Friday, October 16, 2009

Develop Managers as Backup Talent

A central theme in Making Money Is Not Illegal, Immoral or Fattening is the importance of being a professional retailer rather than an amateur retailer. Here's a reminder about one difference between the two:
"In your business, mentor professionals, not amateurs. There are many too many amateurs in retailing. I don't care what position you have in the store. It doesn't matter to me if you're pushing a broom cleaning, I don't care if you're running a multi-billion dollar organization. You're an amateur or you're a professional, and some people have characteristics of both amateurs and professionals.
"First off, with amateurs, the business runs you. All the amateur has done is buy themselves a job. If you spend all of your day on the floor, who is running the store? You cannot run a business by spending all day, every day on the floor because you have no clue what is happening to the finances in your business when you do that.
"Let's say you don't go back to your store today. Let's say you don't go back to your store for three months. What happens to your business? Think about that now, please, and if you say something like, 'Well, if I'm gone, nobody will do the ordering,' then your business is in big trouble. That's the way amateurs operate, and they're not really smart business operators. They're really self-employed because if you take them out of the business, the business has no value at all. Zero.
"You want to be able to take somebody out of a business and have that business still have a value. Now with professionals, they work on the business, not just in the business."
For more complete coverage of the differences between amateur retailers and professional retailers, see Chapter 4 in the book.

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