#70: Mike Michalowicz, Author and Entrepreneur — The right way to hire; practical exercises for team retention; and how to come back from rock bottom

Welcome back. This is from startup to Grownup. My name is Alyssa Cohn and today I'm thrilled to have Mike Michalowicz on the podcast. Mike is a multiple time entrepreneur, a 10 time author, including the very successful book Profit first and a speaker. Mike has a new book out called All In How Great Leaders Build Unstoppable Teams. Mike's mission is to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty and we talk about what entrepreneurial poverty is and, and some of the root causes. We also talk about Mike's personal journey from making a ton of money to losing it all and going bankrupt, along with his realization that when he had all this money, he was a jerk. I want to warn you that Mike uses some colorful language to describe what a jerk he was. So if you're sensitive, you can skip past the first five minutes. Beyond that. There is so much wisdom here. We cover Mike's work with small businesses and what their common challenges are. Turns out these challenges are relevant for you even if you're not a small business owner. We talk about what it takes to lead great teams, how you can better know your employees with some very practical tools, and why you should replace your interviews with camps just like sports teams do. This is a fantastic conversation and you're going to love it. So please enjoy my great conversation with Mike Michalowicz. This is your chance to be on stage right now.

Screw it up. I'm screwed up.

Here we go, right here. I am here with the one and only Mike Michalowicz. Mike, so much to talk about.

Welcome to the show, Alyssa. Thank you for having me.

I love your curtsy. Appreciate this message.

You don't do that often.

No, really, thanks for coming. And we have so much to talk about. Because, Mike, you're. You've done it all. You've done all the things you've done. The businesses you sold, the businesses you've written, the books you've talked, the talks, all the things. When you were a kid, what did you think you wanted to be?

Garbage man. And I still have an aspiration to do a day out on the truck. I think. I think those guys are. And I'm not trying to generalize. I'm sure it's women do too. I've only seen men. These guys are burly. They're chomping on cigars at 5 in the morning. They're throwing stuff that weighs it. I can't pick. I cannot pick up my garbage bag, let alone my garbage can, right? So I struggle to get my bag in. And then these guys, a Double hand flip. They do a curtsy afterwards. My problem is the steak. It definitely smells bad.

Yeah, but at least you get to say you spend your time outside. By the way, let's not get. Let's not go down the path of burley, because, as you know, I'm a fitness fanatic. So now I'm kind of like, oh, I wonder if I could lift all those cans.

Dude, we should. I have this as an open offer. If there is someone that owns a refuse or waste management company of some sort, I'm in for a day. As long as we can do it, you know, safely. I do want to hang off the back of truck. I don't want to do it down the highway, but maybe me and you can do it.

I love it. I love it. We're already inventing things here on this podcast, and. But is that your final answer, what you want to be?

That's what I wanted to be when I grew up. I mean, not like my entire life. I was. I wasn't, like, in high school saying, oh, maybe, but I remember it, period in my life. I just. I love these people. I'm like, my God, that's. That's awesome.

That's the life. Living the life. Yeah, Well, a lot of kids are into garbage trucks, but at some point, you decided that you had a different mission in your life. So I'm just curious about, like, your current mission and how that evolved over time, then from the. The lofty goals that you had to now the sort of other elements you're doing.

It happened during a. A dedicking process. So let me. Let me give you the before and after or the after and before. So today, my mission, actually, I have on my wall right here, says to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. And what I mean by this is there is in the U.S. 33 million small businesses, $25 million in revenue or less that qualifies as small. Internationally, I think it's 350 million small businesses. And the vast majority of these business owners are in starvation. Not. Not necessarily literally, but perhaps some. But figuratively, they don't have enough money to pay the rent, pay employees if they have them, let alone pay themselves. So it's constant sacrifice. And it's irony. It's the greatest irony, because we went into business to financial freedom, to have personal freedom, to serve a calling of sorts or a desire. And those are things that don't happen. Well, before the dedecking process, I watched a movie called Wall street, and it had this Gordon Gekko character, greed is good. Yeah, that came out. I think I was in college when that came out. I remember watching it and funny, about a month or two ago I saw a picture of me in my first business. Greased hair. I did everything to look like him. And I'm like, that's what I'm going to be. My passion, my interest is money and I'm going to get rich. And didn't happen. And I found it very unfulfilling. But what did happen as I. My first business was in the tech, actually. Two businesses in a row in the tech space. They were not sustainably profitable. I was that person who was living entrepreneurial poverty. I sold both those businesses and had two exits. One, one was private equity deal. The other was a Fortune 500. And I did become a millionaire in my early 30s. Self made. And then I was like, oh, I've arrived at level one now. Now I show off my effects. So I, I got the expensive cars. I, I'm. We're going to do this massive expansion for a house. But we decided to move into Mountain Lakes. Well, you're from Jersey. It's you know, expensive town. I'm like, that's better. That's more us. And we got, we went on a big long sabbatical in Hawaii. There's a private island called Lanai. Larry Ellison owns. We're gonna stay there. I just, I was a dick. And I remember you've met my wife Krista.

Yeah, we're out.

And she's like, you know, I really do want to get a new car. I said, what car do you want? And she's like, oh, you know, some of my friends have the Land Rover. I like that. So we went to the Land Rover dealer and I was such a tool. I didn't realize it. The, the store manager comes over and says, what would you like? I'm like, whatever you got, it better be the most expensive man. And the store manager's like, oh, yes sir, yes. Goes running. And I'm like. But then my wife looked at me, she's like, what is your problem? And I'm like, I regret saying. This is actually hard for me to say now. I looked her, I said, we got more money than God. As I said those words, I felt I believe in God. And I felt the wind just go out of me. It was hard breathing in the moment. I was like, what just happened? And that's when I think it was divine intervention, the D decking. I was a dick up to that point. I don't think outwardly, like, I hope I Didn't outwardly seem. But I was judgy. I thought that accumulation of stuff was success. I thought I was better than others. Totally dicky. And then I lost everything. So it took me two years. I spent money aimlessly. I started businesses that failed. And then my daughter. I wrote about this. One of my books came up to me when she was nine years old. I had told my family, I think we declared bankruptcy. We're done. I was crying. My daughter volunteered her piggy bank to me and said, daddy, I got us or use my money. And that was the time I finally hit the rock bottom and. And the de decking was done, and I decided I need to get out and start being of service, that I need to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. And I've discovered. I mean, it's true for you too, Alyssa. Is that what we are compelled to teach, I believe, is what we are actually yearning to learn. We are yearning to know. So what we teach is actually what we're a student of, what we need to master for ourselves. And so I. I've devoted, I think, the rest of my life. I can't imagine otherwise, to eradicating entrepreneurial poverty, because, selfishly, I need it for me. So now I'm an author writing books that does that.

Yes. I mean, we want to get into. Especially your latest book, but I mean, that. That is such a compelling story. I mean, I just want to say that I. I am curious about two parts of that story. Why did you spend money hand over fist just like that? It was like. Just arrogance. Just like. You know, because I think. I think you also made some bad investments. Right. I mean, like, he was. You sort of just thought, like, I'm a genius. Everything I touch turns to gold. Is that right?

