Lena Ridley: Redesigning Business and Life with EOS

Lena Ridley  00:00

The tools themselves and the model so practical and a whole lot of things that you can implement into your business. But then when you elevate those tools to the EOS life, which is doing what you love with people you love, making a huge difference being compensated appropriately with time for passions, and, you know, time for hobbies, it actually takes bravery to take those intentional steps you build that for yourself, whether it's as an EOS implementer or a business owner.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:35

Thanks for joining us on the Better Business, better life podcast. I'm your host, Debra Chantry Taylor, and I'm passionate about helping entrepreneurs lead their ideal lives by creating better businesses, because, as I like to say, life is too bloody short. I'm a certified us implementer, an FBA accredited family business advisor and a business owner myself with several business interests, but I also work with established business owners and their leadership teams to help them get more of what they want from their business in their life using EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System. Today, I'm excited to have a fellow EOS implementer on the show. She has a 26 year career in financial services and has been a business a partner in four of her own businesses. She has worked in and on and with hundreds of professional practices across Australia, and she switched from being an integrator to a visionary in one of her businesses today, as she's going to share with you, what EOS did for her personally and also for the businesses that she's worked within, and then why she chose to become an EOS implementer, and what her favourite EOS tools are. Lena Ridley is a professional EOS implementer.

She's based in Sydney and covers the entire east coast of Australia. So welcome to the show, Lena. It's lovely to have a fellow EOS implementer on the show with me. Thank you for having me. Oh, my absolute pleasure. So we, as always, we've been chatting before we came on the podcast, and we'll just get a little bit about your story. I'd love you to share with the listeners your story. To you know, how did you come across? EOS, what was your journey to get there and even go back a bit further than that, tell me a little bit about your entire history.

Lena Ridley  02:11

Yeah. So fine. I mean, let's start at the start then. So I grew up in Canberra, entrepreneurial father that had employed roles that had actually also then stepped in, started micro businesses and small businesses to kind of fulfil certain goals at that point in life. And I think watching my dad do that got me very interested in the business world and how businesses work. And my first job was, you know, in a in a chemist that my dad and my mom owned and things like that. So I went after school and followed the kind of traditional path of going to university and doing business degree and then doing an MBA, and got into the financial services base, because I had been doing a lot of my assessments on a financial planning business that was a small business in Canberra. And what I realised as I built my career using these academic tools that I had learned is that sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn't. My experience was probably the gap during a lot of but also realising that sometimes, when you were facing into a particular issue, whatever tool you had at your disposal was not necessarily helping the business owner in that frustration or that emotional moment at the time. And so I felt that there was a little bit of a gap there, but continued to build a 26 year career in financial services across different avenues. And during that time, always found myself drawn to roles where I was in helping a business grow. I was in a business in a seat too, designed to make the business grow. And so that kind of really started to draw out that passion and purpose along the way. I've sort of started or been a part of partner in four different businesses, and one of those was a business that my partner and I started that was completely separate to financial services. And so putting all of that experience to use in a completely different industry was a wild ride, because that was in we were importing alcohol, and we were, you know, part owners of a distillery in Mexico, and there was all these weird, wonderful things happening, and that was really great. But over that time, you you know, we'd had a family, we'd started a couple of businesses. I was running this business while I was on maternity leave, and those things, you know, working in the alcohol industry, where my partner was then obviously working hospital. Hospitality hours to talk to business owners and sell and things like that. We realised that me working in a corporate role, having a young family trying to run the business, him working hospitality hours didn't necessarily work for our family, so we sold that business, and then I became an equity partner in another financial services firm where I started off in the integrator seat and then moved into the visionary seat over the course of almost seven years with business.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  05:27

Before you go any further, I'm just going to ask you, just for people who maybe don't know the concept particularly well, the difference between an integrator and a visionary seat.

