How EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) Can Transform Your Business and Team

One of the most pivotal points of my business journey here at the Hub was the point where I realized the business that I was building was going to work, and now it was time to grow. But how do I manage this growth as it's finally starting to come? It was a really interesting spot to be in, because just figuring out first how to build a business that's going to grow, that's the hard part, right? That's step one. But once you start to hit a point of significant growth in your business, or you just know you're plateauing and you're ready for whatever that next level is going to be, that's really important to figure it out, because I think on the outside, we all look at that moment and go, okay, great, I can figure out all the internal things, right? But to grow, I must need more marketing and more Facebook ads. And we. We look at growth as such an external factor. But what I realized in that moment for us at the Hub, was growth was really more of an internal factor. What we needed in order to grow and scale our company was actually better organization. It was building the right team culture. It was figuring out how to get our team row going in the same direction and also how to take our business from being a relatively flat business model, Meaning everyone on the team answered to me personally, I was the bottleneck of the business. Yes. And move our model instead to have leadership, which allowed me, frankly, to figure out how to sleep at night. Because I knew it wasn't just me making the most important decisions in the company, but it was our entire team of leadership who had the business's best interest at heart. And not only did they know the things we were on that gave them the best interest of the business, but they also had to know all of the financials and all of the data and all of the numbers of the business so they could be empowered to make those decisions. Now, as an entrepreneur and a founder, sometimes it's hard to give up that control, to build up a leadership team around you that really is going to optimize your business internally and allow it to scale externally. You guys, today, I'm so excited because I'm bringing you behind the scenes on this process, a journey that I started a few years ago when Eric first started to come to work for the boutique, and he looked into and discovered a process called EOS Entrepreneurial Operating System. It actually comes from a book by Gino Wickman called Traction, which I'm sure some of you have probably read. Once we dug into the book, Traction and Really thought long and hard about how we could start to implement it and talk to friends who had also read the book and started to implement it. We realized we needed some help. We needed a coach, we needed somebody who could hold us accountable and over the course of time, stand by us and the Boutique Hub as we started to implement EOS and make sure that we're actually doing it the right way. Insert my friend and personal business coach, Tom Wessner. Tom's joining me today on the podcast and we're going to be talking about what it's really like behind the scenes for him to work with us, our entire leadership team at the Boutique Hub, what our journey's been like implementing eos. We what you can learn from EOS and how you can begin to implement this program as well. So I am so excited. I'm a little nervous. I'm bringing you totally no holds bar behind the scenes today, but I think you're going to get so much out of this because when we think about growth, you guys, I'll be honest, when I thought about, oh, our mission and our vision and our focus and our values, it's easy to push those things off of your to do list because you don't understand their value and their importance and how they're actually going to help you scale. Once you go through those things, however, and you really build a solid foundation and company culture and you're all rowing in the same direction. It is absolutely life changing. So get ready. Meet my personal coach, Tom, as we talk about the entrepreneurial operating system. Let's talk about your business strategy and the juicy details of what actually works from mainstream fashion to fashion on Main street and the entire ecosystem behind it. How do we scale your company and do it with the balance and the happiness that we all seek? Let's hear from those insiders, experts and strategists that actually make it happen. I'm your host, Ashley Alderson from the Boutique Hub and I can't wait to chat. Hey guys, welcome back to the podcast. This week. This is new. I'll say this is new. We're totally flipping the script this week on the podcast and you guys are going to get a behind the scenes look at what we have gone through at the Boutique Hub. Because today I'm so excited, Tom, to have you here. You're our coach, you're my coach at the Hub and so you're going to get all the juicy details behind the scenes of what it's really like at the Boutique Hub. But we're going to Talk about lots of things you guys can self implement in terms of EOS as well. So, Tom, thanks for being here today.

Oh, it's a pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.

I'm a little intimidated. I'm wondering like how many details we're going to get into and I'm going to go, oh, crap, I need to work on that after we get off this podcast today. So don't hold back. That's my advice. So if you guys are listening, some of you have heard me talk about EOS inside of the Hub or at the Boutique Summit or in our Mastermind. Some of you may be brand new to what is eos. So Tom, will you just take a minute, explain what is eos? How did we get here, the books and everything?

Sure. What is eos? It's not a fitness program. There is a fitness program out there called eos. EOS stands for the Entrepreneurial Operating System. It's a business system, not a digital online system. It's a manual way, a system of organizing your human energy in your organization, organizing them to achieve three things we call vision, traction, healthy getting your vision and your plan for the future crystal clear. Getting people to understand that vision, understand they're part of the plan, getting your people to work with focus, discipline and accountability. And third, work is a healthy, highly functional team that enjoys working together and supporting each other in healthy manner.

