A contractor's journey to self-mastery requires discipline, integrity, and respect. Welcome to Hammer and Grind. And welcome to the Hammer and Grind podcast, the podcast built for contractors to help maximize profits and get you off the tools before burnout or bankruptcy happens. I'm your host, Brad Hebner. And I'm here to help you on your journey to self-mastery. Make sure you check us out on our social media platforms, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook. Just search for Hammer and Grind Podcast and you'll be able to find me there. Consider joining my free Facebook group called the Contract Your Profit Blueprint. I created this free group to give you as much information as possible to help you in your business. I go live in there once a week, tons of content to help you in your business. If you want to accelerate the success, consider joining my paid coaching group called The Profit Club. In there is a great community of contractors all willing to share information and help each other succeed, as well as hundreds of hours of training, coaching calls, everything you need to accelerate your business. If you want to learn more about that, you can find out more information on hammerandgrind. com forward slash The Profit Club. Or just send me a message and I'll be happy to share that with you. Now, let's get on to the show. All right. Welcome back to the Hammer and Grind podcast. And today's episode, episode number 119. Employees are a pain in the you know what. Or is it just me? So I wanted to do this podcast. Actually, that's kind of a last minute thing. It just popped in. I was talking to one of my clients today on our weekly or bi-weekly accountability calls. And he was struggling with an employee, wanted some advice on how to handle it. So I know this applies to pretty much everybody out there because it applied to my business. It applies to everyone I've had this conversation with. And I don't believe that I've really talked about this specific topic. So I wanted to dive into it today on this podcast. And that is really just dealing with employees. One, we're going to talk about how to interact with employees to get the most out of them. And then on the back end, knowing when and how to terminate employees when they're not working out. So hopefully this should be a very productive and educational podcast brought to you by one of the troubles of my clients and probably the same thing every one of you have dealt with. So let's get into it. I want to start with the understanding of that when you hire employees. you are like the captain of a ship. Now, I've talked a lot about ego and pride and how we put our self-worth and our self-image into our business. And this is one of the areas where it can come back and hurt us. And I'll explain why here in a little bit. But basically, when you see your business as an extension of you, where your identity and your character and everything about you is tied into your business, whenever something happens in your business, you take that personally. Now, there's definitely something to be said about taking care of your employees. You definitely want to take care of your employees. But to what extent? In my experience with my own business and with other contractors that I've worked with, most of us... tend to screw ourselves before we handle a situation with an employee, right? So what I'm saying is it's important that we take care of employees. Some of you are screwing your employees over either purposely or unknowingly you're screwing over your employees. And that's a little bit different story. I'm assuming that if you're purposely trying to screw your employees that Eventually, you're going to go out of business and it will be because you deserve to. Because I don't know any business that doesn't operate ethically or morally that stays in business for very long. There's some that probably get by, but I don't know too many of them that survive in that culture of purposely trying to screw people. The second category is those of you that are unknowingly... screwing your employees. And you guys typically fall into the, I'm going to 1099 my employees. They are employees, but you're going to 1099 them because of one or two reasons. It's easier for you or your employee thinks it's easier for them. Very few times does it actually work out to where it's beneficial and more easy for your employee to be, they're really an employee, but you're treating them like a 1099. In most states, in most areas, well, it's a federal, it's actually at the federal level, but even states have different laws on this. It's completely illegal to treat employees as a 1099 subcontractor. But that's not what this podcast is about. I'm just simply saying that some of you are unknowingly not doing things the way you're supposed to. Not talking about you either. I'm talking about those of you who want to do right by your employees. You want to provide an environment, a job that pays them well, gives them benefits so that they can have a life as well as you. And you can really build this culture of a team that really wants to work together. That's who I'm talking to. So when you hire people for your business, especially when it's your first hire, That's kind of scary to do because you don't even know if you should hire somebody, what that all looks like. Let me just tell you that when you go to hire, unless you have a mentor, unless you have someone that has been there and done that before you, unless you hire a company from the get-go to do this for you, you're probably going to make bad hires. It's inevitable. You're just going to make bad hires. And it's part of it. As you do it more... It's crazy how this keeps coming back, but the more you practice at something, the better you get. I know it's crazy how that always works in life. It's the same with hiring. The more people you hire, the better you will get at it. The better you will understand certain characteristics and