Mark Rampolla
Appearances
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
Culture endures. It can last for generations if done right. This is the sort of stuff that becomes legacy for decades, if not longer.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
And a leader, you know, across a leadership team, if you hire for sort of now in the next 12, 18 months, you know, 24 months, the rest is you got to set the intention and then be non-attached to the outcome.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
Look, I think it starts with oneself, you know, know that self. And I think there's, you know, if you're kind of a soul, you know, leader, there's ways to do that. I'm a big fan of personality inventories from Myers-Briggs or DISC or Enneagram to understand yourself and understand, you know, own your gaps. Second is with a team. So, I mean, you do have an executive team around you.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
to take some time to really challenge what is our culture? How would you define it? What are the words associated with it? And then test that. There's plenty of tools and techniques out there now to sort of take an interview and understand what does your team say? What's the three or four words that you would use for your culture? Unsolicited, forget what's on your board or your mission.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
And then when you look at where you are and where you want to go, that's sort of the gap analysis that says, is the culture strong? There's also, we actually use, once a company gets to a certain size, you can use Gallup as probably the best engagement surveys. Those are really powerful. And at least that's a benchmark that you can then check in over time.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
And we'll indicate some of the key aspects of the culture. We absolutely advise all of our companies are using either coaches or outside advisors that have our sort of talent and culture experts at least check in and help founders and teams think through how to assess and look at their culture. Those are a few.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
And like you said, any of these, I find the great companies, every function they're looking at that way, right? Get an outside perspective. What's best in class? What are we doing on customer attention? What are we doing on operations and finance? What are we doing in marketing? And what are we doing on people and talent? And having that outside perspective.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
The other thing that came to mind for me as you were sharing that is, One of the things, I've run numerous organizations, up to 300 people. And to what you said is very true. It's virtually impossible to be in it and look at it at the same time. And in addition to outside talent assessments and advisors, one thing I'm a big fan of is facilitators.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
Because it's virtually impossible, there's a lot of research on this in group dynamics, to be both the leader and the facilitator of a meeting, even just every meeting, right? So we as a firm, we spend the money and have professional dedicated facilitators for our big meetings, right? And it just pays huge dividends to get that.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
Not every company can afford that at every size, but there's something particularly for big strategy meetings, for larger groups, like having professional facilitation.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
Great to be here, Lauren. Thanks for inviting me.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
Look, in another life, I would be a facilitator. I think it's incredible skill. And I've had some training in that as well. But what I've learned is even though I consider myself pretty good at it, I can't be the leader in the room and do that, right? It just, the mind doesn't work that way. And there's a lot of research around group dynamics that show why it's challenging. So very cool.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
I have some thoughts, but I'm curious. What do we love about that?
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
Assuming they have to solve it all up front before they get out and learn. There's just nothing like getting out and learning. Fail fast, iterate constantly, see reality. What's really going on in your business? What's going on in consumers? What's going on in trends? Be very clear about your intention, what you're trying to build and what the hypothesis is.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
Look, we're not far away as a firm. We'll have a full time. either facilitator slash people talent, like whatever that, they're tough. They could be separate in some ways. But even right now, we have a dedicated person. In fact, we use the same person that does, facilitates our big strategy meetings for my partner and I for an annual offsite and ongoing about our dynamic. Yeah.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
So I'll start with a story. I'll tell you one in Zika that I think is relevant, but just to give you some even more context on that. When I ran my first business for a multinational in Latin America, I had a guy that I inherited that ran a certain service territory and particularly his biggest customers were in Panama. And the thing I observed with him is
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
And there's one time where he told me, Mark, I'm going to be out for a few days. And I said, okay, what are you doing? Are you on vacation schedule or whatever? He's like, well, I'm going to be in Miami. Enrique, who's the chairman and CEO, chairman of the board of the customer, our biggest customer, he's going to be having surgery. His wife's going to be having surgery.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
And I helped to get him into a hospital. that he couldn't have got in otherwise. And I'm making sure he's set up, his kids are set up and everything's set up. So they just have a great, you know, as best experience as you can. That to me was the learning. I've talked about the need behind the need. How do you run a business when you're worried about somebody going through surgery, right? So that-
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
taught me to really think even deeper. So then one example was with Zico, we decided we were going after yoga studios. At the time, hot yoga was the rage. So that's what we were going after. And I decided to really get to know these studio owners. Who are they? What are they about? What are they struggling with? What are their concerns about their business, right?
