Episode 80: Extreme Ownership Book Club: Helping Your Business WIN (And Keep Winning)

Episode 80: Extreme Ownership Book Club: Helping Your Business WIN (And Keep Winning)

Brandon Schoen:
Welcome back everyone to another episode of the Profit Cleaners. I'm your host, Brandon Schoen. And today guys, we have a very special episode, a little different than our normal episode podcast. We're actually going to be giving you guys a sneak peek behind the scenes at our latest Profit Cleaners book club and what we've been reading. So we get a lot of questions guys. A lot of people ask us, what are you guys reading? Whether it's in social media and our private mastermind groups, or just through email, people are always asking what books are you guys reading? Which ones have been the most impactful for your business and for your life, and have really changed everything for you. And so we do have a list on the website guys of books that we always love direct amend, but we do dive deep in this book club. So I want to encourage you guys to jump into the book club with us, but want to give you guys just another taste of what it's like to be in the book club. We're getting this more organized so we can have these live discussions with our students and the book club. But right now it's more Brandon and I just kind of given our overview of how we're applying this to our cleaning business. So it's very, very cool guys, very applicable. So wanted to give you guys another listen in alongside us because this book specifically extreme ownership has just been such an impactful book for years. I've heard my coaches, my mentors talk about it and I've read it before or reading it again guys, because it is that impactful. And it's an amazing book. It will help you shift your mindset to just change your business, change your own personal life and basically blame no one else. You take all the ownership, everything is on you essentially. And so when you start running your business and your life, this way, everything gets a lot better because there's no excuses, right? No one else to blame. So yeah, I want to leave you guys with that.

Brandon Schoen:
If you haven't yet joined the book club, definitely jump on board. It's Profitcleaners.com/bookclub. And if you guys are getting value out of this, maybe you don't want to commit to the book club yet. That's fine. But if you want to keep hearing these podcasts, if you guys are enjoying these podcasts, you're getting value in any way. If it's making you better, if it's making you laugh, if it's making you think differently, please help us. We know, normally we just ask for a review or to subscribe to the show, but we're going to add another layer to the Patrion group guys. And it's just five bucks a month. If you guys are getting value out of the show and you just want to contribute five bucks a month to help us produce these episodes, pay for the editing, pay for the technology and everything to get these shows out to you guys, that would be a huge help. So you can also contribute just by going to Profitcleaners.com and hitting on the book club there. And there'll be another layer there. So check it out guys, if you want to help out, that would be much appreciated. And we appreciate every single one of you guys. And again, just want to give this back to you, this little nugget of knowledge, going over our notes on the book, extreme ownership this month with you guys. And just when you join the book club, we'll get way more into it, of course, and you'll get the show notes and more of the details of actionable things. But guys, without further ado, let's jump into the book club. Hope you guys enjoy this month, extreme ownership, how US navy seals lead and win. And until next time guys keep it clean.

Brandon Schoen:
So as a leader, you must fully understand and believe in a mission before you can convince others to embrace it and lead them to do what's needed to succeed. So again, it comes back to the leader guys, if the leader, whether it's on the cleaning team or you as the leader of the business, if you don't believe in your mission and the reason behind it, then how are you going to fully get behind it? And how is your team even going to be convinced and inspired by you? If they know you don't believe it because people can feel if you believe it or not. It's a lot of communication with humans is non-vocal, it's subtle body language and other things. So people can feel if you're leading your business, like, hey guys, we're gonna, we're going to be successful. And you say it like, I don't know, maybe we're going to hit our goals. Maybe people aren't going to be excited. They're not going to be inspired. They're not going to be wanting to take, go above and beyond and do whatever it takes to win because they don't think you believe they're not going to get behind that. So again, it filters down from your energy, your attitude, your belief, you got to believe in the mission and you got to get people inspired to come on board with you to win together.

Announcer:
Grow your cleaning business, make more money, have more time. This is the Profit Cleaners podcast with your host Brandon Condrey and Brandon Schoen.

Brandon Schoen:
Hey guys, welcome to the monthly Profit Cleaners book club. I am your host, Brandon Schoen joined by my cohost.

Brandon Condrey:
Brandon Condrey.

Brandon Schoen:
That's right. And guys, welcome. We got a little behind this month. This is actually February's book we're doing that we're catching up on, but it is extreme ownership - how US Navy seals lead and win. And just talking all about leadership, which I think is one of the most important principles of running a successful business. It all comes down to the leadership and the leaders really determined the success of your business. So that means you. If you're running a business, if you're an entrepreneur, you are the leader everyone's looking at you. And so you've got to step up and these are some amazing, amazing characteristics principles, things that you can be implementing to become a better leader and to get your whole team on board and leading better and just getting everyone. So it's a win-win for everyone. So we're going to go through some notes today on the book, go over the principles. Anything that we learned, some application to the cleaning business that we thought was applicable on what we're learning and how we're applying it to our cleaning business, how you can do the same. We'll go through some key takeaways, some quotes. And I think the idea in the future, as we get better at these, we'll probably have the whole book club. If people want to jump on these calls, we still haven't done that yet, but we're just going through the books as we do them guys and taking extreme ownership of getting this done for you, because we are busy as well. It's hard for us to read books sometimes too, but you know what? We get it done. And you pick up a book on audible and listen to it while you're working, whatever it takes, right? That's the extreme ownership mentality. So yeah, Brandon, let's jump in. I think the quote I wanted to start with is at the top here, but leaders must own everything in their world. There is no one else to blame. I think that's a great quote.

