Episode 129: Run Your Business with Clarity:

Operating Systems with Shelby Hacala

Keith: Welcome to the Empowered Investor Podcast brought to you by the advisory team at Tulett, Matthews and Associates. Have you ever felt overwhelmed by the number of voices telling you how to plan or invest for your future? We’re here to help you cut through the noise, bringing clarity to your investment decisions and helping you build lasting financial peace of mind. Learn more and subscribe today at tma-invest.com.

Welcome to the Empowered Investor. My name is Keith Matthews and today I’m joined by our special guest, Shelby Hacala. Shelby is a seasoned certified business coach and has over 25 years’ experience helping business leaders achieve clarity, alignment and success. Shelby owned his first company at the age of 20 and then subsequently went on to own three more. He sold his last company to the aerospace industry in 2014. Shelby decided to transition to full time coaching. He used the platform EOS Entrepreneur Operating System as his way of helping business owners gain clarity, develop a vision and execute their plans effectively. In 2021, Shelby made the bold decision to leave the EOS community and pioneer a new approach. He created or co-founded a new system called Bos360. Today’s show is going to talk about operating systems and how they can be used by business owners, leaders in companies, management teams and employees in all of these firms. We’re going to focus on what they are, how they’re used, how they can have an impact. What makes today’s show a little bit unique is that we here at Tulett, Matthews and Associates, we do use a business operating system. We’ve been using EOS now for two years. Entrepreneur Operating System.

And so when I met Shelby a few months ago at a coffee shop in our local area, I realized that he was a coach in a field that we have become passionate about. So I said, Shelby, you’ve got to come on the podcast, share your insights with our listeners and then at the same time we’re going to be able to share potentially some of the insights that we have here at Tulett, Matthews and Associates how we use an operating system in our wealth management industry. So we’re super excited that Shelby said yes and did come on the show. So today’s show has a bit of a different twist. If you’re a business owner, if you work in a small to medium sized business or you’re just fascinated about how to run, how to possibly run a business, today’s content will be invaluable. So thank you so much for tuning in and we hope you have a great show. Shelby, welcome to today’s episode of the empowered investor.

Shelby: I am really pleased to be here. Thanks, Keith, for having me.

Keith: Really looking forward to today’s conversation. It’s on business operating systems. We use a business operating system at our firm here. You’re an expert in it. So thank you so much for coming in and talking to us about it, sharing stories with our listeners and really excited to have you on.

Shelby: My pleasure. I’m looking forward to it.

Keith: So, Shelby, why don’t you give our listeners a little bit of background. How did you become a coach, specifically on business operating systems?

Shelby: Yeah, there’s a bit of a journey behind it and a story, and I call it sort of the origin story of how I got here. And you know, my son one day looked at me and he said, dad, like, how do you do this work? And I kind of looked at him and I said, Philip, probably, you know, if you think about it like life has been preparing me for this the whole time. And so what I mean by that is I go way back and think about my ancestry. They were like ocean sailors. And they’re always entrepreneurial in the nature of discovery. And so both my parents were entrepreneurs as well.

So I kind of grew up with that. You know, my own personal story is that I became an entrepreneur in my mid-20s. This is my fourth startup business, and I’ve been successful at growing a business, selling it, but also having gone through some kind of the lowest of the lows as an entrepreneur. And some of that has to do with a family bankruptcy with my dad in the 80s having a business. And so I understand what that’s like. And also going through a pretty major health surgery at one point in my life where I had fully invested into my new venture and had to be sidelined for three months and I couldn’t work.

And it was life threatening at the time. So having the highest of the highest lows, the lows, and learning throughout that time what it takes to be a great entrepreneur and how to manage and run a great business as well. So there’s some learnings along the way that I’ve gathered and got to a point in my life after having exited my largest business, thinking about what should I be doing next and decided after my research is to become a business coach, to really share some of the things that I’ve learned with those people that I care about, which are business leaders who truly make a large impact in our economy, but certainly in personal lives as well.

Keith: Well, you’ve got a hell of a background and you’ve been a coach at EOS or you were a coach at EOS for seven or eight years. And that’s a system that we currently use to help manage Tulett, Matthews and Associates. A few years ago, you went on and you developed your new operating system. We’re going to talk about BOS a little later in the show, but let’s share with the listeners, like, what is a business operating system at its very basic core?

Shelby: So to connect that question with my journey, once I exited my business, I was looking for what I should be doing next? And I did some research. And it took me over a year of doing deep research around how I can truly help a business leader or an entrepreneur or a business owner? And one of those things that came up was my research pointed me towards this idea of running your business in a systemized or systematic way.

And so really within a framework. But I didn’t want something that was theoretical, I wanted something that was proven. And so my research led me to this author called Gino Wickman. And so I literally picked up the phone and called him and we had a conversation around what he had created. And so this was the EOS methodology. Now, in Gino’s wisdom, one of the things that I validated with users of the system was that it was so simple that it was giving the results that I was looking for for potential clients. And so that’s why, after having studied the different types of business operating systems out there, I decided to become certified in the EOS methodology at the time, which was over 12 years ago.

Keith: And EOS stands for Entrepreneur Operating System.

Shelby: That’s correct.

Keith: And that’s actually how Shelby and I connected was that I identified that he was a coach in this area that we’re actually quite passionate about here at our firm. I would say four years ago, we were introduced to the book Traction. And I go to a peer to peer group where I’ve got six other business owners that operate wealth management firms. And they were all saying, well, Keith, you really should read Traction. And so when I picked up that book Traction, I read and I go, oh my God, this is the framework that we could use to run our business. And this framework is this operating system a way to think about how do you manage 15 people? Whether it’s 15 people, whether it’s 100 people. And so often in the world that we’re in, Shelby, portfolio managers are starting, they’re starting their firms. There are two people, there are five people, there are eight people. But they don’t understand how to then manage bigger teams because they’re practitioners. And so this was a really insightful book for me and an operating system for me.

And it also reminded me of my MBA when I did the MBA at Western in 1991, which was all case study. It’s all about how to run businesses. So everything you do resonates with me. And this is why I’m very passionate about this topic today. And I love the fact that we’re going through this. So, okay, so what kinds of businesses can benefit from an operating business from an operating system?

Shelby: Right. So one of the things that I was looking for when I was thinking about how can I teach back to these really, it was really my business buddies that I was saying what could be this universal methodology? And so when you say is it only good for a particular type of business? And the answer is no, it’s not. It’s good for all businesses within that. Let’s be clear that we are talking about an entrepreneurial business. And so small to medium sized businesses, anywhere from two to $50 million in revenue, 10 to 150 people in their businesses is kind of like the typical size that the type of business it’s good for, it needs to be. And it is, it spans all types of businesses from manufacturing to distribution to technology to firms, which is more a little bit of what you’re doing, et cetera. So it really spans all types of businesses.

