Top Tips from Mathis Young:

1. Ask For Help Before You’re In Too Much Pain:

“It is lonely at the top, and being a business owner is not for the faint of heart. You don’t have to figure everything out yourself. Be willing to ask for help, whether that means getting a coach, joining a peer group, or finding someone who can help you see things differently. Mathis wishes he had asked for help three to five years earlier, rather than waiting until the pain became overwhelming.”

2. Find Your Tribe Of Like-Minded Business Owners:

“Running a business can feel isolating, especially when the people around you haven’t experienced the same challenges. Find a tribe of other business owners who understand what you’re going through. A peer group can give you support, perspective and accountability when you’re facing difficult decisions or hitting another ceiling. In Mathis’ darkest times, he leaned heavily on his network of other business owners because they understood.”

3. Get Clear On What You Actually Want From Your Business:

“It’s easy to say you want more money, but that may not be what you really need from your business. Mathis realised that what he ultimately wanted was peace. Get clear on what your business is giving you now and what it isn’t giving you. Then identify the things you need to change so the business can give you the life you actually want.”

Mathis Young 00:00

It is lonely at the top. Being a business owner is not for the faint of heart. It is tough. If you are an entrepreneur, just be willing to ask for help. EOS literally changed my life, and so now it’s just like, hey, I get to go help business owners change their life, and it works. I had to learn to try to be quiet. I think I’m the smartest person in the room. I have all the answers, but I hired these people for a reason. And either I’m going to let them help me, or I’m just going to dominate the conversation.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 00:37

On to another episode of Better Business, Better Life. I’m your host, Debra Chantry-Taylor and I’m passionate about helping entrepreneurs live their ideal life by creating a better business. I started this show almost six years ago in order to bring people’s stories to you-stories of entrepreneurs that have gone through the highs and lows and who are prepared to share that to help other entrepreneurs understand that what they’re going through is perfectly normal and there is a way through it, and today’s guest is certainly going to help with that. So he has he he’s got a really interesting background. He bought a franchise and trained himself to be a dog groomer. He actually built and scaled that franchise to be the largest dog grooming franchise in the USA over a period of seven to 18 years, and he weirdly admits that they were making a lot of money, and it wasn’t about making money, but he would often spend the evenings crying himself to sleep from the stress that came with running that business. And it wasn’t until he found himself a peer group, found himself an operating system, and really started to work on the business rather than in it. That things turned around. So he’s going to share with us now what that looked like, how he wished he’d asked for help a lot earlier than he did, how he joined a peer group, and during that peer group led him to EOS and traction, and then what that did for him and his life as well as his business. So, please welcome to the show Mathis Young. He’s a professional EOS implementer these days. He helps other businesses to not go through the pain that he has gone through. It’s lovely to have you here this afternoon.

Mathis Young 02:14

Great to be here. Thank you for having me.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 02:16

Absolute pleasure. Hey, look, we’ve been doing as we always do a little bit of a chat before you came on the show, and you have got a very interesting story in a business that’s kind of dear to my heart. Because anybody who knows me knows that my two dogs, Apollo and Hermes, are my absolute life. They they take part in my EOS practice. They are they come everywhere with me. And of course, you actually built the largest mobile grooming franchise in the U.S. over a number of years. Is that right?

Mathis Young 02:41

That is correct. Yes.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 02:42

So tell me, how did you get into that, and why?

Mathis Young 02:45

Yeah. So I my background is in sales, and at the time I was working at a local bank here in Memphis, and so I was doing a tonne of networking, trying to drive leads and sales to the bank, and through all the networking I was doing. I met a a business broker, specifically a franchise business broker, and at the time I was networking with him, trying to get him to send me the people he put into business to me, so that we could do their banking. And then we just kind of struck up a friendship. And one day, we just started talking. I was like, you know, I may be interested in what you’re doing. I may be interested in going out on my own. So, we just started having initial conversations, started exploring it. I ended up taking some assessment, different things about what do what do I want in a business, what am I looking to do, that sort of thing. And so, we ended up narrowing it down to three different franchises, and ultimately, I ended up selecting Aussie Pet Mobile, which is a mobile pet grooming franchise. So that’s how I got into it. The main reason: a yes, I love dogs. I have two downstairs right now, but b I was like, I did not want to have to worry about clients. Where am I going to get my clients from? At the time, crazily enough, 18 years ago, mobile pet grooming was in high demand. It’s even it’s like exponentially higher now. But even back then, calling around talking about to different people in town, talking about people all over the country, it seemed like there was a market there, and it wasn’t going to be that tough to get clients in the door. So ultimately, that kind of swayed my decision about why I ultimately went into to the mobile pet grooming franchise.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 04:32

Excellent, and there’s another little connection there too, isn’t it? Because it was actually an Australian New Zealand pet franchise, right?

Mathis Young 04:38

That’s right. Yeah,

Debra Chantry-Taylor 04:39

started by an Australian. Okay, so you so you bought the franchise. What happened from there?

