Episode•March 18, 2024•45 min

EP158: From Boss to Leader: Transforming Your Approach in Contracting Businesses

The idea of "extreme ownership" is similar to the idea that as a business owner or boss, you are responsible for the things that happen with your company. This way of thinking changes the focus from blaming outside causes to examining oneself and finding ways to get better. In this episode, Brad talks about: Leadership in contracting businesses, discussing common misconceptions and key principles. Importance of continuous improvement as a boss and a leader. The Marine Corps' 14 leadership traits and 11 leadership principles Three key takeaways for contractors: taking extreme ownership, working for employees, and understanding that leadership is a learned skill. The importance of effective communication, empathy, and creating a supportive environment for team members is emphasized. Taking responsibility for all aspects of the business and fostering a collaborative and supportive team culture. Mentioned: Book List: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OOFVt4TdbYv0vhv-TSQQRSqJTSR_wTtzKcSMGSg1cjM/copy Links to Resources: Get the blueprint to create financial freedom & more free time before burnout or bankruptcy happens. A complete Done-With-You Program - Join the Profit Club Join the Free Facebook Group - The Contractor Profit Blueprint Get Paid for Estimates - Free Sales Guide Plan Your Profits - Profit Journal Help us get the word out to other contractors by leaving us a review or sharing our podcast! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Transcript

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Contractors journey to self-mastery requires discipline, integrity, and respect. Welcome to Hammer and Grind. Hey, welcome back to the show. This episode, we're going to be talking about leadership, all things leadership in regarding to contracting businesses. We're going to be talking about what contractors get wrong about. leadership. And then I'm going to give you three takeaways at the end around leadership that I want you to start implementing in your business. So let's dive into this episode. So what is leadership, right? Like this is, I think intuitively we understand the word leadership and we understand like this person's in charge, right? They're the leader, but what does that actually mean? How does that manifest in a small contracting business or even in a large contracting business? I think a lot of times What happens is contractors fall into a leadership position by requirement, meaning they have to grow their business or they believe they have to grow their business. And the way you do that is by hiring people, right? And so when you hire people by default, you become an owner, a boss, a leader, right? And so we just take on this leadership persona. But we never fully understand what leadership is. And here's the thing about leadership. Leadership is a learned skill. It's completely learned. It's just like sales. It's just like your trade, like craftsmanship. All of that is a learned skill. But it's one of the very last things that contractors do in their business is develop their leadership skills. And honestly, this should be one of the very first skill sets you should learn. As you're building your business, as you're starting out, you know, whether it's a one man show or you're starting out small and you're trying to grow, you should be developing your leadership. I've read hundreds of books. I don't even remember now. You know, I don't know if it's 150,200, who knows? It's over 100 books for sure. A lot of those probably, I'm going to say about 30% of those books are leadership focused, meaning it's something around leadership. There's books like Eat That Frog, Extreme Ownership, Dichotomy of Leadership, and the list goes on and on and on. I can't think off the top of my head, but there's a lot of books on leadership. So if you're not reading books on leadership, you should be, first off. If you're not studying and watching videos on leadership, you should be. One of the, probably the leading person you should be following on leadership is Simon Sinek. Now, I'll admit that sometimes when I'm coming up with podcast ideas, sometimes I know weeks in advance what I want to talk about. Other times, I don't even know 10 minutes before I start recording. And this morning is one of those times on the way into the office, one of my clients posted in our... our WhatsApp group chat, and they posted a video of Simon Sinek in one of his leadership talks. And I love Simon Sinek. I've read multiples of his books, Start With Why, What's the Other One, The Infinite Game. Like a lot of these books that he writes are really, really good. And he's a very, very good speaker. So anything Simon Sinek, go to YouTube, just type in Simon Sinek, you'll find it. Lots of good stuff on leadership. This is something that I haven't really talked a lot about. I've put elements of leadership into different episodes, but I've never really dedicated an entire episode just to leadership. And that's what we're doing here. So, you know, leadership is not being a boss. You may have heard the term, that person's a natural born leader, right? And I do believe that there is some truth in that, okay? Because there's different