Justin Cook

00:00Hey guys, we're going to start off this show talking about profitability. And did you know the typical independently owned and operated restaurant operator typically makes between four and 5% at the end of the day, four and 5% the national chains typically bring home between 12 and 15%. What is the difference? The difference is they are using the newest and the best technology to capture every single bit of profit. And that is what GoTab is going to help you do. GoTab isn't really in Nashville. This is brand new guys. This is a technology that will help you open and close tabs faster. It'll help you with the customer experience. And if you're downtown, if you're a bar, if you have a lounge any way that people can walk in and scan a QR code, GoTab seamlessly picks it up. They can place their order. They can start a tab, they can close a tab and then the bartender can add to that tab. The server can add to that tab. Anybody can add to that tab.

01:02They've got pictures that go with it. It is absolutely amazing. They have so many features and benefits that you need to go do a demo. It hurts you nothing to do a demo, but it only does is it teaches you more about what's available for you right now. Here's what you need to do. You need to go to www.gotab.io. Then you need to click a forward slash E N and then a forward slash N R R. I'll tell you what's going to happen there. You're going to go to a page that is a landing page for Nashville restaurant radio listeners. Immediately. When you go set up for a demo right there, you get $500 in free hardware. That's just not something. They offered me that $500. They said, look, if you will sign up, we'll give you money. I said, I want you to pass that along to people in Nashville and they go, really? Okay, great. We'll do that. So 500 bucks goes to you for free hardware. It's just, it's there. Go check it out. I don't know why you wouldn't. You can also go to Nashville restaurant, radio.com, click the sponsors tab and you can click on the go tab link and it will take you directly to that link, but you've got to use that link.

02:12Okay. Set up a demo. It hurts you nothing. Let's get into this show. Welcome to Nashville restaurant radio, the tastiest hour of talk in music city. Now here's your host Brandon. Still. Hello music city. Welcome to Nashville restaurant radio. My name is Brandon still and I am your host. We are coming at you on a Monday baby Monday. Yeah. Sorry. I get all jazzed up for Mondays. I just freaking love it. I love it. We got sunshine today. Got sunshine tomorrow. Man, I just love a Monday. Anybody else out there? Anybody else out there love a Monday? You're in your car right now going, shit Monday, change your perspective.

03:14You got this because today we're talking to Justin cook and Justin cook is an EOS implementer. Okay. What does that mean? The entrepreneurial operating system. So Justin works with me and my team at our restaurants, our leadership team, and he teaches us how to lead. We've created culture. We had culture. We put our, we figured out what that culture is and how we use it, how we live, work, breathe higher fire, everything. And this has been the greatest thing that's happened to our company because our manager meetings, they start on time and they end on time. We have issues solving. We go through everything. We trust each other. We have arguments, we fight, and it's healthy. I'm telling you guys, this is a game changer, what you're going to learn today. And this is tip of the iceberg. So it all stems from the book traction by Gino Wickman.

04:16And if you've read that or you're into this, you're going to love this conversation. If you own a business or you're a leader of a business, this is something that's going to help you a lot. If you're the leader of a family, this is something that will help you a lot. This book is amazing because it teaches you how to be consistent, be consistent in how to show up every day with purpose and intentionality. And those are things that we want to do in all forms of our life. So this is a really just amazing thing. And we're going to come back on, he's going to do an episode two. And like I said, we're going to do an like an event where we all show up and he's going to teach you how to do your VTO. It's going to be a lot of fun. But back to start off to go back to this go tab on the beginning of this episode, guys, it's more than just this. I'm so excited about go tab because it's the coolest thing. I did the demo the other day and I was talking to him and they do a full POS system. You're looking for a new POS system. They do that. And they have so many other functions, but I love the fact that you could, the data, it just collects so much data and you're like, gosh, there's data.

05:21Everyone, what do you do with it? It will help you do stuff with it. They will help you identify, Hey, I'd like to put a wine dinner together, but how do I find the people that do it? Oh, they can look through all of your data and see who bought bottles of wine that were more than $65 or a hundred dollars or whatever you want to do. And you can send out push notifications to those people straight through this. You want to find out, Hey, we did this special last week that had duck and you know, Hey, let's, let's see everybody that bought the duck. We're going to do a new special that has duck. Let's see if they want to come back. There's a million different ways you can use it. It's just so freaking cool. And it's brand new to town. Well, Phoenix, everybody's talking about it. And I'm like, why is nobody doing this in Nashville? So I reached out and I said, can you guys please, can I introduce this? Can I be somebody that brings this to Nashville? So go check out the link, do a demo because I'm serious. Also, last ad here, a super source, Jason Ellis is absolutely killing it out there. He's one of those guys. Also, I talked about it two years ago and I said, listen, call Jason Ellis and just have him come in and do a demo.

06:27Let him teach you about your dish machine. Cause I didn't know shit. I didn't know about my dish machine. I didn't know anything like how many rack runs I got per month. And that included the chemicals, but if I didn't use them, what happens? If I use too many, what happens? And he broke it all down for me. And I was like, I had no idea how I was getting screwed by my chemical guy. And when I called them, they were basically, yeah, yeah, we're, that's what we're doing. And I said, please stop that. And he goes, well, if I stopped that, we've got a business. And I went, what? It was unbelievable what Jason was just able to teach me. And based upon following him on Instagram, follow super source on Instagram. And you can see they post whenever they sign up a new, put a new dish machine in. And it's like every single week he's putting new dish machines in. Cause you guys are hearing it. You're getting it and you're going, Hey, this is clearly much better. He doesn't make you sign one thing. You have to sign a contract. You don't have to like, he's week to week. You can get a dish machine from him.

07:28And right now, if you go to Nashville restaurant radio.com and you click on the sponsors tab and you click on super source and you get ahold of them that way, you're going to get three free months of dish machine rental, right? So you can get a brand new dish machine three months of it to free. And after the three months, you don't like it. He'll come take it out. That's how confident he is that he is going to service you the right way. He's going to take care of you. He's going to do educate. He's going to teach you guys. He's going to teach the people in your building how to use the right chemicals. I know I'm rambling here, but we were using five times the degreaser that we were supposed to be using. And he came in and he goes, why are you using so much degreaser? And I said, Jose, why are we so much degreaser? And he said, Oh, because I like to get it really clean. And he goes, no, man, these things are made. Like if you put the one cup per gallon or whatever, the thing is it's made to work just as good. You're just wasting the degreaser when you do that. And he goes, really? So we made a batch and it worked just the same. And he's like, Oh, now we don't use five times the degreaser. One conversation of him teaching my guys how to properly mix chemicals.

08:30And I went, well, I just paid for itself. That's amazing. And we're actually saving lots and lots of money every single week. And I get to have a friend come in the building every week and check in on me. And he knows all my dishwashers by name. It's just the best. So super source, Jason Ellis, go, go to our website, nashrestaurantradio.com or find him on Instagram and just message him and say, Hey dude, come talk to me. Come teach me about my dish machine. Tell me what I've got going on. And he'll do that. And he's been doing that for years and he's killing it. So thank you guys for listening and thank you guys for supporting. And let's jump in with this episode with Justin Cook. I'd love to know what you think. Go to our social, send me a DM, whatever it is, tell me what you think about this. Cause I want to talk more about it. All right guys, enjoy. Super excited today to welcome in Justin Cook, who is a certified EOS implementer. What the hell does that mean? And welcome Justin. Thank you so much for having me.

