How To Gain Freedom With The Entrepreneurial Operating System With Lyn Askin

As entrepreneurs, many of us find ourselves trapped in the day-to-day operations of our businesses, realizing too late that we don’t own a business—we own a job. In this episode, I sit down with Lyn Askin, a certified EOS implementer and lifelong entrepreneur, to discuss how business owners can break free from this trap. Lyn shares his personal story of reaching a breaking point and the critical moment when he realized his business could not run without him. His journey led him to implement the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), transforming not only his business but his life.

Lyn explains how EOS helps entrepreneurs create clear vision, accountability, and discipline within their organizations. We dive into the six key components of EOS—vision, people, data, issues, process, and traction—and how each helps businesses scale while empowering founders to step away from the day-to-day grind. If you’re ready to stop being the bottleneck in your business and start creating a company that can thrive without you, this episode is a must-listen.

Connect with Lyn Askin:
 
If you're ready to implement a system that will help you build a scalable business, connect with at LynAskin.com or search for him on LinkedIn. Lyn is passionate about helping business owners like you achieve real freedom and success. 

 

Books Mentioned:

• Traction by Gino Wickman

Join the New Catalytic Leadership Community

Check out our new online membership site, with new resources by Dr. William Attaway and his team added weekly: https://checkout.catalyticleadership.net/

Chapters

• 0:00 The Founder’s Trap: A Business That Can’t Run Without You
• 6:00 The Turning Point: Lyn’s Wake-Up Call
• 12:30 What is EOS: An Overview of the Entrepreneurial Operating System
• 18:45 The Six Key Components of EOS
• 25:31 Building Accountability and Scaling Through Delegation
• 33:01 The Road to Freedom: Moving from Overwhelmed to Empowered
• 38:31 How to Get Started with EOS

Transcript

Dr. William Attaway: 0:00

It is an honor today to have Lynn Askin on the podcast. Lynn is a certified EOS implementer and a certified exit planner. As a lifelong entrepreneur, he spent over two decades running a digital marketing agency, where he helped small business owners grow their businesses online. Today, he helps business owners get the business they really want so they can run the business instead of the business running them. He's also the head coach and success strategist for Seven Figure Agency Len. I'm so glad you're here. Thanks for being on the show.

Lyn Askin: 0:33

I'm so happy to be here. I believe I met you in Cancun at a conference and we just happened to be sitting next to each other and we happened to be at the very same conference the very next week and so sort of serendipitous that our paths crossed, and I'm really glad that they did.

Dr. William Attaway: 0:52

As am I. I'll tell you, I've already learned a ton from you, and every conversation only adds to that, and I can't wait to see where this conversation is going to go today. I appreciate that.

Intro/Outro: 1:04

Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed to help leaders intentionally grow and thrive. Here is your host author and leadership and executive coach, dr William Attaway.

Dr. William Attaway: 1:21

I would love to start with you sharing a little bit of your story with our listeners, particularly around your journey and your development as a leader and I think that made me entrepreneurial.

Lyn Askin: 1:32

I think the you know desire for a teenage kid to have the same things that the other kids had. Or you know, if I wanted a pair of Levi's, I had to purchase them on my own. If I wanted a pair of Nikes, I had to have my own money for those things, and you know, and so I guess I've always been entrepreneurial. I think even as young as eight or nine years old, I had a paper route Uh, my teens at a mobile disc jockey company. In my twenties I started building computers.

Lyn Askin: 2:14

Um, in 1995 or 96, I built one of the first online auctions. I've built a first e-commerce store in 97, I think sounds right. And then from that point I just started helping other you know sort of business owners navigate what was fairly new. You know internet back then, you know the world of websites and internet marketing. You know, over the next you know 20 or 26 years, I guess, I grew up a fairly successful digital marketing agency that had, you know, some of the same challenges that everybody else had Probably a lack of clear vision about who we were and who we served. We had maybe a lackluster team commitment, probably because of a lack of clear vision and leadership from the top and probably a lack of discipline and accountability all the way to the top and you know, despite all of that, still had a pretty successful business.

