Why is it so hard for business owners to let go? How many of us have someone in our business that we KNOW needs to go, but we haven’t done it yet?

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My management and leadership style has always been lenient. It’s always been “If you have my back, I’ll have yours.” Up until this point, it’s been extremely beneficial for our business, and customers.

We’ve positioned ourselves as the #1 House Painting company in our area, with over 250 Five-Star reviews — we provide an excellent service and our customers are always extremely happy with us.

I’m an “Employee First” Business owner.

This essentially means, if I take really good care of my team, they’ll take really good care of my customers. In theory, this works great if the following is true:

• The employees are “Bought in” to the vision of excellent customer service
• The employees feel as though they are being compensated fairly
• The employees have something external to strive toward (Personal goal, or internal organizational goal)

I’ve learned in my 7 years of management, If any of these 3 values are FALSE, that’s when the problems occur.

When an employee starts to trade their appreciation for expectation, there’s a noticeable decline in their overall motivation, workmanship, and standard.

The caring business owner has a keen responsibility to ensure the happiness of his team — to manage the 3 essentials listed above (Within reasonable capability — Remember, a happy team creates happy customers)

However, there will always be a time where someone does not appreciate the opportunity, feels under-valued in terms of pay, has outside stressers that effect performance, and loses their motivation to either achieve something personally, or ascend within the organization. Someone who was once a rockstar, could easily turn into someone that is a detriment to your brand.

A friendship built with an employee after so long, now becomes a bottleneck in the flow of the organization, which means:

• You toss the idea back and forth of whether or not it’s time to let the person go…
• You hold on to the idea that they will change, they will get back on course, they will buy in again…
• You excuse their poor performance…
• You avoid the idea of getting letting them go

The truth of the matter is, if your gut is telling you it’s time to let someone go, you need to let them go.

It doesn’t matter if this is a supervisor, a manager, a top salesperson…

Although it may cause a rift in the system initially, you’re much better off without their negativity, poor performance, and lack of care.

Too often, business owners keep people around for way too long. Either fear, or guilt is what stops them from doing so. Chance after chance, they refuse to make it right. Until eventually it gets to the point where the standard is completely dropped, and you’re the one left picking up all of the pieces because of a decision you should have made a long time ago.

I used to be afraid to let people go:

• “How will we finish this job without them?”
• “Who will I hire to replace them?”
• “What will they do for money? Their family depends on his income”

All of these questions are good, however, they shouldn’t create a stronghold of fear around making a decision that’s in the best interest of:

1. Your overall peace and well being
2. Your company as a whole

My advice +TL/DR: Let go*. If there’s someone in your organization or business that needs to go, make the decision to let them go. In most cases, this will free them to pursue other opportunity, and more importantly it will free you to give someone new an opportunity to thrive.*