Psychological Ownership: Why Your Team Won’t Step Up Without It

If everything still runs through you - decisions, approvals, follow-ups - it’s not a motivation problem. It’s an ownership problem.

In this episode, I sit down with Mike Michalowicz, author of Profit First, Clockwork, and his newest, All In, to unpack why capable teams stall and what actually causes people to step up. We go far beyond culture, perks, or performance pressure and get into Psychological Ownership, the missing system behind self-managing teams, clean handoffs, and sustainable scale.

Mike shares how high-performing organizations recruit A-players through education, build safety that unlocks real honesty, and design environments where people take responsibility without being managed into burnout. We also talk through why culture often fails, how community changes everything, and what it looks like to lead people with dignity through every season.

If you’re scaling, investing in systems, automation, and clarity, but still feel like the bottleneck, this conversation will reframe how ownership is created, sustained, and shared.

Books Mentioned

• Profit First by Mike Michalowicz
  
  
• Clockwork by Mike Michalowicz
  
  
• Fix This Next by Mike Michalowicz
  
  
• The Pumpkin Plan by Mike Michalowicz
  
  
• Surge by Mike Michalowicz
  
  
• The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur by Mike Michalowicz
  
  
• All In by Mike Michalowicz

If you want to go deeper, Mike’s work, books, and podcast can all be found at mikemotorbike.com, including free chapter downloads and his podcast Becoming Self-Made.

Join Dr. William Attaway on the Catalytic Leadership podcast as he shares transformative insights to help high-performance entrepreneurs and agency owners achieve Clear-Minded Focus, Calm Control, and Confidence.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Mike’s Origin Story
• 2:13 Rethinking Vision And Real Leadership
• 3:16 Becoming An Author By Necessity
• 6:22 Recipes, Results, And Entrepreneur Reality
• 7:39 Recruiting A-Players The Sports Way
• 12:25 Education-As-Recruiting And Real Examples
• 16:43 Creating Safety: Physical And Relational
• 20:36 Earning The Last 10 Percent Of Honesty
• 24:03 Community Over Culture For Stronger Teams

Transcript

Welcome And Mike’s Origin Story

Dr. William Attaway 0:00

It is such an honor today to have Mike Michalowic z on the podcast. Mike is the creator of Profit First, which is used by hundreds of thousands of companies across the globe to drive profit. He's the creator of Clockwork, a powerful method to make any business run on automatic. He's the author of Fix This Next, an instant Wall Street Journal bestseller, The Pumpkin Plan, Surge, and the Toilet Paper Entrepreneur. His newest book, All In, teaches how great leaders build unstoppable teams. Mike, I'm so glad you're here. Thanks for being on the show.

Mike Michalowicz 0:36

William, it's a joy to be with you. As I shared in our pre-recording, sorry for my attire, not typically how I dress for an interview. I've been out shoveling drive our driveway three times this weekend, including this morning, going right before this.

Intro 0:57

Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed to help leaders intentionally grow and thrive. Here is your host, author and leadership and executive coach, Dr. William Attaway.

Dr. William Attaway 1:23

How did you get started?

Rethinking Vision And Real Leadership

Mike Michalowicz 1:25

Yeah, so I I've been an entrepreneur my entire adult life, ever since graduating from college. And in that capacity, and in other capacities of life, you're instantly thrown into leadership. Just in unexpected ways, I didn't know that running an organization, even just with a handful of employees, is managing personalities. It's not just giving directions. It's not just assigning tasks and expecting the tasks to be completed or not, and then addressing it. It's dealing with people's life's events, navigating conflict amongst each other. Leadership was so much more. And the biggest aha I had was I always thought leadership was setting a clear vision for our organization. This is where we're going collectively. And now I believe that's something that's important but is secondary. Don't set a corporate vision, set a collective vision. What does everyone want to achieve in their own lives? And how do we work as a team to satisfy all of our collective vision? Those are things that came about and me developing as a leader.

Dr. William Attaway 2:32

But your writing has impacted so many people. And I know that's a that's a gift. Is that something you saw coming? Like is this something that you've always felt like I'm a writer and this is this is who I am and how I can pour into other people?

