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Today's episode was sponsored by Titus Talent.

We know each other's rhythms and that's part of that trust and the communication side of it. And it's really just not that complicated. It's like it's essentially like a buddy system of which you're like, Hey, I'm going to look out for you. You look out for me. We're going to communicate and we allow ourselves both healthy tension and healthy conflict and have developed a lot of skills around that thanks to other advisors.

Everybody, welcome to another season of 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 Rocket Fuel. I'm your host, Mark C. Winters, co-author of Rocket Fuel and an expert EOS Implementer. Today, I'm thrilled to be talking with David Kaplan and Alexander Day of Death & Company, a cocktail institution with an award-winning menu. David works as the founder and visionary of Death & Co, and Alex is the integrator. The two have published three influential mixology books together and continue to open new Death & Co locations nationwide. The brand is known for creating unforgettable experiences and connecting people through cocktail-anchored hospitality. In this episode, we'll hear how Alex and David balance their partnership and how they stepped into their unique roles. The two will also break down how they make Level 10 meetings work from opposite coasts, and the challenges that became catalysts for success. We're kicking off the conversation with David Story of how he was introduced to the book Traction after tapping out in other entrepreneurial groups. Here we go.

I found out about EOS. We were fortunate enough to get exposed to a lot of the sort of entrepreneurial, kind of entrepreneurial books, data systems through a friend of ours, an amazing peer in the industry. He set up this, sort of retreat for operators. And I felt like I had kind of taken it as far as I could. Alex joined for a number of them as well. That's really where I first learned about a lot of business practices such as quarterly cadence, vision, mission, et cetera, core values. But I felt like I was kind of topping out there. And I had just a casual catch up with a friend of mine, a phenomenal entrepreneur. And I caught him kind of just journaling at the bar. and thinking I was poking fun at him, I was like, Hey, are you writing in your diary? He was like, well, actually, I've developed this daily journaling ritual. And that brings me to another question. I wanted to ask you, what are you doing? How are you running your business? We recently adopted EOS and it's been transformative and we're paying an implementer. It's really changed our world. I was like, that's not where I thought this casual cocktail catch-up was going to go at all. And so that was the first time that I was introduced to EOS. I dove in, read the book, and kind of gently introduced it to the team.

What was the first book you read? Was it Traction?

It was Traction, yeah.

Okay.

First book, right?

So then you come back and you tell Alex what?

Alex and I have always had a great rapport, now understanding ourselves as sort of the visionary integrator role. Before, like many folks, we were just thought of ourselves as partners. You do this and I do this and we all kind of tackle everything. And we've always been very close, very good friends, and we've been cognizant to work at that relationship. So I think I was less reticent to tell Alex where I was at and what I was thinking, but I was very aware, at least I thought that our executive team or leadership team would be pretty wary of this. We're in the bar industry. We like to think of ourselves as rogues or alternative folks or rebels or whatever it is. And this felt corporate. I don't know how else to say it. It felt corporate. And so I was a little nervous to bring it to them. And I think, you know, it took a few months of a little kicking and screaming, but pretty quickly everyone saw the value. And after, I don't know how many sessions, it was either the first or second session that we had with our implementer, everyone was like, this is going to change what we do and how we do it.

And your implementer was, Josh Holtzman, yeah.

Great guy based out of LA, still really close with him. We worked with him for four years, I think, and still get the opportunity to hang out with him. I just went to my first US conference with him actually in San Diego.

Yeah, Josh is a superstar. He's really great, great guy. Great guy. So that's cool that you got connected with him and to get this thing kicked off. So in the process early on, reading the book a little bit, maybe going through the accountability chart in that first Focus Day, you get exposed to this concept of the visionary and the integrator. So Alex, talk to me about the first time you saw that terminology and kind of that structure. What did you think?

