3 top tips from Shelley Woodrow
1. To think is to create
The lesson that I’ve learned is, thoughts are things. I want my input to be positive and the things that I think about to be positive, so that I create the things that I want in business. To think is to create so be careful what you think about. In the EOS process for sure, be careful what you ask for because you will get it using this process.
2. When intention is clear & I take action = 100% results
I found when my intention is clear, when I know what I want whether it’s in business or in my personal life, the mechanism will show up. The mechanism will appear when I am clear. So put out there into the universe what I want. Setting that intention, then taking action and mobilising energy towards that intention equals 100% result. Because the way that I will get there may change a million times, but when I’m clear, I usually get that thing that I want.
3. Read The EOS Life book
If you haven’t read The EOS Life book, read it. For me and for my clients, my wish is that we all can live our best EOS life. Get the things that we want from our businesses, but also get the things that we want in our personal lives and have that balance, however we define it. I wish for all of you to live your best EOS life.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
business, eos, life, people, implementer, clients, tool, sales, core values, businesses, love, helping, business owners, coconut, entrepreneurs, company, scorecard, running, structure, leaders
SPEAKERS
Shelley Woodrow, Debra Chantry-Taylor
Debra Chantry-Taylor 00:12
Welcome to another episode of Better Business Better Life. I’m your host, Debra Chantry-Taylor. I’m passionate about helping entrepreneurs and their leadership teams get what they want out of business and life. On the show, I invite successful business owners and expert speakers to share their successes. They are open and honest about the highs and lows of business and also life as a business owner. We want to share those learnings with you to inspire you, but also to help you avoid some of the common mistakes. My hope is that you take something from each of these short episodes that you can put into action to help you get what you want. Not only out of your business, but also your life. So good morning, and welcome to another episode of Better Business, Better Life. I’m here this morning with Shelley Woodrow who is a newly certified EOS implementer from Las Vegas. Welcome, Shelley.
Shelley Woodrow 01:00
Thank you so much. Great to be here.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 01:03
It’s lovely to have you. I understand of course it’s afternoon over there, rather than morning. So good afternoon to you. So Shelley, you and I have met through our EOS community. I’ve heard your story and I just think it’s fascinating. I wonder if you might share a little bit of that with our listeners about how you got to, I suppose first of all know about EOS? And then secondly, actually become an EOS implementer.
Shelley Woodrow 01:24
Yes. So my first introduction into EOS was about three and a half, almost four years ago now, where I went to a company to do some project work for a friend of a friend who was standing up sales. So I went over as head of sales into this company in San Diego, California and they were working with an implementer. And they were running their business on EOS. And I had never heard of EOS and had no idea what EOS was and got to experience using the tools and the disciplines firsthand as a leader on an EOS team, and then got to work with a professional EOS implementer. Or we thought we were working with a professional Implementer at the time we later learned we weren’t but that’s a whole another story. So it was introduced to EOS fell in love with the system and then went to Detroit about three and a half years ago. And I got trained and became an implementer.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 02:27
So what did you fall in love with because I too fell in love with it when I saw it. But I wonder what it was for you that made you fall in love with us.
Shelley Woodrow 02:34
So for me it was the tools and the disciplines and the structure that it brought to a very non-structured sales environment. So it was very helpful as I was standing up a sales organisation to have some structure that helped the entire leadership team in the business work more efficiently.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 02:58
Okay, and you come from an entrepreneurial background, don’t you? You’re telling me that your family all had their own businesses. How has that shaped the way that you view things?
