Mastering Role Balance and Conflict Resolution | John Burns and Caleb Dillard

We were, quote, trying to do it right. You have your visionary and you have your integrator. And then all it looks like a flowchart of how things go. And what happened was, is that we were working hard doing these things, but it actually became a bottleneck and an obstruction, if you will, between me and the rest of the organization on accident. And one day, I can't remember how long ago, Caleb wrote it out with this puzzle piece and turned it up sideways. That how the integrator and the visionary work together. And all of a sudden that way it just unlocked.

Hey everybody, and welcome to the Rocket Fuel podcast where visionary and integrator duos from entrepreneurial companies share a behind the scenes look at their relationship. These amazing leaders blend their unique skills to create Rocket Fuel. I'm your host, Mark C. Winters, co author of rocketfuel and an expert EOS imp. Today I'm honored to be speaking with John Burns and Caleb Dillard of Accential Wealth Advisors. Accential is a leader in objective investment management and financial planning services for individuals, families, corporate executives and business owners. They're one of the fastest growing firms in the U.S. named by Financial Advisor magazine with five locations across three states and multiple production lines being 100% direct to the consumers. John Burns, CFP, serves as a CEO and visionary for Accential Wealth Advisors and has over 30 years of industry experience. Caleb Dillard, CFA, supports the team at Accential Wealth Advisors as Chief Operations Officer, Chief Compliance Officer and integrator. And the two men have worked together for years in the visionary integrator relationship. In this episode, John and Caleb break down this relationship and how to balance their responsibilities and communicate through conflicts. Were joining in on the conversation after EOS had been introduced to Accential with Caleb sharing the ways he and John fit into the EOS system after John gave him the Rocket Fuel book. Here we go.

Well, I would say initially when John gave me the book, it was just another book. And there was the Traction EOS book, so just another book. I had a friend of mine who recommended the Traction EOS system and I said, hey, if she's recommending this to me, there's got to be something to it.

So at that point, I think it.

Was two or three months later and I picked it up, started working through it and I said, hey John, I think there is something here. And he said, well, no kidding, that's why I gave it to you. And so I worked through it and I'd say that was when the realization happened to me as to what it means to be an integrator, what it means to be a visionary. There's kind of differences that John and I have and kind of embracing those and leading into those. And I would say that became that much more apparent whenever we started working through the Rocket Fuel book. It kind of gave permission to lean into the differences together, to lean into the strengths of a visionary, the strengths of the integrator being aware of the weaknesses on both ends.

So you're saying you're not exactly the same.

They were not.

But what was interesting in Rocket Fuel was kind of the concept of complementarism. It wasn't worded that way, but it very much meant that we could be something special together by embracing those differences. That's it.

Right. It's the two piece puzzle that we want to fit to kind of make that click. So I want to talk kind of through the evolution process here. So, John, you start off in a world without Caleb before you thought of having an integrator type role to help and you know, as the owner, vision entrepreneur, that kind of got this balloon in the air. What was your life like before having an integrator? How would you describe it?

I'll start early. I didn't have the visionary language, you know, or vernacular, but I would say I kind of embraced those roles early in starting the business, certainly within the wealth management space, teaching financial concepts and good investment and tax and how to bring all these things together. I started with education of people and great communication and then meeting with people all day, every day, helping them make good decisions and have their money help serve their life and their unique purpose. And I built everything else around that. So all the details around the business were around those key functions. I did only those things, which is somewhat what a visionary does as we built it from pretty small in the early 2000s to where we are today. We reinvented ourselves a couple of times to get where we are. But I always had those visionary tendencies. Before we really embraced EOS and having Integrator, I would say we were stuck a little bit. Maybe more than a little bit.

Tell me about stuck. What does that look like?

Stuck means that passion is there, vision is there. You know, knowing what we can go do, but we just couldn't get out of our own way. There's a lot that goes into that and I really respect every aspect of that. It's just not me. And I just, you know, I can't do it. I don't want to do it. And so we needed both leadership and management capabilities in the different areas of our business. To get us back on track and get us capable of doing what we're capable of doing.

