Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome back to Daring Heart and Strategy in Small Business Marketing. I'm your host, Hailey Bowen, and today's guest is someone who brings both heart and humor to the world of leadership and workplace culture. Michael Kerr is a Canadian hall of Fame speaker, the founder of Humor at Work, and the author of nine books. Yes, nine. His newest, Small Moments, Big Outcomes.
There it is. Yay.
He spent over 25 years traveling the globe helping leaders see themselves not just as decision makers, but as culture creators. And he does it all with a serious dose of humor.
So in this episode, we are going to dive into how to lead culture with attention, even if your team is small, the power of humor in business.
And of course, we need to pick Michael's brain on how the heck he became such a famous speaker around the world.
So welcome, Michael.
[00:01:08] Speaker B: Thank you, Hailey. It's fabulous to be here.
[00:01:11] Speaker A: It's so great to have you. I'm going to put some high expectations on you because when I got my intro to you.
[00:01:19] Speaker B: But you have to lower the expectations, Haley, so I can just kind of step over them. Easy.
[00:01:24] Speaker A: Yeah, no, that's not happening. So I expect to at least laugh one time. That's. That's my. And I've already done it, so I think you've already met.
[00:01:31] Speaker B: There you go. There you go. Check. We can check that off. No more laughter. We're done.
[00:01:36] Speaker A: Excellent. This is a very serious podcast today.
[00:01:39] Speaker B: Very serious.
[00:01:40] Speaker A: Okay. So I love to start off with my guests hearing about their story in terms of how did you get into a career in leadership and culture and kind of where you are now with your business. What was the spark that kind of got you to this place?
[00:01:55] Speaker B: I worked in this large organization. I was a senior manager. I oversaw big, big team, huge budget. I was known at the time for my sense of humor as a leader. In fact, it was sometimes a point of conversation at the senior leadership table. My sense of humor, yeah, sometimes it would get me in trouble. Just a little bit of trouble. But for the most part, I was known as a person who actually practice what I now preach about. I led with a lot of humor. I brought a lot of humor into the workplace. I believed that, you know, we should be having fun at work, not just because of all the benefits it brings, but because, like, life is short and work consumes the biggest chunk of our time. It's the single biggest use of our waking hours, our energy, our talents, our passions. So I think, you know, why wouldn't we have fun? We owe it to the people we're working with to Our families, to our souls, to create as fun a workplace as possible. Now, in this organization, however, the culture changed dramatically and it became. How do I put this politely, Hayley? It became a soul sucking, fun sucking kind of workplace that was just sucking the life out of me. And I realized I needed to change things dramatically because I was not gonna spend my life working in a soul sucking workplace. Life is too short to do that. So I made the leap because I was a communications manager. So I did a lot of speaking and training. I knew that I was good at that. That's where my passion, and I wanted to keep doing that. So I thought, okay, I'm gonna hang my shingle out as a professional speaker, see how this goes. And because I was interested in this idea of culture, because our culture became so dysfunctional, and humor, because I used it so much, I remember thinking that, you know, there must be a little more to this humor thing than meets the eye. And I actually went to a humor conference.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:03:50] Speaker B: I took a sabbatical from my job, Went to this. He worked. Yeah, it was. Yeah, it was very fun. And I started researching it academically. And that's what kind of sparked this journey to talk about how work should not be sucking the life out of us. We should, in an ideal world, feel energized by our work. I mean, now we're not always going to achieve this goal, but wouldn't it be awesome if we could finish the workday actually feeling better than when we went into work in the morning? That it actually energizes us instead of sucking the life out of us?
So that's why I got started. It was driven, frankly, from a place of frustration that so many people are working in these soul sucking, fun sucking workplaces.
[00:04:31] Speaker A: Yeah. And they continue to work in these places.
[00:04:34] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:04:35] Speaker A: I don't understand it.
I mean, there's a lot of opportunity out there. And I guess I'm a person who. I'm like, if you don't love it, you gotta change it. That's just my personality. But it's hard to do. And it takes a lot of bravery to take a step like that. Especially, like if. Especially for you, like if you were in a senior leadership role, to go to that, to being like, okay, I'm going to build my speaking career. I'm going to be a speaker now, Right?
[00:05:01] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Oh, it was scary at first, Haley. Right. Which. Which I'm. I'm sure a lot of people listening. If you're a small business owner, you've started out, it's Terrifying at first. Or it can be. Right. I remember, you know, waking up the first day and thinking, okay, I'm used to having, you know, dozens of people around me, and it's just me and my dog Eeyore.
And literally the first, especially the first six months or year, it would alternate every morning. One morning I'd wake up and I'd hear the theme from Rocky and I'd be, ah, this is the best decision of my life. And then the next morning I'd wake up and I'd be thinking, what the heck have I done?
[00:05:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:36] Speaker B: Yeah. Cause it's not regular paycheck.
[00:05:38] Speaker A: Right.
[00:05:39] Speaker B: It's not like no pension, no. No benefits. Right. Just what am I doing?