It was certainly a process of getting acclimated to it. And I think I'm probably, and this is more reflective of me in that time and place, felt resistant to it, resistant to Dave on a whim being like, this is the thing that we should do and look at and getting really excited about. And meanwhile, my brain And now I have language around this, right? But at the time, you know, look back at it, my brain was in the mud, working on a project, in operation, whatever it was that I was very focused on. Like, what are you doing? This is a waste of my time. And so it took a little while, as Dave said, a little kicking and screaming. When that barrier was broken for me, and when I read the book for the first time and consumed the information, you know, my first pass through it was set in, and then I did a second pass on it. And my first reaction was, wow, this is really simple. It was in that way almost a little resistant to because of its simplicity. And then the second read through, I'm like, oh, I get why this is simple is because it's meant to appeal to a very large audience and to be clarified, to be simplified, to provide a shared language for people. And then it started clicking. And specifically when we visited the integrator, visionary relationship, I had a lot of different thoughts about it. You know, I come from a very creative background and a lot of the work that, you know, I still do today and Dave and I work on together is within the creative realm. And some of the more kind of binary definitions of an integrator versus visionary were challenging for me to wrap my head around. But then when you dig a little bit deeper and understand some of the psychology around what it means to kind of align with one direction or the other, then things start making sense. And you later on other things like Myers-Briggs and all these other kind of like assessments. And suddenly we start developing a language together. We're like, oh wait, no, that's just kind of how my brain works. And so what had been before maybe, I mean, David and I have gone maybe in one fight, two fights, professionally speaking over our careers, maybe we're 20 years in. Like that's pretty remarkable, right? But even then having some of this language, I'm like, oh, well that sure explains it. Cause my brain works like this and yours brain works like this. And these are the things that motivate you and these are the things that motivate me. And so as I wrap my head around that, leading in to implementation with Josh Holtzman, it was really like, I see it now in retrospect as the kind of early foundations of what has really become, you know, an incredibly fruitful relationship for Dave and I built on trust and communication and collaboration with that framework as that foundation, I guess.

It was hilariously clear. Right, the roles when you thought back on your 20 years of experience together. Give me a specific example from kind of your life leading up to them. It's like, oh yeah, okay, that explains it. That's in this situation, that's why you were this or he was that.

I think even just how I introduced EOS to us was a good example. I was like, went off in whatever direction, was very confident that this would be transformative. And it was one of the times, and I try not to do this very often, but one of the times where I was like, all right, come hell or high water, I'm going to find a way to introduce this. And whether everyone buys in or one person buys in, I know I really just need Alex to buy in. And then we can together, we can make sure that everyone kind of gets there. And again, whether we take them kicking or screaming or whether they just jump straight into that was certainly one instance. But I mean, just looking down, like long-term vision, big ideas, like Alex and I, when we first started reading Integrator and Visionary, like what those kind of types are, I think we quickly saw ourselves. But I know I was a little nervous to bring it to Alex, and at least in one part, because of the term visionary, because it's a little highfalutin, it's a little self-aggrandizing. You know, and Alex and I both were doing everything and we're both pretty competent at doing everything. But this gave us a tool to understand what we were most comfortable in, most fluent in. And it's not to say that we can't be good or great at the other things, but it's like sitting, sitting in our true seats or performing the tasks we're meant to do. It became very clear, like, oh, I'm, I kind of live a little bit over here and I have integrated capabilities, but that's not. that's not who I'm born to be. That's not where I'm sitting in my seat. And I feel like, Alex, you felt the same way.

Yeah, I think I did for sure. And I saw the opportunity within it, too, of acknowledging, and we did, we talked extensively about what this language meant for the future of our company. And is it, if we are adopting these almost identities, do those collide? Do they assimilate? Do they live separately? Are they, what are they relative to our self-identification as human beings, right? And so much of our work in our industry is built and specifically our work as Jen and Luck and as Death and Co is built upon a very incremental and self-initiated path. That very little of it was methodical, if we're being clear. I am passionate about this thing. and I am going to persevere to make it the best version that it possibly can be. And it's going to be driven by like those two things. And, you know, like Dave will make fun of me, but I always bring up Angela Duckworth and Grit. And the concept of it is like, is the basis of our company. And without that passion and perseverance, we never would have gotten where we are. Do we maybe have some aptitude for this stuff? Kind of. But Dave studied art and a find photography at gallery arts and a little bit of psychology in there too. And I have a degree in European studies and like a music background, like whatever, we're not qualified academically to be where we're at, but that confluence really, really helped us. And so having, again, having those conversations and saying, okay, what does this mean to us? And allowing attention to exist that isn't so restrictive of saying, yes, yes, we are these roles, and this is my function within this organization. And we can also do other things. We can expand that. And I think, you know, our body of work speaks to that in various ways. Be it the books, be it our work opening and building bars, be it our 40s into media, be it our online marketplace, which is a huge part of our business and a massive marketing engine, is all the architect, Dave, that's Dave's entire, you know, Dave created that whole thing much to my eye rolls out of my head, rolling right out of my head with it, you know? So it's, it's, what are we doing now? Like, I, I find that good. Yeah. Exactly. Like, what?