Brandon Schoen:
And I think just some backstory of the book here real quick. So it's about these two us Navy seals. As we know, a lot of people know some of the highest performing military teams in the world are Navy seals. It's really cool throughout the book. They're talking about all these battles that they're in and Iraq and Ramadi is the, is the city they're in actually touched home for me because growing up one of my best friends, Chris Saddles Berger growing up was killed in Ramadi. Rest in peace, Chris, it was one of my best friends. He was in the city of Ramadi. So all these stories of here in the battle and all this stuff just brought it back. A lot of memories thinking about him and stuff, but these guys are warriors. You know, these guys are the leaders on the front lines. That's what you are. Business is war business in the battlefields. Whether you like to think of it that way or not. And so this book definitely applies to that. And just being in high pressure situations as a leader in your business, you gotta make decisions, take immediate actions and make whatever you gotta do, whatever it takes to stay focused on the mission to accomplish the mission. So I think we can really apply this book to our businesses as for that accomplishing the goal, the mission of your business. So you can hit your goals and also picking the right leadership so you can get your team. This is a big takeaway I took from the whole book is just like, if, if your team's not cutting it, if they're screwing up and make mistakes, it's your fault. It's my fault as the business owner, right? Which is hard to swallow. I think that's a really big one right there, but I don't know where you want to start, man. There's a lot to cover.

Brandon Condrey:
The last time we did this week does went down this document and read through the script. Like you guys are going to get this document, which is good for you guys. If you want to read this and you didn't read the book, this is a really good summation. So I think we should just do what we normally do, which is banter about it. So this book is a whole, I really liked the format of it. So this was a really good example of a book that you did not have to sit down and read, end to end. You could have done this in sections and totally gotten it. So the way that they do it is there's 10 points. They cover we'll touch on those as we go through this. But each point starts with a story of something that happened in the battlefield, some story of things that went right or wrong or whatever they were, or Navy seals training. They talk about that too. Then they review like what the lesson to be learned from that story was like, here's the takeaway that you should get from our story about this gunfight. And then they tell you like, here's how it should apply to business. And then right after they tell you how it applies to business, they give you an example of it happening in business. So you get it from the war side and the combat side. Here's an example of how it worked out in real life for a business. So yeah, the whole thing was cool. There were two stories that stuck out to me, but I'll cover those when we get to those sections. So I think really we should just cover each one of the 10 sections and then just kind of talk about those. So yeah, the first one was extreme ownership. And so the concept of that is that, look, if you're leading the team, ultimately you're responsible for what happens with the team. I didn't get to something that gets lost a lot, especially like in middle management corporate-y type environments where you're like, no, it wasn't me. Like it was the employee that did the whatever blank, blank, blank. Like I have an example from us. Like one time we talked about this in a different episode of a podcast, but we got four employees in a day. And it was because this manager at a local food production company was so bad. One lady on this team found out that we were hiring and told everybody else and they all quit at the same time. And so they left, came to us and then that guy got demoted or fired or who knows what, but that's an of, he tried to pass the blame off to XYZ, but it all left. Like if you were taking ownership of it in the beginning, they wouldn't have left. So the buck stops with you. I think the buck stops here. That's a good mentality to have about it. You see the opposite of that sometimes where like Mark Zuckerberg had to testify in front of Congress about disinformation and the election and stuff. None of that was his fault. That was every answer was no, I didn't know that, like we hired a guy to do that. And it was his fault. He just sounded like he was totally disconnected from his own giant organization, which is crazy to me.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah. That's a really good example. And that's just going back to the concept, true leader. Doesn't find excuses or blame others. He doesn't say, oh, well, that's the team's fault, which there's a lot of examples of that in the business examples they were giving. That's a very common example is it's not my fault. It's the teams or they didn't do it. Right. But instead if we put our ego aside, take full responsibility for the outcome, that's what we need to be doing as leaders and business owners and actually taking the underperforming employees, taking the under-performer staff, whatever it is, and that's dragging the team down and we need to train that and mentor that person up to speed. Right? And take that responsibility on ourselves. Say like, maybe I didn't communicate it well enough. This is how it needs to be done next time better. And it's my fault for not telling you that or training you the right way. It's the leader's responsibility to clarify the mission, the action plan and get people's equipment and everybody on board to perform those roles. So if your teams aren't doing what they need to be doing, if you're not hitting your goals, if you're not, if your cleaners are screwing off and not doing their job, it's your fault. And as hard as that is to swallow it, that's the thing that takes courage and humility is dropping your ego, putting your ego aside and accepting criticism, being willing to take that feedback, winning hearts and minds, building clarity in your teams and processes. So you can move forward. And when you have that right kind of leadership, it's contagious because it's in your attitude. And when you take ownership of, Hey, this is my fault. Even if your teams are like, I could technically say, it's my fault. But if you take ownership of that, they're going to trust you more as a leader and everyone can come around you to support you to even better. So as hard as that is to be humble sometimes and do that, that's a really big part of leadership. So I think that's a huge takeaway there.

