There's something that every organization needs to work on.
Welcome to another episode of Builder Nuggets, the show where builders and remodelers discover how to build thriving businesses while working less. I'm Duane Johns and together with Dave Young, we share the elements of success that have helped hundreds of contractors like you build better lives.
Despite working hard as business owners, we can sometimes feel like we are spinning our wheels and not getting the results we deserve. This can occur in hot markets. Like the one we're in now we're in a downturn, but when it does,
(00:32): Does your business leaks, profit and momentum? Yup. Even in a strong market, it's easy to get caught up in the chase, lose focus, veer off track when we're busy, our structure or communication breakdown, especially if we haven't spent the time to properly fortify it. So today we brought in an expert, who's worked with hundreds of entrepreneurial business leaders around the world to implement the structure. You need to engineer the exact business outcome you want and get your whole team behind your mission. We're taking a deep dive into the entrepreneurial operating system or EOS for short. If you want to get more traction with your business and your life with your team, this episode is going to get you started. I have been a student of EOS and traction for years. It's helped me a ton in my business personally. And I'm a big fan of keeping things simple.
(01:24): And I think today's guest will be able to test that. EOS does just that our expert today is a lifetime entrepreneurs gained experience in the family business. And let's just say, became aware of the challenges associated with that. And he's passionate about your success. He's worked with us in our businesses and he understands builders. We'd like to welcome David Hickman, founder and CEO of traction partners and EOS implementation company, gentlemen. Great to be with you. Good to have you. Thanks, man. Your business coaching has taken you all over the world in your travels and across the different verticals. You've seen all kinds of challenges. Is there anything unique that you've discovered about working with builders? Phenomenal question. So you're right. I have gone all over the world and I've seen these tools used well, Dwayne, as you mentioned from my personal life with my wife and kids, and just getting clear there all the way up through a large solar provider that is a worldwide organization over 2,500 employees.
(02:27): So very complex areas. And then I have some commercial builders, some home builders that I've worked with rolling out these tools with too. And I think that there are just some common, common things, and they really sum up with what EOS is great at providing where there is a vision that vision needs to be shared. If it's going to go beyond one entrepreneur person or one leader, where there is an entrepreneur that has some big ideas, they need traction, they need help. And on the accountability and side so that it just doesn't stay a dream or as Gino Wickman, who wrote the book traction where EOS began says vision without traction is merely hallucination. And then the last area is team health. And this is really important in this market today because people don't love what they're doing, love, who they're doing it with. They're just going to go find another better opportunity somewhere else. So the healthy portion is also so vision, traction, healthy, universal, whether I'm in India, implementing whether I'm in here in the States, working with a big commercial builder or a smaller home builder, it's a vision, traction healthy. If you improve those three things, you're going to have a great business.
(03:41): So I thought I was going to get some like inside dirt or something when I asked that or some good, you know, show fodder here. But it sounds like I'm going to get you to walk us through the exam, walk everyone through exactly what attraction is because Dwayne and I have been using it for a little bit at various various stages, but it, it sounds like this is a proven system, or we know that this is a proven system that works in all entrepreneurial type businesses, whether you're a builder or whether, you know, a web development company and this thing is scalable. And because of the core principles of it apply to anyone who is trying to create their personal desired outcome, would you say that's fair?
(04:22): Yeah, I would agree wholeheartedly. And there are different areas that just need more attention. There are some people that are good at some of the key components of their business. There, they need help in other areas. And so EOS is going to bring a balanced approach and make sure that we're touching on all those key areas so that we're not missing anything. It's amazing. I don't care what company you have out there. Small, large, you know, successful, not quite there yet when you're brutally honest and go through that. There's something that every organization needs to work on. Agreed. And it's fascinating because Dwayne, at the beginning of the process or process for you, Dave, at the beginning we have all of our clients take this and they'll come in with some numbers. And I was just working with another company. That's been doing this for about a year and well, they did the same questions cause we get a baseline and we want to see improvement.
