Welcome to the Business Abundance podcast, providing
the tools and knowledge to help small business
owners succeed. For additional resources, visit
www .businessabundance .online. Hello and welcome
to the Business Abundance podcast. I am back
with Rowan and Ian. And today we're going to
be chatting about whether you have too many employees,
which I guess can feel a little bit. counterintuitive
because if you're busy, you need more employees
sometimes, but I have a story to tell. Yesterday
I was in a cafe and I was sitting in the corner.
I saw them come out with this really nice new
leather chair. I heard sitting in the corner
just thinking, oh. Yeah, just with all my friends.
With the lady there with the laptop and bought
one coffee for the day and sat there all day.
Was that you? You got a problem with that? So
sitting there, they've come out with this new
chair and it was, it was a pretty chair. These
employees put it down, shifted around a couple
of times, nodded to himself, gone out, gotten
someone else. They've come back. These ladies
then moved it to another location. Which chair
was this? It was just this. The leather covered,
I don't know. So a fancy cafe chair. Yeah, fancy
cafe chair. Yeah. And you've, you sit down on
it and she's had a look around and she's gone,
yep, no, that looks, that looks good. And, and
I thought it was done with. And I was like, okay,
took two people to do with the chair. Cool. All
right, no worries. And I clearly must've popped
out of my little, my little brain break. Anyway,
they've come back with two more employees. So
we've got four people around. It's been moved
a third time and this took five minutes. this
moment and it's been moved to another location
closer to me so I got a good good look at it.
Sat around someone said oh well what do I know
I don't even know about interior design but hey
this looks better and so after what was it five
six people three different locations we've got
a place for this that I think will be moved when
a customer comes in. Once another chair added
to it. Yeah. And then I look in front of me and
everything clearly hasn't had the same amount
of attention and you kind of go, oh, that's,
that's a lot of people for one chair. Did you
mess with them and just make comments? Oh, it
doesn't actually. Terrible feng shui studies
feng shui. Oh, I actually Instagram. Room feng
shui, very cool. I'm just listening to this entire
story and I'm like, can you pick the person who's
not married? Because every time we get furniture,
it moves 20 times before it's in the right spot.
That's not a married thing, mate. It's not a
married thing? No. Oh no, okay. I mean, I move
my chair around. Do you? I'm not married. Yeah.
Do you have someone else coming in and go...
That looks good, but... No one would dare. That's
my house. The question is, does Lisa listen to
the podcast? No. So I'm really, really lucky.
I could say what I want. Anyway, so moral of
the story, more people doesn't necessarily mean
a better outcome. Truth. How long does this take
to move this chair? I mean because I became quite
invested in how many people would come out and
I was actually hoping for more. I think it was
about 25 minutes between the time of impact that
that chair made the floor to when it found its
final destination. Now I am going back to that
cafe. Wasted our time too. You just dropped two
movies as well. The final impact and final destination.
That's outstanding. I love this story. I'm going
back to that cafe. either tonight or tomorrow,
so I'm keen to see where that chair has made
it. Maybe they did that on purpose. Oh, it was
quite entertaining. For those of us in the chair,
so you can update in the comments. Yeah, and
it's moved. Imagine an Instagram story from that
coffee shop, and then the chairs moved again,
and then they just do that and build an audience
around that one. Did you test out the chair at
least, didn't it? Yeah, like it's, it's good,
but like in the wrong spot, clearly I would move
it if I were them. Yes. What day is that? That's
a Monday. It's the normal wages. If it's 25 minutes
and let's say half of the time, that's allowing
for the other time than not. So what 15 minutes,
10 minutes per person. Yeah. Yeah. Cause by the
time they fluff around get that then get back
to their work. Got a narrow wages, isn't it?
Yeah, we're getting about a hundred bucks. Let's
move a chair. That will move again. Do you reckon
that will provide a benefit, cost to benefit
ratio? Absolutely not. No. Might be a really
good chair. It was a good chair, but like by
the time - They move it every day for that same
thing. Exactly. So that 400 - 700 bucks a week.
