The ROI You Can't See: Why Investing in Employees Pays Off #Leadership #SmallBusiness

As companies scale, the habits that got them here often end up being the bottlenecks that stop them from going further.

It's culture drift, Josh. Those same leadership habits that drove early success can quietly create bottlenecks and friction.

Exactly. We call that paying the invisible tax on scaling, and frankly, no one wants to pay it.

No, and by bridging the gap between human behavior and operational discipline, we help you cancel that invisible tax.

We equip teams with the diagnostic playbooks they need to eliminate conflict, hold teams accountable, and build a business that thrives with or without you in the room.

Because kindness without clarity is just expensive avoidance.

If you're ready to stop paying the invisible tax, head over to businessfixpodcast.com and let's get your business moving forward. When you buy a widget maker, you can go out to your factory floor and look at said widget maker and be like, look, I have this wonderful machine. What happens when you buy employee development?

Oh gosh, you're not going to compare it to the widget buying. Oh gosh.

I have, but we're going to talk about why it is very different and why you should probably do the employee development before the widget maker.

Yes.

Stay tuned. She's the CEO.

He's the marketing and operations guy.

If it's broken, you need—

The Business Fix.

We are trained to look at the P&L.

Yeah.

And ask. And I mean, first off, we're supposed to. Most of us have not received any training.

This is—

you started something. Good luck with it. We are told to look at the P&L and be like, what's the return on this spend?

Yeah.

If we spend $1,000 on Google Ads, we want $3,000 in revenue back. I like those equations.

Absolutely.

If I send $1,000 out into the world and it comes back with 2,000 friends.

Yes.

I— this, this is the formula for a successful business. So many times, though, owners spend money on leadership coaching, team development, wellness stipends, better benefits, and then they don't see the immediate— like, they send the money out there and they don't see it come back with friends within 8 minutes.

Yes. Or they forget that it's the people still showing up are probably the reason why they're spending that money. Yeah. I see no value. Are people still showing up to work? Sorry, not sorry.

Trust me, it's not because of the pizza.

Promise. Yeah.

So, I mean, as someone that loves spreadsheets— I love spreadsheets— I even get a little bit frustrated about that unmeasurable spend. It went out. Where am I seeing this come back? Where am I going to look for this? And we realize that not everything can be counted directly. It can be counted. Like, did I— like, I always joke, I walked into the studio today, I flipped the lights on, and they turned on.

Yeah.

I am here to fight yet another day. That is one measure of doing business correctly. So that is— and that is where it is going to show up. The problem is, in so many cases, it's muddied by so many other things. So we want to break this down into the human and people side of this. And then we want to break this down into the operations side of this. to be like, hey, you have sent your money out there. It is coming back.

Yes.

It is coming back. Just, it's coming in through the window. It's coming in through the side door. It's not walking through the front door the way you think.

No, not at all.

So like, for me, I want every dollar to walk, walk in the front door and announce itself. Like, hey, I walked in the front door because of this. So many owners, when they're spending the money on executive coaching, professional development, and culture initiatives, we're going to, we're going to call these— I'm going to say this a little bit facetiously just because I want to set this up because of the way people look at those in so many cases. They later go, where's the ROI? Why is that the wrong question to ask?

Well, the question's not wrong because ROI doesn't matter. Of course ROI matters. So it's okay to say, where's the ROI? The problem is that leaders are using the wrong measuring stick. So we can't measure every human investment like a Google ad campaign.

We can't?

We can't. People don't work that way. So if you spend money on training, leadership development, return doesn't always show up as a clean line that says, congratulations, you spent $17,000 on this keynote and now you've got $24,000 next week in return on investment. It just, it's not that simple.

There's no button.

No, I mean, wouldn't it be lovely? Yeah, I know it would be. I wish that happened too, but that's not how people work. So return shows up in a lot of different ways. It shows up in the employee who stays. It shows up in retention. It shows up in the manager who has hard conversations instead of avoiding it. You know, that coach, correct, cut framework that we talk about and doesn't spend every day cleaning up avoidable drama. Can you imagine what would happen? If you coach your team, your managers to be able to lead people and they're not on a fire alarm every day, they're able to handle the client issues. I mean, it could also be a team member who catches the mistake before it becomes a client fire. A lot of times we don't see those things. You don't quantify them. You should be. I mean, it could also be, and a return could be a high performer who believes the future inside the company that you have is someplace that they want to be, as opposed to like, and because of that, they're ignoring those recruiter emails and recruiter phone calls. they're getting to go work for your competitor because you've made the environment that you're in wonderful for them to be there. That's invisible ROI. And I think that when we're talking about ROI, we really need to talk about retention. And there are 3 C's to retention that I want to talk about. I want to talk about capability, confidence, and commitment.

