Creating Career Paths for your Employees Part 2

The Small business show, episode 378 for Wednesday, may the 4th be with you 2022. Greetings, folks and welcome to or welcome back to the Small Business show here at BusinessShow Co, where we are small businessing every week. Sponsors for this episode include a new sponsor, iTrust Capital SBS, where you can invest in cryptocurrencies inside your IRA. This is something I wish I had at my disposal a couple years ago, but I'm glad that we have it now. And also a returning sponsor, Bambi B-A-M-B-E-E.com small where you can go there right now to schedule your free HR audit and free trial. So we'll talk more in depth about how you're going to do each of those things in a little bit here. But for now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean. How you doing, man?

I'm all right. This has been kind of a frazzling week, but it's good, like, you know, lots going on.

Yeah, that's good. That's a new term. I haven't frazzled, but frazzling is good.

Yeah, yeah, it's been a frazzling week. Well, in that the end result of it is I'm frazzled and when I say the end result, it's Tuesday afternoon. I'm aware of this. We had a, you know, I haven't talked much about it recently because it's been kind of a, there's been some heads down work that's not entirely exciting to talk about. But there is that other business that I don't talk about that we have been looking into selling. We're partnering with an M and A firm and we've been having some meetings with prospective buyers. Like we're at that point. There's no offers on the table yet. It's just, you know, but those are coming like what a great learning process. It's been fantastic and that's been the learning part of it has been. It's so good because, you know, I've never done anything like this before and it's just fan. It's so fascinating to me what's going on. There's, you know, there's a bunch of partners. I have multiple partners with this business and the, our M and A firm, you know, had set up one of these meetings. I have been, I have taken point on this inside the company. Obviously we have the M and A firm doing their work and they're the professionals. But we know that this process of selling a business can be one of those things that becomes like a spider where it just goes everywhere. Right. And so we've been compartmentalizing it, and I'm. It's, you know, my job is to sort of run point on it and only involve my partners when they need to be involved, when I need information from them or they're the right ones to answer a question or something like that. But otherwise, I'm taking kind of the brunt of it all so that they can continue doing their jobs and we can keep running the company and growing the company and assuming it's not going to be sold and just keep cranking forward. And so our M and a guy had invited me to a few of these meetings over the past couple of weeks, and then he invited all of us to one of them. And I asked him, I said, are you sure you like what's different about this one? Why do you want all of us? And he's like, well, yeah, that makes. Yeah, it was an interesting thing, right? Like, I was like, what's the deal? He's like, well, he's like, I didn't want anybody to feel. He's like, I knew I wanted you. And the tech person, Believe it or not, in this company, I am not the tech person, which is fascinating. I mean, I am a technical person, but I'm not the tech person at this company. And he's like, I wanted, you know, that person there to be able to talk about some of the specifics. I'm like, yep, that makes perfect sense. He's like, but I didn't want anybody else to feel left out or offended. And I stopped him and I said, okay, we need to have a heart to heart about this here.

Yes.

You know what?

You're.

What's your job? What's your job? Yeah. And I told him, I said, you don't need to worry about offending us. I said, first of all, you know, we're all grown adults here. We really have, for a variety of reasons that I. That I will talk about on the show at another time. But this partnership has worked out such that there's no egos involved or if there are, they're very well managed. Yeah, it's just been wonderful. And so I said, look, but even if there were, like, you know, it's your job to make sure we're represented as best we can. And I said to him, I said, we're all aware that the more feet we bring to this meeting, the more mouths they could wind up in. And I know that that's a bad thing. Yeah.

And it's not a knock against anybody else, but it's like, you know, if you have no experience being in meetings like that, it's one thing if you're listening, but if questions come up and you feel inclined to answer, you just got to be careful how you answer things.

Yes, exactly.

And I imagine there's. I mean, I've sold a few businesses and I imagine that an M and A guy is probably guiding you and giving you some feedback, some training, if you will, into how to attend these meetings and what to say and what not to say. Right?

