Dave Gulas:
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Beyond Fulfillment podcast. I'm your host, Dave Gulas, and this week, my guest is the president of effective performance strategies, Ryan Weiss. Welcome, Ryan.
Ryan Weiss:
Thanks for having me on, David. I appreciate it.
Dave Gulas:
Yeah, thanks so much for being here. Could you tell everyone what EPS is and how it got started?
Ryan Weiss:
Yeah, so I first started, really, as a consultancy, a consulting company. I left the corporate world about eight years ago. I had moved eight times, seven times in 17 years, to Asia and back a couple times, and left the corporate world about eight years ago and started a consulting practice. And of course, at that time, I was on airplanes every week, traveling all over the world. And then Covid hit, and I lost all of those live engagements. And so it really transformed. At the beginning of COVID we created a software platform. I've got an outsourcing team, like a BPO outsourcing team, to help clients streamline their processes, use the software to document those processes, and then where it makes sense to outsource them to be more effective and efficient.
Dave Gulas:
Okay, so Covid really forced you to pivot and create a brand new business model for your firm.
Ryan Weiss:
Yes. On a very specific day, I can remember the consulting practice was destroyed, and EPS, the system, the optic system I talk about, was formed. And it didn't all happen that one day, but that's it started the journey.
Dave Gulas:
Okay, so going back to, like, the beginning of your journey, like, your corporate career, what was that like? What led you to make the jump, ultimately to consulting?
Ryan Weiss:
Oh, great question. So really, it even started before my corporate career. I started my first company at 15 years old. So that's going back 30 plus years ago. And my youngest brother still runs that company today. He's grown it into a great organization with 100 some employees now really taken off. And so I had an entrepreneurial spirit from a very young age. That's how I paid my way through college and then went into the corporate world.
Ryan Weiss:
And I was growing and learning and doing all these things, but there was part of me that always wanted to be an entrepreneur again. And so after we lived in Philippines was the last place we lived. We moved back to New Jersey, and then I resigned and started out on this adventure of entrepreneurship.
Dave Gulas:
Okay. And so much of your present work, too, is focused on companies getting effective, streamlining their processes, documenting their processes. Like, how did, how did your corporate career shape that? Did you see so many issues that need to be resolved and a problem you could fix? Basically, yeah.
Ryan Weiss:
Great question. So it really did. My background is very technical. My degrees are in chemistry and finance. So I spent a lot of time in the corporate world, um, working in the chemical industry, global chemical industry, looking at numbers, looking at chemical formulas, looking at all these things. But, like, what I came to really clearly understand through all of those experiences is that process and technical stuff is only useful if people understand it, perceive it, and use it. And so I really started looking at the people side. And that's really where the concept of optics came from, is optics has two definitions.
Ryan Weiss:
The word optics. The first one is the study of light, the physics of light. The second one is the perceptions of people about a situation. And so it's really that intersection of creating great processes that engage people to ultimately fulfill some purpose. And that's really what gets me excited. It's not just about process, but it's about enabling people to do something more effectively and engaging people for efficiencies and improvements and making their work better.
Dave Gulas:
Yeah, yeah. And like you said, you have such a technical background, I mean, with your clients that you're training now, and everyone through the firm, like, what are some cause, you know, like you said, you have to have your processes documented and streamlined and all that. What are some majority, I guess, reasons you see so many companies don't these days?
Ryan Weiss:
Yeah, I think probably the biggest frustration is that most organizations, maybe a huge majority of organizations that I've even interacted with, not even just clients, they tend to document processes within a department. They document the process for a role or for a department or for a position. And the biggest failure in that is that most work streams, most things that actually happen, have to happen across the departments, not just within a department. So it starts out that a company maybe has these, starts out with a product or a service, and it's one or two or three people. And then before long, all of a sudden, it's big enough where it's got these departments, and each one starts sort of documenting and creating systems that work for their department. And what optics really does is helps to break down those silos, break down those work streams, and help really work more efficiently and effectively across departments. And I think that's one of the problems that I see in so many organizations, why processes are not well documented, why they're not streamlined, why they're not effective, has to do with people within groups, kind of creating their own process that works for them, but that has expectations for other departments and other people. And if it's not done well, it really is just ineffective.
Ryan Weiss:
And so people just don't follow them.
