The Secrets of The Highest Paid CEOs in the World…
Summary
- I notice that the character of a CEO often surpasses the need for new skills or tactics. It's the character that often becomes the limiting factor in business growth.
- A CEO is ultimately responsible for making managerial decisions, and the best ones take that very seriously.
- The success or failure of a founder-led company is predominantly the responsibility of the CEO, as they choose the market, the strategy, and build the management team.
- To improve your company, focus on your personal development first – you must be the kind of person who can attract top talent.
- Being a successful CEO is more about who you are than the specific tasks you do. It involves being a generalist who leads by example and shows strong character traits.
- CEOs are the "jack of all trades" and must be familiar with all aspects of their business enough to hire the right people for those roles.
- As a CEO, you are the chief firefighter and problem solver for the company's biggest challenges.
- Inspiration is a key trait of successful CEOs: they are calm, dependable, physically and mentally healthy, courageous, empathetic, value-driven, and mission-focused.
- Focus on acquiring skills and traits that enable you to create value, rather than being fixated on financial goals.
- To become a million, ten million, or billion-dollar CEO, you need to develop corresponding skills and traits. Your personal growth dictates the level of talent you'll attract.
- Use John Wooden's Pyramid of Success as a framework to identify traits necessary for becoming a better leader and growing your company.
- Rate yourself on the following traits to evaluate where you need improvement: industriousness, enthusiasm, friendship, loyalty, cooperation, self-control, alertness, initiative, intentness, condition, skill, team spirit, poise, confidence, and competitive greatness.
- Encourage your team to go through the exercise of rating themselves on these traits to promote collective improvement and leadership growth.
Video
How To Take Action
I would suggest focusing on character development. A CEO's character can limit the growth of their business. Work on personal development to be the kind of person who can attract top talent.
Here's a good way to do that:
- Understand your role: You're not just managing things, you're leading by example. Be familiar with all parts of the business and become a generalist.
- Be the problem solver: When big challenges come, you're the one to tackle them calmly and dependably.
- Develop value-driven traits: Instead of just aiming for financial goals, grow skills that create value in your business.
You should use John Wooden's Pyramid of Success to identify the traits you need:
- Rate yourself on traits like industriousness, loyalty, and competitive greatness. Where are you strong? Where can you grow?
- Aim to improve on the lower-rated traits. Focus on those daily.
Here's your action plan:
- Evaluate your character traits using Wooden's Pyramid.
- Pick one or two traits to improve.
- Put up reminders to work on these traits every day.
- Show these traits in action – lead by example.
- Encourage your team to do the same exercise for collective growth.
Let's look at some detailed steps to follow:
- List traits that you think are crucial for a successful CEO from the Pyramid.
- Rate yourself honestly, from 1 to 10, on each of these traits.
- Identify the lowest scores and create a plan to improve them.
- Each morning, review your plan and take one action towards improving a trait.
- End your day by reflecting on how well you exhibited these traits.
This way, you'll grow as a leader, and your company will grow too. Remember, it's more about who you are than what you do. Your personal growth dictates the talent you attract and the success you achieve.
Quotes by Leila Hormozi
"The only thing that prepares you for running a company is running a company"
– Leila Hormozi
"I want to hit a billion dollars simply because I would like to meet the Layla that can create that"
– Leila Hormozi
"Top talent doesn't work for somebody who's a mediocre CEO"
– Leila Hormozi
"You have to earn the right to be confident through preparation"
– Leila Hormozi
"Competitive greatness means you have a love for the journey for the person it presents for you with the opportunity to become"
– Leila Hormozi
Full Transcript
today we're going to talk about what are the successful traits of a ceo or the traits of a successful ceo and the reason i want to talk about this today is it's just it's really top of mind for me because acquisition.com you know obviously i'm working with the ceos and the cos on a honestly mostly a daily basis and often what you notice is the limiting factor is not what skills do they need to acquire what courses do they need to take like what's the tactic they need to do next it's the character and this is what i've learned in my journey and i'm by no means uh finished and perfect or the example of a great ceo at all in fact i don't put myself in that category but uh i do say that i put a lot of effort in and i try to help other people and i transfer my knowledge to everybody else that we work with and so i wanted to share that with everybody here today because i think that if we can make everybody better then we make better companies and that produces a better environment for work and so that being said uh what i want to first do is define terms okay so what is a ceo uh seems obvious but it's really just the highest ranking person in the company or institution uh ultimately responsible for making the managerial decisions um and i think that uh oftentimes people are like i'm the ceo i don't need to do [ __ ] about managing and i'm like good luck with that uh the best ceos in basically all of time if you look at what their jobs were you know they took it very seriously that they were you know if anything the highest ranked manager they're managing the profits they're managing the revenue they're managing the high level leadership team um you know you can have leaders that are doing a lot of the work but somebody has to manage them and that is usually the ceo so that being said why is this video you're worth your attention well uh 20 of new businesses fail in the first two years 45 in the first five years and 65 in the first 10 years and i think most people neglect to admit that this is because of the ceo and i will put a nuance here which is if you're watching this video you are most likely a founder led ceo i would say maybe one percent of my audience you might be like put in as a ceo in a company but i i highly doubt that