919. Q&AF: Accountability With Team Members, Dealing With Loss & Finding Good Employees

Yeah, we were sleeping on the floor.

Now, my jury box froze.

Fuck up bowl, fuck a stove.

Counted millions in a cold.

Bad bitch, booted swole.

Got her own bank rope.

Can't fold, just a no.

Headshot, case close, close, close.

What is up, guys?

It's Andy Prissela and this is the show for the realists say goodbye to the lies to fakeness and delusions of modern society.

And welcome to motherfucking reality, guys.

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to talk about the topics with us.

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All the time.

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Because we're smarter than everybody.

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Yes.

And better looking, too.

That's right.

And you guys can, you know, see my reading displays on full effect.

Yeah.

Uncut.

Uncircumcised.

Uncircumcised.

Yeah, man.

What's going on with you, though, man?

You good?

Yeah.

Always getting to check in.

Yeah, man.

I got like dry needling done all across my traps and neck.

I was getting these cramps done in my neck real bad.

So I had Taylor

hit me with the dry needles.

Fuck.

Yeah.

I feel like I got beat with a baseball bat, bro.

I forgot.

I haven't had that done since I had my shoulder rehab.

And I forgot like how that stuff makes you pretty sore.

Taylor's mean, bro.

Oh, she gets in there.

I mean, sweetest girl ever.

I don't think she's mean.

I think she's just

her best at what she does.

Listen, I've worked with a lot of people, dude.

A lot of PTs, a lot of

if you, if you don't,

if you need PT here in St.

Louis and you don't consider Taylor Summers,

you're not going to get as good service.

That's real.

It's the truth.

It's absolutely.

I mean, I've been an athlete my whole life.

I've had a hundred fucking different people work on me, bro.

She knows knows what the fuck she's doing.

Yeah, no doubt about that, man.

No doubt about that, man.

But yeah, it's uh, it's QA.

If you guys know how this works, uh, we got some calls, we've got some write-ins,

and uh, let's make some people better today.

Yeah, man, I got some good ones for you.

All right, I bet you do.

Let's uh, we're gonna start off with a call.

Let's get Wes, Wes, Wes on the phone.

Let's give Wes a call.

Hello, Wes, what's going on, my man?

Hey, what's going on?

What's going on with you, brother?

Where are you at right now?

I'm in Arizona.

Ooh.

All right.

Arizona's not bad.

AZ.

Yeah, it's not too bad.

Northern Arizona.

It's my 28th birthday today, too.

Oh, dude.

Hey, look at that, man.

Happy birthday.

You want to sing happy birthday to you or something?

Happy birthday to wes

what's up bro awesome dude how you doing we're doing good man 28 huh

28 yeah 28 big 28 it's awesome i'm so excited to get this call on my birthday too hey

dj's uh gonna give you the happy ending too you know all right all right

He just volunteered it.

He just sign language it to it.

Yeah, I got you, bro.

I got you.

All right, Wes.

What's going on, man?

What's your question?

How can you get helped today?

Let's see.

So I'll give you a little bit of background.

I recently became a team leader last November.

I worked for a well-known grocery retail store.

We've been doing great.

We've been hitting KPIs.

You guys carry form energy?

Yeah.

An opportunity I've really had is with accountability with team members.

know,

it's just been, it's been kind of a struggle with certain team members.

Some team members do really great.

I feel like we have a really good team.

It's just opportunities as a team leader, definitely being a new team leader,

having those conversations.

I've tried some positive reinforcement,

but some team members are just really hard-headed.

Me being 28, a lot of my team members are older in their 40s and 50s.

I've had one team team member tell me, like, you know what?

I have a personal problem with taking direction from younger guys.

And I'm like, dude, honestly, that's a personal problem.

I'm doing my best I can as your team leader to work together as a team and get us to this common goal.

But that's just a big opportunity I've had is just

how to hold team members accountable and

guide the team in the direction that I want us to go.

Cool.

Yeah, bro.

First of all,

leadership of people is the the hardest job on the planet.

Management, leadership, these things are difficult.

And to become effective at these things is a lifelong journey.

So you shouldn't be down on yourself that it's a struggle your first time doing it.

It's very hard.

Okay.

Let's see.

Where do I want to start this?

Because I got a lot to say here.

I can very much so relate to the

older people not wanting to take you seriously and not wanting to listen.

You know, I started my business when I was 19.

And by the time, you know, I was 25, I was leading people that were in their 30s, mid, late 30s, that didn't, you know, want to take me seriously because they were 10 years older than me.

And unfortunately, that is the mentality of

lower skill people sometimes.

They believe that there's some sort of seniority based around other things besides skill set.

They think that if they've been there a long time, that they get some sort of preference, or they think that because they're older, they know more.

And these things just simply aren't the ways of the world.

So I wouldn't pay any mind to that, bro.

And if you have the ability to start to work people like that out, you will do better and move faster with younger people for a couple reasons.

One, they'll listen to you better.

Two, they're probably hungry.

Three, they haven't grown to accept the reality of their life, meaning a lot of these guys that you're probably dealing with are in a situation where they think, man, this is as good as it's going to be.

So I don't really give a fuck.

I'm not going to listen to Wes tell me what I can and can't do.

I'm just going to to do my shit and be left alone.

And so getting rid of those people over the course of time is important if you want to develop an effective team, because those people create cancer in the group.

They will undermine you.

They will talk shit about you when you walk away.

They will tell the other team members not to listen to you and that you don't know what you're talking about.

