Loyalty, Losing Key Employees, and Managing Change at your Small Business – Small Business Show 182

The Small business show episode 182 for Wednesday, August 1, 2018. Greetings folks and welcome to the Small Business show here at BusinessShow Co, the show that is by, for and about small business owners. And here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And I'm Shannon Jean on the west coast. I'm really happy to be here to talk today.

Yeah. And fires are okay?

Yeah, yeah, we are. As I mentioned to you before the show, I own some real estate up that we're developing up near the largest fire which is up north about. It's, it's, it's about a four hour drive when you can use the free way. But with the freeway closed due to the fire, it's about a six hour drive. But this valley that we live in, that I'm looking at right now out of my studio is just, we're just covered with smoke and it's just hazy and you know, and it's still that far away. So there's a tremendous amount of fuel that, a lot of reasons, but one of the main ones is it was about oh, 30, 40 million trees that died during the California drought. And a lot of that stuff is out there ready to burn that has not been removed. And that's what we're seeing, a lot of burning. And this fire, this up there called the Carr Fire, Carr, interestingly enough, was started by a car. Somebody had car trouble, pulled over into the weeds and the heat started right up. So yeah, it's crazy but you know, it's getting there. It's about 30% contained now and you know, hopefully we'll continue to do it. But that's out here in the west when there's no rain, you know, to speak of and we have first, you know, and these kind of accents. Lightning in the wilderness. That's what happens. It's crazy.

Yeah. Well, I'm glad you're okay and I hope it, I hope it stays that way, man.

Yeah, I think so. I think, I think it's going to be great. So, so go ahead.

I was just going to dive right into things. So we've been called out on this show before by, by several of you for not sharing. You know, we talk about, talk about the charmed life and we're always really positive and optimistic and sharing, you know, successes and the things that we can do to be successful and the things that we've done that we think make us successful and we certainly acknowledge that we've made mistakes and, but, but we've been called out for not Sharing, like, the bad things that happen. And part of that.

And I think, yeah, maybe you're just going to say this, but part of it is we don't focus on those things. We. We've kind of create our own reality by focusing on all this positive ST stuff.

Correct.

But it is, I think, a great time to jump back and talk about how sometimes this stuff hits the fan and it's challenging.

It's challenging. Right. And. And the other part of the reason that I. That, That I don't wouldn't naturally bring things like this, frankly. In fact, if. If you folks hadn't asked, I don't think we'd be having this conversation on this episode today that we're about to have. But. Because I don't want to, like, I see no value and we're not doing it today, so it's not going to happen, but I see no value in. In sitting and thinking or sharing the thought. Poor me. Right? That doesn't. That's unproductive. So that's why, naturally. And I think you feel the same way, Shannon. Like, you don't. You don't think of yourself as, oh, gosh, why do these terrible things happen to me? Even though sometimes terrible things happen, you know, and you just deal with it, that line of thinking is the wrong way to start. When things happen that are challenging or unexpected or not great. Right.

Yeah, I would agree. And you have to. In my experience, it's the minute it goes wrong, your thinking should already be, okay, what are the next steps to get me to the other side?

How do I fix this? Correct. And that's all that happens. There's no time for poor for me. But also, there's like, there's no space for that either. Right. So, yeah. So it's with that in mind that. But also with your sort of requests and acknowledgments, folks, in mind that I share that, you know, a week ago today I woke up, you know, and got to my desk and a sales guy. I'm not going to share his name, but it's really not difficult to figure out who this is. You know, we run small businesses here, and it's how it goes. And I. There is no ill will. And I. Hopefully you'll hear that through this story here. But. But a guy that's been with me for 14 years told me that he was. That he had gotten a job offer. This was a Tuesday that, that he. That he informed me that he'd gotten a job offer on. On a. On Friday, out of the blue. He wasn't looking, he wasn't unhappy, and he got a job offer on Friday and he was going to take it. I was like, wow, okay. Like, holy crap. You know, like, that's the first. It was just. I was shocked. Yeah, well, it is tough, but it was also simply shocking. Right. And so, you know, the first thing.

Let me ask you, let me back up. Why was it, why was it so shocking? As business owners, things happen to us all the time. Okay. Okay, that's crazy. Let's figure it out. So when we have something like this happen, what is it inside of us that is so shocked that someone could do this? Which I don't want to say on a whim, but certainly sounds like pretty quick action. What would you say? Why did it shock you?