traits. that leaders have that's in leadership. And I'm going to get to those here in a minute. Some people are born with specific traits that are natural for leaders. And that'll make sense when we go through those here in a minute. You see this a lot in like kids sports. My son, he's seven. He just had, he's just playing baseball. I think it's his fourth year. Is that right? Fourth or fifth year in baseball. Whenever they start, I guess it's his fifth year in baseball, I believe. I don't even know. whatever they start. He's been doing it for a few years. He just moved up to a new league. They had practice last night. And you can see some people on the team that kind of step up. And I don't mean like athletic abilities. I mean, like they take charge, right? Like they're telling the guys, Hey, everybody come over here. Hey, let's do this. Right. You know, the coach says everybody gather around and people start moseying in. And then there's one kid that's like, You know, there's a kid who didn't pay attention or didn't hear the coach or whatever. And then there's a kid on the team that's like, hey, Johnny, get over here. We're having a team meeting, right? Those can be early on traits of what a leader or what we might consider a leader to be. But leadership for the most part is trained. It's learned, okay? So we can have the traits of a good leader, but leadership and leadership principles are trained. They're learned. And so I've always talked about, can I constant and never ending improvement, right? The path for self mastery. That's what we're on. We're on a path of self mastery, mastering of oneself. These are all things that tie into leadership. Good leaders, good leaders never stop learning. I believe in, I don't know if it's a book or not, but Simon talks about, he even talks about in the military that good leaders eat last. And that's true. When I was in the Marines, As a leader, you know, in different leadership positions, you always made sure your troops ate first and then you would eat last. Right. Leaders always eat last. Some of the things that I see wrong with contractors in regards to leadership are you providing a job for somebody. In other words, you start a business and then you provide them a job so they can provide for their family does not make you a leader. action of providing a job does not make you a leader. In other words, by positioning, because you're a boss, right? You're the owner, you're a boss, and you have people that work for you. That does not make you a leader. It just makes you a boss. It just makes you someone in charge, right? Leadership is not a position. Leadership is a a way, a culture, a trait. Okay. You see this? So in the Marines, I had plenty of leaders that were terrible leaders. I had plenty of people in charge of me. They were absolutely terrible leaders. And I would question whether or not to follow them in the battle. I had other leaders who I would do anything. If they said, go charge that machine gun nest and you're probably going to die, I would do it. Because I had so much respect for them as a leader, not because of the position they had over me. Right? So creating a position does not make you a leader. In other words, you know, sometimes leaders think that it's their job to provide them, you know, to go out and sell jobs. Like I'm a good leader because I go out and I sell a job and I keep them busy. Now, a lot of you have good intentions. Don't get me wrong here. Don't mistake good intentions with being a bad leader, but having good intentions doesn't make you a good leader. Some of you will bend over backwards and you'll not pay yourself for two months so that your guys can eat and they're taking care of their families. And those are good traits of being a good leader for sure. But that simple action alone doesn't make you a good leader. So in other words, going out and just selling jobs or, you know, doing the estimates or ordering the materials, like the position work, right? The position things that have to be done does not make you a good leader. That's just a responsibility. So your responsibilities don't make you a good leader. Okay. Another thing that people think leadership is, is you just hire people that already know what they're doing. So as a leader. All you have to do is hire an expert, somebody who knows what they're doing, and then you sit back and they do everything because they know what they're doing. And that's what leadership is. That has nothing to do with leadership whatsoever. The best of the best of the best still need leadership of some kind. So simply hiring someone who knows what they're doing does not automatically make you a good leader. Okay. It might make you a good hiring person might make you really exceptional at hiring good people. That doesn't make you a good leader. Telling someone what to do every step of the way. That does not make you a good leader. That makes you a terrible leader. Makes you a micromanager, right? Leadership is not telling them what to do every step of the way. It's not like if you're a good leader, you lead from the front. This is a term using the military a lot. You lead from the front. You see guys charging the battlefield, you know, rushing the beaches or whatever. And your leader, whether it's a platoon sergeant, company