Yes, absolutely. It's kind of like selling a house, if you've ever been through that process. In fact, I think I know that our M and A firm has a lot of the same licenses that a realtor would have. Yeah, I mean, it's. It is super similar. Right. You have. When you're selling a house, you're selling one thing to one buyer. Right. It's not like you've got six houses that you're selling, you know, or 600 houses, and you're, you know, you're looking to market a product that is replicatable. It's not replicatable. Right. It's one thing that will eventually, hopefully be sold to one buyer, and that's it.

And one word can tank the whole thing.

You got it. That's correct, yeah. For example, this week, you know, I had been on a couple of these calls, and we did a coaching call before the one this week. And I call it a coaching call. It was more just a prep call. I mean, there wasn't any, you know. Well, there was one moment of coaching where he said to me, clearly, based on what I had said in previous meetings like these, he said, hey, one thing. Don't say to be honest. He said, oh, yeah. Better to say to be candid or candidly, he says the problem. And I knew exactly where he was going. As soon as he said it, he said, the problem with to be honest is it implies that you have not been honest so far. Yes. And as soon as he said it, it was like, okay, I wrote it on a sticky and I put it at the bottom of my monitor because we were doing a zoom meeting. It was like, okay, remind yourself, because I. Because I have been honest with these people all the way through it, you.

Know, but it's a common term, you know, that people use. But. But it does have that connotation. And your brain does think that, yes.

Yes, you can't help but, but, yes.

So I love that. This concept where you, number one, pick a point person to interact, you know, with the, the company that's helping you sell the business and they can relay things back and forth and you know, as long as you have transparency. Yeah, you're all going to sign the deal. Right. You're, you know, correct. And then, and then picking the people that need to be at the meeting based on their need to be at the meeting.

Right. That's it.

And we've had, we've done episodes on how to host meetings and one of the first questions you ask is, do I need to be here? You know, because if you don't, you then don't waste your time, don't waste everybody else's time.

Yeah, just get out of the way. Yeah, get out of the way. That's the key.

Yeah, I would have known that.

I know. Well, that's the thing is, you know, you learn this stuff and I, I, it's been, it's been a really interesting process because, you know, we, we're a small company and we, you know, we are being, there is interest from places that are larger than us, which would make sense. Like that's how that works. But there's also, you know, a lot of the questions that they ask are, you know, well, we want to see your financials, which of course we've, that's, that's been sort of the boring part of this that we've been doing over the past couple months is preparing the financials in a way that shows up for them. We've run this business as a cash based business and it is, you know, some of these people want accrual stuff and they want to be able to see it this way. And, and at first my temptation was, well, okay, we can restate this and we don't really have that data, but I think we can get there close. And finally, just in one of these meetings, I said, look, I need to tell you we run this business as a cash business. It was built to be a cash business. It has been a cash business. It's profitable. I can tell you anything you want to know that I know about the business. I'll tell you. But I don't have accrual based books because we've never run them that way. And that just opened up the doors, everybody relaxed and it was, and I even joked, I said, you know, I referred to our M and A guy and I'm like, he yells at me that we don't have these and I'm sorry that we don't have these. But that's just the reality of how we've run the business. And it's, you know, it was. Everybody was like, yeah, okay, we get it. It's all good. Yeah.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. Honesty, you know, I was being honest despite.

You don't say that.

But, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I think that's an important thing to, you know, it's okay if. And I find myself doing this too. You're in a meeting and you're working and negotiating and you're trying to impress and also, you know, adjust your. What's going on to them. Kind of like pacing and leading.

Pacing and leading. That's the. That's exactly it.

Yeah, but you don't, you know, you gotta be careful that you get yourself in a little trap there. If it's not the way. Okay. That's not the way it is. And it's okay to go, wow, that sounds great. And that's just a great opportunity for someone who buys the business or we don't do that right now.

Imagine how much more successful this business could be if we. Or you were to do these things that you're asking us if we've done. It's like, yeah, and I've had it.

