Introducing Impact Moments: A Podcast for the EOS Community

Mark Abbott

[0:00:06]

Hello, Christine. Hello, Kris.

Kris Snyder

[0:00:10]

Hey, Mark.

Mark Abbott

[0:00:11]

How you doing?

Kris Snyder

[0:00:15]

Well, one of us has to go, Christine.

Christine Watts

[0:00:17]

So I know

Mark Abbott

[0:00:20]

that's the fun part about doing a three person podcast, right? You got to figure out how to, how to handle the quiet moments.

Christine Watts

[0:00:30]

I know Krisand I are finding our rhythm for sure.

Kris Snyder

[0:00:34]

And I, and I, I'm always cognizant that I'm an extrovert and I suck the oxygen out of the room, so I'm trying to make sure I make space. That's why I don't think you're always

Mark Abbott

[0:00:44]

sucking the oxygen out of the room. But I do appreciate the self deprecating humor. So. Hey, listen guys, this is, this is fun. So you know, Chris, you and I have done a founders framework podcast before, correct?

Kris Snyder

[0:00:58]

Yeah, it had six views, but. But I'm hoping for eight or ten sometime soon, Mark, so we'll see.

Mark Abbott

[0:01:06]

Well, well, maybe you guys can, you know, help us, you know, get some more views out of there. And yeah, this is a call back.

Christine Watts

[0:01:12]

People are going to go watch that content now.

Kris Snyder

[0:01:15]

Yeah, yeah.

Mark Abbott

[0:01:16]

And then, and then. So Christine, this is your first time, right?

Christine Watts

[0:01:19]

Yeah, it is.

Kris Snyder

[0:01:20]

Yeah.

Mark Abbott

[0:01:21]

So let me do a quick introduction. So, you know, we, we affectionately like to say Christine is full time employee number one. And I think Christine it is, I want to say, plus or minus. Like it's almost like January 1st of 2017. Is that about right?

Christine Watts

[0:01:39]

Yeah, I was. Because there's the whole trend right now going on of 2016, verse, 2026. And so Justine had slacked and asked like, do we have any pictures? And so I told her I did the thing where I got the job like end of November, like around Thanksgiving. And I took December off for the holidays and just started like right at the beginning of the year. So I didn't have any 2016 pictures because of that, but I did text Iban, one of our first developers.

Mark Abbott

[0:02:06]

Yeah.

Christine Watts

[0:02:07]

And he sent me a few good ones of him and Sven and was sharing all this stuff that he's living in Bangkok now and like just, you know, got married last year, so it was a fun little catch up moment too.

Mark Abbott

[0:02:19]

Oh, that's very cool.

Christine Watts

[0:02:20]

Yeah.

Mark Abbott

[0:02:21]

Yeah. And then, and as, as full time employee number one, you were originally, I think Benj focused mostly on helping us with marketing. But I think almost from the very beginning it was marketing, customer success, managing, you know, the engineers trying to keep me from overwhelming everybody with new product ideas and more.

Christine Watts

[0:02:49]

Yeah, I, I mean, literally, because I was just looking through my phone at these pictures. I have screenshots of the two Job descriptions were like a director of customer success and a director of marketing. Which is like hilarious from a title perspective because literally nobody worked here to direct. But it made it feel very official, like I was joining a real thing.

Mark Abbott

[0:03:13]

Well, then, then, then, then the reality is we are in your 10th year, so you get that. You know, our famous 10th anniversary gift, which we've only given out once. So, so, so you're in year number 10, which is, which is super cool. And then Chris, your, you started. I want to, I know we became fast friends in, I want to say 18.

Kris Snyder

[0:03:39]

Yeah, 18. We fast friends. Investor advisor. And 19. And then technically January 1st of 2020 is when I joined.

