Right Person, Right Position

Business brain, episode 565 for Wednesday, July 10th, National Pina Colada Day 2024. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business brain, the show where we take a few ideas, we crunch them, we dissect them, we analyze them, we use them to tune our business brains every single time we get together. Our sponsor today is shopify.com businessbrain where you can go and sign up for a $1 per month trial period. We'll talk more in depth about that in a little bit. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, as usual on.

I'm Dave Hamilton and I'm still Shannon Jean, and I'm still out here in Northern California. How are you, Dave?

I'm good, Shannon. I have what I believe to be good news to share.

Oh, that's.

I don't know. It's news.

Let's see.

There are things that I intrinsically pay attention to in terms of their prices. There are two of them. One is concert tickets because I buy a lot of them. And the other is far more intentional in my life. And that, my friend, is canned tuna fish. We buy. We don't buy the chunk. We buy the. We buy the better stuff, whatever it is.

The. What is it? Albacore.

Albacore. White tuna.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We have a rule in our house that I will point out we have had to violate for about four years now. But the rule is that we only buy cans of tuna when they are a dollar or less per can. And yesterday we were able to buy five cans for $5. Now, it was a special. But that's how these things begin, is things start out as specials. And the same is true with concert tickets. It, you know, like we're seeing shows, not selling out. They, you know, there's still some being canceled. Some being canceled, right. Yeah, there's a lot. There's a lot of flux in the concert industry about what the price of a concert ticket should be post COVID lockdown. Of course, during COVID lockdowns, there were no concert tickets being sold. Post COVID lockdowns. The prices skyrocketed and people were buying them because people had mounted up a ton of money and wanted to get out of their houses and go see concerts again. So they were selling out at top dollar, and that's fine. We bought tickets for the Stones. The Rolling Stones. We just went and saw them a couple weeks ago. We talked about it with the. I can't remember the name of the company that would check your bags.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. Remote locker people.

Stupid. It's stupid. It's great that it exists. It's ridiculous that it has to.

Terrific.

Yeah. But we bought those tickets in October. Now we bought them on the day they went on sale. So Stones are my dad's favorite band, and I was happy to spend whatever it was. It was almost 500 bucks a ticket. Right. Like, it was not cheap. That's high for a concert ticket.

I would agree.

That week, tickets were being fire saled for that same show. For let's. In our section, let's say half of that or slightly less than half of that, which. Totally fine. This is not sour grapes. My family always yells at me. They're like, I can't believe you're looking. We've already bought tickets. It's like, no, I want to know for next time.

That makes sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because if they don't all sell out. Yeah. It's a sunk cost. It's totally fine.

Yeah.

But if they don't all sell out right away, then I want to know at what point before the next. Before a show, like, when does the dip happen versus it coming back up? When does it plateau? All those things. So I pay close attention to this stuff because we see a lot of concerts, and we did. We went and saw John fogarty from the 20th row. Perfect seats, last minute. Two weeks ago, we paid $30 a ticket. I paid more for my parking space.

Sweet. Yes.

Right. But. So the number is somewhere between 30 and 500. Right. But it's come down. And tuna has also come down. I. I know it's just a special, but.

No, no, it's.

That's going to normalize.

Yeah. You're. You're telling me that tuna is a buck a can. Tells me that interest rates are going to come down soon.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. Yes.

That's what we. And that's what we want. Yep.

It's the tuna fish litmus test. But it, but it, but it. Like, it's a thing. Groceries have been ridiculously priced since COVID lockdowns.

It's been nuts. Yeah. Inflation on groceries. And it's not like, oh, you. The. The inflation index or whatever. Oh, inflation is up 4%. It's like. No, it's like double. Double, you know.

Correct.

Sometimes you go here and Renee will come home because I don't shop. I'm not that. I'm just not.

Yeah, yeah. To be fair, Lisa passed this information to me, but.

Yes, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. And so she'll come home. She's like, you know, mayonnaise was $8. And so we have this new thing. We're like, only we have this list we use on our phones that we share. I'll get some of this. So there's always a caveat. Now it's like, oh, I want this, but only if it's on sale.

Yeah.

Otherwise I'll just wait. Or I'll get a substitute or get something. Because it's ridiculous that, you know, some of these fees. And I don't know about you, but we have this thing out here with our stores. I think there's only a handful of big grocery store chains now, but at Safeway out here, everything will be crazy expensive. Like a 12 pack of soda or whatever. Not to would be like eight or nine dollars. And then the next time you go, it would say, oh, buy three, get four free.

Yeah, some crazy. Well, but that's the thing is that's new. That that didn't happen six months or 12 months ago. Yeah, that stuff for it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yep.