Shelley Woodrow 03:09
So it was interesting, my upbringing was through my family members who own businesses and I don’t think we call them entrepreneurs back then they were just business owners, but my grandparents had the only grocery store in my little hometown in Michigan, and my dad ran a deli that he owned. And then my other grandfather had a State Farm Agency. And what I learned from them was to run your own business, own your own business and lead people. And so that’s really what I’ve done through my entire career. And most of that career was 26 years in media. So I ran ad sales for a big media company cable operator, and oversaw very hefty and complicated P&L. So that’s where I got my first exposure to running my own market and my own business, essentially. And then from there, followed my love of coaching to Vistage Worldwide and got to experience connecting and coaching and working with pure advisory board groups. And then from there was introduced to EOS through the company that I mentioned earlier. So that brought me to where I am today, about three and a half years ago, stood up my business and then started started implementing EOS. And I have fallen in love with what I do and have been doing it ever since I love helping entrepreneurs get more what they want from their business.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 04:35
I can see that. Absolutely. So tell me a little bit about your your history with this first kind of, you know, experience of running EOS in a business with what turned out not to be professionally EOS implemented, but nevertheless that you were doing something of the EOS process, I guess. Can you share a little bit about that experience and what I suppose some of the challenges you came up against and how EOS helped with that.
Shelley Woodrow 04:57
Sure. So some of the challenges were we really had no internal processes really defined, and especially around sales, because we’re introducing a new revenue line, a new sales channel. And so that’s what I was invited to come over and stand up. And so in working with EOS tools, it made everything much easier, much quicker, it provided a structure for the business. I knew sales, it but I’m not great at imposing structure. So because the tools are so simple and easy to use, overlaying that structure on a solid sales foundation, made for a really great experience running on EOS. Now, I later learned after I went through the training and became a professional Implementer that we were doing many things that we were complicating, and that were designed to be very simple. And we were making things harder than they needed to be. And so then I fell in love with the EOS even more.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 06:15
Because this simplicity, yeah, it’s part of the reason that I sort of in love with it, too, is that, you know, having done an MBA and kind of working with a number of businesses over many, many years. It just took all of that amazing kind of knowledge, but really simplified it down. And we all know that as entrepreneurs, you know, we get distracted by the bright shiny lights. And so as much as you can make it simple, the better it becomes. Yeah. So in terms of, you know, when you went and did your training, and you said you found that it was perhaps, yeah, should have been a little bit more simple. Can you give an example of you know, where, people, because I know that even businesses who are trying to self implement tend to overcomplicate things as well. Can you think of an example where people might overcomplicate and what effect that might have on the business?
Shelley Woodrow 06:59
Yeah, the experience share that I dealt with was we had a scorecard. And in our EOS world, what we advise clients is 5 to 15 numbers, 15 measurables, on your scorecard that you can affect that our weekly activity based numbers and in our scorecard on our scorecard, we had approximately 40 numbers. So you can imagine doing an Level 10. tended to run long and that was the other thing because our scorecard measurables were so numerous, our Level 10s. Always ran late, and I couldn’t understand why we couldn’t start and end on time we were okay getting started on time, but always ran late and and in hindsight, was because we were spending so much time reviewing way too many numbers. Not worthy, really, of the leadership team’s attention.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 07:57
That makes perfect sense. What’s your favourite EOS tool?
Shelley Woodrow 08:01
So I have two. So the the first is the Level 10 Meeting. And that meeting agenda, I feel like it truly is the moment of truth for a leadership team. helps to bring structure, helps to have the team really learn disciplines around solving their key issues every week and moving the business forward. So that’s number one. And then number two is the Vision Traction Organiser, just such a simple way to create a vision and a plan and alignment and agreement around that plan. So everybody’s rowing in one direction. So I cannot choose between those two. I love them both.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 08:43
And I think those two together, I mean, I’ve seen the same, the Level 10 Meeting can just fundamentally change the way a business operates, right a leadership team operates and how they actually deal with things and it’s really quick, like it’s almost as soon as they start implementing that agenda, things start to change almost overnight, don’t they?
Shelley Woodrow 09:00
Well, I think about when I do talks, and I introduced this tool, I tend to publicly apologise to leadership teams that I’ve worked with in the past. I’m so sorry, our meetings weren’t better. They were in hindsight, more news and weather type meetings where we just shared around the table what was happening, and we never really solved problems in those meetings. And so it is such a great tool for issue solving every week, moving the business forward.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 09:29
Now, you’ve been doing this for sort of three and a half years now. So I’m assuming you’ve worked with quite a number of different businesses. Is there a particular sort of case study or story that you could tell about something that’s significantly changed in a business once they started working with EOS and with yourself?
