The Scalability Code

The Road to Scaling is Paved with ROCKS | Rick Benton

• Matt Haney • Season 1 • Episode 37

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0:00 | 35:45

What happens when the exact framework you need to escape business chaos sits unread on your shelf for a decade? 

In this episode, Matt Haney sits down with Rick Benton, an EOS Implementer who spent 30 years scaling a high school DJ hustle into a massive audiovisual empire before exiting out of sheer exhaustion. 

Rick reveals why founders must embrace "rocks" to align their team, the addictive power of delegating, and why aiming for 80% perfection is the secret to a healthy culture. If you are ready to stop white-knuckling your operations, tune in. In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why ignoring the EOS framework cost a founder another zero on his exit.
• How to get your entire team to truly buy into company goals using rocks.
• Why treating mistakes as circumstantial rather than character flaws builds trust.
• The danger of using delegation as a punishment instead of empowering your team.
• Why AI will never replace a leader's ability to listen to what isn't being said.

CHAPTERS:
00:00 Welcome
01:27 Rick’s Entrepreneur Roots
04:05 High School DJ Hustle
04:58 Chaos to Exit in 2018
06:20 Finding EOS Afterward
07:25 What EOS Implementers Do
09:31 Rocks and Scorecards Buy In
12:20 Managing People Without Shame
16:42 Letting Go and Delegating
20:21 Delegate and Elevate Mindset
23:02 Visionary and Integrator Fit
27:30 Life Outside Work Travel
31:50 Closing Wisdom

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.

Rick Benton

now this business is multi-state, and during the week we're providing audiovisual services for corporate meetings and galas and conventions, planning for all of those events as well, coordination between different vendors and hotels and lodging and all that fun stuff. And on the weekends, I'm still sending DJs to bar mitzvahs and high school dances using all that pro gear, from the corporate stuff to turn high school gyms into festivals, We had entertainers, and I've lived Get Him to the Greek movie, where I've gone to other cities to say, "Come on, it's time to get on the plane." but on top of that, logistics, depreciation, vehicles, maintenance, quality control, warehousing, moving stuff in and out, and where is it going? And on top of trying to pay the rent and make payroll. It's driving me crazy. Every day is out of control. It's chaos. I love it, and I'm collapsing

Speaker

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

All right, here we are today, another episode of The Scalability Code. Today joined by EOS implementer Rick Benton. Rick, thanks for joining us today

Rick Benton

My pleasure. Happy to be here

Matt Haney

Well, I start every one of my episodes, whether it with an EOS person or an entrepreneur or whatnot, looking back, we always has a rush our introduction, right? It's always like, how do we get in? How do we say we need to say, and then how do we move on? I wanna intentionally spend a minute or two talking about your background, your entrepreneurial journey, but first I'd love to know, If there's anybody that impressioned you as an entrepreneur, either as a child or early in your career, someone, a person, a place that said, "Hey, this is entrepreneurship, and it's not the nine to five that you know." does anything come out, jump off the page to you in terms of how you got started and then jump into where you are today?

Rick Benton

Interesting question. believe it or not, I've never been asked that in all the

Matt Haney

that's the intent. That's the intent

Rick Benton

So I have to go back and say that early on, my grandfather owned a produce store down in Downriver Detroit. And, five years old, we're waking up at 4:00 in the morning to make sure we get to the Eastern Market. He wanted to make sure he had the freshest produce and products for his clients. I learned even Just this past weekend, I was in Detroit visiting my parents, and my mom was telling me the story how he started as a butcher. But the catch was, what he learned was meat has such a short shelf life, he switched to fruits and vegetables, because even if they were a couple days old, my grandmother was really good at saying, "Hey, you know what? Here's a little pile of day-old stuff that's discounted," and she can move all the old inventory, whereas meats, they're done. Nobody wants them.

Matt Haney

Yeah, no, you don't wanna put up, put... Yeah. Nobody wants to eat boiled meat.

