← Confessions of an Implementer
Confessions of an Implementer
S2E46 | Two Visionaries, No Integrator, and a Brewery That Almost Didn't Open with Lee Handley
00:58:15
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- [00:00]
A
I was so focused on that business plan, which is the best case scenario. Just fell so in love with that. I didn't think as much as I should have about the operating agreement, which I would tell me or any entrepreneur. That's your worst case scenario. And it's okay to put some attention into both.
- [00:25]
B
Welcome to Confessions An Implementer. I'm your host, Ryan Hogan. We share unique stories of EOS implementers and the companies they've transformed to give you a rare glimpse into the successes and challenges of the system in action. Let's jump in. Lee. So, one, one thing is I usually don't do recordings this late, and so the lighting is going to be a really interesting thing. One, thank you for taking the time to come on the show because we're on different coasts and so it's probably like almost nighttime where you're at right now.
- [00:57]
A
Yeah. But it's sunny Alabama, so we've got plenty of sun and heat to keep us warm.
- [01:02]
B
I love it. 1. So I can't stop smiling and I can't stop giggling because when, when you and I last talked, I, I think it was like July, mid July is when you and I connected last. And, and I pay attention to the details, like the little things like, like who's got just a gnarly mustache? And when you jumped on the call today, I was like, I don't, I don't remember that being a thing. And so I just wanted to congratulate you on just like an amazing mustache here.
- [01:31]
A
Well, we're mustache brothers.
- [01:34]
B
That's. That's what we're doing.
- [01:36]
A
That's what big shoes,
- [01:40]
B
a ton of topics to cover today. I'm super excited. I think even JBS had commented on our, on our little thing today, but I think there's a lot of things I want to get into. And one of the things that kind of stood out to me as I was looking at your background and some other things that you had done as you were kind of coming up and finding your way into eos is you did a stint as CFO for a while.
- [02:05]
A
I did.
- [02:07]
B
Are you a numbers guy? Is this like, were you. Cause it wasn't like, hey, FP&A. Or like maybe like bookkeeping, FP&A, some sort of analysis or analyst and then. And then cfo. It's just like from, from business to cfo.
- [02:22]
A
How.
- [02:23]
B
How did that work?
- [02:24]
A
It's just something that I've always been really good at. It took me a long time to discover that that's not the only part of the equation that matters. You have to actually enjoy doing numbers to ultimately keep doing it. But I just have always been good at it. But it took me too long to figure out that numbers are not for me. So I bad get away. Numbers. I'm done with numbers.
- [02:56]
B
Are you one of the types of people that can see business like the matrix on the P and L? Like you can pull up the financial statements and be like I know exactly what's going on in this business right now.
- [03:10]
A
Yeah. Assuming that the you know, chart of accounts, you're pulling me back into the accounting world, which I forsook or forsaken. It's forsaken to me. But yeah, the revenue, cogs, gross profit, operating expenses, it usually gives me a pretty good idea. But that, that assumes the company has their chart of accounts in good order. Most of the ones that I used to see in the past, the, you know, you had to call those into question first to make sure everything's kind of in the right place. But yeah, it can tell you a lot. I am glad to have that in my toolkit.
- [03:48]
B
It looks like kind of after that you got into stumbled into intentionally did entrepreneurship. Was the starting of that business like was that the first time, did you grow up wanting to be an entrepreneur? What did that look like?
- [04:06]
A
You know, I think early on I just wasn't very self aware. But all I knew I would wake up in college in the middle of the night and the deepest part of my soul was asking what are you doing? Why are you in accounting? I wanted to be a rock star, either guitarist or drummer. Always been a creative person. And I just stuck with what was secure, what was easy, more predictable, what's going to make mom and dad happy. Luckily I fell into doing the accounting work for ad agencies. So that began my journey more towards entrepreneurship and more creative endeavors. So it was that experience working in the agencies, I started to notice the patterns of the needs that they had. They didn't really put a lot of focus into the back office operations process, financial management. So that's what gave me the idea to start my first company.
- [05:07]
B
Got it. And what was that company called?
- [05:10]
A
Oh gosh, you're gonna make me say it. It's work. I'm a pro.
- [05:16]
B
Why is that? Is that something? Are you, are you least proud of the name? Like what, where does that come from?
- [05:23]
A
Well, it's so hyper niche. Workamajig is an enterprise software for ad agencies that combines project management, accounting, resourcing, CRM. It's an everything tool for ad agencies. So I Wanted to mimic my company name after that software to align with customers of that software and help them kind of plug and play the tech components to get their process together, get their finances together.
- [05:56]
B
You found a niche here. Like, did that, did that. Was that intentional? Like, when you started this, were you like, hey, I've got some exposure over here, so I'm gonna plug into this and I'm gonna market myself as like, you know, the, the backend business office for, for creative enterprises. Or, or did one or two find you. You realize, like, oh, boy, do is there some business support needed in, in these creative agencies? And then you just went all in.
