If your employees don't care about your business, there's a very good chance that you've given them no reason to care. One of the biggest complaints I hear from contractors is nobody cares like I do. And they're right. Nobody will ever care as much as the owner does. But that's not the real problem. The problem is expecting employees to act like owners while treating them like labor. If your team is disengaged, doing the bare minimum, constantly making mistakes, or just collecting a paycheck, then before you blame them, ask yourself this. What have I done to create an environment where someone would actually care? Because leadership creates culture, and culture determines effort. And in this episode, we're going to break down why this happens and what you can do about it. Hey, welcome back. I'm your host, Brad. We're going to be talking about why your employees don't care and why how it's your fault, but more importantly, what you can do about it. So like I said in the intro, nobody cares about your business like you do. And we can't expect people to act like owners and then treat them like, you know, paid labor. There has to be buy in. There has to be something in it for them. And so we're going to talk about a few different things here, and hopefully this will open your eyes a little bit and then help you going forward on how you can start changing the culture of your business, which will impact the results you get from your employees. So here's number one, plain and simple. They don't understand the mission. They just don't understand the mission. But, Brad, what do you mean? We do. We're a landscaper. We do landscape patios. That's what we do. That's the mission. No, that's not the mission. That's the occupation. The mission is higher than that. And if you've never done. If you never created a mission statement or you don't have core values or you don't have a vision statement, go back and listen to those episodes where I talk about those, because that's super important as a guiding light, as a guiding post, as a GPS for why people want to buy into what you're doing. All right, so let me tell you about a story, the story of three Masons. There's an old story. I'm going to read this, too, by the way. There's an old story about three masons working on the job. A man walks up to the first mason and asks, what are you doing? And the first mason says, I'm laying bricks. So he Walks up to the second mason and asks the same question. What are you doing here? And he says, I'm building a wall. Then he goes to the third mason and asks the same question. What are you doing here? And the third mason says, I'm building a cathedral. All three of these men are doing the exact same task. They're laying bricks or they're laying stones, whatever they're doing. And so the difference is each one of them sees their job differently. The first one sees it as a task, the second one sees it as a project, and the third one sees it as a purpose. And we want to get our employees to the third level, which is doing it because of purpose. Right now, this changes how someone approaches the work. If all you're doing is showing up to do a task, you're not going to be engaged. You're just not. Nobody who listening to this, who owns a business would want to show up to our customers. Job where you. You just do what the customer tells you to do. Hey, Brad, just show up on Monday, and then I'll tell you what to do. And then when you go show up and they go, okay, the first thing I want you to do is unload the truck. And then let me know when you're done with that. And you're like, well, just tell me what we're doing. Like, give me a whole. I want to be able to plan. I want to be able to figure it out. I want to be able to know how all stuff goes together. No, no. Just do what I say, one step at a time. And that's how a lot of you run your business. And you're. And then you get on the socials, you're like, man, please suck. Nobody wants to work. Everyone has a bad work ethic. You know, that's because it's a leadership problem. It's a you problem. There's a saying, if you show me a bad employee, I'll show you a bad manager. And that's true. That's absolutely true. There's another saying. People don't leave jobs. They leave people. People don't quit because they don't like the job. They quit because they don't like the boss. They don't like the culture, they don't like the environment. And that is what a job as a leader is to do. Not a manager, a leader. Because you own the business, you have to step up and be the leader. And if you don't like that or you don't want that responsibility either, you're going to have to find Someone that can be that position or you're going to have to do it by yourself because you will always have this problem. As long as you think your job is to manage people and be a task rabbit, you know, just assign tasks to people. That's not what your job is. All right, so one more thing here. The person laying bricks may only care about getting through the day, right? I just have a job. The person building a wall may care about the project and make sure it's done correctly, but not so much care about the overall business and the success of the business. Whereas the third person who's building a cathedral understands that their work is part of something bigger. All of us want to be part of something bigger than ourselves. It doesn't have to be, you know, we don't have to go to the moon. You don't have to go work at, you know, SpaceX and be on that team that goes to the moon. That doesn't have to be that big, you know, bigger than you. It just has to be something bigger than I'm installing doors