In this episode, John Kozicki (Michigan Rock School and RockSchoolProprietor.com) and Mandy York (Music Time of Milford) get real about the unexpected challenges of hiring instructors: the mistakes they made, the emotional weight of being responsible for others, and the mindset shift from solo teacher to leader.
In this discussion:
- Hiring is a crucial aspect of running a small business, and clear expectations are essential for new hires
- How anticipating growth and can impact hiring, and planning ahead is vital for effective management.
- The responsibility of managing others can feel overwhelming, and how transitioning from teacher to manager requires a mindset shift.
- Creating a supportive environment fosters growth for instructors.
- Embracing leadership roles is necessary for business success.
Building a great music school and studio business isn’t just about how you teach. Supporting staff and making good hiring decision becomes equally important when you take on the role of studio owner.
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Episode Transcript:
John Kozicki (00:01.365)
Welcome to Rock School Proprietor Podcast. My name is John Kozicki.
Mandy (00:05.408)
And I’m Mandi York.
John Kozicki (00:07.233)
And Mandy, we are talking about hiring again on this episode. We did a hiring episode. Geez, I should have looked it up. I normally will look up what the episode numbers are when we talk about kind of something similar from previous episode. We did talk about hiring. I don’t remember what it is, what episode number it is. It was a while, but we’re gonna take kind of a slightly different bent.
Mandy (00:29.09)
Feels like it’s been a while.
John Kozicki (00:36.727)
on the topic today. I think the last time we talked about it, it was more about, hey, here’s some things that like you should think about. And again, I don’t remember exactly, but this time we’re going to talk about, well, you’re going to talk about mistakes that you feel you’ve made hiring. And I’m going to talk about things that I learned, but didn’t expect to learn after I started hiring. So I’m basically putting myself into
Mandy (00:54.732)
Yes.
John Kozicki (01:06.371)
that position of like when I was a solo instructor transitioning into hiring my first few instructors and, and staff members and talk about that stuff. So.
Mandy (01:18.722)
Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. We talk about hiring a lot.
John Kozicki (01:23.373)
Yeah, well, I know I’m in the, I’m in the middle of doing some hiring and I think you also are.
Mandy (01:27.822)
I am. Yeah, we’re growing. So I’m bringing on another teacher and it’s a big deal. We talk about it a lot because it’s so important, right? As small business owners, these are, these are our, this business is our baby, really important to us. We, we serve kids. So there’s, there’s that aspect. I, know, my students are,
John Kozicki (01:39.279)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy (01:56.462)
They’re my kids. They’re really important to me, and I want to provide the best instructors for them. I just feel like there’s a lot of pressure when it comes to hiring.
John Kozicki (01:58.085)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (02:03.938)
I think there’s the pressure that I feel is when we are hiring specifically for instructors, it is yes, it’s hiring, but we’re service providers. We run service businesses. So when we are hiring, we’re also, it’s almost like we’re sourcing our products.
Right, because we’re not like retail where it’s like, okay, here’s this thing that you’re gonna sell. Yeah, you’re have to learn a little bit about it, but you’re also gonna have to learn just how to sell it. Our instructors, when we hire, are our products, essentially.
Mandy (02:31.341)
Yeah.
Mandy (02:46.986)
Yes, that’s a good way of looking at it.
John Kozicki (02:50.454)
Yeah. So when we are hiring, we’re not just hiring for tasks. You know, I mean, yes, there are tasks involved, but there’s, there’s something more. And I think that’s where that, that additional pressure comes from, at least for me.
Mandy (03:08.056)
Yeah, no, I feel that. Yeah, okay. I want to… No, go ahead. What are you thinking about? No, go ahead.
John Kozicki (03:11.396)
I was thinking about Oh, sorry. Do you have more to say about it? Okay. Well, what I was thinking about was, I’m trying to again, putting myself back into that mind space or that that headspace where I was when I first started hiring. And well, actually, you know what, let’s let’s talk about your stuff first, because you’re
I think yours in terms of timeline is, here are all these mistakes I feel like I’ve made hiring over the course of, you know, a decade. Yeah.
Mandy (03:41.838)
Yeah.
Yep. Let me just put it out there. And yeah, that’s what I have in mind right now is these early years when I first started hiring. And I should say for myself, you know, maybe a small business, a piano teacher perhaps can relate to this where I kind of thought it was just going to be me, you know, some piano teachers just have their studio, whatnot. I didn’t expect to grow.
John Kozicki (03:56.013)
Okay.
