Balancing Business Success and Humanitarian Impact: JoBen's Inspiring Story

Ever wondered how a structured system could turn around a struggling business? Learn how JoBen Barkey, an early franchise owner of Soccer Shots, revolutionized his operations with the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS). After dedicating 300 hours to studying EOS, Joe Ben shares the profound impact it had on scaling his business and navigating the severe challenges posed by COVID-19, which slashed his revenue by 98%. Discover how defining and implementing core values not only helped his company thrive but also fostered a supportive, value-driven culture.

Listen as JoBen recounts the trials of managing a franchise during the pandemic, dealing with inconsistent state regulations, and making tough decisions like laying off employees. Using EOS, he managed to streamline operations, cut costs, and prepare for a successful comeback. Dive into practical insights on how core values such as "We are fun," "Help first," and "Pursue excellence" play a crucial role in hiring and maintaining long-term employee satisfaction. JoBen offers actionable tips on using these values during interviews to ensure candidate alignment with organizational goals.

Explore JoBen's inspiring community projects, from funding a soccer program in Peru to founding an agriculture school in Cameroon. Through these stories, learn the importance of balancing professional success with humanitarian efforts, which not only motivates employees but also drives meaningful change. JoBen's journey is a testament to the transformative power of EOS, enabling him to achieve a fulfilling work-life balance while contributing significantly to nonprofit work. Tune in for an episode packed with insights, practical advice, and inspiring narratives.

Connect with JoBen
joben@soccershots.com
text 949-338-268
Instagram @OneKidneyAdventures

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https://timelessci.com/
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Chapters

• 0:02 Implementing EOS in Small Business
• 12:34 Navigating Business Challenges With EOS
• 22:55 Discovering and Defining Core Values
• 28:14 Analyzing Core Values in Interviews
• 39:13 Creating Impact Through Connection
• 48:57 Solving Problems With Sustainable Initiatives
• 52:39 Transforming Communities Through Sustainable Farming
• 1:03:54 Achieving Work-Life Balance With EOS
• 1:13:18 Inspiring Conversations Spark Creative Ideas

Transcript

Tony: 0:02

Welcome to another episode of Carolina Commercial Real Estate Connection. Today we have Joe Ben Barkey on with us. Joe Ben, thank you so much for joining us today.

JoBen: 0:11

My pleasure Great to be here.

Tony: 0:14

Joe Ben is a creator and owner of Soccer Shots, which we'll get into, and he started that and has grown it into a franchise using EOS Entrepreneurial Operating System, and we're kind of going to go through that with him. He also gives back and does charity work which we would like to get into. His wife is into EOS and helping people out with the EOS operating system, and so much more about his background I'd love to dive into later. So, jobin, thanks so much for taking the time.

JoBen: 0:50

My pleasure.

Tony: 0:51

It's going to be fun. Yes, sir. So could you start by briefly explaining everyone the EOS, the entrepreneurial operating system, and how you decided to implement it across your franchises?

JoBen: 1:04

Sure. So just a tiny correction I wasn't the founder of the franchise system. I got in very early, and so I was fortunate enough to be able to be a part of creating it. The birth of it wasn't my genius idea, but I got in really early in 2009. And I was fortunate enough to get in early, find a system that I really believed in. And I was fortunate enough to get in early, find a system that I really believed in, invest quite a bit early on, and so we own six franchises in two different states, but I got to 2000. Oh gosh, I probably muscled my way to 2012, 2013, from 2009.

JoBen: 1:39

But I was starting to realize there's something I don't know about running a business. Really well, I have a, you know, I grew up in the Amazon rainforest. I moved to North America by myself. I have a BA in psychology. I was. I was felt like I had no, no business running or owning a business other than the passion and the drive and the innate wiring to do it, other than those small things. But I was just like I was. I was coming to the realization that if I boiled it all down, we were still growing. The numbers still look good, but I was multiplying based on reputation. I was not duplicating my early success anymore because I simply couldn't touch every part of the company anymore. It was bigger than my reach.

JoBen: 2:22

And so I called up a friend who is now an US implementer he wasn't at the time and I was like Tim, there's something I don't know. And so he was like yeah, unload, you got 30 minutes Talk to me. So I explained it all to him and then at the end he's like I think I can summarize this in like a sentence or two if you'd like. And I was like yeah, go for it. And he said he said it feels like you understand that you need to delegate responsibilities, but you do not want to abdicate your responsibility to see the company succeed and to see jobs be protected. Is that accurate? And I was like yeah. I was like first off, please follow me around the rest of my life and summarize 30 minutes in two sentences. So like accurately for the rest of my life. Follow me around the rest of my life and summarize 30 minutes in two sentences. So like accurately for the rest of my life, all my friends and family will appreciate it. But second, that is bang on.

JoBen: 3:10

Like how did you like how did you do that? He's like well, I read a book recently that you need to read. He goes I'm going to, I'm going to overnight it to you, promise me you'll read it. And the best way to get someone to follow through is get them to say out loud that they'll do it. So I was like, yeah, I'll do it. So he sent me the book.

JoBen: 3:32

I opened it. It was traction, um, the how to guide that, the meaty how to guide um, for how to do what is EOS and how to do it. And um, so I read it through. I read it through twice in 11 days and I was like this is it? This is everything I've been trying to build on spreadsheets cobbled together with Word documents, and it's already been built and tested. And you know, way smarter minds than me have already worked out the kinks of this. Why would I ever try to do my own version? So I immediately pulled out of operations. I announced to my team I was going to take 300, I was going to track 300 hours of studying this system and at the very back of the book it has a sequence for self-implementing or for implementing the implementation sequence for what order you should go, cause it's a little bit different than what you naturally think you would do, and there's reasons for it and it works great.

JoBen: 4:17

But the changes that started happening in our business were unbelievable. And so, from that point until 2021, we self-implemented, and then a little thing called COVID had happened in 2020, which destroyed our business, our business. The two quarters following when COVID first came, we generated 2% of the revenue that we had generated the previous year in the same two quarters, and so it was really challenging. A sudden 98% reduction in gross revenue with many of the same fixed costs was like how are we going to survive this?

JoBen: 4:55

And my business is soccer shots working with two to eight-year-olds on site at preschools and elementary schools. So, if you remember, the schools all shut down and then, even when they reopened, parents couldn't go on campus. You had these elaborate drop-off lines and pickup lines. So if they're not letting parents on, they're not going to let some joker coach come on and run a soccer class for 35 minutes. Then, even when they reopened, they started saying like, okay, you can come back, but you can only coach one classroom at a time, right? So before that, if there's 50 kids, maybe I'm pulling nine kids out of five different classes and making a great class of nine kids. Well, now I've got to run five unique classes. You know a few two-kid classes and a three-kid class in there, and you just can't do it. I can't pay a coach five times what I was paying them before, with no with, with, you know, money trickling in and and scheduling wise, I can't send a coach there for, you know, four or five hours to coach nine kids.

JoBen: 5:58

And so even when the state started to reopen, it was still really slow for us, and so we started thinking like, well, what do we do next? And we started thinking about EOS. So my wife decided to go become an EOS implementer, because it was about the same cost to start and launch it as a business as it was to hire someone to come in and be an implementer for you, an outside implementer. And so I just knew that I couldn't self-generate an outside perspective, and in my blind spots it's. It's always going to be hard to hold myself accountable in front of the team. In my blind spots, in the areas I'm self-aware like I can do that I. I I have hired enough people that are smarter than me in enough areas of the business that I can. You know I've, I've been, I've been open and honest enough with myself and my limitations where it hasn't been an issue to own my weaknesses and own my strengths, and by owning my strengths I mean just allowing my team to hold me accountable to delivering them consistently and well, consistently well and on time. But it just, yeah, I just started feeling like there's some things in the business where I'm probably letting myself slide a bit without knowing it, but I guarantee that my team knows it. So I felt like I just couldn't self-generate an outside perspective. That was one thing I couldn't accomplish, no matter how hard I tried to implement myself.

