Getting What You Want Out of Your Business | Ep. 11

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Beyond Business podcast. My name is Charles Mackay. Today I interviewed Daniel Davis, who is a certified EOS implementer. Now you're probably wondering what is a certified EOS implementer? So in previous episodes we've talked about the EOS operating system, which is a book called Traction, which is written by a guy out of the US called, called Gino Wickman. That operating system has been life changing for thousands of business owners around the world. And Daniel is the guy who brought that to Australia and has now got, I think up to 15 or 16 implementers across the APAC region helping businesses implement the EOS and the Traction model throughout their business. Anyway, so Dan started his career within fuel stations and from working in them to then working on them, to then owning them. And throughout that he went through so many life lessons and business lessons and through that he eventually got into some other consulting businesses and over time eventually found the Traction model and eos. And I really wanted to share this with you guys. Something that comes up a lot within organizations that we work with is they might have a really big growth plan in place, but so many of the foundations aren't in place. And Dan and I talk through that and why. Dan is really passionate about helping businesses get, especially business owners get what they want out of their business. So without further ado, hand over to Dan and myself. Enjoy. Daniel Davis, what an absolute pleasure it is, mate. So tell me on this fine Thursday morning, where are you sitting and situated?

So we're in our offices at Pyrmont, so just overlooking darling harbour here in Sydney, which is great, great place to be, albeit a quiet place of recent times. The city's been empty, it's been mined, so people are starting to return to work, which is nice.

Yeah, yeah. Have you been, what's your daily commute to the office like? Is it on your little scooter or you been walking?

Yeah, no, it's still been on the Vespa. If I get lucky, it takes me about four minutes coming across from Woolloomooloo. If I do catch a red light or two, it can blow out. So sometimes it gets to that seven or eight minute mark. Frustrates me. But yeah, pretty lucky.

That's awesome. That's awesome. So, Dan, it's an absolute pleasure to have you on today and you know, dig into a little bit of where you got started with business and what you're up to today. So for everyone on this, you know, on the podcast, tell us. Let's rewind a bit and tell Us where you got started into business. You've been on a pretty amazing journey to what you're doing today. But where did it all kick off? And tell us some of those key milestones along the way.

Sure. I think it actually probably kicked off back getting my first job as most people can kind of recall. It's pretty exciting. Didn't like school much, so never felt like it kind of fit in there. And then I was really fortunate. At the age of 10 I got my first job working at a timber yard out in Western Sydney at Regent's Park. ABC Timbers it was called back then and it was just awesome getting to mingle with people. Actually felt like what I was doing was purposeful and got paid. Back then it was in cash. Pretty cool. You got a yellow envelope every week with your name on it. So I was earning $4 an hour back then and I just thought it was awesome. So yeah, since then, just never ever not had a job. By the time I was 13, I had three jobs outside of school. Loved it. After I left school I took a job in retail. Just working in a service station. Wanted to kind of get around my social awkwardness that I had developed at school. So working in a retail environment helped me become a little bit more accustomed to talking with people. And I enjoyed the busy nature of being in a service station. Lots to do, lots of clients to serve, and started to manage a store, then a couple of stores and at the age of 21 I got my first opportunity to get my own store up in Blackheath in the Blue Mountains. Pretty cold part of the world during winter anyway, and lived at the store, like literally. So I'd open the store at 5 in the morning, work through till 10, 11 o' clock at night when we closed and then slept in the storeroom. And I'd do that every day, seven days a week for nearly three years. And by that point we'd built that little store up to being the one of the best stores in Australia. It was the highest sales per square meter store in the country. In saying that, you know, just like every other business owner though, I think I worked out every possible thing to screw up in those three years. So, you know, learning as I go. And then I managed to have a bit of cash flow and started to buy my own sites and build them and then operate them. So still staying in that retail environment, enjoyed that for about a period of seven years, then sold out of that, moved back to Sydney and I've been involved in a number of different businesses over the Years, everything from manufacturing to telco and then kind of fell into this space for the last decade, kind of through my passion for wanting to learn how the heck do you run a business? And having not been to uni myself, I just found that a lot of entrepreneurs were the same as me, struggled with knowing the ones of business. So it ended up with me in this space and loved it ever since.

