Matthew Michael and Nick Rios opened their Macon, Georgia, marketing consultancy, M&R Marketing, in 2008. Initially, the pair, who’d known each other since high school, handled everything. However, they realized they needed to add talent at a brisk-but-not-blazing pace and provide those hires with a productive work environment. Before long, things got complicated.
“We were at a point where if we didn’t put some structure in place, things were going to get messy, fall through the cracks,” Matthew explained.
Vision
That’s when the duo turned to Certified EOS Implementer®, Rob Betzel. Rob was a former client of M&R and had offered Matthew some advice when they’d served on a board together.
Because of this history and Rob’s own entrepreneurial journey, Matthew and Nick felt confident Rob understood their creative agency and how to manage its anticipated expansions. Rob guided both Nick and Matthew through the EOS Process® and how to get started running their company on EOS.
As the leaders began their journey to Running on EOS™, Matthew read Rocket Fuel. He realized Nick was a natural Visionary with big ideas and that he was more suited to serve as the Integrator, transforming big ideas into reality.
Part of the Integrator role meant Matthew needed to run meetings. The problem? Matthew hated meetings. He found them long, boring, and usually pointless.
“I was very anti-meeting, and Rob was like, ‘Just trust me. It’s not going to take more time,’” Matthew recalled.
Rob introduced the leaders to the weekly Level 10 Meeting™ Agenda. Rob helped Matthew see how, when done correctly, are actually a time management tool. Matthew saw the EOS Implementer was right.
“It’s just completely killed the ‘Gotta minute?’ meetings,” Matthew said, noting those discussions always took longer than a minute.
The Level 10 Meetings went so well that the leaders decided to include everyone, not just the leadership team, in using more efficient meeting times. The biggest challenge lay in setting and tracking Rocks, or quarterly priorities, as part of the Level 10 Meetings.
Traction®
Matthew now believes establishing and tracking Rocks around long- and short-term goals plays an important role in the company’s growth. Yet, Rocks, along with longer-term planning, weren’t always embraced.
“It’s very structured, and this place is a house of creatives,” Matthew said. “ We have developers, designers, and writers, who are not usually structured folks.”
Through time, the team began to understand how Rocks and Level 10 Meetings contribute to the company’s growth.
“We’ve realized that if we build good Rocks, the right Rocks, they are just as valuable as billable production hours,” Matthew said.
Healthy
Today, M&R Marketing has steadily increased its headcount to 24 current employees. Business is good—so good that the company plans to expand into secondary markets.
Additionally, Nick and Matthew want to delegate their daily responsibilities fully. This will allow each of them to focus exclusively on their Visionary and Integrator roles to keep M&R Marketing competitive and growing. Such an option is only possible because of the changes since the company began Running on EOS.
“EOS really just gives you the framework and clarity to make good decisions,” Matthew said. “And that really helps take the guesswork out of what we’re doing. Because so much of what we do as entrepreneurs is kind of fly-by-the-seat, and it’ll work out… maybe.”
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