Success is Succession w/ Josh Swing

Speaker A: What's up? Uh, welcome back. I'm your host, Josh Swing, and I couldn't be more excited to spend this episode with you talking about the concept of successional leadership. I've had the unique opportunity over the past month to spend some time at a couple of different conferences leading sessions on successional leadership. And there's a really unique challenge that's facing a lot of different industries and organizations. And it's what people are calling the Silver Tsunami. I didn't call it that. Other people are calling it that. But the breakdown of the Silver Tsunami is that, um, statistically, in a bunch of different industries, community banking, credit unions, financial institutions, construction companies, that over half of senior leaders, over 50% of senior leadership teams, um, will retire by the year 2031. So it's 2026. At the time that I'm recording this podcast episode, in less than five years, over half of senior leadership teams will have retired or transitioned out of their senior leadership role inside of the organization. So you combine that statistic with another statistic, and that's that 70% right now of top performers that are leaving a company, a majority, vast majority, 70% of top performers that are leaving their company have cited lack of development opportunities is the primary reason they are leaving their company. So the combination of those two statistics creates a very scary future for some teams and some organizations that if over half of your senior leaders are retiring and, uh, a lot of your young leaders are leaving because of lack of development opportunities, it's really hard to see a future in which you're successful, in which your team is performing at a top level. Because we know, like John Maxwell says, that everything rises and falls on leadership. And without leaders equipped and ready to step up and take ownership inside of your organization, it's going to be very, very hard for you to be successful moving forward. And so, uh, whether that's the case for you, I think there's probably three different ways that you may be coming into this podcast is you're listening to this podcast, you're a leader of a business or an organization, you're thinking strategically about the culture inside of your organization, or you are a leader that's just trying to level up, you're looking to take on the next thing and to continue to increase your influence and maximize your potential. Wherever you're coming in to this podcast from, there's going to be something applicable for you and valuable for you, because I believe for you, young leader who wants to level up and maximize your influence, the biggest thing holding you back from what's next is not having somebody else to fill your spot. So if, if I'm a manager and somebody comes to me and says, hey, I'd really like to throw my hat, my name in the hat for this new opportunity inside of our company, my immediate next thought is, well, great, who am I going to get to fill that top performers, uh, hole that they're leaving behind inside of their organization? If that leader can say, hey, so funny you asked that. I've actually been strategically pouring into two or three other people on my team to equip them to step in and step up in my absence, they're going to do it even better than I was doing it. When I take on this next responsibility, it gives me peace of mind to then be able to move you into that new position, to give you that new challenge, to, uh, allow you to maximize your potential and continue to grow yourself. If I know that that's going to be true. And so wherever you are in your professional journey, you need successional leadership skills. A lot of people think, oh, successional leadership, that's something that I'll worry about when I'm 60 years old and I'm thinking about retirement and I want to leave a legacy behind in my company and not hang them out to dry. Then I'll think about succession planning and successional leadership. But that's not the case. If we want to be successful leaders, we need to have a succession plan in place. And here's another thing. All of us are here because of somebody else. You're in the position that you're in because somebody else successionally led you. They saw in you what you maybe didn't even see in yourself at the time. Um, they saw you for not where you were, but where you could be. And I know I'm a product of this. I think about my professional career and I think about Thomas Westbrook at Lifetime Fitness, who poured into me and gave me my first professional sales job and helped teach me what does it look like to have a sales role or lead a sales team inside of the fitness industry. And I think about Dave Porter and Ashley Devine, who gave me opportunities in the private club, the country club space, to show me what does it look like to deliver exceptional hospitality and to build a culture that attracts new members. Um, it makes it very easy to impact a community because of the membership that you're growing inside of any given area geographically. And then I think about Cord Sacks and Corey Tao here at wildspark, our founder and our CEO, who Cord gave me an opportunity to, uh, step in here at wildspark without any technology experience, without any tech sales or business to business sales experience. Cord saw in me what I didn't even see in myself and gave me that opportunity. And then, Corey, as I've continued to level up in my career and take on more responsibility