How to Handle Layoffs

The Small business show episode 389 for Wednesday, July 20, 2022. Greetings folks and welcome to or welcome back to the Small Business show here at BusinessShow Co where we are small businessing with our business brains every week trying to add to our business brains and use them to better our businesses and our lives. Sponsors for this episode include taylorbrands.com SBS that's where you're going to go to get 40% off of this AI driven all in one platform. For anyone starting a business or your side hustle. We'll have more details about that in a minute. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire I'm Dave Hamilton.

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

Yeah man, I'm doing good. It's. Yeah, cranking along. The summer is always an interesting time. My schedule's all over the place but I've been, like I said last week, I've been having, my productivity has been high even though maybe even because I've been doing a little bit of travel. I mean we had that two week long trip to Greece and all that. That obviously, you know, derailed things for a little while because that's just how those things are. But sure. But perhaps because of that, since I've been back I've really been able to focus on, you know, on getting stuff done and moving some things forward and yeah, it's a weird time, you know, this coming out of COVID lockdowns and everything is. Well, quite frankly, it's not all that great for my businesses to be. To be perfectly honest.

Well, we've seen, yeah. With our mind too. I've seen some interesting things going on that we weren't expecting to see and yeah, it's definitely different.

It's different, yeah. I mean the lockdowns obviously when lockdowns hit initially everything stopped because no one knew what to predict. And that totally makes sense. But within certainly a month and probably even a little bit less than that, things kicked back off and 2020 was, we had one quarter that was way down Q2, but by the end of the year, year over year, we were up and, and then 2021 was, was up gangbusters from that. This year. It, it's, it's not, it's it in looking at it, 2021 was the anomaly for us, you know, and I, and.

I would say normalizing again.

Yeah, I would say the second half of 2020 was also an anomaly for us. But because the first half, especially Q2 was so dismal it looked, you know, just like zooming way out. 2020 looked like kind of a normal year for us. You know, revenue wise, 2021 was, was gangbusters and, and now it's, I mean it's fine. Like I say it's bad for us, it's not terrible for us. Like things are fine, things are great. In fact, I'm not complaining. I'm just saying like, you know, if I take the last observation. Yeah, if I take the last five years, there's this bump up that was 2021 and we're not seeing that yet here, but I have this feeling that we will. I think people really liked being at home in a lot of ways. Not all of the ways, mind you.

Right, yeah, not all of them.

It got a little bit oppressive and all of that. And there were certainly some dark things about it all for sure. But I think we as a people generally learn that we like we can spend more time at home and that's a good thing. And there's things we can do at home and you know, I think we learned a whole lot more about what that is. We're not just using our houses as places where we sleep when we're not out working or doing things. There's people that are now working at home that weren't before, people that are, you know, doing more staycation y type of things. And I think right now what we're seeing is a bit of a reaction to that. Everybody that can is traveling, everybody's sort of getting out of their houses. But I think come the fall, I think we are going to see it, you know, the kind of, the leaving the houses thing subside and I think the new normal, if you will, to use a phrase that sucks. Um, but I think it's, but it's accurate. I think that's going to have people at home more. And people at home, it turns out is, is good for the businesses I have, you know.

Well, and that's a good point is what type of businesses. You know, we, we've been talking for a few weeks about hey, how to, how to do well during a downturn and different things. So it depends on the positioning of your business. You know, in, in my historical perspective when I look at my companies, especially technology related companies that we've always been one step behind the latest technology and always like we were in the refurbished and the pre owned market and the repair market. Those business, they all thrive during downturns and recessions because people are trying to save money, you know, and make their dollar Go further. And I would say I have that, you know, handbag side hustle. It's the same thing. It's like, oh, I. I don't have a thousand bucks to buy a new bag, but boy, I'd like that and I need it and it's 500 bucks, you know, that kind of thing.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And you're absolutely right. This is just, you know, specific to my businesses. They just happen to be the types of things where, I mean, if I was in the travel industry, well, 100% different. Yeah.

