Financial Advisors Want To Know Podcast
Welcome to the Financial Advisors Want to Know Podcast Hosted by Catherine Tindall, CPA.
Each short episode is a targeted topic for advisors looking to scale intelligently, save taxes, and build their practice to 7-8 figures the right way the first time. Join Catherine and the experts she brings on as you grow and scale your practice.
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Financial Advisors Want To Know Podcast
Ep 56: The "Ins and Outs" of Annual EOS Planning
Financial Advisors Want to Know: The "Ins and Outs" of Annual EOS Planning - Ep 56 Scott Rusnak
Welcome to the Financial Advisors Want to Know Podcast, I’m Catherine Tindall a CPA with Dominion where our focus is helping financial advisors navigate income tax planning and compliance for their firms.
Scott Rusnak is an Executive Coach, Expert EOS Implementer® and a Board-Certified Coach for the US and British Olympic Teams. He is also the Author of The Entrepreneur’s Field Guide.
Scott has co-founded and successfully exited multiple businesses, including Schoollogic, GolfNow, HM Systems, and Tutela. Each successful transition has been attributed to the tools within the EOS framework.
With more than 30 years of experience in the entrepreneurial world as a Coach, Consultant, and Advisor, he helps his clients recognize blind spots and learn lessons that can only be taught by someone who has been through it all.
Podcast Takeaways:
Healthy Teams First: Annual planning isn’t just about setting goals—fostering vulnerability-based trust and healthy conflict within your team is foundational for success.
Off-Site for Insight: Annual planning should happen off-site to create a fresh perspective and eliminate distractions, allowing for deeper strategic discussions.
Structured Cadence: The EOS process emphasizes annual planning for team health and vision alignment, while quarterly sessions focus on short-term execution and measurable goals.
Solo Practitioners Need Planning Too: Even solo advisors should engage a facilitator to guide annual planning and ensure goals are actionable and scalable.
Tools for Success: Resources like Patrick Lencioni’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and The Ideal Team Player are critical for building stronger, more effective teams.
Connect with Scott:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottrusnak
https://scottrusnak.com/
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https://www.linkedin.com/in/ctindallcpa/
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Contact Catherine's Team:
admin@dominiones.com
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Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Financial Advisors Want to Know podcast. I'm Katherine Tindall and today I have with me Scott Rusnik again. This is our second episode together. He had such a good time. He wanted to come back again and I wanted him to come back again because I'm a big fan of EOS, the Traction Entrepreneur Operating System. It's something that we're implementing in our practice. A lot of the practices that I enjoy working with the best use this system too, so it works. So, scott, if you're not aware of who he is, you can check out that other episode we did, but he is an expert EOS implementer. He's an executive coach. I connected with him through another financial advisors podcast who he had successfully worked with. He's co-founded and exited several businesses and he's got over 30 years of experience with this. But his experience will speak for itself when you hear the advice that he gives. So thanks for joining me again today, scott.
Speaker 2:Catherine, it's my absolute pleasure. I've got to ask you what is the pre-Thanksgiving temperature in your neck of the woods today.
Speaker 1:Oh well, I'm actually in California right now, so I feel like I'm cheating. I'm usually in New Hampshire, but it's about 50 degrees and it's raining out here.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm in Coronado in San Diego. My surfboard is very lonely beside me because the surf's not so good today.
Speaker 1:No, well, that's a good complaint to have, though, compared to what some people have got going on. But yeah, no, it's funny how, like being on different sides of the state cause I'm up North, like really, will you know it's it's like it's different country up here. But so we're recording this in November and I think you know I'm in full. This is tax and a year tax planning mode for me in the practice, right, and I think it's a good time too for people to be, you know, for a lot of practices to be thinking about their annual planning. I know it's something that we tend to do in the autumn, and a lot of the advisors that I work with do this in the autumn too, but so where would you recommend people start when it comes to the annual planning process and what's recommended in the EOS system?
Speaker 2:Well. So here's the thing Whenever we start with a new client, we talk about healthy and smart. Most people come in as a client hey, can you coach us? We want to get smarter, we want to become more effective and to set your core target, your North Star going hey, in 10 years we want to hit that, this certain measure. Well, that's kind of easy, that's table stakes. And then you back it up and say, well, here's where we want to be in three short years from now. And you look at it well, what do we want to look like at the end of 2025? That stuff isn't as hard as the healthy part of healthy and smart. So healthy, open, honest teams have the foundation.