- [06:23]
A
I was way more cautious about it than I should have been. I knew I was really good at the software. I knew that I had something that the creative agencies needed. But I was really afraid of going niche and limiting who I worked with. And I went to the workamajig user conference and thought, hey, I might pick up one or two clients. I'm surrounded by over a hundred representatives, one hundred agency representatives, and just. It just hit me like a ton of bricks. I was like, you're a creative guy that does the thing creative people don't like to do. They don't traditionally love to have relationships with accountants. But I'm good. I've got the perfect, like, Trojan horse into every one of their businesses. I can be someone they trust. I can play guitar with them at the, you know, after we get done working together sort of thing. So once I got a taste of that environment, then it became clear super fast, really quick.
- [07:27]
B
Why. Why do you think it's so hard for companies? Because I hear this all the time and, and we've struggled with it. It sounds, it sounded like until you kind of validate it for yourself. Like, you may have struggled with this as well, which is this concept of like, niching down. Like, what?
- [07:42]
A
Yeah.
- [07:43]
B
Why does that tend to be such a, I don't know, such a struggle for organizations?
- [07:48]
A
I can only speak to my case. I have a strong sense that everyone, that many are like me. But for me, it's confidence and insecurity to some degree. But I remember as a kid, this is my example. There's a trust building exercise at the camp I went to. They called it the pamper pole. You climb this telephone pole and basically you need to wear your pampers when you get to the top of it because you've got to jump to a trapeze bar. And to me, that's everything in life has been that pamper pole. For me, it's having the faith that when you make that leap that that bar is going to be there and even if you miss it, you know there's still something there to catch you if you fall. And having that confidence that. It took me a long time to make the jump as a kid and it took me, it's taken me a long time with any big decision like that in life. It's just a, I think I'm more, I'm less risk averse than most people, but in the entrepreneurial space, I'm probably more on the risk averse side.
- [08:54]
B
When you're hearing of, of companies that may be struggling to niche down or, or like they think they validated it but, but they're, they're just not sure. Like, what, what do you tell them? What do you it, how can you help them kind of navigate this concept of like. Because we hear it all the time, riches are in niches. And it's like, well, what does that actually mean? It just means the deeper you go, the more focused you can get, the more consistent your marketing message, the more top of mind you'll stay for your prospective clients. And like, it just sounds so easy. But at the end of the day it's like, it's tough.
- [09:30]
A
Yeah. You know, as an implementer, we ask questions more than we give answers. And so the two questions that come to mind, you know, if I really wanted to go deep, I might ask, you know, Ryan, what are we afraid of here? Another one is, well, how do you want to be competitive amongst your peers? How are you going to stick out? I have a lot of strong opinions on niching now that I've made that leap because I don't see, I do see if you're everything to everybody, that's a function of fear and you're not quite ready to trust that you're going to land if you take that leap. But I also don't see how you're going to be profitable in the long term if you're not doing that. You're always just fighting a tough battle with people that you probably don't need to be working with in the first place. And it's going to be hard to charge a premium for what you do because you haven't, there's no reason for someone to see you as being different. You haven't given the market a reason to see you that way.
- [10:39]
B
I'd love what you just said there. Which it's, what are you afraid of? What are you afraid of right now? Because that like, that'll make you That'll make you think pretty hard of why wouldn't we, why wouldn't we do this? Are there, have you ever observed times or maybe experienced times where the niche down did happen, but maybe it was the wrong niche and there had to be some sort of like iteration or pivot from there?
- [11:09]
A
Well, the first one that comes to mind is my work. I'm a pro business. I was so hyper niche, I couldn't think of a good way to actually develop my market because it's, it was limited just to ad agencies working on a particular platform.
- [11:28]
B
Businesses is literally just the sequencing and, and solving of problems and, and the foundation of that is bringing the right people in and making sure that everybody is, is aligns with the core values and all those, all those amazing things. But the problems never stop. So once you niche down, it's not like the problems go away, it's just like maybe the problems become a little bit more focused.
- [11:50]
A
That's right.
- [11:51]
B
I'll give you an example of something that, that we're still, we're still putting a lot of thought in. Recently is like Talent harbor, over the last 12 to 18 months, has niched down into sales roles. And there's a variety of reasons for that. It's pretty blue ocean. It makes up about 30% of the search space. Like, there's a whole bunch of really interesting dynamics. It's really hard, so people stay away from it. And we've been trying to figure out, okay, well, if the role is our niche, we also need a vertical or an industry, and we haven't done it yet. And I'm trying to figure out if it's fear or not. But the other thing here is, like, some searches are easier for us than others. And so we're trying to collect still some of that data to understand. Like, maybe we focus on this because we're better in that, in that area. But I don't know. I think, I think the, the gap space is, is powerful, if you ask me.
- [12:47]
A
Lee. Yes, I, I know the fear is you'll put a shingle out and there's no one there. But what really happens is you're sending out a signal and it's going to resonate with the exact people that need to hear your message and you start talking to them and ultimately you start just going deeper. And I imagine that once that happens, your world opens up a whole lot more and you see that you're not as limited and there's really no end to how deep we can go. And what we love to do and what we're great at.
