Ryan Redding: 17:09
Yeah. He has he has a saying that is, you know, hey, the the the grinder of the business, the one who’s actually just grit and drive and muscle. That part of you has to die in order for the leader to be born. Right. Like you can’t just, like, out grind you. That person has to die. They have to stop existing in order for the leader that carries the next iteration of the business forward to be born. And I think, I think I experienced that firsthand. And I think that that insight is spot on.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 17:45
So talk about the next iteration. Right. So you’re like, okay, you do a cold reset, go to Napa, I come back and now what do you figure out is your zone of genius that you’re going to focus on now for, for yourself and the business?
Ryan Redding: 18:04
Yeah. So that’s the that’s the weird part for me is I, I consider myself a decently smart guy. Right. And at some point, I felt like I was almost too smart for the problem. It’s like I tried to make it too complicated. Too intense. My first effort was like, okay, you know what? I need documentation, I need SOPs, I need process maps, I need quality control checks, I need, I need, I need, I need, and I found myself like spending time doing, like, all the stuff, right? Like building these what I thought were capabilities that needed to move forward. And to a certain degree, I wasn’t wrong.
But on the other point, I was still trying to make cupcakes. I was just doing a different type of cupcake. The the real key came when somebody started saying something like, have you heard of the book Traction? And I’m like, what’s that? And actually, I heard this from from several people who had similar sort of roadblocks is that you should read it. And then there was a complimentary book at the time. It’s still around, but it’s called Rocket Fuel that you should read both of those books. And then you should consider like an operating system, like EOS. Like, I have no idea anything you just said. Neither the books nor this alphabet soup name called EOS.
I don’t know what this is, but let me look into it. And that was the first time when I realized that the key really wasn’t me doing more of the things. It was me dividing myself into two. And so in that framework, there’s this idea of like, you have a visionary, a visionary for almost all businesses is going to be the founder. There’s going to be the inventor. It’s going to be the person who lives in the future in the la la land. What’s funny is that’s not me. That’s not my default. I’m not by default, the aspirational integrator. I I’m like this weird integrator y sort of function. But by my role, I had to sit in this visionary component. Right.
Which is like I had to look 12 plus months in the future, which means I needed somebody else to sit in the current calendar year to deal with the day to day. And when a lot of people kind of introduced this concept, one of the things that I tell them is this isn’t this isn’t like, hey, they’re your number two. This isn’t like a low man on the totem pole that you just bring in, and you assign them tasks, and then they just you just delegate things to them and you tell them like, no, This is the other side of chair number one, right where the visionary side of chair number one is like you’re 12 plus in the future, you’re thinking ideas, new products, new services, new territories, new, new, new. It’s what about and what if and what could we do? And then it’s the integrators job to figure out how to actually make that happen.
So they, for all intents and purposes, are managing the business. They are carrying the weight of the business. And so once I swallowed that particular pill and actually, what’s funny, I sold that particular pill prior to fully adopting EOS, I’m like, okay, cool. I need a director of ops. I need him to sit in this integrator sort of function, and I need someone who can challenge me, who can debate me, who can actually think about things in the best interest of the business. I don’t need a yes person. I need someone who could actually wrestle with an idea and come up with the best outcome, even if it’s not what I would prefer. And I am so, so, so fortunate that who we ended up finding in that time was a guy.
He was at Tesla in Northern California at the time, doing a lot of the solar roofs as their ops person. And I remember the first conversation I had with this person, I, I was actually on the way home, and I’m having this, like, such a stimulating conversation with this guy. My brain was on fire. Like, I was just like, my brain is alive. This is an incredible conversation. So much to the point. Like got home, walked to this parking lot like a quarter mile from my house, and just paced the parking lot for another hour just to keep the conversation going. I was just so stimulated by what this person brought to the conversation. Ended up hiring him, brought him on. And through a period of that first calendar year, this was probably 9 to 12 months.
It was just like teach him the business because he didn’t come from marketing. He didn’t come from digital like he came from like manufacturing and utility management. So which is fine. Like I loved having that sort of very linear sort of process thinker that, you know, how many times you need to turn the wrench. Like seven? Nine. Tell me exactly how many times to turn the wrench. It’s going to get turned that way, but then apply that to a service fulfillment model. And what for me, what I experienced was once, once he started learning kind of the core of the business and how these levers worked in service as opposed to like a manufacturing capability, it became the most liberating thing to fully entrust him with whole segments of the business like I could fully entrust him with, like, hey, as of now, all fulfillment teams like all of our 60 some employees report to you. All of them like they have team leads, right?
