Justin Cook

00:00Very excited to be partnering with C&B Linen. If you know me it's my number one topic of conversation is linen companies and how shady linen companies can be. I have just disgusted with how the business practices work in this industry which is why I was so excited when I found C&B Linen. They're out of Waynesboro, Tennessee and they don't charge any fees. So the linen price that you have, whatever that first linen price is, that's your price. And so you may say well every year they must raise the price on this seven-year contract, right? No, because they don't do any contracts. There's no gas fees, there's no clean green service fees, there's no replacement cost, there's nothing. The only price you pay is the price that you pay for the actual product. I know it's too good to be true. No contracts. They do formats. They'll make custom formats for you. They do fresh linens, cleaning supplies and guys I just did a tour of their facility and it is immaculate. It is state-of-the-art. I'm gonna post pictures on my Instagram. You can go find them and you can see how absolutely gorgeous this is to the point that they even wash and sanitize every one of their used laundry carts. It's just absolutely amazing. If you're looking for a linen company you can trust, who wants to earn your business every single week, go back and listen to our episode with Jason Cruz, the owner of CNBLenny. Hear it from his straight from his mouth exactly what they do or you give them a call at 931-722-7616 or you can DM me at Brandon Styll on Instagram for my exclusive pricing through the Nashville Area Restaurant Alliance.

01:50Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, the tastiest hour of talk in Music City. Now here's your host Brandon Styll. Hello Music City and welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll and I am your host. Super excited today. I almost forgot to mention that we are powered by Gordon Food Service and again super excited still super excited to introduce I have a co-host today on this episode. Ladies and gentlemen, Sean Lyons. So great to be a host. I didn't realize I was a host. You're a co-host on this show today so today we are bringing in Justin Cook. You may have heard me talk about Justin Cook on the podcast as an EOS implementer. EOS is an acronym for the entrepreneurial entrepreneurial operating system and it is based around the book called Traction by Gina Wickman. Now if you're out there you've probably heard of the book Traction. Gina Wickman's amazing. They do a big conference every year. Us at our restaurants we work the EOS process. I am the integrator. We have a visionary and I know that you Sean also work on the EOS system. We do yeah and we we love it but like I said not but and because we don't have an implementer I'm assuming that they help with a lot of things that the natural gaps that we have when we started implementing in ourselves but I was just briefly sharing before this that we've come up with ways to fill the gaps that that our own dysfunction of our team and implementing the EOS system and I was just saying the gaps that we experience in restaurants specifically when doing EOS is that it does require a certain amount of time every week and then every quarter and then every year and so from

03:52a weekly perspective it's really hard to carve out more than an hour hour and a half just because of the craziness of restaurants. Every quarter I think you recommend an entire weekend which that's pricey for a lot of every quarter it's one day. There's one it's called a quarterly pulsing where you kind of get the pulse of your your team and it's it is an off-site and it is one day and it is it's a lot of fun. Yeah well ours is not so much fun ours is five hours back to back cramming as much as possible by the end of it it feels like you're a vegetable brain but the things we've been doing have changed that but it's not a full you know going out to dinner experience which again it's just a cost and a pricing and I'm sure it pays for itself but you know there's I guess that's just where we have to get to and then from a yearly perspective I think that's the weekend right during a yearly meeting but again there's an annual planning you typically do in like the beginning of January and we're gonna talk to Justin about all this stuff about just kind of what that looks like and like I said we so we are self implementing which naturally you know when somebody does that it's like learning from YouTube and you get the big ideas and you miss some of the details and so we filled in some of those details but know that one of the biggest things that we've been able to do to make us more effective is to make meetings in general more effective through very specific tactics and strategies which just makes the US process more effective overall. Well I'm excited so that's why Sean is here today because I can talk to Justin and you can hear me talk about why I think EOS is great or not but the more people that I meet with through NARA and the more restaurants that I'm walking into and the more times after the interview and we're talking and it's like what are the things that you're challenged with the most it continues to keep coming up and a lot of it is this operational opportunities how do we communicate really well our meeting cadence and then just I don't know what the next year the next three years look like and it's like well you have to be very intentional with those things and you have to put

05:54together a VTO and they're like a VT what like and it's a whole thing and I really I keep recommending Justin to more and more people and I wanted you as somebody who's self-evident to come in and just kind of be a part of this conversation so we are gonna take a real quick break just off the bat we're gonna hear a quick word from our sponsor I'm actually gonna play the Justin Cook ad right now and then we're gonna come back and we're gonna have Justin Cook live in studio if your leadership team is not on the same page and you are constantly having these long meetings and you're not getting traction this is your opportunity today I'm talking about the entrepreneurial operating system EOS yes it is based around the book by Gino Wickman and traction we use it at our restaurants they use it at frothy monkey they use it at at least barbecue they use it at Carrington Row Germantown Cafe Park Cafe lots of restaurants are using it because it helps and let me tell you today Justin Cook is a great facilitator Justin helps business owners and their leadership teams implement the entrepreneurial operating system which is a set of simple practical tools disciplines to help you get better at three things vision traction and to be healthy vision is getting you and your leadership team 100% on the same page with who you are where you're going and how you're going to get there traction is helping your leaders become more disciplined and accountable to execute on the right things that will make your vision become reality because a lot of times you're doing a lot of stuff but not the right stuff healthy is helping your leaders become a healthy functional cohesive leadership team because unfortunately leaders don't function well as a team if you start with the leaders the rest of the organization will follow and you'll get to a point to where your entire team is crystal clear on vision everywhere you look people are executing the things that make your vision come true and it's a great healthy fun place to work if that resonates with you you can email Justin right now at justin.cook at EOSworldwide.com or you can call

07:58him 615-336-7133 to see if EOS is a right fit for you he will come down and do an initial kind of introduction and ask you a bunch of questions it is totally free definitely call Justin today okay welcome back you just heard the ad for EOS and Justin Cook and now we are joined live welcoming in studio Justin Cook he's an EOS implementer hey Justin what's up how's it going I tell you the crowd just gets so excited when we have these new people in studio I have that effect everywhere I go it's a thing honestly it's just normal for me at this point Justin is followed with his humility here I love it yeah Justin this is not your first time on the podcast it's not you were on the show May 15th 2022 yeah three and a half years ago guys it doesn't feel that long but it also feels that long yeah it's a weird it's a weird paradox but yes that makes sense people say like your kids grew up so fast and I always go no I'm not I'm not subscribing to this like and they go long days short years yeah yeah that long days short years because you look back on you go gosh damn so fast but like there are days you're like well this day never freaking end yeah and then they do so welcome in gentlemen we have Sean Lyons here I don't know if do we say you are the proprietor you're one of the owners over at Carrington Row German Count town cafe and Park Cafe proud Nara restaurants love to have you guys and you guys work on EOS but you're self-implemented we talked about this a little bit in the intro Justin you work with all kinds of businesses tell us a little about yourself and kind of how you got into this so my journey began probably it was about ten years ago I was part of the leadership team of a security integrator that does access

10:00control cameras alarms and the two owners had merged their two businesses a couple years before and I always say they got married without doing their premarital counseling right like they were just clashing they were doing this the business was bleeding money they were on the verge of dissolving their partnership and I had come from outside of either of their businesses and so I had a good trusting relationship with both of them and they asked me to facilitate some conversations around whether their partnership was salvageable which is not awkward at all but I fortunately I had heard about us at a conference and I thought man if we did this and we could get you aligned on your vision we could use that as a filter for everything else and so we decided we self-implemented and I led our implementation a year later we had had a million dollar swing back into the black four years later we were the largest locally owned security integrator in Nashville and they were able to exit two years after that which is why they had merged their businesses in the first place so I just got to see the transformative power of EOS I went into doing some consulting work and when you're doing consulting you're telling people exactly what to do and then watching them not do it and I kept thinking man they would execute better if they were running on the US because it's such a powerful system for execution so I started offering US implementation had several take me up on it and the rest is history like this is what I was put on earth to do it's what I'm passionate about it's what I absolutely love eat sleep and breathe this stuff yeah I don't think I knew that I don't think I knew that part of the story yeah I love that yeah so if I'm listening to this and I'm a restaurant owner right now and I've never heard of EOS yeah what's the simplest way to explain what it is and why it matters in business or even in hospitality yeah I mean in any business

