Scaling, Selling, and Saving Businesses with EOS | Jonny Goldstone | Ep 206

Jonny Goldstone  00:00

There's also a big difference between delegating and just abdicating responsibility and handing something off to someone without them really knowing how to do it. Make sure that you invest the time and effort training people to ensure that they're able to do what they're meant to be doing. You've got to have the right people right seats are fundamental. If you find out you're wrong, then okay, you can try and pivot as soon as possible. Never compromise when it comes to hiring. Be really clear on what your core values are that you want people to do. Be clear to the extent that the person can do the job and go on that basis.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:35

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 in their ideal lives by creating better businesses. And I like to say life is too bloody short.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:55

I'm a certified EOS implementer, an FBA credited 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. I use this podcast to share practical tips and tools about how to use EOS in your business and life to get more of what you want. Today's guest is an Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year winner, and was a Forbes future leaders under 30 nominee. He has built, scaled and successfully exited businesses in the UK and the US, and he's an investor and a professional EOS implementer. Today, he's going to share with us how he took a startup business, sold it to a multinational, came back in to revive that business, built it up in the UK, and how he eventually sold it again, before he then went on to become an EOS implementer. My guest today is Johnny Goldstone, so welcome to the show, Johnny, great to have you here.

Jonny Goldstone  01:53

Thanks. Good to be here.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  01:54

Yeah. So we've been having a bit of a chat before we start recording, and you've got a quite an interesting story, because you haven't always been a business person. Is that right?

Jonny Goldstone  02:02

That's absolutely right. Yeah, yeah.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  02:05

Tell us a bit about how you got to where you are today.

Jonny Goldstone  02:09

So I started, started out after education as a lawyer. So I qualified as a corporate lawyer, having spent all my time growing up thinking I wanted to be a lawyer, my father was a lawyer, and lots of law in the family, and that's what I thought was going to be fun for me. Within a year of qualifying, I realised it was not what I wanted to be doing. It wasn't very creative, and the sort of the work life balance, well, it really wasn't much of a balance. So I just left the law without really having a plan of what I was going to do. So my parents were absolutely thrilled about that when I told them, and then they were even more thrilled about six months later, when I told them I was going to set up a taxi company, mini cab company, which, you know, it's, a it's a very good industry.

There's lots going for it, but it wasn't what they dreamt of for me when they put me through law school and everything. So with a friend of mine from university, who'd also a disenchanted lawyer, we co-founded the UK's first and only sustainable, environmentally friendly taxi company. It was called green tomato cars, so it had a crazy name, and we were two ex-lawyers starting up this environmentally friendly taxi company. People thought we were mad. We got a load of publicity. We made it up as we went along. It was great fun. It was pure startup. We were answering the phones, driving the taxis, washing the cars, everything ourselves, you know, really pure startup world. Great, great fun. And then we built the business. We didn't really know what we were going to do with it. And about five years in, we got an offer to buy the business, which was not life changing, money at all, but it was great, because we didn't really know what to do next. And we kind of had the sense that it was going to take a lot of investment to move it to the next stage. So we sold the business.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  04:07

Who bought it out of interest? Was it another taxi firm?

Jonny Goldstone  04:11

We were acquired by a multinational transportation company called Veolia Transdev. They have operations in five continents, multi billion. They'd never done cab, taxi in the UK, and the UK business arm sort of wanted to experiment maybe, and dip its toe in the water, because that industry was becoming sexy, I think, is overused. I wouldn't say it was becoming sexy, but it was certainly becoming something they were interested in. And this was all before smartphones and apps and all of that kind of thing. But they took a punt on getting into that sector, and I stayed around for a couple of years after we sold as part of that deal, and then they asked me if I wanted to go and set it up in America. So I. Went to sue, went to Washington, DC, relocated with my wife and two very young children at the time, and had two years there trying to set up this business, which was a complete failure, not quite from the moment I got there, but it turned out it was a hospital pass, if you know, know the phrase, and basically everything I'd been promised wasn't so and also the market forces were changing. Just at the time we tried to set up because Uber was creating a massive stink.

