The EO Visionary Voices Podcast

Brent Peterson (00:01.24)
Welcome to this episode of EO Visions. Today I have Brooke Lively. She is the newest author of Scaling Law, Brooke, and so many other things. EOS implementer, CathCap CEO, but Brooke, go ahead, give us a much better introduction for yourself. Tell us your day-to-day role and one of your passions in life.

Brooke Lively (00:22.239)
Can we just start with passion because that's way more fun than anything else. My passion is travel. There is nowhere that I am happier than on an airplane. I...

Brent Peterson (00:26.549)
Absolutely.

Brent Peterson (00:34.414)
Alright, well, join my life.

Brooke Lively (00:38.687)
Well, you know this week I'm I fly to Buffalo today that I do White Plains, New York and then I do Minneapolis and So I'm I'm really lucky that I get to spend a lot of time on the road

Brent Peterson (00:46.284)
Yeah.

Brent Peterson (00:49.836)
Yeah, that's awesome. Good. can't, you know, we moved to Hawaii a couple of years ago and I still make my forum meetings in Minneapolis and I can't say I love the trips to like Florida. I have to go to Florida in February and it's a 13 hour flight. So anyways, we're not here to talk about airlines and yeah, just one comment. Like my son is a developer and I brought him into like a C level meeting with a agency owner and another platform guy.

and we sat and talked about how we're gonna get into like, what is a diet, where are we on our Delta points and how can you get into the sky lounge? And he's like, my God, dad, if this is what like C level life means, I'm never gonna get there. I don't wanna go there.

Brooke Lively (01:34.463)
Well, American Airlines did send me an email about a month ago telling me I was in the top 10 % of travelers out of DFW. I thought that was pretty funny. I'm like, huh.

Brent Peterson (01:42.678)
Wow, that's great. Yeah, absolutely. All right, so Brooke, we're gonna talk a little bit about your new book, but we're also gonna talk about EOS and how you kind of got out of your EO qualifying business. But before we do that, you have volunteered to be part of the Free Joke Project. So I'm just gonna tell you a joke. You just give me a rating eight through 13. So here we go. I took the shell off my racing snail thinking it would make it faster.

If anything, it made it more sluggish.

Brooke Lively (02:14.751)
Okay, so I'm actually gonna give you a 15 on that and I'm gonna tell you why. My high school's mascot was the snail. And yes, we used to yell go go escargot So I just like, I don't know.

Brent Peterson (02:20.014)
Alright.

Brent Peterson (02:27.639)
Okay.

Brent Peterson (02:32.93)
There we go.

Brooke Lively (02:37.171)
That hit close to home. I thought that was pretty good. All right, so now I've got a question for you. Eight to 13? Like, not one to 10, not one to five, not zero to 20?

Brent Peterson (02:39.382)
Yeah, that's great. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, like if editing, if it's a bad, know, really bad, could say, could take, my, my producer can edit out like, Hey, this is one to 10. they can, Hey, you gave me an eight. It sounds still pretty, sounds pretty good.

I should just do a range of 10 to 10. Maybe that would work better. Yes, absolutely.

Brooke Lively (03:03.717)
it. This is just you're just doing selfless plugs here. You are just making sure that you come out looking like a rose, smelling like a rose.

Brent Peterson (03:12.753)
Absolutely, yes. Yes, absolutely. right, so let's dive in here. Where do you want to start? know that you've, tell us a little bit about leaving, what it meant to kind of leave your business and start and go into EOS and do some other fun things like that.

Brooke Lively (03:31.307)
So, CathCap which is my EO qualifying business, is a fractional CFO company. And I think like a lot of people, kind of started it by accident. I don't know about you, but you just kind of fall into some stuff and you're passionate about it. I was passionate about making lawyers more profitable and helping them run like an actual company.

because they run it like a practice. They're taught in law school. You have a practice. So I started this company and I loved it. And I discovered EOS because how are you an EO without everybody pounding on you about EOS, right? I mean, it's everywhere. Everybody's doing it. Everybody's talking about it.

