Pass or Play: Using EOS® to Discern the Right Opportunities | Jeff Hennen and John Green

After a while, as you continue to grow, you have to have a sound structure and EOS gave us that structure that I would say it was a big boost when we added that because it was the right thing at the right time for us.

Hey everybody, this is Mark C. Winters, co author of Rocket Fuel and expert EOS implementer. Welcome to the Rocket Fuel podcast where visionary and integrator duos from entrepreneurial companies share a behind the scenes look at their relationship. These amazing leaders blend their unique skills.

To create what we call rocket fuel.

Today, I'm excited to welcome my two.

Guests to the show.

John Green and Jeff Hennan of the Rag Company. This privately held Idaho based company specializes in premium microfiber towels. Jeff is a through and through visionary. He and his wife purchased the rag company in 2012 from the company's founder who was selling the towels out of her garage. Little did they know that the mom and pop company they purchased had existing contract with the likes of Tesla and Ritz Carlton. Soon after taking over the company, a video review of their towels went viral and the Rag Company took off overnight. In this episode, Jeff and John, his COO and integrator, share how embracing the EOS framework has helped them navigate the company's exponential growth and build an effective team. We're going to begin the show where Jeff describes how he and his wife Carolyn purchased the business. Let's dive in.

My wife and I purchased the business in 2012 and the gal that started it, sadly she was in hospice when we bought the business. Nobody was interested. The not real sexy business, selling towels out of your garage. And so she and her husband were looking for somebody to take the business over. And my wife and I both have our MBAs and so we were kind of looking for an opportunity at some point in our lives. We both worked for large corporate organizations and we really wanted to exercise our skills and see if we have what it took. We were musicians many, many years ago and that was kind of our for about 12 years and that was kind of our exposure to being self employed. But at some point after getting business expertise, we really wanted to see if we had what it takes. And the opportunity came up and we actually told the owner that we hope they turn our offer down and kind of a different approach.

But why was that?

What were you thinking there, reverse psychology?

Well, no, I just, you know, like I say, she was in hospice, she was 70, she started this online business, her husband had a heart condition and it's like I did not want that guilt on my shoulders. And so I said, here's all we have. This is about it. And this is kind of our test. And we wanted to see if we could really make something out of it. And so her husband replied back earlier, well, he said, After 50 years of marriage, because she had been bedridden. And so after 50 years of marriage, we'll probably just sell the inventory and we'll take it from here. We said, no problem, that's great. He said, however, let me go ask her one final time. And so he asked her, and she said, I have one question. And the question was, are you going to actually do something with the business or are you going to take the money and run? And morally and ethically, that was the last thing we wanted to do because we figured this opportunity is kind of a gift to get that jump start. A lot of businesses, they start out kind of cold. They're trying to figure out the connections. We had the connections, but we also had a lot of paper files. There was nothing electronic. And so we didn't realize that her customer base for microfiber towels included Tesla Motors, the Ritz Carlton, the Mark, the Conrad, the W. She had all these customers that we didn't have an opportunity to go through all the files and recognize that. Any rate, we said, well, no, we're going to make it go a bit. Our oldest son is quitting two jobs and he's ready to come to work for us. And so they said, okay, well, the business is yours. And then we're like, oh, no. Oh boy, here we go, Here we go.

All right. So before we move on from that kind of time period, how did you even find out about it?

It was a friend of a friend, the gal that cleaned our house, cleaned their house. And so naturally, cleaning houses, you have microfiber in the Jan San World, you have it in the facial beauty spa, and then you have it in automotive detailing. Those are kind of the three big segments. And we honestly didn't know what we.

Had when we bought it.

We just knew we had a lot of inventory. And we did not have a lot of experience in microfiber, but we had a lot of business experience. And we had the desire and passion to really make something out of this. And so we spent the first year just trying to figure out what did we get. And about a year later, we got a phone call one day and a gentleman said, hey, I've been looking for your towels for three years. I haven't been able to find them. And I'm going to mention you in my next video. We Said, great, we don't know who you are, but that sounds wonderful, Sounds great. Let us know how we can help. And about two weeks later, because I'm working with the factories, I'm usually up three, four in the morning. So all of a sudden our website just started going crazy. I'm trying to figure out what in the world is going on. And we basically had our introduction to a viral moment and he released a video basically saying that the title of the video, it wasn't just a mention. The title of the video was the Rag Company, the World's Best Microfiber. And you know, you can't buy that kind of publicity. And so that really helped launch us and for us.

