The Practice of Therapy

Mike Michalowicz
Mike McCalla wits here and I am proud to be on the practice of therapy podcast with Gordon joy the show. Well, hello folks,

Gordon Brewer
I'm so glad to have somebody that you're in a big treat. This is going to be a big treat for everyone. I'm happy to have back with me today. Mike McCalla wits Welcome, Mike.

Mike Michalowicz
Gordon. It's always a joy to see you. Thanks for having me back.

Gordon Brewer
Yeah. And so for folks that are listening to this podcast if you if you've been listening while his name comes up a lot, just a whole lot. And if you don't know about Mike McCalla wits you need to because I will say Mike that your book, Profit First, which you're probably best known for was just a total life changer for me and my practice and hundreds of other therapists out there. And it's just been a, as we were talking about, we were talking about the evolution of kind of how Mike and I met, which I'll talk a little too we can talk about that later. But But Mike is an entrepreneur and an entrepreneur behind a $3,000,000.03, three $3 million companies. Let me say that right. Yeah. And is the author of several books, including Profit First clockwork, the Pumpkin Plan in his newest book, all in which we're going to talk about today. And so Mike McCalla wits has been on been a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, journal, and business makeover expert for MSNBC. And he regularly travels the globe in his entrepreneurial advocate. So I'm glad you're back, Mike. This conversation Yeah,

Mike Michalowicz
let's dig in. We're gonna have some fun, I think.

Gordon Brewer
Yes, yes. So. So let's let's just start with talking about this new book. And I got to hear Mike speak. Yes. At the Meet you in Kentucky conference with Casey Compton and case, we have a mutual great friendship with Casey. But I was actually looking back at my notes from from your talk. And, you know, the one thing that stood out for me is just thinking about how we hire people, because I know that that's a tough thing for a lot of people in particularly in our, our industry. And just so go my guess about

Mike Michalowicz
this. Yeah, that was one that was the first time I delivered a traditional or formal speech on all in. And as I say the book is releasing, hasn't released yet. It's releasing on January 2 of 2020, for how the book came about. And some of the concepts that we can dig into, is, I like to look at what an entrepreneur, myself or any entrepreneur yourself, what we want to achieve as an outcome, and what's the common path we use to get there? But what's the data behind the actual results? So just jumping back to Profit First, for a second. Most entrepreneurs I have interviewed want to experience personal and financial freedom through their business, I'd say as well in the high 90s is are those are some of the objectives. So I looked at it and very few people experience personal freedom we're in trapped in the business, we work like crazy, and absolutely don't achieve financial freedom. We're living cheque by cheque. So I said, Well, how come we want this yet, quote, unquote, no one is achieving it. So I look at the data and with Profit First, I found that the foundational formula or method we follow is we take our sales, we subtract the expenses, and what's left over is profit. But there's never leftovers. The problem that formula is we're told profit is a leftover, it comes last. And in profit. First, I flipped the formula, its sales minus profit equals expenses. So in practice, you take your Profit First, hence the title, hide that money and run your business off the remainders, the pay yourself first principle applied to business. So when it came to all in, I said, What's the process we use for recruiting and retaining employees and raising the bar for our organization? And first, with recruiting, I noticed that the method we use is interviews, you know, the traditional interviews, there's countless books out there the great questions to ask and so forth, how to get your A players. So I looked at the results and the results are abysmal. less than 10% of the people that we find through interviews end up being great performance for our organization. We make extraordinary numbers of Miss hires, and people who are mismatches not ideal fits, we kind of put a square peg in a round hole. So one of the strategies I looked at is, well, if that doesn't work, if that's putting profit last equivalent, you know, what, what's the flip, and I found and I shared that the event is we can do effectively recruiting workshops, I call them workshops. It's something I discovered is is prolific in the sports industry, but hasn't yet been widely applied in the business industry. Some businesses have done this with great six US, but I'm trying to expose it to everyone. So just a background story. In high school, I played lacrosse, not not a big popular sport in the south. And it's not generally a popular sport, but it's growing. And I was a average to average minus athlete. But I was had the opportunity to go to a camp at a school in the Northeast called Hobart, it's, it was back in the day, pretty famous for lacrosse. And I went there along with three 300 to 500 other students, and we're out in the field practicing and training and the coaches are helping everyone improve what was happening behind the scenes, I did notice that some of the athletes were tapped on the shoulder by a coach and say, Hey, you're showing some skills we'd like to help you with even further come to this field, and goes that field. And what they were doing is they were identifying the athletes with the most potential, the most desire and thirst and helping them play and practice at even a more elite level. While at the end of the camp, Hobart, the organization, the school had identified a handful students who would ultimately become Hobart players, they were the best of the best. But the magic is, I got better too. And so did every other athlete there. The work shop process allows everyone to improve, and the people that show the most desire or thirst to become your candidate. So there's an application in business, I think, at the event I shared Home Depot and their story. I don't know Home Depot is big throughout the US. And I don't know if you've been to one of these. But Gordon, newer, I could go to a workshop where they're making birdhouses and you bring a child, or maybe he's going around, and you learn this process. Now, there's a multifaceted approach. First of all, they're getting you to the store, so you're more likely to be consumer, they're giving you a favorable experience, so you're more ingratiated with them. But behind the scenes, there's a couple Home Depot employees that are teaching, who are also observing. And they watch for the participation from the parents, who is helping other parents who's the most into this. And they tap those folks on the shoulder and say, hey, you've demonstrated such skill and interest. You ever consider working at Home Depot. It's a great recruiting platform. And this plays out in other businesses too. But what the lesson here is for any business, particularly if you're in the therapy industry is run workshops. Now, it doesn't need to be a five day camp at Hobart, it doesn't need to be a workshop that's hands on like Home Depot, you could do this virtually. And is there a skill or something that candidates may want to acquire that you could help teach and just by their attendance, and then their demonstration of acquiring a skill, you may pick extraordinary candidates. The last thing I want to share is you don't need to teach this stuff yourself. And so if you could find someone that has expertise and skill, you could teach that. Make sure you invite people to pay to some degree because they need to participate. We're not We're not looking to have as open class who ever wants to show up shows up, they need to have some small investment to be vested in it. And lastly is my favorite part is this isn't something you run on Indeed, now it's not like you know, you run an ad that almost no one responds to, now you can go to you can go to your competition and say, Listen, we're introducing a new skill, send your therapists our way and cherry pick that way. You can go to workshops that already exists, you can go to adult education classes. And I got a lot on this. But my final final tip is, if you're not ready to run the workshop, just go to a class where people are being trained on the people, you want to bet for the what you want to recruit, go there as a student, but really as an observer, and now you don't have to put on the workshop, you can find the perfect people that you want to bring on board,