So, so I heard you, Alex, you, you use the word tension, right? And so it's, it's sort of that creative tension. It's the tension on the rubber band that, that, that creates, you know, we talk about power. We talk about rocket fuel being truly power between the, the differences that the two of you bring and blending that into something. so as you got language around this, so now you've got words, a visionary and an integrator that, okay, it kind of makes sense that the pattern that's there, the internal wiring that's there, how did it change how you communicated? So you've been together for 20 years, as you said. So you've been talking, you've got all kinds of ways that you've done it that have been very effective to get you to where you are. And then that kind of clicks into place. So tell us what changed in the way that you communicated between the two of you. as a result of clarifying those roles.

Everything pretty quickly. We were probably fairly typical partners in that we didn't lay out what Alex did versus what I did. We did everything together for the most part. So we didn't, in doing so, it was great and I had to become very good at areas that are not, that I don't feel like I'm born to be great at, but having that competency certainly has given me confidence in areas that I otherwise have tried to run away from typical kind of visionary stuff that I now see where it's like day-to-day ops running to the numbers, like really digging deep into the P&Ls, the minutiae, and like the world of accountability and the culture of accountability that you need to create and have a fluency there. But right away, Alex and I said, oh, you're great at this stuff. I don't need to be because I have a endless trust in you. I can stop trying to be even good at that. I'm confident in my fluency so I can understand where you're going, what you're doing, how hard you're working, and the level and the caliber of your work. But I can then free myself, let go of the vine and US problems. I can then free myself to really try to get much better at the things that I feel like I'm kind of born to do. And that way, I don't think that we would have been able to do anything, almost anything that we've done to date without that almost disentangling and empowering of ourselves and each other and looking at each other and be like, no, no, you go forth. I got this. And we love to do everything. Like right now, next week is a great example. I'm flying to Denver. I'm shooting a campaign video for our next crowdfunding campaign. And then I have an investor Webinar on Thursday morning, then an investor happy hour. I'm shaking hands and kissing babies and doing that dance all week. It's going to be fun. I enjoy it. I feel like I'm pretty darn good at it. Alex, meanwhile, is doing a massive road trip blitz around the south in three of our new locations with the entire ops team. And I'm just overflowing with want to be there with him, because I love that stuff. I love digging into the weeds, but it's like, You got this. I just want to be there because I love you guys. I love working with you. I love seeing you do what you do. I'm going to be over here doing what I do. So that mutual empowerment, we never would have been able to raise the money that we've raised to structure the company to grow, to have these opportunities without being like, really looking at the accountability chart and being like, this is you and I know you got this and this is me and I'm going to tackle. Yeah.

So trust is obviously a big part of your equation, right? Alex, from your seat, what changed? What's a big change that you've experienced as you got that language and you got that clarity around the two roles?

I mean, gosh, it's a long history. And I think that there's various stages of our career and our relationship with EOS as a system on which to operate. And I think it did start at the beginning of us Simply having a conversation around this aligning on where we sit in these roles and then trying it out. There was a testing period, right? Of does this feel right? Are we letting go too much of the vine or are we leaning in too much? And it's a part of our back and forth on a kind of annual base or whatever longer term trajectory that is really, really helpful and really important and valuable for integrators and visionaries I think kind of as a universal statement to have conversations about, right? You know, where, you know, Dave purely specializing as the example he just said, purely go into Denver and just focusing on that, whereas I'm kind of overseeing our ops team and making sure that they are bringing to life the larger engines of our company in the future for our growth and doing it the way that needs to happen. If we were to purely do those things and those two routes, we would not have the connection that we have. So we do need to kind of ebb and flow a little bit with that.

One of you described your relationship as a dance. So is that what you mean? Is that back and forth? Is that what you mean?

I think so, yeah. I mean, I think any good relationship has, if you use the dance metaphor, has steps in and out. It has give and take. It has acclamation. And when you dance with somebody, you know how their body moves. When you work with somebody, you know how they move. And it's an analogy we use often within bartending, that's what my background is. I was a bartender for many years. The kind of cliche is you never really learn a bar until you've been behind it for six months. Just know organically where everything is so you can remain face up and facing your guests so you can kind of work fluidly. But there's also the dance with your coworkers that you develop over time. And I think that that really applies to our work together. And so we know each other's rhythms. And that's part of that trust and the communication side of it. And it's really just not that complicated. It's essentially like a buddy system of which you're like, Hey, I'm going to look out for you. You look out for me. We're going to communicate and we allow ourselves both healthy tension and healthy conflict and have developed a lot of skills around that thanks to other advisors in our world.

