Financial Impacts of EOS in Ecommerce

Welcome to the Ecommerce Finance Podcast. I'm Stephen Brown with LedgerGurus, your host, and with me today I have Bret Mitchell. Bret is an EOS implementer with a long history in ecommerce.

Bret, welcome to the podcast.

0:27 Bret Mitchell

Stephen, great to be here, great to be with you.

0:29 Stephen Brown

Give me your journey to becoming an EOS implementer, and why don't you talk about some of the milestones in ecommerce along the way.

0:37 Bret Mitchell

Yeah, happy to do it. And again, thanks for having me on.

So Stephen, I started my career in New York City consulting Fortune 500 companies, because I wanted a front row seat to what makes certain companies succeed over others. And really what I observed is that it came down to leaders. They're either the bottlenecks or the drivers of success. And the great leaders of the great companies employ a certain set of principles to get there.

1:10 Bret Mitchell

And so throughout my career I've worked across about 12 different industries, ranging from multi-million dollar startups to some of the world's most revered brands. Those same principles kept coming up again and again.

And it was when I was on the leadership team of one of those companies, I was on the leadership team at Purple, most people know it as the mattress company, it's an omnichannel retail company, a direct-to-consumer business, wholesale business, and our own stores. That's where I discovered EOS.

1:50 Bret Mitchell

And I know we'll get into what that is, but essentially one of our departments was running so well that it stood out to me. And so I called the leader one day and said, how are you running things? What's going on over there? I wanted to learn. And he said, my department's on EOS.

So I asked, what is that? And as I learned, what I saw was really for the first time, I saw the same principles I'd seen throughout my career really employed and applied in such a simple, complete and effective way. It kind of blew my mind.

2:25 Bret Mitchell

And so I started to wonder, what if I could help more people, more leaders, apply those same principles to get more of what they want from their business? It's what I love doing, it's what I feel like I'm meant to do.

I love walking alongside leaders who feel like their business has plateaued, or maybe they don't have the control that they want, the business is running them, they're not running the business. Or they want to get ready to scale, and helping them really apply these principles so they can have the growth and freedom and leave the legacy they desire.

2:50 Bret Mitchell

So just in summary, I've worked across so many different industries, multiple leadership teams. Again, I mentioned Purple. I sat in the chief merchandising officer seat at Overstock.com, it's a $2 billion publicly traded company, and had all these amazing experiences. And now I get to take that, coupled with a proven system called EOS, to help leaders grow their businesses and grow themselves. I love it, it's great fun.

3:04 What EOS is, and why it's gaining traction

Stephen Brown

We're going to get into what EOS is, but maybe let's just start with a high level.

EOS stands for the Entrepreneurial Operating System, is that correct? And there's a series of books. Probably the core book around EOS is Traction. It's like the famous one, but there's, I don't know, five, six, seven books I think in the series.

3:26 Bret Mitchell

Yeah, there's a whole library, but the core, the mainstay, is Traction.

3:30 Stephen Brown

So we want to get into some of the principles of EOS. It's a framework for how do you run your business, and strategy, and all sorts of things.

But before we do that, I want to ask you a question. Why do you think EOS, pun intended or not intended, why is it gaining so much traction? It seems to be very popular. I see it in a lot of businesses, and I see it in some ecommerce businesses. Why do you think it's become so popular?

4:03 Bret Mitchell

Well, because it works. And because it answers a set of questions and pain points that you as a business leader encounter every day. And it does it in a simple, practical way that helps you get more of what you want from your business.

And so it's been around for a few decades. But ultimately it helps businesses do things like, there's one client that I worked with, as we started working together and they started implementing EOS, they started to make some critical changes to their leadership team. And then within about four months they went from the red to the black, so from unprofitable to profitable. And by the end of the year they had their first million dollar month ever. And that was a big milestone for them. And they served ecommerce companies.

4:56 Bret Mitchell

And it was in the middle of an environment that was very challenging. We're in the middle of tariffs.

5:04 Stephen Brown

Yeah, so there are tangible financial outcomes. Do you see that often, where businesses who implement EOS will see improvements in their financial performance?

