How to Break Through Business Ceilings By Scaling With Purpose with Micheal Schoenberger

Have you ever noticed how businesses grow a lot like the stock market? You have your ups. You have your downs. Then, you're back up again. Then, you're back down again. And just when you think you've cracked the code, you smack into the ceiling. Some businesses break through but others stall out, burn resources, and start to decline. And that's what we're talking about today on Experience Leadership.

Welcome to Experience Leadership, A podcast that challenges small business owners and entrepreneurs just like you to dare to be the exception. Join our host, customer experience expert Marc Haine, as he uncovers relevant and timely content to help you script and direct your business and teams to create jaw-dropping experiences your customers and staff deserve. Here is the host of Experience Leadership, author of Lights! Camera! Action!, customer experience expert Marc Haine.

Welcome to this episode of Experience Leadership. I am your host, customer and employee experience strategist Marc Haine. And I am thrilled that you are here with me today because my guest is Mike Schoenenberger, CEO of Sunco Communications and Installation. And today, we're putting a spotlight on how leaders can break through growth ceilings and scale their businesses with purpose without losing their freedom or their passion. So, stay with us. I do have one simple request. If there's somebody in your circle who could benefit from the insights that we're sharing with you today, please do them a favor and pass along a link to this episode. And please make sure that you yourself are subscribed to this podcast. I wonder if you've given any thought to the mechanics of growth. In my experience, growth isn't just about adding more sales or hiring more people. Growth comes in phases and every phase brings its own ceiling. If you don't have the right processes in place, your businesses stop Being a dream and they start feeling more like, well, like a prison. And that brings us to our Question of the Day. What is your ceiling right now? And is your business set up to break through it? Or are you grinding harder with less return? I'd love to know what your comments are and I'd love to invite you to be part of this conversation. Why don't you go ahead, drop your thoughts and comments in the comment box below. I'd love to hear what your reality sounds like. As I mentioned, I'm really thrilled to invite and introduce my guest today. He is Mike Schoenenberger, CEO and founder of Sunco Communications and Installation Limited, a high-growth telecommunications company serving clients across Canada.

Hi, Marc!

Since adopting his system in 2017, Mike has led Sunco through consistent double-digit growth, 2 successful acquisitions, and a full transformation into a scalable values-driven organization. Mike doesn't just believe in his EOS system as a business system. He lives it as a philosophy for leadership and for life. He's an active member of EO, a mentor through iMAG IMYEG, IMYEG, and the University of Alberta Venture Mentoring Service. And he sits on multiple advisory boards including the Magi Centre. Beyond business, he's a keynote speaker, a storyteller, a mountain enthusiast who believes in the power of real human connections. And as of last Thursday, he's a TEDx speaker. Mike, welcome to the show. It's so great to have you.

So glad to be here. And I listened to all that and I'm like, wow, that's a mouthful. Who is that guy? Appreciate the time and I look forward to this talk.

Yeah. So, before we take a really deep dive into today's topic, can you just tell us about your experience with like hitting ceilings at Sunco?

Yeah, for sure. You know, we're just coming into our 25th year. September 1st, you know, was 2000 is when we first started the business. And it was the truck, the materials in it. You know, my wife was doing all the bookkeeping and all the marketing, and Sean was writing side by side. And at that time, we were trying to do everything ourselves. So it's like managing the contract, you're doing the work, you're billing the work, doing all the things. And it's really hard to scale when you're stuck. There's not enough hours in the day. So you try to create more by getting up earlier and going to bed later. But there was interesting times in the beginning, and it was always— we were lucky that opportunities presented itself and we dove in and We took the initiative to hire people not when we were desperate for them but when we saw the opportunity to hire more people and people smarter than ourselves. And that started very early on when we're talking early 2000s here.

So, for the business leaders who are tuning in right now, how do they know that they've hit a ceiling? What are the signs that the ceiling is hit and we need to do something different in order to break through it?

Yeah, it's usually when the cracks start to show. So it's whether it be yourself personally that you're finding there's not enough hours in the day or some things are starting to slip. So you know you've hit the ceiling and you need to make changes when stuff starts going off the rails. And typically in the early days, we noticed when the train was already derailed and then you're trying to figure out a way to bring it on the rails. So a good example is Forgetting to do your accounts payable because you're trying to do the work. So you delay the billing 1 week, 2 weeks, and then it takes you a longer time to collect. So then you have cash flow issues. Or you have these quotes that you need to do and you don't have time to do the quotes because you're busy doing the work. You're doing the quotes late at night and then sometimes you make mistakes. So a ceiling when you're a $250,000 company or a $100,000 company is a lot different than a million-dollar company. It's just when you hit a period of, holy crap, I don't have enough bandwidth to get things done. Or you notice that your customer service levels and what got you to the place where you are in the first place has started to decline. You're getting more complaints.