John Kozicki (04:08.407)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy (04:16.224)
as big as I did. And I kind of just expected I would, I would, it would just be me and I’d teach as much as I could. But the demand was there. And, you know, which is great. It’s a great thing when you have to hire. And I quickly learned that not just for not just to hire instructors, but also like admin too, which would
John Kozicki (04:26.925)
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (04:39.982)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy (04:41.496)
take the pressure off me so that I could do the thing that I love, is teaching, being in the classroom as much as possible. Now, so I would say it kind of snuck up on me. And one of the first lessons I learned was that like I waited too long. You know what I mean? I was like, we’re really growing. The wait list is like increasing every month.
John Kozicki (05:00.292)
Okay.
Mandy (05:10.784)
I need to be thinking about hiring now, or I should have been thinking about hiring sooner, because your workload is, you you’re almost at capacity and you’ve got to figure out, you know, when to fit in interviews and things like that. So I think one mistake I made, one thing I wish I would have done was to have the foresight to think like, okay, these numbers are moving in this direction.
John Kozicki (05:30.265)
Yeah.
Mandy (05:40.386)
Maybe I would like to expand and start looking and starting that hiring process sooner. And that’s something I have learned. Mm, yeah.
John Kozicki (05:48.525)
It’s so hard. Yeah, it’s so I think it’s so hard to put yourself into the future in that situation, right? Because you’re talking about future growth like you haven’t been. This is unexplored territory, right? And so it’s hard to put yourself in the in the headspace of where you will be and how you will how you will manage.
Mandy (05:59.693)
Yes.
John Kozicki (06:18.998)
in uncharted territory, right? And like I’m actually experiencing that a little bit right now, looking to bring on like more admin help, like in addition to, right? And so, which is like, I’ve never done that before. So it’s hard for me to think about, well, what is it going to look like? And instead I’m thinking things like,
these are the things I would have that additional admin focus on. This is going to be additional cost for me based on like, you know, this hourly rate and expected hours per week. You know, so I’m thinking about those things and not necessarily thinking about how this could potentially change for the better. What’s gonna happen? Yeah.
Mandy (07:10.006)
Yeah, Mm-hmm. Yep. So having that foresight, it is really difficult, but that’s one thing that I’ve, you know, a mistake I made and I think I’m better about it now, 10 years later. I can see because, you know, we’ve all got turnover. I can see that as, you know, someone leaves, I’m not immediately just redistributing their class load to the rest of us.
John Kozicki (07:27.812)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy (07:39.756)
And saying, we can, we can manage, this is going to be fine. No, get someone else in the works right away. yeah. kind of along those same lines, I felt like I rushed my hiring process early on.
John Kozicki (07:54.092)
Hmm, that’s yeah, what’s the saying? Higher, slow, fire quickly. Yeah.
Mandy (08:00.522)
there you go. mean, hire slow, that’s right. Because the need was there and I was just in a rush to fill it, I don’t think I made the best hires early on.
John Kozicki (08:19.309)
which is related to your first one, which is you felt like you waited too long, right? Yeah, because you waited too long and then you feel like, I’ve got to hire.
Mandy (08:23.448)
Yeah, exactly. Mm-hmm. Yep.
Mandy (08:29.26)
Yes. And again, going back to what I said at the very beginning, this is, there’s a lot of pressure and it’s really, this is our product. So, I take a lot more time than I used to, vetting teachers. I do more, like, I’ve reached out, you know, like who, who do I know that might
John Kozicki (08:44.749)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy (08:55.98)
have some good connections. I personally reach out to different people, have conversations, more than just one interview with a person. And I take my time really explaining the position so that these candidates have a full understanding of what we expect, what’s required of them. I was telling you before, I almost sometimes feel like I’m trying to scare them.
John Kozicki (09:26.019)
Like, you don’t want this job. You don’t want it. No, I do want this job. Yeah, you want them to beg for it. Yeah.
Mandy (09:26.026)
away. You know, like that’s extreme, but just really let them know.
There you go. That’s the thing, right? You lay it all out. This is what it is. Everything from, you know, a menial task that you’re going to expect them to do every week, the really rewarding stuff. This is, and this is how we do it. And this is what we expect to, you know, pay. Like, is this, I want this job to be a really good fit for this candidate. I want them to really want it. So.
John Kozicki (09:56.418)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy (10:05.442)
Those are the big things I learned in the beginning. Mistakes that I made that, and now I feel I do a better job than I used to.
