Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - How to Lead Like a Boss - 124

Episode Date: November 12, 2019

Is your business struggling? Is your personal life a mess? You’re probably not being the leader you need to be!  Leadership is always the problem and leadership is always the solution. There’s no way around it. This week’s Empire episode is all about what you can do to improve your leadership skills and start taking charge of your life and business. Listen and find out what you need to do to become an exceptional leader!   “Leadership is not being the CEO.” “It’s important to tell, show, and get a due date.” “In business, something is always going to go wrong.” “Be a beast today. Be a bitch tomorrow.” - Bedros Keuilian   Here’s what you’ll discover: 01:04 - What exactly is leadership? 04:18 - You can’t justify your unbalanced life. 07:15 - You have to have a why if you want to succeed. 10:03 - Mission over the man. 13:54 - Invest in your team. 20:24 - How to start making decisions in your business. 22:11 - Be emotionally resilient.   “Leadership is the problem. Leadership is the solution.” “Make the decision.” - Craig Ballantyne   Follow us on Instagram: @bedroskeuilian / @realcraigballantyne   Buy Man Up and get Bedros’s High Performance Leadership Course for FREE: https://manup.com/   Make sure to watch my Empire episode with my mentor Jim Franco: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5NOa3h6_Bc   Make sure to review us on iTunes: http://bit.ly/theempireshow   Youtube: https://youtu.be/tWfwXgzfHX4

Most of us are too emotionally reactive. When something goes wrong in a business, something's always going to go wrong. You emotionally freak out, you're reactive, you go, what did this happen to me? How could they do this to me? You've got to be responsive. Leadership is a problem. Leadership is a solution. I am here with a man who wrote the frickin' book on Leadership, Man Up by Badros Kooli.

We're going to talk about one of your favorite subjects today. Leadership. All right, all right. My name is Craig Balentine. Welcome back to the Empire Podcast Show. So, let's first define leadership. Define what it means for an entrepreneur to be a leader and bring the ship of leadership. Yeah.

Well, I'll tell you what, it's certainly not just being the CEO. You know, you can incorporate your company and all of a sudden overnight, you're the CEO, which technically means you're the boss. And you might get that mixed up with being the leader. Leadership is not being the CEO or the boss. Leadership is being able to have the influence and persuasion to move a group of people towards an outcome. And when you think about it, there's a lot of responsibility there. Again, leadership is to have influence and persuasion over a group of people to move them towards an outcome. So much to unpack there.

Yeah, because, you know, someone here, I'm like, oh, I don't, you know, I'm a solopreneur. I have, you know, one or two people. Well, listen, you've got leadership over family, over your community of your business, you know, the clients, the customers you have. So you're not just a leader at work. You're a leader everywhere, right? And leader of yourself, too. Of self. And that's, you know, and man up.

I talk about leadership, pillar number one of the six pillars is self-discipline. Because if you can't lead yourself into your own vision, how are you going to lead a group of others to really bring your vision to fruition? It's going to be near impossible, right? Yeah, exactly. So what are some common mistakes that people are making at both levels of leadership or entrepreneurship? So let's say like for the beginner, the person with the small team or, you know, barely one or two, and then the person who's, you know, in the eight figures, what are the mistakes you see there? Because you talk to so many people. So it's real simple.

In the very beginning phase, the problem is you're a solopreneur. You're your own boss. No one's telling you want to clock in and clock out. And so you end up kind of winging it. And that ends up creating a very loose leader. Because the reality is you're a leader no matter what. You can lead your business to failure, stress, anxiety, debt, or you can lead your business into success and prosperity and impact

and making it an industry dominator. The difference is this. The leader who's a solopreneur right now, probably has very loose structure. Because they go, well, I'm winging it. I'm doing it all, man. I'm the marketer. I'm the sales guy.

