"The Customer Is Always Right" is a Destructive Lie

Sean Weisbrot: Borja Cuan is the co-founder of Four15 Digital, a growth marketing firm that focuses on using ads to help their clients grow. In this episode, we focus heavily on psychology, talking about his journey, what he's learned, how he's changed to stay relevant, whether resilience is something you learn or are born with. And so much more. So if you like these psychology based episodes, then you're in for a treat. Let's get to it. What is the hardest thing about being a business owner?

Borja Cuan: dealing with a lot of bad news. I guess I was thinking about exactly what it was. I mean, there's so many things, but I think it's not a straight line. And I think. You have to have the ability to be resilient and adapt. And I think the hardest part about being a business owner, it's not very glamorous and I don't consider it hard, but I think for many, it's hard for me. I knew going into this that I would be, uh, a very bumpy road and a series of ups and downs, and a lot of what you do as a business owner is solve problems and deal with problems and get bad news. Um, so I think if you're someone who expects it to be a linear path, uh, in every day to be sunny, I think you should not become an entrepreneur. Um, for me, when I get a customer call and they say, Hey, we decided to, uh, you know, cancel or go with another agency, I think you have to learn to sort of listen and process that information. Uh. Reflect on it briefly and then move forward, and then just sort of like, what do we have to do to make up for that loss revenue? What did we learn, if anything, from this client departure? So I think the hardest part about being is that business owners, it's, it's, um, you know, it's, it's, it's challenging in that you're just dealing with a lot of these, uh, day-to-day issues, but hopefully what keeps you motivated and inspired into sort of. Uh, process that, and, and get through it is that you're motivated because of all the good things that, that happen with, uh, having a business. In terms of the, the wins and things like that,

Sean Weisbrot: do you think resilience is something that is in it, or can it be learned? Because a lot of people should not be business owners.

Borja Cuan: I agree with you 100%. Uh. I think you either have it or you don't. Um, can you learn to become more resilient? Sure. Through experiences and adversity and things like that. But I think overall, that is my superpower, uh, is my ability to deal with pain and suffering, um, and not let it sidetrack me. I actually can just sort of like, okay, bad news, bad news, bad news. I have the ability to center myself, find perspective, remind myself this is not cancer. It is important, but it's not life or death and it's all solvable. Um, and the pain will be pa will pass. It's temporary, right? Um, until the next one. So I think resilience is something that you either have or you don't. Um, but I think you can. Build resilience. Um, but do you build enough resilience to be able to cope with what will be, uh, a long and difficult journey?

Sean Weisbrot: What have you had to change about yourself to remain relevant in your business?

Borja Cuan: I don't know if it's to be relevant, but to be effective, uh, is, uh, my leadership style has had to evolve and I've had to improve in areas as a business owner, as a business leader to. Adapt to the current times. Um, and I think leadership is so important in owning and operating a business, a successful business. Maybe if you have a bad business, it's not important. Um, but if you have a successful business that you wanna scale, um, it requires people and I think, um. When you're dealing with people and you're working with people and you rely on people, you have to have really good leadership. And so I think I have matured, evolved, improved as a leader to be more effective in managing the business and growing it and improving it. Um. And I've managed teams before starting my own company. Um, but that's different. You know, it's, I was working for a company, I was, you know, a manager, but it wasn't my company. I had the, the, a lot of people above me to support me and, and making decisions and, and reinforcing, uh, things for me and things like that. So when, when you're the business owner, kind of the, the buck stops at you. And you are ultimately responsible for, for the team, and you make all the decisions, right? We're private, we don't have a board or anything like that. So I think, um, for me to, you know, be relevant, effective, I think I've, I've definitely done a lot of intro introspective on my leadership style and, uh, made improvements or optimizations or changes to that, to, um, you know, to, to, to, to. Kind of adapt to, um, my business and the, and the people that are part of my business.