There were sort of allegations that they were spying on senators and using their technology to sort of know where people were going and all sorts. And we were trying to set up a what seemed like a similar business in Washington, DC. So the regulators were like, we don't, don't want to know about it. So apparently they never even opened our application to be regulated. So I managed to run a business, run that business under a different brand of one of the existing businesses that the company that abort has already had out there, and that went fine.

Jonny Goldstone  06:05

But it meant that the green tomato brand, or the green tomato brand, as I had to learn to call it, never really got off, never got off the ground in America. So I ended up coming back to the UK, like say, we had a young family who had to decide whether to stay or to come back and get the kids into school and all of that sort of thing. So maybe, if it was just the wife and myself, we may have stayed longer, because it was a great experience in terms of the lifestyle, but from a family logistics and everything, it made sense to come home. So we came back to the UK. I got various roles in consultancy and mentoring, and was on some advisory boards, and I also had a couple of startups that I tried to try to get off the ground. Didn't quite happen, but some really interesting experiences.

And then, just as I was at the stage of, oh my god, what am I going to do now? Because the money pot, the little money pot, had run dry. Pretty much the company that had born green bought green tomato cars from me, contacted me to see if I wanted to come back. And long story short, the business had fallen on really hard times, not because I wasn't there, but because Uber had made a massive splash in the UK, and it had really upset the model that we were operating, and they'd struggled to work out the strategy and stuff to sort of address that. So they're in a position where they were looking to sell the business that wasn't doing very well, and they wanted a safe bear of hands to sort of steady the ship whilst they went through that process, ended up that they couldn't find a buyer, and the week before Christmas, they were about to put the business into administration, and I was in a horrible position of knowing that all our staff and drivers were going to be let go and weren't going to be paid just before Christmas, and it was just myself And the finance director who were privy to this information, which was, you know, real pressure, worst, worst position I've ever been in my life, and it was pretty horrific. Fortunately, I had two things. I had a coach who was able to talk to and confide in, which really helped me personally. And I also had a business partner who I talking with and possibly lining things up with who was happy to come in and take the business back, essentially. And so the day after day after Boxing Day. So the 27th of December, because the insurance brokers were all on holiday over Christmas, we took the business back into our own ownership, and we basically had three, four months of cash before it was going to go under again. So we had to do a really quick turnaround.

Jonny Goldstone  08:48

And we managed that turn the business around. And just around that time I had come across EOS, so I'd been given the Book Traction, read Traction, sort of turning the pages. I was like, Oh my god. Why did nobody tell me about this before? I can't believe this exists. This is amazing. And so we implemented EOS into the business. Having done the very quick turnaround. EOS isn't really a turnaround tool, but it's a great thing to then develop the business and put good systems in place once you've got a steady footing. So we turned the business around. We implemented EOS as far as we could, and the business, we got the business back to a really good place. We acquired another business. We ran some massive projects really successfully, and over just over 18 months ago, we were acquired ourselves by the UK's largest mini cab operator in London.

So it sort of came full circle. So I've ended up exiting the business twice and over that period. Over the last three or four years, I've got to say, I kind of lost my passion for being in an operating business, and I got more and more interested in. Learning about business science and coaching, so I've done a lot of reading webinars, all that sort of thing. And so having sold the business, that's essentially freed me up to become an EOS implementer, which essentially is what I'm now passionate about, which is working with other businesses leadership teams of similar sized businesses, and helping them just to get their business running as well as possible, whether it's that they're looking to sell it or grow it or just move things along, so that that's what I get to do now. So that's where I've come to.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  10:30

Wonderful, that's really cool. I mean, the Traction book, it is a game changer, isn't it? And I suppose when you first open it up, it's not the easiest book to read to start off with, but when you start to get into it, it is a little bit like a Yeah. How come nobody's shared this before? This is, I mean, it's not very simple. It's not necessarily easy, but it's very simple and it's very easy to understand. It's very easy, but in place, what were your kind of thoughts as you were reading it for the first time?

Jonny Goldstone  10:53

I mean, I thought I was going to get naked because I was nodding my head so often. I think, like you say, the biggest learning is simple, but not easy. And with my clients, I I probably say that five or six times every, every day that I'm with clients, it's, you know, this stuff really is simple, because the whole point is that you remove the complexity from as much as you can, and just, you know, execute with discipline. So for me, the main thoughts were, keep it simple.