Dave Gulas:
Over time and do you think it's a bigger problem for companies not having that documented or that they have it documented but no one's following?
Ryan Weiss:
Yeah, I think a lot of organizations have some level of documentation, and sometimes it saved, like, back in the old days, it was in a binder. Now it's on a sharepoint somewhere. Whether or not people can find it, whether or not it's useful, whether or not it's so detailed and so much stuff going on that it's unusable. Those are some of the real challenges that I think organizations have. It's like most organizations I work with, we start documenting something. We start looking at a work stream and say, oh, yeah, well, we've got this template, and, oh, yeah, I remember we saved that somewhere. And they, like, go on this journey of trying to find the documentation. Well, if they can't find it, how likely is it that they're training new people with it or that it's actually being used and it's really, really low? So helping organizations get more organized, get streamlined, make those handoffs better between departments, that's really where I think we've got a real differentiator in how we're doing.
Dave Gulas:
This and kind of diving deeper into your process. So let's say a company's hearing this right now, and executives are listening, and they say, okay, makes sense, right? We need to fix this and document it, streamline it. Like, where do you typically start with a company?
Ryan Weiss:
Yeah, so typically, I like to start with a work stream that's having some problems today. So sometimes it's a sales process or a, you know, sales and operations interaction. Sometimes it's in their finance department. Sometimes it's human resource. It may start somewhere with some pain that they're experiencing today. And by documenting that, by working on their first work stream, that's really where then it starts to grow into, yeah, we could also do this, and we could also do that. And so I've had clients now that started with their first work stream, for example, in human resources, their onboarding process. And we've ultimately documented 37 different work streams within their organization of how their project managers and project engineers work together or how their human resources and finance team work together.
Ryan Weiss:
So it can really go across any departments. But starting with a place that's going to have an impact for the team is really, really critical, because if you start with some process that's not important or doesn't have problems today, people are going to very quickly start asking, why are we even doing this?
Dave Gulas:
So you think it's important to get some, like, some, some wins in a key area to establish momentum.
Ryan Weiss:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Dave Gulas:
Okay. And, like, going from like a. Before and after, like, when you implement these processes and streamline it, like the example that you're just talking about, what's the impact that, that can have on a company?
Ryan Weiss:
Yeah. So it can have a few really key impacts. We've seen. It's employees, like, their personal feelings about their job is one impact. The second one is. And I think for a lot of business owners, they, they look at it first through the lens of what's this going to do to my bottom line? I've got a client, manufacturing client here in the Chicagoland area that we started on this journey about two years ago. And the owners actually looked at me a couple of weeks ago and we were sitting in the meeting room and they said, you know, they said back when we used to get busy, people would start getting really, really stressed out. And they said over the past two years, they've doubled their revenue.
Ryan Weiss:
They've doubled the throughput in their I in their factory. And they said, if we had not done these things to streamline our processes, we would have had chaos today. Because a couple of years ago, when they got busy, it was maybe a 5% or 10% or 15% increase for a short period of time. They've literally doubled the output of their organization, and people are doing what they're supposed to be doing, and it's working. And so it's testimonials like that that really get me excited about the impact that we're having, that an organization can double their grow by two x and still be functioning really, really well because of the streamlining that happened.
Dave Gulas:
Yeah. And that's such an important point that you bring up and one that's not always easy to measure where you're talking about the stress level. Right. And we hear so much today about employee burnout and kind of that line to where, you know, people, there's more boundaries being enforced more than ever with employees. But how much of that do you think is due to maybe inefficiencies within the company that's even pushing towards that stress level and that level of burnout?
Ryan Weiss:
Oh, it can be a massive impact. So we actually have a case study with one of our clients where we looked at, at the beginning of our journey with them, there were actually employees in that organization that said, we don't want to do this, we can't do this, we are stressed out, we're overworked. And we actually got some survey data at the very beginning, and there were some employees thinking about quitting because they're like, we don't have time to document our processes. We're working round the clock just trying to hold things together. And by doing the documentation, by looking at the work streams, by streamlining these things, we saw a two x to three x improvement in the mindset of the employees. And the clarity of their role was like three times three x improvement. The work life balance was dramatically improved. The stress level was dramatically improved.
