Embracing Unconventional Paths: The Business Revolution | Zac Cramer | Ep 142

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:00

Welcome to the Better Business better life Show. I’m your podcast host Debra Chantry-Taylor. In this podcast I interview business owners, iOS implementers, and business experts who share with you their experiences, tips and tools to help you create not only a better business but also a better life. At the end of each show, you will have three tips or tools that our guest share that you can implement immediately into your life. If you want more information or want to get in contact, you can visit my website Debra dot coach. That’s D B R A dot coach. Please enjoy the show. And today I am joined by the delightful Zach Kramer who is joining us from Portland in Oregon. And Zach is a certified EOS implementer. Who uses a they them pronouns. Hey, welcome to the show. Zack, awesome to have you here.

Zac Cramer  00:47

Thanks so much for having me. Look forward to it. Absolute pleasure.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:50

So you are a certified us implementer. But that hasn’t always been your gig has it? So tell us a little bit about your journey through life to get to where you are now.

Zac Cramer  01:00

Yeah, well, I mean, do you want me to start with my my history as a petty thief? Yes, please. So um, so my very first business, it did not go well. So what I did is I went into the garage, and I took a bunch of my dad’s tools, and I put them into my little red wagon. And I started going door to door in my neighborhood in Los Angeles, and selling my dad’s tools to my neighbors for pennies on the dollar. And I was eight years old, but that is not an excuse for criminal behavior. And so my mom was wondering where I was, and I think five or 10 minutes later, she came and found me down the street and drag me home. And that was the end of my very first business. I think it lasted like an hour, maybe like the cost of goods sold was terrible. The revenue was not there. I mean, really not an auspicious start to my entrepreneurial journey. I gotta be honest with you.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  01:47

Sorry, that’s gonna be in stitches. I’m trying really hard not to love to like the microphone. That is absolutely brilliant. I’m telling you to dare get his tools back.

Zac Cramer  01:54

No, he didn’t. Well, he got back the ones that were still in the wagon, but I mean, they weren’t gonna come to me, that would have been rude. You know, they got a steal of a deal on a hammer. What? You know, what are you gonna do say, oh my god, a kid didn’t know what the market was supposed to be. I’m sorry. Yeah, now? Yeah. Okay,

Debra Chantry-Taylor  02:08

Perfect. So that was a start of your entrepreneurial career. I’m guessing you learned a few lessons from that. Where did you go to next I

Zac Cramer  02:15

Swear to God, the next thing I did was I sold candy on the playground. And in middle school and high school, I was a candy dealer. And I mean, literally candy made out of sugar. I was not selling marijuana or something else that call candy was literal actual candy, did it summer camp too. And then when I went to college, I was a ticket scalper. So I would I got I was early in the game of getting you know, five or 10 different credit cards a bunch of different addresses. I use different people’s dorm rooms, right so that they you know, wouldn’t wouldn’t know who’s you know that I was doing that. And I would buy a bunch of Boston Red Sox tickets. And then I would go and scalp them. So I had a lot of fun with that. And then when I graduated college, do you guys have best buy in New Zealand’s that a store you have?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  02:56

No, I don’t think so. I had heard of it.

Zac Cramer  02:58

It’s so it’s a huge store that sells computers, TVs? You know it does they have this thing called Geek Squad that does the repairs anyways, despite the fact that there was this megalithic multinational, you know, multibillion dollar company out there and said, you know, what the world really needs is a store that sells computers, like that’s what I should do, because I’m a nerd, right? And so I opened a computer sales and repair store. It was called Happy hamster computer repair. Because you know what fun, right? Let’s have some fun. build that into a chain of three stores realize that dealing with the end customer sucks. They don’t have very much money and they like to complain a lot. So I sold those stores made about a million bucks. And then I started it assurance, which was an IT services company for businesses built that sold it somewhere along the way, realize that if all your assets walk out the door at the end of the day, which they do in professional services, you really don’t have a net worth. So started turning the money I got out of the IT services into real estate. And now I own several buildings here around town, that have been my sort of lifeblood. Coming out of that last business, the IT services business was looking around for what to do next. And I thought, well, you know, this EOS thing that I’ve been doing, right, it’s how I run my companies. This is real fun. I wonder if I could you know, I wonder if I could do this right? And so, had a friend asked me for some help help them out. And another friend asked me for some help help them out and start to call myself the accidental EOS implementer. I was just just kind of doing it. And so that was the that was the beginning of the beginning of the end, the beginning of this current phase of doing EOS.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  04:20

Fantastic. And so, in terms of what you’re most proud of throughout that journey, have you got something that you kind of really are proud of and professional personally?

Zac Cramer  04:29

Absolutely, I would say the thing that I’m the most proud of is that I started my journey very much trying to be something right trying to be the image of a masculine white male business owner person, you know, the way that I thought I was supposed to be as a business owner. And as I went through my business journey and discovered that it was okay to be a, you know, queer, non binary autistic person and running a business that That that was okay. And that I could do that. And I didn’t have to adhere to some image that I had seen in books written in the 1960s about what an executive was supposed to look like. And I could still be successful and make enormous amounts of money, despite being also a you know, liberal business owner who runs his business according to loving best practices, instead of just sort of looking at the bottom line and saying Nobody cries here.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  05:22

Yep. Awesome. Okay, I love it. I’m not quite sure where to go with it from there. But um, so tell me a little bit about soccer. I picked up on the autism thing. And I hadn’t actually picked this up when we talked so diagnosing are you actually kind of on that? Yeah. Okay. And so that was because we talked about being a high fat find right now. That makes perfect sense, right?