Sean Weisbrot: I'd love you to be more specific about something that you had to change, that that was painful for you. So I'll give you an example of myself. When I was doing my last tech company and I had a team of 16 people, one of them was a close friend of mine who I had hired to be the COO. And there were a number of times where something would happen. I'd find out about it, I'd get annoyed, and I would let my anger lead the conversation with whoever it was on the team and. He over time was like, you gotta stop doing that. You have to, like, if you get pissed off, it's fine to have those emotions, but don't show those emotions to the team. He's like, you can yell at me all you want. You know, we're, we're close friends, it's fine. But like, you can't do that with these people if you feel anything, just like walk away. So it was fully remote. So we had the opportunity to just disconnect from the computer, walk away, go blow off steam. He's like. You have to come back with curiosity and questions so you can get to the bottom of what's going on without judging anyone until you know what's going on. And it took me many times of hearing that for it to sink in and for me to start practicing it. And when I started to do that, I started to have better relationships with the team. But it took me a long time for that to happen. So like what's something that you specifically went through

Borja Cuan: recognizing that. Employees over clients. Uh, when we started the agency, it was clients over employees, meaning we were so obsessive and committed to winning our first deal. We didn't care how much people paid us. We just wanted to get the opportunity to prove our worth and to show value. We would do it at all costs, right? We were just like, Hey, we're starting a business. We wanna get our first client. We want to make them a raving fan. We know if we do, they'll pay us more. They'll refer other clients. Um, we were just so happy that someone wanted to work with us. We were, you know, a, a new agency and there's thousands of agencies out there. Why would you work with us? Right. We were brand new. Um, and I think that mentality was good, right? Over delivering. Um. Not over promising on the sales side because we wanted to do everything we said. It wasn't a function of that, it was just really, uh, setting the bar very high, but putting that pressure on the team and at times it was a lot of pressure and it came at the cost of their happiness, right? Their, their job happiness. And so I had a moment a couple years after launching the business where I was really realizing that we had to reverse the prioritization, meaning we needed to make employees over clients if it came to that. And that's not to say that our clients can't be demanding that they can't ask us to do a lot, that we can't be held accountable. Um. But if, if, if, if we push our team too much and we don't. Sort of prioritize balancing work, account load, things like that. We're not gonna have great employee retention. We'll have great customer retention, but employee retention won't be great because people will be burned out and they won't be happy. And that will, um, be reflected in the way we deliver customer experiences. And so I remember in front of a, and the whole team, it was, you know, 20, 20 people at the time. Um. I, I let the team know that I recognized that I had made a mistake as a leader, and I talked them through kind of what, what I was thinking right in my head and how we had done business a certain way and my intentions were good, and that I wanted to make our clients super happy so that they would never leave us. But I, I failed to recognize that that came at the cost of some team. Members happiness and it led to them being unhappy and unhealthy and blah, blah, blah. So I totally, you know, made this part of our, you know, values. One of our values is now if we have to choose it's employee over client. So now it's a very different approach, right? We're still delivering great service. The team is still working hard. We're still, um, you know. Held to a certain standard, but we have much more of a pulse on, hey, we're not sort of like overdoing it to the point where you are now unhappy. So that's definitely one thing that as a leader, I definitely did not prioritize when I started my company. And uh, and it took me a couple years to come to that realization, but when I did, I acknowledged it, I made it public on what the mistake was. I let them know why I did it. It wasn't intentional, but the bottom line is the outcome was not good and that I was gonna make some changes, um, and, and did it right away.

Sean Weisbrot: What was the result of that?

Borja Cuan: I think it was just in general, people, uh, could sort of feel better about working here. You know, they, they felt that things were much more balanced in terms of what the workload was, right? What the expectations were. Um, and, uh, and overall happier. Right? Just happier coming into work. Right? They weren't dreading. Uh, you know, some of the things they had to do. Um, so overall, I think it created a better culture, a better working environment, happier team members. Uh, really it came at no cost to the client. It was just kind of moving some things around, right? Reorganizing, optimizing a few of our processes. So we didn't, uh, ha make this change. And as a result, lost revenue or clients, we just made improvements the way employees felt about their job.

Sean Weisbrot: Did it lead to specific increases in revenue in a period of time or a decrease in employee churn?

Borja Cuan: It didn't lead to increased revenue from clients. So I would say nothing changed on that front. Um, and in terms of, uh, retention, um, I would say I. Yes, but I don't have like a statistic to back it up and say our retention, uh, rate went from, you know, 22 months to 32 months. Right. We kept someone on 12, you know, one full year longer. I would just say, you know, when you're operating a small company, I. You just know because you have a pulse in the business and you're interacting with the team. If it were a hundred people, it would be different. But when you have such a small team, you can talk to pretty much everybody. You feel the vibe, the energy. You see people, you observe them. So for me, it was just one of these things where I just knew I. Because I could just feel it. I could, I could see it, I could talk to people and get a different energy. Um, and so, yeah, I knew that these, uh, it, it, it frankly immediately improved the moment I got in front of everybody and I vocalized it and acknowledged my wrongdoing or, or, or a mistake that I made as a leader. It wasn't beneath me to fall on my sword. It wasn't beneath me to say, Hey guys, I'm not perfect. I, I really messed up. Um. And I wanna let you know why I did what I did. It wasn't intentionally, uh, trying to make your life unhappy here. Um, and most importantly, what am I gonna do to make this better for you? And so that in itself, and giving them an opportunity to hear me say that and ask questions was like right there and there. Right then and there, they knew, uh, they felt better about, about things here because that was something that was definitely on their mind.

