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I have over a thousand employees across all of my companies that generate $250 million per year. And this is the one skill that has allowed me to achieve this. Leadership is the single most important skill, because if you know how to do it, you can lead people who do everything else and every other skill. All skills are additional, whereas leadership is the only skill that multiplies. If you can lead a department, you can grow it. If you can lead a company, you can grow it. If you can lead people, you can grow them. Hiring the right employees can make you millions. But most entreprene get it wrong the first point. Everyone wants to lead the way, but nobody wants to be alone. The first time I promoted one of my sales coaches into a sales manager, I remember I got a call from him about three weeks later, and I had texted him, and I said, like, how's the new role feeling? Like you really wanted it. I'm just curious, like, how are you feeling this far in? And he said to me, it's actually really tough. And I knew he was going to say that, to be honest with you. I said, why is it tough? He's like, I just feel really lonely. And I wasn't expecting that. I was like, well, let's take a look about this. You are no longer on a team. You lead a team. Therefore, the things you do every day are not the things they do every day. You do different things, therefore you do things alone. You also do things before other people, so you're not doing things in lockstep with people. You're doing things to lead the way so that they can do them next. You also have less peers now. Before, you had 15 peers on the team. Now you have five peers on the team. What I told him is that the price of leadership is loneliness. You. You can't lead the way unless you're a few steps ahead of people. And that's the thing, is that when you're leading the way, people aren't beside you anymore. They're behind you. Even though it's just a few steps, you feel those steps. When I was first building a business, the main emotion I felt through most of that time was loneliness. And I used to look at it like it was a problem. And it wasn't until I honestly recognized, what am I trading right now? I'm trading loneliness for being a leader. So I get all this good stuff that comes with being a leader, but on the other side, that also comes with the fact that sometimes I feel alone, which makes sense. There are less leaders, therefore you Feel more alone. And so that is why loneliness is the price of leadership. I felt this myself so many times in my career. And I will tell you that it doesn't get better. You just get better at leading. You get better at being alone and you become better company to yourself. What I recognize is what made it feel so much worse when I was first starting out is that I wasn't good company to myself when I was alone. And in the things that I had to go through by myself, I wasn't being my own best friend. And if I actually think about the way that I used to speak to myself versus the way I speak to myself now, when I was alone, I was constantly beating myself up. I was constantly worried, I was questioning things, I wasn't cheering myself on. And once I recognized that that was why loneliness was so painful, I said, well, how would I speak to myself if I were my own best friend? And that sounds so freaking lame, but I swear to God, it has made the entire process so much less painful for me. This is a game where the last man standing wins in terms of leadership. It's not about achieving his goal. It's about staying in the game. It's about being the type of person who can envision, endure hard things and stand tall when you do. And for me, if I'm constantly feeding into negativity, feeding into worry, feeding into self doubt, there's no way I want to be alone and there's no way that I could make it as a leader. And I have had to completely change that frame of mind for myself. There's nothing wrong with feeling lonely, but it feels really shitty if you're in bad company with yourself. So if you're watching this video, I would ask myself two things, which is one, are you willing to make the trade? If you want to truly be a leader, it will definitely be lonelier than being a follower. If the answer is yes, I'm willing to pay the price. The second question is, are you going to choose pain or suffering along the way? Loneliness will happen and it will occur no matter what. But suffering through the loneliness is compounded by how you speak to yourself. Do you want to grit your way through this journey or do you want to make it easy on yourself? And you want to actually even make it something that you might enjoy. And if you want to enjoy the way they are, then you change the way that you speak to yourself and you change the thoughts you allow yourself to focus on and listen. If this is something that you struggle with and this is something that you're like, how do I change my internal dialogue? Like, let me know in the comments, because I'm curious of these topics that I'm talking about. Which ones you guys want to hear more about. The next point is that a great leader surrounds themselves with people who make it easier to achieve their goals, not harder. Here's the thing. A great leader is only as great as the company they keep. I saw this to be true when I had a leader on my team who had really big goals for themselves, and she was vocalizing how much she wanted these things out of the job. It was weird because she said, like, I have all these big goals of moving up and doing these things. But then, like, when I gave her opportunities of like, all right, we're gonna do this thing. Or like, can you jump in here? Or like, hey, we've got this thing that's going on this weekend. Can you help here? She'd always say no. And I was like, why are you saying no to these opportunities? If you want to move up, I only present them to you because of what you told me you wanted. And what ended up coming out was that she had a very unsupportive spouse at home. And I said, well, how is this person unsupportive? She watched some of my content and was like, I feel like this is me. And she's like, well, they constantly complain when I'm at work. If I'm at work and they're not at work, they're constantly telling me how much they miss me and they wish I was home. If I have to work on a weekend, they're constantly complaining about how I'm working on a weekend. If I talk too much about work, they punish me, essentially, for talking too much about work. And overall, they don't have anything good to say about the job. And I was like, all right, listen, this is not about the job. This is about your goals. Is this aligned with your goals and what you want to do with your life? And they were like, yes. I was like, all right, let's give them feedback then, about the fact that this person is constantly punishing you for the process that it takes to achieve your goals, because that's really what they're doing. And so that person had that discussion, and the person on the other end, it didn't end up working out, and they actually ended up breaking up. And they broke up because that person, their spouse, made it harder to achieve their goals, not easier. And I tell you, like, the moment that these people broke up, that person just completely Propelled forward towards their goals and in their career. And listen, I'm not saying that you should like sacrifice your family for your career. That's not what I'm saying at all. It's about something bigger than that. It's about having people in your life that support your life's mission, your personal goals, what's important to you. It's about engineering an environment that makes it easier to succeed, not harder. And that starts with the people that are in your environment and the people who are closest to you in that environment. You know, when I was younger, I got out of relationships because I had the same thing. I had people telling me, you're working too much. I had one guy tell me, I wish you wouldn't work so much and you could just be a pretty girl that would come to these events with me. This guy had a lot of events for his work. I was like, what the fuck? We're not aligned, we're not the same. That ain't me. I'm always gonna be like this. Cause this is what I want out of my life. I get to choose how I show up in this world. I get to choose what I do with my life. And listen, homie, like that's all fun and games, but like, that's not for me. And so what I've seen is that a leader is only as good as the people they surround themselves with, both in and outside the business. I can almost always correlate the highest performers in my businesses to people who have the highest amount of support outside of the business. And one of the easiest ways to rid yourself of self doubt, of limiting beliefs of conflict, is to ensure that the people that are surrounding you outside of work don't create any of that. And the sad thing is that oftentimes we let people who have given up on their dreams interfere with us achieving ours. And that's the thing, is that the more that you give yourself permission to live life in accordance with your goals and your values and your desires, the more you will be criticized by people around you. You just want to make sure that the people around you are not the closest. The next point is that as a leader, you don't demand respect. You earn respect by being