or I'm laying patio blocks or, you know, I'm installing roof shingles. It has to be more than that. It has to be. So most employees, the reason why a lot of this is going on, most employees only know the task because you tell them, like I just said, install the cabinets, finish the drywall, clean the site, be at the job by seven. That's you assigning task and them completing task. There's no buy in into something bigger. There's no buy into the culture. There's not. And if you're listening to this and you don't agree with me so far, it's probably because it's 100% true. If you think this isn't applying to you and you're having struggles with employees and this 100% applies to you, you just got to lower your ego, you got to suppress that ego and actually be open minded to listening to this. And as someone who's been in the military and thought they understood what leadership meant, I mean, into a certain degree I understood leadership and then got into the civilian world and realized it doesn't work the same way. It's just, it's two totally different, you know, leadership structures and leadership styles. But leadership is inspiring people. It's making other people leaders. That's what leadership is. Management is be here at 7. Management is go do the drywall. Right? That's management. You're just telling them what to do. You're managing what's happening. Leadership is an empowerment. It's something you do to someone. It's not something you tell them. You do it to them, you inspire them. That's leadership. So when you go, when you're just a, you know, when you're just assigning task, they don't understand why their work matters. They don't understand that they're part of a bigger picture. And it's your job job to explain that to them. People care more when they see the bigger picture, when they understand it. So your team should understand why the company exists, what kind of experience you want customers to have, what standards the company stands for, where is the company trying to go, and how their individual role contributes to that mission. And again, these are all, all of these things come from your mission statement, your vision statement, your core values. Those things address this part right here. It addresses it. And when you have strong core values and you have a strong mission, you will attract people that align with those mission, with that mission and those core values. I've talked about this before. You know, if your core value is, I don't know, let's say you're, you're a religious person, and so you want to always treat people right, you always want to do right by them, and you always want to, you know, represent your faith and blah, blah, blah. So you're, you know, you're a religious company. If you want to title that and you go hire someone who doesn't care one iota about that, doesn't even think, you know, God's real or whatever, and you hire that person, you don't think there's going to be conflict within your culture 100%, there's going to be conflict. So when you, when you have a, when you have a. A core values, there you go. When you have core values, that's what's going to allow you to attract the right people to your team. So a carpenter isn't just installing cabinets. They're helping create the kitchen where a family will gather together for the next 20 years. Right. If you were building that cathedral for a king or for a, you know, politician or someone high up, you would make sure every single piece of that is perfect. I was recently watching a video. They were doing work on the White House. And I always thought, like, man, what, what is it like to be. To work on the crew that's working on the White House? You know, in, in America, the, the presidency is like the highest level you can get to and like working on their, you know, the White House, where they're at and what, you know, What? They're around all day. Like, is there not a. You know, sometimes we do jobs is like, we got to get this done. We only got five hours. Is it just like, we want this perfect no matter how long it takes, open checkbook, or is it still going to be, hey, we have a contract, we have to do this? Obviously, like, this is going to be a 10 out of 10 level of work when you're dealing with the White House. But this is always something, always fascinated me about. I wonder what it's like to actually do work, you know, in something that prestige, like the cathedral. Like, you're working on the cathedral. So anyways, a little. Little deviation there. All right, so where did I live off at? Yeah. Project manager isn't just updating a schedule. They're protecting the customer's trust and the company's reputation. Right. All these different levels tie in and your. Each level, no matter where it's at. Apprentice, you know, journeyman, project manager, foreman, whatever it is. All of these positions need to understand why their role is important and how it contributes to the overall mission. So showing them the cathedral is the leader's job. What I was just saying, you can't expect employees to understand the mission if you've never communicated it to them, hey, go over there and just start digging in the hole. I mean, digging in the ground. Dig a hole in the ground. Like, how far do I dig? How big is it? Oh, what do I do? Don't worry about it. Just go dig the hole. That's not. That's not going to be very motivational. It's not going to be something bigger. I'm just digging a hole. This sucks, right? But if it's something way more important, like, hey, go dig that hole. Because we are, you know, we're building this, you know, very, very important thing now. They're a part of it, right? People