S2E22 | Beyond Revenue: Redefining Success In Business with Michael Richman

Summary

Confessions of an Implementer – S2E22

Beyond Revenue: Redefining Success In Business with Michael Richman
Host: Ryan Hogan
Guest: Michael Richman
Release Date: November 12, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the true meaning of business success beyond just growing revenue, as Ryan Hogan interviews Michael Richman—serial entrepreneur, EOS Implementer, and current President of EO Los Angeles. The discussion covers Michael’s entrepreneurial journey, lessons learned building and selling a family business, the transformative power of EOS, evolving definitions of success, and insights into facilitation, legacy planning, and adapting to new technologies like AI.

Michael reveals the realities of working within a family business, the pivotal role of community through EO (Entrepreneurs’ Organization), and offers practical advice on implementation, partnership, exiting a business, and embracing what it means to "get more of what you want" from your company.

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Main Discussion Points and Insights

What Does Success in Business Really Mean?

• Success Isn’t Just Revenue:

  • Michael emphasizes that business owners often seek more than money—such as freedom to travel, peace of mind during vacations, or time with family.
  • "What EOS is, is it gives you more of what you want from your business… Some of them it is to grow revenue, and that’s great. But some of them it’s not." – Michael [00:00], [33:23]

• Redefining Metrics:

  • Owners may prioritize personal freedom, operational independence, or building a legacy, rather than simply chasing top-line growth.

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Entrepreneurial Journey: From Family Business to EOS

• Origins in Entrepreneurship:

  • Michael’s family history spans milk delivery (with a legendary mob connection) and awning manufacturing.
    • "Entrepreneurship, I think, was in the blood in the family." – Michael [08:59]
    • Anecdote: His grandfather’s role in bootlegging during Prohibition for Meyer Lansky. [09:00]

• Entering the Cabana & Awning Business:

  • Initially a commercial banker, Michael moved into his father’s business after another acquisition fell through.
  • He bought out one partner, becoming 50-50 co-owners with his father. [11:09]

• Lessons in Running/Niching Out Business:

  • Focused on scaling through process and relationships (e.g., landing accounts like Carl’s Jr. and Panda Express), not technical expertise in manufacturing.
    • "We knew how to run a business and how to grow a business. We knew how to look at new products and bring those into the business." – Michael [13:13]

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Implementing EOS: Self-Implementation vs. Professional Support

• Self-Implementation Experience:

  • Michael implemented EOS himself after reading Traction, finding immediate clarity—“it turned the lights on" in his business.
  • Realized later the value of having a third-party facilitator for honest conversations and team health.
    • "Having a third party in that room changes everything." – Michael [04:00]
    • Example: Closely evaluating roles revealed a beloved staff member was underperforming, leading to positive and honest transitions. [21:27]

• The Value an Implementer Brings:

  • Third-party EOS Implementers ask tough questions, force candid dialogue, and help dig into root causes.
    • "We’re all implementing the same material, but the differentiating factor is the way we facilitate and we’re able to ask those hard questions." – Michael [04:48]

• Common EOS Outcomes:

  • Turnover on leadership teams is common as right people/right seats are clarified.
    • "I see it definitely a lot more being an implementer now… there’s major turnover in teams when we start really implementing." – Michael [24:51]
  • Businesses become far more valuable and ‘turnkey’ through process documentation and strengthening core values.
    • "When they were able to come in and buy the company, all of a sudden we had everything documented... All the processes were written down and it allowed the new ownership to come in and say, okay, here are the keys, we just need to put in the ignition and drive." – Michael [23:36]

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Navigating Family Partnerships and Exits

• On 50-50 Partnerships:

  • Michael insisted on an equal split to prevent feeling like an employee.
    • "I refused to buy the business unless we were 50/50 partners, because otherwise I’d always feel like an employee… I didn’t think that was healthy for the business." – Michael [18:26]
  • Decision-making as equals (sometimes one wins, sometimes the other).

• Building To Sell:

  • Focused on building value through great service and product, knowing this would lead to acquisition interest.
    • "We knew that if we did that, we’d have an acquisition." – Michael [17:14]
  • Their sale emerged from an EO connection—consultants preparing them for sale ultimately became buyers.

• Biggest Lesson from the Sale:

  • New owners quickly veered from established processes and failed, leading to bankruptcy.
    • "Try not to deviate from the processes too quickly… Really going into a business and understanding why certain things were done is really the way it should be done." – Michael [36:01], [37:31]
  • Ryan notes many new owners can’t resist “tinkering,” often at the business’s peril.

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Life After Exit: Coaching, Facilitating, Giving Back

• Transition to EOS Implementation and Facilitation:

  • Inspired by coaching and supporting others (EO, USC, Mastermind groups), Michael leaned into helping business owners find fulfillment—not just profit.
    • "I love coaching. I love helping business owners. So what should I do with the rest of my life? I should help business owners get more of what they want from their business." – Michael [26:32]

• Facilitating Mastermind Groups:

  • Leads both high-net-worth and industry-specific (e.g., T-shirt printers) groups to tackle issues from legacy planning to technical troubleshooting.
    • "A group of people getting together and understanding what they do and being able to help each other." – Michael [28:23]

• Common Challenges Post-Exit:

  • What does success mean? How to leave money to the next generation? What comes next?
    • "What does my legacy look like? What am I gonna do next? I’m antsy after owning a business and selling a business." – Michael [30:15]

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The Art of Facilitation and Listening

• Keys to Great Facilitation:
  • Curiosity and the skill of asking questions that dig deeper.
    • "Curiosity. You have to want to know the next piece of information… really force them to dig down into what does this mean?" – Michael [31:04]
  • Ryan shares the importance of not scripting your next question in your head, but being present in the conversation. [31:56]

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Technology, Change, and Looking Ahead

• On Implementing Change as a Buyer:

  • Michael cautions new owners—observe first, act slowly (90-180 days) to avoid unnecessary disruption.
    • He shares real-world consequences of switching from handwritten orders to computerized systems prematurely.

