Transparency Isn't Telling Everyone Everything | Leadership Without the Trauma Dump

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.

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If you're ready to stop paying the invisible tax, head over to businessfixpodcast.com and let's get your business moving forward. I feel like the prime example of what we're going to talk about today is LinkedIn. Yes, because there are so many people that are like, I want transparency. I want people to know things. And we're like, no, we don't want them.

No, we don't.

You don't. And trust us, like, you should share things. You should be transparent. You should be honest with your employees.

Yes.

Not that honest. No. Stay tuned. She's the CEO.

He's the marketing and operations guy.

If it's broken, you need the Business Fix.

Welcome to Transparency. It's terrifying.

Being transparent really is, because there's that— like, there is the trauma dumping founder that is sharing everything on LinkedIn and with their team.

Yes, and a video format, so their team's watching it on LinkedIn because they didn't share it with them.

Correct. Or it's an— it's a mass email, or it's— and some people put this as vulnerability. Um, no, that is essentially like— there's a difference between being vulnerable and putting your hand on an anvil and passing out sledgehammers.

Yes, well, and passing the paranoia to everyone else. Not everyone else needs to hear about this, especially people that work for you. If you're like, we're going out of business tomorrow, but it's really not, I'm just, you know, I panic all the time, right?

No, with like business owners Many of us, a large majority of us, run in a constant state of panic.

And we freak out constantly. Our intern doesn't need to know that.

No, no, no. It's the— yeah. So we talk about filling the silence with truth. We talk about directness is kindness. And we talk about running the mirror test, all these things. But today we are going to tackle the dark side of that. There's a reason why I enjoy doing voiceover work. Transparency is a phenomenal thing. But like everything else, if you drink too much water, you die.

Yeah.

Uh, grapes are great. You, you eat too many of them, you die.

Yeah.

So we're going to talk about like making sure that we are not confusing transparency with emotional unloading.

Yes.

We want to make sure that we are real but not dumping cash flow panics. We want to make sure that we are not talking about board struggles or massive strategic pivots that we thought of in the shower but we haven't thought through yet.

Yes.

Not that any of those have either happened to either one of us.

Never done those.

I have pulled my phone out in the shower and started typing the email, and I'm like, no, no, wait till you— wait till you're dry, Josh. At least wait till you're dry.

Some boundaries there, right?

At least— well, they don't know I'm typing up in the shower.

Yeah, next time you send me, I've got a great idea, be like Where did you hear this idea?

Was that too transparent? Please tell me you're not anywhere near the bathroom.

No.

I know we've both seen this on LinkedIn.

Yes.

We've both heard horror stories from the grapevine. Like, or like, we've seen a ton of Facebook comments about stuff like this recently too.

Yes, we have. Like, as I look at our Facebook There's some significant trauma dumping happening in our Facebook. And you know what? It's okay.

It's great for that. And I love it.

We're fine with it.

That is truly what we are here for. And it's helping us know what we need to be talking about because we've seen it, we've been there.

Yes. Don't be friends with your employer so you can do that in our comments, please.

Correct, correct. And once again, I will say that if you have someone that we need to subtly send something to, you can tag them. More than happy to do that. Love that. When leaders think that they're being, I'm just going to be human and I'm going to share every existential horrifying dread. Okay. Why is trauma dumping on your employees like the worst form of leadership neglect?

Yeah.

I like the big long swallow, like the gulp.

Yeah. All right. So I wanna give some perspective before I really answer the question.

Sure.

Connect this back to the framework that we come back to all the time with clarity, consistency, and care, all right?

We've mentioned those before.

We do, 'cause they're the 3 C's of leadership. Yes. Transparency only works when all 3 are present. So without clarity, people make up stories. Yep. Without consistency, they stop trusting the message. And without care, transparency turns into emotional dumping. So for this episode, I think healthy transparency can be 3 things. It's steady, selective, and solution-oriented.

Yes.

Yeah.

I dig that.

Good. I'm going to explain it. So steady means I do not hand my unprocessed panic to the team, right? Selective means I share the right information with the right people at the right time. And solution-oriented means if I share something hard, I also give people a next step, a timeline, or a place to focus, because transparency is not telling everyone everything, right? So let's go back to your question. There is a difference between being human and handling your anxiety and handing your anxiety to your team like it's their job to carry, right? We don't hand our anxiety to our team, all right? Your team deserves honesty. They do not deserve custody of your anxiety.

No, don't do that to them.

No.

No, don't do that to people.

And that's where leaders cross the line. So I mean, if I say to my team, we're navigating a challenging quarter, here's what we know, here's what we don't know, here's what we're doing, and here's what this means for your role, that is transparency.

That structure right there.

Yes.

I feel like that also needs to go on a pillow.

