Managing Your Expectations of Other People

The Small business show, episode 358 for Wednesday, December 15, 2021. Greetings, folks, and welcome to the Small Business show here at BusinessShow Co where we are small businessing every week. Every day of every week is in fact how it goes. Our sponsors for this episode include coinbase.com SBS where you can get 10 bucks in free Bitcoin, and napjitsu.com SBS where you can save 30% off your first order of their cool stuff. We'll talk more in depth about each of those shortly here. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

In Lafayette, California, I am Shannon Jean. That's cool. You can buy crypto and then take.

A nap and let your crypto do whatever it's going to do while you're sleeping.

Yeah, yeah. Two things I like a of lot.

That's it exactly. Shannon, I need some business therapy today.

All right. I'm up for it, man. I'm always interested in talking about these things.

Yeah, yeah.

This is just personally. Right. So we are helping each other out.

We're helping each other out and hopefully helping all of you out out there. And I will say before we get into this feedbackus show co is where we want to hear from you. We really, this is, this is what we do here, is we help each other. So I am taking the, the role of the one that's coming to us for help today.

I like it.

Right. So I need help managing my own expectations. Let me, let me get into this a little. I'll. I'll specify. Sounds good, right? I'm not a perfect person. I'm definitely aware of all kinds of things that I let slip through the cracks. Right. In fact, I think that's a big part of learning how to be efficient is figuring out which things you don't have to do. Right. I mean, that's a valuable life lesson is learning.

When you mean don't have to do, you mean that you could have someone else do for you or just don't need to be done or that don't.

Need to be done. Like, what corners can you cut to get from where you are to where the end of your story is? Right.

I like it.

I was talking to years ago when my son was applying to, actually to a private high school. He was talking with someone at this school, an administrator at the school that he had known for years, and they said, yeah, the workload here is really tough. But that's part of what we're here for, is to teach you what work actually needs. To be done so that you can be productive. And I thought, wow, what an interesting thing.

I.

At points in my life, I felt guilty about choosing which things I'm going to do on any given day. And I'm always prioritizing. Right. And yet I am a productive person. And when I heard him say that, I was like, great, okay, that makes sense. You learn how to do that. I really think that. In fact, I think that is at the essence of the difference between being busy and being productive, is learning to choose which things you. You do each day.

Yeah. Along the same lines, I think shortcuts are a much maligned method of getting things done that can help you save a lot of time and help you pick out things that you don't have to do.

Absolutely. Yes, exactly. Shortcuts is another way of talking about this. I like that, because shortcut sounds positive as opposed to skipping something, which is a negative thing. So with that in mind, I get it. I do it. I understand the value of it. And I really don't see myself as any smarter than the people who work for me. In fact, I try to make it the opposite. I like to have people who are better at things, especially at the things that they're doing that I am. Right. I don't always succeed at that. I am a perfectionist. I have flaws in that regard, and we'll get into some of those here. But that's sort of the goal. And I get that. Really, I'm just somebody who grinds it out and makes it happen, and that's fine. I have no problems with that. However, I routinely find myself frustrated with people who don't. Who, in my eyes, don't do at least as much as I do, because I know I'm taking shortcuts. So, yeah, I'm already taking shortcuts. And if you're doing less than. If, in my opinion, you're doing less than me, that's frustrating to me. So maybe a better way to phrase this is people who take different shortcuts than me. Right. If their priorities and their choices are different than mine. Now I know we're all different people. This is why I'm bringing this as business therapy. I'm laying on the couch here. I understand that some of the things I'm saying are contradictory to one.

I have lots of questions popping up, but I want to let you get through this first.

