Managing employees and dealing with people is often the largest challenge you will face when running your business. Lee Godbold talks on how to manage your employees for maximum profit.

Good morning everybody! I hope everybody’s doing great today. What I want to talk to you briefly about today is something that a lot of you all are probably starting to think about. We’re getting into busy season. Some of you already have a team member. Some of you started to think larger. You’re starting to get to the point, realizing you need to hire. Some of you are just realizing” Damn, I can’t keep up. I got to get some more people. One of the hardest things to do is manage people. That’s the reason so many people run from having employees is the complexity of managing them and the issues that come up when you start relying on people. People generally start letting you down and that’s always. You’re dealing with people in business that’s just going to be something that’s going to occur.

Some quick little tips. Number one, always be hiring. It doesn’t matter how many people you have. It doesn’t matter how much business you have. You need to constantly be hiring. Why is that? That’s another thing that you have to do all the time. Then you’re worried about people not getting hours and everything. If you’re always hiring, people realize they always must perform because they’ve got somebody coming up behind them, nipping on the heels. Let’s put an example of a college basketball team. You got your star point guard out there. Point guard does great one year, but he’s got the number one recruit in the nation coming up after the following year. He’s got to perform. He knows if he’s going to get to play in time, he’s got to get out there. He’s going to bring his A-game. He must do well and improve. He’s got to offer a lot of value to the team.

Always be higher. You got a lot more options when you’re always hiring. The other thing is do not accept mediocrity. Hold everybody to the same standards of performance that you would hold yourself. Now, this is a tough one right here, but if people showing up late. Address it first then they got to roll. If people are not sitting out review request asking for reviews and you consistently tell them they’ve got to roll. If people are getting jobs off on time, they got to roll. If they’re negative, we don’t put up with any negativity. Any negativity, they got to roll. So, do not accept mediocrity in your organization. You got to be constantly.

You’ve got to be pushing people. You got to be pushing the people from behind. They’re always talking about push or pull management. It’s both, you’ll push them from behind, but making sure they understand the mediocrity is not accepted. That you got other people coming in behind them and might be hungry for a job. You got to pull them too. You got to let them know what your dream is. You got to let them know that those of you that hang with us. Accomplishing this, there’s probably some promotions and raises along that will bring you up, but you got to be pushing people from behind. As soon as they start not performing after you’ve addressed at the time or two. Move them out and bring in another person. That’s the reason you’re always hiring. That way, you’re always bringing people in. You’re bringing in people and getting rid of the people that don’t perform as well. It’s a constant cycle. Bring them in, kick them out. This sounds kind of ruthless to a lot of you, but that’s how you’ve got to do it. I can promise you with the rare exception, most of your employees have a better opportunity came around the corner. They might not go out and look for it, but if something arises around the corner, they would take it and they would not think about you at all. By not accepting mediocrity and rolling people out as they come in, your really good one rise to the top. Your really good ones hang around. Your really good ones are happy with the way things are going, they’re happy because their efforts are being rewarded by maintaining a job. They’re happy to see that other people can’t get away with not working as hard. If it only takes one or two people to drag everybody down, don’t put up with it.

I like treating it like a sports team. I like it where your performers, your best performers get the playing time. If you’re out there and you’ve been averaging 20 to 25 points a game, you will play. If all of a sudden that 20 to 25 drops off over a consistent period of time, they might start backing you out of the lineup. The performers get to play. The other one’s ride the bench and they might ride all the way to the cut line too if they consistently do not perform.

The other thing about sports team, longevity does not matter. For example, Lebron James is probably the best player in the game. Probably the second-best player of all time behind Michael Jordan. If he gets the point where he isn’t performing, and I don’t think that’s going to happen any time soon. If he gets to the point where his performance drops off, it doesn’t matter what he did for the past 10 or 15 years. He’s not going to get the playing time. He might not get cut just because he got a contract in there. He isn’t going to get the playing time. Longevity doesn’t matter.

Guys would be like “I’ve been doing a great job for you for 5 years.” “You’ve been doing a great job for 5 years but you’re not doing it now. You are not performing like you were in the past 5 years. You got to go.” That’s a little tough when you first started adopting that, but what you’ll realize is you get rid of the bad people. You get some good people. People are going to go. Race horses, after years and years eventually they’re going to go lame. Everybody’s eventually going to go lame. It’s your job as a business owner, as somebody that’s taken out a lot of risk. Putting the future of his family and himself up in the air over this deal. It’s important that you get rid of those race horses when they go lame.

You’ve got employees for them to make you money. Make your organization money, that is your number one reason that you have team members. So, if they get to the point where they’re costing you money and they’re no longer living up to your standards. They got to roll You got to roll them out. That’s the push in. You’ve got to be pulling people too. When you get employees in your organization that are really going above and beyond and doing a great job. You got to pay them what they’re worth. You can’t be worried about that a dollar or two an hour more that you’re going to pay them. We got one that we’ve been with us for 6 months. Doing everything, plus what we’ve expected out of him.

He’s making $4 an hour more than some of these guys that have been here for 2 to 3 years. He’s been here for 6 months. He got the management responsibility now. That irritates some of the guys underneath. Those guys got to roll. They’re either going to react one or two ways. They’re going to pick their game up or they’re going to lead this organization by choice or by force. One or the other. Reward your performers with a promotion if possible. Definitely with pay raise, pay them exactly what they’re worth. Oftentimes they’ll continue to step their game up. What’s funny was a lot of them don’t even think about the pay. They enjoy the job so much.

Your real go-getters are the ones that will do their best job possible no matter what the pay is. The thing is they wouldn’t stay in your organization long. I mean, they know they are worth more. They’re always going to put their best foot forward, but you got to pay them what they’re worth. This guy has been here for 6 months. Truck team member manager will make $50,000 a year. There’s a lot of you own business out there. You’re afraid of employees, you aren’t even making $50,000. We’ve got multiple people making $50,000. The deal is you got to hire people. You’re not a business until you hire people. You’re not going to achieve a great level of success until you hire people.

Hiring people is tough. Dealing with people is tough. There’s no doubt about it. Adopt this mindset right here, you won’t have to put up with a lot of the stuff because you will work it out. You’ll have people constantly coming in to replace the ones that are going out because they’re no longer good for you. They’ve gone lame. I’m happy to help everybody. It’s a great Monday afternoon. We’ll post more videos today. Have a wonderful day! Let’s make some money. Let’s have one hell of a week. Talk to everybody real soon.