This week's home automation podcast features our host Ron Callis interviewing Cesar Quintero. Recorded live on Wednesday, February 7th, 2020 at 12:30 p.m. EST.

About Cesar Quintero

At 24 years old, Cesar moved from his home country of Venezuela to start a meal delivery service that was ahead of its time. After 5 years, the company made over six figures and had 27 employees, but he was stuck in the business running most functions in the leadership team. He then joined the Entrepreneurs Organization (EO) and learned about the book Traction, and implemented EOS in his company.

With 2 years of implementing EOS, the business doubled in size, and Cesar was able to pull back and work on the business solely as Visionary. That freed up his time to start 2 other businesses and started to mentor and coach entrepreneurs that wanted to scale.

Interview Recap

Here are some of the topics Ron had the opportunity to discuss with Cesar Quintero:

• What entrepreneurs can expect from working with an EOS Implementer
• Defining the 6 key components in EOS
• Type of businesses that would benefit from the EOS system
• The EOS proven process of implementation

SEE ALSO: Home Automation Podcast Episode #98: A Custom Integration Industry Q&A With Nigel Dessau

Transcript:

 Ron: Hello, everybody. Ron Callis here with another episode of Automation Unplugged. Today's show is a little bit different kind of leading up to our hundredth show. I wanted to bring a different type of content and guest to you today. For those of you that know me personally, you'll see that when I'm talking to my friends or customers in the industry, many of my customers are my friends. Still, when I'm interacting with you, we often end up talking principally about business and growing the business and the challenges in business and entrepreneurship. Middle of last year, we made a pretty big decision here at One Firefly to move in the direction of a particular set of changes and implementing some business practices that I frankly had been hearing about for many years. There were many integrators and even some cases, some manufacturers that had started implementing a system called the Traction EOS system. I had heard it enough to where I finally decided to dig deeper and brought my leadership team in, and we dug deeper. We adopted this methodology of business and started practicing it. And there's a whole process to it. I thought what I would bring you today is our coach, if you will. In the world of EOS, they're called an Implementer. I've got my implementation coach for EOS Traction here as our guest today. His name is Cesar Quintero. I'm going to bring him in now, and we're going to have some fun. Again, thanks for joining us. Cesar, how's it going, sir?

Cesar: Hey, Ron! Can you hear me?

 Ron: Cesar, yes, I can hear you. Cesar, if we could start with your background, just tell the audience who you are and where you come from.

Cesar: Yeah, I'm originally from South America, Venezuela, where I grew up. My background is in industrial engineering, so I'm a process engineer. I was in Proctor & Gamble for a couple of years, four years in the consumer research part. At 24, I decided to move to a new country, get married, and start a new business. My country was going through a rough spot, and it still is. But at 24, I decided to move to Miami and start a food delivery company. It was a little ahead of its time. That's 16, 17 years ago now. We had a commissary kitchen, so we cooked and delivered meals. I had to convince people it was convenient to have your meals delivered back then, believe it or not. Pre-Facebook, pre-everything, right. The company grew with time and grew in complexity. It's a logistics company; it's delivery, it's cooking. Little by little, I didn't know what to do. I started this food business with no food background, and I found this book called Traction, the one you were mentioning. And it changed my way of seeing how a business should be run. It helped me get myself out of the business, work more on the business, and empower my employees to take ownership. It created a true environment of accountability and transparency, where within the first year and a half, we've doubled in size. Up until then, I was the worst enemy to my own company because I was so involved in everything in every decision. This book and the system helped set us free and growth and accountability and transparency. I'm a big advocate now.

 Ron: I want to peel some layers back on that. You had mentioned that you had challenges when you were running that food delivery business growing, and it was challenges around "getting out of getting out of your own way." How did you end up getting out of your way? Mechanically, what happened in the business where you, in fact, got out of your way?

Cesar: Yeah, I think, I think one of the biggest issues we have as human beings and as managers as leaders is that we think we always have the answer. And if we don't, we make it up, or we seem we have to. I think that was a notion I had about leadership or management around the team. It was, I always needed to know and needed to say where we were going. I think this book is more about collaboration, and every person knows best what they do best. And what I love to do, some people don't like to do that. What I don't like to do, some people love to do it.

