ALL IN: How Great Leaders Build Unstoppable Teams - Keynote with Mike Michalowicz

Back in the day, I had a VAR. Some of you, some of my friends are here, so you know that. Does anyone know what a VAR stands for? Vastly amplified rates. That's what it is, vastly amplified rates. We've moved to MSPs, which is massively steep pricing. I know you know that. But I had a VAR back in the day, and just to give you context, this is when the platform de jour was Token Ring. Does anyone remember Token Ring? All right, over 50, over— this whole group's over 50. It was on NetWare 2.2. Anyone remember NetWare 2.2? Over 60, over 60. Okay, ArcNet, anyone 70? So it was funny, I was talking to some folks outside. They're like, oh, the most devastating attack nowadays is DDoS, these denial of services. It really destroys systems. You don't know what a denial of service is unless you've worked on a token ring network. I had a client, you know, 50 nodes, all— and if you don't know what token ring is, get the hell out. It's a coaxial cable all connected in a ring, and if you tripped on it, the entire network would crash. That is the ultimate denial of service. After I had that business, I moved into computer forensics, computer crime investigation. And I remember sitting in my office this one particular day and I was running the numbers. I was like, oh my gosh, if we simply do X, Y, and Z, we can achieve $10 million in revenue. This is my third year in business. I'd never up to that point grown a business that size. Like $10 million in revenue, that's it, and we can take down our biggest competitor. There was a company named Krull. They may still be around today. And I was like, if we simply do this— so I called my team together, just like any, any great leader would do. We had a huddle area similar to this stage, not as many effects. We did have a Lip Couch by Happensance. But I called everyone together, and, um, where'd I put the markers? Oh, they're hidden on me. All right, well, if anyone can find markers for me, I'd That would help. Oh, here they come. So I— thank you so much. I appreciate it. Good to meet you. So thanks. Thanks. So I decide, I decide I'm going to do the big reveal. And you know how this works. It's where you take the number you're going to achieve. You set the corporate vision. Let me just take this off and you write it in big bubble letters. So in front, before the team came in, I wrote in big bubble letters, $10 million in revenue. But to hold back the reveal, I put my sticky note over it, kind of like that. And I called everyone in together. Now, to get a group excited, when you have a corporate vision that you're gonna set, you gotta have big flair. So I queued up the most important song Probably the best song of all time, the best rock song of all time. You know what it is. It's Eye of the Tiger. So I cue it up, and I have Patty, my assistant, I tell her, when I start doing this speech, hit the play button, and we're going to do the big reveal. My 30 colleagues walk in. I straighten up my jacket. I say, I've been in my office for the last 8 hours. Running the numbers, calculating what we can do. And my gosh, do we have a grand job in front of us. If we do the right moves, we can transform the industry of computer forensics forever. And that's when I did the signal. Similar to the markers, she wasn't ready. So I'm like, the signal, do it, do it. And that's when she hits play and you hear that ding, dika, ding, dika, ding, dika, dang, dika, dika, dang, dang, dang. And I'm like getting really amped and like, we for the first time ever are gonna achieve $10 million in revenue. And that was the response. That was the response. Thank you. I guess you were there. Because it was total silence. And I'm like, what? I just revealed the biggest goal we've ever had. For our team. This is our corporate goal. And I said, oh my gosh, in my head, I forgot to do what every master leader does, and it's the grand guru prayer hands and head nod. That's how you get people excited. So I said one more time, I said, maybe I wasn't clear about this. For the first time ever, our company's gonna take down our biggest competitor and we're gonna achieve $10 million in revenue. Thanks. I wish you were there because people did not do that. They're like, oh my gosh. It was silence again and people shuffled out of the room. Patty came over to me and said, Mike, if we achieve $10 million in revenue, you get the bigger house. You get the new car. That's your vision. What about our vision? This became a learning lesson for me and ultimately a mission on what great leaders do. And I'll give you the first little tip. Most leaders set corporate visions. Great leaders set collective visions. Great leaders understand what their team wants to achieve, not for their job, but for their lives. And how do we achieve all of the goals? How do we lock arms and march together? I endeavored from that day forward to one day become a great leader. I'm not there yet. I'm more competent today than I was before, and maybe I have flashes or moments, but I do want to share with you what I learned. I started studying about this, particularly around COVID. What was interesting in the COVID pandemic was what was formerly a desire has become now a demand. You know, I, I wanted to work from home pre-COVID, now I expect to work from home. Before, I wanted flex time, now you better give me flex time. So I started studying this. It was interesting, during this period there was a situation that happened at a museum, actually two museums, one in Baltimore, another one in Russia. Yekaterinburg is the name of the city. And in Russia they have a a museum after a former president named Boris Yeltsin. Just like here in the United States, they set up these buildings and monuments, and they'll have art displayed or other things. Well, the Boris Yeltsin Museum, they have an art piece that they call "Three Figures," and it's similar to the Mona Lisa in its importance, at least in Russian culture. And I'm going to do a very amateurish version of it, but it kind of looks like this. It's 3 figures, they're faceless, and it's worth millions and millions of dollars. They hired a security guard, Alexander Vassiliev, and his job was to strictly stand in front of this piece of art and stand guard. In fact, he was told explicitly, "Do not look at the art, do not engage with it. Your job is to protect it. If anyone approaches it, defend it from graffiti, defend it from damage." That's your job, and stand there for 8 hours straight. At the same time, there was another museum in Baltimore called the Baltimore Museum of Arts, and they did something interesting that I find great leaders do. Most leaders tell their team what to do. Great leaders ask their team what they could do. In the Baltimore Museum, they had another piece of art. It was called Medusa because, shockingly, It was Medusa. And it was a knocker from the 1500s, an old door knocker with Medusa's head. And the guard protecting it, his name was Michael York, and he watched the entire exhibit, this room where this Medusa head was. And the curator for the museum came up to him and said, "Hey, I'm curious. Could you tell me about the work you do here, what your observations are?" What could you