The Multiple Benefits to Requiring Employees to take Vacation

The Small business show episode 357 for Wednesday, December 8, 2021. Greetings, folks, and welcome back to the small business show where we are small businessing here every week at BusinessShow. Co back here in Durham, New Hampshire. I'm Dave Hamilton in Alafia, California.

I'm Shannon Gene. Yeah, so we're recording this show a week early so I can talk to you, ask you how your Thanksgiving was.

Right? You can ask me how my Thanksgiving was. Yes, temporarily.

That makes sense. Yeah. My side of the country. Right.

I was. I was over in. My son is going to school in Portland, Oregon. And so he had a very short break this year. He basically would have. If he had flown home, he would have had like three days at home. My daughter finished an internship, so her semester ended early. And so we decided to do the very economical path of taking three of us and flying out to stay in a house that we were renting instead of taking one of us and flying them back to a house that we owned. But it did allow the family to really be together for an extended period of time. We were out there for eight days. Lucas, my son, was with us for six and a half of those. So it worked really well. We've always enjoyed. I mean, mostly always. You know, we. We. We raised two kids, so there were unenjoyable moments, of course, but, you know, we really enjoy our family time together as the four of us. And. And obviously we. We. No one's at a point in their life where it makes sense for us to always be together, and that's good. But when we do have the opportunity to be together, we all really focus on. That's great. On. On just making it happen. And it's, you know, a compressed period of time, but we get to hang out and then, you know, we all go our separate ways and do our things. And my daughter's actually off to Italy tomorrow, and my son is finishing up his semester. And, you know, Lisa and I are doing our. Like, we're all living our lives, which is how it should be at this point in time. Yeah, that's right.

I think it's great. I think that's a. I would feel the same, or I do feel the same. And you get everybody together and it's this. I think they're more important because those moments are kind of fleeting in the sense that as. As they expand their world and do their thing, there will be less and less of that. And so it's great we were able to get together.

We took my daughter to. We Took the family. But her. I think it was her high school. I don't know. There was something. Was it a high school graduation trip? I guess it would have been. Yeah. We did it the year before her graduation, I think. I don't know, four or five years ago, we took the family to Europe for two weeks. And that was the, like. As we prepared that vacation and planned it, we planned it for like, six months, which really I. High. If you can do that, I highly recommend it because there's so much enjoyment that you can get out of the planning process. You know, in addition to just. Yeah, I. In fact, I've heard people say, even if you can't afford to go on vacation plan one, you'll actually enjoy it. Like that. Right. You know, it's like thinking about all the things you can do. And as we were getting close to that trip, we. I don't know why, but we all realized. And it's probably because it was her, you know, graduation trip and she was going to be going off to college and all that good stuff. We all realized, wait a minute. Like, our time together is. Will end. It's limited. It's not. Right, Right. Because it was, you know, up until then that we all lived in the same house. I mean, it was just how. How it was raising two kids. And leading into that trip, we all realized, oh, wait a minute, this is going to be a thing. And so my son had to only go to sleepaway camp for two weeks instead of a month that summer, which he did. And we all carved that time out of our schedules, and it became this very intentional thing, and we obviously did the two weeks in Europe together. But even after that, whenever we were all available to be home for dinner together, we were. And we really focused on when we could. We sort of relearned how to choose to be together as a family, as opposed to it just happening by default. And, you know, and it, like, you know, when we would have dinner together, we'd all put our phones down and just, you know, enjoy. Even if it was just 30 minutes or whatever. It was like, yep, this is our time together. Let's make the most of it. And we've gotten pretty good at that, I'd like to say.

Yeah. And I would also say that that is the accumulation of successful parenting. When your kids realize that as well, instead of. Because, you know, at certain time in their life, they're like, oh, get away, get away. I want to do my own thing. Which you want.

That's normal too. Right?

So it's Great. That. And I have a couple of young adults as well. One that recently graduated from college and one that's still in college.

