Debra Chantry-Taylor: A Deep Dive into My Hard-Earned EOS Lessons

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:07

Thanks for joining me 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, as I like to say, life is too bloody short. Today is an extra special episode that is actually taken from a podcast that I was a guest on a couple of weeks ago. Mina Amso, who is the podcast host of notes from the executive, invited me onto her show to talk about what EOS is and how it can help you and your business. And so I'm going to share that episode here today on better business, better life. Thank you so much for hosting. Amina. I look forward to sharing the podcast. Debra, welcome to the podcast. Thank you very much for having me.

Mina Amso  00:50

You have a video on Tiktok, yeah, that I absolutely love. It's about, how do you have the perfect meeting? And it's got to use 1000s and 1000s of views, and I just think it's a wonderful video. And I wonder, why do why is it so popular?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  01:07

It fascinates me because it was something that I was encouraged to do by the agency that I work with, and I could think of nothing more boring than a video about how to run a perfect meeting. But it just took off on Tiktok. As you said, it's got hundreds of 1000s of views, which is phenomenal. And I think it's because we've all been in those meetings that are boring as batshit, right, where you're sitting there, and it's just discussion upon discussion and nothing actually gets done. And they go over time, and people are politicking, and, you know, there's a lot of talk about things, but nothing, no action that comes from it. And so I think the idea of having a framework that can actually make your meetings fun, make them a bit more engaging, put a little bit of fighting into the meetings. I think fighting for the greater good is really important. And just having a structure that means you leave that meeting and there's actions from and it never goes over time that appeals to people.

Mina Amso  01:58

Is there such a thing as a perfect meeting?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  02:00

I think there should be, I mean, I always say they're called a level 10 meeting for reason. We want everybody walk out of there going, that was a 10 out of 10 meeting. And if you follow the structure that I share in that video, you can have a perfect meeting, because it stops you from going off down rabbit holes. It stops you from getting caught up in stuff that's not important. It's bringing a laser sharp focus to the things that need to be done to move the business forward, and then gives you a structure to kind of action that So yes, there should be perfect meetings.

Mina Amso  02:25

I don't know why. I just want to start this episode with that comment, but what I wanted to lay out for our listeners is this episode is for especially for you, if you're starting out, you've just launched a business, and you are a little bit confused, a bit chaotic, lacking structure. You're unclear about your priorities, feeling overwhelmed, hiring like have no idea how to hire a team or even manage them, only them, and wasting a lot of time and unproductive meetings, as we've just explained. Perhaps also you might want to be scaling your business, but have got no clue. So maybe you've just started, or you got like a two year old or a three year old business. But equally, this podcast will also be really useful. And I think this is Debra, kind of your people that you work with established businesses, people who are have got lots going on. They've got heaps of people on their team, and all these personalities and ways of leadership. There's like a leadership friction I had in my notes here. Need bit of help, and this is what you help businesses with. So one of the most emotional moments that you have seen in a boardroom after introducing EOS, which is the Entrepreneurial Operating System.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  03:37

So I'm going to use an example. It's not a typical thing that I do, but I often work with the shareholders in a multiple shareholder business, and I was once with a team. There was 11 shareholders in the business, and we had introduced EOS and the leadership team, and the management team was using EOS in the business, but there was still a lot of friction between the shareholders and we the interesting thing was we were using our process of the issue solving track. So how do you really get to the root cause of issues? How do you identify what that root cause is, discuss all the possible options and then solve it? And so we had this big, long list of issues on the whiteboard that the shareholders had highlighted as being an issue for them, and they all individually spoken to me about the one issue that was the biggest issue in the business. And yet, every time we picked the top three to discuss, they kept avoiding it. And for almost two hours, we went around, they kept avoiding the one issue that I knew was the biggest issue in there. So in the end, I called it when I said, Look, there's a massive elephant in this room, the issue number six. Let's call it number six. You've all told me is the most important issue, and yet you don't, you won't bring it up, and you won't discuss it. And it was because they were afraid. They were afraid of what that might do with the team and the friction that it might cause. But once we called it, and we actually haven't started talking about it, it really cleared the air, and we came up with actionable steps that they could actually take to overcome the issue. And I see that so that was in a big shareholder meeting, but you see it in meetings all the time where there is something that is really obvious. I call it the other. Put in the room, and people don't want to go there because they're scared of what it might actually create.

Mina Amso  05:04

Why do so many entrepreneurs feel stuck, even when they have a clear vision?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  05:08

I think they feel stuck because often they don't let go. So they've got a very clear vision of where they want to be. They've employed a team around that can be a small team or a large team, but they're not actually allowing those people to step up and take full accountability. And I'm an entrepreneur myself, so I sit here and I smile to myself, because I see myself doing it sometimes as well. It's really hard, because it's our baby, because it's our business. We think we can do it better than anybody else, and it's probably true. We probably can, but if we continue to try to do everything ourselves, we're never going to scale the business. And so it's about, how do you enable yourself to be able to let go? And that's not necessarily easy.

Mina Amso  05:44

What about vision? When you have lack of vision, do you see a lot of people that you work with that there's a lack of vision in there never a lack of vision.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  05:53

I think there's always an idea about where they want to head. What I see more so is the founder, the owner, the person inside the business, has not been able to articulate that clearly and share it with the team. And so they've got an idea, and they've got it in their mind. They think they've told the team. They think they've got the team on board, but in actual fact, the team doesn't understand where they're headed. And I always say, if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there.

