FIRED on Day 2! - Business Bootcamp

Hey, everyone, this is Mike Andes, and you're listening to the Business Boot Camp podcast, and today is the first episode I've ever shot in our new studio. So you might be listening on the podcast, you might want to check out the YouTube channel, you might want to check out Facebook, you might want to do something, because right now I'm in our new studio. It might sound a little bit different. We're not finished yet, but this is the new studio. Right now, we're just in about a tiny little section of it that you're seeing. Eventually, we'll have it all finished out and you'll be able to see more of the studio. But I want to just. This is a really special episode for me, and I want to say thank you to all that have listened for years or months or just even if you just started joining in the past couple weeks, I want to say a big thank you, everyone from Landscape Business Course Barbells in Business here on Business Boot Camp podcast. So a big thank you, and I'm looking forward to the memories we're going to create in this studio. And. And I am just very, very excited. Literally, within the next couple weeks, you will see the whole studio. You'll see everything that's going on. And I just look forward to the long nights, lots of working here. I have a closet where I can sleep, bathroom, office, and there's a place here where we can start doing seminars next year. And so I am looking forward to it so much. But today we're going to do a real show. We're going to talk about something really important, and we're going to talk about something that happened recently in my business where I actually had to fire someone on their second day of working at my company. And I want to reinforce and use it as an example of just how important culture and hiring and firing is for your business. But before we get into today's show, I want to say a big thank you to Gusto. And so you have heard me talk about Gusto time after time after time. And the reason for that is because they have supported the show incessantly, and I want to say a big thank you to them. This stuff studio is in part due to their financial support of the show. They pay me on a per episode basis to talk about them. They do not pay me for you to use their link and their trial and things like that. That's all 100%. Like, I don't get a commission or anything. So please do go to gusto.com bootcamp if you have Employees. If you do payroll right now and you're looking for a better way, it's an absolutely fantastic solution. And they have really stepped up to the plate in support of small business owners and the mission of what we're doing with business Bootcamp podcast, answering as many questions as we can for small business owners, creating a framework and a place for young entrepreneurs to grow and learn. And so they have really stepped to the plate. And when I signed, I got the studio, they stepped up to the plate and signed up for the next year of sponsorship for this podcast as a way for us to help fund the build out. And so I'm very grateful for them and I really hope that if you do have employees and do run payroll, check them out. Gusto.com Bootcamp they're giving you 90 days as part of the podcast listenership to try out their software. And so instead of just the regular 30 days on their homepage, you can get the 90 days by going to that URL. So please check it out. I really do appreciate their support. So let's jump into today's show though. So if you're a small business owner, you know what it's like to hire and fire and have to find a great team and find the people, the right people for the right place on the bus. And so it's very important as you begin to grow and scale your business that you realize one thing. There's one way to determine the culture within your business and that's firing. There's nothing that speaks louder to your people and the people on your team than firing individuals. And that sounds hard. And some people think that makes me sound like I'm somebody crass, like don't care about people, their emotions or their life, livelihood. And that's just not the case. I am far on the other side of the equation that I don't fire fast enough. I think about it too much. I think about how I could possibly train them, mentor them, encourage them, give them resources. And so I know for a fact that I'm way on the other side in terms of not firing people fast enough. But by far and large, the best way for you to dictate culture and you as the CEO, you as the founder, you as the owner, as you build out a team, you are the coach. And the coach has to make the hard decisions when it comes to draft. The coach has to make the hard decisions in terms of who's on the bench, who's out on the court. And if you are going to be a great CEO and you're going to build a great team. You have to make some hard decisions when it comes to hiring and firing. And so hiring is great. Everything is great. When people are hired, they're happy, the team is happy, New talent is coming in and they have new experiences, new ways of looking at things, new ideas for growing the business. Everything is just hunky dory, everything is fantastic. But firing is the way that you tell everyone, that you show to everyone on your team what is allowed to be, what's allowed to fly, what is considered acceptable, what is the standard of your business. And so a few weeks ago, obviously we're going to spring for my landscaping company and we're looking for a lot of people, looking for a lot of new hires. And we're hiring a lot of people. And so we've recently hired several people. A couple office now a couple people out in the field. And in the next few weeks we'll be hiring more people. And so we hired this young man, had worked fantastic. The references were great as in terms of being a really hard worker. So like, you know what, he's gonna be great for the field, out in the field, working really hard on landscaping projects, mowing lawns. He doesn't, he's not afraid of hard work. His references were just spot on when it came to his work ethic and how hard he could work. And so he used to work at a place where he was basically by himself. And it was kind of like a factory setting. It wasn't a factory, but similar to a factory setting in terms of just the same thing all the time. However, it's very, very hard work. And he was by himself for 12, 14 plus hours a day. He was by himself the entire time. Not working on a team, by himself, working.

