Age 33
While making oil field machinery for a local manufacturer, Mike Muirhead wanted to apply for a recently vacated job. That’s when he got a lesson in what not to do.
He asked his boss if he could hand in his résumé, “and he was like, ‘Yeah, just put it on my desk,’ really nonchalant and dismissive. When I checked back, he said he was hiring his buddy from Ontario over me, who had been there for seven years, without even an interview.” So Muirhead drafted his resignation letter and put it on his soon-to-be-scrambling boss’s desk.
About a year later, in a management role at Crane Supply, Muirhead had to break the news that he and his best friend Jesse Rudiger-Aasgard, were able to make a full-time go of their side business, Forge 53º, in part because of the money Muirhead made from Crane. “I was expecting them to be so pissed. But [my boss] Vito was just like, ‘No hard feelings. Can you train your replacement?’”
It was a big lesson in treating employees right, which starts in Muirhead’s interview process philosophy of only hiring people he would hang out with. “I don’t like saying you work for me — we work with each other.”
He makes space for people to make beautiful works of art
This article appears in the November 2022 issue of Edify
