EP18: It's Your Fault

Well, that's the bottom line. I mean, it's your business. It's your fault. And people need to, people really need to accept that. They need to embrace that. You know, too many people point fingers nowadays. It's just in today's, seems like today's society. It's not my fault. You did it. Point finger, point finger, whatever. If it's your business, it's not going the way you want it to. If you're not winning, it's your fault.

Maybe you didn't train him well enough. See what I mean? I always go back, man, I didn't train him well enough. I didn't give him enough time. I didn't do the right walkthrough with it. That's the mentality I have to take towards my business to grow and get better and to get my employees better and to catch their attention. I got some stories about that.

It's still your responsibility. That's where this is all going to twist. The responsibility factor lays in. This is what happens. If they didn't show up for work on time, it's because maybe you've been too soft on your other employees and they've seen you be soft to the other employees coming late. You're not hard enough. And so they're like, it's going to be all right. I'll just, I'll be a few minutes late. In fact, I'm going to stop and get some coffee.

True that.

I actually haven't, you know, I bought that book to read. And then one of my dear friends, a contractor, was having a lot of trouble with some employees. And before I could read it, I'd literally put it in an envelope. I boxed it up and sent it to him. And I never got it back from him. And I didn't buy it again. But I sent it to him and it like really changed the way he does things. He's like, I can't believe you sent me this book. It's been awesome. But I think I have some of those tendencies that, you know, like, taking blame like it's my fault it's my responsibility but i need to go buy that book i'm gonna order it right now

literally had it like literally when i got it my friend was complaining about you know how his employees screwed everything up and you know it wasn't his fault and i just literally put it in it and sent it to him

how about you can't believe that i actually like gave it to someone that needed it. I believe

I bought both of those books and sent them both away to other people. How crazy is that?

It's bad leadership.

You hire applicant pro. get them. We're not officially sponsored by them yet, but you hire an applicant pro and you fire their asses and you get new people. You train them better. You treat them well. You treat them nice. You pay them well and keep them around. I mean, like that's your fault. I mean, if you're not winning, it's your fault. There's, there's ways around it. You can, you just, you can't have the victim mentality. So that's the thing. I don't believe in victim mentality. I can't stand it. I, I want to get as far away from it as possible. You know, if I get an employee on the team and they have the victim mentality, they do not last long. Right. And that's just the thing. And it's funny because if I think back to all the employees that I've had over the years that have the victim mentality, it is never their fault. Right. Anything that happens. Right. So when you have an employee screw up and clearly it's their fault. Right. I'm going to take responsibility, so ultimately it's my fault. But when I go, hey, what the heck happened here? Oh, it wasn't my fault. I mean, that drives me crazy. Just go straight to victim mentality, and I just want to get as far away as possible.

Maybe not to that degree. I'd usually get, I get over things pretty fast. I try not to beat myself up too much. I mean, I do self-evaluate and I can get after myself, but I usually can recover fairly quickly, not dwell on it too much.

Well, I mean, I got cancer. Was it my fault? Or was, you know, was it because I ate poorly? Was, you know, like, there's certainly circumstances that are not your fault. You know, someone can be born with a deformity or a mental disability. It's not necessarily their fault. You know, so surely things like that. But, you know, so I'm, this is interesting. This is an interesting point of view, I think, because I've had animals my whole life. you know, and, and fish and plants. And, you know, it's a big responsibility to have those kinds of animals. And there's been times where I've screwed up in a pond and I've lost fish because of, you know, like literally what I did, like I left the hose running overnight, uh, you know, got distracted, left the hose running, chlorine killed my fish, you know, and it's devastating. And so like, when you have that kind of, when you have that kind of loss due to something that you've done, that's when I might beat myself up a little bit. Um, if I lose a little bit of money on a job, like one time I made a $10,000 mistake on a job, I measured the liner one way. And because of my inexperience, I did, I got the measurement incorrect. $10,000 mistake. Was I upset? Yeah, I was super upset. Um, but you know, I just like, well, I screwed that up. I learned that lesson. Well, I'm not going to make that again. And then I just go on, but you know, I lose. 500 bucks in fish and I'm devastated, freaked out, bummed, you know, super upset, have a hard time sleeping at night, you know, all this heavy remorse. Right. So when it comes to animals like that, it's, I think it's, it's, it's given me a different perspective on, you know, how to absorb, you know, a fault on something else. When someone gets hurt, it's bad.

Right. I see what you're saying, but you still have to, you have to take it. If you have, if you constantly have that. wherewithal to be like, hey, I can have some kind of control over everything. I mean, clearly you don't have the hand of God and you're going to make everything go exactly the way you want it. Things are going to go poorly in certain times. We learn from it, you know, and not dwell on it. So, you know, I have safety meetings all the time. I train the guys. You know, like currently right now we're in triple digits in Southern California. So we have safety meetings two, three times a week about heat. Let's have enough water. Let's have the shade. Like, hey, you should be hydrating at night. You know, you should not necessarily come to work and drinking a monster when it's already 92 degrees outside. You should already be hitting the water up. You know, if they drink beer all night long, wake up with some coffee, come to work with the monster, they're already, their tank's empty on, you know, being dehydrated. I can only do so much. And hopefully they'll be okay. You know, sometimes people, they just don't pay attention.

