EntreLeadership - Dealing With Unhappy Team Members and Customers

Episode Date: May 8, 2023

Today, we’ll hear from: •      A business leader struggling to train and delegate to a team member •      Leadership principles learned from extreme sports with Alison Levine •      A house call dentist who feels guilty for making a profit •      A small-business owner wanting advice on how to enforce a cancellation policy with grace Links mentioned in this episode: •      The EntreLeadership Podcast: https://bit.ly/TheEntreLeadershipPodcast •      Register for EntreLeadership Summit: https://bit.ly/3LRiZJH •      Alison Levine’s website: https://bit.ly/3neLPf3 •      On the Edge by Alison Levine: https://bit.ly/3oAEZkn •      Start your free trial of EntreLeadership Elite: https://bit.ly/3tI2fN8 •      Learn more about EntreLeadership’s Stages of Business: http://bit.ly/3yvdavv •      Have a question for The EntreLeadership Podcast? Leave a voicemail at 844.944.1070, or submit your question for a chance to be on the show with Dave Ramsey: https://www.entreleadership.com/ask   Take our listener survey and let us know what you think about The EntreLeadership Podcast being a caller-driven show. When you do, you’ll be entered to win a $100 gift card: http://bit.ly/40dV9hf Start growing in business and leadership with the EntreLeadership Newsletter. Sign up to receive tactical tools, advice and resources in your inbox every week: https://bit.ly/3IRWnsL Support our sponsors: •      NetSuite: https://bit.ly/NetSuiteEntre •      BELAY: https://bit.ly/351P9AE •      Payority: https://bit.ly/3IaA5SK •      Staples: https://staplesbusinessadvantage.com/ramsey Learn more about EntreLeadership Events: •      EntreLeadership Summit: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipSummit •      EntreLeadership Master Series: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipMasterSeries   Learn more about EntreLeadership Coaching: •      Elite: https://bit.ly/3tI2fN8 •      Advisory Groups: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipAdvisoryGroups •      Executive Coaching: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipExecutiveCoaching •      Workshops: https://bit.ly/EntreLeadershipWorkshops Listen to all the Ramsey Network podcasts anytime, anywhere in our Ramsey Network app: https://apple.co/3eN8jNq Learn more about your ad choices: https://www.megaphone.fm/adchoices Ramsey Solutions Privacy Policy: https://www.ramseysolutions.com/company/policies/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, this is the Entree Leadership podcast where I take calls from business people, leaders, just like you, about what it takes to win at any stage of business and leadership. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host, with over 30 years of experience leading in the trenches right alongside you. We started this thing called Ramsey on a card table in my living room, and here we are today. If you got a question you want to ask on the show, fill out the forum at Entreeleadership.com slash ask. We'll line you up to be one of the callers here or you can leave a voicemail and we'll line you up to be one of the callers. We don't tell you what to say,

but we've got to schedule you. There's a podcast. That's how this works. 844-9-4-1070. Big show today, lots of you coming on here as we talk about you right in front of you. It is our specialty. Also, in another break here,

next segment, Alison Levine, will be with us. She is an amazing lady. She's the team captain of the First American Women's Everest Expedition and a best-selling author. She's also one of our speakers at Entree Leadership Summit, so we wanted to have her on and learn a little bit about her story and then give a little preview for those of you that are coming to Summit. Zach starts off this show with Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Hey, Zach, how are you? Hey. What's up? So what do you mean by a technical company? What is it? He's not doing. We do electrical. Yeah, so screwing up and putting a wire in a wrong place blows up stuff.

Correct. Yeah, I got you. Okay. So let him do certain wiring without one of us. Okay. So you hired him to do a detailed job, and he's unwilling to be to handle details well or unable to handle details well? He's not educated to the law, but we were wanting to train him because he's got family in the area, and he's 20 to him.

So you've been training him to do wiring on a very technical level, and he's not getting it? Yeah, he's not getting it. And there's been time on one in a way that encourages him to want to learn more, but doesn't make him want to leave because I've been with him and worked directly. Okay, so he does know how to do it. Yeah, but why? Well, I mean, you're having trouble connecting to me, so I'd believe it. Okay.