That's right. That's right. So I was in my late 20s when I sold my. Yeah, my first business. And my second business I sold when I was 31. I had it, like, two years, and it just took off. Right place, right time. And the first business in my head, I'm like, oh, I had cut my teeth. I didn't know I was doing. But I sold it. My second business. I didn't realize how important timing was. So we were doing computer crime investigation, and it really wasn't big then. This was early 2000. Well, the Enron trial broke. We legit got the Enron call for defense, and they said, could you do the work? And we're like, yeah, and got all these cases, and so we're instantly on the map. I never really fiscally I never fiscally managed that company well, never. But the cash flow was such, we were getting such big cases, so much opportunity pouring in. I'm like, meh, I'm a genius. So part of it perhaps was my age. I, I do see it when I talk with entrepreneurs that are younger, particularly males generally when I try to pry, what's your interest? Often it's like I'm passionate about getting rich. I want, you know, and, and they're compelled. They see the video of like influencer dude with the jet behind them and the, the Bentley car and it's just like, oh my gosh. But you know, I had appeal to that too. I thought that was success. Now I see success as contribution, as giving. So it took me a cataclysmic financial event to figure this out.

Yeah, like you really hit bottom. But when you hit bottom, I guess I also trying to figure out, and I understand you had, had this, you know, that you believe in God. You had a faith moment in some ways, but also when you really hit that bottom, said we're going to declare bankruptcy. Why didn't you do what a natural thing to do, which is I'm going to make it all back again. Like how did you then recognize that there was a mission in it for other people as well as you? I really agree with you. We teach what we need to learn. And yeah, I'm just curious if you had that insight in that moment or you just followed your instincts or what was that? Bring us back to that.

I remember the moment. So, so I'll give you the exact day. It was February 14, 2008. So I sold my second company and then it was about two years later that I had evaporated everything. We celebrate Valentine's Day, kind of like Thanksgiving dinner at our house. And my three children were there and so forth. And that's when I make this announcement. Sobbing, My daughter gives me the, the piggy bank. It wasn't like I woke up the next morning, said epiphany, I gotta fix this. I went through depression for two years. I stopped talking with all my friends. I did not go to therapy. And I started to drink enough that I looked forward to because of the medicative kind of effect. There was a numbing, but it didn't fix anything. And I was continuous process. And in the background my wife didn't work. We agreed that she wouldn't, but she was now trying to look for jobs and stuff because you know she, we wanted her to be a stay at home mother. But she started looking for jobs. And I was trying to get little gigs here and there, anything. And then I asked this magic question myself. There's a question that we've all heard. If you had all the money in the world, what would you do? And it was so freeing, is it's not. You don't need to generate money doing that vocation. I asked myself that question. But the counter question, which is, if you had no money in this world, what would you do? And when the answer's in alignment, boom. I remember once, I don't know why, but I was like, I would love to be an author one day to write books. And if I had all the money in the world, that's what I do. And then the question hit me. I said, I have no money in this world. I'm done. What do I want my vocation to be to generate money? I said, author. I'm like, oh, my God, this is it. I also remember my wife saying something which was like the biggest knife to the stomach when she goes, she said to me, she said, but you need to get a real job, too. Especially when you're an author here and you need to get a job alone. Is like. It's the. It's a slap across the face. But she's like, mike, we need money desperately. Like, we're in trouble. We couldn't afford our house anymore. We had neighbors in Mountain Lakes who volunteered their house for us. They were going on sabbatical and they gave us their house. We were talking about moving. I'm in my. Now in my late 30s, talking about moving back in with my parents. That's for times. And looking back on that, it's funny when you do these exercises of documenting your life, looking back, you see this pit. It was the shittiest time today. I am more grateful for that moment than anything in my life. It became the great reset for me. And I feel, I hope I do, a massive empathy for entrepreneurs who want to get rich aren't getting there. And this desperation. I. I also have this empathy for people who think, well, I guess this is the. This is just what's going to be. I'm going to work all the time, relentlessly, and I'm never going to get forward. But I've. I've made my bed, I'm going to lay in it. I don't think either of those are necessary. And it was. As I shared earlier, there are great ironies. I'm. I'm out there trying to help others with this, which is actually helping me and is a great Source of income, which is then sustainability, to do more of it, to live a life of comfort. And that is an amazing, fun thing. I wish that for everybody. And it's been an upward spiral.

Yeah. And it is a spiral. It feeds itself. That's just so perfect and so beautiful. And I'm so struck by sort of entrepreneurs who do have this, you know, this sense of, like, it has to be this way, it has to be that way, or like, success looks like this. And I'm just curious, you met so many entrepreneurs. Like, how much of success do you think is the inner life? Like, what do you think that entrepreneurs have to change or identify in their inner lives to be successful?

Yeah, I think for me, and I've had the privilege of working with some entrepreneurs and helping identify this, it's identifying either a traumatic moment from our past where we drew a line in the sand and said, I'm never, never allowing that to happen to me again or anyone else. And, you know, financial trauma is nothing compared to what other people have experienced. And some people become, I guess the word is the victim of that. They say, this has defined me. And other people say, this won't define me. So we have that choice. And the beautiful thing is you have that choice any day. Like, you can say, going back, and I did. I let define me for two years. I'm a financial failure. I never deserve this. I suck. I let define me for two years. And then one morning, and maybe it was a cascade of effects, I said, this. This will not define me. I'm going to redefine it. So a traumatic event. And then I think the other trigger is, ironically, the childhood dream. You know, some of us miss out. I do. I still want to be a garbage man. No, I do want to live out that fantasy for a day. It doesn't speak to me, but I do know some people who say, gosh, I am yearning to do this, and that inner child is being ignored. And what a horrible situation if that child gets ignored forever. So I would pick one of those two.

Yeah, I think that's so true. Do you have, like, maybe talk a little bit more about the specific. The kinds of entrepreneurs that you work with and what you do with them? And then we definitely want to talk about your. Especially your latest book, all in, and talk about how people can engage their own teams. But first, talk about the kinds of entrepreneurs that you work with.

Yeah.

How you work with them.

Yeah. So I'll give you kind of the layer structure. So I am an author now of 10 business books. Profit first is my most popular. And what I do is I look for a desired outcome that we have. I want to be profitable, the actual outcome. So desire versus actual, if there's a discrepancy, I'll, I'll investigate. Well, what's the method that we're told to follow? I find entrepreneurs are wickedly smart, but we follow some systems that have been kind of instilled in our mind. The example of the profit first is we're told that profit comes last is the bottom line, year end. But it's also human nature. When something comes last, it gets ignored. So most people don't address profit, they don't bake it into every transaction. So I flip the model, take your profit first, pay yourself first principles. Your business, your business will grow. So what I do is I write a book. Then I will find a licensee, someone that wants to buy the global rights to teaching or certifying others in this methodology. So I've four or five books now that have active licensees. They in turn teach the entrepreneurial community. So I come in at a very, I don't know if surface level is the right word, but I think it's the most accurate. I don't go in deep with people, that's not my talent. But I'll go in and say here's some contrarian ideas or here's an inspirational message and you've got it. As a result, best estimate, I know in book circulation it's around 1.5 million books in, in people speaking and so forth, maybe there's a little bit more of an additive. But the entrepreneurial community is consistently what I call micro enterprise. These are companies, I would say 80% of my readership are under a million. I would say the other 20% are generally under 10 million. They're all founder based and meaning no venture capital. The only money they raised was probably from their own pockets, maybe some, some family or something like that. So they're generally these, I mean they're not sole proprietorships, but that's the, the model that became an LLC or an S corp or something. Generally I, what we, I do then with these folks is we'll put them into one of these programs that can help them in the moment and in the most kind of highest level is we'll actually invest in these businesses. Right now I'm invested in 11 companies. We're hoping to add eight more this week. Actually we reach out tomorrow to folks that want to join us. And so we taken a phantom equity position for a period of time and help turn these businesses around and generally consistently see there's five or six common problems that a lot of businesses have, regardless of the vertical. And now, and we're in every vertical from appliance sales to diesel engine repair to a candy store in Montana to professional services and so forth. And I go in, I try to turn this business around and knock on wood. My hopeful final thing, starting to come up with this phrase. Now that we've been told that most small businesses on the brink of failure, and my research indicates the opposite. If we're really on the brink of failure, all these businesses have been on the brink of failure for five or 10 years. They would have failed by now. We're actually on the brink of success. It's not like one bad move is going to take us down. They've made those bad moves and survived. It's one good move will move them up. So I see the brink of success in these businesses and try to help them that way.