12:01hospitality like restaurants or hospitals or hotels or I've worked with plastic surgeons or electrical contractors like it doesn't matter all of them have humans and EOS is a way of managing the human energy in your business and ultimately if you just played the ad you probably talked about we really help you with three things vision traction and healthy vision getting everybody aligned on who you are where you're going and how you're gonna get there right because you can imagine everyone is a ball of energy and their energy is pointed in all different directions and when it's pointed in different directions it's pulling against each other and if we can get all of that energy aligned in the same direction then magic can happen and so we get everybody aligned on vision traction is executing on the things that make the vision a reality I see so often businesses are doing a lot of stuff but they're just not doing the right stuff or they don't have that discipline and accountability in their execution and then healthy is just getting you to be open and honest functional and cohesive especially as a leadership team so often when I start with a team they're like a work group they're a group of leaders and each of them has their own little thing but they're not a team they're not like I'm invested in if I own sales I'm focused on sales and if ops doesn't execute that's ops problem but we've got a shift right none of us win unless we all win and so sales needs to be just as invested as ops is in ops success and so it's that shift to really being a team and if we can do that with the leadership team the rest of the organization will follow and so ultimately EOS is just a system of simple practical tools that help you do those things I saw Sean shake in his head he was good you're going over kind

14:05of the everybody the ball of energy piece which I think every restaurant in the world just identified with that all these balls of energy going in all the different directions pulling away and then getting them on the same page Sean what were you thinking well I'm just thinking in restaurants they say like the big key milestones are starting your first one and then yes seconds hard but then the third is kind of like a make it or break it time just because you do have a lot of key leaders and then they have their own teams and it's not always the owners we usually have a dominating presence you don't have as much of a dominating presence so it's so much more important that everybody's aligned or else it could fall apart yeah but if you can get them all on the same page it's the foundation to having a lot of success and so like we're literally going through all that right now and because likely because we're self implementing we're using EOS as their framework and then I say we're going a level deeper it may already be included in actual EOS but the the how to hold people accountable the how to address issues and create safety right the actual words that you use and like the actual tactics that you do to get everybody to bring their we call it your inside voice out or in my case since I'm the owner and I like to talk my outside voice in like there's tools that we're working on from a separate person that's helping us make us more effective but I'm sure with an implementer a lot of those tools are already included in in that practice sometimes sometimes that's the work that I'm doing with the the leadership team in the room and really setting the example for them to take from there but then there are lots of tools out there outside of the US around specifically around communication and how you communicate there are not necessarily us tools one of my favorite books is the psychological safety play book right and it's all about creating psychological safety in your organization and just some very practical tactical ways to do that so that you can get the best results from something like EOS because one of the

16:09things I'll say when I'm talking to a team about whether we're gonna work together is you need to be willing to be open and honest and vulnerable and it's okay if you haven't been yet but you need to be willing to be because if we can't go there we're not gonna solve any of this other stuff and I it's funny I just I had a call just before this with somebody that was asking me about clarity breaks which is something we we encourage leaders to do just take time to take to get clarity and he asked me can clarity breaks be abused it can people take too many clarity breaks right and and underneath that I was like okay this isn't about clarity breaks he wanted to know how many are allowed I was like this is a trust thing like what's what's behind this question that you're asking me and we talked through it I was like what would it look like for you to just have that honest conversation with this person and say to him hey these are the things that I'm feeling and that's the stuff that like you've got to be willing to do that for EOS to work the tools are only gonna be as powerful as your ability to be open and honest with each other and does EOS give tools to do that because what we're digging into right now is we can say very easily that hey you need to have this open conversation but how do you do that like how do you actually physically how what are the words you use to open that conversation and so this is the work of Rudy Mick it's Mick systems but we have something that we've implemented in our company over the past eight months where when this situation comes up like you talk to that owner and then the owner says you need to or an employee maybe to the owner or a boss they say like a term throughout the company it's in your verbiage hey I have a moose right and so a moose so the moose is an elephant in the room but just like in restaurants we want something fast quick easily interpretable and when you say moose the

18:09S cut one it makes you smile a little bit and then it's also goofy it's a moose so you say I have a moose but what moose does if everybody understands that concept top-down then it's like oh I'm about to go into people problem solving and then there's a formula I say I have a moose and then the person who is receiving the moose says thank you for the feedback which allows you to actually take a break take a breath realize that you're about to get into a conversation and then also once you're in the conversation how easy it is for somebody who's emotionally riled up a little bit dysregulated which is normal for everybody how do you realize when it's becoming dysfunctional and so the work that he is bringing in for us is saying hey if you hear things like hey everybody isn't agreeing with this new process we're never gonna get there these broad terms that are not specific or hey when Brandon was here when he was the leader you know that this never would have happened so when people are stuck in the past so clearly people when people when you start literally hearing the words that say everything nowhere no one those general terms or when they're stuck in the future hey this is again not going to happen or what if what if is the number what if this happens yeah so when people are like as the leader who's receiving the feedback and somebody brings it to you or vice versa or somebody brings it to you and you start hearing these words like okay I have about 90 seconds to two minutes until this becomes unproductive and the word he uses drama I hate the word drama but like that's what they use and so what's the tactic to get them moving forward like actually how do you get them moving forward you say that's great thank you for that feedback I appreciate your perspective but today moving forward what do you need today moving forward what this is what we're going to do because being stuck in the past or being stuck in the future isn't actually getting anywhere you just just yeah in

20:10the in the waters so I think that's where I was when I bring up us with our he's our fractional COO when I bring it up he's like I love it he's like the one lacking piece that he sees in it is it doesn't teach tactically how to move from one step to the other but again he's also not an implementer so I'm super curious I have a feeling like Justin's about to answer that yeah no I think I think there's their EOS is focused very much on first principles you gotta have it stuff I like the fundamentals and we could go we could expand and expand X but we're really focused on like what's the stuff you need to do to be clear on your vision what's the stuff you need to do to execute well on it like that kind of stuff when it comes to that kind of hyper specific communications training like here's how I would approach that if I had a team that was saying hey we're struggling to get people to be open and honest I would I would just say well what do you think is the root issue of that well people are people are afraid to raise their hand because you know in the past somebody out of them okay well what could we do and I would just dig into it with them and let them create their solution for how they're gonna handle that and I do it's funny you mentioned the moose like in my session room where I host my clients I have a set of animals sitting there and those aren't they're not like EOS things although I buy them from the EOS worldwide but yeah we have an elephant in the room and if you need to pick up the elephant and throw it at somebody and I've had a lot of animals thrown at me by the way mostly the squirrel most of the squirrels are that the bull the bull sometimes like that I've seen the horse I've seen some incredibly powerful moments of somebody picking up the bull and saying you're being a bully right now I was thinking bullshit but it's that's one with a dual meaning no bullshit and don't be a bully you have a figure you don't actually say it yeah

22:13but like it's ever in front of every setting there you can reach out and you can pick one up and like that kind of stuff creates a level of safety and so yeah I would say those are things that sort of tactically I do with a leadership team when I'm working with them but they're not always EOS tools and so like what I do I I'm a teacher facilitator and coach so I teach you the EOS tools and that's the stuff that when you read traction you've got it all in there like I love Gino because he gave it all away like he literally put the exercises in traction that we do with clients and and so teaching and that's about 15% of what I do and then the rest is the facilitation and coaching and it's being present with the team being in the moment seeing what's happening calling it out and helping them uncover their own answers and solutions see I really I hear so much of this come out in the five dysfunctions of a team have you read this from Patrick Lanzoni the five dysfunctions of a team that absence of trust and intention results and then everybody in the same page when there are those moments where somebody's afraid to have that conversation that's kind of that absence of trust if you trust me that where I'm coming from is a place that we both know that we want to get to and in our restaurants it was making every guest repeat guest like that was the number one thing and if we all trust every day in our meetings that we're all here to make every guest or repeat guest then any feedback that goes in especially in a group setting any feedback that happens shouldn't be a you're dumb this isn't right like hey have we thought about this I'm trying to make every guest repeat guess so I'm gonna throw my thing out there and it's like every they should be passionate meetings I want if there's a meeting that I finished and everybody's like okay that's what he wants us to do then they leave the room and they say that guy's an idiot that's a failure in every way like I need you to say that in I want to

24:19hear your voice let me know I think that's where passion comes from and then when you get to hear that person and go wow what great feedback thank you I'm gonna take that into consideration or we even may take a vote I mean if you have everybody there I know I think that's if you haven't read the five dysfunctions of a team it is massive when it comes to a leadership team and identifying why those individual circumstances might be happening because you look at you go oh that's what it is that's one of the dysfunctions it's actually this that's why I do love about EOS and that more specific tools everybody's so scared about AI and I think a lot of restaurants have realized that oh we do have a superpower you know maybe the margins are tough now and we don't know what it's gonna look like but doing this kind of people work it's just like working out you know like you can learn about it you can read about it all day long but to actually get the reps of like tamping emotions yeah reading a person in the moment the micro whatever jitters that people have on their face and reading those and be able to understand it that I mean that's that's gonna be human superpower I think that this type of skill set that we're developing and we're getting reps on like it's gonna be so hard to catch up from a mechanical standpoint yeah one of the things we did at the company where we self-implemented I I read the book crucial conversations my dad is a marriage and family therapist I read that book like 15 times okay yeah 15 times so I the the owners were still doing this a little bit and I'm talking to my dad about it because essentially it's it's therapy and he says you should read crucial conversations you should have them read crucial conversations I read it loved it had them read it they were so blown away by it that they sent me to go get certified as a crucial conversations trainer and we took all 85 of our employees through two days of crucial conversations training around exactly what you're describing when emotions are charged opinions differ and

