34 - From Engine to Architect | The Founder’s Guide to Becoming Irrelevant (On Purpose)

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 I'm going to talk to you about your leadership style and how to help you grow in your business. Many leaders as they start off in creating a business, they create a prison and we're going to talk about that today. Because today in business, the hero leader, that model is completely unusable, it's overrated, and it's really hard to exit. So we're going to talk about how to build a real empire when the founder becomes irrelevant. And I know that that's a very, very difficult transition as you are building your business, as you're creating value, but in the end, you should be working towards irrelevance. And then we're going to talk tactically about how to do this. And I'm going to give you a historical example of how not to do it. And that one is going to shock you. So let's jump into the podcast today. The first thing I want to say is that you're not leading your micromanaging if you have to be present in everything you do. And I know this has been a topic that I've spoke about for quite some time now, is that you have to get to a place where you systemize what you do so that your presence isn't completely necessary. Because if not, you are the reason why your business is not scaling. And it's because you're always the solution, and you can't be the solution past a certain point. So today, I want you to think about two scenarios. Right now, today, many of you are the engine that drives your business. And you have to get yourself out of the archetype of engine and get into the mindset of, I'm the architect, I'm the architect, not the engine. As I begin to build my company, I have to pull myself out of something out of being the primary driver. In the beginning, I get it. When you're the first person in the company, you're employee number one, you are driving everything, you're selling everything, you're fulfilling everything, you are the electrician, you are the extra back provider, you are the dentist, you are the doctor. I get that it's tough because you are the engine. But you have to create a transitional point where you're no longer the engine, you are the architect of that business. Because if you're the engine, the longer you put yourself into that position, the harder it is to remove yourself out of it. So the problem with what I call hero leadership, hero leadership is something that I'm completely against in business. And I know that it's the easiest path to success, to be an influencer and to put yourself out there. It's the easiest path that gives all the algorithms of social media a line with you creating that hero leadership model where you are the guy, you are the lady, you are the person who is driving it all. But the problem is that it will fail because the founder is usually the fire starter, they're the talent, they're the glue. But then it becomes the bottleneck, it becomes the burnout point. If your business falls apart without you, you've built a fragile system, not a legacy. And this is really important because this is what most founders do, they are the fire starter, they are the thing that is jumpstarting this business. But then at the end, it turns against him, it turns against her, it actually becomes the bottleneck. The people that love you for the lift in the beginning begin to hate you after time because they cannot find success, true success with you. So what we have to do is we have to move from just charisma into systems, systems versus charisma. Number one, we have to replace this type of thinking. We have to replace everyone needs to hear from me with everyone needs a system that is the way that I do things. If instead of you constantly be in the bottleneck of all checkmarks in the business, and you can get to a place where you are just creating a system that they know is a system that you they can adhere to and find success, now you've created something that is truly scale scalable. The other thing you have to get away from is I motivate my team with my system governs the team. Usually you think in a founder based business, I have to be there to motivate them. And I've often said that my core values are honesty, integrity, passion. And the reason I use passion is because what I really want is for people that come into my organization, self motivated, I despise having to be the energy the driver that drives my people what I want to do is create the system that they're already excited about working in. And then as they began to walk down the path of success for themselves, their self motivation that then propels inside of the system I've created to align it all to find the success that I want. So we have to replace charisma with systems, right? I have seen this in so many businesses that I've built where I am the founder, but then I have to be the energy as well. And that's that's the charisma I'm talking about. You know, the one thing that I often say is that in the empire operating system that there are really three tools that you really should be using to establish the systems. And that is number one, your stoplight reports, you have to know your numbers, you have to know on a weekly basis, what your performance is, what is driving you. Number two, you have to know what's called your brick, your brick is your core KPI, your key