The Science of Flipping - Episode 107: Interview with Best Selling Author Mike Paton

Episode Date: September 1, 2017

document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function () { podlovePlayer("#player-5eb5ab30a0a9b", "https://thescienceofflipping.com/wp-json/podlove-web-player/shortcode/post/2758", "https://thescienceofflipping.com/wp-json/podlove-web-player/shortcode/config/default/theme/default"); }); document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function () { podlovePlayer("#player-5eb5ab30a0b20", {"title":"Episode 107: Interview with Best Selling Author Mike Paton","subtitle":null,"summary":null,"duration":"","poster":null,"chapters":"","transcripts":"","audio":[{"url":"https://audio.simplecast.com/e33ace16.mp3","mimeType":"audio/mpeg","title":"AUDIO/MPEG","size":0}]}, "https://thescienceofflipping.com/wp-json/podlove-web-player/shortcode/config/default/theme/default"); }); Best selling author of Get A Grip and co-author of Traction, gives us the inside scoop on how to build your business with structure and accountability. Get a Free Coaching Call with TSOF team. CLICK HERE TO FILL THE FORM. JOIN MASTERMIND  — APPLY NOW!!

Welcome to the Science of Flipping Podcast. I'm your host, Justin Colby. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to the Science of Flipping. I am your host, Justin Colby. And if you are watching this right now, you can see I have a very, very special guest with me today. And before I introduce this guest, as you can see, he's dressed very sharp and ready for business right now. But before I introduce him, I want you guys to know, if this happens to be your first time to the podcast, you happen to click on this episode, this is all about building your life by design, creating a business that truly can bring you the finances that you want so that you can create the life that you want. For those of you out there, it's all about real estate investing.

What are the systems and strategies and tactics, organization, and what you will learn about today is what type of business model are you creating to be able to build something that has longevity and profitability for you to go. Go to The Science of Flipping. Download my book for free. It's the same book I have on Amazon that I sell each and every day for $15. For listeners, I give it away for free on thescienceofflipping.com. As well, if you need anything else from you're interested in talking to me about our masterminds or our coaching. There are applications there.

We have a funding partner that you can sign up for to fund your deals. All of that is over at thescienceflipping.com. Go there first and check it out. But listen, let's just jump into it. This guy is very dynamic. He is a best-selling author of multiple books. As you can see behind him, he has a complete vision of what business needs to be. But with no further ado, I'd like to bring Mike Payton on to the training.

What's up, dude? Hey, doing great, Justin. How about you? Doing good, man. Doing good. Very excited to have you on. Whether you've known it or not, and the reason why I hounded you guys to get you on to my podcast is because what you guys have built there with the EOS model, the book Get a Grip, the book Traction,

has made a profound effect on my business in how we had to kind of go back into the business almost to restart. So I hounded you guys. I was talking to your assistants. I was like, I need you on the call. And so happy to have you and thank you for spending some time with us, dude. Happy to do it. So let's talk a little bit about the books. First of all, let's kind of just start there because you have several books and one would be Get a Grip, which is a great book and written in a parable form.

So for those of you who have a hard time reading self-development books or making books feel like they're stereo instructions, Get a Grip is not that at all. It's actually really quite amazing. So how did that book come about? Yeah, so the first book in the EOS book library, if you will, the traction library, is Gino Whitman's book, Traction. Yes. It spells out what EOS, the entrepreneurial operating system, is and how to operate your

small entrepreneurial company that way. And that's what drew me to EOS and to Gino in the first place was I read Traction and I just fell in love with the simplicity and the accessibility of the concepts in the book and the sort of understanding that Gino seemed to have of the unique life when you're running a small business with between 10 and 250 people in it, when you're hitting ceilings, when you're frustrated with, you know, people and, and partners and employees. That never happens, by the way, that never happens, you know, so, uh, so that's what drew me in. And then, uh, after I joined, uh, Gino became one of the first professional EOS implementers in the world. I started talking to Gino about writing the second book in the series, which is