trustworthy. I had an acquaintance who had a business that was worth almost a billion dollars. And this was about five years ago. And I thought it was so interesting this business was worth so much money. Because the way that she ran her business is that if somebody did not respect her, if somebody disobeyed her, if somebody had a Different opinion. She would just fire them. And it's funny because I remember seeing that and I told Alex, I was like, man, sometimes I'm just like, how does that even occur? How do you get a business to be that big while treating people, like, so poorly? And why? By acting ins such a way where you just have no trust from anybody on the team. And it's funny because that business was worth a billion five years ago. That business today is worth $150 million. It lost so much value that it can't even sell. Why did that happen? Because there was a mass fucking exodus from that conversation I have with that person to when it was like, peak. I talked with people in the company and they were all saying like, oh, we're getting the fuck out. It's a mess in here. You know, they fire everybody for no reason. Like, if you just don't agree, they don't tell you anything, they give you no feedback, they just fire you. Like, it's basically like a complete l lack of trust from the employee base to the leadership. And a lot of the employees came to me because I had been edified by their leadership and they trusted me. Ironic, right? What happened was that all of their best people just left. All the top talent, all the people who really helped build whatever good culture there was, they all just left. And a great mentor of mine told me this, which is, companies die from the inside out. They implode more than they explode. And it made so much sense, because what happened there was that it wasn't an issue with the market. It was an issue internally. If you can't get your team internally to operate in the best way possible, if you don't have great people, if you don't have great operations, if you don't have great marketing, if you don't have great sales, what does it matter that you're in a great market? It doesn't. And so eventually what happened was in the beginning, that company was like, first to market. And so it didn't matter that they didn't have the best people and the best culture and the best way of doing things. People stayed at the company because there was nowhere else to go that was better, and they were better than all the competition. And it just hadn't been long enough for them to say, I'm sick of this shit. Well, eventually what happens is competing companies prop up their best talent, says, well, shit, they're going to take over faster and they have a better culture, they have more trustworthy leader. And so they left. Is that the Way that they had operated the company was one in that they demanded respect without having earned the trust of their people. The irony of leadership is that everyone says, oh, I will act respectable once they respect me. I will act trustworthy once they trust me. They expect more from their teams than they give to their teams. And I have always played the opposite, which is you must give before you get. You're the leader. Leader, meaning you lead the way. You show them how to treat you. So how can you expect people to trust you, to respect you, to do all these things because of what your fucking title? It doesn't matter. That's not how humans work. You have to give it before you can expect it from people. Bad leaders say you need to be respected, not liked. Why do people say that? To give themselves permission to act like fucking assholes. People do not care how much you know until they know how much you care. Leaders who don't have skills to lead well use force as default. And so if you're somebody that's watching this and you're thinking to yourself, like, man, like, I do kind of demand people respect me. I do do all these things. You have a skill deficit. You're not a bad person. You just don't need skills. So here's the question that I ask myself when I am seeing something from my team. When I see them act in a way that is not in accordance with the values of my company, When I see them act in a way that I wouldn't want them acting, I ask myself, in what ways have I exemplified this? And then I'm like, there's gotta be a chink in my fucking armor, because there's no way. If I was the epitome of everything I wanted to see in my team, they would know that that wasn't even close to acceptable. I am constantly t tying it back to myself if somebody isn't acting respectful of me. I'm asking myself, have I ever had an interaction with them where I've gotten to show them how much I respect them? Respect is earned. It's not demanded. And all of these things are given first by the leader, not by the team. So the people, for example, on my team that trust me the most are the ones who know that I tell them when it's bad, and I tell them when it's good. It's not that I do one or the other. I have both. And so they say, I'll be like, you know that you can trust me, that I will tell you that. Oh, I know you'll tell Me, I know you will tell, tell me. And it's not that I'm mean. I am never mean. I am just honest. I will always tell them where they stand. I will always tell them what I really think, and I will not withhold information from them, partially because that is part of my values and partially because I know in the long term it is for the best that I always am upfront, honest. Because what does that do? It keeps small problems small. It helps people develop faster, and it creates predictability. And here's the thing. Trust lubricates business. The more trust you have, the faster you can go. For example, you know, people look at myself and Alex and how fast we've been able to do things within building all the businesses we have. People always say, how have you accomplished what you've accomplished in this decade? I trust him with my life. I would take a bullet for him, and I know he would take a bullet for me. And that trust, not ever having to wonder if we've really got each other's back and we really have each other's interests, has allowed me to go so fast because I don't have this mental drama. I know he will tell me when something's up, and he knows I will tell him when something's up, and we will handle it right then. I trust him innately. And because of that, we can go so fast together. And I just take that relationship and I look at how I can replicate that in people on my team. How do I create that trust of them knowing, like, I've got your fucking back. We're in this together. And I will tell you when something's up, and I will tell you when something's not up. And because of that, we can move fast in areas that are slow. And with people who move slow, typically there's not enough trust. And most of the time that comes from shortcuts in communication. The next point is that true leaders don't complain, they solve. I hired somebody to be an operator in one of my companies, and I thought that there was a lot of value in the fact that this person was constantly pointing out the problems and constantly talking to me about the problems. There's value, of course, in bringing up problems and bringing up things that are not going well. This person was overly fixated on it. And what was really interesting is that I looked at where this person's time went. They talked about problems more than they talked about solutions. Why is it that leaders don't talk about problems as much as they talk about solutions? Why is it that leaders are optimistic, it's not because they're delusional, it's because it's a skill. Being optimistic is a skill. When you are in a company where bad shit's happening all day, every day. It is a very necessary skill. Because here's the thing, if you're focused only on the problems, how do you grow your business? If you're focused on the negativity, how do you grow the team? What I recognized is that if you allow the problems to steal your attention, then you take that attention from finding a solution. The best leaders do not complain. They solve, they ignore, acknowledge the problem, they acknowledge the impact of the problem and then they get fucking busy solving the problem. So the best leaders I've recognized on a call, when they bring me a problem, they spend about 10% of the time on the problem and 90% of the time on the possible solutions to solve it. Something that I observed early on for myself was I used to talk about problems more than I talked about solutions. Why is that? Because I didn't know how to solve. Because I was new, I was inexperienced, and I didn't have the tools in my toolbox that I have now. So I reckon recognize that some of this comes with experience of knowing how to solve problems. But some of it also comes with restraining yourself from complaining and talking about problems. Because if you indulge in that, you're never going to have time to find solutions. And so now I'm very cognizant of the fact that I think of it as 90, 10, 10% of the time we spend on talking about the problem. So we understand the scope. 