Episode Transcript
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Jim Ahlin (00:00):
Oh yeah it's good
it's called delegate and elevate
.
Lyn Askin (00:04):
Delegate and elevate.
Jim Ahlin (00:05):
Oh no, so yeah, now
you got me going 90 days is hard
for me, man.
It's a long time, that's a longtime.
Lyn Askin (00:12):
Welcome to the
Roofing Success Podcast, your
go-to source for insights andinspiration to achieve ultimate
success in your roofing business.
I'm your host, jim Alleyne, theco-author of Internet Marketing
for Roofing Contractors and thebest-known roofer and the
co-founder of Roofer Marketersas part of the leadership team
for the Roofing and Solar ReformAlliance.
I'm here to bring you the bestfrom the industry.
(00:34):
In each episode, I sit downwith top industry leaders to
dive into their strategies andvaluable lessons to help you
find success in roofing.
And valuable lessons to helpyou find success in roofing.
Hey, welcome to another episodeof the Roofing Success Podcast.
Check out the new website,roofingsuccesspodcastcom.
(00:57):
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We also have a new YouTubechannel Roofing Success YouTube
channel.
So go and subscribe there and,as always, like, follow, comment
, leave us a review, shoot me atext message.
My phone number's in thedescription.
(01:17):
Today you guys have heard metalk about EOS.
Like on so many of theseepisodes that I've heard a
couple of times I should get alike an affiliate commission on
EOS.
Like just because of how manytimes I talk about EOS, and so a
good friend of mine, lyn AskinI've known him for man many,
(01:40):
many years now is an EOSimplementer and I was like let's
really have a discussion aboutEOS.
So, lyn Askin, man, good tohave you on today.
Jim Ahlin (01:50):
It is so cool to be
on your show, Jim.
I appreciate it.
Lyn Askin (01:53):
Yeah, man, so you
have become an EOS implementer.
Is there an official title?
Or is that the official title?
What is it now?
Jim Ahlin (02:03):
Yeah, so I'm a there.
There's kind of three levels ofEOS implementer there's a
professional EOS implementer,there's a certified EOS
implementer and there's a expertEOS implementer.
So that's the sort of theregistered trademarks of those
things.
I'm a certified EOS implementer.
Lyn Askin (02:17):
Awesome.
So what does that?
What does a certified EOSimplementer do?
Jim Ahlin (02:25):
Jim, we, we implement
the entrepreneurial operating
system.
Obviously it's a system createdby Gina Wickman, kind of
focused and based I mean I guesshe created the system first and
then wrote the book Traction toexplain the process.
But we basically help businessowners sort of channel human
capital into one shared vision.
Lyn Askin (02:49):
That's awesome.
So for anyone who does not knowabout EOS, the book Traction by
Gino Wickman is a great placeto start.
There is, I think, for today'sdiscussion.
I want to talk about the EOS,or start with the EOS model, and
so can you explain to peoplewhat the EOS model is?
Jim Ahlin (03:11):
Yeah, and I think I
think maybe I can give you a
little clarity on on.
You know sort of what an EOSimplementer does when it comes
to the.
You know your leadership team.
So I work with leadership teamsand I and I make your
leadership team better at threethings.
And we say that's vision,traction and healthy.
By vision what I mean is, youknow, we help you and your
leadership team get 100% on thesame page with where you're
(03:32):
going and how you're going toget there.
By traction, I mean instillingdiscipline and accountability so
that no matter where you look,you see people executing on that
vision.
And then healthy, of course, itjust means making you and your
leadership team a more cohesive,functional, fun-loving team
that likes to work together.
And what we find is, you know,as the leadership team goes, so
(03:52):
does the rest of the company,and so we work with leadership
teams to make them better atthose things.
And we do that in the.
You know, kind of in theframework of the EOS model.
You know kind of in theframework of the EOS model.
Now, the EOS model probably bestway to kind of describe this is
that you know all of usentrepreneurs are kind of built
the same way, we're used todealing with 136 simultaneous
(04:16):
issues, you know.
But to the extent that we canget you to strengthen just six
key components of your business,those 136 simultaneous issues
just tend to fall into placebecause they're really just
symptoms of a real root cause.
And so when we look at yourbusiness, we place your business
in the center of it and wefocus on six key components, and
I'll walk you through thosereally quickly and I'll just
(04:37):
give you the kind of rough sortof roundabout version of it.
If you want to dig into any ofthem in particular, we can do
that.
But we start with the visioncomponent.
Once again, this is aboutgetting you and your entire team
focused on where you're goingand how you're going to get
there.
If we move over to the peoplecomponent, this is simple you
(04:59):
can't achieve a great visionwithout great people.
And then we move over to thedata component.
This is really about runningyour business on, you know, real
numbers, facts and figures andnot sort of subjective emotions
that so often drive thedecision-making that we make in
our companies.
Now, when your visioncomponent's clear and your
people component's strong andyour data component's strong,
(05:20):
your business becomestransparent and the obstacles
and problems and issues andchallenges start to pop up.
And so we move on to the keycomponent number four, and
that's the issues component.
We make you guys really, reallygood at solving the issues as
they arise in your company.
Move on over to component numberfive and that's your process
(05:42):
component.
That's about getting yourhandful of core processes
documented and followed by all.
And then, of course, we move tothe traction component.
Now the traction component kindof sits at the bottom of the
model, and it's by design,because if you can't bring your
vision down to the ground andexecute it with discipline and
accountability, when we say thatvision without traction is
(06:02):
hallucination when we say thatvision without traction is
hallucination.
Lyn Askin (06:10):
That is very true and
I think as business owners, we
hallucinate a lot.
You know, we really.
You know I mean we strugglewith this early in our business,
in Roof for Marketers, and wejust went and we hoped that we
were going in the rightdirection.
Sometimes we hoped that we hadthe process for it, we hoped
(06:33):
that we just would keep goingand push down walls and jump
over others and go around someand sometimes it hurt some, and
you know, sometimes it hurt andyou know and and and.
So as we implemented EOS in ourbusiness, I remember the first
quarter and it was like this iscrazy, man, like we, we got more
(06:54):
done, we got this thing movingforward very quickly.
It felt it felt different andand so I know in that you know,
we we kind of there's a processto that right, there's a process
to getting this going in yourbusiness, implementing EOS in
(07:18):
your business.
