S2E20 | Systems Create Freedom: EOS and the Art of Letting Go with Dave Borland

Summary

Confessions of an Implementer

S2E20: Systems Create Freedom: EOS and the Art of Letting Go with Dave Borland

Host: Ryan Hogan
Guest: Dave Borland (Certified EOS Implementer)
Date: October 29, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the personal and entrepreneurial journey of Dave Borland—a multi-time founder turned EOS Implementer. Host Ryan Hogan and Dave explore themes of entrepreneurial growth, the transformative power of business operating systems like EOS, and hard-won lessons about leadership, hiring, and truly “letting go” to achieve both business and personal freedom.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Early Entrepreneurship and Learning Through Experience

• Dave’s Background:

  • Started in software training in the 1990s, moving into web and database development as technology shifted.
  • Initial ventures: self-taught, highly entrepreneurial, driven by the example set by his entrepreneur father.
  • Early businesses started almost accidentally, often due to necessity (“The dude left town without, you know, he's like, you want to buy it? And he didn't even wait for my answer. He just took off.” – Dave, 05:10).

• Influence of Family:

  • Dave’s father emphasized sales as the foundation of business.
    • “Sales is the first thing he said. Sales is number one. The product is secondary.” (09:17)
  • Entrepreneurship for Dave was about seeking freedom, despite the struggles and risks.

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2. Sales Mindset Evolution

• Early Mindset:

  • At first, Dave was focused on selling whatever product was in front of him, not customer needs.
  • “When I first started selling, it was, I can sell it, and it wasn't thinking about you, the buyer, as much. And I think it translates to what I do now...” (00:00, reiterated at 14:41)

• The Big Shift:

  • The breakthrough came with learning curiosity-based sales—asking questions to uncover real needs.
  • Adoption of Sandler Sales concepts: “There's a method but really it's a bunch of questions. It's all questions... questioning works but not questions to force...” (18:08)
  • Realization: Relationships are more important than “just” closing deals.
  • Advice evolved for younger entrepreneurs, focusing on help-first mentality rather than pure numbers game.

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3. Challenges of Scaling and Leadership

• Moving from Founder to Leader:
  • The transition from sales-focused entrepreneur to leader “with mouths to feed” was a huge turning point.
  • Early mistakes included hiring based on gut feeling and optimism—often resulting in mismatched hires.
    • “My gut was optimism gut... ultimately three out of four would come in and they would be poor hires. Not because of them, because of me.” (29:15)
• Team Intervention:
  • At one stage, Dave’s team staged an intervention to get him out of direct hiring and operations, focusing instead on his strengths—leadership and vision.
    • “The team sat me down. They had an intervention once. The team that was kind of good. They're like, get out. Right?... you can sell, you can lead... that's it, you get out.” (30:49)
• Letting Go:
  • He learned the hard way about the need to delegate, trust others, and put the right people in the right seats—core EOS concepts.

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4. The Pain and Process of Hiring

• Hiring Mistakes:

  • Both Dave and Ryan share stories of hiring blunders, often due to founder bias and making emotional, not process-driven, decisions.
    • Memorable metaphor: “You don't know which way their toilet paper rolls or they have a preference until you move in with them.” (34:15)

• Improved Processes:

  • Both discuss evolution towards structured, team-based hiring processes (e.g., panel interviews, peer feedback).
  • Ryan summarizes hard-won wisdom: “It's always been because of people. Like, we have succeeded or we have failed based upon the people.” (39:22)
  • Critical realization: Founding entrepreneurs must “get out of the way,” or the company will stagnate at the “lava lid”—a ceiling created when everything runs through the founder.

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5. The EOS Discovery and Transformation

• Discovery of EOS:

  • Dave’s business hit a wall after merging with another firm. They tried “Scaling Up” (Rockefeller Habits) but lacked execution and structure.
  • EOS was introduced, initially with skepticism, but quickly proved transformative.
  • “Six months into that thing and we... we're making tons of money again. We had the right people in the right seats. I become like, this is that epiphany of like, why am I an EOS implementer? Because it worked for me.” (41:42)

• What Changed with EOS:

  • First step: Building an Accountability Chart to clarify structure and roles (“what structure do you need, not just who do you have?”).
  • Data-driven management, focusing on clear metrics (e.g., billable efficiency) and facing the need to make tough cuts for the health of the business.
  • Implemented core EOS tools (Accountability Chart, Core Values, People Analyzer, Data, IDS/level 10 meetings), prioritizing execution and healthy team dynamics.

  “The structure you have may not be the structure you need and the people in that structure might not be the right people, period.” – Dave (49:37)

  • The result: not just profitability, but a renewed sense of joy and direction as a leader.
  • Dave’s love for the system led him to become a professional implementer, eventually logging over 900 EOS sessions.

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6. Transition to Implementing EOS for Others

• Dave’s EOS Implementer Journey:

  • After his own business exit, clients asked Dave to “do that thing” (EOS) for them.
  • Initially did so independently, before joining as a formal franchisee when EOS tightened their branding/licensing.
  • Found fulfillment in helping other businesses achieve clarity and freedom.

• Client Fit and Approach:

  • Dave seeks to work with entrepreneurial, open, honest, collaborative, and curious leaders—who are also up for a little humor:

    “If the owner is humble enough to hear it, that, hey boss, you suck, that's a good client for me. They also have to be kind of funny or at least enjoy my humor.” (55:23)

  • He emphasizes he gives away tools and help freely, even when it doesn’t result in paid engagement.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Outgrowing Old-School Sales:

  “At first, I failed...And I learned about this system called Sandler Sales...it's all questions...tell me, what are you hoping for?...when that change happened, it wasn't about price...it became about relationships.” – Dave, 18:08

• The Danger of Founder Bottleneck:

  “If you can't trust your team to do all that, you'll never grow past the lava lid. You can't grow past yourself.” – Dave, 35:15

• People Over Everything:

  “We have succeeded or we have failed based upon the people. And somebody would say, like, oh, well, it's process...Yes. But it's people that are building that process.” – Ryan, 39:22

• ‘Aha’ of EOS Implementation:

  “The structure you have may not be the structure you need and the people in that structure might not be the right people, period.” – Dave, 49:37

• On Client Selection:

  “If the owner is humble enough to hear it, that, hey boss, you suck, that's a good client for me. They also have to be kind of funny or at least enjoy my humor.” – Dave, 55:23

• Willingness to Help:

  “Even if people say, ‘Hey, Dave, I just want a couple tools, we actually don't want to hire you...’ I give it away. I have the joy of getting paid for it most of the time. But...I love to help if I can find the time, and if I can't, I'll find the time regardless.” – Dave, 60:44

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00 – 09:17: Dave’s family background, early entrepreneurial journey, influence of father
• 14:41 – 21:13: Evolution in sales mindset, moving from “pushy selling” to curiosity-driven relationships
• 21:35 – 36:24: Scaling up, hiring mistakes, learning to let go, delegation & team interventions
• 40:46 – 48:24: Discovery of EOS, business struggles and turnaround, merging and exiting the agency
• 49:37 – 55:08: EOS implementation impact, rebuilding accountability, making hard team decisions
• 55:23 – 62:44: Client selection philosophy, giving back, maintaining joy and authenticity in the implementer role

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Closing Style and Tone

Throughout the episode, both Dave and Ryan are candid, self-deprecating, and practical—leaning on stories, humor, and hard truths.