Get a Grip. And both of us had similar ideas about what that next book needed to feel like and be. And we wanted to write a real, raw, nitty gritty, in the trenches business fable that really helps entrepreneurs running entrepreneurial companies, quite frankly, feel like they're not alone and that lots of organizations, lots of leaders have the same set of problems and challenges. And it's so true. I mean, I've read both those books. Traction completely changed my life completely. Then I read Get a Grip and it was just so good to kind of take a perspective on it. And I understand it's written in fable form, but it was a good perspective to have those hard-hitting conversations, right? The conversations that they have where people are feeling like they're being attacked, but really

it's just bringing out into the open the conversation that needed to happen for the business to continue growing, right? That's right. Yeah. Our rule in writing the book, Justin, was that if Gino and I both hadn't seen something similar play out in a session with one of our clients more than 10 times, we wouldn't include it. So what you see when you read that book, what you hear and feel is just the real raw emotions that happen when you get a group of humans together trying to make something great happen in the world. And, you know, if any of your listeners are out there wondering whether it's normal to get ticked off or frustrated or yell at each other or have people quit, throw stuff around the office,

it's just normal. There's a lot of passion in an entrepreneurial company. Yeah, there's no doubt. And I myself have a business partner, and we were friends first. And we're still great business partners and great friends today because we know how to be able to separate some of the tough conversations, bring them into a business world, and not feel like we're attacking each other personally. And for those of you out there listening and having partnerships,

and that can be very, very difficult, right? Because too often do we end up feeling like whatever is being said, there's a personal attack in there there and it's not just business. So those conversations are hard, especially for partnerships. Correct. So let's jump into the philosophy, teachings, strategy behind all of this

because again, I wanted you on here specifically because there's so many people that need to know how to build a business the right way and to start the right way. And if you've already started, quite frankly, I was years into the business before traction. I went back into my business to rebuild it the right way based around the entire EOS model, right? And so let's just kind of start with, I guess what I would say is if you were talking to someone about to start business or maybe they just are starting the business, maybe there's a little money coming in, what would be your words of advice or where

would you take them? Yeah, so for somebody just starting out early in the stage of their business, I would say get in touch with and be crystal clear on what it is you want from that business. What are you passionate about? What's really important to you? Try and articulate the soul of the business and and create a crystal clear and compelling vision that gets you excited when you get out of bed every day. That would be my advice to somebody just starting out. Where I tend to engage with an entrepreneurial company is a little later when a young entrepreneur has created a business, sometimes accidentally, and they find all of the, one know, one day they, they're passionate about something that they're good at. They sell a couple of things. And the next thing they know, they wake up and they're writing paychecks to 12 or 15 people. You know, holy cow, I've got a

business here, right? And so many clients will, will say that's what it feels like. And so when I engage with entrepreneurs at that stage, the challenge is most of them have hit the ceiling. They've started to lose touch with what excited them in the first place. They're spending a more significant part of their days and hours and nights and sleepless moments and sweaty moments, frustrated and scared and not doing work that they have fun doing. The business is running them rather than the other way around. So that's why that first step of being really clear and intentional about what you want from your business and what it's all about at its core is so important. So important. And I think you hit it on the head and there are times where you can lose the passion, the love, because you get so brought into the weeds, right? You are so deep into the weeds that that vision, the creation, the baby that you're so excited to build and hit these new benchmarks and revenue. And all of a sudden you're brought into the minutia of the day-to-day

and you're so thick into those weeds, that love is there, but it's so deep now that it's not something intangible anymore. You can't even feel it really. Yeah. And that's a basic tenet of EOS is that as you grow, your business is going to encounter multiple ceilings, multiple periods of chaos where the business calls you from the high-level, visionary, relationship-oriented, creative, problem-solver self that you are into the weeds. And what EOS is is a way of operating an entrepreneurial company that ensures that the right people are executing on your vision and your plan alongside you, which will allow the true visionary entrepreneurs in the world to stay engaged with their business and count on others to manage the day-to-day.