It's fascinating that, you know, nearly the school of hard knocks and you know, I can relate a lot to that too, where you've just got so much passion and energy and you just want to do stuff, you just struggle sitting in a room. And I can, I can totally relate to that. So before you got into exactly what you're doing now, what was the. And after you got out of the service station, the retail side of things, like what was the big thing that you were trying to solve at that point in your life? And also potentially business that was a big factor to then lead into where you're at now. We'll get into that sort of that crossroad then.

Sure. I think the turning point was I had invested into a friend's company, had no intention of actually working in it. I didn't do due diligence. It was the first thing I. First business I'd ever actually not started myself. So I wasn't experienced. I didn't know how to do any due diligence. There was really the whole decision was based off trust and somewhat emotion. You could say it's nice to be in business with friends, or so it seems at the time. And unfortunately that business had a lot of problems. Shortly after I invested, he ended up declaring bankruptcy and because of unpaid debts to the ato. And so I ended up with a business that I didn't know much about nor had any intention initially to be involved with it. And so I thought if I applied the same principles that I had previously, work really hard and try and learn, it'll make sense. But I just couldn't crack it. And as I progressed, I just realized there's a bunch of things that I don't know about business. Retail is very much. If you're a person who cares about your customer and prepared to work hard, you'll typically make it work. And in this business, there were a lot more levers involved in the business and I just wasn't able to learn. So I seeked help from coaches, consultants. I was quite frustrated that I wasn't quite getting what I wanted until I met one person, she was fantastic in. Loved it. So Much that I applied what I learned to other businesses, ended up buying out her business and just found my passion. I really love working with business owners, helping them to learn those basics that nobody taught me.

Makes sense. And then what was that? Obviously you got that business to a point and I'm sure there was some methodologies that were in that and I suppose leading into the traction side of things. So people that have listened to this podcast, I think nearly everyone on it that I've had has talked about EOS or traction in some way, whether they have self implemented or, you know, used a consultant or whatever it may be. But what got you, like, how did you find it and what was the trigger that you went, you know, I need to be involved with this. And what was that problem looking like at that point?

Yeah, so pretty funny story on how I found it. I got invited to go to Necker Island, Sir Richard Branson's home, with a trip of, you know, I think there was about 15 of us from Australia. We're all pretty pumped. It was pretty exciting trip. And when we landed actually in la, the first leg of the flights, gotta catch like five planes to get there. But yeah, when we first landed, I remember coming off the plane and, you know, being super pumped, and I looked up the TV screen that said, virgin Galactic flight crashes in the Mojave Desert. And I thought, oh, shit. Double shit, right? Poor guys. Okay, yeah, you know, Richard's clearly not going to be there. So we got to Necker Island. He, of course was. Had just departed, and the people organizing the event said to me, hey, look, you know, you do a bit of consulting and speaking, do you think you could run a couple of sessions in his absence? Because he won't be here to do anything with you guys over the next few days. And I was like, thanks, but no, I'm not that guy. And she goes, please, we're really in a spot. And I said, sure. So anyway, I did a couple of talks and turns out that one of the people there actually happened to be an EOS implementer. And she came up to me afterwards and said, hey, you know, you got a twin brother in Detroit. His name is Tino Whitman. Even looks like you're bald like me. So anyway, I ended up reading Traction. And she was right. It was just connected with me. It was like reading a book I'd written myself. He just nailed it in the simplicity of the way he put all the pieces together and fundamentally was in line with everything that we'd always been teaching our clients. But he just Wants to put it into a really simple methodology that worked. It was just faster. It was like looking at a product, inventing a product, and then looking and thinking somebody else has invented a faster, easier one, simpler one. And, you know, I don't have the ego where I care if my name's on the book. I just looked at it and thought, this shit's great. And so I reached out, connected with Gino and flew to the US and met up with him and said, I want to bring your brand to Australia. And he said, oh, that's awesome. Let's do it.

