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Success without a successor is failure. Mm-hmm. Yes, I said that. I said failure. You can build the company, grow the organization, become the person everybody calls when something goes wrong. You can have the title, the office, the influence, you can have 20, 30, 40 years of experience. But if nobody can lead when you are gone, what exactly did you build? Because at some point, your leadership is no longer measured by how well you perform. It's measured by how well the people that you develop can perform without you. And this, I don't think people really spend time talking about. Some leaders don't actually want that specifically. They want you good. Yes, they do. Just not that good. They want you trained, just not prepared enough to replace them. They want you sitting at the table as long as you remember whose table they think it is. And that, my friend, is not leadership. That is gatekeeping. And you know what else? More damage can be done to an organization, to a business when a leader stays in position too long. And I'm not talking about age. So let me be clear. I'm talking about staying beyond your effectiveness, staying when you stop developing people, staying when every new idea feels like a threat. Staying when the organization has to protect your ego instead of improving its performance. Staying simply because you can't imagine somebody else doing your job. At some point, I'm sorry to tell you, but you gotta sit down. And I don't mean disappear, I mean transition. There comes a point where you have to trust that your leadership, your wisdom, your experience, everything that you've imparted into the next leader will allow them to meet what you've done or hopefully exceed what you've done. Because isn't that the point? Imagine if every founder refused to leave. Let's think about Phil Knight. I think he's like in his 80s now. What if Phil Knight was to say, nobody can run Nike like me? Nobody can run Nike but me. And I'm just gonna stay here until I'm like 150 years old. Think about Apple. Steve Jobs wasn't going to be there forever. Tim Cook eventually took over. He had to lead, but he had to lead as Tim Cook. He didn't spend his whole career pretending to be Steve Jobs, and that's secession. And whether you are sitting in a corporate office, you're working in the government, you're running a nonprofit, leading a department, or building your own business, it doesn't even matter. You cannot be the last leader. I'm gonna say that one more time. You cannot be the last leader. I actually believe that it's immoral to have people underneath you, have them underneath your leadership, and intentionally not prepare them for success. Who does that? What are you protecting? Your title, your paycheck, or your importance? Or better yet, are you scared that if somebody learns everything that you know, they won't need you anymore? Now, I might not be able to see you all, I might not be able to hear you all, but I just heard somebody say, ouch, I know that hurts, but that's a different conversation. We are not going to talk about that today. Now, I'm not a political person. I normally stay out of conversations like these because that's just not what I do. I'm not interested in politics or any of those things of the like. And the reason why I created this episode is from something that took place just recently. Now, here in Georgia, there's a city called Stockbridge, and we had one of the youngest mayors in Stockbridge. And there's something that took place with this mayor, and it bothered me so much. Like it bothered me to the point where I felt like I was involved. And I'm not saying that because I know every detail of what happened behind closed doors because I don't. There were allegations against him. There was an investigation, there was a hearing, and ultimately the city council voted to remove him from office. So I'm not sitting here trying to retry somebody else's case, right? This is not what that's going to be about today. That's not my lane. I am aware what lane I should be in, and I'm sticking to it. But what bothered me was watching the whole thing play out. Now listen to me. It was distasteful. I mean, messy. And something, I could just smell that there was something bad, especially when you start looking at the conflict that existed, and you start looking at this young man, and before the final hearing, you're like, what in the world? So somewhere during this whole process, right, the judge removed one of the council members from participating in a process after finding that she could have possibly been biased against this young mayor and that he couldn't call the process fair with her sitting on the panel. Now, that's where my ears started to perk up. Because regardless of what you think about this young man, I recognize something in that moment. I recognized the fight. And immediately I thought about stealing from the color purple. All my life, I had the fight. I know. I brought it all the way back. But to be honest with you, I've had those moments. I've had moments where I knew that I could do the work. I knew that I had earned my seat. I knew what I brought to the table. And instead of somebody saying, Okay, let me help you become better, you find yourself dealing with territorial behavior, people withholding information, unnecessary resistance, little power struggles. And then you're sitting there thinking, like, why are we even fighting? We could be building something together. And that is the part that bothers me. Sometimes you gotta fight somebody who could have been helping you win, or you could be helping them win. And it's not even because there's no room for both of y'all. But I think it's because they can't celebrate your win without somehow believing that it takes something away from theirs. And that's one of the ugliest things insecurity can do in leadership. It turns potential allies into opponents, it turns mentorship into competition, it turns secession into a threat, and eventually everybody loses. Nobody's winning. The organization