S2E47 | The Courage to Keep It Simple with Josh Holtzman

Summary

Confessions of an Implementer – S2E47

"The Courage to Keep It Simple" with Josh Holtzman

Podcast Host: Ryan Hogan (Talent Harbor)
Guest: Josh Holtzman, Veteran EOS Implementer
Date: April 30, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this insightful episode, Ryan Hogan sits down with seasoned entrepreneur and EOS Implementer, Josh Holtzman, to explore the power of keeping business leadership simple. Josh shares his multigenerational family business roots, the lessons learned from dot-com-era highs and lows, and how focus, discipline, and courage to simplify are key drivers in business growth and transformation. The conversation is brimming with actionable takeaways for leaders, founders, and implementers, culminating in Josh’s mission for his next “act” — scaling his impact through knowledge sharing and thought leadership.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Josh’s Entrepreneurial Roots & Influences

• Multigenerational Entrepreneurial Family

  • Raised in a family that immigrated to Los Angeles with nothing and built successive businesses over generations ([02:01]).
  • “The conversation around the dinner table was, ‘How was business today?’ That was our entire family, my relatives. That’s what I knew.” – Josh ([02:57]).
  • Contrasts the family’s practical, execution-driven lifestyle business with the moonshot ambitions of dot-com startups.

• Dot-Com Bubble Lessons

  • First-hand experience in two wildly ambitious Silicon Valley startups with rapid growth and sudden failure.
  • Key learning: Vision without execution leads to chaos, while execution without vision lacks inspiration ([07:01]–[08:25]).
  • “We just chased too many things… The challenge was, is that we didn’t really have the discipline to execute.” – Josh ([07:01]).

The Power and Limits of Ambition

• Ambition Without Focus Is Dangerous

  • Dot-com companies raised millions quickly but ultimately crumbled from overextension:
    • Too many projects diluted focus ([09:10], [12:17]).
    • “Instead of producing five different products, we were producing 15 at once. Versus let’s prove we can do one or two of them.” – Josh ([12:17]).
  • Visionary energy is vital, but not at the expense of executional rigor.

• Picking a Path: Learning on Others’ Dime

  • Josh deliberately worked at startups before starting his own company to learn from their mistakes and successes ([13:28]).
  • Pivoted from dot-coms to software development, teaching himself programming to deepen technical expertise ([13:28]–[15:25]).

Founding, Growing, and Exiting a Tech Business

• Early Days: Humble, Bootstrapped Beginnings

  • Launched a small software development firm with the goal of building a great place to work and serve smaller businesses ([15:33]–[16:16]).
  • Fun early anecdote: his first client built an “erotic pinatas” ecommerce site for bachelorette parties ([17:14]).

• Finding a Niche: Partnering with Salesforce

  • Built one of the first automated drip campaigns integrating Salesforce—opened significant opportunities ([18:51]).
  • Scaled to 20 employees and $4M in revenue before facing growth challenges.

• Hitting a Ceiling & The Value of Execution

  • Vision to scale to $15M revenue fell flat; after 18 months, revenue was stagnant and Josh was fatigued ([20:15]).
  • “I had plenty of vision. I didn’t know how to execute.” – Josh ([20:16]).
  • Decided to pursue a strategic merger instead of pushing alone ([21:40]).

• Successful Merger & Scaling with EOS

  • Sold company via merger to a peer running on EOS, scaling from $13M to $40M in three years before a successful cash exit ([21:40]).
  • Proper cultural alignment and EOS integration were key to a smooth and positive merger:
    • “Fortunately, together we grew from about $13 million combined to about $40 million in three years.” ([21:40])
    • “The integration of the two companies’ success [was] largely to EOS.” ([30:47])
    • Most of Josh’s team remained happily post-merger ([30:12]–[30:47]).
  • “Eight people from our management team at that company have since become EOS implementers. Peyton calls us his farm team.” ([28:13])

Journey to Impact & Becoming an EOS Implementer

• Transition from Operator to Implementer

  • After exit, explored fractional CTO roles but found them uninspiring.
  • Inspired by a former colleague who became an EOS Implementer, Josh started his EOS journey in 2017 ([34:22]).

• Internal Growth: From Proving Himself to Purpose-Driven Work

  • Candid self-reflection on being motivated by a need to prove himself versus making a true impact ([36:03]–[39:28]):
    • “I realized that, okay, great, I am where I am. I’m doing this because I actually love it. I’m doing it because I’m making an impact.”

• Scale of Experience

  • Nearly 1,000 EOS session facilitated.
  • “Now I have my own experience. … then the M&A in which you had the exposure to EOS … become your own EOS implementer. Now a thousand sessions, like, what are you …?” ([40:26])
  • Has helped companies move from founder disputes and $1M revenue to $135M and thriving teams ([44:06]).

The Philosophy of Simplification in Leadership

• Leadership is Simple—If You’re Courageous

  • Most business challenges are created by avoidance or lack of courage, creating unnecessary complexity ([44:06]–[47:45]).
  • “Leadership can be really simple. It’s that most leaders don’t have the courage to do the tough things they need to do … so they build scaffolding around them … and make their businesses way more complex than they need to be.” ([45:29])
  • Simplification is a mindset—constantly ask if a decision moves you closer to your true goals.

• Common Pitfalls of Unnecessary Complexity

  • Accountability Chart: Keeping underperformers in key roles leads to complicated workarounds (e.g., secret meetings, redundancies) ([50:47]).
  • Overcomplicated Initiatives: Trying to do too much at once results in missed goals and diluted energy ([53:03]).
  • Too Many Scorecard Metrics: Leadership should focus on 5–15 key organizational indicators—the “bridge of the ship” analogy ([56:29]–[61:43]).
    • “Imagine you have the ability to tour a cruise ship bridge… What are the handful of gauges you use to really … get there safely and on time?” ([59:43])
    • “When everything’s important, nothing’s important.” ([56:29])
  • Core Values: Three to seven is ideal—memorable, actionable ([55:35]).

The Power of Reset and Communication

• Quarterly State of the Company Meetings
  • Critical to refocus, share vision, and prevent “negativity bias,” especially as teams lose focus every 90 days ([63:38]).
    • “In the absence of data, the mind makes up a story. And… we have a negativity bias, we go dark. And so I think it’s critically important that that happens on a quarterly basis.” ([64:46])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Family Entrepreneurship

• “I didn’t know many people who were employees growing up as a child, I knew one day I was gonna be a business owner. I didn’t know what I was gonna do, but I knew that was my calling.” – Josh ([02:54])

On Lessons from Dot-Com’s Fall

• “We had plenty of resources. There was an unbridled ambition. … The challenge was, is that we didn’t really have the discipline to execute.” – Josh ([07:01])
• “I want to create a place where it’s not just about thumping on my chest and saying, we’re better than you… It was more about, let’s put some points on the board.” – Josh ([07:39])

On Complexity in Business

• “They had big vision, but they were not disciplined in their execution. And ultimately they ran out of money.” – Josh ([08:25])
• “Instead of making progress from here to here, we make progress from here to there. We get a handful of things 50% of the way there versus one or two or three things 100% of the way there.” – Josh ([53:03])

On Focusing the Scorecard

• “Imagine… the bridge. What are the handful of things you need to be looking at to steer this organization from point A to point B in the next 90 days?” – Josh ([59:43])
• “If one of the biggest organizations in the world [the Navy] can have three core values and still operate effectively, maybe we don’t need seven.” – Ryan ([55:35])

On Prioritizing Impact Over Ego

• “This isn’t just about running a better business for me, it’s a calling. It’s about making a bigger dent in the universe.” – Josh ([44:06])
• “I realized that, okay, great, I am where I am. I’m doing this because I actually love it. I’m doing it because I’m making an impact.” – Josh ([39:28])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:01] – Josh’s family and entrepreneurial upbringing.
• [05:53] – Dot-com boom: Quick money, big vision, lack of discipline.
• [09:10] – Spreading resources too thin: The cost of “more”.
• [15:33] – Launching first business; early client anecdote.
• [18:51] – Discovering Salesforce niche; first big break.
• [20:16] – Stalling at $4M — Lessons in execution and fatigue.
• [21:40] – Merging, scaling, and the role of EOS in success.
• [30:12] – Merging teams and the importance of cultural fit.
• [36:03] – Moving from ego-driven to impact-driven motivation.
• [40:26] – Reflections after 1,000 EOS sessions.
• [44:06] – Real client stories of massive transformation.
• [45:29] – “Leadership can be really simple…” — theme of newsletter.
• [50:47] – Simplification principles: Accountability chart, rocks, and scorecard.
• [55:35] – Core values: Less is more.
• [61:43] – The “bridge and engine room” scorecard analogy.
• [63:38] – Importance of quarterly State of the Company meetings.
• [65:41] – Where to find Josh’s newsletter and contact info, plus his approach to new clients.