Zac Cramer  05:41

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Definitely part and parcel. Um, yeah. Well, so it used to be called Asperger’s Syndrome. So we now call it high functioning autism. We don’t call it Asperger’s anymore. Because it turns out that does. Dr. Asperger was a Nazi who participated in the genocide of children. So we’re way off that term. Yeah. So it’s HFA. Now high functioning autism. And yeah, I was diagnosed with it, I don’t know, probably 10 years ago. And it’s just, you know, part of my personality, part of who I am, you know, autism is just a descriptor of characteristics, right. So it’s not a disease, I don’t have like a problem that needs to be fixed. It’s simply a description of some of the characteristics of my personality.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  06:12

So I’m wondering though, because of course, my mind immediately goes to kind of Eos and kind of going, Hey, so in terms of the kind of visionary integrator scale, which is more natural for you, because you’ve talked about building businesses, and you know, one after the other, and yet at the same time, a high factfinder generally tends to be more of an an integrator type person. So I’m just curious as to what that means.

Zac Cramer  06:30

So interestingly, on this one, I am a high factfinder, low follow through. So I really like details. I really like digging into the weeds. I really like learning everything I can learn about something. But I don’t like following a process. I don’t like building a process. I just want the information. You know, there are times this I took a vacation to Mexico a couple of months ago. And one of the things I noticed in Mexico is that they tell you don’t drink the water drink on the bottled water. Right. And I was just sort of wondering, well, that’s curious. Why is that right? And so I think I spent, I don’t know, four, six hours going down a rabbit hole of learning about the Mexican drinking water infrastructure, because I’m curious, like, why is it like this? Why don’t they have clean drinking water? That’s a fact finder, right? Somebody tells me that the water here isn’t good. They go. That’s interesting. Let me go find out about that. I didn’t do anything about it. I didn’t then try to fix it. And yeah, just kind of like, Oh, now I know.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  07:16

Yeah. Okay. But I suppose that that is part of the visionary isn’t it’s always looking at the different. What we’re trying to find solutions for things is actually what visionaries does, that makes perfect sense. Okay, so I’m curious. Eos, I get that it was a natural progression for you to kind of go from doing it accidentally, to to do it taking on board as a profession. But how did you first come across EOS? Because here a little odd New Zealand, it’s not a well known kind of terminology. It’s not a well known framework, whereas in the US, obviously, it’s a lot more prolific, prolific, I suppose. Yeah.

Zac Cramer  07:46

So it happened after a shitty staff meeting. So we had a staff meeting. And it went really badly. My My people were unhappy. It took a long time, we didn’t really get through much of the agenda. And I’d been running a business for like eight or nine years at that point. And I was like, This is stupid. How have I been running a business this long? And I can’t just have an effective meeting. And so I literally just went to my computer and just googled, like, how do you have a good meeting, and an EOS microsite popped up for the level 10 meeting, which was obviously, you know, one of the most important tools in the US. And it was just this lightbulb moment of like, Oh, I could stop trying to figure this out and make it up on my own. There’s a system out there for it already, right like that. I can just implement this system. Instead of trying to figure out how do I set goals? How do I hold people accountable? How do I decide on the right people? Because figuring all that out from scratch? Like is hard?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  08:29

Yeah, no, I agree. And I think it’s probably part of the reason why I fell in love with it, too. So I’ve been coaching and running businesses for a long, long time. But and people kind of go Oh, Eos, but it’s just a cookie cutter, it’s kind of forces you into something, it doesn’t it just means that all the basic stuff that you do in a business is put into a beautifully simple, not easy, but simple system that you can actually use. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I

Zac Cramer  08:49

Mean, it’s what I always say to people is people you know, people are like, trying to think of new business ideas. Like how should I run my new business on us? I’m like, Absolutely not. EOS is for you have a business. You have clients, you have customers, something’s already there. This is infrastructure, right? It’s not startup methodology. It’s not how do you get this thing off the ground? It’s how do you run the thing you’re already doing?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  09:07

Yes. Yeah, I just a really good point. And of course, Gino has now developed the whole suite of products hasn’t. So you’ve got the e os, which is definitely for the the established businesses, then you’ve got the entrepreneurial leap, which is more for the startups and then some of the more internal self analysis stuff that is for once you’ve kind of reached a certain point on the question. I think I’ve lost my words right now. But you know that the hierarchy of needs, you know, once you get to that, you’re a lot more introspective than you are. Okay, cool. So tell me what EOS did for your businesses.

Zac Cramer  09:39

The biggest thing that EOS did for my businesses was great clarity. When things were going well, we knew why they were going well. And when they were going badly, we knew why they were going badly. They there’s so much doubt and uncertainty and unknown in running a business and once you’ve got a clear scorecard, clear core values, you know what PwC stands for? You know what the accountability chart is? It’s just transparency transparency into why things are the way they are. And it gives gave me the ability to move much more quickly because I spend a lot less time going, what’s wrong? Why is it wrong? Whose fault is it and a lot more time going, okay? That’s what’s wrong, I see where the problem is like, that’s what we need to act on, let’s act.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  10:16

And it brings all the team on that journey, too, doesn’t it? So it’s not down to the founder to kind of solve all those issues, but it’s actually about highlighting them so that the team themselves can actually 10 times their thinking and think about things differently, rather than just the business as usual.

