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ISI Brotherhood Podcast
A podcast for growth-minded Christian businessmen who desire momentum and accountability in their business, family, finances, faith, and personal wellness. Each week, Aaron Walker, also known as Big A, shares authentically from decades of business ownership, marriage, and raising a family. He takes on listener questions and deep-dive into FORGE episodes with tried and tested co-hosts. Subscribe and visit our website https://www.isibrotherhood.com/podcast
ISI Brotherhood Podcast
103. THE FORGE: How to Fire People and the Tragic Cost of Avoiding Conflict
"You’re okay to go bankrupt for the sake of helping somebody?" For Tony, our mystery operations manager, the answer is, unfortunately, yes.
Tony is waging war against himself in this episode of THE FORGE. His employees aren't showing up for work, his "compassion" is running the show, and his customers are suffering for it.
How can he fire people he wants to help? Isn't compassion worth the cost of quality control? Him and the business he works for is in a cycle of indecision and conflict avoidance because Tony desires to help guys in rough situations and provide them with a job... but what happens when these guys don't show up?
Key Takeaways:
- The tragic cost of avoiding conflict
- How to fire people that don't align with your values
- Why your business' mission is critical to everyone's success
- What compassion REALLY looks like for employees who don't show up
We tackle the complexities of aligning personal preferences and skills with job responsibilities, especially within family-owned businesses. This episode is packed with practical advice on decision-making, personal growth, and the power of open communication, all aiming to help you overcome procrastination and conflict avoidance to achieve a fulfilling and balanced life.
Join the Iron Sharpens Iron Community: https://isibrotherhood.com/community
Connect with Anthony Witt: witthouse.com or anthonywitt.com
Anthony Witt is a professional licensed counselor and a business owner with a deep understanding of how entrepreneurship impacts personal health and those around them. Having bought, sold, and started multiple businesses, he has gained valuable
experience at the intersection of personal health and business. His belief that "a healthy business owner creates a healthy business" underscores his approach to helping entrepreneurs thrive.
Connect with Bret Barnhart:
Barnhartexcavating.com
Bret’s Calendar Link
Bret’s Linkedin
Bret Barnhart, Jr. is the fourth generation in his family to start his own excavation company. He began Bret Barnhart Excavating (BBE) in 2002 with $1,500, a single backhoe and truck, and a trailer. Since then, BBE has grown to an entire fleet of heavy machinery and trucks, averages just under 20 employees, and grosses $4mil annually. Being specialized, along with having a personal mentor and joining a mastermind, has helped shape not only Bret's company but also himself as well. Bret and his wife Crystal have been married for 16 years and have two children, Cole and Adelyn.
If you want to hear more speakers like this every month and be with the guys on the call, join the Iron Sharpens Iron Community today: https://www.isibrotherhood.com/isi-community
Connect with Big A:
View From The Top Website: https://isibrotherhood.com
The ISI Newsletter: https://www.isibrotherhood.com/newsletter
Big A’s Linkedin:
Hey, don't feel rough, man. This is what God intended for us, as men, to do, and I'll be honest with you. I'm encouraged. I am Because this was truth, it was caring, it was love, it was compassion, it was helping you accomplish the things that you need to do. And I'm just going to be honest. This is what I want. I saw, yeah, this is it. Want ISI to be. This is it, hey?
Speaker 2:everybody. Welcome back to View From the Top podcast, where we help growth-minded men who desire momentum in their business, their family and their finances get through the valleys and up the mountain to their very own view from the top. Hey, before we get everyone in here today, a quick question to you that I want to bring to you was brought to us by the ISI community. The question is do you ever feel stuck or plateaued? You know that feeling when you've accomplished a few things, had a few successes, but then you find yourself kind of being paralyzed, maybe being anxious.
Speaker 2:Well, a few weeks ago I learned nine principles that are helping me get off a plateau that I've been struggling with for some time, and you can learn what I and scores of other men learned in the replay of Going Next Level in the resources space in the ISI community app. You can listen for free in the ISI community right now. Just use the promo code POD30, that's P-O-D-30 on the payment screen. You can do that by going to isibrotherhoodcom right now and jump in there. Use that code P-O-D-30, isibrotherhoodcom and go to the resources section and you can listen to that going next level how to get you unstuck and off a plateau for yourself. I hope to see you in there. All right, let's get to the episode. Let's get Big A and the guys in here for this episode of the Ford Big A, you there.
Speaker 1:Wally, good to see you today, hey you too. I'm fired up, anthony. Good to see you. Brett, good to be here, good to see you Hard to have you, man.
Speaker 1:It's good to see you guys. I have to admit that we do four episodes a month and by far this is my favorite time of the month to do the Forge. I love the Forge. I recently watched a movie called the Forge and it gave some examples of some of the things that we're doing in here, but I really think it encourages us to dive deep with our guests and really help them solve some problems. So you guys do an amazing job doing that. So thank you, brett. Before we get started, we're going to be talking about indecision today, obviously, and conflict avoidance. Is there a time for you that indecision or avoiding conflict has disrupted your life or maybe cost you in a meaningful way?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I've been going through the notes thinking about this. I was thinking about different areas, but I would say the one that really stuck out for me was walking through a situation with my family, specifically my wife's dad, and having a difference in agreement and building a house and, out of trying to protect a relationship, it put her in a very, very difficult situation when honestly uh, when I look back now, as the man and as the husband, I should have led and not put her in that difficult situation, no matter the results of what could come out of that relationship, to protect her, because it really was putting her in a very, very difficult situation because I wouldn't step up and lead but I didn't want to get in a situation that messed something up with the relationship. But at the end of the day, it's going to go there anyways and it's all good now, great relationship. But I could have led better. I could have stepped up and not been indecisive in how to lead that and protected her as my wife.
