Part II: Intro to my business context and need to build trust, honesty, integrity and fairness

Speaker A Hello.

Speaker B My name is Jim Schultz, and I'm president of Applied Educational Systems. We are located in Lidditz, Pennsylvania. We are involved in in developing computer driven, integrated curriculum solutions for elective courses in grade six through twelve in the United States. I founded the firm actually 21 years ago. And in our particular market, because we're dealing with educational institutions, the government, the first ten years were really difficult in terms of we had to develop product on spec, then we had to go out. It's a long, complex sales cycle. Each one of our projects usually take about two to three years for completion. Over the last ten years, I've been able to grow the company in terms of revenue and also build some systems and process and structure in where my focus now tends to be more on the strategic nature of the business. And tactical operations are run by the managers and the technical staff. Our vision as a company is to prepare learners for a changing world. So as technology changes, the world changes. We want to give them a foundation that they understand the process of learning and they can apply it. And again, productive citizens again, is going to lead us to more gains, not only in the United States, but internationally. Right now we have our labs installed in about 2000 schools throughout the country. And then from that, typically at each.

Speaker A School there are going to be about.

Speaker B 500 students a year that are going to be exposed to the course, go through it and again, hopefully develop mastery of the standards defined in the course to give them lifelong learning skills to be productive citizens.

Speaker A One of the things I learned from my father, he was a successful entrepreneur, he was very humble. And the limelight was never it was never about him. It was always about trust, honesty, integrity. One of the stories I like to tell my kids, I didn't even know this until I was in my 20s that my father had 14 patents to his name. And when I brought it up to him, he almost said it's no big deal, anyone could have done it. When I think about what model he was for me, and one of the reasons I started this business and then in our Vistage meetings, on a monthly basis, we get to process issues. Member brings up an issue that they're having to the whole group and it's a discussion. The majority of issues that are brought up tend to be around poor performers, or an issue with the manager, or a conflict between managers, or a conflict in the organization. And when I started to read Requisite Organization, the thing that really struck me if you have an organization that truly has mutual trust, people respect each other, a sense of fairness, openness, honesty, integrity. Not that you just talk about it, but the actions are embedded in the culture. What a great thing to have for those people influences in their lives. So again, they can go out and have a positive influence with their family or with their friends. I think that's the true key to the Requisite organization and what every small business person should think about is, again, that's the legacy I think we all want to try to create when we start a company.