You Don’t Have to Solve Every Problem, Just the Most Important Ones | Sherri & Scott Yukel

Entrepreneurs take risks. That's what we do. And that's kind of cool about a husband and wife team is, yes, we're the same checkbook. We both were willing to take risks and it's why we kept growing and we changed our business. Our business model is constantly changing. Probably about every three to five years we're a different business just because of what we do. And I think that's really key to why it worked for us.

Hey, 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. I'm really excited to introduce today's guest to you. Sherry Yukil is the founder of Big Dot of Happiness, a party supply e commerce company and a true visionary. She started the company in 1999 with $700 cash and her midwestern work ethic. Scott Uchel, her husband is an engineer by trade and was the company integrator for over 20 years. In this episode, they share how trust, communication and clear role definitions are essential for operating a business. As a married visionary integrator duo, if you're interested in scaling your business or selling your company without sacrificing its structure and values, then you're definitely in the right place. We're going to begin the show where Sherry and Scott describe how their business got started and what led them to implement eos. Let's hop in. Today I have Sherry and Scott Uchel from Big Dot Happiness, a remarkable party supply business that specializes in creating goosebump moments, memories that last a lifetime. So thanks for your time today and welcome to the show.

Excited to be here.

Thanks, Mark.

Yeah, very nice to meet both of you. I am very curious to hear your story. So I know a little bit, just enough to be dangerous. So we're probably going to jump all over the place today. And so to start, I'd actually kind of like to go to kind of pre EOs. So tell me what was going on with the company before you brought in somebody to help you with eos?

All right, I'll start here. So big down of happiness was a kind of just a hobby back in the day. Back in 1999 is when we started and it was the true startup kind of thing. The mentality of just, you know, whatever you got to do, you do. I was able to hire my husband about five years in, so he left his corporate job and came on board when E Commerce was really trying, you know, starting to expand. And I think we ran the company for at least 15 years and through some massive growth and changes with E Commerce over those years. And then I'll let Scott kind of say why we decided we needed some structure and then how we found eos.

Great, Scott.

So, yeah, pre eos. So we've been doing eos, I believe, for about four or five years. It's been prior to that, there clearly was some structure. My background is engineering. I come from a six Sigma black belt type background. So processes and things of that sort have always been super critical. I think there's some challenges working with your spouse and we can get into that if you'd like to eventually. But yeah, we were on some pretty big growth curves with the business and just happened to stumble across this tool, the OS tool. It was a book sitting on my nightstand, I think for about two years. And I don't know, something made me pick it up one day and I was like, wow, we need this. Because it was really, the business had grown to, I don't know, 80, 90 employees. And trying to keep everybody, you know, accountable and working towards the same things was becoming difficult.

I'll add a little to that, is that I am what you would call a true visionary. I didn't like a lot of structure. And when Scott first brought EOS to the table, I'm like, no way in BLEEP am I going to do this. And so I will tell you that I fully embrace the whole entire concept and I cannot imagine where we would be without it. But at first I'm like, you want what? You want me to push? You want me to put things in here to talk about priorities. What, what, what? I played full visionary. Yes, I hook, line and sinker. I'm that person.

Great. So let's talk about that. Right? So you first start looking at the structure that's going to come by implementing eos. And so how were you structured right before. So before you did your first accountability chart, you know, and implementing eos, how were you structured? So, Sheri, what seats, as we would call them, were you sitting in at that point?

I mean, I still was the sales creative, kind of pusher of the company, the driver of the business, high strategic discussions, relationships, etc. But I think what we found is that we hit that level where no longer could all the answers come from Scott or I, and we had to start building those team members, those leaders under us. And that's when it just to be Accountable and to make decisions and to kind of follow the. Find the guidelines of the goals that we had in place. And that's really when we needed this. So we did have leaders, but they were young leaders and they really didn't feel the accountability to make a decision. And so we really needed. We needed this to help help everybody on the same mission.

So how would you describe what the structure looked like before? Right. So right before you built an accountability chart, was there a structure or was it just kind of. Everybody was kind of doing what?

Yeah, I can answer that, Mark. So I think the structure there was an org chart, as we called it before we started the EOS process. Now it's an accountability chart. We did have that, but the reality is that Sherry and I both wore a lot of hats.