I feel like we've been on a C theme a lot recently.

We have. I've liked— because, I mean, we do 3 C's of leadership, we do Coach Correct Cut. C's are really important. C starts for Chrissy, C starts for clarity. I mean, we like C's.

And it also starts And it starts with consistent.

Yes. Clarity, consistency, and care. So when we talk about retention, we're going to talk about capability, confidence, and commitment. So capability means the person can do the work better. Confidence means they are less dependent on the owner or manager for every decision. And commitment means they care enough to protect the business when no one is standing over them. Yes, a world where people do not need babysat or ruled over by an overlord. That's what we want. We want capability, confidence, and commitment. So think about when you're like, what am I investing in? You're investing in those 3 things. So the better question is not, where is the immediate ROI on my team development? The better question is, what would it cost us if we didn't make this investment?

Ooh, framing.

Yeah, because sometimes the most valuable return is the problem that never happened.

Oh, yeah.

That's crazy. Take that, Mr. What's in my P&L? Well, it's not going to be there. Because we saved a whole lot of things.

Right. Yeah, it's not going to be there because we prevented it from showing up as giant red numbers.

Exactly.

Love that. From that HR, from that visionary perspective, how does the leader measure the value of the invisible savings account? Is that what we're going to call this?

Yeah.

I like the name, the invisible savings account. This is all the money we saved because we didn't screw this up. Like the retention, the trust, employee loyalty that never shows up, like how do you measure that?

Yeah, so the first thing I would say is that we have to stop only measuring exits.

Ooh.

Because I think a lot of leaders pay attention, not a lot, everybody, everybody pays attention when somebody quits, all right? But that's it. So it's really, it's like measuring smoke after the house is on fire. I mean, if you want to truly— it is. If you want to truly measure an invisible savings account, you have to look at 3 things. So go back to, Capability, confidence, and commitment. So with capability, it asks, are people actually getting better at their work? Are managers having the hard conversations? Are people using the tools, training, and coaching that we pay for? Have we increased capability? And that's one part of the return. And then the second is confidence, and confidence asks, are people more willing to solve problems without waiting for the manager or owner to rescue them? Are they bringing issues forward sooner? Are they asking better questions? Are they recovering faster from their mistakes? Are they saying when they make a mistake? I mean, are they clear enough to make decisions without that second-guessing themselves? That saves you a ton of time. And then commitment asks, do people believe this company is worth their effort? And they're staying because they see a future.

That's huge.

Yes.

Huge.

It is. And I think you got to ask yourself, are people staying because they see a future in this organization, or are they staying because they feel stuck? And I'll tell you a lot because, you know, If they're staying because they feel there's a future, chances are they're also protecting the business when no one else is watching.

Yes.

And that's really where that invisible savings account lives. And yes, you can measure parts of this, but it's not all turnover. It's a lot of different things. So we do that through, you know, I think you'll probably talk about it in operations, we do it through, you know, stay interviews, through promotional readiness, through manager effectiveness, whether or not the same problems keep repeating.

Do we actually fix it, or does it happen tomorrow?

Yes, and I think too that leaders have to pay attention to what is happening in the room and ask some questions about their engagement and really be honest about it. Do people speak honestly? Do people ask questions here? Do they challenge ideas? Do we recover from mistakes? That's a big one, right? And then I would say the most important is, do they trust their manager enough to say, I need help? Ooh, big one. Because if your people are never asking you for help, you've either trained yourself out of the training position, yay, congratulations to you, most of us don't ever do that, or you have a silent problem, which is most of your listening, they're listening because you didn't train yourself out of a problem. You've trained and now they're like, oh, I don't want to talk to them. I don't want to deal with that. And I think it's easy for us to say, well, these are all fluffy culture questions. They're not. They're business continuity questions. It's really about how do you stay consistent?

Yeah, no, this truly is, is it's making sure that you are able to continue and you are able to get better, because if you're not getting better, you're going backwards.

Yeah, exactly, because the invisible ROI of employee investment shows up when people have the capability to do the work, the confidence to own the work, and the commitment to keep caring about the work, and that's not soft, that's strategy.