Speaker 1:What would you have done different 20 years now behind you, like you're mature, live experience, business owner, obviously been married 20 years now. What would you have done different today? What advice would you give people when they're dealing with a situation similar to yours?
Speaker 3:Well, specifically to the family, is you want to use them and work with them, to respect them. But at the end of the day, if it drives a wedge between you, you didn't gain anything by working with them. And the funny thing is you've asked me this before what. Do you know that you're acting like you don't know? I acted like I didn't know that we were going to end up where we ended up, and guess what? We ended up right there. You knew it all along, right, and if we would have sat down and had a hard conversation, the truth of the matter is she would have said, yes, I'd rather protect the relationship with my father, and then I would have went and had the conversation rather than putting her in a difficult situation. And we ended up in a difficult situation anyways, and she was involved, right. So then there's hurt there where I could have carried that burden and protected her from that hurt.
Speaker 1:So the truth of the matter, she would, she would wanted you to anyway, right, she would want you to protect her and take care of it and go make those difficult decisions.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it wasn't that we were getting anything specifically for free or expected it, but I, I would tell you, pay double to protect the relationship than to work with family and if they don't like it, make the decision. If it's your wife, protect her At the end of the day, protect her Lesson learned there.
Speaker 1:Relationships are first and then monetarily, anthony, what about you? Any decision, brett's was very personal.
Speaker 4:I came up with a business, one which is a little bit less personal. So I literally here, when we moved here, I was looking for a house. We were looking for a house to buy, but also looking for a house to flip, because if I could flip a house, I could take that money and throw it into my next house that I want to buy for myself. You know, rent for a little bit longer and I saw a house pop up. I called the agent that I work with for you know, and he's like I can meet you there in an hour. We got there in an hour. He's like we're the first ones in. We were the first ones in. By the time we were out, two more couples had come in. It was like eight o'clock at night. He's like we can't put a deal down on this now. We can. The bank's open at 9am. We can do it first in, we'll be great.
Speaker 4:Well, I know how real estate works. I've done enough flipping, I've done enough buying of properties to know that, okay, I need to work this. I didn't work it, I just waited. He called me the next day at like 9, 10. He's like hey, you missed it. I'm like how do we miss it? He's like you missed it because they broke the rules, figured out how to go around Not like illegally broke the rules. They figured out how to go around the rules to make the unsecured check work. My indecision was I wasn't willing to be creative at that time. So I told them I mean it was a sweet deal. I watched them do what they did. They resold it. They made a couple hundred thousand. I was so frustrated.
Speaker 1:And you bought at the height of the market here in Nashville when you bought, and so you were dealing with a lot of competition.
Speaker 4:But let me throw this on a personal side. I don't have a real specific example. My indecision and I think the guys here that are in the group, that are in my mastermind group, would agree with this my indecision comes out in my lack of focus. So I'm indecisive by jumping to another thing, by not being specific. So the application of my indecisiveness is really when we really boil it down, when I pivot to something else very quickly without pushing the other thing through. That's how my indecision comes out. So sometimes I miss the opportunity, to even miss the opportunity, because I've jumped too fast. I'm looking at 10 things instead of one.
Speaker 1:What about you?
Speaker 3:Go ahead. I want to say this to Anthony a couple of years ago and we're in a group together and he got ripped for that specifically and he has honed in his focus and is doing a great job. So I don't I know you may feel that way, but sitting back looking at you being in a group with you after you got tore apart.
Speaker 4:That example I just gave you, I really shouldn't be doing flipping. I don't do flipping anymore, Like that's not something I do. So honestly, if I go back that up, even I probably shouldn't. I got the deal to begin with because I wasn't doing flipping at that time anyways.
Speaker 1:Chasing the sign of the object. There you go again, Wally. What about you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think back to a business situation where I had a business partner that was 18 years my senior and I had the majority ownership of the business and he was responsible for sales.
Speaker 2:And I say this is indecision, because I couldn't lean into committing to a decision and following through. So he did great at certain things, it wasn't that he wasn't a value to the business and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yes, was it frustrating and all that? Sure, but at the end of the day, looking back on that situation, I should have 100% made a decision and leaned into that decision about how to improve the sales processes and our sales progress in the business. Even though we were doing well, like good man, we could have done so much better, looking back, hindsight being 2020. And then, of course, we had an exit, and that would have been, you know, that would have affected things even greater, right? So I let that, that fear, or I let that conflict with someone who was older than I was and who did actually didn't have the final decision making power, still control me, and so I fought with that for years because I wasn't willing to like decide.
Speaker 4:I was there. I think there was a couple extra zeros that maybe fell off of that closure because of that.
Speaker 2:Thank you for reminding me of that. I appreciate that. That's great Thanks, thanks, anthony.
Speaker 1:My example also is business and it's real estate related and I'm going to share numbers because it has more of an impact. So in 2002, three other partners and myself bought a condo in Destin, florida, at Silver Beach pre-construction $685,000. A year later it was built. We got it. We enjoyed it for a few years, rented it out a little bit. 2006 rolls around and we decided to sell it. We put it on the market. At this time it was $1.7 million is what these units were selling for, so we've got $1 million in profit.
