Delegating by Outsourcing, Dispute Resolution, a​​n​d Boomerang Employees – Small Business Show 218

The Small business show, episode 218 for Wednesday, April 10, 2019. Greetings, folks, and welcome to the Small Business show here@businessshow.co the show BFA Small Business. Our sponsor for this episode is textexpander.com podcast. We'll tell you why you want to go there and what you get when you go there shortly. But here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton, and out on the west.

Coast, I am Shannon Jean. How are you, man?

I'm good. You sound. You sound pristine today, mister.

Is that right?

Yeah, it sounds pretty good. I don't know why. I don't know if. I don't know if it's something I did on my end or, you know, if the bandwidth gods are smiling upon us, whatever it is. Yeah, that works.

I'm happy to be heard.

Yeah, exactly. Right, Right. That's why. Actually, that's what we're doing here.

You got it. So what's going on in your neck of the woods?

All kinds of things. It's crazy. It's. You know, we just tipped over from Q3 to Q. Sorry, from Q1 to Q2. And so that always brings all kinds of crazy things in the, you know, consumer advertising business. It's weird how we focus on these, you know, artificial, you know, barriers or artificial tipping points of our. Of our calendar and all that stuff, like. But, you know, it's. It's how it works. It's fine. It's just how it goes. Yeah, no, it's good. That's good.

Awesome.

I.

Stuff you want to start and talk about, right?

I do. Well, a couple of things. Yeah. I wanted to share the hardest thing that I do every day, and I realized this every day, and I've actually been thinking about this for a couple of weeks, and. And it's amazing that it doesn't really become any easier. And the hardest thing that I do every day is drink two glasses of water when I wake up. Like, as soon as I wake up, I mean, I put on my clothes or whatever, and then I get to the kitchen and I drink two full glasses of water every morning.

Straight. Just right to your head.

Straight.

Straight. No problem.

Straight in. It is so difficult. I don't know why. Maybe it's because I just woke up. But I've been doing this for months, but it just doesn't get any easier. It's like. And I treat it like a system, like, you know, in the Scott Adams style, I give myself permission not to have them, but I do have to fill the glass. Right. Like that's, you know, that's my deal. And I can just not have it or whatever. And honestly, there are days, for example, tomorrow I have to drive down to Princeton, New Jersey, first thing in the morning. I am not going to drink two glasses of water and get in the car. Right, right. Okay. I mean, there's a practical limitation there that, you know, biology gets in the way of. Right. But. So I will give myself permission not to do it on any day tomorrow. I'm telling you, I'm not gonna do it. But by and large, I don't fail at this. I drink them, but, man, it is so hard. But that's interesting. It gives me. It's so stupid because it gives me such a sense of accomplishment.

Well, that's good.

At the beginning of the day. Yeah, it's great. I like that it hasn't gotten any easier in a twisted way, because it's like, all right, if I can do this, then I'm good to go. I'll do whatever I want all day. Sort of teaches me that. It reminds me. It doesn't teach me. It reminds me that there's no reason to procrastinate. Once you do something, it seems way easier than it felt like while you started trying to do it. Yeah.

And if that can give you that sense of accomplishment to start your day, doesn't matter what it is. It's a great example how something simple can hack your brain and get you moving quickly. And I have some tricks like that, too. And when I miss them, I always like, damn. You know, if I. That's how I wanted to start. I wanted to get done, get going, and then roll on. But those are great tricks.

Yeah, it's just like. It's a. I didn't. The night. I think the nice part about it is that it's an accidental trick. Right. It's something that I want to do. Like, I know it's good for me to drink water. Right. So I started doing it because. Because of that. Not for any other reason. It's like, well, if I just start the day with two glasses, then I know I'll never get behind because I do drink water all day. And that part's fine, but it, you know, just kind of kickstarting the body and all that. It. For me, it works really well. And it has this added benefit of just not getting any easier, which is great. Yeah, it's really good. It's really good.

Very cool.