performance indicator that is driving the success for business. And there's one, there's one brick, there's one key performance indicator, if you drive it, you will get the success you want. And then lastly, in that you have to have your win meetings or the meetings, win stands for weekly important numbers, they're the meetings that govern your numbers. So it's the daily or sorry, the weekly checkpoint that allows you to see the numbers and know if you're on track or off track. I often think through this process, I don't need to know everything that's happening. I need one number to tell me if we're winning. If you feel like you have this question in your head, I wonder what my people are doing. And that is the question that is pervasive in your mind. If you ask your employees, what do you do, then you're doing it all wrong. You're doing it 100% wrong. What you should know is the numbers should tell you if the people are being successful. And when you see that success, you don't have to wonder, I wonder what they're doing or what they're up to or what their actual processes are, because the numbers, the win, that brick, it tells you if you're winning. And if you're winning, then you've aligned everybody with purpose in a process to get the production that you need. How was that for alliteration? So next, what real leadership looks like? What real leadership looks like? Instead of having this kind of hero leadership model, here are the things that I believe really indicate true leadership. Real leaders remove themselves from operations by design. It's intentional. So I would ask this, and I said this in a previous episode, but I would ask it again, is that I think these three questions you should be asking yourself are number one, what would break if I left for 30 days? And you should ask your team that if I left for 30 days, what would break? What would be missing? Because then you will clearly know where the bottlenecks are. Number two, ask your team, what decisions am I currently bottlenecking? What is preventing you from speed and productivity and success? And number three, what outcomes still depend on me that shouldn't? Now, there are some outcomes that are always going to be dependent on you. And by design, we should be intentionally getting rid of those as we grow our business. You don't want to add more things to your plate. You want to begin to take them down. There is a rule that is called the rule of replacement. And that is if I can replace myself, then I've done a good job. And if I replace myself, and I can put myself into higher or greater use, then I must replace myself. And so that should be the constant, the constant litmus test of how well we're leading. A good leader, a real leader is not one who has a public persona or that is loved by their team. A real leader is replacing themself because that is true leadership. Now, if you're sitting here going, yes, I get it. And I am the hero of the business. I am the hero of this story. How do I go from the engine to the architect? How do I go from hero to architect? Number one, in order to do that, you have to build your team, not your personal name. It's not your reputation you should be building. You should be careful about your reputation, but you should be building the team that then operates for you, right? And so the way that you do that, and I've used the Empire operating system is, is you literally have to know your numbers. If you don't know your numbers on a weekly basis, then you will constantly dive in into areas that don't matter. You'll, you'll filter things through your business or through yourself in the business that don't necessarily need your checkmark. And when you do that, it's a clear indicator that you don't know your numbers. You don't know what makes you successful. The next step, and here's the challenge I want to, to give you, right? And then I'm going to give you a historical figure that I think is going to be a little bit shocking that I'm going to go opposite on what I believe about them. But this is what I want to do is to challenge you. If you're still the one driving the team, what happens if you leave? What actually happens if you leave? If your team needs your energy to perform, you haven't built a business, you've just built a spotlight. Number one, the challenge that I want you to take. Number one, remove yourself from one reoccurring meeting every week. Remove yourself and find out if they have enough numbers reporting to allow them to do it with your, to do it without you. You know, what's funny is like everything I'm speaking about on the podcast usually comes from questions I get from people who are operating businesses or it's something I'm practicing. Today, I have the coffee company because coffee. And we have a bunch of retail stores called the Myth and Legend coffee houses. And today in my win meeting, I said to them, Hey guys, I know we do a weekly meeting. I think it's time for me to remove myself out of this meeting. You guys got it. We got our numbers down. You've got a cadence for reporting. I'm going to get to a place where I am just doing this either every other week or once a month. And you guys can report anything you need to me, but I am now officially moving out of this meeting. But it was the process of building it and watching it and making sure it happened. And I was in it for two