Shadowing Practice: If You Don't Understand Leadership, You'll Never Win - Learn English Speaking with Video
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leadership is just like this elevator everybody wants the top floor office nobody wants to be in the lobby
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and that's exactly why you might be stuck between floors right now watching people less talented than you win more
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so today we're starting from the bottom
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because leadership is not a soft skill it's the skill it sets the ceiling on your income your business
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and your entire life because the reality is none of you are getting rich alone
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if you think otherwise you might as well get off the video now i've built three nine -figure companies
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and the people who stay stuck aren't the least talented ones
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in the building they just never learn what the next floor
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costs this is the leadership elevator floor by floor this is
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going to show you you don't have to work harder you
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just have to be smarter all right first level lobby what
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a winner actually does before you can get into the elevator there's a lobby full of leadership lies
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and it's why most people spend their careers on the ground floor working harder
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and becoming the most exhausted employee in their company the lie
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that is the first
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and foremost in my mind is a really hard one as
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a leader you should be liked here's an underrated quality of awful leaders
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which is they try to please everyone
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and lead by committee approval guys is a drug
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and leaders get addicted to it
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and then they become mascots what legendary designer uh johnny ive
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asked steve jobs way back in the day was steve jobs
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he asked him to be less harsh with the team
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and jobs looked at him and the story is
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so good jobs's response instead to ives was why do you care
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and he said well because i care about my team
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and i don't think it's good for them
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and he said no you don't you're being vain you want
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them to like you i thought you wanted to create the
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best products in the world i thought you wanted to create incredible leaders
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and humans who are going to be better
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because you work hard on them you aren't and
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so i've realized he was pissed at the time
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but he realized he wasn't protecting his people he was selfishly protecting his need to be liked
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and you know i've later admitted god jobs was right he
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actually admitted it at jobs funeral real leaders say the truth
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even though it is hard your job is not to be
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liked it is to be trusted the second lie is
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that leadership is a democracy sorry guys your company is not a group project
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so stop putting every hard decision up for a vote in
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2008 for instance howard schultz shut roughly 7 100 company operated starbucks stores for an evening
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and he actually retrained all 135 000 baristas now he knew it would cause sales to fall
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and create some chaos but he did it anyways
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because starbucks had in that time now not
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so much scaled this entire business because of this idea of incredible baristas
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so schultz didn't ask the company to vote on whether it
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needed to do this he prescribed it committees well they basically
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sand every sharp edge off until your answer is just safe agreeable
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and completely useless take input from everyone but take orders from no one
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and lie three the leader should save everyone
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so i call this the office firefighter and basically you look like a hero
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but you quietly create a company full of arsonists you rescue
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the deadline calm the furious customer rewrite the terrible deck at midnight
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and yeah you feel good you feel like a hero
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but it's actually your training so you're teaching everyone around you
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that they can fail because mommy
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or daddy will just clean it up i think micromanaging means you hired wrong
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or you led wrong every fire you personally extinguish is a fire your people never learn to prevent so
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if everything needs you you are not actually indispensable you're what
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we call the bottleneck now lie four your team is your
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family this one kills me please for the love of all
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its holy stop calling your company a family families don't have performance reviews they don't track quarterly kpis
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and they don't fire grandma
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because she missed a quota you know payroll is not actually
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same thing as blood right you can care about your people protect them pay them well
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and still decide they cannot stay in the role and
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that is betrayal if it is a family
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but it's not a family it's a high performing team
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and i think calling everyone family turns this like accountability then into what you know family breakups
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that allows weak performers to stay great performers then carry them
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and resentment is going to eat your company alive no one should ever be surprised
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when you fire them if someone is shocked
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when you fire them you failed long before they did care hard tell the truth faster even
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when it sucks and don't confuse being loyal with permanent employment i swear most new leaders
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and even people who've been leading for a long time suck at this
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and it's the reason why you won't make more money
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and oddly it is the reason why people won't like you makes no sense right
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but actually if you call people family if you try to please everybody if you try to be everybody's buddy, you become two -faced because that won't work in business.