(05:15): And so they did the same questions and because they saw the questions in a different light, namely has this gone through all 174 of the people in my organization. Do they all, are they all on the same page? Now that answered with a lower number because they know that only their top tier of leadership is really solid on it as it cascades through the organization. So that organizational checkup, 20 questions give you a great baseline for where you're at today or where you think you're at. And then when you ask your people all the way through the organization, you might be clear, get great numbers as a leadership team. But as you cascade that say maybe a project manager or finished carpet or somebody that's working at the end has no idea what the vision is of the company. They just know to do their job. So when you get, everybody's seeing that, knowing what the, where the company's going and they see their role in what they're achieving, then you get great results. David, tell us in your own,
(06:09): What the heck is EOS traction in the entrepreneurial or entrepreneurial operating system and why should anyone consider it?
(06:18): I had the basic introduction. I have been doing this for a number of years, helping clients with this. And I just will tell you, I touched on them earlier already, but we did maybe jump ahead. So we'll pause and just step back. What do I do? When I work with companies, I helped them with three things. We call vision traction and healthy vision. Not only having a great vision in your own mind, entrepreneur leader, but vision is getting that vision a hundred percent shared with everybody in the organization so that everybody knows where you're going as an organization and how you plan to get there. Traction is instilling discipline and accountability so that wherever you go in your organization, people are executing on that vision. And then healthy is working together as a healthy, functional, cohesive team. People that enjoy working together, even though you're very different and there may be some conflict, we figure out ways to work together in a harmonious way for the greater good of the company. So those are the three things that we work on. And when you have a company that is on a track to improve those, they get better results,
(07:28): EOS Contains the entire framework to map that out, create the plan and manage it on a daily, weekly, monthly, annually decade basis.
(07:38): Yeah, I was just going to go there's so those are the three things that we help with in order to get good at vision tracks and healthy. We introduce our clients to six key components of any business. They exist in any business. And we work on strengthening all six of those key components of what are the six components, the vision component, the people component, because if the vision is greater than yourself, you need great people in order to carry out that big vision that you have. Then we introduced the data component. That's just moving beyond the subjective feelings to facts and figure something tangible that I can add to that entrepreneurial gut instinct. That's usually pretty good, but if we can add data to that, that's great. And when you have vision people and you add data, then everything becomes very transparent in the organization.
(08:27): You see where what's holding you back, where the problems are, what things need to be addressed. And that leads to the fourth key component, which is issues. We have to get really great at setting up our issues in an open and honest way, seeing what they are at the root, and then addressing those at the root, taking some decisions, taking some risks to solve those issues so that they go away for the greater good of the company. From there, we move on to the fifth key component, which is the process component. That's the right and best way to do all the important things in your business. Don't just leave it to, you know, a foreman or somebody that's managing people write that down, teach people, figure out the best way, write it down and then manage people, lead people, train people, retain people or coach people up or out, according to those, the right and best way to do things.
(09:16): That's the process component. And the last one is the traction component. And this is the area that it's where the rubber meets the road. It's where we bring our vision down to the ground and we execute on the vision and we have some rhythms to that that are really important. Don't just set one year goals and then come back to them in the fourth quarter and think, Oh wow. Yeah, we've either done it by chance. Or we've totally forgot what we were doing. Revisit that regularly. And the cadence and ELs is a phenomenal quarterly pulsing where we make look at where we've been the last quarter, see how we did on our goals, revisit our vision. And then we set goals in agreement and this collaboration, rather than they just get set by the leader or leaders, there's this collaboration so that we develop ownership within the company.
(10:07): Everybody goes away excited about knowing what they need to accomplish and how they're going to accomplish it. And then a weekly cadence also, which is the legendary L 10 meeting or level 10 meeting where we can talk about what that looks like. But it's just the cadence of all of your leaders in the organization, touching base for the right amount of time, staying efficient so that you minimize a lot of meetings with different people, but doing that all one time per week, no more meetings for the sake of meetings. Yeah. So my clients often fight me on the whole level 10 meeting approach until they see it. And then I come back another quarter later and they're fighting for that meeting. They say, Dave, we've eliminated so many extra meetings that now I love the meeting. And by the way, in level 10 is just doing this work at the end of every meeting rating.
