AJV (00:02): So how do you build culture when you have a company or a team that is virtual or just a company or a team that’s growing beyond your ability to talk to or interact with every single employee or every single leader on a regular basis? But, but that’s the question. How do you build culture? And I was having a conversation on the influential personal brand podcast with a newer friend of mine. Her name is Brittany Ruby Miller, and she’s the daughter of Jeff Ruby from the Jeff Ruby steakhouse and Entertainment Group. And they have grown to be more than 900 employees, multi-location restaurant, a hundred million dollars in revenue. And we were having this conversation around culture, right? And here at Brain Builders Group, we’re much smaller than that. But we’re all virtual and we only get to see each other all in person a couple of times a year. AJV (00:59): And in this post pandemic world where not everyone is in the office, I think this conversation of how do you build culture has come up to be more prevalent in conversations as the years have gone on. And so we have this conversation of how do you do that? And I think there was a couple of things that came out that were worthy of kind of just highlighting in this quick, kind of short episode right now. So the number one is, does your team speak common language? In other words, do you have a, a set of principles, a foundation, that everyone understands what you’re talking about? And so as we were talking about this idea of shared language, it came to this is not from training documents or SOPs, even. Those are, those are good and helpful. That’s not what we’re talking about. AJV (01:49): It’s do you have a shared common list of beliefs, values, principles that you work by? And one of the things that I think you can do as a small business owner and entrepreneur that doesn’t cost tons of money is have your own company library. And I think this was a very big takeaway for me but also for all of you. ’cause It doesn’t matter if you have just a, a one, you know, team member organization or you have a thousand, it’s like, do you have a shared language so that when you use an acronym or when you say something, everyone goes, oh, I know what you mean. Because then it allows you to have quicker conversations without the contextual explanation. And one of the fastest, cheapest and most impactful ways to do that is to have a company library. Now, there’s lots of different ways that you can do that. We, we actually have this at Brand Builders Group. We have this leading up to that we use a platform called Better Book Club. In fact, I’ll include a link to that in my post here. But Better Book Club allows you to have a virtual library AJV (02:59): That says these are company sponsored events, and you can even reward people for reading those. You can make it mandatory, but then you can also incentivize them to go and read these. And one of the things that we instituted as a part of Better Book Club listens to customers is that we have a book of the quarter that every single quarter, we as a company buy a copy of a book that we’re all going to read together. We’ve done this for two years. So we’re, I think on book number seven, as we’re in Q3 2024 as I’m recording this, and we, we select books that have you know, I would say Universal Appeal that are applicable and beneficial to you no matter what your role is, no matter if it’s day one or, you know, you’ve been with the company since the beginning. AJV (03:47): Some of those books have been unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guera. It’s one of my top 10 favorite books of all time. It was mandatory reading for our entire company in Q2 of 2024, right? We started the year Q1 this year with Extreme Ownership by Jocko, Willem, and Leaf Babin. We said, we started the year on this kind of accountability mindset that we all need to take ownership. If you see something, say something, it’s not your job or your job, it’s everyone’s job. Do we have to own this? So we started with that. And so that allows all of us to have common language. So when we talk about like, are you owning this? All I have to do is go, Hey, do you remember when we read Extreme Ownership? That’s what I’m talking about right here. And, and that’s all I have to say, right? AJV (04:36): Same thing with Unreasonable Hospitality. It’s like people know, and I say, Hey, are we being unreasonable with this? That it’s not a bad thing. It’s going, Hey, are we really doing this with intentionality in mind? Are we doing this because it’s easy? Or are we doing this because we, we want people to feel seen, loved, and cared for in a, a unique and personal way? I think those are things we’re reading right now, Q3 2024, hidden Potential by Adam Grant of Learning. How do we, we we grow and develop the staff versus just hiring for the staff. And that’s, those are cultural things that we believe in. Those are not necessarily books that fit every organization or every person, but those are have been ones that stick out to us of going, Hey, this is the common language that we’re trying to instill to build culture. AJV (05:25): I think that’s a huge part of it’s, do you have shared language? Do you have common language? There’s really expensive ways to do that. There’s super affordable ways and having a shared company library that’s available for all new employees coming in, but also required reading that you have for all existing employees. So that’s one thing. The second thing is making sure that you have well documented and well communicated core values, vision statements, mission statements. Brittany in our conversation calls it her vp Mosa, right? And I think, I dunno if I’ll get all of these, but it was like vision principles, mission Operating Guidelines, SNA Systems and Accountability. Oh my God, have I got that right? This is a miracle don’t hold me to that, but VP Moosa, VP MOSA vp Moosa can look that up, . But for us we have a