So it was this roller coaster ride, but it smoothed out over time. Started to get a few small wins stuck to it. I was persistent.
And yes, it was very slow the first few years, but it was fun. It was fun to build this thing from the ground up.
[00:06:01] Speaker A: And did you start out with the company that you have now or have you like humor at work? Was that like, how old is that company?
[00:06:08] Speaker B: It's 1996. We're talking about 1997.
Yeah.
[00:06:15] Speaker A: So that's pretty much a company with staying power.
[00:06:18] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:06:19] Speaker A: And is it a solopreneur or do you have multiple. Do you have people working with you or how.
[00:06:24] Speaker B: Solo. Solopreneur. Solopreneur. So I'm a one man band, you know, like Artie.
[00:06:31] Speaker A: The one man band playing one woman band.
[00:06:33] Speaker B: There you go.
[00:06:34] Speaker A: I highly recommend it. It's great.
[00:06:36] Speaker B: It's great, right? Well, yeah, there's pros and cons, of course, but there's a lot of freedom, a lot of flexibility and. Yeah. So it's. It's. It's great. And I. And I'm glad it worked out. Now the business did shift in terms of focus. It really was at the beginning very much focused just on the humor in the workplace aspect. Why businesses should embrace more humor, how it can help a business succeed with their customer service, with how humor can help us communicate better, be more creative and innovative, boost morale, manage our stress, be more resilient. Why leaders should lead with humor. So it was very focused on that humor angle of workplace culture, but it broadened over the years. So now I focus far more on workplace culture, recognizing that humor, I think, is one of the key traits, attributes, resources to build a great workplace culture, but it also reflects a great workplace culture. So humor is the end result, I think, of working in a workplace, working on a team where you're Doing all the things you should be doing to build a successful business, to build a successful workplace culture. Humor is just the end result of that because it becomes easy for everyone to bring a good sense of humor into work because they feel valued and respected and trusted and appreciated.
[00:07:53] Speaker A: I was just gonna say some people just aren't funny, though, Michael. Like, how do they bring humor in if they're not funny? I've met people who I don't find very funny.
[00:08:02] Speaker B: Well, I don't know that I'm funny all the time. It's a lot of pressure to be funny. So I make it very clear to my audiences. And in my books, I talk about this.
It is not about being funny. It is certainly not about telling jokes, being the office clown, being the office standup comed, having a sense of humor. And I take this very kind of global definition, if you will, of humor. That humor is about just being more human and more authentic. It's about finding the humor that's out there that happens every day in our lives and appreciating it. It's about being able to laugh at the things that you cannot control. And if you're a small business owner, that can be quite a bit some days. Right?
[00:08:41] Speaker A: There's a long way.
[00:08:42] Speaker B: And. Yeah. And especially as a leader. So for the leaders out there, I really want you to hear this one. It's especially about learning to laugh at ourselves more. It helps us stay humble. It helps us stay human. It helps us get over this need to be perfect all the time. And it allows us to just be human and be okay with making some mistakes and fumbles. Laughing at ourselves is one of the most important things we can do, I think, as leaders. And is it not a truism that when a person takes themselves overly seriously, no one else takes them seriously? That's the. That's the irony, right, Is people go around taking themselves all seriously. And the reality is, hey, no one's taking you seriously now because you're taking yourself so bloody seriously. So it's about lightening up on yourself, and it's about just creating that lighter tone where people can bring their sense of humor to work. So if you feel like, well, I'm not a naturally funny per, that's okay. And it's not about being an extrovert, by the way, either. Some of the most effective, successful business owners and leaders I have interviewed all over the world are introverts. Some of them have even said they're shy. However, they recognize they cannot hide behind those natural personality traits as a Leader, it is their job still to get out and connect with their employees, connect with their customers and to build that culture where it's okay to have some laughs, where it's okay to bring your sense of humor along for the.
[00:10:12] Speaker A: So how, how do you do that? How do you build?
You just like give, give me some like tangible, like what's a step maybe. So let's bring it back to small business. So the clients that I have and a lot of the listeners are in this spot in their businesses where they're starting to hire their first, you know, few people, a lot of them are, you know, 10 people or less.
And a lot of them have a lot of culture problems. They really, really do. So what would you kind of give as like for somebody like that who. And I think the culture problems, at least the ones that come top of mind right now, is that the business owner is so busy and wearing so many hats that oftentimes the staff just feel like a number, you know what I mean? Like just like just do this, do this. And they also have their staffs doing a lot of different things, like no defined roles kind of thing.
[00:11:12] Speaker B: Right.
[00:11:13] Speaker A: So for a company like that, how do you go about starting to change the culture or create a start out with the right culture?