I think it does. So if I do that, great. If I look at them and say, I don't know if we're gonna make it, I'm barely sleeping, the bank is nervous, I'm terrified, our board is angry, people have no ability to change the outcome. No, that is not transparency. That is emotional unloading. So I mean, I say this with compassion because I've been there. I know leaders are human, right? CEOs get scared. Owners wake up at 3:00 AM doing math in their head. All right? Yeah, it happens.

And it's usually, it's not the good math.

It's not. And I understand that deeply. At least once a week, I am convinced that I am going to be homeless.

I laugh, but it's the same.

No, it's true. I mean, but here's the thing, your team is not your therapist. No, they are not your peer group and they are not your emotional pressure valve. And I think a lot of times leaders confuse their team as their peer group. Absolutely not. And so this is where steady, selective, and solution-oriented, it really matters because to be steady does not mean fake, it means regulated. So we process our fear with the right people first. Whether that's an advisor, a coach, your therapist, or your peer group, maybe your spouse if it's appropriate, or your leadership team. Do not process raw panic in front of the whole company. Don't process your raw panic with your new team member who just got there yesterday. Don't do that. All right, so we're going to be steady. Then we're going to be selective. Not everyone needs every detail.

Correct.

So the frontline employee may need to know that priorities are shifting. They don't need to know every anxious thought that you had about payroll investors or whether or not you made a bad strategic call. They don't need to know that. So be selective in what you tell people. I'm not saying hide everything. Be selective in what you tell people. And the third is to be solution-oriented. So if you're sharing something heavy, you've got to give something, you've got to give people something to do with it. Otherwise, you're just transferring that weight. And that's not leadership. That's neglect dressed up as authenticity.

Lipstick on a pig.

It is. It's not okay. I—

to me, it's funny, like figuring out what's actually relevant to people. 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 fit 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.

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

And the answer is not much if it's your head trash, right?

Totally agree. Because like, I, like, I wake up sometimes at 3 a.m. Yeah. Oh, I've got an idea. I've got a whatever. Even though some of my staff may be working at that point in time.

I'm not bothering them.

No, I'm still not going to send it to them.

No.

Then because then they're like, why? Why? Why is he up at 3 a.m.? Yes. Don't, don't make them ask that question. From that, from HR, from psychological safety, what happens to a high performer's productivity when the CEO routinely shares the—

oh, oh, they're panicked.

This is the big one, Elizabeth. I'm coming to see you, honey. My red fox impersonation isn't all that great, but what happens to them when you share that with them?

Yeah, when they, I mean, you routinely panic in front of the team and you don't fix anything. Yeah, okay. So your high performers, they don't panic first. They plan first. And sometimes that means they plan their exit.

Oh, they are in cover their butt mode.

Absolutely. They may not say anything right away because high performers are usually steady. They don't want to add drama, but internally they start doing risk math. So they start thinking, is the company stable? Should I be worried? Do I need to protect my family? Is leadership actually in control? And when a high performer starts asking those questions, is the company stable? Should I be worried? Their mental energy starts to shift and then they're thinking, okay, I got to protect my family. And they're no longer fully focused on the client, the project, or the mission. Part of their brain is now scanning for danger, right?

They don't feel the need to go down with the ship because other ships will be like, come on aboard.

Exactly. And that's the hidden cost of toxic transparency. I mean, it takes people who were engaged and turns them into quiet self-protectors. And I think it's also why psychological safety is, it's not just about whether people are nice to each other. Psychological safety means people believe their environment is stable enough to speak, work, learn, and take risks without fear of being punished, blindsided, emotionally whispered, or like just eliminated from the organization. So when, as a CEO or as a manager, you're routinely sharing panic without a plan, the environment stops feeling stable. So again, come back to that steady, selective, solution-oriented. If you're steady, your people can breathe.

Yep.

Yep. If you're selective, they're not overloaded with problems outside of their control. And if you're solution-oriented, they know what to focus on next. And high performers can handle hard truth.

Yes.

In fact, I mean, they usually appreciate it. Totally. Yeah. What they can't handle is emotional whiplash. So like one, one week everything's great, it's amazing, we're hitting all our KPIs. And then the next week the sky is falling. We're going out of business, we're all going to be homeless, we're not going to have jobs. I mean, and then you're pivoting constantly and then we're fine and then we're not fine and then we're good and then we're not good. As an entrepreneur, you might thrive that way. I know I like emotional whiplash. It's just part of being an entrepreneur. Most people are not entrepreneurs. The people that you pay to be on your team They're not you for a reason. All right? So I mean, like that back and forth communication is that leadership weather where everyone spends the day looking at the CEO like an emotional forecast. Like, what are we gonna do?

What's blowing in from the east?

Exactly, and that's exhausting.

