Tim Norrell Bio
Tim learned early in life about the value of Hospitality.. In the fourth grade his elementary school was going to start a football team but needed to earn money to buy the equipment and uniforms. The school decided to have all fourth and fifth graders sell candy. Tim got his box of candy with 12 bars on a Monday and sold every bar by the end of the day. Tuesday he got another box and sold all 12 bars by the end of that day. Ultimately, Tim borrowed the money from is father and bought all the candy and raised the price from .50 a bar to $1.00 per bar and sold all of the candy within three weeks thus earning money for the school, paying his father back what he owed him and buying a bicycle for himself and starting a savings account; all while treating his potential customers with respect.
During high school Tim and his brother started their own part-time weekend business, washing tractor-trailer trucks. Tim visited every trucking company in a 50-mile radius of his home selling his services. He and his brother worked all day on Saturday and Sunday afternoons (after church of course, a must attend demand from his mother) and continued this business throughout high school and college.
After college Tim went to work for Zales Jewelers in their management training program and became a store manager at the age of 22. His first store was in downtown Texarkana, Arkansas where a new mall had just been built. He was asked to run the store for 8 months because Zales had a new store in the mall and there was 8 months left on the lease at the old downtown store. After 8 months, Zales signed a new 36-month lease because Tim and his staff had grown the business by marketing to the local school district and offering old-fashioned hospitality.
Tim became a Store Improvement Manager for Zales and went into stores that were failing and turned each store around as quickly as possible. During the 18-months he was in this position, Tim worked in 32 stores in 18 states and never failed to make a store profitable. He was promoted to District Manager, first in Oklahoma City, then St Louis and finally in Atlanta. While serving in Atlanta, his district was named #1 district 4 consecutive years.
Tim became disenchanted with retail and wanted to do outside sales, where he believed the “real professional” sales reps were. After looking for a while Tim began a career with Pitney Bowes as an outside sales rep. He was named the #1 salesperson (out of 3200 sales reps) two years in a row and was promoted to District Manager, in Wichita, Kansas and then moved to Springfield, Missouri as Branch Manager.
After working for Pitney Bowes for 12 years, Tim left and began his own business as a trainer and consultant in sales and hospitality. Tim worked with several large companies including Anheuser-Busch, Freidman’s Jewelers, Pitney Bowes, Lanier, 3M, Canon among others. He also worked with hundreds of small businesses designing sales training programs and delivering sales & hospitality training programs throughout the U.S.
In 2020 Tim turned 65 and with Covid, he decided to sell his business and retire. His retirement lasted 4 months and because of boredom Tim began looking for part-time work.
It was at this time, Tim went to work at a local Chick-fil-A as the Hospitality Manager, working 3 days a week and using the things he had learned and taught about hospitality during his years as a trainer and consultant.
Tim has been married to his wife Ruth for 40 years and they have 3 children and 5 adorable grandchildren. When Tim is not at work at Chick-fil-A, he is usually working with another business helping them improve their hospitality, studying hospitality, spending time with his wife who he says is his “best friend”!