ScreamingBox Technology & Business Rundown

SPEAKERS
Dave Erickson, Russell Dubree, Botond Seres

Dave Erickson 00:04
Does your startup or small business culture really mean anything? Can business culture really grow sales? Business culture is really about how you treat people. But for many businesses, it's not something they think about, change or improve. Is your business culture something that is holding back your business success? We're going to discuss business culture and how it affects your growth on this month’s ScreamingBox podcast. Please like our podcasts and subscribe to our channel to get notified when next month's podcast is released.

Dave Erickson 00:57
How to Grow your startup and jumpstart your sales. What is your company's business culture and how can you use it to grow your business? Welcome to the ScreamingBox technology and business rundown podcast. In this month's podcast my co-host Botond Seres and I, Dave Erickson, are going to get some culture this month by talking to Russell Dubree, founder of Performance Faction. Russell is a well respected business coach who is insanely passionate about helping business owners scale their business in a way that brings profit, purpose and meaning to their lives. After a tour as an officer in the United States Air Force, and a few other startups in between, he co-founded the digital agency life blue. After 15 years, he sold a majority stake in the company in 2017 and an eight figure valuation near the end of 2021. He felt his time as a digital agency operator had reached its end, and decided to focus on helping other business owners create successful businesses that are profitable, sustainable and built to last. To this end, he started Performance Faction Consulting, to help businesses reach their full potential by setting up the right foundations and Business Cultures needed for success. Today, we are going to discuss business culture and how it affects your growth from startup to sales and how to make growth happen. So Russell, an impressive history. Is there anything you'd like to add?

Russel Dubree 02:21
No, I think you've covered it very well. Dave, thank you for having me on the show, excited to talk about all things culture. And yeah, looking forward to the conversation.

Dave Erickson 02:30
Let's start off with business culture. Maybe you can describe to our listeners, what do you think business culture means and is?

Russel Dubree 02:39
Yeah, I mean, a very, very nebulous term. And, and you can I was I have a talk I give, and I tell people, you can go on Google and get several 100 definitions, but I really just like in culture to the collective behaviors in the business or the cumulative, unacceptable or acceptable behaviors that exist in a business. So at a very behavioral level, right. And, and that's probably one of the challenges in business that is very this in squishy, intangible definition. So I'd say the first start is right, how do we define it in a way that people can understand?

Botond Seres 03:11
So what role do you think leadership plays in shaping and nurturing a healthy business, Russell?

Russel Dubree 03:20
I don't know if this is fortunately, unfortunately. But pretty much everything. I mean, the business is ultimately going to follow where the leadership takes it. And right, and I help a lot of small businesses. And that's one of these challenges that small businesses have in scaling is, right, if you're a small business, you can kind of just get it all done because you've got that capability, that skill, you're highly motivated, highly ambitious, and then you hit that wall. And then now it's about people movements, how do we share these behaviors that are positive that are going to help the business grow, from every level, right, just from not only the delivery, but to how we get work done, and internal processes and things like that. So the leader has to lead the way, in all those different things. And the more and more that business grows, you know, making sure that they do that in thinking terms of the people, not just the bottom line in dollars. I think that's what happens a lot in business today. It's too much. How's this gonna affect sales? How's this gonna affect expenses? And just going straight to those answers, versus how do we get this group of people to provide more value and be more valuable to them in that process as well?

Botond Seres 04:29
Right, so together correctly, that you believe in leading by example, in these questions.

Russel Dubree 04:37
That's just a given. I think I've, I feel like I've gone through the University of Leadership through, I did ROTC in college and spent some time as an Officer in the United States Air Force. And let me tell you one thing you get hammered real fast on is if you didn't lead by example and show, it had to be a team first mentality and you're a leader, especially coming in as a young Lieutenant and being over people that had been in the Air Force for 20 years. If, if you didn't lead with a people first mindset, and by example, you were gonna get your lunch handed to you real fast.

Dave Erickson 05:11
A lot of startups are started by a wide variety of people and sometimes startups, you know, are started by a group of engineers or an engineering person, not really people with much experience in leadership or running a company, but they come up with a product idea and they say, look, let's make a company out of it. So in that situation, you're kind of thrusting someone who may be an introvert, or maybe not somebody who doesn’t even understand management theory or anything like that, into the role of CEO or leader of the company. What kind of advice do you have for somebody like that? Who, you know, doesn't necessarily have leadership skills, what should they be kind of focusing on to become better leaders?

Russel Dubree 05:58
Leadership is certainly a journey, right? I'm not the leader, I am today that, you know, that I was when I was, when I was younger. Or I should say, right, that I am a far better leader. And I think honestly, the first part for business owners is empathy. You know, think because we are ambitious, because we maybe have this idea. And right, we're highly invested, we got a lot of motivation behind this, that we forget, others aren't just so naturally inclined to that thing. They've got their own personal interests in mind, and what they're trying to achieve with their life. So ultimately, it's empathy for that understanding that, you know, they're not going to put in 100 hours for your business, just out the gate unless you inspire them to do so. So I think empathy just goes a long way, that this is a people movement journey, and how do we bring along others, we have to show that we care about them. So I think along with empathy comes care, that if we care about best interests of people involved in this process, that's going to guide us to a lot of the right decisions, especially as I make the analogy a lot when money decisions come into play, oh, gosh, what this money decision is going to have a very adverse effect on people. But when we really take up people first mentality, and like I said, again, that empathy approach, it often just guides us to, the, to the right answers. And, you know, I think, in what I speak about to, a lot is, it was that, that transition when we've decided we needed to stop focusing on just revenue expenses, how do we survive? But really, how do we create an environment where people can thrive? And I didn't have all the answers when I asked that question the first time, but just simply asking that question and going down that path, was, was pretty instrumental, I think, in turning the business around.

