How EOS Transformed Niall Mackay’s Business | Niall Mackay | Ep 201

Niall Mackay  00:00

I don't want to have a business that has six white men at the top of the tree. I want to have a diverse staff from all over the world, from diverse backgrounds, that are going to lift up the business.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:09

And a traditional hierarchical environment, you'd be going, Oh, well, I can't say that, because Niall's the boss, you know. And if I say that, you know, he's going to hold it against me. Or whereas within EOS, we kind of go, actually, we're a trusting team. We're here for the greater good of the business, and so we want you to have those conversations. We want you to pick us up on it, because that's what we're about, and it's perfectly okay.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:38

Thanks for joining us on the Better Business, Better Life podcast, I'm your host, Debra Chantry-Taylor, and I'm passionate about helping entrepreneurs lead their ideal lives by creating better businesses because life is too bloody short.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:58

I'm a certified EOS implementer and FBA accredited family business advisor and a business owner. Myself, with several business interests, I work with established business owners and their leadership teams to help them live their ideal entrepreneurial life using EOS, the entrepreneur operating system. But I also really enjoy sharing everything I know to help anyone who is a business owner creative at life. Today's guest is an ex-comedian, teacher and fundraiser, but these days, he's an award winning Podcast Producer and podcast host, and he's the founder of 7 million bikes end to end podcast production agency. He's been on the show before, talking about how to use podcasts to help your business, but today he's back to talk about how EOS has helped the podcast business itself. Welcome back to the show, Niall. Great to have you back again.

Niall Mackay  01:44

Thank you for having me. I'm very excited. It's normally me doing the podcasting interview, so I'm excited to be interviewed.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  01:49

I know so those of you who've been following us will know that we actually had Niall on the podcast a while ago, and he actually talked about how businesses can use podcasts to actually create brand awareness and to attract new clients, etc. But this time around, we're actually gonna be talking about how EOS has helped Niall and his team to actually change the way the business is run. So in exchange for Niall helping us with our podcast, we started talking about business strategy and planning and EOS, and he was like, What's this all about? And so we shared some other things, and we've been slowly implementing some of the tools into the business. So we have been implementing some of the EOS tools into the business, and one of the things that I've always loved about EOS is that we focus more on the practical tools that will actually help the business make a difference from day one. And so these are things like having a level 10 meeting on a weekly basis with your team, having a scorecard, having your rocks. Let's talk about some of those things you put in place, and then we can talk about how we got to the vision and where you're headed. So weekly meetings, you hadn't been having these before we started working on EOS. Is that right?

Niall Mackay  02:50

We hadn't been having any meetings at all. It was so terrible. It was awful. And I, you know, tried it as a founder, and as you see a Visionary, which I still feel weird, but I think it's a cool term, trying to just let my team do their thing and a little bit hands off. But a few months ago, as we have our weekly calls, and you helped me so much, I can't remember what my specific question was that week, but you said, you need to have your weekly meetings. Oh, I remember. It was because I saw somebody else in the podcasting industry that I look up to, that I want to emulate within the next few years in terms of what their business does. And they said they had a daily meeting, and they have a worldwide team similar to mine as well. And I was like a daily meeting. Wow, that is that what so my question to you was, is that what I should do? And you said no, and you introduced another EOS concept to me that I wasn't aware of, which was a weekly meeting, and we started implementing them, following what you shared with me with the EOS template. And has just been incredible. The conversations that we've had we read the meeting and being able to change, not change, but keeping people accountable, which I didn't do very well at all. And even as this is what I've loved about working with you, been able to grow so much as a founder and a leader and a manager, and I had just been a really, really bad leader in terms of keeping people on their toes, because I just trusted everyone.