Mark Abbott

[0:03:48]

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it's eight years ish is what you like to say. So Christine and I got 10 years ish and you. And I got eight years ish. And it's been a hell of a ride. Yeah, it's been a hell of a ride. And so one of the reasons we're doing this, this, this podcast today is that we're here to introduce a new channel and, and a new segment on the new channel, right? So the new channel is 90x EOS and that's all things related to how we support the EOS community, right? Companies that are running on EOs, the implementers, partners that we work with across sort of the EOS ecosystem and probably more so you'll, you guys will share, share more on that as well as it'll be a place where, you know, we will also post, you know, testimonials and, and product updates that related to 90io. You know, our, our software offering that's, that's serves the, serving the US community as well as, you know, you know, probably explainer videos and a bunch of different things, but we're super excited to launch that channel. And then, you know, Founders Framework is really, you know, going to be the place where, you know, I focus on having conversations with and about, you know, the founder's journey and really, you know, sort of focusing on founders across all these different stages of development that we talk about. Whereas, you know, for the most part, you guys are going to be dealing with, you know, sort of companies that are focusing on execution, right? You got a leadership team. You know, it's been, I hate to say it, but we talk about this all the time on Founders Framework, right? It's, it's, you know, it's been cobbled together as best as the, you know, either the, either the founder can, or the entrepreneur can or the business owner can. But, you know, it's certainly not running on all eight cylinders because if it were, they probably wouldn't reach out, you know, to try to take advantage of an operating system like eos. And so it's really more about, you know, focusing on sort of those, those companies have got to the place where execution is now like pretty darn important and they're feeling the needs to take their game to the next level. Is that kind of fair?

Kris Snyder

[0:06:28]

Yeah, I think it's very fair. And there's a lot of overlap. I don't think we're pretending that between Founders Framework and what we're doing on Impact moments and the 90x EOS channel, there's not going to be overlap. I think they are synergistic in their nature, but not devices at all. Right. But we are still trying to give people a place to go that they relate to the most. And I think that hopefully people will find both channels useful and sometimes more specific to one to the other.

Mark Abbott

[0:06:58]

So.

Kris Snyder

[0:06:58]

Cool.

Mark Abbott

[0:06:59]

So tell us about Impact Moments.

Kris Snyder

[0:07:04]

Well, Christy, I'll go first and you'll clean me up. You'll clean up after I do it.

Christine Watts

[0:07:08]

That's great.

Kris Snyder

[0:07:09]

Yeah. So, Mark, you probably had this too. As you know, when you were doing your coaching work that you're in a session, you're working with a client, right? And you're, whether you're doing the initial implementation work or you're doing a quarterly or an annual, you're working on something. And that, that thing, you just keep turning it over and over again, right? And so at some moment in time there's an aha and it lands in the room like it lands. And everyone's like, oh, that's it. Like, that's the thing that we were looking for, solving for, trying to create. And for me, I started to write that as an impact moment and I literally would hang a, you know, hang a yellow piece of paper in the room, right? And I'd write impact moment on it. And I'm like, team, I don't know if we're going to find them today, but if we do, we're going to recognize them because it's special. And that impact moment, when it happens, we're going to decide what to do with it. It might live on a compartment, like a swat, or it's going to live on a long term or it's going to live in the vto. But we don't want to walk by it because often what I found is when we didn't name it, like important things have names, then we'd walk by It. And if it's real, then we want to call it what it is, and then we want to share it with the people that need to know. And often that's the internal team. Sometimes it is external, too. We're going to call it that thing. So you've heard inside the US Community, we call them nuggets. They call them a variety of things, but I just started calling them impact moments, and that just carried for me and so started to take that thought of, like, it's one of the most valuable moments that you have inside the work that you're doing. Most of the time when I'm involved, it's in a quarterly, but sometimes it happens in the weekly meeting, too. Like, you feel the differentiation being made in the moment. Let's capture it. Let's not, you know, lose it. So that was the thought as Christine and I started to collaborate around. Like we said, I think in the channel, this is eight years in the making because we've been talking about doing something like this, Mark, for a long time with 18,000 clients and all the coaching work and all the experiences and all just wanting to share and find the vehicle to share those things out to everyone else and find the scale in that. So, Christine, you can. You can help me out there if I. You clean it up a little bit or be more specific.

Christine Watts

[0:09:19]

No, I think that's a good setup. And even talking about the overlap between, like, what we're both doing, like, I think we're really focused on, too, is like, telling our customer stories and, like, a great example of an impact moment that somebody shared as they were in a quarterly. And they had this realization after all of the struggle and turmoil of the quarter, that they needed to let go of, like, an entire team because of a culture issue. And so, like, that was really interesting because this person is talking about something, like, all of these little moments that led up to the big thing and then the impact and the kind of cascade and ripple effect that happened after that, and the leadership team really having to, like, all come together and, like, support this one team because there was such a void until they could go and rehire for that. And so exploring some of those, like, those hard things that people sit in for and however long they sit in that before they get to that point has been really cool to hear from different leaders and entrepreneurs.