Mathis Young 04:45

Well, I went all in. So at first, I was going to stay at the bank, and then the more we discussed, the further we got down the road. I was like, if I’m going to do this, I got to go all in. So I didn’t have a wife. I didn’t have kids at the time. I basically had myself and a mortgage. And I went and got trained to be a dog groomer myself. We opened from day one. We had a we had a business line that forwarded to my mom’s cell phone. She booked all of my appointments, and I went out and ran dogroom appointments all day. And then I would come home at night, shower, eat, and then get back on the computer and really try to grow the business. So, I mean, in the early days, I was working till 910, o’clock every night on the weekends, and then from there, I just kind of slowly built it. Right, like after six months, I had the first van full. I hired a groomer. Then I got a second van. I kind of ran the second van. She ran the first van, I got that one full. Hired another groomer, got the second van full. I ran the third one. They ran the first two, and then once I got three vans full, and had three groomers for each of those vans, I kind of backed out of like having a dedicated van, and I just kind of subbed. So I started at the end of ’08, which is interesting because I just happened to leave the bank really at the right time because the financial crisis was in full swing. So I started at the very end of ’08. You know, we probably grew more slowly just because of the financial crisis here in America. So, but anyways, the last time I actually groomed a dog was 2013. By that point, we had like call it, you know, four or five vans, probably five groomers, and I went slowly into like administration, growing the business, that sort of thing.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 06:38

And you know, we all know that business is growing that beautiful S curve, don’t they? Where it’s just all a bed of roses, and it all just grows in this gorgeous hockey curve. Was it like that?

Mathis Young 06:48

No, it’s absolutely not. So actually, after four years, and I’ll tell this part of the story. I mean, there were nights where I was defeated. I would lay in my bed, I cry, and I ended up calling my business broker. We were still friends, and I said, “Hey, I’m done. I don’t know how to manage people. I know how to sell. I feel like I know how to grow a business, but I have no idea how to manage people, and it’s killing me. So, can you send me somebody in here to get my book straight and sell this thing? So he sent somebody in, and the guy that he ended up sending in is like Mathis. You don’t you don’t need to sell this thing. You just need somebody between you and the groomers. And I was like, Steve, I can’t afford that. And I ended up hiring my first manager in 2013 at $13 an hour. I think he got like six pay raises his first year. But literally, so Steve became my first business coach and my first manager. He was taking over day-to-day operations, and I went to just working on the business. And we we literally shared one office, and literally from like it was like the day that I hired him, we just took off like a rocket, and we were growing 30% 50% 40% year over year, for the next I don’t know, you know, decade. But that was kind of that was kind of the first like big event in my business life was like I’m ready to be done, but you know, as Fade had it, instead of being done, I found the right business coach for me at that time that really helped me take it to another level.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 08:23

Fantastic, but then you obviously got stuck again because, as we talked about, you you joined Vistage, right?

Mathis Young 08:30

Yeah. So you know, we talk about these ceilings we hit an EOS, and it’s like now that I look back, I hit multiple ceilings. I had a ceiling in 2013, in 2018. So my the guy that I had hired as my manager ended up leaving me and actually going and buying the franchise in Nashville, which is three hours away. And I tried some other stuff. I mean, we were still growing, but it was chaotic, and our operations were not tidied up. And in 2018, I was in pain. I went and visited a Vistage group, and I was like, “Eh, this is too expensive. I’m not ready for this. And it took me a whole nother three years to actually join Vistage in 2021. Well, during the meantime, when COVID hit, we shot up like we were already growing, but it was like steroids. I mean, we grew just tremendously because we were a mobile grooming service. Dogs and cats still needed grooming. People didn’t want to take them somewhere. We would come to their house. You could literally bring your dog or cat to us outside, so it was very safe. So our business took off, and we were capturing, capturing, capturing all the revenue. But man, the operations just were not prepared to handle it. So, I finally gotten enough pain that in 2021 I joined Vistage. I asked for help. I finally did it. I got in there, and I was at my lowest point. You know, financial. Revenue-wise, business-wise, if you looked at us, we were crushing it. But like internally, I was dying, and you know I was really back at my wicks and ready to be done. And then, so I finally joined Vistage. So when I got into Vistage, I was very impressed by the other business owners in our group, and over the first couple of months during our check-ins, I would hear people like talking about EOS, and I was like, “What is EOS? What are y’all talking about? And so somebody explained it to me, and I said, “Well, I look up to y’all. Y’all all seem to have your stuff together and are doing really well, so whatever EOS is, sign me up for that too. So that that’s I was in enough pain to do whatever it took at that point.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 10:51

So it’s funny. I always talk about that. There’s two kind of clients I think that come to us as EOS implementers. The first one is the one that’s stuck and just can’t get past a certain ceiling, and the other one is that they’re growing so fast that the wheels are kind of falling off the car, and they’re they’re really struggling. I guess you’ve been through both of those with that dog grooming business, right? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so you so EOS a bit like me, I’d never heard of it either when it was mentioned. It’s like, what on earth is it? So you they they explained to you what it was. How was it explained to you? I’m interested to know how they explained it to you. No, it’s hard to

