← Confessions of an Implementer
Confessions of an Implementer
S2E21 | From Chaos to Clarity: How Rani Dabrai Found Her EOS Life
00:54:54
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- [00:00]
A
It just started with. We started to get calls for people who needed problems solved that were bigger than phones answered. They wanted to have, you know, instead of find me a plane ticket, it was find me a plane.
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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. Okay. All right, so I guess, like, the first thing you are. There's going to be a lot of first on. On this one. Like, first time I've ever had a guest that, like, held down an entire country for Eos, that, like, is the only implementer down. That's incredible. And then this is the first, I think, like, outdoor, at least, if not outdoor, probably the best background setting that, that I've seen. So where. Where in the world are you, Ronnie?
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A
So I am on a tiny little island called Menorca. It's one of the Balearic Islands just off the coast of Spain. So everyone's heard of Ibiza. Many people have heard of Mallorca, which is next door. And so many people get this island confused with Mallorca. It's not. It's Menorca. It's smaller, it's about a quarter of the size of Mallorca, and it's just very sleepy. It's very quiet. You can see the waters here. It's empty. It's lovely. But, yeah, it's beautiful. And the sun's about to set in this direction and it's very hot. So it's like 33 degrees here. I don't know what that is in Fahrenheit, but there's a good chance I'm going to melt as we do this. Melt at the first as well. Right. We're melting live.
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B
That's it. There's going to be like, there should be so many firsts on, on this one. So last time I talked to you, you were. Was it Alicante?
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A
Yes, yes, I was on mainland. And.
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B
And now you're here, like, is this, is this your summer? Nowadays you're just like, new country.
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A
Well, you know what, Ryan? This is my. And I mean, you've talked, you've interviewed other implementers before, so they've probably mentioned this. This is my EOS life. So do you. When I say Eos life, I know you know Eos. So you know what I mean by that, right? Yeah. So it's, it's the five things, but one of them is time for other passions. And for me, I've got little kids, they're 11 and nine and I always promise them that summer belongs to them. So in Europe we all kind of go to sleep for summer and they finish school in June and we don't go back until September. So I always tell them school holidays belongs to them in particular summer. So I get this big long stretch where frankly as an implementer it's kind of fruitless to try and organize session days anytime in July and August because someone's always missing. Teams aren't just that engaged because you know, hello. So yeah, this is, it's a great way for me to do this. And every year I'm trying to incrementally increase it by a week. So this year I'm really cutting it fine. We land back home the day before the kids start school and I haven't even got uniforms and stuff yet, so I don't know what I'm going to do. Figured that's my eight quick start coming out. Going to figure that out later.
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B
Nice. It'll come together. I just put belief into the world will find a way. And generally it does.
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A
They'll show up to school.
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B
They, one way or another they will be there. They might not be right wearing the right uniform, but they will be present.
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A
They will be present probably still in their board shorts, but it'll be fine.
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B
Yes, that's. So I, I've been in the Navy for 23 years and the last seven or eight of them I've been in the reserves and all of my deployments up until about two years ago, so like an asterisk were always, were always like Pacific side and different, different places over, over in Asia. So I actually got deployed to Europe for about 10 months in for parts of 2022 and parts of 2023. And it was over the summertime and I was observing Europeans over the summer where like everything just slows down and then would go to like to restaurants in Italy and it'd be 4 o' clock and everything shut down. Like what's, what's going. And it's, it's siesta. Like they got. We got to take naps.
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A
Yeah, we have to take a nap.
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B
I don't understand what we're doing here in the US Like I want, I want siestas, I want to do these things.
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A
So. Doesn't everyone, doesn't everyone though? I mean the thing is one of the things I hear so often in my session rooms, especially with kind of any US based teams and My u. God love that My US Implementer colleagues think I'm crazy because I'm like, don't try and get a hold of me in July and August. And they're like, what. What are you doing? How can you shut down your practice? And I'm like, everyone shuts down. But one of the things I hear quite a bit, actually, is in the US I can't remember the exact statistic, but it's a really small number of paid time off days. Right. It's like 10 or 12 in the year. And there are so many Americans that don't even take that. And it's. I think, to my mind, it's super unhealthy because like you said, you've witnessed the European way of life, and everyone's happy. You know what's interesting is I. You know, I think I was talking to you about this in Alicante. I recently had surgery, and so I ignored all the doctor's orders by getting on a plane. But, hey, I'm here. I recently had surgery, and I've had to be in and out of different chemists and. And doctors and hospitals and fairly regularly while I'm here. And what's really fascinating to me is in Spanish pharmacies, there's such a very limited range of vitamins and supplements. And it dawned on me. I was looking for one thing, and I was going from place to place to place, and for the life of me, I couldn't find it. And then it dawned on me. It's because they don't need them. They eat what they need to eat. They get the sunlight, they get the rest. You know what? They get the biggest thing, which is community, which is time with each other. And. And. And these are the. Aren't they the ingredients of life? Isn't that just what makes it magical? So for me, summer is my favorite time of year. Oh, apart from Santa Claus, of course. But summer, yeah, it's like this elongated way of how I think life should be. Plus sunshine.
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B
Yes. Wait, is Santa Claus number one? Is that what that was? And then summer's number two.
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A
It depends what he brings.
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B
That's a good point. Good point. We evaluate that after.
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A
Yeah, we can dig into that. But this is longer, right? Summer lasts longer. It's good 812 weeks. So this is great. Love it.
- [06:19]
B
Okay, well, Ronnie, thank you for coming on the show. And especially because, like, I realized that in July and August, you were pretty much unplugged, and we were trying to find times that that worked, and you were like, let's Just like while I'm in downtime, like, let's just do this.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So thanks for taking a break from, from your vacation to come along with us.
