3 Facets of Unstoppable Company Culture

Caleb Agee 0:00
Make sure that your process protects your culture, right, that it looks for people who will, yes, get the job done, do the work well, but then also that that will promote these signals of good, healthy culture.

Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast. Today is Maven Monday, and I am your host. I’m subbing in for Brandon. My name is Caleb Agee, and I’m here with Megan Ellis, who’s here for your second time, right? Yes, that’s yes. So this is the place where we answer your real life marketing questions so you can eliminate waste in advertising, grow your business, and achieve the big dream, which is such an exciting thing to do, right? It’s pretty fun that we get to do this. So today we’re stepping outside of, I would say, maybe a strict marketing lane, but we’re going to talk about something that’s just a big buzzword,

and it is company culture, company culture, company culture. And I think, hold on, before you know, you turn turn off the episode. I believe this applies to every single person who’s listening. Yes, every single person can affect, and does affect company culture. So we’re gonna dig into this. And yeah, and go for it. So yeah, when I think of company culture, whenever you first asked me to be on this podcast, which, by the way, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. I’m not sure you know how this will go, but I will tell you that when you said that, I was thinking, oh God, company culture, because that’s what I think a lot of people are thinking. It’s a buzz word that everyone’s been talking about post pandemic, and everyone’s like, Oh, company culture. Company culture. In fact, I feel like a lot of business owners believe that they have, you know, a beautiful company culture, yeah. And the truth is, is that if you maybe talk to some of the employees, they might have a differing opinion on that. And so I think it’d be kind of cool to talk about, what is company culture. How do we know if it’s good or bad and and the biggest thing is that, you know today, whatever your employees were saying yesterday on Easter to their families, that’s what your company culture is. Yeah, you know, yes, that’s company culture. Let’s think about that. What think about your employees. Pick, pick two or three of them. What did they say to their mother in law about working with you yesterday? It was Easter, dinner or lunch or whatever. They came over, had some ham. What did they say? Yeah, that’s humbling, because, you know, a lot of people probably say a lot of different things, depending on where they’re at in their life and how happy they are at their workplace. Yeah. So yeah. And so that is probably if you can answer that question, or if you could somehow insert yourselves in at those dinner tables, be a fly on the wall, you would know exactly where your culture stands. But I think whether you choose to set it or not, you have this culture. You have a culture. So a lot of truth, I think some people are against maybe the word culture, like, we don’t do that, we don’t do that. We’re not into that Frou, Frou stuff, right? That sounds weird and expensive. Well, you are setting a culture that is against culture, right? That sounds expensive. Yeah.

So here’s the deal. It doesn’t have to be expensive. That’s the That’s one truth. But the other thing is, you have a culture, whether you like it or not, right? And it is happening under your nose, and it’s a felt thing. This is what a lot of people, a lot of business owners, especially, you can’t measure it, because it’s, it’s held inside of people’s hearts and heads, and it’s not something you can just walk around and say, I, I know exactly how to measure that on the spreadsheet. We put $10,000 into the company culture bucket, and we earned. Can’t do that, right? And so, but there are signals, right? There are like, little aspects and ways that you can see it. So let’s talk about some signs of company culture. Let’s start. It’s a little more fun. Let’s start with the negative side of things. What’s a negative side? An ugly culture? Company culture sound like, Ah, I can give you a couple of my ideas if you’re listening right now. Just go ahead for a moment, think to yourself your own workplace, and think, Hmm, where am I getting a negative tally mark under negative company culture? I would say, you know, to me, whenever I think of something negative, I would think about, what’s the lighting like? Is it dim or is it too bright? Is What’s it smell like in there? Is it, you know, is it stinky? Is it inviting? Is it,

Megan Ellis 4:45
you know, esthetically pleasing?

Caleb Agee 4:49
Yeah, I think about Alec. If you guys haven’t listened to the podcast from last week, he was talking about the environment they set up. It’s a retail floor, but they even, I think he was implying.

