Before my hysterectomy I tried hard to get the team together for our usual quarterly catch-up. We couldn't make the timing work.
So I did what a lot of owners do when they can't get people in a room. I sent emails. A series of them. The standards. What we'd have talked about. The business goals and plans. Upcoming events. What I needed the place to look like and what was expected.
I read them back before I hit send. None of them were out there. None of them said, or even implied, that anyone was doing a bad job. They were reminders of things we'd always talked about.
Then I had the surgery. A couple of weeks later I was back on deck, sending more of what I thought were helpful emails.
"Can we chat?"
That's the message I got. Sure, I thought. If there's an issue, let's sort it fast.
We sat down. They'd read my emails completely differently to how I'd written them. Every one had landed as negative. No positives. They felt I wasn't helping them, I was punishing all of them for a poor performance.
There was no poor performance. That was never the point. But it was the message they received, and the message they receive is the only one that counts.
The moment you get right or wrong
This is one of those moments as an owner where you can go two ways.
You can defend yourself. "That's not what I said. Read it again." I've seen owners do it. I understand the urge, because I felt it.
Or you can do what I did.
I thanked them for coming to me. Speaking up to the boss is hard. It's scary. Most of us hate conflict and would rather stew than say it. They said it. That's worth thanking someone for before anything else.
Then I apologised. Not the fake kind. They misunderstood my tone, and the tone was mine. If they felt no positives in those emails, that's on the person who wrote them.
Then I explained what the emails were actually for. Not to make anyone feel small. To reinforce the standards we've always talked about, because I couldn't say them in person.
Then we went through every email, one at a time. What it meant. What I loved about what they were doing. What they could improve. The positives that I'd assumed were obvious, said out loud.
I finished by thanking them and apologising again. I value them. I don't ever want them thinking our feedback is all negative. Their feelings about it were valid, whatever I'd intended.
What I learnt
They love positives. Actual positives, not implied ones. Not "the standards are X" with the compliment buried in the assumption that they're already meeting most of them.
I know exactly how to communicate with them now. That's worth a hard conversation.
The problem, plainly
Owners write emails from inside their own heads. You know the standards are a reminder, not a rebuke, because you know what you meant. Your team only has the words. And if the words are all "expected" and "needed" and "standards", with no "here's what you're doing well", they'll fill the gap with the worst version.
It gets worse when you're stretched. I was trying to run the business from a hospital bed by email. Nobody's tone survives that.
What to do about it
Before you send anything about standards, read it as the person who's been working hardest. Ask what they'd hear.
Put the positives in writing. Don't assume they're implied. They aren't.
When someone says "can we chat", say yes fast and go in ready to be wrong.
Thank them first. Apologise if it's yours to apologise for. Then go through it together, line by line if you have to.
And ask how they like to get feedback. They'll tell you. Mine did, and I should have asked years ago.
This week I made a decision I didn't want to make. I took a piece of work back from one of my team.
Not because they were incompetent. I want to be clear about that, because it's the whole point. It had nothing to do with their ability. Their life, right at that moment, wasn't ready for the task. They'd had a tough year and taken on extra duties at home. On top of all of it they wanted to create this amazing event, something that mattered to them. I was at capacity and couldn't carry it for them. Three weeks out, I could see that life had got away from them. I could see them starting to drown.
I didn't take the decision lightly. Everything in me, and everything in this book, is built on the opposite instinct. Give people autonomy. Give them independence. Let them own the things that mean the most to them. I'd offered to guide them through the whole process from the start. But guiding wasn't going to be enough anymore, and with three weeks left to make sure the event went smoothly, I had to move.
How you step in is everything.
I reached out. The first thing I did was tell them how much I valued them. Then I told them, honestly, that I was worried about them. Then I made an offer, not a decree. Let me take over the nitty-gritty, the behind-the-scenes pulling it all together, so that on the day you can still be the face of it, work the event, and enjoy watching your vision come to life.
Their answer came straight back. "Yes please. I would love that."
That told me something I want to pass on, because it complicates the tidy version of "always give your people autonomy". Sometimes it is okay to take something back. Not often, and never as a power move. But sometimes. The test is why you're doing it. In this case it had nothing to do with control. It was about making sure a person I care about didn't burn out, and could enjoy their vision as it came to life instead of being crushed under the weight of pulling it together alone.
Notice what I didn't take. They still had every one of the ideas. They still gave all the feedback, still poured in everything they had. What they'd run out of wasn't vision or care or talent. It was capacity, for this season of their life. So I took the load, not the ownership. Your team can always feel which one you've reached for.
I'll be honest, because this book is no good to you if I'm not. Was I frustrated? Absolutely. It would have been easier if it had all come together the way we planned. But I believe in giving people room when their life needs it, and a leader who only extends that grace when it's convenient isn't extending it at all. This is the season they needed it, so this is the season I give it.
There's a longer game in it too. Next time, they'll come to it with a real understanding of what an event like this takes. What to plan for, and, most importantly, what to ask of other people early so the vision comes alive without them drowning to deliver it. This wasn't a failure to learn from. It was a rehearsal they got to walk away from still loving the thing they created.
So for now, I'm making sure they know the one thing that matters most. Every decision and every direction is still theirs. I didn't take the vision. I picked up the parts that were too heavy to carry this month. I'm not the owner of their idea. I'm the facilitator of it.
I rang my boss to tell him my daughter was sick. She couldn't go to daycare and I couldn't come in.
He didn't say no. He didn't write me up. On paper, nothing happened.
What happened was the tone. Stern. A clucking sound, like a disappointed parent. Then a sigh so big I could hear him lean back in his chair.
