Target Locked: Focus, Align, and Thrive

Episode 265 - Tom Brinson/Todd Westra

 

Todd Westra

Tom Brinson

02:17 All right. Welcome to today's interview. You are gonna absolutely love this discussion because the guest we have on today is, is a practitioner of all the things we talk about in almost every episode we talk about. So I'm gonna leave it there and, and let's jump in. First of all, Tom, tell us who you are and what do you do?

 

02:39 Yeah, so Tom Brinson, I work for a company called Ninety.io in a strategic partnerships role. So in that role, my goal is to help onboard additional value add resellers to our network, um, that go out and actually push our product. Um, with Ninety.io there's something really unique about our business as we're geared towards helping, you know, small and medium sized businesses, you know, really focus, align, and thrive which ties into helping them scale. Obviously that's part of the thrive aspect, so, 

 

03:09 Right. Okay. So, name those three things again?

 

03:12 Focus, align, and thrive?

 

03:13 Love it. Okay. 

 

03:14 Yeah. 

 

03:15 Focus, align, and thrive. Okay. That is perfect. Now, now you, you are, um, do. Closely aligned with, with systems that help entrepreneurs and help small business people kind of accomplish those three things, right? And, and in order to do so, you see growth, you see scaling all around you. I mean, you guys are intertwined with this all day long. Tell me a little bit about like as you watch, these users of your software and these users of the tools that you guys provide. And even within your own organization, there's trends that you see that people hit that immediately put them into a growth and scaling mode. What, what's kind of something that you see as kind of your favorite aspect of that whole growth and scaling mode that companies get into when they're trying to build their business? 

 

04:05 Yeah, so the first thing that's kind of coming to my mind is a concept that we talk about a lot here at Ninety, every business, every company that's ever existed had an operating system of some sort. And if they didn't know what it was or what it was called, I like to call that the accidental operating system. Um, and the companies that I've seen really go to that next level, they kind of follow a similar path where most of them at some point will go, okay, well we figured out a way to make money. Just moving around and breaking stuff and moving fast. Um, let's go take something someone else designed and apply that to our business so that the, like a designed operating system like EOS, like scaling up, like business made simple, like any of these different schools of thought out there. Um, I really think that that's just a stepping stone on the journey. I think that there's a place that they go beyond that designed operating system where they have something that's holistic and integrated, so using terminology that's specific to their industry. Um, married through technology, so information is shared in real time. And that integrated pieces where we really come into play at Ninety, where that all of the information that they're learning through their journey, is all stored into our software. And then everybody in the organization can see it and like I said, it's all in real time too. 

 

05:18 So, so why is it so important? I, I mean, it goes to your second principle you talked about earlier, but why is it so important to have this information available for the whole team to see?

 

05:28 It's all about alignment. You know, if, if everybody knows where we're going, we can all pull the same direction. If there isn't a good alignment throughout the organization, then all of a sudden we start to see dysfunction creep in, and you know, all of a sudden there's people that are having meetings after meetings or whatever. All that little stuff that adds up to big hours and delays, you know. Lunches and everything down the road. Yeah. 

 

05:49 You know, there's nothing worse than that. I, I, um, at one point I had 350 employees in one of my businesses, and we were, we were a call center and a customer service center. And, and I'll never forget when, I went on site to one of my locations. We, we were in four locations. I show up at one of the locations and there was like a, a pre-meeting, uh, with the admins and there was another meeting, and then there was a post meeting and I was like, okay. We just had 60 people in a meeting and then like 40 of 'em stayed for the post meeting. Time's that by three hours. Like, what the crap are we doing guys? That cost me a lot of money to have that stupid meeting. You know what I mean? 

 

06:31 Yeah. I absolutely, I think about the, uh, the entrepreneurs that are earlier in their journey that like, how could they afford that kind of time commitment from their staff? You know? 

 

06:39 No kidding.

 

06:40 Yeah, 

 

06:41 No kidding dude. I totally get it. So, so how does your tool helps align people to, to the mission of the company, right? And, and people call mission and vision, sometimes they interchange 'em, but, but I, I, I happen to be, um, one that thinks they're very different items. Uh, mission being really focused on like an objective and vision, being like, hey, this is where we wanna go. You know what I mean? Well, how do you see those inner working within that alignment of these teams?

 

07:09 Yeah. So most companies that come to us when they start their journey with Ninety, um, they really have to get down to that identity before they can even get into the vision and mission. So like, who are we as an organization?  Um, they have to define their core values. They have to kind of plan out some of their marketing strategy, but then, once they've got that, where are we now? They've got the accountability chart mapped out and all of that, then they can start looking at where we are going? Um, and then the, where are we going, uh, you know, mission, vision, goals. I mean, I think you can kind of tie all of those together. There's gotta be a, a, like, like we talked about, there's gotta be alignment on what that vision is. And, and, and then everybody can start pulling the same direction, um, for vision building exercises. You know, I think organizations really have to go lean on those core values, that corporate identity that they build out. Then they can start to say, okay, let's all see where we're going. And then once they have that vision, they can all start moving, yeah. 

