Impact Moments

Coaching the Person, Not the Problem - Jamie Munoz (EP. 11)

• ninety studios • Episode 11

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Jamie Munoz spent four years as a full-time integrator at a large format printing company in Phoenix, helping grow the team from 60 to 100 people on EOS. When her visionary decided to become an EOS implementer, Jamie found herself at a crossroads and started doing fractional integrator work before the term even existed. That led her to founding Catalyst Integrators, a firm that matches experienced integrators with visionaries who need them. In this conversation with Christine Watts and Kris Snyder, Jamie talks about the moment she realized she had become a visionary sitting in both seats, the tension between structure and emotion in EOS meetings, and the termination story she still carries with her: the day she walked into a meeting trusting that the coaching had been done, only to discover it hadn't.

Key topics:

  • How fractional integrator work was born before anyone had a name for it
  • The tension between EOS implementers and fractional integrators, and why there is room for both
  • Transitioning from integrator to visionary and learning a completely different skill set
  • Why things happen for you, not to you: bringing the human element back into structured meetings
  • The termination that went wrong and what it taught her about due diligence

About Jamie Munoz:
Jamie is the founder of Catalyst Integrators, a fractional integrator firm that matches experienced integrators with visionaries running on EOS. Before founding Catalyst, she spent four years as a full-time integrator at AZPro in Phoenix, where she helped grow the company from 60 to 100 team members. She is also part of the Visionary Forum community.
Connect with Jamie: LinkedIn
Learn more about Catalyst Integrators: catalystintegrators.com

Mentioned in this episode:

  • Stutz (Netflix documentary on Phil Stutz)
  • Positive Intelligence (mental toughness training)
  • Rocket Fuel by Gino Wickman and Mark C. Winters

Connect & Subscribe:
Subscribe to the 90xEOS newsletter: ninety.io/impact-moments
Read the 90xEOS blog: ninety.io/eos/blog
Connect with Kris: LinkedIn
Connect with Christine: LinkedIn
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SPEAKER_01

Welcome to Impact Moments Powered by 90. Today we're joined by Jamie Munoz. Jamie spent four years as a full-time integrator at a company running on EOS. That's actually back when we first met, when her company was using 90, and she helped grow that team from 60 to 100 people. When that chapter ended, she started doing something that really barely had a name at the time: fractional integrator work. That led her to creating her firm catalyst, where she matched experienced integrators with visionaries who needed them when they needed them. What makes Jamie's story really different is where she ended up. She went from the integrator seat at her initial company to now being a visionary and an integrator within her own business. And she now sits in both of those seats. In this conversation, Jamie shares what that transition taught her, why she believes believes things happen for you, not to you, and the termination story that she still carries with her today. Let's get into it. Hey, welcome to Impact Moments. I'm Christine. I'm Chris. And Jamie, thank you for joining us today. Excited to have you here. Thank you guys for having me. That's exciting. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if you remember, but we first met at the first EOS conference in Atlanta. Do you remember this?

SPEAKER_02

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And you were working with AZ Pro, right?

SPEAKER_02

Yes. Oh my gosh. Blast from the past. I love it.

SPEAKER_00

It was 2018. 17. 17.

SPEAKER_02

17 and 18. Yeah. Yep.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

So we go way back. And 90 was a different brand back then. Right? Traction?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, an X.

SPEAKER_02

I remember I got my husband the hat that had like the little mountain logo on it. We have an OG hat. Oh, we have one, yes. We're waiting for the day where it'll bring a pretty penny on eBay.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that's coveted, I feel like.

SPEAKER_02

He had no idea what he was getting or what he was representing. And I kind of messed with him at first because he was wearing it all the time. And I was like, you know what that brand is, right? And he's like, wait, no, what is it? And I totally gave him a little bit of a panic moment. I was like, no, it's totally trusted, totally appropriate company to represent.

SPEAKER_01

It just looked like an outdoor company, though. So it just kind of looks like activeware, I feel like it fit in.

