On today’s episode Ryan Williams shares his journey to building an apparel company after his time in the military. During our conversation we cover his best advice for outsourcing, thinking strategically as a business owner, and what it takes to transition from an operational to a leadership mindset.
Ryan Williams, a former Navy SEAL, experienced entrepreneur and founder of Industry Threadworks. As he was building his previous apparel brands, he noticed that most print shops were notoriously unreliable, inaccurate, and had generally poor communication.
After hearing from many of his peers who had their own companies and were dealing with similar issues sourcing apparel, he decided to create Industry Threadworks to address those common problems. In doing so, he created an accurate, reliable and friendly solution for companies that want to place a turn-key order package, and return to focusing on running their own businesses, having peace of mind that their product will be printed according to spec, and delivered on time, consistently.
You can learn more about Ryan and his organization at: https://www.industrythreadworks.com/
Episode Transcript:
00:32
Acta Non Verba is a Latin phrase that means actions and not words. If you wanna know what somebody truly believes, don’t listen to their words instead, observe their actions. I’m Marcus Aurelius Anderson, and my guest today truly embodies that phrase. Ryan Williams has built and sold multiple companies
01:02
And his current company, Industry Threadworks, helps other apparel brands and businesses scale through experience, infrastructure, and data-driven decisions. But Ryan’s not only a badass entrepreneur and expert in apparel, merchandise, econ, and brand building, he’s also a former Navy SEAL who brings that experience to bear in all that he does. To learn more, check out indu and follow him on IG at Invictus5326.
01:29
Ryan, thank you so much. It’s been a long time coming. Thank you so much for giving the time. I know you’re busy. You’re on clubhouse. You, I think you own that place. Do you have stock in clubhouse? You’re just on there all the time. You’re given incredible value. You’re up there with all the heavy hitters and I met you in St. Louis from the Arte syndicate and it was just neat being able to connect with you. So thank you for the time. Dude, of course, man. I still have this gift that you gave me this night that you said, Oh, nice. And you’ve used it. Beautiful. I love it.
01:58
We use it a lot. We’ve got a couple of warehouses now. So sometimes I’ll go through the warehouse myself and do inventory and, you know, get into stuff and do that. That knife is helping out a lot. You’re welcome. I’m honored to have had the opportunity. And that’s what’s so interesting is I see so many people that come from a military background and they don’t understand that the thing that we learn in the military, the things about the organizational components, something as simple as a PCC or a PCI, a pre-combat check or pre-combat inspection to make sure that we have it.
02:28
sometimes just that attention to detail is what can separate you in business compared to some of the other people that are out there. That’s a key part of scaling, yeah. Right, and can you just tell us a little bit about what made you wanna be a Seal and a little bit of your experience there and then we can go into some of these other areas because again, it naturally sort of evolves if you see it from that kind of viewpoint. Yeah, for sure, and I try not to talk too much about the Seal thing because I feel like it’s a good context for who I am and it does provide some.
02:56
color from my background. But a lot of what I do for our clients these days now has nothing to do with my time in the team. So I try not to like, I feel like I’m riding the coattails of a lot of people who have way more experience in that area, way more badass stuff. So I try not to get too much into that stuff. Although I will say 10 years in there and three deployments, two after 9-11. And I learned a lot. It was a great time, a lot of fun, but there’s a lot of frustration in that too. Leadership, even at that level is not…
03:24
there’s not a whole lot of Jacos, even in the SEAL teams. Jacos is an exception, even in the teams. So it’s not all stars and glitter and unicorns that it appears in the outside like anything else. It looks really cool. Then you get behind the scenes like, man, this part of it is really cool. But there’s also these other parts I didn’t see that it’s not so fun. So yeah, I spent 10 years in and then got out and started building businesses. Apparel line was the first business my business part of the time started.