• Reflections on AI:

  • AI’s pace is unprecedented; many business owners fear being left behind.
    • "We’ve never lived in a time period like this… four years ago, three years ago nobody knew what AI was and now everybody feels like they can’t get by a day without using AI." – Michael [43:05]
  • Recommends business owners focus on integrating AI in meaningful, practical ways relevant to their operations; don’t follow AI hype if it doesn’t fit.

• Looking for Businesses to Buy:

  • Sees opportunity in niche, boomer-owned businesses lacking succession plans.
    • "These are businesses that are wildly successful… There’s a lot of them out there that don’t know what to do next and how to graduate or retire." – Michael [41:07]

• Business Acquisition Advice:

  • Recommends old-school outreach (cold letters, networking) over high-tech or AI-driven searches when looking for acquisition opportunities.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Value Beyond Revenue:
  • "What EOS is, is it gives you more of what you want from your business. Some of them it is to grow revenue, and that’s great. But some of them it’s not." – Michael [00:00], [33:23]
• On Partnerships:
  • "I refused to buy the business unless we were 50/50 partners, because otherwise I’d always feel like an employee." – Michael [18:26]
• On Honest Conversation:
  • "Having a third party in that room changes everything." – Michael [04:00]
• On the Risk of Fast Changes:
  • "Going in there and changing things out… Try not to deviate from the processes too quickly." – Michael [36:01]
• On Curiosity and Facilitation:
  • "Curiosity. You have to want to know the next piece of information…" – Michael [31:04]
• On Legacy:
  • "What does my legacy look like? What am I gonna do next? I’m antsy after owning a business and selling a business. How do I kind of itch that scratch?" – Michael [30:15]

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Key Timestamps

• [00:00] – Redefining business success: what EOS truly delivers.
• [02:02] – Michael’s EO journey and initial foray into entrepreneurship.
• [04:00] – Realizing the limitations of self-implementing EOS.
• [08:59] – The Richman entrepreneurial legacy: milk distribution in NYC.
• [11:09] – Structuring family partnerships and leadership roles.
• [13:13] – Scaling niche manufacturing: strategies that work.
• [18:26] – 50/50 partnerships: dynamics and lessons.
• [21:27] – EOS as a tool for “turning the lights on” in business.
• [23:36] – The value of process and documentation in a sale.
• [26:32] – Michael’s “second act” as a facilitator and coach.
• [30:15] – Universal challenges for entrepreneurs post-exit.
• [31:04] – Facilitation as a skill rooted in curiosity.
• [33:23] – The real result EOS offers: freedom, clarity, choice.
• [36:01] – Lessons from a failed handoff: don’t rush change post-acquisition.
• [41:07] – Opportunities in boomer-owned niche businesses.
• [43:05] – On the rise and reality of AI adoption in traditional business.

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Final Takeaways

• Business success is as much about fulfillment and freedom as about growth—define what “more” means for you.
• Honest facilitation (internally and externally) is crucial for clarity, health, and value in leadership teams.
• The best time to make changes is after you understand the business’s history—don’t “tinker” prematurely after a sale.
• There are still rich opportunities in traditional, overlooked businesses, especially those with looming succession gaps.
• AI is powerful, but practicality should drive implementation—not fear or hype.

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Connect with Michael Richman

• Website: MichaelRichman.me

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(For clarity and readability, some quotes are lightly edited for length while preserving the original language and tone.)

Transcript

[A]

But one of the things I find interesting about being an implementer is a lot of people say, oh, well, how much revenue did you grow the company by? But sometimes what I find is my clients aren't necessarily looking to grow the revenue they might be looking for. How do I go on vacation for two weeks or three weeks and not be worrying about my business all the time and not have to pick up my phone every five minutes and not enjoy my vacation? That might be what they're looking for. So I always say what EOS is, is it gives you more of what you want from your business. Some of them it is to grow revenue. And that's great.

[B]

But.

[A]

But some of them it's not.

[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. Michael, thank you so much for joining us on the first ever in studio live recorded Confessions of an Implementer.

[A]

I love it. This is so fun. So fun.

[B]

So when I was looking at place, there's a couple. There's a couple stories here. One, we both had to wear pants this morning because, you know, we.

[A]

First time in months. For me.

[B]

That'S what I was telling you earlier is like, I. I looked at my calendar this morning and I was like, oh, get to see Michael today. This is gonna be. It's gonna be great. Wait a minute. This isn't Riverside. This is an actual address. There we were. So here was. Here was. One other thing is, like, when I was looking at studios, this place is amazing. It is like the highest class studio I've ever seen. Also, there have been like, Ashton Kutcher, I think, was sitting right in your seat.

[A]

Ashton Kutcher was here?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

They've got huge names.

[A]

Okay. So now, I mean, obviously I'm a bigger name than Ashton Kutcher, so makes me. Makes me proud to be in his seat.

[B]

That's good. Okay. All right. So I'm trying to figure out where even to start in this. You actually recently took over as president of EO?

[A]

Yeah, EO Los Angeles. I took over July 1st.

[B]

That's awesome. How long have you been a part of eo?

[A]

I've been a part of EO for about seven years now, almost eight. And EO really started my journey into where I am today. So can I take a minute and share that?

[B]

Yes, please.

[A]

So EO, I joined EO in 2018. I owned my own business, we owned a manufacturing business where we made commercial poolside cabanas and commercial awnings. And I joined EO and I was really looking for a community. Actually, my best friend who worked for me at the time, she said to me, michael, you're sitting there and you're having conversations with yourself all day. You need to be having conversations with other business owners. And so I looked around and I found EO and, and I joined eo and all of a sudden now I have this community, these other business owners that I could speak to that are dealing with some of the same issues as I am. And while I was in my forum, which is a small group that meets once a month of about eight people, people said to me, you have to read this book, Traction. And I said, I've had consultants, I've had coaches come through my facility and I end up paying a lot more than the value I get. And they said, no, this book is different. And so I read it and I loved it. The simplicity of it was just life changing for me. I said, I can implement these things and everybody's going to understand them. There's nothing in here that's so complicated that I need Gantt charts or things of that nature. This will just be something that everybody can really wrap their arms around. So fast forward, I implemented it into my company and in hindsight I should have hired an implementer. And I'm not just saying that because I am an implementer, but I should have hired an implementer. And I still, still was able to implement it into the company. And we ended up having a very successful exit about three and a half years ago.

