How Company Culture Became Overused

0:00Back in the early days, I think the only rule of business is simply to stay in business. Sometimes it's the rules that we create in our own mind that limit us. It's my belief, if you're a business owner, one thing's for sure. If people love what they do, they tend to do it a whole lot better. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is Jon Jance and my guest today is Brian Gataleeb. He is the founder of Tundra Land Home Improvements and author of the upcoming book we're going to talk about today, Beyond the Hammer, A Fresh Approach to Leadership, Culture, and Building High Performance Teams.

0:33So Brian, welcome to the show. John, thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it. Let's have a good chat today. Yeah. So is there Tundra land? Is there some story behind the name there? I find myself tripping over it every time. I want to say Thunder land or something like that. Yeah, that's that. And people did mistake it for that at times. I wanted to find, first of all, I wanted to find a name that didn't exist on, from a URL standpoint. So it's, the business was Wisconsin based, which is the frozen tundra. So I thought, why not Tundra land? And it seemed to work real well. And then, of course, I dialed 1-800-TUNJALAND to see who would answer.

1:08And some plumbing company somewhere answered. And I said, hey, can I buy your phone number? And they said, sure. So I had the domain and I had the 1-800 number. So I was a happy guy. They probably didn't even know what you were buying, right? I mean, they weren't using it for that. It just happened to add up, right? That's right. So in the bio, I didn't read this part, but you talk about starting your business with$3 ,000. So I'm not going to ask you what challenges you face because it's obvious, right? But talk a little bit about the early days and really kind of was there a pivotal moment because you've obviously grown it to quite an enterprise now.

1:43Yeah. Right. 2009 in the back of a friend's warehouse on a plastic folding table with$3 ,000 in cash. I thought it was a great time to start a business. So, you know, there are a lot of people that in 2007 and 2008 lost their jobs, which also meant it was an opportunity. There are some great talent out there. And it was, to me, a great time to start a business. But sure, in the early days, everything was a challenge. I mean, everything was a challenge. $3 ,000 doesn't go very far. So this is duct tape marketing. You have to go out and you have to make a lead. And you have to make a lead and you have to sell a lead and you have to install a lead and you have to do all those things just to stay in business another day.

2:20And back in the early days, I think the only rule of business is simply to stay in business. But over time, we started to grow and grow. And when I sold all the businesses, that original business, Tundra Land, spawned into a couple of other businesses that covered multiple states in the United States. We had 600 employees and doing about$150 million in revenue when I finally sold all the businesses a couple of years ago. It was quite a fun ride. A lot of learning along the way, though. Well, your book is essentially a, I don't know, would you call it a lead? Yeah, you'd call it a leadership book, I suppose.

2:53And, you know, I think somebody who's at some level managed 600 employees can actually call themselves a leader. You, a lot of your book is pegged to the word belief and this idea that it really starts with that, you know, and that, you know, I'm a fan of the idea of the power of the universe delivering, you know, if you have beliefs. So unpack kind of that idea and what it means to this entire book or really even to your entire kind of thinking about leading. Yeah. So what all really came from is that, you know, when you think about back in 2009, when I started the business, if you would have asked me what my business was, I would have said, well, you know, we're a construction company.

3:31Maybe fast forward six years later, when I had 30, 40, 50 employees, I might've said, well, we're a sales and marketing company that happens to be in home improvements. But what really allowed us to grow was when we said, what are we really? Well, we're a training organization. Let's just be a training and development company. And what does that mean? And part of that process is believing in people and helping and getting people to believe in themselves. And the more people believe in themselves, the more they're willing to grow. Sometimes it's the rules that we create in our own mind that limit us.

4:00So can a leader change that perspective? And how do you influence the mindset of people on your team? John, when I first started the business, the success of the business depended upon how well I personally executed. But as you start hiring people and building a team, now the business's success depends on how well teams execute. And by the way, that's both in the leader's presence and in their absence. So getting people to believe in themselves, but also getting them aligned around a certain set of beliefs, around a mission and a vision and things that really matter. And, you know, these are all the necessary ingredients to build an aligned team.

4:38And aligned teams perform well in any market, regardless of competition. So how do you get, you're in one of those industries where, I mean, there are a lot of businesses that, you know, knowledge workers are brought in and they're told the mission, we got to believe we're on the same team. And sometimes you feel like, I could be wrong, I am wrong. But sometimes the feeling is that, well, those people naturally get it. But okay, you hire a carpenter and they just want to go out and build the mantle on the job that they're working on and, you know, not really think of themselves as a training company.

