Find a Mentor, Employee Chatter, and Festivus Employee Meetings

Business Brain, the Entrepreneurs podcast, episode 398 for Wednesday, September 21, 2022. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business Brain. Welcome back to Business brain here at BusinessBrain show, where we are small businessing with our business brains and really just living our charmed lives with our business brains every single week. Really, we're living them every day. We're just sharing about this every single week. Sponsors for this episode include business capital providers where you can go to bcproviders.com SBS to find out how you can get funded for as much as 250k in as little as 72 hours. We will share more details about that shortly here. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean. I want to warn you here, there's a fly in my studio. When I say studio, I say that loosely because that's my. My office, basically, because I'm a business guy. So if you hear me swing, you won't hear the fly, but you may hear me, like, you know, swat around as it buzzes around my face. So I just. Just put that out there. So how are you, Dave?

I'm good. I'm good. Uh, you know, life's been. Life's been nuts. I was thinking about our. We rescheduled for today because I was using my business brain yesterday to organize my life such that I can do the. I can lead my charmed life. And this was. We normally record on Tuesdays. Today we are recording on release day here on Wednesday because I went yesterday with my family to Boston to see this immersive King Tut. They call it the Beyond King Tut immersive experience or something. If and when it comes to your area, folks, highly recommended. But we did it on a Tuesday because, well, everybody else does things on the weekends and it gets really crowded. And so we are all at a point, every one of the four of us is at a point in our lives where we have some flexibility during the week time. And so we just kind of traded that out for maybe doing some work on a weekend or in the evening or whatever and just carved out the time in the middle of the day yesterday to bounce down to Boston. We had lunch and did the thing and came back and we went down after rush hour and came home before rush hour hour, and it was pretty good. So, you know, that's great.

That's a flexibility we talk about all the time.

That's exactly it. Yeah. It's leveraging that flexibility, and it really. It worked it works out. We, you know, we. We all. We all can do it. And once you. Once you kind of organize that around your. Organize your life in that way, and then you use your business brain, figure it out.

Yeah. And I think that also, as business owners, this kind of. It's a great example of the kind of benefit you can actually offer to your employees is the flexibility to do things with their family, whether it's this kind of thing where you're all together or not to miss your kids, you know, spring recital or leave early for this or whatever. What I found is, you know, we had a ton of loyalty over the years at various businesses because I always made a point like, you need to go, go. You know, you can't miss that stuff. And it just, you know, endeared those people to us even more. And I, anecdotally, I would say I felt less pressure just to, you know, hey, we got to pay more, got to pay more because we had this. This flex time.

You're paying in a different way. Yeah, yeah. We do the same thing here. And it turns out, have had amazing loyalty as well. Right. You know, and it's. I give my employees the same flexibility that I give myself. Like, if they want to do this, they know they are more than welcome to say, hey, I'm taking tomorrow, I'm doing this. But, you know, I'll make sure that I get the work done. And that's really what it is. I hate the idea. I almost said, I'll make up the time. You're not making up the time. You're getting the work done. And that's. That's another focus for us here is it's the way we are, the way our business runs. It's not like we need to punch clocks and log hours. It's. We need to get the work done. And as long as we're getting the work done, everything's good. I mean, we do like to have some synchronicity in terms of when people are working, in terms of the hours that people are working, because there's sort of those in the moment conversations that can happen. And to communicate synchronously as opposed to asynchronously makes a lot of. A lot of sense in a lot of cases, but not all the cases. And so, yeah, everybody's free to kind of work when they want to work. As long as they get the work done, that's it.