and so for the context of the people watching this video if you are a founder-led company like you are the ceo and the founder of the company then it is your fault if this happens because here's the thing everyone if you look at all these charts online they're like top three reasons market conditions you know customer segmentation uh management team who makes the decisions of the market that you serve of the management team of the you know new products that you're rolling out that's the ceo and so you can change the market you serve you can change the business strategy you can change the management team what you can't change in a founder-led company is the founder ceo and oftentimes if you are the founder you make for the best ceo and a lot of people don't like to see that and they like to think i need to bring in a professional ceo well there's a lot of evidence to support that that's actually a really terrible idea and so that being said i want to transfer my experience and knowledge to you of what you can do yourself to prevent this from happening in your own company we're gonna break down a couple different things today one this is not lack of effort often because many people like ceos you are often hard driving you try very hard you put all of your effort into something you're often obsessive over it but it's lack of clarity of what success in the role actually looks like and so often people are putting all this effort in all this activity to like learn a new tactic or like get better at marketing or sales or you know become better at customer service and like yes those things are important but being a ceo you have to be the ultimate generalist in your company whilst the company grows everybody else becomes a specialist the ceo has to become more of a generalist and so if you have to be the ultimate generalist in your company what that often means is that you also have to be the example of character in your company because that's how you really progress and that's how you attract talent and that's how you move things forward it's that being said how do you even know what the ideal scene looks like a successful ceo if you've never done it before i think like for me you know not having clarity has always been the number one constraint because like if you tell me which if somebody was like these are the 10 things you need to do and the 10 character traits you need to be a great ceo i would be like i'm [ __ ] i'm in let's go let's do it um but you know i didn't have that luxury and so i hope that what i can bring to you today is at least a peek into that um from my perspective so that being said there's a few people that i want to use as examples here that we've heard of have great ceos and you can say what you want about these people they embody a lot of the traits that we're gonna talk about today uh how would i say this uh it doesn't really matter how you feel about them because the evidence is shown in how they turned around their companies right so steve jobs for example uh he came in to turn around apple they had essentially kicked him out and then he came back in and he did a couple things to turn the company around you know he reduced projects from 350 new projects they were turning uh working on to 10. he found hidden geniuses in the company so actually in terms of rebuilding his leadership team he found people within the company that were quote hidden geniuses and rose them up to become leaders of the company and then he brought in his new co who was tim cook so if you guys didn't know he was actually the ceo prior to being the ceo another example uh would be howard schultz who is one of my idols for sure uh howard again stepped back at starbucks and then stepped back in after being uh just a board member when he saw the company was failing and there was no he talks about this in this book it's really really good it's called pour your heart into it he talks about you know there's no silver bullet there's just a thousand lead bullets and uh it kind of gives me chills to think about because it's just like there he he doesn't contribute the success of turning around to like one main thing it was just a lot of things and so i took the the top ones that he kind of attributed the success to you know they had never done paid advertising so he finally started a paid advertising campaign he required that all the coffee be ground in stores and it would be thrown out after 30 minutes if it was not uh if it was still sitting there for 30 to make sure the taste and the flavor was always on point he replaced all the technology in all the stores to update it he closed 600 low-performing stores and that means i think he laid off gosh it was like 18 it was a lot of people it was like tens of thousands of people and then he did uh institute some management training which required that they closed down all starbuckses and they lost like 30 million in a day for hosting a management training so they could turn around essentially how they manage the properties and so those are both two really great examples of you know successful ceos and i think that what you're going to see is uh and i'll give you some examples woven in of the traits that they both embody and other really successful ceos embody that allow them to actually be successful ceos because anyone can be a ceo does not mean you are successful or good at your job i really like this quote and i kind of want to kick it off with this which is the only thing that prepares you for running a company is running a company uh and this is from ben horowitz he has a book called the hard thing about hard things which i love that book i find this to be very true because when i read it i was in a spot i want to say in like 2019 when i was feeling really like just kicked like i felt like the [ __ ] had gotten kicked out of me because i had to do a layoff and i felt really bad about myself and i felt like i was a terrible ceo and i was reading anything and everything to feel to help my help me improve right and it turned out that the best thing i could do to improve was to stop uh kicking the [ __ ] out of myself uh so that being said it's taken me years to learn and i'm not even close i don't claim to be an expert like i just want to say like this is what i've observed in others and what i've observed in different materials that i've read it's not like i'm saying i'm the epitome of the end i'll be all i am anything but perfect and so really what i want to answer uh question wise in terms of like becoming a successful ceo is like you know what do ceos do because that's also that's probably the first question and then