Tiffany Sauder's Comeback Through Vulnerability, Decision Making Frameworks, and “90% Execution”
Tiffany Sauder, CEO of Element 3, talks about rebuilding her marriage and business after hitting a wall, and how she uses the EOS operating system and decision-making frameworks to run her agency. She calls her approach "90% execution" on strategy.
I talked to my hairdresser about this. I was like, how many people tell you things that they don't tell anybody else in your life? And she's like, all the time. I was like, right. They're admitting their problems to you. You have no stake in the problem, and you have no stake in the solution. You will not be a participant what's happening, but either intuitively or intentionally, they know I've got to say this out loud because it. I got to see it. Like, I got to hold the problem, but they're not saying it to somebody who's going to hold them accountable to actually fixing it. And I think that's a really important piece, is you've got to say it out loud to somebody who cares. My husband and I had to say to each other, our marriage is not okay. This was not what I pictured. This sucks. And at the end of it, it's relieving because at least you can see it. And then it's like, what's the decision that you're gonna make? In the case of the business, every single executive around that table had a choice to stay or leave. Wanna be part of this shit show or not? And if you're gonna leave, I'm not mad. That's a choice you get to make if you're going to stay. This is what the work looks like.
Hello, hello, hello, everyone, and welcome back to Agency Breakthrough. So good to have you with us here today. One person who's not here with us today is Co host Gray MacKenzie. Unfortunately, he just doesn't have a voice to work with today. But that doesn't matter. Well, it does matter, but we'll soldier on through either way. And this will be me hosting with my guest Today, Tiffany Souder, CEO at Element3, keynote speaker, podcast host. Tiffany, how are you doing today?
I'm doing great. It's Monday morning. I'm feeling fresh and, you know, filled with energy and focus. So, yeah, thanks for having me on this morning.
No, yeah, amazing. And, like, what do your mornings usually look like? Do you have, you know, a routine you launch, give me a glimpse into kind of what. What definitely life is like?
Well, we have four kids and so mornings, and we're in school now, so mornings are very busy and pretty structured. So my husband and I both are pretty early risers. We're both up a little after five. My oldest one is a swimmer, so she had to be at the pool at like, 5:45, so he left with her at 5:30, took her to the gym or to the pool. And then went to the gym. I left at 5:30 and went to the gym. And then everybody's back at the house around 6:45 and then we get everybody up and ready for school. Those, my older three go to school and then my youngest one stays home with a nanny. So a lot of, I don't know, getting everybody out of the house, it's, it's fun but it takes a couple hours.
Okay, gotcha. I, I think if Gray were here he would totally sympathize. He, he's up quite early. I mean I enjoy that, you know, working from kind of the Polish time zone that you know, it's 5:00am Eastern and he's already up and answering my many, many slack questions since the morning. But I'm no stranger to 5am mornings myself. With a 2 year old, he.
He.
Gives us an opportunity to see all those sunrises quite early.
Yep.
Okay, I'll see you.
Yeah, I don't like to be working at 5am I need that time to like just for myself.
Oh yeah.
Otherwise it gets really hard. So I can take a kid to practice. But we use the like yellow, the red lights to keep them in bed. My, I have a three year old and if it's red, she can't get out of bed because I, I don't want to see her yet.
Oh, is that a thing? I've never heard of that. How, how does that work?
It's called Hatch is the one that we use. It's a sound machine and and then it also like has just like lights. Like it's an app that you can, it's connected to and so you can put all different kinds of lights and sounds and music. But we just use it as a white noise machine and set it for 10 hours of red. I mean she should probably have 12 hours of sleep but all her sisters are a lot, much older so she goes to bed later than she should. So I set it for 10 hours and she has to stay in bed for 10 hours and she knows if it's red I have to stay in bed. And then at 10 hours it goes off and it turns white or you can have it turn whatever color and then she can get out of bed and then we do the same thing for her naps because she's kind of outgrowing them. But she needs just like time to be desensitized and be in bed for a little bit. So sometimes it's 45 minutes, sometimes it's an hour and a half. But yeah, she stays in bed if she doesn't she? There's a consequence and she gets put back and they get it pretty fast. So.
Wow. Okay. Well, it's great.
Mom has.
Well, you know, usually at the end of these agency breakthrough episodes, we ask for like book recommendations, tool recommendations. This is already huge. I need to talk to my wife about this.