So less frequently as the business grows, do the visionaries need to get sucked into the weeds? Yeah. So I love this, right? Because I could probably talk to you forever. So I'm trying to be very strategic with our conversation here right now, because I could go on. What would you say to the person who's a million dollar a year business and has lost sight of the enjoyment right and where to go back what do they need to start focusing on um to kind of get back in there right because obviously they're bringing in revenue in part what i would ask you is you know one of our one of my jobs so i'm the visionary in my business right my business My business partner is the implementer, right? And so for those of you who have read the book, very familiar terms. But so I'm always able to go create.

I can bring in all the money. But then at the end of the day, it's also what happens to the money. Where does the money go? Why, you know, certain quarters are you like, where the hell did all that money just go right now, right? Is that a pretty common thing that happens to people who are starting to hit that, oh man, we're making seven figures in this business, but where the fuck is all the money? That's right. Yeah. So we talk about the five frustrations a lot when we're sharing EOS with the world and five common frustrations of entrepreneurs. The first two are people and profit. You know,

people, nobody cares or wants it as bad as you or gets it or whatever and profit. What those people do with all the profit, right? So it's those two things right off the top. So you nailed it. And so my advice to the entrepreneur that's beginning to hit the ceiling for the first time, get frustrated, lose passion, lose energy, is to understand that your job has changed. You're now no longer responsible for creating something from nothing. You're partly responsible for maintaining the status quo and running a going concern. And, you know, that's about as exciting as white bread to a typical... That's exactly right. Oh, God, I don't want to do that. And so what we talk about in EOS is, you know, EOS is a system

for helping entrepreneurs get what they want from their businesses. And most don't. 95% of the people who found small businesses don't get everything they want from their business and 5% do. And the 5% that do, I believe, are strong at six things every truly great business needs to be strong at. And we illustrate that by sharing the EOS model in the books and on our website and in all the implementation work we do. And that those six things, if you're great at these six things, if each of these six key components is strong, you're going to have a going concern that still excites you and you can be passionate about and you feel good about as a visionary. And I'll just go through the six things real quick. Yeah, please do. Absolutely.

It's the vision, people, data, issues, process, and traction components. And so the vision component, when you're 100% strong in the vision component, everybody in your whole organization is crystal clear on your vision and on board they want to help you achieve that vision 100 on the same page but to be strong in the people component you need everybody in your organization to be a great person somebody who fits your culture and is good at their job the third key component is the data component. That's just the art and science of running your business on real information, on actionable, predictive indicators rather than the feelings, emotions, and egos that so often drive entrepreneurial companies.

The issues component is just about smoking out all the imperfections, obstacles, and barriers in your business, getting them out in the open, and prioritizing and resolving them for the long-term greater good of your business. That's strong in the issues component. The fifth key component is the process component. And the process component is just about getting the most important stuff in your business done the right and best way every time, even when you're not there to coach or mentor your people to make sure they do it the right way or what so many entrepreneurs are guilty of doing, which is nudging their people out of the way and saying, hey, this is important. Let me do it. And then the sixth key component is the traction component. This is the missing link in most businesses where if you can't bring your

vision down to the ground and execute on that vision, if you don't look around your business and see those 12 or 15 or 27 people that are on your payroll all rowing in the same direction, trying to help you achieve your vision, it just gets frustrating. And so that requires focus, discipline, and accountability. That's what traction is. And that's the EOS model. That's what we're working with our clients to help them strengthen. That's great. And with those components, one thing the listeners should be wary of is this isn't a come in tomorrow and you fix all six of these components, right? This is definitely potentially even through the EOS model, and I know you guys have a training program, this could be a year long, maybe even more, arduous digging into your business to get it right.

And if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right, is what I would always argue. And if you really want to build a business that has sustainability, that you can revitalize that passion, then you are going to need all six of these categories to be at top performance, right? That's right.

