Why Fast-Growing Companies Need Integrators: Lessons from 20+ Business Transformations

What does it really take to scale a business?

In this episode of The Scalability Code, Matt Haney speaks with EOS Implementer Amanda Matthews, who shares her journey from a 15-year career at Capital One to helping entrepreneurs build scalable, high-performing companies.

After transitioning into the restaurant industry and helping grow a multi-unit business from 6 to 21 locations, Amanda discovered the power of structured execution through EOS. Now, she works with leadership teams to implement systems that improve alignment, accountability, and growth.

This episode dives into:

•  The difference between visionaries and integrators—and why both are essential 
•  How to create repeatable processes that drive results 
•  Why leaders struggle with accountability and difficult conversations
•  Practical ways to improve team performance and execution
•  The EOS tools that help businesses scale with clarity and confidence 

Amanda’s story also highlights how pivotal life moments can reshape career paths and open the door to entrepreneurship. 

If you're a founder, operator, or leadership team member looking to scale your business more effectively, this episode delivers actionable insights you can apply immediately.

Feeling stuck in your business?

It’s ok. We’ve all been there… You simply don’t have time for vision and growth. You feel frustrated, anxious, and stuck because goals aren’t being met, processes aren’t followed, and your team isn’t on the same page. Time after time, you’re putting out fires only fast enough for the next one to pop up.

Get OUT of the Sh*t Show 

Let’s build your team and guide them to the next level.

Transcript

Amanda Matthews 0:00

I went off to Capital One, 15 years executive there, and then had a benign brain tumor. like, oh gosh, I've been doing this job at Capital One. I'm head of hr. I love it. But it's also, now, I've done it for several years in a row, and now I see the process and it feels repetitive I And around that same time, happened to get married to an entrepreneur, a raging visionary of the most classic creative sense, a big restaurateur And I ran off to join that circus

Speaker 0:28

Welcome to The Scalability Code, the podcast that helps you get out of the sh*t show and start growing your business. And now for your host, Matt Haney.

Matt Haney 0:37

Good afternoon everybody. Thanks for joining us again for another episode of the Scalability Code. Today I'm joined by Amanda Matthews. Amanda is an EOS implementer up in Dallas, Texas. Amanda, thanks for joining us.

Amanda Matthews 0:51

Hey, super happy to be here with you, Matt.

Matt Haney 0:53

Awesome. So we start the same way. Every conversation I have with every person on here, we're all entrepreneurs. That's one common theme about everyone that joins us, and we're all rushed to give our introduction anytime we meet somebody. What do you do? What's your thing? How it's like go, go, go. Today, that's not the case. Today. We have, time to go back and think and talk and discuss. And the first part is to go back. For you to go back and think about your journey as an entrepreneur yourself, and more importantly, or as equally as important, how you got here and who inspired you and someone around you that. You saw, whether it be as a young person or as an adult that, spurred your curiosity into entrepreneurship. I actually had one of my first bosses on a few weeks ago, which was awesome. And he was one of the guys that spurred me into entrepreneurship. And it was cool to be able to tell him, Hey, you are one of the people that, made me curious about being an entrepreneur. So I don't know anybody come to mind? Any stories, anything that you can recall?

Amanda Matthews 1:56

Well, it's funny, uh, you've caught me on a day that later today I'm presenting to the University of Texas' Entrepreneurial Club, uh, or group of students interested in entrepreneurship'cause there's not like a degree there yet for that in your great city of Austin. And, it talks about the spectrum that people, a continuum of entrepreneurship. Either they are. Kind of like on the solopreneur, self-employed side of entrepreneurship. And then there are the true entrepreneurs, the, you know, Oprah Winfreys, the Elon Musk, the Walt Disney's. Right. And I am very low on the entrepreneurial spectrum. I've been working in lots of entrepreneurial businesses my whole life, but I'm the right hand person kind of person. So I'm not the visionary. I do not have the big idea where I wanna go out. Conquer the, you know, the space in with that idea. I love to be around people with big ideas and help them execute it. Gimme that all day long you think of it, I'll go make it happen. So I am the integrator in the EOS visionary integrator duo that we talk about.

Matt Haney 3:03

I know that role I, I know that I know that role. I

Amanda Matthews 3:06

Yes, exactly. Yes. Right. So. When asked about like my entrepreneurial background, I always like to caveat that because what you're gonna hear is this pattern in my history of, and this person had this big idea and then we went after it and this person had this big idea and then we went after it. And it actually started there at the University of Texas. I was a big swing dancer back in the late nineties when swing dance was hot in Austin.

Matt Haney 3:36

So hot.

Amanda Matthews 3:37

Yeah, so hot. There was all this live music every night of the week, and as the trend started to fade, my dance partner at the time was like, we need to create a venue where people can go once a week and dance without relying on a live band. And so he came up with that idea. And I say with all love and affection, he was not the kind of person that people would trust giving their money to. So we partnered up and I collected all the money to get the memberships, et cetera, from all the fellow swing dancers. He went and had the big problem solving of where it was gonna be, et cetera. And we launched the Austin Swing Syndicate. 98 I think it was, and it's still alive today. Every Thursday night you can go to the Fed and dance in Austin. and yes, if you think about the acronym, the Austin Swing Dance Society

Matt Haney 4:28

Oh, okay.