- [13:26]
B
When you were supporting all of these creative agencies, did you start seeing very common themes that, that I don't want to say isolated, but just common themes, like inside of the creative agency space, where, where it was like, we can, we can fix that pretty quick.
- [13:44]
A
I think a lot of the trouble is a lot of the things that I saw we couldn't fix very quickly. One, I didn't have the language and the tools that I needed. The order of operations I needed to make real change, big impactful change. I think that's, that's what drew me to eos or when I found EOS or discovered it, that's just where it hit me. I was like, oh, thank you. This is what we need. The other things that I saw at the highest level, people were just too afraid. It was like the niching down the creative firms tend. I thought their pricing was the wrong model. Too low. Hourly billing, which is killing professional services, that I just didn't position myself the right way to solve those problems. And that's a scary thing to ask a creative firm to do if you're not that expert.
- [14:46]
B
You said hourly billing. I'm sure some of this stuff is applicable across many professional services. Like, what did you see specifically with hourly billing?
- [14:58]
A
Oh, I wanted hourly billing to be the end all, be all for managing a creative firm. I was the hammer and hourly billing was the nail. And I had this troubling feeling because there were people that would claim boldly that hourly billing is crazy, it's wrong, it's bad, and it created enough doubt that I knew I had to follow the rabbit hole and see where it ended. I had to come up with my own position and know clearly if it's, you know, if it's right or if it's wrong. So that journey was a beautiful thing for me personally. It was just great to find out, found out where hourly billing comes from. It comes from Karl Marx's theory on value, which essentially says that value comes from the sum of its costs, which we know that that's. The short answer is that's been quickly refuted. And you can kind of look at his economic practices and how they functioned in the real world. They just don't. That doesn't explain the price of diamonds, for example, or the cost of water. Yeah, value is subjective was what I learned. And that was a powerful insight that I didn't really get to turn into. It didn't transform my business, but it transformed the way I look at business.
- [16:27]
B
In what ways?
- [16:29]
A
I spent 10 to 15 years trying to manage costs. And it made me think about all the ad agencies that I worked with or creative firms. And I thought, they're going out into the world pitching to all of these clients. But at the end of the day, there's so much focus on the inner machinations of how the business is working and being efficient. What would it be like if we didn't focus on our costs at all? And all we looked at was, how do we create value for our client? And it hit me. It was like, if that's one agency pitching to Coca Cola versus another agency, who would they want to go with? The agency that's focused on delivering value by decreasing costs or by increasing value for their client. I think about going to a con. I'm a big music fan. You go to a concert also big beer fan, own a brewery. So you buy a beer at the grocery store, at a brewery or at a concert. What is the price? I mean, it's, it's different in each place because the value is dependent on the situation or it's subjective, it's not inherent, it's not based on this cost. That's just helped me just view things differently. But particularly on the. For creating value for a company, it doesn't have to be limited to professional services. Just to always keep in mind that. Don't limit yourself to thinking of the value you bring as being the sum of your input. So your time or your efforts, your value is a totally separate thing.
- [18:15]
B
I love that we were talking earlier about, like, some of the, some of the stuff that'll be grabbed and pulled to the front. That, that is a great example of, of a, of, of an amazing nugget and a way to, like, reframe how you think about your product, your offering, the service.
- [18:35]
A
You.
- [18:36]
B
You mentioned a brewery. And how do you. Let's. Let's start from the beginning. How. How did you just roll over one morning and you're running your agency and you're like, I need some, some creative outlet. And, and so you started a brewery. How, how does that, how does that come about?
- [18:55]
A
So I've always been into craft beer. I was brewing beer in high school. Somehow, if you're buying equipment and ingredients for beer, that's not as illegal as buying the actual beer. So you can, you can do that. I never saw a connection between my love of brewing and having a brewery. Fast forward 20 years later, there's a microbrewery renaissance in Birmingham. Our laws changed to allow us to brew beer to make it profitable. Breweries Are starting to boom in our city. Still no light bulbs are going off for me, I'm just, at that time, at least too cautious to make a big step and didn't really see how you would connect the dots. But then a close friend approached me and wanted me to review their business plan for a brewery. And I looked at it. I was like, God, this is pretty great. Wanted some tips and some help, but, you know, all those dots were connected. And I was like, oh, you just ask people for the money and you borrow money from banks, and that's how you come up with, you know, $2 million worth of equipment. He had a great plan. I helped, you know, gave some advice on a few pieces, and I thought that that was it. And two weeks later, he asked me to be his partner. And for me, there was just no question. I love my city. I love supporting and championing my city. I love craft beer. Like, this is my next big thing that I'm gonna do. I'm gonna put everything I've got into making this succeed. So super exciting at that point.
- [20:34]
B
And did you. Did you quit your day job and just walk away from everything and went all in? What happened next?
- [20:41]
A
Way too cautious to do something bold like that. I'm gonna swing from tree to tree. I'm not letting go of the vine until I've got a good hold on another one. I did see it as an exit. I wasn't passionate about what I was doing. I just really. For the reasons I learned later, there was just something wrong. I wasn't delivering impact. I was billing, you know, hourly billing. So I saw the brewery as my exit plan.
