What does it take to truly transform your business? In this episode, I sat down with Todd Bailey, a former pastor turned business strategist who’s mastered the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS). From scaling companies to preparing them for sale, Todd shares the secrets behind doubling growth, solving people's problems, and achieving what he calls the “EOS Life.” Could these simple tools be the key to your business breakthrough? Tune in to discover how vision, alignment, and strategy can change everything.

We talk a little bit about what it is, how to implement it, sources of information about EOS and how EOS and any operating system is critical if you're ever thinking about selling your business because you have to be able to scale it and repeat it without the original owner to get the most money when you sell it.

So listen in and learn about EOS.

Jonathan Breeden: Hello, and welcome to another edition of The Best of Johnston County Podcast.

I'm your host, Jonathan Breeden. And on today's episode, we have Todd Bailey, who is an EOS implementer right here in Johnston County. And I know you're saying, What is EOS? It's the entrepreneurial operating system. And it is a system by which you can run any small business more effectively in scale. I have been doing it maybe not greatly, but if that's even a word here in my office, and it's really helped me.

I've enjoyed reading the books and meeting other implementers like Todd. And I think you're going to find this really fascinating about things you can do in your small business every day. He's also a certified exit planning expert who can help small business owners who were looking to sell in the next 10 years.

The Best of Johnson County Podcast comes out every single Monday and has now for over a year. And we've had many great guests and we have many more great guests to go. So go back and listen to some of our previous episodes. If this is your first time listening, we had Butch Lauder, Johnson County Commissioner Chairman, Chris Johnson Johnson County Economic Development Chairman.

We had Adrian O'Neill, Johnson County Parks and Rec Director. We've had local tennis, Dan Sims, local financial advisor, Chris Key. We've had a lot of great guests. We've had the Redneck Barbecue Lab and Mercedes Harris talking about all the great things going on there. So go back and listen to those.

Todd Bailey: Thank you. Good to be here.

Jonathan Breeden: All right. No problem. So tell the people. Who you are, what you do.

Todd Bailey: Yeah. So as you mentioned, I'm a professional EOS implementer. Entrepreneurial operating system. It's simply a comprehensive system of simple tools to help you run your business more effectively, more efficiently and get more out of the business, get the life, the owner wanted out of the business.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, there's no doubt about that. So let's talk a little bit about your biography. How did you, I mean, this is a, not your first career doing this EOS stuff.

At one point, I think, where'd you grow up?

Todd Bailey: Yeah. So, I was born in Michigan. About an hour and a half north of Detroit spent my childhood in michigan. My dad got a transfer to Miami, Florida, So I spent my teenage years in Fort Lauderdale graduated high school there small college in Ohio and Spent a bunch of time in Michigan, Ohio before I moved to Johnston County.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay, and when did you move to Johnston County?

Todd Bailey: That's what brought me to Johnston County. I went to college for the purpose of studying theology and being a minister.

Jonathan Breeden: Where's church

Todd Bailey: It's called Cross Point Community Church on highway 70, halfway between Clayton and Smithfield.

Jonathan Breeden: Yeah. Okay. I know where cross point is. Yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay. And then I think when you got into the business world, maybe your first job wasn't a financial advisor. I think you bought a business.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay. And you did that for several years around Cary, I think.

We went from 40 million in assets under management to 80 and assets under management in four years. So tremendous growth. All of that I attribute to the efficiencies and effectiveness of EOS So in 20 end of 22 into 23 my wife and I started talking about the future and I said i've got 14/15 years left before I hang it up. What do I want to do?

Jonathan Breeden: Oh man, that's great. That's great. And you know, I've had the fortunate, been fortunate. I read the book traction as well. have a business coach and they it was one of the things they recommended as something to consider. And so I read the book traction maybe three or four years ago.

And it was one of those books. Like I mean, it spoke to me that the concepts were tremendous, you know, and there was this organization and in the book, it's, way easier in the book than it is in real life. Like, you know, and I was like, yeah, I I could do this, I think, you know, and then I actually went to a presentation with, and, in the U.S person like you.

Todd Bailey: Implementer?

So if you're into that, I would, if you read those three books, you're going to be way further ahead. So let's talk about what it is? Other people have heard it. Most people you know, if you're anybody in business has heard of EOS now Traction is a bestselling book, kind of what is it in a nutshell?

That's a pain point that EOS is a great for 82% of the people who hire an EOS implementer do so for people issues. We were talking about retention and losing employees coming and going. And EOS is perfect for addressing. If you're having people issues inside your organization, EOS is really the solution for that.