Well, I mean, in that it was completely unexpected. He was. And we were having, I mean, he's having the best month he's had in a long time, like many, many years. So it, like, we were so focused on like the how we were doing things and the future and all of this stuff that it was just like, whoa, this is not a conversation I expected. It wasn't even like we were in just like the general grind mode. Like, oh, yep, it's another day and here we go. You know, like, there was, there was a lot of forward thinking happening and all that stuff. So it just, it just came as a surprise. Now, you know, it makes sense. Yeah, yeah. Not a devastating surprise, but I mean, certainly unpleasant and unexpected. And it of course changed my way of thinking about not just the future of that particular day, but, you know, certainly there's short term stuff and then to consider and then long term stuff. And so my first thought was, okay, why, you know, like, can I, can I ask why? You know, like, what is it? And, and it, you know, is, is. And the questions as a business. And this is not my first time experiencing this. It is my first time experiencing it with someone that's been with me quite that long. But I tend to have people that, you know, work with me for a very long time. So I have had people that have been with me for, you know, I don't know, about over a decade, but certainly, you know, almost a decade that have, you know, decided to go on to other things. And I mean, it happens. It's how it goes, right?

Yes, that's correct.

So, you know, the first question is, wow, I really rely on person. So are you unhappy? You know, what is it? Is it about the money? Is it something else entirely? And, and you know, the Real question that as, you know, a business owner or manager, whatever it is that. That you're really thinking is, is this that something that I can control at this stage? And, and then. And then sort of the very quick follow up to that in your own head is, is this something I want to control? Is it smart to control this? Or do I need to just let this happen? And so, you know, so I asked him some of those things, and the best answer. And like, I mean, he and I, well, we've known each other a lot longer than 14 years. He's worked here for 14. He actually did some writing for us with a completely different venture several years before that. So I've known him for a very long time. And his comment was, well, you know, after I got the offer, I started thinking and, you know, people don't stay at companies 14 years these days, so it's time to move on. And I can't. That. I mean, that's his decision to make.

Sure.

Right. So, you know, it's not up to me to judge that. It's. It doesn't necessarily resonate with me, but I'm not in his shoes, so I can't, you know, that's okay. It's. That. That's a valid reason because it is his reason. Okay, great.

So, yeah, it. I've. I've had something similar like this happen well, a number of times. Sure.

Yeah.

And to me, when I was a much younger business owner, I. I had. I had a hard time not taking it personally. And, you know, because you're. You think you're creating this culture and, you know, probably back then I had much more of a Superman complex than I now.

Right.

Where you're, you know, everything and all that stuff, business. And I also found myself being angry. And, you know, you have to really be careful because, you know, sometimes it kind of pisses you off. You're just like, what? You know, I mean, you may not say that to them, but. But in the background, you're thinking, oh, right when I was doing this or rolling this new thing out, right when we were ready to do this new campaign or new product line or whatever it is, you're gonna lose. You're gonna lose a really important, you know, gear, if you will, because I always use that gear analogy, that business is a bunch of gears kind of working together, and you're gonna have one popped out and it's going to kind of reverberate down the thing. So, you know, over the years, I've had to grapple with this not to take it personally, to understand that the level of loyalty of the employee to the employer is very different than maybe what the employee or employer expects.

Yep.

Certainly with a small business. And even though you, you can't take it personally, you also have to keep, there's a part of you that makes you successful, that part that you take things personally so you can't totally wipe it out and become, you know, cold to the fact you can still get upset personally and be like, wow, I'm really going to miss you. I love working with you. And I think if you're what helped me through a lot of that, those anger things and feeling upset that they weren't being loyal to me was to tell them that I'm really going to miss you, hanging out with you, you know, miss all the stuff we've got done. But to your point, Dave, I'm happy that you're going to get another opportunity and you know, certainly, you know, wish you the best in all this stuff. Now, how's it going to impact my business?

Right, yeah. No, and that, and the good news is that that, that is exactly how that conversation went. And, and he even felt the same way. You know, I mean it's, yeah, you know, we've worked, we're friendly in, in that way and in many ways, you know, it's like, oh yeah, I'm gonna miss you. So, and, and, and we're both pretty self aware people. So, so it was like, okay, we need to split this into two discussions. Like the, the, the, the grief of the loss of this, this. Not that we have to lose touch with each other, but we will not be interacting daily. You know, that's right, right. Like that's just how that's going to work and we need to accept that. And it's okay for us both to be sad about that and that's okay, you know, but, but then there's the business side and on that side, from his standpoint, if this is the right decision for him, then by all means, go. Like, that's great for you. Yes.