(10:59): How did we do together at this meeting? How was it on a scale of one to 10, 10 being best? How was it? And we want to learn from each other along the way, if there was something that irritated, bothered you about the meeting we learned from that, we changed that next week so that we get to a point where at the end of every meeting, we rate ourselves or getting 9.5 or 10. I just watched on my screen, a couple of emails. I get updates from some of my clients, 9.8 and 10, where the two ratings for clients, somewhere in the world that we're having level 10 meetings today
(11:28): On our builder nuggets.com site, we will lay out those steps and some other supplemental information that you're going to talk and share with us so that our audience doesn't have to take furious notes right now. They can just, you guys can sit back and listen. Yeah, I think it will be very helpful to go to the, to the website and we'll post a little bit more so you can see exactly what this looks like, but you've been doing this for a while. David, what kind of results you see when a owner implements this? Do you have like any good before and after stories that who comes to mind when you think of a, perhaps a builder client or entrepreneur who is looking to put more structure into their business, looking to get their team behind their mission, trying to get adoption across the board, wanting to standardize how they communicate with their group, who pops into your mind?
(12:16): Well, I, I don't, I won't name the client that pops into my mind, but I have, I can tell the story or I can tell why they pop into my mind. And actually at some level, I see this repeated over and over as an entrepreneur myself. So you, you mentioned as part of my family business, part of my story is that I was invited to take over the family business. And I told my dad in his loving and respectful way as I could, no, let's just you, you retire from this. We'll figure out some new ownership when you retire from it, because I really want to start my own thing. I'm an entrepreneur. And I started a business that wasn't successful. And I learned really quick that if I just have a vision for something doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to come to fruition, it could just be a pipe dream.
(13:03): It could just be a hallucination, as Gino says. So what I see over and over is the freedom. We distinguish an EOS. We start implementing the process. One of the tools called an accountability chart, like an org chart on steroids. It gives crystal clarity to the boundaries, the expertise, the skill that an individual has and brings to the table. When I get clarity on that, I also know what I need because I don't bring that to the table. And I need to find people I need to find, create a structure that brings a good balance of all the things that I need. And one fine distinguishing factor is we know who the leader is, or the entrepreneur there who put it together, who has the president CEO, managing director, whatever that title is. But that individual can be two things in EOS. We would call one the integrator.
(13:58): They're the one that gives attention to all the departments. They know the finances, they, they know the customer service aspect. They know the ops area really well. And they're good at managing all that, their work, orchestrating all of that. Then we have another person that is also very important in the organization. We call them a visionary because they have the big ideas personnel, the big relationships they come to, every meeting with 20 ideas, 19 of them are going to be distractions. One is going to, if we, if we focus on that, we're going to knock it out of the park. If we do it really well. So we can't ignore what a visionary brings, but if a visionary is forced in to doing the integrator role, and many of them are, and they can do it to whatever degree, but they'll get exhausted and it will be frustrating to them. If we can free them up to be a visionary and do those things really well, then just makes their lives so much better. It makes their life so much easier to entrust the implementation of that to the integrator so that it makes everyone around them better.
(15:06): Dwayne's talking about me right now. I mean, when he says that, because I'm not strong on the implementer role and I've got some great people who are taking that piece on him from me, it's been so freeing because I love to work on the big picture, you know, 10 or 20 ideas that are going to send everybody down rabbit holes. And I've got a team of people now that know how to get that idea to the ground. And it just frees you up to focus on the stuff that you're best at and allow somebody else to take the best ideas that you have and turn them into something real. When I first went through, through this many years ago, it was, it was eye opening, made a realize that, wait a minute, I'm that guy that does, I come in every week and just have some new idea.
(15:52): And I totally upset the Apple cart and throw everybody in the chaos. And then I wander off and that's frustrating for people, you know, it's extremely frustrating. So yeah, all the different exercises that you go through during EOS, it's, they're very eyeopening and makes you realize that everybody's got their seat. You've got to find out where that is. Yeah. So to just put that, I have the personal experience with that visionary integrator difference in me, definitely a visionary. It sounds like we're in a team of visionaries here. All the integrators are going to shout, yay. They hear this because they want to have us out of that integrator seat. And they want somebody appropriate to sit in the seat, but we're not talking about small organization. This one that I'm talking about thousands of employees, and I don't know something like 300 million in sales and the visionary was stuck also in the integrator seat.