here at wildspark with creating leadership content and going and delivering sessions at, uh, different conferences or for different organizations like I've been able to do here in recent future or recent past. None, um, of that's possible without Corey, um, pouring into me and helping me grow and develop in some of those things. And I know you have similar people in your life. You have people in your life who've poured into you. Uh, my dad is another one. I wouldn't be where I am if I didn't get to watch his example of leadership first, if he didn't intentionally pour into me as I was growing up. You have, whether it's a parent, whether it's a coach, whether it's a boss, whether it's a teacher, um, whether it's somebody in your community, an aunt, an uncle, whoever it is, you have successional leaders who have poured into you, who have helped you get to where you are now. And somebody else needs you. Somebody needs you. There's somebody out there. They're not going to experience the potential that they have unless you pour into them, unless you intentionally grow and develop them and show them what they're capable of. So I'm excited to get into it. What does this practically look like, Josh, as we think about successional leadership? I'm so glad you asked. I'm going to talk first about an illustration. We're not too far out from the Winter Olympics. I don't know if there's any, uh, other Olympic nerds out there like me, but all I catch myself, I'm watching curling. Team USA is not even competing in it. But I'm like, I'm dialed in. I'm locked in. I'm invested in who's going to win this curling competition. Um, but there's a specific event inside the Winter Olympics, um, that I was watching just a couple months ago, uh, back in February. Um, it's crazy to say that out loud now because we're starting to get into summer, but it was just a couple of months ago. And there's this specific event. It's called team Pursuit. I don't know if you've seen team pursuit before, but it's ice skating. But it's ice skating as a team. And there's Teams of three people, and all three members of the team have to cross the finish line for you to finish the race. Um, so very different than, like, a solo sport like speed skate. Solo speed skating, which I don't feel like is as applicable to, um, work, because work is a team sport. Work is not a solo sport. Regardless of what you do, your work is dependent upon other people. Um, whether that's customers, whether that's teammates, uh, whether that's a boss, whether that's a direct report. There's people all around us that are influencing the impact of our work. And so if we want to be really, really good at our work, we have to be really, really good at leading others, leading a team. So here's how team pursuit works. It's a line of three skaters. And traditionally, the way that people competed in team pursuit is they took turns skating at the front. So whoever's the lead skater takes the force of the wind. And the most difficult. Right, because you're leading the way, um, and other people are getting to benefit off you taking the brunt. Force of the wind. And they're drafting behind you. It's easier to escape behind somebody else. Um, but so we would rotate who was in front over the course of the race, um, until Team USA not that long ago, uh, back in 2021, I believe, decided we're going to do things a little bit differently after studying, uh, nascar. Leave it up to the guy from Alabama to talk about NASCAR here. Uh, bump, drafting in NASCAR and Canadian geese migrations. I know what a combination to come up with a new technique when it came to competing in team pursuit. And they found that it was actually more efficient for the lead skater just to maintain their position. So not to rotate who was in front, but for the lead skater to maintain their position and for the skaters behind the lead skater to simply place a hand on the person in front of them and use their momentum to propel the lead skater forward and to help the lead skater when things were difficult. So after some training and refinement, in 2021, Team USA, with this new technique, they set the new world record at the world championships. Um, and then by 2022, so just one year later, every single team that competed in team pursuit at the Beijing Olympics, every single country, had adopted this new technique called the tush push or the American push. Because you, you actually place your hand on the glute of the person in front of you is why it's called the tush push. Don't tush push somebody at work. I'll get in trouble for that. I don't want those problems. So don't. This is more of a metaphor, but, um, I believe, uh, it was Joey, Joey Mantia, who was a member of the team, a member of that original team, who had this quote saying, if I'm doing my job right, you won't even know that I'm there. If I'm doing my job right, you won't even know that I'm there. And I thought, what a beautiful phrase that helps summarize and encapsulate. What does it mean to be a great leader? Well, great leaders propel other people forward. And they don't. They're not seeking the credit, they're not seeking the spotlight. They're trying to help other people succeed. They're trying to point the spotlight at other people and help other people win. And I feel like if we're that number two or that number three person and team pursuit, that's when we know we're doing our job right. We're helping propel other people forward through this concept of succession leadership. Nowhere, uh, is