I'm the person doing the customer support and running all the systems and processes. Well, hey, I get it. But you could still organize that I'm going to wake up at this time. I'm going to do my marketing campaigns at this time. Then I'm going to take my 10 sales calls. And then I'm going to do my support calls. And at the end of the day, I'm going to clock out, if you will,

so that I could spend time with my family and be present with my wife and kids or whoever I need to be present with. What were some of the mistakes you made in that component of your business, when you were just starting out, because a lot of these leadership things you learned the hard way, it wasn't like you read a bunch of books about this, you got it all from experience. Sure, sure, and I think that's the best place to learn, right?

It's through experience because it's the school of hard knocks. But for me, it was one of those things, well, well, I'm too busy to eat clean, so I'll just eat whatever. For a note, I start putting on weight. And I always talk about as a leader, you're a fighter jet. You're not a crop duster. You're not a civilian. You're a fighter jet.

In fact, a book that we just both finished reading, Phil Knight's book, Shoe Dog. You know, he talks about business as battle without the bullets. Man, yeah. And so you figure if you're a soldier, you're going to go into battle. Man, you better be conditioned physically, mentally, emotionally. Like, you better be prepared because you're going into battle. And there's a great chance of dying. Well, there's a great chance of dying in business as well.

And so if all of a sudden, in my case, I started giving in on food. food became my, where I would turn to to stress eat. Sure. And I would eat my emotions because business makes you emotional right through the stress. And then all of a sudden I started spending less time in the gym because I can steal from my personal health and spend more time on my business. And you think that's a bright idea until all of a sudden you realize the gym or working out was your source of stress relief. Yeah. Like that was some sort of balance.

That anchored my day first thing in the morning. and now I'm spending 15 minutes, if I'm lucky, in the gym, kind of waiting through the motions. And so then the stress factor goes up, anxiety goes up. And that's how I ended up having that massive anxiety attack when I was 37 years old, thinking that, gosh, you know, I'm having a heart attack now, and this is how I go at 37. Yeah, and now, like, I see you traveling here, there, and everywhere,

and it's always, like, one of the first things you do when you land, go to the gym. Like, when I land, I go to Whole Foods all the time. You know, I'm taking care of that side of things. I always get to the gym, too. But like you said, man, you've got to look at. yourself as that pro athlete or soldier or whatever analogy you want to use. And I always like to say, like, listen, they don't make pro athletes like LeBron James play 48 straight minutes of basketball. No, you get timeouts, you get quarter timeouts, you get recovery, you get water, you get fluids,

you get, you get, you know, food during halftime, all that sort of stuff. So you got to take the same approach when you're leading yourself. That's exactly. Yeah. And that also creates good habits and a good pattern for you to start leading a team when you get your first employee or your first 10 employees or your first 100 employees. Right, exactly. Because everyone thinks that, man, I can start leading. As soon as I get my team in order, I'll start getting shit together and I'll start getting productive, structured, organized. It's not going to happen overnight, man. If you're not structured, organized, productive now, you're not going to be it later. Yeah. Right. So you move from that solopreneur who just needs to kind of get themselves together so that they can get other people

together. Then as you have a team, like a really decently formed team, even though it's a small team, what's the next thing that the leader needs to think about and the common mistakes you might see? So the next thing you'll want to think about is, okay, well, if I've got a team, even if I've just got one team member, or two team members, what do I do next? Well, you better have some kind of vision in your head because as a solo panneur, one man, one woman show, you're like, all right, man, I'm going to make this thing successful. Whatever your businesses, supplements, apparel, fitness, coaching, dentistry, it doesn't really matter. You've got some kind of a vision in your head, and that ends up being your blueprint, but unless

Unless Craig, who's now working for me, can see that vision, is on board with that vision, we're not going to get there. You're going to go this way, I'm going to go that way, then I'm going to get frustrated with you. We're going to have tension. We're going to have passive-aggressive tension. Before you know it, you're either going to quit or I'm going to have to fire you. And so what you really have got to do, the moment you even think about getting your first team member on board is to go, what is the vision in my head that I want?

