Eric Siu argues founders shouldn't fully step back from their businesses, citing his own four failed attempts and a bookkeeper who notices when he's engaged. FedEx and UPS CEOs visit frontline workers for real-time insights. Neil Patel counters with a 75-80% decision-making success rate, acknowledging his involvement sometimes backfires.
So this is why I believe that why hire people and get out of their way is BS business advice. Because one, it's your company. And that's not saying your way is the right way. My way is the right way. I'm just telling you, I'll share my story here. I've tried this hire and get out of their way 4 times. It has failed all 4 times. Whenever I'm involved and my bookkeeper, one of the bookkeepers said she can tell when I'm involved again and the numbers just go up, right?
Yeah.
And I'm not saying I'm the best thing since sliced bread, nor are you, right? And we make a lot of mistakes and this will go into the next topic, but My take on everything now is just really just 2 words. It's focused involvement. And that might not make, you know, some of our executives happy. Like, I know that someone on my team recently was like, hey, like, so when are you ready to let go? In like a year or 2? I'm like, never. I'm never going to let go. And meaning that I'm going to be involved, I'm going to ask questions where I want. And some people on the team, literally, this is happening to me recently too. They don't like it when I'm going around asking questions, but you know what? I get more information faster. That's why some of the biggest companies like these CEOs, I forgot which company this was, but I think it was maybe FedEx. He would always go and like, or UPS, he would actually go to the ground and then, you know, stop UPS drivers as they're going and say, hey, like, tell me how things are going right now. Because he hears things from people that don't want him to talk to the line people, but it's really the people in the trenches that know what the heck is going on. And if you are the one that's making these big decisions, then like how you need the most information you can get, why would you not in your own company try to get that information?
Dude, totally. And let me ask you a question. Your bookkeeper can tell when you're involved. Funny enough, mine can as well, because I usually burn more money instead of adding. I'm like, invest, invest, invest, growth, growth, growth. And it doesn't always work out. But I would say my batting average overall, I'm not actually a baseball player, or I don't follow baseball. It's okay.
Did you watch the game yesterday? It was so good.
I did not. But overall, I would say if I keep doing what I want, I make mistakes and I lose money, but overall my wins outweigh the losses.
What do you think your batting average is? Because this actually goes into my next topic on Amazon's batting average. So you go.
So when I get involved, I would say 3 out of 4 things work out, 4 out of 5 max, but I would say probably 3 out of 4.
75 to 80%.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's really high. But here's the thing, I think as I go into the next topic, maybe there's a different way of measuring this. And maybe we think our poo poo don't stink too. So that's another thing.
No, no, no. Mine does stink many times.
Many times? All the time.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Poo poo always stinks.
No, no. Or what I'm getting at is me getting involved a lot of times creates issues because I'm okay with chaos and I thrive in that environment. But I'm assuming when you say you getting involved and you enjoy it and your bookkeeper can tell, I'm assuming you're not batting 100% either.
No, no, I don't think, and I think I'd have to think about it. I think if whatever answer I give you right now, I'm probably just making it up. But I would say actually, so your brother-in-law and your ex-co-founder, still co-founder actually, Hiten, he posted something this morning about good chaos versus bad chaos. So good chaos is where you have anxiety, but things are going in the right direction. And bad chaos is like you don't know where things are going, right?
Yeah.
So I like chaos where it's like, sure, I might feel some anxiety, but I'm like, no, there's progress, there's momentum. Bad chaos is when I talked to you 5 years ago and everything was like on fire, right?
Yeah.
That's bad chaos. And then you just have to get through that.