certain traits and behaviors that people have that you want based on the culture and the vision that you have of your business. And so it's important, one, to identify what your vision and core values are and the culture of the business that you want to create. Setting core values for your business is a very important step when you first start out. Because if you just wake up in the morning and you react to the day and whatever happens, happens, and you don't really care if you make money or not make money, you don't care if you screw someone over or not. If you don't have any values whatsoever, it's going to be very difficult to bring people on to that. that chaoticness of not having a direction in the business. So you need to have some type of direction of what we stand for. If you're religious, if you're a spiritual person, you may have those core values built into your business. And so if you're a believer, if you believe in God, you probably don't want to hire someone who's an atheist or agnostic. Probably would not be the best match. Maybe you want a culture of creating and, you know, nurturing and grooming men to be better leaders in the industry. And so you want to be able to have, you know, Bible studies or do these types of things. Well, if someone's not interested in that, it's not going to fit your culture. Maybe you're a culture of hunting. You want to be a hunter. You love hunting. It's all about you. You're a hunter. You take off for a month in the fall to go hunting or whatever. You might want to bring on people that have like values, right? To you. Hunting may be this, that may be your religion is hunting, where you're out connected with the nature and hunting for game and you're going to use that meat to feed your family. That's a real value and core belief that you have. And so if you hire someone who doesn't believe in hunting or thinks it's archaic or cruel to animals, probably not going to be a good fit for your business. So understanding your core values and beliefs. of your business is important to establish so that when you're hiring, you find people that fit your core values. By the way, this also applies to your customers. This idea that you're just going to work for anybody that calls you is crazy. You're interviewing customers as much as they're interviewing you. And you're interviewing employees as much as they should be interviewing you. At the end of the day, this whole thing that this whole game that we're playing called business is about connecting, servicing, and working with people who all have similar beliefs, goals, and values. That's ultimately what it's about. So the more centered you are, the more direction you have of where you want to go, who you want to be, what your business represents, the easier it's going to be to align with certain people. I had, for example, I had a guy that emailed me. I sent out an email the last week and he replied and said, I want to talk to you about your program. This is what I think I want. It's aligned with what I need in my business. I'm like, cool, let's schedule a call for today. And I had a couple back and forth. I said, dude, just give me your phone number so I can text. It's much easier than email. And he sent me his phone number. And when I looked it up in my system, I realized it was somebody that I had already talked to. Not talked to, but they were a client. But this email that I was talking back and forth was a different email. That's important because whenever you schedule a call with me to talk about the Profit Club or talk about my coaching, I take that very serious. And I show up for those calls ready to find out about your business and find out how I can help you. And whenever you get... three or four different text reminders plus email reminders that say, hey, our calls today, our calls in an hour, our calls in five minutes, plenty of notifications that you have a call coming up that you scheduled at a specific day and time. And then you completely ghost me. You're not the type of people that I want to talk to. And so this person reached out. I finally realized, hey, this guy ghosted me. And when I say ghost me, I don't mean just not showing up on the call. Because I will call you. And I will text you and I will say, hey, what's going on? Is everything okay? Did you get an accident? Is there a medical emergency? Do we need to reschedule? What's happening? I get it. Things happen. Nothing. No email, no text, nothing. Just complete ghosting. And so my policy is if you ghost me on a call, I don't want to work with you. Because if you're willing to ghost somebody that you're seeking out to potentially help you in your business and you don't have... enough discipline, enough integrity, and enough common courtesy to say, hey, sorry, got hung up. This happened. Forgot. Whatever. Even just the message of like, hey, I'm so sorry. I messed up. And take ownership of that. And then two months later, you just want to schedule another call and act like it never happened. No, I don't want to work with you because you exhibit behaviors of a person who doesn't have integrity, who doesn't care about wasting someone else's time. So that's what I mean by aligning with your customers. So if you're interested in potentially engaging and coaching with me and my services, and you're just going to stand me up or ghost me, I'm not interested in you because you're not the type of people that I want to work for or work with. That's the same thing you should apply to your customers and more importantly, your employees. If you have employees that aren't going to do what you ask them to do, it's not going to work out well for you. And there's a saying I love. It says, if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. Now, I've talked to other coaches in the industry and the marketing agencies and all that and coaching space. And some people are like, well, I don't ever discredit anyone or I give them second chances and blah, blah, blah. And