And the vision is really defined by what is it that I want out of this business? when do I want it by and why do I want it because you have a very specific one for fit body boot camp so yeah you said that I think people would get a real oh I got to go and say you know I just replace his stuff with my yeah yeah so it's this we want 2,500 fit body boot camp locations by the year 2023 and that means we're going to impact three million people every single morning wow when we have that so the why is so important because if you think that your employee is just going to get on board to collect a paycheck that's not enough. They can get that same paycheck elsewhere, plus have a sense of significance and impact. So if you can explain the why, which is, dude, imagine waking up in the year 2023, and we've got 2,500 locations.

They're all firing on all eight cylinders, and you know that today, three million people across the world are going to get results through their fitness, through their nutrition, through their mindset at a Fit Body Boot Camp location. That is powerful. Think of the impact you're making. It's like, holy crap, I want to be a part of something like that. We all want to be a part of something bigger. And so you got to get your team on board with the what you want, when do you want it, and why do you want it? And if they're not on board with it, they're like, ah, you know, fitness isn't my thing. Guess what?

Then maybe Fit Body Boot Camp isn't your thing. Right, get it on another bus and the right seat on the right bus. Yeah, the right bus exists. It's just, it may not be this one. Yeah, and, you know, no hard feelings part ways. Now, speaking of hard feelings, I think a huge mistake, and I've made this mistake, and I know you've made this mistake. As new leaders, they are reluctant to have those difficult.

conversations. So walk us down the path and the troubles that can lead to and how to get good at that so you become a great leader. So first of all, as a leader, there's really three things that you need to be really good at, and that is one problem solving, two communications, and three, being able to make decisions. Got it. I didn't say being able to make the right decisions, but being able to make decisions, period. Because even if they're the wrong decision, you should be able to course correct. But let's talk about the communication piece. Every single one of us are horrible. And this comes from mom and dad, from grandma, grandpa, aunts and uncles, school teachers who maybe shushed us, who said we should be seen and not heard, who maybe laughed at us when we would speak,

or gave us some kind of weird insecurity about communication. So what happens as we grow up, we still carry those insecurities, and we feel that, you know, gosh, if I try and speak or speak my mind or give someone some direction or feedback, I'm going to get chastised. I'm going to lose validation and approval from them. And so we still carry that hurt from... Yeah, and I think that paralleled so many leaders. You know, they want everything to be perfect. It's like just send the email, send the message, you know, take the vision, share it.

It's not going to be perfect. Never going to be perfect. It's always going to be evolving over time. And it's the over-analysis, the overthinking, the analysis by paralysis, paralysis by analysis. It's just so annoying when people can't even decide on like, I don't know what color of the website should be or I don't know what email software to use. Like just decide it is so painful. Listen. Something as simple as, and we had that happen in this building where we had one of our leaders

from operations that needed to have a conversation with one of our web developers. And when I asked her why you're not having that conversation, like, ah, I don't want things to be tense between us. And I was like, you do realize it's always got to be the mission over the man. And so as I speak to everyone here where communication is concerned. If the mission is to have 2,500 locations by the year 2023, then I can't be concerned about what that person's feelings are going to be like. Now, I'm not going to go in there raging thunder and be pissed off and call them names and say, how did you make a shitty website like this? I can't believe you. But what I can say is, hey, Bob, there's an issue with the website. I thought we had a clear communication on what we wanted.

You obviously dropped the ball. Here's how we need to fix it. And, can you fix it by this date? And communication, real communication, is to tell show do. Tell them what you want, show them how you want it, and then ask for a due date. Yes, and I think, I'll just interrupt you for one second. I think that middle part is where so many people drop the ball because they haven't got clearly out of their head what they want.

So so many people will go to a web designer and say, oh, I want a website, and they won't, all they have to do is say, hey, here are a couple examples of things that I like. You know, for our new t-shirts, here's what I like. For my book covers, here's what I like, for my book content, you know, here's the style that I like, this is what we're looking for. An example already exists.

The year's 2020 now, right? Like we're heading into 2020. Every example of what you're looking for, from a website to a book cover, to a business model, to a supplement label, supplement label, to a t-shirt exists. And it's so easy for you to go to Google, punch it up, and then say images, and go, here you go, here's what I'm envisioning in my head, but our version of it, right?

