Divide and Conquer Kills Accountability | Jennifer Ferris and Laura Elgood

The whole how to work through conflict has evolved a little bit over time because it isn't everybody's preference to have such heated debate. And so, you know, we had to learn how to tamper that a little bit so that we also weren't deflating anybody else who was around and maybe didn't understand that this is just how it works for us.

Hey everybody, this is Mark C. Winners, co author of Rocket Fuel, 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 Federated Service Solutions, an end to end IT solutions provider. Jennifer Ferris is the president, CEO and visionary and Laura Elgood is the Vice president and integrator. Jennifer's father founded the business in 1974 and she made many childhood memories soaking up his entrepreneurialism, work ethic and vision. After going to college and exploring another career, Jennifer decided to join her father's business permanently with every intention of leading it one day. Jennifer has been leading Federated Service Solutions for over 15 years and Laura has been her integrator for over a decade. They're also best friends, but as you'll hear during our conversation, it wasn't always that way. Jennifer and Laura credit the success of their professional relationship to being on the same page, having the right people in the right seats, and clear communication with each other and their leadership team. In this episode, Jennifer and Laura highlight that prioritizing same page meetings is key to creating Rocket Fuel in your visionary integrator relationship. We're going to begin the show where Jennifer describes how her dad started Federated Service Solutions. Let's hop in.

Hey everybody.

Today I have Jennifer Farris and Laura Elgood from Federated services solutions.

Since 2004, FSS has provided jerk free it. Their team is hard working, customer service focused and not afraid of gnarly network problems. So thanks for your time today and welcome to the show.

Thank you, Marcus.

Yeah, it's great to meet both of you and I'm looking forward to a conversation. And so Jennifer, actually I kind of want to start with you, kind of going back to the beginning. From what I understand, your dad started this business and you were just a kid at the time, right? How old were you when your father started this company?

When he started this company? He actually started Federated Capital Corporation in 1974. He started Federated Service Solutions when I was in college. But I started working with him when I was eight.

Eight years old.

So he actually built that company up pretty well, sold it, bought it back, and then he wanted to change things up. And one of the companies he started after that was Federated Service Solutions, and he bought another company, portfolio of business already, and that began the company. So it was actually started in Atlanta, and we kept an office there, but we moved headquarters to Michigan, and we had already a book of business and we got rolling. But I worked with my father for a very long time. There was very few years of my life that I wasn't working with them.

Yeah. So what's it like to have a father that's an entrepreneur?

I was always getting a lot of new ideas to work through and new adventures. So new business ideas, new things to tackle. Pushing a little bit harder, a little bit further, really good ideas. To take the business in a new direction was always a really good way to explain how he was. Right. He was always pushing us further.

Yeah. I notice, you know, a lot of entrepreneurial families, it's interesting that, you know, there's. There's, you know, the kids are the next generation. Sometimes they come into the business that was started by an earlier generation. Sometimes they go, you know, often and start their own thing. Did your dad have kind of a plan for moving you through different parts of the business, just anticipating someday maybe she'll want to run this thing? Or did you ever talk about things like that?

Yeah, when I was very young, probably around that same age, like 8 years old, my dad's best friend's mother told him that I would someday run his companies. I would be the chairman of the board of his companies. So he got it in his head when I was very early on that that would be the case. And I always knew that, but it wasn't necessarily what I wanted. So I went to college and I went to work at Ford Motor Company, and I was working there for about a year, and my grandmother passed away. And my dad called and said, you're coming now, or, you know, you're not coming at all. So I was like, well, okay, I guess I'm coming. So at that point, I made the move over to the company again, but this time permanently. So I had to explain to a lot of people it was no longer my summer job or my vacation.

It was a real job, the real thing. So when you came in, I mean, in that situation, you know, where'd you start?

I started by running, actually. It.

Okay.