how do you become better how do you acquire those trades so that your team can also improve because you are always the limiting factor of your team you know like the best people in the world cheryl sandberg isn't going to work for some you know dude who's like you know disintegrous not loyal not focused got five other side gigs like she's not gonna come work for that guy and so if you really want to give your company a chance you have to become the kind of person who is worthy of that chance and worthy of those people and worthy of acquiring that talent and so first off when you ask yourself what am i actually supposed to be doing as a ceo um it's a very vague answer to that question but what i like to say is you have to be whatever the business demands of you and so if you look at like if i were to make a job description for every ceo in every portfolio company we had it would be different for every person and so that's why i think it's much more useful to focus on traits rather than what you do because it's much about more about who you are not what you do every ceo has a different job description they have a different role they play a different part in the company just based on their innate strengths and weaknesses and so in short whatever the business really demands you to be and oftentimes if you're founder-led you create the demands that the business demands of you and so you are choosing what kind of ceo you are and so you know really starting off you are a jack of all trades i think that often people feel like you know in the beginning you're doing a couple jobs and as you continue to rise up in the company and the company continues to grow you really have to become a generalist and become the jack of all trades in your company and the ultimate jack of all trades right you're a master coach you're a salesman you're a custodian you're a marketer you're a vp of customer success you're a billing manager an hr manager and a therapist right and so it feels like that i would say for most people that are watching this you probably feel this way then you're probably doing your job correctly because the the what we don't always get as a luxury is focus we often have to be able to um you know project our attention over a lot of things and know enough about something to make sure that we can get the right person in place for that role and if we don't know what a vp of customer success looks like or a salesman looks like or a billing manager looks like then how can we hire for those roles and so we have to know enough to be dangerous to build a really great team now the second piece is you're definitely a firefighter things are going to happen you have upset customers you've got employees that quit you've got clients that are upset you've got workplace gossip you've got employees that leave and steal your clients you've got lead flow slowing down like oh [ __ ] what just happened you've got customer success is that max capacity they can't take any more people on you've got a competitor that makes ads about you you've got trademark violation you've got a [ __ ] angry wife at home and so if it feels like you're constantly fighting fires again you are the chief firefighter like there's nobody else that's going to do it but you and so this is your job as the ceo and you are i want to say is chief firefighter it's also chief problem solver like you are here to solve problems and so there's nobody better to solve problems in the company especially when they are large and affect the entire company rather than you it's not something that you want to outsource and then lastly the best ceos of all time know that they are also an inspiration right what is an inspiration calm under pressure dependable and reliable to a fault almost physically and mentally healthy a courageous risk taker someone who has extreme empathy they live and die by their values and they are mission driven and so if you look at people that are considered some of the most iconic ceos of all time you'll notice that they are they have those other two like their firefighters and their jacks of all trades but more importantly they are an inspiration and i don't think that you can truly step into a leadership role until you become an inspiration and so if you want to know what does it look like to be an inspiration i mean this is some of what i would describe but i would just ask yourself like who inspires you and what traits do they embody it's probably not a bad place to start so what i want to do is instead of focusing on the outcome needed uh from your business what we want to focus on is acquiring the skills to actually create it and i think that often we're thinking like what course do i need to buy you know what mentor do i need to get what do i need to do financial modeling marketing leads all these things in order to get the outcome of my business being a million or 100 million or billion or whatever dollar company but instead we want to think about you know really acquiring the skills to create that rather than the outcome that we're looking for and i think that also makes it much more enjoyable and so like for myself i'll give you kind of how i think about this right like i don't want to hit a billion dollars because i want more money like money loses its utility at some point money does not solve all your problems money does not make you happy money only amplifies more of what you already are but instead i want to hit a billion dollars simply because i would like to meet the layla that can create that like what skills does she have what character traits does she embody what kind of person is she and said so instead of focusing on how much money i can make i focus on what skills must i acquire to become someone who can create that much value in the world and i know it's not what i am today because guess what if i were that person today i would already have it and so i asked myself what skills would that layla have what skills would your future self have right like if you want your company to get to a million or 10 million or 50 million or 100 million or a billion like what skills does that future self have i think it's a really important question to continue to ask yourself and the truth is you cannot have a billion dollar business without being a billion dollar ceo you can't have a million dollar business without being a million dollar ceo and it's at some point very quickly between 1 and 10 million you will very quickly realize that it is not your skill tactical skill of marketing or sales or customer success that's going to limit you is who you are as a person and subsequently until