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The Next Act: Making a Broader Impact

• Josh’s upcoming focus is his newsletter, “Simple Timeless Truths for Modern Business Builders” (simpleleadership.com), where he distills lessons learned from hundreds of EOS engagements for leaders everywhere.
• His new 10-year target: Be regarded as a top national business leadership thought leader by 2035, measured by reach (subscribers, downloads, etc.) ([47:50]).
• Practical, story-driven content — going audio and video soon.

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How to Connect with Josh Holtzman

• Newsletter: simpleleadership.com – Free, bi-weekly, value-first.
• LinkedIn: Active and open for inquiries.
• EOS Directory & Micro-Site: eosworldwide.com/josh-holtzman (or search the directory)
• Ideal Clients: Privately held companies, 10–500 employees, in LA (or willing to travel), open to coaching and simplicity.

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Key Takeaway

Courage, focus, and simplicity are the most underutilized superpowers for leaders and organizations.
“When everything’s important, nothing’s important... My goal is to share these stories and learnings to help leaders change their mindset and have the courage to do those tough things.” – Josh ([45:29])

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Transcript

[A]

I want to create a place where it's not just about thumping on my chest and saying, we're better than you. We're going to take you down. It was more about, let's put some points on the board. And at the end of the game, the one who puts some more points on the board wins. It's about doing something real.

[B]

Welcome to Confessions of an Implementer. I'm your host, Brian 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. All right, well, let's kick this thing off. Josh, thank you so much for taking the time to come on and share your journey, share your story. Really excited about this one.

[A]

It's my pleasure and honor.

[B]

Right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And look at this room. It's not too often that we get to come into real studios. And so thank you for, like, you made a big trip today, so thank you for coming on up here.

[A]

It's my pleasure. Anytime I can be around the clouds like this, I mean, yeah.

[B]

It's also. I was telling you earlier when I found this studio and it was one of the recordings that I did, it was interesting because there's a whole bunch of celebrities that come here, so I feel like we're living in their aura, which is great.

[A]

Fantastic. Maybe one of these days we'll be recognized at that same level. So this is the origins. We're starting here.

[B]

We're on our way. Let's start with this because you have a really interesting story. This is not your first trip around the block when it comes to helping businesses, growing businesses, things like that. You are an expert implementer. You are also hard to get a hold of. I remember. I remember trying to. Trying to lock you down in the early days and. And that just speaks a lot to people. People are looking for your time, they're looking for your wisdom, they're looking for your advice. And, like, you have an operator background. So this is like, you experienced it, you lived it first before you ever went into helping other businesses and leaders out. So, like, walk me through that founder journey. Like, did one day you just wake up and you were just like, I'm a founder now. Let me start a company. Or what did that look like for you?

[A]

That's exactly right. You woke up one day and. No, I was kind of born that way. Yeah. And what I mean is, we're here in Los Angeles. This is a place that's very near and dear to Me, hence the shirt I'm wearing. Although, yes, it is upside down, that's not a camera angle. But in any event, I'm actually a fifth generation Angeleno. My ancestors came here from Eastern Europe with Nothing at around 1900, when the city was very different, of course. And because they came here with nothing and arguable what their education was, they had to become entrepreneurs to survive. And it started with things like selling fruit on the corner, we see that today. To collecting burlap sacks in the grocery markets and reselling them to starting a broom factory, manufacturing comforters downtown LA in the storefront. And so I can tell you story after story, but generation after generation continued to build. About three generations ago, in about 1920, my great grandfather started a truck dealership here in Los Angeles, which my dad still runs today. And my brother's involved in it. Point is, growing up, the conversation around the dinner table was, how was business today? That was our entire family, my relatives. That's what I knew. I didn't know many people who were employees growing up as a child, I knew one day I was gonna be a business owner. I didn't know what I was gonna do, but I knew that was my calling. When I graduated college, it was right around the time of the first dot com boom in the late 90s, and I had an opportunity to be an employee, starting as an intern and work at a few of these dot com companies that, wow, what a ride, what an experience were those and learn a lot. That combination of growing up in a pretty humble family business to then having the extreme right out of college and being an employee in companies that raised tens of millions of dollars with Ferraris out front and crazy parties really shaped my leadership philosophy. And then finally, when I was 26 years old, newly married, my wife working as an attorney, no children, our only obligation was our apartment rent. I said, okay, now's the time. And that's when I founded my first business.

[B]

When I hear your story and your family story, it's like it's building something from nothing. And it's like step after step, brick after brick. And then we've got this other side of entrepreneurship that is like, go out, raise money, convince investors that you have the next billion dollar idea. When you were going through that experience, were you taking notes on what to do, or were you taking notes at that point on what maybe not to do?

[A]

Likely a little bit of both. And I probably didn't know it at the time. I mean, growing up in the family business and seeing entrepreneurship in the form of really, quite frankly, a lifestyle business, wanting to serve the community. My father, my grandfather, my great grandfather, who I really didn't know, he passed away when I was pretty young. I don't think they had massive ambitions to take it and become a national automotive dealership and grow and become billionaires type of things. I think it was really about just running a great business profitably, giving back to the community, providing for our family, which I'm grateful for. And arguably that was a little bit easier for each generation because they could build off the next generation. But there was no real long term vision. It was about executing, it was about making a profit. Then flip the script, read it. Of college. I'm at a company that promises to be the revolution of digital entertainment. Bringing TV in Silicon Valley together to be the first streaming platform, which we were. It was a company called the Digital Entertainment Network Den. We raised about $80 million.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Burned through it in about three and a half years.

[B]

That Ferrari, it was the Ferrari out

[A]

front, Ferraris up front, with car washers every day, crazy Christmas parties that were over the top. I mean, any cliche.com experience like I lived it. Yeah. I started as the second assistant to the president of the company.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Who came from Hollywood and it was amazing. I got to be a bit of a doorkeeper to him. All these celebrities, big name executives, they saw that there was this revolution happening in technology and they were coming to us. And I had an opportunity to start building relationships with those folks. So while I saw it was not, not the most challenging job in terms of being the second assistant to the president of the company, I saw that as an opportunity to build relationships and learn. And over time, ultimately I moved up the ranks within that organization, saw it grow to about 300 employees. We laid off a whole bunch because we started to run out of money. And ultimately was there on my birthday, May 17, 2000, I think it was, we brought the whole company together, announced we were laying everybody off and shutting doors and filing for bankruptcy.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

And so some of the learnings there were, we had plenty of resources. There was an unbridled ambition. We were going to change the world. I mean, you could feel the energy when you walked into this space. The challenge was, is that we didn't really have the discipline to execute, is that people were inspired, they were willing to run through walls, but we just chased too many things. And that really impacted some of my philosophy. There was a lot of bravado in the press, in the news, with the celebrities we brought in. As I, as I shared And I was just an intern and assistant in this company. Yeah. But I learned so much. And when I left and realized, okay, I'm going to start my own company at some point in time, and it's going to be something that's meaningful, I want to create a place where it's not just about thumping on my chest and saying, we're better than you, we're going to take you down, it was more about, let's put some points on the board. And at the end of the game, the one who puts some more points on the board wins. It's about doing something real. And so what that inspired me to do is to have a philosophy where it was a combination of. I think it's so critical to have an inspiring vision for your team, for your sense for yourself to drive you, but you also gotta be able to execute. And I think my father's company was really great at executing. There wasn't any real big vision that really inspired people. It was a job. And that's okay. That's not what fuels me.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

On the other hand, working in these.coms I worked at, I worked at a second one as well, that it was a similar story, similar ending. They had big vision, but they were not disciplined in their execution. And ultimately they ran out of money.

[B]

Interesting. When you. When you look back on those and like, when we talk about discipline and focus and maybe simplification and some of these other concepts that you've learned and experienced in real time, when is there. Is there something specific like you today? If they were to say the company still existed, it was still doing the same thing, and they were like, hey, can you come in and be president, integrator or visionary? What would you do different outside of just like, hey, we got to get disciplined inside the organization? What would that look like?

