436 | The REAL Job of Every Business Owner

Feb 19

[00:00:00] Mike Michalowicz: The majority of the world wants jobs with good companies. Don't match talent to titles, match talent to tasks. So our job isn't to do the work. Ultimately it's to be the career of jobs for people who are looking for good jobs. Potential talent is in the right scenario. How will this person perform? Of course you want to know that. The question is, how do you get it?
[00:00:19] Mike Michalowicz: I am a big fan of masterminding. I am in a group with other entrepreneurs. And I love learning the stories of their challenges and struggles and their wins. Reciprocity is what brings that amazing progress for a business.
[00:00:34] Chaz Wolfe: What's up everybody? I'm Chaz Wolf gathering the King's Podcast. Coming back to you here today with what might be a household name in your guys' world.
[00:00:44] Mike Michalowicz: world.
[00:00:45] Chaz Wolfe: He may not think so, but I've got Mike Michalowicz here on the King stage. Mr. Prophet first, keynote speaker, author of all kinds of other books, which we're gonna get into in one of your books here today, all In that's recently released.
[00:00:58] Chaz Wolfe: Mike, thanks for being here on the stage.
[00:01:01] Mike Michalowicz: Chaz, thank you so much for having me.
[00:01:03] Chaz Wolfe: Uh, the opportunity to have you here we don't take it lightly, so thank you for that. But I wanna jump right in. You just, well, actually, I don't know your exact release date. When did you release this new book? All in,
[00:01:13] Mike Michalowicz: call? It came out, so we're recording today.
[00:01:15] Mike Michalowicz: What is on the eighth? It came out on the 2nd of January. So six days ago.
[00:01:19] Chaz Wolfe: days ago, I have crammed as much the book into my brain as I possibly could.
[00:01:24] Chaz Wolfe: And I've got some questions for you, so I'm gonna just get right, rolling to it. , before I do the book piece though, I wanna give you the opportunity just to tell us about all in About Profit First. Just who, Mike? Well, you don't even, you don't even say your last name 'cause you, you had this funny thing on your website about how people can't pronounce it,
[00:01:55] Mike Michalowicz: oh yeah, yeah. Oh, you checked it out.
[00:01:56] Chaz Wolfe: exactly.
[00:01:57] Chaz Wolfe: Who is Mike Michalowicz? Give us just 30 seconds. , so people know who they listen to just in case they don't know you.
[00:02:00] Mike Michalowicz: Yeah. Nerd. That's who Mike Kitz is just a nerd. Um, and yeah, my last name is so hard to pronounce that we just make fun of it. Um, so entrepreneur my whole life. Uh, not ever intended to be, but couldn't get a job outta college.
[00:02:14] Mike Michalowicz: Became an entrepreneur. Um, I built and sold some companies in the tech space. Uh, one was actually sold. I sold to a Fortune 500. I I think the interesting part of my story though is I thought then I'm, I'm clearly a genius. I'm building and selling companies. I lost everything. Um, just out of arrogance and ignorance.
[00:02:32] Mike Michalowicz: What I started doing, Chaz was writing, why am I failing and what, what do I understand about entrepreneurship? I thought I knew everything. I realized I know very little and I still know very little, but I am desperately seeking to learn as much I can about all aspects of entrepreneurship just to improve my own game.
[00:02:49] Mike Michalowicz: And, um, I started becoming books. I was like, wow, I'm, I'm writing stuff that I think maybe I could share with other people. So I discover something that works in my own businesses and I test it with others, and it works consistently. I'm like, this has to become a book. That's how Profit First came about.
[00:03:01] Mike Michalowicz: That's how all my books came about, and that's how all In came about. I, I think it's a way to help other entrepreneurs make the journey a little easier. 'cause it ain't easy, it ain't freaking easy, but maybe a little bit
[00:03:11] Mike Michalowicz: easier.
[00:03:12] Chaz Wolfe: Would you say that the listener here today is maybe hasn't. Built and sold companies, but they still have experiences that they should be sharing maybe locally or even with their team.
[00:03:20] Mike Michalowicz: oh my god, yeah.
[00:03:22] Mike Michalowicz: Like there, there's value in, in. Everyone's journey. I believe, uh, I see life as kinda a infinity symbol, you know, a figure eight on the side. And I think we're all somewhere on there. We're on the exact same path, like it's literally the exact same path. We're just in different parts of our journey and. I think we all have significant value to add.