09:33What that means is I help businesses implement the entrepreneurial operating system EOS and certified just is a designation for how much experience I have. So I have a good amount of experience doing it. I'll say, so I guess we love listeners in, um, EOS is the entrepreneurial operating system. Like you said, it's based upon a book called traction by Gina Wickman. Yeah. And I've loved this book for a long time and us at our restaurants, uh, Greenhouse Grille of Maribor are working with you. We've gone through five sessions, six sessions, four, four sessions, four full day sessions, four full day sessions. Yeah. It's amazing. I'm going to tell you that our organization has changed a lot and we were doing, I think we were pretty well set up to start, but like what you've been able to help us with has been amazing. So thank you for that. Yeah, absolutely. I'm, I mean, I think it is a testament to the work that you guys had already done that you've been able to embrace EOS and just get it rolling out throughout the organization pretty quickly. Uh, and I'm just thrilled to be a part of it.

10:50So we've been talking, thank you. And I'm thrilled to be a part of what you're doing too. So we've been, let's just, I don't even know where to begin with this. And I didn't, we didn't have a lot of conversation before this interview started and I just, I did that on purpose because I wanted this to be organic. I don't know where this is going to go. I don't know where, um, where I want to go, but I do know this. There are a ton of restaurants out there that are flying by the seat of their pants. There's a ton of businesses in general that are flying by the seat of their pants and they get up in the morning and they go to work and they're mostly reactive. They're waiting for stuff to happen. And then they're, they're intelligent enough. They're smart enough. They have enough just sheer work ethic to power through most things, but that's a hard life. Yeah, very much. And, and man, what an accurate description of not just businesses, but how most of us go through life, right? We get up in the morning and we react. Yeah. Right. We, we react to the day that's happening to us.

11:52And that is just such a hard way to do life. It is. I mean, it really is, especially in a restaurant, because you can't, you have no idea what's going to happen. I mean, literally you can have the best plan in the world, but then a COVID outbreak and your staff happens or somebody gets in a car accident or somebody is sick. There's migraines. I mean, every day there's staffing issues and you walk into the building in the morning and somebody broke into your building or I get so hard to keep a good plan. But if you don't have a plan, if you're just planning on the day to be screwed up no matter what, then your failing to plan is planning to fail, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it's interesting the way you frame that around. They're smart enough. They have enough passion and guts and desire to work ethic, to power through that stuff. And I talk about that a lot with clients and with prospects that are considering EOS is, you know, I don't, I don't do turnarounds, right?

12:58I don't generally work with companies that are failing. I generally work with organizations that are succeeding in spite of themselves. Okay. Right. Like they're, they're doing it. They're being successful. They're just working a lot harder than they need to be to get the results that they're getting. And EOS I see is the best way to not only improve those results, but give you back some of your life and give you back some of that time and that, that mental energy that right now you're spending on reacting. Okay. So I want to say right there, that's a good setup to what you do, right? So if you're in a business and you're doing well in your business, you're hustling, but you're having boundaries issues and just balancing work life. And gosh, I wish I could just get a handle on this thing. We want to dig into that today, but first let's tell everybody a little about yourself. Are you from here? Do you have children, family? Give us kind of your, your story.

13:58I grew up in Mount Juliet, so have been in the Nashville area since I was three years old. I am married, had our sixth anniversary last Saturday. Congratulations. Thank you. It was fantastic. Did you do anything special? We went to dinner at fifth and Taylor, one of our favorite restaurants. Love that place. Shout out if they're listening. And yeah, that was, that was our, our thing. We went to San Diego last year. That was like a big trip for our fifth anniversary. And this year we decided to go a little more low key, keep it simple. We're both pretty busy right now. Yeah. So we did that. She works for the state. She's a business analyst for the department of mental health, which in the shortest way to explain that she does a lot of stuff with data and helps them take all the data that they have from their hospitals and make sense of it. So visualize it, figure out what the data means, put it in a format that's easily usable for people that don't spend all their time in Excel.

15:05Yeah. No, it's hard. It's funny cause I just got back from this, this thing in Phoenix we went to and there was literally so many tech companies that the number one thing that tech companies are trying to do right now for restaurants is identify that every single thing that you do in a restaurant, you're generating data. You're just something at every guest that walks in, how long they sit, what they order, how the frequency in which they are like every single thing that you there's data. And it's like, what are you doing with it? And like if you're not harvesting that and making intentional intelligent decisions with it, like there's so many more things. All these tech companies are trying to harvest it and go with your data, we can do this. And with your data, we can do that. And it's super fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. It's, I never realized how much there was to it until she entered into that field and became an expert, especially around just how you visualize the data, the storytelling that you can do with the data, because it's one thing to look at it on a piece of paper and a, you know, a set of rows and columns.

16:13It's another thing to really bring that data to life and help, you know, we, we operate in narratives, you know, as humans, we're always looking for what story does this tell and being able to take that data and help tell the story with it instead of it just being this sort of static thing is really fascinating. Do you guys ever get like, does she come home? Does she bring her work home and you're like, are you able to listen? Or do you go into EOS implementer mode and go, you know, if you guys you're beating a dead horse here, or what do you ever, do you ever do, or do you have to like fight to not do that? Or she just doesn't need it. She just does her thing, right? Like she, she provides the visualization. She's very much a, work in the background, create the visualizations, create the stuff and provide that to the people that are then going to go tell the story. So providing stuff for the, the commissioner for the department of mental health. Here's the, here's the stuff that we've gathered together.

17:19Now you go tell this story while you're making your case. Yeah. That's so cool. Yeah. Yeah. It's fascinating. Okay. So you married six years. Yep. You've got two kids. You said no, two dogs, dogs, I guess kids, two, two dogs. Yep. Maverick and Charlie, they're diehard Top Gun fans. That's why they're named that. The, you know, when they go to their crate, it's called Miramar that kind of stuff. Yep. Yep. And that's sort of my life. I live a simple life. I do my EOS stuff and I hang out with my wife and kids. All right. There you go. I'm boring. There's, there's nothing wrong with that because I don't think you're boring. I find you to be incredibly fascinating. Oh, thank you. Every time we get to spend time together, I'm like, God, this guy's amazing. Which is why I got you in here. So we, we kind of put a pin in it where you said you want to help successful people become even more successful. Yeah. To a degree. I mean, right. Yeah. You don't, you're not going to go in somewhere that's just completely failing and fix it.

18:24Right. But if you've, if you've got it going on a little bit, you're just struggling to get to that next level. That's where you go. Yeah. Lots of times. I mean, what I see is the, you know, these frustrations that business owners and leaders are experiencing. It's lack of control in the business. They feel like they don't have control over what's happening. The business is running them. They're not running the business. It's lack of profits, right? They're maybe at break even or maybe even losing a little bit, bit of money, or they're just not getting the profit that they want. Or they're having people issues, right? And they just don't know how to deal with those. So there's these sort of common frustrations that I see that I deal with and that I help owners deal with and work through. Well, let's break each one of those things down. I think you, I think you just gave us an entire show. Lack of control, lack of profit and people issues. Let's go in that order. Okay.

19:28And wherever you, I'm just going to take this wherever you want to go with it. I have no preconceived do this, but is that okay? Yeah, that works. Yeah. So lack of control. Let's, let's dig deep. When you say, when you say lack of control, give me an example. I think it's some of that, what you were describing earlier of showing up to the business and now I'm just reacting, right? There's stuff that I've wanted to do for awhile and I haven't had time to do it for some reason, even though I think it's really important. There always seems like there's just another thing piling on my plate. I feel like I'm having to micromanage my people or even if I've got great people, we just feel like we're running into each other a lot. There's any number of things that can, where that can manifest itself of just sort of feeling out of control. So what's the first step when you come in, if you're talking the EOS model, do we need to go back and do some basics on the EOS or do you, can you jump right into how the EOS model would help somebody who's feeling out of control?

