Top Tips from Mark C. Winters:
1. Start With The Right Frameworks
“Think about the Rocket Fuel book as outlining the structure for how to make the visionary-integrator relationship truly great, and Visionary for what it looks like to be truly great in that role. It’s a much broader picture and covers a lot more than just that relationship. Those are both really a great place to start.”
2. Know Your Role And Be Honest About It
“Go and take the Crystallizer assessment, and it will give you a good indication of how much visionary you are and how much integrator you are. Be sure you’re very honest with yourself as you go through that, because if you’re not, it’s going to come out in the end anyway. You might as well be honest from the front end if you want that to help you as much as it can.“
3. Know Thyself Before Anything Else
“It’s really important that visionaries take the time to do the work up front to truly understand who they are, where they’re trying to go, and where they are now. If you can spend more time there and get clear, it really helps you get clear on the missing piece you’re looking for and the path to get there.”
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Entrepreneurial seizure, business success, introspective work, visionary, integrator, EOS tools, Rocket Fuel, Visionary book, 10 pillars of greatness, role confusion, intrinsic genius, domains of freedom, same page meetings, Rocket Fuel Power Index, leadership team.
SPEAKERS
Debra Chantry-Taylor, Mark C. Waters
Mark C. Waters 00:00
What I see entrepreneurs do is I see them fall into two traps again and again. The first trap is they have the entrepreneurial seizure. The other trap that I see them fall into is the business is a success, and then they look around, they killed their marriage, their kids hate them, their health sucks. They don’t know who they are anymore. There is a process to follow, and it really starts off with a lot of introspective work by the visionary to try to understand themselves, to try to understand their business. If we can spend more time there and get clear there, it really helps us get clear on the missing piece that we’re looking for.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 00:40
Hello and welcome to another episode of Better Business, Better Life. I’m your host, Debra Chantry-Taylor, and I’m passionate about helping entrepreneurs live a better life through creating a better business. I’m a certified EOS implementer. I’m an FBA accredited family business advisor and a business owner myself. I have three businesses that run on EOS. I bring people onto the show to share the highs and lows of being an entrepreneur, and to share the EOS tools and the things that have made a difference in their life. And I’m really excited about today’s guest, because today’s guest has been involved with over 15 businesses throughout his career. Some have gone really well, some not quite so well. Some have been bought, sold, but been involved with them, and has a lot of experience in the the field of entrepreneurship. He was the co author of what I would call a revolutionary book for entrepreneurs, the co author of rocket fuel. So rocket fuel is a book that really brings into people a concept that most of us as entrepreneurs haven’t thought of, the visionary and the integrator, and now he’s just launched his latest book, which is called visionary, how driven entrepreneurs get what they want without doing it all themselves. Today, he’s going to share with you some of the mistakes and pitfalls that visionaries fall into. He’s going to share with you how you can avoid making those mistakes, and also some tools that can really help you to get the most of what you want out of your business. Mark C Winters is an expert EOS implementer. He is the CEO of rocket fuel ventures, and he is also a celebrated author. Welcome to the show, Mark, it’s lovely to have you on here. So nice to see you. Debra, yeah, I must admit I’m a little bit of a mark C winters fan girl and I have been, you know, raving about your books for years, particularly rocket fuel being the first book, so I was a bit excited when you agreed to come on the podcast. So thank you very much. Looking forward to our conversation. Yeah, absolutely my pleasure. So yeah, Mark, you are the co author of the original book, which was rocket fuel, which I think has been a book that has changed so many entrepreneurs lives. But before that, you obviously got involved in EOS. So can you tell us a bit about your story and how you came across EOS and how you got to be where you are today? Yeah.
Mark C. Waters 02:50
So I, I started out in big corporate and, you know, got the entrepreneurial bug when I was in in graduate school, and, you know, made the leap, left my cushy corporate job and and started my first business. And you know, that led to a string of now we’re up to 15 different companies that I either started myself, bought from someone else, shut down or sold off. You know, some of them had had, you know, good success. Some of them, you know, didn’t. And so all different kinds of industries. So tonnes of lessons through that, that whole journey, and then I really shifted from being sort of an operator or being an operator, to more of an advisory capacity. And I started peer group, CEO peer groups. And really was enjoying that. And it was funny, they they had a programme where every Friday there would be a webinar, and Mike Payton, one of our early EOS implementers, did a webinar on on EOS. And so I saw that, and I was like, that’s, that’s really interesting. That’s I had used a system in my own past, but this one sounded it sounded better, it sounded simple, and I liked it enough to want to learn more. That led to me going to Detroit and meeting a fellow named Gino Wickman, and we sort of became fast friends. And turned out we had a lot in common, you know, EO and some of the people that we knew along the way. And so I became, became an EOS implementer. I came back to Texas at the time. So imagine this, at the time in the States, there were only a couple of dozen EOS implementers, I guess, actually, in the world at that time. And I was the first one in the state of Texas. The next closest one was nearly 1000 miles away from me. And so it was really, you know, a whole new thing. And and so we started to teach people about Eos, and it really grew fast. And that’s, that’s how it started for me to become an EOS implementer.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 04:42
EOS implementer. Fantastic. It’s probably similar, but in different in terms of, I was the first, there was two of us in New Zealand, and we were the first two to ever sort of bring EOS to New Zealand. Of course, nobody had any idea what EOS was, so we had probably followed a fairly similar path in terms of trying to educate people and get them on there. But. Yeah, much bigger in the States, of course. So how did you so the rocket fuel book, as I said, for me, it has been a real game changer for a lot of the entrepreneurs that I meet, because this concept of the visionary and the integrator is something that they’ve never really thought about. They thought they had to do it all. So how did you, you know, come up with the idea? How did you get involved? How to Become the co author of that, of that book?