Becoming An Author By Necessity

Mike Michalowicz 2:46

Aaron Powell No, and yes. So no, I never anticipated I'd be an author. I I was horrible in English back in high school. I remember getting a D in the class, and it's the one class I avoided in college was creative writing and that stuff. But then there became a moment in my entrepreneurial journey where I really I struggled so deeply that I decided I have to devote myself to reinvestigating everything I knew about entrepreneurship, leadership, and so forth. And so that's what I started to do. I started to investigate it and learned a lot of things I believed to be true wasn't true. And I started to document for myself. And that became the the journey in starting to write. Um I could I could see the value in it and started having fun doing it. And then came the time I said, I gotta, I want to publish this and share this with other people. Once I stepped into it, it did become a spark of joy and passion. And now I couldn't see myself as anything else but an author. I I love the journey. Didn't know and never really can anticipate the impact it would have. William, I'll tell you, it is crazy. Heading home from a trip and walking through the airport, and someone shouts out your name and like, oh my God, I read your book. I can't believe I'm meeting you. It's it's the weirdest. And of course, uh a hundred other people around them and saying, Who the hell is that dude? It's a weird, amazing, extraordinary journey. But at the end of the day, what what I do is I write recipes is something that I think will help in leadership or profitability of an organization, whatever. But ultimately, cooking a recipe, uh, being the cook behind it is the real job, and that's what the entrepreneur has to do. And those are the folks that have to be acknowledged. They take an idea, but they actually manifest it.

Dr. William Attaway 4:33

You know, I love that I love that analogy of the recipe. I think that's fantastic. I I'm I'm thinking a lot about your your latest book, All In. And it's so much about leadership, about building teams. I'd love to tackle a couple of the topics that you bring out in this book over the next few minutes. Yeah. One of those is recruiting. You know, I work a lot with HR people, and they are that is a major struggle for them right now is recruiting A players, retention of A players. And you talk about this in your book, and you talk about it in a way that I don't know that I've heard anybody really discuss recruiting. Can you share a little bit about your philosophy and what you've learned about recruiting?

Recipes, Results, And Entrepreneur Reality

Mike Michalowicz 5:16

What I like to do is I look at a process that I follow and that others follow. That's the common approach. And so when it comes to recruiting, historically, it's been running some form of ad, putting the word out, and then going through an interview process of sorts. But I also then look like to look at what's the desired outcome and what's the actual outcome. And when there's a mismatch between the desire and the outcome, I then look at the method we follow. And for most employers, most leaders are looking to hire, we'll call it a player candidates, top performers, whatever that however that's defined. And the result is maybe 10% of their hires ultimately play out that way. The majority are not a fit or don't perform at the levels that are expected. So I said, okay, the that that process, there's something finally flawed with it. Is there an existing process where they look for top talent, but the outcome is consistently high, like 90% success or 100% success? And there is one industry, it's a I think it's a trillion dollar industry now that that recruits at that level. And it's the sports industry. And what they do what these teams do, I um I love football, and um I love a lot of sports, but but with football, they don't say, like, hey, can you show us your resume? Are you proficient at Microsoft Word? You know, what's your what's your where's the green light on a traffic light? They don't go through those interview questions. They say, hey, show it on the field. Demonstrate your skill. So that's one thing that we need to do is have people go through workshops where they can demonstrate skills. But the more important thing is how they recruit in the first place. And what they do is they run camps. So I actually played sports in high school and college. I played lacrosse, and I wasn't necessarily a particularly good athlete, but I did play lacrosse in high school. And my parents sent me to a lacrosse camp called Hobart. It was a college here in the North. Actually, you're from the East Coast, it's in New York State, and so you may have heard of it.

unknown 7:13

Yeah.

