2025 Dynamic Dozen No. 8: TierOne

SBJ: What has been key to your growth?
Richard Reding: We spent the last couple years focusing inwardly, expanding and growing within our existing clientele. We’ve grown in personnel, as well. However, I have been trying to stave that off as much as possible. I don’t believe in throwing bodies at a problem. I try to be very cautious and calculated and balance and space that out as much as possible. We also focus a lot on cost savings and reduction in spending and software tech support.

SBJ: Is there such a thing as growing too fast?
Reding: Absolutely. You watch the identity of the organization change. You used to be excellent at support, and now you’re like everybody else. Those are the things we’ve tried really hard to be mindful of. We are a customer experience organization. We don’t even invoice our clients. So, we truly are an experience-only organization.

SBJ: How did you structure your business to attain growth without invoicing?
Reding: We receive our compensation from the service provider that the client selects via the master service agreement we have in place with all 500 providers. It’s very similar to the insurance agency model. We are an agency. We are the partner of record. That enables us to basically be an extension of their team.

SBJ: What are your top issues in managing growth?
Reding: The challenges we’ve had this past year have been around new people learning things that are completely new to them, and even people that have worked with TierOne for a couple years that have been promoted into other roles. There’s still a lot of new processes and new things happening and that newness is challenging. Growth is a little uncomfortable.

SBJ: At a tech company, how has artificial intelligence impacted your growth?
Reding: If it doesn’t need to be done by somebody that has the expertise to handle the nuance, then I want to try to automate it. That has been a big push this last year and partly how we’re able to grow so much without equal personnel growth. Crawl, walk, run: That’s the way. So, a little piece at a time and see how it goes.

SBJ: What has your growth enabled you to do?
Reding: We have an event we call TierOne Percenters. It’s for our top clients. We get out to Big Cedar and it’s a nice getaway excursion weekend that we can give back. This Monday, we’re hosting a charity golf tournament. Those are things we can do without hesitation. It’s nice to make investments into things without needing it to yield a result tomorrow. It’s just a different philosophical thing where you can make a longer-range investment.

SBJ: What is the best business advice you’ve received?
Reding: My favorite quote that I’ve adopted as a mantra is: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” Make the request, push hard for your client. I don’t care if that’s how everybody else does it, or the way it’s always been. I don’t care if it’s a brand-new trail, let’s blaze it.