The Accidental Entrepreneurs
Two different innovators that stumbled on ideas in the veterinary field, built a company, then sold for millions........ without having any idea what they were doing.
Each week, Ira and Stacee will spin the wheel of start-up questions and share the knowledge they wish they had back then.
The Accidental Entrepreneurs
Ep 25: How did you decide on employee titles?
This week, we dive into the labyrinth of startup organizational structures. Discover the sometimes arbitrary nature of assigning titles and roles within a small team, where everyone is juggling multiple hats. Learn about a friend's innovative approach to structuring roles based on compensation, and weigh its pros and cons with us. Finally, we explore how rigid titles can limit contributions and why a more flexible approach might just be the key to a thriving startup.
Ira's tip of the week: Lucid Chart
Stacee's tip of the week: Send thank you notes to your employees
Well, good morning Ira. How are you doing?
Ira:I am doing pretty well. How have you been?
Stacee:Been doing good. We made the trek back from Arizona to Colorado with the whole herd.
Ira:Yeah, yeah, how was the stampede?
Stacee:So it's about an eight-hour drive and we need two big trucks and trailers drive and we need two big trucks and trailers to you know put all the six horses, four chickens, two dogs, cat and all the other gear that these animals and ourselves require. So it went really good, except for two hiccups. We had got up really early I mean we've been working about two days to get prepped to move back and we had everything loaded, everything. The cat was in the truck, we just had to put the dogs in there and the truck was running and the horses are loaded and everyone's ready. And the kitty stepped on the door lock and locked the keys and the phones and himself in the truck. So that was hurdle number one on purpose.
Stacee:And then I was like trying to get Kitty to come step on it. Like oh Kitty, if you could just step on it again, it would be so nice.
Ira:Oh, if you had recorded that it would have been just brilliant.
Stacee:I'll have, I'll post a picture on our social media of kitty and the truck and we're all like. And then the only other hiccup is when we got home we were unloading everything and one of the horses stepped on Ellis's foot and broke his little pinky toe, which you would think is not a big deal. But it turns out like a toe is not something you think about ever, unless you break it, and then it's all you think about. So he ended up having to cut a big hole out of his tennis shoe so he can walk by. Anyways, the big. The best news is all the animals are fine and we're back home.
Ira:Eventually, the car got unlocked.
Stacee:Yeah, eventually. What have you been up to?
Ira:Oh, it's been actually like a crazy week, mostly, um, because of stuff going on with my wife. She had the White House Correspondence Association dinner on Saturday, which is a really big event if you're a DC person. They call it the nerd prom here. Um, and you know everybody the nerd prom, um, and all the journalists and people you know dressed up for this black tie thing. You know president and vice president are there and um, last year my wife was the president of the organization, so I was there with my family and a bunch of friends, and this year I had decided I wasn't going to go because my kids wanted to go see a rock concert. That was the same day and I was like you know, like that's all right, like I don't need to go. But then my wife actually won a journalism award for excellent reporting under deadline pressure, for a trip that she did with the president, and like I really should be there to support her and cheer her on for her award.
Ira:But, the kids were super excited about going to this thing and anyway. So I miss the whole. Dress up in a tux the whole, go on the red carpet and get a fancy picture and shake hands with the president. Vice president, my wife met I don't know Scarlett Johansson and Chris Pratt and a bunch of famous people.
Stacee:Oh, my God.
Ira:I'm not actually sad about missing any of that stuff, but I do feel really badly about missing out on seeing my wife get her award. It is televised so I got to kind of see it. But although it's really cool to like talk about going to these things and meeting people, like if you're someone like me who mostly excels in, you know, being embarrassing and awkward in any of these situations, like it's actually like not that much fun to be there, like it's just kind of cool to say you were there right and I don't know.
Stacee:It sounds pretty cool to be there it's weird.
