← Confessions of an Implementer
Confessions of an Implementer
S2E30 | Personal Vision: Your Business Should Serve Your Life, Not Consume It with Don Maranca
00:55:28
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- [00:00]
A
You need to define what you want, what's important to you in your life, even if you're not. If entrepreneurship or ownership is not in your cards, you have to define what's important to you in terms of your career. You know, what does your career look like? What do you want to be able to do as you grow more and more skills in your career? And how does that provide for your family? What does your family look like? What does your personal life look like? I think it's important for anyone.
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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.
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A
Let's jump in.
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B
Well, thank you for coming there. There's like, so many topics to cover today and I realize, like, this is kind of a short week for everybody and so just the, just the fact that you're taking time out of your day to come on and share some of your wisdom.
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A
Happy Thanksgiving week, by the way. Yeah, just, just want to put that out there.
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B
It's going to be, it's going to be awesome. And like, for you as an expert implementer, because we have kind of varying degrees of implementers and experience and backgrounds. And one thing that I love about it is diversity. When I have the opportunity to bring on an expert implementer, there's just like, there's so much that you've seen in the session room and in your life and growing up and everything else. And so there's just a lot of stuff. And one of the things that we had talked about earlier when we did a pre call maybe about a month or two ago was like, how you see businesses and how that correlates to a body and all these other things. So long winded. I'm really excited about this. Just to start off, how did you get here? Because you have a very interesting kind of career trajectory where it was like accounting and then like big time accounting and then like CFO level and smaller and then. And then entrepreneurialism. Like where, where did all of this start?
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A
Yeah, it was quite a journey. And by the way, y', all, you've had some great guests here, so I'm, I'm very privileged to be part of that. Your guest list here. But yeah, my, my journey, I, I always wondered what God was preparing me for because I was very, very wide in my experience and not very deep in it. So as you mentioned, I, I started out in public accounting, so I Got my master's in professional accounting at ut, which, by the way, hopefully they. They beat the Aggies this, this Friday. So we're going for. We're going to the game. But anyway, so got my master's in professional accounting. Went straight into public accounting. My dad was an. Is an accountant, so he had his own little small private practice. And. And so I went into accounting and worked for Arthur Anderson up in Dallas. And I stayed in public accounting for about five years. And. And that's where I really felt like I got grounded in just the business world because I was in audit. I didn't do taxes. And audit really allows you to understand the business because you audit the financial statements and you have to make sense of the financial statements, okay, Operationally, how do these numbers flow to the financial statements when you have to do these things in operations? And so we actually get to learn about the business, ask. Ask questions operationally, you know, sales and marketing operations, financially. So it really gave me a good foundation of just understanding business. But anytime I'd meet people and I, I told me, I'm a cpa, I'm an accountant, they look at me like, what? Oh, you don't have the personality of a cpa. So. And so I knew I was just getting the experience. And because I didn't see myself as part of partner material and staying in that industry forever, right? I want to get the experience and eventually do something with it. Didn't know what that was, but leadership always interested me. And so when I left accounting, because I would work with different audit engagements, and there are different managers, different teams. And so I'd always study kind of my managers and the partners that I was working with. And I love seeing their style and what was effective, what wasn't effective. And so when I started supervising people, I try to use the best practices that I saw. So when I left public accounting, I actually went to. I went to a regional firm in Austin, so that was in Dallas. And I went to a regional CPA firm in Austin. And then that's when I got into more consulting work, so audit and consulting. And then I left there and went to Dell Computers. And that's where I really kind of dove further into the finance role. So Dell Computers up in Austin, and then in between Dell and Applied Materials, I got. I got burned out. I felt like, you know, I saw a lot of good people leave, and it went back to leadership because this whole thread of leadership in my head was, you know, great leaders retain people, right? And I saw, I saw a lot of People leaving a lot of, a lot of talent leaving Dell and big companies because I worked for big companies. And so I wanted to start my own business. And that was my first dip in entrepreneurship was I started eventerprise and it was an event management company because my whole goal was to help retain employees through events. And eventually I wanted to get to the leadership executive retreat level where I would be doing training workshops with executives to help them retain employees. And that was in the late 90s. And during that time in Austin it was the dot com right dot com era. And so there's a lot of companies that were doing a lot of special events to help retain employees at quarterly events. And that's what I did. I, I helped organize those things until the dot com burst. And so once it burst I, I had to get back into the workplace. And so my business, my clients kind of shriveled up, the budgets kind of shriveled. And so I, I started working again in corporate, big corporate up Applied Materials. And that's where I started blending finance and operational roles together because I, I was in a specific group that, that really looked at on the financial side, but also operationally how could we, we'd be more efficient. And, and again I got burned out after that. So I started working for smaller businesses which is really where I felt like I was more called to do because my dad worked with smaller companies in his practice. And by the way, my, my dad's the oldest out of 12 kids and, and so I have a lot of aunts and uncles and they're very entrepreneurial. You know, in, in the Philippines you have to be entrepreneurial because to make a, a living in the Philippines you kind of have to figure out a way to, to make your own own living. And so they're very entrepreneurial. So I, I think I got that from my dad. And so after Applied Materials I started working for the smaller mid sized businesses and I was the integrator if you will, before the integrator became a term. Right. So I, I worked directly with the owners. I kind of wore all the different hats, kind of integrated all the different functions. And that's really where I fell in love with just working with small to mid sized businesses, really creating that culture, growing it, making the impact that I can see through my own like efforts instead of just being a little cog in a big business. And that's, that's where to the point where I wanted. And I already took a dip my toe in entrepreneurship so eventually I wanted to do that again. And so when we moved from Austin to San Antonio, I took a job here, unfortunately. But fortunately it didn't work out right. So I ended up getting fired. And I was wondering, okay, man, what am I going to do here? My network's in Austin and we're here now in San Antonio. We just had our first child. And so that's when I really had a soul searching and really trying to understand, okay, what am I really good at and what am I passionate about and what are all my experiences have led me up to, to this point. And that's when I decided, okay, I'm going to bite the bullet. I'm going to buy a franchise. Okay. I bought the alternative board in 2010, which is a peer group model.