Keith: And so what about firms like Fortune 500 companies, do they use operating systems or they have a different hierarchy, a different way of managing their business? But could you comment a little bit about that?

Shelby: Yeah, they do, they use their own methodologies. And I would say that it would be more sophisticated in nature. So you would think larger businesses tend to be less entrepreneurial, more bureaucratic. That’s their system. And I would say that it’s not right or wrong, it just is because when you get to a certain size it just evolves to that.

And so you end up dealing with boards of directors having different ways and methodologies around running a larger corporation. Compliance is a piece, but in a different way where it’s just larger. Where we are. And what I do in my subject matter expertise is really around these small to medium sized businesses that are more entrepreneurial in nature. And the system really works around the senior leadership team getting together, making sure that they are crystal clear on where they’re taking the business. So that would be the vision component. The second piece to what this senior leadership team does is really clear on how to execute on the plan, that vision.

And then the third component is always, always. And recognizing that there’s always some kind of level or some level of dysfunction within a team. Now, this is not right or wrong, it just is. And so I just call it out and say, well, let’s deal with that and understand how we can work better as a team and then expand it to the bigger team as far as, like, the type of individuals we need to recruit to work with us. And then let’s retain those folks because we need this very unique team to be able to execute on that plan with tenacity, et cetera. So at a high level, it’s those three buckets that this business operating system does.

Keith: Interesting, interesting. You know, I think all of our listeners at some point, either in the past or presently, either work for a company or work for themselves, right? And so I think of individuals, if you work for the government, if you work for large companies, you follow their protocol, you follow their system. What this operating system is really speaking to, you mentioned it very well, is this entrepreneurial environment, the smaller environment. And how do you get a professional structure? How do you get a system that can allow the entire organization to move forward? And I see often when I speak to either colleagues or friends that are working outside for any company, they’ll tell you stories like they don’t think their business is well run. And I say to them, you know, they may not be in the leadership group, but I say, take this book. Again, I’ll mention Traction because that’s my reference point.

Shelby: Great book, by the way.

Keith: You know, get an operating system, you need an operating system somehow. Talk to management and get them to embrace the fact that you can put a structure and a philosophy, you know, on the philosophy part. We talk about this often with our clients. We have an investment philosophy. And Shelby, I tell you, we’ve been using this investment philosophy for 25 years, and it’s based on a series of principles. And we do not, we really subscribe to these principles. And the nice thing about an investment philosophy is it allows you, it gives you guidelines as to how you operate, gives you guidelines on how you should make portfolio management decisions, what you should do or not do to a portfolio. How do you manage through good times in a bull market when things are always going up? How do you manage through volatility? So to me, what we’re talking about now is this same philosophy, but it’s how do you run a business?

Shelby: Correct. And so what you’ve been talking about is there’s a method, a system, there’s some best practices in your case. And so what I’ve seen in a lot of businesses is that those exist. It’s just that they’re not necessarily well put together in a systematized way. And so what a business operating system will do for you is making sure it’s simplistic in nature, but takes all those best practices, puts them together within a framework that then you can be consistent in all those best practices.

And so there’s six key components in EOS. The version that I evolved our curated tools based on EOS is three pillars and then bounding forces that actually connect all that together. I’ll give you an analogy. So it’s the puzzle analogy where I find that a lot of business founders or leaders will go to a seminar and they’ll learn something and they’ll come back to the business and they’re pretty excited about what they’ve learned and they want to implement that component that they’ve just learned. And everyone gets excited for about a couple weeks or so. And it really disrupts the business and the flow of the business because of this new best practice. But it’s just one piece of the puzzle, and it doesn’t necessarily, at that time, fit within a comprehensive system. And so you get these high initiatives and everyone gets excited, and then all of a sudden it kind of fades away. And then it becomes the, oh, someone else goes to a new seminar and then they come back with the flavor of the month.

And so this is very disruptive to a business. And when I recognized and saw this, because that’s what I was living as, an entrepreneur, I found that that is not how I can get the best out of my business. And my research came back to, oh, if we can run our business within a framework so that these pieces of the puzzle actually fit within a. Then they don’t disappear. They actually continue in nature. And so that we can pick and choose what we put into the business. But within this framework, I totally understand

Keith: what you’re talking about. You know, I talk to individuals 100%. You’re speaking to this idea that there’s a lot of noise that comes in entrepreneurs and business owners and management teams, and they get the flavor of the day and they say, my God, I got to implement this new strategy.

Shelby: And very frustrating and confusing for everyone else in the business.

Keith: Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think back in my career and I’ve been around a lot of business groups and a lot of people have proposed these new ideas in terms of how to run something, and everybody goes back, scurries back to the office and tries to implement it and you know, they didn’t necessarily burn out, but they put a lot of energy and it’s frustrating because it’s not done within a framework.

Shelby: Correct. And so because that being the truth of what I’ve also experienced, one of the reasons why I became a coach and not a consultant, consultants are like, I can go in and consult on what you should be doing around your business. A coach will bring you a framework and tools to implement to help you run your business.

So very different. So I never tell a client what they should or shouldn’t do around their business. They’re the experts. I just listen carefully and draw out from them what is actually happening and then give them the proper tools to manage through it. So really important, and therefore both using a business coach and why you would want to use a business coach is to fast track some of these best practices and help you understand how to put it within a framework for the best practice.

Now, you know, self implementers is also another way to go about it. In my experience, a little slower, but certainly still very doable. You can self implement all these best practices, it just depends on what you want. It’s a little bit like an athlete, right. If you want to get the best out of the athlete, you get a coach. There’s a reason, that’s a clue. Yeah.

Keith: And it’s interesting you say that, so I will confess. Okay, so we self implement here. Okay, so we self implement here. And I’ve always been that way. I can be pretty disciplined as an individual, as a manager, and hopefully I’m a good leader. I believe in culture. Culture trumps everything. As a rugby player who believes in community and cohesive togetherness, I try to bring that to the office. So we go down this self implementation. I just came back from one of my business meetings with my group of other like minded advisory groups and we sat around the table and their number one feedback was Keith. Now you’ve been doing EOS now for two years self implementing. You need a coach. You need a coach to get you to the next level. Your business needs a coach to get you to the next level.

Shelby: So I often see this kind of a path forward. And self implementation, don’t get me wrong, absolutely works to a certain degree. And again, it’s about, okay, you can bring the methodology of a business operating system only so far and then there’s always a next level. And so the next level I think is what you’re saying is yeah, possibly we’d be interested in bringing in a coach to be able to bring us to that next level of what could it look like as far as, you know, bringing these best practices further along?

