Discover how to transform daily complaints into positive collaboration in the latest WESA Retail Roundup. Joshua Routh, an engaging speaker and former retailer, shares his insights on creating a complaint-free workplace, emphasizing the importance of gratitude and focusing on what is working rather than what is wrong. He discusses the detrimental effects of complaining on both personal well-being and workplace morale, advocating for a shift towards positivity and accountability.

Routh introduces the "Gripe" method, providing practical tips for retail managers to effectively handle customer complaints, especially in the fast-paced equine retail environment. Join us as we explore actionable strategies to foster a more harmonious and productive workplace.

WESA Retail Roundup October 28, 2024:

Host: Ashley Winch, host of the Quarter Horse Podcast

Facebook: Retail Roundup Facebook group

Guest: Joshua Routh | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | LinkedIn

Presented By: Western English Sales Association

Time Stamps:

00:05 - Welcome to the Show

00:33 - Introducing Joshua Routh

02:38 - Transforming Complaints into Collaboration

28:00 - The Impact of Complaining

38:14 - Creating a Complaint-Free Workplace

39:09 - Strategies for Retail Managers

42:39 - Boosting Team Morale

46:57 - Conclusion and Next Steps

You are listening to the Horse Radio Network, part of the Equine Network family.

This is Ashley Winch stepping in for Glen the Geek today.

Welcome to the WESA Retail Roundup.

The Retail Roundup is your go to virtual hub for all things retail.

Join panel discussions, learn from webinars, share your thoughts, ask questions and connect with your community.

We host a virtual event or share educational content every Monday via the Retail Roundup Facebook Facebook group.

Today, we're excited to discover how to transform daily complaints into positive collaboration.

So let's welcome Joshua Routh.

Josh is an engaging speaker, performer, author, and former retailer.

With a strong familiarity with the Western equine industry.

Josh brings a unique blend of humor and insight tailored in to retail Team Josh, welcome.

Hey.

Thank you so very much.

So I'm really grateful to be here.

This is going to be a lot of fun.

We were just talking before this started.

I myself grew up riding horses, and my first job actually was shoveling manure in a stable for Marion Brown, who was a.

Well, he's in the Saddlebred hall of Fame in Mexico.

Missouri horse trainer, amazing extraordinaire.

And so I spent a whole summer getting paid.

I think it was $1.25 an hour with shovel horse manure in a stable and going and picking up sawdust and all that.

And then I rode English for a while, rode Western for a while.

I have always had an affinity for rodeos.

And in fact, in fact, I was going to wear my western shirt that I always wear to rodeos, but my business has gotten so busy.

I haven't been to a rodeo in a few years.

And it didn't fit?

No, it didn't fit.

It was.

Yeah.

So.

Oh, well, look at you.

Years have been good to me.

My old.

My old Chinese acrobatics coach once came up to me and patted me on the belly and said, you must be very rich.

You must be very rich.

We love.

We love a silver lining here at Horse Radio Network.

And if that's not a spin, I don't know what is.

Yeah.

So I'm just rich.

I'm rich.

That's all it is.

I'm just very rich.

I love that.

Well, Josh, without further ado, should I go ahead and pull up our slides?

For those listening, you'll be able to watch this video or see the visuals through the streamyard link that we'll be able to share in our show notes.

Sounds good.

Let's go.

Awesome.

So welcome everyone out there again.

My name is Joshua Routh, and we're going to Talk about creating a complaint free workplace today.

And as I said, I am a former circus acrobat.

I own my own circus.

I have owned a magic shop.

I owned a magic shop up until the pandemic, and that kind of just decimated that industry.

So the magic shop went away.

But yeah, I have some experience with retail as well and lots of experience with horses and horse riding.

I used to do a lot of horse camps when I was a kid, and I even trained for a moment to do some acrobatics on horses for the circus until I realized my career would be very short and I could spend more time on other things.

Though I love horses and still again, love to go to the rodeo.

It's one of my favorite things.

So I'm really grateful and very excited to be here talking to all of you.

This is a very fun topic for me, for me, where I came from, to just kind of give you a little background.

I own a circus.

I have 50 performers that I manage.

We do 850 events a year.

And those events are all different kinds.

And I've been a speaker for a long time because I have kind of a unique point of view.

I'm a sword swallower and an acrobat, and I have a fun story.

So people often ask me to speak.

A few years back, I met a man named Will Bowen at a conference for speakers.

And Will just became friends with me.

He became enamored with me because I knew a lot about magic.

And he always wanted to know how this trick was done or that trick was done.

And we were friends for a couple of years before I ever found out what Will spoke about.

I had no idea.

And one day I called Will and I was talking to him and I was complaining about a couple of performers that were working for me.

There were divas, they were acting out, they were causing a lot of strife in our business.

And he said, whoa, whoa, whoa.

You.

You can't complain to me.

I was like, why?

He goes, because I'm the complaint free guy.

That.

That's what I do.

I'm the complaint free guy.

I.

I can't, you know, don't do complaining here.

I'll tell you what, I'm going to send you my book and you can read my book and learn all about the dangers of complaining and how you can improve your business by by stopping complaining.

And so he did.

