Welcome to the Scale With Speed Podcast. I am Judge Graham. I’m here with my business partner Matt Manero. Got the cigar matching. I love the backdrop here. Two guys, right, right behind Matt is his what’s that called like a character chart? Correct? He’s got the cigar and it’s so perfect. Shout out to Billy Williams and his staff is knocking Kingdom content. Yeah, they did all these graphics. So 10 today is one that is near and dear to our hearts. Right? I mean, I would say this, this particular topic is how you build a real company, right? So let’s get clear on something. You don’t have a company unless you have people. Okay. People build companies in Matt. Nice view on that is you can’t just have a culture is nice, dude. You got to have a freaking growth culture, right?

You need this, this fierce, aggressive, whatever it takes to unify a team that wants to win every day. And that’s a growth culture. And that we’re going to get into the differences between culture and growth culture. Why it’s important. We’re going to give you some tips on how you can even execute it. Whether you’re a hundred million dollar company or you’re less than a million-dollar company, it doesn’t matter. You gotta do it and it’s cost-effective at the low end. And then, Hey, if you got money, you can do some really cool things at the bigger end. So just before you check out on today’s podcast and you’re like, Oh, this is about culture. I want to stop you real quick. And I wanna, I want to go back to what the judge just said. Everything starts with this topic in your business. This is not something that your eyes glaze over because so many people judge you like, Oh, culture means it’s touchy-feely.

It means it’s ping pong tables. It means it brings your dog to work. Cool. All that is important if that’s an element of your culture, but we want to overlay growth culture that the organization is moving forward, achieving results, getting bigger, scaling with speed. Yeah. And it takes a commitment from you, the leader to do it. I’m more seeing it in some other businesses that were involved in, where we’re not the operators in those businesses. And it’s those operators they’ve to be dialed in every single day because good people only want to work for great companies. Right? And you can’t be a great company unless you’re freaking committed and you’re dialed in as the leader to live. What we’re going to get into the core values to live the momentum, to live the speed, to live the accountability. Right? So if you’re frustrated and you own your business, or you’re the manager right now, this is a self-reflection time to go do to my dial. Then am I, am I leading by example? Because good people want to be like,

I would bet my life on this next statement. And I think the judge would, too, 90% of your problems will go away. When you get the culture and growth culture dialed in in your organization. Now let’s just say you’re one person or two people or three people you’re small and you haven’t spent the time on it all. The more reason, dude, what do you want out of this business? What does it stand for? What are you willing to tolerate? What does it look like? What is the coloring of it? What are your missions? What is the, what are the principle foundations that you will be relentless to? It’s almost equal or greater importance for a one-person show because, without it, you ain’t going to get two or three or four people to buy into what you’re doing. And without it, they are just everybody’s freaking loss. It is the foundation of great companies. Please don’t check out on us on this one. This is how it starts.

Give our definition, Matt, I’ve got it in front of us. I should have memorized this by now, but I don’t an empowered and aligned organization that is committed to the success of its customers, team members, and financial targets, everything. One more time and empowered, right? And empowered, allowing people to be successful, aligned organizations that are committed to the success of customers. It’s team members and money. The financial targets, right? Most organizations have none of this. They may have a little bit of it. Dude, when you have this level of clarity,

You win all of the operative words right there in there. And those words are the word empowered, the word-aligned, the word, committed to the success of customer success of teamwork, team members, and financial targets.

Listen, Hey, I want that new camera, dude. We gotta make money to support buying the camera. Right? I mean that I, you know, it would frustrate me. It’s like, why do you care so much for the money? Why do you care about your paycheck? Like we gotta make freaking money to pay people. Right? You understand that concept, right?

The reason your company isn’t growing is that you don’t have a clear financial target.

Yeah. Th that you’re empowering people, you’re holding them accountable. You’re measuring it and you’re optimizing it.

So vital, viable, so valuable.

