“Cleaning Up Management Waste” - Larry O’Donnell AlongTheWay 76

answer their questions, ask them how any ideas they had to improve our service to our customers and what have you. And then I pick a driver and I'd go work the whole day with them working the back of their truck. And people used to say, Larry, that's weird. Why would the president of the company go spend a whole day picking up trash? And I'll tell you, I learned more in that day, working with that frontline employee about what was working and what wasn't and what we could do to improve our company than I ever did. Sitting in my firefree Tower corporate office downtown.

Welcome to along the way. I'm john matter as your host and fellow traveler, thank you for joining me along my way as I try to become more like Jesus every day. Today, I'm joined by the very first CEO featured on Undercover Boss, Larry O'Donnell has a powerful personal story. And I really appreciate his openness to share from his success, as well as the lessons that he's learned from his failures. He's the author of the book management waste, and has practical strategies to live out servant leadership, and clean up some of the leadership messes that we might find ourselves in. I'll get to our conversation in just a moment. But as always, I want to thank you for listening to along the way. I hope that you like what you hear, and you subscribe, you can connect with me online as well. All of my socials and contact links are in the show notes. And you can check out all of my episodes at my website along the way dot media. I also have a Patreon page. If you want to help me to continue to put up these along the way episodes if you'd like to become a Patreon supporters simply go to patreon.com slash along the way and select the level. The link to become a Patreon supporter is in my show notes. And now here's my along the way conversation with Larry O'Donnell. valaria Donald, thank you so much for allowing me to join you along your way. This is a real pleasure to have you, you were on the the hope today program just very recently. And as I've been doing these Skype tests and just kind of getting to know everybody as a pre interview, you and I connected really, really well. And I just appreciated your story and the journey that God has brought you through from your business life to your family, and just all the different things that you've gone through. You were on Undercover Boss, which is a pretty cool TV show. We will talk about that a little bit later. And how God's called you into ministry to I've just been like this guy has kind of seen or done it all or been a part of it. And he's really improving things for the kingdom of God. And so Larry, is a pleasure to have you on along the way. Thank you for being here.

JOHN, I really appreciate you inviting me and yeah, I felt like you and I hit it off just right away. All we were doing was just, you know, testing audio and video. And I really enjoyed the conversation with you.

Yeah, so I want to share with the listeners here your journey with the Lord. And so if you wouldn't mind just kind of tell us how God has led you along along the path.

You know, I was blessed to have been raised by a really loving mother and father, I grew up in a Catholic family we never miss church went every Sunday, no matter where we were even on vacations. And I was just blessed with a with a great family have one brother and two sisters and just wonderful family life. Although even as a young child, I just always felt like just had this tremendous guilt. Because back in those days, you even had to go to Confession every Sunday to talk to a priest before you went for communion or to participate in the Lord's Supper. And I just found myself confessing the exact same sins every single week. And I was really worried. I mean, I just had this feeling that there's no way I can ever get right, or be good enough to get to heaven. And I was really worried about that. And in seventh grade, a family friend invited me to a Protestant youth group. And I started going to that and then I went to a youth group retreat one weekend. And that's when somebody sat down with me and for the first time explained to me the gospel, that Jesus came and lived his life perfectly here for 30 years, to show us what living the Christian life really means. And then spent three years training his disciples and spent three days dealing with our sin and send it back to heaven. And by placing our faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, our sins are forgiven, past, present and future and we're promised eternal life with him. And when that was it, Explain to me I just felt this huge burden lifted off of my heart. It was like, Are you kidding me? Like I, you mean, I am assured I'm going to heaven. And there it is. It's in God's word written right there. And I was so excited. I mean, I was elated. It just, I can remember that feeling I had that this burden, my debt was paid for. And that was really life changing for me. And that was in about seventh grade. And I went on through high school, led Bible studies in high school, in college, and, and so, you know, I thought that I thought I was doing what God called me to do. And I met my wife, we dated in college, I met her when we were juniors, we dated and then got married about a year after college. And, you know, she's a Christian. And I thought, things were seemed to be going pretty good. I was progressing fairly rapidly in my career. And even then I viewed my business, my, the business career that God had given me is really my ministry. And so things were rocking along pretty good. And we then had our, my wife got pregnant with our first child, daughter, and she was born totally normal. And then and about pretty quickly, right after we got home from the hospital, we could tell her stomach was really bothering her every time after her feeding. And my wife talked to her mom and her mom reminded her that my wife had been intolerant to lactose. And that's probably all is wrong with her. She just can't tolerate milk. So why don't we switch her over to a soy formula. And as soon as we did that, she was fine. sleeping through the night, no problems, everything was great. And when we went in for her two month checkup, the pediatrician told us yeah, that's got to be what it is. But let's just make 100% sure, I'm going to send you down to the medical center and have some tests run. And let's just make sure that's all that's going on. Well, unfortunately, we got with a doctor who had never done this test on a little two month old infant. And by that time, she was probably about three months or