you're a billion dollar ceo you won't have a billion dollar team until you have a million dollar ceo you won't have a million dollar team if you want a 10 million dollar company you must first be a 10 million ceo and then you will have a 10 million dollar team so you are always going to be a couple steps ahead because the thing is if you are not you are not able to attract the right people to build that with you and so whether or not you reach this is actually based on your accumulation of traits and skills which is what i want to focus on today it is not about what course am i going to take and like do i understand how to get more leads and like let's get a better closer framework in here and like i got a one more one liner for you like all that stuff like isaac you can [ __ ] hire people to do that but those talented people won't work for you unless you are the kind of person worthy of working for top talent doesn't work for somebody who's a mediocre ceo and like this is something that i have to hammer into my own self because i have to constantly remind myself like the best talent won't work for me if i'm not my best version of myself and like does that put pressure on me honestly no because i want to be the best version of myself and i think a little bit of pressure is a good thing putting pressure on ourselves to be better right and having people around us that are the the people below you in the org chart if they make you want to move up right then you have the right people and so i want to preface this with this is an exercise that i'm going to take you guys through that i have done with multiple teams and probably i want to say now i've done it with 900 different ceos um and i have derived this from john wooden okay so i basically took a concept that he had in his book and i made it into an exercise i've done this with myself my team and you know almost a thousand ceos at this point and they all love it and i think it provides a ton of clarity into what skills and traits do you need to acquire to become that kind of ceo and so if you don't know who john wooden is he won 10 ncaa national championships in a 12-year period as head coach of ucla no other team has won more than four in a row and so he is known as like the greatest basketball coach of all time and he's gone down as uh you know one of the best coaches and players to ever be there he's wrote a book on leadership and i find it it's a great book i guess if you're in sports i don't know because i've not um i don't have time experience in sports but it is one for one relevant for business and the reason for that is if you think about it as the ceo you are the coach of the team you are the head coach you are essentially john wooden and everybody else are the players on the court and the thing is i like to think of it like this every team needs a coach every team needs a head coach and for those of you who are still really intricately involved in your business and have trouble letting go and you're like i don't know if i have time to focus on like becoming a better ceo i'm doing all these jobs right well what if john got on the court with his team you know what happens then there's no [ __ ] coach to coach the team while they're playing the game and so that was a really big epiphany for me as he talks about like the coach doesn't get on the court the coach's job is to work through the players the coach's job is to prep the players to reflect with the players to coach the players but the coach doesn't get on the court and so you don't go do their jobs you work with them and through them you get the job done i think that's a really good mental frame that he shared in his book but the main takeaway from his book is he talks about the pyramid of success okay and success as he defines it is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction knowing you made the effort to do your best and become the best that you are capable of being and so he breaks down the traits right that he believes people must embody to become ultimately competitively great and at acquisition.com this is actually why our third tenet is competitive greatness because i this pyramid so completely embodies what is necessary to make it to the top and so when i think of like billion dollar layla i look at this pyramid and it's just this on steroids and so i want to break down what each of these traits means because this will help you not only better yourself right by ranking yourself on each of these traits but then also you can have your team do this exercise and they can rank themselves so we're going to start at the bottom there's really the two cornerstones of success okay industriousness and enthusiasm industriousness what is industriousness okay many consider work to be like going through the motions you're putting in the time you're enduring boredom that's essentially what you're doing like you're doing [ __ ] to pass the time work and industriousness are not one and the same working early working late the kind of work that requires you to be fully engaged focused and in complete absorption many would call this flow that is industriousness a lot of modern day work tends to lack effort a lot of people tend to check things off the list but the question is to what extent did you do the thing it's not did you do the thing it's how well did you do the thing the quality of work right and to have quality work it requires engagement focus and complete absorption and so when i'm thinking about hiring people and i'm also thinking about myself i'm asking myself like how industrious am i being am i fully absorbed in my work am i in flow and the people that i hire are they in that or are they just checking boxes and so actually using these two cornerstones these are two of the first things i think of when i'm looking at a portfolio ceo when we're taking on a company i'm thinking are they industrious and are they enthusiastic and so in terms of industriousness what i would love for you guys to do is just on your phone or on the side of your computer is like rate yourself on one to ten one is like you know zero basically like you have no industriousness and ten is like absolute industriousness like you could not be more fully absorbed in your work now going with that is enthusiasm because we've all worked for somebody who works really [ __ ] hard but they are kind of an [ __ ] and not fun to be around right like they're completely absorbed in their work but like they're very difficult to be around and the thing that john talks about is that drudgery does not breed champions if you have a workplace that's just all [ __ ] work and