So a couple of quick stats we’re going to give, um, I love stats. 87% of employees are unhappy and not motivated. These are real stats. Now, again, this is probably more at scale, right?

So, you know, if you’re going on, dude, I’ve got, you know, three people and everybody’s, then this is

Probably a little off, but did you get 15, 20 plus 3,100 people, 87% are unhappy and not motivated. It’s a real stat, 31 hours per week that people are not being productive. It’s 40 hours a week to debt. That goes back to the lack of alignment, commitment, and accountability. 63% not engaged. I don’t give a fuck that I’m here. Let me hide and get behind Facebook. I’m building my side business on the side. I’m doing whatever. It’s just a job. I need to work. My, what was it? Seven hours a week in the, you know, I’m just, I don’t care. Right? So the thing is Matt and I did this and it burned the ships. Dude. You’ve got freaking walking zombies. People just don’t care about the organization. And more importantly, it’s tux toxic there’s toxicity. That’s brewing because you haven’t built, not just culture, but this growth culture.

This is weird to be talking about this. Cause we have Ramsey and Z in the, in the studio with us. And you guys are, um, you know, you guys are saying one of two things in total transparency, you’re saying Matt and judge you’re full of shit. Or you’re saying, no, I actually see what they’re saying. So we have those Mike’s fired up. Oh, I don’t. Why don’t you guys tell the truth about whether or not you agree, whether it’s with the commercial fleet, this company, or other companies with the stars that we just threw out, that most people do, and most people are not engaged? And most people just look at their job, as a job for the paycheck. What do you guys think about that?

Is it just the job, is the question. So I would think some people may go through life. I mean, I’m not saying personally, I’m just saying maybe I’ve worked in the past with professional development companies and yes, there are companies where they send employees because Hey, these guys just aren’t great with people skills. They don’t know how to communicate. They don’t want to be there. So yes, I think it does exist a lot in businesses. I’m not saying it’s here. [inaudible], it’s so funny. Is that, that, that, I’m not the one that makes that decision for either of you guys. Right? You guys need to understand that. I mean, Troy is totally empowered to decide whether you’re engaged and productive and all that sort of stuff. It doesn’t make it to my desk anymore. Right. So you’re somewhat protected here because you’re your boss and hearing it.

But the most important part is that you know, you’re not going to listen to a podcast where we ask you guys whether or not what we’re telling is something that you believe in or not. So Ramsey, what you’re saying is that yes, you’ve worked in environments where what we’re talking about is true. The question is, what did it do for you? Like not the 67% who’s disconnected, but the 33% who are engaged, right? I mean, one bad apple spoils the bunch. Did it feel like that to you when you were empowered and wanting to do a good job, but then this coworker’s just sort of like, Hey, why are you working so hard, man? What are you doing? What do you have experience with? Well, um, there’s, there’s this statistic I learned about in my last job where, um, it’s like everyone in all your employees are in a boat and there’s 20%, they’re engaged.

They’re 80% that are somewhat engaged. And then there’s a last 20% that is disengaged. The 120% though, by the way, sorry, a 60%, 60, 20, 60, 20. Gotcha. All right. So I’m bad at math anyway. So it was a hundred percent right. Total and the 60% in the middle were disengaged, uh, somewhat engaged, not engaged all the time, but the last 20 you think, okay, well, those disengaged ones are the ones that affect my business the most. But the study found that the ones that really hurt your business are the ones that are kind of somewhat engaged in this, but not engaged all the way, because those are the ones that are like drunk drivers. Yeah.

Oh, they just have the drunk guy in the corner. You didn’t do anything. You got the problem with the guy that is drunk and gets behind the wheel.