Mathis Young 11:19

remember now because I’ve been doing it for so long. I read the book first. I read Traction, and it all made sense to me. And I was like, I just took a blind faith. I mean, I trusted my business chair. I trusted the other business owners and and Vistage. And I really don’t even remember my 90 minute meeting. I don’t. I mean, I was probably like, you don’t even need to do that. Just sign me up. Let’s get started tomorrow. You know that that was kind of my. You know, I wish I had those clients now, but I mean, the fact is, is like I should have done this three to five years before, and I waited it until I got in so much pain that I had no other choice.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 12:00

Okay, so you signed up. You did your 90-minute meeting. We assume we can’t remember, but we assume that we did. And then you started on the journey, on the process. And I’m always interested because I see businesses that we know they’re not going to get the full results immediately. It’s going to take some time, you know, up to two years to really get sort of great results from. But there, there are some instant wins, aren’t they? What was the biggest kind of win for you in the beginning?

Mathis Young 12:25

Well, I’m a I’m a true visionary, and just to be frank, I don’t like to be held accountable. Like I don’t like I have a million ideas, and I want everybody else to implement my ideas, but I don’t want to be held accountable to them. So just just weekly accountability, just like Mathis and everybody else on the team, did you get this done? Yes or no. And you know, to come to a meeting, even as the owner, I mean, nobody really on my team is going to quote unquote hold me accountable. But I felt like the system held me accountable. I didn’t want to be. I didn’t want there to be eight to-dos from last week, and everybody had got their to-dos done, and I was the only one that didn’t get them done. So it just really created like that was the biggest thing. It just created you know accountability. Yes, there was the vision piece, and yes, there was this, but it was like, okay, we got to turn things around. How are we going to turn them around? Well, we’re going to do A, B, C, and D, and then you come to the meeting, and it’s like, did you get A, B, C, and D done. Yes or no? And it’s magic that if you actually do A, B, C, and D, things start to change. You know. So that was probably the biggest thing. It’s just like the accountability piece.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 13:31

Yeah. Once you learned about EOS, did you look back onto you know to the beginning when you first brought that first employee on? Was that your integrator? Do you think?

Mathis Young 13:40

Yeah, absolutely.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 13:41

Yeah. Okay. So tell me a little bit about because I mean, people who who maybe don’t know about EOS as a whole, you know, visionary integrator relationship. The visionary being the big picture person, the one that’s got the crazy ideas. The integrator being the one that brings it down to the ground and holds the the team accountable. Tell us about your relationship with that person and what that did for the business?

Mathis Young 14:02

Well, so like the the guy that I hired in 2013 was my integrator, but I didn’t even know what EOS was, and we worked really well, you know. And I think we were basically kind of doing a lot of the visionary integrator stuff, but there was there was definitely some conflict, and I think not having the EOS framework and understanding how to leverage our strengths just lended itself for for some more conflict. And so, you know, fast forward to 2021, we you know I got into Vistage. I think I started EOS in January of 22, and like here’s the biggest thing, or another huge thing is that people in Vista said the people in your leadership team today are not going to be the people in there tomorrow, and I was like, oh yeah, they are. Like I can’t live without these people. Well, we started EOS in January of 2022. And it became very clear that the integrator I had in place at the time, and the other two people in the leadership team were not the right people. And you know, it’s just like as simple as the accountability chart is. My fear was like this business cannot survive without these people, but by the time November of 2022 came around, so you’re only talking 11 months later, our entire leadership team had turned over. You know, but I, but it was strategic, and they all didn’t turn over at once. And right, like the business could absorb new people, and we just brought new people into the leadership team, and they just they just plugged right into EOS. And the last person that I hired on my leadership team was was our new integrator, which was in November of 2022. And he just plugged right into EOS. And but I knew at that time what it looked like to have somebody in the right right seat, right? I had the right person in the right seat. I didn’t know any of that stuff when I started EOS, I had all the wrong people, and so I ended up hiring the right, you know, person for that integrator slot, and he’s still there today. And we haven’t got there yet, but I sold the business three or four months ago, and he’s still he’s still the integrator at that business. So yes, I mean when I started my U.S. journey, I was in a lot of pain, and I probably got in more. Even though we started gain gaining some traction, things started to change. We really weren’t going to change fully until I got the right people in the right seats, and so all of that had to change as well.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 16:38

And I think sometimes you have to go a little bit backwards before you go forwards again, right? And I see it with some of the clients I’ve been working with now for a while, where they’ve got to a a certain point, and yeah, they’re hitting that thing where the people who got them there are not going to get them to the next level, and the the visionaries, the owners, generally like, oh no, but I can’t let them go. They’ve been so loyal, blah blah blah blah. It’s like, yeah, but they’re just not they’re not the right person for the seat, you know. They’re sorry. Not so much the right person. It’s the they’re not the rights in the right seat. They just don’t have the capacity to really take that seat to where it needs to be and take the company where it needs to be.