Rick Benton

Yeah. So early on, I was going down to the store. My mom was going down to the store. we'd work the day. I would stock apples at eight years old on the shelves, and I didn't really connect any of it. But later on in high school, starting a business and running with it, realizing that, this is for me. I like doing my own thing

Matt Haney

That's so cool. Rick, I love that. You know, it's interesting, I tend to interview folks that are not necessarily young. So, the folks that I the experienced humans I'm coming across can recall back to a service-based business in some capacity where somebody in a service industry impacted them and taught them entrepreneurship inadvertently or advertently. And I think your story is unique to you, but it's a story that, resonates with some of the folks that I've interviewed who had a grandfather or a grandpa or an uncle or an aunt that were in a business that was serving a very specific niche that was not AI, because it wasn't around. It was not tech-enabled. It was literally they were selling stuff to people that needed to buy stuff in the simplest form of, of entrepreneurship and, supply and demand. What'd you do in high school? What was your high school story? What industry were you in? What'd you do?

Rick Benton

my entrepreneurial journey started when I was in high school. Friend and I started a DJ company because, yeah, we wanted to bring that concert-like experience to anything we can book, homecomings, proms, bar mitzvahs, birthday parties, graduation parties. Who's gonna hire high school kids, right? and we were committed to that vision. Well, fast-forward a couple decades, and now this business is multi-state, and during the week we're providing audiovisual services for corporate meetings and galas and conventions, planning for all of those events as well, coordination between different vendors and hotels and lodging and all that fun stuff. And on the weekends, I'm still sending DJs to bar mitzvahs and high school dances using all that pro gear, from the corporate stuff to turn high school gyms into festivals, into Coachella, into concerts. So you can imagine the levers that we're trying to pull to keep this thing going, just on top of dealing with admin and labor. We had entertainers, and I've lived Get Him to the Greek movie, where I've gone to other cities to say, "Come on, it's time to get on the plane." Uh, but on top of that, logistics, depreciation, vehicles, maintenance, quality control, warehousing, moving stuff in and out, and where is it going? And on top of trying to pay the rent and make payroll. It's driving me crazy. Every day is out of control. It's chaos. I love it, and I'm collapsing all at the same time. It's

Matt Haney

How long ago was this?

Rick Benton

Well, in 2018, somebody decided that they loved it more I took the exit.

Matt Haney

Wow. So you literally started a business in high school. I'm not gonna guess your age, but you ran it for at least one, maybe two decades,

Rick Benton

Almost

Matt Haney

and almost three decades, the same

Rick Benton

Almost three.

Matt Haney

and exited it in 2018. what an incredible story, and what a shit show.

Rick Benton

yeah.

Matt Haney

All at the same time

Rick Benton

all at the same time. It was definitely all of that. it's an awesome business in your 20s. In your 40s it gets a little old and you like to sleep a little bit more. and since 2018 had a string of mild successes and some utter train wrecks, Anybody will tell you, we learn so much more from train wrecks than we do from successes. And I found myself working for a business that was running on EOS, and I literally looked at this, I was like, "Where was this? when I had my business?" I could have avoided so much stress and heartache and broken glass that I admittedly now see I brought to my business. Well, you know where that was? It literally, it was sitting over here on the shelf for the last 10 years

Matt Haney

Ta-da. There it is.

Rick Benton

I never read it. So I flipped through it, connected all the dots, realized I could have sold my business for another zero.

Matt Haney

Wow

Rick Benton

could have set my business up for, to be self-managing. and I immediately knew I needed to help other businesses, other entrepreneurs avoid that same stress and heartache and broken glass that I created, and maybe they can sell their business for another zero

Matt Haney

So, so question. I ask every EOS implementer the same question, which is, you know, do you see any overlap in clients? I love that EOS serves so many different industries and people, and client types and business sizes, but do you find yourself, Rick, coming across common themes in terms of what industries you like or you're good at? I mean, obviously if somebody were to say they had a DJ business or tech audio bus- you, you would be the subject matter expert, but any overlap you see in your own unique