Yeah, that’s true. There’s the cop. Oh, okay. I’m good. I can text and yeah, I can drive and drink and whatever. So it’s, that’s what I’ve learned that, uh, you want to be part of the ones who are always engaged. The ones who are rowing the boat and not the ones who are just rowing the boat. When the boss is looking,

You wouldn’t be in an environment. Listen to, I can’t, I can’t personally, I have to be excited. I’ve got to be fired up. I need to be stimulated. I need to walk in. I mean, that’s why you’ve seen my office. Like I need to walk in and be greeted by a 14 foot home. I need to hear music. I need to see vibrant colors. I need to hear energy. I need, I, I thrive on that. And I think people do too, right? I mean, people need to be stimulated and people need to win. Dude, when you freaking win and we’re pressing on a couple of our companies, you get those wins back to back to back. And your plate is so full of tasks that you have to complete. And you understand that by completing that, you’re helping the broader team. When dude, it changes everything, everything.

And what you’re saying though, judges that you built an environment that made you happy and then you amazingly found lots of other people that had the same alignment and desire for what makes them happy too.

It goes back to like your core values. I mean, here’s, what’s great about business and capitalism. It’s not for everybody. Okay. And that’s okay. And if you are the leader and you carry that cross, dude builds a freaking company. How you want it. Right. I mean, what behaviors in habits do you want? Because there are enough people out there that are aligned with you. Fucking be happy.

That’s what I was trying to say earlier. I didn’t get it out. Right. But dude, if you’re a one-person show, build it the way you want it to feel that dude. Right.

If you want it, you know, aggressive, loud, crazy speed. You know, I’m referencing to me. I mean, that’s building a freaking culture though.

Totally build it the way you want it to play out. And there are lots of people who come and join you.

Yeah, that’s great. I, I, I’m actually, uh, um, you know, working with a provider science, which is a client that is RP one and I’m helping them with culture and consulting and everything. And they sent vinyl, they’re doing the core values. Right. And, uh, the president had asked me today. She said you know, here’s the first pass. What do you think about them? And there, they’re very soft. Right? Very sophisticated, um, very clean. And I said it’s your office? Like what feeling do you want? Because that feeling if you’re going to walk in, it’s going to be very calm. It’s going to be very buttoned-up, not eclectic, very professional. All continuity looks great if that’s what you’re going for a home run. But if you’re going for, I want freaking killers to come in here and fucking hot and kill and blood then, and we’re not, we’re not there, but that’s a decision of what kind of environment do you want?

Yeah. Z you want to throw in any commentary. Your mic is hot. No, it’s not. He did that on purpose. See, you just have it there for lunch. [inaudible] you should get a picture today and a gold belt buckle. And he put the gold mic in front of him. Posey. That’s great. I’m excited. We got the sures though. The issue, they make a big deal.

There’s one thing I wanted to mention is that there are two things that I tell myself every day I walk into this company that always bring value and don’t wait for Minero’s ass. You gotta press him. You gotta press. No, that’s great, man. I mean, that’s, that’s what you want though, right? I mean that that’s, that’s what you want.

All right. That’s cool. Zee and Ramsey. Thank you guys for having the courage to jump on and jump in anytime you want. Y’all if you got some perspective, um, judge, when we’re talking about growth culture, which is an episode of, um, scale speed that we did on the seven deadly habits, you know, this is the people should go back and listen to the seven deadly habits of business so that you can give yourself a check on whether or not those seven things are happening in your organization. Cause they will, they will destroy it. But they are just part of our, our, the ship’s mantra. When we talk about creating a goal growth culture, the seven deadly habits is a big part of it. So let’s go through some, some, some other stuff, the big guy on, you know, what he made. Yes. Yeah.

I mean, so I mean, first and foremost, and I think we did an episode on core values. Right? Have we done that? Not yet. Okay. We’re going to, I’m assuming, but, but a part of that is, is his core values, right? What are the behaviors, the habits, the things that you want to build the organization around, and then how do you bring that to life? You know, visually. So, um, you know, if you’re here looking at CFF, I mean just an amazing facility, right? You’ve brought to life through vinyl and physical elements, your core values. Right? And so we did the same thing at [inaudible] like fearless was a core value. We had a 14 foot Hulk statue that brought that to life. Right. Um, I’ve, I’ve worked with smaller companies that said, Hey, innovation is a big thing for us. What did we go and buy, you know, for, you know, 70-inch monitors, the cheap ones, they were like a thousand bucks each? Right. And then connected all their software and their analytics to it, put some beanbags in a room, and made it the innovation room. Right? Like you’ve got to provide an environment that did exude what you’re trying to do. You can’t say you’re innovative if you don’t have any innovative shit.