Yeah. You should celebrate when people, I always make comment to the other employees and all we need to celebrate someone's leaving, going on to something else. They've been great while they're here. If they've been great while they're there.

Of course, yes. No, and sometimes you don't have that right. In this case, that's absolutely the case. Yep.

Yeah.

So, you know, like, so there's that process and thankfully with this particular person and me and the way it worked like that was able to happen in a very natural and overt way. Like there was nothing being swept under the rug here, which was, which was good, you know, so, okay, great, no problem. Then the question, then the question is, okay, what does this mean in the short term? Right? You know, when, as you said, you know, when you're a small company, regardless of what you hire someone to do, every person winds up injecting their, their personality, but also their, their skills into the business, right? And, and so, you know, it's, it's very easy to say, okay, this person did sales like, well, yes, that's true, but how did this person do that? And that's going to be different from how any other person does that. And, and really helps define the culture and, and, and the, the capabilities of the company. So it's like, okay, what has he been doing? How, you know, what parts of that do I need to replace in, in terms of like functionally replace immediately? What parts do I never need to replace and what parts do I need to replace, you know, at some later date, but not like day one? And, and, and as part of, and this is something, you know, really important for whenever someone leaves, whether, whether it's initiated by them or by you, and I have actually some comments about that is when do they leave, right? Because here's the thing. No one individually gets to decide that a person is going to stay right, at the company in this scenario, right? Neither he nor I can decide that he will stay. The only decision that individually, either one of us can make is that he will leave, right? He can choose to quit, I can choose to fire him or let him go. Right? But, but I like, if I choose, I want you to stay or he chooses, I want to stay. But, but we aren't both in agreement on that point, then that does not work, right?

Yeah.

So, so there's really only one decision each of us has control over, right? And so the decision that you as the business owner have to have to make very quickly after it's made clear between the two of you that this person is no longer going to be in your employee at some point soon is, is that immediately. And you know, when, when I have had to let people go, either firing somebody or laying somebody off or whatever, generally speaking, I've decided that that needs to happen the moment that they are informed that that's going to happen. And the reason is, even if you have the most realistic and reasonable and trustworthy person, everyone, they are going, they, they have been surprised by this at some level. Maybe they were expecting it but didn't know when it was going to happen. Or maybe they weren't expecting it at all. Right, right, right. And now they're let go. Do you still give them the keys to your business? The ability to contact customers on your behalf or vendors on your behalf, whatever their job was, you know, because there is a period of time where each person needs to process that this is going to happen. And during that time there's going to be a range of emotions, often a wide range. And even the most reasonable person, like let's say you could guarantee that 24 hours later that person was going to be in exactly the right headspace. Okay, cool. But there's still 24 hours of that processing. Do you want them? Is, you know, what's the risk to you as a business owner of having that person still on staff for some period of time? And you need to make that decision, you know, and that it's an individual scenario, but it is certainly something to think about. And if you're letting someone go, you need to make that decision before you have that conversation.

Yeah. And my take on this is very simple. The only, and just think from a business perspective, the only reason to keep someone around is if it continues to benefit your business.

That's it.

If it does not, they should go. And because there's too many chances for things to go sideways, in my opinion. Now, you know, if it's a long time employee like this and you need a small transition window for training and this kind of thing, and again, you've handled it as the business owner of like, hey, Bob is leaving onto a new opportunity. We're really happy for him. That's also a great message for your other employees to see. It's like, oh, you know what, if I ever go, this is a good place to be because even if I leave, they're going to be genuinely happy for me. And so I like that overall positive message. But, but you really have to look at it. It's rare in my opinion that that person should be allowed to stay around. Especially like you've got a virtual business where people are spread out. But if you're coming into a building and everybody's working together, it's hard for certain types of people to not want to talk up their new position. Hey, I'm getting a better job, I'm making more money, I'm getting X, I'm, you know, and, and we had a time where a bunch of our technicians were getting, you know, kind of raided, if you will, by a Large cable company that was hiring in the area and they were specifically giving these guys extra bonuses if they brought people with them. And it was maddening. And until I figured that out, it's.