Kris Snyder

[0:10:17]

Yeah, that was one of my clients, Mark. And we, you know, IDs on it accordingly. And I'm like, what do you want to do about it? They couldn't, because they literally. The choice was fire the whole team. Right. Or figure out how to, like, instrument down. And the next time I. We had a quarterly, they had let them all go. It was a whole technical support team, and all the leaders had to go sit in those seats while they figured it out. But they were not going to, like, let that linger because it was so bad. From a culture perspective.

Mark Abbott

[0:10:43]

Yeah. You know, and it's interesting, speaking of, of culture, you know, I have a book that I'm pretty close to being done with that is tentatively titled a Founder's Note, Notes on Culture. And it really talks about sort of the whole journey to building a culture that ultimately, you know, will survive and, and, and persevere even with leadership changes.

Kris Snyder

[0:11:14]

Right.

Mark Abbott

[0:11:14]

That's a great company. When that culture is something that, you know, can, can, can persist, you know, after, you know, once, once the founders had it handed off to, to a new CEO and a new CEO is handed to another CEO, you know, those are the great companies. And, and part of. There's a whole chapter in here, Chris, and it's, it kind of, you know, you get, you get a lot of credit for the chapter. And it's about, you know, storytelling, right? And that, you know, we have, we, you know, great cultures have hard artifacts and rituals and stories and, and sort of guiding guideposts, right, that make sure that, you know, we all stay true to the culture because, you know, the culture, you know, deep down, is what attracts and retains, you know, your great talent. And so these stories, you know, they, you know, they need to be, they need to be recorded, right? And so the fact that you guys are doing, you know, really helping people sort of identify those stories, those impact moments, right? And sometimes they're going to be wins, and sometimes they're going to be learns, as you would say. But, you know, they really, you know, the great ones really help crystallize, you know, stories that support the, you know, the essence of, of a company's culture. And so I love the idea of not just, you know, in sessions, but, you know, but having people think about, hey, this is an impact moment. Right? And this probably is something that should be part of our story as a company.

Kris Snyder

[0:12:49]

Yeah. And it's hard. And you go back to your founders moments, right? Like, there's gonna be moments where you're trying to decide, should I be this brave? Should I be this bold? Am I, am I crazy to think I would fire the whole team? But when you hear that others have come before you and stand alongside you and they did these things too, hopefully that encourages them to take that next step, that's a hard step. It's a, It's a real step. It's struggling. Right. But sharing those stories, they're. They're not alone.

Mark Abbott

[0:13:16]

Yeah.

Kris Snyder

[0:13:17]

And business building, it's an art. It's a science. We think about stages.

Mark Abbott

[0:13:22]

Right.

Kris Snyder

[0:13:23]

Like, but all that they are, patterns are going to repeat. And so when you get to that next thing that you're trying to figure out, is it the right thing? And you have a bunch of other stories you can look at and say, maybe if I look at that, I can understand not just what they did in the moment they did it, but how was the outcome.

Mark Abbott

[0:13:37]

Right.

Kris Snyder

[0:13:37]

And if I can relate to the outcome, then I can be courageous enough to go in and do that hard thing next. Right. To sometimes invest to the unknown. We have the hypothesis testable theory tends a trend. All those things like, we don't know yet, but we won't know if we don't go do. And sometimes that's what you have to do next. Yeah.

Mark Abbott

[0:13:57]

And I'm sure, you know, you know, over the years to come, as you're doing these, these, these podcasts, you know, it'll be really interesting. I'm just thinking, AI right now, right to do. Let's just say, you know, you have 50. You know, you're in 50, you know, right now I think we're almost at. For Founders Framework podcasts, but, you know, you're in, you have 50 of these episodes and now, you know, you download them all. And what are some of these, you know, core stories that you just consistently hearing about? Right. Like, you know, one that comes to mind when you're thinking about, you know, you're firing a whole team is, you know, a conversation I've had, you know, dozens of times, which is, you know, I am not aware of very many people who fired someone and they've ended up regretting it. Right. It's like as soon as you're like, oh, right. And you start to go down that path where I think this person just, you know, whether it's a competency issue or a cultural issue or a commitment issue or a capacity issue, whatever it is. Right. You know that those are, those are, those are stories that you have to hear a bunch of times before you're like, okay, yeah, I need to do this. Right. You give them the, the stories, help that, you know, that leader navigate that moment with confidence.