Ryan Weiss:
So by going through this and having clear lines of accountability, responsibility, understanding of expectations of the other departments, and documentation of what the actual tasks are that support the work stream, by going through that engagement in six months, there was a massive improvement in overall stress level and clarity of people's roles.
Dave Gulas:
Wow, that's powerful. All right, so going back to when you started EPS here, so what was it like in the early days when you made the jump from corporate and just growing the business and getting those initial clients? Was that a challenge?
Ryan Weiss:
That's a great question. I mean, so when I first left the corporate world, I did have a network, I did have some folks that I did some subcontracting for, that I did some work. And so really getting to a point where I could sort of the transition was softened by that, right, by having some clients lined up initially, but it also delayed the true vision and development and deployment of what I really wanted to do. So I think that that day when I was driving back from one of my last business trips, I was doing them all the time and I lost every project that I had lined up, gave me that reset that I needed. Like I was literally driving in the car for 5 hours and every project was canceled. And I kept getting these phone calls like, all right, we're not gonna be doing this anymore. We don't have visitors in our plant or whatever. It really killed what we were doing.
Ryan Weiss:
But it also gave me that reset that I needed to enable the software platform development and the outsourcing processes and all the other things, and really reinvigorated kind of that client journey that we were looking to create.
Dave Gulas:
So when that day happened, right, and you lose everything and you realize you gotta do something quick. How quick were you able to get this new platform active and creating revenue?
Ryan Weiss:
Oh, it took some time. It was not just like an overnight success, right. I think sometimes we look at things and we think, oh, that's really successful, and look how fast it, it took some time to really pull the vision together, to pull the team together. We now have a software development team. We've got project managers, we've got some accounting and finance folks and customer service folks doing the outsourcing type work. It's been a journey over the past three or four years, but we're really getting to that point now with my book coming out on August 1, with the podcast that we've got and being on podcasts like yours, talking to people and sharing what it is we're doing, it took the past few years to really get to where we are today, where it's really, really exciting. I'm starting to see the vision come together.
Dave Gulas:
Okay, and so let's talk about the book. So you've written a book, and it's called Optics, and it's launching August 1, 2024. Tell us about the book.
Ryan Weiss:
Yeah, so the book really helps folks to look at and understand more about their process and about the pain that they may be experiencing and helps people walk through that journey of why do they feel the way they feel, like, why are they having this pain in their organization? As your organization grows and these departments, those handoffs, those, those frustrations that are happening, what optics is and how it works. So helping people to be able to, they really don't need a consultant to come in and do all these things. Our software platform is very quickly going to be software as a service, so people will be able to implement this on their own and not need someone like me to come in and do all these things. Kind of gives a step by step process to enable them to self implement if they'd like to. And of course, our team is always available to support wherever it's needed, but also to enable that self, that self service type of concept.
Dave Gulas:
Okay, so you're moving to a SaaS model. You say people can sign up and implement this. What type of companies are you serving? What size?
Ryan Weiss:
Yeah, so most of our companies today, most of our clients today are in the 5 million to 70 million in revenue size. So most of our clients today are, I mean, so really what we're looking at is the ability for even smaller companies, more in the startup mode or in that really early growth mode, to be able to self implement with the book, with the SaaS platform, with those type of things. But most of our clients today, I would say, are in the 5 million to 70 million in revenue range. A lot of them are construction companies, distribution companies, rental agencies, manufacturing. So we've got a pretty broad variety of the types of companies that we serve. Typically, it's companies that have some departments, some handoffs that need to happen. And I'm often reminded of a book I saw years ago and I purchased called what got you here won't get you there. Companies that have reached a transition, a turning point of, wow, we've got these frustration.
Ryan Weiss:
We've grown so much and we don't have things streamlined and we need to take a look at that, are really at that point where this can help them to succeed.
Dave Gulas:
Okay. You also mentioned the podcast which you started about a year ago. What made you decide to start a podcast?
Ryan Weiss:
Yeah, so I was kind of resistant to it. I wasn't really sure what I was going to talk about. I wasn't. You know, people told me that for a while that I should be considering it, and I was kind of resistant to it. But what started the journey for me, what really was the trigger to lead me down that path, was the, there's all this AI generated content in marketing and there's all these things going on. And the podcast for me, really was about interviewing great people. So I appreciate being on your podcast. It's about engaging with great people, learning about what their success was, how they see people in process, what challenges they've had, how they've overcome those things to share with a broader audience.