Yeah.
So thank you for sharing that and I'm glad I asked. Well, speaking of the pod, let's, let's get into it. So Tiffany, I'm so glad to have you here today to share your, you know, your agency breakthrough story. And you know, I, of course I looked through some of your stuff, listened to your EOS speech for example, which honestly I thought was excellent. As somebody who's kind of big into public speaking, I love the storytelling way you started it, quite emotional. So I don't know if that's exactly what we'll be covering today, kind of coming into it fresh, but we'll go through the usual agency breakthrough formula. Talking first about Element three, your agency, kind of what you're up to, then going into the agency breakthrough story and you know, like I already teased at the end, maybe a few more rapid fire recommendations from you. So let's start at the beginning there. Tiffany, tell us about, you know, your agency. How did that happen? What kind of scale state are you at right now? Paint a picture of what's today.
Yeah, so my agency is called Element 3 and we are kind of headquartered in Indianapolis and I, we are at almost 19 years I think, which is pretty crazy. So my story of getting into the business, I'm a small town kid and went to college actually for business and finance and started out at Lilly, which is a big pharmaceutical company here in Indianapolis. They're actually the largest by market cap in the world right now. Big pharmaceutical company, I thought, you know, I dreamed of the big city and having a big job and feeling important and you know, working at a high rise and all the things that come with that. I thought that's what I wanted. Did that for three years and I enjoyed it. But I realized I really love the environment of being able to make decisions and seeing really quickly the like the change cycle of like, were you right or were you wrong? And in a big company, for lots of good reasons, they don't give, you know, 20 somethings much decision in making authority. And so I, I'd grown up in an environment where my dad is an entrepreneur. He's done a lot of different crazy things. And so I like risk wasn't something I saw necessarily because I grew up around so much of it. I was, it was like kind of in the background for me. Kind of fades into the landscape. And so I told my husband and I had been married for just a couple of months at that time, and I was like, I. I just, I don't really feel like. I feel like I could have the best day of my professional career at Lilly or sleep under my desk and like the stock price was going to be exactly the same. So I'm really driven by significance and just kind of realize I want to be in a place where I can have a lot more impact again, impact, relatively speaking, but kind of see the impact of my decisions and am I right or am I wrong? So my dad and I bought a small little agency. My dad was the financial partner and I was the sweat equity partner. And he never worked him hour in the business outside of, you know, giving me some certainly advice along the way, but didn't, you know, didn't work in the business or with clients or anything like that. And so over the last almost 20 years, the agency had like maybe four people at the time when we bought it, it was very small, it wasn't doing much, it wasn't worth much. And now we have almost 50 people and we're one of the larger agencies in our market and we've got plans to continue growing. So Today I'm the CEO. I have a president that runs the agency. I'm 43. I think that's relevant only because I find a lot of times these leadership transitions happen when the founder is at a place where they're really tired. And so maybe it doesn't give the space to be as planful as maybe you could. And so, yeah, we can talk a little bit about that transition. I think that's been a big part of our story. We have four kids, we have four girls ages 14 to 3. And we are a two career home. My husband has a gigantic job. He's executive vice president for the nation's largest commercial vehicle dealership. They're in 28 states. He travels about 40% of the time. And our kids are in sports and really busy. So, you know, we talked a little bit about me having a podcast. I'm really passionate about helping two career families make life sustainable because it can get to a place where everything is screaming and nothing feels fun. So we worked really hard at that. So that's kind of a little landscape of my life and the agency. Yeah.
Okay, I have a few threads to pull on here. Well, first, would you be up to sharing for example, revenue figures to give people, you know, a sense of the scale a bit more.
Oh, sure, yeah, we're around 10 million in revenue. And yeah, I think we're like 45 people, 43, something like that right now. You know, like, it kind of changes. I haven't looked at that lately, but we're in that range from a headcount perspective. Coming out of COVID we got really strategic about using the freelance capacity more strategically to help us, you know, not staff up to our peak all the time. And that's been. Were really, really helpful in maintaining margin and, you know, like the. I feel like the devil's kiss in this business is having to lay people off because you lose a big client. And so really helping us just stabilize the core. That's been a really big part of our strategy over the last three years.
