Welcome And Sponsor Note

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is the Empowering Healthy Business Podcast, and I'm your host, Cal Wilder. Each episode, we'll dive into topics important to folks who want to run businesses that are both nicely profitable, sustainable, and scalable, and who want to achieve balance in their lives and realize their potential inside and outside of work. The show is sponsored by SmartBooks, provider of bookkeeping and accounting for businesses. Let's get started. Welcome. I think today's episode is going to be a very interesting one, and I'm not sure where all it will go. I was introduced to today's guest related to potentially coming on my second podcast, the Marketing Agency Power Hour, and then I quickly realized there's a much larger story here to tell than just what his current marketing agency is doing. I think we'll find some similarities with uh episode number 30, which was overcoming blind spots of visionary founders trying to scale a business with Becky Binuti of BB Coaxing. Shout out Becky. Um but I think we'll see how today's guest does that to accelerate the growth of specific kinds of clients. So without further ado, JB Mullikan, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Thank you, Cal. Thank you for having me. Excited to have this conversation.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Yeah. So maybe I'll start by asking you you know, you founded multiple, multiple companies, multiple agencies over the years. You've uh your current one, you started on EOS from day one, I understand. And prior is you probably didn't use EOS, so maybe you implemented it midway through. So I'm curious, what's it uh, what's it been like to, you know, start on EOS when you run on EOS versus not?

SPEAKER_01 1:37

Yeah, so that's a uh it's it's a fun conversation to have, right? I think you know, the one of the core tenets of EOS is you're just harnessing the energy of people, right? Getting everybody running in the right direction. And um, you know, agencies uh are their own unique complexity because you know, we're the land of corporate misfits. There's you have the entrepreneurialism and the and the uh the creativity and all that kind of coming together, and it's all deadline driven, it's very dynamic. So I think agencies themselves can be a place internally that can seem chaotic, uh, many if not most of the time. And um, so being um, you know, starting an agency young and really learning business and entrepreneurship and all that at the same time, you know, I had some success in my earlier years growing agencies and did that. Um, you know, it was fun, but it was chaos, you know. And um uh did that for about 12 years before then going client side and uh being in marketing leadership for two different organizations for about a decade. And then really had that, what I didn't know now was a visionary itch, you know, had that itch to be like, I'm doing something on my I'm doing something, helping other people build their vision, but I wanted to do it on my own again. So um kind of my introduction to EOS was I had jumped out and started a consulting company and left a position um at a good size systems integrator, software systems integrator where I was running marketing and sales, and wanted to start my own consultancy and sat down with a friend of mine, Adam Landrum, like on day two of my first week on my own. Like the only thing I had done was quit my job and printed a business card and um and started networking and met with Adam and um he was running an agency for about 20 years. He was an accountant and uh by background who just at the dot com boom started playing with websites.

SPEAKER_00 3:36

That's an unusual combination right there.

Jamie’s First Real EOS Moment

SPEAKER_01 3:39

Correct. Yeah. So he was an accountant who started building tools in the early dot-com era, websites for people, that then became a full-blown agency 20 years later. And um he listened to what I said that morning at breakfast, and he was like, you know, I hear you, but don't do that. I was like, why? It was it's like I'm an accountant, I have an agency, it's been 20 years, I'm exhausted. I'm doing this thing called EOS. And will you come and be my integrator? Um, and so he gave me a copy of Get a Grip. Um, and that was my introduction of to EOS was really reading that book I'd never heard of it before that day. And over you know, five days reading the book, talking and negotiating that next Monday I started as his as his integrator. So um that was my intro to EOS. I'll hold that part of the story for down the road. But so that was three years, that was the COVID chapter, and then had the opportunity to do something on my own again um when uh after COVID had kind of lifted, and decided to jump out, not start an agency again, do some consulting. And that consulting led us to where we are today, which is wonder. Um, and when when it was getting very clear that that I was gonna start and build another agency, uh, then I just committed, I hired our EOS implementer, and I hired my integrator, my co-founder and I, Mark, hired an integrator. So there were three of us, and we sat down 10 days after he started and did our focus day for EOS. So we literally ground, you know, at the very beginning, started with our implementer doing a formal EOS implementation, and that's been uh about 20 months ago. Cool.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

And so for those listening who are not familiar with EOS, it's it's really uh a business operating system with a very structured set of uh you know organizational structure and meeting cadences and things like that. How would you how would you describe it, Jamie?

SPEAKER_01 5:32

Yeah, I mean it's it's it it is a framework, and you know what there is a lot of uh a lot of people, you know, what is this thing? Is it software? Is it a bunch of bureaucracy? Like I'm an entrepreneur, I don't want all these rules. Um, and it's actually a framework that gives entrepreneurs freedom. You know, it really does help you focus on the right things, align your team in the right direction. Um, you know, every every community has some unity. Um, every culture has a little cult. So really it helps a team focus on a common good, which is whatever the vision of that organization is. Um, and then it gives you the language, right, to to allow everybody to to know how to speak and and manage and communicate well, and it aligns goals to that vision. So it has a really strong accountability uh framework or accountability component to the framework that really just removes drama, lets you be objective, have a vision, have a clear plan, let everybody come to their to their seat and on the bus and uh know where the bus is headed and just do their job really well as a team.

SPEAKER_00 6:43

Right. So there's components, there's instead of a traditional org chart, you have the accountability chart where it's focused on the outcomes that each role is responsible for, not like the job description of what you do, right? And then you have a structured uh weekly leadership team meeting. Um, and then you have structured quarterly meetings and annual planning, but it all starts, like you said, with uh focus day, right?

SPEAKER_01 7:10

Correct. Yeah, and then what it gives you is it gives your organization a pulse, you know, um, it gives you a rhythm, it gives you uh predictability to allow, like for us, the the energy and chaos that we thrive in as an agency, like, but it does give us a heartbeat, right? We can still get our cardio workout in because we got so much going on, but it gives you uh um just it sets aside the time, gives people the language to allot, depending on what team you're on, you know, 90 minutes a week to work on the business instead of in it.