Brandon Condrey:
Yeah. I think from the cleaning standpoint, there's a bunch of takeaways here that we could talk about. But one of the things that we've always done when we started Sandia Green Clean was that we never punished people for a breakage where you're always as the company, we're going to cover that. So what we were saying to both customers and employees from the get-go was we're confident enough in our training of you, that for anything gets broken, like that's a breakdown of the system and to the customer, if we break anything in your house, we're going to cover that. One of the things we saw when we started the business early on was competitors arguing with people in reviews. That was one of my favorite things to see like, no, it was your fault because you left the dog door open or whatever. But none of those guys, none of those competitors that are now a distant thought in the wind, none of them took extreme ownership over this stuff because they were fighting with customers like accepting of the criticism part of that story is that you shouldn't turn around and then berate the customer because they gave you some feedback. You should say, you're totally right. We definitely did that. Here's how I can fix it for you. That's the extreme ownership as owning the cleaning company side of it. Yeah.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah. That's super true. And I bet if you guys look around in your markets too, you're going to see the same exact thing. This is most business owners are like you've ever, ever had a bad experience in a business that you like blame the customer sometimes, or they put it all on you. It happens all the time. So this is such a huge opportunity for you guys to step up and take proactive action, to be a leader. And like Brandon was saying, don't be arguing. Don't blame your customers, especially don't blame your employees, even it's your fault. When you own that in an all comes back to you, it's actually super empowering. And like I said, it makes people trust you more. It makes people want to come alongside you more. And it's just the, when people read those reviews and when we have a negative review, we do that. We take extreme ownership and say, we're so sorry. We broke that. If we do break something, we actually take ownership of it right away. We leave a note and tell them right upfront, Hey, we broke this, this the.

Brandon Condrey:
Try it. That's the cut off the negative review. Right. And that cuts it off.

Brandon Schoen:
And a lot of times that works amazingly well, because again, they trust you more now because you're like, Hey, I made a mistake and I'm going to own that mistake. And they're like, wow, thank you for owning that. I'm not going to go blast you with a one star review everywhere. And I'm going to actually trust you to come back and do it again. And thank you so much. Like people appreciate that. So I think that's a huge one just showing that, not just with your employees, but your customers. That goes a really, really long way.

Brandon Condrey:
Yeah. I do think a note needs to be made here about this is not the same thing as like the customer is always right. Extreme ownership is you recognizing a fault and you're going to try and fix it. It's not your fault. If the team's car gets crashed into while it's parked at someone's house, there are limits to this. So don't get crazy with it. I mean, get extreme. Like you need to be excited about it from the business standpoint, for the benefits, it's going to get you, but we've fired customers because they said lewd and sexually suggestive things to the teams before you shouldn't save that customer, you shouldn't go to that customer and be like, yep, totally my fault that you got drunk at 10 o'clock in the morning and tried to hit on one of my employees. So like the common sense about it is what I'm trying to say. In most cases, I think this is true, but it's not necessarily that you want people to be able to walk over your employees and say that it's your fault all the time.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah, absolutely. And so I think that leads us nicely into our next principle, which is no bad teams, only bad leaders. So leaders fundamentally decide their team's level of performance under the right leadership. Any team can thrive and truly leaders have the greatest impact on their team's performance. So again, it all comes back to the leader. If the team isn't performing, if other things are happening, that shouldn't be happening. It's the leader, right? And so good leaders don't make excuses. They figure out a way to succeed. They figure out a way to get everyone on board and accomplish the mission in front of them.

Brandon Condrey:
The big nebulous concepts. I don't have a specific example from our cleaning company that does this, but we elevated Claudia to a leadership position. And then really good things happened after that. So I, but like this is maybe too in our own horn a little bit too much, but like, I don't think we have a lot of examples of where we put a bad leader in control of something and things went wrong. We did fire a couple of people early on that were toxic to the rest of the crew, but they weren't necessarily in a leadership position. The example they gave from the book for this one was spot on. This was mind blowing to me. This was one of the stories that really stick out to me. So they were talking about seals training and how they have these boat races. And these teams, there's a team leader. And then they have six Navy seals under MR. Or hopeful Navy seals. These are just trainees right now. You're trying out for the team and they had to race these boats. And if you want to race, you got to like sit down for the next one. I'm like take a break. And these are guys that have been staying up for like five days in a row and they're all delirious. And there was this one team that consistently kept winning over and over and over again. And then there was another one where the leader was clearly just not into it. He was braiding people like this is your fault. And they asked him his flat out, like, why are you losing all these races? You guys assigned me the worst guys, like blah, blah, blah. Like he immediately switched to blaming everybody else that he could point at. So what they did was they switched the leaders of those two teams, the leader, the boat race team that was winning and the boat race team that was losing, just switch the two leaders back and forth. And then suddenly the one that was losing all the time won the very next race. And the one that was ruining before came in very close to second, but it was like a wake-up call for that leader that was shouting at people that like, nope, that was you, man. Like you had fully functional people underneath you the whole time. So that story to me was really, really resonating. It was very cool to like see that if you've got all the pieces in front of you, you just need to tweak the right thing to make it work.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah. I think from like probably a real example within the clean, our cleaning business is on our team. You know, think about it. We have switched around the team leads before on the cleaning teams and it does make a massive difference when you have someone that's leading the team, that's just a downer, but doesn't have a positive attitude. That's like, it just brings the whole team down. So it's so true. The team is good. And if you put a new, better leader on that team, they all rise to that level. They rise to the level of the leader. So that's why it's so important. And when you're hiring, it's not always just experienced it's attitude. Are they leaders, are they willing to be coachable and learn and rise to that occasion? And when you get enough of those leaders on, they're gonna attract more leaders, but people will rise to the level of the leader. And so that's why on our cleaning teams, for example, if we're having issues, that's usually the case as it is the leader on that team is bringing everyone down and bringing morale down and things like that. So when you have someone like that, we have had negative employees that we've had to let go. And usually that solves a lot of problems, right?