So I'm almost the same. Yeah.

Yeah, Almost same. And I love seeing that. Oh, hey, we want to be sure, you know, they. They feel the same way and, you know, want to get together and value that time. That's a. That's huge.

That's awesome. Were you able to have the four of you together for Thanksgiving?

So we, we. My daughter, her boyfriend lives in Pennsylvania or his parents live in Pennsylvania, so they go up there typically for Thanksgiving. The last couple Thanksgiving. And my daughter will be home for. For Christmas. She comes home in a couple weeks, so she'll be home and we'll all be together at that time. But we had my son and he brought one of his buddies that didn't have anywhere to go from school. So we went up to Tahoe. We had our huge family event here locally in Lafayette, where we had sit down dinner for about 20 people. I smoked two turkeys, which I'd never done before, which was. It was a little stressful, but it turned out.

I want to talk to you about this. Because we ate a smoked turkey in Portland last week, we decided not to risk trying to cook a turkey in an Airbnb. You know, especially in Airbnb. We had never stayed before.

We don't have all the stuff.

Well, we didn't know what we were gonna have, so we. We ordered a smoked turkey and then just heated it up in the oven. We cooked some other things and. And really did make a nice kind of, you know, family event of it. But we love the smoked turkey. Yeah. So I wanted. And we've had it before. We used to get it in Texas at the barbecue joints. We could get down there. I've deep fried a turkey for Thanksgiving before, but never smoked one. So I want to get it.

The smoke was great. And it was. I'm not a huge turkey. I mean, it's not my preferred. I mean, I eat it like in sandwiches. Right. But, you know, so there's probably a reason why we cook turkeys once a year. But the smoking was terrific in the sense that it's very juicy. It takes a long time or, you know, you're low temperature. Long time. And then this time I did one with regular seasoning and I did one spicy.

Oh.

And I have to say the spicy one was much more popular. And because turkey's kind of bland.

It's bland.

And yeah. So the spice was. Everybody loved that. And the gravy was incredible. The gravy was super smoky because I caught the drippings up front in the smoker.

Got it.

And that was, that might have been the most important part of it.

Makes sense.

And then up in Tahoe, we went up and. And they're actually for actually Thanksgiving with some friends and my son. I cooked turkey on the rotisserie on the Weber on the charcoal grill. And we do that up there and. Oh, it's. I actually thought that tasted better than the smoked one. My wife disagreed, but, yeah, sure.

Yeah, yeah, it's good stuff. That's great.

I love it. Yeah, I love it. It's great. So, yeah, I'm glad to hear your update and I hope everyone listening.

Yeah.

You know, I hope everyone listening as we pull you back two weeks prior to, to Thanksgiving. I think it's just a great time of year and I love, I love this time of year, the holidays and get together and.

Yeah, I like it for getting together. Yeah. The gifting thing can get to be an issue. You know, it's, it can, it can distract from the getting together at times, which is part of why I really like Thanksgiving, because generally that's, that's not part of it. So, yeah, it's great.

You know, it's good stuff.

Speaking of your small business and gifting, there was a, an announcement from the SBA just reminding us all that we have until December 31st to apply for Eidl Relief. The loans, the targeted advance, all that stuff is still going to be accepted up through December 31, and it will be processed after that until funds are exhausted. So make sure you take a look at that and see what it is that you might be able to apply for still.

Yeah, we mentioned that a few episodes as well and talked a little more in depth if you want to search EIDL up at BusinessShow co. But yeah, the advance, I think you can still get up to $10,000.

Yeah.

Depending on number of employees that they give you.

That they give you. Right.

And then the balance is, you know, it's a 30 year. You have 30 years to pay it off. I think the interest rate's still around three and a half percent.

Yep.

And it's a great bridge loan as well. It's great to borrow money when you don't need it.

Right.

And I think they give you 12 months to start making payments. Yeah. You're going to accumulate interest during that time. But I know we did it. I paid mine back because I didn't. I wound up not needing them.