I mean, the thing you told me was he didn't know how to do the work and he's not doing technical work, but then a minute ago you just told me he is able to do the technical work, But it doesn't do it when you turn your back on him. So which is it? Does he know how to do it or not? He doesn't know how to do the technical work. Then how come he can do it when you're standing there? Because you're telling him what to do?

Because I'm very detailedly saying, yeah. So he doesn't know how to do it. He's just doing what he's told. No, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. Okay, you cannot delegate to someone if you can't trust their competency and their integrity. I can't figure out which one's missing here. I think it's competency. But the way you described it a minute ago, you said he does great work when you're standing there.

But then you just now said he doesn't know how to do it. He's only doing what he's told. So he's not competent. He doesn't know where to put the red wire without blowing the bomb up. Yeah, and he's not, and he's been working there. How long? He's been helping us for a year, but there's a light, and he does all that work, because we have to do those simple.

I can't tell what you got. I'm sorry. I'm about ready to blame this on you. But either way, it sounds a little bit like you guys are super nerds, and if somebody doesn't just become a super nerd overnight, that you don't want them around. I can't tell. But, I mean, you say the kids, the kids wiring stuff,

he's showing up for work. When you tell him to do something, he does it. But that's not enough. you want him to be able to handle the theory at 23 years old of wiring an industrial plant. And I don't think he can do that. And I think that's an unrealistic expectation for one year in on an apprenticeship. So I think you guys need to decide what you expect of him in detail, since you're detailed people, and outline that, and then sit down with him and say,

this is exactly where I need you to be in the next six weeks. I need you to be able to do these four things. And it's not four of the wiring tasks. It's four concepts. Okay, I need you to be able to wire a board that looks like that without me looking. I need you to understand how to do that. And so how can I help you get there where you can wire that board without me looking and put the red wire in where the red wire goes without blowing the place up?

I need you to be able to do that more than just a wire in a duplex or a switch, which I, for God's sakes, can do that. And I have no idea to do what the rest of the crap is. I would blow the building up too. But I don't think you guys have as detailed as you are. I don't think you've been detailed in your job description, your KRA, your key results area. This is what winning looks like. And you need to write it out and then have him read it back to you to where he clearly understands the gap between where he is now and where exactly where he needs to be in six weeks for you to declare him winning.

and if he can't get there then, then he needs to leave. Because he doesn't have the brain matter. He doesn't have the capacity to become, to do the job. And sometimes that's true. There are jobs I don't have the capacity to do. And you don't need to give them to me to do because no matter how hard I worked at it, I couldn't do it. I can't dunk a basketball, okay? I'm five foot something fat, 63.

Okay, I'm not going to be, if the job is dunking a basketball, screw it. Go ahead and fire me now. All right. I can't. I don't have the capacity to do that. That doesn't mean I'm a loser. It means I can't do that. And so if this guy doesn't have the wiring, the detail wiring, no pun intended, inside his head to be able to do this detailed wiring, then you're never going to get him there. But I don't think you guys have been clear. I think you thought he could just come on and hang out with the family and he would just become one of us. Oh, bull, this is too technical for that. You're going to have to lay out exactly in writing what you expect of him, and then I think you're going to get there. But you can't just

say, well, I don't think you are, you know, we're during lunch, you're not paying attention. What the heck? Who knows what that means? No, you got to really, you're going to have to detail this out. That's where you're missing. You may find he's magically smart once you give him an exact path to run on. But I think you guys have been pretty vague about his stuff, and I think that's the problem you're getting into. So, you know, that's where I would go with that. Folks, the KRA, the key results area is one of the things we teach you to do in Entree leadership. And if you're in Entry Leadership Elite, we'll even provide you a form to go do this with. Every single person working on your team needs a written in writing key, key results.

area and it's like three key result areas. This is what winning looks like. This is what winning looks like. And if you do this, you're winning. By definition, if you don't do this, you're not winning. And if you have people out there working and you have no idea what it is there after, then, hey, that they have no idea what winning looks like. You put them in the job, then it's like taking people bowling and turning out the lights. It just doesn't work. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. Welcome to the Entree Leadership Podcast. Several years ago, I started putting some of the best thought leaders, speakers, writers on the stage, on leadership, and on business. Most of them in those days were friends of mine.

