The Secrets of The Highest Paid CEOs in the World...
In this video, the speaker (a partner at acquisition.com) argues that a CEO’s biggest limiting factor is character, not tactics or skills. He defines the CEO role, especially for founder‑led companies, and explains why many startups fail because the founder‑CEO lacks the right traits. Using examples from Steve Jobs, Howard Schultz, and Ben Horowitz, he illustrates how successful CEOs turn around companies. The core of the talk is a detailed adaptation of John Wooden’s “Pyramid of Success” into a practical self‑assessment framework for CEOs. The pyramid’s base starts with industriousness and enthusiasm, moves through friendship, loyalty, and cooperation, then self‑control, alertness, initiative, and intentness, followed by condition, skill, and team spirit, and culminates in poise, confidence, and competitive greatness. For each trait the speaker explains its meaning, why it matters for a CEO, and suggests rating oneself on a 1‑10 scale to identify gaps. He emphasizes that CEOs must be ultimate generalists, chief firefighters, and inspirational leaders who embody these traits to attract top talent and scale their businesses.
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Today we're gonna talk about what are the successful traits of a CEO or the traits of a successful CEO. And the reason I wanna talk about this today is it's just, it's really top of mind for me because at acquisition.com, you know, obviously I'm working with the CEOs and the COOs on a, honestly, mostly a daily basis. And often what you notice is the limiting factor is not what skills do they need to acquire, what courses do they need to take? Like what's the tactic they need to do next? It's the character. And this is what I've learned in my journey. And I'm by no means finished and perfect or the example of a great CEO at all. In fact, I don't put myself in that category, but I do say that I put a lot of effort in and I try to help other people. I try to transfer my knowledge to everybody else that we work with. And so I want to share that with everybody here today because I think that if we can make everybody better, then we make better companies and that produces a better environment for work. And so that being said, what I want to first do is define terms. Okay, so what is a CEO? Seems obvious, but it's really just the highest-ranking person in the company or institution ultimately responsible for making the managerial decisions. And I think that oftentimes people are like, I'm the CEO, I don't need to do shit about managing. And I'm like, good luck with that. The best CEOs in basically all of time, if you look at what their jobs were, you know, they took it very seriously that they were you know, if anything, the highest-ranked manager. They're managing the profits, they're managing the revenue, they're managing the high-level leadership team. You know, you can have leaders that are doing a lot of the work, but somebody has to manage them, and that is usually the CEO. So that being said, why is this video worth your attention? Well, 20% of new businesses fail in the first 2 years, 45% in the first 5 years, and 65% in the first 10 years. And I think most people neglect to admit that this is because of the CEO. And I will put a nuance here, which is if you're watching this video, you are most likely a founder-led CEO. I would say maybe 1% of my audience, you might be like put in as a CEO in a company, but I highly doubt that. And so for the context of the people watching this video, if you are a founder-led company, like you are the CEO and the founder of the company, then it is your fault if this happens. Because here's the thing, everyone, if you look at all these charts online, they're like top 3 reasons: market conditions, you know, customer segmentation, management team. Who makes the decisions of the market that you serve, of the management team, of the, you know, new products that you're rolling out? That's the CEO. And so you can change the market you serve, you can change the business strategy, you can change the management team. What you can't change in a founder-led company is the founder CEO. And oftentimes if you are the founder, you make for the best CEO. And a lot of people don't like to see that and they like to think, I need to bring in a professional CEO. Well, there's a lot of evidence to support that that's actually a really terrible idea. And so that being said, I want to transfer my experience and knowledge to you of what you can do yourself to prevent this from happening in your own company. We're going to break down a couple of different things today. One, this is not lack of effort often because many people like CEOs, you are often hard driving. You try very hard. You put all of your effort into something. You're often obsessive over it, but it's lack of clarity of what success in the role actually looks like. And so often people are putting all this effort in all this activity, to like learn a new tactic or like get better at marketing or sales or, you know, become better at customer service. And like, yes, those things are important, but being a CEO, you have to be the ultimate generalist in your company. Whilst the company grows, everybody else becomes a specialist. The CEO has to become more of a generalist. And so if you have to be the ultimate generalist in your company, what that often means is that you also have to be the example of character in your company because that's how you really progress and that's how you attract talent and that's how you move things forward. And so that being said, how do you even know what the ideal scene looks like of a successful CEO if you've never done it before? I think like for me, you know, not having clarity has always been the number one constraint. Because like if you tell me, if somebody was like, these are the 10 things you need to do and the 10 character traits you need to be a great CEO, I would be like, I'm fucking done. I'm in. Let's go. Let's do it. But you know, I didn't have that luxury. And so I hope that what I can bring to you today is at least a peek into that from my perspective. That being said, there's a few people that I want to use as examples here that we've heard of as great CEOs. And you can say what you want about these people. They embody a lot of the traits that we're going to talk about