do? And Michael responded and said, well, I don't know if you know this, but for most of the time I'm acting as a glorified bathroom attendant. Most people come to me and want to know where the men's or women's bathroom is. He goes, but also as a guard, I sit here and I observe what people are saying about this piece, Medusa. Some people say that she was a villain. Others say she was a victim. He goes, I have this perspective that perhaps no one else has. I know more about this art than even the curators of this museum. So the curator who was talking to Michael York said, "Well, what could you do with this?" He says, "I can tell you what art should go where in this museum." And that became the inspiration for an idea they called "Guarding the Art." They took 17 guards at the Baltimore Museum of Art in 2021 and invited them to become curators. It went on to become the most successful exhibit of all time at the Baltimore Museum of Art. It had more traffic, many more visitors, had more donations, and no surprise, had more engagement with those guards. Now, let's go back to Russia here. One day, meaning after 24 hours of Alexander Vasiliev protecting the art of the three figures, the next morning they found that it actually had some graffiti drawn on it. Someone had improved the art by drawing some eyes on it. Under Alexander's watch. Well, it was Alexander who did it. He was a little bored, he said. He defaced the art and effectively destroyed it, costing the museum millions of dollars of value. And this won't be a shocker to you, Alexander Vassiliev ironically, coincidentally fell out of a 13-story window the next day. That's a joke, by the way. It's a very dark joke. It didn't happen. He was poisoned to death. All right. What we're going to discover today is that good leaders, or most leaders, I should say, tell their teams what to do. Great leaders ask their teams what they could do. I do have a little worksheet that I handed out. I got one here in my back pocket. So you have on your desk if you want to follow along. Is it there on your desk? Was it not? It's in the book. Oh, it's in the book. It's in the book. OK. If you want to follow along, I'm going to give you the answers. I made it real simple to find it in your workbook. It has a picture here that is wallet size. That is wallet size. So you can cut it out or you can put it in your refrigerator. OK. I want to tell you, answer number 1, unstoppable teams are created through great leaders, not merely assembled. And you're starting to learn. Some of the leadership tips. We also answered number 2 in our worksheet here. Most leaders are telling their team what to do, meaning they're forcing compliance. Number 2 is forcing compliance results in resistance. Granting ownership control results in aspiration. So number 2 is compliance and ownership. I think Jocko Williams was here, was it last year? He wrote a book along with Leif about extreme ownership. And maybe he shared that story of the Navy SEALs that are in Coronado. And what they do as part of the training is you have to take these rubber boats down the shoreline from the beach into the water, race around a buoy, and do it over and over again. And they have about 20 teams going at this, and for most people doing it one time will give you effectively a heart attack. The Navy SEALs do it about 25 times in a row. And they noticed after the third or fourth race, there was one team that was winning over and over again. And they ran an interesting experiment. They swapped the leaders. They took the, the team that was winning, that leader, and put them on the boat that was always coming in dead last and put the dead last boat leader into the boat that was coming first. The next race, it still played out the same way. The winning boat won again, but not by as much. By the third race, They weren't winning anymore. Infighting had started happening and arguments started breaking out. But that losing boat started to compete. And by the 5th race, it was winning every single race. I think the mistake I had, I thought that great teams need to be assembled, but it's really great leadership that assembles and unifies a great team. There was a movie that came out recently called "The Boys in the Boat." Anyone see that? Okay. You may be under 20, I don't know. That was not an age qualifier. "Boys in the Boat." It was about the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. The US rowing team was going against the Germans and the Italians, among other teams, but these were professional teams. Literally groomed, the Germans and Italians selected, handpicked when they were infants to be rowers. That was their destiny. They had the physical makeup of it. They were trained to do this. This is all they did. They were defined as the winners. And then came the US team. None of these athletes had ever rowed before college. They had no idea what they were doing. They were gangly looking. They didn't have the muscles or the strength. And yet they went in and they won the gold medal at the 1936 Olympics. An inferior, weak team because the leader unified them. Great leaders have the team connect and communicate and engage with either each other in support. And something interesting can happen. You can achieve what's called a swing state. In rowing, if you swing at the exact same time, it doesn't matter how strong you are. There's an amplitude effect that everyone's perfectly swinging at the same time and the boat launches forward. And the only way to achieve a swing state is if everyone emphatically trusts each other. And that's up to the leader. What we're going to do this afternoon is we're going to go over a model that I've been researching that I found has defined great leadership. And I'm trying to deploy for my own experience, but also think you can impart some wisdom from this. The model I call is FASO, F-A-S-O, and it stands for the 4 major categories we're going to look into. The first element is fit. Fit is finding the person that is the ideal fit for your organization and your organization has the ideal fit for them. Let me start off by asking a question here. Just by a show of hands, what is stronger? And we'll make a quick vote here. Is a pyramid stronger or a spider web? And you're already like, oh, this is a trick question. It is. It is a trick question. Who thinks a pyramid is stronger? Raise your hand if you think— no one's going to vote for the pyramid. I love this group. Okay. Here's the trick. It ain't the spider web. So now you're screwed. Who thinks the spider web is stronger? Raise your hand. Yeah. I like— no hands went up. I love this group. Just by a show of hands, who here has hands? Any, okay, half the group, half the group. Robin, you are screwed. These MSPs can't type on keyboards. They don't have hands. Alright, here's the deal. The spider web and the pyramid cannot be compared. They're actually both super strong, right? A pyramid, you know, is made out of granite, these massive structures. They're immovable. They're structures that can withstand massive earthquakes and huge hurricanes, but they can never be moved. So yes, they are stronger than a spider web. But of course, a spider web is very flexible. Pound for pound, ounce for ounce, there is no natural