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B
Right.
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A
And I think you're familiar, you are in Vistage. So it's Vistage, YPO C12. So it's, it's that peer group model and I bought that in 2010. And I loved working with the owners. And in essence, you know, I, I had it for five years until I introduced EOS into my kind of my, my service lines. Because when, when I was working with the owners for about five years, I still saw them struggle with implementation of strategy and their, or the whole organization. And so I was actually creating my own model because I didn't see anything I liked until I read the book Traction. Someone gave me the book Traction. It's like it's all there. All the philosophies and all the, all the things that I've been using are all consistent with what Gino has described. And so in 2015 is when I became an EOS implementer. So it's been 10 years since August that I've been an implementer. And I love absolutely what I do. I do feel like this is my calling. I get to serve in a way that I love.
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B
10 years puts you in OG territory. You know that, right?
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A
I just listened to your podcast interview with CJ and then Dan Wallace. Yeah, they're the og. And by the way, I thought OG was like old guard. I didn't know it was like original gangsters. I didn't know what that meant. Like.
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B
When, when you were, when you were kind of growing up and it sounds like you had not just the entrepreneurial itch, but you, you were living it so like an entrepreneurial family. And you saw this when, when you went directly into kind of big consulting. Was that, is it retrospect to look at that and say, like that helped me build the credentials to get where I'm at or like when you, when you graduated, were you like, hey, these are the skill sets that I need to build? And like, these are the enterprises in which I'm going to build those skill sets to accomplish that. Was it intentional?
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A
Yes and no. I mean, I had no idea I was gonna start a business and, and have a leadership development company, right? So, But I knew that I was gonna just take some steps to get the experience that, that I want based on what I'm really good at. And I just chose to start in accounting because that's, that was my degree and my dad was a cpa, and so it just naturally fit. I said, okay, maybe that's what I'm supposed to do, and then from there I'll figure it out along the way. And I just knew that because when my dad really has just instilled a strong work ethic in me, he, he left. He left the Philippines. I was born in the Philippines. I left when I was five there. But when he was, when I was four, he left on his own to get established in the US and he brought us a year, a year later. And I've just seen him work so hard to, you know, fulfill the American dream that he wants for his family, which I'm the beneficiary of. And so I've seen, I've seen what, what dedication and what entrepreneurship can do to, to families, to individuals and, and from there. That's why I thought, okay, public accounting is where I'm going to start. But I know there's something bigger that, that God's planning for me. I just didn't know what that was. So I just kind of, I was just being obedient and just taking steps towards, you know, doing the best I can and in the, in the places I work, because I, I only lasted about three years in each of my, each of the companies I was in and just doing my best and doors would open and close and things like that. So it's just, it just worked out that way. But I do felt like it gave me a really strong foundation of just business and different types of businesses, different types of industries, different types of roles and functions. And it just gave me a really good foundation of just business in general.
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B
Love that. And, and, and it's been, it's interesting, like, what you got to observe between kind of the accounting and the finance. And just in case someone's listening and they're like, accounting, finance, those are all the same. Like, how would you, how would you differentiate both of those? And then would love to go down the, the Finance path real quick.
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A
Yeah, I mean, accounting is really, it's your, your, it's more historical. Right. The accounting side of things is you're making sure the historical side financially is, is accurate and it's relevant. And you're, you're abiding by certain. Because I come from an audit standpoint, you're abiding by certain principles that reflect the true condition of the organization. And for me, that was kind of my accounting side. And then once you, once you start getting beyond that and getting into more forecasting and budgeting and kind of analysis, that's where you get more into kind of the financial aspect, the anal analysis. You know, what do these numbers really tell me? You know, how do you analyze that? How do you forecast going ahead and how do you make financial models that make sense if you were to go into certain, certain things? And so that's, that's where. Because originally I thought I was going to become, you know, kind of a, an outsourced CFO type of thing because I, I did wear the finance and operational hats in businesses. CFO roles, operational director of finance, director of operations roles. And, and when I bought the Taft franchise, since I get to know their businesses so well, I thought offering them outsourced CFO services was kind of where I would lead to, but that wasn't really my passion. So, so I'm more of a people and operations and process person with just a finance and accounting kind of mindset, if you will. So I don't, I kind of went in a tangent there. I don't know if that answers your finance and accounting question.