5:15 Bret Mitchell

You bet. And of course it varies, I don't want to pretend like there's a single silver bullet, but absolutely.

I mean, we wouldn't do this, in fact I tell every team I work with, and my colleagues that do the same thing say the same thing, if this doesn't increase, our goal for you is for this to increase the value of your business. When it doesn't, it doesn't make sense for us to be working together.

5:45 Bret Mitchell

I'll give you another example. There's one client that I'm working with that we've been working together for about two years. Their industry is down over 40%. This particular company has held flat. So that's a massive success for them.

They attribute it because of their choice to implement EOS, because it's helped their team align, focus on the right priorities, and be really effective and efficient with what they do. Those are real results.

6:09 Stephen Brown

I'll give you our tangible case study. LedgerGurus, we use EOS.

We discovered it, we'd heard about it, and then I think we dived in around 2019, 2020 and rolled it out over a period of time. It was kind of principle by principle. And I think it really transformed the way we do meetings, transformed the way we do planning, transformed the way we focus on initiatives. And I'm a huge fan, which is part of the reason I've enjoyed getting to know you over the last year.

6:50 Stephen Brown

I feel like EOS bottles up a bunch of best practices into an easy to, I won't say easy, but a relatively easy to use framework that anybody could use and get benefit from.

But let's talk about what EOS is. We've talked about a couple of the outcomes, those are some amazing outcomes. Obviously there are a lot of places, we don't want to get into too many details, but maybe for a few minutes describe what EOS is for an entrepreneur who's thinking about exploring it.

7:20 The frustrations it solves

Bret Mitchell

Yeah. And just to set that, let me touch upon some of the common frustrations that it helps to solve. Because we've worked with thousands of companies and we've seen a pattern, a theme, and it'll help set the stage for what it does and how it helps.

So just briefly, one of the top frustrations that business leaders have is control. They feel like the business is running them rather than they are running the business. One business leader describes it, uses this metaphor, he says, I feel like my business is a van hurtling down the freeway and the two back doors are flying open and I'm chasing after it trying to grab hold and get inside to try to control it.

8:10 Bret Mitchell

So that's one frustration. Another one is around profit, meaning not enough of it. And profit is the rocket fuel for the organization, so very important.

Another one is people. It's just getting people to focus on the right things, do it really well, not feel like you have to keep pulling them along with you, but they're actually driving the business forward. Hiring the right people, getting them in the right spot, harnessing all that energy. It's a challenge.

Others who feel like they've plateaued or hit the ceiling have talked about that, or they feel like they've just tried all these things and it's not working.

8:50 Bret Mitchell

So what is EOS? Ultimately the reason why a company chooses to implement EOS is to get more of what they want from their business. And the focus is getting really great, getting better, at three specific things.

The first is called vision. This is about getting you and your entire leadership team 100% on the same page with where you're headed and your plan for how you're going to get there. So each of you are seeing the same future and you're committed to it, you want to be a part of it, you're aligned to that and you're working towards the same thing.

9:20 Bret Mitchell

Traction is the second thing. When we talk about traction, it's about increasing your leaders' focus and discipline and accountability, so everyone's working on the same part of that vision.

It's getting the right people in the right seats. It's making sure the right hand knows what the left hand's doing, optimizing your communication, running effective meetings, you mentioned that. So everything's working really well and all the energy is focused on that vision and plan.

10:00 Bret Mitchell

And then the third thing is something we call healthy. And not from a nutrition, fitness perspective, but from a team dynamics perspective. Meaning that you as a team are working together in a more healthy, cohesive, functional way.

In fact, it means that you are willing to address the real issues, even the uncomfortable ones, the ones that are holding the business back, the ones that people tend to keep quiet. Or they're sitting in the conference room and they're thinking it but they don't feel like they can say it. Those are holding you back.

10:30 Bret Mitchell

And so we focus on vision, traction, and healthy, get you really great at that. And then as the leadership team goes, so goes the rest of the organization. And we get to the point where everyone in the organization is crystal clear on your vision, they're executing on that with increased traction and focus, and they advance as more healthy, cohesive teams that enjoy working together.