Sean Weisbrot: One thing I appreciate about American cultures, the willingness to be open and vulnerable, because in my experience living in other countries, I've never seen anyone do that before. Of the companies I've worked for or worked with in I'll, I'll name called China and Vietnam specifically, I've never professionally worked in. Portugal, but as a customer, I, I see different businesses in the way they act. And yeah, at least in these three cultures, I, I can see just a, a general un openness or close closed-mindedness, uh, from leadership that if there's a problem and you blame the employee, you blame somebody else. People don't take responsibility for their actions or their decision.

Borja Cuan: Even in our office in Mexico. It's a different culture in the way they do business. They are not accustomed, at least there, at least the team. I can't speak for everybody in Mexico. Maybe there, there are companies that have a different sort of way of doing business, but the directness, right, the feedback, being direct and and being able to give feedback to leaders and us being okay with that was not at all something that they were accustomed to. It was a very much like, oh, we, that doesn't happen. People aren't this direct with us. Maybe they're having these conversations behind the scenes, but they're not telling us directly. They're not giving that level of transparency that you are. So I think that was definitely an adjustment for them, is knowing, Hey, listen, we're gonna adopt some of the, um, you know, the, the, this, the, the, the, the way we do business in the United States, we're gonna actually do it the same in Mexico. Um. And, and we want people to feel comfortable in coming to us and saying what's on their mind. And it was like, it, it, it definitely took some time for us to get people to feel comfortable in that type of environment.

Sean Weisbrot: Hey, just gimme 10 seconds of your time. I really appreciate you listening to the episode so far, and I hope you're loving it. And if you are. I would love to ask you to subscribe to the channel because what we do is a lot of work and every week we bring you a new guest and a new story. And what we do requires so much love so that we can bring you something amazing. And every week we're trying really hard to get better guests that have better stories and improve our ability to tell their stories. So your. Subscription lets the algorithm know that what we're doing is fantastic and no commitment. It's free to do. And if you don't like what we're doing later on, you can always unsubscribe. And either way, we would love a, like if you don't feel like subscribing at this time. The last job I had. Ever before I started doing my own things was with an, an American guy in China and I tried to be open with him and tell him what I saw. I was the HR manager for his company. He had a private academy, pri private, uh, training school, uh, with his wife who was Chinese and he was you a white guy from Oregon and. I treated him the way I would treat any other American, and yet this guy had been in China for so many years that he had lost that kind of sense of openness, I think, or that was always just his personality because when I would tell him to his face the negative things I saw in my solutions or suggestions to solve the problem, he would thank me kind of. But then behind my back, I'm pretty sure he hated me for. Having good ideas and, uh, there was always this weird kind of push and pull with him. I, I really did not enjoy working with him, unfortunately, even though I loved the position and I loved everyone else, and I just, I was like, this, you know, you, you've got a great, I'd never said this to his face, but my, my feeling was, you have a great business that could be so much better if you would just stop coming into work. Because you are the one destroying the future of your own company. I didn't, I've never said this to him, but that his personality was so overwhelmingly obnoxious that I think everybody secretly hated him.

Borja Cuan: Yeah. That's not a good place to be, right? Where people are feeling that or that's their opinion of you.

Sean Weisbrot: He was. A clear sociopath. So my, my degree's in psychology, and I saw it very, like, very early on. I saw that he manipulated everyone around him, but I, I don't think they realized they were being manipulated. And I saw it, and when he tried to do it to me, I was like, I'm not letting this happen to me. Like, I'm way too smart. Like I recognize social, uh, manipulation, like, and he just really wanted people to like him. But the way he did it was manipulative and, and it was a shame. It was like. The teachers hated him. You know, I, I had to, I had to get rid of all of the teachers and hire new teachers, uh, who had better experience and better qualifications, and offer them higher salary. I had to renegotiate the entire contract with him because he didn't wanna pay people more. I was like, if you pay them more, you can justify charging the customers more. And the customers are affluent. They can absolutely afford to pay more. You could double the price and they would still pay it. And he was just, he wasn't willing to see a lot of those things. And there was a guy that I had hired to be a teacher who ended up being promoted above me to be like the headmaster of the entire school and get double my salary. Like, I love the guy. He was, he was fascinating and, and really well suited for the job. But like, I could have done that job too, and I was there first, so like, why? You know, it's just like little petty things like that that like wasn't necessary. And to top it all off, when I got a concussion and I was struggling to work for a little bit, he fired me as a result. That's when I said I'm never working for anyone else again.