And that stuff will kill your ability to create

an effective offensive front with your team.

And so I would start making a list of the people that you think can be saved and the people you know cannot be saved and start working to replace those people

moving forward.

Now, with all that being said,

let's focus on how do I get the team to execute with a positive attitude.

Me being an inexperienced leader, having these conversations.

We'll start with the group and then I'll get to the conversations.

Okay.

With the group, this is going to require you to sit down with the group, paint a detailed vision of not just what you're trying to accomplish, but what will happen if you accomplish and what that means to them in their career path.

So at the end of the day, most people are pretty selfish, which is fine, but

you have to understand as a leader how to utilize their selfishness.

And

I don't even want to say it's selfishness.

I just think it's human nature, right?

We have to look after ourselves.

So you have to be effective at leveraging that want and need for them

to the team's benefit.

And the way that you do that is by understanding that they are only going to work

at their best when they are inspired to be their best, not motivated to be their best, not commanded to be their best, inspired to be their best.

And the difference being is that when they are inspired to be their best, that is coming from themselves.

That is their own idea.

That is their own conclusion.

I want to do great because it will lead to this.

And your job as a leader is to create the path and make the path understood, not just once, but consistently.

Okay.

And that would sound something like this.

Hey, guys, look, I know that you think this is just another grocery job, but here's the thing.

It's not.

Here's what we're trying to do long term.

Here's what we have to do now.

And if we do this now, here's where it will lead to you potentially upgrading your life if we win together as a team.

And so that needs to be a fundamental foundation of the communication that you have between you and your team on a consistent basis.

When you meet with them, every single time that should be communicated in one way or another.

All right.

And then, you know, you mix in the other issues that need to be addressed into that talk.

But everything should be always connected back to what we're trying to accomplish as a team and what that's going to mean for them.

And if you do that, you'll have enough of the team, like you already said, I've got some great people.

Those people will get super excited.

And when those people get super excited, just like the negative people are a cancer, the positive people will spread goodwill and inspiration throughout your team.

And then, you know, it's important that you do the first part I said by cutting out the bad people eventually.

So that is the gist of how you can lead a team

attitude-wise.

Now, dude, this could be a whole day.

I could sit with you for a whole week and go through the nuances of this, but I'm giving you what I think is the cliff notes that we can answer within the timeframe of this show.

Now,

having those conversations, and by the way, you're welcome to ask any follow-up questions after this.

Having the conversations is usually

difficult because we frame it as difficult.

Okay.

We, as a leader, will say, Man, I got to go, you know, get on to DJ because DJ is not doing his job.

And you need to reframe that in your mind.

I'm not going to get on to DJ because DJ is not doing his job.

I'm going to point out to DJ that DJ is not doing his job, and then I'm going to make him understand what that's going to do to his vision long term.

Okay.

So

it's not by force, it's by

clarity that's correct.

So

and then that way, just like with the inspiration, the ability to correct the path comes from inside.

It's all the

yeah, bro, because people respond best to their own ideas, okay?

So, our job as leadership is to say, hey, if you do a great job, here's how you do a great job.

If you do a great job, this is what the team will do.

And if the team does this, this is what it'll mean to you.

And then when they're fucking off, you reverse engineer that back to, hey,

this is what this is going to mean for you.

It's going to mean that you don't have a fucking place here, bro.

And you're going to go from thing to thing to thing.

And you're going to end up bitter like Tony over there, who's 55 years old and fucking hates it here, right?

So

the conversation that that's the gist of the framework of the conversation, but the conversation

to make it easy, you have to remember that you're doing them a favor.

You are doing them a favor by showing them where they're messing up

and how they're going to improve.

And a lot of people that lead assume that people don't want to get better.

So when they talk to them, they're very abrasive about it.

When in reality, most people do want to get better, they just don't know how to get better and they're not aware.

So reframing the hard talk into a talk of

I actually really care about DJ and his family, dude.

I don't want him to fucking lose.

So DJ, come here, man.

I need to talk to you, dude.

Here's the deal.

This sucks.

This sucks and this sucks.

I appreciate all you do here.

Okay.

This is fucking amazing.

You do great here.

You do great here.

You do great here.

But if you can't clean up these things, dude, we're not going to be able to win as a team.

And if we can't win as a team, all the things that you're trying to do within this organization will not happen.

They're not going to happen.

And look at Tony over there.

He's 55 years old.

It didn't just happen for him.

You have to make it happen.

So having a conversation that's framed, you know, you've probably heard of like the positivity sandwich, you know, where you tell them what they did good, then you tell them what they suck at and how to fix it.

And then you close the meeting with what they did good again.

And that generally works pretty good

for getting people to hear the information.

You know, everybody likes to be reminded and valued for the things that they do good.

But, you know, you have to be able to critique them and coach them.

And I think a lot of people that struggle with leadership and management,

the reason they struggle with it so hard is because

they're not realizing

that our job as leaders is to develop the people and serve our people,

not just to get our goal.

Like

our team won, you know, 15 games.

That's okay, you know, but if your motivation is just for yourself to win the 15 games and you're not pouring into players, the players aren't going to want to work for you.

They're not going to want to sweat for you.

They're not going to want to fight for you.

And so

it's this very synergistic

reality.

You know, if you care about them and you help them and you're honest with them, they will reciprocate that with giving their best.

And that's how great teams work.

You know, the hardest coaches that I've ever had in my life

were actually the ones I'm most thankful for.