I would just say, hey, guys, let's get together and help all these small business guys. And the thing has exploded. It's become a big deal. Now we've got 3,000 people coming every year. It's sold out. It's called Entree Leadership Summit. And it's some of the top people in America today. And I get to meet new friends, which I'm doing today.

Allison Levine is with us. She'll be one of our speakers, New York Times bestselling book on The Edge. And she is absolutely amazing. Team captain of the first American Women's Everest Expedition. And doing something like that, you get some leadership tips out of it, I'm sure. Hey, Allison, welcome to the podcast. Hey, thanks. Thanks so much for having me.

I'm so pleased to be here with you. Well, it's wonderful to have you. Okay, so you're a big time explorer. You've been all over the globe. and climbing the highest peaks and doing all these extreme things. Well, I got you into this. So it's kind of random and bizarre how I got into it. I was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona.

And when I was a kid, I loved these stories about the early Arctic and Antarctic Explores, the early mountaineers. And I would read these books and I'd watch these documentary films because it felt like an escape from the extreme summer temperatures in Phoenix. So I just, I love stories about really cold places. But I never thought I would go to those places because I was born with some health challenges. I was born with a hole in my heart that got bigger as I got older. I had my first surgery and I was 17.

That one was not successful. But I had another one when I turned 30. And at that point, this light bulb went on in my head. And I thought, okay, if I want to know what it's like to be these explorers going to these remote mountain ranges, then I should go to the mountains instead of just watching documentaries about them, I want to know what it's like to cross 600 miles of Antarctic guys on skis and I should go ski across Antarctica instead of reading books about it. And if these other guys can go do this stuff, why can't I do it too?

And I think there are things in life that intrigue you, that interest you, and you can either read about them and watch films about them or you can get out there and try them. So one of the things I've found about people that do these extreme things is, and I mean, I've done momentary things, nothing like you've done, but where I just step into something for a moment that's right on the edge. You always come back kind of, there's almost a philosophical thing that occurs while you're doing it. You come back with these leadership principles that sound like, okay, that's a sport in the Antarctic. How the flip could that possibly apply to a heating and air guy running a heat and HVAC thing in Chattanooga, Tennessee?

Well, it does apply. There's principles that do apply. Definitely. And I mean, granted, the typical work environment is a lot different than Antarctica, you know, even with your air conditioning on full blast. But it's similar in that the conditions can be very extreme. There's a lot on the line every single day. And smart decisions need to be made. And you're in these extreme environments where you cannot control what's going on around you. There's a lot of shifting and changing, and you need to be able to adapt to things as they shift and change. And you also need to realize that there's going to be times of great discomfort, and you can power right through that. And yes, the business world can be very stressful, but you do not have to let that stress hold you back or hinder your success. Yeah, learning to do hard things, whatever is in that bucket is so important.

Yep. It is indeed. It changes everything. Okay, so you kind of, one of the hints they told me about you is you've got occasional pieces of unorthodox advice. What's one of your favorite ones that puts people on tilt? I think one of my favorite ones comes from a lesson I learned from Coach K., Mike Shusevsky, who's the winningest coach in the history of college basketball. I was fortunate enough to serve on the board of the Coach K. Center on Leadership and Ethics for a number of years.

got to interact with him a bit. And a piece of advice that he gave me about recruiting a team, at first I thought didn't make any sense. He said that when he's recruiting a team, and by the way, he was not only the coach for Duke basketball for decades, but he was the coach of the U.S. national basketball team. They brought home several gold medals. So this guy knows what it takes to win.

And he said that when he's recruiting a team, what he looks for is ego. And I thought, right, because you don't want that, right? Weed those guys out. I get it. He said, no, you want ego. And I thought, wait a minute, that doesn't make any sense. That goes against everything I've read in every management and leadership book. And then he went on to explain it and it did make sense.

He said that when he's recruiting a team, there's two kinds of ego that he looks for. The first is what he calls performance ego. He said, I want people who are good and who know that they're good. He said, I don't want LeBron James to come out onto the court and be a wuss. I want him to be LeBron James with all of the confidence that goes, with them. And I thought, okay, that actually, that does make sense because I certainly do not want to be climbing Mount Everest with a bunch of teammates who get to the base of the mountain and look up and think, oh, I don't know about this. You know, looks pretty high up there. And then this, right?