Mina Amso  06:16

What about freedom? And you know, a lot of people start businesses to get free and to have time freedom, financial freedom. The people that you work with, do they have that now, or do they come to you because they started a business and they have less time to do anything, and then you help them get that more time.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  06:35

There's definitely that second thing, like, what generally happens? I've done it myself. I've got many business I've run many businesses and still have a few businesses myself. You go into it thinking, Yes, I'm going to create this time freedom, financial freedom. But we often because we don't let go, we don't actually have that ability. And so yes, clients will often come to me because they feel completely overwhelmed, a little bit burned out, don't have any time. They're working ridiculous hours, they're not making enough profit, and it's often just about getting some clarity around what needs to happen in the business, so they can actually allow other people to step up, take full accountability, and then you actually get the freedom. So most of the clients that I work with, their visionaries, they're the people who've got the big ideas, the people who've got the big vision, once they can actually let go of the day to day running of the business, they have the freedom they're actually looking for.

Mina Amso  07:19

And they can probably scale faster, as you were saying, right? And they can create more businesses as they go.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  07:26

But what I just want the one that's really important. I think that the people who start businesses are generally visionaries. They are the people who've got the great ideas. They disrupt the industry. They know how to create a space in the industry they can work within. They're not necessarily good at the day to day running of the business. And I'm the same myself. I'm a great visionary. When it comes to the day to day running of the business, it's not my skill set, and they are two very different skill sets. And I think we feel like we have to be one person who can do everything, and we're not. We're better off to say, what are we really great at? What's our unique ability, our God given talent? Try to spend most of your time doing that. Allow other people to run the day to day business. That's when you get that freedom. That's when you're starting to get back in flow and doing the stuff you love.

Mina Amso  08:05

Is there, like a misunderstanding about systems and structure amongst business owners?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  08:09

Well, I think they have to do everything. And so they think that they have to be the person who's kind of leading the business, taking the people forward towards the vision, but also trying to run the day to day business, the teams. And that's a different skill set that requires difficult conversations, that requires holding people accountable, that requires measuring people on what they're achieving, and that's not a natural skill set that most of us have.

Mina Amso  08:31

You almost have to be a little bit more of a manager of people. Like personally, I don't really enjoy managing people.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  08:40

Most of us don't, no, most of visionaries don't. There are definitely people. We call them integrators. Integrators love managing people. It is, you know, it is their God given talent, and so they absolutely adore it. So you need to find set yourself, somebody who can actually do that, because that will free you up.

Mina Amso  08:53

Well, you've worked with companies close to collapse. What's usually the turning point?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  09:01

Well, close to collapse. I think it's usually it's clarity. In fact, everything I do is around clarity. I think this is the biggest challenge, is once you get clear on what it is you're trying to achieve, clear on the people that you need to actually execute on that plan, clear on your systems and processes, clear on accountabilities, clear on your issues. Once you get that clarity, then you can start to create things. And a clarity creates confidence.

Mina Amso  09:25

How quick can you get a clarity? Do you feel like it's easy to like you sit down somebody and you have a few questions to ask them, and then all of a sudden they have clarity or and also, does clarity come and go in a business?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  09:37

Yeah, clarity definitely comes and goes as the business changes over time. But in terms of seeing results, there's no magic silver bullet. There's no magic pill we can pop, and everything is fine. Yes, you can certainly get some clarity around just doing a session around your vision, but that's not actually going to lead to clarity in the entire business. And so I generally say within the first kind of four weeks of working with a client, they start putting in the EOS tools. They will see a fundamental change in the business. Within three months, they'll start to see real results actually happening. And then between, sort of, we always say, between 18 months and two years, when it really start to become embedded in the business, and that's when the real results come through.

Mina Amso  10:14

Some people are probably wondering, thinking, what is EOS? And it's a new thing that we don't know, but maybe give me a little bit of a rundown on from the macro picture, like where you are at amongst all these other 1000s of EOS specialists, I would say, or implementers, I would say, and where do you sit amongst that? And then where do you sit in New Zealand in terms of size?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  10:38

Yep. I mean, so in terms of EOS, it's probably fairly new to New Zealand, but it's been around for 26 years, and there are 220,000 businesses using EOS around the world. There are 846 currently. That changes every month, but 846 versions of EOS implementers around the globe, majority in the US, for sure. That's where it started with. You know Whitman, but there are three of us here in New Zealand, and I work between New Zealand and Melbourne. I think there's about 46 of us in that kind of APAC region. My specialty is I just love helping businesses that are complex, some family businesses, businesses that have got multiple shareholders, businesses that are just struggling to get some clarity in their business. That's where I help.

Mina Amso  11:17

If someone here is listening going, I'm new, and I've just started my business, and I come in that like growth phase, a little bit unsure about my next step. Is my business running efficiently? Is it operational excellence? Kind of thing? Are there? Do I have systems? And if I do have systems, what are they? And what should I do with the systems, is there a framework that you work with people to help them go through that step by step, to really judge up that business structure?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  11:50

Absolutely. I mean, so first of all, we can put a link in the bottom for this, but there's a thing called the organisational checkup, which is a free tool that EOS offers, which you can go online, you can answer 20 Questions. It does give you a bit of a sense of where things are at, and it produces it produces a report that actually says, Here are the ways you can actually improve on each of those six key components. And so from that, you get links to all the free tools. EOS worldwide is an amazing business in terms of they are really passionate about helping entrepreneurs. And so whilst working with an implementer has a cost associated there's a cost associated with it. There's a whole lot of stuff that is free out there that you can actually take. So as a startup, it's a perfect opportunity to do a little bit of a checkup on where you're at and then start to implement the tools to get some clarity.

