052 - Revolutionize Your Business: A Journey Through EOS Transformation

052 - Revolutionize Your Business: A Journey Through EOS Transformation

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Welcome to this episode of Women Powering Ecommerce. Join me every Tuesday as I take you behind the scenes of my journey as a female e-commerce entrepreneur. Together, we'll explore the highs, the lows, inspiring you to take action and achieve your own business goals. So let's get started.

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All right, so I'm super excited about today's topic. One of my main focus this year, and this is EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System. And I wanna share how it impacted our business this year. So, and I'm just super excited because I worked so hard on implementing this and I'm really, really happy with the results. So in general, I just wanna explain how we found focus with EOS. So here it is.

So we implemented EOS starting in January 2023, which like I said, has been really amazing. I took a full year and that was my goal. I came in January, I said, okay, I'm allowing myself a full year to implement this system I've heard about properly and make sure I do it right. And now we just, we have done a full circle, which is amazing. So.

I'll explain to you what it is, but I also wanna explain why we did that. So first of all, I'll explain the why we did it, and you'll understand after why I'm talking about the system. So let me explain our issues first. So I'm sure you'll relate. You have high hopes for the upcoming quarter or year. You're super excited, super motivated with what you've just set for your team or with your team. So you create a set of goals.

to finally only look back at them like two or three times in the year, or you do a little better, you set goals, you actually follow up on them, but they're really like vague goals. So they're not smart goals. That's one thing, or maybe another scenario, you have goals for your company, or you're the only one that's aware about the company's goals. Yeah, been there, done that, all of these scenarios. So when...

All of this happens, what we have is just scattered goals and a total loss or lack of direction. And like I said, that's what I used to do in all of these scenarios. I mean, they're pretty common, right? We, a lot of the time start there, learn from that, and then we move on to better systems. So we have these great goals, and like our intentions are really to get them, make sure they become a reality, but...

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Is that enough? Like aren't written goals and good intentions good enough? And the answer is no. Why? Because running a business comes with daily operational challenges that will push you away from your goals and from what's most important. And I remember days when I started a business and all I would do all day is just take care of emergencies and urgencies here and there. It feels like you're running on a treadmill all day.

putting all kinds of energy, but going absolutely nowhere. So eventually I had enough and I was just looking for a change. So what I did at the time, I don't even remember when this was a few years ago. I Googled the answer to my issues, like the actual question I had and looking for an answer to my issues. I looked for books. I actually read several books, but to be honest, none of them felt really to really fit my needs.

And I read this one of these books was I actually started reading it. Honestly, I never finished it because I realized it was just overkill. But for where we were at, but that book is scaling up. It's an amazing book. It's great. But at the stage we were at, it was overkill for the stage of our business. So I needed something. I realized I needed something much simpler, and that would be easy to implement. But Scaling Up is a really good book, depending on where you are.

in your stage, but I needed something different, a little bit simpler, like I just said. And that's when I found the book, Traction, this book. I mean, actually, I remember that I had already read this book or maybe started reading this book a few years ago. And to be honest, I thought it was one of the most boring books. It was so boring, but you know what?

I guess it's only because I was not there in my journey and I did not see the point and the benefits of actually implementing what it was teaching. So I mean, sometimes that happens. But yeah, so traction. This is a book by Gino Wickman that offers a step to step guide to help businesses run more effectively and efficiently. So it introduces a it introduces simple.

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and practical tools to help leaders and teams improve their company's operations and achieve their goals through what this book calls the Entrepreneurial Operating System, EOS for short. And so in the EOS system, there are six key components. I'm just saying in case some of you have never heard of this.

Maybe you have, which is great. I'd be excited to know how you're doing on it. But for the ones who, it's maybe the first time they hear about this. So EOS really runs on six key components, which are vision, people, data, issues, process, and traction. So at first I was a little skeptical. I've heard many businesses say in the past that they,

ran on EOS. To me, that sounded like a popular business trend only. But then I understood the principles that really drive this method. And I understood that it was built under what it was built. And it really can help you structure your business. And that's what I was looking for, some structure. I had no clue how to do that. So what I did is

Test out the EOS for my SaaS business first and implement it after a simplified version for my e-commerce business to help meet both business needs as to a stage that these businesses are at the moment. Because even for my e-commerce right now, some things I felt didn't really quite fit, which is fine. I mean, it serves as a base and then you can adapt and adjust it as you go to your needs.