I love it. It's, I think to a lot of, you know, technicians these days are ending up being business owners and they learn this craft or their skill and then they just don't do anything around the business side of it. And that could be a doctor, like literally any technician these days. And I think that book, like, I can put my hand up and say it absolutely resonated with me too. I was just like having the aha, aha, aha moments the whole way through it, going, yep, yep, did that, yep, did that. And just to simplify it into layman's terms, like, you know, in reality, as you look at the numbers globally, like how many small businesses are there versus massive enterprises and there's no book for it. And I think the other thing that resonated with me too, you know, you're pretty humble, chilled out guy, and you just don't necessarily love the rah rah stuff and not a lot. It's okay to go to the odd thing, but so much of it out there is just fluff. And the stuff I loved about traction, it was real meat, meat and potatoes, pretty simple stuff. Just get into it and start executing. So cool. So you got traction, you got it out to Australia and you've been doing that for a few years now. So what are you seeing now, even in the current environment before, I suppose, Covid hit But the challenges changing with businesses or as business is getting more sophisticated and they're actually getting a bit smarter or like, where is it at now and what sort of challenges are you seeing and where you're trying to help people or business owners in the current sort of, you know, the last couple of years you've been going, yeah.

Look, it's really, it's an interesting question. And I can kind of tie it back to what you were just sharing around the. One of the fundamental challenges in business is that you can get people who are absolutely genius at what they do, right? Industry experts. Absolutely Brilliant technicians and then they go and try and run a business and they fail. They really struggle. And the unfortunate part is they often do so in silence. There's something that comes. There's a stigma that comes with being a business owner and that is you're expected to know it all. You're expected to have the answers. People look to you for the answers and it's. You might be able to answer the specific thing around your expertise, but when it comes to running a business, it's not so easy. And it's interesting because even just this week. So in terms of. Are things changing? Yes, things are changing. You know, there's a massive shift to online, there's a massive shift to people questioning, do we need to go to the office every day? I mean, you and I have been banging that drum for years, so I'm really stoked about this whole Covid thing. And people are washing their hands too, which is also fantastic. Having been having my cleanliness freak about me, I'm loving it. So yes, people are definitely questioning the way in which we do business, but the core challenges haven't changed in that we are still seeing. In the last quarter through this pandemic, I've actually taken on six new clients. I've been busier than ever. And without sharing one of their businesses names, you know, just this week I started with a company that they are serious geniuses. I mean they supply big companies, you know, Defense Force Airlines, NASA. I'm talking super smart team. And they're in here talking to me about how do I run the business, how do I scale it, how do we take our genius, our knowledge and create a business of, you know, how do we make sure that we're managing our people right, that we're looking after our customers right? How do we bring consistency and scalability into the business? And it all still comes back to the fundamentals that we share with Action Book and what EOS principles are all about, which are the same principles that have been around for 100 years and they're going to continue to be around for next hundred years. It's just the ways in which we do things are going to vary.

Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I was at an event, like a social event where someone was presenting, I think the co founder or the founder of Iconic was talking and they went on a really interesting journey of hiring the best talent in their individual field and they would give that talent that really challenging task and it would be a half baked solution coming back and they had this epiphany that how about we put a group of maybe less talent but similar like minded people with all sorts of culture backgrounds and all sorts of back, you know, different ways of thinking into a room and challenge that product or that challenge that problem and the solution off the back of it was like 10x better than what the one genius could do. So I think that's another thing that's fascinating. You know, I've talked quite a lot about, you know, business values and having an organization doesn't mean they have to look the same, it doesn't mean they have to be into the same thing. Like values are deeply ingrained and I think organizations that have had the one type of personality through that, through it, especially in these times, have been really challenged because there's just no different way of thinking.

