Impact Moments

When EOS Leaves the Leadership Team — Jared Stein (EP. 8)

• Ninety Studios • Episode 8

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0:00 | 47:39

Jared Stein's career path reads like a choose-your-own-adventure: five CrossFit gyms in New York, a stint at the NBA, teaching spin at Flywheel, and running operations at a wellness resort. Now he is the COO and integrator at Strategy Financial Group, a wealth management firm helping retirees protect their families and their legacy. In this conversation with Christine Watts and Kris Snyder, Jared talks about what happened when he stopped keeping EOS inside the leadership team and rolled it out to every department and every person in the company. He shares the moment a nervous team rated their first meeting a 10 out of 10, how he went from thinking core values were "psychobabble BS" to seeing them completely change how teams operate, and the million-dollar gym deal with a friend that went sideways because he skipped the paperwork.

Key topics:

  • Rolling EOS out beyond the leadership team to every department in the company
  • The moment a nervous team gave their first structured meeting a 10 out of 10
  • Going from "core values are psychobabble BS" to making every decision through them
  • A million-dollar CrossFit deal that fell apart because the paperwork was skipped
  • Why the integrator seat is about removing obstacles, not doing everything yourself

About Jared Stein:
Jared is the COO and integrator at Strategy Financial Group.
Connect with Jared: Instagram
Website: strategyfinancialgroup.com

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Connect with Christine: LinkedIn
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SPEAKER_04

Hey, welcome to Impact Moments Powered by 90. Today we're talking with Jared Stein. Jared is the COO and integrator at Strategy Financial Group, a wealth management firm helping retirees protect their families and their legacy. But before that, he had an incredible and diverse career. He ran five CrossFit gyms in New York. He worked at the NBA, top spin class at the flywheel, and ran operations at a wellness resort. So he's seen businesses from every different angle. Jared shares how he rolled EOS out beyond the leadership team. So he went to every department and every person in the company and what happened the first time that a team that was nervous about this new system gave the meeting a 10 out of 10 and how it really made it all worth it. He gets really vulnerable, like about core values and how he went from thinking they were psychobattable and BS into seeing how they really completely changed how teams operate and how they make decisions. And he tells a story about his biggest mistake, a million-dollar gym deal with a friend that went sideways because he skipped the things on the paperwork. So tough one. Lessons worth hearing. Let's get into it. Hey, welcome to Impact Moments. I'm Christine. I'm Chris. And we are joined by Jared. Thank you so much for coming today.

SPEAKER_00

My absolute pleasure. Yeah. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_04

So uh give us a little intro. Tell us about yourself.

SPEAKER_00

Uh a little intro. Uh well, I'm from New Jersey. Uh, the oldest of five kids.

SPEAKER_04

Nice.

SPEAKER_00

Came out of high school, right to college. They told me, like, hey, you're from New Jersey, you're gonna go be a banker. And so I was like, cool, I'll go do that. So I went into an investment bank and uh I was on that institutional trading floor for the first five, six years of my career. Uh, learned some really cool stuff, learned that I didn't want to do that for the rest of my life. Um, so went over to the National Basketball Association where I had a friend who was already there. Really easy intro. So I got to work in sports for a year, and that was really cool. Uh, realized that the big bureaucracy wasn't for me. Went to business school while I was in business school, leaned into fitness, um, had to pay my bills. So I was teaching uh a spin class with a company called Flywheel. Um rowing with City Row. Yeah, it was uh I absolutely loved it. It was the best job I ever had. Um, it was like pre-Peloton, like we started doing Flywheel. Yeah, so some of my friends from Flywheel were the founding instructors there. Um so we're still buds today, but they're rolling in.

SPEAKER_04

It was the first competitive one that I went to too, where I was like, oh, I want to win. I want to be at the top.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it was and it was a great product, and it's it's sad that they uh when the founder sold, um it kind of collapsed on itself. I did it in Dubai one time.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. Like because you were trying, I was traveling a lot, and they were like, you could just pull up the app and just go and do it.

SPEAKER_00

And I thought that was super cool. Yeah, it was uh it was before its time and it was it was a great experience. And while I was in business school teaching all these fitness classes, I was doing CrossFit for my own workouts, and one of the guys I was working out with disappeared one day. I get a Facebook message from him two, three months later. He's like, Hey, you want to grab a coffee? I moved to Brooklyn, tell me the story. And I'm like, sure. And he pitches me the idea of opening a gym in the neighborhood that he's living in. I told him no. I was like, I don't have any money, I don't have any time, right? I'm gonna go back to the workforce. Like, he's like, no, no, it'll be fun. Like, you'll run the gym, I'll you don't have to put any money in, I'll I'll finance it. I'm like, all right, let's see what we got. So we started looking at some spaces. We saw one warehouse, we were like, okay, I see the vision. We can we can do it. So we built one and it was a lot of fun, right? Uh the term blood, sweat, and tears, this this is there was all three.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And building a gym in the middle of Brooklyn, no air conditioning in the summer was like hard, but felt enriched. And customers showed up. No marketing, no nothing. We opened our doors, and next thing we knew we were full, and we knew we had to expand. So in New York City, if you move five blocks north, you're in a different neighborhood. So we found a space there. One turned to two in the first eight months, two turned to three in the first year. And then we were like, I don't want to build these gyms anymore. They're it's exhausting. Let's go buy them. So we started some MA activity and realized that like gyms don't make a lot of money. Uh well, CrossFit gyms didn't make a lot of money. Um, so we were like, we have a proven practice. We know how to operate these things, we know how to market these things. Let's just go buy gyms that are failing, flip them around, and we'll build our network. And we did. Uh, we had five CrossFit gyms, and then we bought a big box gym that was printing cash, um, but it was in bankruptcy. And so we bought it out of bankruptcy. Um that was going really well uh until 2020 hit and collapsed the whole business model and uh moved out to Arizona, uh shortstop in Texas, was in hospitality at a beautiful resort called Savannah, it's a wellness resort. Um, and so I was the VP of operations there for three and a half years before I moved into my current role with uh Strategy Financial Group as their COL.