Brandon Condrey:
Yeah. That's hard to do too. Especially like no labor market that we're in now, it's hard to let a fully functioning employee who knows how to clean and knows your processes. It's hard to fire them cause they have a crappy attitude, but you've got to make that call. If you don't do it, that stuff is like a cancer that spreads suddenly, that whole team is mad at you. We've had people when we did fire them or when they quit, they tried to take people out with them. They're going to extract a whole team and it's worked like we've had two or three people quit at the same time, which is devastating from a customer service perspective. But if we had just cut out the cancer at the beginning, when we knew that it was a problem, then maybe had a different outcome. That is a good example of putting a bad leader in a spot that they shouldn't have been in. Like, and we get better over time on recognizing what makes a good team lead compared to what we thought would have made a good team leader.

Brandon Schoen:
Absolutely. So I think that segues nicely into our next principle, which is clarity and belief. So as a leader, you must fully understand and believe in a mission before you can convince others to embrace it and lead them to do what's needed to succeed. So again, it comes back to the leader guys, if the leader, whether it's on the cleaning team or you as the leader of the business, if you don't believe in your mission and the reason behind it, then how are you going to fully get behind it? And how is your team even going to be convinced and inspired by you? If they know you don't believe it because people can feel, if you believe it or not. It's a lot of communication with humans is non-vocal, it's subtle body language and other things. So people can feel if you're leading your business, like, Hey guys, we're going to, we're going to be successful. And you say it like, I don't know, maybe we're going to hit our goals. Maybe people aren't going to be excited. They're not going to be inspired. They're not going to be wanting to take, go above and beyond and do whatever it takes to win because they don't think you believe they're not going to get behind that. So again, it filters down from your energy, your attitude, your belief, you got to believe in the mission and you got to get people inspired to come on board with you to win together.

Brandon Condrey:
So the concept is called clarity and belief. So that's the belief part. You've covered. A lot of that. The clarity part is sometimes the reasons that you as a leader may not have belief is that you don't know the reason why. So if you get your team leads around and you say, all right, guys, starting next week, you have to leave a handwritten note for every single customer. And they all just give you groans like men. Some I cans going to start cramping and don't want to do that. But you just told them like we're doing it and leave me alone. I'm the boss. You should encourage your leaders to be in a position to be able to ask questions. They need to know the reason why, when you told them, you need to tell them why the reason we're leaving notes is that it gives you this deeper connection to the customer. The customer feels connected to you. It will lead to more tips for you. It will do all these things. If you can explain that, that's the clarity, the belief comes second. And then when they explain it to whoever they are leading, if the belief is already in there, that is that nonverbal communication part that comes through when they explain it to you without rolling their eyes or groaning or slumping their shoulders. And they're telling everybody about it, that is important as well. So make sure that you explain the reason why. And if someone questions it again, extreme ownership, they questioned it because you didn't do a good job explaining it. Try again. Try to answer that question a different way without getting offended that they had a followup question about it. It's okay for them to not be a hundred percent on board at the beginning. Just explain it a little bit.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah, exactly. And I think that's a big problem too, is people are afraid to be questioned. So you got to create that environment where your employees and your team, they are okay with being, Hey, I don't understand this. Or like, can you clarify that better? Because again, that's going to help them clarify the mission. And you, as the leader need to be continuing to listen and support your team to maintain that belief and ensure you can execute because they understand very, very clearly. And they have, there has to be that open honest communication, which is a big part of our company too. But you got to have that sounding feedback loop. So everyone understands. They feel good about it. Then they feel good about asking questions. There's no, there's nothing in the way of that mission getting done. So yeah.

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Brandon Schoen:
CEOs think differently as a small business owner, you have to stop thinking like one, we're launching the Profit Cleaners book club to help transform the mindsets of cleaning business owners everywhere. Together, we'll read some of the most important business and mindset books so that you can become the leader. Your business needs learn more about the Profit Cleaners book club today, by going to Profitcleaners.com/bookclub, that's Profitcleaners.com/bookclub.

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Brandon Condrey:
That does go really nicely in the next one, which is managing your ego. So if you have created the kind of environment where people are afraid to ask you a questions, your ego is way too big. If you're going to get offended, when someone asks you something and if your answer is because I said, so that is the wrong answer.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah, absolutely. And that's a big case. I can remember lots of jobs I've worked at, or you hear of other bosses out there that are just these big old egos. And nobody wants to ask them questions or question any of their motives or anything they're doing, which is a horrible place to think.

