Anyhow, thanks for tuning in for episode 317. Today's episode is going to be about staying on top, sticking to the basics, keeping the flywheel moving, and remember that everything rises and falls on leadership. Welcome back, everybody, to Beyond the Tool Belt. I'm your host, Tykov Backer. And we've had some incredible guests on the show so far this year, but today I decided to pump the brakes on that and go solo and speak directly to you guys. Although we do plan on having a lot more guests on the show this year. We're gonna have leaders, builders, people who are in the trenches every single day, shoulder to shoulder with their teams. But today I wanted to pause on the interviews and talk directly to you guys. And thank you. Thank you for hanging in there for those of you that have stuck around. Um, we are making some changes to the studio. And we got the creative juices flowing again. We got a new little setup, we got some new toys, some new audio equipment, some new video equipment, and and uh we're dabbling. So thank you for traveling on this journey with us. Uh, but but thank you. Thank you for uh hanging in there with us. Um, and today we're gonna talk about leadership and and the flywheel and Jim Collins book a little bit, and uh might as well dive right into it now that we have Autio. Let me get a sip. Let me take a sip. Some go-go go go go go juice here before we start diving into it. And that's that's kind of where we come up with the the live raw and uncut because shit like that happens. You know what? I'll keep my water up here with me. Screw it. Um so this this episode is going to be about uh being at your best when it matters most, which is can you turn my mic up a little bit? Okay, yeah. Turn turn the turner up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A little more, a little more, a little more. There you go. Cool. I just want to be able to hear myself talk as well. Because I'm D. Yeah, I'm Dif. Can you hear me now? Oh, that's a lot better. Thank you, buddy. Yeah, because I could tell like when I was pulling away a little bit there. All right, I think we're ready. If not, we're we're going for it anyhow. Because I don't know if we're ever gonna be ready, ready. I just gotta be willing, right? So, anyhow, um this episode is gonna be about, you know, being at your best when it matters most, not just during the hard times, and not just when, you know, fighting through, you know, self-doubt, low self-esteem, or even uh imposture syndrome, but also when things are good, right? When momentum is there. And if you've been in business for any amount of time, you should know what momentum is. Okay. Um, it's it's it's tough to get, uh, but once you get it, um you become kind of complacent, I think, at times. So I want to talk about being your best, especially when when when times are things are good, right? When opportunity is knocking. And and when, if you're honest, um you've been shit. It what happened, what has happened to me is where I become uh a little asleep at the wheel is what I call it. Janna hates when I say that because she knows that um I eat, breathe, and shit, this thing. I was trying to come up with a better word. I was gonna say defecate, but I don't know, that might have sounded a little too weird, this thing. So, so let's get into this. All right, so the real cost of of um being a leader, you know, when when I'm off. Okay. And so here's something that I think we don't always like to admit as leaders, um, is when we're off. You know, I I know I don't like to admit it. I don't like people to know that I'm off a little bit, but I'm sure I wear my emotions right on my sleeve. Um, but anyhow, it just seems like when I'm off, everything is off. Yeah, it's self-doubt starts to creep in. Um, when we start questioning ourselves, um, when confidence dips, and for me, imposter syndrome gets loud, right? It's just like banging on the door, and it's kind of all I can hear and low self-esteem. And our team feels it. Okay. Our team feels it, momentum slows, decisions get delayed. And I'm speaking from my experience here. Um, maybe there's some other hardcore badass mofos out there that don't experience these things, but I know in most of the circles that I run in of you know, leaders and entrepreneurs and business owners and managers and sales managers and high-performing people have experienced the same exact identical things that I'm describing here, right? When my vision gets cloudy and and it doesn't stop, the shit doesn't stop at work, right? It it's you know starts to spill into my home life. Um, it starts to affect my health, it starts to affect my energy. Now I'm not gonna camp out here and talk about all the negative stuff, right? The low points and all those things. We we all know what what that feels like. Doesn't matter. We all know what that is, who you are, doesn't matter where what your position is. Um we've all been there, I guarantee you. But but what I do know and want to acknowledge, um it's important, right? Most companies don't stall because of of market conditions. They stall because the leadership stalls. And and that doesn't, that shouldn't just ride on an individual's shoulders. It it has it has to fall on individual, individuals, right? But but somebody's got to be the the energy, the force behind, and in in hopes that when that that person at the top is is faltering, that his co-leaders can help pick up the slack and keep the momentum going. And that's a tough thing to do. I mean, that is really a hard place to get a business where you know you're not a solopreneur, you're not, you know, in this just for yourself. But when you are an entrepreneur and there's many other people that are in your organization, um, hopefully there's somebody or someone that you can lean on. Um so when when leadership stalls out, it's because um it's usually an outside um thing, source. Um it's not all