that, like, built the Empire State Building, people that build, you know, huge monuments, like, they're super proud of that. And they. They do it because they're part of that, and they should be, right? They did something amazing. So you have to create that for your team. You can't expect employees to understand the mission if you've never communicated it. And again, you have to repeat the vision, the standards, the purpose, the definition of success, not once during onboarding, but all the time, every day, constantly beating it into their head. And by the way, if you have core values, if you have standards, that's what you measure stuff against. If you have a standard of, like, this is how we do things right, and then you show up to the job, look at it, and it doesn't meet your standard. You can go to that team member and say, hey, what happened here? You know, well, this, this, and this. And you ask them, well, does it. Does it meet our standard? Right? And if they say, yeah, it meets our standard and it doesn't, then you have some retraining to do. You didn't do a good job of training them. They didn't understand it. If they say, no, it doesn't meet our standard, then you can go through why, you know, what happened, what can you do differently? What are different courses of action? You know, that's. You have to have something, a goal and a standard and the overall mission to want to do that. Right? So you have to repeat this stuff every single day, all the time. It's not once and done. And no, it's not just putting the mission statement, all the wall in your warehouse and no one ever reads it. That's not. You have to, like, literally beat it into them every day. You have to do it so much, they start making fun of you. Like, you want your employees making fun of you because you say it so many times. Oh, did. Did Brad tell you about our mission? Yeah, he told me. You know, he tells us every single day, right? Well, when you go in there for the first time, he's going to tell you about the mission and the like. That's fine. That's good. I want my employees making fun of me because I talk about it too much. That's far better than never talking about it. Your employees may be. May be laying bricks, but it's your job as a leader to know, to show them that they're building the cathedral, right? You have to show them the cathedral, the mission. All right? Number 2.2. You've never given them the ownership, right? So you make every decision for them. A lot of owners complain that employees never take initiative. Yeah, because you've done everything for them. You've changed their diapers, right? You feed them every day. You treat them like babies. No wonder they act like babies is because that's how you treat them. Right? But these are the same owners that will make every decision, solve every problem, correct every detail, override employees constantly, never allow anyone to think independently. And then they wonder why the team waits to be told what to do. You train them to come to you for everything. That's your fault, 100% your fault. You've trained them to call you, to go to you, to solve everything. So if you want People to take initiative, then you have to give them ownership of whatever that outcome is. And you have to accept what the outcome is. Now if it's not a very good outcome, again, you go back, you compare it to your standards or the expected outcome. If it matches, great, if it doesn't match, you go through that. But when you see someone's about to make a mistake, or they're about to do something the wrong way, or they're about to do something the hard way, sometimes you have to actually let them make that mistake. There's a story one time, and this is, this is a true story. I don't know where I heard it, but somebody in a big, big company made a mistake and it was like $100,000 mistake. Like they did something wrong in an order, cost the company $100,000. So the employee goes into the. His boss, the owner, and he says, hey boss, here's my, here's my resignation. And the boss says, what's this for? He's like, well, I screwed up big time. I made $100,000 mistake. And the boss says, I just paid a hundred thousand dollars for you to learn that lesson. Get back to work. Right? He's saying, I've already paid for this. If you leave now, someone else is going to come in and make the same mistake. So yeah, you're going to make mistakes. Your team's going to make mistakes. Obviously you don't want them to make a hundred thousand dollar mistake. But the point of that story is you can't be the savior for everyone. They have to make mistakes and learn on their own. Obviously you have to put some kind of parameters around what those mistakes are. But some of you, I've talked to a lot of contractors, some of them, some of you are like, man, you know, I have to go meet my guys at the. I'm like, what, what are you doing all day? Like, why is, why don't you have any time? Why are you so busy? Well, because guys call me and I got to go meet them at Lowe's and buy the materials. And like, why the heck are you doing that? What do you mean? Give your guys a credit card, give them account, give them the access. You don't need to be the one meeting there to pay for. Well, what if they steal from me? If they steal from me, you didn't hire a good person to begin with, but what gives you the indicator that they're going to steal from you? Because one person stole from you 10 years ago. Now all of a sudden you think everyone's going to steal from you, so you got do it yourself. That's. That's insane. That's crazy talk. Give your guys a credit card and put a limit on it. 500. Lemon. Give them