The unusual way we give feedback at our companies

0:00Do you think your feedback style is unusual and have you changed it over the years? What do you mean by feedback style? The way you give feedback to people is pretty direct, you would say? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But have you changed it at all? Okay, talk about the unusual way that you give feedback at your company and if you've changed it at all over the years. I'm still direct. I was talking to someone the other day and she knew I was getting frustrated. And she was telling me, she's like, Neil, the problem with you is if you're not working with someone who is really smart And she's not saying I'm smart.

0:33She's implying it. I'm not saying that's true. She's like, if you're not working with someone who's really smart, you just don't get along with them and you don't have the patience and you're just ready to figure it out some other way. And I was like, you probably have a good point. But yeah, I've always been direct. And the reason I love working with her specifically is she's smart. and when I try to make a change, I want to do something, she'll provide me data really quickly and tell me how much it can hurt the business based on the change I want to make or how much it could help. So in essence, she's learned how to really work with you and what you like and what you don't like.

1:10Yeah, but I don't work with her much at all. I would say over a course of a year, on a normal year, I mainly have three hours worth of conversations with her. That's a lot. For the year, for the year. For the whole year. Okay, that's not a lot. That's not a lot. Okay, so let me ask you this. But I'm intense. That's the problem. And people, you know, a great example of this is I'm running ads right now. And I'm getting it working, right? And it was Friday when the ads went live. Saturday morning, I could already tell they weren't going to work. And it was just so off cost-wise that I'm like, this person is spending maybe 15, 16 times what they should be for a lead.

1:55And most people on my team are like, dude, it's been one day. Give it time. The algorithms have to learn, all this kind of stuff. But when you're spending enough, like some things I just know. And I'm like, goodbye. I'm not saying they got fired, but they got fired working with me. I'm not saying at my company. I'm just saying with me, they can go work on something else with an organization. And right away, I figured it out myself that same day on how to get campaigns up and running and working the way I want to. And the next day, the costs, no joke, were 1.11 of what the other person was at. And I already knew that their campaigns just weren't going to work.

2:37And even at 1.11, it still wasn't where I needed to get the campaigns. But within another three days, I was able to get the campaigns to a striking distance where they probably will work. I just need 30 to 60 days worth of data to see if it works. but all the other bottom of the funnel metrics look equivalent to the rest of our lead sources and same with the quality. So in theory, it should work and it should be profitable. I just need 30 to 60 more days, but I'm quick. And if someone can't keep up with the pace and give me what I want right then and there, I move on and I have no hesitation. I do not care.

3:14So the good thing about you, Neil, is you've never changed that, right? I've seen over the years, you know, sometimes people can't take Neil's intensity. Sometimes we'll start crying and stuff, right? For the record, Neil's never made me cry before. But here's what I'll say. The reason why I bring this up is because maybe a younger version of me in my mid-20s or so, I would care about what people think, right? And so what would happen is I would be inauthentic. And what happens is I start to sit on the side and I watch if they can figure it out. And the longer I wait, the more pissed off I get.

3:45I get more and more and more pissed off. I just wait and wait and wait. And then I just explode, right? And then the intensity comes out. The change now, I would say in our 30s or so, you've been doing it consistently. But I realized I'm just like, someone might cry, someone might quit, someone might get emotional, but I'm not going to not be me. I'm going to be authentic. And we talked about it with my team recently. And then actually we had a meeting because someone was like, oh, I'm worried about Eric's feedback style rubbing people the wrong way and people quitting. And actually two people that worked with me for a while that really understand me was like, for one.

4:20you guys shouldn't try to protect people from Eric. Okay, that's wrong in the organization. I'm sure people have tried to protect the organization from you before, maybe, right? That's not the right way. Still probably to this day. And I think that's actually the wrong thing to do, right? Because that's a present, oh, like keep people away from Neil. Like, no, he's just trying to help. You have no other incentive than to just help the company. Yes, and when I help or when you help, we don't think it makes the person that we're helping look bad. We're just trying to accomplish the goal and we look at it as one big team and it benefits everyone.

4:48And people take it, oh, if Neil or Eric, right, we have separate companies, but still they look at founders in general. If they had to help someone, someone didn't do their job. And we don't look at it that way. You know, I was talking to someone the other day and I was like, oh, you should, uh, we really want this person. Cause like, oh, I got this amazing person we want to end up hiring. And they're like, oh, they're 50, 50. And I was like, cool. Before they can give you the no, I was like, let them talk to Mike or I, my co-founder and we'll help close them. And most people look at that as, oh, well, if we have to get your help to close them, then we didn't do our job.