He sent me his book and he also sent me some of his bracelets because there's a challenge that goes with the book.

And I did the challenge.

I Read through the book and I learned so much about how complaining can drag down your business, can drag down your life, can harm relationships.

And it really, it changed my business.

And I even encouraged my performers to do the same for them to go ahead and try to become complaint free as well.

Because I realized that if we live a life of gratitude, we're not living a life of complaining and we can all raise the boat together.

And so I said to two of these performers, I asked them, I said, I want you to do the complaint free challenge.

And they kind of looked at me funny, these two specifically, because I had others that were actually doing it.

And these two specifically were like, no, I'm not going to do it.

And it was the longest walk I had to go through to walk to the door and say, you know, then you can't be a part of this business because we're growing, you know, in this business we're going to grow in a new way, the new era of gratitude and a new era of not complaining.

And you don't want to be a part of that.

So I'm sorry, you're going to have to step away.

And these are my two top earners.

And you know, as business owners, when you have top earners, you can forgive a lot.

And we do, we forgive a lot.

We look over a lot of things.

We look over how they treat us sometimes or how sometimes there is an error that they know better than us or whatever and they don't see the background, the day to day, what we really go through.

Most people who are business owners all know that they think that the employees often think that we're rich or we're riding high on everything and you know, we get all the perks and all this stuff.

They don't see the background, they don't see all the work that we do.

Once someone told me that owners, you know, love it because they work 12 hours.

They only, what was it?

Owners love that they only work half days.

That's right.

Owners of businesses love it because they only work half days.

The hard part is deciding do I work the first 12 or the second 12?

And that's totally true.

We work 12 hour days.

I know that it's probably the same for you, but it's the same for me.

We had to start taking Sundays off.

We had to start committing to time for ourselves because your business swallows you whole.

And I work with my wife and we've been running this business for 20 years together.

And as I said, when those two left, I was really worried that My business was going to struggle, and it did for a moment.

But what it also did was it created space for new people with an attitude of gratitude to step in and step up.

And then they grew, and they grew as performers, and they grew as entertainers.

And we went from 750 events to 850 events.

And we started working more and more and more.

And now we work with the St.

Louis Blues, the Cardinals, Purina Farms, Nestle Purina, a big client of ours, the St.

Louis Soccer Stadium.

All the big companies in St.

Louis use our performers for their events.

And we're getting more and more requests months and months and months out because people want the positive attitude that our performers have.

And so I want to share this with you.

I want to share some of these things with you.

And I went back to Will, and I was like, will, I love it.

This is great.

And Will was like, great.

I want you to go out and share this message for me.

So that's what I'm here today doing.

I'm sharing Will's message with some of my own anecdotes and things as well.

So when we're ready, we're going to get going here.

All right, on to the next slide.

So one thing I want you to realize is that gratitude is about what is present and what is working.

Complaining is about what is wrong and what is missing.

When we're living a life of gratitude, we're focused on the present.

We're focused on what's going on here and now and what is actually happening in our lives right now that is going well.

We're focusing on those things, then we're lifting ourselves up.

It's like watering a plant.

The plant starts to grow.

When all we're focused on is what's wrong and what's missing, we get that negative attitude, those negative feelings, and it starts to drag everything down.

So when we're complaining, we're only focusing on the negative.

We're not focusing on what's possible, the future or now.

And all those things, when we're thinking about what can happen, how we can do things differently, how we can change things going forward, well, that's gratitude.

That's where we're at.

That's the present.

How can we get through these problems now as opposed to just complaining about what happened to me, what happened to me.

This is not right, that's not right, and so on and so forth, what's wrong and what's missing.

So that's what we're going to be talking about.

I'm going to teach you how to live a life of gratitude and how to turn those complainers in your businesses and in your life into collaborators so they're not using your ear as a dumpster that they're just throwing all their junk into.

Wouldn't we all love that?

I think most of us would agree that there is too much complaining in the world.

And the world is not the way we'd like it to be.

All of us feel this all the time.

We're walking around, we hear all these complaints.

We see it on the news, we see it on the media.

I think that's a bare nosed fact.

There's too much complaining in the world.

Also, again, the world isn't the way we'd like it to be.

We look around and we see things the way they're not supposed to be.

And this and that.

And this is what causes a lot of complaints as well.

We both live in this headspace.

We all live in this headspace here.

So this is a great place to start from.

Complaining is defined as expressing grief, pain or discontent.

Now the key word here is express because many people have thoughts every day of grief, pain or discontent.

We have all these thoughts.

We have negative thoughts every day.

I know I've thought about robbing a bank.

I'm sure many other people have thought about robbing a bank.

How easy it would be, all those kinds of things.

You have little daydreams of that sort or even worse, or even not so bad.

We have those negative thoughts.

The reason we have those negative thoughts is it was safer in nature to not eat the red berries.

Negative thoughts kept us safe.

When we were going through the woods and we're like, oh, there's red berries there, maybe I should try them.

No, we shouldn't eat the red berries.

It's a pattern that built up in our minds over and over the years.

So all through evolution and beyond, we start to see this idea that negative thoughts keep us safe, that we don't touch the hot stove because the hot stove is hot.