It's interesting. I'm happy. I'd be happy to see the prices. Prices come back down, that's for sure.

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Yeah, we've got next. So we're not gonna talk about tuna, but we're gonna talk about.

Well, then forget it. Folks, thanks so much for listening.

Thanks for coming. Yeah, so I'm a. I'm a plant guy. My. One of my first companies that actually took off and make money when I was in college was a landscape construction business. And one of the phrases that we use in that business, as I learned, I went to school for that, went to college for that. Uh, and one of the phrases that you hear a lot was right plant, right place.

Okay.

And the. The lesson behind it is, you know, if you're going to take a. If. If you have somebody's by their front door and you're going to plant a plant, you want to plant something that's going to, like, stay the right size to be near somebody's front door. For example, if you plant something that's going to get 20ft tall and 30ft wide, you're just creating a problem.

Yes.

Okay, hack it back. And you're trying to get this plant to do a job it was not created to do.

Okay, okay, I'm with you. I'm. Yep, following you now.

We'll segue this here. I. I've taken that once I left that business decades ago. I create. I started thinking of that. That concept is. Works with people as well and with your business. It's right person, right position. And I'm not.

I like this.

And, yeah, and. And the. What I. What I want to talk about is because there's some nuance to it. This is not just, oh, well, you get somebody. That's good. And then you just keep promoting them. Promoting them because.

All right, look, that was it.

That's okay.

I pushed the wrong button. I pushed the wrong button.

We're just going to leave it highly unusual. We're going to put this date July 9th at 1:30pm because that's a desk thing. Okay.

You know, I was going to remove the banner from the. The bottom here and the video thing, which I know 99% of you don't even see, and yet there I am pushing the wrong button.

I like the music, I love Shopify. They are the. I can do a whole show on why I love them so much. But anyway, so you get people in and it's the, the typical, okay, you start them out at some level, they're good at that job and you're like, well, maybe this person will be good at this. Let's move them up and, and let's move them up. And it. A really common example of the Peter principle is you have a salesperson that you keep promoting, giving more responsibility and eventually they become the sales manager.

Oh yeah, no.

Well, that is an entirely different position than the awesome on fire salesperson that was closing deals and real aggressive and everything. Now that person has to have empathy and great listening skills and leadership and persuasion skills.

Yeah, that which it takes to sell is not that which it takes to manage.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Now some of, if you're, if you're fortunate, some of them do good. But in my experience, some of the folks that are just okay at selling become very good managers because they have a different skill set.

Right, right person, right position.

Right person, right position. Yeah. So I like to just, you know, you kind of have to look at the roles of your people and keep track. You almost have to have a database of what are their skills, you know, and you have to observe them. Are they good listeners? Can they talk to customers very well. And you don't want to move these people out of what they're really good at. It gets what I'm saying.

Yeah.

And, and as entrepreneurs, we are always thinking of moving up, right? Oh, how do we make more sales? How do we book more of this? How do we get more clients? How do we start another company? You need to understand that your employees do not always think that way. Some of them may want to continue to move up, but some of them are happy. They want a great place to work, they want a competitive salary. They want autonomy. Very important.

Not necessarily in the order you are. No articulated here.

Money is often down the road or down the list because they, the other thing that's really important, flexibility.

If you can give that to them.

Flex time.

Yes.

Can I go see my kids baseball game?

Yes.

Their play. And man, that stuff is easy to give.

I think so.

Yeah, I think so too. And it's super valuable. So as you, you're thinking about this right person, right position. Don't always think that you've got to move somebody up to another level. And I've made this mistake over and over, you know, when I was younger thinking that, oh well, that Technician wants to eventually run this department, that ticks it. And I used to make this stupid comment. I'd walk around and I would go, well, don't you want my job someday? And then eventually I saw enough people go, no, I don't want your job. And I had a hard time understanding it. And so I had to kind of walk back or tone down my entrepreneurial spiel, if you will, that is going along in my head all the time.

Yes.

And realize that some of your most valuable people, they may stay in that same position forever, but you've enhanced their job. Perhaps they take on a little more responsibility, they're making more money because they're better at their job or saving money or more productive or whatever it is. But you don't have to move them. I think you have to move them up constantly.

I have a friend who's been at Apple for 20 now, six years, and there was a, probably a 15 year period where we were in touch, but not, you know, not at any deep level. Like, there was no falling out, just lives went different directions.

Yeah, sure.

And we wound up syncing back up a couple of years ago, and he literally helped start a department that was blessed at the, at the hands of Steve Jobs. Like, Steve created this department.

Yes. Yeah.