20:38Yeah, I think, I think it would be helpful to frame up sort of what we do. So there's these frustrations and the model all works together, right? It's a holistic model and all the pieces work together to help solve these different frustrations. So let me take a step back the ultimately when I talk about what I do with business owners and I'm trying to give them the quick, like this is what we're working on is I work with leadership teams to implement a set of complete systems, processes, proven tools that help them get better at three things, vision, traction and healthy vision in the sense of working with the leadership team to help you get a hundred percent aligned with where you're going and how you plan to get there, right? You're all individual balls of energy and we want to get that energy focused in the same direction.

21:44And so we get aligned on vision. Traction is just instilling that discipline and accountability to execute on the vision, to do the things day in and day out that are going to make that vision come true and healthy is helping the leadership team become more open and honest, functional, cohesive because a lot of times you aren't. What I find is that leadership teams are often made up of people that were are fiercely independent. That's how they became leaders but they don't always play together well as a team and so there's some politics or there's I don't want to say this because I don't want to hurt this person's feeling or whatever. Lack of trust. Yeah. Lack of trust and we've got to break through that. So ultimately everything we're doing with EOS is to help get better at that vision, traction and healthy and I worked specifically with the leadership teams because once you get the leadership team there, the rest of the company will follow, right?

22:48It happens from the top down a hundred percent. Yeah. And so eventually you get to this place where everybody in the organization is clear on your vision, who you are, where you're going, how you plan to get there everywhere you look, you see people executing on the things that are going to make that vision come true and it's just a great fun place to work that people love to come to and that's sort of what we're working towards in the EOS process. I love it. So I'm thinking Patrick Lencioni, Five Dysfunctions of a Team is a book that if you're out there and you're listening to this, whether you love the EOS process and obviously traction is a great one to start with, but Five Dysfunctions of a Team, learning to fight this healthy conflict I think is the biggest thing. We did this yesterday in our leadership meeting. We talked about creating this new core value of effective communication and we went out in the room and five people had five different opinions and we were all passionate about these opinions and everybody stated exactly what the opinion was and nobody got butt hurt because we didn't do half the people that wanted to we didn't do the thing that we needed to do and we had a clear decision at the end of the day, which one it was going to be and we were all on board like, okay, we all feel heard.

24:10We all said our thing. Nobody's leaving here thinking that, Oh, you don't like me. Well, no, we all have the same vision. We all want to get there, but we have different ways of getting the level of communication we're able to have in that meeting because of our level tens, the way that we do them is pretty special. And that's something that takes a while to get there. Oh yeah, for sure. But when it happens, you go, Oh wow, that was way better than this. I'll talk to you after the meeting. I'm going to text you in the corner and see what you think and all. Yeah. Oh, none of that. Yeah. You know, it's, it's awesome that you bring up Lynch Yoni because he, I was recently at the EOS conference and he was one of the keynote speakers and he told this story of, you know, years ago he was, he was hanging out with Gina Wickman and this was before Gina wrote, traction. And when you think about that vision, traction healthy that I just described, well, Gino's inspiration behind that was really, he saw Jim Collins really focusing on the vision side of things.

25:19And then he saw Vern Harnish with Rockefeller habits scaling up, really focused on that execution, that traction piece. And then Lynch Yoni doing this incredible work on team health. I mean really, truly the expert on team health, but there was nothing complete that was addressing all three of those. And that was the birth of traction was bringing those concepts and those ideas into one single holistic model. So it's really cool because we, we say often as EOS implementers, we don't, we don't have to do a lot of fresh work on team health because Lynch Yoni has done it for us. Yeah. It's, it's really, we've done off sites with both teams based around that book. And it's, it's an absolute game changer and then pair it together with traction. And I hear lack of control and I immediately go to our level 10 meeting. Yeah. I don't know. Are we too? I mean, cause I feel like every manager meeting I've ever been in starts off and it's like, okay guys, these are our numbers.

26:25What numbers are they? Do you understand the numbers? You're just reading off numbers and then it goes around the table. Hey, what do you have behind the bar? What do you have with chef? What do you got? And you go into a room and you get off on 14 different tangents. And then the meeting ends and you're like, what the hell do we just do? Do we, nobody has action items from this and we all got to maybe get some stuff off of our shoulders, but there really wasn't strong intention. And then you leave the meeting kind of feeling more confused than when you got into the meeting and the level 10 meeting through the EOS really gives you control. Yeah. And accountability almost immediately. Yeah. Well, and I think what would be helpful because I see the level 10 meeting as where everything from EOS comes together. It's sort of the linchpin of the entire process. So let's do a quick what the EOS model is or what EOS is. Do it. So EOS is built around this model that has your business at the center of it.

27:26And it comes from this discovery that Gino made that when you get down to the root of 99% of the problems in a business, they live in one of six areas and we call those the six key components. And so I'm just going to take a quick pass around that model and describe what those components are. Perfect. Yeah. Go for it. So the first component is the vision component, right? This is getting everybody 100% on the same page with who you are, where you're going, how you plan to get there. The second component is the people component. You can't achieve a great vision without great people, but great people means something different at every organization. It does. So we've got to get crystal clear on what great people means in your organization. The third component is the data component. The data component is all about running your business on those important facts and figures and not gut feelings and emotions that so often drive decision making in entrepreneurial organizations.

28:34I see this all the time. So often it's, yeah, it feels like we're doing X, Y, Z, or it feels like we're always having this issue. Okay. Well, are you, or does it feel that way? Cause those are two wildly different things because our mind anchors on certain events. It's sort of like the horns and halo effect, right? This thing happened most recently. I had a client call and say they were really happy. So now I think everything we're doing is fantastic because I have this one experience or I had a client. Yeah. I had a client call and complain about this thing. And now I think every time we've done that type of project, we failed and we have no data, no objective data to really drive home. What's what's actually happening in the business. And so with those three components, what happens when you start to strengthen those is it shines a spotlight on your business. I said earlier, I've got two dogs, both of them shed quite a bit.

29:39I've got a Roomba. I have another vacuum. I sweep. I do all of this because it's just dog hair everywhere. We have hardwood floors and every morning I open the door to let the dogs out and the sun is coming in and I look at the hardwood floors and all I see is dog hair. Right? And this is what happens in your business when you strengthen and when you start to work on the vision, the people and the data is you see all that dog hair on the floor. Right? Yes. I think there's people out there that would hear that and go, ah, they'd rather not see the dog hair on it because they're almost like, there's a, there's a fear that if I can see all the dog hair, then I have to do something. And if I can pretend like it's not there and I can go on with my married life. Yeah. Yeah. They just block the sun from coming in. Yeah, exactly. But really that brings us to the fourth component, which is the issues component. And the issues component is an amazing component of this process.

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31:49Again, Erin Mosso, 615-319-6453. Hey guys, Robins Insurance is the insurance company for restaurants in Nashville. Hands down. If you're a restaurant and you don't use Robins Insurance, well, you should. You should call Matthew Clements. His number is 863-409-9372 or go check him out at robinsinsurance.com. R-O-B-I-N-S-I-N-S, insurance.com. So restaurant insurance is different than regular insurance. And insurance is one of those things that helps you feel protected. You know, I have a guy, I have a guy that I buy every bit of insurance from my personal life. And then we use Robins at both of our restaurants and they're different. They're different. They're, you don't go get your heart worked on by a dentist, right? You go to the right person. That is what Robins Insurance is here to do. Um, we're about to have Benjamin and Max Goldberg in the studio, the strategic hospitality, their customers, they use Robins Insurance.