JoBen: 7:21

And so in 2015, when we first implemented and then, through kind of 2018, 19, our, our business, radically transformed many, many changes for the good. What I didn't realize is that there there are two ways of talking about EOS. There's using EOS and then there's running on EOS, and I think that every self-implementer, the max we can do is use EOS. Running on EOS is a whole nother. It's a whole nother ballgame. And so what I wasn't prepared for which was a very pleasant surprise is that when Amanda, my wife, became our EOS implementer, she was not working in the business. She was a hundred percent in the owner's box. She hadn't been involved in in operations for a few years at that point, so she was coming in with a totally fresh perspective and she was holding me to the rules.

JoBen: 8:08

A lot of times, a visionary over talks their opinion and then no one else gives theirs, and so what I wasn't aware of and was a pleasant surprise was that the leveling up we did when we self-implemented and started using the EOS tools was significant. But the leveling up that we did once we brought in a professional EOS implementer to make sure that we were harmoniously integrating all of the tools and using it holistically in our entire company, that level up was even bigger, which was amazing. So I feel like having self-implemented allowed us to navigate through COVID, through those challenges. We closed down well, we reopened well, but then where we are today is we expanded to Oahu, so we have four franchises in Southern California, two on Oahu. Our business is generating two and a half times the revenue it was prior to COVID and we have a really strong team.

JoBen: 9:03

I've been very proud of all of our leadership teams, the different versions of our teams all along, but where we are right now is. I'm very, very comfortable and confident in our team. So that's what EOS has meant to us. It definitely makes me sound like a way smarter business owner, just quoting a couple of these books. So if you boil EOS down, it is simple but not easy. So if you can grasp simple concepts, you can sound like someone who really knows what they're talking about. The execution is where you have to go and do your checks on me and make sure that we're actually doing it. That's what we weren't doing as well during the self-implementing stage.

JoBen: 9:39

But yeah, eos, I talked to everybody about it. I've given away over a hundred traction books to friends. I have one friend who told my wife in confidence about two years ago. He's like yeah, I did not, I didn't read traction and I didn't give EOS a serious look because Jobin was like so passionate about it he wouldn't stop talking about it. I just kind of like, oh, I just didn't do it and I'm like so then I talked to him. Next time I saw him. I'm like, steve, the reason I talked about EOS all the time is that every time we spoke, you talked about problems in your business and I knew the solution because I had read about it in a book and then I'd solved it in my own business. So I was just tired of hearing you complain about the same things for five consecutive years, buddy, so I bleed orange.

JoBen: 10:26

I love EOS. You know EOS. People question whether or not it can work for any business, but when you boil EOS down to what it delivers, it delivers the same thing to business owners, no matter what your industry is and what your business is. It delivers these five things that make up the EOS life Doing what you love with people. You love, making a massive impact and being compensated appropriately for that impact with time to pursue other passions. That's the EOS life and that's what I'm living because of EOS, so I'm extremely grateful to it. I give Gino all the credit for everything that's working in my business. He takes no credit for anything that doesn't work in my business, but I just love it. I'm so passionate about it, and I tell people that I finally discovered the key to passive income. It's having your wife have a really good company that makes money. That's my passive income. I just sit back and cheerlead.

Tony: 11:21

Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, that's fantastic. And Gino Wickman is who wrote the book Traction. He's wrote a whole series of books. He just came out with a new book called Shine, which is basically looking within yourself as an entrepreneur and getting most out of your life. Just, I'm not completed with it yet, but it's a great book from the start. So I wanted to dive back just a bit because you bounced around some stuff. So I wanted to hone in on a couple of things. One, when you were discussing, after you were allowed back in the classroom during COVID, this was a complete change in your operations and how you guys were to remain profitable and staying through that when you had that massive drop down to 2% of revenue and lost at 98%. And then you go in and you can, instead of having nine kids pulled from multiple classes you're doing. You've stated that you had a teacher and you had two kids, three kids. So tell me that one obviously came up as a big issue for you guys. How did you resolve that?

JoBen: 12:25

That one was a that one. We decided to play a waiting game. We just couldn't make the numbers work and so that's just contributed to a longer shutdown for us. Um, we were, we were shut down.

JoBen: 12:34

You know, I it's a franchise system, so I get to see what this industry does in different States under different rules. And you know, without going into anything about the, the, the, any opinions about the shutdowns or anything like that, the the challenging part was seeing, like the next state over, be wide open with you know, and I'm, I'm seeing the revenue we have. We have open reporting of all revenue for all franchises and there's, you know, 153 unique soccer shots owners across the U? S and Canada now, uh, you know over 300 locations. So I get to see how all the locations are doing. And then all of us, all our little pack of like, uh, you know 15 people in California, we're like what is going on? We're living in a totally different world from the rest of of the States. But and then the frustrating part was like you, you can drive a there's an open border between States, so if they're wide open, having you know 3 000 kids soccer tournaments, and then everybody drives back to where I live like what's the point? Like what are we doing? And so it. And again, that's not a statement on whether what was right or wrong. It was like how can you possibly have two populations living side by side, um, with no barrier between them, and we're living under completely different guidelines? It doesn't make any sense. So I'm watching, I'm watching people bounce back and I'm watching parents put wanting to put their kids into programming Cause they've been stuck at home for so long, and I'm seeing my friends have like their best seasons ever revenue wise, enrollment wise and we're like we're at nothing still.

JoBen: 14:02

And so what EOS did is? It allowed me to create a structure that allowed me to reduce all of our costs, because I knew the key components, the core to running a business. Well, I knew what we needed to do. Mentally, I couldn't put myself in the place where I was like who do I lay off first? I ended up having to lay off 39 people. Um, I didn't. I had to do it in reverse, and I encouraged all the feelers out there to think the way I was thinking at that point was who, who can I hold onto the longest? And so I reverse engineered, you know, the layoff, uh order that I had to go Cause. Mentally I couldn't. It was too hard to put a name on who's got to go first, right. And so COVID or, sorry, eos allowed me.

JoBen: 14:49

I had an accountability chart. Because of that, I knew it wasn't based on on who my friends were, who I was closest with. It was based on the key roles to rebuilding. So I knew exactly what I needed to do to rebuild and then, when the time came to reopen, we had all the structure in place. But you know, I also knew the people on my team. I knew what their skills were, because we did the accountability chart versus the org chart, and the accountability chart puts everybody's skillset in their bubble Right, and so you're identifying where their your neat genius is.

JoBen: 15:19

And so I called in all the people that I felt were persuasive, all the people that were good on the phone, and I downloaded three months worth of expenses from our bank account and I divided up the different sheets, I printed off and we went through and highlighted which things were fixed costs. And then, in March and April of 2020, we negotiated our way out of every fixed cost for our company, out of our office rent. We had a five-year lease and I called. I was like man, I know everybody's probably calling and they were like, no, honestly, no one's called. I was like, perfect. So I offered them $10,000 to get out of my lease this is right away, right, and they're like but you have such a good space. I'm like I know, but I also have no income coming in. And so we were able to negotiate our way out of it, paid them ten thousand dollars and got got out of years worth of my lease, and so I'm very grateful for that. But every fixed cost, we negotiate our way out because I knew which people could do it.

JoBen: 16:22

And then, when it came time to reopen, we were able to reopen really well and we reopened with two franchises a six hour flight away on Oahu, and we were able to do that because of EOS. So EOS was man. It's going to be a theme. I'm very, very appreciative to Gino Wickman for what he created, as well as all the other books. Right, rocket Fuel was a super impactful book for me personally and professionally as well.

JoBen: 16:44

But yeah, um, that that's kind of how we definitely couldn't navigate the two kids in a class, uh, cause I was paying out more money for the coaching that I was getting getting in. Uh, just just coaching was costing me more. So, um, I think I think EOS helped me be to be much more aware of um. I can't really restart until I can afford this nucleus, this core, and so I was. I wasn't waiting for a random time, I was waiting until I felt like I had enough to bring back these five people and then we can launch and then we just build back from there. So it was, man, it was a tough time.

Tony: 17:19

Yeah, I mean for sure it sounds like, you know, we we weren't impacted that entirely much in the construction industry, so we didn't really. You know we weren't impacted that entirely much in the construction industry, so we didn't really. You know, we would basically have trades and limit who goes in, so we just have one trade at a time. And we weren't at a full shutdown, it was, but it was easy for us to kind of organize it and remain operational. It sounds like you that's, you know, very difficult, that you're having to basically go through an order of operations of laying off 39 people. When you're going through all of that, I imagine you know some you're OK to lose other ones, You're just hoping you can get back and you know somehow keep them somehow around where you can get them back when you're back operational. So of those, about how many were you able to re-secure once you started coming back online?