a Discover card so they can buy gas. Well, I got to go meet the guys every morning to fill their trucks up and. No, you don't. No, you don't give them ownership of that stuff. Hey, just a quick time out from the show. If you're a frustrated contractor who's dealing with low profit margins, stuck working on the tools every day, or doing free estimates for people who are are never going to hire you in the first place, I invite you to my private contractor community, the profit club, where contractors just like you are adding two to three times more profit each year without producing any more jobs and finally getting completely off the tools to never do another free estimate again. So if you're ready to increase your profits, stop doing free estimates and get off the tools. Then all you have to do is click the link in the show notes to learn more about the profit Profit club and see how it can easily two to three times the cash in your pocket give you a proven sales process that will convert more jobs with ease and get you off the tools once and for all. And the best part is you can do all of this without having to produce more jobs than you currently are. Click the link to learn more. Now let's get back to the show. It's crazy that you guys want to. You think you got to control every aspect of your business and that's scalable. It's not. It's the opposite of scalable. That's why you're stuck all the freaking time. That's why you're worn out, because you're trying to do everything. If someone comes up with an idea, you got a problem. Hey, boss, I got the. Here's what I'm thinking we should do. Hear them out, like, let them tell you what the idea is. Don't say no, No, I already got to figure it out. This is what we're going to do. Don't do that. You're just training them that you're going to solve the problem for them. Let them come up with the idea. If it's a terrible idea, you say, yeah, that is one way we can do it. Is there any other ways you think we can do it? And you lead them. You lead them to the answer that you want them to have. Sometimes they may have a better solution than what you have. Sometimes their solution is never really Good enough. And then you have to maybe throw in some suggestions. Those are both really good ideas. What do you think about this? And you kind of include them in that. What do you think if we did this instead of that? They may go, yeah, actually, that would work out a lot better. All right. Yeah, I agree. Let's do that. That's it? That's all you got to do. You'll come in, save the day. I'm the hero. I know how to. I've been doing this for 20 years. I can do it my. In my sleep. We're going to do it this way. Why are you moping around over there? It's because you just came in and wrecked everything, guys. Everything in your business is your fault. 100%. Everything. If something in your business you don't like, it's your fault. As soon as you adopt that mindset and you just take extreme ownership of everything, your life will change overnight. Because when you blame someone else, you give away all the power to change it. When you accept the responsibility, you have the power to change it. It's that simple. There's nothing else that goes to it. It's that simple. Placing blame removes your power. Accepting responsibility gives you power. Responsibility creates engagement. Give employees ownership over specific outcomes such as job site quality, customer communication, scheduling, material readiness, inventory, cleanup, job profitability, final walkthroughs, so on and so on. Ownership does not mean abandoning them. It doesn't mean abdicating. Like, hey, you're responsible for doing the final walkthrough. And then you don't do any checkup. You don't actually go and, you know, verify that they did what they're supposed to. That's what abdicating is. You can give someone ownership, and then you go and verify that they did what they're supposed to. And after they've done it a dozen times or two dozen times to your standard, then you can check it off and say, john knows exactly how to do the final walkthrough. He's the man. He doesn't need my help anymore. I can give him that full responsibility and. And I can delegate it to him and not. And I know it's going to be done right. That's what responsibility looks like, giving them ownership. So it means it's clearly defining their results. Give them the authority and hold them accountable. Again, back to the credit card. Some of you want your guys to go. They got to go to Lowe's and buy a $8 tube of silicone. You want them to call you and tell you that they're going to spend that money. You want them to get approval on that $8 tube of silicone? That's insane. Like, just tell them, like, listen, you're on this job, anything that's under 500 bucks, if you think we need it and it's going to make the job right and do the, you know, meet the mission and the outcome, then go do it. You don't need my approval. Just go to the store and get whatever you need. If it's over 500, if it's over a thousand, if it's over X, then yeah, give me a call so we can, you know, at least I have an idea and we can consult on it. But anything under this dollar amount, you're good to go. Turn them loose, guys. Let them take that responsibility. Just put this, Put lateral limits. Put limits on what, you know, how far they can go with it. Don't give them a credit card with a $50,000 limit and never check up on them again. You have to be smart about it, okay? People care more about what they help build, right? So if they're building something, I. E. The business, they're building something bigger than themselves, they're going to care