Speaker 1:One of my partners went and negotiated the real estate deal with a realtor and he came back all excited and he said I've negotiated the deal for us and I've saved us 3% on the real estate commission. And immediately I knew better and I'm like we need to offer her a bonus. We don't need to knock 3% off of her commission. And he said, no, no, it's going to save us a considerable amount on a million seven. It's what we need to do% off of her commission. And he said, no, no, it's going to save us a considerable amount on $1.7 million. It's what we need to do Make a real long story short.
Speaker 1:12 months go by, the market tanks. We ride it all the way from $1.7 million down to $650,000. We sell the unit and if we had offered a bonus at the time, the peak of the season, we would have sold it instantly rather than no one would show it because there was a 3% deficit in their real estate commissions. And I knew better and I didn't approach my friend and force his hand and cause him to go back and renegotiate the deal. And so that conflict avoidance, because we've been friends for 30 years and it cost me a million dollars, us collectively a million dollars. And so conflict avoidance, indecision that can be pricey. Listen, let's talk to our guest, tony. Good to have you today, buddy.
Speaker 5:Yeah, it's great to be here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, it took a lot of courage to be here and thank you for that. Hopefully it's going to be meaningful to be here, and thank you for that. Hopefully it's going to be meaningful and beneficial and helpful as you go forward. But, tony, in talking to you numbers of times, to your own admission you dislike conflict and you really struggle with making some timely decisions. We're going to dive into that just in a second, but before we do, I wanted you to give a little context of your situation, who you are, where you're from and introduce yourself a little bit better to the audience today.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah. So I am a Nashville Tennessee native. I've been here for about 18 years. I've got my wife, ashley, and we've been married for seven years and we've got three little ones. And, yeah, I've been in Nashville during that time. I started off my career in software, space IT, and then in the last two years I came over into restoration contracting. So that's the company I work with. Now I'm the operations manager for the company. So we do when fires, floods, storms, disasters of any kind happen, we go in, we dry things out, make sure that mold isn't growing, take care of anything in that regard, clean things up and then rebuild it back to the state that it was previously. So that's kind of our bread and butter and what we target and what we do as a business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I want to add to the backstory just a little bit. So I've known you for a couple of years now and we were at an event and you were at the event and you and I had a great dialogue, interesting conversation. You had shared with me some things that were going on in your industry that you couldn't solve. We talked through that for probably 45 minutes, maybe an hour. We talked through that. The way I approach things is usually head-on and you know that. I just said, well, I don't understand why you haven't dealt with it. And you said, well, I'm really afraid to go to this guy because he's not really doing what he said he was going to do. And that's kind of my role, but I don't really know how to handle it. And we worked kind of from there right through that.
Speaker 1:Then at another event we were at, we had a similar conversation. Then at another event we were at, we had a similar conversation and I asked you about that and you told me the progress that was happening as a result of that. And then we started talking about procrastination and indecision and conflict avoidance. It all kind of goes hand in hand. And you said, yeah, I want to solve that, I want to get through that. I want to get past that because I want to be really good in my role and I want to do a good job, and you volunteered to come here today to be with us to kind of talk through that, and so is that a good summation of your situation and what you're dealing with.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah, I think that's a good summation of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Why do you think you're conflict avoidant and you have trouble making decisions?
Speaker 5:So I think sorry frog in my throat, um, I think that the the primary thing that goes into it for me is that I really want to see particularly in situations like this, I really want to see people succeed. I love when I have had a chance to work with guys who started off pretty rocky and then were able to make significant strides forward. I was able to be a part of that. I really have a lot of trouble with confronting and pulling the plug when somebody is not getting it and they're just not getting to that place and I get in my head about trying to be compassionate, trying to be to build them up, and I know that this isn't good, but I I do it.
Speaker 4:Can I ask a question? What does that even mean? What does it even mean to be compassionate to a person? I mean, we don't have time to do like a 90 minute therapy session, but what does it mean to be compassionate?
Speaker 5:I would say. I would say it means get meeting them where they're at and and doing what you can to help them. I suppose I'm thinking um it's a good question.
Speaker 4:All right. So being in more of their ad and doing them, what was that last part doing? Yeah, Doing, doing what I can in order to to help them and walk with them and what they're dealing with so what I hear is that the best thing for them is for them to be better in their position with you yeah what if you have nothing to do with them being better?
Speaker 5:well then, I'm going to what?
Speaker 4:I'm trying, yeah, I'm getting in my wheels. Yeah, yeah, I'm going to spin my wheels.
Speaker 4:Yeah. So what I'm getting at is a lot of people that are conflict avoidant. They do this. They say okay, hey, well, I can't. I just I know I need to talk to Kevin, I know he needs, and what's happening is he's doing. You're doing two things. You're damaging both and I'm using the people on the call here, right, you're damaging both and I'm using the people on the call here, right, you're damaging both big a and Brett and that relationship. And also the best thing for Kevin is for him not to be there. That's the best thing. For him is the the best thing is not to drag somebody along to make them better in a position or in a location, in a place that they should be in is to figure out what that is, and if that doesn't involve you, the best thing is to get rid of them as quickly as possible. That's the best thing for them.
