hey everybody how's it going i hope
you're all having a lovely lovely
weekend so today i wanted to discuss a
video that i did nine years ago it's
called control yourself to control the
world why it's right to be at fault even
if you're not wrong and also
contrast that with this video i did
yesterday where you have three people
who work here steve data recovery and
management dan board repair and patrick
shipping having a three-way contest with
a foam basketball that they shoot into
this little hoop over here that is by an
ikea shelf that houses the junk and
garbage before it goes into e-waste so
we have this over here which is the
normal garbage and then this ikea shelf
which is pretty much e-waste waiting to
be collected and it's kind of bigger
because you know there's a bunch of
stuff that we don't really have like we
don't have garbage pickup for e-waste
every single day and you can see that i
also have my lovely little bike parked
over here now they were having a
three-way contest to see who could win
you know who can get the ball in the
hoop more and somebody had commented
saying as a customer if i walked into a
repair shop and saw employees playing
like this throwing balls i'd be hesitant
to leave my device for repairs after
watching this i'm not sure what the best
way to handle a situation like this is
and you know what's maybe this isn't the
time and place to be playing eh
and uh you know this particular person
has often left comments that were really
really pedantic but i wanted to kind of
dig into this a little bit because i
think it's an important topic now one of
the things that i think is really
important to understand as a manager is
that there must be a balance so if you
are always on the side of your employees
you're likely to have a blind spot to
how your employees are not serving your
customers if your employee comes up to
you and says this person was mean this
person was an ass this person is lying
and you always side with your employee
there is a chance that you will be
providing poor customer service as a
result of that if you always think to
yourself there's nothing i could have
done in this situation you then there's
a good chance that you may not improve
to a point where you're actually able to
provide better customer service in this
video where i say control yourself to
control the world why it's right to be
at fault even if you're not wrong what
i'm saying is that even if you don't
believe you did anything wrong it's
important to always have some
introspection on how your systems and
processes could have been different to
avoid a negative outcome and i give
examples in this video you can't control
somebody else choosing to be an
but you can always control how you deal
with it or how you put your systems in
place to lessen the likelihood of that
happening in the future and that's
something that we do with this business
all the time anytime something doesn't
go as planned a ticket doesn't go as
well as it could have i'm always
scrolling through this and regardless of
whether or not i think the person in the
ticket is being mean or an ass or
whatever else i always think to myself
what could we have changed in order for
this to have gone better if it's taking
a little longer to get something and
there's a shortage of it and it's known
that there's a shortage of it i think to
myself well why didn't we stock up on
that ahead of time so that if there's a
shortage into the future we'd be able to
offer a service that nobody else could
i'm always thinking to myself what can
we do differently and that's an
important part of doing business here
you know we always want to be the best
at what it is we're doing and we're
always looking at how we can control
ourselves because we don't have control
over the world we don't have control
over the customers we don't have control
over the supply chain but we have
control over the choices that we make at
the same time i think it's very
important to also understand that if you
consistently side with the customer
that you may end up in a situation where
it's close to closing somebody's on
break and you're not allowed to use a
foam ball and toss it into a small
basketball hoop because that may be
perceived as quote unprofessional and if
you go that far in the opposite
direction if you go that far and have
the pendulum swing in the direction of
pleasing every single person the type of
person who's going to be mad and walk
out because they see somebody having fun
then you're likely going to end up with
a workplace that has far more
compromises than retaining that one
customer most people who walk into a
place like this if they're greeted
immediately when you walk in the door if
somebody immediately attends to their
issue shows a level of proper
professionalism by proper
professionalism i mean actually knows
their stuff not is wearing a suit and
tie and says yes sir and thank you sir
and gets their issue resolved
99.9 of people are not going to care if
one person that's 90 feet away in the
back of the store next to the bathroom
and a junk shelf are using a foam ball
and tossing it into a hoop that's just
not something that's going to be an
issue but what can become an issue is if
the people that are doing the work are
then demoralized because you take away
everything that is perceived to be fun
because to others it is perceived as a
harm or a danger because at the end of
the day you got to think to yourself
who's the type of person who's going to
complain because they see somebody
actually having some fun and you also
have to understand the kind of work that
we do in this industry this is a job
that takes a toll on you it takes a toll
on you mentally but it also takes a toll
on you emotionally this is steve's clean
pure air bench he has two of them this
is his pc 3000 machine and all of his
donors there are times where he has
spent 30 hours on a single drive and
only gotten a partial recovery where
that partial recovery was not good
enough for that customer so it was all
to waste there are times where paul or
dan have spent seven hours digging
through a hole in one board to try to
remove every single short and they
finally do it only for it to
intermittently turn on for a reason that
they can't figure out when it doesn't
matter in this field it's one thing i've
noticed it doesn't matter if you've been
in this field for nine years there are
technicians that have been with me for
nine years that have fixed tens of
thousands of tickets that are experts
when you have three or four difficult
cases in a row that you have spent
several hours on and you got nothing out
of it it is depressing it takes a toll
on you emotionally it can give you that
sense of imposter syndrome of maybe i'm
not good after all and it's really
interesting to me how regardless of how
successful somebody is regardless of how
good they are regardless of how many
five-star reviews are in their name for
