Being a Visionary Without Being The Visionary | Casey Brown & Alex Hayes

Hey, everybody. A quick update to this week's episode. Since I first sat down with this week's guests, Casey Brown and Alex Hayes from Boost Profits, the company has reorganized into two sister organizations, Boost Pricing and Braveheart Sales Performance. When we recorded the episode, Casey was an unofficial visionary sitting in what they called the innovator seat, while her co founder, Gretchen served as the organization's true visionary in the visionary seat. Since reorganizing Boost Profits into two separate businesses, this week's guests, Casey and Alex are now the official visionary and integrator duo of Boost Pricing.

Having some insight into yourself, which is the one thing that I think is really important for visionaries who want to have an excellent integrator, is to actually take some thoughtful time to say, what are my weaknesses? You know, I think about LMA and most people that I know that have this visionary mindset pre EOS before realizing what it was and putting a label on it. They want to be good at it because they inspire people.

Hey everybody, this is Mark C. Winters, co author of rocketfuel, an expert EOS implementer. Welcome to the Rocket Fuel podcast where visionary and integrator duos from entrepreneurial companies share a behind the scenes look at their relationship. These amazing leaders blend their unique skills to create what we call Rocket fuel. Today, I'm thrilled to welcome my two guests from Boost Profits, a sales training and coaching company. Casey Brown is the co founder, president and innovator and Alex Hayes is the integrator. When Casey co founded Boost Profits with her friend Gretchen Gordon, a sales training and coaching company, their shared visionary skills were part of what made them successful. But once they started operating on eos, it became clear that they couldn't both be in the visionary role. And Casey wasn't thriving in the integrator role either. So what's the right fit for a founder and president if not in the visionary integrator duo? In this episode, Casey and Alex break down the emotional and strategic process they went through to hire Alex as the integrator, nurture a culture of authenticity and vulnerability, and run their business on EOS purely and accountably. We're going to begin the show where Casey shares how her leadership role evolved to fit her strength as a visionary outside of the official visionary role. Let's dive in.

I have been in business for a little over a decade on my own, at first as a solopreneur and then I built a small team. So when I merged with my business partner, Gretchen Gordon, and we formed our new entity, that was right at the time I'D been familiar with EOS for a long time, but we wanted to start our new enterprise off on the right foot. And so we chose EOS as our operating system. In working with our implementer, uncovering which of us made more sense to be in the visionary and integrator, it really wasn't a question in our mind at that time, like, are we the two right people to have these roles? That wasn't a question that we asked ourselves. It was more a question of which one of us is going to take which role. Because there were two leaders in the organization, There were two of us, there's two positions and the VI relationship. And at that time, and this is still true of the two of us, between Gretchen and I, I am the better integrator, which does not make me a good integrator.

The bar was low.

We're both visionaries and, you know, taking the crystallizer assessment, that's, that's clear from those results. But there's also other sort of psychographic.

Realities just to kind of interject there. I was just looking at your score. So your visionary score was an 81 and your integrator score was a 60. Do you happen to know what Gretchen's are?

I know that Gretchen was a 94 on visionary.

Got it.

And I don't know where she sat on integrator, but lower.

Okay, so that's perfect. That gives us a sense of kind of how much more wired as a visionary Gretchen is than Casey. And then Casey, you know, more wired as a visionary than an integrator. Perfect. So pick it up.

That's right. But the gap isn't huge. And I've, you know, I'm an engineer. I like process, I like data. There were some, some things that tempted us both into believing that that was gonna work. And we started out that way, but it did not take very long. I mean, a matter of months. It was clear that, you know, some of the elemental characteristics of an integrator were really missing for me. And one of the ones that I'll just mention here is lma. I don't enjoy it. I'm not good at it. I'm impatient about it. I believe. I love, love, love people. So I love people. I love our people. I'm very committed to having a culture that's healthy and, and for them to have good lma, I just don't want to be the one to do it. And what we know about anything, we don't like, we avoid it. We procrastinate. We don't invest in getting better at it. And so that was one. But there's several other things that Alex is great at and that good integrators should be great at that I wasn't. And so it became just clear that for the goals we had for our organization to grow, it couldn't be me. And so we had flirted with the idea for a short time of okay, well, we'll just both be visionaries and then we'll find an integrator, we'll hire an integrator. All of this was sort of coming to the forefront of our consciousness around the time of the US conference last year, 2021's conference. And I stood up in a session that Gino, you know, spoke, and then he closed the session with a Q and A. And I stood up and I described our two visionary problem and asked for some advice. And he was very clear with his prescription, there can be just one visionary. And he said some reasons why. And he said, if there's a spot on the accountability chart for the other of you that doesn't take the visionary seat, then great. But to try to have a two headed visionary seat is like having a two headed monster. It doesn't work. So there was a little bit of frustration, grieving, I don't know, maybe a little bruised ego in sort of demoting myself off of that level of the organization and putting myself in an accountability chart below a new person that we're going to hire and bring in. But ultimately that was a very short, bruising process. I got over it quickly and I'm much more committed to the good of the company than I am, you know, being in some senior position.