A lot of hats.

You always do as an owner of a business. But the way we functioned was spreadsheets and a lot of emails going back and forth. There was always, I think, some confusion as to what the heck we're supposed to be working on at this point in time because Sherry would send an email or I would send an email, and pretty soon someone's off and they're doing something different than what they originally were working on. So it was a little bit of chaos going on. I think we were pretty good at organizing it. But again, as we grew, it became so obvious that we were struggling on what we should be working on.

Right. So when you did that first accountability chart where you've got, you know, visionary seat, integrator seat, and the rest of the seats on your leadership team, which it sounds like you were just kind of starting to maybe fill out. Right. How many seats were each of you sitting in and what were they?

Well, I still role play the role of high level sales, but I don't necessarily want to be. I'm kind of one of those unique people that have turned into more of Scott and less of a visionary. So I can kind of play both whether I wanted to or not. I mean, visionaries love to be visionaries, but I kind of know the whole business. I know all the way from operations to product development to marketing. And so unfortunately, I still touched too much of that. So I needed to get myself out of that and really look at the high level of the business in order to grow. The chaos word is actually quite brilliant. And in our world of E commerce, that changes very fast. Chaos is necessary in order to stay on top of things. And so controlling the chaos is really what really got really good with eos and how to Implement that throughout. Not only just the leadership team, but now also down into the departments.

So, Sheri, for you, I expect you were sitting in the visionary seat out of the gate. True.

Yeah.

Were you also sitting in the integrator seat in the beginning or was Scott in the integrator seat from the jump?

I guess I would say I was mostly in the integrator seat from the jump. But again, we wore various hats. I've always done the finance and there you go. I've always done the it, the systems side of that. Because within E Commerce, there's a lot of software. There's a lot of back end software. The other thing too, as a business, we're not only E commerce, we also are a manufacturer.

Okay.

So I was involved. We manufacture our own products. And so we actually, our business is a fairly complex business from the standpoint that we design. We have an entire creative team. Sherry would lead the creative team to help identify what products we should be producing.

So, Cher, you would lead the creative team as a. Was that a distinct seat in the chart or was that just something you were doing as part of your visionary role?

Part of the visionary role. And I also kind of controlled marketing, which was where are we going to sell, how are we going to sell it? And yeah, so I would do creative marketing and talk to production. And then so it was kind of like a split. Like, you know, half of us were doing marketing, creative and touching in production. And then Scott was doing finance it and helping the flow of production.

And let's not forget, I. Let's not forget I was involved with a lot of HR stuff. So.

And that's like, that doesn't happen when you.

I think I'm up to like seven seats. It sounds like you were sitting in Scott. Right. And Sherry's in, you know, three or four over here on the leadership team. That first leadership team. How many other humans were on it in addition to you? Two.

There's only like two. Maybe two for production. And a marketing person.

Yeah, we had a marketing on the leadership team. Production manager.

Okay.

And then we started expanding that out.

Okay. And so. All right. And so it started to. That's, you know, so it's typical. Right. So when you first start, it's. It's. I've never seen it where everybody's just sitting in one seat and it's all nice and clean and pretty. It just doesn't work that way. People have to sit in multiple seats out of the, out of the gate just to kind of do what needs to be done. Then you kind of start to prioritize and go to work on getting the right people in the right seats, which takes time. And so you start moving down that path. You start fixing some of those things. The two of you begin to be able, I'm guessing, to focus more on these visionary and integrator roles. Is that accurate?

Yep, absolutely.

And so you shared with me that you're a husband and wife. And so talk to me about that. Talk to me about the spousal relationship that's also the professional visionary, integrator relationship. I've seen a few of these. I've never been in one myself. But talk to me about what's really cool about that and what maybe is really challenging about that.

Mark, you have to wait for my book. I'm just kidding.

No, I expect there's a good one coming.

