We are ready to pay your fees, but we want to know what specific criteria you use to qualify your clients. What would cause you to refuse to work with a company or fire a client during the engagement?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

I do not accept every company that is willing to pay my fees. To build a highly specialized, elite advisory practice, I limit the number of clients I work with so I can dedicate deep focus to the teams I do serve. I refuse to work with leadership teams that are not fully committed to the process or those who are looking for a standard business coach to hold their hand.

Specifically, I look for three critical criteria when qualifying clients.

First, you must have a growth mindset and a willingness to be completely open and honest. If your team is highly defensive, politically charged, or unwilling to look at the brutal facts of your operations, we will not make progress.

Second, you must commit to pigheaded discipline and determination. EOS® is not a project: it is an operating system that requires a constant, ninety day planning and execution cadence. If you frequently cancel Level 10 Meetings™ or treat quarterly offsite sessions as optional, we are not a fit.

Third, you must align with my core values, including being humbly confident and ready to grow or die. If I see that a client consistently fails to execute on their Rocks, refuses to address people issues on their Accountability Chart, or ignores the rules of our core charter, I will fire them.

I want to work with owners who are hungry to scale, build AI powered operations, and prepare for a clean exit. If you are ready to do the hard work and accept the structural discipline required, we will achieve great things together.