Niall Mackay  04:18

And to be honest, they were amazing. They were all doing their job. But what also happened around that time? So one of the girls on my team, she'd been on my team for over a year now. She's absolutely incredible. She looks after my website, does the blog post. And I thought, oh, you know, she's been in the team for over a year. It's probably time to give her a pay rise. You know, that's what you should do as an owner, as a founder, you evaluate. And so I looked at the inflation where, I'm based, in Vietnam, and it was about 5% so I said, Okay, I'll give her a 5% pay rise. And I messaged her say, hey, win. Really excited to tell you you've been with us for a year, and you're amazing, so we're going to give you a pay rise. Now this was before we started those meetings, and she messaged back, and she's just so lovely. She said, You really don't need to give me a pay rise. I don't. Do that much work, to be honest. And I was like, oh my god, okay, well, I'm gonna give you the pay rise, and you're gonna get a lot more work. Okay? And so part of these meetings was, for the first time, writing down in the scorecard what everybody has to do, including myself as well, which we'd never done before. And that part of that meeting is the first thing we do is just go through the scorecard, and it's really quick, like, have you done this? Yes, have you done this? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, no, oh no, you haven't done that. Why not? Or I'm having a couple of issues with this. Quickly talk about it, and then we go through that, and then we move on to the other agenda items that you shared with us as well. So just having that as a template, and once a week just going through normally, the answer is yes, but being able to go through it once a week and say, are you doing this? Yes, and even myself as well, holding myself accountable, one of my agenda items, or scorecard items, was, how you posting on LinkedIn two to five times a week? And I'd scheduled the LinkedIn posts for about six weeks in advance. So every week I was like, yep, yep, yep. And then eventually I was like, Wait a minute. I've been saying yes for quite a lot of weeks. Now. I think I need to go back and check to make sure that that six weeks hasn't expired. And sure enough, for about a week, there no posts going out on LinkedIn. So I was like, All right, so again, a nice reminder for me to then go and schedule another six weeks worth of posts, and then I put a diary reminder in my calendar saying, this will this is the last week you have scheduled a LinkedIn post and reminded to go and do more. So that's just a small example of how EOS has made a massive difference to just a daily life weekly life.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  06:35

Sure, and look, just to be really clear, I never Don't say no to daily meetings. I think my thing was that I don't think you need to have daily meetings, and so it's always about what's right for the business, but if you're doing nothing, actually, moving to having a weekly meeting is a step in the right direction. And we believe that a weekly meeting should actually be enough to cover those things off. But for some businesses, they just like to have that touch point. And if you're going to do a daily meeting, there are there's a very short version you can do, which we call a stand up, but it's not appropriate for every business and as nothing worse than spending time in meetings when they add no value, right?

Niall Mackay  07:06

Of course, I mean, I'm not a fan of meetings, and that's why we that's why we weren't having any at all. But there's obviously some value in them, and especially as a team, and some of the discussions we have now have just been so rewarding and so enlightening, been able to share my vision and share what I want to do, but then also getting their opinion. And so last week, we had a meeting. So my team are based worldwide. Everyone works online and works on their own time, but I realised that, I mean, I'm the worst at it, but they had, they have been bad at it as well, because I do so I would, you know, send a message on Thursday night or send a message on Sunday morning. Is that blog post ready yet? And I realised, like, you know, I want to have respect for people's time, and I want people to have respect for my time. I don't want to be working on Friday nights or Sunday mornings. But I thought again, I'm going to empower them. I'm not going to take what we do. And so in our in our meeting, was a great opportunity to take up the chance to say, Hey, do you want to start having more respect for each other's times? I know I'm really bad at this. How about instead of, you know, we can message each other about work whenever we think the time is like I do. Why don't we set, set it that we can only message each other between 8:30 to 5:30 Vietnam time, any other time we have to just wait. And both of them came back and were like, No, we quite like just being able to message each other at any time about work, and I don't think we should change it. And I was like, oh, okay, then that's fine. We'll keep messaging each other on Sunday morning.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  08:31

Yeah. But I think what that actually highlights is about, you know, people like to have boundaries. They like to know what the rules are. So even if the rules are you can do at any time, they now know what those rules are, and they don't feel like they're kind of pushing at them. So I know people often, especially visionaries, will come back to what a visionaries in a moment, but visionaries often kind of feel like, oh, you know, but I don't want to micromanage. It's all about micromanaging. It's about these are the bound. Here's what we expect from you, here's what this looks like, here's what it doesn't look like, and this is what we need you to actually do. So that accountability is just setting boundaries so they know. So even having those conversations to allow them to decide what boundaries they want to have is a good thing, right? Oh, for sure, absolutely. And I think the scorecard is also about this. I think a lot of people get really worried. They think, oh, but putting a scorecard in place, it feels like I'm micromanaging.

But it was really interesting at the conference last week, there was this term that was his luck, called fair exchange. And fair exchange means, if you employ me, I am being paid to do a role. And so there should be some expectations around what that role needs to actually do in exchange. And we've been paid on time and getting annual leave and all those wonderful things. And so the scorecard just gives that. Here's what we agree is a fair exchange. The rules of the game. It's like, if you imagine, you can't I don't know about you, I'm a tennis player. That's probably my sport of choice, but a lot of people like rugby or whatever. Again, they like imagine if rugby or tennis had no rules. You just got two people on the court, put them with a couple of rackets, getting a couple of balls away, off you go, and there's no rules around it. So how do we know who wins? It would be an absolute shit fight. Imagine that on a rugby field. It would. It would look like disorganised ballerinas on a butter buddy a grass pitch. So the school card that all those things are just about giving some boundaries, some rules of the game that say, this is what we play. Here's what the fair exchange is. This is what I pay you for. This what I expect of you. And it just makes that real quick clarity, right?