Mina Amso  12:31

What sort of what's the framework that you if someone is coming to you right now, not maybe not come to you, but just wanting to, what are the steps that they need to take, or framework would help them to like, if you can share it with us, to strategically go through it and get clarity on what they need to do.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  12:50

Sure. So I'm going to start by saying the reason that I fell in love with EOS. I've been a business owner for many years. Still own businesses right now, and I do both the EOS implementation and run a business. And I've also coached for many years as well. I've worked with the Ice House and whatnot when I came across the I came across the EOS framework, I fell in love with it immediately, because it is so simple. It is based on the premise, if you can work on just six key components in your business and work on them equally and strengthen them, you'll have a much more scalable, saleable, sustainable and fun business. And so those six key components are the key to it all. And it really is that simple, we try and over complicate it. If you can just really get back down to basics, you will actually have a business that's got you have everybody on the same page. Knows the vision. You've got a plan, and the discipline to actually execute on that plan, and you're having those healthy conversations as well. So okay, can you list them for us? Of course, yes. So 60 components. The first one is vision. That is obviously about where you're headed and your plan to get there. The second one is people making sure you've got the right people in the right seats. Third one is data. So are we measuring the stuff that is important, and more importantly, doing something with it? We've got process, oh, sorry, issues, issues, which is very much around, are we identifying our issues and dealing with them? Process, which is around systemizing your business, and then traction, which is about making sure we have the tools to hold people accountable and the discipline to run effective meetings.

Mina Amso  14:06

Okay, that was a lot. Yeah. Can we take them one by one and go through them and explain them to me? So what the first one is vision.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  14:13

The first one is vision. And so vision is really about we've got a very simple thing called a vision traction organiser. It's eight questions that you ask working with your team to come up with the answers around who you are, so your core values, who you serve, where you are headed in the long term. So your 10 year big, hairy, audacious goal, who you're targeting, Who's your ideal client, your three year picture, bringing that 10 year target down to the ground in a more visual kind of way, one year plan, 90 day rocks, and your issues list. So once you've got that structure that gives you the clarity about what you're trying to achieve, and then the second part of it is making sure that everybody in the organisation knows it, shares it, understand how they fit into it. Second one is around people. And so people make or break a business. And we've all seen this in our own businesses, you need to have the right people. So right people are people who fundamentally Share. Your core values, who fit in, who are perfect fit for the organisation and all that is great. But if they're not in the right seat, if they're not doing a role that they're really good at, that they're really capable of, we call it GWC, get it. Want it, capacity to do it. Yeah, but it really is about, you know, if getting it means that it's in their DNA, they know what the role is about wanting. It means they want to jump out of bed and actually do that role, day in, day out. And capacity is not about time capacity, because we've all got 24 hours, seven days a week that we could work if we wanted to. It's more about do you have the technical knowledge, the experience, the expertise, the qualifications to do that role?

Mina Amso  15:36

Well, I'm sure someone now is asking, how do you get an employee out of their bed and they want to get out of their beat to do the job.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  15:42

I think if you've got them in the right seat, if they really enjoy what they do, we all have stuff that we love and we all have stuff that we hate, and our challenge is to make sure that all of our people are in the right seats, that they're doing the stuff that they love, and if they love what they're doing and they're really good at it, they're going to want to come out into the office every day.

Mina Amso  15:59

Do you have you seen examples where employees have turned into super fans?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  16:05

Yeah. I mean, I think that one of the tools that we use is a thing called the people analyzer, and then we look at the values, we look at the AGW, see the role. So it's a tool that actually is not designed to get rid of people. It's designed to highlight where you might have some people issues. And I think, as a leader and a manager, when we go through this tool and we look, do they share the core values? Are they in the right seat? It's a chance for us to then highlight where we might have some challenges and start to have conversations with people. So it's about being out of the cots. So let's just say, for example, I don't believe that you do. You are doing the job that you really enjoy. I can have a conversation with you about what you do enjoy. I can have a conversation about where would you be better placed if you're not meeting the core values, I can have a conversation around. Look, I've seen some examples where I don't feel like you're quite living by our core values, and you might turn around and go, Oh my goodness, I had no idea. And so I've seen employees who when you start to have these conversations, but first of all, they feel far more valued because we're having conversations with them all the time about where they fit in the organisation, where they're going to fit in the future, and then also they're getting feedback that they can actually work with. And so I just find that the more conversations you can have with your people, taking the emotion out of it, and that's the importance of the tool. Yes, you can see people turn around from being what you thought was a challenging person, when they get given the right feedback, they can turn on a coin and then suddenly they're a great employee.

Mina Amso  17:24

Yeah, but not always do these conversations end up with firing somebody.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  17:29

Or I don't think I've ever I'm not a big fan of firing people, per se. I think It either makes people lift their game and want to be a more important part of the team, or they'll recognise they're a square peg in a round hole. And if they're a square peg in a round hole, they'll make their own decision to move on. And that's what we really want, because it's better for the company, but it's also better for them. We want them to go somewhere where they are happy, where they do fit in, where they are doing a role that they love. And so as much I've seen it happen is that when you finally realise you've got a real issue, it's not our fault as a leader, it's actually the fault of the person that they just don't fit in. When you have the conversation with them, the light bulb goes off for them. They'll go off. They'll find something else. They'll be happier because they're doing a role that they really love, and suddenly your entire team, no matter what size it is, will go I wish we'd done that earlier, because when you remove that person, it makes such a big difference.

Mina Amso  18:16

So the teams have definitely improved in that sense then, and having that aspect of people, like the importance of hiring the right people, so the starting is hiring the right person and then managing them, or speaking to them, getting feedback is so important, and not having communication is so important, right? Yes. So what's the next point?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  18:36

Next point is around data, and this is one of my favourite things. I never thought I was a data person, but I think if you don't have data, you're going with opinions, right? And if all you've got is opinions, the strongest person in the team wins when you're looking at cold, hard facts on a weekly basis in your scorecard, then you're actually making decisions based on facts. And so the idea is a scorecard becomes your weekly reporting tool that goes is this business doing okay? Is everything running as it should? Are we doing our business as usual? We're keeping the doors open. And the idea behind is, as soon as you recognise that there's something that we're not hitting in terms of the numbers, you're then having a discussion around, how do we actually improve that?