Hang on, what was it that was unique about the video that made it go so viral?

He had a large following. He was just, he was kind of entertaining and very educational as well, and had a big personality, a very big personality. And so people were attracted to that. And so when he says something, people listen. And so we just went crazy. And we had, I think maybe two employees at that time, three employees. And when we took off, we knew, okay, here's our opportunity. You're going to get that spike. How do you preserve that spike?

Right?

And so you're trying to minimize the drop. It's going to drop. You can't keep that. But we want to diminish it as much as possible. So we had our kids, grab your friends, anybody that can pack, if they're breathing, they want to learn, come on down. And so we took off from that point, but we really, my oldest son had gone to film school down in la. And so based on that moment, that really convinced us social media for our business is going to be where it's at. And oh, by the way, it's not necessarily going to be facial beauty Spa Jansan World, it's going to be automotive detailing. And so from that moment forward, we really tried to exercise our focus around detailing, learning everything we could. Our son was active on Reddit, not anything other than educating people about microfiber, because we did deep dives from the moment we bought it until that point. And so we kind of became the subject matter experts on Reddit. And then it just kind of grew from there. But we've always taken a very organic approach to everything that we've done. And we've been able to achieve 150 to 300% growth every year, revenue for the first few years. And then now we're holding pretty true to about 60, 65% a year, which I know that that's not the norm and a lot of it has been because of social media and the way we've been able to really grow it. Our whole mantra is education. We're not going to shove products down your throat. We want to educate you. If we educate you, we build trust. If we build trust, you're going to buy from us. We've never had to worry about that. I made one cold call ever, and it was the first and the last. I thought, well, golly, we supply the Ritz Carlton, the Mark, the Conrad, the W. We should have no problem being able to supply our local hotel here. That's the luxury hotel. Of course they're going to buy our towels. Well, they had a semi polite thanks, but no thanks and it was like, okay, that didn't feel very good. But I know that's kind of the.

Profit in their hometown syndrome, right? Too close to home.

You got it. And so we've really helped develop our social media and media presence. We have an entire team now, 10 employees, dedicated to building YouTube content, Instagram, TikTok, all of that. And it has driven us in ways I never could have imagined. And John and I are not the subject matter experts in automotive detailing, but thankfully we've been able to build this relationship kind of organically. Just like the business. We've been able to build our relationship organically.

So I want to bring John here in just a second. So, but before that, I'm curious, have you had, I mean it sounds like a ton of fun to be able to kind of build the business and really the marketing engine to be the social media and video engine. Right. Have you had any videos that have taken off as much as that first one did?

Yeah, far exceeding that. We've got some million plus view videos and it is so much fun. And John and I generally, I mean, we'll give high level guidance, but generally we try to stay out of their way. For my wife and I, you know, I'm almost 62 now. And so at this point in our lives, we're trying to build the business so that John and our leadership team that we've developed thanks to eos, that we've developed now they're going to take it the next step, the next generation. We've had tremendous success, we've got a fantastic team and like I say, for John and I, we've been able to build our relationship. It's been a bumpy road, hasn't been perfect, and we're more than willing to share all those bumps. So that Others can maybe learn from our mistakes, but I will say absolutely 100%. When we started our EOS journey last fall, it really opened our eyes. And John's been a fantastic leader, and I want to let him speak to a lot of this because he's just done a fantastic job being able to take us this next step. I tend to want to do everything, every opportunity that comes along, and I can explain a little bit more about that later on here. But, yeah, all the opportunities that come.

Along, I want to grab them all. And that's not.

That's not good, John.

Well, that's part of your role as the visionary, right? So you bring that energy. So I like that. All right, so, John, let's kind of bring you into the. Into the mix here. So understanding you joined the company during that time when it was growing like crazy, and they're looking for basically what you call any breathing human. That was kind of the main qualification we're looking for. So, John. John was one of those. He passed the fog, a mirror test. And then. So, John, talk about sort of your journey, you know, kind of how you started out, what you were doing, and how that evolved over time.