[00:03:43] Mike Michalowicz: I, I, I'm a big fan of masterminding. I, um, in a group with other entrepreneurs and I love learning the stories of their challenges and struggles and their wins. Maybe it was on finding that perfect candidate that I couldn't find, or maybe it was going through a lawsuit or something. Um, those are. Just as valuable if not more than someone who sold their business or something.
[00:04:04] Mike Michalowicz: So, uh, whatever you've experienced, there's extraordinary value there. And it's not just for supporting others, it's your own journey. You're, every challenge you have is a learned opportunity.
[00:04:14] Chaz Wolfe: I agree with you. Um, gathering the king started off as a mastermind before the podcast even came about. And so that experience that you're talking about of just what we find, just genuine owners who wanna come to the table, kind of take off the crown, is what we say, and they're just sharing. I had, I was doing events a couple years ago and it's like.
[00:04:31] Chaz Wolfe: They didn't really want necessarily. I mean, of course speakers are great. You know, the names are great. They wanted just to be with each other and share
[00:04:38] Mike Michalowicz: share. Yeah. Well, because we're kind of weirdos jazz. Like I, I, I, I didn't think we were, but we are. I, um, I ran, um, some stats and I found that only 17% of the population will ever operate or own a business.
[00:04:54] Mike Michalowicz: 17%. But here's the crazy one. Only 20% will do on a sustainable basis. So after five years in business, only about 20% of those 17% will be sustaining, making enough income to support employment of others, that's 3%. 3%, 20% 17 of the population runs a healthy, sustainable business that that's the weirdos.
[00:05:15] Mike Michalowicz: The majority of the world wants jobs with good companies. So our job isn't to do the work, ultimately is to be the creative jobs for people who are looking for good jobs.
[00:05:24] Chaz Wolfe: I saw that that was actually a line from your book, is that our job is to create jobs.
[00:05:28] Mike Michalowicz: create, create jobs.
[00:05:28] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. Love that. uh, multiple of my companies use Profit First, so thank you for that. Just from over here to the side saying, thanks, I appreciate you, but let's jump in here because you've already kind of introduced, uh, this idea of the Mastermind.
[00:05:39] Chaz Wolfe: Um, but you talk about it in your book as the idea of building community. First. We're building community over culture. So let's, let's just present this. What is community to you versus culture's? A buzzword. Buzzword. Let's, let's jump right in.
[00:05:51] Mike Michalowicz: yeah. It's a big buzzword and I, I was a big buyer into it. So what culture was typically defined is what are the set of established values you have often called core values or immutable laws. These, these perce, these ways you see the world and when you hire people to bring in people that share common values.
[00:06:11] Mike Michalowicz: But what I realized is it causes the siloing effect. We start hearing the yes ands, we start getting clones of ourselves. The strongest communities, and I'm not just saying in business, but in the world, are ones that are diverse because it brings in different perspectives. The blinders are removed. In my own business.
[00:06:31] Mike Michalowicz: I remember, uh, I'll never forget this, this was about two years ago. We had a retreat and there's about 20 of us together. And, uh, we were talking about the values I had and I said one of the big values, and it's kind of funny, is no dick's allowed. And what I mean by this is I don't think life, there's enough time in life to deal with Dicks, to deal with people who are rude, but also for me to be a dick that's not permittable.
[00:06:53] Mike Michalowicz: And I share this with my team. And I remember one of my colleagues, Kelsey looks at me and says, gosh, that's so broy Mike. Um, that's not who we are. Perhaps that's who you are. She goes, I understand what you're saying but that's not the way I wanna phrase it. Um, we are gonna be the Ted lasso of companies.
[00:07:11] Mike Michalowicz: We want to be the eternal optimist and supporting people. ' cause we do believe in every individual and every team. And it became the be the Ted lasso. It was this collective philosophy. So to bring about. Culture. We actually have to evaluate our existing community and encourage diversity and then understand what our collective essence is.
[00:07:31] Mike Michalowicz: And that becomes our values, not the leader's values thrust upon
[00:07:35] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah, you, you phrased it like this in the book. You said culture is, , I am. So we are, and community is, we are. So we are.
[00:07:42] Mike Michalowicz: we're so we. Exactly. That's the difference.