That's a great explanation. I look at it as most businesses get started, most entrepreneurs get started and they operate like a bunch of squirrels running in 12 different directions. And EOS is your opportunity to put all your squirrels on the same track and get them all pulling in the same direction. Can you take it a step further and break down like the wheel and.

The six parts of the wheel, the business system? Well, first of all, the EOS business system tools and disciplines were really discovered and pulled together by the founder. His name is Geno Wickman. And he pulled that material together because he studied the top 5% of entrepreneurial businesses and he really took a look at what is it that they're doing different than the other 95% to be so successful. And so he pulled together this business system that we call EOS based on the fact that every business is dealing with thousands of issues. And the top 5% that we're hitting out of the parks strengthen six key areas. We call them components of the business. The first is the vision component and I'll just talk through them just at a high level. To answer your question, Ashley, Yep. The vision component, strengthening that is getting Your vision for the long term, seven, three, one year. Your values crystal clear. Everyone understanding that and wanting to be a part. The second component, and some of you probably heard of the book Good to Great and this is where Gino got this. The second component as the people component, you got to have the right people in the right seats. If you get the right people in the right seats, everything else tends to fall into place. The third component is you've got your vision, your plan clear. You got right people in the right seats, they know their part in the plan and they're operating off facts, figures, objective data versus feelings, emotions, egos and subjective data. And when you get those three things going, vision, plan, right people, right, sees we're operating off data, the issues and opportunities just become crystal clear, the really important ones. And so you get your organization really comfortable with surfacing issues, opportunities. We've got like a three step process for getting to the root of those issues and opportunities and solving those with to dos, actions, owners, outlooks or completion. The fourth component is the process component. Every business has a set of core processes like your HR process, your marketing process, your sales process, operations, service, product delivery, finance process. And the goal is to identify what those are, document, simplify and make sure everyone's following those consistently. That creates efficiency, scalability, makes your life more fun. And the last component is traction. That's everyone in the organization knowing their part in the plan and operating every day with focus, discipline and accountability, advancing your company forward to hit your long term vision. Now I did mention it sounds like this is relevant for maybe larger organizations. It can be applied and my wife and I apply this to our own coaching practice. A two person company, it's relevant for a two person company, it's relevant for five. I have businesses that are 1,000 people or more. It's relevant and it scales. You just use it in a lighter weight fashion for a smaller company. One, two people.

Okay, I want to break down both of those today and we can use, you know, the boutique hub as an example of how you implemented with us in each of those areas. But we'll, we'll talk about how, if you're a solo entrepreneur, where to, where to start implementing as well. How did you and Susan first get into eos? I want to know the backstory a little bit. I don't know that I've asked you that.

Well, we both have started and exited our own small businesses. I was into software engineering, she was into consulting and project management. So that's where we kind of cut our teeth in Small entrepreneurial businesses and our experience, as Ashley said, you know, chasing a lot of shiny objects, everyone wearing multiple hats, these were smaller businesses and that's what you have to do. We've also both worked in Fortune 500 and 100 companies where at scale you have to have systems discipline in place, you have to have all those components that I talked about need to be there to organize and mobilize a lot of human energy. So we've both been in corporate organizations where we've seen the EOS practices at scale and it really helps in the really successful businesses. We've also realized that we're entrepreneurs, we enjoy working in the small, fast moving organizations like Ashley's Boutique Hub and we thrive on that. And at some point in our career we realized that we had the knowledge, experience for startups, large businesses at scale, that we wanted to take that knowledge and really turn around and start helping other entrepreneurs achieve the success that is possible by running really more efficient businesses and pulling less hair out of their heads.