[00:11:20] Speaker B: Yeah, well, the very first thing I think every leader out there needs to embrace is to just embrace the idea that first of all, don't think of yourself as not just a manager, but think of yourself as a leader. Because there is a difference between being a manager and being a leader. Not saying we don't need good management skills, have good management skills. Your business is going to end up like an episode of Game of Thrones after a while and nobody wants that. So we need good, strong management skills. However, there's a fundamental difference between being a manager and being a leader. And beyond that, I challenge everyone to think of themselves as a culture leader. And why do I say that? Because we know, and this is what you need to embrace too, as a mindset, is that culture is your number one competitive advantage. It really is. It is your number one driver of success. And we should probably define what I'm talking about here. By culture, I just mean not what you do in your business, but how you do the things you do. It's your mojo, it's the feel of the place, it's the employee experience. We talk about customer experience. And I know all of you are very focused on providing great customer experience, but what experience are you providing for your employees? So it's about the Unique set of rituals, traditions, values, behaviors that make your business you and different than your closest competitor. What is your unique culture advantage? We know it is the number one driver of success.
We know it becomes easier to hire better people that are a better fit for your business. If you focus on your culture, you will keep people longer, you will keep people happier and more engaged and more motivated, and it will drive better customer experience.
So you need to be relentlessly intentional about thinking about your culture, which means as you think about business decisions in your business. And by the way, this applies to small businesses as much as big businesses, right? Hayley, you talked about you could have a team of just five people. Well, you still have a culture.
How you work together, how you communicate together, how you collaborate. You've got a culture there. So being intentional means every time you make a business decision, get used to also including the culture factor. So how will this business or how will this decision impact our culture? Will it help build our desired culture and will it reflect our desired culture? And of course, it becomes essential that you hire with your culture in mind, that you are hiring people that aren't just a fit for your culture. The danger with hiring, Hailey, people who are just a fit for our culture, is that we sometimes run the danger of just hiring clones of ourselves, right, because we're so awesome. Why wouldn't we want more of us? But the danger there is if you want to really innovate and grow your business in the long term, sometimes we need to hire people that are going to challenge us, that are going to move us in the right direction with our culture, that are going to bring skills and attitudes that maybe we don't have on our team yet. So hire relentlessly for your culture, which means on your website, where you're promoting your business, wherever you do that, talk about your culture, bring it to life, make it fun, make it conversational, connect people's hearts to their minds, talk about the experience employees are going to have working with you, set yourself apart by doing that, and then relentlessly in the hiring process. And in fact, I wrote a very small book several years ago because this, this is such an important topic called Hire, Inspire and Fuel Their Fire. How to recruit onboard and train new employees to live your culture out loud. So gear your questions, gear your whole interview to make sure you are assessing for a person's attitude for the culture fit for the values that they are going to bring into your company, because that is absolutely critical. And then as a leader, you've gotta keep that culture message alive. You've gotta talk about it. And like you said, Haley, we get busy, especially in a small business. We get busy business. We get busy, we're focused on all this stuff and we're running on that rat wheel. And sometimes we forget the importance of taking, taking a little time out and understanding the importance of talking about our culture with our employees, being intentional about that, talking about it in our meetings, making sure your values actually mean something. And they're not just words or phrases on a wall that they actually mean something to your employees. So you're translating what your culture values are. You're turning them into stories and examples to bring them to life. And when you. That amazing transformations can happen in a business.
[00:15:49] Speaker A: So how do you pick? So I do work with, obviously, brand strategy. And part of that is we come up with the brand values. Now for a small business, often the brand values become the company values. Right? Right. Because their company is their brand.
How, how do you come up with culture values for them to decide what should be the, you know, three or four things that we really should be pushing, or do you have a recommended culture for people?
[00:16:19] Speaker B: I don't have a recommended culture for people because everybody's different. Everybody wants to emphasize different things. And there's different types of businesses, different styles of businesses. I certainly present examples in my book of what some companies do come up with, but I urge them just to have really rich, deep converse, to really think about these. Right. So you're not just slapping together, you know, the, these words that you've seen some other company have. I mean, the funny thing about values, Hayley, and I'm sure you've seen this in your travels, is I will sometimes show examples of different companies that have the exact same list of values. Like they're identical. Same list of values. And yet company A, kind of a soul sucking, fun sucking culture. Company B, same list of values. And yet they're winning all those best places to work awards. They're rocking it with their employee retention rates and successful customer experience and all that stuff. They're absolutely rocking it. So what's the difference? They have the same list of values, but it's those old cliche sayings, actions speak louder than words and talk is cheap. So it's the company that translates and actually lives those values out loud, of course, and holds employees accountable and celebrates employees for living those values out loud that will be successful. So I think companies, leaders, and ideally, especially if you're a small business owner, one of the many advantages of being a small business owner, Business owner, is you can be more flexible, you can change faster than a big company. You can adapt on the fly and you can involve your whole team a lot easier. So my best advice is to have this conversation with everybody on your team. Get their ideas, talk about what they're passionate about. Talk about just, hey, what kind of workplace do you want to work in? Like, what matters to you? You don't even have to use the word values at first. Just start talking, talking to them and have this conversation. Take the time to do this. How do you want to feel at the end of the workplace? What's to you in terms of how you relate to one another on your team? And these different words, these different phrases will come out. Now what I do recommend though, is to make sure they're fun. Like, make them fun, make them meaningful. They're of no use if nobody knows what they they mean. I interviewed this president of a company in San Diego years ago, and now, well, they've always been a successful company. They win those best places to work in San Diego awards year after year. But the president was telling me this hilarious story. He went out to lunch with his senior management team and just on a whim, he said, hey, I'm going to buy lunch to whoever can name our company values.
