181: Chris Ronzio — The Benefits of The EO Accelerator Program

Foreign. Hello and welcome again to the Scaling Up Business podcast. I'm your host and scaling coach Bill Gallagher on the show with me today. So, Chris Ronzio, welcome to the show. Chris.

Hey, Bill, what's up?

Awesome. I've got a cold which, you know, gives me a good, good voice. Right? So Chris has been on the show before, guys. He's the founder and CEO of Trainual. It's his fourth business. And we talked about a little bit before we went in more depth about Trainual in the past, which is a great SaaS app to help you automate all of your onboarding training documents and keep everything in one simple, searchable, teachable system. Right. Think training plus manual learning management system plus like Wiki. It's a great system. I know a number of people have used it on a recommendation and still others are still considering it. So happy to see that we're going to have a special offer for our listeners at the end of the show to help you get set up. But listen, this guy has gone from startup and his fourth business to they'll finish this year with 25 employees. They've documented they've built over 100,000 processes across 104 countries, tens of thousands of users and millions of dollars in revenue. But Chris came up as a client through our EO accelerator program. And I want to talk about that because I've been very involved in that. Some people ask us what stage we get into and so this is all really about that. Right. So glad to have you back on the show. So why don't we, before we get, why don't you tell folks what you think the accelerator program is?

Well, I tell people the accelerator program was like my real world business education. So I went to business undergrad program. But it was really just the basics. And it wasn't until I got into accelerator that I saw other business owners, I interacted with peers, I was assigned mentors. I learned so much through the program that I am not only a raving fan, probably more of a rabid fan. Anyone that's. Anyone that's going through this growth? Yeah. So amazing program and I'm excited to chat about it.

So people ask like what size clients do you work with? And I'm like, well, I actually work with people from only a few hundred thousand through hundreds and hundreds, through half a billion and billion dollar valuations. And, and it's the same tool Set Scaling up applies. We're dealing with the fast growth, but it applies actually at a big range of stages of growth in the company. And how we do it's different, which tools we apply and what order is different. But the fundamental work is the same. And listen, if you're an early stage entrepreneur, this show is definitely for you to listen in on and hear Chris's experience, learn a little bit about the program. If you're later stage bigger company, I think it's also useful. Some of the best innovations that I've had as a CEO and also seen our clients have, have come from things that we saw some upstart do, some young small company that challenged the status quo and did something in a new way. So you may hear some ideas. So don't tune out just because this is early stage companies. I think there's something to learn in observation from anything that you're willing to look at. So that's the program. The program is for companies between 250,000 and a million. It's to get you over your first million in sales. We operate it around the world in a lot of different countries. It's sponsored or presented by the entrepreneurs organization eo, which is where the whole scaling up Rock Habits framework got started. And so we, we're very involved today, well beyond that world into YPO and vistage and other groups around the world. But this EO organization is where we run the accelerator program. So that's what we're talking about today is how you got in that. So give us a little bit of your background, talk about the earlier companies you did and kind of what got you to the accelerator program, your first attempt at it like that.

Sure. So I started my first business when I was in high school. I was 14. It was a video production company and we filmed youth sporting events. First Massachusetts, where I grew up, then up and down the east coast and then across the United States. And so the events we did were these little, you know, we'd show up to cheerleading or a figure skating competition or a big baseball tournament or a football tournament. And we'd record the footage for the Jumbotron for the judging systems and then ultimately sell to parents and coaches and scouts. And so when I heard about the accelerator program and eo, it was from a college professor of mine who was in Boston, one of the chapter presidents. And he told me, oh, this new thing starting, you should totally apply for it. At the time I was something like 170,000 in revenue going through college. And so I didn't qualify quite yet. But when I graduated that year I was at 260. So I just over the threshold of being able to get in so at that time, my business was going across the US And I wanted a West coast presence, be easier to ship out our gear. So I volunteered, kind of raised my hand and moved to the west coast, picked Arizona, where I still live today. And the first thing I did when I got here was to apply to the accelerator program. So it was a great foundation, not only for the business, but personally and putting my roots down, making friends. So great group, building a community.

So we teach things in the accelerator program. We're going to talk about learning day in just a minute. And then you get a group, you get a community of people. You have an accountability group. You have a coach, mentor who leads your accountability group and takes you through the program. And then you have a trainer who comes in and leads it. And that whole thing together is what helps you get there. Right. Talk about building. Well, why don't you talk about the accountability group experience first? What did you do there and how did that go?

