#62 - What to do when an employee wants to quit? - Update

Summary

What is it that all the richest people in the world know?
How do you get 20 million people to collaborate in one project?

And how to deal with a team member that has an anxiety attack and wants to quit the job? These are some of the questions we are diving into in today's episode.

This is an "Update episode", it means that In today's episode of Becoming Great.com podcast, Emil Ekvardt and Erik Bergman, explore the very real challenges and problems that come up when building Great.com. A company that gives away 100% of its profit to protect the environment.

This is an opportunity for you to get a behind the scenes look, of what it feels like to build a company - and also get an update on our progress.

What you learn here is not something you will read in a book. It’s the real story of how Great.com gets built.

This episode starts with Erik reading a message from our public slack channel. One of our team members is sharing about a panic attack he has been having that is related to work. How to deal with situations like that?

After this, we are going into a segment where Emil describes our new "Great.com talks with…" charity podcast. He is explaining the progress that we have been making, what the purpose of the podcast is, and sharing some of our biggest milestones so far.

In the third section of the episode we are diving into something that the richest people of the world already knows, that is, the power of networking. We explore why Erik has spent so much time on social media over the last year and how it is now starting to add lots of value to Great.com as a business.

In the final act of the day, we are diving into the importance of celebration. That even in times where it seems like we are missing all of our goals, we find lots of important energy in asking ourselves the question "What are we proud of?" and by using that finding area of the great progress that we haven't even been aware of earlier.

Transcript

[00:00:50] What is it that the richest people in the world already knows?

[00:00:56] How do you get 20 million people around the world to collaborate in one project? And what do you do when you get a message from one person in the team saying that he constantly gets anxiety attacks from working and he wants to quit? These are some of the questions that we'll be diving into. In today's episode of the Becoming Great Dot.com podcast.

[00:01:23] And if you're new here, they're becoming great dot.com podcast is for you. Who wants to make the world a better place? Or just your own life, too, for that matter? Better to entrepreneurship and to personal development. And I am here with, as always, my good friend Erik Bergman. Erik is the founder of Great. The company that we're building there will give away 100 percent of its profits to help the environment. And previously, he also made over 50 million euros when he founded his last company, Catina Media. They went from zero to 300 employees in just five years. And he's also teaching business and personal development on his Instagram account that has over one hundred and fifty thousand followers.

[00:02:20] Eric, how are you doing today? Good.

[00:02:23] And I'm here with my good friend Emil, as always, who was the first one joining me in Great.com, and he's also the host of this podcast, as well as our other charity podcast, where he interviews charity organizations. And on the side of great dot.com, he runs a life coaching business. And he's my creative sparring partner in everything that I do when it comes to creating content. He is the one I balanced the ideas with when it comes to podcasts, Instagram, Twitter, and I just love learning things with him. So how are you today? Good buddy. Could you say we're creating millions, Shachar? No, I cannot. No sparring partner. I'm not a danger. It's kind of you in your circle. Okay. You're my sparring. Ninja sparring. I love it. All right.

[00:03:13] And in this podcast, we do episodes about personal development. We do episodes about entrepreneurship. And we also do what they called real life experience episodes where we talk about things we learn when we implement the things we the things we learn into real life when we're building the company. Great dotcom.

[00:03:34] And this is an update episode from the last month and this month has been quite intense indeed.

[00:03:49] I just spent 30 minutes meditating on my bed trying to get rid of all the anxiety that I'm feeling.

[00:03:58] Just opening my e-mail inbox fills me with exciting that won't disappear. I've searched within to understand the causes of this, and I've realized that I've had this feeling every day for weeks, maybe even months. And I think I want to quit. This is the beginning of a message that was sent from one of our team members in our public slack channel this month. And. What was it that happened?

[00:04:34] Before I tell you guys what actually happened, I had a question that really interested me. Interesting. It's interesting to me that just came up and that is because I'm just working in the business. You owned a business. You're ultimately responsible for this. What is your emotional reaction if you're gonna be truthful when a team member says something like that?