way more about it. So when someone has no voice, no responsibility, no opportunity to improve anything, they become disconnected again. You just become the widget, the warehouse widget puller. Just pulling the lever all day. There's the old, old commercial from the, I think it was the 90s or 80s and it was like, time to make the donuts. It's like this guy getting out of bed at 3am every day. Time to make the donuts. That's what these guys are doing. They're just showing up and you want them to do this one simple task every day with no, you know, no accountability, no responsibility, no ownership, nothing. Just do the task. When they are trusted to make decisions and they can see the impact of their decisions, they become way more invested. When a guy comes to you and says, hey, boss, I've been thinking about, you know, what would be cool is if we, if we change the warehouse and we put this, this and this over here, it would actually make, you know, the inventory way quicker. It's probably save us a, you know, two or three hours a week and it would make everything much easier. Your employee comes to you and tells you that, and you're just like, I, I created the layout for the warehouse, so it's going to be that way. You just shut him down. You completely shut that dude down. He's never going to Come back to you with another idea. Never going to come back to you. You have to listen to their ideas. You have to listen to their feedback. Whenever I was working, if I had to, you know, if I was working on the tools or if I had to show up to solve a problem or whatever, it was always a. It was always a crowdsourced solution. It wasn't me telling people to do. I show up. Hey, guys, what's going on? We got this. Yeah. What do you think we should do? John says we should. I think this would be a good idea. Chris says, I was thinking this and we're all collaborating together. Yeah, I like those ideas. Anything else? What about this? What about that? John's like, yeah, actually, here's another thing. We could do this and this and this. And so we're like, collaborating. Not me telling them what to do. I didn't just show up and tell them what to do. Although inside, here's the most important part. Inside, I wanted to say, go do this right here. Just do this. That's what I wanted to say. On the inside, I would be frustrated because it's like, guys, it's so simple. It's right here. It's so easy. You just got to do this. That's how I felt inside. That's what I wanted to say, but I didn't say that because I understood that that would take. Take them out, take the breath out of them. Knock the breath out of them, Knock that energy out of them. You have to let your guys come up with ideas, put them in charge of that. People care more about what they help build than what they're simply told to do. It's that simple. All right, last point here. Your systems reward showing up, not excellence. So good and bad performance are often treated the same. Many companies pay everyone based on time alone. The employees who solve the problems, protect the customer, produce quality work, help the team, takes responsibility, is treated exactly like the employee who barely meets any expectations, shows up five minutes late every day. Eventually, the strong employee starts wondering, why should I work harder and give more. More effort? Because it doesn't matter, right? Because you have. You have no standard and you hold everyone to the same. No standard. It's like. It's just like the wild west. You take your A player and you turn them into, you know, a B player. Although you really can't do that. They players just leave. They'll just leave your business. But you take good people and you. And you knock them down a notch or two. And then you wonder why performance goes down. You wonder why they make stupid mistakes. That's one of the reasons expectations and accountability are unclear. Employees cannot meet standards that they have never been told. That's never been defined for them. So you have to be clear about what good work looks like. What's the outcome that we want? Very simple thing you can do, guys. If you're doing carpentry and you want a standard for, like, how the trim looks, what you want the. The reveal to be on the casing on the door, right? Is it 3 16? Is it a quarter or is it 3 8, by the way, you guys tell me in the comments, leave me a message. Like, what do you. What do you think it is? What did you guys do? 316 quarter, 3 8. I always did 316 on my reveals. But if you have a standard, take a picture of your casing up close, okay? And then write on it and say, our standard for reveals is 3:16. This is what it looks like. That's all you got to do. That's. That's a standard now. So when you have a new guy come in, you say, look on our reveals, on our casing window, casing on our doors and windows. This is what we do. We do a 316 reveal. And here's a picture of it. This is what every job should look like. If it's narrower than this, it's not acceptable. If it's wider than this, it's not acceptable. That's a standard. Super easy. Take a picture, mark it up. That's a standard, right? So now they understand what that is. Be clear about what good work looks like, what is unacceptable, who is responsible, how performance will be measured, what happens when the standards are missed. Be very clear about that. Accountability cannot depend on the owner's mood that day. This is. I've actually had. I've had employees tell me this, right? I've had employees, and something happens, and I'm like, all right, I want you to do this from now on. You know, this is how worship. This is how we do it, guys. This is how we do