I Had to Fire an Employee for the First Time

In this episode of the Clean for Profit podcast, I talk about something every growing business owner eventually faces: personnel problems and hard leadership decisions.

Last week, I had to fire an employee for the first time. We dive into what led up to it, what I learned from it, and how growth in business starts changing the kinds of problems you deal with.

When you go from being “just a guy cleaning windows” to leading a real team, the game changes fast. Standards matter more. Communication matters more. Culture matters more. And avoiding hard conversations can hurt everyone involved.

I also share updates on Sierra Window Cleaning, the growth we’ve been experiencing, and the reality of building systems, managing people, and trying to scale without losing your mind in the middle of busy season.

If you’re growing a home service business, building a team, or stepping into leadership for the first time, this one will probably hit home.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to Clean for Profit. We got a quick solo episode today. Um, guys, it's been a crazy last few weeks, last month, whatever. As far as you want to go back, it's been a crazy year, man. Um today is uh May 10th, so we're a third of the way through the month of May. And um we're positioned to do probably like $45,000 to $47,000 in window cleaning and window cleaning only this month. Uh, and a lot has happened, man. I think probably the main lesson that I've that I've learned from hiring this year so far, and I already mentioned this in one of the last episodes that I did, but just to go over it briefly, because I think it's really important, is that I hired too late. Um I hired when I needed it, not before. And as a result, that's put me in a position where I'm a little bit um bottlenecked. Not a little bit, I am really crucially bottlenecked by my ability to do the work. So, you know, I've been a solo operator for the better part of eight years now, um closer to nine years, and um and I I liked it that way. But uh, you know, this year I really in collaboration with my coach decided to grow and have been working towards that. And the amount of work that we've picked up has been staggering uh unexpectedly. So if I had any idea we'd be moving at this momentum, uh I certainly would have hired earlier, but I didn't. Um so I started hiring in like February of this year. So about three months ago now. And I I just I brought one guy on. He's been doing really great. Um, he's at like a solo operator kind of level now. There's still some stuff here and there that he needs help with when it comes to doing ladder work and stuff. Um, but that's just one example of where you know I've been also trying to keep up with demand. So I've been hiring more. Um, and we had uh a guy come on, and he came on about a month ago, and I ended up firing him. Um so I wanted to talk about that specifically and like what happened there without getting specific. Um uh because I I definitely learned a lot from it, uh, and I'm gonna be using what I learned moving forward, and maybe you can avoid the mistakes that I made in in hiring this guy. So, like I mentioned, I started hiring too late. So by the time I was making hiring decisions, I really wasn't in a place of leverage by any means. I wasn't in a place where I had optionality, I needed basically a warm body, and I was trying to vet as much as I could. Um, but like my vetting was basically a quick phone call, and um that that was the majority, that's the majority of the vetting that I was doing. So it was very minimal. Um, and I'm not even sure I would have caught this stuff if I had done in-person interviews and gotten to know know the guy, but there really wasn't a stage where I was able to learn anything about character. Um, so I learned about qualification, background, etc. And as far as I could tell, this guy that I ended up hiring again about a month ago was very much so qualified to do the job, and he was. That's honestly the hardest part about having to let this guy go, is that he was a month in and he was he was a very good technician. Um super productive. But um some stuff started popping up pretty early that um that I knew right away were red flags. So this guy's in his 30s. Um he's older than me by a little bit. And um we were working together, it was our third day, and we had, you know, we were at the first job of the day, and um, you know, on his on his second day, actually, I'll go back a little bit, we uh we were wrapping up a job, a big job. It was a sixteen hundred sixteen hundred fifty dollar job. So it took us all day. And uh it was me, my brother, and him at that job, and uh I thought I had closed a gate. Uh well actually I had, um, but it was really easy to push open. And the owner's dog got out and started running away, and it's like an old dog that can't hear very well, but it's still pretty healthy, so he was able to run. Um, and the owners weren't home, and they had specifically told me about you know that dog um and his proclivity to try to escape. So I thought I was being cautious, but um not quite as vigilant as I could have been. So that ended turning ended up turning into a five-minute fiasco of chasing after this dog and uh you know catching him and getting him back home safe. So no no bumps in the road, no worries there, but it was kind of a bummer because you know, for the moment I felt like I kind of failed my client, but you know, it is what it is. We got the dog back, he was totally chill, all good. So that was on a Friday. On Monday, we were at the first job of the day, and uh we're you know, we have branded sweaters or whatever, every employee gets one, and uh, we were inside and it was warm, so he took his sweater off. And, you know, one of the rules that we go over for our company, like this seems like super anal, and maybe it is. Um, but the rule is like if you take off a piece of clothing um or anything of that nature, make a quick trip back to the car to put it in the car. Um, or make it extremely, extremely obvious, you know, where where you're leaving it, so you can't help but grab it as you're leaving the house. Well, he he ended up putting it on the kitchen counter uh of my client's house. And he didn't realize it until we were done at the