Fire Them Now

Probably seems like a weird topic to kick off the new year here, the first week of January, but my colleague Michelle and I were just having a conversation and I think it’s actually the perfect topic for the new year. So we’re gonna talk about why you aren’t firing them and why you need to and how to not drag the same issue you’ve been having with someone on your team into 2023. How about we don’t do that? How about we stop? Let’s talk about that right now.

Happy New Year. Happy 2023. If you’re listening to this a year from now, happy whatever year it is, . But today we’re gonna talk about firing. We’re gonna talk about firing in a way that I wanna talk to you about what I see when I coach my clients.

I’ve done a lot of episodes on firing on how to fire and all the things. I’m gonna talk to you a little bit about that too, but I really wanna talk to you. I want you to sit here with me quietly and listen to me. Like, really listen to me.

Here’s the thing. You have to fire them. Okay? You have to. You have to be able to, and you have to. And it’s not because you’re cruel. It’s not because you don’t have any patience. It’s not because your expectations are too high. It’s because if you have people in your company who are not delivering results, you will fail more. You will create lag in your growth. You will lose sleep, and it will be emotionally stressful. It has to stop.

So what happens to me is I get clients. We have people coming to How to CEO. And immediately everyone who’s in How to CEO has at least one issue they’re trying to triage. It’s what sort of triggers all of you to say, “I need to do this. I need to sign up.” You’re like, there right now.

So you come in, and you say, “I, yes. All that. Okay. I, yes, I need to learn all of that, but what do I do about Bob? Because Bob’s been here for 12 years. Bob’s he been here for three years and he just is, I don’t know. Like he’s a nice guy. I just don’t think he’s in the right seat. I think he’s just, I don’t know. He has a lot of personal problems right now. He’s kind of been, you know what, he’s been sick, whatever.”

Right. Listen, I’ve heard it. Bob is not delivering on the promise of his position. This is what we know. Now what we don’t know and what I don’t know when you start working with me is, does Bob even know what is the promise of his position? That’s where you and I have to begin.

We have to make sure we’re clear. Have we told Bob what we expect of him? Have we been consistent? There’s some things that you have to do as the leader of this business to make sure that’s true. But I’m just gonna pretend right now between you and me that that is true. You got all that figured out. Bob is still not getting it done.

But listen, you’ve known Bob for 25 years. Bob is your husband’s best friend’s cousin’s wife, I dunno. Right? He’s Bob. He’s a guy you like. He’s not hurting anyone. Do I really have to fire him? Yeah, you do. Here’s why.

There is only one reason ever. There is only one reason ever that you hire people, love. If you’ve been listening to my podcast for a while, you know what the answer is. What is the answer? To deliver results. We don’t hire people to save them. We don’t hire people to help them cure their drug addiction. We don’t hire people because they just got divorced and they don’t have any other way to make money. We don’t hire people because they’re our cousin. We don’t hire people because they’re our sister. We don’t hire people because they’re cute. We don’t hire people. For any other reason than to deliver results, period.

Now, if you happen to like the people, this is good news. And usually, when you get your values figured out and you start hiring differently, the good news is you actually start to really have a team that feels like synergistic. But if you hang on to Bob, you can’t do that. Because not only is Bob not delivering on the promise of his position, but Bob is also preventing you from finding someone that can.

And listen. Cue the other side of the – I hear you. “Yeah, but Chris, it’s so hard to find someone with Bob’s unique talents and strategies. He’s the only one I can find who knows how to do this one thing.” I’ve heard it all. Happy New Year, aren’t you glad you tuned in today? I’m giving you a shit ton of fun.

Okay, so here’s Bob. “He’s the only one on the planet.” You know, that’s a stretch for me to believe, right? The problem is you haven’t found someone to replace Bob. I get that. But I will tell you, in my quite vast experience, it is so much worse to keep him on board. Because energetically you have this black ick in your company if you have someone in it who isn’t performing. And that black muck, icky, gray, whatever you wanna call it, that’s how I see it energetically when you have somebody in your company who’s not performing. It’s like this matter in your business that is literally repelling success. It’s repelling the candidate you want.

There is no mistake that as soon as you release someone in your business – I can’t even tell you how this just happened to me – I released someone in my business that was chronically making mistakes. Lovely person, but, it didn’t matter what it was. There was always something not right, always. And so I just said, “I can’t. I gotta let you go. I gotta let you go.” And within a week, this amazing other person came into my life. This is not an accident. Am I yelling? I’m yelling. Sorry. I’m yelling. I’m gonna tone it down.