Prioritise, you know, because we're all so good at having 100 different balls that we're juggling in the air, and you end up doing everything not very well, and some things you never even get started that you should have. So learning how to prioritise and then focus, which isn't the same as prioritisation. So for me, focus is all about knowing what it is that you do that you are good at, and that's on a personal level and on a business level, and then really being true to that. Because again, it's very tempting to as a person, to try and do things that you're not great at, either because you think you're you know you'll do them better or quicker than someone else, or because you're a bit possessive, or whatever it may be.

Jonny Goldstone  12:05

So learning to do what you do well and let other people do what you've hired them for, that they're good at, but from a business point of view, not trying to be all things to all people. So I think at green tomato, when part of the struggle that that they had after Uber launched is that they've sort of tried to be a bit of all things to all people. They tried to appeal to drivers who liked to Uber. They tried to appeal to customers who liked to Uber. They cut their prices, they stopped focusing on the sustainability angle, which was actually what set us apart. And when we took the business back, we just said, Guys, let's just get back to the basics of what makes us special. We're not going to try and compete with Uber, we're going to absolutely differentiate ourselves from them, do all the things that they can't do, instead of trying to do the things that they can do.

And you know, lo and behold, that's really what enabled us to turn the business around. And your customers get that, and your staff and your drivers understand that, and it means you've got to make some difficult decisions, but much better having a business that you're running, well, that knows what it's doing than having a business that's all over the place, it's going to be a bad result if you, if you go that way. So yeah, I think those, those are always the main, the main learnings for me, and the main things that I now try now try to instill in in my clients.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  13:17

Perfect, and you obviously self-implemented EOS from the Traction book, is that right?

Jonny Goldstone  13:21

Yeah, that's right. We self-implemented largely because myself and my business partner, quite different characters, and my business partner, whilst he understood it, and yeah, understands why I want to be and am an EOS implementer. It wasn't really for him. It wasn't his style. So his take, and our agreement was that I would implement it to the extent that I could with people in the business, because it was a really helpful way to drive the business forward. But we never had the buying of the two of us doing it together. So it was, you know, not a perfect implementation at all, and definitely not pure. But, you know, we managed to make the business work. We had a really good understanding how to do that together. But yeah, it was a visionary who didn't want to do EOS, and an integrator who did, and I think if you do it that way around, it's just about manageable. Doing it the other way around, I think would have been a disaster.

But fortunately, we managed to make we made it work. Interestingly, the one big project that we did that we really ran like on EOS, was when we had the contract to run all of the world leaders transportation for COP in Scotland in 2021 and that was a massive, multi million pound affair over space of a month, and I ran that as an EOS project, essentially. And it was amazing. I, you know, that was sort of my, my project, and I'd won the pitch, won the tender, and it was really on me to make it work. And it was massive. Of pressure, but I got everyone sort of really rowing in the same direction, using the EOS tools and principles, and that, as much as anything, was what really drove home for me the value of Eos, albeit on a sort of small scale, for a specific project, but all of the principles sort of shone through and were used for that project to really great successful effect.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  15:26

So tell me, was there a sort of particular tool that really made a big difference? Because, I mean, obviously there's a lot of tools in the EOS toolbox, but was the one thing that really stood out for you that just changed the way you approached business as a whole?

Jonny Goldstone  15:38

For me, I think the accountability chart is probably number one, especially when you're in one of those positions of sort of leap of leading the business it is. I think it's human nature for most leaders, at least, to want to do stuff themselves. I said I was not a great delegator. I trust people a lot, but there's a big difference between trusting people and letting them get on with stuff that you've always done and that you know. You think you know the best way to do it, and you can do it super efficiently and so and there's also a big difference between delegating and just abdicating responsibility and handing something off to someone without them really knowing how to do it, and just saying, Oh, well, I'm letting you do it. So you go and do it.

