Jonathan Raymond, Owner of Refound

Jonathan Raymond talks with Bill Ringle on My Quest for the Best about the culture of accountability, the proper way to give feedback, and developing an organization that puts people first.

>>> Visit MyQuestforTheBest.com for complete show notes and more expert advice and inspiring stories to propel your small business growth. My Quest for the Best is a top-rated small business podcast with over 300 episodes of thought-provoking and insightful interviews with today’s top thought leaders and business experts. Host Bill Ringle’s mission with this show is to provide the strategies, insights, and resources that will unlock the growth potential of your business through these powerful conversations.

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Interview Insights

Key points that you’ll learn from this interview:

Why organizations are putting so much thought into a “people first” cultureHow to give feedback without micromanagingHow a software company gave their senior management the room to play at the level of their titleThe one mistake organizations make over and over againThe importance of embracing uncertainty

Read the Show Notes from this Episode

1:10 Raymond recounts his first real experience in entrepreneurship, telling about the “driveway car wash’ he owned with his friends.1:33 [On lessons learned from this early venture] - “One of the lessons was the operating costs are always higher than you think they are.”1:50 “Any industry worth being in is crowded.”2:15 How law school taught Raymond to show up in the world in a professional way.2:53 “My education in law school really helped me write with some structure, rather than just stream of consciousness, but to actually put one idea after the next in a way where something builds.”3:05 “A lawyer is able to string a series of good ideas together and build an argument, right? Which is what a good book or a good blog post is: it’s a good argument for advocating a a piece of change.”3:45 Raymond describes what it was like working 3 jobs out of law school, and still barely being able to cover rent. 4:04 [Paraphrasing Andy Warhol] - “You know you’re on track in your life when you’re using the best and the worst of what’s happened to you over the course of your journey.”4:26 “If I want to have an impact in the world, I’m going to have to take some steps, and there’s going to be some painful moments along the way.”4:52 [On Raymond’s Clients at Refound] - “I think the biggest problem we help people with, I would say, is overwhelm and ambiguity.”4:55 “In most modern organizations, there’s a lot of thought being put into ‘How do we create a people firs...