Yeah, yeah. I mean it's getting the core right, you know, if we get, if we get to get the fundamentals right, it can be technically genius. But there's, it's about getting the team aligned around a common vision, getting agreement around where we're taking this thing to make sure that we're rowing in the same direction, making sure that we've got our culture defined and it's real. Yeah. That we've filled the business with the right people, right seats, you know, that we can see what's working, what's not working. It's basically going through the EOS model, the six key areas that we focus on. And as I was sharing with this team this week, they all came out of it. It's highly educated people and they said, geez, this stuff is so simple, so effective and we didn't really have it there. And the, the key takeaway was through having these fundamentals, the business fundamentals in place. It's actually going to allow them to stop having the unnecessary distractions so that they can actually focus more of their time on the genius work, recreating their industry and bringing all these tech advances because they won't have to be worried about these other things that are going on. If you've got the systems in place, the structure right and we are managing and coordinating everyone's human energy, then you're going to get great results. And so that's what they're to do. It's EOS is fundamentally designed to simplify and structure the management of your business. It's there to make it easy. And that's why it works.

That's why it's softly and it is fascinating. The obviously EOS have it, you know, surprise, surprise, an ideal client And a sort of a market fit. But it's been interesting talking to people that are outside of that market fit or that ideal client that have self implemented. And it has absolutely worked. You know, you don't necessarily need to implement all the 20 tools, but those core tools can make just such a big difference. And, you know, I think you touched on a really interesting point of rowing in the same direction. You know, I talked about that with someone this week is like, if we're rowing in the Olympics and we've got a team of eight and there's one person not rowing in that direction, we're stuffed. Like, you've got to be. You gotta be all on song and, you know, you look at elite sport, they're all very similar. I can bet you if you went and implemented AOS into a, you know, an NRL or an AFL footy team, you'll probably end up winning the Grand Final in three years. It won't happen in one, but it will probably happen. So it's fascinating. So on your journey with eos, like, how have you evolved and what have you got the most out of? When you start looking back at your own journey from starting EOS to where you're at today, to where you see the vision of EOS and where it's going.

Sure, that's a good question. I think that there's a few things, few fundamental things that I've learned, you know, just aside from the tools and how practical and effective that they are. And I obviously use it in my own business. And EOS worldwide, we use it in our own business. It helps us, you know, stay focused, stay in our lane, build. You know, we've. We've had the. Since I've been involved over the last, you know, six years or so, the company's grown from 70 people to we're around 400 mark now. I think our culture is stronger than ever. They've just done an amazing job. They really get the power of right people, right seat. We have an amazing leadership team. Mike Peyton as our visionary. He's only just recently stepped aside from that, but has done an amazing job. Kelly Knight is the integrator. She's just been the biggest gift to our business, supported by a great team. So those things aside, that's about building a great team and keeping those values and core focus real right the way through. Those things aside, I think the personal takeaways that I've had from it is the power of simplicity, really understanding and respecting that, the power of. On a personal level, one of the things that I've learned is Gino Wickman saying the power. The power of saying no. One of the challenges that entrepreneurs have, particularly visionaries, is we tend to like, make we enjoy making people happy. And sometimes we are our worst. We're our own worst enemy. We say yes to everything and what it ends up resulting in is that we just bogged down, we're busy all the time and we often can't deliver in the way that we'd want to because we just take on too many things. And so, you know, he says, you know, we've all heard the saying, but this guy actually applies it. You know, it's not a hell yes to something, then it's a no. And we've all heard it before. But do we actually apply that if you got the guts? Because it takes balls to actually apply it. Right. It's hard to say no to somebody. It really is. Particularly for someone like me. I mean, it makes me sick. Yeah, I'm always like, sure, yeah, yeah, I'll do that for you. But when you really take that on and apply it, it means that when you do say yes to something, you can do a genuinely good job and you feel proud of the work that you do. And it also means that you can block out time for yourself. That was one of the hardest things I ever had, was managing businesses and then having time for myself. And over the last five years, I've managed to increase from two weeks to four weeks to now eight weeks. I think I'm approaching nine or 10 weeks off this year. Liberating, that's come off using EOS and also those principles of simplicity and the ability to say no. And the final one would be that point that you mentioned earlier is you touched on was choosing your clients. Now that takes real guts. About two years ago, I took it on. I think I shared it with you, actually. We were catching up. You know, when you're back in Melbourne, just the ability to say, if you. If you meet a client and they're not a core values fit, just run, man, run, run away. Because it's going to be really hard work and job miserable. And so I've been applying that the last couple of years and it just turns your life on its head. If you can say, only just say yes to the people you want to work with and say no to the others. It's fantastic.