SPEAKER_00 7:45

Um there's a whole set of tools that instead of having to go figure out how to do you know performance reviews, which you know, annual performance reviews are painful for everybody involved usually and not really that helpful. Um but so they have different tools. So you don't have to figure out how to do a performance review, how to figure out do all the employees know the business and values of the business? And so instead of having to reinvent 20 different tools or whatever, you know, this EOS gives them to you. So you spend your time executing and driving the business, not trying to figure out how to manage the business.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

Yeah, absolutely. It just gives you those languages, those tools, and and the number one, you know, tenant is simplicity, right? So fighting complexity with simplicity is is what the framework's intended to do. Um, and taking like employee reviews or even hiring, um, you know, that's challenging, right? There's everybody has their different way of doing it. There's some formal, some informal. Um, but really the the on the people component of EOS is GWC. Does the person in this role get it? Do they want it? Do they have the capacity to do it? And when you pair their roles and responsibilities with just the yes and no, if there's no maybe, is do they get it, yes or no? Uh do they want it? Do they have capacity to do it? But you're doing it in the however many the five or six key roles um that are in their function. Um, and then you align that with core values. Um, and then you do that quarterly, and it just makes, you know, that uh mitigates surprises, gives you a structure to a framework, lets employees know when those conversations happen. And you obviously have multiple times with L10s and other places to, you know, work through issues and challenges. Uh, but it just really gives good, clear communication and expectations.

SPEAKER_00 9:33

And uh, you know, provides a scorecard, kind of forces like you know, measuring what matters on a weekly basis and rolling it up toward quarterly objectives. So it's you know, it is kind of binary, yes or no, which is uh one knock on it compared to other frameworks, because it's hard to say always visit yes or no. Sometimes it is kind of half or maybe.

SPEAKER_01 9:53

Um but it yeah, it still gives you the conversation. That's the thing is it gives you the conversation and the language to at least say, like, hey, we can use this tool, we can look at it. Um and there's ways to do it. Like, you know, EOS doesn't provide leadership, doesn't provide people, right? It just provides the frameworks that are very simple and easy to follow. Um, so you can bring your personal style and you know, background and dialogue and everything into that.

SPEAKER_00 10:19

Yeah, cool. Um, and then the other kind of knock I've heard is, and I experienced it some, I'd overcome that to some extent when I was running on EOS, which is it's kind of light on strategy. It's got those three uniques, but unless you really dive in and kind of look at that in terms like and like we ended up using um uh uh it was written by the CEO of Procter Gamble. It's about it has strategy maps in it. I don't know. It kind of forced us to decide what we wanted to be good at, who we were gonna sell to, things like that. And ultimately it can come up with three uniques, but I feel like sometimes you need a little more of a structured way to figure out your strategy too.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

Yeah, when they when you talk about what's what makes you different, uh, what's your nature, what's your target market, you know, that's the three very three simple lines on what's called the VTO, which is the vision direction organizer. Um, and really what that does is at least gets everybody aligned on what we're not gonna go do, right? Yeah. Because it does narrow it down and just say, okay, here's what we do and for whom. Yeah. Um, and what here's what makes us different, here's what we do and for whom. So it's it's very simple. But yeah, it doesn't give you a marketing strategy or a plan to say, like, now what do we do? We have time and dollars to invest to build a pipeline to drive revenue. It doesn't give you that. And which is actually why we founded Wonder, is because that's a very natural stage for a company to have a vision, you know, have uh once they get a clear vision, usually they realize, wow, we've got this internally, we've got alignment. You know, and our messaging no longer aligns with what this target market is or what makes us different. So as an agency, that's where we come in and work with brands that run on EOS, because we can take that VTO and actually help them build a brand strategy that's true for who they are today, but who they want to be in a decade when they're trying to hit that 10-year target. Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:12

So the way you described kind of internal culture at agencies, I'm curious how hard it is and how often it succeeds implementing such a structured uh system, such as EOS, and how much resistance there is, and how do you overcome that natural resistance to imposing structure or embracing structure?

Strategy Limits And The VTO

SPEAKER_01 12:30

I I will say most likely, like so I am a creative by background, you know. I'm I'm started as in the graphic design side of advertising. Um, and I've I am all things that come with that crazy creative agency leader. Um I enjoy new stuff. I love working with clients, um, love, you know, um working through the work and keeping everything moving. Uh, but I don't do the same thing twice ever, right? So I'm just not a super structured person. Um, on strength finders, my number 34 is discipline. So, you know, for me, um, and I I know tons of agencies that now run on it. So, you know, I think it is, it has gotten very common. Um, because what makes our business complicated is we're not, say, a civil engineering firm where everybody's engineers, right? We're not a single discipline agency. You've got a small team, many small agencies, 12 to 20 people, even 12 to 30 people, don't have full departments with managers because you know you've got developers and and media people and SEO people and writers and designers and all these different skill sets that are just hard to manage. And we do custom work, right? No aid no client comes to us and says, I want exactly templates of what you did for your other client for us, right? So helping meet clients where they are, understand uh what their unique needs are, and then doing the work for them, everything is custom with you know, uh a mixed discipline team. And then that just makes things hard. You can't really create an assembly line for agencies that are full service. You can if you're just gonna do one thing and that's your niche. Um, but we choose to be full service. Um, so it just gets hard. And I think that EOS for agencies like ourselves finds some freedom and letting EOS bring that rhythm to where we can each week talk about the challenges, the things that are blocking us from getting our work done, right? Those are called issues. So each week we now have the platform in every department to say, here's the issues I'm having. Um, those get surfaced up, teams solve problems, and then they check those off and they're done, right? You go to the next week. So I think that um for me, I was starving for it. I always knew uh that I love being inside the agency business. But one of the reasons I did want to do it again is because it's so it's exhausting, you know. But the energy it took me to 26 to start an agency, I didn't have that energy at 52 when I started wondering. And I didn't realize that until we started it again. Um, so EOS just really gives you that freedom, it removes a lot of that drama and friction and frustration and lets people do what they want to do. And for creative people, you know, one of one of the most important things about creativity is constraints, right? If I say go be creative, and I give you no assignment, you know, some people may struggle, but once you put kind of the the banks on the river, the water starts flowing, right? And I think that's what EOS brings to um an agency is it's the banks to the river. So we can still flow, have energy and do what we do, but it just really gives you that that structure that you need.

