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Julia Folk is the Integrator at Brilliant Group, a chemical and pigment manufacturer in Richmond, California, just outside San Francisco. The 24-person company has been running on EOS since 2019, self-implemented, and moved from Bloom Growth to Strety at the end of 2025. Julia joined Brilliant Group in 2021 as an office manager, grew through nearly every department in the company, and was named its first Integrator in 2025.
You’d been on Bloom Growth for years. What made you start looking at other options?
Before I was in the Integrator Mastery forum, I hadn’t really ever thought about it, to be honest. We just used Bloom Growth, and that’s what we had used since before I’d started. Then I got into the course and people were talking about all the different ones — Ninety.io and Strety were the two main ones the other Integrators mentioned, and there were a couple others.
I asked my Visionary if there was any rhyme or reason why we were with Bloom Growth. And he said it was just the one we went with at the time, and we’d never really revisited it. So I asked if he’d be open to me exploring other platforms for a quarter, just to see what they were like. And he said sure. We weren’t even necessarily going to move — I just wanted to know more about what was out there.
What did you notice as you investigated and compared Bloom Growth and the new EOS software options you were exploring?
Immediately I realized how important it would be to have an EOS software that was officially licensed by EOS®, with all the right terminology. Bloom was EOS-branded at one point, but it wasn’t anymore. When we’d onboard new hires we’d have to say, “Okay, so it sets goals, but it’s a Rock, and we’re going to call it this, but it’s actually this.”
That whole going back and forth on the verbiage would cause unnecessary confusion for people.
I was also looking for something easier for people management. To find out if somebody did their To-Dos or their Rocks, the interface in Bloom was a little clunky. And I felt like our Scorecards weren’t really fresh, so I was excited about the opportunity to reset and have something more user-friendly and action-driving. At the time, we were separately looking at project management tools, which made Strey’s built-in Projects appealing. Finally, I was also digging into the integrations available for each option — everyone wants everything to talk to each other these days. That was a big thing for me.
What did the evaluation process look like?
I did demos with three different softwares, including Strety, based on what was easily available on their website. Strety actually did a demo on a call with me — the other ones were a click-through demo on my own.
What stood out about Strety right away was definitely the people management piece. And then you have a few functions like Projects that are a little bit outside of EOS, but it’s still one tool that we can all be using. I also felt the interface was pretty similar to Bloom as far as user friendliness, so my team wouldn’t have to learn something too incredibly new when we transferred.
At the time we were also implementing a new MRP (material requirements planning) system, and switching both systems just happened to coincide. My team had already been learning enough that month, so I needed to make sure what we were moving to wasn’t too big of a jump but still added value. The people interface, and the interface with Microsoft because we’re on Teams — having that right away got people excited about it. Not saying “Oh, it’s another new thing on my plate this month.”
How did the migration and adoption go when you moved the company over to Strety?
Our whole team was on Bloom — everyone doing Rocks, Scorecards, To-Dos — so it was the same thing in Strety, from the top all the way down. And I will tell you, adoption went really quickly, even with people already a little stressed from the MRP process.
It was two L10s, and then everyone was totally fine. We ran our Quarterly on it when we had only been on it for a week.
We just jumped in, and it was some people’s first time even clicking into Strety. And we ran a whole quarterly planning session. That’s how user friendly it was. It was so seamless that we barely noticed we had to transfer — which was one of my goals. I didn’t want it to be this huge learning curve.
Taking a step back — what did your career look like before you joined the Integrator Mastery forum?
After getting my degree in retail and consumer sciences, I started my career in retail in various store management roles, mostly at big, global brands. In 2020 I was working for Kiehl’s, but with the pandemic our store ended up closing, so I was debating whether to stay in retail or try something new. I started at Brilliant Group in 2021 as an office manager. They’d already started EOS in 2019, self-implemented with a consultant who still works with us — he’s from Dow Chemical and had had other clients do EOS.
When I was hired, before I even started, our owner just gave me all the EOS books. He said, “This stuff will prepare you for what we’re going to do. EOS is how we run our company.” I didn’t know anything about it. And pretty much right as soon as I started learning about it, I really saw myself in the Integrator role. I remember my first week there — again, I was hired as an office manager, and I’d never worked in chemical manufacturing before — being really interested in the integrator role. When I asked about it, there wasn’t anyone currently in that position, and it wasn’t something our owner had really explored yet. From my perspective, as I grew within the company and took on more responsibility, we started working on that as a potential path for me.
Getting up to speed wasn’t too difficult. Working in different retail stores, there’s always their version of how they run their company — each big brand had its own core values, its own way of running meetings — it’s own operating system, essentially. So it felt really easy to adopt EOS.
The buy-in started before I really even understood what I was buying into.
My owner had been sitting in both the Visionary and Integrator seats since he started the company by himself 18 years ago. He was happy to jump out of the Integrator role as soon as he could, but he had to make sure the right person was in place first. We danced around it for a couple of years, started talking about it seriously about two and a half years ago, and then last year in our Q3 planning session it was announced that I’d officially be in the Integrator seat, after years of working roles across departments. One of the really good things about my Visionary is that he’s not afraid if I fail, or if I don’t have the perfect answer right away. He lets me try things.
You went through the Integrator Mastery class right around then. What did it change for you?
I did it last September, and it was really important to my development. It made me understand the Integrator role even more. Even with our experience with EOS — I’d gone to an EOS conference, participated in EOS-led things — sometimes it kind of felt like you’re basically the operations manager of the company, and being the Integrator is so much more than that.