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
Their last beverages were insignificant, coconut water. They love Zico, but how does that really tie into their business? And so the more time I spent with them, I understand they're all independent business people. At most, they had two or three studios. Their lifeblood is getting, you know, versus butts in seats, it's feet on mats probably, right?
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
And so I realized that's a constant concern that they had, right? So I asked them, how do you do that? How do you build your audience? What do you do? And I realized that, you know, they're all trying to market like anybody else and run the studios and they're not all great marketers themselves. So what I realized is, what if we can help them solve their problem of getting more people in the door?
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
And so what we did is, As part of our sort of program, we would say, look, we'd like you to bring in Zico and give you some free product to promote it. But by the way, when we do our demos and events down the street, we're going to be giving out, do you have cards we can give out that are a first free visit? Oh, you don't? Well, we'll make some for you. So now we're out.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
giving away, so people come in to the studio with a little Zico stamped on it, right? Similarly, we realized they had a hard time retaining yoga instructors. And so we put together a program where we would do contests and support yoga teachers getting their training so they would come back. So now Zico's part of building their business and retaining their talent.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
It's fascinating for me when I think about culture, because generally it's this nebulous term, everybody use it, but what does it really mean? And I think it's one of those things that it shows up in different ways. And so what I think about, I thought a lot about when I was building Zico, what I think about when we're investing in companies is...
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
Well, of course they're going to sell their coconut water. Our major competitor was the guy, the founder even told me, he's like, for five years, we did everything we could to get in these yoga studios. We could never get in because we had them, they did yoga competitions. We were there because that was their way of sort of expressing their creativity and what they were trying to do.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
So we're so embedded in that community that there's just no way anybody else was gonna take our place.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
My view then, but even more so now is the best anyone can do is pay attention, see reality. What's really going on in your business? What's going on in consumers? What's going on in trends? Be very clear, as clear as possible about your intention, what you're trying to build and what the hypothesis is. And then you check in constantly.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
So for us, that was, okay, we're trying to build a multi-billion dollar category and a billion dollar brand. We think the link is that we're gonna start in yoga studios and then build the mainstream. Start in yoga studios, then build with yogis, then endurance athletes, natural food consumers, and then eventually mainstream. So that's the hypothesis. We don't know if it's gonna be true or not.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
And the ultimate test was an ROI on any one of these businesses. So at the end of the day, we were able to say, are these yoga studios generating enough sales that it makes sense, right? And of course we weren't running the studios. These are relatively small things. We're going to do demos anyway. Why not add this on, right? We're going to sponsor someone. Why not sponsor yogis?
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
So then they circle back and tell students and they're wearing Zico gear, right? So there's sort of a 360 approach to marketing, really in many ways, pre-digital age, but same thing applies digitally with a sense of ROI, right? And then once that attention is clear, we go all in, right? So for weeks or months, this is all we would do until we step back and look, is it working?
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
Does that hypothesis still hold? Is the intention still clear? We can't control the outcome. Dive back in, do it again, right? And so we would do that and then do it in other cities and then do it in other channels until we sort of started to build little by little. But it's always a hypothesis until you test it out.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
where it shows up in places that you might not always think about it, right? So for us at Zico, what that meant to me is it wasn't just about the product. Where is it showing up? How is it represented there? And what's the experience, the even somatic, emotional, physical experience that a customer and a consumer ultimately have with that product, right?
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
everything's an experiment.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
That single point where it's really changed my life in many ways. Like everything I do in my life now is an experiment. This is an experiment. How's it working? Is it working? Are we going to do this again? Should we do this differently sometime? I've come to, it's so liberating to realize nobody has it figured out. You don't have to have it figured out. It's all testing. It's all learning.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
And that is just, to me, so freeing. So we do that and encourage our companies to do that with everything, right? The hypothesis is we're going to hire this person, they're going to work out. The hypothesis is we're going to have this culture and it's going to deliver this way, right? And those things are always going to be tested and learned over time.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
And then the simple term for it is non-attachment to the outcome. You set the intention, you drive towards it, and you take a step back and learn. And I think it is constant curiosity. Be aware of one's attachment to being right. Yeah, you know what? I want to be right about this. I want this hypothesis to be right. Let's learn, right? Maybe I'm wrong and we all get to learn.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
The first that comes to mind as we're talking about this is assuming they have to solve it all up front before they get out and learn. This is nothing like getting out and learn. You know, fail fast, iterate constantly. That's the first thing that comes to mind. I think what you talked about, the sort of in-depth getting to know customers and the real need behind the need, that's it.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
There's an art and science to that, right? I just spoke to a candidate for one company we're looking at for a leadership role who's got a background in culture anthropology. Right. I love that background, right? Like just conceptually, the way to think really deeply, how does somebody make decisions and why, what's behind that? And what does that really mean to understand that?