SPEAKER_00 15:47

Yeah, it kind of gives you the guardrails like you still have to go do your creative client work, but you know your what scorecard metrics you're accountable for delivering every week. And so no matter what you need to do for clients and projects, you know, this is what kind of the number needs to numbers need to be at the every week.

SPEAKER_01 16:05

Well, that's a great example. That's something I resisted. I um, you know, I in in in not selling time, right? That's something being on the agency side for 25 years, we've never sold time, we've never been like this is gonna take 12 hours at X mount, and that's it, you know, we've always done fixed bid work. And what you want to do is hire premium fixed bid work, you know. Um, but I resisted uh timesheets as a scorecard metrics for over a year because um that it's one of the most punitive things, I think, as is timesheets. Because if you give me uh if the goal is 80% utilization, which means I got to build 32 hours this week, and you give me 40 hours worth of weird work and I do it in 20, I'm now in trouble for only tracking 20 hours of my time, right? But it's like, no, I did 100% of my work in half the time that you gave me. So then you have to have a culture that says, all right, well, I got this done, raise my hand. I've got 12 more hours to get my utilization, keep giving me more work, right?

SPEAKER_00 17:09

Right. And the more productive you are, the more money you you can make. Everybody, you know, the business makes more money, you have the opportunity to make more.

Creativity Needs Constraints

SPEAKER_01 17:16

But it keeps going up. So that you know, if you're if you're if your metric is your time, you're at the mercy of good planning. And the people who are planning are at the good mercy of good sales, right? So it is to me, it's a very artificial metric that um can be used as a weapon and usually is. So I resisted it. Um, and then last Q4, we actually said, all right, we're gonna, we couldn't figure out the metric for the creative team. Yeah. Because it's very little within their control, you know, and you could be like, well, missing deadlines. You could did we miss any deadlines? Did we uh did we do any rework? But really, those now are to me are putting in a bunch of processes for stuff that's only processed because we now have a metric. It's not like the metric is is a leading indicator, it's a lagging indicator, you know. So we did um we put out um a scorecard metric that says our our creative team has to bill 32 hours a week on average rolling over over 12 weeks. So if one week's down, it doesn't matter. If you take a vacation, it doesn't matter, but in 12 weeks it's gotta be that, you know, at that 32, uh, that 80% utilization. And I actually found that my team liked it. Like I was the one who didn't want to give it to them. I was like, this is a weapon, don't do it. Um, and I finally gave in, and now there's rhythm in it, and it's become part of like this week, as an example in our Monday L10 for the creative team, you know, one of my creatives built 57 hours last week, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:50

Like that's that's you know, from a you look at that and you're like, Well, was he productive or was that a problem because he was unproductive?

SPEAKER_01 18:59

Well, he the thing is is he was super productive, but it was because out of his control, he was slated to do some work, and then new urgent client work came in, right? And then so that had to move in front of that, which then pressed him to have to binge work all weekend. So the if you were like looking at hours, it's like great, but you have to look at the context and go, it's pretty fair, unfair situation.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

I mean, I I'll I'll share my two cents on uh utilization. My first scent is well, I guess I have three. My first scent is if you're in a professional services business, like an agency, most of your cost is your payroll and your people's time. It's like you're blind if you don't have visibility into their utilization, right? So that's my first thought. My second thought is you know, you got to avoid weaponizing it, like you said. Like you have a scorecard, there can't be um there needs to be a balanced set of metrics in there so you can measure utilization, but then you might want to know what's the effective hourly rate of those hours. So you may want to say, okay, I want to make sure I'm getting$150 an hour for the work. So if I log, you know, 15 more hours than I'm really supposed to, then that's gonna kill my effective hourly rate. And so it kind of balances and gives you some insight as to manager of what's going on.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:17

Um, and then I guess my third scent is um um well, I guess that was my third scent. You gotta have you gotta have another metric on the scorecard to balance it out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:29

Yeah.

unknown 20:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

But no, I think for us in doing it in 12 weeks, it's worked out to where it's like, hey, you can take, you know, uh a Friday off, you know, and as long as we're getting that week's stuff done, but then you know, you're gonna have to make some time up there because we're a small team. So if you take two days off, we're shifting your work to someone else who's picking it up, most likely.

SPEAKER_02 20:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

And so just having that that balance and that expectation. Um, and pulling it out to a longer view, you know, versus like at a day, it's like, you know, you had eight hours of work, you only build two and a half. You know, it's like that's very micromanaging from my perspective. It's like pull that back out and look at a longer window.

SPEAKER_00 21:11

Yeah, yeah. I mean, what happened in a week could be interesting, but it might not be good or bad. It just may be interesting.

SPEAKER_01 21:18

But I say that, you know, going back 20 years ago, running an agency with timesheets, you know, that was uh timesheets were the issue. It wasn't a scorecard metric. Everything was about job profitability and you know, tracking times every week, turning in your timesheet. I worked at an agency that paid us$20 on Fridays if we would just turn our timesheets in. That is actually not accountability, right? You don't have to pay someone to do the job that you maybe that's part of your job anyway. You don't pay someone to do what a basic expectation is. So just agencies have always struggled to find ways to do it.