SPEAKER_02

Totally, totally. Something sold at REI for sure. Yeah, of course. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Well, uh, give us a little bit of background on you, um, how you kind of came into the role of integrator. Cause I think when I met you, you were integrator there.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah. So I was full-time integrator at AZ Pro. Uh, it's a local company here in Phoenix that does large format printing. And I was, I was helping that company for about four years before we found EOS and hired our implementer. And, you know, we were just hitting a ceiling. Like we knew things needed to change. And uh we found EOS. And I was like, thank God there's an easy book that I can hand to people and prove that like the things that we want to do are actually a thing. And so my visionary, I mean, he had found the book and and told me to figure it out. Yeah. So um, yeah, four years we had our EOS implementer and we were running it. Um, we had grown the company when we found EOS from about 60 team members up to 100. But in that time we had a lot of turnover. So we were making sure that we had all the right people in the right seats. And honestly, like again, like 90 played a big part for us in us having this incredible software and tool where even though we were all in one location, we had people going out in the field and stuff, but we could have like I remember the days when I had to write, I had to write the agenda on the whiteboard every time. And it took me so long. And then manually capturing to-dos and everything. So again, just having this simple, easy system that could empower the team also to take accountability for getting things done and the ease of us being able to roll out and share our VTO and our accountability chart and our updates and things. It just, anyways, it was a godsend. So yeah, I was integrator there full time for those next four years and got us to a place where the leadership team was built out, it was running, things were humming. My visionary was finally like, what does life look like to potentially not be in the day-to-day anymore? And I could just be the visionary. And he actually became an EOS implementer.

SPEAKER_04

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_02

And I was like, well, what do I do? You know, do I become an implementer? Do I help other companies running on EOS? Like, am I starting over? I also owned a boutique at the same time that I kind of like side hustled. And I worked with special needs dogs. So I was like, how can I work from home, have my boutique and go there a few days a week, still be the integrator for this company? About a day a week is all they needed. Um, because I had replaced myself as operations. So that's really where fractional was kind of born for me in 2018 and took me to the next step of my journey, which leads me into where I am now with Catalyst.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And I'm so curious because I feel like now I there are a lot of fractional firms, but I don't think I knew of any beforehand. Had you seen that like in practice before you started yours?

SPEAKER_02

So no, it was very much like I remember going to lunch with my implementer, and I was like, am I doing something illegal? Like, are the EOS police gonna come and arrest me because I'm like this charlatan, you know, just like a day a week with a few different companies. But, you know, I really remember, again, from every every EOS conference, I feel like anytime Gino or Mark Winners got up and spoke, they really talked about the the numbers of the lack of integrators per visionary out there. And there was like this call to action almost that you couldn't ignore that was like they would say these numbers like, for every four or five visionaries out there, there's one integrator. And then you're like, oh my gosh, like there's an underserved like community here of all these entrepreneurs and visionaries. Yeah. Then also when you really look at EOS and the integrator seat, it's not typically full time. You're usually also the head of operations. And if the company is not growing and scaling or reporting to a board or something like that, where it's like multi multiple locations or multi-vertical, then a fractional integrator really can meet people where they're at. It can help them go and grow. So I really just feel like I fell into it on accident. One of my early mentors that I reached out to and found that was doing fractional work had been fractional for Mark Winners at one point. And so I kind of started getting that mentorship and learning what it truly meant to be fractional and how to uphold that and make sure that it's not just a self-promoted thing of like, oh, I just read Rocket Fuel today and I decided I'm gonna be a fractional integrator today. But it's really like a progression of the journey and a next step for full-time integrators when they're ready for that next step in their career. So um I feel like I got very lucky in that it wasn't really known what fractional integrators were. We used to have to really explain it to people.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And uh fast forward to today, where again, it's the pendulum has swung a little bit to where there's lots of people in the space and lots of options and an integrator for everyone, right? Like if you're a visionary, you can find an integrator of any size and type and background that you need to get you where you want to go.

SPEAKER_00

We have about 150 in our partner program today. That doesn't mean there's not more, but just in general, we've been watching that trend too. And it's been interesting to talk to them and go, What do you do? Right. And I think there is this interesting moment when you said the EOS police, right? Like there's this interesting moment where you got 870 EOS implementers out there and they too are trying to understand like what's that intersection and how do I refer you in to go do that work, or do you compete with me?

SPEAKER_02

Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Right. And there's there's some healthy tension there because we've seen that in the community at times. Because the US implementers are gonna not just uh do the three session days that you do to implement it, then they're gonna do quarterlies and annuals, right? But a lot of fractional uh integrators are also doing quarters and annuals.

SPEAKER_03

Yep.

