Life on Mars - A podcast from MarsBased
Welcome to Life on Mars! A podcast about technology, entrepreneurship and innovation from MarsBased. You will listen to stories of the best founders, investors, experts and celebrities from all around the galaxy every two weeks.
Life on Mars - A podcast from MarsBased
We finally bring an expert on company culture / Aaron Schmookler
What really makes company culture crack as you scale from 10 to 30+ people? In this candid conversation, Aaron Schmookler (co-founder of The Yes Works) sits down with Àlex Rodríguez Bacardit (CEO, MarsBased) to unpack the patterns they have seen across startups and mid-size teams, remote and on-site.
We dive into: preventing culture erosion during hypergrowth, why manager span of control matters, how to sell services without hard selling, practical leadership habits (Be Obvious), and the realities of building trust in distributed teams. Real stories touch on TextExpander, Medtronic, and SOG Knives, with step-by-step ideas you can apply tomorrow.
If you lead a team, sell B2B services, or you are scaling a product org, this episode gives you actionable frameworks for structure, communication, and conflict, without the fluff.
🎬 You can watch the video of this episode on the Life on Mars podcast website: https://podcast.marsbased.com/
I'm loving that you have this attitude and this you know, I th I've got the feeling that we'll have a great time. We're already recording, Aaron, so welcome to the show. Here we are. You know, next to nothing about the show, uh, you've been introduced to me by our mutual friend Greg Scoun of Tex Expander Fame. And um as I mentioned, I like to have these conversations for the first time. Or I don't like having certain conversations that they should have been a podcast episode. And the second time you have them, they're not as good. And you said, let's do it. And you're one of the very first people to accept that, not the first, but I'm having the feeling that we'll have a good time.
SPEAKER_01:People decline.
SPEAKER_00:Not yet. I haven't had that. But because I started doing this before my paternity leave, I only recorded three episodes this way, right? And so and they went really well. I would say like the success rate was good. They haven't been published yet. Um, but uh I'm fairly confident that I will keep doing this in the future. So thank you for agreeing to this unknown kind of thing.
SPEAKER_01:Well, it's uh it's a fun and new way to think about how uh how podcasts might happen and also how introductory conversations might happen. So uh we're having this one for posterity.
SPEAKER_00:There's two things that will make this happen uh more interesting for people. The first one is like this is not a kind of content that you usually see. Like most podcasts are street. I don't know if you're a podcast person. I am. I love I love missing podcasts, yeah. I've come to the realization most podcasts are very scripted. They have the same people, that they're like all in the same circles, and they follow the same kind of structure, you know, like dropping some bangers in the beginning, and some smooth transition to the conversation, then every 10 minutes or something like a big headlines or like a clickbait uh kind of content, and do you know the crisis towards the end, or like the worst moments, lowlights of the company, and then the the inspirational story towards the end, right? So it feels like I only kind of know what we're gonna talk about. Exactly. And uh so precisely that's that's what I want to do. The second is I like to like I like to give voice to other kind of companies, not like you usually you see like everybody's shooting for I want to have like the CEO of a Stripe, the CEO of uh Facebook, the CEO of whatever, like the big names, right? Or companies right after an exit, right? Yeah, and I find that I learn more from companies like yours when I listen to podcasts than from, you know, because at the very end of the day, I think that the takeaways are more practical from people who are like one or two steps above you, not ten steps. Like what can I learn from Elon Musk?
SPEAKER_01:Most of us are running most of us are running average companies, right? Maybe not average in terms of uh, well, I mean, most of us are running average companies in every way. That's the that's the nature of average, right? And we really are the the challenge is not how do I become Facebook. It's it's how do I become the next step? That's it, it's a small increment that we need to accomplish. Always, right? How do you eat an elephant? One one bite at a time.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. So, Aaron, I have a lot of questions for you. Um to give some context to the audience, that issue I wrote uh a couple of months back, maybe even three months back, was at Marsbase we were hitting 30 people, right? Uh right now, uh, for the first time in history. We used to, for the first 10 years, we used to hire two to three people at a time, which is something very organic, very feasible for a company that's small, boutique, um, very artisanal, if you will. Um, and last year we decided to take it a notch a notch up, right? And said, okay, we're gonna hire six people, see what happens. We've hired eight. We're in the process of hiring two more people before the end of the year. And I felt like a lot of things were trembling in the company, not for they were not bad necessarily, but things were shaky for a while. We've had to stabilize the company way more, put more put in more effort than in previous years, because with two people like, ah, what do they see or did this there? Would you hire one six months, the next person? Now, in February, we hired four people at the same time. And that was that was big for us. Probably not as big for companies you work for. I've seen Microsoft on your on your website and um a few other big clients. But in companies like us, it feels like it's it resembles the situation Tech Expander had in the day. And so I wonder how do you actually work for companies like the size of Microsoft and companies like Marspace? Like is playbook similar or is it very different?