Yeah, I totally agree. What happens when a business owner cuts the investments? towards employees with the money is tight. If I had a nickel for every time that I have heard that throughout my career, like what's the actual strategic and financial penalty they end up paying downstream? And I have a great quick story for you on this.

Yeah.

I, at one company, I was told to help tell the staff about we're not doing dental insurance. We did that. And then, because they said money is tight and they want to put money to R&D, and 2 days later showed up with a Lamborghini Gallardo.

Oh, that's unfortunate. That's unfortunate timing. I'm sure no one could tie—

Right, right. Unfortunate timing is the right way to put that. So like, what's the strategic and financial penalty that they end up paying? Like downstream when they say the money is tight thing?

Well, stop investing in your employees and they're going to stop investing in your business. It's that simple.

It is. It is. I like, as soon as I, as soon as you started reading this, I'm like, yes.

Yeah, it is. And I mean, I get it. I mean, there are times where it is necessary to do something for a short moment or a short time in the business, in which case tell your employees why you're doing it. Tell them what's going on and give them the the space to kind of understand that. But I mean, I think leaders have to be really honest, Josh, with what and why they're cutting. So, and I'm going to use something, I mean, you talk about a lot, Josh, it's the mirror test. Sometimes it's easier to cut the investment because you don't want to look in the mirror and do the hard work yourself too. That's the other part. And I think there's the, we don't have the money, but then there's also the, I don't want to have to do this because I'm going to have to raise my own standard and do some things that may make me feel uncomfortable. So sometimes employee development means That means I have to develop myself, which means I have to get better at having sweaty 10-minute conversations, and I really don't want to. So I'm not going to do that. We're just going to cancel it all. Because let's be honest, employee investment also requires leadership management to level up themselves. And I mean, not everyone wants to put in those reps.

No, it's something we check with in talking to people that we're going to talk about consulting with.

Yes.

Is like, Are you ready to change?

Yes.

Because, like, if you're not, if you as the CEO, if you as the leader are not ready to change—

Well, and I would say you're doing yourself a disservice and you're doing your business a disservice if you cut employee investment because to you it feels uncomfortable.

Yes.

Because when you cut those things, you're not just cutting an expense, you're cutting capacity, confidence, and commitment. And then what frustrates me is that leaders act surprised when people burn out. They stop caring and then turnover goes up. Like, I don't understand. It's like, well, you stopped investing in your people. And that's real. That's the replacement task tax of things, right? You might save money this quarter, but you are going to pay for it later in recruiting and retraining and lost productivity and client disruption. You know, SHRM talks about like the Society for Human Resource Management, SHRM. It's not a person, it's a thing. They talk about that. There is a cost of about $4,700 for average hire or rehire. I disagree. I think it's way higher. You talk about 20% to 30% of salary sometimes too, but when people talk about how we can't afford to invest in people right now, how much money do you want to spend in replacement cost?

Yeah.

So, I mean, it's not like— so here's the challenge I would issue to the audience. Before you cut people investment, I want you to calculate the cost of the last 2 resignations That you've had to deal with, not hypothetically, but actually calculate it. Recruiting time, interview time, training time, lost client continuity, manager stress, owner involvement, how many sleepless nights you had, like all of it, mistakes during transition, and then ask, would a fraction of that amount have helped this person stay, grow, or perform better? If people are leaving because they don't feel like they're being developed, that's a real CEO question. Do the assessment.

100%. And that assessment I love because I feel like you get 2 questions into that where you start to actually do the calculations.

It's like, oh crap. Crap's not the word I would say, but yeah, that's what you're saying.

You're 2 questions into this and then you realize, huh, the numbers are the same. The decimal's in a very different place.

And my gosh, I feel terrible about this. So yeah, ask yourself, is that $5,000 I was going to spend on employee development, is it worth that savings of having to replace somebody who could cost you $20,000, $30,000, $40,000? That's not a math— that math doesn't math well.

It's just— It's tough. It's tough math to digest because you have to take a lot of numbers from different places and stick them in one place and calculate that. Have your accountant do it.

Exactly. All right. So, you know, from HR and CEO side, I think the biggest challenge is that, you know, owners want certainty before they invest.

Sure.

I mean, and I understand that, but people investment doesn't work like a vending machine. Unfortunately, people aren't vending machines.

That's actually the analogy guy.

