Ready to move past chaos and achieve scalable growth? Today, we dive deep into the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), the powerful framework and toolkit helping leadership teams gain crystal-clear vision, drive disciplined execution, and build healthier, more engaged workplaces. Host JR Lowry sits down with Chris Hallberg, a seasoned EOS implementer who has worked with over 100 organizations, achieving astonishing 90% employee engagement rates and numerous “Best Places to Work” awards to unpack the six key components of EOS.

We’ll explore everything from getting the right people in the right seats to leveraging Chris’s latest venture: an AI-driven EOS platform, GoExpand, that turbocharges performance and accountability. If you’re a founder or executive looking to break through a growth ceiling, tune in to learn how to inject military-grade focus and discipline into your company’s DNA.

Check out the full series of “Career Sessions, Career Lessons” podcasts here or visit pathwise.io/podcast/. A full written transcript of this episode is also available at https://pathwise.io/podcasts/chris-hallberg

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The Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) – With An AI Booster With Chris Hallberg

The “Business Sergeant”: Leadership Expert, Military Veteran, And Serial Entrepreneur

This show is brought to you by PathWise.io. If you’re ready to take control of your career, like thousands of others already have, join the PathWise community. We’re going to be talking about the Entrepreneurial Operating System, EOS. For readers who may not know, EOS is a set of simple tools and habits that help leadership teams get crystal clear on their vision, stay disciplined in execution, and create healthier, more engaged workplaces. To discuss that, our guest is Chris Hallberg, who has worked with more than 100 organizations and helped them achieve employee engagement rates above 90% and numerous best places to work awards. He is co-building a $5 million AI-driven EOS platform. Let’s get going.

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Chris, welcome, and thanks so much for being on the show with me.

Thanks for having me on.

I am looking forward to getting to know you and diving into the world of the Entrepreneurial Operating System, EOS. Before we do that, why don’t you give us a brief background of yourself?

How did I get to where I am? My origin story?

Yes.

Chris Hallberg’s Background & Entry Into EOS

I spent my twenties in a couple of different uniforms. I was a part-time citizen soldier in the Army National Guard Military Police Corps and full-time in the Department of Corrections, and then in a sheriff’s office. I had a Paramilitary and Military law enforcement career. I got out of all those uniforms in 1999 and entered the sales world in the construction space. I became a top-selling sales performer. I became a sales manager, a sales executive, and ultimately a business owner. I exited my last company in 2011 and have been coaching other entrepreneurs and their leadership teams since.

In early 2014, I was introduced to Gino Wickman and Don Tinney at EOS Worldwide and became implementer number 60 or something like that.           Now, there are about 1,000 in the world. That’s coming up on twelve years this winter. Time flies when you’re having fun. I’ve graduated well over 135 teams from the Entrepreneurial Operating System. Some clients still hang on to me and run their annual planning, or I give them an EOS booster shot as needed. Turns out, the traction, if you’re not diligent, fades away like anything else that’s hard to gain.

I spend my time coaching leadership teams. I do some one-on-one coaching with CEOs. I launched an agentic AI business operating system platform to run an operating system like EOS and keep all the glue together. All the insights of over a decade of EOS and making some observations of what my top teams were using, I created a product that takes out the Frankenstack of the 5 or 6 different people apps and operating systems apps, and then an AI agent, and I put it into one convenient solution that’s optimized for team performance.

You’ve given a good intro into what we’re going to get to. Let’s start with the basics of EOS. For those who are unfamiliar with it, what is it? Why is it such a powerful framework and toolkit?

The Six Key Components Of EOS

I’ve had Harvard and Warden MBAs tell me after a couple of years of running EOS, “This is the real NBA, Chris. There’s no theory. It’s all practical.” Gino Wickman, the creator of EOS, was helping his father, Floyd Wickman, who’s a Hall of Fame speaker and real estate trainer. He turned around his training company. It was about a seven-year affair. He had a nice exit in his 30s, too young to retire.

As a member of the Detroit Chapter of the Entrepreneurs Organization, EO, which is a peer group for $1 million and up entrepreneurs, after the exit, he noticed that his forum or his peer group, a good half of them all were having problems. They’re all in different industries, but they all had the same problems. He had created some tools while turning around his dad’s business, and then saw an opportunity when a bunch of different people doing a bunch of different things had the same issues. He started using those tools and started helping those companies turn around, and then he saw an opportunity in the market.

Basically, what is EOS? It is 20 or 30 of the most popular business concepts simplified, stripped down, and then plugged in together in a simple, holistic operating system to align and synchronize all the moving parts of one’s business. It is a masterclass in, “All you need is this from that and a little bit of here. Now, tie those together. Use these to create that.” It’s a brilliant set of tools. It’s quite simple, so people look at it and sometimes discount it right away. I assure you, simplicity is one of the secret sauces of why it works so well.