Yeah, so the accountability group was a brand new thing for me because going through college, it was always weird that I had my own business, my friends were getting, you know, real jobs, and I didn't know any other entrepreneurs with employees. So when I graduated, I had four employees. I had this little operation, and really no one to talk to about it other than my. My employees. And so when I joined this group, I was assigned, you know, six or seven other people. We'd meet once a month for about three hours. And the first meeting I went to, I was terrified because I felt like, I know nothing about business. These people are going to school me. And then the guy across the table is almost at tears about how his business was close to shutting down during the recession. It was like a garage flooring company. And I remember just thinking like it was a support group for entrepreneurs or this. This kind of like AA for entrepreneurs. And the bond that I developed in a couple months with the people around that table was deeper than what I had with some of my closest friends through college. So it just became this comforter or this safe place to talk about the problems of the business, where on the outside I was trying to tell everyone I was not an idiot for having my own company. My college friends all had these great paying jobs, and I was constantly trying to prove that my business was doing well as opposed to being vulnerable about what wasn't working. The accountability group was the first place where I had the chance to. To talk about the problems and get some help.

You know, I think it's a really good. It's a really good thing to notice is that, that there's an environment to talk about the things that you're working through that is not okay in other realms, like you are problems as CEOs and entrepreneurs sound like bragging to other people or they just can't relate to them. And it's just not a comfortable thing to just talk about over beers with your friends who have like a normal job and having a group of peers who have some shared experience and then a coach or a mentor or somebody who's been through the process before. Maybe they don't know exactly how to win your business, but they can relate to what you're going through and they're willing to, you know, support you, listen to you, call you, challenge you like that. It's not that they know how to fix your problems, because they don't. Right?

Yeah. I remember getting a big event. We had this event and it was like $20,000 over this one weekend. And I would tell my college friends and they'd be like, oh my God, bro, you're gonna buy drinks and you're taking everybody out. Whereas in the group, I'd say that, and it was like, well, what was your margin on that? How many you know, did you have contractors? How many hours were you working? So it's totally different.

Right? So some facts also for our listeners. These groups are, they tend to be about five people plus a coach. And the coach in this case is simply a volunteer entrepreneur CEO who's, who's done it before, who's grown a business to some size well above the point that you're dealing with. And they have no particular expertise in, they have mild expertise in the scaling up framework and none in your industry in all probability. But they will run the group. They know how to run the group. They know how to help and challenge and connect and relate and like that kind of thing. And then you got your peers in the group who all have different businesses and they're all trying to get their business over a million. Right. So you're in it now. Our bigger companies often belong to organizations like ypo, Vistage or eo, but in this we have these groups that, that come together. So talk to us then about the learning day. What did you do, you know, share the story of your learning days or you could just pick out any one of them or one of the things that stand out. I know you talked about the one page plan and building that.

Yeah, that was one of the earliest things. So the way the program was structured was every quarter we'd get together for one full day where all the different accountability groups would come together. You'd sit at tables, you'd interact with people, but then you would get content around some core area of scaling up or early on the Rockefeller habits. And so there was cash and execution and people and strategy and these just different areas of the business business and one day would just be focused entirely on that. And so, you know, for me it was a crash course in everything from pricing and understanding how to create a P and L to the strategy of the one page plan, which then, you know, expanded into an annual planning session with the team. And I had never done any of this before, so I think someone's first year in accelerator is just kind of, you know, doggy paddling to like not drowned. And you're just trying to stay above water and get, get all this down. And then, you know, your second year beyond becomes more about technique. You get the basics, you know how to swim, and now you're just like, how do I do this efficiently and put to good use what I'm learning. So the one page plan, which you mentioned was one of the first things that I was able to take back to my company. And we used it at our accountability groups. We'd update it every month on here's what we're going to do for the next 30 days. Here's our areas of focus. I remember you couldn't blame anything on not enough time or not enough money. It was like put down your goals with no excuses or your biggest problems. And just the clarity around simplifying that down to one page that I could share with my employees or my team on our weekly meetings was mind blowing. So that for me was a big takeaway. And then there were just so many lessons, like one of my first accountability groups. I remember our coach, he was going around getting everyone's updates. And my big problem was that I had paid this vendor something like $10,000 and they hadn't delivered what I wanted. It just wasn't working out. We were at odds. They had already spent the money, the team had turned over. I wanted a refund. It was this just bashing heads sort of situation. And he told me like, hey, it's a small town. Do you really want to have a bad reputation and fight with these guys? Or, you know, can you just tell him you understand, you have empathy for his position and why don't we go our separate ways? And so I left that meeting, I called this guy, I told him it's okay, you know, I know this is probably as tough for you as it was for me. Let's go our separate ways. He was stunned. And I learned the lesson of sunk costs, which I had never learned before, you know, so there's little things like that that you get from a coach or from a learning day and then put into practice immediately. And now six years later, I ran into that guy at a meeting and he introduced me to a bunch of customers and was so appreciative that I was as forgiving as I was back in the day. So you never know how these things will play out.