SPEAKER_00

And that becomes this really interesting demarcation of like how does that all work together?

unknown

Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So I don't know if you've had any of that experience like working with the US implementers and figuring that out, but most of the time I think we it we take, because at 90, we we take a very abundance-minded approach. Yeah, like there's something for everyone. And so just go figure out what that is. But I think there's you know, a little bit of tension in the community.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, there is, right? And they're that can come into place, right? When the you've got people maybe that are acting out of integrity or doing things that like can kind of distill, like distill a brand or distill an industry, like in a way, you know, if we kind of even see fractional integrators as like a like some sort of an industry. The way that I see it and experienced it was like my implementer from day one was telling me, like, Jamie, you're gonna need to run this show. Like, this is you as the integrator. When I'm not here, when you're onboarding new people, when things are happening, like you are the champion for this. Like you need to know this the back of your hand. You know, I could call my implementer for questions and some guidance and things like that. But at the end of the day, I was there every single day making sure that EOS was running, the business was running, I had rocket fuel with my visionary. That was my responsibility. And he wanted to empower me to be able to do that. So from day one, he was encouraging me, watch how I'm facilitating. You know, we debrief after the sessions, see how I did that, see how I led that session or those things. Because the goal was, and I think the goal still kind of is that you graduate from your implementer after two years.

SPEAKER_00

That's right.

SPEAKER_02

Now you see value, right? Like it's anytime I can show up and not run a meeting, for sure as the integrate, like you are like, oh, thank God. Like I don't have to be the one also leading this thing. Like it is so wonderful to participate, but in that absence or graduation or no need to have that outside coach or facilitator, it's it lands with you, especially in times of tough budgets or things like that. Like companies kind of shrink in and say, like, okay, what resources internally do we have that we can use that can support us with where we want to go and not have to rely on external facilitation. I mean, I could argue why it's a necessity, but it's also a luxury in a lot of ways. And in tough times, I feel like you have to make those decisions of like, you know, what what can we do if we can't afford to bring somebody else in? Um and it is our integrator's responsibility, kind of how I see it.

SPEAKER_00

There should be an independence moment, right? Like you now know how to do it, so go do it. Right. You don't need that person anymore to coach you through it. Now, if you need them for an annual, maybe, right? But otherwise, like just run.

SPEAKER_04

Right.

SPEAKER_00

That's that's what the that's the whole investment was to build the muscle memory, to build the skills, right? Now you've got it.

SPEAKER_02

So yeah, go do it. And I think a thing like uh predicting, right? We're I'm probably gonna misquote how old EOS is. Is EOS like 17 years old? No, 17 in 2020?

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Okay. So if you even think about that, if the goal was to graduate even after two years, you have integrators now who have probably run multiple companies for 20 years, like at this point on EOS. So they know it. They know the nuances, they know how to teach it, to train it, to make sure that the team is running on it effectively. So I think by those very numbers, integrators with experience have been bred over the past, well, let's say even 15 years that can do this work, right? And that can support companies, multiple companies at a time, which is a a cool thing that I think has happened is being a COO or being an integrator for me in the past, and even looking at where my career career trajectory was going, was like, well, where do you go once you've like been successful in it? Do you start over with another company? Do you continue to grow and grow and grow? And like maybe work in companies that you don't love that size or that complexity anymore because what is your growth ceiling? You're usually not going to become the visionary. So, like, you kind of top out. So, what a cool way to provide more impact and and ripple effect out in the world, being able to help smaller companies meet them where they're at and get an infusion of an integrator that they otherwise couldn't afford.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I'm so curious to hear about your journey because you did do that where you transitioned from integrator to visionary, right? As you were creating catalysts.

SPEAKER_02

So you gotta be like really crazy for what do that.

SPEAKER_00

And then I did what?

SPEAKER_02

And then I did. Yeah. Yes. This turns into a therapy couch, right?

SPEAKER_01

What was what was that time like? Like, how did you kind of discover new things about yourself and like push yourself past what you thought you could do? Like, what was that time like when you were creating Catalysts?

SPEAKER_02

Still the time. Yeah. Every day, still.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