Ira:It's weird like it's it's cool. But if you're me like, it's super obvious that you don't belong here it's like you don't fit in, mister right one of these people is not like all the other beautiful fancy people, right?
Stacee:I have a question for you. So, like you know, as a vet, when you go I don't know I go to barbecue and some rando I don't even know will come up to me and ask me a question about their dog. Does this happen at those kind of fancy events to you? Oh?
Ira:Yeah, of course it does right. Like here's my husband's. Like, oh, like, what do you do? And they're expecting you to be. Like oh, I'm on TV, so like, yeah, whatever. And it's like, oh, I'm a veterinarian. And like, oh, let me ask you about my cat. Can you tell me why she's been? You know, being outside the litter box, I'm usually like, no, I specialize in oncology, but thanks for asking.
Stacee:Those are the worst, especially when they tell you I've taken my pet to the doctor three different vets and they can't figure it out. So let me ask you, you.
Ira:I'm meeting for the first time at this party and has never seen my pet Like you probably will have to answer. You're going to tell me the truth. Everybody else is hiding the truth.
Stacee:Yeah, everyone's hiding and it's some little pill. You know about that, no one else does. I always preface those with like I don't think you're going to like my answer very much.
Ira:Do you ever stop telling people that you're a vet? Because of that?
Stacee:Yeah, I do sometimes when I'm just like too tired, but then I feel weird about that because I'm not very good at lying at all, so it's probably even weirder that I I don't know.
Ira:For for a long time I was doing cancer research primarily and not acting a vet, and so I just started telling people I was a scientist and nobody asked me anything. Once you said that, Like it works so good, that's a good one.
Stacee:Well, let's get into it. Today, the question of the day is how did you decide on titles for your startup? Which is kind of a weird question, I think, but you gotta do it, you gotta do it and it turns out it's one of those things you don't think matters, but maybe you end up realizing it does what's your story with it.
Ira:Yeah, you know, so company really just started with me and my co-founders and I don't know that we really gave that much thought to titles. We were all kind of co-founders. That was pretty much our title. When you fill out your official documents, when you create a company, I think somebody has to be the president and somebody has to be the secretary, and so we gave one of my partners the title of president and we thought it was super funny that we gave one of my partners the title of secretary. We just always called him our secretary for the next 15 years.
Ira:But yeah, we really didn't have real titles. And then when we started hiring some people, we just had, you know so, and so did customer support, and you know, when we brought in other people, it's really hard because at a startup you don't really just have a job where you're in charge of. You know you're not in charge of a team, you're doing everything yourself and you're not really in charge of a department because you're one of the few people at the company you kind of do a little bit of everything. Yes, I think we it's someone that we gave a title, something like operations manager, which I don't even know what that means. It just kind of means you deal with everything, right, and you know like and we didn't even really know or think too much about, I probably couldn't even now tell you like, oh, like, what's the difference between a manager and a director or a head of or a VP of it's?
Ira:I guess If you have a big organization, there's sort of like hierarchy. Probably a VP oversees some of those other people who might oversee some other people. But at a startup, yeah, that's just not the way things work, so it's pretty tricky. How about for you?
Stacee:Yeah, it was super hard because I didn't like you. I didn't really care about titles at all and in fact when I hired the first handful of people, I'm like, ah, you can give yourself your own title whatever you want, cause I really don't care, just do like this. All this work. There's just like so much work and there's so fragmented. It's not like you can give someone a specific title.
Stacee:But, um, and then I also was confused or not sure how I'm supposed to. Am I supposed to have an org chart? And then I, over time, fill in the blanks with people, or do I start at the top, like I was like everybody's vice president, like who cares? Like there's only five of us. So you can be VP of customers, you can be VP of operations, you can be VP of operations.