about that age, but still really tiny. Yeah,

yeah. And so he unfortunately, used an adult instrument rather than the one for a little small infant, and it blew lots of air into her stomach. And so she threw up and aspirated and was without oxygen for an extended period of time. Long story short, she was in intensive care for about four months. It was terrible seeing her that way. And finally they came in and told us, Look, she's not going to make it probably even through the end of the week. Why don't you take her home and she can pass away peacefully at home. And we were devastated. I mean, you talk about shipwrecked, we were shipwrecked. And, you know, the good news is, she has had somewhat of a recovery. I mean, she still has brain damage. But she's 35 now has physical impairments as well, from all the drugs that they placed her on, damage her kidney and lots of other issues. But at that time, when that happened, I didn't lose my faith. But I was really angry at God. Yeah, at first I was saying, God, you got the wrong, the wrong guy the wrong You know, my wife and I, we go to church every week, lead Bible studies, you know, look at me look at start pulling out my resume, you know, saying, look, this is what I've earned, you know that you're not treat me fairly, this is not fair to do this to our daughter. I still prayed every single day I said, Look, I know that you've got the power, you can heal our daughter, I know that you can make this right. I was still pretty angry though. Because it just didn't seem fair. And then my anger gradually turned into default. I started then thinking I must have done something to cause this. You know, I mean, here, my daughter's two, three months old. She couldn't have done anything to cause this. So it must have been something I did in my past. So now I'm having this guilt feeling. And just saying, God, whatever I did, I'm sorry. You know, and I start trying to think of all the sins I've had, and I'm confessing them and I'm still reading my Bible every day. And one day, I was studying the gospel of john, and I've come to chapter nine. And the first few verses of that tell a story where Jesus is walking with several of the disciples and they come upon a blind man. And they say, Jesus, why is this man blind? He had been blind from birth? Is it because of his parents sin? Or is it his sin that caused his blindness? And I go, Oh, this is fantastic. That's my question. Exactly. Did I cause this from my daughter? Is it something I did? hear Jesus answers that question. He goes, nope, it wasn't because of this man's sin, or the sins of his parents. It was so that my works could be shown my glory could be shown through this man. And I said, Oh, my gosh, okay, it was like the light bulb turned on, I realized I had been so focused on me and my plan, you know, I'm a Type A driven kind of person, I got a plan for everything. A while I thought I was living my life out as a Christian, I had really become so self focused. And, you know, how do I get ahead in my career, all about my plan. And the plan I had for my daughter, all these things, you know, I just had this beautiful picture of what my first child and my daughter, what are what our lives were going to be bright. I mean, I almost had her married off, but, you know, thinking of how she was going to progress through school and do whatever she did, and but God had a different plan. And it wasn't my plan. And he was telling me, you got to trust me. Yeah, this is totally different than what you expected. But you got to trust my plan. And it was transformative to me. I said, I was sorry, for being so self centered. I trusted him, I still didn't completely understand why, and I can't tell you how it's still 100%. Understand, there's still times when I think about, you know, what if particularly around holidays, like, you know, the Christmas time when all my siblings and their kids, you know, there have grandkids now, and I see what what their children, you know, progressing through high school, college, get married, and that kind of thing. And I'll start thinking, What if, and then I go, Well, there I go, again, just focused on myself and not God's plan. And when I look at the impact that my daughter has had, not only on me and my faith, but on so many other people, she's done more to build God's kingdom than I ever will. I just realized that God had a different plan. He's using her in a completely different way than I expected. But, and he's gonna make up all this, you know, sometimes I feel like, gosh, what if he's gonna make all that up to both of us, when we get our new bodies in heaven? I mean, surely our focus is going to be on Jesus. But I also know that we're going to enjoy a lot of time together that we didn't weren't able to do here, right. But that's the focus is all on bringing Glory to God.

So you said that your daughter has brought more glory to God through her situation than you feel that you've been able to do? How so? What does that look like?

Yeah, there's so many examples, I could give you everything from other families, mothers and fathers that might have a similar situation, you know, a child that might be injured in a car wreck or get sick or whatever it might be, that people say, hey, you ought to call, you know, Larry, or Darrow, Donald, they've been through a similar thing. And how many times I've been able to share the gospel through that. Or when I take my daughter to the grocery store, for instance, she's very social, it's hard to understand everything she says. But I take her to the grocery store, everybody, there, noser, everybody, and her smile and the joy that she just brings to everyone that she encounters. You know, they can just see the the light of Christ shining through her. Now she loves to carry for whatever reason. She sees me read my Bible a lot. So she wants to read the Bible. And the one that she decided she wanted from me is the biggest Study Bible that I have the heaviest one. And she totes that thing around. And she'll open it up. She can't read it. But sometimes I'll ask her to read it to me. And she'll say things like, she'll put her finger down, like she's reading the words and she'll go, and thank you, Jesus for making heaven for us, or, you know, something like that. And it's like, I didn't tell her that that's the Holy Spirit speaking through her. Wow. You know, people see that and they interact with her and her best friend passed away and she was pretty upset by that. She didn't quite understand. But you know, as I've explained that she's in heaven with Jesus. And now, she talks about her all the time. And just recently, I had a friend whose wife passed away. And she said, Oh, she's in heaven now with my friend. So she didn't totally get it. But just hearing that in my friend hearing that meant a lot to him. Yeah.

So you've had a developmentally challenged daughter for 35 years, but you still had to have, you still had to provide for your family, you still had to work, you still had to do all the things that a good husband and a father needed to do? How did you do all the things that you needed to do? How did you balance home life and work life?