that's fine. You do what's important to you. But I have my beliefs that if you don't have the common courtesy to at least let someone know you screwed up and forgot, then I don't want to work with you. And so that's something I stand for. That's important to me. Having discipline, having integrity is important to me. It's actually one of my core beliefs right here on my logo in the background. Discipline, integrity, respect. If you don't have enough respect to let me know. If you don't have integrity to admit you did something wrong. If you don't have the discipline to show up for a time that you set, then I don't want to work with you. And you should have core beliefs in your business that your employees will adhere to and that your customers will align with. This is a little bit off topic. I wasn't even planning on talking about that. But it ties into this because it's so important that when you go to hire employees, They have to fit your culture. They have to. That could include political parties. If you have one political party and the other person has it different, it may not work out. I'm going to say something here. It's very controversial. And it may get me in trouble. But I truly believe this. The whole idea of anti-discrimination laws, I understand where it comes from and the need for that. However, what it's turned into is a complete joke. Because I don't care who you are, what you do, what you're doing, what position, what business, it doesn't matter. When you hire people, you are absolutely discriminating against them in some way, form, or shape. Now, the discrimination laws are about race, religion, culture, and all that stuff. Ethics, their ethical background, all that stuff. I'm telling you it does matter depending on certain beliefs that are important to you. Now, obviously, you can't break the law. I'm not telling you to go out and ignore that and break the law. But what I'm telling you is that every single person in every single job interview discriminates against the people who don't get hired. It's just the facts of it, right? This idea that you're going to hire someone because they... they fit everything else, but they go against one major belief that you have, like say religion. If you're a Christian and they're a very outspoken atheist, you know, devil worshiper, and you're like, well, maybe, you know, I can't discriminate against them because of the anti-discrimination laws. I don't want to do that. That's ridiculous. What do you think the outcome is going to be? It's not going to be good. I promise you. I mean, that's just common sense, right? So yes, you're going to discriminate against people in a way that's appropriate. Again, I'm not telling you to purposely break the law because you hate one people group. That's not what I'm talking about. Don't send me hate letters and all that stuff. I'm saying that if 10 people apply, you're going to discriminate against the nine people that aren't qualified in some way. You're going to discriminate against their skill set. You're going to discriminate against their... experience. You're going to discriminate against their behavior. You're going to discriminate against their character. You're going to discriminate against something. It's just going to happen. So if that's true, then you might as well hire people that are going to fit the culture that you want to create in your business. Now, some of you hire based on needs of bodies and bands. You need a body in a van because you're behind schedule and you need employees. So what do you do? You put a job posting out and one person applies and shows up 10 minutes late to the interview and reeks of alcohol. And you're like, can you drive? Yeah. Can you do plumbing? Yeah. Okay. You're hired because I need a body. Right? I just need bodies. In the military, we used to joke about, hey, I need three bodies over here. It's like volunteering. I need three people over here. I don't care what you can do, what your skill set is. I just need three people to do this task. Some of you are hiring because you need warm bodies. That is a recipe for disaster. Now, obviously, there's different skill sets, different levels of your business. If you're hiring for an apprentice versus hiring a project manager, there's obviously different levels there of how important each one of these beliefs and core values that you have. and would affect that in your hiring preference. Now your core values, I should back up there. Your core values are really about what you believe and who you are, not like your skill set. So your core values should apply across the board no matter what level. However, if you're discriminating, if you're hiring based on the position and the skill set of the position, then that's a different story. If all I need is a guy to shovel ditches. It doesn't really matter too much of all the other stuff that goes with it. I hope that makes sense. Or if I just rambled on about nothing. So you hire people based on your culture and your core values and beliefs. So when you hire these people and you find these people that you want, the very first thing you should do is ask them essentially what's important to them. What do you hope to get out of this employment? what's your dreams? We always ask, what's your five and 10-year goals? That's a good question to ask, but not really for the sense of it determines if they have vision or if they're dedicated or whatever. I'm saying you should ask what their five and 10-year goals are so that you can figure out how to make that happen for them. Because someone that's coming to work for you who's a 19-year-old kid, he may not want to be working there in five years. Maybe he needs to save up... $30,000 so he can go to school and become an attorney or something. I don't know. So he's like, hey, I'm willing to give you two to three years of hard work so I can make money so I can pay my way through school. Hey, I'll hire that guy. I'll hire him in a heartbeat. Even