[B]

Wow, that's incredible. So when you were self implementing, were you like, I know what we're doing, we've got this all put together?

[A]

Yeah. I would say that I felt like I knew what I was doing, but I also feel like some of the conversations that would have happened, especially being an implementer now, and I see the conversations that would have happened that are different because I was standing at the front of the room, I feel like even though people like myself think that they're open and honest and that everybody's gonna be sharing whatever they feel in their hearts and whatever they feel about your company, the truth of the matter is they're not gonna be sharing those things because you're at the front of the room and they're afraid to share those things because they don't wanna lose their job or lose a bonus or whatever the case may be. So having A third party in that room changes everything.

[B]

And what are some of the ways, the strategies, the techniques that you're able to come in and really change that dynamic in the room or create the safe space to really draw out those conversations?

[A]

Yeah, I mean that's one of the most important things I do. Look, at the end of the day, you're talking to a lot of implementers. We're all implementing the same material, but the beauty and the differentiating factor is the way we facilitate and we're able to ask those hard questions, we're able to dive into the danger zone. And when we see something, rather than just kind of letting it slide, letting it go to the ether, we're able to go in there and really dig into what's the problem? What is the root cause of why you're feeling the way you are feeling?

[B]

Yeah, that's, it's so interesting when you talk about the self implementation because. So we wound up going with Margaret Dixon out of Boulder, Colorado for my last company, Hunt A Killer. We had discovered I was a part of Vistage at the time. Dan Wallace came through my Vistage group in Seattle in like 2017 and, and so we self implemented. And I had the same kind of reaction that you had, which is I went, I read the book and I was like, this is easy, like we can self implement. And it was a game changer for the business. Like my, my first company, which was called Run for your Lives, a zombie infested 5K obstacle course race, it, it grew very fast and then it bankrupted. And one of the things I like to talk about with Hunt A Killer is like, we were able to get over that 10, $15 million threshold because of EOS, but we self implemented. And I thought, I was like, we're masters at this. We went eventually, once we thought we could afford it, we got Margaret Dixon and the first thing, we walk into her session room in Boulder and she was like, what the hell are you guys doing? And so EOS had a, a significant impact on the business just through self implementation. And then when we went through actual implementation, it was like a whole nother transformation at that point.

[A]

Yeah, I see that a lot. I walk into places and they say, oh, I tried, I tried doing my VTO or I tried doing the core value. But when I'm really able to give examples, real world examples, and show them some of the differentiating factors in what they're talking about and how I could help them, they're really able to say, okay, this is a good investment.

[B]

Yep, Yep. So just to. Just to rewind us back a little bit. Cause you talked about a cabana company. Is that correct?

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[B]

How does. This is one of the things I was thinking on my drive here. I was like, how. How does one get into the cabana business?

[A]

Yeah, it was a family business.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

So my father bought the company from two partners who were making commercial tents. And, well, he stayed partners with them, actually, but he bought half of the business. They were making commercial tents and they had all these ancillary businesses that would do some of the. Use some of the equipment and do some of the things that they didn't do. So they had a carpet business for outdoor events and different things like that. And they had this struggling awning business that was doing residential awnings. We're doing some commercial awnings. My dad came in and bought it about 30 years ago, and he ran it. And about now, 15, 17 years ago, whatever the case may be, I was looking to buy a business and I was actually in escrow to buy a sign installation business. And as soon as I was in escrow and driving literally to the office to hand them the check, the guy called me and said, you know what? Cold feet. I don't want to retire. And so I said, well, what am I going to do now? Because I knew I wanted to own a business and. And my father said, well, why don't you come work for me? And I said, family business. Me working for you? That doesn't sound like a good idea. So I said, what if I owned the business? And he said, well, why don't you make my partners an offer and see if you could buy the business? And so I made his partners an offer and they accepted and I bought the business.

[B]

Wow, that's incredible. Before you got into business with your father, had like summertimes, were you working for the business? Internships?

[A]

Actually, before I bought the business, I was a commercial banker. And so I saw a lot of, you know, I saw a lot of businesses come through the door. I saw a lot of numbers come through the door. And so I started to understand the real way and I believe to generate wealth is through owning a business and entrepreneurship.

[B]

When. When you looked at what your. What your father did and when he purchased the business, like, was. Was he intentional did. Is this something that kind of fell into his lap or was he a lifelong entrepreneur and saw an opportunity and did it?

[A]

How.

[B]

How did that happen?

[A]

Well, he always wanted to be an entrepreneur, so we came from an entrepreneurial, actually owned a milk Distribution business in New York City. And we were put into that business by famed gangster Meyer Lansky from the 1920s. And during Prohibition, Meyer Lansky had us bottling alcohol into milk canisters and delivering it to speakeasies throughout New York City. And it was a legitimate business. We owned it for 70, 80 years in New York City. And all my cousins and my father was a milkman for a while, and my uncle was a milkman. My grandfather was a milkman. Everybody in my family were milkmen. And so entrepreneurship, I think, was in the blood in the family. And so him buying a business was something that he always wanted to do. He had worked the corporate ladder, worked Fortune 500 companies, and always wanted to own a business.

[B]

Got it. Got it. What happened with the milk business?

[A]

We owned it until the mid-90s and sold it.

[B]

That's. That's. That is awesome. What a. I didn't even. That didn't show up in your LinkedIn profile.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. Cousins with. Like I said, Myra Lansky was a cousin. He was a distant cousin. So, you know, not. Not something that I like to advertise, but I'm sharing it with you on the podcast.