Mark C. Waters 05:23
Yeah, Gino coined the term. So he gets full credit for, for naming the structure and, and it’s in, it’s in traction, at least the terms. And, you know, he early on in my implementer journey. He threw out the idea of, hey, what if, you know, we write a book on this visionary integrator relationship, and so I put my hat in the ring. And you know, I was, I was blessed in many ways that he, he chose me to be the co author, and off we go. And in my experience with my own businesses, I had actually used that structure so I hadn’t called it that. I didn’t have the terms, but I had experienced those feelings of a visionary that struggles with execution, you know, partnering up with someone who’s great at execution so that we can each operate in our own zones of intrinsic genius, if you will, and what was able to happen because of that. So I had a strong, you know, a strong affinity for for the the idea. And so anyway, we spent a year basically living in each other’s brains, which is a very interesting experience for if you haven’t done that, and especially when the other brain is Gino wickman’s brain and so, and then we wrote, wrote rocket fuel on how to how to really make that, that relationship, that visionary, integrated relationship, something powerful and positive for an
Debra Chantry-Taylor 06:44
entrepreneurial company. When was that written mark, or who was that? Well, I should say 2013 we started. 2015 is when it published. Actually got published. Yeah, great. Okay. And now, of course, you’ve got your new book out, and that is why I’ve invited you on the show, because I remember when I saw you talking about, I think, on social media, and I went, Oh my goodness. Is a book called visionary, how driven entrepreneurs get what they want without doing it all themselves. And when I read the little blurb about it, I thought, oh my goodness, I’d just been talking to a client who had got to the point where her business had grown large. She had gone through a couple of senior leadership teams that hadn’t kind of quite worked out, but she finally got the right seats, and all of a sudden she she had people running the business, and she rang me, and she said, Debra, I don’t know what to do anymore. I don’t have anything to do, like the business is running. I’ve got nothing to do. And I said, Well, why aren’t you just being a visionary? And I don’t know what a visionary is. It’s like, this is what you used to do. Justine, you changed your industry, the what you developed and the way you did it, that was what you were doing. But she couldn’t remember what that really entailed, and she felt lost. She actually said to me, she was thinking about giving up the business because she like, just, I don’t I don’t have anything to do anymore. And so when I saw your book, I thought, oh my goodness, this is it. This is what a lot of people, I imagine, go through, is that when the when the wheels are so well oiled and the machine is working well, then it’s like, well, I’d feel useless.
Mark C. Waters 08:00
What do I do? We call that feeling put out to pasture. That’s the term that we would, we would hear a lot, right? And it’s this, this feeling of, you know, not being as valuable, not being as important, not being as connected, right? And I was actually engaging online with someone earlier today, and they described it as, you know, basically, re exercising this, this, this thing in this new space, which is actually the space that you’re wired for. And my observation was, Well, the good news is, it’s not like creating a muscle that you’ve never had. You’ve had it, right? You’ve had the visionary muscle forever. I mean, you were born with this, right? It’s just you may not have been fully using it for a while. So the good news is, once you lean into that, it tends to wake up pretty quickly, and the next thing you know, you know, you’re often and having fun and doing great things again.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 08:49
Yeah, I’m going to come back to the book and some of the pillars that are in there, as the temper is a greatness. But one of the things that I’ve seen, and I’m sure you’ve seen in some of the companies you’ve worked with as well, is that when we do feel like we’ve been put out to pasture, what what can happen is the visionary then starts to come in a middle because they don’t have anything, they don’t, they don’t, they’re not clear about what they should be doing as they come in, they, you know, we call them the seagulls, where they come in and kind of shit all over the place, and then fly off and leave, if everybody else. And I’ve seen that happen a lot, where the visionaries do, they’ve just, it’s almost like they they need to create some more chaos and some more fires, because otherwise, what do they do?
Mark C. Waters 09:20
Yeah, they get bored, and they get bored. I call it 10. Tampering, right? So, I mean, that’s the effect, right? As they come, they come in, and again, they don’t have bad intention. They think they’re helping. They think they’re doing something, something good. But the reality is, when they, when they you know, they make a decision, or they give direction without consideration of the context of everything else that’s going on, the plans that are in place and and the things that have already been set in motion by the the integrator and the other leaders in between them and whoever they happen to be talking to, it can it can stir up a mess, you know, and we don’t want visionaries to feel like they can’t communicate. I mean, I want visionaries to communicate all the time, you know, with everybody. They should be talking and listening, right and being engaged with anyone in the organisation. Frankly, that they want to the more the better. But it’s when they step over that line of actually making a decision or giving some kind of direction, which may be changing again, the things that have already been set in motion at the really, at the wrong place. That’s that’s much better handled if they work that through the through the integrator.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 10:27
I always say that to the visionaries and to the founders. It’s like, you know, you can go to any level 10 meeting you want to, and you should, because it’s a way to keep connected. But just remember what hat you’re wearing when you’re in there, which means you’re not there unless you’ve got a role in that particular function, then you’re just there as an observer, as if somebody who can, you know, but, but not, not the person who can actually make the decisions. And that’s when you know, yet the end runs and things happening, things go wrong. So you’ve got these 10 pillars of greatness to help make your vision a reality. Would you like to talk to us a little bit about that?