Kill it. One chair moving. One chair. Absolutely
horrible. Poor people. I do love this cafe. It's
great cafe, but you just, you look at it and
I couldn't help, but not talk about it because
I know that this isn't the first time this would
have happened. And that there's, there's clearly
too many people involved when. So they're clearly
not busy at the time. They might've been busy.
They must've been busy, but they probably didn't
get their jobs done. Cause they said we've been
busy all day. People are often busy. Don't like
being stuck around doing nothing. Yeah. So just
busy, just doing things that you as an owner
doesn't bring. So it could have been one of those
situations. My sister used to work as a waitress
and if they were quiet, they'd go out and wipe
the walls or the mirrors and the tables because
they had to be doing something where clearly
that's an over -staffing problem because you've
got too many people for that time period a day.
Could be an example, yeah. Yes, but, um, I guess
as a business owner, you want to be using people
in a way that adds value as in billable hours.
Yeah, exactly. Like what's actually bringing
a return. Um, and, and in the same respect. someone
might actually believe that that's a better out,
like everyone has different ways of doing things.
Absolutely. And that's, I think we've talked
about in podcasts before, if you're trying not
to micromanage, you give someone a result that
you want. Don't micromanage how they get that,
the process, basically. It's, it's the outcome
that you're wanting, but for one person that
don't over collaborate on a chair. That could
have been a situation where the first person
comes out and says, all right, well, I'm going
to ask for forgiveness instead of permission.
This is where the chair's going. If anyone doesn't
like it, they'll say something. Does it get the
desired result? Yes. Cool. Carry on. Could have
taken 30 seconds. Yep. Yep. Yes. So I guess there's
a few underlying issues that you can watch for
when you're in business and that's the over -collaboration.
It could also be under -stimulation. I mean,
if your employees aren't necessarily interested.
The board definitely slows things down. Yeah.
Yeah. Filling their time with things that don't
matter. That's not going to be good for employee
morale. And to like the point I was just making
about the lack of clarity on what they're like,
they're not empowered to actually decide what
they're trying to do. Basically, they don't feel
like they have the authority to make that decision.
So they need everyone else to come in and make
that decision for them, because then at least
- Back story there, couldn't they? Yeah. Someone
did this once and then the owner come in and
said, ah, what have you done? So we get heaps
of different opinions and try and make sure it's
right. And then it's not just me that's put the
chair in this one spot. Yeah. I think a few recent
client examples that, you know, sort of support
the theory of you can have too many employees
sometimes. And for years, they kept getting better
service and doing more procedures to make sure
that things weren't missed. And that was continual
building, continual building, sure, build the
procedures and do the training and make sure
things are ticked off and then measure them to
make sure that they're done and all these things
that it could be more and more and more and more.
And then - Sounds like a government department.
No, we don't work with government. And anyway,
we're looking at just the overall, okay, everyone's
busy, you know, there's too much going on, things
are getting missed. Bit out of control, hard
to manage. You know, everyone sees we're working
hard, everyone's stressed, everyone's unhappy
about it. But then just looking at the budget,
it was like they had more admin people than productive
people in the business. So they had eight productive
people and eight admin. I was like, well, how
does that make sense? You used to have six productive
people, one admin doing all the quotes and all
that sort of stuff. So how did we end up with
the same numbers? And I was like, we need it.
But fundamentally just didn't make sense. And
then at some stage we We sort of broke the cycle
and then got rid of pretty much all of the admin
and just changed systems, which was the fancy
system, changed it to a simple system and lost
out on a few areas. And then basically cut back
everything that wasn't essential in the delivering
value to a client list. So there's lots of things
would be nice and I would check some balance,
make sure bad things didn't happen, but it was
fundamentally, is it valuable to a client or
not? And then they've been getting by with two
admin people getting more done. And then obviously
that's a pretty big change to the bottom line.
And then now the owner's working less than they
were before. With more admin. With less admin.
Then they had more admin. Yeah, correct. Yeah.
So, you know, that's, that's when we had, and
I know our business, once we, we went down 30
% in people, we grew 50 % in income and then
12 month period, which was, you know, the same
sort of thing of investing in growth and resource
development. But sometimes that can be too much
and then it slows everyone down. And then we
had another client recently as well. Two admin
people plus one of the owners was an admin and
they had a sales rep and the sales rep left.