SPEAKER_01:Uh it's it's similar because uh Microsoft may be a giant corporation and we didn't serve the giant corporation. We served a team at Microsoft. Well, we served a team at Medtronic. So uh you know, people talk about you know, if a VP at at Microsoft has an organization. This is my organization within that that behemoth. Um and the frankly, most of our most of our clients are companies in the 30 to a thousand people range. So the getting out the the Microsofts and the Medtronics and the uh those are much rarer outings for us.
SPEAKER_00:30 people, 30 to 1,000 is like quite a big range. So like the drop down of companies usually comes in smaller.
SPEAKER_01:You know, we're working we're working with a team. And then maybe we're working with a with a with a broader base, having having begun with one team as a pilot, then we're rolling out the same tools and techniques for uh for a a broader base of people. And what we're doing at any given time is helping leaders create environments and giving people the skills that it uh that are required to be effective with other people. It's hard to be effective with people. We are we are funny creatures and uh and and at times unpredictable, at times uh you know, really reactive. So it's there are a lot of skills that that need building, and it doesn't matter whether there are 50,000 people in your organization or five, it's the same skills.
SPEAKER_00:How do you sell these kinds of services? Like I am I find it extremely hard, maybe not extremely hard, but like pretty hard to sell bespoke development to companies. Like companies of all sizes like you work for companies like Microsoft, and startups and scale-ups and public organizations and NGOs. Um but selling something like bespoke development when half of the world just buys fucking WordPress and that's it, is very difficult. But when Greg introduced me to your company, I thought like, wow, this kind of consulting of like company culture and team organization, like fixing this kind of stuff, of course everyone needs it, but must be a really hard sell from the outside of perspective.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Well, I think one of the important shifts, and we've been in business just one year less than you. One of the important shifts that I made it has been to some degree and an important way to stop trying to sell it. So uh, for example, a CEO was introduced to me by the leader of his uh of his peer group. He said, Oh, you know, given the challenge you're having, you should talk to Aaron. And he said, I've got great people on my front lines, and I've got great people managing them, and I don't understand why all these great people are at each other's throats all the time. And so rather than sell him the fix, I asked him some questions. And I learned that each of these managers, who was really well hired and well selected for uh a commitment and an integrity that had them working hard to drive performance, each of those managers was managing 30 people, 20 people. So they had an awful large number of direct reports. And uh and I said, Well, this the you know, the the research shows that that's just too many people. And he said, Well, let me try breaking it down and you know, have them managing eight to 10 people instead. And they stopped being at each other's throats because they had these managers had the time to build strong enough relationships to withstand the pressure of them working hard to drive performance, and uh so he got a little free insight and didn't need us. I find that when I help people with the easy stuff, not that that's easy, but the insight is easy. We get work. He's introduced me to people who who needed our. Not for his company. We didn't get work from his company, but I have had introductions from him that that did lead lead to work. Uh and there are a number of of stories like that where you know we're we're maybe moving down the sales path. We discover some insight that's gonna really transform things things for them. And uh not that everything is fixed, but enough is fixed that the that the priority drops for working with us to s uh under something else. Um and what goes around comes around. So some of those folks do come back and say, okay, now this has risen to a priority level again where we actually need some uh some intensive work, and we get to we get busy. And people will listen to conversations when you told them. Sorry? Oh yeah. Sorry, I broke you off. Go ahead. I was just saying it's always conversations. Every every month and month and a half or so, I I have a I call it a CEO's bull session. And I invite a bunch of people and we talk about some uh particular topic of interest. Like uh in a couple weeks, I'm gonna be uh running a bowl session with CEOs about how to have a strategic retreat with your leadership team that doesn't just waste time and money. And we have a conversation. And I'm I'm not necessarily the expert in the room, though I have some insight about that. I facilitate a conversation. And uh because I'm building relationships and offering value and not clawing after people, uh people lower their guard, and I eventually see an opportunity to say, would you like help with that?