Christine Watts

[0:15:14]

Yeah. I think one of my favorite parts of the podcast is at the end when I get to ask, like, what somebody's biggest fuck up is like what do you look back on and think like this was one of my biggest mistakes. And it's always related back or I think most of the time at least like to the impact that they have on another person. And so much of it comes back to that people conversation where it's like we both could have been happier sooner had we made a harder decision early on.

Mark Abbott

[0:15:40]

Yeah.

Kris Snyder

[0:15:42]

And we are. So we're taking the podcast and we're doing a blog for each one. So we, mark, we are breaking down the transcript and we're creating a blog in case people don't want to watch. And you know, Christine, the half hour hour or whatever we're doing and then we are putting that inside the newsletter as well. So we're trying to give a couple different vehicles for people to engage on it. And also then part of what we're going to start to do is there's testimonials inside these podcasts when they say really good things about a topic.

Mark Abbott

[0:16:11]

Right.

Kris Snyder

[0:16:11]

And hopefully 90s in that topic most of the time it is so far. But then we're going to put those Testimonials in a 90 second 2 minute clip so if you don't want to like break down all the, all the dialogue, you can go see something. So we're really optimistic as we create those bite sizes. Not quite TikTok, but something like that. Right. That people can just engage with.

Mark Abbott

[0:16:33]

Yeah, no, I'm excited for it and you know, it's, it, it, you know, you guys, you know we, we came up with a, I think we had, we had, we, we had the Founders Framework podcast first, then we had the Founders Framework newsletter and, and now you guys got the, the, the, the Impact Moments newsletter. Or Is it a 90x EOS newsletter?

Kris Snyder

[0:16:56]

It's a 90x EOS. Yeah. That's. The podcast is the only like impact moments bit. But the channel is still the channel and everything else is kind of feeding into that.

Mark Abbott

[0:17:04]

Yeah. And what was, you know, what I love about sort of like we got similar things going on and we're learning from both of them, you know, and, and I don't know if it's, you know, it'll, it'll be interesting to see how things go. But in the newsletter that came out Most recently for 90 Xeos, I think the podcast was, you know, front and center on it.

Kris Snyder

[0:17:32]

Right.

Mark Abbott

[0:17:32]

The first thing. And my gut is that did. That was good for, it was nice for also getting people to go check out the podcast because it's not front and center at all on. On our new on the Founders Framework newsletter. And I'm like, huh, that seems smarter than what we did.

Kris Snyder

[0:17:50]

Well, and in fairness, I joked that we had eight views on the podcast that you and I did for founders. It's 179, but the first podcast that with a client, I think it's over 300 views and climbing. And I think some of that is the promotion right from the newsletter and putting it in the right place. So it's not that the content is not compelling. It's like we also have to be really good about how we promote that to people to see it.

Mark Abbott

[0:18:12]

Well, and the other thing is that the newsletter, I think it's almost 50,000 subscribers now, which is awesome, right? I mean, from the very beginning, right. So, so, you know, so props to you guys on, on, on, on doing that. So, yeah, getting in front of 50,000 people, putting it up, you know, up front, I think, you know, because ultimately, you know, you know, our job here is, you know, specifically is, you know, to help companies running on eos just, you know, you know, like I like to say, get bigger, stronger, faster with a lot more confidence and competence and, and to do it comprehensively ultimately. Like, because we believe eos, you know, is, is super powerful when it's cascaded down and throughout the organization. And, you know, it's. Over the years, we've kind of wondered why, you know, what we could do to make that, you know, more prevalent, right, to have more and more companies really see the power of cascading it all the way down and across the organization. Because it seems as if, you know, there are a whole host of reasons why it doesn't happen a lot, including like we like to call tech stack anarchy, which is, you know, somehow or another people. Well, I don't want to have a project management tool and be using, you know, a tool like 90. Obviously, we're addressing that with integrations, but really, you know, helping people understand that, you know, when everybody's on the same page, marching at the same pace, going after the same, you know, same goals and understanding why you do the things you do is, you know, the, the companies are just, they're healthier, they're better performing and, and, and, and, and, and they go farther, faster.

