Adam Sand (speaker) reflects on leadership for roofing-business owners, framing his remarks as humble, studied observations rather than definitive expertise. He emphasizes lifelong learning—absorbing knowledge from people above and below you—and recommends vetting teachers by asking about their track record. He illustrates the value of ‘getting in the weeds’ with an Elon Musk/Tesla Model 3 anecdote about removing unnecessary parts to speed production, and introduces a framework of three leadership "lids": belief (vision/conviction), operational effectiveness (ability to run the business and compel the right work), and leadership (ability to lead people). He also gives a practical choice example: declining to launch a paid info-product to stay focused on building a service business.
Chapters
Foreign. Talk about leadership. I also question my own right to talk about this stuff. But I study this and I share this and I reflect on this myself. And so I'm going to give you my own humble. But I feel educated at the very least on the topic because I study it and I know that it's important to all of us. And so I look at this as something that is collaborative in nature, in that we will grow as leaders together. Because I don't think that I'm the foremost expert because I am not, you know, $100 million CEO yet. There are probably some topics in roofing where I would argue that I could say I'm best in the world or at least best in class at certain things. When I talk to you, I would encourage you to always ask anybody who's telling you what to do, you know, what's the biggest company that you've built, what's the most money you've ever made? And if they sold their business, what did they sell it for? Because that is the ultimate measure. And so those are the kinds of things that I ask people when I go looking and learning is I want to know what they've actually done because I want to absorb as much as I possibly can from them. The way I look at life and business is it's largely this, like, absorbing of energy and surrounding yourself, putting yourself in a community with other people who are aggressively trying to grow themselves and learn and staying forever a student. Because I want to absorb as much as humanly possible from other people, not just above me, but also below me. Because there's so much to learn from anyone. There's so many great lessons out there in the world. We're living in a time like never before, where the communication of information is more free than ever before. Even a guy like Elon Musk, right? If you look at like the Elon Musk playbook, right, Who I would argue is one of the greatest leaders of our time. You know, I know he's, he's kind of a polarizing guy, but he wants to learn from everybody, even the people who work for him. Like his like four step playbook is like to get in the weeds, to question everything, to create constant urgencies, that it creates pressure and opportunities to break things and grow and then motivate talent, talented people, right? So that's why he'll go and talk to somebody on the floor on in Tesla and ask them 38 questions. He wants to learn everything. A good story about how that worked out was when they were making the Tesla Model Model 3. He went and realized that the whole production line for the Model 3, which is a high volume production line, right? It was the first time he went and built a high volume car and he found that the whole production line was getting slowed down because of this blanket, this insulation type material that was getting installed. And essentially it had to be like adhered to the underside of the battery. And so he asked one engineer on the floor, he's like, why is this slow? What is going on? What do they have to do? What about the process could be better? How could we do this faster? Could we install it earlier? Where could we do it? Why is this even here? They said, oh well we need that because it's like a fire protection for the battery. And he said, well, why do we need fire protection for the battery on the bottom? Like that doesn't make sense. Fire goes up, da da da da. Like it was along those lines. When he went higher up from that person, they said no, actually that's for noise, vibration and handling. And so then he went to that person, asked them questions, they said, no, that's for in the installation. Turns out they actually got to remove this. There's two point points where he found this. He found it was some cross member on the frame and some, some blanket. And he found out that neither of the engineering teams from either department actually needed these two components to be there. And it was one of the things that made him able to speed up that production line. But it was just two different teams that both over engine. Then when they trimmed down to find the cost point that they needed to be at for the Model 3, they both determined that this is unnecessary based on other things that were done. And then he sped up the entire production line. That's what it means by getting into the weeds and questioning everything and creating this sense of constant urgency and then motivating talented people to make smart decisions. So if he does those things, then I should also do those things. And that's what I mean by trying to look to the best in the world, or look to the best in your community, or look to the best in your surrounding, say the roofing industry, and try and find the best of the best. And then realizing that leadership breaks down into three lids. There's essentially a cap on everybody's ability to lead in that the business will only grow until it can push the lid up. But your lid is actually broken into three categories as there's more responsibilities to a leader than just to simply lead underneath that ability to lead and compel others to do things. There's your operational effectiveness, right? Your ability to operate a company. And so that's kind of where that, that Elon Musk things comes in is like, he's actually a very, very good operator. If you look at Gary Vaynerchuk or you know, Alex Hormosi, someone that's very popular today, you know, it's their ability to operate that is strong. Right. Alex, I would say is probably more standing on the, on the foundation of his wife Layla, who's probably the real great operator. But I think Alex is the better communicator of the two and the principles that have made them successful. But your operational effectiveness is, is more than just your ability to compel people, but it's your ability to compel them to do the right thing, to do the thing that will make the business grow. And this is a place where I find myself having to learn and grow every day since launching the platform program because we're dealing with a wider variety of engineers. I'm sorry, of engineers, of business owners. For you to ever grow your operational effectiveness or your leadership ability, you have to believe in what you're doing. You have to believe in that what you're wanting to do is possible. You have believe that some of the certain things that you want to do in your business are right. And you have to believe in something so much that sometimes you have to put a bullet in the things that you love and you know, you could do just to keep doing the thing you said you would do. Because there's a hundred ways to make money. Just the other day, one of the people that we're taught that we get consultation from, that we like to make, you know, help us make decisions, suggested that we sell essentially an info product, right? Like some kind of several thousand dollar a month mastermind. And I had to stand my ground because I don't want to be these like guru where you pay for access. I am totally cool, but doing these webinars completely for free. I do not want to start some Facebook group for a couple thousand dollars a month where I charge for access and community, even though it's a perfectly fine business model and people do it, it's not what I want to do because I want to grow a services business, not an information product business, not a community business, but I want to build a service based business. And so even though this person giving us this advice is better than me in many regards, like they they based on their track record, they are better than me. But I have to believe in what I'm doing so much that I'm willing to put a bullet in something that I love and something that I. Or, and. Or something that I would be good at, that would make the company money so that I can keep to my promise of doing the thing that I said I would do, which is this business. And so your business will only grow at the rate that you're able to remove the constraints. And in many cases, the constraint is your own ability to lead. And your leadership is broken down into these three lids. Your belief lid, your operational effectiveness lid, and your leadership lid.