Amanda Matthews 4:29

the Austin Swing Syndicate, sorry, Austin

Matt Haney 4:31

got it. That was

Amanda Matthews 4:32

thought that was real funny. No, it was super. We thought it was super hysterical

Matt Haney 4:36

It is still hysterical. I have a teenager. We love the opportunity to, to say potty words. Okay. and so yeah. That's awesome. So that was your. that. So that was in college, right? Coming outta college, Yeah, Yep. And that was your first sort of jaunt into entrepreneurship.

Amanda Matthews 4:52

That's right.

Matt Haney 4:52

grow up around entrepreneurs? Did you have any entrepreneurial

Amanda Matthews 4:56

a mom.

Matt Haney 4:57

people?

Amanda Matthews 4:58

No, I had a mom who was a teacher, a dad who worked for big corporations and worked in consulting companies. Now, my grandfather, the only story I had in my family of entrepreneurship was my dad's father, He kept trying to start his own business over and over again and failing. Right? So I didn't have like a super positive like history or lore in my family, but when I went off to Capital One, 15 years executive there, and then had a benign brain tumor. So the thing that really opened my eyes to a different way of working was this idea that like, oh gosh, I've been doing this job at Capital One. I'm head of hr. I love it. It's so fun. But it's also, now, I've done it for several years in a row, and now I see the process and it feels repetitive I didn't see a lot of space to move there. Had this brain tumor that helped me realize that like, hmm, is this what I wanna do for the next 15 years? And around that same time, happened to get married to an entrepreneur, a raging visionary of the most classic creative sense, a big restaurateur who could see concepts that were needed in the market before anybody knew that they were there. And I ran off to join that circus, as a way to explore. What it would be like to be in that entrepreneurial context. my ex-husband was that person for me that showed me that lifestyle. And it looked cool and it looked fun and it looked so creative. and then I came in to do the actual, like back of the show work. And it wasn't so fun. Wasn't so cool, but it was very hard work, but it was a blast kind of controlling your own destiny and I loved it. Fell in love with

Matt Haney 6:37

Oh, that's such a great story that you, uh, so you spent 15 years as an, as an HR exec, all at Capital One,

Amanda Matthews 6:45

in the late nineties. Capital One was just a little maverick credit card company shaking things up with data and I got to see that transition. Same founder still today, head of the company, one of the longest. Running founders in all of financial services, fin FinTech history, and I mean, he was a true founder, like would get up at our annual meetings and inspire us and maybe there were some tears involved and like he was the, the thing, the real, the real deal and I didn't understand at the time I was seeing was that entrepreneurial charisma. That I now see all the time. And he grew it from that tiny little credit card company to this big behemoth national bank while I was there. So I kind of got to see all those phases of transition.

Matt Haney 7:30

How many employees were there when you started and when you left? Do you know them? Have you done the math

Amanda Matthews 7:34

You know what, I have not done the math, but it must have, oh, at least 10 x the number of employees while we were there, you know,

Matt Haney 7:43

So did your HR department just keep going? I mean, just, just.

Amanda Matthews 7:49

like, let me not misportray my skillset here. I was not a classic HR person. I'm not like your payroll benefits type of person. I'm, I was the HR consultant, like people strategy work, So kind of you need one of us for every five or so executives, you know, helping them run their, and I ended up in the auto finance division, so I went through like five auto finance presidents while I was there being their HR consultant.

Matt Haney 8:15

I'm working, alongside a company that was just acquired, after 24 months of being in business acquired by Accenture. And we're going through the process of integration from this small, scrappy, entrepreneurial startup to Accenture. And it is for everyone, just the most mind blowing thing. but anyway, I wanna go back. I want to pick on, this transition from corporate, big business to entrepreneurship. And that transition must have been quite a change. Here you are working alongside people, professionals, adults, if you will, into a restaurant startup world. What in the world was that like?

Amanda Matthews 8:52

it was trial by fire. the company I went into, my ex-husband's company had six units at the time. We ended up growing into 21,

Matt Haney 9:00

and were they fast, casual type deals?

Amanda Matthews 9:01

Fast casual burger place. In fact, we tried to open two in Austin, which failed miserably. So lots of lessons learned and we opened like five other brands in, you know, over that time I was there, a couple that really worked and are still alive and most of the others failed. but yeah, just learning the difference between a knowledge worker base, right? We still had big, large call center employee base, a non-exempt or non salaried positions, but that is still not the same as having. A lot of transitional workers, restaurants are often people's first place to work. They're, you know, there for, to make the money and then they leave and they're inconsistent. It's not a career necessarily.

Matt Haney 9:40

they, they could not be further from the opposites from each other. That is fantastic. You have people that are seasoned finance executives and folks that's first job outta high school are in high

Amanda Matthews 9:50

And so I was really unprepared for like some, so I came in, oh, you know what we need? We need a scorecard for every restaurant. We need, to have measurements in place. We need to, um, do an employee survey to understand how people, like, I just tried to lay on all this corporate stuff. Like everybody was like, Missy, hold on. Cool. Your jets. We are

Matt Haney 10:12

cute. That's cute.

