Neal Bell, MBA

Implementing EOS into two of my own businesses drove significant growth, and simplified operations. In 2024 I decided combine my operational experience with a deep understanding of EOS to help other business owners achieve everything they want from their businesses. For many of us, it's a little scary to think that you can have ANYTHING that you want from your business. I get it - but it's true. Sometimes the hard part is being absolutely 100% certain of what it is that you actually want. I have been going to a CrossFit gym for a long time, and I see lots of similarities between CrossFit and EOS. Both are simple, but not easy. Practicing good fundamentals over a long timespan really adds up. Ask yourself: Do people who have done CrossFit for 10+ years look and move differently than people who haven't? Of course they do - EOS can help you separate your business from the competition by consistently honoring proven tools and disciplines over time. Running on EOS delivers three primary benefits: VISION (everyone understands where you're going, and how you intend to get there), TRACTION (Every day your team is executing on your Vision, building the future version of your business while operating today's version) and HEALTHY (a culture of people who support each other, hold each other accountable, and HAVE FUN). The 182 different things that are bouncing around in your mind right now as an business owner - what if I told you that they can be sorted into six categories: Vision, People, Data, Issues, Process and Traction? What if I told you that your team is capable of contributing more than they have been - AND THEY WANT TO? You can have the business of your dreams. You can have the life of your dreams. I can help you get there, by implementing the simple tools and disciplines of EOS into your business. To get EXACTLY what you want from your business, book a call with me. I can show you a clear, compelling path forward.

White Rock Media was the start of my entrepreneurial journey. Like so many entrepreneurs, I leveraged technical skills that I had learned and decided to “be my own boss.” Who better to do this than someone who held degrees in Accounting and MBA, right? Hoo-boy…it was not as easy as I thought it would be. Fortunately I gained some early clients and was able to grow the business out of positive cash flow. But I eventually maxed out my capacity and needed to hire my first employee. I’m very fortunate to have hired some very good people over the years, but I had massive blind spots - I simply didn’t know what I didn’t know. Eventually I discovered EOS, and these blind spots were revealed - and addressed. Implementing EOS into my business allowed me to clarify my Vision, and tie all new initiatives and hires to it. I was able to give better feedback to my team based on our shared Core Values, rather than constantly shifting performance goal posts. We were able to stay focused on our true purpose - making us able to say “no” to opportunities that fell outside of our sweet spot. And, I was able too disentangle myself from key processes. This freed me up to think more strategically. In twenty-five years of operation, the team that I assembled at White Rock Media managed more than $130 million in advertising media placements. We created lots of value for our clients, many of whom I am close with to this day. Founding White Rock Media taught me so much more about entrepreneurship than I ever could have expected. I grew as a leader, eventually learning that I didn’t need to have all the answers, so long as I had good people and the openness to ask the right questions. My years leading White Rock laid the foundation for me as an entrepreneur, a husband and as a father. I look at my adult children today, so grateful that I was able to be there for them as they grew up, while at the same time taking great care of a diverse list of clients.

The Maamos Kitchen chapter of my journey as an entrepreneur was truly amazing. It all started with a blank copy of the Vision/Traction Organizer (V/TO) - a foundational tool of EOS. I had already used EOS to simplify and strengthen my advertising business. With Maamos Kitchen, solidifying my vision by answering the eight questions in the V/TO made it easy to recruit the right people to my team - everyone knew what they were signing up for, and what their role would be. Simply put, the vision was to give consumers a different quality/convenience option when solving the Evening Meal Challenge: fully-cooked, scratch-made meals, sold chilled to customers for a quick reheat in the microwave at home. This solution offered much higher quality than the fast food drive-thru, broader menu selection, and greater flexibility for the timing of meals. I personally bootstrapped the financing of the operation, and unfortunately chose a suboptimal location. This made it hard for the business to thrive - but the role we played in our community was significant, and we loved delivering this vision of what is possible with our brick-and-mortar location. We later pivoted the concept into meal kits - using our recipe design, graphic design and consumer marketing experience to help grocers to produce meal kits under the Maamos Kitchen brand using vegetables prepped in their deli department, along with proteins and packaged goods right from their store shelves. This was a novel answer to the competitive threat posed by mail-order meal kit companies, but ultimately proved to be too labor-intensive. Both versions of Maamos Kitchen reflected a love of food and feeding people as well as entrepreneurial creativity. I learned so much from this chapter of my entrepreneurial journey.

Zero Base was the second of two entrepreneurial businesses that I worked for before starting my first business. The three equal partners of Zero Base hired me to offer an entirely new service to their clients - media planning and buying. Their creative and production work was world-class, and their clients were beginning to ask for assistance in developing and executing paid media schedules to deliver this great messaging to their target customers. Working at Zero Base gave me a front row seat to the business of advertising, and wide latitude to shape the processes by which media schedules were created and managed - which allowed for novel ways of marrying the medium with the message in a variety of advertising campaigns. The young staff at Zero Base had immense creativity and vitality. It was where I matured as an executive and had a ton of fun. I also got to see how decisions were made (and sometimes deferred) in a small entrepreneurial enterprise. I was young and cocky enough to think I could do it on my own, and I eventually did. While I later learned that things were not as easy as the younger version of me expected, I am truly grateful for the experiences that I gained during my time at Zero Base Advertising.

RFA offered me my first job in advertising after graduating from college. My Accounting degree laid a strong foundation for doing entry-level media work, which included lots and lots of auditing radio and television invoices, to ensure that the schedules we placed with those outlets ran as intended. The Media Director to whom I reported was a great mentor with whom I still stay in touch, thirty-three years since we first met. RFA showed me the ropes and had high standards, and are still going strong - now with a 2nd generation of leadership guiding it.