[00:07:45] Chaz Wolfe: And so as someone's listening here today, and they're thinking about making their first couple of hires or maybe their 200th hire, how, how are they thinking through the lens of community versus what they probably already have if they're a larger company culture, uh, you know, identified with core values and all the things that you just said we're good, but like, maybe not community or the other guy's, like, I've never even thought about core values.
[00:08:07] Chaz Wolfe: I'm just making my first or second hire. How are they thinking community?
[00:08:10] Mike Michalowicz: Yeah, well, values emanate from experience. So the challenge would be to say, I want someone with different perspectives from their values. Like, you know, we believe. X. So we want someone else that believes Y so we can find common ground. That'd be nice, but that's not really doable. But diverse background and and experiences is what brings around different values.
[00:08:31] Mike Michalowicz: So instead of saying, I want someone with the exact same background as we have now filling this role, I want someone with a different background filling this role, and you actually strengthen the way that role served because now you have someone with a different perspective. So that's how I do it. Look for diverse background of experiences.
[00:08:47] Mike Michalowicz: And I'm not saying work experiences, I'm saying life experiences.
[00:08:50] Chaz Wolfe: I wanna get to that in the hiring process here in a second. 'cause you identify that as well earlier in the book. But we've done this with Gathering the Kings from a mastermind perspective. And it sounds like maybe you're the group that you're part of as well. It's like where you can have a an HVAC group, or you can have an author group, I'm sure.
[00:09:02] Chaz Wolfe: But if you can get collectively around other entrepreneurs from other industries, different ages, different types of businesses, different parts of the country, you have perspective, which is really true agitation of thought. And it goes back to the actual definition of what a Mastermind probably is from Napoleon Hill.
[00:09:15] Chaz Wolfe: Would, is that kind of how you're
[00:09:16] Chaz Wolfe: thinking this?
[00:09:17] Mike Michalowicz: there's, yeah, that's exactly what I'm thinking. Um, there's an echo chamber effect when I'm in an author and I do have an author group, and it's funny, it's, there's only three ways to market your books when you're in this author group. The second I'm in a group with an HVAC guy, and ironically, I'm in a group.
[00:09:32] Mike Michalowicz: With an hvac, an electrician. He's does a suite of home services and others. The ways to market my book business now is a plethora of things. It's hundreds of ideas. So that, and, and I know other people listening in have experienced this. When you, when you find clones of yourself, you hear clones of what you're thinking and that's, that's the blinders on.
[00:09:52] Chaz Wolfe: Okay. So going back to the hiring process, you kind of just described, looking for different experiences. You, you kind of talk about in your book the difference between experience and intangibles as we're going through the hiring process and bringing on new, new members. I'm gonna get to your a, b and C format here in a second.
[00:10:08] Chaz Wolfe: 'cause that's just gold. But the, the intangibles versus experience. Most of the times you said, we're looking for people with experience. We were using it just a second ago as a lens of getting other, around other entrepreneurs. We're switching over now to the lens of hiring people and you're disseminating experience versus intangibles.
[00:10:24] Chaz Wolfe: Give us a little bit more.
[00:10:25] Mike Michalowicz: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you, we were talking about the diversity of life experiences before, but there's also work experience and the belief is that our work in the past is indicative of our work in the future, and there's some value to that, but you've probably experienced that where you hire someone on their resume, past work experience, and then they actually do their work and you're like, not even close.
[00:10:43] Mike Michalowicz: So that is not a good hiring mechanism yet. That's what most businesses rely on. There's a second thing to look at, and it is the intangibles. I call 'em innate talent and innate talent. There's tools like Myers Brigg and Enneagram. There's, there's countless ones out there that are really good at showing the behavioral wiring, but what I explore in this book is a, a talent that's the most important and is the least looked at, and it's called potential talent.
[00:11:07] Mike Michalowicz: Potential talent is in the right scenario. How will this person perform? Of course you wanna know that. The question is, how do you get it? What you do is you run workshops. There is a half trillion, that's over $500 billion in revenue industry that does not do interviews. Uh, they don't focus too much on the Enneagram.
[00:11:26] Mike Michalowicz: What they focus in is on workshops. It's the sports industry, and, uh, I, I played sports in high school. I played lacrosse. I'll never forget, I went to a camp in Hobart. It's a New York lacrosse college. It's known for that, along with 300 other students. I was learning new skills there and as I was playing, so were these other athletes and some of 'em were tapped on the shoulder and said, Hey, you're demonstrating skills.