- [06:38]
A
Are you part of my vacation? Ryan? This is, this is us. You're here.
- [06:42]
B
There's another first. There's another first. And so your background, like, there's a lot of really interesting things about, about you and your background. And I think on as a headline on LinkedIn, you're the only certified implementer in all of Ireland, which is pretty cool. And then also, like, it looks like you got your, your start in like kind of the, the PR world or the comms world and then parlayed that into entrepreneurship. So like, how did you get into comms? What was the draw to that? And then how did you spot an opportunity to start a business?
- [07:21]
A
Yeah, so. Well, the opportunity to start a business. I've basically always been unemployable. I just didn't realize it until my mid-20s, so I think it was inevitable. And I always. Actually how I got my start into comms was how I was doing my own thing anyway, so I was at university and I was doing a degree which involved, it was media and pr and then it involved a degree of kind of outbound communication. And I was into music, I was into nightclubs, and I found a way to get paid to party because I didn't have any money. Student. Right. So I found a way to basically PR for nightclubs which meant I was on the guest list everywhere and then document my experience as a journalist whilst I was in the club and do all these nightclub reviews. So I started life as a music journalist and, and just basically got paid to party. There isn't anything, there isn't anything high skilled about any of that. It was just luck, I think, and tenacity on my part. And then I got into television. So I was working in a very serious job in television, which I loved. I was in London and my roots are Irish and Indian. So when my contract came to an end in London, I wanted, I always wanted to move home to Ireland where my relations, my cousins and everyone was. I, when I was growing up, I'd spend all my summer times there and my winter times in India. So I always wanted to come back to Ireland. And when I made that decision, you know, I landed in the country and I thought I was coming from this big PR world and it would be really easy for me to find a job in the same space. And it wasn't. That was just my ego. And I ended up, falling right down to the bottom of the tree. And I was temping and doing all these jobs that I hated. And eventually I kept getting invited to leave. I was really terrible at them all. Eventually, I stuck one job for long enough to come up with this idea of remote working. Long before remote working was a thing, especially in Ireland. Especially in Ireland. And I thought of myself. I thought. I thought, who's the most famous assistant ever? And of course, it was Miss Moneypenny. So I named my. I just bought the domain name Ms. Moneypenny. And that was it. I started to. I actually pitched the idea to my boss at the time. He turned it down. He didn't love it, invited to leave again. And then, you know, after sulking for a while, I decided I'd just do it myself. And I did. And it took a while to get off the ground, quite a while, actually. And. But then when it did, it caught fire. And that was it. And then there was. You know, I sort of. I guess in the end, my business was probably an exercise in entrepreneurial ADHD because of how I, you know, bought different revenue streams in. They were all connected. They were kind of an ecosystem, but nonetheless, they were quite different. So I ended up doing that. And eventually I. For different reasons, I sold off. I sold off the business in chunks. I sold off the revenue streams of the business, some small, some big. And I was, you know, hanging around for a while. There was a whole kind of chunk of time in between where I was doing some interesting stuff, but I was hanging around. And, you know, a lot of people who sell their businesses will tell you that you kind of lose your identity a little bit with it because it was your baby. And that's where I was at. I was in this weird place where I'd lost a sense of who I was. And a fellow implementer, who you should also interview, actually, Julia, she kind of tapped me on the shoulder and she said that with my history and Ms. Moneypenny, I'd worked with just over 1600 entrepreneurs, and I'd seen that journey as well as I built my business at the same time. So I'd lived it as well as been in the backseat of it. And she just said it seemed like I had the perfect ingredients and what I consider EOs. And I discovered it just as I was on the tail end of my exit. And I realized that I wish I had discovered it years ago, because I probably would have gotten more money for my business, the different revenue streams, if it had been run better. But I also Realized that was where I really belonged. It's facilitation, it's entrepreneurship, it's teaching, it's all the stuff I love. And it means I get to hang around with cool leadership teams all day long. So at the time, like I said, I was first again. And I still am, you know, five, five, six years later now there's still no other implementers in Ireland, still just me fighting the good fight. But it's great. I'm in a really amazing European community. Actually, just before this call, I was on a call with some of them and now I train. I'm on the training team for the newer implementers who are also on this journey. So it's exciting.
- [11:33]
B
There's a couple things here. So the first is, and you said this like three times, and each time I was kind of chuckling because you kept saying you were invited to leave. So in the US we just say I got fired.
- [11:47]
A
Yeah, listen, my background was pr. I had to PR that thing up.
- [11:53]
B
It's such a nice way to put it. Like, you go. You're like, well, I was invited to leave. Invited to leave. Okay, that's going to be. I'm going to take that. It's hilarious. How long did it take you to really start seeing some traction with the.
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A
With the company, with eos?
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B
No, no, no. So when you started up and you were like. It really took us a while to like get up and running, but once we did, it took off. Like, how long you think that took?