Lyn Askin: 3:08

But in 2020, it was October I got the wake-up call, of all wake-up calls, and suffered a massive bilateral pulmonary embolism and William, as I was laying there in my yard dying, all I could think about was what kind of mess did I just leave my wife and son? Um gosh, I, I, my wife was going to have to go to my office, she was going to have to fire all the team, lose all of the clients and lock the door behind me. And, and that would have been the legacy that I left for my family. Because you know, quite frankly, if, if I had died that day, my business would have died with me. Um, you know cause?

Lyn Askin: 3:47

I didn't have a business, I had a job, and not a very good boss at that job. And so, uh, uh, I, I thank God I survived, I, I'm, I'm here to fight another day and I'm still working out. You know why that is, and I'm still trying to figure out my purpose here in life. But, um, what I knew at that moment was that I, that I had to change the way that I operated my business and the way that I operated my life. And, uh, my, my first instinct was that, man, I need to sell this business. I, I, it's killing me in every sort of way. But I'm not sure if you'd know this or not, William, but you can't sell a job.

Dr. William Attaway: 4:32

Not easily.

Lyn Askin: 4:34

And so I went on. I went on a mission to, to, to build something, to build some structure into my business, that that it didn't rely 100% on me and that it didn't have to touch every piece of it and that if I did happen to die and something bad happened, that I would leave something for my wife and my family that was sellable and scalable. And you know, that was sort of ran without me and so, you know, at that moment I guess I found EOS, found the entrepreneurial operating system. You know, I had read the book Traction, I bought it in 2014 and sort of read it and put it on the. You know, you got to put your book, I got to put your book feed them, and it goes on the shelf with all the rest and I thought, boy, that's nice. I sure wish I could do it someday. Obviously, my scare made it real and it made it time for me to implement an operating system within our business that would help me grow and scale. And over the next year. So we hired a professional EOS implementer and he came into our business and over the next year, we 3X'd our revenue, 7x'd our profits. We grew from 10 employees to 27. Revenue seven extra profits. We grew from 10 employees to 27.

Lyn Askin: 5:48

And I was, probably most important of all, able to take myself out of the day-to-day operations and sort of fell in love with that whole process. Fell in love with EOS, drank all of the orange Kool-Aid, became a professional EOS implementer because I wanted to help people get that same you know sort of success and and realization of of a business that we've sort of dreamed of from the beginning. You know we all start our businesses thinking, oh great, I'm going to start a business, I'm going to have all this free time and money and, and you know, no stress and I'll have my weekends off and man, it is just not like that at all for most people. And so that's what I, you know, because I was able to achieve that, I just wanted to help others do that, ultimately leading to a successful exit and the sale of my agency. So I guess that's probably a little longer than you were hoping for, but that's my story and I think that's why I'm so passionate about helping other people sort of build the business of their dreams.

Dr. William Attaway: 6:49

I love that and it's not too long at all. The thing I love about it is that it really illustrates that there is no such thing as a wasted experience. I believe that every experience in our lives is either for our benefit or for the benefit of other people. And what you have done is you have taken a pretty horrific experience I mean, that's not something anybody would choose to go through and you have taken it and said okay, instead of just being a victim and instead of just saying, oh, poor, pitiful me, woe is me. You're like okay, what am I going to do? How do I get to the solution side of this? And not just for you, but now being a conduit of what you've learned, and saying how can I help other people experience this freedom? I love that generosity of spirit, man.

Lyn Askin: 7:40

Yeah, thanks, I think that's really important to understand. Is that no-transcript? It was awoken to the realities of my life and I don't know. Just quite frankly, the brevity of it. And you know, I always sort of thought that, oh heck. You know, I never had a bunch of money in savings and I knew I'd never be able to retire, but I liked what I did and I figured I'd probably just work until I died. I just didn't realize that could be in October of 2020.

Dr. William Attaway: 8:21

Wow, you described something a minute ago. You said I didn't have a business, I had a job. I think a whole lot of entrepreneurs would resonate with that if they were honest with themselves. That's not what they intended to create. They intended to go start something different than what they left, and yet that's what they have. Do you see that a lot?

Lyn Askin: 8:44

Oh my gosh. Yes, if your business cannot run without you, you don't have a business. I mean, if your business 100% relies on you for the day-to-day operations, one it's of no value, you know. There's certainly no exit value and that's nothing that you can sell, because if you're gone, you know now, the best salesman just left the zero, left, everybody left, because you're not staying with the company. And so there's power in building a business that can live without you and you can sit in your visionary spot and do visionary things while you build operations to manage the day-to-day operations of your business.