[A]

It was just the pursuit of more. First of all, I'm more of a classic visionary than I am an integrator. For the record, with that said, I always say that if there's a spectrum, let's say visionaries here, this is like add hair on fire, new idea every five minutes. And this is integrator. I can run the trains on time perfectly with not a lot of creativity, but do it well. I'm probably just to the right of the middle, so I am. I can work in both rows for a period of time, but at the end of the day, the visionary type of role is what inspires me nonetheless. Looking back in, hindsight's easy. I was also a, you know, pretty low on the totem pole there. So it's easy to be a Monday morning quarterback, but. But my observation, looking back on it from what I know now was the idea was great. We were marrying Hollywood and streaming technology, which back in 1999 was the size of a postage stamp. Most households did not have high speed Internet. We were still using dial up. And we had some pretty innovative ways to make that work. The challenge is that we decided while we were creating original content, we started off with like 18 different kinds of original content with, you know, 10 different showrunners. And then we decided, well, we got to get ahead of the curve also, we're going to establish a music label as well. And it was just one thing after another in the calling of entertainment, which is great. It was just the pursuit of too much at once versus let's saying let's put all our eggs in one basket. Let's produce two shows, two concepts and stream them and make this big and prove ourselves and figure that out and build the momentum on those. And I think we just took our resources and spread them too thin and ran out of Runway.

[B]

We had a similar challenge at Hunt, A Killer. And one of the things that we discovered is not only we were creatives. And so we had the creative team that developed the storylines and the assets for that. We had the game designers that translated that story into a game, which overall had the final product. And then we had marketing, which was how do we tell the world all the things that we're doing? We had distribution, so we had both online sales and some of these others. And what I realized is, like, we were trying to be best in the world at too many things. We were trying to be best in the world at designing a game, best in the world at marketing, best in the world at distribution and logistics, which, like, we had a warehouse. And at a certain point we took a step back and we were like, we got to get out of, like, there's other organizations that are best in the world at that. When you think back to that. That company specifically, like, if you were to think about all the core competencies that they needed, like showrunners and production. My wife's going through AFI right now, so I'm intimately exposed with how much goes into production. And that's outside of this. Like, you need a great story before you even go into production. Do you look back on that and you're like, well, actually the technology was kind of the secret sauce. And if we would have let other subject matter experts do these things or I guess, like, were you were you trying to build too many core competencies at that point?

[A]

I don't know if it was building too many core competencies. I think it was just taking on too much.

[B]

Got it.

[A]

So for argument's sake, we had a lot of really talented people that came from Hollywood that had been doing it for years that understood how to create a show, how to shoot, how to manage narrative. We had some amazing technologists, and the technology was pretty early on for what we were doing. So we were kind of figuring out. But they were great. It was just that rather than producing five different products, we were producing 15 at once. Yeah. Trying to figure it out as we went. Versus let's prove we can do one or two of them. Do them really, really well, scale that, build an audience, prove out the model and then go from there. That would have been my angle, but again, hindsight's 20 20.

[B]

Yeah. It makes sense when you. You talked about the balance or the. The perspectives that you were able to gain and develop from both of these experiences. So looking at the brick by brick, profitable company, you said maybe lacked a little vision but had the execution down pat. Then you got into these other organizations where maybe lacked a little bit of the execution, but had grand visions, like, without that kind of second perspective. Did that second perspective kind of expand your horizon as far as, like, what's possible, or were you already of the mindset, like, I'm going to go and this is just like, let's learn some stuff before we go.

[A]

Yeah, I definitely knew I was going to go at some point in time. And I figured before I went and founded my own endeavor, which I didn't know what I wanted to do. Let me learn on somebody else's dime for a bit. Yeah. And I worked at two.com companies. The first one I mentioned, the second one was a company where straight, really organically. It was a sports agent who at the time started creating websites for all the top athletes. And that spun into a company that did all sorts of things around sports on the Internet. But again, sort of undisciplined pursuit of more. First websites of athletes. And then we were doing official signed merchandise because we had those athletes where you can buy it online from them. Then it turned into a sports wire and then it turns into a news desk where they were. Yahoo. Was powered by all of our sports news. And so again, it was all under the theme of sports, which is, I guess, better than owning car washes and laundromats and sports. But again, there was a lot. So similar learnings There and again, that had a similar fate, unfortunately. And then I actually pursued the idea of going deeper on technology because that's something that I always really enjoyed. And I actually became a software developer for a couple years, which I had no business doing by the book. I was an English major at UCLA and I was passionate about technology. I had a little bit of experience building some websites during college as a really early adopter and I literally went back and bought books and taught myself how to develop software. I remember as a 24 year old, still looking like a college student and wanting a free education, I just picked up the UCLA course catalog and started going to classes that I was never registered for just to learn and thought maybe I'd go back and get a computer science master's degree that would give me some credentials. But ultimately I realized it was time. At 26 years old, we had no family, like I mentioned, the risk was pretty low. And I spoke to a cousin of mine who was entrepreneurial and he said, Josh, there's no perfect time. You just got to do it.

[B]

Y. All right, let's. Let's dive into it then. So what, what, what? After all these experiences and everything you observed, what did you launch?

[A]

Well, like many young budding entrepreneurs having a technical skill, whether that's baking pies or whether that's washing cars, I happen to have a knack for understanding how to develop software. And I launched a company at the time, really with pretty humble ambitions. It was really just to build a great place to work that built great product, made a profit in the technology space. I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do with that, but I did see the world was evolving smaller to midsize businesses. All had their brochure websites at the time. If you remember, back then, everybody had a simply just the idea of going to, you know, Reinhogan.com was pretty innovative that you had a website.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And that was probably just a couple pages with some information about your bio, how to contact you, and I'm using you as an individual. But think of a smaller business. They were starting to become more interactive where services could be provided, shopping could be available. It wasn't just an informational brochure and I had the skills to do that. The idea was to build an organization where we could provide that ability to smaller to mid sized businesses. You didn't have to be an Amazon.com or Bank of America to be able to provide some sort of online service. And so really we were just a professional services organization to start one of the first projects we worked on was for my aunt, which was very sweet of her and her friends to help me out. The company and based here in the San Fernando Valley. They were a whole bunch of women that primarily were homemakers. And they had this investment club, which I love, and they made some money. They said, let's start a business with this money we had invested. The idea was erotic pinatas. What? Yes.

[B]

You had to build their website.

[A]

Think of paper mache pinatas for bachelor parties that were, you know, all sorts of body parts on them, stuff with condoms and penis candies and all sorts of funny things. And I'm gonna tell the story one day. I built their website so people can buy their erotic pinatas online. Anyway, thank you, Aunt Laur. That was a fun experience. The business, sadly, didn't last very long, but nonetheless, a lot of fun. But for sure, story to tell. Yeah. So anyway, to make a long story short, that business evolves. One of my early on clients happened to be looking to build a what we now call a drip campaign, an automated drip campaign. And they were using a CRM platform called salesforce.com they were using a email service provider called Exact Target. And they reached out to me in my small firm and said, hey, could you automate this for us? Because there was no drag and drop. Build a campaign at that point in time. And we built one of the first drip campaigns, which was wildly successful. Salesforce heard about it. Exact Target heard about it, and they invited me to come and speak at their user conference in San Francisco. Dreamforce, which is Salesforce's user conference, back then, had about 5,000 people that attended. And I remember I walked in and I saw the 5,000 folding chairs set up in the Moscone center in San Francisco. And I said, wow, this is a big opportunity here. I can get my feet in the ground here early on and maybe build something. And sure enough, that's where things really pivoted. I realized that we're not just going to be a software development company. We're going to be a salesforce.com partner, professional services partner. Let's ride on their coattails.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

To give you an idea, I exited that space about 10 years ago. But when I left, there were about 200,000 people that showed up at that conference.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

And so really, I built a professional services firm that rode on their coattails. I bootstrapped it and grew it to about 20 employees, about 4 million in revenue. And like the business, I was brought up in, my family business, I didn't really have any bigger ambitions than that until I learned that companies of our scale and type in in our space, we're selling for really high multiples. And when that epiphany struck me, I realized I'm sitting on something that actually could have some sort of exit value. I also recognize that in order to maximize the value of the business, I really would be best to scale it first before selling it at the size of 4 million. Yeah, I created an organic plan. I was a member of the entrepreneurs organization at the time. I remember presenting to my forum my plan, love it. To grow from 4 million in revenue to 15 million in revenue in three short years. I had an organic plan to do it created some shared ownership for the rest of our team. We would scale it to 15 million and sell it for 15 to 30 million dollars. And I'd never have to worry about a dollar, you know, again in my life. And our employees would share in some of that as well. Got everybody on board and 18 months later we were still at 4 million in revenue. Oh no.

