87Plus Blog

Five years after opening REJUV AVE., a relationship-based medical skincare spa in Fenton, Michigan, Tracy and Scott Aubuchon felt like their company had hit the ceiling. They realized that growing the business would require significant changes, so they began to seek advice from other business owners who had faced similar challenges.

After discovering Gino Wickman's book Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business, Tracy and Scott were convinced that the Entrepreneurial Operating System^® (EOS) tools were exactly what they needed to get their company to the next level. 

Companies running on EOS^® know that articulating and communicating your Core Values is essential to getting the right people in the right seats to help you achieve your vision. That’s because these values define the characteristics that you want every single person in the company to share so you can build the culture you want in your company.

Some teams hit an emotional wall after their first year of implementing EOS^®. Teams that begin with many large issues to resolve can make significant progress in the first year and, because of what is still left to accomplish, feel unsatisfied and a bit discouraged.

Even the most successful entrepreneurs occasionally discover that running a business is more challenging than they expected. If you're a business owner, you may often find yourself dissatisfied by a lack of control over time, the market, or your company. You may have people who don’t listen, understand, or follow through. Or perhaps your profits are flat, preventing you from taking your business to the next level.

In a recent session with a client, several leadership team members mentioned during their check-in that EOS® was “not working.” The Integrator expressed frustration that they were not making enough progress and worried that their investment in the process was not paying off.

Does this gardening incident sound familiar? “My son ran over my rosebush with the lawn mower. I thought for sure it was dead! But to my amazement, it came back stronger and more vibrant than ever.” It seems like most of us have a gardening incident somewhere in our past. Aside from teaching your son to spare the shrubbery, there is a business lesson in this gardening incident, too. It’s about pruning for growth.

It’s arguable that the same vision, hard work, techniques and patience that are required to grow a vibrant garden are also required to grow a vibrant business. Just like gardening, growing a business is a blend of science, art, and practice.

When something good or bad happens, or when we have an idea, we want to share it. When we have a question, we want to ask it. When we are frustrated, we want to vent.

Sharing our news, ideas, questions and frustrations whenever the urge strikes, consumes an incalculable amount of time and human energy, and that matters because many of us say we don’t have enough time to accomplish everything we want to accomplish.

I used to think of an executive assistant as a luxury that only high-powered CEOs in large companies could afford. It seemed silly to pay someone to do something I could do myself, and I figured that it would take more time to explain what I needed than to do it on my own. But as my company grew, I realized that delegation is not a luxury—it's a necessity. 

Ever notice how everyone in a workplace knows who the bad boss is—except the bad boss? If you’re supervising others, and you’re frustrated with their performance, it’s possible that the problem isn’t your team. You could be the not-so-great boss.

Disengaged employees cost the U.S. more than $500 billion in lost productivity annually, and most of that disengagement can be traced back to poor leadership and management. From large corporations to small marketing agencies, the impact of a bad boss can have catastrophic consequences to morale, revenue, and customer satisfaction.

Meetings are often seen as the most useless part of business life, but they don’t have to be.  In fact, meetings can be an important tool for driving your company’s growth, but they have to be run effectively for your team to get value and stop viewing them as a waste of time.