Impact Moments – Details, episodes & analysis

Mark Abbott is the founder and CEO of Ninety, the platform powering this podcast. He was EOS Implementer number 33 back when there were only a handful of coaches in the community. He has spent decades obsessing over vision, culture, and what it takes to build companies that last. So when he looked around his own company last year and realized the culture had drifted, it hit hard.

In this episode, Mark opens up about one of the most difficult years in Ninety’s history. The company had grown fast, maybe too fast. Leaders were over-indexing on taking care of their teams instead of doing what was right for the company. People were quietly sitting on work they did not need to do and not escalating it. And when it came time to make hard decisions, the first attempt did not go the way Mark would have done it. He let it happen anyway. And he has regretted it ever since.

We dig into:

• How Mark discovered EOS in 2010 and became implementer number 33
• Why vision and culture are the foundation of everything else
• The two co-founders in Naples who were ready to break up until one conversation changed everything
• Leadership changes on the ones and threes, and why good people still end up in the wrong seats
• The three levels that matter for senior leadership: ego development, time span capacity, and levels of thinking
• What “succeed or escalate” means and why it became a mantra at Ninety
• The difference between the first reduction in force and the second, and why founder mode matters
• His three biggest mistakes: the first RIF, the Paddle/Stripe decision, and the new commercial model

Mark also shares the moment he told Christine, vulnerably, that he was not happy with the culture of his own company. For someone who has built his career around helping others get culture right, that admission carries weight.
If you are a founder wondering whether you have let things drift too far, or a leader trying to figure out when to step back in and when to let go, this one is for you.

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Kevin von Keyserling built a consulting company called Certified Security Solutions and transformed it into Keyfactor, a multi-billion dollar cybersecurity unicorn. Then he walked away from his operating role, got recruited by a local VC firm, and decided to do it all over again with a healthcare supply chain startup called ReadySet Surgical. But this time, things did not go as planned. In this conversation with Christine Watts and Kris Snyder, Kevin shares the moment he sat in a quarterly review and said what no one else on his leadership team would say out loud: "It's an F." Every metric missed. Every objective failed. Some things were outside their control, but most of it was not. What followed was a comprehensive reset. Three direct reports left. A board member walked. But 18 months later, the company is growing over 50% year over year with a sustainable go-to-market and the right people in the right seats.

Key topics:

• Transforming two different companies from consulting to SaaS, and the culture shift each time
• The first F quarter: owning collective failure instead of blaming sales
• Moving from tribal knowledge to systemic knowledge using EOS and Ninety throughout the entire company
• Skipping validation and burning cash on a go-to-market that was not ready
• Balancing empathy and results: lessons from the Elon Musk biography

About Kevin von Keyserling:
Kevin is the CEO of ReadySet Surgical, a supply chain management software company connecting hospitals with medical equipment manufacturers. Previously, he built Keyfactor into a multi-billion dollar cybersecurity company.
Connect with Kevin: kevin@readysetsurgical.com

Mentioned in this episode:

• Keyfactor (formerly Certified Security Solutions)
• ReadySet Surgical
• Elon Musk biography by Walter Isaacson
• North Coast Ventures

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Connect with Kris: LinkedIn
Connect with Christine: LinkedIn
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Impact Moments is produced by ninety. Learn more at ninety.io.

🔗 Check out our episodes on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@90xEOS

🔗 Learn more about Ninety: https://www.ninety.io 

Mike Minard bootstrapped Delta Media Group into a SaaS company serving 40,000 active users in residential real estate. After two decades of building it, he stepped away. Not because the business was struggling, but because he was burnt out. What followed was a two-year stretch where the company more than doubled in revenue, but lost its way on product, support, and culture. When Mike sat in a quarterly meeting and heard excuses instead of answers, he knew he had to come back in and blow it up. In this conversation with Christine Watts and Kris Snyder, Mike talks about what it looked like to fire an entire support department for core value violations, halt sales to fix internal operations, and rebuild the company he had spent 20 years creating. He also shares why he believes AI adoption has to come from the top, and why the developers on X are more useful than the company press releases.