Where you're just like, oh, I don't even know how to do that.

I don't know.

I think that's great. That's exciting. But we've never tried it. And I don't know, you know that. And I think it's. It's okay to. To just be. Oh, I don't know.

It's transparent. Yeah.

Yeah.

Just. It's because it's the, you know, I had a business partner, my original co founder with Backbeat Media, Greg Snyder, had the. He has this. Had this phrase that. That he uttered a few times while, you know, during our. Our history together. Well, you know, we would be preparing for some important thing or whatever. I'm like, well, we could just tell him this. And he liked to add, well, yeah, it sounds good. And it has the added benefit of being true. Yeah, that is good. Yeah. The added benefit of being true.

That's great.

Yes.

You know, if you're a small company. Speaking for myself, you know, I can remember pitching and trying to get partners and getting, you know, money and all this kind of stuff. It's very easy to expand, to make things sound bigger than they are, more complex than they are. And you don't need to do that.

No, you definitely don't want to do that. I mean, whoever you know, assuming that there's a buyer that, that comes up with an offer that's acceptable to us, we will then head into due diligence. You know, whatever was said during the, you know, those pre negotiations had better match what they're going to find during due diligence, otherwise. And they're going to find everything during due diligence as well. They should. Like that's how it's going to work. So, yeah, you really don't want to mislead anyone. I mean, you don't want to mislead anyone, period. But in this scenario especially.

That's correct. And I talk about good leaders, learn how to manage the truth. And it's the way you pitch it is important the way you talk about it. But in these situations, really being upfront and open about things because like you said, you know, there's going to be some digging if things go forward and you just want to be transparent and authentic and say, hey, you know, maybe one of the reasons we're, you know, you could say one of the reasons we want to sell is because the business is ready to go to the other. The next level. We just don't know how to do it that well.

That is what we say. And it has the added benefit of being true. Yeah, we know. We're not the ones to take it to the next level. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, perfect. All right, well, we have. We have a part two to do here, Shannon, don't we?

We do, yeah. You know, we talked last week about why it's important to have career paths for your employees and all the added benefits you get. And then we started to talk about how to do it. We focused on creating the org charts and how to do that. So if you missed that episode last week, go back and listen to that, because in a few minutes, we're going to go on to the next section and go in and start with why job descriptions and ladders are really important.

I like it. All right. The. I want to do that. The next thing that I want to do, though, is I want to tell everybody a little bit more detail about each of our two sponsors. If that works for you.

Yeah, let's do it.

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And, you know, the underlying concept here is, you know, you're creating all these things to help other people, but in turn, you know, of course it's going to help you and your small business. And one of the things, you know, we talked about the org chart and that E Myth concept where when you start, you know, you put your name in every box, but you're kind of creating this future of what your business is going to look like. And all the roles that you do, I think one. Another good way to do it is with job descriptions. And I say I call ladders or use that term ladders as well, is because the job description can, you know, obviously it's got to describe what you do in the job, but also should have some things like prerequisites. You know, what do you need to know to get this job? You know, what's the. You're a tech. I always lean back on the tech thing because that's.

That's what you did.

Yeah, stuff we did. So, you know, it's like, oh, you're a tech level one. Well, in order to become a level two, you have to, you know, be in this position for so long, and then part of the job description should also include the next steps for advancement. You know, and it could be all kinds of different things. You know, you could go into whatever position, but having that as part of the job description, where you're coming from to get that job and what the next steps is really a great way to get across to people. Look, we want you to continually advance into new roles here.

