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🌼 Gardener vs Carpenter 🪚

July 17, 2023

Hi ,

Have you ever heard the analogy of the gardener and the carpenter?

The basic premise is that, as a carpenter, you can shape and model whatever you’re building exactly as you want, every single time.As a gardener on the other hand, you don’t know what will be the outcome. You need to treat your plants the best you can and hope for the best.

This analogy is usually mentioned when we think about parenting - Many parents try to shape their kids exactly as they want. Trying to carve them based on what they think is best, instead of watering them and letting them grow.

I argue that the same thing is true with physical products and people. Many Amazon sellers struggle with hiring and training employees because they treat them like they treat their products. With physical products, we can shape them to be exactly as we want them to be.

We can’t do that with people. With people, we need to treat them the best we can, allow them to make mistakes, allow them to grow and develop, and not micromanage their every move.

Transitioning from developing products to leading people is a tough one, but must be done in order to reach your goals. It’s impossible to remove yourself from your business day-to-day unless you have a team of people you can count on.

👨👩 Hiring = Dating 💏

Many Amazon sellers try to hire one or two people and fail. Maybe they fail to find someone, or they fail to train them, or maybe it takes 2-3 months to understand that person isn’t the right fit.

The truth is, you have to keep trying. Dating is the same way - You can expect that the first time you talk to someone you like you’ll hit it off and get married. I mean, it might happen, but it usually doesn’t. No one can learn to become good at dating or talking to the other gender from books and nail it the first time, as you can’t learn from a textbook what it takes to be a good CEO and a strong leader. You learn as you go.

Lead by Example

There are a lot of tips I can give that I found along my journey as a business owner, but if there’s one that stands out is this - You have to SHOW your team what a good job looks like. You have to show them what getting something done looks like.

You can’t expect your kids not to smoke if you’re smoking. You can’t expect your team to reach the finish line if you don’t show them what that looks like.

Keep improving yourself and your team will follow,

Tomer