03:54
I sold my half of that one. But 5 years later, built another Paraline, sold that one. I had a kettlebell company, sold that and looked around at the end of that one. And I was like, okay, well, this is 8 years that I’ve been doing this. I’ve sold 3 companies. What do I want to do with this? And what are my assets? What can I build from here? And it just so happened that I had some friends of mine that were starting Paralines and they were really struggling. So I came in and I was like, hey man, I have significant experience with this. I can…
04:23
help you like, here’s what you should be paying, here’s what your mortgage should be doing, here’s how you handle customer services, how you handle the whole structure. And I helped one of my friends grow from about $100,000 in annual sales to about $4.5 million. So that was about three and a half to process, we helped him do that. So through that process, that also like, I realized, okay, well, we can actually affect a lot of change on this. We can provide a lot of assistance and I do have good experience in this and it can be really helpful. So then we built a business around it.
04:50
It was initially just my laptop and me and I was doing all the work. I was the operator. We didn’t have any employees and it was good. I really enjoyed it. I like solving problems and I enjoy being hands on with it. So for me, that was a good role. But then the company grew and we started getting more people on board and then my role completely changed. We’ve been on this kind of roller coaster trajectory since then. And I’ve just been in a rush to learn as much as possible. That’s why I’m in Clubhouse so much because I’ve learned so much from…
05:18
people on there that you would never ever get the chance to actually talk to. And everybody who gets on just tries to one up each other with the amount of value they’re providing. And some of these guys have built like 10 million, 100 million. Some of these guys have built billion dollar businesses on there. And they’re telling you exactly how they did it. I’m like, dude, I got to spend the time to do it. So sometimes when it’s my turn to speak, I try not to take up too much time with it. So I try to be very tactical with the messages that I give. But I just try to give as much as I can there because I’ve gotten so much out of it.
05:47
And I can attest to hearing you speak when you speak on the RTS and it could cause because you gave so many things that just made so much sense. And we were talking even earlier how it’s amazing how people will sort of rush around a business without standard procedures, without KPIs, without some of these simple things that they’re literally just they’re fighting every step of the way and their hair’s on fire and they’re they’re reactionary. And it’s almost like they’re able to succeed in spite of that lack of organization.
06:17
Yeah. That’s an important step though, because I found that you need different things at different points in your trajectory as a business owner. Like when I was an operator in the company and it was me doing the work, I didn’t read a book for like 10 years because nothing that I needed to learn was in any book anywhere. So I was literally making it up as I went. So I learned a lot from like, you know, Gary Vee at that point, some very tactical things I needed to learn about social media, about branding, about how to like put pieces together physically because I was the one putting the pieces together.
06:47
is very tactical things. And most of those things are not in the books. So reading books at that point in my career would have been a complete waste of time. So I didn’t do it. So I didn’t even listen to podcasts at that time. I was just like, if I needed a very specific piece of information, I went on YouTube, found it and then started executing right away. And for me, when you’re starting, and that’s been the same thing with any of these companies that I’ve started, is there’s always that phase that you go through where you’re the operator, you’re the one doing everything. But the point that you brought up about…
07:15
systematizing things is so key because a lot of people get caught up in that. And they never move beyond that because they get just frantic with everything. And it’s an insurmountable amount of things that need to be done in the day. And they don’t know how to offload it. And I fell into this trap too, where I thought it’s very common saying here with entrepreneurs like, I just replicate myself. But I can tell you like my business right now would be freaking terrible. We have 24 people. If I had 23 other writers running around here, it would be absolutely terrible.
07:45
So I think in the beginning, and I used to say that too, it’s like, oh, I just seem to replicate myself. I just didn’t understand what I really needed at that time. And the way that I ended up solving that after bumping into a few walls was that I realized, and this is the system that I recommend to people do now, where if they’re in that place where they’re the operator, they’re the one doing everything, they don’t know who to hire because they don’t even know what the tasks are. I found it a very simple process. You basically take one week, like a normal week.
08:13
you write down every single thing you do during the day. Down from what time you get up to how long it takes you to make breakfast, how long it takes you to drive where you’re going. You have your laptop out. What things do you do when you get to work? What do you do at lunch? What do you do every time you go to the gym? Absolutely every single thing throughout your day for a full week. And it’s not going to be 100% accurate, but at least it’ll give you a snapshot. And from there, what you do is you take all these things, lay them out on the table.