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And at least if you're hard, they know that you're honest.
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Lie five, the leader shouldn't work the hardest.
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Being the hardest worker in the company, that's not you lead it.
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This is how you actually burn out as a CEO.
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And think about this for a second.
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If you burn out as the person in charge, your entire your business burns down.
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I think what people think a CEO's job is, it's like be available, answer fast, know more than anyone else.
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That's not true.
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What is it actually?
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Hire people better than you, build clear standards for them, get out of their way.
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The unhinged hours can get you from zero to one and you probably have to do it to do that.
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Like there's kind of no other way.
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And you kind of keep doing all five jobs from one to a hundred.
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Well, that's not going to work.
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You won't scale.
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Like you just sweating all the time is not a system.
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That is actually just using your horsepower.
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And it means you're being needed for every decision because you think it's a flex, it's not.
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It's actually evidence that you failed to build anyone who can do the job almost just as well as you can.
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And the best leaders, they fire themselves from as many roles as possible.
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So at some point, this, you know, hey, I'm doing everything stops being the truth.
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And instead, the thing that's cool about your business is how much it wins without you.
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And that test starts the instant you hand one important result to another person.
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floor number one is all about giving instructions
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that don't immediately bounce back to you
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so it starts the first time you delegate something
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and get back a steaming pile of technically it is exactly what you asked for
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but you wish it wasn't and your first instinct
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if you're like me is like it i'll do it myself
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but you just doubled your work
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and then you realized you're actually undoing their work i did this for years
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so i had a company full of smart people who wouldn't
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move an inch without asking what do you think you know our president called it a stable of assistants
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which is kind of funny and then i would blame them
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but the real problem was me i'd hand someone a fuzzy thought
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and then expect them to read my mind and get pissed
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when their work didn't match the finished project i had imagined
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but never explained so micromanaging means you either hired the wrong person
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or you're leading wrong and like let
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that sink in for a second the fix to this is just one simple tool
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that changed how i run my companies it's called smart
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and smart basically means that the way you instruct people falls into five categories
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so when someone gives me an instruction
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that isn't according to the smart rules I hand it back
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because decoding a lazy ask should not actually be your job
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and there's a lot of research that backs this up
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so lock and Latham basically took 35 years of goal studying studies to find
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that challenging goals consistently beat big ones like do your best as long as people had commitment feedback
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and actually knew what they were performing on
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so the first part of smart is specific and
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that means a clear deliverable improve our marketing well like how there's 452 million ways to do
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that as opposed to create a three email sequence for customers
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who abandon checkout that's really specific measurable is the next one
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which means an objective test hey what's the number of emails here it was three, the response you want for customers who,
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the metric that proved it works, more abandoned carts get filled and closed.
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Next, we've got achievable.
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And achievable means they already have the time, resources, skills, and authority to deliver them.
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So if you give someone responsibility and they don't have any authority, for instance, you may hand them blame for decisions they actually couldn't make.
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An example of this would be telling your assistant they need
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to increase your sales goals by talking to the sales team
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well that's not really in her purview she can't have any influence over
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that next it's relevant
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so relevant connects the work to a real priority at contrarian
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thinking for instance we run something called customer success tuesday
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so the whole team hears real wins from our members like this person who just closed on their first business
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or this person who finally hired their virtual assistant or this person
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that their business grew triple digits so
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when the work starts to feel like just a list of tasks then people actually stop caring as much
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when you can make it relevant to them they can see the human on the end of it
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and lastly it's time bound
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which means you need an exact deadline this is like i swear you guys
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if you check
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and see how often you do this you're going to be
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shocked by how often you don't everybody thinks they're a good communicator
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and i'm a pretty good communicator and i mess this up all the time
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if you use the word soon that means nothing end of the week Okay, that could be fine, but what time?
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What date?
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Another person might think end of the week is Friday.
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Another person might think that's Sunday night.
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There's a new path to wealth.
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Small business.
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The side hustle that grows with you.
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From window cleaning, to flower shops, to car washes.
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Read Own or Be Owned, apply the lessons, and watch it grow.
