I've been in business for a few decades. I think I have taken it as far as I can alone (and with a basic level staff). I'm ready to expand, and while I know my field better than anyone, I just don't really know business. The work is there, the reputation and experience is there. I just need to step to the next level and while I have some ideas, I don't know how.

Any books would be appreciated.

Send me an email and I'll mail you Traction by Gino Wickman.

Taylor.holcomb @ eosworldwide dot com

Holcomb said:

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Send me an email and I'll mail you Traction by Gino Wickman.

Taylor.holcomb @ eosworldwide dot com

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Thank you! But, I actually picked that up. It sounds like it might be "the" book.

Glad you found the book Traction. The EOS principles in the book helped me grow my business, and I've seen it work wonders in other businesses as well. If you have any questions about the EOS principles and how to implement them, feel free to email me. Always willing to help a fellow Ag. Happy reading and good luck!

Helps us understand better.

Is this a consulting knowledge work based business or product/service?

You want the business to expand but do you have the capacity to take on more work?

What do you think the opportunity for growth is?

Can the business support a second person? It might be worth it to find a BD guy with a reasonable salary and profit share arrangement to bring in the growth you seek.

Ragoo said:

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Helps us understand better.

Is this a consulting knowledge work based business or product/service?

You want the business to expand but do you have the capacity to take on more work?

What do you think the opportunity for growth is?

Can the business support a second person? It might be worth it to find a BD guy with a reasonable salary and profit share arrangement to bring in the growth you seek.

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It's law. I've developed a very good reputation and clientele over the years of my practice. But the problem is that I am way too involved in the day to day operations to grow my practice or focus on the things I need to. For example I can make very good money doing X but I can't market myself for X because I wouldn't be able to handle the work. But if I had a staff, to the point where I am focusing on legal issues rather than filing documents, going to the courthouse, etc etc and on and on.

The goal is to get a full blown staff of paralegals/legal secretaries, a dedicated operations officer and bring in additional attorneys. And, yes it is very scalable.

And thank you, but what is a BD person? Business development? If so, that's what I was thinking about an operations officer.

Holcomb said:

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Glad you found the book Traction. The EOS principles in the book helped me grow my business, and I've seen it work wonders in other businesses as well. If you have any questions about the EOS principles and how to implement them, feel free to email me. Always willing to help a fellow Ag. Happy reading and good luck!

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Yes, I went to the website and saw your profile. It looks like you were in the very same place I was. I likely will reach out to you soon. I just have so much to get done in the next few weeks

General Jack D. Ripper said:

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Ragoo said:

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Helps us understand better.

Is this a consulting knowledge work based business or product/service?

You want the business to expand but do you have the capacity to take on more work?

What do you think the opportunity for growth is?

Can the business support a second person? It might be worth it to find a BD guy with a reasonable salary and profit share arrangement to bring in the growth you seek.

---

It's law. I've developed a very good reputation and clientele over the years of my practice. But the problem is that I am way too involved in the day to day operations to grow my practice or focus on the things I need to. For example I can make very good money doing X but I can't market myself for X because I wouldn't be able to handle the work. But if I had a staff, to the point where I am focusing on legal issues rather than filing documents, going to the courthouse, etc etc and on and on.

The goal is to get a full blown staff of paralegals/legal secretaries, a dedicated operations officer and bring in additional attorneys. And, yes it is very scalable.

And thank you, but what is a BD person? Business development? If so, that's what I was thinking about an operations officer.

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exactly. Business development

I'm going to read the book recommended by Holcomb. It should be here in a few days. But, how do you think one should go about hiring a BD? Hire a recruiting service?

Not a book...but a good Aggie. Very impressive Bio....

https://ceocoachinginternational.com/coach/jeff-bledsoe/

Let me know when you figure it out.

I have recently read: (Entreleadership, Traction, Simple Numbers straight Talk and Big Profits, Buy back your time).

