When EOS Visionaries BREAK What Integrators Build | Adi Kaskavalciyan (Ep. 259)

One day I said to him, you know what, I'm going to leave you before you leave me. And this is all in the context of business. I was never going to leave him as my husband, but I didn't know what else to do because we were not able to grow. We were not able to scale because too many distractions. We drew a line in the sand, and from that point forward, he became the best business partner ever.

I thought it would be fun to record an episode and introduce all of you to my wife and my business partner, Addie. And we thought, hey, this would be cool for Valentine's Day. So that is the podcast that you're going to be listening to now. We talk about our journey together. I try to be like Mr. Serious Interviewer on this because I kind of, I want you to get to know her a little bit. But, you know, we talk about what it's like working together as, you know, partners in life, uh, partners in business. I mean, we're basically partners in everything that we do. And we also talk about kind of visionary integrator relationship. You know, she is, she's actually very unique in the sense that she could do both. I cannot. I'm pure visionary. I'm a horrible integrator. She's an amazing integrator, but she's also really good. And so for all the integrators out there dealing with a visionary, someone like me and probably someone like you that's listening with entrepreneurial ADD, then this episode is for you. And for visionaries Visionaries, this one is for us too, because now you get to hear about what it's like to deal with you. And now I'm using EOS terms, Visionary Integrator, but Visionary, for those of you maybe not heard this terminology before, a Visionary is basically, it's us, the people that started the business. We have ideas, we break shit, we go 100 miles an hour, we forget what we said last week because we got new ideas this week. And so, when we're like that, we need a really good integrator that can take all of those ideas, corral them, and help get a plan in place to actually get the visionary's vision executed. And so hope you enjoy this special Valentine's Day episode and let's get into it. Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the Wealthy Contractor Podcast. With me today is Addie Kaskavalciyan. From The Wealthy Contractor.

Hello everyone, so happy to be here.

I thought it would be interesting for me to interview Addie, but not as necessarily as my wife, but really as my business partner, because like a lot of you who have a solid partner in place, whether that's a partner in the business, a partner at home, or a partner for both. I have one of those, and it's very important for me. It allows me to do what I do best. So I wanted to talk with her a little bit about what it's like on her side of the fence, and this will be a really good conversation. So Addie, for those that don't know you, give everybody kind of like your Like I ask everybody, the 2-minute, your 2-minute backstory.

My 2-minute backstory is that, gosh, where I really got my confidence was in doing social work, I guess. I became the PTO president, raised a bunch of money, built a school playground, and after I achieved that in 1 year, I looked at Brian and I said, wow. If I could do this for the school that I was doing it for, what could I do for myself? And around the same time, Brian and I were, as you know, people know our backstory, so kind of lost everything. We had to reinvent ourselves and we went into business together. And I was really able to test that theory, you know, of what can I build on my own? In this case, I wasn't doing it alone. I was doing it with Brian, but still it was what could I rely on myself to create? So the rest is history. Everybody knows that we built G4 Marketing together and we also created now The Wealthy Contractor.

Well, not everybody knows that.

For those of you that don't know, Brian and I started in business together back in 2009. We were in that reinvention phase, also known as we lost everything phase, and we had the opportunity to create. We worked together, you know, we started in 2009 out of our bedroom. We put our desks in there and we started our company. A few months later, we moved to Miami. and that's when things really kicked off for G4 Marketing. That was 2009. We sold the company in 2023, but the journey was a wild ride. In the first few years of G4 Marketing, wow, it was, it was super exciting because we were creating together something new. It was the first time that we had built something together. Before, I had worked in Brian's companies, you know, doing other things, you know, in one of the companies I was, I started doing payroll occasionally, but Before you knew it, I was running one of our handyman businesses, helping to run that. But this we were doing together and creating together, and it was a lot of fun, but a lot of, a lot of pain as well, because I didn't know what I was doing. I'd never built a company, but I just knew how to work hard. I had a lot of grit. I had some influence with this guy because this guy I consider a true visionary. Amazing ideas, but sometimes gets very distracted. And so along the way, we, you know, we would bump heads from time to time because he would get distracted and, you know, the grass was always greener somewhere else. And when he got distracted, I got left behind trying to manage everything, plus grow, plus fill the void he left because he wasn't present. And so we struggled with that for like 5 years to be completely transparent. One day I said to him, you know what? I'm going to leave you before you leave me. And this is all in the context of business. I was never going to leave him as my husband, but I didn't know what else to do because we were not able to grow. We were not able to scale because too many distractions. And honey, is this what you wanted me to talk about? Yeah. Okay.