Zac Cramer  10:29

Oh, yeah, it was, it was a huge relief. So um, you know, one of the companies that I implemented in was this IT services company. And what we were amazed that after implementing EOS was that our service employees, the people at the bottom of the scale, the people who are just resetting your password, and kind of doing basic stuff, once they were in a level 10 meeting, they actually changed our entire toolset, what we as leaders had thought was the right set of tools to support our customers, they came to us and they were like, hey, we’d rather use this tool, we think it’s going to be more efficient. We think it’s cheaper, like people are talking about it on Reddit, can we use this tool? And we’d be like, Yeah, sure. Let’s use that tool. And over the course of a couple of years, we actually swapped out our entire toolset and continue to add more tools, from a bottom up standpoint where our employees are coming into us as a leadership team and saying, This is what we want to use. Can we try it? And we’re going Yeah, great. Yeah, let’s use it. Let’s see if it improves efficiency. And if we like it,

Debra Chantry-Taylor  11:15

Fantastic. Okay, so you’ve already mentioned that the level 10 is kind of a game changer. Is that the favorite EOS tool for you in the toolbox? What’s your

Zac Cramer  11:27

Name? Their favorite childhood? Their favorite restaurant? Like? Yes.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  11:29

Yep.

Zac Cramer  11:32

Okay. Favorite tool, honestly, is GW state.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  11:35

Okay, because I find Elaine that for people who perhaps haven’t come across that concept before.

Zac Cramer  11:40

So GW C stands for gets it once it has the capacity to do it. And it’s the way that we evaluate if someone is the right fit for the job that they’re in. And what I love about G, WC, is it takes these conversations that used to take days and weeks and months of is this the right person or not the right person? Why are they working out? Why aren’t they working out? There’s something wrong with Chuck, what’s wrong with Chuck, and it creates a narrow framework that says, Just chuck, get it? Does he really understand fundamentally what this job is? Does he want it his truck excited to be here? Does he want to come to work everyday and do amazing things? And does Chuck have the capacity to do it? Does he have the skills, the tools, the resources, the ability to get this job done? And all of a sudden it took these people problems that we spend months hemming and hawing about, and would make them take minutes, where you just go, oh, you know what? Chuck doesn’t want it? Yeah, he does get it, he does have the capacity to do it. But there’s no motivation there. He just doesn’t want to do this job. Oh, well, we can’t fix that. Right? Nothing fixes motivation. I can’t give you a pizza party or a raise. If you don’t want it, you’re not going to want it. Okay, great. We need to replace Chuck. And that just I’ve seen as I do applications for other companies, how often that has a lightbulb aha moment where people just like they get it if it’s have to snap into place.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  12:54

And of course, the tool, that kind of preface is that is the accountability chart, which is very much making sure that we’re thinking about the structure of the business first, rather than the people. So we got actually what’s the structure is, and it’s required for the main functions of the business and the leadership team to move forward. And then you apply the GW C tool, and you kind of go okay, well, here, we’ve got some issues. Yeah, tell me. Tell me a little bit about because one of the tools I’ve been talking a lot about just recently is the whole rocket fuel. The whole visionary integrator thing? I think, for a lot of people, that’s an absolute lightbulb moment. Tell me your kind of version of visionary integrator and what that does for business.

Zac Cramer  13:26

When you say it’s been a lightbulb moment for people, you mean, understanding that those two functions exist inside of an organization? Yeah. And

Debra Chantry-Taylor  13:31

That they don’t then, you know, because I was talking to somebody yesterday, they were saying that, you know, when that when they were actually looking to go into a business where they were coming on board as CEO, there was already an existing founder, most recruitment people, they look for a CEO. And they actually merge those two roles together and go, we want some who’s gonna be big picture thinking big relationships taking us. And we want you to be absolutely in the minute detail and managing all this stuff. And so he was saying, For him, it’s like when he suddenly saw that the rocket fuel model and kind of and the accountability job, he got a visionary and an integrator, it suddenly made sense, because they are two quite different people.

Zac Cramer  14:03

Yeah. I’ll tell you a story. I was working with a team a couple of months ago, and we’re talking about the visionary and the integrator for the first time. And the person who would go on to be the visionary breaks down crying, and he puts his head in his hands, and he is just bawling. And we’re all just kind of like, what, what’s going on, like, what is happening? And, and he sort of, he clears his tears up a little bit. And he says, I always thought there was something wrong with me. Right? I thought there was something wrong, that I couldn’t focus that I couldn’t stay on task that I couldn’t, you know, follow all of these things through. And now, I understand. I have a unique skill set. I have a vision, you know, I have this ability, and it means this is what I am and this is what I do, and there’s nothing wrong with me. You know, he’d been so hard on himself, right about not being the leader. He thought his company needed without understanding like you said, you can’t be both. You can’t have a great vision for your organization and also be Even in the weeds day to day person, that’s just there aren’t people who there are very few people who have both of those skill sets. And so I think that was maybe the most impactful moment for me when it comes to that visionary integrator thing is, is watching us somebody realized they were not a broken person. They had a skill set. They were a visionary.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  15:16