Botond Seres 07:37
I mean, that's an interesting paradigm that one side leader has to ensure that whoever they are leading, set out and perform the task ahead of them. But on the other end, they also have to enable that team to work well together. One thing I have found during my professional career, I have yet to play a professional leadership role. I'll be honest with you, Russell, but one thing that I found is it, it is incredibly effective to just focus on the small things like sort of like psychologists would do, like always leading with the same question like how are you, not Hey, I need you to do this right. I'm sure that you have a much much better explanation for this than I could ever give. So

Russel Dubree 08:40
Yeah, I mean, right if we go back to that different cultures its behaviors; behaviors are not massive concepts right behaviors or this the smallest of things to the point saying hi, I had a business owner my podcast not too long ago, and they said a huge turning point in their business was they used to show up every day in their office and they would go straight to their office put their head down and get started on work. And and then you know, I don't remember how they arrived at this epiphany but they're like, I'm gonna stop and I'm gonna say hi to people in right in that process, you know, she learned more about them and and you know, I think she basically said this was the turning point in your business when she started saying hi to people and she came into the office every day and and right so many positive incomes, we can outcomes, we can assume what would fall out of that right you understand your team, you have more again, going back to empathy, right? This is all a relationship game. And, and then the other thing I think is right, yes, this very task driven mentality. I think again, a lot of times business owners are very ambitious. How do we get, how do we just move on to the next thing, not necessarily mean we always slow down and think okay, this again, this is a people thing. We will move faster in the end if we bring others along with us, and so I'm a big believer and even just the one on one where you know, if I talked to a lot of business owners, they say in those one on one meetings they have it's what are you working on? What's going to be coming next? All these very again, task oriented things, but those conversations really should just be about the growth of that individual. Where are you at in your career? What are obstacles from, from the next place you're at? And how do we work together on solving those? You know, is there a new responsibility you need? You know, so many things can come up with those questions. If we just say, this is about growth, not how to get work done. That's all humans, I think we're always incentivized to get tasks done at the end of the day. But can we be inspired to achieve at a higher level? That's very different than Yeah, very, very operational task based conversations.

Dave Erickson 10:36
As someone who started several businesses like yourself, I definitely understand the concept of different people, have different responses. And I do think that, particularly like the first business I had to run, the focus was on the people more on, the focus was on the work that people were doing. And that for some people actually works really well. They, they prefer to be treated that way and other people start missing the other aspect of it, right. And if I made a mistake, and you know, running a business, it was I was focusing too much on the tasks versus the people. And then obviously, the second business, I said, Okay, let's, let's focus more on the people. And as you learn these things, you grow. And now the focus is on the people. And sometimes I err on the other side, which is not getting the task done. So it's, again, a balancing act of, you know, letting people do what they want versus giving them guidance. So maybe you can kind of talk a little bit about that in, say, small businesses or small startups, there's usually a small team of, you know, three or four people, their personalities may not line up. How would you like, what, what advice do you have for those types of companies of balancing out those personalities? And getting them kind of moving more along in the same direction?

Russel Dubree 12:05
Yeah, you know, that's a really good question, Dave. And I think this is, this was a big learning experience for us. And that growth journey, and I don't even know if I even describe it, linear prac, practice, but just even understand how I can even came to all this, we're our first five years in business, we probably got to about a million dollars in revenue. And but we were, you know, this close to just failing any given day, I think we're gonna we're our doors were likely to shut. And then and then we, as I said, kind of some of these philosophy changes, mindset changes, the the epiphany went off. And, you know, we had some pretty fast growth there and then eventually sold the company for an eight figure exit. So all this is, Hey just give some credibility to some of the, the concepts we're discussing here. But this is what I think is the big struggle for small businesses, you probably start out hiring who you can get, not maybe always who is the best fit for the culture and the environment. And and, and that's a really tough struggle to navigate, right, you don't have a lot of budget just to go and get anybody on your team. So at times, your budgets constricted and, and even just, as you mentioned earlier, you haven't done this before in terms of hiring, how to bring people on your team, but, but ultimately, if you can get to this point, and the sooner the better, right, if we hire people on the values based upon the values of the company, and you know, certain traits that we say, are really important for people to going to work there, they can have some of those personality idiosyncrasies, and I don't think it's really, it's not going to really be a problem in the environment. But if there's fundamental values that you know, I think are misaligned or off, that's going to be tough. And I think that's sometimes where you see some of those issues, right. And this is taken, a fundamental one that we were very important about this. We wanted people that wanted to learn and grow. And so we always even just said, like, Hey, if you're not better, from where you are today, two years from now, then you're probably not the type of person from this company, if you just want to come in, do your tasks and get off. That's, it's not about I want to make you work 100 hours, that's just about saying, I want to be the best developer possible, I want to be the best designer possible. And, and so right, that's a value thing. Some people do just want to check those boxes, and there might be an environment that's perfectly great. But that wasn't going to work in an environment. So how to, again, gets back to just values alignment and, and bringing people on the team that share at least at some level, some core set of values that are very similar.

Botond Seres 14:28
I mean, it's really important to have a team where the core values the, the core beliefs of the people on there are a good match or at least a decent match. But even if those values are misaligned, it is possible for, it is possible to remedy the situation by molding the culture to account for all of these different points of view. And I do wonder if you have any particularly, fun examples and pulls off situations like this.