Brandon Condrey:
That's standard. I feel like that is the default for a lot of managers, which is why Tim said that quote, which is people don't quit jobs. They quit managers. Like I think by and large, every single one of us has multiple stories about a boss who was unreasonable. Didn't listen to you. That happens more often than not. I think what we're trying to do here by virtue of you being in this book club and listening to us, we're trying to help you become a better leader to elevate yourself above being the crappy middle manager that shouts at people because they broke a plate in the restaurant. That's not ideal. So yeah, the managing your ego is just keep it in check, man. You need to be able to take feedback, take questions without it being like personally painful to you, you just need to be able to adjust. And these things will get easier over time. They always do. But if this is new to you and you're trying to do it just don't be arrogant about it. You need to be open-minded and listen to those questions and really respond without being judgemental about it.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah. And again, just remember the whole idea is you got to keep everyone focused on the mission. So you got to keep your ego in check. You got to stay humble. This is hard. This is humility. This takes courage to do this because nobody wants to feel like they're screwing up. The most successful people in the world have big egos because they want to win. So it can be really good to have a big ego, but it can also be bad if you're not humble about it, if you're overly arrogant. So oftentimes the most difficult ego to deal with is our own. So check yourself. We have to do this in our company meetings all the time to just like check your ego at the door. It doesn't matter. It's not about your agenda, your own personal circumstances about the team. I mean, you're focused on the team, then everything gets better because everyone, it's not just about you. It's about everyone there. That's what you're trying to create is that team, that teamwork, which actually leads us really nicely into our next one, which is covering move, which is all about teamwork.

Brandon Condrey:
Covering move and yeah teamwork. So cover and move is a military tactic. You've seen it in movies for sure. But the idea is you're going to watch what's over me or shoot at the bad people that are over me so that I can run and then I'll do the same for you. And then you run. And so the example, the book on this was really powerful actually. Like they were under fire, they were trying to escape the situation and they were successful. Ultimately they got these two teams out, but they did it without communicating with each other. And they both got lucky and they were able to escape. In reality, they got in trouble when they got back to the base by their commanding officer who said like, why didn't you cover them? And you guys move in and they cover you and you move like that was ridiculous. Do you guys put all these people at risk? The concept here is super simple, which is teamwork. Like we all got to work together as a team, but I think within a company like, especially a bigger one, like ours, we're pushing 50 employees. We're at 10 cleaning teams. There's a bunch of teams within the company. So we have individual cleaning teams and on those cleaning teams, there's a team lead. And then two other people on the team they have to cover and move together as an individual cleaning team to make sure that they get through their jobs efficiently, that nothing gets left behind all these good things that work as a team. And I think we're pretty good at that. There's a different concept where the 10 teams need to work together as a bigger team. And there's a cover and move aspect there too. Where, okay, well look team to one of the people on that team had a family emergency. They had to go. So there's two people working there when there should be three. So if one of the other teams finishes early, the cover and move part of it would be for one of those people to volunteer, to go help out that team to make sure that they finished the day. So that, that two person team isn't stuck here working until like seven, eight o'clock at night. And they had to put in a 10 hour day. So that's an example of cover and move. And then even at the leadership level, like there's so many examples. If one of us like fell off on the podcast editing schedule or something, or one of us got sick, like, okay, well there's other people that can pick up the slack here, but ideally they should do that by default, the cover and move should kind of be like, look, help out your people. We're all big team is the giant corporation, that big cleaning company that we're all trying to move in the right direction, all rowing in the same direction. So every little bit and piece in there, multiple PR parts of it can cover and move with everybody.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah. And I think you said it all really, really well. So all of that ties into how do they know by default, how to do those things. Even if someone steps out how's everyone on the same page, it all comes down to the next principle, which is keeping things simple. And if everyone knows the reason why, and it's simple and it's easily communicated, it's easily understood what their job is, what the mission is. And once that's really clear, if something crazy happens or throws everyone off track, people can in real time adjust and they can quickly change because they know enough, that's clear enough that they can adjust a little bit and make sure that the mission still gets accomplished. I think one of the examples, and there's a clear example in the book too, about this bonus system that this company had initiated, that was just really complex and nobody understood it and it wasn't helping me through.

Brandon Condrey:
Weighted and you had to make this or that. And no one knew what thing to make to hit their bonus. And all the bonuses were going down and were pissed off.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah. And I thought this was a really similar example. Like in our cleaning business, we have a bonus system, a bonus report, and it's been refined by our mentor my many, many years, but it is really simple. It's like, they know what to expect. We're measuring this, this, this, and this thing. And showing up on time, is your uniform tucked in? Are you finishing the house in a certain amount of time? It's things that are real measurable. They're easy to understand. It's clear. And it's even clear so much though. It's on a board in our office. It's like accountability. Everyone can see who's hitting the goals and who's not. And it's simple. So the goal is not to have the perfect clean every time it's the goal is to hit it with this efficiency and create this experience for the customer. And it's clear enough that even if things aren't perfect that day, we're still able to complete the mission.