So, so what was the seat? What was the seat that you moved into?

It's the perfect seat for a homeless visionary. It's an innovation team, so I get to make stuff up, invent products and services, develop content. So it's ideating and visioning in a lot of ways that most visionaries, or I guess all visionaries are naturally inclined to do, but honestly freed up from certainly the responsibilities that were so constraining to me of an integrator, but even some of those of a visionary. I think there was not much of a discussion, and there didn't need to be much of one, about who should sit in the visionary seat. It was clearly Gretchen. But I say, although I'm not the visionary, I'm still a visionary, that's still kind of who I am. And so how do we unlock the best potential of what I'm good at and what I'm strong at for the organization.

So I want to pick at a couple of different pieces of this. So one is, you know, you mentioned in the integrator seat that LMA was not the thing that was your joy. You could do it, but it wasn't something that really gave you energy and made you filled with joy. LMA for anybody that's not familiar, leadership, management, accountability, Right. In this new seat in innovation, do you have any direct reports internally, we.

Call that team the Mad Scientist Club and the only members are Gretchen and I. So officially, I suppose, you know, in eos pure, I have to LMA her, but it's a visionary, managing a visionary, sort of, you know, blind leading the blind is a term that comes to mind. I don't know that I'm doing any LMA there, but we do a lot of co creation. She does some things on her own, I do some and things on my own. And it sort of funnels up through my accountability to the organization to manage innovation.

And so then who do you report to in that seat?

Alex. We all work for Alex.

You report to Alex. Okay, so you report into the integrator. So you're on the leadership team in that seat as well, right?

That's correct.

Okay, so just trying to paint this picture for everyone so they can kind of see how it all fits together. So we've got Gretchen as the true visionary. We've got Alex as the integrator. We've got Casey leading this Mad Scientist Club with the visionary also participating in a seat down there as a member of that club. And so it all goes together. And so then you also, you still sit in the. Well, let me come back to this. So Alex, so let's kind of bring you into the picture. So Casey and Gretchen kind of figure out, all right, we need somebody that's truly made to be a great integrator to bring into this thing. And so they kind of start figuring that out. Meanwhile, where are you? Where are you in the world and what's your situation and how did you kind of get brought into this conversation at that stage?

Yeah, I think serendipity is probably the best word for it. So I had the opportunity of actually hiring Casey with her previous organization. I was a sales leader and was on an executive team and was feeling like I didn't have what I needed. I was feeling unfulfilled in my role. I loved my team, I loved the lma, I loved managing my people. But I didn't see a future in that role and it wasn't fulfilling for me and anyone that has met Casey knows that you want to just be around her all the time. And so after hiring her, I followed her. I listened to anything she put out, read anything she put out, not just because I thought it was great for my organization, but just because I felt very connected to her in a very short amount of time. So when I saw the merger happen with her and Gretchen, I actually reached out to her and said, where can I be on your team? And at that time, there was not necessarily a space spot in that moment, but come to find out, they were already having this conversation of, what does that look like? How do we find an integrator? I had no idea what EOS was. I didn't know what an integrator was. I was, I think, really fortunate in that Casey had seen me lead my team when I hired her. So she saw the relationship I had with my team and at least knew that I had some strengths there. And fortunately, I think for all parties, they still went through the recruiting and onboarding and hiring process for the role. And I went through all of that. I think it made our trust stronger. I think it built our relationship through the interview process. But I.

So let's talk about it. So I want to hear more about what that process looked like, and actually, I'll come right back to you. But Casey, from, you know, kind of behind the scenes, what's going on at this point with you and Gretchen, and when you're figuring out, you know, what we. Here's this person who I know she's reached out. Maybe she's good. We need to go through some kind of process. How did that all work? How did you decide how to approach filling that seat?