But I figured, you know, he's a hard worker, he's looking for a team. Like he's tired of working by himself. Great, great guy, great personality, great communication skills, all of those things. So you know what, we're going to give this guy a try. He's going to work great out in the field. And when I do commit to someone, I do hire them. I, I just go full in, 110% committed to them. I want them to succeed. I want to see them win. I want to set them up for success. We go right into like giving them uniforms and giving them company credit cards. Like day one, we're giving them those things, just full trust, 100% trust. I'll let them discount that. I'll let them ruin that trust that I Have for them. I don't go into the relationship thinking I shouldn't trust them enough or they have to somehow earn their trust for me. To me, like, I don't look at it like that. I look at it much more like I go into the relationship just 100% committed. And so that's what I did for him. You know, we did orientation day. I took him out for lunch, we drove around. I took him to the gym that I own. I took him to the different places that I do business and things and spent the day with him, got to know his family and his little girl and all these little things. And so all of that happened, you know, the next week, he started his day one after orientation and went, good. Day two. After day two, we fired him. And so I'm getting better at firing faster. And so I think the reason I fired this individual, number one, I did not see the mistakes that he made or the things that disqualified him from working on our team. I did not see it.

But there's two reasons why I fired this individual. Number one, I wanted to make a very clear statement to my existing team that their feedback is very important. So I fired this individual 100% based upon the feedback that I received from the people working for me that are on the team already. And so I wanted to make a very clear statement to the people working on my team that, hey, if you give feedback, I am going to make my judgment calls, whether it be firing, hiring, business decisions, about customers, about efficiencies within the business equipment, whatever it is. I am going to take your advice and your consultation very seriously. And I wanted to make that clear to them. That was the first reason. The second reason was that I wanted to be clear to my existing team. And you'll notice there are two reasons why I actually fired this individual, had nothing to do with them as much as it did the existing team that I have. And I wanted to protect what we already have, our culture. The second reason was that I knew that this individual, based upon his behavior and the report I was getting back from my team, was he was never going to integrate well with. With a team mentality. He was used to working by himself, used to working hard, and that's good. Working hard is fantastic, Great work ethic, fantastic. But there's a difference between working hard and working as a team player. And so in my business and in my companies, I don't value the money as much as the team and building that team. So there's no reason for me to be like, okay, well, I'll put up with someone being a bit of an idiot to everyone else. Basically, I'm okay with putting up with that because they're making me a bunch of money because they work so hard. Like, that's not really an equation that goes through my head. And so when I hear that someone. So basically what happened? He got hired. And his first week was brutal. We had snow route. So here in Washington state, we recently just had a massive snowstorm. And we're just not used to that. And we aren't really usually set up for it, but we were doing snow plowing. And so on our snow routes, we have, like, the border patrol headquarters, we have clinics, places that need to be done. We have apartment complexes. And so this particular day, this individual that we had hired, he was going out to relieve one of the crews at big border patrol headquarters that we have to service. And so one of the team members that were on our team was at the headquarters, had been working all day long plowing, and was looking to get some fresh blood, some fresh legs in on the job to finish it up. And so what ended up happening was this individual basically sat in the truck and then when they arrived, he showed up to the job site, jumped inside of a skid steer, which is like a big piece of equipment. You might not know what that is. It's like a bit. It's a skid steer. It's a big piece of equipment, heavy machinery. And he's never done the safety protocol for our company. He's never, like, had training on it. He just jumps in it. Never actually talked to the person that was the manager of that job, the person that was in charge that job, had worked there the whole day, was the head leader and foreman at that job. Didn't even talk to him. Just jumped in this piece of equipment and started, like, trying to operate it. And so, number one, just like, super unsafe. We're in, like, a secured zone, which is the headquarters of the border patrol. And here he is on a machine that he should not be using. So that was kind of a strike, but that's not like a huge issue for me. We can train someone around that and say, hey, look, you can't do that, and you gotta have training, you gotta have safety training and blah, blah, blah. But then after that, he worked for a little bit. Whatever, they kind of worked it out. And then he decided that, you know what, I've hit my eight hours for the day, and I don't really want to keep going. As if it was like a choice. And So I get it, I get it. Hey, after eight hours, that's a full day's worth of work, quote unquote. And so you can go home. But the people that have been working there all day knew that they only had another hour or two left, maybe an hour and a half left to finish the job. Like, you know what, instead of coming back tomorrow, let's just knock it out today.