- [21:09]
B
You know, my grandfather, he stone a bar downtown Baltimore, and he would be. I was like, I want to open up a bar one day, pop. And he was like, absolutely not. No, no, you don't. He was like, two things in life. One, restaurant slash bar, Very, very challenging. Number two, Two, best days of your life. When you buy a boat, when you sell a boat. I was like, oh, okay, great. So those are kind of my life lessons now. You know, he didn't talk about breweries, but I'm just, like, starting to think about breweries equating to, like, restaurants. So what did it look like once you grabbed onto that vine? What's going on?
- [21:50]
A
So what it looked like initially was just getting the real traction, taking that plan, and turning it into real things, like, where is this going to be? Who are we asking for money? How many people have to come in each day and buy beer from our tap room in Order to have a profit, it's just really taking the idea and making it real. I was going to be our integrator. I didn't have that language then, but everything made sense. On paper is the best way to put it. And the numbers look really good, especially, I don't know how it is in other cities, states, but in Alabama, you know, we're brewing the beer and we're not having to go through distributors. You can sell it on site. You're selling, you know, five to $7 pint that cost you pennies to make. So the economics were soaring, and we just saw a growth plan that, again, on paper, on an Excel sheet, looked fantastic. We didn't find it incredibly difficult to sell in order. When I say sell to sell that idea. We were not sophisticated startup entrepreneurs. We just were smiling and dialing, asking people who they knew. And we do the business plan. And it took less than a year to be fully capitalized.
- [23:24]
B
And then I think Mike Tyson. Everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the face. So.
- [23:29]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [23:30]
B
One of, one of the things that you've kind of alluded to is this idea of, like, on paper, it looked incredible. So, like, let's set the stage here. So is there, in your brewery, is there a door where people can come in and, like, actually drink at a bar? Or is it. They have to come in and buy six packs or whatnot?
- [23:50]
A
We essentially, we've got a. We call it a tasting gallery because it's. It's kind of like a bar tap room. But we also sell art. We allow artists to come in and display their work. So the tasting gallery functions as a bar. You can walk in. The brewery is adjacent to that space. Okay.
- [24:09]
B
All right, so we'll set the stage. It's grand opening. It took us a year to raise money. We got everything together, and then we've got the red tape. Did you have the mayor? Did you have, like, people come in and cut the ribbon?
- [24:24]
A
That's a great question. Well, I mean, there's two punches to the face here. We've got my relationship to the brewery, which dramatically changed before we even opened. And then we've got the industry, you know, changes that have happened and the difference in what Excel told us would happen and the way the economics of the situation actually worked.
- [24:49]
B
Well, that's.
- [24:50]
A
So I don't know which one comes first. Yeah, we're happy to talk about that. Let's.
- [24:54]
B
Let's go into the first one, which is so one of the concepts in EOs, people and making sure bodies aligned on vision. So I guess the biggest question we have here is like, what happened pre opening that that had an impact on you and everything that was going on in the business.
- [25:17]
A
As far as my relationship with my visionary, I've got great language to use for the situation. Ten years later, everything is. The hindsight is certainly 20 20. So my partner and I, we were not on the same page. I don't think we knew it. We knew that we loved each other. We knew we loved and supported our vision for what the brewery was going to be and the success we were going to have. But we did not spend a lot of time thinking about the practical impacts the true integra. I mean, we're basically two visionaries without an integrator. I can kind of function as one of those. I believed that I was designed to be that type of person because I was good with numbers, but now I know that that's not true. It takes more than that. It takes more than skill with numbers.
- [26:20]
B
Like looking back on it, two visionaries, two humans sitting in the visionary seat and like, would you add to that with two different visions?
- [26:29]
A
That's a great question that I've never been asked when it comes to the brewery. It's very insightful and I think that that's, that's a big part of what tore our relationship apart. I think we probably did have two visions. We were probably close to being on the same page, but not quite there. I think I can speak for myself. It was easy not to talk about it because it was also easy to just focus on cutting the ribbon and having this beautiful brewery with world class beer. And we just, I just focused on the fun.
- [27:14]
B
Like looking back on that situation today, like what, what would you do differently with the knowledge and, and especially like the EOS skills and same page meetings, all the, all the tools and everything. Like what, what would you do different?
- [27:29]
A
Well, an EOS implementation would have just knock that out of the park, using something like the accountability chart just to get really clear on who's doing what. You know, two people working on a business, you've got a good idea, you can stand at each other's back and support each other. You've got a good idea of what the other person is facing. But there's still these other things that come out of left field and that can cause problems, that can cause issues. You know, at a small level, just who's got that? Do you got that? Do I have that? Who owns the result? And if that's not clear, I mean we worked probably for at least a year on the business and didn't even think about having an operating agreement. We didn't know. I didn't know how much of the business I owned until we were probably seven months into doing the work. How crazy is that?
- [28:35]
B
That's. That's wild.
- [28:36]
A
Thankfully, that side of things worked just fine.
