Scale Your Business with EOS | Steve Krebs | Ep 202

Steve Krebs  00:00

Oh, why is that such an amazing business? It's an amazing business because you did all the little things really well. It was our culture. It was our mindset to go in and improve each week. And it's like a human right to put people in their right positions. If someone's not the right person for their job, we're actually doing the right thing by letting them go and do the right thing.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:21

Life's too bloody short, right? It's like actually, if you're not doing what you love with people you love, it's time to start asking some difficult questions.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:36

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  00:55

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 Entrepreneurial Operating System. Today's guest is a fellow EOS implementer. He was brought up in an entrepreneurial business, and he has been running businesses for most of his life. He started a business called Machines4U in his bedroom with a mate, it became Australia's largest machinery marketplace, and they sold it successfully. 18 years later, he has run the rotor room marathon, although he almost didn't make it because he approached in a typical visionary Style. Today, he's going to share his journey, his pathway to being a better leader, and how you can use the EOS tools to create a better business and a better life. Steve Krebs is a professional EOS implementer and the founder of Boss Coaching. Welcome to the show, Steve, good to have you here.

Steve Krebs  01:49

Thanks, Debra, appreciate having me on. Yeah. I'm excited to have a bit of a chat and see what comes out.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  01:55

Same here. I want to have you share your story with the people, listeners on the podcast. So you have been an EOS implementer for a few months now, but before that, you actually had a business that you built from your bedroom, I understand, and then you sold it 18 years later to a venture capitalist firm. Tell us a bit about your journey.

Steve Krebs  02:12

Yeah, it's an interesting journey, really. I mean, when I go right back to day one, you know, I was brought up in a entrepreneurial household, Mum and Dad. I'm from Rotorua in New Zealand, so mum and dad had two clothes shops and a shoe shop, so there was plenty going on. You know, Dad was always educating me right back to the days of 3-4-5, years old, you know, taking me into the shops and, you know, sometimes on the weekends, you take me in and me and my brothers and sisters, so you had it around you, and then, you know, my parents split up and went their own ways. So I sort of went from heaps and heaps of money and cars and nice big house to, oh, my God, you know, living with mom. But we, we got by, but we didn't have heaps and heaps of money.  

So I guess from an early age, I sort of learned to if I wanted something, I had to go out and get it and create that, you know, and me and my brothers, if we wanted a motorbike, we had to go and get a job and figure it out and pay for it. So it, I think you learn to hustle from an early age, and that, and that taught sort of the basis of entrepreneurship, really, because we went into so many different little businesses and bits and bobs. And then, you know, I've worked for other people. So then I'm, you know, was back in Auckland, actually selling capital equipment, machinery. And then, yeah, right back to WR Jax days where so I'd go out and see customers and sell them machines to make their lives easier and more efficiency within their businesses. And I really love that it was such a cool learning of a job, because you got to see so many different businesses, and you got to genuinely help them through the process of efficiency and machinery. So did that, and then moved over to Melbourne, and then that's where, along with another Kiwi guy, we started Machines4U from the end of a bedroom, you know. So a different world, really starting a business.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  04:15

So what took you to Melbourne?

Steve Krebs  04:20

I was with girl, originally.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  04:22

Oh, is this right?

Steve Krebs  04:23

Yeah. So, you know, I thought she's the one I was just move over for a year and give it a try. And, you know, 24 years later, I'm married, two kids in a in a house. And, you know, living here, I wasn't actually coming to Australia for that long, but it's, it's an amazing place, and lot of opportunity over here. I still go back to New Zealand loads and loads, but I love it over here. You know, it's a good lifestyle.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  04:46

I'm very fortunate. I kind of travelled between Melbourne Auckland, so I have the best of both worlds visits.

Steve Krebs  04:51

Well there you go. Well, I was Melbourne originally for six years, and that's where my wife's from. And then we've moved up to the Gold Coast eight years ago, and we just. Absolutely love it up here. It's ridiculous,

Debra Chantry-Taylor  05:02

Beautiful. Okay, so tell us a bit about this business then. So Machines4U. It was started in the in the bedroom in Melbourne. What motivated you to even start that type of business?

Steve Krebs  05:14

It was genuinely solving a need. Because back in those days, 18-19, years ago. Now we had to help people sell their second air machine quite often before they buy a new machine. So back in those days, it was trading post, you know, the big, thick trading post in the petrol station. We used to help people list their machinery in there, and then, you know, we could see that was going to go online, because car sales was about then, and trading post was trying to take their content online, but not doing it very well. So then we were like, hang on, this is what's coming. You know, machinery marketplace. But when we talk to people at first, they were sort of like, oh my God, no one's going to buy a tractor on it on a website. You know, you go to field days trade shows you, you sell it in the trading post. But then as time went on, we were absolutely bang on, and we were right. You know, we had a we had a model, effectively, where we could take people's machines, put them on the marketplace and then run cheap AdWords back in the days, you know, that back in the days when AdWords were two cents and five cents, and I wouldn't bet on an AdWords when it got to 20 cents, can you believe it used excavators, and now they're up $14-16.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  06:30

Easily. Yeah. Okay. And so building a business from the bedroom floor, bedroom into the bedroom, obviously took some effort, and you had a partner in that too, right?

