The Math of Trust

Mark Abbott
[0:00:06]
Hey, Kris Snyder.

Kris Snyder
[0:00:07]
Hey, Mark Abbott.

Mark Abbott
[0:00:09]
How are you?

Kris Snyder
[0:00:10]
I'm good, man. You know, I'm still using the line from Charles from True Space. It's an amazing time to be alive.

Mark Abbott
[0:00:16]
Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:00:16]
I went for a kind of a hike run this morning on the trail, and it wasn't as sunny as last week when I was here. It was a little overcast today. But still, with the mountains around you and everything, it's just, you know, that was kind of my phrase in thinking, it's an amazing time to be alive.

Mark Abbott
[0:00:30]
Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:00:31]
Um, scary. And a lot of, I know a lot of people are scared by it, right? But I think you can turn that fear of the unknown into the possibility of what's to come. And I think that's where I was taking from Charles' comment and just kind of trying to feed back into that as well.

Mark Abbott
[0:00:43]
Yeah. And just, yeah. Thinking about the possibilities, thinking about, you know, sort of getting to a place where you can start to attack problems that heretofore, you know, were so complex that it's almost like, I can't. But now, you know, obviously, in health care, as an example, Alzheimer's, as an example, right, starting to be able to attack these truly complex problems that up until now were, you know, just mind-boggling. And you can do that across, you know, almost any area of interest. So it's an infinite, right? And so sort of just like going there and understanding that now we have the ability to solve an almost infinite array of problems. We're never going to get to the end. You know, that old, I remember it from, you know, early 2000s, right, where someone hit, boom, you've reached the end of the Internet.

Kris Snyder
[0:01:55]
Right. Right.

Mark Abbott
[0:01:56]
Yeah. Well, and I also think it represents agency.

Kris Snyder
[0:02:02]
So you and I were talking about what Claude can do for health care, right? Both got a bunch of health care things going on in our families. And it just represents so much agency of whether like, you know, you had to have a good functional health person involved and then that doctor had a special and you're like always just trying to sort out this map of and they're cautious because they don't want to say something that could be used against them. So there's CYA motions and And now the agency is to go ask Claude and do some some research and then come say, well, tell me about this. Right. Is this true? Because if it's true, I want to have a conversation about it. Otherwise, I feel people feel lost, especially when it's critical care.

Mark Abbott
[0:02:38]
Yeah. And then and then, you know, if you if you're if you're a little bit cynical or or, you know, just, you know. not sure whether or not this is enough information or the right information, then you can have the, you know, Claude versus Gemini versus CHAT GPT conversation, which I have, you know, I have an agent And, you know, I will sit there and I've got two big screens, right? And I'll sit here and I'll actually have the agents debate things. And, you know, right now I am facilitating the debate, right? And, but, you know, at some point, right, I'll be sitting here, like, you know, with my whisper flow on and, you know, having conversations. And, I mean, it's just like, really unbelievably cool back to Charles's point, right, which is, you know, we're just, we're unlocking something that we've, we're unlocking potential in a way that's just, you know, mind boggling in some respects.

Kris Snyder
[0:03:43]
Well, I know, I don't think this is probably your path to get this conversation, but it has a lot of applicability to Ninety, right. And 10 years at this, right. Building a software company and now watching the acceleration of what we were thinking would take a year to go do something is now happening in weeks, potentially. Right. And that velocity changes the mindset and to wrap, not just ours as leaders around it, but the entire organization around that change is not. and consequential.

Mark Abbott
[0:04:12]
It's hard. And it's, yeah, it's, yeah, that's the right point here is it's, you know, we've been, you know, you and I've been together shoulder to shoulder. I want to say 18, 19 depends on sort of like first meeting and then just like really working together. And so, you know, so 18, 16, that's eight years out of our 10 years now, because we'll be, Officially, you know, our 10th anniversary is, like, next month, right? And this is a 10th anniversary podcast, right? So I've done it with you and Michelle and Christine now. And then, you know, as I've said for a while now, I've been thinking about you know, Ninety since 2005, been thinking about AI since 2012 in terms of Ninety. And here we are, you know, finally having the capabilities that you were envisioning actually materializing, right? And, you know, as I've said a bunch of times, I think, you know, Opus 4.5, which is, you know, sort of the fall, late 2025 was when all of a sudden it's like, no, like, this is now a hammer that really works, right? And it's, you know, it's back to Charles's point, right? You can see all these different things that we can do now within Ninety as a software, within society, right, to help people become better and better versions of the best version of themselves, to help their companies become better and better versions of the best version of themselves. You can see it But it's one thing to see something, it's another thing to actually bring it to life. And that bringing it to life, for me personally, and you've experienced me, right, with this, it's like, this shouldn't be that hard. But it is.

Kris Snyder
[0:06:26]
I think we both have had that sentiment too many times, like we're looking around going, is it really this complex? Are we just creating the complexity? And sometimes we do, right? I think that's just a human element of it, you know, and we like to simplify if we can. And that's why when we look at it, we think the problem set just feels like we're complicating it because it shouldn't take as long as it's taking.

Mark Abbott
[0:06:47]
Well, the thing that I'm guilty of, and I've acknowledged a lot of my deficiencies on this podcast, but what I now see about me is that I'm like It's obvious. We just need to do this. And then it's not obvious to people. And if you say, hey, just do this, then they're not into it.

Kris Snyder
[0:07:23]
Right.

Mark Abbott
[0:07:23]
It's not their idea. And I don't mean this in a disparaging manner.

Kris Snyder
[0:07:26]
Right. Right. It's human nature.

Mark Abbott
[0:07:28]
Yeah. But it's like, hey, guys, let's just do this.

Kris Snyder
[0:07:31]
Right.

Mark Abbott
[0:07:32]
And then it's like, well, you know, either we don't agree with you or we don't understand it or we have all these other things we gotta go do and we're focused on and we don't have time for this or whatever the reason is. If you can't get someone to like own it and really like believe in it, You know, it's like the idea of a great business, right? You can have an idea for a great business, but ideas are worthless, right? And so what I'm sort of becoming more at peace with is, you know, just because I have what I think is a great idea doesn't mean it's going to turn into a great idea, right? And my job is not to do other people's jobs. And, and the consequence of all this is, you know, I've, I've envisioned these things, and then they don't get turned into my vision. And then we're all frustrated. And so you got to step back and say, okay, These are all the things that I think we can work on right now. What excites you? What are you willing to own, right? What are you willing to sort of, you know, feel like it's yours and you own that craftsmanship, right?