today. How would I say this? It doesn't really matter how you feel about them because the evidence is shown in how they turned around their companies. Right. So Steve Jobs, for example, he came in to turn around Apple. They had essentially kicked him out and then he came back in and he did a couple of things to turn the company around. You know, he reduced projects from 350 new projects they were working on to 10. He found hidden geniuses in the company. So actually, in terms of rebuilding his leadership team, he found people within the company that were, quote, hidden geniuses and rose them up to become leaders of the company. And then he brought in his new COO, who was Tim Cook. So if you guys didn't know, he was actually the COO prior to being the CEO. Another example would be Howard Schultz, who is one of my idols for sure. Howard again stepped back at Starbucks and then stepped back in after being just a board member when he saw the company was failing and there was no— he talks about this in his book. It's really, really good. It's called Pour Your Heart Into It. He talks about, you know, there's no silver bullet, there's just 1,000 lead bullets. And it kind of gives me chills to think about because it's just like he doesn't contribute the success of turning around to like one main thing. It was just a lot of things. And so I took the, the top ones that he kind of attributed the success to. You know, they had never done paid advertising. So he finally started a paid advertising campaign. He required that all the coffee be ground in stores and it would be thrown out after 30 minutes if it was not— if it was still sitting there for 30 to make sure the taste and the flavor was always on point. He replaced all the technology in all the stores to update it. He closed 600 low-performing stores, and that means I think he laid off— gosh, it was like 1,800— it was a lot of people. It was like tens of thousands of people. And then he did institute some management training which required that they close down all Starbucks and they lost like $30 million in a day for hosting a management training so they could turn around essentially how they manage the properties. And so those are both two really great examples of, you know, successful CEOs. And I think that what you're going to see is, and I'll give you some examples woven in, of the traits that they both embody and other really successful CEOs embody that allow them to actually be successful CEOs. Because anyone can be a CEO does not mean you are successful or good at your job. I really like this quote and I kind of want to kick it off with this, which is, "The only thing that prepares you for running a company is running a company." And this is from Ben Horowitz. He has a book called The Hard Thing About Hard Things, which I love that book. I find this to be very true because when I read it, I was in a spot, I want to say in like 2019, when I was feeling really like just kicked, like I felt like the shit had gotten kicked out of me because I had to do a layoff and I felt really bad about myself and I felt like I was a terrible CEO and I was reading anything and everything to feel to help me improve, right? And it turned out that the best thing I could do to improve was to stop kicking the shit out of myself. So that being said, it's taken me years to learn and I'm not even close. I don't claim to be an expert. Like, I just want to say like, this is what I've observed in others and what I've observed in different materials that I've read. It's not like I'm saying I am the epitome of the end-all be-all. I am anything but perfect. And so really what I want to answer question-wise in terms of like becoming a successful CEO is like, you know, what do CEOs do? 'cause that's also, that's probably the first question. And then how do you become better? How do you acquire those traits so that your team can also improve? Because you are always the limiting factor of your team. You know, like the best people in the world, Sheryl Sandberg isn't gonna work for some, you know, dude who's like, you know, disintegrous, not loyal, not focused, got 5 other side gigs. Like she's not gonna come work for that guy. And so if you really want to give your company a chance, you have to become the kind of person who is worthy of that chance and worthy of those people and worthy of acquiring that talent. And so first off, when you ask yourself, what am I actually supposed to be doing as a CEO? It's a very vague answer to that question. But what I like to say is you have to be whatever the business demands of you. And so if you look at, like, if I were to make a job description for every CEO in every portfolio company we had, it would be different for every person. And so that's why I think it's much more useful to focus on traits rather than what you do, because it's much more about who you are, not what you do. Every CEO has a different job description. They have a different role. They play a different part in the company just based on their innate strengths and weaknesses. And so in short, you're wherever the business really demands you to be. And oftentimes if you're founder-led, you create the demands that the business demands of you. And so you are choosing what kind of CEO you are. And so, you know, really starting off, you are a jack of all trades. I think that often people feel like, you know, in the beginning you're doing a couple jobs.. And as you continue to rise up in the company and the company continues to grow, you really have to become a generalist and become the jack of all trades in your company and the ultimate jack of all trades, right? You're a master coach, you're a salesman, you're a custodian, you're a marketer, you're a VP of customer success, you're a billing manager, an HR manager, and a therapist, right? And so it feels like that. I would say for most people that are watching this, you probably feel this way. Then you're probably doing your job correctly because the, the, what we don't always get as a luxury is focus. We often have to be able to, you know, project our attention over a lot of things and know enough about something to make sure that we can get the right person in place for that role. And if we don't know what a VP of customer success looks like, or a salesman looks like, or a billing manager looks like, then how can we hire for those roles? And