5:22And I'm like, no, you know, and I know what they're thinking without them saying, like, yeah, just put us on the phone and we'll help. Good job on finding him. Let's go. I don't care if someone did everything perfect or not work as a team and just solve all problems. Yeah. And that's the founder's job to jump around and sprinkle the magic every, every now and then. And to wrap up my point here and then we'll move on. But, um, my, someone else has worked with me for about five years now was like, you know, when you're in authentic before you kind of just sat back and waited for people to figure it out.

5:52And I could tell you're getting more and more pissed off. And that led to destruction. Right. Um, and so she's like, yeah, like, no, you shouldn't change. Right. And I'm like, yeah, and I won't change. And the thing is this, if the feedback you're giving or the feedback I'm giving, if it actually works, if it actually, if you give direct feedback, the best case scenario is they get better. The second best is they quit. The worst is if you don't give feedback and they stay. That is the worst. That's why I think you need to figure out what works for you. My CDO, the way he gives feedback, he's so nice.

6:25He's so nice, but it works. It's extremely direct, but it's so nice, and it's extremely disarming. I was like, I don't have the patience for that, but it's so effective. It balances me out really well. So, yeah, you know, it's just like, hey, John, you're really terrible at this. Here's how you can fix it. But like saying it in a nice voice. I have learned one thing about myself. I am slowly starting to change how I give feedback in my personal life. Because I remember my daughter, Emma, she told me a few months ago, you know, we're sitting in bed. This was late at night. I like putting the kids to bed and being the last one.

7:03and she tells me, she's like, daddy, you know, I can tell that you're getting, she's five. She's like, daddy, I can tell that you're getting really frustrated with me. And I'm like, yes, I'm getting frustrated and I was stern with her. Cause I'm like, you're not listening. And I'm telling you certain things like, don't jump off the couch. You're going to get hurt. And she's like, you keep doing it. And she's just like, well, you need to understand I'm a kid and you You need to be more patient with me. And you need to talk to me as if I'm your child and not an employee at your company. Wow. Because they hear some of my calls, right?

7:36Because it's like on speaker. Yeah. And I have a habit. I never really hold the phone to my ear. I'm always on speaker. Yeah. And I'm like, you are right. I need more patience because I feel bad. She's a thousand percent right. Right? Yeah. And then I'm like, but you also need to listen once I tell you something once or twice because I'm telling you for your own good. And she's like, I'll try, but you also need to understand I'm a kid. And sometimes I just can't help myself and do what I want to do, even if you don't like it. Wow. And I was like, okay. And she is right, but I'm trying. But even with my children, I get frustrated after like the third time of telling them something.

8:16Why don't you just ask them? Why do you think I ask you to do these things all the time? Dude, I've tried doing everything. And even like when they get hurt, I'm like, do you understand why dad didn't want you to jump off the couch? No. and they're like and they're still crying and and then like 10 minutes later they're going off of it all over again and then you know they're gonna get hurt again i'm like dude yeah you know but well i wouldn't know i don't have kids but you would know way more than i do when i first started my business the overwhelm was real i didn't have the tools to help me scale if only i had shopify from the start to handle all the behind the scenes work shopify is the platform behind millions of businesses globally from huge names like mattel and Gymshark to the smallest brands just getting started.

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10:48Actually, this brings up to the next point. Maybe this is a personal thing or a professional thing. But the question is, should you criticize in public? And what I mean by that is usually what they say is you want to criticize in private, praise publicly. What's your philosophy? Then I'll go. It depends on the situation. And I'll give a personal and a business situation because I can't think of a business situation for both things. Actually, for a personal situation, if my kid's at the playground and being mean to another kid, I will go and talk with my kid right then and there and be like, Hey, the younger kid was almost about to get on the swing.

11:26You ran really quickly to just beat them. And now they're disappointed, but you knew, and you knew you were faster. That's not cool. You know, just come adequate and just being a good person. You don't do that to others. Right. And I'll tell them in a polite way. Um, and I'll ask them to share with the other kid. And if they say no, I'll ask them a few times. Eventually, I would take them off the swing without like crazy force or anything. I don't want to hurt them. But I would, in essence, with a little kid, tell them in public. But on the flip side in business, you know, I have a CMO, I'm not really the CMO of my own company, Salo, if he does a presentation to the company and the stats are off, like, dude, your stats are off.