Borja Cuan: Did he have some strength that clearly not the human capital side.

Sean Weisbrot: He was actually an amazing educator with the students. He was so good. And his understanding of psychology was so good the like, he understood how to teach people how to learn a language and that was the goal of the academy. And he was so good that like I had been in, I'd worked in a number of schools in China. And a lot of them, the kids end up not really learning how to be fluent in the language. And his school was the only school I saw in 10 years that the kids could actually communicate in English in a fluent level. Like an, like, he had some kids coming like 5, 6, 7 years old. They were coming five days a week, an hour or two a day, and they were near native. Like they sounded like they were a kid from America and, and they actually had the ability to communicate with you and they were learning about science and math and a bunch of this stuff as this extracurricular stuff and in English and just the way he understood how the brain worked and how to. Get them to enjoy the learning process and how to get the learning to stick in their brains was just so fascinating to me. That was the only reason I took the job. It's because I wanted to learn more about how to do that.

Borja Cuan: Oh, it sounds like a common thing, right? You're, you're good at the actual practice, but you're not a good business person. They're two distinct skill sets, right?

Sean Weisbrot: If he had been in the teaching in the classroom and he let his wife run the business, they would've probably made 10 times more money.

Borja Cuan: Sounds like, uh, ego gets in the way.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. 'cause his wife was easy to work with and she was Chinese so she could communicate with all of the, the families. Right. 'cause we were in China, so they're all, they're all Chinese, you know, none of them are speaking any English. And I could speak Chinese, so I could also help if I needed to. But generally I let his wife do you know, most of that stuff, it wasn't my job. I was the HR manager. Right. I'm middle management. My, my job wasn't, uh, to run the company, but I. It was a massive learning experience that I'll never do again. Yeah, I can imagine. So I, I've, I've been an HR manager for my dad's business as well, and I've, I've, you know, had my own businesses where I've had to hire people. And, uh, it, it's very different to manage someone else's business where you don't have control and, and having your own business where you have pretty much full control depending on size. Um. But I learned from my last company that what I like is to not have employees. I like to work and I, I know that it can be limiting in a way I. But I mean, my first business was an eight figure business, and I didn't have any employees. I had, I had a few people that did contracting once in a while in the case there was a service that I couldn't provide. They kind of came in and, you know, fulfilled the service for me. But like, they were running their own business. They, they didn't need me to teach them the process. They just did their, you know, did what they always do. You know, it's just that I brought them the client basically. So, um. But like having people full-time and managing them and training them and being responsible for their hopes and their dreams is like it. I'm, I don't know if I wanna do that again. It was so much stress for me. So my hat's off to anyone that runs a business and has employees that I. You know, stick around.

Borja Cuan: Definitely hard. Uh, the, the people side of having a business is really difficult. Um, definitely the most difficult thing any entrepreneur will probably say. Right? Just, uh, you know, especially in, in what I could call like the, the post COVID world. Um. I think it's just, uh, requires a lot of effort. It has to be a priority. You have to invest in your team. You have to build, uh, deep connections with your team. You have to get to know them, uh, and what their aspirations are professionally, what are the goals that they wanna accomplish? You need to be clear on putting together a plan for them to achieve those goals. And if they're not. Achieving those goals, you need to sit down with them and you need to explain what, what, what they're not doing to achieve those goals. And then make sure that they're aligned on what needs to happen to get them back on track. Uh, you have to constantly sort of motivate them and inspire them so. It's just a lot, right? It's, it's very time consuming and you have to make it a priority or you have to build a team around sort of like training and development to make sure that everybody's sort of like growing and, um, I. And, and they, they need to feel fulfilled, right? And everybody is different in what they need. So, you know, I think when you're operating a business, um, it's not a one size fits all approach. It's very bespoke. When you have employees, the way you talk to employees can't be necessarily universally the same. Um. The way you, you work with them and the plan you have for them in some cases has to be very customized depending on what their personal goals and objectives are. So yeah, that's, it's very time consuming, yet it's very important and it's critical if you're running a professional services organization and, and, and, and like I say, always when you have a happy employee or you have happy employees, that translates into. Service and customers can tell if the team is happy, you know, the team, te tick tends to do a better job when they're happy. And I experience this myself as a consumer, as a customer. Whether I go to a hotel or a restaurant, uh, or a retail store, I. I instantly know based on the energy and the people that interact with me, if their employer treats them well and if they're happy, so I know that that's gonna be the case with my company. If we treat our team well, if we. Uh, spend time with them. If we, uh, develop them, if we take care of them, uh, that's gonna translate into better service.