 Ron: I would just say, I would challenge, I don't know that everyone knows what they do best, but if you challenge them to think about it critically, they probably could tell you what they do best.

Cesar: That's a good assessment. Everybody knows what they like to do and don't like to do, let's put it that way. But sometimes it doesn't align with what you do. So that's where your critical thinking has to happen for sure.

 Ron: Did you have to hire more people to grow or did you just have a team and you just realize that, "Hey, I'm going to do these set of roles in the business and I'm going to have these other people carry on these other roles?"

Cesar: What I realized is that I wasn't allowing the people around me to do what they were supposed to do. I wanted to be in control of everything, and I wanted to be top of making sure that everything was done correctly. I think that was the biggest shift within the system and understanding that it's not a lot about me. It's about how we can all help each other, and we win together. We all can do this together. And it's not about me proving that I'm the best leader or that the best teammate and delivering the things.

 Ron: What was the end result with that business? Are you still involved in that business, or did you successfully have an exit?

Cesar: Within three years -- basically there's a concept in EOS where you do an accountability chart of who takes what responsibility and you map it out with sales and marketing, operations, finance and support, the Integrator and Visionary. I was basically holding four out of those five seats when I started this process. What this process helped me do was determine which seat I wanted to be in, which was a Visionary. And then each of those seats got occupied by one of my employees that was there. They took ownership of that function. Within 3 1/2, 4 years, I was completely out of the operational part of the business, where they made most of the decisions, and they knew what they needed to do. I just put the vision on board. So 3 1/2 years ago, I sold half of my business to the Integrator, who's the operating manager now. Now I more provide vision. I'm still involved in the business but more in a visionary capacity. I love to do this for passion. This is where I spend most of my time now.

 Ron: Tell me about what this is. I know that you're a consultant for us in many other businesses,

Cesar: Oh! Not the word consultant.

 Ron: All right. All right. Implementer, coach. I don't know. There are a whole plethora of synonyms. Oh no, I got, in trouble. My bill's going to double next month. So, tell us what is the Implementer role, and how do you play that out for businesses? What does that even look like?

Cesar: Yeah, so the ImplementerImplementer, our job is really to teach the system to companies. We come in, and as I experienced in my company when I tried to do it myself, I went through the book, I went through the system, but I was still the leader, I was still the voice. Getting everybody on board was more difficult for that. An Implementer is a person who doesn't specialize in your company per se but specializes in the system. So I hired an Implementer. They came in, and within six months, we most had most of the tools already implemented. Our team had to do it. I had experience with it, as well. That's where we started gaining Traction, and within a year, year and a half, our an employer, our ImplementerImplementer, was out of the door, and then we could self manage it within internally.

 Ron: And is that common? Is that common that the ImplementerImplementer is engaged for the initial period of following the process and the methods and then they're out, or they always stay involved?

Cesar: That's why I don't like being called a consultant because consultants, I feel, sometimes create dependency, and businesses need them. I think Implementers, we come in, we teach a system, but our job is to really have it run within in an effective way where you don't need us anymore. We're specialists in EOS and what the EOS concepts are, which is the Traction book and all of these concepts.

 Ron: I'm going to put on the screen here the six key components of EOS. Walk us through this. What are the six key components, and how do you help businesses implement this?

Cesar: As a summary, and this is summarizing the Traction book. It talks about every business, no matter what business you are. Every business has 137 types of issues. And if you narrow them down to six key components, if you focus on these six key components, every business can get better and better. You create a culture where everybody's aligned in vision, everybody's gearing towards Traction, and it's a healthy and open and honest environment for the team. What these six key components are, the more you work on them, the more aligned your team is, and the more you accomplish your goals. The first key component, it's all about vision. And it's defining that vision, having a defined vision through the eight questions they call it. But it's, what are your core values? What is your core focus? Why do you do what you do? Where are you going to be in 10 years, in three years, in one year? What are your rocks? What are the issues that are preventing you from getting there? So it's having a well-defined vision, but that all also share it. Because if everybody's pulling in their direction on what the vision is for the company, you're not rowing in the same direction. It'll be harder to get there faster. You want everybody aligned with this vision. It's not only defining but having it shared by all of your team.

