33 - From Achievement to Connection | How to Win at Business Without Losing at Life

Welcome to the Impact Podcast. I'm Eddie Wilson, here to help you visualize what others cannot see, create opportunities where others have failed, and push you to build empires where once there was empty space. Let's embark on this journey together and make a difference in this world. Today on the podcast, I'm going to talk to you about something that's near and dear to my heart, and the topic is why empire builders fail at home. Let me talk to you about my greatest mistakes today. I'm going to get extremely vulnerable and help you see some of the mistakes I've made and some of the reflection that I've had over the past, let's say, two to three years to make some changes in my life. And so I want to talk to you about something that's a little bit more emotional today versus tactical. Usually I go tactical, I talk to you about the Roman Empire, the Napoleonic Code, or how to build your business, or how to scale your business. Today, we're going to talk about relationships. And just by way of introduction, in my opinion, it's the thing that I'm worst at. I have just come to this place. If you realize that you're not good at something, oftentimes the first step to actually getting better at it is to admit it. And so for me, relationships are a very hard thing. And I'll explain to you why, and I'll explain to you how detrimental that can be. If you're an entrepreneur and you're a driven entrepreneur, I will tell you that one of the hardest things there is on the planet is to maintain relationships. Tell me if this is familiar. You really like somebody, but you haven't talked to them in six months. And then you feel guilty because the next time you actually want to talk to them or pops into your head, you think, well, man, I shouldn't actually reach out because I haven't maintained a relationship. Or you have people that ask you in your life why you don't put them first, why you work so much, why you put the business first. Oftentimes you lay at night and you feel guilt over the fact that you've put so much into the growth or success of your business or your life, but you don't have a lot of people around you cheering you on. You have admirers, but not relationships. You have fans, but no friendships, right? That's what it's like to be an entrepreneur who struggles in relationships. And I found myself there so many times. So today, we're going to jump in, I'm going to give you kind of the three areas that I really struggle with and in self reflection, how I've spent time trying to improve this. I'm not out of the woods yet. I still struggle with it. It's still very much a conscious effort for me. And maybe it'll help you by me being transparent today. So you can scale a company. You can sell it for eight figures and still be completely bankrupt in your relationships. That's where I found myself. I found myself exiting company for the very first time and bankrupt in my relationships. Having a bank account full of money, having assets that tell you that you're worth something or associating net worth with your personal value, but looking around and realizing that if you actually had to value your life and the relationships you have, you're actually bankrupt. You don't have a lot of assets there. You have the physical assets and no relationship assets. Today, I'm going to talk to you about the three biggest relationship traps I see in entrepreneurs like me and some of the fixes that I've written down that have saved me or at least helped me repair from the times that I have blown it. The first thing in kind of setting this idea is that business is clear. It's rhythmic. It's trackable, right? Business is easy for someone who has a more analytical mind. Someone who has clear goals and vision and KPIs, key performance indicators, but relationships are not. Relationships are messy. They're emotional. Oftentimes, relationships are unstructured. You don't build a great relationship by having a weekly win meeting or having a brick. Those are all good things and can supplement a relationship, but oftentimes, the best part of a relationship is when you have those untethered moments. You have those unstructured moments. You have those moments where it's just authentic and it's real and that is what builds a deep, deep relationship. Founders like you and me often default to the measurable, not the meaningful. We often dive into what can I measure? Do I have success? I found myself in relationships in the past looking and saying, well, how many times did I touch base? How many times did I put down my phone and have a meaningful conversation? I was gauging the success of the relationship off of making sure that I had something measurable. Can I tell you that relationships oftentimes are immeasurable? It's impossible to measure because the things that matter the most are those quiet moments that are unscripted. Then for people like you and I, you can't delegate connection. I can't have my executive assistant go connect with all the people that I want to. I have what's called a hot list in my life. In that hot list are a list of people that I want to build a relationship with or I want to maintain a relationship with. I can't tell my EA to throw it on my calendar to remind me to make sure that I go, but I can't let her be the substitute. That makes sense. I can give myself aids, but I can't necessarily delegate that connection. The other pieces is you can't delegate connection and you can't automate your presence. As much as I like in business, automating things, creating more efficiencies and productivity, you can't automate presence. Presence is just you untethered. It's you authentic and there's no substitute for it. I think that one thing that I want to jump into is number one, I want you to first identify that that's you. Identify that