Lena Ridley  05:35

Yeah, so the integrator seat, which was labelled general manager at this point, I literally had my finger in every pie in the business, really coordinating all bringing all of the different business functions together, copied in on hundreds of emails a day, and knew everything, and it was my job to sort of coordinate and bring that all together, moving then into the visionary seat, which was labelled the CEO seat. It really shifted my thinking so shifting it from very much the executing on what the 12 month plan is and the one year plan to really starting to think of, how do we take the business from that three year picture to that 10 year target, and really bringing those ideas and bringing that journey to the up. So the first couple of months in that seat was a real mind shift for me, and then realising that actually that visionary seat brought me far more joy than the integrated scene. I think

Debra Chantry-Taylor  06:41

it's a really interesting point to make here, because I have a similar journey myself as well. I was actually a GM of a 220 staff business, and although I was very, very good at it, it wasn't until I actually got my own business and realised that I was naturally a visionary that I realised how restricting it had been being the integrator in terms of being able to be my true self. And so getting into the visionary role really meant I was in flow, that I really enjoyed it, that everything was very, very different. And I think a lot of business owners have that challenge, because in the beginning, you almost have to be everything to everybody, and so you end up wearing all these multiple hats. And when you can truly find what you're great at and actually move into that role full time, then it makes a huge difference the way that you enjoy your work, doesn't it?

Lena Ridley  07:23

Oh, you feel it in your soul. It's very it's very real.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  07:28

So, I mean, you, you talked about the fact it was a GM and a CEO, but then you brought in the, you know, the visionary and the integrated things. So you obviously came across EOS, and that's what brought that language and that understanding of what those kind of roles were about, how did you come across the EOS?

Lena Ridley  07:42

So at the time, one of my business partners, the managing director, said to me, one day he's he said, humour me. Come along and listen to this thing, and then just tell me what you think. You know. You don't have to do anything other than that. And the managing director had known, had a social contact with one of the other EOS implementers that's well known to everybody, Daniel Davis. And Daniel had been talking to our managing director about EOS for a number of years, so I went along and listened to what I now know is a 90 minute meeting. And then we went for coffee afterwards, and he said, What do you think? And I said, we have to do this, because for me, that was the gap and the missing link between that sort of academic it's not quite working in the emotional moment to the Okay, now I can see a path through that gets everybody talking the same language, deals with the emotions and kind of the head trash along the way, and really brings out those core issues, no matter what they are.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  08:51

It's part of the reason I kind of fell in love with EOS too, is I'd been coaching, actually been running businesses since I was 23 and then I also had been coaching for a number of years, and I'd never had an actual framework. And so just like you've got the MBA done, all the academic stuff had learned along the way, put a whole lot of things in place, just almost by by feel. You know, we needed to have a scorecard. We needed to have some way of holding people accountable. But there was nothing that actually held it all together. And when I saw the framework, it was like, this is genius. This is just a there's nothing new in here. Nothing rocket science, nothing new. But it was a framework, like you said, that can bring everybody on that journey using the same language, on the same page in a taking all the emotion, I think, is one of the key things about the OS. I love using it in family businesses. For that reason is that it just all the tools are designed to get you to the real issue without it being personal, so you can then have those difficult conversations. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Okay, so you, you, you obviously signed up and you went in and you started doing EOS and tell me. So how long ago was that?

Lena Ridley  09:48

That was four years ago this month, actually.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  09:53

And throughout that journey, you obviously then realised that, yes, there was a role for you. You were more of a visionary than you were an integrator. What was that Aha moment for you?

Lena Ridley  10:02

I was sitting, we actually moved seats during lockdown, during COVID, and I was sitting at the my kitchen bench, and I was I had myself set up for the day, and I'd always sort of get in there and have a scan of the emails to see if there was anything urgent and important that needed to be dealt with. And the volume of my emails had dropped off a cliff as soon as I moved seat, because those functions had gone to to somebody else. And I sat there and I went, Well, what do I do now? That moment was cathartic, in a way, because that was the realisation that I had to shift my thinking from the one year picture to the journey of the three year to the 10 year. And it was really important for me, and seek to to have that long term thinking and journey so that I could bring those ideas to my business partners and board. And that was really my affair moment. It's like, okay, now I can actually bring forward this this vision and this excitement of what I think is possible here. So that was, that was great. It was a little scary to start with, when I was like, I have no emails to answer. Well then it was just like, No. But that's the reason, you know now you get to do the fun stuff.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  11:34