Christine Watts

[0:19:58]

Yeah. I think something we haven't gotten to yet, but to that point is I'm really excited to start building a community and connecting more people around this stuff too, because, Because I think a lot of people, to your point, don't realize what they can do and what happens when they do start going to departments and beyond the leadership team and even just like from some of the work I've been doing lately, like I led a office hours group last week and There was probably 10ish people there and they were asking some questions as a follow up from the annual planning webinar. And there was somebody that asked specifically about driving accountability and making sure that things are actually happening from when they set their one year goal. And so I gave my 90 answer but then I looked to everybody else there and I said this is a question that comes up all the time. What somebody else share. What are you doing to help answer this too? And so the conversation that happens during that is really cool and I'm excited to take some of what we're doing on the impact moment side and also drive that back to users and people that are experiencing the same thing and let everyone talk and really learn from each other in that way.

Mark Abbott

[0:21:11]

Yeah. And I think, you know, I didn't mention this, you know, but you know, Krisand I are delighted to share that, you know, Christine's heading up a new part of our organization which we call Pro Serve or Pro Services. Which one is it? Pro Server or Pro Services?

Christine Watts

[0:21:26]

I don't know, I think I write Pro Service. I don't know. That's awesome.

Mark Abbott

[0:21:33]

I'm going to call it Pro Serve for right now. Yeah, I like Pro Serve better. But you know that, you know, your team is, is, is now helping, you know, tens of companies, you know, you know, confidently and competently start to cascade EOs down and because a lot of, you know, a lot of people whether, whether they're self implemented or they had an implementer. Right. Both, both groups, obviously the self implementers are even, you know, more obvious. Right. But, but both groups are like, you know, could you give us a little help in, in sort of figuring out how to cascade or Chris, what do they call it? Roll out EOs, you know, across the organization. And so, you know, we're delighted to have Chris, Christine leading a team now that's doing this, as I said, for you know, dozens of companies and, and not to, not to be punny but you know, we know it's having an impact.

Christine Watts

[0:22:35]

Yeah.

Kris Snyder

[0:22:36]

And for those, you know, playing along at home, it is professional services, if you Google it so 90io professional services. That'll take you to the page. So yes, I think proserve is a, is a fun thing to say but just in case they're, you know, in case you're looking for it, it is professional services.

Mark Abbott

[0:22:52]

We appreciate you Making sure people know where to go Kris.

Kris Snyder

[0:22:55]

Well, Mark, we, we, we have some impact to make there.

Mark Abbott

[0:23:02]

So what else should we talk about, guys? So everybody, you know, so you know, everybody knows to go check out the, the new channel. Number one, you have a sense for the content that's going to be on it. You have a sense for the, the, the, the new podcast that's on there, which is obviously impact moments. What else guys? Is there anything else we should share with the, the six people that watched Chris's earlier video?

Kris Snyder

[0:23:30]

Well, I, I do think the partners, right are, it's really important to us this year. Like we're, we've been very partner friendly, partner centric, like just being in the community, helping those that we can. But this year we're really going to try to bring that into both that channel of 90 Xeos, but also the podcast and start to really highlight it. And you'll, for those of that go to the EOS conference. You'll see that like we're trying to rally the partners because it does take a village, it takes an ecosystem, it takes a community to deliver and we want to be more centric to that this time around. So you'll start to see that in some of our channels that we're putting out there and how we bring those partners to life.

Christine Watts

[0:24:12]

Yeah.

Mark Abbott

[0:24:12]

And we need to stand up a partner page on the website. I've been saying this for a long time and you know, just to celebrate them and to celebrate our relationship and so hopefully we can get something like that stood up in the not too distant future because yeah, I mean, you know, would us conference is now, what about four months away? And you know, we've been there for all but one. We won't say, you know, we were, we were uninvited one time back when they were trying to compete with us on the software front. That's gone, so we don't have that issue anymore. But we were uninvited for once. But we've been in there for all the other ones and it's great to go there because there's probably, I don't know, off the top of your head what the list of partners that we got. Great relationships. Oh gosh, 20ish.