Niall Mackay  10:16

I think what it did giving clarity was great, because as a, I guess, a startup, which I don't think we are a startup, because that's kind of more of a tech thing, but we're a new company, very small. You don't have HR, you don't have all these rules like you're talking about, so you just kind of move fast, and you don't really think about things. And it just really helps to be able to put those rules in place and then think about things and give that bit of structure to the team, and then what I love about EOS is the simplicity of it and how it can be replicated easily. Because I think, as somebody who has no business background, everything seems over complicated to me. It's like, oh my god, I'm not I've only got business background. How do I do all of this? I don't know what's happening. But then every time I talk to you, it's just like, you just do this. It's super simple and it's really easy, and then you're like, I remember asking you a few weeks ago, like, what is good about like, why is EOS good? I'm not saying it's not. Why is it good? And I think your answer was just the simplicity and how it can be replicated. And actually running a business is not that complicated, but we, everyone makes it complicated.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  11:22

Humans have got this tendency of over complicating everything, and so it's about simplifying it done as much as you possibly can. And I think that sometimes people think that because it is so simple, it can't work for large organisations. But when I've got clients who've got a couple of 100 staff, and they've got EOS throughout all the levels of their business, and it works perfectly fine, just as it does for a husband and wife team who are working together, or a team that's got three or four people. It's just it is a framework. It's designed to be simple. I just think we have to stop over complicating things, make keep things simple.

Niall Mackay  11:51

And I can see how it can scale up as well as we're going to grow as well. And the support that you've given me this year has helped us grow enormously in terms of not just structure, but terms of business as well. And the advice that you've given has been so helpful.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  12:06

Thank you. But I think, I mean, I think what comes out of it mostly is clarity, right? I mean, as a visionary, and I'm going to explain what a visionary is in a moment, but, you know, visionaries do tend to get they've got it all in their head. They know what they want to achieve, but they're not able to articulate it, and they or they forget. I mean, I know I do this all the time in my head. It's really clear, but I kind of forgot to tell the people on my team what we're actually doing. So the EOS just brings that clarity to and says, Hey, that's how I can share my vision. This is what I'm looking to do. This is the simplicity behind it. And then people get to understand it, and it's shared every week, every quarter. Yeah. So yeah, I love it. I think it is very simple. So what? So you've obviously put in place that the weekly meetings, you've got your scorecard, tell us about rocks, because rocks is one of the next most important thing. Because we know we've all we're all running around in business as usual and making sure all the doors are kept open. The money's coming in, we're getting paid. What's your understanding of a rock?

Niall Mackay  12:59

This is, it's not going to be a good answer. So this is the part that I get tripped up on the most. But I did go through this exercise with my team recently. First of all, I don't like the term rocks, because to me, it initially seems like something that is in your way of blocking you or stopping you, and it took me a while to get my head around the rocks is what you put in place to achieve your goals, and it's something to do with putting rocks in a jar and filling it with water or something like that.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  13:26

And that’s where it first came from. I'll explain it, because this is actually quite important. We haven't talked about this, but it's like there is a video that you can Google. If you Google rocks, even COVID rocks, I think it is. There's this beautiful 70s video. It's hilarious to watch big, big shoulder beds, big Buffy hair. This. This was with this woman, and he's trying to teach her about, you know, how do you make sure the important things get done? And so what he says is, he's got this, this glass jar, and he's got these big rocks, he's got these little mini pebbles, he's got this lot of sand, and he's got a whole lot of water. And he explains that the only way you can put them all into that glass jar and they will fit is you've got to put the rocks in first. Because if you put the rocks in first, the pebbles will go down around them, and then the sand will go in between that then the water eventually fills up. Try and do it any other way, put the pebbles in first, you're fucked. So it's like, actually, you've got to get the rocks in there first to get it actually happening. And so that's what rock size is, order of importance. If we do those things first, they're the non urgent, important stuff that moves the needle. So I always say either increases revenue, it decreases costs, or improves efficiency. It's the stuff that actually makes the business better, as opposed to the business as usual, which just keeps the money coming in. You're going to Google that now, aren't you?