12:06And I'll tell him like, come with, if you're going to present on something, the data better be accurate or you're wasting everyone else's private not public no not in public okay yeah right but on the flip side and i'm just making this up if salo sends an email that looks bad because he didn't take certain things into account instead of replying back to the email and blasting him i'll actually call him up i'm like dude you messed up here this is what you need to do in the future if you actually want to look good and this is how people think and you're just skewing the data to make yourself look good.

12:40That's not cool. If you want to get respect from people as a leader, you need to make sure that you're accurate. And you just say, Hey, we actually changed what the definition of this metric is. So automatically improved my numbers by 50 % is something that I actually gave him feedback on. And he did, he won't care if it's public. He's a really good friend. And he's like, thank you for this. And I didn't tell him to do this. He respond to everyone. And And he said, by the way, this metric's looking better because of we change a definition. So we should optimize for this other metric here. And it's too early to tell if the numbers are going to be better or not.

13:14But directionally, they're moving in the right direction. So like I would give him feedback like that in private because I want him to improve upon as a leader. And he thanked me for it. And he's like, really appreciate this. Thank you very much. And it wasn't a big deal. But like, if someone's doing something in public and it's wasting everyone's time within the organization, I will tell them right then and there, stop wasting everyone's time. But it's something that they're just doing particularly and that they could approve upon. I tell them those kind of things in private. So then that way, you know, it doesn't need to be public.

13:48So the way I look at if you should criticize someone in public is, so you would hear common management wisdom. It's like, exactly. Oh, you should criticize privately and praise in public. And you read a lot of these books, but then the thing with books is this, you learn over time what actually works for you. And there are certain philosophies. It doesn't mean that just because it's in a book, it's right for you, right? You have to figure out what actually works for you. And so here's how I look at it. Sure. In some cases I do criticize privately. you know, I don't want to make it a public thing because it is just tied to that person.

14:18But in some cases, for example, if there's eight of us sitting in a meeting and someone is late four minutes, that meeting isn't four minutes late. It's 32 minutes late. And so if someone joins, I'll say, if Neil joins a meeting late, I'll be, man, you know, the only thing I don't have Neil is time. Right. So I might, I might criticize him publicly there. Or in some cases, I used to hold back. I'm like, yeah, you know, management knowledge, management knowledge. And I know some people really hate this, right? But I feel comfortable criticizing in public because the thing is this, if someone's going to learn, if someone's going to make a mistake, that's okay.

14:52Okay. But we all should learn from that mistake. There shouldn't be, we should hide it because then what's happening, then those people might start to make the same mistake again. Right. And so to me, I think the vast majority of people probably hate that. But you learn over the years what works for you and what doesn't. And you have to also look at, hey, if it actually works in a company and the bad people are rotating out and the good people are getting better and it's attracting more good people, then it's working. So I think it's like you keep testing these things and you figure out what works for you.

15:22But I think the biggest signal, and we can move on from this, is if it feels right to you. Yeah. And the way I like looking at it is not just really feeling right, but by being direct with people in public for just most stuff, it'll help people, A, build a thicker skin, and B, it'll teach the rest of the company that they should be direct. It doesn't matter if someone is above you or below you. If someone's doing something wrong, you should call them out and tell them how to fix it or help them or tell them what to do. So then that way it could be improved upon. And this overall helps the whole organization grow versus you're seeing a lot of these big corporations, people hold stuff back and they're gigantic.

16:07But when they first started, they would have never got to the size they are today if they operated the same way. You got to make sure that people are doing what's in the best benefit of the company. It doesn't matter what their position is. And people need to learn to just talk about hard things. I like to always say withholding feedback is withholding progress. And the thing is, yeah, entropy kicks in. So as long as the founders can stay in the business and they can keep the the heat in there, they can keep injecting heat. That's all you can ask for at the end of the day. So I think if you're listening to this, if your founder gives you direct feedback, you might feel like it's a personal thing.

16:40It is almost never, I think 99.999 % of the time, it's never personal. They just want you to do better so the company can do better. That's all it is. Yeah. But the caveat with it is, is when you give feedback, you can be direct, but be kind about it. Be respectful. Yeah, exactly. Like, don't be like, F you, look at you. Don't call them names. You're dumb or anything like, you can't do that. That's just not cool. Yep. All right. That's it for today, guys. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe. Go to marketingschool.io slash agency to learn more about the Agency Owners Association to grow faster.

17:09And we'll see you tomorrow.