There are six key components of the Entrepreneurial Operating System model. When we look at the EOS model, I like to joke that EOS is like CrossFit for business. You see these CrossFitters. They look like action figures. They do some core exercises and then a bunch of little things. You don’t go to the pinky abductor machine at the health club and be like, “Look at that. I’ve been working on that for a while.” You can’t tell. It’s a minor, very small muscle group versus squats, bench, or deadlift. Those are big groups.

In those 6 key components for your business, the 1st is the vision component. You are getting the leadership team, the management team, and then the team 100% on the same page, where the business is going and exactly how you’re going to get there. The second key component is the people component. You are putting the right people in the right seats.

There’s a lot of stuff from a bunch of other folks in EOS. This is a great example. Jim Collins and his masterpiece, Good to Great. He had millions of books sold. The right people share your core values. Right seats, what we in the EOS world call GWC or Get it Want it Capacity. You have to have both the right person and the right seat. Once you get 90% of your company to be the right people in the right seat, they’ll clear out that last 10% for you.

You can curate a company all the way up to 80% of the right people in the right seat. Twenty percent that aren’t the right people in the right seat will still keep us from the dream. It is very important to curate a team of all volunteers. Everybody wants to go where we’re going. No hostages and no work-release people. Folks who want to be there.

The third key component is the data component. That’s getting past the egos, personalities, and subjectives, and boiling the entire organization down by positioning a handful of numbers. Activity-based numbers weekly and results-based numbers monthly. If we’re not hitting those monthly numbers, we turn up those key indicators, those activities, until we get into parity. Then, we give people a measurable or number. It’s like, “When I hit this number, I met my goal. I’m a full teammate. I don’t have to worry. I’ve contributed as agreed upon. I can go enjoy my weekend with no guilt whatsoever.”

The fourth key component is the issues component. When you’re strong in vision, strong in people, and strong in data, your business is open, honest, and lucid. Issues stick out like a sore thumb. We have to have a way. We have short-term issues. It’s like, “I’m down to solve this issue. Let’s go.” Issues aren’t just problems. They can also be opportunities, things we need to discuss and get clarity on.

We have long-term issues. It’s like, “That’s an issue. I have no ability to solve that. I have some preparatory issues. I need to take out some foundational things. Let’s write that down. It’s good therapy. We’ll sleep better tonight. Every quarter, we’ll look at that and see if we can graduate those long-term issues to short-term issues.” Finally, a solved issues list or a boneyard where your old issues go. Once in a while, one of those will spring back to life. Your issue is all back.

It’s a zombie apocalypse part of the EOS.

It’s like, “J.R., your issue back.” You’re like, “What do you mean it’s back?” You thought you solved it at the root. Turns out, you solved it 1 or 2 clicks right before that. That’s why. The old joke is that if you pull a weed, then another weed will replace it in your garden. If you burn it with fire and cover it with concrete, you’re good for a few years at least on the weed. Permitted issue solving, taking them out at the roots.

The fifth key component is the process component. When we talk about the process component, 20% brings you to 80%. Checklist. Outlines. Go fast things. Software-based rules. Things that customers like when we do it this way. Process allows us to scale with consistency. Process is an important thing. We can’t have a million processes. We just need some core processes and then some general orders on how to operate, so we can respond to customers’ needs, be consistent, and do so in a scalable manner.

The sixth and final key component is the traction component. That’s bringing the vision down to the ground and making a reality by creating a 90-day world. Us humans get a little frazzled after 90 days. You’ve got to pick us up, dust us off, pat us on the back, kick us in the butt, or whatever that human needs for the next 90 days.

Then, we create rocks, which the late Dr. Stephen Covey coined the term. Rocks are big priorities. These are usually strategic initiatives outside of the day-to-day. Once done, give us a new capacity or a new capability. However, how can it be a day-to-day thing if it’s broken? You might need to rock it up and get some focus and some accountability to bring it back to a high luster.

Everyone’s walking around. The average company, even ones making money, is walking around about 30% or maybe 40% on the EOS organizational checkup. You can go to OrganizationalCheckup.com and take it yourself. Our job as an EOS implementer is to get the team over 80% strong. Once you’re over 80%, then your job is to maintain that. A lot of clients are like, “We want to go to 90%.” The extra credit is to try to graduate at 90% on the org checkup. It’s hard because the air gets a little thin at the top of those mountains. Going from 80% to 90% is a lot harder from 70% to 80%.

That is the Entrepreneurial Operating System, all predicated on the book Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by Mr. Gino Wickman. I used to know how many Traction books there are, but we have a book company, and everyone’s writing Traction books. There’s a huge library. There are 6 or 7 main books and a bunch of detailed books coming out. There’s no shortage of reading material for those who want to learn more about EOS.

What do you guys call yourselves? Coaches? Advisors?

Implementers. We have professionals, certified, and expert EOS planners. There are three tiers to show the career progression. To get to the top one, that’s 7, 8, or 9 years of EOS-ing to get to the expert level. When you guys go in at whatever level you are of those three, what does a typical engagement look like? How long do you typically end up working with a company to roll this out?

