The Problem with Giving Employees What They Want

The Small business show episode 373 for Wednesday, March 30, 2022. Greetings folks and welcome to or welcome back to the Small Business show here at businessshow Co. The show where we are always small businessing and then we are talking about it once a week here. Small sponsors for this episode include hunterdouglas.com SBS where you can go and get your free style Get Smarter Design Guide and Banknovo.com SBS where you can get your free business banking account in just 10 minutes. We'll talk about each of those in a little more detail shortly here. For now here. Back here. Finally, back here in Durham, New Hampshire.

I'm Dave Hamilton and in Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean. We were both coming back from some travels.

Yeah, that's right.

Ready to go.

Ready to go. Yeah. I was away for 12 days for two different conferences and I actually have some things to share about both of them. I was at south by Southwest and then in Austin and then after that I went to LA for podcast Movement Evolutions. It's rare for me to have two conferences that are back to back, but when I looked at the schedule for this, I couldn't justify skipping either one of these, especially after so many years of not being able to go to these conferences.

Yeah, sure.

And I looked at the schedule and it was like, okay, well if I'm leaving Austin on Sunday and I need to be in LA on Wednesday, flying back to New Hampshire, halfway across the country to then turn around two days later and fly all the way across the country, the other direction did not make sense to me. So I figured, well, I'll just keep heading west. And so I did. I just went to LA and got there a few days early. My son came down from Portland, it was his spring break and my wife came out. So we had a few days of, of sort of, you know, family time in between. And then, and then, you know, the, the other conference sort of kicked up. But yeah, it worked out. You, you had a, a very non business trip, didn't you?

It was terrific. Yeah, it was the first time.

It was great.

Well, I was worried about it because I was going to be really off the grid for a long period of time. We drove about 20, I think 2,400 miles, rented a Sprinter big van and saw some great stuff. Went to Moab and to Bonneville Salt Flats and a lot of stuff in Utah, Grand Canyon, back through Arizona, Joshua Tree. It was, it was great. I really enjoyed it. But there was large sections where you Know, you're just literally like, go in the middle of nowhere and make a left in the desert. And so. But it was great. It was wonderful. My wife and I, we had a great time and saw some awesome stuff, and I really enjoyed it. It was. It was really cool.

That's cool. That's great. I like it.

Yeah. There wasn't too much pain when I got back. I mean, you know, you have to kind of manage jumping back into things. But the key for us, we came back on a Friday.

Okay.

Which was great because I had the weekend to kind of ramp back up. And I would highly advise if you could do that to. To do it, because then I didn't hit. Have to hit the ground Monday so bad because I kind of eased back into it.

That's good advice. Yes. I. Managing the work that will need to happen either while you're gone during your trip, or certainly when you get back is a smart thing to plan for. I did the same thing. I came back Saturday morning, and so I had all day Sunday before I had to get into Monday. And it made a big difference. The other thing that made a difference is. And this wouldn't have been relevant for your trip, but I knew going into this trip that I was going to need to work. You know, it wasn't gonna. A lot of times when I go to a conference, I mean, I'm certainly working at the conference, but I'm often delaying. A lot of the things that I would do is sort of my routine here if I was in the office. Right. You know, there's. There's those things. And. And for this trip, I knew I'm gonna be away for 12 days, it's gonna be the end of the month, it's the end of the quarter. For a variety of reasons, I just couldn't shirk my responsibilities for what effectively would become two weeks, you know, And. And so the first thing I did was give myself permission to, like, not attend the conference one afternoon and hole up in my hotel room and actually do work. That's something I. That would be my natural inclination because I'm. I'm actually an introvert. I know I'm not shy, but that doesn't mean I'm an extrovert. Right. That is learned behavior. But my default would be to happily hole up, avoid people and. And, you know, and do work or something. You know, it doesn't matter what. But I would hold up. So I gave myself permission to do that, which I normally do not do when I travel, and that. That in and of itself was perhaps the biggest thing. Although the second thing was equally as important for me, at least in the moment, and that was traveling with a portable monitor for my laptop in my office. I am, you know, I am a two monitor person at my, at my desk and at my podcast station here. Right. Like I always have screens and when I travel I have my laptop. And yes, I use an Apple laptop so I can use the whole sidecar thing with my iPad and use that as a second screen. And I've done that at times. But I travel with a smaller iPad. I like an iPad mini. So it's not quite, you know, it's a nine inch screen. It doesn't have quite the real estate. So I traveled this time. The one that I brought with me was the Lenovo ThinkVision M14 and it's a 14 inch super slim. It comes in a nice little case. It is, I'll call it bus powered, meaning it's powered by your computer. So I plug a USB C cable between the two and then that's it.