So my frustration sort of manifests as if I'm doing it. Then you should be doing at least that much too. And it drives me crazy when people don't at least do the things that I'm doing because I feel like I'm doing, like, in my mind, I'm always doing the bare minimum. Right. To get it done. I'm not wasting my time doing extra stuff. I figure out what the essence is, and I do that. And that's how I remain productive. And this is what drives me to micromanage people. And I always say to people when I hire them, listen, I don't like to micromanage people. I'm guessing you are someone who does not like to be micromanaged, because I have yet to meet that person. And so if either of us notices me micromanaging you, that's a problem that we both want to solve. I'm saying that out loud up front. You know, I do not enjoy. I don't want that to be the default for us. So if either one of us notices it, we both have permission to bring it up right away.

Well, it's an indicator that there's something's not working.

That's exactly it. That it. Right. This is not how things are supposed to be. So let's fix it. Yep. And let that be. Like you said, the indicator, the litmus test. I like it.

Yeah.

But this is the thing, more often than anything else that drives me to want to micromanage someone. It's like, well, if you're not doing it this way, how are you actually going to get it done? I know that I'm not right about this, but I also know that this is how I feel, so hence business therapy.

Yeah. When you posted this into Slack, as we often start discussing topics for the show, I immediately said, oh, I share that same trait. I often feel the same way. And so, you know, I want to do a little research on. On why and see if it's common. And I think it is pretty common for leaders, whether it's small business owners or whatever, to. To feel this way. And I think that's the first step to trying to get this figured out is that it's inevitable that being disappointed is just going to happen.

Right.

Because it's just going to happen. But okay, flip side. All right, you need to be self aware that you will certainly disappoint other people in various ways of.

I am super aware of that.

Yes. And I know you are. I can tell from the way you're talking about it.

Yeah.

And I try to be as well.

It doesn't mean I'm aware of it. Every single time that I do it, I'm aware that I have disappointed people, and I will continue to do so. That's right. Yeah.

I've been shocked a few times in my life by having people kind of call me out and I've been like, whoa, I had no idea that, you know. Cause you just kind of get moving forward and you think that Bessie, as you're the leader, you're the owner, and you're just moving forward, going, okay, well, here's the benchmarks I've set for myself, and I'm knocking these out. But along the way, you could be disappointing people other ways that you, you know, you need to kind of learn because it does impact how they perform as well. So my take on this from a. From a small business owner is learning how to Managing your expectations of other people. And that's going to be the title of this episode.

Wait, okay, hang on. Managing your expectations of other people. This reframes this. I had written it down in our agenda, which becomes our show notes, but is a malleable, evolving document until it gets published. In fact, sometimes it even evolves after it's been published. But, you know, the way it exists at this moment in time, and it's about to change because you said it better was managing people who are differently efficient. So I was still trying to make it positive. Right. Like they're efficient in their way, but really this isn't about managing them. It's about managing my expectations of other people. I like this.

Correct.

All right.

I think that's where it start. Now, there is a lot of things, or many things beyond our control, but I, of course, truthfully, you can only control yourself, so.

No, I like this.

Right.

I want to let people. This is great. So this is. We've set it up here, Shannon.

Yeah.

I want to. I want to let people. I want to let this settle in for us all, because the next thing that I want to do is talk about our two sponsors for this episode, if that's okay with you.

Yeah, let's do it.

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Yeah, well, the one thing I've learned is that if you go after it hard, it often doesn't work out. When you try to really go after and tell somebody how they're doing it wrong or they're not getting it done.

This much I've learned.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. I learned that a long time ago. So you do have to kind of change the frame. And the one thing I tend to rely on a lot in my business career is, you know, when you want to criticize, you know, you look in the mirror and when you want to praise, you look out the window. You know, those analogies. Right. So it's always looking inward first. Because I think that's where as managers, that's where it all starts. And even like I used to tell my managers and supervisors, look, if they wanted to fire somebody, I say, well, this is a failure on our part.

On our part, everything's a management failure. That's right.

We either we hired the wrong person or we didn't train them correctly. You know, something came up, sure, we.

Didn'T fire them fast enough. I mean, like any of those things. But that's on you, right?