Keith: Fair enough. Couple questions on systems, and then we’ll go to the next step. Why do so many entrepreneurs struggle without a framework? I know you’ve alluded to it, but let’s just call it out right now. Why are they struggling without a framework?

Shelby: Well, I think as a baseline, it starts with this feeling of being frustrated, and they don’t necessarily know why they’re frustrated. And so when they come to me and have a conversation with me, we use tools like a strength test to kind of dial that in to give us some indication of what it could be. Strength test their business on six key components. In my version, you know, we strength test the business, the brand, the team, the strategy, the execution, and the culture. So we have a conversation to discover the frustration. It’s usually within these six buckets. And then we point to what’s really going on. And so the struggle is around not knowing and not being able to identify what’s actually going on. Sometimes it’s really clear and they know and understand. It could be a people problem. It could be, you know, maybe I’m not getting as much profit out of the business as I should be. It could be something around, you know, we’re not executing as well as what we could be. Sometimes it’s a communication problem.

The leadership team isn’t sure how to communicate properly. What’s in their head? Quick little exercise with the team, and I ask them what they hear when I tap my finger on the table, and it’s just thump, thump, thump. And then they’re saying, well, I’m just hearing thumping. And I said, that’s interesting, because in my head, I’m thumping to this amazing symphony of a song that I have in my head.

So the analogy is that all they’re hearing is thumping. But in my head, I’ve got this great song, and my favorite band is U2. So I always have a U2 song in my head. And I’m, you know, strumming along this thumping. All they can hear is thump. So the analogy is, a lot of times what happens as entrepreneurs struggle is they have all these things, their ideas, their thoughts, their plan. It’s all in their head, and they’re not communicating well, and all their people are hearing is thumping. And the entrepreneur leaders, they have this symphony in their head, but they just can’t get it out.

Keith: Ah, I like that analogy.

Shelby: Yeah. Somewhere when we end up having a conversation. The light bulb goes on a little bit and says, oh, okay. Interesting. I now have a better understanding of where things are not necessarily working in the business. And within this system of a business operating system or the structure of it, we can then move towards clarifying that and then moving into using some simple tools to then ultimately get what you want from your business.

Keith: I love that analogy. You’re almost saying that the team has to kind of see what the entrepreneur, what the leader or what the manager is thinking in their head. Obviously, they don’t so often.

Shelby: 100%. A lot of founders or leaders, let’s call it like it is, they’re in their bubble. They’re so deep into thought around what’s happening with the business that sometimes it’s not being communicated well.

So, again, the business operating system, Boss360, allows for those thoughts and ideas to clearly be put into a framework that is crystal clear. And it’s not just the entrepreneur, by the way. When I work with clients, it’s the senior leadership team. And so when we think about, like, vision work, the planning work, it’s the team that puts it together. We’re not expecting it to come only from the founder or the owner of the business. And so this is really important because we want to make sure that the plan, the vision that is set for the organization is a senior leadership team initiative.

And then it’s about communicating that plan and vision with simple tools, with clarity, so that our people will look at us and go, yeah, okay, that makes sense. Now I know how I fit in that plan 100%.

Keith: And look, if I share with our listeners a story about what we do at our firm, we have our meetings every Monday morning. They’re called level 10 meetings. And only because I think it comes back to. If you ask people, how was that meeting? Most people say it’s not a very good meeting. I didn’t necessarily enjoy it. That’s a classic meeting. In most companies, this is a structure where you’re trying to actually get a 10 on 10 in terms of an effective meeting. But we have meetings where everybody in our team, Shelby and you would know this, is allowed to suggest or propose that there’s an issue they see in front of them, they see a problem, and they want to raise it. So whether it’s Oksana who’s doing account opening in our firm, she gets an opportunity to raise, there’s an issue that we need to look at.

Whether it’s Julian trading, whether it’s one of the PMs, the portfolio managers, whether it’s the tax team, everybody is able to bring forward ideas and then everybody is accountable to help solve the issues. As we try to operate, we’re trying to operate a world class wealth management firm and we think we can and we think we are. And this system is so incredibly empowering to get everybody onto the same page 100%.

Shelby: And so when we talk about meetings, in your case, you call yours a level 10. I know I’ve evolved that tool to be called a five star meeting. The essence and the baseline around that meeting is first to understand when we should be meeting. Because I’m all about less meetings, please, but let’s have the right type of meetings. And so it’s about what is the cadence of our meeting? You’re saying weekly. I would agree. There is certainly a weekly cadence where we should be connecting. And then we need to decide who’s in that meeting and what’s the agenda of that meeting. My five star meeting has really two purposes. One is to verify, check in on what are the most important pieces of the company to win the week. So we have just checked in on what are the top priorities for the quarter. We check in, are we on track, off track. We check in on the scoreboard, which is the KPIs of the company. And I know you do this in your level 10 meeting.

Very important. And there are a couple other components to that meeting. And then 2/3 of the time of the meeting, which is what you were alluding to before, is that we open it up for what are the roadblocks, the opportunities, the pain points we are experiencing right now so that we then can speak to them. And when I say that every single person in that meeting has a chance to speak their truth to that particular component, I have a really one of the first things I do when I start with a client is I put, let’s say a water bottle in the middle of the table.

And so usually it’s branded, you know, whatever name it is and whatnot. And I ask one person from your angle, what do you see? And they’ll say, oh, I see a logo, I see blue. And it’s not a great question. And so they give us their angle. Then I look at someone across the table and say, what’s your angle? And they say, well, I see the same bottle but on my side I see maybe a, you know, some more like, you know, nutrition value or a QR code of whatnot. So I do this with a few people and so what they’re saying is I’m seeing the same bottle. It’s a water bottle, but there’s different things that I’m saying that I’m seeing. And what I tell the team is when we are in our weekly meetings, if we are not bringing up our angle, we’re actually doing a disfavor to the company because we’re not seeing the whole 360° of that bottle. Therefore we could be missing a piece. Some people in a meeting would stay quiet because they’re not sure if they should speak to us in our meetings. And I know you do the same. It’s the opposite. You actually invite everyone to speak their truth to their angle. And guess what? Sometimes that is controversial in nature because there could be a debate, because I’m seeing it something differently. But at the end of the day, we want to be heard and we want to make sure we see the whole picture

Keith: Oh, listen, 100%. And I think about how our business operates. We are integrating portfolio management, discretionary portfolio management, which is a regulated industry. We’re doing financial planning, retirement projections, wills, and we’re doing tax service. There’s a lot of moving parts in a firm like this. And in order to execute, everybody has to be working on the business. And so I think one of the big takeaways, you just mentioned the bottle. It’s so incredibly valuable to have everybody’s input.