08:38
And I call them basically hats. So they’re different tasks. Even making breakfast is a task. And you might find through this process that, man, if you spend 6 hours a week making food for yourself, you might find that your time… If you had an extra 6 hours in your week, you could be a lot more effective with growing your business. Oh, yeah. So even if it costs you $500 to get food for the week on that, and you can make $100 per hour, now you’re net positive by outsourcing that. So… But it’s not until you…
09:07
really dive into these things and pull them apart, you tend to notice this. But back in track of finding an employee, finding an employee, you have to first find out what that person is going to be doing. So in order to establish what the roles or responsibilities of that person are, you got to figure out you as the operator in that stage of business, what do you want to let go of? So by laying out all these hats on the table, you’ll find some are very easy. Like nobody’s going to work out for you, obviously. And you’re probably not in a position where you’re going to outsource food making or whatever. So…
09:37
can pull a lot of these off the table. But then once you get into the actual daily tasks of the business, I like to categorize them. So some of them are going to be financial where you’re just paying people or you’re managing invoices, recreating invoices. Some of them are going to be creative where you’re doing designs, you’re creating pamphlets, you’re creating offers, whatever it is. Some of them are going to be fulfillment. So whatever product you’re delivering, whether that’s a physical product or an information product or whatever it is.
10:06
you’re delivering on those services or that product, like actually sending it out the door, or maybe you’re ordering more of it, or whatever these things are. But you’ll quickly notice that these things fall into several different categories. So you’re probably not going to find the same person to do creative work that’s also going to be fulfilling orders and doing warehouse work. There are two different types of people for that. So we put all the creative stuff into one bucket or hat arena. We put all the technical stuff, like maybe your ads person or your…
10:33
social media person, something like that. Somebody who’s analytic or invoicing will be in a different hat. And then you might have a different bucket or group of hats for fulfillment or tactical things. But once you lay everything on a table, you can group these things out. So once you have been grouped, you’re like, okay, well, am I better doing a creative vision of the company or packing boxes? And once you put it to yourself like that, it’s pretty easy to tell like, okay, well, I’m going to keep doing what only I can do.
11:01
which is the creative part and building the vision of the brand. And I’m really not the best person to be packing boxes or folding shirts or whatever it is. So now you know between those two, you can start to be like, okay, I need a person to do this task. And then in the beginning, it’s probably not going to be full time. So you might have a person who’s doing multiple hat groups or somebody’s packing boxes. And they might also, if you trust them, start doing invoicing or something like that. But it’s very important in the beginning that you figure out what these groups are.
11:30
because then you can define what it is that the roles and responsibilities of this person is going to be. And you can kind of craft an avatar, what type of person is going to best fit for that role. And then you’ll actually have a testing list when you go to make that ad. Like we use Indeed a lot for most of our stuff. When you go to make that ad, you’ll actually have a pretty good write up of like, what exactly they’re going to be doing. And that’s how we’ve… At least in that stage, that’s how we started kind of building out what these different roles are going to look like in the company. And it worked really well for us.
11:59
There’s other stages after that, obviously, but if you’re in that point where you just don’t know what to do, just mapping out your week and organizing all your tasks into the different groups, I found was, it’s provided a lot of clarity and it’s just a great starting point. There’s a million other directions we can go from there, but that’s like the number one thing I recommend to people who are in that position, or just kind of like, they don’t know even who to hire on that thing. Well, and that’s a beautiful thing to go through an audit like that, because like you said, it’s a very no bullshit, what really has to be done.
12:28
Where am I fucking around? Where am I wasting time? And then how much does that time add up? In my book, I talk about how people get on social for 15 minutes, which turns into half an hour. They do it twice a day. So as an entrepreneur, like you said, seven hours a week, that’s a lot of time. And then if you extrapolate how much your hourly wages compared to the person you’re paying 25 bucks to, it’s like, man, you’re shooting yourself in the foot. You do it over a year and you may be losing literally two months of your valuable time.
