Dennis Collins:
Welcome to another episode of Connect and Convert, the sales accelerator podcast where small business owners join in to get insider tips on how to grow their business faster than ever. And we cover a wide assortment of topics anyone can use. Today, I am joined, as always, by my partner in crime, Leah Bumphrey.

Say hi, Leah.

Leah Bumphrey:
Hi, how you doing, Dennis? Hey, everybody.

Dennis Collins:
I’m good. I’m glad you came back. I always wonder if you’re gonna come back, you know? But you do, and I appreciate it.

Leah Bumphrey:
Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Dennis Collins:
You’re very loyal.

Leah Bumphrey:
Thank you, Governor. Much appreciated.

Dennis Collins:
Well, today we’re gonna tackle something that’s maybe a little more esoteric than what we normally tackle. We’re gonna talk about how to measure the financial impact of culture. That’s a tough subject.

We are a little bit, or I’ll put it on me, I am a little bit arrogant to think that we could possibly tackle that in this rather short podcast. But we’re gonna give it a try, okay, Leah? You ready for that?

Leah Bumphrey:
I am here.

Dennis Collins:
Okay, well, before we get started, we have a very special offer that we wanna make to our loyal viewers, and I would love for you to explain it. It’s very special.

Leah Bumphrey:
Well, you know what, Dennis? Both of us love working with small, medium businesses on a growth trajectory, and the podcast gives us that opportunity along with Boomer. What we’re able to do is answer questions at this point when people email them to us, but then as we were talking, and it was over a cup of coffee, I’m sure, but how could we expand that? And of course, we have the opportunity to meet with people over the phone.

We wanna offer a free 60-minute discovery call. No strings attached.

Dennis Collins:
Yeah.

Leah Bumphrey:
But the reason for that is there’s a lot of information, there’s a lot of different paths that businesses are currently on that they might need help with. Sometimes it’s recruiting, sometimes it’s training, sometimes it’s just how do we focus on our marketing?

And you and I do that. So please, if you are enjoying watching Dennis and I talk about the huge variety of topics that we tackle, if there’s something specific that you would like to expand on, give us a call, email either one of us, and we will arrange something.

There’s no obligation. From there, it might make sense for us to work together. It might not. It might just be that we can point you in a few directions.

Dennis Collins:
But there’s no harm in talking, is there, Leah? No harm. We can all probably learn something.

Paul Boomer:
So this is Boomer. Coming in from the side. The email addresses are very simple, actually. DennisCollins@WizardOfAds.com or LeahBumphrey@WizardOfAds.com

Dennis Collins:
So Leah, I don’t know about you. I know you’re the consummate storyteller, but I love case studies. You know, Harvard Business Review, they send me different case studies every week.

I get excited about that. And today, I’m really excited because we’re going to do a case study about business culture. It is so hard to measure business culture. What is it? You can’t get your hands around it, but it’s easier to see the effects that business culture, good culture, bad culture, can have on a business.

So when you look, and I’m sorry, I apologize in advance. I’m the data nerd. When you look at the data, you can learn a heck of a lot about a company and a lot about their culture. So today I’m going to highlight a company called Pixar. You heard of that one?

Leah Bumphrey:
I love Pixar.

Dennis Collins:
Yeah. What’s your favorite? Do you have your favorites?

Leah Bumphrey:
Oh, you know what? There are so many.

Dennis Collins:
Do you know Finding Nemo? Have you ever seen that one?

Leah Bumphrey:
You know what? That was one I saw actually not too long ago. And I say that probably five years ago, but it’s fun. It is just very sweet. I love the turtle. He’s my character.

Dennis Collins:
Yeah. Well, they had, I think the Toy Story series, in fact, I know it was their first. And they had Finding Dory, Finding Nemo, and my favorite of all times, Ratatouille.

Leah Bumphrey:
Chefs and the red wine. Perfect.

Dennis Collins:
One day, when you have grandchildren, you will learn to hate all of these. Because they are played incessantly in my house, in their house, and Ratatouille happens to be their favorite. So it became my favorite.