Almost, I, I mean it's not illegal certainly for, for them to do that, but it's a, that's a great. It's predatory for sure. Right?

It's very predatory. Or un.

Yeah, certainly unconscionable is the right word for that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we had to, you know, when people came and said hey, I'm going to go work for X cable company, that's this huge conglomerate and, and I'm going to make more money, I'm like, okay, great, you know, I'm happy for you. Here's your stuff. Let's walk you out the door right now.

Yeah.

And you know, that case I think is different but I think more times than not you need to kind of wind things down quickly but still keep it positive. You know, of course you don't want to treat, mistreat anybody. And, and you know like in California we have surprisingly this at will employment is, is law land out here. And so you know, you can leave, the employee can leave the employer can end the relationship for any time without any notice for any legal after tell them the reason it's not working out. We're going to let you go today and here's your last check and we're going to walk you out. So I tend to lean towards that quick action is better.

Yeah. And that's my default as well. And so with this it was like, okay, I need to process very quickly like you said, a benefit analysis of this. Right. What's the benefit to the business for him staying? And it became very obvious very quickly that having you know, a short transition week, maybe week and a half period or whatever was, was definitely to my benefit in, in this particular scenario with this particular person. And, and that's, that's how, that's the only way I can evaluate it. Right. Like, sure. It has to be somebody that I trust especially implicitly knowing that they're going to work somewhere else that could arguably call the competitor, like how much.

Right.

And, and as I explained, said look, here's the thing, you knew that you were leaving before I knew you were leaving. Right. You, you obviously you made the decision and then you informed me. So anything that, and I don't think, and I told him this, you know, anything that you were going to choose to take with you, a smart person would like collect all that stuff before telling them that you're going to leave. And I said, I don't, I'm not, I, I'm not, I'm just telling you this in general. Like, I don't think you did this. In fact, I, I, I am certain you didn't. You know, and, and I, and I said, so I'm not really worried about you taking stuff, you know, whatever that might be at this point. And yes, there is benefit in, in me working through a transition with you and paying you for that transition. I said, there's some things that I'll actually have you do. You know, we very quickly transitioned all the active stuff over, and then it was like, okay, you know, here's some other things that you can do that you understand here that can help me through this. And he had the time and he was happy to do it. And so in this particular scenario, we did do, you know, a slightly extended transition period. But that is, I would say, you know, don't rely on that being the norm in your small business.

I would agree.

Yeah. I'm trying to think. There was one guy that we had that was a writer here that got a job working at Apple. He was one of the very first Genius Bar employees, you know, long time ago, like, just as they were starting the Genius Bar. In fact, I think now, I think he still works there and he goes around the country and like, trains people to, you know, open up Genius Bars and that sort of thing.

Cool.

Yeah. And so with him, it was the same kind of thing. It was like, oh, we can, like, we trusted him, you know, it was the same sort of scenario. It was, it was a mutual respect and trust. And so it was like, okay, cool, yeah, we'll transition with you. We don't need to, you know, cut you loose right away. And, but most of the time you gotta, you have to assume that that's what's going to happen. So. Yeah, so, yeah, let me ask you.

A question, A question, too, that I, that I wrote my notes after looking at your, your outline here. Nowhere. Well, we haven't talked about this yet. In a scenario where the person comes to you and I've got another offer and I'm going to go your thoughts? And you might be surprised to know I have some comments on this as well, about trying to keep that person on, trying to match whatever offer they got, make it better and, you know, fight for them, if you will. What's your take on that?