[B]

Oh no.

[A]

Shocker, right? Never heard that story before. So I had plenty of vision. I didn't know how to execute. Yeah, we had really nice people on the team but I didn't pull the plug probably when I should have. I didn't let go enough. Maybe I let go too much in certain cases. The short of it was I was tired. Yeah, we were spinning our wheels and not making any progress. I had reached my financial risk tolerance and decided I'm still sitting on something worth value but I'm really tired and I'm not having much fun anymore. Maybe I can join forces with somebody else and we'll have a much more certain faster path to an exit rather than doing it alone. So I went through a process. This is my first go around of selling a business. I had never been involved again. My dad ran the family business and learned a lot. Ultimately spoke to about three or four different companies. We went through a process and ultimately we found the right partner. It was a pure of ours in the Midwest. Also happened to be an EO run company. We were both in the Inc. Fastest growing companies list and so we kind of connected that way and technically they acquired us. We were about half their size and fortunately together we grew from about 13 million combined to about 40 million in three years. And then successfully sold the company in an all cash deal to a global publicly traded IT services firm.

[B]

There you go.

[A]

So it still had that exit. It was a little bit different than I anticipated at this point. My 20 person company. We had grown it together to about a 200 person company, which was a lot of fun. I also like to joke around that I took an entrepreneurial sabbatical for about three years and it was great. Yeah, what'd you do? I was working. I just didn't have to worry about payroll, I didn't have to worry about I got to sort of run the west coast and not worry about every aspect of running a business. I was still a shareholder, etc. But once we sold, we became part of a 20,000 person international company and the entrepreneur, me pretty quickly said, yuck, yeah, this for a moment, for like a year, I'm like, maybe I'll become the CEO of this 20,000 person company and my work my way up the ranks. And I realized this I don't have it in me is not for me. I'm an entrepreneur at heart. And quite frankly, I started to look back on my journey and I asked myself why was it that I got stuck yet together we were able to break through ceiling after ceiling after ceiling. And the one thing I continued to point back to was eos.

[B]

There it is.

[A]

The company that acquired ours had been running on EOS for three years prior to my arrival. Mike Peyton was our EOS implementer. Oh, gee. Yes. And in fact, I think we were like a second or third client ever.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

And that was before my time. They had started to implement EOS three years prior, but he was our implementer. And when it was time to move on, I could think of nothing more fulfilling than to give back and work with other leaders to help them get what they want from their businesses using the best way I know how to run a business, which is eos. And that's really what got me to that next phase in my journey to becoming an EOS implementer. And that was about 10 years ago, roughly 100 clients ago and nearing a thousand sessions ago.

[B]

That is wild. When you jumping back real quick to when you were 18 months in into executing, maybe, maybe, maybe not executing, but like trying to execute.

[A]

We were moving. I don't know if we were moving forward, but there was definitely movement. Maybe not momentum, but movement.

[B]

There was, yes. And at that point you're like, I'm tired. Like there has been a lot of movement and we need to go find a strategic partner. Like how did you make that? Two questions. One, how did you make that determination of like it wasn't time to sell at that point. It was time to find a good merger or somebody to come combine or join forces with and then two, like what did that process look like? My, my exposure is, you know, you go and you hire a banker and they run you through a, you know, nine to 12 month process and hopefully you walk out the other end with

[A]

a pot of gold.

[B]

Maybe not all the time, but like how did you make that decision? And then also like what did that process like that look like?

[A]

Yeah, I'm happy to share and it definitely was. I explored all the angles. I really had to make the first decision. What do I want to do? I'm not enjoying this anymore. With that said, I've put a lot into this and I believe it's still worth something. I've got to change the way in which I'm going about it. And I saw two paths. One path was to go and try and raise some money and that gave me more Runway and minimize some of the additional financial risk I would need to take on to reinvest in the growth. However, that still came with challenges. Just because I had more resources, financial resources, doesn't mean I was making smarter decisions.

[B]

Insert den at that point.

[A]

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And so I explore that and I figured also if I had a board, maybe there'd be connections, different insights, mentorship, et cetera. I also didn't have a lot of experience doing that, nor did I have experience selling a business. So not that that was any more familiar. And then I went down that or explore the other path and I said, okay, my valuation's not going to be great right now given our size and the fact that we haven't really been producing a profit because we've been eating it up over the last 18 months. What if I were to find a like minded company that also wanted to grow and sell and have a second bite of the apple? So take a little bit off of the table now, convert the balance into equity in the new firm and then sell. It just so happened that Salesforce was very active in building out their partner community very intentionally. If you think about SaaS businesses and with AI that I don't even know where things sit today because things are evolving. But historically their valuations based upon recurring revenue. And if you as a SaaS business have too much revenue coming in from things like professional services now, the market looks at you and says, well you're not. Half of your income isn't from SaaS, it's setting projects up to implement your software that's going to devalue you. Yeah, they said we're going to have a small professional services firm internally or channel internally but we're going to build a robust partner ecosystem. So it's not on our books, all these services, but our clients can be serviced by different partners around the world. So they had a lot of infrastructure to build out this partner channel, including someone who just did M and A of partners. His job was to either help fund partners.

[B]

Interesting.

[A]

Or to help partners merge and do M and A so they can grow that ecosystem. I happen to have a relationship with him. I did talk to some brokers, I did talk to some investment bankers. We were just too small at 4 million in revenue for the fees they were going to take. I would counsel organizations at a larger scale. Yes, hire an investment banker. They're going to get you better valuation. But for they were looking to take just upfront. It just didn't make sense to me. So I worked with this individual at Salesforce and really he introduced me a number of companies and I kind of ran my own process. I put together a pitch deck, shared it with a handful of companies that narrowed down to two or three that were interested and ultimately we received an LOI from one that we ultimately, you know, end up linking, inking a deal with.

[B]

There are a lot of horror stories when it comes to acquisitions and mergers and things like that. What was really interesting about yours is like, it sound like the combined joined forces somewhere between 15 and 20 million and then very quickly doubled, almost tripled that over the next next couple years. That doesn't sound like a horror story to me. Like, so when, when you think about your story like were the values are like was were all of these things already aligned going in?

[A]

It's a really great question. I had a mentor at the time who ran one of the most successful companies in the Salesforce space. And I had reached out to him as well to see if he was interested in joining forces. And we were just too small. It wasn't worth the M and A fees and the effort to bring us aboard. They were already doing 150 million in revenue when we were four.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And one of the things he shared with me is, Josh, you're selling a services based business and unless you're collecting all the money up front, which in most cases you're not, what's critically important is that you've got a cultural fit because if you can't work together, this whole thing is going to go down in flames. And I really appreciated and valued that we had some stated core values at my organization, even though we had not. I hadn't even known about eos we had created Some values, they probably weren't the greatest values, but they were somewhat representative of who we were and what we believed. And we compared those against the company that had acquired, was acquiring ours, that had its own set of core values that they actually created through EOS that were probably a little bit more. And they were actually pretty on point. And so fortunately we got along really well. The structure of the transaction was very fair. I always felt like we were taken care of. And so it worked out really well. It's probably no surprise that eight people from our management team at that company, Magnet, 360, have since become EOS implementers talking about sharing values. So Peyton kind of calls us his farm team, if you will. We've got to be the most number of implementers from any one company out there. I mean, hands down I would imagine. So it's pretty cool. And so we still are really close, just in a different way. Many of us, not all of us, but many of us.

[B]

One of the stories that I hear quite often about like EOS implementation, we went through our own version of this and we experienced something very similar. But it's like, you know, the leadership team that's there on, you know, the first focus day might not be the one that's there on the first annual planning session. You had an organization where it sounds like you were pretty organized in articulating your vision, had these things, maybe not operating on EOs, but you had some of those general concepts in merge with an organization that is operating on EOS. Like did 100% of your team stay and, and carried on for a time being or was there some shifts that had to happen?