Well, I'll be the first to tell you, I haven't mastered that. I had many failings, I think work life balance is one of the hardest things to do. But what I will say is I think God gave me and even more. So my wife, the strength is the burden really fell on my wife dare she became like a doctor, everything she's had to do for our daughter. And she really dedicated her life to our daughter, which is why our daughter can thrive today. But I knew I had to work I've knew it was important that we had good insurance that worked for a good company that could provide good insurance. For us. That was very, very helpful. That was a blessing. With all the procedures. She's been in intensive care, on average, about every three or four years throughout her life. Wow. So she's incurred some incredible medical bills. And we've been so thankful for the insurance that we did have. But what I always tried to do in terms of balance, I traveled a lot around the world in my career, throughout my career. But when I was home, I was home. Once cell phones, for instance, came out, I turned the cell phone off, I'm here I was present at all the times, you know, particularly on the weekend was very important to me to spend quality time. So it was when I was with my family and not traveling, made sure it was quality. At least that was my goal to make it quality time. We have a son as well who came along after our daughter. And so I wanted to make sure that you know, he had a good life. And he could be upset by if he wanted to. Because we had to spend so much time caring for his system. He sort of got shortchanged. Now, you know, I coached him in football and baseball and basketball. And you know, we raced sailboats together. So I mean, I made sure we had quality time. But at the same time, he probably didn't get the same level of attention, he would have had his sister not been a special needs child.

Sure. So you said that you had you know, you had a very busy career. You were traveling all over the world? And what are some of the things that you did? And what kind of a company did you work for? And tell me a little bit about your professional life?

Well, I went through engineering in college, and then I went to law school, I didn't intend to practice law. I just did that. Early in my career, my vision was to eventually have my own engineering and construction firm. I ended up doing pretty well and in law school. So I got some incredible job offers. And we were married at the time. And so I said, Well, I'll do this for a little while, I ended up practicing law for almost 10 years doing transactional law, mergers, acquisitions, business type law. And then I said, you know, this really isn't what I want to do, I really want to be in business. So I went into the oil field work for a company called Baker Hughes, which is the third largest oil service firm in the world. And that's where I was doing a lot of travel all over the world all the time, spent almost 10 years there, got recruited over to a company called waste management, which is the largest environmental and waste and recycling company, probably in the world. And so spent about 10 and a half years over there, that's a whole nother story. I'll come back to that. And after about 10 and a half years there, went back to the oil field, and started a company from scratch, entrepreneurial type endeavor, after spending 20 years in big fortune 200 companies that decided the fun to start one from scratch, which is now a public company as well. So and then after spending, let me just round out my career. After about seven years there, our daughter had a real major setback, it ended up she got a hole in her heart that was developed and she got down to about 75 pounds, and we were sure that this was it for her all that she'd been through. And so I actually told my board I needed to step down as CEO. I'd stay on as chairman. I was Also Chairman, I had been mentoring someone to take my place a female, she wasn't quite ready at the time. And I said, Look, I won't let her fail. But I just can't be here every day, I want to help my daughter and spin her last however many days she has left. And she had another miraculous recovery. And then I said, Okay, God, what's up? I mean, I always viewed that my business is ministry. And you obviously have other plans, what now and he placed on my heart to go to seminary. So I went to Dallas Theological Seminary, spent three and a half years doing that. And now all my time really is spent in ministry. I'm still on a few boards, but most of my time is spent in ministry. Wow.

So you've really gained a lot of experience in the professional world. And I love what you said that you had mentored somebody up already, whenever this thing happened with your daughter, and you needed to focus your time with your family, even though she wasn't completely ready, she was ready enough to take over. And you could just kind of help from a distance, what was it inside of you that already had this idea of I need to have a successor, I need to have a mentor mentee in place,

I guess I've just been blessed my whole life ever since the person I referenced when I was in seventh grade. He was my spiritual mentor for many, many, many, many years. And I've always been blessed with a business mentor, I've just always had somebody that took me under their wing to help me. And because of that, for instance, the CEO of Baker Hughes, who hired me, I couldn't have gone and done what we were able to do at waste management had it not been for his training and mentorship of me, because he knew I wanted to get out of the practice of law and into business. And he was my mentor, my business mentor up until he passed away just a couple of years ago. Wonderful man. And because of that, I've always wanted to do the same thing. Make sure wherever I go, I've always viewed one of my biggest responsibilities is to make sure when I'm ready to move on that there's somebody behind me ready to step in. And in fact, if you look at my career, I've gone on to something new, something totally different about every 10 years. And the other aspect of that is I've always felt this is just me, I'm not saying this is for everybody. But after I've built an incredible team, it's not about me, it's about my team. It's my job then to get out of the way and let them progress. Because at that point, you know, after 10 years, I kind of blocking them from moving up. So let me move Get out of the way, I'll get re energized with something new, and you all move on and take it to even a new level. In fact, I mentioned waste management. That's a whole nother story. That was the largest corporate blow up in history at the time. So think of Enron WorldCom, any of these big public company blow ups. And they had the board had taken over running the company, they had acquired about 1200 companies all around the world. And they have just grown too fast. You know, management started playing around with the accounting, there were lots of issues, they also happen to sell. Most of them sold their stock just before announcing they were going to miss earnings, by a long way. So the board fired everybody. And they were looking for new leadership. And that's when they approached me to come in as part of the team and build the team to turn the company around and restore the integrity of the company. And I knew nothing about that industry when I got there. But through that process, very early after I got there, we hired a young financial analyst, we needed, you know, help, that we had to hire 1000 accountants just to help us close the books, the record, such a math, but we hired a financial analyst to help us. And after we started kind of getting things sorted out, he came to me one day and said, Hey, Larry, I want to move into operations, would you help me? And I said, Well, look, it's that's a totally different job than what you're doing it because it's about people. When you're an operations, you've got to work with people. It's not just numbers, right? It's helpful to understand the numbers. But you got to be able to motivate, and lead people. And if that's something you want to do, sure, I'll I'll help you. But it's going to probably mean you needing to move because I never know where these positions where there's going to be an opening. But if you're willing to do that I'm willing to invest the time and you long story short, I moved him out. He and his wife, his family. He's got he had young kids at the time. moved them all over the place and into some pretty, not so good places that he had to work, but he was willing to do it. And he was the most coachable guy, I remember anything, I'd sit down and try to explain to him, that guy just, he was coachable. He'd say, got it, you know, and I'd go and shut up, he was doing that. Okay, now you're ready for the next thing. He's now CEO of waste management. Wow. And actually, you know, I've written a book, did a play on words, it's called management waste, five steps to cleaning up the mess and leading with purpose, where I outline the things I learned from my career and my personal tragedy with our, with our daughter. And I talked about things that I didn't do, right, so people can learn, you know, from my mistakes, but I also talk about him in the book. In fact, he even wrote the foreword in the book, oh, cool, I get a lot of joy out of investing in other people and trying to help them. And to me, that's what servant leadership is all about. And that's what I write about in the book, it's placing others interest ahead of your own. It's not the typical top down leadership model that we see prevalent in business today. Which is really what everybody uses. Pretty much, you know, I've worked hard to get here. I'm here now, I'm the leader. You know, you're working for me. And as long as you're doing what I tell you to do, or you're helping me in my vision, you know, go forward, then that's great. If not, I'll get rid of you. And I'll get somebody else. That's the typical top down leadership model. But at the opposite end of the spectrum that Jesus teaches, where he even says, I came to serve not to be served. That's where when I first saw that, that that really got my attention. Yeah, because here's God and king, he comes to earth. And yet he humbles himself, in all he does is serve others while he's here. And it's like, wow, okay, I want to learn more about this. And as I dug into the Bible to learn more about leadership, actually, I was shocked to see how much there is in the Bible about how we are to be leaders and live our life as leaders. Yeah. And so I tried to capture that in in my book.