Rick Benton

Here's The beautiful thing about this is that we aren't consultants. An EOS implementer is not a consultant in the business. I'm never gonna pretend that I know more about their business than they do. I'm never gonna offer them the advice, but I will tell them I know the tools. I know the EOS tools that are gonna help them find the answer to what they're looking for, because EOS is all about the people. And the commonality between all this entrepreneurial businesses is the challenge we have with aligning our people to the same vision of where we're going and how we're gonna get there. it doesn't really matter what industry, what product, what service, You know, we assume that you're in the right market with the right people, with the right service. That's not what EOS is about. Now, can I tell people about, you know, an event business and help them with that? Sure. But that's not where the beauty and the passion is for me. It's this system that eliminates the challenge of focusing human energy all to the same place to help achieve the similar goal. Half the battle is turning to the founder, the owner, the leadership team, and getting that vision of where are we going and how are we gonna get there out of their heads, because by the time they reach out to us, they've been in, fireman mode for God knows how long. Like, the last number of years, every day, this is what I wanna do, get to the office and it's like, okay, I end up putting out all fires, and I forget about where I'm supposed to be going.

Matt Haney

one of the things as a fractional integrator working with, 15 businesses so far in my career a big issue I see continually, in my operations space, I see a ton of overlap, in various common themes, and one of the common themes is getting the, EOS framework down one level lower than the leadership team. Leadership team's always very easy They're high level, high performers but that management team down below or that ground level employee, what's a tip, trick, advice or, story that you've seen where EOS-led businesses have had success getting EOS down to the ground level?

Rick Benton

the hardest thing is once we get it to the leadership team, how are we gonna roll this out to the rest of the team? Because generally, entrepreneurs, we start our businesses because we hate accountability and structure. I'm not gonna work for anybody else. I'm not gonna answer to anybody else. I'm gonna do it myself. And the problem is we scale initially, it's fun, it's exciting, and then we reach a point where the only thing that's gonna allow us to get further and grow to the next level is accountability and structure. Guilty. You know, we abhor it, and yet that's the only tool that's gonna help us get what we w- where we really wanna go. So in EOS, the trick is really getting your team to buy into the rocks and the scorecards, at least in my opinion. Buying into the vision and the way we're gonna get there is rocks and scorecards. We heard a quote this weekend from our quarterly connect, "The road to getting what you want is paved with rocks." And the rocks are your quarterly goals that are tied to the bigger picture. The scorecard is, in my opinion, the Daily job, your phone calls, your emails, your customer service, your how many widgets, your productivity, whatever it is. Your rocks are what is going to move the needle on the big picture of where are we going and the vision. So getting people to engage with and buy into, hey, this rock is my part of how we're going to achieve the vision at any level, whether entry level, whether leadership, whether management. We all have rocks. This ties our vision together, and our scorecard is the daily measure of are we doing a good job? How do I know I won the week? Well, Did I get my numbers on the scorecard? So that clarity and communication is what EOS brings to the table and helps leadership, management, and employees all communicate on the same vision and work towards the same goals.

Matt Haney

Love it. Love it, love it

Rick Benton

getting that down to that level is the key

Matt Haney

That's awesome. Uh, in my career and in your career, we've had the privilege of managing humans. I would say running a business is hard, managing humans is harder. what do you see, in some of your experience either through your own decades of, of managing people or through some of your EOS client engagements where, people are struggling to manage people? and it's, you know, like I said, we humans can screw just about anything up, especially when it comes to telling other humans what to do. do you use any themes or, plans or processes to manage people or hold accountable?

Rick Benton

there's a couple quotes from two different books I always like. One is Stephen Covey, first to understand, not to be understood." and living that is kinda difficult sometimes because we all want to, defend our position instinctively or just, sure that, "Hey, this is what's troubling my mind. Wait a minute, slow down." Seek first to understand before you are understood. The second one is, I always like the book "The Four Agreements," and two of those agreements are crucial. We don't make assumptions, like we don't know what other people's experiences is and how they are looking at the world, and don't take anything personally. Going back to that first one, somebody else's position is mostly about them and the way they see the world. It's not about you. Of course, we take it that way. another interview that I saw that always stuck with me, Esther Perel pointed out that we assume someone else's faults is a character, and yet our own faults are circumstantial. If I'm late to a meeting, it's 'cause I, you know, we were stuck in traffic or my last meeting ran late. But if you're late to a meeting, well, y-you're just disrespectful and, and you're not, you're not responsible. It's never, we never apply that same circumstantial to somebody else. We assume it's a character flaw. So when we take in that observation and, give people the same grace that we would give ourselves, it eliminates a lot of shame, blame, and guilt that we apply to business. And eliminating that, hey, I love the L10 meeting because all we're doing is reporting, and if you're off track, you're off track, and our goal is to get you back on track. No shame, no blame, no guilt. If you can eliminate that out of business, I think we'd all run much better businesses