Dr. William Attaway: 9:26

That's so true. You know I love the book Traction and Rocket Fuel and so many others in this whole line of thinking, but not everybody listening is familiar with EOS. Can you explain a little bit about what that is and why it matters so much in what you're describing as this type of goal of freedom? Sure, so.

Lyn Askin: 9:50

EOS. It stands for the Entrepreneurial Operating System, and what it is is a simple set of practical, real world tools that have been around for a hundred years, going to be around a thousand more. That will help you get more of what you want from your business. And in EOS we really focus on helping you with three things vision, traction and healthy. And by vision what I mean is I want to help you and your leadership team get a hundred percent on the same page with where we're going and how we're going to get there. By traction, I want to help you instill discipline and accountability so that no matter where you look in your company, you see people executing on that vision. And by healthy I mean I want to make you guys a more cohesive, fun-loving, functional team that likes to work together, because, let's be honest, sometimes we're not, and so that's true. You know we find that entrepreneurs, we're all kind of built the same. You know we're kind of made of the same metal here, and I think we're used to dealing with about 136 simultaneous issues and we find that to the extent that we can strengthen just six key components for your business, those 136 simultaneous issues tend to just fall into place because they're really just symptoms of a real root cause. And so we work really hard to help you strengthen sort of six key components of your business. That would be the vision component. You know where are we going, how are we going to get there?

Lyn Askin: 11:18

The people component that's pretty simple. You can't achieve a great vision without great people. The data component this is about running your business on real facts and figures and numbers and not the sort of subjective emotions that often drive entrepreneurial decision making. And then when your vision component's clear, your people component's clear and your data component's clear, well, your business becomes a little more transparent. And then all of those obstacles and challenges and those things just start to shake out.

Lyn Askin: 11:46

And so then we move to the issues component. We make you really good at solving those issues as they arise, digging down deep into them and make sure that we're solving them at the root so they go away forever. Then we move over to the process component. This is really about taking your handful of core processes and make sure that anybody that touches one of those does it the right way and the best way every time. And then we move to the traction component, and this is about bringing our vision down to the ground and actually executing on it with discipline and accountability. In our model it's a circle and the vision's at the top and traction's at the bottom. It's no coincidence, because if you can't bring your vision down to the ground and execute on it with discipline and accountability, we say vision without traction is hallucination.

Dr. William Attaway: 12:35

That's so good.

Lyn Askin: 12:42

So those are the six key components of eos and we, we work to help you strengthen each of those in your business to about 80 or better. You know, helping you better. You know, have a better business, build a better business, make more money and, quite frankly, live a better life so many pieces of this system that I just love and resonate with.

Dr. William Attaway: 12:58

One of the things that I often talk with leaders about is the importance of database decision-making, because when I make decisions out of emotion, most often I regret those decisions later. Those are not usually my best and most shining moments. Do you get pushback on that, this idea of really diving into the data and leveraging it for decisions? You ever get people say well, what about my gut? I just have a gut feel.

Lyn Askin: 13:27

Yeah, I think most of the pushback we get from the data component is that it is a way to hold people accountable. So when we create, you know, our scorecard or our metrics, we're sort of like we're looking at our sales department and we say, hey, are we, are we? What metrics do we have to track to know? Are we having a good week in sales or bad weekend sales? What metrics are we going to track in our marketing department to say, hey, are we having a good week in marketing or a bad week in marketing? And we do get some pushback to that on occasion. But the truth is, accountable people love systems that'll help them become better. So we find that if you've got the right people in the right seats and they get it and they want it and they have capacity to do the job. Accountable people love scorecard again, metrics.

Dr. William Attaway: 14:11

And that goes to the second one right People. The right people in the right seats, like Jim Collins would say. Is that something that you walk into and sometimes realize, oh my goodness, we don't have the right people here in the right seats.