That they truncate songs so that the walk in music is always at the hype part of the song. Oh, I love it. No matter when you walk in, it’s always going to be in the good part of the song. And they only curates. They have certain smells and like, yeah, all of that. That’s cool. You can do that for your customers, but your ALEC is actually creating that for his employees as well, right? Oh yeah. And they walk in, what’s the music sound like? Well, I think it’s really cool. Like at our at Frank and Maven Riley, our lovely office coordinator, Riley, she gets here before anybody else. She has to be here before 8am to make sure that, you know, she’s always got the good jams playing, she’s got coffee brewing. She’s got the all the lamps on. So whenever you walk in, it feels so warm and inviting something. I so appreciate, Riley. You’re a rock star. Thank you. Yes. Thank you, Riley. Yeah. Other things I would say for, like, negative company culture, kind of bouncing back and forth here, but oh yeah,

it would be with like, when you walk in, you don’t feel like anybody cares who you are, what you did last weekend, right? What? What’s going on with no smiles, No teeth, no, there’s no warmth, no. Yeah, camaraderie, yeah, probably a lot of, like, headphones on and, like, tucked into corners. And, yeah, clicky, click Yeah, just a closed a closed experience, yeah, something that doesn’t feel open. Yeah, and, and, I think that would continue, dirty, yeah, dirty. Sure it’s clean, yeah, make sure it’s clean. That seems like a given, but it probably is. Yeah.

Okay, let’s switch to the lighter side of things. What would be some signals of great company culture?

Megan Ellis 6:38
Do I just get to freestyle here for I would say,

I would say warm smiles, yeah, and inviting sounds. And I would say a well lit establishment would be, you know, cleanliness is important, like we just said. Megan loves the atmosphere. I do the ambience I need it to feel like a place that I want to be in. Yes, I would also say, you know, I don’t know, snacks, an office dog. Office dog show no roadie roo Megan’s got, Megan’s got the office dog around here, and he is, he’s the best,

a ping pong table. Yeah, I love ping pong. Yeah, we, we jam on some ping pong. Sometimes,

I would say also, like

Caleb Agee 7:32
we were asking around the office even what, what does good company culture sound like? And someone was saying that you actually like coming to work, right? Oh, yeah. Everybody just walks in. They’re ready to go. They want to I, I have a hard time when I talk to people. They’re like, Oh, it’s a Monday. Yeah, I’m having like, like, how’s your day going? Monday? Yeah? Like,

Wow, that must really suck, yeah, because that you have to walk in and say, I have to go to work today. No, we live in a world where there are a lot of a lot of things you can do, and if you can set this culture leader or or if you’re an employee, if you can set this culture that people want to come to, why wouldn’t you want that, like, why wouldn’t you want to create this, this place that everybody wants and desires, right? Well, I think that’s what’s exciting about today, is we’ve got three ways that we think that you can improve your company culture today. Yeah. So we kind of want to talk about what company culture is, what it’s not if you have it or if you don’t, and identify what is good and what is bad. So I think we’ve kind of been through that. However, we talked a lot about

Megan Ellis 8:36
one thing that I want to talk about, about positive company culture is promoting a sense of wellness and safety. Yeah? So like, something that I just really wanted to expand on is, I think that it’s so important that employees feel safe. Yeah, they feel good to be there. I agree. And I think even the wellness part,

Caleb Agee 8:57
I have this saying I throw around every once in a while, which is healthy companies allow for healthy people. Oh, yeah. And Healthy People make healthy companies. Yeah. And so I think really often,

poor company culture looks like you’re proud for people to work 20 hours a week or 20 hours a day or something like that. And there’s this

crush it keep going like and yes, we’re gonna work hard when we show up. But also you’re creating, you’re creating a people, a group of people, that are inherently unhealthy because the rhythms of their life are messed up because they can’t, they literally can’t exercise, eat, well, drink good water, you know, I’m saying, yeah, and then guess what’s going to happen to them? They’re going to get unhealthy, psychologically that we know that causes a downgrade. And guess what it’s going to do to your company, too. You know, I’m saying tank so

healthy companies allow for healthy people. And.

Healthy People make healthy companies.

So every single person inside your we’re gonna we’re gonna talk first about people. Every single person inside your company affects company culture. We just finished hiring, and today, as this episode drops, is Kyle’s first day on the job. So welcome Kyle. It’s good to have you. He’s definitely listening, because he’s a new guy. He’s it’s required, right? We got we we have a claim at his desk later, and we’ll be like, yeah, new guy, listen. Did he listen? This is the test, whether or not he hears this, and we should give him a secret code. No. I’m just kidding. Logical safety at its finest, yes. And so we, we’ve just finished hiring, and the thing I’m always aware of, I do a lot of our hiring here at Frank and Maven, I’m always aware that a single person will affect culture, yeah, sometimes in good and bad ways, but even in a neutral just by being in the building or being a part of the team they affect and change the shape of the organization. And it’s such a it’s such a cool and crazy thing, but you have to be very careful with your hiring process, right? That’s such an important facet of your culture is the people you led into the building, right? Right? And so we have a really, really intentional process that we’ve we’ve talked about at different times, but

make sure that your process protects your culture, right, that it looks for people who will, yes, get the job done, do the work well, but then also that that will promote these signals of good, healthy culture. Yeah, you’re saying, I do, I do. And thank you for that, because it makes it a much better workplace. And I also just want to say, in addition to the people, and you know, the leadership is,

