When team members leave all of a sudden don’t take it personal.
What’s going on, guys? It’s Monday evening, getting my prep work done for Junk Removal Made Simple episode. That I will get the ready record, get put out later this evening. While I was doing this, I got to thinking about something that I’ve touched on before, and that’s team members.
It’s amazing how selfish people are, and some people some of my team members watch this. Maybe they would be like “What do you mean how selfish people? What position are you in to talk about how selfish people are because you’re using our labor to make a bunch of money.” and they look at it like they’re the ones doing all the hard work. Maybe some of them will look at it like they’re being underpaid, not all of them. I got some excellent guys that work for us, but there are a few rights there that will probably have that opinion. When we started selling items, they don’t understand. We’ve got we’ve got a 30000 on payroll we need to meet every week, we get bank loans that are due on different stuff, we have customers that owed us $18,000, $19,000 – we had a couple of them. I was told we had some receivables that were close to just shy of $40,000, and the people are paying slowly through the slow season. We were a little nervous, but we knew we will make it through. We encountered some of those issues before, but we’ve really had a massive round of expansion, we didn’t have a whole lot of reserves on cash; which isn’t a bad thing.
Whenever you’re nervous with cash, you work harder, and you work smarter. When you’ve got a little bit of desperation, that’s a good thing. Even as we grow this company to millions and millions of dollars, as we grow Junk Removal Authority to millions and millions of dollars – and we got a huge expansion plan for that too. I’m not going to elaborate now – but as that expands to more significant things we’re going to keep that money busy. We’re going to keep that money flowing out in investments and expansion. It’s going to keep us desperate, and when we when you’re desperate, anybody that’s been desperate, a lot of times. For example: when a sports team that’s desperate, a desperate team, a team that has to win a game in order to make the playoffs or has to win a game to make the NCAA tournament, they’re probably going to play a bit harder, and they’re going to be a little tougher to beat. They will have a little bit more emotion into that. That’s tough to beat. Keep that money flowing out into investments, into expansion on your business. It’ll keep you a little desperate and keep you a little uneasy; when you get when you get content, when you get easy, that’s when you screw up. That’s when you spend money on crap that doesn’t make you money, that’s when you go out you buy a boat maybe you probably shouldn’t have. I’m not against you buying a boat but is that really where your money’s best spin at that point. Go buy a boat when you’re making so much tag on money that you’re investing as much as you possibly can in your business, and you get money left over to buy a boat. At that point, you go buy a boat. The plane I have is used for business, the cub and all is partnered with somebody else.
Anyway, back to what I was talking about before. We had a team member. We were going to be developing an app, and I can’t give a whole lot of details as to what it’s going to be about, but it’s basically it’s going to make running a Junk Removal Business much simpler. We’ve got scheduling software, the software we’ve developed a few of our own, internal apps for a checklist. I can’t elaborate too much on it, but basically, it’s going to do scheduling jobs online in multi locations. It’s going to be making sure your guys are doing everything they’re supposed to do, it is going to work well in the phone. See right now there’s a couple of different apps out there that are as good as we’re going to make this app in one thing, but this app’s going to be good at several things. It’s going to be everything you need to run a successful Junk Removal Business. If you’re going to be in a Junk Removal Company, it’s going to be a must-have product as soon as it comes out.
Most software developers are just software developers, they’re not business owners. I’m coming out from a business background. I know what we need as Junk Removal Business owner, and that’s what that app is going to have. This particular team member was going to be involved on that app. We’d hope to be starting about March this year, but I told him, I said “Listen. That may or may not work out as far as the start date. We’re going to do this app, and we’ll have you involved in it.” He wasn’t going to run it, he wasn’t going to be the lead guy. We’ve got a strong team behind us with great experience on our software, on our web in, and in our app development in, but I was going to involve him because he has done some simple apps for us – some simple checklist. And he does a good job, very passionate guy. He was doing great, but he calls me up today and he tells me that he’s quitting. I said “Okay, Ben, I understand. All I need is if you just email me.” I knew at this point, the way he said it that he won’t give me a two week, but I said “Okay, here’s what I need. I need you to send me a two weeks’ notice. It’s fine, I understand that you want to be doing more on the I.T., and we don’t have that quite yet right now for you. No problem.” I didn’t tell him exactly this but had he told me he would give me two weeks then this was my thought process, had he given me two weeks we’d brought him back to the app. I understand, he wants to be on the I.T. end of things. He doesn’t want to be on the truck so much. Anyway, he said “Well that’s the thing, I’ve already said no to the job. It used to be that I would not mind saying anything, but this time I said “Well you know there’s something to be said withhold up your end the deal and the end of the deal with Junk Doctors is we do a two-week probationary period, after two weeks you’re supposed to give us a two-week notice. There’s also something to say about not burning bridges, especially when you are certainly aware of this huge opportunity we’ve got coming up.” I’m glad I found out now that you’re not an ethical person. You’re very selfish, and you don’t you don’t look at the big picture, and I’d rather find that out now than after we develop this app, and then we’re having to deal with you at that point. It all worked out. I wish it weren’t that way, but I’m glad to find out he was that way beforehand.
