# Managing A-players and scaling culture

- **Episode:** [193](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/193.md) (2025-05-01)
- **Type:** interview
- **Tags:** a-players, scaling, culture, management
- **Time:** 43:15–51:30 (start 2595s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/193?t=2595](https://truthliesandwork.com/193?t=2595)

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[43:15] Al Elliott: You said something there that A-players come to you and say, look, there's a better way to do my job. I think my worry would be if I say, oh, cool. Okay. Give it a go. And it completely goes wrong. Do you have to have some kind of judgment around that? Or do you just generally say, go on, give it a go?
[43:35] Nick Huber: Well, they're generally asking for a way that you can make their life easier. So generally it's your job, but many times I'll say, no, look, I disagree. We don't need to be focused on adding X, Y, and Z complexity to our business. We need to do this, that, and the other better. And there's lower hanging fruit. I have a lot of big idea people that work for me and I'm constantly reining them in and saying, hold on, let's focus. Hold on, let's focus. There's a difference between that and them saying, damn it, I'm putting this stuff in Microsoft Excel for 4 hours a day. Get me an executive assistant in the Philippines for $4 an hour to do this. I make, I'm, I'm one of the highest paid people at the company and I'm doing this work over and over and over again. And it's making my life suck. And the boss says, oh yeah, I hear you. We'll think about getting you somebody else to help you with this. And then nothing happens. But I also think like from the employee side, like from the employee side, there are things that you can do as well, which is before you take a job is just understand, is it a big conglomerate that there is no way they're going to change anything about the way they do business? A lot of people, a lot of employees walk into these situations. And they work for one of the largest companies in America. They go to New York City and work for JP Morgan. And they get in on the, on the, on the floor in, you know, the 57th floor on 51st Street in New York City. And they say, hey, there's a better way to do this, guys. And the boss says, honey, we've been making over a billion dollars a quarter for 50 years. I don't need your ideas around here. So if you're an idea person who wants to move up quickly through an organization, don't go to the big bureaucracy. Don't go to the place where you can hide without doing anything and you can last 40 years. And the person with the most tenure who shows up early to meetings and does the best at office politics gets the most weight, you know, increase in salary. Work for a company where the owner is aggressive. It's a small team. The company's growing and you can, you can do really, really well there. But another big part of it is just a Look down the hall at somebody who's winning the game you're about to play. A massive mistake people make is they pick the wrong game, the wrong career altogether. Like a lot of people, a ton of people want to be doctors and lawyers. This is a very confrontational or, you know, not widely accepted view that I have is that I don't know very many 45-year-old doctors and lawyers who Aren't obese, overworked, divorced, depressed, or addicted to substances, but very rich. So look down the hall, look where you're headed. Look, if like, if I play this game and I'm about to win this game and I'm very good at it, what happens to me? Very few people who pick a career actually spend the time thinking about, you know, what does it look like if I win? I had a friend who Was a super high performer, super high performer in college athletics. Went, got a damn near perfect score on the LSAT, which is the pre-attorney test to get into law school in America. Went to Columbia Law, which is one of the best law schools in America. Got a, got a clerkship with the best judge, studied and worked all the time, and then got a job at the most prestigious litigation firm In the country, in Washington, D.C., William O'Connell got a job there. 3 years into the job, he is kicking ass, making $1 million a year, working 90 hours a week. He had found a way to get married after some, you know, relationship issues because of how much he was working. And his wife got pregnant and he was going to deliver a baby in October. This was This was July. He went to see his boss and his, and his, one of the partners at the firm said, hey, we're putting you on this case in New York City because it's a litigation firm. Like they're, they're arguing in court and they're in hotel rooms. We're putting you on this case with one of our biggest clients in New York City. Um, you're going to, you're about to go to New York City for 4 to 6 months. And he goes, hey, I can't take this. You got to put somebody else on this because I'm going to miss the birth of my baby. My first baby is coming in October. This court case starts for September 1st. I can't do it. Like, find a different one. And the partner told him, hey, uh, it's not how this works. Like, any attorney in, any attorney in this country would kill to be in your position. You're getting paid $1 million a year. If you make partner in 3 years, you're gonna be making $5 million a year for the rest of your life and on up. Like, this is what we do. He's like, tough love. This is what we do. And so here's, here's my friend had won the game, was the best of the best, went to the best law school, got the best score, got the best clerkship, got the best job. He won the game that he was playing. And he finds himself looking at a guy across from a partner who was overweight, divorced, alcoholic, but had a big-ass beach house in the Outer Banks. He's like, is this the guy I want to be? And he told that partner to fuck off, raised a giant fit in the office. It was a very, very sad deal. Very, very sad deal. He walked away. Um, and it's a, it's a heartbreaking story about how if you pick the wrong game to play, even if you win, is it really, really what you want?
[49:00] Al Elliott: I'd like to know, you've grown from 2 people to now over 300 people across, across multiple different companies. If you were to go back again, at what point would you start thinking about creating a good workplace? Is it important in the first 20, 30 people?
[49:14] Nick Huber: Yeah, you got to treat people with respect. You got to be direct. You got to be a good communicator. You got to understand that relationships are really complicated. And if you are stubborn, if you're straightforward and other people have issues and, or you have a temper, Like tempers ruin careers. It's really sad. If you have some of those early on issues, then you're not going to be able to grow past a couple people. Nobody's going to want to work for you, but actually structuring a company and setting clear expectations and have people who manage people is a whole new skill. And it's not always easy, I'll say. So I still have a lot to learn about that. I'm learning fast and I think I'm getting good at it. But yeah, once you get over 30 people, It gets hard
[49:56] Al Elliott: When someone finishes the book, they've put it down, they've just finished it. What do you really genuinely hope they've learned?
[50:03] Nick Huber: I hope they are better equipped to pick what game to play, meaning finding an opportunity. The whole first section of the book is about picking the opportunity. I hope they have understood what skills are important. Whether it be hiring, management, decision-making, delegation, sales, and picked up a lot along the way on how to do those things better because I tell a lot of very tactical things on how to improve those. And then the whole last section of the book is about people because you can't do this alone. So it's about how to treat people, how to make decisions with people, how to train people to be extensions of you, how to delegate tasks, how to delegate decisions. And then the last chapter I kind of had fun with and gave people a lot of very practical life advice that they might not get, but kind of Things that I wish when I was 20 or 25, I would've read and kind of how to think about kids, how to think about career, how to think about what spouse you pick, how to think about, you know, how you design your life and your health, your fitness, you know, because in reality, you know, money and business is a part of it, but we also have families and we have our bodies and we have our physical environments that doesn't matter how good we are at business. Some of those other areas can really ruin your life if you don't have you know, enough energy put there in the right way. So I want people to read that book and kind of feel like they're entertained, but also well-equipped to go make some more money