This was the senior management team and nobody could name their core values. So they're all.
[00:18:54] Speaker A: I've been in many companies where I couldn't name them.
[00:18:57] Speaker B: Yeah, right, yeah. So they're sitting there, they're laughing and going, oh my goodness, if we don't know these values, why on earth should we expect our employees to know them? Why do we even have them? So they decided, and I love this, they decided to start over. Let's clean the slate.
And they came up with one umbrella, what I would call an umbrella value. And I like the concept of umbrella values. This idea of what is your one overarching value that is more important than all of your values? This is the priority. This is what you want to be known as. This is the core of your identity. And they decided that they were going to be the world's first 100% jerk free workplace. Which is awesome, right? Because how could you not be a little more successful if you know you're free of jerk?
[00:19:42] Speaker A: That's awesome. That's funny.
[00:19:45] Speaker B: Yeah. Now, now what they did though, is they didn't just say, okay, we're gonna be 100% jerk free workplace. They brought that value to life.
They told story after story, example after example of what it actually means to be a jerk. So they Translated it. As leaders, we have to be interpreters of what our values, what our principles are. We need to model those values out loud and again, hold employees, and in their case customers, hold them to account as well. So they made it very clear, hey, we're not going to work with customers that are jerks either. It's too stressful, it's too costly to our culture. So that's going to be a line in the sand for us. But they translated what those values mean. They have signs everywhere that promote it. They promote it in all sorts of way. They have a ritual they do every Wednesday afternoon where they have kind of a values moment to talk about their values and what it means and celebrate somebody who lived their value out loud. It's just a short little. Like it's a 15 minute meeting.
[00:20:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:43] Speaker B: But they bring it to life. And that's the key.
[00:20:46] Speaker A: Wow. I. I love that. And that is, I see the parallel between brand and culture. And really your brand becomes your culture too.
[00:20:54] Speaker B: Right, right, right.
[00:20:56] Speaker A: But the whole idea of living it, it's the same as a brand. Right. If you can't, if you don't live it, if it doesn't change your behaviors as a brand, the way you speak, who you speak to, all of that, then. Then you just have a piece of paper which is useless.
[00:21:09] Speaker B: It's just words on the wall. That's it.
[00:21:11] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Some beautiful mural.
[00:21:15] Speaker B: It's a beautiful mural. The poster with the puppies and the rainbows and the unicorns and. Yeah. And you get your team together and you sing we are the world.
[00:21:25] Speaker A: We are the world. Okay, so I want to talk about your humor stuff again. So for me, I would think that that angle has been a big differentiator for you through throughout. So why do you believe for sure it's such an essential part of the culture? We kind of talked about it. But is it humor or is it authenticity?
[00:21:47] Speaker B: Well, it's both. It's both. And there are studies that suggest that we actually trust people more who demonstrate a healthy, positive sense of humor. And I think the reason for that is tied to authenticity. I'm sure we've all experienced those moments where somebody's acting so serious in a meeting or they're doing a business presentation, even in their. And they don't even seem like themselves. They're putting on the business person Persona.
[00:22:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:11] Speaker B: And then they screw up. Right. And all of a sudden they laugh. Their whole body language changes. And then it's like.
[00:22:16] Speaker A: And then everybody in the audience also changes. Right?
[00:22:19] Speaker B: Totally. Right, right. And everyone's going, oh, there's the real human lurking behind that serious facade. So humor helps us be more. More authentic. And the reason I think this is one of the keystone values, one of the keystone drivers of success is that it truly is, or one of at least our most human characteristic of all. So it helped just humanize our workplaces. It, as I said, keeps us more humble, more authentic, more real. It creates that environment where we feel we can breathe right? We're not walking on eggshells. We don't have to parse every word we say.
We can be comfortable in our own skin. We can speak up. We feel comfortable speaking up in meetings and having richer conversations because we don't have to be.
So humor kind of. It allows this kind of grace in our lives, right? It allows us to just be our real, sometimes very flawed humans. But, but the, and the benefits of humor, as I mentioned earlier, are so multifaceted. So it helps us in so many different ways. And as a leader, one of the most powerful things I think it does too, is it makes you more approachable. It sends the message that you don't bite. You convey the sense that you can laugh at yourselves, that you can be the first person to laugh at yourself, that, that you're okay having a. Of fun on the job as long as people are getting their work done, of course that matters. But you can laugh while you're working. And in fact, we have so much research that shows people are actually more productive when they bring their sense of humor along for the ride and are allowed a little laughter, then you're more approachable.
