My new company vision template (yours to copy):

I could feel myself getting visibly frustrated. The heat rising from my chest, straight to my head.

Why couldn’t this person see it? Why did they keep screwing up?

It was like they had no idea what we were trying to build, or where we were trying to go!

And then it hit me….

Maybe they actually didn’t.

That moment I learned one of the most important leadership lessons of my life…

If your vision only lives in your head, then it doesn’t live at all.

My team was in the dark and I was actually blaming them for it.

So in this week’s article I’m going to show you how to get the vision out of your head… and into the hands of your team.

It’s a tool I call the Vision Ladder, and the template is yours this week for free…

Till next week,

Never say die 🏴‍☠️

Scot

PS. Happy mother’s day to all the amazing mothers out there – including my own wife Carrie, my mom Deb, and my mother-in-law Kathy! 💛

PPS. I’ll be at the Montana Festival this week speaking and hosting a Highland-sponsored dinner for Founders & Operators! I’m also facilitating a panel on regenerative agriculture, with two bad asses: Cole Mannix, founder of Old Salt Co-Op, and Robin Kelson, Executive Director of Abundant Montana.

If you’re there, hit me up! And big props to my friend, Padden Murphy, who’s been leading the charge building this SXSW-inspired event in Bozeman for the broader Montana ecosystem. Can’t wait to be more involved this year!

Do you have command of your business?

As we talked about in Highland last week… so many young CEOs (and managers) confuse ‘command of their business’ with micromanagement.

They become afraid to dive deeply into certain areas of the business – ask questions, second, guess stuff, etc. – as to not offend the people overseeing that area. Or, even worse, be labeled a MICROMANAGER! How awful!

But command isn’t about smothering someone over a long period of time. It’s about knowing the fundamentals of your business so well (like, down to the formula level), you’re able to dive super deep and help problem solve, hold the line on quality, or simply call bull shit when you see it.

You go low, fix the thing, then elevate back to your original altitude. Kinda like a bird fishing in water… (see video clip from Highland).

Maybe its a great analogy, maybe its dumb, but it always helped me regulate when to go low, and how long to to stay there (not long at all if you can help it!).

This is actually what Brian Chesky, the founder of airbnb, meant when he introduced the idea of “Founder Mode” last year. I wrote a in depth article on this if you want to check it out here:

→→→→ What ‘Founder Mode’ Really Is