The summer after my freshman year for college I got a job working for a guy named Jordan. That is pronounced jor-DAN – not like the basketball player. He is worth a blog post – actually he is worth a whole book – but let’s just say that he was the most natural entrepreneur I have ever known. My job was to manage five water-ice carts (that is wudder-ice to people from Philadelphia) that he owned. I was to get them ready each morning, load them with dry ice, five-gallon containers of product, cups, cash for change and make sure that they were staffed and deployed to their places in the city by 10 am so the vendors could sell. After the evening commute I had to supervise getting the carts back, cleaning them, and doing inventory of cups and cash. In between I manned one of the carts.
Jordan gave me my first task of getting employees to man the carts and to sell. Naturally I did the easiest thing and hired a bunch of my friends. It was harder work than any of us had anticipated but I felt that the first week went pretty well and I was feeling good as Jordan and I went over the sales numbers that Friday night.
“That was the worst week of business that these carts ever produced!” Jordan was not happy. “And do you know why? Because no one wants to buy water ice from a bunch of pimply, ugly college boys.” As usual, Jordan was right. “Go out and fire them all. And when you do better next week with a new crew I won’t have to fire you too.”
The lesson? Hire well, hire the right people. Don’t hire following the path of least resistance.
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