Mark C. Waters 10:56
Sure. So where this came from? You know, after we wrote the book, we developed a programme to help integrators become great. And we sort of started with the integrators because it was new, and there’s lots of people doing things for CEOs and visionaries, lots of peer groups for, you know, for those folks, but there wasn’t really anything for the integrators. So we developed a programme focused on how to help integrators learn how to become truly great, what that looks like and where they are, and be able to build a plan to kind of get them from point A to point B. And then that worked really well. And we helped a lot of folks do that, which created more integrators to help these visionaries. But I sort of had in the back of my head, and it started actually coming up from the integrators. Like, you know, do you have anything like this for our visionaries? It seems like our visionaries could use some help. And so, you know, in conversations around that’s like, you know, this, this actually probably would be a really good idea to show the visionary what it looks like for them to be truly great in that role. And so a few years ago, I I framed it up and I did the first visionary master class, actually, at US Conference out in San Diego a few years ago, whenever that was and and had a room full of them, and it was fantastic. You know, I’d done a talk where I had a bunch of folks in the room, and the reaction was really good. And then I was able to put a room together of just the visionaries and take them through it. And and it was, and it was fantastic. And so it basically walks through these 10 things, these 10 I call them pillars that you’ve got to focus on, you’ve got to think about, you’ve got to work at, if you really want to, you know, engage in this role and and deliver it the way that your company needs it and the way that you need it. So it’s about much more than the business. You know, the business is one, one piece of the puzzle. But there’s a lot more to the visionary life in the visionary world than just the company. Absolutely, I’m
Debra Chantry-Taylor 12:49
just having, I’ve got the book here, of course, and I’ve got copies of I’ve been giving it out, left, right and centre over here, and to people who want it. And the, by the way, anybody who’s listening to this show, they’re based in Australia, New Zealand. If you want a copy, please let me know. I ordered a whole bunch of them. I’m happy. To get together. Get to give them out. One of the things that really struck me was reading it and listening to it, because I was actually listening to it on Audible and reading it at the same time. And it was around the fact that there’s, yeah, that there’s different types of visual there’s different types of integrators, and at different times in the business, you need different types as well. So, you know, the the integrated that may I always say that the people who got you to here may not get you to here, but it’s the same with your integrator and your visionary. And the integrated that got you to this point may not be the person that takes you that so can you tell me a bit more about that? Yeah.
Mark C. Waters 13:34
So, you know, we think about it as a three piece puzzle. So, you know, in rocket fuel, we talked about the two piece puzzle, which is really the visionary and the integrator fitting together. And then as we worked with it more and had more conversations, there’s really a third important piece there, which is the business. And so where each of those pieces intersect, where they connect to the business, the question that we’re answering is, okay, what kind of visionary does this business really need? What kind of integrator does this business really need, right? And so you can think of a scale. We call it a spectrum, you know, that goes from really simple on one end where the complexity is not that high, it’s not growing that fast, there’s not a lot of competition. Maybe the ambition of the founder isn’t, isn’t, you know, a lot whatever there’s. There’s some situations where there’s not as much need for either visionary energy or integrator energy. But on the other end of the scale, there’s a lot of that. You know, there’s a tonne of complexity, and it’s growing super fast, and there’s all kinds of craziness going on, and regulatory things to deal with, and lots of people, lots of markets, lots of different products and offerings, whatever it might be. So that really begs for, hey, we need somebody who can really see way out there on the visionary side, and we need somebody who can handle a tremendous amount of complexity on the integrator side. So if you think about these three pieces fitting together, we’re trying to kind of define the shape of those edges, the shape of the business. Edge for both the visionary and the integrator, but then also the shape of usually, we’re starting with the visionary or the founder, and we’re trying to understand them in a way that helps us be able to see the opposite piece, right? So if you imagine those three pieces, if we can define what the visionary looks like and we can define what the integrator looks like, then we sort of back into the shape of that integrator piece, and that helps us be really clear on what it is we’re looking for when we go try to find them.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 15:27
You said earlier, 15 odd businesses that you’ve actually been involved in, and you said that you actually had you you were using that methodology without having the words for it. So your your first integrator. Tell me a little bit about that, and tell me what, how did you go about finding them? Because I think this is always a bit of a challenge, yeah,
Mark C. Waters 15:44
so, so I got lucky, is the short answer. So, you know, I didn’t, I didn’t have to go out. And again, there was no language for this. I just knew what I needed. And so it was literally someone within the team. And you know, I realised that this, this person, could do a lot, and, you know, I would, I would ask them to do something, and it would happen, you know, it would, it would get done, and it would be more and better and great. And, you know, it was just, it was just so much better than when I would try to drive something myself. And so we sort of expanded it and changed some of the the the reporting relationships within the team, so that the other functions began to funnel through, you know, this one leader, and then that that leader could could, you know, translate things for me in a way I understood, and then I could give him direction, and he could trans that to the leaders in a way that they understood for execution. And we still met as a leadership team and communicate as a leadership team, but, you know, day to day, you know, making sure the trains run on time and all that kind of stuff. I mean, he was fantastic. And there’s just no way I, I could have done that. If I, if I could, I would have, you know, quickly burned out, got frustrated, moved on. You know, all of the things that that a visionary is prone to do. So just got, frankly, got got lucky that I found somebody inside my own team that that was very capable at the role. So of course,
Debra Chantry-Taylor 17:08
these days, we have got a lot more tools, a lot more things that can actually help with that. And there’s a few different sort of online quizzes and things that you can do that really help you to understand, you know what, who you are and what you’re whether you’re a visual and integrate is the first point, right? But then also, yeah, where are your strengths and weaknesses?