Yeah, it's really good. I think about over a 35 year career thinking about different deals that went bad and walking away from things and it can be a bitter pill to swallow, but, but a lawsuit takes so much mental, emotional energy and so much. So sometimes it's better to walk away or to issue the refund.

Yeah. I came back to the next meeting and told him what I had done, the coach, and he was like, wow, you did that? I might not have taken my own advice on that. That was good.

Yeah. One of the things that we also noticed, so in preparation, I know that you mentioned your learning how to pay yourself first. And one of the tools or frameworks that we teach through one of our cash days is profit first. Right. Scaling up is a best of framework and we're continually bringing in the best ideas from many sources, giving them full attribution and credit for creating the ideas and weaving them together in one comprehensive system that addresses your people, your strategy, and your execution of cash. You talked about how we have a deep dive, each core on one of these and over a couple year period, we cover different things. So the first year or cash day is one set of things. The second year we repeat a little bit of it, we introduce some new things and like that, we cycle through stuff and people stay in the program for one to three years. Typically, one of the things I think you picked up then and did that applies to especially to early stage companies, but to lots of folks. I know people at every stage who make this mistake is profit first. The concept of, of actually paying yourself. Having a business that makes money that produces a profit and pays you defensible. Tell us about how you, how you learned that what you did.

My initial mindset was profit last and it was pay myself last. And I thought, you know, the burden of having this business is that I've got to afford everyone else that I've convinced or tricked to come work for me. And then at the end of the day I'LL take whatever's left. That was my mindset and it definitely bit me. You know, I relied on my girlfriend or my wife once she became my wife to support our expenses. And I saw the entrepreneur, risk taker thing as just, that's the name of the game. So I remember with my first company, I paid myself a salary of $30,000. And then I, and then I think I gave myself a raise to 35,000. I thought I was living the life. I sat down in the accountability group meetings. We had to present our numbers every month to go through our numbers. And one of the things they had us do was report our profits, our bottom line, and add back in our comp. And pretty quickly my coach pointed out that I was not paying myself a market comp. And so even though I was reporting these meager profits, if I had to pay someone else to do the job I was doing, I'd be totally upside down. And that stood out to me. So as I grew that business, the business model was based on a dependency of this low cost structure. When we needed to be more competitive and hire other people we just didn't have the money to do. Definitely bit us with my next business. That was something I changed from the get go was I need to build a business around a scalable cost structure. So what are the market salaries for all these positions? What are benefits? What are, what do we need to do to attract the people? What should I pay myself so that if something were to happen to me, I could replace myself? And so the next business was definitely set up for success more from the beginning.

Yeah, it's funny how we see people do this again. So the premise of the profit first idea, Mike Michalowicz, who's actually a forum mate with my wife and a fellow speaker and friend, and early graduate of the version of the Rockefeller habits where it all began with the birthing of giants program back at mit. So in that the common view is that revenue minus costs and expenses equals profit, said very simply, and he says that's fine, except we often end up not paying ourselves and not producing any profit as we muddle through things. And with lots of good reasons for why that might be. But if you were to say, first the business makes this and I need this percent for myself and I need to pay myself this wage and then you start to figure out how to do stuff. You're problem solving for the profit. You're actually then dealing with designing the business to make money and keeping your expenses in line, working on your costs and your Expenses in order to drive that. It's a practice and principle to start early on now first we take the money off the table, we run a profitable business and we do that.