Mina Amso  19:13

What metrics are we talking about? Are they what are we looking at? What are we looking out for here?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  19:18

So I think what you need to do is think about the main functions in your business. So what are the main functions? You've got sales, you've got marketing operations, you've got finance, and then you need to think about two or three measurables in each of those areas that are both leading and lagging indicators. So your lagging stuff is a stuff like revenue is a done deal. You can't change that. But the leading indicator towards revenue might be how many sales calls you've made, how many leads you've got coming in. And so you're looking at the things that come before the end result and the actual end result every week, and you'll see if you're not meeting your target, it's time to have a discussion. Why aren't we making enough sales calls? I had a client the other day, big sales team, and they weren't making face to face calls. It turns out they don't like doing face to face calls. They put. Preferred to pick up the phone or send an email, but picking up the phone or sending an email is not as effective as a face to face call. What's a face to face call? It's like being here in front of you or on a zoom call, or, you know, just actually speaking with a person by looking at them, as opposed to just picking up a phone. Okay, yeah, and there's a difference in the way that those meetings go ahead. I think there's a lot more personal connection when you're meeting face to face, if you just send an email or a text message, it's not the same as actually having a conversation. What about a phone call? Is that okay, course, but is okay? Yeah, you could consider that face to face. Yeah. I don't know what they decided in the not my role to tell them to do i consultants. I never told them to do what we did. We just recognised that the number of face to face, whether it be phone call or Zoom call or in person, had actually dropped. And as a consequence of sales had dropped. And so by putting a focus on it and going, we need to make this many face to face calls, the team now had their boundaries. They knew what they had to do. There was an also an element of, if you've got a boundary, you can celebrate success. If you hit it, you can kind of go, Yeah, we did it. That's great. Yeah. And so, and once those but face to face started picking up, guess what? Sale was picked up. So that's what a scorecard is designed to do, is to get you actually thinking about what's working, what's not working, and to start dealing with things on a weekly basis, not waiting till the end of the month, not waiting till the end of the quarter or the end of the year. Sometimes it's actually going are we on track? Are we doing what we need to do? And if not, why not? And how do we turn it around?

Mina Amso  21:23

Quick. One men are here. Thank you for watching this episode. I appreciate you. Thank you for all your support. One thing that you can do for me is to please hit the subscribe button below. I promise you that if you hit subscribe, I'm going to work hard to make sure that my episodes are really good, that will get better and better. So do we have a deal? Okay, back to the episode. What other sales metrics do people need to pay attention to in your view, like, like, because you've had a lived experience? Yeah. So people would like to go like, what have you seen in businesses? Like, more, maybe more examples of businesses that were not doing so well, and then on the brink of, I don't know, maybe collapse or not doing very well, but then they were able to turn that around and pick that up and do face to face calls. Or how do I know if my metrics are not right? Well, sorry, or I am looking at the wrong metrics. Like, what sort of questions do they need to ask themselves?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  22:26

Yeah. So I think, first of all, let's be really honest, a scorecard does not happen, and it's perfect in the beginning. It takes time to develop a really good scorecard, but what you need to think about, particularly with a sales perspective, is think about the funnel. It's like, how do you know? How do people actually come through and end up being a client with you. And so for some people, it's really simple, a certain number of people visiting the website leads to a certain number of leads that come from the website, which leads to a certain number of face to face calls that they will have, and they will know that they convert maybe 50% 25% whatever magic number is. And so then you can very quickly work out if you want X number of clients, once you understand that funnel and you understand the conversion rate, then you can start to, sort of see, you know, what do I need to do? So you're not going to have the answers immediately, but it's about really understanding your business, and that's what data does for you. If you start focusing on data, you might start measuring things, and you might look at it in, let's say, a month's time, and go, this is not useful. It's not helpful. So you wouldn't keep it on there, like people think we have a scorecard, we set it in stone, and that's it. No, you look at it all the time and go, Is this helpful? Is this useful data? Because if you're just looking at every week and going, Oh yeah, it's on track or it's off track, you're not doing anything with it. It's actually not a useful measurable. So I think people need to just under you know, they need to use it as a tool. Start measuring something. That'd be more desperate plea, start measuring something. Because when you start measuring something, you'll work out what you should and shouldn't be measuring. If you're not measuring anything, you can't tell.

Mina Amso  23:44

And if you're measuring something, you suggest weekly, yes, weekly chickens. And then you look at the overall results on, you know, in a month time, and you adjust every month or how often things need to be adjusted. I always we work in 90 day sprints.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  23:57