so we have to know enough to be dangerous to build a really great team. Now, the second piece is you're definitely a firefighter. Things are going to happen. You're going to have upset customers. You've got employees that quit. You've got clients that are upset. You've got workplace gossip. You've got employees that leave and steal your clients. You've got lead flow slowing down, like, oh shit, what just happened? You've got customer success is at max capacity, they can't take any more people on. You've got a competitor that makes ads about you. You've got trademark violation. You've got a fucking angry wife at home. And so if it feels like you're constantly fighting fires, again, you are the chief firefighter. Like, there's nobody else that's going to do it but you. And so this is your job as the CEO. And you are— I want to say it's chief firefighter, it's also chief problem solver. Like you are here to solve problems. And so there's nobody better to solve problems in the company, especially when they're large and affect the entire company rather than you. It's not something that you want to outsource. And then lastly, the best CEOs of all time know that they are also an inspiration, right? What is an inspiration? Calm under pressure, dependable and reliable to a fault, almost physically and mentally healthy, a courageous risk taker, Someone who has extreme empathy, they live and die by their values, and they are mission-driven. And so if you look at people that are considered some of the most iconic CEOs of all time, you'll notice that they are— they have those other two, like they're firefighters and they're jacks of all trades, but more importantly, they are an inspiration. And I don't think that you can truly step into a leadership role until you become an inspiration. And so if you want to know what does it look like to be an inspiration, I mean, this is some of what I would describe, but I would just ask yourself, like, Who inspires you and what traits do they embody? It's probably not a bad place to start. So what I want to do is instead of focusing on the outcome needed from your business, what we want to focus on is acquiring the skills to actually create it. And I think that often we're thinking like, what course do I need to buy? You know, what mentor do I need to get? What do I need to do? Financial modeling, marketing, leads, all these things in order to get the outcome of my business being a million or $100 million or billion or whatever dollar company. But instead we want to think about, you know, really acquiring the skills to create that rather than the outcome that we're looking for. And I think that also makes it much more enjoyable. And so like for myself, I'll give you kind of how I think about this, right? Like I don't want to hit $1 billion because I want more money. Like money loses its utility at some point. Money does not solve all your problems. Money does not make you happy. Money only amplifies more of what you already are. But instead, I want to hit $1 billion simply because I would like to meet the Layla that can create that. Like, what skills does she have? What character traits does she embody? What kind of person is she? And said, so instead of focusing on how much money I can make, I focus on what skills must I acquire to become someone who can create that much value in the world. And I know it's not what I am today because guess what? If I were that person today, I would already have it. And so I ask myself, what skills would that Layla have? What skills would your future self have, right? Like if you want your company to get to a million or 10 million or 50 million or 100 million or a billion, like what skills does that future self have? And I think it's a really important question to continue to ask yourself. And the truth is you cannot have a billion-dollar business without being a billion-dollar CEO. You can't have a million-dollar business without being a million-dollar CEO. And it's at some point very quickly between 1 and 10 million, you will very quickly realize that it is not your skill tactical skill of marketing or sales or customer success that's going to limit you. It is who you are as a person. And subsequently, until you are a billion-dollar CEO, you won't have a billion-dollar team. Until you have a million-dollar CEO, you won't have a million-dollar team. If you want a $10 million company, you must first be a $10 million CEO, and then you will have a $10 million team. So you are always going to be a couple steps ahead because the thing is, if you are not, you are not able to attract the right people to build that with you. And so whether or not you reach this is actually based on your accumulation of traits and skills, which is what I want to focus on today. It is not about what course am I going to take and like, do I understand how to get more leads? And like, let's get a better closer framework in here. And like, I got one more one-liner for you. Like all that stuff. Like, guys, like you can fucking hire people to do that, but those talented people won't work for you unless you are the kind of person worthy of working for. Top talent doesn't work for somebody who's a mediocre CEO. And like, this is something that I have to hammer into my own self because I have to constantly remind myself, like, the best talent won't work for me if I'm not my best version of myself. And like, does that put pressure on me? Honestly, no, because I want to be the best version of myself. And I think a little bit of pressure is a good thing. Putting pressure on ourselves to be better, right? And having people around us that are the people below you in the org chart, if they make you want to move up, right, then you have the right people. And so I want to preface this with, this is an exercise that I'm going to take you guys through that I have done with multiple teams, and probably I want to say now I've done it with 900 different CEOs. And I have derived this from John Wooden, okay? So I basically took a concept that he had in his book and I made it into an exercise. I've done this with myself, my team, and, you know, almost 1,000 CEOs at this point, and they all love it. And I think it's provides a ton of clarity into what skills and traits do you need to acquire to become that kind of CEO. And so if you don't know who John Wooden is, he won 10 NCAA national championships