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Results not guaranteed.
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No purchase necessary for the Own or Be Owned book launch.
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Floor number two is all about communicating like a leader here's a hard truth.
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You don't need a title, you need a spine.
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Leaders control the fucking frame.
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Soft leaders are usually followers.
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They're sheep.
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They let whoever's loud and annoying define the problem.
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They let meetings wander.
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That's the number one sign of a bad leader.
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And they leave with 12 opinions, but no decisions.
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Real leaders are kind of tough, but they decide what matters.
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They're going to force you to have a conversation about it and then tell everyone what happens next.
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I have a belief that in leadership, whoever controls the frame controls the debate.
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Now, this isn't about dominating people.
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It's about refusing to let the first person who speaks define the problem fully.
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Someone says, we need to hire three more people.
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A weak leader starts debating headcount and budgets.
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A strong leader says, we were actually talking about a problem with capacity.
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We're not sure yet that the solution to capacity is a headcount problem.
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We have 14 priorities.
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Nobody knows which three matter.
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Before we add people, we've actually got to make sure that that is the real solution to this problem.
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So the first frame asks, can we afford more people? the better frame asks why does
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the current team have too much low value work why is
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there a capacity restraint you do not want to fight inside
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somebody else's frame this is a great lesson for life
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so here's what you want to say instead i think that's a separate problem let's back channel
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that for a second or let's hold
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that to the side this is the real problem today this is first principles
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and you're going to drag the room back to what actually matters next
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when you communicate as a leader i call it speaking in
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headlines speak in headlines start with the point not the preamble So have you guys ever experienced this?
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Like you're in a meeting, people give you six minutes of background, three disclaimers, two apologies before they even talk about anything.
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That is a nightmare.
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There's nothing worse as an employee than having a poor leader as a communicator that rambles.
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This is how we get taken hostage by our own company.
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And it's how your employees feel sometimes too.
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So stop the apology, kill the backstory, just say the damn thing.
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I call this cutting words, adding weight.
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So a weak version might be something like, I've been looking through the reports and i'm not totally sure
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but maybe onboarding is causing churn so maybe we should talk to more customers
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and we should figure out the solution to the problem instead
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a strong version cut words add weight is churn increased this
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month maya is going to interview 10 cancelled customers by thursday present the top three causes friday
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and recommend a fix the first asks the room for i don't know emotional permission
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and the second gives it a priority and an owner
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and a deadline and we like those i think the other thing
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that most owners do that they don't realize or most bad leaders do
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that they don't realize is they talk too fast they rush through some of this instead of cutting words
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and adding weight they're they're sounding anxious not authoritative and
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so we call this being a gravity focused leader
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so stop machine gunning words like the meeting room is on
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fire make the point then shut up don't be long and went long -winded just because you can but take a pause.
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Most people destroy their strongest sentence by panicking and adding five weaker ones.
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You know, you might say like, we all know we're avoiding the real problem.
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Pause.
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The first person who rushes to fill the silence, that's usually exactly where the problem is.
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So after being really grave and non -anxious, I want you to also think about calm.
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So typically, who do you follow in a crisis?
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Do you follow the one that's like fire, starts running around?
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No. You follow the person whose nervous system isn't actually shitting the bed.
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People trust leaders who seem unshakable.
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I like to think about this as like, your job as a leader is to not look like you're freaking out
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while you're actually freaking out because everybody else is freaking out around you.
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But you know your one job as a leader is not to freak out.
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So your job is to seem unshakable.
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Certainty is contagious.
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If you're panicking, that's going to spread.
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If you're calm, that's going to spread.
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So choose which one you want multiplying through the company or through your teams.
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I think, you know, the line that people hate that I get so much crap for on the internet, you guys can tell me what you think.
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There is no crying in business.
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Do not cry in meetings when things are going sideways.
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Do not show that type of emotional non -regulation.
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It's not that you can't cry at all.
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Go home and cry in the shower like an adult.
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Cry later, vent privately.
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When the building is burning though, your team doesn't need to watch the fire chief collapse, right?