SPEAKER_00:I see a lot of parallelisms in what you what you do and what we do, right? Um I think I understand that you sort of do like you probably don't like the sales word the the same way I don't like it. We do some kind of consultative process. I don't know if that's the right word. Uh bear in mind that I'm not native in English, but uh in which like you're introduced to somebody, they've got a problem, you just go there with no intention to sell. If you sell, great. But the first, like the first intention is to go there, listen to what the other person has got in store for you. Like they've got this problem, they've got this. And I just go there into the meeting, try to solve the problem, and I always I am always very clear, we might not be the right fit for you. Yeah. It might be that you need this other technology, that you will need probably a cheaper company, maybe you can do it in-house, you don't need more space for it, nothing. But they think, like most people are approached all the time by people who are trying to sell very hard, right? So by having this sort of relaxed and chill conversation, I I sense their barriers coming down. And that's where perhaps a more experienced and and better salesman will be like, go now, I'm jumping for the throat. Right. Not myself. Sometimes I just leave the conversation there. So, okay, now I fix your problem or talk to this other person who are like, oh no, uh, you're not gonna sell anything to me. No. People will not remember what you told them, what you did for them. They will remember how you made them feel. And if you made them feel comfortable, they will eventually come back.
SPEAKER_01:Right. Uh and I I think I've gone back kind of back and forth on a pendulum swing in some ways uh over the course of my career as uh in sales. And I I don't really mind the word sales. Um but you know, I've gone, I I've definitely been that clingy, desperate trying to trying to get your business guy. And then I've I've swung too far to the other side and just been like, you know, it's all good, and you know, maybe like you tell me, and uh, and and to that point, and and the more mature I get, and the the more detached from the outcome I get, whether it's the outcome of making the sale or the outcome of whether or not you are offended by me and and focus on what I think uh puts me in the middle, which is service. You know, there's also something horrible about knowing, okay, it's time for you, the salesperson, to ask me to buy. And in fact, like I've come to you for your leadership. And now the I I've felt like we were making progress along the way, and all of a sudden the progress has stalled, and I'm not the expert here. I I've come to you to be my guide, and the progress has stalled, and that's a terrible, uncomfortable place for everybody to be. And so also in in my role with in uh in selling our services, I I I try to focus on what is gonna serve you best, and sometimes that's saying, All right, uh, it seems like this is a good idea. Uh am I wrong?
SPEAKER_00:You're not. And actually my net my next question was was gonna be um, because I've seen that you you also run a podcast and a blog, and content has been perhaps the best and cheapest way to give away some tiny bits of freebies to attract customers, right? But you mentioned that you host this events, private events for CEOs, that is actually also very good tactic, right? So you just invite them, have a casual conversation, try to sell nothing, but you're in the room. And people, when they get in the room, they get like this small circle of people, like at the backstage of a conference or or of a big event. That's where the magic happens, right? So the podcast working wonders for us because we're able to share our information freely, share like we've got a uh the company culture is based on transparency. So we share our revenue numbers, the things we do internally and stuff like that. And people are like, oh wow, you're giving this away for free. You must be really good at what you do, right? So that big builds trust and authority. Um, but jumping into kind of like the subject of the of what I wanted to cover here today, which is the company culture. We have been one of the loudest companies in Spain to talk about company culture. 15 years ago, no one talked about company culture. Granted, we're not a very company, but I took the idea of company culture from the US from when I spent a good time there in 2013. And um and we were very vocal about having a like strong company culture that went beyond like usual startup benefits, not perks, but actual company culture. And um and since then, in Spain, companies have learned how to do it, right? Back then, company culture was the freaking ping pong table at the office and the fruitie snacks, right? Um but there's one thing that I don't feel like there's an actual consensus on this, and I fear that the answer to this will be it's different for every company, but at what point does company culture break?