But like our. Well, our vacation rentals did, like, to your point, were off the charts last year because people weren't getting on planes, but they still wanted to go places. And so our, you know, rentals where people could drive to them, it was unbelievable. I mean, the numbers were off the charts and it was just great given how.

Given how air travel. How much of a disaster air travel is right now. I think, I think come this fall, as people sort of get through their. Their initial waves of, oh, I'm going to try it out, and it's like, wow, they lost my luggage. They did this. It was delayed. Is this much worse than it was before? I think people are going to, you know, do less of that. So you might see a tick, an uptick for your ski season next year. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, I think so. Yeah. The. It's. But it's just an interesting how. Well, I think it's. It's a couple of things. One is knowing that not all businesses slow down during a slowdown or a downturn.

It took me a while to be able to admit that I felt really bad in 2020 and even early 21 saying, oh, yeah, actually this is really good for us.

Yeah. And it's another argument for not just having one company. It's that whole talent stack, revenue stack and spreading things out and being able to say, well, I have this business and maybe you like, were toying with the travel business or the food business for some reason and that because you like suffering. Yes, corre. Well, some people love food. Right. They just can't live without it. But there are some.

I can't live without food. I have. I believe that to be true. I just, I can live without running a food service business. Yeah.

I'll give you a great example, though. There's tons of. In the food industry, businesses that have done great are food businesses that help people cook at home.

Oh, for sure.

Off the charts.

Right.

And I'm not just talking about the food like the Blue Apron and all that stuff. Food delivery where you cook it even I'm a. I have a big smoker and I smoke different kinds of meat and all kinds of different foods and I love doing it. And there are tons of content creators that have created terrific businesses that have, similar to what we're talking about, were off the charts during COVID because people were home and they're like, well, I want to, I want to learn something new. I want to do this, I want to do that. And they were just eating it up. And a couple of folks I follow, you know, Meat church is one that guy's done just incredible during the slowdown as well as like, hey girl, hey, grill. Hey. This is a woman that's got a great site that just produce and they do everything from selling recipes to different rubs and barbecue sauces and all this stuff. And I've seen those businesses just explode. So great idea to diversify your small business stable if you can.

If you can. Yeah. One interesting data point I will share and it is. Data is the wrong word. It is an anecdote. But in the, you know, in the advertising supported business, which is generally pretty much everything I run. Yeah. When there are, I've always said we are the leading indicator in that advertising spends and marketing spends are leading indicators both into and out of downturns. And you know, earlier this year we saw a lot of spends kind of get either pulled back or not renewed. Q2 was actually, it wasn't. It wasn't like Q2 of 2020 for us, but it was slower than an average Q2 for us. And now that we've entered Q3, just the last, you know, seven to 10 days, we have seen so much activity happening. And so it's like, okay, May, you know, I think other people are looking at this Q4 thing and even, even late Q3 as this time when consumer spending is going to, you know, is going to be. Is going to be there in things that aren't, you know, travel and leaving your house kind of thing. So I'm curious to see how to. How it comes together. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, that's right.

Yeah.

Awesome. So what are we talking about today? What's the plan?

Well, we should have a plan. And the good news is we do. We're doing, we're doing well. We're following on to our hiring tips episode last week. So if you didn't hear388, you can go listen to our hiring tips from last week. And so we're taking the other side of that coin today to talk about handling layoffs.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Interesting. So it's not a pleasant topic, but I have a lot to share. If you could. You may not be surprised. Same.

I know. I don't. I don't like it. But. But it is a thing, and so it's good for us to talk about it. The. Yeah. Yeah. The next thing that I would like to do before we talk about layoffs is tell everybody about our sponsor for today. If that works for you.

Yeah, let's do it.