Matt Haney

I think you said no judgment and no shame. Like, I feel like if we could just convey to other people that like, listen, I always say this to people like kind of jokingly. I'm like: Don't judge me for that. There's 100 other reasons to judge me. There's much more reasons beyond my punctuality or my, you know, bullshit comment I make that comes off. Like, find another reason to judge. but I say that sort of tongue in cheek because it's like, listen, we're all doing the best we can. one of the clients I've been working with recently, for the last year or so, there was a little bit of a scuffle, online scuffle between a couple folks in the leadership team, and he wrote back, and you know what he did? he copy and pasted one of the core values in the chat without even missing a beat. the core value was lead with positive intent. And there's not a single thing anyone could have said in that chat that would've even touched what he said by pasting a core value in that said lead with positive intent. Because the reality is, is that chat, everyone in there was not leading with positive intent. They were passing judgment, being critical, and fighting for what they want. it did level set everyone and make us realize that, hey, if we're coming out with judgment and contempt and criticism, we're not leading with positive intent. So I love what you said, about that, which is awesome.

Rick Benton

we need to assume that everybody's doing their best and wants to be successful. If we start with that assumption, then we can look and say, "Okay, so you missed a target. Let's figure out why, and let's get you back on track." It's not that you're incompetent. It's not the shame. It's not the judgment, not the guilt. It's, "Hey, okay, we all miss." Our goal in EOS is 80% or better, not 100%. That's utopia. Doesn't exist. 80% or better, we're doing awesome

Matt Haney

That's right. I will take 80%. I will absolutely take 80%. back to the theme of recurring themes, 'cause my goal is to pull out, recurring themes that we see and provide alternative solutions that we've, you know, seen as an opportunity.

Rick Benton

Yeah

Matt Haney

most if not every single one of the people, including myself, that I've worked with, struggles to let go of the vine and it's hard to trust, right? There's always been someone previously that's told you they're going to do something and they haven't. maybe they had the positive intentions but just couldn't get shit done. How is it that, you know, you built a business for 20-plus years and eventually you had to trust that the person that said they were gonna move this, do that, set this up, be successful, you had to trust that they were going to do that and let them go do it.

matt-haney_2_02-06-2025_192447

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

it's not easy, but any suggestions or, stories around letting go and, how you were able to do that in your business or in businesses that you've seen as an EOS implementer?

Rick Benton

I think the biggest change for me was when I finally hired people who I recognized were better than me. And at that point, understanding that, yes, I have my way of doing it, and I held onto the vine. I would not let go of it. This is my baby. I built it. This is my livelihood, my creation, and if I want it done right, I'm too afraid that you are going to fail to let go of it. Once I realized that, wait a minute, they do a better job than I do. And whether it was early on in high school, you're a better DJ than I am, great, you, you go DJ. Or then it became at, social events, you're a better MC leading, you, you do it. Where it got difficult was now we're running a business, now we have 20 employees, now we have more, and okay, you're a better manager than I am. Wait, I don't need to pay attention to where the truck is going and the order in which it's g- You know what? You let go of it. And it's almost... The sad thing for me is it was almost out of exhaustion. It was almost out of, I am just so burnt out. I'm just letting go. I, I can't play this anymore. And, and I wish I had, you know, some of the tools to say, "Wait a minute, I am hiring these people to do that, and I'm hiring them because I believe they're better than I am, so let them go." And once you get to that point, suddenly it becomes addictive. Once you realize that, wait a minute, I wanna let go, and suddenly you start letting go of everything and