SPEAKER_01:It depends. And and uh and there are patterns. Like you mentioned being right at about 30 people, and 30 people, it's pretty common for the wheels to start to feel like they may be coming off the bus. Uh that's when Text Expander reached out to us, is when there were about 30 people and growing. Um there is I think of of culture, uh it's the set of contagious behaviors and attitudes in a in a community and a company as a community. And all behavior. Guess what? All behavior is contagious. So, you know, I I th uh as you were as you were talking about it, I I was thinking about when I was 18 and I went to a Grateful Dead concert. And you know, I'd listened to Grateful Dead music before. I'd never been to a Grateful Dead concert, and I my behavior was affected by the behavior of all the people around me. If you've never been to a library, you might walk into the library talking loudly, and then pretty quickly you're gonna go, I am standing out like a sore thumb. And you're gonna get quiet if only to to appreciate and and try to understand what have what have I just come into? And so the reason that I say it depends is that different people's behavior, depending on their forcefulness, depending on their charisma, depending on uh how they spend their time, may be more or less contagious. And so I think there are some highly charismatic leaders that can keep a uh a culture on track according to what track they're trying to create more than others. There are other leaders that I've worked with where you know there are 10 people in their organization and the the culture starts to uh rattle a little bit because the force of their personality doesn't carry that level of contagion. And one other one other thought for you is you talked earlier about growing incrementally one person at a time. You know, you bring one person in, and that's one person among 15. So they're the 16th person, and so there are 15 people with this culture contagion, and then that one person is likely to be kind of absorbed into that culture. And if you're 20 people and you hire four all at once, well, now all of a sudden, those four have a more forceful effect contagion-wise. And I I'm just using the word contagion neutrally. It could be that they have an incredibly positive effect on your culture. It could be that they have a negative effect on your culture, it could be that their effect on your culture is neutral, and still it does change things. I don't know if that answered your question.
SPEAKER_00:It does, because I've got the feeling that um most companies having cultural problems is because they hit hypergrowth, right? And that's when they start hiring because they're running out of time. They're most likely VC backed, therefore they've got 12 months to 18 months left of runway, and they have to make a lot of experiments trying to reach product market fit. That means we don't have a lot of people, we don't have enough people, we have to hire a lot, even though we know that most of these people will have to be fired if things go south or if the company just goes bust in in 12 months, right? Um, but they hire them anyways, at the cost of company culture. And most problems the companies face in these situations are caused by overhiring than for what I understand is company breaking, right? It's they actually break it on purpose, right? In this, I don't know if you are of the same opinion or not, but uh I I I think that's that's a common a common trend I've seen in VC backed companies.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Uh I I do think that the focus of VC is not necessarily conducive to things like sustainability. And there's also there's some value to well, let's not lose slowly. Let's not let's not bleed to death slowly, excuse me. Let's actually take some risks and see whether this thing is viable or unvi or not viable. So I think there are there are you know uh there are some narrow slices here, some some thin slices between what is and what isn't wise. And and any risk, uh, you know, you're gonna break things. You know, a lot a lot of us spend marketing money, for example, that if this marketing money doesn't work, we're gonna be in trouble cash flow-wise. And, you know, one of the mistakes that I made early on was to not spend money on marketing. Uh and that meant that we bled to death more slowly.
SPEAKER_00:And the other thing that I think like really affects the erosion of company culture is the length of the tenure of the employees and the companies, right? In startups, high-growth companies, technology in particular, a lot of companies have got an average tenure, or a lot of people, sorry, have got an average tenure of 1.5 years and the companies, right? Difficult to keep a um company culture around if your employee attrition is 32%. That means that every three years, 100% of your employees change. And uh how can you keep this consistent over the years? In our case, for instance, we've got the other side of the spectrum, believe it or not. Most of our people are seven to ten years into the company, which is really weird. People don't leave our company. That either means that we pay very well, or we just don't uh they don't get tired of us, right? At the same time, while that sounds something very good for culture, it comes with a certain set of struggles as well, which is uh long-term motivation, right? Or people getting older and reskilling them and stuff like that. Is this also like sort of the challenges that you also encounter on companies, or you've never seen a company with this kind of problem?
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. Because uh, you know, as trite as it may be, I I don't remember who it was who who originally said what got you here won't get you there. And so there are aspects of culture that may that may be perfect for having gotten you where you are. And now it's it's that same culture that may be holding you back. And culture is habitual. And so if you've got long tenure and now you need a change in culture, for example, maybe you've been a move fast break things culture and you've still got move fast break things habit when you've actually figured out what works and you've become impatient with what works because it's not the personality that your culture has developed to be. Now it's time to perhaps become a little bit more conservative. So there are cultural habits that you need to change. Uh, can that happen with the same people? Of course, people quit smoking and quit drinking all the time. It doesn't mean it's gonna be easy.
