Latest / Caught on the Mike... / "Boss, I'm tired..." A solo tale about work ethic.

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"Boss, I'm tired..." A solo tale about work ethic. · Caught on the Mike...

• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Holy shit.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I've ever started a podcast that way before, but let me tell you a little bit about the week I've had.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: But first I'm going to back up a little bit further.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, as it was pointed out on last week's live stream episode, I don't talk about my day job on the podcast a lot.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: I don't specify exactly where I work, who I work for.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: I just kind of vaguely say I manage retail stores.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not because I'm not proud of what I do.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm actually very proud of what I do.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm very good at my job.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: I enjoy what I do.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't have done it as long as I have been doing it if I didn't enjoy it.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: The caveat is that I work for a corporation and I want to represent my corporation in the best way I possibly can.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: That might mean that I have a guest or I have personal opinions that don't exactly jive with how I would want to represent my company if I were to put my company's name out there.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: But that's also not to say that anything I do put out there would reflect poorly on my company or me.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's just I'm not leaving things to chance.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not leaving things to misinterpretation.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not leaving things to the spin cycle.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we just came off of a year that is nothing but spin cycle, right?
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Extreme left, extreme right, extreme wrong, extreme right.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just not anything I want to leave to chance.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, all of that being said, I'm going to backtrack and start telling a little bit of an anecdote.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: About two months ago, my company acquired a bunch of new stores.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: And three weeks ago, I was given the privilege of taking over one of these new stores.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that's always a fun journey to start from scratch, to cultivate a new team, to mentor people into your style and your standards, and um watch people grow and thrive as a byproduct of this.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Now there are two avenues of conflict that I've already run into.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: One is the standard of people saying that's not the way we used to do things.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: And two is the physical working space that I'm working in.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, just kind of getting things up to par, getting things up to my company's standards, getting things up to my standards.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Not to say that the way the previous ownership was doing it wrong.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's just that we have a different way of doing things.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: So in three weeks, I have been faced with a ton of adversity.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: But the biggest battle came this last Sunday.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Sunday morning, I woke up to a text from one of my assistants that said, Mike, the store is flooded.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm thinking, I'm gonna throw my shoes on, I'm gonna go down to the store.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: There's probably a leaking sprinkler head.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna get out of shop back, we're gonna clean up a little bit of water, I'm gonna go home and go about my day.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: I wish it was that simple.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: I get down to the store and there is water full on gushing out of the front door of my store.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: There is water full on gushing out of each business next door to my store.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: And as I'm walking through my store, I'm walking through four to six inches of standing water.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing coming from the ceiling.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's all coming from the floor.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: A few panicked phone calls later, a plumber, a call to the city, and we find that a main and sprinkler riser, located underground in the back far corner of my store, have both burst and is now flushing water throughout the underground of all the businesses.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: To make matters worse, the shutoff is out on the street and it was frozen solid, so the city couldn't get it shut off.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: It took four hours to get the water shut off.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: So, all in all, my morning at work on my day off started at 8 a.m.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: and didn't conclude until the following day at 3 p.m.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: I was at the store for a whopping 31 hours.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it hasn't ended.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: That was four days ago.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Four 12-hour work days ago.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm not telling this tale to be a woe is me story.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, why I thought it would be really interesting to apply to the podcast is because of the stories about leadership, adversity, and overcoming challenges that we've told for the past three episodes.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like serendipity, as I've brought up in an episode prior, knocking on my door and saying, Here's an opportunity to live those values that you talk about, the values of work ethic, the values of embracing things that suck, kind of rise to the challenge of the people that I find inspiring.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: David Goggins, Jocko, and people that have been on this show, like Sean Swarner, my friends Ryan and Amanda, Anthony Leonhardt Smith, and the list goes on and on and on.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: So what better than eight episodes past my personal episode, the first personal episode that I put out there, than to do another personal episode, and this time to kind of talk a little bit more about my values, the things that I put emphasis on in my everyday life.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's not perfect.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: I can be a sad sap eeyore sometimes, and I have to catch myself, and my wife is really good at catching me being that way.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: I've also not always had the greatest work ethic.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: I had to grow into this person.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: I had to find purpose.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: I had to find my why.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: I had to find my everyday motivation to get myself out of bed.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um I could go on and on and on about the challenges I've had in my past life, but we want to look through windshields, not through rear view mirrors, right?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're constantly living in a state of reliving yesterday, you miss out on tomorrow.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I would say the first focal point would be, as I've said in past episodes, becoming a father and my kids.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: And the importance of them seeing me do right, even if it's hard.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because whether you're parenting or you're leading a team of people, there's a phrase that goes, so goes a leader, goes the team.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: People will ultimately model their behaviors off of what they see you doing.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: So very much like what Anthony Smith said in the last episode of the podcast, you don't do things just so people recognize that you're doing those things, but you do those things because they're the right thing to do.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: There's a certain code of honor in doing challenging things and moving past those challenges and letting it build your character naturally.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: There's also a sense of personal resiliency about just accomplishing a difficult task.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, how many times have you painted a room or hung up a picture or rearranged a room and walked out of it and then walked right back into it so you could look at it with a fresh set of eyes again?