Niall Mackay  14:35

I'm going to Google that now, yeah, definitely. So I don't know if we're great at rocks. The rocks are like smarter goals, right?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  14:43

There are things that can be done within 90 days that you know, you know, within the next 90 days, these are things we can do. Can actually move the needle. So, yeah, you might. So for example, you might say, I want 20 new clients. That's a scorecard, measurable. But what do you need to do to get to 20 clients? And so you might go, Hey, we need to invest in some advertising. Thing. Or we need to develop a marketing strategy, or we need to, you know, to get some LinkedIn campaigns up and running, so that becomes your kind of your rock is working on, that the actual stuff in behind it that will make it happen, as opposed to business as usual, which is the stuff you do day in, day out.

Niall Mackay  15:14

I was just looking at my rocks here. I think that's what we've got. I think I understood it correctly. And we've gone through it with the team, and I had to keep going through it with one of them because she wasn't making them specific. And I was saying, No, you need to make it specific, which goes back to the smarter goal.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  15:28

Smart. Absolutely smart. Goals are important, and the reason I say that they're important, you know, we want to celebrate success. EOS is not just about keeping track of things, but it's actually about the team as a whole getting excited when they achieve those rocks, getting excited when they achieve their scorecard measurables, getting excited when the things are actually happening. Because the more the team buys into what you're doing, the more they can see it actually happening, the more they'll want to be part of it going forward as well.

Niall Mackay  15:54

Yeah, no, it's been I need to follow up on them and find out where they are on the rocks.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  15:58

Excellent. So we know, to be fair, this is a bit of a bit of a journey. We're doing this in a slightly different way to the way that I would normally do with clients, but we're just starting to bring in some really simple tools that will actually help. So we've got the level 10 meeting, we've got our scorecard, we've got our rocks. You also did some work about, you know, who was accountable for what and where things sat within the business. I don't think we've done a full accountability chart, but we've got an understanding of where those things lie. And then you started working on what we call the vision fraction organiser, which is your longer term? You know, what do I call values? What's I call focus? Where are we headed in the long term, short term, medium term? What Tell me about that process for you?

Niall Mackay  16:36

Well, that's actually been really exciting. So we've been using these level 10 meetings the last two weeks. So once we do the scorecard, what I wanted to find out from my team is, what did they think our vision and our mission statement should be? Because again, so it's exactly like you said. It's in my head, and my team kind of know it because I've mentioned it, and they know I'm passionate. I want to help the environment, and I want to have a diverse team. If you look, I'm the only male in the team at the moment. And I think women are just amazing. Like all the women that I've worked with in my life are incredible. All the men I've worked with in my life are pretty terrible, to be honest. As men are rubbish at what we do, and I'm rubbish at what I do. I'm built up by the women that helped me. So that's part of it. I don't want to have a business that has six white men at the top of the tree. I want to have a diverse staff from all over the world, from diverse backgrounds that are going to lift up the business. So they kind of knew this because I talked about it, but we didn't have it down in writing. And so after this, we're actually having our final meeting on it to nail it all down. So last week, we talked about, what did we think vision was? And I'm just looking up, because I should know this off the top of my head, right, but I want to make sure I get it completely right. Let me find SMB mission and values. So we this was over a couple of weeks, and what was really exciting was being able to put it down into three, three words, which came from a lot of talking and discussing, like, Does this mean the same thing? Is a how do we quantify this?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  18:07

So I think what is important, and you just mentioned, it is less, is more. Again, we tend to get really verbose. We tend to kind of over complicate it, and we want people to better remember it. So you're very early in the process, and over time, this will just become people better rattle it off without even thinking about it, because it is simple. As soon as you start making it more complicated, if you can't remember it, then nobody else will. But I think also bringing your team on board, this is where a lot of visionaries kind of fall over it, because they kind of go, Well, I've got the vision, I'll just write the plan, and then you haven't brought the team on the journey. And you might just find that by, you know, bringing them on the journey and talking about what the core values are, what our vision is, what we're trying to achieve, they might have some ideas that might just make a few little tweaks that make it, you know, more relevant to them. So won't actually fundamentally change because you are the founder, you're the one that's actually developing it, but because they've had some input into it, they'll understand where it's come from, understand the language that's used, I'll understand what it means.

Niall Mackay  19:03

So we broke it all down, we talked about a lot, and then we came up with three, just three bullet points that that took in everything that we do, that we're gonna that are our company values. And in our meeting today, we're gonna say we're gonna think of our mission statement to make sure that we can put these into practice every day, and even in five years time, one of the things I loved about I remember reading about Netflix's mission statement, because they used to be a DVD service, right? But their mission statement had nothing to do with DVDs. I think it was something like providing the best entertainment, something like that. So even when they changed from delivering DVDs to online streaming, the mission statement didn't change. It was still the exact same. And I love that you I really think your mission statement should describe what you want to do now and in the future. Just not, not just what you do right now, right? So our three values we came up with, we thought encompassed everything was one was quality.