SPEAKER_04

And you you were owning and operating these gyms, but you weren't leveraging EOS, is that right?

SPEAKER_00

Correct. So my first introduction at EOS was someone who was a vendor of the gym. He was teaching uh CrossFit gymnastics seminar. So through CrossFit HQ, come in and teach you how to coach gymnastics properly. And he would him and I became friends. He taught like six or seven seminars for us, and he's like, Hey, do you want to help other gyms around the country? And I was like, sure. And so he'd get me on these calls with them, and they had a scorecard, they had a tab for IDS, they had metrics, uh, they had a VTO and they had an issues list. And I just sat down the first couple meetings and I understood the cadence, and it was really cool. But he didn't call ADOS.

SPEAKER_04

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00

He didn't tell me anything. He was like, this is how you run the meeting. And it's important that they are in the same time every week. We don't miss weeks, we don't reschedule, the scorecard has to be filled out, and you have to hold the owner that you're helping accountable. And I was like, this is a really interesting rubric for meetings. And, you know, while that was going, I had I was starting to transition out from owning gyms and into the hospitality business. And my first day at the hotel was their quarterly session. And at that point, only leadership was doing it. And you know, I walk in and there's a big stack of books on my on my desk, and I was like, I've read these already. What is this? And he's like, Oh, we do EOS. I'm like, Oh, that, oh, that's what it's called. Cool. I understand. Okay. And we I would jumped right into my first quarterly session. Uh at the time it was really raw at that organization. Uh team health wasn't huge at the moment. There was a lot of conflict coming out of COVID, and um the business wasn't losing money, but it wasn't really making any either. And some things had to change, like operationally, it was just a big venture to keep the wheels spinning. Um, but we, you know, my tenure there, we went from okay, five people are doing EOS and holding these meetings. My job as the ops director was how do I roll this out downstream?

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

Uh, and it was a really interesting crash course, stuff they don't teach in business school about organizational psychology and how do you implement something when you know you have all these people who are in hospitality, and that's a very like niche sector. And if you grow up in hospitality and you only work in hospitality, there well, there's only one way to do it because Marriott has a proven process. Hilton has a proven process, the Four Seasons has a proven process, and all these people are coming from from these, you know, embedded organizations and shifting the the thinking to, hey, maybe we're gonna do it a little differently here and let me show you some value. And if in six months, if you're not finding any value, like let's have another conversation. And that's kind of how I got into the implementer role. And as I was transitioning out of hospitality um into you know retirement services and uh wealth management, uh, part of the job description was EOS implementer. And I straight up wrote the CEO an email saying, Calvin, your next COO. Here's why. Here's what I can do with EOS. Where are you guys in the process? And they were already on 90, which I was like, okay, great first step. Um, who else in the organization organization is doing it? And he was like, nobody. And I'm like, okay, I've done this before. Let me show you how. And that kind of brings me to today.

SPEAKER_04

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

So when you were in hospitality, it sounds like you went into that and you had to drive revenue and you also had to fix culture problems. Were there certain tools you were leaning into as you were rolling it out that like helped you do that quickly?

SPEAKER_00

Yes. In short, we I leaned heavily on EOS because of the the backbone and core values that, you know, EOS makes sure you understand your core values kind of at every step, right? When we look at the VTO, uh, when we run our meetings, when we talk about the lens in which we view the business, it's always through the core values of the business. And so Savannah's core values were super strong. And there's some that I still hold to today. I I believe in it. Uh not only do I believe in the product, but their values are like my values. And I, you know, I really leaned into them. And, you know, if you would have asked me 10 years ago, what do you think about core values? I was like, that is psycho babble bullshit. I don't wanna don't talk to me about that, just do your job. And then I saw how impactful they were kind of on the broad scale. And I, you know, one of the core values at Savannah was teaming guest member experience, experience first. And so we would put all of our conversations through that lens and reiterate our core values and like, okay, well, does this one, does it impact the guest experience or team member experience? And two, does it elevate it? And if it doesn't check either of those boxes, like we're not we're not talking about it today. And so those were the tools in which I really had to pull from because uh hospitality folks really do care about the guest experience. So it's like, okay, well, let's put it through that lens and we'll have a conversation and I'll just do the OS template until you get comfortable with it.