10:44 Stephen Brown

Awesome. And I think the way I describe it, that's a great outline. It's the way you plan, how you set strategy, how you meet, how you communicate. It touches a lot of areas of how you run your business.

We saw immediate gains in the effectiveness of our leadership meetings when we rolled out EOS. We went from meandering week to week around topics, to having a focus that we hadn't had before, and a drive towards not just focusing on whatever the topic of the day was, there's still room for that, but also putting that in line with a broader framework. And I'm a huge fan.

11:30 Bret Mitchell

Yeah, beautiful. It sounds like it's increased your focus, so people are focused on a similar set of priorities versus competing priorities.

11:42 Stephen Brown

Yeah, having goals that span the company. Or at least knowing what we all agree we feel like are the most important things we should do. And there's something about just focusing that can go a long way. But I think it's more than that, there's a lot that goes into EOS.

And one of the things I think, like you, I saw principles of this framework for years in businesses, and I think they're adopters of ideas. I don't feel like they came up with all these ideas. I think they coalesced a lot of best practices into a single framework.

12:27 Bret Mitchell

Yeah, for sure. And like I said, there are a number of great contributors, practices that have been cobbled together that make up EOS. As I said, these are principles I saw over 20 years throughout my career. And they're based off timeless concepts, they've been around for a hundred years, they'll be around for a thousand more.

Now that said, as you really get into it and you look at the tool set and toolbox, they didn't teach me all this stuff in business school. So there are novel, important tools and practices that are part of EOS, and part of it is just the way it's assembled together.

13:10 Bret Mitchell

And so it's proven as well, in the sense that since it was put together, it's all put together by a lifelong entrepreneur named Gino Wickman, he's the author of the book Traction we alluded to earlier.

Since he put that together, he and I and almost 900 other US implementers have conducted over 300,000 full day working sessions for the leadership teams of almost 30,000 companies. So tens of thousands of companies operating on this system, getting more of what they want, increasing the value of the business. It's a proven system.

13:46 EOS through a financial lens, and the six components

Stephen Brown

Let's look at EOS through a financial lens. We talked about some outcomes and I think we've talked around this, but specifically, I've got some thoughts, but why do you think EOS improves businesses' financial performance?

14:06 Bret Mitchell

Well, I think there are a few clear answers for that. And one of those is clear coordinated action towards priorities that make a difference.

So it starts to reveal issues. We call an issue anything that needs to be resolved, with the team's understanding about what really makes money and the priorities. And it gets people focused on the right things.

14:40 Bret Mitchell

I'll give you an example. I have a client that we've been working together for a bit, and we put together a scorecard. So one of the tools or disciplines we use in EOS is called a scorecard.

We focus on data, it's important. We talk about making decisions based on facts, figures, and objective information, rather than on subjective feelings, ego, or emotion, which is often how entrepreneurial businesses are run.

15:10 Bret Mitchell

And part of that is creating a scorecard. It's something simple. One page, five to 15 measurables that give you an absolute pulse on the business. We assign a weekly goal to each measurable. One person is accountable for each, making sure it's on track. And we pair it with 13 weeks of rolling data so you can see patterns and trends as they develop.

15:40 Bret Mitchell

And this particular client had created a scorecard, and we'd been working together for some time. And then I was asking them about their scorecard and we started digging into it. And what I discovered was, number one, they didn't love it. It wasn't working for him, it wasn't driving all the results he wanted.

I said, okay, let's set that to the side, let's look at that again. And I asked him this question, how do you make money? And we did it with the whole leadership team in the room. And we started to break down, little by little, how they make money. They had a couple of key service offerings, and they get paid different amounts based off of that.

16:30 Bret Mitchell

And as we started to break that down, what we learned was that not everyone on the leadership team understood that. In fact, the CEO and maybe one other leader were the only two people in the room that really understood how they made money.

