It's about progress not perfectionism! | Ep 96 | Evan J. Blumenthal | EOS Implementer

Evan J. Blumenthal  00:00

It’s about progress, not perfection, right? There’s no business that does everything perfect. There’s no business that does everything right a 100% of the time, that’s just unrealistic. But if the focus is on doing what’s best for the business, then the business can take care of, it’s not part of the destination, but it’s a result. It’s a byproduct of doing what you shouldn’t be doing what you’re best at what you love to do. And if that’s what your company is doing every single day, the money will come.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:29

so, Good morning, and welcome to another episode of Better Business better life. Today, my guest is joining us from New York where it’s actually afternoon, and I’m really thrilled to have Evan J. Blumenthal with us who is a professional EOS implementer. But He’s also the founder and CEO of EJB. Global. And when you listen to his story, you’ll understand he also came from a very, very strong family business background and big business background. So Evan, welcome to the show. lovely to have you here.

Evan J. Blumenthal  00:52

Thank you, Debra. So happy to be here. I grew up in an entrepreneurial household was a childhood entrepreneur myself and when I was in graduate school and thinking about joining my family’s yarn business, we sold yarn for knitting crocheting. I discovered there was a rule that required all family members to work elsewhere before they could join the family business. And I figured there’s no better place to learn about business than the world’s largest company. And so I went to work for Walmart, I started as an hourly associate, I went through their management training program. And then over a course of three, almost four years, helped run our manage 11 different stores. And what I learned most during my time, there was not only how to run and operate a great business, but also what it looks and feels like to work for a company that’s truly mission driven, purpose focused and living and breathing its core values every single day. I didn’t realize how important that would be until later in my career. Fast forward to about 16 years ago, I was called into my family business and spent the first year helping streamline efficiencies in the operations area and then transitioned into sales, I took over international and then ecommerce grew those areas about 25 acts over the next 12 years, and then was promoted to take on sales responsibility for the entire company. And I was managing those big relationships like Walmart and Michaels and Joanne’s and spotlight in Australia and Hobbycraft in the UK. And as much as I saw success from a sales perspective, I often found myself frustrated by the lack of alignment, the lack of role clarity, the lack of direction for the company, and it was a multi generational family business of which I was a fifth generation member of. And in my zeal to combat that frustration, I discovered EOS at a Vistage meeting. One of the other members shared this with me. And I’m very grateful that he did because I ultimately helped implement EOS into my family business. And we worked with a professional implementer for about two and a half years. And then about five years after implementing Eos, we had smoked out a bunch of our issues made some significant leadership team changes, including including one of the most significant in my mind, and that was bringing in our first non family president CEO in the company’s 142 year history in 2020. And then we started getting offers from private equity to buy the company, ultimately, external offers became an internal offer, and I was able to successfully exit that business and 2021 was a liquidity event that never would have been possible without the EOS process. And so the business stayed in the family, I was able to exit and follow my passion to help businesses grow. And so I’ve I’ve always based I founded my company EJB global a little over a year ago, but I became a professional EOS implementer earlier in 20, early 2022. And it was driven by that motivation to help other business owners get what they want from their business, just like I was able to so I’m excited to share EOS with people to help them get what they want for their business.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  03:59

That’s fantastic. And that is really quite unique. Is it a fifth fifth generation member and then the business was 142 years old or something

Evan J. Blumenthal  04:07

At the time that we had brought on it now it’s 145 and 1878.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  04:13

It’s amazing. Okay, so that mean, that’s that’s a great background story. Tell me a little about, you know, what are you most proud of in your life in terms of both professionally and personally?

Evan J. Blumenthal  04:25

You know, one of the things that really resonates for me when I think of what I’m most proud of, is not only what I was able to do but what what I learned from my father, from my grandfather in terms of the power of building meaningful relationships, wherever you go, whether it’s in business, whether it’s in personal life, like if you really invest in people, if you honor people, if you invest in meaningful relationships, good things happen. And I’ve been blessed to really build relationships that at many different levels and large small and medium sized businesses, I mean, some of the largest companies in the world. I know the CEOs by first name, they know me. More importantly, it’s not who you know, it’s who knows you. But it’s not about that it’s really just about building those meaningful relationships. And when you have not a transactional view on relationships, but a, a really, like an open growth oriented mindset towards relationships, and really focusing on helping others with what they want or need. That’s how you build those long standing relationships. So that’s, I would say, probably most proud of.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  05:33

