Chris Snyder (2:39)

Which part? The entrepreneurial part or the tech?

Ryan Hogan (2:43)

Let's start with the entrepreneurial.

Chris Snyder (2:44)

Well, you know, I think so many people, you hear these stories, right? Like, everything from my first real business was a lawn care landscape service, right? And built that through kind of as soon as I could, you know, stop pulling a mower around with my moped to get a truck, right through high school and ran that business through college as well. And you know, and then. But I had all the proverbial, like I had to sell stuff, right? Because at that moment in time, it was like trying to figure out, you know, what, what that was all about. There was just juice to it, right? It was exciting. From my. I started a candy bar route in junior high, which I got in trouble for because, you know, I had kids distributing candy on every bus and every level of, you know, recess. And the principal called me in, he's like, hey. He's like, what are you doing? You know, are you coming here for an education and make money? And I'm like, both. I'm like, how about you? I thought he wanted a cut of the business, Ryan, right? Like, I was like going to take 10%. Like I could do this. No, it turned out it was a monopoly because the band started selling candy bars on Monday. So anyways, so that's just in you. And I think that is almost for a lot of entrepreneurs, it's just DNA. Like you, you kind of wake up and you want to build, right? You want to figure it out. And so I knew that. And then through college, I'd started another business called Campus Lofts. And we started kind of building loft beds that, you know, where you could actually interlock link and then take your, your university bed and just put the springs inside and got that up to three, four campuses. And that was actually a fun business. But I got to the end of college and, and I was like, I need to go learn from somebody else. I need, somebody else needs to teach me, right? Like, I know what I know and I think I can learn, but I can learn faster if somebody else has a great program. So fast forward, I ended up joining a company called McMaster Car Supply. They're a multi billion dollar MRO supply company. And that does not sound sexy for anyone listening. But what is amazing about it is they have, they still have a great leadership development program. So I heard some other folks talk about on your, your podcast, right? These are programs where you come in right out of school and every 12 months they move you right. Like so I started off in purchasing and then I got to work on warehouse layout design for a new facility. They were standing up and then I got to go lead a department and then I got point I was a controller and another point I was director of marketing and sales. So I did seven years and just learned all these skills. And fast forward that takes us to 1999 and anyone who's old enough to remember that was dot com days. So all my friends were now venturing off and I've been patient and picking up all these skills. Finance, marketing, operations. And it was time so you know, went with some friends. We started a company in Chicago. It was a consulting for software. As my first foray into the truly like we. We did the proverbial raised. I think my memory's fading a bit like $18 million over dinner, right. From a really good firm called First Analysis in Chicago. And that was awesome. Like, like everyone would cheer and I was like fourth, fifth seat in that scenario. So with you know, some other good folks that were were much more on the leading side. But I was was close enough to all the details and then we got to run and ramp. But it was dot com day. So I think we hit about 150, 50 plus consultants at one point. But you knew it was. It was all wrong because the deals were flowing. You weren't working hard. Like people they were spending $3 million, $10 million on software side unseen. You're like this is gonna end badly. And it did. So I transitioned from there to a software company that you know, was a really good run for a bit until it wasn't. And then we Woke up in 22,002 because we were also PE backed at the time. And it's about 500 people. And then they sold us to a publicly traded software company that was 6,000 people. And I got to wake up to, you know, half the company was let go. And then all of a sudden you've got like 350 people reporting to me and consulting. And I'm like this is not what I want to do in a publicly traded situation. So jump from that. I had a friend that was we're doing a carve out from a publicly traded company. So it takes. They took 16 computer product companies. They were spinning them off of the publicly traded company. And I got to go be COO CTO of that of that organization. And that was a turnaround more than anything else. But we were successful and turned it around. But I had a passion along the way as CTO because again, we're now living in like 2005ish type of frame and really loved mobile technology. So I'd spent. I drove up to Waterloo and met the BlackBerry folks because, you know, for those of you who probably are too young to know, there was this thing called BlackBerry that was awesome. Had had a keyboard, right. I still miss my keyboard. And we became the first system integrators for BlackBerry worldwide. So I ended up with my partners, I carved that business out like 15 employees. And then we grew that mobile technology management business to a couple hundred people over the course of time and learned a lot. We started a global joint venture, raised money, my first kind of being the first chair of raising real VC funding throughout that. That bit too. So I've been around a lot of it, but actually got deleted. So I'm telling you a decent amount. So Fast forward, it's 2017. The company is, you know, growing about 15. We wanted to 30% and we just missed the market and the board and I disagreed. Like, just watch BlackBerry. If you go back, look at the trajectory. If you've ever. Not if you've ever seen the BlackBerry. I think it's on Netflix there.

Ryan Hogan (8:08)

It's a great show or it was a great movie.

Chris Snyder (8:11)

Yeah, right. I know all those people, like I was in so many rooms with them. It's Jim Basili and all those guys. So it's. It was kind of interesting to see it from that perspective, having lived it with them.

Ryan Hogan (8:20)

Did you almost go by the hockey team as well? Were you, were you on the PJ with him?

Chris Snyder (8:23)