Speaker 2:Really digging into one of my favorite business books ever, written by Patrick Lencioni, called the Five Dysfunctions of a Team. So I urge everyone listening and watching this podcast to download or listen to that book. Read that book, because Lencioni and his brilliance basically says teams that are not functional they're completely dysfunctional, don't have the right kind of trust. We call that vulnerability-based trust. So there's a number of exercises at the back of this book and I apologize for really coaching hard in this podcast. That's what I'm looking for.
Speaker 1:I'm taking this advice to heart myself, so go for it, scott.
Speaker 2:Good and in our setup I said I was going to be coach heavy today. So, number one you've got to have a team that trusts one another, but it's got to be based on vulnerability-based trust. We've all got warts, we've all got wrinkles, we're getting old. Come on, nobody's perfect. And at the back of Lencioni's book and yes, I do pick up that book for all of my annual planning sessions I read from the back of the book we talk about teams that lack trust and the teams that really lean into that vulnerability-based trust.
Speaker 2:And there's a way to rank that team after you ask, or rank the team after you ask those questions. So a sample of one to five and then a five and above, and then, with your facilitator, your coach or whomever is doing it, you then take it up a notch and say, okay, conflict Teams that are afraid of conflict are completely dysfunctional and there's the right kind of conflict. So again, there's a number of questions at the back of the book. You read through those questions and you have the team evaluate the leadership team. How are we at a scale of one to ten? So, on trust on conflict, same thing happens with commitment, same thing happens with accountability and then results and some people that are watching this podcast might say well, this is a 10 minute exercise, we can get through this in no time.
Speaker 2:Maybe we'll fill it out in advance. Well, the healthy and the smart part is to do it in a room. Take 90 minutes to two hours out of your annual planning session and really dig deep into each one of those questions and the little subtleties, because as people are reflecting on their grade, you'll start to see body language, they'll talk about incidents, they'll share stories and that will allow you to have a greater degree of healthy conflict and the right kind of trust in the room. So there's a fire hose for you, but that's got to be the foundation of day one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I love, I love the way that you're putting that, just because I've noticed from my perspective, when you're a very execution oriented leader, you want to treat a lot of these tasks just like okay, well, this is a to-do list, Like let's get through the list, let's get this done. And in reality it's not a process like that, it's an intuitive process. You know, like you have to let. It's like you have to let those pieces stew and, like you said, take time away, get away from your environment, get everybody actually in a room together. Like, turn off the slack, turn off the screens, because it's not a process where it's oh, you know, we're going to take 10 minutes, get through this, All right, check done. Next thing Like it's not that kind of.
Speaker 1:It's not that kind of a vibe which I appreciate, and it can be tempting to want to pigeonhole planning into that, which is something I have a temptation to. But so when you do this process with the teams, what are some of the common? I liked that you drew. You drew out the point of the teams that don't have conflict or dysfunctional. What are some of the common? You know pitfalls that maybe people might not be expecting on the leadership side, like that was a. That was actually a lesson that I learned pretty early on was I had certain people on my team where they were really hesitant to bring up problems because they didn't want to seem like they were complaining or seem like they were complaining about other people on the team, but in reality it was bad behavior was perpetuating. So I'm interested to hear some of the things you've experienced in doing these with people.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So two things came to mind. Set the stage as well. This is offsite. This annual planning session is not in Catherine's office down the street. It is offsite. So the team needs to make an effort. Not saying you need to fly to Mexico City I advise against crossing borders but you get about half an hour to an hour away from your office. You stay there, you're offsite, you're digging in, and that can bubble up some things as well of like, oh, people can be a little on edge, but I tell them, if they go back to your core values and one of my big core values is do the right thing. And the next is do what you say and then be humbly confident. Hey, as a leadership team, we do the right thing and we raise these things to the surface, these issues. And when people show up a session early on and they're like, oh, we don't have any issues, I'll just say you're mailing it in and I think we need to take a break right now we're going to go for a walk.
Speaker 2:So I just help them rephrase what's going through their mind. So they've got to bring those one to hopefully not more than 10 big issues to the table and we dig in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and I guess when you're, when you're working with advisors or you know people in the professional services side where the work, you know the work is so personal A lot of the times like we don't manufacture widgets in people's personalities and ability to deal with the clients and a lot of soft skills involved. So much, what are some of the problems that maybe you see like recur typically or you know communication breakdowns that you tend to see in teams like that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you're in the world of tax. A lot of the people listening to this or watching this are financial advisors or they own their own firm and I let them know early on in the process. You're actually not in a tax business, catherine. Just a newsflash. You're not a financial advisor. You're actually in the human being world. Yeah, we're just a bunch of people. That's your product actually in your services. So that's the stumbling block is people need to get out of their own way and realize they're in the people business.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:That is really true.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great. So what's kind of the next sequence in the cadence that you recommend people look at?