They were unhappy with them then they left. And
then one of the admin people left and they were
not sure how they were going to deal with everything.
And then the owner that was an admin went sales
and the other admin person's just doing the admin.
And then they changed the systems around a little
bit. They're killing it. Going way better. They're
giving everything done with time left and the
results are. a billion times better. Was that
a conscious conversation or was that just a natural
progression? What do you mean? In regards to,
okay, something's not right. We're going to sit
down and find out what's the problem. Say the
one that had the same amount of admin to productive
staff. Do they sit down and they go, righto,
why aren't we making any money? We've got all
these admin, we've got all this stuff, what's
going on? Or is it just a natural attrition?
I think it was the continual building up of the
policies and procedures of the person doing this
and doing the check. Or, you know, we got in
trouble for that lucky mention before. So now
we're going to make sure we do that right. Or,
you know, and then people, it's maybe it's too
mundane and they get bored and then they slow
down a little bit or they make silly mistakes.
And then there was just a comedy of errors when
people weren't necessarily driven or we were
adding procedures that didn't matter. But the
final winner thing with the owner was that Yeah,
we were all busy. We can't possibly change that.
We need more if anything. Yeah, okay. Because
that's the obvious thing that you can see is
everyone's busy and everyone's stressed and the
people are unhappy and they want to leave. But
then the sort of weird thing is that that last
example we gave, a couple of people left, the
avid person was probably unhappy with how they
were performing. They're probably thinking they
were mucking things up maybe. Maybe they thought
the owners weren't doing things right. Maybe
they were making all mistakes and they're blaming
the owners, who knows? But in reality, it was
they were the issue. It was just complicated
with two admin people doing one job, whereas
one person could do it better. And the one person's
probably going to have their time go quicker
because they're more engaged in their job anyway.
Yeah, and get better at it. Yep. So it's just
an interesting one because we say it quite often
and most people don't believe it or we talk to
the business owner and they're like, nah, there's
no way. Like, yeah, I understand what you're
saying and do whatever, but there's no way. This
is the way we've always done it. No, no, no,
not that. We're all busy. I'm busy though because
everyone's busy. Everyone's saying they're busy.
I get what you're saying. I think that's correct
for us. That's the thing. And then sort of that
happened. So that last example, I think the salesperson
left. They weren't expecting that. Like, well,
what do we do? And it was a newer client for
us. So there wasn't a continual plan to make
it happen. We had to review certain things. We
just fast tracked some of the reviews and then
the admin left and so I could change a few systems,
see what happens. And it was like, oh, this is
actually looks better. So sometimes you're sort
of forced upon the change. Another client, yeah.
Another one of the examples, they were sort of
forced upon the change. And then you came out
the other side and like, oh. There you go. That
was all right. But then for everyone else who's
not forced to make the change, they probably
have the same issue. Whether it's there's too
many salespeople, there's too many people waiting
customers. Like I was getting a coffee on the
way to Launceston the other day by myself because
no one came with me. And it just got me right
in the heart. I think I waited about 20 minutes
for this takeaway. Hot drink. Oh, wow. And they
were, you know, they had enough people on service.
One girl was taking orders and doing things.
It was busy in there and the girl making the
coffee was slow, but been going past there for
a few months now and the girl's been there the
whole time. It was a bit later in the day. She'll
be a bit faster. She'll be a bit faster than
she is. She'll make a sort of one at a time and
she'll look at the tab and figure it out again
and she'll clean everything and then she'll make
another one. And they've got a big coffee machine.
Did they have a chair? No. Okay. Just checking.
Might have been the same place. Oh, I didn't
even get that till then. It's talking about.
And yeah, it's one of those ones where they had
enough staff on, but then some people were running
around like mad and some people were going really
slow. And then the unhappiest customers were
just waiting for a hot drink. It sounds like
it might've been a Sunday. Yes. More money. Less
productivity. But you go to other places, other
coffee shops. And you've got 30 people waiting.