No, no, but. But I was in Pittsburgh when he was making that play at the hockey thing, which obviously did not go well at all. Different set of meetings. But anyways, so we missed the window. The mobile technology thing, the management side of it was shifting to security, which is what they were doing. And so we had diversified into Android and Apple and all that good stuff. But, but you know, it's one of those moments where most of the time the board likes its original thesis and it's like, hey, we still have enough. Let's just keep running this thing versus pivoting it. And at that moment it's like, well, I'm a builder, I need to build and if we're just going to keep running the same play, then you don't need me. I'll step out and go do my next thing. And that company, we eventually got it sold completely to private equity within three or four years, but it was not the out. It could have Been in my mind if we would have shifted the strategy to security, because if you watch in that same time frame how the MSPs we had all the infrastructure to do, it wouldn't have been that big a shift in my mind, but it would have been so much better because the managed security side took off, whereas the managed mobile side did not. And it was just a shift in the market. It wasn't like something that you had to will. You just had to go talk to clients to understand it. And that's always why I've gotten frustrated with boards, because a lot of these boards are financial boards, they're not operator boards. And I sit on a couple different boards even today. And you know, you look around, you're like, you're all. Finance people. Never talk to a client. You talk to one, that's about all. And it's like, where are the operators in the room, right? Like, where are the people who actually know how to build and actually go talk to clients? They're in the market all the time. They can understand more than just how the, how the numbers are adding up. So that's my, it's my beef with the board, but different definitely said so. I left in 18 and wanted to go figure out what to do again. And more than a few of your guests have this moment where somebody gives them traction. They read it and they're like that. All the bells and whistles goes go off. That was not me. So I never heard attraction. I didn't implemented Lencioni's advantage. And I had a friend who knew I was kind of in that transition mindset trying to figure out, do I build something, buy something, what am I going to do? And he had just bought a couple staffing companies. He was like, hey, I'm kind of implementing self implementing eos in these companies. Would you be interested in this work? And I was like, well, let me go take a look at the work. So I called 30 US implementers. I get a little bit of a high fact finder in me. And I went and talked to 15 business leaders doing it. And the amount of response, right. Excitement about how transformative it can actually be is what got my attention. And it's like, all right, I'll go do this. And back in Those days in 2018, you didn't have to go to boot camp. You could just do basecamp implementation. So that's what I started off doing and really fell in love with it. So I did a. Did the US Boot Camp in October of 2018. And my thought at the Time was, I think a lot of us implementers was like, hey, I'll do this work. And it's like, well, I'll use this as deal flow. I'll find cool companies to work with and if I believe in them, then I'll. I'll invest money and time, right. And help them build out what they're going to do. And this will just be a great pipeline for it, which is really kind of how I found 90, you know. So you were, you were a little before me because I didn't start using 90 till mid-2018, you know, from a implementation perspective, and went looking for technology because, you know, that's how you do more or less forever, no matter what you do, just how you do it. And so there's two platforms met Mark Abbott from 90, their founder, I think it was four employees at the time. So it's, you know, pretty small in the early days. And we hit it off and so I became an investor and advisor in that business in 2019. And then in 2020, Mark asked if I could help out a little bit more. And the pandemic showed up. Ryan. So I had some time. Yeah, it's like, well, look at that. So got to be CFO as well as work on the channel revenue side. And you know, my cfo, unfortunately, I thought it was three months, but it's kind of like Gilligan's Island. It went three years until we actually get. Because we just kept building, right. We kept growing and it's like, okay, well, I could keep doing this a little bit longer. I think a lot of our entrepreneurs listening can understand that because we're always like, you know, you do the thing that you can do, you do, and the thing you can't, you hire for. And we were doing all right on, on that front. So, yeah, so that's how I got to 90. I'm still, obviously do. I still do EOS implementations. I keep about seven clients. That keeps me fresh. I love being in the room when it happens, especially when we're using software and I get their direct feedback. I think, you know, much better. Coming back to talk to our product executives and kind of working through what I hear, it's a different perspective maybe sometimes than those that, you know, we just talking to a customer, talking to an implementer.

Ryan Hogan (12:57)

That's amazing. Like one. What an incredible journey. And like I was taking notes as you were talking and now I'm like trying to figure out. There's so many interesting kind of places to take this. The one thing I do, I Want to come back to the cfo, and I want to come back to the board. The CFO thing is really interesting to me based upon, like, your background and experience in education and approaching the CFO through an operator. I'm going to put that one on ice real quick. And I want to go all the way back to when you were graduating college and you had this. This moment where you had been operating a business through college, but there was something. Something inside of it, like. Like what told you that, like, you need to go learn before you go, like, build the thing that. That you're gonna go build.

Chris Snyder (13:47)

Well, it was a realization when you're. When I was sitting in those college classes, right, Whether it was a marketing class and we're talking about pricing and packaging and all this stuff. And. And I had. I had a. A tiny bit of background to go pull on, right? And I could feel the kind of the acceleration to the point of what I knew. And I'm a. I'm a kind of I need to know it type of person. Like, one of the things that I heard, and I think this actually came from Gino in a conversation was like, you know, eos is not target market for partnerships. And it's like, why, why isn't it. Why shouldn't it work? It's like, well, because there's too many partners. The decisions don't flow. So, Ryan, I went out and got an accounting firm, a law firm, a consulting firm. That's like, I bet that's not right. It was right, but it's. That's how I know, right? It's like, I'm going to go do it, and I can learn from it, and then I can really have the context to have confidence in what I'm going to go do. And so I think that was kind of that moment too, was like, I need to do right, and if I can go do it with others, I can accelerate around it. And I do. You know, I think part of my, you know, fortunate position is I'm fascinated by all aspects of business. So I love finance, I love marketing, I love sales, I love building software, right. All that stuff fascinates me, which is also great doing US implementations because I get such a wide breadth of customers to choose from. And being a student of business, you can see patterns, and then with permission, you can even bring them in, whether you introduce one visionary to the next across functions, across industries, which is always fun to do, or just share with them what you see in the patterns versus what maybe they can only see for themselves.

Ryan Hogan (15:22)

Your journey is so linear from a professional development standpoint. You got a taste of entrepreneur ship and, and obviously you had that itch since day one. And then you had this maybe like self awareness, self realization where it's like I, in order for me to like, be the best that I can be going down the pipe that I know I'm going to go down anyhow. Like, then you started at a big organization, went all around, then you were number four, number five in the next one. And then like, you got to a place where you finally launched your own. So you learned everything from like every core function, raising money before you did it. The intentionality behind that, like, did you just know, like it was time when it was time, or. Or it was just like, I was just moving forward?

Chris Snyder (16:08)

No, I think it was often just moving forward. You probably, I don't know, all the episodes. So maybe somebody else has already said this with you before, but the bicycle analogy, like, part of my like, scenario is if I stop, I'll fall. So it's like forward motion progression, right? Right. And even I'm a huge maslov hierarchy of need person. Right? Like, boy, I'm, you know, the whole self actualization, I don't know how long it takes or how exactly to get there. But pro, you know, progress progression is my path, right? It's like people worry so much about what they'll. You'll hear them, they'll say, like, what's, you know, how do you know your purpose? Do you have a purpose? And my purpose is progress, progression, right? How do I get better? Right? How do I help those around me that I love and care about? They also, if I can help them get better. But that's just for me, that's the point, right? It's like learning more, helping more, having a better impact, right? Like, those are the things that drive me.