(16:50): But that became clear on our first session day when we worked on the accountability chart. And from that day, we set forward trying to find a great integrator 18 months later, we found a great integrator and that person has changed the lives of a lot of people. And now the business is running much more smoothly because we have the visionary sitting in their position and the integrator sitting in their position, the company can now flourish. Do you see people starting to adopt the idea of visionary integrator than sort of the roles in the seats over titles in organizations? That's something we talk about? Well, you know, it's easy to put titles on people, you know, general manager, CEO, but sometimes it's not clear on what that even means, but right. And you go through this process, you, you really have some clarity around the role of the integrator visionary.
(17:44): Just curious as to what you see with that. Yeah. It's not only those two positions it's throughout. So if you put like director at the end or the beginning of the name, director of operations, vice president, senior vice president, vice president, there is a lot of ego and there is a lot of just posturing. It's not really thinking about what's necessary. What are they contributing? What does that position need to contribute to the organization? It's more about my powerful title that runs the organization. So we want to separate ourselves from that. It's okay. You can leave titles. They're not going to go away overnight. And some people, that's why they come so they can pass out their business card. It says superstar or whatever the title is. But what we want to get to is what is the function? What are the five key roles in that position summarize their whole job description in five roles that we want to focus on for that individual.
(18:41): And then give it a functional title rather than just this name. And I think there was this push early in EOS. I think some people were adopting, okay, I'm the visionary. So I'm going to put that on my business card now. But even that became the same. There was the same thing. Well, what does that even mean? And so the clarity of call yourself what you want, whatever makes you feel good, whatever gets you going, but from a functional standpoint, knowing what it is that you bring and what you don't bring the box that you're going to be in, that you're going to play primarily. And it's not, I'm not going to leave it to help other people, but what happens in my inadvertent visionary desire to help somebody, I end up stepping all over toes, having things done in a less than optimal way. And we want to free people up. We want to, again, a EOS term that we say is delegate and elevate. So we're going to get rid of a lot of things. We're going to trust that somebody else to do that. And then we're going to elevate to our the thing that we bring uniquely to the organization, because a visionary is really important. Not a lot of people can do visionary things
(19:53): Regulars to our show will recognize that we spend a lot of time talking about how to get the owner out of the way of the day to day parts of the business. The only way you can scale and grow and create a more valuable asset that runs better with less of your time is if you have no, where did you use was trust, trusted people that have the tools that they need to do their job. Then your job, as the leader of the visionary becomes to work with them, to develop the mission and point them in the right direction and then get out of the way and let the specialist do it. That is something that is extremely hard to do in the construction business, because of all the moving parts, all the risks. A lot of times, it's your name on the side of the truck.
(20:37): You've spent years doing things a certain way. These are the struggles that even the best owners go through is getting sucked back into the weeds is, is Dwayne would say. And I think one of the things that's impressed us about EOS is how simple it is. And you know, when you first look at it and you see all the moving parts, you think that's, that's not simple at all, but it really is. It's just common sense, but it is how do I put myself into the right position? How do I know what I'm working on? How do I see what the rest of the team is working on? How do we communicate this to each other? And you all start rowing the boat in the same, in the same direction. And you know, it comes together. So we know that it works. How long does this take to implement into a typical company? If you were looking at a builder with, you know, a team of five to 10 staff. And again, I actually a better question is can you do it with a team of one? If you know somebody who's doing everything themselves, how do you get, how do you get started with eos?
(21:43): So Eos is targeted. So the sweet spot of EOS, where it really gets traction, a little pun intended. There is with organizations that have between 10 and 250 people. That's the size of the organization, because a lot of this is how you get rowing in the same direction. When there's one person in the organization, they're rowing in a direction, hopefully not in circles, but the rowing in a direction. When you have two people, it's very easy to row in different directions. I'm just thinking of, they say, if you want to test to see if you're going to have a good marriage, take your spouse onto a little canoe, ride a canoe trip and see how you paddle with each other against each other, yelling at each other, not getting along. And I think that that starts it. So I'd say two people, get the book traction, read it, ask the questions that we ask a leadership team, just with the two to get you on the same page.
