I didn’t see this one coming.
Neither did he.
One of the things my late builder & mentor Larry Allen taught me was prospects buy BUILT TO LEAD mostly after experiencing it on a call.
So this one’s for Larry…
A 50+ something entrepreneur in a tax accountant suit and I had almost finished a very pleasant coffee yesterday, when I asked him WHY he is leading a successful start-up firm in the commercial real estate industry with a staff mostly of hungry young appraisers hired right off the university campus.
He said he hadn’t ever really thought about it. He saw himself as a guy who mostly just plodded along doing one thing at a time. There was no master plan – no magic script — he’d just started this business initially for survival after being unexpectedly out of work at the age of 41 after building a practice for a wealthy owner who didn’t need him or the team he’d assembled there anymore.
He added matter-of-factly that “vision” is a concept he’s struggled with a lot as a leader. He’d read about it, and even gone to various seminars without gaining much more clarity — except that maybe he just wasn’t the visionary type.
That’s when he asked me what I thought vision was.
I told him vision flows from clarity of purpose, and added — “so let me play back what I’ve heard about your story.”
“You had a cool career going and spent 15 years working for someone else, only to get kicked to the curb in 1997 by someone you’d trusted, along with the rest of the great people you’d hired and poured yourself into along the way. At 41, you were unemployed looking over the kitchen table at your wife and mother of your 4 kids, wondering what you were going to do to pay the bills. You started this business just doing what you knew how to do — excellent appraisal work, doing right by clients, and hiring new team members to do the same along the way. ALL WITH THE DEEP CONVICTION THAT YOU WILL NEVER, EVER LET HAPPEN TO THEM WHAT THE WEALTHY OWNER DID TO YOU, YOUR TEAM, AND YOUR FAMILIES.”
I stopped and let it sink in. His face started shaking, and he took off his wire-rimmed glasses to keep the tears that were welling up from staining his tie.
I asked him if I had answered his question of where vision comes from.
He smiled, nodded, and said “thank you.”
Inside, I said “thank you, Larry.”
Formalities aside, he & his team will start becoming BUILT TO LEAD sometime in April.
The script for this one? Magic.
BUILT TO LEAD 