Process, growth, and creativity - starting your career at 18 and scaling the corporate ladder to become a successful business executive and CEO - that's Brittany Toler's inspiring journey. She cut her teeth at Cape Craftsman, earned her stripes at Evergreen, and eventually led a direct-to-consumer company as CEO, running on the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS). Together, we examine the tension between creativity and structure in entrepreneurial firms, and the challenges it presents.
Have you ever tried to sketch out a three-year vision for your life or business? Brittany gives us a masterclass on how to do just that. We explore how to translate that vision into manageable quarterly goals, the need for alignment and effective communication within the team, and the art of prioritizing tasks using the big rocks, pebbles, and sand analogy. Brittany shares how EOS fueled growth in her business and invites listeners eager to learn more or discuss ideas to contact her - brittany.toler@eosworldwide.com. So tune in, soak up Brittany's wisdom, and don't forget to subscribe, rate, review and share this goldmine of an episode with your network.
Process, growth, and creativity - starting your career at 18 and scaling the corporate ladder to become a successful business executive and CEO - that's Brittany Toler's inspiring journey. She cut her teeth at Cape Craftsman, earned her stripes at Evergreen, and eventually led a direct-to-consumer company as CEO, running on the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS). Together, we examine the tension between creativity and structure in entrepreneurial firms, and the challenges it presents.
Have you ever tried to sketch out a three-year vision for your life or business? Brittany gives us a masterclass on how to do just that. We explore how to translate that vision into manageable quarterly goals, the need for alignment and effective communication within the team, and the art of prioritizing tasks using the big rocks, pebbles, and sand analogy. Brittany shares how EOS fueled growth in her business and invites listeners eager to learn more or discuss ideas to contact her - brittany.toler@eosworldwide.com. So tune in, soak up Brittany's wisdom, and don't forget to subscribe, rate, review and share this goldmine of an episode with your network.
Welcome to the Third Growth Option podcast, where we talk with business leaders and innovators hungry to drive growth that can be faster than internal organic growth and less risky than acquisition. Your moderator is Bernal Duncan-Schpuller, chief Sherpa and CEO at Realign, who has led private equity-owned distributors through turnarounds and growth. With battle-proven leaders from all frontiers, we want to provoke thinking about business growth beyond conventional wisdom and binary choices.
Speaker 2:Hey, i'm Bernal, your host, talking with Brittany Toller, a very successful business executive who is now focusing on helping clients with EOS implementation. Brittany, welcome to Third Growth Option podcast.
Speaker 3:Thank you, bernal, it's great to be here.
Speaker 2:To listeners outside of the gift and decor industry. I think maybe the best way to introduce you is, as, most recently, a CEO of a direct-to-consumer company And you worked your way up through product and marketing and major account sales and innovation And to folks inside the gift and decor industry. Maybe names like Cape Craftsman, ring-a-bell, where you started at age 18, right. Was that like a summer job before college?
Speaker 3:You know I was so fortunate there. It was a summer job in high school and then they gave me a job at the corporate office and I worked my way through undergraduate school there and just fell in love with consumer products and innovation and design and this idea of international sourcing. And so Cape Craftsman was where I got my start and several of my great mentors. I were my bosses and partners there and I loved it. And once I started in the industry, i just stayed in the space. I moved from Cape Craftsman to Evergreen and then, as you said, Which Evergreen bought Cape Craftsman?
Speaker 3:They did. They bought Cape Craftsman later, so that was a fun little turnaround of that And now it's one of the brands in their portfolio as part of their strategic growth through acquisition models. And I spent 13 years at Evergreen both integrating and bringing over Cape Craftsman, as well as working, as you mentioned, in product and innovation, marketing, major account sales you name it So it was a really great learning, entrepreneurial lead there, so tons of opportunity if you're willing to work hard and put the time in. And then that led to the opportunity to be the CEO of a really fun direct-to-consumer multi-channel brand. So we're mailing catalogs, we've got our own website, leading a lot of new product and innovation, And that was a really, really fun and exciting opportunity. That e-commerce space moves quickly.
Speaker 2:That's right. So I want to talk about a topic that is near and dear to your heart, to both our hearts actually process, and I think it was in your most recent CEO role that you became intrigued with EOS, the entrepreneurial operating system. So let's kind of start there. How did you become a believer in EOS?