I always say, try and keep something consistent for 90 days, only because if you keep changing things all the time, things all the time, you lose that clarity with the team as well. Like, oh, we're doing this now. We're doing that now. So 90 days is a nice period of time to give something a chance to actually do it. So every 90 days, we review scorecards without a doubt with all my clients. And sometimes things change, because it should be focused on the thing, the issues in the business, right here, right now as well. So one of my clients, quite a large retailer, was having a massive issue around sick leave. And not just because this was not in wintertime, so it wasn't a change of season, it was just there was a lot of sick leave going on. And so they put that on their scorecard for the next 90 days in all the different departments. And once you put it on the scorecard, it's the whole Peter Drucker thing. What's get measured gets in. What gets measured gets improved. Yes. And so by focusing on it, the team are then thinking, you know, they're looking at it and going, Well, hold on a second. Let's say you and I are in a team, and we've got 10 sick days this last week. Well, I haven't, none of my team have taken any sick days. It has to be you. And so there's a little bit of an element of peer pressure as well to focus on that and actually get the results. So you start putting things. Into your scorecard every 90 days. Say, what is the biggest issue in the business right now? What do we need to focus on to improve? Sales should always be on there. Operational stuff should always be on there. There should always be a certain number of measurables from each of those departments. But it can be varied depending on what's going on. What's the next one? So the next one's around issues. And this is one of the things I always joke about, because I always say, you know, personal issues probably can't help you with but business issues, I think what tends to happen is that with issues, we need to really, how do you define issues? Well, they're not always negative, so issues could be challenges, things that are not going well in the business. We're not hitting our sales targets. It could be that we've got a competitor who is now really strong in the area, or it could be an opportunity. So I don't think an issue needs to be a negative thing, but an opportunity to go into a new market, an opportunity to improve our process in this area. So the idea is to create an environment where people feel really comfortable, to bring all those issues, opportunities, challenges, to the table, to their weekly meeting. And that way, we're starting to uncover things that are not either not working for us, or things that we could be doing better. What do you see the biggest issues then business owners? I work with so many different businesses. There's lots of different issues, but I mean often, especially in a recession, you know that whole sales is a big issue, like, why are we not achieving our sales targets? Now I can tell you, hand on heart, I've got businesses have had the best year ever in this recession, and that is because they focus on the things that are important. So if you're having an issue not achieving your sales, bringing it to the weekly meeting, bringing it as an issue, having those discussions, rather than sweeping under the carpet, you're actually talking about the elephant in the room, then you can start to work on things that will actually improve it. And it's about bringing the whole team together to actually have those discussions. So I come up with an issue. Let's say I'm the sales manager. I've got an issue around sales. I bring it to the table because I don't know how to solve it. We then have an opportunity to discuss it as an entire team. And sometimes the answers come from somewhere completely different, somewhere completely random, and it's like, wow, that's actually a fabulous idea. So the idea is, first of all, get really what's the real issue? Don't do surface level. We all want to jump in and fix things quickly, right?

Mina Amso  27:02

Do you know this is a service level issue or a deep issue? How do you know, if you're not having gone deep enough?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  27:07

The five whys from Harvard is a great place to start. So you should actually be asking the question, so why is that? And so rather than just taking it at face value, you can say, why is that? So if I give an example of a client, this was during COVID times. So the client came into the meeting and said, we've got an ops capacity issue. It's like, what do you mean by ops capacity? We haven't got enough people in OPS to do the work. Oh, that's interesting. So why is that? Oh, we've got all this extra work now, and we haven't got enough people. Oh, so have our sales increased? No. So why have we got extra work? Well, we've got extra work because of COVID. The containers are being delayed coming in, which means that we're not getting the stuff out just in time anymore. So now we're doing pre orders, back orders, just in time, orders. There's a lot more work that's come from it. Oh, okay, so when did this start to happen? It happened when COVID happened. Okay, and so it's started since then. What effect is it having on the business? Well, it's having the effect that we cannot get our orders out in time, so we're getting further and further behind. So now we've asked some questions, is that really an ops capacity issue, or is it a process issue? Because it's actually the process that has changed, not the fact we haven't got enough people. So now we go if it's a process issue, because the process has changed, because the shipping has changed, but due to COVID, now we can start to discuss all the possible options, and one of those might be, employ more people. But if you employ more people, as we know, in New Zealand and Australia, you once you employ somebody, it's very hard to get rid of people. So you could employ somebody, 120k was what they were looking at, to employ two more people. That would be forever. Really, in reality, you can employ people part time. Let's put some people in for a short period of time to cover this thing. Well, how long will COVID last? And that was the question that we all had, right? How long will COVID last? We thought it'd be a few weeks to few weeks, two years later. So that wasn't an ideal solution. And then somebody said, why don't we change our software so it can actually deal with this stuff, which will mean there's less work for the operations people. So that sounds genius. That's actually dealing with a process issue. So the first action point was not let's go and change the software. It was actually more around, let's go and find out what that could look like. And so the action point for the next week was for the IT person to go away, research the software, come back and tell us what that could look like. Next week, he came back as it looks and cost $40,000 can take four weeks to get it all set up. That's a no brainer, because now we're spending 40,000 rather than 120,000 ongoing. In four weeks, it will be resolved, and we don't need to employ more people. So that's how you solve issues. Get to the real root cause, rather than taking it surface value. Because surface value would be, we've got, not got enough people. Let's employ some more people. And so the five whys yes on Harvard, so they just, they actually encourage you to go, just ask why five times? And what they say is, asking, why five times? Yeah, but in terms of, like, trying to get a little bit deeper. So why is that? And so why is that? And so if you think about that particular example, why is that? It's because we're having delays in shipping. Okay? And so it's really, you have to sort of think about the what five, the Harvard five wise talks about the fact that it's, there's people, there's process, there is a couple of the other ones, after my off my head, there's a whole range of things that, yeah. So if you look. Google it. I mean, Google the five or five ways. Great little video you can watch, and it just encourage us to dig deeper, to go what we see at the surface level. It's likely to have other things in behind it, next one, the next one's around process. And this is something that a lot of businesses, it's in the business owner's head. They know how they do the business. They know what they what they do, but they haven't really clearly articulated it in a way that somebody else can follow it. And so our approach is to say, what are the core processes in this business that the business cannot run without? And once you've identified those core processes, you have your sales process, you have a marketing process, you'll have a customer service process, a finance process, really simplify those down into very simple process flow charts or checklists, whatever works could be vidEOS, and then take the time to train your people on what you're expecting them to do in that process, what the outcomes are. And that if you do that with the core processes, and you've got people who can run those, suddenly you've got a business that's scalable because it's not reliant on one person. If somebody's away, somebody can step somebody can step up and actually do that. How does a good process look like in a business? I think there's no magic answer depends on the business. So for example, I'm a big fan of checklists, and so I have a lot of my processes are just done in checklists, but not everybody loves checklists, so there's no point in doing it the way you think it should be done. You've got to ask the people. So if it's in the finance department, they might like a certain way of having processes presented very different to a sales person. So a sales person might like a flow chart. The finance person might like a very in depth kind of, you know, step by step is how you do it. For some people, it's vidEOS. You know, the way that they actually want to learn about things is actually having a video that says, this is the way that we do it. So it's horses for courses.