You come up with that one. I know.

You're welcome. That was amazing.

I know. So, I know that that's— I'm transitioning into operations. That's why. So, I know you love dashboards and data and numbers. How does How does your brain and operations and marketing justify the spend on the real capital as opposed to what people say are like soft employee investments? How do you do this without losing your mind over the spreadsheet?

So I look at it like offensive and defensive spending. Okay.

Oh, I like this. We're getting a sports analogy.

Well, sort of. I mean, it could be sports, could be military, could be whatever. And when I say offensive, I mean like you're going on offensive, not I'm offensive.

Good job.

Which sometimes I am. Marketing spend is offensive. That is like buying new pipeline, that is generating lead. Employee investment is defensive. That is protecting the operational engine, stopping capacity leaks, and eliminating friction. This is one of those things where I say, like, you've got the sale, you did the hard part. Make sure you do— like, you've got the person, you've got the right person. Same thing as getting a sale. You don't want to fumble that customer after you did all this hard work. Don't fumble the employee after you've done all the hard work. I kind of define these because I want owners to stop trying to look at them the same way. It's not the same thing. It's not the same type of investment. The other thing that I want to talk about this is when you look at pay, baseline compensation is simply keeping the oil changed in a machine.

Yeah.

If you don't pay, meaning you don't maintain the machine, the machine quits.

Yeah.

Don't ever change your oil in your car. See how well it does.

Promise. It may seem great for a few minutes.

Right.

A few thousand miles. Right.

Look at all the money I've saved on oil changes. In another 15,000 miles, when you are now sitting on the side of the road on your cell phone and going, I smell a lot of smoke and oil. And then someone comes out with a $25,000 bill to say, hey, you need a new engine. That couple of bucks you should have spent on the oil change, that you probably should have done that. Additionally, with this, something that I also want to say is you don't need— the thing that I, when I talk about this from a pay standpoint, you don't have to pay top dollar.

No.

I always say this, like my motorcycles, I mean motorcycles, cars, anything like that. I'm not going to put the cheapest oil in it. I am not going down to like the Walmart and being like, what's the cheapest oil on the shelf? In the same sense, I'm not looking for the most expensive oil.

No.

I am looking at what is going to serve the job extremely well for the dollars that I'm going to pay. Realize, as a leader, as a business owner, you're going to look at that equation skewed. Don't. Don't. Balance that equation before you start to look at it.

Well, and to go with your oil change analogy, you're going to have to do it at least more than once. I think sometimes we're like, oh, well, I did emotional intelligence training 5 years ago for the whole team. I'm like, great. How many of those people are still there? How many people have you hired? How many people— like, I was thinking about that because we've grown as an organization. And I'm like, well, we did this last year. And I'm like, hold on, we had like 5 new people. Like, we got to make some, like, oh, they need, they need to hear this again. So there is, there's investment and there's continued investment, you know, that consistency piece. Yep.

The same thing that I always like to say too is like, what if I told you for a small targeted investment, I could make your machine run noticeably better?

Yes.

Programs load quicker, parts get made with fewer faults, tooling shifts at half the time. That's not basic maintenance. That's upgrading the engine.

Yeah.

I'm going to make another car reference here for the same reason. It's putting on a better air filter. It's putting on new wheels and tires. It's the same car. You've just given it some upgrades to do the things that you want it to a little Now, we're going to cover this a little bit more later, but when you go to sell the car, do you take the wheels off? Do you take the air filter out? Do you take back all the oil changes?

No!

You do not! They go with the car! We'll get into that a little bit later. One thing that I want to look at is, part of this tracking is a big thing for me.

Yes, the unmeasurable.

Right. But it's not. You cannot look at— you cannot say, we invested in emotional intelligence training this month, um, we did this in September, and where the hell's my money in October?

Yeah.

You have to compare— you have to pair— compare the quarter before with maybe the quarter after. Now, in that comparison, you have to— you can't be like, oh, um, it went down, we actually got worse because of this. You have to take some of the other variables out. So you have to find the variables that look at this a little bit more in isolation. Looking at the broader picture, you're going to be disappointed. But realize, like scientists, when they're testing things, they don't test things with 52 variables in them.

No.

There's one, maybe 2 variables. You're trying to isolate these things. So to me, it's looking at something like track internal employee satisfaction ratings combined with like true voluntary retention rates. That's over 12 to 36 months windows. The other thing I'm going to tell you, Bob, that's been here for 36 years doesn't count.