I fucking hated them at the time, but when I look back on my life, I'm like, fuck, I'm glad that guy was straight with me because it helped me straighten out a lot faster.

So, when he learns who they cared the most.

That's right.

And, dude, as a leader, even if it's of a team, a sports team,

a charity organization,

whatever, in business, it's all the same.

It's all the same.

So, yeah, bro, look, just start reframing these conversations as you're actually helping them and you're helping their family, and that will help you want to have them more.

But that whole, I mean, I just unloaded a lot of shit.

But this whole thing that we're talking about here is an art and it's something that you're not going to master at 28 years old.

You will never master it.

I will never master it.

Okay.

We will be 70 years old and we will say, fuck, I still have so much to learn about being a leader.

And that's the reality of leading people.

But the framework is usually the same.

So big mission.

what their role is in the mission, what it means for them, if you win the mission of the team, and then, you know, having the conversations with the mindset that you're improving their skill set, improving their future, improving their family, which takes away the edge of confrontation and replaces it with an obligation to tell them the truth.

And then when you execute the conversation, positive, critique, positive.

And, you know, if it's a hard critique, you might have to come back an hour later or the next day and say, hey, you know, you know why I fucking telling you this, bro?

I'm telling you this because I want you to fucking win.

And dude,

you know,

that's that's it.

That's about as quickly as I can explain something that will help you immediately.

That was absolutely great.

Something I'm definitely going to be doing.

I'm starting, I've been starting to implement more huddles with my team.

Um, just make sure we're all on the same page, have the same goal.

Yeah, um, you definitely

definitely, that's definitely something I'll be doing more going forward.

I really appreciate that.

How often do you meet with them?

So I do a lot more one-on-ones with my team members throughout the day.

I think a lot gets

missed when I don't do huddles as well, too.

We have a lot of small things here and there where we have walks going on, safety briefings we need to do.

A lot of it's kind of one-on-one.

And I'll do those check-ins with one-on-one.

Be like, hey, how you doing today?

This is what our plan is going to be today but that's good that's good that's good but here's when you got you have to collectively get them together if you want them to function as a team

yeah okay right like you got to paint the pic look dude people will execute at like a level fucking six for themselves but they'll execute at a level 50 for the person next to them Okay, so if you build a cohesive team where everybody cares about the person to the left and the person to the right like they should,

the execution level and the standard level will rise.

So I would definitely encourage you to do more full team breakdowns.

You call them huddles.

That's that's yeah.

Yeah.

I would definitely be doing that.

Okay.

Awesome.

We'll do.

Anything else?

No, that'll be, that's kind of really it.

No, yeah, it was a stressful week for sure.

I had two big back-to-back back-to-back walks, but you know what?

They went super, super good.

So I'm super proud of that.

I think my team's doing a great job.

That's kind of the only real opportunity I see for myself at the moment: just the accountability part and having those tough conversations.

And like you said, I'm not going to learn it, definitely being a new team leader right away, but down the line, I'll definitely get it.

Yeah, bro, you listen:

if you keep their interests at the top of your mind,

if you always operate as a servant leader, meaning I'm going to help improve my team's career path.

I'm going to help develop my people to be more successful.

It's really kind of hard to fuck up leadership.

It really is.

If you're living the standard and you're doing your job and then they know that you're working to help them get better,

it kind of works itself out, bro.

But it's got to be real.

They'll know if you're fucking foolish.

You got to see it.

Yeah.

You can't just hear it.

No, that's real, man.

Yeah, 100%.

That's real.

So don't get down on yourself, dude.

This is brand new shit, and it's really fucking hard.

I would say out of all the aspects of things that you could do as a human being, the most mentally taxing and hardest job that you will do, it's not, you know, it's not physically demanding, but it is very mentally stressful, is leading other people.

And it's really fucking hard when you care about them, bro.

It's really hard.

So.

Yeah.

Sick, man.

Well, we appreciate you, bro.

Thanks for calling in, Wes.

Yeah.

Hey, bro.

Happy birthday, man.

Yeah.

Happy birthday.

awesome thank you guys all right thanks brother i'll hit you up a little later for that uh

the happy ending

all right see you bro

all right thank you guys thanks bro

yeah dude now that's a tough thing like i had to get over that too just in my mental like you know with me leading my group that i lead right it's like bro i've been working on that for six years I still like heavily criticize myself if I'm doing a good job as a quote-unquote leader.

You should.

Best leaders do that.

But it takes a a long time.

The best leaders audit themselves after every motherfucking conversation they have with their team, after every meeting, after every, fuck, bro.

Every time I give a talk, I walk off the stage.

What do I say?

How did I do?

What do you think?

What do you think?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, you fucking crushed it.

What do I say?

I said, I could have done this.

I could have done that.

I could have done this.

I already know where I fucked up when I walked off, when I, when I walk out of a meeting, you know?

So the best leaders, the ones that continue to develop are ones that audit themselves and understand

that when it comes to leadership, there is no finish line.

You're not going to like,

there's always room to grow.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's real, man.

It's a balance.

Like, you have, you can't be a pussy, bro.

You can't just sit there and be like, like, you have to have that ability to say, this is what the fuck we're doing.

Okay.

Like, I don't want this to sound very soft.

This isn't soft.

This is, this is what the fuck we're doing.

This is what the team's going to do.

And this is what you need to do to be a part of the team and to progress here.

But this is happening.

Yeah.

Right.

Like, this is the line.

Yes.

And it can't be like a convincing thing, like,

oh, well, you know, can you guys just do this for me?

That won't work.