I heard a quote this weekend, my friend. I went with my son. This is gonna sound weird to A. It wasn't a tour, but it was a introduction to usc, University of Southern California, but it was in Boston. It was just at a hotel, you know, and it was really, really well done. They really gave us, you know, whatever flavor they wanted to communicate, but they gave us a flavor of usc, even though we didn't get to go there. And it was about two hours long or whatever, and it was broken up. You know, they did sort of a general presentation and then they did, you know, breakouts for the different schools or whatever, and it was great. They have 20,000 students there, or as they like to say, 19,000 students because. Or 19,000 undergrads. I think they have another 25,000 graduate students, which is a weird ratio. Yeah. But, you know, whatever. It works. But they say 19 because I think they feel like that sounds like they can call themselves a smaller school than a 20,000 student school. Whatever. I think that's just marketing speak. Yeah. But they did say something when we were talking to. We went to the breakout group for one of the schools, which is the engineering school, and the guy that was doing that speech said, that session, or whatever you want to call it, said something that, that resonated with me. He said, we try to be as inefficient as possible when it comes to creating an education path. And he said, we don't create an education for 19,000 students, we create an education for one student. And then we repeat that 19,000 times, which is really like, we obsess about customer service here. And so in that same vein that really resonated, it was like, okay, have your systems, have your paths, but don't try to homogenize it. Walk into each experience with the path that you want to take, but know that you are individualizing it for that person in that moment. And I think that's really important. Yeah, yeah.

And a great thing to tell your customers, in this case. Potential customers.

Potential customers, that's right, Absolutely.

So they know that. I mean, if you're especially a larger business and you know, you're. You're moving through things quickly, that. That's a really interesting way to look at it and an interesting message to use as like a persuasion technique in this case.

Absolutely. Oh, it's a sales pitch. Absolutely. All day long.

That's pretty cool.

Yeah, but. But it did resonate, and it is one of those things. If you, if you have a business where hopefully you are already customer service focused and you're starting to grow and your customers are going to be aware that you are growing this is the kind of thing that you can communicate to them. Like, hey, look, no, customer service is at the core of what we do. We are not trying to, you know, create a scenario that works for 200 customers. If you only have 100 now, whatever it is.

Yeah, yeah, right.

But we are trying to. We have created a scenario that works for one customer. We've already repeated it a hundred times. Now we're just going to repeat it another hundred and try to be as inefficient as possible. I just like that because it seems so counterintuitive that it gets your attention and.

Yeah, that's. It's a little bit wrong.

Right.

And that, that gets your attention. I like that.

Yeah, it's a little bit wrong. I like it. Yep.

Yeah, I stole that from Scott Adams. Sorry. He always says that, you know, he'll go, yeah, he'll. He'll comment on a, someone's comment that they made or a tweet or something like that, and you go see how it's just a little wrong. That's what gets your attention like that. In this case, I think that's good because you would think with a massive school, the, you know, very successful, well known, you know, like usc.

Yeah.

That they would want to be super efficient.

Right.

But in. They're telling you the opposite and you're kind of going, huh, that's weird. And you pay attention.

Yeah. I mean, it immediately communicates. We know we're big, but we really are still customer focused like that. That's the message that it communicated. Now, whether that's true or just BS because it's sales pitchy. Well, whatever, you know, that's fine. Yeah, that's. There's nothing wrong with that. Yeah. At least they said it. Like, it shows that they're aware of it. Like it. Even if it turns out to be bs, it's probably less BS than the school that doesn't even care about it at all. Right.

Yes, yes. You know, so, yeah, somebody believes it. So he believes it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's very cool. I like it. I like it.

You have something going on that related to our last topic in our interview last week with Brian o'. Connell. Right. Yeah.

We. A couple things I want to talk about and before we get into kind of our main topic, one is the 5050 partnership. You know, you asked Brian O' Connell from Maris Water Solutions, will you ever do another 5050 partner? And you know, he immediately said no. Very quick.

Couldn't have been faster. Yep.

Yeah, it could have. Faster. And it Is, you know, uh, it does bring up a lot. There's a lot of challenges with having, you know, equal partner and just two of them. It's much. In many ways, it's easier to manage when you have three because you have that odd number out and it. You can kind of play off that. And so, you know, maybe. Maybe that's true.

Well, you know, I'm not a big asterisk to serve on that one, but it's okay. Yeah, yeah, it can.

It can.

It can. Yeah, yeah.

In this case, like, my. My focus was like, okay, yeah. How do you resolve, you know, when things don't go well?

That's what you're looking at with any of these scenarios.

Right. And I have a partnership now, and, you know, in the beginning, this new venture that I started last year, and I'm working with a great guy, super talented. And in the beginning, when we set things up, it was going to be. I was going to be kind of advising and doing a little bit less and providing some resources and things. So, you know, it was a. It's like, look, you're. You're more. You're running things. You're more the operating partner. So you're going to get, you know, your ownership will be higher.

Higher than the 50%. Sure.

Like, you know, 60, 40, or whatever it was. And so that result. Okay, that's just the way it works. And I felt like that was good. But as we've kind of. Let's see, what's the word I'm looking for? It's pivot, but I don't really like that word that much. But we're adapting the business because we're developing a system.

Right. You're evolving things is what you're doing.