So talk to me a little bit about in the communication area, how do you stay on the same page? What does that look like?

All sorts of things. I mean, we follow a lot of the EOS suggestion in terms of we have weekly same page meetings. Those are really important. We prioritize those over a lot of other calls.

Tell me specifically about those. So how long are they? Where are they? What do they look like?

Alex and I and our entire company, we've worked to make it as absolutely complicated as possible accidentally. I'm in Seattle and Alex is in Portland, Maine, so we could not be farther apart.

Genius.

Yeah, I know. It's really great.

It's cheap, too.

It's really inexpensive. You know, you read about far more intelligent hospitality professionals like Danny Meyer, who was hesitant to open up new restaurants more than a couple blocks from his home. So we're in New York, Denver, LA, DC, and soon to be Atlanta, Nashville, Savannah, Seattle, Las Vegas. And then we're looking at two deals in Australia, which will be international licensing deals. So super convenient. So going back to your question, Alex and I, almost everything that happens in our company on a regular cadence is on Zoom, is remote. So we meet every Monday, typically for 90 minutes in the afternoon, Pacific in the evening, because Alex is very gracious on the East Coast. And it's great. It's, it's an L 10. , structure, but we run it a little bit looser than we do the rest of our armings and we use it as an opportunity to personally catch up. And sometimes we'll just talk about non-work related things for a little bit. Sometimes we open it up to vent about things either in the company or outside the company, shared personal stressors or otherwise. But for the most part, it's probably 70, 80% L 10 and, and fairly typically focused. And then in addition to that same page meeting, we try to get as much in-person time together and we also try to get non-work in-person time together. We're very fortunate. I absolutely adore Alex's husband. We get a chance to work with him on almost everything. He's an interior designer and they do his firm does almost everything that we do. But we're also very close personally. And then similarly, Alex and Andrew are very close with my wife, Jenna. She does our PR. for everything. So no nepotism at all. None? Straight pipe. Well, what I like to say is we happen to be attracted to brilliant and talented people. And so we were fortunate enough to marry the best people that we met and encountered and lucky enough to get to work with them. So we try to travel together as couples as well and know each other's families closely. All that good stuff in addition to work.

Love that. Today's episode is sponsored by Titus Talent. Titus Talent Strategies is on a mission to disrupt the status quo in hiring and people development in the EOS community and beyond. If you're looking for a unique process for hiring and developing A-players, Titus whole-person hiring process is your answer. Titus candidates are extremely values-driven. Do things the right way and have an industry-leading guarantee their clients love. Connect with a Titus teammate@TitusTalent.com to learn more. Love that. So y'all have known each other for 20 years. A lot of visionaries and integrators, their first big challenge is getting paired up, right, and finding each other. So 20 years ago, where were you? that you happen to connect?

It was a very different relationship than it is now. How deep do we want to go? Post college, living in New York City, Dave opened Death & Co. I wasn't there at the beginning, and he can speak to that trajectory. But I was just after college figuring out what I wanted to do, toying around with going to grad school, mostly just being a young 20-year-old living in New York, working in bars and restaurants, and having a really good time. and this bar, Death and Co. Opened right around the corner. I went in, sat at the bar, and absolutely fell in love with it. And it was vowed that I was going to find a way to work there. And I just started going there more and more and eventually crossed paths with Dave and invited him down to my bar. And I think you were throwing a party for Tim. And, you know, like Dave comes in with them and I'd set them up, and it was essentially a nightclub that I was running. And for some reason, somebody let me at, like, 22 years old, run a nightclub. It was There was a lot of questionable decisions there, but it was a very fun place. And I set them up. I took my staff aside before we started. I was not hiding anything. And from there, we kind of talked a little bit and found my way to the Sunday night swing shift at Death & Co about six months after the bar opened. And from there it was pretty quick that David and I realized that in addition to having some aspirations that maybe aligned, I certainly don't know it then, if I could have articulated where I wanted to be now, where I am now, certainly. I think Dave had vision for doing more and he really loved this thing that Def N Co was becoming and wanted to do more and that was really exciting to me. Some other opportunities I had, we just continued to feel alignment and at the core of that, which is really important, was us aligning as individuals and understanding that we had a similar background that allowed sort of a shared language. We both grew up in ski towns, for example. That was kind of a thing. And we were both living in New York. And so it was like, when you do that, when you grow up in a place like that, you live in a place like New York City, there's a certain level of reminiscing about that. And that came, became a little bit of a nugget that they grew into a much larger friendship. And from there, you know, I can let Dave speak to kind of the trajectory after that, but from there, business Relationship forged and eventually we came to a place of more mutual alignment versus me being Dave's employee.