Amanda Matthews 10:14

We keep those numbers in our heads. Like there was all of this like, oh, okay, well let me take in the new environment I'm in. I did at least get us an employee handbook and some basic things that I knew we needed. but it wasn't until I discovered EOS that those same concepts I was coming in with from Capital One were literally written in the book Traction. and the way Gino articulates it doesn't make it feel corporate. It's the same tools. Just like hone down for what an entrepreneurial business needs. And that's, that's why I fell in love with it.'cause I was like, oh, this is what Capital One did. Just in a way that an entrepreneur doesn't feel like it's a big corporate mumbo jumbo.

Matt Haney 10:54

So I want to go back and ask you about the employee base and the restaurant space because, must have been quite challenging to hear some of the stories and some of the reasons for decision making and lack thereof. any crazy stories come up that you can recall back to where you were just like, holy shit. Where, what have I done? I went from dealing with people wearing shirts and ties to people flipping burgers, and this story is, is there anything that comes to mind?

Amanda Matthews 11:25

Well, I'm gonna disappoint you just slightly, but I will tell you a story. But the disappointment is that, you know, this was my ex-husband's company and one of the reasons I was attracted to him was because he was a very values oriented, like a good human right. So unlike a lot of restaurants that you hear the horror stories of the things that go on, the culture, there was already really solidly be nice people. Do good for the customer, like make your mama proud. Like all of that was already there. So some of the, like they had already outlawed drinking at work, right? So some of the crazy stories you get in restaurants are because there is a societal expectation that if you're working, you get a shift drink, right? Like that's expected. Of course you're gonna take a shot or two with your customers. So we didn't have that, or it was very limited. So some of the crazy. was not quite as high as I heard from other restaurateurs, but, we definitely had our share of especially like around a manager, they have a holiday party. They try to, you know, hold the hand of the employee. The employee says, no, thank you. Then the manager tries to pull the person into a closet and tries to make out with them, and you're just like. I mean, we did the harassment training. Like how is this confusing? And like some of that kind of stuff that you just, like the message just did not get across that you end up having to terminate really good

Matt Haney 12:51

former restaurant employee in my college days, I can attest to those stories happening And, my story I'll never forget, I was, working in Parks of Utah, which is a ski town. And I just knew the restaurant space and I walk in and back to the kitchen and one of the, line cooks is smoking a joint in his hand and blowing the smoke into the vin hood. And I was like, welcome to the restaurants. This is what happened. you

Amanda Matthews 13:20

My favorite.

Matt Haney 13:22

I'm like, this is crazy.

Amanda Matthews 13:24

My favorite was actually a big hiring mistake we made. We hired someone who gave us his brother's resume. Just put his name on it. So, all the references looked great, you know, had the perfect background. He interviewed really well and then he started saying weird things like, oh, I can get Willie Nelson to come play here. Like, yeah, I just need to send him a message. We're like, wow, that'd be great for our brand where live music plays, right? And he just kept saying these. Weird things and then never followed through. And then finally we started to get a little suspicious and one of our office people Googled this person, like a face lookup thing. And we realized, oh, we have the wrong, we have the wrong person. And then found out, yes, he stole$10,000 through stealing from petty cash And that's the kind of stuff you don't get back. And so, yeah, so different than some of the Capital One dilemmas that we faced,

Matt Haney 14:15

Which were totally, which were entertaining in themselves, I'm

Amanda Matthews 14:19

They were a little less on the scandal side. A little bit more on the oopsie.

Matt Haney 14:26

white collar versus blue collar. I was telling someone that we happen to have been, if you're in hr, you can appreciate this. We happen to have been at the Coldplay concert this summer where the, the CEO and the head of HR were, locking arms and, you know, had a, had a laugh, but also was like. Sad that like it drastically changed both of their lives in a, in a negative way. And relationships, you know, people got divorced and kids were, so anyway, I guess the moral of the story of all of that stuff is, do the right thing.

Amanda Matthews 14:55

People are gonna do the wrong thing, whether they're executives or whether they're, you know, flipping burgers. just, humans are humans and you have to really hire for the values.

Matt Haney 15:04

So get us to the EOS world that transition into the EOS implementer space. And what was the, was there A-E-O-S-I? You came across, everyone reads the book aha moment, but was there someone or something that said, wait, I can really do this and I'm gonna jump off and be an entrepreneur on my own? There's nothing more solo than starting a neo OSI business. I mean, that is. So low. So low. But I guess you have some people around you. Dallas has an incredible implementer community, but you still, you're out there, uh, you know, looking around going, all right, it's me. How did you get to that

