Dealing with how to get payment options inside St Mirren's SMISA Stadium is just as far away from the aggressive style of play Keith Lasley implemented as a player.
If there's one thing the task of finance and battering into a midfield opponent have in common though, it's a sense of hard work ethic and earning your opportunities. And that is exactly what the Paisley chief operating officer has managed to do right through his career
He is speaking to Record Sport on the eighth anniversary of his former side Motherwell beat Rangers in the Premiership play-offs to secure safety. Life now has him dealing with distant cousins of the dinosaurs as he reflects on his first season after taking over his current job from club icon Tony Fitzpatrick. Stephen Robinson guided the club to a historic first top six spot in 38 years on the park, and his former assistant manager is looking to make them a force off it, with home crowds overall in Paisley around 25% up as the community buys into the Buddies project.
"From singing Twist and Shout in front of the Well Bois," he laughed. "How did we end up in this seat? Long journey, I have a few different priorities and responsibilities now.
"I think in this role you are responsible for pretty much everything. All the football things you would think I would be up to but you are in charge of things like payment options for season tickets, kit launches, stuff to do with the stadium.
"Birds nests, that's one thing I didn't think I'd need to look at! That's an issue we had to deal with, a bird nesting inside the stadium. It's a very big one, I think it might have been a pterodactyl given the size.
"It's interesting and every day is different. That's a good part of it and keeps you on your toes. So going from signing a player to getting a nest removed from one of your stands - and everything in between - is how I would describe the job."
If being a leader at a top six Premiership club isn't stressful enough, Lasley adds a Masters of Sports Directorship to his workload, a course in which he is coming to the final stages of.
There's little room for learning on how to catch birds of prey, but it does have a healthy classroom and real life balance. It perhaps should have come attached with parental advisory stickers on top of his St Mirren duties, but mixing it with business bigwigs provides him perspective on the openings available to players now in an ever-changing world.
"They don't have a bird's nest module or if they did I missed it!," he joked. "That's the thing about academia, a lot of the time it is a perfect case scenario and best practice. That is great and it has given me a lot of learning, the Uni course is one of the reasons I am sitting in this chair.
"I have learned a lot. I have a deadline for my last assignment which has added a few grey hairs, but it's been a great learning experience. There's an element of finance and business in a wider sense which is great for me. On my current course, you have chief exec's, sporting directors, people like that coming in but you also have heads of hedge funds, big business and one of the last lectures we had was on the fan-led review and the independent regulator down south.
"You are speaking to people at the coalface of the ever-changing landscape of football and learning about the pertinent issues in the game at the minute. Doing the course and being a chief operating officer isn't good for your health at times. That should come with a health warning but it's something I will take a lot from.
"I think roles have become more defined and there's more structures in football clubs, even smaller ones, and I think that has come in from Europe.
"They had former players going into strategic positions and that is something migrating into British football, where the business guys did the business and football guys did football. If the players are willing to educate themselves enough and look into the other side of what a football club is and part of it is a business that needs to thrive, there are avenues."
Back in Paisley, there have been no shortage of issues for Lasley to deal with. They made a loss of £1.6m in the financial year ending May 2022 and had internal politics crop up on their way towards top six security.
It would be enough to make anybody wonder why they even bothered about jumping into this role in the first place. But not Lasley, as he sails head-on to get through choppy waters.
"I like challenges, I have always been one for that," he said. "I wanted to finish my Pro License before I finished playing and when I got into coaching, my ambition was to be a manager. I worked my way up to assistant and then it was about the next thing for me.
"We want to build 'something' here and what I mean is something long-lasting, something to believe in. That is a huge part of my job in all departments, connecting them so even internally you are connecting your own building and that has been a big focus of mine.
"It isn't always the case. Even internally you can have heads butting together and pulling in slightly different directions and that doesn't work when you are trying to punch above your weight. Go to any club and I am sure there will be internal politics here and there, I think that is just the nature of the beast."
On the park, things are looking up for the Buddies. They fought an uphill battle to claim the rewards of top six football and while key stars like Curtis Main are exiting, there's faith in Robinson to work smart again, with a skeleton crew Lasley knows well.
As for the chief? He knows football is a volatile world and the nature of the business sometimes demands change at the first sign of trouble. But he wants to build a long-lasting project that will prove long-term St Mirren foundations.
"The cat and the dog must be doing a good job!," he chuckled when asked about the small coaching staff at Robinson's disposal. "Must be good tacticians. I am always there as a sounding board and it's a tight staff, but a very good staff.
"Sometimes you can have loads and it looks great having 25 people in your dugout. But if 15 of them aren't very good, they are just filling tracksuits, but what we have is a dedicated staff that we want to add to as time goes on, and finance allows, which we are in the process of doing.
"I think the term punching above your weight is used but I think that is what we are doing. The manager and staff have done a fantastic job and he has a track record of doing that. I know how he works, how he gets the best from players.
"Our recruitment in the summer was really important. Take the top six, we are miles behind the other five clubs in terms of budget. My feeling is we are at a moment of pulling together and that can be a really powerful thing.
"For us to be bigger than the sum of our parts we need to be pulling in the one direction and that is what I feel is happening at St Mirren. We feel we can turn something here into something special, and I am not saying we are going to win the league tomorrow!
"But special for us is moving this club forward together, and that means from the boardroom, all the departments, fans, the people in Paisley who we want to be a huge voice for. That is special. For me to take this club forward, we need to move all that good forward and for me, that would be real success for this football club.
"I am working hard off the park to make sure we evolve in that space too. We make the most of our performance on the pitch to maximise our potential off it. "
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