Stacee:But this ultimately causes problems too, because you're sort of sending off this message or sort of suggesting that if you come in at the ground, you're going to rise up, like you're going to be lifted up over time into this leadership, while everyone else is coming in under you is how I think people perceive it, me included. But then it doesn't work out well that way, because these people aren't necessarily VP quality when you have a team of a hundred, or you know even a team of 50 there. Maybe they don't. They're not great. You know managing other people and I don't. They're not great. You know managing other people and I don't know. And then you have to demote them a little by adjusting their title down, which sucks. So yeah, it's hard. I don't know what the right answer is. For what would you tell people they're starting out?
Ira:let me tell you about an idea. I was talking to a friend of mine who's kind of building the org for for his company and I thought it was interesting. I haven't decided if it's a good idea, but I might want to steal it at some point, uh. But he's decided that like he wants to sort of tier it based on basically just just um compensation level for people. He wants all the people that have sort of a c-suite title, a chief title, they're all going to have the exact same compensation, like everybody that has a VP title they're like the next level down, or what?
Ira:have you, like everybody that has a director title, like every director has this, and wants to just kind of create a bit more transparency and sort of clear like oh, like if you're going to get a promotion from you know, a manager role to a senior director role, like that, like there's really no additional negotiation, like this is kind of what it is and, and there is opportunity potentially for some growth.
Ira:But but that level, if you will, it kind of defines your compensation and vice versa, which I thought like it's pretty interesting. Uh, I could poke some holes in, like why that might not be the best idea, but there actually are a lot, of, a lot of things about it that I think are pretty good. What do you think?
Stacee:That's interesting. The company I ended up selling to they had pay bands where you know, there's a range for all these different titles, which makes it really extra emphasis on the title and not necessarily the work that goes along with the title. And also I guess I find that a lot of really great people that you find work in your company have a diverse set of skills and so you end up pigeonholing them and saying like, well, this is my official title. Therefore I can't do that because that's not really in my neck of the woods anymore. So I don't know the whole title thing. I try to tell people, don't worry about the titles, like you'll still get your, like I'm gonna pay you what you're worth. I try to always to pay people as much as I possibly could, but it did matter to them the title. So I just wish the titles were more vague as all like. But I don't even know how you do this. So this is maybe a really bad episode of the show today, because we don't have any real great advice, other than it's hard.
Ira:Yeah, I mean my, my experience managing veterinary clinic, which I know you share, would tell me that you know what I just told you would never work in a veterinary hospital. Right, Like, yeah, I I ran the clinics but, like you know, like our busiest, hardest working and most productive veterinarians like they made more than I did Right Like that and they should, they deserve to. Right and it just I don't think it could work in that type of an organizational setup. I suppose anything could work if you had the right people for it. An organizational setup I suppose anything could work if you had the right people for it. But yeah, I think it may really just depend on the context and I think there are situations like that where somebody that's not a manager, a director, a VP or anything like, actually could be one of the most valuable people and the highest compensated people in the org.
Ira:Yeah, I'd say just for Like if you had an awesome salesman like that's selling, you know, out of his boots for your product. Like you, you need that person. You probably need to compensate them at whatever it takes to keep them and keep them happy.
Stacee:Yeah for sure. And maybe it just comes down to having open, direct conversations with these people when you hire them, to tell them I don't know where we're going, I don't know how big this place is going to get, I don't know where you're going to fall in the org chart when we start hiring more people. You could see people go under you, you could see people go over you, and I think if I had said that, I could have saved myself a lot of heartache down the road. Also, try to keep people at the bottom of the org chart as long as you can, until you promote them to be the VP once you have, you know, 20 employees or however many you need. I think I would give myself that advice if I could talk to my older self or younger self.
Ira:That might be good advice. I do think that startups tend to create relatively flat organizational structures, um, maybe for that reason because so many people are doing so many things and everybody's working hard, and so you kind of put a lot of people kind of on that same level, if you will, um, and there's not as much need to have complicated management structure either. But ultimately that may lead to sort of the problems that you just alluded to of having sort of unclear opportunities for kind of how things will change as the organization grows. So that might be good advice would be to try not to do that as hard as that is would be to try not to do that as hard as that is.
