The biggest challenges every business owner eventually faces

You ever notice what happens when two business owners meet? I do the same thing every time. Hey, what industry are you in? That is the opener. But it is not the question I actually care about.

The question I love to ask a fellow businessman is this: who are the good people you have with you? And what problems are you having with your personnel, your staff members, your senior executives? Because here is the truth of it. I am in home improvement. I am in marketing. I am in weddings. I have people who clean leaves out of gutters. Internet sales, energy sales, many, many different industries. And the most important part of every single one of them is the people who work inside the companies.

The questions that matter

If there is any advice in here, it is this: do not be interested only in the work itself. Be interested in the people doing it, and ask the real questions. Have you provided the training material for them? Did they learn it? Did they study it? Are they applying it? And do they have the aptitude to be able to apply it?

Build your company on that. Make sure your people have the ability to do the job. Then look honestly at whether they have taken that opportunity and are actually doing the job.

The one thing left to do

And if they are not doing the job, guys, there is only one thing you have left to do. You get rid of them, and you find someone who wants to learn how to do it and who will do the job.

It is brutal. That is the hard part. I have never found it easy, and I hope you never find it easy either. The day that stops costing you something is the day something has gone wrong in you.

I carried caring to a fault

I take a huge care for the people who work for me. When you get a job with me, I do everything in my world to make sure you can be successful, anywhere inside the companies. I have several hundred people working for me across the country and around the world, and I take it very seriously that you are successful, that you are doing well, that you too can win in life. The whole point of being successful, for me, is that I can bring people with me and help make this a better world.

And I have to tell you something. I probably did that to a fault. I got to a point where I forgave people their shortcomings again and again, and I really did carry it too far.

A few years ago, things were not going well. People were not performing, and I had to make a decision. I had to stop thinking one way and start thinking another. I ended up letting go of people I really care about. Good guys. Guys who were trying their best. They just were not getting it done. It turned into a mass letting go, and it was one of the hardest things I have ever had to deal with, because when somebody cannot come to the party anymore, that has an effect on me.

Save the group first

Here is the idea I finally had to accept. You have to save the group, and then if you get the time, you can salvage the individual.

Doing that cutting, severing people off the group, was one of the most challenging things I ever had to come to grips with while still knowing I was doing the right thing. It was one of the biggest shifted viewpoints I have ever had in my life as a professional.

So when I ask a fellow business owner about their people, that is what I am really asking about. Not the org chart. I am asking about the moment when caring for one person and caring for the whole company pull in opposite directions, and you have to choose the company, so there is still a place left for everyone else to win.