I think that is a massive lesson. And sometimes too, it takes a little bit of time to see if there is a value alignment, because up front that could be rosy and it looks Great. But I think for us, I can pretty much put my hand up and say where we've had challenges, there's been a value disconnect. And it can often be too, that the values are on the wall of that business or they talk about they have them there, but they don't actually live them. They may talk about them, but don't actually live them. And you know, every business is going to have challenges and relationships have challenges, but that's when you break through generally. And if you got the blame card out, it's going to be pretty hard to have a good working relationship. So I couldn't agree with you more. I think that's really insightful.

Yeah. And I think what you said is right around sometimes you've got to give it a little bit of time. You know, not every client that you meet is just gonna, you know, sweep you off your feet, so to speak. Some people are really conservative. The real geniuses actually, using the ones that I've been working with this week, they're just really smart guys. And sometimes they're not necessarily really, you know, bubbly and friendly. They're actually quite conservative. But that doesn't mean that there's not a values alignment. It just means the way in which we approach lives. You know, some people are introverts, some extroverts. And I think what you need to do is agree that in your process you're going to give it a specified amount of time. I typically know within a day, within that first full day session, at the end of it, I know I'm going to be able to make a decision, hey, I want to work with you and I want to help you or not. And the way that I approach it is if I get to the end of the session and I'm not feeling it, I'm just gonna say, guys, thank you for today. I appreciate your efforts. Today's complimentary. I'm not gonna send an invoice after today. I just don't see a fit. I think that you should probably talk with another implementer, somebody who would be a fit. You know, it's nothing personal. It's just, it's not gonna be the way that it's gonna work. So I think when you've got that in your mind, there's a. It's a win, win for everybody. Because I know that when I step into the room, I want to be just fully absorbed. I want to just give them everything I got. And you can only do that, in my opinion. You can only do that if you Genuinely care for them. If you don't care for them, I just, I can't do the work that I do that way. And I think just about every business out there.

Yeah. And taking it even to the, you know, marketing level, the sales level, the individual level, like even accounts payable or accounts receivable, if people are not nice to you and treat you badly, you need to escalate that to up the chain and be like, there's a problem here. Everyone's, especially at the minute, high strung or got some issues. And at the end of the day people are, people treat them like people. And that's been the most fascinating thing I've found in this period. People that maybe had their business that has struggled or you know, had to use jobkeeper or leverage Jobkeeper and put everyone on leave. But the businesses that said, you know what, that's the case. But I'm still going to ring everyone I know. I'm going to speak to my customers better than ever. They're the ones that are going to come out and thrive off the back of this, not the ones that have gone, oh, we've got a six week holiday, let's just get into it. So I couldn't agree with you more. So one of the themes of our podcast, Dan, which I think you guys absolutely do, is, you know, we're in a world of that's been paused a little bit. But there's so much consumption, there's so much, you know, over usage of things. And one of my things is, you know, trying to remove wastage from businesses and trying to remove wastage from sales and marketing and technology sort of side of things. But what's. What, what do you find that AOS has done to make the world a better place to probably less stress, maybe business owners. But what's something that you can resonate with that you are doing as an organization?