Key topics:

• Stepping away from a bootstrapped SaaS company after 20 years, and the cost of not watching the metrics
• Firing an entire department for core value violations, and what the leadership team did next
• The difference between chasing revenue and protecting product in a SaaS business
• Why AI adoption has to be led from the top, and how one developer realized he didn't actually know AI
• Daily standups over weekly meetings when the business moves fast enough that 24 hours feels like a week

About Mike Minard:
Mike is the CEO and founder of Delta Media Group, a SaaS platform serving 40,000 active users in residential real estate with CRM, digital marketing, and website solutions.
Connect with Mike: X/Twitter

Mentioned in this episode:

• Vistage
• EOS / Entrepreneurial Operating System
• The Federalist Papers
• People Architects and "The Gift of Being Fired" by Meg (upcoming book)

Connect & Subscribe:
Subscribe to the 90xEOS newsletter: ninety.io/impact-moments
Read the 90xEOS blog: ninety.io/eos/blog
Connect with Kris: LinkedIn
Connect with Christine: LinkedIn
Try Ninety free: bit.ly/3Q99NXr

Impact Moments is produced by ninety. Learn more at ninety.io.

🔗 Check out our episodes on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@90xEOS

🔗 Learn more about Ninety: https://www.ninety.io 

Kevin Woeste left a career in financial trading to buy into his wife's family business, a third-generation land surveying company in Ohio called McSteen. He spent the first four and a half years trying to do everything himself: field work, drafting, managing. He hated it. He and his wife Molly set a five-year deadline, and with six months left, they were ready to walk away. The unlock was realizing Kevin was in the wrong seat. Once he moved into a visionary role, everything changed. In this conversation with Christine Watts and Kris Snyder, Kevin talks about what it took to stop doing the work and start giving it away: handing rocks to his leadership team, watching them execute at a level he never could, and learning to be okay when they do it differently than he would. He also shares the story of firing a top performer who didn't fit the culture, the whiteboard session that created an entirely new revenue model, and why he believes you can't lead well if you don't sleep well.

Key topics:

• Why Kevin nearly walked away from a 55-year family business, and how finding the right seat saved it
• Giving your team the power to fail, and why that is where they grow as leaders
• The "brilliant jerk": when your most productive person is your biggest cultural problem
• How one EOS session turned a whiteboard sketch into a new revenue stream (Preferred Partnership Program)
• Sleep, deep work, and showing up as the best version of yourself every day

About Kevin Woeste:
Kevin is the CEO of McSteen Land Surveyors, a third-generation family business covering all 88 counties in Ohio. He is also the CTO and co-founder of 1MC Solutions, a software company for surveyors.
Connect with Kevin: LinkedIn

Mentioned in this episode:

• Edward Lowe Foundation and the Burton D. Morgan Foundation
• Scalarator program
• Colby assessment (Kevin is a 7373)
• Dan Sullivan and Unique Ability
• Deep Work by Cal Newport
• Atomic Habits by James Clear
• Scaling Up by Verne Harnish

Connect & Subscribe:
Subscribe to the 90xEOS newsletter: ninety.io/impact-moments
Read the 90xEOS blog: ninety.io/eos/blog
Connect with Kris: LinkedIn
Connect with Christine: LinkedIn
Try Ninety free: bit.ly/3Q99NXr

Impact Moments is produced by ninety. Learn more at ninety.io.

🔗 Check out our episodes on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@90xEOS

🔗 Learn more about Ninety: https://www.ninety.io 

Welcome to Impact Moments Powered by Ninety. Hosts Kris Snyder and Christine Watts kick off this new series by sharing why, after 8 years working together and helping 17,000+ companies run on EOS, they're finally putting these stories out into the world.

This podcast is about the breakthrough moments: the aha's that land hard, the light bulbs that change everything, and the ripple effects that follow. We'll sit down with entrepreneurs, integrators, EOS Implementers, and partners who've been in the trenches. Because the struggle is real, but you don't have to go through it alone.

Subscribe to join the journey. More guests, more stories, more impact. Coming soon.

🔗 Check out our episodes on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@90xEOS

🔗 Learn more about Ninety: https://www.ninety.io 

T.J. Gliha and his partners acquired a wealth management firm that served professional golfers and grew it from $250 million in assets under management to over $1.4 billion in four years, going from 4 employees to 26. But the moment that changed everything for Journey Wealth was not a number. It was a client sitting across from T.J., freshly off his third private equity exit, with more money than he would ever need, who was miserable. His health was failing, his relationships were broken, and T.J. realized that managing a balance sheet was not enough. That conversation led Journey Wealth to build an entire wellness offering alongside their financial services: executive life coaching, precision healthcare, family counseling, nutrition, and fitness. In this episode, T.J. talks about the comedy of trying to self-implement EOS, why being too nice to your partners will hold the business back, and how he learned to fire clients who were not the right fit. He also shares why he believes employees are the number one asset, not the clients.