yeah, that’s actually a fantastic. I know, I run a couple of communities over here in New Zealand, for midsize businesses. And, you know, people say, Oh, no, not another networking event. And it’s like, well, no, actually, we honestly believe it. We’re there to help each other. And so the first question we always ask is, How can I help you? And I think when you approach a community with that perspective, you do you build truly meaningful relationships, rather than, Hey, my name is Debra, and I’m a professional EOS implement this what I do do blah, blah, blah, blah. So yeah, I completely agree with that. What about personally, what are you proud of personally?

Evan J. Blumenthal  06:03

Well, I, you know, I’m very blessed, beautiful wife, and six beautiful children, you know, ranging from ages 19, all the way down to four months. So I’m really grateful and blessed to have a beautiful family. And, and I’m just very proud of that.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  06:20

That is fantastic. So I am fascinated to kind of find out more about your story, because I actually work with a lot of family businesses myself. And I know that there’s, there’s always a few more challenges in a family business, and you get in a traditional kind of business where there might be only one or two owners. So tell us a little bit about some of the challenges that you faced in terms of working in that family business and how you overcame them? And how did EOS help with that?

Evan J. Blumenthal  06:47

Yeah, that’s a great question. And it’s so poignant, because I think that my experience has been that any business regardless of whether it’s a family business, or not, often finds, and this probably resonates for people today, one of the one of the most challenging things to do is to get the right people in the business. And then make sure that once they have the right people that they’re in the right seat. And I think in family businesses, specifically, it’s even harder to ensure that you have the right people in the right seats, because there’s an added let layer and added level of complexity around the family component around often the ownership, or whether it’s spouses, it’s, you know, children, grandchildren, siblings, there’s so many different ways that the people aspect of the business can really be extra challenging. It’s already challenging and non family businesses, but it’s, it’s harder in family businesses, because when you have somebody who is the son, or daughter, or is the spouse or a sibling, and it’s not as easy to just, you know, make a tough call or make a tough change when they’re not sitting in the right seat, or maybe they don’t fit the culture for the business. I think that is one of the most challenging aspects. And so people just, you know, I’ve heard this from one of my one of my mentors, Phil Liebman, who heard it from his mentor, at least they are he’s like, people prefer problems. They don’t like to salute, or sorry, people prefer problems, they can’t solve to solutions they don’t like. And I think that is so true. It’s like I would rather just often not me personally, but you know, many of us would rather just deal with something that like, we don’t know how to solve it, rather than, like, we don’t want to do that. Right. And so I think that’s where the crux of a lot of the issues that come to play in family businesses stem from, its not being willing to do what is necessary to put the business needs first, a lot of times, they’re so worried about hurting either people’s feelings, or you know, what’s going to happen if I do that or make, I think that the way that we always viewed how to handle decision making in our family business was, if we focus on taking care of the business first, the business can then take care of the family, once we start taking care of the family first, then the business is going to be in trouble. And so that was the mentality that we took. And it was extremely successful, in many, many ways. And listen, was it perfect No, because I can’t say that we always followed that a 100% But at the same time, that was what we were striving for. And it’s about progress, not perfection, right? There’s no business that does everything perfect. There’s no business that does everything right a 100% of the time, that’s just unrealistic. But if the focus is on doing what’s best for the business, then the business can take care of the family.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  09:43

And I think you know, who you and I both know Sarah B Stern, who obviously specializes in family business as well. And she has been doing some little snippets on LinkedIn about things that family businesses do that really are a bit disastrous, and you know, one of them is you know, just creating systems and processes around an issue rather than that dealing with the issue itself because it’s a family member. And I think you said it. When we first chatted before the podcast, we had up to eight family members at any one time working in the business. So, yeah, you have to be very, very clear about what each of those people’s roles is and what their accountabilities are and whether or not they’re the right person to do that. Did you have any challenges along the way with it?

