July 11, 2024 • 26 mins
Working in women's retail taught me so much about life, leadership, friendships and integrity. Honestly, this was one of the most rewarding jobs I have ever had and it has guided so much of my future decisions as an entrepreneur.
I honestly believe that everyone should work in retail before starting a business. Have a listen to the podcast and I will tell you why.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
32 jobs, 10 times being fired, and 22 times leaving under suspicious circumstances.
I am the Super Unemployable. Welcome to my podcast.
It's been quite a while since my last podcast, and that's for a very basic reason.
I was starting to lose my confidence in this podcast, whether it had any value,
(00:24):
whether anybody was going to want to listen to what I had to say.
I debated dropping the podcast altogether.
I even came up with a new format where I would just interview people about being super unemployable.
And actually, I was about to completely take that direction.
I've already signed up about five or six phenomenal entrepreneurs that I know
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who want to come on the podcast and tell their story. And I'm excited about that.
And I was actually debating deleting all of the episodes that I've recorded so far.
That was until a very good friend of mine reached out. Her name is Diane.
She said she listened to the podcast and she loved it.
(01:06):
And I was surprised because I actually didn't want her to listen to it. I was embarrassed.
That's why I debated deleting all the episodes in the first place.
Actually, this weekend, I had my finger over the delete button,
but my wife stopped me and she said, it's part of your origin story.
Why would you delete that? So what if it's not good? It's at least something
(01:27):
you can share with people in the future and say, see where I started?
And she had a point about that. We all have a story. We all have a history.
And I know in the world of social media, it's so easy to try to delete that
history, try to remove things from our past and only show the things that we're
proud of or that we feel like the world cares about.
(01:48):
But the reality is life doesn't work out that way. We make different decisions.
We try things. We succeed, we fail, and that's okay.
It's okay to fail. It's okay to look stupid.
It's okay to do something that you don't think anybody will ever care about
because the reality is somebody might.
And of course, Diane, who I have known since I was a kid, we are very, very close.
(02:14):
She's actually such a great person and a phenomenal entrepreneur.
She's going to be joining the podcast in August.
She's joining on as a guest and I can't wait to interview her but of course
she's going to be a little bit biased she's a friend of mine.
It's not really about that, is it? It was that little confidence boost that
(02:35):
she gave me that said, you know what?
Get back, do another recording, and don't worry about the rest because somebody out there likes it.
So Diane, this one's for you.
So today on the podcast, we're going back to 1997 and I was working at a restaurant
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called Moxie's and I was a bus boy.
And for all of those of you out there, who've been a bus boy,
bus person, I guess you call it now, you know how much that job sucks.
And I was desperately looking to get out.
I was 16 at the time, 15 or 16. I think I just turned 16.
(03:16):
And a friend of mine said, Hey, you know, so this Moxie's by the way,
was in a mall. It was like one of those anchor restaurants.
So there was lots of options if I wanted to leave. And a friend of mine said,
Hey, you know, down the road, you know, across from where we work is a place
called Jacob and they're hiring.
And I went, Jacob, I've passed by there, but I've never gone in.
(03:37):
And I said to him, I'm pretty sure that's a women's store. And he goes,
no, no, no. There's, there's men's clothing in there as well. It's men's and women's.
And I went, oh, okay, cool.
Now I don't know if he was messing with me or not. Cause for those of you who
know the phenomenal Canadian brand, Jacob, it is women's only Jacobs,
unfortunately has gone under since that time.
(03:58):
I think they, they fully went bankrupt or something about 10 years ago.
And it's such a shame because it was an amazing Canadian brand.
But anyway, so I grabbed a resume and I walked into the store in my,
my dress shirt and nice pants and got about halfway in the store.
And I looked around and I could not see any guy's clothes.
(04:19):
Now today that really wouldn't matter, but this was 1997.
The world was a very different place, but for the most part,
men did not work in women's retail.
That was just not a thing. There were some of us, but not that many.
And so anyway I took a look around and I felt
myself start to sweat immediately because I was like wow I
(04:40):
am in the wrong place and I did
a full turnaround and I started racing for
the door this was not the place for me and this lady caught me and she said
hey are you here to apply for a job and I looked at her and I must have looked
like a deer in the headlights and I panicked and And all I could think of was yes,
(05:03):
because I'm standing there with a resume in my hand.
She takes my resume, has a look at it and says, you know, okay,
do you have any experience in clothing retail?
And I said, no, I just work over at the Moxie's.
And she said, okay, well, we'll look at your resume and we'll give you a call if there's a fit.
And I could not have been happier to get out of there. I hightailed it. I thanked her.
(05:25):
Of course, I was very polite, but I just hightailed it out of there knowing
that there was no No way they're going to hire this guy with no experience at a women's retail store.
But lo and behold, a week later, I get a phone call and they are interviewing.
And on the same day, my friend Diane jumps in the car or I think it was at school. I can't remember.
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And she says, hey, I got an interview with Jacob. And I'm like, no way, me too.
I didn't even know you applied. And she's like, bigger thing is I didn't know you applied.
And again, I'm pretty sure my friend was messing with me. I'm not sure he really
realized that I was going to get an interview.