SPEAKER_02

One of my favorite stories is around core values. Core values are to be aligned to, not necessarily yours, right? So maybe the founder that started the company, right? But we're aligning to those core values in those moments. And we um I have two daughters, they're 21 and 18 now, but we do core values as a family exercise, which is pretty cool. Like, and we believe that you activate, you know, culture through two things it's the rituals, the things that you do, and the artifacts you create. So if you actually are at our house, you will see our core values are in the workout room, right? Like next to the treadmill, right? And um what was cool though was we were, you know, be bold, be brave, love, give, and have fun. And then my daughter was probably 13, and she like at the table at night, I would say, Tell me how you like live these core values today. This is terrible to be a good idea. I always dye man, you're more kids. There's therapy coming for a moment. But but they would say they would give it back to us. And so, but my daughter Tess was like, Dad, I don't think have fun is a core value. I'm like, oh, let's tell, let's talk about it, right? She's like, I want to like say, find joy in the day every day. I was like, Oh, so good. That's a good one. It's a good one, right? So we changed the core value based upon her reflection into the family. And it's like, oh, that's that works, right? Yeah. So I don't my whole point in bringing up that story is I I do think businesses hesitate to bring them forward because I think sometimes we're like, well, what happens if people don't align to them? It's like, I think they do align. Like just put them out there and let's go figure it out together. And if you need to modify something to get everyone on board, then figure that out.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And uh to further that point, now that we've rolled them out of my current organization at strategy, we're doing quarterly conversations and scoring people through the people analyzer and seeing how they match up. And it turns out, like, you know, I'm at I'm blessed to be at an organization that has really strong team health. I mean, like 10 out of 10 alignment on core values, it's it's just really strong. And so when people are, you know, going through the exercise, you know, they're all pluses, and then they have reasons to back them up. And I'm like, yes, it this is working. And, you know, it's it's really fulfilling as someone who's newer to the firm, but also as someone who's responsible for upholding those every day. It was really enriching versus coming from another organization where like team health really wasn't strong at all. And you have to check your teammates, being like, hey, is this aligned with what we're thinking? And and if not, like, what's going on?

SPEAKER_04

Well, give a quick recap for anybody that doesn't know what the people analyzer is, what that is.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so we're gonna have core values, right? You I don't know if you have five, you have some number, right? And then you pick a bar for each one of those, right? And so the bar hopefully is, you know, probably if there's five, you probably three of them. It's almost almost always you behave this way. Most of the time is the the next level down, and almost never is the other one. Like we don't want that, right? Like so, but you you pick that and then you give the reframe to the person based upon the behavior of that probably last quarter. And so you'll do that on core values, and then it's get it, want it, and capacity to do it. And the one thing that I've seen over time, I think Christine, you've maybe seen this too, is people inherently get most of the time, like like the job that we're asking them to do. The want it part is tough. Yeah, it's a it's a fun toggle. Yeah, it's it is because sometimes as you know, you're building a company, you don't really want the seat that you're in. Right. And you look at them and you're like, Do you want it? And they're like, Well, I'll do it for you. Oh no.

SPEAKER_04

Or for this amount of time.

SPEAKER_02

For that amount of time, yeah, yeah, yeah, which is fine for for a little bit of time, but you can't do it for a long period of time because you gotta want it. Like you have to be passionate about it, you gotta show up for it, right? And if you don't want it, then it's gonna come through. Yeah. And the the the C part of that capacity is we can coach to that. We can help you with skills, but you just really need to have the want it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

So tell us a little bit about your current or current organization strategy.

SPEAKER_00

So Strategy Financial Group is a wealth management services, retirement services. We really pride ourselves on being a home office for those who don't actually qualify for a home office. So typically a home office will give you retirement services, tax planning, income strategy, legacy planning, and and some, you know, charity work. So when I say legacy, I mean uh, you know, your your trust. So a lot of people have a will, and that's not really great because every state has a different court and it goes to probate, and now the your loved ones in their worst moment have to wait nine to eight months to settle your estate. And that kind of sucks. And so a trust is a really clean, easy way of avoiding that. And then, you know, the charitable donations, there's a lot of people who want to leave the legacy, you know, whether it's building a wing on the end of a school or giving a pedo or name the charity, you know, people have feelings about that. And so typically a home office, you need 10 to 50 million dollars to get in the door. And that's not our clientele. Our clientele are retirees nationwide who just need help. And what I've learned and what evangelicalized me into this space was that, you know, one, I saw it happen with my grandmother. Um, watching it with my parents, that, you know, these are things that aren't taught in school. You know, they're not talked about on a regular basis. You know, we hear a lot of chatter about Social Security this, Medicaid that, but there are other ways to protect yourself and your family and your or your spouse and or your legacy without one, breaking the bank, two, paying egregious fees, and three, not having to go to multiple different places. And so we all brought we brought it in-house. Um, our founder's been doing it for 24 years. Um, he was evangelicalized when you know it happened to his dad. And, you know, everyone's got a really personal story and a personal why to it. And one, we're we we want to help families, and it feels good to do that, right? Um, obviously we do it for a fee, but you know, when you're watching, you know, Bob and Mrs. Smith, you know, leave the office with a smile on their face, feeling good, feeling protected, feeling safe, it's really enriching. And we've been doing it in the valley, we're just starting to expand nationally. I'm happy to say that my parents are like the first attestators that are are coming over. And um just before this recording, I called her and she was like, I just had the meeting, it went so great, I feel so good. I, you know, all the all the words that told me that she feels safe in case anything happens to my dad. And I was like, Yeah, this is why we're in the business.