It was. It. Yeah. And I did, I think My job was actually an operations analyst job and I managed it at the same time. And my job was really to find problems in the company and work my way up. We had a family of companies at the time, so I was working with fss, which had the IT base. I always liked that the most because I'm an IT person. But we had a capital company doing collections and a railroad as well as a grocery store and a farm. So there was a lot going on and I was helping with facets of all of it at the time.

So that's really interesting. So farm to railroad to grocery store. That's almost the whole supply chain there.

Yeah, the farm was supplying the grocery store. That's how the farm started.

Is that really was.

Yeah, it really was. Yeah, that's very interesting. It was supplying about 30% of the produce in the summer.

But not by way of the railroad.

But not by way of the railroad. No trucks?

No, no. It was down the street. It wasn't far.

Okay, yeah. That would have been good to work that railroad in there somewhere. If it had been 100 years before, that's what it probably would have worked. Right. So talk to me about how did the two of you meet? So Jennifer met Laura. How?

Laura actually was working a retail job as a manager at Club Monaco and she went to school, she can tell more about that part. But she went to school, got her MBA and wanted to get into business and applied at our company. So we actually met working together. Okay, so you could probably do that part better, Laura, what brought you there?

Tell us about it, Laura.

Yeah, that's a good summary and overview. Wanted to get out of retail. My initial background in school was more science based and then switched gears to business. Really had no business experience, however, so applied for an administrative assistant type job working directly under Jennifer and her dad Lou, and was lucky enough to get the position. And that's how Jennifer and I started working together.

And how long ago was that?

That was in 2009.

2009. Okay. And so when did EOS come into your world, Jennifer?

That was January, So probably came into my world at the end of 2016. So we were really struggling with accountability and I was in the Women's President's Organization and I asked them, you know what, do you have any ideas? Because this is miserable. And they suggested I talk to one of the women in our group, it was Marissa Smith, and she gave me a traction book. And that's when EOS came into my world.

Okay, so at that point, Laura, you've been with Jennifer for probably what, six, seven years?

Yeah, about seven years at that time. And I think Jennifer had. We were managing most of the day to day in the business together at that point. So I worked through a lot of different roles in the company at that point. And I think she was about halfway through the book Traction when she said, you've got to get a copy of this and start reading, which I did within two days. And the rest is sort of history.

Okay. So at that point, so 2016, how many employees did the company have?

We had probably about 65, I want to say when we started, when we made an accountability chart in and set our core values, within three months, we had a lot less. But yeah, I think we had about 65 when we started.

Okay, and so you're now we're back.

Up to that now, but you've been.

Through some cycles between here and there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So you're working on the accountability chart and you know, you read so you know Marissa, so that's certainly helpful. And so you read about this visionary and integrator and are you kind of scratching your head and going, I haven't really seen this before. How did that come to make sense for you as something that might be helpful?

Definitely immediately clicked. I definitely knew I wasn't the integrator. I immediately identified with the visionary. I remember exactly where I was sitting reading this book when I read that part of the book and I was like, oh, this makes so much more sense why I don't like all of these things. And we were actually both doing some part of integration. So she, Laura was running like half the departments and I was running the other half. I really like doing sales, which is not surprising in my role. So I was running the sales team and then Laura would be running the project management team or something. You know, some facet of this. I think I actually was at the time. But we were both kind of just splitting everything up and getting by in it all of a sudden really made a lot more sense because it was. Because of the way it was organized. It wasn't really efficient. It wasn't what we loved to do.

And so how did you talk about that? How did you, the two of you go, you know what, this makes more sense? Jennifer, I think I'm the visionary. Laura, I think I'm the integrator. I mean, was it just obvious to both of you?

Yeah, I think it was really clear right off the bat for both of us. I like Jennifer kind of remember reading the chapter where it first talks about the Visionary and integrator relationship and just having a complete light bulb moment. And I think I even had to set the book down and at 9pm at night or something, call her up and say, oh my gosh, it's the answer to everything. We really need to be doing separate things and working together to leverage what each of our strengths are. So I think that was a pretty impactful thing and something we were able to grab hold of pretty quickly because it just made so much sense instantly and something that we both aligned in. Jen being very traditional visionary and me more traditional integrator.