Isn't that the truth? So behind the scenes, you guys, I'll kind of give you some light in terms of our journey to find Tom and to find eos. And I would say Eric is the biggest key component of this for us. Because Tom, as you know, Eric's background is more corporate and you know, he's worked with several large, you know, very large companies. And when he was watching the Boutique Hub from the beginning first take off, you know, his question was always, why don't you have SOPs? Why don't you have processes? Why aren't you tracking this data? Where is your data? You know, it was all these challenging questions that, well, a caused a lot of fights within our marriage. I'll just be honest, but challenge me to think, oh, in order to grow and scale this thing, I, I'm going to have to buckle down and find these more corporate feeling things that Eric's telling me about. And there was really two really critical moments for us when we started to realize we needed to go more down this path. One was at the very beginning when it was just me by myself, trying to pay myself, trying to figure out if this company would ever get traction and just the very basics of implementing, you know, some of these things on our own, be it hiring our first employee and understanding some data and just starting. But then once, once our business grew and we came to find you, Tom, all of a sudden I think we'd hired 10 people in like a very short period of time. We were growing super fast and we were Realizing that all of our squirrels were running in very different directions. And we would have meetings and there would be tears and there'd be frustration because we were all chasing different shiny objects that we all thought were important, but really we were all pulling separate directions. So Eric again, you know, was doing the research, trying to figure out, man, there's got to be a model we can follow. There's got to be something that can help us get this ship on the right track. And in talking to several entrepreneurial friends of ours, one had a large car dealership that had been a family business for a number of years. Another had a large, like, lawn care dealership. And he was asking, how did you guys, with, you know, 500 employees or more, how'd you do this? And every one of them came back and said, eos, read the book Traction. You have someone hired that can help you get a coach. And so starting with the book Traction, we will link it up in the show notes for you guys. So that was our journey. So Eric started to look for coaches, and I had met Tom's wife Susan through Management one. Many of you guys listening know Management one. So that was a great first introduction to say, oh, we need some help. You know, this is maybe too much for us to do on our own at this point with the number of employees we had. So before we go further in our process, Tom, I'm just curious on the difference. When you talk to people about having a coach versus self implementing, how do you help people make that decision?

Well, ultimately, Ashley, it's not my decision, as you indicated, it's helping people decide. And generally there are a lot of self implementing companies, just to be honest. And either they self implement because they have a financial hurdle, right? Hiring a coach is too expensive based on where they're at in their growth trajectory, meaning they don't have enough revenue or profit to afford it. But also in their journey is some realize that just like in a fitness program, right, we all know kind of how to eat, right? We all know kind of what an exercise program. So many people struggle, though, to make the commitment and follow the process and be accountable for following the diet prescription, following the discipline of proper form and the exercise, following the routine of getting up and showing up, right, and putting in the hard work. And a coach oftentimes helps people overcome some of those challenges and provides encouragement, insight, coaching, teaching, and accountability. And so in lots of cases, when you get to a point, you know, when you're at 5 or 10, 15 people and your revenue is starting to feel and profit starting to feel like it's at a good place. And you want to accelerate that. Think about a coach can help you accelerate your trajectory to achieve your next level of growth in your organization. I don't know if that answered your question, but.

No, it does. And I think that's. It's so true for coaching in general. Just. I could speak volumes not only about our experience together, Tom, but a number of coaches I've had and how, you know, they help you avoid mistakes, but they help you get where you're going so much faster. So that is, that is very helpful. All right, so here's what I want to do. I want to break down the EOS model in terms of the boutique hub and kind of walk through how we've learned these different pieces along the way. Starting with vision. Can you first just break down what it means, how you track your, your five year plan, your three year model, your one year plan and your quarterly rocks, what that system looks like? Because I think a lot of businesses just start with what's my goal for the next year, but they aren't really looking long term at where they're headed.

Well, absolutely. Can I ask you a question first, Ashley? Yeah. What state were you in and what led you for your audience? What led you to pick a business system for you personally? Because I remember some of the things that you mentioned when we first met. What would you share with your audience that led you personally to have a conviction that you needed a system or your organization?

That's a good question. So when we were making the decision to work with you, we had talked to several, I would say consultants, and they had talked about coming in and doing, you know, here we're going to do a swot and then we're going to do these things. And they were kind of like making the recipe up as they went in terms of how they were going to help us. And they were all great suggestions and probably would have worked fine for the moment. But we knew that eventually whatever, you know, good came from, that would probably wear off and we would go back to our old habits. So we knew that we needed something that was going to stick with us for the long term. And it was a system not just for right now, but for 10 years from now. And so when we had talked to other companies who had gone through eos, every single one of them said the same thing. And this was fascinating. They said, I would never go back to doing my business without eos. And now at the point we're at, what are we Two years in, it's tough. The first year especially, I would say, was really tough figuring it out. We still haven't gotten completely figured out. We still are struggling. But I would say now the same thing. I would not go back to operating without eos.

Yeah. It is just a logical, practical way to organize people and get stuff done.