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B
Yeah, it sounds like accounting's looking backwards, finance is looking forwards. And what I had this, my former CFO to every, every, every leader that I've, that I've dealt with in my organizations have always thought that they were, they were the center of the universe, the market person. Without me, we wouldn't have any sales, the, the operations person. Without me, we wouldn't be able to execute on the promises that we make for marketing. And what I used to hear from, from my CFO was I can understand every aspect of the business just by looking at the numbers. And, and that's really kind of come through in some of the things that you've already mentioned, like when you're looking at a balance sheet or you're looking at the P and L, like, what are those things that are kind of telling the story? And like, what. How are you helping kind of build a full picture just by using financial statements?
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A
Hmm, interesting. So I Haven't had to put this finance hat on in a while because I've been out of that for so long. But I do look at it in that way, especially in our, in our own business, right? So, because I'm the finance person in our business. And so what I'm looking for is just inconsistencies, you know, different patterns. When I'm looking at year over year, month over month, you know, what, what patterns am I seeing? And, and it goes back to kind of what you mentioned before, when in our, in our pre call is that, you know, I really look at the business as a body. And so, and so when, when I take our, our stats, our data, if you will, our, our pulse of certain things in our own body, it tells us how healthy we are, right? So we, we have our own, our own measurements that our doctors look at. But from a business standpoint, it's the same thing. We have data that shows how healthy our organization is. And so when I look at it from a sales and marketing standpoint, I look at it from operations standpoint, I look at, from a financial standpoint, I'm looking at patterns, I'm looking at data that shows, you know, how, how healthy we are from a year to year, month to month basis. And so if there's certain irregularities or certain things that don't look right, that's where I start diving deeper just to say, okay, what happened? You know, what's going on here? What's the real story? What's causing that? And that, that to me is kind of what, when I put my financial hat on, my accounting hat on is what I'm looking for. Those kinds, those kinds of irregularities in the patterns of the data.
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B
And are those irregularities like, helping, like when you think about either the CFO or the accounting side, like, are those irregularities like helping to generate the right questions to ask other leaders on the team? Are those irregularities like helping to generate ideas? Like what? Let's say there's a visionary or visionary and integrator, a VI team, and they're looking at it and they're seeing some of these irregularities, maybe their gross margins up, down, all around, maybe sales are coming down, they're going up. Like what, what should they be thinking to themselves at that point?
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A
Let's see. So the irregularities that, because when I, when I say irregularities, because that was going back to audit, right? When I'm auditing things and something looks funny and it doesn't look like it's representing the true health of the business, that's when I go to the actual function and say, okay, hey, can you explain what's going on here with these numbers? Because certain things are showing me something here, but then over here, showing these kinds of numbers, and those two just don't jive. And so it does bring up questions for me to ask from when I wear my audit hat. Can you help me make sense of that? Because it just doesn't make sense. So it helps me ask those questions, and it helps, it helps them really. Either they either know what's really going on, or they truly don't know what's going on. And it's very apparent when you ask those questions on, on when you start digging into certain things. And that's usually either. Either they don't know what's going on because they're. They are just, lack of a better word, just ignorant to it. They just don't understand it. Or, or they're maybe hiding something, right? Because that, and that's where my, My, my audit sense just starts coming up is, okay, are they. Are they hiding something? And that's when I start digging deeper. And so I, I use that. I don't, I don't use a lot of that when I'm in session with my EOS clients. I do ask a lot of questions when I see. When I see numbers that don't make sense. And I ask them, do y' all understand, do you all understand why this is with your numbers? Why. Why did it come up this way? Because usually when, when I, when we're reviewing the quarterly numbers, right, I ask them, okay, so y' all had these goals, and yeah, they're. Some of them crushed them, some didn't. And ask them, so what's the story? What's the story behind those numbers? How would your actuals. How did you get to those actuals compared to what you were forecasting or budgeting? Y' all really know. What did you learn from it? Because some people think, some people at the beginning, they just say, you know, don, we just put that goal out there because we just put a number out there, and we have no idea how we were going to achieve it. And just by luck, we hit them. Okay? We really don't know how we did it. And that's when I started challenging them. Say, guys, you need to know your numbers if you're going to put a number out there. Have some assumptions, have some certain expectations behind it. So that way, when you review it and you see what your actuals are, you understand, okay, this is what worked. Well, Our assumption here was correct. Our expectations were correct, but then all of a sudden we missed on these things because our expectations and assumptions were incorrect. And so that way when you start looking at, in that sense, you start understanding your body, right? So when you're looking at your human body, right? So anytime our body tells us there's something wrong and when there's something wrong, we usually go see a doctor. But if there's something wrong and, and it keeps coming up and you don't know why something's wrong, then that's really, you're putting your head in the sand and all of a sudden you, you develop cancer because you, you weren't paying attention to your symptoms and you were paying attention to the numbers of what your body was telling you. So, so that's why I, I, I really do, I don't, I don't stress it as much as I used to because I'm no longer in, in the finance and accounting seat. But I do have that lens where I asked, I ask questions when I see numbers from my clients and I ask them to really, I ask them to see if they truly understand their numbers.