Niall Mackay  19:56

So in everything we do, not just producing good podcasts like quality. Conversations, quality interactions with each other, with clients, with people. We collaborate. Everything is about quality, which, yeah, like we want to make sure everything we do is of high quality, professionalism. So there was so many things we talked about and through about, and we think this all comes in under quality. So that was number one. Number two was creativity. And again, when we make podcasts, how can we add some creativity to it? And it might be small, like with yours, we've added captions in the beginning. We've added little things like transitions. So if we're working with a client, how can we add a little bit of creativity to it? But then not just that as well. We've talked about the word fun. We want everything we do. It does stem from me. I think I'm a fun person. I'm outgoing. I like to have fun with people. So we talked about that, having fun with the team. So tonight, we're actually having our first ever 7 million bikes podcast quiz night.

Niall Mackay  20:52

So with our team, which is a small team, but they're based around the world, so we'll be in an Singapore and the Philippines. We're all going to meet tonight for our first monthly team quiz night, and again, that was came from this discussion of, we want to make sure we have fun with not just our client, but with with each other. And that all comes under creativity. And I really encourage the team. When you're talking to clients, you know, be yourself. Have fun. It doesn't mean when you're talking to them, you're like, Oh, I was out on the piss last night, and now I'm really hungover. I think I have told you I've hung over once, but it's generally not something that you tell people. But we are, we are a bit closer again. So it's about managing those relationships. I said to them, feel free to be yourself. You can. Don't need to be, you know, super stoic all the time, and show your show your personality. And that comes under creativity.

Niall Mackay  21:37

And then the last one was positive influence. And we talked a lot about the podcast that we wanted to work with, and what was our criteria for that? Did we want to work with extremist podcasts? So what if somebody came to us that was extreme right wing or extreme left wing, and they wanted to, they wanted us to produce that content, would we work with it? And so the question we came back to was, does it have a positive influence? So if the answer is no, then we won't work with them. And there are some podcasts that we have in the past refused to work with, and that sounds a bit strong, refused to work with, but we turned down the opportunity to work with them, chose not to, and that was mostly my decision, and I wanted to make sure that the team were on board with that. And even so, I do make my own podcast. I make two. One there's a Vietnam podcast about my life in Vietnam, and one of those episodes, I had said some disparaging remarks about a prominent American political party. I won't say which one, because I want to be positive. And my team, though, said to me that I should stop that. And it did get a couple of negative reactions online, and I had generally, up until that point, always kind of remained politically neutral, not really said anything disparaging about anyone. And I let it slip that, and I said a couple of disparaging things, and I agreed with them. I was like, Okay, I'll stop doing that. I will try to go back to making sure that anything I see has a positive influence. So in all of our worlds, all of our actions, all of our interactions, we've decided that that is something that's one of our values. So quality, creativity and positive influence.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  23:12

Yep. Perfect, and so I think what's really important here is that a lot of founders, they're nervous about doing this exercise with their teams. They think that the team might cut a different values. I think in general, the people you attract are the people who have those core values. It's just about getting the wording right and then, and as they've done so beautifully there, it's not just about the words, but it's about what does it mean and what doesn't it mean? Because the clearer you can get those boundaries about what we will do, what we won't do, you can have your team like they've done with you, call you out when they feel like you're not working within the core values, which is brilliant, right? Because that means not only can they do it to you, but you can do it to them. And as the team grows and gets bigger and you've got more people, those core values, the key being in the word core, they will actually start to hold each other, other accountable for them. So therefore you don't have to micromanage. They're going to do it for you, because they don't know, you know, here at 7 million bikes, this is how we operate. This is how we want to work. So it's brilliant. I think it's great. And it's, you know, giving them a chance to have input into it, they'll really own those values, as opposed to you just saying, Hey, we've got three core values around here. So here's what they are.