Yeah, we're evolving. We're not in love with specific outcomes. We're not getting hung up on that, on a specific outcome. So we're changing to take advantage of some other opportunities. But it will require me to be a little bit more involved or a lot of. Bit more involved. So it's like we have to go to 50. 50. And so when I was amending the working agreement that we've talked about here on the show a lot, I was trying to come up with a. Especially after hearing that comment last week, it just reminded me that, you know, I got to add a phrase in here that will help resolve anything that. That may come up. And so, you know, I just thought I'd talk about it today. You know, basically what I did is I introduced a section on dispute resolutions and what we would do in the event that we both disagreed and we were stuck. And you know, those things happen more often than you're not.

Well, you have to, you have, you can't account for every scenario, but you can try and describe what, you know, conflict or divorce looks like. You know, you're not going to get it right because you're not there, but at least you can agree at the start how you're going to approach those things if and when they happen, which they will.

But hopefully you'll be able to then reach a resolution where divorce doesn't happen.

Right, right.

But you need that. So in this case, I basically described a situation where we would both, you know, use a third party service and we would hire someone and we would both agree that that person, the independent of either of us, it wouldn't be a recommendation from me or from, from them. And that person would have. Which would make the third vote and each of us would have a vote and that person would be. Represent. Be the representative of the business interest only.

Oh, that's great. Right, because you guys each have, you bring your own baggage, as everyone does. Correct.

We represent ourselves, our own interests. Right. Like we all do. So this person and I, and I say, you know, in a conversation off the, out of the working agreement, it's like, look, we just go on Yelp and search for whatever or I mean, there's a million attorney referral services and we just go, great, here's five. I picked these five. You pick one out of them. Right. That way you kind of make it to where it's completely independent. Go out and say, look, we need some help with this dispute resolution. You get a vote and every, you know, we look at the issue, describe it. I mean, it's almost like a mediation.

Yeah, it's like describing a very efficient mediation.

It's private, it's just for us. And you tell the attorney, it's like, okay. And maybe it's not even an attorney. It doesn't have to be. It could be some other kind of professional. It could be a business, somebody else that owns a business, you just never know. But someone you can both agree on. And, you know, an attorney is an easy way to do that. And one person, like I said, picks the list and the other one picks the specific person would be fine. So anyway, I just thought I'd mention that because I'm hoping, number one, I'm hoping I don't have to ever do it, but number two, that it would be a good way to resolve any of those Situations.

That's really smart, man.

Yeah.

And I would even say, you know, I alluded to a scenario where even with a three way, we had, I had done a three way partnership that went totally sideways. And part of the, I mean, the problem was that the three of us couldn't agree on how to move forward, obviously. But the issue was in order to, at the outset, what we decided was, okay, well, we have to have unanimity amongst the three of us, which really is the same as a 5050 partnership. Right. If you don't have unanimity, you're in a logjam.

Yes, you are.

The assumption, the, the failed, the incorrect assumption was that by requiring unanimity amongst the three of us, we would be able to talk it out and, and you know, amongst the three of us, sort of sort things out. Well, that obviously didn't work in this scenario. Wound up in lawsuits and log jams and, you know, the value of the business didn't go where it should have, et cetera, et cetera. Your scenario here would have likely worked for that by saying if we hit a log jam, doesn't matter how many people there are. Right. I'm just abstracting the concept.

That's true. You're right.

It's. If there's a log jam, then we bring in someone that represents the business. And man, what a smart like, that's the key phrase. There is someone to represent the interests of the business. And I could even see going a little bit further. And perhaps you do this at the time. I don't know if you need to like codify this ahead of time, but if there is some dispute, maybe it needs to be agreed that whomever is chosen cannot do work for any of the partners for a period of two years after. Right. Because you could, I mean, you could take a deal on the side and say, hey, okay, look, of the five of you, if I pick, you know, or you're the one picking, right? So you go to number three and you're like, okay, well all five of these people are already approved by the person that I'm not agreeing with. I go to number three and I say, hey, I've got this other project I need to hire somebody for and it's going to be very lucrative. You know, I'll hire you if you. If things go my way. And if they don't, then maybe we don't see eye to eye and I don't want to hire you. Right. I mean, you could even do it in a way that's. That's not necessarily, you know, breaking the rules, but. But having a rule where it's like, okay, and neither one of us can hire this person again for, you know, two years or something like that. Yeah. Keep it fair. Yeah, yeah.

And most attorneys that you talk. Because I've had this experience before where I'd be like, hey, can you help me with this thing? And they. And our, you know, corporate attorney would say, you know, I really can't because I represent the company.

Right.

But I'll refer you to someone that can help you with that. And that. That's what you want. You want that independent, you know.

Yeah. Somebody just come in.