Some businesses have cashflow issues. They might be bringing in $3,000,000, but 3,000,000 is going right out the door 30 days later. And they always feel strapped. EOS is a perfect solution for that type of problem. A business leadership team or owner that they've tried everything. We read this book. We went to this seminar and went to this conference.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, and that is true. And I have, like I said, I've done a little bit of it and I've definitely tried to follow the structure and I think it's important, you know, one of the first things you do, if you start studying it is you sort of need to develop a vision of just, what are we trying to do here?

And I think we've got a pretty good one now. So talk about how people develop their vision state.

Todd Bailey: Great question. So eOS eOS is a system of tools. So there are about 20 tools in the EOS toolbox. So when you bring in somebody like me as an implementer, we help you implement and execute on EOS. So your business is running on EOS.

Over the course of the relationship, we're just mastering those 20 tools. The number one tool in that toolbox is called the Vision Traction Organizer. Or the VTO for short. Basically what that is, is a tool. And if you've read the book traction, there's a sample of the VTO in the book. Even if you never hire somebody like me, use the VTO in your organization. It is the best tool that you're ever going to discover for your business.

And as a team, you're identifying where is our organization, our business going to be 10 years from now? What. What's the finish line 10 years from now, the value in that as you're getting the whole leadership team to see the same finish line, because what we find when I step in with leadership teams, they, when you start the conversation, they're very unified.

But as you start breaking it down, sometimes those visions can be slightly different. The COO and the CEO and the CFO, they all have slightly different visions of where we want to end up. So the Vision Traction Organizer brings everybody to the exact same vision as a leadership team. We're in alignment. We agree on that and it gets everybody rowing in the same direction. So the VTO is a great tool. To help the leadership team sniff out what they should be doing.

Right? So, I mean, it's all together, right? Like we won't heroic individuals and employees working for our clients who we want to see the heroes in their own life, even though their relationship may not be working out. So talk a little bit about that sort of, cause I have really used that a lot. And I might not write it down, but I definitely have it in my head, sort of the right seat, right person, right value matrix as you go to decide to hire somebody.

And then we make sure we got the right people In the right seats executing on that vision. So it all works together.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, and one of the things you have to ask yourself whether you're working with somebody like Todd Bailey or not is okay. What do I need each seat to do?

Todd Bailey: Yes.

Jonathan Breeden: And then you really need to talk about. You need a you know, and this was hard for me, but every job needs sort of a standard operating procedure and needs a KPI key performance indicator what they're and every job you need to kind of know what skill sets would be good in that job.

And then you have to look and say, okay, who do I need to hire? And if somebody is already there, do they have this skill set? Is this something they excel at? Is this something they enjoy? Would they be better in a different role than the role they're in? Because if they're in a role that doesn't fit them, they're not going to be happy.

Todd Bailey: Well, what we find, cause like I said, 82% of the businesses that bring somebody like me in it's for people issues. They're having people challenges and they don't know how to solve it. So when we, when I teach them how to use the people analyzer tool and the accountability chart. That surfaces a couple of issues. One is you could have the right person in the wrong seat, which is kind of what you're describing. Culturally, core values, this person belongs in my organization, but they can't execute on the job for whatever reason. And so maybe I need to find a different job for them.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, and that's the hardest thing for us, for a business owner, that's been the hardest thing for me is you have an employee. It's a good lawyer, but they are a little bit of a cancer and, but you really, they're producing clients like you know, like to the outward world, it's fine, but inward world, they're causing problems.

And then I've had. People like that cost me other people that I did not want to lose because they didn't want to work with that person anymore. The sort of the underlying stress and anxiety of having this person you know, in the office. And so, you know, a players kind of want to be with A players. A players don't want to be hanging out with C players.

And not everybody can be an A player. But, you know, but a C player can make an A player uncomfortable in the A player lead. And that has happened to me more than once.

Jonathan Breeden: Right.

Have family law questions? Need guidance to navigate legal challenges? The compassionate team at Breeden Law Office is here to help. Visit us at www. breedenfirm. com for practical advice, resources, or to book a consultation. Remember, when life gets messy, you don't have to face it alone.

Jonathan Breeden: And, If you're the owner of a small business, you're listening to this, any employee can be replaced except for you because it's your business.

And if you get big enough, you can actually start to exit out of your business and become an investor where you're not there every day, or you can sell it. So let's talk a little bit about how you help people do that.

They just don't know what it looks like. They've never done it. They're going to do it once. They're never going to do it again. So they want to be experts, but they don't know what to do. So what I do as a certified exit planning advisor a sepa is I come alongside the business owner three, five, seven years in advance.