Mark C. Waters 17:25
Yeah. And actually, let me tell you a quick story on that, Debra. So just this, this has just happened over the last couple of days. There was, there was a guy in New York City who has a really fast growing company. Sounds like he’s kind of got a tiger by the tail, and an EOS implementer happened to give him a copy of our book, rocket fuel, and he he read it this. This guy knows very little about EOS. He didn’t have a great frame for really any of it at that point. But he, again, he read that first chapter. He’s like, Oh my gosh. This is me, and these people have been following me around with a camera or something, and identified with it, identified with chapter two, which is that integrator role. It’s like, okay, I need one. And so like any good, you know, high Quick Start visionary would do. He puts out a huge bounty on LinkedIn and makes this post, and all of a sudden he’s getting flooded with candidates to be the integrator for for his company. I mean, it’s one of the bigger responses that I’ve seen happen. And now he realises, oh my gosh, I have no idea how to sort through these, you know, 1000s of people and whatever. And so he really needs an integrator more than ever to kind of help help him through this. And so somebody, we’re kind of engaging online around this, and someone makes the observation. You know, might have been smart to figure out your process, your criteria on the front end, but of course, as a visionary, that that wasn’t the approach. Yeah, let’s just, let’s just get going. So the the punch line is, you know, there, there is a process to follow, and you know, it really starts off with a lot of introspective work by the visionary to try to understand themselves, to try to understand their business, and again, all in the spirit of, if we can, if we can spend more time there and get clear there, it really helps us get clear on the missing piece that we’re looking for, and that increases our probability of actually Being able to find the right person to fill
Debra Chantry-Taylor 19:22
that piece, and that’s what the book kind of goes into. A little bit of those details around how you can actually work those things out. So knowing about yourself and knowing about the business, and then looking for that absolute perfect match in his puzzle piece, in your 15 companies, did you ever have a mismatch in terms of visionary integrate and what did that look like,
Mark C. Waters 19:40
yeah, so, so not in my not in my own, but it’s happened in my clients for sure. So again, I figured this out kind of late in the process of going through my own businesses. But, but with my clients, I’ve watched clients, you know, get it wrong on numerous occasions, and tip. Luckily, the reason why is they move too fast, and they don’t do the things that we were just talking about, right? They just, they’re in pain. And most of your listeners can probably relate to this. You know, you’ve got, you got too much stuff on your plate. You’re not getting it done. You’re frustrated by it, you don’t enjoy some of the things that you’re trapped in, that you’re having to do. It’s showing up in the results of the business. So So you have this pain, and so you know what you want is the first person you talk to, once you learn about this to be the answer, and in all likelihood, they’re not right. And so if you’ve got to do this work on the process side, if you want to increase your probability, it’s never 100% you know, you’re never going to be perfect about it, but there are some very clear things you can do to increase the probability that you do get it right the first time. And you know, when it doesn’t work, guess what? We find out pretty quick. You know, usually in the first three to six months, you’re, you’re feeling it, it’s just not working. It’s, it’s, you know, something’s out of alignment, and then you’ve got the whole process to try to unwind and move on. And then there’s, there’s damage around. Oh my gosh, does this even work? And you know, my, my, one of my case studies, one of my clients, it’s taken four times to get it right. And you know, to his credit, he persevered, and he learned something each time, you know, to help, to help get it better, get it right, but, but each of the previous times has kind of fallen into a trap of, you know, moving too fast, or, you know, really wanting this to be the right answer, and not really paying attention to the signals in the in the data, the objective data. You know, visionaries are typically terrible at hiring. Do you know why? Well, I’ve got an I’ve got an
Debra Chantry-Taylor 21:50
idea, because I’m a vision myself. So I think I’ve got a little bit of an idea. But, yeah, what do you think? What’s the mistake that you fall into? Oh, I’m just giggling to myself, as you were saying that something I always move too fast. I’m desperate to, sort of, I find people that I like and that are similar to me. And so therefore I tend to kind of go out there and go, Oh yes, I really like you. You should come work with me, and then realise we’ve got two of us, which
Mark C. Waters 22:12
is a nightmare. That’s exactly it, right? So that’s exactly the trap, right? Is we? Those are the people that resonated with us. They’re like us, they must be great and but it’s absolutely the wrong thing that we need to add, right? We’re trying to add this thing that’s that’s complimentary to it’s not not like us. And, in fact, sometimes that feels the opposite. It feels like I don’t really like this person.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 22:34
I don’t want to work with them, because they’re too they’re too slow, and they keep, yeah, this is uncomfortable.
Mark C. Waters 22:39
They’re not just saying what I want to hear, you know, and so, but if you know what you’re looking for, and you know that some of that is actually okay and that’s what we need, then it helps you see that and be more objective about and not reactive. And so a lot of times it helps to have people around you that can help you see that, whether it’s your Eos implementer or maybe some other folks on your leadership team. A lot of times, it’s funny, because the leadership team, in a team where they haven’t had an integrator, once they find out about this structure, they’re the ones pushing to get the integrator, because, you know, they’re tired of getting, you know, whipsawed back and forth by that visionary, right? So, so a lot of times they’re so sometimes they can help. There are recruiters that have specialised in, you know, in in this area, in this role, and in helping to find and integrate. So they can a lot of times, help you with process, and again, be that objective third party that’s not too close to it, like, like we get as visionaries, and it can help you see the truth.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 23:40
And I think that there’s there’s there needs to be a natural tension, doesn’t there? And I think that’s sometimes a little bit difficult for us, because I always sort of say when I’m talking to people about the way that I operate in my business, is that I can be really persuasive, right? You know, that’s part of my skill set. I’m really good at convincing people that what I want to do is the right thing, and you actually need an integrator who’s going to be able to push back on that and come back at it with a data perspective or a different perspective. And it should be a good a little bit like a marriage, a little bit of, you know, good good fighting, good conflict is really helpful, as opposed to just always saying, yes, yeah,
Mark C. Waters 24:17
it’s healthy friction, right? And so the power comes from the polarity. So by the degree of our difference is actually what generates the power of that relationship. But we take this, you know, the natural friction of we wanted to butt heads all the time, and through our structure, so through the five rules that we teach in rocket fuel, we take that, that friction, and we blend it into a positive power that that, then that’s what ultimately drives the business to the next level.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 24:45
Okay, great. What does the one thing? Because when I know, but through writing a book, I’ve just finished writing a book myself, I know through writing a book, you actually do a lot of you do a lot of inner work as well when you’re actually working on it always been the thing that you’ve taken from writing this book.