[B]

I appreciate it. Confessions, Right.

[A]

Right there in the confessions.

[B]

Exactly, exactly. And then when you started looking for. For business, was your. Was your family's business ever on the table, or was it always?

[A]

No, it wasn't on the table, actually. The sign business was. Was ancillary to the awning business. And so my thinking was if I bought the sign business, we could refer each other business. So a lot of clients that have signs also have awnings. And so my thought was, okay, if I could put up signs at a gas station and they also need an awning, I could refer that business to my dad and my dad, vice versa. If he's at a gas station and they need an awning, he could say, okay, who are you using for signage?

[B]

That. That makes a lot of sense. Did. Okay, so now you went to. How many partners were there originally?

[A]

There was three partners.

[B]

Three. And did you buy two of the partners?

[A]

No, one of the partners. About the other partner out years before, and then I bought the other partner out.

[B]

Okay, so now it's just you and your dad?

[A]

It was me and my dad. 5050 owners.

[B]

Wow. We're going to come back to that as well, because I do have some questions on the 50. 50. So you purchased it and then why. And then. And then you were CEO, president.

[A]

We worked together. I mean, the titles didn't really. I mean, after we did eos. I ended up being the integrator, he was the visionary. But we didn't spend a lot of time worrying about titles. We just worried about growing the business and taking the business to the next level.

[B]

When you think about, and I realize, like a big kind of fundamental of EOS is not worrying about titles, it's worrying about core function areas. It's worrying about what are the things that you're accountable and responsible for. When you and your dad were operating this business. Is this a. Like, there was. Not that there wasn't an integrator, but were you guys doing everything wearing every hat? Just.

[A]

We were wearing a lot of hats. I mean, the funny thing about the business is I'm scared to get up on a ladder. I couldn't drill anything into a wall. And so. And same with my dad. He's a little more handy than I am, but he couldn't install an awning. Didn't know how to sew, didn't necessarily know how to weld. But we knew how to run a business and we knew how to grow a business. We knew how to look at new products and bring those into the business. And so that's what we did. You know, a lot of the people who were our competitors, they're great at installing awnings and they made a beautiful product because they knew all the technological ways to cut fabric and how to weld. We went the other way. We knew how to run a business and how to go in there and get, you know, Carl's Jr. And do every Carl's Jr. Across the Western United States or to get every Panda Express and do that across the US whereas our competitors would work within a 20 or 30 mile radius and not know how to grow their business in that way.

[B]

On paper, that, that is, that is brilliant in action. Like, what does that look like? Did you. Were you just like, oh, cop. The CARL's junior chief operating officer. Because we know they're going to need a whole bunch of like, how did you build those relationships to be able to get those types of accounts?

[A]

Yeah, I mean, it was hard work. I mean, everything from back in the day was flipping through the LA Business Journal and seeing who's growing and what chains are growing and flipping through the restaurant magazines and restaurant trade publications and hotel trade publications, going to trade shows, meeting people. It was boots on the ground hard work. I remember the first big chain that I landed was Family Dollar and we brought in Family Dollar, who, I don't even know if they exist anymore. I know, I think Dollar General bought them or Dollar Tree. But having Family Dollar and knowing that they were growing in leaps and bounds and being able to go in there and get Family dollar and work with the development team and work with the marketing team that they had, and we did every awning for every Family Dollar in the Western United States. It was huge. Oh my gosh. Yeah.

[B]

And how does that, like, you know, if someone's listening to this and they're like, well, I want, I want Family Dollar. I want, like, I want to go get an account like that. Was this a. Can you, can you trace a line and say, like, what was this conversation, this introduction which landed me here, which did this? Or is it just, like, sometimes things just happen when you put yourself out?

[A]

I mean, I did old fashioned things. I was doing things like handwriting cards to people I was sending them. If I knew when their birthday was, because they were, it was a happy birthday. I'd send them a happy birthday card. You know, in one of the trade publications said, oh, blah, blah, blah, birthdays coming up this month. I'd send them a birthday card. We would FedEx our brochure to their office so they had to sign for it. And we knew that they would get.

[B]

Oh, I'd love it.

[A]

We did all sorts of, you know, kinds of things that would separate us from, from the, the rest of the pack.

[B]

Interesting.

[A]

And then, and then we'd wow them with our service.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You know, we would do things. The CEO of Panda Express was coming to a location in Nampa, Idaho, I remember, and they said, he's going to be here in, in five days. What could you do? The awnings are ripped and don't look great. And he's having event. And we were able to turn a project that would have taken another company five, six weeks in four days.

[B]

Wow. Wow. Did you, did you wind up eventually hiring salespeople or was this.

[A]

Yeah, we hired salespeople. I was mentioning, my best friend was one of our salespeople. We hired a bunch of different salespeople and had a sales department. So that was, you know, again, another inflection point for our company where we really saw it grow. But it was an exciting business because it's one of those businesses where you drive down the street and you could see your product in so many different places. You know, you drive past the Carl's Jr. Drive past the Panda Express and you go, that's my product. And I still do that. My wife laughs at me. We're still out driving somewhere and I go, oh, Panda Express. That's ours. And she's like, great, but my kids think it's cool.

[B]

So what's the inflection point? So you talked about, like, once you started hiring the sales team and, like, things really started to take off. How did you know that your organization was ready to start hiring salespeople and put together some sort of process for that?

[A]

Our capacity kind of hit the wall, and we said, the only way to grow is to create extensions of ourselves, which is kind of an EOS philosophy as well, but to kind of create extensions of ourselves so that way people could be doing the same things we were doing and help drive revenue. And so that's when we realized that that was the way to grow.

[B]

Did you and your father always share the vision, the same vision for the company?