And after a couple of years, I gave in. And it worked really well for us. And at one point, we were looking at our clients. And you could almost divide them into three buckets. There was bucket A.

that would start working with us and have incredible results. Like, just think hockey stick, everything high end to the right. And then there was bucket B, and they were making nice steady progress. Then there was bucket C, which you couldn't even tell they were working with us.

And we're like, what are we doing with bucket A that we're not doing with bucket C? So we're a bunch of data-driven ladies. We started digging. And what we discovered is we were giving them the same strategic financial advice. We were using the same models, the same worksheets. Bucket A was executing, and bucket C wasn't.

Brooke Lively (05:33.117)
I mean, who wins the basketball game? The team that takes the shots or the team that doesn't, right?

Brent Peterson (05:40.395)
Yeah, that's really good, yeah.

Brooke Lively (05:42.359)
So we thought that was interesting. We're like, OK, so this is now out of our control. We can't make them execute. But what is enabling these firms to execute so well? And when we dug down, we found that with the exception of one company, everybody in Bucket A was running on EOS.

That was life changing for us. From that day forward, EOS became our biggest outgoing referral. And because at that time, CathCap worked almost exclusively with law firms. Now it's, you continue to grow and it's industry agnostic.

We'd refer people out and our owners would come back to us, our firm owners would come back saying, I can't find an implementer who will work with a law firm.

Or they don't understand our industry. So when CathCap got to a point where our integrator was really running it and I had nothing to do, she's like, what are you going to do with your time? I'm I don't know. She I think you should be an EOS implementer for lawyers. so that's what I do. I am the only one in the US, maybe the only one in the world.

I only work with law firms.

Brent Peterson (07:16.449)
Yeah, I I think I feel like that's such an EO story too. We did EOS in 2017 and our implementer had a full time business and he slowly worked himself out of a job by be doing more and more EOS. And I just feel like you get so good at it that your talents then allow you to turn over to let go of the vine, right? To turn that over to somebody else and.

and just let it run its course and maybe stay in as a visionary or maybe hire a visionary. I think there's so many possibilities there. Talk a little bit about the execution side because I joined the EO, I was an EOA person in 2014. tell us about that execution and I have some comments back to you on

Brooke Lively (08:03.231)
Well, I mean, what do you want me to say? Executing is better than not executing. As we tell our clients all the time, we can fix almost anything. Take the shot, make the decision. If it's not the right decision, okay, then we'll make another decision. But we make decisions with the best information we have at the time. And you gotta move forward. And if you don't take action,

You're just sitting there.

Brent Peterson (08:35.949)
Yeah, I can say that the one thing that really stood out to me when I went to my first cash day or whatever it was, the learning day that when I got invited for EOA, you go to these little get togethers or talks or whatever, seminars, you end up, generally you end up with leaving with some ideas and some frameworks, never action items. And what really struck out to me was,

I left that day with things that I could do that I could apply to my business. And I think that's what EOS does. It's not just a brain thing that you can sort of conceptually try to attach to your business. It's concrete items that you can do. So give us some ideas or give us some examples even of where you've been able to help people execute.

Brooke Lively (09:27.837)
I think.

Let's really kind of do like a really fast EOS overview for those EO members who have managed to avoid it, which I can't believe for the two or three that exist out there. So EOS believes that there are six key components to every business. And if we can strengthen each of those six key components to 80 % strong, we don't have to be perfect. We don't have to be 100%. That's never going to flip and happen.

Brent Peterson (09:33.825)
Yeah, yeah, go for it.

Brooke Lively (09:58.655)
and just be 80%, four out of five times, if we can get it right, your business will be unstoppable. So it's vision, where are we going? And not just the owner knowing that, but everybody in the company. It's people, getting the right people in the right seats, total Jim Collins thing. It's data, of course, I love this one, because I'm a recovering CFO, so.