Megan Ellis 11:53
I mean, take a look at the top down, the leadership is what sets the tone, yeah, for the entire organization, for sure, just like at home, right? And so I just want to say, I think that you are so I just want to give you a compliment here. I think you’re so good at leadership here at Frank and Mavin, because I feel like all of our team, if you ask anybody, and you interview them separately, no matter when they know that they can come to you and they can share what they need without feeling judged or without feeling you know whatever they can come to you, and it’s an open door policy, and they know that you will listen and you will help. And so I think that you have a great emotional regulation about you, and I think that that is the most important thing that you can have in a leader. And so I just want to say thank you for doing that. Thank you. And so that’s part of the people just emotional regulation. If you need to know how to do that, talk to Caleb. Oh, well,

Caleb Agee 12:57
I don’t know if I can. Yeah, I will definitely try. But, yeah, give me a call.

Yeah. I think leaders, you have

the biggest impact on the organization and and that shows up in who you choose to let in. It choose it shows up in when it’s time to let somebody out. Yeah, that’s a big part of it, sad but and scary, right? But that’s a reality. And then I think it also shows up in your frequency of connecting with people. You know, I’m saying because I think often,

Megan Ellis 13:29
if we say, like, if an employee is surprised at the outcome of their annual review, you’ve not been doing a good job, right? You know? How could they be surprised? You should have been less Yeah, if it’s good or bad or otherwise, they should know one way or another. And so I have monthly check ins with every team member, and that’s a that’s a facet of, like, how we do things, but if there’s not some sort of regular moment where you get to sit down and talk, that’s all about the people and that sets the culture, yeah, I agree. I think you’re so good at that. I also think that obviously Brandon is a genius and the leader of this organization, and one thing that promotes such a cool culture is his generosity. I mean, whenever you think of Brandon Welch, I think of the most generous human I’ve probably ever met, and so I love that he just blesses people like with the most ridiculous things, it seems over the top, but the thing is that he has a heart of giving. Yeah, and it’s, it’s really cool to see how that little ripple effect changes everyone around him. Yeah, I’ll, I’ll brag on Brandon for a second. He doesn’t know. I’m gonna say this, but we’re gonna quiz him and see if he listens. Yeah, we’ll see if he listens to the podcast every once while now, the i passingly mentioned that I would, I wanted to get back into drumming. I played drums a lot growing up, and

Caleb Agee 14:50
just in passing, literally, we were having a leadership meeting, I said, I was like, Yeah, I’m thinking about getting a drum set. I’d like for my son to pick it up, and I want to play a little bit more. Yeah.

The next day, I went home, and my kids were like, Dad, go downstairs. Go downstairs. And I was like, what? What’s going on? And so I go downstairs, and there is a full drum set downstairs in my house that Brandon had delivered just generosity. That’s just his way. That’s how he does it. Yeah, I could, I could give countless examples of how he has blessed me over the years. But that’s just, if you know Brandon, you already know that about him. So yeah, that’s very cool. And that’s something that,

Megan Ellis 15:30
that’s something that we get to benefit from all the time. Yeah, yeah, it’s so cool. So that’s people. People are, I would say, the most, the first thing that affects culture.

Caleb Agee 15:43
Jim Collins, in his foundational business book, Good to Great he said, great vision, without great people is irrelevant. So yeah, the next, the next thing we’re going to talk about is purpose. We are going to talk about purpose, but we had to cover people first, because without great people, the purpose doesn’t really matter, right? And so Megan

Megan Ellis 16:08
purpose. Why does Frank and Maven exist? He’s gonna put me on the spot. Yeah. Well, we exist to create a world where entrepreneurs can confidently grow their business without wasting any money on advertising. Yes, that’s it, nailed it. Yeah, we say that every single Monday morning the the entire team knows it.

