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Coming up next on Passion Strike.
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Here s the irony, John.
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I recently heard this and it s resonating with me.
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So in the last few months, someone said it s easier to go 100% than it is like 95% because it makes choice very clear.
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An all-in team has clarity on what the goal is for the collective team and has a reason
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to contribute 100% of themselves.
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And the leader speaks that to the individual is as important as the team and the team is as important as the individual.
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Welcome to Passion Struck.
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Hi, I m your host, Jon R. Miles.
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And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips and guidance of the world s most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you.
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Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself.
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If you re new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays.
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We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes.
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Now, let s go out there and become passion struck.
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Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Episode 406 of Passion Struck, consistently ranked by Apple as the number one alternative health podcast.
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A heartfelt thank you to each and every one of you who return to the show every week, eager to listen, learn, and discover new ways to live better, be better, and make a meaningful impact in the world.
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I have an exciting announcement.
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The Passion Struck quiz, a perfect companion to my soon to be released book, Passion Struck, is now live.
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Curious to know if you re an imitator or a vanquisher in the grand game of life?
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Head over to PassionStruck.com and take the quiz to find out.
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It s more than just a quiz.
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It s your first step towards a life of intention and fulfillment.
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If you re new to the show, thank you so much for being here.
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Or you simply want to introduce this to a friend or a family member, and we so appreciate it when you do that.
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We now have episode starter packs, which are collections of our fans  favorite episodes that we organize into convenient topics that give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do here on the show.
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Either go to Spotify or passionstruck.com slash starter packs to get started.
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And in case you missed it, earlier this week, I had two great interviews.
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The first was with Dr. Mark Hyman, a number one New York Times bestselling author and a trailblazer in functional medicine.
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I welcome Mark back on the program to do a deep dive on the future of medicine.
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The second was with Dr. Elisa Pressman, a developmental psychologist and the beloved voice behind the hit podcast, Raising Good Humans.
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In this episode, Dr. Pressman invites us to let go of the pursuit of perfection in parenting.
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She brings a refreshing perspective that challenges the high-pressure norms of modern-day parenting.
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I also wanted to say thank you for your ratings and reviews, and if you love either of those two episodes or today s, we would so appreciate you giving it a five-star review and sharing it with your friends and families.
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I know we and our guests love to see comments from our listeners.
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Throughout the month of January, I am trying to bring guests onto the program as we get closer to the launch of my book that illustrate what it means to live a passion-struck life.
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Today, I m thrilled to have a remarkable guest, Mike Michalowicz.
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Mike isn t just any business expert.
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He s a game changer in the world of entrepreneurship.
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By the age of 35, he had already founded and sold two multi-million dollar companies.
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He s the best-selling author of transformative books like Profit First, The Pumpkin Plan, Clockwork, and Fix This Next.
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Today, he s here to share his latest insights from his much-anticipated book, All In.
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In this fast-evolving corporate world, building a successful team has never been more challenging.
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With the advent of work-from-anywhere cultures, flexible schedules, and the complexities of bridging generational divides, leaders are constantly searching for the secret sauce to team success.
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They ve tried everything, from office perks like food and games to intensive team-building exercises and training programs.
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But the question still remains, what really makes a team unstoppable?
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Mike s new book, All In, is a beacon of hope for leaders at all levels.
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He reveals his proven formula for assembling and nurturing a team that not only works together, but thrives together in any work environment.
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Today, we re diving deep into the core principles that Mike outlines in this book.
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We re talking about the art of recruiting the right talent, transforming your struggling employees into superstars, and matching individual abilities to both client and company needs.
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It s about creating a workforce that is as invested in your organization s growth as you are.
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So whether you re a startup founder, a team leader, or someone aspiring to elevate their company culture, this episode is for you.
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Get ready to uncover the key formula for building and retaining your dream team and learn how to truly commit to being all in for your employees.
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Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life.
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Now, let that journey begin.
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I am so excited to welcome Mike Michalowicz to the Passion Strike Podcast.
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Welcome, Mike.
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John, it s a pleasure to be with you.
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Thanks for having me.
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I always like to start these episodes out by giving the audience an opportunity to get to know you.
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Do you have a favorite motto or quote that has greatly influenced who you are today?
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I have a few, but there s one that instantly jumped to mind.
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It s attributed to Oscar Wilde.
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I don t know if he actually is the one who said it.
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It s be yourself.
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Everyone else is already taken.
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And for me, it just emphasizes that we need to express ourselves as we naturally are.
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We were put here perhaps for a reason and lean into who you are.
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The amazing thing is people embrace that too.
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People like to see people who are truly themselves.
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Yeah.
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And I love that.
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And I m not sure if you ve ever run across Andreas Widmer.
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He runs the MBA program at Catholic university, but earlier in his life, he was listless and he ended up applying for becoming a Swiss guard for Pope John Paul II.
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And he told me that the Pope ended up becoming just a great mentor for him, but he told him the greatest mystery in life is what you just brought up in your quote.
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And that is finding our uniqueness, that thing that we were put on earth that only we can do.
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And I think that s a great way for us to both start out today.
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That s great.
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And Mike, I understand that you had a formative experience dealing with your daughter s piggy bank that prompted you to change your relationship with work and how you show up in the world.
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Can you discuss that moment and how in some ways it led you to creating your book Profit First?
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Ironically, John, I think sometimes the darkest moments in our lives ultimately become the greatest moments in our lives if we can leverage that.
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And just to give context, I had built some businesses early on.