JoBen: 18:12

Yeah, first off, it must have been nice to be considered essential by the government. I was very non-essential but yes, I have a lot of part-time staff. My coaches are mostly part-time, so I got a small percentage of them came back. I got a good chunk of the full-time staff. I read the entire CARES Act. It took me seven and a half hours to read through the whole CARES Act and every document they produced after that.

JoBen: 18:38

And so I understood all the problems with the PPP when they first rolled it out and I knew they had to change it. All the problems with the PPP when they first rolled it out and I knew they were. They had to change it. You know early rules like, um, you have to spend it all within eight weeks of getting it. It's like well, we're totally shut down, so what do you want me to spend it on? Um? So I just sat on it and I was like hey, I know that in eight weeks this converts to a loan. Um, worst case scenario, I just give it back. But there's no, like, there's no reason to spend it right now. So what I do with my staff is I just worked out something. I said hey, I can, you know, I'm going to pay you. Um, you know, the max I could pay was a hundred thousand dollars, a hundred thousand dollars equivalent salary. So I just brought back, um, nine people, um, put them on a hundred thousand dollars salary till the PPP ran out, and then I, so I was way overpaying them what their existing salaries were. And so I just had a, you know, a gentleman's and gentlewoman's agreement with the team where I said, hey, if we, if we don't ever reopen, this is your money forever. Put it in a savings account right now, don't touch it.

JoBen: 19:40

Most of them were living back at home. They had, you know, sharing costs with family. So I'm like, sit on this as your restart money and full blessings to you If we don't restart, start your own project, do your own thing. I'm happy that we were able to help you with this right. And so we did the two rounds of PPP, built up quite a bit of savings for them to help them, and then when we reopened I think part, maybe possibly because of that they were there was a there's, you know, the law of reciprocity If you do something for someone, they do something. So a lot they, they showed back up. A couple of them said like hey, honestly, we've moved forward. One of them started his own company and stuff. But they said we will come back and we will work this off as a declining balance. And so that's how I was able to utilize the PPP is we just had spreadsheets and they knew when they'd worked it off and full blessings to go their way afterwards. So we got almost everybody back to help us restart and we restarted on PPP money with a declining balance from their savings account. So I was really really blessed by that.

JoBen: 20:43

One wild thing that happened in the middle of it is I was telling the bank that they were doing some things wrong and so I ended up talking and I won't give the name of the bank, but I ended up talking to the vice president and he went back and reviewed stuff and he asked me if I could put together a one-page document for him to present to his team for how they should be managing the ERC credits and the PPP. And I was like buddy, I don't feel I'm trying to save a children's soccer company right now. I don't have time to be doing presentation, your presentation to the bank. But it was wild. There was help out there and so I definitely pursued every penny I could get. I know some people did that and then misused it, and I know there's a lot of stories out there about that, but we were a company that went after every dollar and then redistributed every dollar to our staff, and so we were able to restart because of that.

Tony: 21:41

That's awesome. That's awesome. You've got great stories. So one thing I want to touch on is your culture and your core values. So how has EOS helped you define and cultivate a strong company culture, core value within your franchise, and how do you give back with those core values?

JoBen: 21:59

Great question. So I thought it was doing core values really well. Like if you talk to anybody that's just starting the road to EOS, they haven't done any self-assessment yet, they haven't, like they're just getting going, they're going to tell you they're great, like we have great core values, we have great structure, accountability, all that stuff, until you start getting into actual accountability and measurables and then you're like, oh, I was completely fooling myself. So I had core values. In hindsight, they were 100% core aspirations. They were things that I hoped to be someday, right, if you don't talk about them, if they're not a part of your vocabulary, if they're not a part of your hiring, firing, promoting, calling up, calling out, decision making, then they're not core, they're just values, right? And so we started calling our previous iteration core aspirations, not core values. And so EOS takes you through a process where you develop core values and because of EOS, I for the first time understood that this wasn't something that I was creating and then telling people this is who we are. We bring in our leadership team and then we sit down and we say who are we actually? Who are we? How are we determining who we hire when it comes down to two very similar candidates.

JoBen: 23:21

When it comes to capacity, right, eos teaches you the GWC get it, want it capacity. So, when you have two people in front of you and they both get it, want it, have capacity what is deciding the difference for us? Because there are so many great values out there, right? So every company's got a list of values, and every one of them you're like, yeah, that's a pretty good one, but which ones are ours? Right? How are we making our decisions? And so we just whittled and chipped and whittled, and what we did keep guilt combined, and then we whittled and chipped, whittled and chipped and we got down to three. And then we felt like we were just missing something, and so we added the core value. You know there should be an action thing. So we added the core value we are fun. And then you get to put little descriptions for what's fun, and so I put in there we are a no drama company.

JoBen: 24:11

And so when we started to look carefully at who was surviving long-term with us, who was making it onto the leadership team and then finding a comfortable home, and it was people that like to have fun and it was people that didn't enjoy drama. Yeah, hard things happen. There's always going to be relationship disruptions, you have to navigate and stuff. But if you have a value, go back to it. It says like hey, we don't perpetuate and extend drama. When we have drama happening, we address it and we move forward.

JoBen: 24:47

High trust, right. Patrick Lencioni's five dysfunctions of a team helped us understand how to establish high trust. And then we started talking about our core values. During our hiring process, during all of our coaches meetings, when we were bringing people back in and we do our you know, I do my once a quarter address to the company we would talk about core values. We started calling out core values when we see them right, like so, one of our core values is help first and then we can get into how that. You know how that has influenced and impacted the direction of our nonprofit and the work that we do there.

JoBen: 25:22

But help first. So we talked to our leadership team. We say like, hey, we're an inverted triangle the further you progress in our company, the more people you support and serve and we are a help first company. So when you have a help first company and you're feeling overwhelmed, you just have this. You just have this sense that people are for you and that they will help you without keeping score Right. So by that I mean like man, I have a lot on my plate. This person seems to be finishing up their work pretty quickly. It's no issue to call them in and say like, hey, man, there's no chance I'm going to get these, all these out to the schools. Could you grab five of these packets and drive them to the schools and I'll grab these five? Everyone in our company will do it. In our company will do it, no problem. Nobody says like, oh, that's below my pay grade. That would be counterculture for anybody to say that and it would stand out like a sore thumb. So the core values just became the way.

JoBen: 26:13

We started filtering who we brought in after we determined that they were a GWC fit. Now we want to make sure that they love who we are, because if they love who we are, then they're going to find a home here and they're going to. They're going to stay long, much longer, long-term. It's really, really hard to stay at a place that you're not aligned with, and we tell people when there's an alignment issue. We make it super clear we're like this doesn't mean this isn't good person, bad person, this is us or different place at just as good but different Right, and so that that that was important for me to get to Cause I, you know, I, I think, I of course I'm going to think my core values are the best core values. But getting to the place where I actually could, could mentally accept and then incorporate into how I thought and talked to it that like there's, there's easily 20 core values out there that are just as good as the four we've got easily, probably a hundred, maybe 200.

Tony: 27:07

And so wait before you go too far. We've got. We are fun. Help first. What are your other two?

JoBen: 27:13

Uh, pursue excellence, we are fun. Oh man, you might have to edit this one. Uh, pursue excellence, we care.

Tony: 27:24

Uh, we care uh we care, yeah, there we go there, there we go awesome.

JoBen: 27:28

All right, you got if I don't say I'm in order, then they then.

Tony: 27:31

Sometimes I get three out of four plus, if somebody asked me mine I can't, I don't have, okay, I gotta read them. I mean I can, you got, I got most of it.

JoBen: 27:38

Then you're gonna if you'd ask me, uh, when I was still in charge of of the interviews, uh, man, just I'd roll them up because I talked about them all the time. Now it's more we'll have. I'll focus on one core value during a quarterly, and so I'm just super focused for a quarter on one core value. Luckily we have four, so there's four quarters, so we can. It works perfectly.