26:21the stakes are high how do you handle those crucial conversations and so I say that to just say like that kind of stuff is so complimentary to EOS EOS doesn't go it they're not specific tools that are gonna go it's the skeleton to yeah but it's EOS is the framework in the system for running your business effectively yeah I remember I literally read traction two weeks before we opened our first restaurant reopened our first restaurant and we gotta we gotta do this did it pull it out our week did our first meeting threw it together but I mean I definitely I definitely attribute a lot of success that first year to the framework just because it gave you some form of yeah like you said I think some sort of sort of focus to put the energy and honestly gave me our investor a lot of confidence because it just gave yeah it just oh they have a system yeah he has a system yeah and which ultimately led to him being more confident and expanding but I think yeah I owe a lot to us for just the perceived professionalism that that I provided in the actual professionals and when used well I'm gonna bring this back to just the overall generalities of EOS because if we can talk about us all day long and I love this let's keep doing it what symptoms if I was a restaurant operator what symptoms should I look for to indicate that the business is running me instead of the other way around yeah that's a great question so I think I mean just that phrase you kind of know right but it's are you having consistent people issues right you're having trouble hanging on to people you're losing the good people and you're like why did why is that the person that quit why couldn't they have quit right so you're having consistent people issues profit and lack of profit right you're not getting the profit out of your business that you want and that you

28:24should be getting with the amount of effort that you're putting into it that's a big one right lack of control feeling like this is something that I think you you feel it in your body when you just don't have that control in your business when it it just feels like it's slipping from you I would say like I say nothing's working and that's what I mean by that is like you you keep reading these books saying okay this is the magic bullet this is the thing that's gonna fix it and you do that and it doesn't work and then you read another book and you try another thing and you start to lose a little credibility with your people because you've become sort of flavor of the month and so now instead of eagerly adopting the things they're sort of sitting back and be like okay well we'll see if this sticks right and so I think all of those are symptoms of like the business is running you you're not running the business it's true oh a hundred percent I mean I just pause for a second because I'm just thinking about how many people out there are going oh that's me that's me right now so if that if I hear that what's kind of the talk me off of that ledge because a lot of people are sitting there going that's me I don't know how to fix that like that's the thing that's driving me crazy right now what's the first step like what's the first thing somebody who's in that who's living that life right now can do to kind of I mean three really deep breaths and hold them in exhale but like yeah that give me give us some hope so the the first thing I would say is you're normal you're normal and just like know that and it's not because I think you get in that stage and you're looking at the stuff on social media or you're looking at the posts on LinkedIn and you're thinking all of these people around me are they've got it together and this is happening to me and that's really isolating and lonely and depressing and

30:29not true and not true like Gino came up with EOS because he was working he was one of the founding members of the entrepreneur organization chapter in Detroit while he was running his family business and he started working with entrepreneurs and over the course of working with like 80 companies 95% of them were experiencing what you what we just talked about 95% and it was 5% that weren't and he looked at those 5% and said okay well what is what's different what's happening there and it was all of the issues came down to a weakness in one of six areas in the business vision getting everybody a hundred percent on the same page people and having the right people in the right seats and knowing what that means and how to define it great great stuff yeah yeah right yeah data running the business on facts and figures not emotions and gut feelings issues their ability to actually dig in and solve issues at their roots not just play whack-a-mole with the symptoms but like really digging and solve the issues at its root process making sure that the most important things in the business are happening the right way in the best way every single time and then traction executing with discipline and accountability on the stuff that will create the business that you want and so when you like the thing if you're feeling that out of control we've figured out how to fix it like and that seems it seems almost cocky to say but at this point we've done it with with implementers we've done it with over 30,000 companies wow right and then probably 10x that are doing what you're doing have read the books and are using the tools in their business to get better results and so it's proven none

32:31of this is theory and so if you're feeling that way like call me I'll hop on the phone with you I'll give you a copy of traction like I'll do whatever I can to help you but know that there's there's a way out it doesn't have to be that way so let's jump into thank you for that that's that is encouraging to hear that to hear that like oh there's this that is part of my problem where do I start when I read traction I thought one of the most fascinating things was just the vision and most people who start a restaurant or visionaries they they see it they know everything and there's a term that they say in the book do you see what I'm saying yeah you see what I'm saying literally impossible to see what somebody is saying if your vision is so crystal clear and every single person in your organization understands the vision then then it is then you people so that everybody can see what you're saying so what does vision really mean for like a small restaurant group and is it more defining food service and culture or something else yeah so I mean what I love EOS really hones down vision is answering eight questions right and it's getting everybody a hundred percent on the same page with the answers to these eight questions first what are your core values and this is your handful of rules it's the culture for your organization and I feel like that one's so much it helps your people make the best decisions and that's what allows you to release some of the control because you know if they'll hey just run your decision through the lens of our core values and do what that tells you and they may not make the perfect decision but it'll be close enough it'll be good enough and so what are our core values what's our core focus why are we doing this like what's our passion and what are we best at

34:36right where should we be focused where are we going with our 10-year target right what's the big long-term goal so that we know what we're shooting for what's our what's our North Star what's our marketing strategy who are we gonna talk to and what are we gonna say to get them to choose us and so just those four things alone start to really crystallize who you are why you do this and what you're best at and where you should be focused where you're headed and who's gonna help you get there and then you start to bring it to the ground with a three-year picture okay well if we're on our way to that 10-year target what are we gonna look like three years from now right where does our revenue need to be where's our profit need to be some measurables that describes the size and scope of the change but then really paint a picture and this is the you see what I'm saying right because you actually describe what it's gonna look like what are the strategic changes that are happening what are the opportunities for growth for your people a lot of my clients use the three-year picture as a stay brochure like this is why you want to be here this is why you want to grow with this organization because this is where we're headed and when you yeah yeah I can still see that's ten steps might be ten years might be tough to extend years but yeah but three years you can see oh I can see that the seed of that happening yeah and when you when you paint that picture there's this thing in your brain called the reticular activating system and it's like if you're at a party and you hear your name from across the room amidst all the stuff it's that it's it's the thing in your brain that filters all the input that you're getting what makes it through to your conscious mind wonder if with chat GBT I just love the idea of the stay brochure because you know we're always hiring and stuff and especially people I let you just plug into chat GBT plug-in detail of what it is and please make a brochure

36:36visualizing like a literal brochure yeah just speak louder than words I'm just yeah that would be really cool yeah honestly easy to create nowadays yeah we have a VTO that we post in the kitchen yeah which that's what I'm describing yes so I was just gonna say so how can a restaurant use a tool like the VTO what is a VTO to define where they're gonna be and you know that that three years I think is really hard to as a leadership team if you're not used to doing that and nobody's walked you through all of these steps to help you kind of oh because you pull it out like you pull every single one of the you go over with the entire team and everybody collaborates to create all of these things and by the time you're done to go here's your VTO VTO is an acronym for vision traction organizer yeah right will you walk through continue walking through now that I've put a framework that what a VTO is and we post this in the kitchen like everybody gets to see this but do they actually read it because I posted in the office and it's so small I guess we should have a big one that they don't really do it so that that's I guess where my mind went because I post all the time but if you if I were to ask there's probably one out of a hundred people that even look at it even though we talk about it all the time so that's why like if we have a few almost me like a vision board that represents the vision track engine organizer yeah I feel like people would actually ask questions and then you can we do we do we do like our all-employee meetings we always start with a core value speech so we get up and we do the core value speech and then we review the VTO and where we're at as a company and it's you know if you're a server you're bartender you're a dishwasher a line cook hearing that kind of makes you feel like oh I get it I see why we're making some of these decisions what we're doing because I see what our three-year path is and then and then you go hey if you want more questions I'm gonna post this right here in the kitchen anybody can look at it and I'm available whenever you want to answer I'll answer any questions about it and I'd love to talk to you about it yeah and it's really kind of a cool thing because I just read this