loses, the team loses, the community loses, performance suffers, progress is going to slow down, all because somebody needs to remain the most important person in the room. And while I was watching this whole case play out, I just kept thinking leadership does not have to look like this. You don't have to tear somebody else down to transition power. You don't have to make the next person fight you just because they're bringing something different. And you definitely don't have to hold on to a position forever just to prove that whatever you built mattered. And that's when my mind went somewhere personal because I've actually worked inside of a company that taught me what that can look like. Now, I used to work at Apple, and one of the things that I've learned from working there is that Apple doesn't operate like the company belongs to one person forever or one personality. In Apple, they have a system and they welcome fresh ideas. Your fresh ideas matter, fresh perspectives matter, different leadership matters. Think about this. Steve Jobs was Steve Jobs. There will never be another Steve Jobs. But Apple didn't stop when Steve Jobs stopped leading it. Tim Cook came in and he took over. And look at what just happened this month. After 15 years as a CEO, Tim Cook stepped down from his position September 1st and he transitioned into the executive chairman. John Termes, I think his name is Turnus, became CEO. And Apple didn't describe that as some sudden shakeup. They said that this came from a long-term secession planning. Did you catch that? Planning, not panic, not waiting until everything starts to fall apart. Not somebody holding on to the CEO position until they're physically incapable of doing it. I've seen that so many times. This is not, well, we're gonna wait until the board has to drag somebody out of the office. This is planning. Tim Cook didn't have to disappear for somebody else to rise up. And that's the important part. He moves into a different role. His experiences, they didn't suddenly become worthless just because somebody else became CEO. And I think some leaders, you need to hear that. You don't become less valuable because somebody else is ready. That's the insecurity that a lot of people deal with right there. Sometimes your value changes, your role changes, your contribution might even change. But that's what leadership is. And maybe that's one of the reasons organizations like Apple continue to evolve. They understand something a lot of smaller organizations never learn. And that is the organization has to become bigger than the person that is leading it. Now I want you to bring this back to your business, your department, your organization, your team. Because it's easy to listen to me talk about a mayor and Apple and think, well, this ain't got nothing to do with me. What does this have to do with me? It does have something to do with you. Who's behind you? Who are you training? Who knows what you know? Who can actually make a decision when you're not there? And the harder question, I have to ask you this: who are you intentionally keeping from knowing what you know? Uh-huh. I know I caught you red-handed. Mm-hmm. That's real different, right? Nobody ever talks about that. They're not asking you those type of questions because some leaders, they're not failing to develop people accidentally. They are withholding. They don't invite you to the meeting. They don't explain how the decision gets made. They don't introduce you to certain people. I've seen this. They give you the work, but not the exposure. Then they turn around and say, Oh, she's not ready. Well, how am I supposed to get ready? This is something that I teach when I am talking about identity and execution because sometimes your identity, it becomes so wrapped up in being the person that's developing another capable person. And it starts to feel like self-destruction. And it's not. That's legacy. The person that you train becoming better than you, it does not erase what you accomplished. It proves what you accomplished. And that's why I keep coming back to this. Success without a success, a successor is failure. Because eventually you are leaving. We all are going to leave. The only question is what happens when you do? Does everything that you built walk out when you walk out? Or does you leave somebody capable enough to take the action and keep moving? Because you can't build sustainable results around one person. Not in business, not in leadership, not in life. And if you're trying to figure out where you're holding on to tightly, where you've become the bottleneck in your business, or where what you know isn't translating into what you're building, that's what I help people with. Those are the things that I help my clients uncover. Because sometimes the problem is not that you need another strategy, it's the gap between what you know and how you're moving. And until you identify those gaps, you want to keep treating symptoms instead of fixing the actual problem. So what do you do in these situations? I want you to think about this. If everything stops without you, you haven't finished building anything. I want you to listen to me and listen to me clearly. Being needed can feel good. Yes, it feels great. Being indispensable can feed your ego. But operationally, that is so dangerous. If your team can't make decisions because you're gone for three days, what do you think is going to happen? That is not evidence of your importance. That's evidence of a system problem. Okay, Juanita, you got me. You called me. What do I do? Okay, I'm glad you asked. Identify one responsibility that is currently right now just sitting on your desk collecting dust. I want you to document it, train somebody else on it, and then let them execute it without you hovering over their shoulders. And yes, I really mean don't micromanage the person. Let them do it. The next thing is really, really big. Stop measuring people that you're not willing to mentor. You can't complain that somebody's not ready when you're never actually preparing them to be ready. They don't