It's like coffee coming every 30 seconds. You
know, like so. Well, some of the places that
just specializing coffee as well. Some of those
sort of hole in the wall coffee shops, their
productivity is amazing. You watch two people
behind the coffee machine. And you just, wow.
Yep. So where are we getting to with that? It's
like that, that business would be one where you
look, oh, we didn't have enough staff to wait
until our times were too high. It's like a cafe
as well. So we need more staff on when it's busy,
but. Do we need that? Or do we actually need
a better process or better training or a better
person? Oh, the person costs too much, but what
if they're working with so much faster? Um, might
cost an extra $2 an hour, but they're pumping
out five coffees in the time that that person
makes one. Yep. Yep. So when we talk about resources
or talk about resource capacity, maybe. So sometimes
we think we need more employees for more resource,
um, cause we need more capacity, but maybe we
need to increase our capacity in another way.
possibly, which I think that gets to when you
get too many, then everyone's doing the wrong
thing and everyone's trying to fill their days
and then that becomes the new norm. So like that
story with, you know, the monkeys that got put
in a room and then they climbed the ladder to
get whatever and they'd get water poured on them,
I think. And then they replaced all the monkeys
and then eventually they wouldn't climb the ladder
because everyone knew it was bad, but no one,
no monkey had actually seen it before. So if
people come into your business and put everyone's
unofficial, they're doing the wrong, not doing
the wrong thing, but they're working on things
that don't matter. Then everyone that comes in
gets trained to do the things that don't matter.
And then you get to that situation of people
know why they're doing it. Yeah. We're not driving
the business forward and everyone thinks they're
doing a great job. And then the owner's upset
because the end result's not happening well enough.
And then people are frustrated to leave. So I
think that's where you get to that situation.
So when you go in and you ordered a business
and you recognize that this is happening, those
conversations with owners must be interesting.
in regards to here's the advice and then the
owner is like, well, there's no possible way
we can get rid of five staff. How do you approach
that? Just a question without notice. Oh, it's
sort of like, it's an argument. You've got to,
I guess, I've got to see how that's practical.
Yep. You've got to see the issue first though.
Yeah, you've got to see the issue first. So it's
probably not more a discussion or review to get
to that point. It's more, you can identify things
like that budget. Obviously having the same admin
to productives, not possible. It's possible.
It's not suitable. So, okay, well, we need to
look into that. Yeah. But then, yeah, if they're
seeing one thing every day, they're feeling one
thing every day and they're under the pump. Well,
it's pretty, yeah, you've got to make a pretty
good case as to how that's going to be different,
but it's also a pretty brave thing for them to
try because if they, they cut it down and it
doesn't work, like there's more work for them.
Yeah. Cause you're essentially talking about
incorporating change and people don't really
like change. In my experience, working with businesses
that pay crazy amounts of money and then sort
of don't take your advice. It's like, well, what
did you hire me for? But I think it's focusing
on what the end result needs to be. So the case
for the, the, the admin to productive would be
okay. Well, the end result is we need more productive
people to be the admin. So, okay, well, the level's
going to be this. How, how could we make that
happen? We get them involved in what would need
to change. Yep. Before that, in it, in figuring
it out, when I said, identify the issue that
there's little hints that you see it's the. We're
getting things done, but there's a lot of problems.
They're constantly stressed. They're pretty unhappy.
There's all these like little - You're going
to do that job. Yeah, who's going to do it. Yeah,
exclusively you see that, well, there's the admin
roles. Who's doing what? Oh, well, we all do
that. Why are you all doing that? Well, because
we need to do this. And no one's sort of given
authority to make small decisions. It's sort
of like a top -down. Yeah. All people get into
authority as far as that admin role. That is
a big job. You just don't understand what that
job is. Yeah. You inflate it. Yeah. I was sitting
with other consultants yesterday and we're going
through like this, this, um, this business's
bookkeeping was miles behind. It was pretty straightforward.