I wanted to talk to you aboutthat for people.
You know people canself-implement, they can hire an
implementer.
There's different ways of doingit.
We self-implemented well, kindof with the help of our coaching
group that we, or mastermindgroup that we're in together.
You know there was an EOSimplementer that kind of did a
group session for us and thathelped us to kind of focus on
(07:41):
that.
But to implement EOS properly,how does that start?
Jim Ahlin (07:49):
Yeah, I want to go
back to your other point really
quickly, and you talked aboutwhen you guys started your
business and and yeah, youworked really hard, you had to
keep breaking down walls.
And I guess I kind of like tosay that there's there's a
couple of different ways.
Like, as entrepreneurs, westart a business, we've got to,
we do something because we loveit and we start building
something.
And then you got to figure outhow to, how to clone yourself
(08:09):
and if you want to scale, youjust got to keep breaking
through these ceilings and youguys did a great job of that.
And so I guess I like to saythere's there's a couple of
different ways you can run yourbusiness.
There's guesswork, there's hardwork and then, of course,
there's frameworks, and EOS isreally just a framework on how
to run your business and theprocess of implementing.
I would say, if somebody wasreally interested in learning
(08:31):
more about EOS, there's a coupleof ways to start One.
You got to read the bookTraction.
I think that's important.
That'll give you a feel for it,and once you kind of read that
and get a little understandingof it, then you maybe have to
kind of make a decision.
Are we going to try and do thison our own or are we going to
bring in an expert that'll helpus go a little further and a
little faster?
I also.
So one thing I also want to sayis, like, if you're sort of the
(08:53):
visionary of the company versuskind of the get it done kind of
person, I think there's anothergreat book that's a great fit
for a lot of visionaries.
It's called Get a grip, um.
I particularly like the audioversion of that Um.
It's a great story it's.
It's the fable of EOS and it'skind of a fictional company
who's struggling and havingchallenges with team and growth
and scale and and vision andwhere they're actually headed.
(09:16):
And you know they've gotthey've got a difficult like
kind of control on the companyand they hire a professional
implementer and the story walksyou through their focus day,
through vision building day one,through vision building day two
, and through their quarterlies,and so that's kind of where I
want to start with the process.
Clearly you can self-implement,but whatever you decide to do, I
(09:36):
think it's really importantthat you schedule a 90-minute
meeting with a professionalimplementer.
That 90-minute meeting is free.
It's like Oprah you get a90-minute meeting, you get a
90-minute meeting.
We're not going to say no.
If you want to have a 90-minutemeeting book, a call with me,
let's do it.
I'm going to get you and yourleadership team in a room.
I'm going to learn about you.
You're going to learn about me.
(10:02):
I'm'll share with you and yourlisteners what that looks like
right now.
So, if you were to hire aprofessional implementer, we
start with what we call a focusday.
Focus day is you, me, yourleadership team.
We get in a room, session lastsseven hours plus or minus an
hour, and we're going to work onyour business.
We're going to get out of theweeds, you know, out of the, out
(10:25):
of the high cotton, or whateveryou want to call it, and we're
going to work kind of at a30,000 foot view.
We're going to be your board ofdirectors for the day and in
that session we're going towe're going to build the
foundation for you of EOS.
We're going to implement kindof some of the foundational
tools.
We're going to build anaccountability chart.
We're going to start puttingthe right people in the right
seats and understand what yourcompany needs to look like.
(10:46):
Going forward, we're going tobuild their first set of rocks,
and rock is basically your90-day biggest business
priorities.
We're going to teach the level10 meeting kind of the level 10
meeting and that agenda, andwe're going to take a first cut
at your scorecard and by firstcut I mean it's going to take a
little while to fall first cutat your scorecard, and and and
(11:08):
by first cut I mean it's goingto take a little while to fall
in love with your scorecard.
And we're going to try and getyou to 60, 70, 80% on focus day
and then we're going to let thatsucker evolve over time until
you're getting really greatmetrics and have a good pulse on
your business.
So that's the focus day.
And then we kind of wrap that up, we send you out into your,
into your business for 30 daysand it's kind of spaced learning
.
You know can't cram it all intoone day, cause we kind of we
(11:30):
got to go and do that in yourbusiness.
We're going to come backtogether about 30 days later and
we're going to do visionbuilding day one.
Now, of course, we're going togo backwards.
We're going to look at all thework we've done so far.
We're going to work out thekinks, the bugs, the problems,
the challenges, and then we'regoing to start working on the
vision of your company and we'regoing to build out your core
values.
We're going to build out yourcore focus.
(11:50):
We're going to build your coretarget.
That's kind of about where wewrap up vision building day one,
sometimes a little more,sometimes a little less.
Then we send you out in yourbusiness again for another 30
days.
Then we come back for visionbuilding day two, 30 days later,
once again reviewing all thework we've done so far, working
out the kinks or bugs, and thenwe start making this real.
(12:10):
We start digging in and we getinto.
We build out your marketingstrategy.
We build a three-year picturebecause we really want to know
what this company is going tolook like just three years from
now.
You know, if we can make thatreal, crystal clear, the odds of
it actually happening are justso much greater.
If we can get everybody on theteam to visualize what this
company looks like, then webreak it down even further and
(12:31):
we get really close to theground.
We're at one year, and so webuild our one year picture, I'm
sorry, our one year plan.
We set a set of goals for theyear and then we dig in and we
set your next set of rocks.
After 60 days, man, we've gotthis thing installed.
You guys are humming along,you're using the system.
You understand it well, you'llhave mastered the focus state
(12:52):
tools and then we just get intothis sort of execution phase
where I'm just running yourquarterlies and your annuals as
long as you need me.
Eventually you'll sort ofgraduate from the process.
You won't need me anymore.
That's really my job, jim.
I'm trying to get in.
I want to teach you the system,I want to put it in place and
help you get that discipline andaccountability, and then I want
(13:14):
to get the heck out of your wayand let you run your business.
Some people keep theirimplementers forever.
Some are short, but the typicalkind of uh process looks looks
like a couple of year process toput this whole thing in place.
Lyn Askin (13:30):
Yeah, and it it's
just getting the framework
implemented.
