Episode 257: How to Break Down Big Goals to 90-Day Sprints, (Tips from a 100-Mile Runner), Tom Rauen

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How do we break down big audacious goals? Well, if there's anyone who would know, it's Tom Rowan. Tom's an ultra runner, someone who runs 50, 100-mile races just for the challenge of it. Tom is the founder and CEO of 1-800-T-Shirts and Envision Custom Screen Printing and Embroidery. Inc. 5000 company. Tom is also the co-founder of Dimensional Brewing Company, a microbrewery in Dubuque, Iowa. And he served on many notable boards and nonprofits, including a foundation Tom and his wife Amanda started, the Rowan Family Foundation, with a mission to giving back to the community. Now, this coming September, Tom is competing in the World Series of Ultra Running in Italy, and it's the biggest, most competitive race in the world at Mont Blanc.

The highest mountain in the Alps in Western Europe, located on the French-Italian border.

It's 106 miles and 33,000 feet of climb. Created in 2003, the race known as the UTMB is the most mythical and prestigious trail running race in the world. So if anyone would know about how to take big audacious goals and break them down into manageable tasks that help you overcome Herculean feats, It's Tom. We started a new written series at community.commonskeew.com about scaling a multi-million-dollar business. And as part of this series, I wanted to interview Tom and ask him about his experience implementing EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System created by Gino Wickman, highlighted in his book Traction. EOS has been named by many leading brands in the Common Skew community, so I wanted to know more from from the implementers themselves. Today's episode is brought to you by Commenscue, the work-from-anywhere platform that powers your connected workflow, enabling you to process more orders and dramatically grow your sales. To learn more, visit commenscue.com. Now here's Tom Rowland, and we begin our discussion with my question about how he first learned about EOS and how he implements it in his business. Here's Tom.

When did you did you first start reading and decide to implement that for your business?

Probably 4 years ago. It's been an evolution, that's for sure. So we started off using a spreadsheet to measure our rocks and keep track of everything. When you say measure our rocks, what do you mean by that? Basically, there's 3 things that you're setting up, and you have an issues list, so you're putting down all the issues that you have, a to-do list, and so the— some of those issues get turned into to-dos, and then the bigger issues or to-dos get turned into rocks, which are the big goals and bigger things that you have to get done that you're probably not going to get done in an afternoon type of thing. Yeah. And we look at those in every department. We've got it broken down on sales, creative, screen printing, embroidery. And then I think we have one that's just a general overall admin or type of thing. And then so those are department level. Things, and then we have company-wide, and we break that down into 90-day segments. And we say, all right, for the next 90 days, what are these big things? If we can knock over these big dominoes or crush these big rocks, what's going to actually move the needle forward in our business? And sometimes we look at our day, and if we look back at what we did for the day or for the week, The day-to-day stuff that we're doing with our customers are always transactional. It's getting this order done, getting artwork approved, whatever. The big things when you're working on the business, those are transformational. So those are pushing the business forward, those are changing. Like I said, I like to call it big dominoes because you knock one over and it's gonna be a ripple effect on the impact that's gonna make all the transactional things that are happening. And so we just break those down 90 days for each thing, whether it's an issue, a to-do list, or a rock, we put a deadline and say, all right, when is this going to be due and how is this getting done or who is doing it? So we assign it to somebody. And that doesn't always mean it's internally where if we don't have the time or the resources, we look at that rock or even the to-do and say, Okay, do we have to outsource this to an agency or to somebody else? Or what does that look like? So then everything's got, we've got our list, we've got timeline when we expect it to be done, and then we know who's responsible for it or if we've gotta hire someone to help get that thing accomplished.

So is the, the rocks are your big projects.

Are there a finite number of rocks?

Yeah, typically. 3 to 5.

Okay, 3 to 5. And let me— since you're an ultra runner, by the way, do you have some— you have something on your horizon that you're gonna be doing in the upcoming year or so?

Yes. Is this a trick question? I don't know. I'm curious.

I wanna know.

I'm always fascinated by your ultra running lifestyle and how it meshes with business.

Meshes.

Yes. So I entered the lottery and I got accepted into UTMB, which is Ultra Trail Mont Blanc. And that is the World Series of ultra running. Which is the biggest and most competitive ultra race in the world. Wow.

Congratulations, my friend. Wow.

Yeah, I was not expecting— I qualified last year at Western States and entered the lottery and just, I was not expecting it. So when I got the email saying I was accepted, I was totally blown away. I was surprised, but then also I had that, oh shit moment. Oh gosh, this is a big one. Now the work begins.

Wow.

And you get that email like the week after Christmas. When you've been eating junk food and sleeping all day. So it's gonna be— When is it? Yeah, it's September 1st. Okay. So I've got plenty of time to train and it's an absolute beautiful area. So it starts in Chamonix, France. We'll run probably the first, I think, 15 miles and then enter into Italy and it goes through Cormier, Italy. And then, Once we get through Italy, it'll circle up into Switzerland a little bit and then around the Mont Blanc massif and back into France to finish in the same spot. So it's kind of just like a—

how many miles?

