The Keys to A Successful EOS Implementation with John Heritage

All right, welcome back to Agency Journey. This is Gray MacKenzie from Zenpilot. This week, I've got the pleasure of bringing on John Heritage from evenbound. John, welcome to the podcast, man.

Thanks, Craig. Great to be on. Thanks for having me.

Yeah. So I'm excited to chat through. We're going to talk through some of your journey kind of in this series that we're doing around eos and impact that it's had on agencies and the pros that comes, the good, the bad, the ugly. But starting point for folks who aren't familiar with even bound, can you give us the profile in the firm and how you, how did this, how did this whole story happen?

Yeah, I tell this, like, origin story. I'm a fan of origin stories and I like, I love hearing other people. So I'll give you the short, condensed version of my own, which is my wife and I moved out to this little town on the coast of Grand Haven. I jokingly refer to it as the Huntington beach of the Midwest. So if you hear that at some future stage, you know, I coined that phrase. But we moved out here to work for a company that was just had some inspirational leadership and really, really cool company to work for. It was wildly successful at the time and growing like crazy. And I was brought on to run their marketing function. And so that that company was heavy duty in real estate. And then in 2000, like 7, 2008, 2009, that wasn't such a good time to be in real estate. And so what ended up happening with that company is it devolved into some smaller brokerages. And I ended up kind of starting a marketing consultancy for those brokerages, which eventually evolved into even Bound. And in that process, I was looking at potentially, like, taking a job for a big corporation, like a manufacturer here in Michigan, stuff like that. And I think, like, ultimately where I landed was I don't want to go sit in a bank of cubicles and work for a big corporation and have that environment that I really wanted to create an environment that I would want to work at if I were going to work for a company. So that was kind of one of my, my goals when I started this. We went through, like, gosh, a lot of, in that period of time, you know, we went through a lot of iterations of who we were and what we did. For a while, we were doing big e commerce website projects for a while. We were doing a lot of different stuff. Around 2015, 2016, we got connected with HubSpot, which at the time was kind of a marketing Automation platform, really. And we said, well, this seems to work really well as a vehicle for us to deliver services. And so we, we got in the partner program where we started selling and we started servicing around HubSpot but still delivering on like, like the, and really refined like what we were doing from a marketing standpoint and settled in on essentially website projects and then a really high level of inbound marketing. And so, you know, those things kind of changed and evolved for us. And all of a sudden HubSpot emerged as a, like a contender in the CRM space. Right. Which helped us redefine directionally symbol what we were doing. And we really leaned into that service. And so now today we are essentially, we've got one foot in marketing services. Things like website projects, high levels, inbound marketing, a lot of paid media work. And then we also have some technical consulting that we do specific to HubSpot, whether it's integrations or, you know, implementations, things like that.

What does the team look like today, John?

So at current we've got a couple open positions. I think if those hires. Open hires will play between now and the end of the year, we'll be close to 25 employees. And in the course of that evolution, which I just kind of unpacked to that origin story, we've noodled around with a lot of different versions of what would be in, in EOS terms, an accountability chart or an org structure. And so generally speaking, if, if work comes in and it's specific to projects, like a website project that goes through our projects team, if it comes in and it's specific to HubSpot services, like an integration or an implementation or some kind of technical work that goes through that system and there's a whole team of people associated with that. And then we have, they work and make three pods right now. But anybody that's on any kind of like retainer with us goes through what we call managed services.

Okay, makes sense. And then remote at this point.

Yeah, yeah, it's like, gosh, I try to remember when they changed that in the directory. I want to say it was like a year and a half or so ago, they made some change to the website directory and they. You opened that up to be like remote. And I think at the time we were like, oh no, we, you, we really, this is what we have to do.

Right.

And so like it changed. Like, I think the advent Covid forced that on everybody, whether you were prepared for it or not.

Right.