Yes. I love that the language is all there for us. Like, it's one thing to organize our leadership team, and really developing our leadership team is something we did through eos, but then all of the language to cascade messages to the rest of the team, like, it's all done for us. And I'll show. If you guys are watching this on YouTube, I've got my manual here. So I have this little binder that we get together, you know, every quarter and work with Tom and. And then again for our annual retreat. But all this is done for us and we just work the process. So that takes a lot of. A lot of weight off of my shoulders, I would say.

Ashley, you raised a good point. And so I know there are other operating systems out there and seminars. You know, like take Tony Robbins seminar. What EOS has is not only the business system tools and disciplines, but the motivating seminar attributes, but it also has a stepwise process for application. And what we find in the entrepreneurial space is most businesses fail because of weaknesses in execution. And EOS provides an execution framework. As Ashley said, we're two years into this, and there's a stepwise approach that has psy. A methodology to each step that's applied, and it is all in traction. And so you can self implement the steps. A coach will just take you through those steps much more faster without some of the pitfalls and mistakes you might make along the way. Doing it yourself for the first time.

Yeah. So true.

Yeah.

All right, Tom, let's talk about vision. And you can use the boutique hub as an example of how we broke these things down. But I just want to get everyone's heads wrapped around planning beyond a year and then planning by quarter.

Okay, I'm going to preface this for your audience, which is, look, this works for construction companies. It works for apparel companies. It works for healthcare companies, pet hospitals, accounting firms. The way you run a small business is the same regardless of the vertical you're in. And why is it? Because it's about aligning human energy around a common vision. And so the vision. Ashley asked the question, what's in the vision? There are eight questions. We walk. A leadership team or you as an individual business owner through first, what are your core values? Those are your guiding characteristics of what you want to get out of your culture and your organization. Second, we talk about your core focus. What's your purpose, your passion, your cause. And Ashley, you can come back to highlight what you built out as the boutique hub, answers to some of these that you think are most relevant. So values core purpose, call that the sweet spot of your operations where you want to focus all your energy. We build out your basically your long term, we call it the 10 year target. Could be 5, 7, 10 years. Where are you headed long term? Lots of businesses use revenue profit. Some businesses don't get excited about revenue profit. They have maybe clients reached or patients served or pets, you know, taken care of, something more meaningful. So you get values core purpose, 10 year target. And then we look at like what are your target markets? How many target markets are you serving? It could be more than one. Not for profits have inbound donor targets and they have outbound product service targets. So not for profits can get a little more complicated. But for Ashley, let's say she's got three or four different target markets. For each of those target markets, part of that is getting your leadership team or yourself, what are the priorities for those target markets? And for each of those target markets, who is your target prospect and what message do you want to share to maximize your return on invested sales and marketing resources? And what are your differentiators? Three differentiators, plus or minus one that really are going to attract people in that target market. Then we move to what's your three year picture? And we set the three year picture as you can think of manifesting, visualizing where your organization is going to be in three years from now. Your revenue, your profit. Take your magic paintbrush out. You got right people, right seats, core processes in place. You're growing year over year at 10% percent revenue growth, your profits tracking, you've expanded internationally or into different states or regions. You know, what does it look like? Everyone's working harmoniously, you're having fun, you've got time for your own personal endeavors and pleasures. You paint the picture. Studies show that the more you can visualize that, the more people in your organization you can get to visualize that, the more likely you are to happen. We call that the vision side of your vision, traction, vision, execution plan. Then once we get that vision clear, you get that vision clear for yourself. Then we drop down to the plan side, which is what's the one year goals? Revenue, profit. What are the three to seven things that really are Going to make a difference for the next year for your business. Very important here for visionaries, three to seven things that seems so constraining. Like studies show that if everything's important, nothing's important. So really crystallizing and sharpening your goals down to the three or seven that are going to make the biggest difference in the next year is so important it allows you to say no to other things. Because sometimes our appetite gets so big, especially when we get so confident in our growth ability, sometimes we get carried away. So it keeps us grounded and you know, your staff is your visionaries. Geez, 20, we can't do all 27 things, you know, which three to seven. So anyway, and then we look on, we start a 90 day world. So you've got your seven year, your three year plan, your one year plan, and then we start a 90 day cycle. So every 90 days, what are the most important things that need to get done to move you 1/4 to your 1 year goal? Your 1 year goal is moving you 1 year toward your 3 year goal. Your 3 year goal is moving, you're halfway to your 7 year goal. We start that cycle every quarter, then every year we take a re look at your vision, where you're headed longer term and you make updates because the market changes, you know, your, your desires change. I'll stop there, Ashley, give it back to you.