So I love that you said in the book that you share about your failures, as well as the successes, it's really easy to for people to share about the successes they had, and the things that they learned from that. But a real honest person is actually willing to share from their mistakes and their their shortcomings. What's a story of a shortcoming or a failure that you could share here? And then what's the lesson that you pulled from that?

I'd say one that that just jumped into my head is, there was a time where we were looking at several different companies that we could possibly buy, there was one that one of our primary investors was very keen on and thought we that's what we ought to go buy in. I didn't, the more I looked at it, it just didn't feel right to me for a variety of reasons. And I prayed about it. And, you know, it was like, nope, lots of problems here. This isn't the right way to go. And I got swayed. I didn't trust my gut. And I didn't trust what God was telling me. And I got swayed. Now look, I'm not blaming anybody, it was my decision show. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying Oh, I got talked into it. It wasn't my fault. No, I made the decision. But my lesson was, trust my gut and trust what God is putting on my heart, right? It turned out that it was a big mistake. It was a terrible acquisition for all the reasons that I knew it was gonna be. And so what I learned from that is the same thing came along again with another company, and I said, we're not doing it. We're not going to do this one. And thank goodness, we didn't because the company that bought it had all kinds of problems, then, you know, that's one that comes to mind. To me, if you're not failing, you're not learning. It's real easy to sit back and just say, Well, I'm afraid to fail so I'm not going to do anything. And you'll just sit there right where you are, and not even get to utilize the opportunities that God gave us. Yeah, I mean, if you remember there's a story in the Bible where the owner gives some money to three slaves and one of them just goes and buries it does nothing and you know, he is these castings. He's not placed in a good place when No, definitely not when the master returns. And so, I'm not going to tell you, you just go with reckless abandon, but you got Have, you got to get out there and take that step in faith and whatever it might be? You know, it's like Peter, and Peter walked on water, you know, he was the only one that stepped out of the boat. Now he ended up, you know, sinking, because his faith wasn't strong enough. But he had a little bit of faith to jump to step out onto the water and walk towards Jesus. Yeah. And that's what Jesus is telling us. Just, you know, I'll take what you have. Just like when he took the the few little loaves of bread and a few fish, it's like, I'll take whatever you have, if you'll just give it to me. Right? Let me use it. I can make something beautiful out of it. Yeah, that's all he asked

us to do. You know, with that little bit of faith that Peter had, he took, he took more steps on the water than I've ever taken. And so that was always something to look at with that. And I love the parable that you brought up with the master and his servants. And, you know, they exhibited servant leadership, at least the two of them that did, you know, make that investment? And did it bring a return? Part of that is because they had servant leadership. That's one of the things that your heart is really beating for is that servant leadership. That's how you really turned around a company that was in the dumps? I mean, pun intended with that one? Yes. You know, how do you how do you know when it is time for you to get out of the way for somebody else? Because that would be a really difficult thing. I think, because you're seeing success, you've turned a company around. But now you're not the guy that's in charge, you weren't forced out, you took that step, and said, okay, it's now time for me to get out of the way so that somebody else can exceed even further, what are some of the things that you look for in yourself and other people to say, now's the time that I need to make this step?

Well, I'll actually devote a whole chapter of it in my book. So I hope people will go there and take a look. But I've always just prayed to God, for me, it turned out it was about every 10 years, you know, every 10 years in my career I moved on, it got to a place where I felt like I wasn't being as challenged as I like to be. I loved my team. In fact, every time I did that, in my career, I actually shed tears when I left, because I knew I would never be as close to those members on that team as I was right then. And so it hurt my heart to leave. But yet, I also prayed a lot about it. And I asked God, either open doors, closed doors, you know, show me where you want me to go, where? Where do you want me to go? And I'm serious. When I say I viewed businesses, my ministry, there were lots of lots of times I shared the gospel or my own story, with others at work. And I was always looking for those opportunities. Now, I didn't run up down the halls, you know, chanting scripture or anything like that. I and I don't think I ever made anyone uncomfortable. But I just and I still view the business community as the largest untapped mission field anywhere. Absolutely. That was my focus. And that's, that's what I tried to do. But God would, at some point, sort of just tell me, okay, I've got something new for you. And it was hard to leave. It was really hard to leave. But I, I trusted God, and I knew, okay, this is gonna be something exciting. I was always excited when I got there, right? It isn't gonna be 10 years for everybody. I just say you got to listen to God and always built the team, knowing eventually I was going to leave, because we're all gonna leave very few people in today's culture, you know, spin, go one place and work there their entire year, right. So if you know you're going to leave, build a team that, you know, you can be so proud when you do leave to see what they do after you get out of the way and let them go.