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I ve been an entrepreneur my entire life and I had some early successes.
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One of my best successes is I built them and sold them.
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Private equity, Fortune 500, and admittedly was arrogant.
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I was like, oh, I got this figured out.
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I m a genius.
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Didn t really appreciate how much good timing or good fortune and good luck played into the success.
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Well, I started spending like crazy because I wanted to live this lifestyle, this large lifestyle, and started becoming an angel investor, spending money left and right, investing in businesses because I m like, I know everything about business clearly.
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This is my early 30s.
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I lost everything out of arrogance and ignorance.
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I didn t come home to my family.
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I d been lying to them by omission.
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I didn t tell them how dark our financial situation was because I didn t accept it.
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I saw our bank account dwindling.
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Logically, I saw that, but emotionally, I wasn t ready to accept it, thinking a big customer would swoop in or some big moment would happen and another investor would buy another one of my businesses.
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I got a call from my accountant saying, you got to declare bankruptcy, which
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took the wind out of me, even though I knew it was coming.
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This is the moment I have to accept it.
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He said, there s one alternative because you can liquidate your few remaining assets to pay your debts, but that s it.
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So I decided option B. I don t think my creditors were responsible for me.
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So I decided to liquidate a few things we had left.
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We got out of our house.
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We got rid of the cars.
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I came home to my family to tell them.
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They did not know what was going on.
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They knew things were stressful.
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I was under constant stress and told my wife.
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I was sobbing, she was sobbing, our three children, and said, we re going to lose our house.
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We re losing everything.
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And my daughter, at the time she was nine years old, John, and I told her, I can t afford to send you to horseback riding lessons.
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It was something, just to give context, it cost about $20 a session for a group of kids to go for a half hour.
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And we were broke because of me.
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My daughter ran out of the room.
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I remember so vividly, she was running out of the room and I m like, that s what I want to do.
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I want to run away.
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But I also felt this loathing for myself that I defined myself as a provider for my family and yet my daughter s running away from me now.
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She wasn t actually running away.
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She was running to her bedroom.
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And she grabbed her piggy bank.
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And she ran back as fast as little gangly legs could.
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And she puts it on the table.
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She goes, Daddy.
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She goes, I know you can t provide for our family anymore, but I ll start doing it.
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And I get emotional.
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Gosh, I ve told this story so many times, I still get emotional.
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It was the rock bottom moment of my life.
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I was so proud of her stepping up and her saving.
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She was actually saving for a horse with nickels and pennies, and one day wanted to save it.
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And I had to compel my kids to save us, save me.
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After that, I went through depression for a couple of years.
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So I share that not because I m proud of it, but I think it s such an important component of sharing that many entrepreneurs, most of us, we disproportionately as a community experience depression over any other communities as entrepreneurs, leaders.
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And I kept on reflecting on that moment, saying, what s to learn here?
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became a seed for change.
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What it did is it stripped me down from, I hope, that arrogance permanently.
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I don t know much about entrepreneurship.
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I m desperately trying to learn.
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I write tons of books because I have to learn this for myself.
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Everything I m writing about is what I m learning for myself.
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So I started this journey of exploration.
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I hope it never ends.
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And I m just curating ideas, assembling them, deploying them now in the businesses I own, and hopefully helping other entrepreneurs in their journey to make it a little bit easier.
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Well, thank you so much for sharing that and for being vulnerable.
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But I also wanted to talk about our kids because I saw myself and my son through your story.
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When I was growing up, I ran cross country and track.
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And I remember just how proud I was when my father was able to make it to the meets.
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especially knowing how busy he was with work.
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And my son also ran cross country and track.
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And at that time I was the chief operating officer for a company.
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And as you know, when you re in that position, you don t have a ton of time, but I would intentionally plan ahead so that I could make as many meets as I possibly could.
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And you had a similar experience that I hope you could share.
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But more importantly, I was hoping that you could share your philosophy of treating work like water.
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This is funny, my experience with track two.
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I remember this one period in my career, this was after my experience with my daughter and losing all of our money.
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I found that there s multiple forms of poverty, if you will, that entrepreneurs experience.
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So I ve set a mission for myself, a life mission to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty.
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What that is, is this gap between what we expect or want in our entrepreneurial endeavors and what we re experiencing.
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Most entrepreneurs, when I survey them, literally from here, I m heading to the airport to speak to a large group of entrepreneurs, and I ll ask them, why did you start your business?
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And I ll hear, for financial freedom, for personal freedom, to do what I want when I want, to express myself, to have a platform to do what my soul is calling out to do.
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And yet we want these things, we don t experience almost any of them.
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And I think one of the biggest time stacks is not financial freedom, it s personal freedom.
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We work exclusively for the business to the direct compromise of family time, personal time, friends.
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So after that experience with my daughter, and now I m like, I gotta start a new business, I gotta get this going.
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I remember there was a consecutive period of five days where I didn t see sunlight at all.
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I would come in about
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three, four in the morning, work until about seven or eight o clock at night, head home just to sleep and get back to the grind.
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And I remember like it was a Saturday or Friday and I look, I came outside.
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I m like, oh my gosh, I wonder what the sun is like, what this place looks like.
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I haven t seen it.
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Well, that was an epiphany that I was missing perhaps the most formidable, most important years of my children s lives because I was always working.
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My wife called me and said, Hey Mike, there s a track meet ironically coming up.
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And our son was playing a track, my youngest son, he was younger than my daughter.