All right. Hey, did you know that right now, while you're listening to this podcast, you can go and register your business at the same time? That's right, because our sponsor, Taylor Brands, makes it super easy to make your business official. And this is an important thing. Right. You need to be able to create an entity for your business so you can go get a bank account so that you can really present yourself the way that you want to present yourself. Tailor brands can help you form an llc. No paperwork or anything. You just answer some questions and let them do the rest. It's crazy. They also give you all the tools your business needs in one place. And I mean everything. Business logo, business website, domain name merch, social media posts, a digital business card, and so much more. You're going to be surprised at how easy it is. I certainly was as I started digging into this when they came on board. They've figured it out, and that makes sense. You do this enough for other people, you figure out what people need, you can put it together, and that's how they make it work. Also, because you're a small business show listener, you get a 40% discount. Just go to TaylorBrands.com SBS that's TaylorBrands.com SBS for 40% off. So go to Taylorbrands.com SBS today and build the business of your dreams. Our thanks to Taylor Brands for sponsoring this episode. All right, so you got your business running, You've set it up with Taylor Brands. Everything's going well, but you have the. The one. You know, one of the people you have is the wrong person. So now we got to talk about that. Right? Yeah.

Or more than one. Right. If sometimes something happens with your business, you know, you know, you don't have one of those companies that does well if we roll into a recession. Yeah, you know, we. We always recommend. You know, layoffs are one of the last things you should be doing because your employees are just such an important asset. And it's expensive to replace people.

It's expensive. And it also It. The optics of layoffs are an important thing for your existing and future team. Right. If they feel like you protect them, you know, until. Until it is, like you said, a last resort that sticks with people and that means something. So, you know, it does. Being able to show your employees and truly just showing them by action that the only time you let people go is A, well, when someone is a problem, we'll talk about that. But also B, when you literally have no other choice and this is what needs to be done to preserve everyone else who is left.

Yeah, and that's right. And it's part of my notes here talking about how to handle it with people that stay and how you manage that. So I think, you know, it's just a. It's a. It can be a miserable experience, but I would say if you do it right, it can be okay, you know, and you can get through it. And, you know, it's the fact that we're talking about it, and if you're thinking about it, this is the opportune time to put some effort into how it's going to work. And so I want to jump in and say something that sounds obvious, but I'm still shocked sometimes when people don't do this. But you always want to have two people involved when you're laying someone else off. Right. Not the other person you're laying off, someone else that's there with you, either from your HR department or your supervisor or someone. Right. And whether that's in person, if you have to do these things on the phone, unfortunately, hopefully you don't have to. Or on a zoom. If you have a remote, you know, distributed workforce, you want to have another person on the line for everybody's protection and to critique how things went. And after things are done, you want to ask, hey, how do you think that went? And give you tips. Because if the. The longer you own companies, layoffs are something that is going to happen eventually, and you want to have some skill at it to make it better for yourself, but even more importantly, better for the people that you're laying off.

So what do you do? I agree with you that in a. In a perfect world or even an imperfect world, having someone there, you know, a neutral third party, if you will, the word neutral might be, you know, incorrect, but someone who is not doing the laying off, nor is being laid off, having that person in attendance can be a great thing because you can protect yourself against. Well, you told me this. No, I didn't. You know, this person you got to. Yes, right. What do you do, though, if your company isn't big enough or structured in such a way that it's appropriate to bring someone else in? Bringing in a peer often would. That would be. Gosh, I could see that being detrimental, you know. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, what about somebody on your. Your advisory board?

Oh, that's interesting.

Talked about here a lot.

Oh, yeah. Bringing your accountant in or something like that. Yeah. Yeah.

Maybe it doesn't need to be attorney, and that may send a wrong signal.

Yeah.

Or, you know, but even if you did, maybe you don't introduce them to your attorney. You call them your advisor. You know, I've asked my advisor, Mike here or whatever to just sit in on it on this, just to make sure, you know, I don't know. Let me see you. You want to present it in such a way that it's. It's good for both parties. Hey, we want to have an independent third party here. This is my advisor, you know.

