At times my company feels like a huge football-field-size nest filled with thousands of baby birds with their mouths open, and I'm the only one digging for worms. How do other business owners do it? The stores in the malls? The names on the directories in the office buildings I visit? Am I the only one going through this? [Note: I have one of these depth-of-despair days about once every two months -- used to be more frequent in the early years. Usually passes the day after payroll is met and the bills are paid. All that time in front of us -- two whole weeks -- until we have to do it again. Then I go back on the phones, set a few more appointments, bring in a few more contracts, and we are on our way.]
April 23, 1992 I meet with Steve M. He said he would help any way he could but could not attend the April meeting. We meet for 45 minutes in his office to talk about DRM's marketing. Instead we talk about salespeople. I tell him about the nine I have employed in eight years. My tendency in the early years was to hire inexperienced people willing to work on straight commission. (Only one really worked out for a few years until the lure of a stable salary with good benefits took her out of the picture.) Then when we started making more money, I hired people with lots of experience (disastrous in two cases) and offered a salary. Then compromised and hired two guys who thought hard work meant driving to the clients' office instead of persuading clients to come visit us. They no longer work for me, either.
I tell him about my latest hire. Diane N. is the exception. She came to us as a midlevel manager laid off from a larger firm. She needed a job and wanted to try telemarketing. I moved her into sales within eight weeks of working with her. But I see that she is also good at helping me look at operations. She is interested in how her clients can be best served, so we spend hours talking about how to do that.
I also admit to Steve that I love sales, love being outside, and truly dislike the day-to-day grind of operations. At the point where a project is set up and running smoothly, I am restless and anxious to be on the move again.
Steve asks if I had made those sales hiring decisions alone. Again, this advice issue. Of course I made them alone. Who else was there to negotiate salary etc.? He suggests that in the future I never hire a salesperson or manager without letting two or three people inside the company or board members help with interviewing.
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Whenever I have discussions about my hiring decisions with people who work for bigger companies, my internal reaction is usually the same: Have you ever given up a part of your own salary to hire someone in your department? But I do feel Steve's ideas are valid for the most part and add them to the notebook of suggestions I have been carrying around.
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He also points out that we have no long-term marketing strategy. Here we go again. He feels my fears about entering certain markets are unfounded. I could always raise capital if I needed it to fund the launch of a new division. To a longtime bootstrapper like me, these are foreign words. I've never made capital investments without contracts in hand. Is that my mistake? Is that why we aren't doing better? I am too cautious? Too afraid to borrow investment capital to expand the business? My computer loan still looms over me. The thought of borrowing again before paying that loan off seems out of the question.
April 24, 1992 New contract agreed to. We will begin new program next week.
April 27, 1992 Must fire an employee. He was a great employee but has a nasty temper, which flared with employees and clients. I had issued a written warning in March without the board's advice. Tonight, while I prepare what I am going to say to this man, I heed Steve M.'s advice and call a board member with personnel experience. Rick M., senior manager for a large university, listens and assures me I am doing the right thing. Then he gives me the words to say. I write them on the back of an envelope in my kitchen as he dictates.
I feel better after talking to him. Then call George S., CEO of a computer-processing business. Not a board member but someone I have shared business problems and advice with ever since I started working with the board.
It is strange, this idea of asking others for input. Almost like learning a new language. I keep referring to my flash cards. I am also discovering how willing people are to share their own business problems.
George admits that after running his business for 15 years, he felt he had made terrible hiring decisions for the first 10 years! What does he do differently now? Watches more closely during a 90-day probation and gets feedback from other employees before making a decision to hire a person permanently after the probation. He says when he started asking his employees for advice, they started telling him things about employees that they had kept under their hats. They thought George knew what was going on and chose to ignore it. I have employees who have accused me of doing the same thing.
Interesting idea. I've never asked any employees for their opinions before taking someone off probation. [Note: In this employee's case, I could have saved myself four months of headaches and an unemployment arbitration hearing.]