I run an engineering firm of about 13 people ($2mm) Traction seemed to be for larger scale and was too much "bureaucracy/process" for what I need at this stage.
Buy back your time is what I am focusing on but not far enough along to recommend it.

Another vote for Traction ...

I'm a big fan of EOS as well - we use it in my new firm of 5 people and it's allowed us to focus on the small critical operational details within the scope of our big-picture objectives. We're now firing on (most) all cylinders heading into 2025 without slowing down.

After Traction, I'd check out Scaling Up

I'm a big EOS enthusiast. Been great for my business. If you have any questions on it, hit me up. Happy to help. I'm not an implementer I'm just a guy who runs the system.

We also run EOS. I wouldn't say I'm as big as a fan of everyone else here, but it's certainly been helpful. Brings structure and organization to our weekly meetings. Beyond that, I don't think it's been anything I'd boast about.

Out of curiosity - what is your role at the company? And did y'all self-implement or use an implementer?

Nothing against any particular service, but my experience with business coaching etc is usually a guy that couldn't make it in his own business telling me how to do it and tossing out a bunch of acronyms and such. These things may have relevance in different businesses, but the practice of law has a lot of ethical concerns that a normal business wouldn't. I had a supposed business consultant and they were worthless..but made out very well.

I want to have an open mind, so please tell me if I'm off base.

Big Traction fan, too.

Started it with 20-something employees and still use it with 400+. Will never run a company or invest in a small business without it.

MPython43 said:

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Big Traction fan, too.

Started it with 20-something employees and still use it with 400+. Will never run a company or invest in a small business without it.

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I think my copy of Traction arrives today.

Seen some friends in legal go through this and it seems to be one of the hardest sectors to scale in.

Ones I've seen succeed the most took on the role of rainmaker and did the biz dev themself while hiring up attorneys. Of course, you'll have to be ok making less money until you pop scale. That part is pretty universal in most industries, though.

I've also seen success with ones who have merged firms to pop scale. Then you're divvying up the pie and dealing with partners.

Give and take with it all

Best investment I ever made was joining EO and then YPO. Find people dealing with the same things and situational mentors along the way.

bagger05 said:

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Out of curiosity - what is your role at the company? And did y'all self-implement or use an implementer?

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Cofounder and CCO. We've been using an implementer. Part of our problem is we don't have a CEO and one of the three founders has the EQ of a snail.

General Jack D. Ripper said:

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Nothing against any particular service, but my experience with business coaching etc is usually a guy that couldn't make it in his own business telling me how to do it and tossing out a bunch of acronyms and such. These things may have relevance in different businesses, but the practice of law has a lot of ethical concerns that a normal business wouldn't. I had a supposed business consultant and they were worthless..but made out very well.

I want to have an open mind, so please tell me if I'm off base.

---

You don't need an implementer to run EOS. They don't really gatekeep any info on the system itself. There are lots of resources out there, and most implementers I've met are pretty open to offering free advice.

Where I think implementers add value:

Keeping you on the system.
It's a system like any other. You get the most benefit by actually using it as designed. Like if you have a good CRM, but your sales team is storing customer email addresses in an Excel file and one sales rep is putting their call notes in Evernote and the other is putting it in a Google Drive attached to their personal Gmail.

You're like, "Guys, we have a tool for this. We'd save a lot of time and hassle if we all did it the same way and made use of the tools we have rather than waste a bunch of time and management load on creating and managing 100 different systems."

We're pretty disciplined and serious about RUNNING THE SYSTEM, so I feel like it shortcuts a lot of common business problems. Pretty much whatever comes up, EOS doesn't tell you what you should do but it provides a method for how to handle it. My friends who have self-implemented don't seem to enjoy this benefit like I do.


Facilitating
Your interaction with your implementer will be quarterly meetings. During this meeting you do your quarterly planning sessions and they teach/reinforce the tools. Good implementers are very good at facilitating these meetings.


Shining a Light on Issues
Personal example, when we started running EOS the company was owned by a bunch of complicated trust structures owned by my dad, aunt, and grandmother. My dad was still halfway in the business. I was running it but didn't have any real authority and no equity. My brother didn't really enjoy working at the company and wanted to do something else. This had been the truth for years, but all of us were just living with it.