First off, don't call me honey. Call me Brian.

Okay, Mr. Brian Kaskavalciyan.

Call me Brian or sir. No, you are being interviewed. Interviewed. So there's no right and there is no wrong, but I will ask you some questions.

Okay. All right. Well, I wasn't done.

I'll keep going. All right. Well, your 2 minutes is almost up.

Okay. So anyways, 5 years we struggled. That one, I gave him that ultimatum, you know, you're either all in with me or you're not in at all. We're not doing this together. And, you know, without getting into many of the details, It actually worked. And from that, you know, we drew a line on the sand and from that point forward, he became the best business partner ever. Not because it was perfect, but because he focused on not getting too distracted. And that's all I needed. You know, I needed my partner to be engaged so that we could build what we set out to build together.

And that's tough for entrepreneurs because entrepreneurs have, you know, the, that entrepreneurial ADD, they're always like, oh, bright new shiny object, new opportunity. And it's always, you know, we're chasing, we see that, you know, I see that with clients all the time and other people, other business owners, I see them all the time. What helped from your perspective, you know, when you gave the ultimatum and you said, okay, we got to stay focused, we got to just do this one thing and do this thing really well. What else had to happen in that time in order for for us to get aligned and actually be able to go and execute?

So I think one pivotal moment was we had spent, we took a beautiful summer vacation. We went to Greece. We went to Santorini. We went to other islands. I can't remember the whole thing right now, but it was amazing. We had never had so much fun as a family together, the four of us. We had never had such an exotic vacation where we were really immersed in the culture. And we came back, I remember it was during the summer, the kid, the girls were outta school. We came back and a week later we lost one of our main clients. And at the time I was in charge of sales. And I think that that one client represented, what was it like, was it 30%, 40%?

No, it was like 10 or 15% of our business, which was a big hit at the time.

It was a huge hit. And coming from that high, you know, getting smacked in the face with that low was like, wait a minute, everything has to change. And that's when you and I got really serious about running the business. That's when we got the, that performance tracking sheet, you know, where we were, you know, tracking monthly MRR on a regular basis, on a daily basis, wherever we added, whatever we lost. We hired some coaches to help us figure this out because we didn't know what the hell, you know, how to scale it, right? And how to create a predictable business that didn't rely on Brian and I. And so that experience, I bless it, I thank it because it changed everything. It was a turning point for us. So not only were we now aligned as business partners, but we were aligned in knowing that or accepting that we didn't know what we didn't know, you know, to get us to the next level.

And money was, you know, money was tight. Money was, you know, an issue. How did you kind of, how did you deal with that?

So I come from a place of expectation. It's always gonna be there, right? Yes, I came back to that reality of losing that business and, you know, that represented 15% of our, you know, monthly recurring revenue. but more than anything else, it pissed me off. It made me, you know, not, yeah, angry. It, you know, I don't like to lose. I wanna win. And so for me, it doesn't, it didn't affect me emotionally in like, woe is me and I can't do this because all, all I, what I did know is that I could reverse that and then more. And so I've always come, when it comes to money, even though it's tight, I always saw it growing during that time period. Otherwise, we would not have gone on that vacation. We did it because we could do it. But yeah, for me, money has always— I've never worried too much about it. I've never stressed too much about it. I just expect it to work out. And, you know, the good Lord has shown me that this is a powerful tool. In my tool belt, that expectancy.