material on the planet Earth that is stronger than the web of a spider. And it too can withstand hurricanes because of its flexibility. So either one could be the strongest. And that's the thing I want to point out is why it's a trick question is either can be strongest. But only one can offer the flexibility, and that's what small business owners and great leaders need to take on. Here is the pyramid structure of an organization. Perhaps your org chart is something like mine. You have the box up top. I don't know if you put president in there. I like to put the word me. I don't know what your preference is. After I draw me, I put me in there, I put the longest line I can. It keeps going. And then I put my second in command. You know, you got CFO, CPO, CTO, C-3PO. And then below them you have more components for your chart. This is the traditional organization. Org chart. It's a pyramid structure. But in today's environment, great leaders are no longer following this structure because this mandates a what's called command and control environment. I tell you what to do, you give me feedback. It may get muddled coming up or may get muddled getting down. So there's a lot of cross-communication. The other problem is This mandates that we match talent, the people we hire, to the titles that we have. I'll give you an example. My own company, the forensics business, I had a receptionist. Her name was Petra. She had multiple responsibilities. So we'll say Petra was here on the org chart, and her responsibilities included things like answering the phone, greeting walk-in customers back in the day when we had walk-in customers, but also It didn't happen all the time, so she did some light data entry, some invoicing and so forth. I had another guy, Paul. He was in our sales department. Paul's job was to close leads. It was also to be a farmer, to maintain connections and so forth. Petra, our receptionist, was amazing at the social components. She was loved by every one of our clients. They loved talking with Petra, hanging out with her. She was a great first impression. She kind of sucked at the data component. Like, don't put Petra on the invoicing. That's not her talent. Now, in the traditional structure, when your receptionist needs to do all these things and they can't comply with it, they got to go. It's a rigid structure. Paul, our salesperson, was amazing at closing deals. Why? He calculated. God, he would calculate the numbers and figure out right when someone had to do something and would take that opportunity. But he was the worst farmer ever. I mean, he was horrible at maintaining relationships. And that's when the epiphany happened. Oh my gosh, Petra can farm relationships and Paul can crunch numbers. We moved, we started to move back then, and now this is all we do, to a new structure, which is a web-like structure. We have different fields of responsibility. First impressions or communication, data crunching, and so forth. We had all these different fields. And then we had people that were capable at certain parts but not at other parts. And what happens is it starts building this web-like structure. When we told Petra, hey, would you wanna call on some of our existing clients and just check in on them and see if they have other things they like to consume? She's like, I'm all over that. When we told Paul, hey, we have an opportunity for you to dig into our finances so you can close at a higher rate, he's like, absolutely, I'll crunch those numbers and started doing that. We started to match talent to the task, not talent to the title. That's the difference. Great leaders match talent to task. You may have not noticed this. Petra is Greek for— it's a female Greek name for Peter. I don't know if you knew that. I didn't know this. I was actually taking from Peter and giving to Paul. Thank you very much. Thank you. And I didn't even know it. Hey, let's go to our worksheet. We answered number 3. Great teams leverage the distinct talents of individuals. So we're starting to talk about matching talents to tasks. Develop their potential, which we're going to explore in a minute. And build a unified community. We talked about that, how the Boys in the Boat did that. So number 3 is talents, potential, and unified. We also answered number 4. Number 4 is FASO stands for fit, and then we're going to explain the other ones in just a second, but ability, safety, and ownership. FIT, ability, safety, and ownership. Now I want to share one last thing about FIT before we move on to the next thing, and it's about titles. I don't know if you ever did this in your business. I thought it was a good idea. My VAR, Vastly Amplified Rates Company, my computer company, When we were starting out, we had— well, we were a few years in, but we had 4 or 5 employees. And I had this great idea. I'm like, we need to make a good impression to prospects. We need to have big titles here. I had a guy who's coming on board. His name was Mark, and he was going to be doing our invoicing and so forth. He's a bookkeeper. And I said, Mark, you're going to be our CFO. You ever do that? Ever give a big lofty title to somebody? Makes your company look big and impressive, you know. So, it's funny, Dave talked about the big powerful Johnson, Jeff Johnson. When I assign big titles, I'm the big Johnson. And I said, now we have a CFO. Well, I learned a lesson about titles, and I don't know if you ever noticed this, but the word title can also be entitled. What happened was Ken came back to me 6 months later and said, "Hey, Mike, I was looking by chance at the want ads, the jobs out there. I'm a CFO, and you wouldn't believe this. I know you pay me $50,000 a year, but did you know most CFOs make $1.7 million a year?" Thank you. And I was like, a little bit of confusion, Mark. Here's the deal. You're not really a CFO. You're a bookkeeper. We're doing it so we look bigger. And he said, but I am a CFO. What was so interesting is when we assign a title, it becomes part of our identity of who who we are. Mark left our company months later to pursue CFO-ship. I don't know how it went. I hope it went well for him, but it was a big failure for me. Great leaders don't give grandiose titles arbitrarily. We make a web where people are exploiting their talents and matching it to tasks. In fact, in my current company, we're tiny, we have 20 employees. Our little business, no one has title. Well, when we have one person, our president has a title because company needs a president. That's Kelsey. I don't even have a title. I'm like speaker, author, guy, thingy. Like, that's the closest I get to a title. But we match people, their talents to their tasks. So that's fit. The next thing I want to talk about is ability. And think about this. Let's do a quick little survey or study here about A-players, top candidates, and so forth. There's been a lot of research about this, and I first want to ask— I just want to get a sense for our audience here. And please don't, don't be bashful here. But honestly, in this room, if you're most likely a business owner, you're, you're one of the key employees at the company, you probably do tons of stuff for your business. If you consider yourself an A-player, don't be bashful here. Please raise your hand. So who here in this room is an A-player? I see a lot of hands go up. Okay. I would say 60%, 70% of the room's A-players. Who considers himself a B or C player? Nobody. Oh, okay. Yeah. So most people don't have hands. So does anyone consider himself not an A player? Who's not an A player in this room? Okay. Okay. That's what I thought. So everyone considers himself an A player. Let's do this out by a shout out. What percentage— and there's data around this— what percentage of the population are A players? Anyone knows? Yell it out. 2%? 