38:38book called the obvious Adams and it's just about the obvious thing like when somebody comes up to you and says hey I'm really interested in this like what an indicator of somebody who wants more like if you're wondering who your leaders are who are the people that come talk to you about it like that it's obvious it's right there you're the you're the person that's really curious about a VTO yeah cool let's sit down and talk about that that's you're curious about our business and you want to learn more I'm excited to tell that story and we need more all company meetings we mostly do them in pre shifts and hit little bits so we're start we're doing our first all company like full all company in February so yeah that like that part of what we we prescribe is a quarterly like once a quarter you got it you got to repeat yourself often right and so quarterly and you've turned over you've turned so I mean yeah new people going through this vision together but you said one thing in there will anybody does anybody really read it or does anybody really say it and and I I want to key in on that because I was I was thinking about that on my way over here because a lot of times when we start to do some of this stuff we start to question like do they care and the answer is some of them do and some of them don't the a players do the a players get excited and the C players that's data exactly and why would you withhold it from the a players because the C players don't care yeah but I see teams do that I see teams like this this happened to us we had the company where I implemented we're doing quarterly say the companies and then we had a loud little contingent that was like this is a waste of time we should be in the field earning like we're we're billable we should be in the field it was probably ten people out of 90 and that came up and I was like so what you're telling me is you think we because the owners were challenging it like should we still do this and I was like so we shouldn't do it for the 80 people that do want to know because ten people are bored at the meeting right and like highlighting giving those

40:41opportunities for the a players to step up because it does it starts to suss those people out there is the right seat on the bus in the front of vision of because our CEO who seems to be very in a different way similar to you he's like are you gonna that's just part of change you know or a successful organization is is that filtering yeah and and I've started to do this over the past couple months where I you're scared that people are gonna leave but at the same time but what you realize is that actually you get more references from the best people when the bad people yeah yes yes I'm in the midst of that right now and getting over that fear yeah it's a legit it's a legitimate fear and I think that's part of that's part of my job is holding up that mirror to the team and just helping them sort of see it through that lens so back to back to the VTO though so vision traction organizer these first questions that I've described are all on the first page of the two-page document and they're the vision questions core values core focus tenure target marketing strategy three-year picture and then when you the other thing that a great three-year picture does beyond just like helping you see it the stay brochure is it helps you get clear on what do we need to do this year and so you flip to the traction page and the traction page is where we get shit done right if that's what we want to look like three years from now what needs to happen this year what are the three to seven goals we've got to get done this year and then we work backwards what needs to happen in the next 90 days with rocks if we're gonna achieve those goals what are the three to seven rocks we got to tackle and then the last thing is just the issues what's all the other stuff opportunities obstacles barriers that we've got to deal with that we're not gonna deal with right now because

42:41we've set our rocks for the quarter we know what we're focused on and we just give that place that stuff a place to land so that we can let go of it and we'll come back to it every quarter and say is this the quarter we want to do something about it and so ultimately that's getting clear on vision for an organization and I have a blank version of 90 pulled up behind him here I love it 90 is a website that we use to look at kind of I know showing the VTO it actually has a VTO section yeah on the and you can type all of this stuff in here and it's there and you can download it you can print it it'll walk you through thing it's a website called n i n e t y comm i o dot i o dot i o sorry yes it is i o but it'll do everything you're talking about it'll help you walk you through the framework yeah they're a licensed EOS license to them to have all the IP in there and yeah 90 makes it really easy to track all of this stuff and keep it so you don't have to have paper printed documents all the time or be doing it in a word doc or something like that yeah yeah yeah see it well and 98 I don't know how expensive it is but it's it's a great deal so when you think about a VTO and I want to get back to what we were just talking about and thank you for everything you just now said I think this is all really helpful stuff we're talking about that in an all-employee meeting I'm talking about the vision down to the service bartenders dishwashers line cooks well really we're talking about leadership teams are you always on the hunt for the next restaurant location open to any sweet deals on retail space that may come your way why not be proactive and have the market experts out there working for you the retail team at Lee and Associates led by Miller Chandler and Megan Glaser is your go-to for all things commercial real estate in Middle Tennessee they're located downtown and all of it in the middle of the Batman building Miller is a Tennessee native so you know he knows the neighborhoods and

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46:46business but getting adequate insurance at least gives you a fighting chance to mitigate some of those risks it's well worth considering a custom-built restaurant insurance policy as it'll not only make life simpler but it may even overcome some risk you haven't even considered for example you'll usually want to cover risk to property such as the building and equipment along with liability to customers and staff right yeah that's easy but remember there's an important difference between general liability such as a customer slipping on a spoiled drink and a professional liability such as about the food poisoning from bad food or inadequate preparation other elements that are easily overlooked include the risk of fraud and data theft that come with handling cash and card payments the risk of spoiled food you have to throw away if there's a power outage or refrigerator failure and the risk of lost business if you close for repairs after a fire protect your restaurant business by contacting them today it's so easy and when any of those situations happen what you don't want to do is get and dial an 800 number and be put on hold to talk to somebody you have to explain your business to that is why you call Matthew Clements Matthew Clements at Robbins Insurance when any of those scenarios happen you pick up the phone you dial 863-409-9372 Matthew answers goes how can I help you you tell him your problem he's your friend you know him why would you not have an agent that you work with every single day any of these situations right here you need guidance you need support and Matthew Clements and his team at Robbins Insurance are there to provide it you should call today I'm gonna put that number down one more time that's 863-409-9372 call Matthew Clements today right so if you're an owner or a GM or a director of operations or a whatever you're at a high level and you're leading this maybe you're the integrator maybe you are the visionary and those the two positions that kind of run the whole process of the EOS process middle management yeah what if middle management are the people that you're

48:47having the struggle with you're trying to get them to see the vision because if we can get our management team on the same page that VTO really helps them yes a lot I mean that's it if you're telling it to the entire team and there's ten people that don't want to hear it you really need to have people on that that are at that manager meeting the managers need to be on page with this yeah the success or failure of EOS in an organization it lives or dies with the middle management the leadership team can do it great but if they can't translate it to the next level of managers the magic of EOS is not leadership team do everything the magic of EOS is harnessing the power of the entire organization and so you've got to be able to get those that next level of managers on board as well and I think what what I found you know I was working in an industry that was like very it was a mix of office people and very blue collar like we're out working on a construction site you don't need an MBA to understand these principles and Gino was obsessed with simplicity and so it's really broken down in a way that it is so accessible to everybody because we're not throwing a lot of extra stuff in there it's just fundamental stuff now I want to talk about something that's probably heavy on a lot of other people's minds and it deals with that middle management side there's something that there's a tool and when you sign up for an implementer you get a whole big gigantic book that has a whole toolbox of so many things cash flow drivers and then just a ton of these different things yeah one of my favorite things was the people analyzer right so your tool so what I want to now talk about is the people that don't get it the people that are like this is stupid I don't I'm

50:50not on board I want to work here I need a paycheck but these core values this is bullshit I don't I don't believe in all this corporate jargon I just want to come in clock in write the schedule and execute a shift I don't need to oh this is all just too much right there's a people analyzer to analyze all of this stuff will you go into the how that tool works a little bit because I think yeah people should this people allow people to stay way longer than they should yes should I get rid of this person is a major question that a lot of people have in a business and people stay too long and so how do you know to get rid of somebody I think of the people analyzer as the ultimate thinking tool and a lot of this stuff is these are thinking tools and so with the people analyzer you list your core values across the top and you list your people down the side and you just take them through and on each core value they get one of three ratings they get a plus if they live that core value most of the time nobody's perfect we're not looking for perfection they get a minus if they rarely exhibit that core value they're pretty much the opposite and if you're really struggling between the two because they're it depends on the day they get a plus-minus and so you just you go through each core value plus plus minus or minus and right away you see where your issue is right anytime I have a team they're bringing up people somebody lands on the issues list and we're talking about a person I like to you know let the line out for a minute I let them talk about have you done a people analyzer I completely forgot about that until you just said it and like wow that's so simple let's get the clear analyzer out I love I was really good at doing that anytime we'd have a discussion should we not go get a piece of paper let's go let's people analyze this this is not hard let's go and it it takes a 45-minute conversation it makes