[A]

Great question. About two or three people left. One was a newer employee and he had just gone through his own not great experience where he was working at a company where they had a transaction and it didn't go well. So he got spooked and left as soon as we announced it. Another her role was pretty much being eliminated and I think she was just ready to move on. Anyways, everybody else moved over and quite frankly, most everybody stayed a really long time, some of them much longer than I stayed around.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

And I will credit the integration of the two companies success largely to eos. The acquiring company who had been using EOS shared the vision with us from day one. Part of the process of preparing for the announcements of the two companies coming together was looking at an accountability chart and creating one to see where everybody fit. And so we had a common language when we joined in. There was a clear vision that inspired my team to join this new opportunity. We knew there was a bigger opportunity coming together and everybody sort of started to interact in their level tens and their new departments immediately and got onboarded. We even had a weekly level 10 integration meeting of the leaders from both companies to talk about. And that went on for maybe a quarter or so every week. What do we need to do to transition systems invoicing processes between the two companies? And we chipped away at it until there was nothing else to discuss. And that worked out really well.

[B]

That's, that's brilliant. When I, I've heard this notion of like as, as companies are going down the M and A track and they run on EOs like they either bring an integrator or they bring someone in to kind of help them. Like did you guys have that or was that team so, you know, operating at an elite level where, where like these integration L10s and a lot of the thinking of do these cultures align? How do we integrate? Did they happen with or without kind of outside consultation?

[A]

Yeah, I don't believe there was any outside consultation. Some of the leaders in this company had a lot more business experience than I did and they just had more experience doing so. So it went pretty smooth overall, which was great.

[B]

Love it. That is, I will say, out of all the stories, I would say like that one's like a maybe a 10 or 15 percenter versus a lot of others that go sideways. And I think a lot of this speaks to the power of eos and, and alignment of core values and thoughtful integration and intentionality behind all of these, these different processes. Okay, all right. So now you have this ex and you're like, I'm going to be CEO. And then you're like, yeah, maybe not. So you left. And immediately when you left, did you say, I'm going to eos or what did that look like?

[A]

So we just discussed act one, if you will. Right. And hopefully there's a lot more acts to come. And now we're sort of moving into Act 2. And I explored different options. I knew I was turning 40 years old at the time. I had a lot of more in me. I had an exit now and there was an opportunity to do something into the future. And I didn't know what I wanted to do, to be honest with you. I Knew I had 10 years of experience working with technology and business at a really high level. My first reaction was, why don't I become a fractional chief technology officer? I'll work with mid market companies that they've outgrown their director of it, but they're not ready to bring in somebody who's real expensive full time. And I can serve in that way maybe 10 hours a week for three or four companies and make some good money at a high hourly rate. And that didn't really take off. And quite frankly, it wasn't all that exciting. I was sort of doing it because I knew how to do it. And then I connected with one of my old peers from Magnet360, the company that had acquired mine, who had become an implementer. He was the first one from the company that became an implementer. And he shared with me what life was like as an EOS implementer and the impact he was making. And that just sold me pretty darn quickly. So about two or three months after I left Magnet, I went to my bootcamp at EOS, and that was in May of 2017. So this May will be my ninth anniversary since that day.

[B]

All right, quick break friends. Do you find it impossible to hire and retain top sales talent? Or worse, are you paying insane recruiter fees who are all using outdated hiring processes? Yeah, I was too. At Hunt a Killer, we were spending hundreds of thousands on recruiter agency fees. And after I sold that company in 2025, I started Talent Harbor. And the whole vision here was to make sales recruiting accessible to small and medium sized businesses. Because the organizations that can hire and retain world class people are the ones that ultimately win. Most organizations rely on things like ZipRecruiter or LinkedIn and they get hundreds if not thousands of resumes. But we find that the best salespeople are already perfectly placed somewhere else. And that's why our approach is to go after them. And we do that through a business model called recruiting As a service. We do not charge commissions, we do not have success fees, we don't have contracts, we don't have long term 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.com let's get your next sales superstar hired. And something that. And this wasn't the first time that you mentioned this. You keep coming back to this impact and keep coming back to this purpose. Has that become or has that always been kind of your guiding principle, guiding light? It's like you've navigated decisions or big decisions like this.

[A]

It's a really Great question. The answer is no. And I'll share with you a little bit of the journey growing up, like many individuals, we have our own trauma and our backgrounds. And especially I remember going through elementary school and middle school, I was kind of a little bit chubby and self conscious and always wanted to sort of fit in with the cool kids and never really felt like I did. I was always a little bit of an outsider until maybe sort of later in high school, let's just say. And I didn't really realize this, I think at the front of my mind, but it was there in the back that I was driven because I needed to prove myself. What really drove me was demonstrating I could fit in socially, I had my place. Whether that was looking back, I always wanted to be the best at whatever I did. And really I think it was to have some sense of status, right? In some ways to really fit in. We were all social beings. We want to fit in and feel like we have purpose. And I remember playing volleyball as a teenager and like, all right, I'm going to be a professional volleyball player or ice hockey, I'm going to be a professional ice hockey player or playing music. I was a guitarist for a long time. I'm going to be a rock star. If not, I'll be a studio musician and tour the world. And so definitely once I got into the entrepreneurial world, it was, I want to build something big. And anyway, so that was what really drove me. And I would say even through the beginning of my time as an EOS implementer, what I found over time is that slowly, when I became to realize that was driving me and I had achieved these things, I had finished Ironmans, I had sold businesses, I had done various things. I didn't need to prove myself anymore. I realized that, okay, great, I am where I am. I'm doing this because I actually love it. I'm doing it because I'm making an impact. And I realized that in my first five to 10 years as an EOS implementer, when I saw organizations start with me at a point where you had partners not seeing eye to eye, stuck at the same ceiling for the last 10 years, frustration through the organization and over the period of 18 months, 24 months, 2, 3 years, transform into these thriving organizations where things were running smoothly, people got their lives back, they were making more money. This isn't just about running a better business for me, it's a calling. It's about making a bigger dent in the universe. And that's what I've had the privilege to do over the last 10 years. And it's a true honor. That's what really drives me. At the end of the day, you

[B]

brought up something interesting where this idea of proving yourself. I needed to prove myself. One of the questions is, prove yourself to who? To what? Was it to yourself? Was it to somebody else? And then it seems like that started to shift later in life as you were going through. Not even when you first became an implementer, because it still was like, I got to prove something and I'm going to have the biggest practice over X amount of period. And then something switched. Like what? What do you think switched at that point? Was it just like more self discovery? Was it the same feeling, but that same feeling being translated through different means? Like what?

[A]

Perhaps, and I'm exploring this in real time here, perhaps it was a sense of, okay, I've done all these things. Do I feel any different? Do I feel like I belong more or do I feel like I don't? And I think at the end of the day, I just felt like the old Josh and I was okay with that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I think that's probably where the shift came. I didn't need to do it for others. I needed to do it for myself. It was about setting a goal and achieving it just for the sake of being proud that you set your mind to something and you did it. Yeah. Listen, I love leadership. I love helping grow leaders. That's probably one of the most fulfilling things I do out of anything. And so much of that is about mindset. Yeah. It's just having the right mindset, having a healthy mindset. And I don't even know that I can articulate exactly what that looks like right now. I'm working on that, but it's huge. It's everything.

[B]

So when you think back to, like, now you've got. You said a thousand sessions, by the way.

[A]

I'm approaching that. I think I'm at like 978. I don't know the exact count, but this July, I think, is where we're going to hit it. Thousand.

[B]

That's. That's wild. If you invite me to the party, I'll bring. I'll bring a special.

[A]

A special bottle. 100% sounds great. I hadn't even thought about having a party, but that's not a bad idea.

[B]

That's. That's awesome.

[A]

If it happens, you will definitely be there. I. I'll.

[B]

I'll throw the party for a thousand sessions. That's. That's huge. And like, you see, so now you have your own experience. You have your own experience without eos. And then the M and A in which you had the exposure to EOS and starting to run, which by the way, like with one of the OGs inside the entire ecosystem. So like you're from, from the greats. Become your own EOS implementer. Now a thousand sessions, like what's. What are you look inside of a company and they may be able to, to see where they want to go, but they're getting tripped up. What are some of those common things that you're like, well, hey, like think about this or. Or you guys need to stop doing this or start doing this.

