43 - Give Violence a Chance | The Ruthless Decisions Your Business Is Avoiding

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. Welcome to the Impact Podcast with Eddie Wilson. Today we're going to talk about something that I think is probably going to be a little bit controversial. But that's the intent is to be not controversial but impactful. And I think sometimes you've got to stir the pot a little bit and go at some some ideals, some concepts that need to be shaken. And so today's episode is called Give Violence a Chance. Okay, Give Violence a Chance. One of my favorite stories that goes all the way back to the Continental Congress is when you've got the Quaker Ben Franklin who's fighting for peace. The Quaker kind of mentality is peace at all cost. Turn the other cheek. Very biblical stance on peace and making sure that there is being peace being offered. However, some terrible things happen and the British empires imposing its will on these new colonies that are formed here in the US and John Adams who's the exact opposite of Ben Franklin. He's fiery. He doesn't want to be pushed anymore. And some things happen. And Ben Franklin, while in the Continental Congress, is always promoting peace. And he's always promoting that we should whatever the British empires will is. And as they impose on us that we could we could oppose it through diplomacy. And one such instance happens where John Adams turns. He looks at Ben Franklin. He had enough and he said, Mr. Franklin, sir, is it now time that we give violence a chance? And so when we look at our businesses, sometimes diplomacy being a pacifist, being someone who is sitting in the wings always trying to make things better is going to allow your business to die. And when I look at so many things in our life, our relationships, our business, our child rearing, there are things that all are parallel. And I find myself on the side of always wanting peace, always desiring peace, but often thrust into a place where if you don't make decisive action, things will die, things will go away, things will break. And so this episode is about one thing. Our empire, whatever it is, the empire of your home, the empire of your business, the empire of your relationships requires clear courageous and sometimes ruthless decisions. And if you avoid them, you're going to stall your growth. At some point, there has to be a ruthless nature in those that are growing things and building things. Very few empires, if any, have ever been built without turmoil, without conflict, without somebody with a devout resolution to success at all cost. And that's what I want to ask, is that are you dedicated to success in a ruthless manner at all costs? And I think that we can temper some of that, but there has to be the other side. You know, as I listen to people like Jordan Peterson, Jordan Peterson, we'll talk about this concept of that you may not ever have to exhibit violence or you may not ever have to exhibit being dangerous, but it has to be inside. Because if it's not inside, this willingness to be dangerous, this willingness to step out and especially as a man, willingness to exhibit masculinity for the purpose of protection or advancement, if it doesn't exist inside, oftentimes those around you can sense it. But there is something about someone who has that entity that's inside, that has that element of danger. There's a, there's a, there's a, there's something that gets put in check when you know that it exists. I grew up in a home of a father who was a man's man. He was he was a dad who had no problem holding his own. Although he was meek, he was quiet, he was kind. But you just saw it in his eyes. You knew that if you pushed him past a certain point, your your days on this earth were limited. That was the, that was the look you got, you know. And as a young man, I remember, I remember a story and I know that this story is going to sound a little bit crazy and and but I remember my father owned a drywall company and and the drywall trades oftentimes are those of, of, you know, a group of guys that are blue collar and and oftentimes the rough group inside of the construction trades. And I remember one of his workers one night as a young boy as probably maybe early teens, maybe 11, 12, 13. And I remember the story of a man who might work for my dad and he called my dad and we had a small home and my dad's office was kind of a earshot from the living room. And I could hear him in there and I could hear the guy. The guy had said, he said, I'm going to come over and I'm going to take it off of you. And I didn't know all that was happening, but the guy basically was threatening my dad. He was going to come over to our house and he was going to basically do some sort of harm. He was going to take it off them and he, he felt like he should be paid for something that he didn't do. And and then he threatened my dad. He said, I'm coming with a gun. And I remember my dad very, very calmly did not react in a in a strong way. He just I just remember him saying, you better hope that I don't see you first. And I remember my dad walking back and getting a gun, right? Like it was like that, that was the home that I grew up in. And my dad wasn't violent. My dad wasn't didn't lack kindness or empathy. It's probably one of the greatest givers I've ever seen in my lifetime. I think the essence of me giving is tied to him. But there was that there was that danger inside. There was the the willingness to exhibit strength when pushed. And and I've always wanted to exhibit that for my own boys, the three boys that I have. I know that sometimes they would probably prefer me to back down in certain situations. But to show my my sons oftentimes that that there is an element, there's a there's a spot where I will not be pushed beyond. And and that has been exhibited in various ways throughout throughout their growing up and in my life. And they tell funny stories about that today as they get older. But you know, it's it's it's there has to be this willingness to take decisive action to not be pushed back beyond the point of principle in your life. And I'm not necessarily talking about violence in the context of of hurting someone physically, but I'm talking