How much fun were you having?

Zero.

Okay. Okay. So you're in this world, so you're growing. I mean, things are moving, but you're kind of stuck. You're kind of hitting that ceiling. You can see the next level, but getting there is difficult. And so Caleb comes into the mix, and so we start talking about this integrator role. You're implementing eos and you're starting to move down this path and look at a different structure really, to move you forward. So early days really want to focus on the relationship between the two of you here. So as a visionary and an integrator, as you began kind of working out of the gate, how did that work? What did it look like?

It probably leaned a little bit more mechanical, a little bit more structured just in terms of kind of working together, prioritizing execution. It was, I would probably say, more mechanical. What we've learned and embraced really over the last three, three and a half years is more of the relationship aspect of it. We've invited more of the relationship discussion into our same page meetings and understanding where each other are in their personal lives that we all know that influences and impacts where we are professionally. And so pulling that in, which is less about the business, more about the person, more about the relationship. And so we've leaned into that more, and that's really made the difference for us.

I might add a couple of things there. So one of the things that makes Caleb incredible in the role is that he's probably the most competent, if not the most competent person I've ever met. He's one of them in a very small handful. And I know a lot of people in this life, and that comes with when you're good at everything, that you try and you learn and pick things up easily and you're better at it than everybody else. That's awesome. And it's also really hard. It's hard to learn to delegate and trust and it's hard to, you know, why have somebody else do something? So even as an example, that when we were really trying to get off the ground and using traction and learning to be a better team, you wanted to self implement and save some money. Right. That's all smart things to do. But I pushed back on that. And what I wanted for him and for us is that I don't want you to be facilitating to me and I want you to be experiencing this together and not trying to figure out indoor running the meeting. And that's why and where we hired you, Mark, is to really help that. And. And I think that's both a story to demonstrate challenges and opportunities for a good team, because you need those things in an integrator. But at the same time, we got to sit back and be our team and learn to be us and accept coaching and guidance along the way so that we can really experience it.

So there's two things I want to kind of dive into there. One is this idea of competence in somebody who's really good at stuff. And so when you say that about Caleb, is it that he's really good at your business or that he's just really good at, like, everything he tries?

Well, everything.

Mark. I'd add that usually he calls it the curse of competence.

Rightly so. Rightly for exactly the reason he said. Right. You think you're good at it, so you think you should. You know, you could do everything, but just because you could doesn't mean you should. Right. So that's a whole thing. It's typically a visionary problem, but it's interesting to hear him describe you that way. But what I'm trying to get at is a lot of times I talk to a visionary and they're trying to find an integrator, and they're looking for somebody that's deeply experienced and very good at their business. And so I'd be curious, John, your perspective on that? You know, is Caleb's capability heavily based on the fact that he knows your business so well, or is it just that he's one of those people that learns and figures stuff out and he has that general set of capabilities that would likely apply well to any business?

No, he's generally just really, really, really competent and brilliant, and maybe this will give it some color. And so he was, in this period of time, he was actually studying for the CFA exam. I think he was on the second test or whatever. So for downtime while he's studying, and mind you, he passed all three tests first try. Nobody does that for downtime, just so he can get a little mental break. He's studying computer programming language. Now, the firepower that the man has is ridiculous. And so his ability to learn things and do it very, very quickly. So he had skills, cfa, that's definitely industry related, portfolio management related. You know, he's got a combination of extreme intellect and extreme compassion and deep caring for people, which is really, really important. In fact, that's. That may be more important than the other one. But in my mind, if you just had Somebody that was highly experienced and knew our business. That's great. But most businesses are the same in many aspects. There's uniquenesses about an industry or a business and some intellectual property that the company and a business brings to their customer experience. But business is somewhat the same. You definitely got to, you know, have top line. You got to be able to really lean into your people and talent. You got to create fantastic customer experiences. You got to have a demonstratable way to sell and grow revenues. You certainly need to be able to add two plus two and make sure you got profits and can grow those. So there's more similarities and differences is what I'm getting at.

