This is Waste to Wealth, a podcast about turning your waste-hauling business into a profitable, scalable, cash-flowing machine. And now, here's your host, Michael Jocko's standing in front of his commanders after his mission went sideways. He could have blamed the Iraqi soldiers, miscommunication, or bad intel, but instead he said, it's my fault. That moment, he changed how he led. And that is how I run my business. There's a moment in extreme ownership that I'm talking about where there was a blue on blue conflict. Jocko, the author of this book, Extreme Ownership, he had a miscommunication. He had bad data. His guys got confused, they lost communication, and his guys shot at his own guys. They call that blue on blue. And he had 20 different things he could've blamed. Three huge ones. But you know what he blamed? Himself. He said, I'm the owner of this operation, it's my responsibility, it failed, and it's my fault. That's what we're gonna talk about today. Extreme ownership, and this is how you should run your business and your life. Own it. Hey there, I'm Michael McCall and this is Waste to Wealth. Thank you for joining us today. We're having a great time. And if you're in the world of business, you know that it is a fight. It's not quite as dangerous as being deployed overseas and fighting in military zones, but it's still dangerous. It's risky. It's not for the faint of heart. I've seen a million things happen that I can blame other people for, but if it's my business, it's my responsibility. I have to own it. And that's what you need to look for too. How many times have you had a leader that you're following turn around and blame someone else for something that ultimately is their responsibility. The leader's in charge, it's the leader's responsibility. And if someone fails, it's still the leader's fault. It's always the leader's fault. And the leader has to make a change so that it gets executed correctly. So if you're driving along, you've got hauls you're doing, you've got dumpsters you're delivering or junk haul to pick up. Let's say you miss a job. You didn't go to the right address. You're late. Your GPS doesn't work and your phone battery died. Your phone got too hot. It's summertime and it got too hot. Bad things happen and then you miss the mark. You make a customer disappointed. Maybe a team member dropped something and hurt their foot. There's a lot of things that your team is responsible for and they messed up. Well, you can blame your GPS and your phone. You could blame whoever put the address down wrong. You blame the customer for being a jerk. You can blame your employee for being an idiot. But ultimately, all those things are your responsibility. And if things go wrong, you need to identify what happened that was incorrect and then put new systems, procedures, people, in place so that it doesn't happen again. That's what it looks like to take extreme ownership. And extreme ownership is not easy. And even if you know the concept, it's still insanely hard to put into practice because we don't want to take the blame for stuff. If your phone's not ringing for your business, you got to own that too. Why haven't you followed up on any quotes? Why don't you know, why don't people know your brand? Is your marketing all messed up? Everything in your business is your responsibility. We're talking about businesses mostly, but everything in your life is your responsibility. And if you can't control it, then you shouldn't be upset about it. No, no, you can control a lot more than you probably think. So the book, Extreme Ownership by Jocko, if you haven't heard of him, he's got a podcast. He tells a lot of great stories. He was so successful in the military that he also became a advisor for businesses. So he actually talks in the business world to executives about how to take ownership over their departments, their companies, and lead them better. And the best way to lead is to say, hey, this is mine. I'm going to drive the bus. Tells a really great story about in Bud's when they are selecting people to make it to the Navy SEALs. This is the elite military branch, the SEALs. And in the story, he's told it, I have heard it, I must've heard it five times just from Jocko, including in his book. And he explains how it's an exhausting week, Bud's week, where the candidates are, they actually, they're working out constantly, lifting logs on the beach. They're exhausted. They don't sleep much. They don't, they're not, they're, getting put through the wringer, well, they get put on teams and the teams have to race each other in these boats. And they're really big boats from World War II. They're like life rafts, but they're huge rubber boats that they have to carry, take six men to carry them. They're very heavy and they have to put them in the water and they have to paddle them by hand to race each other. And they don't know what the assignment's gonna be until the leader's given the assignments. Well, I think there are six teams that he was talking about in this. And these guys are all toast. And they're exhausted. But if you win the race, then you get a break. You get a break from racing. And if you lose, you're the last one. You have to do extra work, like carrying sand, up the beach, doing extra push-ups in the water, just even more exhausted. So winning, even though you're still getting beat up physically through the training, is very valuable and losing is like the worst thing ever. Well, there was one team in particular that kept winning the race. These guys are all qualified to train here. They're all fit enough to be at this point. They've already gone through enough athletic testing to see if they're strong enough. And this is really a test of will. So I will say, first of all, that people that have dedicated their whole life to be getting to this point would quit two days in because it was that mentally challenging. Physically and, but more important, mentally challenging. But in this race that they did with each other, there was one team that kept on winning and winning and winning. And there was a team that kept on losing. They got last every time, like pretty much every single time they got last. So the leader of the team that was winning, you could say he got really lucky with the guys he got. And the team that was losing, you could say they got really