Small Business Employee Benefits – Maximize Impact and Minimize Cost – Small Business Show 146

The Small business show, episode 146 for Wednesday, November 22, 2017. Greetings, folks, and welcome to the Small Business show here at BusinessShow Co, the show by, for and about small business owners here in Durham, New Hampshire. I'm Dave Hamilton.

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

I am good. End of a long day here, but I'm actually excited. I like what we have on deck for this episode.

Yeah, me too. Me too. And actually, happy Thanksgiving. When folks get this episode, tomorrow will be Thanksgiving.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. In fact, you might be listening to this right after Thanksgiving, so you could.

Be that tryptophan is mellowing you out to the couch. You're just kicking back listening to that. Yeah, that's it.

Watching a football game, watching a parade, whatever it is. Yep.

Yeah, we're recording this a little bit early. I'm going to be in New York City visiting my daughter for Thanksgiving, so that's cool.

So. Oh, this is her second year, right? It is.

She's a sophomore at Mary Mount Manhattan. So we. And we. We always went out, I think.

Yeah, you always. You always did this every year. So now it's kind of a thing. That's pretty cool.

She said, yeah, it's fun. We have a great time.

So. Except now she. It's. I mean, it's vacation because she gets to go and do something different, but she doesn't get to go anywhere.

That's right. She's stuck.

She's stuck.

Yeah, yeah. It's okay. We spent enough to have her there.

I was just gonna say, yeah, we're on deck for that next year, so.

Oh, yes. It's always fun.

Yeah, Always fun.

I never realized. I thought it was difficult, you know, buying a house, but actually renting an apartment in New York City in Manhattan was I. I mean, the amount of paperwork I had to submit was just insane.

Oh, it's crazy.

You just have to shake your head.

The approvals and the.

Oh, yeah.

Yep.

Yeah, it was nuts. But, hey, so today we're going to talk about benefits. The benefit of benefits for your employees. Right. And I was rolling around topic ideas. We've been going back and forth with this stuff, and I thought it'd be great since Thanksgiving is such a, you know, good time of the year. We're always thankful for stuff. And certainly your employees, you're attracting them to your business. Right. By offering them different kinds of benefits. Right. And a job in the first place.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't forget about That, I mean, don't ride your employees and remind them of that every day. That. That's. That most people don't want to hear. You're lucky to have a job.

Get to work. That's not good, man.

That's not what we're saying.

Yeah, yeah, no, but, you know, that's. That's something. And of course, you know, healthcare is the big one, but, you know, you offer. You got to remember certain benefits are more valued by one group or one demographic than another, because, like, I've always employed typically younger folks. We were. We were big part of an internship program out here, and these young, you know, technicians that will come on board. After a while, I realized they didn't value the healthcare as much as I did with my family and that kind of thing. And so the older folks that worked for us, they valued it because they realized how, you know, expensive it is. But so you got to put yourself in their shoes that a younger employee may not think that's such a hot, you know, okay, great. You have to do it.

You know, it's interesting. I've never. Oh, that's not true. We don't currently offer healthcare at any of the companies that I have. We did when I had computer nerds down in Austin. We pulled together a group health insurance plan and did that for all our employees. But most of them were quite young, but they were out on their own.

And.

And, you know, this was 20, 25 years ago. So I think it was a different mindset and a different climate in terms of that. People felt like, yeah, I need to have healthcare. And getting your own healthcare was sort of something most people didn't think about learning how to do. That's very different than now.

Yes, it is.

Yep. But. But, you know, we. We don't offer healthcare at either Backbeat or. Or Mac Observer. And the reason is, well, twofold, if I'm being honest. One is I've always gotten an individual plan for myself, and it's. It. Well, pre, you know, all the changes that came with ACA and all that stuff, it was relatively easy to do. You know, you had to go through some underwriting, but you got to pick a plan, and you got to get exactly the plan that was right for you. You weren't spending more money than you wanted. You weren't spending less than you wanted.

But I think as a business owner and entrepreneur. Yeah, you're more comfortable doing that kind of course.