But this individual was like, oh no, I don't really want to do that. I still want to just go back to the shop. So he ended up just sitting in the truck and then asking from one of the other employees to take him back to the shop, which took that employee off the job so that the head foreman had to stay there an extra hour to get the job done that day and ended up pulling out like an 11 hour shift to get it done. And so at the end of the day, he just wasn't considerate of the team. He didn't care. He was more interested in just punching out after eight hours than just pushing through and getting the job done. He wasn't considerate of the crew leader and the leadership that he had. He wasn't considerate of the other employees that were all in agreeance that they should just stay at the job and just literally it probably if they all stayed like 30 or 4, 30 or 40 minutes instead of coming back the next day, because they get the team mentality, they understand the efficiency and they understand what we're trying to do.

And so for him not even to be like on his second day, you should be kind of like trying to work hard and trying to go the extra mile and trying to be a team player. And so for him to be on the second day is completely oblivious to that, saying, no, I wanted to go back to the shop and then pulling another employee off to take him back. It was just super uncalled for, super not team player. I don't care how hard you work when you're on the clock. And so I got feedback from the other employees and literally I made my decision based upon someone who has worked at our company for six weeks. So the individual that I got my report from had worked at our company for six weeks is an absolute. A player is going to be a long term player on the team, is willing to sacrifice just an amazing person, amazing team player. I support him 100% as I do all my staff. And so he's only been on the team for six weeks. However, I took what he said and was able to, I could trust him enough to know that the report he gave me was gonna be truthful enough for me to fire this individual. And so I fired him that night. I fired him and made it really nice. He still came back to the shop. We gave him a check, we got his uniform back, did all of that, like super cordial, like everything was fine. I didn't. Was harsh against him. I said, hey, look, working with a team is different than working by yourself. And you worked hard, but it's a different environment and you're just not gonna work here. It's not gonna work out well for you here. And so.

Second day of working with us, and he was confused. He was just like, I worked so hard. I thought everything went good. And so I knew it was gonna come out of the blue for him. But for my team, it just, it reinforced the fact that we, we are a team. Team first is the mentality that we have embraced team first. And so when people put their own prerogative or the way they feel above the team. And I get. People get sick, I get all the asset. And we are very trying to accommodate all of those things. People have family, they have situation of issues. Funerals and stuff happens and checkups like all of that. We're very flexible in that regard. However, when it comes to teamwork, I. The worst thing you can do if you have a great culture and you have great A players is to put a C player and make them constantly work with C players. And so I told that to the team. Look, I respect all of you as great workers and great team players. The last thing I'm going to do as the owner here is to make you work with people that are just absolute idiots. Don't care about the team, just care about their own interests and their own self. And that is what I have to stress to my team. Cause it's what I believe in. It's the culture, and that's the dictatorship that I use to manipulate how I want the culture to be. I truly believe that the culture of a company directly correlates the way in which the CEO or the owner or definitely the founder has governed the hiring and firing. And so making that a clear statement was very powerful. I haven't not done that in that way for probably a year and a half for our company. So a lot of the people that are new, a lot of our team that has grown with us and has never seen that happen, that they've always kind of seen me as the soft guy, the one that doesn't fire fast or make those fast decisions and so I think it was a powerful statement to them that I do place value on the culture of the company, to the fact that I will fire someone that quickly if they're not gonna be a team player. And there's a balance, because you could coach that person, right? And so we've done that before. We have younger guys that we've had to coach.