We stay away from those kinds of things.

So as we've gone through this evolution and go through these things, we start to realize as a species that the negative thoughts actually keep us safe.

The problem is when we express those, when we're expressing them all the time, sharing this all the time, we're sharing it all the time and we're causing all this negative energy.

And I'm going to explain a little bit further on down the road here what that really means when we express it.

So it's all about expressing it.

Now, a lot of times people think that they're going to try to withhold every negative thought and it's, you know, they're going to not express all the time and all kinds of.

We still do that sometimes.

You're still going to find yourself complaining.

But I'm hoping that over time, through this process and reading this stuff, you'll have a desire to complain less and you will express it less and you'll deal with these things more in the present.

It is not complaining to speak directly and only to the person who can solve your issue.

Resolve your issue.

That's the other side of it.

So if somebody can solve your problem, and we all deal with people that have problems every day, and if they're coming to us to solve that problem, well, that's a request for accountability.

That is not complaining.

Okay?

So often when you hear something, somebody says something like, you know, this shirt is the wrong size, that's not a complaint, that's a request for accountability.

They're not coming at you and saying, making it all about themselves.

They're making it about the fact that the shirt is the wrong size.

So if you come, if you go to someone and ask for a solution, well, that's a request for an accountability.

And if you can solve that issue, then it's your responsibility to do so.

There's a few myths about complaining.

One of them is that it's all going to be Pollyanna ish if you don't complain.

If you stop complaining, you're just going to be Pollyanna and it's all just positive thinking.

Positive thinking.

Well, it is.

It is positive thinking.

It's not just Pollyanna ish, It is positive thinking.

Because the idea of positive is positive is what's present and negative is what's missing.

Positive literally means what is present and negative means there's nothing there.

It's what's missing.

So it is positive thinking, but it's not all Pollyanna ish.

Also, if we're complaint free, if we don't complain, we're just going to be a doormat.

Well, going back to the last slide, we realize that it's okay to express something to someone who can solve our problem if they can, if they can solve our problem, well, that's okay.

You're not going to be a doormat.

Who the doormat is.

Those are the people that are out there just complaining and complaining and complaining and complaining and not doing anything about their problems.

They're the doormat.

They're letting the world walk all over them.

They're not expressing it to people who can solve their problem.

They're just laying there and letting it.

Letting it happen to them.

Those people are the doormats.

And finally, venting.

Often people think that venting is a good thing.

And this is interesting.

We all love the idea that I just need to vent.

I just need to get it out.

I just need to tell someone.

There was a scientific study done where they took a bunch of college students and they put them in the rooms.

You know, they're testing on college students.

They always do that.

And they had them write an essay, and then they brought the essay back a few minutes later.

And on the essay, they graded it as an F.

Or they said, this is a terrible essay.

They put all these things on it and made the people very angry because this essay was really meaningful to them.

They asked them to write something very meaningful and purposeful to them.

And so to have that twisted in that way made them very angry.

And they said, here's what I want you to do.

They took half the group and they said, we want you to take this pillow.

I want you to vent all of your anger into this pillow.

Slam the pillow, beat the pillow, bite the pillow, whatever you want to do.

Get your anger out into the pillow.

To the other half, they said, we want you just to sit there with your feelings.

Just sit there with your feelings and feel your feelings of anger at the person who judged you so harshly.

Just sit there and feel your feelings.

Then they came back a while later and they said, I'll tell you what, I don't normally do this, but the next phase of this for someone else over there is the person who graded your test.

They have to drink hot sauce.

That's what we're going to be doing to them.

And I'm going to let you fill the hot sauce cup.

You can fill it as full as you want, doesn't matter.

And I'll make them drink it.

I can do that.

The people who vented filled the cup two to three times more than the people who just sat with their feelings.

They wanted them to drink that hot sauce, and they wanted to drink.

To drink the whole bottle.

They wanted to get back at them.

This is a study that came out of the University of Ohio, and it's absolutely true.

So when you think about that, you think about that.

When we vent, we're fueling that fire.

We're waiting for somebody to validate those feelings and to get us all hyped up and get us feeling it even more.

But when we sit and we calmly assess the feelings.

We feel the feelings.

We work through it.

That's what we do as human beings, as adults.

We work through those feelings.

And that's the other thing.

Sometimes when people come to you and they're seems like they're complaining and they may have something about that shirt, they're coming with the shirt and they're angry and they're stomping their feet and saying, this shirt, it didn't fit, it's the wrong size.

And they're just angry about it.

Well, those people, when they were children, they learned that if they stomped their feet or gnash their teeth or they're angry.

Well, that's when things started to change.

That's what their parents taught them.

They had to complain in an angry way.

They had to get that request for accountability in an angry way and smash and gnash and all those sorts of things.

Had to do that to get their way.

So instead of looking at them as a, as an angry complainer, try to look at them as a wounded child because that's really what they are.

They're suffering and we can offer them some compassion.

It's very simple.

Eckhart Tolle said complaining is not to be confused with informing someone of a mistake or deficiency so that it can be put right.

And to refrain from complaining doesn't necessarily mean putting up with bad quality or bad behavior.

