For over 5 years, I fell into the dangerous trap of calling my agency a "family".

I applied the same principles I use in my personal life to my business and ran it accordingly: with forgiveness (at all costs), unreasonable empathy, and attachment.

It's cost me hundreds of thousands of $ by holding onto underperformers and killing productivity in the process.

The reality is, a family is a group you often have to tolerate no matter what. The people who are truly there for you—through thick and thin—are your actual family, not your employees or colleagues.

When a company with a better offer comes along, loyalty and family ties will go out the window because people want what's best for their own lives (and rightfully so).

Your family doesn't (or shouldn't have) the luxury of casting you aside this way.

So what's a better way to run a company?

Answer: like a high-performance sports team.

(Full podcast episode sharing my experiences on growing Magnet Monster over the last 7 is here).

A-Players hate weak performers

You can achieve a lot more with fewer employees when you start treating people like mature, competent adults instead of babysitting them like young siblings.

When you call everyone on your team a member of the family, you create a drag that holds back your A-players.

They have to compensate for the weaker links by fixing their mistakes, which prevents them from performing at their best.

This also means you can't pay your top performers what they're truly worth because you're bleeding money and time to underperformers.

When you embrace the family narrative, you're discouraging growth and accountability. You're letting emotion, rather than sound judgment, seep into your decision-making.

A business is not a charity, and you need to look at the net gain each person provides to your company over time. If they're not performing, they have to leave—just as they have the right to go if they're not progressing with the company.

Lessons from Elon Musk's Management Style

I've been listening to a podcast and reading a biography about how Elon Musk runs his companies. While most of us aren't changing the world or sending rockets to space, his philosophy offers invaluable lessons.

His core belief is that the mission must always come before personal feelings or camaraderie. He believes that being friends with employees is dangerous and counterproductive to the success of a company.

Here are 4 critical principles he applies to companies like Tesla and SpaceX to make them world-leaders:

1. Friendship is a distraction.

Musk believes that a manager's job is to drive people to accomplish things they thought were impossible, not to be liked.

In my experience, if you let personal feelings get in the way of managing someone, you wont hold them accountable. In fact, some of the best performers I've had were those with whom I had the coldest relationships.

If an employee’s motivation for work is based on how much they like you, their performance is tied to you personally, which is a weak way to run a company.

A manager should act as a judge, not a friend.

2. A-Players don’t want fuzzy thinkers.

Musk's demanding style is meant to attract and retain top talent.

I've also observed that the top A-players at my company hate it when people don’t do their job properly and let the team down.

Their standards are excellent, and when they don't see that reflected in others' work, it drags them down and makes them feel misaligned with the mission.

You have to weed out those who aren’t meeting those standards because they have a drag effect on the best people on your team.

3. Mission over everything.

Musk's commitment to the mission is so absolute that he’s described as remorseless about pushing people out if they aren’t serving the mission.

He believes that emotions blur judgment.

When I look back at Magnet Monster's most successful period, it was because we were so focused on the mission of revolutionising how email marketing should be done.

This focus resonated with people, attracting the right talent who wanted to be a part of that mission.

4. The value of fresh blood.

This is an interesting one that changed my perspective slightly on how I view employee churn in my own company.

Musk has a preference for fresh blood and is concerned with employees who he believes are phoning it in. He thinks a company can become flabby and slow if it doesn't maintain a maniacal sense of urgency.

I've seen this firsthand: younger people are often hungry and want to earn money, and while they might be a bit rough around the edges, you can train a good attitude.

In my experience, young people with a ferocious appetite for learning have often quickly overtaken more experienced hires.

You shouldn't hold on to someone based on their experience or time in the game when a great attitude and hunger can replace that.

Finding the Right Balance

Musk's approach is extreme, and it's important to remember that most of us are not revolutionising industries; we're trying to achieve a lifestyle-based goal such as more freedom and financial autonomy to live life on our own terms. That doesn't require sacrificing every waking hour to be at work (or your team's).

You can't expect your employees to work every waking hour for a mission that doesn't transcend life and death. You need to be more grounded in reality.

While you should have excellent standards, you also need to understand that your employees aren't going to have the same level of stress or commitment as you do as a founder.

Ultimately, a company is not a family. Treat it like a high-performance sports team. Demand accountability, demand excellence, and hold people to those standards, while also supporting their goals outside of work and giving them enough time to achieve them.