Yeah, So I asked if that's what he was coming to me for. Right. Because again, you know, it like, I can't make the decision for him to stay. I certainly could have. Even if the company couldn't afford it, I could find some way to Hail Mary and best another offer or something like that, but I don't want someone here that's not gonna be here. And so we did, we talked about this. I said without sharing the particulars, it became clear that while this other offer was for a little more money, maybe again, we're talking about a salesperson. So there's commissions invol and there's an existing book of business here and no business, you know, you gotta start from scratch. So I, you know, is there more money in it, in this, this other opportunity? Possibly. Right, okay, sure. So fine. And you know, reasonably, it's reasonable to assume that yes, it could be built up to something where yes, you know, there would possibly be more money. Great. And, but I, you know, I, it was, we had a very open conversation. Again, I'm not going to share the details about it, but it was clear to both of us that money was not the driving force here. That it was, like I said, it just kept coming back to longevity. And he even asked me, he's like, so did you have any great ideas about a different scenario for me to stay? And I said, well, are you saying that you would want to stay? Because if so, then it's worth having that conversation, but if not, then no, you know, it. And so I kind of turned it back around. I said, you know, are you saying what would it take? Like, it has to come from you? Like, I can agree or disagree or counter offer or whatever, but you need to put the offer on the table. You need to show that you want, you know, that you want to stay here. I said, if it's not obvious, I would like you to stay. And the reason that I think it's obvious is I didn't let you go. Right. I like that. Right. You know, you're the one that came and said, I'm leaving. Not I got an offer and I'd like to discuss it. You came and said, I'm leaving. Okay, fine. Like, I mean, again, I have to accept that that's this, you know, being a logical, reasonable person. That's the only, that's the only option.

Yeah.

So, yeah, so that, that conversation didn't happen. But we talked about having that conversation and it was obvious that it was not necessary.

Yeah, yeah. And I think you, you, I would agree with you that more times. I mean, it's a rare occasion that things work out if you try to match or beat an offer because I think it's a. It's a signal to you when an employee comes that, oh, they want another challenge or they want to do something different. You know, it took less than three.

Days to sort this out. So, like, there's something there. Okay, that's right. It's not my job to get in the way of that.

Yep, that's right. And so I think you're doing probably both of you, your business and the employee a disservice by trying to, you know, convince them. And I've done it, and I, you know, it probably one of the, you know, the mistakes. I've definitely done it trying to keep, oh, how are we going to make it without this person?

Right.

But now I. Having done it a bunch of times, I would suggest that things always turn out better than you think they will when you lose a key employee.

Yep.

Always. Always. You get certain people that step up that maybe never had an opportunity that. That maybe surprise you. It's like, wow, I didn't know this person wanted to do this job or could or had these. These skill set. And. And people tend to. To step in to fill a vacuum or a void, if you will.

Yep. And you bring in other people to be universally true as well. Yeah. Like, in the moment, it may not be obvious that that's.

No, no, it's usually not. Yeah, yeah. But later, you know, but so, hey, and then I want to get to this point that you were talking about change being an opportunity, because I think you hit some really, you know, key points that we should share with our listeners.

Right. Well, then that's the. Yeah, that's the next thing that you think about is, okay, this change is happening. Okay, now how do I manage it? Right. Both from a logistical standpoint, like, who's going to do work that needs. That still needs to be done, and also from a, you know, for lack of a better word, public relations standpoint, how's this going to be perceived by the employees that are still here, the customers that we have, the partners that we have, the vendors, and. And frankly, you know, I had that thought coming into this podcast too. Right. I have to assume that anyone that's going to be impacted by this is going to listen to this because we're going to put it out for the public to hear. Right. So, you know, it was like, well, well, should I have this conversation? It's like, you know what? We're transparent on this show. This is a very respectful thing that's going on here. Yeah, I can talk about this. And frankly, we'd be doing you, our listeners, a disservice if we didn't. So it was like, yeah, okay, but. But it is an opportunity. Right. You know, and. And it could be positive, it could be negative. You. The thing about that is it is 100% up to you as the business. Business owner, whether it is positive or negative. And I have had it. It's been a long time, and I am certain it won't happen in this particular scenario, but I've had it in the past where someone will leave and has some, you know, negative thoughts to share about working for us or with us or about us or whatever. And you know what? Those things, if you. If you handle it correctly, which is usually just don't engage in that particular conversation at all, it's certainly not a bad thing. In fact, the best thing to do is to just move forward and create the positivity that you want to create. And then it's a positive. You know, it's seen as, like, it's okay. It's not, you know, it's certainly. In this case, you've already heard me talking about him. There's nothing negative to say about this person. But even if there were, well, and.

People expect it, you know.

Right, right. People expect it. Oh, they want to hear the dirt. Yeah. Guess what? You're hearing it all right here.

There's no dirt, you know, so. So the way you present it, I think is great because, like, you're. You're talking about it. Hey, this is a business lesson. This is what's going on. I really respect this person. We have great, you know, relationship. And so all those.

And I'm going to miss. Yeah, yeah.