Well, it's your responsibility. Yeah, workman's comp's going to say it's your fault. Right.

is your fault. I mean, so, but then it could come down to the buddy system. Like for us, you know, we're always watching each other. Right. So even if they come to work dehydrated, I can't help their lifestyle. They're going to do what they want to. But, you know, if we get them to the job site and I see them already declining, that's when we're like, Hey, let's take a water break. Hey, why don't you kick back? Why don't you relax? You know, like. There's a lot of layers of precaution. There's a lot of layers of training. And if you have enough layers, you're still going to run into problems. And hopefully they're minimal, but still your fault. That's the way you have to take it. That's the road to success is accepting that and trying to navigate with that in mind.

That's the worst.

Well, that comes back to decisions that you're making and priorities that you're setting. So, you know, if you made the decision to, you know, go work on a new software that's going to help you, you know, dot an I and cross a T a little bit cleaner and get you to a job a little bit faster. If you put more priorities into that than to hiring, you know, a better staff and maybe my T and my I is not going to be just as perfect as it could be. Like, there's the decision that you made and that's. That's where you can say, hey, it was my fault. I should have maybe spent, made that a higher priority because there's only so many hours in a day. So you're making decisions on what you can get done and what you want to do. So, but then you're going to hire good help and then you're going to fall short on that. And that's your fault. You got to just switch the priorities up a little bit. So it's always, there's, you're always, it's like a ping pong match. You're always going to be hitting things that you're falling short. If you're always on the journey to self-mastery and you're completing, you know. want to be growing all the time. You're never just going to plateau and you're going to hit the rainbow unicorn platform and just kick back right there. You want to get to the next level. You're going to hit roadblocks. You're going to make bad decisions. You're going to have to make adjustments. Things are going to happen that are your fault. You just got to keep getting better and better. And the more you're making decisions and the faster you get at it and the better you get at it, the better decisions you make in the future. And hopefully it's less and less sizable faults, if that makes sense. It's things that don't hurt as much.

Well, I mean, you have to accept that you do have some control over some things. Right. That, that would be the first thing is, you know, I think back to, you know, a lot of that hardcore victim mentality, people mindset that I know, gosh, man, I don't even know if, if they can, if you can break through that crust to get through that, you know, crack that shell and pull it off and throw it away. But, um, if you start. to think, you know, when, when something happens, you gotta, you have to catch yourself recognizing it's super important, right? Oh, this is not my fault. This happened because of this. It's like, okay, wait a minute. How could have I controlled this? How could I have had some kind of control over this? So there's a lot of things that we can have control over. Right. So if, if that, if your tool van was in such a great shape, when they would do a site inspection before they leave, Hey, the levels goes here, the drills go there, the tape measures go here. Like, right. So like, I think understanding and maybe even getting excited about how can we control this. I mean, this is easy coming from a control freak, right? I know you've called me a control freak many times, but I'm not really. But it's interesting to go like, how can I train? How can I control? How can I make this not happen again? It becomes a challenge and it becomes fun. And if you can start to think that way, That's the beginning of some magical stuff.

So I'll tell you a story. I've listened to a lot of Jocko stuff. I'm a big fan of Jocko. And so a lot of this extreme ownership philosophy and the thought process behind it, you know, I've picked up from, you know, podcasts and what have you without reading the book that, yes, I'll. get the book and read it. I see you looking at me funny. So I wanted to tell you one time, and this is a little rough for me to say, I want to like go about this the right way, but we were traveling on the road, um, with my team on a project and my, my lead guy, my lead guy, he made some really poor decisions, like confronted, you know, his team, like imagine your, your crew chief confronting like the entire team. drank too much at night, got in an argument, starts talking down to everyone. Really a bad, bad scenario. Like bad. If you think how bad it could be and then escalated a little bit more, that's how it was. And then for whatever reason, I wasn't on location at that time and I was there early the next morning and my crew chief wasn't, he was late. And I caught word of, caught wind of what happened because the other team was already working. And I was super, super upset. I was livid. And he shows up to work late while we're on the road in hotels and stuff and just gets to work and everyone's working, but there was a lot of tension. And so when I finally had enough, let it marinate and think it through and let it absorb without getting upset, I... I pulled my lead guy aside. I was like, hey, we're running the hardware store, hopping the truck. Let's go. And so we get in the truck. We're driving down the way. And sorry for this, Brad, but we get in the truck and we're driving. And I was like, I really fucked up, man. I really let you down. I just don't think I've equipped you with the right stuff to be a good leader. And I just want to say I'm sorry. And he looked at me like. And he was waiting for me to just go, how dare you? You can't do this. Blah, blah. You know, he was like, he was waiting for me to just rip his face off. Right. And I started apologizing to him. And like, literally this guy's looking at me like he wants to cry, like, oh my God, I let you down. And like the whole, the whole, it was, it was really an amazing moment. And on the flip side, when I got back with my team, the, his, his crew underneath him. I had the same conversation with them, exactly identical. And I took, I took responsibility and I took the blame and said, it was my fault that this confrontation happened that night. And I was really sorry. And it wouldn't happen again. And they're looking at me like, it's not your fault. It's his fault. You know, like it was, it was this really weird. The amazing thing is we got over it together and I still have all the same guys on the team. And, um, Will they always remember that? Yeah. And I think that's a good thing. I think that's important. But the fact that I took responsibility for it was a real eye opener. And I could see it in their face. It was a neat moment in my career.