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B
I love that Don. And this is, I don't know whether it's just taken like 40 years for me to figure out like there's this adage or there's this like philosophy out there where maybe it's like the startup culture or maybe I don't know what kind of created, but there's this idea that you just throw a number out there and it's like come hell or high water we're going to, we're going to hit that. And for a 10 year target I get that like 10 year target, there's a lot of feel like we're really just kind of putting a flag out there. We're just trying to get a Compass heading when 3 year picture is starting to get a little bit more clear. But for the one year target and we just used to throw numbers out there just because at Hunt a Killer, you know, we were 25 million, we were like, hey, we're going to do 50 million next year. The only reason we hit that was because of the pandemic. Without the pandemic people would not have been searching for things to do inside of their homes. And we probably would have went in a very different direction at that point. And what we've been doing recently, we're self implementing right now. But when we come up with a number, like there's at least a little bit of math that comes into that, like, okay, this is the number now Here are the things that we're going to do in order to hit that. When, like when you hear teams kind of throw out the well, this is going to be the number and come hell or high water, is that your signal? Are you like pulling back and now and now like helping them with strategy or helping them think through that versus just like, oh, we're going to hit it because we're all just going to work harder this quarter.
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A
Yeah, I kind of help facilitate that. So just. I love what you said because it's absolutely true. So the 10 year target, you don't know how you're going to get there, but if it's important to you, you'll figure it out. You figure out three years at a time, one year time, one quarter at a time. And then the three year picture, you may know how you're going to get there, but you need to be very intentional about how you're going to get there. And so I do challenge them in that three year picture. Revenue goal, profit goal, you know, what does the mix look like? Does your business look the same? What are you doing more of? What are you doing less of? So curate, set, intentionality so that this year, this one year plan, you know exactly what you need to do or at least have a better firm idea of how you're going to reach out that three year picture. Because you, you do have certain strategies that you need to make some changes into, maybe you know, implement certain things, change your mix and your products and services and so forth. So if, if you're not looking at it that way, to me you're not very intentional about how you're going to get there and it is going to be just blind luck on, on how you get there.
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B
You talked to, you talked a little bit about Tab and you ran tab. I've, I've been a part of Vistage actually I just joined DO as well your exposure as like having the franchise and leading this thing. Like there's two big things, there's more. But there's like two things that stand out to me that kind of changed my life. Number one was from a business standpoint. Number one, eos. Number two, vistage. And like EOS could be representative of some sort of framework in which to operate the business. And Vistage, it could just be like a group of advisory peers that can help me work through larger issues like where do you think the value from Tab and Vistage and some of these other things. And is this something that when you're working with clients that you are adamant about like this has to be kind of a part of your suite.
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A
Yes. Because it's so important. You mentioned the impact it's had in your life. I mean, I've seen. I had tab for 15, by the way. I just sold Taft my TAB business back in July. And so I need to change my website and things like that. I was still a facilitator up through October for the group that I was handing over to the new owner because I had four groups and one of them I was actually facilitating myself. So so, But Tab for 15 years, EOS for 10 years. And I've seen what it does, those two combined, what it does to organizations. I have a graphic that actually it was kind of one of my prospecting tools had a graphic that shows. So say this is the rate of the time and this is the rate of change, right? So when you join a peer group, say your normal business, your, maybe your, your change is like this, right? When you join a peer group, your change accelerates because your mindset as an owner starts, starts changing. When you, when you implement eos, it, it actually deploys your leadership team to more change. So it actually, the slope changes even, even more. So I think those two combined are just powerful and it really goes back to kind of the mindset that I, that I have in, in looking at the business body and also just a systems wide thing. So I take the approach of, I think Stephen Covey is the one that, that basically kind of coined this. It's the, instead of having that mindset of do have, be where I'm going to do all these things so I can have this, so I can become this, right? Stephen Covey kind of flips it. He says, no, be this person. Be. Define who you want to be. Be that person. That kind of mindset and the values that you need to have so that you can start doing things so that you can have the outcome that you want. And so I think TAV or any peer group and EOS operating system does that. It helps you define who do you want to be. Who do I want to be as a leader, right? And what do I have to do to be that leader so I can have the outcome that I want. So that's, that's kind of the, the owner mentality that that tab helped kind of crystallize. And then, and then from an EOS standpoint, you know, who do we want to be as a company and what do we need to do to get there so we can have the outcomes that we have? So, and, and that's going back to the. Our own bodies, right? Our own human bodies. For us to have a healthy life, we have to have that, that same mindset too. You know, who do I want to become so I can start doing things that I need to do to have to leave a legacy that I want for my kids, for my wife and for my community. So that be do have mentality that I think a peer group does and EOS does the peer group for the owner and EOS for the leadership team and the rest of the organization.
- [26:34]
B
What's interesting is you leading, chairing, facilitating a peer group and then also bringing people into a session room. Like, it starts with trust and getting people to open up and have the conversations. Like what you have, you have a vast experience with this. How have you had or how have you like, enabled transparent, candid conversations in both of those spaces? Like, are there tactics, tools that you use to help people kind of open up?