in a 12-year period as head coach of UCLA. No other team has won more than 4 in a row. And so he is known as like the greatest basketball coach of all time. And he's gone down as, you know, one of the best coaches and players to ever be there. He wrote a book on leadership and I find it It's a great book, I guess, if you're in sports. I don't know, because I've not— I don't have a ton of experience in sports, but it is one for one relevant for business. And the reason for that is, if you think about it, as the CEO, you are the coach of the team. You are the head coach. You are essentially John Wooden, and everybody else are the players on the court. And the thing is, I like to think of it like this. Every team needs a coach. Every team needs a head coach. And for those of you who are still really intricately involved in your business and have trouble letting go, And you're like, I don't know if I have time to focus on like becoming a better CEO. I'm doing all these jobs, right? Well, what if John got on the court with his team? You know what happens then? There's no fucking coach to coach the team while they're playing the game. And so that was a really big epiphany for me as he talks about like the coach doesn't get on the court. The coach's job is to work through the players. The coach's job is to prep the players, to reflect with the players, to coach the players, but the coach doesn't get on the court. And so you don't go do their jobs. You work with them and through them you get the job done. I think that's a really good mental frame that, uh, he shared in his book. But the main takeaway from his book is he talks about the pyramid of success. Okay? And success as he defines it is peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction, knowing you made the effort to do your best and become the best that you are capable of being. And so he breaks down the traits, right, that he believes people must embody to become ultimately competitively great. And at acquisition.com, this is actually why our third tenet is competitive greatness, because I— this pyramid so completely embodies what is necessary to make it to the top. And so when I think of like billion-dollar Layla, I look at this pyramid and it's just this on steroids. And so I want to break down what each of these traits means, because this will help you not only better yourself, right, by ranking yourself on each of these traits, but then also you can have your team do this exercise and they can rank themselves. So we're gonna start at the bottom. There's really the two cornerstones of success, okay? Industriousness and enthusiasm. Industriousness. What is industriousness? Okay, many consider work to be like going through the motions. You're putting in the time, you're enduring boredom. That's essentially what you're doing. Like you're doing shit to pass the time. Work and industriousness are not one in the same. Working early, working late, the kind of work that It requires you to be fully engaged, focused, and in complete absorption. Many would call this flow. That is industriousness. A lot of modern-day work tends to lack effort. A lot of people tend to check things off the list, but the question is, to what extent did you do the thing? It's not, did you do the thing? It's how well did you do the thing? The quality of work, right? And to have quality work, it requires engagement, focus and complete absorption. And so when I'm thinking about hiring people, and I'm also thinking about myself, I'm asking myself like, how industrious am I being? Am I fully absorbed in my work? Am I in flow? And the people that I hire, are they in that or are they just checking boxes? And so actually using these two cornerstones, these are two of the first things I think of when I'm looking at a portfolio CEO. When we're taking on a company, I'm thinking, are they industrious and are they enthusiastic? And so in terms of industriousness, what I would love for you guys to do is just on your phone or on the side of your computer is like rate yourself on 1 to 10. 1 is like, you know, 0, basically like you have no industriousness, and 10 is like absolute industriousness. Like you could not be more fully absorbed in your work. Now going with that is enthusiasm, because we've all worked for somebody who works really fucking hard, but they are kind of an asshole and not fun to be around, right? Like they're completely absorbed in their work, but like they're very difficult to be around. And the thing that John talks about is that drudgery does not breed champions. If you have a workplace that's just all fucking work and hustle and nothing else, oftentimes people burn out, right? They feel burnt out because there's not the fun. It's not that you need to work less, it's that you have a lack of enthusiasm, right? And without enthusiasm for your own work, you don't inspire anybody else to be enthusiastic about their work. So it really starts with you. And what we know is that work without fun creates drudgery. Feels like you're just piling shit through the day. You're just like, what do you call it? I'm just funneling shit all day, right? Rather than, you know, on a mission, like making progress, like doing good work. And the thing is, is that if you want your team to exemplify these principles, you first must to an extent where it'd be unreasonable not to. And guys, I can tell you that personally, I am very industrious. I was not naturally enthusiastic. And actually making content has forced me to realize that because I watch my videos from like 6 and 12 months ago and I'm like, good God, you know, like I wouldn't watch this. Like the content's good, but like, It just seems way too serious and not— there's not enough enthusiasm. And I think that was because I was judging myself. But that's the thing is that a lot of times people are really industrious and because they have so much judgment on themselves for the quality of work and like being perfect, like all this shit, they have zero enthusiasm on the other side. And the thing is like if you took yourself a little less seriously and you had a little more fun with it, you would actually probably be more productive and so would your team. And so again, I would say rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of enthusiasm. Now, these are the two cornerstones. Like, without enthusiasm and industriousness, you can't