Speaker 5:It's not the whole onto them.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's compassion. That's where I was going with it.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah, and I 100% agree with you. I think, yeah, my challenge is trying to move that from head knowledge into heart knowledge of like, how do I? Of applying that? Because I mean, when Big A and I talked about this previously, that was one of the things Big A said is we talked through this whole situation and Big A looked at me and he said you know what needs to happen here. And I was like, yeah, I do know what needs to happen here.
Speaker 1:But what is the fear? That's what we need to get to, is it? They're not going to like you anymore. They're not going to have a place to go. You're going to be frowned upon.
Speaker 2:Can we back up just a second, though yeah, is the conflict always around people, or is it about things and objects and other situations that don't necessarily directly with people? Like for you, are you conflict avoidant with everything, or is it just in certain situations?
Speaker 5:it's primarily with people, okay, um, and as I'm getting into these people situations um, where, yeah, where I see it having a big effect uh, because I I think I think all those things that you're mentioning of, um, people thinking poorly of me, uh, people not, yeah people, people walking away thinking, man, that guy's a jerk, and putting myself in that position, is just frightening to me and it's not always logical.
Speaker 1:But it is. Would you rather have people like you or respect you?
Speaker 5:I would rather have people respect me.
Speaker 2:Is this always about people that you lead, or is it also about people you report to?
Speaker 3:what does the structure look like?
Speaker 5:you're an owner uh, I'm not an owner. So I am there's, there's the owners, and then I'm right right below the owners.
Speaker 5:Um you, you right, uh, yes, okay, okay yeah, yeah, um, and and and that's one side effect that I see uh, acting out in this, which is one reason I wanted to to talk about it is I have a team that all of us struggle with this in some aspect, um, and so what we end up doing is we spend hours just between the owners and whatnot, talking back and forth about situations. Um, we spend way too much time discussing is this person the right fit, and then flip flopping back and forth and, um, yeah, just just putting weight.
Speaker 1:This is in the owners. Yeah, this is. This is the owners we're talking about. Yes, yeah, so there's no one with real, concrete forward decision-making abilities.
Speaker 5:This is in your whole company, not in this aspect. Yeah, so it's a company problem as well as a personal problem when it comes to people specifically when it comes to people specifically. Is that your mission anywhere as a?
Speaker 2:business is people in your mission. Like how do you show up in your culture about your people?
Speaker 3:selflessness. This is core value yeah yeah, and then teamwork. But I don't see that as teamwork, because if he's got a rock star and he's just accepting this guy showing up late every day for 10 minutes, he's gonna lose his rock star and then have all these guys that need to go see anthony working in his business and customers getting the worst end of the deal.
Speaker 5:Yeah yeah and uh.
Speaker 5:And just to give some context to that, Like, I think that the way this this developed is started as a very small, you know, mom and pop contractor and it's grown over the years and so there's a lot of rock stars on our team that were just, you know, personal connections, guys that have been with the business for a really long time.
Speaker 5:Uh, and then we, when I came on with the company, uh was when they're like, hey, this strategy of this strategy of who do we know and bringing them into the company as employees is not working. We don't have the manpower that we need. We need to go out and start hiring, just from whatever sources we can find people. And so that was one of my big things over the last couple of years has been doing a lot of hiring and bringing people in and trying to learn how to, how to do that and realizing that, yeah, it's, you know, it's challenging to hire people, but then on the other side of that, when it's we're not bringing in people that we've known for forever and we know their character and know who they are, letting them go once it becomes obvious they're not going to live up to expectation, they're not in line with our core values all of those things.
Speaker 3:So do you have customer issues because you are passive towards these things? Yes, I do. Do you have quality issues as a result of yeah and that's okay. No, that's not okay, but that's not enough to make you make the decision. I mean, you're okay to go bankrupt for the sake of helping somebody be honest with yourself in this moment, like be honest with yourself.
Speaker 5:Well, yeah, Cause I, I know that the I know that the way that I should answer that is no, but, but. But there's times when I will spin myself a story because ultimately that's where it leads to. But spin a story around that, Well, you know, yeah, today, if this person is acting like this, we're going to go bankrupt. But I can absorb that for a period of time, train them and get them to where they're going to be better and more effective, and well, you know the decision off down the road.
Speaker 5:You keep kicking the can down the road, kick it down the road with the strategy of you know I'm doing things, but also like I hope this works out. I hope this person changes, even though I don't really have control over that.
Speaker 1:You know, hope's not a strategy.
Speaker 3:I hope this person changes even though I don't really have control over that. You know hope's not a strategy. I know that, yeah, this is not towards you, but I would say you don't have rock stars. You have pastors doing restoration work and you have a business. I think if you did this you would really see the difference in productivity, because even in some of the notes you're trying to build business but you're doing it accepting less than right. Here's the thing I'll say.
Speaker 3:I got bothered and I have similar. I don't struggle with firing people, but I had a situation where a guy had an accident and he was getting a lot of life lessons here and I was on vacation when this accident happened. It was pretty bad. He didn't get hurt, but he could have and people could have got hurt.
Speaker 3:And I was talking to my wife about it that night and I said I just really hate it because we're going to fire him. And he was like he needs to work here so that we can pour into him and different things. And and she looked at me and she said why does? Why does helping people have to be tied to them bringing money into your business? If you really cared about people, whether they work there or whether they didn't, you could pour into them. She said just because he doesn't work there doesn't mean you can't be instrumental in his life.