But. And that's what I'm saying, if I'm being honest, because with that, I Was definitely applying my comfort level.

Yes.

To my employees. And to be fair, I would help them through the process. And many times I have gone and looked at, hey, you know, what would it take? What would the cost be like to get a group plan? And it was always like, oh, it would cost double. Let me just show you how to do this. Instead of me paying for it, I'll just, you know, put in the time and then we're done. But the result of that has been, and I mean, maybe this is part of it, but most of my employees are not family people. They are.

That's interesting.

Yeah.

That's a demographic, right?

Totally. They are either younger people that don't have families yet or they are people even my age or even older who just, you know, never had kids and, and just.

Yeah.

Never did that. And it, it, as you sort of mentioned this, it's not all that surprising that that's what with the culture and the way we do things here, that, that, you know, it's not surprising for better and worse.

Right, that's right. And what I found is what, what that demographic really wanted was cash, you know. Yes, they wanted the cash. That's right. So, you know, I've, if I had my choice, I would just much rather say, look, you can work for us and we're going to allocate this much money for you to go get your own healthcare. Because I always, you know, I don't want to be in healthcare business. I really didn't mind paying for it as a benefit. But what I have found over the years that once you're the. I am the provider in essence and I then have an annual battle that I have to deal with which is that the costs are always going up. So I'm put in a position as a small business owner to be the.

Bad guy to your employees because you're the one that has to tell.

That's correct. I have to break the news. I'm taking more, you know, health, the costs went up 20% and you know, they may not be familiar with this kind of thing and you're thinking, okay, what percentage we pay? And this kind of stuff, it is a no win or yeah, a lose, lose situation. There is nothing, oh, hey, cost went down and you're going to get more money in your check. It doesn't ever work that way. In addition to that being put in that kind of negative situation or relationship with your employees, the management and HR challenges involved in managing those folks healthcare is mind boggling to me.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Oh, it's crazy. And maybe that's why I've never done it again, is because I did it and it was like, whoa.

And again, great, great people. But, you know, and I loved everybody there. But there was folks maybe not used to making. And I say big. I want to. Careful how I phrase this, but big decisions and things that are really complex. You know, if you make. If you select A, then D is going to happen and you could do C and maybe this option, this. And we just found ourselves in a position where every year during open enrollment or when something happened or this kind of thing, or even when you let somebody go, we had a, you know, an episode all about letting people go. You have to deal with their healthcare. Right. And. And, okay, you're gonna do cobra. You know, we. You're covered for 30 days after you leave, and then you can buy it at a certain rate and then you have to explain this stuff to them. And it just.

Man, it's not what you got into business for.

It's not. It's not. It pours glue in the gears of my small business.

Yep, it totally does. Yeah. And for that reason, I was very happy to see one. You know, byproduct of the Affordable Care act was that it brought what I had been doing for decades, going and finding my own health insurance, individual health plans. It brought it right to the forefront and basically right to people's front door. You know, you. You go to the exchange for your state, whatever it is, and it's right there. You don't have to like, find an insurance agent. Right. You know, which used to be step one. You still can. And there's reasons, if you're buying individual healthcare, why you might still want to do that, but you don't have to. It's all just right there. You can do it from your computer. You don't even have to talk to a human. Right. So it, it, yeah, I agree. Homogenized that process and it really, it watered it down to make it fairly easy. Now, what I will say, as someone, because I've been doing this for so long, we aren't on an ACA plan. We were personally. We were able to be on a, what they call the grandfathered plan or whatever. Thank goodness. Aca. And I was going to ask, you know, you said your employees were happier with the cash. I'm curious now, you know, with like, I think ACA rates went up like 50 or 60% this year. I mean, it's. It was crazy.

Depending on where you live, depending on where you live in what level? If you were like at the bronze level, it didn't impact you as much.

That's where it went up.

Like, I thought it was. Oh, I thought it was the silver that really went up the most.

I don't know.

Yeah, bronze.