I love that. I love the type business model. I love it so much. I also love that you get to use your zone of genius, right? The idea of the writing the books and the speaking and the sort of darting in and saying inspirational micisms, right? So that's kind of your special sauce. That's how it. That's how it flies. But I also love this idea of like on the brink of success. I mean, when you. And when you talk about the sort of five or six common problems, can you just start just articulate a few so people can understand what those are?

Oh yeah, by all means. You know, one of the most common problems with. With small businesses is their margins. Usually it's emanating from pricing. They under. They literally undervalued themselves. And they got business in the very beginning because they were the cheap guy, because they had no clue what they're doing. And then they believe that being the cheap solution is the best and it's actually the worst thing you can do. So we gotta change the pricing model. You know, other things that affect margins are efficiencies in an organization that's can be a case that's not typically one, but. So the number one thing we look for is are they mispricing? Most are. Secondly is they don't have a clear client. If I say, who's your number one customer? And they start off by saying everyone who. I'm like, oh my God. They sort of. It needs to be so specific. One of my favorite stories came out of the Savannah Bananas. They use profit first or Wildly successful baseball team. They had a game that they hosted 5,000 people showing up for a minor league Harlem Globetrotters like baseball game. Someone left their sneakers by accident apparently in the sands. And they said, we had a customer so into this that they walked out of the stadium without sneakers and didn't even notice. They took those shoes. And in their conference room, the head chair of the conference table is dedicated to the shoes. They just sit there and no one will ever sit in that chair. And every time they have a meeting, they say, are we serving them? Is someone a customer who's so engaged that when they leave, they forget their shoes? And they've further defined it's got to be a family. They say, we don't want people on their phones. We want family connection. And so they have it so clearly defined. When I called them and said, hey, I can bring down 50 business professionals, I said, not my, not our target. Sorry, maybe we can accommodate you, but this is our target. So number two is these businesses don't know their avatar. They say anybody. And if it's anybody, you water down. Your solution. Next is profit. It's so interesting by implementing profit first, it causes this cascade of looking back at all the problems. So once you say, I'm going to take 20% profit, for example, of my top line to assure that profit, it shows a cascade of problems. If you can't afford that, there's problems your margins or problems your efficiency, there's problems your target. Client recruiting is another common one is, you know, I had a buddy or a friend or whatever and people have outgrown the positions, outgrown them or they can't grow. Or the owner said, you know, I just have a relationship with them, they're not a fit. But I feel so bad terminating the person or releasing them to pursue better opportunities. Those are usually the categories. It's interesting you fix one or two of those things, these businesses start to turn every time.

So true. Yeah, those are true for the small businesses you work with. Also the venture backed startups that I work with, same exact thing. It's fascinating. I mean these are like business problems, right? Over and over and over again. And I love the idea of profit first just to say that because the notion of pay yourself first in general, I think what it does is it when it flips the script, it then requires you to do what's necessary to build that profit margin in and then you think differently and then you take different action.

I, yes, I interviewed for one of my books, A Bodyguard for one of the big five publishing houses. Was it McMillan or Penguin? I can't remember a Random House. But he had an interesting insight. He was at all the board meetings. He said, I just stand there. So I listen. And he goes, to your point, Alyssa. He goes, the problems that these corporations have that are doing billions or hundreds of millions is the exact same problem small business having. They just add more zeros. I gotta let go. One person, my heart's torn out. They gotta let go of 1,000 people. But it's the same thing. It's just an amplitude of zeros.

Totally. Wow.

Yeah.

Mike, I want to say you've talked about hustle culture and what's wrong with it. What's wrong with hustle culture?

I hate it. I. It's. It's. I remember personal story. I woke up one morning, I looked out, it was dark because it was like five in the morning. I was about to head to work. I was like, oh, my God, this is day number five. I haven't seen the sun. I was getting into work, grinding it out by 6am before the sun would peak. It's in the winter and I was leaving at 6, 7 o' clock at night. The sun was set literally five consecutive days without a sign. And I'm like, what am I doing? What's so interesting about this hustle culture? And there's still pretty big proponents, like, you got to grind and hustle out. That's because what happens is we become a crutch for the business. The business has a dependency on that hustle. There's a right down the street from here. There's these power lines that go outside my building here. And there's a tree that grew into the power line that they've cut in the bottom of below. But the tree stump is still hanging on the power line. And I'm like, oh, that's what businesses do. The business, the. The owner sacrifices themselves time wise financially. They don't take any money because they're going to carry the business forward. But the business becomes dependent on it. It kind of morphs around their power line, if you will. And now the business can't release. It actually cripples a business. So I hear stories of Elon Musk and I'm not, what a success. I'm not degrading what he's achieved by any stretch. But when we see these stories of he sleeps in his office, he works like an animal, all this stuff, it sets this precedent of saying, oh, my business can only be successful if I sacrifice myself instead of saying, how do I Leverage what I know how do I use other people much more thoughtful. I think the easy way out is just to work and grind it out as opposed to think it out and guilty. That's what I did for. For so long. For so long. The discipline that got me out of this, I do it now is I take off every Friday, like the full day. I found that I could. I didn't even have the discipline to schedule that way. My assistant books Fridays as not schedules. And she. She blocks it for me. She's much more diligent protecting my time than I am. Don't work on weekends, you know, I have my exercises like you. My God, don't violate like that. I texted you once, like, hey, can you talk real quick? You're like, I'm working out, you son. You know? But the same thing I have.

The literal truth is text I sent.

Yeah, it's true. And like, it was emoticon of the finger. I didn't even know you could do that. It's like, geez, Alyssa. But by protecting these blocks, I've been able to change it. But here's the interesting. Then it forces leverage. It's like, oh, how do I also get this down? Is it technology? Is it other people involved? You know, what is it?

Right? It forces it. I think that's the point. It's a forcing force so powerful. Now, Mike, your latest book is all in. Let's talk about it. Why'd you write the book?

So pre Covid calls from entrepreneurs and some larger businesses saying, we're having a tough time recruiting. What's interesting is the big businesses said, how come small businesses can get some of these rock star people and they don't have the resources we do? They can't give the benefits or the salaries. And how come they're recruiting? Like, that's a really interesting question. And the reverse happened too, is is these small businesses, what can we learn from the big guys? So I started the research. Then Covid happens. And what was a desire Pre Covid became a demand. Post Covid. So I want flexibility. I demand flexibility. I want remote work. I expect it. And so it put in hyperspeed. So when Covid hit, I was like, oh, I gotta write this. But what's interesting is for my speaking work and my book circulation, speaking with a lot more big small businesses. I have a gig Wednesday to a corporation with 900 employees. It's a life sciences company. Talking about this engagement. And I think the essence of it is humanness is how you lead humans. Like, it's so obvious. Um, but there's more to it. And what I did is I looked at every single element of. Of the process of building teams, the recruiting phase, the retention of folks and raising the bar, and found interestingly, like profit first is often we're doing the exact opposite of what would recruit someone. That's fantastic. We do the exact opposite of something that would retain someone. So what are these obvious but not well executed things?