Key topics:

• The client conversation that turned a financial firm into a wellness company
• Self-implementing EOS as a comedy show, and what changed when they got serious
• Being too nice to each other: why uncomfortable conversations are the unlock
• Firing a client who was a friend, and why it made the relationship stronger
• "No entrepreneur goes undefeated": building resilience into the culture

About T.J. Gliha:
T.J. is the president and CEO of Journey Wealth, an independent RIA and full-service wealth planning firm in Cleveland, Ohio.
Website: journey-wealth.com
903 Collective: 903collective.com

Connect & Subscribe:
Subscribe to the 90xEOS newsletter: ninety.io/impact-moments
Read the 90xEOS blog: ninety.io/eos/blog
Connect with Kris: LinkedIn
Connect with Christine: LinkedIn
Try Ninety free: bit.ly/3Q99NXr

Impact Moments is produced by ninety. Learn more at ninety.io.

🔗 Check out our episodes on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@90xEOS

🔗 Learn more about Ninety: https://www.ninety.io 

Jamie Munoz spent four years as a full-time integrator at a large format printing company in Phoenix, helping grow the team from 60 to 100 people on EOS. When her visionary decided to become an EOS implementer, Jamie found herself at a crossroads and started doing fractional integrator work before the term even existed. That led her to founding Catalyst Integrators, a firm that matches experienced integrators with visionaries who need them. In this conversation with Christine Watts and Kris Snyder, Jamie talks about the moment she realized she had become a visionary sitting in both seats, the tension between structure and emotion in EOS meetings, and the termination story she still carries with her: the day she walked into a meeting trusting that the coaching had been done, only to discover it hadn't.

Key topics:

• How fractional integrator work was born before anyone had a name for it
• The tension between EOS implementers and fractional integrators, and why there is room for both
• Transitioning from integrator to visionary and learning a completely different skill set
• Why things happen for you, not to you: bringing the human element back into structured meetings
• The termination that went wrong and what it taught her about due diligence

About Jamie Munoz:
Jamie is the founder of Catalyst Integrators, a fractional integrator firm that matches experienced integrators with visionaries running on EOS. Before founding Catalyst, she spent four years as a full-time integrator at AZPro in Phoenix, where she helped grow the company from 60 to 100 team members. She is also part of the Visionary Forum community.
Connect with Jamie: LinkedIn
Learn more about Catalyst Integrators: catalystintegrators.com

Mentioned in this episode:

• Stutz (Netflix documentary on Phil Stutz)
• Positive Intelligence (mental toughness training)
• Rocket Fuel by Gino Wickman and Mark C. Winters

Connect & Subscribe:
Subscribe to the 90xEOS newsletter: ninety.io/impact-moments
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Connect with Kris: LinkedIn
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Impact Moments is produced by ninety. Learn more at ninety.io.

🔗 Check out our episodes on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@90xEOS

🔗 Learn more about Ninety: https://www.ninety.io 

Amy Morin grew a construction company from $0 to $40 million and exited it after 22 years. Then she bought and turned around a fly fishing resort in Montana, exited that one too, went to graduate school, and became an EOS implementer. By every outside measure she had done it right. And yet, she will tell you she got the most important part wrong. In this conversation with Christine Watts and Kris Snyder, Amy walks through the exit-planning concept she ran headlong past the first time around: the three legs of the stool. She had business readiness in spades. She had no plan for financial readiness or personal readiness, and that gap reshaped what came next for her family. Amy now combines EOS implementation with work as a Certified Exit Planning Advisor, helping owners build companies that are valuable to sell and lives that are ready for what comes after.