short on the stick with the talent that they had. They were doing a really bad job because they had bad people. And so the leader's probably like, if I had better people, I wouldn't lose every single race. So you know what they did? They decided they were gonna switch. They were gonna switch just one person from each team. Switched the leader. They took the leader, I think it was boat number two, and I'm not gonna get it right. Let's just call it boat number six. So they switched, we'll say the winner and the loser, and they switched the leaders of the two boats. Didn't change anything else. So I imagine that the leader of the winning team, we'll call him team number two. I could just look into the book real quick. Why don't I do that? It was boat number two kept winning and boat number six kept losing. So they switched the leader in boat two, put them in boat six and the leader of boat six, they put them in boat two. I'm sure Boat Six was like, the leader of Boat Six was like, yes, now I'm finally going to get a good team. I'm going to do great. And the leader of Boat Two was like, ah, now I got a bad team. I spent all this time developing my team and I got a horrible team. So the next race after they switched, did you know that Boat Two still won because they have a lot of good guys, the guys that have been doing it. They are a good team, apparently, but boat number six just barely, barely lost to them. Just barely lost to them. And then the race after that, Boat 6 won. Boat 6 beat Boat 2. And the only thing that had changed was they switched leaders. Isn't that wild? So he talks about this story a lot. He goes in detail, and then he used this many, many times when he's giving examples. But the message is there's no bad teams. There's only bad leaders, which is very hard for me as a leader to accept because I want to blame my team. I want to say my team sucks. But in this story where Boat 6 started winning just because you put a new leader in place, the leader sets the tone. The leader brings the morale up. They make sure that everything's clicking. He's responsible for making sure that boat goes faster and gets to its mark. Now, the team in Boat 2, they already had that culture of winning. So they already knew how to win. And once they took the leader out, And they didn't lose that. They essentially adopted the new standard that made them really good. And actually, the leader that came in, he actually had to elevate his game so he could actually meet the standard that the previous leader had instilled. So leaders create the culture. They're responsible for that. And I know that if the culture is bad, it's my responsibility. If the culture is a losing culture, it's my responsibility. And that's a lot to deal with as the leader. You need to know that. So there's no bad teams, only bad leaders. Let's prioritize some things. So, oh man. Speaking about teams, do you ever feel like you're working alone, like you're the only one working hard and that nobody else is doing anything? Well, teams are required for success. You can't do anything by yourself. Even if you are the only employee in your company, you still need to coordinate with other people. You have vendors you have to work with. You got to go to disposal sites. You've got to work with mechanics to fix your truck. God, I hope you're not doing all the mechanic stuff yourself. And even if you are fixing everything yourself, you still need parts, right? You have to buy things from people. You got to buy trucks from people. You're not making your own trucks. I know that much. So you have to, you have to partner with other people. So working on a team is critical. You have to learn that. So if you don't have that skill of working with other people, You've got to get it because that's always going to be a limiting factor is how well you can work with people and influence them in a positive way. Not necessarily yelling at them, like you might think of with military people when we're talking about Draco, but most times you're not yelling. Most military success is not from yelling, just from direct conversation and communication about what the mission is. What's the mission? Are you on mission? You off mission, right? So can you imagine trying to win a race in a boat where there's just you in the boat versus a team where it's got six people? There's no way you're ever going to win that race. It's not possible. If you're trying to do the dispatching, do the invoicing, do the hauling, do the mechanic work, calling customers, if you're trying to do everything, you're going to fail at some point, especially because you can't be good at all those things. You need to recruit team members that are skilled at each of those different roles and give them the tools and systems so that they can do those jobs well. So driving trucks is fun. I like driving trucks, but I can't be everywhere all the time. And if I get sick, injured, or I need to spend time with my family, so I have a family life, which is very important for my health. I need more drivers, right? And I can't be calling customers all the time. It's not safe for me to drive and talk on the phone. I know you can do that at a limited capacity, but I'm going to need to write things down, which means that I'm going to have to stop. Much better to have someone that's a phone person, whether they're doing dispatching exclusively, receiving calls from customers, then dispatching them, or they are doing all the receptionist-type work, talking to the customers and to the drivers. You need to have a receptionist, you need to have a dispatcher, someone that's good on the phone and is stationary, so they can pull up their computer and find out what the customer needs to know. They can look up addresses, they can search for them, make sure they got the right address. And you also need to have You need to have what we call bail. You need to have a banker. You need to have an attorney. You need to have insurance. You need to have an accountant. You got to have those things. Sorry, the L is lawyer. So bail is banker, B for banker, A for accountant, I for an insurance, insurance agent and L for lawyer. And you got to have all four of those professionals on your team at some capacity so that you can stay compliant. And that's just to make sure you're doing normal business things, not even