Yes. Oh, my God, I can't wait to talk more about those. Specifically, I'm totally pumped because I'm totally into this myself. The idea of we, you know, we hire people based on. I don't even know what, to be honest with you. Just the sort of the vibe or sometimes around I like this person. But certainly we use interviews to hire people. What is wrong with interviews?

So I, I interviewed for this book a woman named Jewel Kucera. She is from the University of Chicago's medical department back in the day. And they had this great hiring practice, which I'll share. But the first question out of my mouth to her, I said, well, what do you think about interviewing? And she said, mike, interviews are good for one thing. If you are looking to hire someone who's going to be a professional interviewer, that's how you should qualify them. But otherwise she goes, it's a waste.

I love. It's so true.

Because, yeah, it's like, how much do you like this person? And she went on to share this concept of skills assessment demonstrations, but I went deeper and there's another form that no one or very few are doing that is so strong, indicating someone's potential that I encourage all businesses to do it. That's my big cliffhanger. I can share what it is, but.

Yeah, we want to hear what it is. All right, strap on your seatbelt right after the break. There's no break.

Yeah, a little bit of a cold. That's funny.

Yeah, that's okay.

Yeah, I'm not smoking, I swear. All right, get ready for this. So skill assessments, I think many of us know, few of us execute. I'm looking to hire someone. They know they're being interviewed. We try them out on the thing, and it's a good indicator. But there's a thing called potential assessments. And there is a half trillion as in t industry that does this. It's the sports industry. They do a thing called camps. And what a camp is is, say the football. There's the sports. Football and the athletes all come together for a camp. The goal of the camp is to educate everyone and improve them. But the coaches are also watching the ability of people and seeing who has the most potential. Now, here's what's interesting about potential. We all want people the most potential. It always reveals itself in the same three stages. First, curiosity. The people show up and are interested. Then desire. I want to keep doing more of this. I'll show up early. I have lots of questions. And then thirst. I can't quit it. So you would look for people that are going from curiosity to desire and thirst, and that's usually your best talent pool. Well, there's a. There's a mega company that does this, and no one knows. Home Depot has a build a birdhouse workshop. Now, here's what's beautiful about it. They don't say, we're looking to hire people. They don't. They simply say, learn how to build a birdhouse. You're going to have a good experience with the store. Maybe you'll. You'll, you know, fall in love with them and keep buying product there. They have one employee there observing participation, looking for curiosity, desire, thirst, and the parent who's helping other parents or asking questions. They'll tap on the shoulder and say, hey, you ever consider working at Home Depot? You're the type of candidate we're looking for. So it's a vetting process without anyone knowing they're being vetted. Just like a football camp is a vetting process while no one knows they're being vetted. The beautiful thing is everyone gets better at the process. Everyone plays the sport better. Everyone builds a birdhouse. So one last example is, as I was writing this book, I was coaching some businesses on this. I was talking with this bookkeeping firm, small firm, five employees. And they said, we are struggling to get people we can't compete financially with, with the big accounting firms.

No quote, unquote.

No one wants to do it. We run an ad on, you know, indeed or wherever the platform du jour is. And we can't find anybody. So let's run a workshop she set up. Her name was Tuesday P. Brooks.

Well, her name was Tuesday.

Tuesday P as in Paul, but wasn't Paul. I don't remember her middle name. Brooks is her last name. Tuesday.

Tuesday P. Brooks.

Brooks, yeah.

Everyone should have a name like that.

I love. And she's the nicest person. Tuesday is originally from Africa. She's based here in the New York area. And she reached out to a school, I want to say, in Uganda or Kenya, and said, hey, I understand you don't have a bookkeeping course. I will Provide the materials and teach course. I want to work with an adjunct professor. They had 12 women who joined this course. At the end of the 12 or 15 weeks, they all walked out with a certificate of accomplishment as a bookkeeper. And she, during the process, cherry picked three employees. They are her best employees. Driven, educated in the way she wants them educated. She trained them. And the best part is every other person that went through the program is gainfully employed in accounting.

Oh, my God, I love that.

So the lesson here is anyone listening in? If you want to recruit great talent, recruit great potential, you do it by putting on workshops. So educational events. If you want to hire someone that's a cfo, put on a workshop for the advanced skills the CFO needs. You can have a prerequisite saying you must have five years and so forth, just like a college class. But here's this specific tool. There's this concept, A players. I don't like the title because I think everyone is an A player. Everyone has a potential. You match the right person, the right role, everyone's going to be a rock star. So I don't like that titling, but I do know there's a pattern. People who have a passion for something will want to learn about it. So if you put on educational events, you inherently are attracting the passionate people. Now people are looking for jobs, necessarily the passionate people. Then you get to observe them as you educate them. And then you can reach out and say, hey, we'd like to hire you. It's a powerful recruiting tool.

It is very powerful. It's a recruiting tool, but it also builds your whole brand. Like, your point about Home Depot is that they then get connected to the store and they had a good experience there, even if nothing else happens. So it builds your brand no matter what, and, and then it kind of causes all these cascading effects. But how would, like, let's, let's, let's brainstorm now for like, of a different. Other companies that would do that. Like, for example, any normal, any regular tech company, venture.

Well, okay, I'll give you Audible, who did this, but we can go to other technologies. Audible needed people.

Yeah.

So Audible ran a concept called Returnships. Not internships, but Returnships, the qualifier. They said if you've been out of the workforce because of an illness or caring for someone with an illness for over, I think it was two years or five years, you can come here for a returnship experience where we're going to educate you on the newest technology, the newest tech stuff. So these are past professionals. Reintegrated with the workforce. They said after the five weeks you can go seek a job they hired. It was a New York Times article about this. Over 50% of the people who went through the returnship program are now full time audible employees. So you can do nice space. A lot of people hear this concept. They say, oh, it's only for entry level. Like, I can, you know, I need to hire dog walkers. Let me put on a how to walk a dog in groups course.

Yeah.

But it's for advanced people with the prerequisites. So I need a doctor. And she's going to perform heart surgery. What you do is you teach the most advanced future learning that this a player would likely want. So some kind of microscopic procedure. Then you said the prerequisites, the requirements are you must already be a doctor. You must already have these qualifications. So you're getting the people that you want and you know, they're learners into the next level. Now the other thing is you may not have a skill, like, I'm not a doctor. Well, you hire someone to teach it, so you can always fill that. But the best people always want further education on what they're best at. That's the lesson.

So good. So good. And I love, I love how you have an answer for all these. Like, do. You could do this? You could do this, you could do this. The point in everybody is there's probably a way that you're not thinking about this. How to create a workshop, a camp, something like that that helps you really understand the potential that people have. And I would also just say it's like an interesting and new way to recruit people.

Totally. And my dude, they call you dude. I like to call my dude. I got something even better. So as we're going through this process, coaching businesses on this are like, oh, it's too intimidating. I don't, you know, can I do it on Zoom? Yes. You know, but I don't even want, I don't even have an hour to do it. We said, okay, here's the ultimate poor man's lobster. What I want you to do is identify a class that's going on for the type of people you want to recruit. So let's say I need to hire an H Vac technician. Look through the adult education classes and find an H Vac class. Go as a student, not to be a student, to observe the other students. It's already in place. And you get a cherry pick people.

