The barista who said he just makes the coffees
A casual barista told Nick Maxwell he just makes the coffees. What Nick said next is the whole job of connecting someone's role to the outcome.
Eclat had a young barista working two days a week around uni. Nick Maxwell asked him about his job and the answer came back: I just make the coffees.
Nick stopped him there. You have the most important job in the building. If you make a bad coffee, our members do not come back - and I cannot sell to anyone who has already left. That coffee is the start of their day.
He watched the kid's shoulders go back.
Two things, in order
Nick's framework for getting the most out of people has two parts, and the order matters. First, understand what actually motivates them. Second, show them how their role moves the business forward.
Most managers do the second without the first, which is how you end up delivering a motivational speech to someone who wanted a different roster.
The same job at the front desk
It applies to whoever greets people at the door. A member walks in and you have no idea what their morning was - kids giving them hell, bad night's sleep, something worse. If the person on the desk looks up, smiles and says good to see you again, that changes.
If they stay on their phone and never make eye contact, that changes something too.
Nick's own test is smaller than any of it: he goes back to a cafe because they remember his name.
What you can hire for, and what you cannot
Nick recruits for a short list - emotional intelligence, resilience, and the ability to take feedback without treating it as a personal attack. A member having a bad experience is that member's truth, and the job is to work out what stops it happening again.
The one he is less sure you can teach is work ethic. Megan's view, as a recruiter, is that you can refine work ethic but not install it - it tends to be a chip on the shoulder someone already arrived with.
The bit Nick says he gets wrong
He is direct about his own gap here. Four years into building Eclat, he has led by example far more than he has explained why he does things the way he does. Startups are all hands on deck: he is assembling chairs, then hosting a session, then running a tour, then recording a podcast.
Leading by example is visible. The reasoning behind it is not - and people cannot copy what they cannot see.