second job. And when he realized that I checked my phone and my client had sent me a picture of that sweater in her hand, and it just said, oops, dot dot dot. Now, this client, super cool, not a huge deal. But look, it would there were three of us that day, and I sent my guy to the third job of the day, and we took it was 15 minutes away to the first job, so we took a half an hour out of our day to go get his sweater back. Um, again, you know, day three, not a huge deal, but I I used that just briefly, not as an opportunity to scold him or anything like that, but um. But, you know, on the second day when we were at that big job, there was something that came up where we wear booties when we're inside, and he had taken his booties off and left them on the ground basically, so he could go outside and do some windows real quick. And I was just like, hey man, just so you know, um let's keep let's like let's keep our booties on us when we take them off, just throw them in your pocket real quick instead of laying them on the couch or on the floor or whatever. And like instead of being like got it, instead of like acknowledging that, he was just he said basically like oh yeah, I was just gonna I was gonna get it back when I came back in. Which is like weird. It's a weird way to respond to a request. Um I mean it's just as easy to say got it. Um so, anyways, he left his sweater on on Monday, and uh we came back or I I brought up the booty thing on that on that day when that happened, because I was like, just so you know, man, on Friday that booty thing happened, and you kind of like talked back to me when I told you to just keep it on you, right? Well, this is what I was trying to avoid. I was trying to avoid us forgetting something because we always all of us forget stuff. Um I was trying to avoid having to do something like this, or just leaving booties all accidentally in a client's house. It's like we left her trash there, essentially. And the first thing what he did in response, what he said in response to that was like, Look, man, we all make mistakes, like you let the dog out on Friday. Um and it's like fuck you. You know, like don't talk to me like that. I you know, I have a seven-year-old, and I'm teaching him not to talk to me like that right now. So I don't know. Maybe I'm being a bit of a hard ass. That is not why I ended up letting this guy go. But that is one very specific example of something that I didn't vet properly for, which is character um and accountability. Um, like I said, this guy was a great technician, but there was no accountability when it came to instruction. Um I I always do my best to be as understanding as I can and to be as like, I don't know, emotionless as I can, I guess. Um and we have really specific ways that we do stuff in our business, and that's just the way it is. And the people that we work with right now and like the employees that we've had on so far don't seem to have a problem with it. Um but there were just there were just some attitude problems in this guy that's in his mid-30s that um well that my parents certainly didn't put up with um and that I didn't know I I wasn't aware growing up that some parents did put up with it. Um which is weird because it's like yeah, like I said, there there's some of these some of this behavior I'm currently training my six, seven year old, six soon-to-be-seven-year-old um to not emulate. And it's like I'm on a job site at my client's house trying to train somebody in their mid-30s, the same lesson. Um, you know, after a month that gets pretty old. And so anyway, um, that's like one example. Um, I was constantly being talked back to whenever I had a note um on how to slightly improve something, even if it wasn't a huge deal. Um, it was always pointing the finger at a different time that somebody else made a mistake that was similar. Um, instead of taking any accountability, there was no accountability from this guy. And I think out of all of the things that I could ask for that are intangible, like soft skills from an employee. I'm trying to think, I would say honesty and accountability are tied, if not extremely close to each other in terms of priority. Uh, but they're they're tied, if they're tied, they're tied for first. Uh I need you to be honest, and I need you to be accountable because I'm gonna be accountable to you if you make a mistake and you take accountability for it. First off, if you make a mistake, you work for my organization, I'm taking accountability for your mistake. So, uh, from the perspective of the client. Um and uh because of that, I expect the same from you. Like, I can't have people blaming other people when they're the ones that made a mistake. That is not the attitude that I want to foster within my organization, and beyond that, it's not the attitude of a leader in any capacity, and so you know, again, I'm not gonna rant about this guy for 45 minutes, but this was a really good lesson, and I've got a guy, you know, it's Sunday, I've got a guy that's starting tomorrow. Um, I've vetted this guy more. You know, it's it's hard to see this stuff in advance. Um but I have spent a couple hours with this guy. I don't get the impression that he has this particular issue. Um and so we'll see. But anyways, um this is just part of the reps that I'm putting in right now. Making hires, making good hires, making bad hires, having to fire people. I will say, I I think I timed it well. Um, but man, I overthought it. I totally overthought it. Uh when I went to fire this guy, I just basically told him, look, man, uh like we talked two weeks ago, and I brought up three specific things that I needed him to change. Like we sat down and we had a a real brass tacks conversation about what it takes, what it would take for him to be able to stay at this organization. So this did not come out of left field for him. Two weeks went by, one of the three things he had fixed, the other two were like maybe two out of ten, three out of ten improvement over the last two weeks, which is unacceptable. I mean, I need like a 90 to 100% improvement, nine to ten out of ten. Um, and he hadn't done it, so it was time to let him go. And uh he uh they my my lead team lead and him pulled up at the end of the day. I gave him a check and I told him, Look, man, this isn't working. Uh