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Virtue in the Fire: Leadership After Charlie Kirk's Assassination
11 Plays2 months ago
In this powerful and deeply personal episode of the Voice of Growth, host Manny Teran confronts the uncomfortable truth surrounding the assassination of Charlie Kirk—a man whose voice stirred political debate, challenged public thought, and ultimately paid the highest price for his convictions. Without diving into ideology, this episode focuses on virtue: how leaders respond when their values are tested by public outrage, grief, and violence. Manny brings forward the timeless Stoic framework of wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance, and couples it with his own lived experience as a CEO, father, and citizen navigating one of the most volatile periods in modern history. From private reflection to public leadership, this episode challenges listeners to pause, reflect, and then act—from a place of virtue, not emotion. Whether you agreed with Charlie Kirk or not, this moment demands a response from every values-driven leader.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:04
Speaker
The voice of growth, mastering the mind and market. So my first reaction was shock. One moment to the next, he's gone. Courage is standing up for what you believe in.
00:00:18
Speaker
If you celebrated his death, you need to look inside of yourself and you're immediately gonna have something inside you be triggered. But this is really tested my resolve to transform his message and amplify it.
00:00:40
Speaker
I'm cutting them off.
00:00:43
Speaker
Welcome back to the Voice of Growth podcast, where we help entrepreneurs and business leaders master their market and master their mind.
Controversy of Charlie Kirk's Assassination
00:00:51
Speaker
My name is Manny Turan and I'm your host.
00:00:54
Speaker
On today's podcast, we are talking about some recent events that have really blown open the door of some of the inner workings of human beings, has really shocked the world as to the level of violence that's being taken for your your thoughts, for your ideas, for your politics.
00:01:15
Speaker
And that is, of course, the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Now, I'm not gonna get into his ideology. I'm not gonna get into the nitty gritty of what he was professing, what he believed is was truth, what he believed was his path, his way.
00:01:30
Speaker
I'm gonna talk mainly about what happened prior, what happens now.
Stoic Principles for Business Leaders
00:01:37
Speaker
A lot of people have been fired. a lot of people are now dealing with the backlash of publicly celebrating the death of another human being.
00:01:48
Speaker
I'm asking you, if you are celebrating the death of this person who whose role was to challenge people's as ideas, whose role was to get people to critically think about lots of subjects, agree with him or not, if you celebrated his death, you need to look inside of yourself to see what that means in the general context of being a human being.
00:02:13
Speaker
I'm talking today about some stoic principles. There's four major stoic principles that I'll describe and I'll give some context that'll help you as a business owner, as a business leader, make sense of what happened and make sense of what to do when these things occur, both specifically for this ah situation and beyond.
00:02:36
Speaker
Now, business as a CEO, as a public leader, as a business leader, you have a duty to steer your ship, steer your company ship correctly.
00:02:47
Speaker
You have a duty to your family, to your friends, to your community, to act upon virtues, to not just stand there in the sidelines, but lean in when you have to.
00:02:58
Speaker
But there is a careful walk that you need to walk. As a CEO myself, I need to be careful of what I say publicly that is my personal opinion. And I make it very clear when I ah give my personal opinion versus looking at things like stoicism, like this situation for this podcast, playing this day on a table.
Wisdom and Courage in Leadership
00:03:18
Speaker
So the four stoic virtues are the first of which is wisdom. Wisdom is having clarity of thought. Wisdom is drawing from your experiences and from learned and viewed behaviors and making informed decisions with calm and being collected.
00:03:41
Speaker
That's wisdom. the second which The second of the virtues is that of courage. Courage is standing up for what you believe in, in the face of danger, in the face of humiliation,
00:03:56
Speaker
Courage really means going into that blazing fire even when you know you're going to get burned. The third justice. justice Justice has to do foundationally on the truth.