Yeah, I met Jeff first, first out of anybody at the company. I was actually working for a different company in the valley, going through a rough patch with them. They actually were going out of business. So I was liquidating products, merchandising material and everything like that. And the Rag company had just got their first retail location, and that's how we met. They were buying products to build out their store and whatnot. So we had had interactions over the course of roughly about a week. And then they came back at the last visit to meet me, and I was like, what do you guys need now? You guys bought pretty much everything I have to sell, you know. Well, actually, we don't really have a spot for you, but we really like who you are and how. How hard you work and all this, so we'd like to find a way to make it work. And of course, I was in a market for employment. I'm like, heck, yeah. I don't know anything about microfiber, but let's give it a shot. And then that's how it came to be. And then since that day, Jeff and I pretty much worked hand in hand, week in and week out, just building out the store, handling the new volume of orders that was coming in, just growing the company in general. And at some levels, knowing what I know now, I like to think we kind of had a head start Start on our bi duo already because we had worked for years together just without the rules and the structure of eos. Like, we were kind of doing it at a microscopic level for many, many years. And really, yeah, we, we were able to develop a good working relationship. Like he said, we don't always see eye to eye, and even through those times that we had struggles and disputes and things that we had to work through, but we've really, we've matured this relationship to where we can work really, really well together. And with adding in the EOS piece, with just a new education process, learning how to work with eos. But it really gave us a head start in this and it's helped us to get where we are now.

Yeah, I'm sure all that time you spent working together went a long way to kind of build that foundation of trust. Right. And familiarity. You know each other, you know how to communicate. So that I'm sure helped a lot. So. All right, so we started in 2012. Thing takes off like a rocket. You're adding people, you're wearing many hats and doing everything you gotta do. Right? And then it sounds like, what, about a year ago is when you started the EOS journey. So tell me about that. So when or how did you find out about EOS and how did that kind of all get started?

Well, Jeff's wife, Carolyn, she's the other owner of the company, Jeff, Pamela on it. She had started reading the book Traction, which was recommended to her from one of our colleagues in the Treasure Valley, started reading it and she read like the first couple of chapters and she's like, john, you need to read. You need to read these chapters. This is us. Because we were growing so fast. Like Jeff was saying, we're just. It was almost like the train was running off the tracks a little bit. It was going in the right direction. It was just hard to manage it all. So she presented it to us and she was really the biggest advocate for us to do it. Fast forward a little bit. We had our first meeting with our implementer, Jennifer, who is fantastic, by the way, and we were sold from there. Like, it was like, okay, what's the next step, Jennifer, how do we get into this? The three of us are on board because prior to eos, it was me, Jeff and Kaylin. We kind of made all our decisions together, decision by community, kind of per se, not 100%, but. And we were all on board. So we were like, let's roll. And then we got set up our first Vision day planning session with Jennifer and then it's just been forward ho from there.

Yeah. So I want to get into the focus day and building the accountability chart. But before that, you know, when I hear, you know, three people kind of decisions by committee, you know, when I see that a lot of times I'll hear people in the company, they'll talk about that as oh man, you know, the three headed monster. It's kind of, I'm getting pulled in all these different directions. Was it a little bit like that in your world?

Maybe not too bad because the three of us, usually we're on the same page. You know, we very rarely do we have big disputes, but it was just hard to manage all of it because we were like Jeff said, he loves opportunities, which is why we are where we are, but he wanted to grab all of them. And that was probably one of the biggest pain points that pushed us to this because we just didn't have the bandwidth and it wasn't sustainable for us to continue. With us continuously getting bigger and bigger, we needed some sort of mechanism to help us slow down a little bit, focus on what's in front of us and understand which opportunities we should take and which ones we may need to pass on.

So you start the EOS implementation with Jennifer and at that point, how many employees did you have?

When we started implementation, we were, I think we were 39 to 40. 39 or 40 sound about right?

