Welcome to The Get Real Podcast, your high-octane boost and in the trenches tell-it-like-it-is reality therapy for personal, business and real estate investing success with your hosts, power-preneurs Angela and Ron. It’s time to get real!

Angela: Hey everybody, welcome to The Get Real Podcast. This is Angela Thomas and I’m here with Ron Phillips. Hey Ron.

Ron:  Hey everybody. If you didn’t realize it, we’re going to have a great show today.

Angela: Great show.

Ron:  It’s going to be awesome and it’s going to be unique.

Angela: I don’t know if this has been done before. This may be a truly unique podcast.

Ron:  I don’t think this is ever been done before. I’m calling it right now. So if it has, then somebody out there needs to, you know…

Angela: Let us know we’re wrong.

Ron:  Like, you guys are number two, not number one. If you ain’t first then you’re last.

Angela: Okay. We’re okay with that. Number two, it’s not bad. So yeah, so this is going to be an interesting topic because some things have changed in our company. Well, I caused some change in our company in the last what week? So it has been a week. I think I told you after our podcast last week. Yeah, one week.

Ron:  So this is going to be… I think this is going to be really good if you’re a business owner or if you are a person who is, well it doesn’t matter if you’re…. I was going to say if you’re an executive or a high level person in the company, but that doesn’t really make any difference. It doesn’t make any difference where you are in the company, what we’re going to talk about today is something that is applicable to everybody who’s listening. And it is something that I like Angela and I said, well I don’t think anybody’s ever talked about it in this way ever before and we hope that it’s going to be really valuable for you guys because this is something that man, I think we said this, I think I’ve said it at least in three different podcast episodes, Angela,

Angela: I think you have. And real quick, if you don’t mind Ron, I know people have heard this all before, but I want to give just a little bit of background because I mean if you don’t know our history, I’ve been with Ron for a decade and we actually started this company together. And I’m sure you guys have heard that story we told that way back on this podcast. Well we’ve been working together so long, it’s just, it’s kind of crazy and it’s been awesome. So… and yeah, this is really cool because Ron’s past experiences with, you know, breakups in a company haven’t so well, so I know I just gave it away, but several of them have not gone well.

Ron:  What do we call this? We didn’t give this show a name. Should we call it the breakup episode? I mean I kind of already did, but I guess we could rebreak up if you wanted to. This is the breakup episode, everybody. So I think it’s important, like I’ve said this before so I’m going to say it again right now, and then we’ll kind of go into this and what Angela and I have agreed to do is to be very open and raw with you guys about what’s going on with us. And if you haven’t figured it out yet, Angela is getting ready to leave and go make her own company, which is awesome. And if you’re listening to this right now, you should give her some applause. She can probably feel it.

Angela: Thank you. I can feel it.

Ron:  Yeah, there you go. But it’s a decades long business relationship and man, so many hours spent building something together and so it’s a strange thing. We’re going to talk about it, but I’ve said this before in several other episodes and that is that you cannot be scared of people outgrowing you or your company. You cannot be scared of that. And you can’t hire people… You can’t try to keep people down or not teach them the things that they need to know because you’re scared of them leaving. And today what we’re gonna try to do is to explain why that is by using us as a live frigging example. So here I said this three times on the podcast without knowing that Angela was going to come last week and go, Hey, by the way…

Angela: Yeah, you actually said it on the podcast we recorded last week, “Sometimes team members will outgrow your business and want to do their own thing and you have to encourage that”. Those were your words. Pretty sure. So I called Ron after we recorded that podcast and said, Hey, you know, those team members you’ve been talking about that want to do their own thing and have that burning need to go build something of their own? Yeah. I’m one of them. So And the way I approached it was… And I told Ron, I just want to say this too, since we’re being really real, I told Ron that I wanted to transition out of his company way before I felt ready because we’ve had such a long business relationship that I felt like I owed that honesty and to be completely transparent with him.

Ron:  Here’s the other thing is that Angela told me three years ago, it may be more, I don’t know, that ultimately she wanted to, you know, start her own thing and own her own thing. And and so I knew it at some point this was gonna happen. But here’s the thing that we didn’t do right when she came and told me that three years ago, I didn’t figure out how I could work her out of the business because I knew that ultimately someday she was gonna leave. That’s not what we did, right?

Angela: No.