We did the Same here with, with company that we, that we operate the small business show inside of. So.

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, it's, I, I, I loved being able to do it because we just didn't know what was going to happen. So if, if you're listening and you're not sure how your 2022 is going to be or you've had a significant drop in revenue, I think it's a great resource and relatively easy to get.

Yeah, it was an easy to get thing. The interest wasn't terribly expensive and it was well worth it from a confidence standpoint.

Yes.

Knowing that the funds were, like, in my control as opposed to, oh, crap, I need to go apply for them. Right. Like that.

Yeah, Yeah. I wish they had done it as lines of credit, but I understand the management of that because I would have loved to have just been like, hey, we've given you, you know, $150,000 line of credit when you access it, here's the three and a half percent interest rate, because that would be just great.

Oh, that'd be great. Yeah. But then, then we're not paying interest, Shannon.

Yeah. Yes. Well, I all depends on it is more as well, so. But I thought it was great. And like I said, go back and listen to the Eidl episodes that we've done and maybe there'd help.

One more thing from the sba, they've got, you know, we mentioned in a recent episode that they have all those newsletters and everything. And so I've been paying attention to those, Shannon, and they sent out, they shared an IRS video about how to settle your debt with the IRS on your own. Oh, I'm not sure I would choose to go down that path. I think if I was ever in a scenario where the IRS decided I owed the money, I would very likely want to pay an accountant to be my agent in that particular negotiation. However, knowing the process is helpful regardless of who is doing the interfacing. Because you want to. You're the quarterback of this thing, you know, or at least you're the, you're the manager. Right. You're the one stuck holding, holding the bag and paying the bill. That's it. So it's good to understand the process. And so it's a short little video. It's easy. But I put a link to it in the show notes.

Oh, good. That's great. Yeah. I've done it both ways.

Okay.

When we've owed and, you know, we kind of fought some things and, you know, I think it really depends on the dollar amount. And either way, you really have to be involved because to your point, you're going to be paying the bill, not your accountant or your. Or your tax attorney. And over the years, you know, like I said, we've done a couple ways. So if it's a small amount, I've actually found working with the IRS super pretty easy. And maybe in my case, and it was, you know, kind of some basic stuff that we argued about and we lost, but they just pointed out, hey, you know, this, that, and you can't do it that way.

Yeah.

But if you're cool with them, I think they're pretty cool with you. And I would say the one tip I've said a few times on the show over the years is if you get the wrong person on the phone, just hang up and call back and get somebody else.

Yeah.

And you may have to do that a couple of times. Sometimes you get a case advisor that. That will be your, your total point of contact. But oftentimes it's different people, and some of them may just be having a bad day and you just want to say, hey, thanks, I got to go, but I'll call back. And you're going to get somebody different. And you can use your persuasion techniques to make it a better experience, to.

Make it work out a little better. I like that. That's. Yeah, yeah. Smart, smart. Yeah. And I would agree with that. I, I've. I've been through only a couple of things with the irs, but.

Yeah, me too.

Thankfully. I'm sure I will have more in the future.

Well, there is more coming, apparently. I know that's, you know, it's kind of being sold as targeted, very wealthy people. But as we know, small business owners tend to get swept up in that based on revenue. And if you have pass through income, it can really hit you. So you want to be sure you go back and listen to our accounting episodes and make sure your accounting is working great, because that's going to be important, I think, in the next few years.

I don't disagree. Yeah. All right. I want to talk about sick days. In fact, listener Martin wants us to talk about sick days. The next thing that I want to do, though, Shannon, is talk about our two sponsors. If that works for you.

Yeah, let's do it.