So I think with the accountability chart, you really learn, you know who's responsible for what, and then you make sure that you invest the time and effort training people, if they haven't got the skills already, to ensure that they're able to do what, what they're meant to be doing. And I think to a large degree, everything flows from there. Yeah, you gotta have the right people, and there's a lot. Clearly all businesses have to have the right people, and the principles of Eos around right people, right seats, are fundamental. But I think as a single tool, the accountability chart probably even Trumps that, because I think every all the good flows from the accountability chart and having it right, and equally, all ills, I think, flow from not really paying due attention to it. So yeah, that would be my, my number one tool. Yeah,

Debra Chantry-Taylor  17:11

I completely agree. I think it's kind of a real game changer. But I also think that particularly visionaries who start, who decide that they want to do the EOS thing for my reading traction. It's the one tool they generally don't want to go to. They love the VTO. They love the idea of having sort of, you know, rocks and scorecard. But they add the accountability chart is a little bit confronting, because you actually have to deal with potentially people who are not the right people any longer in the business, who can't do the roles that the business actually needs. And it requires you to think very deeply about what is the structure the business requires to move forward, and then do we have the right people for that structure? So it's interesting, because obviously you have a natural tendency towards being an integrator, but a lot of the clients I work with are visionaries, and they've already had a go at self-implementing, which means they've written a VTO themselves, and now they want to bring it into the business. Whereas, yeah, I think everything starts from that accountability charter.

Jonny Goldstone  18:00

Yeah, and I see that with a lot of visionaries like you say partly the challenge of getting the right people in those in those seats, and equally getting themselves straight on what they should be doing and what they shouldn't be doing, and letting their integrator really get on with running the business. Because with so many business the you know the founder is the visionary, and they are used to everyone reporting to them, and everyone is used to that dynamic, and to move away from that, even though it's clearly going to be for the better interest of the business in the long term, is a really difficult move for most people to make, both the visionary and the people that report to them.

So how you address that, how you sort of package that and roll it out in the right way, at the right time, in the right cadence, and with the right communication around it, so that people don't sort of start panicking and, you know, not jumping ship, but wondering what the hell is going on? You know that that's one of the lessons I've really learned working with clients is, is getting the visionary to the place where they're happy to make those changes, and then getting the rest of the business at the same time, really on board with that, and understanding the benefits that will come from it. But it's a massive change in mindset, because it's not instinctive at all.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  19:16

And also, like you just said, I mean, there's different it's different for different businesses, the timing like this is a journey, and you need to learn to walk before you can run. And for some businesses, it takes a bit of time to get comfortable with that so they can actually truly communicate that and let go and allow people to be in their right positions. And so again, I find with a lot of visionaries, they get quite frustrated because they want everything to happen like that, and it's like, Yep, it's not going to happen quite like that. We've really got to take the time and make sure that we're using the tools properly and we're communicating well with the team, and the team understand, you know what's coming and how we're going to work through it. And yeah, it's, it's always been a little bit interesting to see how different companies move different speeds.

Jonny Goldstone  19:58

Yeah, for sure, for sure. I think that. Self Awareness, piece with visionaries and understanding like you say that they typically are the ones who want to run whilst everyone is sort of learning which way they're going, let alone how fast they're going to get there. That that is a big challenge. But unfortunately, my clients so far, all of them have grasped that. You know, not straight away. But you know, they haven't resisted it when, when you sort of explain it to them that, I guess that is part of being self-aware is, is having that emotional intelligence to understand that, yes, you know, you need to work at a pace that everyone else can manage, otherwise you're just going to be on your own and it's going to fall on its face. So yeah, it's a challenge. But yeah, good, good to work with people who can, who can adapt to that.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  20:43

I’d like a little bit more about the cop thing and that you said you use the EOS tools in sort of mini project. What were the key tools that you used for that projects a multi-billion dollar, multi million pound business, I should say, tell us a little bit about what the tools that you use to keep that tight and to ensure its success well.

