In the late Eighties, Chip Fudge got here to a conclusion that modified the course of his business. He ran a collection agency his parents had began 20 years earlier, and one of its clients, Southwestern Bell, asked the team for help with some property claims he was struggling to get well.
It was a lightbulb moment that opened his eyes to recent possibilities, says Chip’s son, Taylor Fudge Entrepreneur. “My dad quickly realized he preferred negotiating with an insurer and an insurance adjuster rather than someone with an outstanding phone bill.”
The collection work led to a twist that ultimately resulted in the collection agency becoming three different organizations: CMR (Claims Management Resources), AnSR (Advanced Subrogation Resources) i AMR (Account Management Resources).
Entrepreneur spoke with Taylor, managing partner of all three firms, to find out how he and the leadership team proceed to innovate and grow their businesses while preserving the legacy of their grandparents’ company.
Entrepreneur: New ideas and opportunities appear every day. How do you choose which of them are price your time and resources?
Taylor Fudge: This is something we encounter all the time. Not all opportunities are good opportunities. I often think of the image of a German Shepherd jumping off a cliff to bite a duck. Yes, he may get a duck, but it leads to nothing but bad news. That’s why we focus on our strengths and key competencies. We do what we could be great at, not trying to be specialists in all the things. If you jump into too many industries, you’ll eventually discover that you just are not a master of any. However, when we see an opportunity related to our core business, we pursue it with a sense of urgency and consistency. We kept our noses down until we hit the goal.
How to expand company culture across three entities?
We are Lean Six Sigma shop that connects these three organizations. LSS is a process improvement methodology. We just sent 15 managers for five months of coaching. For all of our businesses, we want to deliver higher results for our customers than they may get elsewhere. Some of our clients operate in extremely difficult spaces – no one likes being called about an overdue invoice, right? That’s why we invest in our people and send them to negotiation classes to help them succeed.
What have you learned about negotiating and getting results?
This is going to sound a little funny because we mostly talk to people on the phone all day long, but body language matters. When you sit, your voice sounds alert, not slumped in your chair.
Another thing we talk about is consistency and how that may actually be a negative thing. For example, you are having trouble connecting with someone. Then you call them every Monday at 10:00. It may occur that the person you are trying to contact is busy with something every Monday at 10:00. So you would like to use your critical considering skills. Change your approach a little. So we give our employees the process that we wish them to follow, but also some freedom to modify that process to make it work for them and to make it work for our customers as well.
What is your approach to solving problems?
We attack all the things as if it were a process. It’s not about attacking people, it isn’t about attacking a challenge or a situation. You attack the process. We are data freaks. We document each of our processes. We visually determine where bottlenecks, problems and challenges most frequently appear. And then we are able to attack whatever the real problem is as a substitute of hoping that we’re on the right path.
This business has been in your loved ones for generations. How did you manage to maintain a balance between family and work?
This piece of heritage is probably the part that weighs on me the most. My grandparents made it. My dad was successful in this field and I need to proceed that legacy. I never really reported directly to my dad, and that was probably extremely helpful for us, especially early in my profession. At this point we are doing quite well in our individual roles. He is actually retired. He’s a visionary and a money guy. A few of our other partners and I handle the day-to-day operations. My role really focuses on all the things that is happening externally and on customer contact. I tell everyone that my job is to keep our relationships with our customers completely happy, healthy and profitable. But it’s really a team effort. I could not do what I do without trusting my internal team to kill it on the backend and over-deliver to our customers.
Your dad, such as you, is famous for his love of vintage racing cars. Any skills that could be transferred from running a racetrack to running a business?
Working under heavy load at high speeds, and sometimes the brakes are not excellent, so it is difficult to decelerate! [Laughs] Both are extremely stressful and extremely fun. High risk, high reward is definitely a motto that applies to each. And after all, focus. When you are racing, you would like to stay focused, and when meeting with clients, you would like to bring an extra level of focus and dedication to make sure you are running the way you would like.