Amanda Matthews 15:39

Mm-hmm. mentioned that the founder of the company was my ex-husband. So we decided we were gonna separate. We didn't tell anybody in the business, we needed to hire a president to replace what I was doing in the business. So we hire that person, he comes on board in, the first thing he does is hand us a copy of traction. I'm like, oh. So I start reading Traction and I'm like, oh my God. Like I said, I had this epiphany of, it's like all the best practices of Capital One in this bite-size thing. And, so we start kind of a self, he came from a company that, that ran on EOS, so we start picking and choosing. I didn't realize the tools of EOS. We weren't doing the whole thing, but we were doing the ones he liked. And we start implementing makes huge impact right away. And so I'm in love with this, this thing. I'm like, this is great. I don't even know there's a job called an EOS implementer. But it finally comes time. We do a year transition between me and this other guy. It's time for me to go off and figure out what I need to do next. And I'm talking to the person we use for branding and marketing saying, gosh, how much I loved EOS and what an impact it had on the business. And she said, you know, that's a job, right? And I was like, what? I mean, as soon as she said it. It's like my old coaching and helping executives have difficult conversation piece with Capital One for years. That's my shiny spot. Like if I had a shiny, unique ability, it is how to have difficult people conversations. So I get to now use that skillset. Across teams over and over, again as an EOS implementer. So I called a couple of people in the Dallas community, Shane Spillers also. He's one of our fabulous EOS implementers, one of our long timers who also has a restaurant background. He owns restaurants, and so I knew him from the restaurant team when I found out he was also an implementer. I called him and he did. A great, he was so kind and really took me under his wings and explained to me how it worked. And then Ann Chu is also another implementer in the Dallas area and she kind of gave me the day in the life version. So as soon as I heard their stories, I was raring to go and got signed up

Matt Haney 17:43

When did you do bootcamp? Do you remember what year

Amanda Matthews 17:45

February of 2024, so I'm just coming up on my two year anniversary.

Matt Haney 17:50

oh my gosh. Two years in a startup consulting business that revolves around entrepreneurs. What's been the hardest part?

Amanda Matthews 18:00

yeah, I didn't have the business development muscle. Like I had never had to use it. Right. I was at Capital One. There's no business development in that role. I was sales and marketing, running a business that needed to sell to others, but I'm selling a product service, not business development for my own. My shingle, my business, and it's a one woman show kind of thing. So there was lots of stumbles and I, I said I had a lot of enthusiasm without a lot of precision. So I feel like I wanna go back and call everybody I talked to in the first six months and be like, so sorry. That

Matt Haney 18:35

can I get a redo? really mean the words that came outta my

Amanda Matthews 18:38

Yeah, I, yeah. And like learning how not to be needy and be abundance mindset and how you're approaching things and learning truly just to. Help, which is so inherent in my nature, but I was thinking I have to do biz dev and so a couple of books that were really foundational, kind of like got me on the right path. And then I got a business development coach

Matt Haney 18:58

over those books. You gotta tell us what they were. What were the books?

Amanda Matthews 19:00

prosperous coach, Steve Chandler awesome. Helped me really understand that. Helping First mindset and then, unselling. By Kevin Casey. Be careful. There's two Unselling out there. One of them is a black cover and it says Kevin Casey. The other one is something else. Those two kind of like got me in the right mindset, got me the process I needed in place, and then I hired Brian McDonald as a business coach that gave me the like. Reps on the language and how to phrase what I was trying to say in a way that was more impactful. those things together, in the last four months of last year, five months of last year, my business just skyrocketed.

Matt Haney 19:47

Oh, that's so

Amanda Matthews 19:48

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Matt Haney 19:50

and is it referrals? Are you networking in the right places where people are thinking about you? Like what has been, I mean, as a fellow. Solopreneur that's built a small firm who still struggles. I mean, referral based businesses are the hardest business in the world to scale. They're the most genuine, and I think my conversion rates are incredible, but getting leads is, you know, it's challenging. So what do you think was the secret other than just hard effort and intentionality?

Amanda Matthews 20:18

I obviously track where my leads are coming from so I can kind of learn, right? Because it's definitely not do this and then this happens, right? there's no cause and effect that's very directly linked. but a lot of the conversations I planted in year one, they came to fruition. Somebody's like, Hey, I met somebody. Who I think needs you. Right. And it was a conversation with that connector that I had a year ago, you know, but it's, I learned to basically talk to people I liked. About the stuff we like to do. And so I stopped wasting my time going to a lot of networking events and just started talking to the people I actually wanted to talk to. I'm an introvert by nature, so it didn't really benefit me to go to big networking events'cause I just felt like I wanted to die a little bit on the inside after about 30 minutes.

Matt Haney 21:06

You're like, why am I here? This is not me. I'm not myself at best, but I'm here.

Amanda Matthews 21:11

I am here, I'm doing it. Check, check, check, and, um. Then, referrals from my own clients, right? I needed that time to work with them. They needed to see over the course of that year, the big impact it made. So those first year clients were like, oh my gosh, I now like reviewed my numbers. Like, and so when I said, Hey, who do you know? They're like, you need to go talk to so and so and so and so, And then there's a lot of luck, right? Other EOS implementers who I met. Happened to meet somebody that needed an implementer in Dallas. They remembered who I was and what I was interested in doing. and then a couple of warm leads came from EOS itself, where people go into the website and asked to be matched to an implementer. So it was really a sprinkling, there's no one thing that I could say that did it, but it was working all those channels. To be ready. my theme last year was luck. So I wanted to be super, ina Garten has this great book, her memoir, and I think it's Be Ready When The Luck Happens, is the title or something like that. And so I decided to adopt that and be like, I was gonna be so prepared the best EOS implementer, like, get my process down, get my facilitation down, like blow people away so that when I was lucky enough to get leads, I was gonna be

Matt Haney 22:24

execute on'em and deliver good work.

Amanda Matthews 22:26

Exactly.

Matt Haney 22:27

That's so great. I love that. and are you a very, data specific, data-driven linear, I mean, I'm guessing you identified as an introvert. Are you more processed than, than, I mean, are you able to go back? You mentioned tracking leads. Are you disciplined in that?

