Visionaries vs. Integrators: How Real Leaders Balance Chaos + Clarity | John Wallet (Podcast 476)

Trust me, you're not unique. You're not. We all go through not alone. Yeah, yeah. You're not alone. We all like to think that we're like this, this unique entity that has its own unique problems. Trust me, they've been written on a million times. So just stick to the process. Like, implement a process. That's why EOS is great. Like, it's going to take that, that kind of startup entrepreneurial business and move it into the next phase, past those growing pains, because that's what's going to kill you. Like, if you can't grow through the pain, your visionary is going to get frustrated because their goals aren't being met, their vision is being destroyed, and they're just going to sell the business and walk away.

Today's guest is John Wallet. He is the president and integrator at STC Safety and Risk Management. After a career that began on the trading floor in finance, John ultimately found his way into the world of safety consulting, ultimately discovering that he is a natural integrator. Really finding out what that even means and why he was a perfect fit for that. And then being able to be in a position where he was able to use the entrepreneurial operating system, or you may have heard it, eos. In this episode, we really dive into a lot about EOS and how it helped John scale the company that he's with. We talk a lot about different tools, meeting rhythms that really drive accountability without bogging down productivity. We also talk about what is the people analyzer tool, being able to use that to make sure that you've got the right people and the right seats, right culture fits. We also talk about how to work with a visionary CEO that may have a lot of different ideas and being able to navigate those priorities and still keeping the CEO feeling alive and excited and energized and aligned with you as the integrator who might be saying not yet or not sure how I feel about that idea. So you really go into creating a healthy dynamic with your CEO and ultimately what it takes to support a team that's really evolving in such a quick, evolving space in terms of culture, bringing in younger generations. And so whether you are a seasoned COO or you are just discovering EOs, this conversation is packed with very practical takeaways and a lot of really great leadership insights from the chief behind the chief. Welcome to the show, John Wallet. We're super excited for you to be here.

Thank you. I'm so glad to be here. It's an honor.

Yes, absolutely. We're both from Texas, you're in Dallas, I'm in Austin. So we've got that. The country commonality.

That's right, that's right. We're just good old folks.

Yeah, that's right. And I'm so excited to chat with you today. We're gonna focus a little bit on eos. That's something Cameron and you kind of connected over which we've talked a good amount on the podcast. But there's always room to dive into more in depth conversation around that. Sounds like that's something that you really specialized in. And we're really pumped to kind of dive into some of those core topics with you today. So beginning off, would love to hear you are currently working with stc, Safety and Risk Management.

That's right.

Let's go just a little bit about what do you do specifically and who do you serve.

Sure. So safety and Risk management has been around for about almost 15 years now. We do safety and risk management consulting. So most of our clients fall in the construction space where there's a huge propensity to have accidents or harm. And what we do is we work with our clients from the C suite all the way down to the field to create strategy, implement strategy and then execute on all those things that are in the strategy like site inspections, trainings. And the overall goal is to protect our clients, people first, brand second and profit third. In that order.

Love it. Okay, cool. And what do you do specifically with them?

So me specifically, I'm the president, so I have some clients that I work with. I do manage some key relationships, but overall me specifically, I'm just out there managing the day to day operations and making sure that the customer journey that we're pitching to our clients is actually being executed on and they're reaching their safety and risk management goals.

Amazing. And I would imagine with the field that you're in, it's probably really important for your clients to have really good processes in place. So there's probably this kind of dual commonality with inside of your business where I'm sure if you're really good at doing that for your clients, you're probably also really good with that internally. Is that one of the things that you would say is more of your natural strength?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you think about the construction industry at large, it's pretty old school. There's still a lot of paper, there's still a lot of pencils, there's still a lot of really antiquated processes. And with our clients we want to raise the tide. However, we can so if we can come in there and help them build processes or help them build an org chart. In fact, most of our clients, they don't know this, but we're having L10 meetings with them. Our monthly executive meeting is an L10, and we get feedback all the time. They're like, wow, that's a great meeting. It was so structured. It was so on task, and man, we're getting stuff done. Yeah, that's because we're running on Eos and you don't know it. So when we tell them a little bit about why that meeting was so effective, we've actually kind of made some introductions to the EOS process along the way.

Okay, cool. I'm curious. With companies that are a little bit more old school, maybe there's someone listening right now where they're finding themselves in a. In a company where they're struggling to innovate or struggling to get leadership on board or team with making adjustments and shifts. What have been some of the ways in leadership or working with your clients or even inside of your team that you would recommend to anyone in a position like that who's wanting to kind of make some updates in maybe a company or systems that are really, like you said, in more of like, old school category?

Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, so much of it has to start with the vision. If you've got the right visionary and you've got the right leaders who kind of know where they want to go, I think that's half the battle. And then it's just really a matter of finding the right people. Right. Getting the right people, putting them in the right seats, and then really empowering them to start innovating and driving the processes. Because I think the reason why, and this isn't a knock on construction, but I think the reason why I think it tends to lag the technology adoption curve is just because it's older people that are running those companies. Really you're seeing a bigger and bigger push now to. With people, young people coming out of college and going in, majoring in construction management, and going into these companies and then really making a difference. You know, the long and short of it is if you've got the vision, just start bringing in the young talent that's hungry and tech savvy, and they just want to make a name for themselves. Just point them in the right direction, cast a good vision, and then kind of give them the sandbox to play in and your company will start moving.

Great. Yeah. Based off of the conversation of vision for Anyone that's listening. If you're wanting to expand on the vision, create more clarity, extract that in a way where, like John said, really compels your team to move forward in the right direction. Cameron actually wrote a book. I don't know, John, if you've read it, it's called Vivid Vision. But it's all about crafting your perfect vision for your company three years in the future and aligning everyone on that. I would love to talk a little bit more about eos. For anyone who's listening, could you give us kind of a brief summary? What does EOS stand for and what is it?

Yeah, so EOS stands for entrepreneurial Operating System. And what it is, it's just a, it's a framework. One of many frameworks and systems that are out there that help organize the human capital energy, kind of harnesses your resources and gets them pointed in the right direction. And it's funny because people get into Eos and they think it's going to be this brand new innovative thing. Well, really all it is is it's best practices collected from thousands and thousands of thousands of very well run companies just bundled up into one neat package and handed to companies that can then run it and be very effective and start getting their business moving in the right direction.

Okay, cool for you. Was this something that you already were utilizing before you came to this company, or is this something you learned when you stepped into the role? Or how did this come about for you?

Yeah, I had no idea about it at all. So I've been here almost five and a half years and when I was speaking with our founder, who's a friend of mine outside of work about his business, we would talk every now and then, just catching up on things. And he was saying that he was looking for an integrator. I'm like, well, I don't know what that is. And then he explained it to me and I'm like, oh, that's me. I didn't know that how I was wired actually had a label and once I joined STC Safety and was in the integrator seat, I'm like, okay, this is exactly what I was built for, this is what I do. So it was a natural fit for me. But before even coming here, I had no idea what EOS was. But I had gone to grad school. And so a lot of the things you learn in grad school about operations and best practices and things like that, reading good to great. You can see all those little, all those little nuances in eos so it kind of just all started making sense for me.

And when you say that you were naturally wired for it, how would someone know if they're wired to be an integrator?

Oh my gosh, that's a great question. I mean, according to eos, it's a very small population of people who are actually like naturally wired integrators. But I think depending on your skill set, you can become a great one. For me, what that means is I've always been kind of very data driven, very logical, rational, very even keeled emotionally. And for me it looked like taking business ideas, taking the company data, taking the vision, and then being able to kind of take this shapeless, amorphous thing that my, that my boss had in his head and then boxing it in and saying, well, if we can box it in this way, we can do this in recorder, we can do this in a year, we can do this in three years, and hell, let's try to do this in five years. And so if that's kind of the way you think about the world is like, well, I'm very comfortable with ambiguity and I can give it shape and define it, then you're probably a natural integrator.

Love it. And I also love when you said that you can kind of grow into it as well. And one of the things I was sharing with you is how I ended up in the CEO position was by complete happenstance and I was actually a salesperson for three years before that. Very naturally entrepreneurial. I wouldn't say I'm not going to be the person that's going to go create automations of a spreadsheet and know how to do zaps. However, there are systems and things that I can model that are a little bit more plug and play that allow me to put the right people in the right seats. If my, if my weakness, my weaker area is maybe in more of the systems section. Finding someone that you can kind of put in that role and then giving them a system that you as manager can kind of follow and lead them through allows there to be more room for people to maybe be in an integrator position that might not fit the exact, like you said, the very small percentage that can.

Yeah.

So that being said, in your team, are you just the one person kind of manning the EOS system for everyone or do you have people that own any different sections of it or kind of give us a breakdown of how does that actually look like from a team rollout standpoint?

Yeah. So obviously we have our visionary, we have our Integrator. And then we've got VPs in each department and they run their own L10s. And then in terms of, like, you know, other EOS functions, nobody really owns EOS functions necessarily, but EOS does say that everybody needs to own a number. So. And also, EOS has an org chart and accountability chart. So no matter where you are in the organization, you can pull up the org chart, you can pull up the accountability chart, and you can always map to that. Right? And ask yourself on a regular basis if the activities that you are doing align with those things. And the other thing is that everybody has rocks, right? These are your quarterly goals. So if you've got a rock, then odds are you're in aligned with a department rock, which is then aligned with a company rock. So everybody, you know, irrespective of whether they specifically own an EOS thing or not, they're bought into the EOS culture because it's what drives our business and it does a great job. EOS does a great job of helping align everybody so that we're all winning, right? Nobody wants to be at a company where they can't win. What it also does is it helps people realize whether they're in the right seat or the wrong seat really quickly. It helps them know if they're on the right bus or not. And it's something that turns what could be a very difficult, uncomfortable conversation about where you belong in a business and can flip it on its head and say, well, you know what? We're finding you're actually great at this thing, so let's move you over to this seat because you're a great company cultural fit, but you're in the wrong seat. And I think if we move you over here, you're going to flourish because you've got skills and behaviors A, B, C and D, and you're going to align people so much quicker. And people will automatically raise their hands and say, you know what? I don't think I'm in the right seat. I'm not enjoying this journey right here where I'm at. But I love the company. What else could I be doing right? And the right company will find a seat for the right people.