And that's interesting. I'm living through that in a smaller scale myself. Where previously at my previous company, before Zenpilot, my answer to most problems were, okay, we need a new team member. Now I'm leaning more and more towards, you know, okay, we need a specialist. We don't need them full time. We just need to give them a few jobs and fill in this one piece of kind of the. The marketing machine, in my case, because I'm content marketing manager and Zenpilot, so that's one thread I wanted to pull on a little bit more. Second, you know, people are bound to be finding out about element 3 for the first time from this podcast. What would you like them to know about the agency in terms of what makes it unique? Is it a niche? Is it the way you do things? What would you say?
Yeah, the clients we work for are executive leaders who have the imperative of growth. And so oftentimes the business strategy is, is mandating that they create growth. And they either haven't figured out how to do that organically, they're beholden to a sales team that is kind of holding them hostage or beginning to kind of, I would say, just like decay from a sense of like, they're retiring and they don't know how to replace it in the same way. And so they're looking for marketing to be a more strategic part of the go to market strategy. They may have gotten a new funding source, so purchased by private equity, or a new big cash infusion, maybe a new leadership team. So the culture and the strategy is going to be changing or a new market entry where there's a certain vertical or industry where they've really been, you know, numero uno and they're trying to take a, you know, go into a new market that they're not as well known and they're so used to that old playbook, they don't know how to like move into a new market. So those are the kinds of challenges that we're handed by our clients. Always a growth imperative, always working with the broader executive team. We are really mid market players. So think revenues of 50 to 500 million in revenue and EBITDA ranges of like probably 5 to 35 million in EBITDA. So that's kind of the like size of company we're working for. We have a few clients where we're like, they're publicly traded and we're working on like pet project inside of the big company. But for the most part we're a mid market. High growth is who we work with a lot of private equity backed companies so that's who we work for. I, oh, what makes us special? You know, I think the thing that makes us special is honestly our obsession over growth. Our, our purpose as a company is to foster growth and people in business so that they can change the world. Well, when you decide that growth is what you're going to be about, you have to have a real friend in pain because growth is hard. Growth demands that you look in the mirror at exactly who you are. Growth demands that every single day that you get better. Growth demands that you're like pushing but growth also demands rest. Like this is not, you know, an environment where we don't also have fun and enjoy ourselves. But when you say that you're going to be about growth, it requires something of people that not everybody can bring to the table. And so I think that's really the secret sauce in the water here at Element 3. Our employee net promoter score, we just did it about a month ago, is an 88. We're world class and the people who want to work here, we know how to create careers for them. Our average tenure is like four years, which is insane for an agency and we keep people a really long time. So as a result our people are well trained, we know how to work well together, people want to be here. Our culture is incredible and so that is what allows us to do great work. That's been the thing that has made our work where I mean it's not that we don't lose clients but oftentimes it's because the you know, private equity team sold the company or you know, obviously leaders move on and bring in their own teams but we really like, you know, we don't fumble the ball a lot, but it's because our obsession over our people. It's because our obsession over our culture and because people are here a long time, we've, you know, we can train them and continue to help them in their careers, and it's a really, really exciting cycle.
Okay, gotcha. Thank you. Well, that paints definitely a really clear picture of, like, how far element three got. So, you know, now I wanted to look at this from the perspective of kind of the journey to get here, you know, the obstacles along the way, and get into the part that agency Breakthrough is all about. So the story of, you know, what you had to overcome to get to that headcount, that revenue number, that reputation, that NPS score, and also making it all work with, you know, the situation in the household. Like you mentioned, two careers, four kids. Let's get into that. So, Tiffany, I wanted to ask you what was. I mean, I'm sure there must have been more than one, but what's the breakthrough moment that stands out for you and for your agency? The decision that changed everything or the one moment that put you on a different and better course? What was it that changed the trajectory for you and element three?