Yeah. And I think there's hope in that statement for a lot of visionaries out there that are looking, because, you know, the universe of who they should be looking for isn't necessarily limited to experts in their industry. You're looking for this person who has a set of tools that can apply, you know, if they happen to have industry expertise and knowledge. That's great. But it's not the only thing that you're looking for here, and it's not always necessary. Okay, so, Caleb, I want to come back to you for a sec. John's wish, as he said, was, you know, I want you to be able to play as the integrator so that you're not having to play as the facilitator or the implementer in these things because, you know, it's different. It kind of changes the experience. So I'd love for you to describe how that was for you. How was the experience different for you? Kind of trying to wear both those hats at the same time versus when you can kind of sit back and let somebody else facilitate the process and you can really lean into that integrator seat.

Yeah, I would probably start with. I undervalued the complexity of implementation. We had tried self implementing for kind of six months leading up to engaging you, Mark. And each quarterly meeting, we've been doing it just about three years with you now. Each quarterly meeting, I leave it with a higher bar for myself and for the leadership team than the quarter I had before. You can't really do that self implementing, and I want that and I need that. And the best place to get higher bar is externally. So there's kind of the abilities to be able to implement kind of checklists and traction stuff. It's completely different. Constantly trying to raise the bar each quarter. And that was where I made Lee. I maybe falsely had some assurance or it was a little Bit maybe too self believing in the fact on the front end that we can do this ourselves on this side of it. And three years later, having seen the complexity and you're constantly pushing the bar higher and higher each quarter, looking back on it, there's no way that I could have done this for the organization.

Interesting. So John, I know when you started off and you really following the process, you're having this integrator role begin to take on the responsibilities that you want it to, that you need it to. You know, you said that you had this feeling you were kind of losing your voice in the organization. And I think that's changed over time. Maybe talk about your, you know, your changing perspective as that has kind of gone on and grown over time.

When you build a business from the ground up, you know, you're pretty active in every aspect. You're certainly growing top line revenues, you're creating the client experience, the investment philosophy and all the different aspects of what we do. At some point that starts changing a little bit. The next level for us was really kind of growing. And I think this was a little bit of a visionary thing. I recognized early that one of the biggest challenges that the advisory space has is that advisors are getting old and they had no plans around succession and growth and development of great talent for the next generation. And as I think about that now, today, where I am, I had a conversation with a doctor this weekend about it. But why in the world would you hire a 60 year old advisor if you're 60 yourself and you actually want incredible advice and comfort for your family for the next 20 or 30 years when you know that person has to be someplace in the same vicinity and how they're thinking about their life. Right. And so without great teams of talented people, you know, generations deep, there's no way that you can be attractive or serve in that way. That came to me when I was 40 years old. One of my clients asked me, john, what happens, what happens past you if you get hit by a bus? I mean, who's thinking about that when you're 39 and 40 years old? But that started where we are today in this business today, by developing immediately that next generation of talent and expertise across all areas of the business. Certainly delivering advice and working directly with clients, the running of our portfolios, the integration of our advanced planning attacks and all of that. And so what I'm getting to with that Mark, is that some point where I got stuck was I didn't have a job. That's weird. It was really weird for Me figuring out who am I, where do I fit in? How am I of value to the organization? How am I valued to continue to help and mentor where that's possible. And so that's part of what was going on in my head there. And the other is giving people room to grow into themselves, for advisors and current partners to grow into themselves, not me looking over their shoulder. I would do it this way or, you know, and letting Caleb and different other members, you know, learn it and do it themselves and make the mistakes themselves and certainly give them room to do that. But what happened in the process was we were, quote, trying to do it right. You have your visionary and you have your integrator, and then all it looks like a flowchart. How things go. And what happened was, is that we were working hard doing these things, but it actually became a bottleneck and an obstruction, if you will, between me and the rest of the organization on accident. And one day, I can't remember how long ago, Caleb wrote it out with this puzzle piece and turned it up sideways. That how the integrator and the visionary work together. And all of a sudden, that way, it just unlocked. We were stuck in our heads is what was happening. And we were getting in our own way and not letting this incredible thing happen. And that was, I think, a real turning point.

