Creating Culture Podcast

All right. All right. Welcome to Creating Culture. Joining me today is Greg Hickman. I'm so excited to introduce you all to Greg, because Greg is, he's my coach. Greg and I have been working together for a few months now. He has an agency called Alt Agency, and it is all about helping agency owners like myself create leverage. Leverage is the word of the year over at Bajillion Agency, and that's really why we met and why I signed up for his program because he's helping me to figure out how to leverage in different ways and create a business that can scale without having to scale a ton of team members. Because we've already scaled by adding a ton of team members and now we're looking for ways to scale that will leverage all of those people. Thank you so much, Greg, for joining us.

Greg Hickman: It's such a pleasure to be here.

Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. We are really excited today to hear from you about, specifically, you have grown your team remotely and I'm so fascinated by this. It's something that a lot of people are having to do as a result of pandemic and it's not by choice. But you've grown your team remotely by choice. Talk to me about making that decision.

Greg Hickman: Yeah, I mean, when I got started, at least the influences that I had in business when I was launching my business, it was on the side. I launched it on the side and the help that I got at the time, not really thinking long-term, were remote. The first person that we really brought on was in Oregon, I'm in Colorado. She wasn't full-time, she was part-time, 20 hours a week. At that stage of the game, I have to be honest and say that I didn't know what it would look like. But as I started following other online entrepreneurs, it just seemed like that was the way that everyone was doing it. I'd come from traditional agencies and before I went out on my own I was on the client side so I was very familiar with going into the office and seeing everybody.

I think with the launch of the business, especially on the side, it was refreshing to not have to go into any sort of office. I have to say that there was a moment, and there sometimes still is a moment, where I wish we were all in person. We probably will eventually have some people in one location. But I've realized the power in the ability to operate autonomously and asynchronously as an entire team, because I get to focus on what I'm best at with zero distractions, and so does everybody else.

I started taking a lot of guidance, and I'll say direction, from the guys at Base Camp. They've written multiple books, Rework and a number of others. They had that hybrid. They had an office, you weren't required to go in there. I was like, "Well, we'll grow to that." But, in order to do that, you need to operate as if you were remote anyway, so that was kind of when I just put the stake in the ground and said, "That's how we're going to grow."

Speaker 1: I love it. How long ago was that?

Greg Hickman: Well, the business was formally launched, well, version one of the business was launched on the side in 2012, went to full-time in 2014, and then we completely flipped our model and our focus 2015 and 2017. 2015 is when the team really started growing from just beyond myself and a virtual assistant to like core team members. We went from one to two people to, at most we were 13 or 14 with a few independent contractors.

Speaker 1: So today, you've had a lot of ebbs and flows and this year you've scaled up to match demand because you've been growing really quickly. How many team members have you brought on just this year?

Greg Hickman: Yeah. As of April, we were three people and now we're, so we're recording this October-

Speaker 1: Okay. Yeah.

Greg Hickman: ... of 2020 and we're at 10.

Speaker 1: You've added 17 members in five minutes? Awesome.

Greg Hickman: Yeah. Since really the sales teams really, which was where we started, they were hired on the 30th of April and they started on the 1st of May. So, from may to now, we've added seven.

Speaker 1: Wow. The sales team is working out, I guess.

Greg Hickman: It is, yes.

Speaker 1: That's awesome. Well, tell me about recruiting in a remote work environment. You don't get to do face to face interview so much. How does your recruiting process go?

Greg Hickman: Yeah. Well, face to face via Zoom like this. We've been doing this for a long time. We're used to doing online meetings. When the pandemic happened that wasn't really any [crosstalk] to us. But from a recruiting perspective, it started out through different job boards. Like Lisa, who was my first real major hire, who started off on the fulfillment team, implementation account manager type role. She's now the head of operations and helps run the entire business. I found her on Upwork and it took 47 interviews to find her. I was about to hire somebody else and one application squeaked in, and I was like, "All right. Well, I'll just interview this person because it was on my calendar for that day," and it was Lisa. There was definitely no method to the madness on that one outside of I need help and I put a job description up and I interviewed as many people.

Now it's become more formalized. Thankfully, for a handful of the roles that we've needed, there have been, I don't want to call them recruitment companies, but I guess you can call them a recruitment company, but they specialize in finding, training, and grooming specific roles. For the sales team, we went through a company that basically is a two-sided marketplace. They have online training for sales reps, so they train sales reps and then they go find it companies that need sales reps and they have a matchmaking service.

Speaker 1: That's so cool.

Greg Hickman: [crosstalk] that's where we found basically our entire sales team. Then there is another service like that that is ... That company is called Coaching Sales, by the way, for anyone if they're curious. Then there was another company that we brought on Amanda, who started as my executive assistant and now she's become a sales coordinator and wears a bunch of other hats. But, there's a company called the Great Assistant. It's a very similar service.

Speaker 1: Cool.