Okay. So I like this idea. Right. When you talk about it, it sounds good. When we go to apply this to our businesses, though it almost sounds insincere. Well, let me explain this because I need to be talked out of this. I know I'm the one that's wrong here. So maybe, who knows? Maybe. Sure. Fair. You know, the idea of, let's say you have a small company, 10 people or less, Right. And you bring someone in and you say, okay, well, I'm starting you as a, you know, level one technician for us, Right? Yep. And if you do the, you know, stay here long enough and you do these things and you'll become a Level 2 technician. Now, if there are no Level 2 technicians yet that that person could look up to because. Right. We're bringing new people in. So. Okay. You know, it seems like we're calling. We're just coming up with names for things that don't exist. And. And that's the part Where I feel insincere about it. Right. But okay. I mean, I like the idea of incentivizing someone saying you could earn up to level two, but when there is no formal. Like when there is no one at level two, the structure isn't there. Like, what are we actually having?

I believe. Yeah, I think, I mean, and I appreciate that sentiment. So you could have to. If you're just starting out or you're hiring somebody for that position, you have to describe it like that. It's like, look, we're trying to create a system here, so when we grow and meet some benchmarks, and maybe you need to set those benchmarks, when we can afford to hire a person underneath you to actually create a department, this is the next step that you can go.

Got it. Right.

And so I like that.

Okay. Yeah.

You do have to be ready to kind of defend it, if you will, because as I mentioned before on the show, everybody will remember everything you said.

Forever and they will hold it against you. Yeah, well, they might not remember everything, but they'll remember the things that they can hold against you. That's for sure.

Or maybe not hold against, but hold you accountable.

Yeah, that's. Yeah, that's. No, that's a bunch of.

They said, look, you said I could become a level two, whatever salesperson.

Da, da, da.

You have to be able to go, yes, I did. And you may even have to put it in writing. You may need to say, once we reach some benchmarks and can afford to hire the next person, this is the long term plan. You need to confidently be able to go back and say, we're not at that point yet or we haven't met those benchmarks.

So I can do the business.

The business can't afford to hire that person.

You just changed my whole outlook here. Yeah.

You're helping me. The goal is you're getting their buy in. Look, this is a great job. You could do this particular job for whatever year, two, three, whatever.

Yep.

When you're ready to take on something else, this is what needs to happen to move you into that position and that helps grow your business.

No, it's, it's the right, it's the right way to do it. Yeah. Because you're, you're not just showing an investment in your employee, you're showing, well, leadership at its core. Right. Like, I have an idea as to where this is going to go and I'm willing to say it out loud that I have this idea where it's gonna go. Even though there's no Path there. Right. Like, there's. No one has walked this path before. We're gonna walk it together. But this is the path that I see happening now. I mean, obviously, things can change and you can adapt as you go, but by laying that path out, well, it's. I mean, it's. You're the same as your. You know, I pick the end of the story. I pick the story I want to tell so that I have an easier time figuring out how to get there.

They take ownership of it, of course.

Yeah.

So you start that on day one, or at some point, it doesn't have to be day one, but at some point you sit down and go, look, I want your help with this. This is my vision here. I'm trying to do this. And let's talk about that path because it's important. I'm going to skip ahead a little bit.

We're not skipping ahead. We're all just right here together. It's all good.

Yeah. Nobody sees my notes.

No, they don't see your notes. That's right.

But if they hit that, let's say they hit a ceiling and there's no place for them to go.

Right.

Well, I would suggest you need to be ready to help them, and it could be an opportunity for you and them because inevitably someone's going to come to you and say, you know what? I've learned a lot. I'm going to go start my own business because I think I can do this better, or I'm going to move. I'm moving to another part of the state, another part of the country, and I want to do this. That is a tremendous opportunity for you as a business owner to get involved with another business and to either perhaps help them financially. If you can't do that, perhaps you can help with resources, mentoring, guidance, that you can come up with some ownership, part of the business to use that thing and maybe fund them a little bit. It's not the end when employees leave to go do something on their own.

Oh, no, no. I. I agree.

Opportunity for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think that's important on this job description, this ladder thing that I'm. I'm talking about, too. You know, I think salary ranges are great to put on there because, you know, now you may not know what they are, but you certainly know where they're going to start. And over time, I think you get a good sense of. Look, you know, if you're a level or you're this person, or maybe it's a commission salesperson that you can Say, look, once you reach this level, we'll, we're going to increase this or do these kind of things. But I think people always want to see a range of what their opportunities are. Part of this can be also training, what educational opportunities are available for you. Hey, look, as part of this role, we're going to send you to this, get you this certification because, you know, in the tech field.