Recruiting A-Players The Sports Way

Mike Michalowicz 7:13

And they had, I think, like three or four hundred students come, and during this summer session, we were there for a week or two. We were trained. But what was interesting is as the coaches were training us, they would tap certain students on the shoulder and say, Hey, you're really doing well at this skill. We'd like to bring you to another field where we can go deeper into this. And some of those students were tapped on the shoulder and went to get another field. What they were doing was educating all of us, but vetting in the process by observation. Um, I was not one of the ones vetted. But but by the end of the camp, I think three students were offered scholarships to play at Hobart, lacrosse, or or at least were recruited to play there. Now, here's the greatest irony or interesting thing to me. I went on to play collegiate lacrosse. I would say, in part because of what I experienced in that camp, what I learned. So it's a process of elevating all, but also observing. So what I found great leaders do when it comes to recruiting is they put out education. So instead of saying, hey, we're looking for a great plumber, they say, uh, we're teaching um techniques on welding plumbing fixtures. And what that will do is attract people who already have the prerequisite skill set, but also want to elevate themselves to this higher level by learning. So A players inherently want to learn. And so they participate in this education type event. And what you do is you train and educate and you look for the indicators of someone that's an A player. And I'll play this out. Usually it always presents itself in the same way. First is interest, they show up. Second is desire, they ask questions. And last one is thirst. I can't stop this. Um last example of how successful this recruiting is Home Depot does this and no one knows. Home Depot does this like build a birdhouse workshop. You know, you can bring your kid or whatever. And you go there and you build a birdhouse. And yes, it ingratiates you with the store, um, you want to go to Home Depot again. But they have a person there who's teaching and another one who's observing participation. And they say, if someone shows up, maybe even to multiple ones of these, if they help other parents out showing desire, um, if they're the first one arriving and the last one to leave and are so into it thirst, that's someone we should recruit. So they will approach certain people who demonstrate those inherent abilities and give them an application at the end of the workshop. They're very most people, I've never received an application from the Build a Bird House Workshop, but I love Home Depot. But some people are recruited and ultimately choose to work at Home Depot because they've demonstrated those skills and they were offered a position.

Dr. William Attaway 9:41

It's amazing. I think of that like a funnel. You know, and this this is the top of the funnel, this is where they come in. But then as you say, it windows down. And you're able to identify the people that you really want, whether it's an athlete or a Home Depot employee.

Mike Michalowicz 9:55

Aaron Powell or anyone, you can get the like the most sophisticated people. Someone's like, oh, this sounds like for entry-level people, because it's education. Say I need a C someone's already a CPA for five years and has all these skills. Well, what I do is I still put on an educational course, but I put on an elite thing, like learn uh the 2026 tax law uh techniques, um, but the prerequisite is you must be a CPA for five years. So you'll get these people with these qualifications that are looking to elevate themselves. A-players always look to go to the next level. So put on the educational bands. And I have a shortcut. If you don't have the time or the ability to teach the educational component, you can attend one. Look at the courses that are going on out there and attend as a student, but be an observer of the other students, and you'll find your best candidates there.

Dr. William Attaway 10:42

That's so good. It's about the environment that you create. And uh I loved your chapter about creating the right environment where there is safety. Is that something that you learned the hard way or something that you saw in other companies? Or how did that come about, this focus on creating the right environment?

Education-As-Recruiting And Real Examples

Mike Michalowicz 10:59

Aaron Powell Yeah, there's there's different types of safety. I learned it perhaps the hard way, because I thought like certain things were no longer really relevant. So physical safety. If you go back to the OSHA days, you know, you go back to factory workers and stuff like that. OSHA came about to protect people physically. But today that's not a worry. At least so I thought. In my own office, maybe it was a very small author office, or there's uh six people that work there. And um, we we have a physical office, so we're old school brick and mortar. Um we did a survey, an anonymous survey saying, is there any time you feel physically unsafe here? And the feedback came, hell yeah. And I'm like, what? Well, our building's a historic building. There's an alleyway that goes down to the parking lot, but it's it's not illuminated and it's dark. And in the northeast where you and I live, you know, in the wintertime, the sun can start setting by 4:30, 5 o'clock. It can be pretty dark out. And so my team said, I feel unsafe. Like, you know, who wants to walk down a dark alley? You don't know who's there or what's there. I feel unsafe at times. So all we did is we put string lights back there that that run during off hours. My team was worrying. Like, you know, noon comes around or looking, it's like, oh, it's lunchtime. Oh my gosh, it's gonna be dark. I have to walk down the alley later. And it was taking emotional bandwidth from them. So by simply addressing that, um, they didn't have to worry about that. And and and that worry went away. So those concerns have to be addressed. But there's more than just physical, there's relational safety. Do I feel comfortable with my colleagues? And so we have to set an environment where, and this is inevitably the leader who sets the standard where people can be candid in their own skin. Some people feel unsafe being them true selves because there may be emotional consequence or a relational consequence if I am. So the leader has responsibility through their own actions to be emotionally bare. Now, I'm not saying let's spill it all out there, you know, struggling with my marriage. Don't put it all out there, but give enough that people feel comfortable being candid and feel enough coming to you and explaining when they are uncomfortable so you can address that.