I love it. So many good ideas. These are great ideas. And then you have the Problem retaining people. You know, have you heard of quiet quitting?

Oh my God.

Yeah, yeah. So, so talk about retention. And then I, I want to get separately to your concept of the A player because I want to just tease that a little bit more. But like, talk about retention.

So this was like a big aha for me. My second company was in computer crime investigation. I'm in there. It's year two. We are in the right place at the right time. Lucky it's exploding. I run the numbers and I'm like, we can hit $10 million in revenue. Up to that point, I never had a business that size. And we were going to bootstrap our way there and we were going to take down our biggest competitor in the process. I'm like, my God, this is it. After eight hours of calculations, I come out, all my team together, end the day on the board. It was a big whiteboard. We had like a huddle room but sticking over. I put $10 million in bubble letters. I had Patty, she was my assistant at the time. I said, hey, we got to have some like hyper hype up music put on Eye of the Tiger. Cause it's the, it's the best. Like, who doesn't get jacked up to eye the tiger?

Eye the tiger playing.

Yeah, you hear Ducka dicka Dick in the background. And she's rolling her already, but I'm in it. I do this, you know, this grand speech. We're going to take them, blah, blah, blah. And with great flare, rip off this. The thing I say, here's our corporate vision. We're taking down Crawl as our competitor and we're going to achieve $10 million in revenue this year. And there was silence. And I'm like, what? And so I did the cheesiest move of all, which is the guru hand prayer, bowing, head bouncing around. I go, $10 million in revenue, right? And more silence. And people shuffled away. And Patty comes over to me, she said something that changed my perspective of leadership. She was, mike, if we achieve $10 million in revenue, you get the bigger house, you get the new car. Why should we care? Here's the lesson. Really succinctly. Most leaders set corporate visions. Great leaders set corporate collective visions. It's a collective vision. Patty continued on to say, I don't know if you know this, but so and so wants to buy their first house. And their one child is undergoing a treatment right now and they're kind of struggling with it. The job of a great leader is to know what everyone's looking to achieve. Within your organization. And this shocker of shocks. No one's looking to achieve a $10 million company except for the owner. That's my dream. That means something to my fat ego. But to Amy here, she wants to overcome cancer for the seventh year clean, you know, cancer free. Aaron wants to buy a new house because it floods all the time. Kelsey wants to learn Spanish. Someone's learning to play guitar. One person wants to be a clinical psychologist one day. Like everyone has their own dream. What's so interesting is we don't become a make a wish foundation. My job is not to do these things, but it's to make that wish important to keep it relevant. To say, how are you doing on that? Can I block and tackle for you? Can I make some introductions? Because when I'm an enthusiast for their vision, they become an enthusiast for my vision. So great leaders identify the collective vision of their organization.

I think that is so powerful. How do they do that?

So what we do is every single one of us write down our dream list. I actually have it. Turn my camera if you can see right there. Yeah, I can't phone. That's my dream list for 2024.

Love it.

And so everyone has their visions, and we all write it down for the. The year and decades ahead. Then we do is every month we sit down and say, what have you accomplished on your dream? In between that, every week, we are meeting with every employee for 15 minutes, just checking in, but also asking about their. Their vision for themselves. It becomes this very kind of natural way of talking about work but supporting the person in the role. Well, when you achieve a vision, you have, you put on a leaf and you slap open the wall. This tree out here, it's blanketed with leaves. I mean, blanketed. Like there's so many. I've never seen a tree bloom like this. So interesting. From spending a weekend with my aging mom to had a surprise visit with my son in college and he was stoned. You know, like funny things, too. I went to Amy, she's our office manager. And I said, hey, Amy, I think it's time we take down these leaves. There's no more room. And she goes, we are not taking down those leaves. I get a little emotional about. Because these are. Things are so significant to all of us. Like mine are significant to me. And Amy's are her. She goes, no, she's. I got an idea, though. She was. We can start getting paper flowers and we'll start pacing flowers along the bottom. And then we'll get birds in the sky. And, and, and clouds. But she's like, this is never coming down. I think the manifestation here, I can't speak for my colleagues, but just in my observation, I think they've never been supported in this way in business or in their lives. For some of us like that, their vision for themselves is so significant and important. Here's the greatest. Aha. It didn't happen here yet, but it's happened with other businesses that we've coached. Some people say, one day I want to own a business. I want to become. And, and when done right, there's an openness. It's not like you better not say anything because you're in trouble, right? That dream has to become a reality. So what these companies have done and we've coached them on this is why don't you set a plan, Say you want to start your own business. We're starting your own business in five years. We're going to see you through this. You're going to learn the process, but I'm going to teach you how to run the business. And I would be honored to be your first investor. I will own 10% of your business. I will send you clients over so you can, you can hit the ground running. You have to scrap from the beginning. So these businesses, by supporting other people's dreams, are expanding their own business. It becomes very beneficial to everyone.

I love it. It's so, it's so beautiful and also it's so human and so humane. But it's not. Just like you said, make a Wish foundation. So can you like, if, if someone's listening right now, they're like, okay, this is all happy talk. We're not here to like help, help people kind of. We're not help people to here to help people create their dreams. We're here to run a business. How do you really solidify for people the business impact of this touchy feely stuff?

One of my favorite stories is Jancoa. So Jancoa is a janitorial firm in, I think it's the Chicago area. I interviewed Mary Miller, the co founder. I said, I said, tell me about the company. She goes, I'll tell you this, Mike. She goes, no one's ever had the dream of being a janitor. One day she goes, but everyone has a dream. So they started a program called Dream Manager. There's an excellent book by Matthew Kelly called Dream Manager. It's a must read on this space. And she goes, but so they do this similar program of aligned vision, alignment, collective visioning and so forth. The turnover has dropped surreptitiously. I mean, extraordinary. Exponentially. That's the word I'm looking for. Extra exponentially. You know, in the janitorial space, holding someone for six months to a year is an extraordinary. And they have people for two or three years on average. And they have people there that have been generational. I interviewed one janitor whose son worked there and now his grandson works there because they love the company so much. The same janitor bought his first house because the company made it. He said, this is my mission. Now here's what's also interesting that Mary Miller told me. She if you grant someone's wish, it's a form of entitlement. It's a gift. It's like, here you go. And there's, there's excitement in the moment, but there's no sense of accomplishment when we achieve it ourselves. There's a, there's a pride, there's a, there's, there's a power that we have seen ourselves. We can accomplish so much more when we do it. When he bought this house, he's like, what else am I possible? What else can I achieve? My favorite story came out of there that triggered retention with other people. Was one guy, he didn't know how to read or write. He said, I have a granddaughter, I want to read her bedtime stories. So he said, I'm going to, I want to go to school. Well, another employee is for reading and writing. Another employee raises her hand. He goes, I have to hop on the bus, be at the school at 4 o'. Clock. That's when classes start. I'm working. So I got moved to a morning shift and no one is available. This one guy said, dude, I'm in. He goes, as long as it takes. So now there's a, there's a team working on one vision. They switched roles. This guy six months later is reading a bedtime story to his granddaughter and the place loses their mind and the retention goes up. So it drives retention, it drives better work performance, it drives flexibility, it drives camaraderie. There's so many benefits on a tactical level for a business.

It's so great. Are there any special skills that managers that founders CEOs need to have to bring this into their workplace?