Mark C. Waters 24:59
Well. I’ll get kind of meta with that. I think it’s about the importance of capturing the things that you learn in a way that help them make sense to you. There’s patterns that I’ve experienced myself, but of course, it’s like now I live vicariously through all these other visionaries, right? Whether they’re my clients or they’re, they’re, they’re people who engage with other rocket fuel programmes or whatever, I get to hear their stories and talk to them and see their situation. And so, you know, when I see the pattern, it strikes me in a certain way, and I try to capture that. And my, you know, my instinct is, I like to model things. And so, you know, that’s I love being in front of a whiteboard talking to somebody is like, my happy place, you know? I can sit there and I can kind of draw it out, and I can go, okay, and I kind of play with it in a way that it starts to make sense for me. And then I can interact with you and go, Okay, does this make sense to you? And then you teach me something. And together we we make it better, right? And so in writing this book, when it was done, I go back and look and it’s like, there’s a lot of stuff in there, there’s a lot of stuff in there, there’s a lot of tools, there’s a lot of patterns, there’s a lot of things that have just been distilled through literally 1000s of different visionaries that at this stage, I’ve engaged with and kind of pulled it out. And so for me, I’m just I again, I I learned that there’s, there’s value in not just letting that stuff float down the river past you and not taking time to to nail it down.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 26:38
I’m interested. I’ve got a personal question now, because I’ve done the rocket fuel with the crystallizer test, right? And I’m one of the few people who actually scores over 80% on both visionary and integrator, and I don’t, I’m not quite sure exactly why. I know Dane very dangerous. I think because I’m a scientist by trade, and so I think I’ve got that very structured way of approaching this. But I’ve also run, you know, companies have got 220 staff as a GM or a CEO, and so I’ve, I’ve been able to do it. I think I naturally am more of the visionary, but I definitely have a score quite highly on both. What is the danger when you are that way inclined? So it’s role
Mark C. Waters 27:14
confusion, right? So so you get caught in this back and forth of not being sure and not trying to decide and not letting yourself decide. So, you know, recognise there is a very small percentage, we’d say 5% or less, of folks that are visionaries and integrators. And everybody’s not a vision or an integrator, right?
Debra Chantry-Taylor 27:33
I actually, actually tested this. So because when I, when I got the when I first started EOS as an implementer, we got given the crystallised rocket fuel test, I decided to test it on my husband at the time, who was an actuary. And so I thought, Okay, let’s get him to this test and see what. And it came back and said he’s absolutely neither. He scored a whole bunch of stuff. So I was like, yeah, so it is true. You’re not always one of the and nor do we want everybody to be a visionary, right? I mean, and that’s great.
Mark C. Waters 27:55
That’s exactly how it should be. Again, there’s lots of other super important and meaningful roles that we need folks to play. So these are just two of them, and so everyone’s not one of these, but if they are, you’re sort of high on both, low on both, high on one, or higher on the other, right, and so you’re the high on both. So the risk here is role confusion, and what happens is, you know, you either one, you convince yourself that you know what, I’m that rare unicorn that can do both, and I’m great at both. I don’t need any help. I don’t need, you know, I don’t need anybody else to do so you sort of kick the can or look the other way and pretend that you don’t need that Counterparty, and you keep trying to do it all yourself. And again, there’s a very small percentage of people who they’re capable of doing that at a high level, and they love it, okay? So that’s that most people, though, again, just kind of get caught in the in this swirl of trying to figure it out. And so the test Debra is all right, if I feel you full of, you know, bourbon and truth serum and I and I hold a gun to your head figuratively, and I go, okay, you can only choose one of these for the rest of your life. Which one do you choose?
Debra Chantry-Taylor 29:11
Visionary with that, I doubt, yep. And I’ve learned that because I did try, I tried to do both for quite some time, and realised it was a complete
Mark C. Waters 29:19
disaster well, and so and so the way you reacted to that so quickly is what I see when I when I push someone to that question, and I really kind of get them in a corner, and I make them pick they know, so they know one of them. And it’s not always visionary, right? So some people, they go the other way. But the other thing that’s going on there is because you’ve run businesses, you’ve started businesses, you’ve had this, you know, this amazing career, you’ve had to learn to do a lot of stuff, just out of necessity or survival, right? And so you’ve got really good at a lot of things. And so when you’re taking the assessment, you know, remember, the mindset is not, can you do this? It’s, it’s, it’s, do you love it, right? Is this what you really want to do? Because just because we can doesn’t mean we should. And in fact, for visionaries, a lot of times it’s it’s the opposite. It’s the thing that we’re not letting ourselves spend time and energy on. That’s the thing that’s missing. That’s the thing that the business actually needs you to do, because you’re the only one that can do it that
Debra Chantry-Taylor 30:14
is sort of getting it’s really and I try to tell my my clients, when they do that test is to do it from that perspective, it’s like, yes, you can do it, but do you love it? Yeah, does it really make your heart sing? And yeah, then that stuff often gives them a much stronger answer. So another, another key, while
Mark C. Waters 30:29
we’re on this is, is it’s imperative that they be completely honest, right? So, so, you know, can someone game it? Yeah, probably, right. But, but if they do, they’re just hurting themselves. The truth is going to come out. It’s going to come out and and so, you know, be completely honest. When you take that test, it’s going to be better for you and everybody else. And if they’ll do that and embrace it from the from the perspective of, you know what this is, this is what I truly love, then it’s pretty it’s pretty good.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 30:58
Other pillars, the very first pillar in the book is, is the Know thyself. And I think that is one of the most important ones, just because, yeah, as I said, I always use it the phrase, if you, if you, if you don’t know where you’re going anywhere, we’ll get you there. And so having that clarity, because we always talk about this when we’re looking at the business and, you know, being really clear about what the business wants and where the business is headed. But it’s important that as a person, you are really clear about that too, right?