Jonny Goldstone  21:02

So that, again, really came down to the accountability chart. First and foremost, we had we were outsourcing a lot of the roles to different stakeholders. So outsourcing all of the driver recruitment to a partner, outsourcing the vehicle onboarding and sourcing to it to a commercial partner, and managing that. And then we had to take on a lot of people who were completely new to us, and we were new to them, and put them in roles of real responsibility, from the get go, so working out what those roles were, and you know how the structure was going to work, and who was going to report to whom and what each team was going to do, and having to get that really clear. You didn't have the luxury of time to get anything wrong, so people had to be absolutely clear what they were doing and what they weren't doing, and who, who was doing other things, and how they all work together. So it was, it was a classic accountability chart, sort of with no visionary because there wasn't a sort of visionary piece to do. It was all about implementation and hitting the ground running for a short period of time. So that was key. And obviously we didn't follow a an EOS meeting cadence of level 10s, weekly and quarterly sessions, because we didn't have that much time to do it. So it was more or less daily meetings with the odd longer meeting so IDs Ing, with people, getting people confident and comfortable to raise issues that they could see again from the start. Because we couldn't afford somebody to be thinking, Oh, this isn't going to work and not have the confidence to share that with the rest of the team.

So we had a few really, you know, engaging conflicts, healthy, really healthy debate about ideas that we were going we'd agreed to put into practice, and we were running with it, and then somebody who had great experience or could see that something, you know, the wheel was going to fall off somewhere, you know, putting their hands up and saying, Guys, I just don't think this is going to work, either because we change something, or sometimes because a partner or another supplier had changed something. You know, we needed to be able to adapt. And so it was absolutely critical that anybody who saw an issue felt that they could raise that issue and that we could address it properly. And you know, that was happening right up until, not just the day before the planes all started landing in Scotland, but even running through the process, the goal posts would get moved on a fairly regular basis, and you had to be able to adapt. And so having daily meetings with all the key stakeholders and anybody being able to address an issue like that was really, really important, and worked fantastically well, and definitely saved our skin on more than one occasion.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  23:46

And I think it’s really interesting, isn't it, because I know that I've worked in many, many different businesses, both as an owner and also for other people. And often nobody wanted to bring issues up because they were too scared, you know, like so I think that's one of the things about EOS. It's designed to actually encourage everybody to bring issues up and take ownership about how we can actually solve it and I love it, because I've got some businesses where they're really, really hands on, like they grow fruit and vegetables, and so the guys out on the shop floor who are planting potatoes, picking potatoes, they still get a chance to actually raise issues, which in the past they would, they wouldn't have done. It would have been all up to managers, and the managers would decide what to do, but really, the people who are most likely to pick up on the issues, or the people who are actually on the shop floor or the field, as it may be.

Jonny Goldstone  24:31

Yeah, absolutely. And we saw that running, running cop, we had, you know, drivers who were out there, literally on the road with principals in the car, who, yeah, had the confidence and would call in at the end of the day and say, guys, I know we're doing it this way, but actually, could we try looking at doing something else? And this is why, and it's because I have seen something out there for myself, and it's so like you say, it's very rare for, I think, for people, yeah, who are in that operation.

Professional role at the coalface to have the confidence to do that, and it's also very rare, unfortunately, I think, for leadership to want to listen to that. They might sometimes give it lip service, and some much more enlightened leaders will want to hear that. But so many leaders, you know, just sort of, or just carry on doing what you're doing, it'll work. It'll be fine, trust the process, all that kind of thing. And sometimes, yes, you've got a process, and you do need to just follow the process, but just going on blindly, because that's how it's always been done, or that's what somebody said at some point, without really understanding or without knowing what was going to change. You know clearly that's going to land you in trouble. But like you say, it's, it's critical that people have that confidence to raise their voice and believing that they're going to be listened to. Because if you know, if you can raise a concern, but you don't believe you're going to be listened to, again, you're not going to bother. So it's, you know, both, both sides of that equation.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  25:53

Let me go a little bit away from the EOS. I'm just a little bit intrigued to find out, you know, how you turned around the green tomato business. So when it was obviously in a decline, and you're getting towards Christmas, and everything was looking pretty dire, what did you have to do to actually turn it around? Like, what? What's what tools did you use, personally, and how did you approach that?

Jonny Goldstone  26:12

Okay, so turning it around was a pretty blunt experience. You know, the business was going to run out of money. We had far too much cost in the business, especially people. The previous owners had sort of built the business up for a lot of growth. Then, you know what had happened with Uber had essentially meant that growth never really happened. So they had all this cost in the business without the revenues that came through. So the most fundamental part of the turnaround was, unfortunately, to have to lose quite a lot of people from the business on the understanding that if we didn't do that, then everybody would be out of a job not much longer down the line. So, you know, we presented that to people. We communicated very clearly. We explained exactly what the situation was, and they hadn't understood what the situation was until, until we put it in front of them. And so we took the workforce down in from the in the office by nearly 60% within a month.