Brandon Condrey:
So from the cleaning company standpoint, too, another example here is that we have this checklist, right. That the teams do. And the idea for us to keep it simple part was go through the house, do the same checklist every single time in every house. So you always know what you're doing. You're always doing the same checklist. There are other companies out there that have like checklist A, checklist B, checklist C, and the first time you came out your doing checklist day and the next time you're doing checklist B well, okay, well on any given day, you could be doing A, B and C in different houses. What if you mix those up? Like, how do you keep track of which checklist you're doing? How do you know what's on each checklist? And of course, those companies have ways to explain that there's apps or whatever they're using for it. But from an employee standpoint, that seems like it's very complicated to get straight. So I think there's lots of ways that this could apply to the cleaning business, but there's a famous acronym that has come out over and over and over again, which is kiss. And that stands for keep it simple, stupid, and the idea is whatever you're making. Okay. Run it through that kiss acronym real quick, like a quick, is there something we could cut off of this? Is there something we could trim to just make it easier to do easier? It is to do the more people are gonna understand it. The more likely it is that it's going to get done. All of it.

Brandon Schoen:
Absolutely. All right. I think we covered that one pretty well. Springs, us to number seven, which is prioritize and execute, which in any business, in any environment, especially on the battlefield. But if you look at business like that too, it can be very overwhelming sometimes because things are happening fast, things are, time-sensitive a business can, certain scenarios can be high stake and it can snowball into some bigger issues if you're not paying attention. So when it does happen, you have to be as a leader, you gotta be able to keep your composure, stay calm and quickly identify. Cause you gotta make decisions quickly as a leader and you got to quickly identify what is the top priority. What's the thing that we can execute right now. That's the most important that can move us forward and get us out of this issue and solve this right away. So there's a step by step process. They give them the book for that, which we can go over. But I think that is really it right there is just gotta be able to make a quick decision and prioritize stuff quickly for your team,

Brandon Condrey:
From the cleaning team side of things. I think this falls back on the checklist. You've taught them how to prioritize and execute because part of the checklist is that if you finish first, well, then go help the kitchen. That's the one that takes the longest. If you've finished that go help the bathrooms. If all of that's done, do the floors that's built in prioritize and execute. I think this more applies for the cleaning company owner. And if you're doing EOS like that leadership team. So particularly in our EOS system, like there's a bunch of issues that we look at all the time. There's this running list. Like one of the things on there as buy a building, we don't need to focus all the energy right now on buying a building. That's like a distant opportunities. That's low priority. You need to be able to identify like which one of these is creating the highest amount of problem for us right now, if you 2080 rule it, which one of these can we tackle, that'll have the greatest impact. What's the low hanging fruit. Those things are things that you need to learn how to do for sure.

Brandon Schoen:
Absolutely. I love that one. So the next one after that is decentralized command. So it talks about breaking down your teams into groups of four to five with a clearly assigned leader for each group. We work in teams of three. So that's perfect and shared that the leaders of all levels understand the overall mission and immediate goals, including what the team must do and why. So again, we have this hierarchy in the company, whether it's sales or customer service or on actual cleaning teams, but yeah, they understand the mission. They understand what the goal is. We've made it like the checklist we've made the systems, we've made everything so that they know exactly what to do and why, and they know why that they have a bonus report or they know why they're being measured on those things. So this is again like delegating some of that and empowering people, I think.

Brandon Condrey:
Yeah, this is empowering your subordinates to also have extreme ownership, decentralized command, as you know, the mission, you manager three people so that they do it. You know what we're trying to do? You got it. We're actually at a shift with Sandia Green Clean where we're going to get big enough to the point where our trainer Raina, she's essentially managing communication with the teams all day. There's 10 teams. And she's like right at the bandwidth here where it's just too many messages for us to be able to get back to the teams and finite fashion. So we're actually at a point where we're going to shift it up a little bit and we're going to get team managers. So team managers will look over the team leads, have cleaning teams, and those will be in groups of between five and 10. And then you split them up a couple of times. So there, we're creating more opportunity for the cleaners to grow into these roles. But also that is the decentralized command. Like you don't need to run every decision by me. He broke a thing. What should we do? What to do already have the procedure, just do it. A lot of people have a really hard time with this. This is letting go of control, but it is key to be able to run it very efficient, smooth business and make it bigger. This is how you scale.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah, absolutely. And part of that scaling too is having a sound plan, which is the next one sound planning, great leaders ensure that there is a sound planning process that includes the mission, clarity, evaluation of options and risks, engagement of all levels. Post-action debrief and system integration of all the planning processes. So you've got to always know once you, once you put a plan in place, things can change, right? So you've got to take some action, put it out there, see what sticks, what went right, what went wrong, debrief, how you can adapt and make it more effective and do better. Because ultimately you want to win. You want to beat the enemy, whether that's on the battlefield or your comp competitors out there that are trying to steal your customers, who's going to win. You know? So you got to evaluate your planning and make your, again, there is a plan in place. If you don't have a plan, you're not going to go very far.