It's on us. So I, you know, looking inward, you know, the first thing I try to ask myself is there's actual performance and then an ideal that we have in our head. And we all have this about ourselves too. And, you know, are we judging others on our actual performance or on an ideal that we have in our head? Right. And it's important to try to ask yourself that question to start here, I think. And this on the, on the same note, are you disappointed in the ideal version of this other person or what they are really capable of? Because if it, if it's like you, you're. If you're comparing them against this ideal, you know, it's, it's impossible. You're setting yourself up for failure. So you have to look at what their capacities are, you know, their experience, their training. Because those are, those are things that are going to help you figure out why it didn't get done, why they disappointed you. And, you know, for this example, let's say some project, they missed some goal or something like that, didn't follow through, something like that. And then I keep asking myself these questions. Did I communicate my expectations clearly right? Because I'm running them, often running a mile a minute. I got 10 things on my head and I'm like, hey, can you get this done? Did I really Go through it with them that I set clear deadlines. Better. Better yet, did we set them together?

Yeah.

Right. Because if you just give a date.

Yeah. They're going to.

They're often going to say yes, but really, can they do it? So it's better to say, what? When can you have that to me by.

And let them. Let them be. Participate in. In the commitment. Yeah. Like my, My. My biggest points of frustration are. Are twofold. One is if, let's say I'm working on a project with someone and we're both in it together. Right.

Okay.

And I realize at many points during it, wow, you know, this is like 70, 30, 80, 20 the whole way. Like, I'm doing more now. You know, is that on them or is that on me? Is it me saying I want to make sure I. Because how would I. How do I feel when I'm in a project where it's flipped and I'm doing 30 and the other person's doing 70? I don't like that. So.

Yeah.

So to truly aim for 50, 50 is almost impossible to hit. Right. Unless you build a system that doesn't allow one person to get ahead of the other. Right. Which I don't know if that would be a good thing or not.

But, yeah, I would say the ideal system is one that it fluctuates. And you're both aware of that fluctuation and you both respect. It tends to balance itself out.

Well, when it tends to balance itself out is fine. Where. When I have a problem is when it's just always at best 60, 40, and sometimes worse than that. And I understand. I mean, I project. I don't necessarily understand, but I'll project into the other person's mindset of. Okay. And by the way, just so everybody here knows, there is nothing about our partnership between you and me, Shannon, that I am relating to here.

I think we have that balance. We do at certain times.

At different times.

Yes. Doing more than others. But then it tends to balance out.

It does.

And neither of us are hesitant about asking the other person, can you do this?

Can you get it done for us? That's right.

Yeah. Can you take care of this? Can you take care of that? But. But to your point, I think that we, people like us, if you don't see things kind of getting done and correct me if I don't want to put words.

No, you're putting the right words. You stepped over my thought, but I think you're going to finish it for me.

You just do it. Right. Because you're like, well, okay, that's not happening. I'm just going to go ahead and get this done.

I do. But part of that is because I know it needs to be done. But also, if I'm being perfectly honest and bearing my soul here, part of it is because I see myself as the person that gets stuff done when no one else does.

Yeah.

And so this is a self fulfilling prophecy.

Some of that is a delusion, right?

Yeah, of course it's a delusion. Right.

It's a way we create this story in our head to help us be successful.

Correct.

I'm aware of that.

And the frustration that I came here complaining about today is definitely something that drives my success at times. Right. Because it's like, well, nobody else is going to do it. You know, I'm going to fricking make it happen. And then I go make it happen. And it's not hard. It just takes work and focus and discipline. And I think, and I think that's a, that's, you know, I said there were two things that drive me crazy. Maybe it really is just one. But the other side of it is times if we say we're going to meet at 10am and you're not there, especially if we're meeting with like a partner or something, you know, like it's somebody that's not, you know, internal to our organization. And again, I say you, but I don't mean you. But you know, if it's like if we're supposed to meet, why is this difficult? Like that's really something that I am flabbergasted by. It's like we all have the ability, we all have these calendars everywhere. How hard is it to just make sure you're there or if you can't be there to send up a flare ahead of time, like, whoa, something happened, I can't do this. And I get that we all, me included, have times when we flake out on things like it happens. I think the consistency of that is where I really start to lose it.