Yeah, you gotta be human, you know, don't, don't you gotta be dedicked? I think, yeah, I, I, I'm not necessarily good at it because my, I have a actually been diagnosed with what's called hypomania. There's hypermania and hypo which is one degree down, which is this kind of. This energy which emulates perhaps attention deficit. So it's hard, harder for me to stay engaged for a long period of time. Definitely not impossible, but it's harder. I have another person, actually, the president of our company. Her name is Kelsey, who is the most engaged person. She remembers every single detail she loves on you. When she became our collective visionary, if you will, there was a shift in the company before. I think the people would have done anything for the business when I was leading our program. They will take a bullet for Kelsey. They will die for her. They defend her. You know, you side eye Kelsey and you had six other people attacking you because she. She cares so much in. In Kelsey's own way, in her human way about everyone's accomplishments and the organization's performance. This is subjective, but it feels like it's even better. And the best part is it's not like now I'm like the side guy. Mike was kind of not that good at it. No, he's part of the team. I go meet with Kelsey. She does reviews with me. Same thing. I haven't excluded myself. I think actually great leaders do that. We identify what are we good at. I'm okay public speaking and writing. I should stay in my lane.

Yeah.

And we find out people that are extraordinary, what they do, and we elevate them. And I think it takes courage because it's a realization, oh, I'm not that good at that. Or I really sucked at it, or I was damaging the business by doing that. So that was my lesson.

That is, I think it's. Yeah. Very impactful. And also for all of us who have self reflection and to realize what we're good at, what we're not good at. And then to your point, you said that everyone had to have an everyone's an a player mentality. And you could say, you could. You could say, hey, everyone's an a player if they're in the right space. So again, while we're on the happy talk, tell us about that and how that then drives actual business results.

Have you ever been to the Container Store?

Yes. I love that place, brother.

Place. Right? But here's the. Here's the absurdity. They sell freaking containers.

Yeah, that's it.

You can go to Walmart to get containers, but the experience at Walmart is radically different. Container Store, they're loving on you. They're educated. It's a small staff, but they care for you. They know the price inside and out. Walmart, Good luck finding an associate that even knows where the aisle is that has a box or two. So the question. And I met Kip Tindall a few decades ago. He's the co founder. I said, how do you do it? And he famously. And he's got videos about this. He shared his concept of one. A player performs a level of 3B players. So if you hire someone for $20 an hour, an A player, you know, back in the day, maybe that was what you paid. And you hire B players for $15 an hour, you're actually hiring three of those people to perform at level one. So it's actually more expensive. You're paying, you know, whatever, 35 or $45 an hour versus so it's a good, good perspective. Then he shared. He goes, I. We were. He did his presentation. I ended up sitting next to him for lunch. He goes, by the way, everyone's an A player. Which was kind of shocking. After he shows this math, I go, what are you talking about? He goes, we don't hire retail associates. We hire people's aspirations. So someone is in the theater community. We say, hey, this is an opportunity for you to express characters, to explore that. Would you want to do it? We hire someone from the retired community and say, hey, do you want to have some more social time and network with people more? This could be the outlet. You see, great leaders align the vision or purpose people have with the vehicle, the job, to satisfy that purpose. And when we are serving a purpose within our role, that purpose becomes of great significance to us. A players is how I define it. A players see the job as them. I mean, it's their identity. As the job goes, so do I. So if I'm poorly performing, I am a poor performer. A B player sees the job as a source of income. And then the C player, that's the worst of all, sees the job as an evil necessity. And by default, you're evil. So we want someone that sees the job as part of their identity. And you can do it by asking about their hopes, their dreams, their desires or interests and morphing the role to satisfy that. Now, here's the other ironic thing. You could be a garbage man who's aspiring to be a thespian, or you could be a doctor who. Who is trying to get more social time. Like the vehicle, the job isn't as consequential as knowing what the purpose is, because I think any job can fill it. You got to know the skill, you gotta have the skills and so forth. And we talked about how to do that. Do Workshops and camps and so forth. But align purpose within their role and watch people go all A over you. That sound right? You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, I love that. And it's. Once again, it's, I think, just being mindful of who you are as a leader and being mindful of who the people are around you. Like, hey, there are human beings out there. Go figure out what their skills are and put them in the right spot to be successful. But again, it also starts, as you said before, with hiring the right people with the right kinds of attitudes.

You know, I don't know. I'm trying to jump it around. It does. It reminds me, you know, when I speak with me with entrepreneurs, I will often start off in a presentation with this line. Cause I want to give him a shock. I say, do you know the number one job of an entrepreneur? No, what is it? The number one job of an entrepreneur is to be a creator of jobs. Not to do a job, it's to create jobs. And they're like, well, what do you mean? Well, data shows that I think it's 17% of the population ever starts a business, ever. 17% in their lifetime. Only 20% do it sustainably, successfully, profitably. So 20% times 17% is roughly 3%. 3% of the population ever runs an effective business. That means 97% of the population is looking for good jobs with good companies that are run effectively. Our job is to keep creating that. You know, we're the weirdos. We're the weirdos who chose to do this. But it's a shame that many entrepreneurs take the job and they do the work and they grind and hustle. They're blocking out people from doing the work and they're preventing themselves from doing the most important thing. So true to say that.

I appreciate you saying that.

That's interesting. I can mow my soapbox now. No more curtsies for you.

No one more curtsy. You're like all preach all the time over there. Um, there's just one more topic I want to explore. You know, on this topic of, of. Of employees, I'll talk a little bit more about you and your journey, but specifically ownership. So all of the founders I work with, all of them have this value of employees, you know, act as owners.

Yeah.

How do you really help employees act like owners?

So here I'll tell you. The shocking way that rarely works is actual ownership. ESOPs, stuff like that. My research shows it's rarely executed properly. It actually forms entitlement. So now it's funny you give me a little piece of the business expecting me to perform more. I'm like, hey, where's my money? I'm an investor. There is another form of ownership that, that is the game changer. It's called psychological ownership. There's research back from the 80s. It kind of got buried by a guy named John Pierce. He was investigating human behavior and he found is we have a sense of ownership in something when three elements happen. One is we have detailed knowledge of the thing. Secondly, we have control authority over it. Lastly, we can personalize it. So the best example is like a car. And we'll talk about rental car first. Because that's something you don't have psychological ownership or legal ownership over. You know a rental car. You are told when you pick it up or return it, it better be a full time kick ass. No scratches or dents, clean interior. And I have a saying, when we're forced to comply, we seek to defy it's human nature then to find ways to elbow back at the man. So I do donuts in the parking lot. I don't take it to the car wash. But when I own a car, so I own a little pickup truck, what I do is I do get to take it to car washes. When I first bought the car, I spent an hour sitting in the car in the freezing cold winter, going through the manual page by page, pushing every little doohickey. Intimate knowledge. I decide when I'm going to drive it. We're going to drive it, full tank, empty tank, I don't care. It's my authority. And lastly, I personalize. I can put a little bumper stickers on it or something on the rear windshield meter mirror. I can program the radio stations. The more of those elements you give to someone, the more they sense they, they own it. Here's the greatest irony. I don't legally own my pickup truck. The bank does. I'm making payments, but I even say I own it when I don't own it. So with our employees, what we have to do within their jobs is allow them to have control. Ask them what's the outcome you want to achieve in this job? How do you want to get there? How can you improve on our best practices? Control Next one intimate knowledge. Give them training, let them learn more about it. Understand the details, the nuances, afford them the education. The last thing is personalization. Is there things they can do to make it their own. We had a landscaping company where the guys put on the side of their trucks that they put their name that this Is my truck. The trucks are meticulous now. Before that they were driving heaps, but now they sign their names to. They personalize it. They feel like they own these trucks. They take, they take care of it. I do want to give one caveat. Lifedoms can happen like where people start to protect their property and it's mine. Keep people out. So you want to have what's called collective psychological ownership where multiple people send their own thing. So don't have one person's name on the truck. Have three or four. You'll have one person handling your accounting, which would be a bad move anyway. Have a couple of people involved. How we do it here is every employee gets a four week vacation. This is a protocol we started up about five years ago is mandated you leave the business for four consecutive weeks in addition to regular vacation. It's paid, it's amazing, it's a sabbatical. But it's really amazing to the company because when someone leaves for that long of a cycle, the only way you can ensure the continuity of that job. For most businesses in a monthly cycle, something has to happen. You have to have redundancy. So every role has redundancy. Everyone can cover for everybody. And this way if someone gets sick or decides to leave or something goes down, we have a backup in that role.

