From Clowns to Common Sense Growth and Profits

I had an owner come to me one day telling me about his average 15 hour workdays managing a remote staff.

He was recently married but it was already suffering.

When I asked what took up most of his time.

His answer was monitoring the key strokes his employees were doing.

He then asked how he can scale.

I told him either he has a team of criminals that he needs to closely monitor or that he is being a bit over the top.

Either way.. forget scaling the business.

Fix the people and the culture first or get rid of them and get a new team.

But forget growing until the culture and people to grow are in place.

Yeah I know.. treating your people well is a topic that is preached ad-nauseum.

But it is your people who make long term attractive growth possible.

But I get it…you’re often hit over the head by how you should treat your employees from consultants and experts who never had to worry about payroll, or how to keep the lights on.

They’ve appointed themselves the 13th disciple.

Trying to shame you or “show you the light”.

You own and built a business. They do not know better than you what it takes to run and grow it.

And honestly it’s often self-righteous and empty platitudes.

So we’re not going down that path.

Let’s talk about common sense.

First, your employees are not your fellow owners.

They cannot and will not have the same motivations you have to show up every day.

So yes you have to hold them accountable to execute what you pay them to do.

Second, you cannot expect the same level of sacrifice from them that you have for your own business.

Not pay yourself for a month or even two because you have to plow everything right now back into the business? – pain and sacrifice.

Not pay your staff the wages they were promised for two months – criminal in many places.

Feeling the responsibility of having your business earn enough to provide a livelihood for others – that is your sole burden to bear.

So yes – owning a business while managing people is hard.

Paying significant money and getting supbar or no results is frustrating and painful.

But..

Building a growth culture with employees who are enthusiastic and motivated is not only a nice to have but will be what determines how much and how far you will grow the business.

A positive growth culture clones you throughout the business.

You do not need to be everywhere at once and playing policeman.

The right staff, trained and motivated the right way will treat your customers well and often turn them into passionate and repeat buyers.

It’s why it’s often a mistake to treat customer service people as an expense that needs to be managed.

And why paying peanuts – often means you end up with monkeys.

Whereas companies that treat all their employees as assets and invest them in the culture often grow by leaps and bounds.