But there's a fine line between someone that you can coach and certain things that are just gonna eliminate them from being a team player. And the way that he acted was cognizant of someone that was not situationally aware, not aware of others and their opinions, not aware of leadership, not aware of other people. Like, he had never met the foreman ever. And yet he's just gonna hop onto his job site and get in his piece of equipment without even acknowledging, without even saying, hi, my name is. And, like, introducing himself, literally, a new hire jumps into your piece of equipment as a foreman on your job. What are you supposed to think? And so that's just not situationally aware. There's a good chance he's going to bring that same level of carelessness to a job site, and then it's going to affect a customer, which is just out of hand and uncalled for. And so I'm not going to put a customer through that, and I'm definitely not going to put my team through that. So I take a hard look at where do you want your culture? What do you want your culture to look like? And the culture for me is a place. How I dictate and how I want my culture to be is a place I want to show up every single day, and I want to work with the people that I hire. If I ever wake up and I'm like, you know, I don't even want to be around those people. I will make some radical changes in my company pretty fast. And so when it gets to that place, it's something that has to be done fast. It has to be. There's a lot of changes that would have to be made. And I never wanted to get to that place. I want to be a place where I want to come and work. I love the people that work there. I would go to battle for each and every one of my employees, and if it's not that way, they shouldn't be working there. And so when you have that. And I just believe that even as time goes on, we're just. The culture and the camaraderie and the teamwork is just going to grow and build, and that bond will be, even get stronger. And so I look forward to that in my own organization. But you have to make those hard decisions. It was not easy to take the third party report of another employee. It's only worked for us for six weeks. But make a decision on firing someone within two days of them working for us, that's not easy. And it definitely has to. You have to have culture first. But I truly believe culture first is what will get you through the economic hard times, will allow you to be more efficient than other companies because your team begins to think in terms of the business and what's best for the company and, and what's best for the other people that are working with them. And so it's very humbling as someone, as a founder to see that starting to take, to take on a life of its own. And something that you as the founder is never a finish line. You're always having to change and prune and cut like a tree. You gotta keep pruning it, you gotta keep shaping it, you gotta keep cutting back certain areas that are dead. And that's the same way when it comes to culture, you constantly gotta be on the guard, on the lookout for areas of improvement, areas that are weak, areas that are dying, and continually prune them off, cut them, trim them, otherwise you're gonna get irregularities in terms of production, your teamwork, like, you gotta keep that on your front, the front of your mind 100% of the time. To me, culture's number one. And I truly believe that's what will keep a company long term. It's what will keep a company from generation to generation. And it's truly something that I have grown to love about what I get to do every single day. And so before I leave you, though, I wanted to leave with you one more thing that I heard this week that was really impacting to me. And so, as you might have heard, this year, I am doing a project locally, it's called Local Leaders. And what we're going to do is we are going to interview in the studio, we're going to interview business owners in my local community and we're going to talk about how they founded their business and kind of like iconic brands to my local community, Whatcom county up here in Washington. And we're going to talk to them and we're going to interview them and I'm going to record their talk with me, 30, 40 minutes, whatever it is. And some of it might become podcast material, but more importantly, we are going to then take all of those interviews and we're going to make a book out of it. It's going to be called Local Leaders. And then I'm going to give it to as many small business owners in my county as possible. I'm just going to give it away. I'm not going to make money on the actual book itself. And so the idea behind that is number one for marketing for Augusta Lawn Care. So as the facilitator of that book, you know, on the front's gonna say, Mike Andes, founder of Augusta Lawn Care. So locally it'll be a brand awareness, blah, blah, blah. But more importantly is my my opportunity to give back to my local community. Giving back to the small business owners and the business community. It's also a way for me to kind of help them network and get to know some of these iconic brands and the stories behind them. And then also it allows me to talk to some of the best business owners in my local area face to face. And so this past week, I was able to talk to a local business owner.