we all could do better. Some of us are really bad at relationships. I'll put myself in that category. I'm working at it, but I'm not great at it. It's something that I don't naturally just do well. Some of us are decent at it, but we allow our business pursuits to get in the way. Then maybe a few on the podcast today are really great at relationships. I'll tell you that the person who's not good, I'm going to give you some identifiers, some helps, but also the person that is good at relationships. A relationship, and I've said this many times, is 100%, 100%. A relationship is not 50-50. It's every person giving 100%. I know that there are certain times where you don't have 100% to give, but it's a commitment to give 100%. It's a commitment to give whether or not the other person gives back. If you're the person that's great at relationships, I want to help you give, I want to help give you some insight into how those of us that are not great at relationships struggle so that as you give your 100%, you understand how to help us connect better. Here are the three pitfalls. I was recently on a trip. I took my son out of town and just my youngest son. We went and spent a couple of days together. We went, we rode bikes, we did the beaches, we did all this stuff. We just had a good time. On that trip, I used this a little bit of a reflection time. I read a couple of books. I wrote some things. One of the reflections that I had was just going back and doing a self-checkup on this relationship process. About three years ago, I realized I'm not great at relationships. While I pretended that I was, I have a lot of people that will follow me into battle. I've built really large businesses, thousands and thousands of people. I have respect of people. Oftentimes, I have admiration because of the success that we've been able to achieve together, but I don't have a lot of deep relationships. About three years ago, I realized that as I look back around my life, I really am lacking the depth of relationship, true, true connection. In that, I began to try to make some changes in my life. This last month, I went on this trip and began to just go back over these three things and began to really make notes again of where am I still missing? Let me just go back over the three things that I wrote down three years ago. These are the three things that I've been practicing over the last three years, trying to get better at relationships. Number one, you ready? Number one, achievement over connection. This is a pitfall that I have in my life, is that I always elevate the next success or the achievement over the connection. If I go back in my life, I have built some strong connections, but I've let them wane because I then go on to the next achievement. What we don't realize is that in the pursuit of achievement, oftentimes there's great connections along that journey that are built in the fire, they're built in the struggle. What happens is that we then allow that connection to dissipate and then move on to the next achievement. We're always elevating achievement over the connection. What happens is in my life, I actually need to elevate the connection over the achievement. Oftentimes, when I do elevate the connection, my achievements continue on the same path. I'll make statements like this. I wrote this one down on my trip. I said, the one phrase I'm going to stop saying in my life is they will understand because I'm doing it for them. They'll understand because I'm doing it for them. Think about, I've got three boys. Everything in my mind and heart is to build a life for them. But in the pursuit of achievement, oftentimes I'll disconnect from them while still saying, I'm doing it for them. Well, what if the connection with them is actually a greater catalyst for their growth rather than my achievements? I do believe that every child deserves to watch their parents chase their dreams. I don't think that you should just discard your dreams and discard your aspirations. I think that that can be detrimental to your children as well. But it's a balance. It's a huge balance where my boys need to see me chasing the unachievable, the unthinkable. They need to see me striving and pushing and going after something. But I also then can't discard their emotional state, their emotional connection, their emotional feeling and say, now I'm doing that for them. Partially, I'm doing that for me. I need to be very, very specific about this. Oftentimes I find myself, because I'm not connecting, I'm having them validate me. I'll say, here's this win that I accomplished in my life. And the thing is, oftentimes my boys just wanted me. They didn't want the win. They didn't care. They didn't care if I stood on a stage. They didn't care if I brought home an award. They didn't care if I was on the cover of a magazine or if the podcast is top 10. They don't care. They want to be proud of you and you want to give them something to be proud of. You want to be the dad and I want to be the dad. You want to be the mom that your child is proud of. But it's a balance because oftentimes more than they want your achievements, more than they want your wins, they actually just want you. And by the way, every person in your life is the same. Give them something to be proud of, but don't substitute the win for connection. For me, I get into this process of a rhythm of business. And when I get into the rhythm, because the rhythm gives me success, the rhythm and the consistency and the measurables are what gives me success. And that rhythm is what breeds can place and see in relationships. I found myself, I'll give you an example. Three years ago, I was thinking through this process and I heard Jesse Itzler, who's one of my favorite speakers. Jesse is amazing. He talked about the time that he had left with his dad. He said, you know, he loved his dad. He loved