Greg Hickman: They go and find former executive assistants, project managers that are looking for, in the beginning, part-time work virtually. We found Amanda through that. Those are great because when you don't have a interview process or anything formal, which we didn't at the time, they have all of that embedded. You're not only going to one of these services because they're going to find you the person, but they're bringing you three candidates and they've weeded out a bunch of the wrong ones. You're basically paying for their hiring process, you know?

Speaker 1: Right.

Greg Hickman: We borrowed their process by investing in each of these services that then brought us the candidates. We got to interview and select from the final three. That was how we did sales and initially the assistant. The last handful of hires have been more like, I think what you'll call traditional. Which is job description, post them out to job boards, field applications. For us, we basically, in our application, we ask a couple of specific questions that require someone to pay attention to details, and if they don't they're immediately removed from the pool of applicants. That gets us from hundreds of applications down to a much more reasonable number. Then from that number, we're able to look at applications and then basically schedule, we did two rounds of interviews, one with myself and then one with the rest of the team. Probably what most people that end up listening to this are used to. But maybe that little gauntlet process of having them actually do an exercise in order to make it to the next round, is something that has always served as well.

Speaker 1: Gotcha. Tell me about systems for working remotely. I'm talking logistics here because you don't walk down the hall and hand someone a piece of paper. Tell me about the systems that you've had to implement that help your workflow be remote.

Greg Hickman: Yeah. We've been through pretty much every project management software that exists with a lot of failure. I'm not a software, as much as I love software, I love it too much that I can't stick with any one. So, really, the last handful of years it wasn't really based off any specific project management tool. It was actually really powered through weekly meetings and with Google doc and spreadsheets. Up until probably earlier this year we started using a tool called Notion, which we've now fallen in love with, and we've moved a lot of the stuff that was in Google Docs, et cetera, into that. But everything works for us off of our weekly team meeting. Every Monday, pretty much every team member shows up for the team meeting, and we follow, which has morphed from a framework that I learned from the book Traction.

Everybody quickly shares wins, personal and business, then we run through an agenda, we look at client wins, and then we basically say like, "This is what I'm working on and committing to this week," and everyone shares their top level commitments. At the end, there's an area where anyone at any time throughout the week can add to this agenda of, it's called IDS. Identify, discuss, and solve. If someone has an issue that's not urgent, we put it on that document and when we get to that part of the agenda sometimes there's nothing to discuss and sometimes there's a long laundry list of things that happened that someone has identified and now we need to quickly discuss it and figure out what the next step is in the solution. That usually will turn into tasks for someone or maybe even a follow-up meeting. But that's pretty much been that meeting.

Then every Wednesd

Andrea Engstrom:

Welcome to Creating Culture, the podcast where we talk about building a culture that fosters creativity and big ideas and attracts and retains top talent. This is one of the biggest issues that we get requests for help with, is to make companies look like a cool company to work for. I'm Andrea Engstrom. I'm the president of Bajillion Agency. We're a branding and advertising agency. And with me today I have Earl Kemper. He's a master business coach with ActionCOACH Business Coaching. And he's the founder of the Premier Advisory Group of companies, which includes Bajillion Agency and Motorbike Films. And then Action Coach and a handful of other companies. 

Earl is a coach, a business broker and a leadership trainer. But I have to brag for just a second because he's also my dad. Earl has over the last 36 years, he has coached more than 1600 businesses.Multiple times been the global coach of the year and America's coach of the year and the world's number one business coaching organization, which has offices in what, 75 countries or more right now?

Earl Kemper:

86.

Andrea Engstrom:

86 countries. Holy cow, they're still growing. So, but Earl's been a great mentor obviously in my life, but also has grown several businesses over the years and learned a lot of things. But one of the things that has been most impactful that he's taught me recently in the last couple of years, is around this idea of the ideal team player. And this is a book that a lot of folks on our team have read or have learned something about. It's a book by Patrick Lencioni. Earl, thank you for joining me today.

Earl Kemper:

Well, thank you for having me.

Andrea Engstrom:

Absolutely. So, let's talk for a second about what are those three essential virtues, first of all and what does that look like?

Earl Kemper:

Well, before we go there, I think the first thing that goes through my mind is to understand that one of the biggest challenges that people have, and in all the years that I've been coaching, I've recognized it's getting the right people on the bus. And not only getting the right people on the bus, but continuing to keep them where we want them to be in regard to our culture. So if you don't get the right people on the bus, it impacts your culture. And if you don't have an ongoing approach to building on your culture, it can be detrimental to the growth of the business. And as you said, I've been doing a lot of coaching. I've been coaching for 36 years. And one of the key components to having a great organization or a great business is to have a great team.

And so what we did was we researched over the years all of the different possibilities that have worked well for us in working with clients and helping them build that culture. And interestingly enough, a number of those ideas and thoughts that we have had were put together in a great book as well, called The Ideal Team Player by Patrick Lencioni. What we learned was that many times people would be struggling in their business and they think it was because they weren't doing some things right. And sometimes that was very, very true, but other times what the real issue was, they didn't have the right people on the bus. 

