171 | Clearing the Path: Why Your Best People Aren’t the Problem

You know that feeling when you've got a good person on your team and you're just not getting the results you need out of them? I had a technician — we're going to call him Jimmy. If you follow this podcast, you know that typically when I refer to somebody, it's Jimmy. So Jimmy was one of the nicest guys you'd ever meet.

Customers liked him, the team liked him, I liked him. The numbers, however, were rough. His close rate was low, his callbacks were high.

And after a while, I made the call. Jimmy wasn't going to work out. I decided I was ready to promote him to the competition. But something wasn't sitting right with me, because honestly, Jimmy was such a good dude, such a good fit for who we were as a company, that I couldn't just cut him loose without really understanding what was actually going on. So before I pulled the trigger, I decided to do a ride-along. One full day, just me and Jimmy. And that one ride-along blew up everything I thought I knew.

Welcome to the Freedom Blueprint Podcast, the show for home service business leaders who are done just running a business and ready to build something that actually runs without them. And listen, if you're sending a technician into a customer's home, this show's for you. Because here's the truth: none of us started a business to buy ourselves a job. We started it for freedom — freedom with our time, freedom with our money, freedom to build something that's ours. And somewhere along the way, the business took the owner hostage. So if you're ready to win that freedom back, you're in the right place, because this show is the blueprint.

Today we're talking about what I believe is the single most important job you have as a leader. And it's probably not what you think. So let me take you back to Jimmy. For the longest time, I thought leadership was about figuring out who was worth keeping and who was not. And honestly, I was wrong. Leadership is about making sure your people have a real shot in the first place. And I learned that the hard way, sitting in the passenger seat of Jimmy's truck.

See, I climbed into that truck to confirm what I thought I already knew — that Jimmy just didn't have it. But about halfway through the day, it hit me like a ton of bricks. Jimmy cared. He cared about our customers, he cared about the company, and he was willing to do whatever it took.

He just didn't know how. And here's the part that's the gut punch: it wasn't his fault. It was mine.

And think about this for a second. Right now, there's a rumor going around our whole industry that there's no good people left and that nobody wants to work anymore. But here's what we don't talk about: we'll write off good people we already have without blinking an eye. We had one right in front of us. Jimmy was already there and he cared.

And let me tell you, it's a whole lot cheaper to lean in and invest in the person already on your team than it is to run out and hire a new one. Now, I want to be straight with you — leaning in does not guarantee they turn into the best tech. Sometimes you lean in and you find out they really aren't the right fit. And that's okay. But now you know. You did the actual work of a leader. You made the decision based on the truth instead of just assuming the worst and writing somebody off. That's the difference between running people off and leading them.

So let me tell you what I actually saw that day. I watched Jimmy pull up to a call, and before he ever got to the customer, he was fighting with the CRM — fumbling through screens, retyping things, burning 10, 15 minutes on something that should have taken two.

And that's time he could have spent actually helping the customer. Instead, he was drowning in software.

Then we got to the work itself. He's missing tools — tools he needed to do the job correctly, and they weren't on his truck. So he was improvising, making it work, taking twice as long to do the same job. And really, it just made him look slow. And here's the thing that broke my heart a little bit: he never said a word. He never asked for help and he never complained. Because from the outside, all this just looked like a guy who couldn't do the job. But that's not what it was. It was a good man quietly drowning, and nobody threw him a rope.

And that's what kills me about this — how many good people have we written off? Not because they couldn't do the job, but because we never cleared the path. How many Jimmies have been shipped off to the competition when the real problem was never the person? It was everything we stacked in their way. That's the real cost — not just the turnover, not just the money. It's the good people we lose who never had to be lost.

So why do we write off the Jimmies before we ever really look?

I thought about this a lot, because I almost did it myself. Part of it is that we think it's just faster to blame the person than to look at the system we built. If Jimmy's the problem, the fix is easy — you replace Jimmy. But if the system's the problem, well, now I have to look in the mirror. Part of it is we assume they showed up already knowing what we know. We forgot that what's obvious to us was taught to us by someone else, maybe somewhere else. Jimmy came from a shop where their whole motto was "figure it out." So that's exactly what he was doing — figuring it out, badly and alone.

And if I'm being honest, part of it is just ego. It feels easier to go find a new hire than to admit that maybe the gap was my leadership, not their ability. I almost fell into all of it. And it took sitting in the passenger seat to force me to look at me instead of looking at Jimmy.

So after that ride-along, I started asking myself a different set of questions. And these are questions I want you to ask yourself about your Jimmy.

Did he actually have the time to do the job right? Or was a clunky CRM and a broken process quietly stealing it from him?

Did he have the tools — the actual equipment on the truck — to do the job the way we expect it done? Or was he improvising because nobody set him up to win?

Was he ever really trained? Or did he inherit a "figure it out" culture somewhere else and just carry it into our shop, and we assumed he just knew?

And this one's the big one: did he have the confidence to speak up? Did he know it was safe to raise his hand and say, "Hey, I don't have what I need"? Or did he learn a long time ago that just asking makes you look weak? Because that's on us too. We build the kind of place where people either feel safe asking for help, or they suffer in silence to look tough.

So here's your job: before you write off anybody, you go find the gaps. You ride along. You ask the questions. You watch them work. You get curious before you get critical. Because most of the time — and I mean most of the time — the fix is not a new hire. The fix is clearing the road for the good person you already have. That's the whole thing: time, tools, training, and the confidence to speak up. That's the path. And clearing it is your job, not theirs.

So let me tell you what happened to Jimmy. I didn't promote him to the competition. Instead, we cleared the path. We got him trained up on the CRM. We made sure the right tools were on his truck, and we made it safe for him to raise his hand when he needed something.

And Jimmy turned it around. His close rate climbed, his callbacks dried up, he got faster, he got better, and he started helping more customers in a day than he ever had before.

But here's what matters more than the numbers: Jimmy stayed. He trusted us. And he became the kind of guy who tells other good people, "Hey, you want to come work here — these people actually invest in you." The technician I was ready to hand to my competitor became one of the best people on my team. All because of one ride-along. All because I cleared the path instead of clearing him out.

So here's my challenge to you. Go find that team member you've got — you know exactly which one I'm talking about. The one you've quietly started to write off in your mind. Before you make that call, go ride along. Sit in the passenger seat, watch them work, ask the questions. Find out if it's really them, or if it's the path you haven't cleared yet. Do that before you decide.

So here's what I want you to do today. Not tomorrow, today. Go find one roadblock in one of your people's way and clear it. Just one. That's how this starts.

So listen, if this show is bringing you value, I need you to do me two favors. First, share it with another owner who needs to hear it, and subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next. Second, leave us a review. It only takes a minute, and it genuinely helps other home service leaders find the show.

Because we're building something here — a business that gives you your freedom back, one blueprint at a time. So until next time, keep clearing the path, keep leading with intention, and as always, keep crushing it.