[A]

So just common themes you're asking about that I've seen over time. There's a lot of them. And in fact I'll take a step back before answering that. And this sort of goes to act three, right. So act one was about being an operator. Act two was about really being a coach to now these other teams over the last decade. There's another part of Act 2 that was sort of a blending of Act 1 and Act 2 I'll just hit on real quickly, which is just really funny. I don't know if we discussed this on our pre call, but my background was in CRM, right? Yep. I built a CRM to manage my EOS practice from day one because that's what I knew. And people kept asking me, josh, can you help me with my CRM? It sounds like you've got something as an EOS implementer. And my answer was always no, not because I was trying to be a jerk of help first is one of our core values, but I don't do that anymore. That's not my core focus anymore. So I'd recommend they connect with somebody else who can help them out. And after repeated request and request, and we were about 100 implementers at the time. And through your picture to us, Wildwide is we're going to be 800 implementers or whatever the number was. And the entrepreneur me couldn't help it. And I'm like, I am the one person in the world who has the expertise at this point in time to take advantage of this. I know technology and CRM. I'm a member of this community that's growing. Why not create a practice management solution for EOS implementers to run their practice? And I've partnered with an old colleague and friend of mine as the integrator and we founded a company called Session Guru and built the first practice management solution for EOS implementers to run Their practice, we grew that to about 25% of the community paying us a monthly fee as a SaaS model to give them the service. And then we ended up selling that back to EOS worldwide about five years ago.

[B]

There it is.

[A]

So Mark and Kelly and the leadership team became partners in many ways. And that was just really fun to give back in that way, in a different way. And, and I'm glad that I'm no longer involved in that. It was great while it lasted, but it allows me to focus 100% on making an impact with the US. My US practice but went through that was my second exit. And so that took 18 months to exit from the first one. Took about 10 years.

[B]

You're getting shorter cycles now. First then three years, now 18 months.

[A]

Who knows what's next? With that said, so moving to Act 3 then, which is I've had the privilege to do this for the last 10 years and make a huge impact. You know some of the highlights and there's many. One company started working with me when they were seven employees and a million dollars in revenue with two partners who weren't seeing eye to eye. Fast forward six years, they were running $135 million business with about 350 employees. The visionary had taken off about six months of a sabbatical with a company running better than it ever had. And they sold the company for a very great valuation at the end of 2025. And the fun part is they brought in a new CEO and the first thing I thought is, oh, yeah, he's going to have a new idea and way to run this thing. He's the biggest EOS fan now.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

And they've been great. So I'm still with them with the second generation of leadership. So again, that's been a fun story. There's just been other stories where it's not about the top line, it's about quality of life. People who are just miserable. They were sitting in every seat, they didn't trust the people around them and now they're at the point where they come in and just saying, this has changed my life. I'm spending more time with my family now. I've got a team around me I can trust that are smarter than I am. And I didn't do the work, I just guided them. They did the work. And so that's what's so fulfilling to me. And these are just a handful of 80 plus stories that each one's a little bit unique. Being a growth oriented individual, being somebody who always likes a challenge. In being somebody who really wants to prove that eos really can work for anybody. I'm just an ordinary guy. I was inspired last summer to try and make a bigger impact. I can only make as big of an impact as I can working with X number of teams in the four walls of my session room. And I love it. It's not going anywhere. And so I've challenged myself to make a bigger impact by sharing what I've learned over the last 10 years with the whole country. And I launched a newsletter called Simple Timeless Truths for modern business builders. Every other week I publish a newsletter doing a deep dive on something I've learned. And the basic premise is this. Here's the underlying pattern that I've seen with these teams I've worked with. Leadership, Ryan, can be really simple. It is simple. It's that most leaders don't have the courage to do the tough things they need to do. And what they end up doing is they ignore them or they build scaffolding around them to accommodate them and they make their businesses way more complex than they need to be. And as a result, again, leadership becomes challenging, way over complicated, and they're spending all this energy and time wasting energy on things that just are not productive. My goal is to share these stories and learnings to help leaders change their mindset and have the courage to do those tough things. Because in the end, those tough things often require a lot less energy than building all the scaffolding and avoiding the hard truths. And so that's the new mission over the next 10 years, is to really grow that into one of the leading voices around the country to make an impact. So today's really important day for me here that we're having this conversation because I never really talked about this live outside of the followers I have that I've been slowly building over the last six months. But that's what's fueling me. The US practice isn't going anywhere. That's where I get to still be on the ground and work with teams. But this is my opportunity over the next 10 years to create my own core target, a new core target, and say, okay, I truly believe, and I've seen it too many times not to believe it, that if you set your sights on something and you truly commit to it over a long term period, 10 years in my case, it's a nice round number, 2035, you can do anything. You might not know the ways and means to get there. And that's okay, it can be organic. But I'm going to Chip away at one quarter at a time. And not only do I want to prove that for my own satisfaction and to make an impact, but to prove to everybody else leadership isn't that difficult. Yeah. If you can cut through the noise and say, this is what I'm going to do and stay focused on it and make every decision with the intention of getting closer to that, I believe anybody can do it. So hopefully 10 years from now, we'll sit back and say, yep, I did it. There's no reason anybody else can't do whatever it is that they set their mind to.

[B]

I love it. I have to ask, now that you brought up and that you've brought up the 10 years, what's the 10 year target?

[A]

Yeah, so it's the way that I've articulated at a high level. So I teach this and I actually wrote a newsletter about setting long term goals and it's all about creating. The term we use at EOS worldwide is core targets or long term target. And so they can be qualitative, they can be quantitative, but you got to know when you arrived. And so the high level is to be regarded as one of the top leaders in business leadership or thought leaders in business leadership by 2035. And how is that quantified then is the question. And we've got a handful of metrics there in terms of number of LinkedIn followers, newsletter subscribers, podcast downloads, because the intent is ultimately to launch a podcast that would sort of define us when we get there. And that's my way of sort of saying, hey, okay, we're making the impact of the scale that we'd really like to.

[B]

I love it. And one of the things you talked about there, and this is, this was the newsletter that you sent. And by the way, it's a fabulous newsletter. So for anybody that's that's listening like it is there, there are a lot of newsletters out there. Actually, I have a newsletter coming out in a few weeks. And it's like, your newsletter sucks. It's going to be the subject line. Because most people, when they think about newsletters, they think about themselves, they think about their organization. And so when I get newsletters, it's all about, look at us, look at our team, look at what we're doing. We just added this new service, here's our update. And you take the same approach that or the same approach and philosophy that I have, which is like, it's value first, like putting value. Everything else will take care of itself, but you just put great value and great storytelling and Great information out there. And the one newsletter that you sent me was just brilliant because it talked about this idea of simplification. You just went over this too, by the way, you. And you were like, what's going on with leaders? Like, they're overcomplicating everything and like, bringing some of that back into even stuff that, that I think about. Not to get us too, too much in the eos, but, like, when we do our rocks, and the whole thing is like, hey, everybody's got two to three rocks. Therefore, like, the leadership team has 10 rocks and we're on track, we're off track. We look at it on a weekly basis. We actually just implemented something. I was supposed to buy this book called the One Something.

[A]

One Thing.

[B]

Well, that's the book that I accidentally bought. So my partner was like, buy this book. It's called the One Something. And I looked up the One Thing. The One Thing came up. It had 20,000 reviews. And I was like, oh, that must be the one she's talking about. Spoiler. It wasn't, but I still read it. And I was like, this book is brilliant. And immediately. This was last quarter. Immediately we implemented. We said, we're not going to take on two to three rocks. We're all going to take on one. And it's going to force us to get very specific. And so we've only had 90 days of that. We've got our quarterly Pulse on Monday. But it's been. It's been really good. And, and so I'd like just to explore this topic a little bit with you because, like, the whole premise of the newsletter that you put out was like. And what you just said is, like, everybody over complicates everything. So, like, when does an organization or a business leader know that. That they are unintentionally introducing complexities or, or, you know, the opposite of simplification?

