Steve Preda with Traction Equity teaches us how to build a buyable business.
Steve Preda
Author, Speaker, Certified EOS Implementer®
Since the age of ten, Steve (Istvan) Preda dreamt of becoming an entrepreneur, inspired by his great-grandfather, who had built a legendary bakery business in Budapest, Hungary.
After working for top consulting firms and banks in London and Budapest, in 2002 Steve embarked on realizing his dream by starting MB Partners, a consulting firm, helping private companies arrange ownership transitions.
Having overcome many painful mistakes, by 2007 MB Partners achieved market leadership in Hungary, but around its tenth year the firm hit the ceiling. That was when Steve read Gino Wickman’s Traction, which changed his life and his company, forever. A year later a Private Equity group bought the firm, allowing Steve’s family of six to move to the United States.
Today, Steve’s mission is to help entrepreneurial leadership teams succeed, as a Certified EOS Implementer. Since 2016, he has helped over 35 leadership teams clarify, simplify and achieve their visions and start living the EOS Life®.
His new book: Buyable — Your Guide to Building a Self-Managing, Fast Growing, and High Profit Business is coming out in Q2 2021.
Books Mentioned
Running a GREAT company means that you and your team can start living the EOS Life, when:
You are doing what you love to do
Everyone in your company is working in their Unique Ability™.
With people you love being with
You are surrounding yourself with people that share your values.
Making a huge difference
In the lives of your family, colleagues and your customers, empowered to pursue mastery, autonomy and purpose.
Being compensated appropriately
By running an efficient and effective business that is scalable and valuable.
Having time to pursue other passions
Running on EOS® will help you find your life balance, so that you can rejuvenate and pursue what you find fascinating and motivating.
Steve Preda can help you live the EOS Life by purely implementing every tool and discipline in your entrepreneurial business, as outlined in the Traction® Library.
Vision
Getting everyone in your company on the same page as to where you are going and how you are going to get there.
Traction®
Instilling a discipline of execution in your business by creating a process and organizational habits for maintaining clarity, accountability and a focus on priorities.
Healthy
Building an engaged and inspired leadership team, where people are willing to step out of their comfort zones, be vulnerable and engage each other in healthy conflict, for the good of the company.
The EOS Model
The EOS Model™ provides a visual illustration of the Six Key Components™ of any business that must be managed and strengthened to be a great company. This model applies to big and small businesses alike, in any industry.
The Six Key Components of Any Business
Vision. Strengthening this component means getting everyone in the organization 100 percent on the same page with where you’re going and how you’re going to get there.
People. Simply put, we can’t do it without great people. This means surrounding yourself with great people, top to bottom, because you can’t achieve a great vision without a great team.
Data. This means cutting through all the feelings, personalities, opinions and egos and boiling your organization down to a handful of objective numbers that give you an absolute pulse on where things are.
With the Vision, People, and Data Components strong, you start to create a lucid, transparent, open and honest organization where everything becomes more visible and you start to “smoke out all the issues,” which leads to…
Issues. Strengthening this component means becoming great at solving problems throughout the organization – setting them up, knocking them down and making them go away forever.
Process. This is the secret ingredient in your organization. This means “systemizing” your business by identifying and documenting the core processes that define the way to run your business. You’ll need to get everyone on the same page with what the essential procedural steps are, and then get everyone to follow them to create consistency and scalability in your organization.
Traction. This means bringing discipline and accountability into the organization – becoming great at execution – taking the vision down to the ground and making it real.
“To the degree you focus on strengthening the Six Key Components as leaders and managers, everything
will fall into place. That will move your business into the top 5 percent.”
Gino Wickman, Creator of EOS
Leadership teams in entrepreneurial companies need to manage efficiently and effectively. There’s no time to waste managing egos or dealing with office politics.
The EOS Toolbox™ is a complete set of tools addressing and strengthening all Six Key Components™ of any business. These management tools for business leaders are designed to be easy to learn and use, because complexity reduces effectiveness. Every tool in the EOS Toolbox has been proven time and time again in the real world – the tools work!
The EOS Process provides a proven way to put all the pieces together, incorporating each of the EOS® Tools in the right order to best strengthen each key component of your business.
Getting Started
Select an Implementer. To begin, you will need to select someone to play the essential role of “EOS Implementer” and guide your leadership team through the process. This can be a person on your leadership team or a Professional Implementer outside the company. We recommend using a Professional or Certified EOS Implementer for the best experience and results.
The 90 Minute Meeting. Led by a Certified or Professional Implementer, the 90 Minute Meeting introduces your leadership team to EOS®, getting everyone on the same page to decide if you want to use the system and tools to strengthen your company.
Getting Focused and Clarifying Vision
The Focus Day™ A day to give your leadership team tools to clarify who’s responsible for what, set priorities, improve communication, resolve issues and track critical numbers.Your leadership team then uses their new tools for the next 30 days to experience real improvement.
Vision Building™ Day 1. Another day with your leadership team that starts by reviewing and sharpening the Focus Day tools. You will then begin to use the Vision/Traction Organizer™ (V/TO) tool to clarify your vision, starting with who you are, why you exist, what you do and where you are going. You will also get a great tool for reviewing your people. Your team again uses the tools for the next 30 days to experience more improvement. This is a spaced-learning approach which has proven to be most effective for quickly gaining proficiency with the tools.
Vision Building Day 2. Another day with the leadership team to master the Focus Day tools and continue using the V/TO tool to complete your vision, clarify your Marketing Strategy, 3-Year Picture™, 1-Year Plan and priorities for the next 90 days. With your leaders now focused and all on the same page, you’ll use the tools for the next 90 days to execute your plan and experience more improvement.
Achieving Traction
Quarterly Sessions. A day with your leadership team every 90 days to evaluate their performance, refocus, set priorities for the next 90 days and resolve any issues that might impede progress. Your team experiences measurable growth and improvement every 90 days – Traction®. Annual Sessions. Two days with your leadership team each year to work on team health and update the vision and plan for the next year and next quarter.
The Result
A healthy, focused leadership team and organization that makes continual progress towards achieving everything in their vision.