So it was, it was a pretty hard and fast restructuring in that sense. And then there were a whole bunch of efficiencies, not in terms of people, but in terms of how we were paying for things, having systems that were far more fancy than we needed them again, that might have made sense for a business that was doing a lot more revenue, but didn't make sense for a business the size it was at so we addressed those issues as quickly as we could with suppliers. In terms of our own processes, and just made things streamlined to the size of business we were at, rather than the size of business people had hoped we would get to. So it was about making decisions, quickly, communicating clearly, delivering hard news to people, but, you know, with the explanation of why that had to be done, and then really just getting on and executing and holding your nose a bit and having the faith that you were doing the right thing.

Jonny Goldstone  28:14

Because, you know, we say you've got it's better to make that the worst thing you can do is not make a decision. So you've got to make your decision and go with it and hope that you're right, or believe that you're right, and if you find out you're wrong, then okay, you can, you can try and pivot as soon as possible, but you in that situation, you've got to make a decision, get on with it. And some people won't like you and won't like it, and they won't thank you for it, and they won't like you. But you know when it when it's that, or everybody goes down with the ship, then there really is no real alternative. So for me, that was a life changing experience. I really wasn't an opportunity that I would ever have been desperate to have. But once it was there, it was. It was pretty exciting and very formative to have to go through those sort of processes and have that many difficult conversations and take difficult decisions. And really, it's a kind of leadership that that you wouldn't wish on people, really, but it's very, very like, say, formative and a great learning experience.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  29:16

And I think you said you had a coach at that time, and we always talk about the three legs of a store. So you know, every entrepreneur should have a coach or a mentor, operating system and a peer group. Tell me a little about, you know, what was the benefit of having a coach at that time?

Jonny Goldstone  29:29

So my coach, fabulous lady called Sally, who still in touch with and this is sort of six, seven years later. Having her there meant I could have conversations with her that I literally couldn't have with anyone else. It wasn't the stuff I would have felt comfortable discussing with my wife, not because I don't trust her, but it's just not her, her thing, particularly, and also, I didn't want to bring that stress into the house. If I could avoid it, i. And make her worried about things. So I guess if I hadn't had a coach, maybe I would have had those conversations with her. But having a coachman, I could have those conversations with my coach, you know, totally independent person, and also who was help able to help me understand what would be the best ways to, you know, discuss things with my wife and address that, you know, the psychological turmoil, and how to try to manage that in my personal life, as well as a business life, and also to be a sounding board and a source of experience who'd seen these things and been through them before, and you know, could reassure me that, you know, not give me false hope or false promises, but reassure me that, you know, if you understand, you think you understand what needs to change, and you've got the confidence to go ahead with it, then you know, hopefully it'll be all right.

Jonny Goldstone  30:53

And yeah, be it being in that position without somebody that you can have that conversation with, I genuinely don't know how, how I would have coped. I'll tell you and whoever watches this podcast, I had, I had a conversation with Sally, where I was crying my eyes out, you know, utter, deep pain in my stomach of not knowing how this was going to go. And, you know, fearing that all these people were going to lose their jobs the day before Christmas. And yeah, she was, she was an amazing support for me and we still talk about it. And yeah, I mean her and the coaching program that I was on at that time, you know, made, made a massive, massive impact to me in my life. And I like to think, to the business and the way that we ended up being able to turn that around. Because I think, yeah, without that, I just don't know that I would have had the wherewithal, you know, intellectually or especially emotionally, to have to have dealt with that situation.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  31:50

Yeah, that's good. I mean, it is important, I think, to have somebody that you because I'm the same. I love my husband dearly, and he's very, very supportive, but it's just not his wheelhouse. He's not a business person. He and it's hard to have the conversation with somebody. He's an employee, so for him, it's quite a different, different way of working, and so that he just doesn't understand what it's like to business owner. We've had some pretty tough times. We had an event centre when COVID hit, so that was a challenging, yeah, challenging time. Yeah. Anyway, okay, cool. So now let's get back to EOS. So after putting it into the business, so you turn the business around, you put EOS in, you saw, fundamentally, what a massive difference it could make. And then once you got to sell the business for the second time, you decided you would actually like to help other people with EOS. So tell me, what does your what do your days look like now as an EOS implementer?