There is no ego in telling the waiter your soup is cold and needs to be heated up.

If you stick to the facts, which are always neutral.

That neutral word is very important.

We stick to the facts because they're always neutral.

Facts are neutral.

There's no value statement in facts.

How dare you serve me cold soup.

Now that's complaining.

And that's what we're talking about, right?

If I came in with that shirt in your shop and I said this shirt here is the wrong size and it doesn't fit, why would you do that to me?

You've ruined everything you've ruined.

That's complaining.

That's typically where complaining lives.

When I make it about me, me and me and more about me and me.

And we know that's a danger that we're all experiencing in society.

We're dealing with a self centered society.

Now everybody wants to talk about themselves and look at me and look at me and look at me.

So we struggle with this a little bit more frequently than we used to, but we're seeing it more and more.

Complaining, complaining costs money.

This is one of those things that is fascinating to me.

Because we're all struggling to hire good talent, retain good talent, hire good people.

They're just, you know, they don't stick around.

They often jump from job to job.

And what often happens, you see this in a lot of businesses and a lot of studies is you'll see that all the good people are in there with all the complainers and all the Debbie Downers and all the Eeyores.

And when they're in there with them, they're getting dragged down and they don't want to stick around in that environment.

They don't want to be in an environment where people are constantly dragging the business down and talking bad about the business or talking bad about the customers or those sorts of things.

They want to go find a place where they can be happy and they can go to work and they enjoy it because we spend a lot of time at work.

So they leave.

And so that ends up costing us money.

More job searches, more training time.

It's a big time or big time suck and financial suck into a business.

So complaining costs money.

It's also a competitive sport.

We all know this.

If a guy comes in, into your shop, let's say a guy comes into your shop and he's limping and you say, what happened?

He said, well, I stubbed my toe and it really hurts.

Somebody else says, oh, that's nothing.

I tripped going down the hallway the other day and my foot was so black and blue I had to be on crutches for three weeks.

And you hear another customer from the back of the store and he says, that's nothing.

My grandfather tripped down the stairs, hit his head and he died.

Died, right.

That's what happens.

We go in order of severity.

It wouldn't make any sense if somebody came in and they were all moping and trying to buy a shirt or some cowboy boots.

And they said, oh.

And you're like, what's wrong?

My grandfather died.

And somebody across the store goes, that's nothing.

I stubbed my toe last night.

It doesn't work like that.

Complaining builds on order of severity.

That's how it goes.

It keeps the focus on the problem.

Nothing expresses this more than this story here.

There were two guys and there were construction workers.

They were sitting down, having a couple of sandwiches.

One of the guys opens up his lunchbox and he starts eating his sandwich.

The other guy comes and sits down.

He opens his lunch box and he looks at it.

Meatloaf.

I hate meatloaf.

Yeah.

Starts to eat the sandwich.

The other guy just shrugs.

The next day, they're sitting down.

Well, first one opens his lunchbox, start eating his sandwich, chips, you know, having a drink and all that kind of stuff.

The other guy comes back over, sits down, opens his lunchbox.

There it is again.

A meatloaf sandwich.

Why is it always meatloaf?

I hate meatloaf.

And he sits down and eats the sandwich.

The next day, first guy comes, sits down, opens his lunch, starts eating a sandwich, having lunch.

Second guy comes over, sits down again, opens his lunchbox.

There again, meatloaf.

Why is it always meatloaf?

I want something different.

Ah, Always a meatloaf sandwich.

He takes the sandwich, throws it on the ground, stomps on it.

Why can't I get something else?

The other guy looks at him and says, why don't you ask your wife to make you something else?

Second guy goes, because I make my own lunch.

If you hear nothing else today, know this.

You make your own lunch every day with the thoughts you have and the intentions that you make.

You make your own lunch all day with everything that you say and everything that you do.

It's a very important lesson.

So it keeps the focus on the problem.

We focus on the problem.

We just keep complaining about it and don't do anything about it.

That man was perfectly capable of making something other than meatloaf, just like most of us are perfectly capable of making something good out of our lives.

It damages our health.

This is an interesting study.

There was a study done where they put a man in an MRI machine, and the man was laying in the MRI machine, and they had somebody else on the other side of the wall, and they said, what we want you to do is complain at this person.

I want you to complain, complain, complain.

And while the man is laying in the MRI machine, he's going to be listening to your complaints.

So he did.

The man laid in the MRI machine.

The man complained, complained, complained.

And after about 30 minutes, they started to notice that the person in the MRI machine that their gray matter in their brain and their hippocampus started to shrink.

And the hippocampus is responsible for all creative thought and problem solving.

So after about 30 minutes, that hippocampus starts shrinking because this man is complaining to him.

Because under stress, our cortisol levels rise.

Under hearing complaints, our cortisol levels rise vast amounts.

It's incredible.

There's all kinds of studies about this cortisol, this stress hormone being pumped into us by our bodies when we feel the stress of someone complaining to us.

And cortisol and stress has all sorts of physical Damages, diabetes, heart disease.

All kinds of things can happen to you from living in our life of cortisol, not the least of which we're talking about with the hippocampus.

