32. Leadership: Life Design Through Business

Foreign. Welcome back to Leadership in a Nutshell. I'm your host, Kenny Chapman. This is episode 32, life design through Business. Those of you that know me well know that I'm a life guy. And if this is new, listen for you. If you're brand new to our community, welcome aboard. Super pumped to have you. Super excited to be back with everybody. I. I'm all about design in life. And the reality is as leaders, we design our through our businesses, the businesses that we own, the businesses that we operate, the businesses that we help create, all of those different types of things. And so today's episode came to me because I was talking to a client recently about his path and how he got, you know, into the plumbing industry specifically and what he had done younger and different things. And it came up. And I just want to open with, you know, talking about this quick story because many of you see yourselves in other people's stories and, you know, you know, I know for me, when I was traveling with Les Brown and hear Les tell a story, it's like, where do I fit in that. The great Zig Ziglar. When we, you know, we think about all these people from stage, and then what's really cool is when we break it down to our peers and we're talking to other people. And so here I'm having this conversation and said, wow, I didn't, I didn't realize that you, that you went to college. And they said the same thing. I say, well, yeah, I went to college, but it was for only one semester. I said, really? Well, what happened? And he said this. He said, well, I wanted to be an architect. I've always wanted to be an architect. And so I went to college to become an architect. In my first semester, I had my class and anybody out there remember the balsa wood stuff? Maybe they still have it, I don't know. But I remember making little airplanes out of it come in the package. Maybe I'm dating myself now, but you could make these little balsa wood airplanes that you could fly around and put rubber band propellers on them and stuff. And so he said that their assignment was to make a house out of balsa wood. So he created this wicked good design and he went through the whole process and here's his house and everything, and he turns it in and his instructor failed him. He got a big old fat F on the project because one of the eaves of the roof was like a little bit out of length or out of balance or whatever. It was a little bit longer on one side than it was the other, let's say, right? And so he completely got failed. He took it very personally. He called the ball and he said, forget you, forget college, I'm out of here. And that was the end of his path to becoming an architect, or so he thought. And that's where I want us to think about today as leaders. Like, when you really look at the situation, the life that you're in, many of us are doing jobs, becoming business leaders in ways, shapes and forms that actually do tie to quote unquote, who we wanted to be when we grew up. And if they don't yet, then that's exactly why we're spending time together here today. That's part of my overall primary purpose in the world, is to help you unlock that at a different level. And so here it's fascinating. I've been coaching this individual for a while, but I'd never heard that story. And I said, well, wait a minute. You are an architect when you think about it. You own a plumbing company, you design the interior of trucks, you design warehouses, you design brand, you design uniforms that your team wears. You design systems, you, when you think about that, because my friends, what is the definition of an architect? When you look it up, the different definitions, it's always a person who designs and then fill in the blank. A person who designs buildings in the computer world, a person who designs hardware, a person who designs computer software systems, whatever it is, an architect is simply a designer, right? And sometimes we take a step back and go, well, yeah, he doesn't have a four year degree, he can't go to work as an architect. However, he can create his life design as an architect every single day. I want you to think about this. If you're not in your car or at the gym, if you're in a place where you can write this down, write this down. The leader's job is to design it, not create it. And that challenges some of you. As you hear that, you go, well, wait a minute, Kenny, you've told us we're creators and different things in the past. And we go and we do create things. Here's the reality. We are involved in the design and then we make an intention, we create a business plan, we create go, whatever that is, that's all part of the design. And then the universe, God, universe, spirit, whatever it is that, that your higher power that is assisting you in this life is absolutely involved in delivering that in a way, shape or form that you stay focused on. And so, so many of us get caught up on the how, right. That's why I talk about the importance of who before how, but after why. I need to know my why so I can design what it is specifically that I want. And then I'm going to go find the who's that I want to help me build, if you will, what this design represents to me. The leader's job is to design it, not go create it. And so when you think about it today, my friend, when you think about, you know, life, design through business was our topic today and what we're, what we're really kind of diving in and sharing through and like think about your own situation. Who do you want to become? And I don't ask that question lightly. I ask that question very intentionally. Because your business is simply a reflection of who you've become to this point. Whatever leadership role you're in, your role and the results that you get are simply a reflection of who you've become to this point. And that has nothing to do with money, has nothing to do with status, has nothing to do with, you know, your own self esteem. Or does it? Because at the end of the day, who you want to become, how is that showing up? When you think about growth, let me ask you this. Does growth represent excitement or does growth represent pain? Be honest with yourself. This isn't about being honest with me. This is about you being honest with yourself. When I say the word growth, when I say, hey, are you