#14 Tyler Best, President/Owner of Abadan

Tri-Cities Influencer Podcast with Paul Casey

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