Well, you get to the stuff that you actually really good on. I always say that that's what EOS does for founders and business owners. It frees them up to really do the stuff that they love and are great at, which is the stuff that brings the most value to the business. And when you're bogged down in all those emails and the fighting fires and they're sort of trying to run the business, especially if it's not your natural tendency, then you don't have the brain capacity, the space, the clarity to kind of go where are we headed in the future? So I always love it when you work with EOS clients and you see that kind of aha moment when they're actually able to truly let go and just focus on what they're good at. It's just amazing. The difference that makes the business okay so you so you shifted from being the integration of the visionary, and you obviously excelled in that role. And I'm guessing that the business sort of flourished under the EOS model.

Lena Ridley  12:19

What we did is we actually honed in on what I think was a core issue for the business eight business partners different ages. So business partners ranging from their late 30s to their late 70s, business partners that were working as employees in the business, and some that were not either retired or working elsewhere. And then what we came to realise quite quickly was different growth appetites when it came to that difference between what the three pitching was and the 10 year target. And that was a really, really important conversation, because it is what it is. You know, if that's what you want out of your business as the business owner, if those things aren't aligned across eight business partners, you actually have to lean into that and to face into that. So I think that that is a really healthy conversation, and it actually lent to me understanding that it was my turn to get off the bus and that I had a different growth appetite and a different timeline. To some of my business partners. Some of their exit timelines were immediate to 20 plus years. Some of their growth appetites were, you know, small considered stable growth, through to me at the other end, who had, you know, really ambitious growth plans and wanted to grow the hell out of it. And so the end of those conversations, there was a realisation that it was actually my turn to go up and do something different and get up. But if EOS, if I had not had the EOS framework during that conversation and that time, one, we might not have lent into that issue in the time frame, it might have just gone on for years and years and years. Or secondly, I would have really beaten myself up about the fact that it was it was my time to get off, because I love that business, and I still love that business, and that business was a part of my DNA for seven years, but that's okay. You know, nothing is forever.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  14:32

Yeah, and I think you've made a really valid point there. I think that what EOS does is, we always say it's like a spotlight. It kind of shines into all the corners of the business. It forces you, but in a good way, to have the conversations for the greater good. And it starts, it makes you start to realise, yeah, who, what is the vision, and who is on board with that, and who isn't, and, and it's, you know, it's great that you were able to recognise that it wasn't right for you, but it also works with the other people in there too. It's like you need people who are on the bus, who do want to be on that journey, who have a similar shared vision, who actually want to. To row together in the same direction, and sometimes that doesn't happen. We're working with a wealth a wealth advisor, financial services business down in Christchurch and similar kind of thing. They had 11 partners and very much wide range of ages, different stages of their life. And it came down to after in a number of months working through it very, very different visions in terms of where they wanted to go, and that that's a hard conversation to have, but it's the best possible conversation to have, because then you're actually going to be dealing with it, as opposed to just sweeping out of the carpet.

Lena Ridley  15:31

And going, it'll be okay. It'll be okay. Yeah. All conversely, people sitting there thinking that the business is broken because of it, and the business is not broken, just a conversation that needs to be had.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  15:45

Okay, so you obviously chose to go and become an EOS implementer. So you did your boot camp back in November last year. Is that right? Right? Yeah. And so how has that transition been from being, you know, the visionary of an organisation, to now helping other businesses have similar conversations and use similar tools to help them.