And that gives them some way. much more clarity. But that third piece is the due date because it goes, hey, can you do this for me? Yes, I can. Okay, when do you need it as soon as possible? Now, that's vague conversation. Because to you, the designer, as soon as possible, might be, gee, this is like three months of work. Like they want, there's a lot of detail here. For me, I'm not a designer. I don't see the detail. So as soon as possible, it's like in a week and a half. And so all of a sudden, when it's three weeks, and you haven't given it to me, one, as a leader, there's an open loop in my head. Think about all the open loops you have in your head as a business owner.

a thing. All this bandwidth being taken up. Whereas if I knew that Craig the designer would have said, hey man, I can give this to in three months. I'm like, whoa, three months, I thought we can do this in two months. Well, maybe we can meet halfway and negotiate and meet halfway on a date. So it's important for you to tell, show, and then get a due date, get that due date so that we're both on the same page and I can close that loop and invest that bandwidth into something

else. Yeah, I've heard a great phrase, who does what by when, who does what by when? Very clear. So you have a meeting, everybody leaves a meeting, and nobody's assigned anything. And the next thing you know, you have another meeting, how's everybody going on this? Like, well, oh, I didn't know that was my thing. If you leave with who does what by when, all very clearly outlined, here's the outcome, here's the objective, here's who's doing it, all of that stuff. Well, now we're marching in that direction, as you mentioned before.

So that's super important. Now, as your business grows, I know we have some people that are very successful that are listening to this. and one of the things that we learned through our friend Joe Polish at one of his events was the team you have now at a million won't be the team you have at 10 million, won't be the team you have at 100 million, that sort of stuff. What are some of the things that you are seeing in terms of leadership breakdowns or leadership opportunities as companies grow beyond that $10 million? Good question. So exactly. We learned that at Joe's event there, and our friend Clayt Mask, who owns InfusionSoft, has a great book out there called Conquering the Chaos. And in it, he talks about if your business is doing a million dollars a year, when you grow by 300% to 3 million, you will not have the same team.

At least 80% of your team will be different. And I remember asking him, I was like, dude, that worries me because there's a few team members that I really, really like, and I really believe they can be with me all the way to the end to 2,500 locations. I just don't understand why you would say that 80% won't be with me every 300% of growth. Because then I did the math. well then when your business goes from 3 million to 6 million, six million to 9 million, man, you're going to have a whole new team every time. And he said, yeah, yeah, you are.

I said, well, then, and I tried to challenge him by saying, well, what about me? Why wouldn't we have a new CEO? He goes simple, because you're at events like this, getting the personal development, the self-growth, and you're evolving as a human. But you don't invest in your employees and get them to evolve,

the personal development, the self-development, and you're not encouraging them to do that. And so if they're operating at their best capacity when your business is doing a million, when your business goes up to $3 million, they're still operating at a capacity of a million dollars, and all of a sudden you begin to look down at them and go, man, they are not productive, they are not producing, they are not communicating, they are not problem solving. I must fire them. Or they feel the pressure of not meeting your expectations and going,

I don't want to let Craig down anymore. I better quit. And so really the best thing you can do is level up. Like one of the best things a business owner can do who's making, multiple seven figures, eight figures, nine figures, is keep pouring back into your team. You do that as well as anybody I know. Every week you have something, seems like.

Every week we're either reading a book or we're having a team, some kind of a team training where we took them out to Malibu or we have someone come out here just like you. To me, it was well worth paying you $25,000 to come out here for a day and work with our team and teach them all their superpowers and teach them how to really work as a team to problem solve

and not just to work as individual soldiers. Those are the things that matter when you're trying to move a big business forward. Because as a big business, you're like a cruise ship. If a decision has to be made, you're not just going to whip it around like a speedboat. Like everyone has to be on the same page for this cruise ship to slowly one degree at a time,

move. If there's a little bit of friction, meaning half of your employees, a third of your employees are not on the same page and they're causing friction, that cruise ship is not going to go in the direction that you wanted to. When you were a one-person team, you were like a speedboat. You're like, okay, I'm gonna mark it on YouTube.