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She s like, you want to come?
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And I m like, yeah, I need to come.
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And it was like three o clock in the afternoon.
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I went.
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I was one of the few parents there.
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This hustle and grind mentality, I think it s more than just bad or inappropriate.
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It s actually promoted.
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There s major pundits who say, you ve got to hustle.
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How bad do you want it?
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Sacrifice everything for the job.
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And that s totally wrong.
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So I was one of the few parents there.
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And just seeing my son and seeing, to your point, John, his face lighting up as he ran by and he saw that I was there.
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It s a moment I ll never forget.
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I also realized when I came back to work, there wasn t more work to do.
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There was still that same huge stack of stuff, but it wasn t like I didn t have to work longer that day.
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What I started doing is reprioritizing what was the most important stuff.
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There s always going to be a stack of to-dos, always.
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So it s not, can you get through the stack?
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It s just, what is the most important stuff in that stack and keep moving that forward.
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The ultimate expression of this, and I actually wrote a whole book about it, it s called Clockwork, is how to get out of always doing.
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And one of the things I do now, and I ve been doing for, I want to say six, maybe seven years, is take a four-week vacation.
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I intentionally remove myself from the business for four consecutive weeks of physical and digital disconnect.
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And then I m allowed to do so.
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I observe my business from afar.
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When I come back, what worked, what didn t work?
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What structures do I need to put in place?
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What contractors do I need that I don t have?
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How do we modify our business?
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And ironically, a business that can operate absent the owner is the healthiest business.
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These are businesses that are sellable, that someone else wants.
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These are businesses where now you can introduce perhaps your best talent, which is not doing the work, but designing the outcomes, seeing the vision of where you want to take the business and being much more strategic about it.
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So that tracked me, served me, but also connected me with my family.
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That is such a huge priority for me.
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And I love that story.
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And something that I talk as much as I can about on this podcast, because like you, I was a C level in a fortune 50 company.
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And people would say to me, man, you must be loving this, all the money you re bringing in the title, the responsibilities you get to work with Michael Dell.
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But what they didn t see was the 80 to a hundred hours per week that I was working.
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I was traveling almost two weeks per month overseas.
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And then when I got back into the office, I was constantly having to play catch up to all the political issues that were going on and the HR issues that I was dealing with.
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And I remember being at such a low point.
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I was so burned out and I ended up going to see a career coach.
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And he said to me, I want you to picture a stool in your kitchen and I want you to go up to it.
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And when you sit on it, I want you to think about it having only one large support underneath it.
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That s the constant grind that s permeating your life.
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What do you think is going to happen when that constant grind catches up with you?
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It s going to make you topple over.
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He goes, now I want you to think about that stool again, but this time it has five or six supports underneath it.
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And these can be anything that you want them to be.
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I chose to make them my physical health, mental health, emotional health.
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spiritual health, career health, and relationship health, but they re the things that you want to make a priority in your life.
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And the important thing is that you had to work on all of those to be balanced in life.
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So I think you and I are saying the same thing, and it s such an important message for the audience to be taking away from today s discussion.
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Oh my gosh, where I have concluded that when I get asked like sometimes at the end of a speech with some Q&A or whatever, the most common question I get is, what s the one thing you didn t share that s most important?
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And I ve concluded in most cases,
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If it hadn t come up before, I will say the number one thing you can do for your business to improve your business radically is take care of your health.
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The physical component, you just talked about that.
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That is such a foundational necessity.
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And for many entrepreneurs, it s the first to go.
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I work with men and women, and what men will often do is hustle and grind.
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They ll first sacrifice time with family.
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Secondarily, they ll sacrifice time with their health.
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Women seem to be the reverse of that.
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They ll sacrifice their health, they ll sacrifice their sleep, never sacrifice the family as a general rule, but health for both men and women get sacrificed for the betterment of the business.
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But then you don t have your health, you don t have your energy, you can t bring the contribution that you could, so it starts diminishing.
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You re running on an empty tank.
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It s the worst thing to do.
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And it s so hard to reverse that, to start prioritizing our health when we feel desperate to make a successful business go in business.
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Yeah.
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And that leads so many people to be apathetic.
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And that s why I like saying being apathetic as a choice and being intentional is also a choice.
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And one is going to lead you into the valley of despair and the other to the tsunami of greatness.
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So pick wisely.
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Pick one.
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Yeah.
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It s definitely a long journey.
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It s, and it s a journey, right.
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For all of us.
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So Mike, now we re going to start going into your brand new book, All In.
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Congratulations on its release.
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Oh, thanks.
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Thanks, John.
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I wanted to talk to you a little bit about entrepreneurship since it s been such a big part of your life.
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And something I ve been looking at is the Kauffman foundation and the Brookings Institute s reports, as well as us census reports from the small business administration.
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And what they re all showing me is that we have a major problem.
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We are approaching decades and decades of entrepreneurial decline.
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And the crazy thing is the reason that millennials and Gen Z, college graduates and high skilled workers aren t starting companies.
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It s because they re taking the path to starting a well-paid job instead of the risk of becoming an entrepreneur.
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And I believe in this era that we re walking into with automation, AI, robotics, everything else that s coming with the digital age, we re going to be displacing so many people.
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and we need more entrepreneurs now more than ever.
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How can we do our part to encourage these generations that are coming up to put more effort into the idea of becoming an entrepreneur?
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Yeah.
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I think one of the, just to add to the challenges, and I do have an idea, one of the challenges too is we see the art of the sale more and more.