hustle and nothing else oftentimes people burn burn out right they feel burnt out because there's not the fun it's not that you need to work less it's that you have a lack of enthusiasm right and without enthusiasm for your own work you don't inspire anybody else to be enthusiastic about their work so it really starts with you and what we know is that work without fun creates drudgery feels like you're just piling [ __ ] through the day you're just like what do you call it i'm just funneling [ __ ] all day right rather than you know on a mission like making progress like doing good work and the thing is is that if you want your team to exemplify these principles you first must to an extent where it would be unreasonable not to and guys i can tell you that personally i am very industrious i was not naturally enthusiastic and actually making content has forced me to realize that because i watched my videos from like six and 12 months ago and i'm like good god you know like i wouldn't watch this like the content's good but like it just seems way too serious and not there's not enough enthusiasm and i think that was because i was judging myself but that's the thing is that a lot of times people are really industrious and because they have so much judgment on themselves for the quality of work and like being perfect like all this [ __ ] they have zero enthusiasm on the other side and the thing is like if you took yourself a little less seriously and you had a little more fun with it you would actually probably be more productive and so would your team and so again i would say rate yourself on a scale of one to ten in terms of enthusiasm now these are the two cornerstones like without enthusiasm and industriousness you can't really build the one the middle in between okay and the middle is really friendship loyalty and cooperation if you cannot create and foster positive interactions with your team the pyramid will crumble and this is where people who start a business can't get past a couple million a year is that they know how to be a champion the champion right in their minds like they are a high level individual contributor they can put out a lot of work they can be excited about their work but the moment that you introduce other people into the mix they don't know how to do anything they don't know how to get stuff done through other people they don't know how to sacrifice for others they don't know how to lead they don't have to work with others and that by the nature of a founder-led corporation or sorry company a lot of times people come in they've never had a job they've never worked with others they've always been on their own they've always had a side hustle some gig and so you don't know how to work toward a common goal with other people and because of that you wonder why you're stuck where you are and it's because of this it's just like you've never had practice you've literally never had a job or like you've never had a company with more than a couple of people and so once you have to once it's required um that's when you see that you know things start to crack and so first i wanted to find friendship okay friendship it's one that people ask of frequently they say should i be friends with my employees should we have friendships on this team and what i want to explain is that you want to aim for respect and camaraderie okay camaraderie is the spirit of good will between teammates you are comrades in arms which means think of how much you'll give to someone when you're asked to do something by someone that you respect and share camaraderie with so like if you're going into battle with someone every day and you have good spirits between that teammate and yourself that is friendship friendship doesn't mean we go in to the bar together and drink together and i don't know gossip about other people together friendship is when you can walk into war together and so when i think about being friends with people on my team when i think about that i think about can i go to war with this person is this the person i want on my team if we're going to battle and guys i've told you like this is how me and alex talk about in terms of marriage as well it's like would i go to war with this person well the same goes for your team so rate yourself on a scale of one to ten are you comrades in arms with people on your team is that how you view friendship or are you just drinking are you just partying with them or are you nothing do you have no respect do you have no camaraderie there's nothing wrong with that but if you don't accurately assess where you're at currently there's no way you're going to improve next we have loyalty okay loyalty comes from when you show those you lead your concerns for their interest and welfare beyond what they can do for you loyalty will not be gained unless first given okay so what does that mean if i do not show interest for my teammates despite what is going on at work despite maybe they're not i mean not seeing results yet then i will never get loyalty from them the same goes for trust right if i don't extend trust to my teammates i don't give them things to show them that i believe them to be trustworthy they don't even have the opportunity to show me that they're trustworthy if i don't show concern for people beyond what they can do for me in a transactional way then why would they show concern for the company beyond a transactional way they wouldn't and so this goes for like you know attending to like understanding what's going on outside of work with people understanding what does life at home look like you know how was your vacation how's your husband doing how's that move you're doing you know it's thinking about them as a human not just a tool to get what you want and once you can see people as true humans for who they are and you can see what's really best for them despite what's best for the company that is when you will get loyalty from your teammates when you show that your concern for them as a person over over rides your concern for how they do at the work then you will get loyalty that you would not usualize and so rate yourself on a scale of one to ten loyalty do you give it to your teammates do you show concern for them outside of work and then lastly completing the bottom layer of the pyramid there's cooperation which is what is right not who is right so what this means to be cooperative right is to be able to listen evaluate and breast embrace others thoughts and concerns openly and willingly and honestly with enthusiasm and it's searching for the best answer so that we can move the business forward together rather