Ryan Weiss:
So for me, I think there's two really big benefits. One is meeting amazing people and having these types of conversations. The second one, of course, is to share their wisdom and insights with an audience. And I think that those two things together, as I started really seeing that and understanding that, that's really what propelled me to get more involved in the podcasting world.
Dave Gulas:
Okay. And then you've put out 50 some episodes in the past year, so clearly been very consistent. What do you think is the biggest lesson that you've learned since you've been doing the podcast?
Ryan Weiss:
Yeah, I think a lesson I've learned the most, and it's related to the book, to the podcast, to my business journey, is it's all about learning, growing consistently, and just continuing to improve. That first podcast episode I did, I was like, I didn't really know what I was doing. I'm like, I'm going to interview somebody. Let's figure this out. And. But along the way, we've refined and streamlined our podcasting process and the way that we do it, and I've gotten more comfortable with having those conversations and asking questions. So I think it's, it's very much like going to the gym and working out. Going and doing that consistently will lead to results.
Ryan Weiss:
Writing a book. This is actually my second book. My first book. I'm not as excited about this second book I'm super excited about. I took the learnings from that first book, the first business that I started and the hiccup we had during COVID All of those things have turned into these learnings that keep us moving forward. And I think that's the biggest thing. It's consistency, quality, and just continuing to do it.
Dave Gulas:
Well said. Also recently, you received an incredible honor. You were named as one of USA Today's top ten emerging entrepreneurs. Can you tell us how that came about?
Ryan Weiss:
Yeah. So I think along the journey, there's a few things that come along. One is you've got to create a good product. You've got to create a good service. And the second thing is you've got to market it. And as a process person, as a technical person, I often operate very much in let's create an amazing product that works amazingly well. But I started realizing that in order to be an entrepreneur, I also had to get out there and be publicizing and working on and promoting the things that we're doing. And so working with PR agencies and working with organizations to help put the word out about what we were doing was uncomfortable for me.
Ryan Weiss:
But I also realized this is very important. As an entrepreneur with a vision, it's not just about creating a great product. We've got to also share that vision to the world and really promote it. And so working with PR agencies, working with folks to start putting that vision together and putting it out there has been really an exciting part of the journey. That was uncomfortable at first, but it's becoming more and more comfortable with the podcast and with recognitions like that with USA Today and things like that.
Dave Gulas:
Okay, and what was it like when you found out? Because that's, you know, there's select group on that list, and, you know, they obviously publicize that very well. What was that like?
Ryan Weiss:
Yeah, so, I think, I mean, I would say it was. It was humbling, but also exciting. Right. It's like. It's like sort of a, hey, this is like, you know, I grew up reading USA Today's all over the place in. In hotels. I don't think hotels have them as much as they used to, but back when I first, early in my career, like, every hotel I would go to had USA Today's there for. For guests to read.
Ryan Weiss:
And so that was kind of a cool thing, was like, hey, this is a publication. I mean, newspapers aren't as common as they were, but USA Today has obviously got a great online presence as well now. So.
Dave Gulas:
Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So you have the book launching here in a few weeks. What else do you have coming up that you're excited about with your business?
Ryan Weiss:
Yeah. So I think getting our software to a broader audience is really exciting as well. I mean, we've spent most of our time using it as a platform for our consultants and for our clients to use to get things streamlined, to get things documented. Being able to launch that software as a service so that people beyond just our core clients can start using it and benefiting from it is really super exciting to me.
Dave Gulas:
Okay. And if people want to get in touch, learn more about eps, the services you offer, what's the best way that they can do that?
Ryan Weiss:
Yeah, probably the best place to look is epsoptics.com. that's a landing page where you can start learning about eps and optics and what we're doing. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. Ryan C. Weiss. I put my middle initial in there. There's a number of Ryan Weiss's out there, but if you look up Ryan C. Weiss, you'll definitely find me there.
Ryan Weiss:
Or if you also put in optics or eps, you'll also find me there. So super excited to share any with your. With your audience and anybody who might want to connect.
Dave Gulas:
Okay. And we'll link all that in the show notes for everyone. All right. Well, Ryan, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today. We really appreciate that. And that's all the time we have for now. We will see you next time.
Ryan Weiss:
Thanks so much, David.