What a, what a brilliant strategy. Because actually you make it to be a benefit for people.

Oh yeah. And they love it. I love it. And, and it makes a healthier company. Yeah, it's kind of like a weight room. Like when you go exercise, you need resistance to build strength.

Totally true.

He intentionally put our, our business in a moment of lack or situation at different times of the year. It's not like everyone's gonna, we're gonna take off this month. That, that doesn't work because now you actually time the business to handle that. It's all sporadic. So we're constantly taking an inoculation on what it's like to lose someone and it builds a healthier, stronger business.

Yeah, I love that idea. I love the idea. And I also just love all the innovation that you bring to this and that you think about. And it's like everybody right now could actually look at their workplace practices right now and think differently because there's a whole bunch of like stuff. We do what we always do. Actually every single person listening right now could decide, I'm going to just look at some of the processes we have around people and see if there are any that just don't make sense or that I Could reinvent that would make them better.

Yeah. And I'll talk about. It's not, it's not the foosball table or we do the laundry for you. Those can be nice perks. But until you start showing a genuine interest in the human being, that's the foundation. You'll see all this intimate knowledge, personalization, it's the interest in advancing that person, their goals and their personal visions. It's the interest of them achieving their outcomes. It's that humanness.

Humanness. I love it. So, Mike, back to you. You had this crash moment, this bottom out moment where your daughter handed you her pigg and bad things happened. And then you spent your time clawing back from that. And since then, you're a successful author, 10 books, business owner. But there are ups and downs in the journey from that moment on. What sort of ups and downs or maybe downs have you experienced? We want to humanize you. You're not like perfect enough into the.

Oh, no, I am, yes, perfect here.

What are you talking about?

Far from it. Yeah. So I did work as an angel investor. That was part of my major collapse. I had no idea what I was doing. I got outside of my lane. I'm like, oh, you know, I'm here, I'll invest in these businesses. You know, one of the interesting challenges I'm facing now is I don't want to manage a large business. Like I. I'll give you the Amazon's example. I know some people say I want to have the next Amazon, I do not want the next Amazon. I admire that definition of success, but that's not my definition of success. So I don't want to have this mega business, but I do want to stretch my impact. So one thing I've done is I set up licensees and so forth. And it's much harder to navigate that, to care for each person. These are all these little businesses now that are LinkedIn to make sure that everyone's being cared for equitably. And I understand from everyone's perspective, if I'm over here helping this person, why am I not here helping that person? So these, these pulls back and forth. Another thing is, you know, we've been, knock on wood, crushing it with cash flow because I implemented profit first from day one. For I think I've had 62 consecutive quarters of profit distributions. This goes back over 15 years ago. Amazing, amazing, amazing. But in one of our businesses, I see the cash flow slowing. Now the beautiful thing is there's profit distributions coming out and it will continue for the foreseeable future. But what I'm so happy about is I see the problem now as opposed to traditional me, where have been two years from now when the bank hits zero. And like I thought, we get that one big client and turn this around, I'm in. You know, I don't know how the defcons work. Defcon 1 is the most extreme. Or 5, but I'm defcon 3.

Okay.

Either by the most extreme.

Yeah.

Okay. So, you know, I was cruising along DEFCON 1, and now I'm seeing DEFCON 3, knowing DEFCON 5. If things stay as they are, is a year or two out, and that's going to be a calamity. So I'm addressing that now. It's really empowering to be proactively addressing these problems before they become real problems. So that's where I am now. Truly not perfect. And I started business ventures that I continue to start. Ideas that don't work out and fall by the wayside. I do like doing all these little micro tests, testing things out. Yeah.

How do you feel about that? Because a lot of people have trouble and they inhibit themselves from doing micro tests or trying something because it might fail.

Yeah. So what I do is I say I'm a quick start, and I have a core competency. Right. Speak. Core competency, quick start. I can get an idea going and I'll be enthusiastic for a day. And then we're fading. So the first question I have is, is there someone else that wants to carry this? Then I say, can I carry my influence of what I've done to bring immediate momentum to this? Yeah, this is something that can sustain by me simply doing speaking and writing. And so we started a small authors division. We now have, I think we're starting our eighth author this week or next because I'm out there constantly talking to my publisher about writing books and all this stuff. I said, hey, let's just record on a podcast with my co writer. She's amazing. Her name's AJ and we started recording it. And sure enough, people are attracted to it. And we're getting authors, and we have a person that's running that division. It's small, you know, it's a low six figures, but it's profitable. And it's like, okay, let's see where this goes. This investment group we started in earnest eight months ago, maybe 12 months ago, got 11 businesses in. We've turned four profitable. There's a guy, his name is Greg. He's running. He's our portfolio manager. Not my talent but this guy loves it. It's so his talent. But I can leverage what I do. Speak right. Get some momentum. I have a subscriber list of people that perhaps want a service like this to have a partner in. In what I do. And. And those people have come on board, so that's how I do it. But I've said other things that just go by the wayside.

Yeah. And you don't seem to care. No.

You know. No, no. But I don't know if that's a discipline over time or whatever. I mean, maybe my ego gets hurt, but I remember Thomas Edison who lives in your town.

Exactly.

Lived. Lives in your town.

He's a homeboy.

Yeah, he's a homeboy. Yeah.

Yeah.

Your homeboy famously said, and I'm paraphrasing, I love failure because I'm one step closer to success. And so he thirsted for. I'm reading his biography right now, and that's. The guy just loved messing things up. He's like, come closer, come closer.

Yeah. It's so inspiring. And I think we should all be thinking about that, you know, the failure as sort of data. You're either. I said in my TEDX talk, you're either winning or learning.

Do you ever hear the. Yeah, I like that. You ever hear the Sarah Blakely story about what her dad said to her?

No. Tell us.

She said in an interview that every time she and her brother. I think she had a brother, would come home for dinner, the father would say, how did you fail today? And that was the one question I got asked every single dinner. What a great freaking question.

So great.

Because it's the reverse. I'm the. I'm the parents. Like, how'd you do? What? You got three A's and a C? What? Shop with a C? You know, I'm harping on the failure, meaning I want to avoid failure, which means it's in my best interest to not attempt. I'm farming, in this case, my kids. And I heard. I was like, oh, my God, I am such an idiot. That's exactly it. You failed there. How do you improve upon that? What did you learn from it? How's this your greatest opportunity? Congratulations on the wins. Tell me about that failure, because that's amazing.