Speaker 3:That really hit with me and there's something tied to okay, well, if they're here, I'll pour into them, but there's an exchange. Right, yeah, I can fire that guy for the sake of this business, for generational excellence, financial stability, straightforward communication, no regrets and no excuses, which is our core values. I can still pour into that guy. Right, yeah, it doesn't have to be tied to my business. Because number one to me, you're saying I care more about people halfway doing their jobs than I care about taking care of my customer. People halfway doing their jobs and I care about taking care of my customer. Like you, you're saying yes to them to say no to your customers. So what you're saying you won't do to your employees, you're turning around and doing that to your customers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if I was your customer and your team.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would be pissed. Yeah, yeah. So you're saying one thing about employees, but then you turn around and taking money from people to turn around and give them less than products. Yeah, so I would say, set aside like, start a mission, help these people outside of this. You can do the same thing. Let your business feed into that and get rid of them and go get some good people. I think you, you can do the same thing.
Speaker 1:Let your business feed into that and get rid of them and go get some good people I think you can even do the same thing with the mission in your business, but you've got to create a strategy and do like a pro forma and follow the vision. Have kras, have consequences as a result of you know, their ind indiscretions. It doesn't mean you're less than because you make them do things a certain way, the way you're doing it right now, everybody loses.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah and I'll comment on that of like there are whenever this results, and just on the customer side, I'm not going to allow us to provide really bad service to a customer. If that happens as a result of this, the person that's going in and cleaning up the mess is going to be me. In terms of emergency services, I have a a a bad response from a guy. We're staying in close contact with that, but what that ends up meaning is a ton of additional just work, whether you go and do that, yeah, I go, I'll go and do that.
Speaker 3:So you got three kids sitting at home and you're just saying no to your kids to go help some guy that won't show up. Yeah, I just went through a restoration and I know you think it doesn't matter. But if your people can't show up and get my job done and you say your mission is to take care of these people in a disaster, you're not taking care of them because you could be done three weeks earlier If people would show up and do their job. Yeah, I fired our restoration company for this specific reason and everybody I know asked me who it was. And guess what? I tell them yeah, so I'm just saying like here's the thing, here's the other thing.
Speaker 3:My core values help me incredibly, because either I'm I'm compassionate or I'm pissed, and that separates both of those things. So when I'm sitting there making a decision, I say, okay, do I need to fire this guy? Okay, will I regret keeping him or will I regret firing him? Knowing what I know, I'm probably going to regret keeping him. So I need to fire him.
Speaker 3:Is he creating financial stability for my business and my customers or not? No, he's not. He's not showing up, he's not doing his job. Fire him. Is he creating generational excellence. Will that customer call me back or not if we're not showing up? No, fire him. Everything points to fire him and I go in and have a conversation. I love you, bud. Come to our men's breakfast every month. Love to see you, love to pour into you, love to pour into you. But everything about our company and our culture and our core values you don't align with. So, because of your decisions, today is your last day. I hope the best for you. If things change, I would consider hiring you in the future, but things would have to change.
Speaker 1:Yeah, move on. That's compassionate in its own way. That's doing the best. Thing for him. Now he's got to man up and do the right thing.
Speaker 4:You've got to. The way you're compassionate for people that don't fit in your business is not by keeping them in your business. That's the cruelest thing you can do for them, because eventually you're going to fire them. You could have fired me six months ago and now the job market's bad and I can't find it Like the faster you move on that, the more compassionate you are on that. Because they don't fit and you're going to get rid of them. You're stringing them along. Well, because there's also turmoil on their end. Well, and this might not be the case for your guys, but I don't know if I fit here. I mean, they haven't fired me yet. I guess I'm going to stick around, and so they have turmoil on their own end. You could be exacerbating that thought pattern for them.
Speaker 2:Do you find that you're less conflict avoidant? If you have, well, I guess the first question is do you have trouble finding? I'm kind of making an assumption here. It sounds like there's a lot of people I don't know if this is true or not right Like, let's kind of narrow this down. Is this like, is this like one out of five, one out of 10 people in this, these positions you're trying to hire, are you're hiring the right people? Is that the problem? If, if you had, if you had a, if you had a lead pool, it's waiting at the door to get into your business Would you be less conflict avoidant?
Speaker 5:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Like I would say absolutely. So part of this is fear, yeah.
Speaker 5:Yeah, yeah, I mean definitely within this part of it, I yeah just of of learning, uh, how to hire people, um, how to bring people in. I would say a couple of years ago I was like absolutely terrified that I was going to lose somebody, because I was like there might not be another person out there to hire. That's not the whole world. Um, there's, yeah, yeah, there's. There's always going to be um more people there. But yeah, that definitely plays into it for me is what if I don't, yeah, what if I don't find somebody? Um, what if I can't replace this person? Uh, and that that definitely sometimes causes me to string them along for longer than than I should.
Speaker 5:You keep saying I are you doing everything longer than than I should you keep saying I are you doing everything? Um, not in the last. In the last couple of years, I've been involved in or, yeah, I've been involved in all of the hiring stuff yeah, and you have 23, right, yeah, 20 yeah, 23, not counting the owners so how many of those 23, if you could multiply, would make an incredible team.
Speaker 3:How many, how many in on your out of those 23 are just killer that you don't struggle to fire because they halfway show up 5, 10, and just I would say I would, I would say I would say 15, 16.
Speaker 3:So take those 15, 16. We did this and then everybody writes down the traits. We actually went through every employee and identified the best and the worst and then we took the best and we said what traits do they carry that we would want to take on the world with? That helped us create? Basically, it come down to no excuses. Our best that never makes excuses, doesn't matter. Every day. Get it done, no excuses.