• Dave’s style is optimistic, relational, and direct (“I have to love them someplace else. Or maybe I don't even love them.” – 26:29).
• The conversation is rich in practical examples, making this a must-listen for any entrepreneur floundering in the “founder-bottleneck” or seeking to transform their own business structure with systems that create real freedom.

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For Listeners

Connect with Dave Borland:

• [LinkedIn: Dave Borland]
• [EOSWorldwide.com: Dave Hyphen Borland]
• Open to questions, doesn’t charge for chats on tools or advice.
• Based in Albany, NY (prefers clients within a direct flight radius!).

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Want to build a company that gives you actual freedom instead of just more headaches?

Start by asking: are your systems and people designed for growth—or are you the bottleneck? This episode offers both cautionary tales and a pathway out of the founder trap—with practical wisdom from someone who’s been on both sides.

Transcript

[A]

When I first started selling, it was, I can sell it, and it wasn't thinking about you, the buyer, as much. And I think it translates to what I do now into what my clients do as well. Have they made that transition from selling something to finding a need that they happen to have? You know, being curious about what that person's need is, and I wonder if it's a fit here and if there is magic happens. If not, move on.

[B]

Welcome to Confessions of an Implementer. I'm your host, Ryan Hogan. We share unique stories of EOS implementers and the companies they've transformed to give you a rare glimpse into the successes and challenges of the system in action. Let's jump in. Dave, thank you. Thank you so much for joining Confessions of an Implementer. Excited to have you. This is going to be a lot of fun today.

[A]

No, I remember when you reached out and you had the mustache, not the mustache you have now, but the other one, you know, the evil mustache I love. I was like, I'm in. So whatever, whatever we do, man, it's all good.

[B]

I guess a couple of things that, that I wanted to get into, but. But one of them is, you know, talking to a lot of us implementers. There's a lot of, there's a lot of, like, entrepreneurial background, there's a lot of, of success. There's a lot of successful exits, things like that. What's interesting is like, all of the paths, all of the journeys, all of the lessons learned every single time, like completely unique and just incredible story. And, and I was looking at yours and I think there's a lot of interesting, like, based upon the time when, and I'm talking about the development firm, like when you launched it, it seems like it's like right in the dot com, just a lot of stuff going on. How did you start or get into a web development shop?

[A]

Yeah, well, the original business was software training, and nobody knew how to use a computer. You know, all the old people, the old people were like 30. Anyway, so. And so that's when, you know, Windows, I mean, Windows was like a thing suddenly. And, and all these companies needed training on how to use Microsoft Word. And anyway, what happened was eventually they started getting a little beyond that and you got into these things like Microsoft Front Page and Dreamweaver and these kinds of things, and they were like, you know what? This is what work? Why are we doing this? Why don't you just pay someone, you know, anyone. And it became a, oh, wait, we can do that. Me, I could do that. And So I took on this other thing. We started creating this other company and we just started doing like database development, like Access and Visual Basic. All these, all these different tools, mostly Microsoft. And I had a guy for that. And so I did the websites, he did that. We still have the training business going on. It was like these multiple businesses with multiple people. And this grew. And then what ended up happening was that was a. I don't have time for this. But, you know, one of the things I remember now about what I do is getting the right people in the right seats. Right? So it's a phrase you've heard that many times, not a new phrase. It was new to me because what ended up happening, I had a partner that at the time who was doing the database work. Hey, let's create this whole web development company instead of doing this thing on the side and stuff like that. Let's do that. We did that and we were just different people. Turns out he's bipolar and mostly on the, on the, like, the sad side. Wish he was like always like on the go. But he, I mean, that's, that's a problem. But he. This wasn't working out. So I created my own. I took my website clients and, and, you know, went home and then built that thing up. And so that was like. It was sort of like started with software training into this other database, slash, whatever development company into can you build websites? And then suddenly became this massive, you know, 50 projects at a time business.

[B]

When did the, the software training, like, what, just give me a decade or, or like a, a window for, for that company.

[A]

90S. So, yeah, I worked for a guy. In fact, I was horrible at working for other people. And this guy took pity on me, took me on and he said, I need somebody to sell. I go, I kind of sell. So he said, you know, it's a software trading business. And so that, that was 94. And a year later he just upped and moved to Phoenix. You know, I don't blame him, but he, he took, he's like, I'm done. And so I had all these clients that I'd sold and that's how that business started because I was, oh, there's an opportunity. No one's. They have contracts, sort of, I guess.

[B]

So he just left. He just left. And you're like, hey, we, we still have clients over here.

[A]

Yeah. And so some of them are big. I had big colleges that had had a lot of their own classes and things like that. So there was a, there was a demand that I didn't even have to create at that point. It was just thousands of people that are coming through these things, and it's like, where's our people? And so I.

[B]

That was.

[A]

That's how I got started in that. Because the dude left town without, you know, he's like, you want to buy it? And he didn't even wait for my answer. He just took off.

[B]

Do you want to buy it? And yes. What did. How much of the business did you understand? Like, were you. Were you the sales guy and like, you understood how to sell it or did you understand other aspects of the business?

[A]

So my first bit, I'm backing up from that. My first job after college, which was, you know, I really wanted to be an entrepreneur. Some people you'll talk to, they kind of found their way into. I knew from the beginning my dad was an entrepreneur. I saw the value of that. So I always wanted to be one. So my first job was entrepreneurial and it was a selling life insurance. Hey, Ryan, you know you're going to die. Do you love your family? Give me $100 a month. So it was.

[B]

Seems like a pretty easy sell on that one.

[A]

I was not good. And so two years into that, this guy, like I said, I went to him. I actually had another biz, another job, at one point, selling horrible at that cell too. I went to this guy, they said, I think I read this book called what colors your parachute? And it was all about, like, get finding that perfect job. And ultimately it doesn't. It wasn't an entrepreneurial book. It was a book about, you know, finding that career. One of the things it said was like, hey, you know what? You like training people, you like computers. You also like, apparently law. And so it tells you to go look at people, talk to people who are in those industries. So I talked to three people in each one of those things. Training of some kind, software, computers, law. So I did. The lawyers all told me. They all said words like, they took pity on me. They went to. Brought me to lunch. I had no money because I sucked at the last job, remember? And so what happened? They sat me down and I'm 24, probably years old, right? Three lawyers, three different lawyers who did not know each other all said to me, dave, I just want you to take this piece of advice. And then I'm going to pay for lunch because it's going to be worth it. Since everybody hates lawyers and we all hate being lawyers. How's the veal? You know, it was like what he said, you argue for a living. Good. Why do you. Why would that book say you want to do that? Is this something you. I'm like, oh, no, I'm a. I like people. He's like, exactly. Don't do that. You seem like a nice guy. Get out. So the other, the other two, you know, I didn't want to be a teacher. You know, school systems and things like that. Bureaucracy. I knew entrepreneurial. I went to see this guy who did this business like I described, and he was more of a programmer guy, but he's like, you know, we have the software training thing and you can come sell for me. Maybe you'll do a class once or twice. So I knew nothing of how to run that business or how to run a business effectively. I knew I could sell and I knew there's a process and the systems and stuff like that that I needed to do. I didn't have any. You know, college gave me some good. I mean, it was. There's some classes like personal selling and organizational development, but those are really for bigger companies and there's really nothing. And I tried to make my own. There was no entrepreneurial classes back then, but I kind of made my own independent study kind of things. Going to college, you know, doing that got some credit where I could, but ultimately I didn't. I didn't have. If I knew now, but I should have known then they would. Those would have been more successful businesses or I would have gotten out of them faster because, you know, like chasing that squirrel, chasing the. What's the sunk cost fallacy, that. That happened for a while too.