Steve Krebs  06:40

Yeah, yeah, we were two mates, effectively. And you know that first two years of business, you got to play all out. You got to do something special. I can see why so many businesses go bust in that, you know, first two years, something ridiculous, like the first five years, 50% of businesses have gone out of business, and I can see why. Because you gotta, you know, I was a good salesperson, be able to communicate. Luke was good with the internet and sort of, you know, getting things to work. But we, you had to evolve quite quickly. We knew we didn't know it all, you know. So there's so many different hats we had to where, you know, I was marketing, sales, build a team, you know, get a programmer, then get sales people, then get an office bookkeeper, accounting. There's so many different things you'll learn and have your head around, but you got to have the model working first. And I think that's what we did, because it was really built off a need, a problem and a solution and we were able to get our customers on and keep them happy and grow the business that way.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  07:49

Challenges. What are the biggest challenges you faced?

Steve Krebs  07:52

Oh, my God.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  07:53

Because I'm assuming, because it was more than two of you by the time. That's 18 years later, right? How many staff did you have when you sold?

Steve Krebs  07:58

When we sold in the Gold Coast, we would have had, I think it was 22 at the time, and another 14 in the Philippines, because we had our programmers and content people over in the Philippines. So we learned loads that, but loads of challenges. There was always challenges, like we could write a book on this. So, you know, right back to the start of, you know, two mates coming together. How do you work that out in a partnership, and say, on the same page? Right throughout the journey, it's employing staff and keeping them happy and doing all the rest of it. There's challenges within there. I mean, when we were only three or four years in, you know, I had a car accident that took me out for five or six months. So, you know, there's, there's a lot of things that you're challenged with, but I guess it's just how you handle those challenges, whether you still kind of push on and, you know, evolve and then get to the point of actually selling it one day

Debra Chantry-Taylor  08:55

And you would have been really early on in the times of actually using Filipino staff for development and whatnot too, I'm guessing.

Steve Krebs  09:02

Yeah, originally we started in India, but, of course, with the time difference, our head programmer here, we were very lucky. We got a guy that was just a superstar. He right back from the day one, you know. So we actually brought him in part of the business, because he was very good at managing people, zooming people getting, you know, the clarity, because it's easy for people in the Philippines to say yes, yes, yes, and they don't actually know what you know, they haven't fully understood it. So we were good at driving and getting them to do the right things that we needed out of the business. So that's a skill that you really, you know, you can't just abdicator. You can't employ these people and just let them run on their own. You really got to have a strategy behind that, and, you know, and work with them every, every few hours, effectively.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  09:54

Yeah, fair enough. So when I talk to entrepreneurs, I always say, when. There's three things that every entrepreneur, I believe should have. One is a coach, one's operating system, one's a peer group. And you actually had all three of those in your business, right? So you became part of Entrepreneurs Organisation. You used an operating system in your business. I'm assuming you had a coach too. Tell us a bit about those three components and what they did for you.

Steve Krebs  10:17

Yeah. I've had lots of different coaches across the journey of 18 years, just like in sport. I mean, how many sports teams do you know we don't have a coach? There's always so many different blind spots that you're growing across the journey. You know that you just need someone to be able to bounce those ideas of and to help you. Probably the biggest thing. About six years ago, we were the business had plateaued with, you know, this thing, I call it a ceiling and a business, it was genuine with plateaued, and it was frustrating. We're trying things. You're chasing rainbows, you're trying to find these big silver bullets, and you know, you're redesigning commission systems for the eighth time, or you, you just keep trying all these things, and it gets extremely frustrating. And it was extremely frustrating. And then we went and put in a running system into the business, got another coach worked on it. And really, there was a step before it.

Steve Krebs  11:22

There was a step was, you know, it's the good old look in the mirror as a leader and go, What the hell's going on here? How come we get staff and lose staff, and how come we keep turning over the staff? And I had to really take a serious look at what was my leadership level like, you know? So I actually realised, and one of those big moments, you know, where you go, Holy shit, it's me. So then went down the road and went on this pursuit of leadership, and it took me to some really interesting areas. You know, got on this group of men's business people in rising kings. And, you know, it was about health and wellness and how you actually showing up to the workplace, you know. So I went on this 12 week thing, and then they took us down to Sydney and put us pretty much through an essays Code Black weekend, where they buckled and bent us, and then you come out the other side and you were forever changed. The standards and understanding that, you know, there's all these comforts and business and in life, and if you just keep sort of maintain and sort of staying in those, well, then you don't get the performance. So then when I took the standards and took back to my business, well then it really changed. That's where, you know, we reset goals of the plateau. We pushed through it.

So we used to have a 400 to 430 machinery dealers advertising on the site, and we just couldn't break that for about five years. And then by me changing as a leader, got getting better at, you know, the way I lead people, and doing what I say, and working on the culture and having the right people in the team. We then set a goal for 500 machinery dealers, and we did that for a 12-month period. Well, we smashed that two months early, a month and a half early, and it was through getting a really good coach, having a good operating system to follow and, you know, get the vision out, share the vision with people. Because quite often it was in my head as an entrepreneur, getting it out, rolling it out, getting the right people, right seats, all that stuff we talk about. Well, we actually went and did it, and we created an amazing business. You know, that was extremely efficient by the time we sold it.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  13:41

That’s fantastic. It's amazing how those moments can really change using I remember I actually did a not an SAS course, per se, but something similar. We went and stayed out in a old, dilapidated mental hospital, and they had us running around the graveyard in the middle of the night, and then AB sailing down a building the next day. And, yeah, it just brought home how lucky we were and how comfortable life was that, yeah, we weren't challenging things anymore. So yeah, it's great to hear that you're about to do something similar.