Sure. So I think the fundamentals of the way in which we operate when we're working with clients, for example, we always believe in maximizing time. Every minute of a session is occupied with value and if it's not, we change it. So we're obsessed with that. The reason being that we want to see productivity and we want to see goals achieved in our clients businesses. But secondly, we believe that people should be able to have a life also cider work. And if we run businesses effectively, put in place really productive systems, you can have that. And so from the way in which we run our sessions, we apply that. But in terms of how we've shifted of late We've obviously, along with everyone else, we've moved to a lot of virtual. So most of our sessions for the last quarter have been done online, done via Zoom or the equivalence. We just pivoted and held, held our EOS conference a week or two ago. So I was supposed to be in the US presenting at that. So instead I did it from here in the office.

You would have loved that. Instead of the two day travel a.

Week away, I would have been over there and instead I was at home with my family. So phenomenal change there. So, and that was great. It was a roaring success. Everyone's loved it. We actually had double the amount of attendees because we're able online. So great success and a really again example of them leading the way in terms of being able to adapt to the market. The one thing that I would say I've observed from clients and seeing how they've shifted is, and again, I can't stop cheering about this because I've been talking about it for a long time. This pandemic has brought about a different change, is people just looking and thinking, wow, didn't think we could work from home. Well, didn't think we could handle any of this. And we have. In fact, many businesses have improved. Many staff have reported that they're happier, right. More time, more time for their health because they're not stuck in traffic. One client has actually led the way. Very inspiring. They actually, it's funny they were thinking about it just prior to Covid. So I was in here saying, why do you have to be at the office from 9 to 5 or 8:35? Like, I just think it's silly. And they were laughing and saying, dan, that's the world. And I said, I think it's a stupid world. That's why I live around the corner from my office, so I don't have to be in traffic. And anyway, they left the meeting saying, well, we'll look at that. The leadership team was talking about how many of them travel an hour to and from work each day. And so with the COVID response, they ended up shifting their hours for a quarter to see what would happen. So they operate now from 6am till 2pm, staff satisfaction levels have gone through the roof. They're driving to work before the traffic, they're getting home and seeing their kids. They're loving life. And so they said, we're sticking with it, we're happy. And I said, how are the customers going with it? And they said they're loving it. Also, they said, we've got Customers in the car park at 6:30 in the morning and they're loving it that they can pick up their goods and be gone and come outside of traffic time. I think we all need to just look at how we can do things differently. I've shifted now we're about to shift all of my client sessions. Also. We're starting at 7:30 in the morning now instead of 8:30 or 9.

Makes sense.

Yep, makes sense. There's better ways.

I love it. I remember you were sharing the story of, I think you're spending eight weeks in traffic a year out.

That's right. Two hours.

Yeah. Now you have eight weeks in holidays.

Exactly.

And I've. My whole career have been allergic to trav. Commuting. Just like I grew up on a farm. So I walk out the front gate, I could do work if I wanted to. You know, I was lucky enough to go to boarding school and walk out the front gate. I'm at school. And then when I moved to Melbourne, I was like, well, I'm gonna live in the city, or if I'm not, I'm gonna live in the middle of nowhere. Because it's just, what's the. What's the point? And like when we've just shifted up here. And I was commuting because I'm like, I need to meet some people and I was commuting. I'm like, this sucks. And that was only 20 minutes. And I've worked with people that were commuting two hours a day. And I'm just like, what are you doing? Like, you don't even need. And that. I'm really happy that that limiting belief of people, you have to be seen to be heard or seen to be doing work. It's like technology exists today for you to work anywhere unless. Unless you're on the tools and hammering nails and, you know, depending on what your industry is. But I love that. And good on your clients. And you guys just sort of setting that example too. Because it was actually one thing that I was thinking with the AOS model is like, there's a few things here you don't need to meet face to face. Like.