than being concerned about defending my own point and this is why you see a lot of really strong leaders will accept blame and give credit right you guys might see this with alex you will notice that alex publicly gives me tons of credit and then he takes blame he's like oh i [ __ ] up so much he's like but layla is the real reason this business grows that's what a true leader does and that's what i do with my team right like the people who report to me i'm like dude they do everything like i don't look at me and that's something i've had to teach myself to do right because and i do think it comes a little bit more naturally to me because i don't i typically think less of myself um more naturally than i think more of myself but it's really just being considered with like what is right for the company despite how it feels to my ego what happens often in companies and the reason they can't grow is that the leader believes they are always right the leader is closed off to the opinions of their team the leader constantly thinks well i'm the smartest person i'm better than my team they don't take the team's thoughts into consideration here's the thing you can have somebody who's act like this is this is true you can have people who are inexperienced and they might have less context of the business and they can still have a [ __ ] good idea and so you always want to be open to what people have to say some of the best ideas that i've ever had have come from my front line from people who had you know being paid 13 an hour and if you look at some of the best companies so theirs starbucks a barista created the frappuccino it wasn't like head of product and design it was like a [ __ ] barista after work one day created the frappuccino and so that's why cooperation is so important i think that cooperation leads to innovation more than anything and so rate yourself on a scale of one to ten cooperation now if we move to the second level of the pyramid this is probably my favorite one the second tier is self-control alertness initiative and intentness first one self-control this is where so many ceos get stuck and you see the best ceos have a high level of self-control control is of self is essential for consistency in performance and your team wants consistency because the moment you're not consistent it means that you're unpredictable and humans don't like unpredictability they want you to be the ultimate source of consistency in the company because if there's consistency and predictability then people feel safe a true leader and competitor is one who's mastered consistent high performance the difference between a okay sales person and a master sales person is only consistency the okay salesperson goes up and down up and down weeks the master sales person sells the same number every week maybe by a difference of one or two because they've mastered self-control and self-control is control of your emotions decisions and standards and so as the leader of the company what you see is that many when they first start off in business and they continue to rise and grow is they get to this point where it's like these new conditions around them throw them off they become reactive they become emotional they make decisions based on their emotions based on the fact that they don't want to feel anxious they don't want to feel out of control and that's what prohibits the company from growing and guys the reason i hammer home on this one is this is the reason that so many so many companies we see we don't take on because the leader lacks self-control i get on with them and i'm like this person is incredibly emotionally reactive and i'm not a [ __ ] therapist so like i'm not gonna i can't help with that the only thing i can do is show them what it actually looks like and so in order and to master your company and master your team and have a team of people who have this and embody this you must first and a lot of people cannot bear to work for somebody who goes like this all the time and so i can tell you that the reason that that happens is most the time when you're growing a business you think it should look one way and instead it doesn't you think it shouldn't have problems and it should all be certain rainbows and it isn't it's like anything else in life there are tons of things going wrong all the time and that's okay that's to be expected and i think that accepting that and not letting that wave you as a person is one of the keys to having that self-control and so what you have to remember is there is always an opposing force ready willing and motivated to destroy your [ __ ] business and the difference between those who succeed and fail is how you respond there's no less people who are successful have no less problems than you they just respond differently to those problems than those who fail so what i want you to do is rate yourself on a scale of one to ten in terms of self-control are you reactive are you constantly you know letting your emotions guide you or are you in control right are you choosing to respond despite how you feel next is alertness right what is alertness alertness is mental quickness which is the ability to be constantly observing learning and absorbing what's going on around you highly alert people course correct quickly if you observe the details and the patterns you can soon predict outcomes because if you can constantly observe everything that's going on around you you can see that the patterns and then the next time it happens you see the patterns again and you can course correct before the problem even occurs and that being said i think a lot of people are a little too aloof of what's going on their company they're so focused on like i need more leads i need to be more external i need to make some more content that they're not paying attention what's happening inside the company and because of that they don't course quite quickly and things continue to pile up and pile up and pile up until one day it becomes a huge thing and implodes so rate yourself on a scale of one to ten alertness now the next is initiative okay this one's an interesting one a team that will not risk mistakes will never outscore the opponent i really loved when john wooden talked about this because that really hit home for me which is you want a team that can initiate quickly but not carelessly but you do want a team that makes mistakes mistakes of commission versus omission what does that mean if you don't encourage your team to make mistakes they will also never take initiative and if you never take initiative you will never outscore the opponent and so what you want to encourage