Harmony of Hustle
Jump into the World of Justin Shoemaker aka "The Waterboy" . From Business, to music, this is the inside look of the world of the hyper-driven and their Harmony of Hustle.
Harmony of Hustle
Episode #25: First Legal Dispute
I want to extend a heartfelt thank you to all of you for your unwavering support and engagement—it truly means the world to me. Your likes, shares, and subscriptions are the backbone of this podcast, enabling me to bring in more insightful guests and deliver content that helps everyone. As a small-time podcaster without sponsors, your involvement is essential for growth. I’m committed to providing value-packed episodes that resonate with you. Thank you for being an integral part of this journey. Peace.
Connect with me!
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/js_shoez_/
X: https://twitter.com/Shoeinvestor2
TikTok: tiktok.com/@thewater_boy_official
Youtube: https://youtube.com/@justinshoemaker9582?si=DSsbCeNl1kgH3EKK
LinkedIn: Justin Shoemaker
So I'm going to record this now while it's fresh and while it's raw, and the point of this whole podcast is 100% transparency in the ups and downs in business, and I got to say I think today is probably the biggest down I've ever had, and there's so many lessons learned here that I wish I didn't have to learn them, but I'm going to at least transcribe them for you, uh, so that way you guys can learn from this. Um, uh, and it's so annoying, because it's such a simple thing, right, um, that you guys have already heard what I'm about to say before. But, god, when you're in it, I swear I don't know what our brains do. We just it's like we lie to ourselves and we think that the obvious won't be what happens and essentially what I'm going to refer to. I'm going to keep some of the stuff names and things uh, confidential, just because, uh, there could be some, uh, pressing legal matters pressing here soon. Um, but, to quote Alex Hermosi, if someone shows you their red flags early on, um, believe him the first time. And essentially, I didn't comprehend to what degree a single employee could do to damage business relationships with vendors and things like that.
Speaker 1:Business relationships with vendors and things like that, um, and especially when the individuals who are causing the issues, uh, are people who have a vested interest in the business, right, um, and to be fair, I, you know, I probably could have seen this coming due to some character trait flaws, um, but I'm I'm a pretty optimistic person, optimistic person, and I tend to see the good in a lot of people. I'm really passionate about building people up. I'm really passionate about trying to train and educate and get people from where they are to somewhere else, and I think that was a core mistake on my part of you know, if an individual doesn't want to change after a certain amount of time and you present them the opportunity to change, you need to cut them off sooner rather than later. And the hardest part is when you actually like the person or have a relationship with that person. You know you want to see them succeed selfishly. Unfortunately, you know, when you, when you own a business or you run a business, sometimes things happen that take all the control out of your hands. Obviously, if things happen and it goes to a certain level, you can, you know, remediate and try to fix, but sometimes things just go crazy and go out of control. So the ramifications of this are potentially me losing.
Speaker 1:Well, it looks like we lost for right now, a big vendor of ours that was going to help us get a ton of leads, and this is a massive, massive partnership. I mean, this was the key anchor for the company. This was going to be one of the biggest levers we were going to pull to push this business forward. And it's not to say we're not going to get that relationship back, but it's highly, highly strained and because of that we had to let the individual go and it's turned into a very messy exit. The individual had money put into the business and obviously when you invest in a company, you don't get it back right away. The company has to make profit for investors to be paid out for profit sharing. So it's turned into a potentially big legal battle now and it's stressful. This all could have been avoided earlier.
Speaker 1:On Um, there were a couple other things that have happened where I could have pulled the plug earlier, but I didn't Um because, like I said, I saw a lot of potential. Uh, the individual was was really good at some some key competencies in the position. So if you guys are in this, you might have a guy who's like your top salesperson or is like killing it in like a revenue generating role, which is what this was the key competency is, you know, for a couple of months, there they're really getting steam and crushing sales numbers. And I think one of, again, a fatal flaw is you see someone pushing, you know, good revenue and you kind of overlook some of the other issues that could cause problems. And I I was guilty of that and I try not to be, but you know, normally if I hadn't had a relationship with this individual prior, uh, I probably would have just let them go right away. Um, and I think this is one of the dangers of having people that you know you do have, you know that you're friends with or that you've worked with in the past, um, coming into your business, especially early on, because when these things happen, I mean it'll completely destroy relationships. And yeah, I wish you know, I wish I would have done some things different. One of the things I definitely take away is some of the other issues that came up earlier should have been addressed more, more fiercely and honestly. There should have been probably more swift action earlier on to avoid this problem and the lesson for anyone else listening really is.
Speaker 1:No matter how good someone is at generating revenue in the business, no matter if they are good at one individual task, if the overall attitude, if the overall contribution to the company isn't positive like if they're negative, or if you're getting complaints from clients enough, or if they do things outside of the job that looks bad on your company's brand, it's not worth it to try to build those people up anymore. And I used to think it was, and I've. You know every. I guess this is like my mistake. You know if you have learned in business or watched some of the top people in business. They always say like, listen, culture over everything. Right, you've got to have a good culture. It doesn't matter. You know, you'll take a, a, a B, skilled person with a plus culture and and that's how you win a winning team. And I know that. But I've seen this individual in particular is that person at their best, but on the flip side, at the worst it's completely opposite.