Leah Bumphrey:
Oh, beautiful. I love that.

Dennis Collins:
So again, so how do we know?

Paul Boomer:
Hold on.

Dennis Collins:
We’re in trouble again, Leah.

Paul Boomer:
Hold on. I’m going to call you out on something, Dennis, and I’m sorry. You know I love you, but I don’t believe there is any such thing as a bad culture or a good culture.

Dennis Collins:
Really?

Paul Boomer:
Really.

Dennis Collins:
Tell me about that.

Paul Boomer:
Well, because it’s either a functional or a dysfunctional culture. Think of Al Capone.

Dennis Collins:
One of my favorites.

Paul Boomer:
And his son. Yeah, we go from Pixar to Al Capone.

Dennis Collins:
That’s a left turn.

Paul Boomer:
Yeah, that is a left turn. Wait there’s a disconnect.

Leah Bumphrey:
I’m just a simple Canadian girl here, you guys.

Paul Boomer:
Okay, so Al Capone and his son, Sonny. So for Sonny, the traditions, the culture, the way they operate within Capone’s mob to Sonny is normal. But from the outside, to them, but from the outside, it is dysfunctional. They’re okay operating in such a way, in such a manner that the rest of the world doesn’t really agree with necessarily. So for them, it is a good culture.

Dennis Collins:
Ah. So maybe we should use the word effective and ineffective. Would that be better?

Paul Boomer:
Yes, I can get on board with that. And by the way, just because I want to jump in on the fun, Inside Out is one of my favorite Pixar movies.

Leah Bumphrey:
Oh, that’s a good one. That’s a very good one.

Dennis Collins:
So everybody knows about Pixar and that’s why I studied them. And I’ll tell you a little bit of a story about that in a second. But let me talk about the data. How do we know that Pixar is successful? Just because we happen to like some of their stuff, does that mean they’re successful? Well, of course not. We have got to look at the data. Pixar has consistently outperformed all their competition for the past 10 years.

Let me give you the rundown. 28 feature films. 15 are among the highest grossing films of all time. Over $15 billion gross. A half billion dollars average per movie. That is huge. A half billion gross per movie. 23 Academy Awards. 10 Golden Globes. 11 Grammys.

Leah Bumphrey:
Okay, that’s a few much. Too much, so that’s good. Wow.

Dennis Collins:
11 Grammys, 72. 18 out of 25 have 90% positive ratings from the Rotten Tomatoes. So I think data-wise, you would have to agree that they get it. They are one of the best. What can we learn from Pixar? Well, I’ll tell you my story. I first became aware of Pixar in 1995 when they first released Toy Story 1.

I was in Miami at that time, heading up three radio stations. Our management team and I said, you know what, we want to rise above the competition. We’re done just playing the game. We want to do something different. So we were out there searching for different ways to make things happen. We agreed on a lot of things, but one thing we agreed on, we decided to use the Pixar model and apply it to our business. Now, I will tell you what. It was absolutely counter to the way most radio stations were operated.

We were the lone wolf, and we were real happy we were the lone wolf because we were able to implement the steps that Pixar used to make them great. We weren’t ever as great as Pixar, but let me tell you, we had the highest ratings, the highest gross revenues, the highest profits in the highly competitive Miami market for years, 63% net operating profit for many years.

Again, it’s in the data. We used some of the same stuff that Pixar used. What do you think, Leah? Do you think maybe they’re a good example of how some of our small business owners should operate?

Leah Bumphrey:
Well, absolutely, but it’s interesting for me because yes, you look at the data, but then you look at specifically what did you do because it came down to doing, and that has nothing to do with the Excel spreadsheet. That had everything to do with the people, everything to do with the story of the people and what they’re trying to achieve.

Dennis Collins:
Well, what we found from Pixar is there’s a word that sticks out when I studied Pixar, and then to do this podcast, I really looked at some of my stuff. The word is autonomy. When you’re in a creative business, especially like radio, television, movies, animation, how about autonomy to the creators, the writers, the artists, the directors? So Pixar had tremendous trust in their team. They specialized in feedback, candid feedback.

