There are days when I am in the trenches with my team, second guessing myself with the Urge to YELL – Peace – Lone Wolf is Out.
Then Roll into the closest Pub with my Laptop and Cell Phone, throw back a shot of whiskey, wash it down with an ice cold beer and get to work for my self again.
The ONE problem – that would be a short Lived WIN and a I would have lost the war.
The war to create something AMAZING – something that shapes a part of my LEGACY.
About 2 years ago I started learning how to become a better leader of people, especially people that I was going to hire to work with me at Optimized Assets.
As a highly trained Lone Wolf Entrepreneur [LSE] it has been one of the more challenging things for me to do. Most of my self-employed life it has been me and an assistant where I did 90% the work. That Past Season of my Life and it's simplicity is something that I often find myself fantasizing about.
We move to new seasons for a reason and I chose the one I am in now.
I knew entering this war, this new Season of my Life, I would be challenged to break out of my Introverted Shell. It would require me to be around people daily, more importantly trust them to believe in our vision and believe in themselves to do a great job.
It hasn't been easy… We have lost great people and I have had to fire some average ones. There was a good 6 month stretch that made me feel like I installed a revolving door to the office.
It is hard to not Self Reflect and wonder if I just sucked at leading or was destined to be a LSE for life. I lost sleep over it and self doubt began to creep in.
Until One random Sunday Morning. I woke up at the ass crack of dawn, sat at the computer and started writing out the beginnings of something that would change the business forever.
By the time the first draft was done I was excited, yet concerned it wouldn't be received very well when I rolled it out to the team.
I even ran it buy some people to see if I would get that ‘You Crazy' look with the frown smile people give you when they don't want to crush your excitement.
Instead I got more of, man that is pretty cool…I like it, so I jumped back in and finished up the Final Draft of what is now called the Optimized Oath.
This Oath is the driving force for our company, our mission and the core to all things we do as a TEAM Now.
When I rolled it out to everyone, I asked them all to read it and sign it. If and only if they believed they would live up to the new standard we were setting for ourselves and for the company.
Everything changed in our business that day. I will never forget the excitement I received from everyone and the Buy-In I got from them all. It was a true #OptimizedMoment (this is a phrase that is used to describe Moments we have as a Work Family)
Ever since that day you can see the office dynamic has improved, the door has stopped revolving and we have an amazing Team of people working together, laughing together, and supporting each other.
The Oath was exactly what our Work Family needed.
And it was exactly what I needed – it was the moment that I graduated from LSE to CEO.