Ron:  What we did was continue to level up, and I continued to share. I continued to do everything that you’re supposed to do, knowing that someday, which now is upon us, she’s gonna go and start her own thing. Right. But I think there’s a lot of people out there that get super fearful when someone says something like that and they start getting, I dunno what the word is, like they start getting guarded I guess with everything.

Angela: Yeah. I guess if you’d been someone else, I mean that was, you know, less trusting with me or in general you might’ve taken steps to protect yourself against me at that time or started micromanaging me thinking that you know, my heart wasn’t in it anymore and I wasn’t going to do a good job. Or there’s, there’s a ton of different things you could have do. I didn’t even really think about that at the time, that telling Ron my dreams for the future. It could have changed our relationship drastically, but it didn’t.

Ron:  It didn’t. As a matter of fact, if anything, I believe what I said back then was that if you ever do that, I will support you and I will try to help you figure out how to do it. And in the meantime, let’s continue to build the skill set you need to be able to actually make that happen. I’m a firm believer that you should be freely giving the knowledge that you have to other people to help them out. And I hope that I have played a small role in helping Angela get to where she is and it feels good that she’s going to go out and kill it at her new thing.

Angela: A small role? Okay. Come on.

Ron:  And so this is actually really cool and I, and when we were on the phone, so we should get real about this too. And this is because, let’s talk about actually how all of this goes down because when the phone call happens or the in person meeting happens Angela would have done this in person if I still lived in Utah, but I don’t…

Angela: If I even knew that you were coming out here soon, but I’ve no idea.

Ron:  So if you’re listening to this and you’re going to do this, and your call someone who lives in the same town as you, that is not what we’re saying. You should go see them in person.

Angela: No texting or calling breakups. Come on.

Ron:  But the first phone call was, you know, I mean, as a business owner you go through a little bit of shock, because Angela, admittedly she does a lot, right? I mean, this is not like a tiny little void that gets filled overnight. It’s not something you have a really small tiny transition and everything’s okay. You know, losing a really big part of the company and the company culture and you know, basically my partner in crime of bouncing ideas. I mean all of the, Angela knows everything that happens in the business because you know, we constantly communicate about everything that’s happening and I’m going to lose that piece, right? So on the phone when I’m on my side, there’s this small heart attack that happens when someone of that caliber says they’re going to leave. That’s just the way it is, right? If you’re a business owner who has ever had this happen, that’s the first thing that happens. Secondarily if you, I mean, if you really believe what I’ve been spewing on this podcast then I have to be excited for her and actually really was Angela, if you remember on the phone .

Angela: And you didn’t even let me see your heart attack. Although I had a feeling there had to be a little of that happening.

Ron:  So I also told… So this is funny, we had how many three phone calls?

Angela: Yeah, at least three phone calls specifically about this.

Ron:  On the first one, Angela, you can tell everybody how, how you felt, but I think there was some feelings that were misconstrued or some things that I said or the way I said things that were misconstrued because of the way that I handle things like this. So I turn into a cheerleader and I repress all of my feelings and I turn into a cheerleader for Angela, and Angela sits there going, I mean, will you tell everybody where you’re…

Angela: I mean, 10 years together I helped him start this company and then, you know, I tell him I’m going to leave and go build my own thing. And Ron’s like, that’s awesome. Yes, go get it. And that’s it. Just, that’s it. Just go do your thing. Go Angela. Angela rocks. Okay, well, I guess you’re not gonna miss me,

Ron:  So I get this text… This is awesome. I’m not going to read it verbatim, but this text is awesome. It’s basically, basically she says, “I think I took some of this wrong because I’m feeling a little like a little off”. But basically the text says, man, like, are you feeling anything right now?

Angela: I just wanted one single tear, you know, or a pause or something, you know.

Ron:  So make sure, I guess what I’m saying is make sure that if you are in my position in a company and someone comes and tells you that don’t repress your feelings, apparently that’s a bad thing. I’m super trying to pump her up and…

Angela: Which I appreciate.

Angela: I tell her I was going to help her out and everything like I had already been saying, but I left out the piece that I was really gonna miss her. And it’s not like she’s dying and you know, we’re like, we’re not gonna have any more kind of communications, but in the next phone call, things got a little bit different. Right. It was a little more heavy and it was a little more like, this is weird.