No ac.

Correct. The AC is plugged into the computer and that's it. Yeah. So it's super easy to set up and it becomes the second monitor. And it was a game changer for me, like way more productive. Completely changed my productivity. Yeah. And part of it I think is because I'm so used to two screens. If I was used to one screen, then it probably wouldn't make any difference, you know, because I'm already. I know how to be productive that way, but I don't. I am most productive on two screens. And so having that. There's another one I was testing out too. The, it's the Asus. What's the name of it? The Zen screen. And that's a slightly larger one that's 15.6 inches and the same kind of thing, USB C, you just plug it in and away it goes.

Check it in with your luggage or did you carry it as. Carry.

I don't know if they would have liked to know that it was checked in my bag, but I did check it in my checked bag. Yeah. Yeah. That's good.

Good to know.

Yeah. No, these, these things were like I said, invaluable. It just makes a huge difference to, to, to just being productive.

I just checked as you were talking. You know, I have like 22 windows.

Yeah.

On my various screens. You know, I don't know how you do it. And so that, that's a great tip is to carry that in.

Yeah. And they're, they're you know, relatively inexpensive. 200 bucks for the, the Zen screen and 250 for the, the Lenovo, the ThinkVision. So, you know, you're not going to break the bank on these things and they just work. And if you connecting to a Mac, the ThinkVision one is actually a touchscreen, although the Mac does not have any support for it as a touchscreen. But if you connected it to your, you know, your Android phone or your Windows machine, you could actually use it as a touchscreen if you wanted to. I didn't, didn't even bother me. I just wanted a screen like I didn't care. And it looks fine. Like it actually looks great. Looks better than it needs to is perhaps the way I'll say it. So that's my advice.

Good. Yeah, yeah. And you know, one of the things coming back today, I read a very interesting article with a provocative title that I, you know, we're going to kind of steal and use for this show is, you know, and we're going to talk about this more in a bit. The problem with giving employees what they want.

Oh, I like that. Yes.

Yeah. And there's a lot of nuance to it, but it's really an interesting topic and I'm looking forward to the discussion with you.