[A]

Well, I think there's always a way to make things more simple. It's never ending. I think it's more of a mindset, which is checking yourself in every decision you make. Is this getting us closer to where we want to go, where we need to go, or in the most efficient, effective way, or not. And so for argument's sake, here are some ways that I see folks over complicate things. It could be the most common one is an organizational structure accountability chart. They either don't take the medicine, which we suggest is structure first, people seconds. And so they have somebody who's been in the organization for a long time, and perhaps they are like family or whatever it might be, that person's got to have a seat on the leadership team, right? From their perspective, there's no ifs and or buts about it. And that person is not qualified to be the right person on the leadership team, meaning that they are not what the team needs to get to the next level. So what do they do? They surround that person by three other people underneath them versus if they just got rid of that person or move them into a different role, maybe not get rid of them, maybe it's a little harsh, but moved them into a role where they can be successful and brought in somebody who could actually lead that function. They can save lots of money, lots of time, and do it more effectively and they're holding themselves back. That's just one example of many challenges with accountability. Chart. I actually had one client. They had a founder who was in the chief technology officer seat of the organization and got them to where they were. But clearly they knew he wasn't going to get them to where they wanted to go, yet they didn't address it. And they felt like they couldn't have certain conversations with him in the room for whatever reasons. So what did they do? They had their level 10 meeting every week with him, and they had a second level 10 meeting every week without him that he didn't know about. Oh, could you imagine how much time and energy was spent by not addressing that root issue of seven executives that are very well paid doing an extra level 10 every week to avoid this truth? Yeah, right. Simple concepts. And once they realized, okay, this is costing us more than it's worth, they made the switch to their credit. But the world is full of these types of stories, right? Leadership can be really simple. Sometimes it just requires a little courage. And again, my job is to try and convince people, you don't actually need a lot of courage. It's the right thing to do. So that's one area. They overcomplicate it by taking on too many initiatives, too many rocks, as we say, with an eos. And Gino, I think, kind of coined this idea, which is at the end of the day, we are all just balls of energy, Literally, right? You and I are atoms. It's pretty amazing what we can do by aligning our own energy to make an impact. And our job is to, as leaders, is to align everybody else's energy in the organization. So it's like batteries all moving in the same direction. But we've only got so much energy, and oftentimes we just take on too much and so as a result, instead of making progress from here to here, we make progress from here to there. We get a handful of things 50% of the way there versus one or two or three things 100% of the way there and can really celebrate. And oftentimes those three, four other things are just noise. Yep.

[B]

And that reminds me, like when you. When you talked about, like from here to here instead of here to here, like, that kind of reminds me of the story that you were sharing when you had put that plan in place to double the company over three years and you got. And it wasn't for a lack of movement. Like, it sounds like everything inside of the organization was. Was actually not to take us too far back. But what do you think it was like? Do you think that was a. Because if everybody was moving, do you think it was the wrong strategy or just every. It was like Adams, everybody's moving in different directions.

[A]

Oh, there was plenty of opportunity in the market. So it wasn't that. It wasn't a decent strategy. I just didn't have the right people in the right seats. We weren't hitting targets. And I didn't have the language to recognize it or make the shifts. And quite frankly, probably the courage to make some shifts earlier on that I needed to. And maybe the lack of confidence that I was going to be able to find the right people because we were a smaller company and can I afford them? All the talk that goes on in your head. Right. That prevents you from getting there.

[B]

Interesting. And then just side anecdote when you're talking about being in more than one L10 right now. My co founder and integrator and president is in 3L 10s. We know it's not permanent and we're not doing it as like a secret thing. It's just we're sitting in too many seats right now.

[A]

But that's the truth where you're at

[B]

when you think about simplification. Another. And just to stay tactical for just a moment here, I've seen it show up in rocks. I've seen it show up for me personally in core values. There was my first organization. We had 10 core values. Couldn't even remember them all. And it's really. I've been shocker.

[A]

Right.

[B]

This was pre eos. But what's crazy is I've been in the Navy now for the last 25 years, and the Navy has made it with honor, courage and commitment. Three core values. And so that's what I continue to talk to my teams about to this day, is like, if one of the biggest organizations in the world can have three core values and still operate effectively, maybe we don't need seven. So I see this type of stuff pop up in all areas and another area is the scorecard. And it's like, I get it. If the leadership team were on an island and all they had was Internet access and they could look at a certain amount of metrics, like, what should those metrics be? When you think through that simplification, are you like, hey, there's a target here and like, your target should be no more than X? Or how do you consult your clients and leaders to think through the simplification of the scorecard?

[A]

Yeah, it's really. Coincidentally, you mentioned the scorecard, because that's an article I'm actually working on right now. And I did write another one called the Art of Setting Measurable, which is not what to have on your scorecard or how many measurables, but how do you choose what the right target is? Because you make it too high, you burn people out, or they don't believe. You make it too low, you don't push people. So it's sort of a deep dive on that, which we don't need to get into that right now, but that is there as a resource. But let's talk about the scorecard itself under the umbrella of complexity. Right? My experience is that as human beings we have limited attention spans. We can remember maybe three to seven things in a list format at any point in time. So yes, remembering 10 core values is a bit much. The more we share, the more everything else gets watered down. In fact, I'm a big. I'm passionate about great state of the company meetings. I've done two years of breakouts on that at the EOS conference. I've written an article on the 10 disciplines for an exceptional state of the company meeting. And one of the things at its core when it comes to aligning people around priorities, is what are the handful of things they need to know are the priorities? So imagine standing up on stage in front of your team and you're sharing with them maybe the one year plan or the new rocks for the quarter. If they hear 19 of them, everything's a priority and it just becomes mushroom. Nothing is important, right? We've all heard the same, when everything's important, nothing's important. However, if they hear three, these are the three things we've got to crush this year. We're going to hit our numbers and these are the three things that are going to get us there. That's clear. It cuts through all the noise. Right. When you have nine rocks again, they're not going to remember them. Three to seven is kind of the rule of thumb. So I always say when it comes to lists, accountability chart, roles and responsibilities, three to seven is the sweet spot. Rocks. Three to seven is the sweet spot. Seven's getting a little bit much, but yeah, it's still manageable. Anything more than that, it just becomes motion and noise. Every additional line item you add just takes away, starts drawing power from the other ones, is the idea. So back to the scorecard. You know, we at EOS worldwide, you don't have to remember the scorecard. Right. Like you do values or your roles on the accountability chart or the rocks for the quarter to know what are the big priorities? Because you review it every week. But we always say 5 to 15 measurables are really the ideal. That's sort of the sweet spot. Seven's great. I'm not religious about it. Five to 15 is kind of where we want to sit. Anything less you question, do you have enough fidelity as a leadership team to really understand what's going on in your business? Once you start to get to more, you start to question, does the entire leadership team really need to be seeing this? And that's a whole nother deep dive. But here's an analogy that I use, quite frankly, that has been pretty powerful. Imagine you have the ability to tour a cruise ship bridge. You've been in the Navy, so you've arguably been on some bridges in the past for sure, and you can validate this. But I imagine that those officers, the leaders of the ship, their responsibilities to get it from point A to point B as on time and as safe as possible. Right.

[B]

I drove ships great. Yep.

[A]

I imagine there's just a handful of gauges you use to really, with pretty good level of trust, you're going to get there safely and on time. Things like, what is our heading, our speed, our fuel level? And maybe a very sophisticated computer system that lets you know, are you on track, are you off track, time wise to get there? How far ahead are you on with that? You can literally pilot a giant ship with hundreds if not thousands of people from point to point safely. Yet you go into the engine room and They've got another 50 gauges that are very specific to their function for each engine. What's the temp, the wattage that it's producing? Right. The RPMs, oil pressure, et cetera. So I challenge my leadership teams to say, you guys are on the bridge. What are the handful of things you need to be looking at to steer this organization from point A to point B in the next 90 days. And what should those, how do we calibrate those gauges to know you're on track, knowing that if all of a sudden RPMs shoot through the roof at the bridge but speed decreases, you know something's wrong. You're going to call into the engine room and say what the heck is going on? They can start looking at their gauges. You don't need to look at those every week. You've got the high level indicators. Now on the other hand, if you've got a really great engine room leader, they're probably calling it before you even see that to say, hey engine four, we've got some issues. We're seeing this just letting you know in case you see something go haywire on the top. We're working on it. Yeah. And so I use that as a bit of an analogy to really get a sense for okay, what should we be looking at our team versus what can be taken care of in the department level or the intern. And if I've got a lieutenant on this leadership team that's owning that, that I trust, why do I need to look at every week? Oftentimes when you look at scorecards that have 15, 20, 30 items on it, the real root issue is either they need a better US implementer, they need a US implementer who can kind of coach them. They just didn't know any better or they've been self implementing or whatever it is or there's some level of letting go challenges by some of those leaders. They don't even, they don't either don't fully trust the leaders on that team to say run your department. I want to look over your shoulder and make sure the numbers are going okay or they've just got some personal work to do where they struggle to let go.