The second kind of ego that Coach Kay looks for, which is really important in the business world, is what he calls team ego. He said, I want people on my team who are going to be proud to be a part of something that collectively feels more important than the individuals alone, right? Name on the front of the uniform, Team USA is more important than the name on the back of the uniform, the individual team. And that made sense to me as well. So that all that stuff about leave your ego at the door, no. You want people who are good and who know that they're good. It doesn't mean that they treat other people poorly or that they're arrogant. It just means they are confident in their abilities. And that's who you want to be climbing a big mountain.

with. Allison Levine, team captain of the first women's Everest expedition and author of the New York Times bestselling book, On the Edge, one of our speakers at this coming entree leadership summit, success requires setbacks. Boy, I've seen that. I think I've got more setbacks than I do success. Although successes here, I often say success is a pile. In your case, it's kind of funny, a mountain of mistakes, a mountain of trash that I'm standing on rather than laying under. It's all the setbacks I survived and I'm standing on them. It is. The setbacks are so important.

And what you have to realize, too, is that failure is just one thing that happens to you at one point in time. That's all it is. It doesn't define you. And when I was the team captain of the first American Women's Everest expedition, we're a very high profile expedition with a lot of media coverage. and we didn't make it to the summit. Oh, no. We were thwarted in it because of bad weather.

And it took me eight years to get up the guts to go back and try it again. And I went back eight years later and I was able to make it to the summit in similar conditions that I turned around in in 2002. But it was because I had that failure in 2002 that I knew a heck of a lot more about my pain threshold, about my risk tolerance. I knew what it felt like to be high up on a mountain. in a storm, and I wasn't afraid of that a second time around. And I don't think if I would have made it to the top in 2010 had I not had that failure in 2002. Yeah, it laid the groundwork. It sure does. There's no question about that. You do the autopsy on the failure so that you never look like that again. Yeah, but man, at the time, it doesn't feel good. Yeah, I may make some

mistakes, but I won't make that mistake again. Yeah. I just want to, my goal is, I don't want to quit making mistakes. I just don't want to make the same ones. That's all I'm trying to do. So good stuff. Alison Levine, going to be one of our speakers. Thanks for hanging out with us. Hey, guys, if you haven't registered for Summit live stream, you can still get in. Summit is sold out completely has been for a while, but you can watch it with your team or watch it yourself as a live stream. Check it out at entrellorship.com slash summit. It's four days of packed speakers and thought leaders, the best in the business, Jordan Peterson, Willie Robertson, Malcolm Gladwell, Allison Levine, Dave Ramsey, Dr. John Deloney, Ken Coleman, and others are all going to be there.

It's going to be an incredible packed week. It's one of the top leadership conferences in the world today. Allison, we look forward to seeing you in person and getting to add you to our list of friends. Thanks for being with us. Thanks for having me, Dave. Can't wait to see at the conference. Thank you. Awesome stuff. This is the Entree Leadership podcast. Again, if you haven't registered yet for the Entree Leadership, Summit live stream. You can still do that. The tickets themselves are sold out, though.

You can still get the live stream. Entreleadership.com slash summit. Suggest you do that. It'll increase your FOMO. That's the only thing you're going to have. That's the only problem, though. This is the Entree Leadership podcast. This is the Entree Leadership podcast.

If you've got a question and you want to ask on the show, fill out the form at entrell leadership.com slash ask. Or call and leave a voicemail at 844-944-1070. Running a business is hard. You can spend all day putting out fires as the chief everything officer. You can get to the end of the day, go home and collapse on the couch. Your spouse says, what did you do today? You have I no idea.

How you feel like's a fireman? You put out fires all that. That's the treadmill operator. That's where we all start. Hey, there's five different stages of business. We will walk you through the stages of business. There are six drivers that drive your progress and success through the five stages of business. And we can help you with every bit of this in Ontario Leadership, Elite.

That is the Entree Leadership System. Entree Leadership Elite is designed to help you work the system. It's free for the first 30 days. Did I mention it's free? So check it out. Entreeleadership.com slash elite. Give it a 30-day trial. We'd love to have you.