And then we also found out another friend of ours had an interview.
(06:06):
So it almost felt like we were in a bit of a competition.
I remember going to the interview and now all of a sudden I wanted to win. I wanted to get the job.
I wanted to beat my friend at getting this job.
And when I went there, I was actually interviewed by a guy named Ray.
And Ray, he was a pretty cool dude, asked me a few questions.
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And again, I really didn't think I was going to get the job because I knew I
was up against two of my friends who were both women.
And I thought for sure the women are going to get the job.
But a week later, turns out all three of us got the job.
And so that was really cool. And so I left Moxie's. Again, this was a funny way to leave Moxie's.
I'll save that for another story, how I ended up leaving the Moxie's because
(06:51):
that was definitely suspicious circumstances.
But I went on to start at Jacob working in women's retail.
And I can honestly say, I love that job. we
had a phenomenal management team there were
four people in the management position there was
the lead person her name was colette there's another
girl named inga ray who'd i'd already mentioned and then tanya and that group
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of four plus myself diane a girl named may and a few other people we made up
this core at jacob and it was the best time i think i've ever had the clothing
Clothing was amazing. Of course, I couldn't wear any of it.
So I ended up shopping at The Gap, trying to find clothing that would make me
look cool enough to work at Jacob. At the time, Gap was the thing.
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Watch any old Friends episode. They pretty much wore Gap exclusively in the 90s.
But we just had such a good time there and we all got along and there was this,
this energy to the group.
And as I recall, we actually became one of the best selling stores in their,
their group across Canada.
And I think it was just because we had such passion and energy.
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You know, I remember my friends would make fun of me and they'd say,
oh, you work at a lady's store.
That's, you know, what kind of job is that? And I said, well,
where do you work? And the one guy said, I work at Home Depot. I was like, all right.
You go to work and you look at sweaty men all day, which, hey,
for some might be their jam, but I go to work every day and I help women find
(08:27):
awesome clothing and get direct,
access to just fantastic women from the city coming in to ask me for my advice on their clothing.
And I loved it. I loved it. I met so many women at that job that it,
you know, as a 16 year old, 17 year old kid, this was just awesome.
(08:51):
I remember I actually met one girl working there. Her name was Natalie.
She was British. I remember Diane told me she's not British.
And I said, well, she's not British. She's got a British accent.
So, well, when you go out drinking with her, her accent disappears pretty quick.
And that turned out to be true. Nobody could really actually,
she would, was very vague about where she was born. There's very good case that
(09:12):
she was putting on that accent, but I digress.
I thought she was cute and I wanted to date her, but I remember the first thing
Tanya told me when I started there was do not date any of the other staff.
Right. And it kind of makes sense, right? It creates conflict.
For somebody like myself, being told not to do something is basically an invitation to do it.
(09:36):
Maybe that's a super unemployable thing.
I think one of the things that makes me so super unemployable is every time
I'm presented with a challenge to not do something, I almost feel like it's
my obligation to prove that I can do it.
Entrepreneurship's kind of like that, isn't it? I mean, the reality is to be
a great entrepreneur, you have to do things that other people think are stupid.
(09:59):
Or think are crazy, right? Steve Jobs, wasn't it? Steve Jobs quote,
here's to the crazy ones.
So I think there's something inside of us that inherently makes us do things,
that people tell us not to.
So anyway, I did go on a date with Natalie.
Interestingly, we stopped at the bank machine and while we were standing there,
(10:19):
she was getting money out from a bank machine and Tanya walked in.
This wasn't even a bank machine near the mall.
I have no idea how that could have happened. and she stopped and talked to me
and said, Hey Dean, how's it going?
And somehow did not see Natalie at the bank machine. And Natalie kept her head
down because she of course knew as well, you weren't supposed to date the staff.
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And somehow we got away with it. We went out to the movies. I remember.
And the movie was running long and she said, Oh, I've got to go home.
I was supposed to be home a half an hour ago.
And I'm like, well, let's go. Like, what are we still doing here?
We drive back to her place. And she says, do you want to come in and explain
to my parents why I'm home late? And I thought.
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Really? But you never told me that you had to be home earlier.
I'm going to come in and explain to your parents why you're late when you didn't
even mention that you're supposed to be late. I was kind of scared.
I'd never met her parents.
I didn't know anything about them. And she was asking me to come in and meet
the parents and explain her tardiness.
So I said, no. And then that kind of scared me off. And I realized,
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you know what, this is like, it's not a good idea.
She was a little crazy and, and it was a little too hairy, you know,
trying to avoid not getting and caught.
And so we kind of broke things off. And I remember that did not sit well with her.
One night we were vacuuming and the way we did it at Jacob is one person would
do the front half. The other person would do the back half vacuum.
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That's how we split up night duties of the many cleaning duties.
And I remember I finished the first half and I, Natalie was in the back section.
I said, do you want to, do you want to pick up and do the vacuum for the back half?
And she looked at me dead square in the eyes and said, don't start something
you can't finish and walked away.
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And so I guess that was her way of telling me, I'm not impressed with the fact
that you took me out on one date and never called again.