Gordon Brewer
right. But the thing that strikes me about this is that it also takes the pressure off the people, you really get to see people acting more like the real their real self, so to speak, you know, in an atmosphere like that I was just thinking about, and I know you've we've talked, we've thrown this idea around before at the conference, and then just hearing you chat with other people about this. You know, one of the things that has been successful for me and my practices is hiring interns, people that are graduate students. Yeah, yeah. And those those folks are, are hungry to learn and that sort of thing. And one of the thing that's great is, is that you can really see their people skills rise to the top. I mean, you know, we can teach clinical theory and clinical skills, all of those all the time. But if you don't know how to engage with people, you're not going to make a great, great therapist. And so you get to observe that firsthand.

Mike Michalowicz
Yeah, you shared three words. That's the magic bullet, hungry to learn. And that's what we're looking for. There is basically three categories of ability that we should be looking for. And sadly, most businesses only look for one, maybe two. And they are the small factors. Factor. One is what's called experiential ability. Experiential ability is something you've demonstrated in the past is something you can bullet point on your resume. And honestly, that's where almost all of the consideration goes, when a small business is looking to hire someone. And there is some value if they didn't pass, they likely could do it in the future. But there's two other components, there is what's called innate ability. innate ability is my natural wiring. So I may be a high energy person or low energy person, I may be someone who is introverted or extroverted, cultural fit or not. Some businesses now are looking at those components more diligently and that's great. They use Myers Briggs or Enneagram, or whatever the tools are out to evaluate that. But those two combined only represent 20% of the real opportunity in a candidate. The big one, the big fat one in the middle, that almost actually almost everyone ignores, is potential ability. potential ability is what could this person do that they haven't proven yet? Now, that sounds so hard to grasp, but it's not. All you have to do is these workshops. When we were at that event together, I was talking about Eddie Van Halen. If you and I started the Gordon and Mike rock band and said we need a great guitar and we should

Gordon Brewer
do that. We you should yeah, yeah, we should do that.

Mike Michalowicz
I'm not singing and I'm on the tambourine. So you got pickier? Yeah. But but say we wanted Eddie Van Halen. Well, we couldn't get I know he's deceased now. But we couldn't get Eddie Van Halen, he would, he would reject us and say, Are you kidding me, I got my own band, even even take our call. But when Eddie Van Halen was, I think was 11 or 12. That's when he had an initial interest in the guitar. So imagine we went back in time. And we approached Eddie Van Halen, and said, Hey, why don't you come to our workshop? We're teaching guitar skills. And we'd love to have you there. What's the likelihood he attend likelihood he'd attend pretty high. Now, there's a caveat here. We didn't know Eddie would be Eddie Van Halen back when he was 12 years old. So what we need to do is invite all of these students and say, Hey, we have a workshop on guitar playing guitar better. But what will happen in our workshop is Eddie and the other students will first have curiosity, the interest they show up, but that's not a great candidate. The next level is desire. Desire is where they show interest in learning. They ask questions, they practice longer, they're the ones who show up first and stay last. And then the highest level is thirst. Thirst is where they can't quit. It's part of them. And it would be very easy to identify desire and thirst, with Eddie Van Halen, and perhaps other guitars. And early on, within a few weeks, I think we can identify with a potential Eddie on our hands and invite Him in the band. That's what we're looking to do with our company.