Mathis Young 17:13

Well, and and to be clear, it’s my fault, not their fault, right? Like I hired people for seats that they weren’t, you know, they weren’t ready for that seat. They didn’t have the capacity for that seat. They weren’t, or they they didn’t fit in with their core values. And it was it wasn’t their fault. I put them in a bad position, but I didn’t know what I didn’t know at the time either. And so, I was doing the best with what I had at the moment. And then it’s like you start doing EOS, and all these light bulbs go off, and you’re like, “Wow! All of this stuff is so simple, but it’s just like I never knew how to put words to it. I never really fully understood what that meant. And so, like, you know, I had to take full under ownership. That’s the biggest thing as the owner, the visionary. If I didn’t take full ownership, then it was everybody else’s fault, and I had to, you know, be willing to look in the mirror and say this is my fault. Yes, some of these people ended up you know resigning, or I ended up having to let them go, but it was all because you know you know I had to look at myself and then decide okay I got to go get the right people for the right seats in our organisation today. So,

Debra Chantry-Taylor 18:19

and it’s quite confronting, isn’t it? Because you know you do have to accept responsibility. It is actually you’re right. It’s absolutely up to you, and you have to look at yourself and go, “Well, have I set these people up to fail? Which often,

Mathis Young 18:31

right,

Debra Chantry-Taylor 18:32

sadly, we do. We don’t do it deliberately, but we do. Yeah,

Mathis Young 18:35

right.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 18:36

Okay, so in terms of the EOS tools, so I mean, we we talked about the fact that you wish you’d done it a whole bunch of years earlier than when you actually did it, but when you did start doing it, you know, you you you said that the accountability was the key thing that really helped you. Was there a particular tool that you just thought, gosh, that was a game changer?

Mathis Young 18:53

Yeah, I think the the the level 10 meeting is just you know, I mean, I mean again, US is so simple, and there’s nothing magic to it, but just the the level 10 meeting, getting everybody in a room, all becoming one team, rowing in one direction, all on the same mission to accomplish the same thing, and then hey, are we doing what we said we’re going to do? Are we doing the rocks we set out to do? Are we doing the to dos that we’re done from the you know solve the issues from the from the previous meeting. I mean that’s probably probably my favourite tool is probably the level 10 meeting agenda is you know driving driving weekly accountability and team health. You know I think that’s one thing that kind of gets it left out of EOS a lot. Well, I don’t know. This was maybe my perception, but team health is a huge part of EOS. And to the extent, like I had to learn to try to be quiet, I had to learn that I hired these people for a reason. I think I’m in the smartest person in the room. I have all the answers. I’ve been doing this. For 15 years, 17 years, whatever it is, but I hired these people for a reason, and either I’m going to let them help me, or I’m just going to dominate the conversation. And so, there’s so much in a in a 90 minute meeting in a week that you really don’t realise is taking place. There’s there’s the piece of the accountability. There’s the piece of like we’re all on a common vision, rowing in one direction, going to achieve this vision. We’re executing with discipline and accountability, and these people feel my teammates feel like they’re more they have a bigger voice. It’s not all of Mathis’s plan. This is our plan. We created this plan. Now let’s help execute it, and it’s just there’s so many facets of it that I think just are accomplished in just a simple 90 minute meeting every single week.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 20:51

It’s true, and I guess a lot of visionaries listening, and I’m a visionary too, by the way. So I completely giggling to myself because I know it’s really hard sometimes to sort of bite your tongue. Because of course we’re perfect and we know everything, but you’re right. We hire people in order to the role. We have to let them get on. But it is. It is. I do love the structure of the meeting because it takes the personal stuff out of it, and it becomes about what is for the greater good of the business. And I’ve learned, and it’s taken me a while, is that you know the more open, honest, and vulnerable you can be, and the more you can actually step back and let people take accountability, the more they will be open, honest, and vulnerable, and that’s when you really get those great conversations because people don’t feel afraid to to talk and tell you what they think, as opposed to just listening to what you say. And I’ve just seen it with a client recently where, because he was always kind of jumping in and always telling people what to do. The team had actually shut up. They weren’t actually contributing anymore because they were like, “Well, there’s no point because he he just keeps coming in and kind of bowling over the top of us. And so we had a little conversation about it, and he was like, “He hadn’t even realised he was doing it. And so once he became aware of it, it gave him a chance to go, “Okay, how do I actually step back and let them get on with it?