though I know in three years he won't be here. This idea that you're going to hire someone, they're going to be around for 30 years, ridiculous. It's not going to happen. I had a guy I hired. He was in college, and so he could only work like 30 hours a week because he was taking classes. He wanted to be a marine biologist. And I hired him, and then in the summertime, he worked full-time. One of my best employees. He wasn't super skilled. He still made some mistakes and still needed help with things. But a great employee, great guy. He went on to go to... He moved to, I think, South Carolina for marine biology and still occasionally talked to him. because he was such a good dude. He just was a good person. And I loved having him on my team, even though I knew it was a short-term employment because I still got value and benefit from him being there. So asking him, what do you hope to get? What's your dreams and aspirations? What do you want to be able to do? It could be as simple as, hey, I just want to be able to enjoy, work hard and get paid well and enjoy my time with my family. We like to go camping. One of our dreams one day is to go buy a camper. Cool. Well, what can I do to help facilitate that to make it happen to where you can buy a camper? Maybe he wants to work on weekends or work overtime so he can save up. Whatever it is, find out what that person, what's important to them. It could be money. It could be time off. It could be benefits. It could be respect. It could be any of these things. Every single one of your employees is like an entire ecosystem. You're not going to have a business where it's like an assembly line and every employee comes in. At the end, you spit out the exact product that's all the same. It doesn't happen. Every single person is an entire ecosystem that you have to plug yourself into and figure out what works for them. That's what makes people good owners, good managers. That's why I say that whenever you're good at carpentry... Being good at using a skill saw is not going to be a skill that translates into understanding how to see what's important to your employees and what makes them tick. Those two skill sets don't translate. You have to learn how to communicate with people. You have to learn how to have effective communication. so that you can have difficult conversations with your employees and find out what makes them tick and ask the right questions to get into their brain and get into their life and get into their vulnerabilities and their deep, dark secrets and all the stuff that they don't maybe want you to know and finding out what that stuff is. It's not a matter of, I have an employee. It's like, are you married? Okay. What's your wife's name? Your spouse name? How many kids do you have? What's their names? What school do they go to? What hobbies are they in? What sports do they play? What are your hobbies? What's your anniversary date? What do you guys like to do? What's your favorite restaurant? I'm talking like fully engulf yourself in their lives and then understanding what makes them tick. That is management. That's what leadership looks like. That's true leadership. When you understand at the core... what makes your employees tick? Not just the post of, are you going to show up on time? And do you have a license? And no DUIs. And don't give me crap if you can't be on time. I don't want you to post for the job. I want you to apply for the job if you can't show up on time. That's not leadership, guys. That's just a craftsman trying to run a business who doesn't understand leadership whatsoever. Some of you are like, man, I don't know how to do all that stuff. I don't know how to talk to people. I don't know how to understand what makes them tick. And that seems like a lot of work. I don't really care about people. I really don't care about them and their lives. I just want to work and go home. Well, then you're not a good leader. It's that simple. You're not a good leader. And that's okay. If you don't want to be a good leader, maybe you make excellent money. You have the business you want. You treat people like crap. And that's just the way you like to do it. Eventually, you'll run out of people to keep treating like crap. And then you won't have a business. You're free to do whatever you want. I'm just telling you what it should look like. What good leadership looks like. So understanding what makes them tick is going to be extremely key to the longevity of that employee working for you and how much productivity you get out of them. Some people are motivated by money. Some people are motivated by time off. Some people are motivated by feeling like they're part of a team. Some people want to be respected. Some people just want the attaboys. They want their praise and recognition. Understanding what each one of your team members wants and what makes them tick is going to be vital to building a team. And it's also important to how you put teams together. Because if you have one guy who maybe he's an older guy,45,50 years old, and he works hard as the old school. I come in, put my head down, work hard. I don't want anybody to bother me. And then you got a younger kid who's an apprentice working for him. And he's all about wanting to feel included and feel valued as an employee. And it's more important for him to feel like people like him. That dynamic may not work together because it's two different personality traits. And so if you put those two people together, they may not work well. And then you won't understand like, oh, why is this, you know, team A, their production team suck. Their production sucks. I get complaints from customers because stuff's not getting done and this and that. And you may be wondering why that's happening. And it could be as simple as you put the wrong personalities together. This is so vital, guys. Like this, all of this stuff matters across your entire business is hiring good people. And it gets harder and harder