Kris Snyder
[0:08:54]
And I think that's a really interesting part of this moment, which is, yeah, there's all these great things we can do, but

Mark Abbott
[0:09:01]
You got to get people who are excited about turning those ideas into reality, and then you got to let go, right? And it may end up, you know, you may have this, you may want to build an elephant, and then what, you know, the team decides is they want to build a, you know, let's just say a llama, for lack of a better expression. And then, you know, It's like, okay, as long as it's a great llama, I'm cool.

Kris Snyder
[0:09:35]
Right. Right.

Mark Abbott
[0:09:35]
Doesn't need to be my version. It can be your version, but let's all at least align on what we're trying to accomplish. And, um, so it's interesting, right? Because when you think about what humans are the best in the world at, right, we're amazing at creating things, right? And when I say creating things, it's not just like creating, you know, like Steve Jobs creating the iPhone, right? We're amazing at creating new technologies to solve problems. We're amazing at creating art. We're amazing at creating music, right? We're amazing at creating all this different stuff. So what we gotta, you know, appreciate, I think, is that we're at the edge of creativity. That's what humans are great at. And then you let the technology do the stuff that's compressible, that's sort of routine. And so I think just helping people, like, embrace being creators, right? Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:10:46]
And I think We've got this part of society that always, um, have this picture of creativity, not as a process, but as a, as a magical moment.

Mark Abbott
[0:10:55]
Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:10:55]
Like they, they woke up with the song in their head or they woke, you know, they just started painting and they didn't, they didn't know where it came from. And then Mark Rubin's book, The Creative Act, which I think you read as well. Did you read that book?

Mark Abbott
[0:11:05]
I haven't.

Kris Snyder
[0:11:06]
Oh, you got to read it.

Mark Abbott
[0:11:07]
Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:11:07]
It's so good.

Mark Abbott
[0:11:08]
Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:11:08]
Obviously he was.

Mark Abbott
[0:11:09]
You mean Rick Rubin?

Kris Snyder
[0:11:10]
I said, yeah, Rick Rubin. Yes. Thank you. Rick Rubin, The Creative Act. But it really just breaks it down as a process.

Mark Abbott
[0:11:16]
Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:11:17]
Right.

Mark Abbott
[0:11:17]
And it wasn't just some, sure. Some magical moments happen. Yeah. But really it's a process. And I think that was one of my takeaways because as entrepreneurs, You know, we all want that moment was magical and the vision happened, but most of the time it's a process.

Kris Snyder
[0:11:29]
You've got the problem set and you can't let go of it.

Mark Abbott
[0:11:32]
You just obsess about it and you just keep working the problem set through a process.

Kris Snyder
[0:11:36]
And then over time, it looks like it is creativity, right? But to other people, you know, I've got a client right now that they've been at this for 20 years and they're killing it. They're doing amazing work. And everyone thinks they're an overnight success. But if you ask the founder, he's been at this for 20 years. And they just now hit everyone's radar because of their size and the performance, but that's not an overnight success, right? They've been massively creative along the way, but it's been mostly process-related creativity. And I think that's an opportunity for us, right? Because if you use the technology such that you don't have to go through all these other things that you're talking about and you're compressed into the point of creativity, well, that sounds exciting.

Mark Abbott
[0:12:14]
Yeah, yeah. So this is a 10-year.

Kris Snyder
[0:12:18]
And we could do this all day.

Mark Abbott
[0:12:20]
Yeah, we're very good at this. Oh, would you like to sort of share in terms of the journey and in particular sort of the, the journey as, you know, we're, we're both founders, right? Um, and, uh, And, and we've got decades of, you know, wins and losses. Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:12:44]
I said that to somebody on the phone the other day. I'm like, I've been doing this, you know, thing since the dot com days. Like, like we've seen a lot, right. From, from those, those episodes of, of, you know, both the market making motions, the technology making motions and all the way to today.

Mark Abbott
[0:12:59]
Yeah. So what, what do you think's a good. Well, there's some.

Kris Snyder
[0:13:04]
As I was reflecting on this and writing some notes down, there was a couple things that we set out to do, and I don't know if we ever exactly said it, but I was excited about trying to do it. And one of those conversations, my first job out of college was with a company called McMaster-Carr Supply Company, right? Multi-billion dollar, hundred year plus family owned company. And what fascinated me about that is they didn't have any salespeople. They still to this day don't have a single, like Grainger, their competitor, salespeople everywhere, right? And they send out catalogs and they create demand and they have incredible service. And that's how they were able to do that. And you think about, well, why is that important? Well, because it actually shows to the bottom line. Right. And it forces the organization to behave differently. Right. And so when we started this, it was really channel driven and we're like, well, would that be cool if we could make it and we didn't have salespeople, right. That we focused on serving, not selling. Yes. Now there's been a few phrases at Ninety that I was excited about. I think you were excited about that probably didn't land with everyone the same way. Right. Because I think that one got abused eventually.

Mark Abbott
[0:14:06]
We don't sell, we serve.

Kris Snyder
[0:14:07]
Right.

Mark Abbott
[0:14:08]
We don't sell, we serve.

Kris Snyder
[0:14:09]
Right. And what we were trying to drive home was that that's that was not positioning around sales. It was like, hey, let's just be amazing at what we do. Your craftsmanship moment or the product or customer support. Right. our channel folks, like just let's be amazing at that and let's go build those relationships such that the flywheel happens and we don't have to have a selling motion. Right. Which we made it to 40 million, right? ARR before we conceded that, that's that point. I think it was time, right? To kind of shift gears and start to build sales motions and the organization to support it.

Mark Abbott
[0:14:40]
Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:14:40]
But I also just think that was special to be able to make it that far. with that kind of mantra in mind and craftsmanship in mind into the product.