00:04:12
Speaker
Justice has to do with people getting their due. Justice has to do with being fair and equitable with your discernment. And ultimately, justice has to be done in and should be done in a forum because we all bring our bias to the conversation.
00:04:29
Speaker
The last of which... is temperance. Temperance is discipline. Temperance is controlling your impulses. Temperance is walking calmly.
00:04:40
Speaker
Temperance is pausing. I've been very vocal about my own challenges in life and temperance is probably the one that i deal with the most. and So if you think about these four virtues ah as elements of a car engine,
00:04:55
Speaker
the fuel injection, the pistons, all these pieces come together, but by themselves, they're not going to move anything forward.
Elements of Action: Spark, Oxygen, Execution
00:05:03
Speaker
So there are three other elements, just like an engine needs fuel, spark, and oxygen.
00:05:10
Speaker
There's three elements in this framework that I described that need to be put in place in order for the historic virtues to move anywhere forward. The first of which is spark.
00:05:22
Speaker
Spark, if you're listening to this podcast, you have the spark. Spark is life. Spark is that ability to breathe, to be in the moment, to be now. Number two is that of oxygen.
00:05:35
Speaker
In order to to get things moving in an engine, you need oxygen, and oxygen is desire. Desire is fundamentally important to life, fundamentally important in living a stoic life because you need that desire to want to be a stoic person to want to lead that kind of life, that you need to have that as part of what you do.
00:05:59
Speaker
And the last of which was akin to fuel, that is execution. You need to execute. You can think about things, you can talk about things, but you absolutely need to execute.
00:06:13
Speaker
So spark is life. Oxygen is that of desire and fuel is that of of execution.
00:06:25
Speaker
Those three things coupled with the four stoic principles and you're able to move forward. Now you're gonna have bad days. You're gonna have awful days. You're gonna do bad things. You're gonna do wrong things. You're gonna forget things. You're gonna say too much. You're gonna say too little.
00:06:40
Speaker
You're gonna be a human being every single day And every single day, you've got to rely on these these four principles. Every single day, you need to decide whether or not you're going to have that desire and the execution to move things forward.
00:06:54
Speaker
You're going to make tons and tons of mistakes. Now, as a CEO, you first need to go back to the foundational level of being a human being.
Personal Impact of Political Violence
00:07:05
Speaker
You watch that assassination on TV, on social media, whatever, you heard hear hear about it, and you're immediately going to have something inside you be triggered.
00:07:17
Speaker
When i was I was on a phone call with somebody, they stepped away for a bit. I happened to have looked at my email and I happened to have passed by Facebook.
00:07:29
Speaker
And i had some friends that were actually at the event, 15 feet away from what happened. And they posted something on on there. And I thought to myself, is this real?
00:07:40
Speaker
And then the gentleman came back. I let him know about what happened. And we both were a bit in shock. So my first reaction was shock that at a public rally, we resorted to political violence.
00:07:55
Speaker
Political violence has no space in this world. We're done with that. We should have been done with that in 1776. That should have been the end of it But yet here we are.
00:08:06
Speaker
This is 2025 and we're dealing with political violence and it has become a hotbed. On both sides of the aisle, there is sort of very strong language. There's conversations happening on social media threads that I'm just disgusted at.
00:08:23
Speaker
There's celebrations of of of somebody's public death. That's just I can't even fathom what that is and why we're here.
00:08:32
Speaker
Leaning back on what I was talking, as a human being, we we have our own visceral reaction to that. The next level is how do we react? I've mentioned in the past that I've so i've struggled with reacting too quickly.
00:08:45
Speaker
So my element there is to pause. So I invite you when these things happen in the world to pause, to pause and to reflect and to lean on that temperance, to figure out before you you you give a reaction to something, you instead sit in your calm, sit with the situation and you respond when the time is right.
00:09:08
Speaker
You respond to your children, you respond to your spouse, you respond to your family, you respond to your employees, you respond to your community about how tragic something like that is.