So now that we've implemented it, I have to share how it's been transformative. Like I'm sold, at least I'm gonna say for this stage of the company we're at, I think eventually we'll grow out of it, I'm actually sure, but I think for now it's great. So I really wanna share with you what it really helped me with some key takeaways for implementing EOS. Okay, so.

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First thing is clarity of vision. EOS helps in defining a clear business vision and goals. Like I said in the beginning, just too many times it happens that you're not clear on your goals or you set goals and you don't go back to them as much as you should to make sure your focus is really in the right direction. So it really allows you to do that. So, and make sure that your vision is super clear. It really...

really make sure that it happens like that. So another thing is effective goal setting. I learned to set achievable, measurable objectives aligned with my business vision, also known as SMART goals, specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-sensitive, something like that. You know what I mean. All right, so it really helps you make sure you do that. And...

Another thing is prioritization. This is actually a big one. Understanding the importance of prioritizing tasks and focusing on what truly matters, AOS teaches you to set priority goals called rocks. Again, from that jar that where you add rocks, pebbles, and sand, glass and not sand, pebbles and rocks, just to make sure you have the right priorities. So that's one thing.

Another thing is it really helps you become accountable, just your whole team, especially your team leaders, I would say. So EOS encourages a culture of accountability within the team through regular meetings, and we are all accountable for our goals and metrics. This probably sounds very basic, but I'm actually astonished and actually impressed at how many businesses don't have regular.

meetings with their team. Like I've spoken to a lot of business owners and yeah, it's actually a lack. But yeah, regular meetings, but not only regular meetings, the meetings are actually formatted and structured in the way that you really stay accountable, make sure you're focused on your goals in metrics. So talking about metrics, the EOS approach will ask you to analyze a lot more.

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when you're gonna make decisions. So it's mandatory to track and follow a set of North Star KPIs for every department which you add in a scorecard and which you follow up on every week. So it just helps you stay focused and all the while it encourages you to stay simple in what you measure. And I'm gonna make a little confession this year. I think we...

What will change next year, like this upcoming year, I still have to work on those scorecards. I'm just gonna make them more simple. It's so easy to add a bunch of KPIs and numbers in there. And then you just don't know where to look at them. So I prefer to add less, I think, this year than the year we just passed, because I mean, it just becomes overwhelming, and then you don't focus on the right stuff. That's my lesson. Okay, maybe another point is improved communication.

and systemic problem solving. Yes. So the system ensures that everyone is on the same page, which is great. That's already a great win. And done through something called the issue tracking, no, issue solving track, IDS. So it's really in the sense, this little system is to have more effective problem resolution. And the principle behind this is that,

They call it IDS because it stands for Identify, Discuss, and Solve. And by identify, it means not just point out the issues, but make sure you're actually pointing out the root cause of these issues. So it really encourages you to dig deeper than you probably usually would. So when there's an issue, we don't just say, okay, how are we going to solve this? We say, okay, is that the real issue? What could have caused that issue?

and you dig until you find the actual issue. And sometimes what seemed like a technical problem could actually be a human resource problem. So it's very interesting. So maybe one last thing I can share is consistent growth tracking. So when you do EOS, what I found and what I especially loved are the meeting formats, whether it be weekly, quarterly, and annually, you have a little bit of all of those.

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I find that the format of those meetings encourages consistent growth tracking. And it has been one of the biggest game changers I find for me to make sure that we're actually really staying laser focused as much as possible as to where we have to go in our month or year. So that's pretty much it. I hope it helped. EOS has definitely been transformative for us in our businesses.

this year. It's a great system, I would say, for anyone who is looking to structure their company and create accountability to meet their goals. And so yeah, I definitely recommend it. And if you want to give it a go, the first step would be to read that book, Traction from Gino Wickman. That would be my first recommendation. That's what I redo again, if it was to do it all over again, because really...

That book is just like your Bible for the EOS. It's really your guide, your go-to guide. So read that and let me know how it goes. And if you liked today's episode, take a moment to rate, share, subscribe to the podcast if you like what you heard. And again, I value your support in helping other women entrepreneurs in the e-commerce space. Thank you for being part of this journey with me.

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