No. What's your average?

Right. Like, it always drives me nuts. Like, we've got people that have been here for 30 years.

Yeah, I do too.

Bob is not staying there because you have a world-class growth environment. Bob wouldn't take a new job even if Bob Bob won the lottery. Bob shows up at 7:59 every day. Bob is out the door by 5:01 every day. Bob is there because Bob doesn't like change.

That's fair. That's most humans, just for the record.

But yes, your outliers, take those out of the equation. That is another way that you're going to measure this. That should get better. You should notice people staying longer. The other thing is, is like the investments like this, People love the Google Ads because they spend it this month and they see it next month. This is measured over months, not minutes. We've all sat through those keynotes.

The ones where everyone nods, feels great for an hour.

And then leaves without a single tool that they can actually use on Monday morning.

It feels good in the room, but it doesn't fix the bottleneck, the culture drift, or the manager who's afraid to have a hard conversation.

That is why we created The Business Fix Live. You know that we aren't interested in empty motivation at all.

No, we bring the practical side of leadership. Josh handles the operations and accountability, and I handle the culture and the people stuff.

Whether you need a keynote for your summit or a deep dive workshop for your managers, we help you stop avoiding the real issues. We give your team frameworks to stop the chaos and start the growth.

So if you're ready for speakers who actually deliver results, Head over to businessfixpodcast.com and book us for your next event.

Let's stop the fluff and start fixing your business.

Yes, and when we're talking about human behavior change, it takes time. We gotta remember, it usually takes people hearing something 10 times to be able to remember it or do it. What?

Exactly.

10 times, people. You're thinking like, oh, I'm just gonna do one thing. It's like, no, no, no, no. This is why people work with coaches. This is why organizations have longer engagements. It's how do you get consistency?

Remember that one thing we did once 5 years ago? Why aren't you doing that?

Why aren't you doing that? I paid for you to learn how to do this. Do you do it? And if you're going— and model which mandate? Just if you're going to invest in it, model what you want to see.

Correct. The example that I want to give to this is, this is kind of a stock market example. If you look at the stock market on a daily chart, it whipsaws All over the place. If you smooth that, if you use a couple of like a 90-day moving average and take that stock market chart and look at it over a couple of years, oh, it just has this nice gentle curve on it up and to the right. That's what you're looking for. You're looking for this over time. You're not looking for a get-rich-quick scheme.

Not in the moment.

We'd all like to have that. It's not there. So do this over time. The other thing you want to look at is rework tax. What I always like to call the rework tax. If you like, uninvested, stressed, or undertrained employees are going to create that constant operational debt. We see it all the time. When you invest in the coaching, when you invest in the SOPs, when you invest in the training, when you invest in the proper tools, your ROI manifests on the dashboard as a dramatic reduction in rework. This is what you had talked about in terms of like—

What you don't see.

Correct. I'm not seeing big red issues on the— and you, you just don't see it because it's gotten better. It hasn't necessarily spiked anything. It has just removed the bad. What's the, the example that I'll use with this? Because, you know, I always like to compare things. People talk about where would you go back in time, and my answer is always nowhere. I wouldn't. If you go back 100 years, most people did not have a hot shower.

Yeah, no thank you.

You don't see those improvements as much over time. And this is something that you need to look for. The other thing that I want to talk about too is that, that founder whitespace, whether it's the visionary, like my, like as COO, my job is to free you up as the CEO so you can go do the CEO things. If you're busy working with me on like, hey, this got screwed up, that got screwed up. If you're constantly trying to fix things, you cannot do the CEO things. CEOs' jobs are to drive the business forward, not to fix all the problems in it. And so if I have reduced the amount of load that you're getting from that, holy cow, you're able to move the business forward. Imagine that. And I may have a job next week.

That's a good thing.

Right. One of the other things too is when you look— this is the other thing that I always like to harp on. If you have a team that has been invested in, when there is an issue, they don't come apart.

No, that's the best part.

They just handle it.

Yeah, they buckle in and get it done.

Yes, they just handle it. They know how to handle it. They know how to do it. Like, this is why this investment is so worthwhile, because when you do have problems— I mean, I don't know about you, but my business runs perfectly and there's never any problems. But if there ever was a problem—

Yes, I want people who know how to solve it themselves.

My people do know how to solve these problems themselves. And it's because we've worked with them to make sure that they're able to do that.