10%? 6%? 7%? 20%? Yeah. 1%. The highest number I heard was 20%. Anyone say anything higher than that? Now isn't this funny? If even 20% of the population is A players, but I think our average here was 10%, yet every single person in this room is an A player. Isn't that interesting? Isn't that a statistical phenomenon? What's going on here? What's going on in here in Nashville? Is this a collection of A's? Yeah, yes it is. Damn straight it is. That's what A players say, damn it. I'm a rock star. Here's the truth. Every human being on this planet is absolutely an A player. Everyone is. Everyone in this room is an A player and every person on this planet is an A player. They just may not be an A fit for your organization. What we need to look for are people that are a match to what your organizational needs is. But the second I thought someone was not an A player was the second I didn't see potential ability in them. In fact, that's what I found great leaders do. Great leaders look for people's potential. The traditional analysis to find those A players or those 5-star fits is what we call them, the great people, is by looking at Experience is the first thing we evaluate. And if this represents the makeup of a person, experience is about 10% indicative of how someone could perform in the future. Yet we rely on this with so much vigor. Have someone come in, let me look at your resume because what you've done in the past is indicative of how you'll perform in the future, right? So you look through someone's resume. And you know this. You've seen people's resumes. They aren't necessarily accurate. I'm just saying. Oh yeah, I'm proficient, proficient in the, you know, whatever. I don't even know what the platforms are nowadays. Is like, is Network 312 the popular thing now? Right. No, you know, proficient at Linux. You know, I once set up a Linux server at my house. You know, proficient in Microsoft Word. Experience is not an indicator of person's future potential because A, some people lie. Secondly, if they do have experience, have you ever had to un-experience someone to give them the proper experience that they need? You have to unlearn them. That's not how we do it. Experience is very risky. So the next thing that people look at, and I'm happy more businesses are doing this, is we look for what's called innate talent. Innate ability, I should say. What's innate ability? Innate ability is how someone is wired. There's great tools out there. There's the Myers-Briggs. There's a predictive index, Strengths Finder, DiSC, Enneagram. There's millions of different tools and they're wonderful and they show you how someone's wired. Are they a cultural fit? In fact, some interview questions are now around this, like, is this person a problem solver? Where's the green light on a traffic light, the bottom or the top? But those two things alone make up about 20% of a candidate's potential to succeed in your organization, to be a fantastic fit. So, so what are we looking for? We're looking for raw potential. What could someone do in your environment? Meaning, how will they behave? What is their innate and potential in them? And imagine this. Imagine you and I, we just say, you know what, we're going to put together a rock band. This is our last shot at doing it. So let's put together a band. And I know we're all big fans of '80s music. I can feel the vibe. Hair bands, Survivor. So we got to get the greatest guitarist of all time. And the greatest guitarist, at least in the '80s, potentially was Eddie Van Halen. Now, here's the deal. Eddie Van Halen is an A player— was, I know he's passed, but it was an A player guitarist, right? He has all the experience and so forth. Imagine us calling Eddie, "Hey Eddie, we're thinking about starting a new band. We thought we should get a pretty good guitarist. Word on the street is you kind of wail. Are you interested?" And he'd be like, "No, I've got my own band." That's how he talked, by the way. That's my Dutch accent. "I got my own band." And he's like, I'm kind of like a millionaire here. Not really interested. I'm taken care of. And by the way, my band is named after me. Why would I want to join your band? But the problem with experience is the people who have the best potential to work in your organization, the people who are the real rock stars and stuff, probably are doing pretty well for themselves and are very hard to find. But we could have gotten Eddie Van Halen if we found him when he was 12 years old. What we could have done is put on a workshop. We could say, "Hey, we're gonna put on a guitar workshop. We're gonna invite kids that are between 10 and 15 and invite people in to see if they want to learn how to play guitar." Eddie Van Halen happened to discover guitar when he was 12 years old, and his potential was revealed within months. Potential always reveals itself in the same 3 stages. So when you're looking for a candidate, this is what you need to look for. First, it's curiosity. Do they show up and are they interested? Secondly, it's desire. I want to learn everything I can about this. I want to do more of this. And then there's ultimately thirst. I can't quit it. Potential always reveals itself in the same stage. And what great leaders do is they hire and recruit on potential, not on experience. So, okay, great. So how would we do this? Do you know there's a half trillion dollar industry that only recruits on potential? They don't look at resumes, they don't do interviews. Half trillion dollar industry. It's the sports industry. You don't show up to the NFL and they're like, hey, we're looking for some players. Where's the green light on a traffic light? You know, are you good at football? Tell us. Just tell us what you think about playing. No, they say get on the field and start playing. What we need to do is look at skills. Now, here's the one area that most leaders look, but not what great leaders do. Most leaders look at people that they're recruiting and do skill assessments. And those are wonderful. Someone that I want to bring on board and consider before I make the hiring decision, I put them through skills assessments. That's what most people do. But great leaders do what the sports industry do, and they run camps. Now, here's what a camp is. I played sports back in high school. I played as a marginal player at best, but I played lacrosse. Anyone ever hear of lacrosse? That sport, lacrosse? One person. Okay, good, good. One weirdo. Great. So I played lacrosse in high school, and I'm from the Northeast. And I went to a camp called Hobart. Hobart is one of the dominant schools back in the '90s in lacrosse. And I went up there with 500 students. Again, I was marginal at best. And here's what