Lyn Askin: 14:24

Yeah, I think that's a realization that a lot of our leadership teams face. Um, I think one of the first things we do there cause you know, you do have to have the right people in my seat so that you're right that does come from Jim Collins. I'll I'll try and quantify it just a little bit better and make it a little more clear for the people that are listening is that we look at that as two separate things. We have right people. These are people that fit our core values. There are people who like to be around. These are people that we love to have in the office. And then we have right seats. These are people who are good at their jobs. These are people with God-given talent and skills and ambition and desire, and and and. When we can combine those things, you can create a really powerful team.

Lyn Askin: 15:03

Now you could have some issues there. You could have a right person but not in the right seat. You know they could. They could be somebody that you really love, but they're just not in the right role. And and maybe, if we're lucky that we got some other roles that we could move them in so they can be more consistently excellent in their job. Sometimes we have a wrong person in the right seat. This is that sales guy that you know about. That's just kind of everybody. He rubs everybody the wrong way just a little bit, but he's hitting his numbers, but he's chipping away at you in ways that you can't even see.

Lyn Askin: 15:33

He's eating away at your culture day after day after day and that's a huge problem. We got to make sure that we probably got to make a change there and so right people, right seats is really important, and there's a huge bunch of culture and leadership inside of EOS that you know. We got to help you build a great team when I first read Rocket Fuel and learned the terminology around, around visionaries and integrators.

Dr. William Attaway: 16:00

it was one of those moments where I was like how has nobody ever taught me this Like? This is so brilliant, it's so clear. Once you see it, you can never unsee it. When you walk into an organization of business, do you see that type of light bulb go off when you talk about this?

Lyn Askin: 16:20

Yeah, when we, when we, when we map out your accountability chart and we start to build the structure of what your company needs to look like, you know six to 12 months down the road, and then we map out all the roles and responsibilities of each one of those seats and then we put the visionary integrator spots on there and we map those out and then we start putting people's names in the boxes and you know your visionary sitting at four or five seats and you know, I think what's really powerful about that is seeing when we map that out, you actually see the pain that you feel on a regular basis, and so you get to visualize oh my gosh, I'm not just the the visionary here that you know, ceo or whatever you want to call it. Gosh, I'm also the head sales guy and I'm also running the marketing department. I'm also down in operations every now and then, of course, I'm running finance and HR because I'm the one doing the hiring and and you don't get to see that pain until it's like it's, it's really really clear in front of you. And when we do that now you can go.

Lyn Askin: 17:24

Okay, now I see why I'm stressed, now I see why I don't have enough time in the day. What are we going to do about that? And so then we start to go okay, which of these seats are you willing to give up? Which can we hire? Which can we train? Which can we get somebody to step into and really relinquish control and let somebody do the job you know? Open the, open up that seat, give them the skills and the training they need and then let them work. So yeah, I think, um, it's really powerful to to kind of see and feel that. And then we do that with with the accountability chart.

Dr. William Attaway: 17:57

Do you ever see reticence on the part of the founder of the visionary to let go or the visionary to let go.

Lyn Askin: 18:04

Oh gosh, yes, that is really difficult One. You've got to make sure that you've got somebody that you can let go to. We certainly have to make sure that you have the right person in the right seat and that they get it and they want it and they have capacity, because if you don't, well then you certainly can't delegate to them. You've got to handle that people problem first. But one of the things we like to say in EOS it's kind of funny is man, if they can't swim, don't throw them a rock. That's good. You got to make sure that you got the people problem solved first and then you can train and delegate.

Lyn Askin: 18:43

And a lot of times you know people ask me and they're like hey, lynn, how do I hold my people accountable? I'm like, well, you can't unless you have clear expectations and you've built all those things out. And so we think of accountability in EOS. We call it leadership management accountability. But that's a math formula. That is not an acronym. It is leadership plus management equals accountability. And so when you're not getting accountability from your team, we're going to make you look in the mirror and we're going to make you a better leader and a better manager, because that is a byproduct of leadership and management.

Dr. William Attaway: 20:50

And that's not always the easiest thing to see when you look in the mirror, because sometimes something's lacking look in the mirror because sometimes something's lacking.

Lyn Askin: 21:02

Well, um, there was a uh, I think it's august turk and he basically was a contemporary of einstein. Um, oh no, kurt godel. Kurt godel, contemporary of einstein, he was a mathematician, philosopher. He said that you, you know, he sort of proved scientifically that you cannot be a part of a system and at the same time, understand that system. Now I say that a little more country. I like to say that you can't see the picture when you're standing in the frame.

