Episode 514: The Visionary Integrator Fallacy

Hey everyone. Well, I'm going to give you a heads up. Rant incoming. Have you read Traction? EOS's version, their first book that came out, Radically Successful. And then the follow-up book— well, actually, they've come up with several follow-up books, but one of the follow-up books that I know many people have read that really got this whole idea going was this idea of the visionary and the integrator. And so the follow-up book is called Rocket Fuel. So if you've read Traction, many of you have then gone on to read Rocket Fuel. Well, why did people, so many business owners love this idea of just being the visionary? Well, they like the idea of being the visionary and then just having an integrator, what they call an integrator, to go and do all of the work. It sounds great, right? You get to go and just go visionate all over the place. Now, how many times have I talked about on this podcast the critical importance of having a vision of where you want to take your small business. It is absolutely imperative to be able to, to do that and to articulate that on a consistent basis to your team, to the point to where the single most important asset that we have within our own company that we share with our members is called the Clarity Organizer. And the Clarity Organizer, which got its actual initial, at least basis from the EOS VTO or the Vision Traction Organizer. But I took it, we've modified that, but it, Genesis has a nod to EOS's VTO. I just felt like that there was a lot of things on the EOS VTO that just honestly don't apply to small businesses, but yet we wanted a few more things to be able to put on there that actually do apply to small businesses. And such as, like, what is your dream outcome? What's the dream outcome for your small business? What does it look like if the business has fun, freedom, flexibility, and financial success? Like, that's page 1 of the Clarity Organizer. Then it goes on to have you articulate your 3-year vision and your 1-year objectives, and then your quarterly 90-day priorities, then even share your values and the mission that you have. And it's to me the most important asset that we have. And yet here I am absolutely harping on this idea that I think it is a joke that you as the CEO of your small business are just going to be able to be the visionary. I would love to just be the visionary. Look, it is important that I can never delegate. Two things can be true at the same time. I can never ultimately delegate the vision of where I want the businesses to go. Yes, that falls on my shoulders, or if in the case that you have a business partner, it falls on the shoulders of both business partners to be able to articulate that. However, as important as that is, it is only important to the, to the point that it ultimately begins to align the next most important thing. And that is execution. That is execution. Like, you can have ideas all day long about where you want to take the company. But then you have to back that up with a specific plan to get there. Specifically, like, how are you going to actually do it? And so this idea of the visionary fallacy is that you just get to sit back, step back, only pontificate about the vision that you have of the business, then go hire an integrator. The other thing is too, with this integrator deal, that we're small business owners, we're not going to go hire a $500,000 integrator in our businesses. Pretty much everybody we work with is in the early 3, you know, couple $100,000 in revenue in the early stages, up to about $3 million. Yes, we have clients that have scaled past the $3 million mark, and they're on their way to, to 10 maybe even 10+. But the vast majority, when I say vast majority, I'm talking about like 95% of the prospects that we survey, if you opt into any of the things that we do, that's one of the things that we ask. We like collecting that data to get an idea of where people are. And we have an idea of like, you know, 55% of our members are just over a million, 45% are below that. So I mean, it's almost an even 50-50 split. On the million-dollar range. And so none of us are hiring $250,000 integrators. It's a great concept. It's a good idea. But in reality, it's not the ideas, it's the execution of them. Ideas are everywhere. It's the implementation that is everything. And so having a vision is absolutely important. But if you just have a vision and you don't articulate, especially for businesses our size, Team, this is where we are going and this is how we are going to get there. This is where we are going and this is how we are going to get there. And that how is a plan. What is the plan? Now, here's— I'll take this one step further. Is the plan in and of itself going to guarantee success? Absolutely not. I mean, look, Hugh Freeze had plans to win every one of the football games that he coached during the, you know, almost 30 years that he was on the planes at Auburn. Didn't work. We didn't execute. And this goes back to the episode that I dropped last week. And that is, it's not always just even what you do, but it's how you do it. And it's who you do it with. So what is the moral to the story? Look, the idea of being the visionary and having the integrator sounds good. It's not applicable for us and small business owners. Throw that out. Yes, you need to have a vision and you need to articulate that vision clearly, consistently, with your team. But that vision also has to get matched with a plan. How— this is where we are going, this is how we're going to get there. And then it comes down to how we go about executing it. And it goes— and then it matters who you have on the team, how we going about executing that plan, and who is on your team. It's those elements that are in play. This is the vision of the future. This is the plan, how we go about executing it, and who is on our team is ultimately going to matter. Because you can take two business owners, and last week I talked about enthusiasm, and I think that's important too, that the enthusiasm you give to your team about the vision of the future and the plan to be able to make that happen. Because honestly, without your enthusiasm, how's your team going to get fired up about it? So look, again, the first time I heard the idea of the visionary, I was like, oh yeah, that's exactly what I am. I wanted to self-identify. As the visionary. Now I want to self-identify as the architect. I want to self-identify as the designer of the things, and then the building of the blueprint to make that happen. And if you want help in creating a blueprint for your business or help becoming the architect of your business, if you just go to my website, blueprintofwest.com, you can navigate through there. We've got a number of resources. We've got some revamps of our website coming up and going into 2026. I'm super excited about to be able to serve you as small business owners in more ways. BlueprintOS.com. All right, everyone. Hope this served you well. Idea of being the visionary is good. It only is as good as if we match it with a plan to be able to get there. And let's sprinkle in a little bit of an enthusiasm for us as well. All right. Till next episode, lead well and go be great. Hey, and if you're watching this on YouTube, I would love for you to hit that subscribe button. Like, and then post down below what your biggest takeaway from this idea. Did you love the book EOS? There's a lot of really good stuff in there, but, uh, what else did you love? Post in the comments below.