How many organizations allow for candid feedback? How many? Not many.

Leah Bumphrey:
There’s a lot that say they do.

Dennis Collins:
They say they do. How about diverse teams? You know, we talk on this podcast and I teach the four social styles, and the first thing that I say to a small business owner is if you want a successful business, you need to have a combination of all four social styles, not just drivers, not just expressives, all four, diversity – to create different ideas and different viewpoints.

They did something at Pixar called the daily review. They would showcase all the incomplete work, the work in progress to the entire crew. Hey, here’s what we’re working on. It’s not finished, and they looked for peer support and feedback. Then they did something really interesting. This is one of the things we did try at the radio stations, brain trust meetings. We would get a person from different teams, maybe somebody who was on air, somebody who was in programming, somebody who was in engineering, somebody who was in sales.

And we would put together brain trust meetings like that. They would look at the problem differently. So if you had a sales problem, I didn’t want just salespeople looking at it or sales managers. I had the engineer looking at it. I had our CFO, chief financial officer, looking at it. Why? Because we got input that we would not have gotten anywhere else. They had very few bureaucratic hurdles. Producer Paul knows this. He writes about it. He talks about it. We talk on this podcast about it.

Psychological safety. It’s gotta be okay for people, the rank and file especially, to say no, to challenge something, to speak without fear of retribution. That’s what Pixar did. I did my best to do that at the radio stations. That’s hard. Everyone has opinions.

The bosses have opinions as well as the teammates. And sometimes bosses don’t wanna hear another opinion. Well, I made it illegal inside my four walls to dismiss an opposing opinion. Illegal. Can’t do it. And if you did it, you got in trouble. You don’t dismiss opposing opinions. You welcome them. You foster them. You ask questions. You get to the bottom of what the person is trying to say.

Leah Bumphrey:
I’m picturing that your desk had a big jar on it. And every time somebody broke the rule, they had to toss in a, it’d have to be a hundred dollar bill, I’m thinking.

Dennis Collins:
Well, yeah. Back then, maybe a hundred was too much. But nevertheless, there were consequences. I hate to say this. Well, I have to say it.

Leah Bumphrey:
Yeah.

Dennis Collins:
Unfortunately, I had to relieve several rather interesting and talented people from duty because they failed to respect that. They failed to respect the psychological safety that we vowed to create inside our four walls. They didn’t do it. And unfortunately, after many warnings and many conversations and counseling sessions, I had to do it.

I hated to do it, but if I wasn’t gonna stand behind our operating principles, our culture, if I wasn’t gonna stand by it, who would?

Leah Bumphrey:
Then nobody would believe you.

Paul Boomer:
Dennis, producer Paul coming in here, I want to congratulate you on that because that is something many leaders will not do. That is something that most leaders will say, ah, they’re too valuable. But that is one of the biggest things that destroy a culture. And it’s a silent destroy. It’s a silent thing that happens in the background. And it’s usually too late when you catch it.

Leah Bumphrey:
And the first thing that you are, the people that see that you’re doing it, then they are that much more strengthened to carry on with the process. They believe you, they trust you. I agree with Paul, that’s huge.

Dennis Collins:
But what, you know, what I learned, luckily as a young manager, it didn’t take me too long to figure out that, that what you accept becomes the standard. If you accept mediocrity, if you accept, uh, things that are at variance with your stated culture, that’s the rule, I don’t care what you have written down on a piece of paper, or you post all kinds of fancy signs up on the wall, what the leader accepts becomes the standard.

And I wasn’t about to start accepting things that violated the standards that we as a team had agreed upon. And unfortunately, one of the guys I had to let go was one of my best friends. And people said, oh, he’ll never take that guy out. They’re friends.

You know, the guy is in a high level position. He, other than myself, he supervised more people than anyone else in the building. And so I had to make a statement and, you know, it hurt at the time, but it was the right thing to do.