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And I think
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Info marketing, I shouldn t put a bad label on it because I think I m the ultimate info marketer.
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The original info product is a book, right?
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I m selling information.
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But I think info marketing is all about building the hype and then the delivery behind some of these things is pretty weak.
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At the end of the day, what makes a business successful?
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is the art of not the sale, but the art of the delivery.
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When you deliver a remarkable product, deliver a remarkable service, you build a reputation for excellence, and that becomes its own sales mechanism.
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It s a harder path.
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It s much easier to try to persuade someone, convince someone to give you money, as opposed to care for them so well that they
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can t wait to give you money.
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That takes longer.
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I think entrepreneurship, what we don t see as entrepreneurs is it s not at first and foremost a pathway to get rich.
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What it is predominantly, I think entrepreneurship is an expression of yourself.
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First, it starts off with an exploration of yourself, then an expression of yourself.
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And once you get to that stage, then it can be a source of tremendous income and tremendous impact.
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I think the greatest thing I do that I experience now is I m doing what I love to do.
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I wake up every day excited that, my gosh, I m living such a privileged life.
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I have colleagues through my businesses.
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I ve got 20 folks who work directly with me and collectively for the businesses I m now involved in, invested in, a few hundred employees.
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It s amazing to see or to have the privilege to give people a career opportunity that supports them not just financially, but also emotionally and relationally.
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So it s a great privilege.
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I wish the next generation of entrepreneurs realized that this is
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The ultimate opportunity for fulfillment, that s what I think entrepreneurship is.
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But we don t see that.
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We see it as, can you make more money here or can you make more money there?
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And the quick money is in getting a job that pays a big salary.
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And the low money and the risky money is in entrepreneurship.
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And it takes time to get to a point where you have stability and good income.
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But gosh, if people just knew it s the ultimate fulfillment is where you find satisfaction.
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Because money without fulfillment just burns away.
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Money complementing fulfillment has meaning and purpose and direction.
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Yes, I think that s such an important message for people to take away.
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And you probably have heard of Jim McKelvey, the founder of Scratch.
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Yeah, sure.
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I know the name, man.
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And I had a conversation with him, and I think finding fulfillment, as you were saying, is being in tune with our inner self, which so few of us are doing today because we re distracted by everything that s around us.
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But once you tune into that, you start understanding what your unique gifts are.
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And what comes out of that is you start to understand
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The problem that you were put on earth that only you can solve.
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And to me, that s at the heart of what it is to be an entrepreneur.
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It s finding that problem.
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That is so massive that you were put on earth to solve it with your unique skills.
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And when you do that, your life, as you were talking about.
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You re not going to be worried about the paycheck.
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You re going to be enjoying the ride and just the fulfillment that comes with it.
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And to your point, if you stick with it, you re going to have such a better life than the one that you re pursuing now.
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And it s so hard for people to see that long-term perspective.
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Yeah, you asked in the beginning what s your favorite saying.
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I have my own little saying is we teach what we need or we provide what we need inside.
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I like my little rhymes.
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But at the end of the day, at least for me, every book I m writing is really trying to fix something for myself or to serve myself.
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Every exceptional product out there, I remember Zappos, what was their tagline?
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Delivering happiness.
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Tony Hsieh was in search of happiness for himself.
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And sadly, if you know his story, it didn t end that way.
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But so interesting, we ll see usually the most successful companies, what is putting outward is what the leader or the leadership or the owner needs inwardly.
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And when we are congruent with that, when we understand that, then it becomes a joyous expression.
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So every time I m working, I m like, oh my gosh, this is exactly what I need, and I m fulfilling this.
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And that also means there are other people out there you can serve, because they may not have the entire set of needs you do, but they have a portion of it.
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And because you re serving so deeply for yourself, you can serve them deeply in that portion of their life.
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So whatever an entrepreneur does, when they re trying to satisfy an internal need and see that they re really teaching themselves, they re really caring for themselves, they re actually going to care for others in the greatest way possible.
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Oh, thank you for sharing that.
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And something I don t think a lot of my listeners know about is that I did possibly the last interview with Tony.
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Before he died, I think it was just three days before.
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And during that time, I was the editor in chief of a publication called bold business.
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And I had created something called the bold leader spotlight.
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And as I was interviewing Tony, I got to talk to him about what it meant to be considered a bold leader.
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And I was just blown away with how humble he was and what a beautiful soul he was.
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I never had the opportunity to meet him and only heard stories about him.
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And I heard he was an extraordinary human going through a very difficult journey.
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And I think if I can parlay that into the folks listening in is the journey of entrepreneurship, as much as
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It s of service.
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I shared it.
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It s really an exploration and reflection back upon yourself.
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The product or service we deliver isn t necessarily always a direct correlation, though.
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Just one example I use is like toilet paper.
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If you are a toilet paper manufacturer, you may not have a passion about toilet paper, but there may be an internal calling for environmental responsibility.
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Or maybe you grew up where you were poor, and maybe there s a way to deliver your product economically so it can serve a poorer community.
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regardless of the vehicle we re driving, selling toilet paper, writing books, whatever it is, sometimes my books are used as toilet paper, regardless of what it is, you can take that vehicle down the path that allows you to explore and satisfy the needs you have inside.
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Absolutely.
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And thank you so much for sharing that.
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So many gems for the audience to take into account and apply in their own life.
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And for those of you who might not be able to see it, Mike has a sign that says going all in.