And all of a sudden, four months in, you're like, YouTube is not the thing. I don't like YouTube. You can pivot the next morning and go out on Instagram and go, boom, Instagram was it. Here's how we're making money. Sure. As a big business, you're a cruise ship. There's a lot of people on that cruise ship, and all those people better be speaking the same language on board with the same vision, with the same mission, with the same core values,

so that that cruise ship can go where it's supposed to. Yeah, absolutely. All right. So back to Man Up. You mentioned the first pillar was the self-leadership. Walk us through the other pillars, how these are. so that somebody listening who hasn't been able to read your book yet, shame on you for not reading the book yet or listen to it on an Audible,

but because you've labored to do that audio. Oh my God. Oh my God. Yeah, talk about doing the Audible book. Like there's an example of self-leadership. It would have been very easy for me to pay someone, anyone, a professional reader, to do the audiobook of Man Up. But I also heard from many people, including yourself,

like, dude, you ought to do the audiobook yourself. Well, I mean, everybody would want to hear. Right? Who doesn't want to hear? from the horse's mouth. That's sexy voice putting them. The only problem is being a foreigner, I remember as a kid when we would,

did you guys ever have to do this in Canadian? Maybe it's not a Canadian thing. But here in the United States. Like public speaking or something? Yeah, we would have to read like a paragraph out of a chapter out loud, and then you would read the next paragraph and Ed would read the next, et cetera.

And I remember as they were coming along in class, this was like fifth grade. Yeah. I would get so nervous. I would get so worried. And I would start stuttering over my words and I had an accent back then. Yeah, me didn't learn English.

until you were in first grade or so I started to get this anxiety about reading out loud. I could read in my head just fine. And so I'm thinking, I've got to read a book out loud for the entire world to judge and criticize. But the fact was it's not great leadership of self if I don't. If I tell you, you ought to go and lean into the sides of your comfort zone. You ought to be structured. You ought to do the things that make you uncomfortable. And then I pass on reading my book out loud and hire someone else to do it.

That's being a hypocrite. Yeah, that's like you guys not doing the modern day night stuff on yourself first and then asking people to do it. Exactly. I saw your post the other day of the gas mask and it's like, yep, this works. I'm like, I don't want to know how you figure that out, but it probably wasn't enjoyable. No, no, no, choking on gas is not enjoyable. But you did it. But you did it and you did the book.

So back to the six. The other steps. Yeah. So obviously we have leadership of self. Self-discipline is pillar number one. one. The next pillar is vision. You must have clarity of vision. If you are unclear where your business is going, it's like saying, I'm going to go to California, but never really putting it the address that you're going to in your zip code. And in fact, Jason Redmond, our friend who's a

Navy SEAL, he said, look, if you start in New York City and you go, I'm going to go to this particular part of California, but you never put a destination in, there was something like a 90% chance if you just try and wing it, that you'll end up on the West Coast. but you may end up, there's like a 90% chance that you will be within 100 miles, like 100 miles away from your destination, which is useless to you. Right. And so if you don't have clarity of vision, then you're not going to know where your business is going. Your team's not going to go.

So clarity of vision is number two. Number three is communication, which we talked about. You better be able to communicate clearly and get the due dates of what you want. Number four is decisiveness. Be able to make decisions, make the scary decisions, make them fast. You're never going to have 100% of the information. you need to make them correctly. In fact, General Colin Powell talks about the 40-70 rule.