So it's gone from you feeling. I mean, you saw the need to change the structure of the business to go where you're trying to go, right? But then a byproduct of that is that the. You called it. Your job was going away. Basically, the way that you had done things before was going away. The need for you to spend time on a certain set of things wasn't there anymore, which feels weird. And so then as you think about and think about this relationship and what you really, we need the visionary to do. Turns out there's still stuff we need you to do, right?

Yeah, there's a lot. But just saying it out loud, okay. How many rocks or responsibilities are Visionary has none. Zero. Just getting used to all that. And that also that there's room for things outside of the business. And that's a really, really important piece. There's been more than one business that's probably died or slowed or got really stagnant because the passion, energy of the owner just wasn't there. Of that vision just wasn't there anymore. And this process allows that energy and passion to get unlocked and reloaded again in a way that's meaningful.

A lot of our visionaries will say something along the lines of it doesn't feel like work, the stuff that you begin to spend your time on, it doesn't necessarily feel like work. But just because it doesn't feel like work to you doesn't mean that it's not extremely valuable to the business. And we've all got this. Dan Sullivan calls it a unique ability, some gift that God given talent that it's kind of easy for us. It kind of comes natural to us. Other people look at it and they're like, wow, that seems like that would be hard. How do you do that? Right. So it doesn't feel like work but you know, from the other points of view around you, it's extremely valuable for the business and you may be the only person that can actually do it. So we need you freed up to be able to go do that stuff. Is me. Is that the kind of thing that you're feeling?

And I don't say I've had a lot of, you know, guilt, but I don't have, you know, the schedules that many people in our organization do. Right on purpose. But I think that's also what's needed so that we can recognize the opportunities and make some things happen the way that we possibly could and just slow down and think and be able to actually see where we need to go or hey, I think we're a little off track here. We need to really, you know, but if you're not doing that then you may not like where you end up.

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Yeah.

Plugged into the strategic areas that we need to execute on. And I think as John kind of talked about there being an obstruction there, I was the obstruction. As John went from doing all of the day to day and handling all the day to day issues that he kind of let go of and let me embrace. We went from that extreme together to the other extreme of kind of entirely letting go. Maybe not all the way there, but much More so than what we should. And a lot of that's on me. And as we're trying to dial things in and get better, the solution to this is what John kind of talked about. With the integrators plugged into the business, the three piece puzzle, the integrator is plugged into the business and plugged into the visionary, but the visionary is also plugged into the integrator and the business. And we were kind of missing the piece of the visionary being plugged into the business. And so where this has shifted more recently for us is I hadn't done a good job as an integrator getting the visionary plugged in to these strategic areas of execution so that he can breathe energy into them. And so we just, we had a same page meeting one day and he kind of made the comment to me, it was like, you know, Caleb, this isn't working. You know, we're just not executing as fast as what we needed to. And so in going through and solving that, it kind of created the foundation for me to listen to you one day, Mark, as you talk through the three piece puzzle. So I brought it back to John and that was an aha for us is to I intentionally need to work to get John connected up so that we can better harness the superpowers of the visionary. And that's going to further help out the leadership team with having that energy and having that excitement, having that vision there. But also that's done wonders for John. It's given him energy. Like you mentioned, it doesn't feel like work. So his execution in these areas and his vision in these areas has given him more energy and it hasn't felt like work to him.

