Banking & Finance
All in the family
How to put your ego aside and put your business first
By Brooke Bates
Smart Business Chicago | November 2008
Page 1 of 2
Dan Wolfberg
co-president, PLS Financial Services Inc.
When Bob and Dan
Wolfberg founded PLS Financial Services Inc. in 1997,
they put aside their egos to
share a title, responsibilities
and power. But sibling rivalry
isn’t easily outgrown.
“Brotherhood rivalry definitely
shows its face every once in
awhile,” says younger brother
Dan Wolfberg. “When we’re
both working separately, that’s
when we start going in different
directions. So we talk about it.
We’re able to refocus and get
on the same page.”
By spending Monday lunches
and many nonworking hours
together, the co-presidents have
aligned their vision for the company. They’ve expanded their
brotherly bond to make room
for 3,000 employees, bringing
everyone together under the
common priority of putting the
company first. And 10 years
after the founding of the company — which provides retail
financial services, such as
check cashing, loans and tax
preparation — PLS posted
2007 revenue of $151.8 million.
Smart Business spoke with
Wolfberg about how to stay
humble and how to let others
have a say in decisions.
Don’t be a know-it-all. My brother and I started this company
together. As a smaller company
in the beginning, we would trip
over each other working on the
same things. As the company’s
grown, we’ve been able to separate responsibilities and work
on our own strengths. We really
put our egos aside.
Now we get along. We both
want to make PLS something
that’s not about Bob Wolfberg;
it’s not about Dan Wolfberg; it’s
about PLS. We definitely don’t
know everything, or hardly anything for that matter. But we
surround ourselves with people
that do.
I’ve been shocked over the
years at what I’ve learned from
other people. You realize that
you don’t know everything.
I’ve seen companies in our
industry that have that issue,
where the top leaders make all
the decisions and think they
know everything, and they go
nowhere. If you make all the
decisions and you think you
know everything and you
don’t, you may not be around
tomorrow.
Put decisions up for discussion. You can’t be too full of yourself.
I don’t know more than everybody else, and I don’t act like I
know more than everybody
else. You need to listen, discuss, debate and then make a
decision.
Once the decision is made, it’s
expected that everybody buys
in to it and agrees. But before
that point, everybody discusses
it. I don’t sit in my office and
make decisions based on what
I think is right. I want to talk to
other people about it first.
The worst decisions that I’ve
ever made are the ones that I
make without talking to anyone else.
As the company grows and I
get further away from the customer, the more that we need
to rely on people in stores at
the lowest levels to provide
information to make the right
decisions.