Mark Abbott
[0:14:47]
Yeah, me too. And I think I, we may have talked about this on one podcast, but I remember a couple of years ago saying to a group of entrepreneurs who were sitting in a peer group session, And there was someone who was, I forget who they were, but it was a speaker. And he asked some questions and I said, yeah, we don't have a sales organization. And he just sweared at me. You know, in a funny way, everybody would laugh, but it's like, you know, you blank, blank, blank. And I'm like, yeah, right? Because it's, you know, obviously, not obviously, but, you know, we both know that the old expression, less is more until it's not. And to the extent that you can keep things relatively simple and still have, you know, really strong growth. That's awesome, right? And obviously when you introduce a sales organization, you're introducing obviously complexity, not just in terms of the, that's just one more effort that's being undertaken by an organization. But, you know, we've never had incentive plans as a company, right? We're all in this.

Kris Snyder
[0:16:07]
Everybody's a shareholder.

Mark Abbott
[0:16:10]
And so now all of a sudden, you know, we've introduced that. And my personal experience has been that Incentive plans just always are never perfect. It's kind of like whack-a-mole, right? You know, you think, okay, if we just do this, you tweak that or you tweak this, and you're always just like, it's never done well because it's always incentivizing something. You're like, oh shit, I don't want to incentivize that, right? So I hate incentive plans, generally speaking, just because they're complex and they have cultural implications.

Kris Snyder
[0:16:49]
They just do, right? And then there's comparisons and comparisons of Thief of Joy. So you've got one salesperson, and they're talking, and then they figure out they got a different comp planner incentive than the other person. And then they're trying to figure out how to re-engineer something. And it's like, you're just your whack-a-mole point. You're just constantly doing it.

Mark Abbott
[0:17:05]
Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:17:05]
And then I one point was a CTO of a, of an organization had over 100 and some salespeople. And we had a full-time person. All she was doing was trying to navigate all of our comp plans because, you know, legacy, we had inherited it. And so it was just so hard to clean up. And it was constantly changing territories and all that, right, that goes with it. And I think that was also different for us because we knew we were going to be high volume, low average sale price, low ASP software. And so then it's like, how would you really build something that does that when you're in that moment? And I think we've got new thoughts as we start to go into markets like franchise and PE and VC that you'll have larger account sales. So I think that'll kind of bring us into that world even more. And we're doing one right now that we're proud to get out there. But at that point we didn't need it. Right. And so I think we were navigating our way through it and just trying to build great product and have great support to our customers and our channel, quite honestly.

Mark Abbott
[0:18:03]
Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:18:03]
I mean, we went down and we went down to whatever we are now, 40% or some number, right. That's now still coming from the channel. But at one point. It was 80, 90%, right, in the beginning that was just coming through the channel.

Mark Abbott
[0:18:14]
Yeah. And, and, and once again, back to complexity, that was, you know, you look at it, uh, you know, hindsight's not just 20-20, but it's often softened.

Kris Snyder
[0:18:28]
Yes. Right.

Mark Abbott
[0:18:31]
You know, our numbers are not always as accurate as they probably could be. Yeah. But your memories of 2018, 2019, 2020. I mean, I can't speak for you.

Kris Snyder
[0:18:37]
Right.

Mark Abbott
[0:18:37]
But I don't really you know, I don't think of those days as grinding hard, right? I've just, I just, I look at it through this soft lens of history and, you know, and like COVID for us, right? I look at it, I look at that period as, you know, sort of, you know, I hate to say magical because it's kind of weird to say that given obviously it was such a tough time for humanity in general. But for us, it was, it was, you know, it was, it was, it was super high growth and super high cool because we were helping and like the city of New Orleans, you know, deal with running itself and when people couldn't be in the office. And then, you know, we were, you know, we let anybody know that if they were struggling because, you know, like one of our companies, one of our customers was in the food industry, specifically supplying lunches to school systems. Well, how'd that work during COVID, right? And so we're like, look, you don't have to pay us.

Kris Snyder
[0:19:57]
Right.

Mark Abbott
[0:19:58]
And so we're doing great. We're supporting people during a hard time. We're growing like mad.

Kris Snyder
[0:20:06]
Right.

Mark Abbott
[0:20:07]
We're being very, you know. I mean, just good, right? And we could afford to do it. We weren't making any money, but we weren't losing money, right? And you just look at that period of time and it was, you know, it was, like I said, I look at it through this very soft lens of, it was, it was, you know, it was kind of magical. Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:20:34]
Well, and I don't want to downplay COVID, right, but it was a gift to us at Ninety. It was.

Mark Abbott
[0:20:39]
Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:20:40]
Right. And I remember one specific conversation when it was just happening and we, we didn't have our uplift yet because the market was kind of stalling and we were trying to figure out what's going to happen next with all these EOS implementers. because they can't be in person. And our uplift was slow, I'd say, going in. We were winning hearts and minds, but it was a lot to get them to try something different with their customers. When all of a sudden, they didn't have a choice. They had to do something. They had to go online. They had to go to Zoom. They had to go to whatever WebEx type of thing they were going to do.

Mark Abbott
[0:21:11]
And so

Kris Snyder
[0:21:13]
It was out the same time where EOS Worldwide finally let us put functionality in the software that would allow those meetings to run efficiently.

Mark Abbott
[0:21:19]
Yeah, run the quarterlies and the annuals and focus days.

Kris Snyder
[0:21:22]
Didn't have it before then.

Mark Abbott
[0:21:24]
No technology in the session room.

Kris Snyder
[0:21:26]
Yeah, but I got that on my list of topics. But it was a gift, right? Because we would have just been grinding that much longer to win the hearts and minds. But all of a sudden, we had their attention. And not only did we have their attention, we had focus. Because we couldn't go anywhere. Let's be honest. What else were you going to do with your time outside with your family in that moment? You weren't going anywhere.