Ryan Hogan (16:59)

Did you feel ready when you finally, like, founded the company? Like, were you like, we're here and these are the steps that I took. Like, regardless if there was like an acknowledgment, did you feel, did you have the confidence?

Chris Snyder (17:13)

Yeah. Yes and no. I think there's a bit, you know, you'll hear people talk about imposter syndrome. Like, you want to be humbly confident. That's an EOS thing, right? But at the same time, you know, you're, if you're really aware, you're like, there's so much I don't know yet. And I had good mentors and, and you know, professional peers and friends who, when it was time to go do something. They were as excited about going to do it as, as I am. And I also think a lot about one way and two way door decisions. So that the concept here is if I walk through a one way, I can't get back out, right? That's, that's that I have to know. But some of these are just two way door decisions, right? I can go, I can do it. If it's not quite right, I can walk back out of it again. And so it's that it's not the fear of failure isn't there. It's more of the fear of missing out on the opportunity, right? It's like, I don't want to, like some of your couple of the episodes I listened to, it's hard to know because you're committed and you're grinding. You don't want to give up too soon, right? You, you want to see it through because you are committed. You probably convinced a lot of other people to be committed. But I've had to, you know, I've shut down a few of businesses that I thought that if I could have, you know, could have grinded on them a little further. These are typically businesses I like, have an idea, found an entrepreneur. I'm like, hey, I have this idea. You want to start a business? What if you go start this business and I'll help you? And then they come back and they get stuck and you realize, okay, we're too far apart like this, you know, I can't help enough. And they're at a place where we just need to shut this one down. And those, those are hard ones too, because you can, you can see it, you just can't get there. So some of that's also just good, good awareness, figuring it out.

Ryan Hogan (19:01)

It's interesting. It's interesting. Like my first company that I launched, it was called Warwear and it was a performance, performance athletic apparel tailored for the war fighters of tomorrow. And spent like two and a half, three years on this business. And I would say for 75% of that time, we had a whole garage full of T shirts that we had imported. And, and that was like, there were so many lessons in that, that first, first real company. Cause like you, I was selling Creepy Crawl. So for me, it was Mrs. Price. It sounds like it was your assistant principal or the. For me, we never got past the teacher and Ms. Price shut me down. But our journeys are very similar. And I had this thing of like, if you build it, they will come. And I don't know whether that's like the entrepreneurship, like, you know, aura or like people just think that, but once you get in, you realize, oh, that's not it at all. You have to build something compelling and that people actually have a need for. And I held onto the first company way too long. But it sounds like you've figured some of that stuff out along the way.

Chris Snyder (20:12)

Well, trying, right. So I think it's still hard at times where you're like, the model should work, the model looks like other models. But one of my favorite things to say is like, it's always been done before. It's just somebody else, it's a different model. And I just need to go figure out what works someplace else that's not the same and apply similar principles to it to get it to work. And we see that especially as businesses grow, they hit ceilings. When they hit ceilings, you have to reevaluate. Often it's not running away from what you're doing, it's modifying either the market that you're doing it in or the way in which you're taking it to market such that you can get it to grow again. And so we're looking at those, those patterns and those different business models to see if it's maybe just something we need to tweak a bit to get from here to there.

Ryan Hogan (20:52)

And when it.

Chris Snyder (20:53)

Okay, no, we're in one of those moments right now. The SaaS industry, which is an industry I spend a lot of time in, is there right now where it used to be, the moat was the amount of code that you had written. Right. And the velocity and the dollars that you had to spend. And we saw this in infrastructure first. Right. It used to be that if you're going to go start a company, you had to think about all the servers you were going to buy and all you had to get an office. And so that was a barrier to acceleration to be in a business. And then we saw that go away. Right now you're in your house. I'm in my house today. I think that's your house. And so the offices kind of went away as a big, that was a big one way door. You signed a lease for five to 10 years. Right. You really couldn't get back out of that door. I had to buy a bunch of equipment. I wasn't, you know, renting the equipment, I was buying the equipment. That all went away. And now in software, it's there again that you can take a million dollars and all of a sudden have 10 million arrangements. Unheard of, unheard of. But we're watching it as trends inside the industry because the creation of the software is not the issue anymore. The expense of it's not the issue because those barriers have been brought down by AI and supercomputing. And, and so we can now see new entrants coming into markets constantly. And so now it's, that's really about, especially if you're advising and investing in software in earlier stage startups. It's like really what is your moat? Like what is your differentiation that's going to protect you in the journey because you don't have that much time. So there is a whole new way in which we're having to look at companies, especially in the SaaS space and what their differentiation really is. It can't be just the code that they've written, it doesn't. And we think about that a lot. In 90 by the way, as you know, there's a lot of new entrants into the space. US Worldwide's, you know, handed out a lot of licenses to new entrants. So that's created disruption in the marketplace. And you got to think about like, what's the longer term viewpoint that we're going to take, especially as we continue to build the organization.

Podcast Host (22:41)

How do you look at those moats now?

Ryan Hogan (22:43)

Like, like what you're seeing, what you're sensing, the experiences that you've had where you've seen this sort of transformation in the past. Like, is it a, is it a market moat now? So it's like, you know, we know how to speak, we know the exact pain point and we know how to speak. Is it like what does that moat look like 12 months from now, five years from now? Like, how are you thinking through that?