[00:05:00] So my first instinct is kind of, oh, no, this is a problem. I wasn't planning to deal with today. I'm not. I think that's the first thing that comes to mind. Like it's bothering needing to deal with it at the moment. And in the moment, it's. Yes, it's it's a problem to be solved and it's a heavy thing to deal with. I mean, it's never fun to find out that someone is not enjoying what they're doing. When you thought they were enjoying what you were doing, it's like a friend bringing out bringing up something bad that you've done out of nowhere and you didn't know about it. And it's never fun when you get to know about it, but afterwards, you're happy that they dare to tell you. So in the moment, it's it's really heavy. Definitely.

[00:05:56] All right. So to give some background on what happened here is that spirit. Our employee is together with me, a co-host of the charity podcast that we do, which where we have us, a goal to interview one shared organization every day.

[00:06:13] And if you haven't tried to set up a podcast before, I can tell you that arranging one interview with one charity organization everyday is a huge pile of admon. There's so much back and forth. And what we've just started this project and what we ended up experiencing is that we tried to move way too fast. We tried to create too many into use at once. And now we had made all of these promises to different organizations. There was over flooded e-mail inboxes. Promises that we couldn't live up to. And both me and Spirit felt super overwhelmed and created a very strong negative association to this project and to great dot. And this feeling of I can't handle this anymore. I'm having so much anxiety now. It's what Spirit brought up in our selection. Are you feeling the same thing? Yeah. Yeah. We made an episode about this called Boring Tasks. I think a month ago I had my nervous breakdown before Spirit. And then he had it maybe three weeks later. How did the team deal with this one spirit? Sunday's message.

[00:07:30] I wish.

[00:07:32] Everyone that is interested in company culture could kind of be in this team meeting that happened. I think maybe you could. I think republish all of the team meetings. Maybe it is out there on the inside out somewhere. So everyone should be had an agenda agenda for that meeting. And we kind of set that aside. So there was a weekly media. So that was the Milky Way about something that is probably about goal setting or something other as business related. But this immediately seemed like a higher priority and it felt like kind of the whole team. Gathered around Spirit and really gave his him his attention and his support, everybody started reaching out to it. Maybe I can do this to help you. I can do this to help you. We understand. I felt an intense feeling of the group coming together to give support. Yeah.

[00:08:27] And I think I read this quote the other day that trust isn't build when you're offering to help someone. Trust is built when you're asking for help. And I think that's beautiful input because I haven't thought about this before. But it's actually a lot more vulnerable to ask someone for help to showing that you are weak, that it is to show that you can help and that you're a strong you know. For me, looking back at this moment is amazing to see how beautiful the team dealt with it, how many people reached out and wanted to support him without me actually getting involved with it. But I can see it's even more beautiful how what a role model he was actually saying, guys, I can't handle this. I need your support instead of. What I believe would be a common way to kind of try to push through it or maybe even quit without explaining it or just not doing the things and kind of pretending to have done it. I think all of those ways would be common. And I I can see several times in my past where I've thought that people have done things and then three months later it shows up. No, I actually didn't do it, but they didn't tell me. And here he really he manned up and he told me and I think that was that was a beautiful proof of how safe this organization is becoming.

[00:09:54] Right.

[00:09:55] To tie this into someone that might be running their own business or is interested in leadership and how to handle people working for them in general. Now someone is cantril to handle their tasks. So I understand that safety is important. But wouldn't this kind of approach loose a lot of productivity? And I would spend a whole team meeting talking about spirits inside instead of talking about business and also. But you can almost lose as an owner, right, because he says, I'm not going to be able to do as much as we agreed from the beginning.

[00:10:33] Yes, I believe that short term, you lose a lot of speed. Like, it's kind of like we're heading in this direction and we pulled the brakes. But I believe it's like, imagine your child running a car and you start hearing a very, very weird noise from the engine. Either you can continue going and hopefully the engine will hold up or you pull over your fixed engine and you can continue going for much, much longer. And I believe that if there is safety, you will hear this noise. Someone will bring up, hey, my engine isn't working properly. It's better that you stop and fix it. And this car, as long as you keep fixing it, when something happens, you can keep going forever. But if you don't hear that noise, if someone doesn't bring it up, then you're screwed. So sure, short term, you need to stop the car. You're not continuing moving. And that's expensive. That's bad business, short term, but long term, it makes you have a well oiled machinery that can takes you far, far longer.