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And in case you can t see it behind him, Mike has something that says, let s go all in.
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And I remember when I first heard this slogan, I was a midshipman at the Naval Academy and my cross country coach would say to me, you re either all in or you re all out.
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And I think that s a great way to open up this discussion about what it means to be all in.
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It means to bring your entirety of your contribution to the greater service of the collective goal, should there be a collective goal set.
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Here s the irony, John.
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I recently heard this and it s resonating with me.
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In the last few months, someone said it s easier to go 100% than it is 95%.
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Because it makes choice very clear.
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For example, say I want to change my diet and I want to reduce sugar intake.
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It s easier to say I m not going to have any desserts, 100% all in on that or all out, as opposed to break it once a month.
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Because that leaves this cloudiness of, oh, can I do this month?
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And if I do it on a Friday, but it s the end of the month, and I do it the next day on a Saturday and have some more dessert, because there s two different months, does that count?
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There s cloudiness.
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When there s 100%, it s, oh, it s very clear.
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No, I ve committed not to having dessert.
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I m not going to have dessert.
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An all-in team has that clarity.
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And I think it starts with the leader.
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It s like, this is what our win is.
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It s clearly defined.
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Win may not necessarily be beating the other team.
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It may be simply competing till the very end, regardless of your ranking or positioning against others.
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It s the best representation of yourself.
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So an all-in team has clarity on what the goal is for the collective team.
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has a reason to contribute 100% of themselves.
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And the leader speaks that too.
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The individual is as important as the team, and the team is as important as the individual.
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There s that collective.
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I can t wait to explore this.
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And I m going to just use a story from one of my past experiences that we can explore during our conversation.
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When I was hired at Lowe s home improvement, I was brought in to clean up the information security and operations teams.
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And Lowe s had just come through the worst hacking incident at that time in retail history.
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And I remember during my first week, I sat down with the head of HR and it ends up becoming a completely different discussion than the one I thought I was going to have with her.
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And she said, John, we have just done an employee survey to understand the engagement rate across different departments.
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And out of 360,000 plus employees at Lowe s, including all the stores, all the supply chain facilities, all the corporate functions, you have the second lowest scoring group in the entire company.
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And I was like, you couldn t have shared that with me while you were interviewing me.
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So I did what many leaders do.
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I went out and I started talking to my peers and to different customers of the group.
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And what came back was they would all say, this group is the worst.
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They can t do anything right.
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They re not motivated.
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They re not inspired.
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They re just putting in time.
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And after that, I started meeting with every single employee that I possibly could in the organization.
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I remember going in at two o clock in the morning, just so I could catch people who were on the late shifts.
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And ultimately what I learned is that they didn t understand how the jobs that they were doing mattered to the corporate strategy to serving our customers.
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And most importantly to the customers themselves.
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And I think unfortunately that there are a lot of people who feel that way.
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In fact, Gallup did a poll in 2022 that revealed that over 60% of people feel emotionally detached at work with almost 20% of them feeling miserable.
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In your view, what are the causes of this detachment?
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Such a powerful story.
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Yeah.
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It reminds me of David Marquette.
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Kett s book, he was with the Naval Academy too, and he wrote the famous book, Turn This Ship Around.
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And I think the moral is, to your story, we experienced at Lowe s, his story, and what my research is, is all the same, that a leader can transform a team.
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And it s not that the people need to be transformed, they simply need to be recognized and given direction.
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In David Marquette s book, it s the lowest performing submarine in the entire naval force.
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They re all sea players, everyone on that ship.
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And they replaced only one person.
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David Marquette became the captain and within a year they became the top performing ship in the entire
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naval fleet because of the leader.
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And so what does the leader do is the question, of course.
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First of all, embrace the people as individuals.
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There is a concept I write about called psychological ownership.
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And I think once people understand this, it will transform how you manage your team and it engages your employees at the highest level.
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There s two types of ownership.
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There s what s called legal ownership and psychological ownership.
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But the only time someone feels like they own something is only when they have psychological ownership, regardless of legal ownership.
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So the story here is I own stock in Ford, and I remember driving down the road past a Ford factory, and I did not look at the factory and say, wow, I own part of that.
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Few of those bricks in that building are mine.
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I simply said, oh, where s my dividend?
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Legal ownership does not bring about that emotional state of owning, but it does bring about a sense of obligation.
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I do legally own that.
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Where s my money?
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Psychological ownership is where we feel that we re part of it.
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It s actually coherent or connected to our identity.
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And there s three elements that bring around psychological ownership.
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One is a sense of control.
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I can give it direction.
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It s under my authority.
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The second is intimate knowledge.
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The more detail I know about it, the more intimate I am with all the elements, the more I feel it s part of me.
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And the last part is the ability to personalize.
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The more I can give it my own sense.
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So I actually have a Ford pickup truck, a small one, and my Ford pickup truck I actually, interestingly, don t legally own.
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The bank owns it.
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I m making my installments on it.
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But I have psychological ownership, so I feel it s mine.
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And what is it?
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I have total control over it.
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I decide where I drive it.
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I decide where I park it.
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I put it where I want.
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That s control.
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The second thing is personalization.
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I program the radio stations.
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I put the bumper sticker on the back.
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That gives me a sense that it s more mine.
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And the last thing is a bit of knowledge.
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I know every little button and doohickey and little setting on it.
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Therefore, the more I know about it, the more I feel possessive of it.