We're sorting it, you know, while we're talking,
we're getting a lot of it sorted and like, yeah,
number one, we've got to, got to work with this
lady because they're not going to get rid of
her. It's a relation. I'm going to work with
this lady to get her up to speed, process some
training and, you know, and then, um, just like,
oh, well. She's working 20 hours a week. So there's
definitely capacity there. And we're like, okay,
we're sorting out three months worth of problems
in like an hour. So yeah, people think the job
is bigger than it is because I don't understand
it. Yep. Can be, can be part of it. Yeah. But,
um, the thing is if you can look at, get them
focusing on what would need to change. So it's
easier for them to change when there's a, they
have to, whether people leave or another reason,
right. So the conversation with the client wants
like, okay, we're going to change this. We're
going to change this. We're not going to order
this in ourselves anymore. We're not going to
stock it. We're not going to change this. So
we're going to order the freight because we're
saving money, saving the freight. So we're going
to throw all these different things that they
were doing to save money and, you know, make
things more efficient or effective or reduce
damage. We're not going to do any of that anymore
because we're going to get rid of everyone. And
then we're just going to have a few people and
get the stuff from you. And they're just going
to get it and give it to us that day. I'm like,
why don't we just do that now and keep all the
people. because they wouldn't have any of that
ambient cost, but we have way more productive
capacity, we still get the same. Yep. But then
you can sort of understand how they get to that
point because each decision made sense, but then
bring them all in practice. It accumulates. It
accumulates. And then one thing wasn't working
and it was them causing problems and then friction.
If you just go back to something that's not quite
optimal, but it's super efficient and easy to
manage, they put that in place and it's like
happy days. So is there like a magic wand kind
of have a look at your business and have a light
bulb moment? If you're, if you, you probably
might think everything's going well, but you're
not making money or there might be another signifier
that you might be overstaffed. Is there any?
Magic wand. Yeah, that's, that's kind of, everyone's
chasing. The way I see it is you become very,
um, very comfortable in what it is that you do
day to day, because you've gotten to that point.
with the best intentions. You've made these decisions.
It leads to a full admin people and they're all
doing their role. I'm trusting them because I
employed them because, and it sort of becomes
this environment where you're like, this is the
best I could do. That something's not working
and something's going against the grain. I don't,
I don't like it. And that's, I guess why an outside
perspective is always helpful because then you
have someone who will challenge it. And in some
cases, it might be a business owner's partner
who goes, well, that doesn't make sense. Why
are you spending money on that? And they could
be very, very right. And if your gut reaction
is oh, well, that's the way we always done it
then. Can also, this is why it's really a messy
one. Cause it could be the other way around.
The business owner's wife could be like, you're
never, you're never too busy. You're working
at home and all that. You need more people. You
just need to get admin for you. That's what everyone
else is putting admin person. It's pretty stressful.
It's an admin person. I was still busy putting
that one in. It can work both ways. So I guess
it's not a silver bullet, but the, the, the fundamental
was you need a business model. So who do we have?
What roles do we have? What resources can we
afford? And then how do we make that model work
with that? So if you're always coming back to
that and what you're doing is different, then
how can you get that in place? Yep. You can do
an audit and look at, I know it's hard in the
admin space because what they do doesn't necessarily
generate income, but you can look at what makes
an impact. So if they're spending a lot of time
on organizing morning teas, as opposed to processing
invoices. Or doing customers know when the delivery
is going to be. Yeah. Then that's. that's two
different impacts. Both are important because
one's for culture and one's for customers, but
in a hierarchy of importance. We're all busy
about internal culture and no one's calling customers,
so then customers are always upset and then they
have problems all the time. We don't have culture
because the customers are always at us. And we're
going to have customers, but everyone's really
happy because we're doing the right things, culture
-wise. Yeah, we're all sitting around a desk
and like, oh, where's the next dollar coming
from? We've got no customers left. I've been
hearing about someone's training recently, personal
leadership and leadership training in an organization.
And they got the choice to do a project for a
group project to benefit the organization as
part of it. And it's on wellbeing. And I keep
laughing when I hear about it because, you know,
well -being is important, of course, you know,
don't get me wrong. But if it's a little leadership.
Little snapshot into business abundance culture,
right? Well -being. But if we learn about leadership
and stuff, we've got a group of leaders. We just
do improvements on like, oh, how can we make
it nicer for people? And, you know, just to make
sure it runs, you know, well off and blah, blah,
blah. Like what on earth is happening for the
actual leadership or the function of that business?