I would say that like having that aha moment to realize, like, I always identified as an integrator. But then what was interesting was I had these moments and these things happen where I look back and I'm like, oh, I I've got entrepreneurial spirit. Like my dad is an entrepreneur. Um, he works in the car business. Like, he's owned his own used call car dealership, like my whole life from being a kid and like having a jewelry business when I was in college, I had a clothing line. I opened the boutique. So I always had these like safer side hustles because my integrator side comes out and I'm like not a risk taker. I'm not gonna, you know, put my house up as collateral to like build and grow some business when I'm like, you know, it that's just not me. I'm not, if there was a visionary spectrum or continuum or something that we could look at and see, like I think there's extreme visionaries like the Gina Wickmans, um, the Bob Schennefelds, the Mark Abbots that are on this side of the spectrum that are so visionary. I think there's some of us who are there and play it a little safer or just have a different flavor into how we are um visionary in a different way. So when I say that I fell into this, like I went solo fractional by myself my first couple of years. And I think what was wild to discover was my desire to help other people not feel alone, whether they're visionaries who are feeling alone because they don't have an integrator, or integrators who are feeling alone because they want community or they want to be fractional and help more people. I found this really unique spot that I fell into of being able to build catalyst to be the catalyst for these integrators and for these visionaries. And it's wild to wake up one day and realize, holy shit, okay, I'm the visionary of this. Like that's it's wild because now I'm running this business and having the vision for this business. I'm not doing client delivery. I'm not doing service delivery. I don't, you know, I don't have clients anymore. Um, I haven't taken clients in a few years. So it really just becomes like, what are your your gifts, your unique abilities? What do you love to do? And then what are the gaps and in growth and opportunity? And that's kind of where I'm at, have been at for the past five years. Catalyst is about to turn five in 2026. It's amazing to watch how it's grown and taken shape and is so different than it was from inception to now, and how different I am and how the things that I've gone through have shaped me uh to probably be uh a better visionary than I for sure was when I started this because I wasn't ever focused on being a good visionary. I was a really good and strong integrator. So I've had to learn how to be a good visionary and put myself in environments where I can learn from amazing visionaries, also.

SPEAKER_01

That's such a good perspective. You have to like change or adjust a bit of your community to make sure that you're like hearing from different perspectives and those voices.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, for sure. It's a cool place to be that I feel like I can speak both languages now. Like I feel like I'm like this whisperer that can like toggle between the two. And also is right now I'm sitting in the visionary and the integrator seat for Catalyst. And I, my heart goes out to all these visionaries who are sitting in both seats. Like what I can see and feel and put words to that it's doing for me in my life, like the drop from 30,000 foot to ground level is real.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And what that does to your body physically, mentally, like it's a lot. So I need an integrator. I don't want to be the integrator anymore.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Uh so I'm we brought you here and asked you about an impact moment. And you've worked with so many clients. I'm sure you have so many stories. But what was the story that you chose to bring today?

SPEAKER_02

I'm at this, I'm at this place and I'm having these ahas, which I recognize people listening or watching either have had this aha or will one day, in that you realize that everything is happening, whether it's life or business, to me it's it's both, it's harmony of both. Is that things are happening for you, not to you. And when I like really truly embraced and embodied that specifically this year, with a lot of coaching and therapy and different things, that I can see how things have happened in in the growth of the business, or my growth even, that equipped me to be stronger today, to be able to get through things differently today, to be able to support somebody else going through those things today. So it's hard when you're going truly through the suck of something, you know. Things like it doesn't mean things don't just suck. Like sometimes things just suck. That's okay. But I think it's when you can really reflect and go inward on how those things impact you and how you feel about them. To to not just try to move through them really fast. The big thing for me lately has been realizing that by the very nature of things like EOS that we have, where we have structure, right? Like we know there's a vision and there's goals. And if there's an issue, we take to-dos and you know, eventually, you know, could it be a rock or whatever, right? Like we have structure to things.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