Evan J. Blumenthal  10:19

Well, I would say that was one of the things that EOS helped us most with frankly, not not only with the family members, but with everybody throughout the company is, when we went through the exercise of building out our accountability chart, we really got clear and intentional about what is the right structure for the business, and then trying to do our best to put the, you know, those right people in the right seats based on what they’re great at what they love to do what they can consistently execute on, and have the desire to do. And, and prior to implementing Eos, we didn’t really have a mechanism or a way to have some of those tough conversations. Because inevitably, when you don’t have a process to follow, if you don’t have a way of doing it, then things can get personal and not intentionally, but people take things personally or, you know, it could be Well, this one likes this. They don’t like that. They like me, they don’t like me that people get into their own head. And often self deceived themselves in terms of what, you know, the conversations that need to happen, or that are happening, are intended to be. And so for me and our company, it was the solution to that issue was implementing EOS and getting more clear. And like all companies like it’s a journey, it doesn’t happen overnight. You don’t snap your fingers, and then magically, all of your people issues disappear. Like there’s no magic pill or silver bullets. Definitely. And but having those conversations with a focus on what’s best for the business I’m focusing on is this the right structure for the business? Let’s take events structure, first people second approach, which is very, like it’s not a natural way of doing things in a family business. It’s like, oh, here’s the people that we have, where should we put up? Right, and especially when you have multi generational businesses, where many of the people were hired, or were brought on board because either they weren’t available, or they were there, or they had nothing else to do. And I’m not just talking about family members, but and when you kind of put together any business was like duct tape and twine initially, which is what we would literally have on Orchard Street in New York like 100 years ago in our business, it was like, let’s save the cardboard boxes and reuse them. Because, you know, why should we spend extra? That tell you a funny story just real quick, like there was one time, sound whatever. It was one time, it was like the 80s some a customer called up and said, you know what’s going on? We got a box of yarn and like there was a dead mouse in the box. My cousin was like, did we charge you for it? He’s like, No, he’s like, so what are you worried about? Right, like it was a different world 3040 years ago, in business like today that would never fly. And obviously, like that wasn’t an issue as we move to more sophisticated warehousing, distribution. But like when you’re when you’re building a business that like a small to medium sized business, and you’re you’re building it with duct tape and twine, in order to take your business to the next level, you have to become more sophisticated, you have to implement systems and tools and get like people that are, you know, the right people for where you want to go not only for where you are today. And so that’s, I think something that really resonates for me as I as I think about that question.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  13:45

Perfect. No, I completely agree. It’s really interesting. I know that sometimes when I’m looking to work with a client, I get some feedback about Yeah, the EOS model model covers these six components, the vision, the people, the data, the issues, the the process and the traction, and they go there’s nothing about cash flow in there. And it’s an interesting question, because of course, actually EOS does strengthen your cash flow in your profitability. And I know that you’ve got an interesting story about what that did within your business as well. Would you mind sharing that?

Evan J. Blumenthal  14:12

Yeah, well, I can share what I what I’m allowed to share. I will say that. Five years after implementing EOS, we grew top line revenue by probably 30%, which was significant, and we more than doubled our EBIT. Ah, that was completely game changing in terms of not only personally for me, but but for the valuation of the company. And so when private equity firms started to knock on our doors and offer money that was like well in excess of anything we frankly would have dreamed of five years prior. It really brought like, that wasn’t the intention in terms of why we implemented ELS. It was really more about getting alignment and clarity around our mission and our purpose and and consistent messaging, and it’s more initially about that. But the result was a huge increase in profit, a huge increase in top line revenue. And it makes me really think about a video that I saw by Simon Sinek, where he talks about the car being the company and the fuel being the money that the company needs to generate. And the purpose or the mission, or the y, if you will, of the of the business is the destination on the GPS, right? And so nobody buys a car just to fill it with gas and drive around. Like the purpose like because often you ask business owners, and I’m sure whatever you’ve done this many times, you get what what do you want for your business? More money? Like, okay, why did you buy your car so that you fill it with gas, because that’s what Simon Sinek was saying is like, you don’t buy your car to fill it with gas, you get a car so that it could take you from point A to point B take you to a particular destination, you can choose what that destination is as a business owner as a business leader. But, but like, when I think about it, that like money is the fuel, it’s the it’s a, it’s a mechanism to be able to do what you need to do. Some are like you can’t breathe without oxygen, you can’t go anywhere, as a company without money, you need it. It’s the lifeblood of the organization. But if that becomes the purpose, then you’ve lost lost sight of why either you started the company to begin with, or why you joined the company, because there’s got to be a purpose that’s greater than just making money. Yeah,