So, Dave, you've got this young guy that comes on board and is doing some cool stuff. And how did you begin to see, okay, here's somebody that can really have an even more significant role in making your vision a reality, if you will?

If that's not the easiest question, anyone could see and certainly could see Alex's brilliance. And I tell him that not because we're being recorded today, but someone gave Alex the reins of a pretty big nightclub, wannabe speakeasy cocktail bar at a really young age because he was incredibly driven, very what we call ABK, which is worked with rigor and thoughtfulness and clearly had a passion for it. Very, very organized. A lot of, you know, what we now think of as relatively integrator type mindset and execution. And as Alex said, you know, we also had a ton in common. We were very, we were both very ambitious and very young. He was the only person at Death & Co younger than me. When we opened, I was younger than everyone that we employed there. And I also very quickly understood that Alex, even though we didn't have this language, I very quickly understood that Alex is very, very good at a whole world of things that I am not very good at. And I think that was almost one of my first, and it certainly wasn't integrator visionary, but that, that's one of the reasons I became comfortable with the integrator visionary difference so quickly is because I opened Ethos and Co. I've never been a bartender. And so I was like, I know I'm, I'm pretty bad at almost everything that we do. which is an interesting thing to say as someone who helps build cocktail culture nationally, globally, whatever it is. I'm like, I was a terrible waiter in high school. I've never been a bartender. Not a very good, I was never a GM. I don't think I would be a great GM. I like to be the guy behind the curtain. I like to be exactly in the seat that I am. I like to be connected to it and see what we're building and see the impact that we're having. And I've worked really hard to try to get better at the areas that I'm not good at, but Anyway, that very quickly saw all of that in Alex and it just made sense. It clicked and we started to work together more and more and it became more and more fun.

Very cool. So, okay, just to kind of set context for our listeners about the size of your organization now. So employee wise, how many folks you got?

177 employees right now.

177. And so you're right in the cocktail business. So I have to ask each of you, what is your favorite cocktail?

You go first. I know what Dave says. You should ask us what the other ones is. Oh, okay.

Let's do it that way. Let's do it that way. Alex, what is Dave's favorite cocktail?

His favorite cocktail is a martini. Actually, and I would say a subset.

Of that would be a Vesper. Okay, a Vesper. Okay, so very specific. Anything more specific?

Can you even get more specific about it? I think you like Coq au Americain instead of Le Lay Blanc in there. as I recall.

And what temperature is that served at?

Well, I mean- He knows that too. Close to zero. I mean, as cold as his freezer can get with the proper dilution and pre-batched in a bottle. There we go.

So, did he nail it?

Of course he did.

Okay, so let's see if you can do the same. What's Alex's favorite cocktail?

Oh man, I can't, I can't, well, we'll see if I'm right. I think my answer is that I think it depends on the time, place and mood. And so I think it would probably go from either Calvados, Negroni, Cider. What am I missing?

I mean, Martini's pretty high up there.

Martini's high up there. I didn't think it was the number one spot though.

Yeah, it is very situational.

Alex is more than him. Alex is more interesting than almost everything we're going to talk about. He's a more interesting person. He's got more interesting drinks.

Don't listen to him. He's full of it.

You guys really like each other. And appreciate each other. That's very cool. Very cool. Okay, so let's talk about this. It hasn't all been, you know, roses and sunshine. You've been through some tough stuff together too, right? So, like, you know, the pandemic was a big deal, particularly for business in your sector. So what lessons did you learn going through something like that? that was so devastating for so many, many other bar businesses, again, businesses that were trying to do the same thing you're trying to do. What did you learn? What was your big takeaway from making it through that?

I'm sure they are. I think, wow, I mean, if you're reflective over the last five years, it's, there are so many different phases and milestones within that that were edifying. You know, we often joke that this period of time was the equivalent of going to hospitality grad school. And what I mean by that is almost monthly, if not weekly, in the beginning, we were reimagining and reinventing our business.

And.