If you guys want to do it, can you?

There has to be fucking confident leadership.

and coaching that happens.

And the standard of where you're going is non-negotiable.

Oh, I love that, man.

I love it.

Guys, Andy, let's get question number two going.

We got to write in on this one.

Guys, Andy, question number two.

Hi, Andy.

Andy, I lost my dog one month ago.

I know where your thoughts may have gone.

Time to move on and stop being a fucking pussy.

No one more than I want that more, but I'm stuck.

I have no kids.

My dogs were a big part of my life.

This last dog had a stroke and is just gone.

We had no warning.

Not that life always gives you that.

But anyway, I'm lost.

Every morning I get up saying that I'm going to get out and get my workout in.

Every morning I sit like a sad sack of shit in my sadness and grief.

I know grief is a motherfucker and we all process it differently.

I just don't feel like I am.

As the day moves on from the morning, I get better and by the end of the day I have at least gotten in a five-mile walk.

All day I get pissed at myself for wasting my morning routine with this grief.

I carry the anger and the sadness like a rucksack on my back.

Then I listen to your podcast and your TED Talk post and social media, and I feel like I'm really, I really am that sad sack of shit.

That I'm that dumb fuck that you talk about who wishes for shit, not knowing you can't wish you must achieve.

How do I move on from this?

Dealing with tough shit, man.

Grief specifically.

Well, I mean, look, dude,

it's a part of life.

It's unavoidable.

And whether it comes in the loss of a pet or

a loved one or a a diagnosis or like you're gonna get fucking hit, bro.

And I think that's the, that's the thing that

people live, not saying this person, but a lot of people live in this ignorant state of,

it's not gonna happen to me.

It's not gonna happen to me.

And it does happen to you.

And it's a fundamental reality of life.

There are going to be unexpected, very difficult circumstances that you are going to have to deal with, which is why it's so important to develop mental fortitude and mental toughness inside of yourself.

It's not something that people are born with.

It's something they develop.

And so

when it comes specifically to going through very difficult times,

The answer to getting through those times is often the opposite answer of what almost everybody else will tell you.

Because what will everybody else tell you?

They will tell you, hey, take it easy, man.

You're going through a lot.

Relax, process it.

The reality of getting past very difficult things is to take action towards where you would like to be.

And you've already said that you don't like feeling like a sad sack of shit.

And you are a sad sack of shit right now.

And guess what?

I'm a sad sack of shit sometimes.

DJ is a sad sack of shit sometimes.

Everybody is a sad.

It's called being fucking human, bro.

It's life.

There's nothing wrong with what you're going through.

And to be honest, I get it, bro.

I had my duck get killed last year.

And everybody, like, it's just a fucking duck.

Well, yeah, to you, not to me.

Like, to me, I don't have kids.

I go there every morning.

I see the duck.

I go there every night.

I see the duck.

The duck gets happy when it sees me.

You know, she follows me around.

She thinks like that, to me, that's a big deal.

And so I was fucked up.

And when my dog, Oscar, died in 2012 or 2013, he died in my fucking arms.

He was seven years old.

It was a day before his eighth birthday.

Dude, I was playing guitar.

I fucking heard him breathing weird.

I looked at him and I could tell he was scared shitless.

And he got up and he ran and tried to crawl under the bed and hide, which is what dogs do when they're dying.

They try to hide.

I pick him up, I take him, he's fucking dead 10 minutes later, bro.

Like everything was fine.

And then he was dead.

And bro, that I've never gotten over that.

I still fucking think about that all the time.

Still, he's still the screensaver on my fucking phone.

Okay.

We all go through hard things, bro.

But to get out of the hard cycle, we have to bite the bullet and start taking fucking action.

And this isn't some plug for live hard or 75 hard, but this is the time when you need that kind of thing.

You need a mission.

You need a purpose.

You need something to accomplish and recalibrate you into someone who can make the decisions even when they don't feel like doing the thing.

And that's the power of the program.

Okay.

We talk about the program not being a fitness program because it isn't.

It is, you get fit as a result of the mental toughness that you have to develop along the way.

And so,

bro,

real talk.

I would start 75 hard and I would fucking do the program and I would do it perfectly.

And it will be enough to force you where you cannot complete the program while you're sitting there feeling sorry.

And you just have to accept the fact that, bro, you're not going to be the same after losing one of your dogs, bro.

Like, every time.

I was talking to my father-in-law about this a couple years ago, and he was

he's like, dude, it's got to be hard to have dogs, you know, because he's not a dog guy.

Like they have a dog.

He lives out in the,

you know, their dogs live outside and shit.

They're not.

It's like a farm dog.

Yeah.

They're not very warm.

It's different than like what I grew up with about dogs.

And he, we, he was, we were talking and

he was like,

He was like, you know, it's got to be hard to have dogs, man, because it's like, they only last 10 years and it's like losing a kid every time.

And I'm like, yeah, that's fucking exactly what

people will say, oh, it's not the same.

It's not the same for you if you have kids, but if you don't have kids, you're an asshole for saying that.

Yeah, right.

You know, like these motherfuckers who do this every year, who say, oh, you fucking, it's Mother's Day.

Being a dog mom doesn't count or being a dog dad doesn't count.

You know how fucked up you sound saying that shit?

Some people, that's all the fuck they have.

They weren't able to have kids.

Okay.

And that's all they got.

And because you're a fucking douchebag, you go on the internet and say some fucked up shit.

Anyway, we know it's not the same, but it's the same for us.

Okay.