know enough. Okay, well, what you gonna do about it? They can't handle this. Well, how do you know if they can't handle it? Have you allowed them to handle anything? You can't keep somebody in the passenger seat for 10 years and then criticize them because they don't know how to drive. Okay, Juanita, you got me again. What do I do? Well, this is what you do: pick a person with leadership potential, give them ownership of something. Not no busy work either. Give them something real that they can do, give them context with it, give them authority, expectations, and room to make the decisions. Then you coach the results. Do not control every move. That is the important part. When you allow people to be on owners, have ownership over something, you start to see, not only do they start to build confidence in themselves, but you start to see something different, especially when you're not micromanaging them, you're not watching over them, you are giving them something to control. The next thing is your replacement becoming better than you is not disrespect. If you are threatened by somebody becoming better than you, you need to examine your leadership. I mean, seriously, your successor should know things that you don't know. You know when they say if you're the smartest person in the room that you're in the wrong room? Well, if you're the only one that knows everything, there is a problem. Your successor should improve systems that you created. They should challenge assumptions that you've made. They should be able to take what you built and make it better. And if they can't do that, you're just repeating the same generation of leadership over and over and over again. And you don't even have to ask me what do you do? I'm about to just tell you what to do at this point. Just ask yourself, what does the next leader need that I didn't have? Then you give it to them. Access, training, exposure, information, relationships, whatever it is, you give it to them. When I first started in real estate, you know, real estate is a dog eat dog world. And when I tell you, it ain't that much help out there unless you get on a team or something like that. And I haven't ever been on a team. I've always been an individual agent. So I really don't know how the teams work. But when you are out there and you're trying to get started, a lot of times people aren't there to help you and give you clients and help you along the way. You got to pay a mentor 25% of your first few deals for them to train you. And I don't understand how you expect for me to just read a book, follow some a checklist, and then go out there and do business. My approach is different because I know what it took for me as a new agent and what I didn't have. So when I have new trainees, when I have new agents or new people that I am training, I always think about that. What is it that they don't have that they need? First things first, you'll never really see anybody in the real estate game give people leads. No, they make you go and talk to your sphere of influence first and talk to your barber and talk to your doctor and all those things. But what if the person doesn't even have a sphere of influence? So I always start them off with, hey, here's a lead. This is what you do, this is how you do it. Let me know if you get stuck. And then we coach from there. The last thing is you have to know when your role needs to change. Stepping down does not mean becoming irrelevant. You still matter, but sometimes the most important and the most powerful move that you can make is going from operator to mentor, from decision maker to advisor, from being the person holding the baton to being the person showing somebody else how to run their race. So if you found yourself in this situation, look at your current responsibilities. Ask which ones still require your leadership? And which ones are you holding on to simply because you always did them yourself? And look at that difference. So to recap, this week, name your successor and not necessarily the person that's going to take over your exact job tomorrow. Who are you intentionally developing? And then you have to give somebody access to something that you've been holding on to for too long. Whether that's a meeting, a decision, some process, a relationship, something. Give them something. And then the last thing, document one thing that currently exists only in your head because your organization should not lose 10 years of knowledge because you walked out the door. Remember, that's not secession planning. That's organizational amnesia. And execution is what matters in this moment. I don't want you to listen to this episode and just be like, okay, yeah, I heard this before, or I already do that. I don't want you to be saying, oh, I need this right, and then go back to being the bottleneck in your business or on your team. You gotta do something. One day, somebody else is going to sit in your chair. Somebody else is gonna have your title. Somebody else is going to lead the meeting, and somebody else is going to make the decisions. That is not failure. That's supposed to happen. The question is whether they'll be standing on the foundation that you gave them or are they gonna be cleaning up the damage that you left behind. Legacy isn't how long you can hold on to something. Legacy is what keeps moving after you let it go. And that is what connecting the dots between who you are and how you move. Because secure leaders, they don't need everybody beneath them. Secure leaders, they build people that are capable of standing beside them and eventually standing without them. So are you ready to pass the baton and trust that you taught them how to run? Now, a lot of times, people, we sit here and we listen to these things and we don't share. I want you to show that you care by sharing this with someone. Whether they need to step down, move out the way, or might have gotten pushed out the way, share this episode with somebody and then identify who you're going to intentionally help develop this week. Because success without a successor is failure.