I don't I don't think this comes as a huge surprise to you, but this isn't working out. And he said, Okay, shook my hand, and that was it. He he walked off. And actually, I mean, speaking of character, before he left my driveway, he had posted on a local Facebook page uh offering his window cleaning services, which I thought was very very funny. Um it was on a page where you're not even allowed to advertise, so I was able to throw a laughing emoji on it before I got taken down. I I did not report it, by the way. Like I I don't care. That's the that's the thing, is it's just like clearly this guy was a bad character pick. Like I made the wrong call on this guy's character. And that's because I just didn't have enough time to to get to know him. And even if I had ultimately, like he's kind of a chill guy, like he reminds me of me a lot, like ten years ago, um, when I was working at ski resorts and stuff like that. Um But yeah, bro, it just wasn't a good just wasn't a good call, wasn't a good fit, so we had to move on. And we got another guy starting. Um so my prayer is that he's a much better fit. Certainly seems to be the case already, um, but only time will tell. But uh yeah, anyways, guys, um this podcast is about me growing this business and about other people that are growing their businesses, and so we're gonna get on the mic um on occasion and just sit down and talk about what's happening in uh in my business because it's crazy, it's moving faster than I had really anticipated. I'm I have this interesting bottleneck I don't think I fully described earlier, where it's like I uh you know, I'm training guys still. I've got one guy that can help in training, but we haven't like polished the training process enough to where I'm comfortable fully handing off training to him. Um so I'm stuck training guys, and I'm like still stuck in the truck. We're totally booked through May. June drops off a little bit, but we have um our lead tech is getting married and he'll be on his honeymoon for two of the weeks out of that. So that opens up things a little bit. But yeah, it's just a weird time because we're like super booked. I don't have really any time to do estimates right now, so I haven't been running Facebook ads. I've just been working my organic leads that come in, which is still a lot. Um, so our growth is really capped by our ability to produce right now, and so yeah, I just need to keep calling, uh like keep not calling people, keep reaching out uh through recruiting to try to meet new people that would be good fits. And you know, one thing that my coach and I talked about is like I need to always be hiring, just not right now, meaning like I can be talking to people that want a job and let them know that this job is like two months out, three months out, um, and that we'll call you if we need you um sooner than that, so that I have a list of people that I have vetted to some degree and that I know are looking for a job and that I can call to see if they're still interested when it comes up. Instead of like trying to hire today for a role that I needed to fill yesterday, that just doesn't work. I need to be hiring this week for a role that I need to fill two months from now. So that's another thing that's coming up, man. It's like May, June, July. I have May, June, July. I have three months uh before one of my guys uh leaves for four months. Uh he's going to boot camp, he's in the Nash Army National Guard. Um, and it sounds like he wants to come back, but he might not be like stationed in the area. Um, so there's no guarantee that he'll be back either. So um it's like I need to be meeting people and hiring right now to fill that role when that opening comes. You know, luckily it's timed with some downseason stuff, but at the same time, like I don't really want less than three guys running for me. Um because that's like my lead tech, one other guy that's trained up that can be a lead, and then one guy that we're training, um, or that is just like a technician. Um that puts us in a really good position because then we got two leads and one tech. That gets us one tech away from being fully like full-time two trucks running. Um that gets us two techs away from the team lead being able to step back into an operations manager role, train a third truck, and like actually have some really serious momentum where we can do you know seven to eight hundred thousand in revenue next year. Um so anyway, that's the high level. Um that's why I fired somebody. I've never fired anyone before, man. Um, I've always just kind of like uh like if the season was coming up, I was just kind of like, look, man, it's slow. I can probably take it from here. Uh, I've never hired somebody that ended up truly, truly not being a fit, and actually truly ended up being a risk to the organization if they were around. Because culturally, it just wasn't a fit culturally, man. I can't be around people that aren't accountable. My my partner is the same way, my team lead. And so it's like, dude, if you're not getting uh if you're not if it's not working from a personal standpoint with the two top dogs in the company, I don't think it's gonna work out, brother. So, anyways, I just wanted to make this to let you know that sometimes you just gotta eat a shit sandwich, and uh that's how it goes. So if that's where you're at, um, I feel you, dog, um, and would love to talk to you. If you guys have experience building teams, you know, I we we have some re regular listenership now. Um you know, I assume most of you are just starting or have started and are trying to grow. But I'm in that growth stage, man, where it's like this isn't just me anymore. We're trying to do big numbers, we're trying to get something where I can be out of the truck um and like have a business, have a business, not a job. Um, but I would love to talk to you if you've built teams before in any capacity, especially in the home service business space. Um, I'd love to have you on and kind of pick your brain uh about best practices, standards, interviewing, like building like recruitment funnels, um, all that cool stuff. Let's get into it. Reach out uh if you have experience doing that. And in the meantime, this has been clean for profit. I appreciate you guys uh tuning in, and we will talk to you next week.