So don't be a fucking fuck.

Yeah.

But at the end of the day, bro, you got to step the fuck up and realize that if you continue down this path,

you are going to be a literal sack of shit.

You have to get yourself past these hard things.

And it is very real and very normal and very human to work through these things.

And, you know, you got to take action, bro.

You got to start doing things that, you know, take your mind off of it.

You got to start doing things that force you to get up and move.

Otherwise, you can't get them done.

You know, one of the most powerful things about 75 Hard and Live Hard is that there's so much shit to do.

Like if you fucking lay in bed till one o'clock in the afternoon, bro, you ain't getting it done.

Yeah.

Okay.

So by default, you have to move on.

And,

you know, and then the other thing I'll tell you, dude, like the other thing

from one animal lover to another, like,

I don't think people really realize how animals,

how important they are to me.

But

when I lost Oscar,

I didn't know what to do.

We ended up getting Otis, our Bulldog now, is the best thing I ever did was to get another one.

Yeah.

And we got him like a month later.

And it was the best thing I ever did, dude.

Like,

it's, it didn't make me feel any

less about

Oscar, but it made me like feel good.

You know what I'm saying?

Well, if it puts your mind on something else, now you got this little puppy, you got potty.

You got to take care of us.

He loves you too, you know, and like it's, I would recommend getting another dog if, if, if that's

where you're at, bro.

So, yeah, it's hard, bro.

This is hard shit.

And society doesn't make it any harder because they don't try to understand people that fucking don't have kids.

They're total fucking fucks about it.

I think there's something to be said, too, just to your point of like, dude, it's life.

Things are going to happen.

Wouldn't you rather be able to have like come out of that?

Yeah, bro.

That's exactly the point.

Okay.

We're competing against

billions of people on this planet.

And a lot of people will say, oh, there's not, you're not competing against anybody except your version of yourself yesterday.

Well, those people are broke.

Okay.

Here's the reality.

If you want to win, if you want to become, create, build anything real, you have to learn how to operate through the hard times.

That is the separator between people who win and people who fucking don't.

Okay.

People who don't win, every time they get a hangnail, they say, oh, I need three three days off and a fucking year of therapy to get better.

That's those people lose because anything that happens along the way throws them off track.

Okay,

if you can become the kind of person that it doesn't matter what gets thrown your way, no matter how hard it is, no matter how frustrating it is, no matter how

pissed off you are or any of this shit,

if you can operate and execute in those times, you are executing at at least double the rate of everybody else.

And if you understand math, like I'm sure you do, you will know that double the execution puts you twice as far ahead as everybody else.

If everybody else runs two fucking laps and you're running four, who's going to get where they want to go faster?

Okay, and the difference between this is being able to execute when you don't fucking feel like it.

It makes you legitimately unbeatable.

So it's very important that when things happen that are hard, which we all have to deal with, it's very important that you don't let it consume your life to the point where it throws you completely off track because that's what most people do.

And you're not trying to be most people.

So

this is a tremendous opportunity.

And as cold-hearted as that may sound, because that's what people are going to call it.

I don't care.

It's reality, bro.

This This isn't called be nice.

This isn't called idealism.

This is called real as fuck.

And the reality is, is when bad things happen, like they happen to all of us, most people get thrown off track, very, very far off track.

Okay.

And then to create the momentum again, it could take years.

Okay.

So one fucking tragedy happens and then it costs you five years of your life.

Is that really worth it for something that happens to literally everybody?

everybody it's not okay

so if you can become the kind of person that will execute no matter what's going on around them you can't be fucking beat bro it's it's literally impossible to beat a person like that you can't beat them okay and and what here's what happens

when you start to learn that you can do this and you start to learn that you can execute versus the other people that can't, you know, like when you're out in the the middle of, you know, the 18 inches of snow when it's minus fucking 20 degrees and you're doing shit that no one else can do, it instills and builds a level of self-belief and confidence in yourself that cannot be fucked with.

It cannot be fucked with.

It doesn't fucking matter what the world throws at you.

You are still going to win.

Imagine feeling like that.

Imagine knowing no matter what the fuck happens, I'm going to still win.

And that's the kind of confidence that pushing through the hard times creates.

That's some powerful shit right there, man.

Yeah, absolutely, man.

I love it.

Let's get one final question.

Another call in.

Vince, let's get our boy Vince on the phone.

Okay.

That's a good strong name.

Vince.

Vince.

Let's give Vince a call.

Hello, this is Vince.

Vince, what's up, dude?

This is DJ.

What's up, DJ?

Vince, what's up, bro?

It's Andy.

What's up, Andy?

How are you, dude?

How are you, guys?

I'm good.

What you up to today?

I was working on a fence and now I'm working on estimates.

All right.

So I assume that you own a construction or fencing company.

I do.

I'm a general contractor.

All right, cool.

Cool.

How long have you been doing that?

Four years by myself now.

Oh, that's awesome, bro.

How old are you?

You sound young.

37.

Oh, shit.

He's got a young voice.

Yeah, he does.

He is young.

37 is still young, bro.

That's true.

Listen, at 30 fucking six, I was 350 pounds, didn't know shit.

Okay.

I got, I mean, I did do the same thing since I was 19.

I was doing okay, but.

I think I evolved.

Yeah.

Some evolution there.

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

So what's up, bro?

What can we help you with?

Oh, well, I am currently booked into the next year, and I'm building 580 linear feet of fence by myself right now, because I can't get people to show up and wake up to their alarm clocks or whatever excuse they're going to have.