years, right? Like we're just every single week, the cadence of making sure we're meeting, making sure we're measuring the right numbers. And but now they're to the place where it's time for me to remove myself. So I'm not telling you something that I'm not doing myself. But number one, remove yourself from one reoccurring meeting per week. Number two, assign the KPI that's most important, your brick to your actual team, assign it to them and make them responsible for it and make them report it back to you. Then you beat the drum of making sure that they stay focused on it. Ask for it every single week. And then number three, here's the last piece of the challenge. Let the system run without you for 30 days. You don't have to go take a vacation. You don't have to go sit on an island somewhere. Let the system run without you for 30 days and find out if you've built a system or if you've built a hero based leadership process that is so dependent on you that it's so codependent that it can't exist without you. So that's the challenge this week is number one, remove yourself from one reoccurring meeting. Number two, assign the brick or your core KPI to the team. And number three, let the system run without you for 30 days. Okay. Let me talk to you about a character because oftentimes it's the stories that we learned that help us anchor this into who we are. So I'm going to give you kind of the emotional tie to this. And you know, I'm a huge fan of the Stoics. And one of the Stoics that I love is Marcus Aurelius, but I'm going to go back to to the person of Julius Caesar. Now Julius Caesar is well regarded as one of the greatest leaders of that empire. And everything I talk about, I took so much about the empires of the past, you know, whether it's the Roman Empire, the Napoleonic Empire, or the Byzantine Empire. I love studying empires and even the current American Empire. But one of the most well regarded people is Julius Caesar. And Julius Caesar has been studied probably almost as much as anyone in a historic past when it comes to leadership. And if you literally got out your chat, GBT right now, and you said, tell me the greatest aspects of Julius Caesar, you would find some amazing ones. But I'm going to tell you how poor of a leader Julius Caesar was. I'm going to walk you through why I actually resist the leadership style of Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar was charismatic. And being charismatic does not qualify you for a leader. As a matter of fact, if you go to some of the most well known leaders of modern day, you'll find that they do not possess charisma. Charisma is great for a camera. Charisma is great for a social audience. Charisma is great for a stage. Charisma is great for recruiting. But oftentimes charisma is egocentric leadership that puts us in a position where we propel our own ideas or own ideals or our own thoughts above others. And so Julius Caesar was charismatic. And that was a check mark against him. Because what happens in charisma is you typically rise faster than the rest, but you don't have the right foundation, the right character, the right training, the right time in to then qualify you for the leadership that you gain by the charisma pushing you forward. And that's what happened to Julius Caesar. His charisma propelled him into a position of leadership before his character could support that leadership. He was loved by his troops, but hated by the system. You know, Julius Caesar, when it came to the actual battlefield was loved. He was loved. But when you went back into the system of the empire, he was hated. He was despised. And that is a big thing is that when some of your staff loves you and some of your staff despises you, you're doing leadership wrong. Typically what's happening is we built a system that caters to one side of the brain or the other. It's, you know, oftentimes the creatives versus the operators or it's the, it's the analytical versus the creative. And you cannot be loved by one and hated by the other. Because if you do that, if you have that, that type of leadership, it's going to play against you. And that's what happened to him. He had that, you know, the young warriors were the ones that were in love with Julius Caesar because of his charisma, because of his ability to fight because of who he was, because of him being able to rally the troops, but the system hated him, right? The third thing that the third characteristic that I really despise about Julius Caesar now that that strong language is that he took on too much. The reason I say despise is because that is always the first key indicator of an egocentric leader is when everything has to go through them, when they take on too much, when they are the central figure. What happens is as we allow leadership to happen like that, where they become the central figure, it starts the downfall of everything. And then you have to go through major painful corrections, major painful corrections. He took on too much. He would do way too much when it came to leading the army, going to battle, standing in front of the political structure at the time, and everything went through him. That is always, I see it in so many companies that I have the chance to go into their company and help them and do a little bit of coaching is I see it the very first moment I walk into that business is I see how