Brandon Condrey:
So this goes back to, in the cleaning example with the team leads, we have a weekly team lead meeting and Reyna who runs that meeting decentralize command, Raina runs that meeting. And she asked them every week, they go over some numbers from the, from what happened before. So this is the debrief of what happened last week. Here's how it all broke down for you guys. Here's any complaints that happened. Here's what went wrong. Here's what went right? And then one of the things we always ask them at the end is, you know what, standing in the way of doing your job. And do you have any idea that would help you guys do your job better? And we always listened to that feedback. It could be new tools, new methods, whatever, but we're not shutting it down. We are definitely listening to that.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah. So that post operational debriefing is really, really key. We also do that in our normal leadership team meetings too, is just saying like, Hey, we tried this, it didn't work. Or everyone it's like this collective mind of everyone putting input in and we're spinning up this better solution the whole time by getting that feedback and saying, this worked this didn't we had this objective, we delegated this. It didn't work or worked. That's really cool. I loved it. The planning concept as well, which brings us to, again, more of the delegating, but leading up and leading down the line, great leaders concurrently, lead upward by offering information and updates to help their leaders understand their work and support them and leading downward to help junior leaders and frontline staff to see the bigger picture. That's exactly what you're talking about.

Brandon Condrey:
Yeah. This is spoke to the middle manager type person where you're in the middle. You're not at the very tippy top, but this is all connected to stuff. Part of this is the example that gave him the book was all right. They're asking you to submit this data, like why? And they already have all that data. We're like, well, have you asked, have you considered like, why they're asking you to do that? And maybe they're just making sure it's for your safety. So like we ask the teams for so much stuff through the day, we're explaining why we need those things. Like it goes back to the customer, it goes back to this, but leading up the line, you and I are at the top. So there's not a lot up there. But if someone came to us and said like, Hey, I've got a great example. We tried to put in place that software that does review management called podium. We tried to use it as the text communication channel for everything. And it went very badly. And the person that led up the line was our sales guy, Matt. He was the man who came up and said, Hey, can I talk to you about this podium thing? I was like, yes, I've already talked to people. But he really explained it in a way that none of the others had that it was creating this insane amount of undue stress and workload for people that we just hadn't seen when we implemented it. So we retracted it. That was the managing your ego part. We were like, yep. That was a mistake guys. Sorry, we'll go back to the old way, our bad. And so that was Matt leading up the line and then us managing our ego by correcting the problem. So that was a good example. Both ways.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah, really good example there. And I think that ties well into when something's happening and you have to make a decision, oh, it's working, it's not working. You have to be number 11 is be decisive, amidst uncertainty. So as a leader, you must be prepared to make the best possible decisions based on available information. You can't be paralyzed by fear. You can't take no action, which is what fear makes you do. It just makes you inactive and not want to do anything. So as leaders, you've got gotta be able to act quickly. And so there's not ever going to be a perfect solution, but being more comfortable with getting uncomfortable, making quick decisions, even when you're not sure what you're doing, that's part of being a leader. All right, that's not going to work. Let's promptly shift to this and see if this works like with the podium thing. Okay. That didn't work. Let's try this, let's try this. And a lot of times people don't do that. They just sit on their problems. They don't do anything. And that's when it gets really, really bad and spiraled out of control.

Brandon Condrey:
I think everyone, if you were running your business in 2020, you have so many examples of this. You either got freaked out by that pandemic and you sat still and things dwindled around you, or you got decisive about it. You did not do the analysis paralysis thing and you took action. So I naturally jive towards analysis paralysis. That's where I like sit looking at spreadsheets all day. I was really freaked out about the beginning of the pandemic, but Brandon was the one who was like, look, we're just set up a Q and A with the customers. We're going to tell him that we're putting on shoe covers and we're doing this. And like we took action constantly. We pivoted so many times during the pandemic and you guys did too. If you still are around, think back to those moments when you are a little bit worried about those things and you'll know how you need to proceed. Everyone has so many examples of this after 2020 that I feel like this is maybe an easy one for everyone to conquer these days.

Brandon Schoen:
Yeah. And really that's the cool thing is you got to shift your mindset. It's counter intuitive, but uncertainty is opportunity, right? There's so when people are uncertain and there's fear, there's an opportunity to act, to make a decision because a lot of people aren't going to make a decision. So if you just think of it that way, that is your opportunity to act promptly, make a decision. When we did that, it was just constant communication with our customers. Tell them, Hey, this is how we're going to do to make sure you guys are okay. Taking these precautions, all that communication built that trust. People wanted to keep working with us. That was our part of our pivot, as opposed to just being like, oh my gosh, we're fearful. We're not saying anything. We're not communicating with anyone. That's what a lot of businesses did the last couple of years. So yeah, that's a great example.

Brandon Condrey:
You don't want to find examples of you can look around so many places to find examples of a company was fearful and they did nothing. And Ron, if you dig around for that, that'll come up over and over and over again. We've said it before in other episodes. But the idea is if you're worried to solve the worry, just take actions, do something, do something that will create some motion and that will help solve the fear. And then you can at least get some momentum.

Brandon Schoen:
Absolutely. And I think the last one is number 12, which is discipline brings freedom or discipline equals freedom. I love that phrase right there. I'm a lot of times you think of discipline, which I think of discipline. I'm like, oh, that means like get up at a certain time and work out a certain way and like be disciplined and read like whatever to do your work. But at the same time, it's like when you do those things, just as an example for like working out, if you're disciplined, working out, it brings freedom because now you have more energy. You've regained your time in a certain way because you've taken action and you feel good about that. You haven't just sat around and had been lazy. You've worked on yourself, you've improved yourself. You've gotten better. And now you have this new found freedom. So I think that goes the same in business that you get better results when you have the discipline to take the right actions in your business. And we've got a pretty cool list here. I don't know if we could read through that for everyone, Brandon.

