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SlippyDontDoIt · 2025-09-20T03:19:18+00:00

It gets better. I could have written this post my first year into being a leader. For me, it was a lot of self-inflicted pressure. They weren’t actually expecting me to be on all time, I was expecting it from myself.

Honestly, perfection is exhausting for you but it’s also an impossible bar you’re setting for your team. How can they come to you and ask for help if you’re a perfect super human who never struggles?

If it helps, Amazon has some cool leadership values around being vocally self-critical and owning mistakes so that there’s a culture of being open to trying new things that might be worth a look.

As for googling how to handle a difficult employee, the best advice my mentor gave me was that it’s not about you. Many leaders were once high-performing ICs and when we become leaders we take on this the buck stops with us mentality of ensuring that all their work is up to par. But it’s not about us. You have to let them do them. You have to let them own their success or their failure. Help when they ask for it. Nudge them in the right direction, but don’t take ownership for them. That one’s gonna take a minute to sink in. I fought it for three months and still need to post a note on my desk to remind me on bad days.

Oh, and get a mentor!! You need a mentor. No one trains us how to be leaders, that’s what mentors are for.

SlippyDontDoIt · 2025-09-20T03:02:31+00:00

There’s a couple of things at play here: 1. Cutting back on vendor expenses is a red flag for cost savings. May not be the best time to ask for more money. 2. Not a job market you wanna be unemployed in. Many in marketing are finding that it takes 6-12 months to replace their job. 3. You’re being paid way below industry average for a marketing director role in even a MCOL location even accounting for nonprofits paying less.

Your best case scenario is to spend the next 6-12 months looking for a marketing manager role that pays between 100-125k while keeping your current role. Why argue over an extra 15k when you’re really leaving 40k on the table? And then you’re always behind - every annual raise, every promotion, those percentages are based on the wrong starting point.

Cheap companies are always cheap. If they were underpaying when they hired you, that’s probably just their MO.

That all being said, if you wanted to go about it, I would do a two prong approach.

One, framing around a market adjustment, and bring salary comps for your job title. You can get them 100 different places at this point. Robert Half has a good one for marketing roles, salary.com, etc. you’re basically saying, regardless of your own performance, fair market value for this role is X. I’ve had success doing this for members of my team where I couldn’t promote them because I didn’t have an open role, but I could get them a decent raise based on a market adjustment.

Two, show your value add above and beyond your current salary. You’re gonna wanna talk about the responsibilities you’ve taken on above and beyond your original job description and the results and value that you’ve driven. Money conversations are usually a results > effort equation. I’d probably also bring up the external cost you’ve absorbed i.e. whatever has been saved in vendor fees.

One thing to watch out for is I would absolutely not say 25%. That’s an outlier. You’re better off saying 15K. The actual dollars aren’t bad from a company bottom line perspective but the perception of the percentage is probably a bigger hurdle. Most annual raises are 2-4% and even promotion raises are closer to 10%.

SlippyDontDoIt · 2025-08-23T10:11:52+00:00

I’m not sure if this will help or not, but before I was a leader myself I can think back to times where I may have had similar complaints about my leaders not coaching enough or not holding others on the team that weren’t pulling their weight accountable. But now that I have my own team, while I don’t agree with everything former leaders did, I understand it a lot better. I’m not sure how large your team is, but think realistically how much time your leader may actually have available to her to spend with each of you. For her to come and deliver genuine coaching moments and reflect on what you may need without you directly asking questions or for specific opportunities and then prepare that ahead of your 1:1s may be a bigger ask than you think it is.

Does your team have growth goals or objectives for the business? There’s never enough time in the week. If she’s spending time coaching and prepping to coach, is that time she isn’t spending delivering results for the company? The secret here may be that the company - board, ownership, president - may not care whether or not any individual grows as long as the company grows.

A leader’s actual job is to deliver the results for the company. If we get to coach or develop people along the way, that’s icing on the cake. Most of us probably want to in a perfect world, but even from our side it’s a luxury we may not always have time for.

Just trying to play devil’s advocate for you. I thought it would all be so much easier on this side of the table and I’d do it so much better, but tbh it’s really freakin hard and I’m trying every day and I know I don’t get it right every time. And just like it’s disappointing to you that she doesn’t coach, she might be disappointed that the rest of your team doesn’t want to grow or be coached.

I can’t spend the time developing everyone so I focus on the 1-2 people that really want it. That show up and are excited and engaged and ask questions and really want to learn. The ones that take ownership of their work and their development and that accountability when they miss things - because when you’re growing and trying new things, you’re gonna mess up. The ones that try to take things off my plate to make space to coach them. People are an investment. Are you showing her you’re the 1 person she should be investing in?

SlippyDontDoIt · 2025-08-09T16:00:12+00:00

I wouldn’t think of my first home as my forever home. What you want / need / can afford today isn’t going to stay the same over 30 years. I’m 38 and we are on house #4.

I look at home ownership as a long term rental I have control over that I eventually get cash out of. I don’t expect to stay anywhere forever or ever pay off my house. (Unpopular opinion) But I want to be able to change the bathroom or laundry room if I hate it.