Amanda Matthews 22:43

Yeah. I mean it was into me at Capital One. We were a data analytical business. My strong point, like that is not my skillset, but. Data analysis and tracking data and making sure that there is a process in place. Like I'm a process nerd, like give me process all day long. and I'm an introvert in that big groups don't like, I can't get there, but like small groups like an EOS team.

Matt Haney 23:09

right.

Amanda Matthews 23:10

Totally my sweet spot. Like if I'm with a owner and their that team, that's a different, that's not extroversion. To me, that is like connectedness with people who were all there trying to achieve something. So the job itself feeds me a ton of energy. It was just those big networking events that I was like,

Matt Haney 23:26

Yeah, the idea of having to, you know, do speed dating in a bar, you know, with 60 people in a networking event where you're like, shit, I gotta go work that table. I just awkwardly worked this table. like, oh no, I get it. And I. Obviously knowing you a little bit, I know I can, I see how it lines up that you would be yourself at best in that small group setting during facilitation and engaging with everyone. That's awesome.

Amanda Matthews 23:51

One trick that I learned that helped me survive those, and I still go to them every once in a while, is I tell myself I only have to make three real connections with people, and then I can.

Matt Haney 24:00

Yeah.

Amanda Matthews 24:01

So if I do that in 30 minutes, congratulations, pat, on the back leave. If it takes me an hour to get there, then I'm there for longer.

matt-haney_2_02-06-2025_192447 24:07

You are listening to the Scalability Code. I'm your host, Matt Haney, founder of Sinclair Ventures, and we help visionary entrepreneurs like you get out of the shit show and focus on growing your business. We offer fractional COO and leadership coaching services that free up that brain of yours to focus on what's next. Learn more about us at SinclairVentures. com. Now back to it.

Matt Haney 24:27

You mentioned this earlier, and this is a big part of what I get to do every day is manage people and hold people accountable. so I'll say, what are some of the hardest parts you've experienced when it comes to leading people and some of the hardest things you see other struggle with when it comes to leading people?

Amanda Matthews 24:44

um, I would say, right, I'm a process person, so people do not think about their people process as a business process, and it is absolutely a business process, and it can be processized, right? People kind of think of it as like softer stuff, but literally it's like, how often do you meet with your people? What's your structure for giving feedback? What's your structure for giving recognition? you just have to put those structures in place, especially if you're not naturally oriented that way, and then you let your process work. Oh, I do this every two weeks. I do this every month. I do this every 90 days. And then you just work the process and it helps you avoid, Of avoiding the difficult conversations, and that's piece number two. I would say the primary thing that holds people back from being great people managers and people leaders is they, they think it's some kind of special different thing than telling someone that there's an error on their spreadsheet or that they didn't execute the, the, the widget the right way. It is no different. Like it is just you need to tell somebody when their values aren't aligned or when they're behaving in a way that's not working or they're being a pain in your rear end. Like all of that can be said in the same way, like, Hey, you may not be aware, but this isn't working for me and here's what I'd like to see differently. Is there any o obstacles to us getting there? Are we aligned on that? It can be so casual and people make it so serious. And so they avoid it. Like it just keep a casual tone. You're not trying to punish the person. You're not trying to shame them. And if you get yourself outta that mindset and assume this person is actually trying to probably do their best, they may be feeling miserably, but let me help a brother or sister out and like tell them. I think you're trying to do great, but it's not actually working, so let's get you there. Those kind of shifts in the tone make a huge difference.

Matt Haney 26:42

I had an instance this week with one of the leadership team members, in one of the companies I work in and it's the visionary, classic visionary. He happens to be an engineer, but he's very visionary minded. And then another engineer who runs people ops in this engineering business we were re-pivot and changing the operating structure within the engineering team. this particular director of operations is very good at project level work and very good at understanding and empathizing and helping solve problems and remove roadblocks but very good in the business. But when we asked him to think on the business and help us reformat some of the things he stalled out. And the visionary was frustrated by it. How can you do this? Not to him. He's saying this to me. How can he be so good at this, but fall so flat on some of the other things? And I said, wait, time out. He's really effing good at this stuff. That's where we really need him right now today. Let's coach him up to do some of the other things. And if you and I happen to be really good at the operating structure line, you know, build out and framework, then let's help him out, like you said, help a brother out. If he's crushing it and turning all of our projects to green lights instead of red lights, let's not bang him over the head with the fact that he can't quite get the full suite of details done. And it was just, to your point, it's that conversation of not leading with shame. And not intentionally, not leading with your emotions is probably a better point. It's like if you can step outside of it and go what's really happening holistically, he's really doing great things. So it's a good point for you to say like, they're trying as best they can. If we can understand and empathize with them and give them the olive branch to help, it's gonna go a long way.

Amanda Matthews 28:17

Right, and the conversation's a lot easier because you're, you're not going in with anger and irritation at the person for not being what they are currently not. My mom always had this great saying that she married my dad because he was an elephant, meaning he was reliable and family oriented and trustworthy and solid. So she couldn't get mad at him when he didn't behave like a lion.

Matt Haney 28:39

right.