For me, that was something I had to learn over many, many years because I didn't have that. And it was much harder for me to get myself to that place of being okay with, okay, well, what we need will show up. And I know how that sounds. But when you start to live your life that way, it's really a much better way to live when you live with trust, with faith, with expectancy that, hey, you know, the right stuff is going to show up, you know, barring any dumb mistakes like the, you know, the boatload of dumb mistakes I made that led to us losing everything, then it's really a much nicer way to live. Now, so where that happened when I like to follow, we were 6, 7 years into the business. And the one big thing that happened right after, right around that time was you discovered heard EOS.

Ah, yes.

And so talk to us a little bit about the discovery and then kind of like what that, you know, turned into.

Yeah, so that was in— I'm— I wasn't at the time— I mean, I was a member of EO, Entrepreneurs Organization, from about 2014 to about 2023. And during that time, I learned a lot, you know, in the beginning I would go to EO had left classes for people who didn't qualify for EO. They call it the accelerator companies that were under a million. Well, we were over a million, so I qualified for that, but I would go to all the accelerator classes. I did that for 2 years just to build my portfolio. Not, not really portfolio. That's not the right word, but to build the knowledge that I needed. And so that was helpful. And then around 2016, I hearing people talk about EOS and Traction and everybody's talking about it and everybody's doing it. I get the book, but I was so in the weeds in the company. It was just Brian and I at the time. Our team was maybe 6, 7, 8 people and it wasn't that big. So a lot of the business day-to-day relied on us. And that book sat on my nightstand for way too long. I, I'm embarrassed to say it sat there for like a year because it wasn't an easy read. We are at the annual EOS. They were having like a, not EOS, sorry, EO conference. They have regional events and we went to this regional event, which happened to be taking place here in Fort Lauderdale, which was amazing, a great event. One of our good friends who was an accelerator coach in EO starts, you know, talking to us about how he's gonna become an EOS implementer. And we are having drinks with him, just, you know, hanging out, having a good time. And I'm like, wait a minute, well then you can help us implement. So we just took the, you know, We basically hired him right then and there to come and help us implement EOS in our business. And when you first start doing EOS, the first 2 meetings, you really do a deep dive. And when I was introduced to EOS, what was a pivotal point for me was when I saw the accountability chart, because, you know, EOS does not use an organizational chart. They use an accountability chart. Well, guess what? My name and Brian's name were everywhere except one row. And that was the hard truth that I had to see to help me change everything. And nothing was the same after that day. Shortly after that, within, I don't know, 3 quarters, you know, we hired our salesperson. A year later, we brought, maybe no, before the year was up, we had another salesperson. We started hiring, you know, roles to fill that accountability chart because now for me, it was about seeing the path. I was so stuck in the weeds in the day-to-day, in the daily grind and the hustle, trying to keep the numbers going, you know, trying to keep the staff engaged because I managed culture, HR. I was managing HR. All that relied on me. I had help with the operational side, like the actual customer service and deliverables, but even then I would get kind of sucked into a lot of that when, when, when it was required. So just seeing that accountability chart gave me the roadmap that I, I needed to start, you know, inserting people here, there. And then as we were inserting the people, creating the processes, the systems so that we could scale, so that we could, you know, duplicate things easily.

And what was the role that you eventually settled into?

So at first, Brian was the visionary and I was the integrator, and then we had everything else built under that. And we held that from, I, I wanna say 2017 to maybe 2020 or 2021. and then we started grooming my, our kind of operations person at the time who was an amazing executor. She was incredible. She still is incredible actually. So I did that for like that timeframe. And then Brian, oh my God, he started being visionary again. And we, he started coming in and breaking stuff constantly and it would drive me and the team crazy. So we eventually decided, Brian, you have this thing, the wealthy contractor, you go focus on the wealthy contractor. So we put Brian, at the time it was G4 Marketing, and so we put Brian in the little box and then I stepped into the visionary role. My CEO, you know, our operations person stepped into the integrator role and then together her and I really led the company and, and sca— and, and helped it grow. We would bring Brian in when we had special needs, when we needed, you know, definitely for content and marketing because, He's really good at that stuff to help with big relationships that the business needed because he has such a great pulse through the Wealthy Contractor, right, on the industry and on what's really happening out there. So yeah, that's how we've eventually evolved.