Typical EOS Engagement Length & Goals

It’s usually around two years. It could be a little faster or a little longer. That’s the rule. EOS teaches independence, not dependence on a consultant. We’re going to do some business coach stuff. We’re going to do some consulting stuff from time to time, but it’s more of being a teacher, facilitator, and coach. Teaching the EOS tools, purely facilitating the right answers in the room. Our job is to remove the obstacles, the sacred cows, or 800-pound gorillas.

Talk about the healthy part, because EOS does three things. Our three uniques are vision, traction, and healthy. Vision from the standpoint of helping the leadership team, the management team, and ultimately the entire organization get crystal clear where you’re going and how you’re going to get there. Traction from the standpoint of helping everyone become more disciplined and accountable, executing well in all facets of that vision.

Healthy means helping the team come together, coalesce, and function as a healthy team. Oftentimes, strong leaders with big egos don’t function well in team environments. We have to make sure that even if you’re big, bodacious, and out there, we’re kind, gentle, good to people, uniform, and not putting ourselves in front of the team.

It’s about crafting a vision and getting the right people to opt in or opt out. There’s the, “Heck yeah,” the, “Heck no,” and the middle circles hell with the flames in it. Our job is to get it to, “Heck no. Let’s not do that. Stop that. Heck yes. Let’s do that more.” Anything in the middle becomes the middle circle. It’s our job to drive it to one side or the other.

Black and white, all the color, and none of the color is clear and scalable. Gray is tricky. There’s a lot of complexity in the gray areas. You can’t scale it. Once we get everything to be all the color or none of the color, it’s much easier to scale a business. If you haven’t gone through this process, you’re making it up. If you think about the phone here, the operating system on my phone, whether you’re an Apple or an Android, ties it together. It ties the calendar, the camera, everything. Without the EOS, it’s a bit of a paperweight.

Most entrepreneurs that I meet are like, “We’ve got an accounting system. We’ve also got a recruiting system. We’ve got an onboarding system.” They list all their systems off, and I say, “What’s the one system that sits over the top of all that and gets everything to fit?” They’re like, “We don’t have that.” That’s what EOS is. It’s an operating system, like the one on your phone, that gets all the different disparate systems to work together. If you don’t have that, this is a game-changer.

First off, where have you been? This EOS thing, I’ve been doing this for twelve years. I still meet people who don’t know about it. I’m joking. The world is a large place. If you’re an entrepreneurial company, the EOS is designed for $2 million to $50 million and 10 to 250 employees. That was the original intent. I’m coaching publicly traded companies doing $1 billion a year, $500 million, a couple of hundred million a year, and certainly $50 million and $100 million a year.

I love EOS because you can turn your company into a speedboat, not a cruise ship. People like the connectivity. It forces you to decide. A lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of leadership teams want to try to straddle both sides of everything, wait to see the tide, and then join late, versus pick something early, scale it, and win. You can’t be everything to everybody.

EOS has you pick. Once you pick, it turns out that there’s a market of people who appreciate what you do. We can scale them, because you’re tiny. No matter how big your company is, the market is almost infinite in size. World domination being number one usually isn’t a good goal. 10X-ing or 100X-ing your scale with the right people in the right seats by staying clear, focused, disciplined, and accountable, and celebrating those wins is a much better strategy to scale any business.

This idea of having the right people in the right seats means so many companies and so many businesses do a good job of recruiting, or they put people in a role for the wrong reasons, and then they have to live with the consequences. Those kinds of situations in isolation can be a nuisance. When they become more than 20% of the population, you’ve got a systemic issue that you need to address. Clearly, you’re not going to operate at a high-performance level if you’ve got people who aren’t the right people in the right seats.

It’s the number one issue in business. I see it for small companies, medium companies, and enterprise companies. The size of the issue is exacerbated by your scale. There’s an old saying. The culture of your business is determined by the worst behavior that you’re willing to tolerate. A chain is as strong as its weakest link. We get cliché for the rest of the hour, and the point would come across.

I find most people don’t invest in the people department as a growth engine. Most people don’t use hiring tools like personality assessments. Most people don’t require the use of an app to keep everything glued together. There are a lot of rules that you can make that are very simple and helpful by having a mindset of, “We’re not going to be some mediocre company. We’re going to be in the top 10%, top 5%, top 1%, or top 0.5%.”

Let me give an example here. Along the way, I’ve always been a big fan of third-party engagement surveys. The business journals, for instance. Every major city has a business journal. You cannot write those guys a check to get an award. There are a lot of awards one could write themselves a check for. There are big, shiny crystal awards. This is not one of them.

The only way to win this award is to compete against all the other companies in your market in your size range. The emails you have will get an email. This is an anonymous email. If your employees don’t love you, trust me. This is a wonderful opportunity for them to tell somebody that your benefits suck, your manager’s a jerk, your communication’s bad, or all the different things that the employees could be upset about.