- [12:25]
A
Well, I started out trying to pitch virtual assistants to, to, you know, a society that just wasn't ready for it at all. Especially in Ireland. Culturally, there were just all sorts of reasons why they just weren't ready. And then through, you know, a different kind of a story, I realized that I was doing, I was pitching to an audience that because they weren't ready, they didn't see the value in it. So I uncovered my version of what I call my gateway drug, which was call answering. Because people did understand that. And when I uncovered that is when I started to get some traction. So people started to understand what call. What people already knew what call answering was. But we started to get. I started to, it was still just me started to get people signing up for the call answering service. But in a typical entrepreneurial way, I was, you know, selling the dream before I'd built it yet. So the call answering service was actually just me doing a bunch of different accents. And eventually I made enough money to get like an intern and I had some help. And then I am a few. We, we baked in some upsell to the call answering. So other call answering companies, you know what they would do is they would say, can I take a message? And, um, and what I realized really quickly was I love talking to people. So I would kind of interview them on the phone and say, you know, is there any way I could help you? And when I found, I asked that question, is there any way I could help you? People would spill the beans. They would tell me what they were looking for. And usually it was really simple. Maybe it was a copy of a document, maybe it was just a very simple inquiry, you know, where is he? That kind of thing. And so when I realized we were getting that gold from people, I would actually start to upsell in the message when we would send it to our client by saying, hey, do you know that we can provide a service that can give your clients copies of invoice 1, 2, 3, 4 and would you like a free trial? And that's how I upsold the virtual assistants. That took, I want to say about two years, a long time. And then we've got like one client and then another client and another client. And then one day someone, a radio journalist did a seven minute segment on my business. He physically came down, he did an audio recording. It was before podcasts were huge. And he physically came to the office and it was a seven minute segment that aired on a Saturday morning and the Monday morning we, like I had a team by then, couldn't keep the phones answered. It just took off. All of a sudden this exposure came. All of a sudden we were the virtual assistant business. And then it just, that was, it just ran from there. There was a long time. Tumbleweed was lonely.
- [14:51]
B
Yeah, well, that's lonely. Okay, now there's like three things, three three paths to go down. The. What was interesting is when you talked about this idea of product market fit, like essentially what you did was you repackaged it. So when, when you said this, this notion of like a country or community that wasn't ready for this idea, virtual assistants and things like that. And then you were like, well, so then we just started picking up phones for them. And so it's like, it's like you sold at that point a managed service which fundamentally was the same exact thing that you were already selling. It was just you started selling the results instead of like the how or the why or the whatever that is.
- [15:32]
A
I mean, I wasn't sophisticated enough at the time to have put it as beautifully as you just did, but that's exactly what we did. So I'll take credit for that.
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B
That's. And like is that, and you talked about this idea of like you continue to layer in, layer in new services. Is it like you got a plate spinning and you're like, hey, we've got product market fit now. Now we're ready to introduce a new product or service. Like, what did that look like in, in real time?
- [15:57]
A
You know, I think the gods, whoever the gods are, were looking after me because it was a little bit more serendipitous than that. I wish I would have been smart enough to have come up with the idea. But what actually happened was some of the clients that we got through, virtual assistants, it started on a step by step. So we started to get inquiries like the, the my company name, Ms. Moneypenny. Was it lent. Obviously it lent itself very nicely to James Bond. So we had this very kind of sexy black and white branding. And I really love to be a little bit edgy. So one we, it just started with, we started to get calls for people who needed problems solved that were bigger than phones answered. They wanted to have, you know, instead of find me a plane ticket, it was find me a plane. So it just started to get be different problems. So I thought I saw this opportunity and you know, these people had friends and they are fairly small communities and they would refer us to their friends. And I saw this opportunity to do higher value work for a much higher ticket price. So we introduced this concierge service. And then that was ticking along nicely until we got the attention of there was a couple of US Senators that engaged us to do a one off project because they were coming to Ireland and one of my existing clients referred them on to us and we managed this sort of end to end project. I thought it would be a one off thing. And it went really well. They were really happy and they went back to the US and they told their friends. And then next thing we're getting calls from, you know, the Governor's office of Mississippi or whatever. And we just ended up getting into this trade mission business. And again it was the same thing. We were organizing, we were answering calls, we were, we, it was the same skill set, just higher, a bit higher end, way more money. And in the case of the trade missions, it involved the Secret Service, which was a big difference. And, and, and so again it was just stepping up by that. And then underneath all of that, what I did was I got into the telecoms game. So when we, I realized that I was missing a trick because we were answering the phones and keeping people on a call. But a lot of the people that would ring us, they didn't have a number to be contacted on other than their mobile. So they didn't have like an office number or anything. And they wanted to separate, as they were growing their little businesses, they wanted to separate personal from business. So I wanted the ability to be able to offer them a phone number as well and then bill them for the minutes. And so there was this telecoms revenue stream baked in as well. So that worked out pretty well.
- [18:17]
B
That's like, was there. Was there intentionality behind. And I'll give you a story, which is with, with our product, it's called recruiting as a service. And one of the things that we've realized over the last six months, and we knew that this was going to be an issue, but, you know, we, we kind of have an acquisition machine. We don't really have a retention machine. And that's because we're so down market with this recruiting as a service product that there's not an ongoing hiring need. So we have clients that come to us, we do great work for a few months, and then they go off and, and do their thing. They come back, which is great, but we can't, we can't really plan or, or, you know, project of when they're going to come back and sort of like, hey, we, we have to, we have to introduce a new service line, something that's like, more sticky. And we went down this whole thing because we focus on sales. We went down this whole thing where it was like, well, we're going to do sales training. This was a couple of months ago. We started to put together plans and think through it and it was like, oh, this is natural because we're hiring salespeople, then we keep them training, but we're not, we're not like sales trainers. And what was really interesting, as we went through this thought process, we were like, we're getting outside of our hedgehog or core competency, our, our niche, our purpose, kind of all these things. And so we wound up layering in, which is really funny to this conversation, like some sort of VA service, which is like nearshore professionals, nearshore staffing. When you tell the story, like, was there intentionality? Like, did you sit down and like, write this out and say, like, well, this is, this is our core focus and this is a natural extension of the competencies that we've built, or was it like, oh, well, here, here we go.