SPEAKER_04

And so you joined today. We asked you to bring an impact moment. And so what was the story that you were hoping to tell?

SPEAKER_00

Uh, well, uh, it comes with our my current organization. We have a leader who I don't know if she wants to do the LMA, the lead, manage, and hold accountable portion of her role. She's in the seat because of her tenure and she's the best at the job. Now, typically that's not how you pick a leader for a position, but there are some instant, you know, some instances of institutional knowledge where you're like, well, she really is the most qualified. Whether she wants to do the LMA portion of her job or not is yet to be seen. And it's an ongoing coaching conversation. But, you know, when I told her, hey, we're rolling this out to your department, you I set up your 90 page, all your team members have access and have signed in.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I've populated your, I've ported your your issues list over from the notepad we were using. And, you know, your scorecards are uploaded. So, you know, go with it. And she's like, I don't know how this is gonna go. And I'm like, I think they're gonna love it. She's like, why would you say that? I'm like, because now they have a voice. Now they have an opportunity to talk about issues in a really interesting way, dive deep into the discussion portion, and actually solve their own problem without having to go to you to you come to the leadership team. And you can solve your own stuff down the stack before it bubbles up. And she's just apprehensive. And I'm like, I'll tell you what, I'll sit on the first however many meetings you want, and I'm happy to be the scribe and run the meeting for you. And she's like, Okay, that made her feel a little better. We go to the first meeting, and one, the teammates are pumped. They're like, Oh, this is cool. Like, I got I got FaceTime with my boss and my boss's boss. I was like, Yeah, cool. Like, we all sit in the same office, but like you guys can come whenever you want. Yeah. And two, they were like, they really dug into the forum. One, they love the personal and professional best, right? That moment of personal connection. It's it really is great because you you you get to interact with your teammates on a more personal level. It just brings tighter connection throughout the organization. And then the second part, we were going through the scorecard and it was clear who was performing and how much production they were doing. And A players are going to report out. And so, like, our A players are top, top, we're so proud to see their numbers up there. Yeah. Like finally getting some recognition. And our organization's really blessed that we don't have a lot of C players, but the B players were like, oh, you know, not to make excuses, but they're like, we have more coming, and they wanted to be up on that leaderboard. I'm like, okay, this is working. This is healthy competition. And then the meeting went, you know, we went through our issues list. I don't, they don't have rocks yet, but we go through the issues list and the conversation was riveting. That I was learning things about their like day-to-day blocking and tackling that I didn't know about, that maybe the manager did, but she wasn't sharing. And the meeting concludes, everyone gives it a 10, and you know, just smiles across the board. And, you know, I I hung back with with this leader and I said, Well, how'd it go? She goes, I can't believe that went so well. And I was like, I can.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I was like, I've been doing this a long time. Like, people really want to be seen, heard, they want to report out. You have a great team. Like, give them a platform to like really shout it out. This is what the scorecard's for. And, you know, she felt much better. It looked like, you know, weight had been lifted off her shoulders. And now I don't have to sit in that meeting anymore. I still do because I want to hear what's going on. But, you know, I pop in as a guest. I don't, I don't feel like I need to hold her hand. And, you know, while she is still developing other aspects of the LMA, but that meeting is going so great. She's so much more in tune. And when she comes to the leadership meeting, she has the answers already because they already talked about it the day before. And so for me, that was super impactful to see like one of the more important departments in our org really clicking, loving it, wanting it, and then they they get it.

SPEAKER_02

And I'll just I'm gonna plug 90 here for a minute, right? You can have the system email you after every department meeting. Oh, I do. Yeah. And it's great. Like you can see because it's you're not rating the meeting, they're rating the meeting. Correct. And uh, if they're like averaging a nine and all of a sudden they have a bad week and it's a seven, you can decide and how to engage in that, right? Like just dip in. You don't have to be at every meeting, correct? Because we can't, like it's just the life is hard that way, right? But but you you can see it, and I I still do this. I'll I'll pick up the phone, I'll call, and I'll be like, hey, that looks like that was a hard meeting. Like, let's talk about it. Like, like, how'd we get to a seven?

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_02

Like that sounds like we're not, you know, we weren't winning today. And then they share and they start to unpack it. And you're like, okay, I'll come next week and let's figure out how we can be better at this because that's not we're not a team that does a seven.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's one of my favorite features, and it's one of my boss's favorite features. So as the visionary, he doesn't want to be in the weeds at all. He's very much like textbook visionary. He comes into my office on Monday morning, he's got a thousand ideas, he throws them on my whiteboard, he's like, Okay, you go figure it out. Out and and and you know goes and does whatever he's got to do. But I set him up to receive those emails because he he's been in the business for 24 years. There's nothing this man doesn't know about the world we live in. Uh he is truly an expert. And he'll see something on some meeting and he'll he'll pick up the phone. He's like, You need to dig in on this. And I was like, You got it.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And now I'm learning because he gets the he has the visibility when he wants it. He doesn't have to micromanage. And I'm learning because he's picking things up and being like, hey, this is this is a real thing. You have to go go dig dig in a little bit.

SPEAKER_04

Well, the visibility and giving everyone a voice is such a huge aspect. Cause I think a lot of people stop with the leadership team and they don't think to go down. So your expertise and seeing the value of how when every department leader is engaged with their department and what can happen through that is really exciting.