There's a good one coming. You know, one thing that we had very early on was we had another married couple, kind of as our financial advisors. They ran a company together, and they were very good at helping us keep lines in the sand. We call them sandboxes. Because when you are growing a company and it does get intense, it's not all roses. As we all know, there were moments when you both feel you have the final call. And we had to really define our sandboxes pretty early. And then when the sandboxes over, you know, they're over top of each other, then you're literally like, ah, that's my call. And then he's like, no, that's my call. And then we had to get together. You know, now in the eos would be our same page meetings and saying, okay, whose sandbox does have the final call here? And so it would get intense. It was really funny. As the company grew and grew and grew, there were moments of just exciting and just, this was the best thing on the planet. And then the very next moment, you could walk in and you're like, oh, my God, this is the most intense and stressful day I'm having. And it was very much a roller coaster until we could really define, like you said, seats and our sandboxes and who controlled what and who had the final say. We did get very good over the years of finally being able to shut it off when we got home. We have four kids, so not only did we run this really crazy, awesome, amazing business, we were raising four very active children.

So how'd you do that? How did you not bring it home?

So, Mark, I think that I know you want to hear the good, the bad and the ugly. So there's some ugly here, I think. So, like Sherry mentioned, we definitely, literally, I look back, I still have, like, old spreadsheets and documents about sandboxes and what we did and, you know, really in the early years. And, you know, as you work together, you get to know each other a little bit. But at the same time, if you talk to anybody on our leadership team wasn't uncommon for Sherry and I to throw out a swear word during the leadership team at each other. So, you know, we're both super passionate about what we do. I really love the business side of what we, you know, what we created. And Sherry was always about the, you know, the customer and the product. And so that's where it worked really well for us. But there were times when we both would be very passionate about something, and it wasn't uncommon for us to have to take a break during a leadership meeting, for example.

So literally stop down and get up and walk out for a little bit.

Get up, walk out of the room, calm down. Yeah, sometimes Sherry didn't come back. But, you know, and so, you know, without a doubt, being married can be really difficult at times. Cause again, when you're both that passionate. We were both very involved with the business, both in leadership positions, obviously, so that made it really, really difficult at times. I think as time evolved and especially as we moved in the eos, it really helped solidify what are the items that we need to be working on and discussing. Again, we don't need to solve all the problems as long as we're solving the most important ones.

Was there ever a time that, you know, one of those heated moments where you had to just really sit down and go, you know what? This is either going to kill our marriage or it's going to kill our business. Did it ever kind of get to that point where you had that conversation?

There are moments of, should we both still be in the business? Should we not both be still in the business? Because I am a true visionary. I'm super passionate. And actually, EOS helped that calm, oddly, because of the structure of the meetings. But, yeah, there were moments I think the desire of though this is. We still have really enjoy. If we didn't love what we were doing, I think we would have made a decision too, to do that earlier on, because it can get really crazy growing and adding people and, you know, the fun of all that. But yeah, I think the fact that we had so much fun and we. We ultimately had this goal in mind, like, we need the company to get to get X millions in sales. And then we're gonna. We're gonna probably take it out to bid. So. And. And that'll happen, Mark. I mean, we can certainly talk about that kind of the back end of the business and where we're at now, but our company is totally taking wings of growth. It's just been really amazing through the process.

So let's kind of follow that journey. So, you know, you start in wearing lots of hats. You know, you build out your leadership team. You figure out how we, as spouses and visionary integrator are going to work together and make this work and not kill each other, still be able to raise, you know, four great kids and have the company do what we want it to do. So you figure all that stuff out. You kind of come along that, that path. What did you find as you were able to really focus on those seats? Scott, for you, what was it? I noticed that you're. You're like an 88 integrator, 59 visionary on the assessments. Sherry, I see you're 92 visionary, you know, 71 on the integrator side. So that's good. That's a real nice match where, you know, you're each high in the. The seat you're sitting in, not too high in the other seats. So that way you don't fight for the wheel, you don't tend to step on each other as much as you might otherwise. So good natural fits there, you know, what did you find that that was really surprising, maybe, as you began to work the relationship in that way and let each of you focus on what you've been calling your true sandbox and spending your time focused on the stuff that you hopefully enjoyed and are great at. What was surprising for you?

You know, I don't know if it's surprising. What I know is that Sherry's always been an incredible visionary. She's been very focused on the customer and the marketplace we're in. And what I know is there's no one else that can do that. She truly understands the market and what we need to do as a business at the same time. She can be going after all kinds of things at one time. And so that's where my job was, is to say, okay, we can't do all this. What are we going to decide to work on? What. What, you know, what. What should be our priority at this.