And so, a lot of it is service delivery, right? Because to your point, if you don't get those proposals done, you might miss the window to submit them. In which case then, now you've just lost the opportunity of maybe even having a lucrative contract. What about when you do fulfill them, but you might take on too many jobs? I know a roofer who a couple of years ago just said he was at his wit's end because, you know, he had so many quotes and he wanted to deliver on it because the season is very short. And so, he brought people on and it was a catastrophe.

Exactly the same thing. It doesn't matter whether you're selling a product or you're doing a service. If you think you're gonna buy, you don't buy enough product, and then people are mad because The delivery times are too long. You buy too much and it sits on your shelf and it goes obsolete. We've experienced lots of those differences. And it's really a lot of it about capacity. When a ceiling is tied to your capacity as a company to deliver what you promised.

Yeah. I speak to small businesses all the time. And I always find that they're always looking to build and scale their business. But typically, that means for them, it means, oh, I have to get a bigger space or I have to hire more staff or I have to get new equipment. What do most of these leaders fail to consider when they're thinking about scaling?

They forget to think about the structure. That if you build a house and you build it ad hoc as you go, how stable is that house? And is it going to withstand winds, hurricanes, weather, floods, all the things that happen? But if you plan ahead and you take time and you do a design and you get an architect to build your print, then that builds the house properly. It's going to stand the test of time. And I think a lot of times what people think, because they're so focused on the scaling, they forget about the process of scaling and creating not just where are we going to be in 6 months, where are we going to be in a year, 3 months, 10 years? Where do we want to go? So that future-based thinking. So then you not just create a plan for breaking through this particular ceiling, but future ceilings. And I think that's the biggest gap that people miss. They're like, I'm too small for all these structures and accountability charts.

Oh, so because I was just gonna ask you about myths, about myths that people have about scaling. So, one of the myths is I'm too small. So, can we talk about it? How do we know we're too small to be able to put systems in place and to be able to start thinking about what it might look like to hire department heads, to hire your own boss maybe if you're not a good business practitioner? What does that look like? What's the myth behind that that people are always fooling themselves into believing? Yeah.

So that's probably the number one myth is that I'm too small to put in any sort of systems and tools. And it's a matter of I ask the question, do you have marketing? Do you have to market what you do? Somebody has to buy your products, so you need marketing. Then you have to sell it, so you must have to have sales. And then you have to have operations because you have to deliver on what you do. And then you have to have a finance department to do the finance stuff. And so that's typically one person when you first start, maybe 2, right?

Yes.

And so there's always those key departments. So if we start with an accountability chart, an org chart, and you break down— this is marketing, this is, you know, sales, this is finance— all your different— you can be your name in those hats, but then you can start creating a plan to go, I hate marketing, so that's the first seat that I'm gonna hire, or I like doing sales, but I'm not very good at it. So maybe I should hire sales first. So by creating what the vision of the company or the foundation of it, it helps you determine where you need to hire first. Right.

What about those business operators who are like, oh, well, I have to do it because nobody else will do it as good as I will?

Yeah, that's probably one of the biggest myths is we always think that nobody can do it as well. And I've created very early on in this journey kind of a rule for myself. That if I ever hire somebody, as long as they do it 80% to the way that I would do it and it's done well and the customer is happy and we're within budgets, then that's perfect. Because nobody's— if they're not the business owner, they're never going to do it quite the way you do. But I learned how it's not— my way isn't always the best way. And if you hire people that are smarter than you, give them the opportunity and the rope. to learn and maybe make things better. So, when we, you know, we're often as the business owners, the people that get in the way, the people that create roadblocks, the people that create chaos. And I've got, I was the biggest chaos developer in my business for a lot of years.

Yeah. It's interesting because you mentioned that you do it my way. Like, how important is it for things to be done your way versus delivering on the objectives? Because afterwards you mentioned all these different other deliverables that you could test against So, how important is the way versus here's the objective and you need to be able to fill this objective?

100%, it's all about the objective. What is our end result? There's like, you look at Google Maps, Google Maps will give you 20 different options to get to the same destination. Most often, a lot of them will be 22 minutes. It doesn't really matter how you get there as long as you arrive in one piece.

Yeah. And so, when you scaled, and because you said you were kind of the biggest obstacle in your business when you were scaling up and At what point did you realize, I need to back off? What were the indicators that said to you, okay, Mike, that's enough. Back off. Let people shine and do their magic.

Yeah. And it was the same thing with myself and my business partner is working too much. So there's not enough hours in the day and you can't do everything. So that was the first thing. And the other thing people were telling me, my partner, Sean, who's business partner for the last 15 years, and we've worked together for all 25, longer than that. We've been able to be confident with each other and call each other when we see each other getting in each other's way or getting in the business way. So having a sounding board is kind of essential because often we can't see the chaos we're creating. We need somebody to help point out the chaos we're creating because we're trying to do all the things, we're trying to do the right thing and not realizing that we're not.