So I've had integrators here before and I've asked them about working with a visionary. What do people that work with a visionary that are listening to this and a visionary really, if you guys aren't familiar with the EOS, we've talked about it here, But visionary is like the typical entrepreneur, the ADD entrepreneur that doesn't want to deal with details. They've got big ideas, they've got big dreams, they're optimistic and blah, blah, blah. It's like, go, go, go, let's go, let's go.

And everything can be done next week.

Yeah, everything should be done next week. What's it like being with, you know, so people understand what a visionary is like? And how do you deal with a visionary?

Well, I can only speak from my experience because I also have visionary in me. My profile is one that can do both integrator and visionary.

So I struggle, which is very, very rare, which, but I struggle.

I struggle sometimes even as integrator to stay focused, right, on what the goal is. But when it was a you and me dynamic, because I knew the end game, I knew what I was able to, you know, where we were going. I was able to temper you a little bit more and bring you down.

How did you do that?

I don't know. How did you do that? How do you think I did that? Do you remember?

I'm asking you. I'm asking you what were the things that you did? Because the people that are listening that are dealing with the visionary, they need to know, okay, if I'm dealing with somebody like that, which they all are, is, and they are themselves. So what are some of the things that they need to do or they need to be aware of that they're doing inside of their businesses that may be hurting the business, that may be hurting the culture of the business, that may be hurting the relationships with their team.

As a good integrator brings the focus back to the quarterly goal, the annual goal, the 3-year goal. Is this going to serve our immediate need? Is this something that's going to serve us this quarter? Is this going to serve us in a year and long term? And if so, then we make room for it. If not, we need to punt. You know, we all have those, what we call them in EOS is a VTO, and those are future initiatives, future things to keep on the list of things to do, right? And sometimes those things remain on the list way too long and you're like, all right, it's time to kill it because this is not important anymore. And so I think that as a good integrator, has that skillset of, you know, because the visionary is part of all of those meetings. Even when Brian was in the box, he was still a part of our quarterly meetings where we are, you know, talking about the future. And so, yeah, it's all about bringing it back down to what is realistic because visionaries tend to have no concept of time and everything is important. And when everything is important and urgent, nothing is important or urgent.

The visionaries that are listening, the entrepreneurs that are listening, and, you know, they have the same, those same traits. You know, they want it, they want it today. Why isn't it done? Next week it's, it's something different. Next week it's, well, you know, last week we were working on this and you told us to do it this way, but now this week you're all of a sudden you're saying something different. Which happens a lot with visionaries. How do you deal with stuff like that? Or what does a visionary need to know about how that makes their team feel? And what are some ways that they can maybe check themselves or, or, you know, before they do that stuff? What do they have to be aware of in their, in their personality, I guess?

Well, I think first and foremost, the visionary has to trust the integrator. That the integrator is acting from a place of, uh, true commitment to the outcome that the visionary desires. So there has to be that high level of trust. And in our case, because we are married, I think we have an advantage when we're placed in that scenario. So if you have trust, like complete and utter trust, then it's about reminding you. I, I, I go back to the big goals, you know, that you as a visionary committed to. That's how I would kind of mitigate those situations. But hey, last week we said that these were the priorities. Are these still the right priorities? And it's like, oh yeah, we gotta get that done and we gotta get this done and we, okay, so where do you want to fit this in? You know, is it, do we, 'cause another thing visionaries hate is no, 'cause I also hate no. So, so it's like, do we need to hire? Is it an investment we need to make in, in, you know, in order to We, you know, it, it changes the way the conversation goes so that it's not just a no, it's like, well, is it still the right thing to do based on these goals we're trying to achieve in the short term and the long term? And then if it is, all right, how do we pivot? How do we make it fit? Who's gonna do it? Right? Because it's who, not how. Sometimes we don't wanna get stuck in the how. Who would we have to hire? Or is it a 1099? Is it a Upwork? Is it, an actual live employee that needs to sit and carry this through. So I think that's one of the ways to deal with that scenario, or that we've dealt with that scenario in the past.