If you do any version of what we do. And you were like, well, we only hire within, you know, 30 miles of our office and we go into the office every day and all this stuff like it just enforced that issue. Fortunately for us, we have always had some flexibility around there. So we adapted really well for it. And like our last few hours, handful of hires have all been from like California, South Carolina, Ohio, like everywhere else in the world, you know, that's cool.

Even in the Huntington beach of the Midwest.

That's right. That's right. We just keep, I mean, and just like it's Michigan, it's Grand Haven, Michigan.

So.

So like we're really only the huntingd beach in the west for like three or four months out of the year. Every like it's nothing, you know, January, we're not the hunting cell, so.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, that's funny. So I think it's helpful to just get a breakdown of like, hey, here's how the services and teams are structured. But it colors some of the, okay, here's, you know, here are challenges that we ran into organizationally and here's kind of the EOS experience. So I think your story is probably similar to ours and to a ton of folks where we started implementing EOS 2017, but didn't actually hire a professional implementer until beginning of or end of 21. And that seems to be a consistent thread. And like a lot of people start off, some people, larger orgs, I feel like often starting with a professional outside implementer. But a lot of people wind up growing into that or saying hey, we, we did this, we really need to take it to the next level or get serious about it. How'd you come across originally and then what was that self implementation experience like?

Yeah, okay. So I came across this a number of years ago when I, well, somebody gave me a book called traction by J.L. wickman and I read the book and I'm like, oh, there's some really good stuff in there. And like I'm, you know, I'm, I'm not a huge reader but when I read I typically I'm reading for, for something around business. So I've read it and then my typical thing is like you're going to take 10 or 20% of this and apply some version of what you read.

Right.

And I think the walk away, the takeaway from reading that book at that time was like, oh, we, we do a fair portion, a fair amount of this already. Like the stuff that they're talking about, we do some version of that. It's not quite through that same structure but like we have Some of this in place.

Right.

So good on us and also good to know. And there's a couple ideas in there for us to like, kind of evolve a little bit.

Right?

And then I think like when you start hitting a clip of growth, like 20, 30%, grow, grow, grow, you're adding people, you're adding complexity, your org structure starts, you start noodling around that org structure and like how things should be structured and things like that. It start opening up discussions of questions. You're like, man, it would be nice to have some framework to run this on. And so we identified EOs. We set a goal for ourselves to say, like, hey, we need, we need to kind of get organized and get on this system. And our approach was our director of operations at the time, she and I sat down and talked and said like, well, okay, so what are our options to implement some version of eos? Right? How do we get started with this? And where we settled was, boy, for the money, let's send Tanya to the class to get certified as an implementer, right. And go through that certification process and then we can self implement. And we did that. We got a ton of benefit from it.

Right.

But and this is kind of the indication for, for anybody who doesn't have a professional implementer that they're working with. What we found eventually after like a year or so was we kept iterating around the same issues and not resolving them.

Right.

And so those same things kept coming up and kept coming up and we're like, gosh, I don't. We couldn't move past some of those things. And so we sought outside help. And at the time, actually I talked to some, another agency owner friend who said, you gotta invest in that because 90% of the benefit is gonna come from that last 10% that you're not doing or that you don't know about. And so we really made an investment and a commitment to run a more rigid version of eos that seems to be working for us.

Yeah, when in 2021 was that that you started working with the professional implementer?

I want to say it was right around the beginning of the year.

Okay, so you're coming up on two years into it. Yeah, the average, at least what implementers tell you. And I'm trying to triangulate that against what all my friends who've worked with implementers say. Yeah, hey, you work with us for, you know, about two years. There's no set graduation point, but at some point you're at this point and graduate and the average team Takes to a little over two years to hit that point. For where you're at right now, does it feel like, hey, we're still getting a massive amount of benefit from working with an implementer, or are we like, hey, we could see ourselves taking this back in house in the near future.

Definitely still get benefit from it, no question.

Right.