12:56
And then what else happens because we lose focus. So now that I’m still pissed off about what I saw on Facebook, I can’t get back to what I need to do, right? So I’m shooting myself in the foot, and now I’m not serving my vision. I don’t even know what that vision is, and I’m constantly a step behind. So again, that’s beautiful. And then you’re also making a really good point because how many people do we know that started business like you were talking about, and they don’t understand that now they have to step up? They have to be the CEO. They have to lead.
13:24
They’re not just on a team with a bunch of people that are helping them. They had to step up. Yeah. Totally different role, completely different role. And it’s funny too, because I’ve seen, and I used to think this way too, when I was like, you know, I wanted to be a CEO because it sounds cool and powerful. And it is, and it’s fun. It’s a fun part of the journey. But you realize that, uh, I think Steumin had a great point on this, that he said, uh, unless you have an executive team, you’re not a CEO. No, you’re, you’re, you’re an owner, right? You, you can be an entrepreneur. You can be owner.
13:54
you’re not a CEO until you have an executive team under you. And that made a lot of sense. But I know for me, my own roles and responsibilities in the company have completely changed from the time that it was just me and a laptop. Now we have 24 people in three warehouses and an HQ and staff and a whole bunch of different roles. And now, what my day to day looks like is less than 1% the same as it was three years ago. Less than 1% of the tasks are the same.
14:24
for me, that was a really big shift because I enjoyed being an operating company. I liked doing the things and I got into that trap that I think a lot of people fall into where they’re really driven and they want to work hard. And when you’re an operating company, the harder you work, the faster the company goes and the more money you make. And it’s a very linear progression. But once you start to have a team, and now time isn’t the most important factor in that equation. So you can’t just work harder. You got to manage the team better.
14:52
And then you step into the CEO position. Now you’re managing managers. Now you step into a leadership position, which is very different from an operator. And that was a difficult transition for me because I’ve never really wanted to be a leader. I still kind of not super comfortable with that, but I know that for me to build the big company that I want to build, that’s what I have to do. And I can’t just work harder. I can’t just work more. I have to figure out now when we’re doing it’s kind of like the same exercise we talked about.
15:22
I got to figure out, okay, if I’m going to be the CEO or owner or leader, whatever it is of this size company we want to get to, what does that look like? What are my roles and responsibilities going to be in that size company? So if we want to get to $10 million, what do I need to do? What is my role need to look like? What do I need to be capable of as a leader in a $10 million company? And $100 million. What do I need? What’s the difference in that?
15:49
And how much do I need to grow and what specific ways to become the best person for that role at $100 million? And then $300 million, whatever it is. So what I realized is that what I needed that initial point in business where I was starting was just YouTube videos and very capital stuff on how to actually do things. And then it became management issues and dealing with people. And then that morphed into leadership positions and very different outlook and building teams, not just managing one team but…
16:17
managing multiple teams and building other leaders underneath. And that’s where I started getting into books in the last probably year and a half because this stuff isn’t… Where is the information? When I was an operator of the information on YouTube, now that I’m in a leadership position in the company, where is the information? Now what I need to learn is in books, it’s in long-form podcasts, it’s learning from other people who are at that level and beyond. So that’s why my day-to-day…
16:46
my role and what’s expected of me and what I expected myself has completely changed. Thankfully, I’m not good at a lot of things. But one of the things I am good at is being very self-aware. So I recognize myself that, okay, I’m not… I think we’re doing… Last year, we had like 6.4 million. So we’re on track. We’re still growing. But we’re not a 10-million dollar company yet. We’re not near where I want to be. I want to be a set of gold.
17:14
and a half years ago to be a 300 million dollar company. So our goal this year is 20. Our goal next year is 100 years after that is 300. So we got a big fucking goal. And but I know for me, I got to really look at what it takes to run a company like that. And I run this company pretty well where we’re at. But I know that there’s certain skills I don’t have that I’m gonna really need at 10 million, at 20 million, at 100 billion. So I’m taking the efforts now to make sure that I learn as much as I can.