SPEAKER_00 21:53

So let me ask you um, I'm putting you in the spot a little bit here, uh, but like before EOS, when you were running agency. Without EOS, what were like the top three big challenges or problems that you faced that are now solved by EOS? Or like what are the top ones that you've had to deal with that get solved now by EOS?

SPEAKER_01 22:13

I mean, I it's so like I going back and looking back, I mean, you know, pipeline and workload and uh the pulse and of the agencies, the feast and famine of the agencies, right? Like you get a bunch of work in, you know, and now everybody's focused on work and no one's looking up to what's on the other side of this, right? And so every I would say everything was a lagging indicator, right? We're reporting on the work that we did last week. There were very few things talking about the future. And I think that when you take each department, you know, um, in an organization, usually it's you've got lead, you know, so a visionary operations that's in the US called the VI relationship, visionary and integrator. Then you got sales marketing operations and finance. That's kind of the five seats in a very simple business. But then you split some, like we split, well, not here, but you know, sales and marketing can be split apart, you know, operations, you know, account service and creative direction, two totally different functions, right? So it doesn't make sense for those two to report into each other. So you get multiple seats on the leadership team. But the accountability chart says who's responsible for what, and then the core processes, which is how do you break the whole business down into the eight or 12 processes that run everything? Like you get that figured out, and then each of those eight or 12 processes belongs to someone on that accountability chart. So now you have full leading indicator metrics across each department, right? So being able for us every Monday to go on the sales side, how many leads came in last week, right? What's our what's how many opportunities, what's the value of the opportunities that we created in the past seven days? What's the uh what's the value of the pipeline that we have for this quarter, you know, and this quarter's coming to an end because we're at the end of March. So, all right, what's the next quarter looking like? Like having those at a leadership level every week across all departments just keeps everybody focused on kind of heads up versus once we leave that L10 meeting, we're heads down again getting all the work.

SPEAKER_00 24:19

Right. And I think the good integrators force those leading indicators to get defined because there's a there's you know a tendency to you know minimum you know, avoid certain accountability. So whoever's responsible for sales and marketing, you could measure them on how many deals they closed last week or month to date, but that's just lagging. You want to know how many calls they made, how many meetings that they had, how many proposals they presented, things like that each week, which are based on just effort, not so much. Some you know, luck and in the right place at the right time determines, you know, who's gonna sign for how much money each week, but you know, effort determines how many calls you made, and you know, some effort with some luck determines how many proposals you were presenting, things like that.

SPEAKER_01 25:08

Yeah, I've always since running a sales team, pipeline created. That's my weekly metric. Like in the past week, since last time we met, how much new pipeline has been created.

SPEAKER_02 25:16

Yeah.

Utilization Metrics Without Weaponizing

SPEAKER_01 25:17

Um, because that is it's lagging, you know, metric of last week's behavior. It's a leading metric of future sales pipeline, right? Um, and then like just issue resolution, like one of the issues for us last um probably last June was we were short staffed on the account service side. And we were we were hiring, but we were just understaffed. And so I was just telling clients, like, look, your work's getting done. I just don't have time to tell you that. So clients were emailing on like, what's the update on this? What's the update on this? So we actually put the primary um scorecard metric for our account service team is how many times did clients email us last week asking for an update on something? And the scorecard is zero. That's the goal. Um, but once it was once we put that metric on and it was like six, and then it went to four, you know, now it's zero, zero, zero. And if it's a one, we're talking about it, you know. But just the that idea of you know what met what's it what what gets measured matters or if we have the saying around it. But just knowing that that's a recurring issue that we're having. So let's just make it visible every week and let's solve it.

SPEAKER_00 26:28

Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, once each seat in the accountability seat gets, you know, their top metrics figured out, then you have the exercise of figuring out, okay, what's the short list of top company metrics and then making sure you incorporate because you can't just if each uh seat has five metrics each week, you can't roll it up to like 25 metrics at the company level is just too much. So then you have to really prioritize, you know, what is the senior leadership team going to be really focused on every week versus what is each department gonna be focused on every week?

SPEAKER_01 27:00

Yeah, when we first rolled out EOS, um, and so I was at an agency called Up and Up at the time, and we worked with an US employer named Charlie White. And, you know, the way he talked about the scorecard is uh, you know, if you um, so Jamie, so I'm the visionary, right? I'm I'm I'm the leader of the organization at the on the accountability chart. So Jamie, you're in uh the Dominican Republic on vacation with your wife. It's Friday afternoon, you're flying out Saturday morning. Uh, you know, a um someone from the resort comes out and says, Mr. and Mrs. Millican, you've been such an amazing guest. Um, if you would like, we will give you the next week, you know, as a comp your stay, you could stay another week. And so your scorecard needs to be the six to eight things that could be written on a napkin with no context that you could look at and be like, what's the health of my business after eating gone a week? And can I, you know, can I look forward and know that I could be gone another week? Like it and look, just what are those handful of things? And then once you get that set from the visionary's perspective, then you do it as a leadership team. Um, and then once the leadership team does it, then they can back up and they can do it at their department, right? And then you want to go all the way down to every person having a number. Um, that's not meant to dehumanize or de or do it's just an accountability thing. Every person in the organization has a metric. And what should happen naturally is that metric rolls all the way up to where I'm an individual contributor, and I can see how that supports that those upper metrics of the organization that would be on that napkin for those six or eight things.

SPEAKER_00 28:34

Right, right. So this all sounds awesome, but how does it work if you've got a five-person agency and you, you know, you're trying to fill eight seats in an accountability chart, and you know, people can only do so much.