Tony: 28:00

So when you're saying that you know you're getting and you've got these GWCs and so I understand that, so they've got, you know, maybe, the experience, Both of them have the experience to line up to you Both. They both are doing great interview and have some. Everything seems to align. So how, in this stage of not knowing them, how are you saying, ok, this one has more of the core values than this one, just from a quick interview? Where are you being able to analyze that? How?

JoBen: 28:28

we're asking for things like tell me a time when you were, tell me, tell me about a time in your life when there was a lot going on and some people weren't having a great time and you managed to find a way to have fun. And then so they give you a story like oh man, we went camping one time and we got three flat tires. People were complaining the whole time and I was like what an adventure. That's who I want to work with, right, that's a we are fun person. And then when you start talking about help, first tell me about a time when you were, when you were going through something challenging in your own personal, profession or professional life and you managed to help somebody else get through a tough time, even though you were in a tough time. And so when people you know, when does help first show up? Well, when I'm, when I'm going through a challenge and I still manage to help, that shows that it's in my DNA. I'm just going to, I'm just going to help first, and then I'm going to worry about, you know, how I get helped, how I get taken care of after that as a as a totally separate issue, but I'm going to show up and help first, and then you know ones like pursue excellence are fairly straightforward.

JoBen: 29:28

We say like, fairly straightforward. We say like, what's the time? Tell me about a time when you didn't have the training or the background to be excellent, but you showed up, you gave your best anyway and, as a result of repetitions, as a result of, of, of of effort, you were able to produce a result that you're proud of, even without any knowledge or preparation. And so sometimes that takes a bit more thinking. They have to think through a time when they were, when they were felt unqualified but still delivered and and and. So we do. It's just stories, right, and then care. You're just listening and and you know we talk a little bit about our projects. You know digging wells, opening schools, dealing with some of the, the trauma that comes from working in a country that's in the middle of a civil war. If there's no emotional response to that, like they're checked out there, they start to lean back while we're talking and they're just like not engaged. If there's no response, that then it's like maybe, maybe, maybe. What we care about isn't necessarily what they care about. They can care about lots of great things, but our specific things are not things that are high on their list, and so that's another thing we ask them is we say at the end of it you know, you got this interview because we believe you were a fit for the role, but now it's time for you to go home and to decide if the organization is a fit for you and how you want to positively impact your community, because there are many great ways to impact our communities. This is just one way. So if you go home and you decide that yeah, everything you've heard here sounds great, the core values sound like they're aligned with you, with who you are intrinsically, then you're going to find a group of great friends here who love you, support you and want to see you win. This is going to be a great place to work. But if you but if you're in constant conflict with what's most important to us, then this is going to be a challenging place to find success and to feel at home and to feel fully comfortable. So that's kind of how we do it. We incorporate it in.

JoBen: 31:26

One of the ways that we show help first is when I'm interviewing, is when I'm interviewing the first. We do it at 45 minutes. The first 15 minutes I actually I model help first by sitting down, and I say this will be in a group interview. The first interview is a group interview and I'll say I know that you guys all take classes on how to win interviews. I know you take them in high school, take them in college. Those are all taught by school teachers. I would love to take 15 minutes as interview and talk through how to win your dream job, and our hope for you and for everyone who comes and works here is that you look back at soccer shots as the stepping stone that prepared you for your dream career, because for many, this is a part-time job and it will always be a part-time job, and so you know.

JoBen: 32:12

The first thing I talked to him about is you know, um, isn't it amazing that, uh, we don't have to work in the in the coal mine, just because we have come from four consecutive generations of coal miners? Isn't that amazing? Isn't it amazing that we can apply for jobs all over the world in the space of 15 minutes from our couch? Well, and then during COVID, like while sitting in our underwear, like, like on our couch isn't that incredible? And so we talk about that. And then we talk about the old way of interviewing, how people come in, you know they'd make you sit for a while in the lobby just so that. Just so that could impress upon you how much more important my time was than yours. And then you know, if I could set it up, you'd walk down an echoey hallway to get to the interview so that you would feel small, and then I would lift my chair a little bit so that I'm a little bit higher than you. There are all these things, right, I said.

JoBen: 32:59

Here's the truth of what's happening in every interview and it's happened forever is we just desperately don't want to hire bad people, bad employees, people that are just here to take advantage of us. We don't want to do that. And so the moment that we realize that you are a great candidate, all of the power in the interview flips to you, because now we desperately want you to represent our company, represent our brand, to help us execute on our projects and meet our goals and objectives. And so you now hold the decisions, no longer us. We know we want you, but many, many interviewers will keep up the facade of like you'd be lucky to work here. So let's instead flip it and let's understand that you actually control the power. You have the power in the interview when you're a great candidate, and so if you believe you're a good candidate, how are you going to go in there and exert that power?

JoBen: 33:49

I said, well, a great way to do that is by speaking the language of the company you're applying to. A great way to speak the language is do a little research ahead of time. So we tell them research their online statements, find their core values, their stated core values, but then also find things that are important to them, a little about us thing like read that Everybody puts it out there on their website, and then come in and ask some questions using the verbiage and terminology of that company's own values. And so what you're doing is you're doing two things. First, you're showing them that you can speak their language and that you already speak their language, but second, you're actually asking them value related questions so that you can determine whether or not they have core values or if they have core aspirations. That are great. Little posters on the hallway to the bathroom a picture of like an airplane going straight up saying we pursue new heights, right, like okay, cute.

JoBen: 34:46

But wouldn't it be great if you knew in the interview if the organization actually lives by their core values. And so find a company whose core values you love and then go to the interview if the organization actually lives by their core values. And so find a company whose core values you love and then go to the interview with the intention of finding out whether or not they actually live by these core values or if they're just core aspirations. So we do that whole talk for 15 minutes. Then, when we circle back at the very end of the conversation to talk about now it's time to go home to think about it for the good fit, we tell them we know if it. You know we eat, sleep and breathe our core values, and one of our core values is help first. And so what you heard first in this interview was us modeling one way we live out our core values. We want to help people win their dream jobs, and so that's kind of how we incorporate it, that's how we find out.

JoBen: 35:31

You know we tell some, we tell some emotional stories when we talk about some of the things we're involved in and, um, sometimes we get a big laugh, sometimes we get some tears up, but but at the end of the interview when I'm like okay, so talk to me about something that stands out, about our nonprofit. If they're like man, soccer just meant a lot to me. I love the sport. I want to give back. We're like man. You don't think they heard anything. I said, um, so we're, we're, we're listening. You know, we're listening to hear. Are these active participants? Um, um, oh sorry, the the.

JoBen: 35:58

We actually folded, um, I'm forgetting. We folded, we care into help first. It was we own it was the. It was the fourth core value. Not, we care, um, so it was. We pursue excellence. We own it. We have fun, um and and uh, and we help first.

JoBen: 36:19

And the reason we say we own it is we're not a company that wants to shift blame to other people. We also believe that we're the best people to fix a problem that somebody else creates for us, and so we're not going to sit around and point fingers, we're just going to go out and fix it. And then the other part, too, is everyone on the leadership team. I tell them, when somebody comes in and you're having one of those call up conversations where someone hasn't been delivering on expectations, there is a component in there that is our contribution to the problem, and so we don't have to own 100% of the problem. But sometimes our contribution was just not addressing it soon enough, and so a real example of that is I called the guy in. He hadn't been doing what I asked him to do, and so I said, hey, before we start this conversation, I want to own my part of this. I knew this was a problem four months ago and I delayed in addressing it, and so we could be four months into fixing this. Instead, we're starting today, and that is 100% my fault and I hope you'll accept my apology for that. That was poor leadership on my part.

JoBen: 37:19

And then after that, we transitioned into the expectations that weren't being met and we talked about ways to solve it.

JoBen: 37:21

But we talked to all of our staff and leadership and we say you don't have to mentally own half of it. If somebody is late all the time and you're telling them all the time don't be late, it's not your fault. They're late, but maybe you didn't create consequences, clear consequences. So that's your 5%. They own 95% for not doing what they're supposed to do, but you let it slide, and so there's your 5%. So we just tell our team just try to think of your 5%. We just arbitrarily call it five and that's our. We own it. We're going to own 5% no matter what. Now, when a customer is upset, when someone's upset, I tell my staff I'm like, okay, mentally, own 5%, but don't blame them for the 95. Just own the five. We keep it on our side of the table and we just move forward. They just want to be heard, right, and so that's kind of how we live out the core values in our company and transition from aspirations to values.