One great example of that, we were working with a dentist office and they had a couple of managers that we interviewed. And when we began to look at those managers and as we talk today more about the ideal team player, you'll get a picture in your mind. But what we came to realize, they just didn't fit the culture. So we had to help them find a different place to work and recruit the right people on the bus. Now, the amazing thing was that the company doubled in 18 months and a big reason for that was because we adjusted what needed to be adjusted in that team.

Andrea Engstrom:

Oh, that's incredible. Okay. So what are those three virtues that are essential in an ideal team player?

Earl Kemper:

So the first virtue that's essential is called humility or to be humble. And when any person is humble and they have the focus on the company and the culture, that is a tremendous positive impact to everyone around them, the team, the clients, or customers, as well as the overall company. And then another real key characteristic is to be hungry. Now, many people are hungry for themselves, but are they hungry for the company? You need to be humble and get your ego out of the way. You need to be hungry, meaning that you're working towards the vision and mission and with the culture of the company. And then you need to be what he refers to as smart, but then he refers to as “people smart.” So it's not intellect. It's really being able to discern how people are feeling, thinking, and from what they're saying, what they really mean.

Andrea Engstrom:

Yeah. So it's not how good you are at math. It's emotional intelligence.

Earl Kemper:

Yeah. It's a form of that. Yes it is.

Andrea Engstrom:

Okay. Okay. So let's talk about how can you tell if somebody is missing one of those qualities?

Earl Kemper:

Well, one of the things we did is we took some of the information that he had, which gave us a list of about 18 different characteristics of people. Six related to being humble, six related to being hungry and six that are related to being people smart. And each time we did that, we could look at our company, personally and say, how are we doing? How would we rate ourselves in each of these six areas under each of these three virtues? And if there are areas that need to be improved, then we help them by giving them direction on how they can be more humble, more hungry and more people smart. And if it's just not something that you can improve, you may need to make a change in your team member.

Andrea Engstrom:

I see. So, you evaluate that person or you look at those qualities or however he lists those things and you're looking for specific things and individuals. Now, what would be an indicator in a real life situation that someone on your team may be maybe lacking in one of those virtues?

Earl Kemper:

That's a really good question because one of the real tell tale signs is when someone is wanting to take credit for all the successes of a company, rather than recognize that the team brought about the success or that the company brought about success.

Andrea Engstrom:

Okay, so that would be an indicator or an obvious evidence that someone is lacking in humility. One thing that I've noticed before, and occasionally, and part of this is what we'll call it being people smart. But have you ever met somebody and you're trying to have a meeting and then during that conversation, you realize that they're not going to say yes to it unless they feel like it was their idea.

Earl Kemper:

Yes.

Andrea Engstrom:

Right? We've all met people like that, where you go, Oh, okay. Well, I have to now listen for them to say something that sounds like what we're wanting to accomplish here and then give them the credit for thinking of it. So that they'll go along with what we know is the right thing to do. And it's like, if it's not their idea, they don't want to do it. That's that would be an example of, of noticing when somebody is lacking in that humble virtue. Right?

Earl Kemper:

100%. It's not just that they're on an ego trip. Sometimes it’s just that they have self-interest above team interests.

Andrea Engstrom:

Yeah. And there's a fine line because there's nothing wrong with wanting to recognize individual accomplishment. I mean, we enter things to get awards where, when my coach Anthony, his number is in the top five coaches in the world, I want to say, yay, go. And there's nothing wrong with that. But that idea of looking at what's happening and saying, I have to take, I have to be the one that gets the credit for that, as opposed to deflecting and saying, this was really a team effort because we all know, especially in the agency world, we all know that none of this happens without the right team members in place to do it. But it is all a team effort. Right?

Earl Kemper:

Well, ideally it should be that the team is winning together. It isn't about any one individual winning more than another individual. And as long as the team thinks that way on an individual by individual basis, you're creating an organization of ideal team players. But when you have that person that just wants to take credit for everything and you know what I mean? You see that in companies from time to time. It just isn't in them to give others credit.

Andrea Engstrom:

Now what's tricky is you might have a team member who came from a culture where that was actually the only way to succeed, or that was actually celebrated in some way. If you were the one who was receiving the credit for things that meant you were the next in line for an important thing, or to get a pay raise, or the person who was in management over you was kind of coaching you on how to work that system. And so that was actually the values of that company were evidenced by how they were helping people to climb that ladder. So there are some companies that don't practice this as a culture. So that can be really tricky when you're recruiting somebody who's not coming from a work culture where this is valued.

Earl Kemper:

Well, I think one of the most important things that you're bringing up is you have to develop the culture with who you have right now. So step number one, when you're trying to create the ideal team players in your office is to let them know what that looks like. So if everyone knows what the ideal team player is supposed to be they can at least be working towards and striving towards that goal.

Andrea Engstrom:

Oh yeah. How do you help people to know, ho

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