Okay, so you got 3,940 people. You start off in that focus day and early in that day you start building the accountability chart.

Right.

And you work through the process and you get to that visionary and integrator seat. Tell me about that. Tell me about the discussion in the room and kind of how that all resolved. Was it obvious? Was it a surprise? Was it contentious? Was it like, oh yeah, this is awesome. Right out of the gate, how'd it work?

I was going to say it was semi obvious. I mean, it was easy for John and I. Carolyn had the hardest time with it because she's like, well, wait a minute, I'm the owner. And she recognized absolutely. John was absolutely the perfect integrator for us. But she's really had a hard time as the owner and she wants to be part of these key decisions and all the same time and she handles a lot of our from HR and the finance and accounting, she handles all of that and does a wonderful job with that. But in this kind of a structure, when we have our weekly meetings, you know, our one on ones there, and it was kind of hard for her to watch this happening and not, you know, not being an active part of it. And so obviously we're married, so I, you know, I would share a lot of the stuff with her. It was a different kind of a role. And to Jennifer's credit, she saw kind of was happening. John was kind of working closely with her. And so we, the four of us had a really good work session to get us through that and help, you know, define the roles and the benefits and, you know, how this is really going to work in the long haul and how it's in all of our best interest for that relationship. It was a little bit of a challenge. It was. It was also kind of hard for me. John's right. I just want to grab everything. And that's ultimately. I also know it's the stupidest idea. I was an IT project manager for 20 years, and I recognized you can't do it all instantly. You have to pace it and use the resources that you have, whether it's money, people, equipment, whatever, you're managing that. And so it was tough because the ego was like, oh, no, we can expand to this company. We can have this product and we can. We're very, very fortunate because people reach out to us. Thanks to social media, we've been able to really, really grow the business, our presence, and we're humbled by what that really does for us as a business and the responsibility that comes with that. But at the same time, you've got to be smart. And so John's my little voice on the show.

A good friend of mine, Jason Williford, describes it perfectly. He says that the biggest threat to a visionary's great idea is their next great idea.

Yes, right, Very true.

So you see, you feel that.

Right?

Okay. So good on Jennifer seeing this and kind of bringing all the parties together to talk and work it through and get a line. Okay, so I understand. So your wife Carolyn, she sits in other seats in the accountability chart, right?

Correct.

Does she sit in a leadership team seat?

Correct.

Okay, so she is in the weekly level 10, right. She's just not in your visionary integrator same page meeting. Right. Do you have an owner's box meeting?

We're starting that. We've had her sit in, like, probably maybe once a month. I've brought her into our same. I still call it a same page meeting, but just bring her in and kind of can go through some more stuff, talk about some bigger things that are coming down the pipe.

Good.

We're building that in for sure. Right?

Yeah, that's we know when I see owners, multiple partners, whatever it is, you know, particularly when you've got spouses, right. You know, having that owner's box discipline as a way for the other owners that aren't, you know, she's on the leadership team, so she's a lot closer than what we see other times where somebody maybe is totally disengaged, they're not in a seat in the organization or they're in a seat below the leadership team level. And so they're just not as in the loop as those leadership team members might be. It's a great discipline to just kind of help them make sure they're getting all their questions answered, able to provide input, you know, appropriately on the things that should be talked about at the ownership level. And then that direction comes right into, you know, your visionary integrator relationship and then right into the leadership team. And then we go, you know, take action and we execute and do the things that we should in alignment with that plan. So that all sounds really good. All right, so back to that focus day meeting. We're building out the accountability chart. You know, John ends up in the integrator seat, Jeff ends up in the visionary seat. Were the two of you sitting in other seats as well at that time or were you able to call yourself just in those seats exclusively at that point?

We were able to put ourselves exclusively in those seats. Wow.

Yeah, that's unusual. So that's, that's fantastic. But that's, you know, a lot of times starting out, it's not that way and they have to kind of work into it. So that's great that you're able to start that way. How many folks on the leadership team in addition to the two of you? So how many direct reports, John, do you have as the integrator?

I've got four.

Four. Okay. And all right, so there. Now everybody's kind of getting into eos and you're on your implementation path. What was kind of the next big. As far as the implementation, what was kind of the next big breakthrough or milestone that you remember coming up?