Shelley Woodrow 09:47
Of course, the one that comes to mind is I have a company called Coco Taps that I work with and they are the coconut business and you may have heard of Coco Vinny, he and his team have been featured on Shark Tank and on NBCs, The Profit. And what’s unique about them is that they’re really in a business that there is no competitor right now, they take coconut shaved coconuts into a diamond shape, they put the company brand and logo on the coconut, and they have a patent on the actual tap, that you can tap right into the coconut and drink the coconut water milk right out of the the fruit, right. So what what they focus on our vacation destination owners and vacation destinations are their two target markets. And so you can imagine when COVID hit, save, hit pretty hard. So their clients are the hotels on the Las Vegas Strip, the cruise ships, and vacation destinations, none of which were really operational during that time. So through EOS, they were able to pull forward the ideas that they had on their three year picture and really pivot during the COVID time period when they lost about 90% of their revenue, just went on hold. And they were able to work on things that were destined to be worked on in their future, but they were able to pull them forward and work on them and stand up some equipment, a tapematic machine that was in their future, but they pulled it forward and really created new ways to market and found new clients through this process. So they got into the grocery business and got their product out that way. So EOS really helped them be able to just shift and make changes when they were hit hard and it enabled them really to stay in business.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 12:02
And that’s because they had the clarity of the vision of the future, therefore, they could actually bring it forward. Whereas a lot of businesses just go day by day fighting fires keeping going. Actually, and we’ve even heard about them over here. So it’s a very, very famous brand. It’s awesome. Any others that kind of sprang to mind that you’ve had sort of, you know, I mean, I know that most businesses get great results, but is there any that particularly stand out anything Oh, you know, that was just a game changer for them.
Shelley Woodrow 12:31
I have two right now that are in very similar situations, their ability to pass the baton from the co founders to two new business partners in both cases, has been accelerated through this process, and has really made those transitions much smoother and easier because they’ve been able to use the tools. So they’ve been able to use the tool where we can put owners that are going to morph out of the business at some point in the near future into the owners box. And they’re allowing, in both of these cases, the new partners to stand up and take on the in the business roles while they are shifting to working on the business. So I’ve got almost two identical situations where clients are working in that capacity and it’s really helped them gain clarity around the timing of their departure, what their role is today, between now and the time that they actually do retire, and what they do with their day, because there’s that clarity. So those are just two cases that are front and centre. I’ve just worked with these clients recently and been in their quarterly with them and they’re two clients, one in California, one in Nevada that are almost in an identical situation. But these tools really are helping bring that clarity to big life transitions. Yeah so it’s nice.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 14:10
I think. I mean, obviously, with the EOS, we work with small privately owned companies, a lot of those are actually family businesses and I think it is always a sort of challenge is what happens when you’re ready to start thinking about moving on and how do you hand over that baton to the next person, whether it be a family member or somebody who’s not in the family, but will actually take that business over?
Shelley Woodrow 14:30
Yeah. And you know, one other example with these two clients is in both cases, there was a major health issue. One on each of those teams, and we were able to use IDS, a tool or issue solving tool through EOS, in one case to prepare for a surgery that could potentially end in death and IDS what happens if I don’t make it through the surgery. And we did that before the surgery. And in another case, after a major heart attack, we IDS what and how to bring that Visionary back in the right time frame and decide what that visionary really was going to focus on that would bring less stress, more balance and really more of the EOS life. So the tools can be used for really even dealing with health issues that affect the business.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 15:39
And I suppose you know, that’s why I have my elephant here is some of those things they’re not talked about, are they, until sometimes it’s too late. And I think that’s what I love about EOS is bringing all those issues to the forefront, making sure we are having those conversations and really getting to the root cause of what the issue is before trying to jump in and solve it. Yep, yeah, absolutely. Okay, and I can see you’ve got your EOS life poster in the background, tell me about your EOS life and what it means for you and also for the companies that you work with.