I like to make decisions based on data as opposed to gut instinct. And interestingly, the world has changed. It used to be that we didn't have enough data. Now we are really inundated with so much data that you can't see the forest for the trees. The fourth one, the fourth pillar is issues.

We've got to de-stigmatize identifying problems and start to solve the problems. And don't just treat the symptom. I'm from Texas. We say, you just kind of hold it together with bubble gum and bailing wire. I think the rest of the world uses duct tape. But we're Texans, so we've got to be a little different. Don't do that. Don't just kind of.

hold it together and throw it in the corner because it's going to come back at you bigger and worse. So solve it the first time at the root. The next one is process. People don't like it when I talk about process because they're like, my god, they have visions of like that 700 page manual on how to do everything. Yeah, no, not that. What is the 20 % of

The ELS document the 20 % that gets the 80 % done. That's all. And then the last one is really the one you're talking about. The last one is traction. And traction is really about accountability. It's about taking that vision and bringing it down to the ground and executing on it. Gino Wickman, who came up with EOS, says that vision without traction is a hallucination.

Brooke Lively (12:23.525)
So, you know, giving everybody 90 day rocks. This is your project for the next 90 days, and I'm gonna follow up with you every single week to make sure you're doing it. This is your one, two, or three weekly number that you're responsible for driving. And that number contributes to this number.

that contributes to the success of the entire company so people really see how they're integrated in and how that little thing that they may be doing, if they stop doing it, the whole company comes crashing down or crashing to a halt. But it's making the commitment and then holding people accountable and following up on it.

Brent Peterson (13:18.381)
Yeah, that's such a good point. think that most people, well, A, let's talk about EOS a little bit. EOS is really open source, and you can go ahead and do it on your own if you wanted to. But I want to make a point on what you said about connecting all the dots and having your team connect the dots. An Implementer really helps with the team bonding and getting together. I remember when we did it.

our implementer actually told two of the people on our leadership team that they really didn't have a role. And that was hard. That would be hard for a leader to do easier, easier for an implementer. But he said it in a way that they're like, yeah, you're right. I guess we don't, you know, and they, they, they weren't on the leadership team anymore. That those are some of the things that maybe an implementer does would do if you are trying rather than you implementing it yourself. So maybe talk a little bit about why somebody would hire an implementer.

Brooke Lively (14:14.217)
Well, I mean, I am a classic example. I started out self implementing at CathCap CathCap, and we did really well. And then as so often happens, we kind of fell off the wagon. Brent, I don't know, did you just go straight to an implement or did you try to self implement?

Brent Peterson (14:33.995)
we went right to an implementer, which was the best thing we could have done. I think that if we were to self-implement it, we would have been stuck and we would still would have been halfway doing it today.

Brooke Lively (14:36.287)
Yeah, you're smart.

Brooke Lively (14:45.567)
Yeah, so that was kind of what happened. So we fell off the wagon, we re-implemented, it didn't have the same effect the second time. And I got really frustrated and, you know, thank you EO. I had Gino's email address and he had written a quote for the front of one of my books. So I sent him this email, God help me, poor man. If you had printed it out, it probably would have been like 23 pages long.

And he emails back and says, Brooke, it would take me all day just to figure out what's in this email. I'm like, game on, Gino, how much? He's like, ha ha, nice try. Answer these questions and I'm going to give you an implementer. And it was so funny because we talked to this implementer who, by the way, years later we are still using this guy because I like having him moderate our meetings. But.

Brent Peterson (15:13.485)
You

Brooke Lively (15:43.135)
We get on the phone with him and he starts asking about all the tools. We're like, oh, we've got a VTO, we've got this, we've got that, we're all good. We don't need the three foundational days. And the foundational days are focus day, vision building one, and vision building day two, which is really where you define who you are as a company and where you're going. And he's like, okay.

Yeah, sure, let's just start trying it. And we got in there. Brent, we were a disaster. And we had no clue how bad we were. However, it worked for us at the time. We couldn't have afforded him when we self-implemented. I was still an accelerator. by the way, I'm the world's longest accelerator member. I think I was in for five years.