32:56Like I said, I do both of my restaurants. So very, very important. Check them out. Again, Matthew Clements is the guy to call. He will walk you through any questions that you have. 863-409-9372. Hey everybody. Today we're talking about my good friend, Ben Ellsworth and GigPro. After years of spending too much time and money on useless staffing software, Ben Ellsworth knew something had to change. So out of necessity, GigPro was born. GigPro is the on-demand marketplace for hospitality staffing. They're changing the way people work and hire. If you download the GigPro app today, you can get the help you need. GigPro has an exclusive promo offer for Nashville Restaurant Radio listeners. Sign up at go.gigpro.com forward slash N-R-R-B-I-Z. And make sure that you use that code. I want them to know that you came from Nashville Restaurant Radio. That again is go.gigpro.com forward slash N-R-R-B-I-Z.

34:00That code will get you your first gig for free up to $200. Go check them out right now. That brings us to the fourth component, which is the issues component, right? It's dealing with the dog hair and making sure that as we identify those issues, we're not letting them linger. We're not just talking about them and then leaving and coming back. And the issue is still there. We're not experiencing issue deja vu. We're actually solving our issues, putting a plan of attack in place to make them go away forever, right? And so that's the fourth component. The fifth component is the process component. And this is just about making sure that the most important things in the business get done the right way and the best way every single time. And then the sixth component is the traction component. And it's the name of the book, right? And if you're looking at the model, it's you know, it's the circle and at the top is vision and at the bottom is traction. And that's not a coincidence because traction is really where you bring it to ground.

35:01There's a quote in the book that I love where Gino says, vision without traction is hallucination. And man, nothing could be more true because it's awesome to come up with a great vision. And there are a lot of businesses out there with incredible visionary leaders. But if you can't execute on the things that it takes to achieve that vision day in and day out. Congratulations on your imagination, I guess. There's another quote in the book that I love that. That was my favorite quote. It hit me like a ton of bricks. And it said, you ever hear the saying, you see what I'm saying? You see what I'm saying? You know, yeah, right. Yeah, it's like, no, you can't you literally can't see what somebody's saying. Yeah. But if your vision is so crystal clear that it's just that you can you can say people can see what you're saying if your vision is that clear and you continually talk about it and you put in your forefront, this is our vision.

36:04People go, I see the vision. I see what you're saying. And they have there's a buy in that happens there. Yeah. Bringing it to life, really being able to paint that picture and tie your vision down to reality is so important. And I yeah, I love that that part in the book where he's talking about that, because that's ultimately what we're trying to get to. Can you see what I'm saying? And that's strengthening that vision component. So vision, the vision component's huge. Yeah. If we so we talked we started here, lack of control, lack of issues and lack of profit. Right, right. People issues, people lack of control, lack of profit and people issues. Let's start with let's get let's dig a little bit deeper into vision. Yeah, absolutely. So strengthening the vision component, one, we've got to figure out what our vision is. And most importantly, we've got to get everybody 100 percent aligned on that. Excuse me. And so we take a pretty simple approach to that and we just answer eight questions and we document those questions on a two page document called the Vision Traction Organizer.

37:15VTO, baby. VTO. Yeah, you're going to hear me say that a lot and I'll just sort of lightning speed, take you through those eight questions. Yeah, let's go. So we identify what are your core values and it's easy to Google core values and pick some that sound good and then sort of run from there. But your core values are discovered. They're already a part of your organization. They are the things that describe your best employees. And so we've just got to discover those. We've got to define them clearly and we've got to start using them to hire, fire, reward, recognize all of that stuff. So I talk about core values a lot on this podcast because we have core values and I have core values in my home with my children and it's on the wall in the kitchen. What our family core values are, we have them in the restaurant and I think when I walk into a restaurant from somebody who's saying, hey, come help me do whatever it is, that's kind of the bedrock.

38:22That is the thing that you, so many people build these houses and you go, no, no, there's no foundation and the core values are really the foundation for how you do everything in the building. It's your true north. Is that right? Yeah, absolutely. And we talk about it a little more in the people component, but the core values are ultimately how you define whether or not you've got the right people. Core values are your culture. Your culture is not beer Fridays or ping pong tables or whatever. Right. Your core values are your culture. The core value, we have a core value of cheers. That means we want you to have fun, do something that's going to create fun for you and your guests. And we have people that bring in candy, people that bring in brownies. We have people that like to play music in the morning and they curate playlists for the team and people that tell jokes. And one guy does a motivational quote or during lineup. Like we encourage people to do things that are fun. Yeah. And that's one of our core values.

39:24And we, we live by that, like, hey, have fun with everything that you do. But that's what drives us not, oh, we're a fun place, but like, no, we're intentionally, we want to do that. Yeah. The other really nice thing about core values is it helps you micromanage less and it may seem hard to sort of tie those two things together, but ultimately your people are going to run into situations that they haven't seen before and they're going to need to make a decision between option A and option B. And if they filter that through what most closely aligned with our core values, they're going to make the right decision. Yeah. And even if maybe you would have said, well, we could have done option C and that would have been a little bit better if they did the thing that aligns with your core values, it's probably not a disaster, it's probably just fine and we can coach and get better from there. And so they serve as this handful of rules that your people can use to help make better decisions.

40:27And in that way, but every single leader in the world wants is for their staff and the people working for them to have a guidebook for how to make good decisions and work every day. Yeah. And you know, even if it's the wrong decision, the core values at least set up for us to sit down and have a conversation as to why they made that decision. Right. And then there's a foundation for what we go back to for the next time. I encourage mistakes. I want people to make mistakes because it gives me the opportunity to go, Hey, let's talk about that and you're in trouble. But let's talk about the decision-making process and then you kind of coach people through it based upon the next time something happens, they go, Hmm, does that align with who we are? Yeah. And it's super important. Yeah. So that's core values, core values, this question. Number one, the next question is what's your core focus? And core focus is a really specific term we use. You've probably heard something similar mission vision values or mission statement or, uh, Jim Collins calls it hedgehog concept. Stephen Covey calls it the voice.

41:29We use the term core focus because it's your sweet spot. It should come from your core, why you exist. Why do you get up every morning and do this work? And then what are you better at than everybody else in your world? Right. And that should drive laser focus in your organization. It should help you avoid shiny objects. It should help you stay focused on that thing where you're going to get the most bang for your buck. When you hit a ball on the sweet spot, it goes further with the same amount of effort. The core focus is the same thing. If you stay focused there, you're going to go further with the same amount of effort. So we answer that question. And once we know that, then we're going to just set a 10 year target. And this can be five years. It can be 30 years, but this is the BHAG, right? The Big Hairy Audacious Goal. It's the one single clearly articulated goal for the organization that brings us together, that inspires us.

42:33And from there, we know where we need to head, what we need to do. We just work backwards from that 10 year target. Absolutely. So that's question number three. Now, once we've answered who we are with our core values, why we exist, what we're great at with our core focus, and where we're headed with our 10 year target, the next question is our marketing strategy. Who do we need to talk to and what do we need to say to help us get there? And so we have four parts in that marketing strategy. We figure out your target market. What's the demographic, geographic, psychographic profile of your ideal customer? Yeah. So who are we talking to? And then the rest of it is just crafting a message that's valuable to them. Right? So our three uniques, what are the three things that when put together, set us apart from the competition, make them want to come to us, which is a fun process. Oh yeah. I love this process.

