Expanders vs. Containers

There are only two kinds of people at work.

I learned an important lesson in the early days of building my business. There are only two kinds of people at work.

In the early years of The Corcoran Group, I was hiring to fill a new sales position. One day a woman named Esther Kaplan walked in, and after one look at her I knew she was entirely wrong for the job. She was buttoned up, quiet, and reserved, all things pointing in the opposite direction of sales. We shared niceties and as I was handing her my card and feeding her my party line of “We’ll call you if something opens up,” she did something that totally changed my mind on her. She opened up her purse to slip my business card inside, and in doing so revealed the tiniest, most organized filing cabinet I’d ever laid eyes on. She had little slots for each compartment of her purse, and they were labeled! I looked at Esther and I saw my business in that purse, organized to a T. I knew I had to have Esther on my team. I offered her a job on the spot.

Esther was the best hire I ever made, and two years later we were running the business side by side as partners. She had all the traits I lacked: She kept the entire business in order from personnel to file systems to getting credit lines and directing the attorneys. All the stuff I was no good at. She was the ultimate container. And that left me free to be the ultimate expander I was, and do the things I was naturally good at like recruiting, advertising, PR, grandstanding and seeing how far I could go. She did her stuff, I did mine, and together we built a giant business.

With Esther as my partner, I learned an important lesson about building a team: There are two kinds of people at work, expanders and containers.

Expanders see the big picture and push the business ahead. Containers keep everything tight and organized and make sure you always have the money to keep going. Esther was the container to my expander, and together we worked like a dream. My business would not have succeeded the way it did without Esther beside me, and I could’ve easily missed out on her if I had my head stuck in the sand.

I took that lesson and applied it throughout my business. Each new office we opened needed to have an expander and a container at the helm, and that combination proved to be the winning formula that helped scale my business.

I’ve applied this lesson to all the businesses I work with. It’s important to know where you fall on the spectrum, then get out there and hire someone who’s good at what you’re not. So get out there and find your Esther! It’s the perfect balance that builds a winning team.