Whose business has gone down to the fourth generation. So literally 70% of small businesses that are family businesses never get are successful past the second generation. This company is the fourth generation, and so they're doing something right. And so I interviewed him and I thought it was fascinating because I really wanted to talk to him about working with a family inside of a business, working around your grandkids and your kids and your spouse. And like, how does that all work? What's the dynamics, what's the emotions and the relationships like in those scenarios? And how did they make it work when so many small businesses can't put that family dynamic to the business dynamic and make it work? And so in talking to him, I had never heard this in my whole life. And I'm sure it's super simple. Maybe you've heard this before, but I asked him, like, is it hard working with your family? Is it hard making that delineation between business and family and business and my wife versus business and sorry, my wife and then boss. Is it hard to delineate that? Is it hard to say you're my grandchild, but you're also my employee? Is it hard for them to make those decisions, the differentiations between business and personal life and those relationships? And he said something that really fascinated me. And I have never, ever thought about family business in this way. I've always kind of been of the opinion that your first employee, maybe second employee, might be family or friends because it's so much about trust and just knowing they're not going to rip you off. That that's super important. And first one, two employees, but then after that, I've always been of opinion, like, don't hire your family just because you don't want that dynamic to ever get in the way of the business and making correct business decisions. Because I've just seen so many businesses that have made decisions based upon relationships in their personal life versus what's actually right for the business. And so that's always been the way I've kind of thought. Never really said that. But then he said something that just completely I had never thought about. Super simple. He said this. He said, you know what?

I'll never stop working because most people that are my age, he's talking, he's in his 60s. He's like, most people in my position, they retire to go spend time with their family. And yet I get to spend. This is him speaking. Yet I get to spend time with my family every single day. He said, why would I want to go. Why would I want to quit this job and go do something else when the reason that everyone else is retiring is to go be with their family? And I get to come to work and be with my grandkids and be with my children, be with my spouse all day. And I get to see them grow and learn and build the business and do something together, have a project, a common goal, a mission, something they're working around. I never thought about it like that. I thought about it like, in terms of it's tough to make that work, the dynamic between a wife and a husband. And then your kids get involved and it's like, okay, then you go home. But he completely thought from a different perspective. He thought that, you know what the reason people work is so they can go home and spend time with their kids, so they can go home and work on the weekends, go out with their children, spend time with their grandkids. And he's like, I get to do that all of the time. I get to spend time with the people I love, the people I want to be around all day long at business. And I thought that was amazing. Really changed the way I thought about small businesses and family dynamics within a business. And so just something I've been thinking about, something I thought was super cool, but I hope something day that I was said kind of triggered something in terms of, you know, that person you need to fire in your business. You need to use that as an example for your A team, your A players that are looking to you to make the hard decisions. You're the one that makes the firing, and you're the one that dictates the culture. I encourage you to make that hard decision. And if you have a question on how to do that or what is happening in your business, I'd love to help you. Just email me at businessbootcamppodcastmail.com I'd love to help you start, grow, or save your business. I look forward to a lot more episodes in this building. I look forward to a lot more videos, a lot more podcasting content. And I really am so thankful for all of you for listening and it's gonna be really cool in the future. So thank you so much. I'm Mike Andes. You've been listening to Business Bootcamp Podcast. Until next time, Be great. Cause nothing else pays.