If there is a consistency of not showing up on time and not valuing your time or your partner's or vendors or whoever's time, those are big indicators that things are not going to go right down the road. And you're right.

Yeah. These are two very separate problems, I think.

Yes. Those are that that is a big issue that drives me crazy too. And I like to flush that stuff out with that. We've had shows about the working agreement before and you know, you can set people, not that you're setting them up to fail. But you're testing, testing that because you know you're going to do a bunch of work here and I want you to commit to, at the very minimum, let's work out this agreement in a timeframe that we both can agree on and let's be on time and get it done. And if you can't, I can't. I mean, the dozens and dozens of times ideas and projects that I've started have ended at the working agreement because the other party cannot get it done. And that has saved me many, many hours of frustration and many, many dollars, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars. Because when you're ready to commit, you need to make sure other people are. It's not to say that back to where you started here. It's not that I'm really good at it. It's just I like. You grind it out each day. I know it's not the grand gesture that makes me successful. It's the daily.

It's the daily grind towards success.

And checking off the little things on my to did list that I got done, that's it.

I Facebook. Actually, it was from Ryan Stuman, the hardcore closer we had on the show years ago. He posted something, it was just last week where he told the story, two separate stories. One of a friend of his who's a billionaire, one of a friend of his who's a professional athlete. And both of them said, people ask me what the secret is to my success, and the story is boring. It's the little things that I do. The athlete, I just learned how to. I started working out when I was 19 years old and I never stopped. The athlete said, I never went from being, you know, 200 pounds overweight to being this, you know, picture of model fitness and all this. He's like, I just, I just. I just kept it. I just do it every day. And the billionaire was like, yeah, I don't have any. Any special secret. He's like, I learned how to make a little bit of money and then I made a little bit more than I made a little bit more. And it's really boring. He's like, I have the most boring, you know, riches stories. Like, I didn't. It's. I didn't come from rags. He's like, my parents had a little bit of money, you know, and he's like, and I just figured it out, but it's boring. Nobody wants to hear the story.

But from the outside, it looks like magic.

It looks like magic because there's Nothing. There's no one thing. People want the magic pill, Right.

Tell me what to say. What is the idea that made you a billionaire? Nothing. There is nothing.

Nothing.

Yeah. It's work.

It's the work. Yeah. Well, we talk about when people come to us, and this is where the working agreement. I'm glad you brought that up into this, because it really is a good litmus test to kind of, like you said, smoke out any of those problems. But people come to us individually and even collectively, like, hey, I have this great idea. Can you sprinkle your magic fairy dust on it? And it's like, no, I can't, because I don't have any. I never have. The only thing I know how to do is get up and do it.

Yeah. And anytime.

Which is the magic fairy dust, by the way.

Yeah, that's it. That is. And I can look back and even up to just a few years ago, when I had to pull somebody through, I still do it because I get excited about an idea or a concept, and I'm like, okay, yeah, I could be involved in this. And if I have, I look back and see, where did it fail? It failed at the beginning when I had to kind of pull them through getting the working agreement done. Or like, they did. Like you're talking about, they were not on time. Frequently indicators that I should have. Should have set off kind of alarm bells and said, hey, you know what? I don't know if this is going to work. And kind of leads me to my next point is that I think the first thing you have to do, taking on this okay, person that's not following through, whether they work for you or whether they're a business partner, is ask yourself, what role did I play in this failure?

Yeah, right.

Yeah, it is. Because we all do. Whether we.

Even if it's just keeping. Whatever the scenario is, the employment arrangement, the partnership, the whatever, keeping it going is your choice every day or my choice every day.

