If I have to answer this question in short, then I would say, ‘’If you are positive about yourself then it doesn’t f**king matter.’ Let us now proceed to a more detailed answer to what losing my entire staff taught me.
Back in January 2017, I noticed that my team was not performing well and their productivity had reduced by 70%- 80%. I tried my best to solve the situation in an attempt to again augment the productivity of my team. I am not a firm believer of the rule of “Hire late fire fast” and I didn’t apply this rule to my team since all my team members have been working for me from the very beginning and have helped me a great deal in starting my company.
Since the option of firing them was ruled out, I met them personally, even paid a visit to their house and helped them in focusing on company’s vision rather than focusing on the problems faced in the business during the first year. As a result, a few of my team members got motivated and started performing well but that did not last for a long time.
And finally, in April and May my entire team, 3 co-founders, and 5 other employees resigned from the company and all I was left was just a new joinee who had joined about a month ago. I still do not know from where I managed to gather a gut feeling and have taken a decision that I have to create wonders for my company even if nobody is there to support me. I started working overtime for around 13- 14 hours every day, stopped meeting friends and did not even take a single holiday after that. And to my surprise, the results I was able to achieve have been terrific. I am sharing weekly data of Google Analytics with you all. You can see for yourself.
I increased my website page views by 98.2% in just 3 months. During this entire process, I learned the following things.
1. Probability is Never Zero
When all of my staff had quit the company, I promised myself to work hard and achieve good results irrespective of what is happening around me. At that time I knew nothing about how I will be doing this but I was highly confident that I will surely do that. My proficiency in mathematics was an added advantage that gave me a new confidence and I learned that probability can never we zero. So I started figuring out how it all can be done. I read 30-40 case studies of world’s best digital marketers and compiled a list of 7 points from my extensive learning and eventually began to divert all my whole efforts in implementing them. Though I remained short from what I had planned for, but I am still satisfied with the results so far.
2. Total Passion Outcomes Total Employees
Earlier I used to think that the more the number of employees in a company the bigger the company is. Nevertheless, companies like WhatsApp were exceptions to that. But when I, along with the new joinee, was able to outperform my last and much bigger team, I learned that even though we do not have the scale to measure the passion with which we perform at work, such a scale should really be there so that we could be more and more result oriented. After all, it is not about the total number of employees that you are working with, it is the zeal and passion with which you perform at work. The more your team is able to scale on the parameter of passion, the better it will be able to perform irrespective of the number of employees.
Even if you have 5 employees whose passion is less than any single employee, then that single person will give you better results.
3. It’s Not About Situation, it’s About Mindset
If you look at the graph you will observe the downfall during the month of March (red line in the beginning) and the surprising part is that I was also the part of the same team. It clearly shows that at that point in time, my mindset was at its worst because I was worried about how things will improve and how traffic and sales will go up. My sales team and other employees were not performing well. I also thought at that time that I alone cannot bring the desired results and it has to be a collective effort of the entire team.
But when everyone left, a different kind of wave started flowing into me. I observed all the big victories in history and learned that it is always one single person who fights against all the initial adverse conditions and makes things a bit favorable for others. He brings initial results so that others can trust him and join him on the same mission. Then the same thing I implemented in my business as well. Instead of losing hope, I made myself clear and performed in a manner that could not have been possible if the same old team was working with me.
4. Never Give a Second Thought
The same notion is taught to us in different ways right from our days of childhood. Some say it as; never live in the past while others simply believing in moving on. I implemented the same thought. When my team members decided to leave, I asked everyone twice to stay in the company in a span of 3 days. After that, from the 4th day onwards, I never gave any thought on persuading them to stay. However, I never ever regretted the fact that I had invested my time in the wrong people. Instead, I focused on how things can be improved for good and that, I must say, helped me in achieving great results.
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