[B]

It's like the hardest sunk cost. It's the hardest thing to move, to get away from. What. What about your dad? Because you said so, it sounds like you were getting into this. There's nothing. A lot of experience. You're about to just like dive in head first. The lawyers all said, like, hey, we all hate ourselves, so don't. Don't be like us. And so that was. That was great. You also said you're. You grow. You grew up in a family that was entrepreneur. What about your father?

[A]

Yeah, so my dad had. He. Up until. So we moved to Lake Placid, New York, for the Winter Olympics. Have heard of that. And so we moved there because he. He worked at the telephone system forever in, you know, in bureaucracy. Right. It's a management. And then we moved there. He was on the organizing committee for that. And we were very involved. He was very involved with that. And after the Olympics, of course, it's over. You don't need that job anymore. So he was like, I don't want to go. I do not want to go back to big business, to the telephone company. So he started his own business. And as kids, I was probably 11 years old when he started the business, and it was an alarm system company. And really they was no ADT or simply safe or any of these kind of things. There was just like individual alarm system companies. And so. And they're expensive. And so he started selling that. I didn't know. We lived in a nice house, and I had no idea until the day I show up at school. They're like, oh, wait, you're. You have a. You have a special card. I'm like, what is that? You should get free lunch. Like, oh, cool. I had no idea why, right? Because he had. Putting all the money into the business, like, every dime we had, and it wasn't making it the first. And eventually he did. So I saw the. But I saw the. The freedom. I guess the word is freedom. There's a side. There's a big asterisk to that, of course, as you know. But the, the freedom of saying, hey, what is. Do I have control, somewhat control of my destiny? If I can sell something and I can make something that people want to buy and then I can get paid for it, wouldn't that be great? So I saw that and, and his freedom, being able to do those kind of things and, and being the boss, whatever words you want to call that. I thought that was interesting. And so we, we always, you know, he was always pushing. He's still alive. Always pushing that, you know, that idea of, like, you know, if you want something, go sell it. Like, sales is the first thing he said. Sales is number one. The product is secondary. You don't need. You're not an engineer. Don't be that. At least for me, don't make it. They will come. You have to just find it and then get people to buy it. So, you know, so that was. That's the background. And, you know, I learned from him. You learn from everyone, right? What to do, what not to do. And. And from him, what I did, the part I learned to do was, hey, you're. If you want to control your own destiny at some point, give it a shot, right? If your brain is, I can't work for other people, that probably means you think you're an entrepreneur and, and give it a shot. What's the worst that will happen?

[B]

Did you look at sales? Because, like, it's not, it's not that you looked at that or took that advice and then jumped immediately into entrepreneurship. Like. Like, you read some books, you went to school, you dabbled in some other things, and then you jumped into a sales role. Like, did you look at sales or the sales role as like a. An entry point into entrepreneurship? Or were you thinking, like, hey, if I can just get really good at selling, like, people become millionaires all day long with being salespeople.

[A]

That's right. Well, both. I knew that that was going to be my entree. I went to an engineering school, Clarkson University. It's very much an engineering mindset. People typically work for other people. They'll create their own businesses. But the idea is, you know, build something, fix something. I didn't have those. That skill set. I don't. I mean, I'm horrible at that at home. So sales had to be the way. And I like people, like I said before, and I'm curious and I like to help people and all that. So I. That was. My dad said too. He's like, you know, the way. The way to business, you have. The first thing you have to do is sell it. And what it is is not important. It's like, you can sell it, you can do it. So I wasn't thinking about the other end once you sell it, but make it and buy it and customer service and all that stuff that has to happen. I was just thinking almost like a very micro business mindset of, hey, I sell it, it'll come. That's why the wet. That's why my first job I was really excited about that was that life insurance business, because I thought I could sell anything. It's my own business doing this in quotes, you know. And so it's just a matter of what I'm selling and. And how much passion I have for it ultimately. But yeah, sale in. In the day sales, that was my entree. Brian Tracy, all these people back in the day of selling these things. There's a couple of them. Zig Ziggler was a guy. I was just on those things. The guy that made the envelopes. I can't remember his name. He's the envelope guy. John. Shoot. I'll think of it later. Jack. I don't know one of those names, but he was. I would just read those books highlighted yellow because that's what you had to do. Just highlight, constantly highlight. Whole thing was yellow and just really got really got into sales and the mentality of psychology of sales and then getting what you want that way.

[B]

Did those moments or experiences in your life like, validate, validate that that was the correct path or, you know, has your advice to young people iterated, shifted, evolved based upon those experiences that you had?

[A]

Yeah, oh, I absolutely shifted. I mean, I think about, you think about youth and you think about there's energy in youth, of course, there's naivety in youth. And so with those two things, energy and ivy, you can kind of feel like you could do anything, which is why insurance companies don't like under 25 year old male necessarily. And I think for me, what I learned about like it's, I'm, I'm not. When I first started selling it was I can sell it and it wasn't thinking about you, the buyer as much. And I think it translates to what I do now into what my clients do as well. Have they made that transition from selling something to finding a need that they happen to have? You know, being curious about what that person's need is. And I wonder if there's a fit here and if there is magic happens. If not, move on. I think that part of me was saying to, hey, Ryan, even if you were one of my friends, Ryan, you're, you know, you're 24 years old and you know you're gonna die and someday and you better start planning now. I would just try to force in whatever thing that I sold into that software training, everybody needs it, websites, everybody. I mean it did, but it was, it was just that mindset I think of, of being curious first. And that, that's a part I think has changed over time. Whereas I just wanted, if I wanted to make money, I would sell it. And then the numbers game. It's not a numbers game. I mean it can be, but, but I'm more curious about, about people. And if I can help you. It's a mindset change. I don't even try not to track my numbers about my close ratios and things like that. And I see clients that do it successfully. They find passion in what they do. They're not political about it. You know, it's not like my way is better than your way. It's like, hey, we've got something that might work for you. And if it does, like figure that out. I, I think a lot of my, the clients that I resonate with, or maybe both, both ways it's that they are help first. It's actually one of our core values. But they're help first curious about like how they can help someone and then if they need that thing, why wouldn't you be the choice? You know, if we can, if we're good at it.

