Consumer Services
A map for success
How to grow a company with goal-oriented employees
By Brooke Bates
Smart Business Pittsburgh | December 2008
Page 1 of 2
Philip Pelusi
founder and CEO, Philip Pelusi Salons
Philip Pelusi sounds like a
style-savvy Bill Gates as he
recounts how he dropped out of high school to attend
beauty school and opened his
first hair salon in 1965.
It was a risk that paid off, and
those who succeed in business
require “a maverick component,” he says.
“They will be risk-takers,” he
says. “They won’t always follow rules.”
To balance his risk-taking,
Pelusi sometimes hires employees who are more qualified
than he is. And his success-seeking attitude surfaces in his
350 employees as he helps
them down their personal
career paths.
When everyone meets their
goals, the company grows, he
says, and Philip Pelusi Salons
has expanded into a chain of
13 locations, sprouted hair
care and skin care product
lines and posted 2007 revenue
of more than $15 million.
Smart Business spoke with
Pelusi about how to grow your
company by helping your
employees meet their goals.
Q. Why is it important to hire
employees who are more
qualified than you?
One has to be astute enough to
know what you don’t know. You
have to surround yourself with
people that are very qualified
and, in some cases, more qualified than you. You can get the
door open, but now to go from
point A to point B, I have to be
willing to hire educated people.
I always felt that the company will only grow as far as I
can as an individual. The more
I can grow, then the more
there’s room for people under me to grow. But if I’m myopic
or if I’m little, if I don’t go anywhere, then obviously they
can’t, so they’re going to have
to leave. That’s why you have
to have a vision, a path for
opportunity, a career path.
At one point, I was the top
colorist. But it got to the point
I had to replace myself. That
was a tremendous learning
curve for me. When you’re
growing a business, you have
to be able to replace yourself.
Everyone you hire, their function should be to grow and
also to replace themselves.
By doing so, then they can
move up; they’re not threatened
then by somebody coming up.
You start to create a culture
that’s more of a coaching/mentor culture and a little less
threatening.
Q. How do you help
employees decide on
their career path?
Everybody has to know
their role, so you have a
road map for success. It’s
very important that it’s
tied into what their goals
are. If someone is in a
limited-function job but
they want to be there,
they don’t want to go anywhere else, we’re not
going to sit down and try
to sell them on a Ph.D. at
Pelusi.
They’re going to be part
of the team. They’re
going to be updated and
still know that there’s opportunity in our system.
Say you have some prior
experience; you come to work
for us. We do a skills assessment. We would hire you, give
you credit for your previous
experience, knowing you would
have to learn and transition into how we do things. They would
have a personalized road map.
If you’re right out of school
and you come to work for us,
we’re going to do a skills assessment. Then we’re going to map
out a road map for you on what
you need to do to increase your
skills and to move up a level.
Everybody has a vision. They
know where they’re at; they
know where they need to go.
It’s not just what I think you
should be doing.