Yeah. You know, in the EOS talk that you mentioned, I told a little bit. I'd say, like, more pregnant part of the story. But I. I think that in. In 2018, it was a really pivotal time for me in my life. It was a pivotal moment in my time, in my marriage, and it was a really pivotal season for the business. And I think all of us were tired. I was tired in my life. You know, I had been pushing really hard for about almost 15 years, giving the business everything that I had, thinking that that certainly had to have been, you know, had to be the right formula. Um, my husband and I didn't know how to prioritize ourselves. And, you know, we're both firstborns, we're both really high achieving. He's incredibly smart and talented. And so, you know, we'd gotten a habit of pursuing our individual success and not knowing what that looked like together anymore. And the business, I bring a lot of energy and excitement to things, but I didn't really know how to build a business for long term growth and sustainability. And I knew how to get people excited. I knew how to get people to want to work here. I knew how to sell clients. But when it came to putting together a playbook where, you know, things were lasting and they were scaling and there was structure and there were you know, I don't know, job descriptions and all the things that were required. When things start to stable, they need to stabilize. You know, my talents were really starting to not be what the business needed and I didn't know how to be anything different than what I was, which I'm a great salesperson. I'm great at creating culture, I'm great at big ideas, and I'm great at starting things and I'm great at working hard. But I needed a more. A deeper complement of tools around me. And so, you know, I think that that was a moment where I had to decide what hard I was going to explore either the heart of like rebuilding in place and rebuilding my marriage and rebuilding in a lot of ways, my, you know, relationship with myself. I had a lot of personal satisfaction from all the hard work that I was doing and the self sacrifice and how hard I was pushing myself and the hours that I was putting in. That was a big part of my relationship with myself and I had to rebuild the business. So I think in that moment I knew I had to start over. And I had the choice of starting over with what I had or starting over with something new and pretending for a season that that was gonna be easier because sometimes a new marriage and a new company and like all, you know, all that just sounds easier. Like, let me just get rid of everything that was and start over. And. And so I think that. I think just inborn character traits is loyalty. And so I think it's that. That said, nope, I'm not gonna fail at this. I'm gonna be good to my word, you know, to these people, to these clients, to this man that I married. And I got a lot of hard work to do.
Okay, wow. Well, so it's not just one challenge that you were facing. It sounds like it was like a whole set of challenges all coming to a head at once. Before we move on, can you tell me more about like, what was going through your head? What kind of thoughts were you having? And also what were the stakes for you here? You know, what was at stake in that situation?
Well, I think that the ultimate things that is at stake when you're an entrepreneur is your ego. You know, the rest of it is, you know, money certainly was at stake. You know, we had some debt in the business, we had a lease that we were going to have to figure out how to make good on. But like, all that is like, logistically solvable, you know, like, you know, filing for bankruptcy and being like, oh, crap, I have no money and I Got to figure out to pay these people back. Like, that stuff sucks, but it's like, ultimately, I think not probably what would have hurt me so bad. I think it was the ego of the failure. I think that it was realizing that signing a piece of paper and not being able to like make good on the money that I owed somebody, like, that's, that's like credibility and that's that, that to me is really, really important. I think that's like the X factor of being able to do well, especially in a city where you're going to live for a long time. And so I think that stuff is, man. I mean, those are like really expensive prices that, you know, you have to pay. And I, I think that as I've gotten older, I realized that some people do start businesses and they do fail and they do restart and they are fine. But my, you know, early 30, mid 30 year old self, it felt like it was going to be a fatal failure.
That sounds like, you know, at this point in, in the story, the stakes are really high. So I'm really curious about how you proceeded from that point on. It sounds like if it's fair to characterize it like that, you know, the challenges you were facing were not just in the business, but also, you know, some of it was in the kind of personal sphere. So where did you start untangling this and when did things start to change?
Well, you know, I kind of have.
This problem to the person, you know, who's involved in the stakes.
