Episode 106 — Pour on some Rocket Fuel with Author Mark C Winters

It's really important for people to take the whole thing together. Everybody needs both scores. They may already know they're a visionary, but it's helpful for them to see where they fall on that integrator spectrum as well. And likewise for the integrator to see how much visionary they have in them. Because one of the things that goes on there is the integrator is a lot of times a translator for that visionary. Seth.

I know you know eos. We've got Mark C. Winners stepping into this week's episode.

Now.

It's funny, when Paul and I recorded just yesterday, he and I recorded with Mark and we said, hey, we might lose power. The Hurricane Fiona just went through. We're running on diesel. Lo and behold, this afternoon, the diesel runs out and Paul is not available. It's you and me, bro.

Hey, hey, you know, it's part of it. Maybe it's just meant to be, man. Maybe it is just meant to be.

Yeah. I guess this is your calling. That's why you're here. You're here to step in and save the day for the border and bus. So I really was excited about you getting on here to talk about eos, because I've read the first chapter of EOS probably five times. And then I go back and I start over, and I start over, and it's probably because I'm on audible, and it's taken a while for it to sink in, but you know, eos, so this is perfect.

Yeah, I find EOS really interesting. And, you know, we've been a study of EOS for a long, long time, along with some of the other, you know, structures that are out there. And so when you told me to jump in on this one, I was really excited about it, man.

So before we step into the boardroom with Mark, I do want to ask how much have you seen EOS implemented in our industry?

In our industry? I've seen a lot of companies talking about it. I've seen quite a few companies attempt it. One of the things that we had done is that I had a belief that it is the right fit for some companies. And so we had actually put a contributor into Pest Daily who is an EOS implementer and really, really well respected one, just so people could get a basis for it, you know. Have I seen it effectively implemented? Not a ton, but it's a big talk out there right now. It's been a big, big talk.

Cool. All right, that's enough. We're gonna step in. We keep throwing around eos. We're about to dig in. This interview was with Mark C. Win wrote Rocket Fuel with Gino Wickman. Gino Wickman wrote Traction, which is where EOS comes from in the entrepreneurial operating system, which Mark's about to tell you all about. So let's step into the boardroom with Mark C. Winners.

Let's do this.

Paul. I'm glad to bring in another fellow Texan, Mark Winters, into the boardroom. Mark, welcome to the boardroom Buzz.

Hey, thanks for having me, Mark.

Really appreciate you joining us here on the boardroom Buzz. The reason you're here is because this book, Rocket Fuel is something special and so wanted to bring you on and dive into Rocket Fuel. So a lot of people in the industry have picked up on EOS or Traction. Before I mess up what Rocket Fuel is about, you know Rocket Fuel a lot better than I do. Tell us about EOS and Rocket Fuel.

I had the good fortune to meet Gino Wickman a number of years ago and got introduced to eos, the entrepreneurial operating system. And it became a platform that I would use to work with clients on. Sort of replaced kind of what I was doing before because I was so impressed with it. We had a lot of experiences in common, sort of became fast friends. And he had a concept that he had discovered that he had named the visionary and the integrator. And it really refers to two types of leaders inside an entrepreneurial company. The visionary is the one that most people are already familiar with, that crazy idea person that will start something, anything, they just can't resist, they can't help themselves. They go start this business to do this thing that they see in their head. And then the integrator is a leader that's wired very differently than they are. And they're all about getting stuff done and making things happen and following through. And so what Gino noticed, and then I also noticed in my clients as well, was when you had those two leaders in place, the business did better and really achieved some phenomenal results. Better than businesses that didn't have that kind of a structure in place. So we decided that the world needed to know more about this. And thus the book Rocket Fuel, which really takes the simple idea of that structure, builds a framework around it of rules and tools to help take what is a naturally friction loaded type of relationship. Because they are so different, they kind of want to butt heads. And so we put a structure around it to focus that friction in a positive way. And that's really the combination that we call Rocket Fuel.

It's awesome. I'VE got some questions. This might be some free counseling or free advice, but we'll get to that.

Perfect best way to do it.

Now, for those that haven't read Traction, is that a required reading before you pick up Rocket Fuel?

So I think it's important to meet people wherever they are. And so we have people that come into. If you think about it as a sort of a EOS ecosystem that has all these different things going on, we have people that retraction first, and they go, okay, this is what I need for my business is a way to really get clear on where we're headed and how we're going to get there. Create accountability so that we can have traction and get closer to that vision being real every day, and then create health in the culture of the leaders in that organization so they can talk about the things they need to talk to. So sometimes that's what resonates with them and pulls them into the journey to begin to do the work they need to do. Other times, particularly if it's a visionary entrepreneur, they may or may not be thinking about that stuff. They may be flying much higher than that. And so typically, when a visionary picks up the book Rocket Fuel, they read the first chapter. It's about them, and they love that chapter. It's great. They're like, oh, yeah, yeah, this is me, this is me. And then they read the second chapter and it describes the integrator, and they kind of scratch their head and go, okay, that makes sense, actually. Yeah, that's probably somebody that could help me. And then they're like, all right, how do I find someone? Or they kind of know who they think it is, and they hand them the book and then tell them, hey, read this, and then let's do whatever we need to do to make it happen. Mark.

It seems to me like now I don't know much about eos, but I've learned a thing or two about it over the years. And you have the concept of the visionary and the integrator, and clearly that resonates throughout the entire thesis of this book. Could you define a visionary and integrator for us?

Sure. So the visionary is that they're that founding entrepreneur. They're the one that sees the future. They see where things are headed, and they see the opportunities for where we might position this business along that path to take full advantage. They've got great ideas. They're sort of an idea fountain. 10, 20 new ideas a week. 90% of those may be bad ideas, maybe crazy ideas, maybe kill the company. Kind of ideas. But one of them, two of them is gold. And it's the thing that's going to take that company to the next level. They're great at big strategic relationships, particularly external relationships where they're working with somebody in the industry, big partnerships, folks in the community, whatever it may be, looking outside, getting the connection, meeting the person, getting in the door, making whatever needs to happen to kind of open up even more opportunities, even more possibilities. They're also great deal closers. They get bored by the tedious process of sales. But if you can bring them in when it's the big deal and it's time to close it and make it happen, and we've got kind of top to top discussions going on between the two companies, they love that and they're really great at that. And they're also great at solving big, complex, interesting problems. That's something that's really fun for most visionaries. So integrators, again, wired differently. They're more about execution. So think about the integrator or the visionary is the one that kind of makes it up. They see it. The integrator is the one that makes it real, makes it happen. So they're really focused on the details. They're focused on leading this leadership team, holding them accountable, getting them all aligned, working harmoniously through and between all these leaders to get all that energy, laser focused on the vision of the company and what it's going take to execute it and get it done. They're great at breaking ties. So you'll have two leaders. Sales and marketing says we have to go this way and finance says, no, no, no, we have to go that way. And they're sort of at odds and they can't work it out. Well, the integrator can swing into that conversation and see the big picture, hear all sides and break the tie. They can make the call and make the decision so that we don't, as a leadership team, get stuck there. They're great at, again, accountability. The P and L results, they just really are the glue in the center of the wheel that just holds it all together and makes it happen. Does that give you what you're looking for, Paul?