Bronze is basically the plan we have. And when I looked at the exchange, it was like, whoa. So I wonder if that will make people, like, if it will sort of turn the tide back to. Man, I just wish my boss would take care of this for me. Right. As opposed to I can get it on my own. Yep.

Yeah. And I think that it's a real tough one. And, you know, there are companies like Zenefits and things that will, you know, now they've had some trouble, you know, but I think they've turned themselves around and now they do. But getting an outside HR firm that can help with that stuff, I mean, I think it's definitely worth looking into. I think it does, you know, bring your employees closer when you can offer them that help those health benefits and does endear them to you, you know, more. But it, you know, it's definitely time consuming and expensive to manage the program when you've got, you know, 15 to 20 or 30 people that are in and out all the time asking about this, just, you know, dental benefits and this and that. I mean, it's crazy. It's. It. It kind of drove me nuts a lot. And I like to your point, I did not start my business, a company to be. I didn't want to be in healthcare business.

Right.

Never.

You know, if you did, you would have started an insurance agency.

That's right. That's right. So. So the healthcare is the big one.

So healthcare. But that's not the only one. Right? You've got. Should we talk about paid time off?

Yeah, let's do it.

Yeah.

Yeah. So, you know, you've got. Do you offer paid vacation and, you know, it's there. We used to offer, you know, paid vacation. We offered sick and kind of sick slash personal days as well.

And did you. Did you count those for your employees?

What do you mean by that?

Give them. Well, yeah. Did you give them a limit of what they could and couldn't take?

Yeah. So what we did is we, you know, you set up an accrual.

Yep.

You know, and they would accrue a certain amount of paid vacation, let's say two weeks a year.

Yeah.

But it would be accrued. So starting January 1st, you know, they would start earning it every vacation or, I'm sorry, every pay period. Let's say was X number of hours they would accrue or for every hour they would get some amount that they work. So over the, over time they have to build it up and they could use it sick and personal. You know, we, we would give them five days a year.

Okay.

And they could do whatever they want with it and because, you know, people are going to use it anyway.

Right.

You know, when, when, when their kid has sick or when their kid. And, and we, I think a big benefit that you can offer your employees and this is a kind of an umbrella benefit that relates to all these things is flexibility.

That's the key, right?

Yeah. And you know, as, as business owners, Dave, we've often said here on the show we don't have freedom, but we have flexibility. So if you can give a little piece of that flexibility and empowerment to your employees, it they really become loyal to you. And when I, when I'm, what I'm talking about is, you know, when a kid has a play at school or has a doctor's appointment or something like that, you got to let him go.

You got to let him go. Yes, yes. Well, you know, that, that's, I've had employees say to me, you know, I bet I could go somewhere else and make a little bit more money, but I can't imagine going anywhere else where it's like if I, you know, I've got a guy who coaches baseball, right. And so in the spring, his schedule is a freaking disaster. Sure, right. I mean, you know, because he's coaching these kids and they schedule these kids baseball games like, you know, for, for like, well, especially when summer comes, they're in the middle of the weekday like, and these are, these are like 10 year old kids who's going to, who, who's going to bring these kids to the games? Like, my guy has the flexibility to do it. He's like, yeah, I'm going to go, but you know, I'll get my work done. It's like, of course, you know, treat your employees like they're adults and it depends on the job they're doing some jobs that you don't have time. Flexibility. But, but he's a, you know, he's a sales rep for me.

Yeah. If you can do it, I think that's one of the best things you can offer them. It is a huge benefit to them. But. And I think it's worth pointing out if they don't realize it, that's something.

You can, you can sort of beat.

Them over the head with. And some people have to leave before they realize it. Right. And I've had that happen. And, and I've had some people come back, you know, so, so it, it, you know, it's a, it's a huge benefit. So the, the, the sick slash, you know, personal days, like, look, you need to take a day, take a day. But I think that it's important too, is, you know, how do you let it. How or how much of any do you let it roll over? You know, if, if you have an employee, do you really want an employee that has a month of unused vacation on your books? Because that's a, that's a liability.