Dr. William Attaway: 21:22

That's the way I say it, too Right.

Lyn Askin: 21:24

That's. That's that's where you know, that's where having a professional outside third party voice EOS professional come in and can help you. You know, I'll see things that you can't see because you are standing in the frame. That's so good.

Dr. William Attaway: 21:38

I've watched so many people who could benefit from what you do and have watched them flounder and I imagine you have too Like what is the first step toward engaging an implementer? Is there a minimum size for the company? Is there a minimum size for the team? What does that look like?

Lyn Askin: 22:01

Well, we certainly in EOS. We have a target market and we believe that EOS works best for companies of 10 or more employees, more between 10 and 250. But, in addition to that, their owners and leaders have to be open-minded, they have to be willing to to to grow, they have to willing to be honest with those around them, Uh, and they have to be more afraid of the status quo than they are of real growth and change, because this is a fundamental change in the way you do your business. And so, um, from a size perspective, uh, you can certainly implement EOS as a. You could self-implement you by the book traction, you could do all of the materials and everything's free online and you can certainly self-implement. Obviously, to work with a professional implementer, there is obviously a fee involved and, and you know, there's a certain revenue. That would have to make sense, and I don't know what that number is for you because I don't know what your you know potential available cash is for that. But you can certainly self-implement. But if you were interested in implementing with a professional implementer, which I highly encourage, there are about 800 of us in the world and we're all really good at this. We really pour a lot of ourselves into mastery of this system. No one implementer is better than the other. I want you to get the right implementer for you. If that's me, fantastic. If it's not, I would introduce you to somebody else that I think would be a great fit for you.

Lyn Askin: 23:25

But the engagement starts with what we call a 90-minute meeting. That 90-minute meeting is free, there's no charge for that. We get together on a call me, you, your leadership team, and I learn about you and you learn about me. And then I show you up, I open up the fire hose and I show you all the EOS tools. I show you the six key components and the two tools or disciplines we use in each one of those to help you get more of what you want from your business. At the end of that, we have a little discussion. Then I show you what it would look like and I show you our proven process on basically the process, on what we walk through every one of our clients with and how we actually help you implement this system.

Lyn Askin: 24:06

At that point you decide is this one, am I right for you, or is EOS right for you? Is this the right time? Are we ready to make this commitment? And then, of course, is the implementer that I'm meeting with right now the right fit for us, is happy to introduce you to, to, to someone that that would be a good fit if I'm not, and so on and so forth, but starts with a 90 minute meeting. If you like what happens in that meeting and you want to move forward, um, we schedule a full session day together. It's it's eight hour day. We call it focus day and we get together and we start building out your accountability chart, your first set of rocks for scorecard, and we teach the level 10 meeting pulse. Again, you love what happens there. Then we schedule your next two sessions out. Every day is a full session day. It's a full eight hours with me and your leadership team and we build out this system.

Lyn Askin: 24:54

What's your favorite part of what you do? And I love seeing a little bit of healthy skepticism in the beginning. I love seeing some of those team members going, ah man, I don't know if we need this. And then, just even in that first day, at the end, when everybody really buys in and realizes that one, I love them and I care about them, and then I'm really there to help them man really get ahold of their business and and to see that happen over and, over and over again and the impact that we're actually having on clients is absolutely my favorite thing.

Lyn Askin: 25:27

This is the best thing I've ever done. You serve with such heart.

Dr. William Attaway: 25:29

It just, it just bleeds through in everything that you're saying and I know the listeners are picking up on this. Thanks, I appreciate that. Um, it just bleeds through in everything that you're saying and I know the listeners are picking up on this.

Lyn Askin: 25:39

Thanks, I appreciate that. Um, it's I love what I do. I, I, I do what I love with people that I love. Um, I'm having a major impact on their on their lives and on their businesses. I'm being appropriately compensated and I have time for their interests. So I really truly live in the EOS life. That's so awesome.

