Maven Marketing with Brandon Welch

How to Eliminate Negativity in Your Business

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If your business feels heavy lately (more stress, less spark) this episode might be the reset you need.

Brandon and Caleb are back together for a Maven Monday conversation on restoring joy to your business and rebuilding the energy that made you start it in the first place.

They share three practical moves any leader can make to shift the atmosphere, re-engage their people, and build a team that actually wants to win again.

No buzzwords. No kumbaya. Just clear steps to bring purpose and positivity back to work — for you and your team.

Inside this episode:
 • The leadership habit that kills negativity fast
 • How to build gravity around your company vision
 • What to do when the wrong people are pulling you down

If you’ve been craving clarity, energy, and momentum again... start here.

For entrepreneurs wanting to grow without wasting money, join the Maven Marketing Mastermind → https://www.mavenmethodtraining.com

Our Website: https://frankandmaven.com/
Instagram: /frankandmavenmarketing
TikTok: /frankandmaven
LinkedIn: /frank-and-maven

Host: Brandon Welch
Executive Producer: Carter Breaux
Audio/Video Producer: Nate the Camera Guy

Do you have a marketing problem you'd like us to help solve? Send it to MavenMonday@FrankandMaven.com!

Get a copy of our Best-Selling Book, The Maven Marketer Here: https://a.co/d/1clpm8a

Do you have a marketing problem you'd like us to help solve? Send it to MavenMonday@FrankandMaven.com!

Get a copy of our Best-Selling Book, The Maven Marketer Here: https://a.co/d/1clpm8a

Brandon Welch:

And I think you'll find that when you are unified towards making life better for the we and not the me, that just eliminates negativity because everybody goes home with purpose. Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast. Today is Maven Monday. I am your host, Brandon Welch, and I'm here with who the heck are you? AG.

Caleb Agee:

You didn't give me my first name. What is your first name? I don't even know.

Brandon Welch:

Haven't seen you around here in a while.

Caleb Agee:

I'm happy to be here. Um Welcome back. Thank you.

Brandon Welch:

Welcome back. He's back, folks. I'm back. Mr. Salib Aji. We had a client one time who called and he said, Yeah, I'll get with Salib on that. And I was like, Who's Salib? It took me three or four times, and I was like, Caleb? And this guy was like, not from around here. Yeah. And so I think he worked with a lot of folks in a different part of the world that were Salib. And I was like, no, Caleb. I was like, you know, from the Bible. He goes, Oh, I don't know anything. I don't know anything about the fact.

Caleb Agee:

Well, I mean, I guess uh it works, but how about Isaac? He's also in the Bible. He's also fun fact, all three of my names are in the Bible.

Brandon Welch:

Yes, they are.

Caleb Agee:

Age's in there too. Is it really? Oh yeah.

Brandon Welch:

Well, you were AG ing well. Tell us what you did when you were gone.

Caleb Agee:

Hey, um, I did a whole lot of nothing. No, um, I just took a sabbatical in case this is your first episode and you're like, what are these guys talking about? I've been out for four weeks. Uh I'm not sure how many podcasts weeks that was, but I think it was about four. And um focused on inputs. So, not output, inputs, which is I try to every day just do the five things that I eat a lot, yeah, focus on input, just just uh consume everything I can. No, um, just the things that make me the best Caleb, and that's uh really what I try to do. So uh for me that was reading my Bible, quiet time, uh reading something else, exercise, and writing. And beautiful. That's you get the best Caleb when Caleb does all five of those things.

Brandon Welch:

You have really good complexion about you when you came back. I don't know. Oh, thank you. Yeah, you did you did chop your beard off though. Uh I think four weeks of holding the razor really far away from you.

Caleb Agee:

It was it was getting a little wide on my face here.

