Building a company culture is one of the most underrated things I see, because it’s really easy as the leader to get distracted by your own problems, get distracted by what’s going on in your life, get distracted by the fires that pop up and you make decisions very short term. Make decisions about how is this going to solve a problem today? How is this going to create impact today? How is this going to make money today? Building a culture takes time. I look at it as farming, right? I’m a plant a seed, I’m going to water the shit out of it for a year and then it’s going to develop it into a plant that provides fruit.
Employees and culture is the same thing. You have to look at it as a 6, 12, 18 month strategy pouring into somebody today that will get me this yield down the road. Even with my video people. These guys are awesome people. I’m going to pour into them and Cooper’s been a great friend of Ryan’s, an employee of Ryan’s, and I’ve gotten to know him really well. But he knows what he’s going to get when he shows up here because I’ve been planting those seeds over time. It’s going to be a good shoot. It’s going to be one take. It’s going to go awesome. We’re going to have some laughs. We’re going to have some great conversations. We’re going to catch up. That isn’t easy but he knows what he’s going to get when he shows up here every single time because the consistency is there. You can’t plant a seed, water it today and then don’t touch it for six weeks and think you’re going to get something from that.
And building a company culture is very similar. So this is where I see a lot of shortcomings. I’m going to say some things I’ve learned the hard way. I think making too many changes to the mission is a challenge. I’ve done it. I’ve seen a lot of businesses do that. Who we are, what we’re trying to do, our price point, who we’re helping, who were hiring, what projects we’re taking on, what projects we’re not taking on a lot of changes to the mission. I think to have a strong company culture, there has to be a long-term strategy mindset around what is our mission, win rate. Our mission is to simplify and systemize the growth of home service companies. And I’ve been saying that for three years. Every week, every team call, this is our mission. If it doesn’t align with that mission, it’s not for us.
And sometimes that means you have to sacrifice good things in your routine, in your pricing structure, in your offers, in your client base and your employees. You got to sacrifice good for great because there’s going to be some things that help your mission that you have to say no to that you have to get rid of that you have to decline, that you have to fire. Sometimes you have to fire really good employees because they’re just not great in alignment with the mission and that’s hard to do. Sometimes I see people adjust their mission because of the players they have. You can’t do that. You can’t change what you are trying to accomplish as a company or the impact you’re trying to make based on the assets or resources that you have, that will dilute your culture because people aren’t going to know what they’re showing up for, which also bleeds into the standards.
If there’s a mission, there has to be standards. SOP, standard operating procedures, but literally just like what are you expecting from your employees? What are you expecting out of them? Because what will happen, I see this a lot, your best employees, those revenue generators, they get away with a whole lot more than the other people do. You’ll probably let your top sales rep get away with murder, but your receptionist gets yelled at every fucking day. No, you can’t do that, that dilutes the culture. You have to have a standard across the board. And I’m going through a season right now where we’re probably going to be letting go some of our employees in one of my companies just because they’re good, not great. And it’s not so much what they are today. This is where a lot of people fail. As your mission continues, as your journey grows, there’s evolution.
And I’m going to talk about my core values here in a second, but one of our core values is continually evolve. So we’re always trying to get better. So we’re trying to be on this plane of increase, this plane of improvement. Well, if you have an employee that’s here and it’s closed, they’re good, not great. Over time, that gap, that delta, will destroy the way you feel about that person. I’m sure if you’ve ever had an employee, dude, they were like freaking great last year. What happened? What happened is you got better and they didn’t. They’re actually the same person, same qualities, same standards they hold themselves accountable to. But if you don’t hold everybody the same standard, they won’t evolve with you, they just won’t. And that will mean that I can look at today, same concept. What will this seed grow into in 12 to 18 months?
If I know right now that seed does not have a high propensity to grow into fruit that I actually want, then I’m not going to spend the next 6, 12, 18 months watering that seed ’cause I’m not going to get what I’m looking for. So same concept in being consistent with the mission over longer periods of vision. Employees are the same way and the standards need to be held the same way. Now you can’t do this with your standards and think you’re going to build a quality culture. One of my “I am” statements is I am going to keep a very high, clear and fair standard. Anybody who’s been around me knows that I hold people to an incredibly high standard. And it’s not always fun and it’s not always easy, it’s actually never easy, but that’s what I live up to because that’s what I want for my culture.