90% of the time we're going to talk about the solution. All right, it happened. What do we do now? All I want to think about is what am I going to do moving forward. It's a matter of where you're putting your energy. And if your energy is only going towards how bad these problems are and all the worst case scenarios, you're missing out on all the things that you could learn from the problem, of all the things that you could gain from it, and all the things that could happen on the other side. Those who cannot solve problems, complain about them. I love this quote, it's by John Maxwell. The pessimist complains about the wind, the optimist expects it to change, and the leader adjusts the sales. The leader gets to solving the fucking problem. Something I actually do quite often to audit. I ask myself, I look back at that and I ask, how much time did I spend Talking about the problem versus focused on the solution. And in the moment, when I'm dealing with the problem, I ask myself, am I focusing in my thoughts on the problem or on what I need to do next? And businesses move at the speed of the boss. And if the boss is fixated on the problem and on the solution, they're probably gonna move a lot slower. And so it benefits you in all ways to focus on what you're gonna do next, what you've gotta do to solve the problem, rather than indulging in how the problem has affected people, how bad it is. All that bullshit is that leaders have their personal lives under control because business is personal. I had a company in the portfolio, and it was one of our best companies in the beginning. It was doing really well. I think in the first year we 11x the results were crazy. I was like, wow, this company is doing really well. I didn't really, like, double click into the CEO's personal life or their personal choices. And along the way, the company's still growing, but the person started making, you know, not so great choices. Employees start messaging me and telling me, like, I don't know if you know, but this person's, like, off doing drugs and not in our meeting. And then I don't know if you know, but, like, this person's, like, showing up to the meeting, like, really disheveled and looking like they just, like, partied all night. And, like, I don't know if you know, but, like, this person, like, talked to our customers about this, like, rave they were at. And, like, I don't know if you know, but, like, it's been a week and they haven't been in the office and they've actually been boating the whole week. And I was like, all right, I'm partnered with this company. But, like, I'm not this dude's boss. And so, like, what can I do to dictate his life? The company's still performing. Definitely not align with my values. Definitely not aligned with I want, but I'm kind of in this. So, like, I have to use some soft influence to see what's going to happen. The company kept growing. It was doing well. And then it all started to crumble. Started to crumble because I started getting phone calls from leaders on the team telling me that they didn't want to work for this person. Why didn't they want to work for this person? I mean, like, these are grown adults calling me, telling me, like, it's really tough to work for this person. It wasn't how this person showed up in the business setting. Good business person. It was the person this person was outside of work, and it was what he did in his free that created the perception of who he was at work. You cannot compartmentalize life, whether people like it or not. And I get some shit for this. What you do in your personal life absolutely affects how people see you at work. And I think that people lie when they say otherwise. I don't want to take advice from somebody who doesn't have their fucking shit together. Even if somebody's like, oh, I can tell you how I grew my business to 10 billion, but they're out there cheating on their wife, doing drugs all day, drunk half the time. I'm good, dude, I don't need to find out from you because business is personal. And I'm not going to believe that you were able to achieve those things in a way of integrity and in a way that I would want to achieve them. If this is what the rest of your life looks like, what do I not know about the business? You don't just become a different person when you come to work. This is something I talk to my team about. I'm like, you bring your whole self to work, whether you like it or not. And trying to compartmentalize and be a different person at work and a different person at home is why a lot of people don't become leaders. Because they say, oh, I want to be respected in the workplace. I want to be admired in the workplace. I want people to think I'm a leader in the workplace. You think they don't know what you do in your free time? There is social media nowadays. There are so many ways that you can find out what somebody does. And not to mention, people can tell. They can tell by little things you say. They can, like, tell by the way that you show up. They can tell by, like, little nuances of stuff. By the way, that guy went from having a business that was worth like, $45 million to a business that was worth nothing. And it was because every single leader on the team left. That's why when we started acquisition.com one of the core values is unimpeachable character, which is, who am I proud to associate with on and off the field. Why is that? Because I know that nobody can become a great leader if the way that they act outside of work is completely opposite to how they show up inside of work. And the values you live your personal life by, whether you like it or not, become the values at which you operate your company. And it's funny because people say, like, values, like values are what you do, not what you say. And it's very hard to just do completely different things outside of work than you do inside of work. For anybody. The issue is when there's a discrepancy and you hide it. For those of you who are thinking, when I prompt you with this question, oh man, there's a discrepancy. There's different ways to close that gap. The question is, what's the discrepancy between who I am inside the workplace and who I am outside of the workplace? What's the gap? Two ways to fill it. One, you can be honest about who you are inside of the workplace. You can tell them what you actually do outside of work. You can be honest about, you can own it. Shame only exists in the dark. Or you can change your behavior. I will tell you for myself. When I first started gymlaunch, I was like, okay, I really take this seriously. Who I am outside of work and inside of work, I want all those things. And I just felt like a responsibility of like, I have all these people that report to me like, I want to be a good example for them and I genuinely want to be a person who makes the world better. I start with making myself better. I looked at my life and I was like, well, I like to drink a lot outside of work. And this was like when we had just started the business and you know, we'd been like sleeping in motels, drinking a fifth of Jack, splitting subway, and I still had a little bit of like fifth of Jack, like coming through, like the weekends. I liked to get a little shitty. I was like, either I can be honest and tell my team or I can change my behavior. And then I decided I'm changing my behavior. And I didn't drink for three and a half years. I didn't touch it because I was like, it's not worth it to me. I don't want to set the example that I'm like getting shitty on the weekends because now they're going to be like, oh, I'm going to get shitty on the weekends. Being a leader is not a one time event. It's a constant practice that you practice every day. The next point is that you can lead without integrity, but having integrity is what makes you a leader. I think there's a big difference between being somebody's boss and being somebody's leader. It was about six months ago when I was speaking with a female CEO and she has a very large, well known Company. And I was talking to her about just, like, my philosophy around people. And I was like, why do you like doing what you do? You know, Like, I love leading a team. I love helping people grow. I love communicating well. I love watching people develop. Like, that's really, like, my favorite thing. She was like, wow, I actually don't like any of that. I hate talking to my team. Very different. But I'm interested. Like, tell me why. And I remember she said something along the lines of the fact that she thinks that she could do every person's job in six minutes a day. And it's interesting because I think as a leader, there's definitely times where you see what people are doing. And of course, you're like, I have 15 years of experience. I could probably do this in two minutes. But that's not the point, because you can't do everything. So I've recognized is that over time, you don't know what other things are on people's plates. You don't know why something takes longer. And actually, the less that you know about something, the more likely you are to say that it takes a little amount of time. She went on to tell me her pay philosophy and how, basically she pays as little as possible, and she has, like, the highest expectations in terms of how people show up at work. And she talked about how. How she was firing about 20 people that week, and that was, like, something she was really excited to do. And I was like, interesting. Okay. Except for the fact that your public brand is one that you love people and have a great team and do all these great things for them. I just don't see how this is gonna play out for her. There's no way they can't tell that she's full of shit. And I swear, it was not even two weeks