Tony: 38:14

So, jobin, what I would tell you is listening to you, you have a ton of passion, you know, for your company, a ton of passion for EOS. Obviously, it's obvious to me why you're successful at what you've done and building a great culture within your company. I wanted to go back a little bit within. When you were talking there, you quickly said you know, one of the things when I'm talking to people is digging wells, opening schools and seeing if they have an emotional response to that, because you are involved in digging wells opening schools. So tell people a little bit more about that and how you guys are giving back as a company, because I find it amazing.

JoBen: 38:54

Thank you, yeah, so I think you know. I think there's four T's to giving People talk about time, treasure and talent. There's a fourth one talk that I think is really important to recognize because it doesn't cost anything is really important to recognize because it doesn't cost anything. But some of us are wired as connectors and we can. We can, we can do a huge service to a project or to an initiative just by connecting the right people together, just by helping to tell the story, just by spreading awareness, and it costs absolutely nothing. When, when our friends write a book, you know how much, how much does it hurt us to post about it on social media? That's a form of talking right. How much does it hurt us to post about it on social media? That's a form of talking right. And so when I first started, we had no money and so I was like, okay, I'm just going to tell people about opportunities.

JoBen: 39:41

I grew up in a third world country. I look like this, I look like I'm. You know, I'm actually Canadian, half American, half Canadian, but was raised as a Canadian, my dad's Canadian, so we never cut in line Canadians don't cut in line things like that as Canadians. So we never cut in line. Canadians don't cut in line Things like that. I was raised 100% as a Canadian but yeah, super annoying when your mom saves a spot for you at front of the line at the cafeteria and your dad says you have to go to the back because you're a Canadian and I'm like, but mom's an American and she's going to let me cut.

Tony: 40:08

She's an American for crying out loud.

JoBen: 40:11

Just my American half is cutting in line. We're okay, but oh sorry, Okay so.

Tony: 40:19

I knew I wanted to build a library, yes, well, yeah, I want to hear how you got into Diggy Wells opening schools, what you're involved in with it.

JoBen: 40:28

Yeah, so 2012, I was ready to start doing projects. We'd had no money. Um, I got a phone call, uh, from a friend I grew up in peru and I grew up in the amazon rainforest. I lived there till I was 18 years old, um, so really close friend of mine. He said he was trying to do what we were doing but he had, uh, four flat soccer balls and he had 40 kids in his program and nobody was paying him. Um, and so I was like okay, I said. I said I have no money. You know, I had like 42 bucks in my bank account and my engine on my car had cracked and I had to borrow $1,900 from my brother who was a school teacher just to get my little Honda Civic back on the road. And so I had no money.

JoBen: 41:09

But I knew people and so I was like, okay, let me see if I can get help. So I told everybody I knew if. Well, first I went to Score Sports and I asked them if they would donate their profit margins so I could afford more equipment. And so the next order of 2000 soccer balls. I asked if they could make it 2200 and just give me at cost the 200 soccer balls. It's a company based in Long Beach and so they agreed to that and so I went around to everybody I knew. I went to parks, talked to strangers and I said, hey, if you give me 20 bucks, I'll buy two soccer balls. If you give me 40 bucks, I'll buy four soccer balls. Give me your email address, I'll send you a picture of the kids playing with the soccer balls and stuff.

JoBen: 41:47

So four months later we were in Peru with a fully funded project and I realized the first day I'm like man, I don't need to teach these guys anything about soccer. I need to teach them the basics of running a business. And so we started pivoting and being like, ok, I can come with all the equipment and the know-how of setting up an academy to funnel into competitive programming, but the skill set I have is like I built a business with no help, no help, no financing, nothing. And so I know how to bootstrap and build a successful organization. You know it's a multimillion dollar organization. We have 10,000 players a year in the program. We started with 63.

JoBen: 42:26

So when he's saying he's got 40 kids and no money, I was exactly in that spot and built it to this. So I'm grateful for that. It helps me to be able to help, I think in a better way because I'm empathizing versus sympathizing. And so I did sit exactly in their seat and walked in their shoes, and so we did that project. But it was familiar. It was back in Peru where I grew up, so everything was easy. So the next one was to Rwanda. Are you familiar with the genocide that happened in Rwanda in the early nineties?

Tony: 42:57

Yes.

JoBen: 42:58

So I went to, I was working there and I went to the genocide memorial as part of my time in Kigali, rwanda. I was working with a private school, but it was a training facility for the teachers for 42 public schools, and so I went. They, they paid for me to go to this genocide memorial and, um, I was educated. I learned a lot more about everything. The last hallways, pictures of children, um, from happier days, but pictures of children who were killed in the conflict. And I got to this five-year-old and a picture of a blown up picture of a five-year-old, and my oldest was five at the time and I, I, um it. It told, like, who his friends were, what his um, what his favorite games were, his favorite food, all this stuff. And, uh, it said, you know, he loved to play hide and seek with his dad. And then it talked about how they were killed and he was killed. Um, he looked at his mom and said where can I run to? And mom had to decide does he know he's getting killed or does he run away, thinking that he's free? And so she said just run, honey, you'll be safe. And so he took off running and he was shot and killed as he ran, um, and, and the mom knew that he was going to be killed, um, no matter what, but she made that self selfless decision to have him, um, think he's free. Um, um, right, as he was right before he got killed was sobbing, um, I went back to the, to the apartment I was staying in that night and I stayed up most of the night just being like what are we doing?

JoBen: 44:16

Like I could have sent a doctor here to save lives, I could have sent a construction team to, to to build something that lasted, and so I was really questioning the value of what we were doing. And doing these soccer camps, right, and teaching how to teach the youngest of kids, cause we focus on two to eight year olds. So we're really, really good with gentle coaching, which is not, which is not common over there or where I grew up, and very harsh a lot of like flip-flops to the side of the head when they mess up that type of thing Right, and so we're teaching like you can't use corporal punishment on a four-year-old and have them want to come back to practice. So just training them. You have to train them differently than you would a 17-year-old. But the next morning we were writing curriculum. I was teaching them how to write their own curriculum. They made a list of 20 character words and then a bunch of skills, and then we'd partner those up and we'd write a lesson plan. One character word, like responsibility or respect or determination, and we'd partner with with some skills and we'd write a curriculum.

JoBen: 45:18

And they brought five kids over to give an impact statement and this little seven-year-old went up there and this quote was on my wall for years, for five years, so it's why I remember it. Um, but he stood up and he said thank you so much for coming here, seven years old. So thank you so much for coming here. I don't have a father and no one's ever taught me football before. And they took a deep breath and he said um, what matters the most and what I'll never forget, uh, is that you came here and you didn't care if I was a boy or a girl, you didn't care if I was good at football or bad at football. You just came here and you love make more children feel the way I feel right now, and I was like, oh my gosh, like I couldn't get words out Right. Um, there's a picture of me with the kids I've got. I mean, pick something super red, my eyes are that red, I'm hugging the kids in the picture and I'm just like, what perfect timing to have a kid articulate for me what I was actually doing, which had nothing to do with soccer, football or even business. It just was how do I live out my desire to love and positively impact as many people as I can? And so that started our projects.

JoBen: 46:25

We then went to Cameroon, did some projects there, helped launch a nonprofit that runs focused focus on youth and girls programming. They set up the first competitive leagues in Cameroon for women. Uh, first tournaments and everything, um and then. So I did that in the French speaking side, and then I went and did more camps on the English speaking side as well. Uh, this is 2017. So I made friendships on both sides and then a civil war broke out between the two sides, and so I still have connections on the French side and I still work with them. You know, the people I work with have nothing to do with the conflict. They're just stuck in the middle of it.