- [19:58]
A
Um, cool. Well, my eight quick start I don't really write much stuff down. I just, you know, ready, fire, aim. So. And I think I've always been that way. Now I forgive myself for it. So probably honestly, a little bit of both. I mean, I was strategic. I definitely. One thing I know I'm good at, and this is where eos, I guess, came in, is that I've. I'm, I'm good at seeing the thing long before it's sexy. Like, long before everyone gets it. So now you can swing a cat in Ireland and there's thousands of VAs everywhere. Like, 20 years ago, when I started it, no one even knew that term. And I got out when the crowd arrived. And it's the same with eos. I'm always happy to sit in the discomfort of being odd and weird and doing it first for a lot longer than anyone else's. I think. I don't care. I'm just happy to do it. And what happened back then, I think is honestly a little bit of both. Yes, the opportunities came to me, but when I sat. I mean, opportunities will come to me all the time, but I always had an instinct for, you know, of all the shiny things, that's the shiny thing I'm going to go after. And I also knew inside out and this, you know, you said you launched the sales trainer and then you had the va. Like you really, really are inside the heads of the people that are your clients. So that's what enables you, I think, to layer and stack profitable revenue streams on top of things because you understand their wants and needs and you understand what's missing and you're selling the full package. And that's, I think, what I was doing. I could see that my target client was. There were certain commonalities, but then I could see the nuances. So I was pretty good at saying, okay, what. You know, wherever somebody came in, I could sell them onto something else. It didn't really matter. Even if they came in at the highest end, I would be like, hey, what about, you know, what about a personal number that no one else has? Only your wife? Great. There's a telecom sale, you know, so it wasn't intentional consciously, but on another level, I think I, I was good at sifting what didn't work to find the diamond that did.
- [21:59]
B
And did you have in like as an 8. Quick start. Usually what that. What that does is just creates havoc and chaos all throughout the organization. Did. Did you have like a. Because it sounds like you, you discovered or learned about EOS later. So did you have somebody that was your integrator at the time.
- [22:16]
A
That was like, I had it. I had a procession of people who survived me.
- [22:23]
B
Yes. That's funny.
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A
Thankfully I'm still friends with and even one, one, one of my team members who you would have been in touch with was my first ever employee back then and so she's seen this chaos. So the stuff that you actually heard about, the stuff that bubbled to the surface and became profitable is the stuff that survived what you. No one hit. Like, you should see how many domain names I own. Like, I've had some terrible idea, yes, really awful ideas, but I went and bought the domain name anyway and I had it. You know, I was going to go and build that business and it was going to be like, some of them are humiliating, some of them are super embarrassing. And. But yeah, no, I had all the chaos. I didn't have anyone to do the follow through until I did. Like I had a collection of people that sort of did the follow through. But that's when I discovered it. When I did learn about eos, I realized that the missing piece of me had been that integrator. And I realized that if I had, if I had been educated and intelligent enough all the way back then, and if I had known that day one, I would have done things so much differently and probably would have achieved a lot more, a lot quicker and been more profitable for sure, because I wasted a ton of time spiraling and, you know, Tasmanian deviling my way through things.
- [23:30]
B
Do you think you'd still own it? Because, like, if you were sitting in your visionary seat and it was running itself and you're just cash flowing like, you think you would have kept it?
- [23:38]
A
I probably would have. I mean, there were definitely some, there were definitely some elements of it I fell out of love with for sure. And those were the pieces I sold first. Because I really think that when you start to like you, I think as a visionary you go in stages, right? You fall in love with your business and then you fall too in love with your business business. And then at some point you start to fall out of love with your business and then when you fall out of love with your business. I found for me at least, and I have seen it in my session rooms, you kind of become allergic to it and you become destructive for it. And that's what I was starting to do. I would think I was unconsciously self sabotaging, but if I had been more sophisticated, if I had been educated better, I think if I had known, I probably would have had that Brief that barrier between me and the business. And I could have seen it more objectively because when you're doing the quick start plus you're shoehorning yourself into the follow through. It's not good. It's not good. So I probably would, yeah, I'd probably still have some cash flowing pieces of it. I mean, yeah, maybe in a different lifetime.
- [24:38]
B
How do you see sabotaging kind of manifest. And, and I agree with you by the way. Like I, I've seen this throughout of all of, of my companies where sometimes I'm like, am I the one creating the chaos? Like am I doing this like subconsciously and intentionally? But I, I, I've never heard it put so openly of like you fall in love, think it's be too much and then, and then now you're like, don't want to do this anymore, so you start lighting fires. I can see a pattern with my own, with my own journey. But how does that manifest? How does that like what does that look like inside of a company?
- [25:11]
A
So inside of the company I think the, I saw with myself but I see with other people as well. Especially if I'm working with teams where they are at the lower end of the EOS target market where they're sort of still, you know, monetarily even the first way I saw it was cash money. My bank account was like, it was insane. Like as soon as I would start to get successful I would find some way to mess it up and I didn't even know I was doing it. There were times where I would, I would get like a really, I remember I would get some really, really amazing leads and it was like a fear of success or if a feeling of oh God, if I answer this or if I go back to them that means I've got to do it. And ugh, really I'm not loving this right now. So maybe I'll just let it sit for a bit. I'll get to it tomorrow. I'll get to it tomorrow. And procrastination, you know, I just see it manifesting in lots of little ways and if you're self aware enough, which I wasn't back then, you can kind of catch it. And that's where an integrator comes in. You can kind of delegate the looking after it to someone else and, and I think it may be, you know, maybe an act of self sabotage was not, you know, I never got funding because I didn't want to be beholden to anyone. I never actually went ahead and even though I didn't have the words for it. I should have looked for someone who was sitting in that integrator seat. I never did. Maybe that was self sabotage as well. There's probably countless different ways, if I was to look back and think about it, that I could uncover that and answer that question. But I now I'm just very self aware and I ask myself, when I find myself self sabotaging, I ask myself like, what's really behind it? What is it? Is it a success barometer that I'm pushing through? Is it a ceiling? You know, and it's weird because as implementers, well, I anyway, my, my colleagues are probably a lot more sophisticated than me, but I don't always practice what I preach. I get it wrong. So sometimes, obviously I'm human. And actually some of my team say, remember what you said? You know, they remind me, they eos me. So it's, it's kind of good to see it. Sometimes you have a mirror and you, you get it reflected back at you and then you can undo it.