Exactly. I mean, we talk about, I took a 3-week vacation this summer and nobody, nobody missed me.

I missed you.

In part. Well, I mean, people missed me, but like, things arose, but they knew how to solve them. But that didn't happen overnight. That was a lot. of training and employee investment and a lot of, you know, it took a lot of time. People are like, how did you do that? I'm like, it's taken like a decade to get there.

Yeah. And it just the payoff for you in that is you're able to focus on the CEO things.

Exactly.

Which after 10 years of grinding away, a couple of week vacation isn't a bad deal.

It's kind of important to be able to think about the business.

Correct. Yeah. You should be able to think about it, not just what fire do I need to put out?

Yeah.

How do I grow the business? Not how do I keep it from burning to the ground?

Or burning me up in the process. Yes. Right.

Um, something I want to look at too is like, I can tell when I've gone into businesses by what I do, like what I like to call just a walkthrough test. You can feel the difference when you walk into a facility or an office where reinvestment is happening. The difference is night And I always, I always, I always like this analogy of this too, because when you walk through a place like that, it's cleaner. The machinery's in top condition. Production moves without constant chaotic interruptions. And when I'm talking about machinery, I'm also talking about the human beings.

Yes.

They just look better.

They're doing their client work. They're happy. They're excited, engaged to help a client.

Right, right. And in shops, in like the blue-collar realm, they're— once again, the way they present is just different. It hits different. They show up and I mean, like, look, I've seen this in working with some plumbing firms.

Yes.

They show up and there's some guys that show up and you're like, oh, you just crawled out of a crawl space, a dirt one. There's other ones where they did just crawl out of a dirt crawl space. And there may be some dirt, but they still look incredibly professional.

Yes.

And it's because they've taken that pride in things. So, to me, there's a couple of pieces with that. There's the high-performance vibe, minimal unnecessary chatter, but every interaction's warm and friendly. Just because you have high performance doesn't mean you have to act stiff and stuffy. That's not the case. Occasionally, you're gonna get some laughter. There's a palpable shared focus. We are here to do the thing, and we love doing it right. You can hear and feel that. On the flip side of that is we have the hostage vibe.

I don't like the hostage vibe. We get clients that are the hostage vibe. We're like, whoo, this is a challenge.

We've walked into businesses where they're like, where they see someone like you or I walk into the business and they're like, oh, who's that? Someone's in our business. Oh my God.

Why are they here?

Why are people here? Why? Like, right. Like they just— and then they have— you can tell they're trying to look— look like they're working. While they're trying to sum anything up.

I love the typing when they're staring straight ahead. You know, they're trying to look.

Right, right, right. The other thing that I see is too is— and this is— there's a middle ground between those two. There is what I like to call the shared trauma workplace. Yeah, people are joking, but it's primarily to escape work. Work friendships exist, but they are bonded over the shared trauma of managing the boss's mood or just surviving another day. And that's the answer. It's almost Friday. If it has like, if the person answers with what day of the week it is, probably they fill in this—

They're living the dream.

Right. Living the dream. You know what my favorite response to that is? Someone's like, living the dream. I'm like, yours or someone else's?

Exactly.

And they look at me like, you're such a jerk. And I'm like, I'm okay with it.

Yeah, honestly, it's where most companies live, right?

It truly— I mean, it truly is. And this is, this is once again, you don't fit into one of these 3 categories. These are a scale. These are, these are a Venn diagram. Now, granted, the 2 circles are at opposite ends, but there's, there's a Venn diagram of this. Um, one of the things that I want to talk about too, from the marketing side of this too, you cannot market past an uninvested team. The big summit is just around the corner.

And if you're still wrestling with that nobody wants to work anymore narrative, it's time to stop complaining and start fixing.

We're taking the floor at 10:15 on October 15th to break down the real strategies for building a culture that actually works. We don't just want to see you there.

We want to help you shift your perspective. So join us in Cleveland and get the tools you need to stop managing by hope and start leading with clarity.

Grab your tickets today at cose.org and use the code TROCHE26 at checkout for your attendee discount.

And we'll see you at the big summit. Correct. Yes, 100%. That should be a pillow. Oh, I get a pillow for a needlepoint. Yeah.

Oh my gosh.

You can't market faster than this team. I love that.

And I have to say, Tammy, If you're listening, I want my pillow.

Yeah.

It's like, if you're marketing a world-class experience, but your frontline staff has the look on their face of the hostage.

