Larry Weidel tells the story of Tom, a senior executive who told founder Art Williams he wanted to slow down and focus on family. Art congratulated him, then said that meant it was time for Tom to leave leadership.
One day, one of our senior people, right at the top of the leadership chain, walked into Art Williams. And for the sake of keeping the embarrassment low, we're going to call him Tom. So one day Tom walks in and says, art, unbelievable. I've had a phenomenal weekend with a family. And we know we spent some time together, we did some different things. So I've come to a decision, and the deal is this. I'm at a stage, my life, you know, we worked around the clock. We went 24, 7, 365 for I don't know, how many years has it been? It's 15 years and, you know, kids are up, getting up, doing some fun things together. I think it's time for me to switch gears. It's going to be time. It's time for me to start, you know, smelling the roses, enjoying the family. Maybe get a hobby, you know, something to break up what I'm doing, Keep. Keep me fresh, new interest. Go to ball games with the kids, start having more of the neighbors over, have more cookouts. You see these people enjoying themselves with the cookouts in the grill. You know, maybe it's that time for me. Maybe get an rv, take the family out, get a place in the lake. You know, I'm just starting to think visions of sugar plums, you know, this just sounds like such a wonderful, exciting thing to be doing, Open up my life. And so Art heard this. He didn't say, let me think about it. What did Art say? Art was always going to surprise you. He said, congratulations. He said this. This shows your new maturity. This shows you're growing up. I'm so proud of you. You're growing up as a dad, a father and a man. It's a real breakthrough. I can tell. You got a new confidence, you got a new vision, a perspective. Fantastic. You're getting ready to enter a phase of your life you're going to enjoy like never before. But the one thing I'm going to say, tom, that's great, but we're going to miss you. We're going to miss you. And then all of a sudden, things change for Tom. Like, uh, oh, what have I done? Maybe I ought to rethink my game plan. Maybe there's another way of going about this. Maybe I can get. Take some of these trips due without losing my focus. Maybe this doesn't have to be as big of a change as I thought it was going to be. Maybe I can get this stuff done and still keep that staggering income I have coming in to fund all of these fun activities because all of these fun things are going to cost money. Kids are teenagers now, but they're all going to be more expensive as they get into their high school years. Buying cars, going to college, making friends, making these European global trips that all the high schoolers and the college kids do in the summers and going to take money, money, money. Maybe I'm bailing out too quick in terms of getting into this stage of maybe I just better shut up about this in the office and get my butt back to work. Because, see, Tom had a light bulb go on. And that light bulb was when you start focusing on quality of life more than your job, you might just as well go ahead and retire. Because from that point on, you're really not going to be good for nothing at work, where people are counting on you to deliver and they expect you to be totally committed while you're there. So Tom had a lesson. Art saw it instantly. He handled it brilliantly. He knew if Tom, you know, that was what he's going to be talking about, that's what he was going to be focusing on more than what he needed to be focusing on at work, then it was time for Tom to just move on down the road and get somebody else in that slot that he could depend on. When you start focusing on quality of life more than your job, you might as well go ahead and retire. Hope you enjoyed that. Let me know if you got any stories about that yourself. I hope I explained that with the right perspective. And if you enjoyed that and you're not a subscriber, go ahead and subscribe or leave a comment. Question? Come over and see us on Wide Dell on winning and go out there and have some fun in your life, in your career. We need you winning. Sam.