But at the end of the day, like that dude is the top of the org chart. He would be responsible for anything with legal, anything with finance, anything with like PNL or dealing with the CPA. Like those were those were his domains. And to fully just another human to do it. Not in the same way that that I would write. That’s not really the point. But to do it in a way that serves the interest of the business best. That was the most challenging and difficult thing because as as a founder, like your your instinct, at least for me, was, well, I can’t give them all. Like, I just got to give them a little bit. I just gotta like, baby steps and like, micromanage the baby steps.
And at some point, once I realized that he saw the the upsides, the downsides, once he saw the tensions and the forces that were at play on any department or any sort of decision on the business, to just fully trust him and let him navigate it, it was it was an incredible sort of experience to reorient the teams, to reorient our fulfillment model to where it wasn’t around me. It wasn’t around me at all. It was around him and the systems he was building that finally were able to get the momentum we would need to bust through that plateau. And probably within a 12 month period I went from doing 80 90 hour weeks. Like those were insanely common for me to.
At one point I was down to five hour weeks. Like it was crazy. And at some point, I would have clients on our books and employees on our books that I’d never met. I didn’t know that they existed. I’m like, this is the craziest thing ever. Like, I’m not interviewing people. I’m not vouching for clients. I’m not chasing collections like, this person is taking care of all of it, either directly or through other people. And that was that was a pivotal, transformative moment to transition from. It has to be my fingertips, because nobody else is going to have the context or the relationships or the clout or the credibility or the experience or the or the or the whatever excuse that you tell yourself to make yourself feel better than you actually are.
But to fully trust, not just delegate, but entrust somebody else to make those decisions for you in a way that serves the business best. It was awesome. And because our relationship and I’ll take a quick sidebar here, because it is so much more than an operational change. What I have found from personal experience is when you have those the right people in that seat, they allow, by the nature of the rule, a certain amount of conflict and debate. Not toxic, not not destructive, not tearing each other down. Right. But wrestling for the best ideas for the greater good of the organization.
Like so you want people who are comfortable going toe to toe and battling it out and wrestling with ideas and poking holes in your, you know, fairy dust unicorn that you think is so amazing. You want them to see that for what it really is and ground you and you as a founder. You’ve got to be able to listen to those people, like take their feedback and take it in. So it’s it really is like the personal relationship, not the not the professional relationship, but the personal relationship. You have this person where you trust them, you love them, you love their family like you want to see them win as humans.
That sort of relationship is really underpinned in trust and a deep, profound respect that allows them to operate at the level they need to operate in the business. So it’s way more than just like an org chart rule. It’s way more than just an operational hire. It really is like you’re hiring a spouse, you know, like someone that you can deeply respect and admire, that you can like, disagree with, you can debate with. And at the end of the day, you guys both want the same thing. Those are really, really powerful relationships. And for me personally, that was that was a game changer, that it saved. It saved my life. It saved my relationship with my kids. It kept the business moving forward. I cannot imagine, I cannot imagine it doing it any other way.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 27:22
Ryan, I’m curious. Thanks for sharing that. And I’m curious on the heated debate side, because I’ve experienced this firsthand where especially with the visionary integrator, you know, I’m more of the integrator operations person. So I know when there’s visionary ideas come to me, I’m immediately like, how the hell are we going to do that? You know, it’s going to take like these 172 steps. And so I pushed back against it, you know, and and so there are heated debates. So I’m curious.
Ryan Redding: 27:59
Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 27:59
On that front, what were some of the heated debates. And like, you know, it sometimes, sometimes results in something completely different from what both people think. Sometimes it’s in the middle, like maybe there was a new product that you were like, I have this new shiny idea. And then the operations person is like, Ryan, like, settle down. You’re like, I’m not going to settle down. This is the best idea. This is going to move us into the future or whatever, I don’t know. And I do want to point out before you answer that people can. I did do an interview with Mark Winters of Rocket Fuel.
That’s a good one, and Gino Wickman of Traction, so people can check those out as well. And like Ryan said, when I read Rocket Fuel, it definitely made a lot more sense in the business world to me with that book. So I’m curious about those heated debates and and how they got, you know, how they ended up and got resolved eventually. I don’t know if any shout out to you.
Ryan Redding: 28:58
Well, you know, what’s funny is I don’t know if any stick out to me. It’s because we always debate and this that sounds weird, but I guess a little bit of background. So for me, I’ve always like as long as I can remember, I’ve been a little bit of a contrarian. Like, Jeremy, if you were to come to me and say, bro, you gotta try this sandwich, it is the best sandwich I’ve ever had in my life. Try it.