- [28:39]
B
Were you still hanging on to that other branch at the time or had you already let go?
- [28:43]
A
I was trying to do both. And it started the further down the road we got with the brewery, the more difficult that became. A lot of traveling and trying to. When you're trying to keep up with meetings with people that are trying to stroke large checks, that becomes difficult. And then how do you prioritize, too? You've got one vine is paying your mortgage and one won't be paying you anything for who knows how long.
- [29:14]
B
If you would have. If you would have. You would have had kind of tough conversations up front. Do you. Do you believe that you still would have went down that path? There just would have been more clarity behind, like, who's doing what, what are expectations, visions are aligned? Or do you think that there was. There was a chance that, that, like, that there was two completely different paths or directions that, like, it would have. It would have stopped it before it even started.
- [29:46]
A
God, such a great question. I wish we were having this conversation when this was happening. That would have been really good, helpful. We'll never know. But the difficult conversations would have happened when they should have. They would have happened at the right time and not after things fell apart. If you were our EOS implementer, you would have forced us to have those difficult conversations and they probably would have been painful, but there wouldn't have been as much at stake. We wouldn't have been so far down the road. Wouldn't have been so hard to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
- [30:26]
B
When did this come about? Because this was prior to opening. And so, like, where. Where exactly was it? Like, holy crap. Like, you know, I sensed it. I could see it a little bit. But, like, we're not even going to get to open at this point. You know, the way things are structured
- [30:44]
A
right now, we essentially were going to fully make ourselves public and launch and serve beer to the public semi legally. We got. We got rulings behind the scene that we were blessed to serve our beard big festival so that everything kind of came to a head with that beer festival and giving our beer to the world. Once we got through that, that's when my partner and I ultimately had Our big falling out.
- [31:21]
B
What. Just out of curiosity and you know that this might not apply to everybody. I'm just deeply curious. Like, with the beer festival, like, were there. Were there things that. Because you talked about rulings, were there policies or laws or other things that, like, were unclear when you were getting into it, or were things like changing and then like, you guys were still like, pre open, so you guys had to change with the things that were happening.
- [31:54]
A
It was so. So the. All the alcohol laws in Alabama had been dramatically changed with. Over a period of a couple of years. And this festival was actually funding the. The change. So the proceeds from the event go to lobby, you know, the Alabama laws on beer. So we really didn't have a great idea of what was legal or what was illegal. And what was fun about that for someone like me. I like to get scrappy and look where no one else is looking and just figure out, well, where does the rubber meet the road? Like, how does this become illegal? How does that manifest itself in a real way? I mean, if we're in some backyard party, there's probably not to be a cop there. There's not going to be a TTB agent, an ABC agent, local enforcement of alcohol laws. So, you know, first we asked an attorney, you know, do you see anything here? Like, well, I don't think I see anything here. And I was like, well, the ABC is the Alabama Beverage Control. I think that's what. What it stands for. How cool. Why not call them and ask them what do they think? And they didn't seem to think that there would be an issue or they couldn't pinpoint what law we would be breaking. And our think our final step was to call. No, we had two more. We called the ttb. I don't know if that's still a federal. The federal agency that gives you your license to serve alcohol. And they kind of seem. They couldn't really find an answer either, so they couldn't really figure out what it was we would be doing wrong. So finally we just brought that to the festival organizer and laid it out on the table. And they're like, sounds good to me. So we just rolled with it. It's a lot of fun.
- [33:52]
B
And just for clarity, like, what. What was it?
- [33:57]
A
We're serving beer that wasn't brewed in a facility that's been registered with our laws and permits. And we didn't even have. We weren't even using kegs that were. We were using like, soda kegs. Interesting. Basically brewed in a basement.
- [34:17]
B
How did You, I, I can't imagine the stress levels here because, like, there's so many things happening. One time you're trying to get the brewery up and running, you're trying to get to the grand opening, you're trying to get to the cut the ribbon now. You're like having issues over there. The laws are rapidly changing now. Like, you're like, got to sell some beer. So you go to some festival and then it's like, well, we might be breaking some rules. So then you got to get lawyers involved. Like, this sounds, this sounds like incredible stress.
- [34:46]
A
What could go wrong? This is where my personality is. Kind of a split personality. I'm the numbers analytical guy, but I'm also running jump off the diving board and invent water on the way down. It just, it's just going to work and we're going to make it work and that's that. We weren't trying to do anything bad or wrong. So if we broke a law, let's turn the taps off and ask for forgiveness. I guess that was the thought I was just focused on. We have this festival once a year. We're really close to opening our doors. We're not missing this opportunity to show our beer to, to our community.
- [35:29]
B
Do they call Master Brewers? Who's, who's the person that's like kind of. Is that what it's called?
- [35:35]
A
Gosh, I should know this. Well, let's call him the brewmaster.
- [35:38]
B
Brew master.
- [35:39]
A
That's what I'm called.
- [35:40]
B
There it is. And was that you and your partner at the time or did you also have a, a brewmaster that you had hired and brought on?