John Kozicki (10:13.163)
Okay. All right. Boy, I’ve made tons of mistakes hiring. But luckily, I’m not going to share those. This episode, I’ll have to share that at a different time. When, when I first started hiring, I had opened my studio as a solo instructor. And teaching guitar, was teaching a few bass lessons.
Mandy (10:19.347)
Hehehehehe
Hahaha!
John Kozicki (10:42.037)
And I was only doing that for a few months because I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to make it a bigger, a bigger studio. wanted to offer drum lessons and voice lessons and keyboard lessons and the bands, as I’ve mentioned many times. But well, yeah, that’s what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to do that. And my means to kind of get it started was I’m first just going to start teaching on my own and
Mandy (10:56.374)
Okay, so you had that foresight right in the beginning. You had your plan.
John Kozicki (11:11.677)
so after a few months, I decided, okay, now it’s time. I’m, I’ve got this, this other space that I’m going to be moving into. That’s going to accommodate more, more variety in what I can offer. And I decided my first hire was going to be a drum instructor. So I placed ads and did interviews and I hired him and that was about it.
And then I started like I had already hired him. And then I thought about, I don’t have student policies. I haven’t established any sort of timeline for pay or any process for that. I haven’t made any sort of like standardized system to track attendance. I don’t have any of that in place. There were all these things like
who’s going to be communicating with the students and the parents? Is it me? Is it him? Is it like a combination of both of us? Do I need to get him like a company email address? know, like what kind of additional insurance do I need? Like none of that. I didn’t think about any of that stuff. And so like in the spirit of my approach to this conversation, what I’m, I guess,
Mandy (12:25.624)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (12:37.143)
going to talk about is more about the things that I wish someone had told me when I was there, you know, or even the things I wish someone had told me in the first few years even of hiring because I just sort of rushed right into it. Not even really thinking about well, what are the consequences of this action that I’m taking? I saw the end result, right? I need a drum instructor so I can do these other things.
And that was my goal. so I cool, accomplished. But what does that mean now? Because I went from being a solo instructor, where I’m, it’s just me, to all of a sudden, I have this other person. And there is responsibility that comes along with that. So yeah, I’ve got I’ve got like five things that
I want to kind of focus on that are really things that like kind of shifted my mindset, I think. Again, things I wish someone had told me in those early years. First, when I hire another teacher, I became more than just a teacher myself, right? So I was a teacher and I think
Mandy (13:59.448)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (14:02.502)
what I thought was going to happen was, I’m going to hire another instructor and I’ll probably have to, you know, take on a little bit additional admin work. But my purpose for it was to, again, offer more lessons, different variety of lessons. But I also thought like, I’ve got this space. I can hire another instructor. I can make some extra money, you know? And so
I think picking up that additional administrative stuff was not that big a deal, at least in my head. But then it started to compound, right? And like what actually happened was I spent less time, I think teaching and more time thinking. I wasn’t, know, thinking about different things, like thinking about all those other things that I had mentioned before about like insurance and like how do you contact people and you know, all this other stuff.
I spent way more time, way more time on scheduling and communication and decision-making and problem solving than I anticipated I was going to spend. Right. Cause I also thought, all right, well I’m already doing my own admin. So yeah, I’ll have a little bit more admin to do. No big deal. It’s the same stuff, but it’s not it. Like it just compounds. and then I moved from teaching and some admin.
right, to also supporting this other instructor. And that was kind of the first time, you know, we got him in the studio and, and like, started doing all this stuff. And that was the first time I thought, this feels a little bit different, you know, than my job as a solo teacher. Does that make sense?
Mandy (15:36.174)
Yeah.
Mandy (15:52.706)
Yeah. yeah. Supporting the teachers. It’s… Yeah, because…
John Kozicki (15:58.145)
Yeah, it just felt all of sudden like, okay, I’m not a teacher anymore, you know, which is where my identity was.
Mandy (16:07.19)
Yeah. Yeah. But you’re teaching teachers, you know, that’s kind of a, it’s like a mentorship role almost. That’s how I feel about it with my teachers, but it’s, it’s a job like, kind of supporting their, their learning, you know, their teaching and making sure that like, like you said, their, their product is what you want it to be.