43:34And there's a lot of ideation that happens during that process because sometimes you go, maybe we're not that unique. Maybe we need to find more uniques. And it's a good, fun, fun moment. Yeah, one of the most fun things that happens for me in that process is when I'm working with a client and they have these three things they've been focused on already, but I say it needs to be valuable to your client. And so I asked them, I said, if you think of your best, your top five best clients, what would they say about you, why they choose to work with you? And oftentimes it uncovers something that they haven't really been focused on, but that's the thing that has added value. They've had this sort of marketing speak that they really like and they like the way it sounds, but that's not the thing that's speaking to their clients. And so it, it creates the shift. And again, it's, it's not overly complicated.

44:35It's just about getting aligned so that we're giving the same message. Right? Yeah. The other two pieces are a proven process and about 50% of companies do this. And it's just a visual illustration of what it's like to do business with your organization from prospect phase to lifelong client. I don't know of any restaurant that has a proven process because they're out there trying to convince people to come in and it's like a long buying cycle or something, right? No, there's not. Yeah. And then there's a guarantee. What's the pledge or the promise you make to ease the fear of adoption, right? And again, that's about 50, 50 on whether companies end up using that, but that's the marketing strategy. Once we've identified those things, now we just start to bring it to ground. We start to make it real with a three year picture. And this is that can you see it? Right? That's why we call it the three year picture. And we're just going to make some predictions.

45:38If this is where we're headed on our 10 year target, what do we need to look like in three years? What's the revenue need to be? Was our profit need to be identify some measurables? And then we just paint a picture of what it actually looks like. This is where I see things like another location open, providing health benefits, doing profit sharing, any number of things, retirement 401. Yeah, exactly. And it's really cool. Cause one of the things that I've seen lately is that the three year picture almost becomes a recruiting rocher. All of it does. Yeah. Yeah. It's, I mean, it's really, the VTO is really an internal marketing tool. Well, that's, I was just going to say we've, we have our VTO posted in the kitchen, like we're on the door, leaving the kitchen and everybody who works there, I think the number one thing that people ask is what is my, what does it look like for me in the future?

46:41Is there opportunity for advancement? And when you put on a board, Hey, look, this is our vision. These are our, these are our key unique, this is the target market we're going after and this is what we're going to do in three years and this is where we're going to be in 10 years and people look at that and they go, Oh yeah, like there's growth and you have a plan. You know, just them seeing, we hired a new manager and she, we have him train at the other restaurant and she came to the other restaurant and her first level 10 as a manager meeting and she goes, Oh my God, I've never been in a meeting that started on time and ended on time and it was so well structured and her entire perception of everything she knew about restaurants, she was like, I don't know, I just kind of feel like I, I, I want to be part of this. Oh, I see, I see where you're going and you go, well, thanks. Like, no, that's what we want you to do. And for the people that are working there who are actively disengaged or just kind of disengaged, they're just doing a job.

47:42They see that and they go, Oh, well in three years, they want to be here in 10 years, they want to be there. Maybe I step it up. Maybe I get engaged because this is something I want to do. Yeah. And that's the beauty of the three year picture is it bridges that gap because that 10 year target that you set, it is so hard for people to see their place in that it's so hard for them to imagine that and the specifics around it. And honestly, it's hard for us to predict what that will look like. And that's okay. The three year is where we can really bring it to life for our people and use that as, as kind of like a stay brochure for our employees. So I had Will Newman, who's the owner of edley's barbecue. He's been on the show a couple of times and he has a huge traction fan and he, um, he has his VTO posted in the, uh, in the kitchen, same sort of a thing and gets the same sort of reaction, but will as a visionary, right? So we're gonna, I'm going to bring in a couple of terms because I think there's people right now that are listening to this and you're either really excited or you're anxious because there's a lot of work to do there.

48:48Right. And I'll let you know on the leadership teams, this is the, this is probably the biggest moment I think Stephen had was when he realized I'm a visionary and I need an integrator. Yeah. And so let's talk about those two roles. And if you're a restaurant owner out there and you're a visionary, what that looks like this kind of help people identify which role they might be in. If you're a visionary or an integrator or what other part of the leadership team you might be on, is it about that time to, can we do that now or is there things you want to talk about before? Yeah, we can, we can introduce those concepts. I think that's helpful. And we talk about them in the people component often, but this is a good segue because I mentioned earlier, you know, the vision traction organizer. It's two pages. The front page is labeled vision and the back page is labeled traction. And those two pages really speak to the visionary and the integrator differently. So a visionary is just the idea person.

49:50It's the big picture person. It's the person that comes in with 20 new ideas every week. One of which is a good idea, right? That, that we can actually execute. And so visionaries 99% of the time, they're the founding owner of the business, but they don't want to be in the weeds, right? They don't want to be in the day to day because they've got the next big idea. One of the things that I see pretty often is from a visionary is something like, I don't mind managing people as long as they don't need to be managed. Right. And I'm like, Oh, well, congratulations on not having that skill. Like, let's just call it what it is. And that's okay. Know thyself. That is, that is the thing is that that's okay, but you do have to know yourself in that regard. Yeah. And so every great visionary needs a great integrator and the integrator is just the person that is running the day to day of the business. They like to get into the weeds. They like to remove obstacles.

50:52They like to coach the leadership team and help them, help them become better. And they're, they make their trains run on time. And if you can get the right visionary and integrator combo, that's rocket fuel. There's also a book called rocket fuel. A great, great book by Gina Wickman and Mark Winters. Uh, I had a call with Mark Winters the other day and just hearing from him and all the things he's learned and the data they have and the things they've seen with these visionary integrator combos, it's just incredible. Well, and that was the thing. Steven was, you know, he had all these ideas for our restaurants and he was going in and he wasn't getting the traction. He had all this vision. He wasn't getting the traction. And I think he got the advice, Hey, if you could bring somebody in who could make the stuff happen, all these, the story that's narrative is playing in your mind. Can you tell somebody those 10 ideas and then can they go, the good one is there.

51:52Let's talk about that. And then can they go make that happen? And that's what, that's when I came on board as the person that come in and say, as almost good guy, bad guy to a degree, but it's a good, go get this thing to stick, make it happen, coach, sit down, lead, and the relationship is pretty special. Yeah, the relationship, the relationship is special. And it's funny that good guy, bad guy framing. I think one of the things that happens is having the right integrator helps the visionary not be a bad guy anymore because up to that point, the visionary was probably driving people crazy and giving them organizational whiplash every 90 days with this new idea or new thing they want to pursue. Right. And they need somebody to help wrangle that in. And that's what the integrator does. And that's a great segue into the, the last part of the VTO, the traction side, because you've got this three year picture where you're going to be three years from now.

52:55Okay. Well, the other thing that does is it sets you up for really good one year planning. If that's where we need to be in three years, what do we need to do this year? And we're going to make the same predictions around revenue and profit and stuff. And then we're just going to pick three to seven of the most important things that we've got to get done this year. And we're not going to pick 23 because of everything's a priority. Nothing's a priority. And this is where that, that integrator and the whole leadership team really help drive into what are the really important things so that we can start executing on this vision from there. We work backwards and we set rocks and rocks are just 90 day business priorities and it's the same deal. What are the three to seven most important things we got to get done this quarter if we're going to achieve that one year plan? I think the rocks are the most impactful thing. Rocks are the thing that's moving your business forward. I think that's the, besides everything, you know, it's just the operational doing what we say, saying what we're going to do.