Caleb Agee 16:31
Kyle will know it in like two weeks if he doesn’t already, right? That’s, that’s how we do it here. But that’s a purpose that we carry. That’s a shared purpose. It’s why we all come to work. And it’s, I know maybe it seems like we have, like, a creative, interesting we’re in marketing and advertising. It maybe seems, seems like people would kind of write us off, like, Oh, that would be easy to find a purpose in that, right? I fix mufflers for a living, right? And I can’t find purpose. No, you help moms get their kids to school on time, right? You know, like, I think, I think there’s, there’s a meaning behind the thing, that you can find a purpose that really can speak to the heart of your team. And when you have good purpose, that everybody is like, yes, if we are doing that, then I’ve done a good day’s work, right? Is all worth it? They show up, then they’ll, they’ll give you their heart and soul, right? You know, in their work. So it was last week we got a call from someone saying, like, man, it is so cool, because my first year with marketing, I, you know, did X amount of dollars, but last month I did X amount of dollars, the same, you know, in one month that he did his first year. And you know, we’ve only been working with him for, gosh, I don’t want to get this wrong, but maybe four or five years, maybe five or six, but it was a huge number. And it was so neat to hear him just kind of give his testimony, just off the cuff, like to us, just guys. Wow. Thank you so much for holding my hand through this and just making me stay the course. Because I did not know that it would, you know, Blossom the way that it has. I believe that it would, but now I’m finally starting to see it. And he’s like, telling his friends, and he’s saying, like, you have to do it this way. It’s been so impactful for our business and so

Megan Ellis 18:28
and then I just the thing that I love the most about that is, yes, I want him to have a healthy business, and yes, I want him to be able to bless all of his employees and all those things. But it’s so cool to see him living out his dream, like they just took this awesome vacation, and his family’s doing well, and it’s just, it’s very, very cool to be a part of, yeah, so, and we have, like, we have a Slack channel here that will, like, we call it client success, right? And we’ll send when we get the little text from the client, or we have this moment, or we we type it in and we celebrate, we throw a little parties

Caleb Agee 19:02
that is, that is a big signal, I would say, of

I think it’s Tim Miles, who said, Show me the last thing you celebrated, and I’ll show you what you care about and and so

make sure you’re celebrating often, because if your team doesn’t feel like They’re winning, alternatively, they’re not, if they’re not winning, theoretically they they’re losing, right? Yeah. I mean, yeah, that’s, that’s how I see it. I don’t, I don’t do sports with no scores, but, yeah, I’m a competitive person, but no, I think it’s good for your team to acknowledge the fact that they are winning, right? There are days when it’s hard. There are times when it seems like

maybe your client list is down, your revenues are down. You’re having a hard time making sales, whatever. But if you can celebrate the fact that you fulfilled your mission, even in a small way, for one client, you’re doing it, that’ll promote good company culture, and then it makes people more self assured.

Hard and confident to go off and go do the next thing. So, so cool. So that’s your company purpose, right? But I think there’s this facet of purpose that we forget about, right? People can bring, every person brings their own version of a personal purpose to them, to their workplace, you know, I’m saying, and so very often, business owners, I’ve heard it a lot of times, right? They’re saying nobody cares about this as much as I do, right? They don’t care about the company, the business, as much as I do. I wouldn’t say that they don’t care about the business, right? Or even like me. Personally, I care about Frank and Maven a lot. But there’s also this personal that’s that’s that business owners personal purpose, right? Was to make a business right, right? Absolutely, that was part of their personal purpose. It’s not all encompassing. It’s not everything about them. But then there’s also this facet, that every person in the organization is bringing a personal purpose with them. Absolutely, for instance, like my personal purpose is being the best mom I can possibly be, yeah, that’s my whole purpose, yeah. And so that’s, that’s, that’s the reason I’m on this planet, I believe. And so I feel like Frank and Maven allows me to do that, and if Frank and Maven did not allow me to to fulfill that mission, then I would not be working at Frank and Maven, yeah, yeah. And I think the same is for me as a husband, as a dad, right? I think the big part of this is to find what that purpose is for your team members, because this is a it’s a relationship, right? Culture is founding on relationship, yeah, you know, but that’s the thing. Is that a lot of business owners like, how can I improve company culture? And it’s like, how much do you care about what matters to your people? Yeah, you want them to care about what matters to you. But are you doing the same for that? We must be in marketing, the golden empathy, right there. Empathy, empathy, caring for other people. So