Angela: Yeah. It is so weird. I mean, seriously, it’s even weird when you’ve only been with the company two or three years. But when I’ve been working with you for over 10 years and you know, we’ve been basically partners in this or it’s, you know, it’s been, it’s felt that way. So I’m so ingrained in everything. I love this company. I love what we do. I love our whole team. I know it’s weird for you as well, but for me, making the choice to leave all that, that has been my home and you know, so important to me. It’s just weird. I mean, I knew I had to do it eventually. I just wouldn’t be, I just can’t be happy without building my own thing. But it’s just a really strange feeling and it doesn’t feel good all the time. Occasionally I’m excited, but it’s like a freaking roller coaster, you know? I’m also really sad about quite a bit. Quite a few things. So.

Ron:  Yeah, so this is going to be weird. And so now we’re having several conversations. As soon as we get done recording today we’re going to have another meeting. And you know, we’re doing this transition plan and all of this stuff. Well, I truly can say that I’m super excited for Angela. I’m so excited that then the next show we’re actually going to talk about what she’s doing, what her plans are so that you guys can start to clap again, celebrate Angela for at least two shows. And then after that, like if she’s gone on the next show, then I can punk her out and she won’t even know until the episode airs. It’ll be fantastic. No, we won’t do that. We’re celebrating Angela. Celebrate Angela next time and tell her a little bit about what she’s doing.

Ron:  And I think we should also talk a little bit about what’s involved in this whole startup thing, right? Because we’ve talked a little bit about it before, but man, we’re in the middle of a startup right now. Angela is in the middle of his startup right now. And you know, it would be beneficial I think for everybody to hear just what’s involved and what you think about and what you thought you knew that you didn’t know and what’s, you know, all of this crazy stuff that’s happening right now in your new business. So we’ll do that in the next show. But I think it’s really important that people understand that there’s a way to do this and there’s a way to not do this. And unfortunately I think most people do it the wrong way from both ends.

Angela: Yeah, for sure. Actually, this is really got me thinking because we’re talking about this, about even past companies where I worked, once you kind of have a plan for how you’re going to leave a company… I think a lot of people, you know, kind of shut themselves off from it and stop caring and kind of emotionally disconnect, which is why so many business owners, I think like, Ron, you can speak to this, but that’s why it’s really hard to let someone stay in your company even for a little while after you know they’ve decided to leave because naturally you assume they’re not going to care anymore and their work is going to suck and their minds elsewhere, and maybe even their, I don’t know, out to get you or you know, going to do something that’s going to screw you up or steal your secrets or steal your team members or whatever it is.

Angela: And I, because you know, integrity is actually a core value I have and I really honestly care about the company that I’m in and the people in it, of course, I would never ever do that. And I’ve always tried to leave, you know, with good relationships and making sure I put everything in until the last day and help if needed even afterwards because that’s the only way to do it in my mind. But man, that is not the case across the board.

Ron:  Actually I would say in the majority of instances, I think what happens is there’s a switch that gets flipped and the team member becomes an employee and the employee gets this me versus them attitude. And then the business owner does the same thing and they go into their corners and it’s like, dude, we’re gonna have 15 rounds now. And whoever wins it’s like a contest about who can be the biggest jerk to the other person. And it’s, that’s so deflating for the company as a whole and it is completely unnecessary from both ends. You know, there’s no reason why you can’t handle it like Angela just said. No reason.

Ron:  And I think as a team member coming in and saying, Hey, here’s what I’m going to do, but how can I best help you guys to transition? It takes a lot of weight off of the business owner. Now you need to be, you need to understand that from a business business owners’ perspective, there’s still a side of a business owner that goes, yeah, but I mean like how much output am I going to get for what I’m paying here?

Ron:  Mentally most people can’t do what Angela just said. Mentally most people checked out probably a month ago or two months ago or three months ago, and now they’ve completely checked out because now they’re committed. They’ve just opened their mouth and fully committed. Right, but I want, I want everybody listening to understand it doesn’t have to be that way. If you’re a business owner, you don’t have to automatically negatively associate someone leaving with, okay, this is going to suck. They’re not going to do anything. The transition is going to be horrible. I’ve got to now protect myself from everything. Yeah. I think that if you’ve created the right culture in your business that that should be the opposite of what you’re thinking.

Ron:  So when Angela told me that and I got over my little 15 second like, Oh my gosh, this is going to change everything in my life now and I’m going to have to do things completely different. After I got past that and after I got past the cheerleading session that I did for Angela, we get down to it and go, okay, well what are some things that I know that I can count on? Number one, I know Angela is honest. I know for a fact she’s honest. I mean, she’s had access to…

Angela: I have access to everything, Ron.