Brandon Welch:

Well, hey, speaking of uh of joy, today's episode is about restoring joy to your business. Now, before you uh exit and say this one's another kumbaya, um, I just want you to know that if you are one of the CEOs who are going, man, we have gone through a lot of stuff in our business the last five years. We've gone through like having to readjust to this um I don't want to say an entitled mentality, but but what a lot of CEOs have observed as an entitled mentality or you know, people wanting more from you and culture changing and the expectations of you know remote work. And there's just there's just been a about a three, four, five year hangover for a lot of companies. And I hear a lot of CEOs talking about it, like when are we finally going to get back to work and maybe having fun and having some like having some appreciation in our business? And I think what's happened during this time where we all, every CEO, myself included, we had to just observe what was becoming culturally acceptable from employees, uh, just their relationship with work. And so if you found yourself in this place of like, I would like work to be fun and we're gonna use the word joyful, and I'd like to eliminate some negativity that may be existing on your team. Uh Caleb and I have walked through that. We have walked to many other leaders and companies through that. And we have three just get-to-work type uh prescriptions for you today. Yeah, it's three, yeah, three sections.

Caleb Agee:

Before you run away and you say, Well, I'm a solopreneur, I manage only myself. I would say these apply to you. This is how to lead people and yourself well, and that person inside your head that that talks maybe with negative words. Um and then also if you're inside of a company, I think there are aspects of this that you could aspire to and you could realize change yourself. Yeah, you could change yourself, you could change it from the inside, and you could look at this is a real thing that um company leaders are dealing with, and you can be a leader from where you are by one setting setting strong values, but then also um you can acknowledge what your leader's going through and have empathy and just and see it. So let's get into it.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah. So the the number one thing that will re like just remove this negativity and move you in the direction that I think we all want to go is to create a culture of winning. Uh, a couple weeks ago I did an episode that's like, hey, go build your people up. And it's not like um, we're not talking about throwing pizza parties or celebrating vanity metrics uh or participation trophies or anything like that. Um, but there are things that are going well. And sometimes the the negativity in an environment, uh, when you've got an elephant sitting on the chest of the US economy and politics, um you forget that even though there's less, maybe uh maybe it's less easy to breathe, there is still oxygen. Yeah. And looking for those moments to celebrate winning. And I'm gonna tell you some like tangible things and then also some some like statistical things. This doesn't you don't have to be like this cheerleader of a boss all the time. Um, but if you bake in some sort of a ritual where you are acknowledging what is working, um you get more of that thing. Yeah, you tend to get more of that thing.

Caleb Agee:

Of what you celebrate. And I think what happens a lot is um actually it's been proven scientifically, you cannot have gratitude and and negativity at the same time. It's a one-way, it's a one-way channel.

Brandon Welch:

It's within minutes when neuroscientists study it. Like literally, when somebody practices a few minutes of gratitude, the amount of cortisol and the amount of negativity just fades inside of a person's brain.

Caleb Agee:

So that that is a a one-way antenna that cannot be changed. And so when you allow yourself, when you allow your team to celebrate, to acknowledge what is good, um, there is something good. You can always find something good. Uh it's a it is a negative attitude. If you think there's nothing good in your organization, you will you have to find that for yourself first, but then celebrate that and share it with everybody and then invite them in along with that and and make a culture of gratitude and winning.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah. Uh Willie Nelson said, when I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around. When I started counting my blessings. Um, Gallup studied this recently, 2023, and they found that teams who regularly recognize each other experience 31% lower turnover and 12 times more engagement. How would you like your team to be 12 times more engaged?

Caleb Agee:

Yeah. Work human research said 69% of employees say they'd work harder if they felt more appreciated.

Brandon Welch:

They would work harder. You want your folks to work harder? Turns out there's a there's uh there's a hack for that. It's called appreciating.

