Employees

Employees, employees, employees. These people will either make or break a company. I have the genuine pleasure of working closely with a lot of different business owners in a lot of different industries. Every single one of us talks about our employees, rarely by name, but we talk about successes and failures that come from good or bad hiring decisions. I've realized some things that I would like to share with you, dear reader.

1.) Every business that wants to be successful will have to hire employees at some point. Unless you want to charge an arm, a leg and some toes for your service or product, you'll have to hire some day. At some point the demand for your product or service will get to be too great for you too handle on your own. At this point you'll be faced with 2 options, hire some help, or raise prices. Raising prices will run some people out the door and you won't know who that is until you raise them. This can be emotionally difficult for owners since we truly care about our customers. It will also cause you to end up serving "the upper class" if you continue raising prices to avoid labor costs. If you want to grow, and you want to continue to service lower income individuals, you will have to hire some help.

2.) The help you hire isn't always helpful. It takes a lot of time and money to train empyees, and not every employee is going to take instruction well. People are messy and we all take our messes with us everywhere we go, whether we want to or not. It's just part of being broken humans. Some people have more issues than others, but one thing you can be sure of is that your employees will bring baggage. This creates a delicate dance of attempting to get as much production from our employees as we can without pushing too hard, or not pushing hard enough. People have a tendency to do the least amount required of them. I'm pretty sure it's a survival mechanism in us. We reserve as much energy as we can so we can make it through a whole day and we often still feel wiped by the end of it. Founders and business owners tend to be more hard working than the average human. If they weren't, they probably wouldn't be a business owner. It takes a great deal of effort to make a business successful. When a highly driven owner comes in contact with a less than driven employee, things don't always go so well.

3.) How do we find good employees? That is a great question. It takes a lot of time and effort. As an owner you should expect to look through a lot of applications before finding any good ones and interview multiple people before finding one that is a good fit. You would think that's it, but it doesn't stop there. Not even close. And I think that is where a lot of us owners make our mistakes. We think that once we hire someone, we will finally have the help we need. Nope. You will need to train that person that interviewed well. Then you will have to hope that they weren't putting on an act in the interview. Often times people show themselves to be different after they are hired from when they were interviewed. So once they are hired expect to invest a lot of time in training the right people, and expect to have to fire the wrong people. That is just the reality of being a successful business owner. At the end of the day, if you want large scale success you will need to be able to train people how to do all the things you can do, and you will need to fire people that can't keep up or aren't a good fit.

4.) What about AI and robotics? AI is getting to be very popular and it has people super excited (or worried). I think AI is going to have a massive impact on the way the world works and indeed already has. It will never fully replace humans though. I use AI a lot for KB Designs. Companies will always need humans to Oversee the AI. What AI does is empower you and your employees to do things that you wouldn't be able to do otherwise. I think AI will reduce the need for large companies to have as many people on staff. This may help the small business owner as well. Although, if the small business owner isn't "tech savy" (many aren't) this technology won't help them. Who can really accurately predict the effects of something like AI on the world? I don't want to sit here and make that claim, but I highly doubt AI will ever fully eliminate the need to hire employees, especially for small business owners.

So what's the point of all of this? I guess my point, dear reader, is that if you are in business or plan to be in business, expect to become a leader of people. In order to be an effective business owner, you absolutely will need to become an effective leader. Read leadership books, watch/listen to podcasts of other leaders so you don't have to lean on your own understanding. Most importantly, pray to God for success and that He would lead the right people to you. At the end of the day, He guides the hearts of humans and success is bound up in Him.

Good luck, and God speed!