It's crazy and it's. Sometimes it's such a simple change to make. Like I remember having consulting clients or even now an EO forum mates that made this change. They had the money in the bank but were not, were too afraid to pay themselves that market wage. But then you just flip the switch one month and you raise your salary to what it should be and then everything else kind of sorts itself out. So it's pretty cool.

Yeah. And it can take a little while to transition into it and to design the business around it. But if you think about like our best business innovations and even our process innovations come from necessity. Not from, you know, creative innovation spaces where we have lots of brightly colored things and toys and we dream up the next thing, but more from the necessity. Necessity is the mother of invention, is the, is the age old saying. Right. So you want to invent a lever. Well, you throw a guy in a cave, board it up with a stick and he'll figure it out, right?

Yeah.

And that is really what happens in that environment. So talk about then, what are some of the other things that you apply? What is it that you learned that accelerated the growth of trainual out of the program and on the growth trajectory that you're on now?

Well, I think some of the content that we learned early on about just why you need training and systems and processes, that was the foundation for wanting to build this. I remember in my first business I had just a document, a sheet, and I started making for the first time everyone's roles and responsibilities. And I made them all different colors and I listed out here's the tasks that you do in the business or the areas of responsibility. And that was in its infancy. What became trainual years later was just the clear understanding of who does what in a business. I remember our facilitator saying that, you know, if, if two people own something, then no one owns it or whatever, you know, whatever the saying is. And, and that really stood out to me that every area of the business needs someone that's responsible for it. And then you need to train people and trust them and not micromanage them. And all the other combination of lessons I got over the years just became trainual. So I think, I think that's at more of a macro level. And then more specifically I remember learning how to focus. I think a problem I've Seen with a lot of early accelerator type companies is that they're doing everything for everyone and you're still trying to figure out what sticks and make money in any way that you can. And so you take on services and do a dozen different services for a dozen different people. And it's really hard to build a process that's repeatable when you're switching things up and customizing things for everyone. And so, you know, that plays into both Trainual's marketing and messaging. But also the product. We created a very narrow, specific product for a specific size company going through a specific type of growth, and that served us well. So that focus has been just constantly repeating for me. I remember even in my video business when I started Accelerator, we still did corporate videos and commercials and weddings and really anything someone would pay us for.

Okay, we do that.

Yeah, exactly. And by the end, it was just three sports that we did, competitions that had at least a thousand people competing in them because we had a very specific way of setting up our table and replicating DVDs or thumb drives. And it just didn't work with other other types of video.

Jack of all trades, master of none. So you've got it to get really great, to scale, to focus, to make a profit, to have some competitive advantage. It really makes a big difference to pick one thing. And this isn't just about getting over your first million. I know people that have sailed through 10, 15 million and are still doing too many different things. I've even seen, I coached one company that was 400 million was trying to be in too many businesses at once. They thought 400 million was enough that they could like, no, dude, you guys need to focus. And that was a mixed bag.

Well, it's like as any tree grows or bushes grow, you have to continue to pare them down, right. To control how they grow from there. But yeah, I saw it again and again and I think the revenue doesn't matter as much because businesses could be all over. You could have one business that's doing $100,000 transactions and another business that's doing thousand dollar transactions. And so you could see a company, an EO that's a $10 million business going through the same problems that $300,000 business and accelerator is going through, but they're just in different markets or selling different things. And whenever you learn that lesson, I think it's so valuable.

Yeah, it's funny, we see these kinds of things again and again at every stage. So I've come into companies with 100 employees and they're like, it's all kind of a mess. We've grown really quickly because they had an interesting idea that there was some response for and they had some push, but they're like, why is our team so messy? Why is the organization so chaotic? Why is our culture so weird? It's because it's accidental. Like, look, you've chased business and you've thrown all kinds of things in, and we don't have any clear culture and values articulated. Right. And so that can make a difference and becomes really critical as you start to get over 50 people. But you can actually get up through 50, 100 employees and not have done that. It's just a lot harder and messier. And now you have to go in and clean it up. And what will be apparent right away is that you've got some people who need to go. And that's going to take a little more work, a little more pain, and a little more chaos in the organization than if you did it when you say, had three people at that stage. So. So I think you've done a really good job with laying that out.