We’re a little short-staffed right now, and he knew that. I’m sure he knew we’re short staffed right now and [he] didn’t care. We’ll occasionally loan team members money if they need a day off late notice – we’ll go out of our way. We might spend 15 or 20 minutes or more trying to find somebody to cover their shift and coordinate some. We might even look at our schedule to coordinate trying to get this guy off so he can go do whatever he wants to do, but they forget about those favors that you give them. So, if you’re going to provide him with some favors just because you think that’s going to help out their performance or something, they can go for that, unless it’s a particularly loyal guy. We should have been closer to 33-34 people now, but we have like 28. We are short staffed, but of the 28 guys we’ve got on our trucks [in] over three locations, I’d say there’s three – actually we’re about 30 total team members: Captain, me, Christian Kirsten, all the Junk Doctors – and of those there’s probably three or four [that] I consider really, truly loyal team members. That doesn’t mean that if I turn around and stab me in the back that it does not surprise me. I don’t think they will, but these loyal guys are hard to come by. Where I was getting is if one of those three or four people you think are really loyal, then chances are they’re not really going to ask you for a whole lot of stuff. Because they’re dedicated, they’re hard workers, they’re not going to ask you a whole lot, and the times they do ask you, do your very best to accommodate it because these guys have earned it. Everybody, elsewhere it’s obvious that it’s just about them, they’re just doing their job because it’s a job, don’t have a lot of pride in the work they do, you’ve got to know those guys are out for themselves. Don’t go out of your way. Don’t waste a lot of time doing favors for them, because as soon as they see the grass a little bit greener on the other side, then they’re going be jumping ship. That’s just the type of business we’re in. Even then it’s not even just this business. I got friends that are part of the corporate world, and it’s a problem. The managers up in the corporate world, and it’s a problem they’re having. A lot of the guys we have working for us [just have a] temporary job, or I guess all jobs are really temporary, but nowadays who stays with the company for a long period of time. What some people look at this Junk Removal job is as an interim job. It’s something they do in between. Majority of our guys are part-time, they’re not they’re not going to get health benefits; they get paid a decent hourly wage, but it’s not a tremendous amount. They look at it as an interim job, but I’m talking with people out in the corporate world, it’s like a career type job almost – it’s the same thing. As soon as the grass is greener on the other side they jump ship, and they just leave the companies hanging. Sometimes they won’t even turn in two weeks, even in a big paying job they just jump ship. Don’t let stuff like that surprise you, don’t let it bother you, because it’s easy to say “What did I do? I looked after this guy, I did this, this, and this form.” if you’d [like to] help them out, just look at it, and well hopefully it will help out his performance. Don’t look at the fact that you’re doing them a favor. That’s really unfortunate but that’s the way it is, that’s the way it goes.
Just be an employer, so don’t take it personally, and just don’t feel like you got to do all these favors for these guys. Pay them a fair wage, if you can find a program that may be selling items to get them more involved where they can earn extra money from selling items. Like we’ve got a unique idea on how we’re going to try and really get these guys enthused on bringing more and more items that we can actually be sold so we can create that income, because I know there’s a lot of stuff they’re not bringing us. I’ll cover that. I’m hopeful that it will get them more involved in the business as a whole where their effort can actually mean. In addition to helping the company out earn more money, that they can earn more money. I will talk all that, and then maybe we’ll have great success with that. Six years of operating this way, I’ve gotten where nothing really surprises me when it comes to team members. I used to take it personally, but I certainly don’t know. If you’re going to take this stuff personally, it’s going to cause a lot of big strain in your, life big strain on your business, big strain in your relationship. You just got to accept it as is, and just find a solution, find a fix. Sometimes what you do is you’ll stay a little bit short-staffed to almost to try to get you guys hours – don’t do that. Bring people in. They may have a few fewer hours, but bring people in. Very seldom do I lose anybody because of two little hours; it’s like hardly ever happened. People say they want more hours. I’ve lost more people from being burned out, than from not getting enough hours. These are the same guys that are saying “Give me more hours.”, So I give them a bunch hour and then it gets hot, they have a few tough jobs, and they quit, they get burned out. Hire enough people where you’re not relying too on if you lose one or two at once that you can still make it through, and don’t take stuff too personal. Be a good guy, but don’t feel like you have to go out of your way.
Junk Removal Made Simple episode coming right up, [just] getting ready to record. It won’t post until probably 2 or 3 a.m. this morning. It takes a while for that to get uploaded, and I still got to edit it afterwards. Business Expansion – blowing your business up. When should you do it? When should you expand? You should always be expanding, but when should you expand either geographically, or adding additional services, and how do you go about doing it. That’s going to be covered in this Junk Removal Made Simple episode coming right up, and we hope you find it very helpful. As always you can e-mail me at [email protected]. Check us out at junkremovalauthority.com as well. Talk to you everybody soon.