All right. Hey, look, you know, when running our businesses, HR issues can kill us. Things like minimum wage requirements, labor regulations, even wrongful termination suits can come and get us, especially when we're not paying attention. And listen, HR manager salaries ain't cheap. They run an average of 70 grand a year. Well, our sponsor, Bambi, spelled B A M B E E was created specifically small business. You can get a dedicated HR manager, craft your HR policy and maintain your compliance, all for just 99 bucks a month. I know with Bambi you can change HR from your biggest liability to your biggest strength. Your dedicated HR manager is available by phone, real time chat or email for things like, I don't know, onboardings and terminations. And on all of this stuff, they customize your policies to fit your business and help you manage your employees day to day, all for, again, just $99 a month. You've heard about this. If you are a listener to this show. We've been talking about Bambi for a while because they've been sponsoring for a while. If you haven't done this yet, now is the time they are here to help. And it's all month to month. There's no hidden fees you can cancel at any time. So unless you started your business because you wanted to spend all your time on HR compliance, go to Bambi.comsmall right now to schedule your free HR audit. That's Bambi.comsmall spelled BAM to the B E-E.comsmall and our thanks to Bambi for sponsoring this episode. You know, there are so many moving parts when it comes to running a small business. It can feel impossible to figure out what to focus on to win against the competition. And that's why you need to listen to the David versus Goliath Podcast. This podcast will help you find the clarity you need to slay the Goliath in your industry. It's a must listen for entrepreneurs, for people who are small businessing every day. Like all of us here at the Small Business show, the David vs Goliath podcast is packed with insight to help small business owners beat our large competitors. Host Adam Degrade is a serial entrepreneur. He's passionate about creating a space where we can all come together and learn from one another. He interviews small business owners from a variety of industries to share their best practices and their mistakes that they've made along the way. Like Bob Taska, who took his family's automotive business from a single point dealership to one of the largest auto groups in the usa. Or David Dorman, a Realtor who runs his own Century 21 franchise, Adam knows it's never just one thing that makes a business successful. It's a combination of things. So each episode covers the five areas that every business needs to thrive. Plus sales, role playing, guest interviews, and practical tips to Take action. Today you need the David vs Goliath podcast to get inspired and educated on not only how to compete, but to win. Subscribe to the David vs Goliath podcast on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And our thanks to the David vs Goliath podcast for sponsoring this episode. All right, Shannon, so we got this note from Martin here, and it was about the title. He sent us a link and the title of this article on Axios.com is Sick Days Disappear in the Remote Working World. And Martin wanted to know if we had any thoughts about this. I'll read a little bit of this so that we can sort of set the stage before the pandemic. If you woke up with a runny nose or a tickle in your throat, it was a simple enough decision to stay home and avoid infecting your coworkers. Now, as more Americans work from home, sick days are disappearing. Why it matters. Working through sickness, fatigue makes it harder for people to recover quickly and completely, prolonging the harm to their health and productivity. And it also leads to an epidemic of presenteeism, showing up for work when you're not feeling up to it and not doing your best job. So then there's more to it in this article too, and we'll probably get into some of this stuff. But. But I wanted to set the stage here. You have thoughts about this, Shannon? I do.

I think one of the first things we need to do or you might want to do in your company is change the terminology and don't call them sick days anymore. Just call personal days and you can do whatever you want with them. I think that takes some of the, you know, am I sick? Am I not whatever. Away from it. And if you're going to like, give as part of your benefit package, hey, X number of, you know, personal days, you can just, you don't have to refer to them as sick days. Now. There are going to be times where people are just like, hey, I'm just not feeling up to it. But I think how you frame it is a good way to start the discussion about take time off. You need it. You know, we want you to take it. And also understand that being present isn't the number one priority. The number one priority is your productivity and the results, of course. Right? If you can do your job with less time, well, I mean, that's okay. And not that, hey, I'm here. We have a friend that started working from home and she was explaining it that, like, they had to log into to Skype at, you know, 7:59 in the morning and be active all day long. I was like, that's terrible. You know, what are you doing? Is. Is more important of the fact that, hey, I'm. I'm here and I'm. I'm moving my mouse so you can see activity, Right?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

You know, that's not. So I think how you present it to your employees is the first step.