Ashley is with us in Buffalo, New York. Hey, Ashley, welcome to the Entree Leadership podcast. Hi, Dave. Thanks for taking my call. Sure. What's up? So I'm a self-employed house-call dentist. I have zero employees, just one administration.

contractor. I feel guilty charging my patients and making a profit in my business because I offer health care services. So how can I keep growing my business without debt while still being in a reasonable price range for my patients? Are you charging 20 times more than other dentists? I typically do charge a lot more because I'm at a patient's home. So in a typical dental off- Oh, you're doing a concierge practice. Okay. Right. But the first part is I am and generally I'm doing house calls for patients who cannot get to the dentist. Your only other option would be a medical transport. In a lot of cases, they can't even get a medical transport.

So I feel bad because I do charge a premium, but my patients are usually very sick or have a reason that they're homebound. And it just feels icky to me sometimes. But the alternative is they don't have the service. I'm the only one in my region that offers this. And I do have student loan debt like most dentists. So I'm trying to make a way of doing. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. What is the wealth demographic of the people you're calling on? I get that they're homebound and they're ill, but are they wealthy, poor, or what's the mix? So I am busy right now. My schedule is pretty full, and I am seeing a lot of patients who are affluent, and this is nothing to them. They're very happy to have me come over, and they're grateful for the service. They see their value. But then I also have a lot of patients that I'm.

know our stretching to reach to pay me, which is fine. Like they're happy to do it, but it's definitely a stretch for them. The demographic in my region, I would say, is definitely middle class or Buffalo, New York is not a super affluent city. No, I'm just saying, I'm not talking about your city. I'm talking about your patient mix. Okay. So you're saying the vast majority of your patients are upper middle class to wealthy.

There are a few that are having trouble that is right on the line. there's a few of them, a handful here or there that are just sad cases, and you just want to help them. And then, right, and there are many more I wish that I could see, you know, they call and they hear our fee schedule, and then they immediately just, they hang up because they know that they won't be able to. So I struggle because I would love to reach everyone. There are so many people who need the service, and I'm, like I said, there's not many

dentists that are offering this at all. So I would love to be able to reach everybody and grow my practice, but I just want to be able to make a living doing so, too. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, to start with, nothing you're doing is greedy. And so if you set that aside, then your guilt needs to go aside. All we're trying to do here is how to make a living, a reasonable return on my time, giving the investment that I've made into this career, hundreds of thousands of dollars you've spent and are in debt to get this, to get here.

You simply are not independently wealthy that you can give away your services. You don't have a choice. Economically, you don't have the choice to work for free, regardless how guilty you are. Or if it was immoral. It's not immoral, by the way, not even close. So, you know, if you just said, I don't work with anybody but wealthy people, there's nothing wrong with that. That's your target market. That's who my persona is of my average customer.

They can pay it and don't think a thing about it. As a matter of fact, they can pay a little more. And that's what I do. And then if you wanted to, just say, I'm going to shave off a percentage of my calls. I'm going to say 5% of my calls or 2% of my calls or whatever. I'm going to make those just pro bono because it's a situation that I just want to go help somebody, and that's my ministry. I'll give you an example, okay?

You'll hear me on the Ramsey show occasionally, talk to someone, a lady who's lost her husband. and she doesn't have any money. She's in dire straits. She did not get left a million dollars worth of life insurance. She's got nothing. And I will provide all of our services for free. Okay? I see.

You probably heard me do that. I do it a lot. I have. And enough that it's recognizable. I do that for two reasons. One is, as a Christian, I'm supposed to take care of widows and orphans. It says that in the good book. And the widows are a special place in God.

God's eyes. And so I'm going to, I'm going to be the guy that steps up and does that for that reason. But also a percentage of our, I mean, we make a lot, we make a good profit around here, and we can afford to donate some of our services to the community because we charge without any guilt to the rest of the community. And, uh, and we've got ways we can help them. So I think that's the thing. I think you can just say, uh, you're, okay, let me, let me come and take, one other track on this. I'm just, I'm going with you because I'm trying to, I have processed this guilt, but it's so long ago that I've forgotten it. Because I get, here's the crap I get, okay? Dave Ramsey got rich off the backs of poor people. You ever heard that one? That's out there all over

the place, okay? And so here's the thing. It's, it's always humorous to me that I wrote a book on how to get out of debt and how to handle money that caused people to transform their lives. and I sold the book for $10. And when I sold 10 of them, nobody cared. When I sold 10 million of them and helped 10 million people, then the liberal lefties get pissed off. That's just dumb. Okay?