 Ron: Just to focus on that just for a moment, I know that when you and I started talking again, cause I've known you for ten years. Still, when you and I started talking again early last year in 2019, it was really an area for me where I didn't, personally, as a business owner, know how to get to this concept of a vision. I had this perception and maybe some of those listening can relate to this, that on so many corporate websites you see this BS vision, mission, language and it's all this corporate speak. I just always struggled with what exactly does that mean and how exactly does it translate to day to day activity within the business. I really, I think, responded quite well to the vision within the Traction EOS system as to what vision means. Can you just provide a little more, maybe detail on there are eight questions that get answered, it's not one sentence.

Cesar: It's not. That was my thing when I was a part of going through this process, it's like, what if I get it wrong? You know, like, this is so heavy. How can I put this in the perfect words? What I love about EOS in general, and it's not only on the vision, but I think it happens on most of these, it takes a practical approach to things. This isn't going to be at 100% when you're going through it. I think that's what we expect a lot of times when we try to craft it in a way, but it's, let's answer these questions, let's put them through the wringer, let's filter them through, let's stress test them, let's bring it to the team, then let's come back, let's do this. I think that that approach of not being too permanent and more flexible and more in the alignment of what everybody's looking for and having those questions drawn in the way they are makes it easier to draft where we want to be.

 Ron: Sure. That makes sense. For those of you out there listening that know me, I mean this is an area where I had personally been weak, and I knew it. I just didn't know how to get past it. This system and the coaching from Cesar helped my leadership team, and I craft a vision that we could get behind. We rolled it out to our full team; some of them are watching and listening right now. Just last month in January at an all-staff event in New York City, which by the way, Cesar, the score was better than 9 out of 10 as reviewed by the team. I know we're going to talk about that in our next quarterly meeting, but it was received well by most in terms of there are these other pieces of this pie, can you go through what they are and what it means to get better at them?

Cesar: Of course. The people component is what I was talking about before, having the right people in the right seats. A lot of times, we've talked about having the right seats. We start with the right seats because we need a clear structure of who does what and who's accountable for what. That's the structure I was talking about before. I was almost in every seat because everybody came to me for everything. The more clarity and transparency there is one who does what and structure in the business. If I need to talk about X, I go to this person. If I need to go to Y, I go to this person, and it doesn't create "Mom" and "Dad" scenarios where Mom says yes, and Dad says no. As we get looped around, and it creates complexity within organizations. Having a clear structure of who does what is pivotal, but then having the people there that get it, want it, and can do those things, those seats are pivotal for the right seat conversation.

 Ron: I was going to say go through that again in a little more detail. Cause I'm going to say of all the businesses I work with every day, I'll just say a random generic example. They may have that person in sales out there, putting the wins on the board. Still, they're a miserable person to work with. Still, they put up with them because they're putting wins on the board or that technician that knows how to do all the installation work or knows how to build that rack of equipment beautifully, but they're not great for the company culture or maybe even a cultural match. How does a business operator think about that? Within the Traction way of thinking, what's the right answer there?

Cesar: That's why you need to talk about the right people as well. Right seats give you structure and performance. But the right people are people who behave the way you expect them to behave when you have core values, and they're defined as part of your vision, and these are the expectations of, if you're not there, this is how they're supposed to behave. That's what we call a right fit. A lot of times, we make fit, and it's very subjective. It's just like this guy doesn't work in our team. But it's hard for us to describe why. What I love about this is that it creates a people analyzer, it takes all of this subjective feeling issues, and it creates an objective way of seeing, "Are they living these behaviors? Are they mostly, or are they not?"

 Ron: So, it's a way of scoring them.

