The Power House: Client Highlight Interview
The motto at The Power House is “win your life.” Owner Max Lipset and his team of coaches help clients (including Sue) win their lives every day through five main fitness services: group coaching, private coaching, team training, corporate fitness and wellness, and elite athlete training. The gym offers yoga, Pilates, CrossFit and nutritional and health coaching as well. It’s also important to Max and his wife Jill that they create career opportunities for Power House coaches, who give so much motivation and support to the Power House community. In the interview below, Max shares how EOS has been a perfect compliment to the system he and his team use as health and fitness coaches, and how their EOS results have caused the business to win as well.
YESS!: How has EOS helped you, your staff and your clients “win your life?”
ML: “Win your life,” comes from a teammate of mine back when I was playing professional soccer in Seattle. He was from Cameroon and spoke limited English. He once told me, “I have to win my life,” and that really stuck with me. I realized it was possible to win at your whole life and live life by design. That has evolved into setting big goals and celebrating small successes along the way. We help our clients do that when it comes to health and wellness, and EOS helps us do that for our business. EOS has given us the exact tools we use for our health and wellness side to be applied on our business side. These include the to-dos every week to celebrate small successes, and big goals like our Rocks, 1-Year Plan, 3-Year Picture and 10-Year Target. For these reasons, EOS was a natural system for us to adopt. It’s changed what we do here and everyone sees the value in their own coaching already, which benefits our clients, too.
YESS!: What drew you to EOS?
ML: I first met Sue as a client that was training at The Power House. I’d also been given Traction by a different client who was a business owner, so I had some familiarity. Once I began training with Sue she began learning about our business and discussing EOS with me. We were going through many transitions in our business so it was perfect timing. As coaches ourselves, we also knew we needed an outside expert to take us through the process and keep us accountable and prioritized; we knew the value would be much higher than working through the process ourselves.
YESS!: What has been the biggest benefit of EOS on your business?
ML: The EOS tools are so helpful. Having those tools accessible and not needing to create them ourselves has been a huge time-saver. We use the tools how we are supposed to and it eliminates the trial and error; EOS has been a massive short-cut in terms of systematizing our business. Tools like the V/TO and Accountability Chart have allowed us to communicate our vision clearly to the rest of our team and created more accountability, which has been a massive change for us. We recently had a big event called “Win Your Life Day,” and it went so smoothly. I wasn’t running around managing a million details, instead I could focus on leading the panel and giving my presentations throughout the day. EOS has allowed us to create that accountability and buy-in with our team. Our alignment and infrastructure have been impacted enormously, and we used that new infrastructure to pull off a huge event.
YESS!: How has the team come together as a result of EOS?
ML: EOS has caused alignment in our company and allowed us to communicate our Vision through the V/TO, Accountability Chart and quarterly State of the Company meeting. We make a point of talking about our Core Values in our Level 10 Meetings and have people think about how they are living them day-to-day through our processes as a service business. Our Scorecards have also created alignment in our team as people now understand what’s important to the business and how they can contribute.
YESS!: What leadership transitions have taken place since implementing EOS?
ML: My wife and I are the only ones who are still on the leadership team we initially started with. We had five at the first meeting and now have three. There have been a few different iterations of the leadership team; my baby daughter even came to a few of our sessions!
YESS!: How has EOS impacted your people decisions? Can you share an example?
ML: We are using the People Analyzer and 5-5-5 tools regularly which have been really helpful. They are a great way to have a conversation with people that gives them an opportunity to take ownership and opens the door for feedback that’s centered around the importance of the Core Values. We’ve hired five people in the last year and are using the EOS tools as part of that. We’ve created a hiring process that has allowed us to do a much better job of identifying if someone is a “Right Person, Right Seat” before they even begin working here. Our V/TO and Core Values have allowed us to create a hiring process that we feel confident in.
YESS!: How have your profits been impacted?
ML: This is the end of our 4th year of business, and we’re growing really rapidly. That first year we grew 40%, then 30%, last year 25%, and this year is more like 15%. Considering how much growth we’ve had, that’s phenomenal, and we’ve been able to sustain that growth and now build this year. We lost a key person last year but we were able to continue and still have that growth, which I attribute to EOS in a ton of ways. We were able to absorb losing a key person because we had systems. This year we’ve also realized we have a lot of work to do to be able to continue growing. EOS is causing us to set up for future growth.
YESS!: What has surprised you?
ML: When you think you’re clear on your Vision, and then have your Certified EOS Implementer push you to write it down and be concise enough to share it with the world. That’s been more difficult than I anticipated. There have also been constant surprises with people changing seats.
YESS!: How have your meetings improved?
ML: They have improved quite a bit from when we started, and we’ve gotten better at using the tools and sticking to the agenda and format. The follow-through on to-dos and rocks is also so much better from where we started. Our meetings before EOS were so bad, and now people understand the value of that meeting time.
YESS!: How has accountability changed within your organization since EOS?
ML: People are taking so much more ownership. A lot of that comes from our Level 10 Meetings, Rocks, and the transparency around our 1-Year Plan, 3-Year Picture and 10-Year Target. They can see how their to-dos and Rocks line up with the bigger company goals and can buy in. They understand how the Rocks they are putting their extra time into help our business hit those big goals. This was the first quarter when everyone had their own Rocks and it was clear what everyone was working on. It’s been cool to see everyone in the organization running on EOS.
YESS!: What has been the most challenging part of implementing EOS?
ML: Getting clear on the Vision and following the system. We’ve learned that if everyone is accountable no one is accountable, and we’ve had a hard time implementing that because we like to assume it’s going to get executed. For me personally as the Visionary, getting clear on the Vision has also been challenging. The Vision is clear to me, but Sue has helped me see that I need to share it in a way that everyone agrees with and understands. Figuring out what weekly measurables to put on our Scorecard has also taken some time.
YESS!: What EOS tool has been most valuable?
ML: The V/TO has been super impactful because it contains so many tools within it, like the Core Values and Proven Process.
YESS!: What is the most beneficial part of working with an EOS Implementer?
ML: Working with someone who is experienced at growing a business and having them as a resource to help prioritize and do the difficult work has been enormously helpful. Having a neutral party in the room can be very helpful as well. If you’re coaching yourself it’s really easy to work on the things you’re good at and ignore your weaknesses. When you have the benefit of someone coaching you, the process becomes so much less biased of what you need to work on. This is the same when we’re coaching clients on health and wellness. If people think they are doing EOS but are only using some tools or are not working with a Certified EOS Implementer, don’t fool yourself. It’s not the same thing at all. On more occasions that I can count, Sue has said, “it’s not the right time to be focused on that; we need to do this other thing first.” She helps us keep our priorities on track and gives us perspective. If we were self-implementing, we would have said, “We kind of have a V/TO, but we’re going to switch over to this other tool that seems easier.” The work that seems hard is usually the most important stuff, and that prioritization process has been huge.
YESS!: How has your business changed since implementing EOS?
ML: We have more alignment, accountability and transparency in our organization.
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Categories: Client Highlights