[A]

Look, family business is difficult. And so there were times where we didn't agree on everything, but I'd say we were on the same page. We both wanted to grow the business. We both wanted to see an exit at some point, which we did. And I'd say that generally we still. We still talk and have a good relationship, so it obviously worked out. But generally we would try to proceed with the vision that we thought was best for the organization to get to our end goal.

[B]

Did you guys build for an acquisition or. Or were you heads down on wowing customers and providing a quality product? And eventually the acquisition just kind of came.

[A]

I was going to say, those are the same thing for me. So we built a great product. We served our customers really well, and we knew that if we did that, we'd have an acquisition. We'd have people that wanted to buy our company at some point.

[B]

Got it. Did you go the banker route or did someone just knock on the door?

[A]

Eventually it was very interesting. We hired a consulting team to help us get ready for sale, and I met them through eo. So again, another EO connection and how EO has paid off in dividends for me for years and years. Met them through eo. They helped us put together a package to go out to market, to go talk to bankers and that type of thing. And one of the people at the company said, hey, I have some people backing me. I'd like to buy your business.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

So that's how we sold it.

[B]

That was it. Yeah. I've heard a lot of different. A lot of different takes on this idea of 50, 50, and. And so it's like, on one hand, it's like everybody has. Has enough skin in the game, and there's, like, shared responsibilities. And then on the other side, it's like, well, if. Like, if crap hits the fan, there truly is, like, nobody that can ultimately make this decision. Like, what. What's your philosophy on that? And has that evolved over time?

[A]

Yeah. I refused to buy the business unless we were 5050 partners, because otherwise I'd always feel like an employee. If we were 4,951, it would be a situation where I could be overruled no matter what I did. And so I didn't want that relationship. I didn't think that was healthy for us, and I didn't think that that was healthy for the business. I think that what we needed was us to both be an equal partnership, so that way we can make decisions together. And so it wasn't one person overriding the other person. So sometimes there were decisions that I didn't agree with, and sometimes there were decisions that he didn't. But knowing that we were both 50, 50 partners allowed us to kind of come together and make the decision. And sometimes you'd say, you win on this one, and sometimes you'd say, you win on the next one.

[B]

Yeah, I. Listen, I think it was. I think it was Jeff Bezos, and it was this idea of, oh, gosh, now I'm going to forget the word. But it's like, where. Where people are kind of fighting for their perspective. And then there's a. There's a compromise. And he has this. This thing where he talks about, like, compromise is actually not the best path forward because you're basically, what you're doing is like both of you are settling for something. But it's like, if someone was gonna take the right decision, then somebody is right and somebody is wrong. And typically, in a compromise, basically no one's brave enough or bold enough to take the position that I'm gonna be right. Do you think there was ever compromises or other things that happen where you're like, this would have been the better path, and we just didn't.

[A]

You know, sometimes when you don't go down that path, you don't know if it would be the better path.

[B]

It's true.

[A]

And so I think that's part of it is you don't really know if the other path would have. Would have led to the dividends that you thought it would have led to. But I think that having the 5050 partnership allowed us to say, this decision is yours. You're going to own it, and this decision is mine, and I'm going to own it.

[B]

I. So I. I love that. And. And I'll Tell you, my perspective has changed or evolved with the 5050 partnerships. I, I started off with 50 50, and then my, my partner and I didn't see eye to eye on some things and we had to make some, some tough decisions. I ultimately it, it worked out because him and I got into business again in hunt to killer. And today I'm back on the. I do believe in 5050 because I, I think that to your point of, like, when someone feels like an employee, even if it's one point, there's a different, like, dynamic or shift in, like, how people are operating in the lens which they're looking. I'm not, I don't know what's right or what's wrong in this. And I'm sure every situation is unique. But, but anyhow, three years ago, five years ago, I've been like, gosh, 50, 50. And this was telling people back then. I was like, it's terrible. You guys are going to run into some sort of situation. You're not going to have a way out. And today I'm like, sometimes those are for the better.

[A]

Right?

[B]

So, okay, and when, when did you find out about or discover Eos in the journey? Like, how many years after you bought your shares?

[A]

I think it was about eight years into it. Okay, so it was a while into it. And like I said, we had tried coaches and consultants and really hadn't gotten a ton out of them. And so this was kind of a deviation from that. And it was something that we thought we would be willing to try. And one of the cool things, if I could share that we found out from Eos, was I like to say it turned the lights on. It turned the lights on in my business. So it allowed me to understand what was truly going on. And I share this story. We had this sewer who was working for us, had worked for my dad for 25 years, something like that, and nobody had ever tracked anything she did. So all of a sudden we started tracking QC by person, and we realized that she was failing 20, 30% of the time. Her products were being sent back and we had never had a clue. We thought she was the best sewer. We loved her. Everybody said, this is the best person you have at your company. She's so sweet, she's so nice. But she was failing in her main duty, which was to sew products. And so just turning on those lights allowed us to then be able to make different decisions than we were currently making. And in that situation, we went and talked to her about it and she said, look, I've wanted to retire for years and this is my opportunity to retire. So that ended up working out. But, you know, you, you kind of think that you know what's going on in your business, but really until you open up the hood and look underneath it, you don't know what's going on.

[B]

Interesting. Did you have. Because that's that notion of like, right people, right seats, sounds like she was very much the right person, just maybe wasn't in the right seat. Ultimately use that as a, as a reason to depart.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Did you already have a set of core values in the organization before you introduced eos?

[A]

I think we had one or. But we didn't really talk about them as core values. So having the customer come first was always number one for our business. But we never kind of shared it with everybody. We had posters up, but that was, I think, something that people would look at on their way to the lunchroom. But it didn't really click in until we really started hammering home those core values.

[B]

When you implemented eos, did you guys grow faster at that point?

[A]

We grew faster, but also we started to put processes in, into place and I think that that made the company more valuable when we sold it. So, you know, when the, when they were able to come in and buy the company, all of a sudden we had everything documented. Everybody knew what their roles and responsibilities were. All the processes were written down and it allowed the new ownership to come in and say, okay, here are the keys, we just need to put in the ignition and drive.