Cesar: Yeah. We score each core value and how each person performs around the core value. They could be the best at performing their job, which means they're the right seats because they know how to do their job. But if they're the right people, I call them terrorists because then if they can get away with stuff, people around them can get away with stuff. And it's kind of what happens with the rotten apple, and the whole batch goes sour. This is all about understanding who you need on your team and who you want on your team, and then understanding that they're good at their job. So that's the right people in right seat conversation, for sure.

 Ron: Excellent. Let's keep going through it.

Cesar: All right. Once you know you have the right people, right seat, and you know where you're going with your vision, that's where data comes in because it objectively tells you that you've got the right people in the right seats, but also doing the right things. A lot of times we can love someone doing as a person we love, and they have all the abilities and all the capacities on paper, but then at the end of the day, if they don't achieve their measures and they don't achieve their metrics, we can't improve what we can't measure. If we don't have metrics and we're not tracking things, how do we know if they're performing a good job or not? How many installations did they have to do, were they on time, under budget? If they're in marketing, how many leads did we bring in? How many closings did we get? Those are numbers that we need to get. Every single person in your organization needs to know what their number is because it's good for you. It's good for them. And it's great clarity.

"Many people, from my experience, I imagine for you and all the businesses you work with, Cesar, it's gotta be quite common that people don't know the exact health of their business. And that's just terrifying."

Ron: I was just in a meeting, and I haven't checked the Facebook data to know if this person is watching. I told this person to watch this interview, or I recommended it. They were telling me that just recently did they feel that they could have intelligent conversations about their business performance. I'm referring to revenue numbers, profitability numbers, labor utilization numbers, things such as that. They had put in the hard work around building those dashboards and that proper chart of accounts in their P & L. They could look at the right pieces of data to know that whether their business is making money. Many people, from my experience, I imagine for you and all the businesses you work with, Cesar, it's gotta be quite common that people don't know the exact health of their business. And that's just terrifying.

Cesar: Most of us do, I call it bank accounting, it's how much money do I have in the bank? And that's what matters. Instead of understanding your numbers, it's what's driving those numbers and the lack of numbers. I was guilty of that 100%. It's not having visibility and also not wanting to have visibility, too. Sometimes I wanted to hide behind the chaos and hide behind excuses and not deliverables. There's a lot of people that like to live that way within the company, "Oh my, my role is too complicated. There's no way you can measure what I do," but everybody can be measured in performance for sure. It's finding that data.

Ron: There's a people analyzer, I don't even know the right way to say it, but there's the world of culture index. Right. You'll describe to our audience what that is, but you had recently pointed me to that, and I ran an audit across my whole team, and it scores you on seven different criteria. I was just going to add that my logic quotient was a 10 out of 10, which I think scared the person that was describing the data to me. It just means that data is really important to me, having that visibility, it gives me as an operator a lot of confidence in terms of making decisions.

Cesar: For sure. What you were saying before, the time it takes to put together could be a little cumbersome at the beginning, but once it's set, it's just automatic. You have to have the people plugging in those numbers. Then you're able to see trends and track what's going on and perceive things that are about to happen.

Ron: So powerful. We've gone through the top three, the first half of the pie -

Cesar: Those are the long ones, so we'll streamline the last ones. Once you know where you're going, and you have the right people in the right seats and doing the right things, that's when issues come up. And issues in the EOS and Traction is not a negative thing. Issues are things we need to talk about. We need to solve it. Every business has issues, and we all know this. The problem is when those issues don't bubble up, and people don't share like the frontline people don't tell you things are wrong, or they don't tell you things that are going on. That's a blind spot for us. What we want is to have a mechanism and a system where it bubbles up issues all the time. It's not only bubbling them up, but it's also actually discussing them and solving how many people get stuck in meetings that just report or discussing things, and then they never get to anything. The IDS methods are Identify the issue, the core reason, not just the superficial symptom. Why is this issue happening, and how can we solve it? Then we discuss it as a team, and then we have to have the next steps and commitments out of the discussion. If not, it's just discussing for discussion's sake. That's what the issue, the key component is all about.

Ron: Cesar, I've got some comments here on Facebook from our live audience, and I have Ted, he's one of our account managers. He says, "Hey, Cesar, any rocks you're working on that you'd like to share?" Yes! Now, what are your rocks? We haven't talked about rocks.