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SPEAKER_00
What Marquette did, I bet you what you did, either with a cognitive realization you re doing psychological ownership or just intuitive approach, I suspect you, I know David Marquette, and I ve seen other people do this too, to great effect, and we re doing it with our own teams too here, is you give your people
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The ability to get more understanding of the work that they re doing.
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Why are they doing this?
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What exactly does it do?
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What is the bigger impact it has?
3
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The ability to have some control.
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Where are you going to direct this?
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How can you improve the work you do?
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How can you make it more fun for yourself?
3
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But how can I have a bigger impact on the company and the ability to personalize?
3
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And when we do that, people who are quote unquote C players and the worst performing teams sometimes become the absolute best.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I have such a great parallel story.
3
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I have to tell you, when I was an ensign, the lowest level of Naval officers, I get sent out on my first deployment and it s on a destroyer called the Compte Gras.
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And she ends up coming out into the Mediterranean late because she was the first Navy vessel in over a hundred years that outside of being in wartime had been sabotaged.
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So I get on the ship and I ve never been in any organization
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before or after where the morale was so low.
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He barely even saw the commanding officer.
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He knew he was losing his job.
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And all he did was sit in a stateroom all day and sulk.
3
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And while I was there, not only did we lose him, we lost the executive officer and the engineering officer as well, because the petty officer involved
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in the sabotage had been part of the engineering department.
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And then fast forward, I get on my next ship, which is the USS Kidd.
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Both of them are destroyers.
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And I remember meeting our commanding officer and he was just all in.
3
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You could feel his passion and you could feel the passion throughout the ship.
3
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And he basically treated you that if you had a specialty, you were numero uno in his mind.
3
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He s going to put you in charge, trust your judgment, et cetera.
3
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And I was on the ship for about two and a half months.
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And I remember one day I was standing in the command and control center and there were two OSA gunships who out of nowhere decided to open up their scud missile doors, pointing their missiles right at us.
3
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And we go into general quarters.
3
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And then he looks at me and he says, John, what do you think I should do?
3
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Should I take them out?
3
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Or do you think this is purely posturing on their part?
3
SPEAKER_01
And I happened to be the intelligence officer on.
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board, and I had the best perspective from everything that I had been studying on what I thought the threat posture was.
3
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And I told him that I think that he s just posturing.
3
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And so we ended up doing nothing.
3
SPEAKER_01
And fortunately, that s what it turned out to be.
3
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To be honest, it showed me
3
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how much confidence a senior officer could have in you, and what it meant to be guided by a leader who actually believed in you, compared to the opposite that I had previously been encountered with.
3
SPEAKER_01
How do you think a leader s passion and authenticity play a role in their success?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, exactly that.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m going to go back to David Marquette s book because it resonates with me and we can talk about it in some private institutions too.
3
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But in David Marquette s book, one of the things he changed as the commander of the ship was instead of people asking permission, may I increase throttle by 10% permission granted, became I intend
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to increase fraud by 10% proved.
3
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What s interesting is in that subtle language change, people are coming with authority and control.
3
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And so they feel more sense of control.
3
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It s not that they have to sulk or bow down to an authority.
3
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They re simply now becoming a collaborative.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that s what it sounded like in your situation too, is a collaborative.
3
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And he allowed you to exert authority and control over where your domain of knowledge is and collaborate with you, taking your ideas.
3
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That s what great leaders do.
3
SPEAKER_00
So in private organizations,
3
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The danger is micromanagement.
3
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And it still exists today.
3
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Most businesses, specifically small businesses, are restricted in their growth specifically because of the leader of that organization.
3
SPEAKER_00
The vast majority, I think it s over 97%, maybe 98% of businesses will never have more than three full-time employees plus the owner.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the reason is because the owner is making all the decisions and controlling everything.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s a Hindu goddess named Kali.
3
SPEAKER_00
And this Hindu goddess is a figure, it s a female s head with six arms.
3
SPEAKER_00
You ve probably seen it before.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that s what we become as a business.
3
SPEAKER_00
We become one mind, the owner, that says, do this, do that, do this.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the typewriter goes back, do this, do that, and keeps repeating.
3
SPEAKER_00
their work schedule I tell them I m like if you re doing that you have a nine to five work schedule and I m not saying nine in the morning five o clock at night I m saying you only work at nine o clock at night till five in the morning that s the nine to five because during the rest of the day you re inserting yourself in all the decision making you re a micromanager and that diminishes
3
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Trust.
3
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Any form of trust.
3
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Basically, people are being programmed, if you will, through repetition that I don t trust you to make any decisions.
3
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Just do what my instruction set is and wait for the next instruction.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that inherently limits the growth and the health of any organization.
3
SPEAKER_00
So what we need to do as leaders is give people control and authority.
3
SPEAKER_00
Not 100%.
3
SPEAKER_00
This is something that becomes collaborative.
3
SPEAKER_00
But give people control and authority.
3
SPEAKER_00
Give people the ability to personalize things.
3
SPEAKER_00
Again, not 100%, not a free reign, but give them the ability to give it their own flavor.
3
SPEAKER_00
Give them the ability to gain intimate knowledge.
3
SPEAKER_00
The reason we don t want to just abandon things, that s called abdication.
3
SPEAKER_00
So micromanagement is dangerous, but also is abdication.
3
SPEAKER_00
Abdication is like, it s yours, just run with it.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then there s no accountability.
3
SPEAKER_00
In abdication, people start building fiefdoms, their own kind of territory, and they block other people out.