Speaker 3:I love this part of the story So interesting leading a company and working with really imaginative, creative, hardworking leadership team. And so the private equity firm I was working for had asked me to come in there and kind of lead a major financial and strategic turnaround, and the first few years were fantastic And we were really able to quickly grow sales, move from losing money to being incredibly profitable and having a pretty fun time doing it also. And then a couple years in I felt like we were hitting a ceiling. It was hard to get new initiatives accomplished and accomplished well. I had really great leaders that were really strong in their business units and nice to work with, but it seemed we weren't able to really accomplish things together, felt like everybody's working in their silos Or, in the worst case, everybody's bringing the problems to my desk right.
Speaker 3:And so in Brittany, what should we do? What's the answer? And so a friend in my network, when I was kind of saying this is the position I felt we were in as a business, gave me the book Traction which now was written over 16 years ago by a man named Gina Wickman, and it immediately registered with me And you know me some better right. It's got the work of really amazing business minds like Jim Collins and Patrick Lanchoni and Dale Carnegie. So it's got the information from all these amazing business leaders that you've read their books. But it also had a system and set of tools and a process on how you take these great insights but then go back into an entrepreneurial led company and actually start using them.
Speaker 3:We started using those tools And I could see a change almost immediately, and so it was really great to see it improve the business, and probably the largest thing I saw was it increased our alignment and accountability. It helped us really understand what we needed to get traction towards our real goals instead of feeling like we're a little stuck in the mud, and I fell in love with that And seeing the positive impact it had on me and the leaders in my business and just you know, using this clear process so you could kind of systemize the predictable, just allow them the human energy and all that excitement and energy we were bringing in to be put on the most important things, because the more simplistic and other approaches were accomplished by process, and when I saw the impact there, i knew this is what I was going to do next, and now I help leadership teams implement EOS and their businesses full time.
Speaker 2:You said process inside entrepreneurial companies, And I think folks, or I certainly think there are sort of two ends of a spectrum. On the one hand you have, you know, entrepreneurial, creative lack of process, right, When you start from zero to something, there's just just start, just go West, young man, right, That's the extent of the process. And then as companies get, you know, I mean, then you go to the other end of the spectrum. if it's, you know, a multi-billion dollar publicly traded company, there's maybe too much process, not entrepreneurial enough and almost going towards bureaucracy, which is sort of a dirty word of saying process. So how do you differentiate between good process and bad bureaucracy, right?
Speaker 3:Right, and you hit the nail on the head. I love the spectrum analogy because it's very much like that, and so you know, in the work that I do, that focus is that entrepreneurial spirit. And you're right, right, most entrepreneurial companies start with a team of one or a team of two. You know, in the gift space it's a lot of husband and wife duos, right that start. And so every decision is yours And it's largely gut instinct or opinion, and you get going. But as you grow, that vision isn't scalable when you're at person, 50 or 150 or 350, right. And what then a lot of entrepreneurs can suffer with is their vision not coming to reality because they can't share it clearly enough that all these great team members that they brought on board can help move the business forward and gain traction right towards that vision. And so that spectrum is exactly why I do this work.
Speaker 3:Entrepreneurs want to be able to create processes that allow them to scale their vision And eventually, for many of them, build up a strong leadership team that feels like they have an equal interest in that business and releases some of the pressure on that visionary, that entrepreneur that first started the organization. And so I kind of use a, you know, pretty classic 80-20 rule, right? What's the 20% of the steps that we need to do that get us 80% of the results? And then, as long as you're training and then managing and measuring people on those processes, you know that 20% that they have the freedom to interpret on their own is going to work. You know, to your question, when do I know you're airing towards bureaucracy?
Speaker 3:It's the client that I go to, who's halfway through their 400-page SOP manual. We're not on the path that you want to be on. You know this is a document that's never going to be finished and never going to be read, and so that 2080 entrepreneurial approach is how I think you know companies and leaders can look at. Where am I right on process, where am I short? You know, have I documented the most critical steps? so everybody's doing it the right way, the same way every time, building our brand and our culture, just like we say to our clients that they are. And once you've crossed over that spectrum, you're going too far.
Speaker 2:And I think that's when people hear the word process and sometimes they shut down because they're just disliked, because it sounds like that 400-page SOP manual that nobody reads. That will maybe be used in executive meetings against a person. Do you find a lot of pushback on the word process or sort of this bureaucratic version of process when you work with clients?