Mark Abbott
[0:21:46]
No. And then the other part of that story is that because the, you know, the world had moved away from being in person, you know, EOS had to move its conference from, you know, in person to online. And then, of course, they were struggling with regard to, you know, filling up the attendance. And we ended up bringing in hundreds of, you know, customers for them. And so, you know, we're sitting there, we're growing, they're getting a percentage of all of our growth. We go help them fill out their conference. You know, obviously, you know, you love, I mean, I love, I know you love, we love, you know, doing things for people that are material, right? Because it's just, you just feel good about, hey, you know, we really helped. you know, they were like super appreciative of it. And so, you know, just to be able to, you know, I like to say that, you know, we all want to matter and to just feel good that you're mattering and you're putting a dent in the world and people are appreciating you for what you're doing. We just had a bunch of wins Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:23:04]
Well, one of my wins was, um, we were on a call and you're like, beginning of COVID, you're like, I'd feel a lot better with some more cash on the balance sheet. And I'm like, well, what do you want? You're like, maybe like a hundred thousand. I was like, okay. So I had to go tell my wife that. So we don't know what's exactly happening. But we're going to go ahead and put a hundred grand into Ninety, which obviously that was a, that was a good idea in hindsight. Right. And all, all things.

Mark Abbott
[0:23:27]
And that was, that was after Spann sold you a little stock too, right?

Kris Snyder
[0:23:34]
Yeah, that was a 19. The first, my first investment was like December of 19.

Mark Abbott
[0:23:37]
Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:23:38]
And so this was like, if COVID was March, it was literally like March or April when we did that. Cause we're like, we don't know where it goes. We should do this. And so, yeah, yeah. Gift of COVID. Gift of COVID. One of the other things that we also aligned on pretty quick, because you said this a second ago of helping people be a better, best version of self, right? Um, was both fans of Maslow, right? Like, I think we started aligning on that and I even shared that I'd been drawing that for my clients on a whiteboard even and saying, let's do a version of this, right, for EOS. If you're at the bottom, that's when you're starting up, right? So we started talking about that and that kind of fueled our back and forth into, you know, you putting a lot of time into the five stages of development.

Mark Abbott
[0:24:21]
Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:24:21]
And then just figuring out a framework, right, for our customers to say, where are you at? Why are you there? Was it a ceiling that you hit along the way that keeps you from stage two to getting to stage three?

Mark Abbott
[0:24:32]
Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:24:33]
Um, and that eventually took on, to the assessment and I don't know how many we've done thousand plus or some number, right? Especially with the Vistage crew when we actually do those talks as well. Um, but just want to talk a little bit about that because I think it's an important part that I don't know that everyone, cause we haven't really got it into the world yet. I mean, it's out there, but I think even with now our AI, our AI agent called Maz, it's part of that whole journey, right? Thinking about helping people get to be a better, best version of self as well as the company.

Mark Abbott
[0:25:03]
Yeah. Yeah. The whole developmental journey, the whole journey around the developmental journey, right, has been fascinating. And it is, you know, getting back in the Wayback Machine, I'm trying to remember when, you know, you kind of, you created the Maslow Pyramid and then you transcribed it to how companies, and I remember it, right, because Survive was at the bottom. Yeah, that was it.

Kris Snyder
[0:25:39]
Right. And I had, like, I took elements of the EOS stuff, like what tools you were using when you were using it.

Mark Abbott
[0:25:44]
Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:25:45]
Yep.

Mark Abbott
[0:25:46]
And then I, you know, then we went, well, No, it's not, you know, if you want to look at it through the lens of development, and it's not, it's not perfect alignment here, right? Because from a developmental perspective, you know, everybody goes through the same developmental journey, right? Using Loevinger's as an example, going through, you know, if you're fortunate, right? You can get up to level nine, which less than, you know, one one thousandth of a percent of humanity ever gets there. But, you know, we sort of had this developmental overview and then we started thinking about what you were working on and ultimately came in and developed into the five unavoidable stages of development. And so instead of survive, it's now explore, right? It's a product market fit, explore, you know, does your idea, you know, resonate with enough people for you to actually have a business around it? And or even better, does your idea resonate with enough people that you can have a business that's capable of becoming a company, right? Which is where and then are you capable of having a company that can be confidently and competently handed off to the next generation of leaders and or owners. And so that, I think that us building and developing that framework, I don't know, do you feel like it probably, in hindsight, probably took a year or two?

Kris Snyder
[0:27:15]
We were getting feedback and I still to this day do. Like I use it, I did it two weeks ago with a client. We were going into a quarterly and they had no long-term issues of consequence. You could tell the list.

Mark Abbott
[0:27:25]
Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:27:26]
And so we did this standard, what's working and not working, and it's still, we didn't get it. And so I then called the audible, pulled out the slide and said, where are we at, team? Write it down. And that became a great long-term issues list because you could tell the friction in the room about the CEO wants to be at stage four and they're really at two. And then what needs to be true, what gets in our way, and that's what you're solving for in order to evolve the company. But without that, they don't really, you know, EOS doesn't have a frame up like that.

Mark Abbott
[0:27:54]
No.

Kris Snyder
[0:27:54]
We can talk about being, you know, 80% strong across six key components, but that's not really diagnostic.

Mark Abbott
[0:28:00]
No.

Kris Snyder
[0:28:00]
It's got a little bit to it, but it's not the same as saying, where do you want to be? Where does this thing need to go? And that's break it down.

Mark Abbott
[0:28:07]
Yeah. Well, I think, you know, we know because of all the research we've done now, right, and it's both sort of in room with peer groups, you know, Vistage or EO or even with our own customers on webinars, right, that the vast majority of the EOS world is stage three, right? They've gotten to the place where they actually have a decent product, right? They're in an okay, if not better market. But they're just, they're like cobbling together this system that has, you know, a sales organization and a marketing organization and a product organization and operations and, you know, and finance or whatever it is. And they're just like, they're struggling to get everybody to be on the same page, right? Singing from the same, you know, hymnal. And so the founder and or business owner is like frustrated, you know, it's almost always a bunch of people issues. And it's like, you know, yeah, here's why, right? You got all these people who come in with their own perspectives, their own playbooks, their own vocabulary, their own level of sort of performance management and their own cultural, you know, whatever. And it's just this, you know, it's just kind of a mess, right? And so what EOS does is, you know, what comes out of all that mess is 136 issues, as Gino would say. And now it's like, okay, guys, let's, let's figure out how to see this mess as being affiliated with one or more of these six key components, right? So now you simplify that. Is it a people issue? Is it a structural issue, right? Is it a data issue? And then you just start, you know, chopping, chopping wood.