later, bang, lawsuit from her employees. I was like, dude, it always comes back around. If you lead people without integrity, you can maybe have work for you. But it's not the same as being a leader that people want to follow. And I think that a lot of times people get into the business of having a business, and they forget about. If you are in business and you want to go big, then you're in the business of people, and that's what it becomes. At some point, it's all about people. You have people building the product. You have people doing the marketing. You have people doing the sales. And so all that you can do is be such a person of character and such a great leader that you attract other people that are so good and so capable, they can do all those things for you. And that's what she didn't understand. And now her company is crumbling. And it really just, I think, cements that for me, because every time I've met somebody who has a company who lacks integrity, who doesn't really want the best for their people, but who maybe portrays themselves as such, that person has gotten bitten in the ass, whether it be in a month, six months, 12 months. So what is integrity? Integrity is the quality of being honest, having a strong moral compass. And so, for example, if you want to be a leader who has integrity and you have a business, it would mean that you are aligned with the values that you preach. And it would mean that what you think, what you say, and what you do are all aligned. What that does is that creates trust with your team when what you say you are and what you say you value are what you show that you are and what you show you value. Integrity is what drives leadership, not the title that somebody holds. And so the question is, at the end of the day, if you don't have a team that is loyal to you, have you been making decisions, whether behind closed doors or not, that create an environment where it makes it easy to be loyal to you? The true test of a leader is not how much they can achieve, but what kind of person, what kind of character they build along the way. And I don't know about you, but for me, people say, what's your goal? And of course, there's a monetary goal and there is a size of business I would like to have, and there's milestones I want to achieve, but none of it matters if I'm a worse person for it. None of it matters if my team is worse for it, none of it matters if my companies and customers are worse for it. Leave everybody better than you found them. And for me, that's my true moral compass around how I know that I am a person of integrity is with every decision I make, I literally think to myself, is this going to make people's lives better or worse? Every person who touches this decision. Now, for some of it, it might mean in the short term it's worse, but if in the long term it's better, eventually they'll see that play out. If you want to be a person of integrity, ask yourself, do my actions align with my words? Are the values that you preach to your team actions that you uphold on a daily basis? Because I think that the root of a lot of lost trust in an organization is between what people say the Organization is about what they say, the values of the organization, and then what they see the leader do on a daily basis. Because if you can't show up as a person of integrity, everything crumbles. The next point, your mindset does not lead to success as leader, but your ability to act despite how you feel, does. When I was first leading my company, I had no idea what the fuck I was doing because I was like 23 and I'd never done any of this stuff before. One of the hardest things for me was understanding how to show up for my team when I wasn't feeling 100%. I used to be the type of person that wore my heart on my sleeve. If I would be in a meeting and something wasn't going right, people would be like, are you okay? Is everything okay? Is something wrong? And so what I noticed is that people were constantly asking me if I was okay. And the reality is, it's the first time I've ever had a business. It's the first time I've ever been doing this. Like, no, I didn't feel okay. I felt fucking stressed. I was scared, I was nervous. Like, there was so much going through my head all the time. I didn't feel that way. But I recognized that it was selfish to allow my feelings to dictate how I showed up and therefore how they felt when they were around me and talking to me. I was like, I need a constant reminder to regulate and manage my emotions. Now, this doesn't mean suppress my emotions, but this means not allow them to dictate my behavior. I got a little sticky note and I put it on my computer and I just said two words, just said, be neutral. My goal with that was that I wanted to be level headed. I wanted to be steady. Because think about like the best people you've ever had in your life that you like, absolutely can rely on, that you take their advice. Like, they're not like this. They're like this. Like they're a rock for you. There's so much more to gain in regulating your emotional response than there is in emotionally dumping on your team. And I think there's a difference between. A lot of people say, well, isn't that suppressing your emotions? I would say, no. Because what I will do is acknowledge. I will say, hey, if I seem a little bit off, I just want you guys to know I didn't sleep really much last night because of X, Y and Z. Or I might say, hey, if I seem a little bit off, I just want, you know, I'm just dealing with an HR situation. It's just kind of upsetting. And so if it comes off that way, comes off that way. Hey, if I seem a little bit off, I just want, you know, like, I had a stomachache all morning. And so if I don't seem like myself, like, that's why I'm not avoiding the fact that I'm not showing up exactly as myself. So they know, but now at least they know it's not about them. Because also, if they can sense that something's off but I don't tell them that it's something else that I've experienced, they assume it's because of them. And so I recognized there's two things that are selfish to do. One, to show up like this for my team, because then that puts them like this. And they're constantly wondering, how's she gonna be? Is she in a good mood or a bad mood? Like, I don't know what to. The second one is that there's so much power in telling people what's going on, because then they don't have to worry that it's about them. What I recognize is that I have never regretted acting in accordance with my values rather than my emotions. I can acknowledge that I have emotions, and I can still act in accordance with my values and goals, despite how I'm feeling. It might be hard. It might be hard at first, might be hard the whole time, but you can still do it. Success is not based on how you feel. Success is based on what you do. In fact, it's based on what you do, regardless of how you feel. There are many days where I don't want to do the thing that's required for me to succeed. But what I do want is to get to the end of my life and to know that I did everything possible to achieve my goals and become the person I want to become. You don't lead based on how you feel in the moment. You lead based on the values that you have set for yourself. I know that sometimes you are doing stuff and you feel like shit. I always just joke that because people always seem to think, like, oh, I'm guessing because you've been doing this for a decade, like, you feel better than I feel. And I'm like, oh, no, no, I feel the same. I'm just good at feeling bad. It never goes away. You don't feel better. You just get better at feeling bad. And so if I want to have any chance of getting out of the terrible feels, then I know that I want to act in accordance with my values, not with my momentary, fleeting emotions. 99% of the success that I have experienced in my life has been correlated with my ability to act, despite how I feel. Here's the question that I would ask myself if I were watching this video and I were trying to learn from, which is, how many of your days are dictated by your values versus your feelings? I think a lot of people don't reach their goals because Tuesday comes and they feel like shit, and they allow that feeling like shit to dictate what Tuesday looks like. I promise you that you will also feel less like shit if you do not do that and you stick with the plan. I think a good frame to take is five years from now, 10 years from now, even just like six months from now. Like, what story do you want to tell about this moment right now? What do you want to train yourself into? With every action we take, we reinforce doing that action again. So it's like with every action we take every day, we really build our future self. And so the next point is that the company that you want is on the other side of a few conversations that you have been dreading. There have been so many times in my career when, because our brains don't want to confront the hard things, where I have not even purposely avoided a hard conversation. Conversation, because in some way, subconsciously, I didn't want to confront how hard it was going to be. There was a time, it was about two years ago, when I was trying to figure out why one of our companies wasn't growing. I just, like, could not see what was going on. A lot of times. The reason this is difficult is because you know the people in the company so well, that the fact