Oh, that can be before you.

Yeah, we want these certifications and all that kind of stuff. And lastly, on this topic, once they get there, they're showing you they're reliable. I believe you give ownership to the job description, to that person, letting them.

Write the next job description, modify it, adapt it. Yeah, you know, you keep, you keep.

Different ones, but they're going to know hopefully the job better than you do.

Well, that's a good idea. Yeah.

You need to be able to produce this. You need to create this. You got to make certain number of phone calls. Here's your expectation. And these people are helping you build out your organization. It's an awesome opportunity. It doesn't have to fall on your shoulders. If you think of job descriptions in a little different manner.

Yeah, you're blowing my mind here. This is, this makes perfect sense because I always, you know, I am used to paving or just heading into the unknown. I mean, forget about paving the way. Just like just going there and then figuring out how to pave it once you're there. That's totally fine for me and it's normal for me now. I'm sure there was a time when it wasn't, but it's been my life for decades. So I have fear and concerns about other things, but that's not one of them. It's like, oh, yeah, we'll figure it out as we go.

We'll figure it out.

Yes.

And I can't take credit for this, wholly take credit, because I had some great people and I had people come back to me and say, hey, you know what? This is the job I'm doing. Here's the job description. It's not quite what you brought me into doing.

What you think it was, Right?

Yeah. What you think was. Let me explain. That's amazing.

That's normal in a small company. I mean, people's jobs will take on. I mean, to say they take on their personalities is probably accurate, but more accurate is they take on the skills of and the interests of that person, you know, and that's, that's just how that's going to. That's how it's going to Work. But no, this makes sense. Yeah. Because not everybody is comfortable saying, we'll just figure it out. But if you, if you lay a little bit of structure around it, then people won't realize they're the ones figuring it out. Necessarily.

Yeah. And I think you have to be happy with, you know, this is also kind of a map, but it's a map of opportunities. And not everybody has to continue to excel and move up. You. That's okay. And it's okay to I, I think to tell your people that it's like, hey, you know, if you become a supervisor of this department and that's just your thing and you're super good at. If you stay in that role, you know, it's not. Oh, that's okay.

That's okay.

Because you get that, that Peter principle, you know, you don't want to just keep, you know, promoting someone until they get into a job that they're no good at. And you need an escape hatch in that case. So you don't lose good people. You know, you need to be like, hey, this didn't work out, but I would either love for you to step back and do this, or let's try something different, you know, because that concept, you can lose good people.

Oh, yeah. Well, and I, and I like that. You know, as we're talking about this and I realize we're talking maybe not at a 10,000 foot level, but certainly not at a 10 foot level. You know, we're maybe at 2,500ft here. But I like that this isn't just a function of time. You stay as a level one tech. To stick with the example, you stay as a level one tech for 18 months and then we will promote you to a level two tech. It's not a function of time solely. You've accomplished these things. We as the business have accomplished these things in part because you've been doing your job at level one for so long and successfully that the business has been able to grow to the point where not only do we need a level one tech, but we need a level two tech. So we'll move you into level two and someone new into level one and maybe you train them if it's appropriate for that to happen, you know, all of that stuff. But I like this idea of tying someone's advancement to the growth of the business. Because that's true. Right. It has the added benefit of being true. You know, like, yeah, we can't have a level 2 tech today because we don't need them. We only have room for one tech or whatever it is, you know, so. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

And it holds both parties accountable. The business needs to give certain things for this person to advance. Right?

That's right. That's training, tools, whatever, education, resources of some kind.

Resources, yes.

Yeah.