And when we start the EOS journey with one of our clients, we ask for a two-year mental commitment. And we specifically say this isn't a seminar where you can come in and dip your toe in the water and things are going to get better. A two-year mental commitment to change the fundamental way your entrepreneurial company is operating so that you're constantly striving to be 100% strong in those six key components, but you're celebrating 80% strong. It's the goal with our clients. When you're 80% strong in all six of those key components, you're running one of those truly great businesses. And you're always going to have issues, but it just becomes so much easier to smoke them out and resolve them for the long-term greater good when you've strengthened all six of those key components.

Yeah. Now, let's dive in a little bit about the meetings, meaning the rocks, the 90 days, the yearly. How would you recommend someone to come back into their business who probably is just putting their head down and going, which a lot of us entrepreneurial types do, right? We're A's, we're drivers, we are red personalities. We just go, we stir up dust and figure it out later, right? So let's help that person get back into, okay, you need to have your weekly meetings and they need to be structured like this. And then you need to have your 90 days. So let's dive into kind of the structure of how to really

regroup. What does it look like? How often? What are we tracking? That kind of stuff. Well, and I really want to tee that up. It's a great question, but I want to tee that up by going back to the first piece of advice you asked me to give to an early stage entrepreneur which is to clarify and simplify that vision in your head of what you're trying to accomplish. Because when that vision is clear, then your mission is making sure everybody on your leadership team and ultimately everybody in your entire organization clearly understands where you're going and how you plan to get there. The meetings and the regular meeting pulse are really part of the traction component where you come together often enough to keep the circles connected in your business, to keep everybody on the same page, to help folks understand what actions and behaviors

and tasks and projects that I need to focus on this week or this quarter are gonna move us forward towards achieving that vision so that context is really important right yeah so the vision is clear so now there are two tools or disciplines we teach in the traction component that help an entrepreneurial leadership team gain traction. The first are rocks. Rocks are 90-day business priorities with a single owner that move the company forward towards achieving its vision. And when we set rocks with a leadership team, what we're building is what we call a 90-day world for the organization, where every 90 days, the leadership team comes together, locks itself in a room, eliminates distractions,

and does a couple of things. The first thing we do is we look back on last quarter to see how we did. We own our successes and failures. We identify any issues that came out of the last quarter and we get them up on our issues list and we learn some lessons so that next quarter we can get smarter, better, faster as we execute next quarter. We then recheck our vision to make sure we're all still 100% on the same page with where we're going. Because the next thing we do is we've got to set a plan for next quarter that'll help us execute on that vision. And if we're not in sync on the long-term vision, we're never going to be in sync on the short term. And so that's that 90-day world of every quarter,

just asking a leadership team, you've been running like hell in the business for 89 days, the ropes beginning to fray, you're starting to get frustrated with one another. Let's come up for air, regroup, recheck the vision, set a new set of priorities for next quarter and repeat that pulse all over again. That's the first half of the two things we teach in the traction component. Yeah, I love it. That's so big, especially because we do so often just get lost and we just keep going. We look back and we're like, what happened? A lot of shit worked.

We made a lot of money. A lot of shit didn't work. We didn't make it. What all happened, right? You don't really know, which makes it borderline impossible for a personality like myself, the entrepreneur creative, to systemize or put any type of organization together for things that are working within the business, right? people to be able to keep the people happy and on pace with where the company's going and keep them included. For someone like me to not have a model like this, it tears everything apart because I have no way to say, keep replicating this. You're crushing it here. Here's where we need to fix. This is where we missed the goal. And then everyone is just looking around like, well,

what are we doing here? Right. So every quarter, imagine you come out of this leadership team meeting. You and your teammates are crystal clear on your priorities. Then you go communicate those priorities to your whole organization. Hey, company, here's how we did last quarter. We're still on the same page with this vision. This is where we're going long term here are priorities next quarter any questions yeah and so the act of every quarter repeating to everybody in your organization what your priorities are does two things number one it allows them to grab a paddle and start paddling themselves because they're clear on where your priorities are it's easier for them to