I want to go back to, like,some of the things that were
very impactful, that I foundvery impactful along the way of
of implementing EOS in ourbusiness and starting with that
focus day and working on is theaccountability chart.
Like, as small business owners,mid-sized business owners what
(13:56):
I loved about it and you couldgo into detail and things like
that about the accountabilitychart we could throw around some
things on that.
One of the things that Ithought was impactful was that
we were writing it's not an orgchart, it's an accountability
chart.
There's a very distinctdifference there.
It's an org chart is who is inyour company.
(14:18):
An accountability chart is who.
To me, it seemed you could, youknow, probably go into more
detail about this, but, like, tome, an accountability chart is
who needs to be in your companyor what roles need to be in your
company, what seats are in yourcompany or what seats need to
be in your company.
(14:38):
We had some fun looking at anaccountability chart of where we
were today.
We had some fun looking ataccountability charts chart of
where we were today.
We had some fun looking ataccountability charts around our
one-year, three-year goals,Like you know that you can.
It becomes a tool Instead of anlike.
To me, an org chart wasn't atool, it's just an is where an
(14:59):
accountability chart was a toolto what we needed to do in the
future.
So let's start with thataccountability chart.
Jim Ahlin (15:08):
Yeah, no, that's
exactly right.
I mean, you nailed it Like thisis not an org chart, and what
makes it an accountability chartis that we build up the seats
in your company and what we'rebuilding, at least in the focus
days, we're building what yourcompany needs to look like
roughly six to 12 months fromnow, and so it's a forward
looking tool.
It's the org chart is like whatexists now and you know, I
(15:30):
don't know.
I guess that's helpful for youknow understanding who's in the
company, but an accountabilitychart.
The other thing that makes itdifferent than an org chart is
that we actually map out theroles and responsibilities for
each seat in your company andonly one person can be
responsible for that seat, andso you know who owns the sales
department.
(15:50):
You know who on the leadershipteam is going to I don't know,
for lack of a better term takeextreme ownership of sales, and
what are the roles andresponsibilities, what are the
five or so things that are themost important that that person
needs to be focused on.
And so roles andresponsibilities and
accountability is reallyimportant here and, again, it's
a forward-looking tool.
(16:10):
So what often happens?
We build this thing out with ourleadership teams and the
visionary sees himself in three,four, five spots.
And we start to understand thatbecause we think as visionaries,
oh, it's my job to do all thisstuff.
But when you map the thing outproperly and you see, oh, I'm,
I'm ahead of finance and I'mahead of sales and marketing and
(16:31):
I'm sitting in the visionaryspot, then we can start to
predict and say, okay, that'snot sustainable.
I mean, we only have enoughhours in the day, we've only got
a hundred percent of ouravailable time.
And, looking at this thing, youknow, I might be a 50 hour week
person or 60 hour week personor whatever, but at some point
you, you're going to hitcapacity.
So we've got to decide how arewe going to get you back to a
(16:53):
hundred percent capacity ifyou're under 20, you know, and
we got to figure out which ofthese roles and responsibilities
we are going to delegate first.
And so it.
It's a future looking tool,it's a great tool and it's a
good way to understand thecompany that you want to be down
the road versus who you areright now.
Lyn Askin (17:12):
Hmm, it one of the
things you just mentioned is
okay.
So this gives you clarity onwhat is needed.
It also gives you clarity onwhere you are, what seats you're
in, and it can be surprisingfor some not surprising for
others that their name ends upin a lot of these boxes and that
(17:34):
speaks to you.
Know what you're dealing withevery day as the owner or
visionary of this company.
Company is like man, there isno, there's no, there's no.
It is a clear understanding nowof why I'm overwhelmed with my
business.
When you get, when, when youstart to see that there are also
(17:57):
the fun thing with EOS, that tome and I've mentioned a bunch
of these tools on here before,one of these tools in that
accountability chart, andbecause you started mentioning
what do we delegate next?
Right, there is a, is it?
Is it?
Is it a tool?
Is it called?
It's called elevate anddelegate right, or something
like that.
Jim Ahlin (18:15):
Yeah, it's good, it's
called delegate and elevate
delegate and elevate.
Lyn Askin (18:18):
So I had it backwards
delegate and elevate.
This is one of my favoritethings too because, like again,
I'm a framework person.
Like you, give me a frameworkand I just go to have to create
these things and think aboutthese things.
Like, if you have to sit thereand think, man, well, what do I,
(18:40):
what do I hire for next?
Right, like, this is a tool towho to hire next.
So, delegate and elevate,explain, delegate and elevate
for for everyone.
Jim Ahlin (18:53):
Sure.
So again, when you're lookingat your accountability chart and
and you see yourself at thesales role and the marketing
role, the visionary role and thefinance role, whatever.
Yourself at the sales role andthe marketing role, the
visionary role and the financerole, whatever the only way
those roles are executed to ahundred percent is if somebody's
(19:14):
working on them a hundredpercent of the time.
And so when you are working onmultiple roles, what is it?
You're not going to do salestoday, or what to?
How are we going to do this?
So delegate elevates a cooltool.
It comes from the idea thatthat you really should be
working in your unique ability.
Unique ability is like a DanSullivan term, but what we do is
(19:35):
we have you kind of map outeverything you touch during a
week what are all the things andtasks that you actually do, and
you map those all out.
We drop them in a kind of Coveyquadrant, eisenhower matrix,
whatever.
It's a grid of four.
There's four boxes In that topleft corner.
We map out all of things thatyou're great at and that you
love to do.
Top right corner, we're goingto put all the things that
(19:57):
you're good at and you like todo.
That bottom left corner wewould put all the things that
you don't like to do but you're.
You know, you've been doingthem a while, so you're good at
it and that bottom right cornerwe're going to map up the things
that you need to like to do noryou're good at.
And when you take all of thatitems from the list of all the
things you do in a regular week,you drop it in those four boxes
.
A little bit of a painfulprocess emotionally, right?
(20:25):
There's not always enough stuffover there in that top left and
, and and the truth is, most ofus spend 60, 70% of our time
working on that stuff on thebottom, and that's the stuff
that we're not, we're not goodat and we don't like doing.
And so we give you a tool, andimagine having to invent a tool
yourself to help your employeesget more efficient, except we've
done it already.
