Liz Mershon is a Certified EOS Implementer with The Profit Recipe, a South Florida-based firm of Implementers founded by Cesar Quintero. Before becoming an implementer, Liz spent more than a decade as a founding partner of a behavioral health company, helping scale the business from a single center to a nationally operating, private-equity-backed organization through two successful exits. 

She first encountered EOS as a self-implementing operator, went through bootcamp in early 2022, and now works with clients across South Florida and beyond — including a client as far away as Iceland. She recommends Strety as her platform of choice.

Let’s start at the beginning. What were you doing before you became an Implementer?

I started my entrepreneurial journey in my 20s. In 2008 I was a founding member and partner of a behavioral health company. We started with one little center, grew very quickly to five, partnered, took on some private equity, and I was tasked with growing the company nationally. At that time I was wearing like 14 hats and trying to drink from the fire hose while putting out fires every day. 

For the first five years, I literally never took a vacation — and if I did go away, I’d hide to take calls because my family was so sick of me being a workaholic. I just felt like I couldn’t disconnect.

That’s when a friend introduced me to Traction. Honestly, I kind of laughed — by the time I picked up a book at night, I’d just fall asleep. But I got through it, connected with someone, started implementing EOS, and it was transformative. 

From day one, just looking at that Accountability Chart and seeing how many seats I was in was an eye-opener. You don’t know what you don’t know. Here I had a whole career as an entrepreneur, and I didn’t realize how much I could be doing better. I knew in some ways, but it wasn’t until I learned with EOS that I could actually see the transformation that was possible.

How did you go from operator to implementer?

After our second sale I stayed on for about a year and a half, then stepped down at the end of 2018. I took a hiatus, did some consulting, and kept using EOS tools with clients. A friend said, “Why don’t you just become an implementer? You love EOS.” Around the same time I met Cesar Quintero, Expert EOS Implementer, and he painted this picture of what the EOS Life could be for me as an implementer.

I was in my 50s. I didn’t want to go work for someone, and I didn’t really want to start something completely new again. This was the perfect balance — having my own business but not having the worry about staff and all that. I went to bootcamp in early 2022.

And honestly, it’s been the best decision. I love that I was able to transition at that point in my life. I wasn’t ready for retirement, and this was the perfect solution — doing something I loved and building a successful next phase of my career.

Had you self-implemented EOS in that first company?

Yes — and in hindsight, it was effective, but not as effective as I thought at the time. Now I work with a lot of self-implementers, and I see why it takes them so much longer to get traction. Some EOS is better than none. But it definitely would have been a lot better if we’d brought someone in.

What surprised you most when you joined the EOS implementer community?

Two things. First, the community itself. What an amazing group of abundance-minded, help-first, truly value-driven people. That’s always been important to me — I’ve never done anything in my entire life that I wasn’t aligned with in terms of my values. So finding that was a really beautiful surprise.

The second was the psychology behind EOS. I came from behavioral health and spent a decade immersed in psychology, and I knew the EOS tools — I’d used them. But I didn’t realize how deep the why went. There’s method to the madness. There’s so much thought behind the why, and that connected the dots for me in a way it never had before.

Can you say more about the psychology piece of EOS implementation? 

Sure. Take the order of the foundational sessions — everyone wonders why we start with execution at Focus Day rather than with vision. There’s a reason. You need to know what it’s going to take before you start painting a picture of the future. It’s going to take discipline. It’s going to take accountability.

Or the 30-day spacing between foundational sessions. That’s spaced learning. You’re practicing, you’re exercising a muscle. I tell clients it’s like working with a personal trainer — eventually you can do the sets on your own, but first you need someone in the gym with you. I joke that I’ve got them on training wheels and eventually I’ll take them off. They’ll be wobbly, but they’ll be a lot more confident than when they started.

The quarterly pulsing is psychology too. If you don’t reset every 90 days, you lose your way. You have to revisit your goals, ask whether you’re on the right path, decide what to pivot from the last 90. All of it is intentional.

