I want to tell you something I don’t talk about enough.
Around 2019, while I was running my mortgage company, I had a new idea. I’d registered the name Directed Ascent and the plan was to help real estate agents market their businesses. Hired someone for social media. Built a curriculum. Ran seminars teaching agents how to create a marketing foundation on Facebook. Had a whole “good, better, best” service model mapped out.
We spent real money. Real time. Real energy.
And we weren’t good at it.
Looking back now, it’s almost funny. I was a mortgage guy. I knew referral relationships. I knew how to build a client experience that made people loyal for life. What I did not know – and what I hadn’t honestly asked myself – was whether I was the right person to be teaching real estate agents to run Facebook ads.
The answer was no. And the market told me so, just not before I’d already paid the tuition.
I share this because it’s the same conversation I find myself having with business owners every single week. The names and industries change. The pattern doesn’t. And the reason I understand it so well isn’t because I studied it – it’s because I lived it.
The Trap That Catches Smart Owners
Real talk – the owners who fall into this trap aren’t the reckless ones. They’re the ones with vision. The ones who see opportunity and move. The ones who’ve already built something real through sheer force of will and smarts.
That’s exactly what makes it dangerous.
The same drive that built your business will occasionally aim itself at the wrong target. A new market. A side project. A pivot that makes sense on a whiteboard but quietly drains the energy your core business actually needs. You don’t notice it happening until you pull out a notebook six months later and realize you’ve been spending 80% of your effort on something that’s breaking even at best.
Meanwhile, the thing you’re actually great at – the thing people pay you for, trust you with, and refer their colleagues to – has been running on fumes.
This isn’t a character flaw. It’s a focus problem. And focus problems don’t fix themselves from the inside.
What Happens When You Try to Hold Yourself Accountable
A while back, I was talking with a business owner who told me he’d been self-implementing EOS since 2014. Ten years. Knew the tools, ran the meetings, had an internal integrator managing the process. Didn’t need an outside implementer – he had it handled.
I didn’t argue with him. I just asked one question.
“What’s the number one right-people, right-seat move you could make in your business this quarter?”
He didn’t hesitate. Three names came to mind immediately. He knew exactly who. He’d known for a while.
So I said: “I challenge you to make that move this quarter.”
He went quiet.
That silence is the whole conversation. Not because he lacked the knowledge. Not because he didn’t understand the framework. But because knowing something and being held accountable to act on it are two completely different things – and you cannot fully do the second one for yourself.
His own words afterward: “If I would have had someone asking me that seven years ago, we would be so much further along.”
Seven years.
The Real Reason an Internal Integrator Can’t Do This
Here’s what I hear sometimes: “We have someone internal who runs our EOS process. It works fine.”
And I believe them – to a point. The mechanics of EOS aren’t complicated. Anyone can learn to run the meetings, track the rocks, update the scorecard. The tools are open source. You can download them tonight.
What you can’t replicate internally is the willingness to ask the questions that could get you fired.
Think about it this way. If you have an integrator or internal facilitator making $80,000 to $120,000 a year, their livelihood is tied to your approval. Their job security lives inside your four walls. Are they going to push back hard when you’re avoiding a people decision you’ve been avoiding for two years? Are they going to tell you directly that the real problem in your business is sitting at the leadership table? Are they going to challenge the owner in front of the team?
Most won’t. Not because they don’t see it – they probably see it clearly. But proximity changes everything. When your paycheck comes from the person you’re supposed to hold accountable, the honest question almost always gets softened. Redirected. Saved for a better moment that never quite arrives.
An outside implementer doesn’t have that problem. I have other clients. My livelihood doesn’t depend on whether you like what I said in the last session. I’m not there to be an AI girlfriend – telling you what you want to hear and making you feel good about decisions you already made. I’m there to ask the question that moves your business forward, even when it’s uncomfortable.
That’s the difference. It’s not the framework. It’s the freedom that comes with having no stake in your approval.
Reduce the Noise. Stay on the Signal.
When Steve Jobs came back to Apple, one of the first things he did was cut the product line. Dramatically. What had become a sprawling catalog of options got reduced down to the core. Not because the other products were bad – but because dispersed energy produces dispersed results. Concentrated energy is what creates something exceptional.
That’s the signal-to-noise ratio. And it applies to every business I work with.
The most successful business owners I know aren’t the ones with the most ideas. They’re the ones who’ve gotten disciplined about which ideas deserve their energy – and which ones are just noise wearing the costume of opportunity.
I learned that lesson the hard way with my real estate marketing experiment. Spent money I didn’t need to spend, chasing something that wasn’t in my lane, while my actual strengths sat waiting. It took walking away from a sunk cost to finally ask the honest question: where am I actually great? And why am I spending any energy anywhere else?
That question – asked seriously, answered honestly – is the beginning of real traction.
The problem is, most owners can’t ask it cleanly about their own business. They’re too close. They’ve got too much invested – emotionally, financially, relationally – in the way things currently are. They need someone outside the building who doesn’t have a stake in the answer.
The Question Worth Sitting With
I’m not going to tell you that every business needs an outside implementer. Some owners genuinely have the discipline and the team to run this process themselves. It’s possible.
What I will tell you is this: right now, if I asked you to name your number one right-people, right-seat move this quarter – you probably already know the answer. It came to you fast, didn’t it?
So what’s stopping you from making it?
If the answer is “I’m not sure,” that’s a clarity problem – and clarity is fixable. If the answer is something more like “I know what needs to happen but I can’t bring myself to pull the trigger,” that’s a different conversation. One worth having with someone who isn’t on your payroll.
That silence you felt a moment ago – that pause between knowing and doing – is exactly where businesses stall. It’s where years get spent on the same problems. It’s where potential sits, patient and waiting, while the calendar keeps moving.
You don’t have to keep circling it alone.