And the second that we illuminated that for the entire team, it became apparent what types of things other functional leaders or department heads could track and manage and control and influence to drive benefits to the business. And now they're starting to hum, because they're starting to get the right financials in place, they're starting to drive the right behavior, set goals around those things.

I just had a quarterly session with them and they've made great progress, and I anticipate for that to continue, that momentum to continue, when we meet again in 90 days.

16:45 Stephen Brown

That's awesome. One of the ways I think about it is, EOS is a framework. It's not a strategy, but it's a way to set a better strategy and to execute your business more effectively. And if you do that, you're going to have financial outcomes.

17:04 Bret Mitchell

Yeah. And there's another point to this. EOS includes a framework that we use with which to look at the business, and it helps you focus on six key areas of the business.

And as a finance leader or a CFO sitting on a leadership team, I know that one of your key desires, I'm speaking to the audience a little bit out there, is how do I become a true partner to the CEO? How do I become a strategic partner to that CEO? How do I elevate the entire team?

17:45 Bret Mitchell

And what the EOS framework or model does is it helps you to see the business through the lens of the CEO. And it will drive you to ask better questions, and where you can help lead the team even outside of your purview, and thus add value to the whole.

And so I think that is another way that it helps all leaders in the room, including the finance leader. And then the finance leader too, knowing the numbers, usually has insights on strategically where they should head that others don't have. And so you pair those two together, I think it's a really powerful combination.

18:19 Stephen Brown

What are those six areas, just for the benefit of the conversation?

18:24 Bret Mitchell

Yeah, I'll mention them and I'll give just a super quick statement or two so you get a sense for what they are.

The first one we call vision. Vision's all about getting everyone in the organization 100% on the same page with where you're headed, your plan for how you're going to get there, and getting that vision shared by everyone in the organization.

18:55 Bret Mitchell

The next one is called people. Now, the thing is, different people, different organizations define great people differently. And so we cut through all the fancy terms out there like top quartile, A player, superstar, and we get to the heart of what great people means for you and your unique organization, and then how to turn that into strategic advantage.

So people is all about getting all your right people into the right seats. People that are great at their job, they fit your culture, and really they're crushing their objectives.

19:30 Bret Mitchell

The third key component is called data, and I mentioned that. It's all about managing the business on facts and figures and objective information.

And then the fourth is called issues. Issues, anything that needs to be resolved. And really you can't accomplish your vision unless you get really great at smoking out all your issues, solving them at the root, and making them go away forever.

20:00 Bret Mitchell

The next component is called process. And this is about doing those most important things in your business, those repeatable things, the right way, the best way, every single time. It's what creates consistency, makes things easier to manage, more profitable, and frankly, more fun.

And then the sixth key component is called traction. And that, as you can imagine, is about executing day in and day out on your vision.

20:25 Bret Mitchell

And it's all put in a circle framework. The vision's at the top, traction's at the bottom, and that's intentional, because you've got to bring your vision down to the ground and execute. Vision without traction is hallucination.

And so all this is really designed to help the team employ a simple set of tools and disciplines to strengthen each of those six key components and then drive the growth of the business.

20:40 What it looks like in ecommerce

Stephen Brown

Let's talk about ecommerce, specifically ecommerce businesses.

Now, this isn't a framework that's for any one industry, it really can work, it's generic best practices. But if you were to talk to an ecommerce business specifically about EOS, what are some of the things that you would be thinking about?

20:58 Bret Mitchell

Yeah. Well, like you said, EOS is industry agnostic, but there are some specific things that can really help.

Think about what do ecommerce businesses care about, what are they thinking about? They're thinking about brand. They're thinking about customers. They're thinking about driving traffic and optimizing website conversion rates, and merchandising, pricing, warehousing, product sourcing, all the costs. All those things are critical.

21:35 Bret Mitchell

And so you think about even just take [unclear] in a warehouse, and you have to be able to deliver product on time, get it to your customers for them to be satisfied, for them to return. EOS will help illuminate opportunities.

And we start with, we go through each of those six key components. But there's some just basic practical stuff.

22:10 Bret Mitchell

I was working with the team of a merchandising agency company. They have a warehousing business, almost like a third party logistics. And they had members of the warehousing team that were saying, hey, I don't really have time to manage my people and to lead them.

