Laura Johns:
[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Know Grow Scale podcast. I’m Laura Johns, founder and CEO of The Business Growers, joined by Lynn Askin, certified EOS implementer. Who is going to help kickstart. I’m going to call this part one, because this is a podcast. We do have Lynn coming up on a webinar soon. So if this piques your interest, then you’re definitely going to want to continue to listen and learn from Lynn in a webinar in October.
So Lynn, thank you so much for being. On the Know Grow Scale podcast. As you know, we’re going to be talking to managed services providers and it companies today. If you will tell us a little bit about yourself, um, introduce yourself and, and tell us what we need to know about you before we dig in. This is, uh, this is going to be super fun.
So, I do want to tell you a little bit about me because I think there’s part of this story that’s, that’s, that’s important, I think that you relate to. And so, um, I I’ve been an entrepreneur my whole life. I, I, you know, I, I grew up in a house with a lot of love, [00:01:00] but not a lot of money. And I, and I think that made me entrepreneurial and paper out when I was eight or nine, um, at a mobile disc jockey company, my teens, I started building computers in my twenties.
Um, actually built one of the first online auctions in 1995, um, built my first e commerce store in 96 or 97, and then my, my bookkeeper, which one of my first hires, like, Hey, I’ve got another client, needs a website. And, you know, I helped him out and I built, I built a website for a company called High Life Nutrition out in Las Vegas and that became Chef Jay.
And, and so, you know, I, I had a pretty early start in, in internet marketing and, and agencies and ran a pretty decent agency for, for 20 plus years, 25, 26 years. but in, in 2020, I actually got like the wake up call of all wake up calls. I, I, I suffered a massive bilateral pulmonary embolism, which means, you know, I, I, my, my lungs filled with blood clots due to a blood clot in my leg and, and, and I nearly died.
And, and so as I was [00:02:00] laying there dying, Laura, I, all I could think about was what kind of mess did I just leave my wife and son. You know, you know, it’s weird. You think when you’re, when you die, your life flashes before your eyes. But all I could, all I could think about was like, man, I should have done more.
I should have been better. I should have had a better business because my wife is going to have to go to my office. She’s going to have to lock the door, fire the team, lose all the clients. because I didn’t have a business. I had a job. I had, I had a, you know, it wasn’t very well structured. The business relied 100 percent on me.
and. I don’t know if you know this, but if your business relies 100 percent on you and it can’t run without you, you don’t, you don’t have a real business, right. And so, um, I, I went on a mission, Laura, to, to fix that. Obviously, thank God I survived and I’m, and I’m here and I’m still, I’m still working on why I haven’t quite figured that out yet, but, but I hope, I hope you find out at some point, but sometimes we never know, right.
It’s, it’s a lot, a lot bigger than us at times. For sure. but I, but I, I, I went on a mission [00:03:00] to, to solve that problem in my business. I knew I had to do better. I knew I had to build something that I could leave to my family. you know, I always thought that I, I, I sort of was a lifestyle business for me, you know, I figured.
I don’t have a lot of retirement money and I don’t have that, but I, I guess I’ll just work until I die. I just didn’t realize that could have been when I was 50 years old. Right, right, right. And so I, I found, you know, I looked at a bunch of different operating systems and ways to structure my business and how to scale, and I, I, I got into clickup and a bunch of things, but I, but I found the entrepreneurial operating system and I had bought the book Traction.
in 2014, and I read it and it’s, I’m like, Oh, that’s great. I sure wish I could pull that off, but I closed the book, put it on the shelf with the rest. but I, but I pulled it back out in, in early of 2021 and started reading it again. And I’m like, man, this is exactly what we need and tried to self implement.
And that was a bit of a struggle. And of course we made a little bit of progress. but then I hired a professional implementer and I hired a professional EOS implementer and it came in [00:04:00] and man, what a transformation I made my, made my business. We over the next year, year and a half or so, we three extra profits, or I’m sorry, with three extra revenue, we seven extra profits.
We grew from 10 employees to 27 and more importantly, Laura, I was able to sort of take myself out of the day to day operations. My business built something that could run without me. eventually leading to a successful sale of my agency. And I, and I gotta be honest, I love that process so much. And I love what it did for me and for my family that I wanted to, I wanted to help other people do the same thing that I did.
You know, we all start our businesses because we think we’re going to get this freedom and this time and this, you know, whether it’s financial freedom or time freedom or whatever, weekends off, we’re going to be able to work half a day. Right. And the truth is, it’s not like that at all. I can guarantee, I can guarantee the audience listening is laughing as you’re saying that, because it’s not, especially in this line of business, that’s not reality.
For sure. But that’s what you think. That’s what you think [00:05:00] when you’re like, Oh, I’m going to have a business one day and I’m going to, you know, and then, and then it’s, it’s, it’s not like that, but I’m here to tell you, it can be like that. It can be like that. And what you need, I, I, I firmly believe that every company Needs needs three things.