54:02Like rocks are the greatest thing in our business right now that propels us forward and people owning their rocks and accomplishing their rocks. It gives every one of the leaders in the team purpose and they know what they're doing to come to work. Yeah, it's, it's amazing. Like, and it's, it's a pretty simple concept. It's a really simple concept. It's, it's about learning to say no to the wrong things. So you can say yes to the right things, to the most important things. It's about prioritizing. And so we set those rocks. Everybody has their own set of rocks and each of those company rocks has somebody's name next to it. And that's the person that's got to get it done. They got to push it across the finish line. They're going to get help from other people, but they're the ones that are owning it and that's where we really start to instill that discipline and accountability. And then the last question, the last thing we put on our vision traction organizer is an issues list.

55:05And that seems like a weird thing to have on a vision document. It's the best thing. It's the best thing because I just told you, we got to say no to a lot of stuff so that we can focus on the right stuff. Well, that stuff doesn't just go away. So we put it on the issues list until it's the right time to deal with it. And so that's the vision traction organizer. Those are the eight questions that help us get aligned on your vision as an organization. And once you've done that, like once you've done that with the leadership team, the next step is just getting that vision shared by all, right? Having everybody in the organization, you guys have a hundred and how many employees? How many employees? 125, 125 employees. Your leadership team has six people, five, six people, six people. We got to get the other 125 employees on board with that vision.

56:07And we do something crazy to make that happen is we tell them, it's insane. We tell them the vision, right? I love that you've got it posted in the kitchen, but then we also just do every quarter, a quarterly state of the company where we get up in front of everybody and we just share where we've been. What did we accomplish this last quarter? How did we do on our rocks? What did we learn where we are? Hey, here's some updates. This is what's going on. And then where are we going? And we just go back over that vision with them and we just repeat it over and over every quarter. Yeah, I think that, um, I think we, we're just getting to where we've done that once and you go in and you tell everybody all the things that you're doing and you make it fun, but the, we do it weekly in our level tens. Yeah, I love that. That is, I mean, as a leadership team, being on the same page, holding each other accountable for your rocks, there's to-do lists and you talk about issues.

57:12And I said, that's, that's my favorite part of them on the VTO, but in our weekly meetings, we do something we call IDS. Yeah. It's an acronym for identify, discuss and solve. So the level I mentioned level 10 means, cause it's probably the most impactful thing that we do as a leadership team right now, because it's, it's the account of every Monday at nine o'clock and it starts at nine o'clock and it ends at 10 30 and it never starts at nine Oh two. It's at nine o'clock. Yeah. Everybody's there five minutes early at least. And so we kind of catch up and then we do the meeting, but you, you bring up issues throughout the meeting, something happened through the headlines or you, we're all giving kind of our reports, but then we identify the problem. If it's an issue, we identify what it is. We discuss it and then we solve it. And that's it. Yeah. I mean, we, as a leadership team tackle problems all the time. And we've got to the point now where we can all just freely discuss it because we have the trust that every single person is there because we're all, we all see the vision and we all want to take care of the guest and we all have the exact, if you, if I did something that potentially would be hurtful to any, we talk about it, we, there's no sacred cows in the room.

58:26I love that. Yeah. When we do these meetings with you, you have all these little, uh, it brings these little animals like, like stress ball type animals, little foam animals. And he has one that's a cow. And if you start, if you, oh, we can't say that, cause that's this, this, he'll throw the cow at somebody. I know sacred cows get in there, get uncomfortable. Let's go. Yeah. And I love that. Yeah. It's so critical to be able to just have the open and honest discussion. Right? Like just get it out there. Don't worry about saying it right. Don't worry about not stepping on toes. It's important that we all give each other some grace so that we don't have to spend a lot of time and energy trying to say it the right way as a leadership team, right? Like let's, let's model what we want for the rest of the organization as a leadership team and just say it. Just say it. Yeah. Just do it. Yeah. So we've got the sacred cow. We've got the elephant when there's an elephant in the room that we're tiptoeing around, right?

59:28Yeah, there's a, there's a couple of those animals. I like that. I like the horse. That's the one that we, that we get the horse. There's a squirrel. Yeah. There's squirrel for tangents, the horse for when you're beating the dead horse. Yes. I use that one a lot with you. Yes. Well, we all feel like we have to go around the room and we all get to, we all get our whips in on the horse and then when it's like, Oh, things really dead. Okay. Well, I'm glad we all got our shots in on it. Like, but we wasted 20 minutes of our day. Yeah. I'm, I was having this conversation recently that people, when they're speaking out, they're either contributing something new or they're just gaining their own emotional satisfaction from saying a thing and so you kind of got to be honest with yourself and ask that question, am I saying this because it's helping move the conversation forward? Or am I saying this for my own emotional satisfaction? We will openly say we're saying it for our own emotional satisfaction. Yeah. I need to say this because I just feel like I want to say it and I need to say it and say, okay, get, get it out, man.

01:00:32Yeah. Just get it. We're going to drop it right when we're going to, this thing is solved. We're clicking the button that it's solved. We're not talking about it anymore. Yeah. We're moving forward. Yeah. And that's the, that's the critical thing is that there is some sacrifice there to not getting that emotional satisfaction. But it's about getting through the issues. You've got 90 minutes together, right? 90. That's not actually a lot of time. All of your leaders are in the room. So this is the most expensive time you have as a business. And so every minute that you're spending repeating yourself or repeating someone else, or going around talking about why the thing we all agreed on is such a good idea is time you could be spending on solving another issue. You know, I never thought about it like that. That's why you work with me. Now, as I say, well, sometimes we need to get it out.

01:01:32I'm like, no, we don't need to do that. We need to move on to the shit. That's really important to get to another issue. Yeah. Cause you've got a lot. You've got a lot of issues to deal with and that's okay. Like that, that's good. That is exactly what we do. It's not a, you got a lot of issues. You guys aren't doing the right thing. Like that means, no, we're able to mine, we're able to open all of the shades and see all the dog hair and you don't want to just find dog hair in one room. You want to find it in every room and you want to clean it all out. And that's how you get healthy. Right? Yeah. I think it's, it's not, um, it's not, you have a lot of issues versus you don't have a lot of issues. All of you have a lot of issues. You've discovered a lot of your issues versus you haven't discovered a lot of your issues. And I would much rather be on the side of we've discovered a lot of our issues. Uh, yeah, it's amazing. So I want to, I want to move around cause we're getting close to the hour mark. Okay. And we guys, I got an hour and a half.

01:02:33So I don't know what your time looks like, but people, yeah, right now the industry, the restaurant industry is, well, it's, it's damn near impossible to find great people to be, I don't know. One restaurant that's like, Oh no, we're fully staffed. Right? Yeah, no, we're good. Thanks. No, we're not hiring. Thank you. Like, I mean, there might be like Audrey or something. I don't know. There might be a couple of restaurants that are that way, but for the most part, most restaurants are looking for great people. How do, how does EOS keep great people identify great people? There's an actual method when you're identifying people who work with you currently, whether or not they're the right person in the right seat. Yeah. And then what does that do for retention? And let's talk about the people. Yeah. So the people component and we can move through the rest of the model pretty quickly because the vision is where a lot of it starts, right? And I want to do another show.

01:03:34I want to, I want to bring you back for another episode where we can, maybe I bring somebody in who's maybe I'll bring in a couple, an integrator and a visionary who are working model and we'll get some more conversation going. Yeah. You've already agreed. We'll do a next step kind of a, an episode. Yeah. But for today, I just, I really wanted this episode to be, if I'm, if I'm a restaurant leader and I'm listening right now, I'm either anxious because gosh, that's a lot of work. I'm excited because I need this amount of structure and what I do. Like this to me, if I'm listening to this, if I'm taking a walk right now, listening to this podcast, I'm going, holy shit, I need this. Yeah. This is something that like I need right now. Uh, and I will tell you, you do. Yeah. Cause we need, we thought we were pretty damn healthy company. We were doing really well. Yeah. But it's, it's, it's a game changer. Yeah, absolutely. So the people component is all about right people in the right seats.

