Biography Edition (Churchill): Translating Historical Valor to Modern Painting Business Tactics

Welcome to the Profitable Painter Podcast Biography Edition, where we delve into the lives of some of history's most successful individuals to uncover the strategies, tactics, and mindsets that propelled them to greatness. Today, we're delving into the remarkable life of a leader whose unwavering determination and inspiring leadership galvanized global resistance against the most formidable tyranny ever witnessed. Join me as we navigate the journey of this remarkable individual and extract invaluable lessons you can apply to elevate your professional painting business. Get ready to be inspired, to learn, and to transform the way you think about success and leadership in your own entrepreneurial journey. Winston Churchill was a British statesman, military leader, writer, and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during two critical periods in history, most notably World War II. Born in 1874 into a prominent English family. Churchill's career in public service spanned several decades, during which he held numerous high-profile positions in government. He is best known for his leadership and stirring oratory during World War II, rallying the British people with his speeches and leading the country to victory against Nazi Germany. Churchill was also a Nobel Prize laureate in literature recognized for his extensive writings, including histories, biographies, and speeches. Despite controversies and varied opinions on his policies, Churchill is remembered as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the 20th century and a symbol of resistance against tyranny. So I just recently read a biography about Winston Churchill by Paul Johnson. It was a great read, and I'm gonna try to pull out some, some things I think we can learn from Winston Churchill and apply into our painting businesses. So the first thing is Winston Churchill, from when he was very young, he had a big vision for himself. He, and he actually didn't have a great childhood. I'm going to read a quote here: How to use a difficult childhood. How to seize eagerly on all opportunities, physical, moral, and intellectual. How to dare greatly, to reinforce success, and to put the inevitable failures behind you. So that's something that Winston Churchill did really well. He didn't have the great childhood. His, his parents didn't really seem to believe in him when he was younger. He struggled in school. He didn't do that great, but he, despite that, he had a great sense of belief in himself from the beginning and throughout his life. And here's a quote from the book: Churchill began his, his plan of campaign to make himself famous. And that started in his early 20s, right after he got out of school. He basically wanted to go out and find glory, and he found wars to go join and fight. His basic plan was that he wanted to get basically famous from being successful in war, in wars, get medals, and then go to— go into politics from there. And he wanted to be prime minister, was his ultimate goal. And that was something he pursued throughout his whole life, which he obviously eventually got. So I think kind of a takeaway for us: have a big vision for your life and for your business. Set ambitious goals. This is a common theme we keep seeing over and over again as we go through these biographies is that the folks that we look at, they had really ambitious goals, and they— I think that really, that we should learn from that, not put barriers on our thinking. We need to think bigger. We need to 10x, 100x, 1000x our goals in some cases. So the next theme I identified is being bold. Here's a quote from the book: Churchill was capable of tremendous physical and intellectual efforts of high intensity over long periods with often little sleep. And there's a, there's a time in his life, uh, in his later 20s, he was, like I said before, he was going and fighting in these different wars. One of the wars was the Boer War in South Africa, and at one point he was actually captured by the enemy. The whole time he's in, in captivity, he's trying to figure out how he's going to get out of captivity and to escape. And so he's, he's plotting with other prisoners there, and they were actually being treated pretty well, so nobody was really interested in working with him to escape. So he ends up just escaping by himself, and he left a note on his bed addressed to the commander of the enemy saying like, "Hey, I'm Winston Churchill and I'm escaping," something to that effect, which was kind of a bold move, one, to just try to escape, right? Especially by yourself. And then two, to leave a note to the, you know, calling out the commander and kind of basically bragging and saying who you are and notifying the guards that he was in fact escaping is just like really kind of a almost weird but very bold move to just kind of alert everybody, hey, one, I'm escaping. Two, kind of screw you to the commander, you know, I'm Winston Churchill. So now they know who