[00:11:49] Mike Michalowicz: That would be really good and can be exploited. Why don't you go this other field so we can elevate those and help you even more. I didn't realize, not only were they helping them, they were also vetting out some athletes. They picked two or three kids to play at Hope Bar, invited them in. I, I didn't, but I did play with collegiate lacrosse and the reason I did in part is 'cause the skills I learned.
[00:12:09] Mike Michalowicz: What's interesting in our business is we can run these workshops, these camps, to train people, elevate their skills. They may even pay to come to these workshops and then cherry pick the best. I, I'll just give one real practical example. Home Depot does this workshop where you build bird houses. I'm sure you've seen them, you know, come to Home Depot and build a bird house.
[00:12:29] Mike Michalowicz: What they're doing is they're using it as a recruiting ground. They're teaching parents, people to build bird houses, and hopefully you'll be ingratiated with the store and you'll buy more from them. But they're also observing who participates the most, who is the, uh, the most eager to learn more. They tap them on the shoulder and say, have you ever considered working at Home Depot?
[00:12:48] Mike Michalowicz: We're looking for people like you. We need to do the same thing. Instead of just doing traditional interviews, what can you teach for what you're looking to hire for? Make that a workshop. And then the people who show the most desire and thirst are the ones you actually want to hire.
[00:13:01] Chaz Wolfe: it. You used the word thirst a couple different times in the book, which I absolutely love. But you say basically the maximized potential is thirst. And so
[00:13:10] Mike Michalowicz: That's right.
[00:13:11] Chaz Wolfe: thirst to us and how does that equate to maximized potential?
[00:13:13] Mike Michalowicz: Potential reveals itself in the same three stages. Always curiosity, then desire, then thirst. So you know, there may be an opportunity. Someone's like, Hey Chaz, Mike, you guys wanna go skydiving?
[00:13:23] Mike Michalowicz: We both may say, yeah, okay, curiosity. That's the first level of potential. We may be great skydivers. Then we show up and I'm like, I don't know if this is for me. I'm out. I'm indicating I don't have any further potential, but you may say, I wanna do this again. That's an indicator desire, desire to repeat.
[00:13:40] Mike Michalowicz: Thirst is where it becomes part of your identity. Like, I got to do this. This is who I am. What we're looking through for in these workshops, when we invite people to learn to experience something new, who are the people that elevate from curiosity to desire and ultimately thirst L demonstrate itself pretty early.
[00:13:57] Mike Michalowicz: Those are the people you should consider as potential candidates.
[00:14:00] Chaz Wolfe: about the team who already exists, right? If I'm thinking through this lens of. Curiosity, desire and thirst. If I'm looking at my current team, how do I kind of overlay this to determine whether maybe I don't have the right people or, or maybe pick out the ones that are really thirsty.
[00:14:13] Mike Michalowicz: Yeah. Yeah. That's great. What you do is instead of using. Titles to match people's talents too. Like I need a receptionist and a receptionist has to answer the phone, greet, walk-ins back in the day, least, uh, enter data, you know, whatever the list is.
[00:14:28] Mike Michalowicz: What we do is we match talent to tasks. So we break all these. Titles into tasks and say, oh, so and so is really good at the data management. Yeah, he's sitting at the front desk but is not a sociable person. Doesn't make a first Great impressions, kind of meh, but my gosh, that number, they're, they're a number cruncher.
[00:14:48] Mike Michalowicz: So when you break talent to task, you start realizing you've extraordinary people in your organization. They're just matched up the wrong titles. What happens is we break down that pyramid structure, CEO, at the top, and then, you know, the, the leadership team and everything. Below. What happens is that pyramid becomes a web-like structure where former receptionist, dude is now doing a little data entry, is also doing data analytics in a different department, maybe crunching numbers in the sales department, and this web-like structure ends up being much stronger.
[00:15:18] Mike Michalowicz: So the lesson is, again, don't match TA talent to titles, match talent to tasks.
[00:15:23] Chaz Wolfe: Love that. And so in your task, maybe identification, you kind of give this ability of like rather than, or. Maybe mindset is rather than looking for a top performer or a high performer, you have this almost deconstruction you call it, of take this high performer and de deconstruct it down into tasks.