We figure out how much do you need for the what is it worth? What do you need for the business to retire the lifestyle you want? So if it's worth 3 million, you need it worth 5 million And we've got 5 years. Let's get from 3 million to 5 million over the next 5 years. I walk them through that journey. If they're already running on EOS that's great.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, and the beginning, the first part of that process is the book's got to be right. I mean, if you're bookkeeping is not right and you're not paying your taxes like you're supposed to, and you're putting cash in your pocket and you're paying every personal expense you've got through the business and you just haven't been audited.

That's not going to work in a sales situation. And I know you have to have that hard conversation with a lot of people.

So you have the potential to be a 5 million. But there's things you're not doing that company is doing. So that triggering event identifies all that to figure out what can we do over the next three to five years to get you to the best in class in your industry we come out of it with a 21 point action plan. And then we I just walk the journey with them we create what we call 90 day sprints with the owner where we say let's do these one or two goals for the next 90 days. And we just do that journey for as long as we need to, to get that business from 3 million to 5 million.

And we're on the business side. We're implementing EOS simultaneously.

So title is catchy and he sold a lot of books, but he works a whole lot more than four hours a week. Tim Ferriss works a lot. He's a hardworking person. He's got a great podcast. So I don't want people to think, Oh, I can work four hours a week and be Tim Ferriss. But I'm saying. You can, if you have your systems in place, you know, and your systems are running your business, then you, the owner, don't have to run your business.

Todd Bailey: And what we call that, we say. As the owner you've been running this HVAC company for 15/20 years we're going to start moving you to the owner's box. We call it put let's put you in the owner's box so you can do what you're describing, you're not really in the day to day operations anymore.

We've got other people doing that and that's what's attractive to a buyer It's not owner dependent and you start getting to live what we call the EOS life. There's a whole book written called the EOS life.

Which means you start living the life you always wanted to live, which is why you started the business in the first place. You wanted to live a certain type of life, moving to the owner's box, getting you out of the day to day is exactly how you live the EOS life.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, and you didn't have the freedom of time because you don't have to be there 40 hours.

Todd Bailey: To pursue other passions.

Todd Bailey: You're involved in rotary and you don't have the time. You're, you go to the weekly meetings. You might volunteer to help with the playground down the street at the elementary school. But when you get into the owner's box, then you've got time to go to Africa for a couple of weeks and do rotary stuff, to your point.

And you have people, doing everything underneath you. Now you have to grow to be able to have the revenue to allow you to pay these people to replace yourself because they're not going to work for free. And good managers are going to cost you, six figures in most of these small businesses, but you can get there if you have a system and a plan.

Todd Bailey: Well, that's where we find that if you want to be in that owner's box, you want to be on that fourth level, as you described it, you can get there and it actually doesn't take as long as what most owners think it will take, primarily because when you start running on EOS, you become more efficient. You become more effective. So you're getting time back and that frees up financial resources inside the organization to expand the business. So you can get there faster than you think you can. If you're running efficiently.

You push the rock up the hill. You know, I mean we would take us an hour and a half to do that podcast but like I think that's where people happen and they don't get a chance to step back and look at it because they're just, right. Doing the work every day.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, and you know, my business coach always said, you know, when you start out, you do the work nine to five and make your fortune 5 to 9. Yeah. You know, like you actually work on the business. So that's what, that's what Richard James says. So anyway, how can people get in touch with you?

Jonathan Breeden: All right. That sounds good.

Todd Bailey: And LinkedIn is great too. All right. All that stuff is on link. Right.

Jonathan Breeden: And he goes to tons of chamber events. If you go to any chamber events around here, you're going to see Todd. His greatly involved in the community. So the last question we ask everybody is what do you love most about Johnson County?

They went to Cleveland High School, Corinth Holders High School, graduated. Most of them still live in Johnston County. It's the culture. I just love everything about the culture. I love being. Close to Raleigh, but not too close the culture in Johnston County is just I love it. I just love it.

Jonathan Breeden: It's great. It's great. I love the culture here I love the people. I love being close to Raleigh, but not in Raleigh, you know that kind of stuff. I agree with you 100% Well, we'd like to thank todd bailey from coming on to this episode of The Best of Johnston County Podcast. We would like to remind you to Like, Follow, Subscribe to this podcast and if you wouldn't mind sharing any of your instagram stories and tag The Best of Johnston County Podcast it will help us grow you.

Narrator: That's the end of today's episode of Best of Johnston County, a show brought to you by the trusted team at Breeden Law Office. We thank you for joining us today and we look forward to sharing more interesting facets of this community next week. Every story, every viewpoint adds another thread to the rich tapestry of Johnston County.

If the legal aspects highlighted raised some questions, help is just around the corner at www. breedenfirm. com.