Here's something that I've dealt with, you know, there's been times where I've been in a leadership role, and I've tried to train up other people. Now, they actually ended up leaving before I did, and so they never got to be the ones to, you know, to kind of carry on the torch after I after I left and God called me somewhere else. How would you deal with something like that? Are I'm sure that that's happened where somebody that you thought that you were investing in, didn't pan out?

Yeah, that's happened a lot in my career, where you're really investing your time training someone and then a better opportunity comes along before you can move them into the position that you're training them for. And you know, that maybe early in my career bothered me it didn't later in my career, because look, if I'm truly placing their interest ahead of my own, I want the best for them. And if there's a great opportunity that now they're capable of going and doing fantastic, good for them good for their family, I got no problem with that. In fact, there's some of those people that then when I went to the next company, I'll reach back out to them and said, Hey, you know, now I do have a position for you. You want to come over here, and they will come join me over there. So I think when you play with a sort of a bigger picture in mind, that it's not about you. It's it's about helping others and placing their interest first, you ought to be excited when somebody gets an opportunity like that, that you aren't in a position to put them in quite yet. Because you don't have an opening or whatever. It just it's not the right time. Yeah. And just be be supportive and help them. And that'll come back to you. I mean, big time. There are many people that I know all around the world, in fact that I still talk to that, because we had that type of relationship. We still have tremendous respect for one another and still talk a lot.

That's really cool. You know, Larry, you talk a lot about servant leadership and your leadership style with servant leadership is really something that opened up an interesting opportunity for you while you were in charge of waste management. Can you talk a little bit about what led you to being the first Undercover Boss?

Yeah, that was quite an experience. When our marketing team first brought that to me, I said, there is absolutely no way that I'm going to go do a reality TV show. I'm not one to one, I just draw attention to myself. And I don't watch television all that much. I don't watch any reality television. But the little bit that I've seen on advertisements, and what have you,

you didn't want to be

it's like the lead characters have these huge character flaws, and they want everyone to know about it. And I just assumed keep mine to myself. But in any event, they they kept telling me No, no, it's not about us, the producers were telling me that. It's really about bringing the light, some great personal stories of the people that work the frontline jobs in your company. And I was already aware of that, because I was going out early in the morning, you know, three, four in the morning and meeting with our frontline people. For instance, I'd go out and give the safety briefing to a group of drivers, answer their questions, ask them how any ideas they had to improve our service to our customers and what have you. And then I'd pick the driver and I'd go work the whole day with them working the back of their truck. And people used to say, Larry, that's weird. Why would the president of the company go spend a whole day picking up trash? And I'll tell you, I learned more in that day, working with that frontline employee about what was working and what wasn't in what we could do to improve our company than I ever did, sitting in my ivory tower, corporate office downtown. And so the Undercover Boss, people had found out about that when they came up with their concept. They went to the largest advertising and PR firm in the country, who we were using to help restore our reputation from what had happened from the prior management. Sure. And they said, We know just the guy and just the company, but it's going to be a hard sell. Because you know, he didn't like drawing attention to himself. They wanted somebody doing the first one that was comfortable doing these frontline jobs, because they weren't really sure how it was all going to come together. So anyway, I took it to the board our board and said, Look, the marketing folks think this will be great. I'm a little worried because we don't have any editing rights. They weren't going to let us edit it at all. And we've come so far restoring our reputation. I don't know what they're going to film. I don't know how they're going to put together we might really end up hurting ourselves. And they said, Yep, you're right. you've analyzed it, right. Could be fantastic. Might be terrible. Hope you make the right decision.

So ultimately, they put it back in your hands.

Yes, yeah. And what they told me was they were going to try to film the whole first season. We were the pilot episode. And they were going to use ours to try to entice other companies to do it. And so the more I thought about it, I said, Look, they're not going to throw us under the bus or nobody else is going to do this. So we went ahead and did it. I was a nervous wreck while we were filming because, you know, I didn't know how it was going to come together. But they did highlight some really incredible frontline employees which is what they told me they were going to do. Of course they made the management look aloof, which was the premise. Sure. Our manager A team was not like that at all. But they managed to kind of put that together to make it look that way. And I, after I saw the final that said, y'all aren't gonna be happy with our management team. You're not gonna be happy how you look. But you're gonna love that story. So just ignore the that part of it. So anyway,

I'm glad you got together the heads up. That's Yeah, yeah. So what was? What was the biggest thing that you took away from that experience? Because I mean, it's, it's pretty cool to be on a TV show that I think it's still going on.