If we take like the human and emotion and energy element out of that and just power through it, we are all not really stepping into and harnessing our true energy or our true emotions that are happening. We're stifling it, we're pushing it down, we're ignoring it for the sake of the agenda. We're moving through it. We've got a timer right running to make sure. There's a pause button on that timer though, to say, like, there might be a hot minute where we need to sit in the suck of something. Like that was hard or that hurt, or that was a a difficult thing, or we could celebrate. Why aren't we celebrating more? Why aren't we talking more about like all the awesome things that did happen and pull from that? So, all that to say, I know it's not like an exact specific moment in time or story of something that happened. I mean, I could dig into all the things that have happened that are stories, but that to me has been like the big like revelation and aha moments for me this year is that it's like it's okay to bring like the human and the element of emotion and human humanized with all this AI we've got going on and everything too, right? Um, and feel those things so that way we can be better leaders through it and um not take those uh moments away from people.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, you I totally get what you're saying. And you're actually really good at this because I feel like I have that bias for keeping things going. We need to we have things we need to get done, efficiency over everything. And I'm like, well, let's just skip through like we need to go faster in the check. We need to go faster and like the team all together. We can't let everybody share whatever it is. And that's the bad, like devil on your shoulder kind of thing. But you're really good about making us slow down and saying, no, everybody is gonna go around, like, and it is gonna take a little bit longer than we want, but it does ultimately make people feel more connected and more willing to like share and like let people, as you would say, step into the danger a little bit more.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and and uh thank you, but I'm I'm still working on it, right? But I one of the things I I try to remind myself is that we coach the person, not the problem. And if you're coaching the person, then you have to let them enter into the problem, right? Versus sometimes I get excited, I'm like, oh, I see the problem. Right. No, no, we can we can get after this. Like let's let's let's just go right there. And they're like, no, they're not there yet. And I don't really know what the problem is. There's early indicators, so I'm just gonna keep coaching the person. And we had this happen yesterday, even. Yeah. Where all of a sudden it's like, oh, that's not the problem I thought it was. Like they didn't know themselves until we coached a little bit further, and then they tell us what the core issue is. You're like, oh, that's it. Now we got it, now we can talk about it. Right, because before we didn't really know, but now we know.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I'm writing a book right now um called Meetings Kind of Suck. Because they just do. Right? Like in most of the time, people don't look forward to meetings. But if you think about like most of what EOS and 90 we we do is we run better meetings, and but they kind of suck. And we just to your point of like, you just gotta enter into that. Place and go, yeah, it's hard. I get it. That was an eight. That wasn't a ten. Now, how do we do better tomorrow? Right? Like that's and that's one of the things I love about Christine's heard me say this. Um, I love rating every meeting now because that's how I know, right? Like you, we sat down, we're having a moment, we're having expectation. At the end, we're gonna be like, let's rate this. One to ten, let's go. And so I did six years of marital counseling. I love my wife, and I started rating the meetings, and the the counselor did not find that fun. I'm like, this was a seven. I'm like, we need to do better, team.

SPEAKER_02

Kind of adapt that, like, okay, if I didn't get value, then I don't have to pay you for this meeting.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. She didn't she did not buy into that either. I was like, we're not, we need more progress.

SPEAKER_01

So, what really changed for you, like kind of getting to this point and like making a more intentional effort towards this mindset? Were there like significant changes with like you and the business and how you work with people? Like, what did you see happen?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I love that question. Again, it kind of help comes from that reflection, right? Like something happens or you have some aha moments, or or something kind of triggers you. And and what I was feeling and sensing and and seeing from my team at the time, this was about I'll say about three years ago now, is that I I don't, I mean, you could use the term burnout, but it becomes like when your personal and professional life are like in disharmony, right? And there's also like a disharmony within you of understanding where your energy comes from, how you recharge, you know, how you are um handling things emotionally and and making sure that you can create that resiliency, that mental toughness for yourself, not only in work, but like as a person, like as a human. Like that's super important. I was seeing that that was in very much conflict with with people on my team. I was starting to experience it myself. It kind of was becoming something that like I could not ignore any longer. Like I it was a feeling that I had. It was something that I was hearing and I was seeing. And within a span of about six months, I had several people on my team leave. They were like burning out, all of these things were happening. And I was just like, oh my God, like what can I do? How can I support, you know, what what my team needs? You know, sometimes you look at it like your visionary is way more heads up, heads out, even maybe your VP of sales, right? They're way more out in the world. They're going to networking things, they're going to conferences, they're going to their mastermind groups or whatever, right? And where visionaries, I think, have the hardest time is they learn these tools or hear from this speaker, read this book or whatever. They get so excited about their experience with it and they bring it back and it falls short because they don't know how to bring it back and integrate it in or roll it in that is a need for their team. If they've identified it's something their team needs, their team sees it as another thing we got to do, or oh my gosh, we already have this big workload. Now you want us to focus on this other thing. Like it just becomes noise. And I think then visionaries get frustrated and don't bring it back, right? They just get to where they're like, okay, well, we'll keep them running and doing the things they're doing in the business, and that's fine. Like, I'll bring back what I can. The way that I saw it was like, how can I bridge that gap of going out in these environments with visionaries, hearing what they need and what they have going on, bringing these tools, resources, speakers, concepts back to my team in a digestible way so that they can consume it and it can help them live better lives and find this harmony in their life. Because I mean, ultimately, if they're happy, their families are happy, their clients are happy, you know, I'm happy that they're happy. You know, like it's just a whole like love fest. And that's great. So I'm like, how can I help curate that for my team? And so that's where I started really finding ways to bring those things in. I did a theme for the year one year that was called Nourish to Flourish. And the whole theme for the year was like, how are we nourishing ourselves to flourish in our lives? And I brought in a couple of different speakers I had met through and part of the visionary forum. And I had gone to some visionary summits, and um I remember Mark spoke one year there, which was phenomenal. How can I bring back this stuff and roll it in? I mean, most of the people on my team are not outwardly going and doing that for themselves, right? They're focused on client work. So, how can I help lead the charge for them in that and bring those resources into them in a digestible, easy to understand manner? So I've created some of my own tools. Um, I brought in other tools and other thought leadership around um how to live your life in harmony and have self-care that's not just facials and massages, um, but also things like positive intelligence. That was a huge one. Um, I had done that with my coach and brought positive intelligence into the team. And now everyone that onboards with us goes through mental toughness training. And um, yeah, that's kind of been the big thing for us. I don't know. What do you, what do you guys do?