So when the hippocampus shrinks and we can't think clearly, we're under stress, we're having heart problems and all these other problems because we're under stress, well, that damages our health.

So all that complaining coming into our brains, well, you know, from other people using our ears as a dumpster, that damages our health.

That's not just something, you know, fanatical.

That is, like genuine.

And so they asked the same person in the MRI machine, they asked him to complain.

They said, we want you to lay here, want you to complain, Complain to yourself, complain about your kids, complain about your job, complain about anything.

So he did.

And they saw the exact same result.

After about 30 minutes, the exact same result.

After about 30 minutes, his hippocampus started to shrink.

So it limits our abilities to think clearly.

It increases our cortisol.

And cortisol is like one of those things.

You've all felt it, that stress feeling.

It's like when you put your car in neutral and you press on the gas and the car is revving up and revving up and revving up, but it's not going anywhere.

That car is just going to sit there.

Well, that's what happens when your cortisol is up.

And that's what happens when people complain.

We start to feel those feelings.

It destroys relationships.

If you think about this, when someone comes home every day, the first thing you ask them is, how was your day?

And they immediately start listing all of the complaints.

And when they start listing all those complaints, it starts dragging us down.

We start to take them on, we start to feel all those feelings.

We problem solve for them or we lament for them.

We start to feel all these negative feelings.

What would happen if, when someone came home, if we just started, you know, asking them, how was your day?

Would tell me something good that happened.

Tell me something good that happened today.

What was amazing?

What was surprising?

What if that was the first thing that came out of our mouths?

Well, we'd start to hear something uplifting.

We would start to feel better.

We'd start to feel open.

We'd feel more connected to the other person.

That's what happens when we're living a life of gratitude, more focused on the positive and not just the negative.

So it destroys relationships.

It's also one of those things, if you think about, you go to singles nights or sorry, ladies nights, or you hang out around a bar, you hear men complaining about their spouses or women complaining about their spouses and saying all these things about their spouses, and then they go home to those same spouses, and no wonder, they walk in the front door and they feel negatively about those people.

They just spent two or three hours complaining to their friends, guys complaining to the other guy down the bar, my wife this, my wife that.

Women complain to their girlfriends about this, about that.

They go home and they go to their spouse and they complain at them.

Look at what you did to me.

And they have all those complaints ready to go locked and loaded because they just left the bar and primed the pump.

Destroys relationships.

The greatest gift you can give someone else is the gift of your own happiness.

That's a good one.

Write that down if you can, because that's one of my favorite phrases right there.

The greatest gift you can give someone is a gift of your own happiness.

Because then you're not a burden.

You're not a burden on that other person.

If you can be happy, if you can find a way to be happy, whatever that takes, there's lots of ways to resolve your unhappiness.

But if you can become happier, well, then the people around you will feel better as well, because that negativity, that complaining, that drags everyone else down.

We're going to talk a little bit about why people complain.

We have an acronym that we use called gripe, G, R, I, P, E.

And I'm going to go through the various reasons, because I'm not here just to complain about complaining.

That's not what we're trying to do.

We're trying to help you turn these complainers into collaborators.

And here is where I give you the special sauce.

This is the secret.

This is the good stuff.

This is where we get into why people complain and how they complain and what you can do about it.

So get ready.

Get your pencils out.

People complain to get attention because they don't know how to get attention otherwise.

It's one of those things that when you're standing in an elevator, we're standing there for a minute, we're okay by ourselves.

And as soon as somebody else walks in, those numbers become real important.

Start staring at them.

Oh, seven, eight.

We start to get real nervous.

We start to get uncomfortable.

So we start saying things like, I wonder if those Cardinals are ever going to win a baseball game.

Or wonder if it's ever going to stop raining.

I looked outside and looks like the animals are lining up two by two.

It's always raining so bad.

Ha ha.

All that stuff.

We complain to get attention because we need attention.

Attention is a human need.

It's not.

Or, sorry.

Attention is not a human want.

It is a human need.

We need attention.

As a human species, we survive by coming into groups together.

We join clubs.

We join associations just like this one here, because we need that attention.

We need that connection with another human being.

And so that's why people complain.

They complain because they need that feeling of connection and attention.

We don't know how to do it otherwise.

We just kind of form this way that complaining has become the dominant form of communication.

So when we walk up to somebody, the first thing we start doing is complaining to them.

Because it's so standard for us.

You know, it's just what we do.

Or.

I'm fine, I'm fine.

Well, we all know the secret behind fine, right?

We're all freaked out, insecure, neurotic, and emotional.

That's fine, you know?

So when we need that sense of attention, we need someone to connect with us on a deeper level.

So when someone comes up to you and complains, the first thing they do, when they complain to you for attention, to get attention, this is what you say to them.

You say, what is going well with whatever you ask them, what's going well with your life?

What's going well with your job?

What's going well with your kids?

What's going well with this or that?

And when we do, when we ask them that, when we say, what is going well with these things, one of two things will happen.

Either they will stop complaining and tell you something good and positive, or they'll realize that they're not going to get what they wanted out of you.

They're not going to get that chance to complain and dump on you.

Your ear is not a dumpster for them.

And they'll go find someone else.

Either way, you win.