17:44
and build myself into that person that’s capable of leading an organization at that level. Those are great points. There’s like a million things that I jotted down, but you were making a great point earlier even where let’s say that we’re listening to say Gary Vee. Gary Vee is telling you from his position currently at VaynerX with all this stuff going down. So he may be telling you something, but that may be true for him where he’s at. But like you said, if you’re a solopreneur, like you said, you don’t have the luxury of just delegating out stuff. You have to figure it out.
18:13
And then, right. And then even the stuff that he was doing with the hustle mentality, that was 10 years ago, 20 years ago. So it’s changed. So you have to be very honest about understanding what they’re saying, but what they’re really trying to give you the conceptual idea so that you can apply that as opposed to, uh, Tim Ferris, when he redid the four hour word, we can re-release it. And he was like, he literally had people that were bitching at him. It’s like, uh, this link isn’t legit anymore. He’s like, if I have to hold your hand.
18:42
to get this information to you, then you’re not gonna make it in the point. Yeah, you’re not gonna make it anyway. I can’t like as soon as I print this is obsolete anyway. You need to have the drive and figure out what I’m trying to give you. Look, I’m a finger pointing at the moon. Don’t look at that. Look at what I’m trying to give you. Yeah, and then- People want the spoon fed answer. They, but if they do, they want the next spoon after that. It’s like you say, like it’s fun to talk about business and drink with your boys and I’m like, man, here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna make a plan that.
19:08
But you got to wake up the next day and actually go do shit and you probably can be hung over. It’s probably overcast and you’re going to be cars me out of gas and got a flat tire. That’s just entrepreneurship. So we used to have a saying in Bud’s trainings that everybody wants to be a seal on a sunny Friday afternoon. You know, you got like two more hours of like pushups left and then you get to go to the bar. You don’t tell everybody you’re a team guy. But yeah, Monday morning at like, you know, 5am.
19:36
Nobody wants to get up and get in the water at 5 a.m. on Monday. So but it’s like you say, like you got to make that transition from talking about it to actually doing it and walk in the walk. We do. And then even that part about growing and evolving as a leader. A lot of people I see when they need to step into the CEO role, it’s more comfortable for them to get in the weeds. Like you said, it’s more comfortable. It’s easier to just put your head down and push because it doesn’t take any intelligence or any like hard.
20:03
worked like people to understand. My team would get so mad at me when I did that. I used to do that apparently like nine months ago and I would go try to stick my fingers in the machine and like, oh, I can fix this. And the fact is I can’t, like I can’t and I’m functional with it, but the systems and processes that I built our team then improved upon and scaled and now when I go and try to put my fingers in the machine, like, I’m gonna fix this.
20:26
dude, I just break it. My team’s looking at me like, what are you doing? Just get out of here. Go to the office. We got it. You go do your thing. Yeah. I’m like, man. But it was a really eye-opening couple situations for me where I realized, shit, we’ve really grown beyond where I was at with this. And I used to pride myself on that. I do it. I know how to do everything. And I can function with every role in the company because I’m still connected with everything. But at the same time…
20:55
there isn’t a role in the company other than mine where I can do it as good as the person who specializes in it. And that was kind of a hit to the ego at that point for me because I’m like, dude, I’m used to being the operator for 10 years at that point. And I kind of prided myself on that. And I’m just gonna work hard. And I’m gonna just gut it out. And now, man, we’re at a point where that doesn’t work anymore. So for me to get to my goals and our goals as a company, that old…
21:24
like fail safe tactic, it just straight up doesn’t work. And it’s actually counterproductive. So now I have to go back to the drawing board and figure out, okay, well, I’m useless at that. Right, so we’ve established that. So what can I do now to move the company forward? What things am I truly good at? What perspective can I share that only I have that only I can do to move the company forward? And we identified a few things, but it really helped provide me purpose because it was frankly kind of a hit to the ego
21:54
I realized I was not the best person for these things that I prided myself on for so long. But that’s a huge compliment to you because it’s actually grown. It’s become its own ecosystem to the point where you truly couldn’t even recognize what was going on. So give yourself credit, man. That’s what you want. Like if you go back and everything’s exactly the same as it was three years ago, man, you’re not pushing. I mean, you haven’t had to like elevate to get to that place, right? So that’s… Yeah, we’re in the deepest water I’ve been in so far. But thankfully…
22:23
Like being in Airtail Syndicate has been a huge buoy for me because it allows me to see what guys like Andy and some of the other guys in the syndicate are doing, running way bigger companies than I am. And kind of just really have frank and honest conversations with them about how they’re feeling and what they’re doing. And a lot of times the interesting thing is that we’re all dealing with the same problems, the same ego hits, the same insecurities, the same visions and misunderstandings.