(22:40): Dwayne, I think in the introduction, you had talked about EOS helping on a number of fronts. And I underscored it because I use these tools in my family and with my wife also. So there are a lot of ways that can be helpful, but any organization of any size, but that's the sweet spot of where we want to get a whole leadership team. So say four or five people in the leadership team together, rowing in the same direction. Then we can cascade that health through the organization until we do that, we can't assume it. We can't just say, Oh, it's just in the leader's mind, the entrepreneur's mind because in order for people to understand things, you have to tell them. And so we have to get people in a room regularly and we have to remind them because you're great. You know, when you set your goal at the beginning of the year or goals at the beginning of the year, but 30 days later, 60 days later, 90 days later, for some reason we have a tendency to drift off and Eos is going to be something that grounds us and continually brings us back to what we've already agreed on.
(23:44): We agreed on it. Now we're just going to remind each other. And one of the things I loved about ELs when I first saw it is as a visionary, didn't like to manage people. I just wanted people to be to self-manage. And that's just not the reality that we live in. And when we implement EOS, the buy-in and ownership happens so that people tend to manage themselves better. There are we, we get metrics and measurables for everybody and we're accountable for them. But I come from meeting to meeting either I did them or I didn't, and it's very clear to everybody. So now the system is managing people more than me having to say, Hey, Dave, come to my office. I need to talk to you about some numbers that are off track. That's all, I've agreed to what it was. I know what I'm driving towards and not, you can see if I'm being successful, right?
(24:32): What's the first step in exploring traction and learning about it.
(24:38): I think that the best way is to grab a traction book or get it on audible and just listen through it. It feels like a story version. There's a great book in the ELs series called get a grip, fictitious company implementing EOS. What I like is Alan is the implementer. That's the role I play for my clients. And so you get a little bit more empathy for somebody that does what I do, and it's really a unique role, but it's, it's challenging. So that would be great. And I'm happy. I mean, you all have ways that they can connect with you through the blog, but if you go to my website and just put in your information, I'll send you off a traction book at no cost. So don't worry about that. That's your traction partners.com. I'll send out a traction book. One other thing that I'll mention here, you asked about the timeframe I'm going to give you two answers.
(25:32): The first one is how long does it take for EOS to really get firing on all cylinders, implement the tools so that you're really running really well. Two years is what I think is a good estimation of time. I work with clients 10 session days over two years. So it's a space learning process. Eventually my clients get it. They understand it. They can use the tools and cascade it through the organization. I'm just on the sidelines. So that's one answer. The only answer though, I think is more exciting, cause I want quick results. I'm a entrepreneur also, and that is within 60 days, three session days in 60 days, your leadership team is crystal clear on your vision. And then you know that the Eos tools that are building strengthen those six key components I introduced you to at the beginning. So there is a tremendous difference in the company that 60 days in is clear on their vision and using all the EOS or the foundational Eos tools.
(26:28): Then by the time we get to a quarterly session, 90 days after that, you've gone through most of the types of sessions and you're ready to move your organization forward. What's the biggest pushback you get? people that say, well, we already got vision. We know our core values we know are great at we've got our goals. And so going through this process though, step-by-step just helps solidify that there are rare cases that clients are doing this really well already. And if so, it just validates that. And then we move on to the second step. If we just think that we're doing really well on saying vision or core values, but we're not, it's undermining the rest of the company's efficiency or effectiveness or one of those three things, the vision, traction, or healthy, if you and one employee are clear on core values, but the others are not.
(27:23): Then it's hard to assess whether those other people are on board with those core values or not. So we're just going to show you tools that say, not only are you going to put them up in a fancy place on our website or in our office, but we're actually going to live those out and we're going to evaluate, we're going to hire fire review reward, recognize all according to those core values. Now you're really living it out. You don't want to be a company like that has integrity as one of your core values. And then the accompany like Enron or something, you know, back in the day that falls apart. And they clearly were not living out the core value. You've got to live them out
(28:02): A quick reminder that the best way to get the most out of this podcast is to engage with the builder nuggets community, visit our website@buildernuggets.com and follow along on Facebook and Instagram.
(28:15): Something that we really try to instill in the folks that we work with is, and it comes out of traction. You know, the attract and repulse. Once you get your core values in line, a lot, almost every decision you make will be based on your core values and especially around hiring and trying to identify people. I know most of the listeners here will agree. It can be difficult to hire properly. And one of the things that we've found has been very successful is when you start talking about not only attracting the right people, but the repulsing part, you know, if you've settled on your values and the things that are driving your company, you want to, you want to stick that in the face of candidates. And if those people are turned off by that or run away, that's a good thing. That was something very big that we took out of going through the process.