So if someone's late, like, you know, things happen. Of course, of course. If you're late one time, okay, great, no problem. You're late a second time. Well. But if you're consistently late, it's our responsibility as a leader, as a partner, as an employer to say, I am. My understanding of you being late is that you don't want to either be here. You don't want to be involved in this project. If you. And if it's. And then you just need to say, if it continues, I don't think we should continue.

Yeah.

And you give them the choice. And if they can go, you know what, I'm just, I'm a late person or whatever, I'll make an effort. Dah, dah, dah. Okay, okay, let's give it a shot. But if they continue to do it, you have to make a change because I tell you that stuff is going to bleed over into everything else that you want to much, much harder things that you're going to have to achieve later.

Yeah.

Whether they work for you or whether you're trying to start a business with them or partnership, Whatever.

Yeah, whatever.

Yeah. You know, so I think that it is important to catch those things early and it's our fault if we don't do it. There's no.

As you're sitting here, as I'm sitting here and you're saying this, I'm thinking about, you know, the recent failures that I've had. Not all of them, but, you know, some of the recent ones in the past couple of years. And it's like, oh man, he's totally right. I saw these things and I just let it go because I was. Because it's a double edged sword. The enthusiasm that I have, which I know many entrepreneurs have. Right. At some points you need that enthusiasm to just plow forward when other people might say that seems stupid. That doesn't make sense. And to be fair, not every time that I plow forward is a smart time. But some of the times have been not even the majority, but enough of a, you know, a sizable minority of them have worked out. And so I get to sit here and say these things. Right. Yeah, but, but that enthusiasm is a double edged sword because it, it's what gets me into trouble. Because like you, you know, you even recently, you know, you said you pulled somebody through the working agreement process only to find out, whatever, six months, a year, two years later, whatever.

Yeah, you're later. And, and a lot of money later, this person bailed on the project and left me in the lurch.

And you could have seen. And you could see it looking backwards. Yep. And I can see it with this other project that kind of came to mind as you were saying that it was like, oh man, gosh, all the signs were there and I chose to ignore them. And that's. And I say it specifically that way. I chose to ignore them. Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

And, and it's, it's also part of that. Boy, I can't remember the phrase, but it's being overly optimistic. It's thinking that because you've had some success in the past, you could overcome these things and, and you could make up for these problems. And, you know, it doesn't mean that. That the person is. Is bad or that they're, you know, we all have faults.

Well, and that's the flip side to this is, is we cannot expect perfection out of anyone, ourselves, others. So there will be these faults that we have to overlook or overcome or both. And so the trick is, like, we're both sitting here looking backwards, saying, oh, well, that partnership shouldn't ever. I should never have let it get as far as it did. Well, okay, but could you take the same lens and apply it to a partnership that succeeded wildly? And all you need to do is change the binary flip for the end result. Did it succeed or did it fail? And let's just say that it failed. Change no other facts about it. Look backwards and can you also then find the things where you said, wow, man, in the beginning, I should have seen that. I should have killed this thing right out of the gate? And I guarantee you the answer is you would find them.

Yeah, yeah. It's doing that postmortem, right?

Yeah. But postmortem is a success as though it were a failure might lead you down a path that does not reconcile with reality. So you have to be careful. Yeah, that's true.

That's true.

There's no magic answers. Here is the reality.

Yeah, yeah. And I want to also, I want to take some time today to talk about how you manage people that are letting you down, you know, your expectations. So let's say you've looked at everything. It's not, You've, you know, you're super accountable and you. What role you've played in the failure. You've. You've taken a breather. You go, okay, I'm going to, I'm not going to go into this angry or, you know, I don't want.

I want to fix this, and I'm going to take responsibility to do that.

Yeah. Okay. And I think the first thing you have to do is, is kind of create a roadmap, whether it's in your head or you write it down of what, what you want to achieve. Right. Is with meeting with this person, is it just that you want them to be on time? Is that, you know, this project, you want to meet these benchmarks or whatever. And then I think it's important when you meet with them to acknowledge the role that you contributed to the failure, because then it's kind of starting with you're kind of taking it on yourself a little bit. I Think it allows them to relax so it opens them up to this discussion that you're about to have with them instead of being on the defensive where they're not willing to listen.