SPEAKER_01

We use a lot of different tools, I feel like internally. Um, and we we talk a lot about like the who you are and how that matches up with like what you're doing right now. And I even remember at one point we did an exercise, and maybe this was a few years ago now, um, where we went around the table and we were talking about it was an annual, and so we're talking about the big company vision. Um, and we were all sharing like what our own vision was for ourselves personally, and like does our own personal vision fit inside? And the company vision needs to be big enough that it can support all of our own, yeah, all of our own individual ones. And so I think like exercises like that, and then just like getting a deeper understanding into like who we are and how we work together, is a lot of what we lean into.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, and personally, um, I'm a big fan of Phil Stutz. I don't know if you know his work. Yeah, so he it there was a Netflix series probably two, three years ago. Um, and he's got five books. But what I love about Phil's work, and he's a uh behavioral psychologist, is he starts with a very simple scenario that says that you have a life force to your resiliency. And your life force has three things in it at any one point in time. The first one is your relationship with your body and how you feel about it, right? Like, so do you move your body? Like it's not like you have to be a triathlete triathlete, but it's like move your body, like like figure that out, then have a relationship with those that you love, and then have a relationship with yourself. And if you do those three things, then you can think about your life force. And so part of like for me, the work I do when I journal in the mornings is I think about my life force and how that's coming together. Because I think it goes to your resiliency moment, right? Like because it's hard. The work that we the work that we do as entrepreneurs and leaders, and it takes a lot of energy. And then sometimes I wake up and I don't feel resilient, like I'm tired, right? Like it happens. But then you go through, I go through the my life force. I'm like, okay, so I do need to go for a hike. I do need to go have some time to like understand how my body's feeling today, right? And I need to go call my mom because that's my the that's the relationship with the people that I love that I probably didn't make time for that I need to.

SPEAKER_02

And you realize these are free things, right? So it just doesn't cost you any money. This isn't like for the elite people to like only have. It's like what that's doing for your your mind and your spirit and your soul and your body when you like feel into those activities is so regenerative. Did I say that word? Regenerative. Regenerative. Yeah, it works. Yeah. It regenerates you. Yeah, it regenerates you.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it works.

SPEAKER_02

I knew it was, I don't want to say bad, good or bad. I knew it was something. When my doctor, I went and saw her and she prescribed to me that every morning I need to go outside, be in the first morning sun, and put my feet in the grass and ground. You know, it's like these simple things of, you know, that that cost you no money. I mean, yes, your time's money and it costs you that, but um just realizing that like, you know, the slowing down. And again, that's why I think like a tool, we'll go back to tools. We'll go back to like what are the things that you have, and and you touched on it where you're like, well, you know, I see the value and I want, I want the meeting to run right. And we want that too, right? Like it's it's and it's all of these things together. But having a tool that like my brain puts no thought or stress or energy into where my VTO lives, if it's currently updated, if the team can see it, uh, what my to-dos are. Like, I can put so much more of my intentional energy and unique ability into other stuff because I don't worry. Like it's just there. It's it's a tool that allows me to not have worry about those things is wonderful.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's all organized. And I feel like earlier you talked about like the distributed accountability, which I feel like is a huge thing because a lot of times like the integrator is just like doing everything themselves and then keeping the to-do list and then reminding everybody what to go do. And like when you have something like 90 where it's like everybody can like see and access and do what they need to do, like it does take a lot of that stress off of the integrator, the person that's trying to do it. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02