That's not me. I didn't do anything wrong. I helped 10 million people instead of helping 10 with that book. And so I sold 10 million books on that particular book. But I didn't get rich off the back of poor people. That's just absurd. And I didn't force anybody to buy the book. And so you're doing absolutely nothing wrong if you charge more than you're charging now

and serve nothing but wealthy clients. So everyone else that called up couldn't afford you. Wow. Okay. Do you think the Ritz is doing something wrong? You can't afford to stay at the Ritz Carlton if you're broke. You have to stay at the Hampton freaking in. I know. I think my thing is because it's a health care service. So if I were selling luxury clothing,

hey, that's housing. Yeah, yeah, and water and right, I guess. Yeah, you're going to be on a street if you don't have a hotel room. But, I mean, listen, nobody's mad at the rich except communists that want to stay there for free, right? I mean, that's just ridiculous. So everybody says, I don't have the money to do, to get that level of service. health care is no different. You have to be able to eat. Now, again, you're a good person and you've got a big heart, and I'll join you in that. I think I'm a good person. I got a big old heart. I mean, I cried Applebee's commercials, so I know I got a big heart.

So, I mean, I think you can give a portion of your stuff away, and you'll take great joy in doing that by selecting the particular things you do. I'll give you yet another example. I've got a Ramsey Family Foundation that we put millions of dollars in from. our family every year, then we give that money away to ministries primarily and other things that help people, okay, nonprofits, and occasionally to individuals in situations. My daughter Denise runs that, but it's not $180 million. So we don't have the money to do every request. As a matter of fact, we don't even fund 10% of the requests we get. We don't have the money. And so every one of the requests are good. I mean, almost 98% of them are valid things that are helping some little child

somewhere, someone divorce recovery somewhere, someone getting out of prison somewhere. They're helping hurting people. But we don't simply don't have the bandwidth because we're not God to do everything that is requested. So we have to tell people no more often than we tell them yes. Wow. I see. And so does that invalidate the concept? Absolutely not.

Absolutely not. So you are a wonderful person. You got into this for all the right reasons. If I knew someone in your area that needed health, needed dental care, I would send you over there because I guarantee you that when you are doing your service, you're also gentle. because that's who that's who you are.

You're amazing. You are the kind of people that make America great. And don't you feel a dime of guilt about charging for your service? You're not greedy. It is not a right. It's just sad. It's sad that the Ramsey Family Foundation can help all those people. We don't have the capacity, though.

But it hurt. I mean, it's sad. It makes you sad. It does. So occasionally find some kind of, of a, develop a process or a procedure by which you select intelligently the people that need you the most that you want to give your services to and go ahead and put a percentage on it. And say this percentage of my calls are going to be pro bono free.

And the rest of them, I'm going to charge without guilt so that I can do the pro bono ones and so that I can feed my family and pay my stinking student loans back. because I'm stinking in debt to get this to be able to do this. So you're a good person. You're a sweet person. And people that are greedy do not struggle with, do not have the heart struggle that you're having. So you're doing really amazing work. Thank you so much.

And thanks for being in the Entree Leadership audience. I'm honored to have people like you listening to this podcast. Wow. Isn't she something? She's special. This is the Entree Leadership podcast. Thank you for joining us on the Entree Leadership Podcast. Well, the reviews and comments are coming in.

Thank you guys for your nice comments. Dave, lots of words of wisdom. Thanks for the video, a YouTuber, a YouTube follower. These videos are amazing for people like me who want to learn about business but can't justify an MBA. No comment, but we're glad you're here. This is better than an MBA. That's my comment. I love that real people are calling in.

This is helping me so much as a business owner. Good. Another one says this is great information, really bad. backs up what I learned in the audio book. Good. The only complaint is it's only once a week, Dave, you need to clone yourself. Yeah, we're working on that. Great show. Love the new format as we hear from real business owners. Great podcast. Look forward to Monday mornings drive when I can listen to the podcast.