All those authentic things, I think, boil down to the, to the lesson is that, you know, be authentic with these people, you know, whether it's employee or a vendor, you know, who now, okay, what's happened now this person is gone. Who's taken my account. What's going to happen, like this kind of thing. And it is all in the way it's presented. It's a great opportunity to show your company in transition so that people don't get nervous.

You got it? That's never.

Yeah. You never want to be in a position where if, you know, one person leaves, the whole place is a house of cards and it falls apart. And even if you. I mean, we've both lost business partners that seem to be critically key people, and you just. Okay, now how do we. How do we keep moving on? And that's what you have to do and present it in a positive light. Talk to get out in front of it, though. I think it's important to not wait for the customers, you know, or vendors, whatever the person's interacting with, to ask, hey, what happened to Bob? You know, you can go, oh, hey, wanna let you know.

Yep.

Bob moved on to another opportunity. And Jack is your new rep. And let me introduce you. And he's great. And we're literally looking forward to yada yada. It's actually another excuse to reach out to customers that maybe you haven't talked to in a while.

Totally.

And try to drive new business. So it can vary.

No, it can be a very positive thing. And in fact, you know, to his credit, that's one of the things that this guy is leaving said to me. He's like, you know, in the short term, he's like, you get to reach out to all these people that I would be a pest reaching out to again. He's like, but here you go. And, and during this transition, he was even like, look, here's the opportunities that I see here and here. Good for him. No, like I said, it couldn't possibly be handled in a better way. Yeah. And as I was putting this together, I came up with what I like to call a magic phrase that I will share here. People don't care about who left. They care about who is left. Right. Yeah.

That's good.

Right. So just bear that in mind as you handle these sorts of things. It's not about. Yeah, that person was. Was great and they're no longer here. Great. Fine. People understand that change happens. In fact, it's way easier for them than it is for you as the business owner. So treat it like it's okay, and it's okay, you know, because it is. It's. It's. It's how it goes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I would also, you know, one last note that I had written down after, you know, talking about this a little bit was that it's really easy to. To fall into this kind of comfortable. I don't want to use word rut. It's not a rut, but it's your. If your comfort level is, you know, such that the thought of a certain employee leaving is just devastating, it's probably time for that employee to leave anyway.

That's a good point.

You know, it's. If you're, if you're too comfortable, it's just not great. And I mean, I mean, it's kind of Management 101 you know, as well, when you're talking about middle management, it's like, well, you don't want these guys to be too comfortable. You know, you have to keep them on edge. Well, you, as the business owner, you need to be a little on edge, too. So I think that comes back to that. Things usually turn out much better than you think when, when folks leave because it forces you to kind of dive back in, to reconnect maybe a little bit with, with some of your customers to get involved in maybe training a new employee. So you, you get in touch with things and maybe you know that new blood comes in, so it kind of pulls you out of your comfort level. You don't get to see the same face every day or talk to the same person and have the same routine. But I'm, I like routine as much as the next person, but sometimes it can be your enemy.

No. Routine is the enemy. No. And that, that's for sure true. Anytime, you know, I've had, like you said, you dig in, you start kind of handling something yourself that you haven't handled in a while. Well, it always works out better, right? Because you've had someone doing it in a way that's effective. So you already know what works. You don't have. You're not reinventing the wheel or you're not inventing it from scratch. You get to go in and tweak a little bit in a way that when there's people involved, it's hard to tell. People, especially someone that's been doing a job for a while, as I said, they infuse their own personality. They have some ownership over it, and that's a good thing. You want people to feel empowered owning their, their jobs. But that also means that if you have an idea, you know, you, you can go in and, and micromanage everything, but it's not going to be all that effective if you do that all the time. But here's an opportunity. You know, we're all a little bit control freaks if we're running businesses. So you get to go in, you get to retweak without upsetting anyone. So. Yeah, there you go. Yeah.

Yeah.

I, I want to talk. Oh, go ahead. No, go ahead.

No. Well, I was going to just say is we certainly would like to hear, you know, our, our listener stories and happened and either from an employer or even an employee perspective, what worked well for you, what didn't? Feedbackusinessshow,.co or come up and chat with us in the small business support group at BusinessShow Co Facebook that'll redirect you over there. We would love to hear your story.