Mathis Young 22:00

Yeah, absolutely, and yeah, I think I I think for me as an EOS implementer, because I was a client for four years before I became an implementer, I just I’m just very direct with those people, and I’m not mean. I just say, hey, how about I want you to go last? Let’s hear from let’s hear from Susie, Mike, and Joe. Like I want you to go last on this one, and then just, and everybody else is like, and they’re all kind of looking around the room. But it’s like, hey, you’ve been dominating the conversation. I let you go for a little while, but now it’s time to to let your team, you know. And it’s just like slowly training them and training him to let let the other people in the room speak. But the only reason I can do that as an implementer is because I was that guy in my own room as a client. You know,

Debra Chantry-Taylor 22:45

I hear you. It’s definitely um helpful that when and it’s what I love about EOS implementers is we’ve all been there in various roles, but most of us are visionaries, I think, and we and so we’ve actually been on the other side. We know we’ve seen ourselves do that, and so we’re coming from a place of experience, not just an academic. This is what you should do, which I think is really helpful. Okay, so I’m interested. Why did you become an EOS implementer? I mean, you had the biggest franchise in in the US. Why didn’t you just continue doing that?

Mathis Young 23:11

Yeah, EOS worked too well. You know, I had this grand vision of like, I don’t want to run day to day operations. I want my team to run it. Well, be careful what you wish for, right? Because I literally went from working, call it 6070, hours, 80 hours a week, where I was drowning, to the last year, year and a half of owning my business. I was going to the office for two meetings a week. One of those was a 90-minute L 10 meeting, and the other one was an hour long meeting with my integrator. So, I mean, I would go to the office more sometimes just because I was bored. But literally, I’d created a self managing business that only needed me for two meetings a week. And so, as a visionary, like I had been doing this for 17 years, and I feel like my visionary ideas were running out. Right, so like everything, and I mean, I think that’s everything. All these ideas that I had, how we can grow the business, how we can do this, how we can do that. I’d already either tried them, or we had implemented them, or we had scratched them, and so frankly, I was not fulfilled. I was not stimulated anymore, and so I started to look at buying other businesses. And so I made over the course of call it 18 months, I made offers on three different local businesses, and one reason or another, they just never, never transact. They they never close. And so one day, I was actually had gotten out of Vistage and allowed my general manager to step into my integrator to step into my spot in Vistage, and I was my Vistage chair reached out to me and he said. Hey, let’s go to lunch. I just want to kind of a parting lunch. So we’re sitting at lunch, and he’s like, “So what are you going to do now? And I said, “What do you mean? What am I going to do? I was like, “I have a business. He’s like, “Yeah, but you’ve been trying to like buy other businesses, and you’ve already admitted you’re kind of bored at your business. So what are you going to do? And I was like, “You know, I think right now I’m just I’m good where I am, and he’s like, “Well, have you considered being an EOS implementer? I was like, “No, but that sounds awesome. And he said, “Well, there’s only one other implementer in Memphis. She wants somebody else. We need to keep growing the EOS brand in Memphis, and I think you would be really good at it. And I was like, “Why would why would she want any competition here? He goes, yeah, it’s not like that. You should just meet her. So I ended up going to coffee with the other implementer in Memphis, and she was like gung ho about like, yes, we need more people here. I hope you do it. And she and I struck up a friendship, and then I went. I just then I signed up for to go through the process of becoming an implementer. Right, they have all these due diligence and they interview you and all these stages. And then once I got through all of that, ended up going to boot camp. I was not even looking to sell my business. Like I decided in July of 2025, so a year ago, that okay, I’m going to explore this EOS implementer thing. A week later, this franchise broker had reached out to me about selling my business, and I was like, I’m not really interested. You know, things are going really smooth right now. He’s like, Well, I’ve got buyers just lined up wanting to buy small, medium-sized businesses, and I was like, “Well, I mean, if you can like give me a certain number and it all works out, then I’ll listen to you. But I’m not really looking to sell, so it just so happened that it just kind of, you know, as fate may have it, it all just lined up.

Mathis Young 27:01

I ended up going to boot camp in November of 25. I ended up going under contract to sell my business in November of 25. I ultimately closed on my business in April of this year, a little over three months ago. And I’ve just been. I was already doing EOS as when I still own this business, but now I’m just I’m just doing EOS full time, so it just it all just worked out that way.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 27:25

Yeah. So it’s interesting. I’m going to go back a little bit. So you you know you you said that you had got told that you know come and be an EOS implementer. Memphis is another one there, and I think for a lot of people that yeah they see it as being competition, but the EOS community is quite different to that, right? We all work together. We all love to help each other, and we don’t. I don’t see anything as competition. In fact, I don’t even see other business coaches as competition. But it’s it’s all about being able to help people. Tell me a little bit about how that sort of works for you as an implementer.