That's like a keyboard warrior. You can only talk me to someone on a keyboard on Facebook or something.

Oh, yeah, yeah. That was a good one. I really liked that podcast.

So listen, on a really similar note, And, you know, I feel like I love our coaching group. Can I just say that? Is that, can I just put that plug in there right now?

So I feel like I've been coaching some of my peers and other people coming up in the business for a long, long time. And even before our coaching group was put together, you know, when you and I put this together, the reason I sent that book, I think I sent him, The Dichotomy of Leadership is the book I sent to him. And he's in our coaching group now, which is really fun for me. But when I sent him that book because he called me up, like he was having trouble with his employees and he didn't know what to do. And it was really, really a cool moment for me as well, because this is probably around the time where I had that scenario I was just telling you about. In fact, The Extreme Ownership, I bought that book and gave it to my... my, my super, my crew chief at the time. I'm like, you need to read this book. Right. But the dichotomy of leadership, the book that I sent out was because my contractor buddy, it was telling me how he's really struggling with some of his employees and telling me all the woes and all this shit. And I was like, listen, bro, this is all your fault. And he's like, well, you know, backing out, backing out. And I remember I did like a role play with him. This is cool. You're going to love this. I did a role play with him and I told him what to say to his employees. And exactly what I just said, I told you to my crew chief and what I said to my crew members. It's my fault. I let you down, blah, blah, blah, this kind of effect. And I told him what to say. I got goosebumps on my legs right now. And he was like, I have to think this through. But the next day he went in. He went into his guys and he did that. His guys were literally getting ready to quit. He was ready to fight. He actually was like, I think I'm going to fire my entire team tomorrow. That was one of his things he was saving. It was also because half his team wanted to quit anyways, because they were having so much struggle. So he goes to work and he has this conversation with his team. Meanwhile, his father's there on part of his team, like helping him, right? And his father's looking at him like, who are you? And what have you done with my son? Like, I can't even believe this is coming out of your mouth because it was so unorthodox for this contractor. Right. And he said he had the conversation and it totally corrected all the problems. Everyone was like, no, dude, it's my fault. I let you down. I'm not going to let this happen again. They started accepting some of the blame. They started taking some of the ownership where before they were like, no, it's him. It's him. It's not me. It's you. Like all this stuff. It like brought the team together. And so that was the reason when I had that conversation with him and the next day he told me how, how it affected his team. I put that book with it. I didn't get a chance to read yet. And I sent it to him and it made a big difference in his business. That's gold.

My favorite thing is like his dad was staring at him. He's like, my, I saw my dad look at me like, who are you? I don't even know who you are right now. And that's, that's like, that's the real awakening right there. You know, that's the magic.

I wanted to pitch in here. So the two books that we're talking about, it's funny, like this whole podcast is like based around Jago Willanick, right? And, you know, the reason why I feel like I have a fairly good handle on the philosophies that he's teaching in the book is because, you know, I've listened to. at least two different podcasts of, uh, Jocko and Joe Rogan. And these are like three hour podcasts. I mean, they're, they're super intense, you know, thorough podcasts and, and, uh, I, I enjoyed them quite a lot. So that's why I felt like I had enough in me from those podcasts where I could like apply what I learned from the podcast, which is what he wrote in the book and, and apply it to my team and, and apply it in like a coaching. type call, right? Can you imagine? I mean, you know what it's like to train employees. This is a crew that he's had. Like imagine five guys and everyone knows they're all talented. They all know what to do, but they're not clicking. Something's going wrong. The leadership's poor. And can you imagine the value, like what that phone call was worth, like that coaching moment? I mean, it's one of my great moments for me that I always chalk up to like, this is a big deal, right? And because not only because it saved his his team and, and basically resurrected it, but also for him to see his dad, see the change in him and him to realize that his dad noticed the change in him. It's like, so there's so much impact right there. It's just, um, it's good stuff. That's why, that's why I love our coaching community so much.

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