Speaker 3:So now that is a core value tied to people, right for people. So you take that and then you go and you and then I well, I did this at all stuff months ago I said, for every person you bring and they stay three months, I'll pay you 500 bucks. So if you took those 16 guys and you said, for every guy you bring because they're hanging out with rock stars more than likely and you quit saying I have to do this and I have to do this, you will be blown away. How many people will come through the door? Incentivize that and let them go and bring their best friends and the people that they work with. They've got to stay 90 days. We've got rid of a lot of people.
Speaker 1:Those bonuses are insignificant compared to the value it's going to add and the money that you're losing now as a result of the bad work ethics and not showing up. This will be insignificant. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, it's a good strategy. Yeah, so then you've got that pipeline coming in and you're constantly building that bench. You can't even build the bench because you're out filling a gap for these guys. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? Yep, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 1:Tony, what is this doing to you personally? Yeah, tony, what is this doing to you personally? Because we all know that when you have this conflict, avoidance mentality, procrastination, it creates internal stress and even resentment and that can later cause health problems. Are you seeing any problems for you personally, in your family, with your bride, with your children, with your extended family? Is this creating any problematic?
Speaker 5:areas for you personally in your family, with your bride, with your children, with your extended family. Is this creating any problematic areas for you? I mean, uh, I I would say I would say absolutely of um. One thing that I'm thinking through as we're, as we're talking through this is just, I think so I've been in this role for almost two years now, um, so for the first year or so I was kind of I hadn't been in a role where I was hiring, firing and managing people like that before. Um, so it's kind of figuring it out, um, I'm still figuring it out, but kind of figuring out the basics, um, and then, over the past probably six months or so, it's just incredibly discouraging like it just feels like I am, yeah, just just spinning and running into the same challenges over and over again, um, and not really making progress, not really having a strategy beyond hoping and getting stuck in that rut and that definitely, like my wife, very noticeable to her.
Speaker 1:Tony, what are you doing personally for personal and professional development? What is it that you're doing to make yourself better, so that you can handle these situations differently, so that you can handle these situations differently.
Speaker 5:Well, one thing that I just started doing is getting involved in the ISI community and going through the core development of developing my own personal core values. That's been really helpful to me the last few weeks To kind of shout out or plug there, Um, and has really has really helped me to shape myself around that and starting to try to get more, um, more business accountability built around myself. Uh, and I I wouldn't say I'm doing a great job of that, but I'm working towards that and I want that to be the case and I want to have more of people challenging me like like Brett is right now and confronting it head on, of like you're lying, I think you're in the wrong seat of the business.
Speaker 4:I agree too. Before we go down that rabbit hole, can I say something real quick? So a lot of what I'm hearing here is you have somewhat clear, this is who I am, this is what I do, and you love it. But the problem is, that's what you say, it's not what you do. You say those things but you don't actually do them. You say those things but you don't actually do them, and so there is a clear discontinuity or conflict, internal conflict, whether you can recognize it or not to who I am and what I really do. So every time you don't do who you believe you are, you just beat yourself up, and what that does is that reinforces the negative narrative. And so what I hear a lot of like in this short time is I hear a narrative that says this is the way I am, this is the way it is, and it's not the person you want to be, and so that reinforces the belief structure. Right, and so let me, let me give you, I'll say, a suggestion. Maybe that's the right here. You don't have to change that necessarily. Fastest way to overcome it is to change it Like, change that in you. Okay, we can go down a different route to figure that out. One of the things that helps you here is knowing it, knowing what the weakness is with it and developing strategies and structures to overcome it.
Speaker 4:I'll give a personal example. I'm a starter, like that's why I'm a squirrel, and I'm still a starter. And I'm still a squirrel, but I know that intuitively about myself and I have worked really hard, and I have to continue to work really hard, to build structures around myself so that I don't squirrel, so that I don't just start and move right. I'm still that way. I can recognize it when it's happening, and actually that recognition prevents me. Sometimes I entertain the thought for an hour, I waste an hour and then I let it go Like there's other strategies I use, but my point is I haven't actually changed that characteristic. I've learned how to manage that characteristic. And the people around me for instance, the people on this call that are in my mastermind group they know that about me and so they can call me out on it.
Speaker 4:So for you, if that's, if you're, if you were let's use the word we've been using today conflict avoidant. That's your tendency. Yeah, changing it, and I think we should maybe work on changing it. But pushing, letting people push, giving people permission to push and I think, explicit permission, brett, you have the right to do this to me, you know whoever those people are in your life is huge, because one of the things we don't have time to get into that I'm seeing is actually your problem is that you're controlling, because you do everything, because you don't trust anybody. So there's a trust potential factor, there's a controlling potential factor that we're not even we're just we don't have time for today to get through. And so I guess what I'm saying is and I'll be quiet, brett was going a direction which I thought was really important actually is know it about yourself, know those things and have people in your life, like Vic A said, that's going to be able to call you out on it.
Speaker 3:Be able to call you out on it. I would just say the incredible people on our team is the areas that I suck and I had to be honest with myself and quit fighting it and so okay. So we look at people and we say, okay, the GWC, do they get it, want it and have capacity? You get it. You know what you need to do. You have the capacity if you really wanted to go through it. But do you really want to do that for the next 10 years? Do you want to be the guy that's hiring and firing people? Honestly, no, okay, why fight it? Give it up. Go find somebody else to do it. You can be the rockstar client customer service rep that just loves on people. You can make the experience with their house incredible. Let somebody else do it, because you're never and the more you get stressed, the more you're going to fall back into this. I believe yeah. So I would say how does so?