And that is so important as a leader. We know from a whack of research there's this thing called organizational silence where our employees are fearful to speak up to the boss for all sorts of reasons because we haven't built that trust, we haven't built that environment conducive to good conversation. So employees won't raise their hand and ask you challenging questions. They won't speak up when they see a serious safety issue or a customer service issue because they're scared, because they've seen from past experience that it doesn't always go well when they speak up and tell the truth in a meeting.
So bringing your sense of humor along for the ride is. It's not the only way, but it's one of the most powerful ways, I think, that you can create that culture where people know that you don't bite. They can come and talk to you with their serious issues. They can suggest an outrageous idea that might some innovative new result for your business. They can ask those tough, challenging questions.
[00:24:57] Speaker A: Yeah, I love that.
Speaking of authenticity, I don't know if you could hear, but my dog is snoring. Like, I just have to wake her up. Just a second.
[00:25:08] Speaker B: You're gonna wake up. Oh, poor dog.
I'll just talk amongst myself. Was it. So did I put your dog to sleep? Is this what you're learning here? I'm boring your dog. Oh, there's. What is your dog's name?
[00:25:23] Speaker A: Rosie.
[00:25:24] Speaker B: Rosie. Hi, Rosie. Hi, Rosie. Are you allowed snort?
[00:25:28] Speaker A: You do this to me every time she does this to me the last couple. It's like I. I think the sound of my voice, like, makes her fall asleep.
Okay, go, go lay down, Rosie.
[00:25:40] Speaker B: Come on. This is a fun topic. Stay with her.
[00:25:42] Speaker A: Yeah, you're giving us a complex, Rosie.
[00:25:45] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:25:47] Speaker A: Okay. So sorry about that.
[00:25:50] Speaker B: That's okay.
[00:25:51] Speaker A: I also find in the speaking world, like, for me and coaching and, and stuff that I do that humor really, like, like is kind of my differentiator. A little bit in when I deliver my, like, training and stuff, because I'm. I'm so.
Well, I do stuff like that, but I'm like, I just. You just can't care. You just have to be able to be yourself.
And I think you're exactly right. That makes people at ease, makes them be themselves. And when people are themselves, that's when the good stuff comes out.
[00:26:25] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And it, and it makes you. And this, this holds true for all your employees as well. It just makes you more likable.
[00:26:31] Speaker A: Right.
[00:26:31] Speaker B: People. People want to work with people that aren't jerks. They want to work with people that, that they like. And so humor is one of the easiest ways to do that, to send a message that, hey, you know, I'm human and you, You. You can talk to me and I don't bite.
[00:26:47] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, I love that. Okay, so let's switch gears a little bit and talk about you building this business up.
So I know you had mentioned the first couple years were a little slow, like, as it is with most businesses. So what would you say was the thing that allowed you to really start to gain momentum in your business?
[00:27:07] Speaker B: Well, it was.
I think any small business owner. Any small business owner has to. I mean, I mean, the word we all probably hear all the time is just that need to be relentlessly persistent. Right? It was persistent. So just sticking in there, doing the work, doing the work you need to do that sometimes you don't always enjoy doing, but you've Got to do it to drive results. I know now in my case, in terms of a differentiator as a speaker, and you mentioned it, for sure, it was my humor. And I think for any business, just while I'm on that point, right, if you want to differentiate yourself from your nearest competitor with your customer experience, you've got to do, I think in my mind, to really simplify things, you got to do one of two things. You have to either go the extra inch beyond what they're doing, so you've got to do something more than what your competitor is doing, or you've got to do something different.
So I was definitely focused probably more on the do something different aspect. So I put myself out there in my talks. I was very, I had all sorts of props and that wasn't normal back at the time, I, I, and part of it was just not even knowing any better, right. So I didn't have to unlearn stuff. So I had all, you know, huge, which I still have in my talks, a big six foot table of all these crazy props. I would use hats I put on, I would mess up my hair, I would just all this crazy stuff. So I weaved in a lot of humor while still delivering a very relevant message. Right. Humor is just a vehicle to deliver a message in our businesses. And that, and so that was my approach. So that helped me gain word of mouth traction. But what I did very early on, that differentiated me too, compared to a lot of speakers, I think was I just, I did so much research, so much research on my topic, going to conference, reaching out, talking to leaders, interviewing leaders, interviewing people in companies all over the world, which I continue to do today to get these great stories, to get these really interesting, cool stories. And that was one of my big differentiators too. And when you share those stories, it makes you more relevant and it makes you more credible. And also it offers audiences the sense that, hey, this stuff can really work. Because I'm talking about sometimes some pretty crazy ways we can add a little humor to the workplace. For example, I talk about this one company. You know, really easy way to add more humor into your culture is to create some fun theme days every now and then. Some, some companies do these every week. Like this one company, they do third person Thursdays where everybody talks about themselves using their own name.