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A
I do and I, I'm starting to realize that more and more. It's maybe one of my superpowers. But before I do that, I'm going to go back to what we talked about. The power of having a peer board and EOS is, is when I, because I, I have my, the board that I, I had four groups, okay? And three of them were facilitated by other facilitators and coaches. And I had my own. And, and in my group, 80% of my clients were both TAB and EOS. And in my other groups, maybe 50% or less. But my group would always be because we polled our members every year. Did you have record revenues? Did you have record profits? And how many employees did you add to the workforce? And every year consistently my group, that 80% of them are running on EOS, whether it's me as their implementer or one of them actually has Jill Young as their implementer, and some of them self implemented every year, 80 to 90% of them had either record revenue, record profit, or both. And they, they've added employees. So they're always in a, in a growth trajectory. And I do believe it's because they're both in a peer group and in eos. So, so back to your question in terms of vulnerability. Because if you know me, and a lot the people that know me, I'm a big crybaby, right? So I get, I get pretty emotional in the meetings. If it touches on something that really is meaningful to either that member or a leadership team member, I kind of empathize with them. So I start tearing up if I see someone crying. In the room, I start crying, but that's one thing. But also I always just set the expectations of being open and honest. I mean, every implementer does that in their own way, but I feel like I somehow connect with them because I always set that stage of openness and honesty. And it might be because as they get to know me, I'm willing to be vulnerable. And so in my check in, sometimes I get choked up because I'm sharing a personal best, you know, how to get choked up about it. And it just kind of brings a level of comfort. Yeah, I can be vulnerable too. Right. So I do that both in my tag groups and in an eos and actually in my tab groups, one of the things that we do is define a personal vision again, except B, defining who that B is up. Who do you want to become? And in my tab groups, I have every single one of them state their personal vision before they. They go into their challenge. They want advice on. From the group. And so that in itself, you are being vulnerable on. On what, what you want. You know, that big picture of what you want in your life, both professionally and personally. Because people share a lot of things in that personal vision that's very, very personal and. And deep and very important to them. And so when they do that in my tab groups, then just that setting that stage opens up with vulnerability there. And in the EOS sessions, you know, when, when. When we're going through. Through issues, you know, I always. I ask them open and honest when we're building out that issues list. Open and honest. This is your chance to be open and honest and transparent. What's really bothering you? What's keeping you all from being your best? And we're here to fight for the greater good. So I don't. It sounds simple, but it may be just how I ask. It just helps them kind of just let their guards down because of just the way I ask for that. And I'm transparent myself. And hopefully my clients will say that because I. It's. It's almost. It's annoying when I get so emotional and tears start coming down my face, but I just can't help it. It's just one of those things that God designed me to really just empathize with the people around me. So I think that just brings another level of transparency with people in a room.
- [31:11]
B
All right, quick break, friends. Do you find it impossible to hire and retain top sales talent or worse, are you paying insane recruiter fees who are all using outdated hiring processes? Yeah, I was too, at Hunt A killer. We were spending hundreds of thousands on recruiter agency fees. And after I sold that company in 2025, I started Talent Harbor. And the whole vision here was to make sales recruiting accessible to small and medium sized businesses. Because the organizations that can hire and retain world class people are the ones that ultimately win. Most organizations rely on things like zip, recruiter or LinkedIn and they get hundreds if not thousands of resumes. But we find that the best salespeople are already perfectly placed somewhere else. And that's why our approach is to go after them. And we do that through a business model called recruiting As a service. We do not charge commissions, we do not have success fees, we don't have contracts, we don't have long term engagements. And we become an extension of your team as expert sales recruiters. If you're tired of the same old recruiters and want to actually grow your sales team, check us out@talent harbor.com that's Talent Harbor. T A L E N T H A R B O R dot com. Let's get your next sales superstar hired. I don't think I've ever, I've ever heard about a personal vision. Like, and there's a lot of conversations around, like, what's the business vision, Core values, things like that. Like what is, what is a personal vision? And like what is a personal vision? If it's a statement, like what is, what does a good personal vision look like?
- [32:53]
A
Yeah, so that was one of the first things I loved about the tab process, is that we do, we do focus on the personal vision first. And that's really just like, just like an eos. The middle of that EOS model is your business. Right? And that's, that's the middle is your business. And the 60 components around that is around your business tab. Really, the middle of that circle is your vision, your personal vision. It really combines both personal and, and business because your personal vision is really your end goal that you want in your life. And the business is really just a means to that end. So it defines, you know, what do you want your business to provide, to allow you to do certain things in your life. Right. But it also defines what your role in business is like. You know, what, what is your ideal role in your company? When do you want to exit? How do you see that exit? You know, what, what do your employees look like? What's your culture look like? But also it blends in. You know, how do my, how am I balance, how am I balancing my work and personal life? What am I able to do, because my business is providing this and then after, you know, my business is providing what that is and how do I exit? What is my exit? What do I do after I exit? So it's really combining all those, and boiling it down to 100 to 150 word statement so that it just, it forces you to really dive deep into what's most important to you. And when you have that crystallized, just like in the business, the VTO is the greater good, then for an owner, that personal vision is as, that, that's the greater good for them, for their family, for their community. And so that, that's, that's where as a coach I, I help and drive towards that.