It does. And I guess I would imagine like everything in life, it's a spectrum, right? I mean, could one individual then have aspects of both?

They could. And so we have a tool that gets to that. We call it the crystallizer assessment that you can take, has 40 questions on it and it will give you a visionary score and an integrator score and it's just another data point that really kind of indicates how naturally wired you are for the things that are typically associated with the visionary seat or typically associated with the integrator seat. And so if you see somebody, the scale goes to 100. Right. So somebody that's 100, that's the highest score you could have on either one of those dimensions. Never seen anybody that was 100. I'm a 96, for example, as a visionary. But somebody who scores really high on one of those areas compared to someone who scores really low, what that tells us is it's going to be easier for them. It's not just necessarily a binary. They can do it or not, but somebody who has a really high score in that area, it's going to be like just falling out of bed for them. It's just super easy. Somebody who has a low score, they may still be able to do it, but it's going to be a lot harder. It's going to wear on them. It's going to fatigue them. At some point, they may not be able to sustain it. So that's a way that somebody can kind of get in there and see if they're really honest with how they use that tool. They can get an indication of kind of where their natural wiring may sit.

You made the crystallizer assessment, right?

Yeah.

Can you just give yourself 100 and say someone finally made 100?

That would defeat the purpose. Right.

Okay.

Now, Gino and I collaborated on that, but we've modified that just kind of based on the experience that we've gotten. And we would kind of, you take one assessment or the other. And what we found is it's really important for people to take the whole thing together. And really, everybody needs both scores. They may already know they're a visionary, but it's helpful for them to see where they fall on that integrator spectrum as well. And likewise for the integrator to see how much visionary they have in them. Because one of the things that goes on there is the integrator is a lot of times a translator for that visionary. And so they've got to be able to. While maybe they don't fly at the same altitude as that visionary is flying, they got to be able to fly high enough that they can understand that they can get it, that they can relate to the visionary that that visionary is throwing down and then translate that, bring that in practical terms to the organization so we can actually do something with it. Yeah.

I remember walking out of a few meetings at different businesses in which the Employees would look at me, I think I fit naturally in integrator role. They look at me and be like, what did he say? What do I do now? What was the gist of that? I find myself in that translator spot at times.

What is that?

Based on that assessment, what's the right mix? Right. They could be too similar. They could be too different. What are you looking for as balancing out those two roles?

Yeah, so there's lots of different things that go into it, and it's just one of the data points. But we think of it as a two piece puzzle. And so you're really looking for a complimentary relationship where between us, we score high on all the necessary areas of a visionary integrator duo. So we don't have a lot of places where we both score low. We think about those as gaps. So when we match them up, we don't want to have a lot of gaps in that relationship. The other thing we look at is overlap. So, Paul, if you and I both score really high on some things, then instinctively we're both going to kind of want to move in that area and take control of that area. And if we're not really clear on roles, then that can create sort of a fighting for the wheel kind of a scenario. So you just got to take the time to be really clear on what roles are. So we're looking for a fit that covers all the areas with a minimal overlap. If we were both exactly the same, then we didn't really gain anything. Right. So we like that complementary difference. So we want a minimum overlap that we can kind of clarify through role definition. And then we want to have minimal gaps. So, you know, between us, our duo should have all the areas well covered that we would want out of that combination.

So in addition to that, you talk about core values. Does core values almost supersede all that before you get to assessments like, you've.

Got to be lined up at your gut almost 100%. Yep. If we're not a core values fit, it's a non starter.

Okay.

Yep. 100%. Right.

The interesting thing was when I thought about the organizational chart, it's called a accountability chart. Is that right?

Right.

Okay.

Right.

And as I was reading chapters one and two, I thought, now how does that report? This is probably the integrator in me. How does that report structure look like? Where does the leadership team so the number three and below. So below the visionary integrator, who do these people talk to or how do they report or what does that look like?

Well, first let Me back up. So to clarify a difference, an important difference between the accountability chart and what people are traditionally familiar with is the org chart. So everybody's had org charts, seen org charts, and org charts are riddled with, I call it levels. So if I'm at a higher level than you are on the org chart, then somehow that means I'm better. It's kind of a lot of entitlement. And titles tend to go with that, with how org charts are organized. And oftentimes they really give you no indication of what the heck these people do. Where the accountability chart really approaches it from the ground up and says, all right, what all needs to get done in the organization. How can we sort of cluster that stuff together in human sized clumps? That makes sense. And then let's make clear lines of accountability. One to one accountability. So each person is accountable only to one other person for this set of things that they need to be sure they get done. And there's a specific way that we think about making sure that they're actually the right person to do those and to be in our company and in the right seat, that that's the right seat for them given their particular gifts and how they're wired and the talents that they. So when you get that all clear at the top of this thing, the visionary is at the very top and they have one direct report and that's the integrator. That's it. Now there's reasons for that. And one big reason is typically the visionaries are not great at holding people accountable. They're just not. At most, and I'm actually a really good example of this. In different times in my career, I've had probably more than a dozen direct reports. Not just all the people that were in my whole organization, but that many reporting to me directly. And I thought I was doing okay, but then I look at somebody that's a great manager and really great at holding people accountable, and I was doing terrible at it. So on a good day, I can probably hold one person accountable as a natural visionary. Okay. Integrators, on the other hand, this is a part of their DNA. They're just made for this. And so you want the accountability of the rest of the leadership team to flow directly into them. So the visionary has the integrators, their one direct report that's accountable to them, and then the rest of the leaders, they all report directly into that integrator and that's the conversation. That's what the reporting structure looks like. That's where there's total clarity created on what's expected of each of those people and feedback and closing that loop on how good a job they're doing on making it happen and living up to those expectations.