Yeah. Look. Look at the situation. And all they're really doing it, you know, in most cases is venturing an opinion on what they think is in the best interest of the company to move forward.

So that's right. Yeah. That's all. Yeah. They're just sharing an opinion. That's.

Yep.

Yeah. That's.

If you guys can't. And then after that, if, if, if, you know, you're going to vote, he could have his opinion, or her opinion could be different from both of you. Right. Or. Or the three of you, however many parts you have.

Yeah.

But at least it's. What I found is that oftentimes it's just the exercise of going through these things that helps to resolve the problem. Because frequently it's. It's lack of communication because you can kind of see problems coming down the road.

Right.

Long, long way. Down the road you go. Boy, this is tough. This person doesn't want to hear anything.

Yeah.

Or. Or maybe I'm the person that doesn't. You know, you can kind of get the sense of how things are going. So frequently it is that we're just not communicating, and maybe this third party can come in and help break that logjam. So one or both of you can say, hey, you know, yeah, we're not. We're being an idiot.

We're being idiots. Yeah. Let's.

Let's change this.

In general, if you have to pull that person in, you're sort of accepting implicitly, at the very least, that you're being an idiot. Like, you know, like there's. There's an emotional component at that point. Right. You know, it's hard to see, you know, the forest from the trees and all of that, but generally speaking, yeah, that's what's going on. Yep, Yep.

I agree.

I agree. Yep.

That's cool. I have one more topic after. I think you want to do something here. I do yeah, let's go.

Yeah, I want to. Well, I want to talk about our sponsor, and then. And then we have Boomerang employees to talk about.

We do. And I have. Before we hit Boomerang, I have one thing that I want to go over really quick too about.

Yeah, okay, sounds good. All right, well, our sponsor, as I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, the URL is what I mentioned, and that's textexpander.com podcast. Textexpander is a utility service that both Shannon and I use separately in our businesses and our personal lives. And I mean, it's just. It allows you to take all of those things that you would have to type out or copy from an old email and paste into a new email. You keep them in your TextExpander database, and you can either invoke them with a click of a mouse or, even better, a short little keystroke, hence, text expander. You type this little thing, and it expands into this bit of text that you have perfected and crafted and even synced amongst your entire team. And now textexpander 6.5 for macOS and 2.0 for windows sports an entirely new visual editor for snippets. What this means is your snippets are your text. You can put little variables into them, like the current date or the contents of the clipboard, right? So things can get really interesting. It used to be that you had to know, okay, I'll do like, you know, percent U or something for the, you know, this URL or something like that. I can't even remember because I always had to look it up. Well, now in the editor, you can just drag these things around. It's all visual, all way easier. And so you can edit your snippet, fill ins with dates and date math, little nested snippets where you've got one inside the other. You can insert words, phrases, forms, templates, and more with just a couple of clicks everywhere you type. It's really, really simple and super powerful. It's exactly what we talk about here. We're efficiency freaks, right? Textexpander allows us not only to be efficient, but accurate, because oftentimes efficiency turns into rushing, and rushing turns into. As my. As a former attorney used to say, he says, haste makes malpractice. Well, that. That applies here, right? When you're trying to get something out, if you're just going quickly, you can make mistakes. Textexpander keeps you from making those types of mistakes. It's really, really awesome. So 20% off your first year is available if you go to textexpander.com podcast. That's why you want to go there, right? When you get there, you'll be able to pick small business show from the list. So you'll be able to tell them that we sent you. But go to textexpander.com podcast. That's where you can download and sign up and all the things that you need to do. That's your starting point for your experience with textexpander. I'm happy to have them as a sponsor. We would be telling you about them as a sponsor, but I can also recommend them. It's just awesome. And I couldn't live without it. And our thanks to textexpander for sponsoring this episode.

Yeah, it's an incredible app. I don't know how I would live without it. Fantastic.

No, I'd write my own. If textexpander went away, I just write my own like that. It would be worth taking the time to do that. Yeah. Yeah. It wouldn't be nearly as pretty as what they've got. It would be functional, and that's what I need. But I don't want them to go away. I'm happy to. Yeah, no, this is a good thing.