Yeah. And I think there's ways, like, we always had all kinds of levels of employees from entry level and technicians and Supervisors, managers, and it, the higher. I don't want to use this hierarchical thing, but for, you know, managers and executives, it's that flexibility or freelancers, maybe his flexibility is a little more, but that we did, we did have hourly folks and you can make it work with them too. You just, you have to. Some people roll right into it and they just, oh, yeah, great, I'll deal with it. Flex time, this kind of stuff. And we actually built up, let them earn flex time. You say, hey, you're going to stay, you want to get some things done, we'll bank it in your flex thing. Now every state is different. A lot of people, you know, they don't let you do that anymore. But I loved it and I think they liked it a lot. So it's definitely something to, to consider and to add to your benefits package when you're talking to people, especially when you're trying to hire people.

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It's powerful.

It's super powerful. And he's right. That, you know, I mean, I think about my own life when I've. When I've let my ego get in the way, which is far more often than not. So just, you know, I'm not good at this. But when I. When I have gotten it out of the way, I am far more successful than I am when I think I can be the one to just do it all. It's better when I do what I'm good at and let other people do the stuff they're good at.

Yeah, that's smart. It's also kind of that, you know, we've. I've made that comment before here on the show that you're the average of the five people you hang around, hang around with the most. Right. And, you know, it is the question that comes to mind, though, when you, like, especially somebody who's had massive success, how do you connect with that, someone like that? Because it's kind of a mentoring thing. Right. Okay, I'm going to find a mentor that's better than I am, however you define that. And I think that there's all different ways to do it, even to the point where you have to pay people. We had Brian o' Connell on the show a few years ago, a couple times, actually, and he joined this roundtable of CEOs. Actually, we had the founder of that show, too. And he talked about how, you know, they were making him better, this group that he was paying to join. And they told him, you know, hey, it's time. Your business has grown so much, you need to hire a cfo. And he just couldn't get his head around it and giving up that control, all that kind of stuff. And they told him, well, don't come back if you don't hire a cfo. Yeah, because you're wasting our time. And that got him to hire a cfo, and it made all the difference in his life. I know he's been, you know, very successful, and business has grown, grown tremendously. So there's lots of different ways to do it, but I guess the key is just to get out there, even if you have to pay, pay for it. You got to get involved in some groups. You know, ask your kind of unofficial advisors who you should meet, who you should talk to, whether it's your accountant, your attorney, your banker, any. Anybody, your business associates. If you join the chamber of commerce in any sort of organization that you can then reach out to people that you think are doing better than you and learn from them.

Yeah. As I'm digging into this, I've never had a problem accepting that an expert like that, an attorney, an accountant, those types of folks are a graphic designer even, are better than me at the things that I am hiring them for. Really, where it comes, where. When I heard this, where it resonated for me was he did this with his business partners. Right. So anytime I'm entering into a business partnership, I feel like I need to show my value. Right. And the way that I do that is by being the expert at as many things as I can possibly be an expert at. Right. Because I want to. I want to prove my worth. I want to earn my place or at least show that why I have this place. And what he was saying was exactly the opposite. It was just find the good people and let them do the work because they're better at the work I'm supposed to do than me. And that was the really interesting thing, was saying, no, no, that's harder. That's much harder. And that's where this resonated for me. Yeah.

And it's often uncomfortable.

It's massively uncomfortable.

Yeah, yeah. Because I'm used to, like, being the leader or, you know, driving things. And it is more uncomfortable when you have to, you know, work with people. Well, maybe uncomfortable isn't the right word, more challenging to. To your own framework of how. How things work. But, yeah, it is terrific advice.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Yeah. So I, yeah, I heard that more. I mean, because he's done it with his business. Like, that's what he was talking about was in the context of business partners. Yeah, it's fascinating.

That's good. It's good stuff. You made a comment or, you know, in our notes that we use here for the show and something about, oh, you need to always expect your employees are going to talk with one another. And I'd love to dig into that concept. It's not really, you know, keeping secrets, but things that you may not expect your employees to talk about, you can count on him talking about. And, you know, just. Folks, if you're listening, we're kind of doing a grab bag of topics today, things that Dave and I are interested in and hopefully you are as well. And I'd love to learn more about this, you know, that statement and kind of where it resonated with you.