I want to talk about the concept of loyalty before we leave here today because it's an interesting thing. I would assume anyone listening to this by now would join me in calling this person that's left extremely loyal. And he really is like, I couldn't possibly think about an employee that's more. I couldn't come up with a way of having an employee that's more loyal. Right. It doesn't exist. And I'm grateful for having had the opportunity to work with him and all of that stuff. Stuff. But, you know, loyalty is not a binary thing, nor is it defined the same way by you as an employer as it would be by someone who is your employee. And, and you. And it's really important to remember that there are going to be those occasions. You know, all we've talked about this before, we don't dig into it because again, not poor me, but there are those times when, you know, cash flow is tight or whatever. You as the business owner choose to, you know, forego a paycheck for yourself so that your employees can get paid and all those things. And hopefully those things don't happen all the time. But I mean, it's normal for those things to happen occasionally. You know, cash flow is what it is and you've got payroll that doesn't necessarily operate the same as your cash flow does sometimes. And that's okay. And that is an example of being loyal to your employees. But you have to remember, first of all, your employees have no idea that that happened. Even if they know that it probably has happened. You know, if they can guess that at some point over X number of years, that might have happened a few times, like it's not their responsibility to care about that. And you can't, you know, back to your comment about taking it personally. You can't. Like this is one of those things that you just can't take personally. It's like you have to evaluate that loyalty from employee standpoint, from their standpoint. You can't apply your views to how other people are going to see things. Otherwise. Otherwise you will wind up taking things personally and it's a disaster. So it, you know, loyalty, certainly in this scenario loyalty exists, but you can't expect it to be. There's no equality in loyalty, if that makes sense.

Yeah, the things, the things that you think they should be loyal to you for, often they have no idea.

They don't even know they exist.

They don't know what they don't know, so you can't. And I've fallen into this trap over and over where you're like, oh, you know, I've done all this kind of stuff, and if you think about it, all the things that you've done, are they even aware of it? Right. So you, you can't. You're having this internal conversation about why they should really be loyal to you. It's like, well, wait a minute.

It.

They don't. They don't.

They don't know.

They don't.

You can't blame.

You can't do it. You can't do it.

Yeah. And that's where I, I mean, I, you know, I, I very quickly dismissed the thought. But I had this thing where it was like three days is all it took, man. If three days was all it was took for me, like, this wouldn't. But that's not. You can't, like, you can't even walk down. I mean, as I'm, as I'm even describing the internal conversation, I'm stopping because that's how long that took was like, nope, this is not. Wrong line of questioning, Dave. You can't have this conversation with yourself. It's irrelevant. Get over it. It's like, okay, yeah, yeah, get over it. Right. Moving on.

Yeah. And that's the secret, you know, to keep moving on. It's, you know, to me, I, I always make this comment to my kids, you know, what solves problems. A symphony of action. You just keep taking act, you know, being active, trying new things. If that doesn't work, try this. If, you know, A didn't work, go to B. And just you, you move, you take steps and you sit back and, and be inside your head and overthink things. You have to just keep moving forward, Keep moving.

What was it? You know, as one of my favorite quotes comes from Duke Ellington, the jazz musician, and he said, it's so, it's sort of in this, in this realm here. He said, I don't need time, I need a deadline.

Oh, I like that.

Right?

Because we all do, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Yep. And this is like, okay, okay. Like, I mean, this, you know, a brand new deadline that I didn't even know was going to exist all of a sudden existed. I was like, okay, there you go. Yeah, perfect.

That's what got 182 episodes of the Small Business Show. You got it because you just kind of wallowed around, said, ah, we should do this and try it and once in a while we'll touch base. And I can remember the first conversation that we had about this. You said, the most important thing is consistency.

That's it.

And if we're nothing if not consistent.

Right. That's it. That's what we're doing, man. Awesome. Thanks so much for listening. Yeah. I hope this came across the right way. I really think it did. Otherwise we wouldn't waste it. Yeah, but. But thanks for listening. And hopefully, I mean, the whole point of this was to share the experience in a way. Essentially what you folks have requested, like, how do we process through? You know, I. I can't even call this, like a. A. A. A negative thing. Right. It's just how do you process surprises? There you go.

That's right. There you.

That's it. Yeah, that's it. So, yep. Thanks for listening. As Shannon said, find us feedback, business, show, co. We would love to. We'd love to hear from you. And I think from there, we'll. We'll see you next week because it's what we do. We got a deadline.

Take it easy, folks.

Take it easy. Keep living that charm life.