Yep.

Janet. And she's gonna be here with us. And then just move right in.

And then move right. No, that's a. That's a great. I like this. I. I was thinking, you know, maybe using our. Our sponsor, Bambi. Right. B A M B E-E.com Small. They're not a sponsor of this episode. But. But like that, you know, they are super inexpensive and that they can. You know, that you could bring them in perhaps for your HR advisor in for that call.

Yes.

As well. But I like this idea. But. Yeah, if you. If you don't have that or you're not comfortable doing that. Bringing your accountant in or. Yeah. Your business partner, if you have. If you have one.

Yeah.

Even if you don't have one, bring your spouse in or your, you know, someone just to be there, to be that witness. Yeah. Yeah.

I think it's, you know, if you can have an outside advisor, that's. I think that's the way to go.

Agreed.

Maybe you. Maybe you have to. If it's on zoom, maybe you just have to record it and say, hey, I'm recording this. Da, da, da, da. For both of us. And I would be glad to give you a copy of the recording. You know what I mean?

Oh, yeah.

You know, phrase it that way.

Yes.

I think that's another good way to do it. But before you go into this, the one thing I would say that's very, very important is you have to practice. This is not something you want to practice, but you have to practice how this is going to work to make it smooth. And you Know, one of the things that you got to have empathy, but you, you also have to be the one driving the conversation, and you can't let things get out of control. I call it. You know, you have empathy, but you want to avoid the apology spiral.

Oh, yes.

You don't want to go down this rabbit hole.

No. Even if it. And even if it is your fault that this person needs to be laid off, and it might be. I mean, it might be. In fact, it almost certainly is you. It's your fault because you hired the wrong person. It's your fault because you didn't manage the other people at the business to drive revenues high enough to keep that person like, you can. You can paint yourself into a very accurate corner where it is your fault. You.

Yeah, but you can't think like that.

Well, you can think like that when.

You'Re doing the layoffs.

You can't say anything like that. This is. The decision has been made. Not. We're going to need to. It has already happened. Right. The decision has been made.

That's. That's good. It's a foregone conclusion.

Yep.

And I'm. And again, you want to have empathy and, But.

And you can say, I'm sorry to have to do this to you on a Wednesday morning if you want, but that's as far as. In my opinion, that's as far as the apologies need should go. Because otherwise, you're right. That apology spiral, man, it does.

It's bad news. You may be very emotional. You may be upset that you're going to have to do this. Certainly if you haven't done it before, it can be emotional. Practice is going to get you through that practice with your spouse, a business partner, one of your managers. Go through the whole process and have them ask you uncomfortable questions, because I guarantee you, at some point when you're laying people off, they're going to ask you uncomfortable questions like, why me? How could you do this to me? I've had this right to my face. I've had the, you know, my situation about, you know, blank. My kid, my wife is sick, whatever it is. How could you do this knowing that? And you need to know how to answer that so you can keep things moving forward.

And I will, I will. I will practice here with you so that people, you know can hear this. If somebody says, you know, how could you do this to me? You know my situation. This is not personal. This is something that the business needs to do, and I have no other choice. You just.

Well, I would, I would argue that. That's the. That. I would not use that phrase.

Okay. All right. Yep.

Because I guarantee you they're going to then immediately give you another choice. What is the other choice?

That's true.

You're.

That's.

You're on the right track. But don't say, I have no other choice.

This is the decision that's been made.

There you go.

Yeah, yeah. No, that's your right.

The decision. We've been made.

See why Practice is important, folks.

It's not an easy one, but this is where we're at, and you got to keep the conversation moving forward. I want to talk about, you know, I want to go through the paperwork. I want to work this out, you know, da, da, da, da. The other thing to avoid is. Is you cannot say how this makes you feel.

You. About you.