SPEAKER_01 28:50

Correct. So that is the um, that's the complexity of EOS, which is why EOS, they say this is for you know, entrepreneurial uh operating system is for entrepreneurial organizations. They either were or are still have an entrepreneurial spirit. Um, and but 10 to 250 employees, and that's what they would say. The principles can be applied anywhere, but it takes 10 or more to start having an accountability chart. Um, that's not for us, you know, a 10-person organization with 23 roles and everybody's wearing all the different hats. Um so and then the foot the inverse of that is there comes a point where you get too large and you get a you become a matrix organization with not a single vision. And that's probably where you start to lose that entrepreneurial component. Um, and so that's why they say over 250 is kind of an if. Um, but I am uh a firm believer, especially for um none of not if you're a solopreneur and you plan to stay that way, then there's some really good discipline in there with scorecards. Like when I started just as me all over again, I sat down my first Monday and built my scorecard and held myself accountable to the activities I needed to do to generate revenue, right? Um, each week. Um, but uh the the scorecard, the rhythm, um you know, the casting of vision, the VTO, all that is applicable to a one-person company. Uh, it's just the accountability chart, the leadership, as you add two, three, four, five people, it's it's hard. And I think most, I don't know this for a fact. It's it's hard that almost if they said we're for anyone, you'd have a lot of people with 10 people or less saying EOS sucks, it doesn't work, it's broken. Yeah, and it really because you just don't have the scale. Um, the other thing is EOS is not a fix-it tool. Um, it's not a product market fit tool, right? So it's built for organizations that already have product market fit, that already have revenue supporting them at 10 people or more. Um, and I think that's a defining thing too. It doesn't help you, it's assuming you're you have a good business and you want to be great. It's not a turnaround tool or like, hey, if we don't do EOS, we're gonna close our doors. Yep. You know, it's not a leadership tool, it's not a product market fit tool. It's meant for organizations that want to uh cast vision, um, get traction and be healthy.

SPEAKER_00 31:21

Cool. You know, I was thinking, I'm trying to remember that uh book and tool framework that was helpful in figuring out strategy that would result in the three uniques. And it's the name of the book is Playing Dwin by um I can't see it.

SPEAKER_01 31:39

Yeah, I was looking. I I know I have I have seen it. I don't read it.

SPEAKER_00 31:44

AG Laffley, long time CEO of Procter Gamble. Yeah. So if anybody needs some help figuring out strategy to feed into the VTO, I would really highly recommend the book Playing to Win, and there's a tool in there that helps you figure out target market and you know what you're better than the competence man for that target market and why it matters for that target market and all that good stuff.

SPEAKER_02 32:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:07

Cool. So I don't know, we can talk one more question for EOS. Then I want to understand more what you're doing at Wonder and get into like your life story a little bit because that's very interesting too. But um another challenge I've seen is with you know, when a you know 12-person company or 15-person company implements EOS or somebody less than 10 implements it, even though it's not really intended for less than 10. They kind of put people in seats and it's called senior leadership team. But these people are not really senior leaders, they're individual contributors, they just happen to work in a small business. And then the business grows and it's now 20, 25 people. And what was good enough when you were 12 kind of is is subpar when you're 25, but you've got these people you really like who've been with you for a few years, and it's you know, removing them from the senior leadership team is is tough, but you can't end up with people on the senior leadership team at that point who are not really senior leader caliber. How do you navigate that?

Leading Indicators And Scorecard Design

SPEAKER_01 33:07

Yeah, so I think the you know, the right people, right seat is is um one of the people components. And, you know, I add, you know, are we on the right bus, right? So you got the bus going in a direction across that bus, so that's that's your VTO. It's like, here's the vision, this is where this bus is headed. Uh, you want to get on the bus, you got to align with the core values, right? Those core values are the rules to the game, like these are the things that we hold true. Um, core values can't be pressed too far. So that's why honesty and integrity are the two that you'll see on most corporate walls, because no one's gonna say, I don't want to work uh with him, he's too honest or has too much integrity, right? So that's my test of is a core value a good core value or not. Uh, but then you've got once you're on the bus, you've got the right seat. So if someone buys into the vision and they are on the right bus, then you may have someone who's not in the best seat, or you may have roles and responsibility in that seat that may have to be moved to another seat, right? So when you think about the accountability chart, it's what are the core functions? Um, and then you have, you know, six to eight roles and responsibilities for each of those functions. And what I've experienced in that scenario before was we have someone who they do, someone has to own this seat, and it happens to be this person. And from a GWC perspective, you know, you look at those responsibilities, and there's one or two that either they don't get, don't want, or don't have the capacity to do. But the rest of the seat they're doing good for today, right? They're again, you're committing to the leadership team, but you're re-evaluating this every 90 days, and then you're doing annual planning once a year. So there's, you know, there's four times a year to look at the accountability chart and say, do we have the right people in the right seat? But sometimes it is like you're in the right seat for now, but we got to move some of these roles to another seat, or we got to carve that out to a different function. Um, but from an objectivity perspective, everyone understands what we're trying to do, you know, uh how we're gonna do it, why we're doing it. And so it shouldn't be a surprise and come as like in a quarterly meeting where it's like, hey, you're no longer fit for this seat, right? That should have been going and all being an ongoing conversation to where the leadership team was a part of knowing what the needs of the organization are and are seeing way ahead that this is gonna evolve. Yeah. And if this is gonna evolve, that may mean that I'm gonna drop down into you know a different seat, but it's the right seat for me that's gonna give me energy and I'm gonna enjoy my work, versus if you give me rules and responsibility that you know are not right for me and I'm not good at it, then you're actually gonna drain me, you're gonna burn me out. Yeah. So I think it is there again for my just pure taking the emotional port at part out of it, there's a lot of logic and objectivity that would go into that decision before that person was ever pulled off that seat. I mean, I'm not even pulled at me, but it's not an emotion, right? It's a constant refining of the energy of our people to get going in the right direction. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:05

My buddy Glenn Grant, who uh was on, I think, episode one of the podcast when he was talking about uh selling his business um or how to prepare to sell the business, um he he did some consulting um for self-assembled ventures was his business. And one of the things he did was he was working with the smaller end of the range of EOS. You know, he was an EOS implementer, but he he called it for smaller businesses, he called it the um the execution team. Like this is what we need to execute the business, not the leadership team. So people didn't get accustomed to be being called the senior leader of the business. They were part of the execution team.