commander, battalion commander, whoever is out in the front leading the charge, putting himself in danger to make sure that the motivation and the leadership is follow or lead from the front. You don't lead from the rear. Okay. So leadership is not telling them what to do. It's showing them the way. showing them how to do stuff and then they can do it on their own and giving great speeches and talking a big game. Guys, we're going to build this amazing company and everybody's going to get rich and we're only going to work, you know,20 hours a week and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And everything's going to be great. And everybody's like, yeah, that's awesome. And then you go out, you know, then when you leave the room, you go into your office or you go home and you turn on and watch TV or play Xbox. You don't live up to your own hype. You're just talking a bunch of bull crap because you think that, quote, motivates them to want to go and do stuff. So leaders lead by example. They lead from the front. They're willing to do the things that is required to show their team that they have their best interest at heart. Now, this doesn't mean that you have to do all of the work. This doesn't mean that you have to be the one crawling into the crawl space. and doing the work to show them that you know how to do it. Now, I have a, I always had a philosophy that I would never ask my team to do something that I was not willing to do or have done. So, you know, when I started and back in the day when I got out of the Marines, the first job I had was in telecommunications. And then I ended up going and being a service tech. I've spent, I mean, I've been in dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens, probably hundreds of crawl spaces. You know, running cable, fixing cable, all of that, right? It's dark, it's dirty, it's dungy. You don't know if there's a snake down there, mice, raccoon, whatever's going to eat you, spiders. Like it's not a comfortable place to be. And so I've done that. And so I may have my team go on the crawl space, but I've done it, right? I've done it many, many, many times. I don't have to go in there and say, look, I'm going to show you how to go on the crawl space. I would do that if it was, if it was required. But if I've never done and gone in the crawl space and I would never do it in my million times in my life and I'm scared and I don't want to go in there and then I expect my team to go in there without any question whatsoever and no fear, then that kind of makes you a hypocrite. Right. So don't ask your team to do stuff that you're not willing to do yourself. So, again, doesn't mean that you've done it. It just means you're willing to do it if need be. So you don't have to like be the guy that's done everything that everyone else has done. I do believe it allows you to be a better leader when you've actually done those things because you understand it. You have more empathy, which is a very key point of being a good leader is having empathy. So if you've done it before, you know what it's like. You can have empathy towards that, right? You know, if you're working outside, it's 110 degrees. 100% humidity, it's freaking miserable. And if you've never done that before and you're asking your team, why is it taking so long, guys? This is ridiculous. You guys can normally do this in one day and here it's been two days and you've never done that. That does not make you a good leader, right? You haven't even at least gone out there and experienced it and try to get a better understanding of what's going on and make arrangements for that. Giving great speeches, talking a good game, and then not doing it yourself does not make you a good leader. It makes you a bad leader. So let's pivot a little bit here. Give me a drink of water. I'm a little parched. Let's talk about what leadership is through the Marine Corps. Okay. Now, I'm not going to go super deep into this. I am going to list all these things. Talk about a few of them, but we're not going to spend the next hour and a half, you know, diving into each thing. In the military, in the Marines, we have what's called the 14 leadership traits. Now, these are traits, like I mentioned before, that maybe your kids are already showing. These are traits that are associated with leaders, with good leadership. Okay. And then we had a little. acronym because the military has like 8,000 acronyms, little sidebar. There's a book I saw one time. It's about a half inch thick and it's acronyms of the military. If you were in the military, you already know what I'm saying. The military loves its acronyms. There's more acronyms than anything else. Okay. So the acronym for leadership is JJ did tie buckle. This is the 14 leadership traits. JJ. Did tie buckle is just an acronym to remember the 14 leadership traits. So number one is justice. Number two is judgment. Three, dependability, initiative, decisiveness, tact, integrity, enthusiasm, bearing, unselfishness, courage, knowledge, loyalty, and endurance. And if you go back and listen, those are, that's the JJ did tie buckle. Justice, judgment, dependability, initiative, decisiveness, tact, integrity, enthusiasm, bearing, unselfishness, courage, knowledge, loyalty, endurance. If you don't know what