I think there's a lot to be said about when you find a really solid culture fit. I mean, there's of course, a balance. Like, you don't want to have your team stretched so wide because you just have all these great culture fits and you're like, how do we keep them in? And then you have no profit left. Over because your labor so high price expensive. There's a balance there. And like, if you find an A player and you can identify they're just in the wrong seat. Totally agree. Find something for them. And the other thing too to consider is that if you're like you said, if you have some sort of system where you can really track those metrics, it's a lot easier to identify is this person succeeding in the role or not. And I can't remember where I learned this from, but someone was telling me, you know, if you're thinking about letting someone go first, ask yourself, one, is the person in the right seat? And B, have I given them the proper leadership? Because you could have the right person.

Yeah.

They just might not be being led in the right way. And it sounds like EOS kind of creates a system for that, whereas a leader, it's a little bit easier to know are they hitting that or not? And if not, how can I support them better? And. Or do I need to move them to a different role? Or maybe they're just not the right fit. Overall, there's a couple pieces that you mentioned that if anyone's new to eos may not know what that means. You mentioned owning a number and an L10 meeting. So let's start with owning a number where you said everyone on the team should own a number. What does that mean?

Right. Right. So every business has lots of numbers. I think the easiest example would be a sales team. So if you've got a sales leader, odds are they are responsible for a company quota or goal. Right. Their job is to bring in X million in revenue this year. That's their number. And then they need to create the underlying metrics to support that obviously in the activities too. But if they can then track to those individual upstream effort numbers or KPIs, then they will know whether they can hit their goal. Right. So they got to own that sales quota number. Maybe if you're in the back office, your number is X percent efficiency or X percent of tasks closed in your work order system or ticketing system. Right. That is your number. So we all have numbers. You know, I'm a very competitive person. I like to know how I'm being measured, but I also like seeing a scoreboard because I want my name at the top. Right. I think every competitive person wants to see their name at the top. But it can be very frustrating for a competitive person or a high performer if they don't know the rules or they don't know the numbers by which they're being measured and you know, I've, I've, I'm, I'm plenty guilty of being a poor leader sometimes in that regard where you know, had I given the person better transparency and clarity into their number, they probably would have done better. And that's just a lesson learned for me. But every, everybody needs to have a number of some sort that the, that way we can tell whether they're on track or off track and what that does leading into your other question or comment about the L10. If something, if a number is off track, what you can do is create what we call an IDS item or identify, discuss and solve. It's an issue. Right. That you can then move into the L10 meeting, the Level 10 meeting, to then discuss and potentially solve forever.

Hmm. Okay cool. So it sounds like the L10, it's a meeting structure and you can kind of take things from individual roles and bring it over. What, what else is in the L10 meeting?

Yeah. So in the L10 we're talking about people and company headlines. Right. High level, like what's going on in the business. Just so everybody's caught up. We're talking about our rocks, whether they're on track or off track, talking about our numbers, our scorecard, whether they're on track or off track. And then following up on our to do's, holding ourselves accountable to things that we committed to doing that are going to drive the business. And then from there, depending on if things are off track or not, you'll have issues to discuss. So the bulk of the meeting, so an L10 meeting is 90 minutes, 60 minutes of that are spent purely identifying, discussing and solving company issues. So that's, that's where the bulk of, of the, of the action happens. Because these are the things that potentially if you don't solve, you could really damage your business, your culture, your people, your reputation, any number of things. So the, the, that portion of the, of the meeting is critical.

Makes sense. Is this everybody like team wide is on this meeting. Do departments do it on their own or who's doing this?

Yeah. So it really depends on how you want to structure it. I mean the goal is to have the right people in the room to be discussing the right things and solving the right things. So for example, you wouldn't want to have a bunch of engineers in a sales L10. They will die, they will explode.

Yeah.

It is not, that is not their world. So yes, you want to try to put like minded team members together. So in our example, we have an executive L10 weekly there's a sales L10, there's a marketing L10, there's an operations L10. And as the integrator, I can pop into any one of those whenever I want. I know when they're happening, but I try to avoid, if I do go, I try to avoid being like a dominant voice. I want them to feel empowered to identify and solve their own problems. But if they can't, then they're empowered to push it up to the executive L10 where we can make higher order decisions for them if we need to.

Okay, so it sounds like there could be more departmental specific L10 meetings. And if they get stuck, like your guys's approach is try to solve your own problems. And if you get stuck, then it gets put up to the executive team and then you guys decide. Do you bring in people on those calls or do you guys discuss them on your own?