Dr. William Attaway: 26:01

So you have dealt with leadership in a lot of different contexts in your life and, as you have grown, as you have developed, you're a different leader today than you were five years ago, to be sure, and five years from now, your business is going to need you to lead at a higher level still. How do you stay on top of your game? How do you level up with the skills, the new leadership skills that your team and your business and your clients are going to need you to have?

Lyn Askin: 26:34

I think the first thing that comes to mind there, william, is to be humbly confident, and I think that's one of our core values in EOS, and I am really, really confident in my ability to help you. But I'm humble enough to know that I don't know everything and I believe that life is a never-ending journey of self-improvement. And so I read. You know, if I were to zoom out, I've got a shelf, kind of like you, behind me. I've read every one of those books and I love knowledge. I love taking additional courses. I've really poured myself into EOS Mastery, taken some advanced facilitation courses, conflict management courses. You know, become recently become a certified exit planner, because I really want my, my clients, to be able to quantify the results of what we do. So I just keep leveling up through through conferences, through books, through paid sessions. I just I never stop learning.

Dr. William Attaway: 27:38

And I think that posture, that mindset, is why you are the success, that you are the most successful people that I've talked to, never stop learning and as you have continued to learn and grow and develop, I'm curious is there a book among all that you've read, is there a book that stands out, one that's made a big difference in your journey, so far that you would recommend?

Lyn Askin: 28:07

Wow, there are a lot, um, but, as you asked that question, the one that that really jumps out at me, um, is the alter ego effect. Uh, it's uh Todd Herman, and what's interesting about that book is I think I've spent a lot of my life, um, with imposter syndrome, you know, um, I believe that I, you know, I'm pretty smart guy and I know a lot of things, but I guess there was always this, this feeling in the back of my mind that I didn't know enough and that I wasn't good enough and that I didn't man, someday that my clients are going to find out that I'm not that good at this, or whatever. It is Right, and I think that was just something I carried with me forever, um, and I had that, uh, I had that when I was a simple blackjack dealer in Las Vegas, and I had it when I, when I, when I ran a a million dollar plus agency, um, because I just never felt like I was good enough. Um, I don't have that feeling in EOS, but but the, the, the book is really about realizing that you, you can create sort of an alter ego and you got to figure out. Like you know, you and I speak on a lot of stages and I think the nerves that that we get right before we step up there are real.

Lyn Askin: 29:19

Um, but I but I also have to switch into the Lynn that that is confident and strong and who can jump up on that stage and do this thing, and that doesn't have to be me. That could be this alter ego I've created and I and I sort of switched to that person. When I get up there and I'm like, okay, I gotta be, I gotta be stage Lynn today, and I and I go and do that, and then I get off and I can just be me again and I can feel like I don't know, it's a really interesting concept. Um, you know, you think about a major league batter. If you're up there and you're facing I don't know, randy Johnson and he's throwing a hundred mile heaters at your head, like if you're not in peak mental state, right then when you're up there to bat, you're going to, you're going to fail, and so I think there's a way to. I don't know.

Lyn Askin: 30:01

I think we, I think we all sort of ego shift a little bit. Like you know, you come home from the office, you pull into the garage, you're like man, I've got to be a great dad and a great husband now and I got to shift to that guy. You know I can't be that same, that same leader that I was at my office. I got to be a different leader at home, different leader at home, and you can be intentional about what that means. And you can be intentional about what does it mean to be dad-Lin and what does it mean to be stage-Lin, what does it mean to be US implementer-Lin, and you can map that out and I've done that quite a bit. And that book was really powerful for me because it gave me permission to not be everything to everyone all the time. That's powerful.

Dr. William Attaway: 30:42

One of the things I said earlier is that you are the head coach and success strategist for a seven-figure agency. So I want to ask you this what does success look like for Lynn? Ooh, wow.

Lyn Askin: 30:56

Now we're digging in here. We might struggle with this. Obviously, I want to be able to take care of my family, but I'll tell you what success has looked like for me over the last 22 years. Um, my son turned 22 this week and so I've been a good dad. Um, even running a business. That that I that I felt like I worked in 16 hours a day, seven days a week.