Now, when I hear everything, how you describe visionary, it's very entrepreneurial. Right? There you go. Eos, right. Very visionary. Now, what happens if you have a integrator that also has an entrepreneurial spirit? Are those two things polar opposites of each other or does that work?

Great question. So the watch out is that they get confused about themselves. So you have somebody that has a. Let's just say an 85. They're 85 visionary and 85 integrator. What are they? And they'll be confused and they'll think they're both a lot of times. And what we found is it's extremely rare, less than 5% of the time that someone is truly wired to be great as a visionary and great as an integrator. And most of the time, if I have that person who, let's say they score high and they think they're both, and I can really pin them down and just go, okay, if we fill you full of bourbon and truth serum and hold a gun to your head and you've got to pick. You have to pick which one you're going to be for the rest of your life. They'll tell me, and it's there, and they'll say, if I had to just do one for the rest of my life, I would pick this one. And that's usually a pretty good tell for where their heart is and where their natural wiring is. A lot of times it's a visionary that's confused because they have had to develop a lot of the skill sets of the integrator just by virtue of the journey they've had to go on to get to where they are. In the beginning, it was just them. And in order for them to survive, they had to pay attention to details. They had to follow through. They had to do all this kind of stuff. And so because they did it, it's kind of like my experience as a manager. Yeah, I did it because I had to. I thought I was good at it until I saw somebody great at it. And visionaries will have that same kind of experience. They think they're really good at it and they can do it. But just because they can do it doesn't mean that's what they should be doing. It doesn't mean it's their gift. And when you get them paired up with a great integrator and they're like, wow, look at that. That's awesome. I could never do that. Or if I did, it would wear me out in about 15 minutes. So that's the big aha that they seem to experience.

That makes sense. Does the ownership of the company always need to be the visionary? The reason I want to ask this, Paul talks about this as far as like an organizational design. Sometimes the owner, the founder of the company, the CEO, isn't the best leader of the company. So maybe he's not the visionary, he started it, but it's time for him to take a back seat. Is there a problem in that?

So we have something we call the owner employee, rules of the game. And one of the premises, the foundational beliefs, is that ownership brings with it two rights and privileges. One is to your share of the profits, however your structure is, however that stuff gets divvied up, you get your share of the profits of the company, the economic gains of the company. Two is you have your right to a say in the major decisions of the company. Again, whatever how that structure is set up to work for the major decisions, not every little thing for what brand paperclips we order, but the big things. Are we going to buy another company? Are we going to take on another equity shareholder? Are we going to sell the company? Are we going to big things like that, which is probably less than 5% of the decisions that are going on in the company. But beyond those two things, that's it. Ownership does not bring with it automatically the right to be an employee in this company. If you're going to be an employee in this company, you have to be the best person to fill that seat. And you have to fill it arguably better and more responsibly than any other person we might bring in off the street to fill that seat? Because everybody's watching you. Everybody's watching you. And what they're watching for you to do is do what we call playing the owner card and basically say, well, yeah, I know we've got all these rules, we got all this stuff, but that doesn't apply to me because I'm the owner. And when an owner does that, it basically causes the whole system to lose its integrity. Everything kind of starts to come unwound. Accountability doesn't work the same when they won't play by the rules as well. So we have this structure that we've carved out. We call it the owner's box. That really think about it sitting sort of above the accountability chart. And some owners choose to Live there, They're fine to live there. They stay informed, they weigh in on major decisions, they take their profit checks or whatever that looks like in terms of their economic participation, and they let the leadership team run the business. Other owners sit in that visionary seat or that integrator seat, or a completely different seat. They may be a head of sales, they may be a salesperson, they may be a designer or lead R and D or all different kinds of variations, some technical thing that they really love and enjoy doing, but they do it playing by the same rules that everybody else in the company plays by. And so that's the key. So just because you're an owner doesn't mean you're an employee. And it certainly doesn't mean that, that the visionary or integrator has to be an employee. Although I will tell you, most commonly in a founder led company, 8, 9 times out of 10, the founder is that visionary. They end up in that visionary seat. So most often that is what happens. But you'll see companies that pass down through multiple generations of a family, they've been acquired, so they weren't started by the owner. Lots of different scenarios there where someone else emerges to be the visionary, or sometimes they are in fact sought out and brought in to be the visionary. Somebody from the outside.

I'm taking all the questions. I still have a few, but Paul, jump in there for me.

I'm just wrapping my mind around the whole integrator versus visionary. And I'm just thinking about how, I guess if you think about any privately held business or even a public company, the CEO, what does he do? He sets strategy, he reports to the board, and the board's brought in by the shareholders. So he's setting strategy and organizing all the resources and capabilities of the firm. So he's effectively a professional manager. And I'm trying to think about the idea of the visionary versus an integrator in the construct of a publicly traded business.

Yeah.

So let's talk a little bit about that. For me, I always start at the public level and work my way down when I think about organizational design type.

Yeah. So let's come at it from a different direction. So our target market is not that. Our target market is an organization that typically has between 10 and 250 employees. Privately held has no board.

Yep.

Right. So that's really where we're coming at it from. Now I will tell you, there are tons of publicly held companies with thousands of employees, billions of dollars in revenue that run on eos. But the fundamental thing is sort of this, this entrepreneurial mentality, entrepreneurial culture, for how they're structuring and running that business. Right. So let's come at it from a private equity view. When I talk to private equity people, what they tell me they see in this visionary integrator structure is risk reduction. Because I go in and I acquire a company that's led by the visionary founder and I loop them into a contract to stay for three years and within 12 months either they're leaving on their own or I'm wanting to kick them out because they're just not wired to work in that business where they're working for somebody else. Right. And so you take that again, just the traditional, the one leader model and you split it into these two different halves, the visionary and the integrator. And for the visionary founder. Now if I'm thinking about it's my company, they're going to be less interested in wanting to make sure I hang around, which is great for me because I don't really where I want to do that anyway. If it do hang around, it's going to be in a much more free, lower accountability kind of a role, which I can probably handle. And as the buyer, again, I've got an operating system in place. If they're running on eos, I've got an integrator that's going to stay there. They like this, they like doing what they do. And if I look at it, I may have an integrator that can grow into what I would consider a more traditional CEO role, which is something that's more combined if that's the path and that's what you're trying to get into. So for this model and what we're talking about, really think about that part of the growth curve where you're moving from 10 to 250, you're going from being the person who's doing it all by yourself to actually building a leadership team and allowing them to build capacity in the organization and get this thing on up until you get to a point where either you decide that you're going to commit to this or there's something different as you get really, really big. That makes sense.