that somebody in the company might actually be the reason it's not growing. It's not an option in your mind. These are the chess pieces that we use to play the game. And I remember I woke up in the middle of the night and I was like, oh, my gosh, it's this person. They're not in the right role. We need to completely move them into a different role, which is not as involved in the company. Immediately, I was like, that is what it is. I completely understand that, and I know it. And then I was like, oh, my God, how am I going to have this conversation? And that was when I was like, how are they going to take this? They're going to think that it means they suck. They're going to think all these things. But I knew in order to grow the company, that's the conversation I had to have is I had to basically tell one of the founders, I think you'd be better as a board member. I don't actually think that you are somebody that should be operating in the company. And I was so nervous about this conversation because we hadn't, like, had a big conversation yet as partners. As soon as I knew I needed to have it, I was like, I'm going to have it right away, because I know this is going to move everything forward. But I was dreading it. And I scheduled the conversation, got on the call, and it's so funny, because in my mind, I'd made it up to be, like, this big thing that was, like, going to come to fruition. And, like, the first thing was like, wow, I think that's a great idea. And I was like, what the fuck? All this, like, drama that my brain had made up about what was going to happen for the situation only for this person to be, like, completely aligned with what I was saying. Making that change is what propelled that business to 13 hours since we invested in it. And I was like, holy shit. If I hadn't had that conversation, what would have happened? And that really gave me perspective. How much growth is on the other side of these hard conversations? I acted in accordance with my values. I knew I did the hard but right thing because they so often are the same fucking thing, which is like, it's always the right thing is the hard thing, and the hard thing is the right thing. It's the people who are above the strategy, above the product, above the service that are not having hard conversations. Or it's the fact that you haven't gotten rid of the person who you have had conversations with but isn't the right person anymore. I can't tell you how often people. People say to me, they're like, layla, like, you know, like, I get all the people stuff, but tell me. I'm like, motherfucker. It's not like I talk about this shit because I'm afraid of strat, like, strategy, marketing, sales strategies, all these other things, like acquiring customers, Like, I know how to do all that shit, but who does those things is people. And so if you don't have hard conversations with the people that are above very important places in the company, shit doesn't move. I say it because it's such an important lesson to me. It rocked me realizing early on in my career how detrimental avoiding these conversations is to a company. It is everything, because if somebody isn't performing and nobody speaks to them about it, what happens? They keep not performing. If you don't have the courage to have a hard conversation, then you better have the courage to deal with a very difficult situation. You're not getting rid of problems. You are trading them. So here's the question I would ask if I were you, and the question that I ask myself. What conversations am I avoiding? What people am I avoiding? What conversations have I continued to shove off and not have, out of inconvenience, convenience? And those are what I need to tackle first. And a lot of times, what I do is I just get into a groove of addressing them. It's like, when I know I'm gonna have to have one, I'm like, all right, what else have I been putting off? Is there anything up in there? I'm really digging through because that's gonna move the company forward more than any initiative that you could ever do. The next point is that the speed of the leader is the speed of the team. Back when I was building my first business, I hired somebody who I really liked, just like a fantastic person overall. But they were new. They'd never done the job before. And so I hired this person to oversee a very large, very important department in. We're going to call this person Gary. And Gary was awesome. But when Gary came in and took over the department, very quickly, things that took one day started to take, like, seven days. And I was like, what is going on? Processes that took like a week started taking a month. And then things that took one person to do took, like, four people to do. And I was like, all right, what's going on here? I said, you know what I'm going to do is I'm just going to come in, I want to shadow what's going on. I want to shout out how you're doing things. I want to shadow the meeting the team. I want to look at all the processes and the systems and see what's happening. And what happened was he said one thing on a meeting with me that was so interesting. He said, well, I think things could move faster if I didn't have to, like, review and check on people. Like, that just gets in the way of me doing my job. And it was so funny because in that moment, I was like, dude, you have a team of 20. That is your job. Your job is to make all of their jobs easier. You are the multiplier. You are supposed to multiply their efforts by making them go faster. And I looked in there, and I sat down with him, and what we identified was that he was slowing Everybody down. He wasn't reviewing anything quickly. He wasn't getting back to people quickly. He wasn't messaging people quickly, he wasn't communicating quickly, he wasn't disseminating information quickly. Everything he did was so delayed compared to what I had been doing prior. The job of a leader is to increase the output of everybody that reports to them. So if you put a leader in place and output goes down, effectively, they are not a good leader. If you put a leader in place and output goes up, they're a great leader. Why is this so important is because in business, the big ones don't eat the small ones. The fast ones eat the slow ones. It's not about needing to be big right now, but you do need to be fast. When I was building my first business, when we came into market, I knew that speed had to be our competitive advantage because there were big players waiting to steal everything that we were building and implement it into their business. And I knew that if we couldn't do it fast enough, they would be able to capitalize on that. I remember I went to an entrepreneurial meetup and this guy pulled me to the side after I told him what kind of business I had. And he said, listen, when it gets easy is when you hit the gas. If you don't, these guys who are bigger than you are going to come, they're going to steal all your shit and they can put you out of business. And I have never relaxed since that day nine years ago, the same way that I did before, because it was fucking true immediately. What I started seeing within about three months of us building our business is everyone started trying to figure out ways to copy us. All the big players are saying, oh, we see what they're doing, it's really working. Let's try and copy it. The only advantage we had was speed. And so I know that now when I'm building a business is that speed is a competitive advantage. And that doesn't mean moving fast with shitty stuff. It means moving fast with good stuff. Success is not just about having ideas. Success is about acting on those ideas faster than your competition and faster than other people in the market. And that is why when I hire for people, I'm looking for people who are fast. The number one indicator for me is how fast does somebody get back to me if I ping you, how fast you respond, how fast somebody responds to daily communication tells me how fast they move their department. I can almost always correlate it. The speed of the boss is the speed of the team. A mentor that once told me something. And I think it, it really helped me put this into practice, which he said, if something comes onto your plate and it takes five minutes to do, and you have five minutes, just fucking do it. You don't need to add it to a to do list. Do it now. And that was so powerful to me because I think so many people procrastinate. They put things off and they don't understand the importance of speed in business. I used to send these surveys to my team and I would say, you've got a week to complete this survey. I would notice that nobody did it until the last minute. Why do they not do it to the last minute? Because that fucking survey takes five minutes to do. Why am I giving people a week? So I said, fuck it. I give it to them, they give them the day. And also I think it's a really good test of how fast people on the team are because the survey takes five minutes to fill out. So now what do I do is I give people a day because it takes a day. Here's the thing. Speed creates progress. Progress creates momentum. Momentum creates success. But it all starts with speed. So here's what I'm asking myself constantly. If I have somebody in a leadership position, I look at what is held under them and I ask myself, is it moving faster or slower than before they were here? If the answer is slower, I need