I agree. I think step one is having a culture of productivity and results. Like, that's, to me, that's where it starts, and quite frankly, that's where it ends. Like, we've been remote effectively for forever. 23.

Right.

23 years. Right. You know, and we have had office space at times. We've had staff in the same city that wanted to work together, which was fine. But even then, there was no accountability to be in the office. It was, you know, look, tell me if neither of you are coming to the office anymore, so we stop paying rent. But other than that, that was the only sort of accountability to. It was, let's make sure if we do this, we use it. But otherwise, our culture has always been about productivity and results. I know that if I set myself up in a scenario where micromanaging is possible, I will be awful about it and I will hate it and my employees will hate it. And I tell anybody that comes to work for me pretty much exactly that. Like, if either of us catches me micromanaging, you, that is the sign of a problem. It is also a problem in and of itself. But if you see it, you gotta tell me because I'm probably seeing it too, but maybe not. And we gotta bring it to each other if that's happening.

Yeah. Because there's a reason.

Right. Something has gone wrong. Yeah. And. And the interesting thing is from that we have never limited people's sick days. We've always told people. And so we do have a. We do define them differently from personal days or vacation days, because sick days have always been unlimited. And now what's that? Yep.

Paid.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. For our salaried people, our sick days are unlimited. And again, it comes down to trust. Right. Like, we are all about productivity. Obviously, if you're sick, you are not going to be productive. Like, that's just.

And I. Yeah. And I agree. And I think there's a. This definition of defining it for salaried employees versus hourly employees is important how you're. You probably have to deal with them.

Differently, I would assume.

Yeah, yeah. And so that. That's a different. It is A different discussion. I agree with you 100%. Salaried people is like, hey, you're going to manage your own time.

You're going to manage your own time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we. We started doing unlimited vacation time. I think we talked about it on the show five or six years ago, and that I think has worked out well. Although there is the risk, the risk of which I am very well aware that if people are not accruing vacation time, they may get too focused on productivity and not take any vacation time. And I do try to lead by example in this regard, where it's like, no, I'm going to take time off. I choose to be available. I make it clear to my employees I do not expect them to choose to be available when they are taking vacations. And there are some where I also choose not to be. Like I said, I try to lead by example in that regard. I'm sure I fail in lots of different ways, but it has worked out well for us and our culture, so. Got it. Yeah.

So if we've kind of covered the sick thing, I think it's a good segue into this vacation. And an article like you recently shared with me, where the author talked about engineered chaos, Actually, I think it was a tweet. Right. On Twitter and talking about, hey, you know, he referred to them as forced vacations.

Right.

Meaning, you know, hey, you gotta. You need to go block out this time. We want you to take a vacation. And, And I think that's very important as well for the employee as well as for your. For your business. And I have some. I have some thoughts on that, if you want to.

Yeah, no, let's do it. I'm. I'm. I. This is. Because this is the area. This is the risk area, like I said, for, for me, for the way we do things. Yeah, Yeah.

I think it. It, number one, you know, it can help rejuvenate your employee. Just like you feel better after you go on vacation and get away. And a lot of times you think, I can't be away. Who's going to do all this stuff? I guarantee your employee thinks so. Pulling them out of that is important to do kind of a framing reset because you want them to be confident about what they do, but not so confident that they think nobody can do my job.

Right.

Because it's kind of a fine line there. But I also think it's really good for your business in the sense that if you want to find flaws in the systems that you're using, you got to pull People out and, and then talk to your team about, okay, you know, Shannon's going to be on vacation next week. These are some of the things that need to be done. Delegate them out. Or if they have an assistant or somebody in their department, you want to see that. To expose problems that may be getting overlook, overlooked or worse, hidden.

Right.

And if, and you know, I've been in this position where I've had people unfortunately hide problems and you did not know about them either until you made them, you know, take some time off or you, you know, unfortunately had to let them go. And then all of a sudden everything comes crumbling down.

Right.