and harder today to do that because of... the shortage of labor, right? So it's even more critical to be picky, which is going to eliminate, which is going to reduce the amount of people that you have available that even fit the profile of who you want to hire. So it's like finding a needle in a haystack. It really is. The good news, though, is that when you find people that check all of the boxes that are winners and what they do, your business will operate. like a freaking race car. It will be off the charts and performance and ease. And people like that like working with people like them. And so they will also bring in their friends and co-workers and acquaintances to come and work for you because you're a good leader. They're able to do what they want to do and excel. And they want to work with people like them. And so when you find a good person... do whatever it takes to keep them around and make them happy. And then also they will bring in other people that will be a great team. Okay. So it's like, it's a, it's a win-win when you, when you're able to find those people. The next thing we'll talk about is understanding responsibility as an owner in terms of your team building. This, this podcast idea and this conversation that we're having is actually stemmed from my client that I was having the conversation with because he has an employee who's been with him for about a year. and he's having trouble with him. There was a situation where he doesn't pay holiday pay, which right, wrong, or indifferent, doesn't matter. But he pays them through lunch. So they take lunch and they get paid. And actually, if you were to take holiday pay and give them holiday pay without lunch or pay for the lunch, they come out way ahead by getting paid for the lunch. It's a lot more money they're getting paid. by not having to clock out for lunch versus the holiday. But one guy, for whatever reason, thinks he deserves to get paid for holiday pay as well as not having to pay for lunch. And he's just all mad and butthurt about it. So he's just going to be like, oh, you know what? This is bull crap. And he's over there and you're pouting and not wanting to show up for meetings and all these other things. And then one of the guys that's working with him, his attitude changes overnight because this guy, he's having to work with this. guy who has a bad attitude. And I was having this conversation and he's like, we've had all these talks, man. I found out what's important. I found out what he wants. He just wants more money. I gave him more money. His wife got insurance. So I took him off my insurance and I even paid him the difference for the insurance. So he got like an $8,000 raise right there. He wants to get paid for his lunches as well as get paid for his holiday pay and everything else. And it's like, The guy basically wants an extra $25,000 a year in benefits. And whether or not you can afford that or can't afford it or whatever, it's not a matter of like, I'm not going to give you these things because I don't want to pay for it. It's more of a matter of like, financially, our business can't support that. I want to get there. We're trying to get better and improve our profits and all that stuff. But I don't want to... I can't. I can't do that. And if you're not willing to be a team player, then there's not much I can do. And this person's like, I don't care. Either I want that or too bad. So we're having this conversation and I'm like, dude, you just got to let them go. This is obviously someone who's not interested in the greater good of the business. His other employees that he has are all like, hey, whatever we got to do, how does it affect the bottom line? We appreciate what you do. We realize you're trying to be more profitable to help us out. It's going to take time. They're all on board. They care about the business. They care about him as an owner. They're all about, hey, we're willing to work together as a team so that we can work better, be more profitable, which is going to benefit us in the long run. The other person's like, I don't care. It's all about me. And I'm saying, dude, you got to let him go. You just have to let him go. He's like, he's a really good employee. When he's here, he works hard. And he's good with the customers. He puts on this fake person where he's really good with the customers. He gets five-star reviews. Everything is great. And this is what I want to talk about mainly. I don't care if you have the best employee in the world with the craft and the skill. If they have a bad attitude, it will wreck your business because it will piss off everyone else in your business. When you have an employee who's pissed off for whatever reason, and they have a bad attitude, it's like having cancer in your business. It literally is like having a cancer in your business. And for him, this particular client, he's a good dude. He's a really good dude who wants to take care of his employees. I admire him for his dedication to taking care of his employees. But at the same time, when you have cancer and you let it run freely, what does cancer do? It keeps growing and growing and growing until eventually it kills everything off. And that's what a bad employee is. And at some point, you just need to cut the leg off, to switch into a different virus or bacteria or whatever. If you have gangrene, if you woke up in the hospital and you have gangrene in your leg and the doctor's like, hey, you have gangrene, we got to amputate. We got to cut off your leg below your knee. If we don't, it's going to keep growing. Eventually, it'll grow into your other leg and then your arms and then your organs. And if you don't, eventually you'll lose all your organs. And if you don't, you'll eventually die. Most of us should be like, hey, cut it off. If we can't save it, cut it off. I don't want this gangrene because I don't want to... kill off my entire body. Yet that's what a bad employee is, is gangrene or cancer in your