Gordon Brewer
Right, right. Yeah. And that's, yeah, in one of the things, too, is that unknown hiring therapists, we want to be able to see their ability to interact with people. And you get it firsthand when you do a workshop like that. I mean, it's nice. Yeah, yeah. You get there was a you get Yeah,

Mike Michalowicz
there was a case study. University of Chicago, they have a medical center. And what was so interesting about this night included in the all in book is The they were interviewing in the traditional way. Show us your resume, sit down, be interviewed. And the interviewer felt that she had this specialized skill to identify the best candidates. Well, the university said, we want to approach this in a different way. We don't think we're getting the best candidates. And there's a bigger backstory to that, but they ran a skill shop. And the same candidates that were interviewed, went through this process of going to different workstations, and going through and demonstrating experience, like how do you check in this was for their administrative department? How do you check in a new patient? Now, here's what's so interesting. They had about six workstations. One of the stations was that check in and the person running it demonstrated a patient who has cerebral palsy. And she knew this because her roommate had it. And it's very hard to have fine motor skills. So taking out your honor, your identification, your driver's license, can take up to 60 seconds or a minute. So what they did is workstation is they they had candidates check the person in and she noticed that many of the candidates or some of them were very gracious, some would say Please take your time. Otherwise they may assist you if you'd like assistance. But one camp particular was brutal. She ripped the card out to just give it to me we got to move. And what was so funny and not in a hallway but interesting way was in the interview that candidate who ripped the the driver's license out of the hand, was the best interviewer and was gonna get the job, but was the worst in the skills assessment. What it ends up is someone that shows confidence and control may speak well, but it doesn't mean they can do the work well. So they all did. We hired the people that had the best skills. The retention rate was our best ever the performance rate was the best ever. It proved to be a much better model.

Gordon Brewer
Yeah, yeah, I know, there was something that an acronym that you came up with my get called Fassa. So you'll say some more about that?

Mike Michalowicz
Yeah, fast. So it rhymes with lasso. And it stands for the the four key elements for building an all in team and retaining a team. F stands for fit. So just going through as quickly as most organizations think a fit is a person to a title. And that's a mistake. It's a talent to a task we need to match. So instead of saying, I need a marketing director, say, what's the marketing director, do our social media management or whatever the components are? Write those down, and then say, what is the talents I'm looking for to do this? Social media is someone that maybe is very organized. Graphic design work is someone who's very creative, which are very different things. Then we say, who are the candidates, maybe even already in your organization that can bring their town to specific tasks. What happens is we break out of that pyramid structure of titles, and we go and take a web like structure of matching talent to task, it builds much thinner, stronger, healthier, leaner, meaner organizations. So that's the fifth part. ability we talked about with Eddie Van Halen. What we're looking for is potential ability. So I'm not saying disregard experiential ability, I'm just saying it's very insignificant compared to potential. So we need to lean to have potential workshops, virtual workshops, attending someone else's class or workshop or always to find people with potential. And there is a massive community, people with great ability, potential ability and otherwise, in some cases, or in many cases already gainfully employed, but they don't know what else is out there. So they're not looking in indeed, they're gainfully employed. Those people who don't have a job right now, generally. So what we do is now we enter a whole new community of people who are ready, perhaps gainfully employed, but don't know or don't see a path forward beyond what they're doing. Now, you can introduce that by leveraging the potential S stands for safety. We must have a safe environment. And I'm not just saying physical safety, that's mandatory. Imagine anytime you someone may come up and hit you the kneecaps with a metal pipe? Well, I'm going to be on edge all the time. Yeah, we will. Yeah. So we need physical safety, but we need relational safety, I need to feel that I can be my true self in front of you, Gordon, and you the same way for me to perform my best. So as a leader, we need to build an environment of honesty, integrity, and self, represent yourself truly, authentically, and starts off with a leader doing that. Do it in small drips and drabs, I wouldn't start off by saying I got to tell you about my life story and all the things I messed up in my life, here I am. But we may actually get there over time. And then the last part O stands for ownership. And what I found is many owners, business owners come to me say, Gosh, I wish my employees would act like owners. So I said, Okay, how do you do this? Well, you do by deploying, deploying what's called psychological ownership. Psychological ownership is where you feel something is your possession, even though legally may not be. So the example is, I own a truck, a Ford little pickup truck, and I take care of it, I wash it, I park it, you know exactly where I want, I make sure it's secure and protected. I get the oil, change all that stuff. But here's the funny thing is I don't actually legally own it, the bank does. I'm making my installments, one day won't be legally mine. But it's psychologically mine. You don't need to give your employees ownership in your organization. In fact, that can even trail trigger entitlement which is dangerous. What we simply need to do is demonstrate you have control over this, I can park the car where I want, you can personalize it, I put my dice on the rearview mirror, and you have intimate knowledge around meaning you understand the intricacies of how it work. If we give our employees opportunities to have those three elements, psychological ownership will kick in. Look for the key word, the buzzwords when they start saying this is our organization or this is my job, or this is mine to take care of all those things, my mind hours all show a sense of ownership.