5:08How do you kind of deal with that mindset or did you? Yeah, that's a great question, John. So first of all, it's true. There are a lot of mission statements that are either in some cases, they're non-existent businesses. And other times it's just maybe a poster on the wall somewhere. And the question is, how do you bring it to life, right? How do you weave it into the fabric of your organization? And how do you make it so that everybody, whether they're swinging a hammer out in the field, just a carpenter, or somebody that's working in the mall, trying to schedule an appointment for a bathroom model, how do you, how do they understand what is their role in the mission and vision?

5:40How do you bring it to life? I'll give you an example of one way we did that if I could. So we would install replacement windows in people's homes. Well, when you put new windows in people's homes, you typically take the old windows out and you throw them in the trash, which normally that's okay. But our mission statement was to do well and do good. And what that meant for us is the purpose of business is to make a decent profit decently. So we always look for opportunities where we could do just that. And how can we involve others in the organization in doing so? One way was with these old windows.

6:11We would take these old windows out of people's homes and instead of throwing them away, we would turn them into really cool art pieces by giving these sashes to local artists and community members and the high schools. And they would turn these windows into art pieces. And then once a year, all these windows would get auctioned off and the money raised would go to make a positive impact in the life of another individual. If the installer wasn't careful taking those windows out, we wouldn't have windows to auction. If the marketer didn't set an appointment, we wouldn't have windows to auction.

6:41So that's just one example of how you can take a mission statement and just really weave it into the business. And people then feel like their job is more than just a job. It feels like they have purpose. And that's really important. They also understand that their work is impactful. Yeah. And you know, there's countless, especially when we were going through after the pandemic and there was, you know, this quiet quitting and all, you know, whatever terms people wanted to call it, you know, it really, the bottom line came down to people saying, you know, I'm just, I'm not tired of working. I'm just tired of working here.

7:11I'm just tired of working for you. You know, I want to work somewhere where I feel, you know, valued. You know, I write about that in my book that there was a study upwards of 60 % of people in the United States have left a job simply by the way, just to get away from a manager. So there are a lot of reasons why you're right. People quite quit after the pandemic, but then And still, there are a lot of unhappy people. And that's such a shame because, look, it's my belief, if you're a business owner, one thing's for sure. If people love what they do, they tend to do it a whole lot better. So how do we get people just to love what they do?

7:43Because the customer journey really starts with the employee journey. 100%. I mean, I've said it 100 times. Any way, shape, and form that your business comes into contact with a customer, that person is performing a marketing function, regardless of what their job title is. It certainly is. And, you know, it's interesting because when you think about, you know, scripting inside of an organization, it's quite common in the home improvement business where maybe the sales reps are scripted. But really the installers need to be also taught how to communicate with a customer. How do you ask for a check?

8:14How do you make sure the customer is happy and all these sort of things? Because you're right. They're all – the thing about the home improvement industry, unlike many businesses, is 99.9 % of every employee is customer facing. Whether it's over the phone or face-to-face. and everything represents your brand. And you just want to make sure that you're aware of that. Well, look no further than the reviews, the five-star reviews in the home service industry. And they don't often mention the company. They mentioned Rusty who fixed my boiler. That's right. We had a couple of our installers, what they would do is while they were in the home doing whether a bath project or window project, they kept some nine volt batteries in their toolkit.

8:53And they would say, hey, Mrs. Jones, when's the last time you changed your smoke detector batteries? I'm here. I'm happy to do it for you. I'll tell you what, look, we always installed a great shower and a great window for people, but customers love that little 2 % shift. It was a big deal for them. Yeah. Well, and a lot of it's because they're not getting that in a lot of places in their life. Right. And so I think that it kind of, I don't want to say it's easy, but it kind of lowers the bar, doesn't it? Well, people deserve, customers deserve to have a great experience, especially when they're investing their money in something.

9:25Likewise, employees deserve to have a great experience. They're giving up a portion of their life inside of an organization. They should be happy doing so. It shouldn't be a miserable experience. There might be some other stuff they'd rather do. So let's get down to some brass tacks here, some in the weed stuff. You introduce an approach to feedback that you call the center and sphere. You want to break that down? Yeah. So what happens when you tend to give feedback to people, even when it's just a little bit constructive, they tend to kind of shut down and they only, people tend to remember the negative more than the positive.