Key topics:

• The three legs of the exit-planning stool, and why business readiness alone is not enough
• Why 75% of owners regret selling their business one year later
• How identity loss shows up after an exit, especially for the founder who built the thing
• Going to market through connectors with a real reason to connect, not just an intro
• The cost of ego, and what Amy would tell her younger self

About Amy Morin:
Amy is an EOS implementer and Certified Exit Planning Advisor (CEPA). She previously built and exited a $40M construction company and ran a fly fishing resort in Montana. She also hosts the Exit Velocity podcast (formerly the Mastery Partners Podcast).
Connect with Amy: LinkedIn

Mentioned in this episode:

• Multipliers by Liz Wiseman
• Start With Why by Simon Sinek
• Exit Velocity podcast (hosted by Amy)
• Value Acceleration Methodology (Walking to Destiny by Christopher Snyder)
• Exit Planning Institute (EPI) and the CEPA designation

Connect & Subscribe:
Subscribe to the 90xEOS newsletter: ninety.io/impact-moments
Read the 90xEOS blog: ninety.io/eos/blog
Connect with Kris: LinkedIn
Connect with Christine: LinkedIn
Try Ninety free: bit.ly/3Q99NXr

Impact Moments is produced by ninety. Learn more at ninety.io.

🔗 Check out our episodes on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@90xEOS

🔗 Learn more about Ninety: https://www.ninety.io 

After 13 years as an EOS implementer and nearly 950 sessions, Jim Wardlaw picked up David Hawkins' book on the map of consciousness and found a framework that reframed everything he thought he knew about leadership teams. Hawkins places courage at the midpoint of human emotional states, calling it the line between negative and positive. Jim started seeing that line everywhere in his work: the teams that muster the courage to face hard truths consistently come out stronger, while the teams that stay below the line stay stuck in anxiety, politics, and avoidance. In this episode, Jim shares how that insight changed his approach to facilitation, tells the story of a single moment of vulnerability that transformed an entire leadership team, and explains why he believes AI is a bridge to better human thinking, not a replacement for it.

Key topics:

• How Jim met Gino Wickman before EOS existed
• David Hawkins' map of consciousness and the courage line at 200
• The three questions exercise that broke a senior executive and transformed a team overnight
• "Give me the 20% that's real": a conflict resolution technique from Hank O'Donnell
• Why AI might be a stepping stone to higher human cognition, not a threat

About Jim Wardlaw:
Jim is an EOS Expert Implementer based in Western New York with about 125 implementations and 950 sessions under his belt. He started as an ad agency owner in East Lansing, Michigan, where Gino Wickman was his first implementer. After selling the agency, he earned a master's in Creativity and Organizational Change Management from the Center for Applied Imagination at Buffalo State, the oldest organization in the world focused on creative problem-solving. He is currently writing a book called Entropy exploring the relationship between AI and human imagination. He can be reached at jim.wardlaw@eosworldwide.com or jimw@stitch.solutions.

🔗 Check out our episodes on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@90xEOS

🔗 Learn more about Ninety: https://www.ninety.io 

Jared Stein's career path reads like a choose-your-own-adventure: five CrossFit gyms in New York, a stint at the NBA, teaching spin at Flywheel, and running operations at a wellness resort. Now he is the COO and integrator at Strategy Financial Group, a wealth management firm helping retirees protect their families and their legacy. In this conversation with Christine Watts and Kris Snyder, Jared talks about what happened when he stopped keeping EOS inside the leadership team and rolled it out to every department and every person in the company. He shares the moment a nervous team rated their first meeting a 10 out of 10, how he went from thinking core values were "psychobabble BS" to seeing them completely change how teams operate, and the million-dollar gym deal with a friend that went sideways because he skipped the paperwork.

Key topics:

• Rolling EOS out beyond the leadership team to every department in the company
• The moment a nervous team gave their first structured meeting a 10 out of 10
• Going from "core values are psychobabble BS" to making every decision through them
• A million-dollar CrossFit deal that fell apart because the paperwork was skipped
• Why the integrator seat is about removing obstacles, not doing everything yourself

About Jared Stein:
Jared is the COO and integrator at Strategy Financial Group.
Connect with Jared: Instagram
Website: strategyfinancialgroup.com

Connect & Subscribe:
Subscribe to the 90xEOS newsletter: ninety.io/impact-moments
Read the 90xEOS blog: ninety.io/eos/blog
Connect with Kris: LinkedIn
Connect with Christine: LinkedIn
Try Ninety free: bit.ly/3Q99NXr

Impact Moments is produced by ninety. Learn more at ninety.io.

🔗 Check out our episodes on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@90xEOS

🔗 Learn more about Ninety: https://www.ninety.io