Dr. William Attaway 13:06

Let's talk about that for just a second because I think that's a that's an important piece that a lot of leaders really skip over. And that is creating an environment where people will give you that last 10% of honesty. You know, the first 90% is easy to give, but the last 10% we often hold back because we don't want to break a damage a relationship or get fired or whatever. You know, how do you create an environment where people feel safe to share that last 10% of honesty?

Mike Michalowicz 13:32

Yeah. So it is by me yielding that honesty about my own circumstances. Someone has to be the first to go. And if the leader is willing to be candid, humble, and show humility in the circumstances, it'll allow other people to do it. But you also don't just deep dive in. You don't just show up and say, you know, here's my challenge or whatever it may be, and just dump on the table. It can be too much too soon. There's um a great research project that was done around how people find love and connection. And I think they call it like the 27 questions. I'm not sure exactly sure it was, but what they did is these questions start off with very surface-level questions, they slowly get deeper. We have to feel safe moving into it. So in our own office, we we will pick from those questions or other questions. And sometimes as a group, just bring them up and we'll start surface level and we'll go a little bit deeper, and that's enough for today. Over time, you know, trust is built over time. It's not something that you can instantly have. There has to be recurring situations. The last thing we do to build that trust and that comfort is we build what we call remember when's. You'll find with your closest friends, you typically have remember when moments. I remember when you and I went to the game and I spilled the soda all over me and how funny that was, or whatever. Life circumstances build these memories that we can both associate, these stories we both connect with. And if we have connected stories, we have more trust in each other inherently. So we have retreats. Uh sometimes we actually we'll we'll leave for a couple days. Once a year we we we head out of town as a group and work together. But other times it's just we're gonna take a half day and go to the local pottery shop and we're gonna build pottery together, not to manufacture events, but to have time together outside of the regular structure of work and the remember when's present themselves. And when I hear my office, Aaron, who scheduled this for us, speaking to Kelsey and saying, Oh, remember when we're at the pottery shop and we made I know greater connections happening. So as leaders, we have responsibility to allow remember when's to present themselves.

Dr. William Attaway 15:41

You're building community when you do that. Yeah. And I think community has such an impact on productivity and performance over time.

Mike Michalowicz 15:50

And community is such a great word, William. I think in many businesses, we've been programmed to build culture. And I I challeng, I I believed in it until it didn't work. Culture, at least how I've been interpreting it, is what are the standards, the expectations, the filters I have for my own organization, and find people that comply with that. And that's gonna be our culture. So really my culture was a reflection of me as the owner or leader of an organization of where I wanted to be. It was it's effectively mini me's in some capacity.

unknown 16:22

Sure.

Creating Safety: Physical And Relational

Mike Michalowicz 16:22

But when we think about the town you or I live in, the communities are generally very diverse. I went to school in Virginia, I know Nova, Northern Virginia very well. I have friends in Burke and Chevy Chase and all these different areas. And I know um the diversity of communities, and that the more diverse a community, generally, the stronger the community is. As long as there's connection, there's there's common ground. What happens with diversity is you bring in different perspectives. And that's where the magic happens. You don't get this tunnel vision, you get different perspectives. Well, as leaders of our organization, we want that diversity because strength comes from it. If if I had an organization that was all white males in their 50s like me, who acted like me, it would be a big yes fine. I think we should do, I think we should have a uh a concert with Def Leppard uh to open up our event because everyone loves Def Leopard. And the whole group is like, yes, everyone loves Def Leppard. No, not true. But if I have females, I have people with different ethnic backgrounds, I have people with different religious beliefs, it gives a much more holistic vantage point, and that's where strength is.