really build the middle in between. Okay? And the middle is really friendship, loyalty, and cooperation. If you cannot create and foster positive interactions with your team, the pyramid will crumble. And this is where people who start a business can't get past a couple million a year, is that they know how to be a champion, the champion, right, in their minds. They are a high-level individual contributor. They can put out a lot of work. They can be excited about their work. But the moment that you introduce other people into the mix, they don't know how to do anything. They don't know how to get stuff done through other people. They don't know how to sacrifice for others. They don't know how to lead. They don't know how to work with others. And that by the nature of a founder-led corporation or, sorry, company, a lot of the times people come in, they've never had a job, they've never worked with others. They've always been on their own. They've always had some kind of side hustle, some gig. And so like, you don't know how to work towards a common goal with other people. And because of that, you wonder why you're stuck where you are. And it's because of this. It's just like you've never had practice. You've literally never had a job. Or like, you've never had a company with more than a couple people. And so once you have to, once it's required, that's when you see that, you know, things start to crack. And so first, I wanted to define friendship. Okay, friendship. It's one that people ask of frequently. They say, should I be friends with my employees? Should we have friendships on this team? And what I want to explain is that you want to aim for respect and camaraderie. Okay, camaraderie is the spirit of goodwill between teammates. You are comrades in arms, which means think of how much you'll give to someone when you're asked to do something by someone that you respect and share camaraderie with. So like if you're going into battle with someone every day and you have good spirits between that teammate and yourself, that is friendship. Friendship doesn't mean we go into the bar together and drink together and, I don't know, gossip about other people together. Friendship is when you can walk into war together. And so when I think about being friends with people on my team, when I think about that, I think about, can I go to war with this person? Is this the person I want on my team if we're going to battle? And guys, I've told you, like, this is how me and Alex talk about in terms of marriage as well. It's like, would I go to war with this person? Well, the same goes for your team. So rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10. Are you comrades in arms with people on your team? Is that how you view friendship? Or are you just drinking? Are you just partying with them? Or are you nothing? Do you have no respect? Do you have no camaraderie? There's nothing wrong with that. But if you don't accurately assess where you're at currently, there's no way you're going to improve. Next, we have loyalty. Okay. Loyalty comes from when you show those you lead your concerns for their interests and welfare beyond what they can do for you. Loyalty will not be gained unless first given. Okay. So what does that mean? If I do not show interest for my teammates, despite what is going on at work, despite maybe they're not, me not seeing results yet, then I will never get loyalty from them. The same goes for trust, right? If I don't extend trust to my teammates, so I don't give them things to show them that I believe them to be trustworthy, they don't even have the opportunity to show me that they're trustworthy. If I don't show concern for people beyond what they can do for me in a transactional way, then why would they show concern for the company beyond a transactional way? They wouldn't. And so this goes for like, you know, attending to like understanding what's going on outside of work with people, understanding what does life at home look like, you know, how was your vacation? How's your husband doing? How's that move you're doing? You know, it's thinking about them as a human, not just a tool to get what you want. And once you can see people as true humans for who they are, and you can see what's really best for them despite what's best for the company, that is when you will get loyalty from your teammates. When you show that your concern for them as a person overrides your concern for how they do at the work, then you will get loyalty that you would not otherwise. And so rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 loyalty. Do you give it to your teammates? Do you show concern for them outside of work? And then lastly, completing the bottom layer of the pyramid, there's cooperation, which is what is right, not who is right. So what this means to be cooperative, right, is to be able to listen, evaluate, and embrace others' thoughts and concerns openly and willingly and honestly with enthusiasm. And it's searching for the best answer so that we can move the business forward together rather than being concerned about defending my own point. And this is why you see a lot of really strong leaders will accept blame and give credit, right? You guys might see this with Alex. You'll notice that Alex publicly gives me tons of credit and then he takes blame. He's like, oh, I fucked up so much. He's like, but Layla is the real reason this business grows. That's what a true leader does. And that's what I do with my team, right? Like the people who report to me, I'm like, dude, they do everything. Like, I don't look at me. And that's something that I've had to teach myself to do. Right? Because, and I do think it comes a little bit more naturally to me because I don't, I typically think less of myself more naturally than I think more of myself. But it's really just being considered with like, what is right for the company despite how it feels for my ego. What happens often in companies and the reason they can't grow is that the leader believes they are always right. The leader is closed off to the opinions of their team. The leader constantly thinks, well, I'm the smartest person. I'm better than my team. They don't take the team's thoughts into consideration. Here's the thing. You can have somebody who's like, this is, this is True. You can have people who are inexperienced and they might have less context of the