106 miles and 33,000 feet of climb.

Whoa, Tom, this is amazing news.

I'm gonna get to know a StairMaster really good because we obviously don't have mountains or like areas to climb that big in Iowa.

Yeah, so this is actually a perfect setup for my question for you about EOS because you mentioned 90-day sprints basically is what you're creating with your 3 to 5 big rocks. And I'm curious how you think as an ultra runner, you have this 106-mile race. Many of us facing the year like as entrepreneurs, as business leaders, whether we're sales directors, a year feels like a marathon. So a year feels like you're 106-mile run, but you're breaking it down into these 90-day sprints. Is that— does for you, that's really got to mean something. For the rest of us, how has that really helped you capitalize on your goals, and how does it equate to you running 106 miles?

They correlate very well side by side. And so I look at it, and I can't look at— in business, I can't look at, okay, here's what we want to get done this year. What do we have to do this week and this month or in the next 90 days? And let those compound and stack up to what the ultimate goal is, whether it's on a 1-year, 3-year, or 5-year plan. The same goes for training. I know September 1st, I need to be ready and prepared to run the 106 miles. What I can't do is think I'm just going to go out and run even a marathon tomorrow, let alone 100 miles tomorrow. So training starts off 5 to 8 miles at a time and Every week you just add a little bit to it, and it's broken down into different training blocks as well, where the first training block is just building up your base fitness, and then it gets into another training block segment where you're increasing your VO2 max and kind of your endurance at that point. And then the next training block will probably get a little bit more technical of— I'll start running with some of the gear that I'm going to be doing, start doing some smaller races that are maybe 30 miles or 50 miler that is similar to the big one as a lead-up, kind of like almost a staging moment of, okay, um, let's practice everything we're going to do on the big race day on similar type of trails with all the nutrition that you need, everything else. So it's just piecing all those parts together until we get to the finish line. And so whether it's running the 106 miles or in business, like, it's just putting all those small pieces together knocking over, like I said, I love knocking over those big dominoes because that's going to ripple effect everything else. And then in the race itself, the starting line gun goes off and go, and you know you're going to be in this thing for a while. You don't know what's going to happen. It's unpredictable. And you can't look at it from the start of, I've got 106 miles to go, say, all right, I've got 5 miles to the next aid station. I need to make it the next mile, I need to make the next step. So one step at a time, one mile at a time, one aid station at a time. And once I, I break those down and I just try to get to that next mile or to the next aid station, eventually I look down at my watch and I realize I'm more than halfway to the finish line from where I started. And then it just starts going from there. So we just keep tacking together. And even when I get to mile 80 or 90, I don't even think about all the miles I've completed or what's left. I just think, what do I got to do? What do I have to eat? And how's my body feeling for the next mile, the next 5 miles to get to that aid station, whatever the case is. And the same goes back to— I look at our production schedule or the jobs coming through, whether it's in production or in the queue for artwork and things like that. And I always tell our staff, like, the same goes in the race. You can't look at 25 cards and 20,000 t-shirts stacked up waiting to get printed. Just think about that next order. All we got to do is focus on that next order, what we got to get done in the next hour, what you got to get done this morning, and then what we got to get accomplished for the day. Don't worry about the rest of the week or the rest of the month. We just have to tackle what's at hand right now. And so that's how I— once I get done with these races, I come back, I report to staff what I've learned, the challenges I've over— I've overcome mentally, more so even than physically. And then I tell them how I relate that to stuff in business. And when I put myself in those situations where I'm pushing just mentally and emotionally to every possible breaking point over a 106-mile race, things become a lot easier and simplified in business because I know that we can always push a little harder. We can go, we can find another gear. We can always just go a little deeper.

This correlates so well. Taking the— a lot of us in business, I did this for years as a business leader. I would say we're going to grow by 30 or 40%, and there was— we didn't break it down into those 90, into the next, getting to the next station, or those micro goals that we're talking about. Tom, the other thing about ultra running is it's incredibly complex. There's so much going on. There's your diet and nutrition, there's the altitude, there's all of these conditions around it, just like in business. Why do you think— so my point is it's very complex what you're doing, the run you're doing. A lot of people think it might be something incredibly complex when you throw in nutrition and everything you have to monitor and, and do with business. The industry and what you do has gotten more complex as you've grown as an entrepreneur. Is that why— is my main question I'm trying to find out— why is EOS so important? People like you and other entrepreneurs that I respect have adopted it and really accelerated their business. Why, why is it such an important operating system?

