Chad Silverstein on why selling his company felt weird: change ripples through relationships, and leaders need to embrace being different while knowing what to keep private. Share only with people you trust, and watch for questions as permission to open up.
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You know, there's something really scary about change, especially around the people that you love, because when you change things, it creates these ripples in your life. This is one of the hardest things for me throughout my journey, my builder's journey, is that I make changes and it sends these ripples through my life, and it has an impact on people around me. Sometimes not so great. You know, when I sold my company, it changed everybody's careers in my company, and I was very close with everybody. And here's the one thing I know about myself that I can share with you, that hopefully you're going to discover about yourself, and that is that I'm weird. And I'm really cool with that. I'm different. And I'm different on purpose. You know, I like to think like an outlier, because I don't want to be like everyone else. I don't want to be normal. I don't want to just be a sheep in the herd who's following everybody else, because that's the way everyone's doing it. I actually like being distinctly different for some people. It's really hard, but I've just realized that I don't really care about the trends, and I don't care what everyone's doing and what they're wearing. I just don't care. Now there's probably certain areas of my life that this does show up, and, you know, I'm contradicting myself and, you know, it's like, get used to it, right? Build to lead is full of contradictions. Leadership is full of contradictions. But I'm just telling you how I think and that I embrace the weirdness of it. And to my close friends, you know, I don't know if they would call me weird. Maybe they would. I'm different. But I think there's something very attractive about leaders who. Who can be different. And they. And they're comfortable with it, and it may not be your thing, and that's okay. And I think that's what makes you distinct, is that you have your. Your tendencies, your nuances, your. Your own distinct differences that make you a little bit weird or crazy, off the wall. And as long as you're consistent and as long as it's not extreme, I think. I think that could be really something you use to your advantage. And I would share this one little nuance to it that I've learned over. Over my career is that you want to be careful what you share and you want to keep the right secrets. I love to be transparent. I love people to Know what I'm thinking? I don't want you to have to assume or guess what I'm thinking. But sometimes I've overshared and it's gotten me in trouble. And the one thing I know about oversharing, especially with the built lead work, is that you'll say certain things that you're on a high with, you're real excited about, and someone will bust your bubble. You'll tell them that you're doing your worldview and. And then they'll, you know, they'll make a comment or. Because it's not their thing, and it doesn't matter how harmless the. The comment is, it will. It will make you start to think about, why am I doing this? And don't go near that. Don't go near that. Keep it to yourself. Keep the right secrets. The right secrets with built lead is doing all this hard work and keeping it to yourself and sharing it with maybe a few. It might be your builder, it might be teammate that you're doing this with. It might be a close loved one. That is the only person you can go to because you don't have anyone else that you want to share this kind of stuff with. But you want to make sure that you're not pushing this stuff on other people. And just because you might take to it doesn't mean that other people will. In fact, you'll probably repel them from it. And so you'll know you can give a green light when people ask you questions. And when people say, wow, you seem different, you know, what's in. What's up with you lately, that's a good scorecard win. But if people ask you questions, they're giving you a green light to share. But don't be very careful how much you're pushing onto other people and know that as you change and you have to make some hard decisions to put some acute pain into your life, that can mean that some of the relationships that you currently have in your life might change. That's been one of the hardest things for me personally, and it's something you just have to deal with, and it's just hard, very hard. But I will say that the rocks, the few I have, and you're blessed if you have a few, you know who they are when they still love you after you've changed. And that's. That's some real powerful stuff when you can figure that out, who that is in your life.