And I'm trying to find a way to

incentivize and find some good employees.

Well,

did you have employees before?

What's that?

Have you had employees before?

I've had a couple.

Longest one lasted about three months.

Okay.

And what happened in that situation?

Explain to me your general experience with employees thus far.

I've had a couple pretty decent ones that would show up and were pretty timely and pretty decent.

The last one, I asked him to, he was having a bad day already with his wife, and I knew that, but I asked him to like shovel three shovelfuls worth of dirt out of some holes.

And he said he wasn't going to do it and squared up.

And I told him he needed to go home.

So he quit, quit over that.

I wasn't trying to get him to quit or anything.

I was just, if you're not going to listen to me and you're having troubles at home, you need to go take care of that.

Yeah.

The other guy just kind of ghosted me.

Okay.

After a while.

Where do you live?

I live in Dewey, Arizona.

Is that a rural place or

what is?

I don't know where that is.

It's a little south of Prescott.

Yeah, I still don't know where the fuck that is.

It's

about an hour north of Phoenix.

God, okay, there we go.

All right.

So somewhat rural-ish

area.

Yes.

Okay.

Yes.

All right.

Well,

how were you paying those people?

Were you paying them fair?

fair?

I try to start my guys at 20 an hour.

Okay.

And what do people get normally in that area for that kind of work?

Other posts that I've seen from other contractors are starting at about 18 to 20.

Okay.

And then

lead guys are running at about 30.

Okay.

And I had a retired guy working for me.

I was paying him $25 an hour.

He was pretty good, but he's having some health issues.

Okay.

How have you tried to recruit employees so far?

In all honesty, I haven't tried really hard, too hard.

Usually it's just like a Facebook post of basically what we're doing, jobs we do, and the hourly start.

Okay.

When you have employees,

are they expected to just show up, clock in, do the work, go home?

Pretty much.

Yeah.

And then sometimes I'll even, depending on where they live, I'll try to meet them to pick them up because some of my jobs are an hour away.

So

I try to pick them up, to take them there.

Okay.

All right.

Here's the deal, bro.

You're graduating from

the

calloused hand worker to actually operating a small company, which will likely move into a bigger company.

Is that your goal?

Is your goal to expand the company or is your goal to kind of just you do the work and have three or four dudes to help you with it?

That's kind of where I'm looking to be at.

I do enjoy doing the work.

I don't want to, I'm not looking to get huge.

I really like one-on-one with my customers and being there to do the the work.

Okay.

So I was thinking that maybe three guys and then ultimately doing some more general contracting, subcontractor type work and maybe building some homes eventually.

Okay.

All right.

Look, you

any,

all right,

for you to

get where you're trying to go from where you are,

You are going to have to treat it as an aggressive building of a company.

Okay.

Here's what I mean by that.

Business is ultra competitive.

It's the most competitive fucking thing in the world.

It's more competitive than any sport, than any game, than anything.

It's the most competitive thing.

And

when

people say,

so I'm in the fitness industry, as you know, so people will say shit like this.

They'll say, I want to start working out, but I don't want to look like, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger or something like that.

And it's like, bro, you could work out every motherfucking day, all fucking day for your entire life.

You could take every steroid.

You could take every supplement, and you'll never fucking look like that.

Okay.

And when business owners say, hey, I just kind of want to maintain where I'm at, that creates a

very comfortable attitude.

amongst your company, which makes it very hard to build an effective team for what you're trying to get to.

So what I'm saying here is that you have to go at this every single day as if you are trying to build the best construction company ever.

And that's the effort that it's going to take for you to survive long term.

That's reality.

So you have to flip your mindset from, I just want to do the work.

You can do the work.

You can have three guys, but the attitude of what you need to have cannot be, hey, I'm good where I'm at.

And the reason is because you can't get anybody inspired to want to work for you with that attitude.

For you to get where you're trying to go, where you're looking to have two or three guys, four guys, and then eventually maybe a dozen guys that want to build homes, all right, you're going to have to.

frame it and build it as a real company.

And you're going through a process

that

is very critical to your future in this business.

Let me explain to you what that is.

You can either say to yourself right now, well, I'm good where I'm at.

I just need a helper.

All right.

And you'll continue to have this situation

happen over and over again.

Right.

They're going to show up.

They're going to get pissed off one day because their wife yelled at them.

And they're going to say, I'll kick your ass if you make me move the dirt.

And you're going to have to deal with this shit over and over again.

You don't want to deal with that shit so

you have to say to the guys you have to say when you look to hire someone you've got to be able to say to them look this is what i'm doing this is what i have done i've worked as a gc on my own for the last four years my goal for this is to build a

company that does this and this and this.

We want to build homes.

We're going to get there.

I'm booked out all the way till next year with these kind of jobs.

But once we get through this, we're going to start moving towards that.

And you have to get, it's funny because I just answered a question right before this.

It's very much

similar to what you're asking.

The point here is that you have to inspire these people to work on the big vision that you are creating for the company.

All right.

What's going to be the differentiator between someone who shows up?

for 20 bucks an hour and then eventually tells you to eat shit because they're having a bad day.

And the person who values their position in your company is going to be what's on the line for them in the future.

All right.

So, you are going to have to get really good.

The first thing you're going to have to do is define what exactly do I want to do.

And it can't be like this.

You know, I think I'd like to have three dudes.

And, you know, I'd like to still do that.

That's not a certain vision.

People won't believe in that.

Okay.

You've got to give them certainty.

I've been doing this four years.