[B]

Was this immediate. Was this like after your know, a few, a few reps and you're like oh, selling isn't like forcing things, you know, upon people. This is like asking questions like what where was, where was that shift for you in life?

[A]

Well, the shift was. Yeah. The original story of of all of this stuff is like my dad would be old school sales and so that's the other side of it. Right. And you know, he's changed now too. But the idea was oh you what color do you want it? Red or blue? Like that's how you get somebody to buy something. Right. You know you like water, don't you? Right. How much water did you need? I don't know. It was like one of these. I think for me I got beaten up so many times by non truck but you can just see it in their eyes. I'm not going to trust you. I'd be at these networking events that would be like parting of the Red Sea. Here comes Dave. You know, people would avoid me like the plague. Rightly so.

[B]

You still had the lawyer or the recruiter you had. You had that stink on you as you, as you went around.

[A]

Yeah. So I didn't recognize that in that first I failed. So that First1I Two years into that thing I failed but I was bad at it. I by the way have clients in that business now. The exact organization life insurance company and it's fascinated by people who are successful at it because they are what I believe I am now which is let's be curious if you can help you versus a numbers game which is 10, 31103110 people. Three people. Proposals, one will buy. I just keep turning away. And those are true but I think the mind when did that change? I think it's. Who was it that said Was it one of those books, Ernest Hemingway when somebody went, when he went bankrupt it was like slowly and then suddenly, you know what did you go bankrupt slowly, then suddenly. And for me I think what had happened was there was a light bulb moment in the website development company. So before that I was old school doing stuff and I was still doing it in the beginning and like where's the value in this? And having these things like why are these people buying and kind of forcing it. And I learned about this system called Sandler Sales and part of that was, you know, there's a, there's a method but really it's a bunch of questions. It's all questions. And I thought hey, questioning works but not questions to force People to what color do you want on your phone or your car or whatever it was? You know, tell me, what are you hoping for? You know, big open questions and what would you do if you could? And, you know, whatever it would be. And I use those now, and I use those in the website business, like a little mini psychologist, like, why are we talking about a website? Well, you. You called me. You called us and said, you want a website, but what do you want in this website? Well, I want it to be this. And I wanted the about us page. No, no, no. What do you want me back up? What do you want in life? What are you hoping this thing's going to do? And when that change happened, it wasn't about price or anything like that. It became about relationships that. I don't know. When that was probably 30, 31, it started to. And I started to, of course, the systems that I'm using now, all the, all the mindset and then the system Sandler. I learned about the E Myth, the book the E Myth by Michael Gerber. Systems and processes matter. I learned about that and I learned about all these things. John Maxwell, all these people want leadership. You know, people care when you do all that stuff. And so I just a matter of like, okay, I'm curious. I'm gonna need to learn more about this thing that I don't know much about. It says president of my title on my business card. But what. What does that mean? It means nothing because I have no. I have no idea how to run a business beyond selling at that point. So that became even worse when I started to have people. It's like, you know, how do I do this? That's another epiphany I had.

[B]

Well, that's that. I mean, you, you. I didn't even have to take us back there. You took us right back. That's, that's the thing is your business card went from sales to president. The owner said goodbye, went to, you said Scottsdale, and then. And now your business card says president. Like, how do you start to pick up all these other aspects of the business that quick?

[A]

Yeah, you don't. You fail miserably. So I had periods of time, I remember this for all the businesses that I had and even the successful ones where there's a period where you question yourself. I know people do as I know I do. As a parent, sometimes I question my, am I a good parent? Like, am I a good boss? Am I good? Is this a big good business? Whatever it is, there's always a. A sense of Doubt. And I had the doubt when I hired my very first person in that first business, the software training business, that wasn't a trainer that you could just see them do the job. I had somebody do like office stuff and things like that. And I thought, you know, if I don't make the sale this week, she doesn't know it, but she could be let go next week. She thinks she's in a secure job because she's working for someone and that like, oh my gosh, I've got people now, now they're not children, but it's like I've got some feed mouths. That, that was a real thing. And that was. I grew up fast at that one. When I saw that, you know, I can't mess around. I can't take a day off if it's sunny out. It's not as much freedom as I thought. But if I don't, if I can find a way. I didn't know about like, you know, there's Dan Sullivan was not in my life at that point. The guy, you know, who, not how, you know, find, find a who. I didn't have any of that. I thought I had to do it all myself. And that didn't happen until later where I understood that probably eos when I learned about the US the idea of, of just like trying to plug away at things and hoping that I can firefight in my way to the next week throughout that stuff. And I think, you know, there's moments in there where just like, okay, I've got five people or seven people or 12 people or 20 people or more. What is. And they're all looking at me for pay raise and looking at me for. This person, you know, took my, you know, this person's in the bathroom too long. What do we do about it? This person took my chair like, you know, it was like, I can't do all these things and deal with a chair. I don't know what to tell you.

[B]

All right, quick break friends. Do you find it impossible to hire and retain top sales talent or worse, are you paying insane recruiter fees who are all using outdated hiring processes? Yeah, I was too. At Hunt a Killer, we were spending hundreds of thousands on recruiter agency fees. And after I sold that company in 2025, I started Talent Harbor. And the whole vision here was to make sales recruiting accessible to small and medium sized businesses. Because the organizations that can hire and retain world class people are the ones that ultimately win. Most organizations rely on things like zip recruitment, recruiter or LinkedIn. And they get hundreds, if not thousands of resumes. But we find that the best salespeople are already perfectly placed somewhere else. And that's why our approach is to go after them. And we do that through a business model called recruiting. As a service, we do not charge commissions, we do not have success fees, we don't have contracts, we don't have long term engagements. And we become an extension of your team as expert sales recruiters. If you're tired of the same old recruiters and want to actually grow your sales team, check us out@talent Harbor.com. that's Talent Harbor. T A L E N T H A R B O R dot com. Let's get your next sales superstar hired. Here's what's funny about chairs. Like you say chairs and like, and other people out there might be like, that doesn't, that doesn't happen. I had, and I'm like, you know, we had people fight over chairs at my last company. Like they, somebody was like, these chairs are more comfortable. We had upgraded some of the furniture and so this person stole that person's chair and didn't say anything. And like we literally had chair issues. And it sounds like this is a, this is a common thing in companies.

[A]

It is. Apparently we just need to sell better chairs. We have a consistent chair. Just a share. We should make a business.

[B]

The chairs probably could be metaphors as well. But, but in our stories they're quite literal, which is hilarious.

[A]

Yeah. It was like what, you're adults? No. People need what they need.

[B]

Basically it sounds like a fire hose. It sounds like this all went down. Your position in the company changed. So you had to not just be the salesperson, but now you had to, you, you had to run stuff. And it sounds like the, the weight of that responsibility and looking around saying like, it's not just me anymore. It's not just like I don't just have to take care of me or get my. Myself a paycheck. Like we need to make sure this thing stays alive. What happened from there? It was everything besides the chairs, was everything perfect or, or like did stuff fall apart a couple times?