and I'm not talking about like necessarily chaos or anger. I'm talking about surgical intensity. I'm talking about this willingness to exert force when necessary. The willingness to cut clean when hesitation is starting to kill your momentum. So this might be a controversial phrase. This concept of giving violence a chance. I'm not talking about fists. I'm talking about focus. I'm talking about this intensity that has to come with building empires. And I'm talking about taking bold decisive do it now decisions that can scale companies and then ultimately protect your vision. If you allow your vision to just a road to just allow anyone to sabotage it to come in and pose their will, you'll never build something of substance and size. And so when I talk about violence, let's define it for a second because I don't necessarily want to talk about fists and I don't want to talk about physical violence, but I'm talking about in the context of building empire. It's about clarity. It's about decisiveness and it's about imposing imposing your will. So why most founders avoid violent decisions. Most founders are going to get into a place where they'll cast vision. And most people in the business world, and really just I guess in the world at large, do not have a business problem. They have a decision problem. They cannot get to a place of A, they have enough information or they have enough emotion or gut feeling that they'll sit in indecisiveness. And so they'll use phrases like let's give it just a little bit more time. Let's let's just wait a little longer. You know, I'm not going to take action on this person because they've been loyal. They may be destructive today, but they've been loyal in their past. So I'm going to give them just a little bit more time and I'll give them just a little bit more grace. This is just too messy to fix, right? Like it's too, there's just too many layers to this. And so I'm just going to have to do it one by one. It's going to take some time. This phrase, I don't want to burn a bridge. This is my famous one. I don't want to burn a bridge. I want to leave an opportunity for later. And so we leave pathways that erode or destruct our business open because we don't want to burn a bridge. And every time that you delay a decision, you've already made in your gut. And I know that many of you have heard me talk so much about data-driven decisions, but there is something to be said about an operator or an owner that has a gut feeling. It's rarely wrong. When you feel a strong gut feeling, it's rarely wrong. I made a social post just recently that has gotten quite a bit of traction where I said that when people show me who they are, I believe them. It's like I'll go ahead and allow that existence and whatever they show me to kind of set its place inside of me where instead of me always just resisting and saying, well, I want to believe the best about them. Let me go ahead and believe what it is that they've exhibited to me. And the same thing goes with your gut. There's so many times where I've resisted a gut feeling even though in the end it ended up being correct. If you are a solid operator and owner, your gut is going to be right a majority of the time. So here are three types of violent decisions that you must make. Three types of violent decisions you must make. And it's going to take resolve and it's going to take courage to actually do it. Number one, the courage or the violent decision that I'm talking about is the courage to cut. If you keep people who can't grow, your empire never will. If you keep people who can't or won't grow, your empire will also lack growth. There have been people in my life and oftentimes I tell the stories about the people that have succeeded wildly with me. And I rarely tell the story of those who actually couldn't make it, right? Those that just couldn't get to the place where they were a benefit to the empire, they were a detriment to the empire. And I'll tell you that time and time and time again, my personality is to give people a little bit more grace than I really should. That's a flaw in my leadership style. Now some people might just say, well, he's kind or he's nice. And there are times where I've just let things hang on. In the concept of business, there's always A, B's and C's. And we've talked about this on the podcast in the past. A's are rock stars. You get out of their way. You promote them. You let them run. B's are the ones who have potential to be A's. And if they're B's, they just don't necessarily have the right training or maybe they don't have the right opportunity or the right experience. So your job as a leader is to focus on the B's to develop them to get them to be A's. So you're really leaving your A's alone. You're giving them pathways, guidance, guardrails, you're giving them vision and they're running. The B's are the ones where it's like they're almost there. And if you spend time and effort and train them, they'll get to A's. And then you have your C's. Your C's are always the ones that are never going to change. They have the bad attitudes. They have the poor work ethic. They're the ones that show up late. They're the ones that don't give the extra effort. They're the ones that you can never truly count on. Like you know the ones like in your mind, it's like, well, if I had to have a go to person, okay, they're a B or an A, right? If you look at that person, you think, man, I don't know that I could put weight on that person. I don't know that I could count on that. I don't know if they're going to come through for me. There that there's a high likelihood that they could be a C bad attitude won't come through, can't hold their pull their weight. And so there have been a lot of stories where I tell the success of the people. But let me tell you a story of someone and I won't use their name because I believe that that person has actually turned around some of the issues that they faced is that I have brought in someone or I'd brought in someone to run one of my companies. And she was someone who came with high accolades and high drive. And I use a system called predictive index and she had a similar predictive index to me. And so I believed I knew what I could count on. I believe