Debra Chantry-Taylor  16:26

I think you’re absolutely spot on. And I think that you know, when you get you and your work on those six key components, and you strengthen that vision of where you’re headed, and what you want to achieve, and and who you want to work with and work with the people in the process and the other bits and pieces, the profit just becomes a consequence of that. In terms of the result,

Evan J. Blumenthal  16:43

it’s not it’s not it’s not it’s not part of the destination. But it’s a result of byproduct of doing what you should be doing what you’re best at what you love to do. And if that’s what your company is doing every single day, the money will come,

Debra Chantry-Taylor  16:56

yeah. And I think just just really interesting to get a 30% top line growth and increasing the profitability after you know, so we would have been 140 years as business have been operating. Because often people think that after a business has been around for a long time, plateau is the only option. But it’s not true, right, there is always the potential to break through that ceiling and take the next level up if you want to.

Evan J. Blumenthal  17:16

Well, and that’s absolutely. But that’s where I think one of the other challenges of any family business in a multi generational scenario exists. Because often you have scenarios where one generation has one motivated series of motivations, another generation might have a different series of motivation. So you know, if you have an older generation, who is maybe not yet ready to retire, but they also are not very, you know, interested in taking on significant risk, their tolerance to grow, the business might be a lot lower than maybe the younger generation who has bigger and you know, we’re ambitious goals. And so navigating through that, and having clarity around what it is that the company needs to accomplish and where it’s going. You know, I think of the, you know, the story of the CEO, who wants a $500 million company, and his company has 100 million today, and the CFO who wants like one more basis point of profitability as a goal for the business, right, you’re gonna manage those two businesses very differently. And, and it’s no different with, you know, multi generational families as well, you can have some, you can have some folks that are like, you know, I’m good with, like, modest growth 5%, you know, whatever. And, like, maybe, you know, 10% is great, but like, and you’re gonna have another generation who’s like, if we’re not doing 10 to 20% growth year over year, we’re not being successful here. And, and the ways to get there can often vary. I mean, I, I had responsibility for international and global business development for many years. And we were hyper focused on the North American market for much of the time before I was focused on that. And then ultimately, we were able to successfully grow to five continents. I was, you know, I built business, not just the business side, but also the infrastructure to be able to support that business. So it wasn’t just about where we could sell products to, in some cases, like, for example, in Europe, we had to build an operations component there were in order to be able to service the customers in the European market, we needed to have warehousing and distribution locally, to be able to service those needs. So it was, you know, it gets complex, but if you want to grow, you can like keep your blinders on and stay in your lane and only focus on your, you know, whatever your market is here. And I’m not saying not to do that. But if you want to take it to the next level, you have to think outside of what you’re currently doing, either in terms of clients or customers. geographies are sometimes it’s, you know, sometimes it’s organic growth, sometimes it’s inorganic growth, sometimes it’s acquiring other businesses to take it to another level. But it’s so important to hit through break through the ceiling. When you do hit it, you can’t stay stagnant. Because if you do, I like to, I like to it like my analogy for business is, it’s a downward escalator that you’re trying to get to the top, if you stop for a minute, you’re going back.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  20:14

Fair enough. I love it. It’s really cool. And I suppose it comes down to what you really, really want. And I think one of the things I think it’s really powerful about EOS is actually bringing that entire leadership team together every single 90 days and talking about, you know, what the future is, what their vision is, and more importantly, having that diverse thought and people able to contribute towards issues and opportunity, we call them issues. But when you were there issues, opportunities, challenges, whatever it might be, and being able to go right, okay, this way, this is where we want to go to how do we change our thinking, how do we change our strategy, what do we need to do in order to get there, but then having that real laser sharp focus, not getting distracted by because I’m a bit of a visionary myself, and so I’m very easily distracted by the next bright, shiny thing, or I have amazing ideas in the middle of a night, and then I come in my integrated goes, Yeah, may not be quite such an amazing idea. But I think that EOS gives you this structure and that 90 day, getting together everybody in a room just gives you the opportunity to to explore different things and have a bit of a different approach towards things.