Russel Dubree 15:02
You know, and I think that's probably again, a tough thing from a small culture culture versus a large culture, a larger culture when, you know, those beliefs are shared widely across the board, you know, I think people can assimilate and kind of be inspired and learn, like, oh, maybe this is a better way for me to operate or, or I was inspired to, for whatever things and by going back to a small culture, you know, one person can dominate so much of the behaviors of that group. And, and so that's what makes it all the more, I guess, you could say fragile at a smaller level versus higher level. But downside, right is a larger company, if they've got some maybe negative aspects in there. You know, it's a lot harder to reorient them. But I'd say at the end of the day, it just all comes back to behaviors. And focus on a behavior level, if you say, learning and development is important, and you want people to grow, are you putting your money where your mouth is, you know, in what, what do you have in place to show that? So for example, in our company, since that was such a big component, we, right, hadn't everyone had a learning and development budget for a relatively small company, I know, that's some of these things are things large companies just have out the gate because they can throw money at it. But that was, that was a big expense for us to give everyone you know, $2,000 a year to say, you know, go do go learn something with this, you know, that's it's kind of free money for you to go do that. We held this pre-pandemic, so we're still all in the office. But every week we call it Life Blue University and brought people in and, and, you know, we had lunch brought in, and we bring speakers in. And that would range from development related topics to, you know, cybersecurity, and you know, how to set up a server and things like that to things that were just complete, outside the box, right, nutritionists, fitness experts, financial experts just to help people with the total person concept. And then sometimes just inspirational. We brought in a very interesting gentleman that collected Homeless Signs, our people are signs from homeless people. And sometimes he paid for him. So he had this entire art collection. And he talked about just this whole journey of this whole process and everybody, I mean, some people were practically in tears, they were just inspired. Right? So it was a culture of learning and caring and kind of total person. But it had to be, you know, we didn't just say that, we didn't just kind of put her foot down and say, This is what we're going to do, we put our money behind the behaviors in the business that, that match what we're trying to accomplish there. And it absolutely changed some people, I wouldn't say not not maybe revolutionary, but But you know, I think people got on board that maybe otherwise wouldn't have been

Dave Erickson 17:36
In starting a business, particularly small startups, but also SMBs, don't do a lot of this stuff in the beginning. You know, some businesses do, they sit down, and they they write out their mission statement, and then they write out okay, we, you know, our business culture, these are the points that we really want about our business and how we want to run it and treat people and they're very detailed about that. And usually, those companies are run by people who are very detail oriented. And that's great. But many businesses that I've talked to, they don't have any of that, they don't even think about it, when they started the business, they're just so focused on, okay, product is ready, we gotta get it here, and we got to start marketing, we got to start selling, and they start getting into the nuts and bolts of the business. I think it might be much harder later to correct that, to all of a sudden, you've been running the business in a certain way. And then all of a sudden, a year later, you know, we really should kind of have a value statement and a mission statement. And let's get everybody together and talk about what's important to them, that type of stuff. How important is it? I mean, doesn't really matter? Do you think that you need to start off with a very precise or set up or flushed out mission statement and value statement and, and all that type of stuff? Or is it okay to start the business and then a year later try to do it? What do you think works best for you?

Russel Dubree 19:01
That's a really good question. I don't know if I have like, the quick thing or the very pointed, specific answer. And, and, because one of the things I mean, people have made all different types of businesses work with all different types of manners and still get to the same power, even if we're just talking about good culture businesses. I think if I look back on my own journey, at least to have at least a waypoint, right, the notion of if we take a compass, and we just say we can go in any direction, that's not as good as we're gonna head north. And I don't know exactly where north is yet or where my waypoint is, but, but just having some ideas and some of those thoughts written on paper, I think is, is at least maybe a good starting point, even if you maybe just don't even have an idea of what you all want that to be in the long run. And the reality is, is the businesses, the business is probably especially when it's a smaller startup, it's going to naturally inherit the values and those traits and the mission and the purpose of the owner. And, it's over time or that business, the business culture itself starts as separate from, from the owner, especially if they don't manage it maybe, to the, to the right way. And so I think that's why sometimes culture can be bad and startups, it can be good and bad is that right there, a lot of times the dream was someone starts a business they have, you want to make money. And right, it's part of even staying in businesses of the survival game of making money. So I think that's what becomes the driving force of the culture, if we don't really set it. Otherwise, I mean, business has to survive, it has to make money. That's the fuel for growth.

Botond Seres 20:32
Russell, for you personally, what does the this expression mean? Slow and smooth, and smooth is fast.

Russel Dubree 20:40
You know, that, I've started hearing that a lot more recently. And I think that is a really good way to describe, you know, right, the, you know, I think in all this chaos of a business environment, especially a startup environment is Go, go, go get it done, get it on, get it done, and you miss out so many pieces, right. Again, a lot of times owner driven, the owner might have that talent to go 100 miles an hour. But you know, maybe the intern or some of these other employees don't, don't have the skills or the ability or, again, goes back to maybe even motivation to go 100 miles an hour. And so while you might solve some challenges, you're going to create a lot of fires in your wake. And so I think that's just, your company in the long run is only as good as how fast the team can go, not how fast any one individual can go. And so ultimately, the whole business goes faster when, when slow, and I think that's why slow is smooth, you have the time to focus on attention to detail, you have the time to focus on process, you have the time to focus on people. And in the long run, those people are getting better, more empowered along that path. And then eventually, that’s smooth is where it becomes fast. I think that's how it least correlates in the, the, the I think, in the same way, right? Coming from the military reference, if you are taking a you know, a building, let's say in the military, and you just rush in guns blazing and everything like that, you know, we know how we can imagine how chaotic that would be versus taking the time going through it the right way that ultimately you'll probably get to the same or better result faster than Yeah, all the chaos that might ensue. Otherwise,

Botond Seres 22:18
Right, I think you bring up a great point there motivation that so many people miss, like, I don't know, if you Dave or you Russell saw these CEO mad clowns couple months ago, wherever, where they just fail to grasp the concept that they as the owner, have the motivation to move the company towards a eight figure or nine figure exit, while the intern, earning literally nothing, may not share that motivation may not be inclined to work 16 hour days. And I feel like there's a disconnect there. And I wonder if you have any good tips to sort of internalize this concept of vastly different levels of motivation?