there a better case study of this than getting a front row seat to watching the succession planning, uh, done by Chick Fil A in recent years past. So, Chick Fil A, obviously I have a lot of Chick Fil A listeners here to the podcast, so this will be old news for some of you. But for some of my new people, um, who aren't as familiar with Chick Fil A, uh, Chick Fil A is an incredible organization. They've been the top qsr quick service restaurant, America's favorite quick service restaurant for like a decade. I think. Crazy A, uh, crazy run that they're having right now and crazy growth that they've experienced as a result. But I've had the privileges of working with over 400 different chick fil A owner operators across the country, which has, uh, allowed me to have a front row seat at, uh, some of their, um, annual meetings called Next. Annual seminar called Next. And I got to see the transition of Dan Cathy to Andrew Cathy, his son, happen to take place. But before that, it was Truett Cathy to Dan Cathy. So Truett Cathy is the founder of CEO, the. The founder of Chick Fil A. Founder of Chick Fil A. He ran the company from 1967 to 2013 and grew chick Fil A to the point where is it? $5 billion. Which is really, really impressive considering they started with one little location in Georgia and grew all the way to $5 billion by 2013, which is when Dan Cathy Took over Truett Son and took Chick fil A from 5 billion to $17 billion in just nine years, which is crazy. In 2022, Chick fil A was at $17 billion. Dan steps down as CEO and he makes way for his son Andrew Cathy to take over who is the current CEO of Chick Fil A. And when this happened, it was, it was met, I think, with some questioning, um, around Dan. What do you. Why, like, why now? Why stop now? You've had so much success in your nine year run. Why stop? Don't you have more left in the tank? Don't you care about Chick Fil A? Um, isn't there more that you think Chick Fil a is capable of? And his response was. Was absolutely. I think that there's more for Chick Fil A. But it's not about me and my readiness to move on. It's about the next leader up and their readiness to continue moving the mission forward. Dan operated out of this successional mindset that success is not about what you are building, it's about who you are building. I've heard Dan regularly say that we're not a chicken business, we're a people business. Um, we're a leadership company. We just do it through chicken sandwiches. That it's about who we are building, not what we are building. And I don't think any statement could better sum up successional leadership. The successional mindset, as I would define it. It's the discipline to build the people around you while you're with them so that the mission moves forward after you're gone. It's the discipline to build the people around you while you're with them so that the mission moves forward after you're gone. Um, but what's keeping you from being the successional leader that you want to be? Um, there's certain successional roadblocks that are in the way that would prevent us from having the impact and leading successionally like we. Like we desire to. And I'll list off a couple of these here. Rapid fire. The first one is tunnel vision, man. We're so locked in and focused on our own things, our own priorities, that we don't have the peripheral vision to see others and see opportunities for growth and development around us. But maybe there's a lack of trust too. That's the second one. There's. There's a lack of trust that I don't have confidence in the intent, the ability or the execution of those that are around me to spend the time with them, to grow and develop Them and I don't know that they're capable of being able to step up and fill in with some of the things that I've been entrusted with. The third thing would be fear. What if I pour in and develop this person and spend all this time with them and they leave and they launch out and they don't continue to carry the mission forward? Well, what if, what if they stay and you don't? Right? The classic saying, uh, what if they stick around and you don't? Um, and I think that reality is a lot scarier than what if you build them and they leave? Because what's going to happen if you build them and they leave is now they, now they turn into a walking billboard for your leadership and for your company. That man, I grew so much because I was there with this organization that it's going to attract more and more people to come and work with you. So tunnel vision, lack of trust, fear, self doubt. Maybe, maybe it's a self doubt issue where uh, I don't know that I'm confident enough in my own abilities yet to be able to teach somebody else how to do this. What about this one? Terminal busyness, right? We live in the busiest world that's ever existed. We have to make 35,000 remotely conscious decisions, decisions over the course of any given day because of the amount of stuff that's coming at us. That man, if we're so busy we feel like we're barely staying afloat, we're never going to get to the, to the thrive part of what we want to do. If we can't get out of survival mode, it's hard for us to get to the thrive mode. And the last one here is nearsightedness. Man. I'm only thinking short term about the here and now. I uh, have a really hard time seeing the future thinking long term. So we have to be, if we want, if we want to be successional leaders, we have to put on the successional mindset. We have to be others focused. We