22:50
It’s just that, you know, their problems have a few more zeros behind them than I do. But they’re usually very similar problems. And that gave me a lot of confidence to realize like, oh, you know what? I’m not screwing everything up. I’m actually doing okay with this. We’re on track. This is very normal to have these problems and issues. And as long as we’re solving them quickly, and we’re not making the same mistakes twice, that’s pretty on track with where we need to be. But it was really helpful.
23:19
empowering me to see that these guys that I put up on these pedals, they were struggling with very similar things that I was struggling with. And man, their journey looked very similar to mine. And I’m like, dude, the biggest lesson I learned from that was that there is no magic pill or plan or button or anything. You really just have to do the work. But also, you have to make sure that your system is set up to where you’re not spinning your wheels. You have to be affected. You can’t just work harder. You do have to work hard.
23:49
But working hard is not the only answer. You also have to make sure that your system is set up to where you’re building in improvements and any mistakes or issues or problems that come up, you’re addressing why they happen and readjusting the machine to make sure those same mistakes don’t happen. So mistakes are always gonna come up. That’s normal. But if you see a trend where the same mistakes keep happening, that’s either a system problem or it’s a personnel problem. Or maybe what we’ve ran into sometimes too is that we build a system
24:18
so intricate and so accurate, we didn’t account for the human error. Yes. And yeah, and that was a problem too. So we have to account for, okay, there’s some flexibility with, we need to address the training of people. We need to address, you know, the culture, we need to address the wellbeing of the people that we have running these systems. And we can’t build the system that expects a machine to operate the machine. We have to build a system that is flexible enough to have an operator, a human operator come in and be able to take some of that flex in there. And.
24:47
when you were talking about the CEO component as well, again, it used to be where you could just find the tactical stuff wherever you wanted. But again, the questions that you have now are specific and unique to you. And we can ask other people and that’s fine. But again, the very specific, the idiosyncratic things that you’re fighting, there’s no book out there. There’s no other person, there’s no other Ryan Williams out there in your company. So that’s why even that idea of adversity from the military and everything else, the answer that you seek is in the adversity that you’re not.
25:17
facing that you’re not doing the work that you’re not unpacking. And by doing that, that’s how you’re doing so well, because you’re willing to be self aware and call yourself on your own bullshit and say, okay, well I’m dropping the ball here. Obviously, what do I have to do? And if nobody else can tell you the answer, then you got to figure it out. And that’s where, where would you say that your leadership style came from or is your leadership style always evolving? How would you classify it? Oh man, I say number one, I’m probably not.
25:46
the best leader. Why is that? I never was a really good leader. Even the SEAL teams, I was like an E5 when I was in a platoon. So I wasn’t really like in a leadership position at all. When I went to instructor duty, so I was an instructor for a while in the BUDS training pipeline, which is SEAL training for guys who don’t know. And I learned a lot there from like teaching a public speaking course and realizing the power that you have of these people is a huge responsibility. These guys were… The training is literally life and death sometimes.
26:16
they’ll do whatever you tell them to do. If you tell them they’re trusting you with their life and you tell them to go jump off a cliff, they will literally jump off a cliff. So it’s a massive amount of responsibility. So coming from the SEAL team to an instructor position was… That was the first step for me into what I would consider the start of a leadership position. And then when I transitioned into being an entrepreneur, there was nobody to lead. It was just me. So I got to do whatever I want, which is nice. And then we stepped into a few people that we had on the team and it was more…
26:45
not a leadership position, but a management style position. And it’s only been probably the last year and a half, maybe two years that I’ve actually had to step into a leadership role. So I’m always evolving. And the things that I’m saying here on this podcast now are just my perspective on what I’ve learned so far in the next five to eight years. I might look back on this and like, man, I didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about. I might have a completely different perspective on it.