set of six core values. AJV (06:27): And every single month at our All hands on deck company meeting we go through these and we have someone in the company volunteer. They pick one of them and they do a mini five minute core value presentation, right? So we have all of them available every single month as we open up our company meeting. But then somebody volunteers, or sometimes they’re voluntold, but for the most part, they volunteer and they put together like, why did they pick this core value? How do they see it being lived out? And why is it important to them and their role at this specific time and time and place, right? So I think that’s just keeping, keeping them real. And it’s not that they’re hearing it from us, it’s, it’s, I care what the team has to say. And honestly, their presentations, they’re so much better than mine. AJV (07:11): But that’s one thing that you can do is just have like, Hey, these are, these are the core values that we operate this company with. And I think the most important thing is sharing those when you’re interviewing people during the recruiting and hiring process. So you never want someone to come on board and be like, whoa, where did that come from? So the openness, transparency of going, Hey, this is how it is. It’s not for everyone. That’s okay. But before you take a position here, you should know this is what it’s gonna be like here. Opt out now. No hard feelings, , no like no guilt but opt out now. I think it was a really important thing that we can all step into and live into as we, as we make these hiring choices and as people make some of the bigger deso decisions of their life of, Hey, this is where I wanna spend, you know, 40 hours of my week every week, 60% of our waking hours are at work. AJV (08:06): You better be aligned with your mission, values, mission, purpose with your company. Otherwise, you’re going to be miss role. Bull money’s not worth that. It’s just not. So that would be something the other thing, when you talk about mission and vision, right? It’s like, why do you exist? Why does your company exist? What, what’s your purpose for being in business to begin with? And what I have found is I hope this is helpful and impactful for our team to be reminded every single month, at least monthly, we’re gonna read this together. And we call it our brand mantra, but it, it’s basically our vision and mission statement. It’s why we’re here, what we hope to do, our, our purpose how we do things. But we call it our brand mantra. AJV (08:55): You may call it your vision statement, mission statement, purpose, whatever you wanna call it. But for us, it’s a brand mantra. And I do hope it’s important for everyone to take a step back and for at least five minutes as we all read it together, to remind ourselves, oh yeah, that’s why we do that. Oh, yeah, I remember that now because it’s easy to forget. And I, I hope everyone else finds it important, but what I have found that for me is that I need to stand back and read that every single month so that I don’t forget why we exist, what our purpose is, what our mission is, what our vision is in the middle of customer service problems or inundation of reporting and analyses, or managing deadlines or missed deadlines or projects that didn’t get done or missed the budget or did it, whatever. AJV (09:45): All this stuff is in the middle of all the stuff going on, which sometimes is very fun. I need to step back every single month at least for me and go, oh yeah, that’s why we’re here. That’s why we do what we do. And if it’s important for me, then I know it has to be important to at least someone else in our team, someone else in the company to go, this is more than about just money, right? It, it has to be, right. For all the things going on, it’s like people could do a lot of different jobs. It’s like, it’s gotta be more than just about money. And that that is how you build culture. It’s like, do we agree on things that are beyond paychecks and benefits? And the answer is yes. It’s like, I want people who want to be here. AJV (10:31): Not that they have to be here. I don’t want a paycheck to be the only reason our team is here, which means that we have to attract people on common and shared language and beliefs, and we have to keep them based on the same things. Because not every job has all glamorous parts, and not every company is gonna be sunshine and rainbows all the time. There’s gonna be, you know, stormy weather and there’s gonna be hard times. And people make it when we go, but it’s more, it’s more than about just me or just my department or just my paycheck, right? It’s gotta be about more than that so that we can weather the stormy times but also celebrate in the good times. And so those are just a couple of things. As you’re, you’re asking yourself, like, how do we build culture, a culture that doesn’t have to be managed by one person at the top, or as your team and your company grows, how do you still uphold the same level of standard of excellence or core values that you had when you were really small? It’s because you have to hire for it. You have to manage for it, and you have to retain for it. And if there’s been a time where you’re out of alignment, then you, you can’t be afraid to part ways because that, that’s damaging to the culture of the organization. And by keeping Speaker 4 (11:52): One person, you could be damaging 10 others. And those are things where it’s like you hire for it, you manage for it, you retain for it, but you also let people go for it because you all have to be in alignment to have a good, healthy culture. We are not perfect at this, let me tell you. I am consciously aware of where we fall short. But you gotta be open to it. And, and you’ve gotta do something even if you can’t do it perfectly. So, couple of ideas on how do you build culture. If you want more, go tune in to the Influential Personal Brand podcast with Brittany Ruby Miller on how to build strong culture.