(29:02): Yeah, I'll, I'll just mention here on core values. I'll just mention that this goes beyond even employees or potential employees in the organization. It goes really in our industry or construction area to subcontractors and making sure that even subs largely subscribed to the core values that you're trying to deliver it to your clients, just because you're not the one on site delivering some aspect of the business. Maybe it's even more important that you know, that they care about the things that you care about because you're on the hook for whatever they deliver, whether that's to the good or not good. So you want to make sure that there's alignment that goes beyond just who you're hiring to. Who's a subcontractor for you delivering, as you said, there's probably people that have never heard of this before. There are a great deal of people that have to some degree maybe touch on, you know, can people do it without an implementer and then maybe benefits to why they should do it with an implementer?
(30:02): So EOS was probably about a hundred thousand companies that read traction. They're implementing some of the tools in EOS. It was about 400 ELs implementers, professional or certified implementers across the country, around the world. And there's a whole group of people that are self implementing. I think that the number of clients that are using an implementer is about 10,000 companies. When we're recording this right now, about 75,000 session days, full day sessions that we have led our clients through. So that's the team. So there's a lot of people using these tools outside of this. And I think what resonates with me most, even when we have a self implementer track companies that have implemented, some of the tools are familiar with some of the basics and we start to work with them. We go through the process just a little more efficiently than if it's a client that is just new to Eos.
(31:01): One of the things that resonates with me is they say, Hey, Dave, when you're here driving this process, there's just a different dynamic that happens. So if I come in once a quarter, which is the cadence that I'm with my clients once a quarter with them, they'll just say I had one. I remember he's just like Dave, we need you to come to our level 10 meetings because when you're here, there's just a different dynamic. We're a little more open and honest. I think what he was trying to get at is our managing director is kept in check when you're in the room because he's delegating the authority to you. And so you're pushing back where we all want to push back, but you know, it's going to make our life really uncomfortable if we push back in that area. So the open and honest that EOS creates a culture of, I think somebody coming from the outside, that's with love and respect, stepping on toes when they need to be stepped on is one of the biggest things when it comes to implementing, that would be the big difference.
(32:01): Dwayne and I have some experience with this in that it was probably about, well, it was a couple of years ago. Dwayne was talking with me about this
(32:10): And we wanted to use it in our, in our
(32:13): Coaching platform and the things that we do with builders across the board. And I found it was really easy to get excited about the visionary parts that I liked and I was good at. And I think it's normal human nature that you gravitate towards the, for me, it was the non implementer things. And so I focused on all the exciting stuff. The tenure plans, you know, the highest people analyze it highest and best use. We're going to your dream business. And this is what it's going to look like in 10 years. What does that look like? We're going to map it down now it's three years and down to one year. And even at one year I was doing okay, but then it starts to fall apart because I didn't have the discipline. It's hard to just hold yourself accountable constantly. I was sort of putting EOS and I was putting a piece of the EOS into our business.
(33:04): And Dwayne was doing a much better job of putting some, some more of it into the areas that he was working on, but it never truly came together. Despite the fact that I had a guy in Duane on my team, who's a total champ for this stuff who believed in it. We had our own struggles getting it. And now we're reaching out to an EOS implementer to say, all right, well, we need some help figuring this out and staying on track because as much as you can learn from reading the book and that it is simple, you need to get put into your lane. You need to have that structure there. So you don't try and create your own version of it. And do it. I say in a half-assed way where you're sort of implementing traction, it just doesn't work. Your wheels are still going to spin. Yeah.
(33:48): In agreement with that, one of the things that we say, well, there's always this tension and this got asked earlier, I think by you Duane, where, where are the tensions? You know, Oh, our meetings are great. Are we're clear on our vision? The discipline of accountability is fine. We're in alignment with our core values, wherever that is. When we introduce these concepts, when we teach the tools, there's just this great accountability that comes from the outside. That's just not able to be present when you're within the organization. There's a quote from a mathematician philosopher that we quote that says he can't at the same time, work on the system. When you're in the system, you need to have some sight from the outside and somebody to remind you of that process.