Probably our L10 meetings kicking it off L10s where we were learning, everyone was learning about each other and how to conduct themselves and how to be truly open and have objective eyes in these meetings to really solve the problems and focus on figuring out, digging down, finding the root of it and not trying to break our old habits of okay, like you had benched previously, the three headed monster. A lot of our leadership team had feelings of okay. We go to these Meetings and we talk this stuff through, but at the end of the day, you three are still making the decisions. So working through that transition and just learning how to properly go through an L10 was our next breakthrough. And by no means are we perfect at it yet, but we're making great headway as a team. And I think it, for me, it stems primarily from Jeff and I, when we go to our same page meetings, really working through issues and making sure we're. We're truly on the same page and how we roll these things out to the team. Our team would sometimes feel like, okay, great, you guys had the same page me, you made a decision, and now you're bringing the decision to us. But it's still a decision. Right? So educating our team, like, this is our time. This is our. Our time to work on the business and vet this decision.

Yeah, it's a whole different experience for that leadership team in terms of accountability and ownership. When we can make a decision in that room, you know, and we could talk about whatever. And particularly visionary integrator are sort of pre aligned and so we can, you know, get other information out there if we need to. You can make a decision in contrast with when we talk about a bunch of stuff and it's kind of like, well, yeah, but I got to go check with the parents. Right. I got to go talk to somebody else about this before we can make the call. So I get how that was probably much more fulfilling for them as you kind of moved into that mode. I'm curious at this stage, how were they responding to you, John, in the integrator role? And I'd like to hear your perspective. And then, Jeff, I'd like to hear your perspective as well on kind of how the team reacted to. All right, having somebody in that integrator role doing the things that a great integrator does. What did you see early on, John.

Early on, when they were trying to comprehend what EOS was, I got some feedback on how I was running meetings and how I was giving direction because Jeff and I were still kind of trying to figure out our piece, like, who's giving orders? Right. Who do I go to? And we're still kind of working through some of that stuff, but for the most part, they were pretty receptive because I had already kind of been running the business hand in hand with Jeff for a long time anyway, so there was no, like, new introductions of John's given direction and things like that. That was kind of a natural transition for us already. Probably the biggest transition is them Trying to understand how I'm trying to re. Steer how we make decisions and how we develop new processes and things like that. As far as from me being in the integrator seat, trying to elevate more, delegate, give them the opportunities to put in their input and really see that input being put into effect, some of that has been kind of a longer road for us, like just getting the best out of them. Our team has this skills, but, like, giving them the power to make those decisions and the accountability piece of it, you know?

Right. Jeff, what did you see early on? Did it feel like people were, you know, taking to John in that role real quick, or did he kind of have to earn their confidence, earn their trust?

Great question. It was interesting to see the evolution. John already had the respect, but it was some of the challenges that came up because a couple of the resources that we brought onto the leadership team were relatively new to the company, but they had the skills that we were looking for in those kinds of roles, and so they had a good rapport based on respect. And at the same time, though, it was interesting to see how the challenges were coming up during the L10s. And we kind of went through this pattern, and, John, feel free to jump in here. We kind of went through a pattern where when we first started, everybody's kind of tiptoeing around and everything, and then we went like, heavy duty. And it's just. It got really, you know, I don't want to say aggressive like we're.

Yeah.

But it was just. It was taking us, oh, Golly, we're spending 45 minutes to an hour going through three different things, and we should be able to just. If John and I have done a good job on our same page the day before, we should be able to fire through these relatively quickly. But it was a relatively big struggle for that. But now I would say the past couple months, we've kind of settled in where we're able to really hit things much more effectively and efficiently. We still have, you know, there's things that we're going to have to take offline or we just can't get through everything. But before we had, oh, golly, we'd have like 25, 30 things on the list, and we'd get through eight, you know, maybe. And now we've whittled them down, and so now there's maybe, golly, 12, 15. And we're able to get through all.

12 or 15, and they're probably meatier things, right?

Yeah, yeah.