I would take time. We’ve done it in different ways, but we’ve had like things like dream manager or have people write down their goals. What do they want from life? What is their have them write personal mission statements and share together. Understand those, uncover those together, and that will help you to understand how you can support them in their personal purpose. Yeah. And back to what makes a good culture and a bad culture a sign if you’re if you are struggling in this area, people will not want to share what their hopes and dreams are with you, because you will not be safe enough to know. Wow. You know. Yeah, yeah. So look for that. Look for those moments, the people and the purpose, and what’s the last thing? The last one is the pursuit of excellence. We went with some alliteration here. We love alliteration around here, pursuit of excellence. Pursuit of excellence. Yeah, yeah. And, and I think

without this is for you who maybe you’re writing us off as the fluffy clouds and we’re painting rainbows together, and, you know, just having a good time playing ping pong and throwing darts all day, that’s not what we do, petting our dog, yeah, just hanging out with hanging out with dogs and strumming on guitars.

Yes, that happens here. I cannot deny that it does not happen. But

the reality is, we also pursue excellence. We are entrusted and your you and your team are entrusted with dollars from your customers to do good work for them. And so when you build that into the culture, everybody wants to level up, right? You know, I think that’s such a powerful, powerful piece to to push everybody toward, like, what’s the best we can do, pursuit of excellence. I think that’s cool. I think that, you know, in in our walls, you can find us, you know, challenging a message like it are, yes, it’s good, but how can we polish it? How can we make it the best that it can possibly be. Yes, it passed over some of our team members eyes. It got an approval. But, you know, can you take another look at it and just make sure there’s nothing that we’re missing things like that that happens internally. And, you know, sometimes it can get annoying to have to, you know, have such a high level of perfection before work goes out, but that is that that’s from the top down. It’s that pursuit of excellence. But what I think is cool is that you can find a lot of that outside of these walls. And what I mean by that is, I think that you and Brandon both do a great job of challenging us to be the best humans that we can actually be. And yeah,

Megan Ellis 24:37
in lots of ways, we have challenges all the time, 50 to fit. We just had, we have, you know, the professionalism challenge. I know that’s right around the corner, yeah, but just encouraging us to think about, like, what would improve the quality of my life. And, you know,

I don’t know, how can I be.

The best mother that I can possibly be. And then you guys, I feel like, are always doing a good job of stepping in. Once I’ve once I have said what I’m trying to make happen, you guys come in with coaches or come in with a way for me to achieve my goals outside of this place. And so I appreciate that. Yeah, well, we’re happy to do it. I think, I think it’s such a

Caleb Agee 25:21
it’s, it seems obvious, but it’s actually not. It’s a very intentional thing that has to be done right to pursue that. For me a big, a big way we pursue excellence.

I always love the processes, because I think they set a standard, a bar that we know this is how we do it, right? And that’s cool. And so I would encourage you if, if, wherever you sit in your in your position, in the company, set up processes of like, I expect myself. At this point I’m going to make sure I send the client an email. At this point I’m going to make sure that we do these, we check these boxes. Yeah, we’re going to do this thing

that get for some personalities that’s like, I don’t want to I don’t want to process. I don’t like that, but, but here’s what happens when you have a product that maybe doesn’t go as well, right? You You offer the client a service and it’s like, oh, at the end of the this thing, it did not finish. Well, we can go back to that thing and say, did we follow the process? And if the process was followed.

Okay, then we need to adjust it right, because it didn’t finish well, right? But usually we find we’ve missed a step in the process, right? And then we can say, Oh, well, if we would just we got to make sure we do this part and everybody can fail successfully and learn from those moments so that we can do better next time love it. So yep, that is pretty much what we have for you. Today. We are talking about setting company culture. You can change it in your organization from wherever you sit. I believe that this is such a powerful thing. It is the energy, it’s the feeling, it’s the electricity that passes between employees and the leadership it passes between employees, one on one and departments. This is the culture that you are setting and you need to assess it. Yeah, how can you make it better? Yeah, that’s I think I’m glad that you said that, because I think that’s the one thing that we really want you guys to walk away with today is, gosh, whether you think that you’re a part of the culture or you’re in charge of the culture, no matter what your perspective is, I hope that you’re encouraged today to know that you can affect it, yeah, and you can smile big, and you can ask your team member how their weekend was. And you can, you know, offer some light heartedness and joy to make it better. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Hey. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this, would you hit that subscribe button so that you can get updates anytime we drop a new episode, we are back here every single Monday answering your real life marketing questions. If you want to send a question to us, you can send it to Maven Monday at Frank and maven.com

we are frank and Maven, I’m Caleb, I’m Megan, I’m Megan, and we’ll always be here because marketers who can’t teach you why are just a fancy lie.