Ep 06 - Rip Tilden

"People Know": Rip Tilden on Protecting the Quality of Your Sessions

23 minutes | Host: Chris Beer Guest: Rip Tilden

Key takeaways

Rip Tilden has been implementing EOS® since 2009, which puts him seventeen annual seasons and nearly 900 sessions in with around 100 client teams.
He found that by the third two-day annual in a week, six session days in a row, he wasn't attentive, he was short tempered, and he lectured instead of coaching.
His fix wasn't more discipline or better prep. He changed the calendar and asked a group of clients to move their annuals to June through September.
He made the ask plainly rather than dressing it up in client benefit language: he wants to be effective for them, he doesn't want to be worn out, and a no is fine.
With one exception hardwired to its fiscal year, every client agreed. As he tells it, they shrugged and said they could do that.
He points out what Implementers forget when they worry about looking unprofessional: clients don't want to pay your fee and get you at half engagement.

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The Idea

The third client in a week.

Rip Tilden levelled off at 20 to 25 clients and stayed there for a few years. The practice worked. Then annual season arrived and it stopped working.

Two-day annuals stack fast. By the time he reached the third client of the week, six session days in a row, he was working Friday and Saturday, and he could feel the drop. His description of it is unusually honest for someone with his track record: "I wasn't attentive to what they were saying. I was short tempered, I didn't patiently reteach, I tended to lecture in an obnoxious way."

Most of us read that and reach for the wrong solution. Better sleep, tighter prep, more discipline. Rip did something less heroic and more effective: he changed the calendar.

He went to a group of clients and asked them to move their annuals to other times of the year. June, July, August, September. Not because those months are better, but because EOS® runs on a quarterly rhythm and that rhythm is not owed to anyone's fiscal year.

What makes this worth stealing is not the idea, it is the ask. Rip did not dress it up in client benefit language. He told them the truth, which happened to also be the client benefit:

"If you feel you can move yours, I would be grateful if you would, because I want to be effective for you and I don't want to be worn out. If you can't, I'm going to be seeking that from others."

He named the consequence plainly. When he gets exhausted, he stops hearing everything, he is slower to read the room, and he becomes a lecturer rather than a coach. All of which is worse for them.

With one exception, a company hardwired to its fiscal year, every client said yes. Rip's account of their reaction is almost anticlimactic: "They shrugged their shoulders and said, we can do that."

The reason it works is the thing Implementers forget when they are worried about looking unprofessional. As Rip put it, clients invited you into the room because they want you there. "They don't want to pay your fee and have you be only half engaged."

The Steal

Make the ask for the good of the client

Count your annuals falling between November and February. If more than two land in any single week, you have a scheduling problem and it will show up in the room, not in your calendar.

It’s likely too late to reverse your schedule for the 2026-2027 annual season, it’s not too late to take a Clarity Break around what it would take to build your ideal schedule. Pick the clients whose fiscal year is not genuinely tied to the calendar and make the ask at your next Quarterly. Use Rip's structure: state that you are approaching several clients, name what exhaustion actually costs them in session quality, make the request, and say plainly that a no is fine.

Then block the days off between the annuals you keep. Book them before the clients do.