Fair enough. Fair enough. I was 16, not very responsible. I get it, right?
You need to be a better person. And definitely I learned along the way how to
be a more upstanding date.
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Those were definitely early days for me.
So anyway, we're at Jacob and the whole crew, we're having a phenomenal time.
Just honestly, like I mentioned, it was such a great crew. Everybody worked
so well together. We sold a lot of clothing.
We did really well and we had a lot of fun.
But then for whatever reason, the headquarters decided they were going to start moving people around.
(12:53):
They took Colette and moved her to another store.
Inga was moved to an annex store, which was in a different part of the city.
Tanya, I'm pretty sure, quit. And Ray, I think Ray might have still been there.
But they brought in a new manager. This is what stands out the most to me.
So our management team was broken up. Diane May and I still work there,
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but we weren't management. We were still in school, high school.
We worked evenings and weekends, but the new manager came in.
I honestly, I can't remember her name.
And during that time, she brought in another sales associate and she very quickly
promoted that sales associate to assistant manager.
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So now there was the two of them and they had this edge. It was almost like
they came in and they didn't like the old crew.
They didn't want, I think she felt threatened in a way that the old crew was
maybe territorial or clicky.
I didn't feel like we were, I was a very friendly guy.
I enjoyed working with people and I went out of my way to make them feel welcome.
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And of course she was the new manager.
So, you know, we work together really well, I thought, but it wasn't that way.
And I can honestly say, having worked with so many organizations, this happens a lot.
I don't know if you found this same thing, but you start somewhere and everything is phenomenal.
Everybody's getting along and sales are crushing it or whatever business activity you're doing.
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And then it always seems to be the way about a year, year and a half in some
sort of change happens and all those good vibes go away. I mean,
if you've worked for an organization that has not faced that churn, I envy you.
And I think the leaders of that organization know what they're doing.
This could be why Jacob ended up not making it. Their leadership team made weird decisions.
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When you have a group that is churning and firing on all cylinders, do not break them up.
Keep them going. Have them teach other teams, but don't split them up and don't inject.
People who ultimately will break down that wonderful cohesion that made the place so successful.
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It was about four months into this new manager. I'm going to call her Jane.
I honestly can't remember her name. Jane.
And she called me into the back office and she had a document sitting there.
And I was really surprised because was there a document for it in the back room?
And she told me that I was being written up for insubordination,
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gossiping, and making people overall feel bad.
That was a really big surprise to me because I've always prided on myself on
treating people well and making sure they feel taken care of and excited and happy to work with me.
And the manager used this excuse. She said a girl named Cassandra has formalized
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a complaint that you are gossiping about her at work and you are gossiping about her outside of work.
And so my first thought was, okay, we'll deal with this at work thing in a second,
but what happens outside of work?
What is that any business of yours?
So there was a lot of fallacy there, but the biggest one was a outside of work.
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Work we didn't talk about people at work diana and i were close of course we hung out every day,
she was part of my circle of friends but we
definitely didn't take that work home with us why would we it's a retail store
and even if we did what business is it of theirs so i told her first and foremost
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we don't talk outside of work which was true and i'm not going to sign something
that says that i do and i'm certainly not going to sign something that's related to my personal life,
has none of your business whatsoever.
Now, Jane told me, well, Diane said that you do do that outside of work.
You do gossip outside of work.
And this is early psychology. It's a, I think it's called the prisoner game
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where you've got two people and you want them to confess and you try to play
them against each other because they're not in the room to talk to one another.
So you'll say this person told me you did the crime. And then they go to the
other person and say, they told me you did the crime.
The idea is you're going to get somebody to actually break down and tell the
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truth because they're so afraid of what the other person said.
There's a three-way system that works here. If you both talk, you both go down.
If one person talks, they might get leniency. The other person goes down.
Or if neither of you say anything, then they don't have anything on you and nobody goes down.
But it's really hard because they're saying the other person said something
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about you. But you have to have integrity.
If you know that you've done nothing wrong in this world and somebody tries
to accuse you, and no matter what they say, somebody else said,
you hold your ground and you certainly do not turn on your friends.
I can tell you this was a toxic management group when A, they tried to pin things on us that weren't true.
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And when I spoke to Cassandra after, she clarified that there was no complaint.
She said in one passing, she felt like a bit of an outsider.
And I get that. She'd started new.
We were all a crew, Cassandra, the sales associate, you know,
we'd been together a year and a half.
And anytime you come into a new organization, you're going to feel like an outsider.
And I get it. And I wish we would have done more to make her feel welcome. but
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certainly she'd never issued a formal complaint this
was the manager trying to find a way to get us
out so anyway i held my ground i finally
had her cross off everything in that document that i knew wasn't true and i
signed the tiny last portion that said we did not make sandra feel welcome when
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she started and that was fair why it would be a formal complaint why it has
to be written in a document, I don't know.
But it's true. And if they want me to attest to it, that's fine,
because you have to have integrity.
Again, another great feature of the super unemployable is integrity.
Okay? It's not to say that if you're highly employable, you don't have integrity.
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But what I can tell you is, as a super unemployable person, you are not going
to have a lot to rest your hat on.