JoBen: 46:58

But on the on the English speaking side of the country, the terrorists started becoming more and more ruthless and barbaric, and the government really didn't have access to that area. So there was a food shortages, food insecurities that came from COVID access to that area. So there was a you know, food shortages, food insecurities that came from COVID, huge malaria outbreaks, a huge cholera epidemic that was killing people and no education. All the schools were closed in 2017. So the first, you know, we, we first thing we did is we supported a guy's soccer Academy over there, started working with them and I'm talking about camera, because cameras now are a long, long-term project. So we did that. Then we did a bunch of other projects but eventually opened an elementary school. They named it it's the wordiest name ever. It's named after my wife. It's Amanda's School for Bright and Gifted Children. I don't know how a first grader in Cameroon gets through all those words, but it's so nice of them to name it after Amanda.

JoBen: 47:53

But we launched that school and then they sent me pictures of a big celebration and I saw a bunch of kids playing in water with cups beside the water, and because I grew up in a third world country, I knew that that meant there was a crossover between bathing water and drinking water, and so I asked right away like hey, do we have a good supply of water here, and they said, no, we have a huge cholera problem, um, and no access to clean, safe water, none Um.

JoBen: 48:21

So I was like, okay, what they were doing was they were filling water bottles um, um with water, um, and then placing it on the roof um to heat up, and they were letting it sit there for days and trying to cook the water on the roof of their, of their huts, um, and, and that was that was the best they could do, and so we went in, we I found out there was a natural spring a couple of kilometers, a couple of miles away, um, and we we ran an underground waterline and built a pump. I I had no idea how to do this stuff. Youtube is a great teacher, um, and so great guy in Cameroon, kingsley, and he was like he's like boss, we can do this. He goes. We just got to get on YouTube and believe in ourselves.

Tony: 48:55

I'm like okay, let's go.

JoBen: 48:57

So we built a waterline, did a huge ceremony. It was so cool. I can't go there. It's really unstable, I can't blend in very well, and so I wasn't able to attend. But Kingsley sent me a message two days later and he was like we have a problem, he's like boss. I tell him not to call me boss, but he does it anyway. He's like he's like boss, we've got a problem.

JoBen: 49:18

So this one water supply is now servicing 1500 people and the tap is right by our school, and so they're lining up every morning before dawn to get water. He said everybody's well behaved, everybody's polite, but it's too distracting to have hundreds and hundreds of people lined up outside of the school. And so I was like okay, let's, let's, let's, let's build some more water lines, dig some wells. So we found a new location, we bought it, we dug, we knew the water table was at about 20 feet. We got to 19 feet six inches and then the water line was the well was poisoned feet. We got to 19 feet six inches and then the water line was the well was poisoned, um, and which naturally was naturally poisoned. The water was wasn't drinkable, and so, um, but we bought the land.

JoBen: 50:00

So now we have this land, we had no idea what to do with it. So then we talked to the villagers and we're like, hey, we needed to donate land. This time, you know, we dropped like 26 000 to buy that land, to give them a free well, and and then we hit, and then the water didn't work. So then I went back and I was like man, I can't drop 26 K every time we want to try to dig a well. And so they gave me the land. They provided um people to do the labor, and then we just paid for um, paid for the parts and paid for print together and we hired the. We hired um professionals to come and help us to test it, to make sure the water was good. So then we ran a line, we dug another well, and then nine villages showed up and they were like where's our well?

JoBen: 50:38

So then it became a much bigger project. Again. He and I are both soccer players and then academy directors by trade, and so we started a water company to start producing water. Everything we do, we try to do it sustainably. Um and so, uh, we started the school, but but I'm paying the teacher's salaries every month and that's not sustainable. Uh, so then we started a taxi company and we hired all the coaches for the soccer Academy we've been working with as taxi drivers, and then the profits from the taxi company paid the salaries for the teachers every month, so it wasn't costing us anything to run the school. We're running it completely for free. So then we solved the water crisis, and I can go, and that's a whole podcast.

JoBen: 51:23

If you want to go deep on what it's like to run projects in the middle of a civil war, that would be that they can make a movie about the stuff that's gone on so far. But then fast forward to where we are today. We decided to use that land to start an agriculture school to address the food shortages, and so in October, on like four, three, four weeks notice, I left my wife and five kids for five weeks and went to Africa and took a farming organic agriculture course in Kenya Same same basic geography as Cameroon in the area we were working. So went there with my director from Cameroon, took this course and then we went back and three months later we opened an agriculture school teaching six nutrition crops and two medicinal crops, including artemisia. Artemisia is a plant that, when processed correctly, that they use that plant to make every malaria medicine. It comes from Artemisia, and so we teach them how to grow the plant, how to cultivate it and then how to how to dry the leaves and then grind them to powder and then to drink it as a tea. It's a little bit bitter, but it it. Uh, it puts off an odor. I believe it's the odor, the body odor that it puts off um, that repels the insects that carry malaria.

JoBen: 52:39

Malaria is only carried by by the mosquitoes at night. Um, it's only by the female mosquito that's only bites you at night. So during the day people are fine, but at night they're getting hammered by. Um. Malaria and the it's just. Malaria is a parasite that the mosquito carries. So if there's one infected person in the house sleeping, it will bite that person, and then if that same mosquito bites another person, they'll become infected with the malaria parasite. So we taught them how to grow and create a tea from this Artemisia plant and so that reduces the symptoms from often hospitalization because of severe dehydration, um, down to one, one and a half days of symptoms. Um, if they already have malaria and they're having an attack, because malaria never leaves your body Once you have it um, if you don't have it and you chug this tea like crazy, it keeps you from getting malaria.

JoBen: 53:28

So we taught them that. And then we we taught them a whole bunch of nutrition crops. Um, we just graduated our first class of 46 students, and so we gift them with tool sets and all the seeds to start their own farm and, additionally, we teach them how to sustainably farm, so they collect their own seeds, they dry their own seeds and then they replant them. It's all part of what we teach them. So we have a facility now that we bought by accident because we were trying to dig a well, so we have this land that we get to teach them on. We're very blessed to have it. It's right on a river, totally by accident, unplanned. We're not thinking at all about the river when we bought the land and now we have a river, so we have never-ending water supply for our farm.

JoBen: 54:09

And then we teach them to go back and do exactly what they did at the farm in their own backyards, and so with a 20 foot by five foot garden bed, they can feed. They can feed, you know, their neighbors 50% of the nutritional needs for a year. They can continually feed them, and they can do it in soil that has no nutrients. That's the trick that we learned in Kenya is you dig down 12 inches, you remove that soil and then you dig down another 12 inches to loosen up the soil and then you fill it with compost. On top of that loose soil, you fill it with decomposing everything you've been collecting and then you put the 12 inches back on top. So you have a big mound of dirt now, and then you never walk on it. So it's. It doesn't compact down Right. And then you only have to do that once every five years, and so it can turn soil that has no ability to grow crop into high nutrient soil.

JoBen: 55:04

And then we teach them how to plant partner crops so that they don't have the same insect that eats two, two crops side by side, that they don't have the same insect that eats two, two crops side by side. Um, cause the insects won't jump over a crop that they don't eat. Um, and then we, we plant marigolds all around it. It's a natural insect repellent, and so we learned all these tricks. I'm a soccer dude that's got nothing to do with farming and never wanted to have anything to do with farming. And now, um, now I own an agriculture school in Cameroon. So you know, that's the big picture that everybody hears.

Tony: 55:38

You know we can do five podcasts on this is the beauty of you know, operating under the EOS, which has allowed you the time to be able to give back to the world in such an impactful way.

Tony: 55:51

I'm so glad you've been able to share that.

Tony: 55:53

I mean, all of this boils down to you know you have honed in on processes with your company to where you have allowed yourself the time and the capacity to be able to actually go make a difference in this world, while your company can still operate self-sufficiently and you can leave and have and dedicate the time to doing something that's created so much passion for you, and your company is not being penalized for you doing that. That's the whole gist of EOS and you doing all of this, which has allowed you to truly give back, and so that is the value of EOS is actually being able to find passion in life and give back with the success that you've built up, and what a testament it is to all the people that then work for you. That's man. I work for this guy. Look what he's creating, look what we're doing. This is what we're doing. I support this, and that in itself is then it drives your employees that they are working for a great place and they want to be part of that.