It’s amazing. My first response, almost, almost 100 times out of 100 is to be like, really? The best sandwich. Like, I want you to prove to me that the sandwich that you discovered is really the best. I’m not just going to give you a free pass. Like, prove it to me. And at the same time, I. I learned through debate. So when you’re telling me about how amazing this sandwich is and you’re, like, making all your points about, well, it’s got this sort of Asian pork or whatever, like, I don’t know what goes into a great sandwich. I’m learning.
It’s like, oh, okay. So there’s like a constructive component. There’s a qualitative component. There’s okay. It’s not just like the sum of the ingredients. There’s something else here. And I want to understand it, I learn I usually don’t double down. I usually don’t entrench I usually flex at the same time. I appreciate the challenge. So if I come out saying like, hey, this is the next best idea, it’s going to take us into the next decade.
Somebody’s challenging it, being like, bro, you’re full of shit makes me forced to it. It forces me to wrestle with that idea to make it a better idea. Right? So I am I am borrowing now wholeheartedly this concept that comes from a guy named Patrick Lencioni. Patrick Lencioni famously wrote the book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, or The Advantage, where he talks about like this trust component and not he actually breaks it up to say it’s not a predictive based trust.
Like, oh, I know if I talk to you about this sandwich, you’re going to react this way. So instead of saying it the way I want, I’m actually going to say it this way to kind of manipulate your behavior, because he would call that politics. And he would say, in a high performing environment, you don’t have room for politics. Instead, it’s this idea of like vulnerability based trust, which is this idea of I trust people enough to show them my vulnerabilities and my weaknesses and trust that they won’t exploit them. And so superficially, that’s as easy as things like, I don’t know the best answer to this, I don’t.
Or hey, Jeremy, you know this better than I do. This is really your domain. What should we do here? That for a lot of people is really difficult to do. To just say they don’t know. Or here’s one that a lot of guys struggle with. I got it wrong, I screwed up. To just candidly admit that mistake without fear that somebody else is going to exploit you, try to attack you, try to weaponize that opening that you just created in the in the Lencioni framework. That is the fundamental component. And so I, I learned about the stuff. Oh, gosh, this might have been 2005, 2010 where.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 32:02
I remember I could picture the Death by Meeting book that he wrote? Actually, yeah. Yeah. He’s got a he’s got a number of really good books. Yeah.
Ryan Redding: 32:10
That is another great resource. And it all kind of builds on this principle that people should be able to bait, not because they’re trying to win an argument, but because they’re trying to fight for the best possible decision. Right. And so when that is the underpinning that you trust people enough to fight for the best possible decision, it really does change the dynamic. Now, had I had I had personality defects that said like, no, I always have to win.
Like I have this idea of like, I can never be wrong. I can never be vulnerable. I can never be flawed. I always have to be right and tip toe around me and like, kowtow to make sure that I feel, you know, like you’re kidding me with kid gloves. And we probably would not have had the success in that dynamic that we had. And so those were those are like background materials that when he was hired. I’m like, cool, you need to read Five Dysfunctions. You need to read. I think I said death by meeting at that point. I also said, like, here’s Traction.
Like I actually sent him, here’s the reading material. We’re not doing any of this officially yet, but this is what we’re moving into. This is kind of the framework that’s in the background. But at least now there’s a common vernacular that we can both share and to this day. Right?
I mean, it’s been not quite a year, but a just shy of a year since I fully exited the business. And at this point, he and I are still deeply close friends. Right? I can’t imagine someone else in my life that has the role he has. He can speak things to me that very, very few people have the ability to speak.
And it’s not because at this point I’m not signing his paycheck, right? It’s not a relationship that’s based on mutual financial benefit. It’s mutual respect and appreciation, and it’s just a fundamentally different sort of dynamic. So I think, you know, it’s funny, I don’t remember the original question that got me on this particular rabbit hole.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 34:04
I was wondering if you remember any heated debates?
Ryan Redding: 34:08
Yeah, dude, at this point, that’s that’s what it was. We debated everything I could I could call him today and say that I saw this thing on the news, and he’s going to take the other side of the the news article, and we’re going to hash it out. And it’s just like a fun thing. Probably one of the biggest ones was trying to figure out, do we sell or do we not sell when the conversation like this is probably the one that, you know, there’s a lot of these like little moments of big ones, like, do we let these people go to promote this person? Do we fire this client?
Do we add the service like there’s a lot of those? Probably the most transformative one was when it came down to we had an unsolicited offer to purchase the agency from a strategic partner like, well, this is a really great partnership. We we cannot ignore this. But the debate of wrestling through that, that particular debate took about a month of just like to tear apart, to think about it, to wrestle with it, to bring up other issues, to poke holes in it some more. It was not a seven minute one and done.
