Operations

The Observation We require identity verification on the website: a picture of your ID and a selfie. A few customers a week call and say, there’s no way I’m giving you my ID. Almost always, the reason is identity theft. So I ask them, what do you think they do with that stolen identity? They target businesses that aren’t doing identity checks like we do. To that, they almost always go, “Oh, I’ve never thought about that side of it.” Almost selfishly, if you ask me. They’ve only ever pictured themselves as the victim, never the business that gets stuck with the bill. ...

When we ran simulcast auctions, with people bidding in the room and online, I heard the same suspicion time and again. The people in the room thought the internet had an advantage, and the people online thought the floor did. I think putting those two methods of bidding into the same auction can create distrust. Each group competes against people whose way of participating differs from its own. That gives bidders another reason to question whether everyone has the same opportunity to compete. ...

By John Schultz, CAI, AMM | Grafe Auction Company This article describes our experience with Nebraska’s auction-house permit process in August and September 2026. When a retailer closes, the remaining alcohol inventory can create a question that doesn’t come up with shelving or refrigeration: can we include it in the auction? Nebraska now has an auction-house permit for qualifying alcohol sales, and our experience obtaining one offers a place to start. ...

It takes us about 90 days to bring a new hire up to speed. Illness or injury can take someone off the schedule much faster than that. A resignation may give us two weeks. I was talking about hiring recently and found myself questioning when we start. We wait for a position to open, then look for someone to fill it. By the time they arrive, we need them to do work they haven’t learned yet. ...

The Observation I was thinking this morning about friction in technology, and how a good customer will leave without a word. A little is useful. Too much, and they just give up. The local coffee shop is a franchise I go to all the time. A few months ago they released a new mobile app to replace the old one. The new one has latency problems. Flaky at best, worse around 8 in the morning, less bad mid-morning. A colleague and I were talking about it in the office. We wondered if the app is silently failing and they don’t even realize they’re hitting a bandwidth wall at the rush. ...

The Observation David Senra asked Brad Jacobs how he differentiates A, B, and C players. Jacobs runs a mental exercise: picture the person in your office saying they’re done. Not a counteroffer conversation. Already moved. Orderly transition only because they respect you. Then feel the reaction. He walks the scale C to B to A. Restated in rank order: C (Jacobs): You shouldn’t smile. Nobody likes firing people. You postponed it. Now you don’t have to pay severance. Problem solved. Replace them. Get the courage to take them off the team right away next time. ...

The Observation Touch it once. When something lands, finish it or triage it on the first touch. Do not pick it up, set it down half-handled, and pay the full re-entry cost later. Touching without deciding is how piles become careers. I learned that young. At sixteen, through business class and Business Professionals of America, I interviewed for an On the Job Training slot and got hired as a teller at Norwest Bank, the company that became Wells Fargo. Stillwater in May 1993. Through March 1998 I moved from that floor to the Norwest Center downtown Minneapolis (now Wells Fargo Center), then across the street to IDS as lead teller, then to sales and service supervisor with a second drive-up branch on Portland Avenue while they found a new supervisor. Somewhere in that stretch, leadership training put the line in my mouth: touch it once. ...

After a foodservice liquidation, the survey scores came in. Same complaint, different names. The display piece mounted high on the wall. The scramble for help. Paying someone to take down what they already bought. Our invoice terms were clean. The buyer removes their lots. Onsite help is fee-based, not staff. High mounts and wall pieces were always going to be the buyer’s problem under the paper. I still kept catching recovery notes that apologized for the terms. “You shouldn’t have had to climb.” “You shouldn’t have had to pay for help.” That sounds kind. It also rewrites the deal after the gavel. ...

The spark I was listening to Gary Vaynerchuk on The GaryVee Audio Experience, an October 2025 episode about wasting time on people who will never buy from you. He made a comment about bonus structures that stuck with me. His framing was intentionally sharp, but the useful part was underneath the rhetoric: employees often factor the maximum possible bonus into their lives. Once they do, the bonus is no longer experienced as upside. It becomes expected compensation. ...

A seller calls a few days after the auction closes. The line of equipment they bought new in 2021 came back at 40 cents on the dollar, and they’re sore. They paid top money for it. They expected more than this. So you do the thing the business trained you to do. You send the marketing report. Look at the reach. Look at the registered bidders, the ad spend, the page views, the email opens. We ran the play. We found the market. ...