Mark C. Waters 31:23
Yeah. So, so this is all again. It’s about, about looking inside and getting clear on what this journey is all about. For you, who you are, what’s important to you, and you know, and in life, what’s important to you. And so one of the things that I introduce here is, is this idea of, you know, intrinsic genius. And it’s that, it’s that thing that we’re great at, that we love, that aligns perfectly with our with our drive, our cause, our the impact that we want to make on the world. And, you know, we all have something, and it’s different for each of us. But if you know what that is, it’s it makes all of this much, much more clear, much more simple to line up. Another thing that I introduce in this chapter, in this pillar, is something I mean I refer to as an individual operating system, but it’s basically, how do you get clear on what defining what you really want? So tell you a little story. So my wife and I were one summer. This was actually shortly after rocket fuel had been published, and we take a trip to Colorado in the summertime. So the mountains in the summertime absolutely beautiful. And so we’re hiking up this place where we ski in the wintertime, and we start having this debate on, would you rather be rich, or would you rather be king? Have you ever had that discussion?
Debra Chantry-Taylor 32:41
I haven’t. No, I’m going to try that to you.
Mark C. Waters 32:43
You haven’t. It’s sort of a classic, classic EO kind of discussion. So at this point, I had it probably dozens of times, you know, would you rather be rich? Would you rather be king? And at different times in my life, depending on where I was and what was going on, I probably answered it, you know, both ways at various points in time. And so for whatever reason, on this day when she asked me that question, I was like, you know, it depends. It depends on which one of those is going to give me more of the freedom that I want. And so then that started me thinking, Hmm, how do I define that? What does the freedom that I want actually look like? How would I define that? And so that start started me down this path of looking at all right, everybody’s got a list of all your life areas and whatever. And so I rounded up like 25 of these people in their lists, and I did this big cluster analysis, and kind of said, well, this is the same as that. They’re just calling it different things, and kind of put them all together. So in the end, there were nine. There are nine, what I call domains of freedom. And you know, some of them are the usual suspects, like your your your body, your mind, your spirit. Some of them, the layer I call the multipliers, is like time, money, relationships, place is one, right? So if you can do things in a beautiful place, that’s a multiplier. If you can’t it can tend to hold you back. And then we’ve got our vocation. So our business, what we do, that has an economic engine with it, and we have our avocation or our hobbies and all of this stuff. It’s interrelated. So I built a model around that, and it ultimately determines what your impact is going to be on the world, how you do in these in these areas. So combine that with an exercise that you know. Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach, yes, okay, so, so years ago, Dan took me through an exercise he called the lifetime extender. Have you seen that exercise? No, I haven’t. No. Briefly, the idea is that you you start with your actuarial age of death. So you know, what are the actuaries saying? You said you you have a history with an actuary.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 34:45
Yes, I did. That’s right, my husband, yeah.
Mark C. Waters 34:47
So you know, whatever, whatever the math says you’re going to die. So you write that age down, and then you say, Okay, what do I want to be true at that age for me to feel like it was a life well spent. Okay, so it’s sort. The eulogy exercise, right? What would you want people to say about you? What would you have accomplished? What would you want to be true? So you kind of go through and you make that list, okay, you look at it, you feel pretty good about that. And then here we go round two. Magically, you’ve got 20 more years. Wow. Okay, all the normal things here are done, they’re all checked off. I got 20 more years now. What do I want to make true now? And it’s a really interesting mind shift that happens when you do that. And so for me, it was a this was a game changer, because I basically, in that second round, realised that one of the most important things for me was I wanted my children and their children to want to spend time around me, not out of obligation, but out of desire, right? And so that was a big thing for me, because, as at the time, I had little little kids, and so I was a new dad, and I was just trying to figure it out. And so I was trying to figure out what kind of a parent I was going to be, and that discovery changed fundamentally how I approached parenting my kids, because I was sort of pre wired to be a strict disciplinarian and be really hard on them, but there were certain situations where they would do something, and my instinct was come down on them really hard, and I would think, you know what. Remember what you want in the end game here, you want them to want to spend time around you, so maybe this, you don’t need to come down as hard on them here. And so I did a lot of things much more relationally with my kids, to try to make sure that I increased the odds of that long term vision that I had becoming true. So couple that with my nine domains of freedom model that I came up with, and it’s like, Okay, what if we can take a visionary entrepreneur early in their career, transport them forward in time to when they’re 100 years old, or whatever, and walk through each of those domains and go, Okay, when you’re 100 your future self, what do you want to be True about your body. What do you want to still be true about your mind? What do you want to still be true about your relationships? And then we draw a through line from there all the way back to today. And we can look at today and go, Okay, what are the levers in the present? You know, for the health stuff, it’s like, okay, your nutrition, your sleep, for the relationship stuff, it’s okay. It’s how you parent your kids. It’s, you know, there’s a lot of different things that you can get clear on, and then you can begin to develop habits, set goals for yourself in the present that are going to greatly improve the probability that you’re actually going to get this life that you want in the future. So now take that with those nine domains, and if I said, Okay, Debra, I’d like you to force rank those nine things, and you’d go through and you’d do it, and it would be different than mine, which would be different than my wife’s, right? So, so the importance of these things and how we’re doing right now on each of these things, it’s different for everybody. And what I see entrepreneurs do is, I see him fall into two traps again and again. The first trap is they have the entrepreneurial seizure, right? This is, this is kind of like gino’s work with elite, right, where he’s talking about the the entrepreneur, you know that that’s just getting started, that’s in development, right? That’s just kind of coming out. So they have this entrepreneurial seizure. And they think, Man, this is, I’m gonna have fun, I’m gonna make a big impact. I’m gonna make a lot of money, you know? I’m gonna have flexibility of time and all this kind of stuff. And then they get into their business, and 18 months later, Debra, we drop in on them and see how it’s going, and what do we find?