Cause God forbid you're sick or something, you know. So anybody can roll in and and pop that open. And people that feel less confident about running a meeting, like the agenda is there for you. You know, it's so clickable and easy and intuitive. Um, I am not a software technology like person at all. So for me, I'm like, I can use it. Like it's it's easy for me. Like I can use this. This is simple and easy. And also like the human element, too, where like anytime I need help or support or have a question, I can chat, I can, and I'm talking to a human. And if I don't respond, I know I'm gonna get an email that's like, okay, so but did you get the help you needed, Jamie? Like, did you solve that thing you needed help with? And I'm like, oh yes, okay, thank you. Like you followed up with me. That's great. So I get you get the support that you're looking for too. And also being virtual. So, like when I was at AZ Pro, we were all in one location. We were all in person. And yes, like pulling that tool up so much easier than writing on the whiteboard. But anytime, you know, like you went virtual, like now I'm 100% virtual, we can easily run that with all of our clients, like and all of our teams. It's so simple and so easy. So whether you're full-time or in person, like it's just such a benefit. When people are like, oh, I'm using a Google sheet, I'm like, oh God, okay. Well, you know, I don't want to like make anyone feel bad or like judge them or anything, but I'm like, it's it pays for itself. Like having the software and and taking on that investment, it it pays for itself. Like, hands down, you guys know this.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I have one more question about you, and I want to hear about your biggest fuck up. What happened? What was the situation between two firms? Between two firms. Between two firms. I should have said it more deadband. You were so close.

SPEAKER_02

Oh my gosh. Uh my biggest fuck up. Oh my God, like ever, most recently. Oh yeah, you should like how do you pick one? I guess it's like always my first draft of this answer is like, well, we all mess up all the time and every day, right? And we have these big things that happen, but like we reflect on them, we learn from them, we put new things in place, right? It's like, you know, as long as you're learning for it from it, it doesn't feel like as long as you're learning from it, it doesn't feel like this massive thing because you you you used it to grow. Um, but that doesn't directly answer your question. Biggest up. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01

One of mine that always comes to mind when I think about this sort of thing is like I know everybody has that feeling where it's like in the pit of their stomach and like they're sweating and whatever. And I was working at this company and I was the only person in marketing, and I was updating something and I completely took down the whole website. But the problem was the website wasn't just like, oh, people click here. It's like a small business loans company, and so people like can't get their loans and they can't apply for things, and so everything is shut down. And so then I just like stayed there sitting at my desk like this for hours into the night because I'm like, I can't fix it, but like I have to be here and I have to stare at the screen. And that taught me a lot of things about going slower, and I still go too fast sometimes, but I have not taken down a website since. Yeah, see, thank god.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that that we know of.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, that you know, yeah, and it's not due to happen again. Like it, that's like a one and done situation, and you're through it.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, that's great.

SPEAKER_01

Lots of good lessons.

SPEAKER_02

All right, well, what's yours?

SPEAKER_00

I would say it was a personnel issue where we decide to hire a leader that I didn't believe we should hire, but we were in a seat of pain. And so it's that moment where nobody in the seat was not working, so you were going with somebody, and we had done an exhaustive search. So we did the hire, and then within a couple months we're like, this told just bad. It's a bad hire, right? And so I then I had to go get our CFO involved too, and I'm like, I think this is a bad hire. He's like, I think so too. And then we got our C our chief product technology officer involved. I'm like, what do you think? He's like, Yeah. So then we had to go to the CEO who was exhausted by like all we did. And we let the guy go. And he'd only been there for two months. And he's not a bad human. It was just the wrong hire, right? And and I look back on that and I could have done it better. Like, we should have just said no. Like, we we know it's not right.

SPEAKER_02

You ignored your gut because it sounded like you like your gut was telling you already that ignored it.

SPEAKER_00

So many people and we were exhausted, and we were just ready to move. And like I I you know, the the founder, Mark and I went for a walk and we're talking about it, and I'm like, we'll make this work. And then you're like, oh, we can't make this work at all.