JoBen: 56:50

A hundred percent. Can you imagine? So you're, you're 18, 19, 20 years old and you work at a company that teaches little kids soccer. That's not super rewarding long-term. And we tell them that we're like hey, you're, you're not going to wake up excited to go to work every day If the only thing we offer is the chance to teach a three-year-old to kick a soccer ball straight. That's, it's just not long-term rewarding, said, but what if you, you worked at a place instead? You know what if they work at a place instead where you know they have seven kids in their class and they're so great and they're there that kids tell their friends. And now they have nine kids in the class, right, well, those two kids are straight profit for us and we can only donate from the profit. We can't donate from the soccer shots expense account, right. And so we talked to them about like hey, you know, we're not buying a boat, right, that's our, that's our, our joke, we always make the language we're not buying a boat with the extra money. Like, we're digging another well. Every well costs us between five and $7,000. We're digging another well. We're opening another school. We're adding more taxis to the taxi companies so that we can pay the teachers more, and they all know that.

JoBen: 57:59

So I'm in an industry with a turnover. For our part-time employees, which is the majority of our staffing, our turnover rate is every six to nine months. That's two to three seasons. That's about how long a part-time coach typically works in this industry. We just had four coaches reach 10 years with us. Four part-time coach typically works in this industry. We just had four coaches reach 10 years with us. Four part-time coaches reach 10 years with us and it's because they know that when they wake up in the morning and they go to work, they're doing so much more than teaching soccer to little kids. So now what they're doing is they're supporting communities that can't help themselves in underserved communities within developing countries. Right, so you wake up in the morning, you don't feel like teaching you to kick, but maybe you do still feel like helping someone have access to safe, clean drinking water. It's a totally different reason for getting out of bed in the morning and it's how we live on our values, right? So we talk about help first and then we report how our company is helping, and then we also talk to them again about the four T's. So we say like our company, 15 years in, is at the point where we are using treasure now, right Time, treasure, talent and talk. We're able to use significant treasure to do these projects. A lot of that is because I'm leveraging my understanding of a third world country and how far the US dollar goes when you're in some of those countries to do projects.

JoBen: 59:18

So we've built soccer complexes, we've done all kinds of projects and our staff here gets to get excited about you know there was. We pass everything on to them. But there was recently a little baby in a family. A village of 600 people just got a well for the first time, and a family, a village of 600 people, just got a well for the first time. And, and three weeks later I got sent a picture of a little baby African boy named Jobin, who was just born. And so I turned around. I'm like, I'm like guys, this is like, yes, the kid has my name. That's unbelievable, but this is a testament to the organization. Like I, my name to them is the organization, and so they named their baby after the organization that you guys all make happen. That's it. That's wild Right. And so, yes, we tie them into our why, our what is just how we live out of the why, right, and so great that you I love that, you that you pointed out and touched on that you know the, the, the, the.

JoBen: 1:00:18

The summary that you gave was the five points in a summary. Right, I get to do what I love, which is impacting people, changing lives. I get to lead an organization, which I love doing. I love being the CEO, the visionary, the big ideas guy. I love sitting at a coffee shop with an empty notebook writing mostly terrible ideas in it. I love that. I love it. Right, my job, my stated job, is to come up with 20 big ideas, and 19 of them can be awful, but one of them is going to disrupt the industry. My integrator's job is filtering for everybody else poor woman, but doing what we love with people we love.

JoBen: 1:00:59

Well, if you filter through core values, if you talk a lot about why you're in business, if you talk a lot about who you work with and who you bless and who you want to bless, you start to attract people that you just love. You love these people, right, and they're all different walks of life. My wife and I are people of faith, but we have people of all different faiths that actually work in our organization, and we work well together because we want to serve the greater good All of us do in the organization. And we have people of no faith that just think that people should be nice to people and they get attracted to work here too, and so we get a lot of people that have the same goal coming from different places, right, and so the goal of making other people's lives better, and so we do what we love with people we love.

JoBen: 1:01:43

We are making a massive impact, right? I think every business owner wants to believe and hope that their idea, their job, will positively impact as many people as possible, and then being compensated appropriately for the impact means that if your idea sucks, if it's not working, you're. That's why you're not getting paid very much. It's compensated appropriately not compensated a ton and so compensated appropriately. Our idea has worked and so we are compensated well enough to be able to self-finance our own nonprofit, and so we get very little outside help. We finance all these projects.

JoBen: 1:02:18

But that's the fifth deliverable of EOS, the EOS life right. The fifth deliverable is time time to pursue other passions, and I've always been a huge advocate for the value of time as one of our most valuable resources. It can never be replaced right, and I've lost everything, our most valuable resources, it can never be replaced Right. I and I've lost everything. Um, I've, I've people, my kids, my kids don't really understand how wild this is. When my wife met me, um, I, she was 22 years old, I was 20, 21. I was 26 and I was living in my car, um, and I was perfectly fine with that. Um, when we drive, when we, when last time we were in Canada, we drove by this one rest stop area and I was like, guys, there's where dad used to live because it was safe, so I'd park in the rest area, I would do the little sink bathing. And Amanda, she tells people, she tells me she's like well, I had never met anyone like you.

JoBen: 1:03:08

I grew up in a smaller town on the outskirts of Vancouver, canada farming area, and then this guy comes in and it's just got these wild big ideas but actually he believes he's actually going to execute them and he's doing the things that lead to it being executed and being done well and on time and impacting as many people as possible. So for me, time was a big thing and I was willing to give up resources and income to have my time, and so that's to. I was willing to give up resources and income to have my time, and so you know that that's the fifth deliverable is time to pursue other passions. It is our most valuable resource. Nobody gets to the end of their life and wishes they'd made a hundred thousand dollars more. No one. Everybody would trade for one more day, one more chance to talk to that person. Set things right. And so you know, we just I.

JoBen: 1:03:54

Our stated goal for our company was I said I will work like a dog for five years. It ended up being about eight years. But I said I will work like a maniac for this amount of time. But then, after that, I'm going to be at every single school event. I'm going to do drop offs and pickups for my kids, I'm going to go to every sports event. I'm not missing anything. And you know, last week I was at a two and a half hour uh play on the history of the U? S for my fifth grader. That started at eight o'clock in the morning and eight, 30, eight, 30 to like 10, 10, 45, 11 o'clock. It just kept going. I was like, oh my gosh, I get to do that, right, I get to go and be there, um, because of EOS. And so it's not because of soccer shots, it's not because of me, it's because of EOS. And I love Gino.

JoBen: 1:04:41

Gino walked on stage a few years ago and he says it's his partner that came up with the terminology. But he said you know, we've been fooling you all, we, we, you know, we present this business system for creating structure and harmonizing human energy, creating accountability through measured, tracked measurables, and he's like so. So that's the forward facing. But what we actually did is we created something that gives the business owner founder these five things. And if you don't think you want these five things, your spouse or significant other does, or your kids want you to have these five things uh, doing what you love with people you love, uh, making a massive impact, being compensated for it.

JoBen: 1:05:22

But then the fifth one time, right, um, my kids are fit, are 16, 15, 13,. Um, um, 11 and 10. We have a bunch of birthdays in these two months, so I've got to try to keep up with who's had their birthday already. But in that age range you start to think about summers. Okay, so in two summers, my oldest is out of high school In three summers, the next one's out In four summers, the next one's out.

JoBen: 1:05:48

We live in California, so the secret reason for being here is because it's too expensive to move out. They're going to have to live with us forever. It's going to be great, and so I really enjoy my children. They're great fun to hang out with. Excuse me, we have four kids in five years and then we adopted our oldest five years ago and so we have five kids in a seven-year span. They do everything together and sometimes they invite me to hang out with them too, and I love it.

JoBen: 1:06:14

So it's great, but yeah, that deliverable the last one time to pursue other passions. That is what has allowed me to do all this nonprofit work and to really focus on that. But also that's why Amanda was able to step into the owner's box of soccer shots and then become an EOS implementer Because, you know, living the EOS life, making a massive impact. She was like this is how I personally can do that. So my wife stay at home mom, homeschool, mom to EOS implementer, working with executives and you know, owners, business owners, executives and their teams with no network and she's built this successful business that's thriving and is doubling year over year and it's been incredible and it's because she's just so passionate about helping people and she loves sitting in the uncomfortable when people are lying to themselves.