Yeah. Thank you. Well, I love what you said about the accidental versus intentional. And I would say that's what the accelerator program really drove home for me was being intentional about different areas of the business and dedicating that time quarterly and monthly to thinking about how do we do reviews with people, or how do we create a an org structure, or how do we change our pricing so that it adds to the bottom line, or how do we do a referral campaign and find out what people are actually saying about us and who is our best customer? And it was like every lesson or every day was just a different opportunity to be intentional about some area of the business. And so when I compared myself to people that hadn't gone through the program at any company size, I started consulting for much larger companies, but they didn't have that structure. These little lessons that I got through accelerator were groundbreaking for bigger companies that just hadn't been intentional thinking about it. So I think it's important for everyone.

Yeah, it's funny. We work on implementing meeting rhythms, and in a big, busy company, it's a lot harder to do than when you're just starting out. Right. And if you've been down the road and then you start to learn stuff, the second business you'll do, you'll put it right in from the beginning. No, we do quarterly planning off sites. We stop, pause, reflect, review our results, plan the next quarter, see how we're mapping against the annual goals and make an adjustment. We don't just keep forging ahead without checking to see how we're doing.

Right. It's funny now with Trainual, we're growing quickly, hiring a lot of people. I just brought someone on that was an early employee at Uber and she sat through our first quarterly planning session and said that's the best planning session I've ever been in. And it was cool that we've had that practice in place from when it was just me, you know, and, and I was coming up with the quarterly objectives and the rocks and that, that's just continued on and it's nice to see that appreciated.

Isn't it brilliant. So you've got a person who comes over from a background in Uber right on the staff side. Not the, not a driver. Right? Not a driver. Yeah, yeah. So they've been through some planning sessions and they thought your planning session was the best that they'd ever been a part of. Right. There's a multi billion dollar, well funded business who's grown more on the basis of they have a good idea that is needed and wanted. Like simplifying, improving that, that access to casual transportation. And in fact I, a couple of years ago I sold most of our cars. My wife now has a car, but I don't technically have a car of my own and I just take Uber all the time. But, but there's a company and. But the company's losing money and the company was run by a complete jerk for a long time, not so much anymore. And now they're having to clean up stuff. But now they're like a global organization and they're having to redo their culture. Right. Can you imagine so much work and so much more risk at that point?

Yeah, absolutely. So I mean it's easier if you get it right from the beginning. And I think things will always get messy. You always have to redo this, but you're kind of building a muscle of knowing how to do it right. And so it's easier when you get to a certain point of chaos to reorganize than it is to have to start from square one.

Well, we just started a new company this last week, took on a new client and I only work with regular coaching clients about 10 at a time. So this is one of our new ones. And $20 million business, 100 people and they've never done any off site planning, strategic planning. It's all been driven by the two leaders of the business for a long time now. People have Plans of all kinds, but they don't interrelate with each other really clearly. Right. You can get pretty far. And that's actually a lot more typical. 100 employees, $20 million of our regular work. But there's a lot of fundamentals that they haven't done yet. There's people cross working on the same thing. It's not clear who owns what. Right. I just know as we. As we do our first sessions with them in the coming weeks, that we're going to have some early wins just by bringing clarity to some of these things and cleaning up some basics. But the lack of discipline in some of these areas, the meeting cadences and the scorecards and the dashboards and things like that, is going to create some growth curve, like some challenge for them to adopt that stuff.

Yeah, right. There's so many areas of the business I get excited by that. So just hearing you talk about that makes me want to dive in and fix that company. That's just.

I love that stuff. Well, maybe we'll mention you right away to them.

Perfect. Quick win.

We'll see. Actually, I have another company that for sure you're going to come up with that we're also starting. We'll probably start two new clients this quarter that has a great need to identify and clarify key processes because they've got a founder CEO who's still got their hands in lots of things, and there's breakdowns and handoffs between departments. And I know that is all like core process, lean work, and it's right up the alley of a system like training, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

Is there anything else we haven't talked about about your experience in the accelerator and what got you through the program and graduating and growing?

