In the seven years since the founding of Chute CXO, it has worked with 30 firms, helping to grow annual revenue by 44% on average for its clients.

Its core philosophies can be seen in the company’s headquarters. In the entryway to Chute in the Arts District, there is a wall displaying the Chute’s credo, what company owner Josh Holtzman calls “EOS Life.”

It is the five things that his client companies have in common, said Holtzman, a business coach.

They are people doing what they love; with people they love; feel they are making a huge impact in the community; they are being compensated appropriately; and they have time to pursue other passions in life.

“This is one of the biggest rewards you can possibly get outside of financial results. At the end of the day that is why it’s here when you walk in,” Holtzman added. “My clients see this as what they are all working towards.”

EOS stands for Entrepreneurial Operating System, a business method that Holtzman was introduced to in the mid-teens after his company, American Data Co., was acquired by Magnet 360. That was, in turn, acquired for $50 million in 2016 by Mindtree, now known as LTIMindtree, an India-based technology consulting and digital solutions company.

Starting his own company

After the Mindtree acquisition, Holtzman decided to strike out on his own.

“I’m an entrepreneur at heart and we became a 20,000-person company,” Holtzman explained. “I said yuck and it was time to move on.”

He and the other members of the leadership team at Magnet 360 had been working with a business coach who used EOS.

As he reflected on what he wanted to do next, his thoughts kept going back to that coach and the Entrepreneurial Operating System.

“So, when it was time to leave, I could think of nothing more fulfilling than to give back to other organizations and help them run great businesses and get what they want from their businesses in that new role,” said Holtzman, a licensee of the Entrepreneurial Operating System. “So that was about seven and half years ago.”

Kyle Kazan, the founder and chair of Beach Front Property Management Inc. – a Long Beach firm that does residential, retail, office, and industrial property management – said that EOS works for both companies he is involved with.

In addition to Beach Front, Kazan is also the co-founder and chief executive of Glass House Brands Inc., a Long Beach cannabis company. Both companies are Holtzman’s clients.

Kazan admitted to not being “the religious type” so leaps of faith do not come easily to him. But he certainly took one with Holtzman in 2019, the year they started working together.

“I wish I could get into a DeLorean with a flux capacitor and dial it back a few years and start (working with Holtzman) sooner. If I could do that and talk to my previous self, I would have started it five to 10 years earlier,” Kazan said. “That’s my biggest regret. I have no regrets of working with him just that I didn’t do it earlier.”

Holtzman said he met Kazan indirectly through the Entrepreneurs’ Organization, a peer group of CEOs and business owners, where the chief marketing officer of Beach Front was a member and mentioned to Holtzman that the company was having trouble scaling up.

In its first 18 years, it put 6,000 units under management. With Holtzman’s help they were able to double that number in four years.

And at Glass House, the results were the same.

Kazan credits Holtzman for helping them grow  into the largest growing house for cannabis in the world with revenues growing from $15 million to $60 million in revenue in three years.

Growing the business

How Holtzman goes about getting clients has evolved over time.

When he first started, Holtzman said he used his network of business leaders from the Entrepreneurs’ Organization to find clients. At the end of his first year in business, which was 2017, he had about six or seven.

Today, it is primarily through referrals that he gets his new business.

“Clients are getting great results from the work that we do together,” he said. “They end up sending the other CEOs or business leadership teams they are familiar with or who they also know are stuck.”

Most of his clients have one of two things happening at their business. One is that they have hit a ceiling and do not know how to get to the next level, he said.

“Or, alternatively, they are growing very rapidly, and they feel that if they don’t make some changes proactively, they are going to hit a ceiling and that is going to halt their growth,” Holtzman said.

David Kaplan is chief executive of Gin & Luck, which owns Death & Co., a chain of cocktail bars with four locations – in the Arts District in Los Angeles, New York, Denver and Washington, D.C.

In a video made from early 2022, Kaplan said that he and his leadership team were looking for a system and structure that would take the business to the next level.

“EOS was and is that solution for us and it’s been transformative,” Kaplan said.

Holtzman met Kaplan in 2018 after the business owner had read “Traction,” by Gino Wickman, the creator of EOS.

“They were looking for a Los Angeles-based coach to help their leadership team scale their business,” Holtzman said.

Kaplan said in the video, that EOS has allowed Death & Co.’s employees to have an amount of buy in at the company. An unexpected benefit is that employees feel that the leadership team has a huge amount of trust, Kaplan said.

That, in turn, has created a phenomenal amount of retention even through the pandemic, he said.

“People are devoted and committed to the company because they want to see this through with us which has been amazing,” he added. “What more can you ask for?”

Anthony Laney, founder and owner of architectural firm Laney LA Inc. in Hermosa Beach, in a video made in 2021, called Holtzman “an incredible implementer.”

“He has such an intuitive sense of what it means to scale a business and when a business hits a ceiling how to enable the leadership team to identify exactly what is causing that and to create a plan to break through that ceiling,” Laney said.

He said that Holtzman’s unique ability is knowing when to push a team to go deeper into a challenging conversation and knowing when to sit back and let the team figure it out on their own.

“As a coach and a mentor, I think there is the right balance there in letting us as the business owners co-author the vision but also being there to insert his voice when we need some guidance and some advice,” Laney said in the video.

Measuring achievements

In working with his clients – 28 out of the 30 are based in Los Angeles – they help Holtzman achieve three things that he calls vision, traction and healthy.

Vision refers to working with the leadership team to get them all on the same page for where they will go and how they will get there. Traction is from the standpoint of helping the team execute better, become more accountable to one another and make their vision a reality while healthy refers to becoming more healthy, cohesive and functional as a team.

“As goes the leadership team so goes the rest of the company,” Holtzman said.

Once a client signs up and commits to the process, they will see Holtzman about five times a year at all-day work sessions at the company offices on Traction Avenue in the Arts District.

He asks them to take two-year mental journey with him because that is how long it takes to ingrain the concepts and disciplines that he teaches into the client’s DNA.

“We don’t do long-term contracts,” he added. “If it’s not working for them, it’s not working for me. At the end of the day, if they get value they pay me, and if they don’t then they don’t (pay).”

Over the past seven years he has done about 750 full day sessions, and only once was he asked for a refund, Holtzman said.

It was a client that Holtzman admits he shouldn’t have taken on.

“It was early in my journey,” he said, “and I probably pushed them too hard into it. I learned from that experience.”