prioritize their time and energy. And number two, it creates a little accountability for the leadership team. Because when an entrepreneur sets his own priorities on Monday and doesn't tell anybody about it, when they're different on Friday, the only person who's got to deal with that is the entrepreneur himself or herself. And I'm a visionary too, Justin. We're the world's greatest rationalizers. Yeah. Okay. And so we're trying to drive some personal accountability into this model with that 90 day world that just says every 90 days, if you can't articulate your priorities and stay focused on

them for 89 days, man, something's got to give. You can't get a whole organization to get in line behind you without clear priorities. Yeah. So let's bring it even a step further. How often should people be meeting, right? Should we be meeting once a week? And then how long are those meetings? What do we want to be talking about in those meetings? That's great. So the second part of the traction component is what we call the meeting pulse. And that 90-day world is one part of the company's meeting pulse. I've already clearly defined that. What we also find is that if a leadership team only comes together once every 90 days, all heck breaks loose pretty fast. So what we ask our leadership teams to do is devote 90 minutes a week to a great, efficient, productive level 10 meeting. And so the name level 10 meeting comes from a question we ask

all our clients when we start the journey with them, and that is to rate the effectiveness of their internal meetings. And the average answer to that question when people are being honest, and most of the time, surprisingly, they are, is about three and a half on a scale of one to ten. And so with the level 10 meeting, what we're trying to do is raise the average quality of a company's meeting, internal meetings, from a three and a half to a nine or a 10. So once a week for 90 minutes, what we do is we follow five rules. You've got to meet on the same day and at the same time every week with the same members of your leadership team. Okay. You've got to use the same agenda every week so your team starts to get better at the art and science of efficient, productive meetings rather than making the agenda and the objectives

up differently every week. And then you always have to start the meetings precisely on time and end on time so that the meetings don't collapse everything else that's a priority on top of itself. And so those are the five rules we follow. And the agenda is very simple. We always start on time. We begin by reviewing the three most important things to every business. Are we hitting our scorecard numbers? Are we completing our rocks or priorities? And are we keeping our customers and employees happy? We call those three items the reporting only section of the meeting and what we're

doing there is we're trying in 15 minutes total or less to check in on those three important things and create issues that we're gonna tackle later in the meeting. Rather than starting the meeting with one person on the leadership team talking ad nauseum about what he or she thinks is the most important thing for us to talk about today. And from there, we've smoked out a bunch of issues. We go through a quick to-do list. A to-do is a seven-day action item. Each member of the leadership team typically has one to three to-dos every week. And they say out loud in front of their fellow leaders that I got my to-do to done or not. And it drives a little personal accountability.

And it's awful. You run your company. Right. Even if you're the owner and you had a seven-day action item and you couldn't get that thing done in the last seven days and you have to say not done to your leadership team, it feels awful, right? Have a little accountability. And then once we're through the to-do list, then we spend the vast majority of the meeting, 45 to 60 minutes in a 90-minute meeting, we spend prioritizing and resolving issues using a little technique we call IDS, which helps companies identify the root cause of the issue, discuss

it briefly with no politicking, and then agree on a plan of attack that'll make the issue go away forever. That stands for solve. That's what solve means. And IDSing all the issues. And my teams are coming out of their meetings feeling crystal clear on their priorities for the week, feeling like they've prioritized and resolved some real issues every week and grateful for the efficient 90 minutes they've just spent together

with the rest of their leadership team. And with that, the meeting always concludes on time. That's great. That's great. Yeah, these are some of the things that, again, the book Traction, the parable with Get a Grip. I mean, this is something that all entrepreneurs, I don't care. I'm in the real estate investing space. I have a good friend, Sean Terry, who actually years ago recommended

traction to me and he actually created a scorecard based around traction for real estate investing, right? Like how many leads are coming in? How much money was spent? What's the cost per lead? What's the cost per deal? How many appointments have you gone on? How many contract, right? So he built it out, which has been great. We use, actually, in our educational platform to help people understand the value of a scorecard. If you don't track it, it's just lost. What gets tracked gets managed. If you can't manage your business, then you might make some money, but you're not going to run a business. You're just going to have a high-paying job.

