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I introduced you to EOS® probably about three years ago.
Yeah. And I remember, you know, it’s it’s like it’s like kind of like recruiting for a religion. I was It’s not far off. I have heard it called a cult. I do not disagree. But, you know, I I slipped to you the book traction.
That’s true. You read it afterwards. You like
You’re like, “Oh, man. That like that that’s us.”
And that said, you started your company. I introduced you to one of my buddies, Tim Barrett. Shout out to Tim Barrett. Awesome EOS® implement.
Very awesome. And you literally started your company day one with an impletor. You had like an implement and I think two employees.
Four. But yes, four. Okay. All right. Yeah. You guys got
So tell me about you. You implemented EOS® and ran for about a year and a half as I guess kind of a solo VI duo.
Yeah, one man does it all. Tell me about implementation pre-integrator and kind of what led you to say like, yeah, I need to get an integrator in here.
Yeah, you know, it was a lot of that had to do with, hey, we’re getting really busy building houses, which is great. Yeah,
I don’t have time to do the organizational side of things. Okay. But you know starting off with the OS was huge because immediately everyone sees a road map. Everyone has clarity. Everyone’s like oh this is what is important. This is what we’re working on. This is how we’re doing things. The the accountability chart was like every time we would have Tim come in there be like an aha moment where it was like oh wow I’ve gone 10 years at a company and no one knew what we just accomplished in the first like you know the first quarterly. Yeah. That’s amazing. Like, oh, you do this and this and this and you do this and this, you know, like simple concept except when you’re trying to put pieces together and then it’s like, okay, who’s actually going to do this and you have something to go to and says, well, this falls in this category, so that’s this person.
Yeah. And everyone says, oh, that makes sense. That’s what ES that’s EOS® does. It’s like, oh, that makes sense. It should go here.
And so it it’s, you know, instead of having to reinvent the wheel, instead of having to like go back and forth on, well, I mean, I kind of do some customer service and I’m kind of this person. Well, this says you do PR, so I think this is all you. Oh, that does make sense. You know, it it’s kind of like that that that final vote of casting of like what what makes sense here.
Yeah. So, that was huge to start off the company like that. And then and then really did take our team and say, “Here’s our vision. Here’s what we’re going to be doing.” And now everyone instead of, you know, everyone’s on another island or running wild, they’re like, “No, we’re working together. We’re coming together to to decide what we’re actually going to do as a team.” And so team building wise, it was huge from the start.
Yeah. But then as you grow, you’re adding more pieces. You know, you need you need leadership team, you need department heads, you need clarity, you need accountability. All of a sudden, you know, as we’re growing and I’m trying to build the business and how can we actually handle, you know,
Yeah, this many bills and do I need another project manager and well, who’s going to talk to the selection coordinator and tell her how to do this, this, and this. Well, I can do some of that, but you know, some, you know, what is what does our hiring process actually look like? Am I just winging it every time? Well, no. We need to go back and like polish this up. Well, I used to have the time for to do that the first year. Now I just don’t.
Okay. So, what I think I hear you saying is, you know, when you were firing it, there was, you know, you just weren’t as busy with operations, right? You’re not building as many houses. So, did it take So, you were running for about a year as kind of a self-functioning both sitting in the visionary and integrator seat and felt like that worked for the first year.
Yeah. For our size and how many employees you really had and and
You know we don’t have a huge organization even now but
Also as you’re growing and scaling up
Things don’t work the same
And so it takes a little bit of a while to see that
But you also have to pay attention to that. Yeah. And if you don’t have the time to like review and see well how are things going and have those conversations and really dig down to the data
Because some of those red flags will pop up immediately but some won’t come up for six months and that’s where things started like kind of getting shakier and it’s like I’m missing things I don’t have the chance to review these things and so when that red flag does come up it’s like well I should have known this three months ago and I should have known to hire six months ago. What what so sometime within that you know from year one to year one and a half you know you either what what were you feeling or what were you experiencing that you said like
The business is working
This isn’t working for me in both roles I got to bring somebody in
I’ I’d say it’s the clarity and accountability like things were just getting muddy
You know and things were things that used to be in focus were getting out of focus and and that was kind of just basically happening throughout the departments you know and I didn’t have the chance like I need to go to this apartment and then you know like that’s this is now a bigger process of deciding what needs to be focused on first and that’s I mean there’s a reason there’s an integrator because it’s it’s a job and it’s like oh you know I don’t have it’s time to do another job yeah but this needs to happen and if we don’t people are getting discouraged things are you know even if balls aren’t being dropped
People are you’re losing some of that focus that people had and they don’t appreciate that and the more that happens and the more nothing changes yeah
People get frustrated Well, and and I remember you coming to me. We talked about a lot of that and at the time, you know, because we’re friends, right? Like we’re like we were already great friends. We’re even better friends now,
But at the time you kind of were like, ah, you know, I know you do this integrator role. I want to And you know, I was stepping into doing part-time integration. I I’ve got a lot of reasons that I wanted to do that and and believe that there’s a lot of value to that. It’s not the right fit for everybody, but what was it what was that like for you to kind of look at that through the lens of like, huh, could this work part-time? Do I need a full-time integrator? Like, what was that conversation like in your own mind?
Yeah. So, because originally I was like, how many, you know, how many days are you going to come? Is it five? And then it’s like, well, it can’t be five because essentially like if you’re here five days a week, you’re trying to do change five days a week.
