Had to fire a partner

[Flasch186]

Yeah so had to do something at 46 yo I’ve never had to do before, fire a partner, worker, and shareholder. It was not easy.

Basically this girl partnered with us 5 years ago to start, run, and grow our property management Co and for about 1 year things were good. We had set it up in the beginning that we are a big family at work and while we would be there to support her, especially financially, we would stay out of her way and allow her to run it and develop it as she saw fit.

After about a year though things started to feel weird. We had a marketing meeting where we gave her a lot of ideas for outreach to bring in new properties, some 101 and some she would have to either hire out or learn a lot to execute and at the end of the meeting she looked at us and said, “so who’s going to do what?” And I responded, “what do you mean? You are, that’s your role.” It was weird but important to remind her that we have another company to run full time and the pm was her baby.

Then somewhere around the same time she tried to sell me on the idea of her having ownership of the sister brokerage company we run and I told her that that was not in the table and would not be considered.

Over the next few years she gained herself a raise because she said she was doing everything and we agreed to the raise until she hired people to do those tasks for her but unfortunately she viewed that as an incentive not to hire and hurt her income.

She also grew the company to a spot where it afforded her an annual income she was comfortable with and would then allow her to really push another part of her life she finds super important which is to grow her status in the real estate industry’s hierarchy. She is very award driven, accolade seeking, and title chasing. We are the opposite of that and simply want to focus on the customers and growing the business. It became too much of a disconnect over the last 18 months and the complaints grew to an uncontrollable level because she was inaccessible. The complaints almost solely involved the lack of communication, lack of timely responses and incomplete answers to inquiries. On top of that her communication via text and email was so riddled with grammatical and spelling errors it was embarrassing.

So finally we decided to secretly begin interviewing for a replacement and engage an attorney to draw up the papers. Secretly because she knows everyone in the industry here for better and worse. We thought we found the replacement but after a while of sit downs I got the impression that whole being good property managers and getting us through the triage they couldn’t see the big picture as they negotiated splits against the company that they would run, inherently hurting the company’s bottom line as they grew their piece of the pie. Eventually my partner saw them the same way and we lucked into, at the same time, one of our Realtors and friends that owns a renovation business/flipping business ventures that she would do it and find it exciting. It only took a couple of sit downs to see that she saw it as a company she could grow and make a lot of money in the future (while being fairly compensated up front) and wouldn’t be looking to squeeze her own company over time.

So Tuesday we sat down with the old partner and stuck to the script the attorney created and terminated the old property manager, presented her with a buy out, and eventually secured the buy out on Thursday along with two months severance contingent on her cooperation. It’s been crazy to go through the disaster of paperwork, email chains that were largely ignored until they were infernos, and incomplete attempts to gain business.

When we internally announced it to the sister company the realtors were over the moon and we learned 25% of our own realities would not refer business to our own pm co that the old girl ran because she was so awful. Already Cindy instantly regained the trust of our realtors to submit business to her and this weekend got a new door from one of them.

We were kind to the old pm on her way out, no non compete, no discount on the share offer amount, let her decide what she wanted to call this for the publics consumption etc

Regardless it’s short term pain for long term gain and my mental health is already better. I now have someone in place that actually cares as much as we do which is a nice feeling.

The old girl was very sad to go, said some narcissistic things that we let her off her chest, talked about the way she see things from her pov and it truly was a disconnect in the world she lives in and what we see and are living.

I’m happy sad nervous excited but it’s a first for me…46 and that’s something I experienced for the first time.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[flere-imsaho]

That's a lot to go through. Sounds like you handled it well.

[sterlingice]

I think firings and layoffs are two different things, too. I've never been a manager but I've been a supervisor and we had 6 contractors that eventually we had to cut and it was my job to tell them.

The first two, I barely felt it because they were not very good employees, but still felt bad for them as people - it was going to make the team function better and I could justify it in my mind as everyone else benefiting from the detriment of those two. Plus, in a lot of cases, people just fall into jobs that aren't good fits but don't leave because of inertia and likely they will find a better fit anyway (or at least, that's what you tell yourself).

The middle two were kindof hard - they were pretty good employees. At one point, one of them asked me something about one of the other contractors, one of the ones we were still keeping. I'm a pretty straight shooter but had to pull out the stupid company line I was coached, something to the effect of "let's just talk about you today" and I felt dirty saying it.

The last two were really rough because they were better than a number of my full-time people and really busted their rear ends to do a good job and there was nothing I could do to save their position. I remember feeling ill to my stomach for a couple of days after that.

I suspect something like this feels the first set

SI

[Flasch186]

update, the clusterfuck of time bombs and hand grenades we're uncovering and all of the checks I've had to write to make shit go away so we can move forward and not dwell on the past is frustrating. I called our attorney to ask if we can claw back some of the severance and she said, "You fired her for being terrible at her job.... you can't now go and claw back monies for her being terrible at her job which is why you fired her." And when I say terrible I mean... fuck all terrible now that we've seen behind the curtain. We signed an NDA so I can't even counter the narrative we gave her permission to control that it was an amicable buy out and she is jst evolving up.

[Toddzilla]

YOU signed the NDA (well, the company)

The people that worked with her and for her DID NOT sign an NDA and I presume are free to say whatever they wish about the old battleaxe

[BigDPW]

I have been through several business separations over the years and they are all challenging and painful. It can be so draining and demoralizing to work through such a separation. When not executed well it can take a long time to untangle. I have learned so much from each one however and it makes me and my business better each time. It is always tempting to be punitive to the opposite party but I have learned that you have to stand your ground but not let your emotions drive you decisions on how you handle things.