Things Needed to Grow

What do business owners need to grow beyond just EOS? 

Jonathan B. Smith, author of Optimize for Growth makes a point in his book that there are three things needed to succeed; an operating system, an executive coach and a peer group. Three simple needs needed to build your enterprise. 

Personally, I like EOS but any business owner needs an operating system to make all the moving pieces of their business function properly and effectively. An executive coach is the operating system for your brain whereas EOS would be the operating system for your business. An executive coach is going to have a separate set of tools that are designed specifically to help the individual visionary business owner overcome individual level challenges and achieve individual level goals. The third and last thing that you need is a peer group - business owners on the call. Being a business owner is freakishly hard, right? There's pressure from your customers, pressure from your employees and pressure from your family. You've got one hundred and fifty employees. That's one hundred and fifty mortgages and one hundred and fifty minivan payments riding on your decisions. That's a huge amount of responsibility. There is no replacing the camaraderie of fellow business owners who have been there and done that. The motivational speaker, Jim Warren, said “you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with” - If you want to build a fifty million dollar company, you need to surround yourself with people who have built fifty million dollar companies, and that's what you can gain from a peer group.

I am a trained executive coach. I have the tools to optimize your brain. Some of the tools that I use most frequently are EOS tools which apply to individual level concerns. For instance, the ideas, the framework, identifying, discussing, solving, and digging down to the root of the issue to solve the problem. I also recently joined Strategic Coach as a client. It is a peer group I wanted to be a part of. I am receiving executive coaching from a strategic coach and I now have access to all of their tools so it’s a win-win situation!

There are a wide variety of executive coaches out there. For those of you who aren't familiar with the coaching marketplace, the barrier to entry to executive coaching is about as tall as a sheet of paper. Viewed sideways, there is no barrier to entry. Anybody can call themselves a coach. It’s the same way you find any professional service provider - referrals and recommendations. Ask somebody who seems to be crushing it and odds are they're crushing it because they have a coach! Ask them who their coach is. If they're really good and their coach is really good, you're probably going to have to get on the coaches waiting list. So get on a few people's waiting lists and nearly every coach is going to do a free call. Personally, when I do a call with a business owner I simply begin coaching. The experience that you have on the phone with somebody like me is the experience that you're going to have in a private conversation. So to summarize, don't worry about certifications and all that kind of stuff, I personally don't think it necessarily matters. It's about results, not about some weird list of letters after your name.

Think about a college football player who practices all week long, eight hours a day, sometimes twelve depending on how rigorous he wants to be about going to class. To perform for three hours. Hours of practice only to play a three hour long game. Without an operating system or a coach, you don't have any time to practice. It's 16 hours a day, you're never practicing, you're always performing. You're always on the field. So with practice time being so limited and performance being so important, ask yourself, how could a coach help me? The mental hurdle to get over may not be as high as you think it is!

Three simple things… An operating system, an executive coach and a peer group. Optimize your growth!