Some of the kind of motivators behind that were dictated by legal restrictions or our own convictions about what we wanted to ask of our staff and the safety that we wanted to create for our guests in a very kind of challenging environment with a lot of conflicting information. Right. So it's a very confusing time. But in that we had a fiduciary responsibility to our business to do the best that we could to make our way through it and an obligation to our employees and the people around the table and really, you know, our core group that we had built this with to, to have it survive. And, you know, I think some people had the, had an opportunity over those early days of COVID to, you know, spend some time on personal reflection and, and growing maybe hobbies they were into. And I have so much respect for that and just a little bit of jealousy. But Dave and I looked at each other a couple days in, and I, and I swear it was a couple days in, we're like, we're not wasting any time here. And, and sorry for the use of language, but it was, we were, it was diver, you know, we let almost everyone go except for a core group of people, which is for those who have had to do that, who've had to fire one person, let alone almost 200, is awful. It's a truly existentially challenging moment. And to then take that and turn it on its head and say, okay, we need to do something with this energy. We are not going to waste it. We are going to look internally, figure out what matters to us. And over the course of many, many months, let alone years, asking ourselves hard questions about who we are, where we want to be, and what we want to do was extremely clarifying for our future. And then there's kind of the more mechanical side of things, which is how this business functions. And fundamentally, our industry has changed. It is no longer the same. And currently right now in 2024, mid-year, it is, we are in such an interesting place in that, you know, the larger consumer perception is that things are back to normal. And that's just not true. It's not true from an economic standpoint about our cost of goods and the labor environment nationally that exists, let alone the lingering impacts of the last many years. And so, I'm very much on a pulpit right now, whatever blow horn I have, to remind people of this and let them know of the challenges because it's a really, really challenging time right now. And so we are continuing to reinvent and change Our business model. And I think that the moral of the story there is we have become a very nimble company and one that looks at data in a way that is just far more profound than we ever have before. And I think that's both good and at times can kind of strip away the creativity, strip away the passion, strip away the things that we love about the human engagement and connectivity of our work.

So let me play, when I hear all that, Alex, what I hear you say is it's the lesson is about adaptability. ability and being able to move, but with sort of a foundational foothold of your core values and your vision and what's most important to you. Am I hearing you right?

Mark, you took the words out of my mouth. I think in absolutely aligned with everything Alex said. And I think when you're faced with really just earth-shatteringly tough moments in your life, and in your career, in the company that you're building, you need to look to something, right? Like you need to feel, you need to hold on to something. And the whole world feels like it's sweeping you away. You gotta have something. And we were very fortunate to have EOS and to have this foundation. And we are not paid by EOS. I say this to anyone and everyone. I had a meeting yesterday where I was proselytizing about it. and it really was, as you just said, Mark, it was our mission purpose, our core values, our core Target. Like, we knew what we wanted to do, and we knew who we were, who we are, and that did not change. And so Alex is. Is very right. We're. We looked around, and we saw some people saying, all right, well, we're closed. I'm gonna go learn to play the piano. We pursued, like, growth. and whatever that meant. And I find purpose through work. I know Alex does as well. And so we got to work. We worked probably as harder, harder than we ever have through this time where none of our doors were open. And we looked to opportunities to show who we were and what our values are. And one of the many great things that I think we did through that time is we created a COVID and reopening playbook. And we said, all right, We need this for ourselves. Let's not forget who we are. Let's make it sexy. Let's make it beautiful. Let's package it, make it fun and dynamic and interesting to read, and let's share it with everyone. Let's just make it open source. How can we be there for our community, for our culture, and help people get back? And that was just one of many things that we did. And as Alex also said, we went to the books. We reviewed the tapes and every tape we could. And within that metaphor, it's like we were really pulling up Excel and saying, how can we reopen? How can we do this better? How can we do this differently? What's the world going to look like? And how can we be better operators to ensure we have margin to share that margin, to better incentivize our people and be better employers? Because that's always been the North Star for us. How can we be a truly great employer? And that's part of BOS. It's a huge part of our motivation for US. if we're a better organization, we're going to be better employers, we're going to have better product, and it's going to be a better hospitality experience, we're going to become a more sustainable and more profitable company because of that investment.

What a great example of learning from the tough stuff that comes along and doing something good with it. We got a lot of people listening that are their visionaries themselves, they're integrators themselves, or they're trying to figure it out, or they're just interested in these crazy visionaries and integrators that are out there in the world. So if you're talking to them, and so Alex maybe you take it for the Integrator and David, maybe you take it for the visionary. If you're talking to yourself 20 years ago or you're talking to somebody that's gonna end up on that path, but somewhere ahead of where they're trying to get to, what nugget of wisdom would you offer? What's one thing that you've learned maybe the hard way that you can share that is gonna be really important to them to making this do what they want it to do?