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
And what are those triggers and what are those decision makers they make to really be thoughtful about that? And I also think it's amazing how often I see companies that don't really understand where their customers make money. Where do they make money? And how do you align with that? What are their real values? I'll give you a prime example.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
We're dealing now more and more with companies that are not just B2C, but are B2B and sort of the food supply chain. And a lot of them are climate related ones where they have often very clear data they can show on climate mitigation. And the ones that I'm interested in, though, anyone's talking about how much carbon they're going to reduce, the effect they're going to have on the environment.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
If they're not talking dollars and cents from their customers, we're out. Because the smart ones say, look, I'm going to, I'm selling to Target a new material science packaging solution, but it is cost competitive and it saves them money. And oh, by the way, it also has CO2 reduction.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
Because if they're smart, they've done the research to know the buyer at Target probably absolutely has a profit goal. They probably also have an environmental goal, but that will never chunk the profit goal. So if you're trying to sell them on that, the other thing is understanding in our industry, buyers, right? What do they really care about? And it's not just the product that sells on shelf.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
They've got objectives. What are those objectives? What are they measured on? Is it inventory losses? Is it efficiency of space? Once you understand those, then you can tailor your offering to match that or not. Go fish somewhere else where the fish are going to bite what you're offering.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
And so I'll give you some examples from Zico and then how this applies in other brands. But what that meant for me is versus talking to a sales rep about their business and what they were doing, my approach was show me. I want to go see it in stores and I want to try to and see it in location and get a sense of how they are creating that experience. And so
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
Same with consumers, right? There's ample data about the gap between what consumers say they'll do and what they'll really do. Health awareness, sustainability, and other things. And so I can tell you personally, I've had a massive shift in the last decade. I used to invest in and want to be part of companies that had an idea of the way the world should work. I'm done with shirts.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
I see reality, right? This is the way the world works. That doesn't mean that we don't have these challenges or opportunities, but how it's the need behind the need, right? So consumers, retailers in a B2B environment, they're making decisions for their self-interest and there's an economic part to that. That doesn't mean it's the only way, right?
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
But to ignore that, you're missing the point, you know? And there's sort of the reasons to believe and, you know, emotional and rational, right? Good companies get behind both of those. What's the rational reason is this is going to save money. It's good for the emotional ones. I get to go tell people that I just was involved in this cool company, right? I get excited.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
I could tell my boss that this or that, right? Those things matter, but you got to understand, you know, which ones you're playing on.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
Oh boy, that's a great question. That's a great question. I have been thinking about that recently and I don't know the answer today, to be frank, because I realized I had really good training in that. Maybe I have an empathetic inclination, but I also got trained in that in sales training, corporate sales training early on. I just had a great program that sort of grilled that into my mind.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
I'm thinking about that more. And I have been spending some time with my team trying to model that, where we sit down and I'm asking the question, what really is going on here? What are the needs? What's the emotional, what's the functional needs that they have? But you're making me think that I may need to formalize that a little bit more.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
What I would do is go into a store, but particularly where this really came to life for us early on was like you mentioned, a yoga studio. It's one thing to see, okay, there's product there, but it's another to see that the person behind the counter is wearing a Zico shirt. that they know him or her when they come in. Oh, hey, Janica, thanks for, there you are again. Good to see you.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
As you say that, I realize the way we are training our team in that is coaching. So we have an active coaching program. Everybody in the team gets coaching. And a big part of that coaching is listening. And we practice putting somebody in, letting them speak, and also practice being aware of what comes up.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
One of the reasons people get blocked in listening is they're so focused on what's going on in their own head. There's techniques and tools to be aware of that to then allow listening. What comes to mind, I don't know if you're an Eric Fromm fan, you know that name, The Art of Listening? I don't know him. I've heard that book, but I haven't, I gotta get it. Okay. 1950s, but incredible. Yeah.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
Yes. Oh my God. Is that true? I know. One simple little book that comes to mind is, um, Say less, ask more, and change how you read forever, the coaching book. Yeah. It's even that idea, like, just say less. See what happens.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