Mathis Young 27:53

Yeah, you know, it was almost too good to be true. Like I remember, obviously, I met her, and we had coffee, then we had lunch, and I was like, “Okay, she’s being real. Like it, like this still seems a little weird to me that she wants competition. So then I went to boot camp, and then on the heels of boot camp, you go to your first QCE, and I’m sitting in there, and they’re doing all these core values shoutouts, and I’m like, “Man, they like really live and breathe their core values at EOS. It’s not like words on a paper. These people are like real, and it just becomes ingrained that as you come into the system, this is who you become. And it’s just like, man, if all these people have an abundance mindset, if all of these none of these people see each other as competition, then that’s just who I’m going to become. So it really is like wild. I mean, how abundance mindset EOS implementers are, and how we’re all cheerleaders for each other. We’re all trying to help each other. I mean, we haven’t like me and her name Sophia have not really bumped in to each other yet until like a month ago, and she called me and says, “Hey, you’re going to hear from this company. They want to talk to another implementer. I told them to call you, and it’s just like it’s just wild how that works. It’s like, “Hey, I would love to have them as a client, but if but if they’re better, if you’re a better fit for them, I want them to go with you. And she, I know she genuinely means that, and I would genuinely mean it for her too. And it’s just, it really is a help first, right? It really is like, I mean, EOS, like so. When I was at boot camp, and QCE was the next day, Geno Wickman was there, and I was like, I’m walking up to him, and I just was like, I walked up to him and I looked him in the eyes and I said, Thank you, you changed my life. Because, and I don’t say that like flippantly. And I walked away from him, and tears were flowing down my face because like EOS literally changed my life. Like we talk about, we’re going to change your business. We’re going to change your life. Like it did change my life. It changed my business, but I would tell you it changed my life more than it changed my business. And so, like now, it’s just like, hey, we get to go. I get to go help business owners change their life, and it and it works. Like I’ve seen it, I’ve breathed it, and just the abundance mindset of all EOS implementers is really, really a spectacular thing.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 30:29

Certainly is, and when you go to QCA, for people who don’t know, is our quarterly collaborative exchange. It’s where all of the EOS implementers get together. We have one in the APAC region, but they’re obviously around America as well. And then we have our annual kind of conference as well. And when you get sort of, I think there’s almost 900, maybe a bit more now, implementers around the world who get together for these quarterly things, and it’s just phenomenal being in that room. The energy, the abundance mindset, as you said, the help first thing. Meeting Gino was a as a highlight for me as well. But what I do think is really important, and I know for anybody listening in, you know, the relationship you have with an EOS implementer, it has to be the right fit. And you know, even though we all teach the same things, we all follow the same proven process. We are all a little bit different in the way that we approach it. So it’s really important that you have that relationship where you feel comfortable with your EOS implementer. Which is why I always say to people: speak to two or three. Make sure that you know I am the right person for you, and if I’m not, that’s okay because there’ll be somebody else who absolutely

Mathis Young 31:27

is. Right. Yeah. Absolutely.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 31:29

Yeah. And I think that’s important. It’s a bit like you know, it’s like any relationship. You want to make sure that you have that sort of that ability to be to be really comfortable with each other. Okay. So you went joined in 2025, and you are now doing it full time. Tell me a little bit about you know what it’s like to be on the other side of the equation. So rather than being the business owner, being the person who’s helping the business owner.

Mathis Young 31:52

Yeah, absolutely love it. I mean, I really, I mean, I always believed in EOS because it worked for me. But like, I love helping other people. I I think I get way more enjoyment out of it than they do. I mean, I had a I had a session today, and it’s a guy that I know, and you know they didn’t have the greatest quarter last quarter, and I was like, “What are we going to do differently? And to be frank, the owner, the visionary, was not executing. He was not doing what he needed to do, and so I had a stern conversation with him today in front of his team, and he and it was it went really really well, and he took it very good. He’s like, okay, got it. This quarter, we’re gonna do it, and so it’s just I love it to see the light bulbs go off. I love to see people make their business, you know, better. And so, I mean, this is kind of a funny story. At the last QCE I was at in May in Detroit, I was talking to this guy on break. He’s like, “Hey, introduce yourself. So, how many clients do you want? I was like, “I think I my sweet spot is 15. He’s like 15. I was like, yeah. I was like, I don’t like. I don’t need a full slate. He’s like, yeah. You say that, and he goes, it’s not even about the money. He goes, man, you get high off of helping people. I’m like, I know what he’s talking about. Like it’s all. It is almost like a drug. It’s like, and it’s not what we’re doing, right? Yes, we’re we’re helping, but it’s just like we’re implement. They are implementing EOS into their business. We are helping along the journey, but to see the progress they make, to see the light bulbs go off, to seeing them gain traction and start executing with discipline and accountability. It’s intoxicating, and and I love it. So, you know, I I was actually texted my vistas chair when I was on the aeroplane sitting in Detroit last UC, and I said, “Hey, I want to say thank you, thank you for everything you’ve done for me. Thank you for scooping me off off the pavement when I was at my lowest point. Thank you for helping getting me become an EOS implementer. I was like, my life has never been this good, in the sense of like I am doing what I feel like I was put on this earth to do, and that’s a great feeling.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 34:22

I can wholeheartedly agree with you. I’ve been doing this for almost seven years now, and I, yeah, I just I always get my heart sings when you see those light bulb moments when you see things kind of suddenly make sense when you see that the business turn around from a tough point. And I love I love it when business have tough quarters, right? Because tough quarters is just an opportunity to learn, and and I think the beauty of having an EOS implement, as opposed to trying to do it yourself, is that we can see from the outside in, and we can call out some of the things that maybe they’re not seeing. Because it’s difficult to be in the business, facilitating the conversation, running the quarterly, trying to do all of that on your own. An external person just has that that ability to take a bigger. Step back and look at it from an outsider’s point of view.