That's one of the things that you see is the issues stops being kind of the noise stuff, and it starts to be kind of the real stuff. And you watch people as they've evolved in the team, where out of the gate sometimes they feel like they need to speak on everything, they need to weigh in on everything, so they're proven they know something or they don't think anybody else knows that or whatever. And then later on, again, as that trust builds, the contributions become much more pointed and valuable and helpful. And not just because.

Right, that's a great point. Because I was the one who would be jumping in left and right trying to throw things. And John did a great job with his. He'd have his referee shirt on and it's like, wait a minute. And he facilitated a great meeting. And so he pulled me back in. And so I've really. It's been a learning curve for me to let them do their thing and let them succeed and maybe fail every now and then. That's okay. You know, we're all learning together. And even just some of the things, it enables me to be far more focused where I belong in a focus area there. But I'm seeing things around the buildings here. We've got seven buildings on our campus now. And so I'm seeing things coming up and it's like, oh, I didn't know that was going to. Oh, wow, that's cool. I like that. Great job. Had no idea. And it's that kind of stuff where I don't have to be involved. And you know what? People will succeed if you let them succeed. And so that has been, for me personally, probably one of my hardest but most effective learnings and when to keep my mouth shut. Stay out of it.

That's a really, really big deal. That's cool that you cite that as a key learning. All right, so let's dive into the same page meeting. So, you know, you referenced that a little bit. How are you doing them? I want to hear a little bit about how often you do them, how long, where you do them, and how that may have changed over the last year.

Right.

Or since. Whenever you started to kind of how you're doing them now. Is it the same? Is it different? So, John, tell me a little bit about that.

Yeah, for sure. We try to do a same page meeting every week. And we try to do it before our L10. Our L10s are on Tuesday. We try to do same page meetings Monday afternoon. Typically, we'll do them in house. Like, we'll just go into Jeff's office and we'll go in. Ours are pretty informal. We'll kind of chit chat for a couple minutes, check in, talk about different popular things that are happening throughout the building or in town, see how each other's weekends were, so on and so forth and then we'll kind of just, we'll get into our list. Jeff keeps a list. I've got a list of things we'll work through, just check them off. We'll typically either start with my list or his list. One of us will go first and we'll just work down it until we hit the end of it and then we'll switch and go to the other person's list, talk through the issues, create any new to do's or any follow ups that need to happen from it. And it's pretty much been that way since we really started. I mean occasionally our schedules don't align and we'll maybe do one by phone but it's pretty much been the same since we started. Eos.

Do you look forward to them or do you. Why?

I think it's a really good for me it helps me because like Jeff's got a lot on his plate, he wants to do a lot. It helps us instead of just at random like hey Jess, where are we at with this? Oh, I forgot about that. Or it's on my list to do. It gives us more of a structured time like okay, Jess knows or has an inclination in his mind. When I go to this meeting, John's going to be asking me about this and it truly, like it sounds cliche but it puts us on the same page. We know we have a record of what we've talked about, what we're working on and we know what we need to continue to follow through on all that, you know, love it.

And we're able to get two resolutions so much faster that we can cut through a lot of the clutter and noise to get a good solution, a good resolution because John will participate every now and then in some of the other teams L10s just kind of listen in or help if there's a topic that he needs to be part of or whatever. But we're all better prepared. It doesn't mean that we're spending hours and hours together because he's got his role, I've got mine. But when we're, we look forward to the same page because maybe I haven't seen him for a few days and we get caught up and now it makes what we're doing so much more enjoyable. We have a lot of fun. We really.

That's a big deal too, right? I mean, there's sort of an energy thing that's going on there that makes it more enjoyable. It keeps it connected. You know, it sort of puts away some of the fears or doubts or concerns about stuff you may not know about. Right. And lets you really just engage and have fun.

Actually, one thing I was going to say also, this was a key lesson learned for myself because both Carolyn and I, like I said earlier, we came from large organizations, Fortune 500 businesses or large medical centers. And for me it was so important. Always the bureaucracy side of things. When you're in a big business, we said, oh, we'll never be that way. We're not going to have bureaucracy. You can talk to anybody at any time and we're going to be a flat organization and we're going to be effective. And that might work for the first little bit, but after a while, as you continue to grow, you have to have a sound structure. And, and EOS gave us that structure that I would say it was a big boost when we added that because it was the right thing at the right time for us. And so, yeah, we do have organization. And some might look at it as bureaucracy. I don't because I would hope that we are a little bit better organized than that and so that there's not the surprises or politics that might have to take place. But maybe it's an effective bureaucracy. I don't know.