I believe they need a peer group. I believe they need a coach and I believe they need an operating system. EOS is that operating system. I love it. Well, I think there’s no better person, obviously, to talk about it. You didn’t just, you’re not just drinking the Kool Aid, you made the Kool Aid. You, you poured the sugar in, you poured the mix in.
So I love that. I think that, you know, I always have said, I want to. I want to take a workout class from someone who looks like I want to look right. You always want to, you always want to be learning. You always want to be learning from someone who has experienced it and been through it. So I think that that certainly makes you qualified to talk about this today.
So really excited about this. So, okay. For those listening who have not read the book traction for those listening, who have absolutely no idea what EOS is, can you just [00:06:00] tell us about it? And then why an IIT company or managed services providers should care? Sure. So EOS is the entrepreneurial operating system.
And, and I just want to make it clear that everything that I’m going to tell you today was invented by Gino Wickman. Gino wrote the book traction. Gino was one of the, the first members of the Detroit EO chapter. And he kind of worked with members of that business to kind of, you know, He, I guess he’s just sort of figured out that he had sort of a knack for the art and science of building a great business.
And he saw a difference between, between like the really successful companies and the not so successful companies. He tried to figure out what that was. And the truth is when we start our businesses and you know, we, we reach various versions of success, but we do that through either guesswork or hard work or framework.
And so EOS is a framework on how to get more from your business. And so I guess we like to say that I help entrepreneurs and leadership teams get better [00:07:00] at three things. I help them get better at vision, traction, and healthy. And what I mean by vision is let’s make sure that you and your leadership team, the entire company is all on the same page with where we’re going and how we’re going to get there.
By traction, I mean instilling discipline and accountability so that no matter where you look in your company. You see people actually executing on that vision and then healthy. I just mean like, let’s make you guys a more cohesive, fun, loving, functional team that likes to work together because let’s be honest.
Sometimes we’re not right. Yeah. So most of us are kind of dealing with like 136 simultaneous issues. We’re we’re all built the same. I mean, that’s, that’s when we thrive. Like I getting goosebumps. Like that’s. That’s when we’re at doing our best work. Like things are just happening. And some of our worst days are those days we’re sitting around going, Hey, what’s going on today?
It’s not going on, right? But we find that to the extent that you can strengthen just six, six [00:08:00] key areas of your business or six key components of your business, those 136 simultaneous issues kind of fall into place. Cause they’re really just symptoms. Of a real cause. And so we work to strengthen your vision component, your people component, your data component, and your issues component, your process component, and of course your traction component.
So EOS is a framework on how to run your business. It’ll fundamentally change the way you guys operate. It’ll make you better at just about everything. Are you able to share, I mean, that sounds amazing, but I’m also like, you know, on behalf of every it owner, business owner out there, I mean, are you able to share any of the secret sauce here or like the fundamentals of what really may, I hear you when you give, you know, you say these different pieces, but like, what does it, what does it mean?
What does it look like? In the day to day life of an owner of a managed services provider, IT business, how might it change the way his day looks? Can you share some of that? So let, let, let’s kind of break [00:09:00] this down a little bit. let’s start with your vision component. obviously if I’m going to try and help you get from point A to point B as efficiently as possible.
We have to know what point B looks like. And so, right, you know, we don’t start there. Start there. What do you want out of the business? Yeah. So we don’t build like a 40 page strategic plan or anything. We, we have a two page document that has eight questions on it. And we’re going to get 100 percent on the same page with the answers to those eight questions.
Those questions are, what are your core values? What’s your core target? What is your core focus? What is your marketing strategy? What is your three year picture? What is your one year plan? What are your rocks or your biggest priorities for the next quarter? And then what are your issues, kind of what’s holding us back, what’s slowing us down, what’s taking us off?
What’s, what’s preventing us from achieving that? And so we build your vision together. And then we make sure we get the right people in the right seats. And so we move over to the people component. Now, we [00:10:00] also got to make sure we’re back to vision. We got to make sure that vision is being shared by all.
It’s not just your vision, right? It’s the team’s vision. We build it together. Then we move to the people component and we, we talk about two things there. We got to get the right people in the right seats. Now the right people are people who live your core values. These are people who would just exemplify what you want in your company, the kind of people you want to be around, the kind of people you love, the kind of people that if you could clone them, you know, if you had a hundred of them, you could take over the world, right?
When we’re sure we’re getting right people in the right seats, and then we’re going to hire, we’re going to fire, we’re going to reward, we’re going to review, and we’re going to recognize people. using those core values. Okay. Now, top of that, we got to get them in the right seats. And this means we got to get people that are good at their jobs.