SPEAKER_02

That's where the power comes from. It's not the leadership team. Yes, we should all do that. But once you get everyone working in the system together, that's when it really starts to have momentum.

SPEAKER_00

And we share, I don't know if a lot of firms do this, but you know, our we have a production goal, right? And the whole firm needs to be marching to the beat of that drum. And we share that metric throughout the organizations on everyone's scorecard. There's no hiding from it. Because I I know by Friday if we are winning or losing in the week. And I know how that affects our year, how that's gonna affect, you know, our future months. And I want them to know too. And we've just changed our incentive plan to align with that. Because before it really wasn't it it was tangentially aligned and it was a really good plan when the firm was six people, and now it's not. And so we've had a reframe that, but the visibility downstream, everyone's looking and there's no place to hide. And, you know, at Strategy Financial Group, we believe that everyone's gotta be an A player and that we don't have room on our roster for C's, and we really don't want Bs. We want we want A players, we want people who want to report out, we want people who get excited about reporting out, we want people who come ready to win, who are asking questions, managing up, and the scorecard 90 is is just such an easy tool to use where they can see it, they know if it's right or wrong, or trending in the right direction, green or red, and what they specifically need to do to impact the business to get us to where we need to be.

SPEAKER_04

It's interesting because actually a lot of clients that I'm working with right now are hesitant to have everybody's numbers up there. Like they're worried for their people, what but it's not letting them step up or take accountability or do those things. So it's it's refreshing to hear the perspective because I feel like I share this a lot of people want to do better and they want to grow in what they're doing. And so this is like a very clear way where they can drive accountability and ownership for themselves.

SPEAKER_00

And a little bit of competition. And not to say that, you know, particular groups have the ability to drive revenue and some are operations and support. But when I look at it through the lens of the company as a whole, well, if the support function's not working, it's gonna be really hard to drive the revenue, you know? And so I want, and this may be some of my hospitality background coming in, but like this thing needs to run as beautifully and seamlessly for our guests and clients as possible. And everyone's got a part in that magic. Whether it's our marketing department setting up seminars, whether it's our operations team picking up the phone to call a retiree about a cash withdrawal, whether it's our our you know, sales team treating every meeting as if it was the last one they were ever gonna do. Right. And, you know, at strategy, we have a big, wide range of clients. We have clients who come with us, you know, $150,000 in retirement savings at 65 years old. They need help. And then we have people who come in with $10 million who are gonna be okay, but they don't they don't know the tax implication. And they need they need help too. And we need we strive to treat all of them, anywhere in between, the same and have give them that same gold or white glove experience. And everyone on the organization has got to be aligned with that. And that's why we want to go full kimono with our numbers because they have to see it so they understand their impact of the business.

SPEAKER_02

It's it's one of those moments where when I've been coaching clients and I'm like, you have to win the week to win the month, to win the quarter, to win the year. And they'll have that moment. They're like, oh, you're saying we have to win the week to win the month. I'm like, yes.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_02

And how do you know if you're winning or not? Right. To your point of like, it's on the scorecard team. Yeah, just look at that. And if it's not winning, then fix it. And what what's great about EOS and scorecards in 90 is it's not a reporting function, it's a leading indicator of the function. And I think that often, like when we start to talk to teams and they're like, oh no, we we have data. And you look at it, you're like, yeah, but that's all lagging. It's like you're driving your car and I'm looking through the rear view mirror versus looking through the windshield. Correct. That's not how we drive cars. We gotta look through what and and that's the leading indicators that we're chasing. And as soon as they can see that, and then it just changes.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's been super powerful for our team. And we do look at both backward-looking data and forward-looking data, but much more so on the forward-looking stuff because well, what's done's done. Right. And we can learn from either we won the week or we lost last week. We can learn from that. But what are we doing now to impact this week, next week, next month, next quarter? And well, we know what the result is, we know where we got to go. So what are we doing, you know, to to drive that?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, and um, on average, there's probably five to 15 numbers on a scorecard, and two to three of those are lagging indicators. Like cash is always on there for some reason. Like people are and I get it, right? There's like that's not a leading indicator, that's lagging, but but the CEO, founder will probably feel better if they understand where their cash is at. So it's like, all right, keep there.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, we don't we don't keep cash on the scorecard, but we do report cash on a weekly basis.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

But we're in a look, uh, I'm I won't shy away from it. We're a successful practice. We are not we're in an expansion phase. So, you know, our cash troubles are well, are we gonna expand the business or are we gonna write a check to the IRS? And my visionary is hyper growth mode. He's got a BHAG out there where we do. I know where it is, I know how to get there. But do you do can you share what it is? Your tenure is your tenure target? Yeah, a tenure target to have a billion dollars under management.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yo.

SPEAKER_00

And we are we're marching that way and we're growing quick, 26% the last four years of growth. So we are, you know, every couple of years doubling the business from where it was. And it's really exciting to be a part of that. And we're because we're good at what we do, I would say we are the best at what we do. We're able to say, okay, well, if we service X amount of families, we can expect X amount result. And we want to get there. And the our product offering doesn't necessarily lean to the BHAC. It gives us a portion of it. But because we're in financial services, not every product is gonna get get us to the BHAG. But we have to service everybody in their unique situation because some products aren't suitable for everybody. And um, so we just need to expand our market reach. And so that's you know, when it comes back to cash, it's like, well, all right, how are we gonna deploy that to help more families? And those are the conversations, you know, they're fun conversations to have, yeah.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. Well, and earlier we were talking about the wealth transfer that's happening right now and how everything is going on. And so you guys are almost trying to keep up with that demand with people really thinking about exit planning right now.