Russel Dubree 23:09
Yeah, that's I mean, that's a really good question. I mean, one, it just is the constant reminder that they've done so many studies now and prove that money is a relatively low motivating factor. And there's even more studies that the more complicated work is or the type of work someone's doing, that it's actually demotivating to try to just throw money at incentive. So it works great. If you know, I'm making widgets, right, I can move so much, more faster if you pay me more to make more widgets, I know the exact, I guess there's a term I use to sort of create this up. But success is the ability to match effort reward. But when that is big and complicated and nebulous. It, people don't know how to work harder, to you know, even grasp that financial incentive that might be in place anyway. And so I think this just comes down to fundamental needs. What are people's needs? That's what's going to motivate them, they want to be a part of something they want to belong, they want to contribute, this is a fundamental need we have as human beings. And, and right, they want to be successful, they want to feel like they're contributing, and they have their own mission and values and things and this gets back to value alignment. And if they can do that in their work, that's going to be inspiring, this is going to be motivating towards them. But you know, if just someone is telling them. work harder, throw money, and they really don't know what that means. You have so many more unintended consequences than in terms of what their activity is going to be. They're going to be thinking they might be doing something really good. And so, even get back to your question, you know, from the intern to you know, every level. Are we meeting the needs of why that person is there and right. interns have a different set of needs and a senior executive or something like that. But again, if we can align these together and, and everyone thinks, everyone honestly if we just think about this We all have, we can't expect someone to just want what we want, we have to meet them in the middle. And maybe that's just how I will net out that answer is, is meet people in the middle with what their needs might be. Create places for them to fulfill those needs. And I think you solve a lot of that along the way.

Dave Erickson 25:20
I mean, it's definitely easier when you're a small company, to be able to, you know, look at even understand or know, the needs of the people you're working with your employees and, and some of them are doing tasks that are redundant and don't have a lot of flexibility in them, because they're very mechanical or whatever. But other tasks, you know, some owners are very micromanaging and want to manage every aspect of a workers work, whether it's, you know, doing something mechanical, or whether it's creative, or whatever, and some owners are able to give their you know, you're the expert, you go do it. And I trust you kind of kind of way of doing it. When you're small, that's relatively easy. Obviously, when you refer to your employee as employee number 3672, can you please do this? And you're pretty big at that point. That scalability, how do you take a business that's small and personal, and the relationships are very close? And as you grow and start scaling up? How do you keep it so that you can still motivate them not just with money, but with relationships and treating them well?

Russel Dubree 26:33
You know that that's a challenge, I almost want to go figure out and how to solve at some point, I think we do have our examples out there. So one of the things we were registered B Corp, don’t know if you’re familiar with that concept, but for those that aren't and listening, that's basically it's a collective out there that measures its members that say, We balance, in profit and purpose. And so we're not just about the dollar. But here's all the things we've proven that we're, we have in place that say, you know, we're kind of about this concept. And so if it starts, I think it starts at the top. I mean, I think that was the baton mentioned earlier, right? It starts with the top and that trickles down. And, and I think if I'm, if I'm being honest, I'd say we have a lot of leaders in businesses, at a lot of different levels, especially the larger the organization that got there not because of their ability to move, inspire or grow people, but because of some other skill they have. And then when you have a collective of leaders throughout the entire organization, where that's their currency, that's their value, that's what they're after, you kind of get what you get, I think in terms of the overall culture. And so we were really big, and I know that, right is people need to be in leadership and management positions that are excellent at guiding and managing and growing other people. That really is where I think the, the net net comes down to, we still need our hard chargers and our dynamic people that have the skill sets, but oftentimes don't know that they need to be in kind of, management or even true leadership positions. Because that, you know, I think that's just going to affect culture in a negative way, in the long run. Because they're not, I mean, quite an not not to give a blanket label. I know we're talking about a big concept here. But a lot of times those people don't really know how to achieve success through others, they only know how to achieve success for themselves.

Dave Erickson 28:22
Someone who's doing a creative role, like ad creation, or marketing has one kind of style. Sales is a completely different one, right? Sales are all about motivation and they use money as a reward, but really, you know, to keep sales motivated, you know, you have to hear no a lot of times. And so managing salespeople must be very different. In some businesses, the sales are all done by the owners initially, if an owner is, has a startup, and they want to kind of grow their sales, that's a personality thing and a culture thing as well, not just finding a salesperson, is that correct?

Russel Dubree 29:03
5000 years ago, right? People on the frontier, right? And we needed all these different roles, we needed the challenger that's gonna go in and you know, not right. And then we need, you know, the peacemakers to keep everybody together. And then we know we need all these different personality types and roles. And, and so, they all fit into the system. And you know, to the extent, sales, right, that is a different personality type than the person doing very creative work. They are inspired by a completely different type of thing, right? This, this gets back to where they need to hold some of the same values. But we can lead those people differently when we understand these different personality types and how they operate and what their needs are. I think just even knowing that works as well.

