Gino Wickman - Rocket Fuel: The One Essential Combination That Will Get You More of What You Want from Your Business

Rocket Fuel is a powerful model for freeing up entrepreneurial Visionaries to do what they do best. It fills a void that undermines most entrepreneurial companies. Gino and Mark provide a practical game plan for building an organization that perfectly combines vision and integration.

Dan Sullivan
President and Founder, Strategic Coach

Contrary to popular belief, it takes not one but two entrepreneurs to build a great company, and they have dramatically different roles. In this brilliant book, Gino Wickman and Mark C. Winters explain the vital importance of having both a Visionary and an Integratorand show how that relationship can provide the rocket fuel your company needs to achieve its full potential.

Bo Burlingham
Editor-at-Large, Inc. magazine, and author of Small Giants and Finish Big: How Great Entrepreneurs Exit Their Companies on Top

Copyright 2015 by Gino Wickman and Mark C. Winters

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Visionary/Integrator, V/I Duo, The Weekly Level 10 Meeting, The Issues Solving Track, LMA, The 90-Day World, The Core Questions, The Same Page Meeting are registered trademarks of Gino Wickman.

EOS and The Entrepreneurial Operating System are registered trademarks of Gino Wickman. All rights reserved.

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First e-book edition: April 2015.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Wickman, Gino.

Rocket fuel: the one essential combination that will get you more of what you want from your business / Gino Wickman, Mark C. Winters.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-941631-15-7 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-941631-16-4 (electronic) 1. Success in business. 2. Creative ability in business. 3. Small businessManagement. I. Winters, Mark C. II. Title.

HF5386.W49427 2015

658.409dc23

2014041349

Editing by Heather Butterfield

Copyediting by Stacia Seaman

Proofreading by Greg Teague, Clarissa Phillips, Brittney Martinez, and Cameron Proffitt

Text design and composition by Publishers Design and Production Services, Inc.

Cover design by Faceout Studio

Graphic design by Drew Robinson Spork Design

Printed by Lake Book Manufacturing

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Significant discounts for bulk sales are available. Please contact Glenn Yeffeth at or (214) 750-3628.

To the entrepreneur:

The 3% that creates 66% of the jobs. This book should help you create a few more.

Gino Wickman

To Dad, R.L. Winters, MD:

The hands of a healer, a heart for the Lord, and the adventurous spirit of an entrepreneur... Youve taught me so much. I marvel at the number of lives youve impactednone more than mine.

And also to my beautiful wife, Beth, and my sons, Austin, Blake, and Carson:

Everything is better when Im with you. You are my world. I love you beyond words.

Mark C. Winters

VISIONARYvisionary, noun \vi-zh-,ner-\,
First Known Use: 1702

: one who has clear ideas about what should happen or be done in the future

: one who has a powerful imagination

: one who sees visions

: one who has unusual foresight

Dreamer, Seer, Creator

INTEGRATORintegrator, noun \in-t,-gr-tr\,
First Known Use: 1876

: one who integrates

: one who harmoniously unites the major functions of a business

: one who keeps the trains running on time

: one who creates focus, accountability, and alignment

Right Hand, Number Two, Steady Force

T his book is a how-to manual for understanding and managing the relationship between a Visionary and an Integrator. It will help you crystallize the meanings of these two roles and take your company to the next level. You will learn to utilize this partnership the right way to free yourself up, maximize your potential, and achieve everything you want from your business.

This is the right book for you if:

You are an owner, founder, co-founder, or partner in a small business and you are feeling stuck, frustrated, overwhelmed, or out of control.

You want a great second-in-command to free you up to go to the next level.

You are not sure about looking for a president, general manager, or COO.

You want to maximize the existing relationship with your Integrator.

This is the right book for you if:

You have all of the characteristics of a strong second-in-command and want to put those skills to use.

You are sitting in the #2 seat in an organization and want to help take it to the next level.

You are a partner to a Visionary type, and the relationship is strained, frustrated, or just not working right.

The message in this book is based on a discovery Gino made over 20 years ago. He applied it to a family business that he co-owned and ran for more than eight years before successfully selling the company. He has personally researched, taught, and validated this concept, working hands-on with over 125 companies and applying it directly through more than 1,500 full-day sessions with owners and leadership teams. It has been further validated by a team of dedicated EOS Implementers working with thousands of companies and by business owners in more than 10,000 companies who have read and applied the concepts outlined in two other books he has written.

It is important to note that the companies we typically work with generate revenues of $2$50 million and range in size from 10 to 250 people. While this discovery also works with companies both larger and smaller than that range, this is our target market where these principles have been mainly validated.

What is the discovery Gino made? There are two distinct types of leaders in all small businesses: the Visionary and the Integrator. One sees the future, and the other makes it happen. These two roles could not be more different from each other. That is why it is magic when they work well together. Famous examples include the combination of Walt and Roy Disney at Disney, Henry Ford and James Couzens at Ford, and Ray Kroc and Fred Turner at McDonalds. While you may think of these as large companies, they were small once. We point them out since they illustrate how vital the V/I (Visionary/Integrator) combination was in their early growth.

This book is also filled with other examples of the hundreds of thousands of unheralded small companies. While the scale is different, the two roles are still vital in building a great company. Youll learn about real world V/I examples like Joel Pearlman and Rob Dube of imageOne ($15 million in revenue), Randy Pruitt and David Bitel of Detroit Radiator ($20 million), and John Pollock and Paul Boyd of Financial Gravity ($2 million).

This discovery came about as a result of three overlapping events. They occurred in rapid succession after Gino took over running his familys business. It was in dire need of a turnaround, and he had to act fast.