I would say that IQ does not trump EQ. And what I mean by that, is, you know, a lot of people that are engaged in these conversations are cognitively adept. They're smart people, right? And if we know anything about the modern world of business or life for that matter, simply being smart does not always equate to success nor positive relationships. And clicking in a layer deeper than that, of being aware of who we are as emotional creatures and where we sit within the spectrum of our interaction with others can be really powerful in forming these relationships. We have the great fortune of working with a coach, Mary Pat Knight, who wrote a book called Humanized Leader, which, I mean, Mary Pat is like, I miss talking to her every week. She's, yeah, mine's downstairs in my actual office, better light here. She taught us a number of skills that have been with me that I think about every day. And one of them is factual, direct, neutral, and kind. And as I interact with Dave and I in our relationship, as we have hard conversations about things, as we make really big sea changes in our company as can be the case and has been the case in the last couple of years to approach these things that are emotionally challenging with some of these skills of being, as we navigate a situation, being factual about it, being direct, being neutral, but also being kind and humans about things. I think that is the biggest piece of advice I could have.

Love that. Very well done. David, for the visionaries.

I should have gone first. Alex is always a tough act to follow.

Tough act to follow.

For a few things in relation to the visionary integrator role, when it was first introduced, we've had an interesting journey with it. And I think it's probably fairly typical where we started to understand it, really adhered to the textbook definition. And in some ways, if you do that, you can box yourself in. And I don't think that's the intention. It's almost the more you work with something, To learn it, you have to adhere to the rules. And then to truly master it, you have to know how to break the rules and sort of rise above it and know how those rules can otherwise empower you. And that's been the case for our partnership. That's been the case for how Alex continues to become a phenomenal integrator, how I hopefully continue to become a phenomenal visionary and leader in the company, is that all of these things, visionary role, an integrator role, anything, it's incredibly dynamic. And the more you take in, the more you can layer on and make it your own and make it even better than where you're at today. And I think Alex was speaking to that in a certain respect with the humanized leader. I love taking in business books and consuming them at massive volume. And if you do that, if you don't, the more you learn and however you choose to learn, the more dynamic and layered you make your role. And I always think about Jim Collins in the 20 Mile March. I got a long list of top 10 hits, but they kind of all change around depending on where I'm at. But, you know, the 20 Mile March of not just where your business is going, but where you yourself are going as a visionary, as in this question, in this example, you're never done. Your company is never done. You're never done with your personal journey. and that can be daunting or that can be incredibly exciting and empowering.

Love that. So in the space of being dynamic, I was told you're a wake surfer.

I would say I enjoy wake surfing. To say I am a wake surfer feels like a level of, I don't know, I don't compete in it. I enjoy doing it, but yeah, I mean, you throw pretty much any sport, Again, Alex and I have this in common. Any sport our way, either of our way, and we love to pursue it. But yes, Seattle and Sammamish is actually the home, the birthplace of wake surfing.

Which is pretty cool. I didn't know that. Is there anything you've learned from being whatever level of wake surfer you are that you think ties back into making a visionary integrator duo powerful?

Oh man, what a great curveball. I think sports in general are great metaphors for business. Wakesurfing is a fun one actually because it's one of the few sports where you really don't get hurt or it's almost kind of tough to get hurt when you fall down. And the empowerment of failure is something we should all talk about more because we don't learn that much when we succeed. We just don't. Like as humans, we don't. We're like, great, and sometimes that can give us a false confidence and then we fuck it up next time. We learn a ton when we fail. And same is true for sports. If you're pushing yourself to really get better in a sport, you're gonna fall. And it depends on what sport, how hard that hurts. You know, skateboarding, not for me. You fall. Wake surfing, I think is a better comparison to business in that like most of the time you will fall down, fuck up and fail. And in our profession, we get to do it every single day. because we have people coming in every day and we're gonna slip up. We're gonna have a less than stellar service somewhere in one of our doors every day. And not just that, for Alex myself, I have seven, ten calls a day and then a million tasks in between. We all live that life. We're not gonna show up as our best selves in each of those. And to reflect on that at the end of the day and think about how we can do it better, just like when you fall down wake surfing, does it hurt? water's cold, you get back up, away you go.

Love it. I'd say you hit that curveball right out of the park. Very well done.

Well, speaking of the metaphor, I love it.

Yeah, right?

Thank you for giving me an easy sports metaphor. If you went a little deeper, you'd find out that I do not know traditional team sports.

