“Using EOS as part of my entrepreneurial journey is a 10 out of 10,” said Matt Meents, the Founder and CEO of Yardstik, and former Reside Founder and CEO. “Making the decision and then following it has been transformative.”
Meents started his former web development company, Reside, in 2001 and says he and his team tried to “be all the things to all the people.” The timing could not have been worse, according to Meents, because the tech bubble burst in March of ’01 and then September 11 upended the entire economy. Meents was at a crossroads with his business.
In 2007, Reside had been hitting the ceiling for a few years because there were too many priorities, and his team was not “rockin’ in the same direction.” Meents says reading Traction was a lightbulb moment, and he felt that every single word was written just for him.
At first, Meents says he tried to self-implement EOS, but “when you are self-implementing, you have to implement and (also) be a participant. The two things are hard to do when you think about where you want to take your company.”
In 2006, Reside connected to Salesforce.com because the company had experience in customer relationship platforms. One of the most iconic collaborations involved creating an ideas portal to drive innovation for Starbucks using Salesforce as the tool. Starbucks rolled out the portal, managed it, and based on an idea from the portal, the “green drink stopper” that nearly all coffee drinkers identify as part of the Starbucks brand was created and designed.
Rolling off the success of the Starbucks idea portal, Salesforce reached out to Meents’ team for help with the Obama/Biden Transition team to create an ideas portal for the campaign, capturing the issues voters cared about most. At the time, the portal identified that affordable health care and the legalization of marijuana were top issues in the Presidential election race.
Meents says, “If we called on (the President Obama/Biden transition team) as a small firm, we wouldn’t have gotten it.”
Like many companies Running on EOS ™, the Reside team saw day-to-day issues get solved, allowing the team to dream big. By this time, Reside brought in their EOS Implementer®, Mike Paton to implement EOS in 2008.
Wanting his team to experience the EOS Process® uninterrupted, and also aware of the phenomenon of Visionary energy, Meents said he bought a Harley that summer in an attempt to not bring any new ideas to the table for 90 days until the first quarterly.
He says that at first, it felt “like falling off a cliff,” but Paton inserted himself into the areas of the business the team wasn’t talking about and motivated them to address the elephant in the room.
After an emotional quarterly, his team agreed that the company’s focus needed to be primarily on Salesforce. Because of this shift, half the company quit. Despite all the changes, Meents and his newly shaped team stayed focused. They even received an offer from a client for a quarter-million-dollar web project, but knew they needed to turn it down because it did not align with the company’s new vision that was developed during Vision Building®. While it was the right thing to do, at the time it was painful.
After running on EOS for a couple of years, Meents’ company tripled revenue. At this point, Reside’s V/TO® (Vision/Traction Organizer®) proclaimed they wanted to be the best in the world at Salesforce, leading to Salesforce investing in Reside. According to Meents, keeping his organization laser-focused and having the right people in the right seats was key to exponential growth and an eventual successful exit.
In 2012, Reside merged with Magnet360 to become a Salesforce national force to be reckoned with, and scaling continued. Meents says the merger would not have happened if Magnet360 had not adopted the EOS Process® because it created alignment and a shared language.
From 2012 to 2016, Meents and his team grew Magnet360 from $15 million in revenue to $25 million. Then, in 2016, Mindtree acquired Magnet360 for $50 million. Meents stayed with the company until 2019, and by that time, Magnet360 had grown to 500 people with over $50 million in revenue.
Meents’ latest words of wisdom come from his new venture, Yardstik, which helps customers run fewer background checks. In Vision/Traction Organizer® speak, Yardstik’s purpose is reducing people-related risk, and their niche is measurably better background screening. Yardstik’s 3 Uniques™ are meaningful savings, disruptive tech, and transparent partnership.
Out of the gate, Yardstik was Running on EOS. In retrospect, Meents says that he was trying to be both the Visionary and Integrator™ but quickly faced burnout. Once he brought in an Integrator, his business made huge strides. He attributes his former company’s success and his new company’s growth partly to EOS.
“EOS created the foundation and focus for a fantastic exit,” said Meents. “It will help you focus where your lanes are, it will help you understand where the Integrator frees you up and propels the business, but you have to go through the process to get to that,” said Meents.
Meents exited Magnet360 in 2016 for $50 Million.
To learn more about EOS can help with your exit strategy visit: https://www.eosworldwide.com/partnerships
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