I noticed happening. The other students were going along and we're all getting better. We're all learning new skills, how to face off and do all these different things, shooting skills and so forth. And the coaches tapped some of the athletes on the shoulder and said, hey, come with me. I want to take you to another field. "so we can teach you additional skills and you can play with more elite players." And some of those players were tapped on the shoulders and brought to yet another field. By the end of our 5-day camp, 3 of those kids were invited to play for Hobart. A camp not only educates everyone, it's an evaluation platform. And the people who showed up were all curious about lacrosse. Some of them showed desire and ultimately some showed thirst. Here's the greatest irony of all. I went on to play collegiate lacrosse. This guy. In part because— thanks for laughing at that. That was awkward. You are not winning the Shagwire, I'll tell you that. Whatever I can do so you don't win the damn car. They improved every person there. Everyone got better. Here's the opportunity for your business. Start running educational events, start teaching people the skills. You want to hire some great technicians? Start teaching technical skills. If you need entry-level techs, you can say how to get started as a technician. If you need to hire higher-level techs, have a prerequisite. Say you have to have 5 years of experience and so forth, and maybe some certs in CompTIA or something, and then you're going to learn this elite skill. Because the people who show up, the learners, are curious, desire, and thirsty. And there's one common trait we've seen in every top performer every single time. They want to learn more. I strongly suspect every person here voted themselves an A-player. I suspect that means you're also a learner. What you like to do, I bet you thirst to learn more about it. So if I taught you about it, I would be a magnet like bees to honey coming to my office. Now, this isn't just theory and it's not just sports. Has anyone ever gone to one of the Home Depot Build a Birdhouse workshops here? Anyone? Okay. Over 50. I don't know. I don't know. I'm not— it's actually not relevant, but you probably have a child. You may have a child here. I don't know if you guys know this. The Home Depot Build a Birdhouse workshop is a recruiting platform. What? Yeah, it's educational. Which means it gets the curious people in. Hey, I was always curious about doing this. Oh, it's a fun activity with my kid. Oh, and yes, you get ingratiated with the Home Depot experience. Maybe you'll buy some of your products there. They have one employee sitting there in their orange apron watching, and they're looking for these three indicators. Who is showing the most curiosity? Who's showing the most desire? What parents are helping other parents? Who's the one who shows up early and wants to keep doing it? They then come and tap you on the shoulder and say, hey, you're showing all of the potential to excel here at Home Depot. Would you be interested in an application? They've recruited thousands of employees that way. By the way, did you guys get an application? Yeah, you're not qualified, I'm sorry. No potential, no potential. I don't want to even see your birdhouse. But here's the deal, you've improved in your skills. You got better at it. You probably like Home Depot even more. And they didn't have to recruit you. Why are we still doing these stupid interviews where someone comes in like, oh my God, they stink, kick them out, and they go home like, I didn't get the job, I don't know what's wrong with me. Next person comes in and they're not a fit. Start running workshops. Audible does this. Audible does what's called returnships. People who've left the workforce for an extended period, 4 or 5 years, they say we're gonna teach you what modern technology's like and what the modern professional environment's all about. It's a learning experience. People are curious to show up. They've hired now over 50% of the people who went through returnships have become employees at Audible. Be the company that does education. And by the way, if this feels overwhelming, I'll give you the ultimate shortcut. Whatever you're looking to hire, that type of role, find out what workshops are going on already. Is there an education course for that tech that you're looking for that techs are going to? You go as a student, not to be a student, but to be an observer of the students, because the people with the most desire and thirst are your best candidates. That's how you get great people. That's how you find ability. The next element I want to talk about is safety. We need to have a safe work environment. We can thank a group of women for this. Back in 1920, There was a company called the Radium Dial Company. I don't know if you remember watches from back in the old days, even in the '70s, '80s, they're still making them. It would be a watch with those fluorescent dots on it, green dots, right? It would absorb the light and it would glow for hours. That was made for the military in 1920, World War I. They had made these things, and the material that glows in that green is is called radium. Well, the employers knew that radium was radioactive, hence radium, hired workers, all women in this factory while the men were off fighting, and told them the process to putting a dot on your watch was to take a paintbrush, dip it in the radioactive material, which they didn't say was radioactive, it was just radium, Make the dot on the watch, lick it, so you get nice— oh yeah, oh yeah, lick it, so you get nice and pointy, lick and dip, do it again, lick and dip. Within months of this, some of the women— this is sad but true— started to glow themselves. Their skin started to glow. They became known as the ghost girls. And within months of that, some of them started to get facial tumors and body tumors, and months after that, many were deceased, painful deaths. It became the inauguration of the OSHA movement, the Occupational Organization to bring about safety standards. The owners of the radium company knew it was a dangerous material, but decided to leave that part out. Safety is just as important today, but there's 3 forms of safety we have to be concerned about. First of all, there is a concern around physical safety, even in the professional work environments, which I didn't think really mattered, but it does. I asked my team, we did an anonymous survey, I invite you to do the same thing, saying, tell us, is there any way that you feel physically unsafe here at any time? 3 of our employees wrote back, they said, yeah, actually, when we leave the building, there's an alley that leaves into our parking lot, it's pitch black, and in the middle of the winter, around 5 o'clock, it's pitch black back there, and by 6, it is forget it. They said, I don't feel safe walking down a pitch-black alleyway, which maybe you wouldn't feel safe either. So we had this simple thought like, wow, why don't we just put lights in the alleyway? Which we did. And that prevented that problem. What was interesting was I didn't realize how badly that was affecting performance. I had employees starting at lunchtime saying, oh my God, I have to go home down the