Matt Haney

Now you're like the ultimate delegate and elevate human. You're just like, "Here, you, you, you, you. Here, here, here." And all of a sudden they're like, "What do you do?" And I'm like, "Well, my job is to make sure that all the, you know, trains are running on time. Your job is to go do this vein or this vein or this skill set." So yeah, it is interesting how when you do let go of things, you can become disengaged. But I always tell folks that, visionary founders at some point are gonna roll over and want their job back that they were doing, which is now your job. we just have to make sure that we keep them informed. You know, give them a metric to follow, give them some sort of, touchpoint where they know that they're not losing complete control of the business they've created. They've just hired people that are capable and competent

Rick Benton

Right. And once you do that, that's brilliant. you mentioned the delegate and elevate tool, and I, just diving into that one, I think that's one of my favorites. And, it's such an amazing tool because it paints for you with total clarity what it is that you love doing that energizes you, and what just drains you, and yet you're still doing it. And you self-admittedly say, "I'm not good at this and I don't like doing it," yet you still do it. and it paints a picture, a inspirational picture. If I could spend all my days doing something that I love, that fills my cup, that brings me energy, what is that life gonna look like? And now there's a goal. Now there's a goal for someone buried under all this work that says, "I wanna get there. I wanna do what I love with people that I love." and especially if you get into the who not how aspect, instead of delegating, which is pushing things down, it's almost like a punishment. "I don't wanna do this, you do it." It's like, wait a minute, I'm gonna elevate the task to somebody who loves doing it. I'm gonna empower them to do what they love doing. It's so powerful.

Matt Haney

It is, and I also think, to your point, I, I love that you, referenced delegate to a negative. And I mean, I hear that and I don't disagree with that connotation being put on it. But I also think, like, you know, you wouldn't say you delegate the snapping of the ball to the snapper. that's his job. that's what he was hired to play on the team for, is to snap the ball to the quarterback. It's not necessarily a delegation or a downside. That's the role in which he was brought onto the team. So I think if we're, if we're using the tools and if we're being intentional with ourselves, we're creating roles and responsibilities that mirror the job description that they were created for, and making sure that people are doing their job and not someone else's. Or not working one level down when you have a team that executes at that level. That's not negative. That's just agreeing to the playbook we've all put in place. I love that, reshaping a negative to, "Hey, this is your unique specialty, your skill set, what you're good at. Let's let you continue to go do it."

Rick Benton

When you use tools like Kolbe and other assessments, that you can really dive into unique abilities and our instinctive strengths, and we can really find the right people for our team who GWC, who get it, who want it, who have the capacity to do that role, and, they're just in their happy place, and that builds an intentional culture.

Matt Haney

Yep, It sure

Rick Benton

builds the culture we want, the culture we want, not the culture we just happen to come across

Matt Haney

Uh, another thing that's fascinating for me as a fractional integrator, I've been fortunate to see 15 or so different you know, visionaries in the visionary seat as we see them through EOS. But business owners or founders that have created a company. fractional integrator, no surprise, here I am coming into different businesses helping that visionary integrator relationship flourish. think back, take a minute, to a scenario or two where you've seen the visionary integrator relationship not successful, and if there was a disconnect or if there was something that caused that. Is any stories come to mind or people or scenarios where you said, "Oh shit, this isn't working, I have to address it," and then were they able to pull through or did it dis- disrupt the relationship?

Rick Benton

I had one client, father-son duo. Father moved into the integrator role, son was taking on the visionary role. Father built the business,

Matt Haney

What business? What were they in? What was the space?

Rick Benton

construction. And father built it, and he's really into detail. He was really into custom building beautiful legacy properties. And the son wanted to take it in a different direction, kinda go more commercial. And the challenge was that, you know, here we have the established business and we wanna shift into essentially what became a different business, and we had two separate visions. And from my experience doing both, working both corporate events and social events, you know, the wedding team is not gonna go out and do the corporate meeting. gala maybe, they're both parties, but the meeting, the conference is a totally different skill set, language, entirely different beast than the wedding or the bar mitzvah or, anything like that. So we're talking different staff, different language, different results on a custom property Every detail matters. On commercial, we need to rent that out yesterday, get it up, get it fast, and build it to spec so we can get it rented. Totally different mindsets. And so consequently, we were dealing with two totally separate visions.