Shelley Woodrow 16:12
Yeah, so for the listeners, if you don’t know what the EOS life is, it’s really doing what you love, with people you love, making a huge difference in the world, being compensated appropriately, with time to pursue other passions. And for me, that means really having the right number of clients that fit my core values, and vice versa, we’re a good match, that still leaves me time to spend with my family. So we love international travel and we attempt to do a big trip every year and been pretty successful until a COVID we’re two years behind. But we love international travel and experiencing the world. And, you know, I love exercise and having time for my kids and my husband. And EOS allows for that. And you know, my definition of an EOS life is probably different than yours, Debra or your listeners. And you know, it’s just defining what that is. And then and then living it. And so I feel like A.) I get to do what I love every day with people I love and that in and of itself is just so rewarding.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 17:30
We have an awesome..
Shelley Woodrow 17:31
I love it, I get my energy from that.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 17:36
And so for business owners, you know that they sort of see that and think, Well, that’s great for the EOS implementers, but it’s the same for business owners, right? If you’re actually spending time doing what you love in your business with people that you love, and you get to make that huge difference. And I think for a lot of business owners that having time to pursue other passions is the bit that tends to fall by the wayside most easily, isn’t it?
Shelley Woodrow 17:57
And we have the greatest tool that I love teaching when we’re talking about EOS life for our clients, our Delegate and Elevate tool is it bringing this joy forward to our clients through the tool that allows them to isolate the things that they don’t love to do, they’re not great at they don’t like, get rid of those things as soon as they possibly can over time, it’s you know, sometimes it can’t happen immediately. Because there may or may not be someone to delegate to, but we find the who’s and when they can remove some of those things, they get great energy that’s derived from the things that they like to do, they love to do, they’re focused on their strengths, their talents, and they’re able to focus in the business where they want to add the most value. And so they get to live the EOS life. And so that’s part of the joy of this for me is helping them see beyond the business results, but what kind of life do you want to live? What’s your definition of the EOS life and then helping them live it.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 19:08
I mean, I’m with you. My whole thing is called Better Business Better Life. And it’s all about really about having a better life by creating a better business. And I think that, you know, I see people who go into business, because they want the freedom because they want the time to do those other things. And they end up being completely consumed by the business. And you know, it’s hard to let go because, you know, I can myself personally, I can do everything in the business if I wanted to. I know. Most of us can as entrepreneurs, but should I be? And I suppose if you think about if you’re doing things like the accounts, which I really don’t like, you know that energy that you get from doing that, it just drags you down. And it’s like house cleaning. I always give the example of house cleaners, anybody who has not got a house cleaner, you’re mad because at the end of the day, for me that’s three or four hours a week that I could spend, I’m a really really good house cleaner, but spending three or four hours cleaning makes me feel miserable versus having three or four hours where I could be outside cycling or doing things that I love, photography, whatever it might be. It’s just you know that energy is the most important thing. And that’s the same goes with business. Why are we doing things that we hate so much?
Shelley Woodrow 20:12
Yes, we have to protect doing what we love and do more of it.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 20:17
Yeah I completely agree. Okay, so I forgot to ask you right at the beginning, you’re you’ve obviously had quite an interesting life from the entrepreneur family background into, you know, Vistage doing the sales and the media stuff. What would you say is your professional and personal best so far? Because we always talk about these EOS meetings, I think it’s really interesting to learn about people.