Well, those are, I want to pick on a couple of those that I think are important for everyone who's listening. So one of the first things that I think was impactful for us when we started to implement the vision piece of this was nailing down our core values and our core focus. And I know that sounds like if you're listening, you're like, why do I need that? Why do we need to spend time on that? And honestly, when you're going through the exercise of building it, it can feel a little bit like you're banging your head against the wall, right? Like how's this really going to impact me? It's just a couple of words, right? But it's so important and it has proven to be so important for us. So I'll show you tomorrow. Beth made these for our leadership team and for the whole company. So it's just like a little like little corrugated sign that has our company values on it. But when we use these, we hire by them, we, we do all of our reviews by them, re reward by them, we fire by them. Everything that we do revolves around these values. And I don't know if it was when we were doing this, Tom, or when we were implementing our accountability chart. But at some point you had told me that there's kind of a rule of thumb that when you start to implement eos, a certain percentage of your team will either leave or you'll let them go in a certain period of time. What was that stat?

I'd say, based on my own personal experience with my clients, it's around probably 20%. So 20% of your leadership team, or 2 out of 10 or 1 out of 5, isn't the right fit. They don't share your values or they're not what we call get it, want to have the capacity to fill the seat, and in some cases you can move them to a different seat. The values misalignment is the biggest issue. You know, studies show that we hire for skills match and we fire for values misalignment. So if you have your values clear, and as you said, Ashley, you use that to interview, attract people, or repel people. Because if people don't share your values, they're less inclined to come join you, that can save you a lot of time because letting someone go and retraining them is a very costly expense. Plus has cultural impacts to the rest of your organization. If you're turning and burning people for your organization.

Yeah, what you just said really popped out at me. I've not heard you say that before, that you hire. We often hire for skills and fire for values. That's so true. So having your values in check really does change how you completely operate. And so that stat, that 20% stat for us, Tom, and you've been there through all these conversations, but we, we did have a few people leave and we ended up letting go of, I don't know, probably three or four people along the way. Because all of a sudden, you know, you always have that one in play that you're like, okay, something's off, something's not right. This isn't working. We're always reviewing this person's performance for whatever reason. But once you know what your core values are, then you're like, oh, light bulb. This is why we're not aligned in this one particular area. So I would say if you're self implementing or you're listening, just really going back to using those values day to day is a really critical step.

Well, and if you think about that, you know, lots of leaders get frustrated with their staff because they're not living the values. And then they stop for a moment, moment. And they think, well, I've never really written my values Down? Yeah.

Do they know?

I've never really communicated that. I expect people to adhere to these values. If you haven't done that, you haven't written them down, you haven't communicated them and set your expectations and told people they're going to be accountable for living them. It makes it really challenging to like really nail people down when they're not performing. How are they not performing? They get frustrated too because it wasn't clear. So part of the process is having that clarity up front, communicating that you have them, you expect people to adhere to them. Hopefully you're hiring people that are natural fit. Some people aren't. They need some encouragement. So that's kind of a precursor step to actually doing the performance management and corrective action plan.

Yes, absolutely. What would you say besides core values is the other like in terms of vision, the other thing that you hear from companies that is most important to them and they're like wow, this was a light bulb moment for us.

Well, I'm going to use the example of a brother in law that runs a manufacturing company. He was self implementing eos and he had the vision laid out with a couple of his senior leaders, his brothers, his partner. And I was assessing his self implementation and asking him so how far down in the organization have you shared that vision and the plan? Have you enlisted other people? Do other people believe in it? He's like why would they need to know? You know, they have tasks to do on the manufacturing line or in the field or it's like they don't need to know the whole vision. Well, think about yourselves. If you're looking for a place to land a company to go work for, which one are you going to work for? One that has a vision and a plan. They want to take the super bowl, they want to make it to the playoffs or you know, we're just going to be out picking daisies on the field, like which one do you want to go, you want to go for? Dan Pink has a video. What motivates people? Purpose, autonomy and mastery. It's not so that vision is your purpose, it's where you're going and you're going to attract higher level of talent that are more aligned with where you longer term if you have that clarity and you can communicate it at the point of a prospect looking to join your organization.