- [27:17]
B
Another thing that you, you had said is, is there, is there anything that I can help you with? And then that was followed by did you know? Which the did you know? Thing is pretty interesting with kind of that whole, the whole outgrow thing that's the outgrowth movement that's happening and this question of like, did you know? Are there ways that like you still, it sounds like that was a kind of a key nugget to growth and product market fit and understanding the needs of clients and the problems that they were having. Does this still show up today? Like, have you used that? And like, not that it's a Jedi mind trick, but is this still something that you use today?
- [27:57]
A
Yeah, probably, but maybe with different words. I think ultimately it just boils down to the art of, well, two things, listening and caring. I mean, you can see someone who's struggling and you can choose to listen to the struggle and help them find a solution, or you can walk on by because you don't care. And I think I do it all the time. I think my struggle now is my, my tendency is I'm help first for sure. So I always want to just jump in and be the rescuer and fix and solve. So actually my struggle is to hold myself back and not do that because, you know, is there anything I can help you with? Well, of course, you're an entrepreneurial team. The list is endless. But the follow through of that is what I'm always tempted to quick start and then abandon. But the. Did you Know, piece. I'm not sure. Sure. Maybe in different ways, but not with that. Maybe not that wording. I have to listen to myself. I'm not sure.
- [28:54]
B
When, When. When you were going through. Through all this and like, the ups, the downs, the. The sideways, like, did you have it. You didn't have EOs? Did you have a community? Did you have a network of EO Vistage, like, anything like that as you were growing this with a. Like, folks that may have been there, done that, or were you just charting a brand new course?
- [29:16]
A
Yeah, well, I had. When I was growing with Moneypenny, I had a community like a. Like, it was a local business, but we had an international client base, so I had a local community. And they're still my friend. Like, you know, I'm in the same place now for a really long time, which is different than how I grew up. So, you know, I see people around, so that was physically a community. I was also in BNI in the early stages of business. So BNI was a lovely community. It was the same people every week. But towards the end of Ms. Moneypenny, I discovered EO, and I joined EO as well. And that for me has been my. That's my church, that's my religion. You know, I'm in the same forum in EO now for seven years. Eight years. Seven years. A long time. Anyway, and it's eight men and me, so we meet obviously once a month. Actually, we went to Ibiza for our retreat a couple of years back, and I had a lot of fun telling my friends that I was going away for a week to Ibiza with eight men just to see people's faces. It was very funny. But, yeah, no, EO has probably been my biggest and most transformational, defining, really, really huge and important part of my life, actually. My forum for sure. And then now my. My EOS community. Now, I know they weren't for me back then because I didn't know them, but it's the same kind of thing that translates.
- [30:33]
B
And one of the reasons that I do this, do this podcast. So EOS changed my life. And I used to have a company called Hunt a Killer. We sold it, I think it was last year, last January, and it was Vistage and EOS that completely changed the game. And so when the company sold and I got into this, I was looking for ways to kind of stay tied to it because all of the. Everybody seems to share the same values. And this kind of gets into, like, the company side of things as well, where it's like, it's a. It's a community of people that, that want to help first, want to help their clients solve problems, things like that. But it just seems like most folks have seen the light and it's impacted them in some way. Like when you said her name was Julie, right?
- [31:20]
A
Julia. Julia.
- [31:22]
B
Julia.
- [31:22]
A
He's amazing.
- [31:23]
B
So when Julia. When Julia came to you and was like, hey, you should check out this thing, did she hand you a book and say like, like, go read it. Get back to me. Like, how, Where. Where did. Where were you first? Like, this is incredible.
- [31:34]
A
Actually, Julia and I have a mutual friend and I'd kind of cross paths with her. She's. We'd met. I'm trying to think exactly how it came about was I chased her down. I was curious. I was like, hey, what you doing? We came in conversation and then she pointed me in the direction of the books and she said, read it and tell me what you think. So I did. And I was like, this is interesting. And then I was. It was like I was. I was committed for sure. But I just, I. Again, is that the quick start? I'm not sure because I retraction and I read Get a Grip and they're both very different. And then I started to consume the material and then I took some space because that's just how my brain learns. And I did nothing about it. And then I came back and revisited and it felt like the right fit. And then the more I saw, the more I saw. And then I realized there was more to see. And I could see for me that it was definitely a pathway for, like, you can never stop learning doing this. Never. You all, like, I. I always feel stupid because of how little I realize. I know, but you just never stop learning. And it was just. I was hooked. As soon as I got it, I was hooked for sure.
- [32:38]
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 ZipRecruiter 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 engagement 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@talentharbor.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. When, when you talk about the never stop learning, there was maybe, maybe a few weeks ago, I was having a conversation with someone, someone. And what was really interesting is he was like, you know it the first, call it like 50 or 100 sessions. Like you're in the back of your brain, you're like, you're talking to yourself and you're like, oh, am I going to remember this? And like you're, you're following the materials and everything else. And then he was like, like, you know, 100 to 300. You're like, okay, I don't, I don't need to reference the materials. Like, I, I, I got the hang of this now. And he's like, it's this constant journey of just up and down. Like, where have you seen the same thing? And kind of where are you in, in that, that trajectory?