Shelley Woodrow 20:38
You know, for me, the two compliments that I had throughout my career are probably my favourite, I would say are my accomplishments. And one of them is going to sound wacky. But, you know, I think number one is leaders, it’s our job as leaders, whether we’re business leaders, or leaders in life, to help create other leaders that have the skills and abilities to develop and create other leaders. So first and foremost, that gift that I’ve been given is to be in those positions where I can work with leaders and help them grow and thrive and develop has been one of my proudest accomplishments. The other is how I treat people I remember somebody saying one time, you know, you fire somebody, and they come out of your office, and they give you a hug, and they say, thank you. And they genuinely meant it as a compliment because it was about treating people with dignity and grace and humility, and all of that. And so I was just so proud of that, because as leaders, we sometimes have to make those tough calls. And I think, in business, there’s the what you do and the how you do it. And so, yeah, I’ve worked really hard to treat people with respect and dignity and grace, and even when we’re making tough decisions, just to do it in the right way. So those things I’m pretty proud of.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 22:19
Perfect. Yeah, it is interesting, actually, I was going through some old photos on the weekend. And I, back in my very, very early career as a general manager of a wood manufacturing firm, and we had a lot of gang members who were actually working in the factory. And as a consequence, you know, not that all gang members like this, but a lot of them were, were not very good at turning up on time, or they would, you know, turn up some days later than that they were supposed to, I remember having to get rid of one guy because it just wasn’t working out for him or for us. And so I had the conversation with him and we decided it was best that he actually leave. And then at the end of the weekend, we had a little bit of farewell for him and there’s a photo of him and me sort of sitting on his lap, you know, he was really actually quite grateful for me for a second, which is quite odd. But yeah, I know you’re saying it’s about the way that you do it and making sure that you know, you’re looking after both parties, because sometimes getting rid of people is the best thing for for them as well.
Shelley Woodrow 23:08
Oh, absolutely. In most cases it is because they tend to not, if it comes to that point, there’s usually a right people, right seat issue and it’s not good for either, so it can be win win.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 23:23
You know, that’s a really good point actually, right people right seat, give me your perspective on right people right seat, because one of the things we talked about a lot in EOS.
Shelley Woodrow 23:30
Yeah. So for me, it’s just aligning core values and hiring and bringing to life and living and breathing core values and using them to get right people. So people that fit the culture of our clients, organisations, of my organisation, you know, people that I want to attract into the company and right seats, you know, people that are great at their jobs, they have the skills, the abilities, the desire to be great at their jobs, they’re high performers and so I’ve always believed way before EOS that you have to have the right people in the right seats, that a high performer who doesn’t fit the culture can kill the the culture, and people that are just so perfectly suited for your business from a cultural, from an HR standpoint, that aren’t performing are going to be problematic as well. So it is truly important to have both and a hiring example is back to my coconut friend. One of their core values is trail maker. And so because they’re in such a unique business with no competition. They, if they hire somebody that doesn’t have that essence of trail maker doesn’t understand that there is no path to follow, that this company’s forging the path, if that employee candidate needs structure needs a proven way, needs a lot of hand holding, they will fail miserably because in this company they are finding the way every day because they are new and there’s nobody to follow, they’re leading. And so it’s so important that they use those core values, especially that one too, to make sure that the people that they bring on can operate with ambiguity. No proven process no system until they until they develop it.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 23:30
Yeah, you know, I completely agree. Hey, just in terms of it’s interesting, how do they test that, you know, when not test? But you know, how do they check that when somebody is actually coming for an interview? Because somebody can say, Oh, yes, absolutely. And I’m trail finder, but what can they do to ensure that their actions fit in with what they’re saying?
Shelley Woodrow 26:08
Yeah, great question. So what they do is they say, along with the other core values, there’s four more, but they say, you know, Can you can you tell me about a time where you had to be a trail maker, you had to lead the way and you didn’t know, the way? And so can you describe for us? What was the situation? What action did you take? And what were the results? And so it just as a way to test when somebody says, Oh, yes, I can be a trail maker. Can you give me an example of a way that you’ve done that in the past? What was the situation? What action did you take? And what were the results? And so that tends to be just a very simple way to kind of have them demonstrate that they have done that, or can do that, because they’ve got some examples.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 27:01
Love it. Perfect. Hey, look, we like to give our listeners sort of three things they can take away and action, because EOS is all about traction and getting things going. So what would be the sort of three top tips that you would like to share with the listeners today?