In order to win one of those awards, you’re going to have to be in the high 80s to mid-90s percentile. We’re talking about top companies. My clients or my graduates win them annually with ease. My clients have won over 200 individual Best Places to Work awards. Think about twice the EBITDA and a low turnover waiting list to work there. If there’s a waiting list to work at your company, what does that say about your results? What does that say about your culture?

I coach my CEOs to pay their employees in the 75th percentile. Go to Payscale.com or a similar service. That’s what we pay people because there’s a profit margin for A-Players. A-Players oftentimes do 2X or 3X of a C-Player. We never pay them 2X or 3X. We pay them 1.2X, 1.4X, or maybe 1.6X. There’s a hidden margin in A-Players. We can do a lot more with a lot fewer people. A small team of A-Players can run circles around a large team of C-Players.

We throw talent and systems. We’re choosy. I’d like to say we’re slow to hire and quick to fire. Those are the cultures of elite teams, whether that’s a sports team, a Military unit, or a business that is enjoying outsized results. As an EOS implementer, there are close to a thousand of us, but there’s only one of me. I’m the Business Sergeant. That’s my personal branding. That gives me license to be direct, kind, ask for decisions, and straightforward. Almost brutally blunt is a term, but it’s effective. We don’t need to dance around the truth. We need to call it out and decide, “That’s not going to work. We need to be better. How do we do that?”

If you have a mindset, you have an operating system. The big thing is some sort of a tool. Us humans are on our phones all day. It’s like, “Do we need another app?” It turns out that we need a curated app. We don’t need what I call the Frankenstack, which are these 5 or 6 people apps that you need parts of. We have an operating system app to keep all the tools together. It can be complex, but you can simplify it with a software tool like that.

There’s agentic AI. If you’re not using an AI agent to store your process and put your information, you want your employees to know you’re behind. I’m catching people up on that agentic AI, the creative stuff. That’s a little scary for people, but agentic AI is asking the question, getting an answer in about 10 or 15 seconds, and not having to serve anybody. That’s giving people time back. It’s increasing velocity. Think about it, if we have this operating system. We’re running. We have a tool that we’re in. I can find everything. Visibility is there. I get that healthy peer pressure. I don’t want to be the last on this list, so I’m going to come in early, stay late, and get into the green.

There’s a scatter plot. We have an X axis and a Y axis. We have performance on theX and engagement on the Y. You need to be up in the right, in the green. Don’t be down into the left, in the red. I find that green is good and red is bad. Yellow is almost red. Everyone drives. Those are the traffic signals. If they want to be green, they’ll get green. If they don’t want to be green, then they won’t. They’ll come up with all the other excuses you hear on a daily basis that say they want to be successful, but don’t seem to move in that way.

Here’s what I’ve done with GoExpand, which is the name of this agentic AI platform. It has an EOS license, so it’s an official EOS software partner. I’m very proud of that. You have to be the right person in the right seat. This is how you do it. Everyone can see this. Go. It gets rid of all the subjectivity, which is the hardest part of EOS or any other operating system.

To put it this way. I have clients who get it. They see the truth, and they see it as I see it. I point it out, they’re like, “Yes.” With other people, I’m like, “Look over here,” and they’re like, “There’s nothing here. Please go away. Don’t ask about that. There’s nothing to see. Please move along.” It gets us all looking at the same things at the same time. We all have agreed we’re here to be awesome. Making the decision that we’re going to be a top company is the first thing, as well as committing to that.

Entrepreneurial Operating System: Slow to hire and quick to fire—that’s the culture of elite teams. Whether it’s a sports team, a military unit, or a business enjoying outsized results.

Back to what we were talking about before, you have to capitalize the people department. We’ve got to be able to recruit the best and brightest, and then we have to be able to retain them. Not everybody should be able to get a job at your company. To get a waiting list at your company means that you’ve done all the work we’re talking about.

It’s about a two-year process, but all you have to do is follow the process. The success rate is 85%-plus percent. The 15% that don’t make it are beyond help. It’s usually a founder with a skewed view of the world. Megalomaniac, big egos, everyone’s full of crap, or whatever that looks like, I can’t help those people. I wish them well. Anybody who wants to be great and is willing to go through a little bit of discomfort to get to the promised land has a very high success rate getting there. Doing EOS poorly is superior to doing nothing. Doing world-class EOS with the right tools and the right mindset is the game-changer. That’s what I get excited about.

I can tell. You’re making this investment in an agentic AI overlay on EOS. Talk a little bit more about exactly what that looks like in terms of how you deploy EOS and how it affects how people operate EOS on a day-to-day basis.

The Importance Of The Right People In The Right Seats & Elite Company Culture

There are some existing tools that have been around for 7 or 8 years, and they’re great. I recommend that even one of the less future-rich tools is still better than no tool at all. Folks have spreadsheets, Trello boards, and have EOS-ed a bunch of stuff. The reality is, it’s a holistic operating system. If you don’t connect it, you lose visibility.

