Johannes Floor retweetledi
This guy handed me my ass.
I was trying to improve my company’s leadership & culture. I got connected with a St. Louis billionaire Bob Chapman.
The man barely said hello before firing off questions.
”What are your margins?”
”How much cash on your balance sheet?”
”Who owns the business?”
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
I wanted guidance on motivating my people. Creating a people-first culture. Personal growth.
Instead, the billionaire who wrote Everybody Matters was leaving me feeling small.
Then Bob dropped a bomb:
”I couldn’t do all this culture stuff at my company if I didn’t own 60% of the business and it wasn’t profitable.”
If you knew me before and after that conversation, you remember what it did to me.
But Bob made it crystal clear. Your culture isn’t possible without control. And control isn’t possible without profit.
If your business isn’t profitable, you don’t call the shots. Your investors, your shareholders, your lenders do.
If you take too much funding? You’re making decisions to appease your board, not your employees.
Bob built Barry-Wehmiller into a people-first company because his financial position allowed him to.
At that point in my career, I was deep in the trenches at Ampush. I built a successful company, sold part of it.
I had already been thinking about my next project, Gateway X. But now, I was thinking about how I would structure it.
No outside investors. No chasing quick exits. No short-term decision-making just to hit someone else’s financial targets.
That single conversation changed how I approached everything.
Keep my business profitable. Keep controlling interest. Call my own shots. Develop a culture that matters.
That’s exactly what we’re doing at Gateway X.
And that’s what real freedom looks like.
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