bearing is, bearing is like not losing your cool. When everything's just, you know, crushing around you in the military, if people are dying, getting shot. Blowing up. Like if you lose your bearing, it's like, oh my gosh, we're going to, we're all going to die. Like that's losing your bearing. Bearing is you act calm and cool essentially when everything's falling around you. So when the guys call, the customers call, the material guys call, the vendors call, everything's falling around you. And you're like, I can't take it anymore. This is crazy. I hate owning a construction business. Nobody wants to work and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you verbalize that out loud. to your lead guy or your office manager or one of your guys hears you, what you're doing is destroying the culture without even realizing it. So you should not be complaining in front of your team. Wink, wink. Don't complain in front of your team. There's a reason why they say it's lonely at the top because you can be in charge of a 5,000-person organization. At the top, you can't share all of your frustrations, all of your concerns, you know, all of your complaints with people below you. You should never, ever, ever share complaints, frustrations about your business or anybody else with people below you. You should always be sharing them with someone equal to you. Usually that means outside of an organization. This is why the Profit Club is a fantastic community. Because guys get to come in there and vent and complain whenever they want. And we can help them through that. Sometimes it's like, hey, man, you're just having a bad day. Sometimes it's like, hey, you have the wrong mindset here. You shouldn't think like this. And here's why, right? So the community aspect is very important for leadership because you should not be complaining to people below you. You shouldn't be complaining to your office manager. about the field guides, and you shouldn't be complaining to your field guides about the office manager because people will talk. This is one of the hardest things for people in leadership to understand. You never, ever, ever badmouth anyone else on your team, like ever. You can do it for five years with no badmouthing. One little slip up can destroy that. This is extremely important. So that's what bearing is. So those are the 14 leadership traits. You can just go online and Google, you know,14 leaders, Marine 14 leadership traits and see this, get all the definitions and stuff as you want. But bearing is one that I see happen a lot. And you could be frustrated. Don't get me wrong. You could be on a job site and the, you know, they don't deliver the door in time and you're waiting for three hours and you can be frustrated. Like, gosh, dang it, man. This is really going to set us back. Guys, this is really going to set us back. I apologize. You know, should have done a better job of getting this lined up. You can be frustrated, but you don't blame and complain. See the difference? So it's normal. It's human nature to be frustrated. So the next thing I want to talk about is the Marines also have what they call the 11 leadership principles. And so I'm going to name these, and I'm going to deep dive in just a couple, two or three of them, because these are also important. And by the way, this is not about the military or the Marines have the perfect leadership. formula and all that stuff. It's just, if you understand the nature of the military and what's at stake, it's like the best proving grounds period for leadership, right? When you're, when you're in the military, specifically in a combat role, if you're on the battlefield and things happen at the speed of light and you have to make decisions in a millisecond, right? You have to, you have to be a good leader. Because you can make one wrong decision or you could hesitate too long, not be decisive. That's one of the leadership traits. And then that can cause people to die or get hurt, right? So the stakes are much, much higher in the military than they are in corporate America. So these are good, sound principles, good, sound traits, but they're not the end-all, be-all, okay? Like I said, there's lots of books on leadership. And just so you guys know, I have a book list and maybe I'll put it in this show notes if it's not there already. I have a curated book list that has links to Audible and to Amazon to buy the books or listen to them. And I'll put that in the show notes so you guys have access to that. And it's broken down by categories like leadership, marketing, sales, mindset, so on and so on. It's not all of the books. It's just the ones that I have curated as the best ones that I like. And it's a growing list too. So I do add books to that as I come across new books. So back to the 11 leadership principles. 