Niall Mackay  24:09

It was so great because immediately our editor sent me one of the reels, the shots, whatever you want to call it, for the, you know, the 62nd little video clips. And it was one of my podcasts. So it was me, but immediately it was it was negative, even though it's part of the main episode, which I was like, It's fine to leave it in the main episode. It's just 60 seconds out of an hour, but we don't want and as I could immediately say to her, is this positive? And she was like, No. And I was like, we literally had this meeting yesterday about everything we do we want to have a positive influence. So I know it's in the main episode, yes, but when it's part of the main episode, it's not so negative. We don't want to highlight the 62nd clip, which with no context, is super negative. So that was nice, though, to be able to say immediately, like, you don't have to explain it. We don't have to go through it. It was just like, do you remember yesterday we talked about positive influence? Do you think this is positive? No, okay. Change it, and immediately there's no conversation needed. So that was, that was really good. And I love what you said there. Yeah, my team were important to call me out on it. And they really were.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  25:09

Which is what I think I mean EOS, that's what it comes down to, is having that trust in your team so no fear of consequence. The more you have your weekly meetings, the more you have your quarterly sessions, and you start talking about things, people will start to feel empowered to actually have those sometimes difficult conversations. Because, you know, in a traditional hierarchical environment, you'd be going, Oh, well, I can't say that, because Niall's the boss, you know. And if I say that, you know, he's going to hold it against me. Or, whereas within EOS, we kind of go, actually, we're a trusting team. We're here for the greater good of the business. And so we want you to have those conversations. We want you to put to pick us up on it, because that's what we're about, and it's perfectly okay, and you're not going to get upset by it, and they're not going to get upset by it. It's great.

Niall Mackay  25:47

And I know that you mainly use EOS for businesses that are bigger. We're only a small team, as you mentioned before we started, when we first started talking, it was pretty much just me and a freelancer and a part timer, and we're not much bigger now, but we've gotten bigger in a year, and I know we're going to get bigger because we have goals and we have rocks, but it's been really amazing to have this support, even as a small team, and use these principles to help our business grow. And I have no doubt, after being working together for the last year, that it's going to keep going in the right direction.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  26:21

Yeah. Oh, look. I always say, I mean, EOS works for anybody who's got more than one person. It's really hard to have a level 10 meeting on your own if you've got just two of you. It works. It helps keeping people on the same page. It means you're on the same page. Transition where you're headed. You've got that discipline accountability, keep them on track. So even a two-man band can use the EOS principles. And I always describe it as it's kind of like building a house. You've got the foundations, and then you've got, over here in New Zealand, you've got wooden frames that they put up next and they fill everything in, right? And so that's all that EOS has the foundation. So it's the wooden frame where you want to put the partitions, and how big the rooms are, and what colour you want the wallpaper, and whether you want flashlights or whatever, that's all what you add to it. The EOS framework is just the foundations. So it's rock solid and the framework to actually hold it all together. But how you decide to decorate it, or interior designer, or how big you are, that's all up to you. And so it works for people with two people. It works for companies with 1000s of people. I mean, some other clients that we work with have got several 1000 people still using the EOS.

Niall Mackay  27:24

That’s pretty cool.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  27:25

That’s pretty cool. Yeah, I know that's why I fell in love with it. So let's have a quick talk about this visionary thing. Because I know you said that you can't really relate to it, but you are a visionary, whether you like it or not. It's obvious, and I think it's hard, because the visionaries will often beat up on themselves and say, yeah, they're not good at the people stuff, and they're not good at the day to day stuff. There is a reason for that, and this is the other thing I loved about EOS, right? The visionary and the integrated role has been spelled out in a book called Rocket Fuel. And rocket fuel basically says that there are two types of people that have to run a business to make the business accessible. You've got the visionary, who is the person who usually came up with the idea, is one that pushes the boundaries, looks for the new things that needs to be done. Always big picture, always big ideas, big relationships. Opens up the doors. And then there is the integrator, who is very detail focused, very much, not afraid to have tough conversations, loves the minute detail. Loves to keep everybody on track, everything on there. And they're actually two completely different personalities, right? And somebody described it perfectly today. It's like, Are you right handed or left handed?

Niall Mackay  28:24

I'm right handed.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  28:27

Right. So if I ask you to take your a pen in your left hand and write out a complete sentence, how does that actually feel for you? It's like you feel stupid, right? Because I can't write probably my left hand, and I looked like a child. And it gets very frustrating. That's because, you know, that's the way that you work with the right hand. Now, trying to make you write with a left hand means it's unnatural. Same with the visionary integrator role. Now, the visionary is designed to be big picture, big relationships, really pushing the boundaries. And an integral is designed to be much more detail focused, much more people focused. You don't want to try and force those two things together, because it doesn't work. Let the left-handed people right with their left right with their left hand at the right ear, but write their right hand, and then you've got people doing the right roles.