have to give trust freely. We have to have an abundance mentality, not a scarcity mentality. We have to have confidence in our own skill set to be able to step in and build others. We have to have to have good prioritization skills and this culture of terminal busyness that we live in to focus on what's most important and not focus on everything all at once. And then last, we have to be future focused. Uh, leaders shape the future. And so if we're not future focused then it's really difficult for us to be leaders. So I would challenge you to think about that. What's the roadblock that's keeping you from your successional leadership? What's the roadblock, um, that you run into the most frequently? Is it tunnel vision? Is it lack of trust? Is it fear? Is it self doubt? Is it terminal busyness? Is it nearsightedness? Let's start thinking about how we can overcome those roadblocks to get to where we want to go. Um, another big roadblock that we run into is something that I call the hero complex. The hero complex is our propensity to step in and just do things ourselves, to be the hero, when we should be the guide and the developer of others. And the phrase I like to use to summarize this principle is more Yoda, less Superman or less Superman, more Yoda, less Superman, more Yoda. Think about it. If you ever watched Superman before, Superman isn't out here creating other super super men and women. It's not what he does. He doesn't have a downline and a, uh, multiple, um, generations of supermen or super women. Superman is just the one that's flying into the building, saving the day all the time. But you look at Yoda comparatively, and Yoda has this incredible downline of other Jedis. He leads the Jedi temple. He's investing in the young Padawans. He's got Obi Wan Kenobi, and he's got Qui Gon Jinn, and he's got, um, Samuel Jackson, whatever his name is in the Star wars trilogy. But Yoda, he's got Luke Skywalker, right? He's pouring into all these other Jedis where he could, he could very easily step in and do it way better than any of them could. But he's giving them opportunities to develop, to grow, to learn, to fail to learn some more so that they can become, uh, the high performing Jedi that he knows that they can be. And so how do we operate more like Yoda and less like Superman? Well, we have to guide people through what I would call the five step learning process. The five step learning process is this. There's five different stages that people will move through towards mastery. And I would say mastery is when you've developed somebody who can develop somebody else. But the first stage is to learn. We can't do anything until we first learn how to do something. And this is when we're discovering something for the first time. And leader, there should always be something that you're learning. There should always be something new that you're doing. But we're doing something that we've never done before. We're discovering the what, the why and the how. I think about right when Yoda picks up Luke Skywalker for the first time and he's starting to do his training and he can't really figure out how to move things with the Force yet. We're starting to learn something new for the first time. Well then once we learn something, after we move through stage one, we can get to executing something and this is when we can do something pretty well. We're growing in our proficiency and we start to see some glimpses of success. We're growing in our self confidence because we're starting to see some small wins along the way and we can adequately do the job. I think about this salesperson who's being trained and developed and they've now learned all the language, the cadences for their sales process and now they're starting to um, win some deals and see some success for the first time. I think that salesperson is now executing in their role. Well, once we get uh, to that execute level, then we can move to step three, which is owning. We can now own the role that we're in. And this is when we're not only thinking about doing it, but we're thinking about how can we make it better. We're mastering the skills needed to do the task. We're consistently performing above the expectations that we have for ourselves and that others have for us. And we're starting to innovate and discover new ways that we could do it even better. We're not thinking just about doing the task. We're thinking about how am I taking full ownership of the task and being as good as I can possibly be. Um, I'm not just a doer, I'm an owner now. So once we own it fully, we own the whole process. Um, now we've mastered it, now we can start pouring into other people. So now we're at the developed stage. So we're learn, execute, own and develop. And so I think about Luke Skywalker now as he's turning around in this new trilogy of Star wars movies, building and developing Rey, the young Jedi, um, who he's rising up so that she can defeat the dark side of the Force, but you start developing somebody else. So Luke was poured into by Yoda. Luke got to the point where he was owning things, right? He defeated the Emperor. Now he's getting the opportunity to develop this new and up and coming Jedi where you can lead somebody else through that learning process. You're starting to reproduce what you do into someone else, so then you can get to the reproduce stage. And so I think about now Rey's been poured into by Luke Skywalker, who was poured into by Yoda, who now is poured into by Ben Solo, who they now, uh, team up together to redefeat the Emperor in the. Sorry, spoiler alert if you haven't seen any of the Star wars movies, and I'm sorry if you're not a Star wars nerd like I am, um, that you're having to bear with me through this illustration. But now you get to this reproduce level where you develop somebody who can develop somebody else, and you're seeing multiple generations. And a ripple effect from the time that you've invested with others is not only they master the task, but they train and develop somebody else to be able to master the task, allowing you to delegate totally and take on new challenges. So the five step learning process again is Learn, execute, own, develop, reproduce. A quick exercise for you is to take two minutes now to think about all of your responsibilities, all the tasks that you've been entrusted with, um, and to group them into one of these five categories. So as you think about your main priorities when it comes to your work, where are you in that main priority? Are you at the learn stage still? Are you executing it? Are you owning it and making it better? Are you starting to teach and develop somebody else in the develop stage, or are you reproducing? Do you have multiple generations of leaders that you've poured into or that have been impacted from the strategic investment that you've made in others? And so I would encourage you to take every single task that you do and to group it into one of those five categories. And then what you'll begin to see as you look at your different tasks laid out over those five categories is where do you need to grow most in your successional leadership? If everything is more towards the front end of that learning process, if you are more in learn, execute, uh, mode, then you probably need to develop. You probably need to invest in building the skills required so that you can get to that ownership stage and then begin to develop other people. But if everything's bottling up right there around the middle, if it's bottling up right there on the own stage, um, then we need to start looking at how we can be better at delegating so that we don't have this bottleneck of things that we're owning that nobody else is taking ownership of. How can we start to move into, to develop and reproduce and start delegating appropriately, allowing other people opportunities to grow and develop and not just taking it on ourselves. And so how do we do that? So I'm going to give you four different leadership styles and these are the situational leadership styles. Ken Blanchard lays these out in his situational leadership model. But each of the four styles applies directly to one of the learning stages. So as you're guiding people through those five learning stages, the first leadership principle that you want or the first leadership style that you want to apply is directing. Uh, the directing style of leadership is very, very hands on and detail oriented. I mean if somebody's learning something for the first time, if they're in that learn stage, then you're wanting to very, very clearly articulate the why behind what they're doing and then you're wanting to show them how to do it. They need to see an example, um, they need to have something to model it after and then you're wanting to keep them going and give them coaching along the way. Um, there's a lot of hands on ness that's required during these early parts of the learning process and you're laying out a step by step plan for those people that are in that learn stage. So you're directing if somebody's in the learn stage and then once somebody's executing once they can do it adequately. Now I can take a small step back and just coach the individual. So I'm not as hands on, I'm not micromanaging now at this point I'm starting to engage in some two way communication. I'm starting to ask um, more questions, get suggestions and thoughts um, from the person that I'm talking to. I'm encouraging more collaboration with the person that I'm guiding through this process. And so once you do get to that person to now they're owning it, now they're thinking about ways to make it even better. Um, new ideas that not even, that you don't even have yet. Um, now I can just start supporting this individual. They don't require as much coaching. I can simply support them where I'm not going to hang them out to dry here. I'm not throwing them in the deep end and saying good luck, I hope you can swim. Um, you're still continuing with some periodic check ins but you're allowing them more space for decision making and failure at this point. You're trusting them with more and knowing that they're going to fail sometimes but they're going to learn from some of those mistakes. You're asking more questions and making less statements where in the directing and in the coaching styles, um, you want to give more advice in those scenarios, um, in this, uh, style of support, you want to make less statements and help guide them to the answer that they can come upon themselves because they're going to take way more ownership if it's coming from them and not coming from you. So direct, coach, support. Those are the three first styles. The last style is then going to be delegation delegate. And so this is where you're casting vision, you're outlining all the outcomes, you're clearly defining the expectations for how you, you want to see this person perform with whatever it is that you're delegating to them, but then you're fully handing it off. You have full confidence that they're going to take over, um, and they're going to do it just as good, if not better, than you can. And you got to get out of the way at this point. Don't get in the way now at this point and be seen as the micromanager who's always requiring more than is needed in this current stage. Um, realize that this person is at the developed stage where they could start training and developing somebody else, and you need to get out of their way and let them run, let them fly. And then the same thing applies. Delegation also applies to the reproduce stage, that fifth stage of reproduce. But if we want to be effective leaders, we can't just apply one leadership style in every scenario. We have to be really good at leveraging all four styles. Directing, coaching, supporting, delegation. And it applies to every different task that somebody would do. So it's not the whole person that's coming through these different stages, but it has to do with what exactly it is that they're focused on. So somebody you may be delegating something to, you also may be directing them in and applying two different leadership styles to the same person. It's more dynamic than we realize that it is. Which means we have to be really, really effective at switching in between these different leadership styles to make sure that we're meeting our people where they are, that we're leading them different, because every person is different and unique. So, uh, I want you to think about what leadership style comes most naturally to you as you think about directing, coaching, supporting, and delegating. Which style comes most natural to you? Which one gets applied the most inside of your leadership relationships? And which style are you most likely to miss as you think about your previous experiences leading and developing others? Um, which one typically gets Skipped the most. Um, are you not as detail oriented in directing as you need to be with somebody? Um, do you tend to jump straight from directing to delegating and not have as much coaching or supporting in the mix? Um, identify where it is that you thrive and identify where it is that you need to spend more of your focus to be the situational leader so that somebody can move along successionally in this successional leadership framework. Number three. Um, uh, I've got some really thought provoking, what I call maximizing leader questions and successional leader questions on how we can guide anybody through a succession plan. As we're thinking, how do we grow and develop people? Um, we got to have a great succession plan in place. We have to execute on this on the succession plan in place. So the three maximizing leader questions, this is for you, leader, to apply to yourself. And the questions are, where am I now with a specific task or responsibility that I'm thinking about? And what learning stage am I in with this thing? Where do I need to go? So what's the next stage that I want to get to inside of this learning? Uh, the five learning stages. And then number three, how will I get there practically? How am I going to move from executing to owning? Do I need to invite in mentorship and help? Do I need to seek out training or resources or content on how I can get better at this thing? Do I need to go ask for feedback from a peer, from a colleague who does this thing really well? How am I going to practically get to the next stage that I need to be at? And then the three successional leader questions are, where are they now? So as you think about the person that you're thinking about intentionally growing and developing, where are they now in the learning stages and how it pertains to the specific topic it is that you're thinking about growing and developing them in? Where do they need to go? What's the next learning stage that they need to get to? Do they need to get to from learn to execute? Or they need to get. Do they need to get from own to develop? Do I need to help them learn how to develop somebody else? Um, so where do they need to go and then how will they get there? What are the things that that individual needs to do? What do they need to take responsibility for and own in their developmental journey? And then where do they need your support? Where is your role in all of this? And how can you help them succeed with getting to that next step of where they need to go? And so thinking about These things is going to help you build and develop not only a succession plan, but to be able to come alongside of that succession plan with some successional leadership that you can execute effectively on it. What's really crazy is, uh, I was talking to some credit union leaders and now there's this mandate in place that all credit unions, um, are required by the government to have a succession plan. For anybody at the executive level, they have to have a succession plan in place. Because of the silver tsunami that's upon all of us, there has to be a succession plan in place. But really what all it is is just designating a person that could be a part of that succession plan and detailing what it is that, um, that is going to be entrusted to them, um, as that succession plan happens or unfolds. And so all of these credit unions are putting into place these succession plans. But then what happens next? What happens over the next two years, three years, four years, five years between now and when, when that successional transition actually happens is going to be what makes or breaks organizations. It's going to be what separates the ones, uh, that are successful in the future to the ones that are just a flash in the pan of success right now. They may be successful right now, but that success will be very short lived if you don't have leaders to carry the mission and the vision forward. And so we have to have a very intentional, strategic successional leadership style and approach to be able to execute all these succession plans that are happening. I'm starting to get tongue tied now with all the succession that we're talking about. But here's what's really, really powerful. So I'm going to bring it full circle for us as we round out this podcast. As I go back to, um, the story of Dan Cathy and Andrew Cathy and this, um, case study on succession inside of Chick Fil A. Well, what, what has happened since. So what has happened since Andrew Cathy has taken over and Dan Cathy has stepped out as CEO of Chick Fil A? Well, Dan Cathy has gone on to build a town, an entire town in Trilith. Um, if you're around Georgia, if you're around the Southeast, you need to go visit this place. Really, if you're not, even if you're not in the Southeast, you need to go visit this place. But the town of Trilith is right next to Trilith Studios, which is the largest studio lot. Sec. Sorry, second largest studio lot in the world. And the only one larger is in Bollywood in India. Um, it's actually larger than The Universal Studios lot that's located in Los Angeles. This Trilis Studios lot. It's amazing. They filmed Avengers Endgame there. Love is Blind, the new Superman movie. Even though we don't want to be Superman, we want to be more like Yoda. All of these movies have been filmed in these new lots at Trillist Studios. And he's built a whole community in town around it to redeem an industry that traditionally has been broken or has been um, defined by broken families in a really, really high divorce rate. And so, because he's built this town around the recording studios, families can come live here in the town of Trilith while their family member is recording for, uh, a movie, while they're filming for a movie or a TV show that they may be involved with so that families can stay intact. Because families are so, so important to the communities that we're all a part of and to how people grow and develop and experience fulfillment in their lives. Your family is typically the most important arena that that happens in. And so he's been able to do all this incredible work around the entertainment industry because he entrusted Andrew with Chick Fil A so that he could step up to what's next. He may have never done any of that stuff if it wasn't for completely delegating it to Andrew and stepping into that new thing. And listen, Chick Fil A hasn't slowed down either. They've continued to be successful, um, even, even after the transition has happened, uh, that, uh, that now, since Andrew has taken over, they've grown to $23 billion. 23 billion. So from the 17 billion that he left him with now to 23 billion. And it's probably even higher than that by now. I just don't know about it yet. And so really powerful things happen when we entrust others and we apply successional leadership to other people. But I want to remind you of three things before we close out here. Three very, very important principles that I want you to remember. If you don't remember anything else from this podcast episode, I, uh, want you to remember these three things. And the first thing is that it starts with you. If you want to see a, uh, culture of successional leadership spread inside of your organization that you have to first model it. You've got to be the leaders. Go first. Leaders are the ones that know the way, go the way, and show the way. And so you've got to show what it looks like to successionally lead if you want other people to do it too. Inside of your organization. It starts with you. I want you to remember something else. That somebody needs you. So, one, that it starts with you. Number two, somebody needs you. There's somebody out there, like I said at the beginning of this episode, that they're never going to realize their full potential unless you help them realize it. Unless you help them realize what they're capable of. Uh, they need you. I hope somebody, when they think about all the successional when they think about the successional leaders in their own life, just like I was naming off some people at the beginning of this episode, I hope that they say your name. I, uh, hope that that person. You're one of the first people that comes to mind when they think about the people who have made the biggest impact on them and their journey and helping them grow into the leader that they are. I hope that they think of you. Somebody out there needs you. The last thing that I want you to remember is there is more for you. It may not be building recording studios or building an entire town, but there's something else for you that you're not finished yet, that you have not fully realized your potential. And you're never going to know it unless you chase after it. And you're never going to be allowed to chase after it unless you start successionally leading other people. And so I pray that you get to fully realize what you are capable of by applying successional leadership, by growing and developing others, so that you can continue to pursue what's next and then continue to apply successional leadership and grow other people in it. Thank you so much for leaning into this episode. I'll see you next time. Stay saucy, everybody.