So what was your first step to kind of put that idea into action?

I mean, I think the next thing we did with it is take it to a few select members of our management team that we'd been with for a long time and started talking to them a little bit about the book, the EOS system and what were they seeing as some of the challenges and roadblocks to us gaining better traction and accountability within our business. And pretty quickly saw that this was something that the rest of the team could see and visualize and latch onto and that there was a stronger need for us to set separate what our strengths were to also just help give better alignment throughout the organization. I think because Jennifer and I were approaching so much from a divide and conquer, that was part of what was making it difficult for us to get accountability. It made a lot of, well, this time I asked Jennifer, the next time I asked Laura, I get different answers. What do I do? There was no repeatability because direction was coming from too many different directions all the time.

Yeah, okay, so you start to get that feedback and then what? Jennifer?

We actually self implemented at first. So we tried, you know, we worked with our managers, worked on getting all the traits to develop the core values. We tried to work through each part of the book and kind of set things up. And eventually we called Marissa in to give us the 90 day, like that initial introduction to EOS and trying to decide what we wanted to do because we saw that self implementing was a little too challenging with, I think we had nine managers at the time and we were nowhere near having any idea what a leadership team would look like or anything like that. And then we ended up deciding to engage Marissa and we brought all the managers in to a room and had our first meetings and started that discussion and built the leadership team. That was really memorable. Watching sitting back and watching the team really take themselves out and move them to say they're no longer going to report to me. And they're going to put themselves under another department and watching people react to that.

So it sounds like you had nine people, nine managers. I'm assuming they were all in the room for that. When you ended up with that structure, that iteration of your leadership team. And how many people were actually, you know, visionary or integrator or the direct reports of the integrator?

Immediately? Only one, right, Laura?

No, immediately. And then immediately there were two because we still had. We had director of sales and director of operations, and then the two of.

You were filling the other seats.

I don't think we had a director of operations yet.

So you're wearing lots of hats.

Yes, we actually didn't have a director of operations at that point. Yeah, we just had director of sales.

So you move on down the path. But now you've got a true accountability chart. You've got a visionary seat, an integrator seat. You've got the other leadership team seats defined. Maybe one of them, you've got somebody other than the two of you sitting in, but otherwise it's the two of you having to wear another hat or two to cover all the things that need to be covered. And you start off down your implementation path with a great guide in Marissa. And what was kind of the next big breakthrough for you?

Probably, I mean, as we started to work together as a leadership team and do some different initiatives with the rest of our management team, I think probably the next big pivotal move or big milestone was when we rolled it out to the whole company, which happened, I guess it was about six months into our whole EOS journey and starting to work more as visionary and integrator together. That was pretty impactful, pretty big point.

When you started to roll it out really fully to the rest of the organization. So I'm curious, did you have Laura at this point? It sounds like you would have been there for a while, the two of you working together for a good long while. So you probably knew each other pretty well. And then when you step into the visionary and integrator roles formally and some of these other managers, their reporting relationships are switched around. Was there resistance? Were there some people that are kind of like, well, hang on, I've always reported to Jennifer. I don't want to report to Laura. That feels like a demotion to me. Different kinds of reactions that sometimes we'll see people have. Did you have some of that?

Absolutely.

How'd you work through that?

Well, patience. A lot of communication.

A.

A lot of communication to also help give people more of the why explanation of how should this benefit them actually long term so that you can start helping people see the payoff to having the change made. I mean, just because it's what they were used to doesn't mean it's what was best for them. So we had to leave some of those sacred cows behind and continue forward with the changes. We had some people opt out of management roles because they couldn't really fully understand what we were trying to do, which even I think just showed potential that the management role wasn't even really a right seat for them. So there were a lot of changes that took place in our organization in that first year and a lot of it was really positive and impactful change and I think even probably a renewed energy for Jennifer and I within the organization because we were starting to do things that each of us was more excited about and work together overall instead of kind of in these siloed roles that we'd been in before.

