The three months I couldn’t walk
In 2011, a rare illness called Erythema Nodosum left me unable to walk for three months. I was a Canadian entrepreneur in my twenties, and my business needed me every hour of every day — so when I stopped, it stopped. I nearly went bankrupt.
Lying there, I made myself a promise: never again would I own a business that breaks without me.
The rebuild started with delegation, and I was terrible at it. I failed at hiring an assistant five times — overseas, domestic, do-it-myself, through an agency. After the fifth failure I accepted that the problem was me: how I delegated, not who I hired. I asked myself one question that changed everything: “What would have to be true if I were legally bound to stay with my next assistant for three years?” (told in full on the speaking page)
That standard rebuilt my career. My consulting rate went from $40 an hour to $1,000 an hour. In 2016 the method became Great Assistant, which has now matched 1,000+ entrepreneurs with US and Canada-based executive assistants. In 2025, Yale’s Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking invited me to teach it.
Before all this: I grew up in Edmonton, Canada, served 3 Prime Ministers as a House of Commons Page at 17 (2000), earned a BPE from the University of Alberta (2006), and spent my twenties as a College Pro Painters franchisee and a touring rock drummer. I live in Austin, TX.
Early-life facts extracted from profitfactory.com/about/timfrancis; “at 17” is Tim’s account.