Matt Haney

who who happen to be related to each other. Ah, even more complicated

Rick Benton

Yeah. So when you're looking at that scenario, you can't tell the kid, "Hey, you need to fire your father." and you can't tell the father he's wrong. He's built an incredibly successful business. So how are we gonna break through that? And ultimately, EOS, they didn't get to the point where they could get two separate businesses, so EOS wasn't really a good fit for totally instilling it because it-- we had two visions, and we couldn't break through that. it was challenging, and sadly we weren't able to bring it fully to fruition there. in other situations where the visionary held onto everything and the integrator was just a long-term employee, EOS was able to bring that integrator from operations manager up to the integrator seat, and they were able to have a back and forth where now the visionary's erratic, top-down leadership was able to be a little bit more complementary, created a much better culture. We were able to set the business up for eventually transitioning as the visionary founder was getting older and set a timeframe when to get out of it, and we were able to do that to make it much more attractive. And whether they ended up becoming an ESOP or doing a sale or still in that process, we implemented EOS and the business was just so much smoother and a much better culture for it. those are just a couple of the stories of the integrator visionary duo. One where it works out, they all got aligned to the same vision. The other one, that was the obstacle. the relationship stood in the way of the vision alignment, and it was challenging. And if you can't break through that, whether for family relations, you're gonna go in that circle, and you're gonna stay at

Matt Haney

in that circle. Yeah, that sucks. And no, not every story ends with roses and sunshine and multi, multi exits with a, with zeros. Some of them end in, flames in the sense that you're jeopardizing a relationship with a child or a father. and you know, that lack of alignment is tough. It is really, really tough. let's jump into a couple other things here. Outside of work, and then we'll close out with advice. So what keeps you ticking when you're not chasing entrepreneurs, and staring at the whiteboard and writing things and circling things and, doing pie charts with the six levers? And so what do you do outside of work to stay relevant, fresh, and exciting?

Rick Benton

yeah, love traveling. this fall my wife and I are gonna go to Italy. It's been on the bucket list for a long time. We're finally making it over there. I've heard that you can eat as much pasta as you want and never gain weight.

Matt Haney

doesn't count. Where are you guys

Rick Benton

it we're gonna go into Bologna, and then we're gonna get on a boat, go around the boot, spend a little time in Croatia, Montenegro, and then work around, and then we're gonna end up in Rome and spend a couple days there. So, check out all of it and it's gonna be... Looking forward to that. Um, last year, we're going in September,

Matt Haney

I am going on Sunday with my wife and three children. We're gonna go to Rome for two nights, Florence for two nights, and Venice for two nights. It is going to be a hauling around with three kids. but, but we're excited. I've been several times. My wife lived in Florence in college for a year, and my kids, eat pasta four to 17 times a day. And, I'm excited to show them. I said, "Listen, you guys can eat as much pasta with butter as you want, but there's going to be a dish on the table which you haven't had, and you're going to try it or we're not gonna keep ordering the best pasta with butter." That's awesome. Well, how long are you guys gone? Sounds like that's a little bit longer of a trip

Rick Benton

Yeah. We, we had the option, we... Do we wanna go on land and go deep in the various location, or do we wanna go wide and take a boat around and, bookend it with two cities? So we decided to take the boat for the first trip, and we're-- It's, I think the boat trip's 10 days, and then we got a couple days on each bookend, so, um, we just, we decided that coming off of last year, we were in Alaska's, the North, the Passage, which was gorgeous.

Matt Haney

I'm sure

Rick Benton

you open up so many more perspectives when you see other countries, other cultures, other ways of doing, other ways of looking at things. not to mirror it back to EOS, but I like that different industries, we're not pigeonholed in different industries, 'cause I learn things from this industry that I apply to that industry, or this company over here works over that way. and the more diverse of an understanding of what we have, how other people address their challenges, whether personal, professional, life, it makes us wiser, stronger, more empathetic, better humans.