Yeah, it does. I guess when you talk about visionary, is it almost like saying, okay, so a lot of privately held, I think you mentioned earlier in the discussion, 70, 80, 90% of these founder led businesses are visionaries. Right. So we could I guess say that an individual with a visionary personality is more likely to take these sort of risks, come up with some cockamamie harebrained Idea, start a business. Right, but. But they don't necessarily possess the organizational skills or all the other requisite skills in order to take this thing from this harebrained idea and ultimately market it. Right. Could we almost say that an integrator is more of a professional manager? Can we say that? I think about this from the standpoint of Apple Computers, right? I mean, would you say Steve Jobs was a visionary or an integrator?

It's kind of a no brainer answer, Right?

Right, exactly. I'm throwing softballs at you. Right? He's the visionary.

Yeah. We look at a lot of these combinations through history, like in the Ford model, in McDonald's, in Honda standard Oil, where you go back and there's sort of these companies that end up being these big titans of industry. Right. But they didn't start like that. And Apple's another example. Right. You know, I don't understand Wozniak in the early days probably well enough to kind of understand that. But clearly Steve was, I mean, he was a visionary even from the time they started it. And so whether you call the integrator a professional manager or whatever label you want to put on it, we kind of use integrator to kind of bring this set of things they do together. It's really about the things they do. And being a manager in the sense that they hold people accountable, they keep them focused, they set crystal clear expectations, they follow through, they create alignment, they do all these kinds of things. So if you want to call it something else, okay, that's what we're saying is important that they do that isn't a natural gift or capability of the visionary. Again, they can do it to a certain extent, but it's hard for them. And so it's typically not sustainable. So a visionary has the harebrained idea, they launch the company, they take the risk, they can't help themselves, they got to do it. They're able to just through their own energy, get out and stir up enough interest that they can kind of get something started. But then a lot of times that's where they kind of fall down. They can't keep it up. And so it kind of comes back down. And then maybe they kind of get all cranked up again and they kind of grow again, but they can't keep it up and it comes back down. And so the integrator also brings this kind of persistence to allow it to kind of keep going and keep growing and build on itself and scale.

Got it. Patrick.

I'm thinking about change. Mark, let's say someone picks up EOS or picks up traction or picks up rocket fuel, right? The owner does. And all of a sudden they're like, we need to do this, we need to do this right now. Right. That change is really going to rock everyone else's role in the organization. So in terms of change management, is there a way to transition that well, to onboard into this new way of operating their business?

Yeah. So we literally have what's called the EOS process, which is the most effective way to implement EOS into a company. Gino and others have tried many different ways over the years in terms of do this first, do that first, do these steps, don't do that one, whatever. And this is the one that has been proven, this is the one that works. And so again, it's a very clearly defined sequence of what you teach first and what you have the team do with it. The fundamental requirement though is that they really have to want to, they have to be frustrated, they have to be in pain that what they're doing currently isn't working. They have to be aware that they don't have all the answers, they have to want help, they have to be willing to let somebody challenge them and push them and all that. And then they've got to commit to the hard work that it's going to take to get from wherever they're at to what we would call a successful implementation of EOS, which takes time. Typically it takes 18 to 24 months for a company to become self sufficient with an implementation of eos. If they're working with a professional EOS implementer, if they're trying to do it themselves, just using the book, it probably take a lot longer than that. So those are all things to think about. I'll have conversations, Patrick, with people around, well, maybe we should wait until we get all this kind of fixed or we get this just right or get this person here or that person here. And it's kind of like if we're going to have somebody come over and clean our house, it seems like my wife wants to make sure our house is spotless before the house cleaner shows up, which in my mind is crazy. If they're professionals and they do that great, then let them do it. Let them do that great. And so anyway, when you reach that commitment point, the pain is great enough, the prospect of gain is large enough in your mind that you have the courage, you make that commitment. All right, we're going to do this, we're going to be serious about it and we're going to do it right wherever you're starting from, that's what's key to make sure that you are successful.

Yeah. In terms of that commitment, I think about change management underneath the visionary and integrator and that next level, that leadership team. So if you decide to commit and we're going to do this going forward, are there best practices to get the leadership team on board or is it a matter of like cut bait if they can't make it?

Yeah. So here's what happens. The first step of the process is we call it a 90 minute meeting where the leadership team comes together with the EOS implementer. EOS implementer shares a little bit about themselves, gets to know a little bit about the company and that leadership team, and then walks them through the EOS model and the EOS process. So what it looks like to do this kind of a pure implementation we're talking about at that point, that gives really both sides, the team to decide if they're really bought in and ready to commit to this. Also the implementer to assess whether they really are. Because guess what, if you're really not, the implementer probably doesn't want to work with you. So if both parties go, yep, we're committed, we're ready to move forward, then the process begins. And one of the very first things that you get into is defining that accountability chart. Okay. And so when you do that, it gets very real and we start to make some very intentional decisions about the structure that's going to give us the best chance to get where we're trying to go. And we define that structure first and then we map people to it. And so guess what? Sometimes all the people in the room don't have a seat on that leadership team structure. Sometimes there's somebody that needs to be in that leadership team structure that for whatever reason didn't get invited to come to the meeting. Right? And so you flush these things out, you begin to see these things. But it's in a very collaborative, open and honest type of discussion that you get to, that that's focused on, all right, what do we need? Not just, hey, look, we got to make a seat for Susie because Susie's been here for 50 years or because she's my sister. But you know what? We need a seat that does this. Back to the difference between an accountability chart and an org chart. We need a seat on our accountability chart that's focused on making sure that we get new business or making sure that we keep our promises to the customers, whatever it might be. And then Does Suzy fit our core values? Yep. We have a way to look at that. And does Susie, we call it gwc, get want and have the capacity to perform in that seat at the level we need her to perform, and we have a way to kind of score that out and see. And maybe Susie's only one of the candidates, and Frank is another candidate and Joe is another candidate, and we use that kind of a way to assess each of them relative to that specific seed on the chart and make the best decision. All right, which one's the best decision for us? And you kind of get started and you go through that process and you'll learn some things. It's not uncommon, again, that somebody finds out something that they didn't expect. But guess what? It was already true. It was already there. And so we've just. Now we've made it visible so you can deal with it. And so you go through that process, and you're always evolving and working on that. And some people get there structurally really fast, and some people. It takes more time. And every once in a while, you'll have somebody like I had somebody in here not too long ago, and their entire leadership team, I want to say, through the process, and this is probably over, I don't know, maybe three or four years, may have turned over twice.