[B]

Are you going to use that analogy in your, in your newsletter? I love that analogy.

[A]

Yeah, it is, it is baked in there. Probably just a very light version of that. You guys got the detailed one today. Just because I try and be economical with words. But, but yes, no, no dig to,

[B]

to eos and, and how, how like it usually comes down with the being on an island. I like yours a lot better. Thank you.

[A]

I appreciate it. I think it works. I think there's two different things though. I think the bridge engine room concept really adds another layer of. It's not that we shouldn't be measuring things, it's where do they where's the appropriate place to measure them?

[B]

Interesting.

[A]

And then the question around the in case those don't know, the EOS analogy, as you sort of called out earlier, is imagine you were on an island with no connection to the outside world. The cabana boy or the cabana girl can bring you one of two options or one of two items. One is a frosty beverage of your choice and the other is one sheet of paper. What would the 5 to 15 measurables need to be on that paper for you to know with confidence how is my business performing? Might not know why it's performing well or not, but you would know that still critically important. I would think I would meld that with the okay and you're on the bridge. These aren't the only things in the company you can measure. These are just the things you're going to be measuring on the leadership team.

[B]

Right.

[A]

You can also take some of these things and move them down to your engine room because whether you're the marketing engine room, whether you're the sales engine room, whether you're the finance engine room, where they've all got their own departments, you can still look at these things in your department if they're relevant. But what do we really need to bring to the bridge?

[B]

We're, we're redoing our scorecard right now. So this is so, so topical.

[A]

Awesome.

[B]

Last question on, on this, you brought up this, the, the great state of the company. Is this something that, that you think about on an annual basis or is it each quarter the leaders need to be getting in front of the entire crew saying this is where we're at, this is where we're going.

[A]

As I'm sure you've heard, ag nauseum, we lose our focus every 90 days at the leadership team and every human being in the business. I believe it's critically important. It's non negotiable to bring everybody together once a quarter to do a reset, whether that is literally bringing everybody together, doing it on a zoom, doing a road show where people on the leadership team go to each office location, whatever that looks like, make it your own. But people need that reset. They've got to hear the vision seven times. They will forget what they're working towards and why it's important. They want to understand how we progressed, are we performing, is this all worthwhile? And they want to understand where we're going as an organization. And it's also a time just to celebrate culture and be together. And so I think if you're doing that well, people are leaving recharged at the end of those days. Reconnected. Oftentimes when they don't get information throughout the quarter as well, the mind starts to make up stories. In the absence of data, the mind makes up a story. And oftentimes we have a negativity bias, we go dark. And so I think it's critically important that that happens on a quarterly basis.

[B]

Love it. Okay, so let's talk just real quickly about the newsletter before we get into how people can find you. You've got this amazing newsletter. It's.

[A]

Is it weekly, bi weekly at this point? Yes.

[B]

Okay, so every other week it's a fantastic newsletter. It's quality first. It's about helping. Helping the person that's consuming the content. Not about promotion or things like that.

[A]

I don't make a dime off of it. It's really about me again, fulfilling my own need to give back. As I shared earlier, I think before we started recording. So I'm just gonna hit on this real quickly. I am a product of all those who have taught me through the years, whether they be books I've read, mentors I've had the chance to work with, bosses I've worked with in the short period of time where I've had actual bosses. I feel it's a duty to give back to the next generation. So this is one of the ways that I'm doing so.

[B]

Love it. Okay, so someone just heard all that. They just heard about these brilliant newsletters. Where can they go to subscribe?

[A]

Yeah, simpleleadership.com is where you can find me. We publish a newsletter every other week. And the idea is if you subscribe via newsletter, those get pushed out right to your inbox. You don't have to go seek them out, but the entire library of the history history is there as well. And so I think we're approaching about 22 articles at this point in time. They will be there forever. They will be there for free forever is the idea. And then moving forward, we're going to start doing some more audio, video as well. One of the requests has been, I love your newsletter, Josh, but I just don't have the time to read it. They're intended to be consumed in a 10 to 15 minute setting. So think of like a chapter of a book, if you will, on a specific topic. We're going to start releasing these as audio as well. And the idea is it'll be a podcast format where you can subscribe to the podcast. And every week when there's a new one, we'll launch the article and there'll be an audio version that you can listen to on your drive in if you choose to consume it that way. Eventually. The goal is to do more of a podcast like this. Over time, we're going to be launching some more video clips as well, sharing some of these best practices. We're literally just setting up the studio right now. So I hope this is the beginning of a journey that we can all enjoy together.

[B]

I, I, I love it. And we should trade some notes. We, we just started to evolve our, our newsletter. I've got some similar idea. I'd love to hear what's working for you. And, and we can trade from a client standpoint in eos. EOS isn't going anywhere. You're still helping clients. What do you look for in a client?

[A]

It's a great question. Number one, that they're willing to be coached. Yeah, not everybody is. Those who are the most challenging is, oh, we've got all these problems in our company. Eos seems like the right tool and I know better. Yeah. Okay. If you can't follow the process, I can't help you. And sometimes that isn't very clear coming in, and that starts to be clear. And that's where I need to have some direct conversations. And I think I fired one client ever, just due to the fact they completely lied to me and created some health risk that was important to me. Outside of that, I've had some clients who, again, aren't as coachable as I'd like them to be. But at the end of the day, if they're getting more, if they feel like they're better with me than without me, that's great. At least they're getting value. It's a little bit sometimes challenging for me to stomach a little bit because I just feel like they could be making so much more progress. But we're putting little coins in the machine and they're making progress. That's okay. But really, for me, I'm located here in Los Angeles. I've set up a fantastic facility, believe it or not. The address is at 811 Traction Avenue.

[B]

Nice. You change the street name on this?

[A]

I've been asked many times. While I have a Los Angeles T shirt that's about as much pole as I have in this state or the city. Excuse me, but the intent when I set that up about four and a half years ago, was to create a canvas where our clients could do their best experience. Think of as an urban retreat facility where you can come in and you can just, I can focus on the business for the day and be taken care of. And so we really take hospitality seriously. We're passionate about there to really make memorable experiences there, not only to do great work but just to feel like you've just walked into a four star hotel and you were taken care of for the day. With that said, so most of my clients are here in la. I've got a couple will do virtual, either legacy or we've committed to this. A couple fly into LA and I try to discourage that because usually it's just not scalable. Some point you've got my session fee and then on top of it flying everybody in and hotel, it just gets really expensive quickly. But for me, clients with 10 to 500 employees is kind of my sweet spot. Privately held, open minded, willing to do the work across a variety of industries. That actually is what excites me. I've got clients, I've got the largest cannabis grower in the country with 5 million square feet of grow. It's insane. We, we went visited their facility. I've got law firms, I've got tech companies, I got manufacturing companies, hospitality companies, medical companies. So it's just fun to have my hands in different organizations and they're like human beings on the planet. Whatever race or background you are, we're 99.9 something percent the same in our DNA. So are these companies.

[B]

Love it. Okay, so now we've got someone that, that's been listening to this. They're like oh, I'm a company between 10 and 500, I live in LA and I'm ready to be coached. How can they get ahold of you?

[A]

Yeah, reach out to me either via simple leadership.com, my contact information is there via my micro site on the EOS worldwide websites, which is eosworldwide.com Josh I think-holtzman look me up in the implementer directory or via LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn so that's somewhere you can follow me as well. We tend to publish content multiple days a week and we're monitoring things. So would love to hear from you if I can be a resource and if I'm not the right fit. But I've been doing this for a long time. Many of the implementers in LA were past clients of mine or mentees of mine and I would love to help connect you with the right person even if you're in another geography. I just want to help.

[B]

That's awesome Josh, thank you so much for taking the time making the trip, coming in and sharing all this. So huge impact between your story, the lessons learned, the M and a Act 1, Act 2. And it sounds like you're entering Act 3 at this point.

[A]

I'm excited. Well, thanks for having me here again. This is a big milestone for me. And part of the reason I didn't agree to join you earlier on was, again, I've only got so much energy like anybody else, and I was really focused on getting this launched. And so now is great timing. So thank you for having me here. Thank you for everything that you do as well. It's a big value add both to our community as implementers and I think, to the broader EOS ecosystem.

[B]

Sweet. Thanks so much. I now am blushing. Thank you. Appreciate it, Josh. Thanks very much. All right.