I mean, communication is one thing, right? And so we want communication to flow freely all across the organization. But, you know, the accountability for giving direction and making decisions, that's where you need that structure. Right? And so people have those and they own those and they're accountable for those. And again, it's all about focusing. You know, Gino talks about it as a system to focus and harness human energy. And I think that's a good description for what EOS has as an effect. All right, so let's play future for a second. So you know, you're looking down the road three years, five years, 10 years, however far you want to look down the road.

How.

And actually I want to hear this from you first, Jeff. How do you think your visionary integrator relationship will be different? Pick your timeframe. But how do you see it being different in the future than it is today?

Part of our plan, because of where I'm at myself, career wise and everything. I love our business, I love what we're doing, love our team, but at the same time, I've worked hard My whole life I want to start letting John and our leadership team start taking off with things and taking that next level. So maybe a little bit less active in the day to day kinds of things. Same time I was a musician. I love creativity, I love the vision and the, you know, all this stuff and I don't know. So Carolyn, my wife, used to do echocardiography, ultrasound of the heart and she would have patients come in that had retired the week before and they would leave their jobs, have a heart attack and make it or not make it. And we said, I don't want to be like that. I want to keep my brain engaged. I want to be engaged with something that keeps me active and life can be fun with a business with a team like we've been very blessed to have and we feel very, very fortunate to have it like that. But I want to be able to step back a little bit more. We can continue to have our vision. We're add more countries for our distribution.

We're worldwide now.

And so there's lots of avenues that we can take. Right now we're in the, I don't want to say too much here right now because we're kind of early in it, but we are going to be adding another branding division and everything. And so those kinds of things.

What do you think's the biggest hurdle or issue between you and there? So what's the hard part? What's the one thing, man, if we could just figure out how to solve this that's going to free you up to be able to live that, you.

Know, eos live just staying out of their way. I mean, if I can just figure out how to keep the vision. My biggest concern is, okay, maybe I'm not as active who can continue this vision eventually, long term, whatever. I don't know. And I guess Mark, maybe can you work as a part time visionary or that just.

So it's a really good question. It depends on the business, right? So we talk about actually a three piece puzzle, two pieces being the visionary and the integrator and the third piece being that business. And every business has a, you know, an integrator spectrum and a visionary spectrum.

Of how much of each of those they need.

And so, you know, for a business that, you know, is super complex and you know, it's huge and growing really fast and in lots of markets and lots of different kinds of products. So, you know, think about a SpaceX or something like that that needs a lot of visionary, right?

Oh yeah.

And sort of the classic example I'll use is a, you know, a company that all they do is drywall. That's a lot more simple. Right. And so that probably requires less visionary energy. So that's part of it. I think the strength of the team has a lot to do with answering that question too. You wouldn't want a visionary that was totally disengaged. You want somebody that's able to be really thoroughly engaged with their integrator at a minimum, and then participating in the level 10 meetings and the quarterly planning and the annual pulsing, all of that. But you don't have to do that all the time. Right. I mean, so we want you to take your vacation. So if the life you see for yourself is being gone more and able to travel more again, it's all about having that team that's there when you're not. That you're confident and trust, can take it and run with it, but still keeping those hooks connected between you and the integrator and you and the leadership team. That makes sense.

Absolutely. And if we've done a good job developing or strategizing our rocks and everything else for the next quarter, next year, next five years, as we continue to expand, if we've done a good job establishing those, it's not necessarily autopilot because I don't know that we'll ever be.

There, but it's a lot more manageable.

Yeah, for sure.

Okay, so let me flip to you, John. So same kind of question. So you're hearing Jeff talk about what he sees in terms of the evolution of your visionary integrated relationship. What do you see? What do you see being different? Pick your future time horizon. But what do you see being something that's different from how it is today?