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That sucks, I'm sorry, that's the job as leader.
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Now, if you're an employee and you don't aspire to leadership, cry all you want totally fine
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but nobody's gonna put you in charge of hard things
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if you're crying all the time and this is not popular
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and people will lie to you on the internet about this
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they will lie to you you will make less money
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if you cry period
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and business end of story not gonna happen it's not okay it's not you letting your feelings out
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and because you're more empathetic maybe you are all those things it doesn't matter i hate to tell you this
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but i wish that somebody would tell me the unpopular truth
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which is calm doesn't mean you don't feel it
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and authority doesn't mean
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that you're screaming at people it means i'm emotionally regulating myself
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right now i'm not going to push all of my emotions onto somebody else i'm going to stay useful
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when everyone else is losing their next i want you to obsess on one word action like every important conversation
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that you have should end with three things a decision knowner
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and a date actually my chief of staff azad is incredible at this i left a meeting yesterday without getting
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that which is a little bit unlike me
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but uh you're gonna do this too
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and he literally goes wait a second can everybody please stay cody you know you can leave
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but who is in charge of these what are the deliverables
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and what date are they due by
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if it ends with great job everybody well god you're wasting
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their time your employees don't need somebody to waste their time
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they need somebody who's going to help them get a clear action
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so they can actually work less on the things that they want more to get better and get paid more for it.
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So always try to finish with a clear action.
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Influence without direction, that's just you being noisy and doing a power play.
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So don't leave it open -ended.
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Say, I think the summary here is we're choosing option two, which means Sarah's going to own it.
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The first version is due by Thursday at three and we review it Friday morning.
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Is that right, everybody?
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Yes, no, maybe so.
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Then you put it in writing, you put it in your to -do list.
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There's no mystery, there's no plausible deniability, and no one thought somebody else had it this is how you lead from below you also stop wasting
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and dumping unsorted problems onto your boss like a wet bag
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of garbage i know employees bosses suck plenty of them are terrible it's really hard to be a boss
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so maybe give your boss a little bit of credit takes
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way more than anybody thinks to actually be able to lead a full team
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and by the way when you're in charge people don't listen to you all the time even
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if you pay them it's a very funny thing so
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if you want to actually get paid more
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and become a better boss for
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if you want to run your own things one day then
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when you bring them a problem bring them the options your recommendation
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and the risk of following it
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so don't say huge problem what do we do say here's
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what i think we should do here's why here's what's happening
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that's how you earn authority before you have to be the one
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that actually pays for payroll let's talk about ownership really quick
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when you're wrong don't hide behind i don't know i don't know who did
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that just say i made the call i underestimated the risk
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we're going to change the plan sarah owns the correction but i own the review of it by Friday, that's going to be on me whether that falls or not.
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You're never going to be a good leader without accepting ultimate ownership.
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And actually, a friend of ours, Jocko Willing, has an entire book about extreme ownership.
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Even when a problem is not of your creation, own it.
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Be like, that is my fault.
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You're right.
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Yeah, I wasn't the one that wrote the script that was bad.
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Yeah, I wasn't the one that didn't have this fully outlined.
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Oh yeah, they did tell me this.
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No, no, don't tell me any of that.
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That tells me you're not really a leader, you're a manager you know what you should do instead shoot i told you this
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and it was that that is on me i'll do everything i can to not have
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that happen again people will forgive your bad decisions what they
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stop forgiving is watching a leader bend reality to protect their
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ego by the way they already know what's going on anyway most leaders who have gotten there after a
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while pre -smart and this floor it does still have a ceiling you can only communicate
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so well with the wrong people so sometimes the problem isn't your voice
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or you taking ownership it's the other people in the room
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and so floor three is how you hire a players who don't just understand the standard they raise it.
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So floor three is all about hiring people who lays the ceiling for everybody.
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So in this instance, I like to think about four sections.
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Let's start with define.
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If we want to find other A players to do things with us, whether these are co -founders, colleagues, people to rely on,
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it starts with defining even what an A player is.