[A]

No, there would be times where you'd come in, it's great week. Your clients would pay you. You'd have other weeks where. Well, and what, what would end up happening would be. We got to this spot where we, we built a nice new office. So get like build a nice new office. So made started making some money there and, and we moved in and the receptionist, I had like this glass. My, I designed my Office and had a lot of these glass window things I could see out. But when the. The you postal service guy would come by, you know, mailman would come by, drop off all the mail. But the key is don't run out there very fast. That's what I've learned. It took me a while to run out there and look for the checks. Right. Because that kind of panics people, apparently. And so I. I was like, oh, thank God there's a $10,000 check or whatever. It would be good payroll. I. Sometimes that would spit out of my mouth. I think what you're finding is, and you know this, as an owner of business, it's words matter and your actions matter. And those actions of me being terrified, that was probably not a good time to show that kind of thing. Like, hey, you know, I. You know, there's a way to do this, figure it out, but also fix the problem. Ultimately, what's the problem? Problem is not me going out and, you know, pretending I'm. Everything's cool. It's. It's make everything. How do we. How do we do this better? And so ultimately, if you think about the chair issue or any of these issues, sometimes the people were legitimately asking real good. They had real problems coming into the business, just like I do. They had problems in the business. They are just frustrated with. They can't fix them because they're not the owner. They had stuff like that. But sometimes they were just the wrong people. I hired poorly, and I can love them, but I gotta love them someplace else. Or maybe I don't even love them. Like, there's some people like that that were just. I have no idea how. And mostly it was. It's always on me. But it was me probably, that did the final hiring for them in the beginning. And it became. Whose fault is it? Well, I hired them. Yeah. And so, yeah, over time, every time you learn who, not how. Dan Sullivan. Should I be hiring people? No, should not be hiring people.

[B]

It sounds like we've both made quite a few hiring mistakes. Like, did. Did you ever look back and say it was because of this or because of this or like I was using my gut. Like, what. Was there an 8020 principle for the. The hiring decisions that you made?

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. It was all me, my decision. Although we would follow, like, okay, we'll have a checklist and we're going to check their background, do all these things. Ultimately, it came down to. My wife calls this a coin theory. By the way, it's a trademark. Tammy Borland, she Says that was a trademark. But, you know, you've heard this term. Your. Your whatever, your thing that is really good at your strength is also a weakness in a different light. So minus my optimism. Right. This guy. Oh, yeah, he's had an accident. You know, he. He hit someone with a car. You know, he had a bad job. His last boss, he hates. I'm sure he'll be better this time. And so I would. Because he could do his job or whatever. And so I can change this. I can fix this. I can do all that. So I think ultimately the theme is who hired those people? I mean, forget the process. I wasn't following it. Right. So there's another problem. I would. I would go, you know, I'm the bot. I don't need to. You guys have the checklist. Thanks for getting to me now. And I'll make the final decision. It was a gut problem, but my gut was optimism. Gut, if that's a thing. It's a phrase. And that's what I would do. And so this guy would come in. Ultimately, three out of four would come in and they would be poor hires. Not because of them, because of me. Hiring in a wrong spot.

[B]

Did you change anything? Like what? Maybe that was the who, not how. What did you. Did you stop using your gut? Or you just say, I'm terrible at hiring. I'm not doing this anymore.

[A]

Actually, the team sat me down. They had an intervention once. The team that was kind of good. They're like, get out. Right? It's like, what you think you're. You can sell. Here's what you can do. This is before us. You can sell. You can. You can lead. You could be our fearless leader. You know, you can. Rah, rah. That's fun. That's it. You get out. Like, what are you talking about? I'm like. I'm like, yeah, I can run the whole thing. And I'm thinking org charity kind of thing, where me and like, more like a rake, you know, everyone. And they were like, wait a minute. You're on every projects at email. Remember we had 50 pro at this point, when that business. We had 50 projects going on about every given day. And I would sell some. I had another salespeople doing stuff. But ultimately it was my business, so I was involved and understood every single website. I thought it would be like a nice stamp to know who the clients were, know everything. And then the clients would know that. And they go, oh, it's. You know, it's Dave's business. So if I have a Problem go right to Dave and Dave third partying myself. Dave would be okay taking the call and go marching down and trying to fix the issue. And so a part of the hiring, the reviewing, the, you know, working with managing people, all of it should not have been me. If, if I know now what I know now about EOS and the accountability chart, you know, there's a, there's functions, there's roles within that function. They put your name in. I didn't know any of that. I just thought business owner buck stops here on everything. And that was that eye opening thing happened even past the web development company into the marketing agency, which is the last of those companies. When we did that, we learned about EOS and it was aha.

[B]

Yes, EOS was that. That's generally a pretty big theme too. Well with me and with implementers is like the discovery and the aha moment and then we become so passionate about this thing. We have to somehow like you went, you're doing the Lord's work now. You went out and actually did the whole eos. You're now an eosi. I just like staying around the ecosystem because it was such a life changer. When you were talking about some of the changes that you made and the intervention that your team had. Here was my brilliant idea. So I was getting hiring wrong and we did this whole sit down. I said, okay, we're going to put a 3rd ish interview or 4th ish interview in the process. We're going to call it the panel interview. The hiring manager is going to be pulled out of it and it's going to be peers and there's going to be three to five that sit in the room and then they're going to offer their feedback. So we did that. The problem was I was still involved in the process until we got there. So by the time we got to the panel interview, my gut I already knew. So I remember we were looking for somebody very high up in the company and I already knew out of the three which one which we were hiring gave it to the team. The team says whatever we do, whatever we do, we don't hire this person. And I was like, we're hiring that person. So like even the things that like I tried to do to not self sabotage the whole thing, um, yeah, still jumped around it because the gut was too strong.

[A]

It's a, it's probably the heart. One of the hardest things to do is to hire, to get through all the BS of what you know, everyone who wants a job is going to put their Best foot forward. It's like a first date. And so you don't know which way their toilet paper rolls or they have a preference until you move in with them. And so it's. There is just thought of that. By the way.

[B]

You'd be like, are you a serial killer? Because this is backwards.

[A]

Yeah. We could check for that stuff sort of, I guess. I don't know. Dead bodies in the basement. By. Ultimately though, you know, it's like we were doing top grading. Top grading. And that was cool. It's big company thing and all that. We have these. It's a process. It worked on the hiring side of things. A lot of interviews. Where do I get involved? Where's my stamp on that one? You know, it's like we had to figure that out. And I see that almost all my clients. It's like this idea of like, if you have the founding entrepreneur making a decision early on, someone yet like you said, it's already decided. I usually find that the fearless leader, the visionary person might be the last person to say, hey, are you core value fit? Or if he's going to. He or she is going to work directly with that visionary or somewhere in that space, then absolutely change that up a little bit. Because they're a direct manager. Yeah. Of that person. But if you're. If you're like, hey, I just want to make sure I trust my. They have to kind of delegate and elevate terminal use. They have to trust that their team knows the process of hiring, all that tactical stuff. And also strategically, what do I need is the person of core value fit. All that. If you can't trust your team to do all that, you'll never grow past the lava lid. You know, you can't grow past yourself. And in 2034, there's some number there where you just can't. You can't hold all the strings on your. You're not that puppet, you know, puppeteer. You can't just can't. Strings are gonna get all messed up. And I think hiring. Certainly reviewing all that. But hiring is the one that I found most visionaries get out of the way until a point. Right. Maybe it's the last interview. I don't know.