Yes.

You've already shot yourself in the foot. You are lying to your customers. Like, if you have, if you have employees that work for you that truly feel like We are doing the right thing. We are headed in the right direction. You've got the best brand ambassadors that you could ever find.

Yeah.

Because they will talk like it's work. They still have to go there. They still are like, they're not going to come here for free. In the same sense, they want to encourage people to come there because they do feel like, hey, we offer the best solution because they're proud of where they work.

Yeah. Yeah.

Here's a question that, I mean, I want to, I want to pose because I have, I've so many times I've heard this one is what if we train them and they leave? Because to me and my answer, like, I literally was asked this one day and by a CEO that I was working for and he's like, what if I spend all this money on these people and they're going to leave anyways? And I'm like, well, first off, with an attitude like that, yes. At that point, I was already looking for a job myself.

Exactly. Sure, sure.

To me, it was the— I mean, I don't know if it was Henry Ford that said it, but it's like there's the old adage of what happens if I train them and they leave? Well, what happens if I don't train them and they stay? To me, someone's going to leave someday. But look at these numbers from it. You need to tell me that you would rather handicap Your entire team because you're worried that someone may leave someday, like, and that little tiny piece of the investment would walk out the door with them.

Yeah.

You're so worried about that, that like, if you can't do the simple math of like, hey, I'm willing to handicap 15 people because I'm worried about one of them leaving.

Exactly. No.

Talk to your accountant.

No. Keeping people underdeveloped so they're easier to keep is not retention. It's containment. It's not retention. And I think really this questions the leader, their actual relationships with their people.

Yes.

You know, because people do leave. That's life. And you are allowed to be disappointed when good people leave. I know I am. But what you don't want is people to stay on your payroll and emotionally leave, because that's what you're doing. All right? Emotional resignation happens way before actual resignation. So think about, do you really want to keep people who are already checked out because you didn't invest in them? I mean, that's the question that you really need to ask yourself. What if we don't train them and they stay? Well, what if we don't train them and they stay and they emotionally check out and do not give 2 craps about my business? That's a bigger one.

That is a great way to get someone that puts out $20 an hour of productivity, that is a great way to get them to put out $12 an hour.

Exactly. And that's why they're there for— and not everybody is in an organization for 3 But I'm just saying, you get longevity of people who are like, well, they just don't do anything, because that's the environment that you have created.

Yeah. Bob's not leaving because you've now let Bob do an $8-an-hour job and you're paying him $40.

Great!

Is he contributing? No! Is that 2 things in a row that we've— yeah. Wow, that's kind of creepy. So here's the next thing I want to talk about. Let's go perk inflation. Versus genuine investment.

OK.

So, let's talk pizza. Well, I bought pizza.

Pizza, I think, is Josh's favorite perk to hate.

Well, yeah, pizza—

It's not a perk.

It's not. Well, the other one I want to talk about is ping pong tables.

Yes.

And my take on that is going to be really angry. So, I will let you talk. What's the difference between pizza and ping pong tables? And coaching, health, like high-value healthcare, functional tools. I don't know, maybe a career growth path.

Yeah. I mean, perks aren't bad. They're, they're not bad. But I think perks become insulting when they're used as a substitute for real support. We've got to talk about this. Genuine investment builds those 3 C's: capability, confidence, and commitment. So do not confuse perks with commitment and investment. So ask the question, does this help someone do their job better? And some of those benefits, I mean, people are like, well, health insurance doesn't— yes, it does. It helps them be able to do their job better because it's supporting the overall emotional and healthy well-being of them and their family. So that's the question you ask yourselves. All right, go ahead. Tell me about your hatred of pizza and ping pong.

If you make their work simpler, easier, or make them feel better about what they're doing, they do not need A ping pong table.

That is correct. I agree, 100%.

I mean, to me, like, I've worked at a place that had a couple of pinball machines, a pool table, and a ping pong— like, if I'm here, why the hell am I working? Why am I playing those things?

Unless it's specifically helping my brain develop in a way where I've got to do— but most people don't do that type of work.

Correct.

They don't need to go play video games to get inspired. No.

No, I don't. I don't.

Not a thing.

I don't need— I don't need a pinball machine to help me with the spreadsheet. Now, the one thing that I love about this, and this is something that as we were typing this out, as I was doing some of the notes for this, um, you know where else they have ping pong tables?

