building a team, life updates, better humanness reporting (ep 252)

Summary

two things this episode. first, a question I get constantly: 1099 vs W2 for digital businesses. second, the start of a new format I’m testing called better humanness reporting.

on 1099 vs W2. I used to hire all contractors. cheaper, no payroll taxes, easier to let go. I was wrong. here’s the analogy: I once hired a moving company that ran on 1099 contractors. show up day-of, never worked together, shake hands in my driveway, drop my stuff, get in an actual fistfight at the end of the job. compare that to the crew-based moving company we use now. same crew, every move. they communicate, they protect the work, they care.

W2 builds culture. 1099 builds transactions. if you’re trying to scale past a million, you need crew, not contractors.

better humanness reporting is something I make every team do in our weekly meetings. what are you training, what are you reading, what’s a personal or professional win this week. it builds the actual human relationships that the team meeting is supposed to be for. I’m going to start doing it on the podcast too. transparency about training, reading, life, wins.

try harder.

Transcript

intro & new style of episode

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the podcast. So, today I’m going to be doing something a little bit different than normal. I’m going be answering a question I got from somebody I’ve been working with on the business side. Then, I’m going to be going over better humanness reporting, which is something that I say all teams should be doing in their team meetings, but I want to start doing it on the podcast to give you a little bit of transparency behind the scenes, what’s going on in my life, all those kind of things.

So, I’d love any feedback on kind of this new style of episode, and I’ll talk more about that at the end, but let’s jump straight into this 1099 verse W2. Okay, so I get this question quite frequently, and I know when I was first building my digital business, I wanted to hire all contractors. Why? Because they were cheaper. I didn’t have to pay the taxes for them. And letting them go is actually quite a bit easier than a W2 employee.

There’s not as much red tape. and to be honest all the other things that go along with W2 employees. But let’s let’s talk about what it builds in your company when you do one versus the other. And I think the best way I can illustrate this is me and my moving experiences. So if you don’t know about me, I’ve moved a lot. I was in the military. Emily and I have moved even post-military several times.

1099 vs w2: the real question

We’ve moved quite a bit and I have experienced all sorts of different moving companies. and one moving company that I hired a few years ago. They had just a team of contractors come move my stuff. So, we’re moving out of a storage unit into our home and the guy in the truck shows up. It’s just this dude in a moving truck. And I’m like, just one guy? Like, are the dudes in the back? Like, what’s going on?

And then everyone else starts showing up. People are showing up in their cars, their trucks, or whatever. All the other parts of the moving crew, they’re shaking each other’s hands. this is the first time they’ve ever met. And I’m like, “Okay, well, this should be good.” And to be honest, a lot of moving companies do this, but these people had never worked together a day in their lives, right? And so they were things started off okay, but it ended up being a much longer day than I think any of them thought it was going to be.

And just so many mistakes were being made because they had never communicated with each other. They didn’t know how the other person worked. And once things got stressful and all these other things, like you started to see those things clash. And so my things were getting damaged, things were getting dropped, things were taking longer than it needed to, then at the end of the day, they’re basically getting at a in a fight, like an actual fight at my house that I had to intervene and break up.

Then everyone’s just chilling in my house for 30 minutes, sitting on my furniture, uh, and waiting for their overarching boss to make a phone call to me, for me to sign off on everything, pay or whatever. They weren’t going to leave until like I had paid. It was just such a horrible experience. Never use them again. I’ll never recommend them again. They just were a horrible team. They did a horrible job. Made me feel very uncomfortable.

Didn’t like it. Since then, we hired a different movie company for the last several moves that we’ve done. They’re local. And my favorite thing about them is they operate in crews. Okay? So, the crew is always together. So, if it’s like John’s crew, John’s crew and his three or four guys, they go do a moving job today here, then they go do a moving job over there. And it’s always the crew doing the jobs together. And it made for such a great experience cuz I’m moving the same amount of stuff.

We didn’t accumulate a whole lot more. They did the move in half the time. They’re happy while they’re doing it. They’re communicating with each other. Nothing’s getting damaged. Nothing’s getting broken because this is an actual team. People who work together each and every single day. They understand how the other person works. They understand how to communicate and they understand even what to do if tensions are starting to flare up a little bit. They know how to mitigate those things.