Lena Ridley  16:05

Yeah, the journey of deciding to become an EOS implementer is probably the first step. It was that sort of fork in the road, sliding doors moment where one part of me, you know, felt very aligned to my purpose of helping businesses grow. And particularly, I love helping businesses grow that then have, you know, the purpose of that business is to also help others. You know, I get complete joy out of that. But then, on the other hand, I had a very corporate role sitting in front of me, very high salary, and it was this real sort of fork in the road. Do I go back to me building a practice, or do I go into this big corporate role and give that absolute security to my family, but also know that I'm I'm stepping into that sort of corporate politicking and all of the things that came with those sorts of roles, which I don't love. So, you know, I also was coming up for my 50th birthday, and I thought, If not now, then when, you know, when am I gonna if I make that decision? You know, am I really resigned to not following my purpose here? Because I knew what bring? Brought me joy. So this is, you know, this is where we're at. This it's and, you know, my family have been hugely supportive, asked all the right questions, had a lot of other peers in different networking groups and things like that. Just, you know, give me that feedback. You know, when you're talking about those options, this is the one that lights your face up, and this is the one that you just try and talk yourself into. So, so that was the journey.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  17:56

Can I just, can I just pause you there for a second? Do you see that with your clients as well? I mean, I know. I know I see it when we start doing the delegate and elevate tool. And you can, you can tell when you look at somebody was he said, when their face lights up. You know, that's the stuff that they love and are great at. But often they don't see it, because the rational mind takes over and says, but you can do that, and you probably ought to do that, or you should do that, whereas we give them the freedom to go, what is it that really does light you up? And where do you add the value? Have you seen that with your clients now as well?

Lena Ridley  18:23

I'm definitely starting to and I'm certainly cognizant of it where I used to see it the most though out in my last business, when I was interviewing candidates, and one of the first things that I would do was deliver the core values speech to that that candidate, and I could see in their eyes immediately whether they resonated with those core values. And so I got very felt ruthless, but I got very good at honing in on that look in their eyes, and if it wasn't there, then I would just go and you know what? You're not going to fit here. This is not for you. And so some of my interviews got really, really short. I think I dragged one out to eight minutes. One all the time. Just go.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  19:21

We need to get you out of here.

Lena Ridley  19:24

It's just like we're not going to work for you. Just call it. And I'm starting to see that as I move through different things, particularly the accountability chart, when people are reflecting on their own seat, where they are in that at the at that moment, I'm starting to see a lot more of that.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  19:41

It's interesting. I always ask other EOS employers, like, what was your favourite tool? We've talked about a number of them already, but in the business, in the financial services business, what do you think was the tool that had the biggest impact on the business?

Lena Ridley  19:55

Yeah, it was the core values. It was honing in on the core values. Yeah. Once we uncovered what those core values were and really crafted what they meant to us, we actually started living and breathing and using the language. It saved us time. That was the big thing. It saved us time because, you know, I just had the recruitment story, but also, if I was talking with a manager about something that was going on with an employee, then we could literally just use those core values, pop that into the people analyzer, my second favourite tool, and really, you know, really kind of shortcut that conversation to just go, Okay, do we have a core values issue here, do they DWC it and then move that forward by sometimes an hour or two, if you talked around symptoms and things like that before in the past, and then in that business, we, you know, instituted a quarterly core values award and used it As a way of recognising staff that were really exhibiting core values and holding that up as a real point of positivity in the business.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  21:08

There's a couple of things you've actually mentioned there, which I just like to explain to the listeners as well. So I mean, we're talking about core values. I know that for a lot of you who may have worked in in other organisations, you know, sometimes it's a tick box exercise where you just kind of go one of our core values. Let's stick them on a wall, pop them on a wall, put them on a screensaver, tick. They dumb. Where the EOS we believe in building an intentional culture. And we use that process of discovering the core values by looking at our top employees and going, what are the behaviours they actually exhibit? And then we kind of group them together and discover what those core values are and define them. And then the people analyzer, it's one of my favourite tools as well. It actually gets you to think without emotion, whether or not the person fits those core values, who very we use a very simple scoring system, which is a plus, a plus minus or a minus for the core values, where plus means most of the time they're actually exhibiting it. Plus minus means you're never quite sure what you're going to get, and minus means most time they don't. And when you do that with a team, when you've got a potential issue with a person, you really have to ask the question about, you know, are there plus? Are there plus minus? Are there minus? But then you always have to ask the why and what's going on. Is it us? Have we not really supported them, or is it that they're just not a core values fit? And the second part that people analyse is the GWC that Lina mentioned, which is, do they get it? Do they want it? They have capacity to do it. And so if you ask those the questions around the core values in the GWC, you get a very clear picture of what's going on. But then you have to look deeply as a leader and go and why is that like? Was it? Is it their their issue? Is it our issue? What can we do to either bring them back up, or are they just never going to be a right fit for the organisation?