I have a sneaking suspicion that we could do a whole podcast on that level of humility and transparency and accountability if you wanted to. But I'd like to dig into some practical tools and strategies that can help leaders kind of break through their own ceiling. You're talking about specifically some, like even in this introduction, you were talking about some systems. So, when we come back, I'd like to tackle some of those and really bring the juice to this episode. We'll do that right after this. When the spotlight shines on your business, are customers applauding or yawning?

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Welcome back! I am here with CEO Mike Schoenenberger. I mentioned EOS at the top of the show. Could you define what EOS is, Mike? And let's talk about EOS as a system first, and then we're going to take and break it down into its components.

For sure. So, EOS stands for the Entrepreneurial Operating System. Based on a book written by Gino Wickman. And it's now EOS Worldwide is helping businesses scale right across the world. So, that's what it means. I'm happy to dive into it.

What are the components then of EOS? When we talk about this as an operating system, what are we looking at specifically?

Yeah. So, it's basically a system of easy-to-use tools. There's— you talk about based on vision. And when we talk about vision, there are 7 key questions. So, what is your What is your purpose, cause, or passion as a business? What is your vision as a business? Your values, your marketing strategy, your 90-day plan, your 1-year plan, your 3-year plan, and your 10-year target. And you get really— we can dive deeper into those topics. Then it has a data component to it where you have to have— everybody in the company has to have a number and you have to have data to go, hey, are we doing the right things? How are we moving the needle? Are we hitting the ceiling? Are we approaching the ceiling? I guess you can make adjustments before you break through it. Issue resolution. So how do you track your issues? People, making sure that you have the right people, all the right people that get it, want the job and have the capacity to do it. So there's People Analyzer and then Traction, which is paying attention to rocks and very strategic items again in those 90-day windows to help you move forward. So that's the main foundational principles of EOS.

So how does somebody who's never heard of this, how do they start analyzing where they are? Like you mentioned data, for instance. When we talk about data, is there anything specific that you're looking in? Or because that can seem really overwhelming if you're going to start saying, okay, well, let's take a look at all the data that we have and figure out what's most important to us.

Yeah. So if we break out, first of all, if anybody is thinking about this, I'd by-the-book traction. There's also Rockefeller Habits. That was a long time ago. There's Scaling Up by Verne Harnish. They're all business processes that are systems that are very similar. And so, when we talk about the data component of EOS, it would be having systems that are as automated as proper because manual systems can sometimes be modified. So, for example, if I'm on a desert island, And I want to look at a scorecard to go, is my company doing well? Or if I'm on a holiday somewhere on a beach, I want to look at what do I need to see? I need to see that my, my sales targets are being hit. I need to see that my accounts, you know, I got money in the bank, my accounts receivable is in line, my, you know, my projects are all in alignment. So I look at that and if everything's in the green, I'm good. If there's stuff in the red, then I create an issue and it's something to talk about. So it's what is important to your business. If you're a very small company, it's, you know, do I have enough sales? Is my sales forecast or funnel big enough so that I not only have enough sales for October, but I've got enough of a funnel to keep me busy in November, December, January, February? A lot of times what happens when you're small is you end up being reactive. By putting in systems, tools, processes, you can start to become a little more proactive. You can start to see a problem happening before it happens.

And so, from the data component, how much of that leads into the issue component?

It totally leads in because if there's— if you're tracking, let's say, AR or AP, if my accounts receivable is down and I set a target that I want accounts receivable to be $50,000 for a small company and it's at $10,000, is it because I haven't billed things? Is it because I'm just not busy enough? So, if my accounts receivable are only $10,000, it means I could have trouble doing payroll next month. So, it can be a leading indicator of potential future problems. So, from your data, you can create an issue. And an issue gets put into what we call a Level 10 meeting or a meeting where it's a very structured process to be able to identify, discuss, and solve issues.

And so, from there because I mean everybody, I think that most business owners don't have a problem. Pinpointing issues. But a lot of the issues they're pinpointing are actually surface-based symptoms of something bigger. There's a lot of finger-pointing. So, for instance, if they have high attrition, they start blaming the generations. They start blaming things like, oh, people are lazy. The new generation's really lazy. Nobody wants to work. I'm in a small market. I can't get enough employees. And so, they're pointing fingers. How do we shake ourselves when it comes down to these issues? How do we shake ourselves so that we're actually looking at the real issue rather than just all these symptoms of the bigger issue?

Yeah, it's a really great question. There's probably about 20 different ways we can dig into that. So, I'll pick one. A lot of times, because of having a proper meeting pulse of identifying the issue, discussing, and solving it, you can see when you start getting repeat issues coming up. So then, it's like, okay, we're on the surface. If the issue comes back again, we haven't solved it. So, we need to dig deeper. And one of the biggest things that goes along with scaling is creating your vision and your values, because then when you start to have issues, it's like, is this thing we're doing, is it aligned with our values? Is it aligned with our vision? And if it is, then, okay, why does it keep coming up? Is it a people issue? Is it a process issue? Is it a data issue? And then you can break it into the different components. So every time it comes up, it's like, okay, maybe it isn't a people issue. Maybe it's an us issue and we don't have the right process in how we're delivering. Yeah. Or we don't have the right system to track what we're doing. So, I think it's becoming more intentional about how you solve those issues. It's really— in a Level 10 meeting, they call it IDS. Whoever brings the issue forward sets the stage, and this is the issue. Then you have an easy discussion with everybody, all the different leaders or stakeholders. It's not finger-pointing. It's like, how do we solve this issue? Then, if you come up to a solution on it or you dig, maybe there are multiple issues, you just capture those. And then, you give a to-do for somebody to take the solve away. And then, the next meeting, you go, hey, that issue, that to-do, did you get it done? Okay, we'll watch and see if this issue comes up again. So, that's how we do the IDS. When you talk about the people issue, that's a different conversation that I can answer differently.