Love that. And so, Caleb, it's pretty obvious from as you describe yourself and as John describes you, you're one of those people that's always learning, growing, you know, trying to get better at what they do. So thinking about your integrator craft, what's, you know, what do you do to continue to grow and get better as an integrator?

I say listen, listen to your visionary. We've had a lot of same pages and just like I mentioned with, hey Caleb, this isn't working. You know, embrace that, lean into it and work through it and you'll work through a better solution than what I could have come up on my own. And that's always been the case as we've kind of encountered difficult times or worked through difficult things.

Any external resources that have been helpful to you for that?

Oh, the integrator community has been phenomenal. The quarterly integrator exchanges, I'm connected up and actually have a study group that meets quarterly as well, of folks in similar roles, similar sized companies going through, you know, some of them are going through issues that I've gone through before, so I can help them out. Others are going through issues that we haven't even thought about. And so it's listening there and kind of having that resource so that whenever we get to the point of going through something similar, we can tap into that community and hopefully learn fewer things the hard way.

Yeah. Integrator Mastery Forum, you've been a big contributor to that group. So all this stuff, you know, would you say it's been easy? Would you say it's been really hard?

What would you say?

It's been anything but easy, that's for sure. You know, I would also on the previous topic, Kev's a voracious reader. You know, not only has he, you know, participated and done all those things, but he reads on a lot of subjects and leaderships and scale and, you know, technology issues and Legion. And so he's keeping himself really at the forefront of those things to be able to execute. But one thing that's a little bit. I don't know if it's unique about our journey is that, you know, really when we started this in the back half of 2019 and in 2020, of course, Covid hit at the same time, but our run rate revenues are pretty close to coming up on maybe two, two and a half times where we were in 2019. And we've done that in some interesting markets, to say the least. But at the core of what we needed to do was, you know, grow clients one at a time. We built a platform for M and A and advisor recruitment so that we could be a destination of choice for the right kinds of people when they needed more resources to deliver for their. For their clients. And so with that, we completed a purchase or an acquisition in the summer of 2020, right in the middle of COVID We've completely revamped our technology systems, our two key technology systems. And they say, I don't know if it's true, but based on our experience, I think it probably is. The two most disruptive things you can do in business are M and A and integration and technology changes. And we did all of it. And so it was hard. It was hard on us. It really taxed us. It taxed our teams. And so one of the things that Caleb and all of us really pay attention to are the health of our teams and it ebbs and flows with some of the stresses that you're putting onto the business and really onto them. And so when you think about how do you, you know, that was really a factor early on in our journey together because we were doing a lot. And one of the things that makes a great visionary is, you know, passion for growth and ambition. And the integrators got to have that same thing. It's just demonstrated in a different way. And so when you're focusing on those things and you're making a lot of these changes and you're really focusing in, on process and accountability, it's paramount to your success. But the missing ingredient there is you got to have three parts love that goes into that mix. And we had to learn that because of the pain that probably we were causing. Not probably, but, you know, with our, you know, we were pretty singular focused on where we're going and what needed to happen. And that wasn't really negotiable what needed to happen to get there. But it was hard on our teams and hard on ourselves. And there was multiple times in that period of time, you know, we certainly did our same page meetings, but we had some pretty serious heart to hearts.

So talk about that a little bit. I mean, you've described a situation where, John, you said this isn't working. Right. So conflict is something that people want to understand more about as it relates to the visionary integrated relationship. How do you talk about the hard stuff? How do you say that thing that maybe the other person doesn't want to hear? What makes that work for the two of you?

Just like that.

Say it again.

Just like that. Yeah. I mean, there's no secret to say, hey, this isn't working. Yeah, this is where we are on this. We're not getting it over the hump. You know, you're brilliant. This, this and this. If this doesn't get over the hump, this is on you. It's not. The team is fine. This is on you. And at some point this isn't going to work unless. And so it could be on an execution item and, or, you know, with your help. We started doing a lot of different surveys with both clients and internally. And so we got, we started getting some really good feedback and we had some pain in the organization and it's. This isn't okay. You know, and so that's what I meant by that.