Point or how we do it, like. Or the how, Like, Scott didn't always necessarily disagree with. He knew I knew the vision, and he knew we needed to do things. But I maybe wanted to do it this way. And he was like, no, we have to do it this way because of the rest of the team or this has to happen first or we need another facility first, et cetera, et cetera. So how we needed to do it was really important versus agreeing that we needed to do it.

So talk about resolving some of those conflicts where maybe you saw it differently. Whatever the issue was, whatever the topic was, you kind of saw it different. How did you work through to decide, okay, this is what we're going to do and this is how we're going to do it? When you maybe were pretty far off to begin with?

Yeah, you know, Mark, I think, I mean, so many of the, you know, when you're running the business, so many of the decisions that you're involved with are generally tied to some kind of finances of some sort. And what I do know is that a huge benefit, I believe, is that Sherry and I work under the same checkbook. So it was always our finances versus let's say you have a second or third generation type business and you have multiple siblings and multiple sub bosses involved and there's a lot more people that maybe are stakeholders per se. So I think that was always a benefit for us is being able to work out of one checkbook. I also, you know, it really had to come down to whose sandbox were these items in what was the biggest.

Bang for our buck. So we would many times realize we had limited resources with our time and we would say, okay, what is the biggest revenue change we can make? And then we would go after that. I think early on, one of the things I learned with EOS was quite interesting. So Scott's a list guy and he's a checkbox guy. And EOS is quite interesting because it's taught you to work on the most important things for the business. It wasn't like, let's get through the whole list and some meetings. You would spend the entire meeting on bullet number one. But it was the most important thing that we had to solve in order to make the next decision. And that was probably the most eye opening thing for me. With eos. I was like, oh my gosh. And it was great. And it was still the right thing to do because many times we'd be like, oh, it's too big of a project, we're not going to talk about it yet. We needed to talk about that one thing for an hour and a half. And so that was really eye opening to me.

Yeah, I mean, Mark, there are some Failures in the past, certainly. And anytime you. I guess we're both big believers in if you're not failing, if you don't fail some of the time, you're not really trying hard enough. Sherry, can I pick on your bakery idea?

No.

Okay. I do believe I thought it was a horrible idea.

You just need to fail and you need to fail fast. But entrepreneurs take risks. That's what we do. And that's kind of cool about a husband and wife team is. Yes, we're the same checkbook. We both were willing to take risks and it's why we kept growing and we changed our business. Our business model is constantly changing. Probably about every three to five years we're a different business. And just because of how what we do. And I think that's really key to why it worked for us.

So I'm hearing sort of an unusually strong financial incentive alignment. Right. Because you're operating out of the same checkbook. Right. So I get that that helps. True. For most, you know, spouses. Right. I'm hearing that you're similarly wired in terms of risk taking. Is that true? Which one's the bigger risk taker?

I'm more risk adverse than she is. That's just my. That's the engineer in me, that's the financial guy in me. I actually think I've become less risk averse because as business went on, we started to see some successes and realized, boy, you got to spend money if you're going to make money.

Mark, I have a great story there on that one. So Scott was again, please prove it before we buy this $250,000 piece of equipment. And I'm like, eh, no, don't worry about it. We'll make money. So literally we were in printing and converting and we went to a show and we walked by this really pretty giant flatbed printer. And I'm like, this is the coolest thing ever. And he goes, I go, buy me one. He goes, no, what are you going to do with it? I need to see the roi. I have no idea what we're going to make on it yet. I have no idea what. But I promise you it'll be profitable whatever we produce on it, and we'll make money. And he goes, he rolled his eyes. And before we left the show, he bought one. Let's just say within three months we bought two more. So it worked out. And he learned to trust me because I have that instinct and intuition. But also you're going to figure out how to pivot to make money on whatever you have to offer. I will give Scott credit. The fact that we never got loans. We always paid as we went. We were a bootstrap company, and I love that. I think more businesses need to do that and go grow as fast as you can, because it really helped us kind of keep the vision as long as we possibly could. So it's good.