And so I think it's great to bring any, any weaknesses up to the surface, you know, because you should be able to manage things without someone there, and your other employees should be able to step in, and it's good for them, it's good for you. We've talked about it on the show before, about stepping into an employee's role to do some things. I think, Dave, in your case, you stepped back into actually managing part of a business that you weren't anymore and I wasn't. Kind of rejuvenated the business and you. Right.

And me, I was just gonna say more me than the business, but one is a byproduct of the other, for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's this forced vacation thing that, like, would someone do this by surprise? Like, would you. Would you say next week you are off? Right.

Well, that's, you know, the financial industry does that. They do a couple of articles that were, you know, linked in. That one in Forbes about how to combat employee theft and fraud is a big part of it is like, hey, you're off this week or next week or whatever it is. And lots of fiduciary type of businesses rely on that to catch things. Because if somebody doesn't ever want to leave and give up control of their fief, there may be a reason. And, you know, I think it's also really good for just emergency prep. You know, what happens if someone takes another job? What happens if.

What happens if they get sick? Like, if they really get sick? They really. Yeah, they get. Yeah, if they get. Yeah.

Wow, that's.

That's. I mean, it as a, As a small business owner running a business with, you know, 10 or less employees, the idea of willingly choosing to have one of them not there seems preposterous to me. Right. Like, you know, but all the more.

Reason why you should do it.

All the more reason why you should do it. Agree yeah, yeah, I agree.

And I think there's also one last thing on my list, is if you allow your employees to just accumulate more and more vacation days. Well, those are liability on your books, right?

Yeah.

And if. And if you're a small business and you're going to let somebody go, I can remember having this discussion, and I would tell, you know, Renee, my wife, who ran our HR and did the bookkeeping, I'd say, hey, unfortunately, I'm gonna have to let this person go. And she's go, well, what day do you want to do it? Because we. How much vacation do they have? Because we got to write them a big check, you know, and so you've got to manage your cash flow. And you, you know, you should have a limit. I think we had three weeks. After three weeks, you know, you didn't accumulate.

Accrue anymore.

Yeah, accrue anymore. And so you really. That's a good way. Like, I wouldn't if. If I had a small team and I could say, hey, you got to go on vacation. It's a different discussion. It's like, look, man, you're getting. You know, I can sense it. We want everybody to take their time. You know, I want you to book some vacation because you're going to stop accruing. And that usually motivates somebody to, okay, I'll take a week off here, or whatever.

Yeah.

The other thing we used to do is give away trips because we had so many miles. We've talked about frequent flyer and affinity points with hotels on this show many times. If you search for credit cards at BusinessShow Co, you'll find ways to help live a charmed life. And you can also help your employees. So we would say, look, every year we typically gave away a trip, and we had so many points, we could say, you can go anywhere in the world and you would give them the list. Right. And so they could go. It doesn't matter. They could go to Europe, they could go to Hawaii. They could go wherever because you just. You could cover the flights in the hotel. It wouldn't cost you anything. But your points, because we had millions of points. This was at a time where our FedEx and UPS shipping bills were about $200,000 a month, and we paid them all with our credit cards, which was just fantastic. And we paid everything else with the cards. We built those up. So it's an incentive to get people to go when you drop a trip and do some random thing or the other thing is to have them vote on who should get the trip, that's an interesting exercise. But getting their involvement, it gets people gone and you get that culture of, hey, we want you to leave, we want you to go and come back refreshed. Bring new ideas, things you've thought about outside of work. So you want them gone. So you can, they can benefit, but you can also benefit as well.

I like it, huh? Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Different, different ideas to do it. And, you know, if you have ways that you manage this thing, you know, vacation or, you know, sick time, personal days, please share them feedbackusinessshow.co or come up, go to businessshow co Facebook and you'll get routed over to the small business support group. Post it there and share your ideas. We would love to hear them for sure.