Amanda Matthews 28:40

And so it's kind of the same thing, like if you've hired this person to be a lion, then don't get mad at them when they're not an elephant or vice versa. You have to take people for what they bring,

Matt Haney 28:52

what a great analogy too. It's like if you want the one thing that you want, and we all have our shortcomings, but when you lead with who you are at best and what you do, then it's, it's perfectly evident to a lot of us, not everyone, that that's your superpower. That's your unique skill. That's what makes you the person. And when you hire that person. And they do 90% of the stuff. Excellent. You're like, this is the best, this is the best thing ever. Everyone looks like a hero. Great frit, right seat, right person. Bang, bang, bang. Scorecard deal. Love it. but I want to go back to something you hit on'cause I think it's really special. It's in my EOS journeys with all of my clients, the most impactful thing for me, one of the most, I think the accountability chart as an operator is probably pretty fucking amazing. But what I do think is very, very special for us and all the clients I've worked with is quarterly conversations. Having these quarterly conversations in regularity with a very clear and concise format, disarms everyone, it creates the opportunity for genuine feedback. On a scheduled and structured cadence, that's not a surprise. It's like, I know it's coming up when you schedule it, it's not a reprimand. It's a genuine conversation. Are we plus? Are we minus? Are we plus minus? And it's just been magical for all the clients I've worked with.

Amanda Matthews 30:11

I am thrilled to hear that because I agree. It is to me like the perfect remedy to a lot of people problems, and it's like, it's a process, right? If you put it on the calendar every quarter and you fill out the prep work form, then you're ready and you have the right kind of conversation. Doing that alone, if you did nothing else, you'd be solving 80% of your

Matt Haney 30:33

So many problems are solved by the intentionality, and we also do, uh, with one of my clients in particular, we do a performance review and then we do a compensation review. So we're going to review you on your performance. We're not gonna talk calm. We're not, we're not even gonna come up. So, and by the way, they know it. They know that they know we're not talking dollars. We're gonna talk performance first, and then we're gonna talk about, any raises that would come up or any variable conversations or anything. And I think that makes a huge difference. A lot of people don't do that. I have seen more companies do it the other way, which is review and money. Same conversation. Let's make it really freaking awkward for us to look across the table at each other and be like, 3%, 2%, little 1%, five eight. Like, oh, it's hard.

Amanda Matthews 31:17

So I a hundred percent agree with you, right? Capital One Comp and performance, same conversation. So everyone's just mad about everything because you could be told you're great and not happy with your comp, so you don't get any of the benefit of the happy conversa. It, it just causes a lot of frustration. I had an old dear friend, his name was Dick Groat. He was one of the very first performance management gurus and. He wrote a book where he talked about like, you should separate out those two things. So I was like, wow, that really blew my mind. And then I was just talking to an old friend of mine from Capital One who started his own company and he has separated out comp and performance and it was working so much better for them because. So if I could add, I'm gonna add a check mark next to Matt's perspective on that, because I think if more companies could separate those as two separate conversations, two separate processes in the business, the messages you want to land in the quarterly conversation or the annual review, or actually gonna land because they're not then also tied to all the eco and the Maslow hierarchy of needs and everything that goes along with your compensation.

Matt Haney 32:25

Right. No, that's exactly right. And, and I, listen, I don't get credit for that, but I do think it's one of those things that I'll continue to move forward with clients, which is most of the folks I've, you know, in the last eight years of doing this and 15 so engagements, most of them don't have a regular format. And if they're operating on EOS, the tool is known. The tool is not always used if

Amanda Matthews 32:47

And it breaks my heart when team don't really adopt it. Do you have any tips? I would love to hear how you have moved a team from like the theoretical use of the quarterly conversation to the actual intentionality and real use

Matt Haney 33:01

the first part of scheduling, the first part of holding a review is scheduling a review. I mean, that's the, the hardest part. It's like, like literally just get something on the calendar. If we show up and talk about nothing for three minutes, in five minutes, at least we're having a review. starting the process is the hardest part. I use this analogy all the time. I was in college many, many times the day before the paper's due, and I've got a blank sheet of paper. And I'm like, how do I get started? I've got a blank sheet of paper. You type the first word, you type the first sentence, you type the first paragraph. You just have to get started. And that's the same thing with performance reviews. If you haven't done them, we as outsiders, an implementer, an integrator, get to come in and say, this is important. It's not inherent to business operators, entrepreneurs, visionaries, that have owned businesses for years if they haven't been doing it. It's just not part of their culture. So there needs to be some sort of catalyst and we, you and I tend to be catalyst and entrepreneurs wor entrepreneurs worlds. So just starting it and not feeling like you have to get it perfect is the best part of having reviews in my opinion. What do you think?

Amanda Matthews 34:06

Yeah, I'm there like, like I said, basically that's the process answer, right? Put the process in place and then it's gonna force the mechanism of doing the thing that you think is important to do. I think the other piece of it is those visionaries are so self-directed, so self-motivated. I have a couple of visionaries that are just like irritated by the idea of the why would you have to give feedback or performance reviews or whatever. Shouldn't they just want to do it better because that is who they are. They can't see this idea that. The people who are not built that way need the attaboys. They need the redirection, they need that external motivation sometimes to get on the right path and do the right thing. So I think that's the other piece of this is it's really that integrator, the person like you who has to believe in it to help then, and it's a little bit of blind faith for somebody like the visionary, or it's one of those places where it's like, Hey, stay in your visionary seat. You don't have to worry about this stuff'cause you're not gonna have to do any of these things. But the company needs it.