Caleb Agee:

It's called appreciating it.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah, and then Harvard study said small wins, which that's what we're talking about here, small wins. It's not like you can be down for the quarter, you can be down for the year, you can be in the muck and you can still find small wins. The Harvard study found that small wins are the number one daily motivator of employee performance, beating money and praise. Just small wins, just acknowledging small wins around. So um I love what Tony Robbins says energy flows where attention goes, just give more attention to what's going well. Yeah. And so some practical ways to do this. Uh a stand-up meeting on a Monday morning, say an acknowledging three wins from your team for the last week.

Caleb Agee:

Yep.

Brandon Welch:

Uh a group text. Um, if you're a big, big company, you can't do this with all, you know, dozens or hundreds of employees, but you can have your supervisors or your, you know, your colonels down the ranks each have their own five, ten, to fifteen people, and you're going, you're celebrating within those little pods, right? Yeah. Um, a traveling trophy or a bell or a or something that you hand out, like a like an ugly moss ball.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah. That's what we do.

Brandon Welch:

That's what we use. Uh just to say, hey, Nate did awesome last week. Like just these tiny little rituals, emails or text or gathering and saying, uh, here's where I saw wins, and then prompt everybody else to sound off. That is going to create a culture of winning, and that fires dopamine hits that everybody wants to keep getting because we we get addicted to that feeling.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah. And so just practically what this looks like, even for us, how we how we pull this off. Um, those wins look like celebrating what our clients are doing. So we saw so-and-so um for us, it's ad campaigns. It's um that they grew. It's it's something went off really well. Cost per leads, or maybe we had a great shoot. We recorded something that was beautiful.

Brandon Welch:

Or this week it was uh three of our clients hit their annual revenue goals in October. Yes. They hit them, like they're done for the year. They're they're all two months of gravy.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, um, that's what that's what November is for. That is what November is for. Uh yeah, Thanksgiving. Okay, just making sure you got that. But hey, the these things are very much they do have to be tangible. They have to be tangible, and then the other thing, very often it's celebrating each other. So our team is on a team, and so it'll be like, hey, I saw Brandon do this this week, I saw Nate do this this week. And and those kinds of things also help everybody feel appreciated from within their own teams and and noticed and seen.

Brandon Welch:

And so um you want more of that, trust me. And if you do that, it turns out that that energy is flowing upward and it's it's going to just let a lot of the negativity starve and suffocate. You may have things wrong, you may you you may you may be headed for an unprofitable year, but if you aren't the one leading winning, you're gonna get more losing, and nobody wants that. So that's number one. Build a culture of winning. Number two is build a vision that has gravity. So, not unlike uh positive, you know, reinforcement, uh, a vision where we're going. If the news is we're going here, and here's our progress to getting here, and here's what we want it to look like, and here is the world we're creating, vision, those things, things that are bigger than you, or things that are bigger than even a group of people have gravity and people are attracted to that. Yes. If you do not pull them up, they will get pulled down, and that is your fault as the leader. And so we want uh we want to be as leaders building building a vision, like sharing a vision, keeping a vision alive, um, restoking the vision, reminding the vision. Uh Zig Ziggler said, um, we recommend motivation daily, just like we do bathing. Um, it's a good idea to keep doing day after day. Yeah. And so uh, especially weary visionaries um who think they've said it 20 times, well, you need to say it 2,000 times more.

Caleb Agee:

Yes. And then I think I think the other thing that's important is as you make hard decisions throughout the course of your business, while you're while you're doing things that make the challenges that are uncomfortable, things that push your organization to do more, to do different, um, these are the things that make your employees on the front lines uncomfortable. They have to, they're gonna have their jobs got a little bit harder because you made a decision that maybe they don't seem like they like or they don't feel like they like. What you have to do is connect that decision to the vision. And if if you don't connect that decision to the vision, they will think you're just trying to do more, bigger, better, faster. And that's not necessarily what you're trying to do. What you are doing is you're saying, hey, we are here today. We are going over there.