Very interesting. Yeah, it's, you know, it's amazing to me when spouses can work well together like that because, I mean, I'm married 30 years, very happy. Everything's, you know, great. There's no way we could work together. She would hate it. I would hate it. I don't think it would be. Well, actually, I'd say from a skill set. We have very complementary skill sets, but it's just, you know, I don't know, I just. I'm amazed by people who can. Who can make that work really well.

You know, Mark, it's definitely a learned skill. Like I said, we struggled, I think, for a while at first. And again, luckily, way before eos came into the picture, we had basically some mentors, a husband, wife, team that were older than us, and it was huge help having them kind of coach us and mentor us.

That's cool.

Without them, I don't know how it would have turned out.

Yeah, that's great. I mean, that's probably great advice in and of itself is to have some mentorship there from somebody who's walked that road. Right.

It is hard, though, to leave work at work and come home and actually not talk to each other like we're co owners anymore. We're now husband and wife. And that took a little bit of time. We're now much better at that. But you do. You can't do boardroom talk when you go home and be parents. So it is an interesting trade.

Yeah. All right, so let's keep rolling down this path. So, you know, things are working, you know, the company's growing, you know, you're more successful, more profitable. And you had this idea in mind to at some point put it out for bid, I think was your language. So talk to me about when you start getting to that point along the journey. What did that look like?

I'll give the personal side to this. So again, and we've talked about that, we have four children and we also. Scott and I have been in other business groups where we've seen second generation and third generation businesses where the children no longer talked to each other because they had gotten a company from their parents. And actually, early on in our company I think maybe year 10 or year 15, we had our first, maybe our second rendition of our will done. And we're like, you know, we don't want the kids to buy the business. We want that to not be an option because with four siblings that will probably get married, there's going to be eight people deciding, and it's just going to end up horrible. So we already knew that. And this is our dream. This was our passion, not theirs. And so we knew that early on. And Scott kind of had. We both had talked about a number and our vision and when that would happen. And with all companies, you know, there's these business levels you hit, and you kind of need some different skill set, expertise, connections, probably more capital to really make that giant next leap. And we kind of knew that sweet number. And that did happen in 2019. So it was when we got those numbers hit and, you know, we went through an M and A process. So it was. It was quite.

So what I'm hearing there is it really. It was driven by your personal plan, right? Your plan for family, how the business was going to serve, ultimately your personal plan. And so you execute that, you go out, you do the deal. So you do a transaction, and then do you both stay?

Well, so, yeah, like Sherry said, we had planned this early on that we weren't going to pass this along to our kids. You know, we didn't really have any of them that were showing a lot of interest in it, maybe because mom and dad brought home too much work and they decided, I don't want to do that. So that was always our plan all along. The people always. I think people always assume that if you start a business and own a business, that you have to keep it forever, you know, and quite frankly, Sherry and I are both at the point where we want to do something different. No one said we had to do this forever. And then on another note, I'm pretty sure my kids will be really happy with the amount of money we sold it for, and someday maybe they get their hands on some of it, but for now, it's not theirs. So. Yeah. So in 2020 is when we actually got the deal done. We also discovered, as we'd gone through this, is that you want to sell a business when the business is going this direction, not that direction or this direction. Right. So the timing was right for us. So we went out, we had gone through a bunch of management meetings. This is March, February, and March of 2020.

Okay.

We go through our management meetings. We're working with our M And a guy, and he's like, I think we're going to have seven solid offers on the table. Again, we had a lot of interest. Things were going super well for us.

Can I interject?

Yep, go ahead. You take it from here, Mark.