And I asked him, I was like, hey, man. And I'm not going to say his name here because I've already shared more than he probably would ever want me to share. But I was like, hey, you know, I, I assume you're like a manager. Like, he was the first. There was a, there was the sort of founder of the department that was brought on. And then him, he was like number two. And they, and it was two of them for probably five years before it ever grew to what it is today, where there might be 30 people in this department. And I just presumed that he was leading the department because the other guys moved on. And he's like, oh, no, I don't want to be a manager. He's like, I tell them no. And he's like, I'm happy to work at the salary that I've worked at now. He's worked at Apple for 26 years, and I don't think he's an idiot with his money. So he probably has some vested stock that sort of changes his outlook for life. But he's like, no. He's like, I like doing what I do and I don't want to stop doing what I do. It's like, just because I've been doing it for two and a Half decades doesn't change the fact that this is what I like to do.

That's right. And I think that's very important to recognize for yourself.

I was just going to say, for ourselves as entrepreneurs, we don't have to necessarily be at the top. There are places and times where it makes sense to hire someone to run our business for us. Even if we're at a, you know, operational or technician level or whatever. If we want to work in the business, it's fine. Let somebody else make the strategic decisions if that's not what we're good at. Yeah, it's okay.

And Absolutely. And I've lost good employees by pushing them to take on more, you know, responsibility to totally, to, you know, become a manager. And some, many people don't want to manage other people and they're, and they're miserable at it.

And it's, I'm one of them, by the way. I, I know I do manage other people.

Yeah.

But I, I, it's not my favorite thing. It's not why I do what I do. It is a, I have to do it, I'm fine with it. But I understand where my weaknesses are, which I think helps, at least it helps the people that I have to manage.

But yeah, yeah. And let me tell you, if you promote someone and it doesn't work out, it's very tough to bring them back. I mean, you can do it, but it's hard on them on your depart on the department and you know, I'd love some examples or some tips on the best way if you've, if you've, you know, know promoted somebody forward and it didn't work and you didn't want to lose them so you brought them back down. And you know, I've done it, but it's pretty bumpy. And so I guess it's just being, trying to be aware of the message that your employee is telling you. Yes. In their review and the day to day interaction, are they saying things like, hey, I'd love more responsibility, Hey, I think I'd be a good manager, I want to be a supervisor. Well, that's one thing.

Yes.

But if, but if they're, if you're hearing I love what I do, I.

Love my job, please don't mess it up for me.

Yeah, don't, don't, just don't talk to me, let me do my job. And because I, you know, I do, I have this, the saying and sometimes it's really true. It's like the quickest way to destroy something you love. Is to try to make money out of it.

Right?

Sure.

And I don't, I don't, my life has not gone that path. But, but I understand why people say.

Some of the things that I love. I've tried have by monetizing it, you turn it into data points and, and you have to push and all this kind of stuff. But so think about it from a, a, you know, a human resource perspective and figure out where should this person really be and maybe like to, to your point, Dave, assessing your own yourself and yes. Do I want to be the manager? Am I, do I enjoy getting up and doing this? That, that's the question you have to ask yourself.

And I think to answer your question about, you know, how do you, how do you bring, have you successfully brought someone back from that or how do you successfully bring someone back from a failed promotion? Essentially, I think it starts with a company culture that prioritizes self awareness and that means you have to do that for yourself. Like just being honest about. Okay, like I'm, I've said it on the show, but I mean, turns out I'm a pretty good leader. I'm not a great manager, but I tell my people that and that other things sort of promotes this, this idea of let's just be honest as we figure out who we each are, let's be honest about that. It's okay. And then if somebody does have a, you know, short stint as a manager and comes back from it, well then it's, that's not failure, that's learning. We've learned. Okay, that's the wrong spot for you. This is an experiment and it's all okay.

Yeah, that's great. That's, that's smart and, and having that discussion openly.

Yes.

That you, you being able to talk to people.

So it's not, it's not a hidden like, oh, it's not taboo. It's like, yeah, we tried, it didn't work. That's fine. Okay, great.

I didn't even just giving them an out, you know, creating, hey, I didn't really enjoy it.

Yeah.

And so I want to do what I enjoy. I'm going to go back and be a technician or I'm going to go back and be the, be a sales guy and someone else going to step into that role. I love it. I think it's great. I, I'd love your feedback. Let us know the way you handle this stuff. Feedbackusbrain Show. Tell us what you think.

Absolutely. Like he said, feedback at businessbrain Show. We love your emails. We love the thoughts that we get. And then we get to crunch it all together. We get to keep living that charmed life. And we'll see on Friday.