Either or, either or. Sometimes, you know, you're not going to get as much context if they just, you know, take their, take their notes and put them in our meeting and then we just have to read the notes. So sometimes we'll invite them in for that portion of their discussion so they can really advocate for their issue or for their solution. Solution and then give us a better idea. But it can work either way.

Okay, fantastic. Are there other tools from eos that you've implemented that someone may not know about that have really served your guys's company?

Yeah, I mean a really quick and highly effective tool is the people analyzer. So the people analyzer, what it does is it analyzes people as it, as it says against the company's core values and then also whether they get the role, want the role that they're in and have the capacity to do the role. So for example, we have five core values and in the people analyzer you get a plus if you strongly match that core value, you get a plus minus if you sometimes do or frequently do, and then a minus if you are just not aligned with that core value. The idea there is obviously to be pluses or plus, you know, pluses as much as possible. If there's minuses or plus minuses, then maybe there's another conversation, a coaching conversation that has to be had based on that people analyzer. The other part is the get it, want it capacity to do it, which is just yes or no. So John, do you get your role? Yes or no? John, do you want the role that you're in? Yes or no. And John, do you have the capacity, Right. Do you have the resources do you have the mental horsepower, the skill set, the behaviors to do your role? Yes or no. So if you're getting two nos pretty consistently across a period of time, then odds are you're probably in the wrong seat. And we can talk about, is there another seat that would align better? Or if you're just not a core value fit and you're not aligned on the get it wanted capacity to do it, then we probably need to move you off the bus, and we'll do the very best we can to set you up for success on the next part of your journey.

So the people analyzer, it sounds like this is a tool you're using when maybe results aren't where you want them from. Somebody on the team, you can use.

It for when they are, and you can use it for when they are. That's the great thing about it. And you can do it ad hoc whenever you feel like doing it. You can also align it with quarterly meetings, quarterly performance reviews, or semiannual or annual. Part of what we do at our company is we have a 360 review, and everybody has the opportunity of evaluating their peers based on the people analyzer. And it's anonymous. Is it perfect? No. It's a snapshot or a perception of time, of how you're being viewed at that moment. But it can be directional. Right. So if we have a teammate who's getting consistently high marks on their people analyzer for that period of time, odds are the team is recognizing that they're doing something awesome. The opposite is true, too. Sometimes you're finding that, you know what, there's somebody who's being scored very, very low across the board. And I had no idea that this person was having issues. But because we democratized the data or the information or the process, you learn really quick what others are thinking who are closer to that person. So you can get some pretty good, like I said, directional data in real time. I don't know that I would make a single decision if that was kind of the first time you're using a people analyzer. But if you're seeing a pattern over a couple quarters, then that's probably pretty telling.

Yeah, that makes sense for anyone who is listening. Or maybe they're already using eos. It's something they're familiar with. I'm curious, are there any systems or things that you've actually created yourself, maybe in conjunction or you would even say it's a separate thing that's really allowed you to hold your team to a high standard, hold them to core Values, or are you guys just, like, fully eos? And that's the only kind of structural model you're following?

We. We try to be as EOS pure as possible, just because if you stick to something, whatever it is, as long as you're consistent and disciplined and stick to it, odds are your results will be better. Um, you know, one of the things that we've really struggled with, and I own this as a leader, is just accountability. What we found was it was very difficult to hold people accountable when you don't have good processes or you don't have your processes mapped. How am I supposed to know as an employee what to do and when? When I get into certain circumstances or situations with my clients, if I don't know what the customer journey is supposed to look like, I'm just left to make it up on my own and do the best I can. So what we found is it's hard to hold people accountable to that. And what happens is clients, depending on who's working with them, is going to get an inconsistent experience because one person's going to do it one way and one person's going to do it another way. And that just kind of creates a little bit of chaos. So that's been a big thing for us, is just getting more pure about and disciplined about creating the processes that align with the things that we're trying to do for our clients. And then we're realizing too, that we also need to look inward and be accountable to our own company, to our own business to do the same thing. So it's been a great experience. It's been kind of like a year in the making where we've really reflected on why we might not be as far along as we could be. And it's just because as leadership, we've not done a great job of mapping out the process and how to do things, which. Which creates consistency, it creates accountability, and it just simplifies and systematizes everything.

And I think when you're growing fast too, sometimes it can be hard to keep up on updating SOPs. It's something with a fractional client that I have now going through their SOP list, and there are SOPs that haven't been updated in five years and trying to figure out, are we actually using this? What's shifted? Where do we house these things? Are we using a Google sheet? There's all these other different SOP softwares. So when you think about process mapping and even housing SOPs, updating them, have you found a system that works really well, for that or what do you guys do?