That's from an Apple listener. Great return on investment. The podcast is worth listening to every minute. I get great perspective and what I've learned over the past few years has made me in my company a great deal of money. Every resource from Ramsey Solutions is worth way more than they charge. for it. Well, thank you. Consider this podcast is free. If you don't like it, you can cut my pay in half. That's our standing offer. You get your money back. Hey, you can help us out if you'd like to. We would appreciate that. Leave a nice comment or two, and you can leave a five-star review. Mama said, if you hang anything nice to say, don't say nothing at all. We don't need any one-star

reviews. If you don't like it, just listen to something else. But five-stars are great. Make sure you hit the subscribe, the follow, and share a link. share of the show with your friends, send it, say, hey, check this podcast out. You need to know what we're doing here. It's going to be a lot of fun. So thanks for hanging out with us. Jacqueline is in Phoenix. Hey, Jacqueline, welcome to the Entry Leadership Podcast.

I have a mobile swim lesson company. Wait, wait, stop, stop. You have a mobile what? A mobile swim lesson company. Mobile swim lesson company. So you go to people's houses that have pools. Yep, their backyard pools. Very cool.

Okay. Yeah. So I've got 10 contractors as some instructors, and we made, we grossed last year 61,000. And what I'm trying to figure out a little bit more is how I enforce a cancellation policy and a fee with that, with grace and kindness, without being taken advantage of for same-day cancellations at the same time. Is it more emotional that it happens and it's just a pain, or is it actually starting to be large enough that it's a serious financial problem? As I'm expanding, it's getting to be a bigger problem. So it was probably about 10% of my revenue last year. Ooh, that's not okay. That's not okay.

Yeah. That's people being butts. Okay. Now, so here's what you've got to do. Around Ramsey and when we're teaching Ontario leadership, ways tell people when you have a collections problem, and that's sort of what this is, what you have is not a collections problem.

You don't have a cancellation problem. You have a marketing and communications problem. with your customer. So when they sign up, you need to tell them on the front end what your policy is. And then there's lots of grace. Okay? We do that right now. Okay.

What do you tell them your policy is? So our policy is we have to give us 24 hours notice, and there's no fee if you do that. But if you give us less than 24 hours notice, then we will charge you. Okay. How many of them are less than 20? Are you asking me about what happens if they're less than 24 or more than 24? Yeah, we get people, and I've noticed that some folks, they don't care, they'll just cancel anyway, and they're fine with that, and they don't complain, but then we have the other half of them that are pretty squeaky and are upset if we tell them that we're going to enforce that policy. Wait, wait a minute, wait a minute, but we told you up front.

Why would you squeak? Yeah. I mean, this is the deal. If you cancel, now, you know, on an extreme situation, I mean, your mother died and you're leaving town to go to a funeral. Oh, sure. I can do that, okay? Right? But your, you know, your child burped and you decide you're going to helicopter in and they don't want to burp in the pool? Nah. And that's what this is. This is people being inconsiderate to you. The squeaky ones need to leave as customers. Okay. You need to say, it's not, it's not, there's nothing grace and ungraceful. You told them up front if you cancel

within 24 hours. And here's all you got to say. We're small, business people. All of these contractors depend on this income. I have to take care of my folks that do the lessons. Little, you know, Tiffany that comes to your house and teaches your kids. She depends on this money. And when you just cancel, I have to take care of Tiffany anyways. I can't do this. I'm so sorry. But yeah, you're going to be charged. And if you don't want to go with us anymore, that's okay too. But that's what it is. No, that's not ungraceful. They're the ones that are ungraceful. I would have zero. If they want to leave, I'd have zero problem with them leaving. If they squawk, if they squawk what I would say to them is, you know what, this might not be

working for all of us. So the way my program works, we sell package deals. Yeah. They get a discount for committing to more lessons. At that point, are we looking at refunding them, do you think, or like, how do we handle that side? You know, well, you could just say, listen, we told you up front, this is what this is. This is not, you know, I have to take care of these. You know, I have to take care of these contractors. They depend on these for food. They depend on these for their income. And I have to take care of them. And so we do enforce this cancellation policy. I'm so sorry if that's a problem. If that is a real problem for you, when this, when our package is done, you don't have to renew. It's okay. And just let them, here's the weird thing. If you stand up like that and

threaten to not help them anymore, they're suddenly going to turn back nice. as they can be. Because nobody stands up to these people. They just bitch and whine and moan about everything, everywhere they go, because people give them free stuff. That makes sense, yeah. And it's okay.