That's right, you win.

If they talk about something positive, you get uplifted.

And if they go find someone else, they're not using your ear as a dumpster.

You win.

Doesn't work all the time.

Just 100% of the time, people complain to remove responsibility.

This is an interesting one.

We do this.

I was talking about those performers the other day.

We do these evaluations and things.

We work with our performers.

And this one performer often would complain about circumstances before they would even get into the event.

They would have.

They'd be, like, talking about the situation that they were going into as if they were not going to be successful.

They were preparing us for their inevitable failure.

And so they would come up with all sorts of excuses and complain about the situation to keep them from being successful.

Because people complain to remove responsibility from the fact that they may not do well.

They often say this phrase, you know, I would love to do that, but.

And it's always that.

But that's the erasure word.

It erases everything that comes before it.

But I'd love to do that, but.

But I can't because the.

It's too wet.

I can't because I'm not, you know, I don't have the right shoes.

I can't because of this, I can't because of that.

But.

And you don't want to.

But because you want them to do this, they want to get off the hook, but you want to keep them on the hook.

You want them to do this, you have a project for them, you have something you want them to get done and they want to get out of it somehow, some way.

And so they complain about all the circumstances surrounding your asking.

Here's how you get around it.

You say to them, if it were possible, how might you do it?

And the key phrase in that is, how might you do it?

Not me, you.

How might you do it?

If it were possible, how might you do it?

How might you solve this problem?

How might you stack those boxes?

How might you do whatever.

How might you do it?

Because then now we're in a problem solving, now we're in the present, now we're looking at what we can do to actually solve this problem.

So we say, if it were possible, how might you do it?

There's no arguing that.

And if they need some guidance on solving that, and sometimes they do, it's okay.

Sometimes they need a little bit of guidance and some nudging in the right direction.

And you also don't want them to do it poorly.

But that's our responsibility.

Our responsibility, you know, is to help them get there.

People complain to inspire envy.

This is the complaint.

Brag, people complaining, bragging.

And it's, it's kind of funny.

I have a friend, we grew up in a neighborhood that wasn't.

We didn't have a lot, you know, it was a lower, lower middle class families, factory workers, things like that.

We grew up in a rough neighborhood.

A friend of mine and I and Stevie came home one day.

He was living in Colorado.

He did really well for himself.

He's did really well for himself financially.

And he came to visit St.

Louis where I'm from.

And we sat down and we're in a coffee shop and we were just talking, shooting the breeze.

I hadn't seen him in a long time.

He's doing really well.

And out of his bag he pulls a dog leash.

And it was just kind of a rubbery, you know, one of those rope dog leashes with a rubbery handle type thing.

And he sets it down and he goes, you know, you'd think if you bought a five thousand dollar dog, they'd give you a better leash than this piece of junk.

And I was like, where's the dog?

You know, he didn't bring the dog.

The dog was back in Colorado where he was living, and here he traveled all this way just to drop that dog leash on the table.

What he was really saying was, what he was really saying was that, you know, I bought a $5,000 dog.

That's it.

He wanted to flex that he had bought a $5,000 dog.

And, you know, he did it through complaining.

We complain to make ourselves appear superior to other people.

Children do this.

Children often do this.

If you have two children, I hear this often, where you have two children, one is usually the clean one and one is usually the messy one.

And they'll complain about each other.

The one will say, why is he always so messy?

And he always gets to be messy and so on and so forth.

And what they're really saying is, look at me, I'm clean.

Look at me, I'm clean.

You know, I'm the clean one.

I clean my room, I do the dishes.

I'm the clean one.

That's really what they're trying to say.

They're trying to get that attention we were talking about before by appearing superior to other people.

So instead of feeding the fuel of their complaints, this is what you do.

You complement the opposite.

I love that you always keep your room clean.

I love that you always do the dishes.

That's really great.

You know, if you're having staff meetings all the time and there's always somebody who's leading the staff meetings or whatever, and they're saying, well, we could start, but Janet's not here yet.

What he's really saying is, I'm always on time.

So you say, tom, I love that you're always on time.

We complement the opposite.

We reframe it into a positive.

We flip the script on them.

It works every time.

People complain for power.

People complain for power.

This is very similar to our political climate.

You'll often see people try to get you angry about things because people are generally neutral about most things until they're inflamed.

And that's how they get power.

And you'll see this dynamic play out in business all the time.

You'll see one employee trying to get another employee riled up, either against management or against a customer or against another employee.

They'll start little fiefdoms and battles and so on and so forth.

They're complaining to get power, and when they do that, they've got power over that other person.

And then they can start a little army and then you've got a real HR issue.

So what happens is they want to enrage and engage.

This is very much.

The news media does this a lot.

You know, they'll say, is your toaster killing you?

Find out in five minutes when you come back.

Well, we all know that the toaster is not trying to kill you.

They're just trying to get you enraged and engaged because they know that you're going to stick around to find out.

Or social media.

Social media companies have figured out that if you love horses, they'll show you pictures of horses and more pictures of horses and more posts about horses.

But then they'll slip in something that makes you a little bit angry, and then they've got your attention.

And then you engage and you engage and you engage, and then time goes by and then they give you more horses.