Yeah, actually, it’s really true. Because I think in my experience, I’ve been doing not us for a long time, but coaching and running business for a long time. I think that a lot of the time, what yeah, we have this kind of idea of whom we should be and what’s expected of us, and just to have that kind of light. But and I think a lot of there’s a lot of founders that I kind of come across as well, they’ve often got ADHD, or they’re sort of, you know, they’ve got dyslexia or they’ve got things that so they assume that there’s something wrong with them, because they can’t do it. But in actual fact, they suddenly kind of have this realization that wow, okay, actually, these are my superpowers. I mean, I’m on the ADHD scale, and I kind of act as a superpower. Yeah, the reason I was actually late for this podcast a wee bit was because I was actually at home and I switched between one of two things, either completely focused, or completely all over the place. And this morning, I was actually writing a presentation that I’m giving to Sydney for EOS worldwide. And I just got so in the zone that eventually my husband said, Are you not meant to be at a podcast at this? I was like, Okay. I think so hopefully people can relate to that. It’s like when we have these things that we kind of see as being my husband, and I’m completely mad, and think there’s something wrong with me. It’s like, no, actually, they’re my superpowers. And that’s what makes me really great visionary in my own business. When it comes to working in other businesses a bit like you. I’m guessing I’m really good at being the implementer. Because I’m not involved in the day to day stuff. It makes sense. Yeah.

Zac Cramer  16:32

Yeah, absolutely. And you got to know what those superpowers are not got it. But when you learn what your superpowers are, and learn how to stay in those lanes and how to be kind to yourself, right, when there’s the downsides of those superpowers, you know, if you’re ADHD, and you’ve got that time blindness, right, you have that ability to focus in an incredible way. But you’ve had time blindness, you do not notice what time it is, right? Like you get buried in the thing that you’re doing. So be kind, right, don’t beat yourself up. Because you do that love yourself, because that’s part of your superpower.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  17:01

Yes, yeah. But it’s hard, you know, because you’ve got the society but certain sort of pressures on you and I, I can often be here at work. And I’ll be you know, I finished a session with a client. I’m doing some stuff outside of that I love to write I love to, obviously, podcast and whatnot. And I will literally get kind of messages from my husband. It’s like, it’s 730 in the evening. Are you coming home? It’s like, oh, yeah, sure. Okay. But I don’t want to go home, I just get completely lost in what I’m doing. And time just flies.

Zac Cramer  17:25

Absolutely. And I mean, it’s, you know, we all have to a person who has no legs needs a wheelchair, right? Like, we need to know what those weaknesses are, and how to, you know, survive in society. I mean, like, as an autistic person, I have a very difficult time reading other people’s emotional states, right. I often have, I often struggle to know somebody’s happy or sad or angry or what they’re feeling well, so I’ve learned how to deal with that by literally asking, right? If I’m not sure how somebody’s feeling, I’ll say, Debra, I want to take a quick pause. I’m not sure I’m picking this up. Right? How are you feeling right now? Right, because I know that’s a weakness of mine. So I’ve got to put something in place to make it a strength, you know, so maybe for you, you’ve got to like set timers, right? Or have you know, alarms or whatever you not, I mean, like, we find ways if we know what our strengths or weaknesses are, we find ways to make our weaknesses be less weak, and our strengths be stronger, and, you know, not get divorced. Yeah.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  18:10

That’s my plan. Okay, great. Um, the other the other side of it, of course, is the integrator side. And I think for a lot of visionaries, they struggle with this whole integrated person, because that’s almost the polar opposite, isn’t it? It’s somebody who desperately wants to get down into the detail and make sure everything is absolutely right. And the processes are working, and the people are working and, you know, almost becomes they become laser sharp focus, but they almost become a little bit, what’s the right word? And I say no, kind of like a random focusing on that planet and not being able to see beyond that. So I think sometimes when a visionary understands that that kind of person is a good thing to have, and this is why that too, can change the way that they view things. Yeah,

Zac Cramer  18:46

I mean, you know, there’s, sometimes you talk about flaming visionaries in the US system. And I think, I mean, it’s kind of an insult really, right, which is, people need to recognize that they need the other half. I know too many visionaries who have burned out multiple integrators because they think being a visionary means never being limited, right means doing whatever you want, whenever you want. And they take that flaming visionary thing too far, without respecting that, hey, you know, I have a weakness, which is I don’t think about the processes and the details. And so I’m so glad you’re here to help me think that through integrator, I appreciate your skills the same way I ask you to appreciate my skills, because the truth is that both of us have are missing an eye and it’s the two of us together that can see clearly.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  19:24

Yeah, that’s fair enough. And I think when it when it’s a good relationship, and obviously has lots of examples around the world where there have been those visionary integrator relationships, when it is a good relationship, you should have a natural tension, right? You shouldn’t, you should be quite comfortable with challenging each other from both sides. So the integrator should be quite comfortable challenging the visionary about writing it back in a bit. The visionary should be encouraging the integrator gotta go, Hey, hold on a second. Let’s see if we can broaden the thinking of this. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So if we think about the, the accountability chart that PwC thing just took, can you talk me through how you work with a client to help them develop that accountability chart cuz we talked about the main functions of the business. But I don’t know about you, I’ve certainly had clients where we’ve taken quite a bit of time to actually get to that, you know, the realization what the real main functions are. So in your own words, what does a leadership team mean? What does function mean? How do we develop that accountability chart before we start looking for the right people?