Matt Haney 35:08

Yeah, be aware and be supportive. and I always say

Amanda Matthews 35:11

have some blind faith until you see how it actually impacts the

Matt Haney 35:14

yeah, and don't, you know, don't go do an end round and say, this is ridiculous. I'm not doing it. You have to be supportive of it. Okay, so I'm gonna pivot to you here. So give me your, and you cannot do, too, too off limit limits topics here, but your favorite tool or most recent tool to teach in session. That cannot be quarterly conversations or accountability chart. Those are the two you

Amanda Matthews 35:35

Okay. Okay. Uh, so my favorite. Tool, which is actually not technically in an EOS tool, but I'll say it's my favorite way to apply the concept of rocks. You know, again, process person, project manager, background. I talk about rocks as just their projects. We've all agreed have to get over the finish line. And like any good project manager, if you own a rock, you have to create a plan to execute the rock. And so this idea that you are, if you own a rock that's 90 days long. You've gotta put in maybe once every two weeks, some milestone that you're gonna achieve on that particular date, so that when you are doing your weekly level 10 meeting and saying on track or off track, you're saying it because it's true, because you've actually hit your milestones and they are on track. what a lot of teams get confused by is they're answering the question, is it on track for me to get done by the end of the 90 days? Well. That's just a procrastinator's dream, right? If you just, answering that question up until the night before the paper's due, it was on track up until the night before the paper was due, when it was clearly off track. And so to help teams circumvent that, I really strongly encourage the integrator to require the team to create these milestones with specific dates that they all share with each other so that they're better able to keep themselves from procrastinating through the quarter.

Matt Haney 37:01

I call milestones visual accountabilities.

Amanda Matthews 37:05

oh, I love that.

Matt Haney 37:06

Because think about it when you see it up there in an L 10, and I use 90 point IO pretty religiously and have for years when they've made all these improvements using a OI AI tools associated with 90 and EOS, which is awesome because I don't know if you've, if you use 90, do you have

Amanda Matthews 37:24

Yes. A lot less. Most of my, most of the teams I work with

Matt Haney 37:27

Love it. So you set five milestones there, right? And if you miss one, it's gonna change the rock to off track. And then that forces, that visual accountability to showing you and everyone else, hey, we're off track. And by the way, I a little bit of a strategy here that it's not uncommon for my rocks if I take rocks with a particular client to be off track. And I'm doing that by leading. By example. Hey, I'm not on track. I don't sit there to be perfect. I could be on track, I may not be, but there are times when my rock is red and it's like I'm off track. I need some help, or I haven't gotten it, or I've been busy doing these three other things because there's nothing worse than having a teacher that has all the answers. It's like sometimes you want to have some vulnerability, you wanna have some humility, but that visual accountability, forces me to get back on track too. So I think using a tool. and milestones are great and it's gotten so much better. You know, that being able to insert a rock into chat or into an AI generator or to give me milestones, again, writing milestones, the hardest part is writing the first. Paragraph of what a milestone would even be. So I think taking some of those limits out and those frustrations make the rock riding much more effective and just easy.

Amanda Matthews 38:48

Yeah. Well, and I'm totally taking away the nugget of suggesting to my team to use AI to write the milestones, and then they just apply their human understanding to fix it a little bit and set the right dates for them.

Matt Haney 38:59

right, right.

Amanda Matthews 39:00

I, I suggest AI for lots of things, but I hadn't suggested it for that yet, so thanks. I appreciate that.

Matt Haney 39:06

and, and I'll tell folks like, if you're having a block, why don't you and I get on a call and we'll record the call and we'll talk through. literally, it takes 15 minutes. Let's talk through the rock. What do we need to do? We need to do this. When do we do that? It'd be great if we could do about this date, Copy transcript, drop into chat, gimme the milestones and the dates. It's done in seven minutes, maybe the whole thing. So I think using those things to just get forward. And then I always encourage people like, everyone wants to. Do well and hit goals, but the outcome is, is ultimately more important than the process. Don't let the process be more important than the outcome, meaning that we're constantly stressed about the fact that we're off track. It's just there to help us make sure we don't wake up the day before the due date and have a blank paper.

Amanda Matthews 39:52

Great. I

Matt Haney 39:53

So, yeah.

Amanda Matthews 39:54

one of the presidents of Capital One Auto Finance that I really adored, he had this concept that the burden of the administration should never outweigh the benefit of the exercise. And so I always try to keep telling my teams that is like, Hey, we cannot let the administration of whatever the thing is that you guys are trying to. Instill be so burdensome that it's outweighing the value of what you're gonna get at the end. So that simplify thing is

Matt Haney 40:22

A perfect example of that is the quarterly conversation. That's, I mean, is a perfect example of that quote, and I love that saying. So don't let the burden of the administration essentially outweigh the outcome.

Amanda Matthews 40:34

Outweigh the benefit. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Because, you know, I'm, I'm a natural complexifies sometimes, and he had to tell me that, All the bells and whistles you just built in.

Matt Haney 40:43

If there's a step, you can add it.