Steve Krebs  14:07

Yeah it actually showed you that you're capable of way more, and so are your people. How is the business? So when we got this goal of 500 we ended up going for big dinner and lunch and celebration and everything with the full team, we actually ended up smashing the roof of our office, so genuinely, it would move, hitting the ceiling. And we'd smashed all the things, you know, extremely drunk at the end of the night and led by me, but we were so excited that we were punching through and we could take on anything, and anything was possible. It sort of woke up on the Saturday tomorrow to my program again, you smashed up the office. But it was actually so genuinely true, that's what it would take him for us to go to the next level. I mean, we doubled in revenue. And, you know, at 12 months period.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  14:56

And you must have been questioning whether or not they've actually were earning more. Now to get to, because if you hit sub plateau for such a long period of time, you'd be kind of going, Well, is this it? There's nothing more.

Steve Krebs  15:06

Well, you start changing your plan. You start, you know, you're chasing Rambo’s, I call it. You're after these pot of golds within the business that then people are changing too quickly. You know, you're chasing this bit and chasing that, and that's what we realised, is where you get really good in business. It's all the little one percenter improvements, it's all the small things you do on a daily basis. Then everyone goes, Oh, why is that such an amazing business? It's an amazing business because you did all the little things really well. And when we had that, you know, doing it over 40 people well, they were doing it really well too. It was our culture, it was our mindset to go in and improve each week. Yeah, and it really works.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  15:54

And you said it was about we're going to share your vision as well, which often is a visionary. We've got this amazing vision in our head, but we just haven't really articulated in a way that people understand.

Steve Krebs  16:04

Yeah and so why did, why aren't they following me? Why? Why are they not, you know, following? Are they like we, you know, visionary, so I can chop and change, you know, come out with these great ideas, or go away for the weekend, or go to a conference, I'd come back with these great ideas and just moving and chopping changing before people actually get to settle in and do things. So once we clearly got that out, and I could stand up in front of the group and say, it was quite a daunting thing, I remember when I had to go and do this presentation to the team of, oh, you know, here's our vision, because it was the first time we're telling everyone the vision and about, you know, 10 years, we tried about the versions in the past, you know, we would go away for the weekend and, like, come back with this great idea. Usually it was, you know, we're going to go from $4 million to $20 million or something absolutely ridiculous that we had no plan for. And then you would do that plan and put it back in the draw, because it just wasn't real. And it wasn't, you know, off 1% in growth. It was off the big rainbows, the silver bullets, I call them. So when we actually did that, and you could see the incremental improvement over the months, and people you know would have the quarterly catch up with the team and let them know that we're on track, and we could celebrate that and keep doing more of what we're doing. People love that. People actually like fine tuning something and being part of it. We really gave everyone a real belonging and an environment where it was, you know, pretty exciting to talk about problems and fix them and fine tune them, and it was okay. People weren't going to get crucified, you know. So it was a was a good working environment where people could grow often.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  17:42

It's interesting, but I when I teach scorecards to the teams that I work with, I often have to be very, very clear to the visionaries that they might have this massive, big goal that they're trying to achieve, but if they put that on the scorecard and it's unachievable and it's red week in week out, it's not going to do anything for the team in terms of motivating them. So sometimes we have to sort of take a step back and put a lower number in and hit it a couple of times and get some greens, then raise it, and then hit Get a couple of greens and raise it. Because as visionaries, we kind of go, Oh, it's okay. We'll get there eventually. But for the people on the ground, they just see you chasing the rainbows, the unicorns, the pots of gold, and they get to the point where they go, this can't be done. You know, this is we're just, we're kidding ourselves. So having some reality and some serious predictions that they can actually achieve, gives them that momentum I fight?

Steve Krebs  18:26

Oh, absolutely. And that they did the study on the mice and the cheese, didn't they? If you put that cheese too far away, the mice can't go towards it. So I got big at setting up the staff for success. Set up. It sounds so ridiculous. Oh, we all do that. Well, no, we weren't, you know, we had some targets that were too difficult, you know, the process someone was going through. So when you, you know, get people to reach a goal, and then you're able to work with them and go a bit further and reach, you know, a bit further. Well, everyone can reach a bit further, but you don't want to cook them in the meantime, where it's too far out, the cheese is too far away.

And so we're going, we were huge on everyone should come into the business for the day and leave knowing they were successful or not. You know, did we set them up for the success, just in a day, in a week, in a month, in a quarter then, because if we're not well, then we're not you're going to end up on two different pages, and that's when people leave. People, yeah, 82% of issues, they say, come from the people component. And man, do I. I'm like, I was probably higher. You know, 82% yes, it's real. Because when we go people, is it just our staff? No, we go back to the leader, we go to the staff, we go to our customers, we go to our suppliers. I mean, you know, there's some customers we should fire. There's some suppliers we shouldn't be working with. They're not the right people, right culture, right fit. So we took it right to that level. Cool. And then when we did it with people we want to work with, and, you know, the right customers, and had communication and clarity with them, and a good product that was solving their problems, that's where we it was pretty cool in the end.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  20:13

So I love, I just why I love the People Analyzer. I find that tall. It's just, it's so simple, and yet it's so beautiful. Because, yes, it tells you you think you're a people issue. You put up the People Analyzer, you kind of score them on the values and with a GW, see it. And then you actually have to ask the really honest question, well, actually, is it them or is it me? You know, as the leader, have I given them the right tools? Have I given the right boundaries? Have it been really clear about what I expect in terms of behaviour and what I don't expect? Have I actually put them in a role that they can do, that they genuinely want to do, and have the capacity to do. You know, it's so it's a great tool for having those questions answered.