Kris Snyder
[0:30:03]
Right?

Mark Abbott
[0:30:04]
And you get to the place where it's, you know, the system is now, okay, this is how we're going to organize ourselves. And now it's, okay, now the next system is the people system, right? It's the cultural system. It's like, are we all on the same page? It's the performance management system, whatever, right? And then, you know, and then that's stage four is, integrating all this and making sure that everything's working really, really well, right? But the pain, the pain is always a stage three pain. Sometimes it's stage two, right? Rarely, right? Because, you know, typically stage two, you know, is on the smaller end of employees, it's on the smaller end of end of revenue. And, you know, stage two companies typically, you know, are struggling with, can I even afford to pay for an implementer?

Kris Snyder
[0:30:59]
Well, or can I invest in the things that an implementer would help me see that I need to do?

Mark Abbott
[0:31:06]
Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:31:06]
And that's often when, you know, I've been talking to prospective clients. I'm like, if you're not at this stage of ability to invest in your business, you don't need an EOS implementer. You need to do some blocking and tackling to get your margins up, to get your profit up, because otherwise it's not going to matter because we're going to come to a session room and we're just going to keep looking at the same problem set and you're going to not be able to invest into it. Yeah, right.

Mark Abbott
[0:31:29]
Yeah, because stage two is validation, right? And so you're sitting there, right, still trying to validate the damn thing, right? And, you know, and validation doesn't mean stage one is product market fit, right? So that's that whole Explorer thing. And, and stage two is, you know, the validation is just as much about you as a business owner and a founder.

Kris Snyder
[0:31:48]
Right.

Mark Abbott
[0:31:49]
As it, you know, we've already proven product market fit. Now the question is, you know, you know, do you have what it takes to build a business that can actually be successful? And that's, you know, we all know, right, we know that that's not just about the mechanics of selling and buying. It's like hiring and training and, and, you know, figuring out what you should and shouldn't focus on at that moment in time from a prioritization perspective and, you know, just sort of do you have what it takes to be a business leader?

Kris Snyder
[0:32:25]
Well, and, and this is an EOS thing, right? But they say EOS is a system for managing human energy.

Mark Abbott
[0:32:30]
Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:32:31]
And I don't think leaders often appreciate how much human energy they have to manage.

Mark Abbott
[0:32:36]
Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:32:36]
Emotional. I mean, there's, there's so much into that, that if you, if you're not able to it, then, you know, kind of your point earlier, you can't do all the work yourself. You're not going to get out of stage two until you really start to understand as a leader, you have to manage all those humans, right? And you have to lead them too, but you also have to manage them. It just is what it is, right?

Mark Abbott
[0:32:54]
If you don't, then... And the hiring part, right? So, you know, if you end up hiring a bunch of people that just suck all your energy because they really weren't like appropriate, whether it's cultural or whether it's, you know, just stage of the company's development, because You know, the type of people who love being in an early-stage company are not the same human beings who love being in a large corporation.

Kris Snyder
[0:33:19]
No, and I think that's one of the things we've also learned. I think we've known, but the stages help us talk to customers about it, was those humans, when the company grows to stage three, trying to push into four, they feel uncomfortable, they feel friction, and even their seats have changed. But the human hasn't changed enough, fast enough, and now the friction's here.

Mark Abbott
[0:33:38]
Yeah, there's a guy who's you know, teaches founders about, you know, how to become a better and better founder. And I like some of his stuff. I'm not going to put his name out right now because I'm also going to dig on something that he's put out there. But, you know, if you're, you know, the thing he said is if your business is growing at 100 percent, then your people need to be growing at 100 percent. It's not quite true.

Kris Snyder
[0:34:05]
Right. But.

Mark Abbott
[0:34:08]
Directionally speaking, you know, obviously, you know, in part of the beauty of the stages is it also marries up really nicely with the layers of an organization, right? So, you know, the individual contributors at stage one, you know, at level one in the organization, you know, they don't need to be growing at 100%, right? But your leaders, you know, If you're growing at 100%, your leaders need to be growing, right? We can have a debate around whether they're growing at 100% or not. But they do, as the business evolves, and it goes from a two-layer organization to a three-layer organization to a four-layer organization to a five-layer organization, including the founder and or CEO, The level of complexity for that, for your direct reports does increase massively.

Kris Snyder
[0:35:02]
It does. Yeah, it does. Right. And I think we don't invest really well in that. Like there's just, even at Ninety, it's hard for us to make time to actually invest in the leaders and the softer skills of things. Right. Cause we're always like trying to do quarterly planning at a certain rate and we got to solve problems versus going, Hey, we need to take some time. and work on our leaders and their skills, because these are skills.

Mark Abbott
[0:35:25]
Yeah. I mean, it's not osmosis. But I'm going to get in trouble right now, but I'm going to go there, right? Okay. At McMaster's, they were pretty good at- We have a leadership development program.

Kris Snyder
[0:35:40]
Right. Yep. Right.

Mark Abbott
[0:35:41]
How about most of the other businesses you've ever been a part of?

Kris Snyder
[0:35:46]
Not that good. Not that good. Right. Right.

Mark Abbott
[0:35:49]
In my career, and I worked at a very big bank, right? One of the top five banks in the world. And when I joined it, it had really good leadership and development program, right? And then it had modules, right? Where you could go and do negotiation training as an example. And we had Herb Cohen come in, awesome stuff, right? And I could geek out on Herb and all that, right? But there are modules, right? But even at that big bank, right, either your boss was suggesting you get the module or you were like, hey, I'd love to do this, right? And my point is, is that my career has been predominantly around self developed, you know, I've gone after my developmental stuff, right? I didn't, I wasn't spoon fed, right? The whole way up, right? And in small and mid-sized businesses, I think the vast majority of them are not actually, you could say good at it, or you could say, it's just not like, you know, early stage businesses, that's just not a thing you can focus on, right?