More horses and more whatever enrages you.

More of what enrages you.

And then they've got you stuck around and then you're like four hours later, where did my time go?

That's what they do.

That's how they get us.

They keep us engaged by getting us enraged.

So here's what you do, especially when you've got two employees or you've got two people that are having issues with one another.

You say it sounds like the two of you have a lot to talk about.

Sounds like the two of you have a lot to talk about.

Because you don't want.

You don't want to live in the world of gossip.

You don't want to listen to people gossip about things and all that sort of thing.

You want to stay out of that realm.

You don't want to stay in drama land.

You don't want to feed drama land.

So you say it sounds like the two of you have a lot to talk about.

Why don't I schedule a meeting?

I'll bring lunch.

I'll set up a room for you.

You can have the conference room.

The two of you can sit in there and hash this out instead of just bringing everybody else in.

All this and all this drama.

Sounds like there's a problem here.

Why don't you two solve it together?

Let me know the result if you need me to mediate.

I can mediate, but it sounds like the two of you have a problem and you need to solve that, putting it back on them to solve it.

Because otherwise, again, everyone is the dumpster at that point.

Everyone's walking around getting their ears dumped on all the time, and nobody wants that.

And that's that thing we're talking about where complaints cost money.

This is a key factor in that people complain to excuse poor performance.

This is the second half of remove responsibility.

So you've gotten them to do what you wanted them to do, and it didn't go well, and that's okay.

Sometimes things don't go well.

We have to know when things don't go well so that we can improve.

We know that, but they're going to complain because they want to excuse the poor performance.

One of those divas I was telling you about, she would often complain.

She would do a performance and she complained about the audience.

She would complain about the circumstances.

She would complain about how hot it was, why she couldn't be at her best.

I mean, often she was great, but often she had an excuse why it didn't go as well as she thought it should.

And she was always coming up with all of these reasons to excuse her poor performance.

She would often say things like this.

Don't blame me.

Blame the circumstances.

Blame those circumstances, because it's not my fault.

It was like me.

I ran a half marathon, and it was my third half marathon, and by the third one, I thought I had it.

I didn't really train very hard.

I didn't fuel up right.

I wasn't really planning it very well.

And I had a very, very, very bad time of it.

I ended up on the ground, practically choking out, you know, And I had a policeman come up to me, are you okay?

And I was, like, frozen on the ground.

You know, I had hit the wall, and I just didn't do the training.

It was my fault.

I hadn't trained.

And I thought I could do it because I'd done it before, and I had overconfidence in it, and it went terribly.

And recently, this past October, I just did it again.

This was actually last year, so this year I just did it again, and I beat my time by over 30 minutes because I trained, I worked hard, and I was better this time because that's the Thing you have to focus on next time, not this time.

What happened, happened.

Let's solve it going forward.

So that's what we say to the person, how do you plan to improve next time?

We focus on next time, not so much on this time because we can't solve this time.

We can't solve what already happened.

So we can't blame, we can't blame somebody for the past.

Instead we ask them, how do you plan to improve next time?

What do you plan to do differently next time?

What's next time going to look like?

How are you going to do it different?

I don't want to hear all of your excuses of why it didn't work last time.

How is it going to be different next time?

And if they don't have an answer, well, then you have to have a deeper conversation at that point.

But if we inspire people to have those thoughts about focusing on next time, we're focusing on what's present and what's working and not on what's wrong and what's missing.

And that's the gratitude space that we want to live in.

We want to live in what's present and what's working.

And when we're looking at those things, we can improve what's going to happen next time.

So there you have it.

Why people complain, what to do about it.

They complain to get attention, to remove responsibility, inspire envy for power and to excuse poor performance.

And that is my presentation.

Wow, Josh.

I just have to say that resonates with me so deeply.

I try every day to show up and be a shining light for others and avoid the drama.

And so I can't wait to apply a lot of what you explained today to my own professional life.

But for the folks that are a part of the association, I have some questions for them from them specifically.

So how can retail managers apply the gripe method to handle customer complaints effectively, especially in the fast paced equine retail environment ahead?

You know, we have Christmas really around the corner.

What are, what are some tips you could give us?

Often it's a centering, I think, I think this is kind of an interesting concept.

We talk a lot about or we hear a lot in the Gallup polls talk about this.

If you haven't looked at the Gallup state of the workplace, it's really an important report they put out every year.

The Gallup Global State of the Workplace.

Yeah, they do the report every year and it's fascinating because what it talks a lot about is people don't feel connected to one another.

Other and so you can't stop clients and customers from complaining.

They are going to complain.

It's going to come at you and it's going to come at you all swinging arms and stress.

And we all know what it feels like, we all know when it comes.

But you can prepare yourself and you can prepare your team with mindfulness.

And if you spend some time getting centered and you have some release valves of positivity, well, things like we buy our team dinner a lot, a lot of times with our performers, we go to a hard gig and we all know we're going into a hard gig.

We prepare as much as we can.

There will, there will be things that will go wrong, but our performers know at the end of it, we're all going to go out to dinner, we're going to laugh and we're going to focus on the good stuff.

