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Foreign. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Building Build Wit. This is episode 38, and this is the eight lessons I learned in 2025. I. I explained it a little bit on last week's episode, talking about Christmas break, but I love the end of the year. It's my favorite two weeks of the year. Not because of the sweet treats. I do dabble. I do have some sweet treats every once in a while. I know. Hard to believe, but yeah, I do. It's not because of the sweet treats, though. It's not because of Santa coming and giving me whatever gifts I've asked. He always does. He always delivers. Thank you, Santa. I've been good. I've been good. It's because we shut the company for two weeks now. I. I talked again about it last week. I believe in separation season. I think it's the most valuable time of the year in between Thanksgiving and just after New Year's. That's because everybody takes their foot off the gas and I'm like, no, that's not how this works, man. The more I want, the more you want, the more you've got to give. And it's the best time of the year to give maximum effort while everybody else is starting to ease off the gas. So I don't stop working. I love working. I love it, love it. I don't stop. I don't want to stop. But I do shift gears. I don't just do my usual day to day. I shift to a different flavor. That is organization and reflection. I talked last week about organization going into the year. Light Today is all about reflecting, reflection. Now, as Ray Dalio says, pain plus reflection equals progress. And 2025. 2025 was painful. It was painful. But I don't want to just bury that pain and all right, 2026 new year, new me. I want to leverage that pain and reflect upon that pain and learn from what I can to then implement into 26, 27, and future years here at Build Whip and in my life. So I, I didn't have a number of lessons in mind. I really, this was very quick. I sat down within about five minutes, sketched out all right, this lesson, this lesson, this lesson, this lesson. And then I elaborated on them for, for the newsletter and now now for the podcast. But these were the first that came to mind. Are they the best ones? I don't know, but I think there's value in moving quick and. All right, what's top of mind after I've reflected upon the year, and here they are, starting with the first, probably well, not the. Probably the most important was that I read the Bible every day for the entire year for the first time in my life. I grew up in church, but then I pulled the agnastic shoot, agnostic shoot, as a teenager, so to speak. And it wasn't really rebellion. I never had a rebellious streak all that much or I don't like authority. I have a distaste for authority in general, but from a parent standpoint, from an upbringing standpoint, I never really had to kick and scream. It was more so just disinterest. And my parents let me do what I wanted to do as a teenager. So I went many years of my life from my, you know, mid teens to about 30 years old with really no religious undertones. But for whatever reason, beginning of last year, I felt a strong pull to reconnect with my faith. And I thought, what better way to do that than to read the Bible for the first time, starting at Genesis 1. Now, it was dense, especially the Old Testament. I understood about 0.1% of of what I consumed throughout the year. And I have a long ways to go. There's a lot more reading that will be done over my lifetime. But I found something through this process that I did not expect, and that was peace. I feel a new profound sense of calmness, of clarity and responsibility. I can't explain it, but I feel it in a very tangible way. And I feel like this was the foundation that I lacked as a man in my 20s. And I'm really grateful. I have it going into my 30s. I'm extremely grateful. And I know the work has only begun, but I'm on the path and I'm grateful to be here. The top question I'm asked is, what does Bill Witt do? Our purpose is to build the dirt world's next generation. The dirt world is the companies and people building the critical infrastructure and supporting those who build our critical infrastructure that we need to live the lives that we do. Our business is much bigger than me. I run around the world building our brand. But the business itself does two things. One, we help develop the next generation through our product called billwhit Improve. It's a daily training and development platform at about 300 civil construction companies are using to not just make their people better workers, but but better people. And of course, we have the 2026 ARIAT dirtworld summit. The best opportunity to develop yourself and your teams as leaders. So check us out. Billwhit.com, book a meeting with us and we'll talk to you soon. Next 2025 was the fourth year of my father not speaking with me. I've talked about this here, here and there. I spent the previous three years swimming in a soup of sadness, frustration and confusion. And when talking about it, people in good faith always would counsel me and