Chris Snyder (23:05)

Yeah, so it's probably, you know, three things that least I'm thinking. I'm not speaking on behalf of anyone else, but I think the connectedness to the customer. Right. Is really important because that's the intelligence of how you have to move. Right. Like as an organization, because if the code's not a problem to really get there. And I'm saying that loosely because there's still lots of challenges. But if it's not really the issue, then it's like how well do I really know that customer? And then that second step in knowing is data. Right? We think about the data that we're hopefully, you know, with, with permission getting such that I can evolve and as a software company I can create better value and benefit and then really distribution and partnerships. So you look at what's happened, I'll just use Salesforce as an example. This is hard information to get. But how much of their revenue now comes from their marketplace? How much of the revenue comes from third parties that do something around them right. Versus the net new that they have and they don't report cleanly on it Because I think we would all be shocked, right? Because what you actually start to have and Apple did this first, right? They did it really. I don't know first, but they did it really well. And from the standpoint of creating the marketplace and the whole thing of connectivity, what they did interestingly enough though is they decided to keep making all their own accessories, right. Like so AirPods that get put in all that versus using an ecosystem which is obviously what Google's trying to do. So I think from a software company you're going to see integrations, collaborations such that we can take and provide more to Ryan as as our target or your business as our target and kind of a collective motion because used to be really hard to get integrations to work because data sets and not just the API to write but how's the data come flow cleanly. But those barriers are falling quickly as well. So I think even as we think about 90s position, we've got 20,000 clients today, almost 300,000 paying users. But if we look at that base, we look at all the employees, that's over a million employees to go unlock inside of our 20,000. And then you think if we can be a trusted partner and provider working with people like us implementers then we can actually help those customers in a lot of variety of ways. We don't have this all worked out yet, but it's like what if we could right Such that we bring down barriers of friction in transaction and we can provide, you know, to talent at harbor as an example. I know you're on this, you're on the sales. I think you guys do sales recruiting, is that right? So what if we had ways in which we could bring you in as a partner to the one in the right moment in time, right to them and present as an option to them. They transact you. We share revenue. Right. Everyone wins because the transaction happens faster. It happens with a greater sense of no love and trust and you create your whole review process because everyone's always chasing net promoter scores and other ways in which to know the customer's really happy with what happens. So I think our longer term is to be able to pull those things together not just as 90, but as software companies and you got to have a different level of interaction with the customer that hopefully is better informed on data.

Ryan Hogan (26:12)

And is that, is that now driving like thinking through budgets and let's say like budgets monetary as well, but also budgets. Where are we investing time, energy, thought money, like a resource in general? Is there a shift there? So if the, if it's easier to code, then is the budget coming out of the technology team and then being put into a different team?

Chris Snyder (26:41)

Yeah, well, it just has to be because you know, we'll pick on QA. We had a 10 person QA department and this last year it's down I think two people, maybe one because the way in which the code is getting, you know, AI supporting kind of how that the quality is getting. And we're on continuous delivery now. Right. Like there's just different ways to do what we're doing. And so you know, the, the actual human jobs in the moment now this becomes always a big debate. The human jobs aren't going away, right? Like they're not going to go away, they're just changing, which they've been changing over the course of your career and my career already. It's the people who are afraid of the change and are willing to change that are really going to struggle with this because change is constant. That's where growth happens. So we got to lean into it as much as possible and be open to it. In my opinion. I think what will, what will be really interesting. Let's go to US Implementer, since this is confessions of an US Implementer. Right. What's really interesting is what's it going to do to the role of the US implementer? And you probably had again not hearing all your episodes there is the mantra is no technology in a session. Right. Like that's a no, no. Like we don't, you know. And the reason that that historically my mind has happened is because they fear the distraction. Because if you have your iPad open, you're going to be undisciplined human and you're going to go check email while we're actually trying to do the work.

Ryan Hogan (27:57)

Right.

Chris Snyder (27:57)

Or that the implementer is going to try to use 90 while they're running a session. They're going to be tapping away on the keyboard and they will be distracted from paying attention and reading the room. Sure. I think that that could be the case. Right. First off, I think, you know, I'm just, I differ in that mode. I've 400 session days and not one of them wasn't with using 90. So I think if you go back to my client Base, they would say it worked extremely well. But maybe I'm different, I don't know. So I can't speak for everyone else at that moment. I just know that moving forward you're going to see, you know, less about explaining to you what the concepts are inside of eos and more about, like, the true facilitation and coaching. And, you know, it's one of the things that gets said in the US implementer world is if it wasn't for dysfunction, we wouldn't have a job. And that's, that's a coaching moment, right? Because we all have dysfunctions. Like what we do in annuals is we, every year we hit five dysfunctions of a team by Pat, you know, Patrick Lencioni. Because no matter if you're a healthy team this year something happens and dysfunction occurs. And what an implementer can do really well is read the room, enter the danger, provide perspective back such that the team can figure out its dysfunction and get it back. Right? And software's not going to do that. I mean, if it does in the future, it's going to take a lot to go figure that out. So there's plenty of room for teams to still have us implementers, but the actual function of the teaching and what happens in the moment, people are going to have so many other ways in which to consume that energy. You can refine it right from the standpoint of having one team not understand exactly what it is and pull it into context for their organization as an implementer. But there's just going to be a shift in really the reality of it. And I think that should be exciting. I'm excited about it. Like, I. Ryan, I stopped. I have a practice manager and it's Misty. So Misty is put in Al in the room and she's running 90. We record every session with customer's permission. So video and AI. And then during that seven to eight hours, I guarantee you there are three aha, impact moments, right? Like it just happens and it's an unlock. And then historically what would happen is people would be like, oh, that was great. Who's got those notes? Does anyone know exactly what happened last five minutes? And nobody would know, right? Because our memories are just selective in what just occurred. But what we do by recording it is we go, okay, Misty, let's go back to the transcript and find it, Clip that video out, send it to the team, drop it inside their 90 instance and their knowledge base. Now the team has it however they want to use it in the future. So it's not for me that we do that, it's for them. So we're producing a different product for them because our memories are only what they are and it's their time, they paid for it. Right. So why not capture that? The notes are better this way, right? We can summarize better from. From session to session and meet them where they're at. But my point of saying that is I never touch a keyboard. I'm just like, hey, Misty, let's go ahead and open up the vto. Drop the left nav, blah, blah, blah, right? And I'm at a whiteboard doing my thing and all this comes together. Two screens are up. They can follow along if they want, right? Take notes in their leadership team manuals. And then they got. And they've got a good follow product that they, we've captured the moment in time as much as they want the moment. So you wouldn't drop seven hours on them, right? But if there's like, hey, we did. That was a great open segue. Would you guys like it? Yep. Let's go and clip it out. Drop it to you and you could have a different product. So I see that happening in the future with AI. Eventually, Misty won't be my practice manager. It'll probably be an AI agent. And as an implementer, I'm just talking to it, right? It's running and bringing in the things, you know, be like, hey, Misty, remember last quarter when we did blah, blah, blah, Go ahead and bring that up for us, throw it on the screen. And this is like, you know when you watch Iron man and Jarvis and we're like, oh, it's so futuristic. It's not that future is not that far out, right? Like, it's got to happen here. But think about what a better context we have, how much more, you know, how much powerful it can be when we're doing that type of work together with all the information that we need at the time we need it. So the implementers who get, in my opinion, just my opinion, the implementers who get really comfortable with accelerating the skills that help solve the dysfunction facilitation and coaching. And I think it's going to be an exciting time.