Speaker 3:I think when I work with a lot of leaders, when we start saying the word process, the first thing I see is a little fear, Right, Maybe. The second thing I see is a little resignation. Right, The entrepreneur is like, hey, this business is growing too fast for me to be the single decision maker, Right, All right, The single driver. So I've resigned myself to wanting to bring in process And maybe one day I'll come up with a sexier word that means the same thing. But in a lot of the conversations that I have with leaders, I think in a couple minutes, right, when you sit there and talk about going, every company is still using a process. Like you all have a process for how you hire and recruit people. Whether you're a small company and it's just people that owner personally knows and he reaches out to and goes through recommendations, or you recruit on LinkedIn, or you use a really amazing recruiter or HR team, You have a process in which you recruit and hire people. Whether you documented or not, or share it or not, The process still exists. You have a process on how you run meetings, whether you run them really well or really poorly. There's actually a process in how you're doing it, even if you're not naming it. So with a lot of the leaders, within two minutes we can really quickly identify a handful of processes that they have in their business that they're like. Of course that's a process, And naming something then gives you a lot more power and control over it And then looking at that is where you can really look at to go.
Speaker 3:Does this process reinforce the values and the focus of this organization and the type of culture that we want to have? And it doesn't take massive tweaks. I mean the lifting and the work that I can see leadership teams do in just a single day meeting is incredible And a lot of them will go. Man, we spent six months. We didn't get this far, But we again use a process where we come in and we stay focused and we stay present and we work on the business, not in the business. that day We work on the business and it can be a game changer. But yeah, it can be scary this first few minutes when we start talking about process and a lot of that is a little bit of fear of what is this going to point out in my business that isn't as strong as I'd like it to be or is over complicated And some resignation and going. I haven't done this very well map these processes but I want the company scalable and I'm willing to do that.
Speaker 2:And I think some you know, oftentimes I find the work that you and I both do with companies is just a matter of an outsider coming in and being able to sort of name the baby. Or you know, as they say, you can't read, you cannot read the wine label when you're sitting inside the bottle. I mean, right, we have the advantage of the outside perspective to just say to the team hey, i think here's what you guys are doing, i think here's your process. Oftentimes they're not aware of it or they didn't give it a name, so we can help by just providing that outside perspective. Right, Absolutely.
Speaker 3:I think the value that you and I and coaches and facilitators and consultants you know throughout the world, you know you need to bring in one objectivity because the people in that room are carrying that business on their shoulders every single day.
Speaker 3:So we need to bring in a lot of empathy and from my experience in entrepreneurial firms and leading a very entrepreneurial, fast-paced company, i have a lot of empathy for what these leadership teams are going through and it's a very, very busy, constantly changing business environment that we're in now And then with that empathy you can still bring in that objectivity and give them some perspective that they don't have when they're working in that business. And then we're also responsible for bringing in accountability doing our part of the work really, really well and on time and as advertised, so to speak, so it increases their accountability and partner I mean you don't hire a diet coach to feed you cake And just that mental commitment to going I want to make a change and I'm going to bring in an accountability partner is often the very first of the big game changers I see in leadership teams. I'm sure you see this with clients. You work. Seeing that the leader took that first step and made that investment ups everybody's game right away.
Speaker 2:You're exactly right. And just the top leader saying, hey, i don't know everything, let's bring in an outside perspective, gives mid management or the whole executive team kind of the freedom to say, well, i don't know everything either. And the fact is, you and I don't know everything either. It's just and that's where the empathy comes in and the ability to just sort of put ourselves into the leaders shoes Wanted to ask you another question and you kind of started addressing it when we talked about the spectrum from entrepreneurial to overly bureaucratic, the 300 page manual that just collects dust. Essentially, how important is what I call the altitude of information right Being too broad, replacing a 300 page manual just with one sentence is probably not the right thing to do. How do you view the idea of flying at 20,000 feet versus 500 feet altitude when you help executive teams implement EOS?
Speaker 3:Interesting. That's an interesting way to kind of pose that question. And I would say, first for teams, when we're working together, we set our intent and our objectives And I think that's critical. That's critical for everything. Before you start your workout, set your intent, set your goal for that week out. Right Before you set a conversation with your spouse when they've come home from work, set an intent or an objective for that conversation, because going in with thoughtfulness, i find, is going to greatly increase the result.