10:03So when we give feedback to people, we want to transfer belief whenever possible. And we do that through the center of this and the sphere. We explain to them that a, we believe in them and we believe in them because yeah, well, John, I believe in you because I've seen you do X, Y, and Z before. And I know you can continue to do all of that. What I'd like you to work on is fill in the blank, some sort of actionable feedback. But then you surround it again with the sphere of encouragement. Because remember, the purpose of a one-on-one conversation when you're coaching isn't necessarily to terminate somebody, it's to coach them up.

10:35And to be a great coach, you have to be effective. And how do you be effective? Well, you have to connect with people and get people to really want to take advantage of whatever advice you're giving them and not look like you're beating up on them either. It's my pleasure to welcome a new sponsor to the podcast, our friends at ActiveCampaign. ActiveCampaign helps small teams power big businesses with a must-have platform for intelligent marketing automation. We've been using ActiveCampaign for years here at Duct Tape Marketing to power our subscription forms, email newsletters, and sales funnel drip campaigns.

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11:49Now, this offer is limited to new Active Campaign customers only. So what are you waiting for? Fuel your growth, boost revenue, and save precious time by upgrading to Active Campaign today. Yeah, and it's tough. I know as a business leader myself, a lot of times people are doing good work. it's like, it's really easy to take it for granted. Well, that's their job. They get paid to do that. But there's no question that pointing out when people are doing good is a really powerful tool, isn't it? Yeah. What's interesting is some of the best processes came from employees that weren't necessarily satisfied, by the way.

12:27There's this whole thing that when an employee leaves, you're supposed to do an exit survey. And an exit survey, well, okay, that's great. It's an autopsy is what, let's just call it an autopsy. Okay. And, but you get, you mine so much valuable information. We started to do something called stay interviews. Instead of waiting for somebody to leave, let's interview them while they're actually working with us. Let's ask them four questions. The first question is what makes you want to come to work every day? The second question is what would one day make you want to leave? The third question is what is one thing the company is doing wrong today?

12:59And the fourth question is what is something you're not getting out of your leader that you really need. Mining for those things really tells us where we need to take the organization because what happens is when a business grows and, you know, with 600 people, you can imagine the org chart is growing and I'm getting further and further away from the customer and really away from the customer facing people. So stay interviews really connects the leader of the business to what the mindset of the team is, the true culture of the organization. How are people thinking? Because how they think affects how they act.

13:32And how they act is how they behave, which is how the organization performs. Well, and those are some pretty tough questions. And I think that somebody who has asked those questions is going to feel heard. It's like, oh, you care what I think. And isn't that what people want? But we all want to feel heard, valued, and appreciated. Yep. More so than a paycheck, by the way. Yeah. Yeah, no, it shows up all the time when people are surveyed. So how much of this, the word culture has certainly been pretty popular the last 10 years. You know, how much of this really, the problem I have with the word culture is a lot of times people, this is what it should be.

14:05This is what, you know, we ought to, it ought to be, you know, as opposed to this is what it is, because that's really what culture is. I mean, there's things you can do intentionally. So how much of this would you say is culture and how much of it is just figuring out who you are and being it? Well, I think, look, let's talk about what culture is, right? So there are a lot of, I think the word is overused. Every business has a culture. Whether you want it or not, you've got a culture. Now we can talk about what that culture is. But I believe culture is what do people think about the organization?

14:37What do they think about their, how do they think and feel about the business itself? And how does that affect organizational performance? We had a saying in our business that if you wanted to copy our performance, you first had to copy our culture, which means you had to copy what goes on inside of our people's heads. And that's a lot to me, if you have the right culture and you can always inspect your culture, if you look at any organization, I've visited plenty of companies. I know you have too, John. And if you look at how a company hires, how they terminate people, what does that process look like, how they promote, how they reward and compensate, that'll tell you a lot about the culture because it'll tell you what the priorities are inside of the organization, which also tells you how people think and feel about the business.

15:23So there's a line, I think it's directly from the book. Company culture is shaped by the lowest level of acceptable behavior in an organization. That's a pretty, that's a pretty bold statement, Mr. Gottlieb. Yeah. Well, what happens, it's a very important statement. You know, it's easy. It is. The manager that creates a toxic environment shapes the culture of the organization. the high performer, low culture fit, the person that really gets results, but they're not good around the rest of the team that you try to isolate shapes the culture of the organization, the low performer, high culture fit, the person you abs in sales, it's like the person you love, but they can't even close a car door, but you keep them around because you love them.