Zac Cramer  20:16

Yeah, I mean, I use a lot of swearing, I use a lot of leaves a lot of throwing things at them, you know, occasional threats of horrific violence against their pets. I mean, whatever it takes to get them thinking outside the box. No, actually, my favorite tactic, my favorite tactic, when people are really struggling with their accountability chart is I love playing devil’s advocate, and I love doing it with glee. I mean, I have a lot of fun with it. And so I will say, alright, team, here’s what it’s gonna be right. And I will draw the most ridiculous accountability chart that I can think of, for their company, you know, just a sales is going to report to finance and finance is gonna report to operations, and you’re gonna have a two person leadership team, who’s with me, because when you create something for people to fight against, they start to think about what they actually want, right? Like, when you when you draw them to go, well, sales can never report to finance, awesome. Who to sales report to? Well, we need sales at the top of the team. Great. So we’re sales gonna be they’re gonna report to the integrator, okay, like, creating the ridiculousness gives them the freedom to start exploring. And it also gives them the straw man to attack, right to say, No, Zach, your ideas? Terrible, I know. And here’s what we think is actually going to work. And then we start to things sort of start to fall out from there.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  21:24

I really like that, can I steal that

Zac Cramer  21:26

R&d, maybe Republic duplicate?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  21:30

And that’s really, actually really key. Because, yeah, there is a sort of a natural way that every company works. And so you must have done the same, I worked lots of different companies. And they often kind of say, but you know, our operations team is different, because we’re an advertising agency. And therefore, yeah, we’ve got head of strategy, head of creative head of marketing, and it kinda Yeah, but actually, the product or service that you deliver, is actually the ops part all those heads off, or almost the business as usual stuff that feeds into that. So what’s really, really important at this leadership level, thinking that the leadership team is there to actually push the business forward. It isn’t necessarily, you know, obviously being held accountable for business as usual, but pushing the business forward towards that 10 year target. What do we need represented at that level to make sure that we do that? And I think that’s yeah, it’s sort of it’s always a fun, fun game. I think, Mike, what’s your longest accountability, chart exercise, but you probably way faster than me?

Zac Cramer  22:22

Oh, longest? I mean, you mean, just like in a day, how long it took us. I mean, I’ve had them take for six hours before I hadn’t taken well into the afternoon, you know, for the bigger, more complicated companies. But there, it’s, I learned this from another ESI, pretty early on, which is nothing else works without the accountability chart, you know, the entire rest of the system collapses, and so spend the time. And if it means the day is longer, if it means you don’t get through as much, it doesn’t really matter. Because if you don’t have if the accountability chart isn’t right, how are you going to have GWP? How are you going to assign scorecard metrics? How are you going to do anything else in the system? If you don’t have the right accountability chart? So it takes the time that it takes to get it right?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  22:58

Perfect? Yep. Okay, so WC, so you, I mean, yes, it’s a great tool to use when you’re originally doing that accountability chart, but it’s also used throughout the business in many ways, too, isn’t it? Give us give us some examples of how it is used.

Zac Cramer  23:14

You know, obviously, when managers were sitting down doing their quarterly reviews, right, internally, and I actually, I’m gonna say something I don’t know if it’s the OSP or not, I’m just saying that I advise my clients to do is once a quarter for each person who has reports to sit down and run the people analyzer on all of their reports. So you know, check them against the company’s core values for each one of the people that reports them and check them against PWC. Because it does change over time. You know, there are situations where someone you know, their family situation changes, and maybe they wanted it in the past, but now they want to spend more time at home with their kids, and they don’t want it you know, as much anymore, or their capacity changes, because the industry has changed, and they haven’t kept up, right. And so they don’t actually have the capacity anymore. Or more frequently, the company has grown a lot. And somebody who had the capacity to do it at a $2 million dollar company doesn’t have the capacity to do at a $10 million company. And so I think it’s really important that leaders sit down once a quarter and be active in reviewing so that it doesn’t sneak up on them doesn’t bite him in the ass, right? When they suddenly realize like, oh, wow, this person’s been underperforming for a year and a half. But I didn’t notice because they used to be so good.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  24:12

Yeah, I think that’s actually I’m just gonna make a couple notes here something that’s actually really key. And I’m just going to get to my presentation I was working on this morning, because you’re right. I mean, like, as a company grows, people who originally write may not be right for the future. And I think even that part about you’re not wanting any more thing, I want to just delve a little bit deeper into those the whole capacity thing because anybody who kind of reads the books or sees it online, they come in with this view, that capacity is, you know, it’s a time thing, you know, do you have the time to do it, but it’s not actually about time as it

Zac Cramer  24:40

is one of the arms race, skills, goals, time, resources and ability. Right, like, do they have the skill set to do it? You know, I look, I admire lawyers. I think lawyers are super cool, and maybe in a minority on that, but I think like I’m just fascinated by how law works right again, go back to that eat Colby. I have never been to law school. I do not have the capacity to be a lawyer. Right? I cannot go get a job as a lawyer. I have not been That’s the bar, you know. So you’ve got to have the skills, tools and resources are the part where I start to then also push back on leadership teams, because sometimes it’s just like, This person doesn’t have the ability to do this job, you know, you’ve given them a job, and you haven’t given them the tools and resources to do it, you know, especially companies that tell me, they don’t want to spend the money on training, they don’t wanna spend the money on investing in upgrading in their systems. And like, Well, look, if you’re not willing to upgrade to the right to, you know, to modern systems to run your business, right, then don’t tell me this person doesn’t have the capacity. Right? Because they may not have access to the things they need to succeed in the first place. And you’ve set them up for failure. And that’s on you. Right? So I mean, yeah, there’s, there’s a lot more to it than just do they literally have enough hours in the day to get the job done.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  25:40

And the way I like to describe it to around time is it’s like, if you have all of those things, the skills, the knowledge, the expertise, the experience, then you’ll be able to do the job in a reasonable timeframe. And so that’s where that’s where the time capacity comes in. Because if you are a skilled lawyer, you can probably, you know, knock off some legal stuff in a heartbeat me, and you could probably actually get there in the end. But yeah, it’ll take time. Right. Exactly. And it may not be accurate. So we might actually have stuff up on that. So yeah, okay.