[B]

Yeah, like. At least like the bias. Not that it's been removed, but you haven't been in far enough to like develop bias for a preferential of one. Like where I try and sit in our hiring processes is like the very last interview and it's the sanity check interview. Obviously these are for people that are not Direct reports for me because I do think like you have to be engaged to a certain extent if like you are the actual hiring manager, they're reporting to you. But yeah, I just, I'd like to be the last step. And then also as a part of that, like my job today in recruit and it's also my business partner is a recruiter. So like she has 25 years recruiting experience. She was the best recruiter that we ever used at, at Hunt A killer. It's the whole reason that I'm in the business that I'm in today. So I'm very fortunate that I have a world class recruiter as a partner. And what that means is like what I look at my job as is like getting that person excited. So a lot of my conversations are around core values are around like where we're going and like the excitement around those types of things versus like are you the right fit? Because my expectation is they've gone through five interviews before they got to me and I just want to make sure they, they hit the ground running.

[A]

You know, it's fascinating. And you're in the business too, so you're so who, not how. You'd be our who for a business that I would work with.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So this idea. But even within your own business, you need that sanity check person. You know, it's like you have the, you're the professionals and yet there's always something in there. You're like, are we making the right decision here? And your systems of processes, like I said that it's a, it's a thing that most people think they can do themselves and, and even if they're trained, it's hard. Um, and I wasn't. And so this idea of. And still I'm not trained. I've probably hired hundreds of people personally. Uh, I don't know how many of those were great hires. Right. So it's not hundreds, but the goal there is. Just because I've done it a million times does not mean I'm good at it. And so ultimately I learned that too. And specifically about things like, like this. It's like what, you know, is there something in finance or marketing or sales, something in your business that you, that you struggle with and your data shows that you're struggling with it, which is key. Like, hey, what's our turnover? That'd be a good one for this one, right? Turnover's high. That's interesting. Where's the issue? Is it a management issue? Is it a tools issue? They don't give them success through hiring poorly. We're never reviewing. No pay is horrible. What's the thing that we're doing? And it could be all the above or some of the above. But, yeah, having people like you that we're like, if we could just hand 90 off and then make that final thing. I know we can't make it in a vacuum. You can't make it in a vacuum. But that's. That's one of those things. We just talked about people a lot just hiring this. A lot of this conversation so far. And it's not because you're in the business, but because you get it.

[B]

Like, that is business. Like, that's. What if there's been, like, one takeaway over the last, like, 15 years? And all the. All the failures that. That I've had in entrepreneurship, like, it's always been because of people. Like, we have succeeded or we have failed based upon the people. And somebody would say, like, oh, well, it's process. Oh, it's the stuff that you track. Yes. But it's people that are building that process. It's people that are either executing or not executing it across the core metrics or KPIs that you have in place. So anyhow, yeah, I mean, that's probably why we're both, like, gravitating towards this conversation. And, you know, the. The other thing is, like. And vision. Visionaries. Like, visionaries are really bad at this. Like, we are impulsive people. We are gut people. We are instinct people. And so when we have this connection with someone that we like and someone that we feel a connection with, it's very hard for us to pull away from that. One of the reasons I used to like. I used to like hiring recruiting firms was because the person that I would have hired, I will never even have a conversation with because that person will be weeded out long before it ever gets to my level. Oh, yeah.

[A]

What? What?

[B]

So we talked a little bit about here. I. I feel bad. We're like 40 some minutes in, and. And like, now we're at the discovery part of vos. So when did you discover eos? Like, how far were you into the development business?

[A]

Yeah, so we actually, we merged. So we had. So that web development company. I had a friend of mine who had his own business. It was a graphic design. They did print, promotional print, all the printing stuff for marketing and promotional products, tactical things. We did the digital things. And we thought, you know, it'd be really cool if we get together, we. We combine these. Because both people. People need all of this Stuff and they don't have a logo or something. They have something. And what if we did this? What if we created a company that would became a marketing agency and these just became tactics of that company? Wouldn't that be cool? So we started partnering first and then we actually merged them into this one entity and we actually hired on, brought on another guy who was a strategist, marketing strategist, real guy who's also now an EOS implementer. One of my great friends and he's, he's awesome. I got him into eos.

[B]

The.

[A]