- [34:51]
B
I, I, I love that I, and I've never. One, I don't have a personal vision. I mean, I could come up with one. I mean, I just haven't documented one. And I think to a certain extent, I mean, we were talking about intentionality earlier in this conversation and I feel like I've kind of gone through life of just like more, more, more like more growth, more this, more that, whatever the case may be. And that's why I love this concept of a personal vision is a personal now, you know, obviously, like no one would be able to control when in their lives they put a personal vision together. Have you, have you seen though that like a personal vision will then either transform a business vision or a company vision for that owner? Or do you normally see like, it's more of a definition of like why the company exists or the vehicle to achieve the things that are in the personal vision?
- [35:47]
A
Yeah, so it's both. Because usually, you know, when people came to me for tab, they were frustrated, right, because they were working like a dog and, and the business wasn't providing what they wanted out of the business. And, and so, and it was taking over their life. It was their life. Right. And so that's why when in the beginning process of, of our, of our process with TAB is, you know, well, what do you want your life to look like? You know, what is it that's important to you? What's ideal for you? And then when you define that, and that includes personally and professionally, when you define that, then we say, okay, well, in order to do that, your business has to provide certain things for that. So again, your business becomes a means to that end. But it does impact that when you look at the VTO from an owner standpoint, that VTO exists because the owner has in their head a personal vision in their mind defined. It may not be in writing, but they have something in their head. This is what I want to provide my business to provide so I can do these things personally with my family and things like that. Now why not write it down? I mean, write it down. Put your personal vision down. So that way you're very intentional about your personal vision. Because a lot of things that we ask about that is going, what is, you know, what's important to you is like for example, some people put in their personal vision, hey, I want to be home every night for dinner with my family. You know, that's, that's part of their personal vision. Or I want to, you know, I want to be able to vacation at least so many times a year. I want to be able to be old enough to be hit, be physically fit, old enough to travel with my grandchildren when I get older, you know, whatever it is that's important to them from a personal standpoint. Because sometimes people put in there when, when you look at the business, they say, okay, I want my business operating such a way that it doesn't need me, you know, on a day to day basis. I'm working only three days a week, whatever that is. So it's just really defining what, what you want to be very intentional about. And, and that's what I love about that process. Because I'm actually writing a book now. Because when I see what we did with Tab and what we, what I see what we did with Eos or to continue with Eos, it's the same concepts. It's, that's the be do have concept that Stephen Covey mentioned. B, Define who do you want to be as a company, you know, as a business owner, as an individual, do start doing what you need to do. Take action, have the right habits so that you can have the outcome that you want. So you can actually fulfill that personal vision or that vto, that vision traction organizer. So it's just these life principles and there's, there's statistics on this is if you write things down, there's a, there's 42% chance of higher achievement rate of that success rate, 42%. And there's some, there's some studies behind that. And then not only if you write it down, if you share it with people that you, you really trust, because there's another stat that shows if you share it with people that you just put it out in the world and you don't, you don't trust that you just kind of putting it out there, it actually reduces the effectiveness of it. But if you share it with people that you trust, like a peer board or your leadership team, you know, or your spouse or your partner, you know that that increases the chances as well. But not only that. Once you share it. Because sometimes people share only once and they don't have a regular pulse. When you share it with a regular review, a regular pulse, which is what we did with Tab, what we do with EOS, that increases the chances of success from anywhere from 75% to 90, 96%. So, and there are studies that show that. So when you have those habits, okay, write it down. Be very clear on what is it that you want. Share it with people that you care and trust that you feel like is going to hold you accountable. Right? Show accountability partners and then have a regular review pulse to see, okay, how are we doing? How am I doing? What do I need to change? Be open and honest with me. What's keeping me from. From getting there. That just increases the chances of success. And that's what I've been doing for the last 15 years, whether it's with the owners or with the leadership team. And that's why I think it's so powerful. It's very simple. Powerful. But as, as we all know, simple is not easy. You know, it takes very, a lot of intentions, intentionality, to, to do that, to make sure that we do have the right habits. Going back to the lens that I look at as a business body, in, in order for us to have a healthy lifestyle, for us in our own personal body, we have to have better habits. We, we, we just, we kill ourselves with bad habits. And as a business body, we have bad habits as a business body too. So we have to have good, healthy habits as a business body.
- [40:43]
B
When, when you think about the, the personal vision, it is, it is it also like the documentation of other things like is your, is your thing like have a personal. Is it almost like a v. Are you, are you like, get the personal vision down and like that will do 80% of the work?