They're awesome. Okay, cool. So we had some questions at the small business support group. You can go to businessshow co Facebook and it'll route you over there. And one listener asked us to expand a little bit more on the outsourcing as a method of delegating. And I want to spend a few minutes on it. And I think basically what you ask yourself, what is the. What is your core competency? What expertise are you bringing to your business that no one else can do? Right. And you want to stay as focused on that as possible. And anything else, you need to consider delegating or outsourcing to someone else. And especially outsourcing if you're on your own. Maybe you don't have employees, you're using contractors or you're growing or you don't want to hire another employee. Outsourcing still is a, you know, a great solution. And I. I've talked to people before and like, well, I just can't afford it. I don't want to spend the money. But if you think about that, that 10, 1000 rule that we've been talking about, that Joseph Stewart from Mac Outlet and felt that we had on last month, I believe, you know, are you doing $10 an hour work or a thousand dollar an hour work? Well, if it's if it's not where you want to be and you can hire somebody, you should really look at it. And it is relatively inexpensive. You know, sites like Fiverr and Upwork can really help you as well as, you know, we've had a number of people on the show that are HR experts that do outsource hr, accounting, all kinds of stuff that you can go search our archives at BusinessShow Co and look up resources and you know, especially stuff like graphic design, web design, programming, like I said, HR and accounting, social media. I mean, are you going to sit, are you going to try to figure out Facebook, you know, ads and marketing and all that kind of stuff on your own? Is that what you're good at? Probably not. And it's. And it's not that expensive to get some help to come do it.

No. And if. Even if you are the type of person where you feel like, and you probably are, if someone were to show you how to do this stuff, you could do it. There's two questions, right? First of all, you need someone to show you. And then secondly, even once they do, back to your point, is it worth your time to do it? And the answer to the second part may be yes, right? Your Facebook advertising might become your thousand dollar an hour work, right? Like it really, truly could be. I know Ryan Stuman, who we interviewed, the hardcore closer, I think last year. He manages his own Facebook advertising and he sees it as thousand dollar an hour work. So for him it makes sense. But he had to learn it somewhere. And if you don't already know how to do it, then it's worth hiring somebody for $10 an hour or maybe even $30 an hour to do it for a little while. Come up with a strategy. Once you begin to grok it and you want to take over, well, there's nobody out there that says you can't. You know, you can treat this stuff like, like lessons that also are productive.

So yeah, and I like to. I really enjoy getting into this stuff too, you know, and learning it. But I have forced myself to learn just enough about it so I can understand it. Then I can go, okay, I'm going to hire somebody to do this. Now that's much better at it than I am, but at least I kind of know how it works so I can have a discussion about it and what we're trying to achieve and what the capabilities are. Outsourcing. We talk about it here all the time. One of our recent sponsors is Abby Connect. It's like, answer your phone. Should you be answering Your phone? I don't think so. Unless you should be out hustling doing other stuff, driving new business closing sales, you're going to really want to take every cold lead phone call that comes in. I don't think that's a great use of your time. And there's so many resources out there for you to choose from. You can really be selective. Read reviews, ask your peers and other business people for referrals. Like I said, search our archives. I mean, you really owe it to yourself to look at any opportunity that you have to delegate that information out. And if you're a small business with just a single owner operator, which I love, there's a great book about million dollar businesses and I have to find the link to it and put it in the notes. Run by solopreneurs they call them, I guess. And I think that's awesome. Especially I mean, at this stage having recently sold a company with a bunch of employees and all this kind stuff. And I love that too. But I am also enjoying launching businesses now on a smaller scale. And I'm constantly reminded how much, often much more of the profit trickles down to your own pocket when there's not a huge infrastructure built around it.

Yeah, yeah, it's true. Yeah.

So that's my take on the outsourcing. If you have other questions, feel free, you know, to send us a email feedbackusinessshow Co or ask the question in the support group at businessshow Co. Feedback.

Yeah. And thanks Scott, for reminding us to not miss that one. Yeah, that was a good one.

Yep, definitely. Cool. What's next?

Boomerang employees. This is a term that I did not know existed until I was in the midst of considering this. So the idea is that sometimes someone leaves your company and comes back to work for you again in the future. Sometimes people leave and they're not invited back, nor are they welcome. And that's okay, right? I mean, like, you know, you need to bear that in mind as we have this discussion. There's no. As I've said many times, when you have an employee, either one of you can decide to end the relationship, but only together can you decide to continue or start or in this case, renew the relationship. Right? So don't feel pressure just because someone might become available again. In fact, I would say if you're considering hiring someone that has worked for you, start down the path by thinking this isn't going to work. And the reason I advise that is because it didn't work in the past.

Something about it didn't work for you or for them. Right.