Is that correct? It is still going on. And in fact, I think they even still play our episode about once a month, because whenever it airs, somewhere, it airs on several different cable channels, I get emails or phone calls or something that somebody saw it somewhere. In fact, one time I was riding a plane, and I looked in front of me, and there, there's our episode plan. So that that's kind of strange, but it's still on. But, you know, I learned some new things even doing that I had a new job every day they filmed for about seems like it was about 12 days, okay, I had a new job every day. And then they took the four that they wanted, and just use those in the show. But each one of those employees had a really neat story, personal story, and also saw some things that weren't going the way they were intended. And we were able to correct those. And I knew that would happen, because that's why I did it. already. I continued to do it after the show. I didn't go undercover. Yeah, they knew who I was. But who better to ask how to improve your company, then the frontline employees who are doing the tough jobs every day. Right? Right. They're the frontline to the customer, just go ask them. That's how we turned around the company, the operating model that we ended up building, because those companies had not been all put together was based on what we learned from our employees. That's how we designed it. And it's I know, they've done a lot to it since I left, but that's still the foundation of what they're using still today.

Yeah. So you told me in our previous conversation that other companies similar to yours actually communicated with you? I mean, even though there were competitors, they communicated with you. Thank you for what you did. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Yeah, that was amazing. To me. I can't tell you how many of our staunch competitors and even a lot of small, much smaller companies, they're not just mom and pop companies, wrote me letters called me on the phone just thanking me for putting a different face on the industry. You know, I don't know if it's because of that show that was on for a while called The Sopranos, which, you know, show the New York mob running the garbage industry. You know, that show. People just have this view that people that work in that industry are either ex convicts are, you know, troubled people, or, you know, whatever they think of them. Because it's such a dirty job. Well, I'm going to tell you why most of those employees are so family oriented. The reason they like doing that job is they get home early in time to see their kids when they come home. Yeah, it's just an incredible. I love my time there. I knew nothing about that industry before I went in. I love it. Now, I still have drivers and route managers calling me. You know, just checking in from time to time. It's just, it's a wonderful group of people.

That's really cool. That's really cool. So

I tell your listeners go out and tell your whoever's picking up your trash and recycling, tell them thank you or leave them a note on top of their of your container. You know, thank you for what you're doing. Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate it. Yeah, I'm

sure that they will, you know, that that's difficult. You know, you're literally picking up other people's trash. And, you know, that's that's not something that anybody really dreams of doing. I don't think as a kid, you know, if you're gonna ask, ask a five year old, what do you want to be when you grow up? It's like policemen firemen, or astronaut, maybe professional baseball player. But you know, it's it's really cool that you were able to highlight the genuine people that are real family, men and women that are, you know, this is this is their job. And they're able to do that so that they can do the other things that that God's called them to do, right if they're a Christian. And God's called you to do some other things as well. And so God called you to seminary, then God called you to write a book, and this book management waste, you lay out five steps, five keys, it's an acronym and I'll let you explain that to how to clean up a mess, I guess. And so could you just kind of explain what some of those steps are? Sure, I'd

be delighted to for me, I got to simplify things so I can remember it. And as I was going through the Bible, And just to my own mistakes that I was making in my career of trying to figure out, Okay, so this servant leadership thing, how can I remember what to do, and I saw sort of boiled it down to these five steps, what I use is clean c l, e, a n, and that helps me remember, if I don't clean up the mess, then I'm just wasting the opportunities that God gave me to serve others and in the career that he gave me, and I'm wasting my time. And so clean, the C stands for commitment. And that's just being committed to others, placing their interest ahead of my own in the owl is listening. And that just means, you know, giving them a voice, listening to them, and responding to them and living in a way that you truly are, understanding what they're trying to accomplish in their career and helping them. And then the E is empathy. And empathy is something I couldn't have even found that in my toolbox before what happened with our daughter, I'll be the first to tell you, I did not have empathy. And that was one of the things that God taught me about caring for others in when I boil this all down, empathy is really the magic that makes all this work. And it actually it. It works in all our relationships. When you do that it works with people at work, it works with your colleagues, friends, family spouse, that's where the real magic comes in. And then accountability, just being accountable to your team, or to whoever you are in these other relationships with, you know, building trust with them, and just being accountable. And then the final step is notice, I've talked about it a lot in the book, it's not only noticing them, where when they do things, right, thanking them and showing true appreciation, not just lip service. But I talk a little bit about noticing yourself, meaning paying attention to yourself, how do you come across to others? So I spend quite a bit of time in my book going through each one of those five steps. There's others, but those are the five that really resonated with me as I looked at trying to live my life as a servant leader, and I didn't get them. All right, I still struggle with all of them. So I'm not telling you. I've perfected servant leadership. So just watch me or I've, I now have mastered empathy. My wife would be the first to tell you, you know, I'm still working on it. But I've come a long way.

Oh, that's good. That's good. You know, Larry, you were just talking about that last step is noticing. You know, as we look back at our lives, it's it's easier to look back and to notice the times that Jesus has been walking with us, but we didn't realize it in that moment. What are some of those times where now that you look back, you can see, and you can notice that Jesus was actually there with you. But you just didn't see it at that time?