Yes, it very much, the example that I wanna give with this is you, don't want— like, as the CEO, you don't want to be the crazy ex-girlfriend.

Uh, correct.

So how does, how does a leader balance that? Like, because once again, we've talked about, like, after saying all this, I could see how someone would sit there and be like, I'm just gonna sit in the corner and shut up. Yeah, because you do need to be real, you do need to be honest, you do need to have a level of transparency in order to really like have the team feel A, on board, but it's your responsibility to do that as the CEO.

Yeah.

How do you balance that need of honesty and responsibility?

Yeah, I think it's that that's maturity in leadership. So we don't lie.

Nope.

We don't pretend. We don't hide everything behind a fake smile and a pizza party. Right?

I thought pizza fixed everything.

No, it does not.

Oh.

I mean, so you can't, we don't hide behind those fake smiles. We also don't emotionally strip mine our team because we feel overwhelmed. I think that happens oftentimes. So being a steady shield means you absorb, you process, and you translate, you don't dump, right? So there's a huge difference between filtering information and hiding information. Filtering is responsible leadership, hiding is avoidance. I mean, it's really, it's like filtering says, here's what matters to you, here's what's changing, Here's what's not changing, and this is what we need to talk about. So it's really about giving a roadmap. Hiding says everything's fine, even when we clearly— everyone can smell smoke.

It's that dog in the bar.

It is, absolutely. I mean, and the team doesn't need every private leadership conversation. They need enough truth to trust you and enough clarity to act. And that's really the balance. So for me, it's simple. It's a few questions. It's, can they act on this information? Will it help them understand a decision? Will it reduce confusion? And will it protect trust? And if yes, then we share the hard information. If no, you're going to process it somewhere else first. I mean, we have an issue that's come in. We've had a significant client loss. I'm really concerned about X. Well, can they act on this information? Yeah, they can help me generate new sales. Great. Let's talk about it.

Yep.

So, and if the information's hard, we don't just drop it and disappear. Because I think that's something else that CEOs— oh, here, here's the—

yeah, here's the bomb. Mic drop.

Yeah, mic drop out of the room. Yeah, I mean, that's real. It's the version of like when you used to ding dong ditch people. It's like the leadership version of ding dong ditching, right? You rang the doorbell and you ran away.

So here's the flaming bag of dog poop on your porch.

So you've got to stay present. You need to answer questions when you can. You have to be honest about what you know and what you don't know. Don't make things up. That point, and you have to bring people back to what is stable. So, and I think this is also where, you know, leaders need real support outside the business. And I'm a real advocate of why CEOs, managers, leaders need peer groups. We need advisors, we need safe spaces, dare I say, where we can say those messy things, where we can freak out and people will go, oh, you're fine. That's nothing. Oh my gosh, I got this demand letter. Oh, well, it really doesn't matter until they send you a demand letter and they sue you. And it's like, Oh, okay. So like those types of things. I mean, you need to be able to be human in other places, just not necessarily that type of human in front of your team.

Yes.

Because they need you to be steady. Transparency has to create trust. It should never transfer panic. And I think that's where a lot of the LinkedIn posts, a lot of the things you see on Facebook and social media with the need of the transparent leader, the person crying, it's more about, you know, I'm transferring panic and it's about me feeling better about a difficult thing. And so now I feel better 'cause I've trauma dumped on everybody, but I haven't solved any problems.

To me, it's like all the people that you see crying on the reels and stuff like that. I'm like, really? You had the wherewithal. You're that upset, yet you had the wherewithal to record this.

To record a reel and look perfect other than you're crying? Right.

Right.

I get a little cynical too.

Just a hint.

Sorry, Josh. Yeah.

Someone needs some attention. Mm-hmm.

So you're all about systems logic and clean workflows.

Maybe a bit. Yeah.

How does unchecked transparency manifest as an operational bottleneck?

To me, there's some simple things that, once again, I made these mistakes when I was younger. And I realized like, oh, the first one is like, there's some basic filters that you need to put in and some decision boundaries. The first one is the chain of command. Gripes go up. Complaints always go up. They can never, ever, ever go down.

Yes, we gotta create boundaries around these.

Yeah, yeah. Do not complain down.

No.

If you're the owner, find a peer group.

Yeah. Don't ever tell your employees you hate working here.

Correct.

They're not going to want to work there.

People at this place suck.

I hate it here. It's terrible. You made it. Oh yeah, I did. Right.

I mean, like, gripes can only go up. They can never, ever, ever go down. Um, the engineering department here is terrible. Yeah, I know, dude. It's, it's, it's your fault.

Yeah, you did it, uh, right?