I hear that over and over and over and over and over again. People come to calls. “I cannot believe what’s happened in my company since Bob left. I cannot even tell you how much better it feels since Bob left.” I have a woman who I’ve been working with for years, who’s a girlfriend of mine. She let someone go that she’s been working with for years that she knew she had to let go two years ago, but she didn’t.

Then she just let her go. She sends me a text. She’s like, “Oh my God. I let her go.” I’m like, “Oh, sounds good.” Her following text, “I feel so free.” Her next text, “Now I’m innovating my butt off. I’m so proud of myself.”

We are energetic blobs on the planet, y’all. And while I appreciate, we don’t talk about this a lot, and I’m not all wooey, you know that I’m very practical woo. But I do believe this is true and I believe that a business has a soul and has this energy about it. And when you have people in your business who are throttling growth because of their own needs, you are not advancing the goal, the vision of the business. You are protecting the needs of this person. And frankly, even your own, because you just don’t wanna go through the discomfort of firing.

It takes like 15 minutes and it’s over. What are you preventing from happening in your company because you don’t wanna deal with 15 minutes of discomfort? Come on. You’re so talented. If you don’t know how to do it, you must come into the How to CEO program immediately. You’re gonna pay us $4,997 to come into the, to the How to CEO program or whatever it costs right now.

I think it’s actually going up as of this posting. You’re gonna pay us $5,997 to come in and How to CEO, you’re gonna pay us just under $6,000 and that person will be gone. And you know what? We’re gonna end up saving you three times that.

How much money are you losing every day? Not just because this person’s not performing, but of all the distraction that this person is causing for you and for others. It’s painful to talk about because especially if you’ve had somebody in your business for years, it’s so rough. And you have so much more authority here. So if you’re feeling helpless in your business because of what someone else is or isn’t doing, we gotta fix that.

But so many of my clients are sensitive. They’re empaths. They really do genuinely feel. I do. It’s ironic to me that I do what I do in the world, or maybe, I’m the perfect person for it because I’m such a heart-centered person. I feel things so deeply that to be in a leadership role can be incredibly painful. But I love it because I also see the other side of what I have the potential to help others do, and that’s why I do what I do.

But there are days this hurts. And that’s why we want so much to help as many of you as we can. But you must fire them. You cannot continue to hold out that they will change. You cannot keep asking yourself, “Why won’t they? Just, how do I get them to, how do I make them? If I could just figure out how to…” No, if you have somebody on the team and you’ve told them what needs to be done and they continually don’t do it, and you’ve told them what needs to be done and they continually don’t do it, you have someone on the team who either is incapable or doesn’t wanna, and both of those are their responsibility to remedy. So let them go.

I got an email yesterday from someone and she said something like, “We’re finally profitable. It’s amazing what happens when you let some people go.” And I said, “Yes, and when you, ‘let them go'”. So there’s literal and figurative. Think about that person that you know has to go. I want you to really sit in a space of, what would it be like to show up to work tomorrow and they’re not there?

We have this belief, I think, that everything’s gonna fall apart. I have yet to have a client have that happen. Because, I know how smart you are and it’s amazing how you figure it out. But you don’t have to figure it out if that person’s still sort of kind of there, holding the seat warm.

So it’s time. It’s time. It’s time to let them go. It’s time to step into who you are as the CEO of your business and take control of the results that you want and your company and make sure you’re building a team that aligns and can deliver on those results. I don’t know how else to tell you that love. I really don’t, other than to say, let’s go.

And this is honestly, if you haven’t done How to CEO yet, this is the best time to do it. I keep saying this, but we have all sorts of really cool offers for you. Things you can start with right now. I’m gonna be hosting a private two hour virtual retreat from my clients while I’m in Hawaii, which I can’t wait for.

So you’re gonna get all my Hawaii magic juju while I’m there and I’m gonna host this amazing experience. I’ve done it three years in a row. People love it. We all get on Zoom. We all wear our comfies, everybody brings their tea and their journal and I guide you through some discovery for two hours just to kick off the year. We’re gonna do that on Saturday. I think it’s the 13th of January, but you have to be a client to join.

I just want you to know that the problems you face in your company are so normal. But for as long as you stay an island, you will feel like you don’t know what you’re doing. I can promise you, most of us don’t know what we’re doing, but I can also promise you that we know how to help you out of it. So let them go, love. It’s time. It’s time 2023 has a lot of cool promise to it, don’t you think? I wonder what you’re capable of. Talk to you soon.

Hey, entrepreneur, you started that gorgeous business of yours to do some really good in the world. You probably didn’t start your business to manage people, but here you are having to figure out how to manage people to get work done, and maybe it’s not going so well.

So head on over to chris plaquey.com/how to ceo, and let’s talk about how we can help you learn how to lead, manage, hire, fire, and all the things so that you can build a team that expands on your amazing dream.