Well, for sure. When that happened with my daughter, I felt abandoned at first. And I was angry, I still had faith in God, I knew he was there. I knew he was all powerful. I knew he could fix it if you wanted to. And when I look back, it wasn't just a coincidence that I came to john nine that I was talking about. just reading those verses, the Holy Spirit really spoke to me saying, Hey, I'm here with you. You just got to trust me. God is here. And we've just got a different plan. And if you trust me, it's gonna be just fine. And so I'm thankful that when we do go through tough times, and the Bible says you will have tribulation, oh, yeah. Just because we become Christians doesn't mean everything's going to be fantastic every single day. What's interesting to me is, as I look back over my career, where I've grown the most, are those times of trial and difficulty. That's when God wants to draw us in closer. And when we place our faith and just depend on him, he's gonna take care of us. Yeah,

absolutely, he will take care of us and learn that lesson, is really important. Because when we rely on our own selves, and we don't rely on Jesus, we carry the burden on ourselves. And Jesus says to cast our cares upon him, you know, for his yoke is easy, his burden is light, but we got to be connected with him. You know, Larry, if if you had the opportunity to go back in time and visit younger Larry, you know, whether your teenager young adult, you know, first married, whatever season of life that it is, what's the piece of advice that you would want to give yourself and could you tell us about that version of yourself and why You needed to hear that,

I would say it's it's probably about pride and, and being so self reliant, which I was I was of the feeling that I could do anything that I wanted to. And if I just worked hard enough, and it was all about me and my plan, it took, unfortunately, Lily's tragedy. And I'm not saying God did that. Just because I needed a lesson. This was his plan it but what he made something really positive out of a terrible situation. And that was to show me, no matter how bad it is, no matter what you're going through, and let me tell you, that's been the worst trial that I've ever been through. Just trust me. That's what God's saying, Just trust me. You don't need to be worrying about anything. You know, just trust me. When you look at COVID out there right now, there are a lot of hurt and people and scared and you turn on the television, you're scared the political situation scary, everything scary out there. And I just had this tremendous piece. And it isn't, because of me, it's because God gave it to me and just said, Hey, I got this, just trust me. And I found that when I just trust God, and I still struggle with it, because of my type A personality, sometimes I'll go, I'm trusting you God, but you're not moving fast enough. Let me help you out here a little bit, you know, I can at least kind of advance the ball. And as soon as I do that, I get it all messed up. He teaches me that all the time. Just trust God. Yeah, so

what what version of yourself? Would you like to implement that wisdom into?

Well, I, I'm still working on it. It's the, my vision of myself is when I finally you know, end up with the Lord. And I've been through this process. Because I know I've got plenty of more trials down the road, I'm gonna, I'm gonna have more setbacks. I don't know what they're gonna be. But I know they're coming. And if I can just be, you know, like those, those three boys that that went into the fire when Nebuchadnezzar threw them in, and they just said, Hey, we may have to go through the fire, but we still trust God. And they went through the fire, but they didn't get burned. Yeah, God was with him. And what happened? The other people that watched what happened, all brought glory to God, yeah, the eye opener for me that I want to leave people with. Sometimes those trials that you're going through, sure, they're there to help you grow in your faith. But there are a lot of people probably watching you to see how you handle it. Particularly if they know you're a Christian. And so just the way you're able to respond, and it's not you, by you, allowing the Holy Spirit work through you and bring you peace, and just this trust and peace that you have other people look at that. And they go tell me about that peace you have where I see you going through these difficult times? How have you just have this peace about you? I get asked that all the time? Sure. We can use those situations also to help see what a great and loving God we have.

Yeah, you know, Larry, as as we've been talking here, you've mentioned a number of different Bible verses and different passages as well. Is there one in particular that you've held on to that's been kind of like an anchor for you or a life first, however, you want to turn that there have been one verse that's really meant a lot to you.

Yeah, I have so many. Fortunately, I have enough that whatever the situation is, I can draw upon that. That's good, which is what brings me peace. And in sometimes, I don't even know where they come from, like, you know, some of the ones I mentioned today, it wasn't anything, I didn't know what questions you were going to ask me. Somehow I had those in there, and God allows me, you know, helps bring them back to my mind, you know, helps me recall them. But I'd say you know, right now, the big one for me is Matthew 2025 through 28, which is the whole leadership, servant leadership verses that I've modeled servant leadership around that I described. And what I love about those verses is the setup for it is there's two disciples that actually get their mom to ask Jesus if they can be on the right and left hand side of him when he enters the kingdom. So what a great time to talk about servant leadership here, you got two guys that are saying, Hey, we know your God, but man, we want to be important too. So put us on each side of you. And he uses that to basically say, look, if you want to be great, you got to be last. And he even talks about how most leadership that you see out there he talks about the leadership you see in the with the Gentiles are people who are lording it over over others, and he says, I do not want you to be like that. So he clearly says don't use the top down leadership model. And so that's always resonated with me, particularly when I'm thinking about leadership. Very cool.

Very cool. You know, Larry, as we were talking at the beginning of this program, you mentioned a couple of things that really stuck with me. And I wanted to ask you to speak to somebody that's listening, just about how God has helped you kind of overcome the, you know, you said that you're a type A personality, you're a planner, you're, you've been self focused, and you're a driven guy. But you've dealt with a lot of guilt. And you felt like, did I cause this? You've taken a lot of that responsibility on yourself, but it didn't need to be there. And you've also said a lot about the what if, what if, what if? And so how would you, Minister and just encourage somebody that might be struggling with some of these same things?