And so the reason I give that example is because this is a clear-cut example of a team of contractors versus a team of W2 employees, crew, a team that actually works together. And there is a big difference. So we could get into the legalities of whether or not you can hire a 1099 versus W2. That’s probably a better conversation for an attorney than it would be for me. And then also, we could talk about the downsides of W2 employees.

Like I was saying at the beginning, just the overall expense of the employee. Because if you have a certain number of employees, depending on your state, you might have to provide a 401k, health insurance, all of these different things. And then you’re also paying more money for them on the tax side. So, there are some downsides to a W2 employee, but the biggest upside of having full-time employees is building the team and the company culture that you want.

And I think that is where you really excel when you are wanting to build something that lasts. You’re wanting to build something that has a mission, a vision, because contractors can only get so far within that world, right? That I mean, they might be bought into your mission or vision, but you’re not able to lead them the same way.

the moving company story (contractors vs crews)

You’re not able to shape them the same way. you just don’t actually have the time. In fact, one of the biggest things uh you know to look at whether or not you can have W2 or 1099 is how much of their time are you dictating? If you are dictating what they can and can’t do with their time, where they need to show up, all these kind of things, they really can’t be a 1099. They have to be a W2.

Again, talk to an attorney about these things. But I think the biggest thing I try to stress to people is like, what do you want to build? What do you want to build long term? Do you want to build a company, a culture that you’re excited to be a part of, that you have a team that you want to work with, that you know, you guys have a culture, you have a sense of humor. Those are the things that you want to keep in mind when you are trying to build something that lasts.

So, if you are going down this road, don’t always look at the short side of I might save some money. Contractors can be great for this, that, and the other. Like we use a lot of contractors in PT Biz for our coaching and that’s because they’re amazing awesome entrepreneurs and that is their superpower power for them being able to coach and they’re still really bought into our mission and it works out great. But if you’re trying to piece together an entire company of contractors like we have our core team of W2 employees in PT Biz as well and that’s where we’re really able to dive in with people and spend more time with them, develop them, work with them and that really excites me.

It gets me fired up to have a team to be able to lead and to really dive in. So, if you’re considering one or the other, just think about the crew versus contractors, what you want longterm, and ultimately what you are trying to build. And I think that’ll help answer a lot of the questions when you’re going down this road. All right.

why w2 employees build better culture

Now, I said I was going to do a little bit more behind the scenes. And the reason I want to do this is because I just want to kind of take the podcast a different direction uh than what I have been doing. you know, maybe slightly longer. We’ll see if this episode ends up being any longer than normal ones. But I really want to start to go behind the curtain a little bit. And I think the best way for me to do that is with better humanness reporting.

So, you’ve heard me talk about it if you’ve been paying attention or if you’ve worked with me on any sort of level or you’ve, you know, you’ve I’ve done podcast episodes on it. But better humanist reporting is something I’ve implemented across all teams, all companies where at the end of whatever meeting we’re having, if it’s a metric meeting, KPI meeting, whatever, we will do better humanist reporting at the end. And the end is, and the better humanist reporting is fairly simple.

We go, “Hey, what are you reading? How many times did you work out? uh and what is the your biggest win both personally and professionally over the last seven days since we last met? And this helps me so much as a leader to be able to understand my employees, where they’re at, what they’re talking about, how they’re developing themselves, what they’re reading. They can hear what I’m reading. And I think if I can start doing this on the podcast, you’re going to start to see a lot of the behind the scenes with me. you’ll get in my mind what I’m reading on a daily basis uh you know on a weekly basis you know how I’m training ultimately and what’s going on both personally and professionally and the things that are exciting me and what’s going well right now here’s what I want from you if you are a listener of the podcast just give me some feedback however you can do that I know a lot of people uh within the PT Biz mastermind listen to this shoot me a message within our you know private circle DMs let me know if you follow me on Instagram give me some feedback there or as always reply to any of my newsletters.