My vision and my goal and my hope is probably within the next two and a half to three years. We're in the space that Jeff's kind of talking about where he's able to still be involved with the new ideas, the R and D, new products, new trends that are in the industry. But he doesn't have to be in the building doing the boots on the ground type of work anymore. It's a. In our same page meeting, he and I are going over plans for, okay, this opportunity is here, let's roll with it. And I take that direction and then I implement it throughout the company and we get it going. It's less hands on for him. He's able to still stay involved with the business and do the things that he's passionate about. But all the day to day and the small stuff that can get in the way. The sand in the EOS term, he doesn't have to worry about. It's on that autopilot, that easy manage mode and we're just working like a well oiled machine.

That's good. It sounds like you're very much aligned on that. So that's a key indicator of your ability to go make it happen. All right, so want to kind of wind this thing up. I want to get a quick nugget from each of you though, as you reflect on your visionary and integrator journey. To this point, I'd like you to share with our audience kind of the one big learning. So, Jeff, from the visionary perspective, John, from the integrator perspective, what's the one kind of key learning, most important, learning about that role that you could share with our audience that may help them along the way.

For me personally, it's John's the tiebreaker. And as an owner visionary, it's like, wait a minute, I'm turning all of that kind of control. A year ago it would have been harder to say, but today I don't even hesitate. Yep, you're right. John's the tiebreaker. And because he doesn't take that role lightly, he understands enough. I don't have to repeat myself 50 times. He knows where I'm coming from and I trust him entirely to do that. It didn't happen overnight, but it's happened over our relationship over the past many years now. I fully trust him.

Love that one. So do the work to make sure that you are aligned and then let the integrator be the tiebreaker. I love that. John, what's yours?

From the integrator's perspective, kind of similar. For me, it was, I had to open my mind and open my eyes because I need to be in line with my visionary and ownership and then translate that to make sure that my team is in line with that as well. So being the, that middle piece, that mediator, because some obviously in all businesses, the team might not always agree with what ownership's doing and ownership's not going to agree with the team. So just opening my mind and being able to translate that message back and forth is probably my biggest learning or.

Learning moment, you know, so you're the translator, right? You've got to be able to understand and get it and you got to be able to translate that and communicate it and then make plans around it. Love that. Really great nuggets there to kind of wrap us up for today. So I'm super appreciative to both of you for taking time to spend with us. Oh, it's my pleasure, my pleasure to get to meet you and get to talk with you. And I know that you've shared some things that are going to be very helpful for our listeners that are in different places, maybe earlier on or even later on in the journey than you. But you know, we all kind of help each other learn and master this stuff together and that helps everybody. So I'm grateful for that. If our listeners want to find out more about your business or get ahold of either of you, what's the best way for them to do that?

All the social media from YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, I mean it's just the rag company and just all spelled out. We've got our media team that manages all those connections. As far as us personally, it's our names and@the rag company.com.

Love it, love it. For anyone out there, feel free to send an email. I'm happy to talk about any of the stuff that they have. Questions.

Fantastic. Fantastic. Appreciate that. Well, to our listeners, thanks for listening and if you've enjoyed this version of the Rocket Fuel podcast, you know, please give us a review on whatever platform it is that you're happening to be listening on that helps us get the word out and hopefully reach more people and help them learn as well. So until next time, go rock it.

Foreign.

Thanks so much for joining me today. I really hope you were inspired by our guests. If you're interested to discover how your current visionary integrator relationship compares to the relationship you'd like, I invite you to go visit rocketfueluniversity.com and take our free Crystallizer assessment. You'll get both your Visionary and Integrator Index indicator scores and that's going to help you figure out your next step. Make huge leaps on your journey towards EOS mastery by joining us at the 2025 EOS Conference in Washington, D.C. happening April 2nd through 4th. The week will feature engaging breakout sessions, ample network opportunities and can't miss keynotes from Gino Wickman and the best selling author of Atomic Habits, James Clear. Our biggest event of the year, this is the place to connect with other business leaders, learn from entrepreneurial experts and strengthen your implementation of EOS tools. Go to eosconference.com to register now.