Leah Bumphrey:
And you know what? I have worked in the opposite situation where you have a manager who has a friend working and oh, no, we’re not friends. Well, who over here is getting away with a lot of stuff because you guys happen to play hockey together or whatever the situation is.

Dennis Collins:
Well, that is the fastest road to ruin that I know when you are protecting your friends, when they do not have the same standards as other people. And, you know, that’s why they say, don’t get too friendly in the workplace.

Leah Bumphrey:
Even more important than that, it’s the clarity. A lot of people will deny that there’s any nepotism going on, they don’t see it. So by you having and following this pro this, the same, I call them protocols that, that Pixar was doing, it gives you clarity.

It was, am I doing this or am I not doing this? Is my team doing this or are they not doing this? Take no prisoners.

Dennis Collins:
Take no prisoners. Well, the last point I want to make is the point of continuous improvement, learning organizations. We had an in-house library. We had weekly lunch and learns on different topics. Oftentimes I would host it. Sometimes some of my management team would host it and it was open to anybody who wanted to come, anybody. And I paid for lunch and come to the conference room at 12 noon on Tuesday. And we’re going to have a lunch and learn this week’s topic is X.

We had a company library. We had every, we had, of course, Cory Williams trilogy, which was the framework of how we ran our marketing side of our business. Those were all available to my entire staff. Plus we had videotapes. We had audio tapes. They could check out from the library, anything they wanted to brush up on.

So continuous learning and a lot of postmortems, you know, after the fact. And here’s the point after the fact only works if you’re prepared to discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly. If you’re just prepared to discuss the good, Oh, that was great. You guys did great. And not look at what could we do better and what was really ugly. Don’t do the postmortem. That’s part of it.

So Leah, if you were in charge of an organization, if you were the one leading an organization, which one would you work on?

Leah Bumphrey:
Well, I was just in my head going to say my favorite, and I think it relates to what we’re doing here at the three of us, it’s having diverse teams, not being afraid to have different personalities who are bringing different things and you’re honoring those ideas and making sure everybody hears them because it’s not always the person on the top that has the best ideas and it’s not always the person on the bottom that is seeing things with clarity.

You need that. I mean, look at the three of us. I’m listening to you talk about your team, Dennis, and man, I would have worked for you in a second. Now I’m just glad we can work together. But you and I would be a little boring if we didn’t have Paul every once in a while giving us a hairy eyeball and, you know, he’s, he’s got a different way of seeing things.

All I want to be, I keep thinking about him talking about Al Capone as how it relates to Pixar. That’s so cool. Cause Paul, you got to come and see the tunnels of Moosejaw. That’s where he used to hide his booze before we shipped it down to the States during prohibition.

Dennis Collins:
You cannot afford not to listen to Connect and Convert. You never know what you’re going to learn. You’re going to learn about moonshine. You’re going to learn about Al Capone.

Leah Bumphrey:
We have a question based on, and it’s kind of interesting that this comes together, a couple of episodes ago. I love that episode, although it still makes me wish we could have partaken along with Paul. We’re talking about the whiskey market.

And we have a question, Paul, do you have a whiskey seller or what’s it called? The listener that asked the question, they were likening, you know, you have the different whiskeys and a wine seller for different types. Do you stock as a sommelier, if I’m saying that right, a whiskey seller?

Paul Boomer:
That’s a great question. I love that question. Yes, I do actually. So I have my office, of course, which I’m in right now. And I have some back there, of course, that I partake every now and then. And then also in the house, I have a large cabinet with various kinds. And then I also belong to a group of, they’re actually my cousin-in-laws and my son and my uncle, and we have a, our own little tribe that we have a rather large stock, I’ll just say of whiskey, but the best whiskey place I would say is in Austin because as a sommelier, as a graduate of the whiskey marketing school, you have access to the whiskey vault and it is a vault.

I mean, you walk in, you walk up to it and it is enclosed by one of those, you know, heavy bank doors that you have to crank and open and walk in. And it is just everywhere. I think it is one of the largest private collections of whiskey in the country. And it is amazing. It’s beautiful.