dark alley today. Maybe I should move my car up. I can't put it anywhere. I might get a ticket. Oh God. And I've teams focusing on their safety and not their opportunity to work. So first, there's physical safety, but there's a greater component of safety that I want you to be concerned about. And, and perhaps this can be a profound idea for you, is relational safety. We have to feel safe in the environment we work. We want to be able to be our true selves in the environment. And as a new employee, this is often defined on your first day of employment. If you feel safe. And the first day of employment at many organizations, it's on-the-job learning. It used to come to my company, you come in, like, oh, you just got to go work. We need your billing. Go out and bill. You'll figure it out. Go. Oh, fill out this paperwork while you're doing it. Do you know the day that an employee is celebrated is usually their last day? You know, the retirement or thanks for your 5 years of service party time. You're leaving us. Oh, losing another A-player. Why aren't we celebrating the first day? That brings about a sense of safety. First day at our office, now when you show up, there is a huge basket waiting for you. And it's not just generic stuff. It's not chocolates and so forth. They are in there, but there is a mug with your name on it. It says, Greatest Employee Ever. We just know it. And your name is put on there and all this custom stuff. We get business cards for you. Yeah, no one uses business cards anymore. I get it. Business cards don't matter to anyone except the person who owns that business card. So you get a stack of 500 business cards that you can give to your family and friends if you wish, but you also have one that is put in a frame and every other employee has autographed it and said, "Welcome aboard. Can't wait to work with you." So on your first day, you have a framed business card. But that isn't even it. This is the one that I hope blows your mind. And you're like, I was like 50/50 on this guy McCallough, it's his presentation. I wasn't getting much. I think I was gonna vote for Don Miller as best presenter today. I've changed my mind. Mike beat Don Miller big time with this idea. That's subliminal. I'm just setting the stage. Here's what it is. Here's what it is. I'm sorry if Don's watching on video. I'm sorry, Don. I'm sorry. Here's what it is. Don and I are friends. No, we're not. So in this basket, we hired an employee. Her name was Corday, and we do this every single time, and I want you to do this too. We hired Corday. In the process, we ran a workshop. This is how we found Corday. Showed the talents that we needed to manage a department of ours. We invited her on board, and as we invited her on board, we said, hey, we're so honored to have you working here, but we also know that the decision to work for someone, it's not made by yourself. Is there anyone else at home or wherever that you're talking to about as you consider job opportunities? She says, yeah, my husband Brian. Like, he's really trying to help me out and supportive of me in this process. We're like, oh, that's amazing. When Corday came on board, we're like, Corday, we're so happy to have you. And we had this basket waiting for her. In the basket was a box. Now, during our conversations with Corday, we learned that Brian, her husband, likes to collect bourbon. That's his thing. He's a bourbon collector. So we get this box and it's wrapped and there's a card next to it and it says Brian on it. Here's the number one question I can guarantee when you hire a new employee. The number one and perhaps only question they'll be asked the second they finish work for you remotely or they go home from your office. Someone at home is gonna say, how was your first day? I guarantee it. Well, you know what most employees say? "Um, it sucked. I was in the corner. Everyone went out to lunch except for me. They kind of left me and I filled out paperwork. I heard they're cool." Corday goes home. Brian says the question we know is coming. "How was your first day?" She's like, "It was pretty magical. I arrived, there was this gift basket, there's balloons. We spent an hour just doing icebreaker questions and stuff. Everyone was there for me. We weren't working, we were connecting. And then she goes, and there's something weird, Brian. And he goes, what is that? She goes, you got a gift. He's like, I got a gift? She's like, yeah. And she gives him this box. Brian opens the envelope on it and it says, dear Brian, we know the decision to work for an organization is never made alone. We are honored that you supported Corday in making the decision to work with us. Thank you so much for your support, Brian. Oh, and by the way, we heard you love bourbon. What do you think Brian did? He lost his fucking mind is what he did. Okay? Alright? Sorry, Don Miller, I just want him over. He lost his mind. Do you know what happened the next morning according to Corday? 5 in the morning, he's shaking her saying, "You work for the best company of all time. Wake up. Go, go, go." The number one— God, I even shook my ass. My marker fell out of my pocket. The number one determinant of how safe your employee feels at your job is their loved one or family member or friend at home. Because that's the cheerleader or the antagonist. And if that person at home thinks you're not the best company, you're ripping them off, you're not treating them well, they're in their ear every night, every morning saying, you work for dirtbags, they're gonna take advantage of you. You've got to win the cheerleader at home. Okay? Mind blown? Is mind blown? Okay. All right. Whoo! God. Thank you, okay. I'm telling you, do that. That's not what I'm looking for. Oh, it's up here. Got like notes, all this crap. Here's what we want. Let's continue to fill this out. We answered number 6. The 3 types of talent, it's right here on the board, are experiential, innate, and potential. The biggest opportunity for great hires, what great leaders do is we find undiscovered potential. Potential. So 6 was experiential, innate, potential, and undiscovered. Number 7 is use workshops, not interviewing. Use workshops to reveal all 3 types of talents. Let's give one more form of safety. We talked about physical safety. We talked about relational safety. I also want to talk about financial safety. And yeah, you need to— pay people appropriate for what they do, but I will— you know this— you, you can never not pay a person enough. Like, if you give someone more, they're always going to appreciate it and value it, but that's not what keeps people staying around. It's interesting around financial safety. In the research we've done, and now our discovery, there's two things that great leaders do that very few organizations do that give people the most security around financials. The first is they train them on personal finances. They teach them how to manage their own books. I am shocked how few companies teach this and how long I didn't teach it. And now we invest in teaching our team how to understand and manage their own numbers. We know how to manage our business's numbers. We use Profit First, best book ever. Thank you, thank you, thank you. That's my family there, just so you know. We