Shelley Woodrow 27:14
So some of them are not related to EOS, but just in business in general. The first is that what I found in my career and in life is a phrase that I heard from Thomas Wilhite, who said it back in I think about 1973. But the phrase is to think is to create. And so the lesson that I’ve learned is, thoughts are things. And I want my input to be positive. And the things that I think about to be positive, so that I create the things that I want in business, that I want to manifest, so to think is to create. So be careful what you think about, in EOS process for sure be careful what you ask for, because you will get it, using this process. Number two, is that kind of tied to that. When I found when my intention is clear, when I know what I want, whether it’s in business or in my personal life. The mechanism will show up, the mechanism will appear when I am clear. And so you know, just putting out there into the universe, what I want, it’s setting that intention and then taking action and mobilising energy towards that intention equals 100% result because the way that I will get there may change a million times. But when I’m clear, I usually get that thing that I want. And then last but not least, I would say, if you haven’t read the EOS life book, read it. For me and for my clients, my wish, is that we all can live our best EOS life, get the things that we want from our businesses, but also get the things that we want in our personal lives. And have that balance however we define it. And so you know, I wish for all of you live your your best EOS life.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 29:23
Fantastic. And it’s really interesting, because it’s not just about business owners and entrepreneurs, anybody can read that book, even as an employee, and start to see how you can create what is important to you. Absolutely, yeah. Hey, Shelley, it’s been really lovely to talk to you. I love your passion and your energy. I can see you know I joined this community when I talk to people like you. It’s fantastic that we get to work together. In terms of the people you work with, I mean, I know you’re based in Las Vegas, but who do you work with? What do they look like? Where are they from? And how would they get hold of you?
Shelley Woodrow 29:54
Yeah, so they can they can get a hold of me at Shelley.Woodrow@EOSworldwide.com. And the type of people that I look to help are people that want help, that are running a great business. Maybe they’re frustrated or struggling, but they want more than they’re getting today and they’re willing to put in the work and they want to achieve great things. And they’re great humans.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 30:31
That’s fantastic.
Shelley Woodrow 30:32
And that’s how I would describe my clientele. I just I feel so blessed and lucky to work every day truly with people that I love that I would socialise with nightly or I will work with in business because just of who they are, and so great people you know, do what you love with people you love.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 30:55
Hey look, I cannot wait until international travel opens up again because I’m really looking forward to coming over the US and meeting with all you guys. It’s great that we get to catch up virtually once a quarter, but honestly, I’m looking forward that hug one day soon.
Shelley Woodrow 31:07
Me too Debra, thank you so much for having me.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 31:10
Oh, thank you for giving up your time. Have a wonderful rest of your afternoon and I look forward to talking to you soon.
Shelley Woodrow 31:16
All right, thank you.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 31:18
Thanks again for joining us on Better Business, Better Life with me your host, Debra Chantry-Taylor. If you enjoy what you heard, then please subscribe to this podcast. And let us help you to get what you want out of business in life. Each week we release a new short episode which will give a success story and three takeouts to put into action immediately. These will help you take your business from good to great. The podcast is also supported by free resources, templates and useful tools, which you can find at Debra Chantry-Taylor.com. I am a trained entrepreneur leadership and business coach, a professional EOS Implementer and an established business owner myself. I work with established businesses to help them get what they want. Feel free to contact me if you’d like to have a chat about how I might better help you. Or if you’d like to join me as a guest on this podcast. Thanks again to NZ audio editors for producing this podcast. See you on the next episode.
Debra Chantry-Taylor
Professional EOS Implementer | Entrepreneurial Leadership & Business Coach | Business Owner
#betterbusinessbetterlife #entrepreneur #leadership #eosimplementer #professionaleosimplementer #entrepreneurialbusinesscoach
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