You did this. So gripes never, ever, ever go down. Now, like, anyone that knows me knows that I— like, if you need sunshine blown where the sun normally does not shine, I am not your guy. But in the same sense, it's making sure that— I mean, I'm never going to blow sunshine. In the same sense, I'm going to do my best to make sure that complaints never go down. Down gripes are nothing more than gossip.

Yes.

And do you want to be the gossip in your own company? We've talked about how damaging that is. If it's a— like, if you're venting, back the ambulance up and go ahead and shove your culture in it because you are killing it.

Yes.

Not the good kind of killing it either. No, this is not the yo, he's killing it. This— no, you are physically killing it, stabbing your culture as you're strangling it. It is just the worst thing. The other thing is, is about that that open gate failure is what I work with. There's people that want to share, like, I want to open up like decisions to the team. I want the team to feel empowered to make these decisions. No, no, no, no, no, no. A person needs to make the decision. You, if you are asking everyone to make the decision, no, you are just being lazy. That's all there is to it. Open sourcing decision-making processes without defining the clear decision boundaries, you're going to get operational gridlock. You're going to get endless meetings. We've all sat through those while everyone gives their opinion because we need to come to a consensus and frustrated operators. Transparency does not mean democracy. No, you should take input. You should be transparent about the destination and the data. While remaining structured about who actually owns the decision. The only like— and the thing that I always say about this is smaller companies, they typically like to involve everyone in the decisions. The only marketing decision that Betty in accounting should be making is, do we have the budget for this? Yeah, Betty, like when it comes to the creative, shut up.

Yeah, the check's due on Thursday. Does Betty issue it on Tuesday or Wednesday?

Correct. That, that is your involvement in this. Um, the other thing is, is someone, one has to make the decision. I'm gonna, gonna steal a line from Oscar in, in The Office here. This is, once again, this is why ships don't have captains, we don't have presidents for the country, and it is why the Vatican does not have the Pope's.

Yes.

One person needs to make the decision. B, give the people the information that they need to— for the person to make the decision. But it is one person. That is being transparent. That is not just allowing a free-for-all, because once again, free-falls don't work.

No.

The other thing is, is the context versus noise. There is— Kevin O'Leary talks about this, and yes, He talks about how Steve Jobs did an amazing job between separating signal and noise.

Very good, yes.

And to me, there's so many times where I get that company-wide email that you know they hit send like, "Okay, glad that's over with." You're like, "Wait a minute." We talked about it in some ways with the handbook last episode. Yes, yes. And I've seen this so many times where first off, the grammatical like the egregious grammatical errors in it. You're like, oh yeah, so my CEO has a 4th grade reading level. Awesome.

And stream of consciousness just emailed me in voice to text. No.

So first off, I always like to say give it the so what test. Does the person or department that is receiving this information have the direct agency to act or influence this information or the decisions involved with it? If they can't change the outcome, keeping them loop is just loading them up with useless cognitive debt. Yeah, just no. The other piece is to this is the alignment on it. Does this explain why an existing SOP, goal, or standard is in place? Sure, if you can do that, go ahead and share it. Context is what drives compliance. We talked about like, like us and rules, like you and I and rules. If you, if you can explain why a rule exists, I will follow that to a T. Yes, I mean, it becomes my new religion. If I— if you can't explain it to me, it's like, don't even put it in front of my face. I may as well not even know it's there.

No.

The last thing is, is the timing. Is the information stable and actionable now, or is this still a speculative pivot? Sharing the half-baked speculative ideas with the team creates the whiplash and kills operational momentum. The one that I will like that I'll make the example of is like everyone runs into a cash flow crunch in their business at one point or another. On Monday, saying, hey, I'm not sure we're going to make payroll this week, is not the thing that you do when you know Wednesday you have a meeting with the bank about extending your credit line.

Correct.

This is— once again, the information is half-baked. There's half the information there that you need. That, like, don't send that out. No, because once again, you've got half the information. There's things that could change. There's things like— don't do that. Don't put your people into the panic.

No, because they're all going to go look for jobs, and then you're like, I don't know why they're all gone, everything's fine. It's like, no, no, you freaked everybody out. This is not— this is not the job market to freak your people out. They can all find new jobs without a problem.

There is a reason why we have the the nobody-wants-to-work talk. And this is one of the things. The immediate shares is direct us— like the things that, once again, 100% transparency are pretty easy to go to. Direct SOP shifts. Don't hesitate. If you're changing an SOP and you've pretty well got that thing locked down, let them know.

These are things we talk about.

Yes, it's changing. And why? Yes, give them all the information on why it's changing. Now, don't give them your bank account information, but like, look, if you're updating a process, explain what problems the change solves and why. Now, here's the other thing is keep in mind that what may solve a problem for you, and this is why I love the clarity in this, what may solve a problem for you and 3 people in engineering may cause a nightmare for the people in production or the warehouse.

Yeah.