Sean Weisbrot: I had this conversation with another woman a few years ago. She was one of my first guests. It's like episode 30 or something. And she had a business where she only hired, I, I think, only hired women and, or maybe she didn't mean to. It just kind of happened that way. And she has a master's in psychology. So she went through that whole process that you did of, you know, talking to her team and making sure that they understood each other and that they understood her so that they could then understand the clients. And she, I think she went pretty deep into like teaching them all about the psychology of like interactions and how you word you say can affect the other person. Because most people, like, like for example, most people. Are controllable. Uh, they're manipula manipulatable. I, I hate to say it, but it's the truth. You know, you can, like, I could say something that'll probably make you angry. Or I could say something to someone else that might make them happy. I can kind of pick and choose the words that I use to make you feel what I want you to feel, because most people aren't self-aware enough to prevent you from changing how they feel. But the chances of you saying something that are gonna make me feel something are pretty low because I'm aware of those things. So. Because a lot of people have a low eq. You can teach people how to understand so that you can then make sure you have a better working relationship with each other, and especially the clients. And so she had a similar thing where the clients were, I guess not the greatest. And so she'd have to, you know, teach the team how to understand them because if not, they have nowhere to go. And so they, they don't know how to blow off the steam. And so. They're just like, I don't know what to do. And like, your employees were getting frustrated. 'cause they don't have the power to say they, maybe they perceive, they don't have the power to say to the client, this is not okay. I. You know, I, I am not your punching bag.

Borja Cuan: That requires training and conversation with the team to let them know what is, uh, within reason and what is not right. And I say to the team, listen, if you're being mistreated by a client, that's where we draw the line, right? They have to be respectful. They have to be professional. I. That's not to say they can't be demanding or expect a lot from you or become frustrated or express frustration, oh, that's normal in a business relationship and we need to be trained on the front lines to work through those conversations. So that is okay, but if they mistreat you. If you're not comfortable, uh, telling them, uh, to stop or telling them what they did to make you uncomfortable, then bring me in and I'll talk to the client, right? I want to hear, uh, both sides of the story. Like, what happened? Tell me. I'll listen and take notes. Um, and this has happened, right? I've had this situation happen at the agency where, where I've had to talk to a client or. You know, kind of let them know kind of what the boundaries are. It doesn't happen often, but it happens from time to time. So I think a lot of it is just sitting down with your team, uh, letting them know what we would tolerate and what we don't tolerate. And if something happens where we, we, we should not be tolerating that. You do have the power and authority to talk to the client again. It's a skillset to be able to have these conversations. This is where soft skills, uh, come into play, right? You, you can't, you have to do it in a way that's professional, but it's okay to say to someone, Hey, I didn't like what you said. Now I'd wanna know what it was because maybe you are, uh, reacting, uh, badly, right? Maybe you're misreading what they said. And just because someone says, uh. What I say, I've said this to people before, just because you say I, um, was insensitive or I was disrespectful, doesn't mean I actually was. Just because you said it doesn't mean I was, that may just be your problem. Like not my problem. And I've been in those situations personally myself. You know, where someone said to me that and I said, no, that is not, uh, that's your interpretation and it's not factually true. You could say that for anything. You and I could have had this conversation. I said, oh, Sean, you were disrespectful and you didn't say anything that was disrespectful. That's just me not right. So I, I, I, I say to people, just because you said that doesn't mean it was right, but let's, let's, let's, I. Let's explore, let's talk. Right? So yeah, these are all things, train training opportunities, teaching opportunities that are required when you're running professional services businesses. And you have to expect these scenarios to pop up. And you want your team to be prepared and know what is, you know, what is, uh, sort of allowed and not allowed.