teach that now to our employees, and great leaders, I find, teach financial security, personal financial security. But here's the other thing that's interesting, is great leaders also inevitably do open books, which surprised me. If you show open books, you're showing, you know, not essentially always good things. But if you don't, employees inevitably think that your revenue is your personal income as the owner. Like I remember once my business achieved our first million dollars in revenue and I was like so excited. I told my friend, I'm like, oh, I achieved a million dollars in revenue. I told an employee of ours like, hey, we passed that million dollar mark. And my colleague goes, oh, you're a millionaire now. You're making a million dollars. I'm like, no, I'm going broke. I'm going, no, I just, we, but there was no connection there. We started doing open books now about for 15 years. What's interesting is it gives people an intimate understanding of what's going on with the business, but it gives them a sense of security because they see how you're managing the numbers. They don't have to do any guesswork. And our own business, we had an unexpected incident happen last year that was financially pretty devastating. We navigated through it and the whole team was aware of it, and it actually rallied the team as they're watching the numbers move along because we've always had that open. Great leaders open up the books. Interesting. So that's the answer to, on our worksheet, number 8. To maximize people's contribution, they must experience physical, psychological, or relational— you can put physical, relational, and financial safety. We also answered— oh, we're about to answer number 9. The last component I want to talk about in our model here, FASO, is ownership. The number one refrain I hear from people is, "I wish my employees would act like owners." Have you ever felt that way? "I wish my employees would act like owners." Well, I found out you can actually make people feel like owners and act like owners. And I learned it from renting Renting cars. Who here has ever rented a car? Okay, lots of car renters. I rent from Hertz, which ironically is a very fitting name if you know what I'm talking about. I hope no one here is affiliated with Hertz because it hurts. I rented from Hertz and this last time I went there, maybe your experience with a rental car agency was similar, you first have to go through this obscenely long checkout line. You have to go through a checkout process, decline insurance, decline this, decline that, show your ID, your license, show your birth certificate, you know, it goes on and on. Finally they say, here's your key, your car's in slot, you know, A1. And then you find out when you're in the parking lot they've reversed the numbers. The closest number is ZZZ. Like A1's a mile out. You're slogging out there, the rain's coming down, you finally get to your car, but you're not done with the rental experience yet. You then go to that final DMZ checkout. The lights are twirling, sirens are blaring, spikes are going up and down. It's like you're on the last layer of Frogger or something. It's crazy. And then the guy asks for your license one more time and says, I want to remind you You better return this car with a full tank of gas or we're gonna charge you like $50 a gallon. There better be no dents or dings, you'll get penalized. And if this interior isn't spotless, you're going down. And then you show your license again, and then finally, vroom, all the things move, the C parts, and you're allowed out. And what's the first thing you do? You step on that gas as hard as you can, and you start doing donuts in the Prius that you're driving in the parking lot. What do I do? If I see a traffic light— oh, I love traffic lights when I have a rental car. I come skidding in on the reds, the second it turns green, I'm flooring it. Anything to abuse it. Did you notice how you treat a rental car compared to your actual car? There is a lesson here. It's wired into all of humanity. When we're forced to comply, we will seek to defy. Remember this, because most leaders require their team to comply, and it's human nature to elbow our way out and defy. Not me. I'm going to get back at you. I'm going to abuse the hell out of your car. But that isn't true for the car I own. I have a Ford pickup truck. I'll tell you this, I've never taken a rental car to the car wash before returning it. I do take my little pickup truck to the car wash. I care for my car. I went for a long drive from— I'm in New Jersey, I went down to Virginia, 8-hour drive. I remember doing this, it was a subconscious. After I pulled in the driveway, I was meeting with somebody, I patted the dashboard and said, "Good girl." Good girl. And I got out of the car and looked back and gave it the little kind of the butt cheek, you know, point. Hey. And why do we do that with a car we own? Now here is the irony. Here is the ultimate irony. I don't own my pickup truck. The bank does. I'm making my payments. So I don't legally own it. By psychologically own it. Here's the opportunity with our employees. It is not to give people legal ownership. You can if you choose, but that sometimes triggers entitlement. Many ESOPs that we've been involved helping companies set up— we have a company called the All-In Company. We help companies do all this stuff, and we've helped companies have ESOPs. And my gosh, some of these companies give legal ownership and the employees now expect more benefits. Don't give legal ownership. Give psychological ownership. So the question of course is, how do you do it? There's 3 triggers. There was research back in the 1970s by a guy named John Pierce who identified the 3 things that trigger the sense of ownership. Number 1 is the ability to personalize the thing under our domain. So I don't go into the rental car and program all the radio stations. I don't do any of that stuff, but my car, I've programmed the radio stations. I don't slap a bumper sticker on the rental car. I got a bumper sticker on my car. First thing is the ability to personalize it. Second thing is intimate knowledge. When you've bought a new car, have you ever been that person that sits in the driveway in their own house in their all-new car, taking in that new car smell, going through the manual for about 2 hours? Look at all these little buttons and features that I'll never use. We learn everything about our new car, but the rental car, do you ever look at the owner's manual for a rental car? What's all the features? P.S. has. Intimate knowledge. The more we know about something, the more we feel connected with it. So personalization, intimate knowledge, and the last thing is control. I get to use my personal truck when I want to use it. I get to park it where I want to park it. It's under my authority. But the rental car, I have no authority. I'm forced to comply. Therefore, I defy. With our team members, if we want our team members fully engaged Let's do what the Baltimore Museum did. They gave Michael York and the other guards the opportunity to first put some personalization into it. They're the ones who decided where the artwork went. When they set up the exhibit with the art that the guards selected, they