Speaker 2:on one year. Then you go into that five dysfunctions exercise, and then I take it up one more notch and Mr Lencioni will sell a lot of books because of EOS. But we love him. The next book is the Ideal Team Player, and half the people watch his TED Talk before that. It's about being hungry, humble and smart. So when we're done that we're typically halfway through the day and we take a couple hours we go do something fun together, something a little bit odd and strange. We have a dinner that night and then the next day we hit the ground running. It's almost like a regular EOS quarterly. We go review where we're at, what are our measurables, where are rocks going to be reset, the scorecard, talk about accountability, chart our values and then at that point people are duly exhausted by the end of day two and we just make sure that every quarter and every week they're checking in their level 10s, but every quarterly meeting they're staying focused on all the good work we did at the annual, because that's the baseline for the rest of the year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great. And when you like, I guess for people who are not as familiar with EOS like, what are some of the differences between on the annual planning versus the quarterly planning? Things that are maybe just unique to the annual planning side of things Just a slight interruption in this conversation. I wanted to bring to your attention two things that are important for you to know. So we're always at the mercy of social media algorithms, so if you can subscribe to the show, that would mean a lot to me. Even more to me if you can leave a rating and let me know what you think about it.
Speaker 1:But we have a new newsletter that's coming out. It's going to be very active in 2025. That is specifically around tax issues that I'm seeing advisors face in their own practices, changes in legislations and the pieces that I think are critically important for you to stay ahead of as an advisor with the new administration. So nearby, wherever you're interacting with this, will be the link of how to sign up for our newsletter. Also nearby will be the link to my LinkedIn, which is the best way to get in touch with me, learn more about what we're doing for advisors in the tax strategy and compliance work that we do and also to get access to the various tools and interviews and things that I do, specifically designed to help you improve your practice, improve your own tax situation, et cetera. So let's get back to the episode and thanks for tuning in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so annual planning is two days offsite, quarterly is typically one day and quarterly is more about how are we going to chop?
Speaker 1:wood.
Speaker 2:Like, let's look at the last quarter, How'd we do, how are we going to reset that? So we pop our head up kind of, look around and say, okay, how are we going to reset so we can hit that one-year goal, that one-year target? So quarterly is much more focused on looking back 90 days and then moving ahead the next 90 days. And when we set the stage with all of our teams, we talk about the five leadership abilities and one of them is predicting. And predicting we say you've got to predict long term, which is just rocks, because you've already set your one, your three and your ten, and then you predict short term with your scorecard. So quarterly is more about that rocks and scorecard and teaching EOS tools. The annual is much more about that team health and making sure we're on the same page.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no, that that makes that makes a lot of sense. Do you have any specific scenarios, not like the people's names or anything, but just scenarios that might help advisors kind of jog their mind? For you know different solutions that you found with some of these team dysfunctions that maybe crop up frequently on the annual planning side.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I find that let's say it's a team of five and I'm going to use an actual team. I'm not going to say any names, but they brought someone in from the corporate world to run a specific department. This person they come in and EOS is very entrepreneurial and I respect the corporate process and whatnot. But this person is always saying, oh yes, of course, of course, of course I make sure that we check in. They realize it's real and raw, because sometimes they'll sit back and they'll have a certain presence of body language of, ok, we've got this, we've got this. Yeah, you can tell they're mailing it in.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so I would advise getting a facilitator, a third party coach. It doesn't need to be an EOS coach, but somebody in that room that can call it out, because it might be uncomfortable for Catherine or Scott in his own business to call that person out. But when you've got a coach that you can fire or have them push you a little bit harder, it becomes so much easier to get to the source of truth and point things out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that is such a good point and it's funny like there's other certain elements in the business like something that I really like. I have an executive assistant who I love and one of the things that I've loved about that relationship is it's sometimes being one step away from the action allows you to have a non emotional response to things and I've found like, especially when doing planning things or talking about team issues or things like that, like that point that you make of if it's an external person who's calling out, that one team member you're not having to be the one that's creating the bad blood, even though you know you're noticing, you know you don't have to be the bad cop kind of a thing. Are there particular you know particular things that you've noticed maybe in teams that are going through? You know, I think for a lot of advisors, especially when they start out solo, you know you're spinning so many plates, you're slowly professionalizing everything in the business, everything feels. You know it's like you're going from you know like a firefighter in California just dropped in the middle of the fire, to you're working your way through it.