Yeah, the concept, what ended up happening was the between us, we, we started using this system called Scaling up. Back in the time, back in the day it was called Rockefeller Habits or Gazelles. And so. And it was working, but it really wasn't working. And it probably us that wasn't to be fair, it probably wasn't the system, it was us not working the system properly. And one day my partner, his name is Dave too comes and he says, hey, we're thinking about partnering with this other company and they've got this, he's got these book Traction. I got all the traction books back. Here we go. And he says, you know, we should read it. And then we consider doing it. Like we're already doing a system and they're all the same, they're all going to suck. I can't, you know, blah, blah, blah. What was me. It's not working. We started failing, by the way. Day two, after I didn't tell you this part. We put these great companies together, we were both making a ton of money, put them together, put all the people together. And day two, we started losing money because we went, hey, we don't know those, we don't need those 50 projects or these print promotional things that, you know, the race to the bottom in price. And let's go after marketing, agency stuff, pitch real campaigns and things that we didn't really know what we're doing yet. And so we had all these people that were tactical trying to do stuff like that and we hired some people on and brought on some partnerships but it was like we didn't know at any idea who was going to be what, where and how. And so we didn't do with Rock Habits was we didn't really have a functional org chart or what we could now call accountability chart in eos. And we, so we all like I'll just take finance, I'll take marketing. I guess, you know, it's like not it. And so, and so we took those things we started failing. So we found this system Eos, simply because the book was given to us. And they said, you guys need this. And I was like, I don't want to do it. Well, we're going to do it anyway. I had two partners, brothers and sister and this other guy, but he was out of the pit. We had bought him out. So there's two. Two out of three said, we're doing it. Like, okay, for all equal owners, I guess we'll do it. They said, you're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna run this system. They told me, I'm gonna run the system. Great. At least I have some control. Let's do it. And so started doing it. And we, we needed a turnaround, like an actual dollar turnaround. We got six months into that thing and we, we were, I mean, we're making tons of money again. We had the right people in the right seats. I become like, this is that epiphany of like, why am I in the OS implementer? Because it worked for me. And it was like this. I hated to come there to. I, I loved being there at that business. It just felt like we were on a trajectory of awesome. And then my. What ended up happening? Just FYI that. What ended up happening, why I'm not in that business now. It was not. It was a successful exit. But to make the successful exit, what happened was my partner said, hey, we want to merge that company we're partnering with. Let's. Let's do that. And, and there's a husband and wife owning that business too. And like, and it's healthcare marketing. And I'm, I'm not a hospital. I like, I don't like to go to hospitals. I know they're needed, but hospital marketing, hospital, anything to do with healthcare, it's just not. I don't know, I just didn't find joy in it. And merging with people who, who were quasi fits with us. They're great people, but they just. We just had a different mindset of uncore values and things like that. And yeah, he's actually the one who introduced us to the book Traction. So he knew about it. He wasn't really. He was doing it differently. So we started doing this thing and I'm like, they're gonna merge now. And I'm thinking, oh gosh, it's not gonna work. It's gonna be four owners. Brother, sister, husband, wife, and me. Right? Five orders. That's five. I'm good at math. And so I was like, they're like, how about an exit. I'm like, yes, please. And so that was very successful. Exit 2014. And then, and they, they continued on and did their thing. And I, two to two weeks later, I was like, wait, I got out of this thing. I didn't. It was somewhat quick. It was like three months, you know, from beginning to end. You do the lawyer thing and all that stuff and you got paid. And then I thought, what do I do next? I don't even know. Like my dad said, you know, find something you could sell and sell it and I'm going to build. Am I going to build something again? And so one of my clients at the, the marketing agency, they called me and he says, hey, that thing you guys did, I saw a huge turnaround. You guys not, you know, they're just smiling all the time and doing stuff. Can you do that thing for us? I think we might need it. And so I was like, oh, yeah, yeah. So I called eos. I found they had, at the time, you could just download the materials and here's the whole playbook and the whole nine. And you can do that and you can call yourself an EOS implementer without being part of their community. And I did that. And that guy started referring me. It worked. Apparently he started referring me. I got referred to like all these people on the country. I was going to Seattle and la. I live in upstate New York, so I was going to Florida. I was having a good time, but it was a lot of travel because I just said yes to everything. And then suddenly I realized I doing this full time and I like it and apparently have a knack for it. And so eventually what ended up happening was So I had 400, they call these sessions when you, you know, you have this, if you have an implementer, you have a session with that implementer, typically five days a year. I had 400 some odd sessions with clients, maybe 450 before EOS was purchased. And they said, hey, the new model is something different. You have to become an EOS implementer. You have to be a franchisee and you're either going to do it or you're not going to be an EOS implementer. You cannot call yourself, you can't coach on it. You know, you can't use our tools unless you're inside that company. We'll go after you. And I thought, I love it. I love this business, of course. And so I, I jumped in, even thinking it was going to be a Kool Aid drinking kind of Amway kind of thing, like, you know, One of those multi level. It wasn't. It isn't. So that happened in 2021. And so somebody will say how many sessions do you have? I can either say 430 since then or I could say 900.

[B]

They wouldn't let you carry forward the, the other 400 and some.

[A]

No, my one. I'll say, well, it's a good regret. It's a one one regret of not trusting that these people actually do. Didn't have the core values that they say they have. And they do. I was wrong. I apologize and I'm paying for it. I still tell people 900 though. I've still got to do it.

[B]

Yeah, I would do that too. What. There's one thing you said that I like we've got to key in on just because like. Well, I'm deeply curious and I think it gets to some of the underlying value of, of the stuff that you do. You, you had said earlier, you said the business was not going in, in the right direction. And, and this was like right before you had implemented eos and then it was right before the second merger like had come up and you said everything had changed and like I was excited to come to work again. Like what fundamentally changed about the business to get you to a place of where you were like I may or may not want to do this anymore to. I love coming in every day.

[A]

Yeah, it was so bad coming in. I would come in every day. It's Saturday and Sunday and all nights and the whole thing that's was always coming in but hating it and what happened. So, okay, we got the book traction. We started implementing it. I was starting to see it was different than the other system eos. Not to bash any systems, but EOS is very execution focused. Right. So if you have an idea, this is not like Blue Ocean strategy. You're not going to do Blue Ocean strategy with eos. You got to do Blue Ocean strategy, right. Hey, what's new and fancy and all that. But once you have a concept of what you should be doing, EOS was the tool we needed. And so we knew what we wanted. So we had that, we had that side, we knew what a strategy we had all that kind of stuff. It was the execution, getting the right people in the right seats, doing the right things in the right ways, accountability, execution, all that. Team health was important, which we, that wasn't part of what we were thinking beforehand. So I think what ended up happening was we saw, we, we started with the account like most implementers will do. Hopefully every, everyone Does. The first tool we do with a client is called the accountability chart. You know that one? And it's like day one, first tool of the whole thing. And it's like, why are we doing this? Because the structure you have may not be the structure you need and the people in that structure might not be the right people, period. And so what do we, what do we need? So we talk about what we need if we're starting over. We did that and it was a kind of an eye opening thing or it was just not it. Right. Like, oh, we need real people in finance. So the sister, my partner, love her, you know, she's great, but she was not a finance person. She was stuck in that role because she didn't do this fast enough. And it was more like, how much money do we have in the bank versus like profit, P L Or you know, like any financial tools whatsoever except for how much do we have? Which is not a great way to run a business. So we had to find. So we had to find a controller at that time that was good. We had to find who, so we had to learn. I think that tool was one of those like, okay, the secondary part is how do we afford them? Right. The first part is what do we need? If we could start with that, then it was like, okay, how do we, how would we do this? Well, when we look at the structure, we also noticed that there's a whole bunch of people we didn't need anymore, sadly. So we had to make hard choices. So ultimately it wasn't just like, oh, put this in place and everything's going to be rosy. And six months later we're making money. There's choices that we made previously that now we have to make hard choices on. And usually that means, as, you know, people. It was wrong seat people, wrong culture people. We hadn't explored our core values. And when we did, we were like plugged it in and we went, wow, interesting. There's three of these people who we would not hire again even if we could train them how to do their job. And actually two of them were really good at the job. And we made a lot of money. The money we did make was from them. And we're like, okay, we have to trust that this system works. And so I think it's a leap of faith that also happens. So accountability chart, if it's true, core values, if they're true, fly them to the people. Call People Analyzer. We did that tool called People Analyzer, which shows the two of those together. And we went all these people we don't need. And then we also numbers. The second thing was we did was if you're familiar with the EOS model, looks like a circle, right? That data, the data component. And that was just what is our number? And our number happened to be billable efficiency. And we were at 30, we need to be at 60. We found out what, what world class was. So yeah, across the whole team, reception, sales, people who were not billable at all to 100% bill or somewhat billable, mostly billable graphic designer or whatever. So anyway, those once we did that, I think what ended up happening was you, you said it all boys act down to people. But data doesn't lie. What's the data that we need? Okay, cool. Let's figure out how to issue solve, not solve tactically. So all the tool is that I'm just picturing the whole EOS model and it's just that circle thing. All six components were weak and all six components needed to be stronger. And we started with not what we want long term, but we started with structure. And so it was like what do we have? What's the data tell us? Okay, this is what we want. We went there next we went to vision. What is it we want three short years or one year even six months. Whatever it was, it was like a. Okay, let's ids, let's identify, discuss and solve. Is it a process problem? Yes or no? Right. And so we got good at solving issues faster by putting those people in the, in that level 10. We didn't even call it level 10 yet. We were sort of bastardizing EOS. We call it a rock meeting because that's what they called it in the other system. And we were just. But we, we did it and we did it every week. And even if we didn't like showing up, we did it. And I think if I tell people anything, it' this just keep going. And even if it's a day you don't want, you're going to get to that day you do want. But you have to do the hard work to do it. And hopefully not as long as you think it is. But it's going to be hard at first every time. If you want something different you have now, you cannot do it best by doing it the same way you did it before.