Yeah. And it starts foundationally. Right. And then it’s a little bit, I ha I have no, uh, great example, cause this idea just sort of popped into my head. But if you were to layout, um, it’s maybe people think this is a bad example. Cause I’m, I’m referring to employees in the same thing like dogs. But if you laid out a smorgasbord of dog toys, right. The dog is going to test those toys and then they’re going to find, they’re not even gonna know that they were there. You didn’t bring them up. Right. You just laid them out sooner. The dog’s gonna test it. And they’re going to gravitate to the toys that they like, the same thing happens when you bring your culture to life. You like, for example, in RTVs here, amazingly, we didn’t make a big fanfare of what happens on the TVs and what that is being displayed. But guess what? They figured it out and you’ll walk around the office and there’ll be two guys pointing at the TV saying, I’m going to get you, man. Dude, you beat me yesterday in the rankings that show on the TVs. But my point is they begin it foundationally. They exist. They begin to come to life.

Yeah. Well it, it, it, it just changes everything. I mean, imagine, um, let’s, let’s loot. We’ll use a, uh, and I know your buddy has a gym. Let’s use a gym as an example. Okay. What kind of gym are you trying to provoke? Like I’ve got this Westside, Russian hardcore lifting shirt on. And uh, you know, dude, if you walked into that gym, I’ve never been there. I’m assuming if I owned that type of gym, dude it’d have a huge garage door. It would be clean. You’d have chains, I’d have a mural on there. I’d have industrial lights. I’d be jamming, death metal music as loud as possible to invoke that environment. Dude, you gotta watch that, that documentary on Westside gym on Netflix, because it’s very similar to what you’re talking about. And he doesn’t give a shit that’s the culture. But, but I mean, that’s what, you know, it, it, it blows me away.

When I walk into an office and it’s silent and you got outdated furniture, you got a shitty fucking company logo sign that you did at fast signs, you know, 10 years ago or a banner or a banner. Right. And you got broken chairs and you’ve got cubicles and you’ve got an old school model. Like, what are we doing here? Like, dude, do you want to fucking win? No dude, you don’t because you’re so handicapped with cash. You’re afraid. And all of those things become reflective moments of dude. If all you can afford is to put up a banner, you got fucking problems in your office, then we’re talking about, um, you know, some of the companies we’re invested in and we’re starting to move up the food chain, listen, your website is a reflection of your company in your culture. Yeah. If it’s a shitty website, dude, guess what?

You’re going to get shitty customers. Yeah. Okay. And if you get the opportunity to get a good customer and they come to the office and these people spend money and you’re handing them out, you know, dollar breakfast burritos from McDonald’s, you lost, that’s not the culture that you need to bill. So, uh, if anybody’s in Dallas, I’d love you to come by our office here, commercial fleet. But in our conference room, we have a, uh, old military motorcycle, right? Yeah. And so, I guarantee you some people around this, the officer’s like, why do we have that? Well, we have it because the room is called a think tank. Yeah. A military feel to it. The graphic in the room is camo colored motorcycles. But more importantly than any of that, when a client or a bank comes to our office, we sit their ass in the sidecar.

They shoot the little machine gun that’s in front of it. And they put the old school metal helmet on and we take a picture of them in it. And then we print the picture and we put it in a frame and we send it to them and they put it in their office. And everybody in their office who walks in is like, what the fuck is what? You’re not gonna believe it. I went to this company in Texas. It’s like a guy’s got a military motorcycle with a bucket. They’d put me in. I didn’t even have a chance to say no. And next thing I know they’re taking my picture, dude, you gotta bring the place to lie to life. So you may be thinking, I can’t afford a $20,000 motorcycle or whatever. Here are some ideas that are cost-effective, visually update your space to reflect the core values.