Lena Ridley  22:38

And there's also at the bottom of the people analyzer, that little bit that I love is the bar. So the leadership team is consciously deciding what the minimum and acceptable standard for the business is, because if we like someone and we're making excuses for them, and the leadership team can call each other out to say, hey, we agree that this was our minimum acceptable standard. So what the issue here?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  23:06

Yeah, it's great. It's a great tool, and I've used it a lot, even in businesses. Have Been doing EOS for a number of years. You know, as soon as we think we've got a people issue, bring the people on the riser out, and it starts to uncover the real core issue, what's actually going on underneath it. Okay? So, yeah, core values, as I said, done, right? I think they're superb, and I think it's always really interesting, because when we go through the process with clients with they may have core values, and we're not going to try and, you know, throw the baby out with the bath water, but even going through the exercise I just described, it gets them to really think about where they might have come from and whether or not they actually are right or are they even the right language? Because sometimes it's a little sometimes we make tiny little tweaks to what we're in the existing core values. But because we've done the exercise as a team, they're talking in a language, it's a slightly different and then you see this connection. It's like, ah, that makes it's the same essence, but it makes more sense now. Absolutely. Cool. Okay, so people analyzer definitely, and the core values definitely been a game changer. And in terms of the you've been working with a few clients who's a What? What do you think you've seen as being the biggest game changer for them?

Lena Ridley  24:11

Think it's the acceptance or the real life, the realisation first and then the acceptance that their role, you know, as as the leadership team goes, so goes the rest of the organisation. And bringing it back to, you know, if you are, are concerned about an issue in the business, how are you impacting that issue to perpetuate Why is it not? Let's explore why it's resolved, and is it something to look inward first? Is there something that we need to change as a leadership team or do as a leadership team so that that issue kind of either melts away, becomes less of an issue, or allows us to be able to deal. It in an effective way, so then it goes away permanently. So I think that that's been the biggest realisation first is that, you know, as goes leadership team, so goes the rest of the organisation,

Debra Chantry-Taylor  25:13

Yeah, and it's interesting sometimes, when you work with clients here, the leadership team has almost just been there, almost by default. They've never really given great thought about what the leadership to, what the leadership team needs to look like from a structure point of view, and then whether or not they actually do the right role. I had the most beautiful, beautiful example of this, where I was working with the business have been going for 30 odd years, and we went through the accountability chart and the focused as we always do, and we put up the main functions. We had sales and marketing, operations, finance and admin. And then we went around the table and said, right, so now we've defined these roles, and we know what their accountabilities are. I want you to tell me what you want to do. And the ops guy kind of very tentatively put his hand up and said, I want to be doing sales and marketing. It's like, okay. And that was a conversation that had never been had in 30 years, because, you know that he'd always been just the ops guy, and then the and then on the converse side, the sales and marketing guy said, I think I'd really enjoy doing operations. And so this was a conversation that, where would you have that conversation normally, like you, wouldn't you just keep going in the same role? And so we went through the GWC, and we went through and we actually realised that they were both capable of doing either of those roles, but there was a real passion for the want in the other role. And so we switched roles. And so we literally had the sales and marketing guy go into operations, the operations guy going to sales and marketing. For one of them, it turned out fantastically, and they were suddenly in their absolute element, and it just completely changed the organisation. For the other one, they decided down the track that it wasn't for them, and they moved on, which it's not always a bad thing. I think we always feel like people leaving is a negative, but sometimes it's the best thing that can happen for the business and for the person you know.