- [34:37]
A
100%. I couldn't have put that better. I mean, in my first what, what I did, because again, I was the only one. I was going out and I was working with some of my friends, companies and I didn't want anything in exchange for it. I just wanted to get my reps in, which is what I teach my boot campers now as well. But I would, I would deliver it like a session and I would like run to the bathroom with my folder and I swatting and I, oh my God, what do I do? Nayla? So it was just this learning. It was awful. And then you kind of, you get it. Yeah. So the first zero to 100 sessions. Yeah, I'm on. I, so I had this again, like miss Money. Penny. Slow, slow, slow. And then like this. And then it was like a couple of inflection points and I accelerated. I've accelerated different parts of my journey the last two years. I've had a really, really busy couple of years. And I was surprised to see, I think I'm at 400, 412 sessions now. But the distribution of that was not even. I might be getting that number slightly wrong, but that my team will tell me. But I know I'm definitely well over 300. But the distribution wasn't even. They've been clumped together in batches. And of course, as you know, the annual plannings are. They're two days. And the way that the year is distributed is not. It's not always even. Hence, you know, I'm here for six weeks. So, yeah, no, it's. It's been unevenly distributed, but it's definitely been on that pathway. But I can completely identify with that because you have this. This learning curve. And then when. Just when you think you've got it nailed, you realize, oh, my God, look at all this other stuff. Just when you think you've got that nailed, you meet someone who makes you feel really stupid and it's just like, oh, not intentionally. You're like, oh, wow, okay, well, I thought I had it, and I don't. And for me, it's actually, those meetings for me are important because of where I am and the fact that I'm physically, you know, my. I see my community in London once every quarter. And then in February, when I can. I'll go to the us but it can be. There was two years where for six months I didn't meet any other implementer in person. And for me, I found that really hard. But when I go to the us, you see what's really possible. And have you. I don't know if you've interviewed Jonathan yet, jbs, but he's. Oh, he's. He's like. And Scott Rosnath, like, they've got more than a thousand. It's insane. Thousand sessions. And I talk to them, and just when I think I know it. It, they. They say one sentence and I was like, back to the bottom of child hill again. What do I know? So, yeah, it's. It's a. It's a humbling journey. It's an extraordinarily ongoing humbling journey, for sure.
- [37:04]
B
And jbs, I think on Saturday, he was sending me photos from his. From his rooftop.
- [37:09]
A
Right? That's him.
- [37:11]
B
His, like, little. His little walk. And. And like, he. Wait, both of them get after it. And Scott, Scott, I had on the show maybe about a year ago, and when we were talking, I was like, man, does this. Does this guy sleep?
- [37:23]
A
No, I know, it's like Uracelle Bunny.
- [37:30]
B
Yeah. I'm like, I thought, you know, I thought I'd move fast and do things, but, like, no. And then. Have you read Scott's book, because I know it. It got like taken off Amazon, but he's.
- [37:39]
A
Yeah, age is an age ago he sent. But I mean, I've spent every time. I only see Scott once a year in February. And when I say I see him, I mean I see the blur of him because he runs around. If I'm lucky, I get to have a coffee with him. But, yeah, we stay in touch. And he is. His story is incredible. And you wouldn't know it if you just met him on the street. You'd never know it. The stuff that's in his book, stuff that he talked, you just never would know it when you talk to him. He's just incredible. Same with jbs. He's amazing.
- [38:08]
B
What are some challenges, and not in a negative way, but what are some things that US businesses and things that are normal to us are very different and where. Maybe not necessarily like eos and the implementation of eos, but maybe some challenges specifically to Ireland or some things that you see where you've got to bring kind of a different perspective to the table.
- [38:29]
A
Yeah, well, time and money, basically, as in. So in the US, so in Ireland, everything is 10x, right? So Ireland is US 10x 20x everything. And it's just quite hard because I kind of have a foot in both camps. It's hard for people to get their heads around because we're constantly. We're very insular. It's a small island, fairly small business community, but we're relying on exports and imports. Right. And we're relying on tourism. And a number of my clients are in the tourism space as well. So they kind of see it. So understanding the difference between the economy, sometimes I have to wait and click. Like it has to click sometimes. But then the other thing is probably more. So that's the money piece, probably more of a challenge than anything else is time. So as an implementer, I'll speak. So, as I said, I'm one of the. I'm the sprint coach for new boot campers. And so myself and my colleague Martin will train the new bootcampers. And there's a schedule that we say, okay, well, we'd love that. You could grow your practice by, you know, this much per month. Like, you have this amount of clients per month and this amount of clients per year. If you do these things, A plus B equals C. That should make a lot of sense. And in America it does. Does it translate in the UK and the rest of Europe? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It again, you get out what you put in. But In Ireland, I speak to implementers in America that they'll have a 90 and then like the next day they'll be like, yeah, Focus day booked is next week in Ireland. I could get a call and maybe the 90 minute meeting might be a month or two months later and then they'll decide on the focus day and that will be three months after that. And sometimes that's to do with the industry and seasonality. Like as I said, no one starts anything in July or August. Doesn't make any sense. And other times that's to do with the, okay, we need to think about this because it's quite new, feels American, we've got to just sit with it for a while and noodle on it. But then when people do, they're just, they're converts. It's like a church. But it's just the time and the money thing, money takes a while to click. But then the time is just longer. The conversion time, the onboarding time, the you know, Focus Day, VB1BB, all of that just takes a little longer. Good bit longer.
- [40:41]
B
Sometimes does implementation also and not, not from a time standpoint when we're looking at, at like how to book or how to schedule things. But do you also find that, that clients stay with you longer than that two year graduation just based upon like the, the ramp up time that it takes for the implementation?