doing strategic things, which you could talk about sales and marketing as well. And then there's also procedures, operations. Yep. So if you're trying to run all those things, you're just going to be, it's like trying to paddle that boat by yourself. You're going to fail. You're going to sink. You need to have a team. So prioritizing is very, very important. And I know people don't want to hire someone for the phones because they think that's an added cost, but that's the easiest thing to take off your plate. And it doesn't cost $100 per hour. There's some skills that cost more to hire people for. And answering the phones, $20 an hour, you can get a really good person for that price. Someone would be very, very happy to do that job. And you have plenty of candidates to pick from. And you get to have your time back. If you're familiar with the principle of buying back your time, you need to just take how much your company profits per year, divide that by 2,000 hours, and that's your hourly rate as a business owner. And then you should very comfortably be able to pay a quarter of that to somebody. Uh, just very comfortably to give you a number. Um, but you should be able to, you, if you need to drive around and make deliveries, you need somebody answering the phone. If you have enough people where you don't have to do the driving around, then you need to, um, then you can spend your time doing other strategic things like finding good people to hire, getting better customers, working on your pricing, finding out what your competitors are doing, paying attention to competitors. You know what I mean? There's another story in this book from Extreme Ownership where they're in a chaos scenario. I believe this is in Iraq. And Jocko teaches his team to just slow down, relax, look, and then make a call, make a decision based on the information you have there. But the key is to relax first. We shoot from the hip a lot, and you gotta take a deep breath. Just think, what do I know? And then make a decision. You're not always gonna make the best decision because you don't have 100% of the information when you make a decision. It's very important to relax, look around, make a call. Applying it to you. Let's say you got five jobs and you have one broken truck and you missed three calls. Like you got a lot going on. Don't panic. Take a deep breath. Rank the chaos and fix what matters most first. Those missed calls, were they from customers? Did they leave voicemails? The broken truck, is that something that you can get back on the road today? Or is it going to have to go to the shop? Or does it still have to be assessed? You don't know. Do you have to get a part that's out of state? Do you have of the ability to do the work, those jobs, or do you have to call in another employee or even a competitor to help you out with those jobs? So rank what's the most important problem first. And if you have to, write them all down. Use a whiteboard every morning. This isn't just like in the middle of the day. This should be your first thing. What are all the things that are the most important? And attack the most important thing first. We call that eating the frog. So relax, look around and make a decision and then attack that decision. You can only work on one thing at a time. So if you're working on the broken truck, work on the broken truck. If you're working on hiring a new driver, hire that new driver, like just spend time on that. And then when you're done with that task, move on. Discipline equals freedom. That is a superpower. If you can get focus and discipline, you're going to be in the top 1% of people because people can't focus. You know what I am talking about. I'm talking about distraction. This phone here is the perfect example of what our society loves. There's never been a time in life where You could get access to so many things so fast. There's never been a time in life where you could be successful so easily. But it's also true that there's never been a time where you could be so easily distracted. If you are looking at this thing all the time, you are going to be completely out of focus. You're going to be following other people's agendas, and you want to make your own path. It's a horrible idea to just follow what other people want. How can I listen to my thoughts if I'm listening to other people's thoughts? If I'm doom scrolling, paying attention to TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, gotta put this thing down, turn it off, put it on silent. This thing, my phone, my phone won't ring, and it drives my team crazy. There's a little thing on the side here where I can turn on ring or vibrate. So mine's always on vibrate, and even then, it still doesn't vibrate unless you are a contact in my phone. And even then, I think it still doesn't vibrate, because I have missed plenty of calls from people I was actually expecting. Just looking at it, it doesn't ring. And that's okay, because I know that it's more important for me to stay focused and disciplined, and you should feel the same way. So that applies to what we're talking about here, because you need to relax. And if you have a thousand things bouncing around in your head, you can't relax. So take a deep breath. And get some discipline. Luke, I'll leave you with this. Luke 16.10 says, he who is faithful with a little will also be faithful with much. So if you can be good and responsible with the resource you have now, your relationships, your money, your time, your energy, then God's gonna multiply that. He's gonna give you more energy, more time, more relations. And that's just the natural course of how God created this world. If I have good relationships with people, they'll tell people that I'm great to work with, and that'll lead to more positive relationships. If I'm good with money, then I will be using my money create prosperity, and give good value to people, other people, and they will want to give me money as well. So you need to be very careful with the things you have, because if you aren't good with what you have, you're gonna lose that, and that's not what we want. This has been Michael with Waste Wealth. I hope you're having a blessed day, and we're Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of Waste to Wealth. We sure do appreciate it. 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