Yeah, I, you know it's funny Tom, as I think about that, I think that the benefit for us anyway of really communicating our overall vision and our, our, our goals, our plans, but also the data that goes Hand in hand with it. The change that I've seen it make for us is when people know where they're going, they're more apt to put the needs of the company and that purpose and vision first versus what's in it for me. Without the vision, I feel like we just would have a team of people saying, how do I make this great for me? How do I make this easy for me? How do I make this fun for me? So it's a completely different shift in how the team operates when they all know where they're headed.

Absolutely. There is a Gallup pullout that's done every year. And the stats I have are probably dated a couple years, but is on employee engagement. They surveyed, let's say, hundreds of companies, employees, top to bottom, and what they found was 82% of employees were deemed not engaged in the workplace. What is not engaged mean? They don't understand the vision, the plan. They don't understand their parts. They're not really rowing as hard or as in rhythm with everyone else as they could be. You know, they're just showing up, checking boxes, collecting paychecks. That's a missed opportunity to really tap into the potential of each individual. And this Gallup poll basically said 82% of employees are not engaged. And then it broke it down. Why is that? And I'm just going to generalize. 40% had no idea what the vision and the plan of the company was. 40% had no idea what they. Their contribution, how it related to the vision and the plan.

Yeah.

And 38, something like that. Percent had no idea the state of the company as it was working towards the vision. Where was it? Is it on track or not on track? So we employees, if we don't have that information, how can we be engaged and motivated? So part of the tools that Ashley's implemented there with EOs are to make it clear what those things are, to share it with people, to get their buy in, their involvement, their passion. Right. And motivation to help, to help so that you can give them more monkeys versus more monkeys off their back. It allows you to delegate more responsibility to your boys and they're more motivated to pick it up.

Yeah, I will say that that's a little bit intimidating. And when we get to talking about data, I want to, I want to talk about that more specifically because that was one thing I was really scared to share with people was data. But by way of sharing where we're headed in terms of rocks and what is the 90 day focus for us, that was hugely beneficial. So can we talk about that for just a minute? Like the making the rocks really smart and really making sure our whole company is aligned in rocks. That has been a game changer for us and specifically for me as a visionary, because, you know, when you met me, I would focus on 37 different things all at once. And then y' all had to rein me back in.

Well, it's funny that. I really appreciate, Ashley, that you're using the terminology, and I know I use the terminology a lot, like eos and rocks and other things. People may not know what rocks are. The rock, a definition of a rock is really a project. It has a start date and end date. The intent of rocks, or projects as we call them, really priorities, projects. They help move your company forward on your plan and your vision. So you can imagine a project might be instilling an HR process that you don't have that might be a project. Once that HR process is defined in place, people are trained and following it, that project is over. So it has a start and an end. What Ashley's talking about is once you have that vision and plan clear, we start this 90 day cycle, which is what are the projects or rocks, the three to seven that need to get done, or the company in the next 90 days, and every 90 days you're resetting those. But as you see, she called them smart. Some of you probably know what smart means. It's creating a project or a rock that is specific. This is the smart acronym. You can Google it. SMART stands for specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time bound. So on a 90 day cycle, it's time bound by 90 days. Really? Just to simplify the smart is, do you have an outcome that is quantifiable and easy to assess, whether you completed that outcome or not? So did you complete the HR process plan? Yes or no? Versus I'm going to work on the HR process plan. Well, working on the process Plan might be 2 minute review, or you can kind of check the box. Yeah, I touched it. But we really want really clear, crisp definitions for what the outcome is going to be. And Ashley said three to seven for the business, three to seven for each leadership team. We often emphasize for visionaries that less is more because they tend to think more is more. Less is more because you want to hold people accountable. The goal is 80% of those projects or rocks need to be complete in that 90 day cycle. That is the goal. 80%, 100% is okay. But then the question is, are you challenging yourself? You get below 80%, it's like, okay, she's got opportunity for improvement. Let's take lessons learned and improve goals. 80% perfect.