going to grow next year? You're like, well, wait a minute, I'm not sure. I'm not. I don't know how that's going to feel at the time I'm recording this episode for you. We're in the middle of a global pandemic and the year 2020 has been super challenging for people and it's been very painful for people. But has it also created growth at the core level, at the cellular level where I'm not minimizing any pain, any death, any challenges where people really, really had a hard time or lost a family member or whatever that may be. But I want you to think about different areas. Freedom is one of my number one values in the world. It's why I create the way I create. That's why I surround myself with the who's that I surround myself with. I want freedom. And this year I got to grow because I had a level of freedom taken away from me. I can't just go anywhere in the world that I want to. I can't just hop a plane to Australia without a mask and fly for 16 hours. I can't just go to any restaurant, any day of the week, anywhere in the world that I want. All of these things all of a sudden were taken away where I used to live under a false pretense that if I create enough income and create enough systemization, then I can do anything I want, anytime I want, with anybody that I want to. And you go, well, hang on, wait a minute, there's some growth for me there. So when you think about growth, does it represent pain? Does it represent challenge? Does it represent fun? Does it represent excitement? What about in the business, when you think about that? See, for some people, if you think about growth, you say that you want it, but your actions say that you don't. And here's what I want you to remember when you're looking at your life, design through business. And I believe that, you know, it's simply our creative outlet. Like the way that we do business is one of the reasons that we go create. And I'm going to talk to you about that actually in the next episode, in episode 33, because I think it's important that we realize, like, hey, I can design anything that I want. Now, next episode, I'm going to talk to you about why you design that. But today it's really about looking at. You are the designer, you know, my client friend that I'm talking about that was the architect. You're starting with a blank canvas, a blank landscape, a blank set of balsa wood. You get to cut out whatever you want. You get to build the roof any way you want. You get to build the lines any way you want. The interior, any color, any type, any style. This is what you get to do, do. But remember this, you will not scale yourself into pain, my friend. As a leader, you are going to scale yourself into more of the things that you value, more of the things that you get fulfillment from, more of the areas that you want to play the game and the way that you want to play the game. So be easy with yourself and realize, like, man, I haven't been growing that fast lately. I haven't really been going through and, and seeing this exponential growth that I want. Well, you say that you want it, but your actions are something different. Perhaps it's a chance to take a look back and go, well, wait a minute, do I really want to design that way? When I look at the different companies I've created, operated, owned, created self managing businesses, create self scaling businesses. When I. When you look at those different types of things, there's been one commonality is that I will not scale myself into pain. And that means that I've created businesses that have become stagnant at a certain level, that I didn't go find the right who's for because I didn't want to go scale in that capacity. I didn't want to scale myself into tasks, responsibilities, roles. Why? Let's go back. Kenny Chapman's number one value is freedom. If something in a business gets in the way of freedom, I will shut it down subconsciously. I'm talking about, I'll completely shut it down, I'll sabotage it, I'll ruin it. Because I do live my life consciously from if it's not excellent, I'm going to destroy it or improve it. And in that process, I'm going to learn from it. And so what Excellence is to me has a component of freedom to it. What's excellence to you is completely based on you, your goals, your dreams, your desires, and this business, this role, this leadership position that you've intentionally decided to have, or you were a top performer at some level, so you decided that you were your. Somebody else might have decided for you. Like, you need to step into this role. That can be some of you on the line, some of you also had gone, you know what? I can do it better than my boss, so I'm going on my own. All of a sudden, you became a leader there. And I'll tie it back to that old adage saying whatever you want to call it, where if you want to know if you're a leader, turn around and look behind you and see if anybody's following you. I would also go a level deeper than that and say, why are they following you? People are following you for a paycheck, then they haven't realized the design of a life that you want to create because you haven't done it yourself. People want to design their lives, but they don't know how. They don't know who to align with and they don't know where to go. They, the countries that, that we're involved in, the us, Canada and Australia at the moment, are all craving leadership like never before. People want a purpose. They want to have it drawn out of them. And as leaders, when we decide to design our lives through our businesses, we allow our team members to do the very same thing. It's not just your role, my friend, it is your responsibility. Don't worry about creating it at this moment. Go design it. That's what it's all about. Do me a favor, please subscribe here. Just really quickly hit that subscribe button. I want you to make sure that you get the new episodes. As we drop one other ask I've got today. Send this episode as an email. Just copy the link. Send it as an email to somebody. Share this because the business community will get stronger as people start designing their lives through their businesses. This has been episode 32 of Leadership in a Nutshell. I'm your host, Kenny Chapman. I'm super honored to be with you until we talk. Make it a better than fantastic week and I'll see you real soon. Thanks, everybody.