would say something along the lines of, well, just keep trying. He's going to come around one day. You never know. But this year, and it took me years to realize this, I realized that I have no control over anybody but me. And I can't try my way into my father speaking with me or anyone around me doing anything at all. All I have is me, my actions and my reactions. And maybe he'll talk to me one day and maybe he won't. But all I can do is my best. The outcome is out of my control, is honestly irrelevant. All that I can do is my best effort. And honestly, this realization has led me to if you listened to my Christmas special, that was my latest talk, my latest speech that I prepared ultimately for the 2025 ARIAT Dirt World Summit, and I had planned to carry that into 26, into a bunch of different speaking gigs early in the year for associations and various companies. But with this realization and with this understanding, I actually threw that entire talk away and built a whole new one predicated upon the concept of individuality and individual responsibility. Because I think that's where everything stems from. If we want the world to be better, we need to be better. If we want the industry to be better, we need to be better. If we want those around us to be better, we need to be better. All we can control is us. The only person I can control is me. 3. I know this is probably shocking, especially to the women I've dated in the past. I'm a logical person, and so when confronted with a challenge or hardship, I default to rationalizing and explaining. Go figure. But this year I learned that some things, often the most important, have no explanation. And that's completely okay. Not everything needs an explanation. Submission and acceptance of the process are what matters. And I'm still grappling with my deep inner wiring because I'm real. Deep down, I'm wired to just go solve and explain. I've made more progress with submission in the past year than the previous 10. Submit to the process. Not everything has an explanation. Not everything needs an explanation. And that's perfectly okay. Number four in September of 2024, we sold our Billwick Creative business, which was our marketing, our websites, our video projects, branding, etc. And we closed the deal quickly. So we made the decision in September, and we closed the deal entirely in January of 2025. And soon after, we proclaimed ourselves as a software company. Well, we got rid of marketing. What are we left? We're a software company. But as Abraham Lincoln supposedly said when he asked the audience how many legs a dog has if you considered the tail a leg, he said 4. Because considering the tail, a leg does not make it so. So just because we called ourselves a software company doesn't make it so. And the following 11 months of 2025 were an all out ass whooping. All out, all out. And while we tackled many of the controllable factors, there was one we could not control no matter what we did. And that was time. Anything significant, anything great takes time. And I can try and try and try and work harder and harder and harder and harder, but sheer effort does not defeat Father Time. It doesn't. And it's not an excuse to stop trying. But in 2025, I built a much healthier respect for time because it's a significant component in doing anything significant. Next, in early 25, after we closed the sale of the creative business, Randy Blunt called me and he said he thought he could offer Bill Whit more. We had never talked about this before. I had never had this thought before. But after hanging up the phone about 30 seconds later, I knew exactly what I had to do. I had to give Randy offer Randy. It was his choice to accept. I had to offer him my CEO hat that I had worn since day one of the business. And fortunately, after a few days thought, he accepted. Thank God. As when I was younger, I used to believe that it was a sign of strength to do everything. And because it's my name on the company, for better or for worse, I have to be the one leading it. I've got to be the boss. I. I need to be the CEO. But that's not true. And I'm not the best person to lead build with Randy is. That's why I made the decision. That's why the decision was so easy. Everybody's like, man, that must have been such a hard decision. I'm like, no, not at all. Because it's so clearly right. It's so clearly right. And ironically, this decision has. It's put Randy, I think, in the best position to succeed here and to help our team succeed. But it's also put me in the best position. It's freed me to focus on what I do best, and that is building our brand, learning about the dirt world and telling stories here. And YouTube and other mediums. I don't have to be the CEO. Maybe there's a better person. There is a better person. Wow. In 2025, I traveled more globally than ever. I left. I went through customs, United States customs, eight times, which is a lot. Usually, like, you know, one or two is a big deal for me, honestly, but eight was a lot. I went to Japan, Indonesia, Australia, the Netherlands, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Belize, Canada, and