[B]

And once you, it sounds like expanded, elaborated or on your core values, you went from one or two and now you, you introd, started talking about them. You know, one of the things that we hear about a lot is we start having some sort of turnover, an initial turnover. And I think like when I talk to us implementers or like especially on the senior leadership team, within the first year, like there's going to be some turnover. Did you experience that or was everybody pretty much right person until you started looking at other.

[A]

Yeah, we experienced a little bit of turnover. I will say I see it definitely a lot more being an implementer now. Maybe that's because I didn't have an implementer and we self implemented, but I see it a lot more now as an implementer where there's major turnover in teams when we start really implementing.

[B]

Got it, got it, got it. All right. And then eo. So when in this journey did you also join eo?

[A]

Around the time that I implemented eos. It was one of the first books that People gave to me.

[B]

Gotcha. 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 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. Tale e n t h a r b o r.com let's get your next sales superstar hired now. We sold the company.

[A]

We sold the company.

[B]

What happened next?

[A]

I looked at my 4 year old and she said to me, daddy, do you just sit on the couch? Is that your job? And I said, that's not the best example to be setting for my kids. And so I thought, what do I want to do with the rest of my life? And I had been volunteering as a coach for eo. I had been doing some work with the USC Entrepreneurial Alumni Association. I'm a Trojan and I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing with you, but in la it's a good thing. And I said, I love coaching. I love helping business owners. So what should I do with the rest of my life? I should help business owners get more of what they want from their business.

[B]

That's awesome. And so you've done this through eos and then you also talked about some other coaches.

[A]

Yeah, the other thing that I do is I facilitate. I facilitate Mastermind group. So right now I'm facilitating groups for organization that has high net worth individuals. And so I facilitate six groups a month where these high net worth individuals get together and they have conversations about things that they're focused on as people who have sold Businesses as people who are the number two employees at Google or at a tech startup? And how do I work on my trust and how do I think about wealth and how do I leave wealth to the rest of my family and these kinds of conversations that they're thinking about. We do in a facilitated kind of mastermind group for three hours a month. And so I do that with groups of high net worth individuals and I also do that with groups of T shirt printers, which is pretty niche, but I have six groups of T shirt printers that I meet with once a month. And we work on things like goal setting, we work on things like KPIs and we also work on things such as my machine X, Y or Z isn't working and does anybody in the group have any advice on how to fix it? So really a group of people getting together and understanding what they do and being able to help each other.

[B]

Gotcha. How do you, I mean I have to ask this question. How, how do you create a group of. And by the way, like I've been, I've been around people and some people in my network have gotten into screen printing and stuff like that. It's a lucrative business. There's a lot of interesting things. How did you get into that group?

[A]

I coached, somebody facilitated a group for them and they were in the print industry and they said, what you're doing is great. Let's go out and do this with other people in just the print industry.

[B]

When you talk about this professional facilitation, are these existing groups out there just tagging you being like, hey, can you come do professional facilitation?

[A]

No. It's funny, with this group of high net worth individuals called Long Angle, I joined after I sold my business as just a member and while I was being interviewed to be a member, I said to the owner of the organization, I said, why don't you have any kind of forums like we do in eo, any of these mastermind groups? And he said, well, do you want to start them? And I said, I guess. And so that's how it started for me there.

[B]

So you paid your fee, paid your dues and you get all set up and they're like, oh, by the way.

[A]

Can you put, can you help us put these together? And so it was great. We did five pilot groups and now I think we're at 47 groups across the U.S. wow. I think like nine or ten coaches or something like that and they're really taking off. So it's been very exciting to see as the person who started it?

[B]

Do you see common themes? Issues may be a better word, but, like, do you see common things between all of these groups? Are they generally like different. Different conversation points, like, EO about my big business, this, like, personal wealth, or is it.

[A]

Yeah, I think there's some common themes I think people struggle with. How do I leave, especially in entrepreneurship and business ownership, how do I leave money to the next generation? What is my legacy gonna look like? There's a lot of conversation about what does my legacy look like? What am I gonna do next? I'm antsy after owning a business and selling a business. How do I kind of itch that scratch? A lot of these issues kind of run the gamut through eo, through the facilitation that I do. And it's really interesting to see people's different opinions. We talk about things like, what does success mean to you? And it's really interesting to see how people define some of these issues and how they tackle them.

[B]

When you think about facilitation, what does it take to be a great. A great facilitator?

[A]

Curiosity takes. Curiosity. You have to want to know the next piece of information that that person shared and really force them to dig down into, what does this mean? You know, you say that you not sure how you want to leave money to your children. What does that look like for you? And how do you make that decision? How do you think about it? How do you talk to your wife or significant other about it? So there's so many questions that you need to pull from the person in order to really get them to know what they're doing.

[B]

Interesting, interesting, interesting. And so it comes back to, like.

[A]

Asking great questions, asking great questions and being curious about what's the next question? What's the next answer I'm going to get from you?

[B]

Yeah, I've heard this thing. And who. Jbs. Do you know jbs?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

One of the things that he talked about was like, these different. These different types of listening, and there's five different types of listening. And. And like, the. The best type of listening is where you're not generating your next question, like, while the person is talking. So you're not thinking while they're talking, but you're like, you're deeply curious. And then you pause and you ask a question like, I don't know, what. What does. What does a great question look like as a facilitator in. In some of these mastermind groups?

[A]

It's like I said, it's the next question. It's going Deeper. It's really figuring out what the root cause is. And by the way, I wasn't listening to your question when you asked that.

[B]

No, I'm just kidding. It's an interesting theme throughout your life and especially the stuff that you're doing today, because you talk about this facilitation and these peer groups and stuff like that. And then when you think about EOS and an EOS implementer, it is bringing a group of leaders together, being curious, asking great questions, and helping guide them.

[A]

Exactly. And helping them get more of what they want from themselves and more of what they believe they could do.