I mean, it's like, if it's, I think even at like a certain revenue level, like, you're gonna, you're gonna put budget towards like professional development and some consulting or whatever the case is anyway. So like, for us, like, we, we still get a ton of value and benefit from it and like, even though, like structuring meetings, helping us stay on point in those meetings and all that stuff, but like, even beyond that, because we're going fast, right? And I think, like, how long you stay with the implementer is going to be determined by how fast you're trying to go. If you're trying to maintain at revenue and you're not trying to scale and grow rapidly, I could see, like, you know, only needing for a designated period of time. But as long as you are going fast and you're growing and your accountability chart is changing and your leadership team is changing and all those things, like, you're gonna need some help, I can tell you.

Right.

So still get a ton of value out of those and out of that relationship, for sure.

Yeah. How many L10s are you running on a weekly? But not necessarily that you're personally involved in, but I assume obviously there's a leadership one. There's managed services, there's projects, there's technical consulting or whatever that division is called.

That's exactly right.

Is that it?

Yes. So I would say, like, if you look at it like we do, if you look at it by line of revenue and you've got a team associated with that line of revenue, that's probably what's going to make sense from an LT standpoint.

Yeah, that makes sense. I was going to start with the good and then go to the bad, but let me flip it, actually, I want to also. Now, what's been most impactful? You mentioned meetings have been really helpful in staying coordinated on that front. But what have been the most painful parts? Or are there any parts of the eos that. What's really interesting to me is I'm having these conversations and I've got a dichotomy. On the one hand, you get some people who are like, hey, the playbook's the playbook for a reason. And we followed it to A T. And that's when it really clicked for us and we got all the results out and then you got a smaller percentage of the people who I'm talking to and that could be selection bias as well, but who were like, you know what, I love the EOS model, but the reality is behind the scenes, we've tweaked 20, 30% of it and this is what we like, where are you in that? And then what's been, like, what have been the painful parts or the challenging parts to get right in the system and then we'll flip it. And I'm curious about the most impactful parts too.

That's gonna. So I think if you ask that question. So just to be clear, another like entry point that was a definition for us was like, I mean I, I hired Tanya. Tanya is the, the integrator and I'm the visionary.

Right.

So I think if you asked Tanya, she had a different set of answers than if you asked me. And I tend to look at most things critically, you know, and EOS is no exception. But like, I've said this from the start. When you sit down with the OS and you're, you know, doing all this documentation and you kind of go through the process, you create your VTO and like you've got the like the go to market strategy in there and it fits in like one little box on an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper. I'm like, dude, that is not a marketing strategy. Right. Like, I mean, that's my number one criticism is like, that's literally what we do and it is like antiquated at best. I understand in general business terms, it gives you some clarity in that space and you take that set of information and expand on it.

Right.

But like, that's my criticism is a little, it's. There's not. If you're using EOS as a framework to scale and grow, which comes from marketing and sales and all of those like, you know, client facing kind of role. It's like it's not fully fledged out for that type of business.

Right.

That's my, that's my criticism. There was a second part to that question that you asked. I'm trying to remember.

Yeah, well, I would want to go to the like, what's in terms of the benefits, the impactful side, like, yep. And this might be a two stage question that you start plugging it in the first time. What's so good about it that makes you say, yeah, we got to go all in. And then with an implementer what would have been the switches that have gotten flipped for you?

So the first time you build it and kind of go through it, you're like, okay, well this is all making sense, right? It's a framework. It's all it is. It's a framework. It's like when you get everything set up and stood up and you can look at it and be like, oh, okay, yep, this is all making sense. We built our LEGO ship, right? And it looks like a spaceship and there's a guy in there and it's got a steering wheel and a cockpit and the whole thing, right? And then you start looking at, you're like, but I think this could be different. Or we don't really, we didn't really solve for this. Or, you know, there's elements to it. I think that when you self implement, they either continuously come up, like I talked about, like, we're iterating around the same issues. One of the issues, for context, one of the issues that we kept iterating around was like that accountability chart, right? And ironically, we still have a lot of conversations around that. We're still talking about team structure. And I think part of that comes from it's a natural progression and pain point to like growing by 30% or more year over year over year. So if you're scaling pretty quick, like something you got to figure out and you got to keep talking about, right? And so knowing that we weren't going to arrive at a solution for that or a process for that on our own, was what constituted like us going to get outside help.