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So the best people are obsessed with the result.
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You know, it's just really hard to beat somebody who is doing the thing that you call work and they call fun.
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So if they're not obsessed with the game, one, that probably means that they aren't able to see the levels of the game.
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Like business, whether I'm selling laundromats, whether I'm selling baseballs, whether I'm talking to you on YouTube is all the same game.
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And so a lot of times, if you don't like something, it's because you don't actually realize the game you're playing and what it's leading to next.
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So it doesn't mean you're burnt out.
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It actually means exceptional outcomes require periods of intense
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or maybe exceptional intensity a player is not someone with a
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polished resume who interviews well here's what it is it's they
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have a history of winning they create momentum without permission
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and they raise the performance of everyone around them we call these bar raisers
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so they actually walk into chaos
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and they kind of like it they bring some recommendations
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when there are problems because problems just spell profit in business
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So if you have to supply all the urgency and judgment and they're not bringing any of that, you didn't hire an A player.
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You hired basically somebody else who will do tasks for you.
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The second is protect.
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Here I want you to protect the standard.
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And what do I mean by that?
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An A player cannot survive inside a B player culture
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because performance is contagious and A players don't want to be around B players.
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So there's a ton of research that shows if you sit near a top performer, you're about 15 % more likely to perform well but
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if you sit next to an underperformer you're 30 more likely to underperform
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so your a players actually notice who gets promoted rewarded
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and who gets allowed to do half -ass work how annoying is
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that do you guys ever have a boss and there's
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that one person that everybody's carrying all the time that's why a players will leave
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so protect your a players okay next we've got filter for evidence
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so how do we filter for evidence actually can i steal
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that hiring matrix let me show you guys something live thanks this is actually the process of how we hire
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and if you want this you can click the link below we actually will give it to you for free
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so most hiring mistakes begin when a leader gets tired of searching
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and they just like meet somebody kind of charming
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and you know they'll hire somebody
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but i've realized you don't actually have a hiring problem you have a filtering problem
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and that's why i use this hiring matrix every single time
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inside the hiring matrix are a bunch of different things
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but the most important thing is an actual matrix that takes you through five categories.
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The first one is called known candidate.
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So someone on your team have they worked with them they
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have a referral to them a warm reference beats a cold
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resume every single time two proven experience have they done the
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exact job before adjacent experience not the same thing then we've
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got proven industry do they understand the market's customers margins constraints specificity
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because every industry has really expensive unwritten rules and sometimes
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when you get somebody who hasn't done the industry before it's
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like uh it's like having a different type of species inside of the zoo.
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Proven problem set.
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Have they solved the specific problem I need to solve?
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So the same title can hide actually a totally different battlefield.
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Like what would I mean by that?
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You hire somebody from Google who is a hyper growth venture capital business
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and you are a startup that is actually kind of struggling.
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You're like failing.
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You're not growing very fast.
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You need somebody to reverse growth as opposed to this candidate is really good continuing growth
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or being able to manage through growth.
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Two different things then proven scale would be like your company
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has 10 people this person was at google well have they
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wanted the size we were trying to reach a corporate exec
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with unlimited resources can drown inside a 10 -person company
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and in fact mostly they do so in the hiring matrix
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which you can download uh every single candidate is going to
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get this score right five out of five for all of them that's a 25 great we're hiring
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that bad boy that's 100 anybody below 18 out of 25 i'm probably not going to hire.
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And the reason why I like this is because
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when your team hands you this or when you hand it to your team, it helps you make sure that that urgency, exhaustion, and just like, oh my god,
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get somebody in here, doesn't become the hiring criteria.
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This is really, really important.
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And lastly, I want to talk about building a real pool or a bench.
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Most companies interview five applicants and hire the least bad one.
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That is not actually how you recruit.