Ryan Hogan (32:02)

It's so interesting because as you were right before, you got into the story of like, what the future would look like in a session room, I was actually going to take us down that path because I was like, do you imagine a place in a session room where you're just talking and there's Jarvis or something and you took us there. Where is AI? Going when we look at all these revolutions in the past, Industrial revolution, like all these different things, plateau might not be the right word, but it happens. The change occurs and now we have a new, new, we have a new normal. At that point, the we, you and I are probably plugged into all the same things where people are fearful of their jobs and like what's going on and blah, blah, blah. And I, I tend to take your, your position as well where I'm like, jobs are like jobs are going to train as they always done through thousands of years. It's going to transform and, and it's going to shift. Do you think that there is a plateau on this or do. Because like the way people are talking about it, like there is no plateau like this. Like the future is going to be constantly evolving.

Chris Snyder (33:06)

Yeah. But patterns repeat. Like go back to my.com scenario. We were on a rip and run for a while until we hit a ceiling. That ceiling came from some overinvestment. Right. Some things that were bet on that didn't pan out. We've got that going on right now. Think about the hype that was around like, you know, cryptocurrency and blockchain and those aren't bad things. They just hit a ceiling. Right. They plateaued, but they're still in the background grinding and they're coming back in various forms again. So will this A.I. sure. Because it had a slow start. We've been talking about this for a long time. It really wasn't until like three years ago or whatever that picked up steam again. But it wasn't like it wasn't in the background grinding its way through to the foreground. And so we'll see some of that slowdown, that plateau, that ceiling that we get to, then it'll pick back up again and you start to see the intersection, the alignment of some of these trends right between why can we do what we do right now? Yes. Supercomputing, yes. Blockchain. Yes. Crypto is not going to be a thing. Is a thing. So that'll just continue to unlock and then what will really be interesting. 90s got customers in 90 countries. We've never marketed outside the United States. That's weird, right? But not weird if you think about the age in which we live in. Right. It's very accessible. And now one of the interesting things that most people don't know is, you know, our largest customer is in Sao Paulo, Brazil. And they speak Portuguese, but they get their translation through the Google browser. So you used to have to do language Packs Right. Back in the software days, like you had to like figure all that out. It was really hard. But now it's. Even the browsers are doing translations and so that's how you're in all these different languages now. Go, go. And with great respect to the book traction. How many languages are we in? I think three. Right. So I think Japanese, Spanish and English. I think we got more coming. But, but that's a barrier to entry. Like we can't propagate the great mission for EOS when we have language barriers. But what if we did it right and software translates at the, you know, at that speed. Whereas we got to go through publishers and we got to get distribution. We should do all that too. But there's barriers to that. And so I think that you're back to your ceiling, your plateau. I think there will be one, but I think there's also other unlocks that we're finding. Removing friction along the way and how we distribute, how we distribute the things that we do.

Ryan Hogan (35:27)

So it's almost like, like everything cyclic. We're going to hit that ceiling, but we're going to turn around, be like, wow, we, we left a lot of low hanging fruit on the ground that we didn't even look at because we were too busy trying to move forward.

Chris Snyder (35:41)

And maybe your businesses did this too. We've even had this at 90. When you're ripping and running, you're stepping over types of all kinds of things you should either be fixing or taking advantage of. And then when things slow down, you're like, oh, now what? You look around, you're like, oh, we should have done this. It's a high tide, can't see the rocks moment. Right. And which is natural. But when you do, then you should. Now we can go address those things. We should pick them back up and go. Yeah, we, we've only marketed in the United States. Maybe Canada is a good place to go. Right. There's plenty of other places to start to try to take, take the opportunity. Set into.

Ryan Hogan (36:15)

All right, quick break friends.

Podcast Host (36:17)

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Ryan Hogan (37:38)

This is a fascinating conversation, by the way. I don't believe I've had anybody on at this point that's been so in tune to technology and AI and things like that. And obviously you live and breathe this stuff with your other job, not your second job and your day job, just your other job. Where do you think that limit that like limiting factor is? So like, okay, we're cyclic, we're going to hit the ceiling. Like why do you, if you were to look like 12 months, 18 months into the future, why did we hit that ceiling for progress on AI?

Chris Snyder (38:15)

Well, if I have to look at patterns of the past, like something is going to make a break, right? Like maybe it's a security issue. Right now we're trusting high, but we probably shouldn't be. We did that with social media. We trusted high until Facebook stole stuff and sold stuff, right. Then people pulled back. And so there's maybe a security issue looming out here. Look at the whole trademark industry is struggling right now. Books. And we're going to throw up more barriers around it to slow it down. But it's hard. Like these things are learning and people are feeding. And then your AI talks to my AI and then learns from yours, even though I gated mine.

Ryan Hogan (38:51)

Right.

Chris Snyder (38:52)

And so people, there's this transference and it's going to be challenging, but something's going to break and then regulation is going to step in to slow it down, right? And then, then this natural course is going to fight back just like the other patterns have. And so then we're going to like, okay, well that slowed us down, but it still is just a natural force to want to grow again. There's still a generation that, that's going to be slow. There's, there's, you know, pick whatever age you want to pick, right? But it's a generation that just like with mobile, I mean there was plenty of people like I remember like bringing a BlackBerry into the room. They're just, they're pissed. Like, don't do that. That's a distraction. Why would you want to do that? So then it's like all of a sudden that, that flipped, right? And people are like, okay, I gotta adopt this. So we'll see some of that's happening right now, right? Where it's like, well, that fear that we talked about, or don't do this, do that, okay, but you can only do that for so long before the age flips, right? People exit. We've got a huge retirement section happening right now in various industries. So those folks step out who are more resistant to the change, you have more step in and it'll grow again.