Oh, wow.

And his comment was, if you had told me that that was going to happen, there's no way I would have ever started. But having gone through it and seeing where we are now and what we've been able to accomplish, I'm so glad we did.

Earlier, we talked about the Colby system. Right. So there's tons of different personality assessments you've talked about. What crystallized assessment within. Did I say it right?

That's ours. Yep. That's the rocket fuel crystallizer assessment.

Yes.

Yeah.

So within rocket fuel, you've got crystallized assessment, but I think about personality profiles. So if I'm coming from a personality profile system and then I begin reading this book or think I want to integrate rocket fuel into my business, I could think about Colby, I could think about disc. I could think about the hot thing at least the last few years. Enneagrams, are there certain personality traits that you just spot on. You take from personality trait or a good fit into finding the right visionary and integrator.

So I think there's no pat answer. So we'll get the question, what's the profile of an ideal integrator?

That's what I said. That's what I asked you.

Yeah, we'll get that question all the time and the answer is no. And quit asking because I keep telling you no. Because there's not just one answer to it. It's go back to the puzzle, right? So it depends on that visionary. What does the visionary look like? So the visionary needs to understand what's their Colby profile, what's their enneagram, what's their disc, what's their strength finders, what's their culture index, what's their whatever they need to know who they are and then look at what's going to be a good complimentary fit for them. You know, Colby has a great tool where they can take two people and basically show, okay, here's the kind of stuff that's going to be easy for you to work together with someone like that on. Here's the stuff that's going to drive you crazy to work with somebody like that on, right? And so that doesn't give you the answer by itself, but it's a great data point to look into. And that connection process, it all begins with self discovery. And so thinking about the visionary first. Where am I trying to go with this business? What am I trying to do? What's my vision? What do I look like? You know, what is my working style? What drives me crazy, what do I need the most help with? We've got a tool we call the wish list, which is basically just a brain dump of all the things that I wish would get resolved, be made possible, be made, go away, you know, whatever the perspective is. But here's the brain dump of all the things that if a great integrator could come in and solve this, it would change my life. And that becomes part of the equation. And then you start to go out and kind of paint the picture or define the shape of that complementary edge. If I know that my edge looks like this, then the edge I'm looking for must look just like that and just be the edge that fits. So now, okay, go look for that. And lately I've even been talking about what we call a three piece puzzle. So the two pieces at the top are the visionary and the integrator fitting together. The third piece is the actual business. So imagine those other two pieces, once we get them clicked together, they've got to click into that business in a way that makes sense. And so where the visionary clicks into the business and the integrator clicks into the business, that's where the spectrums come into play. So, Paul, you talked about that earlier, having a spectrum. So we have a visionary spectrum, all visionaries are not created equal. So you can have somebody that's like an Elon Musk or a Steve Jobs or whatever that's just way out there and it's super complex. The world that they live in, fast moving, competitive, a lot of stuff going on. The business may need that kind of visionary or it may be a very simple, mundane business that's just kind of more of the same all the time. There's not a lot of change, there's not a lot of complexity. You don't need the same kind of visionary there to run that same thing is true on the integrator side of the equation. If it's a big global company that's operating in multiple countries and has thousands of people and a dozen different product lines and it's just really complex and crazy, you're going to need a whole different integrator than you're going to need for the company that's just kind of a project based business, that their volume's not super high, their headcount isn't super high, it's just simpler. So it's going to take less integrator energy to be successful there than it would at the other example. So you want to understand how those fit and then click that whole thing together and look for the missing piece. So if you are the visionary and you understand your business, you can kind of back into what that puzzle piece of an integrator looks like in terms.

Of influencing you and organizational design or management. Are there people that stick out to you, Mark? Well, including Gino. Gino's first.

The funny thing is Gino, though is the last of my story in that sense. Right. So I went to business school, I studied all the stuff and so I heard words like organizational design and studied lots of interesting things there. And so if you'd asked me 20, 25 years ago, I would have probably given you somebody else's name. But through my own entrepreneurial journey, right. So I gosh, I were up to like 15 different companies that I either started, bought, shut down or sold in all different industries. So just through kind of what I've lived and through the last 10 plus years that I've spent with Gino, Gino's the man. And really for an entrepreneurial company, just the simple no frills approach that's just raw and real and all about getting done what we need to get done. I mean it's the EOS system. And specifically as far as designing that structure using the accountability chart, it's super powerful and I'm blown away by it. And in fact, a lot of times it gets around. Like I'll have companies that, they've got a lot of entities and really kind of a lot of different businesses, but they'll get confused by. They've got all these different legal entities that maybe cross over, maybe they don't. They've got these different businesses that kind of really are complementary and work well together, or they don't. And they kind of get confused in how to structure that all in some way that makes sense and they're able to harness it and focus it. And so one of the first exercises that I'll take them through is I call it drawing the envelope. And so if you get all the stuff up on the board that's out there, that's kind of in play to consider, you got to draw a box around it. And if you're going to draw a box around all of it, but you've got stuff that doesn't really go together, that's probably going to cause headaches. And so maybe you need to take this particular business and carve it out and it sits over here. It's in its own envelope, it's not in this one. But these other three businesses, you know what, they all actually kind of do work together. We can put them in here. And you kind of are again, intentional about how you structure that in a way that you're actually going to be able to create accountability, get it focused and deliver some results.

Other than author, what else is in this background history of yours?