And so you take this tool, runit with yourself, run it with
your team, and now you got totake a look at those those
(20:45):
things in the bottom two boxesand you're going to start
delegating that stuff.
Like some of us can just takethat whole bottom right quadrant
and say here, here, myassistant, take this stuff.
Some of us got to be a littlemore strategic and we're like,
hey, which of this stuff can Idelegate this quarter?
What?
What can I take off my platethis quarter?
What do I have to systemize,document, teach, train that I
(21:07):
can move on to somebody else?
Do I have to make a hire?
What is it?
But all I know is I got tospend my lifetime working, in my
unique ability, on the highdollar value items, or the
highest dollar value items formy particular seat and role,
dollar value items for myparticular season role.
Lyn Askin (21:28):
And that's that's
where clarity comes into play,
right?
So it's knowing what's next,knowing who's next, and the.
I've heard it said that thebest business owners, the best
CEOs, have a high level ofself-awareness, and this is
where that self-awareness comesinto play.
To me.
Like this is where you get toexpress your self-awareness and
this is where thatself-awareness comes into play
to me, like this is where youget to express your
self-awareness.
(21:48):
Like, yeah, I hate to do thatand I'm not good at it, but I
have, but I just keep doing itbecause no one on I haven't
delegated it away to someone onthe team.
Then there are other things,like if you're from the, if
you're from a sales backgroundin roofing and you want to like
man, that's what you love to do,you love having sales
(22:10):
conversations every day, leadinga sales team.
Okay, maybe that's not what youneed to delegate right now.
Right, like, if that's your howdid you put it?
I'd say core competency.
Jim Ahlin (22:23):
That might be your
unique ability or your highest
value activity.
You know you gotta be workingon your highest value activity
Every time.
You know you touch gosh.
If you owned a roofing companyand you were you were packing
shingles up and down.
That's not the best use of yourtime.
I mean, that's a I'm sorry,that's a lower dollar value
activity than than building ofthe company and the vision.
Lyn Askin (22:46):
Like, and so you know
being out at job sites all the
time, being a job sitesupervisor, then going and
trying to sell the next you knowin the next few hours then
going and oh, we need to picksomething up and from the supply
house and bring it over here,like now.
There's so many things that youget to learn how to delegate
right or just know that you needto delegate.
(23:07):
So that's the accountabilitychart for EOS.
So deep dive for everyone todelegate.
So that's the accountabilitychart for EOS.
So deep dive for everyone.
Accountability chart is tounderstand you know what, who is
needed in your business, whatroles are needed in your
business, and then you get todelegate and elevate based on
what you enjoy doing, what yourskillset is best suited for.
So now let's move on and talk alittle bit about what a rock is
(23:31):
.
You mentioned rocks.
We got rocks.
They're all over the place,right.
But what is a rock?
Jim Ahlin (23:39):
Sure, let me go back
to the accountability chart for
one second.
There's one little thing that Iwant to bring up here, and I
think it's important my job asyour implementer is to help you
get from point A to point B asefficiently as possible.
That's what we all want to doas business owners, right?
And so, when I think throughthat one, we've got to know what
(24:02):
point B looks like.
That's step one, right, and wedo that by creating your vision,
okay.
Step two we've got to knowwho's going to do the work, and
that's where the accountabilitytrack comes in.
We got to know who is going tobe responsible for the work that
we need to do to get from pointA to point B.
Okay, now step three is really,we've got to continue to
(24:25):
operate our business as we knowit today, and we use a scorecard
to help you do that.
Step four is we've got to buildthe company that we've dreamed
of.
We got to build.
We got to build that companythat's in our dreams, and that's
where rocks come in.
So rocks, what is a rock?
So a rock.
Oh, and then, of course, we gotto have a system to hold each
(24:46):
other accountable to actuallygetting the work done and that's
where the level 10 meetingcomes in.
So those are the kind of thefive steps and they map
perfectly to EOS.
And so let's talk about rocks.
What the heck is a rock?
So a rock?
The term was really created byStephen Covey and it was
popularized by Vern Harnish, butI guess Stephen Covey.
(25:07):
Basically, he did ademonstration where he took a
cylinder.
It was a glass cylinder and itrepresented our available time.
Next to that glass cylinder wasa pile of rocks, which
represented the most importantthings in our lives, and there
was a pile of pebbles whichrepresented kind of our
distractions and other things,and then there was a pile of
sand that represented everythingelse.
Now, jim, if you put thosethings in the cylinder in the
(25:30):
wrong order or like most of usdo, and we throw that sand in
there first and then stick thepebbles in, rocks don't fit.
So if you take those rocks, ifyou do it the right way and you
put those rocks first the mostimportant things, the big things
, the most important prioritiesfor the quarter you put those in
the glass inloader first andyou put those pebbles in the
pebbles filter in around therocks, you pour that sand in,
(25:56):
that sand filters in and it allfits and you get the most stuff
done.
So a rock by definition is your90 day biggest business
priority.
Lyn Askin (26:02):
As simple as that and
this is why I love it Like what
is the most important thingthat we need to get done right
now to be a better organization,to be a better company.
What is it so?
Now we know this, we have ourNorth Star and it's a short
(26:33):
enough period of time that whatwas helpful for us, it's that
short enough period of time,that 90 day cycle, where it's
like we can get this done.
It's not like we, man, weshould really get that done and
in five years that'll be great.
It's a really.
It's like this is the timelineand we, we have a start date and
end date, and it's, it's, it'slike this is the timeline and we
, we have a start date and enddate, and it's, it's, it's
insight.
(26:53):
It's not something that we canpush off too much um.
So that leads to kind of thehow do you get this rock
accomplished?
Jim Ahlin (27:05):
yeah, so it.
I mean, it's beenscientifically proven that we
can only focus on somethingabout 90 days before the wheels
fall off.
Lyn Askin (27:11):
It's hard for me.
It's hard for 90 days.
It's hard for me, lyn, it's along time.
Jim Ahlin (27:15):
That's a long time,
right, but that's about the max,
right.
You know, the rope starts tofray and things start to fall
apart a little bit, and so, youknow, we sit down with you and
your leadership team and we we,we do a rock creating exercise
and we basically list out herehere are the things that we
think are the biggest businesspriorities for the next 90 days,
(27:36):
and often we come up with alist.
Sometimes it's 90 items long,and we look at that thing.