SPEAKER_00:How about uh I've got the feeling that trying to be an external consultant or expert or advisor, I don't know how you guys call yourselves, when you come into the company, you know that um people tend to change their behavior when they know they're being analyzed or assessed, right? Yeah. So if you come into a company with certain challenges and um they'd like to they'd like you to come in and assess what's going on, assess what works, what doesn't, and you start joining their Slack. I don't know what's your methodology, your playbook. So you you you let me know here. But um I'm assuming that somehow you try to blend in or get to know the team or inspect certain things and whatnot. And the team might kind of like raise an eyebrow at the very least, and say, like, oh, I think there's something going on. I'm uh gonna start working a little bit more these days and gotta stretch the hours a little bit more and stuff like that. Is how how do you do it? How do you do it so that it doesn't affect the not the team's performance, the team's uh actual like how they how they how they act? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I mean when you talk to Greg, and I I watched your podcast with Greg from uh from Text Expander, one of the things he mentioned that I think he said it, you know, it it saved them untold waste. Is is a simple tool, a simple piece of vocabulary, be obvious. So while we absolutely do diagnose the cultures we're coming into, also we just recognize that there are certain principles of effective communication and collaboration, effective leadership that are universal and difficult, and as it's so difficult, in fact, that they're aspirational. So clarity of communication, that's that is difficult. Uh it's universal and it is aspirational. I I'm a pretty clear communicator, and I still need to become ever more clear. So wherever you are, if we can improve your effectiveness at clear, consistent communication, and be obvious is a tool and a bit of language once you understand what it means, that makes even the most effective communicators even more effective. So we can we can give you tools, we can give you techniques, and we can give you skills that are going to make your culture a more effective culture, regardless of where you are now. We don't necessarily need to understand. So that's one piece. And then the other piece is if we hang out with you long enough, and we hung out with Text Expander long enough, the facade that you put up is going to become tiresome and you will become exhausted, and the facade will go away, which we've all experienced. Any to anybody who's ever hired somebody has experienced this, right? That somebody comes in, they put on a certain amount of effort, they put on a certain mask. 100%. And that lasts for a couple of months, maybe, right? With the people who have the greatest endurance, and then you start to see their true colors. Uh, and sometimes their true colors are equally, or even perhaps more wonderful. And sometimes you just go, yeah, great. Well, I'm glad you're getting to know more because your effectiveness in this role is increasing because you know more about the role, even as your effort level, your willingness and endurance may be dropping.
SPEAKER_00:But reading between the lines, that means that you've got to work for a long period, right? So when you come into the companies, you don't just go there for a few weeks. It's probably like a six six months project or something like that. How do you actually work?
SPEAKER_01:You know, sometimes sometimes it's a six-month project. Sometimes it's a as it was with with Text Expander. I think we worked with them for 18 months. Uh sometimes, as we worked with SOG knives, we worked with SOG knives for one afternoon. And we gave them tools, we gave them an experience. Everything that we do in in terms of upskilling a team is experiential because we all know enough generally to be more effective. The question is do we have the experience to put our faith and lean into these things that we know? Um, and so we gave. them the some of the same tools that we gave SOG uh excuse me that we gave Text Expander, like Be Obvious. And the new leader, the new CEO of SOG Knives, was disciplined enough that he said, all right, this is our new SOP. And uh and then tactical enough that he took over from there. And they grew those skills from the principals themselves. So some of our clients are are very short term and some of them are longer term.
SPEAKER_00:How about the other obstacle I think that a process like this or a company like yours might might might face and we experience it firsthand is being remote, right? I don't know if you do on-site projects, I take it that most of it is is remote because I'm seeing your clients they come from everywhere. In our case, we've never had an office. And that in and of itself is already a challenge because you know it as an expert in a company culture. Remote environment, hard remote environments, they really struggle to consolidate company cultures. We take longer. And that's a fact just because we we don't spend enough time together. But coming into as an external observer or as a consultant and advisor um I don't know if that the company culture is also diluted there. You can sense it there as an you know as this third party coming into the company and say like oh I'm not seeing where things are going. I don't understand everything because I'm not exactly in the office and remote environments are more difficult to work with in your opinion?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah it's harder. Before COVID in fact we didn't do remote work. We just said uh let us help find find you something because the way that we train and and really any behavior change is gonna generally require some level of training. The way we train is so experiential we didn't at first see a way to do it effectively online. Then COVID came along and we said all right well we better we better figure this out and we spent some some really intensive time going all right well how do we deliver this remotely and thankfully you know we we met Philip and Greg of of Text Expander after COVID began so that when they said can like you they were entirely remote um can we work with you? And we said yes we we have figured out how to do that. So it is it is a a different challenge because as I said uh culture is contagious behaviors and attitudes uh I can't give you a cold from here um right so so there are contagions that are harder in particular you know I can I can uh cultivate a particular image of behaviors for you while we're on Zoom you know that are harder to maintain for an entire day in the office together so I can fake it more easily and then go and and and be otherwise also the behaviors that you want me to uh adopt are harder to instill in me because I'm not seeing you as much I'm not around the behaviors that you want which is why uh another reason why part a big part of our focus is in training. Most people want to do the best that they can almost everybody everybody's doing the best that they can and in large measure it's about skill I'm not gonna get on a unicycle because I am afraid I'm gonna fall off it but if I have the training to stay on a unicycle and I grow the confidence then I will happily get on a unicycle similarly a lot of the the most effective tools of communication things like listening patience allowing silence those are scary until you've had the training to see that they work and then you can have the confidence in the same way you're you're willing to get on that unicycle that is actually very good segue for my next question which is what is your playbook then?