And at the same time, the employee needs to. Is accountable because they need to perform certain actions to learn to take on more responsibility, to move into the next thing. And it always. It's the answer to the question when people come ask you for more money, because it's laid out, it's very clear, and so you don't have to go, well, you know, we're not making the worst thing to ever tell your employees, I can't give you more money because the business isn't making enough. Yes, that may be true, but I.

Would never say that's a not. It's. I've said that in the past because.

So have I, and I've learned a lesson. And they start looking at, well, look at the car you drive, and you're going on vacation and you're doing this, and you, you, you need to separate it out. It's like one of the reasons I like not doing performance reviews and salary reviews at the same time.

Oh, because it, yeah, right.

It gets you away from a lot of sticky conversations that you can go, okay, hey, here's your performance review. This is what we're doing. And this is how you're. You're moving along this path. And then later on, when you're meeting with your accounting department, looking at things, they have this range of salary, and you go, great, okay. And then at some point you may say, hey, you've capped out on this range. If you want to move up, you need to take these classes, get another certification. It's just a roadmap for them.

How do you, how do you go about defining a salary range? I mean, let's say we know where the starting point is. Right. I mean that. Because that's a whole different conversation. Although not a bad one to have. But. But once you've started, you know, you got the starting point. You know, let's say, I don't know, whatever, 40 grand a year, you know, Whatever it is.

Whatever it is.

Yep. How, how do you define a range from there? How would. How do you approach.

Very scientifically. Okay, make it up. I mean, I can tell you, in the beginning, I was like, well, I don't know. Let's make. I just made it up. And like, okay, so let's start this. And I always use. I Never use round numbers. You know, I think it's more effective to say, okay, this starting range is $42,540 and the range is up to $54,890. You know, because people look at those numbers, goes, wow, they really thought about that.

It's not an arguable number, right?

No, it's just, that's it. You know, and some people can look at that go, ah, that's just not enough for me. Well, you can have that discussion. Go with G. Based on your experience, we're going to start you at, you know, 49. That, you know. Yeah, it's all arbitrary. Now. Over time, I think you will learn that range works. This range does.

Of course. Of course. Yeah. Okay.

You can't pay a level one tech. That or boy, you know, level two tech's making 80 grand a year, 150,000 a year, you know, for your business. It all depends. And you have to continue to tweak things, adjusting.

I have a question. You know, given your example, there was about a 15, 15 to 20% gap between the low end of the range and the high end of the range. Is, is that something that you have ever thought about before or. No?

No, I just, I just, I just start with some numbers that I know. Number one, the bottom number is the most important.

Of course. Yes.

And then you're going to give them some range.

Yeah.

And then you have to, then you have to put them in the spreadsheet and compare them to the other positions that you've got.

Yeah.

And I really like, you know, even people that aren't maybe used to getting paid on performance. I love tying bonuses. I would much rather give a bonus then increase your salary. Right. Because if I increase your salary, that's it for you.

Can't go back. You're never, that's right.

You're never taking that away.

That's right.

So with a bonus like, well, here's your base and you know, if your department produces, you know, this, you're going to get a bonus of whatever, you know. And I've had people get six figure bonuses in great years. And that was awesome because we, we had the cash to do it, of course, but then the next year maybe we didn't and we only gave them a 5% bonus. So they're tied into the, the performance of their job.

The job. Their company.

Yeah, right, the company, all those kinds of things. But I, I think it works really well. Another, you know, just kind of wrap this concept up. Mentorship's really important. For. For the mentor and the mentee. As if that's a word.

Yes, it is. Those are the correct words. Yes.

Yeah. You want to have that discussion when you bring on new employees. Like, hey, you know, as you learn, you've got so much to offer to help, we want you to mentor new employees that we bring in. Or maybe you need to mentor somebody in the sales department so they learn how this technical stuff impacts their business. Right. It could be across department, really important. It makes them feel better. I really love giving them a budget. It's like, hey, you're mentoring this person or this group of people. Maybe I'm going to give you a budget. You know what? It could just be something as simple as a couple hundred bucks a month just for them to go take people to lunch. You know, whatever it is, maybe you want them to take someone to a trade show. Maybe you other employees connect with your employees on an entirely different level than you do.