3
SPEAKER_00
So what we want to do is a little bit of the Goldilocks, we want to get that
3
SPEAKER_00
oatmeal just right or whatever she was eating, the right temperature.
3
SPEAKER_00
We don t, we shouldn t micromanage, we shouldn t abdicate.
3
SPEAKER_00
What we should do is agree to outcomes and observe the outcomes.
3
SPEAKER_00
Where do you intend in your role in this company, in this organization, where do you intend to take us?
3
SPEAKER_00
What do you intend to achieve for yourself?
3
SPEAKER_00
What s your vision for yourself?
3
SPEAKER_00
And then keep pointing back to the outcome and allow people to navigate the path there on their own accord, but always stick with that outcome.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s what a great leader does.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I love it.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I have a chapter in my upcoming book that I call the gardener leader.
3
SPEAKER_01
And what I advocate for is that we need leaders who are eyes on, but hands off.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I love that.
3
SPEAKER_01
And one of the people I interviewed about this concept was General Stan McChrystal, who could be
3
SPEAKER_01
a four star like he was in Afghanistan leading a campaign.
3
SPEAKER_01
But if he s got a strategic target, he can t be micromanaging a special forces unit that s operating on the ground or at sea.
3
SPEAKER_01
He s got to realize that he s given them enough training, enough knowledge, and overall the strategic knowledge of what he wants accomplished on that mission.
3
SPEAKER_01
But he s got no idea what s happening on the ground and he needs to trust that his soldiers are going
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to perform the best that they possibly can in alignment with their values, doing the right thing, and what they ve been taught.
4
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And I think that s exactly what you said.
4
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And it s something that so many leaders need to be doing with their teams.
4
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We also need to give people a safe environment.
4
SPEAKER_02
And as interesting as I was researching out for All In,
4
SPEAKER_02
I was looking into what represents safety, and I looked at Maslow s Heartache of Needs.
4
SPEAKER_02
There s multiple levels, all the way from the most physiological needs, like water, food, shelter, physical safety, up to relational safety, communication, emotional safety, where we feel comfortable just being ourselves.
4
SPEAKER_02
What s interesting is even in today s workforce, a professional environment, you think physical safety is not a concern.
4
SPEAKER_02
Everyone s got a building.
4
SPEAKER_02
My own office, we ran a survey here, anonymous.
4
SPEAKER_02
And collectively, we have about 20 folks.
4
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And I asked, do you ever feel physically unsafe?
4
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Is there anything that we can do to improve your sense of safety?
4
SPEAKER_02
And multiple people said, yeah, the dark alleyway outside the back of our building.
4
SPEAKER_02
There s a way out of our building.
4
SPEAKER_02
It goes down an alley, and it s pitch black at nighttime.
4
SPEAKER_02
But it s the shortest way to get to the parking lot.
4
SPEAKER_02
And so what I learned is starting around 2 or 3 o clock in the afternoon, my colleagues, my team here, is worrying about getting in their car around 5 or 6 o clock because the sun sets in the wintertime pretty early here.
4
SPEAKER_02
My gosh, I m going to be walking around in the pitch black.
4
SPEAKER_02
So all we did is we installed string lights.
4
SPEAKER_02
And with these string lights, now it s always illuminated.
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There s also steps back there, so it s safer for that.
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But now my team is not worrying about walking down a dark alley.
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It s an illuminated space.
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I didn t realize it, but two hours to three hours a day, there was worry, but that s now been eliminated.
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Great leaders are always looking to make sure their team feels safe in all fashions.
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That s just physical safety.
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There s relational safety.
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Can I be my authentic self here without repercussions?
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So what a great leader will do is be their authentic self and share some of the warts and ugliness of their own life s experience to invite other people to feel comfortable expressing the same thing.
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And when people do, the leader applauds that and recognizes that differentiation.
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The last thing, just to put a little bowtie on this, is I was studying where are the strongest teams and is there any commonality?
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And the one thing that kept coming back was the more diverse the team, different backgrounds, different experiences, different races, different gender, the more variability, the stronger the team came.
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Because there wasn t that echo chamber of, we all believe the same thing.
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All these different perspectives came.
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And then this common bond came about from diversity because of different perspectives.
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Greater understanding, greater empathy, but also greater support for each other.
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Yeah, I love that.
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And I want to ask you another question.
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And this one is along the lines of how do we encourage employees to aspire to be more than what they re doing at work?
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Because Gartner research from 2022 had just the startling statistic that a significant number of employees, something like 82% value is being seen beyond their work roles.
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However, only 45% of them felt that their organization views them that way.
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How can businesses better acknowledge and support individuality and the personal aspirations of their employees?
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Yeah, such a great question.
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And I ll share a little personal story.
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It s embarrassing, but it opened my eyes to this.
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My second business was in forensic investigations, computer forensics specifically.
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And we were doing large corporate cases, intellectual property theft, and so forth.
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Well, on third year in business, I ran the numbers in my office.
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I m like, my gosh, we can have a $10 million a year.
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Up to that point, I never had a business that surpassed $10 million in revenue.
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So I m like, this is it.
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I called my team together.
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We were brick and mortar at the time.
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We had 30 employees.
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I had a big whiteboard.
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I put $10 million on there and then put a big sticky note in front of it, had Eye of the Tiger playing in the background, call the team in.
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I m like, this is the year we re going to do, we ll just sign off $10 million in revenue.
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It was like a deflating balloon.
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Like no one cared.
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And I was like, hold on.