So this is why, like, sharing the full framework of this, this is why you do this, because this, this is where you need transparency. And how many times do you get the email, though, that, hey, SOP 5 changed? 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.

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And we'll see you at the big summit. It's like, what? Okay, right. It just did— like, how did it change?

Right, right. Is it a transformer? Is it a— like, did we just erase it? Did someone spill coffee on it? What?

Yeah.

Is it—

did we change like we're doing one step, or did we actually change like we bake bread and now we're gonna bake cookies? Like, what is it?

So many people don't take the time.

No, they don't.

The other one is too, is I this is where you do the deep dive share is resolved client fires.

Yeah.

Oh, the postmortem. Hey, we like— and even if it's a client, like, we lost a client, we're a bit worried about this.

Let's talk about why.

Let's talk about how we can fix it moving forward. Yes. I mean, client X left because we missed a handoff step. Here, what do we need to do to change this? That, like, that transparency.

Yeah.

That, like, stating the math helps to kill the panic of, we've lost a big client. Like, hey, we, we realize this, we're not trying to sweep this under the rug. This is the time to be transparent. We lost this big client and we think it's because of X. Now, the other piece about transparency in this is, if you are transparent in this and say, hey, we lost the client, you are going to get people that are willing to come forward and say, hey, I saw an issue, I saw this issue, and I saw this issue, and I think they contributed to that. If you're willing to address that, the people will be willing to address it also. Other things are, is tooling and infrastructure updates. Any changes you make to active software, hardware, workspace environments, like you have to let people, you be transparent in that.

Yeah, how am I?

How's that? Why? Once again, and this is what I think is so funny, is people are more than happy to trauma dump. And they will unload, like they will be totally transparent about the rash that they have, but yet they won't tell people, hey, we changed a process and here's why. Yeah, like, this is the thing that— these are the things that make my brain melt. And when I talk to people about this, I'm like, did you, did you tell them? Because I, I saw your LinkedIn post. Did you tell them about the cool new thing that you did? Well, no.

Yeah, you can read about it on LinkedIn.

The other thing is personnel moves. Um, this is where you got to be transparent too. And here's the other thing is like, this drives me nuts. Yes, I left a place and it— this was the most hilarious thing ever. They told everyone that it was so I could spend more time with my family, right?

Not saying anything.

Everyone there knew that I was ready to burn the place down. I was 100% gonna go Milton. I'm going to burn the place down. 100%, I was ready to go Milton on that place. And it was painfully obvious. And when the executives come out and say, "Josh, he really felt the need to spend more time with his family." Right. I, I'm like, look, people know.

It's like you're the senator from the great state of blank.

Correct, correct. Or that with Senator, we will say, remain nameless, there's at the time we're recording this currently propped up. Maybe a small lack of transparency there, although the AI videos that have come out of it have been fantastic. Yes. But to me, so those clean person— people know that someone got fired. People know, like, say it. Yes. Don't, don't like, oh, they're going to spend— no, they like, they left out the door with two middle fingers in the air.

Yeah.

Address that.

Yes.

These are the ones that drive me nuts. Here's the other thing that I like. I've got a three-part thing that I always like to share with people. Yeah. And like, these are the things that people don't do that they need to do quarterly. You have to put this on your calendar. One, what we accomplished.

Yes.

Like any leadership role, here's what we accomplished. Because people, especially as a CEO, someone on the production floor doesn't know what you're looking at as the CEO. For all they know, you are out playing golf and you're sitting there in your office with your feet kicked up on the desk.

Yes, tell me what we did.

Correct. So here's what we accomplished because you know what else you're gonna tell them? 'Here's what we're working on.' Mm-hmm. 'Guess what? Here's what we accomplished— should be a few months ago. Here's what we're working on.' So, and I mean, keep track of these so that way people can be like, 'Oh, the CEO actually is doing something. The leader actually is doing something.' The other thing is, is give people a horizon. 'Here's what we're looking into.' Yeah. If you like— and it's so funny, if you send out a quarterly newsletter, and when I say newsletter, I like a paragraph. Yeah, here's what we're looking into, here's what we're looking— or here's what we are working on, and here's what we have accomplished. If you send that out to people and you're transparent in those things— now granted, if it's top secret bomber, maybe not— but give, give people that, that insight into what you're doing. Yeah, goes an incredible way. I've talked with a number of CEOs about doing like internal podcasts for this very reason.

Yes. If you—

and it's funny, I had one approach me and he goes, I'm gonna do a quarterly hour-long podcast.

No one will listen to it.

I'm like, no. I'm like, you could make it a requirement. People are going to turn that on, they're going to go to the bathroom, they're going to come back in an hour when it's done. I said, you can do a monthly 5-minuter. That's all it needs to be. No one, no one really wants to hear from you that much, but they do want to hear from Yes. And they want to hear things that are relative or that are relevant to what you are doing and to what they are doing.