And Matt says this all the time. You’ve got three people in 800 square feet, threw a freaking pizza party with the employees, and went to Lowe’s to spin a hundred bucks on paint. Okay. Get creative, get some stencils, paint the place, but the core values on the wall, right? Uh, you know, deem clean the carpet, clean it. Yeah, dude, it frustrates the hell out of me going to an office that is not clean. It costs nothing to clean your office, clean the office, make it, make it inviting. Those team members spend more time there than they do at home.

Pay your kid eight bucks an hour to go up to your office on Sunday and scrub the damn toilets, clean it,

Create an environment that wants to keep people in the office right now, examples that I’ve done before. And I know Matt’s doing dude. We bought a treadmill desk. Those things were so we had, I don’t know, like eight of them, maybe at one time they were so used. It had its own calendar block that you had to block them, but they had a desk on it. People could work. Right? Uh, we had, we had a yoga room. We had, we provided meals every day. We had, we allowed dogs in. We wanted to create an environment. Um, you know, as, as we had more, uh, mothers, we had a maternity room. I mean, dude, you need to create an environment where people can win and that want to stay in the environment. Right. You know, we did a penalty. Did we use to bring in catered breakfast for lunch? And then depending on who was there at night dinners did almost every day. And we analyzed, okay, you got, you know, hundreds of people, they all leave and they go to Chili’s or whatever for an hour and a half lunch, have a beer or whatever, dude, the tea that hour and a half, if I could have them working, right. They take 30 minutes of lunch because they’re eating at their desk. And I get that hour back across 300 people, dude. It didn’t, the cost was insignificant.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we do the Bootcamp here. It costs us $120 a week to do a Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Bootcamp. We bring in a personal trainer. We work out in the parking lot for 30 minutes. Um, you know, it’s $480 a month. So it’s about 6,000 bucks a year. Do you think that it’s at a pretty good investment, $6,000 a year, people would get back in shape to feel good about themselves to break up there. Yeah.

Yeah. People see what’s not working in this amazing company every day. They bring in a trainer that, that, that allows me. That I don’t have to get up at four o’clock in the morning. Yeah. I’m in an environment of culture. I can take my kids to school, get to work, get my workout in. I don’t have to pack gym clothes to go to some shitty gym and you know, not get home till eight o’clock at night. Like, dude, it’s a huge, that piece right there that Matt did is a phenomenal added value to create a culture of great people that want to work at a great company

Because you solved a problem. Yeah. That’s, that’s something that drew me here a lot to CFF is because of my last I had to,

I used my own Macbook and I had to use everything. I didn’t have anything given to me. I had no amenities, you know, that was it. So, um, when my family, when I was like, all right, well, let’s make the move to Dallas. Um, Troy got in contact with me, brought me here. This was before this brand new office was opening up. It was, it was really nice. And uh, yeah, he just mentioned the small things to me. It was like, Oh, we get free park coffee in the morning. And I’m like, I don’t drink coffee, but I think I may start drinking coffee [inaudible] and I do. I started drinking coffee now and it’s like it helps me in my day. I look forward to it and I’m like, I want to get some coffee. I got some cream. There’s a water purifier machine.