Kris Snyder
[0:37:01]
No, no, you definitely can't do it one, two, but when you get to three and maybe into four, you certainly can do things.

Mark Abbott
[0:37:06]
I, you know, I, but that's my, I'm actually suggesting that it's really hard for stage three companies to really invest significantly in that. So, so the leaders themselves, they got to sort of figure out and now with AI, I mean, right? Yeah. You can, right? If you're interested in learning a skill and developing skills, right? It's like 20 bucks a month, right?

Kris Snyder
[0:37:34]
Right, and we could go through like what's a good design of a program for the different stages, right? Because you can only do so much, you can only invest so much. But something as simple as getting a mentor. Like I'm coaching a company right now where the woman who's running marketing is in her youth, right? But she's plenty bright, she's figuring things out, but she hasn't seen the movie yet. And neither has the CEO, right? Because that's not his angle. And so my guidance to both of them here recently was she needs a mentor. Right. Somebody that she can call when she's thinking about something that she meets with once a month for coffee or something. Right. So start to like pick up skills and have somebody that, you know, is there for her.

Mark Abbott
[0:38:14]
And what's interesting, though, is. So I have a whole host of opinions on mentorship.

Kris Snyder
[0:38:21]
You don't have time for all of them.

Mark Abbott
[0:38:22]
No, no, no. But that's on you.

Kris Snyder
[0:38:27]
But I don't think everyone knows it.

Mark Abbott
[0:38:29]
No, well, I understand that, right? But you can't give someone a mentor.

Kris Snyder
[0:38:33]
No, but you can tell them what the process is and what they should expect, and here's... And how to go about finding one, right?

Mark Abbott
[0:38:41]
But, you know, in mentorship, what you're looking for is a coach, right? And in coaching, right, A coach is there to help you if you want help from the coach, right? So, and it's interesting because we look at coaching, right? If you look at it through like the lens of athletics, right? All right, you have a coach, right? And you go on the team and the coach is responsible for, you know, coach is really in most sports, both a coach and a manager, right? and responsible for recruiting. And there's a bunch of things that coaches do. But the essence of coaching is permission to coach. Do you mind if I coach you? And then what's interesting about that is that to do it really, really well, right? You need to be super in the moment, right? You need to be doing what, you know, I'm calling level three listening, which is I see you, I'm being patient, I'm not judging, right? I'm helping you work through something because you want me to help you. So it's hard to be really good at coaching, you can only coach about like one thing at a moment. It's, you can do it for like 20 or 30 minutes, but because it's so active listening, right, that it's, um, it's, it's, it's, it's like, that's all you can do.

Kris Snyder
[0:40:13]
Right. That's right.

Mark Abbott
[0:40:13]
Cause you're really super focused. You're not being judgmental. You're there to help that person unpack something. And I think a lot of us end up like putting coaching and leadership and management all, we try to pack it all together. in the same conversation and you can't. You can't.

Kris Snyder
[0:40:34]
No, you can't. These are, these are different cycles.

Mark Abbott
[0:40:36]
Yeah. And I, and I, and I've talked about this before, but I think one of the big things that I learned years, I mean decades ago, right, was I used to have people come into my room, um, to my office asking me to help them work on a deal they were working on.

Kris Snyder
[0:40:50]
Right.

Mark Abbott
[0:40:51]
And, um, and we had an investment committee, right? Um, and if they wanted me to judge the deal, well, you know, bring it to the investment committee and I'll judge it.

Kris Snyder
[0:41:02]
Right. Right.

Mark Abbott
[0:41:03]
But what they were really doing was they were coming into my room at office under the guise of coaching, but what they really wanted me to do was judge. Those are two very different things. So I said, hey guys, you can't do that, right? If you want to come into my room for coaching, let me know you want to come into my room for coaching. If you want to come into my room for prejudging, right? Uh-uh. You got to get your act together and you got to bring it to the, to the investment committee. Cause I'm just one of five people sitting on the investment committee. So don't try to come in and have me wearing two different hats because I will fail. Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:41:43]
Right.

Mark Abbott
[0:41:43]
Because they're very different. They're very different, um, requests.

Kris Snyder
[0:41:50]
Agreed.

Mark Abbott
[0:41:50]
Yeah. And, and so it's interesting on the whole mentorship side, I, I do, you Number one, you've got, there's two, there's two humans when we talk about mentoring, right? One is the mentor and one is the mentoree. I'm not sure that a lot of mentors actually understand this well.

Kris Snyder
[0:42:09]
No, they, and by the way, like I was on, I was in EO for six, 13 years and sat on the board a couple of times. One was to run the mentorship program.

Mark Abbott
[0:42:19]
Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:42:19]
And we were mostly matching up EO members to YPO members back when I was doing this.

Mark Abbott
[0:42:24]
Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:42:24]
Uh, but they had great assets. And one of those assets was we did mentor training.

Mark Abbott
[0:42:28]
Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:42:28]
We pulled all the mentors that were going to come in and we took them through a day of training.

Mark Abbott
[0:42:32]
Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:42:32]
And lots of materials and giving them formats to approach it, right. And make sure that you're like all the coaching stuff you just talked about, but also then the clarity from the mentee and what they want.

Mark Abbott
[0:42:41]
Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:42:42]
They had to fill out a form, which was like what their goals are, what they need out of it, such that we could then match the mentee and the mentor.

Mark Abbott
[0:42:48]
Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:42:48]
based upon those things. I'm sure there's probably an algorithm for that now, but back in the day, we were, it was all kind of hand wound, interview the mentees and mentors. So it was a, it was a heavy lift just to get people that right place.

Mark Abbott
[0:42:59]
And then, you know, you may, you know, you may say, Hey, I would love to have this person as a mentor. They may or may not have A, the time. or be the ability to do it well, to really understand this stuff, because, you know, it's a skill.

Kris Snyder
[0:43:16]
And it takes time.

Mark Abbott
[0:43:17]
Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:43:18]
And it takes, you gotta be in a position to care, because otherwise it won't work either.