[00:15:41] Chaz Wolfe: Does that help us do what you just said here as far as like taking talent and matching it to a, to a task?
[00:15:46] Mike Michalowicz: Yeah, exactly. Does and, and I, and I encourage anyone listening in, if you're a micro enterprise, if it's just you and, and whatever. Um, start off with yourself and, and if you've got a dozen people still start off with yourself and write down all the things that you do.
[00:15:59] Mike Michalowicz: And what you'll find is you may not be falling within a silo as much as leaning toward things that you like to do, where you can express better capability and so forth. Then, and here's the key. Once you write down all the tasks, go through that and ask yourself, can I find other individuals just to do one part of it?
[00:16:19] Mike Michalowicz: This is the fractionalization process. I think the mistake many entrepreneurs make is, you know, I gotta find a clone of me if I can just find another me, but another. You is doing what you do. They have their own company, you know, they're doing their own thing. You're a one of one. Like, we're not gonna be able to clone you, but we can fractionalize you.
[00:16:36] Mike Michalowicz: The second thing is, once you break yourself out, this is the biggest challenge. Ask yourself of all these tasks, which one is the easiest for me to do and I enjoy doing the most? That will be your default task. I revert to it. That is actually the first task you want to delegate, and that sounds absurd because you're good at it and it's easy and you enjoy it.
[00:16:54] Mike Michalowicz: The reason is a business owner's job is not to do the job, it's to be a creator of jobs. So you have to learn the discipline of delegating, and if we give something away that we enjoy doing, it's gonna be easier to give away the rest also, because it's easier, you good at it, it's gonna be the easiest to train someone else on.
[00:17:12] Mike Michalowicz: And let's see them excel. Most people say delegate the hard stuff, the stuff you hate to do. That's not the starting point. That's maybe the second or third thing to
[00:17:20] Chaz Wolfe: Hey Kings and Queens, Chaz Wolf. I want to talk to you about something that's super important to me. We put a lot of time and effort. We meaning myself and my team into this podcast, into the content that goes out every single day. And if you have been getting any sort of value or insight from this, we want it to be able to reach other business owners too.
[00:17:39] Chaz Wolfe: So we would love if you would like. Comment, share, leave a review, post, share again, all of the things on social media, on all the different platforms, or even on the podcast mediums of Apple and Spotify, we would love to be able to get our content into more hands, more entrepreneurs, so they can grow their business as quick as possible.
[00:17:59] Chaz Wolfe: Together, we are building a community of like minded entrepreneurs who are committed to growing their businesses to new heights. So let's do this. Let's help each other. Let's help each other grow.
[00:18:10] Chaz Wolfe: I love the, um, agitation there. 'cause it, you're right, it's the opposite of what many people say. And, and I. Probably because it's harder. Um, I can only imagine, you know, having 20 years of sales experience and that being the first thing I handed off in my first business, it's like, ugh,
[00:18:24] Mike Michalowicz: Yeah, Yeah, I know. Now the key is there. It is also the easiest thing. So there's some complex things like, I wouldn't say to like a heart surgeon, like, you love doing heart surgery, you're great at it.
[00:18:32] Mike Michalowicz: You'll do all day long. Let's get rid of the heart surgery. No, I, I think there's some things that are very technical and require a lot of skill. So the other question has, has to be easy. Maybe it's the prep of the, the scalpel and cleaning the, the, the surgery tools. Maybe that doctor really enjoys that.
[00:18:48] Mike Michalowicz: Let's get that off the plate. 'cause it's easy replicatable. But you enjoy it. We gotta start breaking from doing what we naturally love to do because it's as fun and learning the power of delegation.
[00:18:58] Chaz Wolfe: that your very simple process here of just writing it down is like, well, yeah, that's so, so easy. It's just nobody has done it or, or does it. And then more so you can do it for your team. Once you already have a team, you can break their stuff
[00:19:10] Mike Michalowicz: can break their stuff. It gives you, shockingly a lot of clarity. Like, you know, I think, well, I'm an owner of a business, I just need another person to acts like an owner. No, no, that's horrible because they're so ambiguous.