52:54it a five-minute conversation yeah cool it's it's yeah like you said it's all filtered through the values and it just if it if you're everybody's bought in it makes it so clear and so you just run them through and you've got to have a bar because here's the thing if you've got five core values if the bar is everybody has to be pluses on all five you're probably not ever gonna get fully staffed right because nobody's perfect leadership teams aren't perfect but if you've got five core values the bar is probably you gotta have three pluses and maybe two plus minuses if you really want to step it up maybe four pluses one plus minus but if they're below the bar that's the trigger we're gonna coach them up or out once they I guess you just said it you can almost do it anytime yeah I'm thinking about our all-company meeting in February where this is our line in the sand of hey this is they've heard about it they've it's trickled through the ranks again our top level managers know at the middle level managers kind of are aware and the line level people have heard it whispers and starting to be implemented but we're gonna put all company and all that stuff I guess probably right after that as people are reacting to we call it wind checking like are they actually serious about it that's probably a good time to do a big version of a people analyzer is like maybe a month after we do in all company or a re-rollout I think that could be good I think one this is it's a tool that you use as needed and then I have a lot of teams that just do it quarterly like they use it as needed and they do they run everyone through it quarterly so I made a form and this is how we do I don't do I don't do quarterly reviews I do quarterly checkups and I literally have each core value written and then I have a you get to grade yourself D is developing whichever hates the D because I know we want to get a D but D is developing then there's meeting expectations exceeding expectations and constantly

54:56that's like there's four different grades and like there's the all the time I do it and I need to work on that and then there's two that are kind of plus minuses but the plus plus minus and a minus minus plus I want to give them more of a gray area and I give it to them and I say fill this out and grade yourself and I'm gonna do it too and then we sit down and it doesn't have to be when somebody's underperforming this is a great way to explain to your top performers that they're crushing it yeah great way to sit down with them and say dude you're across the board and then you get to explain to them you get to have a one-on-one 20 minute meeting with them and explain to them why they're doing what you've seen them do that's why they're exceeding on core values all the time they get to leave that meeting go hell yeah and if you do have an area where you need opportunity you can still lead that one off with you're doing these two that's great but you know I'd really like to see you improve in this area and you gave yourself with you so you know it too so good so we're both on the same page I'd love to see work on that how can I help how can I help you get better at this aspect of our culture and then they go you know what you're right I just need to work on it but you're the other four if you have five core but are great and then it just opens up a really clean and you do this one-on-one you know you don't do this in front it's a one-on-one kind of a thing but it lets people know that the a they're serious about this stuff this isn't just something they're putting on a wall in the kitchen and saying these are our core values and then never live it like but if you actually holding people accountable to live these core values on a regular basis they all go oh well this is what I'm held accountable for you measure what matters right and this is so it's and it's a super easy form to do and everybody knows that it's coming because it's a quarterly thing yeah and it's just a great way to open up conversations and a positive and kind of make some potentially negative ones turn around to be positive and do you have like the direct leader is do their people like you know like the execs would do the middle managers middle managers do the line level or I'm gonna be honest with you we don't do this very well yeah I want to say that we do this is the dream

56:57is to do that and we have done this on multiple occasions I would like this to be a regular thing we do not execute this very well well I've thought that's the unique thing about restaurants is we had something very similar when I was the GM playing that and we had kind of the quote-unquote top people and everybody's working all cylinders we could do every 60 days a one-on-one without this structure and we were happy but it was a maybe a for two sets of 60 whatever over 120 days we were able to do it consistently and as soon as something else comes up I'm sure this is probably trying a lot of industries it falls apart a little bit you know so yeah curious about that you're less unique than you think it's like working out you have to continually practice this and be consistent with it or you lose that I mean you don't lose the muscle memory but you're if you work out all the time I could go run a mile when you don't do it for a while it becomes more difficult to get back into it I mean like in my opinion yeah what we you can let it get away from you what we prescribe is a quarterly conversation that anybody that has direct reports they have a quarterly conversation with their direct report and we specifically don't call it a review because when you call it a review the walls go up so what are you calling it just a quarterly conversation yeah that's and yeah so it's not a review review I should get a raise at the end of this if I do great right yeah yeah yeah quarterly I'm giving four raises a year no no no this is a quarterly conversation but it's a quarterly conversation and it's what's working what's not working that simple but how you prepare for the quarterly conversation as a manager do a people analyzer how they prepare have them do a people analyzer on themselves right and that that that gives you the content of the what's working and what's not working all right there's another aspect of the people analyzer that's probably the most important part of it there's three three letters G W C that's the end of the the people analyzer yes you have

59:02the five core value I'm talking about leaders in the restaurant you want to know if they have G W C and G W C is probably the biggest one to me because these are non-negotiables right you don't go oh they could miss one and then right these are you have to have these and it's get it want it have the capacity can you go over what that means as far as a leader in a restaurant if I'm looking at a leader should this is this person a right fit how does how does G W C play role so one I would not limit it to leaders okay G W C is any position in any organization the difference so the way we're talking about the people analyzer and I said earlier right people in the right seats the core values half is assessing right people is this right person they fit our core values that's all you got to know right seat is assessing are they good at their job and G W C is assessing are you good at your job and so do you get it get it is are you hardwired to do this work is this what you're naturally wired to not just understand it but you you were wired there's lots of stuff I understand that I'm not great at right so get it is hardwiring you can't change hardwiring people either are or they aren't want it you want this work you get up every morning excited to do this work and then capacity to do it is the capability and that comes from training experience repetition it's the mental and emotional fortitude to do the job well and that like you said you you got to be yeses across the board there right for someone to be in the right seat now you can't move the needle on get it you can't move the needle on want it you can move the needle on capacity with training and experience over time a lot of times you can't move it fast enough and so you've just got to be conscious

01:01:03of that right now you may be able to develop somebody to have the capacity to be a manager while they're in a different position right so you're training them up to get there but I've seen it where somebody gets plugged into that seat or maybe someone gets plugged into an integrator seat even and they're like we can we can we can train them up they will have they're capable of learning it okay what's the timeline because we can't just indefinitely let this run so what's our what's our timeline for it's got to be we got to get it to a yes you rose your hand there what were you what were you raising your hand for well I remember when we first rolled out our version of EOS I remember I read this portion reviewed it but it was the least reviewed because I'm like I don't need to worry about that yet and now like I almost I forgot about it that's why I'm like taking notes because now it's like front front and foremost because the frameworks there we have a lot of the big blocks there but now that we're growing we have other positions and we have people have grown with us in certain capacities and some have raised their hands said I actually don't like this role you know I thought I was going to and I don't I don't want to be and so as a small organization like well do we still have room for you sometimes we do and sometimes we don't yeah or we have people that you said they they get it want it and the capacity is there and it's like well but again can you do it quick enough can you get there and then part of it you know you start judging yourself it's like well I I put we put them there yeah and is on us to give them that training to get to that point and so I think it's comforting to not just part of part of business and that's just part of the progression but um there's definitely a and you touched on the thing that I see leaders struggle with so much you we said someone said it earlier like we don't we don't let people go fast enough and almost always it's because we're so internally torn on did I do enough did I do enough to set them up for success have I done

01:03:05everything I can for them and absolutely we should be doing that and we can't own them being successful like they have to play the bigger part in that and so just getting clear okay I know you don't have the experience or the reps in this if we're gonna take a shot on you here we got to get you to a yes in six months and in six months they either will or they won't but being clear on that it's it's a gift to everybody right and you you also hit on that really painful when someone raises their hand and they don't want it anymore do we have another seat because it's hard you'll have two people issues you'll have right people in the wrong seat and that sucks because they fit your core values you love them they've probably been with you for a long time but they're not good at their job or they don't want their job and hopefully you have another seat but if you don't you've got to let them go it is not fair to them it's not fair to the rest of the organization to keep them around and then you'll have wrong people in the right seat and these can be even harder because they kick ass at their job and maybe your maybe your customers love them but everyone else is paying the toxic presence in your organization they're eating away at your culture in ways that you can't even see and you said it earlier Brandon like some people think the core values are corporate jargon well if you don't do something about it when someone's not living them it is corporate jargon yes that guy who does a great job at his tables who sells really well and is always selling the expense of wine or whatever but never runs food never buses tables always late skips out on side work isn't a team player you know comes in just hey look I'm good enough at my tables I don't have to do all this that guy isn't living your culture and everybody around you is suffering because of it and it's

01:05:05tough because you see the results that's that wrong person right seat yeah and if you don't do something about it you might as not well not have core values well I think the the humane piece to it is giving them the timeline and being clear about expectations and allowing them to be like to be very manager stuff I mean really it's I never even with people analyzer if someone's below the bar or what you always coach it starts with coach hey here's an honest conversation here's where things stand this is not sustainable for continued employment so here's what needs to change put the problem in front of you between you here's what needs to change how are we gonna change it all right we're gonna check back in 30 days or 60 days whatever your timeline is and then check back and have they fixed it or not if they haven't hey I wasn't just kidding around like this is serious we've got to do that this is this is strike two like we got to fix this I'm gonna check back in 30 days and 30 days later nine times out of ten they've left because they've seen the writing on the wall every now and then you'll have to make that tough call for the greater good of the organization and that's transformational stuff yeah that's transformation and that's you know when we first hired Justin I said I could just implement I could look I could do this we don't need to spend way I'll do it and then sitting in the room with Justin I've never been happier that we had somebody else doing it because he doesn't just answer the questions for you you know you're in there and you're thinking this guy's gonna answer the questions for you and you're like hey what do we do about this person you're like you then ask the right questions of us on how we learn how to solve these things if you're not sitting in front of us that was so powerful to me I loved sitting in there just because his responses weren't oh you just do this