Yeah.

The other thing that I always see is too, is I see so many times people are trying to build authentic brands with AI. They're trying to build authenticity. The look on your face is like the— it's your cringe look. And I think it's hilarious. There is like— I see this all the time where people are like, like, we're struggling with this. No, no. Say, we fixed this.

Yes.

Not we're struggling with this because I tell you what, you're not going to attract customers by saying, uh-oh, we're in trouble. No, I don't like— I try and work with good people. I try and work with quality people. I like— I'm always willing to help someone, but I don't necessarily want to be like, hey, I need to enter in a year contract, but it looks like you're going out of business next week. I'm probably not going to take— I'm not going to do that. Yeah. No, let's talk about something here that I really want to get into. The open book management myth.

Yep.

Have you ever, like, have you seen someone like, like, here's our accounting, here's our finances?

Yep.

I, I've seen this in two spots too.

And here's our commission statements, here's how this works. Yeah, yeah. Here's payroll. Don't do that. Ever.

How does that work?

Like what? Does it help?

Yeah, like, I mean, like, I've seen it go both ways because to me, like, do you see it build trust or do you see it as why the hell do you make so much?

Yeah.

Why does the company have so much money when they can't— and they say they can't pay me? What happens when you share that type of information?

Oh, I think if you have financial transparency, but your team and organization doesn't have financial literacy, it creates confusion. It can present resentment. I mean, people may see revenue and think that that is available cash if they don't understand how that works. They may see profit and not understand payroll taxes, reserves, debt reinvestment, all the things, owner risk. The fact that you haven't paid yourself in 4 years. I mean, like, there's lots of things there. So, I mean, from like a CEO seat, and we did this at AUI and Clarity, we actually had, we did financial literacy training last year so that people could really understand, you know, how do we make money? What makes us successful and how does that work? So, you do not dump the full P&L on people without first starting with education. So, those things that I would answer, you know, what drives revenue? What creates cost? What do we reinvest in? Like, those are really key questions to be able to have people understand. I mean, what does a healthy company look like? What does a healthy organization look like? So I mean, steady, selective, solution-oriented, right?

It's funny, I see the same thing too. And what I've always liked to present people with is when we sell an item, mm-hmm, this percentage goes to this, this percentage goes to this, this percentage goes to this. And when you start to break it down,. And people don't— people realize it's not just, I sold a widget for $100, I'm going to take home $10 and Chrissy Myers is going to take home $90. Yeah. Like when you're able to show that that's not the case.

Yes.

People start to get it.

Yeah. When they start— how this is how much we pay for this system that you think that you turn on and it just runs and it's just there. It's like, no. Do you realize in our infrastructure and IT costs we spend about about, you know, $15,000 a month. And they're like, what? Right? Like, yeah, right.

When I look at my—

I pay that.

When I look at my SaaS costs, I sit there and I'm like, oh yeah, oh yeah. And then I realize I'm not a programmer, and I'm like, I have to do this.

I have to do this. And there's certain things that we have to have for regulatory compliance. So when people are like, well, we make this much, I'm like, yeah, and 60% of it immediately goes to Compliance infrastructure, all of that.

Oh, right, right. I don't know if you noticed, there's lights on in the studio.

Yeah, see the desk you're working at? See how there was water? I'm still paying for towels and all those things, right?

I don't know if you noticed, we have running water.

Yes, it's amazing when you have a building to work in, right? Right. Internet, it just magically works.

To me, the transparency piece of that is showing what average percentages are, go to what. And when you do that, it makes a huge difference for people. And showing them that, hey, look, we may have bought this building for $2 million. We just didn't flop down $2 million on the barrelhead and say, this is ours.

We have finance.

Correct. We finance this building. Here's what this costs us on a monthly basis. Here's what just servicing the debt costs us in order for you to actually have carpet so you don't walk around barefoot.

Yes, well, and as a base of just perspective, every person in your organization should understand how you make money.

Yes, 100%.

They should all know what you do and how you generate revenue.

Yep, yep. And what part, like what their role is.

What their role is, how they help.

What do you do when, like, let's say a big, big, big client, 30% client says, eh. And I mean— It does. And the other thing that happens is too, is it's not even that they fire you.

No.

Maybe they went out of business. No.

I mean, Josh, we had a regulatory change that cut our compensation in half overnight.

Yeah.

And we didn't have anything to do with it. That was the federal government.

Right. So, well, like, how do you communicate, uh-oh, to the team without making the team think—

All freak out.

Uh-oh.

Yeah. I mean, calm voice, clear plan, and a next update. Yep. Yep. You tell them the truth, but I mean, you don't hand them an emotional grenade. Just so you know, we lost half of our revenue. See you later.