Speaker 2:back up? For a second though some context, tony, to help us understand. Make sure we've got this right. You've been in this role two years, correct?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Was this a brand new role for the organization or was this something you moved into?
Speaker 5:It was a brand new role. I mean, it had some aspects that were pulled from a previous role, but it was a brand new role.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 4:I was going to ask.
Speaker 3:I just don't see you ever being successful Like at some point you got to say this is not me.
Speaker 3:And I say borrow courage from other people. So I trust to a fault. And I have a guy here that doesn't trust and he's trying to trust better. I'm like you're never going to trust. Borrow trust from me better. I'm like you're never going to trust. Borrow trust from me. I will borrow distrust from you in a specific say, in a, in a, in a interview process, right? So rather than fight it to become that person, stay who I am. Let somebody else deal with it. I think I think to sit here and come up with a solution for you would be wrong, because everything you've said is I don't want to do this for the next 10 years.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Question that's rhetorical, doesn't need an answer that I had at the very beginning. I'm like, okay, here's your story. What was? Why was how come the jump happened? And were you potentially chasing something? Oh, I should go over here Like, cause your, your story isn't not that you can't jump from whatever it was, computer, whatever you were to ops. I'm not saying you can't make that jump. Yeah, how come can become important, or or why? What are the contributing factors that make that the right move?
Speaker 5:Yeah, and I mean I can. I can definitely answer that if you want me to. Which is it has to do with? I mean, it was during it was coming out of the COVID stuff and just realizing that the people, the environment that was around IT, everything moving remotely, um, and just the general mindsets around things, I just it didn't align with me or my values or what I cared about. I was looking at a team of people where I didn't really have anything in common with any of them, um, and then, uh, the one of the owners in this company is my dad, so they had a.
Speaker 4:Boom bombshell. That's a huge other problem we should probably not avoid.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I wasn't necessarily going to bring that up, because that's a whole other conversation and area.
Speaker 1:That's a big part of this conversation. That's a huge part of this conversation.
Speaker 4:in my opinion, yeah.
Speaker 3:So do you feel adequate because you're here doing all this for around your dad, like does that make you feel adequate?
Speaker 5:Um. Can you expand?
Speaker 3:on that a little bit of what you mean. Well, I mean why, like that's a big deal right, and what is your relationship like with your father?
Speaker 5:We have I mean we have a close relationship, friendship.
Speaker 3:Does he expect you to carry all this?
Speaker 5:No, yes, at the cost of your family uh, no, I I think that if I, if I frame stuff at the cost of my family, he's quick to be like oh yeah, no, no, no, no, um, but you you just said.
Speaker 1:You just said it was affecting your family oh yeah yeah, are you the same person?
Speaker 4:are you different people?
Speaker 5:um at family versus at work no, you and your dad oh um uh all right, I don't need an answer.
Speaker 4:Let me just say this if you're the same person, you're never going to get anything done. If you're not the same person, you're going to be fighting. So you got to figure out how to move through it either way, that's really generic.
Speaker 5:What happens to the business if you leave for a month, a few months? Well, pretty much all of the internal stuff doesn't get done, I suppose. So like, yeah, I, I handle um, I handle our payroll, our timesheets and um, we have a, we have an HR company that we use um to handle stuff. But I kind of do most of that, handle most of that um directly with employees, employees, questions about benefits, things like that. It's kind of like a jack of all trades thing. I run some accounts. It's like I could probably find people to fill all of these gaps, but it's not going to be one person. It's going to take a long time to so everything hinges on you.
Speaker 3:So I just took a month off in July and I'll tell you that in June I would have bragged that I was present when I was home and that was so far from the truth. You may think you're there for your family, but if all that is hinging on you, you're not, because I guarantee you you take it home.
Speaker 1:I've got a tough question for you. You can answer it if you want. Uh, if your dad wasn't an owner, would you still be there?
Speaker 4:I think that answer is no.
Speaker 3:That's the yeah.
Speaker 2:Would you have gone there?
Speaker 5:Yes, I think that I would have, but probably not for good reasons. It would have probably been more of a um, there probably been a more of a move of I don't. I don't enjoy being in the space that I'm in. I am not yeah, I'm not moving in the direction that I want to, and so looking for something new. So that's a tough question to answer.
Speaker 4:Can you be happy and fulfilled there?
Speaker 1:At this rather the location, not the role.
Speaker 5:Yes, I can.
Speaker 4:Okay, so nothing's going to change until something changes.
Speaker 1:So what's going to change, Tony? What do you see out of this brief discussion?
Speaker 2:Real quick. I know we've got to finish up here, but Brett mentioned something earlier about you know not maybe being in the right seat. I'm curious, tony have you done any like assessments? Working genius, anything like that at all?
Speaker 5:Uh, I have. So, um, my working genius is invention and discernment and my, um my working frustrations are galvanizing and tenacity and my working frustrations are galvanizing and tenacity. Your frustration is tenacity and you have all these tasks that you have to do, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:That tells you, right there, that's not going to change. Galvanizing you need because you're running a team, you've got a whole team, yeah, and the two traits that you need, you're, there's a deficit.