Humans are used to being in technology all day. Failing in silence, if that’s an option at your company, where people aren’t put on blast for failure, they’ll continue to do it if it’s comfortable. Have an environment where everything is super clear on what’s happening, what’s going on, what’s on track, what’s off track, what the goals are, and where we are at, looking at your scorecard, and following the process.

The matrix of 1s and 0s. People don’t know what the matrix is. How are they supposed to exploit it, play, and win inside of it? For operating system apps, there were four existing ones for EOS with a license. I’m the fifth. They’re all perfectly fine. They all do what they do. It’s a Ford and Chevy thing. Everyone has their preferences.

You have to use one of the apps, whatever you choose, and whatever works best for you. If you’re going to run an operating system like EOS without an app, it’s going to take you twice as long. It’s going to be half as good. That’s my first point. It also says you’re committed because you have a monthly fee. If people aren’t updating their numbers, it’s not EOS’s fault that you’re not taking it seriously or you’re not committed to it. The scorecard being red for five weeks, you shouldn’t be like, “This EOS sucks.” The activities going into that scorecard are what sucks pretty badly.

What I noticed was that I got a lot of feedback on the existing tools. You’re in session. You’re like, “Why don’t they do this? Why does it do that?” I’m not only getting all the, “I wish the software did this stuff,” being a fly on the wall as most implementers do. I put all those into the bank. I had an opportunity to be introduced to some technology people. They had a platform that was enterprise-size and super powerful. The other apps were homegrown, smaller, scrappy, EOS-bespoked. I always thought, “If I could find something larger and then build the simple parts of EOS on it, then I’d have the ability to do more stuff.” That’s exactly what I did.

What I noticed in my time coaching some of the best brands in America, some beautiful logos that we’d all recognize that stepped up to do EOS early on, is the people apps. You would have a pulse survey engagement, pulsing, “What do we like about this?” It could be a question that greets you as you log on, like, “Do you need to talk to your manager today?” You’re like, “No.” It’s like, “Don’t feel the need to be managed today. If you don’t need anything, we’re not going to roll up and manage you. If you do need to talk to management, the manager can start the day by responding to the yeses while not disturbing the noes.”

Pulse surveys are a big thing. Visualization, like getting data scorecards into charts, pie graphs, showing the trend lines, and showing you versus average, is such a healthy thing to have to know where you sit. Dashboards are a big thing. It is putting that data into an easy, visualized thing, like, “I should be there, and I’m there.” Having that is very helpful.

Entrepreneurial Operating System: EOS is a holistic operating system. If it isn’t connected, you lose visibility.

There are performance reviews. You have to have the ability to have performance reviews. That should be in the same suite, so we don’t have 5 or 6 apps. Outside of performance management, we’ll have custom forms and workflows where you can pop a QR code to get information. We’d also look at employee recognition, high fives, and feedback. Not everything’s a high five, like, “Your meeting went long,” or, “You weren’t prepared for this meeting.” I should be able to hand out feedback, receive feedback, and go to the feedback board. I see you got a high five. I was in that meeting. I can give that a like, and then you get another high five. That’s a big thing that people love.

You think of all the personality assessments, understanding that as humans, we’re different. In some cases, there are 23 different personality archetypes. For this position, there’s only 1 or 2 that are successful or have the right wiring. Why would we even want to interview people from the outside world unless they were already wired like our most successful people?

We only interview the people who are our best people. That is a big thing. Those can be $50, $100, or $200 a pop. That can get expensive. I wanted to include unlimited personality assessments in the app, so you can use them. We don’t interview people who are wrong, and we’re desperate. They’re good at interviewing, so we hire them. We can never get the right people because we cycle through people.

There’s a bunch of other stuff. When I talk about the operating system stuff, that’s the vision stuff. In EOS, we call it the VTO. Core values, core focus, 10-year target marketing strategy, 3-year picture, 1-year plan, current quarterly rocks, and long-term issues. We have your accountability chart, which is like an org chart, but it says what you own in the company and what you’re accountable for.

Then, your rocks or your strategic initiatives. All your scorecards, your meeting pulse, and automated meetings. An AI agent that listens to all of your discussions and gives you a beautiful summary. If you took a to-do and it says, “Chris said he was going to do this,” it gives you a to-do inside the GoExpand app. It hears you and says, “You made a commitment.” It puts that commitment for you, so you don’t have to stop the meeting and tap the commitment. It’ll be waiting after the meeting.

The agentic AI is where you’re putting a repository of a couple of hundred documents. You ask it questions, and it gives you the truth. You update the process. You pull the other one out, put the new one in, and the old answer isn’t even available. All the performance management stuff with the happy humans, the entrepreneurial operating stuff, or other business operating system stuff, all those beautiful tools are in one place. You have the ability to search any conversation and look up anything. All the stuff is in there that you decide to put in there.