Your comment about people voting on who gets to take the trip reminded me of something. My son is out at Reed College, which is in Portland, Oregon. As I said at the beginning of the episode, it's where Steve Jobs went, learn about fonts. What's that? And learn about fonts. Yeah. And also met a guy named Richard Crandall who was a professor at Reed until he passed away. Cryptography, computer science and math guy. And that actually wound up being part of the key to Apple's success in, in future years. When Steve came back to Apple, he went back to Crandall and, and, and actually had him build what at the time was sort of a skunk works operation to solve all the difficult algorithmic problems. It was interesting. He left him in Portland. It was. It's a fascinating story about the Apple. I think they call it the Advanced Computing Group, which is still in Portland to this day, if you believe the rumors. But they don't talk about it, which is also fascinating. But anyway, my son went to. There's some guy that comes on campus on a semi irregular basis with used books and he found this guy had a copy of the whole Earth catalog. And so Lucas bought it just to have around the house because it was just a fascinating thing to see. And Steve Jobs used to quote Stewart Brand and that's where that whole stay hungry, stay foolish kind of thing came from and all that. So it was interesting to have around the house at our Airbnb this week. And so I would glance through it and it really was like a paper version of Amazon Marketplace. There were just things from everywhere. Yeah, yeah. It was fascinating to read through. And there was one book that Stuart Brand himself had reviewed. This thing was hundreds of pages long. And I think it was the essential Whole Earth catalog, if anybody's looking for it, was published in 86. But there was a book in it that Stuart Brand had reviewed called Getting to Yes. And it was Negotiating. It's a negotiating book, and it's negotiating agreement without giving in. And his one example from this book. I've never read this book. I don't know if you know of this book called Getting to Yes, Shannon.

Oh, I've heard of it, but I haven't read it.

Yeah. And his. Stuart Brand's example that sort of made him highlight this book in the catalog was when you have to choose how to come up with something. And he used a custody arrangement. Have each spouse create the custody that the other spouse will get. And I thought, what a fascinating thing he's like. Because Stuart Brand was saying. Stuart Brand was the one who created the Whole Earth catalog along with many other things in his life. But he was saying, I hate negotiating. I hate being in that position. But if you're in this scenario where you're both trying to create something truly fair, then that's different than everybody holding their card so close to the vest. Right. And the example of having two divorcing spouses choose each other's custody arrangement will encourage you both to create something quite fair in the process. And I just thought that was an interesting tactic.

It is. Yeah.

And I'm sure I'm going to use it at some point. So I probably will pick up this book and read it, but I'll put a link in the show notes. But. Yeah, no, that's great.

Yeah. I mean, when we used to have the employees vote on stuff like that, I mean, you really get. And we made them give the reasons.

Right.

So it really helps you see parts of your employees that maybe you don't see. Maybe there's, you know, because you're, as the owner, the person that signs the checks. You have a different impact when you walk through and people are doing things that work for you. It's just. You can't avoid it.

It's totally different.

I always come back to the people that actually became some of the best employees I ever had. Those were the people that sat next to me when I. At our Friday barbecues.

Interesting.

And a lot of people didn't want anything to do with me all the way to the other end of the. Another table, this kind of thing. Just close enough to, you know, but far enough away, you know, that kind of stuff. But having them describe why this person should do it. They may be a quiet person that I totally overlooked and they write down something they did great, how they helped a customer, how they solved a problem at work. And it's great to reward those people for things you may not have seen.

I like it. I like it. It's good, man. That's good.

Good stuff. So, yeah, let us know how you handle these issues. Feedbackusinessshow.co. or if you wanna feature you know your business on the small business show, let us know.

Yeah, yeah, we love to hear your story. We love stories. We tell our stories all the time. Come on, tell yours. We'd love to hear from you. Feedbackusinessshow.co. that's what I got for today. Shannon, you got anything else?

No. Me too.

All right, make sure to check out our sponsors, of course, the David vs Goliath podcast and bamb.comsmall. keep living that charmed life, folks. See you next week.