And then the line I've never forgotten. "Surely you can just dose her up and send her to daycare."
I got the day. I also got the message.
Coming back in
When I walked in the next day the tension was already there. Nobody mentioned it. Nobody needed to. It was in how he looked up from his desk and how quickly he looked back down.
He was a dad. He'd had sick kids. He knew exactly what a night with a feverish child looks like and what a morning after it feels like. That's what made it worse. He should have understood, and he chose not to.
What it changed
Before that call I was all in. I cared about the place. I stayed back. I thought about work when I wasn't there.
After it, I was clocking in. Same hours. Same job done to the same standard. But the part of me that gave more than the job asked for, that part went home with my daughter and didn't come back.
He never knew. That's the thing about this kind of damage. It doesn't show up as a complaint or a resignation. It shows up as someone who used to go the extra mile and now quietly doesn't, and you can't work out why the place feels flatter.
The problem, plainly
Owners think loyalty is built in the big moments. The pay rise. The Christmas party. The public thank-you.
It isn't. It's built or broken in the small human moments. The sick kid. The funeral. The morning someone rings and says they can't do it today.
How you sound in that thirty-second phone call decides whether that person is loyal or just turning up. Not the policy. Not the leave balance. The sigh.
What I do now
I'm the boss now, at a gym and a workshop. My people ring me with sick kids. [JADE - FILL: what you actually say, or a specific time you handled it]
I'm not perfect at it. There are mornings when the roster's already thin and someone rings and I feel the sigh coming. [JADE - FILL: a time you caught yourself, if there is one]
But I remember that phone call. I remember being on the other end of it.
What to do about it
When the call comes, sort out your face and your voice before you answer. They can hear it.
Say the kid's name. Ask how they are. Mean it.
Deal with the roster after you hang up, not while they're on the line. The gap is your problem to solve, not theirs to feel guilty about.
When they come back, be normal. No frost. No "we managed without you". They already feel bad about missing the day. Don't add to it.
And if you're a parent yourself, you don't get a pass for being busy. You know what it's like. Act like it.
Most gyms run on hours nobody pays for. Set-up before the first class. Pack-down after the last one. The clean at the end of the night. Owners don't put it in the roster because it's "just part of the job".
I paid for those hours from the start, in the months I could least afford to. Here's why.
What it looks like from the other side
The owner down the road stopped paying her staff for their cleaning hours. From her side, that's a line off the wages bill.
From the staff side, it's a message. Your time is only worth something when a member is watching. The half hour you spend mopping so the place looks right tomorrow, that's yours to give.
People hear that message clearly. They give less. They arrive on the minute and leave on the minute. The place gets a bit grubbier. Members notice. And the owner can't work out why the vibe has gone.
What paying for it did
I paid for pack-down and set-up. It wasn't a big number per shift. [JADE - FILL: roughly how much per week or per person, if you want to say]
What it bought was people who treat the gym like it's theirs, because I treated their time like it's worth something. Three years on, those same people run my business. That's not a coincidence.
The problem, plainly
If the only way your business makes money is by having staff work for free, you don't have a business. You have a subsidy from your employees, and they'll withdraw it the day something better comes along.
Unpaid hours also hide the real cost of running the place. You can't fix a number you can't see. The owner who thinks she's saving on wages is really just deferring the bill, and the bill arrives as turnover, sick days and a team that's stopped caring.
What to do about it
Write down every hour your staff actually work. Set-up, pack-down, cleaning, the ten minutes early they come in to open. Be honest.
Put it on the roster and pay for it.
If the numbers don't work after that, you've found your real problem, and it isn't your staff. It's pricing, or membership, or a cost somewhere else. Go and fix that.
And if you can't find a way to pay for those hours yet, at the very least say thank you out loud and mean it. Then get to work on the numbers so you can.
The owner down the road was, at times, extremely late paying her staff. Sometimes she didn't pay them on time at all.
Her gym is closed now. I don't think late pay is the only reason. But I know what it told her people, because some of them told me.
What late pay says
It says you're last in line.
The lease got paid. The equipment finance got paid. The owner's car got paid. You, the person who was here at 5am, you can wait.
Nobody forgets that. You can apologise, you can fix it the next week, you can blame the bank. Doesn't matter. Once someone has stood in a supermarket and had their card declined because their wages didn't land, they know exactly where they sit in your order of things. And they start looking.
The pressure is real
I'm not writing this from a position of comfort. My first year was as tight as hers. There were weeks where paying wages on time meant something else didn't get paid. [JADE - FILL: what you let slide instead, if you're happy to say]
I chose wages every time. Not because I'm generous. Because I knew that the day I paid late was the day I'd lose the trust I was trying to build, and trust is the only thing that gets a small business through a hard year.
What paying on time bought
Three years later my team is still with me. They run the gym. They ask the right questions and work the rest out themselves.
I don't think they'd say "she always paid us on time" if you asked them what kept them. They'd probably say something about feeling backed. But paying on time is the floor that everything else sits on. You can't back someone and short them in the same week.
The problem, plainly
Owner-operators treat wages as one bill among many. It isn't. It's the one bill that has a person on the other end, and that person decides every day whether your business is worth their effort.
Pay it late and you've told them the answer.
What to do about it
Wages first. Before you, before the finance, before the supplier who's chasing you. If that means an uncomfortable phone call to someone else, make the call.
If you can see a late week coming, tell your people before payday, not after. Tell them exactly when the money will land. Then land it.
And if it's happened already, own it in person. Don't send a text. Say it to their face, tell them what you're changing, and then never do it again.