[00:11:34] So long term, I believe it's it's an amazing decision. And I believe that by stopping the car, by respecting the noise, the entire team sees that. OK. If I actually raise my hand and ask for support, I'm gonna get it. I'm not gonna get punished. I'm not going to get humiliated. I'm actually gonna get love and support, meaning that it's a very crucial moment from a cultural standpoint that someone does this and people come together around it and support it. And I believe looking back at this moment, even though it was a negative thing happened, quote unquote. It's probably the most important milestone of the organization so far at the moment. I'm the proudest of that. We've actually done how the company supported him, that he managed to bring it up, that he did this and everything that followed.

[00:12:29] I agree in.

[00:12:31] I do believe to build that safety. It's so important to encourage and celebrate someone that has the bravery to do that, because like you described in that quote that I love, that was the quote again. Our worth.

[00:12:45] Okay. So let's see if I remember it. You build more, you build more trust. When you ask for help than when you offer to help. It wasn't exactly the quote. I don't really remember the call yet.

[00:12:58] That's the gist of it, because it requires more bravery, because there's a bigger risk to expose yourself like that. Yeah. Dan, it also deserves to be encouraged and praised and celebrated and talked about. Yeah, definitely. I mean, it's much it's really, really brave. You know, I also want to share what happened after you brought it up. OK, let's do that. And I'll be quick. But so Mincberg Spirit, because we had a lot of reading needed to improve this project, make all the processes smoother and build guides and start to really think about a strategy, a spirit did and want to do anything of that. He just wanted to move slow, be in the business, send e-mails, but out being overwhelmed. And I didn't want to do any of that. I just wanted to do the strategy. And so we and since he brought it up, we completely changed. Ah, the way we worked. And both people got much, much, much happier. And it wouldn't have happened.

[00:13:55] If he didn't bring that up. Yes.

[00:13:57] If he wouldn't have had an excited, attackable of his ask for help, you wouldn't get the point of changing everything. And actually, to the benefit of both of you.

[00:14:06] Yes. And both me, a spirit before bringing it up, had a negative association every time we worked with great. And thanks to being able to bring that up. Now we have a positive association. Yes. I mean, working over years, that's gonna be the difference between someone becoming a bearer of culture and a company or someone quitting after a year from out of nowhere because they're fed up.

[00:14:30] For sure. Sure. Let's close this loop and move forward to. How do you get 20 million people in 160 countries to collaborate in one single day? When I go in to the Web site of any charity organization, I see that something is missing. Because what I find is often a very well written bio of the organization explaining the costs that they do. But there's something I can see. I can't really see the people that are behind this organization. And I want to see those people. I want to see the passion that is building the project, because the people that are behind his shadow organizations, they are these two spastic forces of nature. And I can see that on the Web site. And I want to see it. So we have just started a charity podcast and something that makes me very proud. It's when we can show that fire. For example, I interviewed Heidi Soldier from the organization The World Cleanup Day lately. And in the beginning of our interview, she was talking about their organization. What they do, they were going to start organizing a worldwide cleanup day. And she's giving me numbers and their results, like they managed to bring 20 million people together in 160 countries to clean. And of course, those numbers are very important. But something happened. When I asked her the question. So, Heidi. Tell me if I were to go to the world cleanup day, what is the experience like there? And now something completely shifted in her energy. She went from speaking from something that was a little bit more rehearsed to speaking from her heart about the experiences that she have had during these world cleanup days. She described what happens to people when they come together and they do something nice for nature and they see other people are doing the same thing. The connections that are being made, how people are making new friends. She talked about this as a vote for powerful experience for her, and that can never be seen on an organization's Web site.

[00:17:19] Guess what you would have seen when you just visited the Web site was these numbers, right? And you wouldn't get a certain experience of this. So how did your experience about this organization shift when you saw her energy?

[00:17:32] I got a whole other that planted the idea that maybe I want to go to this world cleanup day to experience the people that are there, there and energy like, there's no way to really get that energy behind their organization from text.

[00:17:49] Yeah. I can really see that as this charity part, because that started was an idea that we didn't really know exactly how it was gonna play out and why we were doing this. And when you told me this story was the first time I realized this is the true value of this podcast, being able to show these people. And I think that. The way you experienced that interview proves it's that your impression of this organization has already shifted. You are drawn to this. Yeah.