Jonny Goldstone  32:41

Well, so I'm still building my practice. So right now, I'm actually preparing for annual session with a client who I've been with for a year. They're my probably longest serving client. You know, very happy to say that we're still together, and they're still making great progress. So a lot, a lot of my time is spent doing essentially business development, so a lot of networking, meeting people. There is a massive awareness of Eos in the UK. So there's quite a lot of educating my potential market as to what EOS is, and therefore what difference that can make. And there's lots of people that I talk with who are in the same position that I was of just not knowing that this not only that EOS existed, but actually not knowing that there was such a thing as an operating system for running a business, as I had no idea.

You know, you're just sort of running it on based on common sense and maybe some good advice from mentors or people. But to know that there is actually a system, operating system for running a business, it was an absolute revelation to me, and is to a lot of people. So there's the business development side of it, there's the learning and training side of it for me. So I do a lot of reading, watch a lot of webinars, listen to audio books. I've become really quite fascinated with the science of business and the science of improvement in particular. So yeah, I sort of spend a lot of time in in books and learning better ways and different ways of doing things and addressing issues, both from a business point of view and from a coaching point of view, because I, you know, I've got a huge amount to learn as a coach. And then there's the time with clients.

Jonny Goldstone  34:20

So my session days with clients, which I sort of think of as the reward for the biz dev and the learning my session days with clients are, they're sort of exhausting and energizing at the same time. So you by the end of it, you're on a high but you're frazzled, and you sleep really well at night, having done those days, and it's invariably, there's a level of emotion that you go through with your teams. People will be sharing things they've never shared before. You'll be addressing issues that people had been avoiding for years sometimes, and you get the team to address that issue, and that is an amazing feeling. Uh, it's a big responsibility when you're opening, opening up that kind of worms, that you know you appreciate you're opening it and that you're not going to open it without knowing that you're going to be able to close it at the end. So that can be a real intense time for me and my clients. But so far, yeah, every session day I've done with them, by the end of it, I'm pretty exhausted, but buzzing. And it tends to be the same for them as well.

And sometimes they've been tears, and the feedback I that often comes in my god, that was exhausting, and that was so intense. And I never thought it would be like I've never had a day like that, but God, it was great. And thank you so much. So that's, you know, incredibly rewarding and validating for me. And I, you know, as far as I'm aware, other EOS implementers have a pretty similar experience. So yeah, I kind of, I can't wait to get in the into the sessions with my clients. And of course, although what we do is incredibly structured and robust in terms of the process we follow every day is completely different, because you don't know what issues are going to come up, and your clients are all different individuals, so people are going to deal with things in different ways. So yeah, that there is that excitement, and you know, you're sort of taking, taking a bit of a leap of faith each time with your clients. But you know, hopefully in an environment where you know the parachute is going to open at some point and so, yeah, so that you can land safely together, which is so far the experience I've had, I must admit, yeah.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  36:35

I'm the same. I mean, sometimes when you do sort of three or four sessions in a row at the end of the day, you're absolutely on a high, but you're also at the as you said, you sleep really well, and by the time you've done three or four in a week, I'm just ready to blob a little bit at the end of it, because I've used up all the energy, but still feel amazingly great at the end of it. Couple of things I want to bring up. So the operating system, when we use the term operating system, so in New Zealand, similar kind of thing, people didn't know what EOS was. Didn't know what an operating system was. As soon as soon as you said operating system, they immediately jumped to IT software. It's not, obviously not that. So when somebody how do you explain an operating system to people?