You're going to be going out and you're going to be trying to get people to
work with you, people to invest in you, customers to buy from you.
And if you don't have integrity, if you're not honest, if you're not transparent,
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you will never build the trust of those around you and success will always elude
you. It is your currency.
And so again, as I search for those that are super unemployable,
I'm curious as to whether that is an enduring trait.
It won't be for everybody, but I wonder if it is for most.
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After I signed this document and I walk out with my head held high,
Diane and I, of course, inevitably catch up and talk about it.
And she says, yeah, I got pulled into the office today too, or into the back room.
And she told me the exact same thing.
And she said, you told her that I had been doing that.
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So Jane had told Diane that I was, I said all kinds of things that Diane was doing.
And I said, nope, I didn't. I didn't say
a word about you because again it wasn't even true and I
said to her I said to Jane when I
when she said that Diane was saying things I said I
don't believe that for a second and I knew that was true and it
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turns out in that game of the prisoner game Diane didn't say anything and I
didn't say anything either and I just remember feeling so proud we had this
person who was really insecure as our manager she was not confident in her own
decisions she'd gone into a role with a team that was firing on all cylinders.
And she didn't like that. She felt threatened.
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And her reaction to that was to try to get us fired.
Ultimately, we ended up leaving anyway. It was a miserable place to work.
And there is a great story that parallels this.
If you are curious, look up the story of the founders of Home Depot.
They worked for an organization, a hardware store, and they were up and coming.
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And the guy who was above them saw that they were rising at a really fast rate.
He was threatened by them and ultimately fired them.
They went on to found Home Depot with another person.
And that hardware store that they were fired from, nobody knows the name because
they ended up going under.
I can tell you here and now, as the super unemployable, if you are truly in
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fact super unemployable, then become the greatest leader you can possibly be.
Inspire people, nurture them. And when they rise above you, cheer,
cheer, because that means you helped them along the way to become the most amazing
person they could ever become.
Trying to hold somebody back, trying to hold them down serves no other purpose
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than to stroke your own ego.
And I can assure you those people are going to fly higher than you anyway.
And so that ego that you're trying to protect to show the world that you're
so much better than everybody else, you're going to look stupid. it.
Because instead of being the person who discovered the greatness,
you now become the person who tried to hold it back.
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History does not look favorably upon those who try to hold back greatness.
They ultimately become a joke of the history books.
And to be honest, I could not possibly even imagine a better life to live than
one where I helped, even in a tiny way, I helped people achieve their own eternal greatness.
(22:59):
So I may be super unemployable. I may get fired. Actually, now that I think
about it, I got fired from Jacob.
Huh. So there you go. That must be one of my 10.
I came into this podcast thinking I quit, but I'm pretty sure I was fired or
it was a mutual agreement to leave.
I ended up moving on to a company called another great Canadian company called Le Chateau.
(23:23):
I think they may have gone under now too. I mean, apparel retail has not had,
had a lot of success over the last few years, but Tanya was working there.
So actually Tanya, Inga and Colette all went on to different retail companies.
One went to Le Chateau, one went to another Jacob and one went to the gap.
And I ended up working at all of those stores over the coming year,
(23:46):
desperately seeking to work with that management team again.
That's how much I adored them.
And of course I moved on to do other things.
But during that time, I was just thankful that I got a chance to work with all of them one more time.
But that core team that we had when we started in 97, the one that achieved
some of the highest sales, the single store sales for Jacob of that year,
(24:09):
that team of course never came back again.
And it's always going to be a fond memory for me.
And it inspires me every time I start a business or I move on to work with another client.
I always bring the lessons that I learned working in fashion retail with me.
I even founded a company at one point called Experience Headphones,
(24:29):
and we brought in headphones, speakers, and other technology,
but we positioned it from a fashion perspective.
I used so many of the lessons that I learned at Jacob, Le Chateau,
The Gap, and many other fashion retailers and brought that to Experience Headphones.
And we achieved in some of our categories better
(24:50):
sales than chapters indigo
than amazon than best buy we beat
them in some categories because we appealed to a fashion conscious technology
shopper experience headphones is for another story and i do look forward to
sharing that one that that is interesting that is going from zero to a million
dollar plus company to ultimately all the way back down and below.
(25:15):
I mean, that was a roller coaster of a business, but that's for another day.
What's your story? Where have you been? Where have you worked?
As I mentioned, Diane will be joining the podcast and I'm sure she can share
a few more Jacob stories while she's here.
But I want to hear from the rest of you. What did you learn when you were younger?
What did you learn about management? What did you learn about your own integrity?
(25:38):
What did you learn about your your ability to work for others and the type of
people you can work for, or the fact that you simply can't work for anyone, period.
What is it about those experiences that helped you understand that you are truly super unemployable?
My name is Dean Horsfield. You can find me on LinkedIn. We've got a lineup of
(25:59):
great guests, six already on the deck, but I'd love to add many, many more.
And so please, please do reach out to me. I'd love to share your story.
I'd love to have you on the podcast talking about Super Unemployable.
That's it for me today. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next time.
32 jobs, 10 times being fired, and 22 times leaving under suspicious circumstances.