Well, I think for me, I'm like, well, what sucks more? The thing happening and me having no control over changing the direction or saying it out loud and having like some chance of saving it, you know, Like, I don't know. But I'm definitely not gonna have a shot if I don't admit it. So I think I kind of like get myself over the hump. I just like getting pissed off. Like, I don't want. This is stupid. Like, I'm not gonna be a chicken. And I, I just like kind of say that to myself, like, don't be a chicken. Like, yeah, this is hard. Well, you know who fails? People who don't do hard things. That's who fails. And so I'm like, that's not who I am. I'm willing to do hard things. You know what? If success was simple, everybody would get there. It's not. It's gonna require hard things of me. And this is a hard thing. Like, buck up, buttercup. And I just kind of like give myself a pep talk. And on the front end of it, it's very scary. And at the end of it, it's relieving because at least you can see it. Like, at least you're like, oh, yes, we agree. This is the problem. So now we have a choice to make, which is like, are we going to actually make a new decision? And that's where it goes from there is like, it's vulnerability, an admission of it, an articulation of the problem, like, admitting it, owning it, whatever needs to happen. And then it's like, what's the decision that you're going to make? Like, in the case of the business, it was like, okay, every single executive around that table had a choice to stay or leave. That's like, decision number one. Like, you want to be part of the, you know, want to be part of the shit show or not? Like, you know what I mean? Like, you're stay or leave. We've admitted the problem. We know how big and scary it is. Decision number one is stay or leave. And if you're going to leave, I'm not mad. That's a choice you get to make. If you're going to stay. This is what the work looks like, you know, and so then it becomes about new decisions. And so, you know, we talked about the EOS conference that I spoke at, saying yes to Eos and finding some type of operating system that we went all in. That was a decision. I was like, I will. Literally, I was willing to lose the most talented person on my team. Like, I didn't care who you were. If you thought you were better than Eos, you were not gonna work here. It just, like, had to be. It was like, this is something we're doing. If we knew what to do, we'd already be doing it. We did not have good systems in the business. We did not have communication hygiene. We did not. Like, I was not getting the results that I needed in the business. If somebody thought they were smarter than the system, I love you. You just can't be here, you know, because I wasn't going to run two. I wasn't going to run two programs. We're going to run one program.
Can you say just a few more words about what made you. It wasn't just the idea of we need to commit to a process and EOS is our pick. Was there something specifically about EOS that made you so sad on it? You were willing to get to let talent go if they weren't willing to get on board with it.
I have a belief that people spend 90 ounces of energy on deciding and 10 ounces of energy on implementing. So, you know, go out and sh. Like, there's a lot of operating systems, you know, there's, there's, there's more than eos. So you can spend a bunch of time, if you want to, comparing them, figuring out which one is better. What meeting agenda do you like? Like, what framework? Like, I just don't care. Pick one. I'll just beat you because I'm going to be the best at one. Think about, like, marketing technology. There's a million. Yes, some are better suited than others, but for most people, they don't need the 1% of technology, you know, of, like, of technical difference. Most people just don't use what they have. Well, think about diets. There's a lot that work. People just don't stick with it. They're really crappy at compliance.
Yeah, that's so funny. I was listening about something to that effect. I was listening to a YouTube video actually, about that. And it was the concept of adherence, you know, and the guy basically said, you know, pick whichever diet. He spent 60 seconds on it. We were going to spend the next 39 minutes on motivation, inspiration habits, on how to actually stick to it, because that actually makes a difference. So funny that you mentioned that. It, it totally tracks here. So is it the case of, like, others are 90 ounces decision, 10 ounces execution, and you want to flip that change that?
Totally. I'm like, look, we're going to put, we're going to put 10 ounces of energy into the decision. I mean, I had been around eos for a little bit. I knew what their value proposition was. I knew what their promise was to entrepreneurs that to, you know, essentially allow you to live life on your terms, to make the money that you deserve from your business. And I was like, well, if I knew how to do all that stuff, I would already have it. I don't know how to do that stuff. So let's do this. And I think people make casseroles. They like, say, I like this tool from this thing. I like this tool from this thing. I like this tool from this thing. It's like, oh, my word. Now you think you're smarter than the whole thing. Like, that's amazing. Like, again, my personality is like, you know what? We're gonna pick it, we're gonna go and we're gonna be the best and we're gonna implement it all the way. Like, my trainer, I lift with him, and he's like, you know what workout? What What. What exercises do you want to do? And I was like, I don't care. I want the exercises that are required for the outcome that I want. Don't ask me what exercises I like. That's a silly question. Tell me what aligns with what I want out of this, and I'll do whatever. So as long as it's not hurting my body, you know, so. Yeah, yeah. And we just. We executed really, really, really well. And as a result, we have an amazing company. Like I told you, we have an amazing culture and we had the disciplines I'd love. Maybe you can share that YouTube video with me that you just talked about. But the third step is vulnerability. A vulnerable admission of, like, what is the problem? The second is a very clear decision. And like I said, I. We are implementing EOs. I do not care if the most talented person on my company, in my company, says that they don't want to comply. I'm choosing us over that because I know any deviation from the plan starts to just, like, get a bigger and bigger and bigger impact as time goes on. So that is a decision. People make wimpy decisions, and I think that's a really big problem. When you're in a crisis, you talk about agency breakthrough. Like, if you're at a crappy spot and you can't figure out how to get out of it, like, look at the quality of your decision. Are you very, very clear on what you've decided and is it clearly articulated? Because then the rest of the job is just managing against that decision. The discipline required. What does it mean? If that is the choice I'm making, what does that require?