Ron:  She has access to everything, right? I mean, she could completely annihilate me and could have for 10 years now. So Angela has access to everything. She’s incredibly trustworthy. Number two, she’s incredibly loyal, loyal to the point that she probably stayed past when she wanted to because she didn’t want to hurt the company, I’m guessing.

Angela: I mean, I want to leave the company doing well. I really do.

Ron:  Yeah. So I mean, I know those two things. No, no question. I know those things, but I know those things. Why? Because our culture says that I, I know that about, I mean if we started actually going through the people in the company, except for the people who just started, I know that about everybody.

Angela: How many business owners can say that?

Ron:  I don’t have to worry about anybody in the company. Right. So, so when she brings that to me, I can now go, okay, I don’t have to freak out here. She didn’t say she’s leaving tomorrow. She wants to be helpful in the transition. She doesn’t want this thing to just like do a flop and me to have to like scrounge around and try to figure this out so I don’t have to react like so many business owners do. And now I can have a different conversation with Angela, which hopefully Angela, you felt like this isn’t going to be like, I don’t know, that I wasn’t putting some huge weight on you either, right? That we can have a conversation about how the transition works that’s an adult grownup conversation conversation that two people who have been friends for a decade can have. Right.

Angela: Yeah, exactly. And I think, and I know we’re going to talk more about the kind of culture it is that allows that to happen. One big thing though, and I know we’re going to talk about this later, but one of the reasons I loved working with you is you make everyone in the company feel like owners. I mean even if they’re not, they are partners. They feel like they, this company is their company and what they do matters. And you kind of empower them and give them responsibility so that they care about the future of the company, which is huge when somebody decides that they need to leave for whatever reason. Because if you honestly care about the company and you feel like one of the owners, hopefully you care about its longevity, its future, and you don’t want to just drop it and run. I mean the people who want to burn bridges and hurt things when they leave, they usually have some bad feelings towards the company or how they were treated and they don’t feel like they matter at that company. And I think that’s a big part of it.

Ron:  And I would throw in there too that they’re not a core value fit. They never were a core value fit. And if they were still there, that’s really on the leader for allowing them to be there when they weren’t a core value fit to begin with. And we’ve been through that. I’ve been on that, we’ve talked about that on the podcast, right, that we’re not perfect in this, but we’re really good compared to where we were. We’re really good at it now.

Angela: Since really bad breakups that we’ve had, we have really started using the core values in everything we do and hiring and evaluating. And boy has that made a big difference.

Ron:  Important guys. I know we keep beating that drum, but it’s so important. For this, for this very reason, it’s really, really important. So yeah, now we’re in the middle of, we’re in the middle of these and I have these conversations and you know, one of the things that, that, I mean Angela’s feeling all kinds of pressure right now because I am doing what I’ve always done, which is pushing her to level up. I mean, she’s already going out on her own and I’m going, look, you need to speed the timeline u., Not because that’s beneficial, I mean not because that’s the super beneficial to me because if we speed it up, that means I’ve got to try to figure out how to fill this, this void in short order. But because it’s going to be really important for Angela to do that because if she tries to just side straddle this thing, I know it’s going to be more difficult for her to get her other thing up and running.

Ron:  And so while she, well, you know, she feels a pull over here to make sure this thing doesn’t fall apart, it’s really important that the, the real pull needs to be her business. Because she, you, if you’re a business owner out there, you know, you can’t have a ton of other things because of business takes all of your attention. It’s like a newborn baby. You can’t just put it over there for hours and hours and hours and it’s going to be okay while you do something else. That’s not the way it works. You need care. Right. And so that’s uncomfortable. Right. Angela? I’m making you very uncomfortable. Right. And I know I am.

Angela: Because yeah, like I said, maybe I care a little too much about the thing I’m leaving. You know, I’ve been so wrapped up in it and I’m in every part of it. And so it’s a little hard to let go. And you know, I’m overly confident and I think I can do more than one thing at a time. But I know you’re right. Startups require a ton of attention and obviously I want to make sure that my, my new clients over there are well taken care of. So.