Evan J. Blumenthal  21:15

Absolutely. And being a high visionary myself, I know that feeling of you know, shiny object syndrome, where you can definitely get distracted easily. But that’s why it is so important to come together 90 days, you know, with your leadership team, or even if you’re a solopreneur with yourself, schedule time with yourself and go through the process of getting clear on what your goals are for not only the year, but what are your rocks for the quarter? What are your 90 day rocks? What are your priorities, because when you go through that exercise, and I’ve done this in my own business, even, you know, in the last year in building my EOS practice, go using the tools filling out the video, getting clear on what I’m you know where I’m going and how I’m gonna get there. But also making sure that I’m clear on talking to others, learning from others, I mean, you know, help first and grow or die are not just core values that you know, exist that we put on the wall somewhere. I live them and breathe them every day. And just one example, for me, one of my rocks this quarter, that by the end of this month, will be done was to communicate one on one, either in person or on the phone or Zoom was at least 100 EOS implementers around the globe. Yeah, you come in. I did. Actually, I think I’m only one or two away from hitting that 100 number. So but I never would have done that if I didn’t set that as except that as a rock set that as a priority, I would have talked to people as I talked to people and you know, sure, I would have reached out as as needed. But I wouldn’t have been more intentional about reaching out to other members within this community as I did by setting it as a rock. So, again, that’s just one example personally, that, you know, is in real time, but I think you don’t have to be a big company to be able to use a lot of the tools that EOS provides. Obviously, there’s you know, different tools that will help at varying sizes, the sweet spot of courses that tend to 250 people in your business range. But it’s not a hard and fast rule. It’s not like it’s not like you can’t grow your business with these tools otherwise, and I’ve seen it both personally and from others.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  23:35

I completely agree. And I have a similar kind of example, myself, too. We got the whole grow or die thing. And I mean, I I’ve been working with family businesses for I think about 17 years now. But I decided that actually I really wanted to go and do some qualifications. And it’s my last quarters rock was to do the first part of my accreditation. So I’m now accredited as a family business advisor. And this next rock is for doing the second part of that. So I have even more tools in my toolkit. And so yeah, even as an individual, you’re just having that laser sharp focus. And I share this quite openly, quite regularly. In my first couple of years as an implementer. I kept setting myself seven rocks, because I thought I was super, I work fast. I’m fast paced, I could do seven things. And after two years, I realized that every single quarter, I’d get three or four out of seven. And every single quarter it was you know, it was a bit disappointing because I hadn’t done what. And then I went this is ridiculous. We teach our clients to predict and predict Well, it’s pretty obvious that three to four is the absolute maximum I can do and that’s what I should be sticking to so yeah,

Evan J. Blumenthal  24:30

right. It’s funny you say that because the first quarter that I had out of bootcamp, I had set I think seven rocks myself. And I completed I think five or set five or six. I don’t remember exactly, but the ones that I didn’t complete. I was like I really shouldn’t have even set those as rocks because they weren’t really the most important priorities for me. So I learned in my own ability to predict less is more So this quarter, I said only five, and I’m on pace to hit, hit all five and complete them all, because I was more intentional and you know, kind of reduced that number. But even next quarter, I’m thinking like maybe three or four, because it’s not just about how many it’s more, it’s more about a thing than quality than the quantity.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  25:20

What is important? What is important to move the needle forward on the business? What do I need to actually do? Yeah, completely agree, hey, I’m curious, because obviously, with EOS or traction, as people refer to it, too, you can actually self implement when all the tools are out there, you can get the traction book, you can actually download all the free tools from the EOS website, they provide a huge amount of support there. Why did you not self implement in the family business?