11 leadership principles. I'm going to read these, the principles, and then we'll go back and talk about a few of them. Number one is know yourself and seek improvement. Know yourself and seek improvement. Number two, be technically and tactically proficient. Again, this is military related, technically and technically proficient, tactically. Number three, know your Marines and look out for their welfare. Number four, keep your Marines informed. Set the example. Next one is ensure that the task is understood, supervised, and accomplished. Definitely going to go back to this one. Next one is train your Marines as a team. That's kind of self-explanatory. Make sound and timely decisions. Remember what I just said about making split-second decisions. Develop a sense of responsibility among your subordinates. Definitely coming back to this one. Employ your command within its capabilities. And lastly, seek responsibilities and take responsibility. Those are the 11 leadership principles. These are the things that you should be doing to be a good leader, in this case, in your unit. But this translates completely over into corporate America. So back to number one, know yourself and seek improvement. You should constantly be evaluating yourself to determine your strengths and weaknesses and then work to improve upon your weaknesses. Now, there's always there's sayings about, you know, don't improve your weaknesses, use your strengths and blah, blah, blah. That's not what this is talking about. If you have a weakness as a leader, then you should be looking for ways to improve that. If you're not a very good listener to your team, you can't just say, well, I'm not a good listener, but I'm a good action taker. So I'm just going to double down on action taking. You have to be a good listener as a leader, right? So you can't just ignore all of your weaknesses as a leader. You have to develop some of those. The ones I want to talk about here. So, you know, know your Marines and look out for their welfare. This is something I struggle with. I, you know, getting out of the military and eventually starting my own business, I saw people as a tool. You know, the tool was to get the job done. Now, I wasn't a dickhead to people. I didn't treat them like crap, but I didn't really care beyond work. I didn't care what your wife's name was. I didn't care what your kids' names were. I didn't care if they were in baseball or, you know, if they just had a birthday. I didn't care if they did ballet or, you know, a dance recital. I really didn't care. Not because, like... I'm a bad human being. It's just in my mind, it wasn't mission accomplishment. It didn't, it didn't contribute to the mission accomplishment that that was just how I was right now. I always treated my guys fairly. Like I wasn't yelling and screaming and treating them like crap. And I was always, you know, empathetic towards letting them have time off or situations going on, but I didn't care past them as a person beyond work. That was a fault. That was something that. I needed to work on. It's still something that challenges me today. You know, I try to make it a goal of all my clients to know, you know, remember where they live, remember their family structure, their wife's name, their kids' names, the ages and stuff and all that. It can be difficult. We're up to over 70 people in the group. It can be difficult to remember all that. And I'm not perfect. And I forget. And literally sometimes I have a... If I don't sleep well, I literally forget the names of people, right? But I try to make it a goal of mine to remember these things. That's knowing them. That's the part about knowing them. Hey, just a quick timeout from the show. In the next 30 seconds, I'm going to tell you exactly how you can transform your contracting business. Imagine being part of a community

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Now let's get back to the show. Do they actually care? People don't care about how much you know until they know how much you care. This is 100% true here. You could be the best carpenter on earth, right? And people might want to come and learn underneath you. to be the best carpenter. But if you're a crappy human being or you act like you don't give a crap about them or their family or anything else, it's not going to end well, I promise. People will put up with a bad person for a while, but eventually they'll leave. You hear this all the time with actors where it's like on screen you love them and then you hear off screen how they treat everybody like crap. You know, they think everyone owes them and they want everybody to cater to them. And then you get a bad taste in your mouth. And it's like, man, I thought I really wanted to like that person. Right. That's what I'm talking about here. So you have to know those people. You have to actually care. You have to actually care enough to want to know about them. Also, when you know them, when you're connected with them personally and you may say, like, well, I don't I don't want to know about their personal things. Well, it's important because if you know that them and their wife, you know, your, your lead guy and his wife are not on good terms, but on the verge of divorce, right? Don't you think for a second that that's going to affect their performance each day? Absolutely. It will. And if you don't know what's going on at home and you just say, man, your, your performance is really dipped in the last two months, Steve. I mean, like. If you don't shape up, I'm going to have to let you go. Meanwhile, he's fighting for his marriage and in a state of depression, and you act like you don't give a crap. And you say, But Brad, he didn't tell me. He didn't tell me that he was going through a divorce. Why would they? It's your