I don't. And I, I have, I've had a lot of thoughts and we've, we've tweaked this many times over the, our evolution, and a lot of it just stems from me. Right. We're relatively, especially at Backbeat Media, we're a relatively small company. And I take vacation when it's time for me to go somewhere. And I don't think about how many vacation days I took this year versus last year or anything like that. But I also know that I got to get my own work done. And I found especially because for the most part, my employees are commission sales reps. And yes, we pay them a base and it could be argued, different show. We'll talk about the merits of paying 100% commission versus.

Yeah, that would be good.

Yeah. Yeah. But we do pay them a base. And initially it was okay, well, you know, I guess we gotta, you know, come up with a vacation limit and this, that and the other thing. And then it was, well, you know, you haven't used your vacation time, so now I've got to force you to take time off. Because I want people to. I don't want people to just work themselves to death and burn out.

Yeah.

And, and then we instituted an unlimited vacation policy where people can just do what I do.

Okay. Yeah.

Take the time when they want to do it and, you know, it seems like the most logical thing for this type of business.

I would agree. It totally makes sense.

Yeah. Because it's like, you know, your, your job is to get your job done and you need to manage your own time. If I feel like I have to micromanage you, I will. And then I will fire you because I don't want to micromanage you.

That's correct.

So a logical extension of that is okay, if you want to go on vacation, go if you feel like you can. And I don't say that meaning to Sound like I'm guilting someone. But if you feel like you can take the time, then take the time. And it's good for you to take the time and then come back, recharge.

That's right. And they're very. Yeah. And they're very results driven.

Right, Correct.

And so that's. That's a different situation versus if you have, you know, your employees that need to show up in the morning and, you know, get certain jobs done throughout the day and cover when people are at lunch or whatever. That's right. That's. Yeah. So you have to look at it. But that's a great flexible flexibility thing that you're offering them.

And, you know, I, for the first, I stopped counting, actually. But for the first two years that we did the unlimited thing, I counted, and people were using about the same amount, maybe a little bit less. I kind of had to nudge people like, hey, man, I had one guy, I'm like, dude, you gotta, like, what are you doing this summer? Yeah, you know, that's right.

You've gotta go.

He's like, it was. I don't know. I wasn't really. I'm like, yeah, pretty sure you're gonna go somewhere. And it's like, I'll pay for your airfare, you know. Yeah, like, you gotta go.

And I agree. And you want them, you know. You know, employees sometimes don't want to be gone because maybe they're worried about if you're going to miss them. Yeah. Job security, you know, they don't. They don't have money to go somewhere else, you know, that kind of thing. I understand that, but. So I think you have to put a cap on it. At least in our situation was, okay, you. We're not going to let you accrue more than three weeks of vacation time period. So after, you know, you, you didn't take a vacation this year. Let's say you got two weeks on the books, and halfway through the year, you've got three weeks, you stop accruing.

You're done, you're finished.

And so, because part of the problem as well is if that person decides.

To leave, you got to pay them.

You got to pay him out and write a check for that stuff, which I know you didn't plan on in your cash flow forecast. No. You know, and so I didn't even.

You know, I didn't even think about the unlimited vacation thing from that standpoint. But that totally frees you from that.

It does. It does.

Pay him a dime.

Yeah, that's right. So you don't have to. Right. Because it's up to them, you know, I guess I don't know the legality of it, but it's certainly an interesting argument.

Yeah, it's not cut and dry, that's for sure.

It's not cut and dry. And I think it's also, you need to make it really clear on the vacation versus sick and personal. Sick and personal days don't roll over. You cannot accumulate more. If you don't use them, they just kind of go away, you know, so we don't necessarily point that out all the time because I don't want Everybody rushing on December 25 to five days off. But, you know, we, we let them know when they, when they first hire.

Don't give your guys Christmas off, Shannon, man.

Well, they don't work for me anymore, so.

That's right.