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The best person is probably already winning for somebody else
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so you want a little secret hack find the companies solving
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your problem well then find the humans inside of them who are responsible for
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that and then steal those uh i do this by something called the 50 to 1 rule
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so for every 50 profiles you're going to interview 10 of them sometimes 20
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and then you're going to make one offer based on
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that i also like to require work samples use small paid projects will pay people to do the work
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and call people who have watched the candidate perform not the ones
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that are written on their resume and
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if you're not hiring yet run the matrix on yourself for the role you want next
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and your lowest score is going to show you what proof
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you have to have before even asking for the job
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or the promotion floor three gets a players into the elevator but floor four keeps them from becoming expensive B players.
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So a leader can't hire talent and hope motivation magically appears.
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You build a system where winning changes somebody's future.
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If great and mediocre work both get the same amount of money, time, recognition, you have trained everyone to be super mediocre.
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So that's like having accountability without consequences.
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You know, you don't want that.
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Your team already knows what you value if you've gotten to this floor.
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Now they're going to watch what earns those five currencies
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and what behavior you tolerate without consequences the most obvious one
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is money right everybody wants to make more of it money is obvious
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but i still think a lot of times you don't have
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the incentives perfectly tied to income busy is not a business
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model a lot of times people say to me well i've
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been working really hard 12 hours well what did you produce
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if you didn't produce anything then yeah you just like took
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a scenic route it's kind of sad maybe you need to get better
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and uh when you get better we'll pay you more
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but sales people don't get paid for calls made right they win for collected revenue
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and customers who stay
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so content teams should not win for the number of pieces
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published they should win for views watch time follower growth activity is one scoreboard
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that tells you somebody moved but results
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or outcomes tell you well whether they actually moved the company
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and really revenue so for senior operators i do profit sharing
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or earned equity because their upside should grow with the value they create
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so if you're trying to negotiate a salary uh
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and you're more senior you could say instead of saying here's
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five percent of the company how about here's a path to five percent
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if you can create measurable value
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so do not reward people for looking productive pay them for moving the scoreboard
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and that is exactly what we do at contrarian thinking
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and actually every single thing from the hiring matrix to how
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we tie income to incentives is in this book owner beyond
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it's the full hiring process to stop hiring on gut feeling
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and start hiring on evidence to have more profit
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and less pain in your business in fact it's not just
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about the entire chapter that's on people it's about how to
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increase your profit it's about how to increase the freedom in
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your business it's about how to increase your pricing it's about how to become an owner
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so on september 18th I'm going to teach it live at
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a free virtual event we're giving away over a million dollars in cash
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and prizes if you want the playbook
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and a shot at the giveaways register free at the link below i'll see you there
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and i'll give you all of this we're talking about
446
and it's really important to me that we do this fast
447
so this is a one day event that's never going to happen again
448
because time is our most precious commodity time is actually compensation too a leader who pays well
449
and then wastes 20 hours a week in meetings that's misery like do everything that you can to decrease the meetings.
450
One hour times 16 employees equals how many days lost?
451
Two.
452
Every meeting is a tax on the team.
453
And so if you're a member of a team, I think it's your job to say to the leader, this is not very well run.
454
If it has no decision to make, owner to assign or problem to solve, kill the meeting.
455
If you still got to have it, use an agenda and end early.
456
And a good leader is actually going to protect people's time and judges what they produce.
457
If you're ever in my meetings, you'll see me all the time go, why are you in here?
458
I don't think you need to be in here.