Alex has been set in a high bar all day. So, you know, we tried to try to balance it out here in the end.

I appreciate you. Right?

So Alex and David, I have loved spending this bit of time with the two of you, and I'm super grateful that you took the time to spend it with me and more importantly with our listeners. So I'm grateful. The whole idea behind this podcast is to help people learn faster than we can learn on our own through others experiences, good and bad, right? The tough stuff and the stuff that's really, really cool. And hopefully, if we'll pay attention, we'll learn something that will help us not have to step in the same hole that they stepped in or maybe even get there a little bit faster. And so I know you've helped some listeners today. so I'm grateful to you, and I'm also grateful to our listeners for taking the time they take to listen to these episodes and do something with it. Go out there and I'm a huge fan of entrepreneurs in general and specifically the, the Visionaries and the integrators that make them go and make them have these huge impacts they can have on the world. So thanks for setting a great example for them. Listeners, thanks for listening. If you like this little podcast, tell somebody, leave us a review. If you really like it, it helps.

Other people find out about it and.

We can help them too. So what a fun conversation with David and Alex of Death and Co. Super, super people and a lot of learning in there. So just trying to anchor it back a little bit. So let's go to the Rocket Fuel Toolbox. And the two things that jumped out for me on this one, the first one really ties to the accountability chart tool. And so if you noticed when they were talking about getting clear on their roles, and thinking about, wow, am I really this or really that? And am I exclusively this or exclusively that? One of the things that was kind of challenging was, well, gee, we're both creative. We're both, in a sense, visionary. So does that mean that I don't get to do that? And so for me, the question I see come up a lot is kind of, well, where does vision come from? In the leadership team of a company, where does vision come from? And if you think about the process, who creates the vision? Who creates the VTO? and really it's the leadership team. You know, you're doing it together and everybody's kind of bringing their view, their voice into it. But the visionary has a very specific role. They're charged with making sure that they bring that visionary energy into that conversation, that they bring seeing the future, they bring the ideas and kind of connecting the dots and looking at where things are going and thinking about where we should position ourselves. They got to bring that energy, but it doesn't mean that the integrator can't contribute something in that vein too. or some other member on the leadership team. And then we work through our process and we figure out what the, you know, what the right answer is. But everybody's playing a little bit, but we, by having the visionary own that seat and truly play there, we make sure that we get that, that energy represented in the conversation we're having with regard to vision. Second thing from the toolbox. And I'm going to tie this back to the same page meeting. As you heard them talk about how they do their same page meeting, there was sort of a reference to using the, the level 10 agenda. And so just to clarify, the same page meeting agenda, super, super simple. It's the check-in at a deep level. And he talked about that. We're sharing personal stories and personal experiences, and it's really kind of deep because that's how important the relationship is. Right. So you're trying to understand it's your business spouse. So how would you check in with somebody that, that the relationship is that important to you? And then it's really, it's just ideas. So you're not necessarily going through and doing all the things we might do in a level 10 of checking the scorecard and the Rocks and the headlines, all that kind of stuff. It's really just let's take it to the issues. And so the visionary brings their issues, the integrator brings their issues, and the issue should be anything that you're feeling you're not on the same page about currently, anything that you're feeling you're at risk of not being on the same page about. And the third thing is something that's coming, something that's coming that you want to make darn sure you get on the same page. So you're proactively talking about it, getting alignment around it to make sure that we don't get off in a ditch and get out of alignment on it. so that's the links that I clearly saw back to the Rocket Fuel toolbox today. So hopefully you learn from that. And again, what a great conversation, tons of lessons in there. So take advantage of those and do something good with them. Meanwhile, please go to rocketfueluniversity.com and check out the resources that we've got for you there. Take the assessment. If you haven't already, that'll help you get clear on which of these roles might be you. And if this structure has a role in your world, in your business, and maybe something that can help help you. There's more tools there that you can take advantage of and really join our community of visionaries and integrators. So love to have you be a part of that and hopefully see you out there somewhere. So that's it for this episode. Until next time, go rocket. Thank you for listening today. I really hope this episode inspired you to bring rocket fuel to your business. If you're interested in learning more about the free community for visionaries, integrators and the people who support them, please visit RocketFuelUniversity.com the entrepreneurs behind the entrepreneurs. EOS Implementers help business owners get everything they want from their businesses. Request a free 90-minute meeting with an EOS Implementer to learn how they can help you on your journey toward EOS Mastery and living your ideal life. Go to EOSWorldwide.com to get started.