Ryan Hogan (39:53)

What's, what's most exciting to you about, about all this or, or kind of the age that, that we're in right now from a technology standpoint?

Chris Snyder (40:03)

Well, it's the, it's the ripple effect of impact. So you know, when you start to think about it, you go, well, gosh, I can coach. You know, I think most implementers would say if you're doing 20 clients or 20 plus, like that's a full practice and that's all you're gonna get to. Right? And I can only do so many a year, so over my career, however many years that's gonna go, 10, 15 years, something like that, that's all the impact you can have. But what if it was more, what if you could actually help more people while you're doing the core implementations that you do, but then you actually have software, your help first, right? They're self implementing like you did, right. And then the software, it can reach out and say, hey, Ryan really needs a quick conversation, Chris. Okay, let's have a conversation. And then we can, you know, I can help you at the moment, right? And then we can, you know, there's a future of cohorts, there just are. You can watch these masterminds set up all over the place. Not everybody wants to consume at the same level because they're not the same stage. That's fair. And so you'll see more cohorts happening where people are at like an earlier stage of business building. They're not ready for a full time implementer, but now they actually got, you know, the technology they need to get from stage two to stage three where they're ready for it. And that's just a natural part of the journey. So the struggle is real, but you don't really have to struggle. So let's, let's get tools that we can have greater impact, greater ripple effect and hopefully the US implementers out there will actually feel the need to have a help first moment and help those folks. So many of them do it today, they just do it in workshops. Right. Again, limited reach, 25 people. We've partnered. I don't know if you know this resource exists, but there's a Facebook group called eos Self Implementers Unite, started by Alex Gertberg is a client of mine that we, we have been trying to help moderate some. It's 5,000 people and growing and the dialogue that's happening there is awesome. But think about like we could actually, we're having this conversation right now with Alex about how we help do more with that, how we bring the right partners like yourself into the equation, right. To, to help that community more in a structured way. And quite honestly, it is software that they are on and we're going to use software then take it to the humans, right. Through better community management, those types of things. Now that's impact. But we, you know, what we would do is we'd bring partners in USIs into those moments, right. So that at scale we can do it. Especially when, you know, US numbers are like 300,000 companies running on EOS, but 90% are self implementing. Yeah. And we know, Ryan, that just from our data that if you have an implementer, you grow 30% faster as a company than if you're self implementing.

Ryan Hogan (42:30)

Wow.

Chris Snyder (42:32)

But some of that is noise because you'll have eight, you have stage of company versus other stage of company. Right. So there's a little bit of your choice of when you get one, when you don't. But just in general, that's powerful. Right. So it's like, how can we help bring down those barriers, get them to stage three faster US implementers get involved, they grow even faster. So we can have a different level of impact across the spectrum, which I get excited about because that's really what excites me. Right. It's like all these entrepreneurs around here are all trying to do it together, but we can do it better. And I think that's one of the opportunities I say in front of us right now.

Ryan Hogan (43:04)

I love that, by the way, that data point that you just gave right there. What's interesting. And you know this because you've grown, scaled, raised money and everything else, like the larger you are, the harder it is to grow. So when you Think about like the stage of a company and self implementing generally smaller. When you can finally afford an implementer larger. And so to be growing with an implementer faster than maybe some of the smaller companies that have more of an opportunity to grow faster, that's. That's wild.

Chris Snyder (43:31)

Yeah. And I think. But they're also, when you're at that stage, it's harder to grow but you probably have more resources to invest if you have a path. So one of the things when we do a focus day, we start off talking about value and increasing the value of the organization. Huge Jim Collins fan. Right. So in Great by choice he talks about 10x.

Ryan Hogan (43:49)

Right?

Chris Snyder (43:49)

Right. And so level five leaders, ambition 10x. And then Dan Sullivan, big fan of his as well. Right. 10x is easier than 2x. And what you're starting to do is they're. They have to be in the place to be able to think 10x and then act upon it so often. For, for myself by the second, I'll call it the third annual. If I see they're in that moment where they can start thinking 10x, then that's when I'll introduce like Dan Solomon's tools. Not us pure by the way, for those that listening at home. But when you see it and they need it like we use other tools like us worldwide uses, they have a smack by Jim Collins. Right. So there's. We do bring in other tools at different times if and when they're ready and we think it can have utility for. But 10x is a big deal because that's when they can really, you know, it's one of those moments when we talk about investability of an organization. You got to know that whatever it's going to cost you to pour whatever propellant gas you're going to put onto this organization to get it to grow, you got to know that it can take it first and it's actually got value second. And so take it from an infrastructure, take it from a team, because you could add more to the top of the funnel. But if we can't process it and execute upon it, why do it? Right. But if they can take it and you can actually bring the ROI out of it, you can always get capital, you can borrow it, you can, you know, you can get investors, friends and family, whatever it is. Right. But it's more of having beyond the belief set, having the known set and that's what we're really working for in those stage threes, getting to know such that then they can really take advantage of something like a 10x.

Ryan Hogan (45:11)

When you're looking at a team and you have these tools that you can kind of just pull off the shelf, when you're like, hey, this team is ready for 10x, are you looking at like the organization, the infrastructure, like the, the foundation is there for this enterprise to 10x? Are you looking for a mindset shift? Like you're starting to see some leaders, like actually believe in, in the potential here. And then you take it all, like, what are, what are some of the signals you're looking for in the room?