I am the Super Unemployable. Welcome to my podcast.
It's been quite a while since my last podcast, and that's for a very basic reason.
I was starting to lose my confidence in this podcast, whether it had any value,
(00:24):
whether anybody was going to want to listen to what I had to say.
I debated dropping the podcast altogether.
I even came up with a new format where I would just interview people about being super unemployable.
And actually, I was about to completely take that direction.
I've already signed up about five or six phenomenal entrepreneurs that I know
(00:45):
who want to come on the podcast and tell their story. And I'm excited about that.
And I was actually debating deleting all of the episodes that I've recorded so far.
That was until a very good friend of mine reached out. Her name is Diane.
She said she listened to the podcast and she loved it.
(01:06):
And I was surprised because I actually didn't want her to listen to it. I was embarrassed.
That's why I debated deleting all the episodes in the first place.
Actually, this weekend, I had my finger over the delete button,
but my wife stopped me and she said, it's part of your origin story.
Why would you delete that? So what if it's not good? It's at least something
(01:27):
you can share with people in the future and say, see where I started?
And she had a point about that. We all have a story. We all have a history.
And I know in the world of social media, it's so easy to try to delete that
history, try to remove things from our past and only show the things that we're
proud of or that we feel like the world cares about.
(01:48):
But the reality is life doesn't work out that way. We make different decisions.
We try things. We succeed, we fail, and that's okay.
It's okay to fail. It's okay to look stupid.
It's okay to do something that you don't think anybody will ever care about
because the reality is somebody might.
And of course, Diane, who I have known since I was a kid, we are very, very close.
(02:14):
She's actually such a great person and a phenomenal entrepreneur.
She's going to be joining the podcast in August.
She's joining on as a guest and I can't wait to interview her but of course
she's going to be a little bit biased she's a friend of mine.
It's not really about that, is it? It was that little confidence boost that
(02:35):
she gave me that said, you know what?
Get back, do another recording, and don't worry about the rest because somebody out there likes it.
So Diane, this one's for you.
So today on the podcast, we're going back to 1997 and I was working at a restaurant
(02:55):
called Moxie's and I was a bus boy.
And for all of those of you out there, who've been a bus boy,
bus person, I guess you call it now, you know how much that job sucks.
And I was desperately looking to get out.
I was 16 at the time, 15 or 16. I think I just turned 16.
(03:16):
And a friend of mine said, Hey, you know, so this Moxie's by the way,
was in a mall. It was like one of those anchor restaurants.
So there was lots of options if I wanted to leave. And a friend of mine said,
Hey, you know, down the road, you know, across from where we work is a place
called Jacob and they're hiring.
And I went, Jacob, I've passed by there, but I've never gone in.
(03:37):
And I said to him, I'm pretty sure that's a women's store. And he goes,
no, no, no. There's, there's men's clothing in there as well. It's men's and women's.
And I went, oh, okay, cool.
Now I don't know if he was messing with me or not. Cause for those of you who
know the phenomenal Canadian brand, Jacob, it is women's only Jacobs,
unfortunately has gone under since that time.
(03:58):
I think they, they fully went bankrupt or something about 10 years ago.
And it's such a shame because it was an amazing Canadian brand.
But anyway, so I grabbed a resume and I walked into the store in my,
my dress shirt and nice pants and got about halfway in the store.
And I looked around and I could not see any guy's clothes.
(04:19):
Now today that really wouldn't matter, but this was 1997.
The world was a very different place, but for the most part,
men did not work in women's retail.
That was just not a thing. There were some of us, but not that many.
And so anyway I took a look around and I felt
myself start to sweat immediately because I was like wow I
(04:40):
am in the wrong place and I did
a full turnaround and I started racing for
the door this was not the place for me and this lady caught me and she said
hey are you here to apply for a job and I looked at her and I must have looked
like a deer in the headlights and I panicked and And all I could think of was yes,
(05:03):
because I'm standing there with a resume in my hand.
She takes my resume, has a look at it and says, you know, okay,
do you have any experience in clothing retail?
And I said, no, I just work over at the Moxie's.
And she said, okay, well, we'll look at your resume and we'll give you a call if there's a fit.
And I could not have been happier to get out of there. I hightailed it. I thanked her.
(05:25):
Of course, I was very polite, but I just hightailed it out of there knowing
that there was no No way they're going to hire this guy with no experience at a women's retail store.
But lo and behold, a week later, I get a phone call and they are interviewing.
And on the same day, my friend Diane jumps in the car or I think it was at school. I can't remember.
(05:45):
And she says, hey, I got an interview with Jacob. And I'm like, no way, me too.
I didn't even know you applied. And she's like, bigger thing is I didn't know you applied.
And again, I'm pretty sure my friend was messing with me. I'm not sure he really
realized that I was going to get an interview.
And then we also found out another friend of ours had an interview.
(06:06):
So it almost felt like we were in a bit of a competition.
I remember going to the interview and now all of a sudden I wanted to win. I wanted to get the job.
I wanted to beat my friend at getting this job.
And when I went there, I was actually interviewed by a guy named Ray.
And Ray, he was a pretty cool dude, asked me a few questions.