- [35:48]
A
This is where we were really smart. We brought in a professional. So my partner is probably one of the best identifiers and acquirers of talent. We got a, I don't know if you've heard of Sweetwater Brewing out of Atlanta. So especially 2013, just a super well known maker of beer. We got a brewer from there, so that, that made huge waves. He was, had gone to school in Birmingham and had like all of these big degrees. Had gone out to the brewery school in California and worked with the best people out there. I mean he was, he was like a good PR piece for at least a month for our brewery. He built a lot of excitement for our beer and he lived up to, he lived up to that billing.
- [36:42]
B
How does that. So you, I was about to say grew up brewing, but high school, we're brewing. Like how does all this stuff. Because you probably have a certain taste, you've got A brewmaster. Do all three of you at that point get together and you're like, I want something that's hoppy with lemony zest. And how do these ideas come together for the product?
- [37:07]
A
Man, that is another great question, Ryan. You get it. And that's probably one of the vision components that wasn't business killing or life giving, but something we really should have thought about. What we did, super practical way to do that is the three of us went out and did our beer shopping and came back to the literal table with our favorites that we wanted to share together. And that gave our brew master kind of a a road map to come up with a couple of beers he felt could be flagships or something we could start with. Okay, so we essentially mixed our shared interests together.
- [37:53]
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 process 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 organization organizations rely on things like ZipRecruiter or LinkedIn and they get hundreds if not thousands of resumes. But we find that the best salespeople are already perfectly placed somewhere else. And that's why our approach is to go after them. And we do that through a business model called recruiting. As a service, we do not charge commissions, we do not have success fees, we don't have contracts, we don't have long term 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've heard Steve Jobs talked about. Not Steve Jobs, it was Jeff Bezos talked about this. And he was like, compromise is actually a net negative because compromise means that like everybody chipped away a little bit at their vision, a little bit at their preference, just so everybody could be happy and that the baseline of compromise is everybody wins, everybody's happy. He was like, but in, in like, not war, but he's like, but in business, like, generally, like there's a right path and there is a wrong path and like compromise is the enemy. Did you feel like the ideas that came together like created great beer? Did you feel like everybody compromised a little bit and we got a good product but maybe not a great product?
- [40:06]
A
I think we got really lucky. Our brewmaster, one of his many amazing qualities, didn't have an ego. And so he's able to come to the table each week with two different varieties of beer for us to try. And so the three of us would try it, he'd take the notes and then we would use, we essentially would use that leftover beer. It's a lot of beer. We would use that as a hook to put that out into the sort of black market. I guess, for lack of a better term, you could sort of let the cool hit people know that we're doing a tasting session and invite these people. So they might be beer forward bars. We might offer their people to come in, we might bring in some new at the time, newspaper writers would come in and we get the press to come in and try and get their feedback. At the end of the day, it created a lot of buzz and put a lot of energy out on our beer and it helped us ultimately get their feedback and tweak our recipes and styles.
- [41:22]
B
I love that by the way. I feel like in today's environment, everybody, this is going to sound terrible, but everybody thinks too big and we started this conversation with talking about niches and it's like when I say everybody thinks too big, it's like you start too big. And there is a way to start small and then grow very fast to wherever you're trying to get to. But the bigger that, like the bigger you're trying to get out of the gate, the slower you actually go. And what I love about what you just said there is like there's a lot of companies running a similar strategy with influencers and so they will go out, get some big name influencers, bring them in and have them a part of the actual product, product development process. Ridge Wallets has a, a, well, a well known name. There's, there's a lot of interesting kind of dynamics there and you had this at, at like a community level. Like you had like local influencers coming in and, and, and bringing them into like your world and your experience. Like I'm, I'm sure the, the impacts there were, were pretty great.
- [42:31]
A
It was and it was, it just came so natural to us. We, you know, Birmingham is a community that loves to support the Birmingham community. We're cheerleaders for ourselves. And so it just felt natural to find those other community supporters and band together, really supporting each other to celebrate each other. And. And we found that each time we took those swings, we were connecting the community support would come and they loved it. It worked great.
- [43:08]
B
And like now looking back, everything that you know, now you're still an owner,
- [43:13]
A
I'm assuming, in the brewery, I am surprising to say. It turns out it's really hard to get rid of an owner. You have to buy them out. You can't just say, get out of here. But I'm still remaining owner on the board now, which is fancy talk. Get to make big decisions. But it's become fun again. Able to enjoy the brewery and do a lot of work out of there as well. Throw throwing events for EOS stuff and bringing. Still, still doing the community champion and thing where other people in the community are trying to do things and throw events or do some nonprofit work and we use the brewery, you know, can bring them in and let them use our brewery as a landscape or to do that.
- [44:15]
B
Are there, are there a bunch of EOS size in Birmingham or are you. Are you pretty much like solo down there?
- [44:23]
A
There are between six and eight that are kind of in the Birmingham area. So I think is, you know, as far as like the average goes for a city, I think we're kind of. We have more than, you know, as demographics go, I think we have. We're probably a little above average.