SPEAKER_00:Because uh let me let me explain we we recorded five episodes with an MA boutique dissecting how they work right not that's a pretty like the MA industry is not very transparent and so most people don't know like how these companies work um what is required to get involved with these kind of companies what sort of transactions fees uh how does an N NDA work and uncompete like uh non-shopping agreement and stuff like that similarly we are recording right now like and this week's we're recording a how to build an agency series for the Markspace podcast uh based on our experience um but we don't know how your kind of company operates so what is how does the typical engagement look like like is there uh I suppose an NDA then yeah you give a quote or is it a retainer?
SPEAKER_01:How do you guys work we want to understand where you are as well as we can and where you're trying to get right so it's it's kind of like if you were to call up a physical trainer and say hey I need physical training they're gonna go okay well what are your goals? Oh you want to lose weight well how heavy are you right so that so there there's uh there's that kind of let's learn what is the origin and what's the destination. Okay now we can think about plotting a route so that's that's step one then we agree okay we're gonna do this much of that route together very often what we think about is is kind of three aspects of a healthy culture one is structural prepare the soil we have had a number of uh leaders call us and say one of our core values here is trust I'm not experiencing trust people don't trust each other they don't trust me I don't understand what's going on and I say well open your open your employee handbook to a random page and start reading to me and there are policies in employee handbooks on every page and not every employee handbook most that say in no uncertain terms though in different words we don't trust you as far as we can throw you so if your core value is trust and your employee handbook says for instance and this is one of the most egregious types of policies when you get back from bereavement leave bring us an obituary or a death certificate to prove that you actually lost a loved one if you want trust you've got to show trust I went to a parochial high school you know religious you'd think that morals would be an important part of that and they told us they they told us all day every day you know every time we took a test we are going to be watching you like hawks if anybody cheats you're gonna get zero and it's gonna go on your record and there will be disciplinary action taken essentially they were telling us y'all are cheaters so we're gonna be watching out for that don't do what you do everybody cheated it was a it was a it became a sport given their security measures how are we gonna get past them then I went to college and in college there was an honor code and the professor was not permitted to be in the room while we were taking our exams they'd give this the exam they'd answer any questions and then they were required to leave and then we wrote a little pledge that said I've neither given nor received aid during this exam. Essentially I I did this this is my work I did not cheat. I did not see or hear about any cheating in the four years that I was in college. So people will live up to or down to the expectations that you have from them. So that's one example of prepare the soil are the structures correct another example we already talked about great managers, great people on the front lines, why are they at each other's throats? Because the structure of having so many people report to a single manager is not conducive to a strong relationship. And so there's resentment building and that's creating problems for you that's structure. Prepare the soil plant the seeds we have eight principles of effective communication collaboration and leadership that we train teams to uh understand and implement be obvious is one of those some of our clients just get four of those eight and we plant those seeds in people's brains and they germinate on their own. So we've come back to clients years later and said I I'll say something to the CEO like hey just to be obvious here and he it this has happened more than once that the CEO I'm thinking about Katie right now she said wait you say be obvious too like we say that and I said you remember where you got it she's like oh my goodness four five years later she's like we got that from you it's just become a part of their vernacular to the extent that they forget that where it came from that's culture is we don't even necessarily recognize what it is where it came from that it's something we do it's just it's just how we are. And then the third the third phase is is water the garden uh and that is where we help you germinate those principles and give you real tactics if you think about the seeds and the the principles as strategies for effective culture then the tactics are for example it we give people a four-step process for giving effective feedback.
