See past employee difficulties to build a stronger, more stable company.
When I started studying marketing, a number of the individuals that I really started learning from early on, I would read their material and go to a seminar or conference and they would talk about marketing and other business topics. Over the years, I’ve heard this theme across many, you could call them internet gurus, marketing gurus, whatever the case may be. The theme is that employees are bad. Employees are terrible. You don’t want employees. Build a business that doesn’t require employees.
For many years it was sort of pounded into my head that employees are bad and terrible and no fun and employee difficulties will be the misery of your life. I think it’s a really dangerous way to think and that’s why I wanted to make this video. Because we often, in our business too, will have problems with different individuals and then we’ll say “Man, I can’t find any good employees! There’s not anybody out there that’s any good. They all cause me trouble”. You can think of all the different excuses that you have.
The reality of it is that when you build a great team with great people, and the only way to do that is to let quite a few people on your team go and to constantly be pruning the team, which is something that is not fun in any way. But, the only way to build a great team where you don’t end up with the attitude that you can’t find good people, nobody does a good job, and you dream of having no employees. The only way to get to the point where you don’t feel that way all the time is to constantly be getting the ones that cause you pain, that cause you trouble, that you’re constantly dealing with, that you’re constantly having to talk about, that you’re constantly having to have another meeting with, is to get them out of the business.
When you build a great team, then it’s great to have employees. They can move you forward personally. It’s great to get to work with exciting people that are moving themselves forward in life, that are growing and advancing their careers. Then it actually is great to have employees. If you read too many books and you listen to too many of the wrong people, and it’s some very, very smart people, it’ll be very easy to succumb to the idea that you want to just build a small business without people to make my life easier. That is absolutely incorrect.
Having the right people on your team and having a lot of the right people is exactly how you make your life easier ad better. When you get to work with great people, you’re just going to be happier and they can also help you build an organization. Not just so that it’s bigger to provide you more money, but so it’s bigger that it’s protected in that you have some layers within the company that if a couple key people leave, it doesn’t all fall apart.
The bigger you can build your business the better because it gives a safety net to your team, to you, and to your family. It gives you some people on the team that can cover each other so everybody can go take some vacations and take a break and get recovered mentally. Think in terms of building bigger. Don’t just focus on going small because it seems like it will be easier if you don’t have a bunch of employees that may be difficult. Because from my experience, that’s not the case. The real case is having the wrong employees and keeping them on your team. That’s what’s bad.