his father. And he said that, you know, if you break down the amount of days that you actually spend with your dad over the course of a year, he said, and then you look at your dad's age versus the average age of death, he said, the amount of days you have left are so small. I started thinking about that, you know, like I really did, I would spend four or five, maybe six days a year total with my dad Christmas, I'd spend time with him, maybe we catch up during the year sometimes. And it's like, am I dad and his sixties, right? My mom and her sixties, how many days do you have left multiply that times if the average age spans 82 years old and you spend four days a year, right? It's like, well, man, do I have literally 80 days left 100 days left with my parents the rest of my life? Well, all of a sudden that rhythm of like, well, I try to give my mom and dad a call at least once a week or every other week, try to catch up with them. Like that falls so short of the relationship and the connection I actually want with my parents. I don't want to exit this life and think, man, I gave my entire life to work when the people who love me the most to support me the most who I've been in my life the most to have the deepest connection with, then go by the wayside. So pitfall number one, achievement over connection. Number two, the second pitfall is clarity in business and confusion and communication clarity in business and confusion and communication. I run a boardroom really well, but I don't run a living room very well. So it makes sense. Like it's really easy for me to fall into the cadence of measurables, right? This is really important when it comes to child rearing because what I can't do is substitute what I do in business, what makes me successful into the life of my sons where, yes, structure is great, rhythm is good. However, the moments that I've connected with my sons the most are the ones that are outside of KPIs, measurables, did you clean your room? Did you do good in sports? Did you put the practice time in? Did you go to jujitsu? Did you shoot this many free throws in the driveway? Did you do, right? Like those are all the measurables and that's not connection. I run a boardroom really great and I don't run a living room very well. I, here's another one that I really struggle with that I wrote down. So I wrote three things down in each one of these categories on my trip the other day. The first one I wrote down and when I talk about achievement over connection is I said, I'm going to stop saying they'll understand I'm doing it for them and I'm going to just help them understand how much I love them and avoid that whole concept. The second thing that I wrote down on my trip was that I'm going to stop winging emotional conversations that require intentionality. Let's stop winging emotional conversations that require intentionality. You will never find me walking into a boardroom, walking into a scenario in business where I don't, I'm not prepared. Look, this is my notes on my podcast, right? I do this every single week. I don't, I'm literally prepared in every element of my life. I would never think about doing something important without being prepared. However, I walk into the most important moments of my life, emotional conversations with people that I love and I wing it. I know I'm going to walk into an emotional conversation and I just let it go. I don't prepare the emotions. I don't prepare my response. I walk into heated conversations with my teenage boy or teenage son, right? And I walk into that without clear preparation to make sure their success and the outcomes that I want. That's one of the big things that I wrote down is I'm going to stop walking into emotional conversations, knowing they're going to be emotional while winging it because they require intentionality and they require the preparation that I put into everything else in my life. I'm going to start taking notes before those conversations happen. So for me, here's a quick tip. I do use this element to help me. I think of everything in a stoplight. So if you look at our meetings, they're called stoplight reports, our KPIs are measured through stoplights. That's red, yellow, green, right? What I do in my head, and I'm constantly thinking through this is I'm rating my relationships red, yellow, green. So I'll let a piece of the analytical side come through on this one. And I rate my relationship based on have I connected authentically? Have I spent time intentionally? Right? Like have I had deeper conversations rather than just transactional conversations? I'm rating it, right? These are my KPIs. And then I'm saying, am I in the red? Am I in the yellow caution? Or am I in the green? Have I done it well? And I constantly have this, and I don't know, I'm just programming my mind in this way, and I've done this for a few years. And as I look at those relationships, I look at those connections with my sons or my mom, my dad, with my friends, with my family members, I look at it and I associate, am I in the red? Am I in the yellow or am I in the green? Because in the end, it's like, I want to constantly push myself to make sure I'm in the green and the relationships with people, which comes back to authenticity, true time, right? And connection. So I do allow that piece of the analytical to come in because in the end, that's still who I am. Number three, number three, here's the last pitfall. Replacing presence with mission. I'm so mission oriented. I'm so like, well, what are we doing? And the mission trumps everything. The mission, I give myself oftentimes permission to do what is not necessarily wrong, but wrong for the relationship and the connection in order to preserve the mission. I'm so mission focused. But what are we, you know, like, I literally, and I, I don't know about you, but I listened to the Michael Jordan documentary