Well, it's a great question. I think the timing just really worked out very beautifully. As Alex sort of described there, she reached out and said, hey, need a sales leader. Just kind of threw her hat in the ring to be part of the team in really any capacity that made sense. That was still. While I was fighting against the integrator role, but hadn't quite come to terms, that didn't make sense for me. For me. So, you know, it was a very loose amount of communication between Alex and I. But as Gretchen and I got clear that we wanted to hire, as we call it, a real integrator, which she is and I was not. We know that part of our visionary tendency and this, you know, kind of relates it back to the lma. We also make decisions very quickly. We're both high. Quick starts on the Colby Index. It's likely that we would make a hiring mistake if we didn't follow a really rigorous process. So we really spent some time constructing a hiring process and then an onboarding process that could insert some objectivity and a little bit of dispassionate decision making, because that's not where we specialize into our process. And so we started the recruiting process at that same time when Alex reached out to me and I let her know we were going to be hiring for this. She hadn't heard of integrated. She hadn't heard of eos. I told her a little bit about it. She went out and bought traction. She brought Get a grip. She took the Colby that day and so, you know, showed a lot of interest right off the bat.

Wait, she didn't get rocket fuel, though. She's coming in for an integrator spot and she didn't read rocket fuel. I'm concerned maybe she did.

I would say you. You left out the most important one. Casey actually did. Don't worry, it's over here.

Add away. Add away.

Oh, I think it was rocket fuel and traction that you read. Not good, right?

There we go.

Okay, I stand corrected. Thank you both for keeping me on. So we posted for the position, we marketed it. We had about a thousand candidates in two days. We had to shut down the ad.

Wow.

Alex was one of them. So anybody who has known to us had to apply through the same process. And I feel like, you know, Gretchen and I agreed that we owed it to our organization to follow our process and not to be tempted because we knew someone or liked them or had a good feeling about them. And, you know, we could talk more about what those steps were, but it was involved. And at the other side of that, Alex was our choice, even though she had been a known candidate at the beginning.

Did you get outside help for that process or did you really homegrow it?

Yeah, well, kind of. The design of the process was pretty homegrown. And it was designed to allow us to both have interaction and contact the team members. Other team members have interaction content. In particular, the final on site, in person interview that we brought three folks in for. I'm very proud of the design of that interview day. And Alex can talk about it from her experience, but we asked people to prepare their own onboarding plan and present it to us. We did issue processing. We basically IDS with these candidates, a real issue for our business, just to see how's the chemistry, how's their decision making, what kind of questions are they asking? So the benefit of that for our organization was we had three different very smart people present an onboarding plan which we were able to utilize and learn from. But we also had some really fascinating insights into a very thorny issue we'd been dealing with in our business for some time with this outside perspective. So it was sort of a double whammy. We got to do what we wanted to do, which is evaluate the candidates. But we also accomplished some goals for the business. So mostly homegrown, mostly designed by us for us. But there were two outside organizations that we used. One was essentially someone that could help us market the ad in the right ways and get it in front of the right eyeballs. And the other is an organization that is probably known to a lot of companies running NEOs. It's Vision Spark. And we had them be part of our process. We didn't use them for holistic hiring effort, but we use them for assessing the candidates with their achiever assessments and giving us some qualitative input on their ability to manage and lead based on their interview with that candidate.

Great. Thank you for that. So, Alex, I'm curious to hear your perspective here now. So they've got this process you're going through with, you know, 2,000 candidates or whatever going through the gauntlet here. You've started to hear things like EOS and Visionary Integrator and these new terms, and you're going to have to come in and basically, you know, present your case for onboarding. So how did you approach that as somebody who really wants this? I mean, you've identified this as a target before, before you even knew they were going to do this search, and so you really want it. How'd you approach getting your homework done so you could go in and win the pitch?

Well, it's interesting, and I don't know that I won the pitch necessarily, but hopefully from a holistic perspective, obviously I did better because I got the job.

But I think apparently you won.