Mina Amso  31:42

Is there a business that you really loved working with that you don't have to mention names? Yep, worked with and really felt like, man, they had no processes whatsoever, and now they have things sorted, and then they really can have a business properly then.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  31:57

So I'm going to be honest, I think most businesses I've worked with have no processes or they have too many processes. So they've either got none or they've gone really has too many processes. I think you can because if you've got too many, you've got a manual that is this thick and nobody actually bothers to read it. So that's why we say core processes are the things you really need in each area. What are the core processes in each area? You don't want to have a you don't want to create robots where they're following a step by step process. You want them to actually have a framework they're going to work with it.

Mina Amso  32:26

If someone's like, really new to this concept of a process, one year old entrepreneur, two year old entrepreneur, and they need to suss that out, yep. How does it their simple language? How does it look like for them?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  32:36

I just think it in front of a whiteboard or a big piece of paper on your table, and just go right, right from the start of whatever the process is, what are the things that actually happen through that process? Start sketching it out, and then think about the touch points. Thinks about the things that come out of that that need to be done, and start documenting it. So Don't over complicate it. It's just literally, it's a journey. It's like this is a journey to take somebody from a sales inquiry through to an actual sale. Looks like this when we're looking after our customer in terms of, let's say, producing a podcast, these are the steps that we actually have to go through from the beginning to the end. So just sketch it out to start off with. It's the best place to start, because also, processes are never going to be perfect. They should be adjusted all the time as things change. So if you spend too much time trying to get it perfect, you'll get stuck in that sort of analysis paralysis, and you won't actually do it. So better to have it 80% done. Start getting it out there, start using it. Off you go. And to answer your original question, yes, there was a team that I worked with that really had no processes, and they said, but we can't do it. It's too complicated. It'll take too long. In two hours, we actually potted out all of their core processes to a draft point where they could then go and test it. So I think we over complicate it. We try to make it too in depth, too much information. If you've got people who share your core values, therefore they're living and breathing the way you want them to. They know what their measurables are for therefore their scorecard, they know what their job description is. From the accountability chart, we don't need to give them minute detail. We say, use all that stuff and then follow this simple process, because you don't want to micromanage Google. You don't want to micromanage people, and you also want them to bring personality to to their work. We don't want robots.

Mina Amso  34:12

How do you as someone who is a perfectionist like I tend to have a real sense of idea. I know what I want, and when it comes to a creative direction, I work with fantastic editors. Sometimes I have an idea of wanting it this way and wanting it that way, and I'd like to understand, how do i Is it me or someone else? Doesn't matter, but how do I not micromanage but still deliver the idea of what I'm looking for in a way that it's clear to it's a process, too. That's not a, you know, like, it's not an overnight thing, yeah, things develop. But, you know, for people who are listening going, I want to I know what I want, or I have a fair idea of what I want. I've got people working with me. I want them to do things specific. Quickly. But I don't want to continue going back and becoming so micromanaging that they just people feel frustrated and they start performing worsely than when they first started out, and then they can't have that creative direction or creative ability to creative freedom to do what they want to do.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  35:18

So I think, as a recovering perfectionist myself, we talked about communication one in the beginning, right? Talking to your people regularly is really important. The same thing applies when it comes to processes. I think what tends to happen as entrepreneurs is we think we've got this process, and then we get frustrated that nobody's following it. We've got to actually turn point the finger back at ourselves and say, Have we really given them the time, the energy, the resources, everything they actually need to follow that process. And when I say time is probably the biggest one, we don't give them. So we think fast, we act fast. I will go and tell one of my team, this is how we do it. You got that? They go, Yes, I go, great, but you get it absolutely perfectly right now, from moving on, it doesn't happen like that. And so it is about I've learned myself personally, and I now teach this to my clients as well. Whenever you actually take somebody through some training or you ask them to do something for you, I always ask them to repeat back to me, tell me what you've just heard me say. And then they'll come back and they'll go, and I go, Oh my goodness, that's absolutely not what I meant at all. That's my fault. I haven't communicated well enough. I apologise. Let's try that again. Here's actually what I'm looking for. And always focus on the outcomes, like, don't try and micromanage them to do the task, but tell them what you want out of it, because that way they can, then they can add their own flavour to get it done, but you're telling them what the opposite specific outcomes are. And so I think that we have to, and then, you know, they'll, you'll, they'll go through it again. You'll go, right, just repeat it back to me again. And you have to keep going backwards and forwards to if they actually understand what you're asking for, it's actually our communication that's the issue, not them.

Mina Amso  36:43

Do you think that it was important for you to be in business, to be able to do what you do today?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  36:48

Oh, absolutely. I mean, I don't think, I don't think I could. It's not that I tell people what to do, but I know the right questions to ask, because I've literally failed in every area that I will talk about with people, and so I'm never going to tell you should, or you ought to, or you need to, but it's more I will ask the questions based on my experiences, because the answers sit within all of us, but we just need to pull them out quick.