01:07:06his was well in this what are the tools that you have in front of you let's let's go to those tools me teach you how to get the discipline to continue to use these on a regular basis such good stuff I have so many memories we kind of graduated a couple years or a year and a half ago and I haven't got to spend much time with Justin I sit here and I'm like god I miss this guy it was so good to be sitting in those eight-hour days he's got his place he has an implementation room it's an off Elliston place it's a really big cozy room everybody sits around he's got the best snacks if you're gonna be stuck with me for eight hours oh my god you good food good drinks dude there's like bowls of candy in front of everybody and then all the snacks you can imagine Pellegrinos coke the whole thing that's great and then you're like every time I would go I would like have to like eat a bunch before I got there so I didn't just like I like everybody's judgment like those Reese's peanut butter cups holy shit I'm gonna eat like 12 of those today like it's on can I be one more advertisement for us yeah completely side shot one of the biggest values that I had with us was actually in our personal life yeah like my wife is entrepreneurial on the side as well and I remember we didn't have any major issues but I saw the success we were having in the business and I was like and but there's little issues that come up in every marriage and I was like hey would you mind we're doing this thing in the business would you be offended if I did this for our personal life yeah and I thought she was gonna get offended and she's like no let's do it and so like I what I tell a lot of restaurant managers now especially we have a lot of them that are having kids now and you know some bring up that they're nervous about time management the industry and some don't I'm like you should pay attention to that yeah cuz I am NOT prescribed to like oh you know owned a restaurant a manager restaurant and then I got divorced and the next thing that's that's not an acceptable yeah like it happens of course but don't just let that be acceptable and so we rolled it

01:09:10out and when we we had a spot every week where we talked to be in our weekly meeting but yeah IDS you know that was the first six months that was the most valuable because we had these little tiny things that built up yeah but through the IDS process we brought up all this little things but through that we crafted a schedule in a life that's so specific to us that other people would be like why do you do that but it's so unique and curated to our lives that it's just like a it's a very good system for the craziness quote-unquote that we have going on and it was purely due to like just having a structure yeah it was like self-implemented therapy in a sense yeah but it just created space for us to know and throughout the week when some came up of there let me just write that down there's a place for it we can IDS that later yeah so it was it's that like that's honestly what I'm most thankful for because I love my businesses but I love my wife more so like yeah it's been is super helpful there's a if you'll email me and remind me because I will forget but there's a family VTO oh cool where some of the questions are shifted to be around your family but like what are your dream okay yeah what are the two like what are your dream goals as a family and then as you're thinking about this year where do we want our net worth to be by the end of the year like what are our financial goals for the year what are the what are the three to seven big things we want to tackle this year right and maybe it's the amount of free days that you're spending with your family or it's the vacations or whatever but like it it just again this is all first principle stuff right that applies to business it applies to life how you move forward and get traction on what you want to achieve so I thought you I thought you brought it and I love it I want that I need that that would be really especially I'm doing a transition right now in my own life that I talk about in our next episode not this one we're gonna talk about it our next episode but teasing this is a really good segue into meetings right so many people I think we're trying to kind of all over the

01:11:11place but I want to make sure because everybody has meetings right meetings meetings meetings and most people hate them that could have been an email right yes most restaurants do a manager meeting once a week or once a month or whatever their cadence is one of the main things that we get out of EOS is our level 10 meetings and we call them level 10 meetings as we all rate the meeting at the end of the meeting we used to have these meetings where we would say we're gonna meet at Monday at 2 and the meetings you start about Monday at 220 when everybody got done with all their stuff and they all kind of filtered in and then you started the meeting and you kind of would say hey we need to get our shit together guys this is happening this is going on and why aren't you and this and everybody kind of sits there and they feel like a scolded dog or they say this was great we're just gonna celebrate our wins we don't know how we got him but hell we're crushing it you know and then somebody says hey what about Sarah and then they go oh yeah oh man did you hear this and then you're off on these tangents and then one person says yeah but Mark said oh what about Mark and then you're talking about Mark for 10 minutes and then you're talking and it's like man this meeting was an hour and 45 minutes and you finish my guys we get back to work all right break we're all done yeah and you go do we have action items yeah what that was a waste of my time and it was two hours of my time level 10 meetings changed our organization because they start on time every time they're structured they're organized and they finish on time and we get shit done yeah let's walk through a level 10 meeting and the reasoning behind it and what a good leadership meeting should look like yeah so I want to start by saying the like the ultimate purpose when we think about the level 10 meeting and the meeting pulse right we call it a meeting pulse for a reason because it's like a heartbeat your organization and you really want to keep the circles connected and if you if you imagine

01:13:12you've got two circles and those circles each person is a circle with their priorities and what's important to them and what they're working on and what they're thinking about and you can operate where the circles never touch and everybody's got lots of time to get things done but you're working at cross-purposes you're not focused on the right stuff you're you're doing duplicative work two people are doing the same thing because they didn't know the other person was working on it and so then a lot of organizations go and the circles get on top of each other and they're having these meetings where they're telling everybody about everything and it's like meetings after meetings after meetings and it's a lot of updates right and then there's no time to get work done report on it yeah and so the level 10 meeting is about hitting that Goldilocks of just keeping the circles connected so that we're on the same page but we still got lots of time to get things done and so the structure I'll just walk through the structure these do starts with a segue everybody share a piece of personal and professional good news this builds team health it creates psychological safety right you as you get to know each other you start to trust each other more and there's some science to starting with gratitude because you're gonna spend most of the meeting dealing with issues so we just it transitions us out of the chaos of the day-to-day into the meeting five minutes quick like one sentence personal one professional keep it moving and then you're gonna go into reporting mode and in 15 minutes you're gonna cover the most important stuff in the business you're gonna start with your scorecard and your scorecard is the 5 to 15 measurables that give you a pulse on the business are we on track or off track on these things and if it's off track we're not gonna talk about it we're gonna drop it down to the issues list that's the trouble that we what this is where the discipline comes in and it is easier said than done and this is where in 90 there's it there's a meeting pulse that you can start and has a timer yeah and we go to scorecard and

01:15:14we look over and we set these measurables that we want to hit what we want to hit and if something is red because it'll show green and red if we hit it if it's a red for more than two times it's an automatic drop-down hey it's red twice in a row hey let's drop that down let's let's take a deeper dive into it we're not gonna go into it now somebody's me go well that's because that restaurant you know just wrap it down we're just gonna drop it down and then you click a button and you put add to issues list boom and it drops down so you drop the issues down but you go through that scorecard then you go through your rocks which are those quarterly priorities and everybody's doing their rocks are you on track or off track again you're gonna be tempted to share the progress that you've made why you're on track why you're off track that's the circles getting on top of each other as more than I need to know I just need to know on track or off track if it's off track well rocks are the most important things in the business if it's off track to get done let's drop it down to the issues list and we haven't touched on rocks yet just to kind of say like if you're out there listening as we didn't touch on rocks in this episode yet really yeah I sort of glanced over it rocks are your 90-day priorities and you you assign rocks in your quarterly pulsings you assign what the most important things are for your business and then each person kind of takes one of those rocks and they carry that rock and that's the most important thing that they can be working on and this is when you check in on that and you go hey you're working on a new bar menu that's the most important thing for you are you on track or off track yeah perfect they go on track and you go great keep Sean you're working on a new Valentine's menu how's that looking I'm off track all right cool we'll drop it down yeah that's how it goes and so yeah so so we're just we're going through this on track off track dropping it down to the issues list we get through our rocks then we're gonna hit customer and employee headlines and this is an opportunity for good bad or ugly but it's it's a one sentence headline that hey this is something I'm aware of that I want everyone else to be aware of it's nice not there's AI that does that for