SPEAKER_00

We are. And uh I saw an article from CNBC the other week, you know, what was it, $14 trillion in asset transfer? And, you know, it's it's anywhere from people's 401ks and and IRAs and you know, qualified money, non-qualified money that are saving the bank to physical businesses that, you know, you own a dry cleaner and your kid doesn't want it, what do you do? And well, we can help you with that because quite frankly, that's a scary situation, right? If you if you ran a dry cleaner for 50 years, you're probably the guy I need to talk to to get the stain out of my shirt. But you're probably not the guy who's like poised to, you know, sell his business. And unfortunately, there are predatory people out there, brokers, you know, you have private private equity funds trying to roll every every business. We see see it big in accounting services, uh, you know, seen it in HVAC services. You know, they're they're finding industries where you have this transfer coming. And these owners, you know, someone's offering them a big bag of money, but they don't actually know if that bag of money is appropriate for them. And yeah, it's something that we can help with. Um, but what our firm specializes in specifically is that should something happen to someone you love and care about, that, well, it's all in one spot. And, you know, traditionally we've seen the this bifurcation in the, you know, retirement wealth management space where, well, your tax return's over here, your investments are over here, your estate planning's over here, and you know, your will is sitting somewhere in a drawer. Well, we want to bring that all in house. Make sure that when the worst day of your family's life comes and and you've left, that we can pull it off the shelf and say, hey, you're gonna be okay. This is what we have, this is what's going on. Here's what your father or mother planned. How would you like to move forward? And, you know, that those are conversations that are starting to rapidly approach.

SPEAKER_02

So I coached an IT managed service company and they just recently sold to private equity. And when they came in, the private equity was just blown away. Every process was documented. It's in 90. All the scorecard data was there, right? And this guy's name is Josh. Josh called me up. He's like, Chris, like, because we would did this for years together, right? It's like they just couldn't believe we had all this figured out. It's like, yeah, it works. You did the work. You actually did the work. And so now when you go to sell to private equity and they look at it and they're like, we can value this, right? Otherwise, it's really hard to put a number on that. Super hard. If you're trying to like sell the business and you can't see it, they can't buy it. But if you've done that work with EOS and 90, then they can they can see it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, there's tremendous value in that because if you were on the I've been on the buy side of a transaction when I was buying gyms, and we'd go to, you know, we're talking CrossFit gyms. There's, you know, we used to joke there's two types of gym owners. There's business guys who think they can own a gym and gym guys who think they can run a business. And never works. And so, you know, we'd go in and I'll never forget this transaction. Um, it was in Tribeco, so it was CrossFit Tribeco or CrossFit 212 for forever. And they they had been around for a long time. And I just dropped in, you know, not I was looking to buy the gym, but the owner didn't know and the members didn't know. So I just dropped in for a workout, see what's going on. I'm like, this is a cool space, like physically cool in a basement in Tribeca across from the FBI building. And I was like, man, this is this is like a cool place to work out. Like I would want to work out here. And so I pulled the owner aside and he looks terrible. He looks haggard, tired. He's doing everything he can to keep this thing afloat. And I tell him who I am. He had recognized me when I walked in, and you know, the New York City CrossFit community was kind of tight at the time. And I was like, You ready to make a decision that you want to make a move? And he's like, Well, let me tell you about like, you know, my life. You know, he's getting a divorce, he needs to liquidate the asset to satisfy the settlement. And I was like, All right, well, what's it worth to you? And he says the number, and I was like, okay, show me. He can't. He's got no data, he's got no books, you know. He shows me a tax return that's got, you know, losses on it. I'm like, I'm like, on Bob. I was like, Bob, you're showing me, you know, five years of losses. How about you just give it to me and leave the security deposit and I'll run it for you? I'm like, you just walk away. You don't have to keep writing a check every year. He's like, no, no, no, we make money. I'm like, okay, well, show me some, show me something. Right. And he had no data. And I was like, Bob, I can, we can, we can tidy this up real quick. You leave the security deposit, I'll give you a couple pennies on the dollar for the equipment. And then you just kind of walk away. And he's like, you know, I've been working so hard, you know, so long. And I'm like, I know that's it's heartbreaking, but it's not worth anything. And in a year, this lease is gonna be up and you're not gonna be able to re-sign. So do you want this to be your like a legacy for you? Like, I we're not gonna, we don't have to change the name. Right? Your picture can still be on the wall. I I'm a pragmatist. I uh he can whatever we wanted. I was like, let me make it easy, right? We we value this thing at zero, you owe nothing to the wife. You walk away, you take the $70,000 loss on the deposit, your taxes are easier now. And like, let me solve this problem for you. And it felt a little gross because well, the gym was losing money, so it wasn't really worth anything. But I'm a CrossFit evangelicalist, and I wanted these members to keep having a place to go. And I knew that with the right process, uh, you know, all of our stuff documented the way we ran the business. This thing was gonna make money. And it did. But he didn't have anything to show for it. You know, he didn't document anything. He didn't even know the guy who fixed the toilet. And I was like, all right, like we'll all right, we'll plug and play our process in and see how it goes. But yeah, it was it was a really it was it was kind of sad that you know he worked so long, but nothing he had no numbers. He didn't he he barely had a tax return. It's really such a shame.