On the Rocket Fuel assessment I scored something like a 97 as an Integrator. Feeling comfortable in the attributes of an Integrator mattered, because sometimes I’d feel like I should be more a certain way and I’d be better in my role. But some of the traits I feel like I lack are actually more attuned to a Visionary. I used to think maybe I have to push myself to come up with new ideas all the time, and that never really felt natural to me.
There are a lot of people that can do that. But there are not as many people who can do the Integrator part — filtering ideas, being able to make them come alive, getting a team to row together. That’s also a skill.
My Visionary said he could tell the difference in the way I was right afterward, in my demeanor and communication style. I came out feeling a lot more confident in my strengths as an Integrator, and the types of tools I had at my disposal.
The community part matters too, because nobody else is an Integrator in your company. The clearest example for me is working through Delegate and Elevate with my cohort. When I shared that I didn’t feel like I could delegate, somebody in one of the community IDS (Identify, Discuss, Solve) sessions said, “You don’t need to make assumptions for your team. Give them the opportunity to take something from you. If you don’t want to give it right away, ask who’s ready for something more.”
Without that peer resource I wouldn’t have approached it that way. And then I did, which has been a big change for the better.
Which part of Strety has become most essential to how you run the company as the Integrator?
Being able to actually click on somebody and see their space at a glance. When I’m meeting with a team member, or on my Mondays just doing my check-ins, I can go to their page and it has all their Rocks, all their To-Dos, all their Scorecards, all of our quarterly 1:1s, any notes we’ve ever taken together, any private agendas we’ve had. It’s just so easy to have that right there.
Our HR person is fractional, she works outside our company, and even she said it’s just so smart the way it’s designed — easy to pull up, easy to work with them right away without having to go to different meetings or spaces. Once everyone learned the cadence of how you add things to spaces, it just makes sense.
Speaking of people management — how you do the quarterly conversation is one of the most divisive topics in EOS — whether you take notes at all. How do you approach it?
My team is composed of a lot of chemists and very analytical people, and they’re very absolute. There are no theoretical conversations in my company. Even before Strety, we were writing down what was happening during 1:1s, and people would ask, “Can I have a copy of your notes from that meeting?” Because that’s just how their brains work.
So I have them do the review survey ahead of time — meets, yes or no, for all the core values in the People Analyzer, and then all those drop-downs about GWC (Getting, Wanting, Having capacity) for the roles in their seat, and the leadership and management practices. Then at the end I have a list of more open-ended questions. One I love to ask people is, “What am I not asking you about? What is not getting enough attention in your role?” And I tell them, “You don’t have to write it down. Just give yourself some bullet points and we’ll talk about it verbally.”
I still feel like my 1:1s are a free space. Nothing is tied to some sort of performance review — we don’t do raises or give people a promotion after a 1:1. But my team likes the documentation.
The team has liked the process of it feeling almost like a survey versus filling out a form, and they like to look back on them.
What are you using in Strety that sits outside the core EOS tools?
We weren’t using project management software officially before Strety. Myself and our executive assistant, who’s our administrative manager, both had our own project management tricks, but nothing like an official platform. Now we’re both using Projects in Strety.
I have one for a challenger sale toolbox — all these tools for our sales team, 30-plus deliverables, and each department has different things they’d do. Managing it there is easy, because if we need a special meeting about it, we can see where everyone’s at with it. My executive assistant is doing one for an AI implementation.
These Projects are the things that are bigger than a Rock module can hold well — it’s a good place to park information, have updates, and create agendas all cohesively, rather than it just living in SharePoint.
On the Microsoft side, I’m constantly creating Issues from my email, and adding To-Dos from my email, and being able to add it to the meeting. It’s just quick and efficient. And everyone gets their Strety card in Teams. I told the team they don’t have to get it that way, you can get it by email — but people like their Strety card in their Teams chat in the mornings.
You used the AI Assistant in a quarterly planning session. How did that go?
Our quarterlies are two days for leadership, then one day for technical and one day for sales. This time we used the AI Assistant, our very first time, and we only did it for the IDS section — intentionally, because we wanted to see if it was worth it.
The summaries were so much better than the other AI tools we use to record meetings internally. It really captures tone as well as the actual information. And we’re a chemical manufacturer, so it actually got the words right — that’s sometimes part of the problem with AIs when they’re recording, it doesn’t know what you’re saying.
Then at the end it gave a summary, and everyone loved the part about who was talking the most. One was really shocking — somebody we didn’t even notice was like, “I talked for 45 minutes, and everyone else was 15.”
It really does capture what people talked about — this is how they left, this was their energy. The recap was just so much detail that we didn’t have to edit it.
Even when it would write the solution for the issue and the suggested To-Dos, it was spot on. So the team loved it. I think it’ll be part of our entire quarterly next time. It’s absolutely worth it.
Any parting thoughts on the parts of Strety you love most as an EOS Integrator?
The reports, and being able to go right to that person space. People management and LMA — Leadership, Management, Accountability — is a really big part of my Integrator world, and being able to have it be that quick, and to be seeing the same thing that they’re seeing. My team doesn’t love ambiguity, so they know this is what I’m looking at and this is why it’s important.
Seeing people mark off when they’re getting milestones done on their Rocks, and seeing when milestones aren’t being met, per person, that quickly — it’s easier to manage than any platform that I was able to see.
One of my roles as an Integrator is making sure our quarterly goals come to fruition with the whole company by the end of the quarter. Part of that is the milestones along the way, and if I don’t have easy visibility to that, I could miss something. I just did a report for my Visionary on where we’re at this quarter — these are the Rocks that are on track, these are off track, this is why, this is the plan. I pulled it all from Strety, and it took no time at all.
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