Cesar: Oh, man. Yeah, we haven't. The bottom component is Traction, and the Traction component is all about doing. So the vision is up in the sky where we're dreaming, where we want to be, why we do things, what we are in the world. But the Traction is down in the ground is doing the work. So Gino, in the book, says, "Vision without Traction is hallucination." We can dream all we want, but if we don't do, we'll never get there. So Traction is all about rocks. Rocks are around prioritizing what the top things we need to be working on to move towards that vision, to move the company towards that vision, to move all my tasks into that vision are. A lot of times when we'd say if we focus on everything, we don't focus on anything. The rocks are the premise of you have got the jar, and you put the five rocks in. You've heard of that before?

Ron: Yeah, the college professors in the classroom says, "How much is going to fit in this jar?"

Cesar: Exactly. He asks, Is this full? Is this jar full of five rocks? And you know, students say, yeah. And then drizzles in pebbles and the pebbles trickle in and then the sand trickles in again. And in our environment, the sand is all the noise. It's customer complaints, it's emails, it's things that you know, that don't really matter in the grand scheme of things, they could be urgent right now, but they're not urgent in the grand scheme of things. The pebbles are your job. They're the things that you need to do. They're your tasks. They're your accountabilities in your accountability chart. They're your job description. They're what you need to do. And the rocks are the things that really move the company forward. And the position for those in the top priorities that I need to focus on. If I walk in focusing all on the sand, I put all the sand in first, and then I have to do my job. The pebbles, the rocks don't fit in the vase. That's the analogy. And that's why they're called rocks, is because if I focus on the rocks first, if I focus on a day that I walk into the office, and I say, "Hey, this is the one thing I'm going to do today, and I'm not going to leave until I get this done." That's what you're focusing on. You're focusing on priorities, and then all the rest will just trickle through throughout the day. But you're sure that you're moving forward on those priorities. So that's what we call rocks.

Ron: I'm going to admit I have a rock this quarter. One of my rocks is, now that we've rolled out at One Firefly, our formal vision. We printed ours out, and all of our staff have this handy notebook. But how do you ultimately, back to that people component, drive, and reward and acknowledge your team when they're demonstrating those attributes? One of my rocks is building that system. I'm working with our Manager of People Operations, and we're designing some cool programs to make sure that we're making culture or values and our core values a part of our culture here at One Firefly. Ted, you didn't ask me for one of my rocks, but I gave you one of mine. But Cesar, you're not going to get away. What's one of your rocks for this quarter?

Cesar: I have different rocks cause I work at Fit2Go, which is my food company, and I have the consulting side of this. But my rock on the consulting side is I'm bringing on two associates. One of my rocks is helping them go through the process of the implementation process for the first three days, at least with one company, with each of them. That's my biggest rock this quarter. It's more on the mentoring side and coaching side for associates now.

Ron: What have we not talked about here on this wheel?

Cesar: I want to finish on the Traction side, understanding what our rocks are, but then also having a meeting pulse. Because a lot of times, you think and you set your goals, and you set your priorities, but then you put them in a cupboard or a drawer, and you forget about them. I don't know if that's your case, but that was my case always. And what we need is also a meeting rhythm where there's a meeting pulse where our team and everyone around you is asking you constantly, what's your rock? How are you doing on your rock? Are you on track or off track? Cause on the vision we're thinking, where do we need to be in five years? Where do we need to be in three years? What do we need to be in one year? And then what do we need to be this quarter? But then on Traction, what you're doing is you're going forward. What do I need to do today to get closer to that weekly metric? What do I need to get to on a weekly metric to get closer to that 13 weeks sprint? Which is the quarter. And then what do I need to do this quarter to get to that year? What do I need to do this year to get to those three years? So that vision you're planning backward on Traction, you're moving forward. You'd have to make sure that every week you have your level 10 meetings, and we call them Level 10, just Google level 10 meetings, and there's a video of Gino explaining how it works. It's the most efficient meeting out there. I think it's strategic. It takes you to the heart of the issues, and you're mostly resolving and discussing things. Where I feel most of us get lost on the meeting conundrum of reporting and meetings about the meetings. The second meeting is a very efficient meeting where your team just gets together once a week, 90 minutes same time, same place, start on time and on time, the same agenda, and then you just power through. It's a strategic, powerful meeting that you have every week, making sure that everybody's moving those boulders, those rocks forward.