Jonny Goldstone  37:11

So, I sort of analogise it with having a personal trainer and so a way of doing something that's going to touch on all aspects of how you perform. So for a business that's tools, disciplines, best practices, that you put them all together, and it's a comprehensive package that all work together and they all support each other. And so the more you do one, and the better you get at one, the better that will enable you to do the others as well. And the other thing is that none of it is rocket science. It's all stuff that you will be doing sometimes, again, like with a personal trainer, of course, sometimes you'll go for a jog, sometimes you'll eat really healthily, sometimes you might even do some meditation. So none of it's stuff that people don't understand, but it's how it all works together, and doing it with discipline and doing it with structure, so that you're doing the right amount of each different thing. And if you go off track, sometimes it's not the end of the world. You know how to bring it back on track. So that's sort of how I explain it for my clients. And you show them the parts of the model, the six key components of the EOS model, and that helps them understand better what you're talking about in that context, and also how you're working with the teams, to get clarity on the vision and to execute and to have team health. And that, again, helps them to understand where you're going to get to.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  38:36

I think also, people often hear it, and they kind of think it's going to be very cookie cutter, but I always say, you know, it is a framework that is designed to get you dealing with those six key components and working to strengthen them. But it's just like building a house. You know, the framework is the foundations, and we build with wooden frames over here. So I said the wooden frames. So you decide how big the house is going to be. You put your foundations, you put the wooden frames in. Now you decide to decorate it, where you put the walls, whether you use wallpaper or paint, fixtures and fittings. That's all very, very individualised to the business.

Jonny Goldstone  39:05

Foundations is something I talk about with, invariably, with most of my clients as well. And understanding not just what you say, that you know how you then decorate and where you put the walls is up to you, but also that if you start to try and build something without solid foundations, then, however grand your plans may be, invariably you're going to come across somewhere because you haven't got the core foundations to really enable you to implement that strategy, or whatever it might or that growth, whatever it may be. So that sense of the importance of having solid foundations, that everyone understands that means that you're going to build however you design your house, in that sense that everyone's going to be building it according to the same standards and the same compliance all that kind of thing. So, yeah, I think foundations is a really good word to use around it.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  39:56

Okay, well, I'm sure that we could talk for a whole another hour, but we don't have that. Time, unfortunately, what I'd love to ask you is three top tips or tools. I love this podcast, to be really practical pragmatic, just like EOS is. What would you say the three top tips or tools are for the listeners today?

Jonny Goldstone  40:10

So for me, top tips are to be true to yourself, like I said right up at the beginning. So have that focus. Know what that means for you in terms of your abilities, and know what that means for your company in terms of what you're doing, what product or service you're selling, I think to embrace as an individual that you are good at some things and meant to be doing some things, but there's a whole load of stuff that you're not suited to.

So being prepared to delegate to other people and leave stuff alone that isn't your sweet spot. And last one, never compromise when it comes to hiring the people that you work with, especially in a business that essentially, you are relying on to deliver what you need in your business, if you're in the leadership team, I have never seen a time where compromising on that has worked out. Well, you know, sometimes you're just desperate to put someone in there, so you any warm body will do. Sometimes you've got a sense that somebody isn't going to be a great fit culturally.

But you sort of think, oh, you know what? Let's give it a go. I've never seen that work out well. So be really clear on what your core values are that you want people to do. Be clear, to the extent that you can, that the person can do the job and go on that basis. But if ever, if ever you're in doubt as to either of those fundamental aspects, then I would back yourself and don't make that higher, yeah.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  41:34

Because I think you're right, because the short term gain, it doesn't out live their long term pain that you have among the wrong person in there.

Jonny Goldstone  41:41

No, never works out.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  41:43

Well, perfect. Okay. Well, thank you so much for that. If people want to get in contact with you, Johnny, how would they best get in contact with you?

Jonny Goldstone  41:50

So email jonny.goldstone@eosworldwide.com, LinkedIn. Also, Johnny Goldstone, I've got quite a bit of material and content there that hopefully give you a sense of my style and what I, you know, try to explain how I work with my clients and where my focus is as a as an implementer. I think that's also quite a good a good source of information. And then there's also the directory on the eosworldwide.com

Debra Chantry-Taylor  42:19

Perfect. Hey, look. Thank you so much. I hopefully will get to meet you one day at one of the EOS conferences, but in the meantime, yeah, look after yourself, and we'll look forward to seeing again soon.

Jonny Goldstone  42:29

Look forward to it. Debra, thanks so much for having me

Debra Chantry-Taylor  42:30

Pleasure. Thank you.