It was a it was a legit wrestling. And at the other day, you know, we both came to the conclusion that this was the best strategic move for the business and one that we’d probably have a hard time replicating on our own unilaterally if we chose to pursue a different timing. So it but that particular debate was healthy. Again, I don’t think any of that debate would have been possible had all that other underpinning been there at all.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 35:46
That gets me to the question of, I’d love to hear your learnings from the selling process. You know, going through it for the first time, you know, what did you learn? And then maybe some things on the next go around. You would change or do differently based on your experience.
Ryan Redding: 36:07
Yeah. This is this is a big one. And this is actually something that I’ve started moving more and more into, like coaching people who are looking to buy or people who are looking to sell and kind of guiding them through my experience, too, because what I’ve learned after the fact is that, like, depending on which research you read and cite, somewhere between 70 and 95% of mergers and acquisitions tuck ins fail. Now, the definition of fail is very broad in this context. I’m using it to be like underperform on the expected value that you’re hoping to create.
So it’s this idea of when you’re wanting to sell. A lot of times people sell not because it’s a strategically good partnership, but because they’re burnt out. Like they just can’t do it anymore. Like they feel beaten and they’re like, I can’t, I can’t do this another day. Somebody just I don’t even give me $20. I will give you the keys to the business. Now, if I can walk away free and clear, like there’s a lot of people who sell under those conditions. There are a few who sell under. This is a really great dream matchup. And when those people happen, they usually get super excited.
They overplay the possibilities. They’re like, we can have this strategic capability. They look for these things called synergies, which at this point in time I’m going to say is largely bullshit. It’s this idea of like, well, one plus one doesn’t equal two. One plus one equals three.
It’ll be amazing. And because they see the upside of that exit event, they start making poor quality decisions because that that exit event is now clouding everything else. On the flip side, buyers have the same sort of issue. They’re like, oh, they want to add on this new service. They want to go to this new market, right?
There’s some particular advantage they want. And it makes it where they’re likely to overpay to get whatever asset they think that they’re getting. It could be people. It could be process. It could be technology, it could be equipment, it could be a location. It could be whatever, right? It could be a bolt on that. They’re like, oh, we don’t do this, but it’d be awesome if we did. It could be strategic or complementary. But the idea is that even as a buyer, you start letting your.
But if we only could, and if we only had, you start letting that float your valuation of what you think the other business is worth to you and go through it. So all the attention on what I have learned of almost every M&A deal that I’ve ever seen focuses on the financial due diligence. Right? Show me your PNL. What’s your 12 month run rate like? How is this rolling 12 working for you? Okay, cool. If you have that sort of capability, can we offset this this cost expense in our end. And now bada bing, we just have a magic multiple on the bottom line that magically we can do most of the attention is is built on that.
Almost no attention is given to cultural due diligence of this idea of like, these are people that you’re integrating and they have different styles of different cultures, they have different process maps. And so one of the things that when I speak with, with PE groups especially, is this idea of like, how cool would it be if instead of like rolling the dice to say, well, maybe we’re going to win, maybe we’re going to lose, but we have this capital we have to deploy and we have to deploy it no matter what. And you find yourselves with 70 to 95% chance of failure if you say, hey, every, every business in your portfolio that you’re putting on this platform, if they run on the same set of standardized operating systems, like the whole business accounts for themselves, they operate the same.
They have the sense of familiarity. So you can hold all of them accountable and you know that they’re going to work. So I think, I think a big part is like overestimating the value of what you’re trying to buy. And underestimating exactly how unlikely it is for that to come through with a one plus one equals three. The other thing is, like, for anyone who actually does go through, like, again, statistically speaking, most people never are able to sell the business. Most people don’t. Most businesses, they try forever to sell, and eventually they just take it off the market and it just dies.
But the companies that do find themselves in a situation where they realize that integration is a bitch like to actually try to pull the cultures and the systems and leadership and customers and processes, those things are insanely difficult. And I think a lot of people just think, well, how hard would it be contract signed. Let’s just get your act together. Do it. Do it our way now. And they don’t give themselves space for actually the transition of those moments.
And so it puts simply like taking taking the difficulty of integrating cultures aside, there’s really this idea of like, hey, cool, you’re sunsetting this. You’re welcoming in this new way, right? Like, hey, ink signed. There’s this new future moving forward. Cool. That’s like phase one. Like cool. Here’s all new phase two. Is this going to be this, like, cool. Now we’re kind of transitioning. We’re letting things go. We’re getting people acclimated. We’re evolving these systems. We’re integrating them together. And then phase three is okay, now you’re officially sunsetting the old way.