to coach that person. If it's faster, that's great. Let's pour gasoline on the fire. Let's also coach them because we want to invest in a players. Either way, it is good information for you to have. And ask yourself this. If you put yourself over a department of your business or over a person, do they get better or worse? Do they go faster or slower? That can tell you your effectiveness as a leader. The next point is that the true measure of a leader is not about them leading, but if they can create other leaders. I had somebody that I hired when I first started acquisition.com and that person was really good at doing the job. They were charismatic, they were funny, they worked well with others. But once we got to a point where I needed that person to build out their team, what I saw was not what I envisioned for that team, for that team specifically. I. I had envisioned a team of leaders, a team of people who could build teams. I remember getting on one of their meetings and I was like, oh no, we have a dictatorship here. That person did not lead in a way that created leaders. They led in a way that created followers. They were constantly Telling people what to do and then demeaning them if they didn't do it correctly, rather than giving them more authority to dictate what they should be doing and then giving them feedback based on what occurred. And so what ended up happening is that I actually end up swapping that person for a different leader. Not because that person was not proficient at their job, but because I knew with how important that department was and how they were leading it, it would create a team of followers, not a team of leaders. And like, my vision for acquisition.com is that we become a leadership factory. And that really means that it's important. The leaders I put into divisions, I swapped that person out. And I knew that the person I put in was so passionate about growing others, about mentorship, about creating other leaders in the company, they were aligned with my vision. And the moment that I put that person in, even though there was, like, a bunch of shit that had to get work. And obviously in the short term, it's difficult, especially when replace a big person in the company, the team just completely shined. Like, people who had not talked on meetings stepped up. People who had been, like, late turning in their work and doing all these things, like, were the first to do anything. They were being proactive. They were, like, grabbing shit from people. And what I recognized is that that person had only been a level two leader, whereas a level five leader is somebody who creates other leaders. In order to do that, you have to be able to let go of control. That's the hardest part, is that you cannot create other leaders unless you let go of control. You can have growth, you can have control, but you cannot have both at the same time. You have to figure out how to lead in such a way that you inspire people to be leaders themselves and not even inspire them just to be leaders, but inspire them to create other leaders. So when I look at the output of a leader, the functional output of a leader is if they can create more leaders. The best leaders create more leaders. They don't create followers who. Who just nod their heads. The next point is that great leaders step back so that their team has an opportunity to step up. Back when I was running my first company, gymlaunch, I had a point in time where I was gonna be out for two weeks, and that's because I had, like, a medical thing going on, and I was gonna have to be out. I was gonna have to get surgery, and I was, like, not gonna be able to do anything for two weeks. I was so anxious about it. I was like, there is no way anyone's gonna be able to keep this shit together. Like, what are they gonna do all this stuff? You know, at that point, I'd not even taken, like, a full vacation. I'd taken, like, a day. I was really nervous about what was gonna happen. I was like, you know what? I let go in order to grow. And so I'm going to do that. I'm going to give autonomy to people. They're going to solve the problems. When I'm out, I'm going to see what happens. Four days after I had my surgery, and I'm checking in, everyone's like, everything's going really well. Don't worry about it. We've got this, blah, blah, everything's fine. And then six days after, same thing, 10 days later, I'm like, all right, I'm good to get on calls. And I get on a call, and they're like, oh, so here's what happened. Facebook shut us down. These two people quit this over. And I was like, oh, my God. What? What's. And they're like, leila, don't worry. We. We handled it. It's all done. And I was like, what? And I was like, wow, really? And they were like, yeah, here's what we did. And in that moment, I was like, shit. I have not stepped back enough to see who would step up. I've not been doing it. I haven't been giving my team room to see their potential. I haven't been giving them opportunities to step up. I've been robbing them of the opportunities by taking all the challenges on myself. And that lesson has. Has stuck with me, like, till the end of time. So now every time I wanna take a few days off, I'm going on a trip. I'm sick. Something unexpected happens. I literally am always asking myself, how is this an opportunity for me to see somebody else's potential? It's funny because every time a gap is created in your business, whether it's you stepping back or someone else stepping out, that gap is an opportunity to see someone else's hidden potential. I know, it feels awful. People come to me every week. They message me, they come to my workshops, they're in my portfolio, and they. Layla, you don't understand. Nobody can do this like me. And I'm like, I hear you. They won't do it exactly like you, but they could do it better than you. That's a possibility. They could do it differently than you and still get the same outcome. And you don't know until you try. There's this limiting belief because we've not seen someone else do it but us that nobody else will be able to. And I have been proved wrong in every business that I have by somebody. Somebody can always do the same thing that I've done. I am not special. I am not a unicorn. And so treating myself as one doesn't do my business any good or my team. And so I challenge, challenge you to do this. Think of the things that you're like, nobody else could do this. And I want you to just take it and break it into maybe like three tasks and give those tasks to somebody else. Give them clarity, Explain what you want, explain the outcome you're looking for, see if they can do it. Prove yourself wrong. Because you are. If you're watching this YouTube video and you are selling me that nobody else can do the same marketing the same way that you do the sales the same way that you do, you've proven yourself wrong right there because there's somebody else watching the video that's already thinking that. And you could probably swap with each other. So like, maybe you have somebody on your team that can already do it. You just don't know because you haven't given them a chance. The next point is that a great leader knows how to make trade offs. It is so much easier to be a yes person than it is to be a no person. Because to be a no person, you have to say no to people, you have to say no to things, you have to say no to exciting stuff, you have to say no to possibility. And so you have to be really certain of what you're saying no to. I learned this building my first business. If you've watched my content up until now, or any of my content, I am ruthlessly focused. I am able to say no to a lot of things. And I'm able to do that because I've learned what happens when you don't. When I had my business gym launch, I learned this the hard way. When we were running the business, it got to a point where you know you're succeeding and you have so much success that you're like, wow. You essentially think that you can take on more than you can chew. And you don't know because you're still kind of inexperienced. It's the first time you're having success, you haven't gotten slapped in the face yet. And so you have like a sense of pride and a sense of certainty that just hasn't clashed with reality yet. In building the business, we said, you know, what would be really More valuable is if we built this into a software business. We're like, we need to build software to make this business work. What ended up happening is that we didn't even just build software. We said, all right, we're going to build this software that's going to help gym owners make more money. It was going to be a gym CRM. And then as we were building the gym CRM because we started building the software, we were like, oh, man, we can build software. We should build something else too. And so we built this other tool named Allen that nurtured leads for gyms. And then we said, wow, I don't think we could do both of these things. We probably have to pick one. And so we picked the one that made the least sense for the business, but made the most sense in the short term. We picked Allen, which was his lead nurse tool that we had built. The gym CRM would have very clearly fit with our strategy, but it would have been much harder and cost more money and taken more time. The lead nurture tool took less time, less money. It was easier to get out quickly, but it aligned much less with our