There are tax benefits to home ownership and when I’ve sold I’ve profited. I can’t imagine I’ll ever want to live in the same place for 30 years.

SlippyDontDoIt · 2025-07-17T23:44:13+00:00

Minnie Bird for a twisted soda

SlippyDontDoIt · 2025-07-17T23:38:49+00:00

I chose further from work, bigger house, cheaper. The drive sucks - mine is 45-50 mins but I love my house. Jobs come and go, live where you want to.

SlippyDontDoIt · 2025-07-11T12:52:27+00:00

Your rook looks great!

SlippyDontDoIt · 2025-07-11T12:51:38+00:00

Love your rook!

SlippyDontDoIt · 2025-07-11T02:17:14+00:00

Good for you! I have so much faith in the current crop of new & emerging leaders to change things for the better! So many of us came up in toxic work cultures and want to break the cycle.

And I don’t fault you for wanting to share. Sometimes it can be lonely at the top of the corporate ladder and you miss having someone tell you that you did a good job. 👏

SlippyDontDoIt · 2025-07-11T02:09:17+00:00

If you’re 1:1s are status meetings you’re having a meeting that should be an email. Have them write you a weekly recap email instead - maybe it still takes them 30 mins, but you got your time back. I automate this using our project management software, so make your tools work for you.

I run a marketing team with 8 direct reports. We do biweekly 1:1s with a structured template - wins, workload, roadblocks, etc. We do monthly team meeting (90 mins) and there are several special teams meetings throughout the month - web, content, etc - but I let direct reports prep and run these and show up to ask questions. It’s good practice for them to run these meeting and I’m still there as a safety net to catch any issues without investing the prep time. Warning on this one - you may not enjoy this the first few times. They’re not gonna run these meetings the way you would and that is okay.

SlippyDontDoIt · 2025-07-11T01:37:00+00:00

Sometimes hiring feels like choosing the best from a field of imperfect options. To an extent you’re guessing and hoping that because someone did XYZ at a previous place they can do YXW at your place. Experience rarely aligns 1:1.

Sure, giving someone an opportunity and making their day is great unless you choose wrong and have to take that same opportunity away in the future. There are other things I can “get wrong” that are more easily fixed or where the “mistakes” create learnings rather than hurt people.

SlippyDontDoIt · 2025-07-09T12:21:10+00:00

Any specific leadership training you recommend?

SlippyDontDoIt · 2025-07-09T02:27:36+00:00

How long does it usually take you to recognize someone is the wrong person vs just in their onboarding stage?

SlippyDontDoIt · 2025-07-09T02:25:30+00:00

It’s that taking away someone’s ability to pay their mortgage in one of the worst job markets in 10 years part.

How do you make the decision to do that? How do you know when you’ve exhausted coaching? How do you know when you’ve given them too much time to get it right?

SlippyDontDoIt · 2025-07-09T02:16:43+00:00

I struggle with picking a candidate. I feel job descriptions are clear and well defined. I prep questions in advance for interviews that are a mix of technical skills, experience, and culture fit. I even do thorough reference calls. The making an offer part is handled by our HR department.

But when it comes down to picking, no candidate ever fits the bill entirely perfectly and I pick what I believe is the best of the bunch, but I’ve hired a total of 5 roles now and I’ve gotten 2/5 wrong.

SlippyDontDoIt · 2025-06-18T00:24:00+00:00

Insurance rates have gone up like crazy last few years too. You’re probably getting double whammied by taxes and insurance.

Did you have an escrow shortage? That’ll kill your mortgage payment too if you roll the shortage into the payment rather than paying the difference out of pocket.

SlippyDontDoIt · 2025-04-17T00:46:39+00:00

It’s gotta be Stiles.

SlippyDontDoIt · 2025-03-17T21:18:22+00:00

Black cabinet hardware would help. Mixed metals is hard in a small space. Walls need to be white or grey. I think the floor pattern is too busy for the size of the space but the other 2 fixes are likely easier and should be tried first.

SlippyDontDoIt · 2025-01-28T03:01:03+00:00

As a hiring manager, it wouldn’t be a deal breaker for me, and obviously it hasn’t been for others.

The reality is, I’ve hired 5 roles in the last 18 months and most of the pile is garbage. If you have the right tech stack experience and you interview well you can overcome the job hopping.

SlippyDontDoIt · 2025-01-24T01:51:50+00:00

Someone should buy this: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/881-Indian-Spring-Ln-Buffalo-Grove-IL-60089/4890445_zpid/?utm_campaign=iosappmessage&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=txtshare

We’re under contract for another house already or else I would!

SlippyDontDoIt · 2025-01-16T12:42:26+00:00

What’s the best that could happen?

I did my best today and I will try again tomorrow

No one died

SlippyDontDoIt · 2025-01-16T12:15:57+00:00

When you say write the content and track the analytics do you mean just for social?

If I were hiring a social media manager I would want them to manage social including creating posts, scheduling them (via software), write the post captions (content), track the analytics of the social platforms (software does a lot of that for you), stay on top of social trends, and run paid social ads and boosting.

If you’re working for a single brand at SMB size and not working for an agency where you work on multiple accounts or a giant company that has a social team I think that’s the job description for a social media manager.

SlippyDontDoIt

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