Nobody cares how you feel, especially in this moment. That's right. You avoid phrases like, I feel terrible, I wish I didn't have to. Those kind of comments. And, And. And it's in my notes here. Never say, we have no other choice because they're going to tell you, hey, I'll give you a choice. I'll show you. You should let this person go because they're an idiot or whatever.

Yes. No, you're. Even as it was, as the words were coming out of my mouth, I knew that I needed to rethink this. Yeah. No, this is. And this is why you practice. This is why you practice. No, that's it. Yeah, yeah. This. The decision has been made, and that's what I have found to be the most helpful thing is it's something that's already done. And now we're telling you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And part of that process of having things already done is have all the paperwork completed and make sure someone helps you go through this. Because, you know, whether it's a outside HR service like Bambi or you have an HR department or a person, or if your spouse is your HR bookkeeper person, which is very common. Small businesses make sure you have, you know, whatever paperwork that needs to be filled out, you need to have their checks issued. If you're going to offer some kind of severance, which I'm going to talk about more in a minute.

Okay.

That needs to be explained. If you have healthcare documents for them, if you're gonna offer them cobra, which is, you know, independent healthcare outside your own plan, or if you're gonna ease them into some state plan, all that stuff needs to be done beforehand. So when you sit down, you're not scrambling. You wanna Be confident, because it's not a fun thing and you wanna go through quickly. The other thing I think that's important is if you can do it, is while you're going through this meeting, you should be changing the access to. Or someone should be changing the access to data at your business for this person.

Yeah. I've always done it right before the call.

Perfect.

Yeah. And there was one time where it was obvious to the person that that had happened, and they came into the call and said, you're laying me off, aren't you? And I said, yes, I am. You know. And that's what we're here to discuss today. Yeah. Yeah.

If you want to see some good ways that people handle this kind of stuff, watch the movie Moneyball and you'll see how they lay off. Lay off. Basically, trade or fire sports figures. And it's very cut and dry, and I liked it. And they asked these kind of questions. What? How could you do this to me?

Really?

That's it? And the guys are like, yep, that's it. This is business. And this. And I, you know, be. You know, have empathy, but be firm for us.

Isn't Moneyball how the Red Sox rebuilt their team? I think. I think it kind of.

Oakland A's.

It's the Oakland A's.

But then. But then I believe it was the Red Sox that hired the guy who did.

The A's got it. Okay. Yeah. Cause they, like. I thought there was some. Okay, so there's an east coast reference and a West coast reference.

So the more prepared you are, the better it's going to be for everyone, for the employee, for yourself. I would have a checklist, and I would go through that list as you talk here. Oh, I've talked about this Check, check, check. You have the, you know, the sheet right in front of you, and just a roadmap of where you need to be. You're going to be firm but kind. Like you said, Dave, the decision has already been made. Okay. And I think that you should also put some effort into thinking of how can you help this person after they leave. I think it's worthwhile if you hired them in the first place. If you. If you trusted them with, you know, working at your company and that could. That. Could. You could start with the severance. Can you give them a severance? Right. Sometimes you can't. If things are just, you know, I waited too long and I. You know, we don't have cash, but maybe there's another way you could do it. Can you let them keep A piece of company equipment that would help them out. Like I've lit.

Keep your computer or whatever.

Yep, keep your computer. Now, I have a caveat about that is I like to have a replacement because this is easier for me because I was in the computer business. But if your company, perhaps you have backups to things, whether it's phones, whether it's computer, I don't want them to take the computer they've been using every single day because then you have to wipe everything. Do it. But. But at that meeting, have a comparable, you know, laptop or phone or something and say, look, especially if you can't give a severance, like, I'm really tight. I can't give you a cash severance right now, but I want to give you this laptop because I know it'll help in your search to find a new job.

Sure.

It's a great thing to do.

Yep.

The other thing I like to do is if. If you can authentically do it is give them a letter of reference, give them a hard printed copy and give them a digital copy. And if you're doing it over the phone, show it to them and send it. Or if you're doing it via Zoom, I think that's great. Little Things like if LinkedIn is in your sphere of influence for your company, maybe buy them an annual LinkedIn Premium subscription. Right?