Oh yeah, but, but, but of course we did. But I mean. Yeah, yeah, couldn't, I couldn't resist. There's a lot of work to be done at Christmas. What are you talking about? You know, and, and so you gotta, you gotta look at all those things and find out what the laws are, you know, in your state and things, you know, again, Nolo Press is a great place to go do some research. You know, there's a ton of legal site legal zoom and all this kind of place, but you know, they charge a lot. Nolo Press is relatively inexpensive and you can, you can get good resource and talk to your, you got to have some kind of HR resource, you know, whether it's your attorney, an accountant, a private company, you know, you got to get somebody with this somebody you know.

And get it right. Otherwise you got.

Oh, yeah, you can't screw this up because you want, you're liable. You're the one that's going to come back to. And I don't know what the statute of limitations are on it, but I know it's a long time, you know that it's too long. Yeah. Somebody can come back, say, hey, I never got this paid or this didn't happen, or you know, that kind of stuff.

And if you are in that scenario, go back to our last show. Don't ignore those letters.

Yes, that's right. Yeah, the demand letter. Especially if it's from some sort of government entity, you definitely need to do that.

You know, I have that U.S. postal insights. This is just a tangent. I have that US Postal Insights thing which sends me an email every morning that shows me pictures of the letters that are arriving at the house that day.

That's awesome.

Yeah. It's kind of cool, right? Because they scan every piece of mail that goes through the system. You always have. So, you know, if you're sending things you shouldn't be, just, you know, FYI this morning, I. I, you know, I just happened to glance at it because it's always interesting to know. I. I don't know. I probably shouldn't look at it, but I did, and there's a letter to my wife and I from the irs. And, you know, we always file every time that happens.

From Nay Handsome to me.

Yeah, well. But now the problem is I don't get to open the letter when I find out that it's coming. I have to wait, you know, five hours until the mail arrives.

Yes.

And we just, you know, it's November 6th. We filed our taxes sometime in the beginning of October because, you know, we always are delayed on that stuff. We do the extension or whatever. And I'm thinking, oh, the last thing I need right now is an audit. I mean, I've been through audits before, but it's like, you know. No, no. And so, you know, I, like. It was on the back. I didn't, like, fret about it because there's nothing I can do. You know, you can't chase down the mailman. So it was on the back of my mind for a little bit. And then I had a ton of work today, so I didn't think about it at all. And then I got home, you know, afterwards, when the kids got home from school and there was the mail, I was like, oh, okay, I gotta open this letter. And I open the letter, and it's like. We just wanted to let you know that someone authorized your tax return to be sent to the financial aid, you know, FAFSA department at the government.

Nice.

Yeah, that was me. Okay.

That's nice. Yeah. Oh, I know. I always get those, too. Yeah, it's like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's great. You know, and another thing that I really like is, as far as, you know, benefits is talking about comp time. I'm a big fan of comp time. Sometimes we call it flex time, you know, and you need to look into whatever's legal in your state, county, I don't know, city, who knows? But, you know, comp time, sometimes you need everybody to work overtime. And I know about. In my business, it was always some. Hey, you know, we got this major thing happening here, and we'd like to. But sometimes employees may value the flex time or the. Or the. We call Comp time where, okay, if you work an extra two hours tonight or after work today, you can take two hours off anytime you want.

Ah.

And accumulate.

You don't have to pay them for overtime and they get the flexibility.

Yeah. So that's the trade off. They're not going to get overtime. But what they're getting is they're hourly paid, but it's super flexible. So if they say, look, I built up, you know, two days or 16 hours of over of comp time, they could add that on to like whatever.

A vacation or vacation, whatever.

Yeah.

Is that, is that legal? Can you, can you ask people to work overtime? Like, like what if they don't have to? Laws. Right.

You have to ask you now you, you can't force it, but you can say, look, I, I, I like who wants. You can offer comp time. And what it does for a small business is it helps you conserve your cash. Right.

Of course.

Because you're not paying tax. If you have hourly employees, you're not paying them time and a half, but you can't force them to do it. Excuse me, but you can say, look, we're gonna approve up to 20 hours of comp time because we need some extra time if anybody would like to come in who wants it. And we always had takers, usually most people, if they had the time to go, oh, yeah, I'll take that. Because they know, oh, when I get to Thanksgiving or I get towards Christmas, I'd like to have an extra day and I don't have to worry about this. And you know, as well, if they work a lot of overtime, you know, often call it comp time. Yes.