Yeah, absolutely. I saw a couple of things at south by Southwest that I want to share here on the show and I'm going to spread them out over the course of a couple of weeks here just so that we don't just do it all at once. The first thing that I want to talk about is this interview I saw and I'm going to, I hope I pronounce his name right. It was an interview with Reggie Philz. I may, and my joke is I may be mispronouncing his name, but, but I don't think I am. I think I got it right. He was the, is retired, but he was the president and CEO of Nintendo. That's right, yeah. And fascinating story from this guy. I mean, he, they touched briefly on his, you know, beginnings in a, you know, not affluent neighborhood in Brooklyn where he, you know, where he came from. But he didn't really spend a whole lot of time dwelling on that. Let's say he pushed himself, he moved forward. He was the first non Asian, non white person hired in any sort of role like that at Nintendo. He was actually hired as the VP of sales. And while he was being courted for that position, he demanded a meeting with the then president as he was taking the job. He found out later that that almost Cost him the job, but he would have been okay with that. He knew that he was going to work very closely with this person and he needed to know if he could actually work with this person and develop a rapport with them. And so he did. Now, the person that he talked with, I don't have the guy's name, but this person was the first non Nintendo family member of the business or non family member of Nintendo. And he was Asian in Japan and became kind of a mentor to him. But he was a fascinating story. He became called the Reginator. He was always about just opening doors and pushing forward. And under his watch, the Nintendo ds, the Wii, the Switch, all were products that came out. And it was just interesting to hear him talk not only about his career, but for the reasons that he retired. And this was the part that made me think about our show here. And he quit because he wanted to do other things and he knew that even if he could delegate a lot of his day to day responsibilities, let's say he would still have the oversight responsibility. And on a very different level. Reminded me of what has happened with me since the Mac observer was acquired. I didn't think that that was taking up a lot of my time. Shannon. Yeah, because, you know, it was, it was on autopilot. Right. You know, and, and, and for better and for worse, I will say, like it is that business is already, I can see things, it is doing much better having someone at the helm that is focused on it and pushing it forward. Like, it's fantastic. It's great. Yeah. But I just, I, you know, I thought, because when I, when I started telling friends like, oh yeah, you know, the site's been acquired, they're like, oh great, you can retire now. I'm like, yeah, you know, I, I don't really spe on it, so I don't think it's going to make it. It's not going to make any difference. I have Backbeat, I have my shows that we do those sorts of things. And yet in the last few months, I've found that my inbox is much cleaner. I have more time to do side projects and things like that. I guess it was taking up more mental space than I realized. And when he said this, it was like, this is really interesting because he said he wanted to write books, he wanted to do some board work, he wanted to teach about his experiences, he wanted to do interviews like he was doing at south by Southwest, and he couldn't do those things while he was running the company. And it was really Interesting to me, we always think, well, we can always add more to our plate. And I know I am very much guilty of that. And I think it's possible there might be another person here that does the same thing. I don't want to put words in anybody's mouth, but the door's open. But it was really interesting that that was the reason he quit. Now, obviously, he got himself to a point where financially he didn't need the paycheck anymore, but I got the feeling that that had been true for quite some time and that he was working because he wanted to work and he enjoyed the projects, he enjoyed the challenge, he enjoyed leading the team, and he was working in the gaming industry. So he was literally playing games often. And he said that they asked him, like, how much gaming did you do? He's like, oh, daily. And he says, I would work with the team and we would talk on Mondays about the games that we played over the weekend and all that stuff. So he had a pretty fun job, you know, all things considered. But it didn't leave him time to do the things that he wanted to do. And he was smart enough to know that, which is, which is sort of the key. And that's part of what I wanted to just share here. So.

Yeah, so, yeah, and I think it's being self aware.

Yeah.

You know, and I think as small business owners, it can be challenging. At least I know what it was for me to realize. Okay, like your point where you look and see your former business doing really well because someone has maybe some new energy, new ideas, new focus.

Right. Yeah.

And I have been through that as well. And it's a different feeling knowing, stepping away, knowing that it's going to do great without you and then transitioning to like, man, I'm so happy. It's doing great. And seeing these businesses out there under the helm of other people that you've either sold or.

Yeah. You were mentored and brought them up and. Yeah, whatever.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, businesses that are, you know, still around today, that I started in my bedroom 25, 30 years ago, you know, it's great, but it's a, It's. It's a big transition to be able to step away, and that's a good thing to study.