Mark Abbott
[0:43:22]
And to have the time, right? As I said earlier, you know, I think almost any situation that is complex enough to really be a great, ooh, for the two humans to, to work on, you know, that's like, you know, 30, 40-minute session, and that's, like I said, active listening, right? Level three, where you're really truly watching the person and understanding and not solving for them, but helping them work through it. It just takes time. And then when you try to force it into, you know, compact it, it's not a good, it's not healthy. So, you know, it's interesting back to the, you know, stage three, stage four, stage five, um, leadership versus development versus mentoring. And, you know, as an example, um, haven't seen it done that well, particularly in my career.

Kris Snyder
[0:44:24]
Right.

Mark Abbott
[0:44:25]
Forty-four years now, right? Um, so that's a comment on mentoring. And then on leadership and development, I, you know, what I have seen almost You know, 90% of the time, it's the people that are pretty good at getting better and better and moving up within an organization. They went out and acquired the skills.

Kris Snyder
[0:44:52]
right?

Mark Abbott
[0:44:53]
They went out and acquired the feedback, right? They did all the hard, they did the hard work as opposed to, it was not just like, there was not this perfect program that just was amazing. You know, you know, GE in theory, right, was supposed to, Crotonville was supposed to have been doing this, but you know, where is that today? I think it's dead.

Kris Snyder
[0:45:13]
I think it's dead too.

Mark Abbott
[0:45:14]
Yeah. Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:45:14]
You still don't, you don't hear about it anymore.

Mark Abbott
[0:45:16]
No. No, I think it was, you know, I get it. Okay. Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:45:20]
Well, I've got one more to go to.

Mark Abbott
[0:45:22]
Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:45:22]
So, both fans around trust, like the concept of trust, right? And how it's transferred and, you know, Jim Collins has some good work on it and Lencioni and the Five Dysfunctions of a Team. So, I think we were also getting aligned early on in our kind of language and the things that are important to us. You know, eventually we even arrived at Ninety being one of the most trusted brands in the world as kind of our, our compelling audacious goal. Right. Um, and then during COVID, um, we started to really feel like trust gaps.

Mark Abbott
[0:45:51]
Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:45:52]
Right. And so conversations ensued. Um, and then you came back and you're like, Hey, I think there's, there's a math of trust.

Mark Abbott
[0:45:59]
Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:45:59]
Uh, and there's so much work done on trust, right? Like I think we, we started doing some research on it and then it just becomes almost overwhelming because it's complex.

Mark Abbott
[0:46:07]
Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:46:07]
and we're going to go through the chemistry of trust and all that. It's like, yeah, but these teams who are struggling right now, we don't want the complexity. So it needs to be something that's more specific than Lencioni's trust at the bottom of the triangle. And then could you do math around it? Which then I think became this fascinating tool, right? Which we have not done enough with, right? There's so much goodness in it. And it's hard. It's one of those things where it's like, okay, we think there's three dimensions, and we start with character in a binary scenario. You're either a one or a zero, because if I don't trust your character, it's zero. And then zero times anything is zero. And that one I think actually, having coached it even, I shared with you a story recently with a client, where they said it was zero. And, you know, there's three team members in the room that started off with character at zero and had never had that before. Literally didn't know what to do. It's like, how do I repair a character? I was like, we can't right now.

Mark Abbott
[0:47:02]
You're not a magician. Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:47:03]
It's like, so we, but that the team actually, um, we just started quarterly recently. And when we went in, when we went to unpack, cause I did same page meetings with him, went to unpack. It was massive misunderstandings. A lot of hurt feelings of things that happened in the past that nobody ever slowed down to unpack. And so I think they're on the course to reestablish and they're now spending time together, which will get together the third component of connection or connectivity. But it's, but anyway, it's been fascinating work because we can put to it the way that even that client that day, cause we had done the five dysfunctions of a team and trust was an issue for the organization and the leadership team. So we were revisiting it under issues and the CEO is, was frustrated. And he's like, it's two directional. He's like, I need to be more specific about what the problem is. And I hadn't taught them the math of trust. So that's what we did. Right. And that's really what the tool is for, because if you can't put your finger on it, the tool really helps you get there.

Mark Abbott
[0:47:56]
Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:47:56]
Right. So we go from that character moment and then the competency. And this has been fascinating too, right? Cause I think it's, for me, it's picked up a lot. Um, cause I've been in an EOS world saying competency in this relationship goes to your seat. Cause we have an agreement like that you're competent in the seat and you've got skills. If not, let's talk about what you don't have so we can, you increase the level of competency around it. And there's lots, it's probably lots more complexity you can put into competency. I tried in the moment to keep it directional in its nature, because otherwise they'll, especially the high fact finders, will start to really try to unpack it. Because then it's like, well, if I'm rating the team and trust, right, well, how I know by seat, it's like, well, don't go there yet, right? We all have an agreement what this team is supposed to do, so we can talk about what that looks like, and then let's go through the competency. But that score is one to a hundred. And it's, this is not the percentage one, the connection's a percentage. So it's a raw number. So hopefully you're at a one on character. And then the team's going to come out with something 70, 80, right, in their math. And then you're like, okay, so we're above 80. We're pretty competent as a team, right? So let's go to the next piece, which is connectivity. And we always talk about there's three dimensions of it, right? So it's like, how often do you see each other in connectivity? What's the duration when you see each other, right? And then what's the depth? Do you go beyond sports news and weather, right? Are you actually opening yourselves up in a vulnerable way such that you can connect deeper? And that's the one I think we found in the pandemic because everyone was at home sitting on a screen. They lost those moments of connectivity before that we really started to find that that was what was broken because of what was happening in the pandemic.

Mark Abbott
[0:49:36]
Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, We, I built that model, I want to say close to 2020, do you?

Kris Snyder
[0:49:50]
Yeah, no, it was in the, cause we were having lots of conversations because our teams, we were coaching and we were doing it remotely coaching. It was just off.

Mark Abbott
[0:49:57]
Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:49:58]
It was way off. Yep.

Mark Abbott
[0:49:59]
And, and, you know, I'm guilty of thinking that the character thing, you can have some, like you can have a score of less, while it is one and zero predominantly, I think the one, if you really want to unpack it, you know, you can have a little bit of, well, I don't know if you would have my back in this situation, right? And, and, and some will throw that into the character. Some will throw that in the connections, right? Um, I could, you could even throw that a little bit into competency because you don't know how to have my back, right?