It was like God, that'soverwhelming.
So what do we have to do, jim?
We got to prioritize, and wemake you prioritize, and I will
let you have three to sevencompany rocks.
We're going to figure out whatthose are.
We make you prioritize and Iwill let you have three to seven
company rocks.
We're going to figure out whatthose are.
And so we've got to get really,really good at predicting the
items that are going to move usforward.
(27:57):
You know, mike, might be anacquisition, might be a project,
might be a system we got toprocess, might be a process we
have to create, could beanything.
It's your biggest businesspriority, and so we've got to
figure out what that is and wework with you and your
leadership team to create thatset of rocks.
You know, then we assign thatrock, each rock has an owner, so
(28:17):
somebody who takes, you know,extreme ownership.
They're accountable for therock, for getting it done,
making sure it's pushed over thefinish line.
They don't have to do the rocknecessarily, but they need to
make sure that that project getsdone necessarily, but they need
to make sure that that projectgets done.
And so we're going to buildgreat leaders that that are able
to take projects and delegateand and pull team together and
figure out how to get thesethings done.
(28:38):
It's got a due date and then, uh, and then, of course, we have
to make sure that we have a wayto hold people accountable over
those 90 days because of, youknow, human nature,
procrastination.
We have this procrastinationmodel that says, hey, if I got
90 days or I don't get theParkinson's law maybe, I think
it says do you give me 90 daysto do something?
It's going to take me 90 daysto get it done, right.
(29:00):
And so we want to make surethat there's we have some sort
of meaning pulse, a pulsebetween the 90 days every week
that we're looking and we'rechecking hey, are you on track?
Are you off track to get thatrock done by the due date?
Lyn Askin (29:16):
So in in rocks, like
one of the things that I think
is what is most important, right?
So how do you help peopledetermine or how would one think
of man what is the thing thatwe should be focusing on?
How do we get to that answer?
Is it just the owner of manwhat is the thing that we should
be focusing on?
How do we get to that answer?
Is it just the owner says hey,these are the five things that
you guys need to focus on.
(29:37):
Go like, or you know like, whatis the process of determining
what, what those 90 day mostimportant things should be?
Jim Ahlin (29:49):
Well, I think, I
think what's important here, you
know, our first set of rocksthat we set I hate to say this
the kind of practice rocks,right, we got to get in the
habit of creating a rock.
I mean we want to get them done, don't get me wrong, but we're
in a lot of cases we're puttingout fires.
You know, we're just coming inwe're saying, hey, all this
(30:11):
stuff's on fire, this is all thethings that are broken, these
are all the things we want tofix.
And we're going to spend thefirst, you know, quite frankly,
between focus and visionbuilding day two practicing,
getting those things fixed,fixing those things.
And by the time vision buildingday two comes around, we will
have set our 10 year target.
We would have set a three-yearpicture, we will have set a
(30:33):
one-year plan, and now our rockshave purpose.
Now our rocks are designed todrive us closer to that one-year
goals, or the goals that wehave, or the big, hairy,
audacious goal that we have.
And so that's how we determineour rocks.
I mean, we again, what's broken, what do we got to fix?
That kind of happens in thevery first couple of rocks, but
(30:54):
eventually we transition to whatmoves us closer, you know, to
our North Star.
What projects can we get donein the next 90 days that move us
closer to our goals, to ourthree-year picture, to our
one-year plan and to our big,hairy, audacious goal that we
have?
Lyn Askin (31:16):
I like that, Like in
the beginning it's just, hey,
like let's fix some things,let's see what we could get
fixed, but then once we have alot of the things fixed, now we
can move on to some of thethings that really are impactful
.
Fixing things is alwaysimpactful, but like this is and
another thing I heard from youis it doesn't have to be perfect
in the beginning.
Sometimes we want perfectionout of our businesses, but
(31:41):
you'll never get it.
You will never get it.
Jim Ahlin (31:43):
There's always a
problem.
We got to move from beingreactive fires, problems, issues
to proactive, which is movingtowards the future and growing
our business.
We got to.
We got to build the businessthat we've dreamed of.
Lyn Askin (31:58):
Yeah, that's awesome.
So now we have rocks.
We need to know the metrics.
Right, you talked about themetrics.
Is that part of that Likethat's early, you know kind of
the early thing and that tiesreally into the pulse of the
meetings in EOS?
Jim Ahlin (32:29):
So, yeah, we're going
to build a scorecard in our
first, in our focus day, andthat that scorecard is designed
to give you just you.
You got to be able to look atthe scorecard and have a pulse
on your business.
So imagine yourself on adeserted island.
You know you.
You're there in your, yourlounge chair Maybe there's some
other people on them, but, butyou know your cabana boy, cabana
girl, you know no judgmentwhatever.
They bring you over your frostybeverage and they hand you a
(32:51):
sheet of paper.
On that sheet of paper is yourscorecard.
You got to be able to look atthat thing and know if your
business is on track or offtrack.
You got to be able to know.
You got to be able to have apulse of your business.
You got to be able to look athey, is my sales team having a
good week or bad week?
Is my marketing team having agood week or bad week?
Is my operations team having agood week, bad week?
(33:11):
Are our employees happy?
Are our customers happy, or isfinance having a good week or a
bad week?
But you got to be.
It's simple and if you think oflike, I don't know the people
that over complicate this, but Iwant to describe it sort of
like a dashboard in your car.
When you get in your car andyou put your key in the ignition
, you could just get a fewsimple keys to know if you can
(33:31):
drive this thing safely right.
You can see how many miles areon the car, you know if you've
got enough gas to get you toyour destination, you could see
if your tires are inflatedproperly and you can see if the
check engine lights on right.
That's what we're trying tobuild with a scorecard.
Simple Are we on track or isthe check engine light on?
(33:53):
And if that check engine lightis on in any one of those
departments, we drop that thingdown to what we call our issues
list and we tackle that in alevel 10 meeting.
Lyn Askin (34:01):
Yeah, in the level 10
meeting.
We didn't talk about that yet,but a level 10 meeting is your
weekly meeting cadence thatyou're doing.
So every week you have a level10 meeting, so this thing flows
right.
You have your rocks.
Now you have your issues.
You have, you know, yourscorecard, or your scorecard,
and you're looking at yourscorecard and you're going oh,
(34:23):
there's some issues here.