I love doing this.

This is what I love about it.

This is what I'm going to do.

And I'm looking to build this with people like you, but this is what's going to be expected.

And that allows you to instead to say to them, hey, man, I need you to show up and dig some fucking holes to say, hey.

Look, bro, if you don't dig those holes, we're never going to get where the fuck we want to go.

You're never going to get to this place.

Okay.

So

you are going through a transitionary period of leadership.

You're leading yourself.

You're able to get up every day.

You're able to do the work.

You're able to build the fences and build the decks and do the repairs and do the additions.

But I want to do this at a bigger scale.

And so, you know,

this is less about you attracting people and more about you getting them committed once they're there.

I don't think it's going to be very hard to find people that want to be a part of a mission like this, especially with the emergence of AI and technology where like, dude, a lot of the jobs are just drying up.

So if you're able to say to a young man or a young woman, hey, you come here, I'm going to teach you this.

I'm going to teach you that.

You're going to know how to do these things.

You're going to have job security.

We're going to build one of the greatest home builders in Arizona.

And, you know, that is something to believe in.

Because remember, bro, there's a big difference between someone showing up for $20 an hour to dig holes and help you and someone who's showing up for $20 an hour to help you build the best company that's ever fucking existed.

Okay.

And

you have to learn how to present that properly.

So I need you to get clear on your vision, very clear.

No matter what it is.

It doesn't have to be this huge vision either.

It can be, hey, I want to be a small, boutique custom home builder that builds amazing shit.

And here's the opportunity for you in that plan.

If you help me do this and you're, you know, and you lay out the expectations of what that is.

So

go ahead.

That's what I was thinking the other day is I kind of haven't been.

I've just been looking at them as employees instead of like the way I look at my customers and trying to help my customers and build what they want and need and meet their or go above their expectations.

I want to do that now for my employees and their families.

If I can do that for two or three of them and we can just crush it, I'd be happy with that.

But yeah, what you're saying is

go for a hundred.

Brother, you're hitting on the fucking, you're hitting the nail on the head there, bro.

How you care about your employees is how they will care about your customers.

Okay.

If you care about them and their families, and by the way, that's not letting them have seven days off because they stubbed their fucking toe.

That's reminding them, hey, bro,

we got this to do because we're building this.

And that's what's going to help your fucking family.

And it's basically becoming a coach, bro, for a bunch of young people.

And there's,

I think that the fact that you thought of that on your own shows me that you're on the right track anyway.

And let me tell you something else, dude.

And this is just, this is the truth from someone who's been doing something and become very financially successful personally.

I

fucking love

seeing my people

grow, develop, earn more money, succeed, have families.

That is the coolest part

of my entire existence.

There's no question.

And

I think it's the most rewarding part of entrepreneurship that kind of gets left in the fucking trash by most leaders.

And so you sound like you're a pretty good dude, bro.

It sounds like you do care about people.

And,

you know, not ever talking to you before, I don't want to act like I know you and shit, but like you.

You sound like a good dude.

And I think you sound like the kind of person that would get a lot of fulfillment and satisfaction, not just about, you know, what you built, but how you built it and who you built it with.

And

dude, like, that's just a framework shift from you saying, you know,

I need you to show, like I said, I need you to show up and move these boards to I need to show up and move these boards so that we can build these this amazing company.

And there's a famous analogy.

And I can't remember what book it was that I read, but I read it very early on.

And I cannot remember the analogy, but exactly.

But basically, the analogy was this.

There's a big difference

in a stonemason

who has to build, and it's funny because you're building 5,000 feet of fence.

The analogy they use is there is a massive difference between a stonemason who is told that they have to build a five-mile, three-foot-high wall and the stonemason who's told, we're going to build the most beautiful cathedral that's ever existed in human history.

The person who is inspired by the bigger vision is going to do better work.

They're going to care more.

They're going to be more invested.

You're going to like being around them more.

They're going to value their career more.

And they're probably not going to try to square up with you when you've told them to do something real simple.

You know what I'm saying?

Because they value what we're building together.

You know what I mean?

So it's tough, bro.

Leadership and where you're at in your business is the toughest part of business.

When you're going from working and doing the work to work, you know, you're working in the business to then shifting to working on the business, meaning handling leads, handling your employees, handling all the shit that goes with it, your marketing, all of this shit.

That's a transition that is difficult for people.

It was very difficult for me.

I've never met someone who was like, oh, yeah, that was fucking so easy to do.

It's just, you have to do do it if you're going to go from where you are.

Otherwise, you're basically going to be doing what you do forever.

So you have to look at it like this, dude.

You know, lawyers go to law school, right?

That doesn't mean they know how to operate a business.

This is why so many lawyers switch professions after they graduate law school because they don't know how to run the business.

This is why so many doctors go broke trying to run businesses.

They go out, they get their medical degree, they make a little money, they start opening these fucking restaurants or all this other shit they don't know about, and they lose.

And the reality of what you've done here, dude, is you've went to school for construction.

I don't know if you actually went to school for it, but you did it in the real world.

You know what, you're an expert, all right?

And

you have to understand

that

your expertise now has to be

trained and shifted in a different direction towards actually learning how to run a business.

Running a business is its own skill set aside from,

you know, driving nails.

You know what I'm saying?

And if you look at it like that, you'll be much more successful.

Like my skill set is great over here at doing the actual labor, and I can build great staircases, and I'm an artist with my fences.

That doesn't mean shit when it comes to running a business.