Chris Snyder (45:40)

Great, great question. First off, in the journey, you're going to start to see leaders change, right? So either the leader grows, you know, we say change, change the person, or change the person so the person will change and evolve, or they will get changed out, right? That starts to happen. So you're going to often just start with kind of like of a leadership team of, you know, three to five people, one to two, probably visionary and the integrator are kind of at that place where they could actually start to see it, right? Otherwise, if the, the leaders are not in that place, it sometimes can be because their world is on operational fire. And how can I pick my head up and vision when I got to keep looking down to stay alive, right? So we can't take them there if they're not, if they're not in that place. One of the patterns, this is a favorite of mine is I'd like to say that I think rocks do three things. They fix the advance and they innovate. And if I look at the pattern of my customers, rocks, when we first get started, they're fixing so much because they haven't had the time or the, you know, the discipline yet to go fix. So they fix, they fix and over time they fix less rocks and then they advance better. And advance is much more towards the goals that you set. Like you can now in 90, we can link all this stuff, by the way. I don't know if you know that, but I can actually take my annual goals, link it to my rocks. So we're establishing these patterns, right? So now I go, I can see, I used to fix 80% of the time, now I'm advancing 60%. The thing that starts to show up is the third category is innovate. So fix, advance and innovate. Now when I start to see that pattern, more and more of the leadership team rocks around innovation. We're ready because they've got the mindset to do it. And they're also, they've earned the right. They built the business to the place where it can take the innovation. And so we can really start to think about dream out right and get them there.

Ryan Hogan (47:15)

Which is fun what you just said there with like tying the rocks back to the annual, I'm sure like and then tying your, your annual goals to your three year picture. Three year picture, ten year target. Like what's interesting about that is, is when, and this is probably one of the downfalls of self implementing. So we, we actually at Hunt a killer before I sold it we were using Margaret Dixon out of Boulder, Colorado. So we spent about three years self implementing 0 to maybe 15, 20 million and then from 20 to 50 we had an implementer that was helping us get there. And like all credit to that. The two things that changed my life, one EOS and EOS through professional implementation. And then number two was vistage at the time. And so like that was incredible back in the self implementation mode because like, you know, I've been doing this for five or six years and I'm like we at least know enough and we're kind of still small startup mode. And as you said that what I just realized in self implementer mode is like we may look at what our annual goals were when we're doing our quarterly rocks. Especially like when you create the annual goals because then everything's like attached to it. But, but it's those other three quarterly pulses where I think we're more focused on what are those long term issues or what's just been popping up. And then we'll grab one of those and put it on, put it as a rock. And I don't think we do a good enough job tying that back halfway through the year. So anyhow.

Chris Snyder (48:46)

Yeah, but Brian, think about this. And I do this manually for clients today, but I'm excited whenever you reflect upon the year. You know we grade, we grade the quarters along the way, right. We drop that in the scorecard so we can see the progress. We, we put three to five talking points and that's good reflection. But what really is, is part of the dysfunction is I can't see if I'm solving the core issue versus the symptoms. Right? So if we play whack a mole on the symptoms and we're, we're afraid to get to the core issue because they're often scary, right? How do I see that? But I actually can see if you actually put the information in the system and those issues keep coming back. I can see those patterns and I can try to link them out. That should have resulted in Some kind of rock. Especially if we thought we had it, but we didn't. Right. So. And all that is learning for us and we just get back to scale. It's not. The importance isn't how we get the information that software. Right. It's. It's what we do with it. And that's. It's what again I keep saying, like remove the friction of it so we can have the better conversation around it. Right. And so I think what we're doing now with linking. Are you familiar with the getting what you want tool?

Ryan Hogan (49:47)

No, but I'm, I'm going to go check all these out now.

Chris Snyder (49:49)

It's a great us tool. So getting what you want, basically you start with the end in mind and you work your way backwards. Sounds very simple. When we coach it, we go to whiteboard, we start at the end, we say, okay, you want to be at $2 million more in revenue this next year, let's just dream to that place. It's December 31, 2026, $2 million now, what had to happen before we got there, we step our way back, you know, and then we go, okay, those are all the things we have to do now. Let's put time to them. Slice and dice and we go through it. Right. It's a good tool. Sometimes when the teams are struggling with rocks, we'll bring it out. When they're struggling with scorecards, we bring it out.

Ryan Hogan (50:18)

Right.

Chris Snyder (50:18)

We teach getting what you want. So we're calling it a planning board, but it's really the same thing and we're. It's tools been in alpha and side 90. It's going to come out to light here. So not, it's not going to look like getting what you want exactly, but it's very much the same thing. Think about like the planning board is. I put in my, my, my issue, I put in my goal and I can drag it across periods of time and say all the things that need to be true for me to get there. And then I can think and talk about it as a group and then I can assign it and then it'll generate a rock from it. It'll generate an annual goal and links all that stuff together.

Ryan Hogan (50:49)

That sounds awesome.

Chris Snyder (50:50)

When's that dropping Q1? It'll be in, in general availability. Okay. So but we, we love that because it's just a natural process of how people think and do anyways. Right. So when you're going to go think it through, getting up, you know, with the end in mind, working way back and just doing planning and you can change time periods and quarters. But so often what we have when we're talking about rocks is when people start, especially during the implementation, those three days is they keep getting the sizing it wrong because that whole, you know, has to end at this date is weird because it's unnatural. And like, well, yeah, we'll keep that into a long term issue beyond that date. And they're like, yeah, maybe. But I can't visualize and see it that way because it's in the description. I now the planning board will visualize all that for you so you can see how you want to break it up.

Podcast Host (51:34)

Awesome.

Ryan Hogan (51:35)

Do you have beta testers? Do you have people you can just switch their account on? All right, Talent Harbor.

Chris Snyder (51:43)

Yeah, we got about. I'm going to get it wrong. I think there's 1600 ish companies in beta. And what we always say is like, it's, it's the fun part is seeing all the stuff coming. We need the feedback, right? Because otherwise we'll make a release on something. So we need the feedback and that's why we do it. But then you got to be ready for. Sometimes it doesn't always work the way you want it to work out of the gates, that's the feedback. But you do get to give input. Then you get to see it come to life. You're like, yeah, that was mine. I said that thing.

Ryan Hogan (52:09)

I like, I'll tell you. And I'm not getting paid to say any of this. Like you guys have always taken the feedback and taken action on that. And I'm talking like since the early days, like when this was just a better kind of spreadsheet or a better way to kind of organize all this stuff outside of like Google Docs and Google Sheets or whatever, whatever any company was using at the time, I would just give unsolicited feedback. Like I think at a certain point I was like, you know, be really cool if when something was either off track or, or there was a metric that wasn't in the goal. Like if that were red. And like magically a few weeks later got an email back, hey, we did it and now it's red. And so now every time like something was like on track, off track, it was color coded and you guys just built a culture on this idea of like listening, iterating and then providing that feedback.