And by the way, if you run off one of those occasionally, it's good for your soul. So the way we say it around here is 2% of the public is crazy and should be institutionalized. And so when you run into a 2%ter, it's a good idea to fire them as a customer. And even better,

give them your competitor's business card and send the crazy ones to your competitor. I'm being a little bit bombastic, but because you're such a nice person that this whole thing is bothering you way too much. It is. Yeah. It's like a personal thing because you come to their homes generally with their children, and you're a kind person who loves what you do, you're passionate about swimming, and you're in someone's home, which is a very personal experience.

It's not a cold experience at the YMCA or something, right? And all of this, the relationship gets tied up into this. So when they raise up and bitch about this, it hurts your feelings at a pretty heavy level. Am I wrong? That's absolutely accurate. Yeah. So I think the more you enforce this and the more clients you release that are unreasonable clients and high-maintenance clients, the better you're going to get at this. And it won't become,

it won't be that you're calloused or that you become cynical. It's that you become more realistic about some people just can't be happy. There's another thing in business that we run into, and this kind of falls in that category. I'll throw out that because you're just, you're wonderful. But yeah, you need to just, you need to say, listen, we agreed to this on the front end. I have to take care of these contractors. I'm sorry, unless it's some kind of big family emergency, we don't do refunds. And if that's a problem for you at the end of the package, we just won't renew.

We understand. And let them go. I wouldn't give them their money back for the package. And they may go, just don't come anymore and keep the money. Okay, that's fine. I'll do that. I'll be happy to keep your money. And now, the other part, the other type of person or situation that falls in this bucket

for the rest of our listeners out there is when we're getting started and you're kind of at the second tier, you're kind of, you've gone from treadmill to pathfinder. You've gotten your business up and running where you're not having to personally create all the income. You've got these contractors that are out there doing the income with you. And you know, you're servicing a lot of people. So you've hit that next stage of business.

And what has to happen is you have to have a, when you're in that early stage of business, every piece of business is precious because it's the only way you stay open. You understand? Does that sound familiar? Yep. There's a little bit of desperation in the early stages. Like, I have to make everybody happy or I'm going to go broke because I need every one of these dimes.

And that's normal. That's a good thing when you're first starting. You've gone to another level with your business, but not with your emotions. And you're still emotionally, it's not overstating, but you're emotionally desperate to make everybody happy. And you're not at that stage of business anymore where you can make everybody happy. because one thing's for sure when you scale you're going to find crazy the more you scale the more crazy you're going to find whether it's hiring your team though i mean i got 1100 people i got 1100 opportunities in this building for people will be pissed off at each other the drama has scaled

versus when i had 11 people you know and we don't have much of that thank god but we work really hard at it uh so anyway the thing that goes in this bucket is now you're at the stage of business where you're not desperate for every client anymore. And you need to start thinking about business. There is a percentage of customers that the juice is not worth the squeeze. They cost you more in emotional bandwidth and in trouble and in maintenance. They're high-maintenance people. They're not worth what they pay.

And your life is better and your business runs more efficiently when you cut those two percenters loose. and I'm not saying you need to wholesale going and fire everybody that objects to this. That's not what I'm saying. But your next stage of business for you as the owner is to get comfortable with, I don't need all of these people. As a matter of fact, it's really healthy for me to not have these ones that are a lot of trouble. They're too much trouble. They're more trouble than they're worth.

All of those phrases we say out there in the real world. That's what you're after. So good work. You're doing a good job, Jacqueline. You're a good person. Just hold tight. That's all I'd do. Hey, remember, better aware you, warrior than a quivering critic.

Leaders serve. Leaders are active, not passive. Leaders act on principle, not appearances. This world needs more high-quality leaders. So choose to lead. I'm Dave Ramsey, your host. Thanks for listening to the Andre Leadership Podcast.