Ron: I can speak on behalf of my leadership team here at One Firefly, who currently is executing level 10 meetings. We're rolling it out to the balance of our team here in the coming quarters. There was a pretty profound positive benefit to us doing this, and it was that we're in the seats on the bus, I'm the crazy Visionary with all these ideas, all these interesting places to go and things to do. And I've surrounded myself with really a tremendous team at every level at One Firefly. And in particular, at my leadership team level, where these are the people I lean on to help me run the company. Up until this idea of Traction, rocks, and meetings, there was organized chaos in terms of projects. We didn't use the word rocks, but I'll say big initiatives. And then at what point do all of the leaders and the company have their quota of rocks met? Thus nothing new can be put in the jar because the jar is full. And at what point do you then evaluate what rocks go in the jar and what should we perhaps do in a subsequent quarter? We didn't have that system. And so what happened is rocks would be put on play. I'm gonna use EOS terminology. Now, rocks were tasked, but maybe not fairly. And so people would want to say yes because they want the company to be better. They want to succeed that maybe they'd in some cases want to make me happy, but they'd say yes to things that weren't realistic. And so what would happen and what's worse than when someone takes on a project and then they don't succeed because it was never realistic for them to succeed and they're upset and then maybe their manager, in this case, I was upset at the whole time we were set up to fail to begin with. That's been my personal experience with just that simple concept of rocks and meetings. It just provides full transparency to the big projects on the board.

Cesar: No, and it definitely flexes that predictability muscle cause that first quarter that you're setting up your first rocks is, is Hey, we're going to achieve the world. It's what you're saying. Sometimes we set the expectations too high, but then with time, with practice, predictability is a muscle. We need a practice longterm and short term. So a little by little you'll get a grasp on saying, you know what, this is our slow season so we can do more or this is our high season. We can do less. What projects can we put in and what projects can we do and what can't, but then we're all holding each other accountable. And these meeting pulses also getting the quarterly pulse, the weekly level tens, the annual meetings, all of this just helps facilitate and build that muscle. It's the gym for the predictability muscle.

Ron: We're still newbies, we're still babies, but I can say that I'm certainly enjoying it.

Cesar: I know you guys are pros. You had a solid base.

Ron: We had a great team, and we had some of the ingredients. We just needed structure, 100%. All right, so the component here, I see we've not talked about is process.

Cesar: See, that's the one we always want to leave last cause that's the boring one. We don't want to talk about process, says the process engineer. This is all based on the e-myth mentality. It's creating and documenting the processes. So no matter who comes into your business, they can be plug and play. It's the McDonald's of every business, no matter what business you are, we need the process and systems in place so that everybody knows what they're supposed to be doing. But at the same time, they're also not shoved into a drawer, but it's mostly around there. All are following them. And every process has an owner. That way, every owner is accountable for the process being updated at people following the process. And these are the core processes. These are processes that everybody touches around your organization. And so people process the marketing, the sales the, the accounting process. These are processes that are high-level processes that everybody should know how to do. And everybody follows it because there's nothing more complicated than people and a company. We need to simplify everything as much as we can. And this is a way to simplify that and systematize.

Ron: Awesome. What has been your experience with companies implementing this? What do you call it? This set of practices?

"The companies that struggle the most implementing are the companies that don't have the right team."

Cesar: The companies that struggle the most implementing are the companies that don't have the right team. When you already know within your gut, these people are not the right fit there, don't live our core values are not the right culture. And a lot of times they don't want change because they like living in that subjective area. That's where it doesn't work. This is a system that creates transparency and accountability across all functions. So if, if you're a company that wants visibility, that wants accountability, that you want to all over-perform what I've seen in one fireplace, surprising, you see the leadership team. Everybody wants to one-up each other. But in a good way. It's supportive, and everybody is supportive and how can I help you achieve it and how can I help you that that's what leads to a great team. There are other companies that it's not like that as much. And I've witnessed that more and more where some people are in it more for themselves and understand what, okay, if, okay, I'll do this system that we've all worked for me and I'll do the system if I can get my stuff done better. And it's not so much around the team. What I've seen is a lot of people like to live in chaos, and for those, this system doesn't work.