Yeah, well, you, when you said growing pains, I got a little bit triggered there. Like that's exactly what we're going through. I mean, we are, we are moving out of that, like that, that entrepreneurial startup kind of feeling into professionally managed. And it's coming with growing pains. And the first thing you find is like your systems break down or you probably didn't even have systems to begin with, right? You were just counting on individuals to do the job and keep you afloat. And what we're finding is you can no longer do that. That doesn't scale. You have to create a system, you have to have processes. And that's what we've really found is the breakdown is like, yeah, we don't have good SOPs, we don't have good documentation. All of these things. We're like, if we're going to get from where we are now to a multiple, we've got to make this more simple, we've got to make it scalable and we've got to make it systematic. And that's really what we've been going through over the last year. And to really answer your question directly, like, yeah, we haven't been great at creating the SOPs. And that's something that we're working on is creating systems for housing this stuff, having great document retention and revision discipline, just having good hygiene of our Microsoft SharePoint. We got stuff everywhere. It's a disaster. And I'm sure every growing business feels the same way. Trust me, you're not unique. You're not. We all go through not alone. Yeah, yeah, you're not alone. We all like to think that we're like this, this unique entity that has its own unique problems. Trust me, they've been written on a million times. So just stick to the process. Like implement a process. That's why EOS is great. Like it's going to take that, that kind of startup, entrepreneurial business and move it into the next phase, past those growing pains, because that's what's going to kill you. Like if you can't grow through the pain, your visionary is going to get frustrated because their goals aren't being met, their vision is being destroyed and they're just going to sell the business and walk away. If you want to help them get their vision to fruition, then have a process and just be disciplined and trust that it's going to work.

I love that one of the things that you touched on there is kind of the, the chaos and the growing pains. And you're not unique if you're experiencing feeling like things are everywhere. It's one of the things that was the most helpful that I was ever told by someone that I was working with was, Savannah, you're expecting for there not to be chaos because you're trying to create all of this order in trying to, like, avoid the chaos. But if we're going to grow fast, there's going to be chaos and being okay with having the chaos going on and still moving forward and balancing that with not creating a bunch of systems in order to scale that. Then once you actually start scaling, you realize it was the wrong system to build.

Yeah.

Because different things are breaking. So it's finding that kind of harmony between allowing your team and yourself and the speed and the vision to move forward fast enough that things do start breaking and mistakes are happening and we're learning from them, and we're actually building the systems around that that make the most sense versus just, okay, I want to scale to this. So what are all the systems I need to build? And then you end up wasting all of this time because you built a bunch of things that you don't actually need.

You waste time, you waste energy, you waste money. No, that's. That's exactly right. I mean, and the other side of this is the organization is never. Well, I shouldn't say never. The organization, odds are, is never going to move as fast as the visionary wants it to because of this reason. You have to create the systems, and then you have to create the processes. You got to have the right people in place to manage these things. And all of that takes time to develop. It doesn't happen overnight. I wish it could, but the reality is it doesn't. And you just have to go back to your visionary and say, just reassure them, hey, this system is working. This process is working. Here's the numbers. They're moving up incrementally. Like you're not going to get the results overnight. So just reassure, reassure, reassure, communicate, communicate, communicate that things are good, things are good, things are good. Because visionaries are always going to want to slip back into worst case scenario, my dream is gone. Everything's dying on the vine. Right. Like it's always doom and gloom. Not always. A lot of times it's doom and gloom. But as an. As an integrator, it's really, you know, as the voice of reason and logic. And it's our job to just reassure them and give them the information that they need to be comfortable so that they can continue being strategic and visionary and not pull them into the weeds because.

That's right.

Good.

Yeah, agreed. I think going back to the conversation around the numbers, you know the quote, what gets measured gets managed.

Yeah.

If you've got those numbers, even if things feel. Because I think sometimes like you have some client fires and a team member quits and it just feels like everything's falling apart.

Right.

And if you've got those numbers that you can bring to the owner or whoever you're reporting to and be like, hey, I know some crazy stuff's happening and look at how our numbers are actually trending up. We're just experiencing a little bit of normal chaos and it's okay, here's kind of the plan. All of these things work in tandem together.

Yeah.

And I would love to touch on what is the relationship like with your CEO. How do you guys, you guys have any systems for cross communicating? Do you guys have one on one meetings? What is that system for you guys?