It also desensitizes you.

Yeah, it desensitizes you. My son's graduating. I'm sitting on my soapbox. I like. I like hearing my own voice.

I can't believe it. I didn't expect that.

Yeah, I didn't expect that. Yeah. So between me and you, Jose Tejas was like a three hour dinner. I just spoke for two hours and 59 minutes. It's one minute everyone else talking. So my son's coming back from college. My youngest, he's graduating and he doesn't have a job. And prior me was like, you need a job and so forth. And so what we agreed to is he's coming home to do experiments. There's some things that he's interested in experimenting with and there's a few things I want to pursue in a business opportunity. He's like, yeah, I think your job is going to be starting these experiments and then keep looking for a job and pursue what you want. But do you agree to try things out? And this is my attempt to kind of learn from Sarah Blakely and start failing just so you can learn.

I love that. Start failing. Well, just so you can learn, but also again, to desensitize failure.

I love that. Desensitization. Yeah, yeah.

So that when you script, you're like, oh, oh, well. And then we all fail and we.

You know, all the time when you're, when you're in the, like riding high. Gosh. Try to slow down that engine and kind of coast for a little bit. But it's inevitable. Like life's journey is up and down. I, I looked back upon my entire life doing this map. I call it the life pulse because it looks like a pulse. Up, down, up, down. And you don't know where it's coming from. It could be five minutes from now and I'm blindsided by the next thing. But it's inevitable. So what I'm trying to do is when you know, when you're in hell, keep going. Or when you're going through hell, keep going. And when you're in the high, slow down. Slow down as long as you can and hold on to that.

I love it. So true. Now, Mike, just a few more questions. Have you ever experienced imposter syndrome or severe self doubt?

Yeah, yeah, tell us. Yeah, I remember the first sales call because it was so blatant. I was working for this computer company. It was the first job I had. They sent me a sales call by myself. I pulled up, I remember this vividly. And I was walking into the parking lot for this small office, but it was like one of these multiple offices in the building. And someone had a Dodge Viper. This was the popular car in the early 90s. And I saw it in the parking lot and I remember looking at that and someone walked by me. He's like, oh, you like the car. I said, yeah, I'm gonna own that one day. And he goes, good luck. I was like, okay, all right. Then I walked in. So I'm like, yeah. My ego's like, now I'm like, I gotta sell. I went in and I do a little pitch. Like we do these computer systems, so forth. And they asked the first question. I had no idea what the answer was. My face just went sheet red and then white. I started getting dizzy, kind of stammered. And then the guy looks at me and goes, I think we're done here. We don't need your services. I'm like, I understand. And I didn't get it. And what's interesting is I. I returned to the company I worked for at the time, and I had a good boss, bad boss. I actually written about my new book, Bad Boss Steaming. What the hell went on that was so easy. It was a layup. You're a piece of. Good boss is like, what'd you learn from not. Not a good experience. That's okay, I said. I went beat ready. He's like, yeah, how about this? We're gonna do practice questions. I'm gonna do all the questions and write them down. You're gonna actually have a cheat sheet. We're gonna prepare. Then I don't know how much later after that, maybe six months later, maybe a few days later, I can't remember. But then I got the first sale and the confidence started to come. But I remember the fear. The fear. The other times that I have those, that type of fear where I go red and white is when my wife calls me Michael. It happened today. She goes, michael. And I'm like, what? She goes, I can't find the mail in ballot. I'm like, did I put it in the wrong mailbox or something? Oh, my gosh. She was pissed. And I got terrified. I was terrified.

Well, that's hilarious. I guess I'm just wondering if you have any advice. Not marital advice, obviously. Any advice you have for other entrepreneurs who experience severe self doubt or imposter syndrome.

Oh, well, yeah. Welcome to the human journey.

Yeah.

I think the best thing I did was seek mentors, but in a unique way. I have a list of mentors that have different unique talents, but it's not the holistic person. I thought, oh, I need the perfect person who's a great spouse, who's a great business leader, who's a great, great. And that person will be all my guidance. Well, we're all humans. We're all flawed. Like, if you want to learn how to write a book. Maybe I can give some advice, but gosh, don't ask me how to do detail, like to do accounting and a million other things. And so I saw these people, and I have one guy, he is an extraordinary family man. He tried a business adventure. He was horrible at it. I would never seek his mentorship there. I saw him as a great business person, but doesn't live a lifestyle that's congruent with what I want, but has great insights there. And so I, I, with, as best I can, withhold my judgment of those other character elements and say, here's the one element I want to learn from. That's been massive for me.

That's beautiful. So let's sort of a community of mentors around you.

The community mentors. I even have a. At my home, I call it the heavenly board. My home office. This is the office office. But the home office, I have a wall up with six different historical figures and a famous quote from them. So Oscar Wilde, Maya Angelou, George Washington up there. And when I'm contemplating something, I say, well, what would these people say? And by the way, you can cheat it now by going into ChatGPT and say, here's my board of advisors. Here's my question. How would George Washington respond to this? How would Maya Angelou responses and so forth. And it blows your freaking mind. You actually have a board of advisors from these different historical perspectives actually talking to you. That's actually talking to you.

I love that. That's a very good technique. Mike, what do you wish you had known earlier on your journey?

I. I'm happy I didn't know more because I would. I think I'd be too chicken to. To do a lot of this entrepreneurial stuff. It's, you know, entrepreneurship is freaking scary.

It's hard.

Once you're in hell, keep going. So I'm happy I didn't know much more. I wonder. You know, of course, in retrospect, I said, I wish I understood that. It's about being of service. It's about impact. And when there's a congruency between your calling, what you feel compelled to do, and it's serving people, you become this unstoppable, gracious, powerful good force. I wish I heard that earlier. But here's the deal. Ego. Mike would have not heard it. I mean, like, no, whatever, whatever. Old guy, nice beard you got there. Walking, I would be like, messing my own chops. Why don't you. Why don't you eat a sandwich there, frail boy? That's what I would have said to me, why don't you lift some weights? The big weakling.

I guess we always have to be ready for that, right? It's like you can't really know in advance what you need to know along the way.

Yeah. And aren't we blessed at not knowing in the first place? Yeah. You wouldn't be where you are if you knew everything.

No, no. Definitely not. No one would. That's so true. What advice do you have for other founders as they embark on their own journeys to grow into leaders?

Really know the reason behind the reason. So to me, it's why are you doing what you're doing beyond the transaction? There's transaction, there's transformation. So one of my favorite stories, or one that picturizes this well is, is Harley Davidson. When I go to a conference stuff, I'm going to have a Harley here and some hands go up. I'm like, 90% chance you got a tat on yourself right now. This is Harley Davidson. You're like, yeah, man. And I'm like, you know, you have the company's logo on your shoulder. That's my dream, is for you to tat my logo on your skin permanently. Then I explained, Harley has a transformational experience. So you can buy a motorcycle anywhere. That's a transaction. But when you have a Harley, it has a meaning to it. Weekend warrior, you got a hog, whatever it may be. But it means something about who you are as a character. I think the greatest organizations understand that, that we're in character shift. We're in community building. We are in transformation, not transactions.

I love it. So wise, so much wisdom here. Everybody should get all of Mike Michalowicz's books and particularly his most recent book, All In. And I just want to say thank you. Thanks for listening to From Startup to Grown Up. If you like what you heard, give it a review on Apple Podcasts so other people can find it. And if you know of a founder or someone else who is meant to be on this podcast, drop me a line through my website, alyssacon.com.