business. But we don't want to get rid of them because Brad, I'm so shorthanded, man. I just don't have enough people. I got to get this job done. You don't understand. I'm already behind schedule and these people are pissed off. I'm going to keep them until the end of this project and then I'll get rid of them. That's the type of justification that I hear when people... Why don't you just say, I'm too chicken shit to fire people. That's a much better explanation of what's really going on is because you're a good person and you don't want to ruin someone else's lives. And I get it. I 100% get it. I've had to do that many times. It sucks. It's one of the worst things about owning a business is firing people. Nobody enjoys it. It's a necessity or you're going to die. Your business is going to die if you don't make it happen. And I asked him this question. I said, what's more important to you, his family or your family? And then I further illustrated. I said, let's say the end of the world was coming, was happening. And there's a helicopter. It's the last helicopter off the island. to survive. If you don't, you're going to die. If you get on, you survive. I said, would you put your family on that helicopter or would you put his family on the helicopter? Because that is what it comes down to when it comes to your business. I don't know anybody who starts a business for the sole purpose of being able to create jobs so that you can provide a better quality life for their employees than you do for yourself and your family. I don't know a single person that does that. If that's you, let me know. I'd like to interview you because I have not met a single person who starts a business just for making other people's lives better than your own. Now, I'm all about making other people's lives better than they have while you make your life better. I'm all about taking care of your employees and their families, but not before your family. And hear me here when I say this. I'm not talking about situations where an employee, wife or a kid just got killed or got diagnosed with something, terminal disease, and they're going through a hard time. I'm not talking about those situations. There's times to have empathy and be sympathetic to your employees and do whatever you can to help them out. And then there's people that are just straight lazy or they are entitled and think that they deserve more than they actually do. Those are two totally different situations. One is a terrible situation where you're going to do whatever you can to try and help them out, even if it costs you money. The second one is they're just leeches and all you're doing is enabling them to keep robbing from you, essentially is what they're doing. You got to be able to distinguish the two. And I think most of you would be able to do that. But if you're not in tune with your employees and what's going on, you won't know that. They may just show up one day, a year later and just... all of a sudden have a bad attitude. And you're like, John, if you don't change your attitude, I'm going to fire you. John's like, I'm sorry, boss. I'm trying. Just got some things going on. I'm just trying my best. Well, you better get better because your production's down by 20%. And if you don't increase your production by tomorrow, then I'm going to lay you off. Meanwhile, his son just got diagnosed with leukemia. Do you think he's going to be at the top of his game? Hell no. He's not. He's not going to be. So not understanding what's going on with your employees is going to be a major liability for you where you may end up firing a good employee because they're having a bad season in their life. We all have bad seasons. I've been through them. I went through a divorce. Couldn't work. Couldn't focus. Matter of fact, I quit my job that I had at the time because I was going through a divorce. And because I was on a salary position, I was in a sales position, but I was a salaried, salary plus commission. And I quit because I'm like, listen, I can't do my job right now. I can't cold call people or talk to people on the phone because I'm depressed and I'm going through a divorce. And I don't want to keep taking your money. I don't want to keep taking your money for something I can't produce. And so I quit. I quit. He didn't even want to... He's like, no, I understand. I want you to stay. I want you to stay. I'm like, no, I can't do it because my conscious wouldn't allow me to keep taking his money and not be able to produce. That's the kind of employee that you would want to have that level of integrity. But you have to understand that people go through different seasons and try to adjust. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about when you have a bad employee who's a cancer to your business, you have to cut them off. You have to cut the leg off. to save the business. I had an employee who came on. He came on as a lead guy only because at that time, I didn't have a ton of experienced guys that I could hire. So it was like, there's a commercial. It's always funny. And I forget what it's about. But they say, it opens into a boardroom and they go, is this the best worst idea? And he's like, yes, this is the best, worst idea we can come up with. It was a funny... I can't even remember what it was about. I just remember that. So in this situation, it was the best, worst hire I can make, given the circumstances, because I was desperate. And I'd already been in business for like 10 years. And I hired this guy. In the first 10 years, never had a complaint about the way my employees talk to a customer. Never. In 10 years. A couple thousand jobs, over 900 customers. Never had a single complaint about how my employees talked to the customer. This guy comes on the first week working there. I get a complaint about how he talked to the customer. I reprimanded him. And I told him, I was like, hey, this is kind of, I'm not going to tolerate this. I reprimanded him and let him