Why I Fired Good People

It's Sunday Morning,

Ever wonder why new homeowners always want a new kitchen?

You don't feel haunted by someone else's dreams when you walk into a bedroom.

But the kitchen?

That's the only room where the previous owner left their mark. The stage set for someone else's body. Their coffee stains. Their wooden spoon in the third drawer down. Their height, their reach, their rhythm baked into every cabinet pull.

You make breakfast in their theater. Every time you reach for a plate: This isn't mine yet. New homeowners want a new kitchen to say: I live here now, not them.

Years ago, I bought out my senior partner. I thought, finally! I can make this mine.

So I started swinging. Let go of people who still moved to his rhythm. Changed vendors, and clients, because they didn't feel like mine.

I called it vision. But it was demolition.

Gutting the kitchen because I couldn't stand cooking in someone else's stage, and I almost destroyed it.

Most of us don’t inherit companies. But we do inherit kitchens: teams, traditions, dreams. And the temptation is always the same: start swinging.

You tear, you rip, you gut. It feels like progress. The sledgehammer feels right when you're swinging it. Until it doesn’t. The cost shows up later.

I nearly lost what I was trying to build, because I couldn’t recognize myself in it yet.

Saved my company by putting down the sledgehammer and picking up a wooden spoon.

My coffee stains next to his. My rhythm woven into what came before. My version of dinner, cooked in a kitchen that slowly became mine.

Learned to live in it, and left my stains on the counter.

Where are you renovating instead of cooking?