It's interesting because I just flash back to all these different meetings I had with our management teams at the various casinos I worked with. People would come into these meetings and they have to do the reporting out. So the slot departments, tell us what's going on. Oh, well, we had this, this, and this, and this. And everybody claps and everybody celebrates. And okay, food and beverage. And then I stand up and say, hey, this is all the successes we had. This is really great. And everybody's telling everything to make themselves look good. But talking about the difficult conversations has always been kind of the tough one because people are afraid That they are going to get judged, that they're going to be deemed not a good leader if their department is underperforming. But then, all these things get put under the rug. And so, these 7 key points, how do they keep all these issues from being just swept under?

Yeah. And it's, again, just the structure of it, the simplicity of it. When we talk a Level 10 meeting, the first thing they do is when you come into the meeting, everybody goes around and what's one personal best and what's one business best? So, what's going on great for you in your personal life? What's going really well in the business? And it's meant to be like 15, 20 seconds. And what that does is it disconnects you from where you were prior to entering the meeting and it brings you present in the meeting and it creates some trust and a connection. Then you just do a quick review of any headlines or any big things that you want the leadership team or your leadership team to know about.

Mm-hmm.

And then you go over your rocks. Make sure that you're following up your priorities that you committed to for that quarter. And then it's just all the issues that have come up for the company. So we're not talking about all our celebrations. That's a different meeting.

Mm-hmm.

This is— we're here to solve issues and move the business forward. And I think that's the biggest things. That is, you know, if I have to tell you how great I am, this isn't the opportunity for that. That's a different meeting, right? This is let's move us forward. We learn a lot more from diving into our issues, then you have to celebrate your wins. But you learn from what's broken, what's your losses. So then, as a group, we just pick what are the top 3 issues to discuss. And you just break out the issues one at a time. And there's no finger-pointing. There's no fault. It's all respectful. Conflict is great.

Yeah.

But respectful conflict, knowing that we're here to solve problems and move the company forward. And there's no itinerary, no note-taker in the meeting. It's just solving the issues, which makes a to-do. And then the next meeting you just go, did you do your to-do? If you didn't, why not? Is there a bigger issue? Do we need to talk about it some more? And it's just the same structure every single meeting. It's extremely— that's probably one of the biggest pitfalls that people run into is they take an easy-to-use process and they try to tweak it the way they've always done it.

Yes.

And my biggest thing is follow the— if you're starting out, follow it to the T.

Trust the process.

Do not deviate.

Yeah. For people tuning in, Mike, if this is resonating with them, how can they get a hold of you if they want to pick your brain, get mentorship, bring you in to consult? Yeah.

So, LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn. mikeschulmer.com is my personal website. And LinkedIn is probably the best. But just call sunco.ca and ask for me. And I'm happy to. I'm always— I've had 30-some years of experience. So, having a quick coffee sometimes is always open to do that or a quick conversation.

I love that. The last part of this EOS framework was this idea of traction. Could you dig a little bit deeper into what that means?

So traction is how do you move the business forward? And there's been a lot of science that the human brain can't focus beyond 90 days really well because then you start starting something and then you leave it and you move on to something else. So the key component of traction is you have a vision to where you want to go 1 year from now. So where do you see it? That's the near term. And then you break it into 4 90-day chunks. First quarter, second quarter, third quarter. So what we do in EOS is we have an annual where we talk about our last year. We set this, look into the future a little bit. We say, okay, what's it going to look like 3 years from now? And what is our BHAG or our core target in 10 years going to look like? And you have to have a little bit of fuzzy visibility to 10 years. And we're 8 years into EOS. And I'll talk about the magic that happened there in a moment. And then the 3-year, you've got a pretty good picture to it, but the 1-year, you're extremely clear. Then you say, what are we going to do in the next 90 days to get us to that 1-year target? And then from that, you create your 4 to 6 company priorities. And they call that rocks, that whole sand, pebble, rocks analogy that they talk about.

Yes.

The rocks.

focus on the rocks first, you can fit more in. But if you put the sand and pebble, the rocks don't fit. Right. So what is it going to move the business forward? Like, we've got some AI rocks to have this quarter to embrace, you know, some AI tools and technology in our business that's going to help move us forward in the next year. So that's really traction is just that, making sure that we have a focus on rocks and that those 90-day targets towards your annual goal.