business. What ended up happening, that tool didn't actually work best for gym owners. It worked best for agency owners and actually didn't even work best for agency owners. It worked best for all brick and mortar locations. And so we essentially access, accidentally built another business, and that was a bad trade off. What I traded was another 18 months of growing my business linearly, essentially making no progress on my core business, and building a new business that didn't even end up reaching the level of success that it could have because we had two. And so the trade off was you can have two businesses, one might not grow and one may grow slowly. It was a bad trade off. And I recognize now, looking back on it, I didn't understand the value of trade offs and the value of staying focused and staying committed to my decisions. I didn't understand that strategy is not about saying yes, it's about saying no. It's easy to say yes. Yes makes people happy in the short term. Yes makes you happy in the short term, means that we never miss out on opportunities. If you don't ever say no, then you miss out on all opportunities because you take on too many. And what I recognized, and I learned from that experience, which was very painful, is that the root of strategy is knowing what to say no to. It's knowing what the big yes is so that you can say no to literally everything else. And I will say I'M pretty rigid about that because I do believe that that is what matters more than anything in a company. And I will protect the focus with all that I can. And I am very, very maniacally focused on that one thing. And I will shoo away any other thing that I don't think contributes to that main one big thing, even if it means a big win in the short term. If it doesn't in the long term, I'm going to say I'm not going to do it. And that's the thing is that what I've just recognized over time is when I first started off in business, I thought that successful people said yes to everything. I think that you have to say yes to get started, but once you get started, in order to keep going, you have to say no. And once you keep going, what you recognize is that the best people say no to almost everything except the one thing that's a sure win. Here's a question I asked myself that you can ask yourself to see where you sit here. Where am I negotiating with myself by saying yes? It's constantly what I ask myself, which is like, where am I negotiating with the one big thing I want by saying yes to these other things? And I think that I've gotten good at not doing it in the macro. Like, I'm not saying yes to second, third, fifth businesses, but I do sometimes, even in the micro. For example, if I'm in a season where I know the most important things that I focus on this part of my business, something happens over here, something happens over here, something happens over here. I get a call about this event, I get a call about the speaking opportunity, I get all these things. Any one thing to say yes to in the micro isn't harmful. But out of principle, I say no. Because it's the principle of remaining focused that's most important to me. The next point is that a great leader hires people smarter than them. They see them as a blessing, not a threat. I was hosting a workshop recently where a guy, he was doing about $30 million per year and he was asking how to get to 100 million per year. He said, who do I need to hire? So I said, all right, well, what's your C suite look like? One of the big pieces to get to from 30 to 100 is you need more high level, experienced people that you bring in because then they become mentors for everyone who's not. I said, you know, who's the highest paid employee? And he was like, well, the highest I pay anybody in the company is about $100,000. And I was like, do you have any C level people in the company? He was like, no. And I was like, well, where do you spend your time? And so he spent his time across operations, marketing and finance. And based on the nature of the company being manufacturing, that makes sense. There's a lot in finance. And so I said, well, gosh, like I would think at this point we would want to bring in, I would say to start a CEO and a cfo and then you can focus on the marketing and then we'll eventually outsource that. But probably the founder magic there, that's going to be harder to get out. And he was like, yeah, I would do that, but I can't trust anybody close to the money. And I was like, okay, why? He's like, well, they could screw me. If anybody knows how much we make, if they have access to seeing the money, if they have access to controlling it, you know, because like right now I control all of our expenses. Nobody has credit card, all these things. And it's funny because the next question I asked him was, what do you think is a greater threat to your business? One off random chance that the person that you hire is a thief and steals all of your money because somehow they bypass all the banking systems too? Or that you don't hire the right talent to grow your business, which one has a higher likelihood of occurring? One is a surefire way to destroy your business, don't hire smart people to grow it. The other is like a very like one off edge case scenario that maybe could destroy your business. Yes, that is always a possibility. And the question that I posed after that was, what does your business look like in five years if you don't hire these people, if you do nothing? He's like, well, that's a good point, right? Who knows what he did with that information? But I say that to impress upon you the point. There's always the edge case scenario that somebody could fuck you completely. They could steal all your money and somehow get away with it, and somehow your business would burn down and go to zero. Yes, that could happen to all of us, Covid. Could also happen. But on the more likely case scenario, it's that you hire smart people and you don't give them any authority and they leave and your business ever grows. Because that is what happens to business owners day in and day out. Even if they hire the smart people, they don't want to give them authority because they're scared of their capability. And so they withhold and they control everything. And for that, they don't get anything out of them. And they don't get to capitalize on the growth that those people could actually bring into their business. And here's the thing. It's not just that those people can bring growth into your business. It's that those people can help grow you. It's funny, because I had somebody ask me, one of my friends one time, she said, who have you learned the most about business from? And at that point, I told her I was like, the people that I've actually learned the most about business from right now are these two people that I just hired that are executives. It wasn't an outside mentor, wasn't a book. It wasn't a master. It wasn't a course. I got to hire these people, and I get to. I almost look at it as, like, rent their brains. Like, I get to use their brains for this many hours a week as these people who are smarter than me in these areas. Like, what a blessing that is, that I don't have to go learn everything for myself. That would take forever. I get to shortcut my way to success by using other people's brains. Just like you shortcut your way to making more money in investing by using other people's money. You can shortcut your way to success in business by using other people's brains. It's the same concept. It's leverage. And if you don't hire people who are smarter than you, you never get that leverage. And here's the thing. Great leaders do not hire to maintain status quo. They hire to move up status quo. The goal is to hire people who beat you at what you were doing, who are better than you at what you were doing. If somebody can't be better at you at one thing that you were doing with one tenth of your time, you are not hiring smart enough people. Think about it. Does this person raise the bar of the team and of the company, or do they keep it the same or do they lower it? The next point is that being able to pick the right person is far more valuable than being the right person. When I was growing my first business, I wore all of the hats to start. Head of sales, head of cs, head of finance, head of ops, head of customer billing, head of product, everything. And I was constantly focused on how I could get better at those things. Like, how do I learn more about product, how I learn more about sales, how do I learn more about marketing, how do I learn more about cs? And I had a mentor say this to me. And it really stuck. He said, layla, you don't need to get better at any of those things. You need to get better at at picking people. And I was like, huh? Why? He said, it's the one job you will never grow out of. And that stuck with me from that day on because I was like, holy shit. What I recognize is it's more important to be able to pick the right people than to be the right person for the job. Because my job's gonna change all the time, but I have to pick the people to take it after me. My business is gonna change all the time, but I have to pick the people that are gonna do business with me. You don't build the business. You pick the people, invest in the people, and they build the business. And that's the thing. No matter how brilliant your strategy, if you are playing the game solo, you will