Evan J. Blumenthal  25:44

So I would say two reasons. Number one, I didn’t know that was a thing. Frankly, number two, we never would have been able to, like there’s no way with the complexity of the relationships and the dynamics of personalities and all that, there’s no way we would have been able to be on any level objective enough to it’s like doing surgery on yourself. Like you don’t do surgery on yourself, even if you’re a doctor. Because you need an outside viewpoint. I’m not saying that nobody can self implement effectively, there are companies that have self implemented and have been able to do that successfully. But it depends on the business, it depends on the dynamic, if everybody’s already aligned. And it’s really just about getting clarity around, you know where you’re going and how you’re going to get there. Probably a lot easier to self implement. If you have more challenging personalities, if you have more dynamic, you know, conversations, if you will, that’s going to be a lot tougher to self implement. At the same time, I also want to make clear that like, it’s not that you can only work with implementer, you’re not going to be successful, like there are many companies that could self implement successfully. But like I said, you have to know what’s best for your company, you have to know your team, you have to know your people. And also, it depends on how much time you’re interested in getting results in because, you know, I like to say if you want to go from New York to LA, you can get in a car and you can drive and it’ll take you three, four or five days or two weeks, if you want to stretch it out, you can make a whole summer trip out of it. You could also take a flight from JFK to LAX about six hours, give or take, you’re gonna get there a lot faster by taking the plane. And that’s to me more the analogy of working with an implementer is like taking the flight as opposed to driving driving is you’re gonna stop along the way you’re gonna get distracted by the scenic view, you’re gonna stop and be Oh, I like this, I don’t really like that so much I don’t feel is you know, and you’re going to, you’re going to focus on what you want to focus on instead of what you need to focus on. And so I think that’s the caution that I would offer to any company that’s considering self implementing, by all means, if you want to do it, do it, but know that it’s going to take you longer, it’s going to be harder to really be objective. And for those who can go either way, I would highly recommend going with implementer. There are companies that maybe aren’t, you know, either financially or they’re not at the capacity to be able to implement with an implement or implement EOS with an implementer. For those. I absolutely think that starting out because some EOS is better than no EOS that’s where I you know, I firmly believe that the more that you do, and even if it’s not anywhere near forget 100% strong and each component, if it’s not even anywhere near 80%, strong, you’re going to gain more by going through that process than you would otherwise. Because if you’re just going to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results. That’s the definition of insanity. We all know that. So that’s not going to be productive, you got to do something different. And this is a proven process that really works if you follow it.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  29:03

Yeah, I love your analogy, which you have to take in the car versus a plane, I often use a personal trainer analogy, because I know that in terms of my personal health, I’m 52 and a half, I need to make sure I’m building muscle all the time. I don’t want to get weak as I get older. And I have been a member of many, many gyms. But the problem is with my personality type is I go to the gym. And if I don’t really quite feel like doing the exercise, oh, I won’t do it. Whereas if I have a personal trainer like I do now, three to four times a week she is there, she’s making me do the stuff that I know that I need to do and actually quite enjoy it when I do it. But don’t wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t being pushed by somebody else. And so it’s having that external person without accountability. And if I’m really honest, it’s like knowing you have to go back into your next session. And kind of you know, report on where you’ve been in terms of what you’ve eaten, what exercise you’ve done. It makes you actually do that stuff. Whereas if I was doing it on my own, I got oh, well it doesn’t really matter. So I that’s how I liken it to input self implemented

Evan J. Blumenthal  29:58

its funny you say that I’ve used that same analogy as well, depending on the context of the, you know, questioning or maybe hesitation. The one thing that I’ll just add in terms of that analogy is, oftentimes people. When you think about it from a personal trainer perspective, like you can’t hire a personal trainer to work out for you as much as you might want to. Right, you can’t they can’t work out for you. And that’s, that’s where like, it’s the difference between coaching versus consulting. Right. So we’re not consultants, we’re coaches. And that’s what a personal trainer is, essentially, it’s a coach, it’s somebody who’s going to hold you accountable as somebody who’s going to help guide you on how to achieve your goals in the most expeditious and, you know, effective manner, that we all know that we’re not going to do it the same way if we did it on our own. Right, if we’re being truly honest with ourselves, so I love that analogy, because it is so like spot on, we’re not going to work out to the same extent that we’re not working with a personal trainer, I’ve also been a supporter of many gyms, where I just donated, I wish I could have gotten a tax deduction for the all the donations I gave.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  31:06

But I love that addition, I hadn’t even thought of that. But that’s absolutely right. Yeah, you’ve got to do the work yourself. And I’m gonna do it for you. But I also think that it’s really kind of key that you said that oh gosh is gonna get lost it sorry. I was thinking it’s, yeah, it’s, it’s more than just getting there faster, but they’re actually helping you to kind of focus on your goals as well. So by having an external party, you can focus on the goals that you want to achieve, and how you get there in the fastest possible manner. And I think that it’s important, but again, it comes down to personality, there might be some people listening here listening to this going, actually, I would quite happily go to the gym, and I know exactly what to do. And I would do it all myself. And they may well do it. But for most of us, I think having that level of accountability and an external viewpoint on what’s going on. Because you know, even though we are involved on it, you know, on a quarterly basis with the business, we’re not in the day to day running of the business, we’re actually coming in from an outside perspective. And we can share the knowledge that we have gained not only from running our own businesses, which obviously we do, but also from the other companies that we’re working with. And we don’t we don’t give you the answers, but we can intelligently ask the questions to make sure that the knowledge from the room gets brought to the front.