So there is a place for self-implementing. part of it depends upon how disciplined you and your team are. Are you good at short-term projects or are you good at long-term projects? Do you have a mix of those people on your team? We found that having an outside implementer really helped

our accountability because he would come in and say, did you get it done or not done? And you're like, I got everything but this done. He's like, then it's not done. And you're like, but like, I mean, I'm like this close. I mean, I just need to, he was like, yeah, but it's not done. And so you start to get pretty motivated.

Brent Peterson (17:32.299)
Yeah, implementers ask those hard questions too. And I do, I really agree on that accountability part and how they help you to keep your team accountable, to keep yourself accountable. I think the leader, the leadership team, oftentimes it's a slippery slope, but they're the ones who let things go. you gave that example of I'm 99 % done on my rock. You know what? That means I'm done, right?

No, you're not done. If you're not done until you're done, you don't get there until you get there. Yeah.

Brooke Lively (18:05.417)
Maybe the other great thing about having an implementer, well, I think they're two really good things. One of the reasons we still have the same implementer that Gino referred us to, even though I'm an implementer now, I find that it's really hard to moderate a meeting and participate in it at the same time. So I love having that outside person.

And the second thing that the outside person brings is, well.

They don't bring any baggage. They don't have an agenda. They don't have, they're not lobbying for anything in particular. They have no pet projects. It is an outside opinion that can see things really clearly and can call things out and take some of that. accusation

Brooke Lively (19:06.271)
Maybe?

out of some of the issues because it's just an issue to be solved. But when it's your partner saying it, you get a little offended sometimes.

Brent Peterson (19:21.174)
Yeah, it's a lot harder to communicate there, even to talk about a lot of those things. even as we do a retreat in EO and we go off and retreat, when we don't have a facilitator there to help us, it's a much different experience than if you have a facilitator. So I think the same thing applies to EOS. Last topic I kind of want to look at, I was just at the EO Moderator Summit and...

One of the things they talked about was there's a chat GPT for your 5 % updates. A lot of, I have not yet, but yeah, I'm interested in trying it out.

Brooke Lively (19:52.733)
Yes, have you used it? it is, I mean, you are practically doing a deep dive with it to get your, to get your, I mean, it's, yeah, it's awesome. Okay, sorry, go ahead.

Brent Peterson (20:02.699)
Yeah.

Brent Peterson (20:07.693)
Yeah, so I've built a skill out, an EOS skill in Claude. What are the upsides, downsides of using AI to help you implement EOS?

Brooke Lively (20:20.976)
Bye.

Brooke Lively (20:25.147)
I've been around and around on this topic. And I am in certain places, well, when it comes to your VTO, your vision traction organizer, that tracks those eight questions that really define who you are and where you're going, your core values, your core focus, who your ideal client is, the 10-year target in the three-year picture.

I really don't like using AI there. And there are a lot of people who are like, oh, I'll just go to AI and do my core values. OK, I'm sorry. ChatGPT and Claude do not understand you. They don't understand your team. And you sitting there with ChatGPT is not going to get the buy-in of everybody else on your leadership team, because you're going to go do that in a silo.

Now, I do have friends who spend a lot of time on their AI thing. they're like, chat, my GPT knows me and my company almost better than I do. So I think it could do my core values. But I'm going to say no on your VTO until you're at the very end of just polishing things up. Like, if you need a different word.

There you go.

Brent Peterson (21:55.917)
Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I wish I had a bell. I probably have a bell somewhere here, but I agree with you 100%. And you know, one of the things that we did this year, we bought a company or we did last year, I should say, we did this very innovative thing. We bought a company that has human beings that write content for other human beings. I know crazy, right? Can you believe it? Yeah, yeah, yep, yeah.

Brooke Lively (22:16.479)
where did you find this company back in the dark ages somewhere? Time machine?