job to know your people. What's going on? How's it going? How's the family? How's the marriage? How's your wife? You know, I noticed, you know, I follow my guy. This is me talking. I follow my guys on Facebook. First thing I do, they join, I join, I send a friend on Facebook. You may think that's odd or whatever. I don't want my boss knowing what I'm doing. Okay, whatever. It's your prerogative. But I want to know. I want to know if they posted, hey, I had a great weekend with my wife. We went to this Airbnb and blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. I can ask him, hey, John, I saw that you went to that Airbnb with Cindy. How was it? Oh, it was fantastic, man. Highly recommend it. OK, I want to write that down. Send my wife here. Right. If I notice that stuff and then all of a sudden there's a three week span, you know, Mike, my John is always posting about his wife, you know, two or three times a week and his family and his relationships and outings. And then all of a sudden out of the blue, he goes silent. He goes dark. And I don't see anything going on. Right. And it's like, that's odd. He's usually posting two or three times a week. And then I noticed his performance going down at work. I can start to put two and two together. Hey man, what's up? What's going on? I noticed the last few days you've been, you know, you haven't been talking as much. It just, it seems like you haven't been yourself. Is anything, is everything okay? Anything going on at home? Man, I just, I don't know. You know, it's just, we're going through a situation and blah, blah, blah, blah. oh man, I'm so sorry. Like, is there anything I can do to help? I'm more than happy to, there's this marriage conference thing that my wife and I went to down and, you know, over here. And, you know, I'd be more than happy to pay for that if you think that would help, right? Like I'm invested in my team, guys. This is what leadership is. You're fully invested in them. They're not just a pawn for you to make money, right? This is what empathy looks like. This is what leadership looks like. What you don't understand is that a lot of times the reason why people are rock stars in another organization is because the organization has been set up to make them a rock star. The organization itself gave them the environment and the tools and the support to make them a rock star. So you can 100% take a rock star employee. out of his environment, drop them into your environment, and they will fail miserably. And you will say, well, I guess the guy lied to me. He's not as good as I thought. And that's complete bullshit. That is your fault,100%. If you don't have the environment for your team to thrive, to give them the tools that they need, to give them the education and support and training that they need to thrive, They're not going to thrive. I can't take this plant behind me and not water it ever and expect it to live. It's going to die. By the way, today is Wednesday. It's water. Water Wednesday. Okay? Every Wednesday is water day. It's just a little tiny little tip on how to make things in your business so you don't forget stuff. It's water Wednesday. I got to water when we get done here. Just like your employees, you have to water them. You have to maintain them. You have to give them life. Okay. Everything in life that is alive requires input. It requires some type of growth, some type of input. Humans require food and water, right, to live. Plants, animals require food and water. Team members require... empathy. They require input. They require training. They require the opportunity to grow. So you have to create this idea that you're going to hire someone and it's a, it's a set and forget type thing. I hired Steve, the rock star. I put them in charge day one. I say, Hey, you're the foreman go out there and make it happen. Good luck. I'll check back in with you next week. Next week you check back in and your business burnt to the ground. And you're like, what's going on? I don't understand. I hired a rock star. No, you hired someone who was good at an environment that supported them and you put them into an environment that doesn't support them and he died. Right? If you guys don't understand this, like you're, this is, this can be the root of all your problems. There's no such thing as a clone of you. You have to tell them they're not going to read your mind. That's not leadership. All right. You have to make sure they understand what's expected of them. You have to make sure they understand the processes that you have. And you have to set the expectation and then supervise them the first few times. Make sure it's completed correctly. And then once they've demonstrated to you that they know what they're doing, then you can remove yourself from that equation and then sporadically just check and make sure they're still doing it and hadn't started cutting corners. But you have to supervise them always through the first few iterations to make sure it's done to your standards. This blows my mind. People think they're going to hire somebody and it's going to save everything. No, it's not. The other one I wanted to deep dive in is seek responsibilities and take responsibility. Guys, everything that happens in your business is your fault. 