459
Like go out today you know there's a crew in here filming this video with me
460
but one of our heads was like i'm not going to be in there today
461
because i want to work on this other thing like great
462
amazing like you are an independent center of gravity give your best people their hours back
463
that signals more trust than another motivational speech now one of the other levers that's really important is recognition
464
and actually for some people this is more important than money people repeat what gets noticed
465
so make the right behavior impossible to miss
466
so for instance every other week we have a company -wide
467
meeting where at every single one i make sure to call
468
out a few people who are actually winning like don't say
469
great work everyone name the person the result the behavior
470
that produced it because when you give public recognition
471
and one person credit everybody else goes kind of i want
472
that and build public recognition in
473
when you build public recognition into the company's operating rhythm then the company starts to strive for it
474
so we have flat slack channels for wins in our our
475
all hands meeting we name specific people who moved the scoreboard like our top sales people
476
or winners in content i give random weekly awards for specific things
477
and if you do this
478
while the win is still fresh not six months later in a performance review people see
479
that as a reward cycle like a mouse with cheese right
480
and it should be a spotlight indirectly at the behavior you
481
want repeated the next one actually the bigger you get the more important this is
482
which is responsibility and access winners want to learn more
483
and do more your strongest people do not always need another
484
bonus sometimes they're like i'm bored i want a bigger problem i want more responsibility i want more control
485
or i want to go sit in the leadership meeting responsibility for someone says i trust your judgment
486
and access says your judgment matters here i want you here
487
so don't reward the person who just ships early by dumping more level work on them give them real ownership
488
and let them make the call bring them into the leadership meeting otherwise you teach your best people
489
that competence just gets you chores
490
while leadership keeps all the leverage let's talk about consequences for a second every exception you tolerate
491
becomes permission let someone miss the same standard twice
492
and the third one's on you
493
so for instance uh we have these things called blackout dates at our company
494
so around big events big revenue or earnings months.
495
We have dates that people cannot travel.
496
As you become an owner, you'll see you have to have this in business because you have surges in business.
497
Not every month is the same.
498
And so sometimes you just got to be there, even when you got a wedding that you'd rather go to.
499
So what do you need to do?
500
You need to give clear feedback and a real chance to say, hey, during this time, you actually can't travel.
501
And I know we're buddies and I know you're an adult
502
and I hate to tell you you can't go do anything in life.
503
That feels weird to me.
504
But if i give you this opportunity off what about everybody else
505
and you can always negotiate you can say listen i'm gonna
506
need you to work two saturdays to make up for it
507
and then i can say he's done double the work to cover
508
that one spot ready go because floor three is getting
509
that right people to the right elevator right
510
but remember four four gives them that reason to keep climbing
511
and then the penthouse is where you build a system
512
that actually climbs with you the penthouse sets the tone for everything
513
so this is where owners and ceos operate
514
and the job looks nothing like the work
515
that got you here you are not paid as a ceo
516
to do tasks you aren't even usually the one giving instructions
517
to most of the team your main job now is to set the tone for the whole business
518
because everyone below you is watching you to decide how seriously to take the mission
519
so at the penthouse i really think you lead through three pillars
520
and those three pillars are what you decide where you point
521
and what you model so the foundation for your business it starts with
522
judgment so this is what your decisions are firstly there is one thing you must stop doing here
523
and that's making a thousand decisions a day it feels productive
524
but it quietly drags you down
525
so your value at the top is getting the few decisions
526
that matter right and then building people who can handle the rest.
527
Your next job is really vision.
528
So the most valuable thing you can build clarity around is where are you going?
529
And then repeat it until every person can say it back to you.
530
If you have a vision on a wall, but nobody's repeating it or engraving it in their daily conversations, then you don't actually have a real vision.
531
You have to carry yourself and every part of your life
532
and every part of your company as the same part of the vision.
533
And it's so important that we even have it on the walls.
534
And I'm constantly reminding people to look at them.
535
Lastly, you have consistency.
536
One of my favorite lines and also least favorite lines of all time, because it's so annoying when it gets rubbed in your face, is how you do anything is how you do everything.
537
If you speak carelessly, can't hold a clear thought, or don't look after yourself or your word, people quietly wonder whether to put their careers behind you.
538
They read the small things as evidence of the big ones.
539
And the biggest one is this, do what you say you're going to do.
540
So everything you do at this level, I basically think of it as like a giant filter that's filtering down to the rest of the company.
541
And everything across these five floors builds towards one shift
542
which again is all in this book own or beyond
543
so a few years ago you know my number two he actually quit over the phone uh
544
and he was like i think the third key person to leave in a month
545
and i remember like very clearly i put my head on the desk
546
and finally saw it i like finally saw the truth
547
that i didn't want to hear
548
which was i wasn't running the business i was the business
549
and you know every important decision was in my head and so when this one person was leaving it could crater everything.
550
And the question that turned it around was simple.