Lyn Askin: 31:20

Uh, never missed a spelling bee, never missed a karate class, never missed a piano recital in 16 hours a day, seven days a week, never missed a spelling bee, never missed a karate class, never missed a piano recital, never missed a birthday, never missed an event of any kind, shape or form. And when my son was eight or nine and he's winning the district math Olympics and he looks out into the crowd of a sea of moms, he saw me and I was there every single time. Out of a sea of moms, he saw me and I was there every single time. And, and so success to me, william, is, is if my adult children want to hang out with me. That's success to me.

Dr. William Attaway: 31:54

No, um, that's, that's everything to me that's so good and so inspiring as, as my kids begin to approach adulthood I've got a 20 year old and a 17 year old and that's inspiring for me as a dad, you know, because what a what an amazing thing when, when they don't have to come home and they don't have to spend time with you and they still want to.

Lyn Askin: 32:17

That's that's success for me and and for my wife and my family. That's that's it, and so far, so good. He's 22. He's got a great job. He still lives here with us and he's saving money and stacking up the funds and doing really, really well, and we've been doing things like going to trivia nights and just hanging out and we have a great time together. I love that.

Dr. William Attaway: 32:42

Lynn, so often people walk away from an episode like this with one big takeaway, one big idea. If you could define what you want people to walk away from this conversation with, what would you like them to walk away with the business?

Lyn Askin: 32:53

that you have today is not the business that you necessarily will have tomorrow. You can live a better life. You can build a better business. You can buy back some of your time. You can uh, there are systems and tools out there that will help you get a grip on your business.

Intro/Outro: 33:10

Uh.

Lyn Askin: 33:10

I, you know, I think we talked about this before, but now we all had this vision like, oh, I'm going to have this business and I'm going to have this free time and I'll have my weekends off and I'm not going to have this stress and I'm going to have this financial freedom. And I want you to know that, if that's not you right now and you're, you don't have those things. It is possible and it's doable and it's and it's really just simple, practical tools and a and a framework that you can put in place. I'd like to tell you that you can run your business on guesswork, you can run your business on hard work or you can run your business on a framework, and there's plenty of frameworks out there, but I really, really believe in EOS and I believe it's the answer to a lot of your prayers.

Dr. William Attaway: 33:54

I just had to write that down, guesswork, hard work or a framework. I love the intentionality. Lynn, I could talk to you for another hour. There's so much here, so much wisdom, and I'm so grateful for your generosity and sharing so open-handedly from what you've learned so far. I know our listeners are going to want to stay connected to you and continue to learn more from you and about what you do. What is the best way for them to do that?

Lyn Askin: 34:23

I am super easy to find, so I've got a really uncommon name. I think I'm probably the only Lynn Eskin on the planet. So if you were to type Lynn Eskin into your favorite search bar somewhere, you'll probably fall upon my LinkedIn, my Facebook, my Twitter, anything like that. You could go to lynneskincom and send a message, and I'm sure we can put some links in the show notes and things like that if someone is interested in having a quick chat. But I'd love to connect with any of you. I'm a giver. My core values are. One of them is help first, and so I certainly want to help you in any way that I can. And so, yeah, I think that's you know, lynnaskincom, or find me on the socials. That's pretty easy, lynn. Thank you so much my pleasure.

Dr. William Attaway: 35:10

Thanks for joining me for this episode today. As we wrap up, I'd love for you to do two things. First, subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode, and if you find value here, I'd love it if you would rate it and review it. That really does make a difference in helping other people to discover this podcast. Second, if you don't have a copy of my newest book, catalytic Leadership, I'd love to put a copy in your hands. If you go to catalyticleadershipbookcom, you can get a copy for free. Just pay the shipping so I can get it to you and we'll get one right out.

Dr. William Attaway: 35:46

My goal is to put this into the hands of as many leaders as possible. This book captures principles that I've learned in 20 plus years of coaching leaders in the entrepreneurial space, in business, government, nonprofits, education and the local church, in business, government, nonprofits, education and the local church. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn to keep up with what I'm currently learning and thinking about. If you're ready to take a next step with a coach to help you intentionally grow and thrive as a leader, I'd be honored to help you. Just go to catalyticleadershipnet to book a call with me. Stay tuned for our next episode next week. Until then, as always, leaders choose to be catalytic.

Intro/Outro: 36:36

Thanks for listening to Catalytic Leadership with Dr William Attaway. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss the next episode. Want more? Go to catalyticleadershipnet.