These are people with God given talent and skills and, and, and the mind for it and the heart for it and the stomach for it. And we got to make sure that those align. Once we get your vision component come in place and we get the right people in the right seats, then we’re gonna work on [00:11:00] your, data component and Mm-Hmm.
data component is really just about running your business on real facts and figures and numbers and not like emotions and subjective, not your gut, right? We’re, we’re gonna not your gut. Sometimes, sometimes the gut and the mind come in handy, but data is certainly a lot better, more realistic way to, to evaluate things.
And so we’re going to build a great dashboard that gives you a pulse on your business. You’re going to be able to look at your dashboard and know, Hey, are we having a good week in sales or bad week in sales? Are we having a good week in marketing or a bad week in marketing? Are we having a good week in operations or bad week in operations?
Are our customers happy or are they not happy? And so we’re going to build a dashboard and give you guys numbers and metrics. And ultimately we’re going to, we’re going to kind of cascade that down into the company. So everybody in the company. As a number or metric are measurable. They’re responsible for on a regular basis.
They got to report weekly. So now we’re able to kind of understand our teams doing the things that they’re supposed to be doing. Love that. Love that. Now, when you’re, [00:12:00] when your vision component’s strong and your people component’s strong, your data component’s strong, your business becomes a little bit transparent and you know, we start to find the obstacles and the issues and the problems and those things start to jump out.
Which can get, can get really uncomfortable. So you’re saying if you want to do EOS, you have to be ready to get uncomfortable? Is that what you’re saying? Yeah. Look, the, the, the outside of your comfort zone is where the magic happens. That’s right. That’s right. You want to sit in your comfort zone all day and do the same thing over and over and over?
Yeah. Don’t do it. Right. If you want to get better and you want to have, you want to be more healthy, you want to have, you want to be smarter and healthier than he is, but when those problems start to come out, now we’ve got to teach you guys how to be really, really good at solving issues as they, as they arise.
And so we have a couple of tools and disciplines. That help you get really, really good at solving issues as we can’t just wrap them up and duct tape and twine and shove them in a corner, right? Right. Attack them. But, but when we attack the issue, we got to attack the real issue. We got to dig and [00:13:00] we got to find the root cause.
We can’t just surface bandaid it, right? Bandaid it. Yeah. Yeah. You do that. Then you end up solving the same problems over and over and over. Like the worst case of business deja vu ever. Yeah, yeah, I think that’s great. You know, what I’m what I’m hearing, you know, and I think after having, first of all, been a chief marketing officer at a managed services provider.
So, kind of seeing the insides of how. for lack of a better word, I mean, it can be a bit chaotic at times. It can be I mean, it is it is high. Pressure when you’re serving a client in that type of capacity, you know, as an it provider, but I also. Empathize with those. Owners of these IT businesses. Let’s just say they were kind of like you, they’re really good at fixing things or designing things or doing things, you know, computer guys, you know, or, or ladies, and, they started the business because they knew how to do something and really that’s what they love, [00:14:00] but then all of a sudden now they’re managing 30 people and they really just want to get back to what they love and can’t.
So this, it, even though it gets hard before it gets. Smooth. Maybe. I don’t know. That may not be, maybe it’s a little bumpy before it’s smooth. It just seems like this is ultimately, you know, what it takes kind of like getting healthy, physically, you know, you don’t get to the finish line of a marathon by starting on day one.
Like it takes a little bit of, of the, of work first. So it just seems like. What I hear you saying is, yeah, this is the path to get to that freedom that you started the business for in the first place, right? Is that, is that what you think or you feel? No, a hundred percent. I think, like you said, I mean, we all start our businesses cause we think it’s going to be one way.
And then, and then, you know, we love doing that one thing that we do and to grow and to break through the ceiling. And then let’s be, let’s be perfectly clear. No business grows on a straight line. [00:15:00] We’re going to hit the ceiling at some point. And when we hit this, we’re either going to bust through that ceiling and we’re going to flatten it and fail.
It just gives you the tools and the disciplines, how to help you break through those ceilings as you hit them. And so when you realize that you have to sort of clone yourself, you know, most of us don’t have the skills to do that. Most of us don’t have the skills to manage people, you know, give them the right, you know, share the right vision with them.
share their expectations with them and all of that. And so EOS really is about building a great leadership team so that you as the, as the visionary, the founder. Can focus on your true genius. You can do the things that you were born to do. We can do the things that you love to do and that you’re great at, and we’re going to help you delegate everything else to somebody else who’s equally great at that thing.
Yeah, that’s good. That’s great. I think most, a lot of what I hear on the people component that you were just talking about, a lot of what I hear in this [00:16:00] industry is just how difficult it is to find the right people. High turnover technicians are, are, you know, a tough. higher and then managing a lot of technicians also becomes challenging.