Yeah, one of the, one of the big things that you were also kind of took lead on is, is the company culture. And I think that the visionary, visionary, I'm not sure has the patience that it takes to really work the culture every day. But you were able to do that. And so when you think about the culture of a business, how do you look at culture?

Well, in your EOS, the visionary is the person that drives the culture. They do have the patience. Maybe you just don't have the patience.

I think that a lot of the visionaries know what they want it to be, but whether or not they're the ones that are actually going to be the ones that execute it, I think is, you know, that's questionable because not everybody can do it. Not everybody can be the one that drives the culture. And so, what does it take to build a great culture?

You have to care. I've always lived by the golden rule. I even told my daughters, you know, if you forget any of the Ten Commandments, remember this one: do unto others as you'd like done unto you. And I think when you come from a filter, that filter, it helps you minimize any setbacks or doing things wrong or not being your word. I also believe in being your word. That's very strong for me. So I don't like to let people, because at the end of the day, I don't like to let people down. I don't like to let my customers down. I don't like to let my people down. That was a personal foundation for me, and that's one of the things that really helped me get the team enrolled. I also had a no-nonsense policy, you know, like if people were, I remember at one point at G4, there was a lot of naysayers, you know, it was around the time of COVID you know, it was a difficult time for everybody, but I, I, I tend to, to just address the elephant in the room. I, I don't like things to linger. And one of the things I did shortly after that is we implemented a company newsletter, 'cause I figured, you know what, if you don't give people something good to talk about, then they're just gonna focus on the negative. And so this newsletter was created, an internal company newsletter where we featured employees and their adventures and milestones that they have achieved and accomplished. We celebrated our clients' wins in it as well. But we celebrated our employees' wins. So-and-so got a 5-star review. It would be featured there. And so I think that that was also really helpful in turning that kind of behavior around and reminding people that that's not acceptable. We're all here to do our best. Everybody, and by the way, you know, if somebody was there not to be their best or to do their best, they were quickly identified and, you know, It wouldn't be long before they were gone, you know, because we only wanted people that were going to, to support that vision, you know, of transparency and of love and care. Another thing we implemented was, gosh, it was like a gamification system. I forgot what it was called, but basically we had these core values that we live by and it was so important to us that everybody was embodying those. Core values. And so, we have a gamification system where at the end of the week, all managers and peers could call each other out for living that core value. And every time you got, you know, you were nominated for that, you received X amount of, gosh, what did we call them, honey? The something bucks. It was, yeah, something bucks. And then, you would go to the platform and you would, you know, people would accumulate their bucks and then they would, a lot of people saved them and they would just get Amazon gift cards at the end of the year. I remember one of the employees, she got a Crock-Pot or, or yeah, yeah, something like that. So people would redeem their gifts as they wanted. But anyways, it was another way to help our, our culture and our core values live, you know, every day. So one of the things we did was, hey, if you got nothing good to say, let's, let's make sure we change the narrative and we start sharing in all of the good news and elevate all of us together. And then let's reward people for showing up with, you know, with our core values.

You also dealt with a lot of the, you know, people weren't doing what they were supposed to do. A lot of us business owners, we don't like the confrontation. We just don't want to deal with it. Maybe we're not holding them as accountable. You're not afraid of confronting anybody. And so that's hard for some people. You know, people, they hold on to employees longer than they should. They don't have the tough conversations that they should have. How do you deal with that? How do you confront people?