they're looking for and all this stuff. So it's kind of a a crazy, uh, example of his boldness. He ends up going out into the wilderness of South Africa, nowhere near Britain, of course, here. And he doesn't have any food or water, and he ends up, through a strike of luck, finding somebody that was a sympathizer with the British, and he ends up getting out of the country and getting back to Britain. But that's just like an example of the bold actions from, from his youth that he was doing. And here's another quote from the book: Churchill never allowed mistakes, disasters, accidents, illnesses, unpopularity, or criticism get him down. His responses to abject failure were astounding. So there was many low part— low points in Churchill's life, but he was always coming back and forgetting those things and moving forward. So I think a takeaway for running a painting business is don't be timid, be bold in your marketing, your branding, your leadership, your decision-making, you know, take those risks. Fortune favors the bold. Going on to the next theme, Winston Churchill was a reader. He— and here's a quote from the book— he read everything of value that he'd get his hands on and forgot nothing he read. If he felt he had a gap in his knowledge, he would go out and try to find those books and read that to to get a better understanding of the world around him. And because of his avid reading, he, he saw things coming that no one else was seeing. One of the key examples here is that Churchill had read Mein Kampf back in the early '30s, and in Mein Kampf, Hitler basically lays out what he wants to do, what actions he's going to take if he comes and comes into power, because he didn't come into power until 1933. So he was talking about it in 1930 about what he wanted to do. And so from basically 1930 through 1940, Winston Churchill was warning everybody in Britain like, hey, we need to pay attention to Hitler, we need to get ready, get our, get our military ready, because Hitler is not up to anything good, and he wants to get rid of the Versailles Treaty. You know, he wants to do some bad things, so we need to be prepared for him. Here's another quote from the book: Like de Gaulle, Churchill saw the threat from Germany a decade or two before the majority agreed with him. The lesson here is to identify the weaknesses of your company and find the solutions to those weaknesses. So like I said, through basically a decade, he was warning everybody in Britain. But at that point in Britain, it was— there was like a pacifist movement, and they just wanted to appease Hitler. They didn't really want to do— they didn't want to get the military ready, so they were underproducing aircraft, naval assets. They weren't preparing the army or anything like that. All the while, Germany is just— they're ratcheting up their strength of their military and getting ready to basically try to take over the world. So that did not put Britain in a good position, but Churchill, you know, like I said, was way ahead of the game. So I think the takeaway for us is we need to be continuously learning and improving. We can't sit back on our laurels and just kind of hope everything goes okay because the world is constantly, constantly changing. And so we need to change with it. We need to always be reflecting, strategically planning based off of the knowledge that we're gaining every day. We need to go to bed smarter every day, like Charlie Munger says. So I think that's a key takeaway. Another theme is determination, so overcoming adversity. Here's a quote from the book: Churchill was again sent to the bottom and had to face the task of wearily climbing the latter again for the third time in his life. Another quote: Churchill never allowed mistakes, disasters, accidents, illnesses, unpopularity, or criticism to get him down. And so basically Churchill was in and out of power through his, his, uh, in his political career. And during the '30s, like I had mentioned, he was warning everybody, and he actually wasn't really in power politically during that time. It wasn't until 1940 that he actually came back into power as the prime minister. And by this point, because Britain was basically in this pacifist movement and they weren't really preparing for war, they weren't— they didn't think Hitler was going to be a big deal that they would have to deal with. They could just appease him and he'll, he'll kind of do his thing and be whatever, it won't be a big deal. The British were completely unprepared when Germany started taking over countries— the Czech Republic, Holland, you know, all these different places. And, and then everyone just kind of realizes in 1940, like, okay, we need to do something, so let's get the guy that was warning us for a decade plus to put him in power. So Churchill gets in power and there's like no Navy or Air Force, or at least they have a Navy and Air Force, but it hasn't been prepared, you know, it's, it's, it's lacking in assets there. They have the British Army is, is supporting the French in, in the mainland of