Steve Krebs  20:46

Well, Dan says that isn't it. It's like a human right to put people in their right positions. You know, we're doing the right thing by all other humans. And if someone's not the right person for their job, we're actually doing the right thing by letting them go and do the right thing. You know, if it's not right for the business, it's not normally right for the person, is it? And then it's not right for the company, it's not right for the customers, you might as well get them going and doing something good. And when we got good at that, I was I could sit in the uncomfortable conversation to let someone go, and it was actually a good outcome. It was a good outcome for everyone. I've had people come back to me six months, 12 months later and go, Man, that was the right it was hard at the time, but it was actually the right thing for them, and they ended up happier. And we got the right person, we ended up happier. So it's like, yeah, it's our job as leaders. That's that pursuit of leadership, looking in the mirror and going, hang on a sec, right environment, right people, that'll out trump anything I did do the thing where I just threw people at problems, you know, and they're expensive, and when people don't have clarity, the reverse of that is that it does cause a lot of issues and a lot of heartache and a lot of pain, and a lot of, you know, sleepless nights, I guess if you, if you are throwing the wrong people at the at the problem, you know,

Debra Chantry-Taylor  22:11

I do wonder, and we see it quite a lot with the clients that we work with, where they're, they're not having the difficult conversations. So you're, you're saying that it's probably around their own development and being a better leader will actually help them to have those conversations.

Steve Krebs  22:25

Yeah, I'm going through it at the moment. You know, the customer, the clients I'm working with, and I got to sit and then we show up again and go, hang on. Have you done it? No, no. It's just a thing that they've got to get over and evolve, and then they'll be able to do the right thing by their people.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  22:42

And I think once you've done it, once you kind of do, you start to see that actually it's good for everybody all around and therefore it's necessary.

Steve Krebs  22:51

Well, I think we get caught as leaders that we've done it, and it was really difficult, and we might have copped it up. So we don't want to go back there. You're just left with a whole heap of people in your business that shouldn't be there. So you get hurt from it those early times, because you are an experience to it. So that's why you know having someone in your corner to help you sort of work through those situations, give you some communication tools and to be comfortable with it, and then it can help them through the process. And then they get to see, Oh, wrong person in there, right person in there. That's a different business.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  23:24

So tell me a bit about Entrepreneurs Organisation. Because, I mean, I spent about three and a half years in a forum. It's rather, it's great, great for me, and I will go back to it eventually when I give it more time. But you, you've been doing it for almost six years now. What's, what's the benefit for you of being part of that peer group?

Steve Krebs  23:39

Well, it's about talking with people who are going through similar challenges to you, or people who you like hanging out with. Like, business is my modern day sport. You know, like when I was younger, I played sport. Now I play business. I love it. That's my passion. So, you know, I was just in Queenstown with Queensland and chapter advance and for five days with other 80 business owners. I mean, that's just me and Happy Land. You know, that's just like the conversations, the depth we go to, and the people you're hanging out with that, like meets like, you know, should we share it with the dog or the wife or the kids, or should we talk to people who are actually going through similar situations? I mean, you know, there's some people in there 100 million dollar businesses and sharing ideas and open challenges that I've got, and it can be similar to someone going through the $2 million mark, you know, $5 million mark. So it's just that learning environment. For me, they're getting some great keynote speakers and stuff. I'm more about learn or die pretty much. You know, that is genuinely me. If I'm learning, I'm happy, I'm growing. If I'm not, yeah, I get distracted and I get, you know, need to go and go and do something. So that's why I love the EOS part of it. Now I'm actually going on to the board. And, you know, I've been on the last 12 months, and I'm now full time on the board, so just doing those other roles, I'm also coaching the accelerator group, which is, you know, smaller businesses trying to go through that, you know, get to 2 million, but dollars. So I love that. It's just, you know, working with them, they're amazing.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  25:19

I think it was as of the sharing of experiences as well. It's like, it's not, it's not theoretical, it's not reading some book. It's actually, then people just genuinely sharing what's going on for them. And getting to that, they call it the other 5% that you never get to talk about with anybody else, which is just phenomenal, powerful.

Steve Krebs  25:34

Yeah, but that's the crazy thing. You go straight to that when you talk to people, it's like this umbrella where you can just talk about the real issues. You know, those ones bottle up and, you know, those ones make you crook. They make you stressed. They you know, if you can share those earlier it comes out, and then you can feel better and be better as a person. That's why I love the name of your podcast, by the way. You know, I'm under no one illusion that, you know, we get to live one life. So we just got to live our best life, best business, best life.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  26:06

I always say life's too bloody short, right? It's like, actually, if you're not doing what you love with people you love, it's time to start asking some difficult questions.

Steve Krebs  26:12

Absolutely, yeah, yeah, that's with us. There's something really interesting that came out from last week. It was Sir Michael, held Julie, you know, he, he does 30-year thinking. And it just blew my mind, because I was always 10-year thinking, or five year, three year, one year. We all live in this sort of one year, 12 months. You know, can't do that. Happy New Year, 12 months. Whereas he's 30-year thinking. I mean, you can't think about in 30 years’ time, where what you've done, and who you're with, and who's your team, and where you're around, and how's your health looking, all that you have a decent look in the mirror. That's for sure.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  26:53

I bet 10 years is still good, but you're right. Going even further makes you really start to think, because we did this exercise with our clients, right? We sort of say, look at 10 years, and take your age where you are now, add 10 years to it. And for most of us, particularly me, who turned 54 this year, trying to go 64 Oh, my goodness, that's ancient. You know, it's like the retirement age, which I don't think I'll be retired, but imagine adding 30 years to it. So that's just an entirely different ball game.