SPEAKER_02

It was such a such a such a I'll go back to when I was full-time integrator. Um, you know, I think as leaders, sometimes we don't want our people to feel the pain, right? Like we want to absorb, we want to protect, we want to make sure that they don't, you know, have the bad experiences or have the things, right? So we want to take away we want to take that away from them sometimes. And I feel like like those are the moments a lot of times that again shape us, right? Like you sitting in that suck of what happened to you with that thing, right? Like you're like, I remember that forever, I will never let that will never happen again. You know, no one swooped in to like take it away from you or like save you from that. Like you were kind of allowed to feel that way for yourself. Right. I had a a leader who wanted to terminate someone. And I kind of trusted, I didn't really do enough of my own due diligence. He had come to me and said, like, I'm ready to exit this team member, you know, like all these things are wrong. And I had been hearing about it for a while. So in my brain, I'm like, there's been coaching, there's been all these things, right? So he came to me and he's like, It's been hard though. Like things are going on in his personal life, like I'm having a hard time. Like, I don't, you know, can you come in and support me? Can you come in with me to the meeting and and kind of help do the delivery? He's like, I just, it's not on my heart right now. Like, I just can't do it. Like, okay. I went in kind of blindly trusting. I'm like, I'm sure he's, I'm sure he's done his due diligence. So I'm gonna come in and I'm gonna protect, right? Like, I'm gonna make sure that like this is easy for him. We start delivering the termination and the employee looks like a deer in headlights. They're like, what? And I'm like, oh well yeah, because this and this and this. And he's like, excuse me. Like, what's going on? And I'm like looking at my leader, my director, and I'm like, what will but you? And it was the most fucking awkward, awful, like talk about just painful for everyone in that room. Cause then I'm like, well, fuck, okay. I didn't do my due diligence to like really double check or look at anything. I trusted him, which I'm not saying was a bad thing, but I'm like, I should have probably made sure ducks were in a row. He's looking at me like, oh yeah, I actually never did any of that stuff. And uh, you know, and I'm like, oh shit, okay. So we're in this moment where I'm like, we can't be like, okay, never mind, you can stay. Uh just kidding. Uh, it's fine. But like leaning into it and really having to have that conversation of like not throwing my leader under the bus in front of it and like, what the hell, man? You know, but like, okay, how do you navigate through that? So big learning lessons there, lots of coaching there, lots of things where I'm like, I never in a million years want anyone to feel caught off guard if they're getting terminated.

SPEAKER_01

Right.

SPEAKER_02

That meeting should have been so smooth in terms of him being like, yep, didn't fix the thing, yep, you're right, didn't do the things, yep, not gonna fix it. Like, you're right, like this is better for all of us. Or they self-deselect and find their own job elsewhere because they've been getting coached. So, anyways, all that to say, the way that felt in that meeting that I couldn't believe that that team member felt so blindsided. I just felt awful and I never want anyone to feel that way.

SPEAKER_00

Um and I think that's why the three strike rule works, right? If you do it, because they they get it. That's like, okay, that's the first strike. We don't want a second one.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

But let's coach, let's work together. That's number two. And now the third one's the last day. And so if you've had the other two strikes, then they they can say, I'm not surprised because you already had two, and today's my last day, because clearly I can't figure this out. But there's so few companies that I have coached that actually really do it throughout. They're always like, We're gonna put them on a pip. I'm like, and what's that gonna do? And what what's the consequence to them not changing the behavior? And do they know it's a strike? Because if they don't know, what are they gonna do differently? Right? Like they're just gonna keep trying.

SPEAKER_01

Well, and it's so good for you to have that learning too, because yes, one bad scenario for one person, but I feel like taking care of somebody out the door, like you talked about, like and you probably being able to do that well after that point is really nice for people. Right.

SPEAKER_02

Because people remember how they leave, right? Like they very rarely remember how they came in or how they started. They remember how they leave.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

So I think that that's important too to even if it's not gonna work out, like you said earlier, this person is awesome. Like, I you could be a great person. That's awesome. You can be excellent somewhere else, though. Like that's okay. Um, and that's the hardest thing too, especially if the other person really likes and wants to be there. You know, like that's it's hard. Um, it doesn't make it any easier.

SPEAKER_01

But well, thank you so much for being here. This was so fun. I was looking forward to the conversation. So appreciate watching your journey and thank you everybody for joining. Impact Moments. Go win the week. I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Jamie as much as I did. Jamie said something that really stuck with me. People remember how they leave, not how they start. And that's true for team members, for clients, probably for the conversations that we have every single day. The other thing I kept coming back to was her point about the structure and emotion. EOS gives us a framework, the agenda, the timer. But sometimes the most important thing you can do is hit pause and let people sit in the moment, whether it's hard or worth celebrating. And I think people that bring the real EOS experience to the room, the fractional integrators, the implementers, know how to do that well for your business, which is why people rely on that expertise so much. So I really liked hearing her talk about that. At 90, we built the tools to take the busy work off your plate so you can spend the time and energy on the things that actually matter, your team, your vision, your life. And I liked how she really hit on that and those aspects of her life and being present really matter to her. Thanks for listening. In this episode, if this episode resonated, please hit like, subscribe, share it with a leader that could use the reminder, and we'll see you next time.