Yeah, we don't have a system per se. I mean we have our executive L Tens, that's me, the founder, department heads, vps. But we're a small enough company to where we're interacting all the time and having same page meetings pretty darn frequently. We both got to eat. So sometimes we'll go to lunch and say, can we just talk about this thing while we're at lunch today? Yeah. Great. You know, the visionary integrator dynamic has to be healthy because if it's not, you're going to have so much chaos in your business. I've been in multiple EOs, kind of mastermind meetings where the visionary and the integrator were on totally different pages and it was apparent to everybody and it was always an argument and like nothing was getting done and somebody's pulling the trump card. Well, I'm, I'm the president, I'm the owner, I'm this, I'm that. You just do what I say. No, that's, that's not how that should work for. I'm very fortunate in that he and I work very well together. You know, he trusts and respects my experience and my background and I trust and experience his background and experience. Like I could never do what he does. I'm just not wired that way. And he knows that he can never do what I do. So we consult with each other. Right. He's, he'll, he'll, he'll talk to me, he'll lay out vision speak. Right. He thinks out loud and I'll just listen and I'll say, well, I Think that's a good idea? I think this won't work right now, but maybe it will later on or. You know what? That's not a great idea. Here's why. So you have to be that sounding board. Right. Just like in any good relationship, a partnership, a marriage, you know, any team, you've, you've got to have a good working relationship where you trust the other person in their seat to do what they're going to do, and they're going to trust what you're going to do. But you still need to talk about what's going on so that you're on the same page and you have a united front, because it's terrible for the culture if the visionary is saying one thing and doing one thing and the integrator is doing a total other. It gets super messy super fast. And fortunately, we've had a great relationship the entire time I've been here, and we get a lot done, and it works really well.

That's great. Yeah. The thing that I've experienced a couple times with certain CEOs is navigating that conversation where you were saying, hey, that's not a great idea. And here's why. I found some CEOs are like, yep, you're totally right. I, I, I get it. I see what you're saying. Move on.

Yeah.

There are others that are a little bit more sensitive to having their big vision and ideas within my. Feels like, shut down.

Yeah.

And that's a conversation I've had with a lot of integrators of that kind of dance of, how do I let them know that I'm here, I'm on your team, and this idea sucked.

Yeah.

Like, here's why it's not gonna work. Do you have any advice or recommendations for an integrator that wants to really, like, they want their CEO to feel like they're on the same page and they might be struggling with that conversation dynamic.

Sure. I mean, one of the things I learned early on is that not everything that visionary says is real. You. I had, I remember, you know, my first maybe 90 days on the job, six months on the job. Everything that came out of our visionary's mouth, I was feverishly writing down because I thought it was gospel and I thought we were doing it. And so I would get down a path, and I would spend a lot of time, and I would research and I would model and I would do things, and I'd come back and I'd show it to him, and he would say, no, I was just, I was Just talking. That's not real. So, as a great integrator, if you want to make your visionary feel validated, write down all the ideas, like, get all the ideas out on paper, and then ask them to prioritize them based on what they think is going to give the biggest impact. They will answer their own questions, because if they're the visionary, if they're the founder, if this is their money on the line, guess what? They're only going to pick the best ideas that they think are viable, and they'll do the sorting for you. Now, sometimes they're going to say, john, I just need you to look at this idea. I think I want to do it. Okay, great. I can disagree respectfully, and I'll say, well, then let me just kind of prove it out for you. Let me build a business case for action, and I'll show you whether I think this is viable or not. And why is that fair? Great. They'll respect that, too. So it's all in how you frame it, right? Like, yes, to your point, Svant. It's like if they just feel like you're shooting down every single idea that they have, guess what? You're not going to be around very long because they're thinking that you're the roadblock to their business moving forward. But if you frame it the right way and say, all right, well, let's talk about these things. Let's list them out, let's prioritize. And how about you start. You prioritize them. Okay, great. So if we do. If we do these three things this quarter, this year, whatever it is you think that will get us, you know, get us moving forward or get us further ahead. Yes. Okay, let me. Let me work with that. I can work with that. I think those are great ideas. It's a much different conversation.

That's so good. Yeah. Oh, I love that. It kind of like, it takes you out of, like, the fire seat, you know?

Yeah.

Pushes it back on them, but it's still like you said, helping get down to those final priorities, which ends up being some of those key rocks or the goals that you were talking about earlier.

Yeah, yeah. One thing you have to remember, too, as the integrator, it's really easy to be persuaded or railroaded by a visionary. So you. You do have to have some confidence. You do have to have that relationship of trust, and you do have to be comfortable saying no sometimes. I mean, EOS says that the integrator is the tiebreaker. So if. If there is something where there's There's a split decision. If you're like, no, we are not doing this, and here's why. Then if, if, if you're leaving EOS pure, then, then the decision, the decision's made. If, if you're not in Eos, then, then you can kind of duke it out, I guess. But I think again, going back to, well, you tell me what you think the priorities are now. Stack, rank them based on impact. Let's do those like easy conversation, right? And then everybody knows what they should be working on and you just go forward.