The old way no longer exist. There is no more. Well, we always and but this is how we do it. And let me also say, one of the things I think happens a lot is that there is no such thing unless it’s a hostile takeover. But let’s not assume that we’re in a hostile environment here.
There is no such thing where the acquiring party wins and the losing party loses. It is not conquest that’s happening here. What this is, is you’re creating a new organization. New teams, new processes, new workflows. It is new.
So for both groups, the person selling and the person buying. It doesn’t matter where your perspective is or where you’re kind of power dynamic falls at the end of the day. The way forward is to create a new company where all these people and all these systems and all these teams and all the customers co-exist, and that is not just doing it the old way for either company. So both companies have to be able to sunset the old way of doing things to move forward. There’s obviously going to be like issues and errors with the math on the synergy just doesn’t add up. You know, at this point, I feel like synergy is a buzzword that people say I very, very rarely see one plus one equals three. Most of the time it’s one plus one equals one.
The the acquiring party just doesn’t have the ability either from a leadership standpoint or technology standpoint or cultural standpoint or or or to actually capitalize on the synergy and capabilities of what they’re hiring. So it means that customers can leave, that employees can feel disengaged, that everything just feels harder and complicated. It’s just really, really hard.
And that is the best of scenarEOS. That that’s not even taking the like what happens with the old leadership. Like how do you get them apart?
Because once the old leadership leaves, it’s going to change dynamic with people who have loyalties or affection or relationship with people. It’s a very, very difficult thing to consolidate these things. So I think everyone has these ideas of going through successful exits. And there are those that exist there, 100% are. There’s also a lot of like cautions about ways that they don’t go well. And what I’m hoping with the practice is that more and more companies who are looking to exit and more and more companies are looking to buy can find significant value in making sure that both sides of the partnership are in alignment. They’ve gone through the due diligence.
They’ve asked the right questions, the hard questions. They’ve done the cultural assimilation, and they work through this to actually create a one plus one equals three. Best case and an average case, it’s called one plus one equals two. But to make sure that the person doing the buying and the person doing the selling both walk away feeling like they got the return on their investment, that they did this to begin with. And it’s just harder.
It’s a lot harder I think people give credit for.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 44:23
You mentioned a couple key things, Ryan here, which is integration and cultural due diligence. What did that look like in your process? The cultural due diligence part?
Ryan Redding: 44:37
Yeah. So I think that was one of the lessons that was really difficult. Is the company that bought us, in our case, like KickCharge Creative is a fantastic company. In the world of home services, they are the name in brand and logo and wraps and uniforms. They do creative design better than anyone I’ve ever seen. Our space was largely digital, which is not super sexy. It’s a lot of spreadsheets, a lot of quantitative analysis. It’s just a lot of like data. We we ran on EOS, the kick charge did not. So we kind of had a standardized, systemized framework of like how we surface issues, how we make decisions, how we assign accountability, take charge because they were just a different organization.
They didn’t have like that sort of structure. The other sort of dynamic that went in play was our business post. Covid was largely remote. All of our clients remote, all of our team was remote. We ended up selling our space in Tulsa. We had no centralized office at all post Covid. KickCharge is based in Washington, New Jersey, which is fantastic space in rural new Jersey. So it it makes it where there’s even dynamics with how the cultures are different, with how they communicate, of how they share and disseminate information, of how they of how they even like, do water cooler time, like in a digital remote environment, just like, hey man, how was your weekend? Do anything fun? See that new movie?
Like all those things you have to be intentional about digitally because they’re they’re chats and they’re meetings and they’re like, whatever. When you’re in person, you don’t even think about it. You just kind of walk by and you hear people talking about what’s happening. You kind of learn by osmosis to a certain degree. So I think, I think one of the difficulties that that we experience that I think was underrepresented early on, the due diligence was like how difficult it’s going to be to take two very different structured organizations, one that’s more creative, one that’s more systematic, one that’s more in person, one that’s more rote, and try to assimilate them to be a fully integrated.
And I think that’s something that a lot of companies of similar sort of discrepancies are going to find themselves in. And the other thing is, like there’s also going to be route drivers that are different, right? So part of the let’s talk about hiring a new position for, for us at leveraging. One of the things that we learned is you’re going to do we because we ran on EOS at that point, EOS is all about like right person, right seats and use tools like the people Analyzer to go like, hey, do they fit with the core values? And you can get really clear on what those core values meant and didn’t mean.