100%. You hired them. They stole from you. It's your fault. Because you hired them. You didn't do a good enough screening process, right? Your guys go out and they don't do the right thing. You show up. We've seen videos where the guy comes home and the contractor is like ripped up all the flooring on the first floor. And they were only supposed to do it in the foyer or whatever, or the living room. They're only supposed to do it in one room, but they did the whole room. They did the whole house. And you're like, what is going on? I had my sister-in-law. One of their friends had this happen where they were supposed to demo some drywall. He was a contractor and he had subs come in and was supposed to demo drywall in one room. And he showed up and they had demoed like half the first floor. My sister-in-law is defending her friend saying, well, you know, the subcontractor just didn't listen. They didn't do it right. And I'm like, no, that is your friend's fault. That is 100% on the contractor. Well, that's not entirely true, Brad. I mean, that's, you know, you can't make, no, yes, you can. Can you go into the room and take a black marker or paint and put X's on these four walls and then say only demo the walls that have X's on them? Can you do that? Yes. Right. There's a million and one ways to make sure the right work is done, but here's what happens. It's a text. It's a text to your sub. The sub text you, Hey, which rooms are we demoing? It's the room on the left. When you walk in the door, it's the room on the left. You're talking about the front door. They think it's the garage door, right? Because you're not specific. It's the room on the left. Okay, cool. Got it. You show up. They're demoing the living room, which is the room on the left. And the living room is like half of the house. And you're like, what are you doing? What do you mean? You told us the room on the left when you walk in the door. Yeah, the front door, not the side door. This may seem ridiculous, but I'm telling you, this is the root cause of 99% of your problems when dealing with people is because you're not communicating. Communication, effective communication is a leadership problem. That's a you problem. It's not a sub problem. You have to make it so foolproof. That there's no way possible they can get it wrong. That's what you have to do. And when it goes wrong, you take responsibility and say, you know what? I screwed up. I did not effectively communicate to you which door and which room. That is my fault. I will accept the consequence and I will pay for that. I will pay for your time to fix what you did wrong and to do it right. Because that's my fault. Now, I'm not saying that there's never a situation where someone makes a mistake and they should be the one that takes care of their mistake. But what I am saying is that it's still your responsibility to make sure that's taken care of. So if you hired the sub, they demo the wrong room. You say, my mistake, I'll take care of it. Or let me back up. It's truly their mistake. They broke down. You did everything clearly documented. Everyone understands somebody made a mistake and they, and you say, you're going to have to fix that and still do the demo. And they say, no, I'm not doing that. You know, we're just not going to do that. Screw you. We're out. It's still your responsibility to make it go back to the way it was. You still have to make it right for the customer, right? So ultimately it's still your responsibility is what I'm trying to say there. So seek responsibility opportunities and take responsibility. The best leaders in the world accept responsibility for everything. And by the way, if your team does a good job, you praise the team. This is a very important thing. And I did this. Whenever one person, say Eric made a mistake, Eric was one of my lead guys. Actually, I had two different lead guys named Eric. Eric made a mistake, right? And I have to let the customer know. I don't go to my customer and say, hey, customer, Eric made a mistake, but we'll fix it. I say, hey, we made a mistake collectively. We made a mistake, but we're going to make it right. But if someone does something individually, I give them the credit. Hey, you know, they go, oh, Brad, this is such a great idea. I didn't even think about this. I'm like, yeah, that was actually Eric's idea. He's the one that suggested it. They get the credit. Collectively, you accept responsibility. That's how you take care of your team. Or if it truly was your fault, like you didn't communicate well to Eric and Eric made the mistake, then it's my fault. It's my fault. I didn't do a good job of communicating to Eric what needed to be done. We'll make it right. But I never single out someone on my team. Even if the customer, for whatever reason, presses, who did it? It doesn't matter. Mistake was made. We're going to make it right. I'm not selling out my team. My team is important to me. So those are, that's seek responsibility. So that's 11 leadership principles. I didn't go into each one of them. Again, you can go on Google, search them. There's some definitions there. You can look it up. It's really good as a basis for leadership. So the 14 leadership traits and the 11 leadership principles. by the Marine Corps. If you just go search those, those are really, really good to