Did you lose some people?

Yeah.

Yes, we did. And we did a pretty slow roll out, but we did for sure.

Yeah. I'm always fascinated by the people who at one stage of the process, they'll kind of fight to be in a leadership seat, you know, and it's almost. There's a little bit of ego going on there for sure, but they'll really. They'll kind of fight to be in a leadership seat. And then you fast forward, you know, sometimes six months, sometimes, you know, a year or longer, when they've really been forced to own what it means to hold people accountable from one of those seats and really what you're signing up for. And it's not what they wanted it to be. It's not just the, you know, the glory or the whatever of being in that position, but the hard work that comes with it, the hard conversations, the tough stuff that they have to do. And so sometimes we'll see people that kind of opt out or self select out of that seat on down the road and they're kind of like, you know what? I just want to do this thing over here, this thing that I really enjoy, I'm really good at. I don't want to, you know, to handle all this what we call LMA stuff and have to deal with the people side of it. Did you experience some of that?

We did. We actually did. And it was good because it was an opportunity for them to do more of what they enjoyed.

Right.

And it's a hard thing to admit, and I think it takes a lot of strength to admit it. And we really care about the people that are on our team. They're very much part of our family. It was really surprising when it happened, I would say. But it was a good opportunity for them and for the team as a whole because it gave everybody room to grow as a result.

Yeah, it's cool when you see things like that. I'm consistently surprised, sort of on both ends by some people who they're so self oriented that they make some decisions that kind of lead to a certain outcome. But then others who they sort of see the big picture and they really are that team player that they really are concerned about the greater good and the overall success and they make choices. Both of those ends of the spectrum tend to. Tend to surprise us at times. People are very interesting, but never boring, right?

Exactly.

Yeah, for sure.

It never stays the same either.

Yeah. So let's dig into the visionary integrator relationship piece a bit more. All right, so we're formally in the seats and you start to kind of at some point. Did you read Rocket Fuel?

We did.

Okay, so hopefully there were some good ideas for you in there. The same page meeting and the different disciplines that we teach. Talk to me first about your same page meeting discipline. So how did that start? How is it now? Has it evolved and changed? I'm curious how often you meet for your same page. I'm curious how long they last. I'm curious where you do them. So what can you share with us about that?

So it has evolved a lot over time. And one of the points that Jen and I talk about or think about a lot is just reevaluating. Like what worked for us last quarter all of a sudden isn't working this quarter and we've got a shift. I mean, we're real people too. So things happen in life that make the date and the time change pretty much over the history, though we've tried to keep our meetings to once a week on Thursdays. We started with an initial carve out of, I think like a half day meeting. And that really wasn't accomplishable for us. And we actually like to talk a lot to each other. We like to stay up to date with what's going on with the other one and give little rundowns at the end of the day. So what we've found really has been more manageable and most consistently worked for us is a once a week, like one to two hour meeting to maybe go over hot topics, big projects, what do we need to push forward, what's on our minds more strategically for the organization. But we talk probably three to four times a day for those little 10, 15 minute sound bites. Event session, just acting support system for one another day to day.

How's your work set up in proximity to each other?

Well, during COVID it changed a bit. We went from being in the office next door to each other to being about 45 minutes apart. So we would go to each other's houses during COVID even when we were in lockdown. So I would always carry a spare VoIP phone so that I would have an excuse. Cause I really didn't not seeing anybody. And we would do our same pages then. And we are now moving back into an office. So we will probably do it back in the office once we do. But we will often get in front of a TV and kind of get everything up on the screen and work through our same page. That way we have kind of a Google Doc that we have all of our issues up on and that's how we work through it. And we always start our same page by reading the rules from rocket fuel to each other so that Laura can remind me that she's the tiebreaker. Nice.