Mina Amso  37:10

One men are here. Thank you for watching this episode. I appreciate you. Thank you for all your support. One thing that you can do for me is to please hit the subscribe button below, I promise you that if you hit subscribe, I'm going to work hard to make sure that my episodes are really good, that will get better and better. So do we have a deal? Okay, back to the episode. What do people need to know about you to formulate an idea of the type of work and business that you've done in the past that kind of led you to EOS, or led you to whatever you're doing today.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  37:48

What ladies know about me? I have a very interesting career. I started off as a biochemist and food technologist, and so I've worked in laboratories and then worked through and worked my way up through sales and marketing and then into GM roles and CEO roles. I've managed some pretty large businesses. So I've had a family business, four different families involved in the business, 220 staff, and I was their integrator or General Manager. So I've managed to, you know, manage multiple shareholders as well as a very large team. And I've also run my own businesses. I've had a couple of great successes and a couple of really miserable train wreck failures.

Mina Amso  38:21

I really want to hear about the train wrecks so that that pretty simply.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  38:25

The first one was a case of, I had a very successful IT and tech development company, which we merged in with another company. Didn't do due diligence very well. I didn't even know how much due diligence was. I just knew that I loved the guys I was working with. I could see some synergies. We kind of merged the businesses together. Turns out that there was a whole lot of stuff hiding under the carpet that I had no idea about and as and we also had this. We had one major client over in the US that was 80% of our business. And so we hadn't sort of spread our risk amongst other things. And so we uncovered all these things that were under the carpet that were pretty destroying in terms of the business, but we felt we could recover from it. We knew what they were. We knew how we could actually turn it around. And then the major client pulled the pin, and so they said, We don't want to work with you anymore. And unfortunately, our contractor was a two week notice period, and so 80% of our income disappeared within two weeks, and that just completely destroyed the business. So that was the first time, lots of lessons to be learned from that in terms of a whole range of things. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Make sure you do your homework before you business a whole bunch of things. That was the first one. The second one was the Event Centre. I had a place called the of the common the entrepreneurs playground in Auckland. It was a large co working and event space, and it took a long while for me to actually get the model right and get it up and running. Once we actually had the model right, we had a great, great business, a lot of fun. Had some great brands and things coming in using the space. And then we had decided to move into a much bigger space. So once we got the commercial model right, we're making good money, and we're enjoying what we were doing, we decided to go into a much, much bigger space, something that was almost three times the size of the space that we had. And so we had closed down the smaller space. We. Sign the lease on the new space, and were all ready to move into the new space and make it bigger, brighter, better, etc. And then the building sale fell through, and so everything that we had planned was suddenly out of the window. That was in February 2020 fortunately, in March 2020 COVID hit, and so as a consequence of that. We didn't have a space, we didn't have a lease. We've saved ourselves half a million dollars a year in lease, thank goodness. But yeah, that was the second kind of train wreck in terms of, we had to close the business down. We couldn't really restart it because of COVID, but we had a whole bunch of debt still from the old business, and so I had to rebuild from that debt. It was about $340,000 of debt that I had to kind of rebuild, yeah, pay people off because I didn't want to leave people out of pocket.

Mina Amso  40:42

That's crazy. If you would start those businesses again, one of them, yeah, how would you do it differently?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  40:48

I think a little bit more. I'm very much a big entrepreneur, risk taker who jumps into things. I've got to be careful that I don't just jump in and get excited by what it is and actually do the homework around what's involved. I think, from the event space, the entrepreneurs playground. I think that we did a lot of market validation, and I was a market validation expert at the Ice House, so I'm very good at market validation, but what people said they wanted versus what they actually were really prepared to pay for was quite different. And I wish I'd pivoted earlier in terms of the model. So I was, you know, I was convinced they'd said they wanted, this is what I wanted to develop for them. And it was only when times got tough and we're like, we're not making money, to change the way we're doing things, and we changed and pivoted that actually things started picking up and started becoming a very profitable business. So I just wish that perhaps I'd been a bit more inclined to pivot a bit earlier.

Mina Amso  41:35

What sort of it's really fascinating. I want to find from you, what sort of things that you when you hear from your the people that you work with, yes, what sort of things that reminds you This is why you do it.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  41:48

I mean, it's usually when they just, they often say, after a month in, we wish we'd started this earlier. And so I think there's a joy for me in having that the light bulb go off when those clients heads around the way that they can do things, because nothing I do is rocket science. It's just about simplifying things down and creating that clarity for them. So I think that's the first moment that really makes my heart sing, is when they kind of go, this is great. We love our level 10 meetings. We think this is a great system. We're really enjoying it. And then it's the actual results, because all of the stuff that we do means that they have happier people. They're back in doing, enjoying the stuff that they actually want, you know, that they love to do and they want to do. And then they have the results, both from a top line kind of revenue perspective, but also a bottom line profitability.

Mina Amso  42:32

What are we talking about here? What sort of profits? How do can we expect, or how much, what sort of profit that you've helped businesses make.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  42:40

I've literally seen, I mean, on average, my businesses have, on average, my businesses, I measure every 12 months. So I haven't done this financial year yet, because I'm waiting for the end of end of June, which is the end of the Australian financial year. But last year, the average kind of top line increase was about 23% which is an increase on the year before. That's the average someone more, somewhere less. But then the bottom line profitability was around 53% so we're talking about not only increasing the top line revenue, but actually the profitability by being laser sharp focus on the things that are important. And so that can be huge. You imagine. I mean, for a smaller business, that can still be significant. For a larger business, that can sometimes be millions of dollars,

Mina Amso  43:20

I think that you are one of the most passionate people like you about doing what you do. Yes. Do you do you ever think why you're doing what you're doing? Do you ever question why you do what you do? As an entrepreneur, as a business owner?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  43:37

That's one of the things I've always been really passionate about, for myself, is I'm very clear on my why. So apart from some of the failures I've had in business, I also lost all my family members in a very short period of time, and I regretted not spending more time with them before they they disappeared, if you like, so before they passed. And so for me, I'm really passionate about making sure other entrepreneurs don't go through that, that they have a really good balance, and I don't mean balance as in equal but they've got the right balance. They're doing the stuff that they love, but they've also got time for other passions.