SPEAKER_01 36:46

No, I like that. I haven't heard that, but consider that idea stolen.

SPEAKER_00 36:53

Send the royalty to Glenn. Yeah. All right. So tell me about Wonder and you know what you really do there.

SPEAKER_01 37:01

Yeah, so Wonder is a marketing, media, and technology agency. And uh we um you know having the opportunity post-COVID, you know, new world, kind of starting over from building an agency and uh spending years going, if I ever do it again, I'll do it differently. Uh what we've done is build a uh a very experienced team. So um my leadership team, uh, my original co-founder is Mark. Um he's managed over half a billion dollars in in paid media. So he came from uh uh the bigger agencies, agency called Publicists. So he was an econ guy that went to an agency that got bought by a medium agency that got bought by a bigger agency and ended up as a director of analytics at Publicist. Um tons of experience. Um I'm a media SEO, lead gen nerd, um, a lot of Martech backgrounds, a lot of CRM, uh website development, that's large enterprise web development. Um, and then Warren, my integrator, um actually owned an agency for a decade. Um, he ran about a$50 million agency. He was the managing director of a large in-house agency for a sales company. Um, and then Andy, my VP of accounts, was the president of an agency for 13 years. So we built the leadership team with a ton of experience. Um and then uh we just we have been very blessed to hire great creative talent and great account people and project managers. And then we have a really strong um bench of freelance talent. Uh, one, because the agency model works that way now, two, because there was a period of time between me starting this and leaving, uh doing my consulting work where I recruited for agencies. So I had a period of about 18 or 24 months where I was doing recruiting to help agencies find talent. That's how I found my co-founder. And then during that time, I worked with 30 agencies, I had 10 of those that ultimately ended up hiring us to do white label media for Wonder. So Wonder was an agency behind the scenes that Mark and I had met Mark, and um, he wanted to do something independent, not be a part of a big agency anymore. So we started doing media for other agencies and had 10 clients doing that. Um, and then after that, when I was doing the recruiting, and then we started white label, and I was still stiff-arming starting an agency, that it was we were doing our quarterly, and it's like, hey, next year, what doors do we want to knock on? Do I want to knock on recruiting? Do I want to knock on white label services? Or do we just want to go get our own clients finally? And we just said we're gonna get our own clients. So that was when we he and I came together. I started shutting the recruiting down. We recruited Warren, got EOS on day one, and then started building Wonder from there. But it was from the beginning a very experienced team. Uh, we work primarily with clients that run on EOS, um, mostly in the B2B tech space. We um over 20, 25 years, I created a lot of frameworks that once I discovered EOS and saw what a framework actually could do, we just package those up. We call it in the next 90 marketing operating system. And what we do with clients is um with all clients, large or small, project or retained, we start with two things. What we call first 90 insights. So we have a proprietary process for 90 days. Um, and then we start with marketing continuation, which is we're gonna meet you where you are. If you've got needs, you got a trade show, you got media, you got stuff. We're gonna pick that stuff up and start working. But, you know, for myself, you know, changing jobs on the corporate side, leaving one company and going to be a VP of marketing for a technology company. It took me six to nine months, even though I knew the industry, you know, I knew what they did. As you know, to get into a marketing leadership role takes time to be effective. And so that's one of the things I tell prospects is you know, how long would you expect it would take uh a VP of marketing to be up at speed and fully contributing? They're like six to nine months. I'm like, and you give agencies six to nine days. It's like, so we're gonna do this 90-day thing that we do that helps us get entrenched in your business really quick. We're gonna get to work doing the things that you need, but by day 90, you're gonna have a one-year plan. And that one year plan is gonna be anchored in the three-year picture of your sales and marketing alignment. Um, and then we're gonna execute that that plan on 90-day cycles. So that's our there's more to it than that, but that's the general framework that we use. Um, and it just takes the reactionary component out with both the clients themselves, too, because you now have sales and marketing in conversation, and you have marketing leading where we're headed to support sales versus sales always pulling marketing where they want them to go. Yeah. Um, so and in mostly the B2B space, um, those are the common challenges that we see. Um, but anyway, so that's our approach. We have we work with non-EOS clients as well, but we still use the same approach.

SPEAKER_00 42:01

I know EOS is is really prevalent. Um, I remember when it was first getting rolled out maybe 15 years ago or something, but um it's really prevalent. I'm curious of all the leads you talk to in the BDB tech space, what percentage of them are are on EOS?

EOS At Small Company Scale

SPEAKER_01 42:18

Um, so it's funny. I just had we had an inbound lead coming yesterday. Um, and I hopped on the call at uh three o'clock today, and I was like, hey, how'd you and you know, we we had the conversation and I was like, How'd you find us? He was like, actually, I have a whole Gemini thread. He was like, I was just querying Gemini on on you know what types of companies do what, and who's out there that understands sales marketing in the US, and y'all came off. Um, the uh one of our um first clients that when we were actually launching Wonder um was someone that I've been speaking to. I used to work with. I've been work talking to her over the course of a year. You know, that's another thing that uh we help clients do is understand their buyer journey. Because even as we bring on clients and they understand the journey of them hiring us and the timeline, that's a good reflection of now let's talk about your clients and what that looks like. Um, but we talked for a year and then we finally had the call where they got their Series 8 funding and she said, We're ready to go. This is what I need. And I said, Well, um, with that, let's walk through all that. It's like we have an approach. Are you familiar with the entrepreneurial operating system? She goes, Oh, we run on EOS. So, like the initial conversation was a perfect fit. Um, you know, there's 300,000 companies estimated to be running on EOS right now, so it's very popular. Because we're in the EOS ecosystem too. You know, I have a podcast called Inside the 90. Um and I guess so because I'm in that ecosystem, it's much more common to have those conversations with companies who already run on EOS who know that's what we do. Yeah. But um, I mean, I I would I would say 80% of the time or more that I'm speaking with someone that fits that profile they are familiar with, are have read the book, are self-implementing, or are running with or working with an implement.