(06:27):
And again, I really didn't think I was going to get the job because I knew I
was up against two of my friends who were both women.
And I thought for sure the women are going to get the job.
But a week later, turns out all three of us got the job.
And so that was really cool. And so I left Moxie's. Again, this was a funny way to leave Moxie's.
I'll save that for another story, how I ended up leaving the Moxie's because
(06:51):
that was definitely suspicious circumstances.
But I went on to start at Jacob working in women's retail.
And I can honestly say, I love that job. we
had a phenomenal management team there were
four people in the management position there was
the lead person her name was colette there's another
girl named inga ray who'd i'd already mentioned and then tanya and that group
(07:17):
of four plus myself diane a girl named may and a few other people we made up
this core at jacob and it was the best time i think i've ever had the clothing
Clothing was amazing. Of course, I couldn't wear any of it.
So I ended up shopping at The Gap, trying to find clothing that would make me
look cool enough to work at Jacob. At the time, Gap was the thing.
(07:40):
Watch any old Friends episode. They pretty much wore Gap exclusively in the 90s.
But we just had such a good time there and we all got along and there was this,
this energy to the group.
And as I recall, we actually became one of the best selling stores in their,
their group across Canada.
And I think it was just because we had such passion and energy.
(08:03):
You know, I remember my friends would make fun of me and they'd say,
oh, you work at a lady's store.
That's, you know, what kind of job is that? And I said, well,
where do you work? And the one guy said, I work at Home Depot. I was like, all right.
You go to work and you look at sweaty men all day, which, hey,
for some might be their jam, but I go to work every day and I help women find
(08:27):
awesome clothing and get direct,
access to just fantastic women from the city coming in to ask me for my advice on their clothing.
And I loved it. I loved it. I met so many women at that job that it,
you know, as a 16 year old, 17 year old kid, this was just awesome.
(08:51):
I remember I actually met one girl working there. Her name was Natalie.
She was British. I remember Diane told me she's not British.
And I said, well, she's not British. She's got a British accent.
So, well, when you go out drinking with her, her accent disappears pretty quick.
And that turned out to be true. Nobody could really actually,
she would, was very vague about where she was born. There's very good case that
(09:12):
she was putting on that accent, but I digress.
I thought she was cute and I wanted to date her, but I remember the first thing
Tanya told me when I started there was do not date any of the other staff.
Right. And it kind of makes sense, right? It creates conflict.
For somebody like myself, being told not to do something is basically an invitation to do it.
(09:36):
Maybe that's a super unemployable thing.
I think one of the things that makes me so super unemployable is every time
I'm presented with a challenge to not do something, I almost feel like it's
my obligation to prove that I can do it.
Entrepreneurship's kind of like that, isn't it? I mean, the reality is to be
a great entrepreneur, you have to do things that other people think are stupid.
(09:59):
Or think are crazy, right? Steve Jobs, wasn't it? Steve Jobs quote,
here's to the crazy ones.
So I think there's something inside of us that inherently makes us do things,
that people tell us not to.
So anyway, I did go on a date with Natalie.
Interestingly, we stopped at the bank machine and while we were standing there,
(10:19):
she was getting money out from a bank machine and Tanya walked in.
This wasn't even a bank machine near the mall.
I have no idea how that could have happened. and she stopped and talked to me
and said, Hey Dean, how's it going?
And somehow did not see Natalie at the bank machine. And Natalie kept her head
down because she of course knew as well, you weren't supposed to date the staff.
(10:39):
And somehow we got away with it. We went out to the movies. I remember.
And the movie was running long and she said, Oh, I've got to go home.
I was supposed to be home a half an hour ago.
And I'm like, well, let's go. Like, what are we still doing here?
We drive back to her place. And she says, do you want to come in and explain
to my parents why I'm home late? And I thought.
(11:02):
Really? But you never told me that you had to be home earlier.
I'm going to come in and explain to your parents why you're late when you didn't
even mention that you're supposed to be late. I was kind of scared.
I'd never met her parents.
I didn't know anything about them. And she was asking me to come in and meet
the parents and explain her tardiness.
So I said, no. And then that kind of scared me off. And I realized,
(11:23):
you know what, this is like, it's not a good idea.
She was a little crazy and, and it was a little too hairy, you know,
trying to avoid not getting and caught.
And so we kind of broke things off. And I remember that did not sit well with her.
One night we were vacuuming and the way we did it at Jacob is one person would
do the front half. The other person would do the back half vacuum.
(11:43):
That's how we split up night duties of the many cleaning duties.
And I remember I finished the first half and I, Natalie was in the back section.
I said, do you want to, do you want to pick up and do the vacuum for the back half?
And she looked at me dead square in the eyes and said, don't start something
you can't finish and walked away.
(12:05):
And so I guess that was her way of telling me, I'm not impressed with the fact
that you took me out on one date and never called again.
Fair enough. Fair enough. I was 16, not very responsible. I get it, right?
You need to be a better person. And definitely I learned along the way how to
be a more upstanding date.
(12:26):
Those were definitely early days for me.
So anyway, we're at Jacob and the whole crew, we're having a phenomenal time.