 

08:06 Love it. Love it. I totally agree. So if you're a business out there who's listening and you are thinking, ah, it's just all fluff stuff, you know, like, uh, core values, mission statements, that doesn't really matter. I'm delivering a product to my clients. What do you say to those guys? 

 

08:25 If that's, if that's all they're trying to do, just deliver a product to clients, then I, I, you know, I generally try not to talk to those people. I wanna talk to CEOs that wanna build a great business. If they don't build a great business, then they're probably not a great candidate to work with with Ninety and work with me.

 

08:42 Right, right. I love it. That's such a good answer. And, and you answered two things at once right there. Uh, not only did you answer how to qualify someone who's really serious about growth and scaling, because in my opinion, if you are not completely aligned with your whole team, and they don't know where you're going, the productivity is like, it's so poor.

 

09:02 Yeah,

 

09:03 I, I, I was part of an organization, uh, about a year and a half ago. I went as a Fractional CMO and was helping them kind of nurture and grow their, their whole messaging strategy and things like that. I tell you what, I interviewed all the executive team. I interviewed, um, some of the clients, and I said, how clear are you on what they're trying to deliver to you? And, nobody knew!  Like, it was like, yeah, we're just kinda using their tool. I'm like, yeah. Anyway, it was the most awkward conversation with almost everybody on the team because they didn't have that collective vision where they knew where they were pulled in the company to.

 

09:39 Absolutely. And so I've kind of got a similar story where, um, so before Ninety, I worked at a couple different real tech startups. Um, one of 'em was delivering discount listing services nationwide. One of 'em was delivering transaction coordination services to the agents to help support them. And I'm not gonna name drop, um, because I've got positive things to say about one organization and less than positive things to say about the other

 

10:02 Yeah. Fair enough.

10:03 One, and being, you know, employee number nine. And I brought a lot of the stuff that I was reading with me and I had this awesome leadership team that I was a part of that was super receptive to all these concepts we got really dialed in on, you know, on working on the business. And then the other organization I saw what it felt like when the leadership team wasn't aligned. Um, we spent all of our time, you know, working in the business. We never took a step back to say, where are we? Did a bunch of foolish acquisitions that we thought were bolt-ons, but they were really just like pulling us away from our core focus and seeing those two next to each other, um, was the catalyst for me to join Ninety.io, I I came outta that second experience and I started going through my Rolodex. I knew Ninety, I knew the EOS process, all that , and, uh, I called my friend that I saw I was working here and I said, what do I have to do to get this job and just bang for good . 

 

10:55 Yeah. That's awesome! All right, so, so as you help other businesses with this, and it sounds like you just, I mean, you just listed too with very distinct differences in their approach and how they were, they were their trajectory. What do you see as the biggest challenge that most businesses have in their growth and scaling and what have you seen within your own organization that, that you look at and be like, man, this is, we keep hitting this wall. Like, what is that most common wall that you see? 

 

11:18  I think people are the biggest challenge that most organizations face. Even at Ninety, you know, we are big proponents of eating our own cooking, um, and we still as we scale, and I think this is just a natural progression for any business that's scaling. We grew 93% year over year, and, uh, silos started to form. We headed 60, 60 plus people to our headcount. There's no way that there's not gonna be compartmentalization of information and one of the ways that we really work through that is we make it a big priority to get the team together in person periodically. So, um, probably every other quarter or more frequently if we can. We also have highly structured meetings, weekly meetings where they have, uh, you know, an agenda and we checkboxes. We go through, get everything done, make sure the information's all shared that way, and then we have our own technology where everybody logs all their issues, they log all their to-dos, everything gets put into the platform and then we can all see it. So, um, that I think really helps mitigate the siloing inside our business.

 

12:18 This is so fascinating because, uh, this is, this is something that I see in both businesses that are small and starting up and, and like say sub $1 million, you see the same problems in these a hundred plus million dollar a year companies where it's, it's really becomes the siloing issue. You know, I interviewed a company the other day and they said, um, I was talking to the leaders of the marketing department and they were like, yeah, you know what? We are completely isolated from our sales team. I mean, all they do is complaining about the leads we're sending and we're generating awesome leads. We're getting feedback from the ground and, and we know what people wanna have in our product. And then the product team has their own little silo that's like developing stuff that neither the sales or the marketing team even understand was happening. I mean, how do you help people solve that problem? 

 

13:08 Uh, I mean that's, that's an easy case for, you know, you know, product forward. You know, product forward selling is if the product is developed. In line with what the salespeople's clients are asking, and then we're using the product as a way to lead in. I think that's the big one. I also, you know, my experience, in my opinion, has been that, you know, organizations that use the revenue operations model, where all of the Rev ops teams are reporting to the same three metrics to the same person. I think that cleans a lot of it up because I think you're spot on. Marketing people, in my experience, tend to be a little bit more like due diligence and fact finding and like, I gotta know all the answers before I can move forward at all. And salespeople tend to be a lot more on the quick start side where they're just like, just, yep. Fire, fire, fire, and then aim later. Um, so there's a natural conflict between those two teams. Um, but having one boss that they all report to and having like, let's say three scorecard metrics that they're all responsible for. I'm gonna include CS in this too. Um,

 

14:07 I love that. Yeah. 

