You can be on Entrepreneur’s cover!

How Transparent Is Too Transparent? After losing the company's most important client, a founder explains how he broke the bad news to his team -- and what happened next.

By Joe Keohane

entrepreneur daily
Marxent

Introducing our new podcast, Problem Solvers with Jason Feifer, which features business owners and CEOs who went through a crippling business problem and came out the other side happy, wealthy, and growing. Feifer, Entrepreneur's editor in chief, spotlights these stories so other business can avoid the same hardships. Listen below or click here to read more shownotes.

Beck Besecker believes in transparency.

In fact, he calls Marxent, the technology company he co-founded with his brother, "aggressively transparent." Everyone can talk to everyone else. Everyone has a voice. Everyone has access to management. Most important, everyone is trusted. There's an assumption that the employees of Marxent are professional, responsible, mature adults and thus they're completely capable of taking bad news and rolling with it.

Related: Why This Entrepreneur Broke Up With His Biggest Client

That is, until the news got really bad. Marxent lost a client. But not just any client. A "massively important" client, Besecker says. "Like, the future of our company important."

And when Besecker got this very bad news, he had to ask himself, how much do I value transparency? How much do I trust my employees to take what could be very, very bad news, without quitting or freaking out?

He had a lot of sleepless nights, and read a lot of books, did a lot of soul searching. He reached out to peers.

"I asked a lot of seasoned managers for advice -- we've got a great network of advisers -- and most of the advice was to delay the conversation," he says. "But this was such an extreme situation where I just didn't have a choice. I was going to have to share. And I truthfully, I was scared to death. I had no idea what the outcome would be."

Related: This Entrepreneur Said Yes Too Many Times. Then He Learned to Say No

So he ignored the people who told him to hold back the truth, or spin, and he leveled with everyone. He told them everything. And what he discovered -- about his staff, about himself and about the nature of business -- shocked him and, perhaps more important, led Marxent to even greater heights.

Hear more about it, on this week's episode of Problem Solvers hosted by executive editor Joe Keohane. Or subscribe on iTunes, Google Play or wherever you get your podcasts.

Anyone who's ever had to sign and mail a paper document has wondered: There's got to be a better way to do this. And there is! SignEasy is a easy-to-use, simple and legal way to digitally sign documents. You can sign them yourself, from anywhere and on any device, or send documents to customers, partners, or colleagues for signing, and even track the progress of documents and get notified when a document is signed. And if someone's late in signing, you can send them a reminder. With SignEasy, there's no reason to deal with documents you have to print and sign and put in a mailbox. SignEasy is faster, easier, and safer. To get started for free go to getsigneasy.com/podcast.

ProsperWorks knows what everyone in sales knows: CRMs are really tedious. "Somewhere along the way," its website says, "CRM got really hard to use." And that's why ProsperWorks has built a CRM that's the opposite. By integrating with tools you're already using and eliminating repetitive tasks with automation, ProsperWorks is beautiful, easy to use and drives productivity to help you and your team sell more, faster. Try ProsperWorks for free by using our link.

Joe Keohane

Entrepreneur Staff

Author of the book "The Power of Strangers"

Joe Keohane is the author of the book The Power of Strangers: The Benefits of Connecting in a Suspicious World. He is a journalist based in New York, and was formerly the executive editor of Entrepreneur magazine.

Want to be an Entrepreneur Leadership Network contributor? Apply now to join.

Editor's Pick

Business News

James Clear Explains Why the 'Two Minute Rule' Is the Key to Long-Term Habit Building

The hardest step is usually the first one, he says. So make it short.

Business Solutions

Set Your Team up for Success and Let Them Browse the Internet Faster

With ad blocking, Control D is $35 through April 21.

Business Ideas

63 Small Business Ideas to Start in 2024

We put together a list of the best, most profitable small business ideas for entrepreneurs to pursue in 2024.

Side Hustle

This Dad Started a Side Hustle to Save for His Daughter's College Fund — Then It Earned $1 Million and Caught Apple's Attention

In 2015, Greg Kerr, now owner of Alchemy Merch, was working as musician when he noticed a lucrative opportunity.

Business Solutions

Grab Microsoft Project Professional 2021 for $20 During This Flash Sale

This small investment is well worth the time it will save your team in organizing and monitoring project work.

Business News

Microsoft's New AI Can Make Photographs Sing and Talk — and It Already Has the Mona Lisa Lip-Syncing

The VASA-1 AI model was not trained on the Mona Lisa but could animate it anyway.