Yeah, I. So as soon as you said it from my standpoint, I thought, what a great thing to do. It's only going to cost you a few hundred dollars or whatever, and it's a great way to give someone a resource. Does it feel contrived because you're not getting them another job? Right. Unless you are getting them another job, maybe.

And maybe you tell them that you say, hey, you know what, we've got you a subscription to LinkedIn Premium, or maybe there's another service that's more applicable for your industry. But you could also say, and I'm going to post on there that, hey, if you can be authentically open about it, I want to make a recommendation for this person. He'd be a great asset to any company and we highly recommend him and post it publicly to your 500,000, however many followers you have in some sort of business context, it's a very powerful thing to do that can build trust. If you can do it, you can't do it in all cases because you're like, I don't want to recommend this person.

Sometimes you're laying somebody off because they are incompetent. That's right. Yeah, yeah.

But think about creative ways that you could help them when they leave. You know, maybe it's, you know, hey, we're in the city. I just got you a Metro card because I figure you may be running around to do interviews. It's the symbolism that is important, that I'm not just cutting you off at the knees and I'm moving on to save money because that's how it can be perceived. You can be like, look, we really enjoyed having you here. I want to help you out. I know you'll be traveling around the city for interviews. Here's $100 metro card to help, or whatever you think of it, however it's applicable. But don't forget, those little things can mean a lot. When. When we let people take laptops, man, even though they may be a few generations old or whatever, it was a big deal. You know, I learned that one employee I was laying off, they were taking their laptop home for doing some work at home, but their kid was using the laptop for school at that time, and it was super important. And I. That. That made all the difference to that person. They were like, thank you so much. You don't know how important that is. I was like, wow, that's.

Yeah, you know, well, and maybe that's it. Maybe if you had this person at your company long enough, you might learn some of these things and picking the one that is applicable to that person. I mean, it's like. I hate to put it this way, but it's like buying a gift for someone. If you don't know what to buy them, you get them a gift card, right?

Well, maybe you get them a gas card and maybe you get them in the.

But if you do know, like, oh, this would matter to this person and you want to do something, but know that it could be perceived as you trying to appease your own guilt by doing something nice for this person, you know, and. And it. Because it. It may not be for them. And so I would caution us all to ask that question, who is this actually for? And if it. If the answer. If you can look in the mirror and it winds up that the answer is you don't do it. Just let them go, you should be.

Really doing it, and you should not expect a really gracious response. They're going to be upset you're letting them go.

But, yeah, you telling them, like, this is my issue with giving somebody like a Metro card or something is like, oh, I know you're going to be running around and looking for a job that may wind up Being true. But they don't know that. They didn't think about that coming into the meeting. They weren't thinking, I need a Metro card. You're your. Your example of a laptop, that's a little bit different. I mean, in that one specific case, it was a lot different. But even still, like, everybody kind of needs a laptop. So to be able to say, look, you've. You've had this thing in your sphere, you get to keep it. That. I think that works out really well if your company is in a position to be able to do that. But. But otherwise, you know, the assumed utility of something might come across a little bit, I don't know, Abrasive.

Yeah. Maybe you're. If you're.

Yeah, yeah.

If you're in a business where you're. The person requires tools, can you let them keep those tools? Can you say, look, I want you to keep your tool bag, or I want to keep your tool chest or whatever. I know you're going to need it. You're in the H vac business, and the guy's got his bag that he carries, and he's like, look, I want to do that, or I. We also did a couple times where, you know, we always had people that were in training, and our agreement with them was, look, we'll pay for your training, for certifications, different things. And as long as you stay with us for a year after the training, it's all on us, you know, it didn't matter what it costs.

Yep.