SPEAKER_00:One, two, three, four you do this, then this, then this, then this uh and that points back to it it evolves out of those principles and now you've got specific tactics to employ uh because the principles and the tactics can reinforce one another that is that sort of well no that actually answers the question of like how do you guys work in terms of playbook but in terms of like the contract how do you that how do companies engage with each other right is there the process does it look like a free consultation at the beginning or we come to your office visit 30 minutes something like that then it's an ongoing agreement there's a paid cake at the beginning I don't know like what would people expect from a process like this? Because we've never had companies like yours on the podcast.
SPEAKER_01:So yeah I'm just um so kids at public utility district they came to us and they said here's the issue uh and I said oh well it sounds like you don't have a system for this is how we manage people around here and that seems to me to be maybe the primary issue. You've got a system for how do we create our work tickets and how do we do procurement and how do we do hiring and we've you've got a system for everything except the care and feeding of your most important asset the people in your company so what we want to do is we're gonna give you a system for this is how we manage people around here we'll do a little diagnostic first we'll plant the seeds give you these these principles and then we will over the course of eight months also give you and train you in a system of managing people and performance that leads to strong relationships, strong retention and strong performance. And and that's that was the agreement from the beginning we just said all right we're going to do this significant meal. We've also got something we call the culture seed starter where we survey the team and measure them on six six characteristics of highly effective teams things like trust and respect, a focus on results, a willingness and ability to manage conflict uh things like accountability, right? We're gonna measure your health in a snapshot through a survey then we're gonna give you these first four principles and then we're going to talk about the results of the survey together and what you as a team want to do about it. And that's as far as we go in this first phase. You may decide that what you want to do about it is entirely DIY and we'll give you some pointers and send you off to DIY and some clients who do the culture seed starter uh see that those four principles have given them enough they decided DIY from there and some say okay we'd like to uh we'd like to increase our willingness and ability to manage conflict we think that's the most important place for us to focus and we might ask do you want help with that?
SPEAKER_00:And if they do we have tools for that brings me to my next question as you might know this is a very artisanal process right and you as a founder as you scale your company um you found you find yourself between a rock and a hard place finding the balance between I want to sell more I want to grow the client base at the same time I the company does a great job because I'm still involved in the projects the moment I go hands off I don't know whether it's gonna happen but I in our experience didn't work very well in the past. And so how do you find this balance of I am involved enough in the day-to-day of the projects and overseeing things and like putting the final touches on the adding the final layer of quality of your distinctive founding principles and quality and you know caring for the growing sales.
SPEAKER_01:For me and my company it it kind of goes like this you know so I started over here and it it was you know you mentioned the pendulum right I'm doing I'm doing it all right and it's kind of like well that's not working let me let me delegate some of this and some of that I delegated well enough that I had only had to backslide to here and then the work from here to here is in systematizing this stuff well enough that people can who aren't me can execute and then also taking my hands off of other stuff where I'm holding things back because other people execute better than I do. And then making new progress realizing the ways in which it hasn't been effectively systematized going back and then working my way forward to systematize and train people more effectively and so we're kind of slowly creeping our way uh forward and then you know the the level of experience and the the decade plus of time that I have doing this, there are some parts of what we do that I do better than anybody else and so there's some dialogue to have with some of our clients about do you want to pay to take me away from the other stuff that I'm doing?
SPEAKER_00:In which case you can pay more and and have me or you can pay a little less and get 90% of the quality that's always a very difficult conversation because most of the times if you do like us one of our strongest selling points is like oh the founders are involved in the project.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And we are right but a certain point you're like I'm not required here because like the company is less complex now. It's been like you know for two years and we're moving to this other more complex problem and perhaps more mentally stimulating project right um and then your natural instinct is not to to reduce the fees right to the clients but they they they see you going away and they're like oh why are you going away from the project right but we're still always there for anything that just comes up any putting out any fires and stuff like that. So that's why I think people love companies like ours probably like yours because founders are still there.
SPEAKER_01:We care um we're coming up to the close to the the to to the end of the of the of the show but there's one question we ask to everybody we've always asked this question not only in the five years of Life on Mars the Mars Days podcast but also in the 15 years I've been hosting events um which is what's been your biggest fuck up biggest personal fuck up and and and work like professional fuck up and how much money did it cost to you I can't calculate it's got to be one of your own yeah you have to own it up I cannot calculate how much it cost me and and I and I want to care for good people who are part of this company's history and without whom w the company wouldn't be what it was I think my biggest fuck up has been not believing people when they tell me who they are that sounds interesting you know that there's there's uh you know people saying this is what's what my priority is and they have skills they have abilities that I lusted after and I wanted those skills and felt like I couldn't get where I wanted to go without them and then make excuses for the behaviors that uh and the actions that compromised either my integrity or the well-being and health of the company our ability to adapt and grow with the demands of the market and still kind of lusting after those skills and abilities and being scared of what would happen if I were to just say I love this but this isn't working and if this is part of the package then we're gonna need to figure out a way to to go our separate ways because I can't be around this can't have this in the company can't see the future being as bright as it needs to be if we keep going in the directions that this insists upon. So um that's my answer.