Where, Josh?

Prison.

It's very true. I know.

Why do I want it— like, why do I want my office space to look more like a prison?

No.

No. Granted, I'm also worried about, at this point, about Bob turning the paddle into a shank.

That's possible. Don't deal with it.

So let's talk. We always talk about the Saturday test. If an owner is working every weekend to cover these operational gaps, is it an employee work ethic issue? Or did you done screw up on your ability to properly equip and train them? Oh yeah. So I'd be careful not to blame the team right away.

'Cause, you know, some leaders are workaholics just to begin with. So there's that context. I mean, it could be the leader that has never transferred capability. They transferred tasks, urgency, and stress, but they didn't transfer authority. So I would say if it's every weekend, it's probably a systems issue. Occasionally is entrepreneurship, or you designed it that way.

Yeah, no, I totally agree.

This is one of those, you gotta think about it. What about you?

For me, I mean, there's a lot of weekends where I'm, I've scheduled my life where I like working on weekends. Same.

To some degree.

Because I can get some stuff done and not get interrupted. And yeah, it's nice. And then they're like, Wednesday afternoon, you may find me in a random place on a motorcycle.

Yeah, as an owner CEO, that's how we design our lives. But we don't do that to our people.

No. To me, what I want to say, like on the Saturday stuff overall, is it does happen. There are times when poop hits the fan.

Oh gosh, yeah.

And you need to You need to bust something out on a Saturday. It also shouldn't be every weekend.

No.

If you're in a high-growth stage, maybe it's going to happen more weekends than not, but it shouldn't still be every weekend.

If you're an entrepreneur who's decided they're going to start 4 more businesses, that is your own problem. That's not your people's problem.

Correct. If you are working every weekend, we should talk because we have a form on our website that you should fill out where we can help you get out of that. Shameless, shameless plug there.

That was good.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. I planned that in there. Key takeaways and actionable advice this week. I mean, to me, it's measure the reduction of noise, not just revenue.

Yeah, I would say calculate the cost of inaction. So if you're questioning whether employees' investment is worth it, start by thinking about what the cost is of doing nothing.

Love that. Buy back your white space, meaning evaluate employee development Through founder capacity.

And say, invest in the person, not just the role.

Yo, yes.

Yeah, this is short and sweet.

Do not measure this tomorrow. Measure it in months, not minutes.

I would say build capability before you demand commitment, because people can feel the difference between being developed and being used.

People feel the difference between being developed and being committed.

That's true.

What is the single best invisible ROI investment a 10-person company can make today?

Manager development.

Yes, totally agree.

In a 10-person company, one weak manager is not a department issue. It is a company issue. Yeah, everybody feels it.

And to me, what helps those managers in developing is clear SOP documentation. Yes, 100%. Those, those 2 things. How do you handle an employee that takes advantage of growth and coaching investments without showing any personal improvement?

Well, we don't use one employee who failed to grow as an excuse to stop investing in everybody else. Don't do that. We should have talked about it at the beginning of the episode because there's so many people who are like, well, I did this and Bob left. Well, Bob needed to go anyway. Right.

I mean, it goes back to what I said. Like, don't let one person screw the entire company up.

No.

And so many people do that. They get it. And I get why it happens because people People, like, they get emotionally attached to this.

Yes.

And that one thing, like, you, just because you had 1 person out of 15 leave, you still had 14 that stayed.

Yes. Or you've got this 1 person on performance improvement, we must give them all the development. No, you do not. No, you do not. We must save that. Stop it. That's not the time that you're like, let's invest a ton in employee development now that they're on a performance improvement plan. Go Back to the episode we talked about all that stuff on a few weeks ago.

They've got enough other stuff to work on for the time being that they don't need all that development. Get them up to mediocre and then you can talk about the development. That being said, we've got next week— I forget what episode we're talking about next week. Do you know?

I think it's episode 73. I don't know what we're talking about, but I know it's 73.

Episode 73.

Oh.

Are you curious about what it is?

Yeah. What is it?

Curiosity is a leadership skill.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Oh, that's gonna be a good one.

Yeah. No, I'm, I'm truly excited for us to have the chance to dive into that because it is something that I feel like so many, like, leaders forget about. And it's just so crucial. If you want to learn more, if you want to stay up on things, businessfixpodcast.com. As always, do us a favor. Take care of yourself. If you can, take care of someone else too. We will see you very, very soon.

Bye.

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