Having someone in the room who is neutral makes it easier for these things to come to light. Within a few sessions, the root causes of a lot of our problems were out on the table. Now I own the business, my dad and brother aren't involved, and everyone is a lot happier. I think without an implementer asking us some challenging questions, we could've very easily maintained the status quo for YEARS to the detriment of everyone.

I have a good friend who is starting out with EOS. They've decided to go it alone. Their partnership structure is a mess. They have four partners and everything is managed by vote. It's very dysfunctional. I bet they'll find a way to maintain it even though that isn't consistent with how the system works. I think a good implementer who hold them to running the system and force them to assign responsibility and put someone in charge.



I am a HUGE enthusiast for EOS but there's not anything magic about it. The magic is in actually running your business on an operating system. Doesn't matter what your business is, there are some things that WILL be involved. Culture, people management, working projects, meetings, KPIs, etc.

You can burn up a bunch of energy figuring out the best way to do all of those things on your own, or you can adopt a system that prescribes best practices, puts common language around it, and turns it into a packaged system.

I like EOS, from what I can tell it seems like it has a much stronger community and is more widely adopted than a lot of others, but whether you pick EOS, Great Game, Scaling Up, OKRs, or some other system you'll probably see similar benefits.

Basically, if you get really good at using these tools you don't have to spend a bunch of time worrying about any of that crap so you can focus all of your energy on delivering results to customers.


I've used some consultants that I've hated. I've been with my implementer for years. So in my experience this is very different than others I've worked with.

MavsAg said:

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bagger05 said:

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Out of curiosity - what is your role at the company? And did y'all self-implement or use an implementer?

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Cofounder and CCO. We've been using an implementer. Part of our problem is we don't have a CEO and one of the three founders has the EQ of a snail.

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Respecting the dividing line between the owner's box and working in the company is hard for everyone I know who runs EOS and has partners.

On paper it's easy -- just because you own part of the company doesn't give you a right to work there. And if you DO work in the company, if you're an owner but you have the EQ of a snail then maybe you don't belong on the leadership team.

Easy to say, hard to do. Makes me glad I'm the only owner of my business.

I received the book and started reading. It starts right off with things I struggle with and have never implemented ("________ needs his _____ reviewed by money - there's no time for that"). I'm going to give the system a go. But because I struggle with this stuff I incorporated ChatGPT 4o.

It understands the principles and details of the book and interacts really well. I've used it to narrow down my Core Values and Core Focus.

Good luck. Be patient. If you're very committed and serious about it, two years to be really running is a good timeline. One year for people to learn the system and get used to the tools, another year to get good at it.

This varies pretty widely with the number of people and levels in your organization. And your starting point -- the type of people you're working with and how systemized your organization is to begin with.

Everything in the system falls under the category of "simple, not easy." Like I said, be patient. If you're the entrepreneur then you'll probably pick everything up quicker than the rest of your team. And you'll have a higher sense of urgency than everyone else.

I think there's a chapter late in the book that recommends an order of operations for implementation. They recommend starting with the Accountability Chart and spending a quarter using some of the other foundational tools (rocks, scorecard, meeting pulse) before you get too deep into the V/TO.

If you ever want any war stories or advice let me know. Very happy to help. I'm in Dallas and happy to grab a coffee or a beer if you're local. We can get on a call if we're not close.

Another thing to prepare yourself for -- it's very uncommon to implement the system without experiencing some turnover on the leadership team. A natural consequence of being intentional about clarifying right people/right seats is that you'll find out some people aren't a good fit.

bagger05 said:

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MavsAg said:

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bagger05 said:

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Out of curiosity - what is your role at the company? And did y'all self-implement or use an implementer?

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Cofounder and CCO. We've been using an implementer. Part of our problem is we don't have a CEO and one of the three founders has the EQ of a snail.