Zac Cramer  26:08

What about how Chad GPT invented cases, for a lot for a case for a,

Debra Chantry-Taylor  26:13

I’ve heard a little bit about it, I actually saw it live in action. So I was very fortunate to go with the Entrepreneurs Organization over to Bali for a conference where they brought in some international speakers about AI. So it was Nick next level for us. Because normally in New Zealand, Australia, we’re all behind. And so this guy literally kind of typed into jet chat. GPT. You know, how did Colombo find the US when he arrived in 2005? Yeah, and now you and I know that Columbus, Columbus. Yeah. Sorry, I cannot Columbus Columbus wasn’t around at that time, he was dead, right. But actually, bu t is designed to actually fill things in. So it actually described exactly what he loved about the country and everything else and rah, rah. And then the guy actually typed in now tell me really what happened. And it said, well, obviously Columbus wasn’t alive at that time. But if he hadn’t been alive, this is what would have happened. And so it’s really, you know, it’s that same as everything right? With data, it shouldn’t shut out. It’s like, actually, you got to be very, very clear about what you want. Otherwise, it is designed to fill in the gaps, and not necessarily in a good way. Yeah, yeah.

Zac Cramer  27:10

And I mean, I see it, I will say, as an EOS implementer. I see it a lot when people are like, I don’t know how to write a job description. I can get chatty between writing for me. And I’m like, but this is generic and bad. And they’re like, put the computer made it and I’m like, I don’t know why you think that means it’s good.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  27:23

I love it. I don’t know about you. I mean, this job description thing does my head and a wee bit, right? Because I’ve got people who they did the whole accountability. Right now we need to write a really, really in depth job descriptions like, Well, I’m not sure about that a job description could be one page. It’s your five accountabilities that come to your accountability chart. It’s your scorecard the measurables that you’ve been held responsible for? What I’ve been have delegated authority in terms of delegated financial authority and has what you can and can’t spend? That’s kind of its What more do you need?

Zac Cramer  27:48

Yeah, I mean, so often, the biggest mistake I find that people make when they’re doing the job descriptions is they start to micromanage the how, instead of just saying, Well, what, right, just what if someone gets if someone GW sees a position, you just need to tell them the outcome, right, the outcome is, you hit your sales quotas, and you land new business. And you know, you update our marketing materials, right? That’s what you’re going to do. I’m not going to sit here and write a job description says make five blog posts a week, make 20 phone calls, you know, make sure you’re sitting in your desk, like, like, I’m not going to micromanage how you do your job. Because if you do, WC, and if I tell you what the outcome is, and I show you what I expect out of you, the reason I hired you is I expect you to have the skills, tools, resources and ability to get there.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  28:27

Yeah. And I get a bit more blunt than that. I say, actually, I started with your look, don’t take this wrong, but I don’t give a shit how you do it. As long as you have GWP the role, you are following our company core values and living and breathing them. And your focus on the outcomes. The house is entirely up to you. And I don’t want to hear about it. And that’s what I see a lot of meetings that people run with for they come on to EOS news trends. It’s everybody wanted to tell you about what they’re up to the words working for us. I don’t give a shit about the work in progress, quite frankly, you know, if you want to talk about that over the watercooler off was great. But in this meeting, I just want to know, as long as you’re achieving your outcomes, and you’re living by our values, we don’t need to know how that’s actually done.

Zac Cramer  29:02

Exactly. Yeah, we need we need what comes out of it. That’s it. That’s one hand wish the other see what’s coming feels at first.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  29:07

Excellent. Okay, um, tell me a little bit about the kind of clients that you’d like to work with Zac, what’s your kind of your typical clients look like?

Zac Cramer  29:17

So most of my clients are weirdos. Most of my clients are non traditional leadership teams and non traditional companies. They’re companies that I’ll tell you. One of my clients is a run by six women and transgender people. And I was their fifth or sixth coach that they had hired. And I was the first one when they kept me around for a couple of years now. And they’re like you were the first one who did not condescend to us, right, because you know, so many coaches are these, frankly, old white Republican men, at least here in America. And they would walk into a room full of women and trans people and just assume they didn’t know what they were doing. Meanwhile, this is a company with like 20 to 30% net profitability raking in millions of dollars a year. And I’m just like, how could anybody look at you and assess this as anything other In one of the most successful companies they’ve ever seen other than just bias, right, other than you looked at the people and didn’t look at the numbers and understand these people are running a killer business, and they are ripping the throats out of their enemies on their way, right? I work with a number of healthcare practices that specialize in the LGBTQIA. Plus, in trans communities, I work with companies that are run by first generation immigrants. I mean, it’s, it’s a lot of people who are overlooked by other people, frankly. And they they find a nice, someone who will see them for who they are, and create a safe home for them where you know, they can feel good and get the work of Eos done.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  30:35

Yeah, I think that’s actually a really shame. It’s a real shame to hear that. I know that back in my early days, I’m kind of a little bit old in the tooth these days. But you know, back in the early days of my career, I was a young, blonde female, who really didn’t get taken seriously for a long, long time. And it was it was fascinating, because the stereotypes that kind of existed the way you were even just treated as you wouldn’t a room. And to see that that is still continuing on. But, you know, across all kinds of diversity. It’s it’s just really sad. I mean, yeah, I don’t want to say to that, to be honest, it it makes me cry a bit.