Yeah, it was part of it for sure. I think my mindset at that time, because Casey explained they were so open, they were so transparent with Casey and Gretchen about where they had been and what their goals were. Before I even made it to Columbus, they flew me out there to do this presentation, this onboarding plan. By then I had read Traction, I had read Rocket Fuel, and so I felt like I had a good understanding of what the role was that they wanted and how they wanted to operate their organization. You know, they were very clear that their goal was EOS Pure. And to get there was the goal. And they were trying and they had outside resources to help them do that. But with that in mind, it was pretty easy just to go in and ask them a lot of questions, which I think was revealing for all of us to say, where is it pure? What's working and what's not working. So for me, it was 30, 60, 90 days of essentially getting us closer to EOS purity and getting me in the seat, which that's still day by day, right? I mean, we don't have every process mapped. We don't have me in the seat exclusively. I do a lot of other things. Casey does a lot of other things, Gretchen does. Everyone in our organization does a lot of stuff. We have a small, nimble organization. However, the main goal in that timeframe was for me to really deeply understand the different aspects of the organization. And I mapped it all out based off of, essentially based off of traction, which was a lot of fun because it gave me an opportunity to kind of do a research project on what is this EOS stuff, but also based on a lot of resources that Casey and Gretchen gave me. They gave me their whole VTO ahead of time. They gave me a high level understanding of the accountability chart and who the people were on it. So I had tools to start that and then I was able to start labeling where I had questions and where and ask those questions. And then similarly, I didn't know we were going to do ids. I didn't really have a concept of what that was. But I.

Hang on, let me stop you for a second. Were you asking the questions before the interview or were you asking the questions live during the interview?

Mostly live during the interview. So instead of just telling them what I wanted to do in 30, 60, 90 days, I had a pretty in depth PowerPoint deck of all the gaps that I had of information. Because realistically, the first three months of starting with any company is getting your feet under you anyway. I didn't expect them to have all the answers. A lot of my plan was in the first 90 days, we have to find the answers to all these questions if you don't have them, and we have to align that they're the right answers. Are we going the right direction or are we all on the same page? So that was my focus for that part of the interview.

I want to add just one thing, if that's okay, Mark. I think our culture was on display throughout the entire process and an example. So we are very transparent. We're willing to be vulnerable and wrong. It's part of our team health I think to be like that to one of our core values is human and honest. And so before Alex and the other final candidates had come to town, Gretchen and I each recorded a short video. And it basically said, here's what isn't great about us yet. We're aspirationally, we want to be great at everything. But here's what you need to know about where some gaps exist. And some of those were sort of business stuff, like, you know, we have some process issues like X and Y and Z, and some of them are more sort of personal. And then that carried through on the final interview. We talked about the individuals on the team, including Gretchen and I, and said, here's where we're really strong, and here's where there's some gaps, some opportunities. And then we asked Alex to kind of share the same for herself. And so I think, and I'll let Alex speak to how it was received by her. But I believe an important thing that we designed in was showing and we had, you know, our mission, vision, values, core focus, all that kind of stuff on our hiring page in videos. But I think it was really important to us that someone who would come to work for us would be attracted by that kind of environment, not repelled by it 100%.

So, Kasey, this is for you. What was it that sort of jumped out about that phase of the hiring process, about Alex? What was it about how she approached that whole live interview that sort of helped her distinguish herself from the other two final candidates? I guess.

Yeah, well, they were all strong. What I would say is that the two things that a year later still really stand out to me, that I felt high degree of confidence that she was the right choice. One was just authenticity. It sort of matched our transparency. She wasn't daunted by. She jumped right in. She shared authentically. She shared what she doesn't feel. She's very strong at where gaps might, you know, be for her as she onboards into the role. And it just was, you know, really nice connection that arose from a mutual, you know, willing to be open. That was one thing is authenticity. And the second, and I think especially because Gretchen and I both struggle with this, it was such an appealing gap to fill is her love for lma, leading, managing, and holding accountable. And I mentioned before how much I love people. I love our team. I think we have the most talented, committed humans on the planet working in our company. And the idea that they were being essentially poorly managed by me in the integrator role really broke my heart. I didn't know how to do it better. I didn't necessarily think the right thing was for me to figure out how to get better. It was to put someone in the role that could do it. And it's clear that that's where Alex's heart is supporting me.