[00:19:21] Mike Michalowicz: Once I started writing down all the things I did, oh, it was very clear. One of the things I did, which I enjoyed to do and it's quote unquote easy, was my own scheduling. And I had a defense mechanism for saying why I need to always do my own scheduling. 'cause it's so dynamic. Like by any minute, things can change.
[00:19:36] Mike Michalowicz: Let me do it. But it also took up a lot of time. So that's one of the first things I delegated, and it was terrifying. I have no control over my own schedule, and it's weird, like literally, and it, it's bizarre, but my wife's like, Hey, can we do date night next week on Thursday? And I'm like, we gotta ask Aaron.
[00:19:51] Mike Michalowicz: Uh, I don't know. And so I sound a little bit like a heel, but I've learned that discipline of, of delegating that full responsibility has freed me up to do other things, uh, to impact my business in a positive
[00:20:02] Mike Michalowicz: way.
[00:20:03] Chaz Wolfe: sounds like it goes both ways too. Erin would need to communicate with your wife on the
[00:20:07] Mike Michalowicz: And she does. Yeah. So it's funny, like my wife and I were sitting on the couch watching Ted lasso my wife, uh, texts. Aaron says, Hey, is Mike available to go for a date night on Thursday? And Aaron's like, yeah, yeah, he can.
[00:20:18] Chaz Wolfe: That's, I, I love every part about that. And if the listener is confused by that, um, it, it changes the game. Alright, we've got a few minutes left here and I gotta jump into your
[00:20:27] Chaz Wolfe: A b, C format. You learn this from a co-founder of the Container Store, it sounds like, a equals three BB equals three C, which means A equals nine C.
[00:20:36] Chaz Wolfe: Give us, give us some, some download here.
[00:20:38] Mike Michalowicz: Yeah, it was something that was fascinating. Uh, he was talking about the Container store and uh, we had lunch together and he was explaining how, uh, talented they are. What's so interesting is if you ever have an opportunity to. To visit a a container store, you should do it. They sell obviously containers, um, which is the most boring subject, and Walmart sells 'em too.
[00:20:58] Mike Michalowicz: And so do other big box stores, but the engagement of the employees is off the chart at a container store and a Walmart. Good luck finding an employee who's engaged. My God, that's a double. Good luck. Well, how does the container store who's selling the exact same things find such qualified candidate? He says, well, we hire A players well.
[00:21:19] Mike Michalowicz: And I, I wanna give a little asterisk. Everyone isn't a player. What they did was they said, what is the talent that we're looking for? Well, we need someone that's exuberant, that engages with the audience. Who are the type of people that may be excited about engaging with an audience? Actors, he said. So what we do is we reach out to people that are working off Broadway or whatever, aspiring to be actors and say, listen, you can demonstrate your skills and play different characters here that are engaging.
[00:21:45] Mike Michalowicz: Um, who wants to socialize? 'cause that's a big part of the container store, that social rapport, people who are retired. Um, you wanna reenter the workforce and socialize. And I said, this is the opportunity. What they made clear was that the job was a, uh, source or a means to achieve an end. Uh, to be a great actor to re socialize with the community or whatever, and these people are a players as a result because they can see a clear ending.
[00:22:12] Mike Michalowicz: But what was also fascinating was KIPP shared the, the cost. He said, you know, I play at my employees. This is back in the day, $15 an hour, where Walmart's maybe be paying $10 an hour. So that's a substantial difference, 50% more. And I said, how, how can you afford that? Because 15 versus 10, it's, it is nearly half is more of the cost.
[00:22:30] Mike Michalowicz: He says, well, Walmart needs a higher. Three B players. 'cause people who are not engaged, who don't care, who see the job as just a source of income, don't care so much. It takes three of them to perform one level where someone sees this as part of their identity. So three times 10 is 30, where he's paying 15 an hour.
[00:22:48] Mike Michalowicz: He's like, I'm winning financially. I do wanna share. And this is a big asterisk and it's important. Everyone is an A player, and that may sound bizarre, but everyone has a player potential in them if they're matched up with the right role and it speaks to their identity. I am not saying that our businesses has a role for everybody.
[00:23:07] Mike Michalowicz: That's not the case. I'm saying that everyone is an A player, and if we meet someone who's not a fit or we can't serve them to serve their identity through our organization as a leader of our small company, we simply give 'em direction and say, Hey, you need to head somewhere else so you can really express yourself
[00:23:21] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. You also said that A players are made by a leaders.
