Yigal Adato: 00:20 Hey everyone, my name is Yigal Adato and this is the Pawn Leaders Podcast, a podcast that help you make more money, stress less and live an epic life all while working at the pawnshop. Hey pawn family, welcome back to another episode of five minute Friday.

Yigal Adato: 00:23 And today I want to talk to you guys about one of the biggest mistakes I see in the pawn industry. And it’s not just the pawn industry, it’s also in retail. And let me tell you what it is. It’s promoting a pawnbroker to become a manager. For some reason. And I made this mistake when I owned my shops. We feel like the person who’s on the counter and is doing the most pawn loans, the most sales, the most layaways, we should pull them out and make them management.

Yigal Adato: 01:01 Make them lead a team of people, make them orchestrate our business, make them organize what needs to happen on a daily basis. But the truth is that not everyone’s cut out to lead. Not everyone’s cut out to manage. And some people honestly don’t want to do that. They enjoy pawnbroking so much or sales so much that they don’t want to sit there behind the desk orchestrating, looking at reports, making sure that everything is going well. Now, one job is it more important than the other? Don’t get me wrong. You need an incredible manager. You need an incredible pawnbroker SLA or salesperson whenever you call them in your shops.

Yigal Adato: 01:47 Don’t for one second believe that because you have an incredible pawnbroker, they will be an incredible leader or manager, especially with no training and that’s that training coming from you. That’s specialized training, specialized training in communication, in organization, in HR and how to lead teams, reading books about management skills and leadership and people and psychology. So they get to the point that they know how people work, how teams work, and what they need to do to make your store successful. Now on the other hand, if you’re a manager listening to this and you think just because you were a great pawnbroker, you’re a great manager, you are wrong. There’s some exceptions to the rule always. But if you’re not reading books on management and leadership and organizing business and marketing and sales, if you’re not reading books on influence and psychology, if you’re not taking a course and there’s so many courses, [Incomprehensible] as courses and I think even Harvard business school has like free courses online to freshen up your skills on management, on leading people, then you’re not doing a good job. You think you might be, but you’re not.

Yigal Adato: 03:19 I think a store owners, we get nervous to hire somebody on the outside who doesn’t know the business. There are business so special,

Yigal Adato: 03:31 but there are some incredible managers out there in retail who if you just bring them in and train them a little bit on what pawnbroking is and how to become a pawn broker, they would be incredible managers in your store. So stop. If you keep promoting from within people who don’t deserve to become management or who just shouldn’t be managers who aren’t fit for that. Right. I mean, I had, I remember one of our employees, we made her assistant manager, I’ll never forget this, and we made our assistant manager and things weren’t working out well. It was okay until one day she came to us and said, you know what guys? I quit and we’re like, wait a second, you’ve been with the company for eight years, why would you quit? And she told us, she said that this isn’t what she wants to do. So we asked her, well what if we just brought you back down to doing pawn and sales and her answer I’ll stay with pleasure cause that’s what I love to do. She’s like, I don’t want the extra responsibility. I don’t want the extra management, I just don’t want it.

Yigal Adato: 04:44 But if you believe that somebody deserves it, then spend the money. I’m going to say this again, pawnbrokers, spend the money to train your people. Spend the money to sign them up for a group like the Pawn Leaders Alliance. Spend the money to get them a program like [Incomprehensible] leadership or any management course in your city. Because for some reason pawnbrokers believe that it’s not worth the investment yet they’re hoarding jewelry and merchandise that sits there and they’re wondering why. You are wondering why your stores aren’t doing as well as you think they could. It’s your fault. It’s your fault because you’re not spending the money to train your people. You’re not spending the money to give them what they need, right? The right tools, the right weapons to manage your store and create an incredible culture and make sales and marketing and all these things work together. Because all you keep on saying is It’s too expensive, it’s too much money or you don’t believe in it. If you’re going to bring up a manager from your store and you haven’t sent them on some type of training, stop. If you’re going to promote somebody from within to run your stores and you haven’t given them a just a like a disc test or a personality test, stop.

Yigal Adato: 06:27 it’s not fair to them to have that expectation. It’s not fair to you to think that they’re going to be incredible if they haven’t been trained. So with that, I’ll leave you this weekend and I hope you listen to this a couple of times because this is one of the most important Five Minute Friday I’ve done. I’ve gone over my five minutes and that’s okay with me. We are not growing the pawn industry because we’re throwing people into these positions thinking that they know what what to do, but we don’t even know what we want them to do. We can’t even give them the skills to run our shops. We’re just saying, you manage my store, run my store? Why isn’t my pawn increasing? Why aren’t my sales increasing? But we’re not giving them the tools that they need so they can do the work. If you have a manager that’s with you right now, five years, six years, seven years, eight years, I don’t care if it’s been six months, let’s have a conversation about how to train them so they can become better. Let’s have a conversation about what you can find in your city, how they can join the Pawn Leaders to become better managers

Yigal Adato: 07:52 or just taking a course online that can help them out just that much more. If you aren’t making the lives of your employees better, you have no right to ask them to make your store better. I’ll say this again, if you aren’t helping to make the lives of your team better, you have no right to ask them to make your store better and with that I’ll leave you and let’s have a conversation about this in the Pawn Leaders Podcast Community on Facebook. If you’re not part of it jump in, it’s free. We have incredible conversations in there. If you want to have a conversation with me, a strategy call, a complimentary strategy call charged nothing for this. I just want to help you out with where you are. Go to pawnleaders.com and schedule a call with me, but please stop making this mistake. I beg you. We keep on wondering why the pawn industry doesn’t good talent.

Yigal Adato: 08:56 It’s because we are not training and we’re not giving people the method to become incredible talent so they can stay in a business for a long time. Have an incredible weekend pawn family and I’ll see you next time.

Highlights

On this five minute Friday episode, I discuss the one mistake that will destroy your pawn business guaranteed!

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