SPEAKER_00 44:14

Do you ever actually sit in a seat in the accountability chart?

SPEAKER_01 44:18

So we do. We actually have a service called the Marketing Seat. But that was actually the lead that came in today. That's what he was looking for. So we um it depends on capacity, right? And the time because it's going to be a leadership seat. So either myself or Andy that runs our accounts, he ran an agency for 13 years where they ran on US as well. And then we have some individual contractors that understand the US that have worked with us that we would place if it was fractional. But yes, we do that as a service. It's more of a uh, you know, we're not, it's not, we don't have someone like that every month, always retained where we're doing that, but we can hop in and fill that seat for a period of time and then even help, I mean, with the recruiting background, help people understand what the needs are so that then they can go, you know, find the right person to sit in that seat.

Leadership Seats And Right Person Right Seat

SPEAKER_00 45:11

Cool. So when you were growing, where'd you where'd you grow up?

SPEAKER_01 45:15

Yeah, I am uh standing right where I grew up in a place most people have never heard of called Greenville, South Carolina. Um, that's until it made like the top list of everything. So now it's the best place to live, the best place to work, the best you know, it's made the top list everywhere in the past decade. So growing up, no one had ever heard of Greenville. Now it's an amazing place, it's a very thriving community with a really strong entrepreneurial and agency community.

SPEAKER_00 45:40

I had a colleague's uh fraternity brother, uh, I believe was from Greenville. Um uh Mike Fletcher. Michael Fletcher played baseball, was his he played baseball at Duke.

SPEAKER_01 45:52

Um I know an Amy Fletcher, and I think she's married to a Mike Fletcher. Not sure if it's the same one or not.

SPEAKER_00 45:58

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 45:59

Yeah, but uh yeah, interesting thing about Greenville, South Carolina, it was the first city outside of New York or Chicago to have an ad age agency of the year. So in 1981, Henderson Advertising was ad age agency of the year. Uh if you remember the Dow brands scrubbing bubbles. Um the bubbles going down the drain. Okay, okay, yeah. Um but yeah, so that's so Greenville has had is just a legacy of great ad agencies for you know 45 years now. So it's a really cool, there's a bunch of small agencies now. Uh, there always has been, but it's just it's a really good town. It's a great city, great vibe, obviously great climate now. And since COVID, just you know, South Carolina has become a one of the leading states for in migration trends. Uh, but it's always been a cool town. It's great for agencies and entrepreneurs.

SPEAKER_00 46:49

So when you were growing up, you think you'd be running your own business? And did you think that would be a marketing agency?

SPEAKER_01 46:55

Um, so oddly enough, I mean it's it's kind of a funny way to close the conversation because it's where it all started. But um, I both my parents own their own business. My dad's 82 and still owns a business that he runs. Um and my brother, it's fourth generation now. My brother and my nephew uh work in that business.

SPEAKER_00 47:13

And does it run on EOS is the question.

SPEAKER_01 47:18

I we are actually in a transition. We're in the uh secession planning where I am being brought in and I am slowly bringing some of these things in for my nephew, who will be the heir of the business. Um, so it will it will be there. Um, but uh my mom owned an interior design firm, so she was professional services creative and and uh did all that. So I just grew up in that. And when I was you know in high school, Greenville is uh has what's called the Fine Arts Center, which is a fine arts high school. And I drew my whole life, you know. I was I was a doodler, you know, I you know, I'm not a think ADD is overprescribed. You know, I wasn't hyperactive, but I'm just a creative thinker, you know. So the classroom was never my gift, but I was always drawing. So I got to go to uh an arts high school, um, my junior and senior year. And um, I was in a graphic design class, and um my teacher said, you know, early in the semester, he's like, What do you like to draw or paint? And I'm like, whatever someone tells me to. And he's like, Oh, you definitely need to go into graphic design. Like, you need projects assigned to you. You don't need to be a fine artist. Um, and that conversation, which was probably 90 seconds, paid me on a path to go to Winthrop University to get a BFA. And when I went to college, I said, I'm gonna go to college, get out, work in advertising for five years, and start my own agency. So that was the plan. I didn't make it five years. I started my own agency after three years when I was 26. Um, and the I I look back now, you know, you I I had a very blessed childhood growing up, you know. Um, and um I I but the idea of having a job for the was never it, it just never crossed my mind. I mean, I was like, I'm just gonna go start and do something. And so I think that even goes back to my father's probably pretty high visionary, and uh, you know, I think I have that same streak. And only, only really until last month I was reading the new book, you know, from uh Marks D. Winters called Visionary. And when you read that opening, the introductory paragraph, and he's talking about how you just have this drive to do something, and that visionary is not an ego label, uh, you know, it's a responsibility. Like if you're gonna go start something, you have a responsibility to tell people where this is going. You have a responsibility to let your employees know why you're doing it, and you know, so that everyone can decide to buy in. And I think I've just always had that drive to go build something. Um, but I've always so also balanced that with this like, you know, even the visionary term. Like, I don't, I've never labeled myself as the visionary. I think when EOS came along, I was like, okay, I'm playing the visionary role. But recently now I'm embracing that. I was like, it is my job to cast the cast the vision and get people to buy in and and lead this team this direction.