I was going to just say my favorite one.

That's your favorite rule. I love that. I love that. So talk to me about what's hard. So as again, the two of you have been together, working together for a long time, really before the visionary integrator role. Now you've been doing that for a pretty good while.

What was hard?

What is hard? What's kind of a big challenge from your seat as you kind of look at this relationship? What's the thing that you really have to pay attention to and focus on and work at to make it work for both of you?

There is so much going on that sometimes it's very hard to have that same page. And if we get off of those same pages, you can really tell. And we start to struggle communicating with each other and we start to be a little less impactful. We spend a lot of time together, so we not only run the company together, but we probably spend the most time with each other than any other of our friends outside of work. So you would think that that would still leave us time to figure things out, but it doesn't. There's so much to figure out and I really feel it. I would say that the challenge to work through all the day to day and all the everything that we face and then take the time out, the most important time is this time. But to really prioritize it is always the hardest part.

I hear that Laura.

It's kind of like clarity breaks, you.

Know, you need them, but it feels like it's the first thing that you can cut, right? So, I mean, on that note, have you guys seen the rocket fuel power index? It's a tool. We need to get it to you, so we will. But it's a tool that basically helps you look at your relationship. And it's got eight different mindsets on it. And one of the mindsets on there is the same page discipline and the commitment to it. And so I'll have a big group of people that we'll be working with, and I'll ask them, which of the eight different areas are they either the lowest on or the farthest apart from their counterpart, their visionary integrator counterpart? And one of them that pops up consistently is that same page discipline. It's really interesting. And what I find is people think, well, we talk all the time, so we don't need to. Right? And I don't hear you saying that. I hear you appreciating it. But they think that talking is the same as same page. And it's just. It's not right. When you carve out that space and you protect it, you talk about different things. You get deeper into things than you would just kind of in the passing by in the hall or kind of the quick hit stuff that we do maybe all the time. So that one pops out a lot. So before I give you the other one, Laura, I'm curious what you see as kind of the hard part, the challenge, the thing you got to keep working at. What would you say?

Yeah, I think constantly adapting and then being able to keep the circles connected through the same pages, primarily. I mean, we still are really good about the debriefs, but there can be so much with the day to day. So it's still also the difference between working in the business communication versus the working on the business communication, which I think is what really more happens in the same page meetings. I also think it can be tough because we're both highly motivated, type A, a little bit control personalities. It can be tough to not step on each other's toes or let the strong opinions get in the way. I mean, we're both people who are pretty comfortable with conflict. We've got a high level of trust for each other, but sometimes we still get in each other's way.

Okay, so I love this. So describe for me what conflict looks like. So when you get sideways. So we're going at something from different directions, I see both of you smiling. This is great. Either give me an example or describe for me what it looks like when conflict tends to come up between you and how you work through it.

I don't think you want that answer.

Oh, I want it. I definitely want the answer.

There's a lot of yelling involved.

Oh, really?

Yelling?

Sometimes there's yelling, but, you know, I don't know. Jen, how would you describe this?

Yeah, we can get loud. We also can be very stubborn. My new strategy is to say, like, okay, we're stopping. You know, like one of us to catch ourselves to say we're stopping and coming back to this problem because we need a halt. We're both very passionate about our feelings, so when we get going, it is like we get going. And quite honestly, we have personalities that are like that. I mean, we could just sit and start. We can start going and get really loud and just walk away from that and be perfectly fine. That doesn't damage anything. And actually, we have a few other people on our team that are just like that, too. With us, you know, we just. We're all this kind of personality, but it doesn't mean anything bad. It just maybe sometimes it's pretty intense.

