Speaker 1: Today, I'm going to cover exactly why you as an owner or executive over an area need to be 100% unreasonable with low-producing staff members. Hey everybody, Greg Winteregg here. Welcome back to the channel. Be sure to subscribe, hit that notification bell so you don't miss any of the awesome content that we are pumping out three times a week. Now today, I'm going to speak to you like straight from the heart, owner to owner, business owner to executive, manager over an area. I'm sorry, but there's times when you have to be tough. And when you have a low-producing staff member, somebody who's not performing at the level that they are being paid to perform at, someone who is chronically five minutes late, 15 minutes late, children are sick, dog is sick, car won't start, you know the list of excuses as to why someone can't produce. You just can't tolerate it. One person like that in your business, it takes four or five people to clean up the mess to get the production that you're paying them to get. So here's the point, you are paying somebody to do a job, and as the owner or the executive over that area, you must demand that they get the product of that job or they can't be there. I'm going to tell you a story. I learned this lesson actually my freshman year of high school football. So we're out there, it's August, we're doing two-a-day practices, you know, run wind sprints until you puke, and we work hard to get onto the team, and I was playing cornerback. That's on defense, all right, I generally cover a receiver. There's one game, it had been raining all day, the field was a muddy mess, and my man comes out, he makes a cut, I plant my foot, I fall on my face, and my man catches the ball right in front of the coach. I pick myself up off the ground, and he's right in my face, he's like, Woodering, that was your man. I'm like, yeah, I know, coach, but it's wet out here. He was right in my face mask. Will you figure out how to stand up, or I'm going to find somebody who can. And I'm telling you, I didn't fall down again, because I'm not running wind sprints till I barf to watch somebody else play my position standing on the sideline. And I figured it out, I never fell down again, and my man never caught another ball. So here's the point. I had a staff member once who showed up exactly the way I describe it here on a Monday morning hungover, uniform top, inside out and backwards, I'm looking at the tab, no makeup, I don't care about that, but the hair was just a disaster. I called her back into my office, I'm like, what is up with you? Well, I had a fight, blah, blah, blah, my boyfriend, blah, blah, blah, I'm like, listen, you go home, and you get yourself ready to work, or I'm going to find somebody who can show up on time, ready to work. Never happened again. So here's the point. You can call it tough love, you can call it whatever you want to call it, but just take a look at it from this viewpoint. You are paying somebody a certain salary or a certain dollar amount to get a product, to get an end result. Something then that can be exchanged with the customer, or something then even within the company that they have to do their job so somebody else can do theirs. And so A has to do their job so B can do theirs. Well, if A doesn't do their job, then B has to come back and do A's job. Now you're paying two people. You're paying B and A to do A's job. This is not only criminal to a degree, I'm talking about just completely destroying morale, it destroys the numbers on the profit and loss statement, and it's rewarding someone for non-production. It's rewarding A when B has to come over and do A's job. Now of course when A is first hired, A has 90 days to figure it out. Actually I prefer they figure it out in 30 days, but if they're moving in the right direction then I'll give them 90. But I have many clients who are like, if they can't pick it up in two weeks, I'm kind of done. So you have to be very, very unreasonable as an owner about this point. We have client after client after client. They've given them not just three months, they've given them six months, three years, six years. Well, they're just not skilled in that area, but you're paying them to do that. So listen, the other staff are not going to respect that kind of leadership. B is not going to respect you as a leader when you know A is not doing their job, A is soft, A can't show up to work on time, and B is not going to be happy with you if they have to constantly go back and do A's job because when B is doing A's job, B is not doing B's job. And so then C can get upset with B because now C is doing B's job because I mean, come on, I don't need to be any more clear than this. So listen, here's the point. As an owner or a manager of people, it is your job to get them to produce. And it's fine to have empathy and sympathy for certain circumstances, but you cannot be soft on production. So at the end of the day, you as an executive are getting paid to get the employees under you to work and get the end result. As an owner, if you're being soft, unreasonable on this non-production, you're taking money out of your pocket, out of your family's pocket, this could end up determining where your kids go to school and if or when you retire. So there's nothing good that's going to happen in the end by being soft on low production.