Shelby: And the thing about it is, again, you know, the framework of a business operating system allows for having that opportunity and understanding that this is wanted and normal. Another piece that happens is, you know, if once we get our teams in that method, that weekly cadence, and when they’re debating things, someone walking by could think that, oh my gosh, they’re fighting. They’re not fighting. They’re passionately debating all the different viewpoints. And so that is healthy in a team. But it needs to be understood that it’s not a fight. It’s actually very progressive in nature as far as we’re just speaking our truth. And so we can see the whole picture. And the interesting part of it, and this is where businesses win, is that they are able to see it all, then make a decision because it’s clear what the decision should be around how to move forward. And you know, maybe I debated for something else as far as what the end result could be as far as the decision to be made. But if I’ve fully had a chance to fully speak my truth, then I can be on board and say, okay, I say what I need to say.

If the decision is different than what I was hoping for, I can then just have the healthy component be. I’m all in. How can I now help? And I never go back to what we should have, could have done. I’m all in for. Yeah, let’s go with the decision that was made. So that weekly meeting is critical around making the right decisions, seeing the whole picture, and then, you know, moving forward with whatever that decision is. As a team, which before a business operating system, I didn’t have that. My clients didn’t have that. So they would sit with these outliers as far as, like, these issues in the business, and they would just sit there and nothing would actually get done. And they’d repeat the same story over and over again. Our meetings are not like that. We get in, we talk about it, they make sense. They’re connected to the plan or not. Everyone’s been heard and then made the decision. We move forward. It’s amazing how much more we can get done in a year when we, on a weekly basis, do this.

Keith: I agree fully. And this gets back to what I thought was a kind of a catchy title, traction, because that book is really trying to get the entire group moving forward in almost like a lunge. That was my visual interpretation of something like, get your operating system in place, get the entire team accountable, get everybody working towards solving problems, and lunge the business forward. That was my takeaway from just the title of the book.

Shelby: Absolutely. And I think that, you know, Gino Wickman, the author of that book, I think in his wisdom, chose that title because it’s very appropriate and fitting. So one of the things that I also recognize after being an EOS implementer for eight years is that understanding that there are 20 tools within that tool set of Traction, which are phenomenal as a baseline foundation. And so I was thinking about what my clients were asking me, which were evolved tools from EOS. The transition that I did as far as becoming a boss360 or creating boss360 was around the. What is the evolution? Because there’s more than just 20 tools in business.

Keith: Absolutely. Let’s go into the actual systems here. So we’re bouncing ideas around EOS and boss. Let’s just. I’ll clarify EOS quickly. You’re going to jump in and then we’ll evolve into BOS.

Shelby: Yep, got it.

Keith: So EOS is the system that we currently use at Tulett, Matthews and Associates, Entrepreneur Operating System. Shelby was a coach in that system for eight years and then went on to develop his own system, along with his coaches. The EOS system is built on six building blocks that you need to be conscious of. You need to be able to share the vision of your company across the board so that everybody in your firm understands where we’re trying to go in the next year, in the next three years, in the next 10 years.

We need to be able to understand how to work and manage and inspire people. So people are the second component. Data is the third component. People in our business are the most important. I mean, we’re in a talent business. We have to make sure we’ve got the best people and they have to be sitting in the right seat. So there’s a way to do that.

The next component, which is data, we have to have a way to analyze the data moving in the firm, and understand data points to move forward. You have to be able to measure different things. We have to be able to look at issues. What are the problems, what are the struggles? What are the things we need to solve? So there’s issues. We have to be able to develop processes. And if we’re able to put all of this together concisely in a framework, we have traction and we can move the business forward.

So that’s the model that we’ve been using up to now. We’ve done it for two years now, so we’re into it for 24 months. Shelby, explain now the evolution of what you’ve tried to do and where you’re at with your business.

Shelby: The beautiful thing about what you just said is what happens around 12 to 24 months in someone using traction or EOS is that, okay, they’ve kind of mastered these six key components. And my clients were looking at me and saying, well, what’s next? And I thought, hmm. The answer was nothing. It was what I was being told as an EOS implementer. That’s it. You’ve got 20 tools, you’ve mastered them. I was being told to graduate my clients, and I thought, that is kind of an interesting concept. I’ve now become a trusted advisor to them. They trust me, I trust them. I know their business. And they’re asking me, what’s evolved? Like, where do we go from here? And I would say, you actually graduate. You’re good. And I didn’t actually buy that. And I thought, it’s not working for me. And so when Gino Wickman, the founder of EOS, sold the business to a PE firm, which was fantastic, they converted the implementers to franchises, and I thought, that’s not going to be good for my clients. Or for me, because I can’t evolve that, that next step to these six key components. And so that’s when I left, I left EOS as an implementer and created Boss360.

And so when we think about vision, we’ve decided, okay, what’s the next level to the vision component? And we said, well there’s a two page strategic plan that we need to evolve. And we included branding in there where EOS doesn’t talk about brand, they talk a little bit about marketing, but that’s it. And so we went deep into brand archetypes, we looked around positioning, et cetera. So we added the next level to it. So that was natural. And that’s on the first page. The second page, we call it 1031 Q to have it all in one place. So the BHAG, the 10 year goals, just a one liner, then the three year vision, like what does that look like? The 12 month goals and then quarterly priorities. So that’s one of the things we did on the vision, the people component.

The interesting piece of that is that we wanted to evolve that accountability chart is the tool where, you know, it’s like an org chart but naming out, going further in the description, what’s been happening in the last, I’d say, let’s say three to six months is this whole AI open claw situation where there’s some AI agents being created. And so now we’re already starting to see that some of these seats in a business are no longer being held by actual people, they are being held by AI agents.

And so yeah, so that’s the evolution. Now I’m pretty sure EOS is not talking about that. And by the way, it’s still a foundation, it works. But what about the, should we have a conversation about that? Well, this is what Boss360 brings to the table as a conversation. And I’m actually doing some of those things and trying to be at the leading edge to bring to my clients. This is what it looks like when we move in that direction. As far as the people component, when we talk about data, it’s the same idea. As far as you know, where is that data coming from?

How are we capturing the data? There’s such a thing that we bring to our clients as the second brain. And so the second brain is the first brain, is what’s in yours, your mind right now and how you’ve documented processes, et cetera. But what about data that we can bring forth from a data set? And so now we’re evolving the scoreboard or scorecard from just maybe a simple to a more deeper knowledge from data that’s been gathered in a second brain. Using AI to actually draw some of that conclusion, to understand what is actually happening in the business issues is really around how we tackle what the problems are, the I would say also the opportunities in our business. And so there’s an evolution method around how well we talked about a little bit around that bottle and how we speak to our truth processes. The same idea is that right now, what used to take us, I would say a good six to 12 months to put the proper processes in place in our business and then making sure that they’ve been followed by all, which was the baseline, can now be done literally in two weeks. Because we have a method, a system now with AI technology around being able to capture our processes in our business and we don’t have to overthink it. So again it’s an evolution and the end result of that is a much quicker, I would say execution to all these initiatives that we’re putting in place. So Boss360 is simply curated tools, evolved tools around this idea of a business operating system.

