Thinking Back and Moving Forward: ETR's History Since Day One
March 27, 2007
I had lunch with Katie Yeakle the other day, and she reminded me of how ETR started. It happened in early 2000. Katie had been running AWAI (American Writers & Artists Inc.) for three years, and it was growing. We had four employees, and had just started making a profit.
As with all the businesses I have had a direct hand in starting, AWAI was run on a laissez-faire basis, which meant that Katie was free to set her own rules.
One of the rules Katie set was that her employees could pretty much dictate their own hours. So long as everyone got their jobs done, Katie didn't fuss about what time they clocked in and what time they left. Katie applied this liberal policy to all of AWAI's employees, including herself.
For the longest time, I tried to ignore this practice, but it was eating at me. Ever since I first decided to get rich, way back in 1983, I had made a commitment to being one of the first (if not the first) employees into work every morning and often the last person to leave.
But Katie was drifting in at 9:00 or 9:30... and that was bugging me. "Bugging me" isn't the right phrase. It was bugging the hell out of me. Didn't Katie realize what a bad example she was setting?
I am sure that I mentioned my concerns to Katie more than once. But, for whatever reason, she chose to ignore me. So after seeing her stroll in long past 9:00 for the umpteenth time in a row, I sent her an e-mail that included the following:
Read the rest of this article at Early To Rise
posted by M. Masterson @ 8:57 AM,
Subscribe to RSS Feed