01:17:16us a lot of the reviews and it'll just give AI here's your top good stuff your top bad stuff in the themes employee headline being Johnny came in the other day and we all smelled alcohol and we feel like there's something going on there just that's a headline I'd want to bring up for a big great we'll drop that down we had a guest get too drunk the other night and this happened but just a headline for Bay to be aware of we don't need to drop that down this is just under control I've got her control just announcing into the team it's a headline yeah this is just a just we don't even need to cascade it it's just a headline yeah another side of this thing but yeah so you're just you're just this is just a chance to get up to speed our customers happy our people happy right and so then at this point reporting only we've covered our measurables that tell us if we're on track our rocks that are helping us create the future business that we want are those on track and then customers employees happy and then we're gonna go over a to-do list and the to-do list is comes from when you solve issues somebody's got to go do something usually and this is something Gino discovered early on before he added this into the level 10 is teams would solve the issues and someone would have a to-do but no one would ever know if it got done or not or it's too big and it's not actually that's what we fall into it's like what might that might be a rock it's a month long to do but really okay what can be done in a week yeah that's a huge thing that we're going seven-day action yeah so we just insert some accountability to make sure those things the next week we're making sure they actually got done so we're just going through done or not done and if it to do is lingering on the list you should probably drop it to the issues list hey why isn't that getting done 90% of the to-do should be getting knocked out every week and then you get to the bulk of the meeting and your team your team only interrupt you but like your team knows I'm gonna go to this meeting next Monday and they're gonna ask me did

01:19:20I do there's a built-in accountability and it's already listed out because as you're IDSing this stuff in your Closed Solutions you have somebody leading the meeting who's typing in all these to-do's and they go hey at the end of the meeting you're gonna review all these to-do's and everybody's gonna give you the two thumbs up saying I got it so the next week they know there's accountability coming it's not he's just saying in the meeting and nobody's ever gonna follow up so it doesn't really matter it does matter has weight yeah you've Sean you've read crucial conversations who does what by when and how do we follow up right that's what to do is do for you who's doing what by when the next week we follow up the next week so it just makes that accountability really clear and so at this point we we have reached the bulk of our meeting which is gonna be on issue-solving question about the to-do's the to-do's it just sounds like operational to-do's is it usually always tied back to an issue or a rock yeah I've seen you need your own to-do list I've seen like people's personal to-do list that are just like normal stuff like stuff that we all know you should be doing it just that's clouds out the yeah agenda no these are the to-do's that come out of solving issues right because this is the this is that team accountability I don't need to keep track of all your personal to-do's I don't need to know about all of them but if you have a to-do that's helping us solve one of the most important issues yeah I want to know if that got done or not 100% and so that's what we're tracking there and so we get to the issue-solving and this is where another one of those great acronyms IDS identify discuss solve and this is so critical and this is what this is what makes the meetings effective if you can follow this track prioritize your issues don't try to tackle them all pick three what are the top three we got to tackle and start with number one that's what that's what sucks up our time I was telling him the trouble with restaurants or us apparently is um is that we don't

01:21:22have time because there's always like plenty of issues yeah and I think we I put the pressure on to tackle them all yeah you're rushing through it then each one gets 10% attention yeah versus like okay beforehand these are the top four you guys all agree yes yes yes yes okay let's do that okay that that makes a lot of sense yeah just read the issues listen and then pick the top three and one of the things I thought was really important that you coached us on because we would spend the same amount of time we would go man with that I we spend 30 minutes on one issue and we go around around and he goes no no what's the root there's an issue real issue what is the real issue that is going on you've got to get good at identifying what's the real issue what is the root because who's owning the issue tell me the root issue of this and then let's solve it from there let's get it much information and stop beating a dead horse because what we would do in our team is we got five people in this room and I would tell my thoughts on the root of the issue then the next guy would tell that and then everybody around the table and we'd kind of all say the same thing and it's like all right so we're on the same page but that took 20 minutes you can easily go I agree or one aspect of it but really finding the root of the issue what we need to solve because we can all talk about an issue for 30 minutes yeah but let's solve the root cause of that issue and then let's assign to dues to get it solved and move through it that's that's I forget if I said that earlier but that's that circular thing that was really helpful for us but focused on one thing versus being overwhelmed with so many yeah I stand the circular discussion piece was everybody gets two minutes we always the joke is here's a buck versus you guys have the animals if somebody says something sideways or if they interrupt somebody they that's a buck it's a joke yeah you get two minutes and you go around but you have to not talk when it's not your turn yeah it is your turn you're expected to say something if you really don't have something to say you can pass but what ends up happening is

01:23:22it starts with a lot of energy and people actually build on what they say but then it starts trickling out because everybody kind of starts saying the same thing and that lack of like pass pass pass pass seems like we've made a decision yeah when I'm working with the team I like I'm laser tuned and listening for okay it sounds like we're not saying anything new yeah it's time it's time to make a decision he's the horse has been thrown in our meeting so many times beating a dead horse the horses you're beating a dead horse they'll throw the horse at you and like the horse was the number one thing that we would do because we all wanted to be heard and it was like and sometimes we're just vigorously agreeing yeah I've heard that I'm like I do we need the sales pitch I think everybody's on board let's and there's like there is some there's some discipline to this right like developing that discipline to really hone in and one before you start discussing the issue like IDS came from this discovery again that Gino made early on which was that really smart teams would get in the room and they were really good at one of the steps identify discuss solve they were really good at one of those discuss and they would discuss the issue then they discuss it's more it's more it's more it's more they'd say man wasn't that a great discussion no sure what happened so you got to start by saying what's the real issue identify you gotta pause what's the real issue we're talking about here what's the root why did that happen all right well why did that happen and sometimes you'll dig dig dig into one route sometimes when you ask that question there's six different components and if you're trying to discuss all six at one time you're not gonna get anywhere and so you got to take one at a time okay these are the six different parts of this which of those is the most important to tackle all right let's do that one and then is there a root there and you just and this is all this all takes discipline and I can say I so I I have an EOS

01:25:27implementer do my quarterly sessions with me and my practice manager and I'm the worst at it in my own sessions I love going right to discussion and he's like stop stop what's the issue and then I want to discuss and so there's so much discipline and just getting to what's the real issue then we discuss and everybody says their piece once you don't repeat yourselves and you don't repeat each other and then once we've said everything we need to say we make a decision even if we just have to try something right but we make a decision that's the solve and then we move to the next to the next issue and that's so much more effective than what most teams do we got to get through all of these and you have a time frame and we got to talk a little bit about each one but we don't get to the real thing and that's what leads to issue deja vu same issue over and over and over and over you got to find that the full you have to identify you have to discuss briefly sometimes it's more intense but you the solve part is a big thing because everybody leaves the table knowing what the solve is and who's responsible for doing what to get the solve and then the next week you're gonna say I did that or it's gonna be cascaded to the group when it's completed throughout the week whatever that might be so you're gonna create all these ideas is you're gonna create a bunch of to-do's during this time you're gonna generate some to-do's you're gonna save five minutes at the end of the meeting to make sure you conclude well you're gonna move to conclude and you're gonna recap all the to-do's to make sure everyone's crystal clear on what they signed up for for the week and you're gonna read each to-do and this is a discipline thing again you're gonna read each to-do and whoever's taking it is gonna verbally affirm they're gonna say got it and I love what you do Justin as you say two thumbs up a lot of times so you say that on rocks yeah like are we are we and I use this all the time yeah because not

01:27:30only is it a verbal yeah I got it it's a you look me in the eye and you put two thumbs up and you said I got it yeah it's a memorable moment that you looked at me and said I got it and it's like okay we're on the same there's no plausible deniability here you gave me two thumbs up and said yes I'm gonna do that and so that builds accountability next week when you go there's no well I didn't know what you really meant you gave me two thumbs up you could have said I don't understand the full scope of what this looks like before I give you two thumbs up and say yes I need some more clarification and then you can do that yeah but that's in the meeting you're gonna go over all the to-do's through the to-do's and then we're gonna pause and ask are there any cascading messages is there stuff that we decided that we have to tell other people because they can't read our minds these are lineup topics boom lineup topics right here what do we need to cascade what have we decided that the team needs to know we got to go tell other people and that sometimes generates some to-do's hey add that to your lineup topics right but make sure you communicate these things and then we end the meeting by rating it on a scale of one to ten how did we do as a leadership team scale of one to ten do we start on time do we end on time were we open and honest did we solve our issues and the one thing that we actually added to our scorecard because one thing that our CEO keeps saying like no using conscious communication these tools using our purpose and values is measurable because you hear it and yeah but I'm like the analytical type like well if I'm living in Hawaii how do I know I'm not in the restaurants how do I know that it's being done and so we came up with which we haven't rolled out yet we're trying to make it happen is like okay in the meeting we're during the rate how what do we roll out how do well do we use our culture and values in the meeting how many times have we heard verbatim our values or do we say moose or do we say these things that we're trying to do how well do we rate ourselves because then if I come back as the owner and and you guys I see on the scorecard that you rated yourself eight out of ten but I come into the restaurant and nothing's happening