Well, it came up after we recorded episode 389 where we were talking about how to handle layoffs and that sort of thing. And I was thinking about when, you know, a time when we had to do some layoffs internally here. And I brought it to the staff, of course, after the fact, they didn't tell the staff that we were laying off other people first, you know, but we had a conversation maybe a week later. I mean, I told them about it and then had a conversation a week later. And I said, hey, look, I, you know, I want to make sure everybody knows that, you know, some of these decisions were made because of budgets, but they were made to make the company healthier. And. And so everybody that's here is accounted for on. On the books and is afforded on the books and is in the budget and all of that. And the feedback I got was fascinating because it was clear because they said so explicitly, like, okay, well, this is good because we've all been talking and we wanted to make sure we saved our. Our. Each other's jobs. And so they had all kinds of ideas if, you know, if. If anyone else was going to need to be laid off, how they wanted to be involved. And it was just like, wow, okay, huh? These people are going to talk when I'm not there. Like. Like, specifically when I'm not there. Like, the water cooler is real, even when they're not in the same office. Like, if you've done your job and you've created a company culture where everybody is comfortable talking with one another about business stuff, which hopefully they are, then you must know, don't even expect. Simply know that they will be talking with each other about all kinds of things, some of it personal, some of it business that is not meant for your ears, and that's okay. In fact, it can be a good thing. Again, you get to set the tone both by how you act and how you communicate with people, but also by the people that you keep and the people that you dismiss. So that your company hopefully has a healthy culture. But know that that culture is going to happen when you're there and when you're not there, and perhaps especially when you're not there.

So, yeah, so how do you tap into that, like, where you were, this realization that they started, they were planning kind of without you, what they would do, and they knew what was going on because people are. Obviously, you've hired them, so they're smart and they know what's going on, and they have a sense of things. They see how the business is going, and if things are problematic or slowing down and they're expecting these changes, the challenge is how do you tap in for me, how do you tap into that? Taking their advice without this is going to sound wrong, but giving up control because ultimately you want to make the decisions, right?

Yes. And I don't know that I have the magic answer to that, but I think. Well, I do, just not a specific one. And it is communication, right. For me. And this has happened a couple of times where I have taken a step back on my own, almost unintentionally. We have those moments, I call them my meditative moments, the driving moments, the shower moments, the things where your mind is mostly unoccupied with thinking about something actively. So there's lots of percolation happening in the background. And it was in these moments that I realized, wait a minute. The people that I have working here with us on the team, they are smart. That's why they're here. That's why I can tolerate them, you know, so obviously they're going to be aware of this, and, oh, my gosh, I need to have this conversation with the team that. They're not going to bring it up to you, right? They're not going to bring it up to me. They're going to bring it up to each other. So the only person that can bring it up while I'm in the room is me, or at least the most appropriate person. And so I will bring these things up, and by doing, I won't notice everything, right? But I'll notice the things that I notice, or I'll think about the things that I think about. For example, when. When Covid hit. Right. The first. When lockdowns especially hit, the first thing I did was look at the books and decide how much, you know, well, how much Runway do we have if revenue stops today or pauses today? You know, I know it's going to resume at some point. I don't know when. Okay. That. That was all I knew, right? And so it was like, how long can we keep everybody, you know, on staff? How long can we keep, you know, making payroll here? And I knew the answer to that, and I was like, okay, cool. And then, like, two weeks later, it hit me, probably in the shower or something, like, wait a minute. Haven't told the staff that. How comfortable I am with our ability to keep them employed. They know what's going on in the world. We actually talk about that every day, but we talk about it as a thing out there, not in here. We need to have that conversation in here. Right? So I brought it up, and everybody was. Was they. They had been talking amongst themselves about how to protect the company and protect each other if the company was starting to hurt from this. But they didn't know what I knew. And so I Shared with them what I knew, you know, and everybody felt really good about it. But if you do that enough, then they will start to feel comfortable bringing those types of things up. And, you know, there you have to treat people with respect. I have this issue where I always thought that I needed to treat my employees the way I would want to be treated if I was an employee working for me. And I realized that that was wrong because I, I'm. I consider myself patently unemployable. The people that work for me do not consider themselves that way. They don't think about things the same way. They don't want to know the same level of information all the time that I do. But there's times that they do. And so by sharing those things that you believe. And again, I've had to learn this the hard way, not oversharing, not under sharing, but finding that balance and sharing those things that are relevant to them that you can reasonably predict they are concerned about, then they will bring things up and you can do it. And if the culture is right, they can bring it up and you can say, okay, hey. And they can say, we have this concern and we have some solutions. Right. Whatever those might be, fine. Okay, no problem. Let me hear you out on that. Let me think about it and I'll let you know what we're going to do. Right.