And as I talked with the leaders, we talked about the situation. We kind of helped them see, it's not about having time to manage your people, it's about the mindset of understanding your job as a manager is to lead and manage your people. And some of the frameworks that we use helped us to get to that point and helped them make the right next step to get the team in a better spot.

22:49 Visionary and integrator, and the tension between them

Stephen Brown

They talk about different leadership roles in EOS, the key roles. Let's just talk about those.

And it evolves. When a company starts, sometimes it's one founder, sometimes it's two. So EOS talks about two key roles. This is actually the book that I read first, I didn't read Traction first, I read another book called Rocket Fuel, which talks about two key roles, the visionary and the integrator.

23:17 Bret Mitchell

Yes. So I'll overview it, but I want to hear more about you and your experience with it, because I think it's very pertinent to the conversation.

When you think about what's part of, when we talk about that people component, what's really key is that we look at the structure of the business and we look at the structure of the leadership team. And there's one role that's absolutely key, well, they're both key, but one that we talk about is called an integrator.

23:50 Bret Mitchell

And an integrator, in outside terms, we tend not to use titles because titles can introduce ego and cloud our judgment, they can be helpful in how we interact with the outside world, but think about maybe a president or a COO that the leadership team reports to and they're managing the day to day.

An integrator is someone who keeps the trains moving on time. They are the drumbeat of the organization. They're great at follow up and accountability, and they work with the leadership team to harmoniously solve problems in service of your goals in your one-year plan.

24:30 Bret Mitchell

Now, about half of the companies we work with, there's another function called a visionary that the integrator actually reports to.

And the visionary is the big ideas person. They love to play at 30,000 feet. They don't love to play in the trenches. They have 20 different ideas that they bring to every meeting. In fact, they probably had 20 different ideas before breakfast. They care about things like culture. They're really great at strategic relationships and creative problem solving.

25:00 Bret Mitchell

And when the visionary and integrator work really well together, it creates a dynamic duo, creates rocket fuel for the organization. Hence the name of the book, Rocket Fuel, that outlines that dynamic.

And so that's something that we work with our clients on, is understanding, every organization needs an integrator. You've got to run the day to day, you've got to make it happen. But sometimes there's a unique individual that serves as a visionary, they're just wired that way. And making sure you have the right visionary integrator duo can make all the difference.

So I'd love to hear a little bit about your experience, and why that concept's been so meaningful for you and your organization.

25:36 Stephen Brown

Well, before I talk about my organization, I'm going to talk about what I've seen in our customers over the years in ecommerce.

Oftentimes I see a decent amount of visionaries in successful ecommerce businesses. And oftentimes what I see is they are the product person, the person who had the product idea. Oftentimes they are marketing savvy too, because I think that's a critical skill. So very outbound focused.

26:05 Stephen Brown

And they'll scrap something together. Maybe they've got Instagram chops, I've seen a lot of those over the years, it's evolved. But that person who's like, I'm the product, they have the product idea, oftentimes they have the how to sell idea as well, and they just do that. But they struggle to scale.

And so they'll grab a friend, a spouse, a brother, anybody, somebody who's more operational, who knows how to do a lot of the other capabilities. What do we do about finances and fulfillment and the manufacturing process and all that stuff. The visionaries often are great starters, but they run into problems pretty quickly.

27:00 Stephen Brown

And so the integrator is somebody who usually can deal with all the details and the scale. I've seen that pattern repeatedly in a lot of the customers we've worked with, where you'll have these two people. They're maybe not perfect in those roles, because these frameworks have idealized roles and people are never perfect, but usually I see that combination.

27:30 Stephen Brown

At LedgerGurus, we're an accounting firm. My wife was a CPA, but she was an idea person and she started the business. She's got a million ideas. I helped her on the sidelines for a while, she got it going until it got to be too much, and then I came in, and over time I just took on more and more responsibilities.

And so for the longest time she continued to run sales, that outbound function, a lot of those things. And even though she was the CPA, I ended up running the services teams, because it was more of an operational function.