And you had like these anecdotal references of who these people were. But then we moved into this scorecard method of like essentially trying to quantify outcomes. So when we hire, not only would we filter through like right people, right seats, we’d say, cool. Does this person have the capability to get the outcomes we want? So our hiring process was very systematic, very standardized, but with a high degree of probability, helps surface the people who are the right people who not only had the skills, but also had the core values to help us move forward.
Because of the in-person dynamic of a creative environment, they didn’t really have that sort of systematized approach.
A lot of it came down to who you know, and I know this person at this other place. They’d be a great fit for this. So even like simple things like, hey, I have this new position, I need this hire this new position. Even getting a position posted, vetted, approved by, you know, all the new parties now interested in it. It was it was difficult. So I think cultural due diligence people tend can people can easily just like gloss through and skim over and be like, yeah, well we know you, we trust you, we see your reputation and kind of not get into the nitty gritty of how do these people argue, how do these what are the things that these people feel good enough to fight for?
How do you incentivize their behavior? Do you incentivize them with like a parking spot? Do you incentivize them with a pizza party? Do you incentivize them with a cash bonus at the end of the year? Like what is it? There are these intrinsic drivers that keep people moving on mission for the business. And how do you start creating unified structure? Because you don’t want a scenario where some people feel better and some people feel worse just because of who bought who. Right. So you don’t want some people to feel like, well, I’m remote, so I’m not as legitimate employee as a person who’s in person or my business was sold to this other company.
So I’m not as legitimate of an employee or valued of a team member as this company who bought us. You want the dynamics where everyone is included and there’s not a us versus them. It’s us. It’s like we’re all one company going to our new goal, which means you have to create space for those. The other thing, the other thing I think companies get distracted with is there’s this there’s this desire to want to keep activity going. You want to make progress as quick as possible. So you sign the ink. The deal’s done. Like, okay, let’s get out in the press and let’s start making waves. And let’s start actually making this, this whole big thing that everyone’s been working on.
You paid, you know, bajillions of dollars in legal fees. All right. Let’s start actually monetizing it and actually showing why we did this. One of the things that happens is you have this stages of team development, which everyone should review at every stage. When you’re going through a new hire or an acquisition to see how people change and evolve and how what goes into those various stages of people becoming a high performing team. There’s not a scenario where like put a sticker on it, say, congratulations, you’re part of this new company. Now go and work your fullest capability with these other people you don’t really know.
You have to create the opportunity for these teams to form, and unfortunately, that takes time. Like there’s no substitute for time. So this means a lot of company cultures, if they are conflict averse, going back to the issue of conflict, it might be an uncomfortable process because part of the stages of team development is the storming phase. It’s this idea of like people kind of hashing out what their lanes are and who does what and who can be counted on. Those have to happen. And if companies are trying to do an acquisition and they arrest the development of those stages, that company will likely be stuck in a stage of dysfunction where no team is operating at their full capacity. And now you’re back at this one plus one equals one, not one plus one equals two.
It’s there’s a lot that goes into it and it’s it’s way more. Yes. You need the legal due diligence. Yes. You need financial due diligence. I’m not saying those are not important. But given that businesses are not made of spreadsheets, they’re made of people. I have learned through experience that the cultural due diligence might be the secret ingredient to an acquisition deal, being a make or break at the end of a 12 or 18 month period.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 51:31
Thanks for being so detailed with that, Ryan. I do want to talk about and we’ve talked about EOS, and that was one of the things, you know, we talk about, okay, there’s just way different ways that companies operate. It could be remote versus in-person. It could be EOS versus some other methodology. And we’ve talked about EOS and you are a certified bloom growth coach. Right. So I would love to hear why certified Bloom Growth coach before you you talk about that, I do want to mention and you mentioned how to handle conflict. I did have a guest, Gabe Karp, on who basically his whole book was about how to handle conflict. It was it was pretty eye opening for me.
And his book’s called Don’t Get Mad at Penguins: And Other Ways to Detox the Conflict in Your Life and Business. And he he was an attorney and was used to conflict. So we went into these business settings as a general counsel. He was used to conflict, and he felt the business setting, people were shying away from conflict. And like you said, like a healthy debate is. And he gave a bunch of examples. So I found it, you know, pretty informational for me anyways. So talk about bloom growth coach. Why bloom growth coach.
Ryan Redding: 52:55
Yeah. So let me first let me start with us because I I’ve been on us now for years. There’s a lot of things that I’m really grateful for, of what was at the time we adopted it. And to be really honest, I didn’t know of anything else at the time. The more I’ve I’ve grown and learned and been around other entrepreneurs like, okay, there’s other models and operating systems that exist, but EOS at the time was a really good process to take the weight of the business off of me, the founder of the entrepreneur, from doing everything and being responsible for everything to having like a standard sort of process that you go through.