You talk a lot about visionaries “letting go of the vine.” Why is that so hard, and how do you help them do it?

First and foremost, I validate that it’s totally normal. It is totally normal to fear letting go — because let’s face it, it’s unlikely someone is going to do it just like you. But if you have the right person in the right seat, they could be a game-changer. They might even be better than you in that area, because we can’t be all things to all people.

Then I go to the Accountability Chart. What are the things you don’t love? What’s frustrating you, keeping you in the weeds, stuff you’d want to let go of? Let’s start there — that’s probably taking more time than you even recognize. When visionaries see that chart and see themselves in so many seats, reality hits. It’s like, whoa. Okay, now we have something to work with.

You can’t bombard people and hit them over the head with it. They have to buy in. So baby steps. And it helps that I’ve been there — when I show them the chart and they see themselves everywhere, I know that feeling. There’s relatability when you’ve actually sat in that seat.

What changes in a business when a visionary actually widens the circle?

They get their time back for the thing that’s going to grow the business. Most visionaries are thought leaders — they’re great at building big relationships, bringing in the whales, having outsized impact externally. When they’re stuck doing things someone else could do just as well or better, that’s not the best use of time. The ROI on their hours drops.

I can think of a client who, when I started with her, was practically sitting in every seat — even though she had people who’d worked with her for years. She’d never elevated them to leadership. Today she has a real leadership team, and she’s focused on the things she loves: big relationships, thinking about the next thing. Her team is handling the day-to-day. It’s liberating when you feel like you’re not a prisoner to your business.

Across all the EOS tools, which ones do you find most powerful in practice?

Two come to mind, and might not be the obvious ones.

First, the People Analyzer. Such a simple tool, but so powerful — because the most challenging part of any business is the people. We tend to have conversations with people when we’re already frustrated. We go in with the wrong energy, carrying a story in our head while they carry their own. The People Analyzer is designed to foster the relationship and build trust. It’s a check-in. It’s informal. It’s not a written performance review — it’s a way to put money in the piggy bank of trust. When you use it that way, it changes everything.

The other is the 8 Cash Flow Drivers. A lot of entrepreneurs don’t have a CFO, or they have a fractional one, and typically it’s just one or two of them carrying the weight of financial decisions alone. The 8 Cash Flow Drivers is a way for everyone on the team to understand how they have impact. Every department can impact cash flow. The decisions you’re making have impact. It’s empowering — and for the visionary, it brings the team into a conversation they’ve usually been carrying alone.

How do you help build the team trust that empowers Visionaries and their leadership teams?

It happens in the Level 10 Meeting over time. The more comfortable you get being open and honest, the more trust develops. You’re exercising that muscle week after week.

In the room, part of my job as an implementer is managing the energy — making sure voices are being heard and not just the loudest one. Sometimes I can see there’s something going on with the quieter person in the room, and I’ll say, “I’d love to hear from you — what do you think?” Not to put them on the spot, but because I can tell they have something to contribute. That’s not their nature, so they need the invitation.

And healthy conflict is good — you want to challenge, you want to push. But it has to be respectful and in service of the greater good. If it’s not coming from that place, that smokes itself out, and then you usually have a right-person-right-seat conversation to have. This process reveals the players. The bad ones eventually surface, and that’s a feature, not a bug.

When you became an Implementer, you joined The Profit Recipe rather than practicing solo. Why?

I’m a collaborator — that’s just who I am. And we run on EOS ourselves. I sit on the leadership team, I have a function, we have quarterly meetings, we have our Monday L10s. We practice what we preach, constantly. I drink the Kool-Aid and then some.

The practical benefit is that my only job is to show up and be an implementer. I don’t deal with billing, calendars, back-end operations — none of it. Those are not my strengths, and I know that. If I were doing this alone, even with an executive assistant, I probably wouldn’t have trained someone as well as our team trains them for me. I get to focus 100% on my practice. That’s what I want for my visionary clients, and I get to live it myself.