Don't call it overtime.

No, no. But if they work overtime and get paid for it, it can often bump them up into a higher tax bracket. And all of a sudden they get their check and it's like, wow, they took out a lot more taxes. It's like, well, because you're, you know.

Earned a lot more.

You earned a lot more. And it's, you know, so the comp time was, is a welcome thing. We used it all the time. But you got to find out, you know, what, what if it's legal in your, in your state.

Yeah, right.

Figure that, that kind of stuff out. Another thing I want to talk about, and I don't think you can put too fine a point on this or underestimate the value of this. It's food and drink. And, and I just want to go over that again. You want to feed them and give them drinks as Much as possible.

Yep.

Because it is a relatively inexpensive way to make people happy, to make them feel that you are interested in their well being.

Yeah. You're a provider.

You are providing. Yep. You know, get a, get a soda machine or stock the fridge with soda. You know, I'm not gonna say you want to get sugared up, but you know, if you have young employees, maybe you do.

Yeah. I mean, everybody puts a coffee maker in. There's a, there's one reason for that. You want. He's caffeinated.

That's right. You know, keep the fridge stocked.

Yep.

And you know, and keep, keep food. And that can be done different ways. You know, if you, you can provide food all every day, you can have stuff there and those kinds of things you could have. If, if a group of people are, are working overtime or they're going to work through lunch, provide, you know, order pizzas and have them brought in and get them, you know, so they can eat and keep. Keep going and getting some protein. So their performance is, is, you know, so they're productive as well. I think one of the most powerful things you can do as well. Two of the most powerful things. The first one is as a business owner, cooking for your employees is very, very powerful and means and says a lot to them. If you make them lunch.

Yeah.

Or breakfast or whatever you want to do. If you pull out your grill on a Friday and you cook and you barbecue for them, or if you make pancakes in the morning and you're making sure everybod gets fed, it changes the way they, that your employees look at you. And it's a simple little thing. It is a simple little thing, but it, you know how much pancake mix costs?

Oh yeah.

Nothing.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's a rounding error.

It's a, it's, it's flour, whatever. Yeah. Pancake mix. And you know what, splurge and get some bacon or ham or whatever you're going to do. And those people, you know, and we've, we have kind of evolved it over the years where we started having pool competitions. You know, we would have. Let's, you know what, this month we're going to do breakfast competition and we're going to. Every Friday a different employee can pick if they want to compete for breakfast and they would make breakfast for one another. We would pay for it. The company would buy the food and they would come in early and you'd roll into work at 8 o' clock and it would just smell, you know, like at a restaurant because somebody had been There cooking eggs or bacon or whatever. They're going to do omelets. And it was awesome. And I would say the same about lunch.

It's.

It's great. Get everybody together, mix your departments up and cook for them and talk and connect with them on another level. It's a big, big benefit for them, but it's also a huge benefit for you.

Right?

It's a big deal. So I highly recommend that every dollar you spend on food, I swear, you get like five or ten bucks back in for your employees. Because they talk about it all the time.

They talk about it all the time.

I hear them talking about it. And we would, you know, we used to barbecue right out in front of the building.

So all as customers, you gotta stop saying barbecue. I lived in Texas too long. People get away with that. It's a cookout, Shannon.

A cookout. I'm sorry. We would have our cookout.

People here call it barbecue, too. It's just.

Yes, we call it barbecue. I'm from California. Yeah, no, I know.

Yeah. It's on the coast. It's okay to call that barbecue everywhere else. It's a cookout, man.

So, yeah. And we would do our cookout in front of the building, so the customers would see it and you would post it, and then we would post it on our blog, of course. And so, hey, we're cooking out for our employees today. And da da, da, da, da. And here's the boss cooking yada yada. And you turned it into a marketing thing. And people love that. They buy into your culture. It's authentic. You're not doing it to trick anybody.