Lena Ridley  26:43

Gone are the days where people stay at the same place for 40 or 50 years or their entire career. Yet we get so angsty about people leaving, or we want to play a blame game somehow in either direction, and just nobody wins healthy.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  27:03

So why do you think people turn to EOS like you? Obviously know why you did as an organisation, but you know the clients that come to you, what are the what are their frustrations? What are the things that they they realise it's not quite right, and they go, we need some help with this.

Lena Ridley  27:17

Yeah. So certainly, what I'm seeing from within my own clients at the moment is very typical of the frustrations around hitting the ceiling. You know people. So I have a people issue, I don't know how to resolve it, or I have multiple people issues, I don't know how to resolve it. Our culture feels toxic, even though our purpose is really clean, the visionary driving the business forward to a certain level of growth, but feeling really unsettled by what they think is chaos below them, wanting somebody to help them sort it out, but being very aware that they hate process and like, hey, you know, as the visionaries do, we're going to get all these things done and we're going to implement that idea, and they're quite successful, and the business grows and but there's no process and there's chaos below them. So I've definitely got a couple of those clients at the moment, or trying to do too much. So people, multiple people trying to sit in the same seat, that's an interesting one, because that just slows you down so much as you as you know, or just not letting others or not letting go, so thinking that I must be there managing that person to be successful, whereas I've got one client at the moment, who is feeling like but the person that's actually sitting in that seat is more than capable. So the it's not a right person right seat, it's actually the owner letting go.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  28:54

And I think EOS gives you the tools. It takes a bit of time, but I think if you the talk that gives you the visionary and the owner the tools to see that this person is capable. It builds trust, it builds that accountability. And then eventually they can kind of go, okay, this person is the right person. And I absolutely can let go. It was around trying to do too much. I think that we were always talking about the less is more or less, but obsessed. And I the amount of businesses that I see when they come in, and it's like, So what's important to you? And they've got all these different priorities, and it's often driven by the visionary who's got all these crazy ideas, but they're all working at ridiculous hours trying to get all this stuff done, and nothing gets finished. And it's just an overwhelm that you see happen, isn't it?

Lena Ridley  29:33

Yeah, absolutely. I'm working with one business at the moment, and there was a couple of things that happened really quickly in the process. So when it came to articulating what your sort of purpose, cause or passion was as a business that had it nailed in couple of minutes, which was great, because it's so reflective of that business and what it does in the community. Um, and then we move forward to the 10 new target, and the leadership team almost spoke in unison. And that 10 year target was articulated to me in about 32nd by all of them at the same time. And then reflecting on it, you know, come bringing that break down to what they were struggling with as their issues in the day to day. I'm completely at odds with what they're very clear on as their pen you target so to help them understand that that the gap that we need to bridge that's really powerful, and I'm really looking forward to seeing them on that journey and helping them out.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  30:43

There's such a joy. I certainly get a great joy from seeing those kind of light bulb moments, and then seeing the team kind of get behind it, and seeing the changes that they make, and then obviously the results they get at the end of it, which is always fantastic. Okay, so you're obviously now working as a EOS implementer. I know that you cover the whole of the sort of east coast of of Australia. You're based in Sydney, from a top tips and tools point of view. I always like our listeners to kind of walk away with some top tips and tools. They can go, hey, I can go and try that in my business right now. I can have a think about that. What would you be? Be your three top tips or tools Lena?

Lena Ridley  31:15

Don't forget about the EOS life. That's probably my biggest one, you know, the the tools themselves and the model so practical, and a whole lot of things that you can implement into your business. But then when you elevate those tools to the EOS life, which is, you know, doing what you love with people you love, making a huge difference being compensated appropriately with time for the passions and, you know, time for hobbies. It actually takes bravery to take those intentional steps you build that for yourself, whether it's as an EOS implementer or a business owner or, you know, so So I would say, don't forget about that. You know, read that book as well.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  31:59

Yep, it's a great, great book, very easy read, and it really does, as you said, it still talks about the EOS tools, but it's about actually being more intentional with your own personal lives, that you get more of what you want, not just from the business, but from your life as well.