Botond Seres 29:48
Realizing the differences in both needs and motivating factors, but I think that we can add on top of that to also realize the, the, commonalities on both sides. So let's say that I, as an employee, I would like to earn more and spend less. However, you as a CEO also would like to earn more and spend less. And these two, these two value systems have an inherent conflict built in. And I do wonder how these can affect certain aspects of, of, the culture? Like how to, how to mitigate or how to mediate these conflicts?

Russel Dubree 30:39
Yeah, you might you might you might be the number one crux there of all challenges in business, right there is, if everybody wants to make the most and, and the least amount of inputs or resources or effort, how do we align that? I think the first thing is, is results. And I think that's probably a lot of the problem. And especially right, we're going down a technology path in the business world, right, we're mov, we're far past the industrial age as being the main piece of, I guess, you could say, to label this this time period we're in. And so you know, the industrial age mentality says, to have results, you actually have to be there doing the work, you know, there was no automation, there was no, work smarter, not harder, you just had to do that. So I think it's more about embracing results, and measuring on that, not how long someone's working or anything along those lines. I mean, that's the scary thing I'm hearing in this kind of post pandemic, you know, tech companies trying to get returned to the office and all these mechanisms, they tried to play, put in place just to make sure someone is sitting in a seat, or whatever is the scary part of that. But it's not too hard to just say if I just measured results and if you can get those results done in an hour, I don't care what you're doing, you know, the other seven hours of the day or something along those lines, the same way a customer doesn't care if you achieve results for them, and it took you one minute, they're going to pay for that value. So, so, it is and isn't complicated. But I think again, we've set up all these practices that are built around someone being present, not results based,

Dave Erickson 32:21
You know, people got used to having a certain level of freedom and responsibility during the pandemic, working remotely. And now a lot of companies are saying, wait a minute, I got this office building, I'm paying rent on, or own or whatever, and I need to fill it with people. So go back to work. I've actually talked to some developers. They're fairly high level developers and they say that developers from other companies call them saying, Hey, do you have a job at your place, because my place wants me to go back into an office. And I don't want to go back to an office anymore. So all of a sudden, there's kind of this it again, it's a small percentage of the workforce. It's not everybody. But you know, 10, or 20% of the workforce has decided they don't want to go back to an office, right? And so small businesses could use that as a way of gaining people that they couldn't normally get by offering remote work. But there's still a lot of people who are running businesses who aren't comfortable trying to manage remote workers, right? Our business, everybody's been remote from the beginning. So we're very comfortable with it. But there are a lot of people and a lot of companies who feel the only way to, “control” people or manage people is to have them in their office so that they're there. I don't know, you know, that's kind of part of the business culture, right? That a business can decide, okay, maybe we don't need everybody in and who gets to be remote and who has to come in and that type of stuff. That's probably one of the bigger challenges facing businesses right now. Right?

Russel Dubree 33:55
I mean, it's definitely, it's definitely been a hot topic. And I think I fell into the camp that you couldn't pay me to go back to an office every single day and right I was the owner of a company that showed up to an office every single day. And one of the things I write pre even remote work being a commonplace thing was always how inspired by that actually, the things that remote business has to solve to be successful is the same things and in person business needs to solve to be successful we just get fooled with our eyes and kind of this butts and seats mentality. But again, results are a remote business has to be more results based on order to survive anyway, otherwise, we see the hacks I've seen on tick tock and stuff like that, that people create to how to feign or fake being productive or something along those lines, like fight that people are gonna go where they're incentivized, but, you know, if they're, if their job depends on hitting a result, they're going to do what they need to do to hit that result and the better we can measure what that's going to be out the gate, the more successful our business is going to be at any level, any size overall. And, and, and yeah, stop measuring on things that aren't right. A butt in seat is not providing value, some measurable metric or thing in place that's gonna say, Were you successful today or were you not, is a far better way to operate?

Botond Seres 35:18
I feel like you really hit the nail on the head with that one, since the only reason these hacks can exist like the most jugglers and whatever else. Yeah, it's because even in remote environments, we are looking at like, Oh, is it Green on Teams? It’s not Green? Why? Who cares? I mean, maybe, maybe someone is just trying to think about stuff and goes for a walk. But now the way, the way we measure presence is just, Is Green on Teams? Yes, good, he’s working. Are there any results from that day? Maybe not? Maybe yes. Yeah. But that is as much, much less taking into consideration I find. And, and still, but just, I'm gonna go totally off topic here. But this future where AI is creating art and people are stuck doing menial jobs is, is not the future I imagined there as a wee lad. It's very far from what I imagined.

Dave Erickson 36:22
AI and what roles it’s playing in businesses, you know, it's almost like your business culture nowadays has to kind of start including that a very good example, is the writers strike that's occurring in Hollywood. They're striking, part of one of their demands is they don't want AI to do some of the writing, right? And the studios were like, well, we want that option. And so, you know, employees fear new things, and fear change. I look at AI as just a tool that allows people to become more productive. But people doing work see AI as a threat to their job, which it may be in some cases, in other cases, if you, you know, it's an opportunity to grow and be more valuable. But I think that's something that in business culture, businesses have to take a look at, of, how do they want to have aI involved in their business? And what role does it play?