This was actually a really cool learning curve from a female perspective. You know, it was management groups come in from all over the country, some in international, and I'm the only woman in the room. And it was very intimidating. And I remember our mentoring partner said, sherry, your whole life has set you up for this. Just do what you do best. And so I had to kind of just shake that off. Yeah, I mean, I love this brand. I love what we're going. I want to the ultimate vision to grow this brand. And yes, we went through those presentations and yes, we were had seven solid offers coming in. And our M and a guy. Go on vacation. Go visit your daughter who's studying abroad in Budapest. We'll talk when you get back. This is where the book deal will also have some of this in there. But let's just say what happened then. We were at the airport, and we did not get on that plane because no one else was in the airport. And so the country shut down. When you own an event celebration business in the middle of COVID or the beginning of COVID everybody gets a little sketchy and pause. All offers paused. So Scott and I were literally had no idea what just hit us. What just happened. But I'm gonna give you a sweet spot here, is that we do what all entrepreneurs do, which is a giant pivot in our world, which is celebration people. The spirit of celebrating parties doesn't stop. People still want to be with their loved ones. Still want to. And we did a giant pivot with outdoor yard signs because our phone went off the hook. And we listened to the customer, which is, I can't see grandma, but can you do a honk? And then can I drive by her house? And we. Our business blew up, ended up having the largest May we've ever had. Let's just say some of the bidders came back and said, if this company can pivot through this, we want them. And so we ended up closing the deal for a better deal than originally stated.

And so it did. So the price did go up.

Yeah, it was awesome.

That's very cool.

It was an interesting time during COVID because literally the business went from here to basically zero. And we had to let a whole. Basically the entire staff go, the warehouse, the production staff, because we realized that right now we got to preserve cash. And so our four children, and we're also home because of COVID And are we? Our oldest ones are in their mid-20s now. They were all home at the end of it. They had spent 10 weeks at home with us, kind of on lockdown. We kept our business running. All four of the kids came in. We were all working super long days and hours. I'm in the warehouse, driving fork truck, unpacking boxes, stocking stuff. We are all doing what we have to do to keep the business going. And then, as Sherry alluded to, it started to turn around. And within two months, we were doing more business than we had done prior to Covid. So incredibly stressful time, but an experience that we'll never forget. And all of our kids were all super involved with it.

What a great family experience.

And that's just it. I think. What you always wonder when your kids kind of just see they're involved in a family that has success, you wonder if they have that work ethic. And I will tell you, when it got, I cried. I was like, I've never seen my kids grind so hard. They truly understood what it was like to be an entrepreneur. And our whole team, I don't want to just make this about just the ukules. I mean, our whole team was fully embraced, and it was unbelievable and super exciting. And, you know, you just. You know, they were babies when the company started, so I didn't know if they really remember the startup stage. They got the startup stage just because of COVID And it was probably. I mean, talk about goosebumps. For me, as a parent, it was that. It was exactly that.

Yeah. That's a super inspirational story from an entrepreneurial perspective. To be able to buckle down, pivot, figure out a way to hold it together, to make it work, even through the pain. I'm sure of having to let people go that had probably been there for a long time. All the relationships, all of that side of things, and then the family side of it. To have, you know, to go through that valley together and see how people respond and get to watch each other react under pressure like that, that's. That's. That's priceless.

And then you can start recalling some of your team, and it just. It was really moving, and it was really great.

So, all right, so the deal ends up getting better. You go through this experience, and the deal comes back on the table, or more than one of them, and the price of poker goes up and. Awesome. So you do one of the transactions. Right. The better one. I hope okay, so my question that led us off into that whole path that I was not even aware of, which is a great path. Did you both stay?

We both stayed for a period of time. As of January, I'm no longer with the business. Sherry still is. When we did the deal, we both had signed like a two year agreement, but there was nothing binding about that. Typically they want owners and founders to stick around to help with the transition at the same time. I never did this to work for someone. So as soon as they started asking for financials and reports and I'm like, wait a second, I'm the one that asked for that. Now I'm reporting to someone. I'm like, this isn't going to work so well. So all of my hires, my hats were hired and there's now a new integrator in place. So I've been done since January. Now I just have to listen to Sherry, come home and talk about work. I only halfway listen anymore.

This is my baby. It's my fifth child. And in order for me to truly sunset with Scott, because he's been sunsetting now for a little while and he's super funny, he's totally in retirement mode and enjoying life and he's super stress. He has no stress.

Yeah, he looks totally stressed out to me.