I’m really looking for feedback on what you think of this style moving forward. So, let’s dive into it. I’m going to do my better humanist reporting as if I was in a meeting with a team right now. So, let’s start with training. So, I trained six times over the last week. That’s typically my average. I’m hitting five to six training sessions each and every single week. And my training has been um it’s been a uh a lot of guesswork over the last year or two.

Um, you know, to bring you up to speed, I had a pretty bad back injury a few years ago when I was chasing trying to achieve a 500 lb back squat and 5-minute mile in the same day, and I got really close to achieving that goal, but also hurt my back pretty badly. And since then, it’s been very hard. I mean, I’ve I’ve recovered 99%. The only time it flares up is if I try to go back down that same path with specifically getting faster mile times and a heavy back squat. doesn’t seem to matter how much PT I do, chiropractic care, my body goes into this protective mode when I start loading my spine.

So anyway, not to give not to bore you. I wouldn’t normally go into this much detail on better humanist reporting, but I’m trying to bring you all up to speed of where I’m at. So, what I’ve been doing um in these six training sessions lately, a lot of kettle bell work. I love the kettle bell. It doesn’t hurt me. It makes me feel energized. I’ve been doing that along with some longer runs. um getting about two 1-hour runs in per week and then the rest of those sessions.

Um the next four are kettle bell strength training, maybe some sort of a light circuit work, something like that, maybe more high intensity. Um and those are the things I’ve been doing.

leadership beyond a million: succeeding through people

Really enjoying training right now. So that’s what I’ve been doing six times per week. That’s generally the goal. And also trying to hit sauna sessions a couple times um a week as well in the evenings, which has been difficult lately with the schedule, but still trying to get those in as much as I possibly can. Now on the reading side, I’m currently reading two different books. Um the first one on the business side is the science of scaling.

This is by Dr. Benjamin Hardy. Uh this is the author that also helped uh Dan Sullivan with uh 10x is easier than 2x. Um and who not how I believe. So Dr. Benjamin Hardy, he’s writing some good books. The science of scaling is pretty cool. It’s kind of in that same vein of the 10x is easier than 2x u idea. It’s like setting the right big goals. So far, I found it pretty interesting. A little repetitive, but ultimately pretty decent book.

Now, I’m also reading Practicing the Way by John Mark Comr, which this is a book on the Christian Faith. If you didn’t know that, I am a Christian and I’ve been reading a lot of these books um as well. So, that’s what I’m reading to better myself both in business and spiritually. So, that’s what I’ve been doing on the reading side. And hopefully I can give you more book recommendations as we go. I’m always reading, trying to better myself, always probably juggling two or three books at the same time, and I will start to report those here on the podcast.

Now, let’s dive into both personal and professional wins over the last seven days. So, I’m going to go professional first. So, what we have been building, going back to me talking about crew versus contractors, we have been building a crew, a team at PTBase. And I feel like right now our team is really, really clicking. And part of my struggle over the last year has been my tendency always is to jump back in and do it myself.

Any kind of work, like it’s like, “Oh, you can’t figure that out. Don’t worry, I’ll do it.” Um, and part of the reason is a lot of times it moves faster. I just want to get it done. Maybe I have the time to do it. I want to execute it. Um, and I’m not allowing myself to do that this year. I need the team to figure things out. and I will jump in and give direction strategically, but ultimately once you learn, honestly, after you get past probably a million dollars per year um in business, it’s it’s much less about the grind.

It’s much less about, you know, working yourself to the bone. It’s learning how to succeed through people.

introducing better humanness reporting

And it’s not an easy thing to do. And it’s going to be different for every single person because everyone’s going to have a different team. And you it really stresses your leadership. My leadership style is very I let I want the team to be very autonomous. I want them to be able to operate with a light strategic direction, but ultimately they can go in and execute. That way they don’t feel like they have a tight leash, but sometimes this can backfire if you don’t give people enough direction.