Niall Mackay  29:06

Sounds good.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  29:07

Yeah. So as a visionary, I think we need you. We need we need people like you and me, because we are going to the thing we have to remember as visionaries is we can also get carried away, though, get distracted by bright, shiny objects, and if you don't mind me sharing, you know, when we have our sessions, there's often a time where, oh, and I kind of thought about this, I kind of thought you need somebody to actually kind of keep you in check a wee bit and just go, Hey, look, Debra. I know that most of your ideas are kind of okay, but sometimes they're not, and sometimes we have to be laser, sharp focus on what's important. And that's where the integrator role, which hopefully you're going to get one in, you know, soon, that will actually help you with that, because they that, because they will actually keep you completely focused on the things that are important, allowing you to be freed up to write with your right hand and do it really well.

Niall Mackay  29:49

Well, that was the biggest thing that changed for my business, I think even before we started working together, was when I learned to start saying no to stuff, because I get distracted by. These bright, shiny things. And there's also a little bit of necessity coming with COVID, just trying to survive, and taking on every role that you could get, to try and make some money. And then eventually, once things started getting better, I realised I'm not the business is not growing at all. Like, I have one client, like, now we've worked with over 50 podcasts, I think at that point, worked with like two, and it wasn't growing, it wasn't going anywhere. And I realised I need to start saying no to stuff. So it's always good with our conversations to help me stay on that track of not getting too distracted, even though I still do a little bit. But I'm much better now my initial reaction anytime anyone comes to me with anything is no, and then maybe, if I'll think about it, and I might say yes, but generally, my initial reaction is, no, I'm not, I'm not going to do that.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  30:46

Yeah, and it's hard, right? Because I think that we get almost conned into seeing these people online who are like overnight successes went from this to this in into 90 days, and everything's up to it's probably a lot of bollocks to be honest, because it does take some time and actually, the way that you grow businesses by having that real clarity, having the consistency and just tweaking things by 1% every single week, your weekly level 10 meetings should be tweaking your business by 1% every single week. You add that up over 52 weeks, that's 52% improvement in your business. That's what we're actually trying to get to, is to have, not to say that you won't have some amazing idea that potentially could change the entire industry, but we need to actually focus on improving the current business on a regular basis, rather than leaving it all to once a year.

Niall Mackay  31:32

Yeah, for sure, that's what, and that's why I tell my team as well, let's try and get better 1% every day.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  31:37

Yeah, it makes a huge difference. Okay, so you've got the so you're working with a team to put together that VTO, which is about, you know who we are, what our core values are, who we serve, what, where we're headed. You've got your level term meetings. You've got some rocks in place. You've got your scorecard. What has been the overall impact? Do you think of bringing some of those tools into the business?

Niall Mackay  31:58

Or just structure, which we had none before. And as I mentioned, have no background in business at all, and you kind of like, oh, just do this, or just do this. And yeah, you're moving forward, but now just to have like structure and know that this stuff is tested. It's been done before. It's not just some pie in the sky idea. I don't, I generally don't like flashy objects. Like, oh, hey, you should do this new business thing in the 90 days your business. Like, I don't trust that that is going to work. So I've never really fallen for that. So just everything to have it really simple, written down, even though I'm I do think I'm a creative person. I do like structure and steps. I love systems. Just been able to replicate systems, because if someone else has already done it, you don't need to reinvent the wheel. And so all of that stuff is just what I like the most. And again, I mentioned it before, I can see that it's scalable. It's replicable. The things that we'll do we're doing now with a small team are still going to be the same the things that we do, and we have 10 people on the team and 10 times the income, it's not going to change at all.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  33:01

And I think you’ve done that really well. I've seen you with the processes, you know, taking things that that, again, what we tend to do when we first start a business is we've got all these things in our head. We know how to do it, but if we don't actually get that out of our head written down somewhere and make it replicable, guess what? We're lumbered with that for the rest of our life, because nobody else can do it. And then there's also a tendency for us to go, but nobody can do it as good as me, and then you let go, and you let somebody like, oh shit, actually, they did do an okay job.

Niall Mackay  33:26

It's hard to let things go, but I, I do know that everyone can do it better than me. That's kind of the thing. But it is still hard to let it go, because, you know, I want to do it, but then you're like, I know that they can do this better.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  33:37

Yeah. But there’s the hard, bitter pill to swallow, but it's, it's important, because that's how we create a business that will actually be saleable, replicable, you know, and also more fun. Because, you know, the part of the EOS life mantra is doing what you love with people you love. And so that's really about getting absolutely clear about what is the bits that you really, really love and are really great at, and do more of that, rather than trying to do everything yourself. And everybody has their bit that they love, right? So you might hate numbers, but there'll be people who love numbers. You might hate whatever it might be, and there'll be somebody who absolutely loves it. So finding the right people to do those things makes for the best team. Yep. Okay, so if you had to give, like, one bit of advice to anybody, like, who's starting out in business, or maybe who's been going for a while and feeling a little bit stuck. What would be the would be your, your advice?