Kris Snyder

[0:25:04]

Yeah, I mean I, I would just do a percentage. I think it's 90% plus. And what we're doing is aligning. And so you'll see like at each booth we're calling out the partner system. Right. And there'll be a placard for all of us that have gathered Together to go, we're going to go take care of this ecosystem together.

Mark Abbott

[0:25:21]

Yeah.

Kris Snyder

[0:25:21]

And we're excited about that.

Mark Abbott

[0:25:22]

Yeah, very much so.

Kris Snyder

[0:25:25]

And it's, it's and eos. Mark, you know this because you've been here longer than I have. We always talk about abundance minded. Right. Like there's enough for everybody. But unfortunately, as the, you know, communities expanded, that mindset has not happened the same way. So we are only like really trying to help those that still believe. Right. They're not scarcity minded. They're, they're really going to enter into this equation and work together. So we won't have a hundred percent of the partners involved because unfortunately there's still some of those that will try to stand alone and that's, that's their choice.

Mark Abbott

[0:25:57]

Yeah, yeah. But you know, what's the old expression, you know, you can go fast if you're by yourself, but you can go far if you're with others. Yeah, yeah.

Kris Snyder

[0:26:07]

And that's where we're going far.

Mark Abbott

[0:26:09]

Absolutely. It's the infinite game, right bud?

Kris Snyder

[0:26:12]

Yeah, that's right. Will or resource? You stop playing the game when you run out of the will or the resource. And we got both.

Mark Abbott

[0:26:20]

What else? Is there anything else we should talk about before we, we say, you know.

Kris Snyder

[0:26:27]

Well, I, I mean this is founders framework, so it's, it's, you know, you're interviewing us, but if you want, I've got a couple questions for you.

Mark Abbott

[0:26:36]

Okay.

Kris Snyder

[0:26:37]

Is that all right?

Mark Abbott

[0:26:38]

Yeah, that's fine.

Kris Snyder

[0:26:40]

We'll just flip the script a little bit.

Christine Watts

[0:26:42]

I don't wait. Should this be content? We're saving for impact moments. I'm kidding. Keep going.

Kris Snyder

[0:26:49]

Well, I mean, in 2026, Mark, as you think about it, like what excites you most? What gets you up in the morning excites you about the work at hand. Right. It can be a grind. There's hard stuff, there's good stuff. Right. But what's really exciting you right now?

Mark Abbott

[0:27:04]

Well, as you both know, because you've heard me talk about it for too long, right. I mean, incorporating AI into the platform was something we knew was going to happen from day one. And, and, and we've been working on it since the beginning of 24. I mean, literally working on it. Not just, you know, not just vision stuff and, and, and you know, strategic planning and all that kind of stuff, but literally on the code. And we've been very, very careful. We've been very intentional. We've moved, you know, slow, smooth. Right. Move is fast. And so, you know, we're finally, we started to, you know, put it into the platform at the sort of Q4 last year. But this year, this is the big year, right? This is the big year where, you know, by the end of it, whether 70% or somewhere between 70, 90% of all the tools will have AI incorporated into it natively, you know, including the ability to sort of just ask, you know, Maz about, you know, anything that's going on within the. Within the platform, within the system. And so, you know, I'm. I'm super excited about it. You know, the roadmap is very straightforward, uh, but it's like everything, you know, always seems to take twice as long as you think it's going to take. But finally having something that I've been thinking about since 2012 actually come to life is super cool.

Kris Snyder

[0:28:54]

Awesome. Well, I will take Christine's lead on this. I won't ask more questions until the other podcast.

Mark Abbott

[0:29:00]

We'll save it for the other podcast where we want people to go check it out.

Kris Snyder

[0:29:04]

Yeah.

Mark Abbott

[0:29:05]

All right, well, thank you both for eight years and 10 years of, you know, an extraordinary journey with lots of stories which, you know, maybe we can get into in another podcast. I don't know, perhaps.

Kris Snyder

[0:29:19]

Sounds great. Sounds to us, guys.

Christine Watts

[0:29:22]

Thanks, Mark.

Kris Snyder

[0:29:22]

Thank you.

Christine Watts

[0:29:23]

See ya.