I have a two-year-old grandson who, in my humble opinion, is on the verge of being spoiled by his mother (my daughter).
Here’s what I mean.
When the little guy acts out, which is most of the time, rather than correcting his behavior with a disapproving look, telling him “no” – or at minimum, not giving in to his demands, she attempts to “redirect” his attention.
That’s the term she uses. Redirection.
Problem is, she usually redirects his attention by turning on a favorite video, showing him her phone, or giving him a treat.
She thinks she’s being progressive and loving, but what she’s really doing is encouraging and enabling bad behavior.
And if she doesn’t get a handle on it, it’s only going to come back to bite her in the ass later on in life.
I get it. She loves her only child. I love him, too.
But trying to be his best friend rather than a guiding parent is not the way to raise a child.
The same goes with employees.
It’s perfectly fine to like your employees, but looking the other way when they get out of line doesn’t help them in the slightest.
Again, it’s encouraging more of the same, and it’s not allowing them to grow.
At the outset, you need to offer praise when they overcome a difficult task or go above and beyond to get the job done.
But when you get wind of behavior that’s not in line with the way you do business, you need to take them aside and get them back on track.
I know I talk a lot about getting buy-in from your employees. And you might think that correcting bad behavior is counterintuitive to that message.
But it’s not.
In fact, when your people are bought-in to your company, negative behavior is substantially decreased.
And when it does occur, the conversations are easier and less contentious.
That is if they respect you.
Of course, respect is earned.
And one way to lose respect is by demonstrating a lack of integrity.
Which brings me to a cautionary tale I was reminded of recently.
It’s an avoidable mistake that can cause your employees to lose respect for you and put you out of business, fast.
It’s what I refer to as “Sniping your customers’ customers.”
It usually happens when the tow company owner also provides mechanical repair or collision repair services.
For example: Bill’s Towing gets a call from the International dealer to go pick up a tractor-trailer and bring it in to them for repairs.
And while Bill is out there hooking up the truck, he strikes up a conversation with the driver and convinces him to bring the truck to his shop instead.
Not good.
Because as anyone with half a brain cell understands, after this, the International dealer isn’t going to be calling Bill back anytime soon.
What’s worse is, when these types of incidents occur, everybody talks about it.
“Did you hear about Bill’s Towing?”
“Yeah, what was he thinking?”
And once Bill’s employees learn about his short-sighted move, how do you think they’re going to feel?
You think they’ll feel secure in their jobs?
Not likely.
To grow your business, you need to operate with the highest integrity and treat everyone you come into contact with fairly.
No matter what you see others doing. Or excuses you might conjure up to justify your actions.
Because everybody’s watching you.
And if you act like a two-year-old caught with his hand in the cookie jar, you’re going to be back to square one in no time flat.
Try this instead.
To maintain your integrity, rather than always taking a cookie from the jar, try putting one back.
What am I talking about?
Well, we all owe what we learned to those who came before us.
Be it our Father, Grandfather, Brother, Mother, coworkers, or past employers, we learned how to do much of what we do up in this business from others.
I want you to think of this cumulative knowledge as cookies in a cookie jar, from which we’ve made numerous withdrawals over time.
And we, in turn, will inevitably pass down that knowledge to others.
But if you’re good, instead of simply passing on what you learned, you’ll improve on it.
You’ll tweak some aspects of what you know and make it better than it was before.
And when you do, in essence, you’re adding to the cookie jar.
Now, if you’ve gotten this far and you’re like… “Cookies, WTF?”
“I thought this was the cash calls guy. He’s talking about cookies while I’m struggling to keep fuel in my truck.”
I get it. You’ve got to walk before you can run.
And it might be hard to think about operating with integrity and all the high and mighty stuff I talk about if you’ve noticed a huge decline in your call volume lately.
Maybe you’re not sure what’s going on and think that your lack of cash calls is an industry-wide problem.
To clear up that question, I assure you it is not.
Millions of towing-related searches paint an entirely different picture.
But if you feel like something is definitely very wrong because you went from receiving 18-20 cash calls daily down to, at most 1-2 on a good day, and somedays 0 calls…then this is a problem that needs fixing right away.
And we can help.
One caveat, though, before you schedule a call, there are prerequisites to working with me.
If you don’t have two nickels to rub together and can’t invest in your business, we’re not going to be a fit.
Second, if you think you know what we do because your cousin once watched a YouTube video on web design, don’t sign up.
But if you’re sick of wasting your time Shopping & Hopping all those Get-You-Nowhere web companies who will gladly urinate on your trousers while telling you it’s raining, then a call is definitely your best bet.
That’s it for me today
Don “No Nonsense” Archer signing off.
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