What was it? Hmm. Hmm. Yeah. So I'll share one. I'm not going to give the name of the brand because it's an investment we're looking at. Great. Known this brand for a while, met the founder, and then I visited his office. And it was hard to find. It was in a relatively remote area outside of a sizable city. And it was a nondescript building. And it was around the back.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
And it was basically this teeny little, not so teeny warehouse. And I loved it right away because I realized it's a sizable business, quite profitable. And I realized these guys run, they run lean businesses. And I get in there and it is all about the brand. It is not spent money branding out, but it just represented theirs. They had an indoor golf set up. They had weights.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
They had kind of a bar set up. It was very fitting with their brand. Everybody I met sort of represented the brand. but they were also hyper-focused on space and dollar efficiency. So they had a little packing machine and the founder, actually the guy that ran this group is talking me through, oh, we can get this many packages through this and this dollars and that equates to this many.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
Turns out they're doing like 18 million on Amazon in this space that's smaller than my office. I was just like, okay, I love the obsession with both brand and profitability.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
You doing a class tonight, right? To see that there's some Zico material there, it becomes an experience, right? That tells me we're building the kind of culture that, Because that person that's a sales rep, it's been on the job for a day or a week or somebody they're training with is so obsessed with the culture, so obsessed with the brand that it's coming to life in everything they do, right?
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
Get to know yourself even better and do so with love and compassion, not with criticism.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
Get to know yourself, really. Ask the question, ooh, curious, interesting. I know the one in me that does that. Yeah, yeah, I can see that. Curiosity, self-curiosity.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
The other one I'd add that you're helping me build on is feel all the feelings. Just feelings. And I realize, particularly for guys in business, it's like, don't bring emotion into this. Well, you know what? It's there. See it? Know it. There I go again. The fear's popping up. It's okay. It happens to everyone. Then you can move forward and come back to presence. Totally.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
It's been such a pleasure to have you. Yeah, great to be here.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
And so what I look for when I'm meeting with companies now is, you know, what the CEO says is, founder says is one thing. What I want to see is, I'll talk to the junior most person I can meet. Tell me about the company. What are you guys up to? Right. And that tells me so much more than what you see on posters or hear from them. I want to see, I talk to customers, right?
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
What we, we do deep diligence. Okay. What's their experience with that, with this company? How do they experience the team? How does it show up in different ways?
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
What does it look like? You know, if I'm walking through a warehouse, I'll talk to the warehouse people. I want to see what I what somebody in the back room of a store, how they experience a brand or a service, that gives me a sense of what culture is.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
We go all in for weeks or months until we step back and look, is it working? Does that hypothesis still hold? Is the intention still clear? We can't control the outcome. Dive back in, do it again.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
Yeah, that's a prime example. That is sort of the textbook, so non-textbook, but yet is textbook example. That starts with Mike Cesaro, the founder. And this is who he is. He is... Tatted up, he lives sort of an alternative lifestyle, but he's also got kids and he's a funny guy and he loves humor.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
And so this was his way of just sort of saying, wait a second, I'm not the only one out there that both likes water, wouldn't be caught dead drinking a Fiji or a Dasani, doesn't represent his lifestyle, but he can poke fun at everything to a certain extent, right? Mm-hmm.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
So that shows up in, certainly they've built a marketing team that's almost Saturday Night Live skit level, you know, writers and teams of creativity. But it also shows up in just the way they go to market and the way they sell. And now they have formal board meetings and they have formal processes, but everything's got a little edge of humor.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
All the presentations, all the deck, all the communication, all the swag, everything has this sort of edge to it that represents the brand. And the beauty is, you know, what I saw as well with Zico when it was acquired by Coke, when you do these things right, it endures. Culture endures. And it starts early, but it can last forever. you know, generations if done right.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
And so what I love about Liquid Death is they're doing that not just for the brand today, but this is the sort of stuff that becomes legacy for decades, if not longer.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
The office is in LA and yeah, they've got a skateboard area and a ping pong table area.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
It's, it's, it's a blast, but that really, that really does orient it from Mike. And I, you know, we took, we invited Mike and one of his senior guys on a trip we do as a firm snowboarding. These guys crushed it. I mean, you have people, some of them were skiing, some were snowboarding. These guys are amazing. Right. And so they're, that's their lifestyle. They're having fun. Yeah.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