Yes. That scorecard you just talked about is used in that level 10 meeting to help the leadership team see whether the leading indicators of the business like lead generation and that sort of thing, not the financial results you got last month, but what are the actions that are going to lead to the financial results next month? Are we on track with all those activities so that if you're not doing the work to get the desired results, you can react well before the results are due and get your numbers back on track before you have a crummy quarter or a crummy year? And so that's strengthening the data component, even though we use it in those weekly level 10 meetings as part of the traction component. In my business, we actually have it

on whiteboard. So every time that we go over those values, we track it. And quite frankly, what we found recently as of last quarter is we were over delivering leads to our team, meaning they weren't being worked efficiently, meaning our closing ratio went down, right? Well, if our closing ratio is going down, then that's not going to help us make more money. So we had to adjust accordingly because we could see what was happening, right? We saw the numbers trend

and that was a huge component that we were able to catch up on before it's too late. Yeah, that's why you ask our clients to always be looking at 13 weeks of scorecard history at a glance. it's too late. Yeah, that's why you ask our clients to always be looking at 13 weeks of scorecard history at a glance. So they're seeing those patterns and trends, because if you can't see the patterns and trends, these snippets of one week data aren't going to create a lot of value for you. It's patterns and trends that lead to insight and better decisions. That's exactly right. Great stuff.

Yeah. Well, listen, I want to thank you for your time. My listeners tend to have about a 30-minute attention span, so I try not to push them far. But guys, if you're out there listening to this, A, pick up the books. But B, Peyton, why don't you tell everyone what's the next steps? Where to find you? Where to find the model? What can they do?

You have an entire coaching slash educational platform that you offer to people, which I run masterminds with two other partners. And we push you guys like crazy. I think the last mastermind, we had five people that joined your EOS implementer program, which was awesome because that's how much we believe in you guys. So tell people where to go, where to find you, and what are some next steps? Yeah, so one of our core values is help first. So we just want entrepreneurs to get what they want from their businesses. And so we've done everything we can to put all the resources your listeners need in one place. And it's EOSworldwide.com. So you can go there

to find a ton of actionable content, download a bunch of free tools. The Traction Library is all mentioned in detail on our website under the Books tab. There are five EOS books that have been published now, and there's a link to ordering them in bulk or one by one. So there's tons of video content, literally everything you might need. The other thing you can find there is if you're running a small business and you're interested in learning more about how to implement EOS in your business, our worldwide EOS implementer community is all featured on the website. You just click on the Find an Implementer tab.

You may have one to ten really highly qualified EOS implementers in your community that would be comfortable sitting down with you, helping you learn more and helping you get what you want from your business. So all that's at EOSWorldwide.com. Awesome. Awesome. Anything else you want to mention before we let these guys get out of here? Well, I always like to close with one thing. And for the record, your listeners have about a 20 minute longer attention span than me so 30 exactly is exactly the one thing i like to close with is this gino and i

don't believe that every business should be running on eos we do believe that you cannot run a great business on multiple operating systems you must choose one so whether it's EOS or some other way of operating your business, I urge you to go find one that feels like the way you want to run your company and adopt it and get everybody on your leadership team and ultimately everybody in your company on the same page. If EOS is a great fit, we'd love to work with you. If it isn't, we're good with that. We just know you need one. Go find one. Right on. Well, Peyton, I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Again, this is bestselling author Mike Peyton from Get a Grip and the Traction Series

and all of that. I mean, again, I couldn't refer to them or recommend them more. Get over to EOSworldwide.com. Download all their free stuff. Take advantage of the stuff that they're giving you to become a better entrepreneur, business owner, and go from there, man. So I really appreciate you showing up today and spending some time with our listeners. Appreciate it, dude.

Very grateful for your time and the time of your listeners, Justin. Thanks. Right on, Mike. All right, man. I'll talk to you later. We're out of here, guys. Peace. listeners justin thanks all right man i'll talk to you later we're out of here guys peace