He says, I need as little as the 40% of the information, and I'm ready to make a decision, and as much as 70%. He goes, rarely in battle do we have more than 70% of the information we need to make a decision. Same with business. Rarely do you have all the information you need to make the right decision. And if you wait to get all the information you need, you're already past the point of no.

return. In other words, somebody, your competition has already made a decision, and they're plowing ahead, eating up market share, and you're just like left in the dust. Yeah, and I think one of the great ways for people to start getting better decision-making in business is start making the freaking decisions and they're personalized. And you told a great story about this at the The Perfect Life Richard a couple years ago, where it's like if somebody says, where are we going to go and eat, make the decision. If somebody says, where's date night or what movie, make the decision because, man, people just can't decide for anything these days. I figured out about five years ago that the number this is crazy the number one reason people don't make a

decision is because they're afraid to it's not that they're of any other reason it's just fear and so I said well what if we can train that brain like a muscle that every time there's a decision you're just gonna you know if there's a barbell in front me I'm gonna lift it right just been conditioned put a barbell in front me I'm gonna lift it and so what if you can train the brain like a muscle and so I said well small decisions you can make very quickly. The problem is we all take our time. Okay, which pants should I wear today? Where should we eat today? Where is date night going to be? Should I Uber or should I drive my own car?

None of that stuff matters. Make those decisions quickly. And when you do, you're teaching your brain that every time there's a decision in front of me, I will pull the trigger and make a decision. And I'll deal with the consequences. Because you're going to deal with some consequences, whether the consequences are doing nothing or consequences make a mistake. Maybe the Uber driver was an absolute nut job. Maybe they smell their car. was janky and the conversation was just weird and awkward. But guess what? Next time you're going to drive your car.

Right. That's it. You're not, so you just course correct. And so if you can make those small decisions quickly in life, you're conditioning your brain that when big decisions come in business, I've conditioned myself to make decisions, so I'm going to make a decision fast. Cool.

And so the fifth pillar of leadership is emotional resilience. Most of us are too emotionally reactive when something goes wrong in a business something's always going to go wrong. You emotionally freak out, you're reactive, you go, why did this happen to me? How could they do this to me? You've got to be responsive. Understand that the poop is going to hit the fan, expect it for that to happen, and go, when it does, I'm going to respond to it with clarity instead of emotional reaction. And those two ways of looking at it are the difference between when you're emotionally freaking out and reacting, or you see tunnel vision. It's just tunnel vision. So you don't see a lot of options.

You just see it here like, oh my God, death and destruction. If you're responsive, if you step back and go, why is this happening? What can I do about it? Who can help me fix it? All of a sudden, it's no longer tunnel vision. It opens up your field of view. And you see many different options of actions you can take to solve the problem. Yeah, I want to say one more thing on that part is it also, if you are emotionally resilient,

you also have a better perspective. So I have, you know, all my coaching clients, what they do every week is they send me an update. The first question says, right last week on a scale one to 10. And sometimes I'll get people one out of ten, you know, they're hitting the panic button. And I'm like, if this is your idea of a one out of ten, imagine what would your rating be if something bad actually happened? Something really happened. Right. Like I have other people who I found out my wife had cheating on me if a week was five out of ten.

You know, it's like, okay, great. That makes sense. Yeah, okay. Like, you know, you're still alive and all that sort of stuff. But, like, you know, one employee left. And so one out of ten is, like, I don't know how I'm going to go. Like, dude, stop hitting the panic button. Because if you're hitting the panic button, then you're not making decisions, you're not moving forward, you're sitting there, and you're getting all anxious and that sort of stuff.

So listen, we're all dead in the end, so we may as well make a decision and move forward. Amen. Building that high emotional threshold is so important, man. Like I like that. You know, some guys like, hey, found out my wife cheating on me. It's a five. This week was a five. Right?

Because if you look at that as a one, then guess what? The reality is if most marriages end in the divorce, and I believe the other half of those marriages probably want a divorce, they just haven't pulled the trigger yet, well, you're gonna have a lot of ones if you don't change your perspective. So the sixth- One other thing, one other thing, one thing,

from one of your favorite books that really, I've always been pretty good with the perspective stuff, but I loved when you were talking about Marcus Luttrell, and I think, you know, when he just said, well, we're taught to pack the mud in and we'll bleed out over time. So I was telling that to one of my clients. I gave that a little analogy, and they came back and they turned their mindset around. They said, you're right.