Gordon Brewer
Right? Right. You know, it's uh, I was listening to another interview that you did and shout out to Whitney Owens and her podcast but she's great. What what? Yeah, love Whitney. One of the things that I've thought about is I've just recently reread Malcolm Gladwell 's book. David and Goliath. Yeah, and what and what you're talking about is real. Giving, the leaders need to have legitimacy. And the way that I do that is just what you talked about is be giving people the safety and ownership of what they do. And, and that's, that's so key. I think, in my own practice, I think one of the reasons I've been a knock on wood that I've been successful in keeping people is that I give them ownership of everything that they do on a daily basis. Just kind of like, you know, if there's a problem, I want you to figure it out first, don't come to me with it.

Mike Michalowicz
It's yours. Yeah. And there's a subtle difference between responsibility and ownership responsibility is I have an expectation for you to do this degree of tasks, and you better comply with it. What I was saying is, if we are forced to comply, we will seek to defy. I'll give an example with a rental car, when I have a rental car, I have a responsibility to return it with a full tank, no scratches, clean interior, and so forth. So what do I do the second I go outside the rental agency, I'm doing doughnuts in the parking lot. I'm jamming on that break, when I get near the traffic light, and I'm flooring it when I take off. And that's because I've been forced to be responsible for certain things. And I'll seek ways outside of those responsibilities to defy it. Ownership, it's a subtle difference, but significant ownership gives the person control, you take care of this as if it's yours, because it basically is yours, the object becomes a representation of who they are. So when I assign something that someone is, you know, you own this, now, this becomes part of them integrated with them, it's a representation of who they are. And so what we need to do is drive the point home saying this, this is who you are, this is a representation of you, and, and award them or recognize them them accordingly. But by giving them the control the way they want to get to the outcome that we want, is a big part of giving people ownership.

Gordon Brewer
Right, right. Wow. Well, Mike, I know I've got to be respectful of your time. And this is we could go on for go on for days talking about these things. But you know, one of the things I'll say Mike as that in reading your books, and I've read most everything you've put out there, one of the things I'll say is that you break it down into just simple, you know, everyday kind of language that's easy to understand. And like I said at the beginning when when you when I first read Profit First is kind of like it just is kind of like it opened up, opened up the understanding in a way and I think what you've done here with all in and I'm really looking forward to the book coming out, is really think about how we approach hiring people and running our businesses in a way that creates an atmosphere that people aren't going to be will want to work for you

Mike Michalowicz
and exactly why we're for you want to work with you. Because your business will be a representation of you collectively, it will be a representation of them you know, yeah, I'm I'm proud of the book and I'm so happy you're gonna get a copy.

Gordon Brewer
Yeah, yeah. And so folks, you're gonna hear more from Mike McCalla wits I'm sure and this is it's been such a pleasure to reconnect my goodness. tell folks how they can get in touch with you and where they can find the book and all that sort of

Mike Michalowicz
thing. Sure. So it's at your favorite you know, retail or Amazon or otherwise. But the best way to get started I would say to go is my website now here's the tip knowing and spell my last name so Mike McCalla wits while it's the tip. So here's the shortcut. Go to Mike motorbike nickname I was given in grade school, the only PG nickname I've ever had. So, if you go to Mike motorbike as in the motorcycle, that will bring into my site. All in along my other books. There's free chapter downloads all waiting for you right there. Mike motorbike.com.

Gordon Brewer
Yeah, it's a great your website redesign. I don't know saying you did. It is great. Yeah, yeah. It's

Mike Michalowicz
definitely a different type of website. Yeah, it is. It's

Gordon Brewer
great. It's, and the thing about it is, is Mike makes all of this fun. And you know, it's just I had a friend one time that said, if it's if it ain't fun, it ain't worth doing. And then Mike just absolutely makes this fun and enjoyable. And so appreciate you so much. Appreciate you, brother. All right. Thanks, Mike. Oh, by the way, we'll have all the links to this in the show notes and the show summary so you can access it easily.