[B]

This theme has kind of come up through some of the facilitation stuff that you talked about, like, what does success look like? And getting more of what they want? Like, when I think about eos, a lot of the stuff that we talk about is, like, it gives you time back. Like, it gives you time. And do you find that that's like a common theme, or are there some visionaries that take that time and then reapply it into more. More chaos or more.

[A]

A different business or something like that? Yeah, I see things like that all the time, where they get all this time back and then they go, I'm gonna go buy another business. And it's like you say to yourself, well, you're the one who said that you wanted to take more vacations or you wanted to spend more time with your kids. And so it's really interesting to see what they do when you give them their time back. But one of the things I find interesting about being an implementer is a lot of people say, oh, well, how much revenue did you grow the company by? They want to know what was the revenue. But sometimes what I find is my clients aren't necessarily looking to grow the revenue they might be looking for. How do I go on vacation for two weeks or three weeks and not be worrying about my business all the time and not have to pick up my phone every five minutes and not enjoy my vacation? That might be what they're looking for. So I always say what EOS is, is it gives you more of what you want from your business. Some of them it is to grow revenue, and that's great, but some of them it's not.

[B]

Are these conversations that you're having with the visionary or the visionary integrator out of the gate before, like, starting to develop a queer picture of that before you get in and start kind of tinkering or asking questions? Yeah.

[A]

And sometimes it changes too. Sometimes they go, I don't care about growing revenue. And then they get excited and they go, oh, I could grow revenue in here. And sometimes it's, you know, sometimes it's something where they say, I just want to take a vacation. That's the theme that runs out through it. So how do I have this business run on its own?

[B]

Yeah. Are there some common things that you've seen as you're rolling out EOs or starting to implement where it's like, I see it, this happens every single time. And these are some of the things I need to get ahead of in order to mitigate that.

[A]

I think every implementation is a little bit different. I think what happens is sometimes the leadership team realizes that sometimes it's a right person, right seat issue that we spend a lot of time on, and sometimes it's team health and getting the team healthy, open and honest with each other. So it really depends on the team and how we're going to implement eos.

[B]

Backtracking just for half a second, what was your biggest lesson learned from the sale of that company?

[A]

I would say it wasn't necessarily on my end, but seeing what the people who bought my company did, they didn't spend enough time at my company and they thought that it was going to be different, I think, than what they ended up buying. And the company actually went bankrupt after I sold it. Two and a half years after we sold it, the company declared bankruptcy. And so I think that they just didn't spend enough time really understanding what the business was and what role they were going to need.

[B]

How does that happen? So, for instance, you have EOS rolled out, things are just kind of fully operational, you've got processes developed, and then it sounds like the visionary and integrator, which was the tag team for you and your father, step away, two years later, it goes bankrupt like that. That doesn't sound normal.

[A]

No. And I think some of the things that happen are trying to deviate from the processes too quickly. I think going in there and you've heard this probably a million times, but going into a business and not touching anything for the first year and seeing what it looks like and seeing how we were running it rather than right away, hey, we're gonna change this software, we're going to change this process, we're going to move this person out of the seat that they were in. I think that really going into a business and understanding why certain things were done and doing it that way is really the way it should be done, rather than being like a bull in a china shop and Changing things out.

[B]

That's interesting. And my, my buddy bought a business about a year and a half ago and shared something similar, which is like he had so much background in the direct consumer space that he's like, you know, I know how to optimize these businesses, I know how to control inventory. I know all of these different components. And he had been running his for 10 or 15 years. So he went and bought this business and first thing you know, he opened the hood. He looked and he was like, easy fixes right here. And just like start tinkering around three, four months later, like things start going in the wrong direction. And so you hear that all the time. It's almost like people can't help themselves.

[A]

It was something as simple as even we were handwriting our orders still. They weren't computerized. Okay. And that might seem like in this day and age that we've lost our mind, but that was how we were doing it and it was working and there was no reason to go in there and say, okay, it has to be computerized today. I think it did need to be computerized, but it was something that could have rolled very slowly out and it was rolled out immediately. And all of a sudden people didn't know what to do. Oh my God, these jobs are all on the computer now. I don't know how to use a computer. I only know how to read the handwritten orders and that type of thing. And so something as small as that could really rock the boat.

[B]

Looking back at it, are there things that you think can be changed? And this is actually a self serving question because we're looking at a company right now and while we do want to let a lot of the things stay put for the first 12 months, there are efficiencies that we can gain immediately from looking at different, looking at different components. Like, is there, are there things that you can change or improve within the first couple months as long as you don't change like other things or like, how do you think about that?

[A]

I think about it like just sit there and take a look at what's going on. There's, there's enough time to be able to tinker and change. That going in there immediately just is going to cause more problems than is necessary.

[B]

We brought a consultant in and it's the first thing that they said. So, you know, the question was, well, you know, how are you looking at this? Where do you see the value? Things like this? And we went through the whole thing. He's like, okay, I get it. I was like, but we need to make these changes quick. And it was first thing he said. He was like, you sit back and you just watch things, like at least for the first 90 days, don't touch a damn thing. Right. And just learn. And I can see where for people that are buying businesses that can be a little, A little hard because you, you think you know where you can.

[A]

Right. And you, and you have a financial concern now that you didn't, that the previous owners didn't have. Whether or not it's a PE firm, whether or not it's a search fund, whatever it looks like, people have to. There's either funder that you have to make sure that your numbers are good for. And so sitting there and saying, I'm going to wait 90 days or 180 days, and. And that might hurt my financial bottom line can be scary.

[B]

Do you ever get the itch to buy a company?

[A]

Sometimes. Yeah.

[B]

Do you think it's ever going to become like a. I don't know.

[A]

It's, you know, sometimes you go, put me in coach. Right. Sometimes you're implementing and you say to yourself, oh man, if I could just take two weeks and be their integrator, if I could take a month and be their integrator, I could fix this or fix that. But it's exciting to see them do it on their own.