For you or for them. Or perhaps both. Right. But it ended. So why did it end? And that's really the first question you need to get to. And, you know, so I have done this. Right. I had an employee, actually, I had several employees leave last year, but one of them has now come back. And it is fantastic. It worked out really well. But it was a very diligent, deliberate, and slow process that got us here. And the first part of it was to revisit that exit interview where because this person chose to leave, it wasn't me firing them and letting them go. This person chose to leave, which is going to happen. It's fine. I don't hold grudges for that kind of stuff. There's other things I'll hold grudges for, but by and large, not that that's okay. And when he left, I asked him, I said, okay, why are you leaving? And we had this discussion. He didn't really have any specific answers, nor could I twist his arm to give them to me. It was like, well, whatever, okay, great, off you go. Well, I suggest that if you are going down that path and someone sounds like they might be coming back, the first conversation is to resume the last conversation, assuming you had it. And it's to really dig into that exit interview, because now you do have the ability to really dig and virtually twist arms. You don't actually want to twist someone's arm. That's probably a bad way to resume a relationship. But. Yeah, but digging in and saying, okay, what was it? And really dig. And this is one of those scenarios where I think it's okay to let yourself overanalyze things because you might not get all the straight answers. The person might not even know all the straight answers or certainly might not know how to articulate them in a way that's going to be helpful to you. But intuit things, interpret things, obsess a little bit about them, because you really want to make sure that if you do open this door again, that you're not going to find yourself in the same spot, because that's a huge waste of time for everybody.

Yeah, it is, right?

Yep. Yeah.

You don't want to come back and recreate the environment that caused that person to leave.

That's right.

You're looking, you know, what, What. What are we going to do different? And I really like the idea of engaging with the. The former employee and getting their input into that so that they can get you. You with them. It's like okay, well, because it's not going to be the same. Right.

Well, if it is, you've. I think you're lying to yourself.

Correct.

And, and especially if it actually is the same, because what you're lying to yourself about there is that it's going to last. Now, there are, of course, exceptions to all of these things that we're saying. If somebody left because they had a major disruption in their personal lives or their family or whatever, like, that's different than I left to go work somewhere else. Okay, Right. So obviously you need to go in with the awareness of why, but that's exactly it. Right. You know, if. If the reason they left was because they had this major family event. Well, is it over? Like, that's. That's a fair question. Yeah.

Was that done?

Did it resolve in a way that, that frees you up both time wise and sort of, you know, intellectually? Can you. Can you re. Engage here or is. Is there still this thing that's sort of dragging you out the door? And that's a fair question to ask. But to your point about it being the same, I think the best scenario is to redefine the new position for this person if you're bringing them back to do the same thing. To me, that's a recipe certainly for our scenario. You got to change it up. Yeah, you got to change it up at least a little bit. And in our first conversations that we started having about this, the first thing he said was, well, if I'm gonna come back and do the same job that I was doing full time, I don't see that as a full time job. I think that's a halftime job. I was like, wow, okay, that's. I mean, it was interesting. It was enlightening, but it also was informative that, okay, he's thinking about this as from the right perspective. Like, he's not just looking to, you know, turn the switch back on again.

Yeah.

It's like, okay, yeah, it was, it was a good sign. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. And if they are coming back to do the same thing, you know, you got to ask that question again. It. This again, just requires a lot of sort of introspection and self awareness, like, why is it going to be different this time? And if you can't answer that question, then make it different. Change something, you know.

Yeah.

And, yeah, and. And don't expect it to be the same. And you know that. Well, that feeds into a couple other things that we're going to talk about. But do you have Any other thoughts about that?

Yeah, I think that I've done this too several times, and I've had it work before and I've had it not work before. And I do really think a lot of it hinges on that transparency of the conversation you have with this person. And I do believe it does need to be in a different role because, you know, when employees leave, you often find out lots of different things, right?

Yes.

About, about how they were doing what the job was. And like, to your point, you know, in your experience or the, the person to their credit said, hey, I think I could probably do this halftime. Well, you may have people working for you now that think like that, but they're not going to come tell you. Right, right. But here's, here's an opportunity that you say, oh, okay, cool. So what do you want to do? Halftime? Because people leave for all kinds of reasons. Not, I mean, it's not always money. A lot of it is fulfillment and are they happy and are they being challenged and is it, are they learning new things? And it's often that they're not. So they're like, well, I'm going to go learn something else. So now is your opportunity to say, okay, how do we structure this and what do you want to do? And is there an opportunity in the organization to do that? I've had difficulty with like managers and supervisors that want to come back and step right back into the same role. That's hard because you may have already moved someone else into that position. Probably have. Maybe you eliminated that position.

You may have realized you didn't need that position, but you needed something else. And, and that totally happened with me. Yeah, you know, it was like, because I, I inherited that job and realized that honestly, a good chunk of it was irrelevant, you know, and, and then also realized that some of it was necessary, like we were leaving some money on the table. It was like, okay. So when he came back and said, I think this really is a part time job, it's like, okay, you just, I, I, you may not have articulated it the same way I would have, but you just described exactly the same conclusion I came to, that only part of that job was valuable for this business. Now, maybe 10 years ago it was all valuable, but now it's not. And that was a very interesting, again, a very positive thing. It was like, okay, I'm feeling good about this.