Debra Chantry-Taylor 38:35
That they’re absolutely overwhelmed. They’re fighting fires. They don’t have any time. They don’t see their family anymore. They they frustrated. They’re all of that. It’s the
Mark C. Waters 38:44
exact opposite, right? And so there’s this, there’s this dip in the journey. We all go through it, right? But how many make it through? Not a lot of them don’t, right? And so the work we do with EOS is very helpful there, right? We help a lot of people make it, make it through that. So the other trap that I see them fall into is they the business is a success, and so they get all the way through, and they run this thing, and by all measures, this was a wildly successful business. They have some kind of exit, and then it’s over. And then they look around, they killed their marriage, their kids hate them. Their health sucks now. They’ve lost their identity. They don’t know who they are anymore, right? And so it’s this terrible thing where they just got on this track, and it led them to some place they had no intention of going, and they didn’t even think about it. They weren’t even aware of it. So all of this is back to the question is, okay, I think there’s a foundational thing that has to be thought through, or at least started to be thinking through, as a beginning entrepreneur, so that you can get clear on where you’re really going, and the business just serves that. The business is just, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a piece of the puzzle to help you get there and ultimately make this, this, this happen. But if you don’t have that long. Context for how it fits. It’s easy to get off down the wrong track and end up in one of those holes, then not be able to get out of it.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 40:07
I mean, it goes back to Stephen Covey. Start with the end in mind, but on steroids, right, in terms of, you know, knowing where you actually want to go. And also, I’ve just been, I’m an avid reader, but I’ve just been, I’ve finished reading the science of scaling by Dr Benjamin Hardy, but I’m now listening to his time as a tool and a similar kind of thing. It’s like everything you’re doing now is actually determining your future. So you want to be really clear about what your future looks like, so that you can make sure the things you’re doing now are the other things that will get you to your future that you want 100% I love it. Okay, great. Hey, the last thing I’d love to cover, and I’m going to run out of time very shortly, but in the I’ve actually started recommend this book to integrators as well. I know that it was written for the visionary, but I love that the chapters where it talks about respecting your integrator and supporting your integrator. And I think that if the integrators read it, it gives them a bit of a chance to hopefully help their visionary with those things as well. So tell me a little bit about that, that side of things.
Mark C. Waters 41:03
So first, I love that you do that as well. It’s just, you know, it’s important that the integrators know that it was written for the visionary, so it’s written to them. But you know, what I hear in feedback is it’s kind of like they get to peek inside the mind of the visionary, and which is interesting and informative for them. But you know, one of the things that I do emphasise in pillar five is for the visionary to be very intentional about supporting their integrator. They can do tremendous damage to the toward the success of their of their integrator. If they, you know, publicly, do things to you know, to tear them down or even not support them. If they, you know, override things. If they, you know, pull things away, if they don’t, you know, commit to the same page meeting discipline. To really give that opportunity to be, I call it becoming two halves of the same brain, if the vision and the integrator will truly commit and engage that same page meeting discipline, they really begin to know and understand each other. And then the place you can get there is a place where when either of them are asked independently, you know, the answer won’t be, you know, verbatim the same, but it’ll be really close. And so that gives the visionary comfort and trust to know that, okay, this integrator really knows how I think we’ve talked it out, we’ve worked through the areas where we’ve got differences or there’s a lack of alignment, and so we’re really aligned and on the same page. And again, you know, it’s just like they’re the executional half of my brain that’s that’s going out and making it happen. But you know, if they as the visionary, don’t, you know, help that integrator get off to a good start. Help them get an early win. You know, spend the time that’s needed to kind of bring them up, up the curve, and let them build their credibility with the rest of that leadership team. Because, you know, day one, they’ve got none, you know, of course, the visionary has all the credibility because they’ve been there as the founder or whatever. But so you’ve got to help them climb that hill. You’ve got to be patient with them, to give some time to let that happen and not expect, you know, massive results day one that they they show up on site, that’s a risky move to go, to go that don’t assume that they have all the answers. Let them kind of get to know the business for a little bit, and then you kind of turn that dial up, and they begin to take on more and more, until they’re eventually fully, fully leaning into that role. I just said
Debra Chantry-Taylor 43:24
one of the things I’m thinking is I know that I’ve worked with visionaries and they they’re just so busy, they haven’t got time for this. They haven’t got time for the same page meetings. And it’s, it’s it’s frustrating when you see that, because you know that that is a really key part is to be able to, as you said, spend the time to you’ve got to really know each other inside out, and if you don’t spend time together, how can together, how can you Yeah, and the
Mark C. Waters 43:44
initial response I’ll get on the same page meeting is, oh, we spend tonnes of time together. We see each other every day. Our offices are right next door, our desks are right next door to each other. But that’s a very different kind of engagement, right? It’s very superficial and transactional when you’re just meeting in the hall and talking quickly about something versus dedicated time that’s protected and set aside, where we’ve got three or four hours and we can go deep, we can get into and fully explore and discuss whatever it is that’s out there that we either are already, you know, off the same page, or we’re concerned that we may end up not on the same page, and dive through that You know, tool here I do want to be sure to mention, is called the rocket fuel power index. And so this is a tool where there are eight different mindsets that are indicators of a very healthy visionary integrator duo relationship. And then, of course, there’s, there’s levels and descriptions of what each of those look like. And so the the prescription here is we want the visionary and the integrator to each fill out that that tool individually once a quarter, and then in their same page meeting, they come together and put them both on the table basically and look at how they filled it out. And so what they’ll see is, okay, we’re looking at this one pretty much the same way. So nothing. Really we need to talk about there. Maybe we’ll some things we can do to get it better. But you know this one, wow, you ranked it really low, and I ranked it really high. What’s going on there? Why are we seeing things so differently? And really, that’s very rich for discussion on how, how to get aligned, and something that one of us, or both of us, are missing there. So it’s a really good tool. So that power index, the the duos that use that quarterly see amazing results.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 45:27
That’s good. And, I mean, it’s similar to what we do with the leadership team in terms of where we’re at completely different ends on the organisational checkup. Is having those conversations really helped to get people on the same page. Again, it’s all it’s all about, is understanding why you thought that, and I thought this, and, and how do we meet in the middle? Yeah, yeah. Or, like, we use the,
Mark C. Waters 45:45
you know, the people analyzer in a, you know, each quarterly is, we’re having a quarterly conversation, you know, just to make sure that, you know, we’re clear on the expectations and, and how do they see it? How do we see it, and where we see it differently? You know, make all that go away. Let’s make it visible, you know, how we’re seeing things, and talk about where it’s different and figure it out. This is
Debra Chantry-Taylor 46:03
the thing, with the Eos, there’s so many powerful tools in the toolkit that can actually help. And I think a lot of people, they think that they’ve, you know, they do the five foundational tools, or, or worse, actually, a lot of people who are self employed, they do the VTO, and they kind of think, right, that’s it. We’re kind of doing Eos, but, but you’re not, you’ve got to bring all those other things in. They all, they’re all designed to work together to really get the best results for the organisation. Absolutely, absolutely.