No, no. It's very. It's very transparent.

It's who you are. So, you know, when we are deep frying a turkey in the parking lot and doing video and putting up online, I just don't think there's anything bad about it. Everybody benefits, you included. Your employees love it. It's a great way to do it.

And if you've never deep fried a turkey, man, that is a special thing to do.

Just be careful.

Yeah. Don't deep fry it frozen.

Yeah, yeah, that's true.

That's a bomb right there.

And I said, too. And I'll leave you with this. Not to put too fine a point on what you can do for your employees, but you're really the steward for your employees. We've talked about this before, and one of the best things I think you can do, you don't have to do it all the time, but you need to go empty their Trash. And they need to see you doing it. You need to go up and walk in and go, hey, let me get your garbage. Because they look at you funny in the beginning when you first start doing it, but, you know, it really, again, helps you connect with them, and it sounds really silly.

No, I was talking. I was talking to a friend who runs a consulting business around here, and he's got, you know, he's got people out in the field helping customers, but they have an office, and they're all in the office, you know, at different times throughout the week. And he goes in every Saturday and cleans the office.

Yeah, that's great.

Right? Because somebody's got to clean it. You know, it's not magic. And he said one of his employees asked one time. He's like, you know, he. He was away for the weekend or whatever, and so he was going to stay late on Monday. He's like, oh, sorry, the office didn't get cleaned this weekend. I'll do it tonight. They're like, well, why are you doing it? He's like, I always do it. They were just blown away. He's like, well, do you think magic fairies come in? They're like, well, we thought you had a cleaning service. He's like, why would I spend the company's money on that? Here we are.

I can run a vacuum.

Yeah. He's like, it takes me an hour. It's not a big deal. Yep.

It really builds great loyalty, and it's just. It's just a good thing to do. And, you know, cooking is much more fun, of course.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But still empty in the trash. It's both ends of the spectrum.

So benefits to your employees in all kinds of levels and, you know, we'd love to hear.

I have.

Yes. You got one. Go ahead.

I do have one other thing to end, and that's bonuses.

Ah, yes, yes.

Right. Because bonuses can be delivered in cash. And if there's a sizable amount of cash.

Cash.

Well, money either in their check. In the check. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can give them in cash.

I like the cash cash idea, too.

I do, too. The problem is, and cash. Cash tends to be spent more frivolously than money included. Extra money included in the check. I found.

Correct.

The extra money included in the check is appreciated, I think, for the shortest period of time, because what's going to happen with it is somebody's going to use it to pay their bill, they're going to pay their rent. Rarely are they going to do something for themselves. So it's it's almost, I don't want to say it's a waste. And certainly if you have a business where it's structured where, you know, you can, you know, once a year, whatever, you give somebody a bonus that's, you know, worth 20 grand or something, that moves the needle for most people.

Yes, it does. You know, that's significant.

That's really significant. Right. But if it, if you're talking about $1,000 or less, and a lot of times it is less, like including it in the check often just gets lost in the noise. Giving it as actual cash. Cash can be a very powerful thing. But I've found even more powerful than that is either either giving a gift card or my preference is actually buying something for your employee, a tv, like something that they're going to use. And remember you, because think about it, if you give somebody. What are TVs now? 500 bucks, let's say they're $1,000 really nice TV. Okay, so it's a thousand bucks. You give somebody 1,000 bucks in cash, they're going to remember that and then they're going to spend it probably frivolously, hopefully a little bit. I mean, that's the point of the bonus and then it's gone. But if you buy them a tv, five years, man, that thing's sitting in their house and they're looking at it every day.

I could not agree more with you on this. I think that giving them a tangible item that they're going to use. One year we gave when the first kind of the jawbone Bluetooth speakers all came out and different things and we gave out all kinds of little things and, and that was those things and people had them at their desks and they talked about it. I can remember people talk about the next years.

Yep.