Steve Krebs  27:15

Yeah. Well, he's 86 and he was adding on 15 years. He just has this longevity mindset, and he's still quite fresh as a daisy. He was funny. He was still had heaps of go about him, you know, 86 he wasn't starting to think about hopping in the box. He still had this great positive attitude, you know, and had all these things on the go, which I really liked. That's a good way to think.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  27:38

Especially when you know his history, right. Because, I mean, he went through some pretty major trauma and lost everything, and, you know, if you listen to his stories, it's not been an easy life.

Steve Krebs  27:48

No, we've all got stories. You know, it's all relevant. We'll go through these challenges and stuff. But that's part of this wonderful world of life, isn't it? You know, it's the way we handle them and what we do with it. You know, I'm very lucky to position them. And now where, you know, when you sell a business to private equity and come out the other side, I get to sort of pick and choose what I do so, but this is what I love doing. So that's, that's, that's a good part to it.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  28:15

Nice little segue there. So you are now an EOS implementer, and I'm rather keen to hear why you decided to do that, and I know that you shared with me, before we came on the podcast, that you looked at both scaling up and EOS. So really keen to understand how you arrived at EOS and why you're doing what you're doing.

Steve Krebs  28:34

Well, the easy part is to genuinely make a difference in other people's lives and take them through the process, because I've been in the pain of not sleeping and frustrated and staff leaving. I've been in that pain, you know, we were still comfortable with Miranda Plato, had plenty of money and profitable business, so God, I only hate to think of what it was like if you if you weren't making money. So we still were in a comfort, but a discomfort. So to go through that now, when I go and talk to other businesses, there's so many areas where they just got blind spots and where you can genuinely sit and help and, you know, having those difficult conversations, sitting with a leadership team and being okay, that this isn't okay, you know, and helping people, I've already seen the differences of making people's lives. That's what buzz buzzes me out.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  29:30

Perfect. So the more difficult question then, so with, obviously, EOS and scaling up. And by the way, I've also trained in scaling up, and I love scaling up in the rock and habits, but I chose to go with the EOS for my own reasons. What was your decision making process and why EOS?

Steve Krebs  29:45

Yeah, well, you know, six years ago, we put scaling up in Machines4U, so that was the running process we used to coach. So I've been through the process of putting scaling up in the business. I just felt like it was a bit more. More difficult, like, I've read the book, you know, Verne Harnish’s book, I've seen them talk all that sort of stuff. I feel like the EOS system just compliments each other, that the components come together like a jigsaw puzzle, scaling up. I feel like they're sort of over here, over there, over there. But EOS is more simpler, and it just really they complement each other. And when you fine tune them and get the scorecard right with the rocks and then the level 10, I mean, that they that those are three in the accountability chart. They accountability charts crucial. There's, I mean, that's just amazing. When you put those things together. That beats any system won't be because of your the running system. If your business goes bad, it would because you had the wrong model or the wrongs, you know, the wrong products. You're not solving enough problems for all the.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  30:57

Wrong people in the wrong seats. And you know the accountability. I think the accountability I think the accountability chart is a game changer as well. It's like people love to get into doing the VTO because that's the simple bit. Oh, let's put our plan together. But until you actually have people who are fully accountable, and they know what they're accountable for, the rest doesn't actually happen.

Steve Krebs  31:13

Oh, it just helps so much. Like, you know, if you go back at the reverse of that of an org chart, how many people like me included? When started, it was like, Oh, you got to do that all chart thing. It's like, Oh, you look around the room, or there's five of us. We'll draw them on the paper, and then, oh, we want to add another one. We'll draw one over there, and then we put it back in the drawer. And then we're like, oh, we looked at that all chart thing for a while. That was generally with the world I came from. So then when you start creating an accountability chart which matches in what the business needs over the next 12 months, that that's a game changer that helps you with employing the right person next, because otherwise we end up with these wrong people in our business. That maybe they should have come in, but maybe they have three or four people down the track. So that's what I love about it. You can just see it created by design. Have the right people with the right job descriptions, right KPIs, right cultural fit, and then hold them accountable. And then that's generally how the success comes, isn't it really from.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  32:18

I had a client who actually did it five years out. So he kind of, he kind of had 12 people in his business, but he went five years out instead of five years, probably gonna have about 40 roles. And these are the different roles that we'll have these accountabilities. And so obviously they had a current accountability shot. Many people were wearing multiple hats, but it then made it really easy to understand what the next tire should be, because you could very quickly identify Steve's wearing four hats, and Debra is wearing three, and Steve's getting really overwhelmed, then the next hour has to be the person that's, you know, in this particular accountability chart position.