Amanda Matthews 40:45

Yeah, I, I enjoy like getting it all locked down into the in details, so sometimes I have to

Matt Haney 40:50

Well, let's pivot here in the last few minutes. Tell me what you do outside of, chasing entrepreneurs. Like what keeps you, motivated and driven, to go take those sales calls and those 90 minute meetings and those awkward networking? What do you do to get energy outside of work?

Amanda Matthews 41:05

I'm still a big dancer, so if you, swing dance, any kind of partner dance, I love doing. I do some volunteering with the Lewy Body Dementia Society, so I am a, what's called a Lewy buddy, so it's the second most common type of dementia after Alzheimer's, which is what my mom passed away from. And so they pair me up with other women who have parents with Lewy body dementia, who are trying to help be the caretaker for their parents so that I can kind of be a, a listening person for them, but also maybe give some

Matt Haney 41:33

unpack this. They're going through an issue you've already been through, which is dealing with a parent having Lewy body. Tell me about Lewy body. I'm obviously very familiar with dementia. And my best friend's mom just passed away. I've struggled with it, but I don't know about Lewy body specifically. What, what makes it

Amanda Matthews 41:49

Yeah, it, the unique thing about it is, you know, Alzheimer's is, people think about losing your memory, right? Lewy body dementia. it is a little bit more about losing your, like executive function, being able to make good choices, follow a recipe, kind of take things in their logical order, things that you can start feeling really overwhelmed. It is also characterized by a lot of hallucinations and delusions. So there's a lot of, living in a world which. You see spiders crawling up the wall, or you believe the FBI is coming to get you. and so it has that, those other components to it. it's actually linked closely to Parkinson's, so they can also have some parkinsonisms in terms of their physicality, freezing lack of facial expression. So yeah, it's a kind of a different beast. But the deterioration of the person that you knew is the same. The gr the grief and the loss process is same. A little bit of the. how you deal with it and the tools that you have at your disposal are slightly different,

Matt Haney 42:45

But that's so sweet. So you meet with other people that are struggling with this. You're obviously empathizing and understanding what they're going through'cause you've been through it yourself and it's nice to have someone across the table that's been there.

Amanda Matthews 42:56

Yes, absolutely. Just to be like, am I crazy or do I, is this the hardest thing ever? And you're like, yep, you're not crazy.

Matt Haney 43:02

Yes. You're not crazy. And yes, it's

Amanda Matthews 43:04

yeah. Uhhuh.

Matt Haney 43:06

well, I'm gonna ask you this last question before we conclude. And this is one you're gonna have to hold yourself accountable to. What is your, um, what is a goal? that you have for the remainder of 2026 so that when we meet again, we can look back and, Say, did we hit our goal? What's a goal you have for

Amanda Matthews 43:25

Oh, that's great. Um, I'm, I. I have a goal that for the year 2026, I will have a really well developed process for from client introductions all the way through in terms of tracking. Who did I ask for an introduction? What happened when I got the introduction? How did like, and is there a pattern there of like, what's the right way to make an introduction, you know, for those client referrals and things like that? So I am doing the things, but I don't yet have the, like in my HubSpot, I don't have all the steps in place to make it automated.

Matt Haney 44:04

The customer customer acquisition journey, or customer acquisition pipeline of nurturing them

Amanda Matthews 44:10

from, yeah, specifically from client referral. I have the other ones. I just don't have the client referral piece.'cause that's now starting to be a bigger pipeline for me. So

Matt Haney 44:20

So you want to have it documented. You want to have it

Amanda Matthews 44:23

I wanna have it documented. I wanna have the communication step steps in place and we are actively using it. We being me and my assistant to help make sure, like I don't wanna go back to a client who's already introduced me to someone. And ask again, like right now, I'm keeping all that in my head and I need to make sure that that is someplace that I do that really well and,

Matt Haney 44:43

need to create it. You need to implement it and you need to measure it. Yeah. That's it. Okay. Your customer acquisition journey. Your customer acquisition platform, That's a good one. I have, thank God Ashley, who has worked with me for almost three years now is taking a lot of that burden from me, which is like,'cause I'll roll over and I'll go, wait, did I talk to Amanda? She's like, yes, you talked to her three months ago. Follow up set for 20, 25 days from now, it's in here. And, and I had to let go of the fact that I wanted it to be a certain way and in a certain platform. And she said, that's cute. It's in this platform. I own it. I've got it. If you need something, come to me. I was like, all right, all right, all right. You win. I'll stop asking you to put it to turn that apple into an orange. So, um,

Amanda Matthews 45:28

love that shows, shows growth on lots of levels there.

Matt Haney 45:31

I love it when she puts me on a place, I'm just like, on like another spouse. well, Amanda, it's been wonderful to have you today. I've really enjoyed getting to chat with you and have some conversations around, growing your own entrepreneurial business and working with various founders and business owners. I look forward to, um, continuing our conversations later on, and I'd love to have you back in for another episode.

Amanda Matthews 45:54

Yeah, that was really fun, Matt, and again, I learned a ton talking to you, so thanks so much.

Matt Haney 45:58

You're welcome. Alright, we'll see you next time on the scalability code.

Speaker 2 46:03

Thank you for listening to The Scalability Code. If you made it this far, please follow the show on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you next time on The Scalability Code.