So Michael loves this idea. Hey Michael, I'll see you in the meeting later on, right? Like, like, so stupid. But how could you not go around with a smile on your face all day? So by sharing these examples and especially sharing them from really, you know, what we would perceive to be very serious conservative businesses, people kind of go, okay, it gives them permission to try these things. And there's the social proof that it actually works. So that was a big differentiator, I think, for me too. And then early on, and I certainly tell this to new speakers early on, one of the things I did right away, and this applies for every business as well, is right away make sure you are collecting those testimonials, those customer reviews, those rave reviews from your customers right out of the gate. Those are so amazing important these days. So building that, that, that, that again, social proof that you can share with other potential customers is so important. Absolutely critical.
[00:30:33] Speaker A: Yeah. And in, in the speaking world, and I know I mentioned this on another podcast, but Talk A Dot, have you used Takadot?
[00:30:44] Speaker B: I know of Talk A Dot. I actually don't use it in my talks.
[00:30:47] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:30:48] Speaker B: But I do, but I do get.
[00:30:49] Speaker A: And it's like building my email list.
[00:30:52] Speaker B: Right.
[00:30:52] Speaker A: So that I can then go back out and reach people again. Right?
[00:30:55] Speaker B: Yeah. So it's, yeah, well, and that's, and that's another great point. One of the things I did early on that I still, I started this in 2002 is I do a weekly newsletter called Inspiring Workplaces. I do it every week, every Wednesday morning it comes out. And that has been one of the most effective things I've done for a couple of reasons. One, one as a touch point to stay in touch with people that have seen me speak, see me in one of my training workshops. But also the other thing that I realized, and this is the reason I actually started, it wasn't even so much for marketing. I started this as a self discipline tool to force myself to keep reading, to keep researching, to keep growing my expertise because I have to find new material every week. Right. To write about. So it keeps me fresh, it keeps me energized and keeps me finding new things to talk about.
[00:31:45] Speaker A: I like that. I like that. Yeah, weekly too. And like that touch point with people. So do you get a lot of recurring repeat gigs?
[00:31:54] Speaker B: I, I, I do, I do. And a lot of most of my business is word of mouth. And that's something I've, I've grown to appreciate too. It is, it is largely word of mouth and sometimes it's. The word of mouth is crazy, right? Cause it'll be, I'll get a, I'll get an email or a phone call and well, less phone calls these days, I find. But email or somebody will say yeah. My. My spouse's cousin's boss saw you at a conference two years ago, and there'll be these crazy.
[00:32:21] Speaker A: You know, it was a good conversation. If she remember.
[00:32:23] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:32:24] Speaker A: If it went like three people over.
[00:32:26] Speaker B: Three people removed. It's. It's hilarious. But it's. It's very much word of mouth.
[00:32:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:32] Speaker B: Driven, for sure. For sure. And of course, these days, to the quality.
[00:32:36] Speaker A: Right. And I think that for so many small businesses, the first. At least for me, too, it was the first couple years I had to market, I had to push, I had to do all this stuff. And then, like, I've kind of been coasting. Right.
[00:32:49] Speaker B: Right.
[00:32:49] Speaker A: On word of mouth for, like, the last five years.
[00:32:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:54] Speaker A: So it's not always hustle, hustle, hustle. It's like building your networks and doing such a good, irresistible job that people keep coming back and keep talking about you.
[00:33:05] Speaker B: Totally. Totally. And, Hailey, you twigged me into something that I want to stress here. Going back to the culture and the idea of thinking of yourself as a culture leader. I really want to emphasize this point because as. As you. As you mentioned, small business owners, we put in the hours. It can be long days, lot of work.
Here's what I want to remind you of, though, when I talk about you now, thinking of yourself as a cultural leader, I'm not talking about adding more to your pile. I'm not talking about adding on. In fact, I want you to embrace this mindset. This will make your life easier in the long run. This will mean less work for you, in theory, in the long run, the more you think of yourself as a culture leader. So it's not necessarily. Yes, you may have to do some things you weren't doing before, but for the most part, it's about continuing to do the things you're already doing, but just doing them in a little bit of a different way.
And it will create less stress for you in the long run. It will save you time and energy in the long run.
[00:34:05] Speaker A: Time and energy. The first thing that popped in my mind was like, more retention. Right. People will say, because there's so much turnover in small businesses, too, because oftentimes you can't afford to pay as competitive as you would want.
[00:34:17] Speaker B: Right.
[00:34:18] Speaker A: And so they're like, I mean, it happened to me. I had an admin person at one point, and she got a job at the hospital, and she's like, like, they're giving me benefits and they're giving me this, and it's like, you know, $20,000 more a year.
What can I do? Right. Like, and it took a long time to train her. And then so that now I'm like, I don't want to hire anybody. Because this is, like, this is hard. And so it is hard to lose people.
[00:34:43] Speaker B: It totally. And it's a huge expense. And again, that's a really good reminder, Hayley, of what you said. Is that because there's so many things you can't control, because you can only pay your employees so much, perhaps in your market, in your business, and there are going to be greener, literally, pastors out there, that means you need to be even more intentional about your culture, even more intentional when it comes to being a good leader and doing those things that matter. Appreciating your employees, recognizing your employees, creating a fun environment for them, whatever you can, Focusing on those. Those intangibles that we sometimes dismiss as not being very important, but they are critically important.