that I knew the weight that she could hold. And so I gave her free reign, shared vision, said, here's the guardrail, said, this is the direction that you're going to take. And then in the end, it's like, I think that as a whole, she began to show her colors. And I think that, you know, whether it was, let's just say, whether it was maybe some trauma in her life, some things that prevented her from moving forward, every step she began to sabotage it. It was, and she had all the capabilities, all the opportunity in the world. And she would sabotage and there was never, it was, it was never her fault. In the end, leadership is always one, a good leader is always one who will take responsibility. And if you're given the role of a CEO, like your job is to lead it, you cannot, you cannot point fingers at anyone else. All fingers have to be pointed at you. And anytime as a CEO leader, you look at the circumstances that people around you and you say, well, they're the ones preventing me from success, you have disqualified yourself as a CEO. The CEO has to shoulder the weight of the responsibility. And it goes back to if that person is preventing you from success, then get rid of that person. Unfortunately, I had to remove her from the business and it wasn't an easy thing. But within weeks of removing her from the business and getting my hands around it, the business began to flourish. It took me six months of just paying. And I gave her almost two and a half million dollars for payroll, two and a half million dollars to build this business of one that she had already been successful at. And yet everything was preventing her from success. But the worst part about it was I hung I just would hang on too long. I hung on for almost six months. And in the end, the pain was actually pain to the customer because she wouldn't get her option or her operations right. And it was pain to me, the owner who was having to fund it all without success. And I gave it six months and it was probably about five months too long. I knew within that first time period after I gave her kind of a six month runway, that first month that I really began to dive in and look at the business, I knew it was off. I knew it was wrong. My other business partner began to tell me, hey, there's something off here. And I knew it was and I knew it was that person. And the moment that person moves away, everything begins to shift. We have to have the courage to cut. In the end, you are not punishing the past by making this cut. You're protecting your future. You're not punishing the past. You're not oftentimes we'll say, well, I don't know. I mean, like, maybe this doesn't warrant being fired or let go. Maybe it doesn't warrant moving away from this person. But you can't think about it that way. You can't think about it in the context of what's happening in the past. You have to think about in the context of what you are protecting in the future. And sometimes it looks like a violent move. Sometimes it looks like, whoa, I can't believe he made that move now. I can't believe that person doesn't exist in the organization anymore. I can't believe that person is somewhere else over here doing something else. Wow, what a radical, crazy move. And in the end, you have to have enough courage to make it and live in it, sit in it, provide that direction for the future. Who in your organization is no longer qualified to carry not what's present, but what's next? Who in your organization is no longer qualified to carry what's next? Oftentimes we're preparing for today and we're looking for today and we're like, does this person do a good job today? As a leader, right? Are they prepared to carry what's next? Okay, here's the second violent decision. Number one, you have to have the courage to cut. Number two, you have to burn what's comfortable, but also broken. Burn what's comfortable, but also broken. Being comfortable oftentimes is the antithesis of the pathway and the success that you want. When you are comfortable, it's a dangerous position. When you are comfortable, you need to start to move and to change. We have to kill outdated operations. We have to get rid of unnecessary steps in our organization. Oftentimes it takes us just way too long to find success. And then we have to continue to get rid of bloated tools, those tools that are cumbersome to the company, cumbersome to our business, cumbersome to our lives. And instead of always trying to duct tape or patch the problem, right? Think of it as a boat that's taking on water, right? Like you need to take decisive action. Duct tape is still going to allow the water to come in, right? Like a patch is still going to be something that's temporary. So instead of always taking the temporary fix, take decisive action. Make sure that you're not just patching the problem. You're actually fixing the problem. Empire systems, building a system that's replicable or repeatable. They're simple. They're repeatable. And they're elegant. Like there's a beauty in the simplicity when we do it correctly. You don't have to you don't have to over build and over architect things that are great. Oftentimes the simple and the elegant are the things that build the most build the best empires. It's why I've singled it down if you've ever heard me teach the kind of business principles. You hear me singled down to one KPI, one key performance indicator. It's the brick, right? Like and that's the elegance. Do you build empires by focusing on one thing? It's simple, right? All right. The third thing that we've got to cut. And that is we have to kill the wrong revenue. Now what you're hearing me say is oftentimes misunderstood and I want you to understand this very quickly. There are customers that you're currently taking that are bringing in revenue but also deteriorating the very growth of your organization. Clients that drain your culture. Products that you're willing to take on or do but it confuses your offer or you're not built to service it. But for the sake of taking revenue you're like, oh, but I really need the sale and all of a sudden now you have to bloat the organization in order to fulfill this one thing that doesn't necessarily drive the profit or the pathway for the success that