Well, so, I mean, literally I've had businesses in everything from high end analytics to manufacturing to consulting to entertainment. I mean, it's just kind of been all over the place. I've worked in some pretty interesting software businesses focused in the analytics space and really prediction. One of those was a spin out of Los Alamos National Lab and some pretty, pretty cool work that was funded initially by the Defense Department that we were able to take and do some interesting things with that you can't tell us about. Well, that one initially just kind of interesting story. So I was with Amoco Petroleum and I was an entrepreneur in residence basically for them, which meant they wanted me to come in and not play by the same rules that everybody else played by. They thought they'd gotten kind of big and bureaucratic and slow moving. And so Mark's job was if you thought you could find a, a better way to get it done using external resources, go ahead. And so I had been exposed. Well, I had access to a lot of systems within their Technology infrastructure. That was not normal. It wasn't normal that someone would have access to all the software programs across all these different functions. Frankly, it may have been an accident, but I'm in there kind of poking around and I started finding. I was working on the retail side of things, and I found some technology they were using in the exploration side of things to go look for oil and gas. And it was kind of modeling kind of stuff. And I'm like, oh, this is interesting. I wonder if I can use this to help us look for retail locations and kind of model what's going to happen if I build a site here versus there, what the results would be. And that kind of turned into something. I saw there was something powerful there. I brought some other people in to kind of help. And we built something that worked pretty well. Well, well, then I found this company in Los Alamos, New Mexico that basically had that technology on steroids. And so we took that and ran with it in a consumer behavior modeling direction. So we were able to predict things. This was on the early edge of the whole CRM movement. And basically we were able to predict what people would buy and how much and how often inside a constrained model. And people used that technology to market to people that had credit cards. Hundreds of millions of people that had credit cards. So that was pretty interesting. And then that kind of ran its course. And I ended up coming out of that thing after we exited and I was looking for the next thing and I reconnected with somebody from back in the Amoco days and kind of came back to that retail space and started another company that really focused on retail and restaurant application where McDonald's could come in. And I literally could tell them, all right, if you put a store here, it'll do this many million in sales. If you go half mile south on that road on the other side of the street, it'll do this many other million in sales. And so they could use that and play it against the cost of the real estate to make their decisions. And we could do market optimization applications so you could look at how many locations you could put in a market so that you didn't overly cannibalize each other, but you didn't leave a lot of untapped demand laying on the ground and built that business up and sold that to a company called Experian, who most people in the states know as a credit bureau. But they're actually one of the largest data businesses on the planet. And so for an analytics company, data is fuel. And they had great Fuel. And so anyway, that was kind of a fun branch of my career.

Mark, I got a question for you. When I think about our listeners, they tend to be in pest control and allied services. You've got fire protection, lawn care, all of these businesses are generally route based businesses where you're putting an individual in a truck, sending them out to a business or a home. And so they're relatively simple organizations from an archetypal perspective. And when I start to think about organizational design stuff, I always find myself going back to Mintzberg. I think it was back in the 60s or 70s he wrote, I don't know if you remember the Structure in five where he talked about the five architects of an organization. Machine bureaucracy, professional bureaucracy, divisionalized firm, Adhocracy, for example. And so when I think about our business, our business is an M and A advisory firm, which is really an ad hocracy, right? We don't really have a structure here per se. We're focused on solving complex problems and we've got 15 people that kind of all work together. Whereas when you look at a service organization out in the field, you tend to have what maybe if you take your standard service firm, you might have in a pest control company, 20 technicians and then five people within management and then another five people in the back office. I bring all this up because I'm wondering if EOS tends to work better with certain archetypes versus others when you start to think about the kind of the coordinating mechanism within an organization.

So at this point I have not seen any pattern that would lead me to that conclusion. I've seen equal success or challenge in all different types of archetypal structures, if you will. One of the things that hearing you talk about that makes me think of that's kind of different. And it's always a challenge. There tends to have to be a decision made is in a professional services firm that's partner based. And so again think of your law firm, accounting firm, something like that, that they've got sort of this layer where they're making decisions as partners, but they're kind of all making decisions. They're sort of hesitant to put any other kind of structure in there. And so EOS comes along or somebody brings it in or whatever and that really it challenges that it's different. And so what I've seen happen a number of times is either they all embrace and adopt it, or they reject it and it doesn't work, or the firm splits. And I would say I may see that more often than not where the champions for it. And usually it's because they're kind of hitting a ceiling of being able to scale and grow and do what they're trying to do. Maybe they're kind of acquisitive, they're kind of rolling some other firms up or something like that, but they're trying to get bigger or maybe they're just growing really fast and somebody's pushing that and they see the need or have the desire for that again, an EOS type of structure to be there. And it's that process again of making it all visible and letting you decide. And so the partners kind of reach a point where it's kind of like, look, if we're going to do it, this is how I want to do it. If we're not going to do it this way, I don't want to do it. And that can go in either one of those camps. And sometimes they shake hands and part ways and split it up and go. I'm not saying. And really nobody in our community I think would say that EOS is the only way. There's other ways to do it. It's a very effective way. I know because I see it be effective. It's what we call a, it's really a team health approach to leadership. And so it requires some letting go. It requires sort of a shedding of egos to make that work. Now a more dictatorial approach can be super effective. And so some people, that's their choice, that's what they want to do. Maybe that's right for them and maybe that's right for the time period they're in or whatever. But we see in a team health approach, we just see a lot of resiliency, a lot of adaptability, a lot of sustainability. What happens when that leader that's trying to do it all, when something happens to them, when they wear out or bus hits them or whatever, what's left when they don't have the rest of that structure in place around them. So I don't know if that's answering your question, but that's kind of the patterns I've seen.

No, it does. I guess one follow up question to that would be you were talking about professional services firms, like law firms for example, and sometimes it doesn't always work out. Right? Is that because you're then imposing some sort of structure on a relatively or actually very unstructured organization?

It has to do with the leaders, it has to do with those partners. And if the partner believes that, you know what, I'm a partner, I can do whatever the hell I want to do. I see it won't work. And that's the issue. I mean, I've gotten very successful architectural firms, law firms, accounting firms, I mean, all of these. I've seen it work, but I've just seen it where the partners themselves are not in alignment on how they want to approach this. Does that make sense?

It makes perfect sense.

So one of them wants a more, for lack of a better word, a more entitlement focused structure where because I made partner, then I want to reap all the benefits because I had to go through all the pledgeship to get there. And somebody else sees it a different way and they're looking sort of beyond that. And if they're not in alignment, that's when it struggles.

One thing that really popped out to me in your book, and I don't know if it's EOS related or otherwise, but it's something that we've actually talked about on the buzz before and it's something we've really focused here within our organization to do. And you talk about breaking up things into 90 day increments from a planning perspective, which I feel is extremely important, and a lot of managers just don't do that. But we've seen the benefit here of really charging hard in a 90 day increment instead of putting something six or 12 months out and then you really lose focus on it. Can you talk a little bit about that for a second?

Yeah. So we call it the 90 day world and it seems to be just the right size to do something significant and meaningful. So it's big enough to get some stuff done, but it's short enough that you don't drift so far away from where you started that you forgot why you picked that. And then the context of a leadership team, what we see is another dynamic that we call the fray. So think of it. At the beginning of the quarter, everybody's really focused, they're all aligned, they're all in sync, they're all energized for what it is we're about to go do. So just imagine the rope that you've taken the lighter and you've kind of singed the end of it. So it's all nice and gelled together and it's tight. And then you just, you're rubbing that rope against the brick all quarter long and then towards the end of the 90 days, you look at the end of that rope and it's just all like that. And that's kind of what happens to our people. And our leaders is by the end of 90 days, they're just kind of, you know, they haven't completely lost it. So they're still kind of close to it, but they have drifted. They have started to fray and started to drift. And so, boom, we've got that discipline to bring it back together, get refocused, you know, tee up the next set of rocks and objectives we're going to go after and take off again.