It was. Yeah, no, it was fascinating. I was. I actually watched that interview remotely south by this year. That was the first show that was canceled in the United States in 2020. Right. That show did not happen in 2020. So it had been since 2019. And that year they did an admirable job of rejiggering as much of the content as they could and putting things online. And then certainly last year, they did a fantastic job of it. And this year, certainly they brought back the in person part, but they also brought the. They left the online portion in place. And in fact, I would say they iterated on that and made that better, too. So there was the first three days of south by Southwest. I consumed from here. I attended from here. My family was not home, which worked out really well, but I had some. Some projects to do. Very specifically, cleaning up my office and then cleaning up the studio here and just reorganizing things. And it was perfect to have these kinds of sessions on while I was doing those things, because it's. You know, I would watch the first five minutes, orient myself to who the people were, how they sounded, and then I didn't have to just watch because it's. I mean, it's basically like. It would be like watching you and me do the show. Right. You know, and. And it's just two people talking. And so it was very easy for me to pay attention like you would to this podcast without me, you know, without just gluing my eyes to the screen, which is what happens to all the people in the room anyway. They all have their laptops out. They're sort of doing other things and listening, you know, kind of in the background often. I don't want to say every attendee, but it's not uncommon at conferences. And so it was an interesting thing. And then, of course, I went and, you know, I flew down and saw the rest of south by Southwest in person, but they did a great job, both with sessions like this, and also movies. And I have a couple of movies to talk about. I want to get to our topic for the day, so we will. I will talk about these two movies the next time we get together here. Yeah, but they did a good job at making this hybrid conference really work well, so. And that's not easy. So, yeah, it was good. I want to talk about the problem with giving employees what they want. The next thing I want to talk about are our two sponsors. Listen, Fortune favors the bold, the strong, the brave. And for your business to break out of anything holding you back, you need business checking, as brave as you are. And that's why we're introducing our sponsor, Novo Business Checking. Novo is powerfully simple business checking. And unlike traditional banking model, Novo has no minimum balances, no transaction limits, and no hidden fees. Because instead of a one size fits all approach, Shannon Novo is customized to your business to save you time and free up cash flow. And they have seamless integrations to Stripe, Shopify, QuickBooks Online and more. And you can sign up for Novo for free to join the community of over 150,000 fearless small businesses. People who are small businessing who have found the customizable business checking solution that admires the brave. Sign up for your free business checking account right now at Novo Co SBS and use that link because small business show listeners get access to over $5,000 in perks and discounts. Go to Novo Co SBS to sign up for free. Novo Co SBS Novo Platform Inc. Is a fintech, not a bank. Banking services provided by Middlesex Federal Savings FA member FDIC Terms and conditions apply, of course. And our thanks to Banknovo.com SBS for sponsoring this episode. Who doesn't love to live well, to be perfectly at ease in comfort and in style? Well, if you do, our sponsor, Hunter Douglas can help you do just that. With their innovative window shade designs, gorgeous fabrics and control systems so advanced they can be scheduled to automatically adjust to their optimal position throughout the day. You gotta go and visit hunterdouglas.com SBS today so that you can see the way that these shades diffuse harsh sunlight and cast this glow across the room. You can see how you can enjoy the view outside the window while protecting your privacy inside. And these shades have superior insulation that keep you warmer in winter, cooler in summer, and lower your utility bills. And then you can tap into Hunter Douglas Power View technology, which uses your phone and and you can set your shades to automatically reposition for the perfect balance of light, privacy and insulation morning, noon and night. You're going to want to check this stuff out. It's pretty amazing. And you can live beautifully with hunter Douglas. Visit hunterdouglas.com sbstoday for your free Style Get Smarter design guide with fresh takes, creative ideas and smart solutions for dressing your windows, that is. Hunterdouglas.com SBS for your free design guide. And our thanks to Hunter Douglas for sponsoring this episode. And with that, Shannon, I want to talk about the problem with them giving employees what they want. Yes. Yes.

Yeah, so I read this article and that was the title Inc. Magazine. We're going to talk a little bit about the article, but it really got me thinking about the different types of employees and there's a few different ways to look at this. And so I'm going to back up and really start at the beginning. And one of the things that is important to understand during this whole concept is A thing called the arrival fallacy.

Okay.

Once you get to a certain spot, you're going to be totally happy and you've achieved all, everything and you're done. Right. But it just doesn't work.

It never happens. No, no. You want more.

Yes. You always want more. It's really. And as I got to thinking about this, you know, our whole concept of systems over goals really pertains to this because it's the journey, which is the system that you're developing, that you created. That's what brings you long lasting satisfaction. Because as you work and build things in your personal life, your business, you know, everything, those are the things that you're going to use over and over as you achieve different things, you build your talent stack over time.

Yeah.

So understanding that arrival fallacy, it really pertains to your employees as well. Right. It's this false belief that reaching a valued destination can sustain happiness.

Okay. All right. Yeah. I like this arrival fallacy. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So we start there as our base. And the thing about it is, in this Inc. Magazine article, they talk. It was a company talking about, hey, should we. Should we open up offices again and bring people back in, come back to work, or do we just keep working remotely? And we did an episode about a similar question, I think, last year. And. And in this case, this company asked their. They first started and asked the employees, what do you want? And they were shocked because all the employees talked about how great the office was and the camaraderie and the lunchroom and the things and the. And the interactivity and everything. But when the founders started thinking about it, like, you know, people are sitting like, in their cubes with their headphones on and the break room's always a mess, and they're not doing this and they're not collaborating like this, and they're not happy having to commute into the office, this kind of thing. And what it turned out was what people were responding to and what they wanted was like a fantasy of what office life could be, not the actual reality. Looking at the pros and cons, even.