Do you do it individually? You do it all together?

Well, sometimes it comes up in the group. You don't get to control that, so you have to just.

Damn it.

But that's okay. But see, that's.

Yeah, you're right.

Is. It's better sometimes in the end, it's uncomfortable in the moment because you are. You can. You as the, you know, the. The boss, the manager, the owner, whatever, you know, your role is, can feel ganged up upon and. And in a sense you are. But you just have to approach it with confidence, like, okay, thank you for bringing this to me. Let's talk about it. Let's spitball a lot of this stuff. I haven't made a decision on this yet. I got to figure out what's best for the company as a whole. There's some things. I see things from a different vantage point. You probably hopefully don't even have to say that that's implicit, doesn't need to be explicit because you don't want to sound dismissive. But there is that. But there is that assumption that the buck stops with you. So you are the one that has to sort of take all this input in and go through it and you might have to say, okay, yeah, yeah, thank you for bringing this to me. I don't have an answer for this, but I will have one within X number of days and take however many days you think it's going to take and add 50% to that so that when you come back in the amount of time you thought it was going to take for you to do this, you've beat their expectations. Right, Scotty? Principle key.

Sure.

Yeah.

It's interesting. I still have questions about handling this because I don't think I've done a very good, you know, at because I'm always kind of paranoid about control and, and how you, how you frame things and how, you know, what the perception is of everybody. And even though I think, you know, we've created great cultures over time and people can be free to discuss it, it's a, it's a. That's a challenge. I'd love to continue the discussion, you know, with our listeners feedbackusinessbrain show. Tell us how you've done this, you know, if you have and when your employees want to give input on, you know, if they see things, if, if, you know, just how you handle it, I would really be interested in hearing more about. Would help me a lot. And I'm always, you know, I'm always the one that learns the most on the show, so I want to keep that going along this, you know, communication with employees topic, you also had this idea that kind of probably for the same reason, got me a little itchy under the skin. This, this idea of a team accountability meeting of a. Which I loved. It was kind of an airing of the grievances, a festivus type of thing. If you are a Seinfeld fan, let's talk more about that. How does that tell me how that works?

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Festivus employee meetings.

Yeah. So I did have this idea, and it's a crazy idea and it's, I'm sure, a terrible idea, but I'm.

No, I wouldn't say that. Let me tell you if it's terrible, okay?