- [41:00]
A
It's so it's less about time than it is about the relationships. So one of the things that takes time in Ireland, and this is actually probably it's the same thing as what happened in Miss Moneypenny. It took people time. So as I said, I'm half Irish, half Indian. But when I was building Ms. Moneypenny, the first question I'd be asked is so where are you from? And then I'd be saying, well, the town. And then they'd say, no, no, where are you really from? And what they're really asking is who are you related to and who do I know that knows you? And then they want to validate you. And it took a long time for that to happen. Now with eos, it's, it's not so much the same thing because I've probably got a bigger personal brand, I'm in business a lot longer. But it's more about, oh, what is this EOS thing? I just want to make sure it's right for me. So when, when people have gone on that journey and in the session rooms and other implementers will probably tell you this and I am a falling in love person. So I fall in love with my teams and I probably shouldn't. Glad this is called Confessions of an Implementer because that's one mod would probably have my head. But I love my teams. I really love my teams. And yeah, they want to stay, you know, past graduation past. And yes, sometimes it's because of the speed of adoption, sometimes that happens. But mostly it's okay. We've built relationships in the room and you know, I'm always entering the dangers so we really get to know each other and I'm, you know, I always ask them for open, honest, vulnerable and I promise that my teams get that from me as well. And so that there's a relationship. There's, you know, and I team, I have teams that have graduated and I get invited to parties and you know, we're still in touch. We're still in touch. It's, it's transcended. So it's deepen, it's deeper than just an implementation of eos. It gets way deeper and it's a small place so everyone knows each other.
- [42:46]
B
What's, what's kind of your, your take on, on the, to your graduation? Like even when we came up to it, like we didn't, we didn't quote unquote, graduate because I think there was, there's so much value and you, you spoke about the relationships aspect and I agree. And there's a certain like comfort and other things where the other place in which I saw the greatest value is you get an outsider's perspective that's truly not inside of the business. And, and like I have found that that is invaluable. And so like how do you look at that to your graduation? And, and do you see it as like a, a benefit when they keep you around like where's, where are you at on that?
- [43:23]
A
I mean for sure, like I said, although I've graduated my teams, I don't think there's a single team that I can think of that I'm not still connect. Like they don't still bounce things off me now and again. But for sure some of the teams I've graduated would, they'll say, okay, once a year just come in for a tune up or come in for an annual or come in for one quarterly. And when we do that session day, they say the exact same thing. They say, oh, it's just having the external pair of eyes, someone who's unbiased and non judgmental and that can see things we can't see. And I agree with that. I think that we all need that, right? We all need the external mirror. We all need someone to see the forest from the trees. We can't see that for ourselves. So I think for a company, especially when I've been with them on that journey and I've watched them develop and seen their team members come and go, and now this is where they're at. That 90 day gap is enormously valuable. You know what it is? It's a little like when you see someone who's losing weight but you don't see them for a while. They can, you know, they can. I always say this, day by day, nothing changes, but one day you look back and everything's different. So my team, they're the day by day bit, right? But the one day you look back and everything's different. That's me. So I'll come into the room and I'll say, hey, look, you know, the gap in the gain. Look actually how far you've come, or in some cases not, but let's, let's call it out. But look how far you've come. Look what's going on. Don't forget, like, don't. And usually it's in the spirit of that. It's about acknowledging how far they've come, it's acknowledging their journey and how much they've progressed. So I really agree with that. I think that there's a lot of benefit in having an external person come in and see things as they really are. When on the other side, the team are emotionally invested, you know, they've all sorts of other things going on and they can't necessarily see it that way themselves.
- [45:10]
B
Like when you're going into a team, are there like, kind of like that 80, 20 principle, is there something like when you're getting a team up to speed on EOs, maybe you're in some of the early vision building days where it's like, it's pretty consistent. We're going to hit some issues right here. What would you say, like that most common issue, one or two of them.
- [45:29]
A
Are, oh, elephants in the room. It doesn't matter what the. Every business has predictable stuff. Every business has predictable stuff. That's the stuff that's technical and can be fixed and that's what the tools for the elephants in the room. Team dynamics, dynamic team health, People always people. Wrong people, right seat. Right people, wrong seat. Accountability. Those are the consistent things. The elephants in the room. And after a team, if they, if they progress and once they settle and once they get the right people in the right room with them, and open, honest conversations. That's, that's the rocket fuel stuff. You know, that's, that's amazing when especially that as you know Mark Winters talks about it in his books the right people, right seat, the visionary integrator being right people, right seat in both of those seats. It's just, it's amazing. So the consistent thing I see team health people, just the progression of that elephants in rooms. It's the number one way if you can have those difficult conversations, that's how you progress.
- [46:31]
B
What are some of the ways in which you will bring, you will build the environment so that teams can actually open up? Because we hear about this all the time. It's like if people only said what needed to be said, we could resolve so many issues and then I'll just go home for the day and problem solved. How do you create those environments to really start getting people talking?
- [46:56]
A
Oh, so I'm about to answer the question you asked me earlier because I've just answered it for myself. You know, the did you know? Thing. I do ask it. I do ask it. Did you know that when you answered that you closed your arms and crossed your legs. Did you know that you couldn't, you were eye blocking that person. You couldn't look at them when you were talking. You know, did you know? So I would actually mirror stuff because people, you know, I, I know not what I do. People don't do things. People give away so much more in, in the silence around them and by their non verbals than, than they do with their mouths. So many people will listen with their mouths and I choose to try not to do that. I'm not perfect like I'm human but for me how do I create the environment is. And sometimes I don't realize I'm doing it and I do it to my friends and they hate me for it but I try not to do it. And also I have no filter. I like what come. This is why this was a light dangerous live stream because what's here is coming out here. But so I'll just say what I see and that's probably one thing and the other thing is you know, being in this is, it's, it's kind of cross pollinating some of the EO stuff. Being in a forum for such a long time and I recently just did my forum facilitator training which I've been doing, working on for a long, long time. So you learn these techniques and you kind of, they become your normal and you, you don't realize that you're doing it. So you're just making sure that it's safe. I'm very big on confidentiality. We have to feel safe. We have to make sure that we're all right. If we feel safe, we can be vulnerable. And just making, saying those things outright sometimes is enough. And there's some technical tools as well. You can have the on game like you can have cards, you can have ways you bring it out in your team, health exercises for teams that have been together a long time. But generally I call out the stuff that I see for sure.