Speaker 3:And then for the teams that I work with, we do a mix And I like your conversation on altitude. It's about starting high. What's that full vision? Where do we want to be three years? And we do again that in an entrepreneurial, high level way. This isn't an in-depth three to five years. It's like what do we want this company to look like three years from now? What are five to 15 bullets that identify what? that would be Okay now, if we can see that three years from now it's not very far. So what does the next 12-month plan high level need to look like to have us on the path for three years? Right? So we start at 20,000. Maybe we've moved down now to 10,000 with our one-year plan And then we break it down into quarters. Okay, what would I need to do in the next 90 days To have me on plan for the year? That had me on plans for the three years And just setting that intention. And we look at all of those lenses during this process. So we're never going to finish our 90-day goals right. And maybe now we're down at the 500 to 1,000-foot level And if we then look up and go, is this an alignment with our 10,000-foot goal?
Speaker 3:If it's not, where are we off track? And we work on that in a room And a big part of that effort with the leadership team is to get them aligned. But as goes the leadership team, so goes the organization. So when they take this into their teams and their teams see them working, cross teams within the organization. This way, starting both with a big picture goal and then bringing it down to this is something that we need to do in the next 90 days. That's going to get us on the way there.
Speaker 3:I find it to be a game changer. So I think my answer to you would be we start high and we go low, and then the work that I do with teams. We meet every 90 days. Right, you go and you work crazy for 90 days down in your business trying to accomplish these goals, and then we stop, we lift our heads up. We go back up to 20,000 feet. Right, We reset our alignment, our intentions, we look back at how we did and we look forward at what we want to do next. A big part of that is also going. You're not going to be perfect. The goal isn't perfect. Right, a lot of us are running crazy businesses, succeeding almost in spite of ourselves. Right, the goal is to intentionally get better so that you're getting stronger and stronger at making that impact, which requires you to learn together through that. So I really think, for truly effective leadership teams, it takes a mix that high level view and then that down. What are we going to do the next 90 days?
Speaker 2:And EOS. I think you use the term big rocks right To differentiate from pebble and sand. We've all, I'm sure, seen the YouTube of somebody filling a bucket first with sand and then with pebble and then with rocks, versus first with rocks, then with pebble, then putting the sand over it, right, And so I love that analogy of what I call altitude as an EOS terminology. I think big rocks, pebble to sand.
Speaker 3:Yeah, i know, that's another great things. Franklin Covey that first had that great analogy and it's so crystal clear and that's true in so many things, isn't it right? when somebody's then given you the perspective, you're like That's completely correct. Right, we've got to pick the rocks, which are? the bigger things they are, the harder things, they're gonna take us longer. Prioritize those first, and then you quickly find you have a chance to put the pebbles in their right. Smaller things, consistent meetings, one to ones, and then you still have room to put the sand in there today, and sand in today's environment, probably email, right now, we personal tax, personal whatsapp, what all those grains of sand that if you started with those, you spend all day In your email box.
Speaker 3:But did it move your team forward? you didn't inspire your, your group, and so it is really about setting those rocks, and the work that I do with leadership teams is not only about setting that for the teams and then each of them identifying their rocks, their big picture goals for ninety days, sharing that information out consistently across their organization. Right was everybody say you have to hear something seven times before you even start hearing it the first time? but quarter after quarter, seeing their leaders stand up and go. These were my rocks. Here's what went well and is accomplished and here's what didn't, and it's either a new rock or we changed Based on everything that we learned. That's really important. You said that earlier. Right, like how do you help teams feel like they can enter a room and know that they don't know everything, the same as you know consultant or coach that knows anybody, anybody, everything, right, anybody who's willing to say I know everything's in the wrong room or in the wrong.
Speaker 3:Highly delusional exactly right today's environment. If you stand up and say I know everything, you've lost the entire room, right, they've stopped listening. And so it's about kind of creating that environment where even the teams can see they set goals, they didn't reach them all, but look at how far they got and how can I contribute to that Next?
Speaker 2:I think that's a big part of that when I asked you at the very beginning what made you sort of become a believer in the US, you know, people were working in silos and Which means they're not sharing things. And this whole idea of setting the big rocks, the you know the big goals, reviewing them with Everybody on the leadership team, every you know some of it weekly, some of it monthly, some of it every 90 days creates alignment and creates by it. One thing that I think is important to recognize is that alignment and sharing and alignment and buying requires learning from everybody in the room and everybody learns differently, right? some people learn by reading an excel report, others Are very visual, others, you know, need to have a conversation one on one. How do you see integrating sort of you know, the different communication styles and and and learning styles To help everybody on the team work with each other?
Speaker 3:Well, that could probably be a whole nother podcast in it probably.
Speaker 2:Maybe it could be.