SPEAKER_00 50:25

Cool. And so were there any uh great, interesting stories in your winding career journey that you're sharing?

unknown 50:34

Yes.

Wonder’s EOS Aligned Agency Model

SPEAKER_01 50:36

So what we've left out is I started an agency really young, at 26. Um, I worked for an agency that's pretty nationally known. They're now called Brains, but it was Brains on Fire back in the 90s. Um Brains Co. They're a great, I mean, an awesome uh creative shop. And left to start my own thing. Um, I actually hit success fairly early. So we ended up getting a project from a company called TTI that had this brand of power tools called Ryobi, and they wanted to do this thing with Home Depot. And uh, so we actually got the project to rebrand Ryobi Power Tools and pitch it to Home Depot with a new product that was the first ever Power Tool combo kit. So we literally built the Orange Rack Home Depot inside of TTI's headquarters, and we mocked up full retail displays and everything, designed all the packaging, and it hit. I mean, we just took off, you know, and that was that was like 2000, 2001 during the dot-com bust. Um, and we just didn't feel a thing. We we were growing like crazy. So we got up to about 25 people, um, did that. We knew they were gonna take that in-house um at some point in time, but the challenge was starting an agency is having an 800 pound grill, and uh, that was our 800-pound gorilla client. So once they decided to set that in-house, then we shrunk down, and then I had the opportunity to go start another consulting firm with one of our clients. So I uh, you know, exited that uh uh and with a very graceful partner, you know, like we're still best friends. So he allowed me to walk away and get off leases and all that. We had contracts and all that, and there was wasn't a big payday for me or anything. It was more like, how can I go do this and let him remain stable? Um, and then that consulting company led to me starting another agency. Um, just because we were doing the consulting and those clients are like, hey, will you do the work? Um, we were doing a lot in the destination real estate market back then from we had the Power Tool side of the business, but we had tons of real estate clients. And um, you know, 2001 to 2008, it was booming. Uh, by 2008, I'd built another agency. We had 18 employees. We were actually had signed the paperwork to acquire my old agency with my best friend. He was coming on. Um, that was uh Labor Day weekend. I had to come to him of 2008 and say, hey, we can't do this. We just have a client that went bankrupt. And so first real estate client went under in August of 08. Um, that was Labor Day weekend when I told him that. And then we had another client in the Bahamas who said, Hey, we're our our funding's getting held up. And then our now the title of my uh autobiography will be At least we have Lehman Brothers. So our largest client, our 800-pound gorilla, was Lehman Brothers. So on September 12th of 2008, that was the third domino to fall for us. Uh, and our whole industry was shot dead between the eyes. So we we basically went from 18 people acquiring another agency to laying off, I think 12 within two weeks, um, getting down to a team of uh you know six, seven, or eight. By the end of the year, through some attrition and having, you know, we really started 09 with about five people. Um and uh, you know, that was uh I never experienced the Great Depression, and neither did any of my parents, but as far as what felt like the Great Depression, like 09 was brutal. So uh we we uh tried to survive and pivot. And then at the end of 09, that's when someone reached out to me on the corporate side and said, we've got this, you know, this web Martec role. And it was someone I went to college with, and they knew that I always had a bet for systems and stuff. You would be great at it. And so that was kind of my Jesus take the will moment where I took a paycheck and at January of 2010, and we shut everything down. And I was like, all right, I'm done. Now I'm just gonna be a corporate guy. So that was that's a big uh speed bump in the journey that's uh was was uh I wouldn't trade, I'll put it that way. You know, a lot of learnings, a lot of humility. Um, but it also put a lot of fear in me, that's which was another reason not starting the agency because I did want an 800-pound gorilla, you know, I didn't want to get in that situation again. So with EOS and you know, with a lot of history, we're just trying to do it all differently to where we don't have that same risk again.

SPEAKER_00 55:15

Right, right. Cool. Well, Jamie, I really appreciate everything you've shared uh and the and the great discussion we've had today. If if folks want to reach out to you to connect, um, understand how you might be able to help them or just talk to you, what's the best way for them to do that?

SPEAKER_01 55:30

Yeah, so you can find me on LinkedIn, it's Jamie Mullikan. Um, or you can go to workwithwonder.com and you can find us there and see the work that we're doing and and what our approach is. And um, I'm always happy to connect. So great, grateful for this opportunity, Cal. I, you know, enjoy podcasting. Or you can find me on inside the 90.com. That's our podcast that I do with my implementer. So um he's an EOS implementer, and we just spend so much time talking about business together. Um, coming from Sit More Backgrounds, that we do the podcast, and I'm the marketing seat and he's the sales seat. So um, you can find me there too.

SPEAKER_00 56:07

Awesome. Is there anything else you want to cover before we wrap up this episode?

SPEAKER_01 56:11

Yeah, I mean, I think empowering healthy business, you know, the name of the podcast. Um, you know, if you haven't read traction, go read it because vision traction and healthy is is what EOS provides you. Um, and then just my word of advice is entrepreneurship is hard, you know, and there's a there's a lot of risk, there's a lot of reward. Um, but you know, if you read any entrepreneurial autobiography or biography, it's perseverance, right? It's surrounding yourself with community, um, you know, uh being vulnerable, you know, uh letting people help. And just know that it's a rocky road at times, but there's a lot of reward in it.

SPEAKER_00 56:49

Very true. Well, thank you so much, Jamie, for making this another exciting episode of the Empowering Healthy Business Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 56:56

All right. Well, thank you, Cal. See you.

SPEAKER_00 56:59

Another episode in the books. Thank you so much for tuning in. For show notes and more, visit empoweringhealthy business.com. If you would like to have a one on one discussion with me or possibly engage smart books to help with your business, you can reach me at calc empoweringhealthy business.com or message me on LinkedIn where I am easy to find. Until next time, this is Empowering Healthy Business, the podcast for business owners, signing off.