Evan J. Blumenthal  32:16

Yeah, absolutely. And just piggybacking on, one of the things that you just said is being able to bring knowledge, outside knowledge into the room, I think is another huge advantage, because it’s not just our own personal experience that we’re bringing into the room with us. It’s also the collective experiences of the companies that we’ve worked with the other companies that we might be implementing with and maybe some other companies have dealt with a similar challenge. And maybe the solution isn’t exactly the same. But being able to share context for how to solve certain issues successfully in our observation of how others have solved those issues, brings a different level of experience to to those sessions, because it’s not just about, you know, that anyone who’s in a business has the only the viewpoint within their own business, and any personal experience that they have, prior to being in that business. So having an outside coach implementer, etc, brings not only their own experiences, but also the collective experiences of the people and companies that they’ve worked with.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  33:20

Absolutely. Hey, I’m gonna ask one last question, I’m going to ask you to share some tips with us. So my last question is really around, was there a favorite kind of Eos tool that you use in the family business? That really made a big difference for you?

Evan J. Blumenthal  33:34

Oh, that’s a great question. So there’s so many I would say, I’m gonna answer with two, I think it’s both of the people component tools. So you know, obviously, we want to get right people in the right seats. But the tools that we use are the people analyzer in terms of making sure you have the right people. And then the accountability chart in terms of making sure they’re in the right seat, because prior to utilizing those tools, everything was very murky, everything was kind of unclear. This one’s responsible for that this one sometimes responsible for that we had we had somebody who was the head of sales at the time, but they weren’t responsible for 60 to 70% of the sales of, of the company, because they were only focused on this area, but not that area. So it’s like how do you have a VP of Sales who is not responsible for everything? Like that doesn’t make sense. And then sometimes we had other areas that were we had great and holes that like for example, we had, we had a VP of marketing that was primarily focused on direct to consumer marketing. Now that was very important. And we needed that. But that was only a fraction of our total business. So we needed somebody to really focus as a chief marketing officer for the business as a whole, so that we’re not only focused on the direct to consumer business, which like I said, was just a small fraction of the total business But what about all the b2b business that we were doing that? Like, what? Nobody was focusing on that from a macro marketing perspective? So one of the first, yes, not only hot hires, but one of the first leadership team seats that we identified that we didn’t have already was in the marketing seat, because we needed somebody to be able to consistently bring all the all the content, all the messaging, all the communications that was happening. It was it was all very, you know, kind of siloed prior to using that accountability chart to get clarity around, what is that optimal ideal structure for the business? Right. So that was, that was probably one of I mean, those two tools, you know, I would stick out in my head as most valuable because it really helped us take a step back and focus on our business, not just get caught up in the business.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  35:53

Fantastic. Okay. Sadly, we’re coming to a bit of an end here, which is a shame, but I’m sure you and I will catch up when we’re in Dallas a bit later on. But two or three top tips, what are the three top tips you’d love to share with the listeners?

Evan J. Blumenthal  36:06

So this is in no particular order. But just the thoughts that come to mind? Firstly, I think it’s super important to laugh to, like, people get so caught up in their business sometimes that they forget to laugh. Don’t take yourselves and your businesses so seriously, right, you only live once, unless you’re James Bond, then You Only Live Twice. But you know, for many movies later. So like, be willing to laugh, be willing to have fun, it like it makes everything so much more easy to digest. Not everything is great. Not everything is perfect. Not everything is going to be but if you have a positive outlook on things, and you can laugh both at yourself and others in a productive way, I think that’s one great tip that I would recommend.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  36:58

I absolutely agree. Love it. Yeah.