Speaker 3:But I think that awareness of different types and they're great tools out there and I'm sure a lot of the business leaders listening to this podcast you know maybe you've chosen to send Colby, or maybe you still dis assessment or Or strength finders, and I find that those are great tools to help identify the different types of learners and communicators in the room. You know, i think what you ask offers and what I see that really makes the difference in it is consistency. So we have an approach. We call the level 10 meeting right. So the concept behind that is, if you finish the meeting and you are going to grade it on a scale from one worst To 10 most effective, how could you leave so that your meetings were consistently rated a nine or a 10.? They were effective, they were productive. They're kind of a type of meeting everybody wants to come to right Right, because I know something's gonna get done. They're not in that meeting actually answering emails on the right.
Speaker 3:Right, not the type of meeting that could have been an email exactly, exactly, and so, regardless, i think, of how people communicate or learn, being aware of that is important, but consistency in effort Is equally important. Right, because it's like practice. It's the same as anything else. You're just getting practice and you get better at communicating. So in our level 10 formats, we follow the exact same format every single week. Because why your mental muscles about how to approach that get stronger and stronger the more you do it The same way.
Speaker 3:So the process isn't meant to be restrictive. It's actually meant so it can free up all that mental load that you are carrying. Wondering, are we gonna talk about this today? I wonder if somebody had This on the to do lesson, is gonna remember to follow up? it removes all that mental load because you've all got a crystal clear agenda. The format is gonna go exactly the same and that allows each person to put in the way that they communicate and make it work For them within that, within that framework exactly, and so I think that's the key it kind of removes the fear also of people oftentimes walk into a meeting going all Oh God, what is this gonna be about?
Speaker 2:am I gonna be asked this question? am I gonna be somebody gonna embarrass me? right, because I didn't? I didn't do something that I missed a deadline or whatever. So just having a very clear agenda, same agenda for the same type of meeting every time, just provides that consistency and then you can focus on The content that makes up that you really need to be talking about, not what are we gonna talk about in this meeting?
Speaker 3:Exactly that's our goal, right? we don't want the person coming to the meeting is like I hope nobody's gonna bring this up because I don't want to talk about it. It's not going as I planned, right? We want the type of meeting to go. Hey, we all agreed on this and we're not on track. So let's talk about what's throwing us off track and how can we work Together to solve it, so you don't have that guilt or that fear or that worry. You know you're gonna know that room, you know it's gonna be a topic and it's gonna be all hands on deck to figure out A solution you and I are both not 18 anymore, so you know it's not.
Speaker 2:I'm not gonna ask you, i'm not gonna say anything more about age than that, but we know that we're not 18 anymore. What Advice do you wish somebody had given you when you're 18.?
Speaker 3:That's a great question. I wish early on I had realized that life is this Process, not a series of events. Right, life is a journey, not a destination. Because I think at young ages you know you focus specifically on big benchmarks I'm gonna graduate high school and then I'm gonna graduate college, and then I'm gonna have a job and I don't know what I'm gonna do after that. Right, but a lot of times when we're younger it's looked as the set of steps and then goes great, from 22 to 62.
Speaker 3:Go to work, and it's so much more than that and it requires you to be a constant learner. You're not done after college, you're just Starting. So you have to figure out how you learn the best. Right to your question earlier how do you learn well? is it reading? is it audio box? is it One on one mentors? because after college only you invest in you, and so I had some some good mentors early on. That helped me see that. But if I know that at 18 verses maybe my late 20s when I finally started figuring that out I think it would help me A lot and it's something that I share with with my two boys all the time.
Speaker 2:If folks wanted to reach out to you one on one, what would be a good way for them to find? you know, maybe have sort of an exploratory call on us or share that with your listeners.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. I'm so excited to be doing this work, so I'm happy to lead any leadership team through a meeting that explains EOS, and the process is that we use to see if it might be a right fit for you. You call me anytime. My cell phone number is 910 232 6767. Feel free to reach out to me with any questions or ideas or how much you're loving EOS in your business. There 22,000 companies across the world implementing EOS right now running on EOS, and so my email is britney dot toller at gmail dot com or find me on linkedin there you go.
Speaker 2:I love it. If folks want to explore other growth topics, you can find me on our website realignforresultscom, or to see mail, benno be and then oh, at realignforresultscom.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening until next time You can listen to more episodes on Apple, spotify or Google. We would love for you to subscribe, rate and review it. Share it with your friends or colleagues if you enjoyed the content always growing.