strong that person is in creating a pathway where everything has to be touched by them. And what I know is is the pain that they're going to go through to release that and oftentimes it's not their personal pain, it's the pain of the entire employee base who's going to have to then take on things that they were never grown into taking and it's a painful experience. The fourth thing that I see was he refused to decentralize leadership. What happens is is we have these monumental rises because of character lead or charismatic or charismatic, somebody with massive charisma. We see this meteoric rise. However, when they get to this peak of being and understanding that they're the bottleneck, they have to decentralize leadership. And when they don't decentralize leadership, that is the beginning of the end. It's the beginning of the end because if they refuse to decentralize leadership, it creates the ceiling by which they're never going to get passed. And so something has to break through that ceiling, something has to happen. And in the end of the story, this is what happened to Julius Caesar. He was assassinated and he was assassinated because the political leadership at that time could not survive under a single figure. We oftentimes look at the assassination of Julius Caesar as something that is so horrific, it was so betraying. You know the whole story if you've read anything about Julius Caesar's that he's assassinated. What you don't realize is that he was the single source of failure for the empire. And all of the political structures that time could not figure out how to get past him. And when he became the ceiling, they essentially employed someone to take him out. Because what they realized was the entire fate of the empire was essentially being diminished by this person of charisma, but without character, without character. What they love about you in the beginning, and if you hear nothing else in this podcast, I want you to hear this because this is the meat of the entire message of the podcast right here. What they love about you in the beginning, they will despise and turn on you in the end. It's your charisma that will recruit them. It's your passion that will drive them. It's your vision that will propel them. And because of that, you will then take on this role of the hero leader. And when you cross this boundary where then you become the bottleneck, you will become the person that they despise, the person that they know that they're sealing out because of you. So the thing that you think is so great in the beginning, if you cannot overcome that, will be the thing that destroys you in the end. It's the story of Julius Caesar. And as I love history, but I'm not a fan of Julius Caesar because Julius Caesar became the bottleneck of the empire. Julius Caesar became a hero to his own story. Julius Caesar was the ceiling. And while I could never commend or never recommend, obviously somebody getting assassinated for this, it's like I understand it. And by the way, if you're the bottleneck of your organization, you may not be physically getting assassinated today, but in the lowest level of your organization, your employees are assassinating you every single day, maybe not physically, but they're assassinating your character. They're assassinating your leadership style. They're assassinating your choices. They're assassinating, they're literally taking you on. And they may not be vocal about it, but they are in their mind. Because once you become the hero of that story, you become the meteoric rise and ultimately the meteoric fall. Leadership is overrated. That's what I started with the podcast with today. Leadership is overrated. We need to be building systems for growth and scale, not celebrities. If you want to succeed, take away the celebrity status, roll up your sleeve, build some systems that people can follow on and they will love you for life. They will love you for life. I will tell you that I've done this right and I've done this wrong. I have been the hero of my business. I have been the person who propels that business to success and then I've stood in the way of its success and I've watched the people get frustrated and turn on me. I've also done it right where I have helped grow and scale that business and then I built the systems and I elevated the leaders that were with me and we've grown and gone to massive success. And by the way, the feeling that you feel when others succeed around you and they turn that love and admiration back towards you is something that is so much better. It's so much greater than the love of the people that you feel when you get something off the ground. Play for that delayed gratification. Play for the success of the business versus the success of your name. Play for the success of your people versus the success of the individual. You know, we talk about teams and how great teams are but so many entrepreneurs, they hog the ball, right? They're the ball hog. They want all the glory. They want the last shot. They think everything depends on them and we know, we know that without team, we never win. But somehow we lose it in our businesses. Leadership is overrated, build systems, not celebrities. You talked about Julie Caesar being a charismatic leader. Is what's the balance to being a charismatic, heavy leader? I think the step is that, you know, charisma