Dennis Collins:
I just sat in that vault. I think Leah was in there not long ago and wow.

Leah Bumphrey:
Yeah.

Paul Boomer:
So as a graduate of the whiskey marketing school, you have the code and pretty much anytime you want, you get to go in there and enjoy a dram or two or five of whiskey.

Leah Bumphrey:
Dennis, he’s not telling us the code. I can just tell, I can tell by that little smile.

Paul Boomer:
It is a secret.

Dennis Collins:
I think there would be heavy consequences.

Paul Boomer:
There would be absolutely. And when you’re in that vault, when you’re in that vault, the only people who can pour are sommeliers.

Dennis Collins:
I noticed that. I tried to grab a bottle and someone almost chopped my hand off.

Paul Boomer:
That’s about right. That’s about right.

Dennis Collins:
Yes. I was told that it had to be someone with a medallion on.

Paul Boomer:
Yeah, exactly. And, and I have, I’ve, I’m now I’m going to take my left turn, which I usually do is the comment that you make Leah about the tunnels and such, I actually lived rather close was when I lived in Chicago to one of his hideouts. So I know a lot about Capone.

It’s really interesting stuff, actually. We’re going to do an episode. The other thing is Dennis –

Dennis Collins:
The sales tactics of Al Capone.

Paul Boomer:
Oh, I’m going to write that one down.

Dennis Collins:
Shall we say the persuasive influence of Al Capone?

Paul Boomer:
That’s more like it. Yes. So I’m looking at the title of this episode that we’re, that we’re doing right now, measure the financial impact of culture. Do you, either one of you have a specific thing that a business can measure the impact of culture?

Dennis Collins:
Hmm. Traditionally, I have let the metrics speak for themselves. It was ratings. It was share of market. It was revenues where you stacked up with the 40 stations in the Miami market, I’ve kind of let it be the actual KPIs that you would look at to measure the success of a business, that’s not saying that the culture was the only thing that made that happen, I think it had a big part to play.

Leah Bumphrey:
And, and for me, again, I always lean towards the stories and in the best companies I’ve worked for, there’s been a process and different ways of doing it. But think of having an employee of the week, think of me being able to say, you know what, I’m nominating Paul because this week when we were doing our podcast, he brought up something so interesting we’d never considered before. And it took the podcast in a really neat way and it just provided the synergy.

So I tell the story of how that happens and that is told either in a memo to the staff, better if it’s over coffee on a Friday morning and you’re able to judge the connection because everyone becomes connected to the story and what that success brought and how that was associated with customers, who is able to call in and it is, it’s not maybe a formal way of tracking it, but there’s a heart way of tracking it and that’s built over time.

Paul Boomer:
Those are great, and Dennis, I absolutely agree with that is, you know, how does it tie back to revenue? It absolutely is. And that will increase and decrease based off culture. And Leah, you’re absolutely right. That that’s storytelling and such.

And one thing that I have personally found with this is another way to track it is your recruitment tax. How much does it cost to hire somebody and let somebody go? And as that actual hard cost goes down, you’re learning that your culture is getting better. And that you can tie a physical number to revenue to margin and that affects everything else because people will not leave a good culture. They will not leave a good manager, but they will leave a poor manager and a poor culture. People will leave the culture.

Leah Bumphrey:
People will leave a person before they’re going to leave the job.

Paul Boomer:
And there is a tax when that happens.

Leah Bumphrey:
Speaking of leaving gentlemen, we got to go. I know, that’s too interesting, but we’re going to be back and you’re going to want to be tuning in for the one on Moose Jaw cause there’s nothing more exciting than proving.

Dennis Collins:
I can’t wait for Moose Jaw. You’re going to have to carry that one, Leah.

Leah Bumphrey:
And now I’m going to go and I want to watch the Incredibles and I want to watch Inside Out and I’m going to have to watch Ratatouille again. I have a busy day ahead of me.

Dennis Collins:
All right, guys. We had fun today. Thank you, producer Paul. Thank you, Leah. We’ll be back next week, every week, a new episode of Connect and Convert. Join us.

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