# Learn, Earn, Return: How to think about the long game of your EOS practice Mike Abercrombie maps an EOS Implementer's career to three phases: learn, earn, return. What to do in each, the mistakes he made, and why the best stretch is running all three at once. URL: https://www.success.co/blog/learn-earn-return-how-to-think-about-the-long-game-of-your-eos-practice Published: 2026-10-15 I picked up "Learn, Earn, Return" from someone in a peer group years before I became an Implementer. She was talking about life in general: you grow up learning, you go through your earning years, and eventually you give back to the people who helped you get there. It stuck with me because it simplified everything into three phases. And when I looked back at my own EOS® practice after nearly ten years and close to a thousand sessions, I realized the same three phases map perfectly onto this career. Here is how I think about them, the mistakes I made in each, and what I wish I had known earlier. ## Phase 1: Learn (and be patient with it) If you are a newer Implementer, you are in this phase right now, and it is all-consuming. You are learning the materials, the tools, purity, how to run sessions. But you are also learning biz dev, logistics, how to talk about what you do to people who think you are a motivational speaker or a management consultant. Nobody outside this community really gets what we do. That is part of what makes the learning phase so intense, and there is no shortcut through it. The mistake I see, and the one I made myself, is expecting a threshold. Expecting that at some point everything clicks and you have arrived. It does not work that way, there is no plateau. There is always more nuance, more discovery, more situations you have not seen before. But here is what does happen: with enough reps, the biz dev clicks. Then the sessions click, then the way you add your own value, separate from what is on the video, clicks. You just have to keep doing the work and have patience. **What to do in this phase:** - Pick up the phone, call other Implementers, almost everyone will take the call. - Show up to your MCE (Master Class Exchange) consistently. Not for the agenda or the presentations, but for the relationships. The peer group is the real value. - After every session, take five minutes to reflect. What happened? Where could I have asked a better question? - Do not compare your session count or revenue to someone who has been doing this for a decade. Their numbers are what is possible, but they are not your benchmark right now. ## Phase 2: Earn (and do not stall it) Once the learning starts to compound, you enter a stretch where you can earn well. Gino set up this business model to be healthy, and if you do the work, the revenue is there. This is where I made my biggest mistake, and it cost me real money over several years. I was not graduating clients. The standard commitment is two years at an agreed price, and then the general guidance is to raise $500 every two years. But I never felt comfortable going back to a client and saying, "It has been two years, here is the increase." So I just left it, and stayed with clients who wanted me to stay, at the original rate, for three or four years. But in those three or four years, my rate for new clients had gone up $1,000 or $2,000. Every session I spent with a legacy client at the old rate was a session I was not spending with a new client at the current rate: the math does not lie. **The two costs of not graduating:** 1. **Revenue stalls.** If you do not rotate clients, your income plateaus even while your market rate climbs. New clients come in at your current rate, and legacy clients sit at last year's rate, or the year before that. 2. **Mastery stalls.** Long-term clients eventually reach a point where you are mostly facilitating. They have a better meeting with you in the room, and they know it, but the teaching and coaching is done. You stop getting the reps that sharpen you, you stop seeing new industries, new leadership dynamics, new problems. If it has been six or nine months since your last Focus Day, you are rusty. I still play Paton's video on the drive in before a Focus Day just to get back into that foundational material. **How to know a client is ready to graduate:** I track the usual markers. They have seen all 20 tools, they have been through all the session types, they are 80% strong or better in each of the six key components. But the real signal is when you feel yourself in facilitation mode more than coaching mode. When the sessions are good but you are not stretching. Graduate them. There are plenty of businesses out there that need the help, and both your revenue and your mastery will thank you. ## Phase 3: Return (and do not wait too long) Here is the part I did not expect: once you reach the return phase, you can run all three at the same time. I got the chance to join the coaching team, and later to teach boot camps. That return work, helping newer Implementers find their footing, is also the best learning accelerant I have found. When you are coaching multiple Implementers who each have their own clients, you see a multiplier effect of situations and circumstances you would never encounter in your own practice alone. So now I am teaching boot camps (return), still running about 110 sessions a year (earn), and still finding something new in every single session (learn). The three phases are not sequential anymore, but simultaneous. And that is when this career gets really fun. **What return looks like in practice:** - Take calls from newer Implementers, do not wait to be asked. - Show up to your MCE and contribute, not just consume. Most MCEs have a mix of experienced and newer Implementers. The newer ones need exposure, and you will learn from their questions. - If you get the opportunity to coach or teach, take it. Even if you think it is too early. You will learn more from helping others than from any session you run alone. ## The community is the fuel I have been a YPO member for 25 years, and the reason YPO works is the same reason this community works. When you are running your own practice, nobody else really understands your world: the isolation is real. But walk into a room of Implementers and suddenly everyone speaks the same language. The MCEs, the QCEs, the T groups, the Monday calls, the phone conversations: these are not extracurricular. My own practice would not be what it is if it were not for this community. The people in it were the fuel, they carried me through the early years, challenged me in the middle ones, and now give me a place to put what I have learned back into circulation. If you are in your learn phase and feeling a little lost or adrift, know this: most of the time, getting back on track is one phone call away. Pick up the phone.