Dr. William Attaway 17:31

In that type of diverse community, I think this is where you talk about fostering psychological ownership too. People feel like they are a part and there is a there's a sense of ownership that they have because they contributed to what's being built. That's right.

Earning The Last 10 Percent Of Honesty

Mike Michalowicz 17:45

One of the greatest um discoveries for myself when I came to leadership is this use of psychological ownership. And I had a misunderstanding about it and how it how legal ownership is different. When someone psychologically owns something, they feel it's part of their identity. This is based upon the work done by a guy named John Pierce back in the 1980s, and found that um there were certain factors that drive drove that psychological ownership. But when you feel something's part of your identity, you treat it as such. I have a dog, and my dog, Archer, is part of the family. And I will go to extreme measures to care for him, for his health, to coddle him, where a dog on the street is also a dog, but I won't do the same thing. So why do we treat it differently? You don't own a dog. I mean, we say those words, but we don't possess it. It's its own entity, it's its own soul, its own being. Well, there's there's these factors. One is if we personalize something. So I gave Archer a name. He is a dog, and he was, quote, nameless until Archer was adopted by our family, and that's the name assigned to him. When we personalize something, we feel more possession over it. When we have an intimate knowledge of something, meaning when we observe something, the more we know something, the more we feel it's our possession. So personalization, intimate knowledge, um, and also this the time we spend with something, the more engaged we're something, the longer we invest into something, the more we feel we possess it. So a classic example of this would be like a car. If you own a car uh like I do uh versus a rental car. When I own a car, I program the radio stations. That's an investment of time and effort and personalization. I don't do that with a rental car, I don't program the radio stations. And so I feel more possessive of the car I own because I've personalized it. I can put bumper stickers on it. I don't do that on a car I rent. But look at a car what we rent, how we use it and abuse it. You know, I'll go skidding into the traffic light and then the second turns green. I'm punching it. I wouldn't do that in my own car. So when something is rented to us, we are given rules of use and we will comply with the rules, but we'll also seek to defy because we are forced to comply. But when we possess something and it becomes part of our identity, we'll coddle and care for it. But here's the great irony. The car I own, I don't really own. The bank owns it. I'm making payments on it. So I don't legally own it, I psychologically own it. The lesson is with our team, we need to build psychological ownership. They don't have to or will own the company that you run or lead. You may not even. But if you give them psychological ownership, meaning you allow them to customize elements, you allow them to gain intimate knowledge, you allow them to personalize things, they'll feel more and more possession over it. And as a result, they'll be more engaged with it. I do have one word of warning. You can build fiefdoms. And a fiefdom is something where I have all the knowledge, but I exclude others from it. So I'm the IT guy, I have all the passwords, but no one else is going to know it. And that can become a trap as a leader. So you want to build what's called collective ownership. Collective ownership is where you have multiple parties own it. Just like our dog, Archer, my wife and I and our children all have ownership over Archer. It's he's a part of our family. No one has exclusive control or access to him. Do the same as a leader for your organization.

Dr. William Attaway 21:05

So good. That is such a healthy perspective on that. And I think that's something I know our listeners are going to truly benefit from. Mike, thank you for sharing that. My pleasure. Yeah. The last thing I wanted to talk about is where you talk about how to let people go, the importance of understanding that people are with you for a season on a team and a healthy way of viewing their departure. Could you share a little bit about that? For sure, for sure.