John Kozicki (16:34.912)
Yeah, that’s kind of on my list too, but that didn’t happen right away. At least not for me, you know? So the next thing that sort of was like this realization for me was that I was no longer responsible for just myself, but I was responsible for someone else, you know? And that’s, again, me slowly inching toward
Mandy (16:37.326)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (17:04.054)
what you were just talking about about that mentorship thing, right? So it really hit me that.
someone else’s livelihood now is partly my responsibility. Someone else’s calendar and schedule is my responsibility. And just the weight of that felt way bigger than just like me teaching and like, yeah, okay, I signed a lease, right? So that felt different too. But I would say that the realization that
I now had someone else working for me felt heavier than being on the on the hook for a lease. You know? Is it just me?
Mandy (17:49.998)
Okay. Yeah, that’s, that’s, well, I think it’s a kind of your personality a little bit, you know, I think, I mean, I do, I, I understand what you mean about like having that responsibility and that weight. I don’t think I would call it a weight, but you know, me, like you’re talking about policies and procedures and everything you need to have in place in order to make this,
John Kozicki (17:57.45)
Okay.
Did you not feel that?
Mandy (18:20.13)
this business work with multiple employees. Like, I love that stuff. I have my hand, you know, like it is there. Like, okay, to my employees, if you need to know this, this is where you look and this is where your time card is. And this is how we do. So I think I understand what you’re saying. And I feel that like responsibility for my teachers. It feels like it was probably heavier for you though.
John Kozicki (18:23.254)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (18:27.172)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (18:35.36)
Yeah, right.
John Kozicki (18:49.07)
sure. Well, like, I had none of that stuff in place. Like, nothing, nothing. Like, I got a student policy together before he started. You know, that’s it because I didn’t even have one beforehand, right? It was just like me talking with the clients. So yeah, that was heavy. Okay, number three on my list. This is and there’s this trajectory, you know, I’m sort of you can see the story happening and unfolding, but
Mandy (18:49.934)
Yeah.
Mandy (19:00.706)
Yeah. Check.
John Kozicki (19:18.986)
Number three is I became a manager whether I wanted to or not. And maybe embarrassingly, I don’t think I even like considered myself a manager in the truest sense of like taking ownership of that role. Couple years, maybe, yeah.
Mandy (19:42.24)
Yeah. Yes. You were just hiring coworkers.
John Kozicki (19:48.17)
I really was, was, you know, and one thing I feel like I’ve always been kind of good at when it came to, or when it comes to hiring and hiring instructors is hiring for culture. You know, like really having that conversation with this other musician about what they’re into and what their thoughts on, on learning music is all about.
And feel like that’s always something I’ve had a good sense of. So when I was hiring instructors in those early days, I was leaning way into that. Okay. I’m going to find someone who I want to be in a bandwidth or who I would be in a bandwidth. And usually that stuff translated to, they are an engaging instructor and they’re like dedicated to what they’re,
students are doing and they were able to make that connection with students. And so that’s huge. But because of that, I never even thought about like, well, are they gonna need any sort of guidance? You know, are they gonna need me to like step up and be a manager? So I guess what I’m saying is that in those early days of hiring,
I think what I was seeking was I was seeking growth for the studio. I wasn’t seeking a leadership role, if that makes sense.
Mandy (21:23.694)
yeah, yeah. I think that goes along with what I was saying too. You know, waiting too late, hiring too quickly, just out of necessity. Yeah, I wasn’t considering like, yeah, this was making me a leader, a leadership role, right? Yeah.
John Kozicki (21:32.116)
Mm-hmm. Okay.
John Kozicki (21:41.312)
Yeah, yeah. And I think I resisted that for a long time. Because I think it did need to be that mindset shift. You know, for so long I still was, hey, I’m like, I’m one of these people, right? These people are one of me. We’re all like the same. We’re all teaching music. And again, in those early days, I still was teaching a lot. So it felt more like we were contemporaries.
Um, and I had to kind of flip a switch in my brain and say like, Oh, Oh, I have to manage. have to like, you know, I have to, I have to do more than just hang out and talk music with these people. I have to provide feedback. You know, I have to, um, set standards for what, what we’re trying to do. And that, that was a
Mandy (22:21.134)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (22:41.279)
a real eye-opening experience for me, but it wasn’t like all of a sudden, it was like this slow progression.
Mandy (22:46.808)
Yeah, yeah, I get that.
John Kozicki (22:48.865)
All right, number four on my list. boy, I couldn’t just wing it anymore.
Mandy (22:59.054)
Oh yeah, yeah, because someone is watching you and someone is learning from you and I get that.