Zac Cramer  31:06

We’d like to imagine that history is, you know, sort of like up until the right, right, like, Oh, we’re getting more progressive, we’re getting more tolerant, we’re getting more whatever. And not really, history is more of a series of mountains, it’s more of a rises and falls and rises and falls. And the business community is still a very discriminatory community on balance, you know, the, it’s still a very much a white men run kind of community. And there is a niche of us. And there is a group of us who are running businesses in a different way, and who are appealing to you and working with those businesses who want to run their businesses in a different way. But you’ve got to look for him.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  31:41

Yep. Perfect. It is interesting, actually, I run a community over here in New Zealand, which is designed for kind of mid sized high growth businesses. And I was saying to the guy who actually runs them all around New Zealand, I just run out the Auckland one. I was saying to him, you know, why would we have so many white, middle aged men in this room? And he said, Well, it’s actually a reflection of the businesses and who runs those those types of businesses. And sadly, over here, it still is a bit like that. And it does make it and because I mean, you know, we all know that actually having diversity of any description adds to the value of a business, it adds to the value of the decision making, it really creates a different environment. But we’re just we’re not not there yet. Are we? We’re kind of we’re starting to get there, which is great, but we’re just not there yet.

Zac Cramer  32:21

Yep. I mean, it’s, I’m, I’m here for them, right? I’m here to help them get there. And to you know, be the coach who sees them for who they are and for what they look like.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  32:29

Brilliant, I love it. Okay, three top tips or tools, what are the three things that you would say throughout your journey that you just kind of had this change my life has changed my business, whatever it might be.

Zac Cramer  32:38

Alright, number one is going to be mushrooms. So magic mushrooms, doing mushroom trips under the guidance of a licensed therapist. With the with specific intents and outcomes has been an absolute game changer for me, it’s helped me with my anxiety has helped me to see the world more clearly. We were taught when we were kids, that all drugs are bad. And it turns out that’s not true. I feel much worse after I drink alcohol than I do after I do mushrooms. So that’d be my like, number one tip for anybody who’s looking to get ahead is get inside your own head first, and, and go on. Go on a it’s important that I say this part a safe, healthy guided trip, not just like taking a bunch of mushrooms and sitting in your basement and hoping that things work out but you know, having someone there whose job is to guide things and make sure that you get the outcome that you’re looking for until you know, keep the process safe and healthy. And

Debra Chantry-Taylor  33:31

It’s just a button there’s there’s plenty of practitioners that actually help with that now, again, I just bought one of the guys was doing that. And and you can do it within a safe environment with a number of people. And yeah, as you said, you get more benefit from that than just just taking mushrooms. They also help with sleep by the way, you’re saying not not just the psychedelic mushrooms, but a lot of the mushrooms. They’re finding that whole that whole family of mushrooms is actually great for a whole range of things.

Zac Cramer  33:53

Yeah, yeah. I mean, there’s there’s a lot of science to be done and a lot of benefit there. And I’m glad that that is starting to see the light of day and become a more more common thing that people are finding as a as a medicine as a tool. So I’d say that’s number one. Number two tips or tools for what I mean. I mean, help me

Debra Chantry-Taylor  34:11

Yeah, business and life. So if you think about this whole podcast called Better Business better life, I believe you have to work on both sides of that coin. If you’re like me, I don’t think the right sides of a coin. So yeah, any tips around business?

Zac Cramer  34:22

Number two, I’m gonna say is journaling, paper journaling, a book and a pen or a pencil. And what I’ll say is my handwriting is literally illegible. If you take one of my journals. You can’t tell what the hell I said. I barely know what I said. But there is something about the physical act of writing things down that does amazing things to our brains. That helps us process that helps us contextualize. And even for me who owns an IT company and who does everything on a computer and has this office is surrounded with smartphones and smart watches and smart wallets and smart cameras and everything else. I take out a journal and a penne and sit down and write on a regular basis. And it really helps me sort of find my center and calmness. And then

Debra Chantry-Taylor  35:08

I choose my remarkable as I do enjoy. But what I bought was I like this, I’m a bit of a kid, right? This is actually a remarkable pen that looks like a real pencil. Like, I’m like a school kid, again, kind of writing with my pencil.

Zac Cramer  35:20

Remarkable, one of the only tools that crosses the barrier, right? Because you are you’re writing with a pen, like it is a digital, it’s ultimately digital, but it’s it, it has the same impact as writing by hand, you know, has the same impact, right? So if you’re, if you’re using a remarkable remarkable is a fantastic tool. And then third, and critical tool. fiction reading. This is something I found this leaders have really gotten away from right if they’ve gotten away from but they just don’t do it, which is people always talk about their favorite business book. It’s always like, what’s the business book that you read had an impact, you know, business books are these dry? Dictionary like, textbooks, right? And I think that there is so much to be learned from fiction about the things we actually deal with. Because in fiction, you see people in scenarios and you see how they react, and you see how people respond to the things that happen to them. In a way that’s much closer to reality. Right? You know, you retraction, right? I love track. And I’m an EOS implementer. Right? Traction is a phenomenal book. But traction just says, assuming ideal conditions. These are the things you should do in your business, right. But it assumes ideal conditions. Fiction gives you me a much better headspace on like, what about when you’re trying to implement us in a company where dad’s an alcoholic mom won’t leave? The kid is trying to you know, bring it into the 21st century, you know, the customers don’t want to buy the product anymore, right? Fiction is where we see real life and how things actually function and how people actually function. And I think that when we as business leaders get to disconnected from real world experience of people, then we have a much harder time making the right choices in the business.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  36:58