If you need anything, I'll be crying in my office.

I'll be crying in my office. I mean, and you know, major client losses, people are gonna feel it. They're gonna hear about it. They're gonna have that, I mean, you're gonna notice a shift. So I mean, we're not gonna pretend that it didn't happen 'cause that's not helpful. So we communicate in a way that creates focus and not fear.

Truly love that. In fact, that was something that I would break out even in a piece is security.

Yeah.

Is like, look, we put this much to cash because if X, Y, and Z leave, we're going to— I want to make sure you have a job tomorrow.

Exactly. And for me, I would, I would model it and kind of say we lost a significant client. Here's what happened at the level that I can share. Here's what we're reviewing. Here's what's changing immediately. And then, you know, here's what this means right now for you for work right now.

Yep.

Here's what also what it doesn't mean. It doesn't mean that we're eliminating half of our workforce.

Correct.

It doesn't mean that tomorrow we're going out of business. It means that we have some challenges that we're going to work together to overcome.

You're not getting the 6:00 AM email that says you're out of a job.

No, correct.

I'm still amazed that people are doing that.

Well, I think that last part really matters about, you know, here's what it does not mean.

Correct.

That's the most important part.

100%. Here's what we are doing to make sure that, like, that we get through this. And you've got to say we. And the two pieces to that is if you have a terrible culture and say we, they know you mean me. Yes. You have to— you can't say we're going to get through this together the whole time all you've done is think about yourself.

Yeah.

If you show people that you have thought about them intentionally through time, they will, they will believe you because they have reason to believe.

And they'll do the work. And you don't say the thing and then go silent because that silence creates gossip. You've got to make sure that you stay in.

You have to leave your office door open for a little while.

You do. You got to be willing to talk to people.

Wait, wait till you get into the car. Yeah. To start crying. Um, here's the other one, and I know we addressed it a little bit before, but it— late night emails, Slack messages about ideas, worries, under like, hey, I'm going to keep them informed.

Yeah. Or I've got this idea, I want to give it to them while it's so fresh in my head.

You, you say that with a level of guilt.

I do. I have very strong feelings about this because I mean, because founders and business owners have ideas and brilliant things happen during very inappropriate times. So—

In the shower, on the toilet.

Yep. On a peaceful Saturday during a kid's baseball game, all the things. So here's what I'll say. To your team, if you're doing those things and you're sending it to them, like to you it just means like, "I just need to get it out of my head." It's not to them. It may feel like an assignment and an anxiety attack for your team. So don't unload on them too quickly. So I mean, Even if you say no need to respond, they're still going to think like, well, do I need to respond? So, you know, here's the thing. Create a draft in your email, schedule send, do something else. Do not bombard them at 8 o'clock, like stagger them. So my rule—

They get 10 emails at 8:01. Ding, ding, ding, ding.

I have done that. Don't do it. My rule now is we capture it, we don't cast it.

Oh, great way to put it.

Yeah. So I mean, you write the note, you voice memo to yourself, you put it down in your ideas and all the things. You can schedule it, you can put it on your vision board. Board, you do, but leave people alone when they're during, when it's not their scheduled work time. Leave them alone. All right.

I keep a Google Keep note that is just ideas, random ideas. And I look at it once a week and I delete 90% of the stuff that's in there. And I say this because if my team knew half the shit that went through my head, they'd have me committed.

Exactly.

There is a reason why, like, we both work so well in a padded room because we're comfortable here.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes.

I, on most big ideas, put a 24-hour hold on it.

I love that.

Like, just don't do it. Don't say it. I mean, if it's something that we need to change, great. But if it's a new idea, mm-mm, dude, just keep that under wraps. Think about it, because typically those ideas hit us and we don't think of all of the downstream effects until later. So I, I, I, I try and be transparent in what I'm thinking about, but I also, I, I try and be like thoughtful in that too, to make sure that I'm not, like you said, trauma dumping on them.

No. And we're giving them so many different assignments on Monday and then realizing like, oh, No, like you're, they're running in a direction and then you come in a couple hours later and you're like, oh, I don't really mean that. I changed my mind. Don't do that.

The other piece with that is too, is what, like what's so tough. We talked briefly about before about expectations, like what people, people give to others what they want themselves. And I, it's tough for many owners, founders, Most leaders in general are typically thinking about things pretty constantly.

Yeah.

And what makes your workers great at their jobs is the fact that they don't do that.

They can turn off and you can't.

Correct.

Let them.

They can do the thing and just ignore everything else. And that's what makes them spectacular at what they do. Don't drag them out of that just because you're out of it all the time too.

Exactly.

Couple of key takeaways. And once again, that agency audit at your next meeting, before you pull the team together to share an update, ask yourself, what's the exact action I expect them to take with this information? If there's no action, sit on it.