Yeah, it's nice, but we. we need to actually
be practical and do our jobs too. So it's really
funny because then the frustration with the person
training is they went to one session and it was
about leadership and wellbeing, it was an update
on both. And then they talked about who, what
do we want to talk about first? They said leadership
because we had some training to do outside of
it. A few people hadn't done that. So like, oh,
let's do wellbeing. So talked about wellbeing
for the full session and then spent a minute
on leadership. And I think that's probably a
pretty good example of what Z saying, you go
down, are we doing the important things? We're
all focused on this thing. Everyone's happy to
be on board working together, but then just sort
of snowballs out of control. Everyone's doing
the right thing. But what is the right thing?
I had the opportunity to, my second job was for
a large hardware company from a very large hardware
chain in Australia. And they were opening their
first large, large store. I'm trying not to say
warehouse in Adelaide. And there was 120 staff
for all employed at the same time. And we all
had essentially into the CBD for a week's worth
of training and culture and personality tests.
And one of the key things that I remember from
that was how tight a team we were. But also one
of the things that was sort of rolled down from
management was you guys are all new employees.
We've been doing it this way for ages. You're
going to have fresh eyes. Cause all the managers
that come from other stores around the state
or from around the country, you're going to have
fresh eyes if you see anything speak up because
you might have better ideas. And I thought that
was a really good thing until it came into practice
when you did see things and the management were
like, nah, we've always done it this way. What
are you talking about? In a, in a new concept
for the stores as well, like having those warehouses
instead of just the corner hardware stores. That
would flow on heaps to small business as far
as, okay, oh, no, we should do it this way. Oh,
no, no, no. We've got that in place because we
worked with that once. Um, then yeah, add on
the, so that voice of, okay, we'll check out,
we'll just do that. And then, you know, it's
it, we get unhappy when we're in leaf, they're
not going to buy in, they're not going to get
work, work hard or, you know, be efficient. They're
just going to cruise through and knock off. There's
an interesting process for, I might've been 18
years old at the time, I think. So way back then
Z, but did they have warehouses back then? No.
Well, it was the first one in South Australia.
So I think it might've been the second one nationally.
It's an interesting. thing to get exposed to,
I suppose, because that's a multinational owner
who has this arm of their business and they've
imported these processes from somewhere. And
just to see the onboarding process of taking
a week with new staff, paying them and 120 or
new staff at this one site. And I assume they
replicated that for every new site around the
country. Not everyone's going to have that budget,
but you could kind of implement that at a micro
level. Culture is a big thing. I think in any
size business, even if you're a sole trader,
you can have days where you don't really want
to do this. But if you've got a solid purpose
in front of you and if you want to move a chair,
for instance, you don't need to get 27 different
people to come and validate your decision. There's
a few things, I guess, worth reflecting on when
it comes to the case of the chair. The first
one being, have you created a culture where Any
activity needs multiple sets of approval or opinions.