Brent Peterson (22:22.888)
Yeah, absolutely. Everybody's using pencils. So no, I'm joking. But I think there's a place for humans. There's a place for AI. And I think you're exactly right. Now, we do. I did build a skill out for us that we use to help us in our meetings. But you're 100 % right. You should not be doing your core values by using AI. You should be using your core values, not Chat GPT's core values. Because at the end of the day, and I love this topic, by the way.

Brooke Lively (22:27.561)
Do it. Do it.

Brent Peterson (22:51.5)
At the end of the day, if you ask ChatGPT to do your core values, they are the same core values as the 800 million people that are using ChatGPT. There's nothing unique about that. You can certainly dial it in or help you find it, but the best person to find your core values is you and your company.

Brooke Lively (23:11.679)
That's right. And the problem with using those generic core values is you bring them back into your company and you implement them. You roll them out. These are our core values. But you don't really live them and believe them. So your team sees these are the core values. And this is how the owner and the leadership team act.

And they're not the same thing. So then your core values do nothing but erode trust because you're espousing one thing and doing another. So it can be damaging.

Brent Peterson (23:50.612)
Yeah, and I just I'm so with you. I have to agree with you 100 percent. I don't have to. I am. But I think I think one place that works well and you can train GPT's and what we did is we took our VTO and we trained we trained. We didn't use G. We's Claude. Whatever we we made a skill that it's our our GP our VTO. If somebody has a question about it, they can. It'll reference it and bring it back to you, which is a great way. So thinking about more of a of a

Brooke Lively (24:12.735)
Mm-hmm.

Brent Peterson (24:20.447)
hey, what is our core values? Or give it an employee, like if you have a whole bunch of employees and you have an internal GPT, they can just say, what is our core value anyways? I can't remember, you know? Like this is a central place that you can use as a chat that'll bring back all the things about your company.

Brooke Lively (24:37.989)
this core value. So one of our CathCap core values is live the integrated life. Now the way I do core values is the way they taught me how to do core values in you know EOA so it's the Vern Harnish mission to Mars exercise but if you so I have a phrase

Brent Peterson (24:39.37)
Mm-hmm.

Brooke Lively (25:06.739)
and then I have an explanatory sentence, and then I have a couple of bullet points for each core value. I've had people interviewing that have wanted to drop out because live the integrated life meant something different to them than it does to us. It meant that they were integrating their work into like 23 and a half hours of their day, seven days a week.

And it actually means the exact opposite to us. It is having a life outside of the office and advocating for it. so that would be great to go to your skill and say, I don't get this. I don't understand. Isn't integrated life folding it all together? And your skill could come back and say, no, in our case, it's.

and give some great examples. think that's wonderful.

Brent Peterson (26:07.372)
Yeah, absolutely. Brooke, know, this 15 minutes has gone by like it's been 26. This has been such an enjoyable conversation. As I close out the podcast, though, I give everybody the chance to do a shameless plug about anything they'd like. What would you like to plug today?

Brooke Lively (26:25.567)
All right, so I am going to plug Scaling Law. And Scaling Law is more than just a book. Scaling Law, well, it starts with a book. It is a book published by EOS about how to implement EOS in law firms. It's the only one that's out there. And along with that, I am launching a community also called Scaling Law.

That is a place for law firms that are implementing EOS, whether with an implementer or self-implementing, can come and there's a learning platform to help them hone their skills. We do webinars so that they can learn new things. And of course, there's the community aspect so that they can talk to other people in their practice area or a different practice area.

Everybody speaks the same language. Everybody attacks problems the same way.

Brent Peterson (27:27.244)
Perfect. I'll make sure it's scaling law. I'll make sure we get those in the show notes. And where can they find you? How do they get in contact with Brooke?

Brooke Lively (27:35.721)
I think the easiest way is brooke@scalinglaw.com.

Brent Peterson (27:41.996)
Perfect, Brooke Lively. It's been such a lively conversation. Thank you so much for being here.

Brooke Lively (27:47.561)
Thanks for having me, Brent. I appreciate it.