Brandon Condrey:
Yeah, You got time. Let's do it. A good leader must be confident, but not cocky.

Brandon Schoen:
Courageous, but not foolhardy.

Brandon Condrey:
Competitive, but a gracious loser.

Brandon Schoen:
Attentive to details, but not obsessed by them.

Brandon Condrey:
Strong, but also have endurance.

Brandon Schoen:
A leader and a follower.

Brandon Condrey:
Humble, not passive.

Brandon Schoen:
Aggressive, not overbearing,

Brandon Condrey:
Quiet, not silent.

Brandon Schoen:
Calm, but not robotic.

Brandon Condrey:
Logical, but not devoid of emotions

Brandon Schoen:
And close with the troops, but not so close. That one becomes more important than another or important that the other more important than, than the good of the team. Not so close that they forget who is in charge.

Brandon Condrey:
Yup. So yeah, a good leader has nothing to prove, but everything to prove, some of those are counterintuitive, but if you really think back and consider it, like it's all there. I really think that number 12, like discipline brings freedom. That's just summing it up across the board. The other 11 things, if you are disciplined enough to pull off those 11 other concepts in the book, then everything else should fold into place for you.

Brandon Schoen:
Absolutely. So I loved it. I think it was a really great book. I think I learned a ton of amazing stuff from it. It just, and I like reading this book. I've read it before, but I liked reading it again just because it reminds you again of taking absolutely responsibility for everything in your life, everything in your business, everything in your personal life, everything on your teams, which actually frees up a lot of worry and doubt and other issues you might have. Because if you're like, Hey, it's my fault. If things aren't going well, you're not worried about blaming other people. You're not worried about who's not doing what on your team. You're just like, no, it's my fault. I got to do better. I got to step it up. And it makes everything a lot simpler actually. So, so that's always encouraging to me. So we have some really cool key takeaways in there and the notes guys and that you'll see, but that's stick with extreme ownership. You can start solving problems, stop blaming playing the blame game, believe, communicate, and listen. So leaders must have a resolute belief in the team's mission and you have to continue listening, supporting your team so you guys can flawlessly execute the mission at hand. That's another great takeaway. There's so many good ones put, do you go on personal motivations of the side simplifying.

Brandon Condrey:
The good stuff to read at the end, for sure. But like really, I think there's only 11 things, 12 things in there to cover. Like those are the ones, for sure. So I think if you go to the quotes, these are some things that we liked out of the book. So discipline equals freedom. That's the one that we just covered here at the end.

Brandon Schoen:
Right. That was a great one. I love that. The next one is, it's not what you preach. It's what you tolerate. So again, like setting the standards for your team is huge. You can talk a big talk all day, but at the end, what you actually tolerate and those standards that filter down through your whole company that really elevates the teams or not, doesn't elevate the team.

Brandon Condrey:
Yup. Prioritize your problems and take care of them. One at a time, the highest priority. First don't try to do everything at once or you won't be successful. That's a good point for everything like with goal setting, some of the groups that I'm in, like you want to have three to five goals a year. If you have more than that, none of them will get done. If you have a three to five goals, you'll probably get three of them done and you'll feel super accomplished. If you have six, you'll get none of them done. You'll get 10% of each one done and feel miserable. So prioritize.

Brandon Schoen:
And that goes back to even like our quarterly goals, our quarterly rocks that we do within our EOS system, everybody only has one or two at the most goals per quarter major things. So that's going back to priorities. What's the number one priority. You shouldn't have one or two goals for everyone in your business and the leadership team, at least that they are responsible for every quarter in. And if you're going beyond that, you've lost track of your priorities, right? So don't try to do everything. Pick one thing, be laser-focused on that one thing I love the idea of a laser cuts through diamond, but a flashlight. It just is as broad light, but a laser, a very super focused light can cut through diamonds. And that's what this is. It's like prioritizing and cutting through the highest priority. The most important thing and that's what you can do in your business. If you're organized, if you're doing it the right way, if you're taking extreme ownership, like we're talking about here. So, so yeah, guys, I think that's most of the book here, there's obviously a lot more to it, but that's our take on it. I think it was hugely impactful. I'm definitely going to read it again here. And anytime I'm thinking of blaming anyone, I'm going to just be like, no, my fault. I need to step up and do better. So that's the big thing I got out of it. So, so we're going to leave these notes, the book notes here, you'll have all of these numbered out the big takeaways, the quotes, and yeah, we're doing this every month. So this one's a little bit more of a catch-up guys, but the next book we're doing for March is actually next week. So we're catching up on that one too, which is the ideal team player. Another really awesome book. So keep on the lookout for that one. And I think that's pretty much it for this book club, right? Brandon?

Brandon Condrey:
That is it. Yeah. So hope you guys enjoyed it. We will get better at these over time. And there's one that you want us to cover specifically. Let us know. We're happy to talk about stuff even if you've read it before.

Brandon Schoen:
Absolutely. So until next time guys, keep it clean.

Brandon Condrey:
Keep it clean.

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