Kris Snyder
[0:50:37]
Right.

Mark Abbott
[0:50:38]
From a human perspective. Um, and so, you know, I, I think there is, you know, one could argue that like you could have a 0.9, but I think when you, if you drop to like 0. There is a cliff where you just don't trust that person anymore, right? Whether it's, whether it's 0.9, 0.8, 0.79, whatever, right? There's, there's definitely a cliff in there. And I think for simplicity, because it's always good to be, you make things as simple as you possibly can, less is more until it's not. I think, you know, thinking of it through the lens of one zero for the most part solves you know, gives you what you need in that particular one. And then the competency one, as you said, you know, there's the competency on the technical side and then there's competency on the human side, right? And then the connections one, you know, as you said, you know, it's frequency, you know, and, but the one I think is like hard and really, you know, if you want to go and spend hours with your colleagues talking about is, you know, You know, you know, are we connected on what we're doing here?

Kris Snyder
[0:51:45]
Right.

Mark Abbott
[0:51:45]
You know, do we do we want to run at the same pace? Do we want to have the same like you? You know, you may have a founder who wants to build a hundred million dollar revenue company and another founder is just like happy at at 20 million and without hardly any growth in the other one once. you know, 80%, 50% growth per year. That's just, that's a disconnect on their goals, right? And then, you know, you can have disconnects on your ICP. We've seen that, right? You can have, I mean, there's so many places where you can have some disconnects on just sort of being aligned, right, on a leadership team. And, but, you know, to your point, The model gives you a framework for having some really good deep conversations. Yeah. Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:52:38]
I mean, I, I now have to make sure the team is in a healthy enough place to use this tool because I mean, I've done a couple of times and the tears in the room, like it just, they weren't in enough of a brave place yet, right. To like kind of really unpack a lot of what the history was.

Mark Abbott
[0:52:56]
Well, and the interesting part is, you know, as a coach then, right, is just making sure that, you know, when you're sitting with the founder or the CEO, right, that do you think the team's ready for this? And by the way, if it's not,

Kris Snyder
[0:53:15]
Right.

Mark Abbott
[0:53:16]
That in and of itself is a big signal and something to be worked on.

Kris Snyder
[0:53:20]
Right.

Mark Abbott
[0:53:20]
And so, you know, then it's like, okay, so there's, there's, you know, and I know you're, you know, I've said this to you before, you're better than I am at this particular thing.

Kris Snyder
[0:53:30]
Right.

Mark Abbott
[0:53:31]
But it's like, okay, so now this is a, you got to work with the, the owner or the CEO or founder, whatever, um, and help them like figure out how, you know, what do we need to do to get from here, which is where we're not, it's unhealthy to do this work, to over here, where it's healthy to do this work because you want to get to here, where the team just genuinely loves working together, right? They genuinely love having dinner together. They genuinely love, and they're good at pushing one another in a healthy, you know, constructive way. that's where you want to get to, right? Where 90% of the time you go home at night and you're like, I love who I work with. I love who I serve. I, you know, I care about the company. I care about, you know, my colleagues. You know, and that's, you know, to me, that's what, you know, that's our job, right? It's what we, what we're here is to just improve that percentage of the population that just genuinely, you know, feels like it loves mattering and doing work that matters and believes it's working for a company that matters.

Kris Snyder
[0:54:41]
Yep. Well, and trust is, and we can move to the next topic, but trust is such a powerful thing. And you said earlier, it's like most of these times it's people issues, right?

Mark Abbott
[0:54:50]
Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:54:50]
And then when you're as a coach and you get that vantage point of, you know, being in that active listening and watching the body language. And I have one client where we were doing the focus day, so it's the first time you do the accountability chart. And it was painful. I couldn't figure out why is this so painful. And it was that the COO didn't have a span of control that they weren't willing to give up. Right. And but it wasn't scaling the company because of that.

Mark Abbott
[0:55:14]
Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:55:15]
And so I started to go back and forth between the CEO and the COO. And you could just see that. I mean, you feel the friction, right? It's like cut the air, that kind of moment with the knife. And so just casual conversation, I'm like, do you guys trust each other? And then I looked at each other like, no. And I'm like, what? And so I was like, well, we got to work on that guys. Like that doesn't, clearly we can't even get this accountability chart done because there's something going on here. And I don't know what it is, but we're going to let you guys go figure that out. And so I got a call from the CEO the next day and he's like, hey, that was awesome. He's like, I fired him. I was like, you did what? He's like, I called him into my office and said, we got to talk about it. And like, let's go through the trust. And he's like, I'm never going to trust you. He's like, well, then only one of us can stay then. And it ain't you.

Mark Abbott
[0:56:00]
Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:56:01]
Um, but it's that, that's that deep, right? Which is why I think the trust is so important because these teams are trying to grow, going through the stage fives and things are going to happen along the way. And if that gets broken and they can't figure it out or fix it, then you're gonna either change the person or change the person.

Mark Abbott
[0:56:14]
Yeah, and it's hard, right? I mean, because, you know, what happens is, and this goes to the ego stuff, right? So, you know, we all go through these stages of development. And so we all have access to these stages of development, right? We all don't go through it, right? But, you know, a lot of people get to stage five, which is where, you know, you're about winning and competitive and achievement and all that good stuff, right? And then all of a sudden you're like, you know, I've stepped on a few toes. I've got some relationship issues. And then you go to the empathy stage and And then, you know, what happens is you are over-indexing on care versus performance, and you end up having some leaders who you're not really willing to fire, right? You're trying hard, right, to help develop them. They don't really want to be developed. They kind of, like, they're kind of set in their ways. And so then what you end up, I ended up doing, right, was you overcompensate for their deficiencies by kind of, you know, doing their job.

Kris Snyder
[0:57:24]
I was gonna say, I think that's where you're going.

Mark Abbott
[0:57:26]
Yeah. Yeah.

Kris Snyder
[0:57:26]
You know?

Mark Abbott
[0:57:27]
And, and now.