Yeah, I would say you process before you publish. We don't make a company announcement from an emotional first draft. We work through our emotions first.

They should never be delivered a tear-stained letter.

No.

No. Transparency and the trust factor. It builds. Like, you—

it—

when you look at that, there's, there's different stages to it. And when you're thinking about the thing, working on the thing, or have completed the thing, that you can talk about those in that way with trust. But it's, it's make sure that you talk about those things intentionally.

Yeah. And I would say pair truth with direction. Truth without direction becomes anxiety.

Not that either of us has ever experienced anything like that. The other thing is too, is to find— like, we speak on topics, we have a podcast, we've got some boundaries on what we're going to talk about. Yes, we like— we know the direction, we know who— like, we know what you want to hear. We are talking about those things. We're not going way out of bounds on those. No. And And that is like making those boundaries clear of what you can and can't talk about with your people is a big thing. Yeah. Should personal lives ever merge with company transparencies? Like if there's a personal struggle, family issue, what— like, let's hear it.

Yeah. Yeah. But with boundaries.

Yes.

Always. I mean, if something personal affects your availability, energy, or schedule, it can be appropriate to name it simply. Your team doesn't need a full emotional documentary. No, they need relevant context.

No, don't make your team your therapist.

They're not your support group.

No, they're not. And to me, if you— like, I, I love that if you have a reduced capacity, you can say, hey, there's some personal things going on right now, I need your help. But once again, they don't need to know that, like, all the gory details.

Yeah. What's the cringiest authentic post you've seen online this year?

It's, it's really, it's tough to say because I had someone like literally posted about their STD that they just received.

Oh dear.

Right. No, right. And it's like, I, I work now. Well, and it was LinkedIn.

No.

And they're like, this has really changed my perception of of what work means and all these other things. And I'm like, you could say my perception of things has changed without talking about the STD. I, I just— I— when I saw it, it was one of those ones where I was like, no, they didn't say— and it is one of those ones I, I literally— I screenshotted it because I'm like, I need to look at this again later.

I'd be like, is this real?

Yeah, no, hacked. Oh dear, they did not, because it was written very well in the style of writing that they normally write in. And I was like, okay, wow. I'm waiting for people to start rooting through all of my connections now to see who it was.

I'm really glad I asked that question.

Yeah, yeah. No, that's— I mean, answer your own question here. What, what's the, the cringiest?

I mean, the ones for me are the the, you know, the ones that are around layoffs for employees and the CEOs in tears. I'm like, you don't know how hard this— I'm like, really?

Right?

I'm like, I want to use a lot of four-letter words.

You just put a bunch of people on the street.

I saw one a couple weeks ago about that, and I was just like, when I was at it, when I was on vacation, I'm like, you have got to be kidding me. This is not about how hard it is on you.

It's funny, the first big one was that Hypersocial, uh, Brandon Walecki or whatever it was back in, in 2022.

And after that, you would have thought, don't ever do that, anybody on the planet. Learn from him.

And more and more people are doing it. Yes. And I'm like, oh my goodness. And this is this, like, this is the thing as the leader. And if there's one thing that people take away from our podcast as a whole is as a leader, it's not about you. No, it's never about you.

No.

And it shouldn't be about you. This goes against every grain of that.

Yes. Look at me, all the things I've had to endure. It's so hard. It's like, stop it. I hate that.

It's so tough up here in the ivory tower.

There's no accountability around it. I mean, it's just performance. I get mad at that. So.

Oh, I do. And to me especially, like, I am hyper tuned in for like that type of pattern in people.

Yeah.

And when I see it, I mean, all I can do is laugh. And I mean, here's someone crying on my computer screen, and I'm like, maniacally laughing at it. But like, yeah, Kim looks at me like, she goes, "That is kind of sad that he's doing that." I'm like, "But look at the idiot!" Yeah, it's the— I'm glad we're wrapping this up on such a happy note.

Isn't it? Yeah. Don't be that idiot. Okay?

Really, I mean, to me, It comes down to you have to be transparent. You have to be willing to tell the people the things and you have to be willing to tell, have those awkward conversations.

Yes.

Just make sure that it's awkward conversations that people can do stuff with.

And don't be Chicken Little all the time. The sky is not falling all the time. It's not.

Should we talk about catastrophizing? We did talk about catastrophizing.

We did. We have so many times. Yeah. We probably could again.

Yeah, we probably could. We probably could. That being said, the next episode is going to be an interesting one.

What is it?

Because it's a big problem that people are having. And what's interesting is it's going to be along the lines of the talk that we're doing at the Big Summit.

Nice.

But we're going to make sure that it's different enough that you're going to want to hear both. Nobody wants to work anymore.

For you.

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