Europe, but there's very little preparation. And at this point, Germany is taking over the mainland of Europe. They've pushed into France, and they have taken over a couple different countries already. And the British troops, there's like 230,000 of them, they've been pushed up to the northern part of, uh, of Europe. Into this place called Dunkirk, and they're basically surrounded. And this is 70% of the British Army is surrounded and about to be destroyed by Nazi Germany. And so this is when Churchill is coming in as the Prime Minister, where he basically has a very, a weak navy, a weak air force, and and his army is about to be destroyed, leaving him with like 30% left of his army. As bleak as it could seem, I mean, as it could be, he had the worst situation to come into, but he takes on this adversity and he overcomes it, and he turns— he ends up turning this around. They end up saving the 230,000 with civilian boats out of Dunkirk. And he ends up inspiring the people to focus on victory and to not negotiate with Hitler and to withstand the bombings that end up happening over the next year or so. So he really, he took like the darkest situation and came out with victory. Churchill's resilience was just amazing. Another theme was his hard work. So he had unrelenting effort. One of the quotes is, "No one ever worked harder than Churchill to make himself a man." Master orator. Churchill, obviously during World War II, he was giving speeches directly to the people over the radio and to Parliament, all these things, and inspiring people. But it wasn't something that he just had this natural talent to, to be a good orator. He— this is something that he worked on very deliberately throughout his life, and he would memorize and practice his speeches over and over again. He, like I had said before, he was actually a bad student in school. He wasn't that great, but one thing he did do through reading and through practice, he became a master of the written and spoken language, and he really leveraged that during World War II. He spoke directly to the people, he gave the people hope, and this really started in 1940 when he became a prime minister. Giving those speeches over the radio and kind of inspiring folks. And it was interesting because this is something that Hitler used to do in the '30s, or he did like 1930 through basically 1940. He spoke directly to the people, he inspired the people to take action, but then he kind of stopped doing that in around 1940 or so, and that's when Churchill started doing it, and that's really when things started to turn around for the Allies and I think a lot of that was because of Churchill's basically taking, taking the narrative. So I think one of the takeaways is, you know, we, we need to always be speaking to our team, speaking to our customers, crafting that narrative, putting a lot of hard work into communicating our values and keeping that conversation going, inspiring our team, talking to our customers. Staying engaged with our customers. That's something that we can't let up on. So Hitler made that mistake where he stopped entraining and inspiring people, and I think he kind of lost his— the populace there. And so they weren't fighting for him after a while because, you know, he wasn't there to keep them motivated. Whereas Winston Churchill, he really took folks from the depths of despair, you know, with the situation he came in on and really turned it around. And then, so the last theme is magnanimity. Winston Churchill, he didn't hold grudges against people or countries. Um, here's a quote from the book: And how, while pursuing vaulting ambition with energy and relish, to cultivate also friendship, generosity, compassion, and decency, Churchill wasted an extraordinarily small amount of his time and emotional energy on the meanness of life. Recrimination, shifting the blame onto others, malice, revenge-seeking, dirty tricks, spreading rumors, harboring grudges, waging vendetta. So he— all that negative behavior, he really didn't do. He didn't hold on, hold on to things. He didn't try to get revenge. He basically did the, did the hard work and tried to do the best that he could. And that's what he focused on, the positive things in life. And so I think that's a good takeaway for us, is build strong relationships, with people, you know, have that generosity, that compassion, and build those long-lasting relationships with your clients, with your employees, your suppliers, by treating them with respect and fairness and kindness. Another thing that you could do in your painting business is engage in community projects or philanthropic efforts, you know, that not only enhances your business's reputation but also builds a sense of team spirit and purpose among your employees. So with that, I highly recommend taking a look at the biography by Paul Johnson on Winston Churchill. It's actually pretty short read. It was only a few hundred pages and I, I read it in a, in a few days. So I definitely recommend you grab that book. And with that, I will talk to you next week.