So it's a style thing. But it sounds like you're both okay with it, right? And I also heard you mention, it sounds like you've got a pretty. Pretty strong foundation of mutual trust, right? Where, again, probably because you've worked together for a long time, you know each other pretty well, and so you've got that foundation to, you know, to. To stand on, which that makes all the difference in the world, right? So sometimes it gets charged, you know, you. You care, you know, passionately about this. This perspective, this point, this decision, you know, whatever it may be. And so sometimes you have to call timeout and recognize, hey, I'm triggered. I'm no longer listening. You're no longer listening, whatever. Let's walk away and come back, all that stuff, right? And so when you come back and you finally get down to it, how does it work out? How do you resolve it? How do you get uncrossed and get back in alignment in a way that you can move forward?

I mean, I think, fortunately for us, it's worked out pretty well. The whole how to work through conflict has evolved a little bit over time because it isn't everybody's preference to have such heated debate. And so we had to learn how to tamper that a little bit so that we also weren't deflating anybody else who was around and maybe didn't understand that this is Just how it works for us. But I think we've done a good job of learning how to do the. Let's put a pin in this and revisit it when we've got a calmer head. And typically, I think we're able to walk back pretty quickly to each other, also knowing and trusting the intent that we're both after the same thing here. We've just got two different approaches and feel really strongly about those approaches. But so now let's get back together, and probably the right solution is somewhere in between the two things that we've each been vying for. So a lot of times we're able to come to some kind of compromise or solution that is better than what just one of us would have come up with on our own. And I think that that's what's, over time, continued to really strengthen our relationship. But also the solutions that we're able to bring to the team, because we've already argued them out, so there's not, hopefully, many holes left to poke in the problem.

Right. And it's way better for you to do that in your same page than right there in front of the leadership team.

Yeah.

Correct.

Yeah.

I wanted to be clear. We don't do that. We don't get really intense in front of everybody else, but we do. You can tell that we start, like, jabbing. And some of our leadership team finds it very entertaining. I've heard about it. But we don't get super heated in front of them. But it does help. And I would say that part of what drives Laura crazy is that I will start to. I'm a really big devil's advocate person, so I'll be contrary and I'll go, what about this? What about this? And I think she's like, I already came up with the idea, you know, And I'm just, you know, we're different in our approaches, which, you know, sometimes she'll be like, how can you be so different? And I'm like, that's the best part, you know, And I know it's. It's funny, kind of thinking back to Rocket fuel, it's a lot of what it's about, like the yin and the yang thing, but it's true. We're naturally like that.

So there's a lot of power in that it works. A lot of power in the difference. And we talk about polarity, and if we were just both the same, it wouldn't really be. Wouldn't add a lot. But that difference, when you put some structure around it, there's a lot of power there. That's what we're after. So it sounds like the two of you are friends outside of work. True statement.

Yes, unfortunately.

Unfortunately. That's an interesting comment. Laura, how do you feel about that?

I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.

So let's talk about that for a second, though, because that's not always the case. In fact, I would say, not that people aren't friends, but. But visionaries and integrators. To be socially connected at a high level, that's not the norm. So does that create other sort of dynamics, challenges? How does that work? Is it a really good thing? Is it a different thing? What do you think?

I think overall it's a really good thing. Our husbands would tell you it drives them nuts. Cause we talk about work all the time when we're together in a just social setting. And probably even other friends would say the same thing, like, okay, we're sick of hearing about your work. But I mean, overall, I think it's a really positive thing. I mean, Jen's absolutely one of my best friends, and I'm proud and happy that we can go to work together every day and be creating this great company with a great team and, you know, striving to kind of sharpen the pencil every day.

So that's cool. Jennifer, how about you?

I think it would be hard if we weren't, but I, you know, I don't have a lot of other good frames of reference. I don't know a lot of other visionary and integrators, but I don't know what it would be like if we weren't. I do know that when I first met Laura, I wasn't her superfan. So I.

You were. You were not. You were not her super fan. No, tell me about that.

I wasn't the one who wanted to hire Laura.

Who was?

It was definitely my dad. My dad said, someday she's going to run this company with you. And I was like, you're out of your mind. So I did not believe him. But it was always his final decision on who was getting hired at the time. And definitely our assistant. That was the case.