Aligning Reactions with Values
00:09:21
Speaker
And that's based on the foundational level. Then you as a CEO need to state your intentions, your values, your mission, your vision.
00:09:34
Speaker
That should be something that you do all the time. So when something occurs where maybe one of your employees is publicly celebrating the death of another human being, I'm not going to tell you what to do, but I will tell you, you need to lean on your but values.
00:09:51
Speaker
If you value that sort of reaction, if you value completely open, um transparent, 100% raw emotion to become out however it comes out, then that's your value.
00:10:06
Speaker
But if you value some virtues and truth and being a responsible and a grounded human being, then you might want to say something. Now, you might want to say something in private or you might want to say something in public.
00:10:21
Speaker
That's all going to dip depend on your core values. I know what I would do. I know where my values lie. What are your values like? Ask yourself that question. And then if you think about beyond the temperance, beyond the initial response, think about the side of justice.
00:10:42
Speaker
How do you condemn? Do you condemn that situation? do you How do you judge that situation that might have happened? Not necessarily the Charlie Kirk, what happened there, but your employees response to that.
00:10:55
Speaker
How do you judge that? And how do you expect your peers, people that report to you, people in adjacent communities, people, your vendors, if they are publicly proclaiming the death of somebody, you need to be the judge of leaning back on your virtues, leaning back back on your vision, on your values.
00:11:15
Speaker
How do you deal with that? The next level is courage. Courage is the ability to stand your ground, make make that public decree condemning whatever might have happened and standing by it no matter what.
00:11:32
Speaker
I have seen in my day instances where people were fired for telling their opinions. Now, it was not my role. I might have had an opinion about them being fired.
00:11:45
Speaker
I might have had an opinion for their opinion. But I was not in charge. I was not the leader when that happened. They were fired for saying their opinion. And it eventually blew over.
00:11:58
Speaker
But it did leave a lasting mark in my mind of the sort of person that was the CEO of that organization. And I ultimately wanted to get as far away as that person as I possibly could.
00:12:13
Speaker
And I did. So your forum, your stance on things will indelibly mark your employees, your community at large.
00:12:24
Speaker
So be aware and be ready, be courageous in that modality to understand what you're gonna do, how are you gonna do it, and how are you gonna live with the backlash?
Material Wealth vs. Internal Virtues
00:12:34
Speaker
And then of course, the the next level is that is that of how stoic,
00:12:41
Speaker
as a stoic How as a person that is leading your organization, how are you going to be and show wisdom?
00:12:54
Speaker
Wisdom is something that comes sometimes with age, not all the time with age. I know very wise 20-year-olds and I know very unwise 60-year-olds as well.
00:13:08
Speaker
And there's a spectrum. And wisdom is a continuum. It's not a black or white. There is ah continuum. And the more wisdom you gain in life, the better you are prepared, the better you are to live a life of joy, calm, of peace, of prosperity, of abundance.
00:13:28
Speaker
I wouldn't 100% ascribe to that modality. I have people in my life that I've known that are highly successful. They have tons of money. They have a 12 car garage. They have Ferraris. They have all this land. They have all these material goods, but inside they're rotten. Inside they're scared. Inside they're upset.
00:13:52
Speaker
They live a world of arrogance and they believe that they are a bulldozer and everything they see becomes something to bulldoze. That is not what we talk about in this podcast.
00:14:05
Speaker
That is a different podcast. That is a different framework. We're interested and living a very successful life with tons of abundance, tons of wealth, both material and internal, both that of virtue and that of living a good life.
00:14:24
Speaker
That's what I'm talking about with abundance. What worth is it to have all this material good if you are pissed off inside, if you don't sleep well, if you just use people like their Lego bricks and making some crappy mansion out of their toil, their hard work?
00:14:43
Speaker
No, that's not what we're about in this podcast. So let me give a a few topics regarding Charlie Kirk himself. Charlie Kirk was extremely courageous.
