Why We Are Running Our Agency on EOS
Our marketing agency has been running on EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) for about 18 months now. How’s it going, you may ask? It’s phenomenal.
We’ve grown 35% the last two years. But it’s not just about the business growth. If anything, that growth is the byproduct of getting everything else to operate efficiently and effectively, with the right people in the right seats.
EOS is Not Just About Business Growth
This program is about getting crystal clear on your vision, on who you are, and on the people who will get you there. It’s about the processes needed to get you there and the measurements you need in place to know where you are, when you fall off track, and how to hold everyone accountable.
If you don’t know what or where you want to be, how you’ll measure when you get there, or what people you need to get there, you’re never going to grow effectively.
What’s Our Vision for RED66 Marketing?
Our 10-year target is Clients For Life! Whoa, that’s a pretty loaded yet simple statement. What does it mean? It means that in everything we do, our vision is to create clients that want to stay with us month after month and year-after-year. Everything we do, including how we communicate, how we strategize, and how we report on our work, is all about clients for life.
Now, not everyone will stay for life, we get that. Things change, businesses and leadership change. Still, the relationships we have with our clients, some of the people who matter most to our team, are good relationships no matter what.
EOS Impacts Our Agency Structure
EOS has influenced us, in short, in every way! We’ve updated our accountability chart—a system designed to help us see our organization from a bird’s eye view, in terms of who makes up the team—looked at the core values we want to cultivate here and made sure that everyone on our team has “it.”
Our accountability chart has evolved as we have grown, just like our team has. It’s helped clarify key responsibilities and expertise that each seat needs to be successful.
Right People Right Seat (RPRS), an EOS tool meant to help define roles and make sure that each employee is the right person for the organization and in the right position for the business, is SO important. It’s helped us realize that some people, while amazing humans, were not in the right seat, or that as we grew, we didn’t have the seat for them going forward.
Those conversations are tough! Additionally, some of our seats weren’t defined correctly. We had a great person, but they were in the wrong spot.
How Does EOS Impact Client Work?
EOS makes client work better. I’m sure you can see the trend here, that EOS is a great system for helping everyone do and be better. EOS includes setting your one-year, three-year, and 10-year targets. It also includes setting the vision for what the business will look like in those time frames. Once you define the one-year and the three-year vision, you then identify your quarterly ROCKS. Ah, those beautiful, big, lumpy, and challenging rocks.
Rocks are goals you set for 90 days or one quarter of the year. These are larger initiatives that will move the business forward. They can be for bigger decisions, process changes, documentation, software decisions, margin focus, professional development, heck even working on our own marketing initiatives.
The best part is that they are SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-bound) goals, and we check in on them each week.
As an agency, we have company rocks we review weekly, and our team has individual rocks that support their work or professional development goals.
The best part, and this is where clients come in, is we ask them what their key initiatives are for the quarter and the year, and we identify rocks for each client, too. It could be SEO for a new market, enhancements to website functionality, targeting a new geographic area, designing and printing a large catalog, and so on.
When we know where our clients are headed, then we can be certain that the marketing work being done for them is 100% in alignment with all the work their own staff is putting in.
We Have an EOS Implementer
Our team is not doing this alone. We met our EOS Implementer, Barb Reimbold, at a combined Chamber of Commerce event in February 2020. While EOS is something that many businesses do on their own, we needed help.
Major changes often take outside assistance to hold people accountable to that change; We’re grateful to Pivotal Blueprint for the role it’s played in our development and growth.
Yes, many people are successful on their own. Still, others need that coach there to check-in, to call them out when they get off track or miss milestones, and so on. You get the idea. Our agency has benefited from having an EOS coach, and we strongly suggest it to other small businesses seeking direction!
RED66 is a huge supporter of the EOS Process, because we’ve watched it work right in front of our eyes. If you have any questions about what EOS has done for us, feel free to reach out!