Are You Hiring a Babysitter or a Manager? · Technician Find Community

Are You Hiring a Babysitter or a Manager?

I was on a call recently with a group of shop owners when one of them brought up a question about hiring a GM.

He wanted to know how to structure the pay plan. Base plus bonus? Bonus off gross profit? How does it all work?

When I mentioned that any performance-based bonus tied to gross profit requires financial transparency, he pushed back hard.

"I had a friend who shared his numbers with his GM. The guy learned everything, then went out and started his own shop."

Before I could respond, a veteran multi-shop owner on the call dropped this bomb:

"Are you hiring a babysitter or are you hiring a manager? Because those are two different things."

The Zoom went quiet.

He continued: "Why would you hire a general manager if they're not going to manage the numbers for you?"

THE REAL REASON OWNER'S DON'T SHARE NUMBERS

Here's what I've learned after hundreds of conversations with shop owners about this topic:

The fear of "they'll learn everything and leave" is almost never the real issue.

The real reasons are usually one of three things:

1. The books aren't clean.

One owner on the call put it bluntly: "A lot of people don't even have their numbers right." If you're not confident in your own financials, you're definitely not going to show them to someone else.

2. There's "funny stuff" happening.

Owner buying personal items through the business? Taking distributions that aren't accounted for? If you're doing things you'd be embarrassed for your manager to see, that's not a transparency problem—that's an integrity problem.

3. You're being greedy.

Another owner said it plainly: "The only reason you don't want to share is you're being too greedy. If you're not taking care of them and you're taking an excessive amount, they're going to be upset. If you're being fair, they're not going to be."

Ouch. But he's right.

HOW TRANSPARENT OWNERS ACTUALLY DO IT

One of the most successful multi-shop owners in our group shared exactly how he structures financial transparency with his team:

He builds his owner's compensation INTO the model—openly.

Here's how he explained it:

"Between rent and my salary, I'm taking 20%. 10% goes toward the real estate side, 10% goes in my pocket. That's before anybody else gets anything from the net."

"So if we do two million dollars, I make $200,000 out of that store before anybody else gets anything. And then 50% of the leftover net stays in the company. The rest gets split between the people who got us there."

His team knows exactly what he makes. They know exactly what they can make. There's no mystery.

And here's the kicker—his managers are MORE motivated, not less. Because they can see the scoreboard. They can see how the machine works. They can see that when they drive gross profit up, everybody wins.

Another owner added: "We've got our managers looking at the P&L. It's helped tremendously to keep their eye on the score."

THE IDENTITY SHIFT REQUIRED

If you can't share your numbers with your manager, you don't have a manager problem.

You have one of three problems:

A trust problem (you hired wrong)
A greed problem (you're taking too much)
A bookkeeping problem (your numbers aren't clean)

The shop owners who successfully scale past themselves are the ones who've made a fundamental identity shift:

They stopped seeing financial transparency as vulnerability.

They started seeing it as the ONLY way to create true accountability.

You can't hold someone accountable to numbers they can't see.

You can't expect someone to manage profitability if they don't know what profitable looks like.

And you definitely can't pay someone a bonus on gross profit while keeping gross profit a secret.

THE FEAR THAT NEVER MATERIALIZES

"But what if they leave and start their own shop?"

Here's the truth: If someone has the ambition, drive, and skill to start their own shop... they were going to do it anyway.

Your financial transparency isn't the thing standing between them and entrepreneurship. And honestly? If you're treating them fairly and they can see it in the numbers, they're MORE likely to stay, not less.

The ones who leave after seeing your numbers aren't leaving because of what they learned.

They're leaving because of what they saw.

Fix that, and you fix the retention problem.

THE QUESTION YOU NEED TO ANSWER

Before you hire your next manager—or before you have your next compensation conversation with your current one—ask yourself this:

Am I hiring a babysitter or a manager?

A babysitter shows up, watches the kids, and goes home.

A manager owns outcomes. Drives results. Makes decisions when you're not there.

But they can only do that if they can see the game they're playing.

What about you?

Do you share your financials with your managers? Why or why not?

Drop your answer in the comments. 👇