Mike Michalowicz 21:31

So we don't fire or lay people off, we move them to alumni status. Think about uh wherever you went to school. You're an alumni of that school, so you have an affinity to them, but you've concluded your term there. You're not, you're not going to go back ever. It's done. But it was an important chapter and phase in your life. And so you're an alumni. And so with our organization, we realized oh, if we let someone go or they quit or we fire them, that is a termination with a negative kind of final label on it. It, whatever it may be. So we said, oh, we're going to transition people to alumni status, which means recognition of how significant their contribution was for that period of time, and it'll always be part of them, but they're not going to return to it. So that simple label is part of it. But the other part with the seasonality is to understand as a lead as a leader is that everyone's on their own life journey. We we talked about that collective vision. Someone came to be employed by you, not necessarily because this has been their life's dream per se, maybe, maybe, but maybe it's a pathway to their dream. I have a colleague whose dream was to live internationally. And just two years ago, she moved to Spain. She had worked for us up to that point for seven years. And we did not move to alumni status. She still works for our organization. But I've been very cognizant of this is her dream. And my job was to help support her in that journey. Conversely, could you imagine if I went to her and said, you know what? The one thing you'll never do is move and live internationally. I know that's what you want, but our organization needs you. We demand this of you.

unknown 23:01

Yeah.

Mike Michalowicz 23:02

Forget it. Now I'm building this negativity. So our job as leaders is to know what are the life visions that people have, what are the transitions or changes in their life status and career status that will get them there. And if we can support it through our organization and their supporting organization, that's the best thing to do. But if another organization or another part of their life that is exclusive excludes us as being part of their journey of going forward, that's still the best thing we can do. So that I think that's what we need to do as leaders is to understand that everyone's on a journey and we are a part of it. There's a season to it, and it may come to a conclusion very quickly. It may go for decades and decades and even longer than that. But to realize if we're working in the best interest of our colleague in alignment with their own personal vision, um, the pathway will reveal itself. And I adamantly believe we need to be a server of that life vision.

Community Over Culture For Stronger Teams

Dr. William Attaway 23:58

I love that it's such a powerful explanation of how you see the dignity in another person. You see them as an actual 3D human being, not just as a cog in the machine that you're building that does a task, but you you seek out and learn their dreams, their hopes, their aspirations so that you can help empower them of that. I think that's so healthy.

Mike Michalowicz 24:18

I love it. It it reminds me when I look up in the air, I live outside of New York, about uh 30 miles west of it. So the major airports are out there for this area, Newark, LaGuardia, and JFK. And I'll see these jet streams. And what's so interesting is a lot of these jets, you see the jet streams, they replicate and then they all spin and go into their different destinations. But for a period of time, there's this one massive kind of cloud line that all the planes follow for a period of time. And that's how I kind of visualize our work together. We we are blessed, an organization that right now, six of us and myself, so seven of us, are all on this similar jet stream, but there's certain points that we're gonna go in our own directions. Um, and that's the best thing to do. That's the healthiest thing to do.

Dr. William Attaway 25:04

So good. Mike, thank you for writing this book and for sharing it with the rest of us. It's been such a blessing to me, and I know so many others. I know our listeners are gonna want to grab a copy of this. I highly recommend it and stay connected to you. Continue to learn more about what you're up to and new things that you're doing. What's the best way for folks to do that?

Mike Michalowicz 25:22

The best way is kind of my mecca of stuff, is uh my website. It's mikemakalowitz.com, but no one can spell it. I'll give you a shortcut to it. It's Mike Motorbike, as in the motorcycle. Mike Motorbike.com. The quick backstory is that was a nickname I got in grade school because it rhymed. I never driven a motorbike. Nice. And I have other nicknames too, but they're R-rated or X-rated. I can't say. So I bought the I bought the domain MikeMotorbike.com. And if you go there, uh you'll land on my site. Plus, you'll see a picture of me riding a motorcycle, a cartoon picture, because I'd never have written one. But all in, all my book books are there. I have free chapter downloads so you can you can explore the books without even having to purchase them. But this is the stuff I write about. So I I have a blog, I do podcast interviews with leaders of greatest organizations. In fact, I just interviewed uh Jesse Cole and Emily Cole, the founders of the Savannah Bananas, on their leadership side. So you can get the all at micmotorbike.com. And the podcast I have is called Becoming Self-Made, and I talk about leaders and this stuff.

Dr. William Attaway 26:22

I love it. We'll have all those links in the show notes. Mike, thank you for your generosity today and the insight and wisdom that you have shared with us. William, this has been a joy. Thanks for having me.