it. And the employees, like, Brad, last. On the very last job, we have this exact same thing, and you told us to do it totally different. Because my. I was making decisions based on my mood that day, how I was feeling. Was I stressed out? Was I in a hurry, right? Sometimes. Again, this goes back to the other. The upload episode about your, you know, your standards, your process. Like, if you don't stick to it, it's just a preference. And how are you supposed to know which preference applies on which jobs? Because you just go back and forth and swing in the. Like the. The breeze, you know, like a weed in the wind, just blowing back and forth. You never know. You ever know, never know what direction you're supposed to go when you have just preferences. So you have to make sure that the decisions aren't just based on what mood you're in that day. Guys, we're way behind on this job. We're way behind. We're three days behind. Just get it done. I don't care about this. Do this. You just broke your own process. You just told your team you don't even adhere to your own mission, to your own standards because you're too worried about, you know, trying to get it done. You're losing money, so on and so on. Another reason why you need to charge more. All right, number three. Recognize and reward the behavior you want repeated. It's like dog training. I know. It sounds super simple. It is. It's like dog training. When they do something right, give them a treat, right? Recognize them. Recognition does not always mean money either, by the way. You have to give them money. You can just be recognition in front of the whole team. Hey, guys. You know, morning meeting. Hey, guys. Super awesome. I want to. I just want to give a shout out to Tim over here, because Tim went above and beyond on this customer. He did this, this, and this. And good job, Tim. You know, clap around. Everyone's like, oh, cool. I used to do a give back. I called it the give back. I think it's what I called it, the give back. I told my team that look for opportunities, little opportunities to where you can make someone else's life better, right? It could be with a customer. It could be with your neighbor. It could be whatever. And every week we would have our meeting, and I would go around the room and have everyone tell them what they did. So I kind of gave him, like, set them up for, like, you better do something, because we're going to call it out, right? I'm creating that culture of, like, we want to do stuff. So it could be stuff like, you know, taking the trash can back up by the house, fixing the little loose doorknob in there in the. On the door. It takes two. Two minutes to fix. It could be anything. Little. It doesn't have to be this huge thing. It could be. You got. You went and got the paper for your neighbors, right? Could be. That's it. And so we would celebrate that. We would celebrate how we would go out of our way, you know, how we would Give back and, and do something nice for someone. You do the same thing with your team. So you give them public praise, you give them more responsibility, you give them better opportunities, you give them bonuses, you give them advancement, you give them training, you give them increased autonomy, right? Once they show that they can be responsible and they take ownership, boom. Now you're on your own. Now you get a company truck. Now you're in a lead position. Now you can take on more responsibility and, and, and less oversight because we, you know, we, we trust you and that there's freedoms with that. So people need to know that effort, improvement and leadership are noticed. Noticed. So employees don't rise to the standards you talk about. They rise to the standards you constantly enforce. So going back to the mission statement, the vision and the core values, you can have them plastered all over the walls. But if you break your own standards, then you just give everyone else permission to break them too. So you are constantly under the magnifying glass if you don't. As an owner of a business, you are constantly being watched. You tell your guys, hey, don't be late, guys, don't be five minutes late. And then you're five minutes late three days a week. You're just a hypocrite then, right? Like, don't do that. This is why you have to show up early and you have to leave late. Like, this is why people do this. Because true leaders do that. True eaters eat last. In the military. Your, your leadership eats last. They make sure all the troops eat, and then your leadership goes and eats last. They never get in front. They never, if there's out of the food, they're out of food. Oh, well, that's what leaders do. So as a leader in your business, you are under the scrutiny 24 7. You don't get the benefit of, you know, being lackadaisical. Not saying you can't have bad days, but you don't get to be, you know, expect your team to be on a hundred percent of the time, and you're only on 87% of the time. It doesn't work like that. So one last bonus here. Sometimes it is the employee, Sometimes the employee is the problem. Not every employee is coachable. Some people don't care. Some people resist accountability. Some people are simply in the wrong role or the wrong company. They don't, you know, but don't use that, that one bad employee as an excuse to avoid, you know, finding other people or looking and looking at your own leadership, taking a look at yourself. We've all Made bad hires. It happens. Some people are really good on resumes, are really good at interviews. And then you get the true self 90 days later, right? That's why the whole 90 day provision, probationary period came in, is