Mark C. Waters 46:25
And I see clients that a lot of my clients, have been with me for a long time. And so every once while, get someone that asks for, well, you got any new tools? You know, we’ve kind of covered everything. It’s kind of like, well, you know, let’s take a look at how you’re actually doing on these foundational tools. And you go back and they’ve drifted right, and they’ve forgotten to do something that they used to do, or used to know to do, and they get away from it. So a lot of times it’s just, it’s mastery, right? It’s a journey, and then you’re never done. You got to keep working on it.
Debra Chantry-Taylor 46:51
I actually went back to visit an old client who was struggling and said they weren’t getting the results anymore. And so it sat in on their own, their level 10 meetings, and they had things that were off track on the scorecard. They didn’t drop them down. And I just sat there and listened until we got together, like, why did we not drop that down? We know what’s going on there. That doesn’t matter. You’re like, Yes, sure. You might know, know what’s going on there. But the whole point is, if it’s you know, if, because it was actually something really quite major, one of the leading indicators for sales, and it’s like, you’re not getting the sales, you’re not achieving your leading indicators for sales, and you’re not dropping it down. Hello. This is part of the methodology of this whole level 10 reading. Yeah. Anyway, it’s always interesting. You’re right. It’s it’s a journey to mastery, and we never quite get there. And even as I’ve been doing EOS for six and a half years now, you’ve been doing it for a lot longer, there’s still things that I learn all the time, which is, which is just great. And we run our three businesses on Eos, and we’re still learning ourselves. Yeah. Mark, such a pleasure to talk to you. I’m so excited. I’ve loved having these discussions. I do want to make sure that the listeners kind of walk away with something they can actually do. So I know we’ve talked about some of these things, but can we just do a quick recap, three top tips or tools that you would say, Hey, if you can do these things, this will really take you forward.
Mark C. Waters 48:01
Yeah. So the first one would be to, you know, check out the books, you know. And just to kind of recap there, you know, think about the rocket fuel book as really outlining the structure for how to make that relationship, that visionary integrator relationship, truly great, and then visionary for what it looks like to be truly great in that visionary role. And it’s a much broader picture, right? So it’s, it covers a lot of things beyond just that relationship. So you know, those are both really a great place to start. The second thing I would recommend is go to Rockefeller university.com, and take the crystallizer assessment, if you haven’t, and that’s going to give you a good indication of, you know, how much visionary you are and how much integrator you are. Be sure you’re very honest with yourself as you go through that. If you’re not, you know it’s going to come out in the end. So, you know we’re going to find out. So, so you might as well be honest from the from the front end if you want that to help you as much as you can. And then the last thing is to you know, really, it’s back to pillar one in the visionary book, know thyself. I think it’s, I think it’s really important that that visionaries take the time do the work up front, to really understand, you know, who they are, where they’re trying to go, where they are now, and that’s going to help them figure out that that path to get there. I do lots of writing on this. And so if anybody wants to go to Mark C winters.com or visionary book.com either of those, and you kind of get into, I do a weekly newsletter that really talks about this, where I talk about the things that work, that I’ve seen, the things that I’ve seen that don’t work. And the whole idea here is we can learn so much from each other, you know, and go farther and faster together and hopefully avoid some of the pain along the way. Right? Everybody doesn’t need to make the same mistake. You know, we often think we do and insist on doing it that way, but a lot of times you can learn from someone else’s mistake and actually step around that hole and and get their get their little. Master, I’ve actually
Debra Chantry-Taylor 50:00
registered myself on the visual book.com site, and there’s some great, great tools and things there. So definitely visit that beautiful Hey, Mark again. Lovely to have a chat to you. Thank you for sharing so openly. Thank you for giving us all your wisdom. Really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Debra, great to see you.
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Debra Chantry-Taylor
Certified EOS Implementer | Entrepreneurial Leadership & Business Coach | Business Owner
#betterbusinessbetterlife #entrepreneur #leadership #eosimplementer #professionaleosimplementer #entrepreneurialbusinesscoach
Certified EOS Implementer New Zealand
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Certified EOS Implementer NZ