I love that. It's so amazing. And I experienced this revelation myself where, you know, along my own journey, there have been times when I've managed a lot of people and I thought I was pretty good at it, right. And then, you know, I see somebody do it that's really great at it. It's like, man, they're so much better at that than I ever was. And so just let them do that thing and then let me go do this thing that I actually, you know, maybe am okay at. And we're all better. So it's cool to hear you describe that. So on the process here, how long from the time, Casey, that you and Gretchen said, all right, let's really be intentional about filling this seat with a real integrator to the time that you actually brought Alex on board, how long was that cycle?

Not terribly long. So Alex might remember the dates a little bit better than me. But I think the real, like, coming, you know, the sort of the genesis of the commitment to. To do this was coming out of that EOS conference, so end of April. And then we, you know, had to write the job posting and, you know, get ourselves organized on compensation and all the other things. And I believe, Alex, you were heading off on vacation when we called and made that offer to you. Was that August? Okay, there you go. August. And she started in September, so. And that, you know, with her notice and her vacation and everything, we, you know, it was about a month before she started. So she's been on board a year now. So, yeah, four months. Three or four months, Yep.

Okay, so that's a good benchmark for people to hear because, you know, it's not an easy hire. And what I hear you describing is a very thorough, well thought out process. Getting some help in the areas to support that where you felt like you needed it. And then really a commitment and discipline to actually stick to the process. Because far too often we see folks that are in a lot of pain, right? They need somebody, they want them now. And so here's a human that's alive standing in front of me. They must be the right person. Let's get them in there. Right? And so they want to just kind of jump ahead. And of course, that often comes back to bite them later. So that's really cool. All right, so now we move to a world where we've got Alex in this seat as the integrator. She's beginning this ramp up, this onboarding that, you know, she's participated in designing. And then, Kasey, you kind of start to move into this world where you can really, again, live in the owner's box, live in this Mad Hatter's club. And so, Kasey, from your perspective, I want to hear, how would you describe, in not too many words, just the difference of your overall experience of sitting in that integrator seat, trying to be great versus sitting in the seat that you sit in now and really being free to also play in the owner's box?

Well, of course, like everything in business, it was a perfectly straight line towards the goal. Right? No, the reality is, of course, it's been a bit messy, and it isn't perfect. Now, for anyone who didn't attend, my title of my keynote at the EOS conference was Confessions of a Reformed Control Freak. So letting go of the vine and letting Alex elevate into that role and assume that role with all the power and talent she has hasn't always been easy for me. Some of that is just, I suppose, natural to every kind of visionary. But also, you know, given how detail oriented I am, which is sort of uncharacteristic of visionaries, there are times I've gotten really in the weeds in Alex's lane, and she's very graciously, let me go for a little while and then say, hey, this is my lane. I got this. This is the integrator's job. So go ahead.

Let me dig at that a little bit, Casey, because you're using the word control. And when Gino and I first started to write the book, I came in with sort of this predisposition that control was just a challenge for all visionaries. They just have this controlling nature. What I found, though, as I talked to more and more, and it really has proved to be a broader pattern. It's really about trust. And it's not that they want to hang onto things. It's that they're scared. And there's something that they've let go somewhere in their past and handed it off to somebody to take care of, and that person didn't take good care of it, and they messed it up, they tore it up, whatever, and then you had to jump back in and put all the pieces back together and make it right again. And they're scarred by that and probably got a lot of those Kind of scars. And so it's really this trust thing. And then the other thing I see a lot is it's almost a. It's an inertia, it's a habit thing that's going on where I've always done this and it's just I almost forget to stop doing that.

I think that's the case with both of my visionary people, whether or not they're in the visionary seat or not. And I have more than one. I mean, we provide services to clients and we have excellent coaches and I have a lot of visionary brains on the team in general. And I think it's habit more than anything because I have never felt more trusted.

Interesting.

I've never been in a role where I felt more trusted or in a structure that supports being trusted as much as this with both Casey and Gretchen as well as the broader team. But it is. It's them getting back into habits. And again, it goes back to having some insight into yourself, which is the one thing that I think is really important for visionaries who want to have an excellent integrator is to actually take some thoughtful time to say, what are my weaknesses? You know, I think about LMA and most people that I know that have this visionary mindset pre EOS before realizing what it was and putting a label on it. They want to be good at it because they inspire people. So if you inspire people and people want to follow you, that doesn't mean you're good at leading them, managing them, and holding them accountable. But it does set you up to be an excellent visionary and to be an excellent business owner. So having that self reflection beforehand is really important. And then being able to say, this is where I actually want to play, so it's okay to let go. That's a bad habit. I'm going to let go and I'm.