because most people work hard for 90 days and then they start to drop back to their normal level. So sometimes they, you get a bad one. So a good leader does two things. They create an environment where the right people can thrive and they remove people who repeatedly refuse to meet the standard. If people are not meeting the standard, they're, they're cancer. In your business, you have to get rid of them or it will spread to everyone else in your business. I was talking to one of my clients in the profit accelerator program a couple weeks ago and he's got an employee, super nice guy. You know, he does good work, good character, all that stuff. But he's up, he shows up late every day. He can't get in there till 9 o' clock because he's gotta, he has to go take his kids to school. That's great that you know, he's being a responsible parent. But if you want a job and your job time works from like 8 to 10, or 8 to 5 or whatever, you got to be there at 8. You don't just get to say, well, I gotta drop my parent, my kids off at school, I can't get until 9. That's not, that's not a good excuse. Like they have to figure out a way to make that work if they want to work there. Now I'm not saying you can't be flexible, but if you just give them free reign of showing up whenever they want, then they're not going to be a good employee. And that's, I told him he's got to fire him. Like, dude, you got to fire him. Does it suck? Yes. Is that the right decision? Yes. You have to fire them. So a good leader creates the environment where the right people can thrive. Yeah. Removes the people. Repeatedly repeated refuse to meet the standard. Your job isn't to change everyone. It's your job to create an environment where the right people thrive and the wrong people leave. And if you create that environment, your team will very quickly remove the bad, the bad ones. They won't because they won't. Bad people don't want to be in an environment of high standards and, and winners. They do not want to be there. They will leave very quickly. And the people that are in that, that are the employees that are in that environment, they will not stand for people that are, you know that are lower caliber. This is what it's like in the military, especially in the Marines. You know, when you go into boot camp, they. I mean, we spend. When I went. When I was in boot camp was like 13 weeks long. We spent probably 12 of the 13 weeks in classrooms, like an hour or two a day in a classroom learning about the history of the military. Why do they do this? Because they're saying, you know, people before you did these amazing heroic acts, and you're wearing the same uniform and representing the same, you know, military that they were in, and you better live up to that standard. They. They beat that into your head, like, this is what you're a part of. You're part of something way bigger than you, right? And that's how you. That's why people do things that never even thought was possible. I've done stuff in the military mentally challenging that. Had I not been in the military, I would have quit way, way, way, way earlier. But when you're in that environment where it's like, you know, you're representing all these people, always amazing people, you can't quit. You. You push past that point of when you think you're going to quit. And that's what you got to do in your. In your. In your business. You have to create this environment where everything is bigger than themselves, bigger than you, bigger than your team. And if you do that and you hire the right people, those people will take you farther than you ever thought was possible in your business. If you hire the right people, they will take you much further than you ever thought you could ever take your business. So in closing, your employees will probably never care as much as you do. They just won't. Not their business. That's okay. They don't carry the same risk as you. They don't have the same financial investment as you. They don't lie awake thinking about payroll taxes, callbacks, next work, next month's schedule, sales calls, all that stuff. Stuff to keep ship. And I. They don't have to do that, right? But they can still care deeply about their work, their teammates, the customer, the company's reputation, the mission. They can care deeply about that. And so if your team is engaged or disengaged, stop asking, what's wrong with my employees? And start asking, what kind of environment have I created? What did I do wrong? That's the question you should ask, what did I do wrong? Because if your employees may. Because your employees may show up believing that they're only laying bricks, right? Joining the military, your job as a leader is to help them understand why they're building a cathedral. While you're carrying on the legacy of John Basilone, Chesty Pooler, some of these guys that we learn about, right, that's what. That's what your job as. As a leader, not a manager, as a leader, is to get your people fired up about what they're doing. All right, guys, that's the end of the show. I hope this was helpful. Remember, again, I have a new, new website. You can go and interact and get all the. All the podcasts there. It's hammering grindpodcast.com. you can leave me a voicemail there. You can give me ideas for new upcoming shows, what you like, what you don't like, and it's helpful if you just give me some feedback so I know which direction to go. All right, so the Hammer Grind podcast will have links in the show notes. You know where to find me on the socials. You can just search for the Hammer and Grind podcast. And remember, until next time, profit is not a dirty word.
