Insurance
Game plan
How to create trusting relationships to facilitate risk-taking
By Meredyth McKenzie
Smart Business Pittsburgh | September 2008
Page 1 of 2
Chuck Sanders
President and CEO, Urban Settlement Services LLC
As a former Pittsburgh
Steelers player, Chuck
Sanders uses many of the lessons he learned on the field
to lead Urban Settlement
Services LLC.
He motivates his 120 employees by taking them to football
games, to hear a coach speak,
or using examples of reaching
and achieving goals as a team.
“You also need to be a risk-taker,” says Urban’s founder,
president and CEO. “And then
just letting people know they
can count on you.”
Sanders’ focus on these skills
has helped him grow his company — which provides title,
appraisal, and closing product
and services for lenders in the
loan transaction process — to
annual revenue of $10.5 million.
Smart Business spoke with
Sanders about why it’s a good
idea to take risks and how to
not lose your personality.
Q. What are the keys to risk-taking?
The old gut feeling. It’s always
going to come to those decisions — is the business going
to turn this way? Even though
everything else adds up and all
your advisers and numbers
and reports point in one area,
if there’s something in that gut
that says, ‘I’m going to go with
this and take that risk,’ you’re
not afraid of failure.
If you’re wrong, you’re in
trouble. If you’re right, it’s
going to differentiate your
company from other companies because you will be ahead
of the curve.
Q. How do you get people to
understand why you’re taking
that risk?
Your people have to trust you;
they have to see a track record.
They see it not just in the big
moves but in your every day,
how you treat them and work
with them, you’re open to their
ideas, your communication with
your managers and all the way
down to your security guard
and mail room.
Once you’re going to make a
risky move and say, ‘All aboard,
follow me, let’s charge the hill,’
if you haven’t established that
trust relationship, it’s not going
to work.