I packed in the mud and I'm moving forward. And it's like, great. Because that's all you can do. That's it? You know, I sit there and I'm like, oh, man, I'm all shot up. This is definitely a 1.7 out of 10 today. Right, right. Like, could you, you know, it's worth really telling that story.

So if you haven't seen the movie Lone Survivor with Mark Wahlberg, it's about a Navy SEAL, and there was a book written on it. It's about a Navy SEAL named Marcus LaTrell, and the title is Lone Survivor. And Marcus LaTrell and three other Navy SEALs went up on a mission, on a mountaintop. They were going to do reconnaissance over three days on a little village where there's a bad guy doing bad things. And as it turns out, two goat herders and their flock of goats discovered them on the top of the mountain. Now, because these goat herders are not Taliban, they're not bad guys. Once they got to them, they're like, well, what do we do? We can't tie them up.

We shouldn't kill them. We're Americans. We do things right. So we're just going to let them go. They let them go, and unfortunately those goat herders went down to the village and told the bad guys that, hey, there's four Americans up on that mountaintop. And so a really bad firefight broke out. It was like four against 70 Taliban.

and Marcus Luttrell was the only Navy SEAL to survive. The other three died. And he was shot up, like his tongue, he got, his tongue was bitten off when he fell off a cliff. He bit off his tongue. His hip was blown up when a grenade landed next to him and his hip was busted. His knee was shot through. His butt was shot through.

His arm was shot through. And he's literally crawling, crawling through the mud. And they're just taught that when you have a wound and you've got nothing else to really own his pants during that time when his hip was blown up, his pants were blown off. So all of his medical kit is gone. Got it. So they're taught that when you don't have any medical kit and you're bleeding out, take dirt, take mud, and just put it into your wounds, like plug up the wounds so you don't bleed out.

And so he's thinking, all right, well, I'm taught to survive. I must survive because if my guys are going to come looking for me, I got to be alive. And so he just goes, all right, well, I don't want to go any further. Like, talk about having a one out of ten days, right? And so he goes, all right, I need to give up. I'm going to give up now. He goes, okay, picks up a rock, draws a line on the sand in front of him. He goes, soon as I cross that line, I'm going to give up.

And he crosses that line. Then he takes that same rock, draws another line, crawls across it. Draws another line, crawls across it. He keeps telling himself. As soon as I get to the line, I'm going to give up. Like, he was thirsty. He's in pain. He's bleeding out.

He's scared. And he finally wedges himself in this little ravine and covers himself with rocks and stuff until he passes out he's discovered the next morning by some friendly Afghans. And so they save his life and Marcus LaTroo goes on to live. But the point of this is how many of us in business are willing to draw the line, go past it, draw the line, go past it.

In the project, we have a term for that. We say be a bitch today, or be a beast today, be a bitch tomorrow. Because every day, if you can just be a beast today, you can be a bitch tomorrow. And when tomorrow comes, you're going to be a beast today, be a bitch tomorrow. That's the mindset you need to overcome all the emotional hardships that you're going to encounter in business and in life.

Yeah, that's great. Okay, so last one. And the last piece of leadership, the last pillar of leadership is to build a high performance team because anyone that has employees knows that employees will clock out a little early. They'll clock in a little late. They'll do the bare minimum to maintain employment. I don't want employees working for me. I want high performing team members.

because team members will show up, they're on board with the vision, mission, and core values that you have, and team members play the game to win. Like, I want team members to be here before I am, to be set up and ready to go, right? The difference between employees and team is just surviving and thriving. If you have employees, you're just going to survive. If you have a team, you're going to thrive. You're going to constantly win. And I'm so blessed to have a team here, but if you read my book, Man Up, you'll know that I started off with the,

group of employees who I felt like were committed to sabotaging me. And it wasn't their fault. It was me. I was a poor leader. So it was boss and employees back in the day, and it's leader and team members today. Well said. Yeah, that's powerful. That's where you want to get to. It doesn't matter where you're starting now. You heard from two guys who weren't good leaders, who had a lot of things to overcome. We overcame them over a long time so that you guys will get over it very, very fast and become the leaders that you need to be to grow your empires today. Thank you.