00:14:55
Speaker
He actually gave several speeches about courage. And this is something that I believe needs to be taught to our children because courage, just like wisdom, just like temperance, and just like justice, is something that is beginning to change.
00:15:14
Speaker
float away just like the sands of time. We're not teaching our children these virtues. We're not teaching them. We're teaching them lots of things about diversity, about acceptance, which is great. I'm all for that.
00:15:28
Speaker
But we also need to be teaching them about really what it takes to be a virtuous person. There's something that that Charlie said that was very, very close to my heart because I've had to stand up and be courageous at the face of people spreading lies, people telling half-truths, or people just trying to hurt me.
Legacy of Charlie Kirk
00:15:53
Speaker
I've dealt with it. But this is something that he said. He wanted to be remembered for his courage, for his faith. That to me means, and I've actually heard when he gave this speech, is really comes down to he believes so strongly in his faith.
00:16:11
Speaker
that he is willing to stand in front of crowds to be humiliated on a daily basis. I don't know if I could do that. I don't know if I could stand in front of a crowd and be mocked and be talked about at different levels. and And of course his tragic death and then people celebrating that, imagine his family, imagine his close friends, imagine people that are around him, how they feel that his message is going to be squashed by ah gunman's bullet.
00:16:42
Speaker
The truth is that that bullet, as tragic as it is to have pierced his neck, is going to transform his message and amplify it.
00:16:59
Speaker
And it will take and is taking on new life. I've mentioned before that I have friends on the extreme left and the extreme right. And right now, my social media is being lit up by both sides on what happened with this situation.
00:17:17
Speaker
And i am disgusted, disgusted. Literally, my stomach turned watching people that I know personally celebrate and basically say, well, he got it coming.
00:17:33
Speaker
He had it coming. He had it coming.
00:17:39
Speaker
What I don't like, I don't like a lot of things about both sides, but the one of the biggest things I don't like about the left is they're all for diversity.
00:17:51
Speaker
They want to celebrate it. They want to clap their hands and and sing Kumbaya about it, but they don't like diversity of thought. When you disagree with somebody, it somehow goes cuts down to the core.
00:18:05
Speaker
I disagree with a lot of people. And if I see somebody who's disagreeing with me, that's fine. I can still go have a beer with them. I can still hang out with them. I can still be friends with them. But this has really tested my resolve in these people in my life that are celebrating. I am really contemplating my own decision and how to deal with that.
00:18:26
Speaker
I'm at this very level removing myself from the conversation. I'm not being involved with them. I'm not going to reach out to them. I'm just step back. On a larger level, I need to decide if they will remain as part of my circle.
00:18:42
Speaker
I've told you before that I celebrate my own diverse network because I want to reduce my bias. I want to reduce my, ah want to look at things from different perspectives.
00:18:56
Speaker
This, however, has become very difficult. And what's happening in my life is a million fold out there. billion fold. Everybody else in the world is deciding for themselves how they see the situation, whether they celebrate it, whether they condemn it, whether they're middle of the road, take it or leave it.
00:19:17
Speaker
Opinions and their thoughts are what they are.
Values-Aligned Business Decisions
00:19:21
Speaker
But you as a virtuous CEO need to decide what you're going to do about that. As you're doing business with an organization, you need to decide that if you hear their CEO make mention of what happened in a way that you don't believe aligns with your values, then you need to figure out if you are going to spend your money and give them the business.
00:19:43
Speaker
Simple as that.
00:19:46
Speaker
Now, i because I do celebrate free speech, let them talk. Let them say what they say. I think that There's nothing wrong with voicing your opinions, but it always comes back down to your own values.
00:20:03
Speaker
If it crosses your own values and you're doing business with this person or this organization, then you decide, is this something you're aligning with or not?
00:20:15
Speaker
I know for me, if I'm dealing with one of my organizations that ah is doing business with somebody who is publicly celebrating the death, the assassination of somebody, I'm cutting them off.