They don’t really know what to do and they feel lost. So, I’ve been struggling with trying to communicate that. But I feel like we’re, like I said, I’ve been struggling earlier on in the year, but I feel like we’ve really been clicking lately. We just came off the PT Biz uh live event and the team just absolutely crushed it. Everybody did their job.

my training this week

They did it well. I gave minimal direction the entire time which was very intentional and they did an awesome job. And we just had a new hire on the team um who has really been helping with uh getting more people interested in our programs. Um he’s been crushing it lately. Just came on about a month ago. So anyway, that is what’s going on professionally. I just feel like the team is really clicking. They’re they’re working together really well.

They’re under understand their strategic direction. They’re making a lot of decisions on their own that are the same decisions I would have made. It’s just awesome to see. Now, on the personal side, um this, you know, this might sound uh a little bit odd at first, but Emily, my wife, went out of town recently, and that’s not like a something I’m happy about. I love having her around. But what that does lend me to do when she’s gone is to spend more time with our daughter.

So, if you didn’t know, I have three kids. I have two boys and a daughter. Her name is Eleanor. And what happens, you know, when you have three kids and two parents, is you’re playing a lot of zone. You can’t play manto man anymore, right? And so, Eleanor’s in dance. My boys are in football right now. And so, most of the time it’s me doing the boys football, that kind of stuff, which has gotten a lot easier recently cuz our oldest is now in middle school and he’s doing it there.

Uh, but that’s typically how we divide and conquer. But the only con to that is I don’t get to see Eleanor near as much as I do the boys because I’m with them constantly doing all these things. And so we kind of, you know, we have ways that it works, right? But we get to link up on the weekends, but she’s not getting any younger, right? I’m not getting any younger. Time is going faster and faster.

She’s getting so big so fast. So when I have these opportunities um to just go allin with her and like, you know, do all the things with her cuz I’m the only person there. Uh, I really love it because it helps our relationship get deeper. And so, while I don’t necessarily want, uh, you know, Emily to be gone or anything like that, that has nothing to do with it, I just want love those opportunities, I get to spend time with my daughter more so than I normally do on uh, any given week.

Um, and so anyway, that’s the big personal win over the past uh, you know, seven days for me. And that is it.

what i’m reading right now

That’s basically how we would do that. Um, each and every single week, we do that as a team. every single person goes over those things and I want to start sharing on the podcast because I think it adds a certain level of transparency. You can hear what I’m pumped about in business, both personally, what I’m reading. So again, I’m looking for that feedback from everybody cuz my plan is to actually start producing a little bit less content.

So you’re going to be we’re going to be going down to one podcast per week on this podcast on the better podcast. And the reason I’m doing that is because I want to try and extend them a little bit longer. Typically, I’m doing two 8 to 10 minute episodes, and I’m going to try and stretch one episode like this out to closer to 15 to 20 minutes and just do once per week and get feedback from everybody because I’ve gotten a lot of great feedback that they like the shorter episodes, but if we just go down to one episode per week that’s about the same duration, I’d love to know what people are thinking.

So, again, find me wherever you can. And if you’re one of the mastermind members or rain makers or whatever, if you’re in PT Biz working with me, shoot me a message inside of Circle a DM, let me know what you think. Or if you’re on Instagram, shoot me a message there. Reply to my newsletter. any of those things cuz I’d like to know what people think or what you like on going a little bit more transparent behind the scenes, sharing my better humanist reporting, what I’m reading, what life is like for me right now, and ultimately still trying to give you some value at the beginning of each and every single podcast like I did today with contractors versus W2.

A lot of questions. I probably have 50 to 100 questions in a dock that I’ve just been sent either on Instagram or emailed or whatever. I keep telling myself I’m gonna answer these on the podcast and then I very rarely do it because I always forget that’s an that’s something that I should be doing. So, I’m going to start uh bringing those in maybe one per week uh with whatever you have. So, again, if you if you are giving me feedback on the podcast, go ahead and you know, shoot a question or let me know if you want to hear my thoughts on something.

If there’s something I can help you with, I’d really like to hear it. But that’s it for this one, everyone. I’m going to end the same way I always do. If you want to achieve things in life, you want to build something awesome, you want to have a crew, you want to read, you want to have the big wins personally, professionally, there’s only one thing you need to do, and that’s try harder.