What's the flip side of that, Caleb? Yeah, what's the flip side? So I mean, it's kind of, you know, People may think it's obvious that the visionary can say that to the integrator, but sometimes the integrator needs to say that to the visionary. What does that look like?

Yeah, I'd say that's. That's the flip side. That may seem really brash to a lot of people. If you're not in a relationship like that and saying, hey, this really just isn't working, and meaning it may seem really brash, that's being heard with ears of trust, you know, so John and I have worked out that muscle from the discussion just this morning. You can hear there's a level of trust there that he has in me, and so that I greatly appreciate that. And so as he's coming to me and saying, hey, this just isn't working, it's not necessarily that I feel that, you know, I'm the issue, but it gives me the feeling as to we can tackle this together. If we're putting it out there on the table and wrestling with it, we can get this done.

Right?

And so that. And being brash and being open, putting it out there on the table. It's been very important for me to encourage John to do that. He doesn't struggle with that too much. But I'd say that this is probably an area that I struggled with the most. As you're talking about how hard was. How hard has this relationship been? Or how hard has this been and the journey towards now? This was the area that I struggle with the most. You know, you have cordial work relationships, right? You try not to offend folks. Right. That that kind of changes with a good relationship and being intentional with a relationship, and that what I need from John is his openness and honesty there, and he needs that from me, too. So if there's. If I'm seeing things out in the organization and he sees this kind of vision or this plan or wants to do this, and I see that it's harmful. I'm not doing my job if I'm not clearly communicating, getting that out on the table, hey, I don't think this is the right thing to do. And then getting that out there on the table and wrestling with it, if he still feels this is the right thing to do. And there's been a couple of times where we've kind of worked through this is that, hey, if this is the right thing to do and this is the way to do it, I may not be the best person for getting it done. And so that may seem like brash, all right? But getting that out there Then it's. We can work through it together and figure out what the best solution is and then go tackle it in an aligned way.

Right. So nobody really needs somebody just to say yes all the time.

That's right.

You know, we all need people that point out the other points of view, and we need people that are strong enough to lean on us, to push back if necessary, and not just, you know, let one kind of mow the other over is what I'm hearing.

Yeah, no, we. We have, you know, I mentioned heart to heart. So in our same page, you know, we get into kind of all things and what's working and what's not working. What do you need from me? You know, what are you not getting? And sometimes it's. It's tense because it's important. It's really. We're passionate about this. We're passionate about what we're doing. We care and, you know, it's not worried. This isn't working, you know, I mean, this is, you know, and it's. That's okay. It gets it right there and it's. But if we didn't have the level of trust and respect, then that might not work. We'll fail our way to success. Nobody makes the right decision all the time. We've all made a lot of bad ones in our day, and that's okay. And it's. At some level, you know, it's important that we make decisions. You know, if we do it with the right energy and thought and analysis, we're going to make mostly good ones. And if we make one, you know, and it didn't work out, that's okay. We learn from that and make better ones next time. What we don't want to do is make decisions or make commitments and then not give 100% energy towards honoring those commitments. You know, that's a recipe for success. If we. If we stick with that.

That's the thing to talk about.

Right.

And I know you guys do a good job of really being intentional, as you kind of described, of not. The thing isn't. We don't personalize the thing. Right. It's kind of like it's not, you know, because of you. It's, you know, here's the thing. You know, can we collaborate to solve that thing? Can we get aligned on that and can we, you know, figure out how to make it not like that? So it's not something in the way, but it's. It's opens up a pathway for us to get closer to, you know, where you're Trying to go, yeah. All right. So as we're kind of coming to the end of our time today, I would love it if you kind of think about the people that are listening to this are other visionaries and integrators. Maybe they have just figured out that's what they are. Maybe they're not yet in a relationship, maybe they're just early on, or maybe they've been in a relationship for years. So it's kind of all that range. But one of the benefits of this podcast is they get to kind of be a fly on the wall and listen to somebody who's really doing this every day and learn from them. Caleb, like you described learning from the other integrators in the Integrator Mastery Forum. They learn from you, you learn from them. We all kind of help each other go forward, Forward. So is there some nugget, some tool, if you had an opportunity to kind of sit down in a coffee shop and talk to one of those folks and go, you know what? This is what really helped me. It was this. It was this tool. It was this learning. It was whatever it might be. Is there something that comes to mind for you that really answers that question? What would it be? Either one of you can start.

