If you missed our intro to this series, read this before continuing:
New Game: Tweet secrets to the universe with no context
And then unpack it with your subscribers. Let’s dive into this…
Once we have ID’d who we want, we learned in part 1 that we need to invest in them. We need to pay them a lot.
How much?
Well keeping in mind the above tweet, teams can continue to compound with their great people so long as the compounding doesn’t get interrupted.
AKA, so long as they don’t leave.
Why do they leave? This will lead us back to the first question of how much to pay them…
Here’s the secret the Steel use…
Pay people above what they would make at the next level.
Most coaches are in the USHL to ‘advance’. But what is the real reason they are trying to advance?
Maybe it’s because most can’t afford to eat while they are at that stop.
What if it didn’t need to be a league that you needed to exit within 2 years or risk personal financial ruin?
What if you could stay in a great place for a really long time? Would that help?
Seems to be working in Chicago. In fact, they are pulling D1 assistants ‘down’ to their ‘level’ instead of the other way around.
Why?
Because they pay their coaches D1 salaries to coach in the USHL. And not just D1 salaries but good D1 salaries.
Will their coaches leave to coach in the AHL? Yes, that’s happened twice. But as most USHL coaches are ‘1 and dones’ and as soon as a D1 school offers them anything, they run for the hills. Chicago can keep their best people around 1,2 and 5 years longer than other teams in the league.
This is their real advantage…
Get great people. Pay them what the next level pays so they don’t leave for the next levels.
They only leave to ‘skip levels.’
And I don’t want to hear, “Come on Drew, Larry Robbins is a billionaire owner, most USHL teams don’t have that.”
Sell more sponsorships, run another golf outing, do whatever it takes to get your ‘best people’ more money.
And don’t think upgrading your rink is going to do it.
Your best investment is in the best people, allocate your money accordingly.
Part 2 coming soon…
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