JoBen: 1:07:08

I do not. I feel all the discomfort. She feels none of their discomfort, she just finds it humorous. So I just love that EOS has gifted me with the opportunity to live my EOS life as someone who's, you know, a business owner. I'm the, I am the, the CEO by title and, uh, and I attend one meeting a week, um, at our company, one 90 minute meeting meeting. I don't make any of the decisions and operations anymore, but then, equally, my wife doesn't attend any meetings. She's in all of our quarterlies, in our annual, because she's running them as an implementer, not as a business owner, and so we're both pursuing passions outside of this business we built that has, you know, 70 employees across two different states and it all runs itself and it's. It's amazing, absolutely amazing.

JoBen: 1:07:58

I could have, I could not have done that in the timeframe that we did it, if it wasn't for the gift of the book traction and EOS, and then rocket fuel. You know, I touched on that very briefly. Rocket fuel was the gift that released us, to release me, to step into who I always was. I just felt, like you know, the role of a visionary, big ideas person. It's so abstract and and there's not, there's not measure measurables and there aren't key deliverables, and so how is this a real job? But then you get into the room with people that don't have that skillset that you have of casting a vision and seeing where we could go and who we could become, and you start to realize that it actually is a skill. Combine that with reading Rocket Fuel and they're like buddy. This skill set of a visionary is wonderful, but it's an absolute disaster if you don't complement it with the skill set of an integrator, and so I'm super blessed.

JoBen: 1:08:51

I've had the same integrator since 2015. We learned EOS. We were Eator since 2015. We learned EOS. We were EOS babies together. We learned it together, we implement it together, and right now she is training my next integrator. So I'm super, super excited about the direction the company's going and about her help. During COVID, we actually helped her launch her own my long-term integrator. We actually helped her launch her own fractional integrator company. During COVID to help her have an opportunity to make income. If our company didn't survive, I was like, oh man, this person did so much for us and so how can I help first and lean into that core value? So we helped launch her company and she's still doing her company. And so she's the one that came to us and said hey, I think you guys, I think it's time to have a full-time integrator again and I'm ready to train your integrator.

JoBen: 1:09:45

So beautiful. It's beautiful when you show up for people authentically and help first. Sometimes they don't help you at all because you have to do it without. You have to do it without, without expecting you know the reciprocity to happen, but when it does, it's a beautiful thing. And when you have a great relationship there, I know that she wants us to succeed. I know, I know that when she's not working, she's at our company. When she's not, when you know, when she's working with her other companies, she's still thinking about our company and wants us to succeed and to um, to Excel. So it's, it's wonderful and she's a, she's a um, she's a type, a straight shooter, um says it how it is Doesn't get overly emotionally excited about stuff, um.

JoBen: 1:10:41

And so I knew that winning her over was going to be.

JoBen: 1:10:42

It was going to be something that I had to do very intentionally, because she is wired to be a little bit apprehensive is the wrong word and distrustful is the wrong word, but she's not wired to just get overly excited, like me.

JoBen: 1:10:48

Right, I have to actually convince her that I'm genuine, that the core values mean something to me, that I'm not just like a raw, raw cult leader trying to get everybody to do something for me. I actually am trying to build something and I'm putting in the work as well, and so that's one of my biggest prides in life as a business owner and boss is to have earned the respect of an integrator who I respect. Right, it's a totally different skillset and we just have so much respect of an integrator who I respect right, it's a totally different skill set and we just have so much respect for each other that we can be opposite and opposing on issues and decisions, and she 100% respects me and respects my intentions and I respect her. And I let her tell me no, which is not easy for a visionary entrepreneur, but I let her and I've experienced over and over again that it's the right decision, so I will keep letting her tell me no.

Tony: 1:11:39

Joe Ben, I really appreciate that and I love to hear that. And you know, what I want to do is take a moment. I want to pause. I want to thank you for everything that you've discussed here today. I think it's going to be instrumental to anyone working through their business to grow it kind of scale it to the next level and to free up time. So if people wanted to reach out to you to find out more, if they could get involved potentially in helping Wells or help you expand in your educational pursuits over in Cameron, what's the best way to get in touch with you on that?

JoBen: 1:12:12

I'll give three ways. The first one is my email address Joe ben. I have a unique name. My dad made it up. The joe from joseph and the ben from benjamin became one name joe ben at soccer shots. S-o-c-c-e-r-s-h-o-t-s on the endcom joe ben at soccer shotscom.

JoBen: 1:12:29

That's a great way to get ahold of me. Um, I have a va that goes through all of my emails and sorts them for me, and so put something in the in the subject line about what you want to talk about, and she will do a great job of sorting that for me. The other way is is simply firing off a text 949-338-2681. Fire off a text and then also I'm on Instagram. My Instagram handle is one kidney adventures. I donated a kidney about a year a little over a year ago and so I just wanted to show people that you can still have a heck of a good time with one kidney. It doesn't have to slow you down and so I just that one. I just documented ventures on there, but I also am really responsive to comments on there, and so those are the best ways to get ahold of me, and not just not just if you want to help us with our project, but if you want to brainstorm and talk through your own project. Man, I get, I get amped up talking about a way, different ways to impact communities outside of my own expertise. I just love being a part of a think tank and a conversation. An hour conversation can spark ideas for myself, right Like I had no idea when I started that I would be digging wells, opening schools, starting an agriculture school, an organic agriculture school, like come on, and so if I was to sit down with you and talk about your big idea, that might be my next big idea too. So I find that those conversations are as rewarding for me as they are for the other person and and also they, they, they spur growth and creativity in myself. Just talking with another creative person, talking with another person that had the I had, you know, had the idea and is willing to like chase it and it's excited about, those are the best ways to get ahold of me Just to chat. If you want to talk about EOS, amanda Barkey EOS that's her Instagram handle. Amanda goes on there and gives EOS tips all the time that follow her on Instagram, that's you'll get a nonstop stream of EOS tips and advice and she also answers messages on there. So if it's specifically EOS, you can feel free to reach out to me.

JoBen: 1:14:33

My wife is the actual professional. I call myself EOS implementer adjacent, and so I was a. I say I was the. I was one of the best self implementers out there. But self-implementing caps you at using EOS and if you want to run on EOS, you got to take the next step and put on your big boy pants and hire an implementer. It doesn't have to be my wife. You have to love EOS and you have to love your implementer. Those are the two non-negotiables, and then it'll change your whole life, change your business, change your life.

Tony: 1:15:03

Awesome, Jevin. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you jumping on today and joining us and going through your journey. Thank you so much, man. I appreciate you coming on.

JoBen: 1:15:19

My pleasure and, yeah, thanks for doing this. This is great. I love my goal this year. I'll tell you how you're fulfilling something for me.

JoBen: 1:15:22

So I've done a really poor job of telling the story of what we do with soccer shots, cause I've just been, I've just been doing right, and sometimes you get so focused in doing that when you, when you stop for a second, you're like why is nobody else excited about this? Why is nobody else helping? And you're like else excited about this? Why is nobody else helping? And you're like, oh, I didn't tell anybody.

JoBen: 1:15:36

And so I came into 2024 and I was like, okay, I'm going to get over the fact that I feel like this is bragging.

JoBen: 1:15:41

I'm going to get over the fact that I feel like I'm talking about the good things we're doing too much.

JoBen: 1:15:44

I'm going to get over all of that and I'm just going to believe that there are a few people out there that are wired like me. They want to help people, they want to make a difference, but maybe they're earlier and maybe there is. No, maybe there's not enough treasure right now to be doing financial help, but but posting our story, that's a huge help, right, and so maybe I can invite people into committing some time to help some kid, committing some talent to help, committing some talk to help, and then and then, someday, when they have their treasure in place, they can launch their own projects. But they will have started today, because the right time to start is today, and so you're helping me to fulfill a statement and a goal for 2024. To tell the story as often and as well as I can, so I really appreciate it. The more reps I get and the more time I'm talking about it, the better I will get at it and the more concise I'll get to Absolutely Well, yeah, and thank you, and do not hesitate.

Tony: 1:16:38

Please do reach out to Joe Ben and obviously, if you want to talk to his wife, amanda, about doing EOS implementation, that's also someone please reach out to and I'll put all of this in the show notes so you can do it. And again, joe Ben.