00:20:26
Speaker
That's me. You yourself need to make that decision for yourself. A few more things to talk about here before I wrap up. And I wanted to do this podcast because it's been kind of burning at me for the last few days because I've been, 20 years older than Charlie.
00:20:45
Speaker
And i think about his young children. um I grew up without a father. My father died when I was one. He's got a one-year-old and a three-year-old. And I think about what their life will be like, how much it will have changed because of his ideas, because of his voice, because of his courage to stand for what he believes in and stands for something that he believed was bigger than himself.
00:21:14
Speaker
He leveraged his faith. he was He was excited to meet his maker. He met his maker. And we're here now having this this public global conversation.
Stoicism in Uncontrollable Events
00:21:25
Speaker
There are things happening across the pond, big protests. There are people that are trying to figure out what's happening. I have friends across the world. I made a few phone calls over the weekend and just learning about their perspective. A lot of people thought he was a political figure. They thought he was more like a politician than somebody who was just getting other people to to think um clearly.
00:21:47
Speaker
few things here to to think about. on If you take your step set back and looking at the actual act of violence, but what happened. Stoic principle, this was out of your control.
00:22:02
Speaker
As crappy as it is, it is out of our control. Now you can blame guns, you can plant blame a bunch of stuff, but fundamentally you weren't there to control what happened.
00:22:14
Speaker
So fundamentally that is sort of level one stoicism right there. Number two, encourage, or sorry, on courage and living in accordance to virtue. Charlie stood up for what he believed in.
00:22:26
Speaker
He stood his ground. He voiced his voice. There was no question of where he stood on certain things. He made that known and he paid the ultimate price for it. We've talked about the idea of primititario malorum, which is the premonition of evils, which is essentially being prepared for the worst.
00:22:48
Speaker
um I believe that he knew every time he took that stage, he was not only going to be dodging verbal darts, verbal bullets, but he actually would also maybe be dodging real bullets.
00:23:01
Speaker
And we know where that left. um Responding with virtue when confronted with grief and anger. If you fail in temperance, you're going to react.
00:23:12
Speaker
You're going to spew venom from your mouth. you're going to incite um higher and higher levels of violence in your own mind that may lead to physical violence.
00:23:26
Speaker
the Leaning on your virtue of temperance needs to be grounded and be a place where you pause before you react. You instead pause so that you can respond.
00:23:41
Speaker
Number six, On the role of public discourse, free speech, and the real dangers of polarization. There is a big lesson here in public discourse.
00:23:56
Speaker
We as human beings with the advent of media, this the standard media, with the advent of social media are now basically stoking the flames of polarization.
00:24:12
Speaker
People are amassing to the two sides. People are digging their heels in and closing their ears. They don't want to hear the other side.
00:24:24
Speaker
They just don't. It's up to us as Stoics. It's up to us as business people that want to live this sort of virtuous life. And it's up to us It begins with us to open up our own ears to listen to the other side.
Avoiding Polarization in Discourse
00:24:39
Speaker
We lead by example, mainly in life. Leading by example, having those conversations with people, truly listening, listening to understand, not listening to respond.
00:24:52
Speaker
And that is where it starts. It then continues with with the greater understanding. conversation you might have with your employees. It continues with your values, your mission, your statement, all all that going out.
00:25:04
Speaker
It continues with conversations with your vendors. And if you have a public position in your role, it needs to be done at a public forum. It goes back down to that. We need to be careful of polarization because nothing good comes from closing your ears opening your mouth, and in this case, locking a bullet into a chamber and letting in fire.
00:25:26
Speaker
It's disgusting. Number seven, legacy is not up to us entirely. We wake up every single day not knowing if it will be our last. We believe it will be it will continue. We believe we're going wake up tomorrow. We believe that we're not going to die in the next 20 minutes.
