Ep 141 - No Jerk Policy

Hey, everybody. Flip and Danny here, founders of the Freedom Real Estate Group family of companies. And welcome to another episode of our.

Podcast called Freedom through Passive Income. Yes, I said that super slow because you were going super fast.

Welcome to another episode of our podcast. This one is entitled the New Jerk Policy. Danny, take it over.

All right, let's go, Backstreet. So, yeah, this is a no jerk policy. So I was writing some scripts and trying to figure out what to talk about, and I thought, oh, this is something that we've talked about as a culture, as a company and organization for a really long time. So let's just throw it in a podcast, see what people think. So the no jerk policy is also called the no a hole policy. We were just trying to keep it clean here.

Or the no bad people.

But I don't know who came up with it, but it's something that a lot of people talk about. You can Google it and you can see different. You know, somebody. I'm sure somebody is credited with coming up with this.

We're not the first.

Yes. But it's a lot of what you're going to see is talking about the work environment. And that's, I think, where it came in as to, you know, we all work here. Right. And I don't want to work with another jerk. This is, like, most of my life, pretty much that I'm awake is right here, like, in this office. And I. And so I think that's where I came from. But we. Before we ever made it a policy within our culture or our work environment, we made it a client policy.

Yes.

Because we'd hear complaints and complaints. This guy's doing this, or this gal's doing this, or, you know, blah, blah, blah. And there was a point where we said, hey, we're in our honeymoon phase right now. They haven't even bought a property or invested with us yet. Fire them.

Yes.

And we got this. We empowered our team to say, hey, if this is how you act and this is how you treat us when we're one of. I would. I want to say we're one of the best freaking companies out there in terms of wanting to provide the best of the best and do everything that we can for our clients, and when things happen, we're transparent about it. We fix it. And just. I feel like we have. There's not a lot of people out there that do this. When you are that person and you still have people being jerks, it was just fire them. I do not like, not gonna go there. So that's why I wanted to create this episode. Cause it's been a big deal for us.

Yep. And then the culture of our company too. It immediately went right from not only clients, but also our work environment.

Yes.

You know, nobody gets hired if they're a jerk. And if they're a jerk. Well, usually, usually during the first couple weeks or whatever, they're in the company, they're on their best behavior. But usually it's not very long after that. That's their true colors come out. And they don't last long because we're not going to work with jerks either.

Yeah. Well. And I saw when I was reading online, when I googled this to see, I was going to try and remember who it came from. Somebody said that as long as you put this in your policy in a work environment, you can actually fire based on it. You have a strict no jerk policy. And here's what that means. And now if you're a jerk. And so it said in that article, it says, now everybody's like, don't be a jerk, you get fired.

Exactly.

So we were thinking of some stories where this was an example that we can share. Yeah, yeah. We're not going to mention any names, obviously, but there was one client that had bought multiple properties and he's very. He's what you've heard us on podcast say. If you want to control the situation and if you want to have choices and your eyes on everything, please do it yourself. We are a done for you type company where we're going to go in, we're going to tell you what the standards are. We're going to go in, we're going to do our job, we're going to get out. If something goes wrong, we're going to go in and fix it. But like these, we had emails that were just so, so incredibly long. Do this, do this, and I want this. And it ended up going from one person to the next person. Every person was giving some, you know, here, let me help you with this. And they're all giving something, but then they would go to the next person because obviously this person didn't give enough. They would go to the next person, next person. And this is rare for us to have. And that's why this stands out. Right. Because we don't have very many of these clients, but when we have them, there was a point where they were already a client and they bought multiple properties. So we didn't want to fire them at that point.

Right.

We were trying to fix the things that were legitimately Our fault. But by the end, like, it was just like, all right, okay, this person is not going to be happy. No matter what we do and what we've offered and what we've tried, they're not going to be happy. It is time for that person to go ahead and find a new company who can do a better job for them that perhaps is in the business to be able to handle somebody that is that hands on. That is not who we are. It's not what we built. And so that's one example of kind of a polite firing. It's not like that we thought he was a jerk. It's just he wanted more attention and wanted more hands on capabilities. And that's not how we set up our business.

Right. Yeah. There was another couple. They, it took forever for them to find a place that they wanted to buy. And they were, they were buying on emotions, which we always tell people right away, this is an investment. Don't buy on emotions.

Yes.

But you know, it was, there was. They didn't like the shutters on the house, on one house, and they didn't like something else about another house. And, and they finally found the house that they liked, but it had a tree. And I'm not talking like a little tree, I'm talking like a massive tree in the backyard. And they didn't like the tree in the backyard. They said that it was bad for something and I don't know what, I can't remember what it was. And so we kept getting further and further down the line and you know, and they, they've got, it's under contract, they go, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they said, well, we're not going to move forward until we get the tree removed. And so we said, all right, well, we don't normally do this, but we'll go remove the tree and then, you know, we can figure this out later. And we removed the tree and a week later they said, yeah, we're not gonna buy that house now. And the entire fired, the entire company just went, wait, what?

Cause a big tree like that, let me tell you, that's expensive. It was not cheap to remove.

It was not cheap to remove that tree. Plus it was just a big tree. I hate cutting down trees, you know, unless we have to or unless it's dead or, you know, whatever has problems or whatever it is. But I just, I hate taking down trees. And oh, they just, oh, they killed me. So when they said that, I was just like, oh, see ya.

Yeah. And then one last story that I'll share is actually came from a friend of ours and he was saying, hey, I'm on vacation. And so whenever somebody's on vacation and somebody tells us, you get that auto reply, I'm on vacation. Well, we leave them alone and we wait for them to come back. Well, he was telling us the story. He said, I really appreciate you guys and I really appreciate the fact that you guys leave me alone when I'm on vacation and that you respect that time off that I have because I need downtime too. Unfortunately, there's other people that aren't that way and they email me, they got my out of office supply and they decided Facebook message me. And then they decided to text me, who cares that I'm on vacation and I'm trying to rest. And there's a point in time in your life where you gotta go. That's not the type of people I wanna work with. I don't wanna surround myself with those people. I wanna be around people who enjoy life wa want to relax, want to respect each other's space, time off, all that stuff. In fact, tell in our company it's more like take a vacation. And everybody's like, do not bother them. Do not bother them. Because, you know, that's important to us. So anyways, we just thought this was a very good episode to share because it's something we don't talk about a lot but is very real in business.

Reminds me of the one vacation we took where Tiffany told the entire office, do not message Danny or Flip. If you do, I will kill you. Pretty sure those are the actual words that she said. But, you know, I'll let you do this.

Yeah, it was just how we wanted to kind of end the episode. It's just, we all have one life. No amount of time or money is worth being miserable or dealing with miserable people. So find your line of what you're okay with. Actually find what you align with. And then everybody else gets fired.

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Yeah. Hey, if you're not a jerk, hit the like button.

Oh, boom. There you go.

Let's see how many likes we get.

There we go. But we like to end all of our episodes with Invest Smart, Live Happy. Bye everybody. Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate text Legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions and information on this show are not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss.