Looking forward to diving in!

Whatever it is. I hope you know we have the space for it. And my hope is that you feel safe enough to bring it here. When you're ready to bring it to ManOS calls we'll be there.

@Lendon Pope @Rhys Hall @Tah Whitty @Corbin Sellers just want to say thanks for letting me vent last night. I'm appreciative of this group and the concepts that give me some focus to move thru things like this. Until about a year ago when I started venturing into these types of spaces, I'd never been in any groups or really had friendships to share my stuff. My issues were mine alone. I met @Jared Johnson and started participating and found a whole new world where expression was OK and learned how much easier it is to process something by talking thru vs the old habit of push it down and forget about it. Thank you.

Alright fellas here’s my reflection of how I used the Operating System to move through the freeze I found myself in prior to Wednesday. I mentioned it in a previous post, @Jared Fenn asked for a ‘pinch & zoom’ so here ya go. I apologies it took longer than I originally stated.

I've had an interesting few weeks. For almost 3 years I've been trying to rebuild my company. Between June and Aug of 2023, all 3 of my employees left. I dug deep. I rehired. I simplified. I sacrificed. 2025 was my best year since starting in 2007. It was also a difficult year with my wife's cancer and mental health scares with my teen daughter. Mid 2024 I hired Gary. I saw huge potential in someone that from the first interview said "I want your job". So we started the journey of training him to be my protege. 2025 was hard financially because I was growing and reinvesting and a lot of that investment was in him (time and money). He was a big help with the demands of family, treatments, etc. he was making less than he wanted, but saw the value in investing his time into learning and was gaining what he needed to eventually take over. I was making less because I was investing in him. His progress was slower, than I wanted, but his attitude and determination made up for it (or so I convinced myself). Hindsight, he was a diligent worker, but lacked the vision and confidence to grow a business. Over the last 3 months my wife has felt better and I've been able to dive back into the business and I have huge goals and ambitions for 2026. I could see Gary struggling to keep up with me at this new pace. The end goal of me stepping down or significantly back by the end of 2026 was firm in my mind. His too. However with some new hires and shifts in things I had to change our approach a few times. Rather than talk to me and express his concerns, he let things build up and started having a skewed perspective of my motives. Long story short, over the last 3 weeks he went from feeling frustrated and unappreciated to defiant, that culminated I him refusing to work, refusing to communicate with me and just making unrealistic demand and I had to fire him last week. So in a few weeks we went from things cranking along to another record year, to full nuclear implosion. I'm grateful for the things I've experienced over the last year and people I've gotten to know. I'm at peace with the whole thing. It sucks and it's made things hard the last couple of weeks, but I was honest. My integrity intact. My intentions were never misaligned with our end goal. I look at how I would have handled things even 6 most ago and I would have been devastated, offended. But from the intention and things I shared here, I was able to separate the emotions from the accusations. I was able to see the truth if who I am and be confident in that.