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Respecting the dividing line between the owner's box and working in the company is hard for everyone I know who runs EOS and has partners.

On paper it's easy -- just because you own part of the company doesn't give you a right to work there. And if you DO work in the company, if you're an owner but you have the EQ of a snail then maybe you don't belong on the leadership team.

Easy to say, hard to do. Makes me glad I'm the only owner of my business.

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Yeah our flat structure makes disagreements difficult. Particularly when the difficult cofounder cannot see things outside of his perspective. And he's way too important to the operation to get rid of. I knew that going in, so it's the bed I made.

Yep. If someone can take their ball and go home it makes navigating things tough. Ideally everyone would fight for the greater good of the company even if it meant firing themselves but I know that's not how it goes.

Traction provides many businesses with the tools to address issues. Our business has been too small to implement however many EO members use it so we talk about it frequently. Good luck

reineraggie09 said:

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Leaders Eat Last
Biographies of top business leaders like Jobs, Musk, Buffett
Books on businesses that fail, Enron World Com, learn from mistakes as much as learning from successes.

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I'll check it out. I picked up Fire Proof. It's supposed to be a law firm focused traction.

As for leaders eat last, I'll read it but I've been living that for the last 20 years. I'm ready to eat.

Quote:

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As for leaders eat last, I'll read it but I've been living that for the last 20 years. I'm ready to eat.

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Going to make some assumptions about what you mean by this.

At some point the idea of making more money kinda sucks. You made the money you have by working your ass off. So growing sounds like more trouble than it's worth because it just means working harder and longer. The whole reason you got into the game is for freedom, but making more money means being more of a slave to your company so what's the f###ing point.


If this is anywhere close to the mark, I have some other content recommendations. I'm a big fan of this dude Dan Sullivan who has a coaching program called Strategic Coach.

EOS is a system for the business, Strategic Coach is for the entrepreneur. Lots of people in Strategic Coach run their companies on EOS. The guy who wrote Traction has been in the program for decades and was in it when he developed EOS. So lots of synergies.

The core idea is expanding "the four freedoms."

Quote:

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• Freedom of Time. You want to spend your working life doing what you really enjoy doing, and you also want the freedom to spend time not working too, so you can have a full life and pursue your other interests.

• Freedom of Money. You don't want a ceiling on how much money you can make for doing a great job, for coming up with valuable new solutions or inventions. And if your efforts generate money, you don't want anyone dictating how much of that money you can keep.
• Freedom of Relationship. There are certain people you love working withboth inside and outside your businessand you want to spend more and more of your time surrounded just by these people you click with, whom you appreciate and who appreciate you.
• Freedom of Purpose. This entrepreneurial company you've created is not just a job or a career; it's actually a vehicle to all sorts of things that relate to your fundamental values and ideals in life. This allows you to have a tremendous sense of purpose for being on this planet. Entrepreneurs are the greatest contributors of money, opportunity, and capability to communities all over the world, in every field of human activity.

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Work less, make more money, all while eliminating doing the stuff you don't like to do. Sounds kinda Disneyland but it's worked for me.

They put out a lot of free content and have some books. My recommendations:

- Who Not How - book (love the book but narration on the audiobook isn't very good -- better to read IMO)
- Inside Strategic Coach - podcast where they discuss a lot of concepts from the program
- 10X is Easier Than 2X - book (same story on the audio)

Agree with this. Friend of mine has the EOS shop in College Station.

The simple message is servant leadership. With General in your username, I would assume military so maybe this is old hat for you. Book starts with an observation the author had watching Marine officers eat after their subordinates and builds from there. Talks about everything from the neuroscience to the business profitability of servant leadership and how to actually employ it. Running a business is way more about people management than any product or service. One side benefit of servant leadership and taking care of your employees is that they help you get the next round of employees. The opposite is also true, you treat them bad, they run off future good employees and you are left with sub par labor. Sub par labor = sub par profit.

Welcome to the club. We just celebrated our 2 year anniversary as our own bosses and could not be happier.