Ooh, I love that. I actually feel like this could have served me a few years ago in a situation I was in where I was still working on building up my confidence and my certainty. And I was in a position where our executive team that I was on, we had owner and then two other execs besides me, and we had a process get broken in the company that we had some fairly strict rules around because of safety of the business. And we had a team member on, in my department end up breaking one of those processes unintentionally. So it was this really interesting, like, what do we do here? And the whole executive team want me to let this person go immediately. In my gut I knew I could see the consequences of this because this person ran a department and I could see the, the implement the implications that this was going to have in all the departments. And I tried speaking up, but they were so certain about it and wanting to, you know, really set the standard in the company. And looking back, I wish I would have been able to have had a better confidence in myself to really stand in what I knew to be true. And even having something like that kind of a decision matrix of, hey, I understand, like raising the standard is really important. And here are all of the other things that you guys said are important in this quarter. Here's gonna be the ripple effect of making this decision right now. And I didn't, I didn't have that at the time. And what ended up happening was a whole lot of problems ended up getting created that I am happy to solve most of them. And looking back, I'm like, man, I totally would have done this differently. So I a hundred percent just want to double stamp the confidence and the certainty and having some sort of decision matrix that you can use if you're maybe feeling a little less confident in your ability to communicate, having some sort of system for that as kind of a additional support for you could be really helpful.

Yeah, I mean, I'd be lying if I didn't make some of those mistakes, though, and learn the hard way. I mean, especially as either a new employee or new in the integrator seat. Like, sometimes you just don't know, and you assume that the visionary has all of the information and is making the best decision possible, which usually they are. Right? It's their business. They're at the helm. Odds are they're going to kind of think through things that way. But they're people, too. And, you know, sometimes they get emotional and sometimes they don't have all the information and they're going to want to push an idea. And I'd be lying if I said I didn't sometimes just back down and do the thing. And sometimes that cost people, sometimes that cost, you know, clients. Sometimes that costs a little bit of cultural pain. And you learn and you move on. Is like, you know, we're always trying to operate from. From our best intentions with. With the information that we have. But again, if you can just be an equal with your visionary and be confident and convicted in what you believe and what you think and have a healthy debate about it, then even if it doesn't go the way that you want it to go, you've said your piece and they made the decision based on all of the information, and that's all you can do sometimes.

Yeah. Well, thanks for sharing. And just some of the vulnerability that it's not just like you said earlier, it's. We often get caught in thinking that we're, you know, an imposter or we're doing something wrong. We shouldn't be in this role. And it's just at the end of the day, you're gonna have mistakes happen, and those are the things that you learn from and you can start putting systems around to avoid in the future. Um, we have a couple minutes left here. And there was one thing I saw earlier in some of the notes I was prepping for this meeting about driving accountability with a young and growing team. Yeah, I would love to just hear any insight, kind of open it up broad, not any specific question, but just maybe, like, what are some of your leadership principles with running a young team? Things that have supported you, hiring, leading, firing. What have been some of the experiences that you've had with that?

Yeah, I mean, I've had good, I've had bad. And like I said, I've made my. My fair share of mistakes and been a crappy leader from time to time. And, you know, you just do the best you can. But we've got a pretty young workforce and what I find is that they're very hungry. They, they want to make a name for themselves, they're tech savvy, they're smart, and they really need to be pointed in the right direction. If you want these young people to thrive and excel and love your brand and think with like a business owner type mentality, then you've really just got to give them the responsibilities that you need, give them the right metrics, give them processes or something to own so that there's, there's buy in and then create the culture around them that's going to help them flourish. I mean, I, I, I don't want to paint with broad brushes, but I, I tend to see in my experience that the younger generation cares more and more about culture than those that are our age or older. I think about myself, I just wanted to do the job. I just wanted to be an individual performer and do the very best I could. And I didn't really care about the culture, I didn't care about the frills. But if I knew that I hit target A, B and C, then my bonus would be X. That's all I cared about. But you know, this is a different generation and that's fine. And they definitely care about culture and they're going to make your culture better. So they just have to be led a little bit differently. I mean, they still need accountability, but they want to be empowered. If they don't get those things from the business that they want, then you do start getting some entitlement creeping in. Right. They're going to be asking you for stuff that you, you probably can't provide and that will come across as entitlement. And the reality is, is like I said, they're, they're young, they're hungry, they're ambitious, they're smart, they're well educated. So you, you've got to create the environment for them to thrive, otherwise they're just, they're going to go somewhere else. It's a competitive market right now.

Yeah, I mean the, I heard this piece of data years ago, so it might even be less, but I think the average time my generation was switching positions was every two years. Yeah. After with like having a college degree which is drastically different than 20, 30 years ago. When you say the frills, like I didn't care about these like certain frills, but the younger generation, they care about some of the frills of the culture. Is there any just like one culture hack or you know, maybe fun thing that you guys would consider a thrill that has Worked really well for you in supporting the younger generation on your team.