- [41:02]
A
Well, that personal vision does become like the VTO for that owner because your coach is there always bringing up your personal vision in the coaching sessions. And as I said in my, in my peer groups and tab, all my members stated their personal vision at every meeting. So they always are speaking out loud to their peers. And their peers would call them out on it because they would do things that were against that personal vision and say, Michael, if this is important to you, why are you focused on this thing so much? How's that going to, how's that going to get you to that personal vision. And so they, it increases the accountability. And that's why I think when I have in my group and you know, when they're both on EOS and tab, it just increases that chance of they're fulfilling their company vision through their leadership team and the rest of the organization, but they're also fulfilling their personal vision. They're living the life that they want. It's the EOS life, you know, the EOS life that we all want our clients to have. But sometimes the EOS life becomes too much on their, their company side of things. But the EOS life also is a personal life for them. And in my mind, I. You have to define your own personal vision on what that looks like so that your, your business really provides a means to that end. Because too many times the business becomes the end and the business becomes their identity and they're lost when they, when they, when they sell their business is because they never really define what their personal vision is.
- [42:31]
B
Is this something that you find that's kind of exclusive for the owners, the founders, the visionaries? Or, or is, is your, do you believe that this is a good tool that the entire senior leadership team can use?
- [42:45]
A
Anybody? Anybody? I mean, you can be an individual contributor, you can be a manager, you can be senior leadership. You need to define what you want, what's important to you in your life. And there's a lot of. Actually Michael Hyatt has, has his own personal vision exercise. There's a lot of exercises out there that would help you define personal visions. We just had a specific one through tab, and I think it's important for anyone, even if you're not, if entrepreneurship or ownership is not in your cards. You have to define what's important to you in terms of your career. You know, what does your career look like? What do you want to, what do you want to be able to do as you, as you grow more and more skills in your career? And how does that provide for your family? What does your family look like? What does your personal life look like? I think it's important for anyone and for me it really is because there's, you know, there's a proverbs scripture that says without vision, people perish, right? So that, that applies to anyone. If we don't have our own personal vision, our own mindset of what, who we want to be, who we want to become, then we're, we're rudderless, right? People perish. What Solomon meant by that, King Solomon, who's say is the wisest people person in the world is is that when he said perish by that doesn't mean that necessarily die. It's just they don't have guidelines or guideposts to guide their, their life. So they're always just being blown by the wind. And they live purpose. Their purpose is not clear. So they don't have a clear purpose that they're moving towards. But when you have that clear personal vision, then you have a bigger purpose that you're trying to achieve and that should guide everything that you do. And I, to me that's what creates a discipline that we need to do in our lives to have the good habits is when that, when that personal vision is crystal clear that b do have again, I love it.
- [44:35]
B
Is there, is there a frequency? Like do personal visions evolve over time? Like is it like every five years, every 10 years? And like what's, what frequency is like I don't know, should people be looking and reflecting and maybe modifying?
- [44:50]
A
Yeah. So I always encourage my clients to look like 10 years out. At least five to 10 years out. Right. Hopefully closer to that 10 year, 10 year mark. Because going back to, you know, Gina also talks about as well, your tenure thinking. Right. And what I love about is these things that I've done. There's so many common threads and what I do with peer groups in the US and so it does change because sometimes and just like, you know, the VTO changes, you know, sometimes we have, we go through that vision building one and two process. But then after year one we look at that three year picture and it's like, man, that theory picture was not very good. And so we need to create a new three year picture or just kind of tweak it a little bit. Because now that we know what we know and we've been in eos for a year, that three year picture might not even be as a stretch anymore or it might just not be. We've learned about each other so much now that we know that that's not us, that's not who we want to become three years from now. And so it does evolve. And so like for example, I had one, one client, you know, over 10 years ago and I use his example all the time when I do personal vision exercises and workshops. It's, you know, part of his personal vision was he wanted to develop a leadership team that has his back, that wouldn't allow him to fail, that he, he would have, you know, kids and he would be a great father because he didn't, he didn't have kids. At that point in time that, that the, the business is growing and helping sustain his, his, his standard of living, but also the people that he, he employs and that he is in his dream home where his parents can, if they need to be, can be living with them, and they live in a community where he can kind of with a short drive or walk or in a golf cart, go to restaurants and things like that. And so 10 years after that, he invites us to his dream home and his peer group does. Dream home. And we started his tour at his foyer, and he pointed at me and said, don, this dream house would not have been possible if it weren't for you. And I told, I told them, man, that's way too much on me. You did the hard stuff. I gave you a system that we reviewed every year, every month. You know, you define your personal vision. You made it happen because you're very intentional. Your peers help you do that because you were speaking that out out loud to them and they're holding you accountable to it. So it was a system, it was the habits that helped them get there. And that's why it's so important to, I mean, that's, that's what happens with that vto. That's what happens with that personal vision. When you're very intentional about it. You will get there. You'll find a way to get there. It'll create the discipline and the habits to get there. That's why EOS is so powerful. That's why peer groups are so powerful.
- [47:49]
B
One more question. I, I feel like we've, we've gone. This is, like, super fascinating. That's why I, I'm, I've stuck to this, this personal vision thread. One more question. On, on the personal vision thread, do you think it would be a good exercise as a senior leadership team to have everybody do their personal vision and share it with other people in the senior leadership team? Or is it meant for, like, peers and outside of the company or close friends and family?