follow. Okay. So I want to break this down into three things that I want you to take away from this podcast. Number one, everything that happens in your business is your fault. Everything is your fault. It's your responsibility. You take the fault as the top player. Okay. If you have a business partner, It's collectively both your faults. Even if it's 100% your business partner's fault, guess what? It's also your fault. You chose to go in business with that guy or girl. It's your fault. There's a book, Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink. He was a Navy SEAL commander. Highly, highly recommend it. It was one of the books that I made my team read, Extreme Ownership. He had a second book called The Dichotomy of Leadership. Also a great book. He's got a third book out, which I haven't read yet, but I heard it's pretty good as well. Jocko Willink, Extreme Ownership. Everything that happens in your business is your fault. If you take an extreme ownership position in your business and anytime something happens, you ask the question, where did I go wrong? What did I do wrong? It will lead you to the correct path and the correct solution. But when you start blaming other people, You will stay stuck in an old mindset that will hold you back. Number two is, and this may be the most important thing to understand. You work for your employees. Your employees do not work for you. You work for your employees. Your employees do not work for you. I heard Gary Vaynerchuk say this one time and I thought, well, that's kind of dumb. But then once he explained it, I said, that makes perfect sense. Your job is to give them all of the tools, the training, success, the environment. Remember we talked about is to give them everything they need to be successful. Your job is to make their job easier. And if their job is easier in return, your life will be easier because they will make your business more profitable. They will make your job easier. But you have to be the one that makes sure they have everything they need. There's a question you can always ask your team. Always ask them, how can I help them? How can I help you make your job better? Is there anything you need from me? Do you need a tool? Do you need training? Do you need this? How can I help you be your best? Every day. Every time you see them. Guys, you all set? Everybody understands what's going on? Yep, good, boss. Okay. Is there anything that you need from me? to make sure this job's going to be a success. Anything. And here's a caveat to that. You have to create the culture that allows them to tell you things that you're doing wrong or that you may have a weakness in. You have to create this culture that allows them to be free to speak up and say, hey, next time when you do it, can you give us a better scope of work? Because when you give us this piece of paper that says scope of work, remodel bathroom, that just ain't cutting it. It would be much nicer if you told us what part of things had to be done. Cool. I'll work on that. Can you help me develop that to make sure you got the right information? Yeah, I can help you. Awesome. We'll spend two hours next Monday in our meeting to help start setting the parameters for that. Or when you get a chance at the end of the day, take 10 minutes early. Could you just do an outline bullet point? of the five things or whatever you think the subcategories need to be. So I have a good starting point. See, that's a collaborative style leadership and team. Everyone's helping each other. It's not you're the boss telling them what to do every day. The last thing I want to let you go here with is that leadership is a learned skill. It's not something that's appointed by a position. If you want to have a good business, you have to be a good leader. And if you want to be a good leader, you have to train for it. Okay? You cannot, this is not organic. This is not something you're born with. It's a skill set. Like any other skill set, you have to develop it. And if you're not willing to put in the time, then you are trading that sacrifice for another sacrifice, which is pain. So your option is to trade time, time learning, a new leadership skill. versus the pain that's the result of you not spending the time. So you're either spending time or you're getting the pain. Totally up to you. You decide which one you want to do, but one of those two things is going to happen regardless. Me personally, I'd rather spend the time so I can avoid the pain. A lot of you live in the pain and misery, and you think that's just how it is. And the reality of it is, that you may just be a terrible leader, but the good news is you can always overcome and become an extraordinary leader if you just put in the time. Guys, thanks for hanging out with me. I appreciate you, and I hope that this was helpful. Leave a review. Throw me a message. Let me know what you think about it. Go to the show notes. Check out the book list. We'll make sure it's in there, and I hope you have a great rest of your day. Remember, you know where to find me on the socials. Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, just search for the Hammer and Grind podcast, or you can always go to the show notes and get all of those links. And remember guys, until next time, profit is not a dirty word.