I know, look at him. He's just like. But I know I couldn't let go until I know it's okay. So, like getting all the key players and my successor in place, et cetera. And so yeah, Scott left pretty, you know, fairly quickly after the business transition occurred. We still own a significant part of the business and I will always think about this brand. So to not think about it all the time and actually start traveling with Scott in the future, I need to make sure it's set. And so I'm still the CEO for now. It will, I mean, I think, I'm not sure when this is, but we are announcing my transition here in a couple weeks. But it's, it's, it's about a year from now, but I want to make sure this baby of mine is just set to just explode. And we're the partners are allowing us to do that, letting me be involved with the succession planning, making sure the key players are all set. But you know, it was really interesting finding my new integrators. You know, I know we talked, we haven't really talked about it, but it is hard. It is hard to find this duo. It is hard to find an integrator visionary relationship when you're married to it is one thing, and Scott and I have a great. We had a great working relationship, but I needed that same thing in order to even take it to the next level with especially acquisition. And how'd you do it? My first try was horrible. Let that person go really quickly. It just. You can tell. You could tell within a month. It wasn't. It was. Even though you thought you did diligence, it just didn't work. My new one is amazing. His name is Jim. Scott has met him. If you looked at their results, they're almost identical. It's super funny, but he. And I just respect him. He's. He's done very similar things. He understands my personality and he's funny. He's 59 years old. And he said, I didn't realize I was an integrator my whole life because he's worked at many different companies. And I said, yeah, I know. Because he didn't know the term of EOs.

Right. Didn't have the language.

Sherry, can I interject? I'm not sure anybody understands your personality, but. So the new inner creator, him and I have had some conversations on the side.

Visionaries are people.

About how to work with Sherry.

Visionaries are people.

So I've given them some insight.

We're boring. We don't have a lot to say. Visionaries.

So it sounds like Scott's becoming the integrator whisperer. He's the guide. So, Sherry, on the hiring, the replacement integrator here, so you had the one misstep. What was the lesson you learned on that one? What was the hiring mistake or what you did wrong in the process that you learned from that helped you do.

Better the next time I spent more time on just general communication. People say they'll touch base and have the same vision of you and help you get those projects done. But you really had to have touch points, like, almost every morning and every day at the end of the day, in order to build that trust. I think even Scott gave Jim that one nugget was you have to earn her trust or this will never work out. And I'm pretty sure that's what you told him. I don't even think you told him anything else other than that.

I mean, every relationship's built on trust. And so until you have trust or if you don't get trust, it'll never. It'll never be what it can be, right?

Yeah. And it is great. It's actually kind of, in a weird way, you know, Jim and I work very, very well together, so I'm Making sure my successor, you know, can work very, very well with him, too. Because there is. You do need this duo to grow the company. It's the two voices that you can say anything to. And it will help you grow the brand and help you grow the company. And if there's anything you're holding back, it's not the right duo is really what I kind of think. I feel really lucky to have found a new integrator. Yeah, it wasn't without hardship, that interim.

So I'm curious. One of the things I hear from private equity firms and people that are buying companies is that they will pay more for a company that's running on eos, and they'll pay more for a company that has an integrator because they feel like it lowers the risk post acquisition. Did you experience that in any of your discussions? And kind of when that came down.

One of the other companies that was in the final run for it practiced eos. And actually those exact terms came through their mind. And they said they drink the Kool Aid, if you remember that. Scott. The company we actually went with did not hear of eos, had never heard of it. They were a smaller firm, a younger firm, but we loved it because they're in E commerce. They really understood E commerce, and we just didn't want to have that battle because that's what we are. We're a people. But it's been really cool. I'm so glad you asked this question, Mark, because I will fundamentally tell you the reason that having new partners has been so successful. I mean, it's been a really nice streamless process is because we got them engaged in the vto. The very first month, I think within two months was our vto. And they're like, what is this VTO thing? And they flew in for it, and they're involved in every quarterly discussion setting the rocks. And what it's done is it's made me, as the CEO, there's no squirrels. And as a visionary, to say that is quite shocking. But, you know, there's no. We're all on the same path. We agreed to the rocks. We're on this mission. We're doing it because when young, you know, acquisitions occur, there could just be constantly. And it's kept us in line and it's kept a great relationship growing. And I actually thank Scott for just, you know, doing that and then us really keeping it engaged. And they love it so much now that they're starting to implement it in their other brands, in their other companies they own.

Oh, really cool.