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Did I not play the music loud enough?
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This is amazing.
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My trusted personal assistant, and she s an extraordinary colleague, her name is Patty, came to me and said, Mike, if we achieve $10 million in revenue, you get the bigger house, you get the new car, but why should we care?
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It was the first time I had a realization that the vision for an organization
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is the vision of the leadership.
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It s our dream, our expectation we ve set for ourselves.
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But it doesn t mean it s the dream for our individuals.
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My job from that day forward was to learn the vision everyone had for themselves.
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And
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One person wanted to buy a new house for the first time.
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Another person wanted to learn to play the saxophone or something.
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Another person wanted to learn a new language.
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Once I started learning and caring about what people wanted individually, I realized my job was to help
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I could block and tackle or at least keep that dream in front of them.
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That their job was in part a means to the end of achieving that first house of theirs or buying that saxophone.
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But that was my job.
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And once I started putting their individual visions in front of them and that became our regular dialogue, how are you doing on that progress?
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Is there anything I can do?
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Some introductions I can make?
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Then they started caring about the corporate dream because that s the dream of mine.
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They started to reciprocate.
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One little caveat here I learned is my job is not to provide that dream, meaning I don t gift that new house, even if I could, I shouldn t, and I don t gift him the saxophone and so forth.
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And the reason is a gift doesn t have value.
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It s achieving an outcome without the effort, and it s actually in the effort where we feel pride, confidence in ourself, and growth happens.
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Last night, very first recording, I was watching the college football championship.
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Michigan was playing, Washington.
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Could you imagine they show up to the final game and the college football championship, and the referees say, hey, why even play the game?
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People are going to get hurt here.
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We re just going to grant it to Washington.
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You just win.
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Or Michigan, we re just going to give it to you.
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You guys are the winners.
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No game.
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how we feel.
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It would be the biggest letdown for all the fans.
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It would be the biggest letdown for the players.
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But we haven t proven it.
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It s in the journey, which is painful at times, when that accomplishment becomes significant.
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It becomes the road marker.
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So again, my job is not to provide the vision.
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It is simply to keep them accountable to their vision.
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And when I keep them accountable to their own vision and maybe provide some blocking and tackling, they re going to keep me accountable to our vision and block and tackle for me.
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Oh, I wish we had so much more time to go through all the principles in this book, because it is truly amazing.
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But for the listener, some of the reasons that you want to pick up this book is to understand the principle of psychological ownership that Mike goes through.
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He talks about safety and team fit over versatility, how ability and desire factor into everything.
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that you end up doing at work to foster ownership, which we ve talked a little bit about.
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Intentional alignment among team members, building community in remote environments, and so much more.
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Mike, what is the best place that people can go to if they want to learn more about you?
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The best place is my website.
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I do have a shortcut to get there.
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My last name, Michalowicz, is hard to pronounce.
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It s impossible to spell.
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So there s a shortcut.
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It s my nickname from grade school, which was Mike Motorbike.
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It s the only PG rated nickname I ve ever had, but you can go to Mike motorbike as in the motorcycle.com.
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All in my new book is there and you get free chapters from it.
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All my books are there.
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I also used to write for the wall street journal and you can get all those articles for free.
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It s all for small business and for leaders.
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Mike motorbike.com.
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Mike, it was such an honor to have you on today s show and congratulations again on the launch of this fantastic book.
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All in.
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Thanks brother.
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And congratulations on your upcoming book.
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Thanks for having me, John.
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I thoroughly enjoyed that interview with Mike Michalowicz, and I wanted to thank Mike and Portfolio for the honor of having him appear on today s show to discuss this book all in.
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Links to all things Mike will be in the show notes.
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Please use our website links if you purchase any of the books from the guests that we feature here on the show.
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All proceeds go to supporting the show.
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Videos are on YouTube at both our main channel at John R. Miles and our Clips channel at Passionstruck Clips.
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Check them out and please subscribe.
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Advertiser deals and discount codes are in one convenient place at passionstruck.com slash deals.
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You can find me on all the social platforms at Jon R. Miles.
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You can sign up for our weekly work-related newsletter on LinkedIn, or if you want to be part of the Passionstruck challenge, you can sign up for our personal development newsletter on passionstruck.com.
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You re about to hear a preview of the Passionstruck podcast interview that I did with Dr. Judd Brewer, who comes back to the show to discuss his brand new book, The Hunger Habit, which is based on his deeply researched plan
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to help understand what s going on in our brains so that we can heal the guilt and frustration that we experience around eating.
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With anxiety, we learn to worry, but with eating, this is where comfort food comes in.
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This is where the term stress eating comes in.
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If we eat some food, our brain says, hey, that tasted pretty good.
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Why don t you eat when you re stressed?
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And so we start to learn these habits of eating, not when we re hungry, but when we re stressed, when we re bored, when we re angry, or just simply when we see food, because it s like, oh, that looks good, boom.
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We often lose the ability to really check in with ourselves, to ask, am I actually hungry?
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That s what habit is all about, is automatic behavior.
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The joke is about this, I m on a seafood diet, I see food and I eat it, that type of thing.
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Well, that s our survival
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brain that s been co-opted in modern times.
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The fee for this show is that you share it with family or friends when you find something useful or interesting.
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If you know someone who wants to learn how to become all-in at work, then definitely share this show with them.
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The greatest compliment that you can give us is to share this show with those that you love and care about.
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In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen.
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Until next time, go out there and become PassionStruck.