Right. And the six pillars of EOS are famously, always and forever will be the six pillars. Right. You’re going to have the vision. You’re going to have the right people, right seats. You’re going to have the data, the scorecards, measurables. You’re going to have the whole issue of how you surface issues and IDs them. You’re going to have the process where everything’s documented followed by all, and then you have like this idea of like there’s a certain cadence where you have attraction, right? So in us we’re world, it’s like the idea of like rocks and milestones and this meeting pulse, you have this sort of like rhythm that everyone gets coached and there’s some tools along the way. And for a lot of people, that is a really amazing starting point.
The joke, however, with EOS is that when Gino Wickman came down from the holy mountain with the EOS etched on the tablets back in the early 2000, to this day, like they will say, they will never and will never under any condition iterate and evolve beyond Gino Wickman descending from the mountain. I have tremendous amount of respect for Gino and the organization, but that that framework is etched in stone as of that point in time. The downside, which we’ve kind of danced around to a certain degree in this conversation, is that we have learned a significant amount more about human behavior, about team dynamics, about things, about literacy components that EOS just doesn’t have the flexibility to include and incorporate.
So at some point, it’s a great starting point, but it doesn’t actually evolve based on what we know with just science and research and learned experience. Examples would be we talked about the Patrick Lencioni idea earlier, right, of this idea of like human behavior, relationships, team health. At the end of the day, there’s this idea that when you are a better human, when you are better able to take care of your own personal stuff. When you’re able to show up with more compassion, more empathy. Lean into things with vulnerability. Not only are you just a better person, right? You are going to be a better team member.
You’re going to be a better colleague. You’re going to be a better family person. Like you’re going to have more holistic environments as it relates to people, because, shocker, businesses are about people at the end of the day. So there’s an entire component of the bloom growth system, which is it’s like an evolution of us that’s all about team health. It’s all about creating psychological safety, which Google found a project. Aristotle was like the primary factor in determining is it a high performing team or not? It’s going to talk about like how to build trust, how to be authentic, leading as as a leader with your team. Like these are all things that Patrick Lencioni has done research on for years.
But a lot of this idea, and even Google’s research gets pulled into the US framework or the the bloom growth framework, because now we know better. We know how these things work better. The other thing is like this. There’s this idea of like financial literacy, data literacy, technology literacy. These are things that us doesn’t really do much about. Like it’s cool. Here’s your financial reports and you’re going to review them on a scorecard, but you don’t really know how to read them. Like you really don’t know how to interpret the information that you’re seeing. It’s just numbers on a dashboard. There’s an entire component of bloom that’s dedicated to leveraging and understanding financial insights so you can make better, faster, and anticipatory decisions.
So it’s not just like what’s the scorecard say, but it’s actually teaching like understand what the data means and how to use it to make better decisions. There’s a whole segment about sales and marketing. How better to attract the right type of clients, the right type of customers so you can actually grow your business not just by hustle but by smarts. But there’s also these cool modules that are built on, like for people wanting to exit, like if that is specifically your goal in the next 2 to 5 years is like, hey, I’m gonna do a change of control event and step out.
There’s an entire component in bloom that’s dedicated to helping facilitate the culture that can transition to a new owner, while keeping your team energized and incentivized to want to maintain that relationship. So you’re not selling somebody a business that’s like a bag of rocks. You’re selling. You’re selling the new owner. People that want to be a part of the success of the new company, like they are fully equipped and engaged in what this is. So for me, just from personal experience, I feel like while us, I have a lot of respect for and I have a lot of thanks for them for what they’ve done for me in my business, Bloom Growth has has kind of defined this continual iteration, continual improvement of not just like, well, this is what it was 20, 25 years ago.
So that’s what we’ll always be. But as we have more information, as we have more data, as we have more research, it will continue to evolve to incorporate the latest of human behavior so that businesses continue to be high performing and high functioning. So I wish everyone in the community a ton of success bloom growth to me, just it has become a more holistic and more open world environment where regardless of where you are in the business, what you’re struggling with, like it’s pulling in aspects to help companies leverage that capability, knowledge, insight. And at this point, it’s been it’s been deployed and tested by thousands of companies running on the bloom Growth OS.