Speaker 1:And I naively thought that that was not so much a product of the individual at the time. I thought it was a product of the leadership. When we worked at the last business together, the leadership wasn't great and so I attributed those actions that I had seen previously to a flaw in the leadership of that business. And then, of course, now that I own this business, I thought those things wouldn't happen anymore. But I was mistaken, and so I think being able to read between the lines on these things is super important. I think trusting your advisors in the business is also important.
Speaker 1:I had my COO, you know, many times told me that this individual should have been terminated forever ago, but I, you know I still held on. I was defending them, saying, hey, we can fix this, they're a good asset. Let's educate on the bad behaviors. Try to get them to good behaviors, especially because we're a small team, right, you don't want to just let someone go, especially in the early days. But, to my mistake, that has now resulted in, uh, a massive blow up with one of my vendors and, uh, I am now in repair mode and it sucks and it's a blow and it's stressing me out. And uh, yeah, it's not great. Um, obviously it's not a death blow. Um, we still have a lot of good things going on in the business. We got really good things going on with the Google side and all other lead gen sources. So it's not a death blow, but it is a massive step back and the biggest thing is a strained relationship and that's what hurts the most is business above anything is relationships and having quality relationships and delivering on your promises to you, to vendors, to partners and the business world. It's not a forgiving place. It is not a oh my bad man.
Speaker 1:You messed up Like these big vendors and these big partners. Like they can move at any time, like they don't need you, especially when you're small. Like you have to provide more value to them upfront for them to even want to deal with you. So if you're having these types of problems early on, like it's not good and as a business owner, you know you delegate some of your, you know your brand image and how you want to be perceived to the people under you and unfortunately, you can drill your core values all the time but you can't control how those individuals act. So you have to be really dialed in and paying attention, especially on the early days when you don't have lower level management to keep that eye on for you. You really got to be sensitive if things come up. So if you start getting customer complaints, you need to have bigger red flags.
Speaker 1:If you get big blowups or minor blows that are a huge damage to the brand, at that point you just got to let those people go, no matter what stage you're in and I've heard this before I mean I knew what the right thing to do was the first time something like this happened on a smaller scale. But again, when you have a personal relationship with somebody, it clouds your judgment a little bit and you want to give people chances. At least I do. That's just kind of how I'm wired. I like to give people every opportunity to succeed before I finally pull that plug and I think that is probably my weakest attribute as a leader at this point is not pulling those plugs sooner. I obviously hold a high standard and I'll correct those, but sometimes you just have to do the ultimate plug and let them go. So finally, that's what we did At this point.
Speaker 1:The decision was out of my hands. The only way to repair these relationships was the individual had to go and it sucks. But yeah, I just hope this lesson will help someone else in a small business learn from this mistake and if you have that individual that you're really close with that you know is doing some good for the business, but also is pulling the business down a little bit or does things that make you take four or five steps back. I feel you and especially if that's like a family member, a friend, that's a super hard conversation to have and I just saying it doesn't even emphasize what it feels like when you're actually in it. But if you're going through that right now, I am telling you please, please, please, just do the right thing for the business, because ultimately you have a responsibility to that business to keep that business going. And no matter what their personal relationship is, if an individual in your corporation threatens the brand image or the reputation of that business, they cannot be there because it will unravel so fast, faster than you can even think. So I hope this is helpful.
Speaker 1:Like I said, I wanted to do this podcast and document the journey and it'll be interesting to look back on this in the next five years. But this is the reality of how things go and it's really frustrating when it's you know someone that you didn't think it would come from to this degree and uh, the other thing on this is the issue that happened with this happened months ago, so there's also a delay on this sometimes, which you don't I didn't even think could happen. You know I'm used to the the normal world where bad action happens, bad result occurs, right, and you know quick, quick feedback loop. But this happened apparently five months ago, um, and it's just now coming up. So understand that if you have that individual, even if there's nothing coming down the pipe now, it could be coming down sooner. And, uh, you want to make sure that you've already done your due diligence and that if something does happen that happened in the past that comes to your attention, you can go to whoever or you can at least have some documentation saying you already took care of it. Puts you in a better opportunity than when you get caught flat-footed with something and then you really have no credibility. So it sucks.
Speaker 1:Trying to stay positive If business was easy, everyone would do it and everyone's business journey is obviously going to stay positive. You know we got to. If, if, if business was easy, everyone would do it, and you know everyone's business journey is obviously going to be different. Um, I don't think I've ever seen a successful entrepreneur that hasn't had some major setback. The the key thing here is to keep going, and you can't build a big business with a weak foundation. So, even though we took some blows, uh, this was a good opportunity for the company to reset the foundation. Um, the individuals we have on right now are all super rock, solid, um, really good dudes, really bought into the vision and the culture. So I think, I think it was necessary at this point and I think now, um, we're going to be able to build it back bigger and stronger with the right, with the right values that I expect from my team and, yeah, it hurts, but I think in the long run, it's the right move. So, yeah, I will keep updating you guys as things progress throughout the company.
Speaker 1:Thank you guys all for listening to me. I've gotten a lot of support from you all recently. Thank you guys all for listening to me. I've gotten a lot of support from you all recently and, like I said, if you like this, if you get value from this, if you think this is something that you're learning a lot from, please share it, like, subscribe, send it to your friends. I'm obviously a small podcaster at this point, so no sponsors, nothing like that. I would just like this to get distributed to help as many people as possible, and then I can also. Maybe, if I get more reach, I can bring more people on that can then provide you more value in the business entrepreneur sales world, and that's what it's all about. So all right, guys, have a good one Peace.