So, you know, in. In most companies, the idea, and this is a good thing, the idea is that everyone supports each other and is nice to one another and all of that, and it helps. You want to work with the team, right? You bring the things up. You say, oh, thank you for helping me with that. You did a great job with that. This, you know, all of that. And that happens regularly. And I think that's important, that that happens regularly. And regularly is kind of the key here that led me down this crazy path. I think it's equally important not to gloss over the things, even the little things that cause stress and could be improved, right? Especially if those things are presented, like, productively and with consideration and attention and not just bursting out like, okay, look, this has been going on way too long. The way you format your reports messes with me. We gotta fix it, right? Those things have happened. I know. I've been in those scenarios before too, where it's like, you let it go because everybody has to have their own way of doing things. And you let it go and you let it go. And then finally it's like, all right, screw this. I can't take it anymore. This is not good. We gotta fix this, right? And then, boom, out it comes. So this is where my idea came from about having a regular, but not too regular accountability meeting. Maybe this is a once per month thing. Maybe it's once every couple of months. I don't know where you have this airing of the grievances to take a nod from or give a nod to Festivus, but in a productive way, right? That way you are intentionally getting together to share the things that are on your mind. And everybody knows that this is happening now. Like, this is where I don't, like, I don't know how you make it so that this feels productive, right? But the nice part about it is, no one's guessing. Am I doing something wrong? It worked out terribly, by the way, the example I'm about to give, in my opinion. But I realized I went to see Sting a couple of weeks ago, and Sting has always played with, like, Cream of the Crop, a list world class technician drummers like to play Sting's music. You've got to be one of the top drummers in the world, right? And he's always had this. And it's great. I mean, he started with Stuart Copeland in the. In the Police, and then he went through a couple of Zappa's drummers, Omar Hakim, who was with Weather Report, and Josh Freeze, and he had Keith Carlock with him. But anyway, like, these guys are all just like on a. On. On pedestals. Together, separately and together. So I was like, wait, who. Who's playing drums with him? And so I look and I see it's this guy named Zach Jones. Who the heck is that? And he's a no in. In comparison to the other names I just mentioned. He. He's a nobody. That's okay. I'm. I'm far more of a nobody than this guy, so no problem there. So I watched an interview with him where someone was asking. He's been on the road with Sting. He recorded on his albums a couple years ago. So he's known him for a while and. But he's been on the road with him basically all this year. And he said, you know, people were asking, the interviewer was asking him, hey, so like, you're literally stepping into the shoes of giants. How do you approach this? He's like, well, I know that the way Vinny Kaliuda plays something was one of Zappa's drummers and was a Sting drummer for a very long time. There's only one person that's going to play it like that, and it's Vinny Kaliuda. And so I know that I have to approach these songs and play them my way. And within reason, I'm given flexibility to do that. The vibe is. So there's Sting and then there's this guy Dom, whose name I can't remember, which embarrasses me, but his guitar player, who's been with him forever and sounds like his musical director. Right. That sort of coordinates the band for Sting. But he said, yeah, you know, and if Sting or Dom has an issue with it, they'll tell me. But in this band, no news is good news. You know, you do what you want. If nobody says anything, you know that what you're doing is okay. I thought, okay, that's. I mean, that's cool. Great. Sure. Then I went to see him. It was awful. Like, everybody that I talked to that went and saw him was like, where were all the drum fills? Like, you can't play these Police songs without all the, like, flourishes and hi hat stuff. I mean, that was like part of what made the Police work was that craziness. You know, from the drum kit. And this guy didn't do any of that. He, he basically played like he was a songwriter's drummer and with very few fills and anything. So it was. That part of the, the show overall was fine, but that part of it was just bizarre. But that idea of no news is good news. I'm not sure is a good idea.

No, I think it's a terrible idea. That is. Is a terrible idea.

Case in point here, right? What we saw is they're not telling him anything. Well, why? Like, he assumes it's because they like what he's doing. I mean, maybe they do, but it's very different from the way Sting has handled his career. And they've been changing the set list and taking out the more technical songs and letting those sort of drop off. So it's like, aha. Okay, so they're. So I'm not the only one that not so. I think it would be good in that scenario for them to have a once monthly gathering where it's like we're going to talk about all the, even just the little things that aren't worth bringing up, you know, in the middle of a show or even at the end of a show. But let's, you know, let's share notes. And this happens like in theater, right there, there is. When you're putting together like a musical, you, you know everybody, you run the show. You get to the point where everybody has learned their lines, they've learned their blocking, you know, which is where they need to be on stage, the music, learned their parts, and then you got to put it all together. And so you cram it all together and then you run the show. And unless there's something terrible or dangerous, you don't hold the show at all. You just run it all the way through as a, you know, the first one. You call it a stumble through. And then hopefully it gets to a point where it's like a rehearsal and then a dress rehearsal. At the end of every one of those, though, the cast sits down and it's basically a one way conversation. And I'm not saying that that's how it needs to work in your business, but that's how it works in this business. It's a one way conversation and the director shares notes with everybody and whatever the note is, you just say thank you. That's it, you know, and there is no, there's no conversation required. In fact, there's a phrase that's, that's offered when someone tries to have conversation. It's Called take the note. Right. Yeah, well, that.