And you're right, I lean into conflict, not because I like it, but because it's the right thing to do. If somebody isn't performing how they should be doing, or how they should be, they're not serving themselves and they're not serving me. So let's confront it and try and fix it. If we can't fix it, I think it's best for that person to go. They're gonna be better and I'm gonna be better. It's a, it's a win-win. I don't see it as a negative. I remember when we went into our first EOS meeting, we knew the person in operations wasn't gonna be the one that was gonna lead our team because this person, it was all about her. It was never about building a team. She had to be the center of attention. And I remember telling our implementer this and, and saying, you know, I'm, I'm really scared because if I lose her, it's gonna, it's gonna cause a major disruption, right, in the company. But at the same time, he, I remember him asking me, are you sure you wanna address this? I'm like, we have to because, you know, because otherwise we are the bottleneck and we can't be the bottleneck. And so after, I remember we had our first EOS meeting in October, then we had the second one in November. And after the November meeting, this person deselected out and said, I mean, I'm very grateful. She did give us like a 30-day written notice and hung out with us to do the transition. And luckily at the time, we had a superstar already that very young, but had an incredible work ethic. and we ended elevating her to that role, and she is responsible for taking G4 Marketing to where it is today. She's still rocking that role, growing and developing herself. Okay, should I say her name? Because a lot of people may, you know, some people who are G4 clients may know who that is. I want to give her a shout out because she's a rock star. Yani, whoever's worked with Yani at G4 Marketing, she's incredible. So it was amazing to, to see that. But again, to your point, the question was, I knew that everything was gonna change and I knew that I could not take over operations because I had all these other things on my shoulders, but I leaned into it and I had faith and I expected the right outcome. And so it showed up.

Having to have those conversations sucks. Having to deal with the aftermath. Of letting somebody go sucks, but keeping somebody on the team that should not be on the team is even more painful, I think.

Yeah.

It's a slow, agonizing death.

Absolutely. And it doesn't serve them either. They're better suited to an environment that caters to where they're at in their mindset. Because some people can't deal with change. They like living in their little box. That's where they feel safe. Why are you going to fight that current? You know, everybody is going to be better off where they belong.

I think this has been a very good conversation. I wanted people to hear from you in a different way. A lot of people know you as, you know, the happy quote unquote Brian's wife on the side. But it's, you know, it's more like, you know, Brian is Addie's husband. Addie's the one that kind of makes stuff happen and Brian gets to go do what what he likes to do. But I think for everybody listening, the lesson there is, look, I'm, I guess I'm fortunate that it happened to work out that it's me and my wife. And I know a lot of you listening work with your spouse, with a partner, and sometimes it works and sometimes it's really difficult. But I think that when we understood what each other's roles were, what our strengths were, and then we kind of trusted and got out of the way, that really started to change the trajectory of the business, our income, our wealth, our freedom, all of that stuff. And, you know, if you don't have that person right now in your business, the best thing to do is to understand, okay, well, this is who I am in my business. And now I kind of understand who I need in my business as a GM, whatever you want to call them, integrator, GM, COO, right-hand man or woman, that's a critical role in a business that's going to allow you to grow and get to that next level, whatever that is, that is for you.

Yes, you're absolutely right. I didn't touch on that part, but yeah, EOS also helped us identify what lanes each other were in. And so when you would get in my lane, because he would get in my lane more than I would get in his, I had to remind him and show him the accountability chart and say, you see this? That was my decision to make. Please don't do that again. And so that was super helpful. And it helped you too. It helped him release, let go, you know, trust, trust his partner to make the right decision. And you— I would even tell him, even if I make a mistake, it's going to be good because then I'm learning too. And I'm going to be a better partner to you, even if I make a mistake.

Addie, thanks for joining me.

My pleasure. This is fun.

For everybody listening, hopefully there's some value here and some you know, different ways of looking at things possibly, and hope this was valuable. And until next time, this is Brian Kaskavalciyan and this is the Wealthy Contractor Podcast.