Since it’s an OpenAI workspace, we tokenize. Everyone can have access. We’re not charging $20 for a chat thing. They get tokens. It’s a couple of bucks, even with high use. We are able to see what the brand voice is. Maybe you’re about ready to go to your number one client, so you say, “How do they like to receive things?? We end up getting all the relevant information for a business. We run an operating system. We’re lean. We’re mean. We have access to all of our information.

The leaders can look at team dashboards. I’m talking about the X and the Y access. I can say these people are squarely in the green. I’m going to thank them and ask them if they need anything from me. The folks that are on the line or in the red, that’s where I’m going to spend my time. I’m like, “We’re going to put a plan together. Next week, you’re going to be moving towards the green, or you’re going to be stuck in the same spot, or you might move away.”

Rather than waiting a year or two to see how this plays out, I can take middle managers who don’t have an MBA and probably never got any training, and be like, “You’re now in charge.” Once we set the rules, where these are your numbers, your core values, and your rocks, that’s the game. We have a way to track it and remind you.

If your to-do is a milestone inside of a rock inside of GoExpand, when that milestone becomes due, that comes up a week early and reminds you, “You’ve got a milestone that you need to stay on track. I’m giving you a week’s notice so you don’t flub that.” It’s helping people be better at the Entrepreneurial Operating System, but it’s also helping them communicate, reward and recognize each other, and manage the team.

It’s the same for everybody. We have a uniform solution. Getting back to the 4 or 5 different people apps, my teams were only using 20% or 30%. In the pulse survey, there’s a bunch of stuff in that app, but they only use that part. For the performance management, there’s a bunch of stuff in that, but they put the reviews in there. You go to the dashboarding thing, and they’re only using a couple of dashboards they like.

What I did was take a melon baller, carve out the parts that my top teams use, and put them into one app, including the assessments, the AI, the operating system, and all the people stuff. That’s GoExpand. Instead of $150 to $200 a month per person for all those logins, we’re somewhere between, on the low end, $9 a month and, on the high end, $25 a month. It depends on your size and which version you have, whether it be the elite with all the dashboards, people stuff, and AI, or the essential, which is all you need to run the operating system with its simplicity. That’s the big deal.

Have a mindset of, “We’re going to go do this.” Get an operating system, which usually includes having an EOS implementer. Companies under a couple of million can self-implement at the Self-Implementer Academy through EOSWorldwide.com. If you’re larger than that, then you’re going to hire a Sherpa to climb Mount Everest if you can afford one, because of your chances of not stepping there. That’s why people get Sherpas, because it’s important not to get up to the mountain, but get back down safely. That’s what EOS implementers do. You can do it yourself, but you can get there twice as fast and twice as good when you use a pro that’s been on the trail many times.

Justifying A High Per Diem Rate & The Value Of An Expert EOS Implementer

You have been on the trail many times. You have been doing this for a long time, and you have a pretty high per diem rate that you charge. How did you get yourself to the point where clients don’t laugh you out of the room when you put that price tag on the table?

I’ve had companies sell that were not doing well financially when we started, and then 2 years later, they were getting 2 or 3 more multiples than their contemporaries. $10,000 a day sounds like a lot, but if it’s 4, 5, or 6 days a year, it’s $50,000 to $60,000 grand a year for a couple of years. If someone said, “If you were to give me $100,000 to $120,000 and we’re going to raise the enterprise value of your company by $20 million,” would you take that deal?

Of course.

The point is, I’d be more than happy to take equity rather than my fee. Anytime someone pushes back on the fee, I say, “I’ll take points.” They’re like, “No way. This is going to be worth a lot of money when we’re done with this.” I’m like, “Great.” I don’t get a lot of pushback from that if someone’s looking to work with me or another expert EOS implementer. Generally, if you’re going to have surgery, you want the chief surgeon or whoever trained them to work on you, not the resident who’s been there for a month. Let’s be clear.

Having said that, there are some brand-new EOS implementers who were members of an EOS team for four years. There are brand-new EOS implementers who have a ton of EOS experience. It’s not one for one. When you’re going to look at an EOS implementer, you’re looking at their business experience, their life experience, and their EOS experience. Those are the three things one looks at.

If you don’t want a straight-shooting ex-Military sergeant who asks for a lot of commitment and a large budget for recruiting to swap out the people that you’ve collected who are the wrong ones, they’re not hiring me. People who hire me want to have a dynamic experience. I have a lot of partners in recruiting companies and in technology and fractional people. I have a toolkit, which is EOS. I also have a large list of experts who have proven themselves with me on many assignments again and again. When you hire me, you get my group of Business Avengers.

We’re going between the Military and the Avengers.

They’re all superheroes in my mind. Let’s all aspire to serve other people, crush the forces of evil, or whatever that is at your company, and feel good about it. I like to joke that all my clients wear capes. When I talk to them, I’m like, “I can see your cape moving in the wind. You guys are so amazing.” They’re not talking about just profits. They’re talking about impact and serving others. That’s all the business does. It solves a problem for another group of people. There’s honor in helping people, especially when you do it well.