Well, I don't know if there's any one tool. We certainly mentioned the puzzle piece. That was a game changer for us because it just mentally, it gave me a visual in particular, and I think possibly for Caleb, too, that led us really have an aha moment about how to do our jobs and respective roles better. So let me lean into areas where I can help rather than going through him. We created our own bottlenecks. At the same time, it's really important that what I don't want to do is communicate that that's an end around. There's no end arounds. It's one thing of executing. So there's no end arounds that happen between us in any way. But it does unlock me in a fantastic way that way. You had mentioned Dan Sullivan earlier. There's a lot of things that kill initiatives, you know, procrastination and perfectionism and all kinds of things. So regardless of what your project or what your endeavor is, you know, get it 80% home and you're probably good and probably the last 20%. Some of it may not even matter that much and. Or there's somebody that can take it and get it closer to awesome, but you need to get out of it and go on to your next best activity. So that's been really Helpful for me and I think is just something. And again, little things like that that I can help teach throughout the organization I think will really help. And that goes to the key of delegate and elevate. What's missing a lot in organizations is there's delegation happening, but it may be a form of abdication, not real delegation. And elevate to something much more meaningful, much more impactful to the organization. And that very well may be as simple as revenue generation, but teaching those things properly throughout the organization I think can unlock a team too.

Love that. Love that. Caleb, what about you?

Yeah, Mark, can I give the church answer and say core values? What I love about EOS is you know, you develop your list of core values but then really understand what they mean. You know, with the core value speech, what are the two to three things that really define that word for what it means for the organization? And as you ask the question as to what tool would be most helpful for visionaries in finding an integrator, that one is right there. There has to be core value alignment up and down, side to side cross. So much same pageness there. I think you have to start there and kind of plumb the depths of that, if you will, to make sure that you find an integrator that's in alignment with that, but then also that you stay together as you're executing together. And one of ours that's been the most meaningful one for me is do the right thing. And that may sound as a cheap 2 cent word.

Right.

But in business, when you have a partner that's doing the right thing for clients, doing the right thing for employees, doing the right thing for me and my family. And I see that kind of day in and day out. It's not just how do you attract an integrator, but how do you keep an integrator too. I say that's kept me. And so I'd say understand your core values, understand what they mean to you and then as you're attracting an integrator, attract one with those core values, then interview them based upon them.

Yeah, I love that. That certainly should be a non negotiable for everyone is the core values piece of the formula. And you know, do the right thing. That's one of my favorites because there's just so much power there, right. If we just did that, and I've read of companies that that's their only thing is do the right thing. That's the rule. And that just means figure it out and do what's right. And if you really do that, it makes a huge difference. And every company does not do that. So if you really do that, that makes you different, that makes you special. So we're coming to the end of our time here. So if somebody wants to find out more about Accential, if somebody wants to find out more about either one of you, what's the best way for them to reach out and learn more?

Yes, existential wealth advisors.com we also have corporate email addresses c billardxentialwealth.com and J. Burns@existentialwealth.com be happy to take the discussion offline or help anybody out with anything that we've talked about any way that we can.

Yeah, we'd love it. One of the things I've always loved about this business and in particular with eos, is is there's so much room to help each other and it's a very encouraging group all the way around. So we've been really fortunate to have learned and gotten help along the way for the last 30 years. Anything we can do to help, we'd love to love that.