business and they can still have a fucking good idea. And so you always want to be open to what people have to say. Some of the best ideas that I've ever had have come from my frontline, from people who had, you know, being paid $13 an hour. And if you look at some of the best companies, so there's Starbucks. A barista created the Frappuccino. Wasn't like head of product and design. It was like a fucking barista after work one day created the Frappuccino. And so that's why cooperation is so important. And I think that cooperation leads to innovation. More than anything. And so rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 cooperation. Now, if we move to the second level of the pyramid, this is probably my favorite one. The second tier is self-control, alertness, initiative, and intentness. First one, self-control. This is where so many CEOs get stuck. And you see the best CEOs have a high level of self-control. Control of self is essential for consistency in performance. And your team wants consistency because the moment you're not consistent, it means that you're unpredictable and humans don't like unpredictability. They want you to be the ultimate source of consistency in the company because if there's consistency and predictability, then people feel safe. A true leader and competitor is one who's mastered consistent high performance. The difference between an okay salesperson and a master salesperson is only consistency. The okay salesperson goes up and down. They have up and down weeks. The master salesperson sells the same number every week, maybe by a difference of 1 or 2, because they've mastered self-control. And self-control is control of your emotions, decisions, and standards. And so as the leader of the company, what you see is that many, when they first start off in business and they continue to rise and grow, is they get to this point where it's like these new conditions around them throw them off. They become reactive. They become emotional. They make decisions based on their emotions, based on the fact that they don't want to feel anxious. They don't want to feel out of control. And that's what prohibits the company from growing. And guys, the reason I hammer home on this one is this is the reason that so many, so many companies we see, we don't take on because the leader lacks self-control. I get on with them and I'm like, this person is incredibly emotionally reactive and I'm not a fucking therapist. So like, I'm not going to— I can't help with that. The only thing I can do is show them what it actually looks like. And so in order to master your company and master your team and have a team of people who have this and embody this, you must first. And a lot of people cannot bear to work for somebody who goes like this all the time. And so I can tell you that the reason that that happens is most of the time when you're growing a business, you think it should look one way and instead it doesn't. You think it shouldn't have problems and it should all be sunshine and rainbows and it isn't. It's like anything else in life. There are tons of things going wrong all the time, and that's okay. That's to be expected. And I think that accepting that and not letting that weigh you as a person is one of the keys to having that self-control. And so what you have to remember is there is always an opposing force ready, willing, and motivated to destroy your fucking business. And the difference between those who succeed and fail is how you respond. There's no less— people who are successful have no less problems than you. They just respond differently to those problems than those who fail. So what I want you to do is rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of self-control. Are you reactive? Are you constantly, you know, letting your emotions guide you? Or are you in control, right? Are you choosing to respond despite how you feel? Next is alertness, right? What is alertness? Alertness is mental quickness. Which is the ability to be constantly observing, learning, and absorbing what's going on around you. Highly alert people course correct quickly. If you observe the details and the patterns, you can soon predict outcomes because if you can constantly observe everything that's going on around you, you can see that the patterns, and then the next time it happens, you see the patterns again and you can course correct before the problem even occurs. And that being said, I think a lot of people are a little too aloof of what's going on in their company. They're so focused I'm like, I need more leads. I need to be more external. I need to make some more content. But they're not paying attention to what's happening inside the company. And because of that, they don't course correct quickly and things continue to pile up and pile up and pile up until one day it becomes this huge thing and implodes. So rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 alertness. Now the next is initiative. Okay? This one's an interesting one. A team that will not risk mistakes will never outscore the opponent. I really loved when John Wooden talked about this because that really hit home for me, which is you want a team that can initiate quickly but not carelessly, but you do want a team that makes mistakes, uh, mistakes of commission versus omission. What does that mean? If you don't encourage your team to make mistakes, they will also never take initiative. And if you never take initiative, you will never outscore the opponent. And so what you want to encourage is that, hey, if you're going to make mistakes in this company, and if you're going to make mistakes as the CEO of this company, Better be mistakes through action rather than omission. Omission is when you decide to do nothing at all. Those are the worst mistakes because you don't learn anything from those. All you learn is you shouldn't have sat on your fucking ass. But if you take action, you gather more data, you move yourself forward. Even if you know it's not 100% the right direction or it's not where you want to be, at least it's getting you closer to your goal. At least you're taking action despite maybe risk, right? And so you as a CEO, if you can tell yourself that it's okay to make mistakes, if you can show your team, hey, I make mistakes and it's fucking okay, then your team will do the same. And that means your company will consistently