during COVID. And this was kind of the timeframe of which I was going through a lot of these kind of relationship thoughts. And, you know, COVID was a great time for reflection and time where I didn't have as much going on. And I watched the last dance, which is the Michael Jordan documentary. And while every part inside of me gets inspired and pumped up by who he was and what he accomplished. What I realized was at the end, he had sacrificed all relationships to get to the top. My question after watching the nine episodes or 10 episodes, whatever it was, was, is it possible to have the same success and still have relationships at the end? You know, you, you listen to those stories about how on his quest for the championships, he's having physical altercations, fist fights. And he said this one time he broke down in the documentary and he said, you know, you don't have to do it this way. He said, but this is the way I chose. And in the end, it got me the result I wanted. And the question is, is that really the result you want? Do you want the championships without connection? You wonder if a Michael Jordan, if I ever had the chance to interview Michael Jordan, the question I would ask him, and by the way, that's a huge ask if somebody knows him, connect me, right? This is, that would be my, that's my, uh, that's my bucket list item. The question I would ask him, because I genuinely want to know for myself was you won six championships, right? Would you have given up one to have deeper relationships with everybody around you? Would you, would you have given up two to have a deeper relationship with your kids, right? I don't know. I'm not saying he has a good or bad relationship with his kids, but I'm just saying, would you have given up three championships to have the deepest friendships you've ever had in your life to have your teammates or was winning that important? That's the question I wrestle with all the time. And I think that I've gotten to this place in my life where I don't, I don't want to sabotage winning, but I don't want to make winning at all cost the methodology, you know, because with this process of replacing presence with mission, I constantly put the mission in place. And, um, I read this quote and, um, and it was by a great author and I, I, I love it. It says, he said, be careful not to make the mission your mistress. Make sure that you don't substitute the mission, uh, and you now turn the mission into the mistress. You understand what I'm saying? Like the, where you're cheating on all relationships because the mission is more important, right? Like think about how horrible that is. I, I, um, I can't think of anything worse than, um, then, uh, infidelity, right? Because it, it's betrayal. It's, it creates massive struggle, creates insecurities. All these huge issues, right? Infidelity is such a damaging thing in relationships. We have infidelity every day as entrepreneurs, when we chase the mission over our, the people we love, right? Like you may not be cheating on your wife in a physical sense, but oftentimes when you replace presence with mission, you're cheating on her in emotional sense. You're getting the same high that you, that you, that you're trying that you could achieve through a deeper relationship. So, um, let me ask you this and here's a, here's a thing that I have to do in order for me to make sure that I'm not replacing, um, my presence with mission is I call this the legacy transfer rule. If it wouldn't matter at my funeral, then it shouldn't get my first energy. If it wouldn't matter at my funeral, then it shouldn't get my first energy. There are some things today that I want to create, right? They're missional, my impact, others thing. Like when I think about my funeral, I would love to have, you know, we're in 103 countries. How cool it would be to have somebody, a representation from all 103 comp countries stand up and say, Eddie brought this or the mission that Eddie created, uh, helped us feed 5,000 orphans in the country of Malawi or Ghana or the Philippines. Right. Like how could that, like that is, to me, that's the mission that is worth investing in, right? But I don't want my banker to stand up at my funeral and be like, you know, Eddie increased his wealth from age 40 to 70, you know, uh, 128%. Right. Like who cares, right? Like, so therefore in that legacy transfer rule, if it doesn't matter at my funeral, it can't get my first energy, right? It can't get my first energy. And that's just a rule of thumb. Now, the thing that I wrote down on this reflection trip, I told you, I wrote down three things. The first thing I wrote down was stop saying they'll understand I'm doing it for them. The second thing I wrote down is, is stop winging emotional conversations that require intentionality. And the third thing I wrote down is I said, um, um, that oftentimes, especially with my boys, uh, who need my presence, I say my family becomes the excuse for my absence, right? So in the work, I'll, I'll, I'll kind of jump back and forth and I'll be like, okay, um, so I got to go do this with my kids. And so like, I'll pause something at work versus the, uh, reason for my boundaries. Mentally, I'll make an excuse because I'm diminishing who they are or what's going on. So it makes sense. Like here, I'll give you, for instance, I'll be really transparent. I'll say, you know, I got to go because my 11 year old has jujitsu and I want to go, you know, and I'll say, I got to be, I got to go, I got to go, you know, be there for his jujitsu class or his sparring. That's different than saying, you know what, my family comes first. And so every Wednesday at 5pm, I'm not scheduling anything else. That's just my boundary. That's different versus, Hey guys, it's five o'clock. I got to go. I got to make sure I get over to Maddox's jujitsu practice. That's different than me