Speaker 1:And you know for teams that are, you know, for advisors who aren't used to running big teams or for advisors who are past those teenage years. They've got a couple people working for them but kind of working through those teenage problems of working with a team, what are some things that you've noticed in the process of work, like, like you said, like the team of five, with those those grades of businesses, some of the recurring problems that maybe come up or you know hope for the advisors of, is this going to be like this when I'm a team of 15? Or if I'm, when I'm a team of 20? Like, is it going to be this much chaos still? But you know what are. What are some thoughts you have for for people that are in that that phase of life in the business?
Speaker 2:Great question. I'm going to get specific and I'm going to name a firm name, because I started with a firm called Asset Preservation Strategies in San Diego about five years ago. There were three people on the leadership team. Oh well, I don't think we're big enough for this. I don't know what we should do and I told them you know what that means? You're more efficient. Bill Gates said hey, I mean six great engineers, we can outperform 100. So let's take the three of us and do this the right way. We've done day and a half annual planning sessions and one day annual planning sessions, but there's such an incredibly healthy team that we still follow the agenda. We're just quicker and it just allows us to get that work done. So put in the exact reps that somebody that might be a lot bigger than you is doing and just understand that. Someone like Asset Preservation Strategies, with three people on a leadership team and about five employees follow it and they're just crushing it. Talk about a healthy and smart team.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, and that makes a lot of sense. Like I think you know something that I look on early on in the when I work with these advisor clients and I see certain behaviors. One of the things that I see you know really early on in the planning is the ones where when they're small but they're thinking about when they're going to be big and like how do we build these cadences? Now they're not quite the bottlenecks in the business, but like we don't want to be walking into the fires, like we don't want to be walking into the bottlenecks, like we want to have things structured.
Speaker 1:Do you have any advice for people who are maybe solo practitioners, who have a goal to? You know they have a goal to grow, but I think for a lot of people who are solo, the fear is, you know, if I don't have things organized enough on my side, like am I going to scale a mess? Like am I going to scale a mess? Like am I just throwing bodies at problems rather than me becoming more efficient as a solo practitioner? What's some feedback that you have for people that maybe don't have a team but still need to do annual planning for themselves?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So if it's just one person, I urge them to find a facilitator and walk through it Again. It doesn't need to be an EOS coach. Find someone, because it's just like going to a gym. If it's, I've got to go see my trainer. The appointment's at one to three, set the time and do it and commit. So find four or five hours and block off that day, get away from the office, turn off all the noise, print out the agenda and go back to all the things you want to accomplish and have that coach or facilitator or whomever it may be. Poke holes in it, but guide you along so you do it the right way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's great. So for people who are interested in learning more about the work that you do, scott, and maybe where where you'd like to, you know I know you mentioned the couple of books which we'll put the links below. But for people who are interested in learning more about your work or recommendations you have for where people should go for more resources, what's your recommendation there?
Speaker 2:If they want to come to my website, I'll point them in the right direction. It's scottrusnakcom. It's pretty tricky. I'd be more than happy, and at our last podcast I pointed three people in the right direction and they're super happy. So I see this podcast as a help. First, let's help as many people as we can and hopefully point them in the right direction.
Speaker 1:Yeah, awesome, I love it. Well, thanks for coming on, Scott, and for people listening. I'm going to post wherever you're encountering this in the ether, that is, the internet. I'll post Scott's website and then some of the references he's specifically named in the show for you to be able to check those out. Get the books, get the books, get the books. Do the books. Take the time, make it happen, Because if you don't this has been my experience in my own practice If you, if you don't make the time to make these strategic planning meetings happen, you will let the fires invade your life. The fires are going nowhere. They will always be there. You might as well let them go for a little bit longer and make sure you're getting this stuff moved forward, because if you aren't paying attention to it, you will never get beyond those fires. So thanks for joining me, Scott. I appreciate your words of wisdom and, you know, sharing the process.
Speaker 2:Well, I always say most everyone will be in the same place this time next year.
Speaker 1:Let's make sure it isn't you. So thanks for that, very true, awesome. Thanks, scott, and for those listening, let me know what you thought about the episode. We're trying to get this show out to more people, so if you can, you know, interact positively a like, a subscribe or whatever. Wherever you're encountering this, or just a smiley face emoji, I'll take it. Let us know what you thought about the show, and I'm always interested in hearing about what's going on in people's practices and things they're implementing, so feel welcome to reach out. Thanks again, scott.