Oh, I like this. Yeah. So you're both on the same side of the desk. Like we have a problem to solve together that we have, that we have perpetuated. That's right.

Yeah. And if it's like the time thing, you go, you know, I should have told you three weeks ago that it was really bothering me that you were not on time on a regular basis. I should have. It's my fault.

That's my fault.

You give them a chance to talk and you know, the thing is most people have good intentions. Most people are not trying to disappoint you. I would say the opposite. They're trying to impress you. Especially if you work for them or they work for you.

Yeah. Either way.

Yeah, yeah. And they're going to be hard on themselves. I would argue. We could do a whole show about people that aren't on time. It's a self esteem problem and these folks are typically going to be much harder on themselves than you are. So I don't know that there's a lot of value in you being hard on them. It's more like, look, let's get on the same side of the table and see if we can solve this. And if we can't, then it comes back to us to end it or to change it or whatever.

Yeah, right, right, right.

You know, get out of that. I'm going to punish anybody, you know, and use I statements like hey, you know, I'm disappointed that, that you're late all the time or I'm disappointed you didn't achieve X, you didn't hit these, these benchmarks that hopefully you and I agreed on, you know, last month and then, and then you just got to be quiet and listen to the other person, let hear what they have to say about it. Well, I couldn't do this, I couldn't do that. You know, maybe they're going to say, well, I didn't have the tools to get the job done or I didn't have access to whatever this person. So they may have some real valid thing and the failure may be that they is they didn't communicate to you. Right.

Sure.

You could just be sitting there thinking this guy's just messing around, not getting anything done. But it could be like, hey, I'm waiting on this or this department isn't helping, helping me or that person, you know, whatever. And so there's still a problem because you need to say, look, I need you to communicate when there's these problems as soon as you hear about them. So I'm not disappointed, or we, as a team, let's say, are not disappointed when we. When we can't make these, you know, set the system in place and can't hit these benchmarks. Very important. And as you're talking to this person, you want to keep talking about how you're disappointed with the outcome, not the person. Right.

Yes.

It's not them. It's just like talking to your kids. I love you. It's your behavior I don't like. So you can't. You're not going to say that to your employee, maybe, but, you know, it's the behavior that's a problem. The system has got to be tweaked here. You know, lean into the system concept and really tell them, I like it.

Yeah.

You know. Yeah. And then. And lastly, you know, what are the expectations moving forward? You gotta make sure they understand it. It's like, hey, okay, thank you for being upfront telling me this. My expectation is that you're gonna let me know as soon as there's a problem. Otherwise, you're gonna be able to meet the deadline that you and I just set together. Matter of fact, I agreed on your deadline. You know that. You told me on this date.

You told me. That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And we put it on the count. And sometimes somebody will throw these numbers out or these dates. I'll be like, well, I don't know.

The.

Let's bump it a couple of days.

Let's push it back a few.

Yeah, you got a holiday coming up. Let's do this. I don't want you to be with me, so you gotta be set realistic expectations or you're just gonna be disappointed over.

Well, there's. I think there's a whole show, or at least a segment to be done on all of us learning to set realistic expectations. I certainly catch myself in those scenarios, and I'm getting better at it. But, yeah, I had a meeting recently with a staffer, and I needed to do something to kind of talk about their compensation package and all this other stuff. And it was like, yeah, you know, I'm gonna. I know I don't like saying this, but I'm gonna need two weeks. And, you know, it was like, we have a holiday. We have this, that, and the other thing. And I'd love to tell you that I'm gonna get it done in two Days, but I don't think that's realistic. And so actually we need to be realistic. Yeah.

Yeah, that's good.

Yeah.

And it would want them to do the same, right?