If we’re going to be coaches, right? If we’re going to be coaching other business owners, we have to be setting the standard and being the example. That’s actually two of the things we talk about is that we will set the standard and we will be the example. Well, you can’t do that if you’re not literally living up to the standards that I create. So they’re fair, they’re clear, but they’re very high and I have to do that evenly across the team or you will not get buy-in. Like you cannot let anybody not look to the standard. I see this happen a lot with family in your business, friends in your business, long-standing employees where like, dude, they’ve been here for 30 years, man, they just can’t get on board with technology and I don’t know what to do about it. You fire their ass.
There is no middle ground here. You have to hold the standard or you will dilute your own company culture and you will have people revolt or just quit because high performers that they’re holding theirselves here, if you’re holding everybody else here, they’ll go find a team that they want to be on. The best players want to be on the best teams, and that’s a fact. Winners want to win and winners want to be a part of winning teams. If you’re allowing a B squad to operate, A players aren’t going to want to be there. Repetition is also important. So we’re going to look further ahead. We’re going to hold a high standard and then we’re going to repeat that mission, that vision and those standards as often as possible. I’ve said this for as long as I can remember. If your employees are not tired of hearing about the core values, you’re not talking about them enough.
So here’s ours. And I’m a big fan of acronyms ’cause I think it helps relay the message effectively. So our core values actually spell COACH. It was actually an accident and no one believes me, but I can tell you the people that were in the room were like, oh shit, that spells coach. And I’m like, ding, we’re using that. But it’s communicate proactively, operate with the help first mentality, appreciate everyone’s time including your own, continually evolve, and have a championship mindset. We talk about these core values every week in our team meetings. We kick off our team meetings with reviewing a core value that maybe wasn’t being acknowledged appropriately or executed appropriately. Maybe its, I want to highlight somebody who went above and beyond in one or more of our core values for the week.
We had a great story last week where my events and volunteer manager went wildly above and beyond for one of the attendees of an event we had without being asked, without being promoted, without even asking for permission. She went and spent money on something that she knew would be the right thing to do. And you can’t train that, you can only pour into that. You can only nurture that. You can, like I said, plant that seed, water it and it’ll grow and bear fruit that you want. And so consistency and repetition it is. Repetition also builds trust. A culture only works if they trust what you’re saying and what you’re doing. So being repetitive means like, oh, this is real, this is standard. We have to believe in this because it’s the only way.
You can’t change all the time. You can’t be changing what you’re doing, who you’re doing it for, where you’re doing it, when you’re doing it, how you’re charging for it, and think people are going to buy into that. So the repetition and consistency here in what is the standard, how are we doing it? And then the fourth part, documenting the standard. So we document our SOPs, our standards, so that they can be a resource to our employees, right? Because most employees want to do what’s right, but if they don’t have it ironed out for them or laid out for them or documented for them, they don’t have a resource they can go to.
And if they don’t, they’re going to try really hard on their own and they’re likely going to get it wrong because their standards that you set, not they set. And so having a resource, like I’ve mentioned before we use Asana, it’s a project management app that we have our core values built out in as well as our SOPs. So if you have a reference of how do we do this or how does this happen or when does this happen or how does this work? Or how does that work? We’ve built out a platform, we’ll say a resource, a reference so that our employees can go see how do I do this to the standard? Not just how do I get it done, how do I do it to the standard? And we use pictures, we use loom videos, Zoom videos, mirror boards. We use all kind of different resources within that reference tool, but that allows our employees to not just know it, but then have a way to go back and reference it to make sure they’re hitting the standard.
There’s not a single thing you’re going to do to build a perfect culture, and perfect is relative, it’s very subjective, but I would say sustainable culture. It is incredibly necessary that you understand what you want it to be and you just don’t accept anything less. The minute you start accepting less, you’re going to hate yourself and at some point you’re going to hate your business. I see a lot of business owners who allow the standard to be minimized or not handled appropriately and they end up not wanting to go to work anymore. I know a lot of business owners that allow the standard and the culture to drop so bad that they don’t even want to be there anymore. And if you’ve done that, it’s not too late, you can fix that, you can change that. But it starts with being consistent, being clear, being on top of it and just not accepting anything less.
If you have questions on that, I’d love to talk to you. Ultimately we want to help you win fast and often, that’s what we talk about, so that you can build a championship version of your life!