can get something off the ground quickly but if we don't transition into our charisma, should draw more people with charisma, that charisma needs to be transferred from person to person to person. There has to be a transfer and, you know, tactically speaking, I think that transfer happens in about, you know, in most businesses from the $1 million to $3 million mark. Like, there is a physical, we call them revenue plateaus and what happens is in a business from zero to a million, the leader is the person. They're the person. When you go from $1 million plus oftentimes, $1 million to $3 million to $5 million, what happens is now you have to have, it's not just you and doers that are doing the job. Now it's you with managers managing the doers. Well, the moment that you go from leader to manager to follower, you have to be able to transfer some of that charisma onto that person. You have to transfer authority to the manager or else they can never truly lead the people and then they have to go all the way through back to you. Right? Like, think about it, you've been in scenarios and probably because we're a newer company, you know, you've probably even felt it here sometimes is that when the bottom has to go all the way to the top for answers, we have missed the ability to transfer some of that charisma and leadership and systems to the manager so that they can have the same effect or leadership or authority for the follower. You mentioned he took on too much too fast. Yeah. So could you talk on the balance between in business, we want to push for more, we want to take on more. Yeah. But there's a tipping point obviously, like, do you have thoughts on that? Most people are unaware of when they've taken on too much, especially entrepreneurs because the success of the business is typically on them. So you have to have people that are honest around you. You have to be able to say, what am I doing that I could be giving up? What am I still holding that I shouldn't possess? You know, it's a conversation that has to happen when you go from leader to manager to follower. If it's still just leader to follower or manager to follower, and there's just, you know, it's a very flat organization, it's not quite as important. But the moment you start putting tiers of leadership in, you have to relinquish the doing of the job for the managing of the job. We've all seen it in probably the scenario that it plays out so prevalent in is when a salesperson now elevates into sales manager, where he has to or she has to physically stop selling and start managing the salesperson. That's where I see it most prevalent because typically that's the organizational structure that grows the fastest. You know, but it happens in every area. I mean, think about it in production. It's like at some point you have to stop running the camera and start managing the person that runs the camera. In marketing, it's you have to start, you have to stop writing the ad copy and start managing the person that's writing the ad copy. And we have to do that at all levels of the business because if not, it bottlenecks everything and it clogs the entire system up. So at the same time, you do want to push for more, but you have to have honest people around you to tell you when that's become too much. You push for as much as you can. I mean, in the end, what we all want is massive productivity out of every employee. So you want people to push to take things on. You have to have a group of honest people around you to say like, you shouldn't be doing that. That's not something that is the best use of your time. One thing that's missing in most organizations is this word and the word is candor. It's open and honesty in conversation. We have too much of a political structure inside of our businesses and inside of our meetings where we're cautious with what we say. We don't want to throw somebody under the bus. We don't want to oppose leadership. And so we're playing this like weird delicate balance like what do I say and when do I say it? How do I say it? What organizations need is enough trust to have candor at the table because candor is when I can speak freely and be given enough latitude that if I offend someone, they know my intention is to make the business better, not make myself better. I love that. I have found there has been a scheduled meeting to get everything solved. And in that meeting, not a lot was actually discussed. Sure. The meeting ends and a couple of people hang around and have the real meeting. Have the meeting. And I'm always like, why didn't we do this 10 minutes ago? It's called the meeting after the meeting. It's like, if you have a really strong meeting that goes nowhere, just go to the water fountain or the coffee machine or the bathroom and you'll see the meeting that's happening after the meeting. Yeah, it's hilarious. But I believe candor would solve that. It's like, okay, I love that. Last question in the instance from Julius Caesar, assassination seemed to be the solution. Yeah. So I think in this scenario, decentralizing leadership kind of equals assassination. So what does that tend to look like in a business? What does that actually look like? I was kind of in jest talking about assassination, but because I wanted them to, I want the business owner to feel what's really happening at the lowest level. They're so frustrated that