Mina Amso  44:05

How has that impacted you? Do you think the experience that you had of your family loss?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  44:10

Oh, it's been huge. I mean, it's been a while now, so obviously, over time it gets easier, but it was, I mean, I have no direct family anymore. I've got my sister in law and my niece, but apart from that, there's no direct family. So I lost my mum, my brother and my brother and my dad all of the space at five years. That's gonna be tough. Yeah, it's really tough. Yeah, it was tough because we were actually quite a close family, quite a small family, and so, and there's times now you know where it's I want to call my mum, and she's just not there. And my brother and I got on fabulously, and we would spend a lot of time together. And so I miss having that around. And don't get me wrong, I did still spend time with them. I just wish I'd spent more time with them, and that's my thing. Is, I think I saw what I now see with other entrepreneurs, is we can throw our heart and our soul into our business, and we can let other things slip, and you just never know when things are going to change.

Mina Amso  44:55

So for me, it's hard as it's so hard when you're in a business and you're starting out, and I'm sure people listening. Was just setting out, going, it's just so hard to balance that time of the demands of the baby, even though I try not to call it a baby, because it creates all sorts of things, but, you know, but still, like, it's a thing that we started, and it's a lot of work to make it work and to keep it along. And so for someone who's, yeah, listening, going, it's just so hard to do that. How do you do that when you're still starting out, even when you're established, but maybe when you're still starting it?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  45:29

Yeah, so when you're starting out, you do have to put more time and effort, let's be honest, you do. There's no avoiding that. But what I would say is that the biggest thing that I have learned is getting the right people around you sooner rather than later. So we often put off doing that, because we go but there's a cost associated. I think there's an opportunity cost of not doing it. So I think sometimes you have to bite the bullet and actually bring somebody in, even though you may not be able to afford it, because if you can bring them in, they will free you up to do the stuff that will actually add the value to the business.

Mina Amso  45:58

I love what you just said, because I see that in a number of people that I talked to about being so ready to have someone on board, but not having the cash flow to bring in someone on board.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  46:09

And so again, And so again opportunity cost, and this is the really important thing you've got to think about. Maybe you don't have the cash flow, I would suggest you need to find a way to get it, because once you get that per the right person on board, and that's the most important thing. So right person, right seat, once you get that right person on board, they're going to free you up to do the work that actually brings the revenue in. And so it's really hard, like we said, the beginning, visionary integrated two very different roles. You can do both for a while, but the longer you try and do it, you're almost splitting yourself into two different personalities, and that doesn't work. And so if and if you can allow somebody to come and run the business for you, then it frees you up to do the big relationships, the opportunities, all the things that will actually bring money in. And let's face it, in the beginning at a startup, you are the salesperson. The event, you're everything, but you are the sales is the lifeblood, right? So if you haven't got the sales coming in, and you're too busy, you know, trying to manage other bits and pieces are not your passion, like finance and admin for me, for example, bookkeeping, yeah, I know if you're trying to do that, then then that you can't put your energy into the way you will actually bring the revenue in. And so even just so, it may not be an integrated bringing all that. That's my personal recommendation, that the best person you can bring in, but it could be a finance in person, just having somebody that can work fractionally to take that away from you will mean that you're not only are you not tied up doing it with time, but you know, when you're doing that stuff that you don't really like, you're not very good at, you're in a negative headspace. You're sitting doing finance and admin. So you know, it's really important that we actually need the more we can do the stuff that we are really good at and really great at, the stuff that we love, we're in a much better energy, and therefore we attract more of the right things.

Mina Amso  47:44

Even if it means that you try and get as much sales as possible to finance the person that you're hiring. Yeah, and not pay yourself?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  47:52

Yeah? I mean, there's several schools of thought around this, you know, I know, with the whole Profit First, they talk about paying yourself first before everybody else. And yes, it's important that we do get paid, but there has to be some sacrifices in business, and it's about making an informed decision, and I think also putting time frames around it. So if you're going to say, I'm not going to pay myself, because I'm going to bring this person on board, make sure you've got the right person, you know, take your time to find that absolute right person, and then put a time frame on it. If we haven't actually achieved what we need to achieve within three months, then I'm going to do something different. Because otherwise you might just keep kind of, you know, going and how long are you not going to pay yourself for? That doesn't seem very fair reasonable. So it's like having the light at the end of the tunnel. If I'm going to do a role that I don't want to do, put a time frame on if I'm going to put take some a pay cut in order to employ somebody else, put a time frame on it, set yourself some real targets around when you're actually going to stop that behaviour, so you're not caught up in the Neverland.

Mina Amso  48:49

Debra, it's been awesome to have you on the podcast. I know we can talk more for hours and hours. You've added so much value to our listeners, and I think we're so lucky to learn from you. And if people want to find out more about you, where can they go?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  49:03

That's where I go. If you go to where's the best place to go, they want to find out more about me. If you go to Debra, dot coach, that is actually my personal website that gives you access to all the things I'm involved in, businesses and speaking and EOS as well, eosworldwide.com/debra-chantry-taylor, so that's really long, but we can put that link in the thing there that that's the best place to go, probably debra.coach.

Mina Amso  49:26

Fantastic. Thank you so much.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  49:27

Thank you very much for having me.