I employ 40 people, here's my top 5 pieces of advice for business owners

I employ 40 people across two different businesses. These range from mostly employees in my painting business, to about a 50% split between employees and contractors in my SAAS... As a leader of so many with very little upper management leadership (I am the only upper management in my painting business) I rely heavily on people making sound decisions without the need for constant input from me. I host very little meetings and collaborate mostly via slack. Here's my top 5 pieces of advice for new business owners when it comes to management and leadership. Create space for people to make mistakes - in my painting business, there's plenty of mistakes that happen, of course, more so in my painting business than SAAS specifically because we are working people's homes. I rarely dwell on mistakes, instead, I've created a culture of solution driven crew leaders that if they call me, they're already prepared with a few solutions - at that point, my only job is to help guide them on which one makes the most sense from my perspective (even though i'm not on the job) Doing this overtime, I've probably limited the "what do I do" texts, calls, and messages by 70% because my team members know they're not going to lose their job if a mistake happens. Stop outsourcing leaders at early stages - I tried to hire in "managers" for certain roles, and although they have their place, for me, my experience is to give people an opportunity to manage. I know in some sectors it requires experience, but for me, I like to leverage loyalty. I think loyalty drives growth more than anything and the best way to garnish loyalty is to give opportunity to people. In my painting business, all 4 of my crew leaders have never managed anything in their lives - however, I saw something in them when they were painters that prompted me to give them a chance at managing. From there, two of those crew leaders are now project managers. This fosters a culture of growth that allows my team to see that growth is achievable. Honestly, if I were to bring someone in to manage a crew it would probably hurt morale. It's Cliche, but hire for character, train for skill. On average, my customer success applications for my SAAS get 450 applications on LinkedIn within the first 3 days - it's literally impossible to filter these applicants with the linked in tools, so we funnel them into an internal form - the form is built entirely off of about 80% situational questions that help us see how the applicants will handle tough situations... "A customer is threatening to cancel their account because no one answered their request for help on the intercom messenger - how do you handle this?" Sure, a little experience in customer success helps, but you can really learn a lot by letting people answer these types of questions. Be accessible - get off your podium I used to work for a bank that had about 400 employees - the CEO was this illusive ghost that only showed his face at corporate events. He wasn't a "team guy" he was just a guy that made high level decisions - people kind of feared him. I remember at an awards event, he had an assistant raddle off the awards, and like a puppet he would hand the awards to the winners and shake their hands. He didn't even know the people he was handing awards to. It was awkward. I vowed to never be that way. I don't care if you are QA or you are a prepper on a paint job. I want to shake your hand, or get to know you, or have a conversation with you - i know at scale this is hard, but in meetings, at the end of a meeting (especially a big one) i always say "I'm an open book, send me a message, don't be a stranger. Even if it's just to say what's up" I don't really know the impact because I don't ask, I just know that if i were an employee it would take the pressure down a notch. Care about people I can't teach you how to care about people. It's an innate thing. Possess empathy. I've had people in some of the most crucial times call out of work because of a life thing that happened. Dog died, family member issue, kid got in trouble at school, mental health day... idk all sorts of things. There's no paint emergencies, and there's no SAAS emergencies. Life happens - everything can be fixed tomorrow. I always have my team's back, in some situations, i'd even step in to go paint, or fulfill a role in customer success, do a demo, or whatever is required to help the team. Again, i haven't polled people on this, but I will say that if i were an employee, i'd appreciate this TLDR: 5 things to help you lead a better organization and create a culture of happiness