Yeah. And I think that is a big deal. Now, I am also a big fan of hundred dollar bills because they're powerful and you know, people love not. You know, we basically pay the tax on that. Right, right. We're taking it. Yeah. We're eating it. But. But rolling out a hundred dollar bills is a great way to impress somebody that's working for you. When. But I don't think you need to wait. Those a hundred dollars bills are awesome on Friday at the end of the day.

Yeah.

If you're rewarding employees, if you walk around, you know, here, hey, what a great week, man. You got your department just killed it. Here you go. Everybody gets a hundred bucks, you know, so you maybe give away 500 bucks, five guys, whatever they're going to have, man, they go home and you know, they got some extra cash in their pocket.

I don't care who you are, you make $100 bill turns your head and.

Do not give them 520s. You have to give them $100 bill.

No, no, it has to be. Oh, no, 520.

It's not the same. That's right. No, yeah, $100 bills.

Even when I play gigs, you know, a lot of gigs that I play, just as a, you know, as a musician, I like 100 bucks a man is sort of the minimum that you leave the house for. And if I get five twenties at the end of the night, it's like, okay, there's my 100 bucks. But if somebody gives me a $100 bill, it's like, oh, yeah, yeah, it's better.

I got 100 bucks. It's better.

I know it's stupid.

That's right. It is stupid. But it works, you know, so if you fed that person that day, you emptied their trash and you kicked them 100 bucks, man, they're gonna love you and they are going to work for you on an entirely different level than if, than if you don't have use those little opportunities to connect with your employees and create that beneficial relationship back and forth with you. And you know, it sounds, sounds cheesy, you know, that win, win thing, but it, but it's real. It works. And these people, man, they will sweat blood for you.

I haven't gotten to do the hundred dollar bill thing.

Well, you're not there. You're not with us.

I'm not there. But I used to. We. You just. Yeah, we could do it with, with, you know, you could send it to their bank account or whatever.

But there's Venmo because, you know, Venmo's cool. Is that their phone goes cha ching.

Yeah, that's true.

That's a big. That's a good mental thing.

That's true.

Cha ching. They just sent you 100 bucks. Thanks. Have a great.

That's true. Yeah, I like it. I like, I've sort of standardized that sort of thing. I've standardized on Amazon gift cards.

Amazon, yeah, we've done the same thing.

It's like, here you go. Here's a hundred bucks on Amazon. Like, yeah, I know you're not going to pay a bill with this. So there you go.

And you know, you bring it with Amazon if. Excuse me. If you have employees that are readers and you know that connect, you know a little bit about them and they read books and do different things. Giving a, a book that had a big impact on you and explaining it to them and giving that book, that's a really great gift too.

And a very personal connection.

Yeah, it is a real connection. And that's what you're trying to do. You're trying to, you know, get through the employee or, you know, employer barrier that's there. There's always going to be something, but you're trying to make it semi permeable, if you will, and, and, and get that person to, to just get to another level.

Yeah, it's trust, it's loyalty, but it's not. It's sincere.

It is sincere. It has to be. You can't manipulate this to your benefit. You have to really want to do it. I mean, you know, if you're too important to empty the trash, I get it. That's no big deal. You don't have time. Doesn't matter. You're huge. You got 50 employees and would take you a day.

Oh, yeah, that's. Yeah. At some point.

These are just things that have worked for me in the past and your thing too. But I like it and it makes it more enjoyable for myself, which is ultimately what I'm looking for.

It feels good, man. It does. It sure does.

I'm thankful for it.

That's good, man. Me too. I'm thankful. I'm thankful we get to do this show.

I'm thankful to Dave Hamilton for hanging out with me every week at BusinessShow Co Man.

I'm thankful to Shannon Gene. It's a good thing. I'm thankful. The Storyblocks. I know they're not sponsors of this episode, but they've got an ongoing campaign with us, so check them out storyblocks.com SBS Awesome. I think that's all I got, man.

Me too. Thanks for hanging out with us, everybody. Everybody.

Yeah, it's a fun one. Have a good Thanksgiving or I hope you had a good Thanksgiving. Enjoy your families. Keep living that charmed life. Have a good one, Shannon.

Yeah, you too.