So there’s just so much real world insights, lessons, experience that’s coming in that’s continuing to evolve. I was actually in Chicago, actually not too far from you, just, what, a few weeks ago. And that was the whole thing is like, here’s what Bloom Growth was a year ago. But here’s a lot of the changes and updates we’re making based on more data, better data, more information. And that’s just that’s just something that EOS, it will never be a part of their world. Don’t judge them for it. But it bloom to me, is a better representation of a tool that adapts as we learn more.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 59:33
Yeah, thanks for sharing that. You know, people just, you know, they have an attraction to different programs and there’s a different time and place for those things. And Ryan, first of all, I have one last question before I ask it. I want to point people to check out EightFoldAdvantage.com to learn more. Ryan actually helps people founders, entrepreneurs of all types of businesses with go through these stuck points, plateaus, ceilings and the things that he he went through on his journey. But I do want to ask about the podcast and some of the favorite.
I’ll pull it up here for a second. Some of year. So we’re here at Blue Collar.CEO. Whenever I mention your podcast to people, especially in the blue collar industries, they’ve heard of it. They love it. So I’d love to hear some of your favorite episodes, because for me, I mean, I learn from I listen to a number of your episodes. It doesn’t matter what business, right? Businesses have similar challenges, struggles, and so I’d love to hear some of your, I don’t know if any past episodes stick out to you that you should check out.
Ryan Redding: 1:00:47
I mean, there’s there’s so many. That’s the crazy part. So there is there’s a guy named Lawrence Castillo who is an operator in California. He’s actually rooted in in Colorado but now lives in California. He has one of the most thoughtful and insightful sort of conversations where I walked away feeling like I learned so much. When I spoke with Lawrence. I mentioned Tommy Mellow earlier, Tommy’s podcast, which I think was like a year and a half ago. At this point, I remember having that conversation with Tommy, and I think up until that point, I’d only met him in passing at a few events.
But to find us, very rarely have I had a conversation with somebody who left me, like thinking and wrestling and percolating on what they talked about for days. It was a it was a deeply inspiring and motivating and challenging conversation, just to see someone who has been insanely successful in any industries definition, to see how he thought through his values and like a lot of his values and the way he talks about it, isn’t necessarily about just make more money, but it’s also about his family. You have people in there that Dan Antonelli of KickCharge Creative actually is. He’s on the show where he talks about like how he’s in branding.
You have there’s just there’s so many I don’t know how many hundreds of episodes at this point we’ve done. It’s a lot. So it’s like all these people kind of bring something out. Chad Peterman was one. There was oh the conversation with eco plumbers. So just for context, our agency did a lot in home service space, plumbing, HVAC, electrical, roofing, garage door. So a lot of our guests are in that vein. But you have a couple people who actually talk about how important it is to have a vision big enough to attract people who they can see themselves in your vision. And so for for plumbers like, you talk like we a lot of the conversation was about what it meant for him to have this hundred million dollar vision where he’s attracting insanely high performing people to be a part of his organization that carry the business forward, not because he’s smarter or better looking, although he always has a great haircut.
It really is just he’s incredibly good at painting a clear and compelling vision that is a really, really big tent. So yeah, if there’s especially if you’re in the trades, it is there’s a wealth of knowledge and conversations available. Even if you’re not in the trades, you’re going to learn a lot about people who are passionate about serving people doing right in the community, building or building businesses the right way. There’s not a lot of guys who take shortcuts. It’s just it’s been a really, really great journey to do. And I’m I’m grateful, Jeremy, for you and your team, for all the help along the way, because early on, I don’t know if you remember, I was I was a bit hesitant about doing a podcast. I was like, I don’t want you hesitant.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:03:40
Come on. No.
Ryan Redding: 1:03:41
Like, calm down. Like, I just I was like, I was doing YouTube. I was doing long term YouTube at the time. I’m like, I don’t want to spend more time like, this is just more time. But you I remember talking to you and you’re like, yeah, but here’s the deal. And I have become convinced that podcasts are one of the most powerful ways to connect with people, to learn their stories, to build community.
They are resource to our existing clients. So I will take podcast episodes and say, hey, client, you know you were struggling with X, Y, or Z. Listen to this conversation because you’ll find it stimulating. I highly recommend anyone who’s on the fence about podcasting and just start it. But yeah, Blue Collar.CEO, I could not imagine have doing it without your team’s help.
Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 1:04:26
I appreciate that, and you have many episodes over 218 episodes at this point. And I just want to thank you, Ryan. Everyone can check out EightFoldAdvantage.com if you want to check out the podcast. Blue Collar.CEO or on your favorite podcast channel. And you can check out more episodes of InspiredInsider.com. Ryan, thanks so much.
Ryan Redding: 1:04:49
Thanks, Jeremy.