- [48:18]
A
You know, one of my clients asked me that, and I told them I don't think it would be hurtful if they're really, truly bonded as a leadership team and they're willing to be vulnerable and open and honest about what's really important to them. To me, in my mind, that really helps understand what drives them and how that as a team, they can work together in helping fulfill their own personal visions. And hopefully it's within the company. Right. Because sometimes those personal visions might define that. You know what? I may want to have my own business and that's okay because in our three year picture, when we go through that three year picture exercise, we always ask, you know, what does your role look like, you know, three years from now? What are you doing more of, what are you doing less of? And usually that's the time when some people say, you know, I want to be retired by this time. And that way people, they put it out there and then you start planning around that so you're, the company's not blindsided by it. Hey, this guy wants to leave. At some point in time, we need to start building the bench strength behind that person to make sure that we have a good succession plan, transition strategy. And so when people understand everyone else's personal vision, then everything's out on the table. There's no hidden agendas, you know, and, and, and we're, you're a more functional, healthy team when that happens.
- [49:45]
B
Love that. By the way, that just made our issues list. Because I, I, I love it, I love it, like it, it to me it serves like so many different purposes. Like for one, and you said this is like, if you have a team that like truly gels and can be open, honest and transparent, then this is almost like another unique exercise that helps, helps bring it even closer. Yeah, I love what you just said right there. So it just made our issues list. While we were, while we were talking, you know what?
- [50:13]
A
Something just entered my mind and I may get in trouble for this because it's not EOS pure, but I've had a client for six years and there are very small leadership team. They're four and they're very, very close and tight knit. And you know, we've shared tears together, we share faith together, we, we've really bonded as group. Not, not just them together, but just with me too. And so in our annual meeting, one of the annuals that we did, I really, I, I went through the personal vision exercise with them that I do with, with certain clients and workshops that I do. And they loved it. They loved it. And their homework was to create the personal vision. I just kind of took them through a draft of it, but they believe it's going to really help them as a team and not just professionally. It's going to help them personally really define what's important to them.
- [51:06]
B
I love that I might be following up with you for how you effectively put one together.
- [51:12]
A
Oh, by the way, so now kind of the, the second half of that story of that client with the dream home and we got invited, that was back in 2024 is when we had that, that dinner. Now his new personal vision is. And by the way, he's got kids now. He's got kids now. He's in his dream home. He has, he's built up a great leadership team because he's running on eos. I'm his implementer, and, and they're, they're achieving all sorts of things. His new dream, his new personal vision is really. I wish I could read it. It's just, it's in my head. But part, part of it is, is going to. But, but that was by the time he was 40, he wanted this and he hit it, he hit it when he hit 40 because he defined that when he was 30 years old. Now beyond 40, part of it is what's really cool is he wants to go to Scotland and, and play, play golf there with his, with his kids because he's got a son that he's, he's kind of just starting to get playing golf. But it's just, it's funny because he's very intentional about it. Now that that's written in his head, he's making sure that his son is going to golf games with him. And he actually, he's got this golf tournament that he does for, to honor his dad who's passed and this time around his, his son was involved in that golf tournament. So it's just, it's just really neat how all this, with intentionality and when things are written down that your, your day to day, week to week, things that you do is all aligned towards that. So anyway, just wanted to share that.
- [52:47]
B
I love that. One more, one more question on that line, I think is this, should you refer, like, is this somewhere that you write it down, you put it prominently? That way you're going to see it every single day. Is this something that, like, you know, every Monday you look at, like what. How do you think about that?
- [53:01]
A
So with my clients, we saw it twice a month. We saw it once, once a month because they actually share in their, in their peer group. And then in my coaching sessions with them, which is in between the, the monthly board meetings, I would have it in front of me and, and I would, I would dive into it if I felt like it needed to be. They need to be reminded of what's important to them. If they're often some tangents and they were doing things that were inconsistent with it. So we have our own personal visions here in my organization. So there's, there's three of us here. My wife is in the business and, and my My, my sister in law who's my wife's sister is also in the business. We had the contractors when we had the TAB groups but now that I'm focused on Eos, we have just the three of us and we all, we all have personal visions and we probably need to refer to it a lot more often. Uh, we don't refer to as often as, as I advise my clients to. So that, that, that may be put on my issues list is for me to review our personal visions more often.
- [54:08]
B
I, I love it. What's okay so someone just listened to this whole thing and they're like I need some Don in my life. Like there's, there's going to be some, some personal vision, there's going to be expert implementation. What is the best way that they can get a hold of you?
- [54:26]
A
Probably an email. So my email is don D SM enterprises.com so that is my parent company that I had tab under and EOS under. It's a leadership development company. We actually have another product called Next Generation Leaders that goes to another level of mid managers developing them as leaders. So don'tprises.com so that's probably the best way.
- [54:54]
B
Awesome Don, thank you so much for like we covered first we went down the accounting and the finance and like how to look at balance sheets and profit and loss statements and what questions how to assess all the way to like personal vision. I just felt like today was so impactful so I just wanted to thank you again for taking the time and coming on.
- [55:16]
A
No, thanks for having me. It's my privilege.
- [55:19]
B
Awesome. All right, we'll catch you next time.
- [55:21]
A
All right, thanks Ryan.