I don't know why this just jumped into my head. And it might not answer directly your question, but maybe there's a listener out there that that might benefit from this. I don't know why this just jumped in my head. But because of what happened with my daughter, also, I had a lot of anger towards the doctor that had caused that problem. You know, and I was consumed with, how can I make sure this doctor doesn't cause that same problem for another small infant? And I mean, it. Almost any spare minute I had that I wasn't focused on my daughter or praying, I was thinking about how can I make sure this doctor loses his license or what have you. And it really did take the Holy Spirit. It was first teaching me about empathy and caring about others. When then I realized that that doctor didn't show up that day, saying, Okay, let me go find a small little girl that I'm going to ruin her life and ruin the life of our parents. He didn't show up doing that he was doing the best job he could. And he made a mistake. And I started thinking, how many mistakes Have I made? And how many places have I really messed up and yet Jesus has forgiven me. I've got to forgive this doctor. When God finally enabled me to find forgiveness of this doctor and truly forgive him. It was like a huge weight lifted off my heart. I don't even think about that guy anymore. I mean, I hope he's doing well. I'm not consumed by it, I don't think about it. And what I found from doing that, is forgiveness, I think is, is more helpful to the forgiver than the person that's being forgiven. And that's not true of us with Christ. Obviously, we need our sins forgiven. Yeah. So we can have eternal life. But for us here, I think that's why Christ told us, you know, love God and love everyone else. It's all about loving everyone else. And that's the real magic. And if there's somebody out there that one of your listeners is angry at, it might be somebody in their family, it might be somebody at work, it might be somebody who's dead, and you still have all that anger. If you can find a way just I'd encourage you to pray to the Holy Spirit, you can't do it on your own. I couldn't have done it on my own. But the Holy Spirit brought me to a place that I saw the importance in the benefit of forgiving that doctor, and you can forgive whoever it is that you know, you're angry at. Once you do that, you can move on. It's like bury that trash and move on. And it's life changing. And I encourage people who might be struggling with that, to pray about it and give it a try. Yeah,

there you just said that. You ask the Holy Spirit to help you with that. You know, there might be somebody listening right now that that is afraid to do that. That's a that's nervous about doing that. Could you lead somebody in a prayer asking the Holy Spirit for that help,

I'd be delighted to our Father in heaven. I just thank you so much for this time, and for the listeners and for the opportunity for us to discuss your word that you've given us and how you want us to live our lives. And also thank you for your son. All anyone has to do. We all know that we have a sin problem. We can't get right with you on our own. And yet you provided the solution. And that solution is just by placing our faith in your son. Jesus is our Lord and Savior. And then you've promised us that we will have our sins forgiven in eternal life with you 100% assurance that when we die, we're going to be with you in heaven. At the same time you tell us when we take that step in faith it's by your grace That gives us that faith that you then provide the Holy Spirit to us to come and live in us and help us become the people that you want us to be. And I ask right now, Father, if there's anyone out there that either needs to pray that prayer that you help them pray the prayer that I that I just said, they can do it on their own. And at the same time, if they are Christians, all they have to do they have the power of the Holy Spirit, we thank you for the power of the Holy Spirit living inside of each one of us, to help us do the things that we can't do on our own. And if that means finding forgiveness for someone who we've, we've been consumed by for maybe decades, we know all we have to do is pray to you to change our heart, we can't do it on our own. And we can find that forgiveness, and then have that peace that you will give us once we do find that forgiveness and forgive the other person. So I just pray for everyone out there, Father, whoever might have that on their heart right now that you give them first the strength to just say, I can't do this on my own. Please give me the strength. And then please give me the ability to forgive the other people that I just have this hatred for, or whatever it might be. By the way, thank you for your love. We thank you for all the blessings that you continue to shower upon us. I ask that you bless everyone who's listening in a way that they can continue to grow if they don't have a relationship that they would be feel you tapping on their heart, maybe even today, that they would place their faith in you. And we pray all this in your son Jesus name. Amen.

Amen. Amen. Larry, thank you so much for just ministering to our listeners here and just being willing to share your life journey. And I know there's a lot more to it. But I just thank you for what we've been able to talk about, you know, I know that I can definitely always learn more. And, you know, I can clean up my act a little bit more, you know, and especially when it regards servant leadership. And so thank you so much for those five steps, especially before we leave, how can somebody find out about your book and get in touch with you,

I appreciate that. And thank you again, john, for having me on. Yeah, they can, they can find out more about me by just going to my website, www dot Larry O'Donnell dot com. I have a weekly blog, they can sign up for I have a weekly podcast, which is a Bible study that they can sign up for. And they can also purchase my book. And by the way, my book is not about me all the profits from my book, you know, after Amazon, or whoever takes the distributors take their cut out. It all goes to charity. So I just want to try to help others. And I hope that by looking at my book and trying to put into practice some of these clean principles, that they'll be able to become the leader that God wants them to be. And that is really serving, serving others and having God as their leader. That's what it's all about. So thank you a lot, john,

amen. And I will be putting links for that in the show notes here. So you can just scroll down, wherever you're listening and click that and it'll take you right to Larry's site. And so Larry, thank you so much for allowing me to join you along your way. Thank you, john.

It's been a pleasure.

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Larry O'Donnell, his openness to share from his successes, as well as his failures is truly amazing and very much appreciated. I really like how he views failure

to me, if you're not failing, you're not learning. It's real easy to sit back and just say, Well, I'm afraid to fail, so I'm not going to do anything. And you'll just sit there right where you are not even get to utilize the opportunities that God gave us,

we need to learn from our failures. They are opportunities that God gave us. And we can either utilize them or not. It's our choice, but one way leads to a bigger mess than the other. And we might just need some help to clean it up. I'll be providing the link to Larry's book, website and podcast in the show notes. Thank you for listening to along the way. If you've enjoyed joining me along my way, please share this with a friend who you think will be encouraged by this podcast. Also, please rate and review along the way on iTunes that helps more people discover along the way and subscribe to this podcast wherever you're listening. You can follow me on Facebook, Instagram and my website along the way dot media. I hope that you've enjoyed this part of my journey and may you realize when Jesus is walking with you along your way. Along the way is honored to be part of the charisma Podcast Network. You can find tons of spirit filled content from their vast catalogue of podcasts including Monday through Friday news stories for the charisma news podcast. Go to CPN shows.com to see the full list and latest episodes