go for another couple months while we were trying to... This was also in the COVID time, so everything was crazy. I'm trying to survive and figure out what's going on. My actual lead guy was in the National Guard and he got deployed for COVID, so he was gone for six months. It was crazy in my business trying to figure out how to make everything work. I kept him on for a few more months after that happened and realized that he just wasn't cutting out. He wasn't doing what he needed to be done, what needed to be done. And so I had to end up firing him. And I fired him the same month that my lead guy who was gone for deployment in the National Guard, he was supposed to come back. And like two weeks before he was supposed to come back, he called me. He's like, Hey, Brad, I'm so sorry. They just offered me an active duty full-time position in the Army. I'm taking it. And I was like, Oh man, that really sucks. Good for you. I'm glad that you got that. But that sucks for me because now I just lost my lead guy permanently. And I was working with this other guy. It only took me about two weeks of me working with him directly to realize that he was a bad hire. I didn't realize that my other employees were covering for him because there was some relation there. So they wanted to stay around and they were covering for him. But it turned out he was a bad employee. And I had to fire him. I had to fire him in the same month that I had lost my lead guy. So I lost two guys, two key people in the month that I really couldn't afford to lose anybody else. But I knew that keeping cancer on board was not going to be beneficial long term. And so I had to cut them loose. And it sucked. Not gonna lie, it sucked for several months after that. But that's what's required to have the kind of business that you can grow with good team members. Right? So whenever you have this situation where you've hired someone, maybe they've been good for two years, now they've gone sour. You've hired them two weeks later. After the honeymoon's over, they're starting to suck as an employee. You got to have those conversations. You got to have those difficult conversations. You got to set some guidelines, some expectations of where they need to be at. You know, Chris, when I hired you, you told me you didn't have that much experience, which I knew that. But it looks like you maybe over-exaggerated how much experience you actually had because you're having trouble doing some of these very basic skill sets, very basic jobs. And it's not going to work. It's hurting production. I mean, if this keeps up, I'll be losing money paying you what I'm paying you. And so what can I do? to help you do your job better? Do you need training? Do you need... Is there some other things that you need? Do you need help at home? What can I do to help you hit these goals? This is what I need from you. I need X, Y, and Z. And I need you to be able to do this in the next two months. So what can I do to help you hit these goals? And then actually deliver on whatever they say. they need help with. And if they still can't hit those goals that you set, first, you need to make sure that your goals are not crazy. You're not going to hire somebody who's an apprentice and they're going to know everything you know in six months. It's ridiculous to think that. They're not going to learn how to use every power tool that you have in two weeks. It's ridiculous to think that. So make sure your expectations are realistic. And then two, make sure you give them all the opportunities that you can to be successful. Because a lot of times you guys hire people who are A players. You take them away from another company. They're a lead guy over at XYZ company. You're like, Oh, I need this guy. And you bring him into your broken, busted, crusty-ass business. And he is failing miserably. Because over at the other company, they had processes in place. They had systems in place. They enabled him to make decisions on his own. And he comes into your company and you're micromanaging him. You don't even use any kind of project management software. And it's just craziness. Of course, they're going to fail. You can't take someone who's working in a professional environment, who's doing well, put them in a crappy environment and expect them to do just as well. So you have to support your team with the things that they need. And that's why it's extremely important to make sure you're making enough money. First of all, make sure you're making enough profit so that you can provide the opportunities that they need, the equipment and the training and everything else that they need to excel at that position. So I'm going to stop rambling here. I know this kind of went off topic a little bit. This is one of those podcasts where I really just had a lot to say about the importance of hiring correctly and then firing fast. And don't let the firing decision paralyze you. Because at the end of the day, you and your family are more important than your employees. And it sucks. It's just the reality of it. But you got to cut that cancer off or it's going to kill everyone. So I hope that helps you. Some of you may be struggling with this. You guys know where to find me. Instagram, Facebook, TikTok. Search for Hammer and Grind Podcast. If I can help you in your business, please reach out to me. I'd love to schedule a strategy call. As long as you don't ghost me, I'll do my best to help you in your business and at least give you some things that you can execute on. Even if I can't help you or even if you decide it's not a good fit, the Profit Club is not a good fit for you. More than happy to have a strategy call with you to see what's going on in your business and give you some advice on some actions to take. So if you want help with that, go to the show notes, schedule a call with me. You can also go to my website, schedule a call, hammerandgrind. com. And just remember guys, until next time, profit is not a dirty word.
