I’m extremely lucky in my business.
As of the time of writing, I have three absolute rock stars in my team.
Admin, support, graphics, updates, editing, content…they’re phenomenal at what they do.
And the three of us are doing MORE this year than when we had a team of EIGHT doing more work.
You see I used to have a sales team, content manager, community manager and a whole bunch of other team members.
Now I’ll admit, most of them were great.
Some of them were fantastic.
But ONE of them…
Well let’s just say that ONE bad actor in a play can drag down the performance of every single other person.
It’s like their negative gravitational attraction is much much stronger when they’re a bad influence.
They were late to calls, brash, never stuck to their work.
They even had the gall to ask for a glowing testimonial and reference after I fired them.
I remember getting coffee with my sister-in-law, who happens to be one of my best friends.
I was miserable.
This one person was such a bad influence on the company that I dreaded going into work.
And it was MY company!
The solution sounds simple, right?
But I just couldn’t see it!
I was moaning to my SIL and crying “Woe is me” when she asked to look at some numbers (she’s good like that).
Sales, revenue, refunds, customers, time spent fixing problems, income lost, partnerships lost…
The numbers, pure logical cold numbers, were impossible to ignore.
Even without the emotional component.
Even without me feeling embarrassed and ashamed at hiring them in the first place.
Or that I was a failure if I fired them.
I could not deny that they were bad for our money.
So I let them go.
I was dreading it.
But it was 100x easier and faster than I thought.
I told them on a zoom call and moved on.
I felt better IMMEDIATELY after doing it.
But the shame and fear and dread and embarrassment…
It lead me to cling to the emotional side of the hire long after I should have cut ties with them.
I should have listened to my wife.
I should have listened to my friend.
I should have listened to my gut.
And I did eventually listen to my SIL.
It happens.
But there’s zero point in committing to a bad decision for the rest of your life.
Just because you made a mistake this morning doesn’t mean you have to define the rest of your day by that mistake.
Hire the right people, fire the wrong people.
And maybe you’ll end up with a team of a-players like I have.