[00:18:22] And I really think we've talked about showing praise and encouragement for people that do good things. Previous in this podcast, and I think the people in these organizations also deserves to be in the limelight like that. And when they get to speak from their heart, they become very proud of the work that they do. For example, I had another interview with a woman from an organization called Chaps that are doing male circumcisions to prevent the spread of HIV in South Africa. And she was so proud of her interview that she added me on Instagram later. And the only thing on her bio is the link to the interview we made with her, which means that this is like the most proud she hasn't been of for work. And I think I really want the people in these organizations to feel that proudness. And that, to me, is a huge proof of concept that the podcast we're doing has real value.

[00:19:18] Have that the intention at first when we started doing this podcast, the intention, at least from my end, was from a business perspective, how can we get the name of great out there and how can we get links pointing towards us and become an authority one way or another? And at the same time, we wanted this to be valuable to others without really knowing how. And I think that just these two stories explains that very well, that we're really giving value. We're praising people. We're making them proud of their work. We're showing the listener that, oh, so this is what this organization is about. They get to hear this. Oh, this is are the people around it in a way that means you can never communicate voice a personality in text in the same way as you can when you get the voice said your love, when you put it as this is a proof of concept of this project, because it also feels like to me, when we started this project, you and the Spirit are the hosts. We're both kind of excited, but wasn't really sure where this was gonna take you.

[00:20:29] And the more interviews like this, and I can see just in your eyes when you talk about this, it's like they sparkle is like I see this personality. I bring this up. She's so proud of this. You put it on her Instagram. And to me, you know, that's just such a huge win that we've had this last month of experiencing this and seeing what it's worth.

[00:20:49] It's fun to meet new people, right? When I meet new people in general, I want to talk about my eternal mission is to find what are you the most passionate about? And then I want you to talk about that. And this is exactly what's happening in these 20 minute interviews. They talk about the cost that they care maybe most about in the whole world. And it's super enjoyable to listen.

[00:21:11] Yeah. So we've launched this podcast over the last couple of months. But this is probably the first month where we started seeing the real results of it. We started seeing that it's valuable for the listener. We start to see that the hosts are really proud of it. And we're actually seeing that they are proudly publishing theirs. They're getting links to our Web sites. We're getting we're becoming a bit of an authority in this. So even though it's very early on with this project and we've had anxiety attacks and boredom, all kinds of struggles with it, it's. Yeah, it feels like we're taking it off as a big win from where we are.

[00:21:45] A big win. And now we're also very close to hiring a pod cast coordinator. And a reason that we are close is because we have found a secret, a secret that most rich people in the world are aware of.

[00:22:11] Something that the richest people in the world are very aware of is that the upside of a social network is endless. So what does the secret mean for you? Well, think about this. The next time you're scrolling in social media randomly liking images. What if you were even more interactive and you used social media as a way to build your network for the first time in history? You have the possibility to reach people that previously had been way, way out of your network to take advantage of that.

[00:22:57] And you, Eric, you've been very active in social media lately. Tell me more about that.

[00:23:04] Yeah, so I've probably been I've been very active in social media and periods for the last, I don't know, 14 years. But I took a long break and last year actively started interacting with social media. And it comes from this thing you mentioned, like the upside of a social network is more or less infinite. If you have, you know, people, everything else gets easier. If you have a reputation, that's good reputation. That is, everything gets easier. And like a year ago, I started to say, like, OK, I want to understand social media. I want to get really, really good at it. And I've invested a lot of time in it because I believe it will benefit. Great. And because I want to help out as many people as possible. And up until now have mainly felt that I'm adding value to others, which is a beautiful thing. But I haven't really seen the benefit for great yet. Like, how is is it worth, Eric, investing hours and hours every day to creating Instagram content or to doing this podcast for the business, or am I just wasting my business time that could have been used for the purpose of business? And now when we started hiring, this podcast coordinator was the first time I would like, okay, let's use my social network. Now let's use the followers on Instagram and LinkedIn and see if we can hire people. And I put the word out there and say, OK, we're looking to hire this person. And we got, I think, almost a hundred applicants out of which most of them came from either my social network or the networks of the people in my network. And this will probably we would have struggled to find this person otherwise. And now we got I mean, we still haven't hired them. Maybe we will when the time this airs. But right now we haven't. But we have five, if not 10 really, really strong candidates. And it's all comes from me investing time in social media. Mm hmm.