So I could really see how that people component and figuring out how to get the right people in the right seats. could that alone, you know, outside of everything else that alone could be truly, truly valuable for. Okay. So because we’re doing a part two, I would ask you a lot more questions if we weren’t doing a webinar.
So since we’re doing a webinar, if, if someone is like, this sounds interesting, what would you say the one key takeaway from today as we lead into doing a full on, you know, hour together? What could someone start doing right now? Maybe take a nugget from the book traction or take a nugget from, from what you teach, and lead companies through what could someone start doing right now, in the interim while they’re waiting for the webinar.
So EOS is, is a, [00:17:00] is a, a toolbox of tools. They’re, they’re, they’re main tools in the EOS toolbox. And there’s another 10 or 15 more. but there are five fundamental tools, the five foundational tools of EOS. And that is your vision, traction organizer, and that’s creating your vision. but, but honestly, the first thing that we do in EOS when we implement EOS is we, we build your accountability chart and we start putting the right people in the right seats.
We map out the roles and responsibilities of every seat on your accountability chart. And so build an accountability chart, understand. Where you fit in that, especially as the owner, if you build up that accountability chart and you start putting your name in all the boxes, it’s eyeopening. And that’s the way most companies work.
You know, yes, I’m the visionary and the founder, but oh, I’m also the head of sales. And I guess I’m the head of marketing and I’m the head of finance. And now you’re like, man, I, I, that’s not sustainable. I got to figure out a way to take myself out of these roles. So build an accountability chart, start putting the right people in the right seats.
set your first set of rocks, like [00:18:00] sit down and map out all the things you could be doing this quarter and then prioritize that top three to seven of those, and then focus really hard on your top three to seven goals or rocks for the quarter. I think you should build a scorecard. I think you should have a scorecard that kind of gives you a pulse on your business.
And then I think you really need to adopt something called the level 10 meeting. Now the level 10 meeting is, it’s a, it’s a once a week meeting. There’s a handful of rules for it. Starts on time, ends on time, same agenda, same time every week. we, we follow the same agenda and all of those things. but, but that level 10 meeting, I think is the key to beginning to put EOS in place and have a really, really good with me.
So Laura, when I ask people, I’m like, one of the first things I ask is, Tell me about your meetings. Tell me about your internal meetings, your team on a scale of one to 10. Where would you, what would you rate your meetings? And almost everyone says four or five. And we all know those meetings. So those are the meetings where you get in the room, you go to solve something and then you just discuss the heck out of it.
Nothing [00:19:00] gets done. Right. Nothing gets done. You never get to like the root cause and you never really walk out with a plan of attack. And so the level 10 meeting is the beginning of you solving issues as they arise. And having the tools and disciplines to not only solve it. Come up with the next steps, but make sure that it’s done.
So, those are kind of the foundational or fundamental tools that I want to talk about. And those are the kinds of things that we, that we put in place, in our first EOS session. You want to learn more about EOS? well, I suggest you, you read the book traction. I think that’s really important. That’s the, I might see a copy of it, maybe behind you.
Do I see a hundred copies here somewhere right there? Okay. A whole EOS library up there. So copy traction, if you’re a visionary though, if you’re less, if you’re not the, like, let’s get it done guy. And you’re sort of like the big picture guy. I honestly, I think you should listen to the audio book of get a grip and it’s the story or the fable of EOS.
And I think it’ll, [00:20:00] I think it’ll resonate more it did with me. And I’m of course, visionary. I think that, I think that story really helped me understand EOS and the journey that, that you go on when you implement. So those are the kind of takeaways I think. read those books, it’s the manual for EOS. You can download all of the EOS tools for free.
You can self implement EOS. It’s a hundred percent doable. it is simple, but not easy. Right. And probably especially difficult for that visionary to do it. I know. I don’t think I could do it alone. So really tough for a visionary to pull that off. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. Awesome. You’ve given us a lot of things to think about.
So tell me what, if someone were wanting to learn more about you, the EOS process, how could they find you specifically online? I know that you’ve probably got social media and whatnot. So where would they go to find you? Yeah, I’m super easy to find. I think I’m the only Lynn Askin on the planet. So a quick Google search will land you either on my LinkedIn page or my own homepage, lynnaskin.
com. You can go there. You can [00:21:00] go to lynnaskin.com/linktr.ee and get all my socials, but I’m active on LinkedIn and Facebook and all of those social platforms. So, you can put me there, pick up the phone, call me, easy to find. Awesome. Love it. Well, thank you so much for this, we’ll call it a teaser, this teaser about EOS look forward to more on this in October.
And if you’re listening, thank you for listening to the Know Grow Scale podcast. we look forward to digging in more on a, a future webinar with Lynn. And, again, thank you so much for listening. If you are interested in learning more about. All things marketing and generating new leads to scale and grow your managed services provider business.
Be sure to look us up at thebusinessgrowers. com. Thanks so much.