Just honestly, like I mentioned, it was such a great crew. Everybody worked
so well together. We sold a lot of clothing.
We did really well and we had a lot of fun.
But then for whatever reason, the headquarters decided they were going to start moving people around.
(12:53):
They took Colette and moved her to another store.
Inga was moved to an annex store, which was in a different part of the city.
Tanya, I'm pretty sure, quit. And Ray, I think Ray might have still been there.
But they brought in a new manager. This is what stands out the most to me.
So our management team was broken up. Diane May and I still work there,
(13:16):
but we weren't management. We were still in school, high school.
We worked evenings and weekends, but the new manager came in.
I honestly, I can't remember her name.
And during that time, she brought in another sales associate and she very quickly
promoted that sales associate to assistant manager.
(13:40):
So now there was the two of them and they had this edge. It was almost like
they came in and they didn't like the old crew.
They didn't want, I think she felt threatened in a way that the old crew was
maybe territorial or clicky.
I didn't feel like we were, I was a very friendly guy.
I enjoyed working with people and I went out of my way to make them feel welcome.
(14:03):
And of course she was the new manager.
So, you know, we work together really well, I thought, but it wasn't that way.
And I can honestly say, having worked with so many organizations, this happens a lot.
I don't know if you found this same thing, but you start somewhere and everything is phenomenal.
Everybody's getting along and sales are crushing it or whatever business activity you're doing.
(14:28):
And then it always seems to be the way about a year, year and a half in some
sort of change happens and all those good vibes go away. I mean,
if you've worked for an organization that has not faced that churn, I envy you.
And I think the leaders of that organization know what they're doing.
This could be why Jacob ended up not making it. Their leadership team made weird decisions.
(14:53):
When you have a group that is churning and firing on all cylinders, do not break them up.
Keep them going. Have them teach other teams, but don't split them up and don't inject.
People who ultimately will break down that wonderful cohesion that made the place so successful.
(15:14):
It was about four months into this new manager. I'm going to call her Jane.
I honestly can't remember her name. Jane.
And she called me into the back office and she had a document sitting there.
And I was really surprised because was there a document for it in the back room?
And she told me that I was being written up for insubordination,
(15:36):
gossiping, and making people overall feel bad.
That was a really big surprise to me because I've always prided on myself on
treating people well and making sure they feel taken care of and excited and happy to work with me.
And the manager used this excuse. She said a girl named Cassandra has formalized
(15:57):
a complaint that you are gossiping about her at work and you are gossiping about her outside of work.
And so my first thought was, okay, we'll deal with this at work thing in a second,
but what happens outside of work?
What is that any business of yours?
So there was a lot of fallacy there, but the biggest one was a outside of work.
(16:21):
Work we didn't talk about people at work diana and i were close of course we hung out every day,
she was part of my circle of friends but we
definitely didn't take that work home with us why would we it's a retail store
and even if we did what business is it of theirs so i told her first and foremost
(16:41):
we don't talk outside of work which was true and i'm not going to sign something
that says that i do and i'm certainly not going to sign something that's related to my personal life,
has none of your business whatsoever.
Now, Jane told me, well, Diane said that you do do that outside of work.
You do gossip outside of work.
And this is early psychology. It's a, I think it's called the prisoner game
(17:05):
where you've got two people and you want them to confess and you try to play
them against each other because they're not in the room to talk to one another.
So you'll say this person told me you did the crime. And then they go to the
other person and say, they told me you did the crime.
The idea is you're going to get somebody to actually break down and tell the
(17:26):
truth because they're so afraid of what the other person said.
There's a three-way system that works here. If you both talk, you both go down.
If one person talks, they might get leniency. The other person goes down.
Or if neither of you say anything, then they don't have anything on you and nobody goes down.
But it's really hard because they're saying the other person said something
(17:48):
about you. But you have to have integrity.
If you know that you've done nothing wrong in this world and somebody tries
to accuse you, and no matter what they say, somebody else said,
you hold your ground and you certainly do not turn on your friends.
I can tell you this was a toxic management group when A, they tried to pin things on us that weren't true.
(18:10):
And when I spoke to Cassandra after, she clarified that there was no complaint.
She said in one passing, she felt like a bit of an outsider.
And I get that. She'd started new.
We were all a crew, Cassandra, the sales associate, you know,
we'd been together a year and a half.
And anytime you come into a new organization, you're going to feel like an outsider.
And I get it. And I wish we would have done more to make her feel welcome. but
(18:32):
certainly she'd never issued a formal complaint this
was the manager trying to find a way to get us
out so anyway i held my ground i finally
had her cross off everything in that document that i knew wasn't true and i
signed the tiny last portion that said we did not make sandra feel welcome when
(18:53):
she started and that was fair why it would be a formal complaint why it has
to be written in a document, I don't know.
But it's true. And if they want me to attest to it, that's fine,
because you have to have integrity.
Again, another great feature of the super unemployable is integrity.
Okay? It's not to say that if you're highly employable, you don't have integrity.
(19:16):
But what I can tell you is, as a super unemployable person, you are not going
to have a lot to rest your hat on.