Speaker 5:So so I'll tell you and so I can tell you. Like, the things that I love about what I'm doing right now are that I'm in a position where I can see everything that's going on in the company and I can find areas where there are problems and I can create new systems, new processes, um, uh, get those in place, identify clearly, make a case for we need to make this change, we need to do these things, um, and then working through the process of you know which ones we're going to do, and then past once we get past that I'm I'm in that spot where I have to then be involved in galvanizing, keeping those things going. But there's right now there's there's no one for me to kind of hand those things off to, um. And then I think Anthony was spot on when he was mentioning the. The controlling thing of part of it is me not trusting to actually hand those things off and just continuing to run with them.
Speaker 2:So in two years you've created all this work that you have to now do Essentially, yeah, that's a fair statement.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we should interview his wife.
Speaker 4:That's a great idea. Oh yeah, that would be interesting yeah, have the forge mask ride yeah, that would probably be good.
Speaker 1:Tony, we are at the end of our time, and so I just want to ask you, well before I ask you.
Speaker 4:Final comments, anthony, for Tony yeah, I would probably hinge on. Something's got to change, so you've got to change, and this conflict avoidant person is going to have to make a change. I mean, there's a bunch of different avenues here, but something needs to change and it might be that you're the guy that needs to get fired.
Speaker 3:Roo, I think, a position change. I think he was appointed operations manager and probably not a good fit, great guy, um, and then I would really dig into are you holding everything because your dad is proud of you and um, and 20 years from now it's not going to be worth it to give it all up like you're doing, especially when you admit that you don't want to do it for the next 10 years, but you're holding it together because it is his business. So I think you got. I don't think.
Speaker 3:Earlier on we discussed you trying to change and do these things and I don't. I quite honestly, I don't think it's passionate enough about that to ever be truly successful. You may help build it, but you don't need to manage it. You know, let somebody else and you create boundaries for them and let them get rid of people, bring people on, and you'd be the backend guy like you talked about, and then I think you'd be really good with people. So like customers and things like that, making them feel good seeing the process that they're going to go through. They would feel very confident walking through the process with you.
Speaker 1:The customer journey. Yeah, exactly. Wally.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm going to go with a lot of prayer and a lot of communication with you know those your dad you mentioned is an owner, and other owners as well. What that might look like, you know I think we get fearful being in the role you're in. I've been in similar roles before in previous lifetimes. I've been in similar roles before in previous lifetimes and you know you can get really fearful of, hey, if I communicate about this thing, then you know they're not going to respect it, they're not going to appreciate it, it's going to go south.
Speaker 2:Well, the reality is, if you stay in this, what you're doing right now like it's going to tear you up, like right, you can't keep doing the same thing. Like Anthony said, nothing changes until something changes. So I think that prayer and communication and is there a role you like the company you said that. Is there a role that you can reasonably move into or bring other people along? Are there other ways to outsource even some of the things that you're—if you've created good processes as the systems and you just have to run them and that bores the tar out of you create great processing systems and find good people to plug into.
Speaker 3:Yeah, hey, one other thing you need to go. I don't know if it's on the ISI website, the what do you want form. Have your wife fill it out, separate from you. You fill it out and take her somewhere for a weekend and both of you go through your answers. We've done that years ago and have done it recently, and I would tell you you're going to get the truth of how she feels what she wants for you because she knows you more than any of us or anybody.
Speaker 3:Yeah, right, so she sees it on you when you get home and see what she says. That's good.
Speaker 1:Or take a whole week off and get the grandparents to watch the kids and y'all go and enjoy yourself and talk through that document.
Speaker 1:That would be great. I'm going to take a little different route in regards to this, based on this hour conversation. I think the first and foremost most important thing here is your family, and I think you've got to get that sweet little wife of yours together with those kids or kids are too young, maybe but just get her together and say where do we want to go, what do we want to do, what do we want our life to look like? I think it's not criminal, but bad to put your family through something when there's other options, but bad to put your family through something when there's other options and, after extensive prayer and much counsel, really decide what's best, first and foremost. The second part is if you're chasing this for your dad's approval, that's also doing a disservice to your family and to yourself, and so I would just encourage you to go to your dad, man up and say hey, we got to talk through this. This is where I'm at. I want you to help me work through it.
Speaker 1:If you decide to do a different role there, say what is it? Where can I best use the gifts and talents God's given me? And if it's here, great. If it's not here. I want your blessings and instead of ducking it and dodging it, I think I would address it head on. That way you win. Your self-confidence is not eroded as a result of staying in a role that you're miserable at. Your wife is probably catching the brunt. End of these conversations at home and really figure out what it is that you need to do so that you're happy, that you're thriving, that you're going to have a very successful and significant life. So, from this, what is just one step that you're willing to commit to here in the forge that you're going to do? And then we're going to check up on you a little bit later.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I think. I mean, I think the most important thing that I'm hearing through all of that is just meaningful and direct communication about where I'm at, with not only I mean first and foremost with my family, my wife, but also with my dad and others in the business of where things are at and how I'm feeling about things. Truly not putting that off.
Speaker 1:That's good. Well, hey, I want to thank also the listeners today. Hopefully this has been impactful to you. Really, think through your own personal life Are you indecisive? Are you conflict avoidant? And hopefully take some of these attributes that we've given to Tony today and implement those in your personal life. That's the sole objective and the goal for us here for you to grow and to have that view from the top.