Okay, so. So let me, let me stop right there.

Yeah, yeah, that.

Where you have a central person in this case like a director, whoever that I get and go, you know, hey, this is, I'm helping, I want to help improve whatever this is. You, you were speaking at an event. Here's your talking points of how to improve, you know, eye contact, whatever you guys, they're. The person says thank you. That I get. And I understand, you know, me doing it, managers doing it even, you know, just helping each other out, asking for critique. That.

Yeah. But see, in a company, I want it to come both directions. I want it back at me just as much as it goes in the other direction. Yeah.

So you, I think the way is how you, how you frame it to keep it productive and not turn it into a, A session, you know where. Right. So maybe you have to just have some. What I like and I'm glad you told the story in the theater part and how we got there is. I like there's some rules and it's. Everybody gets okay, whatever. One comment, two comments. And the other person just. They can ask a question. Maybe, maybe. Hey, could you define that a little bit more for me or something? But you can't have a back and forth argument about it. Right.

Right.

Because that's not going to be. You're just trying to say, hey, when you give me that, this report every week, could you do it in this format? Because I have to reformat it every time or I, I need the information by. Or you know, if I'm in the shipping department, everything that needs to ship that day has to be out on the the racks by 2pm or 3pm whatever the time.

Whatever it is. Yeah. Whatever it is. No, I like this idea to borrow it from the theater world that there is rules of order for this meeting. Right.

I like that. That would make it work.

Yeah. That's what it needs. And that's what was missing from my initial idea here was. Yeah. It needs to not turn into. Well, you might not like that about me, but let me tell you what I don't like about you. Right.

No, no, no, no, no.

Yeah. Yeah.

And it can't be personal. It's got to be. This is a professional statement. It's nothing about you personally. I think you're a great person or whatever.

Yeah.

And everybody has to, has to agree on those rules when you go around the table and it. That is.

I wonder if you need an agenda. I think you. I think. Well, let me. Let Me share this idea, you know, because in the way. One way of keeping it from becoming this. All right, well, now that you've brought that up, let me tell you what I have. You know, about my problem. I got a lot of problems with you people, right. Is that everybody comes with a list. And that list is immutable once the meeting begins. Right. So you have your two or three things, everybody has their two or three things, and you're just going to go around and share them. And, and maybe it's even take the note, if there needs to be a conversation after the fact, let there be a conversation the next day. Right. Like, you know, well, here's what I know spitballing here, but me too. Yeah.

The other thing I think it needs is a moderator and it should be a different person each time you, you move the moderation around your team.

Yeah.

So you say, okay, and I think you need to submit those, your comments to the moderator that they can bring him to the meeting because they could look at that and go, hey, how about rephrasing this? You know, maybe, I don't know, but, but I think it would help to have a moderator to keep it, you know, productive. And it's also really a great chance to learn as a person that maybe has never been in that role before. You could, you know, they get a chance to be a team leader in the meeting and you go around. So I think we should really kind of block and tackle this out a little bit more and produce a one pager on what a Festivus employee meeting really entails and, and how to, and how to run it. And then I, I think we should put it up on the website and let people critique it and use it and see if we can create a new type of meeting that could be really productive because we talk about how we're not huge fans of meetings because they kind of, you know, they can suck out a lot of the. Your time and the soul out of your, your day. But this could be interesting and I like the way it's kind of evolved here during this discussion about how to do it. And I think it could be really productive because people do keep that stuff inside. And if they felt that there was a venue where they could critique and make suggestions to help improve one another. Iron sharpens iron, right? When you are working together, button heads a little bit, you can help make each other better. So let's do that. Let's hash out the details. And I think that's great.