What's going on?
Maybe our, maybe our leads aredown, maybe our sales conversion
rate isn't where we want it tobe, maybe our time to build is
not where we want it to be.
Maybe, all of a sudden, you'relike man, what's going on here?
How come these jobs aren'tgetting built?
How come you know, like, maybeit's, maybe you're not
(34:45):
collecting in the right amountof time which would, which would
really impact the business.
Right, like you need to bemaking.
So all of these simple thingsthat you're like all right, all
right, I see, yep, it's, we're,we're looking good, we're not
looking good.
And then, if something is notlooking good, all right, now we
(35:06):
dig in more.
That's how we that now you're,you're, you're, you're listing
out issues and discussing issueswith your team and and finding
solutions.
Right, how do you?
How do you that's like thepebbles in sand.
Is that what we'd put in theanalogy with the with like the
issues be the pebbles in sand?
Jim Ahlin (35:28):
Not exactly, I guess.
I mean, issues are really.
You know, when Gino created EOS, he created it because he saw a
difference in two companies.
You know two types of companies.
You know not two specificcompanies, but two types of
companies.
There's the 95% of us that were,you know, working our tails off
(35:49):
.
Owners and leadership teams areworking really hard but kind of
spinning our wheels there alittle bit right.
And then there's those other 5%whose owners and leadership
teams are also working theirtails off, because that's what
we do.
We're entrepreneurs, that'snormal.
Some of our best days are thosedays when just lots of things
happen and the worst days arethe ones where we're sitting
(36:09):
around going what's going on.
But the difference between thetwo was that 5% of those
companies they actually solvetheir issues on a regular basis
and they get to move on to newissues, because the issues never
stopped.
I mean you, you know that theyjust keep coming, they keep
coming, but we're going to moveon to different set of issues
and and we're going to makeprogress every single week we're
(36:30):
going to get to work on betterproblems or bigger problems or
different problems, because the95 percenters are dealing with
the same issues over and overand over again, and we call that
like the worst case of businessdeja vu ever.
Lyn Askin (36:43):
Yeah, that's
groundhog day, right Like,
that's the.
That's just like, oh, we got todo this again.
Oh, this is the same thing thatwe've dealt with yesterday.
You know, that's just like, oh,we got to do this again.
Jim Ahlin (36:54):
This is the same
thing that we've dealt with
yesterday the reason thathappens, jim, is because when we
solve issues, we're solvingthem superficially, we're
putting a Band-Aid on it, we'resolving a symptom and not the
root cause.
And so, as part of a level 10meeting, we do something called
the IDS or issue solving track.
And you know, as part of alevel 10 meeting, we do
something called the IDS orissue solving track, and we
teach you to really dig downinto the issue, to ask yourself,
(37:15):
hey, is that?
You know, what's written on theissues list is never the real
issue.
That's a symptom.
What's causing that thing tohappen?
Let's solve it at the root.
We don't ever have to deal withthis again.
We're going to set this thingout, we're going to knock it
down, we're going to make it goaway forever for the long-term
good or greater good of thecompany.
So that's, you know, we're kindof bouncing around a little bit
(37:37):
here, but-.
Lyn Askin (37:38):
Yeah, we're bouncing
around, it's all right.
Jim Ahlin (37:40):
Yeah, yeah.
But yeah, I want to make surethat you understand that we're
going to teach you guys to bereally, really good at solving
the problems that you have asthey arise, cause if, if you
take those issues and you justkind of wrap them up with duct
tape and twine, shove them inthe corner, eventually your
entire company is going to beheld together by duct tape and
twine, and none of us want that.
Lyn Askin (37:57):
Yeah, and Gino and I
have have something in common
Cause that just sounds exactlylike why I, how, how this
podcast came to be right, LikeI'm doing sales for roofer
marketers and businessdevelopment and I'm talking to
roofing contractors all day longand some of them I'm like my
goodness, you are crushing it.
(38:20):
This is absolutely amazing whatyou're doing.
And then I talked to some otherfolks and I'm like I don't know
how you even consider whatyou're doing a business.
And so I wanted people, Iwanted those contractors who
were struggling or gettingstarted, to hear from those
(38:41):
contractors who were like really, really executing well and
really successful and it's likemaybe that's why I resonate with
EOS so much right, like it'slike this is there's this
framework there that just itreally does help you organize
the chaos of the day to dayright and move on to other
(39:05):
things.
I want to.
I want to move on a little bitinto like what you, what you
guys, do in the vision buildingdays and mainly around core
values.
I find this was anotherexercise that we really, really
attached to and I've had lots ofconversations about core values
and just in the past fewepisodes, we've had multiple
(39:28):
conversations about core valuesand building your team and
attracting the right people, butthis is where you have to
define your core values.
How does one define the corevalues of their business?
Jim Ahlin (39:49):
Well, the truth is so
core values.
Let me define core values, asEOS states.
Core values, so our core values, are an essential set of
guiding principles that definewho we are as a company.
So this is who we are, this iswho our team is, this is what we
believe, this is what we think.
You know, and and, and I don'tmean integrity, I don't mean
(40:10):
honesty, I don't like, those arejust so phony that just you
know, if you got to say, trustme, I don't.
I mean, that's not the kind ofcore values I'm talking about.
You know, I'm, I'm.
I'm talking about help first.
I'm talking about do the rightthing.
I'm talking about like thosesort of core values that that
exemplify who we are.
And, and, jim, we use our corevalues in EOS to hire, to fire,
(40:33):
to review, to reward andrecognize our employees.
They become, oh gosh.
So, dr Thomas Gordon, he, hecreated this thing called
parenting, effectiveness,training, and I'll summarize it
really quickly.
But he said to be a greatparent, you got to do these
three things that you know notso great parents don't do, and
(40:54):
number one is to have a handfulof rules.
Number two is to repeatyourself often.
And number three is if you'regoing to have a handful of rules
and you repeat yourself oftenbut you yourself don't follow
those rules, you're going tohave chaos.
So you got to be consistent.
And so when we talk about ourcore values, our core values are
our handful of rules about whatit means to be a great employee
(41:17):
at whether it's roofing successpodcast, or, or, you know,
Joe's roofer, or whatever.