John Kozicki (23:04.793)
Yeah, and musicians, at least the musicians that I hang around with love to wing it. They love to improvise. And and I think, you know, that’ll only get you so far. But when it comes to you being the the business owner, like as the solo instructor.
Mandy (23:12.046)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (23:32.223)
I could change my mind anytime I wanted to, right? I could shift gears. If there was something wrong, I could just kind of fix it on the fly and again, just wing it. I could rely on intuition.
But with employees, they need that clear, like, okay, this is what’s gonna happen. They need those clear expectations, right? I mean, going back to that leadership idea, if I was gonna follow someone or if I’m being led by someone and they’re like, I don’t know how we’re gonna do this, but we’re gonna figure out as we go.
Mandy (24:15.182)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (24:16.563)
it doesn’t instill a whole lot of confidence. So it forced me to sort of look at what I was doing and how I did it and deconstruct that and then break it down for other people and say like, here’s what we’re doing and this is why we’re doing it and have that big picture.
Mandy (24:19.48)
Right. Mm-hmm.
Mandy (24:39.01)
Mm hmm. Yeah. And for me, that looked like, like, planning ahead, you know, planning, earlier and sharing lesson plans and things. Because, you know, we can, we’ve been doing this a long time and we can effectively quote unquote wing it, right? We, you know, for sure. But, but no, you don’t want that to be what your teachers are seeing. and I found, you know,
John Kozicki (24:58.327)
sure.
Mandy (25:08.748)
When my teachers are relying on me and they’re still maybe in learning mode, it’s good for me to be planning ahead more and giving a little bit more thought to the activities that I’m planning for my classroom too. It’s not a bad thing.
John Kozicki (25:26.549)
Well, yeah, and I think there’s, again, it’s a, and I can say for me, it’s, it’s this difference between what my role is, or what my roles are, like, I can still wing it as an instructor. Okay, whatever, we’ll figure this out, you know, on the fly. Okay, this isn’t working. Let’s shift. No big deal, right. But as a business owner, as a manager, as a leader, that winging it just
Mandy (25:41.568)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Mandy (25:47.331)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (25:56.15)
doesn’t feel secure. Hey, am I getting paid this month? yeah, maybe so. Yeah. Right. Yeah, exactly. Does not instill confidence. All right. Number five. This is this one was, I think this one’s subtle, but really significant.
Mandy (25:58.124)
No, Exactly. Yes. Thanks for the reminder. Yeah.
John Kozicki (26:26.431)
I just stopped being the business, meaning like that identity of the business is essentially me. And I had to start being the owner of the business, if that makes sense.
Mandy (26:43.616)
It does. Yes. Yeah.
John Kozicki (26:45.609)
Right. They’re like, again, so subtle, but as a solo instructor or as a solopreneur, those, I guess those personality traits and the business are just so tightly wound up. There’s, there’s no real like pulling them apart. It’s like, John’s music school or whatever, but hiring people and having a staff.
It’s no longer just I am the business, but like I have to take ownership of this bigger thing, right? This bigger thing that like my identity shifted. Does that make sense?
Mandy (27:27.214)
It does. Yeah, I get it. When it was just me, I felt like it was like the Miss Mandy show all the time, right? Same thing. Like you said, when you bring people on, you do shift into that more like ownership role, manager role. Now, I still teach a lot, so the Miss Mandy show is still happening, but I need to bring the other teachers into the fold because it’s no longer just mine. It’s theirs too. And I want
John Kozicki (27:49.375)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (27:56.598)
Right.
Mandy (27:57.442)
You want your clients to like have as much respect and love for those instructors as they do for you. You want them to be successful.
John Kozicki (28:04.574)
Yeah, and those same, those same bonds that you make with your students and clients and that I made with my students and my clients. All my other instructors are making those types of bonds, right? But those are like completely independent. Like those are completely separate of me, you know? So it’s not just me, the business anymore, but it’s…
Mandy (28:22.69)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (28:34.078)
me the owner of the business and we have to kind of let those things like flourish and thrive. You know, it is it is. But I mean, they’re like, you know, I can see where. Okay, so I remember also when I, I brought on a an intern
Mandy (28:40.622)
Yeah, that’s a really cool thing. Like, that’s exciting.
