Can You Trust Your Employees Too Much? (The Mistake That Cost Me Millions)
Blanket trust feels like leadership. Nine years in, it is the single decision I would take back first, and the bill is bigger than the bad hire.
Yes, you can trust your employees too much, and it is the most expensive mistake I have made in nine years of running a business. Blanket trust does not show up as one big betrayal. It shows up as a hundred small excuses you accept because you want to believe people, and the stack of them is what costs you.
Why trusting people too much is a business problem
Because the small stuff compounds. Someone is late, the car broke down, fine. Someone makes a mistake, they did not mean it, fine. Each one is a micro moment where you choose to believe the story, and each one teaches the room what you will accept. I was raised on forgive and forget. That works in a family. In a business it is an invitation.
The good employees pay for the bad ones
Here is the part owners miss. The bad eggs are not the real cost. The good ones are. They watch the bad ones get away with it, decide the company has no standard, and leave. I have lost good people that way. So the trust you extended to protect one person ended up costing you the person you actually needed.
You are not the benchmark
My trap was relating everyone to me. I would never intentionally hurt my business, so when I slip I give myself the benefit of the doubt, and I projected that onto everyone on payroll. But nobody else owns the company. Nobody else has the stake. Extending the grace you would give yourself to people without your incentives is not fairness. It is a blind spot.
How to fire an employee that clients love
Hire first, then fire. That is the whole answer, and it is the reason most service businesses keep people they know should be gone. In a gym, clients attach to the trainer, not the brand. Fire that trainer with no cover and you lose the revenue tied to them. So you sit in the catch 22 and the toxic person stays another quarter.
Recruit before you cut
The only way out is to have somewhere to put the client. That means actively recruiting before the termination, even when it feels unfair that the person does not know it is coming. Telling them in advance does not fix that. It hands a person with nothing to lose weeks of access to your clients and your staff. Your obligation is to the people feeding the business, and the standard has to cut both ways, for employees and for clients.
Clients get over it faster than you think
Every time I have let a popular trainer go, clients asked why. I do not badmouth people, so the answer is it did not work out, and I swallow the part about the program not being followed and the corners being cut. Some clients leave. Then two or three months later the ones who stayed tell me the new person is way better. It happens every single time, and then they fall in love with that person and the cycle starts again. That cycle is the business leveling up. You do not get it without the courage to cut.
Always be hiring
A standard you cannot enforce is not a standard. If you have nobody to replace a person with, you cannot fire them, and everyone knows it. So hire continuously, even when you are full. Build a backlog. The backlog is what turns a rule on paper into something the floor believes.
No one is ever safe, and that is the point
Yaw pushed on this hard. If you are always looking for someone better, no one on the team is safe. Correct. But safe is not the goal. Mutual is the goal. The company grows, it brings more resources to the employee. The employee levels up, they bring more to the company. The moment one side coasts because they have been here four years, the trade is broken. Tenure earns the benefit of the doubt on the extremes. It does not earn a pass on speed.
Redundancy is cheaper than the mistake
You will not catch what you do not check. We had a person collecting payments who never told us a state payment had landed on a card we were supposed to run, so it never got run. That was one thing among many I only found after the fact. The fix is checks and balances, two people responsible for the same number, so somebody verifies. I sat on hiring a fractional CFO because five thousand dollars a month felt like a lot. She has already found that much a month that we were leaving on the table. The alternative to five thousand a month in oversight is finding out someone walked off with a hundred thousand.
Trusting people too much was the absolute biggest mistake I made in business.
The real reason you have not had the conversation
Yaw asked me the question that matters. You know who should not be here. Why have they not been talked to. The honest answer is not the catch 22. It is that I built relationships with them, and I grew up believing everyone else was more important than me. That is why the conversations are late. Not strategy. Nerve.
People will pull you back to the old version
When you start holding the line, the people who benefited from the old you will work to bring him back. They do not like the new version because it cannot be taken advantage of. Expect it. It is confirmation you are moving.
Courage is the value under every value
Yaw brought up an exercise on core values and the one he found underneath all the others: courage. Aristotle said the same thing. You can list authenticity or connection or speed as a value, but none of them exist without the courage to act on them when it costs you something. Accountability is leverage. What I am holding myself accountable for this year is being me, all the way, and the conversations have already started.
The full conversation with Yaw is in The Employee Mistake That Cost Me Millions on the show, including the exam cheating story I called four hours before it happened.
If you know exactly who on your team should not be there and you still have not said it out loud, that gap is what coaching exists to close. Get on the waitlist.
Common questions
Can you trust your employees too much?
Yes. Blanket trust is the most expensive mistake Anthony says he has made in nine years of business. It shows up as a stack of small excuses you accept because you want to believe people, and the stack hides the big problems until you finally fire someone and find the rest under the rug. Trust should be earned by a pattern, not handed out on day one because someone tells you they love the company.
How do you fire an employee that clients love?
Hire the replacement first, then fire. In a service business clients get loyal to the person, not the company, so letting a popular trainer go without cover costs you their book. Anthony's rule is to recruit before you fire so there is somewhere to put the client, and to accept that some clients will leave anyway. The ones who stay usually admit within a few months that the new hire is better.
Why should a business always be hiring?
Because a backlog of candidates is what gives you the freedom to hold a standard. If you cannot replace someone, you cannot fire them, and everyone on the floor learns that. Always hiring means the moment a person stops meeting the bar you have options, and it means good employees see that low performers do not get a permanent pass.
What does keeping a toxic employee cost a business?
More than the clients you are afraid to lose. One toxic person can flip an entire gym, and the good employees are the ones who pay for it, because they watch the bad ones get away with it and quit. Anthony's position on the show is that the cancer does more damage than losing the clients attached to it, as long as you have hired the people to back the decision up.