Keith: It’s a great explanation. Is it fair to say, remember the E-Myth?

Shelby: Yes, of course, one of the great books, I prescribe it to all my clients.

Keith: Actually is it fair to say as soon as you mention the word processes, it reminded me of the E-Myth, which is this book that came out, I don’t know, maybe 25 years ago. Shelby. We were both probably graduating university around the same time. But is it fair to say that Boss or EOS or operating systems is a much more advanced way to think about how to run a business versus the initial E-Myth statement which was you gotta figure out how to work on your business. I don’t think they really told you how to work on your business.

Shelby: That’s why I like these, I call them OG books. Right. And you get back to them and they’re all very still relevant in direction in the thinking behind them. The truth of the matter is, and this is the same thing with EOS, it was created 20 years ago. And so what’s the evolution to it? And so directionally, the E-Myth. Absolutely. Core processes, et cetera when working on your business. And then how has it evolved to today’s reality? And so this is what we need to be conscious of and the reason why I, I’m a lifelong learner, like every, every month, I’m always reading books, I’m always going to conferences, I’m always getting something new, and then I discern it to say, okay, filter it for what makes the most sense for my clients. And so I’ll bring them in at the right time, what is appropriate for them. And that’s the evolved version of an operating system.

Keith: I remember one of our clients who’s had a very successful run, credits some of his early thinking to the E-Myth. Now, I mean, I feel fortunate that I gave him the book 25 years ago and I said, you need to read this book. You’ve got a great business. And so, you know, he says that that book was so helpful to allow him to think about how to manage his business. He’s just had a fantastic ride and a journey. These concepts are so powerful.

Shelby: 100%. It’s a classic book. That’s why I still read for my clients to read. It’s on my reading list for my CL for sure.

Keith: Okay.

Shelby: Keith, I really appreciated this conversation. And at this point, I actually have a couple questions for you, if you’re okay with that.

Keith: Absolutely.

Shelby: All right. And this is maybe a little bit of my style and how I work with clients. I’m always very curious around, you know, where they’re at at this moment. And for us, we’re talking about a business operating system. So my first question to you is, you know, how did you come to be curious or interested about, in your case, you started with EOS, so how did you come to that? Tell me about that.

Keith: I mentioned it a little earlier in the sense that I’ve been going to my peer group meetings for 20 years. Five investment management firms, portfolio management firms, that operate using the same investment philosophy. I’ve been doing two meetings a year for 20 years.

Shelby: This is your peer to peer group.

Keith: Peer to peer group.

Shelby: Great.

Keith: And in that peer to peer group, along with other people that I know, there was always this idea that as you grow your business, there’s going to come a point in time when you can no longer just be a single individual, either portfolio manager or financial advisor, with a team of maybe two people supporting you. As the business grows, you need to have some form of a structure to help you manage the business. So when we got to about 11 or 12 people in our team, that’s when I said, listen, you know, I’m going to read the book. And when I read the book, it brought me back to. And I’ve always embraced managing this business professionally with a professional structure and work on processes and work on consistency with our clients, work on all the things that I think are best practices. For any business. So when I read the book, it just, everything resonated. We were also at an interesting point where we were going to. As we were growing, I said I need to have the team also involved. And I got some very bright, engaged young individuals in the team who are capable. So what I found with this system is it allowed them to be fully in. It allowed them to participate in managing the business and helping the business move forward. And for any young person, I think that’s an inspiring offering.

Shelby: Awesome. Okay, so if I hear you right, then let me just recap what I think I heard. So you’re in a peer to peer group. And that group, you share ideas and best practices inside that group. As you’ve evolved, you’ve learned about, oh, there is this. Some of the people in this group of mine are talking about this business operating system. You were pointed to a book, you read it, resonated with it to a very high degree and thought, okay, I can start self implementing this right away. Because the information in that book was simple in understanding, but also most importantly, implementing so that your people could engage with that information that you’ve just learned. Is that about right?

Keith: 100%.

Shelby: So having said that then after having used these tools for, I think you said over two years now.

Keith: Two years, yeah.

Shelby: What would you say would be like your top most powerful component or tool that you say this thing, this was a game changer for us.

Keith: You know, I’m going to answer that with a few things. It kept our team accountable and that’s everybody, me included. So when you’re assigned a to do, which is a terminology about getting something done in the next week or two or you’re assigned a rock, these things. You mentioned this earlier. Often when you run a business, an idea or an issue gets pushed aside and you kind of, you don’t actually address it and you come back to it six months later, I thought we have to look at that here. You account for things, you write things down, you track them and you’re accountable to finish them.

Shelby: Great.

Keith: As long as you agree that they are all worth doing. Rock is a term that’s used as a challenge. You want to move the rock so you can open up your path and go forward.

Shelby: So would you say then. So first accountability. So now your people become more accountable by default. And then secondly, you just mentioned the word rock, which is not really a business term, but you know, we use that and a different word for a rock is a top priority. And so we identify top priorities. We just end up calling them rocks. There’s a whole reason for that. So you’re saying that’s to be like your number two, accountability.

Keith: I think when we last reviewed it, we’ve solved or we’ve pushed aside 50 rocks in two years. That’s 50 challenges to help. We’ve solved it. Sometimes it takes a week to do it, sometimes it might take three a month. But we’ve solved these little irritants, these issues. And it could be all about improving the client experience.

Shelby: Wow.

Keith: It could be about improving efficiency so that we can handle a client better or client experience or improve it. There’s all sorts of different ways that businesses improve.

Shelby: So this is amazing. So if I hear you right, then you’re saying using the methodology, you were able to identify 50 top priorities, which we call rocks, and you were able to work through them to be able to get an end result. And at the end of the year, you were able to move 50 top priorities through your business.

Keith: Two years, two years to do that,

Shelby: That’s like a huge, like, big push. And what you’re talking about and what I see in businesses without a business operating system, you’re trying to do that, but what ends up happening is that the priorities are diluted.

What I mean by that specifically, and tell me if this is what you’re experiencing in the evolution of what you’ve used, is that before a business operating system, we had a lot of priorities, a lot of initiatives, but we were working on all of them equally or, you know, as much as possible, and we were working darn hard, but never necessarily getting very far with them or to the finish line. Even with a business operating system. When we talk about top priorities and we call them rocks, what we’re saying is less is more. And what we mean by that is we’re going to take a few rocks, top priorities, and ultra focus on them so that we bring them to the finish line.