- [48:53]
B
When you were, when you were kind of coming up the ranks and you had, you had just gone out and went through boot camp and came out and you're ready to go do this, what's the best piece of advice that you got as you were kind of on this journey?
- [49:08]
A
Oh, just keep picking up the phone. Julia told me just, it's simple. It's super simple. So when you do boot camp. So my role in bootcamp for my bootcamp graduates is I'm what's called a 180 day sprint coach. So I stay with them for 180 days and I coach them along and I make sure that they're doing that before they start that sprint. They get. It's amazing. Training, like EOS implemented training is just absolutely superb. We get a checklist of things that you just need to do and it's so simple, it seems stupid. And you know, I get calls from my, my newbies all the time and they're like, oh, I'm not getting this and I'm not getting that. And I'm like, did you do the checklist? Did you do the checklist? Did you? Simple, simple. Like it's just all the simple stuff. So back in the day, yeah, I wasn't, I. Well, I didn't do the checklist. That's why I became a sprint coach. I said, I've made if I can do this by myself in this, like anyone can do it. If I can get a practice off the ground, anyone can do it. So follow the basics. Just do the basics. Pick up the phone, have relationships, understand, listen and help first. Like when you get to know the tools, you're not there to, to sell for me. I'm always about if I can help someone, if I can help the person I'm in front of with one of the tools. Good. It's all good. We'll come back to me in another way. But just. And the other, the other big thing I'd say is never stop learning like, just never stop learning. You can never get so confident. You think you know it all. You never even. I think, Peyton, Emily, like, they would all say that they're always learning, they're amazing. So I'd never stop learning for sure.
- [50:45]
B
What do you look for in clients? Like, have you found, have you found that, like, the staffing and business service side is your sweet spot? Are you agnostic? Like, what, what do you look for in a great, in a great client?
- [50:57]
A
Oh, they have to be able to be open, honest and vulnerable. I can tell by the first conversation. Like, are they for me or are they for someone else? If they can't, if they can't have a conversation about more than just the weather, then we're going nowhere. Because that tells me an awful lot about how they lead their team. And people look to their leaders for a measurement of how they should behave, a barometer. And if the team leader and also stuff that they'll be like, well, you know, don't tell them, but this is what I want. And I'm kind of like, well, okay, now are you going to tell them all I. What's going on? So if they communicate open, honest and vulnerably, for me, that's the deal breaker because we're just going to spend a ton of their time and money dancing, dancing around the truth until one year in, we'll get it and then it'll be like, all the lights, oh, wow, we finally get it now. Why didn't we figure this out sooner? I just never want to be the implementer in the room of the team that says, well, why don't you tell us sooner? You know, just never want to be that person. So for me, if they can't have a real conversation about real things and really what's going on in their business, if they haven't got the ability to be courageous and open and honest, then, then that's a problem. I can't. It's just not for me.
- [52:12]
B
And do you, do you primarily focus on Ireland or are you. Do you do virtual sessions? What about geographically?
- [52:21]
A
Yeah, so I have Irish teams and I do do virtuals and largely I have, um. Virtual is necessary because so many teams are remote now. So they're, you know, they might be based in Ireland on paper, but actually they're all over the place. And then I have a handful of teams then that I'll physically go to or if they'll come to me. So annual season teams come to me. I couldn't do annuals away. Like, I wouldn't See my family for three months. If I did that, it wouldn't make sense. So teams will come to me. But yeah, no, I probably 50% of my teams physically in Ireland and then the rest are either virtual or elsewhere. I get to see some pretty cool places. It's great.
- [52:59]
B
And so it sounds like what you look for in a team is like willing to enter the danger zone, willing to have the conversations that need to be had. Honest, open, candid, anywhere, geographically. 50% sounds like it's in Ireland. How about industry? Is there a specific industry or like business is business?
- [53:19]
A
No, it's B2B. I will say that there's. Because of, by virtue of the fact I'm in Ireland, I've got, you know that there are a number of tourism companies because the country is dependent on tourism for a large part of its income. Wealth management as well has started to bubble up as well. And, but it's, it's, it is industry agnostic. What's interesting, I think, is that through my Miss Moneypenny days, I probably worked with every industry and every type of entrepreneur under the sun. So, I mean, I know a little bit about everything, you know, not a lot, but I can, you know, confidently have a conversation about plumbing to get me past a certain point or, you know, access control systems. Like, it's, it's quite bizarre. So I just, but it's not really. The only pocket really is probably the tourism and the wealth management, they've started to bubble up. But tourism is by virtue of location.
- [54:09]
B
Okay, so someone just listened to this and they're like, I need to talk to Ronnie. Like this is. She is the implementer for me. How would they get ahold of you?
- [54:18]
A
Yeah, sure. So just message me on LinkedIn. I have my microsite as well, my EOS microsite. Just put in Rani debray, EOS implementer Ireland. That will come up. But I'm Quite active on LinkedIn and you can find me, you can find me on either one of those two places.
- [54:36]
B
Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate it. And taking a break from your current break, that's a lot, so thank you.
- [54:45]
A
No, thank you. It's been great chatting to you.