Sometimes one person can ruin a company for you forever.
Hey, everybody.
It's Jay Baer with another Jay Today, where I give you a piece of my mind three minutes
at a time.
I am in snowy Denver, Colorado today.
Out here for a meeting with one of my very, very favorite clients, the guys at Cabela's.
So no, this is not camo, but it could be.
It could be camo in a convention of accountants perhaps.
On the way out here, actually I had already arrived.
I was at the Denver Airport.
I went to get a bite to eat, hungry, flight delay because of the snow.
I went to the Mexican Cantina, I think it's called, in the Denver Airport.
I may have that name wrong, but it was somewhere in that ballpark, and I guess the lack of
creativity in the naming of that restaurant probably should have been my first clue.
But I went to the Mexican Cantina.
It was approximately half full at lunch.
I asked the hostess for a table of one.
She said, "Yeah, we've run out of menus," which I thought was strange for a restaurant.
Really that's kind of like the basics of having a restaurant is actually having a menu.
When you're half full on a Monday afternoon at lunch, I thought it was strange that they
would be out of menus, but I thought, "Well, that's kind of interesting.
Maybe they're reprinting new ones."
So she said, "Well, we're out of menus, but we'll bring you one when we have one."
As she departed without asking me if I wanted a beverage, I mentioned that I wanted an iced
tea.
Iced tea arrives, good job on that, and I wait for a menu.
And I wait for a menu.
Meanwhile, I look over my shoulder and noticed that the same hostess, who had just seated
me without menu, sans menu, and this was like maybe a few minutes ago.
It wasn't like this was hours ago.
So either she has a massive short-term memory problem -- maybe it's the legal weed in Denver
-- or maybe she's just not very good at her job -- has now seated two groups after me,
who each have four people in their party and they all had menus.
So I'm not really sure what's going on at this point.
Now I've been there 10 minutes, no menu, a bit of an iced tea, and I get frustrated.
I leave $2 for my iced tea and I depart without ever even seeing a menu at the Mexican Cantina.
Now here's the thing.
The chances of me going back to that establishment are frankly zero, actually literally zero.
It's never, ever going to happen.
There's a lot of restaurants in the Denver Airport.
I will never be back.
Now I don't know if it's just a bad restaurant.
Maybe it is, but maybe it's just a really bad hostess, in which case that one person
and her inability to do her job effectively in that moment in time cost them a potential
customer and maybe other potential customers.
This isn't the first time this has ever happened to me.
It's probably not the first time it's ever happened to you.
There are companies that I will not do business with because I find a particular person in
that company unethical or loathsome in some way.
There are conferences I will not speak at because there are people in the organization
that run that conference who have treated me, in my estimation, poorly.
Maybe I'm just hypersensitive, or maybe it's just an example of the simple fact that one
person can make terrible, terrible decisions that impact an entire company.
Even if the rest of the company is great, one person can really have that kind of an
impact.
So it's not about training so much in companies.
Of course, you want to train your employees.
But the key is to have people who understand how to treat people.
That's why I'm always telling you on Jay Today and elsewhere to hire for passion and then
train for skills.
It's the old saw.
Hire slow and fire fast.
So I want to ask you this question.
Is that fair?
Is it fair that I'll never go back to that cantina?
Is it fair that there are companies that I will not do business with?
Is it fair that there are conferences that I will not speak at because one person in
a much larger organization has treated me in a way that I find frankly unsatisfactory?
Am I being hypercritical, or is that just the way the world works?
Have you ever had an experience like that?
I'd really like to know.
Let me know in the comments wherever you're seeing this Jay Today video.
Today's Sprout Social Shoutout is for my friend, Mark Sanborn.
I had the great pleasure of meeting up with Mark while I was here in Denver.
Mark is a terrific author and speaker about leadership and companies and strategy and
getting the most out of your people.
One of my mentors as well on the speaking side of my business and just a fantastic guy.
So you should absolutely be following Mark Sanborn in social media.
If you haven't read his book, "The Fred Factor" or "Fred Factor 2.0," you absolutely should
do that.
He knows an awful lot about leadership and people.
As always, this show, the Jay Today show is brought to you by Sprout Social, a terrific
social media marketing platform.
It's what I use for my own social media.
And by Candidio.
They make these videos a success, even from Denver.
I just upload them, they do the rest.
They can do the same for you.
Until tomorrow, this is Jay Baer with another Jay Today.
Thanks for watching.