[00:35:24] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And so one of the things that I do when we do brand strategy is we talk about, like, the purpose of the company, right? Not in terms of profit, but in terms of what is the good you're doing in the world.
How does that play into culture? Or is it less important in your mind than kind of some of the more everyday values being lived?
Like the.
[00:35:47] Speaker B: No, I. I think. I think that speaks to a sense of purpose. And I talk a lot about that. I talk about that in my last book. I talk about that in all my talks. Because we know when employees have a sense of purpose at work, they are far more engaged, they're more happy, they tend to be more productive, and they tend to be attracted to businesses that have a sense of purpose and stay longer when they have a sense of purpose. In fact, an international Mercer survey found a sense of purpose was one of the top motivational influences for employees.
Now, when I talk about a sense of purpose, one of the first things I hear is, well, you know, we're not exactly solving cancer here. You're solving world hunger. How do we have a sense of purpose?
Doesn't matter what you do for a business, you still need as a leader to connect to your own sense of purpose and to connect your employees to a sense of purpose. And it can be in just simple, simple ways. There's this wonderful study. Amy Reznesky, a Yale professor, talks a lot about purpose at work, and she has this wonderful study that I often reference of cleaners in Midwestern hospitals. Now, think about that. Think about this.
These cleaners, they all. They're doing the same job, same Duty, same roughly level of pay, same culture, same hospital, and yet very, very different mindsets that she describes in a research that we see across every profession. At one end of the scale, the cleaners, very, not very happy, didn't deal with stress well. And they would talk about their job like this, yeah, my job, it's pretty boring, anyone could do it. And then they'd rattle off their job description, here's what I have to do, blah, blah, Right? Yeah. So not very motivated. The other end of the scale though, now, same hospital, same job, same culture, yet they would say things like, oh, my job. You know, cleanliness in a hospital is really important. People die if we don't clean properly. And you know, what I love is about is connecting with some of the long term patients we have in the hospital here. So there's a patient down here, he's bedridden, so every chance I get, I move the around in his room. And that gives me such a great feeling to be able to do that for them. So they just through their mindset have reminded themselves of the purpose of their job. But as leaders, we need to make that connection. We need to make sure we're doing that. A really simple example too, of how a sense of purpose can change for people. And I have all sorts of these simple little examples. I was hanging out with this fantastic company called Barrel Health Call center in Dallas, Texas. They have an amazing culture and a fun culture. And the receptionist had the job title the director of first impressions. And I'm seeing that more and more in businesses because that captures the real purpose of that job. Right. Rather than receptionist, I'm the director of first impressions. So just doing things like that. There was a food and beverage manager at a hotel in Orlando, Florida I met, and his job title was the manager of Vibe. Same idea. So he was talking to me about, hey, I'm the manager of Vibe. And he said, well, when they changed my job title, it kind of opened up these new ideas for me about how I view my job and how important my job is. Or you look at a very. So sometimes the language that we use matters. A very simple example, Pike's Place fish market that we've probably most of us have heard about. When they became world famous for adding more fun into their fish market. And one simple little language shift that they did. Hey, instead of providing good customer service, we're gonna challenge our employees to make everyone's day. And isn't that a more interesting sense of purpose, A more fun sense of purpose?
[00:39:19] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:39:19] Speaker B: What can I do to make this person's day in a non Clint Eastwood like manner. What would that look like? So, you know, thinking about the language we use, but being overt in terms of making sure your employees understand why their job matters. That's all we're talking, no matter what they do in your company, reminding them on a regular basis, hey, hey, we appreciate what you do here because without you, here's what would happen.
[00:39:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:47] Speaker B: And celebrating the downstream benefits of what you do too. Right. So celebrating your, not just your business success, but your customers success because of you, because of your services, your products. How is success showing up for them? There's a company in, I think it's South Carolina where they make a piece of medical equipment. So what they do is regular field trips where these frontline employees working in the factories, building these little widgets at things, they will actually meet with the patients and the families of patients and the doctors and nurses to see the impact of what their little piece of the puzzle on that assembly line actually leads to in terms of an end result.
[00:40:28] Speaker A: Yeah, that's so important. That reminds me of in my previous career, I was a brand manager for Swiss Chalet. So restaurants across Canada, and they did, every year, they did the, this campaign to raise money for the sick kids hospital and their equivalents, like in other provinces. And when I took it over, I invited like the managers, the assistant managers, whoever wanted to confront me to the restaurants to go to sick kids, read to the kids and like actually experience what, what is this campaign going to mean?
And that year, I think it was four times the, the donation across all. We did other things too, but that was one of them. And I think that that was a really important one for you to see. Tangibly, what am I doing?
How am I changing? How am I changing lives for the better because of what I do? Totally. So they just had to sell these little coloring things, little ornament, origami, ornaments, small little task. But then they could see the empath, right?