Right? Yep, I think that’s really cool. It was really funny. You said about, you know, traction, I actually got given when EOS launched into New Zealand, I use my event center over here in New Zealand. That’s how I came across it. And they gave me both get a grip and the traction book, I tried reading the traction book first I kind of went it’s actually a bit hard. And then I read the Get a grip. And and what I loved about it was it’s like the Patrick Lencioni stuff, right? It’s very much a fable, you can see the characters, you can see how it engages. And then of course, I was desperate to read the traction. But when I think if I hadn’t actually read Get a grip first, I may never have actually got to traction because you’re not the first person I’ve heard that from. Yeah, and I do I read a lot of fiction. And sometimes it’s sometimes it’s just escapism to to be fair, sometimes it’s just nice to actually move away from business, which is, you know, is all consuming for me to just have some escapism in trashy magazines or in books around period period, dramas or romance.

Zac Cramer  37:46

I cannot be like in the third tool be like, have fun. Like I see too many business owners or too many business leaders who just aren’t having any fun. And I’m just like, Yo, you’ve got money, you’ve got power, you’ve got resources. Why do you look so sad all the time? Like, let’s enjoy this, you know, one life to live.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  38:03

Okay, one last question for you. What would you tell a younger version of yourself if you could go back in time?

Zac Cramer  38:10

Get a job. Let’s get a regular active job work nine to five, get some promotions, for the love of God don’t start businesses don’t think you know better than Best Buy, just get a job. Oh, god. Yeah. Because I mean, look, I am. So I think of not to be too much of me. But I think about the infinite number of possibilities of the future. Right? There are an infinite number of possibilities from this moment outward, right? In this moment, the next thing that happens, a 747 could come crashing through my window and could kill me, right? You know, or a dog could be barking in the hallway, or somebody could send me a check for a million dollars, there’s a million, there’s an infinite number of future possibilities. My future possibilities from the time that I was a kid have led me to an extraordinary place where I have wealth, and I have privilege and I do something I love. And I have partners that I adore, and I am a person that I really enjoy being. But if I were to look back at all the possible pathways, so many more of them led to bankruptcy, and you know, depression and everything going wrong. And you know, how many moments were there? Where if the customer had said no instead of yes, then that critical deal wouldn’t have happened, the company wouldn’t have continued. Right? So just because things turned out really well doesn’t mean I look back and say that was a good decision. I look back and say it would have been so much easier and so much kinder to myself and so much nicer to just get a job or have a career get PTO. Like I’m not I know very few business owners who take more PTO than their employees. Right. Like most of them haven’t taken vacations for years.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  39:43

Yeah, and that’s not good. We’re here to help them change that. I’m actually really glad that you didn’t just take a job as that because otherwise I wouldn’t have been here on this podcast with you. And I wouldn’t have learned about your story which has been really fascinating. So thank you.

Zac Cramer  39:54

I’m glad to for how it worked out. But the advice to younger self would definitely be like you are so much done. More than you think you are, you know so much less than you think you do. You haven’t got the slightest clue everything that’s going to go wrong and how much it’s going to hurt and how many lessons you’re going to have to learn. And like, it might be worth it if you become me eventually, but also probably not and get a job.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  40:13

Yeah. Okay, fair enough. Okay, so I’m sure there’ll be people out here kind of going, I want to talk to Zach, whether it’s with you or just have a chat to you. How would they get ahold of you?

Zac Cramer  40:21

Carrier pigeon. So what you want to do is so the easiest way, obviously, is through my email address, Zack dot Kramer’s esc.cr A M er at EOS worldwide.com. If you’re like me, and you’re an introvert, you’re afraid to talk to people, you can go to how to business.com which is my business advice website. You can read articles that I’ve written there about how to do things in your business. Basically, if anybody if I get the same question three times, I just write an article about it. So the next time I get that question, I can send people a link. Those are the best ways to get

Debra Chantry-Taylor  40:50

Perfect and for those of us anything that says they’d rather than busy but that’s all good to say. That dog trainer at EOS worldwide.com Or how to business.com That’s the one. Okay. Hey, Zack. Look, thank you so much for spending your afternoon Friday afternoon with me really appreciate it. I look forward to seeing you next month revenue us.

Zac Cramer  41:06

Super fun. Thanks for the time. Nice meeting you see you next time. Thanks.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  41:09

Thank you. Thanks for listening to the podcast show better business better life. My name is Debra Chantry-Taylor. I’m an EOS implementer family business advisor, business and leadership coach podcaster and speaker. However, I’m also a business owner with several current business interests. I’m fortunate to have live the high life with all the lifestyle, the toys, you name it, and then I’ve lost it all. Not only once but twice in two spectacular train wrecks. I know what it’s like to experience the highs and lows. I came across EOS when they launched into New Zealand using my entrepreneurs playground at an event center in Parnell Auckland. I love the simplicity of the tools and then philosophy is fitted my personal brand statement perfectly. The brilliance is in the simplicity. I’ve always been passionate about seeing entrepreneurs live the life they love. And now I help them live that EOS life doing what they love with people they love making a huge difference in the world being compensated appropriately and with time to pursue other passions. If you want more information or want to get in contact about using ELS and your business, you can visit my website at Deb Deborah dot coach that’s dub dub dub Deborah D B ra dot coach. Thanks for listening.