Hey, it's time to save the date for our next boutique summit. The largest conference for our industry just for boutique owners, E commerce stores of all types and wholesale brands. June 9th and 10th. Coming back to Dallas, we can't wait to see you there. With several speakers, tons of breakout sessions, your very own private trade show. Did I mention swag? Plus an opportunity to network with retailers just like you. Ready to scale and grow your business. You guys. We plan the boutique summit. It on the front end of the market happening at Dallas Market center so you can really get the most bang for your buck when you're traveling. Attend the boutique summit, stay for market, learn as much as you can, buy as much as you can and get ready to grow and scale your business. June 9th and 10th. Click the show notes to sign up, get the information and save the date right now. So how this, I'll just give an example of how this looks for us and at the hub. So we'll have the 90 day rocks that our leadership team develops and then each member of our team, as you said, has their own rocks in their department. So those of you who know Jeff, he leads our marketing team, or Ben who leads our development team, or Samantha who leads our wholesale and hub and toy team, then they all have their own individual set of rocks that really feed to the company's rocks. And then in terms of ongoing operation, every week when we meet, whether it's our leadership team or it's our marketing team, or if it's an all company meeting, every meeting is started by going through those rocks and just saying, okay, are they on track or are they off track? And when they're off track, then we need to identify, discuss and solve. Why are they off track and what are we going to do to get them back on track? So that's become a huge part of our culture all the way through our team and again, really getting us all pulling in the same direction. Those of you who are listening and you think, gosh, I go throughout my year and I get in the boutique hub and I see someone's, someone saying, oh man, TikTok's killing it. I need to get on TikTok. Or I see, oh, emails are killing it. I need to get on emails. It's so easy to get overwhelmed with all these different projects and shiny objects that we see someone else having success with. But the truth is we'll be much more successful if we really give that project a space on the calendar where we can really focus on it and make the most of it versus just trying to dabble in all these different shiny objects all the time. I see that almost every single day in the hub. So really aligning with those three to seven things per quarter and not letting yourself squirrel is a game changer for us. Tom, let's move on. So that was vision and we won't have time to cover all of the EOS model today. We'll just focus on three vision, people and data. But let's talk about people next. So you talked about me being the visionary for a second. And I would say most entrepreneurs are the visionary, right? Yes, most are the big idea person. But many of you listening, you know Beth, Beth is our right hand. She's our integrator. Many of you have a right hand. They're the person who actually comes and implements the things that you're working on or tells you your ideas are crazy and you need to slow down. So Tom, talk to me about just the visionary integrator relationship, but then also what does it mean to build a leadership team?

Good, good question. Let's talk about. I'll talk about it. In a sense of what are the key ingredients for success and moving to the next level using EOS1 is you have to have a visionary that's facing some challenges and they know what got them to where they are isn't going to get them to where they want to be. And they need to be open and honest and transparent in realizing I've got shortcomings either within me, within my organization. This is why I'm pulling my hair out. I'm frustrated. Somebody. And you're willing to seek help, right? So you're open to help. You're open to changing how you run the business. The visionary, because you know something more is possible. So the visionary's got the big ideas, should be working on the big ideas that are a higher value second ingredient. So that's number one great visionary that's open to change, wants change and is looking to change and is willing to change. Second is an integrator, kind of like a coo if you're thinking a larger scale organization that helps implement eos, keeps everyone working together on joint deliverables, keeps beating this cadence, this drum of focus, discipline and accountability. Running these weekly operations meetings. They often are responsible for running the weekly operations meetings which is going around the table checking with each individual. How are you and your rocks, your projects, are they on track, off track, how is your scorecard? Any metrics on or off track, these surface issues, rocks off track, metrics, off track. So and then they facilitate the leadership team digging into the root cause of why a rock or a scorecard metric or a customer employee issue needs to be resolved and then helping facilitate an owner an action plan and outlook for completion. Third is the leadership team. You have to have a leadership team that is all bought in, shares your values, is recognizing that this is the way the company's headed. They're bought into the process, they're rowing in the same direction, using the tools and disciplines to get the effective results. Did there's there more to your question?

No, that's helpful. So no matter what size your team is, right. You are the visionary. But as I would say, the first hire you make if you're a solo entrepreneur is an integrator. It is your right hand person. It's right brain, left brain.

And the people that you have on the leadership team may not always be a perfect fit for the integrator. They may be good at sales or marketing. Doesn't mean they're good at integration, for example. So it is the second most important position for implementing eos. There is a book, I mean if you're interested in finding out more, it's called Rocket Fuel. It has a profile and a self assessment for a visionary and an integrator to take that basically says what kind of fit are they? Because in lots of cases like you Ashley, in the beginning you're visionary and integrator because you're running around Mike, not necessarily micro, but you're managing all the activity in the business and directing people to do what part of the evolution of EOS is it's freeing Ashley up to do visionary work and her integrator is doing more of the day to day operation stuff that frankly most visionaries don't like doing and sometimes they're not even really good at because there's conflict, there's details, there's this maybe for visionaries kind of a boring, mundane operational repetitiveness to it, but right integrator loves this stuff, they thrive on it.