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Think about that sense of accomplishment whenever you experience that for the first time over and over and over.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, that kind of becomes your normal.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: You get used to that rearranged room, you get to use to that new color on your wall.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: So the same thing goes with your leadership style and with your work ethic.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, after a while, it just becomes muscle memory.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: You just do certain things, and your teams start performing in accordance with those ideals and values that you lay out.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like I don't talk about it enough, but one of my most favorite things about my job is helping to develop new leaders, um, coaching people up so they have opportunities to better their life and further their careers.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I present them with a lot of challenging tasks, and I essentially lead them down the path to, I don't want to say do my job for me, but it's very close to that.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's so the team runs the same way in my absence as it would as if I were there.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: Building efficiencies within your team so there's always a consistency to how every day goes.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: So whenever the unpredictable does happen, like a water main break, you know how to navigate that.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: But I will tell you from first hand experience, just this past week, I didn't know how to navigate that, and I'm just now learning it as I go along.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's been a lot of long days, and again, I'm not trying to sing woe is me, um, but I'm adapting and I'm overcoming and I'm figuring it out.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: So let's take a step back even further.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't always had the same work ethic.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: My examples as a kid coming up, um my parents weren't exactly the most hardworking people on the face of the planet.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not because I didn't think it was in them, I think it was one of those things where they kind of have the victim mentality.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: They get caught up in their own BS and um they kind of make that the focal point.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: So they would quit jobs or leave jobs or move on from jobs because everybody else was out to get them, instead of just owning the space that they live in and being the best person that they could be and just focusing on the task at hand and the reason why they need to focus on those tasks.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: So initially, it didn't put a strong sense of work ethic within me.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: I was a horrible employee on some of my early jobs.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: Hell, I was a horrible employee when I first started with the company I'm with now.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, frequently calling in.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Shit, if I had sick time, I'd use the damn shit.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I'm saying?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: But I think when Lizzie was born, Lizzie's my oldest daughter, I realized that I couldn't be pulling that same stuff that my parents were pulling.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because ultimately you have to break a cycle and you have to make that conscientious decision to break that cycle.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: And not everybody has that within them.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, my wife is an incredibly hardworking person.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: And there's an interesting quote: it's hard work spotlights the character of people.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: Some people turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, some don't turn up at all.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that was by Sam Ewing.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: I just had to make the choice to turn up.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: And if I was going to be bestowed the honor of the position that I am in right now, I had to demonstrate to those people that took their time out to mentor me to prove that their time was worth it.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: I still have my hard days.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: I still come home, I cuss, I grunt, I let a little thing at work trigger my whole day, and I could have a bad day.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: But ultimately, that's my choice on how I handle those things.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: Again, my wife is very good at pointing these things out.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: So are my kids, all four of them.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, despite the events of this past week, I've been really trying to be conscious of it, no matter how tired I am.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: And let me tell you, boss, I'm tired.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's a John Coffey line from the Green Mile.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: For those of you that are keeping score, but anyway, I think one of the hardest challenges I have in this season of my life is shortcutting my family time because of my career and shortcutting the personal endeavors that bring me joy, like this podcast.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Normally I try and drop content once a day, sometimes once every two days, but I haven't so much pitter-pattered a word about the podcast since the Watermane break on Sunday, and I'm kind of beating myself up over it.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: I really care about this creative endeavor of mine, and uh again, it's a demonstration of the work ethic.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll put out this episode and overcome adversity that way.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of adapt and overcome, right?
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'll throw another story out there.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, right around Christmas time, actually, it was on my birthday.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: I uh heard a ring at the doorbell, and we were getting a lot of packages at the time.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, it's right around my birthday, so I'm assuming that there's an Amazon package at the front door for me, and I miscalculated my step while I was chasing the dog, and I sprung my foot.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: My gym routine since then has not been the same.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not entirely certain that I didn't break my foot, but I did something bad, which really sucks because up until that point I was on such a roll that I was going to make 2021 my year.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, my routine hasn't been the same since that happened.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I couldn't run, I couldn't do anything on the elliptical.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so it took a while for me to regain momentum and get myself up to par again.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I did one of those Apple Watch challenges last week where for the month of February, if you close all three rings for seven days in a row, it's kind of in tribute to Black History Month.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Sunday was supposed to be day six, which it ended up being day six because of the 31-hour shift that I worked.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: But Monday was supposed to be the last day.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I uh I had to tap out about 2:30 in the afternoon, and there was no way I was going to uh close all three rings on that Monday.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I didn't get my February challenge accomplished, which sucks because I kind of live for those things.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: But the moral of the story being is I was finally starting to uh catch my rhythm again.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of just the way life goes.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: Is sometimes you start something and life intervenes and you kind of have to stop for a bit, but eventually you can get back on the horse again, right?