Yeah, that's a great way to start the conversation. Versus hey, I want to come back and you know, I want to, I want the same job. Yeah, you know, And I, I have, I think there's definite pros and cons. You know, it's great. You have somebody that kind of is already trained and it kinds of know, knows how things work. They understand your culture. You, you kind of know what you're getting. It's a known commodity. And other thing I really like about it is I think it sends a very positive message to your other employees. As long as it's not a disruptive employee.

Right.

That you've gotten rid of or something. But if it was somebody that was loved in the in and you had a, you know, going away party or whatever, barbecue, that kind of thing, people are happy as they should be because people are always going to leave your business and you always going to happen.

You've got to embrace it. Yep.

Yeah. So your other people see. Oh wow. You know, so and so left, took a chance, tried something new, didn't really work out. But look, now they're able to come back. I mean, that's really cool. And you know, you can use it as a lesson to encourage people to learn new things. Hopefully they'll do it. And apply those new skills within your own.

Yes. Locally, not externally. That's right.

That's right.

But if they can't, that's okay too.

That's okay too. You're right. That's a cycle. And the other thing I like about it is it can help with continuity with customers. If that person again had good relationships with customers, you can say, oh, you know, so and so has come back and we're really happy to, really happy to have them. And I think those are great. There's some cons though, and I know this is going to kind of sound draconian, but when that person left, if you brought someone else in or if you move someone within your organization into that spot, you might have a different salary level now. Right. Because when you hire maybe a new person, maybe you want to give them room to scale up over time so you're maybe not paying. Or maybe, you know, I'm going to have to train them more. Da, da, da, da, whatever. Or if you have a person moving laterally or up, up, maybe they're not going to make the same salary as this person that was there. You have to consider that.

Yeah. And now this person's stepping into a role that by definition is worth less. Not.

And I've done that.

But worth.

No, no, not worthless. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Space important. And I've had a hard time and I had just a great guy that I really liked, and I wanted to come back and do a different role. And he really had a hard time with it. And he was very honest with. He's like, you know, I'm having a hard time. My wife is really upset that I'm getting offered less, you know, And I was like, oh, I totally get it. You have to be comfortable with your spouse and your significant other and talk about these kinds of things. And I said, but here's why. You know, you're going to be doing a different job. It has less responsibility. It has, you know, you can go home at 5 o' clock and not think about it anymore. And this kind of thing. So once you, we explained it, this person wound up coming back and it worked out great. But, but that is something, a hurdle that you may have to get over.

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, you, you glossed over it or you mentioned it, but training is an interesting thing because when you bring someone back, especially if at least part of what they're doing, and that's certainly the case with, with this. And I'm gonna, I've got more to say about that. But if part of what they're doing is part of what they previously did, well, there is a temptation not to retrain that person. And there's a practical reality that for some things, they truly don't need to be retrained. But my advice is be really diligent and a little bit OCD about this. As you go through what their job's gonna be, think about where you want to retrain them, you know, because you may, even if nothing in your infrastructure or with your customers changed, if you, if, unless you completely ignored this entire job the entire time the person was gone, you are probably, as a business doing something different than this person did. And if you are successful at it, then you need this new person to come in and take over from there, not from where they were when they left off.

And see, that could be a negative. I mean, I had it down as a positive, but it could be a negative, right?

It needs to be the. Oh, absolutely. It can be both. And here's the thing. You as the boss, you're busy, so there is this temptation to just say, okay, well, just do it the way you used to do it. It's fine. I don't need to spend the time to train you. And man, that's a really slippery slope.

It really is.

Because you can rewind yourself back and maybe rewinding back is a good. In, you know, in, in whatever scenario. But if it's not you need to really be intentional about this. And yeah, yeah, it's much harder than bringing on a new employee where, you know, you have to train them. Right. And you get to train them because they have no preconceived notions about how to do things, at least not at your business. So yeah, it needs to be the right person. It, it's really what it comes down to. And, and I, my, my advice along these lines is build some check ins into the process. Like, okay, I'm gonna show you how we're doing things different now. And obviously I think of this like a programmer. All I need to do is show you the delta, right. You know, where we were. So I don't have to show you any of that. I'm just showing you what's different. Okay. And that's fine, that's efficient. No, like, all good. But check in a week later, two weeks later, three weeks later, four weeks later, and be upfront like, and make the decision together that we are going to check in to make sure that I haven't missed anything. And you're not just reverting to the default that you know from before. Because for some things, the default, you know, from before is exactly what we want you to do. And in many things it's not. And these are all okay, right? You know, and my guess is again, in the right scenario, whoever you've brought back in is going to embrace that, right? Like, okay, I left for a reason. This is great. The job I'm doing is different. Okay, that's good. But you have to be sensitive to all of that. Otherwise I think it might work for a short period of time, but then it's just gonna fizzle out.