So I'm always interested in things that probably no one else is interested in at all. And this book, Rocket Fuel, you published this in 2015. So how long did it actually take you to write this? When did you start?

So I'd say it was two years from the time Gino says, hey, I'm thinking about writing a book. And we agreed to join forces on that, but. But it probably took a year and change to actually write it. And the rest was publisher stuff. It wasn't us writing it. It was all the machine of putting a book out. Interesting experience, though, to co author a book with someone. He's in Detroit, I'm in Dallas. And so we would brainstorm, here's how we're going to do it. And I would take a cut, send it to him. He would take a cut, send it back, and we'd kind of go back and forth, back and forth on a chapter until we felt like we had it tight, and then we'd go on to the next chapter and repeat that process. But it's really an interesting experience. I learned a lot. Painful at times, probably for both of us, because you're sort of half in and half out of somebody else's brain.

The next book you write will be a solo operation or are you going to partner up?

Yeah, the one I have on deck will be a solo operation.

So you've got one on deck?

I do.

Let's talk a little about that, Cameron.

It's something that I'm writing for myself, so it's something that I think about that's not specific to the entrepreneurial world, but it's certainly applicable for the entrepreneurial world, but it actually has a little bit broader application than that for people. So stay tuned for that one.

Those are often the best types of books, those that one writes for oneself.

Right, Exactly.

So when might I expect Amazon to deliver that book?

Well, let's see. If it takes as long as last time. Hopefully not.

Don't hold my breath.

Yeah, hopefully not. But yeah, I can't give you a date right now, but anyway, that's the next thing I'M spending actually a fair amount of time on rocket fuel right now. Just in combination with EOS worldwide, we've got some integrator programming that we've been doing a lot with to really help integrators identify themselves and help prepare them to be truly great and then ultimately to get them matched up with visionaries. There's a shortage of great integrators in the world, at least the ones that know that they're an integrator. We suspect there's a lot of people that may be stuck kind of in corporate America that don't even realize they're an integrator. They tend to hear about it and they sort of identify with it. And we'll get comments like, oh wow, this is, yeah, this is what I am. This is now I've got something to call myself, which is kind of cool. And while they maybe were feeling a little bit fringy in a typical corporate America kind of gig, they sort of got that entrepreneurial attraction, but not enough. They're too risk averse to kind of make the move on their own. So if they can slide into a combination with a visionary, a lot of times that's a great opportunity and they sort of need each other. So doing a lot of work there. And then I've got some visionary programming in the works to parallel that to really help visionaries understand in this structure what it looks like to be truly great as a visionary and how to be effective when you're working with that integrator. And then as that program begins to roll out, I'm going to bring it back together and we're going to do some things for both where we bring in the duos, we bring in the visionary integrator duo and let them do some work together that can help them take that relationship to the next level.

Why do I picture speed dating as you're describing this? I see some event where you've got visionaries and integrators like matchmaking.

So well, we want to be able to matchmake. We want to be able to say, basically, all right, visionary, answer these 20 questions and then I can tell you, here's five great integrators and we're getting closer and closer to being able to do that. But I've had visionaries that have offered me legit money to come stand outside of one of the integrator events just so they can talk to the integrators as they're walking out of the room.

That's awesome.

Very cool.

It's been a Real treat. I know I've learned a lot from this, so selfishly. Thank you.

Mark, what are some suggestions you might give to our listeners that are interested in learning more about eos? What's a good first step? Should I pick up one of these books? What should they do?

Yeah. For the visionary entrepreneurs, Rocket Fuel is a great place to start for somebody who wants to, to get a sense of Eos. Traction is a great book to start. Think about Traction as kind of the textbook. So if they're a little bit more detail oriented and want to really kind of see the tools in some more depth, Traction's great for that. There's also a book called Get a Grip, which was written by Gino and Mike Peyton, and that tells the story of a company going through the journey of implementing eos. And so it's a little fable, but it kind of lets you identify with some people that may kind of rhyme with somebody in their own business and what the experience was like for them. So that's good for some folks. There's another book called what the heck is Eos? And that's sort of a simplified version of Traction that's designed really for every employee in an organization to be able to read and then relate back to and understand. Okay, here, this EOS thing that we're doing as a company, this is how it comes into my world. This is what it's going to mean for me.

Great, that's very helpful.

Yeah. And then for again, your visionaries and integrators, we have Rocket Fuel University. So online resources, we have a free community so visionaries and integrators can come and join there. We do monthly calls where they can ask questions and interact with other visionaries and integrators and then, you know, kind of figure out what's right for them. And for the integrators who really know they're an integrator and they're really committed to being the best they can be, then they can jump on our track to go to an integrator masterclass and join our Integrator Mastery Forum and become a part of that more advanced community of integrators. It's really trying to be great.

Hey, before we dig back into eos, I want to stop and talk about visionary integrator. You've got the book, we got the authority, you've listened to it, and so spill the beans. What's on your mind? We haven't talked.

What's up? Yeah, yeah, you know, it's kind of interesting. So as I listened to the episode, you know, obviously, he's the man. Right. And I started thinking about the statement you made to me a couple of weeks ago, and you said, seth, you're the visionary, I'm the integrator. And, you know, the interesting thing is, over the years, because I've implemented EOS and some of the other systems, is that I've always been put in the integrator seat. And I never saw myself as the visionary. Right. And listening to this, I started to realize that maybe I actually am. It's a weird thing for me to say, but maybe I actually am, man. But, yeah, you know, listening to him describe it, describe it, describe it. I had a little bit of an aha moment, my friend. A little bit of an aha moment.

Yeah. I think we have to go through this crystallized assessment together and figure out. Because I definitely lean towards the integrator. And it's weird. There's this, like, in my gut, there's some visionary stuff there, but at the end of the day, it's like, here's the task. I can go execute it.

Yeah. You know, it's kind of interesting because before we started working together, I always saw you on the other side, but now that we work together, it's absolutely the case. You know, you are that guy 100%. 100%.