Few thousand dollars, whatever. So you. You've already paid for that. You've already absorbed that. So maybe that's something you say, hey, I want to let you know, too. We're, you know, we're gonna. We're letting you go. It's not your decision. So we're gonna pay for the, you know, the training. We're not, you know, that kind of stuff.

Yeah.

So you got to just think it through. And that's why practice, practice and talk about these things, because they could show you another light that you go, oh, yeah, that's not a good.

And run this stuff past whomever you're going to bring to this meeting with you. Right. You know, your advisor, your spouse, your accountant, whoever it might be. Tell, like, show them the list and say, here's what I'm going to offer to them. You know, here's what I'm giving them. Here's what I'm telling them. And let that person not just be your review after the fact, but, you know, but get their opinion going in because if they think, oh, why would you do that?

Didn't.

Don't. Yeah, don't you see how that might come across?

Don't open the door to this.

Don't open that door.

I never thought about it until you mentioned that.

Yeah. Yeah, that's good.

And how about. Do you. Do you tell people that if things pick up, you'll hire them again?

Oh, man. I mean, if that's true. If that's true.

Only if it's. You got to really be sure. Right?

You got to be. That needs to be one of those layoffs where you're like, I can't believe I'm in a position where I have to let this person go. Because you might find yourself with somebody sitting across the table from you saying, all right, well, look, I can afford to work here for, you know, two months for free. If. If I do that, you know, would that maybe help get the business back on track and then you could start paying me again? Like, be ready for that. Really open that door. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, be ready for them to ask you, would you consider. Will you hire me back when things pick up? I've had that question asked. So what do you say? You know, I would say, well, look, we're going to reevaluate things moving forward and see how things look in the future. And I have rehired people. I have done it. I had. I hired a guy. I'd laid off a person. I went back two years later, I heard he was. He was available, and I was like, hey, I really could use you. We've. We've got some new opportunities, and he came back and worked for us for, like, another five years. So it can work. It can again, don't get trapped in that conversation.

Don't promise it if you don't mean it. And. And I would say that's true of literally everything in. In these. And don't. Don't even promise it. Don't say it. If you don't say it, everything you say in those meetings is a promise.

So it's like talking to your kids. They will remember it, and you'll be like, what?

Yeah, I never said that. Oh, yes, you did. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, okay, so now we went through, you know, tips on how to handle that kind of stuff. But what about the other people? So, you know, before.

The. Arguably the most. Most important conversation you have when laying someone off is with the people who remain. Yes. Yeah.

I think you have to ease. Ease them into it. You have to have discussions about how things are going. Hopefully you're, you know, pretty transparent about your business. And on the flip side, I would tell you that most people are pretty much already know what's going on.

Right.

They have a sense of it. They get it by your actions. They, you know, maybe you're not spending as much on those. You know, you're not buying steak for the Friday barbecues. You're buying hot dogs and hamburgers.

Yeah, right.

You're not doing them at all. You know, and I would say talking about that, that's a good thing to cut out before you start laying people off of the perks is. Is to tell people, look, things are tight. We're going to cut back lunch. We're not going to do lunches, or we're going to do them once a month instead of every Friday, like, you know, used to do. And. Or we're gonna pull back on here because those messages you're sending to people are that the people are important and we're gonna cut back on these other things.

Right.

I think that's really worth. Worth doing. And I think, right. Either before you start layoffs and then after you do it, you have to go talk to the people and say, look, we, you know, we're going to have to, you know, make some adjustments here, and I'll be talking to you and, you know, each of you, and then I go ahead.