And so, in actual fact, what we’re doing is we’re creating some obsessive focus on what we’ve decided are the top priorities in a business. And when we do that, it doesn’t mean the other things that we’re interested in moving forward don’t get done, but we’re prioritizing the top ones as a rock so that we can finish those first. And when you say 50 in 12 or 24 months, that I can tell you from all my experience as a business coach, that is way more than if you were not using a business operating system just by default. You focused on what was top priorities, and got those done. Is that. Is that about right?

Keith: A hundred percent. And every single week, the entire team reviews, reviews what we’re looking at, reviews, what we have to do. You know, and in the old world, let’s go back five years ago, everybody’s working hard. But if let’s say you got assigned a small project that had to be done, it wasn’t unusual to say, hey, so and so, where are we at that project? Well, guess what? That project is kind of down the list of their priorities. But we’ve assigned it an important priority for the firm. But it’s still down the list. And somehow there was. It was a disconnect. Whereas a system like this allows you to connect all the pieces and have everybody working in the firm, everybody working on the business. You know, give you another example. If I’m not here for a couple meetings, somebody else takes leadership of the meeting. It could be Ruben. It could be Cindy. It could be Mike, our compliance officer. It could be anybody, actually. Anybody can step in and lead the meeting. We all know where we’re trying to take the business.

Shelby: That’s right. And you’ve systematized that meeting rhythm. And that’s why anyone can fill in, which is a really key component for any leader. And when, again, I’m working with my clients, I explain to them that as a leader, if you truly want to delegate with control, you need to work through your people using a system. If you’re not at a meeting one day, it’s okay. Someone could just step in. You’ve worked through them and been able to teach them. Here’s how we do it. And we systematized it. And therefore, we can just have someone else run the meeting. So that is. It is fabulous. I have another question for you, if that’s okay.

Keith: Okay, go for it.

Shelby: Last one here from me. Now, we’ve been talking about a business operating system and kind of on the rosy side of things, like, oh, yeah, this is what it looks like when things are really great. But the reality is it’s never perfect. And so tell me about some of the challenges that you may have faced in moving forward with this.

Keith: Oh, wow, that’s a great question. I somehow figured a question like that would pop up so unprepared. Here’s what I would think. Think and reflect on that one. I would think, well, there was a period, let’s call it. I think we’re around month six. We had a weekly meeting each week, and there was a period in time where some members in the team were kind of saying, you know, this seems a bit repetitive now. Do we really need to keep this up? And I’m pretty committed to doing certain things. I said no, this is a marathon.

We are not stopping. We’re going to keep on going, we’re going to keep on finding new things because you get this idea that oh, we’ve solved the world. A lot of the things, well, business things are always popping up. And so that to me was a bit of a challenge where we have some people.

Maybe some sort of second guessing isn’t necessarily the right word, but sort of saying, do we need to keep it up at the same level? And to everyone’s credit, you know, we talked it through, we said no, this is really important to managing the business. It’s really important for succession. It’s really important to put the foundation in so that the next generation leadership can really understand how to manage a business. So we did get through it, but it was through additional communication, additional discussion. I think everybody acknowledges afterwards that it made total sense obviously to continue.

Shelby: That’s so good. You’ve actually described exactly what happens in, you know, what we’re talking about is change management. And so there’s this initiative and it’s disruptive in nature and at one point the team, you know, is not comfortable with it necessarily because they may not be fully engaged in it or they’re not too sure. Now I use a great model with my clients which is called the Tuckman model. So the Tuckman model is the model that you’re describing. Actually I use that model to describe what you just experienced in business. And this happens any time there’s a change in a business. And so in your case it’s like implementing this business operating system. You go through four stages

and the Tuckman model explains what actually happens, not theory. So there’s a forming stage, a lot of confusion. We don’t know what this is. We’re brand new at it.

The second stage is the storming stage where now we’re starting to understand what this is, but we’re still not getting the great benefits of the initiative and so some pushback. The third component is this norm where exponential growth happens and then we get the results and then there’s a performance where you flatline. I use this model and I mention it to you because it describes what you were experiencing. And I work with this model with our clients to understand where we are and there’s actual leadership and management styles that need to change with these four different components. But very normal. And I’m really pleased to hear that you’ve, you know, pushed through with the team to start getting these great results, which I think is what you’re getting.

Keith: Yeah, you know, listen, I’m so happy with, you know, using an operating system and gauging the team and preparing for managing a bit and preparing for growth. We’re a growing firm, Shelby. We oversee 345, 350 client families right now and we have a team in place where we could probably bring in another 150, 200 clients without adding any team members. Now we’ve prepared ourselves to grow and I think we prepared ourselves hopefully in the best way possible. But this system has been imperative to doing that.

Shelby: So what I really like is what we just said and I check in with my clients around this and what you’re saying, if I hear you right, is we’ve built in capacity and so you’re not at your hundred percent maxed out at your capacity within your team. You have a buffer zone which allows for breathing room so that when there is a bit of a crunch time, and by the way, I know it’s crunch time now for you know, a lot of people in this, especially accountants and year end tax season whatnot, but their capacity has been built in. So there’s that buffer set. You’re never burning out your people, is that what I’m hearing?

Keith: 100%. We’re offering abilities to get trained to work. I mean it doesn’t mean that we’re not alluding to tax season. We’re in the middle of tax season, Shelby. We will do 550 tax returns right now. So we’re busy, busy. Edmund is leading the charge in the tax team. We have Linda, Andrea, Megan and Chloe who are all doing a phenomenal job. And for our clients who are bringing their taxes, I know that we’ve got very good turnaround time. So we’re very happy about that. And precision is there. So yeah, these operating systems help you run a business. Okay, so Shelby, walk us through a little bit about your role as a coach. What does that engagement typically look like? How do potential business owners or management teams come to you and what does that first one year look like?

Shelby: So the path to implementing a business operating system in the Boss360 version is that there’s always a launching sequence. And so the launching sequence has to do with full day sessions with the senior leadership team and boss360 coach. And I say it that way because I’m not a solopreneur. I actually have a team. Right now we are 10 business coaches that have been certified under the BOSS 360 methodology. So making sure that we are clear that there’s other coaches out there and they use the same methodology. So it’s the launch, it’s full day sessions. In the first full day session, we learn the execution excellence tools, which we call momentum. Once the senior leadership team has learned the momentum tools execution, we expect them to start using those tools day one one. So right after that full day session, they’ve learned some techniques and tools that are not meant to be like, oh my gosh, I’m stacking more stuff now to my agenda and things to do. It’s the opposite if I’ve learned something, a method, a way to actually manage the execution in a better way, more efficient way. And so they learned the tools in one day. Then they execute using these tools for 30 days.