Russel Dubree 37:20
Yeah, I mean, I think I think I mean, we're still in this topsy turvy nature of of AI, and what's going to be long term effects going to be in, you know, I was at a conference recently, and the most passionate discussion at this whole conference was the topic of AI and all that. But I think we all kind of net it out in great insight, it's this is a tool, and tools historically have not eliminated jobs, they've morphed jobs. And I think that's really where AI’s going to play out. As well, as we're still going to need humans to do things. It's just what the humans, the human portion of that is just going to change with AI, it's going to make things faster, I mean, it's certainly going to cause a shift and in, you know, the amount of if nothing else, the amount of content that gets produced, because it can happen in an instant, versus, you know, some humans do do take time to do things, but, you know, I might be worried, I guess, insane from a workforce perspective, if I'm below average, and then this real machine can come on and instantly do better than me, but that means I have, you know, I have to morph myself in that right. How can I basically always say that out better embrace this, not fight it, because it's coming, and it's going to, it's just like, whether I liken it to the web, you know, 20 years ago, where we were so worried that you know, Wix and things like that were gonna put us out of business, because people could just go build websites themselves, but it's far from that might create a little bit lower floor that someone would get in without paying another company, but found out real quickly. If you want a good website, you can't make that in Wix, you can't do that yourself, you still need, you know, how you structure and right when we have roles like UI, UX, and, and all these things, we've added that process versus just your developer in the in the basement of their house that can kind of do it all put it all together. You know, 20 years ago.

Dave Erickson 39:10
it's a very interesting evolution about how these business tools come into a business in the advertising industry was like that, that they were grappling with banner ads and website advertising and all of a sudden, smartphones came along and they were like, Oh my God, what's this going to do to our industry it's going to kill us and you know that they're not going to do traditional advertising and and you know, it just gave them a new opportunity to learn and grow and those agencies that understood it and learn how to do mobile advertising grew right and those that didn't didn't I think it's kind of a similar situation.

Russel Dubree 39:48
I was just gonna say history has shown at this point right those that fight change die, I think a Blockbuster video, I mean, they were just dead set on that, you know, people were gonna go into a store and rent videos and things like that for eternity. Well, and that right and we we I'm sure you've maybe heard they had the opportunity to buy Netflix for, you know, a 1,000th of a fraction of what it's worth today and then, you know, just a direct comparison, they're looking at Netflix and how they evolved from I'm sending you a DVD to, you know, what, what Netflix is today? I mean, I don't know a single person, honestly, too often that doesn't have a Netflix subscription. And so, so yeah, history is proven, you cannot fight it, you better figure out how to embrace it.

Dave Erickson 40:28
How often? Do businesses need to reevaluate their business culture? Is that like a continuous thing, or once a year? Or only when things change? Or what do you think?

Russel Dubree 40:38
I mean, I think that, you know, we've heard this saying, culture eats strategy for lunch, or whatever. I think that's the culture is going to exist or not exist, depending on what you do or don't do is so the question then becomes, yes, I think I liken it to, you know, write in a startup mindset, the owner has to wear many hats out the gate, there's no avoiding that. But it is not too far into the business where I think their importance does become on managing and focusing on the culture, how is it evolving and is it evolving in the direction that it needs to versus not and really just having your thumb on that. And, and, you know, I would say, you know, even as low as 15 to 20 people, your, if your business is focused on that I have, maybe I need to do some study someday, that you would be far more successful than if you're still trying to do all the sales or do all this one piece that. And then something else is culture, oftentimes, it can get completely ignored. And then it then it like I said, it's gonna grow in some direction, one way or another, isn't the direction you want or not.

Botond Seres 41:44
I mean, personally, I think culture is a thing that needs to be constantly reevaluated. Like just how we do in real life, outside of business, culture is changing by the day. It was just a few decades ago that many of the social practices that are 100% accepted now, were absolutely taboo. Like, I mean, I don't want to bring up anything too controversial, but I'm just gonna say the one example, which is very apparent in today's society, as we used to have insane asylums and we decided that that was a terrible idea. And let's just give those people jobs and give them a place in society. But with every culture of change, there are good sides and bad sides. And I think one of the things we lack as well, I say, we both, I mean, you or anyone else, who actually leads is a good set of criteria to evaluate future cultural changes that we would like to implement.

Russel Dubree 42:51
Yeah, it's hard. I mean, right, who could have predicted the pandemic and the massive change? You know, obviously, hopefully, we don't have cataclysmic events like that too often. But yes, cool. I mean, right, to the whole point, you know, I mean, we've seen it so much, it and I think in this information age we're living in we've seen it change on such a, you know, I think for far faster than we can actually comprehend as humans, if you just only compare it to the first several 1000 years of, of modernized society. And so yeah, I mean, I think if nothing else, the cultural trait that will adapt and play well, the best over the upcoming years is the ability to adapt, the ability to learn quickly and embrace new things. And if nothing else, maybe that's what companies should, would focus on is how do we adapt? How do we, how do we be an environment where we're learning? And, and, you know, Woe to the businesses that want to fight and make things like they used to be or any group are out there. Good luck, I say to that.

Dave Erickson 43:55
Some people welcome change and want change some people, you know, change comes along, they really don't want change. They like it the way it is. You know, you mentioned something in the history of I think Life Blue is your agency. I think it's something that is similar to many businesses, they, they build the business, they get it to a point and it kind of plateaus, right? Year after year, they can't seem to grow the sales, they can't seem to grow the business. Maybe they don't want to, some businesses are just happy chugging along and making the money they're making. But other businesses were like, I would like to grow my business. I don't know how or, something's happened with your company. You kind of reached that point, right? You said that it kind of grew to a certain point, and that stayed there and then all of a sudden you had explosive growth. In that period of growth, did something change in your business culture that helped you grow or to make that growth happen? Maybe you can talk a little bit about how that happened, and maybe how other businesses can kind of stimulate their growth by doing that.