Brandon Welch:

More work matters.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, we are going over there. And the thing I just implemented, the thing we just signed up to do, it leads us in that direction. And so won't you come with me? Thank you so much for doing this. And that gravity drives them up the hill so that they're not stuck looking at their at their hands, wondering why you just dumped something in their lap. Uh, you know, I just you just gave me a bunch of more stuff to do, and I don't really know why to do this. You have to connect those tangible small things to the big gravitational thing.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah. So practically, um, you may have read this in your Bible. Yeah. You may have read this. Uh where there is no vision, the people will perish. That's right. Um, but practically, I think you are rewriting your vision uh to answer why does this matter to the world? If we don't do this today, who suffers? Who misses out? Um, what loss, uh, what what loss to our calling did we have? And it's like going to work is more of a I just say this because it count it could be weird, but it's almost more of a spiritual calling. What are we supposed to be doing? Why are we showing up here? Even if we're making cardboard boxes or you know, taking out the trash or whatever, if that's our job, like what is that enabling? Who is that enabling to work better, harder, clearer to hit their goal? And I think you'll find that when you are unified towards making life better for um the we and not the me, um, that just eliminates negativity because everybody goes home with purpose. Yeah. And and what a what a purpose starving world that we have um going on in in a lot of a lot of corners of life, right?

Caleb Agee:

Yeah. And that gravity, that large thing that you're driving toward, it can't be cheap. It can't be um what it can't be the corporate thing they expect you to do. Yeah. It has to be big. It has to be, it could literally be we dig ditches because it helps the water run to the river and keeps people from sliding off the roads. Great. Be the best ditch digger you've ever been. You know, and you can connect everything to a purpose that supports um, yes, it makes your organization grow. It you should be every organization with a strong mission should be trying to further that mission as far as it possibly can go. Yeah, that is the reality of it. But uh it also helps the people that work with you, the people that work for you, and you need to point them to that at all costs.

Brandon Welch:

Love the ditch digging example. But take take somebody that's like I don't know, maybe stuck repairing forklifts or something like that. Something, somebody that's just it's a really tactical, technical, maybe a dirty type job. It's like, okay, well, what is a forklift? So I repair forklifts. Well, you could say you're keeping America's supply chains moving. You could say that you are keeping Amazon packages going, you could say um by repairing this forklift, you are allowing dozens of companies, some that may be saving lives, some that may be getting um people home for the holidays. I mean, you do you do an incredible amount of work just by the the ripple effects of your nature. And so look for those stories, read them back in your team gatherings. Um and and I'll warn you, like, if you just start doing this out of the balloon, you've never done this before, people are you're gonna get some crickets. Yeah. Like you're gonna have to, you're gonna have to you're gonna be like, we did this, and they're gonna be like, huh, what are you smoking, right? But yeah, but um stay after that. Uh tell the stories about what uh your vision and what the purpose of the work contributed to. And so uh lots and lots of data that says that companies that do that outperform the market um by a lot. Companies with purpose um, I think perform on average 42% better than uh companies that don't. So um you want to be one of those ones with purpose. So the last one, um, maybe something you're you're already good at, but we're gonna reframe it. Um recruit and release. Um the the math is this uh there are there are 10% of people that are gonna like you no matter what and they're going to the moon with you. There are 10% of people that are gonna hate your guts no matter what and they're gonna detract from what you're trying to do. Uh 80% in the middle is up for grabs, generally. And so that's who we need to work on with the last two tactics. But those those top 10 is who we're trying to recruit more for. And those bottom 10, we just need to release them, man.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah.

Brandon Welch:

And uh, you're not doing yourself or them any favors. There's no illusion of grace or anything that's happening there if you are letting somebody stick in a position that they don't like. And if they don't see your vision after trying some of these other things and it's clear, it's like, hey, uh, let's let's get you to a place where you ought to be, because it's obviously not here, right? Yeah. Let's free up your future, right? Yeah. Promote you to a position outside this organization.