Steve Krebs  32:48

Yeah, otherwise, you're getting the emotion of the person coming to you, going, I've got too much on my plate. Oh, have you what? How big is their plate? Yeah, hey. And it's like, when you can look at the accountability chart and I can see, you know, I think you go in reverse to them, where you're actually talking to them, saying, hang on a sec. We've got to go and get someone to help you earlier on, once again, we set our staff up for success, because we can see that hang on. That's a big three roles that person's actually doing here, and we should get someone skilled in it. We did that thing with it with the Kolbe with Jason from Kolbe was absolutely brilliant, and so stuck in my head. I'm very visual. So he got us to write with our left hand. You remember, because of your right-handed, you can write with your left hand. And it was the dog ran across the road to chase a tree up the cat. You write that with your left hand if you're right-handed, in the reverse, obviously, if you're the other way. But when you do that, it takes up so much energy and effort to be able to do it, whereas that's what we're getting our people to do when they're not in that right seat. So that's why it's stuck in my head so much. So I'll sit with my clients and just go hang on a sec. Are you getting them to write with the right hand or the left hand? What job really suits that person? What is their genetic coding? What do they love doing? Because if they love doing it, your business will be better.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  34:17

And I always love laugh and joke, because, I mean, I'm although I'm actually good with numbers from a board level and a high level, not so great at the day to day numbers, but there's so there's no point in me doing that work, because there are people who actually, genuinely love it. My husband's an actuary. He loves numbers with a passion. Find it boring as bat shit. So you know, for every one of me, there's somebody else is going to love the bit side up.

Steve Krebs  34:38

Well, I just look at my son and my daughter. But Ruby's 11, and little Josh is 8. You give him mass. We were doing it last night because we were going through the times tables. He loves it. And where did that come from? He came from the two same parents. Ruby loves English. You get her to read a book or do something like that, or get her to. Spouse something, she's English and he's maths, and it came from the same parent. What genetic coding? Something happens where it's like these mass and she's English, and they're so strong in that. So you know, if we give him more maths and her more English.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  35:15

Gonna be in a bad place, absolutely. So for those who don't know what an accountability chart is, because the babies we believe, but who are still exploring EOS. So the accountability chart is really about deciding what those main functions in your business are, and developing a structure that supports those main functions. And within each box, you've got these five or six roles that that person is going to be accountable for. And so what that really helps you to do as an organisation is to understand who is accountable for what. I've got an issue with customer service. Who do I go to? It helps you understand where things get passed off from one department to another. But it also becomes really clear that this is the role that we're looking for now. Do we have the right person in that? So we do the structure first people second. And so what we're talking about now is, obviously you can sometimes look at a particular role, and it might be a maths role, and putting an English person into it is not going to do the best for the company. So it starts to help you think about, yeah, have you got those right people in the right seats?

Steve Krebs  36:05

God, you'd be good for radio. You're just so good at that advertisement for radio or TV. That's brilliant.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  36:17

Probably speak a little bit too fast for both of those, but that's okay, talking about that's cool, Hey. Um, so I just want to ask, Was there a really, really tough time in the business you talked about hitting the ceiling, and I get that, but is there any sort of time when you, you know you really felt like it was almost time to give up? Because I know I've had business, I've kind of gone, I don't know if I can do this any longer. Have you had any of those experiences in your past?

Steve Krebs  36:41

Uhm I reckon it was around the time we were, we were plateaued, and I could see how you could give up. I did start considering it, which is really weird for me. Anyone who knows me, I was Mr. Machines. For you, you know, I had the tattoo, like, if you know, you're creating something from scratch. It's another baby. It's a, you know, there's a lot of emotion, a lot of energy and effort that goes into it. But when you getting staff and they're not doing the right thing, that's it's got a lot of pain attached to it, and a lot of emotion, a lot of sleepless nights. I always like to try and do the right thing by people. So if I wasn't, that didn't sit right with me that, you know, and that was that looking in the mirror to see that I wasn't setting them up for success.

So at the time, that was the most painful bit for me was going into the office, you know, you had three or four people who could come in and hand their notice at any minute. That's a horrible, horrible feeling for you as a leader, because you're just like, hang on a sec. You know, they could just come in and leave, and they were they're just coming and handing their notice and it was like, Well, how are we actually setting them up? How are we training them? We had to go into all that. We had quite a terrible onboarding system, you know? It was just chuck them out in the pit with the rest of everyone and go and do some of that selling and stuff, you know. I mean, you know. So then when we looked at it and did a proper 12 boarding on week process, right person coming in, because we were clear about HR process, we got very good at recruiting the right people, you know, clear about the process, clear about who we're looking for, who is the right person, who should be in the seat when we did that. And then set them up for success, and then they stick. And then, you know, Merry Christmas. That was the biggest cost in the business, was turning over staff.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  38:45

And we talked about this good turnover obviously, people who shouldn't be there, but there's definitely bad turnover, and if it's happening regularly, you've got to question what's really going on. Onboarding is an interesting one. As I remember my first job in New Zealand. I arrived, I was head of sales and marketing for an engineering firm, and I arrived in my office, and I got there and it's like, there's your desk. It's like, where's the computer? Where's the phone? Are you going to organise it yourself? Okay, and where's my induction? Well, you know, just, just go talk to some people you're working out and it made me realise that, yeah, it's so important. Like, how does that make you feel as an employee? It makes you feel undervalued. It's the team is not supporting you, whereas if you go in there, they've got a beautifully organised induction program with a checklist of things you need to get done in a certain time frame. You feel like you've been set up for success.