SPEAKER_02

So don't do that. Yeah, don't don't do that. Yeah. The takeaway is like, yeah, so don't do that. No.

SPEAKER_04

I'm sure it's hard to like think to get ahead because you're just like scrambling and trying to keep up, and then all of a sudden it's like you're you're too late. And so you coming in at that moment, it's like he didn't have time to even pull his head up and look at things.

SPEAKER_00

He didn't, and I would always say, because my I was very blessed to live with my great-grandmother when I was well, she lived with us when I was a kid. We had her until I was 12 or 13. Um, and she used to always tell me, like, don't put off to tomorrow what you can do today. And, you know, she grew up on a farm in North Jersey. Like she she was a tough woman, and nothing got by this lady. And like she was like, if there's work to do, just do it now. Don't put it off. You'll feel better. And that's kind of how I approach business. It's kind of how I approach my life. And, you know, things like that, you know, having the business intelligence lined up, the processes built, because eventually you're going to need it. And, you know, tie it back to 90, but like it's kind of the like it's a really easy solution that just houses all of it, right? And makes it real easy to, you know, you have all the data for all the time in the world and everything's super organized. And once you build it, it's pretty easy to maintain. Uh, it's why we love the software, it's why I it's super important to the organization. But for me, as the, you know, the integrator, my title is COO, but my job, my seat is the integrator, is like, okay, well, one day Calvin, my our visionary, is gonna want to exit. Well, it's my job to bulletproof him to make sure he has the best possible valuation. And, you know, I take that role very seriously. And I was like, okay, well, all of our stuff's going in here. So by the time he's ready in 10, 15 years, we can open up, you know, flip the hood, and he's gonna, you know, take his bag. It's awesome. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

So I'm I'm curious to hear, you've shared a lot about what you've built, the pain that you've gone through, blood, sweat, and tears. I want to hear about your biggest fuck up. What happened?

SPEAKER_00

Oh, well, I got a long list, but the biggest one, the biggest one was the the the big box gym we bought out of bankruptcy. So uh my business partner and I have been running five CrossFit gyms. We are doing well. We're making money. If we see this gym is up for sale in bankruptcy. A buddy of mine who I knew in the fitness space was like this gym broker, banker. So like he'd sometimes finance the deal, he'd sometimes put the sellers together. Calls me up, he's like, yo, this is in your backyard. This is a slam dunk. Put your brand on it, put your touch on it, put your process in. Yeah. Big box gyms, like the the sector is called low price, high value. So your crunch fitnesses, retro fitness, planet fitness, EOS is they're exploding because you know, it's 25 bucks a month. You can fit, you know, a million people in there, half of those members don't show up, and the overhead's low. So I looked at the model and I was like, yeah, it's in the best part of Brooklyn, like the nicest part of Williamsburg. I was like, yeah. And it was a million bucks to get it out of bankruptcy. I didn't have a million dollars, my business partner didn't have a million dollars, we had to go out and find a million dollars. So I called a guy that I'd done a couple deals with before, and he was like, Yeah, great. He lived like two blocks away, and we were frends, like actual friends. I worked with his wife at Flywheel, that's how we became friends. And I genuinely like love this guy. Like I watched his kid a few times while they were like on a date night. And so we were real friends. So he puts together the million bucks. Comes time to close a deal. We don't have like a really firm operating agreement in place. My best friend happens to be a transactional attorney. He's like, You better get that signed. Like, I can't do that for you. I'm on the transaction. I'm conflicted out. He's like, you're gonna have to go pay someone, you know, 10 grand to get this written, but you need to have this done. Didn't listen to him. Fast forward a couple months. This is like right before COVID. We had done the my business, my other business partner, I would redo the build-out, we relaunched the sale process. It's going well. Like we oversold our memberships. We kept the current members that were there, they're super happy. New equipment, new paint, facility like toilets work, the locker room's not dirty, like every the smoothie bar is up and functioning. Life is good. This guy who helped me raise a million bucks sends us a letter. You're out of the business. And I was like, wait, what?

SPEAKER_02

No, that's not.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and I was I was completely blindsided because him and I are friends. What I later learned was he didn't like my business partner. My business partner didn't like him, but they didn't have to talk. They didn't. I was, I was, I was operating it. They were getting clean financials every month, and he just booted us out, and we had to go to arbitration. And I was like, hey, look, this is the money we have in the deal, you need to repay it.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_00

But like, if you want to operate and own a gym, go with God. You know nothing about this. Like, you'll, I was like, I told him, like, as a buddy, this is gonna be more of a headache than you want. As an adversary, just give me my money back, you can have it. Right. I I I knew what he was walking into. I don't know if he did. But yeah, it was uh, it was really heartbreaking because it fractured the relationship I had with my business partner, who, you know, is still a dear friend, and I would never do that again without him, right? You know, we were we had perfect like symmetry. All the things he wanted didn't want to do, I did. All the things I didn't want to do, he did. And we loved it. We went on vacations together, we ran the business together, we worked out together, we were two peas in a pot. And then what I realized is we brought we brought in a toxic pee and really, really messed things up. It was it was expensive, it was messy. Uh so the lessons learned here is one, if your buddy's a lawyer and he tells you to do something, just listen. Um, you know, going into business with friends is uh a bad idea. Um and straying from your core business focus, uh big mistake.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And uh things, you know, long list of things I would never do again, that's that's probably top of top of the list.