Oh, absolutely. Yes. Right. Yes, of course.

And so you can mentor as well, and you should. But having their peers mentor to them is, is terrific. And you'll get a lot of great feedback. They won't tell you stuff because you signed their paycheck, but they'll tell other people stuff. And if you have some trusted people, they can give you some really good feedback and mentorship. Maybe that needs to be part of some job descriptions.

Right, right.

Hey, before you go on to become a supervisor, we want you to mentor, I don't know, a couple of people for six months or something like that. Oh, right.

Yeah.

So you, you build that in and it helps people become more open, talking to each other. Some people are going to hate this.

Right. And.

And they just, they just won't do it. And that's okay.

Yeah.

You'll be good at their job.

Yeah.

And they, they want to stay there, so.

Yeah. But that, like, giving people the opportunity to fail safely.

Yeah.

Is really good. Huge. Right. Because like you said, you give. Before you can become a supervisor, you need to successfully mentor two other people or something like that. And they do the first one and they realize, I didn't like this. You can have that conversation because you haven't put them in the supervisor role. It literally was a test, but it's an open test. Like, everybody knows this test is happening. And now you can say, okay, well, if you're in a supervisor or management type role, you're going to need to be doing this all the time. Maybe this isn't your thing, or maybe you need to learn more to get there to get more comfortable with that. Which path would you like to take here? And you can avoid the Peter principle, which so often takes a spectacularly technical person. And I say technical meaning doing a hands on thing could be sales, it could be actual technology or whatever. And taking that person and, and because they're so good at their job, moving them into a management role, in theory, to help create other people who are as good at them. And so many times it's like, that's not how it works. So. Yeah. Interesting.

Yeah. So, you know, kind of wrapping this up, I think you have to keep it fluid and you have to constantly discuss that because everything changes.

Yeah.

And you don't want to be so locked in that you're like, oh, I can't take that move because I wrote this, told this person this, or whatever. So you got to have that discussion about how the only constant thing is that nothing stays the same.

Right, right, yeah, of course. Of course.

Yeah. And. And I. And I don't think you need to make it easy.

Well, no, we've talked about that. Like it's, it should not be easy. Yeah, no, that was one of the parts I like the best about this. Yeah.

Yeah. They need to work hard for, to, to advance and they need to be involved in, in their own success.

Yeah.

And then lastly, the real added benefit of a lot of this stuff is it, it helps really attract some great talent if you have these programs in place. Some people really love it. Talk about it on your website, LinkedIn newsletters. Make it part of your business story about how, hey, we're doing more for people in our community, trying to create more opportunities for them, you know, really promote that, because people love that. They love to connect with companies, especially now on a different level. And if you're, you know, a small business and you're doing these kinds of things, creating opportunities, you should be talking about it.

Yeah, I like it. I like it. Thank you. This has been.

Yeah, I'm talking about.

It's good. Yeah. Two episodes that are super helpful. I definitely learned the most this time, so I get to check that box.

I learned a lot by taking these notes and it reminds me of a lot of things and I could do some, some research, but we would love to get your feedback on what you like about this, what you think I got wrong. Feedbackusinessshow.co. or come visit us on Facebook at the small business support group, businessshow. Co. Yeah.

Yeah. And if there's somewhere else that you think you'd like to see us or to be a part of a community. Let us us know, because we want to go where you are. Where are you? Where do you hang out every day? Let us know. Not that we're going to come stalk you like we. We want to do this in an okay way, but, you know, and hopefully a digital way, because it's. Shannon and I are on different edges of the country, so we got to make that part work. But, yeah, let us know where you are. Yeah, it's good. Thanks for listening, folks. Thanks for hanging out with us. Thanks for checking out our sponsors. ITrust Capital, SBS, Bamb. Com small. Keep living that charmed life. We'll see you next week.