This is an essential set ofguiding principles that it tells
your employees this this iswhat we expect from you.
It's one of the things that wecan hold people accountable to,
and so we get you together.
We build your core valuestogether as a team.
(41:38):
Now, this isn't like the bosscoming and saying this is who we
are.
We actually do a core valuesexercise where we pull the core
values from your team.
We figure out who we are.
We don't create aspirationalcore values.
We don't pull the core valuesfrom your team.
We figure out who we are.
We don't create aspirationalcore values.
We don't create accidental corevalues.
We create the core values thatexist in this company and say
(41:59):
this is us.
Lyn Askin (42:02):
How do you do that?
That's the key, right, becauseit's such a like.
It's so easy to just sayintegrity and good.
You know what I mean.
It's so easy just to list thesethings and it's so easy for an
owner to just say these things.
How do you get to that levelthat is impactful in those core
(42:27):
values?
Jim Ahlin (42:27):
You mentioned
bringing the team into it.
Lyn Askin (42:30):
I'll let you loose
here, ready.
Jim Ahlin (42:31):
No, no.
So yeah, now you got me going.
So how exactly do we get thecore values of your team?
Our core values exist, like wedon't have to make up new ones,
they are us.
And so your team already hascore values, which is to sort of
bring them together and definethem.
So we do a core values exercisewhere we basically ask you like
(42:54):
who on your team is like a rockstar, who on your team is
somebody that if you could clonethem, you could have a hundred
of them.
You could take over the world?
Okay, and you're going to listthree or four people you know
everybody's going to list two orthree people and then I'm going
to ask you why did you listthem?
Describe them to me, whatadjectives would you associate
(43:17):
with them?
And then we start building arough list of these qualities
that we admire in our companyand we just work through that.
We prioritize, we kill some, wekeep some, we combine some and
we come up.
It's almost magic, it's, it's,it's, uh.
I've had clients tell me likeLyn, I don't know where you're
going with this, but but I thinkyou like tricked us into our
(43:38):
core body, like they just, theyjust, they just appear and and
uh, it's, it's, it's kind ofmagic.
Lyn Askin (43:45):
Other things I've
heard of.
It like to kind of get yourmind going and thinking about
this is like think about on theother side, not just the person
you would, that you want ahundred more of, but that person
that you want no more of, right, like there's the opposite of,
and then the opposite of that isyour core value.
(44:05):
Right, if you have a, you knowif that makes sense, like
there's, there's ways toapproach this and it's very
unique.
But what I like, what you said,is the core values of a company
are already there.
They're already there and thenbe able to hire around that fire
(44:32):
, around that reward people,discipline, people, like there's
a whole.
It gives you a baseline now todo that.
Here's what was reallyimpactful for me from a core
value perspective.
It came in the form of thepeople analyzer.
(44:54):
Yes, so the people analyzer isanother one of my favorite
things of EOS, because thepeople analyzer is it's
essentially your.
You know like.
You know you have yourquarterly.
You know meeting with your teammember on their, you know how
they're doing, but instead ofjust going, man, they're.
(45:19):
You know Jim's doing a good job.
You know he's fine, he'sgetting his work done.
That's great.
Yep, yep, jim, you're doingwell it's.
Are you exuding our core values?
Are you?
Are you are you kind of inbetween, or are you, are you
(45:39):
kind of showing somethingagainst our core values?
Right?
So, in your actions on aday-to-day basis?
So not just are you gettingyour work done, are you doing it
in a way that is in alignmentwith the core values of the
company?
That's my favorite thing,because it creates clarity in
(46:03):
who are the right people foryour company after the fact,
because hiring is guessing andfiring is knowing.
Not that you want to firepeople, but, man, you got to be
able to measure this and I liketo me, that's the people
analyzer.
So first, when you have your,now your team puts together, you
(46:26):
know you really define yourcore values.
Now you get to measure againstthem.
So that's my take and I'm sureyou can expand on that, but
that's my.
I love that one, I love thepeople analyzer no-transcript,
(47:13):
know, maybe it's there.
Jim Ahlin (47:14):
I just I want to help
you get better at this, and so
here's what it would look liketo me.
Here's a couple of exampleswhere I think maybe you fell a
little short of that core value,and here's what I think it
would look like for you toactually exhibit that core value
.
And now we can have a greatconversation around what it
means to be a great employeehere.
Of course you got to get yourwork done.
(47:35):
Of course you got to get it,you got to want it, you got to
have capacity to do the job.
But when you have somebody inyour team that doesn't fit your
core values, they stand out andthey, they, they poison you and
they you know, we all know theone, we know that sales guy
that's crushing it, but he's agiant.
You know, whatever I don't Idon't want to say the words, but
(47:56):
but you know the one I mean,and you can't, he just eats away
at you in some ways.
That that I mean, you don'teven understand.
You don't have to settle forthat.
You can have people that liveour core values, that are people
that we want to be around,people that we love, people that
(48:18):
we want around us and they canget the job done.
So the people analyzer is justone of many tools in the EOS
toolbox that will help you buildand grow your business.
Lyn Askin (48:26):
Another thing I just
had this conversation.
I was having this conversationon another podcast about sales
leadership and building greatsales teams and we were talking
about rewarding and like anddefining what a championship
looks like and and, and I thinkthat it's similar around that
like we all have to be going inthe same like, and I think that
it's similar around that Like weall have to be going in the
(48:47):
same direction.
And what I love about companieswho really have embraced EOS
JobNimbus, where I've been at,and Roofer Marketers, and you
know, I know lots of greatroofing companies that have
implemented EOS successfully andit's like there's this that
have implemented EOSsuccessfully and it's like
there's there's this you get toexpress.
(49:09):
It helps you express whensomeone is is doing well, but in
relation to that core value.
So, you know, on a we would, wewould.
You know we had a thing we useSlack a lot for internal
messaging and we used an add onto Slack called Karma and you
could give people karma points.
(49:30):
And karma points, would youknow?
You had to write what they didwell or what they you know what
they did, that that made youwant to, you know, kind of talk
about them, and then you had totie that to a core value.
Then you had to tie that to acore value.
So it had to be tied to a corevalue and just those simple
things.
It was like you're reinforcing,it's a reinforcement of that.
(49:53):
At Jabnimus we used a toolcalled Motivocity, did the same
thing.