You mentioned the magic that you created. You want to dive a little bit deeper into that?

Yeah. So 8 years ago, it was 2017. And when we did our first 2-day annual with a facilitator and we, we came to, you know, what is our core target? We'd done all our values and our values that we created then still stand to today. And, you know, we can talk about values next, maybe. And we had to come up with this core target. And we said that, you know, we're about a $2 million company at the time, that by 2027, August 31st, we wanted to be a $20 million company, 70% recurring revenue. We were about 5% recurring revenue at the time, and we set a profit target. And unbelievable, like, it was— I'm like, how the heck are we ever going to get that? But we're like, yeah, we can do it. And we hit our— we exceeded our $20 million target this year, 2 years early. And it just goes to show you that you don't have to know exactly how you're going to get there. You just have to have a view to it and believe that it's possible. And it's unbelievable what happens. You know, we did a couple of acquisitions and is it luck? I don't know. Is it the power of intention and focus and following a process and system that works? I think that has a lot to do with it.

It's interesting because, you know, when you think about it, people go, oh, well, you just got lucky. But, you know, part of the luck thing is being in the right place at the right time. And had you not gone through the exercise to help you define the mental approach to your scaling and to the EOS and so on. You might have been in the right place, right time, but you would have been with the wrong mindset. How does acquisitions fit into this idea of scaling with purpose? Because I've talked to people who they have one restaurant. It's like, oh, okay, but you know what? I'm going to take up another restaurant, lead somewhere else in a different community, and we're going to turn it into the same concept. And it's like, but you have so many problems in your store right now. Yeah, yeah. But if I have the other store— Then I'm gonna have more revenue and I'll be able to solve the problems, right? And it's just like, it just seems like we become reactive. So how does acquisitions fit into this scaling with purpose? Tell us about, maybe can you, if you're allowed to share, can you talk a little bit about how you made a decision to acquire?

Yeah, for sure. So a stepping stone to acquiring is one of the biggest tools that we learned as a company is the delegate and elevate tool. Essentially what it gave us is the ability to focus on the proper things. So the way that it works is it's got 4 quadrants. What it is that I like to do, but I'm not great at. I love to do, but really shouldn't be. Love to do, and I'm awesome at. And then I'm not good at, and I shouldn't be doing. So I think I screwed up the quadrants. But essentially what it means, the most important one is the love to do, and I'm awesome at. And spending your time in that Stops the chaos that I used to create in the company. So I stay in my lane a lot more. The accountability chart, I stay in my box. You know, we have clear delineation in how we deal with things in the company, which allows you to scale and grow. So when we did our first acquisition, it was— we're a VoIP company, we're a VoIP managed service company, and the world of voice and ones and zeros and IT are coming together. And some of our biggest challenges were dealing with our clients' MSP, managed service provider, their IT companies, because they don't understand voice. They're like, one way to solve that is to buy an IT company.

Hmm.

So, you know, there's been a lot of movement in that. So we sometimes believe that stuff doesn't happen by accident. We talked about an acquisition in our 2-day annual, got back, and Sean, my business partner, got a call from somebody looking to sell their MSP the week we got home. So we're like, okay, that's pretty convenient.

Hmm.

And, uh, you know, maybe we're destined to buy this. So we went through, it was a small IT company in BC. It seemed like it was a really good fit. And so we, we did the purchase. Like all good things, the first one gives you lots of opportunities for learning. Got incredible people, lots of lessons learned, which, which set us up for our second acquisition. So just sometimes, even if things don't go quite the way you think they should, Like what I said earlier, learn from your failures and celebrate your successes. So we learned a lot from it. The very first one, we still grew. We've got some, like I said, amazing people and we've come a long way in the managed service provider space. We're now an MSSP. We do the security, cybersecurity side as well. Pretty proud of what we've accomplished in the last 3 years. But it, it set us up magically for the second one. So my biggest experience share would be if you're looking to do an acquisition, Spend the money and hire private equity people that do these acquisitions and look at it and help you run the numbers. And we didn't do that the first time around, and that was probably our biggest failing because there was some red flags that they would've caught. And the second time around, we used a mergers and acquisition company, and it was exceptional and made us national. So it's hire experts to help you with things. And sometimes if something's too good of a deal, Maybe you should look away. So your example, when you're talking about, I've got a restaurant, got some challenges here, I'm going to build another restaurant in another city and everything will be fine because I'll make more revenue. I would go, are you doing it because you're not happy? You want a distraction? You want a distraction from what you're doing here? Do you have the systems and processes to be able to replicate that into another restaurant?

That sounds like a whole box of It's, you know, I figure it's a business version of having a personal relationship problem and saying, you know what, we'll just have another kid. That'll bring us closer together.

Exactly. That'll make things way better. Sleep deprived and, uh, yeah.