you want. And paths that grow revenue but dilute your brand. Stay focused on what you do. Who is it that you are and what is it that you do? And make sure that your revenue is aligned to that. Don't just take whatever job comes your way. When you take whatever job that comes your way and you don't stay focused and you're never known for something, your brand is always confusing to the customer and you begin to dilute the ability to deliver on the products that you've sold. Hear me well on this one. A good customer is one that fits inside of your brand, not one that defines your brand. A good customer is one that sits inside of your brand, not one that defines your brand. When I ran the ad agency years ago we were really good at certain things. And I'll tell you right now, oftentimes the marketing companies, if you're in business, the marketing companies that lack the greatest success are the ones that do everything. They're the Swiss Army marketing companies. But the ones that do well are the ones that are targeted and surgical. And that's where I built my ad agency. I really had two divisions. And each division was known for what we did. And that's why I found success. So profit that cost purpose is way too expensive. Profit that cost purpose is way too expensive. Stay focused on the brand. Take customers that align with your brand and don't define your brand. Okay, so what does violence actually look like? What does violence actually look like? I gave you three areas that I think you should check in your business today, in your life today, in your relationships today. Right? And here's what it looks like. Violence is not rage. It's not anger. Right? Violence is not reckless. It's not just this, now I believe there should be some reckless abandon to these things that matter, but it's not reckless in the sense of it's undirected, right? Like it's directed. It's focused. It's clean. It's fast. It's it's have you ever seen a race car driver? I like watching F1 and watching these F1 races are so interesting to me. But what I love watching is the driver. When you have those driver shots, they're sitting there in the car. And what you'll notice is that that that intense stare on what's happening. And oftentimes I was watching Charles LeClerc the other day. And this entire time where he's going through a series of turns, he never blinks. He never takes his eyes off. He didn't even take that millisecond to blink or to change his focus. It was an intense stare on exactly what it was that he was trying to accomplish. That's what it looks like. That's what it looks like. It's an unblinking decision that when you make this, it proves that the mission matters more than the moment you're in. He's staring at the track. He's making unblinking decisions, decisions that are so intense, so intense that he is going after the mission at hand, which is winning. And that's what that's what business should look like. That's what our relationships should look like. That's what life should look like. When you are in business, let's go back for one second. It can look like canceling a launch that doesn't fit the future that you have. I've had to do that where you've built everything for that moment. You built everything and you've got everybody aligned. And because it doesn't fit the future, cancelling it. In my life, here are four things that I've had to do. And it looks like violence. It looks like radical changes. Cancelling a launch that didn't fit my future. Ending a partnership and doing it fast because it didn't fit the future or the mission. Publicly restructuring my organizational chart. With somebody who is so dedicated to organizational structure and business and having to make a big public adjustment, right? Even though I want everybody or I want my people to feel the stability of knowing that I'm guiding that ship correctly and having to do it publicly. Cutting 30% of tasks that don't move my brick or the KPI and doing it on a consistent basis, consistently going back and cutting that 30% that doesn't move the brick. These are four big things that oftentimes I'm resistant to, but they look like big, violent changes. Empire builders don't swing wildly. They don't go into fights. They don't go into life without an intent to do exactly what the mission states. We don't swing wildly. We strike strategically. As you watch fights like the UFC or boxing, it's always you lose confidence in the person who seems out of control. With an empire builder, we're in control, but we're doing it strategically and intently. When the moment comes to act, we do it without hesitation. You know when it's time to act, oftentimes your gut tells you data oftentimes reinforces it, but we have to act when we know it's time to act. Let me ask you these three questions that I want you to think and do a quick internal study. Number one, what are we tolerating in our life or in our business or in our relationships out of fear? What are you still allowing into your life because you're afraid of what the outcome might be? What the consequence might be? What are you tolerating out of fear? What are you delaying that you know has to be done? What are you putting off? Let me ask you this. There are things that you need to take advantage or take action on, but it's like, well, but a holiday is coming up or but this person has this coming up. You know that you have to do it, but you're tolerating it because or you're tolerating it, you're delaying it because the timing doesn't seem right. Know the timing is now. It's time to make choices now. What violence does your empire need today? What ruthless intention that you need to walk into your life with today and make decisions that make a difference and make a change? What is not serving your mission? What is not serving your purpose? What is delaying you? What is deteriorating? Let's make decisions today. Pick one today and cut it. Make the change and feel all the clarity that floods in once you get on the back side of that decision. Today in business, today in life, today as you walk through this experience, give violence a chance. Thanks so much for being a part of the podcast and for listening today. I'd 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.