is that hey if you're going to make mistakes in this company and if you're going to make mistakes as the ceo of this company better be mistakes through action rather than omission omission is when you decide to do nothing at all those are the worst mistakes because you don't learn anything from those all you learn is you shouldn't have sat on your [ __ ] ass but if you take action you gather more data you move yourself forward even if you know it's not 100 in the right direction or it's not where you want to be at least it's getting you closer to your goal at least you're taking action despite maybe risk right and so you as a ceo if you can tell yourself that it's okay to make mistakes if you can show your team hey i make mistakes and it's [ __ ] okay then your team will do the same and that means your company will consistently be on the cutting edge of innovation because people feel safe to fail and that's one of the the hardest things about running company is that many say i want you to innovate i want you to try new things i want you to think outside the box but then they say oh wait but don't lose money oh wait but don't fail the thing is you have to accept if you want to win you also must fail if you want to win big you are going to fail big not just you but your team so that being said go ahead and rate yourself on a scale of one to ten initiative okay on to intenseness right what is intense intentness is the resolve to stay the course over the long term despite short-term pitfalls and failure this is what keeps you in the game when others say the game is over determination diligence fortitude persistence all different words for intentness and the team is always going to look to you as the ceo to determine if they stayed the course of call of the day i can give you a really good example of this covet hit i owned a company called gym launch what is the entire team looking at from me and alex they're looking at us to say are we closing this [ __ ] business are we going forward and alex and i said we're [ __ ] going forward we are persistent we have fortitude we have persistence and so the entire team rallied behind it despite the fact that we were losing in the short term when kobe hit despite the fact it was a [ __ ] bloodbath our team looked to us and we said we don't [ __ ] give up here like if anything every company will fail around us and we will be the one company left standing and then we will eat up the whole market that's kind of happened so again rate yourself on a scale of one to ten with intentness now we're almost uh to the top of the pyramid we're at the heart the heart of the pyramid is condition skill and team spirit so you see where that sits the heart condition what is condition when it comes to like being a ceo like what would you consider condition to be condition is the mental and moral conditioning is the foundation of your efforts which is really saying like are you mentally and morally strong because when you're mentally or morally weak you hurt your team what does that mean well i would say morally do you have strong ethics do you have strong values do you abide by the values that you tell your team where you see a lot of people start to crack the team gets bigger the company gets bigger suddenly they start to steer away from their values suddenly they're too good for their values suddenly they don't need to embody their values the team can embody those values but you are the most potent source of this in your whole team and if you are not at the utmost condition then nobody else will because everything from you is just diluted down and then second to that is are you mentally conditioned you know are you what are you saying to yourself in your head because half the time that's all it is it's that you're telling yourself shitty stories you're talking shitty stories about yourself about your team about the people around you about your customers the thing is if you're telling yourself those stories what do you think your team is telling themselves so you have to be able to look at yourself and really say am i abiding by my values and am i doing my best to guard myself mentally and to take care of myself mentally and to show up in a good state every day and a good state doesn't mean you feel good a good state means you behave good rate yourself on a scale of one to ten conditioning skill i love to define skill because skill is knowing what the [ __ ] you're doing it's not knowing half your job it's not only three quarters of your job but it's doing all of your job and the thing is is that we are in if you're watching this most likely small business not corporate america and so what that means is that you don't have room to know how to only do half your job this goes for you as the ceo it also goes for your teammates because if you're busy doing 10 of everyone's job or half of somebody's job then that what that means is you're not doing 50 of your own job and so skill defined in business is knowing how to do a hundred percent of your job and so what you want to do is seek to continuously master each skill required rinse and repeat and often the skill that's required to be a ceo is the skill of knowing where you're deficient in character and a lot of the times you know you're watching this video and hopefully this is like enlightening you more but a lot of times people think oh i don't know how to build this landing page i don't know how to do that you need the skill of finding someone who is good at doing that and then not even the skill of finding someone the skill of attracting somebody who is like world-class and doing the thing rather than oh i need to go near learn how to do the thing it's no you need to be so good that you attract world-class talent that knows how to do the thing that is skill and yes in owning a business there are a lot of skills to master which is why it also comes with exponential upside because that's typically the question i get it's like well leila there's so much i need to know here yes there's a ton that you need to know that's why it takes time that's why one course or one video or one hour a week of studying is not going to get you there it's gonna take years of compounded learning and practice and failing and winning rate yourself on a scale of one to ten skill lastly in the heart of the pyramid we have team spirit and i want to say that around i want to say 20 to 30 million this is where people always crack which you think you have teamwork until you have a very large team teamwork is when we all work together lots of companies can get 20 or 30 million of teamwork but team spirit is the