John Kozicki (29:04.008)
slash student instructor to do some teaching for me. And then also when I made my first admin hire, I remember instances where I was in a lesson with a student. So I was still teaching at the time. I was in a lesson with a student and I would hear them working on something, right? Whether that’s my student instructor working with another student or maybe my admin answering the phone and
Mandy (29:05.646)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (29:35.169)
listening to what was going on, completely taking myself out of what I should have been focused on, which is the student, right? My attention was distracted. And I realized in that moment, like, this is not okay. You know, I can’t, I can’t maintain my focus and give my attention to my students in the manner that they need.
and also be thinking about or trying to think about, what feedback do I need to give to this admin, this new admin or my student instructor? You know, that distraction was real. And it also goes back to, how are you, guess, how are you going to train these people? How are you going to have systems in place so that they do have autonomy and they can flourish in their own environment, right?
Again, related to me not being the business anymore. You know, it’s like having to be the owner of the business.
Mandy (30:39.66)
Yeah. Yes. Which can feel a little scary. like I was, but what I was trying to say and convey is like how beautiful though, like you created it. You’re the owner and look at what, look at how many kids you’re reaching and through music and the relationships and that they’re making and the things that they’re doing. So it’s scary, but like remember that and celebrate that like.
John Kozicki (30:45.938)
Mhm.
John Kozicki (31:05.48)
love that.
John Kozicki (31:09.246)
Yeah. Yeah. And I think to piggyback on that idea, like that also needs nurturing, right? It’s not like you give these people responsibility and it grows like, like weeds or, you know, whatever you, you want to nurture it. And you want to, I’m thinking of Michael Hemsworth and his
Mandy (31:09.282)
Be proud of that.
Mandy (31:30.904)
Sure. Yeah.
John Kozicki (31:37.342)
his analogies, but you want to grow that garden, you know, so it flourishes. So that that takes some some nourishment to that was I think it’s still something that it’s both freeing but uncomfortable at the same time. You know? Yeah. So there you go. Those are my my five. Was that way deeper than you expected?
Mandy (31:39.854)
Yeah.
Mandy (32:01.038)
I mean, wasn’t expecting five. But that’s great. I think that those are so relatable. I get all of those points that you made. Same here.
John Kozicki (32:15.122)
It’s weird because I really, like I wanted to give real, hey, what are real advice to listeners? Like, hey, this is what you should do. But it’s more this transformation, I think. And again, these are the things that I wish someone would have told me in those early days. Like, hey, you’re gonna be a manager now if you hire some.
Mandy (32:43.182)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (32:43.814)
you know, like that’s all it would have taken is someone to say that to me, you’re going to be a manager, you’re going to be, because then I’d be like, wait, what, what do you mean? And then, well, you’re going to be responsible for these things. And like, and that would have gotten my brain thinking, as opposed to me just sort of jumping in and being like, I’m gonna hire someone.
Mandy (32:51.96)
Mm-hmm.
Mandy (33:03.17)
Yes. Yeah. I think that’s a really good word, transformation. you’re transforming. No, I would have benefited from hearing it put in those terms because as you mentioned earlier, it was like, well, I need to hire for growth. We need to grow. Grow, grow. Right? That’s why we’re hiring. And then, but along with that comes a transformation and how you
John Kozicki (33:07.776)
Mm-hmm.
John Kozicki (33:22.718)
Yes. Yeah.
Mandy (33:30.882)
view yourself, how you manage, how you do things in the business. That’s valuable.
John Kozicki (33:35.006)
Yeah. Well, and it does hearken back to the episode we talked about, like, are you a technician? Are you an entrepreneur? Are you a manager? Right.
Mandy (33:43.0)
Yeah.
John Kozicki (33:49.402)
in those that situation like okay well who am i hiring for what can i take on this other role right and i i just sort of feel like i fumbled my way along until i found what i was good at and fixed things along the way so well yeah there you go
Mandy (34:07.63)
Yeah. And we do that too. I mean, I thought it was interesting to hear you talk about how, oh, what did you say earlier? Not having a plan as far as how to like train and nurture your teachers. But like, you’re so good at that now. You you figure it out.
John Kozicki (34:21.758)
Yeah. Well, I yeah, I mean, I think I have I’ve systems and processes in place now. Yeah. But man, I like literally, I did not have a single thing in place when I made that first hire, you know, it was literally just like I’d hired him. And I was like, I should probably have a I should probably have a student policy.
Mandy (34:29.811)
Yeah. Yeah.
John Kozicki (34:47.968)
to protect his time, you know? But yeah, that was also all of that is years and years in the making.
So let’s wrap this one up then and we’ll see you next time.
Mandy (35:06.2)
Sounds great. Thanks, John. Bye.
John Kozicki (35:08.0)
All right, see ya.
