A founder admits he avoided difficult performance conversations for years, rationalizing by focusing on employees' passion for the mission. This reluctance to give honest feedback kept underperforming people in place and blocked his goal of building a $100 million company.
The thing that I was shying away from, like the real obstacle where I'm like, no, that's a, that's a scary monster. I don't want to go there, is real feedback and true performance conversations. And even when we would do those, then we would give so many chances. Yeah. Like, oh, but this person is so invested in our mission. And I like just shied away from that. And I let things go on for years that shouldn't have. And there's this quote that I absolutely love, and it's from Rudyard Kipling. And he says, you can have anything you want in life. And if you don't get it, it either means you didn't really want it or you tried to bargain over the price. And I was here saying, I really want this. I want to build a company that has massive impact. I want to get to $100 million a year in revenue. I want to do all of those things and I can do it this way. And he's like, no, you're bargaining over the price.