Though they had already experienced the reality, they had repainted it into the fantasy after.

And I think all of us.

Yeah, we do. Oh, you remember? I mean, that's a defense mechanism, right? I've always said if you remembered what it was like for the first couple of months at home with a newborn, you would never, ever have another second. The second child would never happen. But it does often. So. Yes.

Yeah. That's why your parents tell You. You were such a great baby. Because they don't remember.

We forget. Well, my parents actually remember how terrible I was, but that's okay.

But so this. This concept is in. They realize that because they're like, wait, you know, these people don't show up for the meeting? Or this person doesn't even do this or that. So they. In this particular instance, they flipped a script and they decided to present the pros and cons of the. Of an office space, the costs, the commute, all these other issues. And they asked a very different question. Instead of, what do you want? They asked, what would you decide in.

This situation if they were managing the business?

Yes.

Oh.

Oh, what would you decide? Because it introduces a whole different level of ownership.

Right? Yeah.

Instead of, oh, it's somebody else's decision. Doesn't matter. Well, it does matter, because they were trying to explain, look, these are the costs associated with opening up the offices again. Well, if we don't do that, we could do other things with that money. Hire more people, lessen the burden, add more perks or change things or increase our marketing and maybe grow the company. So they flipped the script and presented it that way, and they got very, very different answers because people had. They analyzed it in a whole different manner, and they decided not to open their offices again.

Right.

We'll link this article.

Yeah, no, that's really. It makes, you know, as you present it this way, it makes perfect sense. Right? Because we. We think we know what we want. But putting yourself in the mindset of having to make the decision changes things dramatically. And I. I've stumbled, I'm sure, as we all have. You know, I've stumbled into this both in managing people and also in managing, slash, raising my kids. Occasionally, the moment of brilliance will come up where you put the burden on them, and it changes everything. I will share a story. If you are listening to this with your young kids and they have not inherited their own decisions about Santa Claus, then perhaps skip this section. And we do. We put chapters in the show, but I think a lot of people don't listen to this with their kids. So. So I think I'm okay sharing this. I stumbled into this one thing, Shannon. It's perhaps the best parenting moment I ever had. I made a lot of parenting mistakes, but I. I was traveling. I happened to be down in Austin. This was many, many years ago. And my wife alerts me. The kids cornered me in the car today. They asked me about Santa. I had to fess up, like, okay, all right, fine. You know, it was gonna happen, like, okay, great. You know, sure. The kids are getting older. It's how it works. And I didn't think much of it, to be perfectly honest. The fact that I had time to think about it, I don't. I don't think was a factor, but I share the factor. And so that evening, I was on the phone. We were. I was at our office in Austin when we had an office there. And, you know, it's before my kids were going to go to bed, so I. We were there late doing something. I think we were building furniture for a new. New office or something. But anyway, it took a minute and, you know, talked to my kids. And so my daughter gets on the phone, and she's like, did Mama tell you? And I'm like, I think so. What do you mean? She's like, we know about Santa. And I was like. And I did. For whatever reason, because she was being a little cagey, I just sort of went with it. And I said, well, what do you know? And she said, well, Mama told us that, you know, Santa's not real. And I said, oh, well, that's interesting. And she said, well, do you think Santa's not real? And again, this was just dumb luck that I found myself in this. In this particular scenario answering that question. And I said, well, here's the thing. I believe in Santa. And every Christmas morning, I wake up and there are gifts under the tree for the entire family from Santa. And she said, wait a minute. Does that mean if we don't believe in Santa, we don't get gifts from Santa? And I told her. I said, I don't know the answer because I've never tried it. And. And she said, I could hear, like, dang it. He put me in a corner here. And I stopped her. I said, no. I said, here's the thing. The only thing that has changed today is that the decision as to whether or not you believe in Santa has shifted from us to you. We decided that you believed in Santa. Today you get to decide whether or not you believe. That's the only thing that has changed. I said, I have chosen to continue to believe. And she was like, yeah, I think I'm gonna continue it. I think I'm gonna continue to believe, too. But it's the same kind of scenario, right? Where it's like, ownership. Yeah, the ownership of it. And that's all it is, is the ownership of it. And. And it worked out very well. Our family still gets gifts from Santa every year. It's amazing. Perfect. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. It's a nice tradition.