Steve Krebs  39:31

I tell you, yeah, might be a new generational thing, because when I started sales repping back in Auckland, New Zealand, it was, here's your car. There's some leftover brochures in the boot of it from the sales record left before. And here's your territory. And you're like, wow, what the heck? And off you go. I remember. You take off all excited, you know, and then sitting on the side of the road to about to go and see your first customer, and you're like, What the hell do I do? And. Know, and then you walk in and you get shot down to pieces. Didn't know what to do. It was a, was it just a fight or flight or just a survive for the fittest? Whereas I don't think customers accept that anymore. You've got to be on your game. For your staff, they've got to turn up and be on their game a lot more. Otherwise, people leave companies.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  40:19

I think there might have been an industry thing, because I remember in the engineering, the engineering industry, I went out, and I went out on the road with the sales reps to find out what's going on. And they had no CRM, they had no note taking. They just kind of went and talked about the rugby, the weather, and came up, I'd be going, what was the purpose of that call? What did you want out of it? And I came from the international kind of pharmaceutical industry. So I used to sell drugs, that's what I did as a living to doctors, to psychiatrists and whatnot. And we had, back in the day, we're talking like 40 years ago. We had laptops, we had CRM we had to be, you know, be saying what the purpose of the call was, what our next step was. And I was just absolutely gobsmacked that none of that existed when I came over here to New Zealand. It's like. So maybe certain industries were ahead of the game, but others were a little bit, yeah, behind.

Steve Krebs  41:08

Definitely wasn’t just turn up and go and do some calls, get out of the office. You know, that was the sales manager said, just don't come back till Friday. Friday afternoon. You're back for beers because we're playing Paul across the road. You know, that was part of the social club year to come have a beer with them on a Friday morning, see you to the end of the week.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  41:29

Yeah, if you're out on the road, you were selling, that's what was the theory.

Steve Krebs  41:31

Yeah. And if you sold something, you stay. Find someone else.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  41:38

Excellent. Then, okay, in terms of EOS, have you got a favourite EOS tool?

Steve Krebs  41:43

That’s what we talked about before the accountability chart. But the crucial part for a business is getting the leadership team right, and that's what we did really well. So self, first leader, then leadership team. So then that really leads into the accountability chart, having the scorecard, having the priorities set for the rocks, but then that level 10 meeting. I love the if you call it the level 10 meeting, but it's these components that make it up, because then you've got the leadership team catching up weekly because we're not chasing rainbows. We go into, you know, weekly 1% improvement, that's 52 times a year that we're going to improve if we're all catching up weekly with the right mindset, if those leaders work well together and they challenge each other, and they're able to have those difficult conversations and communicate well, you've got a data person in there. You got a strategic thinker of, you know, that visionary, and then you get your integrator, who's running the team. When you've got those key leadership team working well, the profits will come out of your business, that the money will just stream through the bank. I think the money coming through the bank is the reflection of the things that the right things that you're doing in the business. And it's really that leadership team with a legal team.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  43:06

And it's possibly where businesses fall over is that they don't have that strong leadership team, even if they're quite large. I know I had a client who had about 50 contractors, but they were all kind of working as sort of like sub employees, and didn't have a leadership team at all. So she was trying to do everything herself, and when she actually finally went, Okay, I need to have a leadership team, a knots person, a finance person, a sales and marketing person, she was just like, oh my goodness, I've now got people who actually help me, and I don't do anything on my own. And so it's, you know, even as well, the bigger companies don't necessarily have that right leadership team, and it can be detrimental.

Steve Krebs  43:40

I find a lot of the big companies don't have it, yeah, still the owner holding on to things, controlling things you know, not having the right people around them, and hand her hand in the things over, and getting them the people you know, and to be able to have their input and to check Some of the silly ideas. You know, visionary, we know, comes up with 20 ideas, and one or two of them are great. So what about the other 18? If you go and poke at another three or four, those 18 in the business, they're going to set people off. Of course.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  44:15

You can have 11 people, a leadership team, all working 70-80, hours a week and not getting anything done.

Steve Krebs  44:20

Yeah. Well, one of my biggest learnings was to get checked by my leadership team and for them to be okay with saying, hang on a sec. Where's the data on this? Hang on a sec. What's this going to mean for this product? What's this going to mean for these staff members? When I had people challenging me in the business as the leadership team, and they could do that, and it was genuinely company first when we did that, that's where we got a lot of great things done, traction, yeah, I don't want to say that sounds a bit clear, but that's, that's where we get it, because, you know, that visionary doesn't get to. Just chuck all this things into the business and then we through that we could have more efficiency and where we're working on the core. Because when once we worked on the core of, you know, having the training stuff, right, having the documentation stuff, right, it sounds like all the boring stuff in business, but that's the stuff that makes an improvement.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  45:20

Hey look, I normally ask us to give three top tips or tools. I think we've already covered a whole lot of them in here anyway. But is there any sort of you know, I think you'd like to share with the listeners that what you really think will make a fundamental difference to the way that they live their life and run their business.

Steve Krebs  45:33

Uhm as leaders, we're responsible to go and work on ourselves, whether that's health that, whether that's how we're showing up in the business, how we are work, show up in the community, at home and stuff. So I think as leaders, we should go on the pursuit of leadership, and then that will flow into, you know, getting a right coach to work with. That'll flow into health, that'll work, flow into better people in the business, which ultimately means better businesses, which means better communities and so on. So I think there's a responsibility of a leader to go on the pursuit of leadership.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  46:13

One last question for you. I saw in your bio that you've done the Rotorua marathon. Tell me about, tell me about that and relate it to business for me.