(34:34): When I think about this, getting buy-in from your team, whether it's a piece of software, a new sales process, new safety boards, like whatever, the thing is, change is hard. I find that there's a natural resistance to change a lot of the time. What's the best advice you can give to an entrepreneurial business leader, a builder who's trying to bring his team or her team into this. And they're going to face some of those challenges, or they've tried to implement stuff before. And it hasn't taken that adoption factor is huge. What's your advice on how to get somebody, how to get their team curious about what this will mean for them
(35:26): Companies that start working with EOS come from a curiosity of working with another company that is running on Eos. Does it just running more streamline and smooth, the problems and issues and frustrations that I'm facing. They seem to have a solution for tell me what it is. And so I'll get a call from a referral of a client that I'm working with. He says, Dave should really talk to this other group because they're having the same struggles as we had before we implemented EOS. So if they've read the book fantastic, if not, then I'm engaging in conversation and I'll just spend five or 10 minutes with whoever's interested in it and just say, Hey, we help with vision, traction healthy. What I'd love to do to see if there's a good fit here with Eos and just to provide you some value, I'll spend 90 minutes of my time with your leadership team.
(36:18): And we'll go over the six key components of Eos and see if there's a good fit. There's a proverb, a Chinese proverb that says when the student is ready, the master will appear. And if the student is not ready, if they think, Oh, no, we got this. Then it doesn't matter if it's Eos or another book, it's just gonna fall on deaf ears. But when there's pain and frustration and business, and especially when you see somebody else that has figured out a way to move forward and you're feeling held back that pain is causing me to be curious, at least Dave, to use her word, but also just say, Hey, let's, let's give that a try. And then what happens when we talk about the whole EOS system with all of the key leaders there is that some things will resonate and people will see, man, this is an opportunity for me to drive home, that we need clarity of the roles in our organization and that accountability chart, Oh, we need core values that we're actually measuring people according to not just ones that are fancy on the wall.
(37:26): We need processes. We need to streamline our meetings. I need a chance to just tell people that this meeting was a three it's sucked. I just need that opportunity just even that. And so when we get together for that 90 minutes, which I love to do, because those think, Oh, Dave's coming in to sell us something. And really what I want to do is I just want to offer some tools. I want to help first and see if there's a need for it. Then I'd love to work with you. But when we do that, we ask a few questions and there are some epiphanies, some light bulbs going off in the room. You can see people's body language change. When all of a sudden they feel like they're getting to contribute, Oh, we've tried this before. It will never work. Or this might be the thing that we're looking for. So that 90 minutes, that's a great discovery process. And I do that all the time for companies just at no cost to see if there's a good fit here. If you just end up reading the book and implementing some of the tools on your own, and you're better off, I feel good about myself. If you want to engage with me and then work together, I'm happy to help over a longer period of time.
(38:29): And the excitement comes from, you know, obviously going through it the proper way. And in the beginning, when you get your, get
(38:36): All that stuff down on paper, core values, core focus. But I think for listeners that haven't really embraced us, the power really comes. Once you get living into that 90 day world, these are the actionable items we have to focus on right now, the team is focused on that. The effort is focused on it. You review it regularly. And those are the things that are moving the needle. And that that's what I have liked about it most, I think is the fact that it brought so much clarity after going through all the stuff on the front end, it didn't get you into that zone where man, every 90 days we can just continue to work on these things, tweak it as we need to. And it takes a lot of the noise away. Absolutely. So two things, I love starting the EOS journey with clients.
(39:19): But another thing that I love when I've had clients that have been with me for a year is doing the annual and that's happening. That's a big season for that here for my clients in the U S right now we're making our one-year plans. So what does 2021 look like? Hopefully it looks less like separate than 2020, hopefully. Yeah. I mean, there's some upsides to things that have gone on, but definitely this is a year to put behind us and look forward. But when we get together, now we're doing our one-year plan and we're all going to be on the same page with that one year plan. But we're going to execute it quarter by quarter in a week by week. So your point, Dwayne, the rhythm, the cadence, the pulsing, it's a really, it's like an EKG. It's the pulse of my organization. So you've got this big blip for the year.