[B]

What do you look for in a client like you? You have had, I don't know how many other people have had 900 plus sessions. Not, not, not a lot. You were in a rare air there. What, what do you look for in a client.

[A]

I look for in a client several things. One, they have to be, they have to be entrepreneurial. So I, if they're looking to be slow and steady wins the race, which is cool. Probably not us. Why do it? Just don't they. They. So there's. They need to be curious people themselves, open, honest, you know, we'll all say these, some of these words, but they've got it. And I mean that. They've got to be honest about it, which means they have to go there, they have to be open to hear it. There's two things. There's not one sentence open and honest. It's two distinct things. If they can be honest about it, that's great. If they also, it's about them, especially the owner. If the owner is humble enough to hear it, that, hey boss, you suck, that's a good client for me. They also have to be kind of funny or at least enjoy my humor. So if they don't, it's not gonna work. I would say, you know, if, if the death, if it's deaf ears and any jokes that I make, it's going to be a long day and my energy is derived from their energy and vice versa. So not that we're joking around with business, but if you can't have fun, I'm not your right person. Like there are people, there are implementers, like you said, they come from everywhere. There's some people who are accountants and, and you know, CPA kind of people that are just like engineer types that are just like, it's driving to the numbers. Let's do your thing. I'm gonna get you there. I mean it's got some, I got humor, but it's got to be dry humor and it's gonna be sarcasm to. What I do is more optimism. So anyway, those people have to have to. But the ones that really work well with me are the ones that, that find joy in helping other people too. And so humble, open, honest, joy in helping other people. They do want something. They're goal driven. Like, I went to this thing called 2929 two weeks ago, did this Everesting ultra hike. It's 30 out, 36 hours to do 30000ft. That hat, you can't see it back there. It's a hat back there. You, you pay a lot of money so that you can wear this red hat that says 2929 on it because you did this hard event. I had six clients at that thing and I was like, wow, these clients are, I love them. Who do I. I mean, I have a. Love a lot of clients, but if I were to say, hey, if I could just spend time with six people for 36 hours and sweaty, that's a high bar.

[B]

Do most of your clients, are they, like, set in a geographical region or do you still travel all over the.

[A]

U.S. i try not to travel the U.S. now. I just grad. You call graduation when, you know, you part ways, but you're not in their life regularly. Every quarter. Right. So that kind of video, you can come back. My last one, I did a California. I had a California client, San Diego. Love them. They're great and love San Diego, but it's too far for me. So. And my new rule is, if it's a direct flight from Albany, New York, I'm in. Right. And so it's. So it's. It's regional. I just took a client on today. It's five minutes from my house. Love that. And go to my house quickly. I forget something. I could run back during your break, whatever, but I. I was just in yesterday. I have a Pittsburgh client. It's not a direct flight. That's been with for eight years. And they refused to let me go. And we met in Cleveland, which is even farther away. But ultimately it's got to be a direct flight from Albany. So the hubs, things like that, all New York City. New York City shore, drivable distance. Boston, you know, Northeast is a very, like, there's a lot of people up here. I typically, I do have a New York City client, but I have my. I have my. My cohort of great EOS implementers. Typically, it's not my style. For. For. I'll give that. I'll just say I've got like four or five people you want to talk to down in the city or New Jersey. It's just a different mindset than I typically bring to the table. But other. Yeah, Florida. If you've got people in Florida, Love Florida, especially. Now, coming up, is it.

[B]

Wait a minute. There's direct flights from Albany to Florida?

[A]

Oh, yeah. We got to get out. That's how it works. We can play Orlando, Tampa, Miami, or Fort Lauderdale. My favorite.

[B]

Yeah, right now, my favorite is Tampa, like St. Pete beach area. But I haven't spent a lot of time in, like, Fort Lauderdale, Miami.

[A]

I. I should.

[B]

I should go on the other side. Okay. All right. Someone just listened to this whole thing, and they're like, holy crap, I happen to live around Albany. And, and like, we are a very curious leadership team. How would they get A hold of you.

[A]

So a couple ways. Easy to find me on LinkedIn. Certainly, you know, Dave Borland. There's only, there's only about 10,000 people like Dave Borland and I guess I don't know, but take more than my simple matter, you know, around me. So there's certainly the EOS worldwide.com Dave Borland or Dave Hyphen Borland, I think linked either one of those two. They could probably Google me. They'll find me. Dave Borland EOS IMPLEMENTER I can certainly give my phone if you want to on this, this thing right here.

[B]

We'll, we'll put some, we'll put some stuff in the show notes. You don't, you don't have to do the phone number thing. Some do. And I'm like, that's a lot.

[A]

Yeah. So ultimately, like I said, I'm curious. I cannot help everyone. I will say this. I can help everyone that needs it, wants it, all the things we just talked about, but I still will help you. So even if people say, hey, Dave, I just want a couple tools, we actually don't want to hire you, but we're thinking about this accountability chart. You said it says in the book, can you share with what that means? Like we're doing right now, we're talking about things. It's like, you know, it's Gina Wickman's ip, it's not mine. And I have the joy of being able to share that. It's also in the books, all this stuff, but I, I give it away. I, I, I'm, I have the joy of getting paid for it most of the time. But I'm working with a pro bono client and by me tomorrow, I'm super excited about that one, maybe more excited about that. It's a city mission of Schenectady, and they do a ton of great work in their community for homeless people and people who are, you know, on that verge of really needing help and have hard times that I've never had. And so I, I actually reached out to them, I said, I want, I would like to work with you. And I'm super excited about working with them. So anyone who says I'm starting a business and it's not eos is right for me or not. Probably not, because you're one solopreneur is not good. I need life change. I'm not a life coach, but whatever would you do if you're trying to be an entrepreneur? Any. I've had people, I just had a conversation last week with somebody like that I just love to help if I can find the time, and if I can't find the time, I'll find the time regardless. So if they just look me up that way anyway, I will take the call. I will not charge you or anyone. And at some point, you know, if they want to work with me at EOS implementer, sure. We'll do it there. We'll do it then.

[B]

Love it.

[A]

Love it.

[B]

Dave, thank you so much for taking the time. Now I feel bad because I took you over five minutes, but thank you so much for. For taking the time to come on show. This was awesome conversation.

[A]

Yeah, it's such a pleasure. I felt like 10 minutes, so thanks for letting me spout off.

[B]

Yeah, no, no, it was. I've got like three pages right now stuff I've got to review after this, but, like, we covered a lot of topics and I didn't even. I didn't even think we were going to get to half of these, so this was a lot of fun. Thank you again.

[A]

Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you, Ryan.