Everything I do in my life now is an experiment. Nobody has it figured out. You don't have to have it figured out. It's all testing. It's all learning.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
Yeah, for sure. And I'll give you a story around that. So yeah, I love the way you think about, you talk about this and it's the way I think about this is, you know, every, there's multiple customers, right? And in our business, most of the consumer products business tends to be customers, a distributor, a retailer, and then the ultimate end consumer.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
They're all extremely relevant in that process. So as a prime example, one of our main customers early on was a big distributor in New York by the name of Big Guys, a famous. They've put a lot of brands on the map, but these are like old school, New York, tough distributors. And to be very transparent, like it's not my people, right? It's not, I'm not exactly vibing with these guys.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
And so, but I knew how important they were. And so I remember early on trying to get their attention. And by the way, they're selling to yoga studios. And I was more comfortable in that environment than I was with these children.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
Yeah, exactly. But what was interesting is to be very frank, these guys weren't giving me the time of day and I was having a hard time connecting with them. I saw a young guy, Andy, that was working for a brand. Vitamin Water was taking off at the time. Andy was Mr. Cool. He walks through the warehouse. Everybody's high-fiving. He's telling jokes. He's having fun.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
He was super comfortable in that environment and they loved him. And so what I realized is I need that. So I hired him. So you gotta know yourself. And what I find with great CEOs, great founders, they know themselves, right? It's impossible for everybody to be perfect at all levels of connection with everyone. And so in this situation, what I knew is I needed him
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
high-fiving and engaging with the distributors, I could upset the direction, but he was going to do that way better than I could.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
And what was interesting is as we built our culture that had these different aspects to it, different personalities, different aspects that worked well, but all had this central core to them, what became so interesting is that culture became so strong, it helped me avoid mistakes. One example. I tried to hire a head of marketing and I was in this mindset where I knew better. I don't need any help.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
And so I sort of did it myself and brought this person in. And within days, she was completely ineffective. The organism of Zico rejected her. And what I love is our culture was so strong, it wouldn't allow me, founder and CEO, to make a mistake. That's a powerful culture.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
I think that's the key point. That's the key point. So, you know, as an example, and I see a lot of companies that make, make, the other extreme mistakes where they're so focused on culture. They only hire because of that and they miss skills do matter, right? Particularly at a certain, certain size of company.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
And at the same time, or they're totally skill-based and don't have any culture that, that rarely works as well. But I also find the, the, the smartest leaders understand culture. To exactly your point, how every hire moves the culture, which way do you want to move it, right? And so what I've seen great organizations do is bring in certain hires at certain time that may intentionally shift.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
I'll give you one prime example. Even in our little firm, as Ground Force Capital, we're a small team. We have a really very strong culture. It is a close culture for finance, especially. We do a lot of communication, a lot of teamwork. and a lot of sort of radical communication, but we probably were leaning a little on the softer side. of where we probably need to go as we grow.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
And so when we were making a recent hire, we were very intentional. We want to find something that's going to shift our culture a little bit more numeric, a little bit more results-driven, because we had shifted probably a little bit far that way, right? And so I think there's a time and place for recognizing, yeah, this person's going to shift us a little bit that way.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
Maybe it's more customer, maybe it's more numeric, They can't be a total radical fit, but every person shifts the culture. If you do it with intention, you can get the shifts you want.
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
And for a phase, right? One of the things that I think great companies do is they recognize you can't plan forever. But you better be thinking 12 to 18 months, right? And so I see, particularly as a fast-growing organization, it's going to change. And so I'll give you another example. I've got a company I'm involved with right now that had a...
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
had a really, we made a major investment in, had a fantastic culture, delivered great quality, delivered great connection with the customer, but man, they were not delivering the financial discipline. And this phase, that company would not survive and achieve its ultimate mission without financial discipline, right?
Experts of Experience
Why Some Brands Become Movements (and Others Don’t)
And so in that case, we are implementing and making some hires that are bringing that. They still fit. They respect the culture. They work with the culture that existed, but they're moving that culture more towards great, great, great. How do we deliver? Amazing. How do we deliver? Right. And there may be a phase where that swings too far and we need to think about it again.