Appreciate you saying that. And you know, for our listeners, when they say that, they mean it. So these guys are legit and really do want to help. So to John and Caleb, I'm so grateful for both of you taking the time to spend with us today and share a little bit about your story. I know that you've helped some of our listeners, so I know that means something to you and to our listeners. Thanks for listening. Hopefully you've got some value out of this. And if you have, if you like this podcast, if it's doing something for you, appreciate you giving us a review on whatever platform you might be listening on that helps others find out about us and ultimately we can reach more people and possibly help them as well. That's the whole idea behind this. All right, so what a great conversation with John and Caleb. And with each of our episodes this season, we want to kind of anchor the discussion in the toolbox. So let's go to the rocket fuel toolbox. And one of the things that you heard them talk about and mention specifically at the end of our conversation today was the three piece puzzle. Okay. And to help you visualize the three piece puzzle, think about that visionary integrator, the two piece puzzle fitting together side to side. Okay. So horizontally. We're trying to understand the shape between those two so that we get a really good complementary fit. You heard Caleb talk about that kind of early on. We don't have a ton of overlap in between us we don't have a bunch of gaps, but between us we kind of COVID all the stuff that needs to be covered by our visionary and integrator duo. So take that two piece puzzle and set it on top of the of a piece that is your business. Okay? So now that two piece puzzle has to click in to the business. So on the integrator side, where the integrator is sitting on top of the business, imagine the edge of that shape. It's got to fit. And that shape of that edge is defined by what we call the integrator spectrum, the integrator spectrum. So different kinds of businesses need different kinds of integrators in terms of how much complexity they need to be able to deal with the different dynamics that are involved. So think about a business like SpaceX that has all kinds of crazy complexity going on versus a business that maybe they hang drywall or they have storage units, something like that. Right. It's just, it's a different level of complexity. You're going to need a different type of integrator to fit that. So we need to understand for this business what type of integrator is right for us. And on the visionary side of the equation, got the same thing, visionary spectrum, where each of those type of businesses I gave as examples would need a completely different type of visionary. And so they need to understand that and really focus their role on doing those things that are going to be the right kind of visionary for that business. So that needs to click. So the visionary and integrator, they fit together.

Click.

The integrator clicks into the business because it fits right on the integrator spectrum. Click. And then the visionary fits into the business because they fit right on the visionary spectrum.

Click.

So there's three clicks we're looking for there that makes it all fit together as a solid three piece puzzle. This created a big aha for John because he was thinking about the accountability chart and how it shows the visionary atop the integrator because the integrator is accountable to the visionary. And he was kind of losing focus, of needing to be connected to the business. And so the three piece puzzle sort of made that, it made it evident for him, it reminded him of that. And so it allowed him to remember, oh yeah, the stuff that this business needs on the visionary spectrum that comes from me. So I need to be doing that stuff. And then I go and I focus that I bring my energy there as necessary. The integrator is helping them do that by plugging them into those strategic areas where they can really add value and do the stuff that we need. So it all works. You also heard John though mention at the end, but no end runs, that doesn't mean that I end run because he's operating with the organization in that accountability chart structure where the visionary sits atop the integrator and he's not going around the integrator to go give direction, make decisions in the organization. He's communicating, he's talking to people, but he's letting those decisions and that direction come from whoever it should come from based on the accountability chart because they understand the full picture at that particular spot in the organization and they can decide, okay, this is what we need to do because they're accountable for the outcomes of that. We let that accountability flow through the organization just like it should. And so that's what gets us to where we need to go. So anyway, a lot of rich lessons in our conversation with John and Caleb today. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. And until next time, go Rocket. Frustrated by the complexities of running a business? EOS1 is the simple to use software that brings your foundational business tools together in one place. It helps you run meetings people actually look forward to, creates a space for uniting your team around a shared vision, and gives you what you need to build a more trusting and accountable culture. Begin your 30 day free trial today at eos1.com.