Like that's the first thing. Can anyone make
a small decision? Like are they empowered? Do
I need to look at a flow chat? If we just, from
my experience, making a judgment call, um, you
know, they feel like they'll get in trouble if
they make the wrong decision for something as
simple as a chair. So it's why everyone's got
involved because everyone's, everyone's too afraid
to do the last thing they have, you know. which
is ridiculous. It's band -aided with them. Oh,
I don't know. So they're getting trouble over
probably things that don't matter. They can cause
all those issues straight away. Yeah. But like,
how do you avoid that? Go listen to our micro
management podcast episode. So looking at you,
how do you know if you've got too many employees
or not? So how are they inefficient? You can
check against other. businesses, other practices,
obviously you get people in like we know a bit
more about systems and what's possible, what
people are up to, AI, or you know, like your
accountant at zero and you've got the hub doctor
automatically do bills and then people are still
manually writing them in, you know, into their
little books. So, you know, get someone that's
up to date to show you what's possible and then
go, okay, well, we could probably do that. But
I think also just looking at what the value chain
is. So if you can break down your core bit of
your business. So, you know, maybe we sell. We
sell trailers to people, right? So, okay, what
happens? We order goods in, we forecast how much
we think we need, we order goods in, we receive
and put them somewhere, and then we get inquiries
from customers. We need to send some information,
have a chat to them, get them to sign up, and
then we need to let them know how long it's going
to be till they can grab it. We need to put the
trailer together and then give it to them. Okay,
that's a core process of our business. That's
all we need to do in our business really. That's
it. What bells and whistles do we put around
it? So maybe some nice communication. We're going
to notify them here, here, here. We're going
to send an email here, here, here. Then what
else do we really need to do? So anything in
addition to that, we're probably just wasting
time. So if you can, even if you've got an existing
business, you can look at that value chain. What's
providing value to a client? What do we actually
need to do? Break it back to that and go, how
far different are we? What can we just pull out
and stop doing? I think that's the major benefit
of employing an external eye or a consultant
in this. situation because the consultant's going
to come in, they're not emotionally attached
to the business. They can look at it and go,
you sell trailers. Why are you doing this over
here? And at times that's exactly how Rowan will
say it. What are you doing? If he already knows
you. But that's advice that is needed, I think.
And I've said this on many podcasts, the amount
of times that Rowan's gone, what are you doing
that for you moron? I don't call you those bad
words. And Z's response right there says that
that's a lie, but it's needed at times. And whether
you've got that internally, you've got that sounding
board internally, or you have to get that from
external sources. It's not a bad idea to have
a pulse check on your business, I think, because
you might think it's all going well and you're
leaking money and year over year. And then all
of a sudden, oh, wow, what happened to the business?
But it's been happening for three years. And
now it's at a point where we need to make drastic
change as opposed to keeping your finger on the
pulse. And yeah, okay. Probably don't need that
extra admin person and that salesman actually
not even covering their wages. Yeah. The thing
that I do when I for our, for us is like, you
just keep your perspective of what other people
do. So you don't need to know detail of the business,
but if you know, like one business is doing a
hundred thousand times what we're doing and managing
it. Like you can't go, oh, that's not possible.
That's too hard or not going to work. It's like,
okay, well, we're obviously overcomplicating
it. If it's something that can be done, someone's
doing a way that much more. It's obviously a
lot simpler than we think. Whereas I think everyone
else goes, oh, it's way more complicated to be
able to do that. Like, oh, that's way out of
reach. It's probably not to do that. It's actually
going to be simpler. So just give yourself some
frame of perspective to go, well, do I need to
overcomplicate it? And that's always been good.
I'll find it's a reference. Yeah. And the other
thing I think probably the last bit is where.
you'd need to be able to give responsibility
to the people that you have employed to make
small decisions. Empower them. Empower them.
That's right. example that comes to mind is where
an admin team ended up putting together a social
media campaign. The only thing that the manager
said was, this is the impact. I want this much
reach and I want this many conversions. Do whatever
you need to do to get that. And they did it probably
in the most unconventional way. I think they
were Gen Z or something like that. And the owner
was like, but that's not how I would do it. Anyway,
they reached that, it excelled. the impact that
they wanted. Even if it's not how you would go
about it, you've got to be able to let your employees
do their job. The outcome, not the journey. We
actually did a episode on that as well. The young
lads at the cricket club. Oh yeah. No experience
whatsoever out of school and smashed it. Yep.
I wrote something about that. your employees
are adults or something like that, write something
about that. Yeah, they're keen to do it. If you're
keen to do it, go nuts. I think that keenness
and enthusiasm goes a lot further than absolutely
cash and slivers of experience. Exactly. So yes,
if your team needs five people to decide where
a chair goes, it's probably worth looking at
if you have too many employees. Unless you're
an interior design company, I suppose, maybe
you might have. Several sets of eyes. I wonder
if they're in the cafe, the sisters of the podcast.
They'll be like, when was that recorded? When
did she come in? I remember that chair. We've
got another one. It took us an hour because now
there were two. Yes, let's hope not. Anyway,
all right. We'll leave you on that, everyone.
We hope you have a good week and we'll chat to
you next time. See you.