[laughs]

...

I appreciate being here.

Um, so I, uh, Building with the End in Mind, you know, it took me about, um, 27 years to write that book.

And so Buil- Building with the End in Mind w- was written for a founder who effectively owns a business.

Uh, a, a business that, um, has systems and processes.

It has consistent top-line growth.

I, I'd love to talk a little bit about that and, and how you think about that relative to these businesses.

David, our first question, how can leaders create and nurture a psychologically safe environment for their team?

Yeah.

Yeah.

In fact, my most recent book, The Founder's Treadmill, is about that.

And where it starts is to say, listen, founder, when you start a small business, you've got to survive.

And a lot of times that means you have to do everything.

And unfortunately, that also means you probably don't trust anybody to do most of the work except you.

What are some ideas that you have on how leaders specifically can maintain effective emotional wellness for themselves in that sometimes very stressful leadership role?

That's awesome.

Thank you.

And I'm always so proud when I remember and she doesn't.

But...

But, but, but I got married first, you know, we had, you know, a child and a mortgage too soon.

And, um, and then I decided that I wanted to go to college.

So got into Purdue five years.

But

And then I, I've, I've had a lot of my friends that, that have companies that, that'll make those complaints about the people that work for them, and I'm, "Just get rid of them." "Ah, I can't do thatWell, how do you know?

Well, let, let, let me, let me give you another answer to the question, because, you know, um, I, I, I literally, I, you know, one of the books I wrote was for the 30-year-olds.

The, you know, it said, "Listen, um, you, you could take your skills and go hang out your own shingle.

But before you do that, the, um...

That's a lot of work.

There's a fair amount of risk, and frankly, you'll just hop on that treadmill and you're gonna own a job with overhead.

So rather than do that, investigate the possibility of investing and buying in to where you started working." But th- then we ran into another, uh, issue that came up and, and I, hopefully I'm solving it with another book I wrote called The Stewardship Advantage.

You're just, you're going a million miles an hour with your hair on fire, and then it starts to become a real business, right? And, and then talk to me a little bit about what people should look for in that moment when it starts to become a real business, and that shift in mindset that they need to make.