Right.

And that, like, did it, did it work out that way? Yes, it did absolutely provide that clarity that we were looking for. It's just another set of eyes, another perspective. And for whatever it's worth, I think you got to find the right implementer.

You have to.

So you got to interview 3 and find the one that is. Makes the most sense for you, right? For your, for your particular business.

I want to dig on that one for a second because this is a huge. There's no training out there. EOS doesn't tell you, hey, here's how to go select your implementer, or here's how they'll surface the geographical names and say, here you go.

Yep.

How.

What was the, Was there a framework that you used? Or how did you wind up making that selection?

You know, we created an RFP. No, I'm just kidding. I hate RFPs. Like, you get an RFP, it's like doing what we do. And I'm sure you're like, your audience is probably going to like, chuckle a little bit, but like, there's nothing more depressing as like an agency owner or anybody operating in a sales like, capacity in an agency than getting an RFP or like an rfp.

Oh, yeah. The worst is when you have a conversation. You know somebody, you have a conversation and they're like, yeah, we'd love to talk to you about the project. And then you wind up getting the RFP when it was like, no, I had an inside track what happened here.

That's right. Yeah. So what we tell people when they send us RFP is like, yeah, I'm probably not going to compete in your rfp.

Right.

And no offense, it's just not really what we do. But the recommendation from our standpoint is like, why don't you meet with three groups and have a conversation and talk at a really high level about what you're trying to accomplish and listen intently to what they say and listen to like, does their solutions or how they would approach things align with your vision for what you're trying to do? And if it does, then it's probably worth another conversation. If it doesn't, you can knock them off your list. Right. And that approach seemed to have worked pretty well for us. We interviewed three people. They all, for whatever it's worth, they all had very different price points. They were at different geographic locations, they had different, like, industry expertise. And where we settled in was, was great.

So that's awesome.

Yeah.

I think I probably shared this on a podcast before, but as we were talking to different implementers, we looked for someone who had built and exited a business in a similar space and kind of had been through the AI cycle. And that's been really helpful to have, you know, in the context of quarterly sessions or whatever, it's largely pure play eos. There's, there's very little of that coaching or consulting that happens. So there's, you know, around a meal afterwards or whatever, conversations around, hey, just tell us the story from your experience. But a lot of the back and forth that happens between you kind of have the ability to, you've got somebody who's, who's lived through that and you can say, hey, like, you can take off your implementer hat for a second here.

Just, Yep.

Business owner, the person who built this, this model before, what did you run into? How did you handle those situations? And it's, that's not necessarily the, the one proven playbook, but it's a data point to help make decisions and someone who's live through how to apply EOS in a similar construct.

Isn't that great? I love doing that too, with people. So, like, I mean, even anybody who's listening, feel free to reach out to me. Like, I would love to go back, you know, three or five years and tell myself like, hey, don't do that for the next 18 months, because that's not going to work out. Like, so if I can give that to somebody else as a gift with nothing in return, I would love to do that. By all means. Yeah.

That's awesome. What. As we're recording this, we're wrapping up Q4, 22. You guys are looking into, obviously, annual sessions coming up, but big priorities for even bound over the next. Over the next year. What are the things that are on your radar?

Yep.

I think you find with like, agency evolution and scaling and things like that, like, it's never like the diagonal hockey stick line that everybody wants to believe it is. When you're like three to five people, it is like you zoom into it and it's a lot of this. Right. But on an upward trajectory. It's almost like the stock market. And so, like, I think our focus going into next year is going to be tighter positioning and breaking through kind of a glass ceiling that we've come up against through that positioning to be able to set the path for our next phase. Phase of growth.