No, I was going to say I would. And this is. I've done this. It is super risky. You have to really talk about practicing, man. Like, you gotta. I took a week of every day going through my notes and my scripts and my talking points before I did what I'm about to tell you. I knew I needed to lay someone off. I didn't know which person it needed to be. Like, it was a strictly financial decision. Right. It was like, okay, we can't afford to keep all the people that we have, but if I slice one out, then everything sort of just fits into place and we can make this work. And so it was like, all right, I have a tough decision to make. How do I know which one? And my gut kind of knew, you know, but it wasn't on paper. It was not obvious. And so I had made my decision. And then I had a conversation with the person, the people actually that. That I. That were going to stay and made sure that nothing they said set up any warning signs for me that, like, wait a minute, this person might be leaving soon. You know, they like, right. You know, do they have something going on? Are they. Is it clear that they're Looking at other things, you know, and that's, that's really hard to ascertain. And it's going to be very specific to your business, you know, to try and suss out whether someone is actively seeking a different job. Right. And so, yeah, right. Because they're not going to tell you, nor should they, you know, in most cases. But having those conversations with people and just saying, hey, you know, I'd like to talk about the, the, you know, the long term plan here and just having that conversation, like here's what you're working on here, here's what I see working on next. What do you think about that? And looking for buy in on those things and looking for engagement on those things is really the key to answering that question of okay, like I'm not about to cut one and then have another leave right away. Right. I mean that might happen if they don't like the way you cut the one. I mean, right. Like there's no guarantees of any of this. But you, you know, trying to sort of ferret out whether someone else is also planning on leaving because that would then in, in my situation would have solved, sort of solved my problem for me, if you, if you will. But you know, so having those conversations with the people that are going to stay does two things. Number one, it helps make sure that you aren't caught behind the eight ball. And then number two, it makes it so that the follow up conversation of hey, this is why I came to you last week about this. You know, we've let so and so go. I wanted to talk to you about that. All the things that we talked about last week are very important to the company and to me. I want to make sure we're, you know, we give you what you need to get those done. But and quite frankly that's part of why we let so and so go because now we have the resources to actually make sure you can do the things that you need to do smart. Right. And ensuring people that you have made this decision very carefully. And once that's the like that's what everybody that need that remains needs to know is that this is a one time thing. It's not, well, these are the brake lights. And then in six weeks watch the crash happen. Right. You know, you want to make sure that the brake lights in the crash happen all at once and that everybody that stays is on the other side of that. And you need to be able to communicate that in a lot of different ways. And one of those ways is by having those conversations up Front so that in retrospect your team can see that you put a lot of thought into this and that you are confident that, that the business can move forward as it now is. Now that we've let that person go.

Yeah, I think it's, it's important.

Yeah.

So, you know, I hope we've, we've discussed some, you know, good tips for you today. It's an unpleasant thing to have to do, but sometimes it's a reality. And the. My key takeaways are, you know, have empathy, but be firm, be prepared, practice this stuff. Very important. You want to be able to control the conversation and not let the person control the conversation and help when you can. If there's creative things you can do, help them out. If you can do the severance, obviously that's, you know, what's very, very common. But I had a guy one time that really the most important thing he wanted was his chair. And I was like, hey, man. Yes, take your chair, please. You know, happy to have. Happy.

Yeah. You can be human in these interactions for sure.

Human, yeah. Be human.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But let's, let's hope nobody has to do it, but if you do, we're.

All going to have to do resource.

It's just how it goes at some point. Yeah, but share your tips, you know, feedback at BusinessShow Co and let us know what we missed, what you think we got right or wrong, and open up a dialogue.

Yeah, yeah, it's. We, we're talking about different ways of keeping that dialogue going in between episodes and we're thinking about a slack group, folks. So let us know what you think about that feedbackus show. Co is slack something you guys use would say discord be better. We know the Facebook group is a little weird because it's Facebook. So we're looking for something that's more of a home for all of us. So let us know, what do you think? I certainly love a lot from this episode. Shannon. This was good. Yeah, man.

Yeah, me too.

Good.

To talk about it and to learn different tactics. We can all help, you know, share those best practices.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Well, like you said, hopefully none of us has to do this anytime soon and we can refer to this years down the road when, whenever we might need to. To do this, check out our sponsor. Maybe make sure you visit taylorbrands.coms BS get 40 off over there. Keep living that charmed life. See you next week.