27:12
But that’s all that we can do though. All we can do is move forward, analyze what went wrong in the past and try to make adjustments to the present so that our future is better. That’s a key to business. But for me, I would say my leadership style is I always try to back it with information. I make my decisions based on data and information. And what I tell our team is that if they don’t agree with the decision I make, I want to know why. I don’t want them to just do whatever I say blindly because I’m not trying to build a bunch of robots here. I’m trying to build…
27:41
thinking, capable, excellent people. So I want them to speak up because if they’re speaking up and they disagree with me, it’s either one of two things. Number one, I haven’t communicated my vision or the reasons why this is the right path correctly. Or number two, maybe I’m wrong. And maybe they have a better idea. Maybe they see something I don’t. But either way, something needs to be addressed and changed. Either I need to change or I need to change either in the way that I present the information so it’s better presented for them.
28:11
Or I need to change a plan based on whatever new piece of information they have that I haven’t accounted for. But either way, I’m getting better. But if you just take like, no, I’m right. I’m the quote unquote CEO and my way or the highway kind of thing. Man, you’re right. Put it this way. If I was the only person that was smart in this company, we would be totally fucked. So thankfully, we have some really smart people that are really good and dedicated to their roles.
28:40
And that’s why we’re able to solve problems really fast. And when we do make mistakes or mistakes pop up, we’re able to self-correct and get back on track and fix the original system very, very fast. So I equate it to like ego, right? So like long-term ego and short-term ego where you have to have an ego to build anything big, otherwise just like…
28:59
I’m just going to sit at home and play video games all day. Right. You have to want to do something big and put your name on a billboard or whatever happens to you, whatever your big thing is for me, I like working behind the scenes. I prefer not to be, you know, in front of things if I don’t have to, but I want to build a million dollar company. And I know for me to do that, I have to build a really good team. I have to build an organization level team. Yes. So for me to do that now, I have to take this big ego, but if I go into a meeting.
29:25
with some of our people like, it’s my we’re the highway. This is what we’re doing. I know best. I can win the meeting and just overpower them. We’re like, we’re doing it this way. And they’re like, okay, great. Okay, whatever boss, you know, and they’ll do it. But number one, they’re not going to care about it. And number two, maybe I’m wrong. And they’re never going to tell me. And it builds resentment. Dude, totally. And now they self sabotage. And then you beat them down and then they’re never going to they’re totally on not on board with the mission. Yeah.
29:53
Jaco has some great stuff on this. I’ve learned a lot from them. So what I’ve found is that you have this long-term ego that you wanna build something big, but in order to actually get it done, you need to wad it up in a little ball, put it in your pocket, and go into these meetings and be like, hey, this is the big vision. This is where we wanna go. But you tell me how are we gonna get there? How are we gonna do this? What’s the best plan? What do we bring to the table? Are we really doing everything we can? What can we shed? We’re running a ship like.
30:22
What’s slowing us down? We really need this picnic table on the deck. No, we don’t throw that fucking thing overboard. Let’s super charge this thing. But I think if you go into those meetings and you don’t allow yourself to be humbled and you don’t put your ego in your pocket, you’ve got to learn to crush your short-term ego in order to build something big to satisfy the long-term ego. Because there’s no way that those two things will exist. You have your small ego, you never put something big. And if you have a big ego, you’re just going to trip over your dick, trying to get there and you’re never going to go.
30:51
So I think it really the best way is to kind of have a mix of both because they’re both very useful tools. But like any tool, you have to know when to use it and how to use it. That’s it. It’s all situational. And like you were saying as well, when you walk in and you say, OK, guys, how are we going to fail? And I don’t see it. Like, where am I going to fall down? Yeah, because it’s not your job. Like you said, you can’t see everything. That’s why you have a CEO or a CFO. That’s their job. That’s their expertise. What am I missing? Were you trying to tell me what I’m doing wrong?