Yep.

I think you can cut a few of those things out, make it a bit easier.

Um, yeah. Yeah, that's really doing it. It's working fine. I mean, I think due to the way that we're doing it the once every 90 days, it's nice to be in person because we're only meeting four times a year. There's something special about that. But we've definitely seen that it can work if it needs to. Yeah. My observation of the online meetings is they tend to be a little bit more on point because people have let there are a little bit less comfortable to just kind of sit back. So I've found that the online meetings are more pointed. People just get on with it, they're moving faster through it and you can.

Probably have them a bit more compressed too, because people's attention span to sit on a computer too for eight hours, it's gonna be tough. That's fascinating. So moving into the next point.

If.

You were to give a tip, like what? You know, over your learning, it's a really big question, but, you know, what's, what's the one thing, if you could compress even traction and eos into one sort of component as a business owner or you know, call it a divisional manager or branch manager, someone that is a leadership, you know, in a leadership position in an organization, what would it be that you would take away and share?

That's a big question. Look, I think that there's, I'd probably answer it with the. Sharing the EOS life. So this is something that we live by as implementers and we strive for, for our clients. And I just think it sounds surreal but, you know, I've been working at it for about six years, seven years now, and it's deal for me now and each year I progress towards a little bit more. And so life is firstly, doing what you love, do something that you actually genuinely enjoy every day. Second point is with people that you love. So what we're talking about earlier, choose. That's who you work with, as in your staff members, your team members, right through to the clients that you work with. Third point is making a significant difference. Be purposeful with the work that you do. I always talk about even back in the servo days, back in the service stations, man, I used to wash those toilets, clean those toilets better than anyone else. To me it made a difference. Somebody's going to walk in here, it's going to be a nice, fresh, clean bathroom instead of some disgusting thing that others often come across. Have pride in what you do make a difference. Fourth point is being compensated appropriately. So getting paid well. I believe that when you do the other things, you become great at what you do, make a difference, then you'll get paid well. And the final point is with time to pursue other passions. So just having time, there's no point if all you do all day is work. You need to have time for your family. That's hence the shift. What I'm doing with my clients now, starting early, I'm just going to lead by example. And it's going to upset some people saying, I've got to get up at 4 in the morning. All right, well, to see how you feel when you're at home at three or four in the afternoon playing with your kids, that kind of. You can't buy that back. No. And it's phenomenal. So I just think that's the tips that I'd give. If we can all strive for eos life, it's. That'll be a great outcome.

I think it is a really, really good tip. And I think the other piece of it, which is really important is you've been working at that for seven years or six years. And when I talk to people, they're like, well, sometimes they'd be like, oh, but, you know, that's great. But if. And it's like, hang on, you have time. Where are you focusing your time? And if you just chip away at those little things every week, every day, rather than looking at the monumental thing you're trying to achieve, you know, life, happiness comes off the back of that and it makes a massive difference to how you then work and all those other things. So I think those two components of that, you know, the eos, life and time, and don't think you have to do it in six months. That was something I personally was trying to do things just way too quickly and it put so much pressure on myself, which then you feel like you're a failure and it's like just little things every day. Just chip away at it. You'll get there.