Evan J. Blumenthal  37:00

The second one is, listen, more, listen to people more, we are often so caught up in our own head or in our own, like, agendas, that we don’t always listen to what people are saying. And sometimes it’s with words, and sometimes it’s nonverbal communication. And I would encourage everybody to listen more. I mean, one of the most impactful books that I’ve read in the last year or two was a book called Leadership and self deception. By the Harbinger Institute, I highly recommend that book to anybody out there, because it really helps you better understand how to get out of your own box in your own head, like you’re like if you’re, you know, imagine you’re in a box, like you can’t see out the walls, great windows, but like if you’re in a box you can’t see outside. And so when you’re in your own head, when you’re in your own box, it’s very hard to see someone else’s perspective, it’s very hard to see where someone else is coming from. If you’re open to if you’re not in that box, if you will, and you’re focused on what are the other person’s needs? What is the other person saying what are they doing? What do they need, and you’re you’re focused on that help first mentality, but from a focus on them. That’s where you can break out of that that self deception mode, if you will, and I would highly recommend that book as a second tip.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  38:31

Self deception, so Right.

Evan J. Blumenthal  38:33

Yeah, that’s correct. I am not one of the authors, I make no Commission’s went up to over. And then I think it’s be open to opportunities. Like being growth oriented is not only a mindset, which absolutely I think people need to be most successful. But being open to opportunities, it doesn’t necessarily mean to say yes to everything. But when opportunity knocks, don’t be so closed minded, that you just slam the door and opportunities face, right? Because good things come. I think when you when you give luck, the opportunity, so to speak. And so I think you have to be open to opportunities. One of the analogies that I like to use is people say are you you know, a glass half full type of person or your glass half empty type person I say who cares? It’s refillable. That’s the life that you get.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  39:32

Love that Totally use one.

Evan J. Blumenthal  39:35

For me, it’s because I don’t just see what is static in front of me. I try to look at the potential of what could be. Yeah. And so that’s why that resonates for me so much is that I could just look at it statically and say, Okay, it’s half full. It’s half empty, whatever. But if I look at the potential, not just what could be right now today, but what could be on into the future. Like there’s so much opportunity you just have To open your eyes to it and see it, sometimes it’s in your backyard. Sometimes it’s across the world. But I mean, here, it’s, you know, we’re talking from literally two ends of the third rock from the sun. But you know, at the same time, it’s like, the world is both so big and so small simultaneously. We don’t always know where opportunities going to not be ready for it. You’re

Debra Chantry-Taylor  40:22

okay, brilliant. So we’ve got to laugh. Laugh, don’t take yourself too seriously. Certainly listen more, and that leadership and self deception was helpful. And then be open to opportunities have a growth mindset, the glass is refillable. Love it. Hey, I’d love to hear what are the kinds of clients that you’d love to work with? And what’s your ideal client?

Evan J. Blumenthal  40:41

Well, because so much, I prefer paying clients. Going back to that first tip, yeah, I find that clients, you know, it actually piggybacks on the third point as well, in terms of the growth oriented mindset. For me, it’s less about the size of the company. Obviously, my background being in, you know, having worked in a family business, working in mass retail, working in a CPG company, consumer products, goods. That is a sweet spot that I have in terms of specific expertise. But I don’t specifically focus on any particular industry. I mean, EOS obviously is industry agnostic. But for me, it’s more about who wants to work with me, who do I want to work with? And are those business owners and leaders growth oriented? Are they open minded? Are they willing to be open and honest and vulnerable with themselves? And the people around them? And are they more afraid of the status quo than they are of change? Because if that’s their mentality, that’s who I want to work with, I don’t care quite as much about the geography or you know, the size of the business. I have a client that two or three people in the business and I have, you know, there’s others that have hundreds, so it’s not about the size as much as it is about the mindset.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  41:56

Perfect. Yeah, completely agree. Cool. So the my very last question for you is, how do people get in contact with you if they’d like to work with you?

Evan J. Blumenthal  42:04

Well, two ways number one, you can send me an email Evan dot Blumenthal at EOS worldwide.com. That’s EVAN dot B lu m e n t h al at EOS worldwide.com. Or you can visit my EOS microsite EOS worldwide.com backslash Evan dash j dash Blumenthal feel free to reach out to me either one.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  42:30

And I think we’ll also have those details in the the accompanying notes for the podcast as well. So you can say, hey, Evan, look, it’s been an absolute pleasure to A meet you. and B to kind of hear about your your, both your family business history, but also your bigger business history with Walmart and stuff. It’s been fascinating. So thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. And I look forward to catching up with you soon.

Evan J. Blumenthal  42:51

Likewise, thank you so much. Thank you