What is up, everyone? This is Alex Lieberman, co-founder and CEO of Morning Brew.

Welcome back to Founder's Journal, My Personal Audio Diary, where I give you the business builder,

the tools you need to think better in order to build better,

whether that's building a business, a team, or a new product.

Today, we are talking about a management philosophy called the Peter Principle.

It sounds academic, it was created by an academic,

but it does impact every single business.

It forces us to think hard about how we support our employees

and how we elevate them properly, so they are set up for success no matter the role they're in.

Let's hop into it.

I want you to imagine this scenario. A sales assistant is crushing it in their job.

They're a hard worker, they pay super attention to detail,

and they do everything that their senior seller asks them to do to make their job easier.

After some time in the role, they get promoted to being a seller, no longer a sales assistant.

If they were highly competent in their assistant role,

let's just say now they are adequately competent in their seller role.

They must learn a new set of skills like actually selling,

relationship building with clients, and hitting a sales quota.

They are still able to hit their stride because they're a hard worker

and they end up succeeding in the role as well as just barely hitting their quota.

A year or two later, they receive yet another promotion and they are now made a sales manager.

While their success as an assistant seller is what got them there,

...