Yeah. And we can’t change five days a week and we can’t do internal meetings five days a week. Sure. We have to build houses. We need to do our actual job. Yeah. So, it started making a lot of sense of like, yeah, we can only really do so much so fast.
Maybe it’s one day, maybe it’s two days. Like, what does that really look like?
And then it was, you know, who can actually do this role? And, you know, if I didn’t know you, it’s like, well, then who who can come in, have that talent level, have that skill set
And be part-time? That’s not a normal part-time person. Sure.
And I can’t have them be five five days a week. So, if it wasn’t a fractional integrator, if that didn’t exist, it’s like I’m not going to be able to find a part-time employee with that skill level and that knowledge base to do this job. Like, that’s just not a reality that, you know, part-time work does not come with the skill level that is required for the job. Like, that’s just not what’s going to happen. So, it really started making sense on that that we need a super talented person. Can we actually afford a full can we even afford a full-time really talented person?
And then, can our team even handle a full-time? And the answer was no, no, and no. So that that’s why fractional just made all the sense. Yeah. Especially I mean looking back now it’s like it made more sense than I even thought it would. Yeah. But those are the avenues. It was like yeah we can’t change that fast all the time.
No it used to drive me nuts because I did W2 for years like 8 n years something like that. And my ability to drive change versus an organization’s ability to absorb change were just at different levels. And it it drove me nuts because it’s like well I could do more of this. And I wound up just defaulting to, you know, work that you could pay somebody a a lot less for and they’d be a lot happier doing that than than myself.
Yeah. I remember our our first conversation about it where I introduced the idea to you. I remember seeing your gears turn and like,
Yeah, I’ll be honest. I know I need an integrator. I don’t know what somebody would do five days a week. Which was which was valid.
Yeah. And now I’m like, oh now now I would. I’m like I see. I mean, it may not last that long, but Oh, yeah. There’s there’s enough there which has been the fun part honestly of like oh let’s look at all these other things that actually need to get polished and that’s kind of where
You know I talk about things being out of focus
There’s things that I didn’t even realize were out of focus that
We started with yeah yeah no it makes sense how did you you know in in our journey and working with me like what has what has that been like what’s what’s surprised you about you know working in the the way that we work together where I’m there one day a week
It’s funny how little off topic we get.
Okay. Like we can talk about all the other things other than work any other time and we do. Yeah.
But when we’re in the office, it’s 99% it’s go time, which is kind of how I operate because I’m always saying if I’m going to like mess around, I’ll just go home. Like I don’t need to do it here.
But I mean that’s been fun of like we get to it, we dive in.
I mean I think our personalities mesh where there’s a respect level where like I know where you’re coming from. You’re not trying to get the win. You’re not trying to like pump yourself up or prove that you’re necessary. Yeah.
Because that’s for me this role was so critical that I needed someone I could immediately trust because if I’m feeling you out of who you are and how you operate and are you giving me good advice or are you just trying to like you know like an inspector who’s going to find some stuff? Are you just finding things to do or is this like actually matter and is your opinion based on what it should be based on or is this you know are is your view of this off?
So h you know having that insight from you at the beginning was like I can trust what you’re saying. I know your skill level is high enough where like you know what you’re talking about and you’ve been in similar industry so like you know what signs to look for and what what needs to happen you know immediately and what that priority list is going to be.
Yeah. And I think the one things I first appreciated was like oh you see exactly the same things I see which are not the surface level issues. It’s like no we need to go this this and this first and it’s like
Yeah that’s exactly what we need to do. And that I mean that was beautiful because it’s like they weren’t on my like top three list. The first three things you probably accomplished were not on my list.
Sure. And they definitely should have been.
Yeah. Well, it’s it’s funny you brought up kind of you know how how busy and you know when we’re working together it is it’s thick. We’re in it. That’s one of the things that I’ve loved about it because like you know if I was if I was with MDC Homes five days a week like I would not be a matched pace with you.
Oh I don’t think we could do it 5 days a week. We just burn out. That would be wild.
Well there there’s not enough work for that pace for me. For for you there is. But that’s what I experienced in in in other companies in that role is that the the visionary at times was extremely busy and extremely you know a lot on the plate but the actual integrator work I always wound up picking up other tactical other roles because you know there’s only only again only so much change only so much integrating only so much galvanization that needs to happen
Within an organization especially a smaller organization right like the size of the organization makes a big difference too.
Definitely. True. But yeah, so as as your company grows, what do you think, you know, do you do you see the do you see that growing into a need for a full-time integrator at some point for you? It’s really hard to see that,
You know. I It’s almost like
I could see us adding more time, you know, two days a week, three days a week, and then tapering it back down and having like a and almost like a wave of like it may go up and go down. But it’s hard to imagine it going to five days because at the end of the day, it’s like, well, we, you know, even if things aren’t broken, there’s maintenance needs to happen or there’s always things that, you know, are going to change.
Yeah. But what are you going to do for five days still? Like I don’t for us, even if we doubled in size,
Like unless you’re just going to start doing other department duties, there isn’t there just can’t I mean it just makes no sense in my mind how you would fill up your time in a meaningful way other than just taking on tasks that probably shouldn’t be yours.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Well, awesome. Well, I have really I love working at MDC. I you guys, it’s a great team.
Love being part of it. So, well, thanks so much for joining me. My pleasure.
