Why a Great Boss Is Worth More Than a Raise

In this episode of The Fuck It Shift, Adam Ross explains why choosing the right leadership matters far more than chasing a higher salary.

When people are rebuilding their lives or looking for a new opportunity, many focus on income first and assume they can tolerate poor leadership or a weak company culture. Adam argues that this approach often leads to frustration, stalled growth, and long-term dissatisfaction.

Instead, he explains why aligning yourself with strong leadership and a brand you believe in can accelerate your development, open new opportunities, and ultimately lead to better financial outcomes than simply chasing the next raise.

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IG: @adamross_online
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LinkedIn: Adam Ross

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Fuck It Shift Podcasts. I am Adam, and I'm joined by Jay as always, is going to hit me up with a question to start the show.

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Adam, when somebody is rebuilding their life and they're going out there and doing whatever they can, what is one thing that they should be looking for?

SPEAKER_00 0:15

You should be aligning yourself with leadership and brand. So let's pretend you're going to do something in the corporate world, you're going to get a job. People make the mistake of selecting the income or the pace structure, the salary, and think that the brand and the leadership will just be something they'll have to deal with. And if you're at rock bottom or you're really starting over, you're new to the workforce, you're young, and you want to actually make a career change, you should be aligning yourself with leadership. The leadership should be the one thing that you're chasing. Brand second, pay third. We got to completely flip backwards when we're trying to rebuild something. If I could just get a job that would pay me 60 grand, well, then I can go to work and be treated like shit and have poor leadership. Here's the thing about leadership. If you really want it, if you love to be coached and you love to be pushed, which is not a nice word these days, but that's what you need. You need a leader that's willing to invest in you, learn about you, motivate you, and push you and guide you. And there's a lot of bad leaders out there, but a real leader cares about you. And when you take that caring or that message negatively, I'm going to give you some tough love. It's because you have shitty standards, personal standards. You take the information in as negative, or they're just trying to get you to do something that you don't want to do, the leader, or it's just for the company, when it could actually be a message that's really directed just at you, one-on-one conversations. And because you have so little standards, so little belief, and are stuck on the negativity channel, you take that as negative. How can anybody possibly care about me? They only care about themselves. No, a good leader is actually encouraging you to level your own shit up. Yes, everybody benefits, but you should be thankful that somebody actually wants to invest their own knowledge, their own time, and their own heart to grow you. But you have no standards. You have no personal standard. You live day to day waiting for something to work itself out, or worse, tell everybody what you could be doing. Man, fuck that. You're not doing it because you have no standards. And when you push back on leadership and you only pick a job for the salary, it's really that you don't have any personal standards or any direction where you're trying to take your life and you're not looking for mentorship. We talked about an earlier podcast. You should want mentorship in your life. If you're 18 to 20, 30 years old and you're not, things aren't clicking for you right now. Success leaves clues, people. Go find a good leader. Go find good mentorship. If you align yourself with that, the pay, the income, all of it will follow itself because you'll grow and you'll actually have standards. You don't like leadership because your standards are very, very low?

SPEAKER_01 3:34

When people are looking for a new job, I mean, you to me are kind of the outcast in this where the president and the leader of the company actually sits in in some of the interviews and gets to meet the people. So they get an opportunity to chat with you before they accept any position here. How does somebody interview the leader or find out who the leader is of a potential company? Sometimes the leader doesn't talk to them, you know, weeks or months down the road. True, true.

SPEAKER_00 4:02

Uh today's great because social media, the internet, YouTube, you can probably find some stuff about the leadership in the company. You can watch leadership or company videos and get a good vibe for the company. You can go on websites that rank, you know, the leadership in the company as well. You can read reviews because reviews on a company generally will tell you how the company is ran by the leadership. And I mean, I've I flip the script in my companies. You usually meet me first. I interview you right off the bat, you know, with time permitted. But I I love to do that because if you can handle me, if you can work with me and I think you're a good fit, then the rest should take care of itself. Because if I'm still directing and leading the company, regardless of the management level, then you should be able to align. And I always encourage everybody that I interview with, you should be picking a leader, not you should be picking a leader in a brand. That is so critical to your growth. If you're thinking about joining the workforce or changing careers, that's where you start. Research the company. Find out who owns it, find out who the, find out who the president is, find out who the leader is. Cold call the place. See how you're treated on the phone. Because generally, how you're treated on the phone and how you're treated calling in, asking questions is how you're going to be treated when you work there. Again, I'm going to also press a button here and say, but you better have standards. If you align yourself with a leader who's invested in the company and time and growing people, it's going to be uncomfortable. And I don't think a lot of people are ready for that. The way they think about leadership today is, oh, well, I get paid X amount to be there. Yeah, my boss is an asshole, but at five o'clock, the workday's over. It's not, it doesn't help even get your creative juices flowing or get you out of the posit or get you into the positive mind mindset. It just keeps you in this, what do they call a rat race? You just keep doing the same thing over day after day after day. So people push for better leadership, push for better brand and align yourself with something you believe in. If you love coffee and you love Starbucks, then work there. It's about aligning yourself with the right fit for you. The rest will come.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

What would you tell somebody that doesn't like the leadership in their company?

SPEAKER_00 6:31

Well, the the knee-jerk reaction is to get out. But I'm going to ask you to, if you're, if you're fighting the leadership in your company, you're not aligned, I would ask you first to take some personal inventory. Because does it really help you leaving, going to another leader if it's your, if you're broken, if you're not ready to receive, if you don't have standards? So just before you pull the plug on something, I want you to think about is it me? Especially if you're going in the same industry and you're jumping because you just don't like the leadership. And that might be valid. Not everybody's for everybody, and that's okay. But just before you leave your opportunity, ask yourself, because I'm telling you right now, the grass is never greener on the other side. It's the greenest where you water it. So if you're in this particular company and you're shitting all over the grass, it's probably going to be the same on the other side. So I would ask you to take some personal inventory. Are you ready to be coached? Are you willing to learn? Are you practicing what you're being taught? Are you buying in? Are you all about the brand and the company? Because if you're not, the income's not going to matter. You can go for a few dollars more and it's not going to change anything.

SPEAKER_01 7:51

You've said the word align a lot in this podcast. And for people listening, I wonder if you could define what alignment mean?

SPEAKER_00 7:58

When we talk about brand, let's let's first of all assume that you love the industry or that's that's why you're in it. Now you're aligning with brand. And what I mean by that, does the brand speak to you? When do you get a positive feeling about the brand? Because you shouldn't be working there if you don't. When you see the color scheme, the logo, the website, the messaging, what they are putting out to the public, does that check boxes with you? Does what that company does to generate revenue, does it make sense to you? Is it something you can get behind? Would it be something at a party you'd be really happy to talk about? Because if it isn't yes to all of those, that's not the brand. And this is a two-step process. You might love the brand and find out that the leader is a complete asshole. That's real. People might say that about me. It's all about perception and where it's coming from. So can you find interviews with that leader? Can you find, you know, social media? Can you actually figure out? Can you get an interview with them? Can you call them? There's a lot of things you can do to figure out if those things would quote unquote align. But what I mean to that is alignment means does it speak to you? Are you excited about it? Because it's really hard to work somewhere, especially when it's kind customer service, client facing, and you don't love the brand and you don't love the leadership. Doesn't matter what you're selling, you're gonna hate selling it. You're gonna hate serving it, you're gonna hate doing it. So you gotta work on yourself. You gotta have standards, you gotta know what you're willing to be excited about, what you're willing to accept, what actually moves the gears for you. And then you've got to align yourself or be into the brand. Until next time, Jay, that's it for the Fuck It Shift Podcast.