[B]

Yeah. It's like you're able to get your fix on a quarterly basis, but you don't actually have to get in and execute.

[A]

Right? Exactly. And when I remember things like workers, comp claims and management not doing what they're supposed to be doing and those types of things, I go, do I want to do that again? So it's always that interesting. Push, pull.

[B]

I can see that. Just like exploratory. What, what industries or verticals are interesting?

[A]

I think there's so many businesses right now that were owned by baby boomers that don't have a generational plan for what's going to happen next. And there's so many niche businesses. Look, I was in the cabana and awning business. I know a guy who was in the cakes in the bottom of urinal business.

[B]

Interesting.

[A]

And these are businesses that are wildly successful because everybody needs a cake in the bottom of their urinal, right?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Everybody needs an awning that owns a restau because they want to have extra seating. These are niche businesses that can be wildly, wildly successful. And I think that there's a lot of them out there that don't know what to do next and how to graduate and Retire. And so I think that the industry doesn't matter as much to me as would the opportunity.

[B]

Interesting. And I think about this a lot. I don't have a right answer. I've tried a couple different strategies. Happy to talk about those as well. But it sounds like the first business you were looking at buying some time ago. I don't know how it came about but maybe you didn't have a broken reactive league looking. Maybe the person was in your network if you were going to do that. Today there's this constant conversation around. There are hundreds of thousands of baby boomer businesses out there. There isn't much conversation over tactically or strategically. How do you get in of those people and start having the conversations? Obviously you are a well networked individual, you running EO and those types of things. What, what strategies would you use?

[A]

I think I would probably. Cold. Cold letter people. Yeah, cold email people. Start having conversations with people in your network. Who do you know, who do you feel like would be the right people to talk to and just go about it the old fashioned way? I think everybody thinks now, oh, AI is the only business that you could be in and AI you have to use in every business in order to find the next thing. And I think that old fashioned still works. And so I encourage my clients to use old fashioned techniques and I would use old fashioned techniques where just because.

[B]

You brought it up, Just because you brought it up, where's AI? Where is AI going? How's it like? What's your take on it right now?

[A]

I think that we're so early in the journey, who knows where it's going. I think it's really exciting and I think that we've never lived in a time period like this. You know the Internet took longer to proliferate. AI went like this, I think four years ago, three years ago nobody knew what AI was and now everybody feels like they can't get by a day without using AI.

[B]

When you're either in facilitation mode with your networks or let's say you're advising some of your companies as the eosi like I'm sure there's a lot of questions around AI and how do I implement AI and how do I think about AI? Like what are you recommending to your clients and like how they should maybe not implement at this point, but how should they be thinking about AI in their business?

[A]

Well, I think they need to think about where does it really fall into place in their business? You know some of the stuff is pie in the sky, dreams oh, I'm going to have a robot make X, Y or Z. Yeah. But I think that there are places where I can play a big role and I think that they need to really think those through. Is this something can that we want to open up?

[B]

What about. I'm not sure if you're seeing this and like, I've heard some rumblings around a lot of fear, like fear that, that I'm already behind the AI curve, fear that I'm not implementing fast enough, fear that like my industry is just going to go away overnight. Like, like what do you think about some of those fears that business owners.

[A]

I mean, I think that my book of business is such that most of those businesses cannot be fully automated using AI. I'm in a lot of manufacturing space, a lot of construction space, and I think there are pieces of those businesses that can be automated and using AI. But I think that generally you're not going to have an AI robot necessarily laying tile in somebody's bathroom. You're still going to need somebody to lay the tile in their bathroom. And so I think the question is how do I integrate AI into the processes that I'm using in order to be able to lay the tile right. In order to be able to manufacture the product correctly.

[B]

And when you think about this, because I was going to say growing up, but 15 years ago, 10 years ago, there was this whole wave of SaaS software as a service and so we were getting away from the CD Roms and now we're instead of paying once a year for the updated version of QuickBooks, we're paying 9.99amonth. And instead of people going out and developing their own software, they would just license it. When you think about AI, are you thinking about it through the same terms of like when a business is looking for ways to implement AI, look for off the shelf solutions that already solve 90% of the problem. Or are you of the mindset where it's like, well, no, we've got agentic AI where somebody can go out, spend or invest five, ten thousand bucks and have some sort of agent built for them. How do you see that right now?

[A]

I think that there is a, I think that there's a real split. I think that it depends on the business. I like to say, if something's already out there, why are you reinventing the wheel? No, but I also think that there are some industries where it pays for people to build their own.

[B]

Okay, Michael, last two questions. First one is what do you look for in a client?

[A]

I look for People who are open and honest and really want to make change. It's not fun for me when I'm sitting there and every single thing. We're not going to do that. We're not going to try that. We're not willing to do that. So I really am looking for somebody that is open or some companies that are open and honest and say, hey, we really are not getting what we want from our business. What can we do to take it to the next level?

[B]

Got it. And is it. Are you agnostic on industry? Okay.

[A]

I mean, I tend to not work with as many technology companies just because of my background. So as I said, the book of my business tends to be construction and tends to be manufacturing, but generally I'm open to any industry.

[B]

Got it. And do you travel or do you like, are you at a time where.

[A]

You'Re like, I travel within Southern California.

[B]

Okay, got it. And then last question is. So someone's been listening to this and they're like, oh, my gosh, I need some Michael in my life. Like, I need to talk to him about this or I need him as an EOS implementer. Want to learn more about EO or some of these other programs. How would they get a hold of you?

[A]

My website is MichaelRichman, and that's R I C H M A N. So Michael M I C H A E L Richmond. R I C H M A N me. And you could contact me through the website and I'll get back to you.

[B]

Awesome, Michael. Thank you so much. This was it. This was our first one.

[A]

I feel like Ashton Kutcher now.

[B]

You're one layer above.

[A]

I'm like Kevin Bacon. I'm one layer from Ashton Kutcher. Awesome.

[B]

Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

[A]

Take care.