01:04:34And if you've read Jim Collins, you've heard that phrase. Good to great. The book could do great. Yep. Good to great. And I ask business owners all the time, you're familiar with this and they say, yes, I said, so you don't have any people issues, right? Cause you already know you just got to get the right people in the right seats. Well, of course they've got people issues and it's because we've got to get clear on what that means in your organization, right? It's people that share your core values, plain and simple, right? And we use a tool called the people analyzer and that's what you're alluding to where we just list our core values. We list our people and we write them against those core values with a pretty simple plus if they exhibit it most of the time, minus if they don't exhibit that core value most of the time. And if you really can't decide between the two, they get a plus minus. And that just gives us a clear report on where people stand in regard to our core values. I facilitated a session recently where they're talking about a person and they're doing all this coaching because the performance isn't there and they're thinking maybe we can get the performance there and I said, well, let's run her through the people analyzer and we had four minuses on core values and I said, why are you talking about performance?

01:05:51This is a, this is a wrong person. Yeah. It doesn't matter if she can do the job. She doesn't share your core values. Right. And it just simplifies a lot of those conversations. Do you, can you literally see like the light bulb go off and people, like when they go, yeah, Oh, that's why it's not working. She's not one of us or he's not one of us, whatever that be. Cause I mean, they're, that's your culture. That's who you are. You bring somebody who doesn't match those core values in like, well, yeah, that's why they're sticking out. Oh crap. Yeah. So that's right. People write seats is, you know, what we use for that is a thing called the accountability chart and without going too deep into that, it's just about identifying the major functions in your organization, taking a structure, first people, second approach. So what are the major functions that we have? What are the five roles? So just like bullet points in that box that they're responsible for, that they need to be really good at.

01:06:52And once we've done that, then we see if we've got the people for those boxes. And we hope that we do. And we build that out through the entire organization. And now we've got a really clear picture of what it means to be in the right seat. The right seat is somebody that is in one of those boxes. And for those five roles, they're really good at that and they love doing it. Right. Ultimately, that's all it is. And we use, we use a thing called GWC, get it, want it, capacity to do it. Get it is just do the neurons in their brain connect to do this work, right? It's why you wouldn't hire a graphic designer to be your bookkeeper, right? So maybe there are graphic designers that could do it, but generally, like that's not what they're wired to do. Want it. Do they want it self-explanatory? Do they get up every morning wanting to come do this work? And then capacity to do it is, do they have the experience, the training, the mental fortitude, the knowledge, all of that stuff to be able to execute this job and do it well?

01:07:59And so we combine that on the people analyzer with the core values. And we just say, forget it, want it capacity. We got to get a yes on all three of those. And if we're a no on one of those, then that's a person in the wrong seat. And so you're, you're going to run into two issues, two people issues. As you're strengthening this component, you're going to have a right person in the wrong seat, and that is so hard because they fit your culture like a glove, they have probably been a part of your business for a long time, maybe helped you grow it, but maybe the seat has outgrown them or maybe they were sort of promoted to the level of their incompetence, right? That happens a lot. And promoted to the level of their incompetence. I'm not going to let you get by with that one. It's, it's where somebody does great in executing, right? And then they get promoted to a manager. Well, just because you're going to executing doesn't mean you're going to managing the best salesman doesn't need to be the sales manager.

01:09:00Right. And so maybe they're okay there. And because they've been there a while, they get promoted again and they're getting promoted because they've been around, not necessarily because they're good and they're just getting less and less good at the job they're being given. Because they've been around. I wonder how many people are right now going, Oh my God, I have that. Like how many people are right now listening to this going, Oh shit, that's Tina or that's Bob, that's it. 80, 90% probably everybody has been like, Oh, we've got that. We've got that. That's light bulb. Yeah. And so hopefully you've got another seat for that person because they're a right person and right people are hard to come by. But if you don't, unless you want to be an accidental nonprofit, you've got to make a hard decision, right? We hope that you are enjoying this. I know I am listening to this again. I'm like, God, this is just good stuff. Accidental nonprofit. Wow. I love it. Hey, we're talking about maintain IQ.com.

01:10:03These guys are amazing. And I know you've never heard of them. They're another one of these tech companies that will help you increase your profits. How do they do that? Because they are digital checklist, digital checklist, to-do list, also work orders, help line temps, everything that you can possibly, they have line temps. You can just, it's Bluetooth thermometers, go straight to it. You can keep track of everything you're doing. This is amazing technology. You need to go just do a demo. Again, guys, this is new technology. If you're in a restaurant and you're in a leadership position, you need to learn about what technology is out there. And maintain IQ is one of those companies that will totally blow your mind. They are doing amazing things. Give my buddy, Will Joxon, a phone call. His number is six, I'm sorry, 714-457-4481. This is not, they're based out of Southern California, guys. They're doing amazing things. It's not even here yet. There's not one restaurant in Nashville that's got this.

01:11:04Hopefully many now, but this is, this is brand new. Some of these companies, you have to have 40, 50 locations. He's looking out for you. It's $49 a month. It is inexpensive, the amount of things you're going to get done. I'm not kidding. Go check him out at maintainiq.com or give Will Joxon a call. Again, his phone number is 714-457-4481. Hey, I hope that you guys have all called my buddy over at the compost company. His name is Jeffrey Ezell. Him and his brother are running this thing. If you're a restaurant out there and you care about the environment, you buy the compostable to-go boxes, you buy the compostable glassware, you're trying to do your thing, well, this is the next step you go, you call the compost company and what they do is they're going to bring you trash cans or green trash cans, you put compostable bags in them and all of your food waste. And yes, those compostable boxes, as well as your plastic cups that are compostable can go right in there.

01:12:10They're going to come pick them up weekly or biweekly, whatever you decide that you want to do. It's really inexpensive and they're going to take it to their farm and they're going to make compost. Did you know the number one reason that landfills create methane or greenhouse gases is because of the organic food that gets put in there. And it gets trapped under all that plastic. And that's what causes greenhouse gases. You can do your part to not only end that, but create brand new soil. They make soil out of this compost that they sell to local farmers. And you can go buy it at whole foods. So this is a great company. We would love for you to give them a call. You can call Jeffrey Ezell right now at 615-866-8152. That's 615-866-8152 or visit them at compostcompany.com. And so hopefully you've got another seat for that person because they're a right person and right people are hard to come by. But if you don't, unless you want to be an accidental nonprofit, you've got to make a hard decision, right?

01:13:15You've, you've got to help them be successful somewhere else. Yeah. Now the flip side is when you've got a wrong person in the right seat, and this can be even harder, right? Maybe we're talking restaurant industry. This is a incredible chef, right? And they are so good and they, they are bringing in the money, right? They make you money. But they don't follow the core values. But they are toxic to your culture. Yeah. And with my clients, I beg and plead with them to make that hard decision because when you've got a toxic person and then you've got some really good people, that toxic person is not the one that's looking for a new job and talk about a hard labor market, you're just going to start bleeding people. And you're going to end up just with the toxic people, right?