01:29:34either you kind of shot yourself in the foot or you can be honest say we're probably at two okay we're growing and I see four and then I see five but yeah I think that's super helpful if you rate it less than an eight you have to explain why I would say eight or less eight or less yeah see I was right then because if somebody gave me an eighth of the day and I was like all right why why is it Nate and they go oh no it's a below eight I have to explain I was like eight and below eight it's not a nine or a ten like tell me what's going on yeah I mean ultimately that I was just talking to another implementer that was what he was one of the first ten and he says nine if it's not a ten I want to know why right because we're not rating it just for kicks we're rating it so that we get better and every now and then you'll have that person that's like I'm a nine because there's always room for improvement that doesn't do anything for us I got all A's in third grade not to brag and I still went to fourth grade right there was like I got the highest score and I could still get better like what gets you a ten today should not get you a ten a year from now well what we find is we get into a rhythm of at the end of the meeting we've just gone through this hour and a half it's a leadership means an hour and a half for manage means for one hour but at the end of that meeting everybody's got stuff to do at 10 30 a.m. on Monday and like 10 10 10 10 10 great can I go now and it's like I don't believe you I don't believe everyone and another thing another thing that I've implemented which I learned from Brene Brown was the turn and learn so what we what we do at the end of the meeting is we get our phones out and everybody gets their calculator and they type in the number that they rate the meeting and then we say three two one and they pull it out because there's a sphere of influence there if I go if Stephen goes first he's the owner and he goes that's a ten everybody else goes well shit I guess I should rate it a ten too but if Stephen says a seven there is a eight eight eight and they tend to follow the most senior person but if everybody turns it at the exact same time then you get a true reading of what everybody thinks it's not just

01:31:34predicated on what everybody else thinks does that make sense so we do the turn and learn I've seen it's I had that happen in a session one time where I like I the people that are close to me at the tables I can see what they're writing and like whoever started it was like ten ten ten and they had written an eight and they said ten I was like why didn't you write down ten yeah yeah like say whatever you got to do to drive the on it because we want to get better we want the feedback yeah this has been awesome this has been so awesome Justin final thoughts man I I know we've been talking for like an hour and 20 minutes which is typically longer but I think this is such really good stuff if I'm a restaurant owner out there and I'm listening is going holy cow I need this in my life how do I get a hold of you you can go back and listen to the ad at the beginning of this because now you're a part of Nara you're working with us as Nara and as I'm meeting with restaurant owners that are telling me this is their problem I'm going you need Justin Cook you need to talk to this guy he can help you fix all these problems give us your info yeah you can call me six one five three three six seven one three three you can email me Justin dot cook at us worldwide comm and I'm happy to I'm happy to help and I'll send you a copy of traction I'm happy to send you a copy of traction I'm happy to hop on a call with you and something that I want to just highlight there have been so many times during this episode where Sean you've been like okay we need to do that better or we've missed on that thing and like we can improve in that area and at the beginning you were talking about all the value you're getting and so I just want to drive home like don't it doesn't have to be perfect like do something start using the tools even if like well we can't afford to work with a coach we can't have cool do something like start using the tools and you will get immense

01:33:35value just from from starting to move in that direction and so that's my encouragement to anybody I like if you're just starting your restaurant if you've got a food truck that you're getting off the ground these tools will help you get clarity on your vision and where you want to go and execute on that and make it happen the first thing I did when I started Nara was I built a VTO first thing I did when I started Nara was where do we want to be in three years what do what are our core values what is our North Star how are we doing it when we first started working with you we met with you over in Green Hills and it was like an hour-long meeting where we you asked this bunch of questions we identified whether or not this was something that we wanted to move forward with is that something you're still doing if somebody's sitting listeners going I would love to get in a room with him for 45 minutes and kind of tell my story because I identify with a lot of the stuff you guys talked about but I don't I don't know if this is right for us is that something you'll do for people yeah the the first thing I do with anybody is I just get on a call to talk to them right so I had talked to somebody at one of that I talked to Jolene and we talked and then if it feels like it makes sense we do the 90 minute meeting there's no cost for that and that's where we get clear on really what EOS is and is this gonna work for you do you want to do this together all right I love it I know everybody we've gone way too long over time everybody has stuff that they've got to go do Sean thank you so much for your time today it means the world last minute coming in and spending this time hopefully you got something out of it so this is great even people who are working on EOS and have been are like oh this is fantastic Justin it is always a pleasure to see you it's been too long and again give us your phone number one more time Justin 615-336-7133 give Justin a call if any of this made sense to you and tell him you heard him on Nashville restaurant radio and you want it you're you're doing this through NARA it would help you to say that we will we'll talk to you

01:35:36soon guys thanks for listening all right thank you so much to Sean Lyons and Justin Cook for joining us in studio you know I think that sometimes you finish an episode and you go that was gold that was amazing and this is one of those and not just because I truly believe that if you own a restaurant out there or you any business this is something that can help you immensely I love it when I get done with the interview and I have a stack of notes because I know these things and sometimes a really good reminder helps you you know sharpen your pencil so to speak I mean I love talking to Justin every time that guy has helped me so much and you know just giving a big hug when he left like it was just like man it's so good to see you I really hope that episode resonated with you because it sure did with me and I think it's an important episode yeah I know it kind of it's he's a sponsor of the show and really just because I just love him and I want to share this stuff and I've put together something special with NARA for him that is a you know kind of hey if you call him and you're with NARA then you get this this discount and all these things but like I don't know I just I just feel like the more restaurants I can help and as I go around and I'm speaking with so many restaurants on a regular basis man was at nine different restaurants last week sitting down talking to owners and really I'm seeing a lot of this stuff this is a lot of stuff that I'm seeing some people have it really dialed in and it's super impressive and I'm learning from them but some people really you don't even realize it when you're in the middle of it until you hear an episode like this and you go oh you know what that that's kind of us and that's a tough thing to hear but you know this is where you get to change that you know I always say what part do you play in a result that you don't want and you know when your leadership team isn't on the

01:37:36same page and everybody's pulling in different directions and you need to be rowing in the same direction on the right people right seats all that stuff you know it's it's pretty special to be able to do this so there's some books around this there's traction if you want a copy of traction send us a message get you a copy of traction through Justin good to great by Jim Collins is another one of those five dysfunctions of a team by Patrick Lencioni is another one of those one of my favorite books of all time is called QBQ the question behind the question these are and right now with Deborah Sunderland who I'm also working with she has her teaching is around the 15 commitments of conscious leadership that is a really in-depth book if you want to really get into it but that's more of a working with you and your psyche inside of you it doesn't deal with anybody else or teams it just deals with what you're doing every single day and are you enough if you feel like you're just not enough and you're struggling mentally that's one of those that helps you reframe everything in your life it helps you in relationships helps you everywhere and I'm working on something with her too but that's just you know all I want to do is find ways to help people get healthy and be a part of it so I really appreciate you guys listening to this episode like I said next week we have Aubrey Olaski she is the owner of paren bakery which there's one in Franklin and there's one in Berry Hill I am going to announce right now if you're still with us at one hour and 39 minutes we are hosting our next NARA connect at paren it's gonna be January the 13th and it is going to be from I think four to seven it's a three-hour deal and it's gonna be in their upstairs area there's gonna be you know some drinks to sample and this isn't there's no like program there's no panel discussion this is just Aubrey in our episode she said I don't know a lot of people yet I've been working so hard I had and I have kids I haven't really met a lot of other restaurant owners I don't know how many

01:39:38other people are like that but this is a this is called our the NARA connect winter social this is an opportunity to get together meet each other say hi know you're not alone and and just kind of meet all the other local restaurant owners in town it's just gonna be a lot of fun it's it's kind of our version of a holiday party it'll be super chill love to have you there if you go to the NARA website you can I don't have it up yet but I will in the next 24 hours I will have up a QR code you can register through an event bright I just want to people are there so I can tell how many drinks we need and how much food we need and all that good stuff so there's no no price to it you just need to be a restaurant owner or GM to two tickets per person or per restaurant if you need more just let me know I mean it's not super strict we're just I just don't want to have 400 people and have a bunch of you know I would love to have restaurant owners hang out there's not gonna be a bunch of vendors here selling you stuff this is just a super chill thing to do so that'll be January 13th it's a Tuesday night from 4 to 7 at Perrin and Berry Hill if you haven't been there it's really cool and then I can't wait for you to hear this episode because like my perception was she this is a chain that's come in from like Reno and I don't I'm not a big fan of that but this is a husband and wife who are in the building every day working their asses off and they have four children they live in Thompson station they've relocated here this is their their their as local as it gets as far as the ownership team living here and all the stuff so I really was pleasantly surprised and really had a great conversation with her and just had so much fun so can't wait to put that episode out it'll be coming up real soon and another big announcement in that episode I kind of divulged some things that I'm gonna talk about on the intro to the next show so please stay tuned and hopefully this holiday season is treating you well I hope that you are being safe out there love you guys bye