Chris Snyder (53:03)

Yeah. I'll share one recent example where that creates a challenge for us. So let's call half of our customers are self implementing customers. Right? And so they don't know what EOS Pure is, and they give us a lot of ideas. And I'll say that not all of our product people really understand what EOS Pure is. And so the example here is the accountability chart. We say structure first, people second. So if you look at the accountability chart, you start with the functional name, right, Visionary, and then it says Ryan Hogan underneath it, right? Not your name. And then, and then so our product teams had all this feedback to. That is incorrect. But if you go look at who's it's coming from, it's coming from the self implementing community, they go, no, that's not what an org chart looks like. It needs to have Ryan's name first, title second. So, so we did it. I didn't know we were doing it. It showed up and then all I got was feedback from customers going, what just happened, Chris? And then our other implementers got that feedback and then I had to go to the product team. I'm like, you gotta switch it. They're like, no, no, no, this is what our customers want. I'm like, they need to not be on the EOS template because that's not what this is. Right? That's not how this works. So you're right. We do listen. We try to process all those requests and sometimes we do make mistakes and then we just got to walk back because we want to be respectful to the system. Right. And the way the system's designed and eos and we enjoy the relationship and the license and all that good stuff, but balancing those two things, right, is a little harder.

Ryan Hogan (54:29)

Yeah, I hear you on that. And like, I would like, not that failure is a feature, but like going down that path. Like for me it's, it's like you guys care, right? Like, like it may not always get it right, but you could just do nothing at all and just send them all to, to an archive folder and be like, oh, there were some, some improvements, but you guys care enough to take action. So I've, I've always loved that. Okay. I in good EOS practice with start on time, end on time. And I know you are an incredibly business busy person because it took us a year to get, get on this thing. No, I, I don't want to promote the, the wrong thing for you. So I, I'll ask like, I'll ask you like, what's, um, usually this is about like, what are you looking for in a client? But you know, I don't know if you're looking for new clients and so what do you want to promote?

Chris Snyder (55:20)

That's That's a great question. So first off, every implementer in my opinion should have a flywheel. Like you never stop doing business development even when you have all the clients you need because the moment you don't, you won't. So I'll just go with what I look. I look for a client that wants to grow. I know it sounds obvious but you got to have, you got to want it right. They also need just to be in the mindset that they want to grow. They're willing to do the hard things because it's always hard. And you know, I've done plenty of 90 minute meetings when we get to the end and I was like what should we know that we didn't ask you? I'm like, well it's just you got a little bit of my personality today but you should know the rest, which is if wouldn't you tell me it's what you want you desire from your business. I have a one switch and that's to try to figure out how to help you get it right. And I've had more than a handful. Came back like you scared our team. I'm like okay, that's good because I would have like there was, there's only one path here that's for it. And so you say you want it as a coach, then you're, I heard you want to have a winning season and then we're going to try to go have a winning season. So those are kind of things I'm looking for in a client but really what I would love this to put out there into The Ethereum obviously 90s always looking for clients as well because we're a growth organization but more US implementers. Like if someone's considering right to, to go down that path and become an EOS implementer. We have 870 incredible folks inside of our community but it should be thousands. The market is massive, right. I always like to use, I live in Cleveland, Ohio and we, I think we have 12, maybe 14 implementers because there's, it gets far out regions of people who come in but there's like 12,000 target market companies in Cleveland alone and a full time implementer carries 20. Like we're not going to get there, right? Like we need more folks that are super excited about helping entrepreneurs and their leadership teams get what they want from their business living their EOS life right. Like those things are important and with what's happening right now from an age and stage and people transitioning out right from their maybe they sell their business and they're ready to go do something else. They have an exit like I did. I'd love to talk to anyone who wants to have that conversation because I think it's a great journey. Not for everybody, but if it's something they're interested in, love to love to have that conversation.

Ryan Hogan (57:25)

Nice. And do you travel or do you, do you look in Cleveland or you're like, oh, I'll get on a plane.

Chris Snyder (57:30)

Well, it's because my kids were younger when I started this. They're now 18 and 21, so I wasn't traveling. But I've opened that aperture back up. So now especially around software companies. So I picked up a few software companies that are out and then, you know, kind of just real selfishly for 90 sake, if it's a business that we think is, I think is highly interesting for us and where that, that space goes. Right now, Ryan, is, is franchise. Like franchise is really interesting to us because it's portfolio management. PE companies. I've coached a couple smaller PEs, but that portfolio and the things that we can build to be helpful to both the owners of those businesses because it's so like, you know, being a VC backed company ourselves, there's a ton of reporting that's just friction to us. Like, yes, we have to do it, but what if we could actually help doing that? And so we're like, portfolio management's a place where I'm taking some more clients right now. Where I think that could be interesting.

Ryan Hogan (58:22)

There's so many things I could say and I don't want to take us down too far of a rabbit hole. If someone just listened to that and they're like, hey, I love the background. I've got a technology company on private equity. How do I get a hold of Chris? What's the best way that they can get ahold of you?

Chris Snyder (58:39)

LinkedIn's easy. So it's Chris with a K Snyder and you can find me on LinkedIn. 90 in the US is going to come up and also we have micro sites. If you go to US Worldwide, there's a directory, you can just put it by name. It's going to come up there and there are emails all the same. So it's just chris.snider us worldwide.com. that'll come up if you want to talk to me about 90. That's really straightforward. Just Chris at 90io.

Ryan Hogan (59:03)

Sweet. Awesome. Chris, thank you so much for the time. I appreciate it. Yeah, this was really good. I, I didn't even realize we're going to go so far down the technology path, but such, like, great insights on that, so. I appreciate it.

Chris Snyder (59:15)

Yeah, well, hopefully we got enough EOS implementation stuff in, since that is a confession.

Ryan Hogan (59:21)

I thought it was great. I thought it was great. Thanks again for coming on.

Chris Snyder (59:24)

Yep. Thank you.