always lose to somebody who's playing it with the team. And that starts with knowing how to pick people. So the reason that I got so passionate about recruiting and then the reason I'm so passionate about HR is because I've recognized that is something that I should never not know how to do. That is something I should always hold close. Because the one thing that builds the business is the people that are here. And so I should be good at picking those people and teaching others how to pick those people. I will, yes, be head of finance at some point, head of CS at some point, and product and marketing. I have played all of the roles, and I will always. My job is always changing, but the one job that never changes is picking people to help build the business. And the best leaders that I know focus on this more than any other thing. They all say the same thing. We all sit there, and everyone. Everyone's like, you guys are where you are because of marketing and brand and sales, all these things, right? We all sit in the back room and we're like, we all know it's because of the people everybody knows. And I think it's where perception is reality, which is, like, you see people on social media, like myself and like other people, and you think they are successful because of who they are and what they're doing. But the likelihood of that being true is very low. The reason that they're likely succeeding is because they're so good at picking everybody else that works for them. Your business gets to a point where it's so big, it is impossible for you to do any one job. Instead, you have to be the person to find the people to do all the jobs. And I've just found that to be true, which is if I pick the right people and I put them on hard problems or big opportunities, my business grows. It's not when I myself go on every problem on every opportunity, because at some point, that's not scalable. If you're the one solving every problem and taking advantage of every opportunity, then that limits your business. And so the only skill that will forever endure is being able to pick people. And so I'll ask you this, which is like, how much time have you put in to learning how to pick people? How many interviews do you take? How many screenings do you watch? How many interviews do you watch? How much of a structure do you have in place? You know, the reason that I invested so much into recruiting and human resources in the beginning is because I wanted to safeguard against picking the wrong people. And I think I've been able to scale businesses so quickly because I just pick a lot of the right people, people from the beginning. I don't have to waste all that time replacing people, hiring new people, turning people in and out. I don't have to worry about churn so much. Because when you have to constantly worry about churn because you're constantly losing and gaining new people, that distracts you from accomplishing any of your business objectives. Picking people is the one skill that you will always need. The next point is that the best leaders are also the most adaptable. Business changes all the time, whether you want it to or not. The environment changes, the market changes, the platforms change. Things inevitably change, and you cannot control that. The only thing that you can control is how you react when it happens. I witnessed this in my last business. We used to rely heavily on Facebook ads. And what happened was that over time, the platform matured, and so it got harder to advertise on the platform. Eventually, one day, the platform did a Facebook slap, where they basically changed their whole algorithm overnight. And overnight, so much of what we did that was so effective completely vanished. What happened next was fascinating because I brought to my team what had happened, and I said, listen, we have to adapt here. We have to figure out something different. Half my team was like, let's do it. Let's move forward. YouTube, LinkedIn, Outbound, all these things. And the other half of my team resisted it. They said, we don't want to do that. Let's just figure out how to make this work. I'm sure it's going. Come back tomorrow. They tried to negotiate with reality, meaning they argued with it. And what I saw is that Those leaders that were arguing with reality, they were fighting the fact that change was occurring, couldn't move forward. So we were spending all this time in the problem and no time in the solution because we were resisting what was real, we were resisting what had happened, and we were arguing with reality. The best leaders don't argue with reality. They adapt to it. The best leaders don't avoid failure or change. They use it as an opportunity to get stronger. They say, how can we use this negative experience or challenge to become better? And the best leaders that you will hire will make your job easier, not harder. And a lot of that starts with accepting change and adapting to it. Adapting means a change in the environment occurs, so you change your behavior as well. Not adapting is when a change in the environment occurs, and you refuse to change your behavior out of fear because you're scared. What if I fail? What if I can't figure something out? What if, what if, what if, what if? What if the best leaders learn to adapt to that change and they come out stronger on the other end? What I have found is that if you have a leader who argues with reality, they create so much uncertainty in their teams. Because think about it, right? I'll give you an example. When Covid hit my entire team, looks to me the government just said that none of our customers can do business. And those are the people who feed us and pay the bills. What are you going to do? I didn't try to fight it. I didn't try to argue with reality. You know what I said? I was like, all right, guys, our customers have their doors closed. So here's what we're going to do. We are going to completely pivot, and we might only pivot for six months because we don't know how long this is going to happen. It's going to be hard, it's going to suck, and gonna make us stronger. I didn't try to fight it. I didn't try to say, you know what, maybe it's gonna go back. And in that time, it was so fascinating because I actually watched my customers who argued with that reality fail. We had gyms as customers. The gyms that went out of business didn't go out of business because of the environment. They went out of business because of their response to the environment. It was the ones who said, well, what if they change everything back in a week or in two weeks? I don't wanna change anything. They were so scared of failing, and they were so scared of what was gonna happen if they made the wrong move. That they refused to change. And because they refused to change, they ended up dying. Because what happens if you don't adapt to the environment is the environment eventually overtakes you, and you become a victim of the environment rather than using it to your advantage. And that is what happened to so many of them. The ones who got stronger were the ones who said, screw it, we're going to change the whole business. Maybe it's for six months, maybe, maybe it's for 12 months, but we're going to get through this, and we're going to be stronger for it. And that experience taught me how much our ability to adapt and respond during times of chaos, during change, and during hard situations dictates our success. If you want to be the best leader, and if you want to have the best leaders, you have to be adaptable. Here's a question to ask yourself. Do I argue with reality or do I respond to reality? I ask myself this. I'm like, am I arguing with reality right now? Because I'm scared I'm gonna fail? Because I'm scared of what happens next, Because I'm scared of the change. And if you just let go of all that fear and all that angst, all the anxiety around change, and you just leaned into the change, how much more would you grow from that? And what could you capitalize on that? Maybe you're not right now. What stops people from being great leaders is not fear of success. It's their fear of being betrayed, of losing, of failing, of judgment, of change. It's not the fear of what happens if I succeed. It's the fear of what happens if I fail in everyone's seats. Here's the thing. I'm sure you've watched this video and now you're like, I get it, it's important. But all this fear comes up. It's like, what if people betray me? What if they think I suck? What if I fail? What if I lose money? What if. All these things. But the other question is, what if you don't try? What does your life look like five years from now if you don't really try to be the best leader that you know you could be? What does your business look like? What does your life look like? And how much do you respect yourself? Would you respect yourself more or less for trying? Here's the thing. You don't need to pick all of these at once. Pick one of these points that resonated with you the most, and just focus there. Leadership is the compilation of so many skills into one. Give yourself some grace, tackle one thing first and stay focused on it until you feel like you've really nailed it. Guys, I hope you enjoyed this video. And here's the thing. If there's any one point that you want to know more about, you want to dive more into, let me know in the comments what point that is, and I will make sure to queue it up for a YouTube video.