Will Kelly argues good employees leave because of weak internal standards and neglected development, not market conditions. At his lawn care company, tolerating low performers and ignoring top talent eroded culture. His fix: document standards, hold people accountable, and invest in A-players through weekly feedback and quarterly growth conversations.
You keep saying you can't find good people, but I want to challenge that. What if the problem isn't the market? What if the problem is what's happening after you hire them? You don't have a hiring problem. You have a standards development and retention problem. You see, you're fishing in the pond, blaming the fish. Meanwhile, your A and B players are quietly checking out because they feel invisible, under-challenged, and undervalued. And your C players, they're dragging the entire team down and you're tolerating it. You see, a few years back at Military Lawn Cuts, I was convinced we had a bad labor market. I'd hire somebody, they'd last 60 days, and I'd be right back on Indeed. I thought it was a Texas thing, a lawn care thing, nobody wants to work thing. Then I had a moment of clarity. I looked at my best team member at the time, and I realized he was doing the work of two people and getting paid like one. No feedback, no investment, no path forward. He was invisible to me operationally. Six months later, he left, and quite frankly, he should have. That's when I stopped blaming the market and started looking in the mirror. The problem wasn't out out there. It was in here and in here and inside of my operation. You're tolerating C players and it's costing you everything. You see, one C player doesn't just underperform, they set the standard for what's acceptable on your crew. Your A players are watching. Every day you keep a C player, it is a message to your best people: this is what we settle for here. Most owners keep C players because replacing them feels harder than tolerating them. That math is backwards. You need to define what the standard actually is, not based off of feelings, not based off of vibes, a documented measurable standard. Once the standards exist, accountability becomes the system, not a conversation you're dreading. The hard truth is if you don't hold the standard, you become the bottleneck. You're not being nice by keeping them. You're being unfair to everyone else. You are not developing your A and B players, the people who already show up, work hard, and care. They need a path, not a raise alone. A path. Development looks like feedback that's specific, opportunities to lead, being recognized publicly, and knowing their ceiling isn't the truck. Most owners give zero feedback unless something goes wrong. Think about that from the team member's perspective. Silence feels like indifference. Invest in your A-players like they're your future crew leads, managers, and operators, because they are, or they won't be. They'll be someone else's. The framework: weekly feedback, monthly check-ins, quarterly growth conversations. It doesn't have to be formal. It has to be consistent. You see, you haven't built a culture with a standard people want to rise to. Culture isn't a speech you give at a team meeting. It's what you tolerate and what you celebrate daily. If C players are staying and A players are leaving, your culture is running in reverse. The best team members want to be around people who are bought in. They want to be part of something that demands something from them, that pushes them. You can't recruit your way to a great team. You build it. From the inside out. When your culture is right, your current team becomes your best recruiting tool. Referrals from engagement team members are the highest quality hires you'll ever get. I used to think I needed to find better people. What I actually needed was to become a better leader for the people who I already had, and I had to get honest with myself about who I was keeping and who I shouldn't. And who I was ignoring that I should have been pouring into. This is the work, not the hiring, the leadership, which is what we're doing here. We're building and developing people inside of Military Lawn Cuts. When I built systems around standards, feedback, development, retention went up, culture got sharper, and the people I was hiring started to actually stick because they were walking into something worth staying for. You see, over the years, the people who we've hired have significantly gotten better and better and better and better. And it wasn't because all of a sudden these A players started showing up. Trust me, they were showing up years ago. It's because I as a leader couldn't retain them. I didn't have the level of leadership and accountability and been able to have difficult conversations and been able to fire somebody on my team when they're not holding the standard. I want you to do this right now. I want you to mentally fire everybody on your team right now. And in the comments below, I want you to put the number of people that are on your team that you just mentally fired. How many people would you rehire from your current team? In fact, what I want to know is your total team size. So give me 5. You got 5 team members and then you would rehire 4. Say 5 team members, I would rehire 4. That, that's the context I want. Go ahead and put in the comments right now. Now, the reason we're doing this mental exercise is because if you didn't put down the number of how many team members you have right now, you have room for growth as a leader. You are not at the level of leadership that you need to be in order to find, recruit, and retain these other A-players. If you're dragging someone along that you know full-heartedly that you would not rehire, why are you not on the back end finding his replacement today? Why not? Is it laziness? Is it lack of care? This is what separates the good companies from the great companies. They take action. They don't wait for the fire to blow up or the fire to get really large and then put it out. If they see a little flame, they give it the attention. It really is the small things that matter. And if you fail to address those things and hold these people accountable, that is where I would start first. Internal, up here and in here to make your organization better. Because the reality is, is you will never outgrow the level of leadership that you have right now. So if you are struggling trying to find A-players, it's a hard truth, ladies and gentlemen, but I would look in the mirror first because it works. I've done it before. When you improve, you constantly grow, you get better each day. All of a sudden, every time somebody leaves the company, leaves the department, leaves the team, as long as you're growing and as long as you're expanding and as long as you're getting better, what you'll find is the team members that's come in after them, they get better and they get better and they get better, and they keep continuing to get better because it's you that keeps getting better. Don't ever stop growing. If you aren't growing, you're slowly dying. Thank you guys so much for watching. Hit the like button if you got value, and make sure you are subscribed because you want to miss these next videos.