Russel Dubree 45:03
Yeah, and you know, I focus a lot of my work today on the agency space. So I definitely understand at least from a kind of a thought level professional technological service perspective how a business ecosystem works. I think, across all businesses, a lot of the same principles apply. But I'll be resonant to say, you know, that's 100% True, just because I have not gotten an experience in manufacturing or some other space like that. But, you know, I think we talked a little bit earlier, it was that epiphany that just said, Look, people we don't, we don't have a machine that we can fix and operate, and it's going to spit out 1000 more widgets, per se, we have this group of people that are doing the work that, you know, for lack of a better term is our machine. And so just like any machine, you would have, you have to take care of that, you have to give it the latest technology, you have to, you know, repair it when it seems broken, or something's not quite working, right. And you have to give it the right input so it's going to put out the right product, if we just kind of break this down to its simplest components. So it goes back to just asking that question, How does that look like, right, and there's a lot more business theory that even exists. You know, 12 years ago, when we were going about this process of how people are motivated and work again, moving out of this industrial age mindset. So, so, I do a talk on, it's called, “the eight keys to high performance culture”. And I think that's, I mean, if we could really start one culture is more than just fun. I think you have a lot of companies out there that say, we do happy hours, and we have these get togethers and we have we make jokes at work. And that's, we have a great culture. And that's, that's a part of culture. That is not the culture. I mean, because at the end of the day, if that's all that's going on in the business, then we're not producing results. We're not growing people. We're not, we're not developing them. So it's all the other things, am I am I do we have integrity in the business, trustworthiness? Do we have transparency? Are we showing how the business is performing? Do we have accountability? Do we measure how we're how we're how we're performing? And, you know, those are a few? So there's several elements to culture beyond just having fun and and I think, at any given time, if you have a business that's maybe hitting a plateau back to your original question, you know, you've probably got something that either hasn't scaled in that right from an element of culture, or just simply need some refining, based upon where the business has grown to or something that it's achieved.

Dave Erickson 47:29
Most businesses, it's, it's either a supply issue, they can't produce enough, they can't make enough, they can't do enough, or it's the sales side, they don't have enough sales, they don't have enough income, they don't have, you know, some businesses is both where they have both challenges. But usually, most businesses, it seems to be on one side or another. If it's on the supply side, that's more internal, or in the case of, you know, supply chain issues, it's, it may not be internal. And on the sales side, yes, it could be internal, you don't have the salesperson and you need the salesperson, or it could be on the marketing side, you're not getting enough incoming leads or things like that. But from a culture standpoint, you know, again, people are motivated. So if you do have somebody who knows the business, they may not think they're a salesperson, if you work with them, and motivate them, they may try it, and they may be successful at it, right, versus trying to hire somebody outside who doesn't know anything about your business, and they just come in and try to do something. Right. Yeah. Most, most small businesses struggle with sales anyways. Right?

Russel Dubree 48:41
Yeah, I mean, as at a smaller scale right there, you're gonna hit that by what are your lead generation mechanisms, you know, things especially coming from technology services, businesses, so many businesses get to a certain size just on referrals. Referrals aren't scalable in the long run of the business, they're a great component. I mean, you're probably doing decent work, maybe most likely. But right until you learn to actually market you learn in turn, you learn to have a specific target audience that you apply value to that's that's going to be that's, you know, especially in a lot of clients I work with that's, that's almost number one for all of them when they're not where they're at where they want their business to be. And I think you solve some of those fundamental layers, right? How to, how to, you know, how to get your product done in a way that you can train somebody on, and how to generate your own leads. That will take you a good long way. And then that's problems I haven't personally encountered yet, right? When you get to 100 million, what are your challenges to scale to get to a billion? Those are, those are things I probably really haven't thought too much, there yet.

Dave Erickson 49:39
There's obviously, you know, different downsides and upsides to the way you get business. I mean, referrals tend to be more personal, so they have a lot more margin in them. Whereas incoming leads tend to be more competitive, because they're looking not just at you, but many other people. So there's a kind of a spectrum to that. I think that this, this idea of business culture, you know, I think it's more powerful than people realize. And I think that, you know, they really need, especially when starting a business, to focus more on it. Because I think that when you start your business, and you know where you want to go, and you know how you want your company to be like, you have a picture in your head, when my company is small, I want it to be like this. And we do these things. And I think that gives you a guide, whereas, you know, I got a product, I just spent two years building it and now I want to go to sell it and go do business, I started a business and, okay, partner, I known you for a couple days, and you look nice, and let's start a business together. And, you know, I don't think that works for you. I think nowadays, even a small startup, you really need to be more methodical in how you start your business, and more strategic and how you plan to go because business culture kind of starts from the beginning, at least, that's my feeling. And although it can develop and change, if you're starting with no thought on it, and a lot of people I think are starting businesses, and they're not really thinking about it, or they think about it in a very abstract way like, I want to start a business and I hope I make money. And if I make money, I'll donate this much percent to this charity. Right. And to them, that's the, maybe the level of business culture. I don't think a lot of people really think about, you know, what type of people do I want in my business? How do I want them to act? You know, do I want a wide variety of people? Or do I want a narrow type of people because I'm detail oriented, I want I only want detail oriented people in the business, which, you know, has its strengths and weaknesses. So what do you think about how much a business should, should go into planning that and figuring out what type of people they want in their business?