Ron:  So let’s talk a little bit, Angela, talk a little bit about this cause we’re, we’re not the only ones who feel this way. We, kind of touched on this in another episode I think, but let’s dive a little bit deeper into this. If you’re a business owner and if and, or if you feel like you fit into the categories that we’re going to talk about right now, it’s important that you, if you’re a business owner, that you start to appreciate these entrepreneurial minded people. And if you’re an entrepreneur minded person, it’s important that you don’t, that you utilize that and you grow inside of a company. But when you leave, you don’t be a douchebag about it.

Angela: Right here, I think it’s a really funny to point out that… Do you remember what I told you when you were interviewing me like a million years ago for the position?

Ron:  I remember that you told me that you apologize for how you looked.

Angela: Okay. Yeah. I was wearing a freaking mini skirt because you didn’t give me no notice of the interview. He’s like, can you come in right now? So I showed up looking like, what did you call me? A mall rat? Yeah.

Ron:  No, no, no, no. I did not. You said that you look like a mall rat and I…

Angela: I don’t even know in front of my vocabulary.

Ron:  I am almost positive that I would not have called you a mall rat. I would’ve called you something entirely different. Mall rat wouldn’t have been it.

Angela: Well, okay, whatever I looked like, I know that you almost didn’t hire me even though you liked me in the interview. Why was that, Ron?

Ron:  That’s correct. The reason was because she was, way, overqualified, like way overqualified because she was being… I was interviewing her for just like front desk level admin, you know, just… She had been running like the Southwest division of Abercrombie and Fitch and then she had a, you know, pretty high paying sales job for pharmaceuticals. And I mean she’d done a lot of stuff right. Graduated college when she was 17. So here’s this girl in front of me who’s done all this stuff and she’s applying for the front desk. And so no, I almost didn’t hire because I thought that she was just a stopover.

Angela: So I think that’s an interesting point to bring up though, because the reason you didn’t want to hire me is because you thought I was gonna leave quickly and all your training would be wasted, right?

Ron:  Yup. That’s exactly why.

Angela: So I think people have the same fear anytime they come across one of these kind of people. Maybe you didn’t know that. I, you know, was wanting to start my own business down the road, but you didn’t know.

Ron:  I was nowhere near as smart as I am today.

Angela: Well, okay me either. But, but you had an inkling that, you know, maybe I’d outgrow your company quickly.

Ron:  Yes.

Angela: Ultimately you hired me anyway. So why was that?

Ron:  Well, because you said that you wanted to grow and learn about real estate, and you knew that you had to start at the bottom and you were perfectly okay with that. And I thought to myself, okay, well if she wants to learn about real estate as she wants to start at the bottom, then she’s got, I mean I’ve got a lot to teach so she, if she really wants that… she’s going to be here for a little while at least. Right. Cause that was a lot to learn. And I think you’re… I mean that was a really good segue into why would you want to hire people who are entrepreneurial minded? Would you want to do that? And the very clear, overwhelming reason is because they’re incredibly talented people. I mean, think about yourself. If you’re sitting there and you’re a business owner, I think you think that you’re a pretty talented person. Most business owners that I’ve ever met think they do everything better than everybody else, which is a big pile of crap, but they think they are.

Angela: You can’t get it started without that level of a confidence and a little bit of ego, right?

Ron:  If you can hire people, bring them onto your team when they are like a an entrepreneur in training kind of a person when they have that level of talent, I’m here to tell you 10 years later, man, I got massive amounts of talent and massive amounts of growth in other people on the team because I was willing to take a flyer on an entrepreneurial minded person 10 years ago. And who knew she would’ve stayed for 10 years? And I think that also goes to the fact that if you have one of these people, one of these weird amoeba people that you know aren’t out there very much, but when you can actually bring one onto your team, it’s what you said earlier, I think Angela, it’s, you’ve got to try to make it so that they can flourish inside of the environment in which they are not typically comfortable. Because entrepreneurial minded people like you, Angela, are not employee minded people. So if you treat entrepreneurial minded people as employees, they will leave.

Angela: Yes, they will. And you know, back in the day when people asked me, I actually had people ask me that all the events that I went to with you, what it was I loved about your company and why I was staying there so long and so loyal to you. I had a few people ask me that, most of them were other business owners. They were probably trying to mooch me.

Ron:  They were trying to poach you.

Angela: Yeah, they were. But I thought about it and I, the only thing I could come up with is that, you know, you treated me well and you were, you were loyal to everyone you worked with and you were honest, which are all true and great things, but the other things you did, some of them I think were on accident. And I kind of want to talk about what those were because…

Ron:  Go ahead. Because if it was your accident, I’d definitely want to make sure I write them down and continue.