[00:23:26] Mike Michalowicz: Yes. So there, there's a great book on this called Turn the Ship Around by Captain David Marquette. And um, what's fascinating is here's the lowest performing ship was a submarine in the Navy, the lowest of hundreds and hundreds of, of ships. And all they did was change.
[00:23:43] Mike Michalowicz: One person, the leader, and within a year became the number one performing ship. In the entire Navy. Now everyone else was considered C players and B players on the ship, and all of a sudden they became A players. Well, what happened was the leaders simply started to embrace them. They took on what's called psychological ownership.
[00:24:01] Mike Michalowicz: They started to express themselves. They , saw that this was a pathway to achieve their greater accomplishments they wanna achieve in their life. They saw the job as part of their identity, not as a job that they must do. And uh, well, it speaks for itself.
[00:24:13] Chaz Wolfe: You're spot on because there's lots of examples there of how someone can be switched out a, a team. In fact, you go, go into, into more detail in the book as far as just two teams. One was winning, one was the absolute bottom, and then literally just switches the, the leadership
[00:24:27] Mike Michalowicz: Oh yeah. That, that was in , extreme Ownership. I love that book is a must read. And what was interesting, that was the Navy Seals. Um, it just happens. These both are in the military, but I've seen it in all different forms of business.
[00:24:37] Mike Michalowicz: And it was literally, they were, they were taking boats. They raced down to the, on the, across the beach to the ocean front. You go around a buoy and back, and this one team was dominating. They, and there was one team that's consistently losing and they switched the leaders and the teams not right away, but within two or three cycles, the team that was the worst team became the best team.
[00:24:57] Mike Michalowicz: What they found is that when there's a leader, they bring about a swing state. Uh, there's a brand new movie out there called The Boys in the Boat. It's about the swing state. How do you get the collective psychology where there's collective ownership over an outcome? They call it collective psychological ownership, and where you, when a leader achieves that, the team as a whole is more than the sum of its
[00:25:17] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. Love that. Uh, as some parting thoughts here, you describe a joy formula or a success, uh, kind of formula that's attached to joy. Um, give us, give us what the formula is and how did, how can we 'cause joy sounds, uh, flowery or like maybe something I can't hold onto, you know, but we all talk about it. We talk about joint fulfillment.
[00:25:38] Mike Michalowicz: The story came from the most, like non flowery dude. I know his name is Patty Cohen. And I was talking with Patty. Um, it was bad circumstances. A a mutual friend of ours, uh, spouse passed away and Patty gave me a ride back to the airport. He runs, uh, a $50 million company, you know, wildly successful, uh, restoring basements and making 'em into fam caves and man caves and so forth.
[00:26:02] Mike Michalowicz: And, uh, what he said was one day he went to his team and said. We want to achieve $55 million in revenue. Good job. Last year, I want achieve 55 million. His sales manager, the person responsible for sales, came up and said, Patty, it's always good. We did a good job and now we have to do better. What if we just cared about how happy people are and it hit Patty like a time tone of bricks.
[00:26:24] Mike Michalowicz: Every one of us has an individual version of ourselves, or vision, I should say, for ourselves that we wanna achieve that gives us joy. The goal, the leader, pat explained, is to. F find what people wanna achieve individually and make sure that their work is an expression and opportunity to achieve that individual goal.
[00:26:42] Mike Michalowicz: Maybe someone wants to buy a house or someone wants to learn to play guitar or learn a new language, whatever it may be. We serve, we get joy out of moving toward goals we wanna accomplish. And when that happens, reciprocity kicks in and we wanna be of greater service to the company because the company's helping us achieve our own
[00:26:57] Chaz Wolfe: Yeah. Yeah. You ha you say that, uh, basically it's an experience of success and wellbeing together. You also throw in their little caveat of, of uh, like a multiplication times purpose. So you kinda wrap that all in up in your answer there of like, purpose, wellbeing basically is what they want, and we're helping them go after it.
[00:27:12] Chaz Wolfe: Do you wanna add anything on the purpose
[00:27:13] Mike Michalowicz: add yeah. Yeah. That's the real formula. But the one part I wanna add is reciprocity, kind of the equal sign. The more we contribute to the happiness and joy of our colleagues, the more we want to give, join happiness to our leader. Um, I remember my own business setting a goal for our company, but when I set.
