Hire the friends of your young
employees. It’s been word-of-mouth and friends basically
who have formed the nucleus
here. We’ve found some people the traditional way, but
mostly, it’s about knowing
people who are already here.
Friends of friends are usually similar to the friends
that are here. They happen
to be the right type of person
to begin with — otherwise,
they wouldn’t have been
friends with the successful
people here.
And the people inside who
chose the friend to come in
here, chose that friend
because they matched what
we have here. They didn’t
choose the friend that’s sort
of lying on the couch all day
long. So that recruiting
process was a big part of it,
and once you have them in,
if you have the right kind of
person, you don’t have to do
much with them to get them
to adapt — they are already
the right kind to begin with
and have the natural personality and skill set to fit with
what we have here.
And if there is anything I’ve
found over the past 35 to 40
years of business, it’s that it’s
a hell of a lot easier to find
somebody good than to get
somebody who isn’t good
and teach them how to be
good. The second is virtually
impossible.
Once you’ve got a good team, put
them in control. Once you’ve got a good enough crew
working with you, which
took us about six or seven
years to build, the most
important thing is you’ve got
to give them tremendous
responsibility and you’ve got
to let them do their stuff
with a minimal amount of
interference. I’ve always
been a little bit more on the
loose side as far as structure.
I just can’t imagine doing it
another way because then
you’re just micromanaging
18 hours a day, literally, and
there’s no way you can be
good enough to cover all the
bases with that kind of an
approach. So you have to be
very encouraging, upbeat;
you have to really forgive
mistakes easily.
Obviously, if a guy makes a
lot of mistakes, he’s by definition not a good person to
begin with. But if a person’s
good, he’s going to make
mistakes, and you just can’t
come down on that in any
kind of a big way. You just
have to sigh and say, ‘Great,
not a problem, let’s try not to
make the same mistake
twice.’
But if a person by definition is good, that person will
not make the same mistake
twice. You have to allow
that. So the more I can have
good people doing all the
work, the more it accomplishes my personal goal —
which is to have everything
work out great with me literally doing nothing.
HOW TO REACH: Radiator Express Warehouse, (866) 780-9392 or www.1800radiator.com