Absolutely. And they thanked me. They were like, I. Everything you said is correct. I wish you could tell me right now what this is going to all look like, but I understand, I appreciate that you're, you know, committing the time to this and wanting to do it the right way. And I understand that, you know, circumstances dictate that this takes longer than either of us would like. It doesn't make me happy, but I am respectful that, you know, and thankful that you were, that you acknowledged that up front and didn't over commit. I was like, yeah, yeah. So that's good. It's hard, though. Like, it is hard. We don't like to disappoint. No one.

No.

Just like, you know, the people that we're talking about here don't like to disappoint. We don't. I don't like to disappoint either. In fact, I think if we, you know, get laid back on the couch, I think we could go all the way down and it's all about, I don't want to disappoint. And that's what keeps me pushing forward.

Yeah, me too. Yeah. And I think if you're the leader, the employer, the business owner, or in some position of power and the other person that you're working with is kind of deferring to you because of that, it really would behoove you to put yourself in, you know, in their seat mentally as much as you can, because they're not, you know, they may say things or try to do things because of that power factor that's just there. And maybe not. So you want to be like, you know, when you tell them, hey, give yourself an extra couple days, it really buys you some credibility. I think that.

Yeah. That you're being realistic.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. I think that's great. And then I think you give them another chance. I'm just a huge believer in that. And then you ask them, hey, what can I do before we leave? What can I do to help you achieve this? Right? What. What can I do? Do you want an alarm? Do you want to email? Do you want to text? Do you know how to set the alarm on your calendar so you're not late? I mean, what.

Whatever it is, what is it? Yeah.

Trying to help them down. But if you. If they let you down again, I think you have to really point it out again, say, hey, this is serious. And if they work for you, it's like, this may impact your future with. With our business.

Our business. Yeah, yeah.

And. And if it. And if it's something that doesn't correct it, then, you know, I've had people that I've tried to push into doing other things, and they have failed miserably, but it didn't take away how good they were at other things.

I see what you're saying. Yeah. The things that they do. Right.

Yeah. And I've made the mistake. It's like that Peter principle where, you know, you tried to push people into doing new things and when they can't handle it, they wind up leaving. And you're like, wow. But they were so great at this other thing. Now they're gone. So now I always try to have the conversations, okay, hey, this doesn't work out, but it doesn't take away from the fact that you are a great technician, salesperson, whatever. So I want you to refocus your energies on this and, you know, become even better or learn more about X or get your certification in X. Yeah. So, you know, don't lose those assets just because of a failure of. Of one thing, One.

One aspect of an asset. Yeah, of course.

So. And if it all goes to hell, then, you know, you go back and listen to our hiring and firing show and you need to make a change. I mean, it's just what it is.

No, that happens. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Or end the partnership or not start a partnership if all these indicators and red flags are going up. So it's a really important topic, and it's one that I'll bet you if we had a group of employees sitting here, they would often they have the flip side of this conversation about unrealistic, unrealistic expectations. They don't give me the right tools. They don't give me enough money. My budget was terrible.

All these, you know, all those things are true.

Yeah. So to be in, to be a successful leader, you need to know, recognize that, be self aware that they're thinking like that and get on their side of the table and go, look, how do we do it together? It's not just me dropping goals and benchmarks and saying, get it done, because that's. That's terrible. Get, get on their side with them. You know, use that teamwork approach and I think you'll find a lot more success.

Yeah, I agree. I agree. Thank you. This was good to talk this through.

Great. I love talking it through too. It always helps me to, you know, put things in, in writing and, you know, if, if you have tips for us that we can share on the show, feedbackusshow.co or go to Business BusinessShow Co Facebook. Get over to the small business support group and post your comment there. We would love to talk with you about it there.

Yeah, the business therapy group. There you go. All right, folks, thanks for hanging out. Thank you, Shannon. This was a fantastic episode here. Thanks to our sponsors. Make sure to visit coinbase.com SBS and napjitsu.com SBS let us know what you think. Feedback if you businessshow co. And keep living that charmed life. We'll see you next week.