Well, I think we both apply the shout out for Scott Pape, barefoot investor. We've both been applying that for years on a personal level and in our business, again, something we've done together on that journey. And you know that's the same theory, right? You read the book and you're like, shit, where do I start? Okay, and he teaches you. It says where to start, and a lot of us just don't have patience. But when you do it and you apply it, you know it works. Yes, it might take a year, it might take two years, right. For all the things come together. But here's a funny update for you because you know that I've been doing it for a couple of years. So personal credit cards are gone pretty quick. But then the business ones, you know, the American Express that we use, you know, you get great points. So you get all these little fish hooks that tie you into it, you know, and you think, maybe I'll just keep it for that. So a couple of updates. So they're all gone now. We cut up the American Express cards a couple of weeks back and we went out for date night. It was good timing because Covid rules just got lifted. So we'll be able to. Were able to go out and enjoy somebody else serving wine to us. That was good. And the funniest part was my 16 year old has been reading Barefoot Investor for the past couple of weeks and just got his G cards in this past week. And this is as a backstory for everybody. Two or three years ago, we introduced the barefoot investor principles, which meant that suddenly 30% of his allowance each week was going to savings. So he was walking around saying, I hate stockpay. Who is this stupid investor barefoot? And now a couple of years later, clearly his bank account's built up and he's reading Barefoot Investor of his own free will. And he's saying, geez, this book's really good. And talking to me about wanting to start his own share and account. And he said, sure, shares would be good to invest in right now. Right, because the market's down. I'm like, who is this kid?

So love it. Yeah, that's awesome. I can also say that, you know, I wouldn't have been able to do a lot of things in the last three years if I didn't have that mindset and park things for rainy days, you know, I think you said something about the. There's a book, you'll have to quote the book book name, but the guy next door, where he was a mechanic. What's it called?

It's called the Millionaire Next Door. It's an American book that was written, I believe back in the 60s or 70s, but everybody should grab it. The Millionaire Next Door old school book. But man, the message hits home. You look at it and think, shit, I might be that guy next door that's spending too much so changes mindset. That was a gift from Gino. He gave me, actually.

Yeah, right. That's fascinating. I'll definitely be putting that one in the show notes. So we've got to start bringing this to ground, Dan. But I'd like you to share a success story of, you know, something since you've been on this EOS journey that you'd love to, you know, highlight and you know, you can shout them out or you can say it discreetly, I don't mind. But something that you can boast about some of the one of the biggest success stories you've had with one of your clients or internally?

Sure. I think that I'll just keep it simple. Last night I caught up with my best mate. We just caught up. He's an architect client of mine. Well, he's gone through EOS and implemented it many years ago and it was our first time we were allowed back at the pub after work. We're just having a couple of drinks and some food and just having a chat. And I said, so, like, how's it all been going? You know, he's got a small business, 15, 16 staff, great at what they do. And he said, look, I'm just stoked. He said, you know, when it all went down, the whole Covid thing, I, you know, got back on the tours, I got straight back in there. I was working normal hours again. And he joked because he said, you know, he normally does five or six hours a week. The business runs itself. Great team, great culture. And he said, I just, you know, I jumped back in because I wanted to make sure everything was okay. And he said, as an update, I went to work this morning, got there at 8 and at 9:30 I realized there was nothing for me to do, so I left and I went home and I waited until the end of the day so I could catch up with you. And he just said, it's a testament to having great business management systems. He said, all the work that we've done over the years has allowed that to occur. He said, I don't need Jobkeeper, I don't need any of these things. We're in a great spot. And so that's probably the best success story in that, you know, it's, you know, it's like family for me seeing, you know, all my like that. But he's my best friend and we're just chatting, so that was great. Yeah, so nice to see that occur.

I love it, love it. So, Dan, it's been an absolute honor to have you on. How do people connect with you or get involved with the eos, especially in Australia. How's that happen?

Sure. So you can reach out and connect with me via LinkedIn. Daniel Davis. You'll see me there. EOS implementer. Or you can go to eosworldwide.com there's an implementer area where you can check out all the implementers from around the world and locally here in Australia and New Zealand or wherever you might be listening from. The implementers here in Australia service all of the Asia Pacific area and Middle East. So wherever you're listening from. There's always somebody there to help. And I'm on there, too, so you can reach out if you ever got an EOS question. I'm here to help. Happy to answer anything you.

It. Love it. Thanks, Dan. I really appreciate it.

Pleasure, Chuck.