You know, if you have a team inthe field, you know it's a
little bit different, but maybeon your weekly sales meeting you
can have a core value of theweek kind of thing, like people
could nominate people to hey,this person this quarter or this
month or this week, you know,had exuded this core value.
(50:17):
Who exuded this core value themost this month, this quarter,
this week, like it.
It helps to reward people, butit's not a reward on the surface
level stuff.
That's what I love about it.
Jim Ahlin (50:33):
There's a.
There's a quote by Napoleon.
I'm just gonna I'm just gonnaparaphrase it, cause you know
the original quotes a little bitdifferent, but it but he
basically said that no amount ofmoney will cause a man to lay
down his life, but he willgladly do so for a bit of yellow
ribbon and and and and.
The concept behind that is ispeople love to be rewarded and
(50:54):
recognized in front of theirpeers, and so the remember when
I talked about the greatparenting lesson, I said you got
to have a handful of rules.
The second thing I said was yougot to repeat yourself often.
And so if you've got a handfulof rules, which are our core
values, to get our team to learnthem, to understand them, to
live them, we've got to repeatthem often.
And we do that by reviewing andrecognizing and rewarding with
(51:16):
them.
And so when you you know, in thelevel 10 meeting, there's a
section called customer employeeheadlines, we use that for
employee shout outs, and I'd sayI want to give Jim just a shout
out this week for living ourcore value of help.
First jumped on a call with me,he walked me through this thing
and and and.
So now we're using our corevalues to review and reward and
recognize, because we want ourteam to learn these handful of
(51:42):
rules and exemplify them often,so we've got to repeat ourself
often with our core values.
People don't learn core valuesfrom a poster.
They don't learn it from a mug.
They learn it from using themday to day in your business.
Lyn Askin (51:57):
Yeah, so I think this
is awesome.
We've talked about a lot and Italked about the kind of the key
components of EOS and how itkind of puts how the framework
comes together.
We talked about how this getsimplemented in your business.
So you have a focus day.
You're talking about youraccountability charts, your
(52:18):
rocks, your meeting pulse, yourmetrics, your scorecards meeting
pulse, your metrics, yourscorecards.
You're moving into your visionbuilding day one and day two
where you're just redefiningthese things.
You're defining your corevalues.
You're kind of figuring out therhythm.
You're starting to play withthis stuff.
It's starting to really kind ofoh yeah, this is how we can use
this, this is how we can usethat.
We're learning how to use theissues list and now we get up
(52:41):
and we're in and we're, we're,we're, we're in our day to day.
Right, this is now it's, itbecomes a part of any rhythm of
your business.
And so you're, you're doingquarterly planning and you know
you're, you're, you're focusingon the bigger, on, on, on the on
your rocks.
You're, you're, you're, you'recontinuing to solve issues.
(53:02):
How do you continue to keep themomentum going?
And I know you guys, you knowquarter to quarter, do that.
How does.
How does a company continue tokeep that momentum going and and
kind of keep the bumpers up,stay within the confines of the
of, of of the EOS framework?
Jim Ahlin (53:21):
Yeah, I think it's
really important, you know, to
follow the meeting pulse of EOS.
And the meeting pulse of EOS isreally, it starts with the, you
know, two day annual and if yougo backwards from that, there's
three quarterlies a year and atwo day annual.
And so what I said before wasit, you know, after about 90
days, like we got to come backtogether and we got to get back
on the same page.
So in a quarterly, what we dois we, we look back upon your
(53:45):
last quarter.
We're going to look at it.
We're going to what'd we doright, what'd we do wrong?
Did we get our rocks done?
How'd we do in predicting ourmeasurables and our profit and
our revenue?
Did we?
Are we getting closer to ourgoals?
So we're going to look back andsee how we did.
We're going to review ourvision again and make sure we're
all still on the same page,because sometimes we're not.
We've got to get back on thesame path here, and then we're
(54:07):
going to set a new set of rocksand priorities for the next 90
days.
So the team has another.
You just get refreshed and youget pumped up again because
you're back together again andnow you've got a new set of
goals and, whether we crushedour last quarter or not, we're
going to come out of that.
You know that's behind us.
We can't just rest on ourlaurels.
We gotta, we gotta move,continue to move forward.
And I think humans need progress.
(54:29):
Humans, humans need a system toget better, and this system
will allow your team to do that.
You know, how do you?
I mean, if you went to asporting event, there was no
scoreboard like, or no scorelike what, what are you watching
?
Even Like who's winning?
How do you know?
And so this system, this is aperfect little.
(54:51):
Obviously, I've drank all theUS Kool-Aid and I love this
thing because, quite frankly, itchanged my own life and I just
wanted to be able to help otherpeople do it.
So we're going to get togetherquarterly again, review the last
quarter and then create a newplan for the next quarter.
Now, and you know, when we getto an annual, obviously we've
got to get some quarters in andthen and we then we do annual
(55:12):
planning and then we re, we do aone day full of, like team
building exercises and we buildculture, because that's really
important.
Um, most businesses spend somuch time on being smart so
little time on being healthy,and so you know, we got to make
sure the smart stuff is thestuff that you do day to day and
we and we you know how we dothis and how we roof and what
(55:33):
materials we use and how youknow that's smart.
Healthy is culture.
Healthy is is is being open andhonest, having great
conversations and and sometimesdifficult conversations, knowing
that I can say the things Ineed to say, I'm not going to
get fired.
We're all on the same page,you're all in the same boat,
we're all rowing in the samedirection.
You know, the problems are notbetween us, they're in front of
(55:56):
us.
So let's just tackle that issueand knock it out Issues.
Don't have feelings, let's justmove forward.
And so there's a really nicerhythm here that brings us back
together every 90 days and getsus back on the same page and
gets us motivated and pumped forthe next quarter.
Lyn Askin (56:12):
Yeah, that rhythm is
really impactful, and so I
encourage everyone to check thisout, man, like for your
business, look in the EOS, seeif it can solve that problem for
you, if you're within the chaos, right, of course, I've talked
about many of these things onthe podcast before, so hopefully
this was helpful for you tohave someone who does this every
(56:34):
day, with Lyn doing this.
So, man, I appreciate your timetoday.
Man, this has been anotherepisode of the Roofing Success
Podcast.
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