week 105: i needed to fire myself

skills + values is a winning combination

thank you to over 11,000 of you who read this weekly and share with your friends and family for behind the scenes on building a million a 5 million dollar business from scratch and beyond.

i also include a personal note in the end so i am grateful that you let me do that without judgement.

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first, thank you for checking in with me as i took a month break from writing and doing just summer family time while getting our small business in order.

one of the things i picked up is a book by John C. Maxwell (notably the #1 Leadership Expert in the world having written 90 books on leadership and still going strong).

i happen to be on a board with him where he talked about his latest book - High-road leadership.

in his book, on page 22, John talks about skills + values is the willing combination.

i totally agree and this thought and it couldn’t have come at a better time.

in the past 2.5 years, we built our company to nearly a $3M in revenue business with a small and mighty team of A++ players.

literally the best team that knows no boundaries.

but as we built the business of GTM Partners with the vision to be the go-to for go-to-market, i neglected the values part of it.

and because we didn’t build our business with values first, everyone operated with their own values and things got out of hand.

candidly, it has been the lowest point in my career as i saw this happening and had all the power as the CEO to stop it, address it, and change it but here is the brutal truth…

i was scared.

afraid…

what if this rocks the boat?

what if one of the A++ players quit?

every person on the team is A++ but even the pirates need a captain to lead them and i failed.

i failed to lead.

because of my inability to make values-based decision, i caused the team to flounder and even with the teams best intentions, everyone rowed in a different direction.

i have no one to blame but myself and i had to fire my old-self - that CEO is no good.

i have to say that out loud.

thankfully, in the last two weeks, everything came to an head and now the leadership team has a clear direction and energized to do things differently and better.

i have a clear direction and i vowed to no longer be a by stander.

it’s not going to be rosy immediately but i and the team can now call out anything that is not our values-based behavior and we can address it head on.

thanks to the leadership team that they have accepted my apology and now it’s up to me to hold my side of the bargain as they agreed to hold theirs.

so we defined our values they are as simple as A.B.C.D.:

A - always be learning and innovating (thinking outside the box is expected)

B - we work better together (heroes are teams)

C - we celebrate wins (no win is too small to celebrate)

D - we deliver on our promise (both internally and externally)

these aren’t perfect but are memorable and practical.

i know we have the right skillsets on the team and with these values, we have a winning combination to build a high-road leadership team, the way John describes in his book.

if anyone can’t operate with these values, we can now help them find a new home but they can’t be on this team anymore.

leadership starts with me if i have the audacity to call myself the CEO (now the new CEO) then i am ready to become a leader, coming in better and stronger than ever.

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on a personal note, i had an XR iphone (go on judge me) and my son, Krish, who just turned 14, didn’t have any phone yet (go on, breathe…).

so yesterday, we all went to our good old neighborhood t-mobile and got me an iphones 15 pro and iphone 13 for Krish.

say hi to krish and pls congratulate him for being world’s oldest kid to get a phone!

🥳🥳🥳

this picture is a reminder to me, that thankfully the job i can’t be fired from is being a dad.

i am learning a lot there too and i am so grateful that while i was going thru the lowest point, i had my family with me.

i thank God for creating a family system, that we mere mortals get to enjoy!

leader point: failure is truly one our greatest teacher, only if we are willing to be it’s student.