Military Background’s Influence On Leadership & The Call To Action/Final Advice

You’ve talked a little bit about how your Military background affects how you approach the work with your clients. How else has it shaped how you lead and how you operate personally?

It comes down to how, as a young man, I needed some discipline. I had a lot of energy. My teacher said, “Chris, no one is going to pay you to talk all day,” but here I am. That’s exactly what I do now. Maybe they got that part wrong. I came from a family with a long line of service, and that was going to be me. It was something I wanted more than anything.

I’m glad. I spent a total of nine years committed. I wouldn’t trade it for anything, but I also wasn’t compelled to go do the twenty years. I felt like, “I got what I needed from this. This is awesome. I’m going to leverage this in the civilian world.” That’s exactly what I did. Only 7% of our population has served in uniform at some time. That means that 93% of Americans haven’t. Quite a few of those people wish they did, quite frankly.

If they can get into the Business Sergeant session room, we’re not going to have to do pushups or get up at 4:00 in the morning, cut grass with scissors, or any of those other things. We’re going to go through some Military operations orders and talk about how the Military plans for things. I’ve got a civilian business operation order. I’ve got some other tools that are from my Business Sergeant brand that dovetail with the EOS tools. They don’t replace them, they dovetail with them.

At the end of the day, it told me when other people said, “Be quiet.” Maybe I didn’t respect those people, but when someone with a chest full of medals, years of service, and who has been through hell and back says, “Shut up,” it carries a little different weight. I would listen to people I respected. Like any other young person, you think you know everything. It’s not until later that you realize you didn’t.

At the moment, those are the people who had my attention. You’re a little scared of them and a little in awe of them. I was so excited to be in that environment. Once I got out, no one told me I couldn’t have that gung-ho, hoorah, “Let’s go have some fun,” moment. I look at the best time in the Military. There were some amazing leaders, but also some horrible leaders. Due to the rank structure, you respect the rank, not the person necessarily. I got a lot of examples of who not to be as a leader, probably more of those than the examples on who to be.

Bringing that sensibility into the civilian world, people love directness, being candid, and calling it out, like, “Greater good. This is a difficult conversation, but it’s a team conversation. The team needs this. We asked you to give it, and you’re not giving it. The team is going to call this right now. Not me, not you, but the team. I find that if we have expectations, those are resentments under construction.

I’m an agreement guy. I expect this. Do you agree? You do agree. Great. Now it’s on you. Once we have all those agreements, when people aren’t willing to make them or no longer care to commit to them, that’s an okay thing. You have a short time on this planet. If this longer suits you, let us know, so we can find somebody that does, not like, ‘So-and-so is going to quit.’”

Managing your company from a position of fear and walking on eggshells at your own brand, I see that more often. That’s not good. That’s not a good vibe. We got to make the rules. Being direct doesn’t mean you’re not kind. No one is doing each other a favor by being nice. Not calling something out and letting it fester creates a lot of resentment. People don’t quit bad companies. They quit shitty bosses. I like to find the shitty bosses and get rid of them. They can go work for your competitor, not here.

As the Business Sergeant, I work with the officers and the leadership team, but something that I specialize in is meeting with their mid managers. That’s a big thing that I do. EOS has workshops and training. I can certainly do a half-day mid-manager. All my clients do half-day mid-manager things, up to 10 or 12 leaders. If you’ve got 24 leaders, we’re doing 2 half days to make it a whole day. It’s group 1 and group 2.

What’s important is taking that leadership team and management team and plugging those cords in. Many people treat their management team, the middle managers, like glorified privates. The sergeants spend way more time with the troops than the officers do. If you don’t have amazing, empowered, and clear middle managers who have hiring and firing authority, that’s a big problem. I light the sergeants up, get them the authority and clarity they need, and then we support them. They do all the good work with the support of the officers and executives.

That’s a slightly different version than most EOS people. Those who have spent time in the Military know that the officers come up with the budget and the missions, but they don’t necessarily plan them. They don’t necessarily execute them. That’s more the non-commissioned officer. The sergeant’s role is like, “Once the officers decide what we’re doing, we’re going to go make that happen.” It’s going to be using their considerable experience and relationship with the troops to make that happen.

That’s what I did. I brought that Military team-building mindset into the civilian business world. No one told me I couldn’t. I somehow, over a bunch of years, became the Business Sergeant. With the Entrepreneurial Operating System, GoExpand, and that methodology, the results are quite high because it’s a very simple, operated environment. You either opt in or opt out.

In the Military, they assign you privates, and not the best and brightest ones all the time. Your job is to take them and get them so they’re an asset to the organization. In the civilian business world, you can pick whatever one you want, but they also didn’t sign a contract for six years. If they don’t like the coffee, the accountability, and the company culture, they’re going to go serve elsewhere. There’s nothing you can do. You can’t call the MPs. They’re not going to go get them for you.

To wrap up, what are 1 or 2 things you would want to leave our audience with in terms of EOS and the broader impact on trying to drive company performance?