00:25:45
Speaker
But you don't know. Charlie cook Kirk stood up there. he sat down that day. He put on his socks. he he lived his life. He was answering questions. and one moment to the next, he's gone.
00:26:00
Speaker
He bled out. they They did their best. But he was gone probably three minutes after he got shot. There was no turning back. I know people said he was stabilized at the hospital.
00:26:11
Speaker
I just think they were waiting for ah telling the family that what had happened, the full family. And then the idea of being able to accept as hard as it is that death is a natural part of what we call life.
00:26:31
Speaker
That's number eight. Being able to make sense to death. And as senseless as it was and as it is, the sense that we can derive from that event and what happened in his death We need to internalize it and we need to live forward in life.
00:26:53
Speaker
Don't use it as an excuse to go down to drain. Don't use it as an excuse to spew violence out of your mouth or out of your your hands. Use it as your own fuel for deepening understanding, for reaching across the aisle, for loving thy neighbor, for giving some grace in the face of Disgusting conversations happening on social media and in person.
Diversity of Thought in Kirk's Interactions
00:27:22
Speaker
I learned this morning of an event that took place where public officials were celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk.
00:27:35
Speaker
Goes back down to what I started this off with. Is that aligned with your values or not? When I heard that, it did not align with my values. My value is that every human being that that wants to stand and and be heard should have that ability.
00:27:50
Speaker
Even the people that Charlie himself was debating against, if you really watch his narratives, if you really watch his conversations, he gave them quite a bit of grace.
00:28:03
Speaker
For being beat up and being thrown arrows at constantly, he gave them grace. He gave them the ability to share their opinion. He asked questions. Was he misogynistic? Was he racist? Was he divisive?
00:28:17
Speaker
That's for you to decide. Or was he challenging people's like thoughts? Was he asking for clarification? Was he getting people to think more clearly about their own decisions and standing by them?
00:28:30
Speaker
That's for you to decide as well. and And so I'll end today's podcast with just some thoughts about What strategy you'll take about something like this and what strategy you'll implement from it?
00:28:49
Speaker
What concepts will you actually go through and implement? I have a tendency to internalize things. I think about things. Others tend to think out loud. they It's just easier for them to talk out loud.
00:29:06
Speaker
I start off internally thinking about things. Then I spend time with my partner and then she's more of a outward thinker kind of person. So we kind of hash these things through.
00:29:17
Speaker
Then I had conversations with my kids and I asked them their opinions about what happened. And i was careful to listen. I was careful to not give a response that was gonna be heavily biased.
00:29:32
Speaker
But I was glad to hear that they both agreed with my values. And so as a parent, you always want one of the gifts that you give your children is the gift of your values, plus or minus, whatever that might be to you.
00:29:45
Speaker
My values align with the fact that his death death was tragic and senseless. My kids agree to that. um And so I will have conversations with my coworkers, I'm sure.
00:29:59
Speaker
And I need to be careful as CEO how much I lean in and how much I say about my values. But I'm not going to hide the fact that i think it was a a terrible thing that happened.
00:30:10
Speaker
Now, how we deal with it, should he should the killer get the ah death sentence? Should he face a public trial? Should we um castigate his family for not raising him better?
00:30:25
Speaker
Should we castigate society for feeding him this... Narrative? Should we castigate the gun industry? so There's a lot of people that want to blame all these things.
Hope for Justice and Truth Post-Assassination
00:30:35
Speaker
He was a lone gunman.
00:30:37
Speaker
So we know. There's also a lot of things with respect to some fishy things that were involved. And so at least from what where we see on the outside, the conspiracy theorists are revving up their engines and there's lots of things going back and forth.
00:30:53
Speaker
At the end of the day, he's dead and we're dealing with these things now. Some form of the truth will come out and we all hope and pray that justice will be served and we can take a step forward in humanity and act with our virtues, act to our truth and be just and show temperance in how we react and how we deal with these things.
00:31:20
Speaker
Thanks very much. Cheers.