Russel Dubree 51:59
Well, I think even right, I mean, to the extent that it feels natural, and maybe not forced as part of it, that's where maybe you didn't analogy earlier of let's go north versus let's go to this very specific GPS spot or say, I mean, right, if we think of just traveling anywhere, the more specific spot that we know we're going to the faster we will get there, what will choose the fastest route or, or the most efficient route or whatever that case is so so the more specific you can be, I think it can be help, but but sometimes I think, too, it's maybe not right to force it. I think sometimes when it comes to some of these things, they, they evolve themselves. I use the example of you know, we didn't start out the business with a purpose. And, and again, it goes back to sometimes maybe he's got to learn some of this stuff the hard way, but but when we finally did create the purpose, and we use the term, save the world from bad design, and we didn't really even know what that meant at the time, we're just like, we want to build cool websites. But over time, that morphed into so much more that not only we didn't want to build good websites, we wanted to design a good company, we wanted to be a place where people could thrive. And so that's what saved the world from bad design started, you know, the meaning started to build upon itself. So, so just where I get back to maybe others just have, to your point, if I'm trying to the least common denominators, yeah, have some thoughts, throw out some thoughts, and maybe see how those stick in to those make sense. And even understand, too, I think this is one thing when it comes to culture, is it aspirational or is it lived? And sometimes I think when people create values, they may be more aspirational than lived. And then we just have to understand what those behaviors take them from aspirational to lived if right if it if it's not the way and I think I made that mistake once in business where it's like, alright, this is our culture, it wasn't our culture is what I wanted it to be. But it goes back to you can't just say it, you've got to live it. So yeah, putting some putting, throwing some ideas and thoughts out there. And then figuring out what the behaviors you need to support them would always be a good, good first step in that thought process.

Botond Seres 54:05
I think there's an expression for this is to look after your backyard before you go international. But I've been wondering, one thing is, is it even possible for someone to build a healthy company culture given that or when the person in question has absolutely neglected both their physical and mental health, which is something we see all the time with startups especially?

Russel Dubree 54:36
Yeah, I mean, I think you have to really lead by example. You know, and, and, you know, you can't, and I think that gets back to and I think this is where even business is evolving as we have to think about the total person here. You know, there's a lot of what I, what I can't stand in the world is generational bashing. We all have our issues. and prose, right and in terms of how we came up, but if we really have empathy for, let's just say a younger generation out there, that I mean, they have had to live through this massive technology change and shift and how the world works. And guess what, the school system doesn't keep pace with that. And so really all these things that we expect or once that, you know, if you're a little bit older, middle aged, or whatever business owner that you've learned by trial by fire over 20 years, your career, they're simply walking into it unprepared. And just goes back to empathy, understanding where someone's at, and what can my role be to, you know, help them along this journey that they're in, and my business can be a vehicle to do that, where I can provide value to customers, I can provide value to people in that construct. And think about this as human, not just a moneymaker thing, then, you know, I think that's going to play out far better, especially as the, you know, we think of tech and the recruiting landscape gets so much more and more challenging every single day, as we progress. I want to be seen as a company that makes people better, that cares about people. And that's going to ease the grease, so much, so to speak on how I can actually get people to come work work here that might, even if I can't afford, and maybe this amazing salary, they're going to come work because they see as a place that, you know, understands this is a human thing.

Dave Erickson 56:25
So what services does Performance Faction provide? And how can people work with you?

Russel Dubree 56:33
Yeah, so this has been an evolution for me and right purpose. And I'll give, I'll give the basic logistics of the company itself, but even talking about how my own purpose in this right is formed over time. But so yeah, I do one to one coaching and consulting for agency business owners, typically small to medium size. So ranging from a handful of employees to, you know, on average, 25-50, and then, or 25-30, sorry, and then, you know, different services phrases down, but that, but basically, they're in this, they're stuck in some place, helping them get from where they're at, to where they want to go, whatever that is, I'm not holding that for them. I'm letting them craft that themselves, but just be given I've had a lot of experience in the agency space, myself, and then getting to work with and talk with a lot of other creative and marketing service oriented agencies. I've seen a lot of ways that worked and hasn't worked and getting to share that information. And, and in some ways, even starting to build a community. Again, not only businesses that succeed from a monetary standpoint, but right give back and live out this, this culture piece. And that's really where my mission, right when I set out to do this, I didn't have all this lined out per se, I was just like, I need to go do something else. This sounds like a good idea. Cool. Let's go do this. But now my mission has grown. And I've thought this but it's formed in terms of I love small business. I think small businesses naturally embody so much of the things that we've talked about today. It's easier to embody some ways and we talked about culture, then massive 1000 person organizations, but, and I want to see more small businesses succeed. And beyond that, what he's mentioned earlier within them, one of the challenges a lot of small businesses run into is the ability to generate leads and sales. Well, if I help make better marketing companies out, there were better marketing companies exist there helps to kind of solve that transition to better small businesses or more successful small businesses. So that's even just how my purpose is evolved in such a relatively short amount of time, as I've been doing this for, for almost a couple of years now.

Dave Erickson 58:37
Russel, thank you so much. You've given us some culture and some of your tips on creating a successful business culture that can help startups and SMBs grow. For our listeners. Please join us in the first week of next month for another ScreamingBox and technology, business rundown podcasts. Until then, keep eating yogurt and stay cultured.

Dave Erickson Outro
Thank you very much for taking this journey with us. Join us for our next exciting exploration of technology and business in the first week of every month. Please help us by subscribing, liking and following us on whichever platform you're listening to or watching us on. We hope you enjoyed this podcast and please let us know any subjects or topics you'd like us to discuss in our next podcast by leaving a message for us in the comment sections or sending us a Twitter DM. Till next month. Please stay happy and healthy.

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SUMMARY KEYWORDS
#workculture, #startup, behaviors, #sales, #ai, #smallbusinesses #businessculture @performancefaction @russel dubree @life blue