I think just to add some, for us it was just like getting focused. I'm a visionary all the way. Also have like a squirrel, right? Can't keep my mind focused on one thing, and I like to stay busy. I like to have multiple projects going on. I love the, the challenge of a rush order and a deadline, all that, and trying to see how many plates I can keep spinning at once. And this system was like, first off, when I read the book and learned the difference between a visionary and an integrator, right? I was like, whoa, I've been trying to be— I've been trying to force myself into the integrator role and do stuff outside of my wheelhouse or comfort zone. And really, I'm a visionary just filling in the gaps on some of that other stuff. And so when I learned that and we set up our accountability chart, it really helps say, here's the position, here's what you need to be focused on. Here are the other positions on team, the top things they need to be focused on. And so then it's the accountability, who they report to, having that structure, but then also having the structure on your to-do list, the issues, and tackling those issues. And not just, we talked about it one time, but then nothing ever got accomplished because that can easily get away from you. Even with the system, it's not foolproof. There's still things on here where you still gotta focus and work the system. And so like I said at the beginning, we started with doing it in a spreadsheet, then we found a software that, that you can load it in and helps track some of those metrics and has a dashboard and helps you assign stuff, cross it off the list, a variety of things. And we're just getting into implementing that. I think that's going to make things a lot easier as well.

Okay, thank you for answering that question about why it's been so important, because I think a big part of that is the integrator piece. Was it when you recognizing your role as the visionary, that had to be somewhat liberating. Did it mean that you now realized, oh, I have to either find an integrator or a scribe or have those kinds of integrator roles around me? How did you reconcile the fact that, oh, I'm a visionary, not an integrator, but I need an integrator? And forgive my greenness, but this is why I like that I'm dumb on this topic because I get to ask the dumb questions. Is the integrator the ops person who keeps the structure and everything going? The visionary is the one who sees where you're going and where you're going to grow to. Correct.

Yeah. The integrator is COO, general manager, the operations manager, whatever you want to call it. That's the person that's taking the vision, taking the ideas, taking everything and putting it to action, getting it done, dialing in. And they're both two very different personalities and the way they work. And I didn't know that for a long time. I just, oh, just, you just go through it and you don't know any different. And I really realized it when I started the brewery and my partner in the brewery is an integrator. And it was amazing how I would take my vision, share that with him, he would put it into play. And for the first year, it was awkward for me there because I didn't know that even existed, that correlation when you can get that all-star team together. So the other thing is like, Walt Disney and Roy Disney. So Walt Disney is the visionary. Roy Disney was actually doing all the work. And most people don't realize that. And there's a lot of other tandem duos like that throughout time that have had a visionary. I think Apple, you could say Steve Jobs was the visionary. Steve Wozniak was the integrator, actually getting it done. So once you learn that dynamic, it's pretty eye-opening of, whoa, I need this, or I need to find that. If I'm Warren Buffett, where's my Charlie Munger at? I need my side guy here. So learning that was just like, all right, we got— that's number one priority.

It also takes a lot of maturity on the integrator's part too, to understand that. And typically they probably come to the table with this understanding, maybe even more so the visionary, because they realize— a lot of us that are integrators realize we're not visionaries. We may even realize we're not technically, from the very simplistic idea of an entrepreneur, an entrepreneur, but we're really good at processes, we're really good at operations, we're really good at figuring things out. And the funny interesting talking with you, Tom, is that I have been in the seat now talking to so many successful entrepreneurs, and after 200 or 300 conversations like this, without using those terms, you can always find those roles within the most successful businesses. And so you affirmed this, but it seems to me because our industry is so complex, because there's so many moving parts, because there's so much opportunity and variety, this is why we need this like interior leadership structure to help take all these world-thinking entrepreneurs that see so many different ideas and channel those into something that would actually produce work.

Yeah, 100%. Another one is me and Marshall with Shirt Lab. I had the idea, we both came up with this idea for Shirt Lab. Yeah. And I'm always pitching to him like, oh, here's what we should do, this and this. And like a day later, Marshall's like back on the phone or emailing me like, all right, boom, I got this done and this done. And so our dynamic there is great because I'll spitball or throw the ideas out there, we'll talk about it, and then he puts it into action and makes it happen. And so that dynamic of the visionary and integrator there, we're very compatible in that respect when it comes to ShirtLab. The one thing that we've adjusted a little bit is with this system, because it's so focused on fixing things or bringing issues to light and documenting them and everything else, so you got your issues, you got your to-dos, you got your rocks, And a lot of times those are all like negative things or here's a problem or here's what's wrong with the business that we've gotta add a component of positive as well. Because I've talked to other people that have done this system and you can't just focus on all these problems and negative things in the business because then all of a sudden like you're just feeling this weight of Oh, we're always constantly fixing things or problems and stuff like that. So you got to take that, but then also add the positive stuff in there too and make sure you're focusing on 99% completion rate of meeting deadlines and whatever those positive metrics and different things are that you can keep pushing out there. So then it's, it balances that out a little bit.

Such great advice. All right, Tom, thank you, buddy. Appreciate your advice always.

Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of SkuCast. Be sure to keep up with our latest content by subscribing to SkuCast on iTunes or to our blog at community.commsku.com. Until next time, friends, thanks so much for listening.

Mm-hmm.