That's great. So, okay, so that's. So you didn't start a superfan, but in the last, what, 13 years now, or however long it's been, I'm trying to do the math. She's won you over.

Yeah, it was like a year in. You know, she'd always stay. I work really late all the time and she'd always stay. And work late with me. And eventually one day I was like, something happened and it was funny. And I realized that, like, she was not as bad as I thought. So we started to become friends. And then after a while, we'd go to dinner after we worked super late. And then slowly we became really great friends. And I don't. I really couldn't imagine it another way because after a really hard day, you know, you might go and look for a friend to go have a drink with or get a bite to eat with and, you know, I. I just get to leave and go do that with her, or we go get a glass of wine and do it on a web chat. But it's still. It's nice to have that person. And we're. We have the same thing in common. Right. We're talking about the same things. So it's nice. We celebrate a lot of the same things.

Yeah, I think it's pretty cool. You guys seem to have a pretty strong foundation of trust, obviously, alignment on what you're trying to make happen and that friendship and kind of getting to share it inside and outside of work. That's a pretty cool situation, it sounds like. So I am curious. So, Laura, we've got integrators listening, visionaries listening. If you're talking to somebody that's an integrator or thinks they might be an integrator, what kind of words of wisdom would you have for them based on the experience that you've had on this journey to get where you are today?

Well, be patient with your visionary. But I mean, ultimately, I think for me, focusing in on how to develop great relationships with people with your team, how to leverage other people's strengths to help benefit the team, are probably some of the biggest lessons learned I've had over the last few years. I mean, I came from a place of thinking that management and leadership was a lot of like, you know, you've got to know to be able to walk the team through it. But also example setting and holding people accountable no matter what it took. But over time, I think softening my approach to a little more of like having a human perspective and realizing that uncomfortable is perfectly okay. It's necessary. And people not being a right fit for the company is just like, you know, everybody isn't friends with everybody else. It's okay just to be different people and being able to really understand that and promote that and comfortably drive that with your team is ultimately really critical for I think being a good integrator of the teams that you're working with great.

Agree. Jennifer, my question for you is this. I want you to imagine a future. Not a future, a present where you don't have Laura. And not only that, you don't have an integrator at all, but you're sitting in that seat too, and you're doing all this stuff, just you. How would you describe that?

Really miserable.

Why?

I'm really bad at seeing. I'm really good at coming up with good ideas. And contrary to everything Laura says, they're all really good, I want you to know. But I'm really bad at, like making. I just expect everyone to get them done. I don't understand why is it so challenging? So it would be a lot of open loops. That's the answer.

Cool. Well, that's, you know, that's a case or a case study really. And you know, the importance for visionaries that are listening to think about as they think about, wow, maybe I should go ahead and pull the trigger here. Maybe I should find a way to find my ideal visionary integrator, match my other puzzle piece that fits together with me. It sounds like you guys have a really special relationship in that regard, so that's fantastic. I appreciate you sharing some of your story with us today. If somebody that's listening wants to find out more about your business or find out more about either one of you, what's the best way for them to get in touch?

Reaching out through LinkedIn is a great way to reach out. Just reach out directly to us and we'll get back anytime and set something up.

Awesome. We'll make sure that's in the, in the show notes. And again, I'm grateful for the two of you taking the time to spend with us today and share some of your experience, some of your story. I know it's helpful for those that are listening to hear those examples and, you know, maybe helps them get there a little bit more quickly, help them get there with a little bit less pain. And that's valuable. That means a lot. And so to our listeners, I thank you for listening. If you're enjoying these podcasts, please give us a review on whatever platform that you're listening on. And 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 to, 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.

Frustrated by the complexities of running a business? EOS1 is the simple to use software that brings your foundational business tools together in one place. It helps you run meetings people actually look forward to, creates a space for uniting your team around a shared vision, and gives you what you need to build a more trusting and accountable culture. Begin your 30 day free trial today at eos1.com.