[00:41:30] Speaker B: Totally. Totally. Well, and even. Okay, so, you know, coming from the food industry, even that as an example. Right, right. If you're in the food industry reminding people that you're not just serving food, you're not just, you are creating experiences for people. You are, are part of sometimes people's most important part of their lives, touch points in their lives. They might be celebrating a party or a birthday or an anniversary or a promotion at their work or whatever it is you are part of that. You are creating this experience. And they are coming to your restaurant because.
Because of that thing that's going on in their lives. And that's kind of cool when you look at it through that lens.
[00:42:07] Speaker A: Yeah. And that would force you as a server or anybody in the restaurant to try to make that more special for them, right?
[00:42:15] Speaker B: Totally. Yeah.
[00:42:16] Speaker A: And sometimes people maybe can only eat out on those special occasions. They're not like going out for dinner every day. And so when they go out.
[00:42:24] Speaker B: So this is a big deal, right? It's a big deal.
[00:42:26] Speaker A: It's a big deal.
Yeah. Yeah. I love that framing. I think that is so important, especially in ensuring your employees are feeling like they're valued. Because I think employees who don't feel valued, they leave.
[00:42:40] Speaker B: Totally, totally. Still one of the number one reasons employees leave us.
[00:42:44] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And we don't want good people to leave us because they're so hard to find.
[00:42:48] Speaker B: Yes. Well, and, and, and, and that's. And that's the mindset that we have to embrace too. I talk about it in Higher Inspire and feel their fire is if you want to hire the best people for whatever that means. Right. And it's different depending on the job. But the best people, it doesn't matter what job you're hiring for. Obviously you want the best person in that position. Well, if they truly are the best person, they can go work for whoever they.
So you've got to sell yourself as much as you're expecting them to sell them to you. It's got to be a two way conversation.
[00:43:20] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So tell me about your newest book.
What is that one about?
[00:43:26] Speaker B: This baby. Yes, my last baby. Small Moments, Big Outcomes. How leaders create cultures that fuel extraordinary results.
So this book is as much about culture as it is about leadership. And it really is a guide for leaders to help them think of themselves and embrace that idea of what we talked about earlier, being a culture leader, why culture matters, and how you can be a culture leader and build the kind of workplace that drives results. And it's got tons of examples from businesses all over the world, small businesses, big businesses, examples on how to bring more humor and fun into the workplace, how you can recognize and appreciate your employees better, how to bring your values to life, how to connect to that sense of purpose. We were talking about lots on communication because communication is everything when you are a leader and when it comes to building a great workplace culture. So there's tons on the importance of communication and how to communicate with your team, how to have good conversations, how to have rich conversations, how to have those uncomfortable feedback conversations and.
[00:44:26] Speaker A: And don't hide behind email and don't hide. Don't hide behind uncomfortable feedback conversations.
[00:44:32] Speaker B: Yes. Yes, exactly, Hayley. So it's packed full of great ideas and inspiration to. To just help people build a more inspiring, collaborative, positive, humane, and, yes, fun workplace environment.
[00:44:46] Speaker A: I love that. And it doesn't mean spending more money, Right? Like. And like you said, it doesn't mean more work. It's just changing what you're doing.
[00:44:53] Speaker B: Exactly. And yes, and thank you for saying that. No, it doesn't mean you have to spend more money necessarily. The amount of things you can do that cost nothing is crazy. There's so much you can do because it starts with your mindset, your attitude, your approach, and finding just simple ways to improve the employee experience for all your employees.
[00:45:14] Speaker A: Love that. Okay, so if listeners could walk away with just one idea about leadership or culture, what are you hoping it is?
[00:45:21] Speaker B: Well, my central idea almost always boils down to this. We've got in. Well, in Canada, North America, on average, we've got about 4,000 weeks in this journey called life. Which doesn't sound like a lot when you put it into weeks. Right. Cause weeks go by really fast. So we've got one crack at this thing called life. You have a disproportionate impact on your employees, on your business, as a leader. So embrace that idea to be a force for positive change and to lead a truly positive legacy. And I don't mean leave behind a legacy because it's too late to enjoy it for yourself. You are building a legacy day in and day out. As a leader, you leave an impression. You leave, as my friend Carolyn says, you leave awake. Every time you leave a meeting, you leave a conversation with an employee. So I want to challenge you to think about what legacy you want to continue to create day in and day out in those small moments. That's why I called the book Small Moments, big outcomes, small things you can do to embrace that idea of being a culture leader. And if you truly embrace that idea of being an intentional cultural leader, the results will follow. You really will create extraordinary results.
[00:46:37] Speaker A: I love that. I love that. Okay, everybody, that's a wrap for us today on Daring Dreams. Thank you so much, Michael. That was an awesome conversation. Loved it.
[00:46:46] Speaker B: It's been a fun conversation, and I hope people got a lot of great ideas and more importantly, are just inspired to try something different.
[00:46:54] Speaker A: Absolutely.