551
Okay, what system needs to exist so it doesn't matter who leaves?
552
And that's why I wrote this book.
553
I started it that many years ago and I wrote Owner Be Owned
554
because this is the playbook of the shift for buying back your freedom, even from the baby that you've created, the business that you've built.
555
And this is the future.
556
So the question to answer here is which floor are you on?
557
Most people are going to spend their entire careers on one floor.
558
And that is because you aren't yet a leader.
559
And remember, leadership isn't a personality you're born with.
560
It's really just a set of skills.
561
And you just watch the ones for every level.
562
So be honest about where you are.
563
You can tell me in the comments.
564
The full hiring matrix and the rest of the scaling systems are all inside Owner Be Owned at my free event.
565
The elevator's open.
566
Which floor are you getting off on?
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “If You Don't Understand Leadership, You'll Never Win”. This video has 566 sentences and 6730 words to shadow. The speech runs for 32:08. The speaker talks fast, about 209 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 87% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| matrix noun | /ˈmeɪ.tɹɪks/ | The cavity or mold in which anything is formed. |
| elevator noun | /ˈɛləˌveɪtɚ/ | Anything that raises or uplifts. |
| annoy verb | /əˈnoɪ̯/ | To disturb or irritate, especially by continued or repeated acts; to bother with unpleasant deeds. |
| communicator noun | /kəˈmjuːnɪkeɪtə/ | Someone who, or something that communicates. |
| penthouse noun | /ˈpɛnt(h)aʊs/ | Any of the sloping roofs at the side of a real tennis court. |
| scoreboard noun | A large board that displays the score in a game or contest. | |
| lastly adverb | /ˈlæstli/ | Used to mark the beginning of the last in a list of items or propositions. |
| lobby noun | /ˈlɑ.bi/ | An entryway or reception area; vestibule; passageway; corridor. |
| consequence noun | /ˈkɑn.sɪ.kwəns/ | An effect; something that follows a cause as a result. |
| resume verb | /ˈɹɛz.ə.meɪ/ | To start (something) again that has been stopped or paused from the point at which it was stopped or paused; continue, carry on. |
| deadline noun | /ˈdɛdˌlaɪn/ | A time limit in the form of a date on or before which something must be completed. |
| quietly adverb | /ˈkwaɪ.ɪt.li/ | Producing little or no noise. |
| ceiling noun | /ˈsilɪŋ/ | The overhead closure of a room. |
| achievable adjective | /əˈt͡ʃivəbəl/ | Capable of being achieved, which either means possible or probable. |
| barista noun | /bəˈɹis.tə/ | A person who prepares coffee in a coffee shop for customers. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| burn out verb | To destroy by fire. |
| burn down verb | To cause (a structure) to burn to nothing. |
| buy back verb | To purchase (something already sold, misplaced, destroyed, or given away). |
| figure out verb | To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce. |
| get back verb | Return to where one came from. |
| get off verb | To move from being on top of (something) to not being on top of it. |
| get out of verb | To leave, exit or escape from; to become free of. |
| go out verb | To leave, especially a building. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- You don't need a title, you need a spine.
- Do you follow the one that's like fire, starts running around?
- If you're panicking, that's going to spread.
- If you're calm, that's going to spread.
- Which floor are you getting off on?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | who've been leading · I've been looking |
| Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result | If you're ever in my meetings, you'll see |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | i've built · i've realized · have gotten |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | people who stay · anyone who can · people who wouldn |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 186 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, don't, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: measurable /ˈmɛʒəɹəbəl/, negotiate /nəˈɡəʊ.ʃi.eɪt/, exceptional /ɪkˈsɛpʃənəl/, anxious /ˈæŋkʃəs/, instruction /ɪnˈstɹʌkʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: elevator /ˈɛləˌveɪtɚ/, communicator /kəˈmjuːnɪkeɪtə/, achievable /əˈt͡ʃivəbəl/, contrarian /kənˈtɹɛ.ɹi.ən/, measurable /ˈmɛʒəɹəbəl/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like matrix, elevator, annoy.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.