Chad Silverstein got the nickname "Derp" and learned that leadership means making hard choices when it matters. He leans on trusted people like Chet and Brett, stays transparent with them, and writes pros and cons when he's alone. Talk doesn't cook rice.
Chapters
I remember when Chet dropped off the book at my house, brought me a box of books for when he released it, and I was going through it, and it was so cool seeing a couple of my employees from my team as the builder's journey. And then a lot of the practices, like yesterday was about my team practice and one of my other employees. I usually know where all the days are that I'm in. And I forgot about this day. I forgot that Brett and I were mentioned here. And I don't know if I've ever mentioned it in any of my melody lines that I'm Derp. And the reason I'm called Derp is because I used to work out with Chet. I don't know if I've ever said this over, but we used to work out, and we'd have these workouts that would. You were designed to fail. We'd have TRXs and crazy stuff. And I used to do these things called burpees. Burpees are when you jump up and down and you hit the ground and come up. And I did it for like 30 minutes straight, and everybody had to do it, and they couldn't walk the next day. And so he. He called me diabolical chirp. I don't know why. And then it became derp, so it just stuck. He called me derp, so that's why he calls me derp. And when I think about Brett, and Brett's a close friend of mine, and he's built a lead and what we've had to endure with our companies, it's been. It's been a crazy journey. And when I think about how hard it was to make certain decisions along the way, I think everybody can look at their life and look at their careers, especially at work, and know that there's like a fork in the road that kind of just is going to. It's either happened or it's going to come up again. These are those moments of truth. You're either dealing with one right now. You either see one coming, or you're going to be surprised with one. Inevitable. It's going to happen. And the question is going to be, are you going to be able to jump? Are you going to be able to go? I have built this, call it discipline or muscle, to just take the harder route. I don't want the easy route because I know. I know I'm going to regret it, and I don't want to live with that. So I'm just not going to shy away. But I will say that I had to always lean on Chet or lean on someone in my life that I could have. Help me see those blind spots again. It's a theme and built lead not to go about it alone. Especially when you're making decisions in the moment of truth and to be able to talk to people who have the wisdom, talk to people who've been there before, talk to people who truly care about you and will tell you the truth, even if it's what you don't want to hear. It's so important that you have that. You got to seek that out. If you don't have that, this community can't provide that because you're not talking to us one on one. But you've got to have someone in your life that you can connect with on a deep level that you can be transparent with and not hide things from and share over those moments of truth and decisions you're weighing and be able to help guide you. If you don't have that, it's important that you do the hard work to again write for clarity and put out your pros and cons of your hardest decisions and then try to weigh those out and make a calculated decision where you're not taking too much risk, but you're not going to again live with regret. Being able to overcome fear and make a moment of truth decision that's going to change everything. These are the there's nothing more important you're going to spend the rest of your life with, who you're going to sell to, who you're going to buy from. Could be a company decision, could be a quitting a job position, whatever it is, could be a relationship. These are big, big decisions that you need to really carefully think through and not let fear, fear paralyze you and make sure you're not going about it alone.