SPEAKER_00:For what however clear or muddy it may be no it's good usually people try to give me very cliche um crap like I hired the wrong person or I took too long to fire that person and stuff like that, right? Sometimes we get I set the office on fire. That was good. Like somebody at Amazon set an office on fire somebody deleted the production database of like entire record record company on like a beak launch day. Some are really freaking epic but like some of them they try to get away with this sort of small things. Yours is uh much more philosophical if you will but given that like in the work or the the field that you that you do um it's uh it's I understand that you can't allow for fuck-ups in judging people right or in trusting people because at the very end of the day be culture is built with people. So if they're not sincere to you or you're not able to read between the lines, you're not doing a great job.
SPEAKER_01:I I would adjust that a little bit. I think there's I give myself a lot of grace around trusting the wrong people where where I hope I have learned my lesson is in not continuing to throw good money after bad the sunk cost fallacy.
SPEAKER_00:Let me shift directions and instead uh continuing to try to put lipstick on a pig okay gotcha and uh I feel like I have committed the same mistake multiple times but also because I have a certain tendency of working with friends and sometimes you just don't want to hurt them. Yeah and you're like okay I'll try to you know put the lipstick on a pick as you mentioned and until that gets to somehow to somewhere acceptable and then you part ways but uh I think I think we're we've been on the same boat here. Many thanks Aaron um one last question for you rolling out the red carpet. So how can we help you on the YesWorks like with our community at Life of Mars, Marspace, is there anything specific you guys are looking for um any kind of profile you want to hire some new market you want to tap into something we can do for you.
SPEAKER_01:I'll say this I I really am a man on a mission. Uh this company started almost 12 years ago now when my wife told me she was pregnant and I was doing work that I loved in a job that I hated. And I just thought this is this is bullshit. I don't want to come home and have my daughter see that even though I love my work I'm exhausted and and uh and and not because I'm tired but because I'm I'm trying truly tapped out and sapped of my life force I don't want her to think that's even a possibility I don't want her to relate to her fellow humans you know by saying you know another day another dollar same shit different day I hate Fridays I hate my I hate or I love you know TGIF I hate Mondays I hate my boss all that stuff I do not want my daughter to come up in the work culture that you and I came up in Alex um so if you are perplexed by frustrated by uh simply believe that that things could be better interpersonally in your company or between your your folks and uh and your customers your folks and your vendors and you just think that there's got to be a different way I'd love to talk if I can if I can help with insight in any way uh that's that's how y'all can help is help me forward this mission that we instead of coming together on uh you know I'll I'll never forget the clerk who who told me after just a great job doing you know having a great rapport with me building rapport just in the couple of seconds that we were I was checking out she said you know I asked how are you and she said I'll be better in a couple hours when I get off that that way that we try to find commonality together is poison. So if I can in any way help us find commonality through the grace of being able to make a contribution through our work that's a good day for me. So help me have more good days uh so that we can all uh find that commonality together as humans by uh the grace of being able to do a good good work making a contribution.
SPEAKER_00:That that is actually very inspirational. So thank you for sharing. Just a couple of thoughts here first one is you know we've been talking a lot about company culture in this podcast in our blog and whatnot this is actually the very first time I feel like I'm having a very forked conversation with somebody who knows their shit about company culture. The second one is bring back the podcast. Like um I feel like all of these sharings all of these learnings um should be shared on like more frequently on a podcast you've got a great voice you've got a great setup a fantastic background and experience like and experienced you you could you could fill many many books with that so uh podcasting you know is a is a great is something very very useful and uh it's a great way to pay for work. So thank you for doing this. Thank you for the opportunity to have this chat together. I feel like I learned a ton and uh wishing you continued success.
SPEAKER_01:Well thank you Alex you know I I do podcasts not infrequently I have my own podcast and I'm brought on as a guest every so often my favorite podcasts are ones like this where people engage with me in ways that have me saying things I've never said before surprising myself with with new insight into the work that I'm doing. So uh I'm grateful to you for uh being present with me in such a way that that you'd bring new stuff out of me. Thank you.