I think just the larger network is really important to understand. So I know there's another cliche of your network is your net worth. And as I was in that program, people were graduating into EO all the time. And then I was getting invited to meet other EOers and YPOers and I would go to other chapters and be able to reach out to people because I was in the same program. And there would be guest speakers that would come in for learning days that I'd connect with on LinkedIn and reach out to from there. And how far the ripple goes is really amazing. And so plugging into a community like that of other people that are growing and doing exciting things, it's, you know, you get that peer support, you get that the great ideas. And it's just, I didn't. I didn't realize initially how beneficial it would be. And so launching this business, this, you know, Trainual, now the fourth company, it's amazing how many of these relationships and you know, press and introductions and friends of friends that have just kind of compounded to make this company easier to start than the three that came before it.

Yeah. Well, hopefully we learn from our mistakes and we do things new in new ways each day.

Yeah, definitely.

Well, I think it's really helpful. I appreciate you sharing kind of the experience. Oh, I got one more question for you. I probably should have known the answer to this before I ask it, but let's just see. Is there anything that you would have done differently going back like you wish you'd done the accelerator program differently? Any regrets that you have about it?

I don't think so. I think I was very intentional getting involved and one of the things I did from, from the, the first year I was in the program.

Yeah.

Was I committed to going to everyone else's office. So Every. We had 18 other members when I joined and the programs grew a lot through the years. But I said I wanted to go to every single person's office to see what their office was like to meet their employees. And that was the best thing I ever did because I'd go to people's place across town and they said no one's ever come here before. We meet at some neutral off site place and no one's ever come to my office. I think just going all in on the relationships is what I would definitely do more of. But you know, that was. That helped a lot.

Yeah. Well, so let me tell folks a little bit about how to get more how to get. We talked about a special offer for our listeners here. We'll go to that. One second. If you are think you're interested in the accelerator program, you have a business below a million anywhere in the world and you'd like to maybe get in that program. You're going to go to eonetwork.org EO Accelerator. We'll put the link in the show notes there. Eonetwork.org eo-acceler you could also just go to eonetwork.org and navigate around through the menu Programs EO Accelerator and find the program and you can get the information there. You can apply there. That's if you're below a million. If you're above a million and you'd like to find a coach in your area or you think you'd like to be coached by me, then I'm going to tell you to go to scalingcoach.com coaching and we have a little info form there that you can fill out and tell us a little bit about what you're dealing with and I can connect you to recommended coach in your area or if you just add a note there that you think that I'm your guy for some reason and why and you know, we could talk about whether or not that's a fit. But I'm happy to help you find a coach that's right for you in your area. We have now, I think about 185 coaches around the world and then we have all of those, I don't know, 60 some cities with the EO accelerator program around the world. This quarter alone I'll be going to Bahrain, Dubai, Kuwait and Salt Lake City. And next quarter I'll probably go back to the Middle east and then I'll also go visit a program in Europe. So I'm around a lot of these programs all the time. It's just an outstanding program. The value is great and on and then above a million. We've got public workshops, we've got our summits, we've got our regular coaching. We've got a range of different options depending on what your situation is. So the link to the Trainual service, if you want to help get your things documented, what Chris is going to do, in addition to the two week free trial that they will give to you, typically on the thing, they're going to include a free setup call and you just go to trainual.com scalingup so tranyou.com scalingup you'll get the regular two weeks plus a setup call that helps you get started. Right with do you call them success coaches or something like that?

Yeah, our customer success team. So whether you have materials you want us to just copy and paste into the system for you or if you're just starting from scratch, we'll help you build out your first process or subject so you know how to do it.

That makes such a difference. Pick one process that you need to have people do consistent consistently build it out in the system and you're off and running.

Definitely.

Well, thanks Chris for coming on the show and talking to us. I want to remind our listeners, big thanks as always to Verne Harnish, the creator of the Rock Habits and the Scaling up framework and acknowledgement to our show producer Lucy Summers who gets everything ready and scheduled and set up and distributed around and all that. The audio production is done at Podfly Productions. Our audio is edited by Albert Burge and video for that matter. The show notes are compiled by Ayn Codena and proofread by Tim McGowan. If you love this show, share it with somebody. Pass it along. We always appreciate it if you'll go and give us a review. Rate us online only. If you like it though. No, you can tell us whatever you want. We bring a new show like this every week and you can follow us@scalingcoach.com you can also drop us a line if you'd like more of something. You like to get more info or like to connect with, or you'd like a different show to be covered, or just any feedback at all. Info scalingcoach.com thanks again for listening everyone. Keep scaling up. I it.