Yeah, yeah, it is, it is. Yeah. And so thinking on this concept of, you know, this, what would you decide? And you know, people don't really know what they really want and they don't understand. They, they keep this, this arrival fallacy is just going to keep getting better and better, you know, be so happy. Well, I would argue that the same concept or this concept is, this is very similar when you're talking about salaries, benefits and other perks.

Oh, for sure. Or, or Santa.

Yeah, or Santa. That's right. And you know, the thing about money, like, I'll admit in many of my businesses, I've often felt walking around like, God, I wish I could pay these people more. You know, I just always feel that way.

Same all the time.

And. Yeah, yeah. And I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. It's just a fact. But there were often people that constantly would hammer us about salary. And it took me a long time to realize that there's more going on here than just the money.

Right.

It is this. Oh, if I just make a little bit more, I'll be happy and it'll solve my problem. I'll get a car, I'll fix my car, I'll do whatever. But there's a particular personality type that it just kind of keeps coming back and back and back again.

I've encountered these people. It's difficult. Yes.

Yeah, it is difficult. And I think what, you know, you have to be very upfront, especially with younger employees that maybe don't have a lot of experience in the business field. And I have, have, have hired those people throughout my whole career.

Yeah.

And the one thing that I think is very important is when you hire them and also to repeat it when you're talking about salaries, is that, hey, we base our salaries on results, an impact on the company's profitability.

Right. Oh, I like that.

Very important that they get that understanding. Of course you have to be competitive.

Yeah.

But you don't want this every time, you know, hey, I've got a problem you've got to have. Now you can help people solve problems, short term issues. We did a show about loaning employees money before.

Yeah.

There's all kinds of ways you can help people solve those issues, but this is different. The other thing I really like and help has helped me get out of this arrival fallacy when it comes to salary is don't do performance reviews and salary reviews at the same time. It helps to disconnect an employee sense of value from just what they make.

Yeah. Because you might not be able to like the company might not be able to afford to pay them more.

Exactly.

Even though they're doing well. Like the fact that they're doing well might be the reason that the company can keep them employed.

Well. And that is a reward in and of itself.

I know, but it's hard to say that to people, especially people of a certain. Like there was. And it's. I'm finding it less the case with people entering the workforce right now. So you know the. And I hate to talk about ages but you know, I will speak generally, you know, the people under 30. Actually I don't find this problem with it but it's that 30 to 40 range right now where there's a lot of that. Well, my self worth is tied up in getting a raise every year and.

That is something if you can.

I think it's just cultural is what it is. Yes, yes.

And I understand it. But from a small business perspective, when things go up and down and there's good years and bad years and there's lots of external things that impact your business that you have deal with.

Yeah.

If you can separate those two. Performance reviews and you could do performance and I wouldn't do them at the end of the year, you know, performance reviews are great to do quarterly, you know, biannually, stuff like that. And then you do salary reviews. But I like to do them, you know, earlier in the year because then you've had time to look and see how it was last year, what's going on and. But I think the most important thing is you're constantly training your employees that not all of their value is just wrapped up in, you know, the check we write them every two weeks, you know, although a lot of it is of course.

Yeah, well, I mean. Right. Like most, most employees wouldn't stay if you stopped paying them. Right, of course. Because they couldn't afford to. That. I mean that's reason number one. Whether they would choose to if they had financial independence. That's a whole other like that's an impossible question for most people to answer. So. Yeah, it's not even worth asking. Yeah, right.

But you're going to get hit up with employees. I just, you know, I've had employees that come to me said look, I need to make X and then everything will work in my life and go well, you know, I want to keep this person. But it's not. And I've done it, I've given them X. And then six, six months down the line, oh, wait, you know what I did, you know, this kind of thing. Oh, man, that was a mistake. And the last thing, I think I.