decided the paint that went on the walls. They modified the entire setup to make it personal. They autographed some of the walls to give it even a greater sense of ownership. The second thing is you have to give people the ability to gain intimate knowledge. So they allowed them to do research. The guards didn't just pick the art, they learned about how insurance works, they managed all the shipping, they managed the entire thing. And the last thing was control. They're the ones who determined how the event ran, when it ran, how long it went, who came, and so forth. They had a graduation after this, after being the most successful exhibit ever. It was called "Guarding the Art." Maybe you want to Google it later and check it out. They had a celebration with family members who came to the exhibit. And similar to like a high school graduation where the dean or something says, please hold your applause till the last student's name is announced. But then, you know, the family of the first student goes up and they're like, we love our son. And then the next family, we love it. And then you have the awkward moment where someone comes up and no one claps. That's the worst moment for everybody. They did the exact same thing with a different experience here. They said, please hold your applause. But the first person that went up, they couldn't stop applauding. The second person, they couldn't stop applauding. And by the third person, it was standing ovations for the entire crew. And 17 people walked up and the place lost their mind. They'd fully engaged the team members because they had the ability to personalize intimate knowledge and they had control over it. Now, what about the retention of those people, by the way? I don't know if you know this, but in the security industry, there's massive turnover, except at the Baltimore Museum. They've improved retention by 250%. Of those 17 guards, 15 guards still work there today. 2 did leave to become curators, professional curators. Great leaders see people's potential and allow people to flourish because they have potential, sometimes even outside our organization, to grow through us. That's what great leaders do. I've been trying to do all this stuff, the stuff I've been sharing with you. Let's make sure we answer some, all the spots on the worksheet before I tell you some final thoughts. We answered number 10, psychological ownership is influenced through control, knowledge, and personalization. I didn't share this, but we'll answer it. Number 11 is indicators of psychological ownership are when people say my, mine, or ours. So if you hear your team saying this is the company or this is your company, they haven't experienced psychological ownership. When they say this is our company, when they say this is my job, that's psychological ownership. I've been trying to deploy this stuff myself, and I'm surely not perfect. In fact, about a year ago, I had an experience. I called my team together and said, hey, in our morning huddles, we have a huddle every morning for 15 minutes. It's a standing meeting. I said, I have a cool new way I want to end it. I bought one of those punch dolls from like the '70s, the weeble wobble type. You hit it and it comes back up. It was like Bozo the Clown. I don't know if you remember that one. It had a squeaky nose. I bought one and I said, we're gonna play Bozo Battle at the end of every meeting. I got everyone a dart gun and we're gonna shoot from across the room and the first one to hit Bozo on the nose is gonna win $5. And we'll do this each day. It's a fun way to end a huddle. The first day we did it and my team's like, eh, eh. The next day they're like, ugh, Bozo Battle. Third day they're like, do we have to do the stupid Bozo Battle? And I felt so defeated. I'm like, gosh, just, I was trying to be fun, and this idea sucked. And I grabbed Bozo and stuck a fork in him and I slumped out. And I'm like, I guess that was a dumb idea. Jenna, my colleague, came up to me and she said, she goes, Mike, it wasn't a bad idea. It was a terrible idea. But I'll tell you something. I'll tell you something. Cares how you care. They care that you care. She goes, that was great leadership. As you start to explore these things, I don't want you to feel you have to nail it and get it right, that you got to get it perfect, because that will impede you from great leadership. Great leadership is just attempting to be of great service, because when you nourish your team, they will flourish. The final story I want to share with you, I may cry a little bit. It's about my dad. My dad died a year and a half ago. And I was there when he passed. I didn't, I was afraid to be, but I was there, and it was beautiful and powerful and learning. It was a great learning experience. My dad had full mental capabilities until his last days when he lost the ability to speak. And I remember sitting with my dad. He couldn't move anymore, he was laying in his bed. And I don't know why it struck me, I said, "Dad, who was the most important person in your life?" I thought he was going to say my mom or I don't know. And he said words, he's mumbling, I can't hear him. I said, "Can you spell it, Dad?" And he spells out H-E-L-E-N, Helen, Fuller, F-U-L-L-E-R. I'm like, who's Helen Fuller? I went to research after my father passed. I went to research out Helen Fuller. Helen Fuller worked for an organization called the Community Service Center in New York City for people who lived in the tenements. My father came from Ukraine, was very impoverished, and lived in poverty his entire youth. Youth. He was helped by this community service center, and this woman Helen Fuller invited him to get out of New York City and go to a camp for 2 weeks. That's all that the community service center could afford him, but then she took him under his wing. My father was going to enter the trades. My grandfather was a carpenter. My dad was going to be a carpenter. Helen Fuller said, I think you have more potential elsewhere, but you're going to need a college degree. I said, I don't know how to pay for it. She goes, join the military. I'm going to guide you through. You'll get a GI Bill. My father was in World War II, went to— got the GI Bill and then went to college and went on to be an engineer. I also found out is my grandfather abused my father severely, physically beat my father. My father never touched me or my sister, never hurt anyone in our family. He was the most loving amazing human being I've ever met. And now I attribute it to Helen Fuller. Here's the funny thing about great leadership. The great things you will do for your team will affect people that you will never ever meet. You will transform lives generations from now because of the great things you've done for your team. And you'll help someone like me because you helped their parent. That's what great leaders do. My final thought for you, it's on the worksheet, and it's this. This is a quote. It's not my quote, but I read it somewhere. I was like, that is the epitome of what I'm trying to discover for myself and teach to you. Number 12 is this: Good leaders make people believe in them. Great leaders make people believe in themselves. Go all in on your team. Thanks for having me today. Appreciate you guys.