it’s fun to meet them because– I think I told you– they’re doing so well, it speaks highly of you. Not that if they didn’t do well, they would speak lowly. Now, a lot of people know you as this successful entrepreneur and business coach. I knew you as a guy who interned for the company you were at, and I knew you as one of the heads of this company that had 400-something employees and was selling the TurboTax, and I was just super excited to get to know you. But describe your childhood and how you were raised, before the successful Tim Redmond, a business mentor.
-Well, I was raised in a very large family. I’m one of 11 kids.
CLAY CLARK: Are you serious?
-My parents wanted to replenish the Earth all by themselves.
CLAY CLARK: 11?
-Yeah, 11 kids. So that’s where we have a smaller family with just four kids.
-Yeah, you guys were not being diligent.
-Well, we were being diligent in making sure we had only four offspring. Actually, amazing– I was just talking to one of cameramen beforehand. I went to school with his dad, and I wrote down, when I was in school, that I wanted to get married, and I wanted to have four kids– three boys and a girl in that order, and that’s what I’ve got.
-Are you serious?
-I mean, it was just amazing what’s happened, but growing up, it wasn’t always easy. Dad worked at a really good company, and then we had some transitions there, and things were tight, and it wasn’t always easy– the food stamps and the special card at the cafeteria that you’d feel the shame of having to use this. I am poor. I don’t have enough. You have to help pay me and feed me– one of those kind of cards, but we all jumped in together.
A lot of people thought it was pandemonium. To me, it was natural. We’d have conversations, and if you weren’t heard, you raised your voice. And then if you weren’t heard again in this pandemonium of human carnage all over, you would yell. And then if the yelling wouldn’t work, you would physically accost one another, and that was natural for me. So that may have been the seeds of entrepreneurship to go out there and handle the tough things out there.
-Now just even getting heard in a group of 11, that’s amazing. Now I understand that you had dealt with some personal disability as a kid, and it’s interesting as we’re interviewing Thrivers– a lot of Thrivers have had physical disabilities.
They’ve been abandoned by family members. They’ve overcame poverty. I haven’t met anybody yet who’s said, I woke up and I was successful, and then I just became more successful. And now have the opportunity to be a business coach and help others be successful.
-I hate those people in a loving way.
CLAY CLARK: Tell me about your personal disability that you dealt with.
-Well, how was I was born with a double cleft pallet. I had a number of other complications. They really didn’t expect me to live.
CLAY CLARK BUSINESS MENTOR: Assuming I don’t know what a cleft palate is. Can you explain what that is?
-OK, it’s when as you’re being formed in your mother’s womb, you begin with that cell and you join the cells and– what kind of class is this, by the way? And you begin to multiply and you actually develop as two halves that begin to come together towards your birth. And so a cleft palate is a lack of coming together of your mouth, and your nose, and your palate– and a lot of complications with that. And so I had some other complications.
My mom and dad rushed me out to see this person of authority. They looked down at what he saw was a deformity or handicap, and says– he announced a curse over me, Clay. He says, this boy will never be a public speaker. He’ll never be able to get up in public and talk. But I have since proven them wrong and taken on the jobs of public speaker and business coach.