Niall Mackay  34:23

Oh, just do it. I mean, yeah, like, everything I've said, it's helped so much, and it is going to help you. I guess you talk about, we didn't really cover it too much, but it frees up your time, right? Like, so instead of floundering and thinking, like, how do I do this? Maybe even trying to read stuff, trying to replicate stuff, like it's all it's all done for you. And I love it when I have a question for you, and you're like, Hey, I got a template for you here do this. And then it's like, oh, right, Okay, sweet. I think that's the biggest thing. It's just gonna help you achieve your goals.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  34:57

Yeah. And like you said, it's been tried and tested for many, many years and by hundreds of 1000s. Businesses. So why reinvent the wheel when somebody's already got something that's going to work for you? Yeah, exactly. Brilliant. Okay, so I suppose one of the things that I just wanted to say is that, you know, the other thing about EOS is that there are, there are many different ways to actually implement it, too. Yeah, for the bigger businesses, sure, it's nice to have someone like myself come in and actually help you. For the startups and things, you can listen to these podcasts. You can download the tools online. There's a whole range of things you can actually do and even if you just do, you know, obviously we want you to do all of it, but if you just do bits at a time, I think that's what you've seen, is you can do a little bit, and it's amazing how that little bit will make quite a big difference, and then do the next little bit. You don't have to take it all on board and do it all immediately. It's just about putting in the different tools over time as it works for you. So there's no there is. There's a better way of doing it, the proven process, but there's no magic way. It's about actually working at the speed that works for you.

Niall Mackay  35:46

Well, and I think as a business owner, you obviously have so much day to day stuff to do. I mean, I think even I don't know, obviously, but I assume even if you're a CEO of a multinational corporation, you still have your day to day things that you need to do in your role. So with the US, I still have all my time to do, all my day to day tasks. But like that, vision, traction, organiser, I did it ages ago. I forgot how I came up with half the numbers, but I remember sitting down and planning all the numbers so I can just quickly look at it and be like, oh yeah, this is what I planned. This is it exists. It's there. And with the meetings as well, we can go back and be like, Yep, we've done we score our meetings like you, like you advise, so they generally get quite a high score, which is nice. And, yeah, it's a great system.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  36:30

I also remember I was going to say it's around you mentioned that, you know, you are a creative and I think a lot of times creatives think, Oh, we don't want to put this in place because it will stifle our creativity. I actually think it does exactly the opposite. I think it gives you enough framework and structure to free you up to do the more creative stuff, because all the day to day stuff is kind of process driven. It's driven by numbers, it's driven by accountability. It's driven by the boundaries, which means then you've got the freedom to actually go, yay, I can be creative with all the stuff that's really important. Yeah, yeah. And that's a got a lot of advertising agencies who use it as a tool, because I just think it's that. That's what it does for you. Cool, okay, any last words, anything else that we should have a quick chat about?

Niall Mackay  37:13

No, just thank you so much for all your support. Over the last year as a small business, the support has been incredible, because it's so difficult when you're just starting. As I've mentioned a couple of times, I've no business background at all. So I remember you interviewed an old friend of mine on your on your podcast, on this podcast, Kat, who had knowns went from when I lived in New Zealand. Don't live there right now, but one day, probably will be back there. And immediately, I obviously enjoyed the interview, so I contacted you with the view of working together eventually, because I was like, this is someone I want to work with. We do podcasts, we do business. This seems perfect. And thankfully, it came to fruition. And we've never been working together. I can't even remember well over a year now, every year.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  37:57

Yeah, absolutely, and I remember it because at the time, I've never actually done my own podcast as and I've always had somebody else do it, but it was being done by, I think, the VAs and, yes, I agree. Well, again, do what you love, and I love talking to people. I love engaging with people. I don't enjoy any of that other stuff, so I've always had somebody do it. But I think that the there was lots of room for improvement, and bringing you on board has really helped us to look at, you know, how do we actually improve the quality of the podcast, even just things like having an introduction and really being clear about what that looks like and having some structure? So from me to you as well, it's been a great relationship to actually go, yes, you your team will just do it all for me, they do a great job, and I'm pleased we've been able to help each other.

Niall Mackay  38:36

Yeah, it's been amazing. So thank you so much.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  38:40

Thank you very much.