Mathis Young 35:02

Right, absolutely.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 35:04

Yeah, and as you said, we don’t do the work; they do the work. But it is just wonderful to see them. I, I actually had. I always promise my clients, you know, if you get an A or an A plus quarter, a true A A plus, we will open the champagne, and I mean, you know, proper champagne. So yes, I actually had one of those last week, and it was just such a joy to kind of go, “Yay! You know, it was a genuine A quarter, and they were so excited, and they were so excited about breaking up in the champagne as well. So that was just a, it was beautiful to be able to be involved in that. But then the next day, I had a client that you know had a C quarter, and that wasn’t so good. But the the great thing was they learned from it. They they took a really good, deep, hard look at it and said, “Hey, what can we do differently? and set themselves up for the next quarter. So that 90 days, getting together every 90 days, is just this gold, isn’t it?

Mathis Young 35:51

Yeah, absolutely.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 35:53

Okay, so I’m interested. How many clients do you have at the moment?

Mathis Young 35:58

I currently have three.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 35:59

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You’re very early on the journey, but that’s great. And yeah, I’m very early on. What does it say? I mean, I love the focus day personally. I think that’s one of my favourite days because it’s when we talk about the accountability chart. It’s when I think that a lot of the stuff in EOS, like the vision stuff, is is is people know about that. But it’s the accountability chart for me is the is the one thing that holds it all together. How have you found your focus days, and what are the sort of light bulb moments in those focus days for your clients?

Mathis Young 36:29

Yeah, you know the weird thing is like as a client. So here’s a confession: I used an implementer for one year, and then I thought I had it. So we did. We only used an implementer for one year, and after four years, I thought we were running EOS pure. Right, we’re doing 90. I mean, we’re using L 10s. We’re doing rocks. We’re having our quarterly’s, our annuals. We’re doing it by the book. And I was like, “What is the point of the accountability chart? I just couldn’t understand the accountability chart. And then I became an implementer, and I’m like, “Man, like the accountability chart is like the thing. It’s like, and and what I found with my three clients is actually in VB one is where the light bulbs go off. We did the accountability chart in Focus Day, but especially with two out of three, but really all three of my clients, but two of them like completely blew up the accountability chart in VB One, and it’s just like that’s when the the light bulbs really started to go off. It’s like okay, we we we set it out. We thought we were good, but man, this has changed, and it’s just the clarity it gave them. So like that’s the biggest thing, and I and I and I love how EOS does that right? We the five foundational tools we touch on them in focus day BB one BB two, which is vision. For those that don’t know, EOS language vision building day one, vision building day two, and you know we talk about when we do the scorecard, we’re going to take a first cut. We’re really taking a first cut at the accountability chart too, you know, and I love to see that mature over the three the three days, and see how it really culminates to when they’re when they’re done with those three foundational days. How much better and more clear their accountability chart

Debra Chantry-Taylor 38:18

is. I always describe it as it is the backbone of everything EOS. If you get that sort of nailed, and it takes time, just like a decent scorecard takes time. But when you get it nailed, it it is the bit that sort of drives everything else within the business. And often people haven’t taken the time, you know. And the difference is for people who don’t know the difference. You know, you’ve got an organisational chart which is just around a role, a title, and a person who owns it. The accountability chart is really more about function, and you know what is the what are the accountabilities for a particular function, and so being very very clear not only about what’s required of that role, but then and only then do you put the person’s name against it. So it’s like an organisational chart on steroids. And I just think that if you think that starts to drive things like scorecards, it drives rocks, it drives processes, it it drives who who’s accountable to whom? Who? Who’s in level 10 meetings with with whom? And it just really brings the whole thing together. And I think I I never realised. I think in all the years of coaching I did way before EOS, that was probably the missing thing.

Mathis Young 39:11

Absolutely.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 39:12

Okay, so tell me a little bit about you know the clients that you love to work with. What is it? What? Why would clients come to you, Mathis?