I’m like, I love to drink tap all day. I mean, it doesn’t matter to me. I’m not picking up water tasted in your life. Isn’t it? Yes, it is. It’s good stuff. I mean, I can get stuff from the, um, from the fridge. It doesn’t matter, but it is so tasty. And then yeah, there’s, there’s just so many things. There’s a culture here. There’s the value of seeing that printed on the wall. As soon as I came in before it was bigger now. Yeah. It was just small right there on the wall. It was still very, very good to see that. And I remember thinking that like, this is, this is it. And in full disclosure, there was a company that was trying to recruit me as well. And uh, and it was like exactly what Joseph was saying. Carpets are dirty. There were old frames on the wall. I’m like, this is a mistake. What am I doing here? This is not, this is it. So easily fixed. Yes. Thanks for recognizing that

End on, on this and there, Matt, unless you want to, you have more, I mean, dude, it’s important. It’s, it’s critically important that you’re creating an environment that people want to win and it doesn’t have to cost a lot. Right? There’s a quote from the CEO of Zappos. That, that, that I know we both love our number one priority is company culture, right? Our whole belief is that if you get the culture right, most of the other stuff like delivering great customer service and building a long-term enduring brand will just happen naturally on its own. And it’s so true. If you build a culture of aligned belief, systems, habits, and behaviors, and create a real team that loves it. And then you empower them and you create a freaking environment that they want to be a part of and that they care. I mean, they need to care, dude. Like, dude, you need to clean your desk rye because that’s what we do here. You know? And guess what? You’ll be happier too because you don’t want, I mean, you want an environment where people say you should see

My office and you think it’s expensive, dude. It’s not expensive. Now it could be expensive. Don’t get me wrong. This one was expensive. Right? The most we ever spent on culture, I think it’s about 40 something thousand just in glass in this office. Didn’t have to do it, but totally wanted it to be done. So people could say, you gotta, I mean like, like I got a half-court basketball.

Yeah, no dude. It’s amazing.

So, but I stole that idea from you, dude. I’d never seen a basketball court in an office until I saw pinches of yours. So look, this is, by the way, at the Bootcamp burn the ships boot camp,

One of the biggest takeaways

We spent a lot of time. We do it. We spent hours, a couple of hours on this topic

For your core values, not only your core values, how do you bring them to life? What’s it relevant to your culture? I mean, that’s the amazing thing about burning the ships, right? It’s not this generic, it’s your plan, your culture, your

Right. So judge, I just want to, I want to finish up on one other thing when it comes to culture and the relentless newness of it, and we share this in the Bootcamp, we literally put up on the screen of a W2 from one of our employees, uh, ex-employees employees here at the commercial fleet, um, where the guy was making North in the W2 shows that we’ve whited out his social and his name and all that for privacy. But we show the actual W2 in which he was making North of $500,000 in personal income. So you can figure out how much that is to the company. And we parted ways because he just would not come on board with it.

Yeah, no, it was probably one of the best decisions you’ve ever done because then the other people that were aligned go, dude,

This is a whole,

Well, not only did they let that guy go, but this means something. This is for real like this isn’t shit on a wall. This is, this is how we do it here.

Because once you do it, you will be tested. Especially if you do it after the fact, that’s why, if we can help you in your startup phase, are you just getting going in your small before you’re scaling with speed, get this shit right? Cause it’s much harder to do afterward, right? Yeah. You will be tested, but you will be tested on your relentlessness to the culture sooner or later and maybe multiple times and you’re going to have to do it. And that’s one of the things that we, we try to give that ultimate layer of transparency at burned, the ships where, you know, we go so far as to show you this guy’s W2 privately, but we show you the actual numbers to say, this is an example of a half, a million-dollar decision that proves relentlessness to the value system and the culture of your company. So it’s amazing. It’s awesome. Um, we could go, we do, we could spend days on this topic, but we ain’t. We only spend at Z. What’s our timeline on this one? Where are we? 30 minutes in 30. So we’re 30 minutes in and we’re going to leave you with that today. Cause

I hope you’re coming away from today’s podcast. And you’re saying I gotta get a handle on this thing.

Paint the damn walls, clean the office,

Go steam, clean the carpet.

When you walk into your current environment, are you happy? Even if it’s your home office, does it motivate you? Does it inspire you? Does it make you better? Can you get better in your environment? The answer is no.

Fix it, fix it now. All right buddy. As you always say, make it happen. We’ll see y’all down the road. Take care and make it happen.