Yeah. I mean, and I'll say this, and then they're going to behind me say, oh, my gosh, he has no idea what he's talking about. That's not what we want. But in my experience, what I found is when you can bring the company together for events and share wins and celebrate, like, have like, a summertime company event and like a Christmas event and allow families to participate, I think that goes a long way because then their families can see what this person, what this employee is experiencing, and they can. You know, they're. They're proud of where they work. They're proud of what they're doing. And if they can share that with, you know, their. Their family, then their family can support them in what they're doing. They understand it better. Family feels supported. One little thing that I think is funny that got a lot of traction is when we do offer letters to people, we will say dear John and wallet family. And a lot of people, that resonates with, right, because you're kind of bringing in the entire person, and their family is part of who they are. And that tends to resonate pretty well. It's funny, we made that little change just because, you know, there were people that were very passionate about bringing in, and we had actually talked to. We knew their families because they were somewhere else. You know, we had engaged with them, and the feedback from that alone was like, oh, my gosh, I feel so welcomed. And that's what they want. Like, when they, you know, it's. It's a huge investment. It's a huge risk. When you leave one thing that's familiar, an old job that's familiar, and you start something new and you're starting all over. People want to feel like they belong there. And you have to consistently make sure that people feel like they belong because they do. Right. They're a critical part of your business, and they're people with feelings and lives and things going on that we'll know nothing about sometimes. But if you can incorporate as much of, like, that holistic self as possible, I think you just get a lot more out of that person.

Yes, totally. I got full body goosebumps when you said the words people want to feel like they belong. You know, work is such it. It eight hours a day. That is a large part of someone's life. They're giving you their life energy, their life force, like their time is their life. And if you can create an environment where they feel like they really Belong and they're seen and appreciated and their family feels that and goes a really long way. Thank you.

Yeah, absolutely beautiful.

Just to kind of close us up here, I would love to know two different things. First, kind of wrapping up the eos. If you could give one piece of advice to a new integrator who's wanting to start EOS implementation, what would it be?

Yeah, I would say if you're thinking about doing it, go get the book what the heck is eos? And have some key people at the company read it so they can understand it and you can kind of experiment to see if this is something worthwhile that everybody resonates with. I think it will. And you'll get more buy in or what you can do too is there's traction, which is all about the integrator visionary relationship. So if you have a great visionary and you guys are really just struggling to figure out how do you take the business to the next level and really kind of, you know, box this thing in. You could both read that or just go on YouTube and watch. I think it's Mark Winters. He does a really great short YouTube video about rocket fuel which really explains to a visionary how an integrator is key and vice versa. But if you're going to do it, I guess my one bit of advice is if you're going to do it, go all in. If that means everybody in the organization is reading the book and doing it, then that's what you got to do. If you have to hire an implementer, hire an implementer. They're going to get you, we self implemented. And it, it takes a while and you have to do it religiously and be disciplined. But we did it. But if you really want to like jumpstart your business and get EOS going, find an implementer who can, who can get this going very, very quickly and kind of incorporate everybody into it so that there's, there's tons of buy in, everybody understands the why behind it and you just start making leaps and bounds forward.

Perfect. Thanks for that. Lastly, would love to know what are you most excited about in the next quarter, both in business and personally.

Yeah, so in business we're really at the tail end of like a turnaround in our business going back to what I was talking about, going from, you know, kind of entrepreneurial startup mode into professionally managed. You know, this last quarter, this quarter, Q2 is really where we've got to get it done. We've, we've got a plan. We, we know what we have to do to get back on track to get the business growing and scaling, and that's what I'm most excited for. We've got some really ambitious rocks, and we've got people in the right seats doing the right things. So I'm really excited about this quarter to see how it shakes out. Personally, man, I've got three children. One's in college. She's doing great, she's thriving. She's in a nursing program. I think she'll be fine. I've got another daughter who's going to be 16 here in three days, and she's going to be driving. She's already put a nice dent in my hood by having a little lovecap with the tree. So the next quarter is probably getting her driver's license and having helped me out on the road. And then my. My little guy, he's 14, he's playing tournament baseball, and they just keep getting better and better, and it's so fun to watch him win and watch his passion grow with his team, and that's a lot of fun. My wife's an entrepreneur. She's got her own business. So she. She's going through some of this on her own where we have these, you know, nighttime conversations where I'm half asleep and now she wants to talk business about I don't know how to get my business to scale. I'm like, well, I'm half asleep. Do you want to have this conversation now? But she's really in that mode. So I think. I think the next quarter or so is going to be a big one for her. She's really starting to double down on what that means for her business. It's exciting to watch. So I get to be her integrator.

Yeah, I love that. Well, yeah, lucky her that she's got someone with all of the knowledge to help us. Perfect. Love it. Well, if someone wants to reach out to you, connect, have a question, maybe they can serve your business or they're looking for support in what you guys do. Where could someone find you?

Yeah, I'm on Facebook. John Wallet. LinkedIn, John Wallet. Instagram, John Wallet. And you can look for us on thestcgroup.com online. Just search, STC, safety and risk management. We'd love to work with you or at least, you know, point you in the right direction to help you solve your problems. You know, we're big subscribers of the go giver mentality, where even if we can't help you ourselves, you know, we'll. We'll do the best you can, we can to get you the information and help you win. That's one of our core values, is help others win. So we want. We want everybody winning all the time. It only makes sense.

Beautiful. Well, I think just from this conversation alone, there's going to be a lot of people who feel like they're going to be able to win after some of the golden nuggets that you shared in here. So thank you so much for your time, John, really, thank you.