because it's not decentralized, where it's all amalgamated into one central source that everything has to go through, what happens is they get frustrated and the outcry of frustration is typically talk, right? It's communication. Most of us don't get so mad that we just go sitting in quietness, right? Like most of us get so mad we speak. It's like, it's the emotional output that we all are used to when we get angry or frustrated. And so then if you don't have a source to go to for frustration, it typically just happens without control. And so that's the true assassination that's happening in every business across America is that the leader is being assassinated by the lowest level out of frustration because they don't have an output and they don't know how to push their productivity through a source. And the funny thing is, is then from the top, oftentimes we demand loyalty, like, you know, be loyal. And it's like, they need an outlet because there's level of frustration because the hero leader out of ego is repressing it all. And, and, you know, I've been guilty of this for sure. It's like, and on the leadership side, you're not doing it intentionally, you're trying to take on as much as you possibly can, you'd want the success of the business. But it's, it's getting out of our own way. It's having a strong enough team to say like, hey, give me that, I'll take it. It's also really important for that mid level manager, the person that's in the middle of everything, the middle middle of leadership and follow ship, right, is to have those conversations up and down. It's a vent to me, let me take your frustration and take it up and also knowing how to communicate to the top to say, hey, there's a bottleneck here. And, you know, and then the true leader has to act, you know, they have to act. It's Brutus, right? Who steps in the head. Yeah, you too, Brutae. Yeah. So I was like, hopefully you hope that you didn't hire a Brutus. Yeah. But maybe the mid management that is, is like Brutus is willing to be like, Hey, so I'm going to have candor. So the story, right? I mean, as Brutus, who actually was a confin on at one point to Julius Caesar is the one who stabs him and kills him. And Julius Caesar is looking around and he feels betrayed by the leadership of the empire. He feels like the senators have turned against him. And so the senators basically talk Brutus into assassinating him. And, and what's interesting is Brutus comes up and he essentially stabs him and he turns around and says, who to Brutae, like you two, you know, like you're against me too. And he dies in failure, right? Like he dies alone. He dies in frustration while being, you know, touted as one of the greatest, you know, leaders of the empire. But it's because he was the bottleneck. Like they were so frustrated with this like single source of, of failure that they didn't know how to solve it. And he couldn't get out of his own way. And he was told for years and years that he was the single source of failure. And it's a, it's a sad story, right? Because I think that's really what happens in businesses across America is that you, and there's Brutuses in every organization, they get to a place where there's just so much frustration and there's not enough success that somebody, you know, decides that they're going to be the one to essentially, to essentially go up and approach the leader or, you know, turn from a disloyalty position to essentially, I mean, it's happened to me like as the leader, I've had, you know, people that are the closest to me come up to me thankfully and be the Brutus and be like, Hey, this is going to hurt, but I need to tell you what's actually going on, right? And so, you know, we don't necessarily kill each other, but it's like, but it is nice when somebody comes up with brutal honesty. And sometimes it does feel like a knife, you know, it's, but the thing is we got to be strong enough leaders to take that and then take action from it. Like you said, with Candor, remember my intention. Yeah. I love it. That's all the questions I had written down. Any last words you want to say anything? I just want to go back to the challenge real quick. And that is because it will tell you where you are. And I am challenging myself on this at every level is that the challenge is to number one, remove yourself from one reoccurring meeting, right? Remove yourself from one reoccurring meeting. Number two, assign the brick or the most important KPI to the team. And number three, let the system run without you for 30 days. You don't have to be absent from the system, but let the system run without you. Let the meetings run without you. Let your people run without you and govern it by the numbers. Don't govern it by the meetings. And that's the challenge. And I want to hear back from you to close out the podcast today. I do want to do this as a thank you to all of our podcast listeners. You know, we have the Aspire tour and the Aspire tour is coming up in one of your cities. We're going to actually in 2026, double up the amount of stops with the Aspire tour. And if you use the code impact, if you go to Aspire, for more.com and you use or AspireTour.com, you can go to a city near you, use the code impact, get a 50% off discount on your silver ticket. And I'd love to see it at the Aspire tour. 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.