It's done a really good job. I love it. I'm so glad we have it. I can't imagine without having it.

Yeah. I think another thing worth mentioning, Mark, is in terms of Sherry's replacement. And again, this is airing, I believe, after this, later.

Yeah, this won't come out here.

Her replacement is homegrown, which is, I think, super cool. So this is. She was actually our first graphic designer that we hired, I don't know, 15 more years, 15, 20 years ago. And so she'll be taking Sherry's position. I think several years back, or at least a couple years back, the thoughts started crossing my mind. I said, hey, I think she can take your role, Sherry. I think she can be the one. And so she's been mentored. And just. It's so super exciting because we know that Sherry's fifth child will be taken well care of because, you know, she shares the same vision as, you know, we would have, especially Sherry.

And I love it. She feels like a daughter. So I love that it's someone that I know has the same vision and passion for the brand that I do. So I'm super excited about the future.

So I have to ask, after that chapter kind of wraps itself up. What's next for the Ukels? What's next for the Yukil family?

You know, I guess I'm. I'm taking the advice of. I've heard from. From other people that have sold businesses is don't feel like on day one, you have to go find something else to do. Take some time off, relax, you know, take a year off. And so I'm in that year right now. You know, I've taken some time off.

I see it.

Sherry's gonna have to catch up.

So. Mark, I'm a workaholic. And, you know, it was really funny. I had this vision of retail, I guess, retiring or selling our company before I turned 50. So we did get that done. I was 49 when the business actually sold. I'm 51 now, so I'm over that curve. But I'm too young to retire, and. And I'm driven by making things, building things, and making things happen. I agree, though. I need to clear my mind. I need to just, you know. But my knowledge of E commerce is quite impressive, and it's taken me a while to actually realize I kind of know my thing, but I can see us doing something. But I will want the flexibility because Scott just said, either you're traveling with me or I'll find someone else, too. So I do need to go or he'll leave without me. And I just am super excited. I want to be able to do whatever. But I also am already starting to do a bit of mentoring young entrepreneurs because especially female entrepreneurs. I love it. I think they're. And you can see when you meet someone, I think, Mark, you've interviewed a lot of people when you see someone, you know when they have it. And it's usually when they talk about their drive and why they do it. It's never about the money. It's always about their passion. And so I can see that. And I really want to help others do that. But I can see me building something else again. I once was told, don't worry, Sherry, it chooses you. And so I can't get that out of my mind. And I'm hoping that actually occurs because I think I have more to offer. But I would like to sunset and travel a little with my husband because he feels like he's. Look at him. He's glowing, right?

He is.

Well, Sherry, here's kind of the deal. So, Mark, I've taken on kind of a little bit of a fascination with crypto and NFTs. And as I'm watching the TV right now up here in front of me, Sherry, you might not be leaving work for a while.

Oh, no. One of those days. Oh, no. Well, maybe she'll have time to write that book she's been plugging.

Yeah, I will someday. I haven't started anything yet, but that feels.

It's in you. I can tell. Well, I am so grateful to both of you for taking a little time with me and sharing your story. I know it's going to help some folks that are out there that are sharing certain facets of your path, and maybe it'll help them get there a little faster, maybe, you know, a little bit without stepping in some of the holes that, that we step in along the way. So I'm grateful for you and to, to our listeners out there. Well, first, is there any. If somebody wants to find out more about your business or anything you're doing, what's the best way for them to get ahold of you?

I'm on LinkedIn. You can look up Sherry Yukil. There's not a lot of Yukil so you'll be able to find me and bigdoufhappiness.com and I'm still the CEO and my email is very simple. Sherrygdadofhappiness.com Perfect.

For me, just LinkedIn under my name, Scott Yukel. Y u k e l Again, there's only one of us.

There's only one. I love it. All right. Well, again, thanks to both of you, Sherry and Scott, and to our listeners, thanks for listening. And until next time, go rock it. Thanks so much for joining me today. I really hope you were inspired by our guests. If you're interested to discover how how your current visionary integrator relationship compares to the relationship you'd like, I invite you to go visit rocketfuel university.com and take our free Crystallizer assessment. You'll get both your Visionary and Integrator indicator scores and that's going to help you figure out your next step. 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.