Matt Haney

Yeah. I, I couldn't agree with you more, and I also feel like as a tourist and a business owner, it's always interesting to see the simplicity behind tourism and the service that's provided. Restaurant, tour, boat driver, taxi guy, gal, ice cream shop, whatever. Like, I think traveling, allows you to see, commerce and having a great service with someone and engaging. it's always very simple and fun and enjoyable to see that there are simple businesses out there. There are markets. I think Europe brings that, that we never get to see and really here

Rick Benton

What's interesting here is, and, and not to take anything away from domestic. European is always talking about how we could go for a couple hours and we're a totally different country. But here, let's not discount, we can go for a couple of hours and be in a totally different culture as well. I've been out to Philly for some clients, which are totally different. I was up in the mountains of Colorado, as well as one client just north of Salt Lake City in Logan, and each one is a unique different culture. Crested Butte is kind of more similar to Logan, but without the college. But still, we can go to different regions and have totally different cultures, even though we're the still in the same macro country. whether hiking in the woods up in Colorado or in northern Utah, just being able to embrace those local cultures and see things that are a little bit different,

Matt Haney

provides a ton of perspective

Rick Benton

It does. This journey is short.

Matt Haney

That's right.

Rick Benton

old you are, take in as much as you can, and don't assume that your way is always the right way.

Matt Haney

Yeah, and then last, I like to close out with, you know, I think back to your story with your grandfather and others, like I am trying to share more wisdom as I come with wisdom to my kids, to my clients, to everybody. I don't know if you come back to any like thoughts or, recurring themes any advice you've been given, that sticks out to you and that you, refer back to or try to pass along in session?

Rick Benton

this past weekend we had our quarterly connect, and there were so many nuggets that come out of getting a bunch of EOS eyes together and just what is the wisdom that comes out in the room? And a couple of the notes that I took down, I mentioned, I think, or maybe I d- the r- the w- a few of the quotes from this weekend, "The road to getting what we want is paved with rocks. Accomplish your rocks, you get what you want." a deeper one was, often come disguised as pain." And in order to, think about the hero's journey. Campbell pointed out we start here, and if we wanna get here, oftentimes you have to go through this journey that brings you down here, that makes it that much hard. How bad do you want this? And you have to go through that in order to get it. that's one of them. When it came to AI, a quote that just has resonated when it comes to the human interaction and our ability to listen and understand and empathize: "AI won't replace listening to what isn't being said."

Matt Haney

That's funny. Say that again

Rick Benton

Yeah. AI will not replace listening to what isn't being said

Matt Haney

Yeah. That's so awesome.

Rick Benton

Yeah. Uh-huh. It's just, it, it's just one of those things and, that when you think about it, what's that human element? What do we bring to the room? And it's the ability to say, you know, we're in the session room, it's like, "Hey, Matt, I see there's something on your mind. I see that look on your face."

Matt Haney

Yep.

Rick Benton

issue on the table, because if you don't, we're never gonna solve it

Matt Haney

Yeah, we're not doing anybody any favors by not bringing up what needs to be addressed

Rick Benton

But how many times have we sat in meetings and we're like,

Matt Haney

Just

Rick Benton

that one.

Matt Haney

yeah.

Rick Benton

Yes, I'm not bringing that one up.

Matt Haney

Yeah. Especially in the family dynamic. I can imagine that father and son duo you mentioned earlier, how challenging it was to have conversations with them during session. that's, a lot

Rick Benton

eventually, you know, that's not the path that they... They wanted to sit there. They weren't ready to make that commitment yet, at least not with me. They needed to... And that's okay. We gotta meet them where they are, So those are a couple of tidbits that always come out. The EOSis are truly fascinating people. The people that I've surrounded in my life, I mean, my wife is absolutely unbelievable and a fascinating person. when I was-- I taught for a year after selling my business, and I learned so much from my students. I definitely learned more from them than they learned from me. And I like, the quote, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." When the teacher is ready, the

Matt Haney

Yeah.

Rick Benton

will appear.

Matt Haney

That's awesome. That's cool. Well said, Rick. I love having our time together today, and thank you so much for joining us on The Scalability Code. It's always great to have AOS implementers with wisdom, and it's also great to have a business owner that was in the same industry for 20 years and saw the peaks and the valleys and the ups and the downs, and there's a lot to be learned from that, and I just thank you for

Rick Benton

I app-

Matt Haney

with us today

Rick Benton

I appreciate it. Thank you very much for having me on. It's been an honor.

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