Have stories that I cannot share that are exactly this. It's, you know, the first time you think, okay, like, I value this person. They make a good point. If we do have the money that we can carve out for this person, like, okay, you know what? Let's do it. And then, yeah, three to six months later, you find yourself in a very similar conversation and you try to point out, like, hey, three to six months ago, we did this thing. Well, but it's. And it's like, oh, I mistrained you. Shoot, this is my fault. Yep, that's right. Yep.

And I think that you also have to train your employees when it comes to the perks that you give them. You know, what happens is when you introduce a perk and it's just there and there and there. Whether it's, I don't know, you know, food in the break room or, you know, time off here, this kind of thing.

I remember when I was at Citibank, they took. They were paying for everybody's lunch every day. And then. Yeah, and that went off.

That just becomes a standard.

It was the standard. And then it was like, that needs. The memo went out and it was like, that's over. It's like, yes. What?

That's right. That's right. So my, My thing with perks is you want to make them temporary and you want to make that, like, rotational. You want to keep rotating things in and out because perks are great, but when you bring them back or you introduce different ones, you get a new. Or your employees get a new dopamine hit, right?

Oh, for sure. No, that's. You're totally right.

Cool.

Yeah.

Something new. They're buying lunch or we're all going out to this. We're not saving everything up to an end of year big dinner event or whatever.

Yeah, right.

We're sprinkling this stuff throughout the year, whether it's bringing in breakfast to everybody or taking everybody out or whatever. You know, your business is unique, but keep introducing those things. And so if you, if you focus on, you know, how you manage the salaries, how you manage those conversations, making sure they understand that they're. They're tied to productivity and profitability and how those people impact them. Two, split out your performance reviews from your salary reviews, and then finally make your perks temporary and on a rotational basis. I think you can address this part of this arrival fallacy and this problem with giving employees what they want because they don't. Like all of us. We don't always know what we want, and what we think we want is often different than what we need.

Well, that's it. And like you said, flipping the script on it is really a great exercise for everyone involved because you, as the person who's in that management role, well, you only have one set of ideas, yours. So giving other people the ability to share ideas with you or putting them in the position where they can share them with you, you might actually hear something that's better. In fact, you probably will. It'll certainly be different. It'll certainly be different. And even that might catalyze a conversation that leads to whatever the ultimate answer is. But the most important part is giving employees, putting employees in that position where the perspective is on the bigger picture. Because, yeah, it's almost like infusing transparency into the process. Right. Everybody wants to see the big picture. We all want transparency. In today's world, that is table stakes in so many things, far more than it used to be. Right. You know, just because we have access to so much data. But this is a different twist on that. But I think it's an important one that it's like. Yeah, you want transparency. Well, okay, let's role play. You make the decision. Oh, wow. I never thought about it this way before. Right.

And I have mixed feelings on the transparency issue because, well, we could probably do a whole show on that. And I do believe transparency is important, and authenticity is probably more important, in my opinion.

Oh, I like that. Yes.

We should break those out and do an episode on that, because I think there's some real pitfalls that you need to avoid if you go down that transparency path. And employees definitely think different than you do. And what they think is a priority is often very different. And you can run up against those things when you're super open. Transparent about. About everything.

Yeah, no, you're. I've. I've definitely created scenarios. Yeah, let's. Yeah, maybe let's do that for the next episode. Yeah. Transparency and transparency versus authenticity.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I'd love to hear about this. You know, do. Do you give your employees everything they want, you know, or do you have some lessons you could share with us about how that's, you know, backfired or worked well for you? Feedbackusinessshow.co. or, you know, go up to the small business support group, businessshow Co. Facebook, and share your stories.

We'd love to hear from you. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Good stuff. I like this. You've got me thinking. So that's a, that's a good thing.

I. I think we'll put the links in the, in the show notes. You can read that article and learn more about the. The right. The arrival valves.

Sounds good. Fun stuff. Thanks, Shannon. I appreciate it. Thanks for listening, folks. As he said. Feedbackusinessshow.co. make sure you check out our sponsors. Sponsors banknovo.com SBS hunterdouglas.com SBS Keep living that charmed life. See you next week.