And we talk about it a lot, you know, offline a bit about how, you know, sometimes it reinvigorates people when things change. I mean, I love change. I'm a huge fan of it. And so when people leave for positive things and negative whatever, if they go into something different or better, it can reinvigorate your organization and yourself.

Right?

Because you're forced to step in and oh, I got to jump in back and connect with these customers or start this new thing or come up with a new way to do things. And I like that often, you know, so I'm always hesitant to give that up. Like, oh, so and so wants to come back. You know, can we do it in such a way that it's, it's not going to take away what we've had to deal with? Let's say like the Last few months or something like that. The longer they're gone, I think the more open they are to, hey, things are different now.

Yep.

We don't do it. We don't do it this way. We do it this way. Are you willing to. But if it's, you know, three months or six months, I mean that, that can be, I think it can be difficult to make sure they're on board. And I think the key is, as you mentioned, is really just, you know, having those transparent conversations and making sure it's the right person. In your case that, you know, mentioned, hey, it's this a part time gig. What else can I do? The other half, that, that's a huge sign in the right direction.

Yep, exactly. Well, and you know, it's interesting. He was okay coming back as a part timer. He did not want to come back as a full timer with the responsibilities to do that job, which I thought was, which was great. And up until, I'll say the day before, that's probably not quite right. But up until the day before he started, the plan was for him to come back as a part timer. And we had one final conversation and it hit me like it all sort of came together. And one of the reasons that I've intuited that he left, he said some things that sort of led down this path. He didn't quite say this, but I think our growth was happening more slowly than he was comfortable with. And therefore it was like, oh, that company over there is growing faster. I need to join that train before I miss out. Totally understandable. No problem. And he's not wrong. And perhaps again, this is why I'm reading this into it. I certainly would agree that our growth wasn't happening as quickly as it could be. Other things were going on. I could come up with a million reasons that are all quite valid. But. But the reality, the result was we weren't growing as fast as we could. And it hit me, it was like, wait a minute, I need to spend more time working on the business than in the business. And one of those things is to take the I out of it. I don't need to be the one spending more time working. I don't need to be the only one spending more time working on the business. We just need to be working on the business more. And it was like, wait a minute, I'm about to hire somebody who's going to sort of naturally find something to do with the other half of their time. Right? Wait a minute, I know what to do with the other Half of their time, like, this is really obvious suddenly. And so it's like, okay, this business development stuff, the growth stuff that needs to happen, that hasn't been happening. Well, let's put some of that in your court and make you a full timer. And he couldn't have been happier about this. I mean, it really. Yeah, it was perfect. It was like, oh, but, you know, it's just one of those things that, you know, it takes a little while for these sometimes for me, anyway, it takes a little while for these things to, you know, percolate and develop and process. Yeah. It was like, oh, this is super simple. Why didn't we do this 10 years ago? Well, you know, hindsight. Yep.

But everything happens for a reason.

Everything happens for a reason. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. It was really interesting. Yeah, it is.

Yeah. So, I mean, I still would be of a mind if somebody asked me, hey, would you rehire other employees? I think it could be mostly a positive thing, but it really depends on the person, and it depends on how you handle it and how you structure it. But I think it's. I think it could be a good thing for your company.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. But you just have to be aware, like, self awareness. We talk a lot about self awareness here, and I'm somebody that obsesses over it. I don't get it right. Probably I don't even get it right half the time, but I at least am trying to. And. And I think that's the key, especially in these scenarios. Honestly, it's the key with hiring anyone. Stop and ask yourself, why am I excited about hiring this person? Just be aware of why you're making the decision. Because with a boomerang hire, if the reason is, well, it's way easier than hiring somebody that doesn't know my business. Oh, man. Yeah. Yeah, That's a warning sign. Yep. Yep. That's great.

Well, I'm glad it's working out.

And so far, so good. Yeah, it's been about a month and a half now, actually, so. Yeah.

That's awesome.

Yep. That's good.

Great. Good. Well, thanks for listening, folks. We certainly appreciate it. Thanks to our sponsors, textexpander and again, feedbackusinessshow. Co. Or visit us in the small business support group at businessshow Co. Facebook. We would love to hear from you.

Absolutely. Hey, Shannon. Keep living that charmed life, man.

I'm working on it.

Same.