[00:27:32] Mike Michalowicz: The understanding I had, when I focused on the individual accomplishments of my team, and not in their job, but in their job serving their lives, like what they wanna achieve in their lives, they started to focus more on the goal that I set as a leader for the organization. So reciprocity is what brings that amazing progress for a business.
[00:27:49] Mike Michalowicz: When you care for your
[00:27:50] Chaz Wolfe: You're an incredible mind. Book is, I mean, I just, just downloading, I'm gonna have to probably read it two or three times, but tell us
[00:27:56] Mike Michalowicz: you're so kind. I
[00:27:57] Chaz Wolfe: book? Where can we find you? , 'cause you offer all kinds of services and coaching and all, uh, opportunities for
[00:28:03] Chaz Wolfe: entrepreneurs to be able to connect with you.
[00:28:04] Chaz Wolfe: What, what's that look like?
[00:28:05] Mike Michalowicz: Yeah, wherever you buy books. If you like Amazon, great. I'd love for you to get it there. But if where your local bookstore has it too, support them. If that's what you feel called to do, I'd love that. Um, if you wanna learn more about me, you can go to mike motorbike.com.
[00:28:18] Mike Michalowicz: The reason I use that nickname, no one can pronounce Michalo, it's, it's a doozy. but@mikemotorbike.com, you'll get all in. Is there, you can get free chapter downloads. All my other books are there. I just write for the Wall Street Journal. Uh, you can get all that, those articles I wrote from them for free.
[00:28:33] Mike Michalowicz: Um, all@mikemotorbike.com.
[00:28:35] Mike Michalowicz: been an incredible time here with you today. Uh, you have been nothing but a blessing. So Mike, thank you for being here, uh, on the king stage, and we will be talking to
[00:28:42] Mike Michalowicz: we'll
[00:28:43] Mike Michalowicz: Chaz. Thank you so much.
[00:28:44] Chaz Wolfe: Thank you for listening to Gathering the Kings today. I hope that you were able to pull out a few nuggets to go apply into your business right away. More importantly, though, I hope that you're realizing that it takes more to be successful than just being by yourself, doing it all on your own, carrying the weight all by yourself.
[00:29:06] Chaz Wolfe: What I have realized, not only in my own journey from multiple businesses and multiple different industries, and now interviewing over two or 300 Other very successful seven, eight and nine figure business owners is that it's tough to do it alone. And so gathering the Kings exists to bring together successful entrepreneurs.
[00:29:25] Chaz Wolfe: In fact, we are putting together 1, 000 Kings specifically. Who are grateful, but not done. We're intentionally assembling Kings who fight tooth and nail for their business, family, and communities. And here's what we believe that in the pursuit of excellence in those areas, that it ignites within us, the responsibility to govern power and forge.
[00:29:48] Chaz Wolfe: A lasting legacy. So if that relates and resonates with you and you know, that you need people around you, sharp, qualified, other very successful business owners. I want you to go to gatheringthekings. com. I want you to take a look at what we're doing and see if it makes sense for you to be part of our pursuit to 1000 Kings.
[00:30:09] Chaz Wolfe: Talk soon.

Host Chaz Wolfe welcomes the esteemed author and entrepreneur, Mike Michalowicz. In this episode, Mike introduces his latest groundbreaking book, 'All In: How Great Leaders Build Unstoppable Teams'. We explore the pivotal themes of the book, delving into the art of sustainable business leadership, the transformative power of a job-creation mindset, and the strategic alignment of talent with tasks. Mike's insights on cultivating a thriving community over mere workplace culture and his innovative 'ABC' format for business excellence offer invaluable lessons for any business leader or entrepreneur. 🌟 Mike Michalowicz is not just an author; he's a beacon of innovation in the entrepreneurial world. With 'All In' and his array of other bestselling books like 'Profit First' and 'The Pumpkin Plan', Mike has revolutionized how we think about business growth and financial management. His journey from aspiring entrepreneur to globally recognized thought leader is filled with lessons of resilience, innovation, and strategic thinking. Having spoken on stages worldwide and his work being translated into multiple languages, Mike's expertise and engaging presentation style make him a sought-after keynote speaker and a mentor to business leaders globally.

Mike Michalowicz

Website: https://mikemotorbike.com/

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