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: So let's say that you're challenged and you're looking for ways to change that mindset.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna give you five criteria for changing your work ethic mindset.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: First one is care about what you're doing, just actually give a damn about what you do.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um find something that you love.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: If even if you're in an environment that you don't like, find the one thing that you love and focus on it and give a damn about what you do.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: Two, I would say follow through with everything that you say that you're going to do.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: So if somebody asks a favor of you, you agree to do that favor, you follow through with it.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you write down a goal, you follow through with it.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: If you post something online and say, hey, I'm going to the gym tomorrow, guess what?
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: You go to the gym tomorrow.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: You have to follow through.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Do what you say you're going to do.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: Three, focus.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: Do not let unimportant shit derail you.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if it's your job, if it's your kids, if it's personal needs, that can kind of derail you, and your pet goals and your work ethic can take a back seat.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: But reality is you are not going to accomplish a goal or develop a better sense of work ethic if you don't focus on what the end result could be.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Four, take the initiative.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: Don't wait for somebody to do something for you.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, don't wait for somebody to tell you what to do.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: You dictate your day.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: You write down a list.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: Get up in the morning, write down the list of the things that you're going to accomplish that day, and do it.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: But know that nobody's going to do it for you.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: You have to take the initiative to do it.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to get up early in the morning and go to the gym, do the five-second rule.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: Wake up, count down from five, or even put your alarm clock on the opposite side of the room of where you're at.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things that I've done a couple of times is sometimes I will throw my gym bag that has my clothes for that day because I shower at the gym in my car.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I have no choice but to get up out of bed and get to my car, which forces me to go to the gym.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: So you just got to take the initiative.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: And number five, figure out a way to clearly separate your professional and personal life.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is the one I struggle with the most.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I struggle with it every single day.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to do better with it.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, even me doing this episode of the podcast kind of puts it out and speaks it into existence that I need to do a better job of separating what happens in my workday from my evening at home.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: So, just a couple of things.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not some sort of guru or anything along those lines, and I'm not going to say that I am the hardest working person that you know, but in my mind, I am the hardest working person that you know.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: This keeps me accountable.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I've talked about it on other episodes before, in particular the episode with Aaron Davis about, you know, posting things on social media.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I've posted things like my workouts and personal goals and such on social media before, and I've been ridiculed for it.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, oh, you're oversharing.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you're just posting this so somebody notices.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: Ooh, look, you've checked in at the gym again.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: But the thing is, is sometimes those little earmarks, those little steps are to hold myself accountable.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: They're so I have to go back and see those things, and I have one of two choices.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: I could delete it and pretend that I've never said that.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: I could pretend that I never set that goal, or I can go back and look at it and say, man, I posted that I was on my way to the gym, but I instead drove through a scooter's drive-thru instead and got some coffee and went straight to work.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna leave you with a few final things.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: If you've listened to this entire episode, and I applaud you if you did, and I am grateful that if you did, I want you to get on your social media, I want you to get on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, take a picture, write a status, speak something into existence.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: And what I want you to do is talk about your work ethic, talk about a goal, and at the very end of it, put hashtag caught on the mic, hashtag work ethic challenge, and let's see what kind of hard shit we can all get ourselves into.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that we can all find some common ground with some of these challenges that we all face every day.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: So to close, um, thanks for listening to another personal episode, and thanks for listening to me go on a tirade.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: I've got to deal with this plumbing problem here, probably for another couple of weeks, couple of months, maybe even for the remainder of the year.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's messy, but uh I'll get through it because that's just what I do.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: Also, I want everybody to know that an every other Thursday night event moving forward is the Thursday night social club.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's a live stream that I started doing on Facebook Live.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm gonna keep that going.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be an every other Thursday night thing, 7:30 p.m.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: Central Standard Time.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, check the event invite.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, sometimes we'll have some guests.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm hoping to have some guests.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: Last week my wife jumped on the microphone and we had a lot of fun.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_00: There's about 10 to 15 people in and out of the chat.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, just bring your questions, things that you want to talk about, and we'll kind of talk about it.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I will release the audio on YouTube later that week for you to listen back to and enjoy.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes you can hear your name dropped on it.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: I know I was dropping a lot of names um whenever we did this last one.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: There's a great Stretch Armstrong song called The Sound of Names Dropping.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's the last thing I'm gonna tell you to do.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: Go to YouTube, uh, search out Stretch Armstrong, Sound of Names Dropping.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of an old Screamo track from the early aughts.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, what I'm listening to right now, I'm listening to a lot of rhyme sayers, like a lot of Atmosphere and Brother Ali, and I'm enjoying the hell out of it.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm finally watching the Wu-Tang documentary from Showtime of Mike's and men, and I love that.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm two episodes into that.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: Man, that's so good.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: Anyways, this has been Caught on the Mic with Michael Clark.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: I am Michael Clark.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, thank you.