[00:25:14] Yeah, and it's not it's this role and also, um, some employees that we have right now have found you to your Instagram content and they want to work with great organization.

[00:25:26] You actually when when I'm looking at the organization, most of the people in the team has found me through social media and then started interacting with me. And thanks to that, they're now working with it. And they haven't even we haven't even been looking to hire people like we just got a new SEO guy. His name is Alex. And he just reached out to me. I don't know, six months ago, eight months ago, I started giving me ideas, starting discussing things. We started talking every now and then and a. Like, I want to start working for you for free for a while just to see if it works. And he's a really experienced guy, is not like some teenager who just wants a mentor, which is pretty common. But this is a heavy weight guy, like can get a really high salary elsewhere. And it's like I want to help out for free. And that all comes from social media. It comes from this podcast. And people hearing how we're talking, hearing what we're doing in these episodes. And I can only imagine how this will scale like the time we have tens of thousands of listeners to this podcast in terms of millions of followers in various channels. How easy, easy will find be to find people who can help out either as employees or just in business in general? And you have really felt that this. This latest months has been a proof of concept of that, right?

[00:26:50] So social media can be used as a way to become magnetic, both in your network and for recruitment. Yes. To create the reputation that makes people willing to collaborate with you.

[00:27:02] Yeah, yeah, I think so. One thing that I think is very important when it comes to social media is what you said in beginning interactions. My guess is that 95 percent of all the use of social media is scrolling and looking at things. And even if you look at or like like million pictures on Instagram, pretty much no one is gonna know that you were there. So you haven't really accomplished anything from a networking perspective. But if you just commenting on Instagram or commenting on Twitter or commenting on YouTube, you're suddenly there. Mm hmm. So I think that you don't need to be producing a lot of content yourself. You don't need to have an amazing YouTube account or an amazing Instagram page to start building a network from it. You get a lot of value from just commenting and then posting a little bit every now and then. But it's first when you start becoming a creator, that you become a magnet. That's when people are attracted to you. And I can see how this started out in my early business days when I was on online forums or like the two of you met on her poker forum in 2008. Right. The reason why I found you, the reason why we're here right now is that you created content on a forum 14 years ago. Now, if you would have just read on that forum and I would have just read it, I wouldn't have found each other.

[00:28:22] Know. That is a very interesting thought to you.

[00:28:26] We're here. But I was just writing a diary. It wasn't anything us, but there was it was a platform where conversations could take place.

[00:28:35] Yeah. And that's all we take and become like a host. She has things to do to become visible. And the beautiful thing with social media is that you can start interacting with anyone and you can become an authority by interacting with anyone. So if you're on Twitter or you're on a forum like we did, if you start talking to the cool kids, you kind of become the cool kids. And everyone was reading. We'll see you talk with the cool kids and you become an authority. It's kind of like whoever is talking with the cool kids on the schoolyard is a cool kid. But on social media, it's easier to just become one because you can reach out without risking being bullied or like get your head thrown down a toilet or whatever. But here you can do that. Just start interacting is it's a much easier way of using social media and become a creator. Creator is better. But it takes more time. But don't ever sit and just scroll. Don't ever sit and just like make short, at least write to people because that's how you start building something of value.

[00:29:42] Beautiful to have something more to wrap up the segment.

[00:29:46] I'm gonna double wrap it. Okay. So let's create a habit. Whenever you're on social media of. Commenting or writing messages to people, because now we're gonna move on and we're gonna talk about the most. I'm not the most a super powerful habit that you can have. It's gonna make your life a lot better. I believe that one of the best habits that you can have in your life is to be good at celebrating the winds of others. And this is something I've been really bad at in my life. I've been more filled with envy than anything else. But a late last couple of years, I've really tried to become better. So whenever someone tells me positive news right now, I want to give them a stronger reaction than expected. I want to be the one high firing them when they got a new job or whatever is I want to light up with my face and, like, get my eyes sparkle and be genuinely happy for them. And the more practice this, the more I actually feel that I get genuinely happen happy and the more I can see in the eyes of the other person that they light up. They really enjoy telling me positive news and they feel better about their own accomplishments and the things around us. And I just think there is such a value about celebration. And to me, that was something that was proven on our weekly meeting the other day because we were talking about the goals that we had set during the first quarter and how it did with us and how did we do with our goals.