You're going to be going out and you're going to be trying to get people to
work with you, people to invest in you, customers to buy from you.
And if you don't have integrity, if you're not honest, if you're not transparent,
(19:39):
you will never build the trust of those around you and success will always elude
you. It is your currency.
And so again, as I search for those that are super unemployable,
I'm curious as to whether that is an enduring trait.
It won't be for everybody, but I wonder if it is for most.
(20:01):
After I signed this document and I walk out with my head held high,
Diane and I, of course, inevitably catch up and talk about it.
And she says, yeah, I got pulled into the office today too, or into the back room.
And she told me the exact same thing.
And she said, you told her that I had been doing that.
(20:22):
So Jane had told Diane that I was, I said all kinds of things that Diane was doing.
And I said, nope, I didn't. I didn't say
a word about you because again it wasn't even true and I
said to her I said to Jane when I
when she said that Diane was saying things I said I
don't believe that for a second and I knew that was true and it
(20:43):
turns out in that game of the prisoner game Diane didn't say anything and I
didn't say anything either and I just remember feeling so proud we had this
person who was really insecure as our manager she was not confident in her own
decisions she'd gone into a role with a team that was firing on all cylinders.
And she didn't like that. She felt threatened.
(21:04):
And her reaction to that was to try to get us fired.
Ultimately, we ended up leaving anyway. It was a miserable place to work.
And there is a great story that parallels this.
If you are curious, look up the story of the founders of Home Depot.
They worked for an organization, a hardware store, and they were up and coming.
(21:26):
And the guy who was above them saw that they were rising at a really fast rate.
He was threatened by them and ultimately fired them.
They went on to found Home Depot with another person.
And that hardware store that they were fired from, nobody knows the name because
they ended up going under.
I can tell you here and now, as the super unemployable, if you are truly in
(21:49):
fact super unemployable, then become the greatest leader you can possibly be.
Inspire people, nurture them. And when they rise above you, cheer,
cheer, because that means you helped them along the way to become the most amazing
person they could ever become.
Trying to hold somebody back, trying to hold them down serves no other purpose
(22:13):
than to stroke your own ego.
And I can assure you those people are going to fly higher than you anyway.
And so that ego that you're trying to protect to show the world that you're
so much better than everybody else, you're going to look stupid. it.
Because instead of being the person who discovered the greatness,
you now become the person who tried to hold it back.
(22:34):
History does not look favorably upon those who try to hold back greatness.
They ultimately become a joke of the history books.
And to be honest, I could not possibly even imagine a better life to live than
one where I helped, even in a tiny way, I helped people achieve their own eternal greatness.
(22:59):
So I may be super unemployable. I may get fired. Actually, now that I think
about it, I got fired from Jacob.
Huh. So there you go. That must be one of my 10.
I came into this podcast thinking I quit, but I'm pretty sure I was fired or
it was a mutual agreement to leave.
I ended up moving on to a company called another great Canadian company called Le Chateau.
(23:23):
I think they may have gone under now too. I mean, apparel retail has not had,
had a lot of success over the last few years, but Tanya was working there.
So actually Tanya, Inga and Colette all went on to different retail companies.
One went to Le Chateau, one went to another Jacob and one went to the gap.
And I ended up working at all of those stores over the coming year,
(23:46):
desperately seeking to work with that management team again.
That's how much I adored them.
And of course I moved on to do other things.
But during that time, I was just thankful that I got a chance to work with all of them one more time.
But that core team that we had when we started in 97, the one that achieved
some of the highest sales, the single store sales for Jacob of that year,
(24:09):
that team of course never came back again.
And it's always going to be a fond memory for me.
And it inspires me every time I start a business or I move on to work with another client.
I always bring the lessons that I learned working in fashion retail with me.
I even founded a company at one point called Experience Headphones,
(24:29):
and we brought in headphones, speakers, and other technology,
but we positioned it from a fashion perspective.
I used so many of the lessons that I learned at Jacob, Le Chateau,
The Gap, and many other fashion retailers and brought that to Experience Headphones.
And we achieved in some of our categories better
(24:50):
sales than chapters indigo
than amazon than best buy we beat
them in some categories because we appealed to a fashion conscious technology
shopper experience headphones is for another story and i do look forward to
sharing that one that that is interesting that is going from zero to a million
dollar plus company to ultimately all the way back down and below.
(25:15):
I mean, that was a roller coaster of a business, but that's for another day.
What's your story? Where have you been? Where have you worked?
As I mentioned, Diane will be joining the podcast and I'm sure she can share
a few more Jacob stories while she's here.
But I want to hear from the rest of you. What did you learn when you were younger?
What did you learn about management? What did you learn about your own integrity?
(25:38):
What did you learn about your your ability to work for others and the type of
people you can work for, or the fact that you simply can't work for anyone, period.
What is it about those experiences that helped you understand that you are truly super unemployable?
My name is Dean Horsfield. You can find me on LinkedIn. We've got a lineup of
(25:59):
great guests, six already on the deck, but I'd love to add many, many more.
And so please, please do reach out to me. I'd love to share your story.
I'd love to have you on the podcast talking about Super Unemployable.
That's it for me today. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next time.
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