Steve Krebs  46:24

Okay, well, maybe there was some learnings in that one fruit. Because, you know, I went and did it at a time where we just had Ruby too. So it was very, you know, young baby, but I was back in New Zealand, and my sister and I and my other brother actually had always wanted to run the marathon, the road to a marathon, because as a kid, we used to always put water out the front we were on the main road of so they've all the runners every year, we used to put out the water and put out oranges and sponges and all this sort of stuff. So I loved it, but I always wanted to run it, but I knew it was really extremely difficult. I mean, it still blows me away to think I actually ran 42 case around that big lake. Yeah, so then go back for Christmas, and my sister and I are like, right, we're going to do it this year, of course, after a couple of Chardonnays on Christmas Day. And then, so that was, you know, December 25. Well, we were running it on the second or third of May, so that, at the time, I could run about five kilometres. So I was like, I gotta run. I just right, I signed up. I told the family, so I'd committed. I don't want to look like a goose and not do it, you know. And of course, my sister would show me up, so then I had to feel like I had to be there, because that's what I do. So I just went out running straight away, you know, I was, we were in the Coromandel. I ran 16 kilometres over the rocks on a over the hills and rocks on a sunny day. We just ended up blowing up my calves, stuffing my ankles, because I had no plan.

So back to what this is for business. I had no plan. I just ran and ran like about six days in a row, ended up back in Melbourne, had to go and see the physio fix my car still there. But in that meantime, my wife, very structured in detail and good at having a plan, went and gave me a marathon running book, and then I got the full four months of training out on the mirror for in my bathroom, got the months out. I knew the days I needed to run. I knew what I needed to eat and drink and all that sort of stuff. So then I had a plan, and then, lo and behold, I ran the marathon.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  48:34

Excellent.

Steve Krebs  48:35

So I did it in a short period of time, four and a half months, and trained. But if I didn't have a plan, I would have just blown myself up like I did. I did the perfect visionary go out just absolutely no detail and myself up, but I fixed it.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  48:51

Perfect analogy, isn't it? Because, I mean, first, we're committing to a goal, yet you're writing it down, you're sharing it, you're getting a plan, and then you're holding yourself accountable to actually do it on a regular basis.

Steve Krebs  49:01

Yeah and I did it, yeah. The big part of telling everyone quite good at achieving goals nowadays, and it's through that, and writing it down, getting it clear, committing and then holding yourself accountable to actually do it. And that's the same in business, isn't it? That's what our team.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  49:18

And it’s amazing you actually can do. I haven't had a full marathon at a half marathon. And a half marathon. I was quite pleased with that. But also, I went and did Outward Bound when I was in my late 40s. So I was the oldest, fattest person to do Outward Bound, I think. And they kept telling us we had to run three kilometres every morning. Their child's been running 12 kilometres on the last day. It's like, I can't run 12 kilometres. But lo and behold, when the time came, we did the 12 kilometres, and we did it, yeah, so it was, it was pretty exciting.

Steve Krebs  49:43

Awesome. That's what's possible. And that's there was that rising kings when I was in the code black, you can find you capable of doing one more step. It's just one more step, you know. And that's the same in business. It's just one more step. We we're far capable. More on what we actually think we are.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  50:02

And I think your whole 1% thing, I'm obviously atomic habits and all that thing. But then is that 1% can just make such a huge difference, and you don't have to go for the rainbows, the unicorns, the pots of gold. Just keep improving things 1% and stick to it, and you'll get there.

Steve Krebs  50:17

Absolutely.

Steve Krebs  50:18

Yeah. Hey, Steve, it's been an absolute pleasure. We haven't spent much time together as EOS implementers, so it's really nice to actually get to hear your story. Hear your story and to share some of your tips and tools. Thank you for that.

Steve Krebs  50:26

Yeah, thanks for thanks for having me. And hopefully, you know, couple people listen to this and they actually take some the ideas out that would be great.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  50:36

I'm sure they will.

Steve Krebs  50:37

Go and plug it into their businesses and reach out if they want to have a chat about anything.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  50:40

So how do they reach out to you?

Steve Krebs  50:44

I'm actually just setting up Boss Man Coaching because I love the name boss man. I used to my kids called me boss man because they used to come in in a school holidays. I'd always take them into the business, and they called me boss man, and then the staff COVID onto it. So I was boss man. So I'm setting up boss man coaching to that's the other part to it. I just want to help people with leadership. And of course, they've got the EOS part to help companies with the structure and stuff. But I think there's a big thing needed in business for helping leaders, and, you know, getting the leader right, which then then they can go and do the rest of this and plug it in with their people, perfect.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  51:23

Well. we'll make sure I put a link to that in the in the podcast notes. So yeah, good luck with that. I think it's absolutely right. I think it's not something we're taught in schools, and it's not something we're taught necessarily in business, so you need some help, and there's nothing wrong with asking for help.

Steve Krebs  51:36

Yeah, well, that, that was that accidental manager, isn't it, because you go into business, because you get this great idea, or you want to do it, but then there's so many things you gotta learn and evolve, and it starts with us. So yeah, that's why I've realised that, you know, there's a there can be a lot more help in this space for, you know, being able to help leaders across the journey.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  51:58

Perfect. Get yourself a coach, get yourself an operating system, get yourself a peer group, and with those three legs of the stool, you should find business a whole lot easier. Absolutely, absolutely, great. Hey. Thanks. Steve again, really appreciate it.

Steve Krebs  52:10

All right. No worries. Thanks, Debra.