28:02 Stephen Brown

And so those are two industry analogies. But for ecommerce, a lot of times I'll see the visionary is working closely with the sales team or the product development team. Maybe they're leading them, oftentimes over time they hand that off, but they're still very closely working with those teams.

And then the integrator is usually, what's happened here at LedgerGurus is over time I've just taken more of those day-to-day operational functions onto me. And Brittany, my partner and wife, she's still very close to the cutting edge. What's new? What services are new? If we were running a product business, she would probably be like, this is what we need to build next. That's kind of what I've seen.

28:45 Stephen Brown

And then EOS obviously talks about, as you grow you start to shed some responsibilities. You wear a lot of double hats when you're small because you can't afford to hire people. But usually it says there's like a core five person team when you can get there.

The other roles you hand out are somebody who's over sales and marketing, the growth person. There's somebody, they call it operations, which in an ecommerce business, operations is often looked at as fulfillment, manufacturing, sourcing, getting the product from creation to customer. That's what I see a lot of what operations is in a lot of ecommerce businesses.

29:30 Stephen Brown

And then they talk about a finance role, which often is all of the back office functions. That could include finance, HR, IT. For a lot of these small businesses it's finance, and they're just kind of scraping the other functions together until they grow up and get a little bit bigger.

29:59 Bret Mitchell

Well, that's it. Those three functions you described, sales and marketing, operations and finance, those exist in any type of business. Whether you're running a lemonade stand as a solopreneur or a multi-billion dollar company. It's get work, do work, get paid. But then you customize that based off your size and scope. Early on you may be wearing multiple hats, and then over time that changes.

30:40 Bret Mitchell

What I love about you and your wife is it sounds like you guys have settled into a visionary integrator, or different seats that are uniquely a great fit for your own gifts and talents and passions and what you're great at. And that is an important space, because that's where people are going to maximize their contribution, that's where they're going to be happiest.

And then ultimately we talk about delegating and elevating. When you get people that fit your culture, they sit in a seat that they're great at, then you get to a point where to scale you've got to let go of the vines, so to speak, and be willing to give them work to do and build an extension of yourself. And that can be scary, it's hard, but you actually empower the organization, you start to elevate the whole organization by delegating that way.

31:24 Stephen Brown

Do you often see a lot of friction, when those roles exist, between visionaries and integrators?

31:33 Bret Mitchell

Oh, absolutely. It is a natural, persistent tension that never goes away. But the goal is to make it a productive tension.

It's like yin and yang, the ancient Chinese concept of different opposing forces that come together to produce something really important. It's almost like electricity and polarity, that it is actually in the tension where the opportunity and the power is.

32:10 Bret Mitchell

You take a visionary who sees around corners and understands markets really well and has just genius ideas, and they can help chart a course of where the organization needs to go, and that's what they're great at. You used the term before, they're starters, not finishers as much. That's usually not where their passion is, finishing. Give it to an integrator, they'll go make it happen and they'll finish it. And so the integrator becomes the key to bring it to life.

32:40 Bret Mitchell

And sometimes they have to filter the visionary. Sometimes they have to be like, whoa, hold on, the team can't do this, we're going to break them, or for other reasons. And that can be really frustrating to a visionary at times.

And so that's where there's a healthy tension. It's simple, but not easy, and you've got to continue to work at it. And within EOS there are simple tools and disciplines that we provide visionaries and integrators to help them optimize that tension for the greater good of the organization.

33:07 Stephen Brown

I wish, when we read Rocket Fuel, it took us years to really fully embrace or know how to leverage these principles. But boy, it would have helped us a lot if we had read that early in our working together.

Being spouses is an added challenge. But Rocket Fuel and EOS, some of our older employees, some of our arguments were legendary, because we would just go at it. Both strong-willed people. We co-owned the business, so there was no power dynamic. It was just, we're trying to fight for what the best idea was.