[00:31:28] To meet depends on what you mean, because we have Sarah revenue.

[00:31:32] Still, I'm totally with you with the idea of celebrating. And my personality or the way I want to be, I want to be really good at celebrating. And I think there's always something to celebrate. So and if there isn't, I haven't looked hard enough. So I think I did. What I did isn't anything to celebrate. It means that you haven't looked hard. There's always something. So me and my girlfriend ask each other before going to bed almost every night. What? What are you grateful for and what am I? I've done well today and there's always something. And it would always have gone unnoticed if I didn't do this exercise. And I think this is kind of what happened in our last team meeting.

[00:32:13] Yeah. So basically, we missed all of our goals that we had written down. We had zero revenues. We were supposed to have revenues. We were supposed to increase the traffic by x Y set. We didn't. We were supposed to do all kinds of things and it became pretty pressing. Just look at those numbers. And by the end of the meeting, the energy shifted thanks to the question that you asked. Like, yeah, but guys, what are we proud of this quarter? And. I wasn't thinking about that at all. And then we just went around the table like everyone talking about what they were proud of. And it turned out that this was actually a quarter of so many wins.

[00:32:58] Probably the most important coyote's accomplishments. Yeah. Yeah. Like the store. It's just from the part of great that I'm involved in the story. Weird spirit than how that had built a certain level of safety in the team. All the progress we are made on the podcast. So we now are able to hire a podcast coordinator and have that whole system up and running. I think you and I have done a huge level up in this podcast now with a video production with higher audio quality. Maybe you notice it feels like the quality of our work has been stepped up so much this quarter and it just hasn't translated into the numbers yet. So it would be so unfair not to take the time to ask the question. In the end of the day or the meeting, what are you proud of? What have you done right?

[00:33:50] One thing I really like with that question, if we compare it to setting goals, is that setting goals you can do with measurable stuff like what is it? And you can do it with things that you kind of can predict will happen. It's like how much money will come in, how many visitors will commit, like, measurable stuff that you can predict. But looking back and asking what you can be proud of can't cover things that while the level of safety that we built in our organization is really bravery from spirit to level of bravery from someone in the team. I mean, you can ever put while you can it would be hard to set a goal that we want to reach a level of bravery in our team next quarter. Yeah.

[00:34:30] How are you gonna measure that for me with goal settings? I think those measurable goals are an important foundation. And at the same time, I think there are more things that you can notice that at least for me, have any other higher impact on my level of excitement and passion and energy I want to put into this project.

[00:34:51] Yeah. Is remembering that the question, what are you proud of? Can encompass so much more than gold. Can you imagine asking that even in dark times, quote unquote.

[00:35:06] When you say that you've missed all your goals because we have missed all of our goals and times feels dark when you don't take time to notice what you have done. Well, because even if you're going through a difficult time, when I say, what am I proud of, you know? You know, I was a really good friend to myself during this difficult time. I was brave here. I did all of these things right. And then the Times doesn't seem as dark anymore. Are only dark if you only measure results.

[00:35:31] Yeah. So let's say that the results are a very dark night. If you're missing all the goals, then you ask yourself what's. Are you proud of? And that becomes like a beautiful firework in this dark sky instead. And it lights up everything so much more.

[00:35:49] And it's fair, I think. Yeah. You deserve to hear it. So make sure to celebrate.

[00:36:01] So, Eric, let's pretend and hope someone listens to this. They like what we do. Maybe they want more people to hear our ideas on how to run businesses and think about entrepreneurship. What is a tiny thing they can do to help us out?

[00:36:18] So one of the things that matters the most when you're a small podcast is the number of people subscribing to the podcast. The ratio between how many listens and how many subscribers, because it's actually not the ones who have the most listeners that get into top lists. It's the ones who get the most visitors that click subscribe. So even if we're a teeny tiny podcast, if we have a lot of people subscribing on podcast apps or on YouTube, that helps us so, so much.

[00:36:48] So if you want to support us, please click any subscribe button. That means the world to us. Now we're going to leave you with one new little thing, which we call the tweet of the week.

[00:37:03] And it's from a guy named Shane Parul, and he says that sometimes success is three percent brains. And 97 percent not getting distracted by the Internet. Have a great week.