And you know, bringing, bringing bagels, you know, there's nothing wrong with bringing bagels or donuts in the morning, you know, or if spending time.

I have a friend who owns a hair salon and you know, just before Thanksgiving, everybody's going to be going home for Thanksgiving and those hair salons are packed to the gills because everybody wants to go home looking their best.

And so these, these hairdressers and things, they're all going to be under a lot of stress.

So what he does is he plans chair massages and he schedules them so there's a 15 minute break beyond the normal break in business.

And he knows that he could cram as much work on these people as possible, overburden their schedule.

But he also knows he's going to get the best out of those people when they get their chair massage and they look forward to their chair massage.

And they know that during the day they've got that chair massage to look forward to.

And that's that 15 minutes.

He doesn't let anybody go in the room, he doesn't let anybody knock on the door.

That is their 15 minutes to get centered, to feel good and all that sort of thing.

And those are the only things you can really do because you're not going to be able to change the environment that much.

You're not going to change customers, you know, and customers expect more and more and more these days.

And there's a lot of battle that retail has to do up against, you know, the Amazons and the order onlines and all that kind of stuff.

So you have to work on being present and sometimes that, that just, there's a method that you can do with just Getting together and doing pow wows where we can uplift each other.

A five minute group chat before the day begins, but focus not on the problems and focus not on, here's what I need you to do, and I need you to do that just on getting centered, having a laugh, bringing a joke, who has something funny to share, who has something positive to share, starting a little chat in that way.

Then we start our day, we kick off our day with positivity.

Not let me shout at you for not sweeping the floor yesterday or hey guys, we need you to clock in on your time cards.

You know, those kinds of things.

Do not uplift those kinds of things.

You know, the group needs uplifting so they're armored and prepared to go into battle.

Because battle it is.

No kidding.

Especially like we said around the holidays.

I love that.

One more question before we close.

As a former retailer, what are your top recommendations for boosting morale in small retail teams that might not have access to large scale training or resources?

I know you mentioned the pow wows or the chair massages, but are there other options or creative solutions out there?

I mean, for us, we spend a lot of time working on just today's market.

We, we see that the team is made up of people who want relationships with the people that they work with.

They, they want to have a connection to the people that they work with.

And it's, it's missing a lot of times because we're wearing through the pandemic, which we're still seeing the effects of.

We lost that.

And so we work really hard to build a community with people because we find that young people today are not as money motivated.

They don't really care about money, they don't care as much about prestige, but they do care about the people, the community and the friends and the relationships that they have with the people that they work with.

So you have to create opportunities for them to feel that success of more friend time and connection time with the people that they work with and building a community.

And we used to talk about team building, right?

Team building, challenges, trust falls, ropes courses, all that kind of stuff.

And those are actually coming back quite a bit because managers don't know anything else.

They're leaning on those old chestnuts of we're all going on a hike and you can read the Reddit subs about workplaces and they're like, why did my manager make me do this?

You know, you can read all these things and it doesn't have to be a ropes course.

It can be as simple as A pizza party.

Everybody loves pizza, you know, but.

But making moments.

So we do monthly meetups for all of our performers, and they all get together and we do what they want to do.

We ask them, what do you guys want to do?

You know, and we help them make that happen.

And then we do a huge Christmas party and things like that, all the standard stuff.

But we have them have a say and a vote and a way in where I'm not just leading the charge or making it happen, because then they've got buy in, they've got investment.

And I listen to them when they have investment and when they have a bad idea, it's okay, because they're going to have bad ideas.

And I go, okay.

I express them.

Why?

It probably wouldn't work now, but it might work in the future.

And with performers you can imagine, we have pretty odd and interesting people that come to me with weird things all the time.

One of them wanted to do ballet on stilts for.

And I'm like, I don't have.

It's beautiful.

But I don't have a customer asking me for ballet on stilts.

You know, they don't want that right now.

But I'll tell you what, when they do, I.

You will get that top of the list.

You will get that.

You know, and.

And just if I come at it with that kind of energy and I embrace them, and I embrace their intelligence and I embrace them with empathy, you know, they reflect that back.

Because again, this.

This generation, the people that are upcoming, younger millennials, Gen Z, they don't care about money.

The ones that we've interacted with, it's not about money for them.

It's about connection with other people and having a shared experience.

Because they read a lot that says, don't work to live, live to work, or don't live to work, work to live, you know, and so they want to live.

They want to live their life.

So if you can create work as a place where they live and they experience and they have community, then you're winning.

You're winning.

I hope that answers your question.

I know it's a roundabout thing.

No, that's wonderful.

And frankly, I'm ready to run away and join your circus.

Like, if you need a podcast horse girl at your circus, you just let me know.

I hope I'm at the top of that list.

You.

You know, when the customer calls asking for that, I will definitely be calling you.

Oh, my gosh.

Well, thank you so much, Josh, for joining us today for Wes's retail Roundup.

You can find this on the WESA podcast at Wisdom by Wesa on any podcast player and also on the WESA trade show YouTube channel.

Be sure to check out the Retail Roundup Facebook group and wessatradeshow.com thanks again Josh.

Thank you.

Thanks so much for having me.

Wessa.