I give them 30 days, then I bring them back to my session room for a full day and say, okay, let’s review what we’ve learned to make sure that we’re executing well. Then I give them a little bit more. So it’s space learning. And the second piece is we create that two page strategic plan. From there, I give them another 30 days. We review the first two days and then I bring them HR tools. How do we work better together as a team? Healthy teams do much more and go further. And therefore the first day’s momentum, the second day’s vision, and the third day’s health.

Then they’re launched and I see them on a quarterly basis after that because we have a full, clear two page strategic plan. We’re communicating it well, we’re aligning our people around the top priorities. And then every quarter we stop our crazy business world, we come up for air, we come to Shelby’s session room for a full day as a senior leadership team, review the paths for learning opportunities, decide where we are on the plan that we’ve put together, and then we plan the next 90 days.

Why 90 days? Because the human being is well built around 90 day cycles. You can research it if you want. I did deep research around this. That’s what it pointed me to. Therefore, we plan our priorities within 90 days. In normal times. I say it that way because if all of a sudden there’s a major disruption in an industry or in your business, you may need to pull in a shorter time than 90 days. So we always keep that open. But that’s kind of what it looks like. And the interesting part is once a year I do.

Keith: You used the word pulse. What are you referring to there?

Shelby: Pulsing is the cadence in getting together on doing the strategic planning. Really important. So on a yearly basis what it looks like is once a quarter we get together for a full day. So every quarter and then once a year we recognize that we need to plan the year ahead and therefore we do strategic planning for the next year. And that’s usually a two day retreat style where the first day we review what’s happened in the last year and then the second day we plan for the next 12 months. And it’s all connected to our, you know, midterm planning which is three years to the long term target, which is the 10 year big, audacious goal.

Keith: Yeah. And so in all these operating systems you’ve got strategic thinking. Typically longer term vision. You’ve got, you mentioned, pulse these 90 days every quarter sessions where you get and you reflect and you think about what needs to be done in the next 90 days and then you’ve got these regular meetings. In BOS, it’s five star meetings, correct?

Shelby: Yeah, that’s the weekly cadence. You’re correct in that it’s perfect. The system is holistic in nature. Meaning that when you’re in the business we have execution tools. It’s about getting it done. We also recognize that there’s the strategic component to it, like when you’re in the day to day it’s impossible to really see the whole picture. And that’s why, you know, all my clients come off site. I never meet them in their business. There’s way too much distraction. So once a quarter they come to either my session room and in the summer I have this amazing place. No, there’s a great yacht club that I go and bring my clients to, but the club, it’s the Royal St. Lawrence Yacht Club.

Keith: Gotcha.

Shelby: I’ve got a nice little sailboat there.

Keith: Well, you and I have this sailing in common. I grew up teaching sailing, so I taught and I sailed most recently at Point Claire Yacht Club.

Shelby: Okay.

Keith: For those that are out of town, these are two yacht clubs on Lake St. Louis within a five minute drive of each other. Royal is the more prestigious yacht club which has sort of an affiliation to all the Royal Yacht Clubs across Canada. So Royal Halifax, Royal Toronto, Royal Vancouver,

Shelby: It’s a great club. And I have to say that the reason why I went there primarily, well there’s two reasons. One is I have a sailboat that you know, has actually there’s more room for it to maneuver inside the harbor. So that for me was really important.

But secondly, which is kind of really more important to me is that they have great meeting rooms there and they have a great chef, great kitchen. And so what I’m trying to do, and this is coming back to the, when we disconnect from the business once a quarter, we want to be in a space where we can fully be immersed in working on the business, not in it. And so this is why I craft a space for them to be very comfortable. Also being able to get into some amazing strategic thinking.

And the end result of that was a very, very powerful day of, yes, strategic planning, decision making. And once that day is done, then it’s all about execution, like communicating really well what we decided on to the rest of the team and then execution on those decisions. That’s all connected to the 12 month plan, which is connected to the three years, which is connected to the 10 year that we’re going, which is the second page of our two page strategic plan. So it all works together. This is why I was saying it’s a holistic, comprehensive model.

Keith: Yeah, I think those off sites are critical and we do an off site with all of our team members. We do it at the Forest and Stream Club. We did actually for a few years, 10 years ago, go to Royal St. Lawrence for whatever reason. We’re at Forest and Stream now. But yeah, the off sites are fantastic. Everyone’s clear headed, we think about strategic issues and it’s really a day of discussion, a day of thinking and it’s gotta be outside the office.

Shelby: So it’s about creating an environment for that to happen. And so wherever. And so this is maybe know any listener that’s listening to this, you know, can be thinking, well, you know, maybe I’m not going to the Royal St. Lawrence Yacht Club or Forest Stream, but what can you do to create an environment for you and your team to be able to fully immerse yourselves in a space where you won’t be disrupted, you won’t be distracted.

And so you just need to think about what that means for you. I also like to bring it to a micro component when I have my one on ones. I mean with my team and my coaches, when I have to have this one on one conversation with them, I also craft a space where we can fully not be in my office because that’s kind of my territory. It’s different. Let’s go to our favorite coffee shop, let’s have a conversation. And again, you know, I bring in some of the tools that I teach. One is called LMC and it stands for leadership, management, and coaching. And this would be a coaching conversation, one on one.

So crafting the opportunity and space around a deeper connection conversation. So just this is important to think about and that is leadership. Leadership is thinking work. Therefore, how do we put that together to make sure that we’re setting it up for success, not failure?

Keith: Shelby, you’ve been coaching for a long time. Are there any businesses or industries that you feel are not well suited to operating systems and are there any that you feel are just perfect? How would you answer that?

Shelby: For sure. So what I do and the type of business coaching I do is really geared for entrepreneurial businesses. And when I say entrepreneurial, I mean that they are growing and want to continue to grow and they are open to be coached, right? So that’s when it works. When it doesn’t work, they’re not open to being coached. They think that, that, you know, they don’t need it or they would not do the work.

I have been in a conversation with a potential client and there’s a discovery process that we always do before I take on a new client to make sure that I am convinced that I can help them and vice versa needs to be the same. They’re convinced I can help them. It’s happened where they wouldn’t do the work. And I told the entrepreneur, I said in this interview, discovery meeting, it’s clear that you don’t have the time, you will not actually do what I can help you with and therefore don’t waste your time, effort, money, etc. So that will never work.

Outside of that in an entrepreneurial business, it works every single time. The analogy I use is if you want to get in shape, we kind of know what to do. We can go to the gym, start lifting weights in the proper way, and will we get results if we do this consistently? The answer is yes.