16:05All of these things shape the culture of an organization. This is why it can't be ignored. You know, one of the pillars in the book is that leaders are aware of the echo of their voice. and the idea is that you can't ignore these sort of things because you're right the look the culture is shaped by the lowest level of acceptable behavior yeah i mean it really kind of disempowers the people that say hey i'm i'm doing this and doing that and like look what they're getting away with you know i guess they don't care it sends a wild ripple effect through the entire organization yeah yeah so you have you briefly mentioned windows for a cause you had another and baths for the brave or yeah, for the brave.

16:43Talk a little bit about, you started talking about where they came from. What impact did they have really on your business to the point where you probably sought out like my next business, we're going to do X, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting because the thing about Windows for Cause is as it makes an employee, a co-producer in the mission statement, it also makes the customer a co-producer. And that's really powerful when you can create a a co-producing customer. Ikea does that really well. If you buy anything from Ikea, everything comes in a little skinny box and you got to put it together.

17:13You know that going into Ikea, but Ikea customers are co-producers keeping the costs of Ikea down. It, Bass for the Brave was another example. You know, it's so sad. The thing about the bath business is it's very joyful, but there's a lot of sadness too. There are a lot of people that have, there are a lot of veterans in fact, that have served our country proudly, but they have a shower because of mobility issues that they're petrified of. They can't step over their bathtub safely. They can't take a shower safely in their own home. And they don't necessarily have the financial means to do anything about it.

17:45Baths for the Brave was an initiative that we started where we surprised free veterans. We surprised veterans with free showers just in time of Veterans Day. And in fact, it wasn't just myself. It became a movement with 30, 40 other home improvement companies across the country, all surprising veterans with free shower projects. When you talk about how do you involve an installer in your mission? I will share with you, John, the installers would fight with each other. They wanted to be the one to install the free shower for the veteran that served our country. And again, we can't do free showers for veterans if customers don't first buy showers from us.

18:23I think a tangible mission that creates a co-producing customer and involves your team in the process is really something special. And that's why I love, you know, from a marketing standpoint there, and the home improvement business was probably as bad as any, it got really tough to find skilled labor there for a long time, especially as demand was skyrocketing. And, you know, I found that companies that did a great job with their employees and were actually able to promote how happy their employees were and what a great place this was to work, that became a tremendous brand, didn't it? Yeah, that's right.

18:57That's right. Because word does get around, doesn't it? Word does get around. It's interesting. And when I sold one of my businesses in 2022, and again, it was coming off of, you know, there's no labor shortage. We received 9 ,000 job applications the last year I had my business. 9 ,000 applications of people that wanted to come. And by the way, this is in Wisconsin where there are more cows than people, just to be clear. So So that's a lot of applications, but people want to be part of something really cool. And again, because really when you think about even recruitment is marketing as well.

19:32It's all marketing. Yeah, a lot of people just think it's lead generation or something. It's like, hey, you run an ad and people show up. And it's really, if we're talking about all the things being true, people want to work a place with purpose. I guarantee you there, some percentage of the A performers that you want, they're looking for that first. That's right. And then if an organization can also create upward mobility, because as long as I've been in this industry, there's been a labor shortage. So let's not even worry about that. Let's just be a training organization where we can take people right out of high school that didn't want to go to college.

20:07And let's teach them a skill where they can do quite well and have a wonderful life with great benefits and, you know, raise a family and all those things that are really cool in life. So, but you have to believe in people to do that. Get good at their craft. Did you start with apprentice programs? Was that part of your? We did. Yeah, we were able to bring anybody in and just if they were willing, if they had the right mindset, if they were hungry and trainable and all those sort of things, yeah, we can put them on a path of success. And that didn't mean just because we hired them for this role, that's where they ended up.

20:39Sometimes we'd move them into another role inside of the business. Again, it really does come down to just taking a moment and trying to find the best fit for somebody and not just kicking them to the curb of in the role they're in, it's not working out. Yeah, awesome. Well, Brian, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. You want to tell people where they might connect with you and find more about Beyond the Hammer. Yeah, you can always connect with me on my website, which is briangottlieb.com. And Beyond the Hammer is available on Amazon, the audio version, Kindle, and of course the hardcover book.

21:11It's a great read. I think you really enjoyed it. It's a fun story. It's a fun, it's a parable and it's also actionable so you can plug it into your business very quickly. Awesome. Well, again, I appreciate you stopping by and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

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