SPEAKER_04

With hindsight being 2020, is there something you feel like you would go back and do differently rather than just not doing it all? Like, is there things Yeah, I would have leveraged the business.

SPEAKER_00

I wouldn't have taken equity out uh on the on the million dollars. I would have go, I'd gone to a bank and and just borrowed it and been like, hey, the model works. Like we have other assets that we can collateralize. I wasn't as sophisticated on deal making at the time. I was kind of like in a rush to do it because it was in bankruptcy court. There was a time ticker on it. I didn't want to get outbit. I was so nervous about getting outbit and I realized there was no other bit. I show up to bankruptcy court and like nobody's there. No one's there. It's just yeah, it's just me. And you know, we had a you know, we had this massive fight with the landlord. It's you know, 35,000 square feet in Brooklyn, and it's not, it's not a small space.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And so I'm getting, you know, all this pressure to to close this deal. And I took the easiest route. And 99% of the time, the easiest route is not the righteous and lesson learned. So yeah, I would have to to redo that, I would have kept our me and my business partner, that would have been it. I would have gone to the bank, I would have gotten creative with the financing terms. Um I would have done the deal because I believe in the business, the model works, and uh I would not have engaged a friend, you know, now now we're not friends. And that that sucks. Like I could the gym, those come and go, like money you can always make more, you know. I that I can leave aside, but I lost a friend and that sucked. Like that that was the trauma for me. It wasn't like, oh, now I don't get a piece of this cool gym, whatever, I got five others. Like I I lost a pal. And yeah.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04

I'm curious to my last question. So if you were doing something other than what you were doing right now, what would you want to be doing?

SPEAKER_00

Well, the Mets need a first baseman. Uh so that you know that if if if if I could. Um No, I I love my job. Um I really do love it. I would if I wasn't doing this current role, I mean I would try you know, I'm still trying to be a published author. I have two manuscripts on the pipe, trying to get those sold. Uh but if someone would pay me to do that, that'd be cool. But that's not not not realistic, you know. I I think it's good enough. Um no, but I I really love the business where I'm in. Uh I love the families that we serve. I'm meant to do this. Um yeah, it really speaks to like my why. And uh if I wasn't doing it with this firm, I'd certainly be doing it with another.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, it's cool you brought up core values earlier too, because even a few weeks ago we had a webinar that was talking about like that overlap of personal and business core values, and it I can feel that coming from you too.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's important i that it aligns with me. You know, I've I've worked in places like the bank or the NBA where like values like just not aligned. Like, you know, they want to do something and I you know, do I get it? Yeah. Do I want it? I don't know. Do I have the capacity? Sure. Do I have the skill set? Yeah. But like the W was really tough for me. And then that's why the gyms are such a natural fit because I I loved it. I I have a you know, the reason I got into fitness was one, it's passionate for me, but two, like the you know, the health and wellness space has been evergreen in my life since I'm 12. Now I don't have to do that as a job. I get to do the for fun, but now I get to, you know, scratch that itch, helping people in a different way. Um so yeah, the core values, if it's not aligned, you know, for me personally, I'm another stage of my career where like I can make that choice. You know, some of us aren't that lucky when you're starting out, and I wasn't. Um but you you get older, you get smarter, and you can choose uh what you want to do.

SPEAKER_02

Two years ago, we were in Nashville as a as a team at 90, and I taught Simon Sinek's finding your why. And I am still like we had a team member talked about like what that did for her and how she's now living her life differently. Like this week she brought it up from something that happened two years ago.

SPEAKER_04

That's incredible.

SPEAKER_02

That's like that changed it for me.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And that's the kind of moments where you're like, oh, that's impact. Yeah. That that's that's real stuff, which is why we should do what we do.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, and people don't take the second to slow down and really think about it. But when you go through those exercises and like can connect it to the bigger picture, it makes a big difference. So you land in the right place. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of value there. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining us. This was really fun. I enjoyed hearing your story. So it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me. If people want to connect with you, is there any place they should go?

SPEAKER_00

Strategyfinancial group.com. Great. Uh, we offer the best strategy and financial retirement guidance one can get. Uh, you can find me at Instagram, uh Jared underscore S underscore Stein, but that's mostly me lifting weights.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. All right. Well, thanks for joining Impact Moments. Hope everyone enjoyed and go win the week.

SPEAKER_04

And that was Jared Stein. What a great conversation. And taking the turn into exit planning and what that really means was fascinating. What really stuck with me was how he thinks about his role as an integrator through that lens and how his job isn't just running the business today, but it's making it bulletproof so that when the visionary is ready to exit in 10 or 15 years, everything is there and ready. If you want to connect with Jared, you can find his firm at strategyfinancialgroup.com. And if you got something out of this episode, make sure you like and subscribe so you don't miss the next one. And of course, as always, share it with someone on your team that needs to hear it. Go win the week, and we'll see you next time.