31:20
And if you do that, or then if you’re even saying about the efficiency, what are we still doing that we shouldn’t be doing? And now everybody goes, Oh, well, you’re still doing that. And you’re still doing that. There it is. And now there’s no ego because we’ve taken all the bullshit away. And it’s about your vision. This is the goal. This is where we want to go. We take everything else away. Is this getting us closer to what Ryan wants? No. Why not? Why are we still doing it? Okay. Moving on. And that’s why, like you said, your vision is so important because
31:49
If you don’t know where the hell we’re going, other than just North, it’s kind of tough, right? I mean, we’re going North pretty quick. Not, not really sure where or even if we get there yet, right? I mean, we’re still going that direction. And that’s where it’s so hard to be a leader because you have to empower this C-suite executive team, give them as much as you possibly can to help them get where they want to go, but then also have again, that ability to listen again, maybe they should be directing you in some ways, if you’re willing to listen to that feedback, because without it again, you’re just sort of.
32:17
running blind sometimes, even if you’re running there quickly. Yeah, totally right, man. And I found Andy and Ed had a really good point. The only first thing to talk about the first year in the syndicate was you have to set a big goal. And I was thinking like before that I was like, Okay, I want to build a big company that makes money. Okay, what the hell does that mean? What is big to you? Number one, and then how big? Where are you going to position this? And I found that it really comes back to reading a map, right? In order to read a map, even on your iPhone, you have to have two
32:46
points, you have to have a really honest assessment of where you’re at. Meaning like, what are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? Where are you on the grid? What are your Apex points? Then two, you have to know where you’re going. You can’t just be like, when you say like, oh, we’re going north. Okay, great. How far? Left and right? What are our angles? You might go a little bit north, but are we going a mile? Are we going 100 miles? That’s one of the things that I learned from them is that I set a goal two and a half years ago to do. I want to build a
33:16
I don’t even know. It’s just random number. I’m like, okay, that’s about the size of Andy’s company. Like, okay, that sounds good. I don’t know what that means. I think we’re at like, 1.8 at the time. I’m like, all right, well, let’s shoot there. And that goal, even though it’s arbitrary, and it might be half a billion, could be any number, it doesn’t matter what the number is. But it matters that there’s a point. And once you set that point, and it’s important to make it big because that direction has a very…
33:43
accurate and direct trickle-down effect to the decisions that you make daily. And I found it’s much easier to make decisions on a daily basis if you have that big vision in the sky in the future. Like, okay, like you said, is this decision, which of these two choices moves us closer towards our company goal? And once you put any question within a very clear metric like that, the answer is usually very clear. And it really removes a lot of the stress and doubt and these day-to-day decisions. It makes it a lot faster to execute.
34:13
frankly, it’s more fun. So I wasn’t really aware how important that was until I did it. And then afterwards I realized like how much easier it made just running the day to day, the day to day. And now you’re encouraging your people to ask questions. If you come into your next meeting and say, listen, guys, we did 10 million this year, but then two years from now, we’re out of business. What happened? And now that makes them look at these little things that don’t look like a big deal. And then when you expand it, you’re like, Oh, so we have to take care of this now, because as we know,
34:42
it gets bigger, just like when you’re shooting. If you shoot from here to the door, it’s fine, but you get to 400 meters, you’re not even on the paper because it’s a seven o’clock pull and it’s just a little bit, but big enough, it’ll actually take you down. So yeah, these small things in scale, man. It’s yeah, that’s why in sample school, they didn’t talk about a minute of angle, which is one inch at 100 yards. So at 1000 yards, that’s 10 inches, you know what I mean? So at 25 yards, no big deal, quarter inch is still gonna hit, you know,
35:10
But a thousand yards, 10 inches one way or the other, that’s a big spread, you know? That was part one of my interview with Ryan Williams, former Navy SEAL and founder of Industry Threadworks. You can hear part two of our interview on the next episode of Acta Non Verba, where we continue our discussion on pragmatic leadership, the problem Ryan is solving with his company, and we even discuss religion. You do not want to miss this episode with Ryan Williams.