Lots of reasons to lose lots of sleep and end up alone. It's really interesting because, you know, I love the phraseology that you just used was to hire experts. Why is it that we are so afraid of hiring coaches or subject matter experts who actually do the work? What is it about like mergers and acquisitions, like doing something acquisition? What is it about hiring a specialist that scares us so much that we figure, oh, how hard can it be? We'll just do it on our own.

I think it's a matter of the lack of knowledge that you think, how hard can it be? I bought houses. I bought cars. I bought all these different things. I run a business. how hard it can be for me to look at the numbers and come up with a price and buy it. And I can tell you, it's all the things that you don't see. It's all the things you don't run into unless you buy businesses all the time.

Right.

They look at— they hold the companies accountable. They help you with future forecasting. They help see if there's holes in the numbers. This is what they do day in and day out. And it seems expensive until You really, you know, you have a problem. It's never a problem until it is. And this is a way to make sure that if you do have a problem, you're done correctly. It's just like, why do I need a will? Well, so that things go smoothly after you die and your wishes are held. It's kind of like them making sure that all your i's are dotted and your t's are crossed.

It also gives us a distance, doesn't it? It gives us a distance because we're in honeymoon state. Like when the acquisition opportunity comes in, you've got this nice romantic feeling about, oh, what you're going to accomplish and the future is open and it sounds all wonderful. And because of that, we're kind of rosing out our glasses. And so, having a subject matter expert come in to be able to shake the tree, it's like, oh, didn't see this one. Oh, didn't see this either.

100%. That's it exactly. We're emotionally invested.

Yes.

Right? When you decide you want to buy something, already bought it, you're already driving it, you're already running it.

Yes.

And so you don't see that, you know, it doesn't have any back tires.

Sure.

You know, there's, there's, you take your reticular activating system, right? So we, you know, there's like a million bits of information coming at us at every minute and we filter it down to 130 or 116. So there's lots of things that we're not seeing. Yeah.

You mentioned the expense of it. When it comes down to bringing in a subject matter expert, a lawyer, an accountant, an acquisition specialist. Is there kind of like a benchmark you use as far as what you're trying to accomplish that dictates whether or not this is big enough that I need to hire somebody? Like, is there anything that's insignificant that you wouldn't bother saying it? Like, and I don't know what I mean by that, but I just, you know, I know that people watch it and they go, well, you know, I'm just going to buy— I'm buying a restaurant for $100,000. It's really not that much.

Right.

Or I'm buying a new storefront that is $12 a square foot, or— right, they justify it.

I think a matter of— if you have any doubt whatsoever, I would always get a lawyer. It's worth every penny to get lawyers to review it. Yeah. And if, you know, if you're buying a customer list, you know, for $5,000 or $10,000, that's probably fine. But then it's like, does the person you're buying the customer list from— are they going to just go out and resell their to those same customers because they decided they don't want to retire afterwards. So do you have proper paperwork in place to keep them from going after your clients? Right. So it's never a bad thing. Usually when you're doing acquisitions, it's a percentage of the cost of the acquisition, sometimes really small ones. So just cut and dried. Maybe you're just buying some assets and you value your assets, but are you valuing them correctly? Are you paying too much for them? Having an expert set of eyes on something or somebody that's done acquisitions before, somebody that you trust, to take a separate look at it. My recommendation is always get an extra set of eyes to see things from that different lens or different perspective because we're like you talked about earlier, we're emotion and we've already decided we want to buy the thing.

Right. Hey, when we come back, I'd like to talk a little bit more about some cautionaries and pitfalls that we should be aware of as we try to scale our business. And we'll get to that right after this.

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We are having an amazing discussion. I hope you're getting tons of value from it. As you can tell from our discussion today, you can tell that Mike and I are both deeply dedicated to supporting business leaders just like you. So, if you're in the midst of planning a leadership retreat, an industry conference, if you're looking for amazing content, a keynote speaker, or you're just needing some expert guidance, we're here and we're just a message away. Feel free to reach out to us. Have a conversation about your unique challenges or even reach out to discuss how maybe we can collaborate to help you achieve your goals. Our contact information is in the show notes. So, feel free to reach out. So Mike, values. You mentioned values early on. And as you were saying that, I was like, oh good golly! Values and a vision. You mean, it's not just the stuff on the poster? Like, there's more use for it?

Yeah, you know what? It's probably the single biggest foundational tool for a successful business. And, you know, our vision here is to make business communications easier for our clients. And we do it by being their trusted systems integrator. And so anytime we're looking at a new product or service or internal, you know, how do we do things? It's like, are we making business communications easier for our clients, right? Is this getting easy? And we live in a really complex world. You know, we got AI, we got VoIP, we got— we're very, very complicated. But when you take a step back, it's our job to simplify it so the customers at the end of the day They call us and they knew that— know that their business is going to be running smooth and their customers are going to be happy and they're going to have a higher customer experience, which equals more money for them.

Mm-hmm.

Right? And then when it comes to values, like I said, we created our values in 2017 and they haven't changed. And we talk— you can ask any one of my employees and they'll know our values. They're, we bring out the best in each other, we embrace change, we do the right thing, we do what it takes, and we're accountable to the outcome.