be on the cutting edge of innovation because people feel safe to fail. And that's one of the hardest things about running a company is that many say, I want you to innovate. I want you to try new things. I want you to think outside the box. But then they say, oh wait, but don't lose money. Oh wait, but don't fail. The thing is, you have to accept if you want to win, you also must fail. If you want to win big, you are going to fail big, not just you, but your team. So that being said, go ahead and rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 initiative. Okay. Onto intentness, right? What is intentness? Intentness is the resolve to stay the course over the long term, despite short-term pitfalls and failure. This is what keeps you in the game when others say the game is over. Determination, diligence, fortitude, persistence, all different words for intentness. And the team is always going to look to you as the CEO to determine if they stay the course or call it a day. I can give you a really good example of this. COVID hit. I owned a company called Gym Launch. What is the entire team looking at from me and Alex? They're looking at us to say, are we closing this fucking business? Are we going forward? And Alex and I said, we're fucking going forward. We are persistent. We have fortitude. We have persistence. And so the entire team rallied behind it despite the fact that we were losing in the short term when COVID hit, despite the fact it was a fucking bloodbath. Our team looked to us and we said, we don't fucking give up here. Like, if anything, every company will fail around us and we will be the one company left standing and then we will eat up the whole market. That's kind of happened. So again, rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 with intentness. Now we're almost to the top of the pyramid. We're at the heart. The heart of the pyramid is condition, skill, and team spirit. So you see where that sits? The heart. Condition. What is condition when it comes to like being a CEO? Like what would you consider condition to be? Condition is the mental and moral conditioning is the foundation of your efforts, which is really saying like, are you mentally and morally strong? Because when you're mentally or morally weak, you hurt your team. What does that mean? Well, I would say morally, do you have strong ethics? Do you have strong values? Do you abide by the values that you tell your team? Where you see a lot of people start to crack, the team gets bigger, the company gets bigger, suddenly they start to steer away from their values. Suddenly they're too good for their values. Suddenly they don't need to embody their values. The team can embody those values. But you are the most potent source of this in your whole team. And if you are not at the utmost condition, then nobody else will because everything from you is just diluted down. And then second to that is, are you mentally conditioned? You know, are you— what are you saying to yourself in your head? Because half the time that's all it is, is that you're telling yourself shitty stories. You're talking shitty stories about yourself, about your team, about the people around you, about your customers. And the thing is, if you're telling yourself those stories, what do you think your team is telling themselves? So you have to be able to look at yourself and really say, am I abiding by my values and am I doing my best to guard myself mentally? And to take care of myself mentally and to show up in a good state every day. And a good state doesn't mean you feel good. A good state means you behave good. Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 conditioning. Skill. I love to define skill because skill is knowing what the fuck you're doing. It's not knowing half your job. It's not knowing three-quarters of your job, but it's knowing all of your job. And the thing is, is that we are in If you're watching this, most likely small business, not corporate America. And so what that means is that you don't have room to know how to only do half your job. This goes for you as the CEO. It also goes for your teammates, because if you're busy doing 10% of everyone's job or half of somebody's job, then that— what that means is you're not doing 50% of your own job. And so skill defined in business is knowing how to do 100% of your job. And so what you want to do is seek to continuously master each skill required, rinse and repeat. And often the skill that's required to be a CEO is the skill of knowing where you're deficient in character. And a lot of the times, you know, you're watching this video and hopefully this is like enlightening you more, but a lot of times people think, oh, I don't know how to build this landing page. I don't know how to do that. You need the skill of finding someone who is good at doing that. And then not even the skill of finding someone, the skill of attracting somebody who is like world-class at doing the thing rather than, oh, I need to go learn how to do the thing. No, you need to be so good that you attract world-class talent that knows how to do the thing. That is skill. And yes, in owning a business, there are a lot of skills to master, which is why it also comes with exponential upside. Because that's typically the question I get. It's like, well, Layla, there's so much I need to know here. Yes, there's a ton that you need to know. That's why it takes time. That's why one course or one video or one hour a week of studying is not going to get you there. It's going to take years of compounded learning. And practice and failing and winning. Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 skill. Lastly, in the heart of the pyramid, we have team spirit. And I wanna say that around, I wanna say 20 to 30 million, this is where people always crack, which you think you have teamwork until you have a very large team. Teamwork is when we all work together. Lots of companies can get 20 or 30 million with teamwork, but team spirit is the willingness to sacrifice personal interest or glory for the welfare of all. And so what does that mean? That means putting your self-interest behind the company. That means the eagerness to sacrifice for the team, not just the willingness, but the eagerness to do so, to put the goals of the organization above your own goals. And this is why when a company gets to a certain point, many people don't get promoted. They get fired. Why? Because they put their own self-interest above that of the team. And you see this with CEOs in terms of how they start to act. You hit $20 million, you hit shit, you hit $10 million, you're like, ah, I'm gonna take it easy. I don't need to work as much. I don't need to be the best example. Like, I've got other people to do things. I don't need to show up to these meetings anymore, right? Like, got someone else that's leading them now. I don't need to watch. I can be on my phone the whole time. You start to get this ego about yourself, and what it does is it erodes team spirit on the team because the ultimate teammate of anybody needs to be the CEO, which means that you must be eager to sacrifice for your team. That being said, rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10, team spirit. And now we got to the top of the pyramid. And here's what I want to give as like a preface to the top of the pyramid. The top of the pyramid is earned, meaning if you have successfully executed the other 3 layers, these will naturally come to you. And when someone says he's got it, I think it's these 3 elements combined. When someone says he just got the it factor, he's got it. I really think it's this. And you can't have this unless you've done all the fucking work to get here. What is it? It is poise. Being true to oneself, not getting rattled, thrown off, or unbalanced despite circumstances or situations. Leaders that lack poise panic under pressure. The best leaders hold fast to their beliefs and act in accordance with those beliefs and those values despite how bad or good a situation appears to be. Poise comes from experience. Poise comes from knowing these bad things can happen and you're not gonna die. And often in the beginning, you just don't know. You think the whole business is gonna crumble every other day and less and less over time. And then one day you realize it's all in your head and that if it did crumble, so what? Start something else. The question really becomes to ask yourself if you have poise is can you meet triumph and disaster and treat the two the same? I get chills when I read that question because I think a lot of people are humbled by disaster, but they, they lose that when they have triumphs. When they have wins. And there's nothing that beats success like success. Nothing fails like success. Because once you have success, you think you've done it. You're like, "I'm here." And if you haven't been smacked in the face at least one time, then you assume that you're not losing it. And often the assumption of never regressing from success is actually what creates it. And being unwavering when everyone says that you will win and unwavering when everyone says you will lose. So it's really being unaffected by the opinions of others and outside circumstances. It's really having a strong sense of resolve within yourself. Being proud of the person you are. Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10. Confidence. I think we could all agree that this is also earned. What is confidence though? Confidence is the knowledge that your preparation is complete and that you have done all the things to ready yourself for the competition in whatever form. You have to earn the right to be confident through preparation. And so if I'm making a speech, I'm confident in my speech because I've prepared. Not because I think I'm the shit, but because I've put in the hours and put in the work. If I'm taking on a company and they're like, how are you going to help our company grow? I can confidently tell them because I've done it 50 other times. You have to earn the right to be confident. Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 confidence. And now we are almost done at the top of the pyramid, which is competitive greatness. Okay. What is competitive greatness? Competitive greatness means you have a love for the journey, for the person that presents you with the opportunity to become. Remember I said it's not about making $1 billion. It's about who is Layla that can make $1 billion. It's a love for the battle that tests you to prove yourself a worthy opponent and the hard struggle that is welcomed, never feared, because you know it's how you grow. So when, when I am hiring for somebody on our team and when I'm looking for somebody to join our portfolio, this is what I look for. I don't look for somebody that's like, I'd be happy if we sold for, you know, $20 million. I don't give a shit. Are you competitively great? Because once you get a certain amount of money, you don't need to do this shit anymore. And the only people that are able to make enormously large companies are those who have this, who understand it's not about the outcome. It's about who you become in the process. When you arrive here, you're not just going to bring out the best in yourself, but in your team. You cannot attract people who are competitively great and love the process until you are one of them. So rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 competitive greatness. I hope this practice was useful for you. You know, I know it was a little longer of videos that I've made, but honestly, walking people through this has really helped a lot of CEOs I've seen develop over the years because it, it does two things. It adds clarity and direction, which is, here's where I'm not good. So if you look now at where you've rated yourself, it's like, where are the things that I need to improve? And make a little sticky note of the top 1 or top 3 things and keep it on your desk. And it's like, now every day you can look at that and say, these are the things I need to work on to become a better CEO. This is how I become successful. It's, it's in reminding yourself daily of the kind of person you want to be. In order to be a truly great CEO, you really have to just become the best version of yourself. So that being said, if this was useful for you, I'd say share it with your team, have them go through this exercise. If you have new leaders who are coming in, share this exercise with them. Because here's the thing is that this pyramid is not just for CEOs, it's for teammates, it's for players, it's for people on your team. So I hope it's of use to you. Have a great, you know, Tuesday, Wednesday, whenever day it is that you're watching this, and let me know what you think in the comments.