33:44 Stephen Brown

And I feel like EOS and Rocket Fuel helped us to harness that tension, to turn it into a healthy tension, and shed some of the ugly conflict. Which I've seen too, as I've worked with some customers, that duo, there's always natural tension and it can get ugly. I've seen some customers where it's ugly.

And I think it helps you understand your role and respect each other's role, and give each other space to operate in those roles, and how to come together to create a combined focus. So I'm a huge fan.

34:35 Bret Mitchell

I love that. And I love the comment about respect, that mutual respect is key.

Can I give you a quick story? A merchandising company in the ecommerce space that I worked with, they had a visionary stuck in the integrator seat. They didn't think of it in those terms, but that's what was going on.

35:05 Bret Mitchell

And when I met with them, the entire leadership team, actually they weren't even meeting together as a team very much, so it didn't really exist. But when we brought them all together, they all expressed pain. Because it felt like whiplash. They were good ideas, but they weren't finishing. And silos had developed, and it was really challenging.

35:30 Bret Mitchell

And so in short order, as we started to work together, get clear on that structure and worked on that people component of the model, we quickly moved to a place where the CEO moved to a visionary seat, brought in an integrator, someone from inside the organization, put him in that seat.

And they are functioning so well now, and that visionary is thrilled, because it's freed him up to focus on his genius and what he loves to do. And guess what he loves to do? He loves doing deals. And so he loves to sell. That dynamic you talked about, visionaries and selling and marketing, it's common. It's very common.

36:03 Bret Mitchell

And so this visionary has now started working on deals. About a quarter and a half ago they acquired an influencer-backed brand, very interesting, fun product, fun brand. Now their EOS is enabling them to actually integrate that team more efficiently into the business. Their business is growing because of it. And now the visionary is working on the next deal. And it's because he's got an integrator that's helping to manage the day-to-day now.

36:32 How to get started

Stephen Brown

Awesome. So wrapping things up, if you're talking to a new leader and they're trying to decide whether they should explore EOS, what do you think the best way to do that would be? How would they know if it's right for them? What should they do to learn more?

36:48 Bret Mitchell

Yeah. So for one, I'll flip the script just a little bit, in the sense that none of this is about EOS. It's about your business. It's about your objectives. It's about your challenges. And so getting really clear on those things is important.

If someone wants to learn more about EOS, there's a variety of resources. One is go read Traction. Great book, lays it all out, lays out the tools, walks you through case studies, but also exercises on how to implement the tools.

37:20 Bret Mitchell

You can go to eosworldwide.com, and there you can gain access to the tools. One of our core values is help first. And so we aim to help, and so we actually give the tools away for free. So you can go get the tools on the website. You can also use the website to look for an implementer to talk to.

37:50 Bret Mitchell

And if you talk to an implementer, here's what it'd look like. You reach out to an implementer like myself, and we're just going to have a phone call, a conversation. I'm going to ask you questions, get to know you, your business, figure out what you're trying to accomplish, and explain a little bit about what I do, like we've talked about today.

And if you want to explore it further, any EOS implementer will offer to give you 90 minutes of their time with you and your leadership team, to show you how to experience vision, traction, and healthy as a leadership team through implementing EOS.

38:20 Bret Mitchell

It's like a session with an EOS implementer, except it's not full day, it's only 90 minutes, and there's no fee. It's of enormous value just doing that.

And through that process it gives you a chance to see it all, get all the information you need to figure out if EOS is right for you, and does it make sense to work with an implementer. Your leadership team gets aligned because you're doing it together. And then you can talk about it and if you want to move forward. And in that meeting you'll learn what it's like to work with an implementer and how that works.

38:47 Stephen Brown

Awesome. If somebody wanted to connect with you, what's the best way to do it?

38:52 Bret Mitchell

Well, you can reach out to me at bret.mitchell@eosworldwide.com. Bret's with one T, Mitchell's with two L's. And that's probably the best way, or you can look me up on the EOS Worldwide website as well.

39:09 Stephen Brown

Awesome. Thanks for joining me today, Bret, and I hope that others can benefit from the amazing thing that is EOS.

39:18 Bret Mitchell

Likewise, it's been my pleasure. Thanks, Stephen.