I think that was one of the hardest parts for me in terms of implementing EOS was letting go of the vine and stopping this ongoing me being the bottleneck of the business habit that I had and just trusting that the team would step up and take on some of those day to day things that were really, really important. And it was.

Expand on that a little bit because here, you know, we're so used to instant gratification or seminars where we go home and we flip the switch and, okay, everything's changed. Letting go is not a switch you can grow. It's a journey. Right? And it starts with kind of clarifying a lot of things and seeing who actually fits the pieces and who gets it and who's really operating with accountability in their seats. You're kind of inching your way down there, but verifying the individuals you're handing off to actually can do the work or your business is going to fail. Right?

Yeah, that's so true. It's not a overnight thing, and it's something you continually work on. I'm still working on letting go today, but I can remember a couple of critical points for us, Tom. I mean, one, there's the visionary integrator relationship. How much can I trust this one person to step up and take on these things that I'd been doing myself? And then also the whole leadership team, not only me being able to trust them, but them being able to trust one another. I remember one time, I don't even know if you were at our house yet. It was maybe the night before you came, because we host our quarterly leadership meetings at our home, and Tom flies in to be with us. But I can remember Jeff going around and like, rallying the room, you know, talking about how much we have to, you know, in Jeff's language, effing trust one another, you know, and he was just getting everyone jacked up to say, hey, we, we really, we have to completely, 100% be able to trust one another and being open and honest about, you know, the good and the bad and not letting anything fall through the cracks. And that was probably our very first or second leadership team meeting. But I think that's gotten better over time as well. Our whole team now, you know, leadership wise, just really gels.

And you bring up a good point because I would say part of the beauty or benefit of eos is it's a structure that I said transcends verticals. It's a skeleton. It's not all the flesh. So part of what Ashley's talking about is we bring in other tools, or you can bring other tools to build out. We'll call it kind of some of the softer practices that bring human energy together to work in harmony. So for an example, we use Lencioni's right five dysfunctions of a team, his basic trust pyramid to building that trust that Ashley was just talking about. And it starts with being open and honest, having healthy conflict. Healthy conflict leads to, right, commitment. Commitment leads to accountability and accountability leads to results. So we bring those in as additional augmentation pieces, help build what we call that third piece, Vision traction. Healthy team health, which ultimately we all know is so important. When you, your human energy is your engine and that human energy, if it's healthy, working together in collaboration can achieve tremendous things.

Yes. Probably one of the things that we got the fastest, the fastest results from when we implemented eos, Tom, was when we went through the process of building out our accountability chart.

Yeah.

And not only the visionary integrator relationship, the leadership team, but then just team structure overall. And where everyone fell on that accountability chart. And me stepping out of, really, I guess I would say the integrator role, where everyone came to me with their problems. I was involved in every review conversation or all the hiring conversations. That's the first thing I stepped out of. And I would say as I stepped out of that and allowed the integrator to come in, which is Beth, it also was Eric coming in and sharing that responsibility as well. Eric's such a people person and is just tremendous with motivating our team. So as I stepped out now, rather than the whole team of 25 coming to me with every, everything, they all have their individual leaders or managers to go to. And then ultimately they can go to Eric and Beth, who are having ongoing conversations with them about what's working, what's not, how can I help, and just continuing to make sure they're all in alignment moving forward. So if you're listening, like, please note, like, that is a huge opportunity for you to implement right away.

That's a good point. I'm trying to think of some ads and I'm sitting here like thinking of a whole bunch of pictures because I'm a graphical person to kind of show this transition. But I think, Ashley, you mentioned earlier, when you're a startup organization, you have to wear multiple hats. But as you grow, you know, you add, go from two people to five to seven. It's really important to start dividing up the responsibilities and actually getting those, the functions, we call them functions and responsibilities and getting those clear so that as you start to grow, you can divide and conquer. You don't have to all be wearing multiple hats because you're probably not all experts at everything, even though you're willing to try and jump in and do some work. So the first step is to beginning to identify the critical functions within your 2, 3, 4, 5 person organization. Yeah, you may be in multiple seats or there may be a couple. The worst case is you've got multiple people in the same seat. Because what we really want to see is clarity of responsibility and accountability. And by building this out, you also for the future, you also identify, like Ashley, sitting in three or four seats. This is not sustainable for the growth of our organization. So it helps you strategically plan. If Ashley's going to retract from a couple seats so she can focus more on the visionary, which seats are you going to fill next? And because you have the clarity of functional responsibilities, accountability, that helps you decide what kind of person is going to get it. Want to have the capacity.