Angela: You might’ve done it on purpose.

Ron:  I will be honest with everybody. I promise. Go ahead.

Angela: No, because Ron does not believe in micromanaging at all, or even know how I don’t think…

Ron:  True. That is an accident. It’s not an accident on purpose, but it’s because I suck at it and I don’t.

Angela: Yeah. Even if you were trying to do it, I don’t think you’d be very good at it.

Ron:  No, I wouldn’t. I would probably piss people off.

Angela: You would. Yeah. But these kind of people, entrepreneurs and yeah, entrepreneurial minded people, they are highly individualistic. They want to be in control. They have a sense of urgency, they’re ambitious, all awesome things. Usually very creative. So if you try to micromanage them and don’t listen to their opinions and let them solve problems on their own, you know, if you give them the answer to everything, they’re going to get bored and annoyed with you and look elsewhere or start their own thing.

Ron:  So the honest answer to this one is that, it was an accidental on purpose. Because if you remember Angela, the whole time we’ve been looking for people to be on the team, I’ve been looking for people like me. I’m like, I said, how many times have I said about salespeople? Like I don’t even understand. Like you have freaking leads, you have, you know, you have the stuff you need, do you need me to actually be all over you? Just freaking go do your job and just do this piece over. Cause like when I was in sales, I wanted everybody to stay the hell alone, just get away from me and let me do my thing. And so I tried to find people like that because those people didn’t need me to micromanage them. And I loathe that. I don’t like it when people do it to me. And I didn’t want to do it to anybody else. And so I tried to hire that way because honestly I just didn’t want to freaking do it. So it was on purpose. But I didn’t realize that that got me these special people who are entrepreneurial minded, who are really high caliber, awesome people. I didn’t realize that’s what was going to happen. I just was being lazy.

Angela: And I didn’t realize that’s why I loved working for you so much and with you. But that’s a huge part of it. So good job doing that on accident. And now that we’ve identified it, you can continue to do it on purpose.

Ron:  I will continue to do it on accident.

Angela: Oh, and on accident. Okay. So, and these kinds of people… So we’ll go a little bit, we’ll go through these kind of one by one real quick, but I did want to point out that in Harvard business review blog, they drew a distinction between two types of people. There’s entrepreneurial minded people, which they call EMPs. I thought this was interesting. Maybe no one else will, but, and the second one is serial entrepreneurs or SEs. And serial entrepreneurs are kind of the traditional entrepreneur that has a burning desire to own their own business, build their own thing. Like I said, highly individualistic wants to be in control and has an extreme sense of urgency.

Angela: But EMPs, the entrepreneurial minded people, they share a lot of these characteristics, but they’re happier within a company and working with a group. So I mean they actually like being in an organization, they like consistency. They like working on teams. But they still have a lot of that creative entrepreneurial mindset and the drive. So if you can identify those kind of people in your own team and in your hiring, I mean, they’re extremely valuable to any business. Unfortunately for Ron, I was more of the SE than the EMP.

Ron:  Hang on though, this is where I’m going to debunk Harvard because I agree that those two types exist. What they are suggesting here is that you should kind of steer clear of the SE serial entrepreneur types and mostly just hire the entrepreneurial minded people who like working in teams because they won’t leave.

Ron:  And I disagree with that because if you can create an environment where serial entrepreneur type people are allowed to grow and you can get someone on your team who needs to grow before they actually go out and do their own thing… Here we have a prime example of that. But you didn’t leave after a year. You’re leaving after 10 years on incredibly good terms, as friends, and having given an enormous amount to the business and hopefully learned a ton along the way and this was mutually beneficial. So I think that, yes, I mean it’s obvious that you could fill your hole if you can fill your whole team with EMPs, I guess the people, that’s fantastic. But I think overlooking the serial entrepreneurial person who fits your core values is a mistake. Harvard I think draws a clear distinction. I think that’s a good thing. But I don’t think the rest of what they say about this is necessarily accurate.

Angela: No. Although they do say that it good luck telling the difference between an SE and an EMP because they are very similar. So I don’t think people in hiring would even know the difference.