Going to try it.

And then sometimes it still might not work. I mean, ultimately I've failed. I have failed in the last year more times than I can count. But luckily I don't have to. And so far, Casey and Gretchen aren't counting. And same. Right. I don't have a tally of all the times Casey and Gretchen got in my lane or. Or struggled not, you know, not playing, honestly.

So, Alex, have you figured out what the most effective way is to give Casey or Gretchen feedback to that end? Right. So team up or whatever that you're doing something here you don't need to be doing. You're doing something here I need you to not do. You know, in a way that doesn't make them as defensive. So how do you do it?

I address it as quickly as possible, and I address it as head on as possible. One of the things that I have struggled with and still struggle with sometimes is attacking an issue as quickly as I see it and knowing that that can hurt feelings, it can hurt mine. Like, I can come into a conversation and feel a lot of things about where the conversation might head. And I may or may not bruise egos when it comes to my own. Casey's or Gretchen's. One of the things that I love about working with those two is that I can do that. And again, it's not grudges. It's really open conversation. And it took time for us to build a relationship strong enough to do that. But they're eager to take feedback. They can be owners and a visionary and take feedback, and they're eager to take it so that their company grows. And that is something that I saw from the moment that I started the interview process with them is they really wanted to improve not just their organization, but as individuals. They really want to do better for themselves, for their team, for their company. I think the biggest thing for me is just not waiting, not letting anything fester, not letting anything build. Because as soon as that happens, then everybody feels it. Everyone in the organization feels it. We have a small company, but I've been in larger organizations, and when you have a leadership team that isn't on the same page, when you have a VI duo that's not on the same page, everyone feels it and they feel it right away.

I love it. Yeah. Having an ownership that isn't ego driven is super helpful. Right. Because it's back to the owner, employee rules of the game. And just because you're an owner doesn't mean you have the right to employment, frankly. And certainly not in a specific seat. You really gotta own the seat, be the best that we can be. You gotta be the right person in terms of core values and gwc, in terms of what we need that seat to do. And frankly, probably need to hold you to a higher standard because everybody's looking at you. And if you pull that owner card out and go, yeah, but I'm an owner. Yeah, I'm a partner. I'm a whatever. And so those rules don't apply, then the whole thing kind of starts to come unwound. So it's so great when you've got owners that can truly, you know, put the greater good of the firm first. So I hear that. So, Kasey, when Alex has given you this feedback on some things that are, you know, it's part of your letting go process, part of undoing those habits, leaning into that trust, whatever you want to call it. Are you experiencing the way she's describing it, where the way she's doing it is kind of breaking down the barriers and doing it, or is there sometimes when, you know, you get approached with something that's kind of like the hackles kind of come up and you just kind of feel defensive and old habits start to want to fight it. Do you ever feel that tendency to want to kind of fight with it?

Sure. I mean, both things are true. I think, you know, there isn't one reaction to feedback like this. I think we are sort of evolving, you know, our trust, our depth of knowledge of who each other are has grown. The one thing that I can say, and this is true across our team, but, you know, I'll speak to Gretchen and. And Alex and I, because we're. The three of us are the ones that occupy these psychographic seats, and those two are in the VI role. I never have, ever, one time, no matter if my feelings were hurt, if my hackles were up, if I felt defensive, or have ever doubted the intention behind the communication of either one of them. And I think that is rooted in trust. It's rooted in trust of who they are as human beings, but also their commitment to. To the good of the organization. And that, I think, is the. I don't know, you'd say sort of the lubricant for the friction that can come up from disagreeing, because they're only disagreeing and going to the mat, you know, on something that I don't see the same way, because they want the company to thrive and they want to be the best we can be. So it doesn't mean I never have that feeling. Of course I do. Less and less. And we're all very direct. So let's say deal with this. Let's speak about it. Let's solve this. I think another thing that we're all very committed to is team health and especially leadership. Team health. And if there's festering wounds of resentment, that'll kill our company faster than anything. So I don't think any of us tend to hold on to stuff or bring it up. Hey, this happened. I felt really frustrated about the way you talked about that. Again, according back to that core value of human and honest, get it out.

On the table and deal with it.