We know this same thing with the business operating system. If you engage in it, then you have to do the work. You have to lift the weights. The coach is not lifting for you. The coach will show you how to lift the weight, the technique, etc. To get the most out of the experience. And that’s why you would want to get a coach. But it works every single time. Now, if it’s a much larger business, and we talked about this earlier on in this podcast, is that, for example, much bigger government, large businesses, bureaucratic in nature, they’re slow moving. This does not work. Well, I say it that way because there are components that you can take and implement in a larger business. It still works, but they need to be entrepreneurial in nature. I have a client, they’re well over $350 million.

Keith: When you say entrepreneurial, they need to be able to make a decision fairly quickly because that’s usually the entrepreneur. They know they can make a decision, they make a decision, they move on it.

Shelby: That’s exactly right. So entrepreneurial in nature means that the senior leadership team gets together, they can look at a situation, look at all the angles, and then make a decision and then move quickly. They can make that decision right there. And then where larger businesses don’t work that way, they’re structured differently in that typically would go to a second level, maybe a third level. The government’s the same. You know, before you pass a bill, it goes through different levels before it becomes law. It’s just how they’re structured. And there’s a good reason for that. There’s nothing wrong with it. But for the type of person I am and my background, it made more sense for me to specialize in entrepreneurial type mindset businesses.

Keith: Well, listen, we’re going to start wrapping up. I have a couple of last questions to ask. And the first one is, you know, Shelby, you’ve been doing this for quite a while now. What do you enjoy most about being a coach? Coach. A business coach.

Shelby: So I’ve thought long and hard on this question, like many years back when I, before I started coaching. And so I had a. What I would call, or what I considered a really interesting entrepreneurial journey. At that point, I felt that, or I felt that, you know, I had accomplished many great things. I’d, you know, built businesses I’d sold successfully, made a few dollars, and then thought, okay, well, what’s next? And so this is also referred to as your second master mountain. And so like I had climbed my first mountain, got to the top and looked around, said, okay, what’s next? And I saw that there was another mountain next door and said, okay, I’m going back down.

And it changed the perspective from, you know, trying to be successful as a business person around the financial piece to more around, like, what’s the impact that I can actually do? And so when I was thinking about that, I thought, well, you know, I can really make a bigger difference in general if I can help other business leaders run through a methodology. What I was thinking about was them, the actual business leader. I had thought about my life and how hard it had been around the struggles I had as a business leader, and I thought I would have liked a coach.

That could have helped me kind of maneuver through all this. Would have been really helpful to kind of live my best life in a better way. And so that was the mindset that I had.

Keith: And so, how do I do that?

Shelby: So it’s the domino effect. If I can help one entrepreneur, then it domino effects their business. And so that’s my purpose. The purpose really is helping leaders in business live their best life, understand what that means for them and then move in that direction. And I just use a vehicle which is a business operating system.

Keith: I love, I love your response. And it’s passionate. I can tell you feel it.

Shelby: I do.

Keith: I think it’s amazing. So here, last question, your takeaways. Our listeners have been listening. You know, this is a wealth management show, and so there’s a bit of a different angle. What I wanted to do was make sure we could introduce the sort of system we use, operating system. It’s been phenomenal for our wealth management business. So the whole group of listeners, very diverse listeners, what are the top takeaways that you suggest people consider?

Shelby: Well, there’s a couple things, so I’ll come at it from maybe different angles. One is I’ll talk about coaching in general. So I’ll start with that because as a takeaway, yes, we can all do these, you know, move in that direction on our own. But there comes a time and a space where a coach will actually be able to exponentially make that environment or that experience go to the next level. So as a business coach, my wife looked at me one day and said, so, who’s your coach? And I thought, ooh, you’re good.

And so ever since then, I’ve always had business coaches and multiple, multiple business coaches. And currently my business coach is, you know, encouraging me to go even deeper into the work. And so I would say that that is one takeaway around this, is that it’s ever evolving, it’s never stopping.

And so always be looking for what is the next level for you personally around any methodology, if it’s a business operating system or anything else in your life around how can I go to the next level? And coaching is kind of a cool clue. And so Dan Martel is my coach and he wrote a book that I would highly recommend. So that would be my plug for a book if you’re looking for anyone listening in is his book.

Keith: What’s the title of the book?

Shelby: So his book is called “Buy Back Your Time”. I highly recommend it. Great content there. So that would be my recommendation at this point. And by the way, I’ve also been. I listen to books sometimes, and the one that I’ve been, David Goggins, is an author that is also interesting to look into. So look into that author as well.

Keith: So, Shelby, before we did the show today, we talked about potentially any giveaways or any offerings that you might have for our listeners around business coaching, around strategies, around concepts. So what might those be?

Shelby: There’s a lot I can do here. The easiest and best ways for me to. For anyone who’s interested, I have a powerful tool that we actually, I came in and I gave you today. And one of the things that I do with my leaders and my clients is that I’ve created a tool called flow journaling. And so it’s a leadership tool for the leader. There’s a journal that comes with it. But any of your listeners interested, the best way to get this particular tool that’s very powerful around thinking work and, you know, stacking, flow work, being in. In flow and journaling, and this is systemized like the method around the tool, I’d be more than happy to give that away. All you need to do is either find me on LinkedIn or Instagram. If you just follow me or send me a direct message and just simply put in a flow journal. And I will be more than happy to send that to you.

Keith: Perfect. Well, thank you so much. And you’ve also got the Boss360 website, so I would encourage listeners, if they’re interested in sort of connecting and seeing what Shelby and his team of coaches are up to on their operating system. Check that out. He’s got a very active Instagram. So if you also like sailing, and I’m a huge sailing fan, I think there’s some great things there as well.

Shelby: Great. Yeah, I try to make it entertaining and fun to see sailing things because it is one of my passions. You’ll also see some things that you can draw away there on the business operating system side.

Keith: Great. Fantastic. So, Shelby, on behalf of our listeners, thank you so much. You’ve been very gracious with your time. You’ve been very gracious with helping our firm think about business operating systems. It’s a little bit of a slightly different slant that we took today for our listeners, but I think it’s very, very valuable. So on behalf of our listeners, thank you so much.

Shelby: My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Keith: And to our listeners, thank you so much for tuning in. Have a wonderful week and we’ll see you in the next episode. Thanks for listening to the Empowered Investor Podcast brought to you by Tulett, Matthews and Associates. If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, be sure to follow or subscribe and share it with somebody who wants to invest with clarity and confidence. To learn more about how we help investors build lasting financial peace of mind, visit us at tma-invest.com. Until next time, stay informed, stay empowered, and stay on track to your financial goals.

Investment and investing strategies should be evaluated based on your own objectives. Listeners of this podcast should use their best judgment and consult a financial expert prior to making any investment decisions. Based on the information found in this podcast.