 Ron: No, that makes a lot of sense. I'm going to give a few more shout outs. Laura says, "Hey, Cesar, are there certain types of companies that your process works better for? Is there a minimum number of employees needed?"

Cesar: Yeah, so the principal is a for-profit business; it has to be people who have an interest in profit because a nonprofit is more volunteers. It's a different type of accountability. Typically we say 10 to 250 employees is our sweet spot. A lot of companies at scale and are at six, seven employees, and are ready to scale. It's a perfect time to do it, but typically it's 10 to 250 employees. And then in the scope of what you do, every business, like I have law firms, I have marketing firms, I have a jet charter company, there's a bank, there are hotels. This doesn't focus too much on the external piece. EOS isn't focused on what your product or service is. EOS focuses on how you deal internally as a team. Any company that has people is great for this.

 Ron: Got it. I'm going to put another comment up from Tina. She is our Manager of People Operations at One Firefly. And actually, I can say Cesar, our meetings with you last year resulted in this job being created and bringing Tina onto the team. Yeah. So, Tina, you can give a Cesar and attaboy later on.

Cesar: Not me; it's a leadership decision. I just facilitate.

 Ron: You just facilitate. She says, "Yay for recognizing employees that demonstrate our core values. Can't wait to see this come to fruition." Well, Tina, my partner in crime, in getting that created. It's going to be a lot of fun. And Wes, says, "I really like how the EOS system forces everyone within an organization to look inward as well as outward to help improve the business. It calls attention to self and organizational strengths and weaknesses. Appreciate both of you being open and honest about your own personal shortcomings."

Cesar: There's a lot of those. By the way.

 Ron: I am mostly shortcoming. So, Wes, I was not born knowing that or knowing how to talk about that. Still, the older I get and certainly the longer I've been in entrepreneurship - I was just joking with again, the customer I was talking to before the show, the longer I'm at this, the more I realize I don't know.

"Looking inward, a lot of times, we think that we learn by doing and a lot of us, and I think in your industry too, we're very manual."

Cesar: Something to Wes' point though, I think it's so true. Looking inward, a lot of times, we think that we learn by doing and all a lot of us, and I think in your industry too, we're very manual. We like to do stuff and get things accomplished by doing. And we don't realize that the more we do if we don't stop and reflect, we can't learn. And that's what the looking inward, and outward is. What Wes is saying, it's stopping. It's taking that time to stop and say, "Hey, what did we do right? What did we do wrong? How can we make this better?" Cause if we don't stop and reflect, we'll never learn. Right.

"It's so easy to be busy being busy simply. Many people that know me have known, I say this all the time, nothing bothers me more than being busy for the sake of being busy. I want to be effective."

 Ron: It's so easy to be busy being busy simply. Many people that know me have known, I say this all the time, nothing bothers me more than being busy for the sake of being busy. I want to be effective. I want to be moving the ball forward. It's just part of my DNA. I was born that way. I just want to know I'm moving. Whatever the objective is, I want to be moving it forward. And I love this system because it gives us clarity around that. I am gonna put another graphic on the screen. It looks like it might be a little bit smaller, but this is the graphic for EOS that I know you, and I went through, or we are going through here at One Firefly. Can you describe what this is and how it relates to them?