- [44:44]
B
I would, I would say so. Like, I was just, we just moved down to LA from, from Seattle. Seattle is a very, very big city. Not many, not many implementers. I. You guys actually might have more. That's interesting. I, I love the, I love the. That you're doing events and things like that. We'll. We'll talk about that stuff offline because I've got some, some ideas, maybe some things we can partner on there.
- [45:05]
A
Oh, cool.
- [45:06]
B
All right. Looking back on it, the last question with the brewery, I'm just fascinated with breweries because it's just like, I think, I don't know, like a lot of people, like when they think about like hobby mixed with business, you think about like opening a winery, opening a brewery, like doing these things and bringing like, experiences into it, everything, you know. Now would you, would you tell. Would you tell your children, your grandchildren would like my grandfather told me. Would you say, hey kids, couple things you want to stay away from one's a brewery or do you look back on all of this and you're like, you know what, like this is, this is really cool to be a part of.
- [45:47]
A
Regardless of how things work out, you just got to do it. You got to go for it. I spent too much of my life taking your grandfather's advice in the sense that I better be an accountant rather than pursue a career in music. Believe in yourself. If it's something you love, you just go for it. And you know what? If it doesn't work out, things are going to be okay. They really are. Even with my journey with the brewery. Things are great. Things are great with the brewery and the way it supports all the other work that I'm doing. The practical advice I would give anyone, because we talked about this a couple months ago, is the thing I really wish I had done. I was so focused on that business plan, which is the best case scenario. I just fell so in love with that. I didn't think as much as I should have about the operating agreement, which I would tell me or any entrepreneur, that's your worst case scenario. And it's okay to put some attention into both.
- [46:58]
B
I think that is, that is very, very wise feedback. My, one of my lenders used to say, I don't know, something was for something. But like, the contracts for the divorce, like, nobody plans on a divorce. Nobody plans on, like an ugly kind of mess. But if it goes down that path and you don't have an operating agreement or something in place, like things can, Things can get messy pretty quick.
- [47:24]
A
Would you rather talk about the divorce while we're still in love or while we're throwing furniture at each other? Yeah, that is not the time to do it. Yeah, accounting, practical advice there.
- [47:40]
B
You've got a really like, interesting, because I would agree, like, people that, that gravitate towards numbers are generally a little, A little more risk averse. Yeah, more risk averse. And it's interesting, like you've, you've got an A, A unique ability to kind of like switch between both sides of like, the practicalness and nature of it and then also the creativity side.
- [48:08]
A
For better or for worse.
- [48:10]
B
Well, I mean, you know, when some people think like, some people think I'm crazy. So like, they, they look at companies and they're like, oh, my gosh, like he, like fears, Fears. No risk. Like, it's just risk is out the window. Well, when you were talking earlier about this idea of like, you know, holding on to one branch, like every time I started a company, I was active duty Navy. And so like, you know, that people didn't talk about that. But I had health care, I had I had a roof over our head. There wasn't much at risk if that thing ultimately failed. Now, I did let go of one of them with Hunt a Killer, but, like, Hunt a Killer had taken off at that point to a degree in which, like, whatever math we put behind it, it'd be like, hey, dummy, like, get out of the, get out, out of the Navy or at least active duty, and go do it. But yeah, what, what? Gosh, we, we didn't even get into some of the EOS side of things. Like, when did, when did you discover eos? Because now you're doing amazing things on the EOS side. Like, were you still in the brewery? How did that all come about?
- [49:13]
A
So was done with the brewery and was back in the consulting work with ad agencies. And I had a couple of clients that the president of the agency would call separately and ask me before I'm coming in, hey, are you on traction? And that was how I found eos. You know, you can only say no once when someone asks you that question. And just reading the book, it just knocked me back in my chair. It just, it not only kind of filled in all of the missing pieces, the things we need to be looking for in a business, but it gave me something I really needed, was the order of operations when the things need to happen. My brain just was never able to really do that calculus further in that journey. I mean, it took me five or six years to even learn you could be a EOS implementer, but if you look at our logo, it's a light bulb. And I don't know who said it first, but you know, it's, there's a reason it's shining a light on your business. And when I was brave enough to do it for my own business and saw the cockroaches scurrying off, you know, it pointed out very clearly why that consulting business was not going to work. That just made me fall in love. It was bittersweet, but it made me fall in love with what we do. As we bring truth, we bring health, bring vision.
- [50:40]
B
There's never an easy transition. Was that transition simpler for you because of the network and like all the things that you had done with your own practice kind of leading up to that? Like, did you just kind of turn it on its head and say, hey, you know, here's my EOS sign shingle, Nowadays I'm open for business? Or did you feel like it was starting from scratch?
- [51:05]
A
You know, we talked about being the risk averse and slowly I did the exact opposite. When it came to eos, I believe just what you said, that I'll just switch the shingle and everything will work and it'll be super easy. And I could not have been more wrong. Oh no, it's funny how that works. But it's been just a surprising and delightful journey just learning so much and the connections as an EOS implementer are so much deeper and more fulfilling and the impact that I'm able to deliver using our tools give me so much more, so much more life giving than when I was doing more of the accounting based, you know, essentially I was putting out fires instead of preventing fires. So it's been a beautiful thing. But it is funny how you can have a great opportunity that's going to be easy and you're super cautious and you don't want to let go and it turns out that it was super easy. And then there's other cases where you're just running into the wall thinking that it's going to work and you fall flat.