Yeah. I think the other thing, too, is that it's never personal. Just like putting a bow on that statement of, I have never received feedback that was about who I am or something that was supposed to hurt me, you know, and that's different. I've been in situations where the feedback you get is personal and it's not something that you can necessarily even change. Whereas I have felt confident, to Casey's point, that feedback that I get to improve, whether it be the way I interact with individuals on the team or an idea for the organization, or we're talking about financials, I mean, it's the whole gamut that it's never a personal attack when you get feedback. Sometimes it feels like it because you care. But again, to Casey's point, we all care really deeply about each other and getting better, and we take the time to know what might sting. And you have to really trust and you have to know your counterparts to be able to get to that point. But the only way to do that is to tackle it and give the feedback and take the feedback and practice.

Great.

One of the things that I really appreciate about this leadership team in our culture is the willingness to take that time and name the unnamed thing. So it just happened earlier this week. Alex and Gretchen and I were on the phone talking about something. We were not in agreement about how we should handle it, you know, without getting any of the specifics, not important for the story. But Gretchen was upset, and we were talking about the issue. And then I basically kind of called timeout and said, let's pause on the issue. You seem really upset about this. It sort of surprises me, but I want to understand what's going on with you. What are we not talking about? What are we not saying? And I think that kind of calling out the subtext from a place of caring is not particularly common in my experience. And I think it makes a huge difference in our ability to stay healthy and get the biggest issue solved all the time and get as much done as we do as an organization, 100%.

There's a lot of power in making something visible that's going on. It's not like it wasn't there before. It was there, but now we're just actually looking at it and can deal with it. I love that. So I want to explore same pageness with you a little bit. And so, Alex, I want to start with you. So talk to me about how you and Gretchen in the pure visionary integrator seats. How does your same page discipline look? How do your same page meetings look? Talk to me about that.

Candidly imperfect.

Okay.

You know, one of the things that we deal with that I think most smaller organizations deal with or companies that are early in their journey with EOS is that Gretchen is also in another seat. She's in a sales seat. And I think it works mainly because Casey and Gretchen are both gracious enough to not play the owner's card. They certainly ideate like salespeople and make up solutions and I rein them in within that seat, but I never have to rein them in as a visionary or as a mad scientist. I get to rein them in as salespeople, which is nice. So right now we are playing the game of where is the time most valuable to our organization is the time right now most valuable for a tried and true EOS visionary integrator? Same page meeting, not in the last couple months. A lot of our VI same page ness happens within the leadership team transparently. The thing that I think is really important is that we are religious about our issue processing. And that's with complete open transparency with Gretchen, with Casey, with our sales leader, with myself. Things make it to an issue list. They either make it to the VI issue list or they make it to the leadership issue list. Because we're small and because we're really open, a lot of those issues make it to the leadership team issues list. There's really not that much that needs to get processed, but on a VI level, because again, we're tiny, we're nimble. From a leadership perspective, it's four people. We are true from an accountability chart perspective. So when I say issue processing, we tackle them, we tackle them hard, we process them in their entirety, and then we get to move on. And I think that if you are religious about issue processing, whether you do it on a piece of paper or you do it with the software, you can't miss the most important things within the organization. So I issue process with Gretchen. I issue process as a leadership team. I issue process within the different parts of the accountability chart too. And I think again, all of us putting our issues on there throughout the week makes it really efficient. But it also, it gives people an opportunity to put something somewhere, take a minute, be able to formulate their thoughts around it, and then present it in a way that makes sense, that's concise, that we can solve quickly.

I love all of that. And I just, I caution you, encourage you is probably a better word to keep protecting that time to have a dedicated space for you and the visionary just to do whatever doesn't get covered by that. And sometimes it's nothing great. Then, boom, we can hop right through that. But other times there's things that seem to, if we didn't have that time, we just wouldn't talk about them. And a lot of times they are the more nebulous, bigger, deeper things that can be super high leverage or really are kind of a root thing for what's going on. But having that more frequent communication where, you know, as things come up and leveraging your level 10. Awesome, right? And just kind of day to day being sure that you're really taking full advantage of all those opportunities is super healthy. So I love hearing that. And so Casey, you're obviously there in the level 10. So participating in all that, you're kind of seeing and feeling that. How do outside of that, Casey, you and Gretchen stay on the same page as owners of the business.

