Two CEOs explain why saying no to ideas is crucial for growth. They run weekly leadership meetings where a disciplined team vetoes proposals that don't fit capacity, timing, or strategy. This gatekeeping culture keeps companies focused and prevents the overwhelm that kills momentum.
What will happen if you don't do it? Because you're going to get left in the dust. Yeah, because this, this industry is changing all too rapidly. There's way too much money in this industry. And so we've got to move fast. We've got to be nimble. We've got to be on our feet and we've got to take, you know, a little bit of risk here and there. Calculated risk, albeit, but we still got to take risks to survive. Yeah, if we don't, we're going to get eaten up. It's just that simple.
How do you control yourself and not just walk in every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and go, got an idea? What about this? Let's do that. Because, you know, that's like a lot of leaders, they're guilty of that, especially, especially founders. And I've seen the same thing with people that take over the business. Yeah. You know, they want to put their stamp on it and sometimes too many stamps.
But I just, I mean, just CEO to CEO, how have you, how do you do it? I have to tell you, I got a pretty good team behind me.
Yeah.
And they have, they have operation meetings once a week or once every 2 weeks, I think it is. And they'll take my ideas and kind of, you know, ransack them. They'll go through them. They'll look at them and they'll come back. Now, that won't work. So I think I'm going to— I'm going to— I'm going to send that back to my team and say, you know, they keep me in line because we're, you know, entrepreneurs are idea machines.
That's— that's our gift and our curse.
Yes.
But if you don't surround yourself with people that are willing to say no or not at this time, or— or what do you want us to stop doing that we haven't finished that you were excited about 120 days ago and you're like, oh yeah, right. Capacity, time, projects, people gave them permission to say no to me. Yeah.
Look, I'm the one that's going to create these ideas because where I see I sit and who the people I have a chance to talk to and people I meet with, they're idea machines too. So when it starts gelling and things come out, you've got to expect me to come to you with ideas. It's your job to vet them and say no, like they've done with me this week. I had a leadership retreat this week. They're like, no, we're not doing that. No, we're not putting that on the agenda. No, no, no, no, no, no.
But isn't that empowering? I know for some leaders it drives them nuts and for some entrepreneurs—
I don't mind at all. They're on the pulse of the business. They know what's going on. And they all have good values. Super intelligent group of leadership people I have. Second most is the leadership team we have. So they're not afraid to say no. They're not afraid. I openly challenge them to criticize. I don't— if you're going to say yes to everything, I don't want you to work here because we're never going to make any progress. Yeah, I can make some progress. But if 8 of us all agree on something and we have a good idea, we're going to make a hell of a lot more progress than just one person.