(40:07): You got littler blips for the quarter, and then you have weekly blips where you're all rallying around the same thing. We're reminding ourselves of the VTO quarter by quarter, making sure that we're on the same page to execute on our goals. It's a phenomenal rhythm. It's not rocket science, it's simple. But when you get into the rhythm, when, when you just use the tools and you commit to using them, you'll be moved forward. Something that got said earlier was about, well, we kind of have our own way of doing it. There comes a point in a session that sometime when we'll say w we start gravitating to our old ways of doing things where I'll just say, now, hold on a second. This isn't the dos system. This is not the Dwayne operating system. This is not the Dave operating system or David. This is the EOS system.
(40:54): And I'm sitting in my office here. I have all the books series back behind me in my office. But when you're leaning into those, those are best practices have been tried and tested by 10,000 companies working with implementers, running on ELs a hundred thousand, maybe a hundred thousand more. At this point, I have read the books and are pulling the best pieces, the best practices that they can. But what I love about it is it ELs you can just turn any of your employees or subcontractors your leadership team onto any of those books. And it's the ELs system. That's why we're going back to what purely works the best. Then we can adapt and modify from there. If we want to have the Dave operating system a couple of years down the road, I'm not going to hold anybody back, go ahead and take the best practices, adopt them.
(41:41): But master two tools are disciplined in six key component areas. Master those first, just to in six areas, only 12 things. Then you can move on to more complex things. We made the decision to go the implementer route because we see it as an accelerant. We know that we, if we're going to try this, we want to get there. But it's like any new thing you want to try, whether it's a new hire or any new system or process you want to be able to, or even, you know, a client relationship, you want to be able to either Greenlight it early and get for lack of a better word traction right away, or realize that it's not going to work and kill it early. But in this case, if you're an experienced at doing it and implementing something like this, you'll never know if you were doing it right. So we, we knew that we were having struggles even on our own, as people who were studying the book. And yeah, you can take some of the small nuggets or the bigger elements out of this and can try and do it on your own. But to us, it just made total sense. Well, if we're going to try this, let's, let's speed it right up
(42:53): About execution. That's like a lot of other things in life, you know, to get out of it, what you put into it. And it, it, it definitely is something that you need to follow through with the,
(43:02): The good thing is it's not hard to do. It's really, once you go through this, get on that cadence, as you said, the execution of it becomes very easy. It's also fun. If you want to streamline your business, if you want to focus, you know, your highest and best use, if you want it to be surrounded by other people who are passionate about the same things that you are, you need to have a system that creates that. And this is it. It is well, we're big fans, David, we're using it.
(43:33): We're going to learn more about it. We're going to get better at it. I encourage anybody out there to explore more about it. Anything else you want
(43:39): Touch on? Or as we close out here today, thinking about a sports analogy where you have a team that needs to accomplish a result, and hopefully they're all on the same page with winning. That's good. But then what it looks like as you carry that through to whatever sport I'll just use American football, as an example, what does it take to win and getting people to align with your values, who you are as a team so that you can have fun together. You can work together, move in the same direction, and then executing really good on whatever their role is, whatever that position is that they have. And then moving forward for the greater good of the team you need to continually get in with the coach coach, what do you see that I need to improve on? And when I work with my clients, I do three things.
(44:22): I'm a teacher. I teach ELs tools. I'm a facilitator, that's that open and honest in the room and going to places that, you know, that's a little bit to avoid. We just won't go there. We'll just sweep it under the rug. Well, those things don't just go away. They become bigger problems. So I'm going to facilitate that open and honest truth in the room. And then I'm going to coach. I do this with a lot of companies. I see a lot of things. So I'm going to help you be your best. So teacher facilitator, coach, I think that would be a way to just sum up how I can help you and your business. One more time, let everybody know how they can get in touch with you. Sure. Probably the easiest way is my website, which is your traction partners.com. And if you just want to use email traction partners at Gmail is a good general way to get in touch too. Looking forward to chatting with some of your listeners and helping them get vision, traction healthy in their business. I'm appreciative you guys. Thanks for inviting me in. Thanks for being fans. And I'm looking forward to more ways we can work together.
(45:23): Thanks, David, appreciate your time today.
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