 

14:08 Those are our three numbers. We gotta hit 'em or we don't get our money, we don't get our bonus, you know, and it pulls people together cuz they have that aligned goal.

 

14:14 I love that. Yeah. Now aligning those three teams is probably one of the biggest challenges in, in any organization, even in little business, you know, I, I've seen it happen where, um, I mean, in my own, I, when I was in my twenties, I had a, I had a we had a great little business and we were doing the same thing. We kept hitting certain, uh, metrics we were growing and, and whenever we get into this range, I think at the time it was like a seven to 8 million range. We were less profitable than we were at 5 to 6 million. And, and we thought, oh, we really wanna be in like the 20 million range. We, everytime we grow and scale our efficiencies went down and, and so our goals were split off because we now had this customer service director. We had different roles that we didn't know how to operate in, and we just weren't good at operating in a bigger silo. Well, we got siloed and, and that's where we kind of fell apart in our quality control. And so we were more profitable with smaller. What do you tell people? I mean, growth isn't something for everybody. As you look at certain vertical types, what do you see are the; are the primary signs that, Hey, you know what, you could probably scale this thing, or, you know what, just keep this boutique. What are your thoughts on that? 

 

15:31  That's a great question. Um, You know, I think the product itself determines a lot of the scalability, at least in my experience, like with a software product easily scaled with a, you know, like a landscaper, you know, you're gonna have a lot harder scaling up to, you know, whatever, 10,000 customers, right? Because you just, you, you have to go buy equipment, you have to bring on people overhead. I just think that certain verticals are probably easier to scale, um, because they're, the, the product costs are, uh, they're, they're static as you continue to grow, 

software is probably the biggest one for me. You know, it just, it just clicks because we can build our product once and we can sell it as many times as people are willing to buy it. 

 

16:12 It is cool. 

 

16:13 Yeah, 

 

16:14 I think, I think every service provider gets jealous of software guys cuz it is so replicable and it's so, so simple that way. But, uh, very cool stuff. So, so as you are looking around in your like sphere of, of people that you know, I guess when you're in your network and you look around and you're getting really frustrated with, with your company, you're getting really frustrated with like a, uh, something that keeps hitting, hitting you guys in your ability to grow and scale. Is there someone that you look at in your network that you think, oh man, that guy just inspired me. Or that, that woman just inspired my ability to, to keep moving forward and kind of work around this problem to grow and scale. 

 

16:54 Yeah, I mean, I've got some really, really incredible partners, um, that have really taught me a lot of different things. Uh, a couple that comes to the front of my mind. Um, I've got a friend of mine, Kyle Christensen, who's with K7 Consulting, uh, Pinnacle Business Guide, uh, former EOS that I've leveraged, you know, his insights in a number of different ways. I bounce ideas off him all the time. Another fellow that I'm thinking of, a guy here, local in town named John Gross, who's an active EOS Implementer that I've been able to leverage his insights on a regular basis.

 

17:27 Cool. 

 

17:28 We've done a lot of, you know, marketing kind of stuff where we're supporting each other and he's in my, you know, Vistage TA group now, and so like, those two and then I, I could probably list off 10 more. Um, I know I've always got sounding board for any of the ideas that I wanna pursue and people that I can trust sharing information. Probably don't wanna broadcast too publicly about some of the inner workings and strategy, but, um, yeah, just, you know, skilled advisors in my corner, you know, it, it, it's huge. Yeah.

 

17:54  Right. That's awesome, dude. I love it. I love it. Well, well, how do people learn more about your tool, about you personally? Like, what's a good way for people to reach out and, and kind of get familiar with what's going on in your world.

 

18:08 Yeah. So the best way to connect with me individually, it would be LinkedIn. Um, you know, it's my primary channel to meet new partners. Yeah, so I'm on there quite a bit. Uh, as far as learning about, uh, Ninety, you know, you would just go to our, our, our marketing website, Ninety.io, um, start a free trial if you want. Um, we do offer free demos. All the, all the good stuff you would expect, um, for that introduction. So, yeah. 

 

18:31 Well, I know I'm gonna use it. I, I, I am, uh, dying to do a demo with you. Check this thing. I'm a, I'm a really passionate guy about growth and scaling and, and systems. I love systems and so if you can have, if you have a way that helps companies grow and scale with systems and accountability and all the other pieces that you need, uh, it sounds like the right tool to me. So, I'm excited to dig into it and check it out. 

 

18:55  I love the endorsement and I, I, I would love to give you a demo personally. So..

 

19:00 I'm, I'm excited for it. Well, listen, I appreciate you being on the show today and, uh, I, I am so grateful for all of you listening in, and I hope that you learned some things today that will help you know what it takes to scale your business.Thanks so much for being here today, Tom. 

19:15 Awesome. Thanks Todd. Appreciate you having me.