saying to my EA, Hey, at 5pm, I'm done because every Wednesday on him, I'm in town. I'm going to watch Maddox, uh, spar and jujitsu, right? Like that's a different mindset. And what I realized was I was using, um, I was using the relationships as an excuse because in my mind, what I was doing is I was putting work here and relationships here. And so I'd have to make an excuse to get over here in order to do that. It's like, no, no, relationships have to go here. And so there has to be boundaries over here. And if there's boundaries, what it does is it elevates them above everything else. It elevates the relationships. And to me, that was one of the big, you know, eye-openers for me as I was going through this process. So let me give you some things. Uh, I gave you kind of the pitfalls, uh, but let me kind of walk you through, uh, the last kind of piece of this. And I call this, uh, I, I titled this as I was writing out, uh, kind of the content for this podcast is this is the empire mindset mindset shift. You're ready? Number one, you're building something bigger than a business. Therefore your life has to be bigger than achievements. Legacy isn't in your net worth. It's who speaks your name when you're not in the room. It's who shows up at your funeral and says, and talks about the impact that you made. True empire builders don't sacrifice their family at the altar of impact. You know how important that statement is to me because my entire life is tied to the word impact. This podcast is called impact. My, uh, my, um, nonprofit is called impact others. So I'm going to read that to you again and understand the weight of what I'm saying. True empire builders don't sacrifice their family at the altar of impact. True empire builders don't sacrifice relationships at the altar of impact. The greatest transfer of wealth is emotional, not financial. As we look at the strength we're passing on the relationships or the people that we are, um, building or mentoring, can I tell you that their emotional intelligence is far more important than their financial intelligence or their business intelligence. Emotional intelligence allow us to absorb and grow. Business intelligence can give us a, uh, ceiling financial intelligence, ceiling emotional intelligence allows us to break through every ceiling in our life. Here's my call to action. What conversations are you avoiding right now because it feels inefficient or unimportant? What conversations do you know that you should be having with the people around you that's going to drive connection, drive relationship, but because it's inefficient or it's just, doesn't feel like it's the right time you're avoiding it. Block off an hour this week. This is, I'm speaking to myself too, right? This is my own practice. Block off an hour this week to be present and not productive, present, not productive. I have schedule, I schedule time on my schedule. I have to because if not, I'll drown everything out, right? Where I have to be present, not productive. There are timeframes where I, I'm not going to sit there and check my phone. I'm not going to sit there and look at spreadsheets. I'm not going to look at stoplight reports. I'm not going to look at data for tomorrow's practice. I'm not going to comb through my schedule to make sure I'm optimizing it. I'm just going to be present. Here's the thing. This is a problem all of us driven entrepreneurs struggle with and I want to encourage you to take a step. Take a step with me. And by the way, as a community, right? Like this is not just me teaching you, me mentoring you. As a community, those of you that have jumped in with us, those of you that have listened to all these podcasts, those of you that it tied to me on social, hold me accountable. The level of accountability I want is how present am I with the people in my life? I'm okay with you pushing me, calling me out. And I want to be okay with pushing you and calling you out. And I want you to help others along this journey. If you know an entrepreneur today, you know somebody that struggles with this, send them this episode, have conversations about this, hold each other accountable, hold me accountable. Let's do this together. A question I had Eddie earlier, you mentioned a question you asked yourself is have I connected authentically? So I wanted to ask you what helps Eddie Wilson feel connected to a person? Yeah. Usually, I have to discard helping somebody in order to feel connected. Because oftentimes, we as entrepreneurs are doers, people that provide, will create this checkbox of validation in that if we help somebody, then it validates us, but it doesn't necessarily connect us because then we're creating almost a dependency. Here's the irony. What actually lets me feel more connected over that time period of exchange is letting them help me. And as an entrepreneur, you want to be self-starter, you want to be self-starter, you want to be self-sufficient, so you don't want to let anybody help you. But deep connection actually comes with the reverse, allowing somebody into my life that can help me. Allowing somebody into my life that maybe they don't provide the help that I need or I want, but there's an open invitation to it. I say it's like this, I think that so much of our relationships you can see in a child-adult interaction. Have you ever made something with your child? Like I have three boys and so I can, I remember I was helping one of my sons with something on his car. He was wanting to put in new speakers and so I said, well, that'd be fun, it'd be a project. Like instead of let's take it up to the stereo shop and have them do it, let's do it ourselves. It's gonna be fun. So we took the door panels off, we did all this stuff. And what I realized was I was an hour and a half in and he was sitting there on his phone while I was doing all the work. And I said, I made