But in the flip side of things, which I think is. It's hilarious, like reading Rocket Fuel, knowing that we've been in a conversation with Mark for probably nine months. It took a long time just for our schedules to line up. So I was really looking forward to this one. But reading the book, knowing that this new business has started, and it's funny because I get excited about marketing and sales and you do as well. But the funny thing about, like, this relationship of the visionary and integrator roles is, of all things, you're the one that's telling me to keep the blinders on. Like, stay focused. Do this one task. That too will come. We'll get there. But for now, just do this one thing right. I think that's hilarious.

Yeah. You know, it's kind of funny because obviously the nature of my world is I have to keep CEOs focused every single day. Right? That's my job. And that's what has proven out success, is to be able to identify these things and move forward and not let people chase squirrels. And it's kind of funny that I'm the one doing that and all. It's kind of funny.

It was very, very timely. We're almost having, like, a public counseling session here. So let's go ahead and set up our visionary integrator format. So how often should you and I get in the cadence of speaking as visionary and integrated, greater, you know, based.

On the EOS model? You know, they've got their cadences. I really personally like the weekly meetings which they call out for us to have the discussions. But really on a quarterly basis, we should really be setting out our goals and hitting what they consider their rocks and making it happen. You know, we should be talking once a week with our future management teams once a month, and then setting our goals every quarter. So that's what we should be doing based on eos.

Let's do this.

You ready, man?

I'm ready. We're doing it. So let's talk about eos, because it is a very, very hot topic. When I think about eos, there's actually specific people. I see it all the time. They're almost proselytizing the big believers in EOs, right. And they are giving big props and credibility and affirmations to what it has done for their businesses. So hats off to y'.

All.

You know who you are. And. And from your perspective, Seth, have you seen where EOS has made a big impact in people's businesses that execute on it?

You know, I have. I could create an argument, you know, on both sides that, you know, EOS fits a very, very specific type of business. Right. Where they become really successful. I've seen a lot of companies, though, that it may not fit that leadership team, and they attempt and attempt and attempt, and it just falls apart. So I think Mark really called it out when, you know, he made a statement about when the CEO steps above the line of accountability, it tends to cause challenges. And, you know, I would tell you that that's one of the things I've seen. In addition, the other component is, is that when the emotional connection or the emotional side of leaders is not taken into account and they're still good people within the company and they're not able to execute on the accountability chart effectively, it usually falls apart. But that's where I've seen it, man. Some do well and some don't. That's where I see the breakdown.

Let's stick with the ones that have done well.

Yeah.

What kind of performance would you say? Like, performance increase or systems increase? Can you tangibly say, wow, they went from X to Y?

What I've seen for the companies that implement EOS is the ones that do it well is I think that they have very, very clearly defined long term goals, midterm goals and short term goals. And they keep the team very, very, very focused. Right. I think that as they start the accountability chart and people who are in charge of putting things in place effectively put in place what's necessary for that business to hit those goals. They do really, really well. You know, the ones when they have the people that are really focused on the goals and they miss their goals, it tends to be the fact that it was the wrong goal to begin with at the phase where that business was. But yeah, that's what I've seen. And so obviously, you know, revenue goes up with a lot of them. You know, typically from a CEO standpoint, the CEO starts to gain their time back because they know what to focus on and the rest of their leaders know what's important to make things happen.

Right.

And so those are some of the benefits that I've really seen, you know, with companies that have implemented EOS well, with some within our industry and then obviously outside of our industry as well. So.

Cool.

I want to kind of ask you the flip side of this as well. There's comparable systems, right. Where is EOS not a good fit? And I just want to help avoid frustration by you saying this.

Yeah, it's a really, really good question. There's other systems, and fortunately I'm very, very familiar with the majority of them. Now, I think to answer your question, in order to avoid frustration before EOS is implemented, or for that matter any of the systems, is that you have to look across the people as part of your organization and determine if you have received pushback on things like this before. So it may not be putting in a major, major overhaul like eos, but it might be the implementation of a new technology, it might be a change to positioning within the company, it might be a change in your sales process where you've gotten pushback or something hasn't been effective when you look at that leadership team. And so when you look across that team, if you're receiving that and you've accepted that in the past, is there's a very high likelihood that when you start eos is that it's going to break down as part of that accountability chart because people aren't going to understand what roles they should take within the company and you're going to assign them roles that they really shouldn't have. That's really where I see it potentially breaking down. So if you look at your team and historically people have given you pushback or haven't executed well, and you're Unwilling to change those people in the roles or unwilling to. To put different people in those seats, that's when you're going to set yourself up for failure.

But in terms of conflict, in avoiding it, a conflict resolution, if that leader just doesn't deal well with conflict, are they going to expect conflict by getting into Eos?

Yeah. This is where I could see things break down. Right. Because the one component that I don't see that's really defined in Eos is dealing with the emotional component of people. If a head of a company doesn't do well with conflict because of a deep feeling, EOS is probably not going to be a great fit. Now, there is systems within the programs that can help with conflict resolution and different things, but at the end of the day, when you get into the core and the soul of somebody is somebody who is adverse to conflict is always going to be adverse to conflict. And that's a hard thing to overcome. Now, people do overcome it. I think that that's really important to consider. Right. I think it's really, really important to consider. You know, within the first month of implementation, the second you go through that accountability chart, conflict starts. If your people are really honest with themselves, is that companies probably aren't looking at Eos if everything's running perfect, if everything's going great. You know, I've seen companies that do it because they want to attempt to scale. But that very first meeting is very tough. When you look around your leadership team and you start to assign accountability and you realize that the wrong people are in the wrong seats, it's going to immediately create confidence, conflict.

I hear you. Very cool as you say that. I think you, me and Paul need to have a little chat about these revenue plateaus and how to break through them. Right. And then what it does from even your side with consulting his side on the M and A side of things. I'm glad you're able to make it. And especially in filling in for Paul's absence in the conditions down in San Juan. Yeah, sounds like people are okay, at least on his side of the island. But, you know, electricity is kind of the printing at this point, so.

Yeah, absolutely.

Now I've got rocket fuel. I'm fired up, man. All right, well, have a great week, man. We'll see you next time.

Take care, man.

This episode has been edited, mixed and co produced by Dylan Seals of Her Bell.

Hey, everybody, Dylan here. I want to remind you right now to go ahead ahead and subscribe to the Boardroom Buzz. We have got some incredible episodes coming up that you're not going to want to miss. Also, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please go to the Apple Podcast app and leave us a short review. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks so much again for listening and we'll see you next week.

It.