the United Arab Emirates. And in conversations, everyone always asks what's different? And what continues to surprise me, though, is how similar human beings are, especially in the dirt world. No matter their differences in upbringings, in religion and socioeconomic status, they share these profound fundamentals that are pride, purpose, and the desire for their family to do better. And I don't even need a common language with these people. You can see it in their faces and in their eyes. And it amazes me every time I think, man, I'm in rural Sumatra. Of course it's going to be different here. And then it's not at all in the best of ways. So maybe this is romanticizing, which I think you do run the risk of, especially as you travel the world. But the more I travel, the more this holds true. People are people, no matter where you are. And the people of the dirt world, they're the people of the dirt world. And they're the only people, really, I want to be around for the rest of my life. I alluded to this in number four, but I never want to do 2025 again. I don't want to do it. Selling half our business was 100% the right call. No regrets there. But it triggered a series of events that were anything but fortunate in the moment. I'm very grateful for it now, now that we survived, we fought for our lives, we won. And as tempting when I sat down to write this, as tempting as it was to write history from a victor's context, you know, to the. To the victor go the spoils. The winner gets to write history. I could have written it in a very different way. Nah, it wasn't that painful. We're actually good to go. We're better than ever, man. Like most businesses do, it was tempting to do this. But honestly, surviving 2025, it's more of a relief than it is a joy. It's more of a relief. And here's the lesson. The turning point of 2025 for us is when we had some brutal conversations, some brutal conversations regarding our reality. We had ultimately to call our baby ugly. And some of it was out of our hands. I've talked about time and some other factors. Some of it was out of our hands, but most of it was within our control. We weren't good enough and we could use whatever cute words we wanted to to avoid reality and dance around it. But until we accepted reality for what it was, nothing was going to change. Reality is. It's reality. It doesn't care how you feel about it, what you say it is. So the faster you get on board with it, no matter how ugly, and work with it rather than against it, the faster you'll be in a better place. Finally developing myself as a leader has been a really weird experience over the past decade because I've done it while also developing myself as a man. And it's been a lot of hot stoves. Like, my hands are bandaged up and burned. I've touched every damn stove imaginable. It seems I'm a complete dummy. I've just touched them all. Like, hey, is that hot? Yep. Oh, that's hot. Oh, there's another stove. Ah, on and on and on, year after year after year. But this year was really interesting, 2025, because I feel like I started to benefit from life experience a little bit, turning 30. And when it comes to people, my data set is not complete. It will never be complete. But it's now it's big enough to start seeing some trends of like, oh, here's a pattern over here, here's a pattern over there. And something I had to really wrestle with this year, and I will continue to wrestle with, is that I can't motivate people that are not self motivated. I can't do it. I can't do it. And it sucks. It sucks. And it is so frustrating. So frustrating. And the feeling of failure is profound when you see something in someone and you desperately want them to get there and you're trying everything, but they just can't get there. But that's because it's on their timeline, not mine. Hopefully they'll get there. Hopefully I want them to get there. And I can do my best to support them, but I can't motivate somebody. That's on them, man. That's on them. And it's tough to accept, but it's also a lot more productive. Again, focusing on me being the best example I can be and then pouring into those that are hungry, that are scrappy, that are just those hungry dogs ready to get after it, that are motivated themselves. So that was a really important lesson for me. And that was the final lesson of 2025. So thank you so much as always for listening, for watching. I am more excited for 2026 than I have ever been. I can't wait, man. And it's going to be one kick in the nuts after another like every other year. But I'm settling in now. I'm like, alright, cool. Yeah. What next? Let's go. Good. Let me have it. I'm ready, man. And we've got a killer team as well. A killer team to make a really big difference in the industry. To support you all, most of you listening that are building our world, supporting humanity. It's an honor to have the opportunity to support those that are furthering mankind. It's dramatic. Yeah, but it's true. So I'm fired up. I'm happy to have you here and we'll see you on the next one. Stay dirty, everybody.