We have a habit of going out for a happy hour and talking over a long dinner, maybe a couple drinks, and connecting on a very regular basis. We also have scheduled five days a week, a 30 minute lunch huddle between the two of us. When I say it's scheduled five days a week, it probably happens once out of every two weeks. So for sure, once, maybe twice in a couple of weeks, we have 30 minutes together to pass through a couple of things. And sometimes that turns somewhat tactical, but most often it's very much kind of, I guess I would say visionary to visionary, owner to owner, you know, what are we seeing here that we need to talk about with Alex or the leadership team, you know, which is only one other person or, you know, what's on our kind of horizon as owners, that we need to just talk to each other about it. Also, sometimes there's not kind of like you said with the VI meeting, sometimes there's nothing. But it's still really healthy for us to connect. We usually bring, you know, we're sitting at Zoom, I'm sitting there with my salad, she's sitting there with her peanut butter sandwich, and we just chat a little bit. And some of it's just sort of cultivating the relationship, staying in touch with why in the first place, this was fun, even when sometimes the reality of the day isn't very fun and bolster each other's confidence, give each other critical feedback that we wouldn't maybe feel comfortable or that it's appropriate to give in front of anybody else on the team, including the other leaders. So between those two things, that's our primary way of kind of staying on the same page as owners.

Love it. All right, so last question. So there's somebody out there Listening owners, partners of the business. They're both kind of visionary, and they're sitting there going, well, why can't we just be two visionaries? We'll have an integrator, but we'll have two visionaries. And so hearing that, what would you tell them as to why your structure of having one dedicated visionary seat, one dedicated integrator seat, and then another visionary type power in an engaged role in the organization? Why is that better?

A lot of reasons. A couple that pop up on the top of my head are some of the EOs, you know, kind of core tenets. Right. So one is clarity. There isn't a question about who's accountable for what and to whom. And that is probably the number one biggest reason for that. And number two, and it's again, kind of part of that same list, is simplify. Simplify and clarity, both to me are very strong reasons to go in that direction. I will speak for myself that the main reason that it was hard to contemplate, it was feeling like I was giving up something, like I was giving up this, you know, sort of senior position on the organization and also maybe giving up some control, that now these guys are going to be in the VI love nest without me, and I'm not going to know what's going on. What I have found in a year plus of operating this way is that I've gained more than I've given up. I spend far less time doing things I'm not good at and I don't like. Far more time doing things I like and I'm good at. And I still, partly because I'm an owner and partly because I'm a visionary in the innovation seat, I still have a huge role to play in the direction of this company, and I get to play that. You know, once you deal with your ego, the rest is easy.

Love it. Alex, from your perspective as the integrator, why is this better than you having, you know, two visionaries that you're trying to integrate from above?

Yeah. I would say echoing the idea of clarity for me as an integrator, someone who's trying to keep things organized and who cares deeply about the team being able to give the team a true, real accountability chart that is simple. They know who to go to for what. They know how to be supported by whom. And that's more broad than Casey and Gretchen, and it's bigger than even the leadership team as it stands right now. It's the growth and future of our organization. I wouldn't be able to succeed as an integrator if I was confused where the responsibilities lie for myself and for Casey and Gretchen, because that trickles down. That confusion is the rest of the accountability chart. So clarity is the sanity of your integrator.

Love it. Wise words there. All right, so thank you so much for your time. This has been fantastic. I love this story and I think there's so many lessons for so many people out of it. So I really appreciate it. You sharing it. If somebody wants to find out more about your company or either of you, what's the best way for them to track you down?

They can send an email to infoostprofits.com that's profits with an S infoboostprofits.com contact us on our website, www.boostprofits.com or they can give us a call. 614-641-0600. So all the ways or LinkedIn or anywhere you want to reach us, you can find us.

Perfect. And we'll try to get all that stuff in the show notes to make it easy. So I'm sure that you've given some help to our listeners, you know, regardless of what stage of their visionary integrator journey they may be on. So to our listeners, if you've enjoyed this, if you're getting value, if it's helping you, we really appreciate if you leave some kind of a review for us that helps more people find out about it and that really helps us unlock this power of rocket fuel in these entrepreneurial companies out there. So until next time, go rock it. Thanks so much for joining me today. I really hope you were inspired by our guests. If you're interested to discover how your current visionary integrator relationship compares to the relationship you'd like, I invite you to go visit rocketfueluniversity.com and take our free crystallizer assessment. You'll get both your visionary and integrator indicator scores and that's going to help you figure out your next step.