Hmm.

And it's in our DNA. So, when we hire people, we ask them the questions, tell us about the time when you felt like you brought out the best in each other or when you embraced change in your personal life or in a personal experience. When we do our quarterly conversations with our employees and their managers, the employee rates themselves to their values and say, do I do it all the time, most of the time, majority of the time? Am I sometimes a little weak or do I never align? We don't have any employees that don't align with our values. Sometimes, it's some conversations and tweaking. But we talk about it all the time. When we're meeting with clients, we talk about our values. We align our values to their values because we want to be a strategic partner, a trusted partner, not a vendor. So, it's important that we have alignment of values because we're not always going to be the least expensive because people are really important to us. So, we invest a lot in our people. And our systems to make sure that we can, you know, do those things.

You mentioned that it's part of your DNA. I've seen people all the time. I mean, probably the biggest stereotype that we have is that we have the poster up on the wall and it's like, oh, we have our vision. Yeah, we have our mission. We have our vision. But then nobody in the company really knows about it. What is it that you're doing differently to make sure that it is part of the DNA? How do you create that level of accountability?

Yeah. So we, we, one, we talk about it in the quarterly conversations. It's in the hiring process. It's in the firing process. I do a, a 30-minute call with all my staff every single week where we talk about— I bring in guests. And so, culture is a big thing. We talk about things that are going on, 1% improvements. And then most importantly, we have a town hall every month where we go over the values and the why of the values, and everybody shares in. We have core values contests. It's just talked about all the time. So, when we do customer presentations, our values are You know, front and foremost, when on our website you'll find our values. Like I said, test me, call up any Sunco employee and ask them what our values are. And, and unless they've only been working for us for a week or two, they, uh, they will know them, you know, and it's not just the values. It's also what makes you unique.

Yes.

Right.

Absolutely.

You know, that, that's a big, the big part of it too. You know, your competitors can have 2 things that are common with you, but never all 3. So if you ask my employees, what makes you different? It's our personal touch. We, you know, that people aspect, commitment to delivering quality and knowledge and experience. We've been doing this a long time, being in business in 25 years. And so that combined with our vision and our values, I think is one of the reasons for our success. So anytime we're looking to do new things, anytime we're looking to grow, add products, add services, or kill products and services, it's all through that lens of does this align with our vision?

Constantly testing against it.

And constantly testing. So, it's you don't just— a lot of companies, they have it. They put it on the wall and they forget. And I very often when I meet with people and I see they have values, I ask them, tell me about your values. And it's interesting like you said, very, very high percentage can't even name their own company values.

And they could be standing in front of the poster. They have to like, well, um.

100%. Values, you don't just develop them. You have to live them and breathe them. And if you do that, The business universe delivers. I think if you're true to them, you have them right.

We're in a really strange time. Like, I don't know outside of the pandemic if business owners have ever felt so out of control as they do now. It's all over the news. You know, whether it's a road being shut down because mass transit's being put through, the U.S. trade war, supply chains are being affected, prices are skyrocketing. How does EOS help businesses cope with all these, really, these changes that could be death to some businesses?

It's because it creates calm in the chaos. If you have a vision to your data, if you know who you are, you have your vision, your values, your purpose, all of that stuff nailed down, you're not questioning that. If you have data that you can look at a scorecard of your different departments and know we're performing, not performing, If there's an issue, you can pick the issue up. And that's probably one of the most important things, that you have regular meeting cadence, level 10 meetings. So when issues come up, you deal with them. We've got this tariff, we've got this happening, we've got this happening. What can we do to solve it? And the meetings are same time every week or every 2 weeks, depending on your meeting cadence. So if it doesn't solve it, it comes back as an issue again and you work again. So it's a matter of not having your head in the sand. EOS gives you the systems and tools to structure for success. And if you follow them, it's just rinse, wash, repeat. It's just like climbing a mountain. You know, you just one foot in front of the other, you run into a roadblock, you figure a way around it, and then you keep on going. And, you know, when we talked in the beginning about that ceiling, systems, tools, processes, you know, you just follow the process and you'll always break through the ceiling.

It sounds like it's a real, like, to expand the metaphor of Putting your head in the sand. This really feels like a periscope, being under the surface, being able to pop up above and be able to look in spite of all the conflict.

100%. I think one of the biggest things that it does, because it's really good at building trust in a culture, like all of my people, we have 70 staff and they all believe in who we are and what we do. They believe in our values. They believe in the culture. And they're not afraid to put up their hand, and we encourage them, don't be afraid. If you see something not working, you see something like there's a, you know, we're on a ship and we're about to hit, you know, Titanic crash into an iceberg, pull the alarm.

Yeah.

And let us know. And it's okay, even, you know, if something went wrong or you see something broken, let us know because we want to fix it. I don't care if somebody made a mistake. I just want to make sure that We mitigate the damage, right? Right. And creating that foundational trust in a company for people to put up their hand. And, and I think that's the biggest thing. And when you do that, then people like where they are.