it doesn't always have to do with with work-related stuff either. A lot of times it has to do with things at home. Unfortunately, I have a very good home life. So, but anyhow, the same also works. It's it's true in reverse, too. It's like waking up that wheel, waking up the flywheel. And sometimes the danger isn't that things are going badly, okay? Sometimes the danger is um when things are going fine. Okay, revenue is steady, the team is functioning, uh, fires are managed, right? And before you know it, opportunity starts to slip by. We become complacent. You look up and you're like, how did I miss that? How you know, or or how did we lose the momentum? And if you've been in business for a while, you know exactly, exactly what I'm talking about. And if you're just starting out in business, um, you're gonna want to listen to this too, because we're gonna talk about the basics here. And if you don't leave the basics, you don't have to go back to them. Um, you know, but you start to question yourself, like, so when did I, when did I stop being so intentional? Um, you know, that's not failure when when things like that happen. It's called uh drift, right? So when you start to drift, and drift is is what happens when when we stop doing the basics, essentially. Okay. Um, I like to call it the flywheel, staying on top of stuff. And Jim Collins talks about um this idea of the flywheel, and I I love it. I absolutely freaking love it. There's a little worksheet too that comes with this book, and I printed it out and I put it in a nice little binder and I worked through it. I want to say price sometime, I don't know, like about a year and a half ago. I picked it back up and I don't think I realized that there was a worksheet with it, but I did, I actually ended up doing the worksheet last week. So success isn't just just one breakthrough either, you know, and and neither does the the flywheel just doesn't like slow down overnight either. Um and it it's not because of one singular decision or or massive win that you can either lose or gain momentum. Um it's it's consistency, right? I'm consistent, consistently not paying attention, or I'm consistently paying attention and I'm on top of my game, which requires discipline and action over time, um, push after push, right? Decision after decision, standard after standard, so on and so forth. And here's the key line that that I want you to remember is that if if you never leave the basics, okay, you don't ever have to go back to them. And if you're just starting out in business, okay, essentially everything that you're doing right now, all that chuck and jive, all that hustle, all that grind, okay, within that you're creating basics, whether it's basic necessities, whether it's um basic systems, basic routines, basic marketing, um, whatever, whatever the things you are, remember those things because a lot of that stuff, you know, and and for argument's sake, a lot of people are like, well, what got us here won't won't get us where we want to go. Yes, I I agree to a certain extent, but there are some basic, some basic necessities that you must not drift away from. And a lot of that's it's discipline, it's accountability, it's setting standards, the SOPs, the KPIs, the core values. You cannot, those are the basic necessities of any organization. It's the core foundation, okay? And and staying on top of things, and I've gotten myself in trouble on this, it isn't about chasing the next shiny thing. I've done that, been there, did that. It's about doubling down on what works, what already works, what what you already know that works, right? Clear vision, the right people, simple scorecards, uh, daily execution, relentless follow-up, follow up, follow up, follow up. That's the flywheel. That's the flywheel effect. And when leaders, okay, is are clear and and focused and decisive, the the flywheel spins faster. I'm experiencing it as we're as we're coming into the new year. I sense it, I feel it. We we potentially may end up doubling our book of business this year. Like I feel it, you know, and everything hinges, everything hinges on momentum. And a lot of that, most all of it comes from the leadership, right? And and let me say this just plainly, right? Everything hinges on the leadership. And I know that more now today. Unfortunately, it's taken me a few decades to to really, really, really define my role and how my my role affects everything and everyone, especially, especially when it comes to momentum. Okay. Your clarity sets the ceiling. Okay. Your decisiveness sets the pace, your energy sets the culture. I've experienced I experienced that on a day-to-day basis. Um, and and your job as a leader is not to have all the answers. And that's the one thing I had to learn the hard truth that I don't have to have all the answers. I don't have to be the smartest guy in a room. And quite frankly, today where I'm at in the season that I'm in, I don't want to be the smartest guy in the room. I don't want to have all the answers. And if if you think that you are the guy that has all the answers, and if you think that you are the smartest person within your organization, you got a long road ahead of you, man. You have a long road. Because there's other basic skills that you need to focus on, right? And see, this is the thing about leadership. Leadership isn't a badge, it isn't a name tag, it's not an entitlement. Leadership is like an action word, it's a noun, it's a verb. Okay. It means putting yourself last and everyone else before you. It is, it means coaching, it means mentoring. It means not taking the credit for things. It means not making no sales, but giving your team the leads. And I'm just using that as an example for for those of you that might be out there listening, that might be managing sales teams or organizations. And and I'm sure you can identify those shortcomings and character defects that