How to Motivate Your Employees in Hard Times

Keeping team members motivated during periods of high growth is pretty easy. There's natural excitement around the office. Everyone is busy, and there is energy in the air.
 
But sooner or later, every business hits a plateau. And getting over that next hump sometimes takes a little time. As a leader, you want to reward your best team members, but what happens when your margins just won't allow additional salary or bonuses?
 
In our early days, I was investing everything back into my company and sometimes working 60-hour weeks. One morning, my hotshot tech expert came into my office and told me he had accepted an offer from another company. It was a gut punch. He was so young and talented that, in my head, I saw him running our whole marketing team in the near future.
 
But, unfortunately, I never told him that. We didn't have the margins to expand yet, so I never had those conversations. And when he left, all those growth plans got pushed back another year.
 
Interestingly, there are a few different ways to motivate employees that cost nothing (except a few moments of your time). And maybe, they'll keep those hotshots in your own company from looking elsewhere.
 
And if you do these things often enough, your bottom line will likely increase so you can pay your team more as you break through that plateau.

Show Notes: How to Motivate Employees Without Paying Them More
(https://www.inc.com/doug-staneart/how-to-motivate-employees-without-paying-them-more/91384016)