willingness to sacrifice personal interest or glory for the welfare of all and so what does that mean that means putting your self-interest behind the company that means the eagerness to sacrifice for the team not just the willingness but the eagerness to do so to put the goals of the organization above your own goals and this is why when a company gets to a certain point many people don't get promoted they get fired why because they put their own self-interest above that of the team and you see this with ceos in terms of how they start to act you hit 20 million you hit [ __ ] you hit 10 million you're like i'm gonna take it easy i don't need to work as much i don't need to be the best example like i've got other people do things i don't need to show up to these meetings anymore right like someone else is relating them now i don't need to watch i can be on my phone the whole time you start to get this ego about yourself and what it does it erodes team spirit on the team because the ultimate teammate of anybody needs to be the ceo which means that you must be eager to sacrifice for your team that being said rate yourself on a scale of one to ten team spirit and now we got to the top of the pyramid and here's what i want to give uh as like a preface to the top of the pyramid the top of the pyramid uh is earned meaning if you have successfully executed the other three layers these will naturally come to you and when someone says he's got it i think it's these three elements combined when someone says he just got the it factor he's got it i really think it's this and you can't have this unless you've done all the [ __ ] work to get here what is it it is poised being true to oneself not getting rattled thrown off or unbalanced despite circumstances or situations leaders that lack poise panic under pressure the best leaders hold fast to their beliefs and act in accordance with those beliefs and those values despite how bad or good the situation appears to be poise comes from experience poise comes from knowing these bad things can happen and you're not gonna die and often in the beginning you just don't know you think the whole business is gonna crumble every other day and less and less over time and then one day you realize it's all in your head and that if it did crumble so what start something else the question really becomes to ask yourself if you have poise is can you meet triumph and disaster and treat the two the same i get chills when i read that question because i think a lot of people are humbled by disaster but they they lose that when they have triumphs when they have wins and there's nothing that beats success like success nothing fails like success because once you have success you think you've done it you're like i'm here and if you haven't been smacked in the face at least one time then you assume that you're not losing it and often the assumption of never regressing from success is actually what creates it and being unwavering when everyone says that you will win and unwavering when everyone says you will lose so it's really being unaffected by the opinions of others and outside circumstances it's really having a strong sense of resolve within yourself being proud of the person you are rate yourself on a scale of one to ten confidence i think we could all agree that this is also earned what is confidence though confidence is the knowledge that your preparation is complete and that you have done all the things to ready yourself for the competition in whatever form you have to earn the right to be confident through preparation and so if i'm making a speech i'm confident in my speech because i've prepared not because i think i'm the [ __ ] but because i've put in the hours and putting the work if i'm taking on a company and they're like how are you going to help our company grow i can confidently tell them because i've done it 50 other times you have to earn the right to be confident rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 confidence and now we are almost done at the top of the pyramid which is competitive greatness okay what is competitive greatness competitive greatness means you have a love for the journey for the person it presents for you with the opportunity to become remember i said it's not about making a billion dollars it's about who is layla that can make a billion dollars it's a love for the battle that tests you to prove yourself a worthy opponent and the hard struggle that is welcomed never feared because you know it's how you grow so when when i am hiring for somebody on our team and when i'm looking for somebody to join our portfolio this is what i look for i don't look for somebody that's like i'd be happy if we sold for you know 20 million don't give a [ __ ] are you competitively great because once you get a certain amount of money you don't need to do this [ __ ] anymore and the only people that are able to make enormously large companies are those who have this who understand it's not about the outcome it's about who you become in the process when you arrive here you're not just going to bring out the best in yourself but in your team you cannot attract people who are competitively great and love the process until you are one of them so rate yourself on a scale of one to ten competitive greatness i hope this practice was useful for you you know i know it was a little longer of videos that i've made but honestly walking people through this has really helped a lot of ceos i've seen develop over the years because it does two things it adds clarity and direction which is here's where i'm not good so if you look now at where you've rated yourself it's like where are the things i need to improve and make a little sticky note of the top one or top three things and keep it on your desk and it's like now every day you can look at that and say these are the things i need to work on to become a better ceo this is how i become successful it's it's in reminding yourself daily of the kind of person you want to be in order to be a truly great ceo you really have to just become the best version of yourself so that being said if this was useful for you i'd say share it with your team have them go through this exercise if you have new leaders who are coming in share this exercise with them because here's the thing is that this pyramid is not just for ceos it's for teammates it's for players it's for people on your team so i hope it's of use to you uh have a great you know tuesday wednesday whatever day it is that you're watching this um and let me know what you think in the 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