01:14:19So those are the, those are the two types of people issues that you deal with. And that's really that people components. And part of what we do there is identify that visionary integrator combo and who's responsible for what. It's funny. You start talking about these GWCs and there's so many acronyms and so many, there's so many words that we've incorporated into our vernacular. As you go through all of this, I'm like, damn, we've come a long way. Cause this all makes sense to me. And if you're out there and you're going, it sounds interesting, go by the book, go by traction by Gina Wickman and read the book better yet, put my contact info in the podcast notes do it right now. How, how would it, if I was listening to this and I wanted to go, I want Justin to come do it, do you, is it a demo? What do you, you come in and you do like a 90 minute meeting, right? Yeah. So I'll, I'll come do, I say it's the movie version of the book, right? 90 minute meeting, uh, with you and your leadership team. If you want me to do that, send me an email, justin.cook at eosworldwide.com and we'll get it set up.

01:15:24Also, if you just want a copy of the book, send me an email. I'll mail you a copy of the book. I got a bunch of them. Wow. Yeah. So I'm happy to do that for any of your listeners. They don't have a copy. They want a copy. I'll get them a copy. justin.cook, c-o-o-k at eosworldwide.com. That's the, that's the one. And I definitely, um, so if, if I'm, I guess the first thing I would tell people to do is to read the book. But if I'm out there, what's, what's one takeaway or a bit of advice? If I'm somebody who is interested or it's piqued my interest in what you're talking about, is there any takeaway that you can just share like, Hey, this is the most important thing you can do tomorrow. Today, you listen to this and you go, wow, I want to do more. What, what practical thing can I do immediately? That isn't just read the book. Um, man, that's hard because, yeah, it, you know, it's, it's a system that all, all the parts work together, you know?

01:16:29And so I'll be honest, the, the most impactful thing you can do in your business always is deal with your people issues, deal with your people issues. Like if you want to take away, look at everybody in your business. And if one of them came in tomorrow and quit, would you be upset or relieved? And if you would be relieved, you've got a people issue and deal with it. And GWC, do they get it? Do they want it? Do they have the capacity? Yeah. If you have core values, you know, put the list, those core values down and then put the person's name at the top and go down and say, plus yes, they exhibit these core values most of the time, a minus, no, they don't display these core values. They don't live up to our core values or a plus minus, which is kind of, it's like a one, five and 10, if you're on a scale of one at 10, one, one, five or 10 is what you get to rate people. It's not a, oh, there are two points then it's under five. It's a one. Yeah. If it's above five, it's, you know, it's a plus.

01:17:29And if it's at that five, then it's a plus minus. We did that with a handful of employees and it was really impactful. Yeah. And we didn't, you do it silently, right? So it's not like you're in a room and you write on a whiteboard and you go, John, what do you think? Tina, what do you, it's almost like you'll have to like turn and learn. We started doing the turn and learn. Do you know about this? You're going to love this. Um, so at the end of the meeting, at the end of each level 10 meeting, you're, we have to rate the meeting, right? So either as a facilitator who kind of runs the meeting through a website that we use 90. And at the end of the meeting, we have to rate it. And that's why it's called a level 10. Cause we've, if you get level, a 10 rating for everybody, it's a great meeting. We've identified that if Stephen goes first and he says it's an eight, then it's all around an eight. Yeah. Anytime that we have to do something as a team and the owner or me goes first. So goes the room. And so what we've done now is we do a turn and learn.

01:18:32And I got this from Brene Brown and an episode of dare to lead, but what she does is we go on our calculator like this and I'll go like this and go, all right. Everybody one, two, three. I love that. And we turn our phone around. We rate the meeting and everybody rates it by like a nine or an eight or whatever it is. And we we've started doing that for when we're going around a room. All right, guys, the plus or minus is a great way to go. Everybody write what you think and turn and learn so that it's not a, oh, well, they think that she does. Uh, yeah, I think they do it too. Like you need to be able to have your own independent answer. And so that's something that I don't know if you knew that we incorporated. I did not know that it is why I always make people write things down. Yeah. I like I always say, all right, because we do this at the end of our sessions, rate the session, but I say write it down so you don't unduly influence each other. But I like that even more. Kind of everybody turning. It's kind of a fun, exciting moment because everybody like starts looking around like, what did you get? What did you get it yesterday at our level?

01:19:33Tim, we, every single person gave it a nine and then a one gave it an eight. He's like, well, it was a good meeting, but I didn't think that, you know, we see as we started with 901 and I was like, really, man, yeah, you got to start at nine, one, you lose a point for that. Yeah. Yeah. But it's a fun process. Yeah, absolutely. So the people analyzer is a big thing. Core values. We will do another show. I think it will be fun. Is there a way I want to schedule? I think it'd be really cool to do an event with you. Yeah. Yeah. I'd love to do that. So let's just say we had a hundred people in a room. Could you be on a stage and can you help a group that size build a VTO? Yes, I can help them build a first draft of a VTO. Okay. So really good working. I mean, they have to kind of have, you can't build everybody's core values in a room. That's a tough one. There's a process we go through to build the core values. Yeah, there's, there's some special magic that happens in the session room to really dig in and discover what are your core values and, and get specific on this stuff, but can I get you started?

01:20:42Absolutely. Give you the concepts, help you sketch out a draft so that you can work from there. Cause honestly doing some of this is better than doing none of it. Yeah. I mean, cause if I can't fully commit to it, if I can at least get the point where I can get a VTO together and I can read the book and kind of get it started, but obviously emailing justin.cook at eosworldwide.com getting you to come out and help do that individually would be something that, I mean, I think it's paid for itself multiple times with just the level of retention and you retain a couple of great people. It pays for this thing immensely. Cause you don't mean that the cost of hiring and training and the institutional knowledge you lose or gain. So it's a, I don't know, it's a game changer. I thank you so much for coming in. Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you having me. This has been a lot of fun. Hopefully you out there who are listening have listened to this. This has excited you because I've want to bring to this, but like things that are going to help people and I, I appreciate everything you've done for us.

01:21:48This has been incredibly impactful, hopefully for a lot of people out there. Justin, the last thing I do on the podcast is I let you give you, you get to take us out. Oh my gosh. So, so much stress. Yeah. You can summarize the meeting. You can say whatever you want. Whatever you want, as long as you want to say it, the mic is yours. What I want to say to people that are listening to this is deal with your people issues. Like if I were to coming back to that, what's the practical thing that we can do, do yourself a favor, do the rest of your people a favor. One of the reasons that I do EOS that I help organizations implement EOS is because I want to create great workplaces.

01:22:53That's sort of my why. And there is nothing worse about a workplace than working with people that don't do the job well or don't share the core values. And you're going to feel like, I don't want to play chess with someone's life or I don't want to hurt this person or whatever, but you're hurting everybody else. And so deal with your people issues, have the hard conversations, make the hard decisions, and you will see an immediate impact in your organization. And don't let the labor market be your excuse because frankly, that's bullshit. Deal with your people issues. Amen. Go forth. Justin Cook, thank you, sir, for your time today. Thank you. Oh, yeah, baby. How about that interview with Justin Cook? Do you want more? I know you want more.

01:23:54I know you're listening to this right now going, I think I want more, Brandon. We're going to do it. We're going to do that. We're going to make that happen more for you. Call Justin. He can set up a personal one-on-one kind of thing with your leadership team or hang out. We're going to have an interview, another interview with him. We go further with a couple of people who I'm going to try and bring a visionary and an integrator into the room and just kind of do the same thing. And like I said, we're going to set up a big, huge event where we can come in and you can learn how to do your VTO, the vision traction organizer. Guys, it is late. I'm tired. I hope you have a wonderful week ahead. Go out there and slay it. We're going to be talking with Jim Meyers very soon, and he's going to be on the show probably Friday and Misty Blue Hardwick from Jack Daniels is going to be coming on the show and just lots of fun things coming up, y'all.

01:24:57Thank you for listening. I hope that you are being safe out there. Love you guys. Bye.