Lena Ridley  32:11

Yeah, top 10. All right, keep revisiting that accountability chart. I really struggled as a business owner implementing that accountability chart and had, you know, and it's okay to do iteration after iteration after iteration of it, because it's not designed to be static, designed to move and live and breathe with the rest of the what's on your your VTO. But that just quickly.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  32:41

That's an interesting one, though, isn't it? Because I think that, you know, if you think about traditional kind of organisational structures and things, that they are kind of set in stone, and when somebody leaves, you just replace that person. And sometimes that goes on for years. What I love about the accountability chart is it is a living, breathing document, and it is designed to be revisited every 90 days, and go is it still right now? Often it will be, and that's fine, but sometimes it isn't, because as a business grows or changes direction, then the it's natural that the structure should have to change to adjust that. And I think that it's, you're right as a business owner, it feels like, well, but that's we're changing a lot, and it's like, yeah, but for the greater good.

Lena Ridley  33:16

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And I think the third one for me, I mean, we've talked about core values and people analyzer, which I absolutely love, but the data component of the EOS model. It's not just because my background comes from financial services, but I loved data as particularly as the visionaries. So for business owners, love your data because it helps you actually paint that journey and see that journey, and see the possibilities, because you can elevate what that data tells you, and then all of a sudden you have a story and you have a picture. And that, in and of itself, is freeing, I think so.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  34:01

Yeah, well, it also, I mean, there's a but there's also famous quotas. And it's like, if, if we have data, let's go with the data. For we have opinion. If all we have is opinions, let's go with mine. And I mean, that's often the case with the CEO. We can be quite our vision with can be quite persuasive. We can bring people, but we should do this, and I can tell you exactly why. Whereas when you actually bring it back to data, it does force you to look at what's really going on. And I know that I always thought that I wasn't a big data fan, but actually it's great because it's it really drives that business, and it means you can see you start to learn what levers to pull. I've been rereading the book fireproof, which were my favourite books, which is about a law firm over in the US who worked with Gina Whitman, and they can predict within point zero, 1% what their revenue will be every quarter and every year. And that is because they have nailed their data, and they know exactly what the levers are that either slow the business down, speed the business up, and can work with it, which means that they're able to be more in control of their business.

Lena Ridley  34:58

Yeah, absolutely. And in. Graders love data as well, right? The scorecard is integrators, best friend, and so they love that. But then, you know, the measurables that come from three pictures and things like that and and what the data can help you build as a vision is great for visionaries too.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  35:16

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so it's a quick recap so the EOS life. Don't forget to live, the EOS life. And if you haven't got hold of a copy of that book, you can grab it from Amazon, or you can ask one of our EOS implementers to give you a copy of that that really is about making sure we've got the balance, and I hate the word balance, but we've got the we're looking at both holistically. We're looking at the business and our personal life as well. Keep revisiting that accountability chart as the business changes, the structure absolutely should change, as there's nothing wrong with revisiting that on a regular basis and then the yeah, don't forget the data. There's a whole book on data by EOS and the data components. Even if you think you don't like numbers, when you actually start to get into it, you'll realise that it can be game changing for the business.

Lena Ridley  35:54

Yeah, exactly. It's stories, not number.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  35:57

Yeah. Beautiful. Okay, look, it's been great to talk to you. I really enjoyed sort of hearing about your journey, and especially that whole switch from being an integrative visionary, that sort of speaks volumes to me. And I think it should speak to people who are in their own businesses. Sometimes we have to recognise what are we really, really good at, but more importantly, what are we really passionate about? Because that's where we optimise value. If people want to get hold of you, how do they get hold of you?

Lena Ridley  36:20

So they can look up eosworldwide.com/lena-ridley and they can connect with me in that way. I'm also on LinkedIn, and people can connect with me there.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  36:35

Too Perfect. We'll make sure that those links are actually in the podcast notes for people who are listening in. Thank you very much for sharing your story and your time with us. I really appreciate it.

Lena Ridley  36:43

My pleasure. Thank you.