Caleb Agee:

You want to hire slow, fire fast. And that's that's a tough thing to say because to be honest, that's uh firing's probably the the worst part of my job. Yeah, no, you don't. Um but it is, you know, it is so important, not just for you know, for the organization, but it's important for the people sitting next to them, and it's important for you um to be able to make decisions um at relative speed. Give people chances, obviously, give them chances. We're not trying to be cold or anything like that. But um, if they're not bought in, if they uh genuinely don't have the capacity to do what they've been asked to do, you are doing them a favor that's right by letting them go.

Brandon Welch:

Yep. And uh every gardener knows this. You weed out, you you take out life of the garden that isn't serving the major crop. Um every tree that is beautiful has been pruned and and you know, branches have been cut off, and you have to do the same thing because you cannot outlead chronic negativity. There's somebody who's just trying to be miserable, they will bring people down. So MIT even did a study that said that uh forty percent uh drop in performance can happen just because of one toxic employee. One toxic employee, 40% drop in team performance. Crazy. We've had these moments over the years where it's like you finally let the person go, and then it's like, oh my gosh, why didn't we do that about you know eight months ago? And so you don't have to be mean. Uh we're not talking about that. We're just talking about if they are supposed to be going to the moon with you, you'll know it, and you'll know it, and they'll tell you if they're not, and so listen to them. So um um, I think doing this on quarterly reviews uh is a minimum of like just like are you happy here? Like, do you feel good about our mission? Like, there's a number of things you could ask um of like, are they s are they doing what the job position needs them to do? Um, and then are they happy doing that? Is this their highest and best purpose? I think that the more you have some of these other two things we talked about, which is strong vision and then a culture winning, and you see them not participating in that, that's a that's a start giveaway because um you know it just it's just holding up the mirror uh more often for them. And so um this does not have to be you know passive aggressive for months at a time to get out of here. It's just like, hey, here's where we're going. I'm looking at one, three, and five years for your future. Where do you want to be? And let's just look and see if there's an intersection of our mission and yours, and then just say, I'm not sure that it is. How do you feel about that? And they'll usually be the one to self-opt out. So I mean give them a runway. Uh we've done this lots of times. We said your new full-time job for the next two months, which means we're going to pay you, is to start looking for your next job.

Caleb Agee:

Is to find a new full-time job. Yeah.

Brandon Welch:

Yep. And word of the wise, do go ahead and put a date on that. Be like, Yeah, by July 31st, we need you to kind of be scooting. Yeah. So um, so guys, that was it. That was um create a culture winning, have a strong vision, release and recruit for the right people. And uh, if that sounds simple, it's because it is. Uh, but it's often the simple things that we don't we don't keep doing over and over again. So follow the advice of Zig Ziggler, do it at the speed of and frequency of bathing. Do it often. Um, we want so bad for 2026 to be the year of revive joy and your business, um, of growth, of confident um vision, confident mission, confident culture, and just overall feel good in the in the world of small business. Like small businesses literally can change America. And it turns out that's who it's gonna have to be. Yeah. Because the other guys aren't doing it. The guys in Washington aren't doing it for us, right? Yeah.

Caleb Agee:

It's gotta be. It's gotta be small business that's going to change things. Um, and uh I would encourage you to make sure you look at these things um and make sure it's distilled all the way down through your company. Uh it's it's really easy to talk, talk big at the top. Um, you probably have conversations with people directly beside you, but make sure there is a mechanism that causes that to come down even to the person furthest away from you. And and this kind of encouragement, this kind of gravity, all of these things have to show up um on the regular, or else you'll start slipping. You'll see, you'll see it fall, you'll see the negativity come.

Brandon Welch:

And um if you aren't pulling them up, they're gonna go down. That's right. So go and pull them up. Let's do it. We'll be back here every Monday doing our best to pull you up and answering real life marketing questions because marketers who cannot teach you why are just a fancy lie. Have a great week.