Right.

And I think we've got a real clear line of sight of what that growth looks like and how we're going to get there. I think it's. It's like planning and hiring and all of those, like, components and prioritizing that stuff and how, how it all takes shape is going to be the focus for us.

Yeah, that's awesome. I had one other question around EOS that I forgot to ask you, which is. Yeah, go ahead.

I was going to add like a side benefit to eos. Right. A side track that I don't think I had eyes on when we started, but has proven out to be really beneficial is when, you know, we sit down in a quarterly, have these meetings, and then we put together this quarterly state of a company and we unpack that for everybody in the company. And then we send out like an engagement survey and we measure back to ourselves like, hey, how are we doing? Give us a grade as a, like a leadership team. Like, you know, and there's some financial transparency. There's all kinds of stuff happening in there within that, within the company. And I think that has make and has made us more. Has made us Stickier.

Right.

For people. I think like employees want to work someplace where they feel there's some transparency or when they feel they're being engaged and they are, they are part of that vision. And that has been a happy, you know, side effect to implementing EOS that I didn't know about at the beginning. But now I'm like, man, that really is great. It really helps solidify our culture, you know.

Is that a custom survey or is it like ENPs or something?

I'm trying to remember what the name of it is.

That's.

That's a ton. Again, I'm a visionary, so I don't. Yeah, I can't get into the details. I'm not good at details and follow up, not my thing.

Right.

She, but she found it and she utilizes it and there's some, there's a way to like, hey, like anonymize what the feedback is and the engagement and then anonymize the response coming back. So like you can have a two way transmission there without. It feels safe to ask questions and stuff without, you know, anonymously.

So yeah, that's super cool. Have to touch base with Tanya and figure out what that tool is. I think that'd be.

Yeah, I'll send it to you. I'll ask and send it to you.

That's great. I was going to ask you about tooling. So outside of the survey, but for actually executing or using 90 EOS1 traction tools.

We are on 90. Although that whole like change over the last couple mods, I think we're, you know, it sounds like they've got it in a good spot with the licensing and everything. But like, you know, EOS and the tools that you have to execute on that. It's like a CRM system. It's like, it's like a banking system. Like you don't want to change it. We're all up on this thing. I don't want to move over to a different system.

Right, yeah.

So you know your historical data.

Yep. So. So we use 90. We also use for like all of our documentation and that type of stuff. Right now, for better or worse, we just use Google Drive, a Google Drive structure for that. And yeah, it's mostly it.

That makes sense. That's awesome. Well, this has been super fun just to dig into the story and hear some of the. What are the ups, what are the downs, what are the tips that you guys have from going through it? So obviously I want to point people towards the website itself which is just even bound. Oh, I meant to ask you this. So I'm going to ask. I'll make two part question which I'm infamous for. Two question one is, was it called Even Bound at the at the beginning or is that a rebrand kind of around HubSpot later on? And then two, anywhere else that you'd want to point people, obviously you've got your own podcast and the Even outside. Anywhere else you'd want to point people here as we wrap up.

Yeah, our podcast is done by our team and I love where ours is going. We're a little newer on the podcast scene, but have done some really fun stuff in there. It's just my marketing in minutes and you can get a link to that from our website, Even Bound answering the first part of the chip, our question last. So even Bound obviously comes from like inbound and outbound marketing working together. That was actually part of a rebrand that we went through ironically, right at the advent of COVID So it was a. I had for a period of time, for a season I had a business partner and then I ended up buying that partner out. And then we kind of arrived at a good enough name for a period of time. And then at one of those and you know, all the good business growth happens at inflection points. At one of those inflection points, we said like, we're really not this anymore. We're now we're this and we're going to position in this direction. And that's what what started that process of rebranding towards Even.

Wow, that's awesome.

Yeah.

John, this was fun. I appreciate going on and being willing to share. Thanks for your time today.

Absolutely.

Great.

Thanks for having me.