Ron:  Yeah. I mean it’s, I think it’s a fool’s errand to try to do that. And I think it’s even a bigger fool’s errand to not hire these people because you’re scared of them. I think that’s stupid. I think if, I think if they match your core values and your core values aren’t that you’re a douchebag, you’re not going to attract douchebags. I know some business owners though that whether they put it on their wall or not, they’re a douchebag. And funny enough, crazy thing, they have a bunch of douchebags working for them and their culture sucks. And they wonder why all the time. Well, the why is because they have attracted people like them and everybody’s a douchebag. So they wonder why in the world they keep getting screwed over by people leaving and stealing their business model and their clients. Well, it’s because those people didn’t have good core values to begin with.

Angela: Exactly.

Ron:  Rant over.

Angela: I love it. Okay, so real quick, I know we already mentioned some of these, but let’s just go through how to get these kinds of people to stay if you’re lucky enough to find them. Because I did stay for 10 years, it’s not too shabby. Right? Number one is encourage them to voice their opinions. I mean, even back when I was, you know, a front desk person for Ron for a short time, he always listened to my opinions and bounced ideas off of me and you know, paid attention to any insights that I had. Which was really cool, especially coming in at the bottom like that. I really appreciated that he didn’t just write off any ideas I had or suggestions or thoughts about whatever.

Ron:  I mean you are an idiot if you don’t do that in your current company. So if you think that, if you think that the opinions of everyone on your team, everyone on your team, is not valuable and that you know how to do things better than everybody else, then you are a fool.

Angela: And you have to actually encourage them sometimes. I mean we’ve had some you know, team members that have worked with us that have been a little shy about it and didn’t think their opinion was worth much. And then maybe those aren’t your entrepreneurial types, but they still had some great ideas that helped us grow. So encourage everyone to share their opinions.

Angela: The second one is asking them to come up with ideas for new product service or way of doing things. Give them challenging opportunities. I know this kind of goes along with asking their opinions, but actually asking them to come up with core ideas to change the business or improve it or solve a problem you’re having; that kind of thing feeds these type of people.

Ron:  Yes. If you’re, if you’re listening to this and you’re not entrepreneur minded and you don’t understand these people are there, they’re more visionary type people and they tend to want to do things quickly, right? They want to, they want to take charge of something and they want to, I mean, they want to, they want to grow it. They want to prove they can do it. And there’s competition in these people, I mean, if you try to put a cap on these people, they will leave. So rather than do that, harness what they really like to do, which is solve problems in a big way. The more complicated, the more challenging, the better for these people. Not tiny little ones. Give them the big, you know, hairy, burly ones.

Angela: The ones that are keeping you up at night, let them, let them take a stab at it. And then these kinds of people, you know they love to take risks. That’s second nature. So you need to allow them to take risks by giving them responsibility over large projects and finding solutions like we just said. So you have to allow them to take full control over it and allow them to fail. If, if that’s what happens. Allow them to either succeed massively or fail in a big way. I’m not in a way that hurts your company. Obviously you have to be careful with this one, especially if they’re newer. But I mean Ron, because he doesn’t like to micromanage from the very beginning, just threw projects at me and said go, and didn’t really give me too much to go on. So I got to create the entire thing top to bottom.

Ron:  You know, it’s really important if you do that though, that when they come back with whatever their work product is, if it’s sucks, it’s not their fault that it sucks. It’s your fault that it sucked because most of the time she’s right. I would chuck a project at her and just say go and she has no clue what I’m…

Angela: I don’t know what Ron is picturing in his mind.

Ron:  So when it comes back and it’s not what you want, you can’t crap on their project.

Angela: Not that mine ever sucked by the way, come on. None. Even back in the day they were perfect.

Ron:  Perfect. So when they bring it, you have to thank them. You have to tell them all the stuff that they did right. That was, that’s awesome. And then you don’t say, but the rest of this sucks. You say, this is all awesome and I think we can improve this piece over here by doing X, Y, Z , and here’s what I had envisioned for it. And then give it back to them and let them, let them take the project to its completion. Right. You cannot… These people, you cannot crush their vision by doing that. Or it will, it will crush them and their spirit and then they will leave.

Angela: Yup. So true. Another thing Ron did really well is tying a reward to accomplishments. And you know, if you’re a entrepreneur type, you are the type that does things before you expect to be rewarded for them. And nothing makes Ron upset faster than, you know, an employee or someone that just expects a raise because they’re breathing and they’ve been there for six months.

Ron:  I’m going to hold that rant in right now.

Angela: You are okay for another time. Yeah, I know we’re going a little long here, but Ron always let me think there was something bigger out there, you know, and there was, so I was always working.