We also help each other. On Monday nights we have two calls — one operational, one all mastery. We share nuggets, bring scenarios to the group, lean on each other. I’ve got two experts in my firm with over 500 sessions between them. I can call them day or night and they’ll respond. That’s an added layer beyond what the broader EOS community offers.

It’s a huge benefit to our clients to have Implementers who can focus entirely on their client work and also benefit from the expertise and insight from other Implementers.

Your firm also gives clients access to vetted partners. How does that work?

We have strategic partners who all run on EOS — fractional CFOs, fractional integrators, HR, and more. So if a client needs any of that, we can recommend someone we trust who already speaks the language. They gain traction faster because they’re not out there sourcing solutions cold. We also run local events — a strategic partner might put on a sales workshop where our clients can come for real value, not a sales pitch. For clients in South Florida especially, being able to show up in person matters.

On that note — virtual vs. in-person. You’ve adapted to virtual, but what’s your honest take?

Look, I have virtual clients and we have effective virtual sessions. We’ve all gotten used to it. But I don’t think anything will ever substitute the human connection. We’re made of energy, and you bring that into a room with you. On a screen I see your shoulders and your head — I don’t see your body language, how you’re sitting, whether your arms are crossed. There are little things you pick up in a room that you just don’t get over a screen. Can I have a great virtual session? Absolutely. Is there more power in the human connection? Yes. I’ll always believe that.

You used to track EOS with spreadsheets back when you were self-implementing. How has software changed things?

Night and day. Back then it was an Excel Scorecard and calling it good. Now having software like Strety means everything is in one place, it’s EOS-friendly, you’ve got the dashboards, the project section, AI built in. I can go in, pull a report, see how a client rated themselves, see what Issues they solved, keep tabs on where they are. It’s real-time.

Can EOS be done old-school? Of course. But the difference in efficiency and effectiveness when you have the right software is huge. No matter whether you’re self-implementing or working with an implementer, you have to track your data. You have to look at your progress. Software just makes that happen automatically instead of being a project.

What made you start recommending Strety specifically?

A few things. The presentation I originally saw with Larry — I thought, this is something. Then as I started working with clients, I kept seeing improvements in the existing clients who were on it, and I just started defaulting to it. Now any new client, I just say, “Strety,” and get them set up. It’s my platform of choice.

What’s made it easy to recommend is how you’ve reduced friction. One of the things almost every client used to ask me was, “I’m already on Microsoft Teams — I don’t want another software.” That was a real objection. The fact that Strety integrates with the tools people are already on — that’s removed a huge barrier. I had one client who resisted and resisted, and finally said, “Okay, I’ll give it a chance.” Now they’re telling me they’re glad they did.

The other thing is that the Strety team is nimble. When implementers give feedback on things that would make the platform better, Strety moves on it. That’s an advantage. A lot of implementers I’ve talked to love that about Strety — if enough of us are saying we need something, you just get it done.

What about the Projects feature specifically?

I actually discovered it through a client — their developers had a lot of work that wasn’t easily captured in Rocks, so they started putting it under Project Management. It’s been fantastic for them. Ever since, I’ve been pointing other clients to it. It’s very well received. You’ve done a great job making things easier for people overall.

How do you actually use Strety as an implementer in your day-to-day?

Pretty intentionally. I’m not in there poking around for the sake of it. Something either triggers me to want to check — a concern about how a client is tracking — or I’m preparing for a check-in and I want to go in to see how many Issues they have, how many To-Dos are sitting there week over week, how they’re tracking their Rocks. That puts me in a much better position to ask better questions and have a productive conversation. It’s the dashboard first, then I dig deeper if I need to. Pretty straightforward.

What would you tell a visionary who’s curious about EOS but hasn’t committed?

You probably already know there’s a gap between where you are and where you want to be, and you’re carrying more of it alone than you should be. EOS gives you a system for fixing that — not by adding more to your plate, but by building a team that can finally take things off it. It’s not overnight. You’ll feel wobbly for a while. But on the other side of it is a business you’re not a prisoner to, and that’s worth everything.