Stacee:Yeah. Well, if anyone's listening and you have some tips for how your company assigned titles and org chart early on, share them with us on our LinkedIn page. And if you are a person that got the fortune or misfortune of working for a startup and someone bestowed a title on you that was odd and peculiarowed a title on you that was odd and peculiar, Let us know what you thought about that too.
Ira:Clearly we don't have a master. Your advice is much appreciated.
Stacee:Well, let's hop on over to where we're going to share our favorite tip or trick or quote what do you have for us today?
Ira:Yeah, all this talk about org charts reminds me of this tool that I used that actually made building org charts pretty fun.
Stacee:Oh, do share. It is so hard to build it if you don't have a ruler and a pencil.
Ira:So this is a product called Lucidchart, which can be used for all sorts of diagramming and figures, a product called lucid chart, which can be used for all sorts of diagramming and figures. But um actually is maybe the only tool that I've ever used that made it easy and fun to build an org chart and like move people around and and change things up in a way that didn't feel like, oh, I've got to like redo everything and um. I once had a position where it just seemed like the org was in constant sort of flux in terms of how it was organized and one of my jobs was to keep track of the org chart, and being able to do it there helped me keep my sanity.
Stacee:Oh, that's a great tip. My tip for this week is going to be you know, when you can't get the title right or you have all this, get the title right, or you have all this one thing you can do to show your employee how much you care about them is to send them thank you notes, or notes, and not just on their birthday or their work reversary, but when it's out of the blue and they do something really amazing. I have found that, taking the time I mean, in how much time are we talking five minutes maybe it takes me more time to find their physical mailing address than to actually write the note. So I ended up over time just having a cheat sheet of everyone's mailing address. But you can just write a little note to them and thank them for something and put it in the real mail. A little note to them and thank them for something and put it in the real mail, and then they get it and it's like such a treat.
Stacee:Well, and one thing that happened to me is a lot of my employees would save those cards, which I thought was weird, but they would tell me like, oh, I saved it. It's on my bulletin board in front of my desk and I'm like it is, and it was just a little card. I wrote nothing fancy. So then what I ended up doing was I would pre-address the envelopes and stamp them, and I I try to be mindful about doing that.
Ira:So that's a tip. Somewhere in here. I'm not going to go looking for it right now. I have not like every single single one, but probably like 70 cards from clients. Um, you know, when you're a vet, like if you do a pretty good job and you're a pretty nice guy, the clients occasionally, um think to send you a nice note and and it is crazy, like how, how great it makes you feel and and sometimes it's you know from the people that you definitely feel like you went above and beyond for, but most of the time it's unexpected, like you know just somebody like oh, I had no idea that this person appreciated what I did for them as much as enough to take the time to write me a special note, right, um, and um, I guess I'm like, I'm like your crazy employees.
Ira:I, I keep a bunch of them and, um, I don't I can't remember the last time I looked at him, but you know, every once in a while, when you're having a bad day or wondering you know where you went wrong. You go back and you're like oh yeah, like I, I really helped all these people and made a big difference, and that's pretty cool.
Stacee:Yeah, and the trick is it's not an email and it's not a text, it's a real card with uh, it doesn't even have to be. It could be a sticky note, I found doesn't even have to be a, like a greeting card or anything. God don't waste your money on that. Um, just pop it in the mail, they'll love it, okay.
Ira:All right, great tip.
Stacee:Well, let's spin the wheel and see what next week's adventure will share.
Ira:How did you start marketing your company?
Stacee:Oh, this is one of the hardest things to do when you're starting out, or even mid or late stage, I think it takes up so much budget and it's so confusing where you get your ROI Indeed.
Ira:I look forward to hearing about how you figured this all out, Stacee.
Stacee:Oh yeah, it's so easy. All right, we'll see you next week.