Ron:  Hang on, let’s not gloss over that though. I wasn’t just pumping Heather’s head full of…

Angela: Heather?

Ron:  Excuse me, Angela’s head full of some thing. Right. Or Heather or anybody else in the company for that matter. You can’t tell people that there’s some other thing over here when you know darn well there’s nothing over there because that’s, that’s just wrong.

Angela: I have had companies do that. Okay. So they do that.

Ron:  The thing that I didn’t want to get glossed over there is that you can’t tell someone and then not actually allow them to go get it over here. And so those things coupled together and they have to be coupled together. Right. So you, you can allow someone to dream that there’s something over here, but then they’re actually, when they wake up, they’re asked to actually be something over there for them to go get.

Angela: And they have to work hard enough to make it happen. Cause I mean, I know, like back when I first started with you, there wasn’t a lot of opportunity that I knew about in the company, but I figured if I showed you what I could do, something might appear. So there’s, yeah, there’s, I don’t know, entrepreneurs are usually good at that. That you know, you’re working above and beyond what you’re expected to do. Proving you can do it before you ask for it is, is pretty important.

Angela: Okay. The next one is let them lead a team. You know, these kinds of people like to be in control and like to be the creative mind and, and this gives them great practice for running their own company. No, I’m just kidding. But letting them lead a team will make them feel valued and important in the company and allow them to build a rapport with, you know, the other team members and help you create a culture. And these kinds of people will want to be in that.

Ron:  This is their lane and that’s their thing anyway. So not allowing to do that them to do that is, is dumb because it, it holds your company back. You have someone who can actually make it happen and you don’t allow them to do it. That’s stupid.

Angela: And then this last one, Ron, don’t get too embarrassed, but I put this one on here because Ron has been a role model the entire time and a mentor for me and the entire time I’ve been here. And you know, another reason I stuck around so long as he gave me something to aspire to and look up to, cause Ron had a lot of traits that I admired in a leader and that I wanted to improve in myself. And you need that. You need someone to look up to, you need, you need to know you can grow by learning from somebody else in the company. And there are a lot of bosses that are bosses, owners of a company but not a role model that someone would want to follow or have mentor them. So there’s a difference there. Be a leader.

Ron:  Thank you. That’s very kind.

Angela: Thank you, Ron. It’s been awesome. So anyway, that’s my list trying to keep this light. Let’s not get emotional here.

Ron:  Yup. No tears today, no tears today. So this is all really important. I hope you guys, I hope you guys found this beneficial cause this is, this is something that, I mean, Angela and I literally, we talked about this yesterday and we were like, we should just put this on the show. We were going through all these conversations, you were like, we should just put this on the show and tell everybody. Because this is because this happens all the time and here’s a right way and a wrong way to make this happen.

Angela: We have seen the wrong way plenty of times.

Ron:  This is such a good example of the right way to do it from both ends, not to pat each other on the back, but we kind of had, the whole show has been pat Ron in the back. But it’s not. This is a really good example of how both sides of this equation should make this transition happen. It’s really, really good because as you’ll hear probably in the next one, I’m going to be Angela’s first client in her new business.

Angela: And I actually didn’t know that. So thanks Ron.

Ron:  Yeah, so I’m going to be Angela’s first client in her new business. And how could that possibly happen if she lit a match and threw it as she was walking out the door? And how could that possibly happen if when she said she was leaving, I was like, don’t let the door hit you in the butt on the way out? I mean, to do that guys is so stupid. It’s dumb from both ends. And unfortunately it happens more that way than it does the right way and there’s just no reason for it. So I hope you got something out of this and I hope if you’re a business owner you’ve realized that that the people on your team are not your enemies when they leave… Most of the time. Sometimes they are. I hope that if you’re a team member and you’re leaving and when you go, you don’t become the enemy. Just don’t become the enemy. There’s no reason for it. It doesn’t help anybody else out.

Angela: Awesome. Thanks Ron. As always, thanks for listening and we hope you’ll listen to the next one as well to learn more about that. Make sure you visit getrealestatesuccess.com and give us comments you have on the subject we talked about or any future topics you’d like to hear, and make sure you subscribe to the podcast, and you can also find us…

Ron:  Share it.

Angela: Yeah, share it. You can find us on Facebook at Get Real Podcast and on Instagram at Get Real Podcast as well. So thanks for listening. Thanks Ron.

Ron:  See you guys.

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