Yeah, I actually was listening to your talk, and I have just one note, and it fits perfectly with what you're talking about here today. One thing you said, I think it was during the EOS talk, is one of the things we massively undervalue in decisions. Is the change management required after the decision. Tell me a little bit about that. You know, somebody in a similar situation, you know, they. They've made the decision and communicated it once. But then there's this kind of. There's pushback. There's this kind of. I would almost call it like, attrition of the decision. Okay, well, CEO said that, but do they mean it? Are they going to push for it? Are they going to fight for it? Or is it going to fizzle out? Tell me about the change management piece of it. Do you have any tips on how to actually make that change stick?
Yeah, I'll first start with the framework that I use when I'm communicating change that has worked in every area of my life. And that is, I'll say it and then I'll explain what it looks like. Do you understand it, do you agree with it and do you like it? Do you understand it, do you agree with it and do you like it? So, for instance, when we needed to get the business back on track, one of the imperatives was profit. We had to, we had to make more money to be able to make the investment that we needed in professional development and all the stuff that we wanted to do. And so a really hard choice that we had to make was are we going to get slowly profitable or are we going to get profitable in a very short period of time on a quick turn? And if we were going to get profitable in a very short period of time, it was going to require us to lay people off. That is a really, so really crappy day. It's a really crappy choice. It was like, you know, both of them were not going to be fun. But we made the decision to get profitable within a six week period of time, which meant that we were going to have to lay people off. So you never want to do that as a leader. It's a very bad day. But sometimes not doing it is a worse decision than doing it. So made the decision to lay some people off. And when I needed to tell the company about that, I use this framework of do you understand it, do you like it? And do you agree with it? Do you agree with it? Do you like it? In that order. So the first was to say, I want to outline for you, let's imagine we're all in like a Harvard Business School and we're doing a case review. And so I'm going to outline for you the facts of the story. And I was like, here was the, you know, here's our clients and here's their average spend and here's been our profitability as a business. These are our goals and this is the cash that we need in the business to be able to invest in these things that we know are important for our long term, you know, ability to compete in the market and to get great talent and to pay you what you deserve and to bonus all. Like, this is the story, here's the story. Do you understand it? And we spend time on just, do you understand it? Do you understand the numbers? Do you know what they mean? Do you know where they come from? Do you know what we mean by this word? Does that make sense? Attrition? Do you understand it? You are not involved. Just imagine we're studying this. Do you understand it? And as a result of this information, the decision is that we've let go of. It was like six people.
Okay.
The second is, do you agree with it? So imagine you are me. Imagine you are a leader in that situation. Given those state of facts, would you make the same or a different decision? So again, I, I laid out for them we had two choices to make. We could have tried to get to profitability slowly, we thought that would take us six to nine months. Or we could get to profitability quickly and it would take us six weeks. Here's why. What would you choose? If you were in my seat, given this set of facts, what would you choose? Do you agree with my choice? And then the third is put yourself back in your own chair. Do you like it? And what I would tell them is like, I understand the story, I understand the facts. It's my job to do that. I agree with the choice that I've made, naturally. But I don't like it. I don't like that I had to let people go. I don't like that this is going to take us a while for our culture to rebuild trust in this area. I don't like that we have to go have all these conversations with clients that some of their people aren't going to be. I don't like any of that. And so we could unite in the fact that this is crappy. But we understand it and we agree that this is probably the best choice for the company long term. And so getting you aligned and what I was finding was happening is I'd be telling people what happened and they would say, essentially, I don't like it. And it's like, well, I don't like it either, but I still need to be in the situation and I, and I can give a chance to educate. So that framework has been very helpful in meeting people intellectually with what is happening and why, so that they don't feel like this is random, they don't feel like this is just some hair brain thing that I came up with. And it allows us to teach them what the game that we're in, which is business. So do you understand it? Do.