Mathis Young 39:19

Well, I think clients would come to me. They’re just stuck, right? They either are in a lot of pain. You know, my my hope is that people don’t have to get where I got before they before they find a solution, right? So, but they’re stuck. They’re not always all the way at the bottom, but they’re just stuck, and they they can’t break through some ceiling that they’re at, right? So, whether that’s revenue, whether that’s people, whether it’s you know a lot of a lot of turnover, or they can’t add more crews or whatever it is, but they’re just they’re just kind of stuck. So, or they just want more out of their business. You know, we talk a lot about. I feel like. Oh, EOS is for businesses that are struggling. No, you know it’s also great for businesses that are good that want to become great, right? So there’s two different you know people that that we’re looking to work with. Some that are struggling that want to become much better, and then those that are good that just want to become world class. And so I think it works really well for both of those businesses. It’s like, hey, we’re doing well over here. Our financials are good. I feel like I’ve got the right team, but like I want to, I want to take this thing really to the next level. So those two type companies.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 40:35

Beautiful. Hey, look, I always ask my guests to share kind of three top tips or tools, and the reason for that is I love the the inspiration, the motivation that comes from listening to other people’s stories. But at the same time, you know, if we think about EOS, it’s all about traction. It’s like, what are you going to do differently? So, I’d love you to share with us what your three top tips or tools are.

Mathis Young 40:53

Yeah, I think number one is just ask for help. You know, I don’t know if it’s a man thing. I don’t know if it’s like a business owner thing. I don’t know if it’s both, but it’s like, hey, it is lonely at the top. It is being a business owner is not for the faint of heart. It is tough, and so you know, I got in a lot of pain in 2013. I asked for help. I got help. I hit another ceiling. Asked for more help. You know, and I think my willingness to ask for help. So, if you are an entrepreneur, a business owner, or business leader out there, just be willing to ask for help. Doesn’t have to be EOS, but like, get a coach, get something, gets you know, ask ask for help would be my first tip. The second one is like, find a tribe, right? Like it is lonely, you know. Get in a vistage group, or join a peer group, or find some other business owners you can go to coffee with once a week, once a month, whatever it is. But have some like-minded people and surround yourself with those people. In my darkest times, I really leaned on my network of like business owners because they understood. So find a tribe, and then the the last thing I would say is spend some time really thinking, getting clear on what do you actually want from your business. And so it’s easy to say I want more money, right? Ultimately, I wanted peace. That’s what I wanted. I mean, the money we were we were making money, but I was dying. I just wanted peace, and so like really get clear on like what do I want for my business, and then making making two lists of like okay, here’s everything my business is giving me, and here’s everything it’s not giving me right now, and so okay. And then what am I going to do? All right, I need to get A, B, and C from my business. I’m getting art. I’m already getting these five things, but I want to get these three more things. What am I going to do to get those three things? So, just getting really clear on on what your business is giving you now and what what you need it to give you in the future.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 43:01

Great advice. Yeah, so ask for help. I completely agree. I think, as you said, I think you wish you had asked for help earlier than when you did, and I think we all have that issue. It’s like, gosh, you know, nobody ever says, “Oh, I’m pleased. I waited five years until I actually asked for help. You know, the find a tribe. I mean, obviously, you talked about vistage, but there’s there’s tech, which is similar about around the world, EOYPO. I think having a peer group is so important because I think as entrepreneurs, we all have friends that are in the corporate world. Life’s not the same in the corporate world. You need people who are going through, have been through, will go through the same things that you’re going through to actually share those experiences, and then yeah, get clear on what you want. It’s interesting, isn’t it? Because often in the beginning, people do think it’s all about going into business for more money, but money isn’t everything, and and it’s not much use to you if you’re you know lying on it. I think you said you you know you’d be crying every night. That’s not money’s not much use to you. It’s not going to take away that pain. Yeah, fantastic. Hey, look, you’ve obviously got a lot of experience. I mean, you don’t get to be the largest franchise in the U.S. with that sort of doing some pretty solid work, and it’s great to hear the the lessons that you’ve learned through the EOS, through Vistage, all those things. If somebody wants to get in contact with you and have a chat to you, how do they do that, Mathis?

Mathis Young 44:12

Yeah, I mean they can go to my website, which is eosbymathus.com. They can call me. My phone number’s on there, and my email address, so that’s probably the best way. Is just go to eosbiomathis.com, and they can get all my contact info right there.

Debra Chantry-Taylor 44:28

Beautiful. Hey, look, thank you so much for sharing your journey. It’s an absolute pleasure to have you on the show and to hear all about what you’ve been up to.

Mathis Young 44:36

Yeah, Debra, my pleasure. Thank you for having me. It’s been a pleasure,

Debra Chantry-Taylor 44:39

and good luck with getting to your your clients. I know you absolutely will because I can hear you know people would be mad not to get in contact with you and talk and not not well not go through the pain because I’ve done the same route. I’ve been through so much pain and my whole reason for doing what I do is because I don’t want somebody else to go through that pain. If we can at least just save me that a little bit of that, I think it’s it’s absolutely worthwhile. And I hear. You say exactly the same thing, so yeah. Please do get in contact with Mathis if he can help you.

Mathis Young 45:04

Thank you, Debra. Appreciate it.

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Debra Chantry-Taylor

Certified EOS Implementer | Entrepreneurial Leadership & Business Coach | Business Owner

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