And so you have to start looking at that as a complete different skill set that you're a brand new rookie at.

Because up until now, you haven't really been running a company and now you have to.

So I would start consuming everything that you can about how to do this and learning everything that you can about how to structure it, getting around other construction guys who are, who have done these things, you know, maybe talking to them, getting some mentorship for some guys who are where you want to be in your specific industry.

These are all things that will help you a lot, brother.

And

dude, you know, I have no doubts that you're going to be able to do everything that you want to do here.

It's just a, it's just a little flip of

perspective switch that you need to make on where your role is.

Okay.

Yeah.

So like another kind of question I had is

I want to, after I started thinking about more towards the employees and obviously the construction world, we end up pretty crippled when we're older is implementing like

trying to pay or help pay for their supplements or like chiropractor adjustments once a month or massages like every quarter and

stuff to try to help with their health like yeah man even boot gift certificates how soon should I try to implement something like that should I do it right well work into it it depends on what you can afford to do bro but

here's what you can afford to do for free and this is the most important thing that you can do.

I would try to organize group activities that are difficult with you and the three or four other guys,

like doing an outdoor workout or

meeting up on a Saturday and trying to do a run, even if some of the dudes are fat.

The mutual suffering creates teamwork bonds.

All right.

And if you think of any great team that's ever existed, the reason that they're great is because they've all witnessed each other work, sweat, bleed, and suffer and be bad at shit together.

And that creates an unbreakable team bond.

And it costs nothing.

It's one workout a month, you know, where you go out and you fucking, you get in the park or wherever it is that you guys do and you run sprints and then, you know, you do, you do some push-ups and shit.

And instead of just sitting on a tailgate drinking some beer.

Yeah.

That doesn't bond people the way that people think it does.

That's a different kind of bond.

Like there is a bond to that.

Yeah, right.

It's beneficial.

But a real fucking like, I'm going to pick this motherfucker up if he's on the ground, that comes from mutual suffering.

And so I like all those ideas you have.

I think that's great.

I think that would help for sure, but I don't think that's going to replace.

I'm not saying anything.

I know it won't replace

the work that it's going to take to bond people,

which you can do for fucking free, bro.

So I think those are good ideas, though, for sure.

Okay.

Appreciate it.

Love it, man.

Yeah, brother.

Well, Vince, appreciate you calling in, brother.

Thank you.

Yeah.

I appreciate all your guys' insight.

I've been listening to you guys for a couple of years now.

So it's cool to actually talk to you guys.

Thank you for everything you do.

You're welcome, bro.

Thank you for going out there and doing the best that you can do.

All right.

All right, brother.

You guys have a good weekend.

You too, man.

You too, bro.

I was thinking, because I've heard you say this a few times, too.

It's like, you know, people always come to 1P and they're like, man, where'd you guys find all these good people?

Yeah, like we picked them off a fucking employee tree.

Yeah, right, right.

You got to build them.

Yeah.

There has to be some investment into that.

Well, and then once the culture starts to, once like it starts to materialize and gel, the culture becomes the filter.

Okay.

So like once.

Then those good people do come.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Good people.

It attracts good people, but it also filters out the people that won't make it here.

Yeah.

You know what I'm saying?

So

in the beginning, it's it's a little more difficult and and when it gets bigger it becomes like a an organism that is self-sustaining for the most part you still have to pour a lot of effort into it but it's just a little bit different way but where vince is

you know that's a difficult situation in any small business owner's uh career you know they're good at their skill set but they don't quite understand how to operate a team or the business.

I give him a lot of fucking credit for, you know, the fact that he's like, well, I was thinking, you know, I need to look at him like this.

That's exactly right.

Exactly right.

And,

you know,

my

goal

for a long time, I ran businesses like he's kind of running them now, where I just wanted you to show up, do your shit, go the fuck home.

And when I,

when I started to understand,

here's what made me understand it:

you are asking that person to trade a large amount of their life for something.

It's got to be bigger than money.

You see what I'm saying?

And

the great thing about this

is that

people love building big-ass shit.

The bigger the thing, the harder the thing, the more inspired people are to take it on.

And

the greatest part of my life, a lot of people think, like, oh, it's probably that he gets to drive these cool cars and fly private planes and know all these fucking, you know, people and shit.

Like, yeah, that's all cool.

The coolest fucking part of my life

is

being able to say

that we built something that not only benefited our customers, but allowed our team members

to have a great life, fulfill their goals.

Yeah, yeah, it's the fucking coolest thing ever, dude.

And it's the thing I'm most proud of.

You know, it's not, it's not, it's, you know, all the other shit is cool.

I'm not going to lie.

Okay.

Yeah.

It's fucking cool.

It's cool.

It's cool.

It's cool.

It's cool.

But what the coolest thing is, is that when

you see

the people who have traded their time for this big vision winning as well, That's that's the shit, bro.

Yeah, bro.

New house, new car.

Yes, bro.

That shit.

That's fucking awesome, bro.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's the fucking best shit ever.

Yeah.

That's real, man.

I love it, man.

Guys, Andy, that was three.

That's a

hell of a way to start a Monday.

Yeah.

All right.

Let's get out there.

Let's make some shit happen.

We'll see you guys tomorrow with a little cruise, the internet action.

And don't be a hoe.

Shut up.

When we're sleeping on the floor, now my jury box froze.

Fuck a boat, fuck a stove.

Counted millions in the cold.

Bad bitch, booted swole.

Got her own bank roll.

Can't fold, that's a no.

Headshot, case clothes, clothes.