You have the company you deserve. Whatever’s happening, you’ve earned it. You’ve owned it. If what that looks like isn’t what you want it to be, then you have to first make the decision as the owner, the founder, or someone with a C title. Someone has to say, “We’re choosing this path.” We need to stop talking like victims and start owning this experience.

The number one thing is we have to decide. Once the powers of be have decided, we’re not going to stop until we’re great. That’s the first step. The lack of commitment and the squishy willy-nilly, “These are our core values. This is what we tell the world,” we don’t operate that way. That’s crap. Stop kidding yourself. That’s number one.

Number two, once you’ve decided not to do that and decided you want to be great, which is a second decision, then you have to put that out there. Part of that is saying, “To fix this company, we might spend some extra money on recruiters and coaching with Chris and Chris’s software. We’re also going to make some investments. We want what we’re going to get.”

What it costs, to my earlier point, is not cheap, but it’s not expensive. If we’re not 10X-ing, 100X-ing, or 1000X-ing my time, then we’re stealing your money. I don’t want any part of that. These are high multiple returns. It is hard. Most people give up. Not my people, but the general world. It gets a little sticky for a little prolonged time, and then it’s like, “I don’t think we can make it.” A lot of people quit right before it’s going to tip.

Once I explain to people, “This is exactly what’s going to happen month by month,” at about month 6 or 7, it feels so much better than it did when we started. Whatever is left, I’m ready to do it because I have believers, because we’ve done the hard part. It’s getting out the worst ones, the terrorists at your company, not the activists.

Some of these terrorists are undercover. You think they’re with you, and they’re not. Every time we put weight on it, we seem to fall. It’s like, “I don’t know. It’s the market and the economy.” It’s always somebody else’s fault versus owning our experience. The neat thing is, once you get 6 or 7 months into the process, the traction is coming in truckloads. The team is like, “I don’t even care if it’s harder from here. I’m doing it.”

To answer your question directly, people give up too easily. As soon as you have enough people who are willing to go through some uncomfortable stuff to get there, I assure you it’s worth it every time. No one has ever said, “We shouldn’t have done that.” It’s, “We should have done that years ago,” or, “I can’t believe that I was the bottleneck at the top of the bottle.

You come in here for a couple of days, and it turns out that the team has been wanting to do this. I have the one that hasn’t empowered them to do this. Are you kidding me?” A lot of times, that’s the answer. The founder doesn’t believe they can make it, so they don’t try. They try not to rock the boat, stay in the middle, and keep it between the ditches. Nothing great happens in that space.

Entrepreneurial Operating System: Founders who don’t believe they can make it don’t try. They avoid rocking the boat, stay in the middle, keep it between the ditches—and nothing great happens in that space.

If you have the ability and you’re sick of being mediocre, make a decision. Send me an email. Get on Zoom. I’d love to have a half-hour conversation with any one of your founders who, for whatever reason, doesn’t believe they can do it. I’ve turned a lot of people who are doubting into firm believers. It doesn’t take that much. It’s not as big a mountain to move. Once you start getting it moving, then it’s on. It’s like a train. Those things are heavy. It takes a while to get enough inertia to leave the station. Once it leaves the station, it’s chugging along. Like anything else, most people are afraid of pushing on something like that for a while without seeing the immediate results.

We will leave it there. We got the deep dive on EOS. That was the goal, so thank you for that.

My pleasure. Thank you.

Take care.

You as well.

Thanks, Chris, for joining me. It was good to talk about the things that often plague small and growing companies. It often is people issues. He also covered in great detail the Entrepreneurial Operating System, EOS, and how it can be applied in a growth company in the $2 million and above range. We talked about how Chris is personally, with his own company, AI-enabling the toolkit that you use along with EOS.

This was an interesting conversation about how you can bring all of that to bear to drive business performance. As a reminder, our show was brought to you by PathWise.io. If you’re ready to take control of your career, join our PathWise community. You can also sign up on the website for our newsletter and follow us on social media on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Have a great day.

Important Links

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• Business Sergeant
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• Payscale
• Organizational Checkup
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About Chris Hallberg

Chris Hallberg—known as the “Business Sergeant”—is a top-ranked leadership expert, military veteran, and serial entrepreneur who transforms good companies into great ones, fast. Ranked #9 on Inc. Magazine’s Top 50 Leadership & Management Experts—ahead of Simon Sinek—Chris blends battlefield-tested leadership with the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) to deliver proven results.

He scaled and sold a startup during the Great Recession at an 8× multiple, built royalty-generating sales systems, and became Colorado’s first EOS Implementer, guiding 100+ teams to achieve 90%+ employee engagement rates and 100+ Best Places to Work awards. Today, he is co-building a $5M AI-driven EOS platform while coaching billion-dollar contractors, national chains, and franchises with a remarkable 85% success rate. With his no-nonsense, high-energy style, Chris simplifies strategy, strengthens culture, and shows leaders how to drive 30%+ EBIT on predictable systems.