David Pedelty

Good managers hit their numbers. Great managers rent a U-Haul at midnight. Go Illini. 🏀

Made it back to Champaign by 9 AM Friday. Product on the floor. Ready to sell. 24+ hours awake. No one in corporate knew. No one sent help. No one told us to do it.

Illinois just made the Final Four for the first time since 2005. Watching that game brought back a story I've never shared. I was the GM of Best Buy in Champaign, IL — Fighting Illini country. Back to school was our Super Bowl. 🧵

I don't use the word "employee." Ever. It signals something broken: I'm your boss. You work for me. We say teammates. And it's not a rebrand — it's a standard. High expectations. Real accountability. But empowerment, not dictatorship. I tell our Scooter's Coffee teams: "Our baristas are the caffeine in the coffee. Without them, we'd be decaf. And decaf sucks." One location put that quote on their bathroom wall. 😂 AI can automate a lot. Culture isn't one of them.

One more thing about Ember: after that night, she saw something in how we operated. She joined our company. The fact she chose to come work for us after watching us troubleshoot a dead POS at 1 AM says more about our culture than any award. You earn your reputation in the moments nobody planned for. 🔗 davidpedelty.com/insights/green…

Here's the part I'll add now that I couldn't tell you then: There are systems today — automated hardware checks, AI-flagged spec mismatches weeks before opening, documented backup protocols — that would have shortened that night significantly. We survived on grit. You can survive on grit AND systems.

At 8 PM the night before opening, Ember Filter looked at me from behind the register and said: "Don't freak out. But your POS is down." Store opens at 6 AM. That's the part nobody posts about. 🧵

@stephanicci 😂 gotta love AI photos!

@dpedelty Is your business in a war zone brother

The barbershop next door saved the opening of our first Scooter’s Coffee. And it happened because I broke my own rule: FUFU — Follow Up or F*ck Up.

As many have pointed out, I know it's a ridiculous AI photo...that's the point 🙃

Side note, AI photos are hilarious sometimes!