Yeah, I like this. It's already gotten Better just having this conversation. I. Yes, I. But there's something to this, you know, I, I shared this. I think so, yeah. I shared this with the team at Backbeat because this, this idea brought forth another thought of mine and it was just a question for my team. And so I told them, I said I had this crazy idea. I don't think it's good yet. I don't know if it's ever going to be good. But the crazy idea was these Festivus accountability meetings. I don't want to do that yet or if ever. But thinking about that gave me this idea of one way feedback. And I asked my folks a question. I said, what am I not doing for you? What do you need for me?

Yeah, it's a good way to start it.

Right. And I said, I prefaced it with what I said earlier here, but also by saying I did not give you the opportunity to prepare anything. So I don't expect you to have an answer right now. I said, if you do, well, then that tells me this is a really good question to ask because you've already been thinking about it and no one did that. Right. If you've got something on the tip of your tongue, man, am I glad I asked. Yeah. Oh, right. But also better to have asked than not to have asked, you know? Yeah. And so nobody did, which I guess was a good thing. But it opens that door of I want to make sure I'm not getting in your way. And the conversation from there evolved from, you know, figure out if anything, what you need from me, what I'm not giving you, where I'm getting in your way. It went from there to, hey, look, if there's something that you're good at or you're interested in, that is that you see as being something you could relate to your job or add to your job or replace a part of your job that you could do here to further the company's mission that you're not already doing. Say that too, because I mean, we're a small company. I know most of the people who listen run small companies. You want to leverage every talent that someone brings to the table. And if someone is seeing an opportunity but not taking advantage of it because they don't feel comfortable, they don't feel like you've told them that, that's okay. Well, you need to be able to. They need to be able to suggest it to you, you know?

Right. Yeah. I like the idea. I think it needs some refinement and some. Like this part, if you're Asking those questions. Just be sure you remember that your employees have incredible memories. So your response will be etched in stone. So think about it, how you respond and say, oh, don't be flippant and say, oh, let's do this or whatever. Yeah, I can do. They're going to remember that. So if it takes more consideration or you need more details before you can make a decision, be sure to get that. Because this stuff's important to your employees. You may think, oh, it's just a little suggestion, whatever, but your employee could have been thinking about this for months and not felt comfortable coming to you. And just face it. If your name's on the paycheck or you're the founder or one of the, you're intimidating to these people at some level and because you control their destiny, at least at your company. So don't forget that aspect of it.

Yeah. And that, that's that. I mean, you're right, they may forget lots of other things, but they will never forget what you committed to do for them. So never. Yeah, and that's good. I mean, that's good. That's, that's the accountability part of this here. So.

Yes.

And I really, when I had this idea, honestly, it started with me, like, I know how to hold my people accountable. I mean it, you know, like you said, I signed the checks. It's, you know, there's, there's this implied and even not implied, it's an explicit arrangement here. You do what I tell you. I pay you for that, Right?

Correct.

But I really want to make sure that they are getting what they want. And I know that I can be scatterbrained. I have all kinds of things I'm doing. And if I'm not giving you what you need or not giving you the attention to a certain thing in a timely fashion, whatever that is, don't just say, well, it's my boss. I can't complain about. Yeah, you can. Absolutely. You can complain about me. It's fine. Like, let me know, we can fix it. It's all good. So.

Yeah, yeah, that's good. I really enjoy these, these mixed topic shows. A lot of stuff going on. We, you know, we've got more stuff to talk about, some interesting stuff. Come back next week. We got a tip for you that's going to save you three thousands of dollars on equipment for your business. Could be tens of thousands, maybe millions.

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