Cesar: Yeah, so this is the EOS proven process. This is a process of implementation. And I think it's the best thing around the whole system and the book and concepts. Because as a business owner, I used to read all these books. E Myth, Start with Why, Traction, Rockefeller Habits, all of these books. And then I'm like, "Okay, what do I bring into my business? What do I do first? What do I do next? I was creating this chaos within my company of not understanding what exactly we needed to implement and how. What I love about this is it's a systematized approached into day one. We talk about the six key components. We talk about what the process looks like, kind of what we're doing in this. It's a 90-minute meeting. Then after that, you go into a focus day, and the focus day is all about you implement the accountability chart and how to lead as a leadership team. And then you do the scorecard, and you do the rocks, and then you talk about the meeting pulse. So little by little, you're adding different tools to different days. And it's the way its structured approach of how that is going to play out. And the best thing is that you're not just learning, but you're also practicing while learning. Between one day and another, a full month goes by. You've been practicing the concepts, and then you start talking about vision. About the eight questions and you come into this more up, up and above thinking right. And then you go into a rhythm, and this is the rhythm that you see at the end, which is quarter, quarter, quarter, year. And that's part of the meeting pulse. Now you're planning, and it's all the strategic planning on, "What do I need to do this quarter to achieve this year, this quarter, this year?" And then the year, "What do I need to do in five, three again?" And then boom. Then you reset every year, and you're constantly reflecting on what needs to happen. This is a perfect rhythm of implementation that EOS has mastered. And I think it's one of the best things, aside from the level 10 meeting, the people analyzer and this is what sets Traction in the US aside for most of the other systems.

 Ron: And if you are out there watching live and you have questions about this process, don't forget to drop the comment into Facebook. At what point would a business Cesar decide whether they should hire an implementer? And I'm stating the obvious here. You are one of many implementers, so where are those people to be found and/or whether they can do this themselves.

Cesar: Yeah, so there's a, there's a website called eosworldwide.com, and if you want to self implement, you can pay for Basecamp there, and you have all of the video tutorials, and you can go through those, you can bring them into your company and go through that process. You can also hire an implementer. There are 350 of us worldwide right now. We have a base here in the US, UK, and Australia. And then there's in Latin America as well. There are implementers across the globe where they can help you and assist you in this process as well. You can self-implement through Basecamp on, eosworldwide.com. You can also implement it here. You can also read a part of the books and the graph you brought up at the beginning, Ron. Traction is more of a reference book. It tells you all the concepts. If you want more of a fable, Get a Grip is a great book. It's the last one here. Get a Grip is a story of a company going through the EOS process. You can see it, and it's more of a fable of a company going through it, it's a tech company. It's great. Rocket Fuel is more around the dynamic between the Integrator and the Visionary. How to be a Great Boss is for every manager. It talks a lot about tools on what you're talking about, how to hire, review, reward fire people based on core values, and based on how to be a good manager and a good coach.

 Ron: We just recently gave out this book to our team.

Cesar: What the Heck is EOS? I love that book. Yeah, that's a simplified version of all of these concepts, which is awesome because if you don't want to spend all the time reading all this library, that's a perfect book to get.

 Ron: For sure. Awesome. Cesar, you've been very generous with your time. Again, I know you have a client meeting there in Miami, and you found time to talk with us, so thank you for that.

SHOW NOTES:

Coach and EOS Implementor, Cesar Quintero is an advocate for the EOS process and has helped a number of businesses, One Firefly included, implement the EOS process for optimal growth and company structure. 

Ron Callis is the CEO of One Firefly, LLC, a digital marketing agency based out of South Florida and creator of Automation Unplugged. Founded in 2007, One Firefly has quickly became the leading marketing firm specializing within the integrated technology and security space. The One Firefly team work hard to create innovative solutions to help Integrators boost their online presence, such as the elite website solution, Mercury Pro.

Resources and links from the interview:

• Culture Index
• EOS 6 Key Components
• EOS Process
• EOS Books
• IDS Method -- Identify, Discuss, Solve
• Level10 Meetings
• E-Myth by Micheal E. Gerber
• Start with Why by Simon Sinek

For more about Cesar Quintero, check out his website The Profit Recipe. You can also contact him at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. If you'd like to learn more about EOS, visit EOS Worldwide to learn more about the process, get access to their library of videos, and discover how to work with an Implementor. 

More Automation Unplugged

Want to stay up to date with the latest Automation Unplugged interviews? Head over to the One Firefly Facebook page and subscribe to receive a notification whenever Ron is live!