a joke to him. I said, I didn't realize this was a project that I had to do. I thought this was a project we were doing together and he said, well, that would be great. Like, and I realized like, oh, I'm the one that's actually in my pursuit of connecting. I thought, oh, we should do this project together versus me just helping him get his car up to a stereo shop. And then the mission became more important. The mission became, well, we got to finish this. Let's finish this tonight. We got to create the greatest sound system for you. And it's like, so we picked out the right speakers and we did the whole thing. And all of a sudden it was like, and then I'm time driven. So in my mind, I'm thinking, okay, putting the speaker in on this door took me 32 minutes. I wonder if I could do it in 24 over here. Everything's a time clock in my head. And so I remember sitting there on the second door and he was sitting there like, you know, and I in my mind, I thought I'm teaching him, I'm showing him, I'm showing him how to do this. Eventually, he someday maybe he's going to do this. And then I realized I was like, when he said, like, yeah, that'd be great. I was like, oh, I missed this entire point. Right. Like, so I remember saying to him, actually, why don't you come over here and do it? And he was like, okay, show me what to do. And I remember sitting there and I remember it doubling the amount of time, right? Because like, it's the first time he's doing it. And I remember asking me questions. And then I remember watching him do it. And then it gave me pause. And I was like, so, you know, I remember like, all of a sudden now we're having conversations about his life, about what's happening. It's like, it was something about just letting him help. It was and I'd say, it's like, that's the interaction. It's like, and sometimes at work, we get so focused on the mission that we don't realize that helping somebody else find success or finding, even though it takes a little bit more time is actually the true connection point. My authenticity is showing that I don't have to do everything myself. When I allow someone else into my space to do it, even though they might not do it perfectly and as good as I do it, it breeds connection. And that connection is way more important than the outcomes. I love it. Next question, something we've talked about before something that's been brought up, I've seen on things. I have a theory, any game, any interaction, any mission you have, you can make it to the end. Yeah, one of two ways. And one is by building bridges and one is by burning bridges. Yeah, at the end, the results still the same. Yeah. But one seems more optimal or better. I constantly think is every dollar a good dollar. I grew up in a faith-based home and biblically the phrase in the scripture says that money is the root of all evil or the love of money is the root of all evil. And so I think, is some money evil or is some money good? And I think that it comes down to this, money is a tool. Money is just the byproduct of an exchange. Money is the byproduct of exchange of whatever it is. It could be your time, your value, money's just in it. So in order to determine whether the money is good or bad, you have to go back to what is the exchange. And many wealthy people have gotten the exchange of value or the exchange of goods based on burning a bridge, cutting someone else's throat, stepping on someone else that help them get to the next level. And I will say that I think that phrase 100% truthful. You're either going to build bridges and you're going to create connection or you're going to burn these bridges and you're going to, you could still have the same result. Think about it. It's like, you know, I think about, you know, I think about Michael Jordan and he burnt a lot of bridges, but he still has his championships. You think about somebody like a Joe Montana, who arguably is the greatest quarterback of all time, because the other one that people talk about, he went to Michigan and I would never agree to that. But Joe Montana, greatest quarterback of all time, if you look at the people that are tied to him, his relationship building, how, you know, Jerry Rice and these people that he made everybody else success around him and he has all these super bowls and they talk about his levity in the, in the huddle. And, you know, it's like, I'd much rather be that because I don't get to the end of my life and have all this success and have no one to share it with, no one to connect with. You can have all the money in the world and still be lonely. And that's because you've burnt the bridges and there's no one else going with you. And so I think that's a constant check that we need to make in our own lives is to make sure that we are not exchanging the wrong thing for the success that we want, right? All money good or bad? Well, it depends on what you exchanged it for. I have come to the conclusion that I don't need to scale everything. Not everything deserves scale. If I stay present where it matters the most, because I'm already inclined to scale, I'll scale the things that matter. To me, that's the, the great, you're a builder, you're listening to the podcast, you're a builder, and you'll have to build everything. If you stay present in the building process, because you are a builder, then you'll build the things that matter. I'm a person who scales things, right? And if I stay present in the moment, I'll scale the things that matter. And so staying present is the ultimate check to make sure that we as empire builders are not failing at home, failing in our relationship and not ultimately hitting these pitfalls. Thanks so much for being a part of the podcast and for listening today. Love to connect with you further and you can connect with me on social media at Eddie Wilson official on any of the social media channels.