Yeah.

And then they're not, you know, we've got this great grand resignation. They're not going to leave. They're going to want to stay. They're going to want to help. You know, you think about how much time we spend in our jobs. If you hate what you do, why do you do it? And so I think that's why, you know, as a company, our values are so important. And our focus on our people is so important. It's like I said, focus on 1% improvements.

Right.

So, if we can help our people become 1% better on how they show up in their life at home, with their friends, with their family, with their kids, they're going to show up 1% better at work. And if we compound that on time, that 1% is going to help bring up their neighbor or their workmate at the cooler next door. And as a company, we just grow and change together, right? And I think that's the foundational principles that I think are really strong.

I love it. And I so enjoy talking to you because you're actually living it. It's not just theoretical to you. It's something that you've proven, you've tested, you've developed. For people tuning in, my biggest fear is that somebody will hear about something new like this that in their mind is brand spanking new. And it's like, oh, that's what I have to do. And then, they kind of implement without having strategy behind it. And it becomes kind of the policy of the month. What kind of cautionaries and pitfalls should we be aware of So, as we want to start implementing and doing the change, that we should really be aware of?

Yeah. So, it's, you know, you start with, you know, reading the, you know, the book, or whether it be Scaling Up or EOS, Traction. And then when you implement, and if you like it, stay true to it and hire an implementer. There's grants and things. There's EOS implementers, Scaling Up implementers that are trained to help keep you on track. And so, we still, we've been 8 years into it, and we have, an implementer that runs our quarterlies, runs our annual meetings so that we can focus on being in the bit or on the business instead of trying to guide a meeting.

Right.

Right. And so it's keeping hiring those experts to keep you on track just because we're 8 years in. I understand EOS inside and out. I could run the meetings, but it's hard to run the meetings and participate in them at the same time. So it's a matter of getting a facilitator is probably my biggest advice to that. But then, just staying true like I said earlier and not modifying it and going, it'll work better if I do this. Right.

Trust the process.

Trust the process. That's trust it. Give it a chance.

Mike, this has been such a great conversation. Do you have any last thoughts about what we've been talking about today?

The biggest thing I'd like to challenge people to start with is if you're a small business, take the time and write out an accountability chart when you look at the key components of every business. And then give it some thought to go, which one do you hate doing the most? Right. And so just, just, you know, that whole delegate and elevate, try to stay in what your passion is, try to say what you love to do and you're amazing at, and the stuff that not good at and don't like doing, try to find a home because I guarantee you there's somebody out there that loves to do that stuff that you don't like. And that's the best way to grow and expand your business.

It's interesting you say that because I'll wrap up with one story that I came across and that is a, a local garage here. I took my car in to be serviced, and then when I came back to go pick it up, the owner was behind the desk making, doing all the invoices, his hands full of grease, and he's like harried, and you could tell that he's stressed. And it's like, why don't you have somebody to help you? He says, I used to have somebody to help me, but then I was, I had so many employees, I was too busy kind of running the business. I couldn't work on cars, which is the reason why I want, I created a garage because I love working on cars. And so I stopped him and I said, why don't you hire your boss? And he went, what? I said, why don't you hire a business manager to run your business? You're still the owner, but you have somebody who is magical at running businesses who checks in with you. So once a day you get together, you talk about the day. Once a week you talk about your goals, but you actually have somebody who's making the decisions for the business and lets you work on cars. Why haven't you considered that? And he says, because I'm the owner. I never thought to hire my own boss.

Yeah, I know. I know. Stick with what you're good at and you love to do. And yeah, you know, that's where the magic happens. Yeah, it's when we try to get too outside of our box and do too many things. Yeah, that we can't get through that ceiling and we bounce off into oblivion or sadness or whatever.

Absolutely.

And enjoy life at the same time.

Sure.

Life's too short. If you can enjoy life while you work, that's great too. Thank you, Marc.

Thank you so much. Could you remind everybody one more time how they can get a hold of you?

Yeah, so, uh, sunco.ca, mikeschonberger.com, or LinkedIn.

Thank you so much for sharing with us today. This has been absolutely brilliant. Thank you so much, Mike.

Yeah, appreciate the conversation. It was awesome.

Why don't you let me know if this was of value to you? As always, my offer stands. If you'd like 30 minutes of my time to help you brainstorm your business with you and your team, feel free to book some time on my online calendar. The link is in the show notes. It's the one that's marked meetwith.marchaine.com. It would be my absolute honor to be of service to you. And while you're at it, why don't you go ahead, leave a review about this episode? I'd love to get your feedback. Was this of value to you? Did you pick up any nuggets? And of course, if you haven't done so yet, please make sure that you subscribe to the podcast. I'd love to get to 2,000 subscribers. Yeah, I'm excited about that. I was gonna say 200,000. I'd like to get to 200,000, but I know it's baby steps. So, thank you so much for joining me today. My name is Marc Haine. I hope you stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope you dare to be the exception.

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