work that they've done that other shops
couldn't do
if you have three or four jobs in a row
that took you several hours that were
not good one of the things i notice is
you can actually see just the dopamine
and serotonin getting sucked out of
their body on their face when you walk
by their workstation you can actually
see it start to affect them
and one of the things that helps keep
people sane but also willing to put that
four to five hours into the next case
that they may not be able to fix is
taking five minutes to play with a nerf
gun taking 10 minutes to play a little
game of foam basketball taking out cards
for a few minutes and having a game or a
rock paper scissors or whatever it is or
you know just having little post-it
notes on the side wall over here that
they use as a height competition or
having a little weightlifting quick
quick contest in the back of the store
before they go back to their work these
are small things that
really take away the elements of the job
that suck the fun out of it and it's
very easy for the fun to be sucked out
of this type of work most of the boards
that we work on are boards that other
companies have failed to repair and as a
result they told their customers send it
here they're not easy they're not
rewarding many much of the time and a
lot of them are not fixable and it
really does take a toll on your head so
the ability to do stuff like this and
the ability of your employees to
understand that if they want to have
five minutes of fun that you have their
back as long as they're doing what
they're supposed to do is really
important when you run this type of
business it's going to have a noticeable
effect on the success rate it's going to
have a noticeable effect on the
retention rate of the people that stay
here you know again steve's been here
nine years nan's been here three and a
half years paul is going coming up on
five years lots of the people that are
here have been here for you know half
the time that the company's been in
business and a
poor you know reason that that is there
i think is because the environment is an
environment where they're not miserable
you know steve started out as customer
service moved on to basic technician
then management then data recovery and
all of the stuff that he learned he
decided to figure out on his own and
that's just not something you do in an
environment where you're miserable dan
was a shipping clerk and he just decided
on his own i kind of want to learn board
repair let me ask everybody else here
what they're doing shadow them check it
out and again that's not the type of
thing that you do in an environment
where if you take a foam basketball and
try to shoot it into a hoop your boss
comes by takes it away from you and says
get back to work that's just it's going
to change things
to a considerable extent so i think it's
something that's important to think
about if you are that type of business
owner that tries to outlaw fun
now it is very important of a balance if
you have nine people in the back playing
with a foam basketball and somebody
walks in the store and there's not
somebody over there to immediately greet
them you're screwing up as a business
owner and your employees are screwing
you as a manager if you do not have
somebody to pick up the phone if the
phone rings eight times and nobody picks
it up because everybody is playing a
game that is bad we have a company
culture here when somebody walks in
within a couple of seconds you need to
make eye contact acknowledge them how
can i help you or if you can't
acknowledge them you if you're on the
phone you put your finger up just like
one second give me a second you
acknowledge them if somebody's calling
we don't have that go just go on a
voicemail during the day thing you
answer them immediately you should
answer the emails as quickly as humanly
possible all of that stuff needs to be
done your cue to some extent needs to be
done and that has to be inculcated into
the company culture it cannot simply be
fun at the expense of work there must
always be a balance but it is important
to keep that balance and it's also
important to understand that in the
pursuit of pleasing somebody like this
that would say i would not leave
something there you also have to look at
the flip side of that how many jobs may
your employees say screw it instead of
continuing to work on because they just
don't want to have the dopamine sucked
out of their head by a job that is not
fixable how
much are you missing out on employees
kind of bonding and getting along and
that creating a company culture of
camaraderie where people are watching
each other's backs and trying to figure
out things together and fix things
together because you decided that you
wanted to take away their foam ball so
all of this is something to think about
i always think that you should be
looking at what it is that you could be
doing differently and technically if i
really want to follow my own advice what
i could do is put a curtain over here so
that if people are having fun and
there's somebody who walks in who's a
killjoy they can't see it but i feel
like that would be going a little too
far every now and then and it's not
often it happens maybe once a month
you'll have somebody walk in who's an
absolute killjoy and you'll have this
sense in your on your on you just in the
tip of your face that if you smile or
you're having fun that that's actually
going to make them mad and you know i've
never ever ever wanted to be at a point
where that that was the customer that i
catered to i've always done a lot of
work here to build up our reputation to
build to to really
do the type of work that gets us to
customer base that we have and gets us
the reviews and the ratings that we do
so that we have the luxury of when that
type of person walks in of saying you
know
sonny's on st mark's place between
second and third or the apple store is
on 14th and 9th or you know something
like that because we it's just not worth
it at the end of the day let me know
what you think in the comments down
below what type of company do you have
what kind of company do you work at do
you work at a company where
the pendulum has vastly shift over to
everybody just kind of screws around and
you have a toxic bro culture and no work
gets done or do you have the type of
company where you know their fun is
outlawed and if you're if you're caught
smiling or laughing you have a manager
that looks at you suspiciously or is the
pendulum right in the center where you
get all of your work done you treat
every customer as if they matter you
deal with their issues you know
concisely and professionally but
simultaneously if you have a bad
bad
run-in with some code or something you
can spend five or ten minutes around a
water cooler shooting a basket with some
friends let me know i'm very curious
your input and i'm also curious your
circumstances and your thoughts i'll see
you all in the next video bye now