- [52:23]
B
Yes, I, so, I mean I could just think. I never even like thought about it like that, but I can think back to so many instances in my life. Like when you were talking about the brewery and how everything looked amazing on paper. Like one of my very first companies, we went out and we raised a little bit of money for it and it was a T shirt company. And like on paper it was amazing. It was like we buy t shirts for $2 and we sell them for $25 and like, you know, magic just happens and, and the skies part and cash just falls right into our laps and it's this amazing thing. I will never forget the day that we launched that website. This was before Shopify, actually of all companies. Yahoo used to have an E commerce platform. Probably like 2007 or 8. We built this whole fancy website, we had an agency come in, blah, blah, blah. And I still remember it was like 9:00am, 9:30. I, for some reason I was thinking it was an event and so like we hit, we hit publish and just crickets and like, you know, we, we sold nothing for weeks and weeks and weeks and I was like, oh, so this is, this is business. But like you. And at least for me, like I had to go through those experiences in order to understand like what not to do next time and like how to think and frame and, and grow businesses. So yeah, just gotta live it.
- [53:51]
A
You just gotta live it. It's a beautiful journey.
- [53:54]
B
Yeah, yeah. What are you, are you an instrument player? Because like you keep talking about the rock star Thing. What, what instruments do you play?
- [54:04]
A
I balance between drums and guitar.
- [54:07]
B
Nice.
- [54:08]
A
The drums kind of settle me down. I'm always kind of moving to a beat of some type. And guitar just kind of helps channel the energy, the emotion, the spiritual energy.
- [54:22]
B
Do you have a couple friends, couple buddies that you play with?
- [54:25]
A
I do, but I spent so much time as a musician that I was just so afraid back to confidence and insecurity that I didn't really attach to those relationships that I should have at a. At a younger age. But I do have people I can play with and groups. And every now and then we'll perform in front of people now. So that's just been a beautiful thing that probably wouldn't have happened. I'm going to blame or attribute EOS to helping me see that that's my path and I can do it. What am I waiting for?
- [55:03]
B
I love that so much. And the other thing, and now you've got a brewery, so you got some friends, and you'd be like, hey, we're having an event in a few weeks. That's what you can do.
- [55:13]
A
Gotta tie it all together, use it for all it's worth.
- [55:15]
B
Yes. Oh, man.
- [55:17]
A
Squeeze all the juice.
- [55:21]
B
What. What Last. Last two questions. The. The first is, what. What do you look for in a client? Like, are you. I realized we just talked about niches and then this question's gonna spring, but, like, you know, are you. Do you focus on a vertical? Do you focus on a location? What do you look for in. In a client?
- [55:41]
A
You know, I've tried to find the language. At the end of the day, I'm really looking at my point of contact. So that's the visionary or the integrator. And I'm searching their soul and asking myself, is this. Do I think this person wants to do good in the world? Because if I think if the answer is yes, then I want to help them. I want to help them. I want to do the part that I can play to help them bring goodness into the world. And that's. That's ultimately all I need.
- [56:13]
B
Got it. Okay. So, Lee, someone listened to this whole thing. They're like a musician, a brewery owner agency. EOS CFO sees numbers risk averse. Not risk averse. Like, just like amazingness. And they're like, I need to get a hold of. Of Lee, how can they get a hold of you?
- [56:35]
A
You mean my phone number or would listen?
- [56:38]
B
Some people do give their phone numbers on this. I would recommend against that, but it's. It's up to you.
- [56:44]
A
Well, I've got a micro site. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm not great at promoting myself. I don't care. But using my. You can use my phone numbers. 205-516-1102. I'm already getting 30 junk text a day anyway and phone calls, it's all, it's all fun to me. So call me.
- [57:07]
B
I got such a weird one last week. It was like, it was like, hey, Ryan, are you still living at this address? We think you might need a new roof or something like that. And I'm like, who are you? How do you have my number? How do you have my name? This is crazy. It's getting wild out there.
- [57:22]
A
Yeah, I may be changing my number soon, but
- [57:28]
B
Lee, thank you. We'll make sure we put your email and the microsite in the show notes as well.
- [57:32]
A
But thank you so much.
- [57:33]
B
Lee. Thank you. Thank you for taking the time. I realize it's end of day. It is probably at this point is nighttime, the sun is going down for me in LA and I'm nowhere near Alabama. So I appreciate you taking an hour, hour and a half out of your evening to come on and just have a fun conversation about things, things that, you know, instances in life where, where you, you learned critical lessons. So I, I appreciate you being so vulnerable.
- [58:02]
A
You make it fun, Ryan. This was great.
- [58:06]
B
Awesome. Thanks, Lee.
- [58:08]
A
Thank you.