I'm talking about. You only to thy own self be true. So working on having a clear vision, learning how to articulate that vision, right? Making making decisions quickly and decisively. These are all skills that you need to work on. And sometimes you got to put yourself in a quiet space to be able to do these things. And you have to be okay with being by yourself as a good leader. That's a lonely place, but you better at times, but you better be okay with you, and you better get right with yourself, and you better be okay with making bad decisions and learning from them and allowing other people to make bad decisions too. Um, because that's the only way, at least for me. Anyhow, set set meaningful goals, okay? Um, and then reaching them together, reaching them together as a team, not alone. Okay. Not saying that there isn't some alone time because I don't want to contradict what I just said, but but allowing other people to participate in this, giving them a say in it, giving them value, giving them the ownership. Okay. So then they take more pride in it. They they'll take, trust me, I've watched it. So um it it's not it's not um from the top down, okay, because I've I've led that way from the top down. It should be more of a shoulder-to-shoulder with our teams. And and people don't need a perfect leader, trust me. Okay. What they need is a present leader. And I've experienced that too, where I wasn't so present at times, you know. Um, and but again, it's something I had to go through. And unfortunately, we've built that trust bank up. Okay. And that's the dichotomy. Um, you know, the trust bank is is is something that takes time to build up. It's like having a deposit, you know, a savings account that you deposit, and and then every now and then you can take a withdrawal from it. Okay. And and it's it's okay. It's not going to put a huge dent into your savings account, and and people are more apt to help you find a solution, help you through that situation. But it's when you continue to keep making those withdrawals and and breaking those promises and not showing up and not being present. That's when that's when you deplete the trust bank. And um, I know for a fact that it takes a long time to build trust in any any relationship, you know, especially when it comes to business and and team members and and family members and and things like that. And I touched on the the dichotomy of that is is is picking and choosing your battles as well, you know, and not just freaking out, you know, it's it's maintaining composure because those moments that you do freak out and you get loud and you have to scold somebody, if you continuously do that all the time, then it just starts to fall on deaf, deaf ears. Okay. But if there's a time where you have a moment and you have to scold somebody, um, or or you know, not necessarily, but when you speak, they're going to listen. But you have to sift through the shit sometimes and you have to learn how to pick and choose your battles much wiser. Okay. It's almost like a game of chest a lot of days. I was talking to somebody about that the other day. But the biggest thing is in in any of that is to be present. And then all of those other things that I talked about are skills that can be worked on daily, daily. Practice, you know, practice these these things. So, you know, and today, today, you know, being being at your best when it matters most, what what that means to me is is is refusing to live in the negative, right? It's taking inventory of what's going right, okay, re-engaging with the basics, and choosing to lead with intention again, okay, with purpose. It means waking up the flywheel. Okay. It means pushing, right? It means pushing the flywheel today, even when things are already moving, okay, because momentum is easier to maintain than it is to rebuild, trust me. Okay. Um, so let's recap. Let's do a little recap here, okay? Um, being at your best when it matters most, not just when things are hard and self-doubt or imposter syndromes kicking in, um, but also when things are going well. And it's easy to drift, it's easy to become complacent. It's easy to lose focus, trust me. Or take your foot off the gas. Ben there did that. I'm sure a lot of people on my team have seen that. And a lot of people have seen me also smash the gas. So this is about staying on top, sticking to the basics, right? Keeping the flywheel moving and remembering that everything rises and falls on leadership. When the leader is clear, okay, decisive and intentional momentum follows. I've watched it, I've seen it. This is fact. Okay, this isn't necessarily my opinion. Okay, and when they're not, everyone else feels it. Okay, so anyhow, so here's my challenge for the week. Okay, where have you drifted from the basics? Okay, where do you need more clarity? What decision have you been delaying that needs to be made now? Been there, did that, probably holding on to something. Okay, you don't need a reset, okay? Because I've said I got reset, you know, I've done Ben there did that. They don't always need a reset. You don't need to um be reinvented. Okay. What I needed was is I needed focus. I needed discipline and I need the lead. Okay. Because when you're at your best, okay, your team is better. Your family is better. Your your life is healthier. I mean, at least I feel healthier. So, anyhow, thanks for spending a few minutes with me today. Um, if this if this episode hit home, share it with someone on your team or share it with another leader who you think might need to hear it. Um, we'll be back soon with more great guests. Until then, stay sharp, stay humble, keep pushing the flywheel. If you got any more questions about that, put it in the comments there and I'll answer the best way I can. I'm Ty Backer, and this is Behind the Tool Belt. Have a great day, everybody.

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