Man Behind Zappo's Company Culture Shares What REALLY Motivates Employees (ROBERT RICHMAN)

Let's give him a hand. Really. I was back there listening, taking furious notes and, and all this good stuff. So I've got a few questions for you, and then we'll open it up because I know you all have some questions. Right, Great.

And these aren't canned. I don't know what's coming here.

I know. I just made them up just now. So we've got all different sizes of companies here. And you've worked with some big companies. Google, obviously, Zappos. So let's say you're talking about a company that's got a couple employees, 15 employees, 30 employees. What would you. Because there's a lot of things that you talked about doing at that level. It's actually great because you have more flexibility. Right. But what would be the first step? Like, you just, you have all this stuff. Like, what would be the first step?

The first is. It's this concept, like I said, that the highest leverage, things you can do, and high leverage, I'm defining as low investment, high output. Low investment, high output is to delete, destroy things that are not working. So what I've seen with the people, it's oftentimes a person. But you, you. There's things that you probably even know. Like, I started off, for me, it was, it was. It was not something I wanted to do to stop drinking the coffee. But it. I realized it was driving me mad. I was getting all kinds of stuff done that weren't the most important things. And so I had to destroy that habit of turning to coffee, which was my form of procrastination. So I bet there's something to you that's coming to mind, things that either you're doing, the company is doing, that is not relevant to your absolute top priorities. And you will get the highest leverage from getting those out of the way, clearing up your energy and space to focus on what you do want.

Right. So that's great. So it's letting go of what's not working before adding on more of what is. Right. So that's great. So let's say that if you have a company with 200 people and you let go of a few people, I think a department can function for a while before you find that one person. But there's some of you out there, I'm sure, that are like, oh my God, I need to let this person go. But, like, we'll have nobody selling or. Right. Or nobody running customer service. And so what do you recommend in that instance? Do you feel it's better to go to keep the person and then go do some interviews, sort of on the side, on the sly, and then bring them in and let the person go. What do you. How do you recommend handling that? Or is it just ripping the band aid off?

Ideally, you know, and provided that you had conversations like this, we're giving them the chance to improve. You really, if they're worth it, you can give them the chance to improve. If not, this is the way I think about it, is imagine if that person said to you, you know what? I got this great opportunity to go do this in this country, in this place or whatever. I'm leaving in three days. That can happen. God forbid, people can get sick, people can die. Like these things can happen outside of our control. So the question is, how close do you want to bring it into your control? So I would say the sooner the better for that reason, because otherwise life can happen and get you smack you back into alignment for what you really. And in alignment with your true values.

Okay, so you're saying rip the band.

Aid off as fast as you can or, you know, give them the chance to improve.

Right, of course. But I'm saying you've done that and you've worked at that for some time. You've invested in more training, you've moved them to another department. Like you've.

Yeah.

You know, and you just, you know, at your core.

Yeah. Then you're fooling yourself and it might be time for you to get back into sales, you know, and that you're doing that until you get somebody.

Have you all had the experience before where because you've let someone go, you've had to dive back into that and it was actually a good experience just for the short term, so that you could really see what might be missing there that you could fix. So would you say also because we're getting a lot of ideas here and you're just. You're drawing the line in the sand and you're saying, I'm going to do this, and then they go back. How do you feel that the leader can best keep themselves accountable to actually do this? Because I know that it's very easy for people to just slip back into the old ways of running a business.

Oh, yeah, yeah. You, you. It's hard to get around just the sheer need for somebody to hold you accountable. So. And that can come in many forms. A coach is fantastic. An accountability partner is fantastic. A mastermind group where you're sharing those goals and they're checking in with you when you come back to it. That's A fantastic way. It's with all these things I found the number one rule for culture creation is co creation. If you feel like you're in a room by yourself alone, that's when you're doing the opposite of culture. It needs to involve other people. And especially with you. As leaders, you're at a whole nother level. I realized, like, as leaders, we are under so much scrutiny and we have to play this role so strong. We have to be strong. We have to be that. That parent. If we're freaking out, the kids are gonna freak out and they're gonna. And they're gonna need therapy later, you know, so you need to figure out a way to take care of that outside of it, of people who really care about you and want to make sure that you're in alignment. That's the easiest way to do it.

I love that. So on that note, why don't we open up for questions? Okay, so why don't we get a few people at this mic and a few people at this mic and let's take advantage of having Robert here and ask some questions. Don't be shy. Come on up.

There you go. Let's give her a round of applause.

Yes.

Okay, so my question is this. When you have people that you're working with and you're a real high achiever, how do you decide, like they decided for you, that you needed to put 2,000 people into this online, whatever you were doing? So to me, that's the hardest part, because as an entrepreneur, we sometimes live in the gap. In other words, we're never thinking about what we just accomplished. We're thinking about where we're going. So when I'm leading other people, and I always know that my minimum will be a lot of people's maximum, how do you get real? How do you set realistic goals so that. That they can. That they do achieve them, but you're still stretching the company as far as you can. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Yeah, it does. It's a little abstract because it's going to vary per business, etc. Like that number one principle I keep going back to is co creating, is that you're do it together. Yeah, you do it together. It's a conversation with them. Because anything we feel that we opt into, we have more buying, we have more participation in it. So there is no right answer, of course. But if we had a discussion and we discussed, well, there's this, this would make it realistic. Maybe we could do this. Here's our edge. You go with that. You Good with that. All right, we're in. You ready to lock and load on this? Let's do it. Yeah.

Perfect.

So you get them to buy into it, right?

Well, they gotta do it, so they have to buy into it. So I don't set the goal. We set it together.

Right. Perfect.

Thanks.

Yeah.

And one hack is. Try this out. Remove the word buy in from your vocabulary. Because all we just did with that example is get into alignment. If you think about getting into alignment, it'll be way easier than trying to sell your employees on concepts.

I love that. Alignment is key.

Yeah.

Yes.

I have a huge list of questions because culture, to me is so important at our company. But something you said I thought was really interesting, that if someone says something outside of work, drunk at a bar, you fire them. How do you get away with that legally?

Well, what's interesting is through that hiring process, they sign a document that says they will uphold the core values, and if they do not, then it's grounds for termination. They actually swear an oath to it as well.

Even outside of work.

Yeah. So they know what they're getting into.

I feel like that's not legal, but I'm going to do it anyway. My other question is, we had this great culture going. We have incredible retention. In fact, if anyone ever quits, it's just shocking because people don't leave our company. But I hired a COO who has slowly changed our company. It's become a lot more numbers driven, a lot more. A lot less fun. And I'm wondering how I get that back. Because we, we need that accountability. We need that focus. But we've lost the fun in the company.

Yeah.

How do you get that back?

What's. What's the image that you have of that fun? What's. What's that movie scene?

We all, we have core values. We all know that we have.

No, no, no. A movie scene. Oh. What would we actually be witnessing if we watched it on the screen? We'd be like, oh, wow. They. They do have fun.

You know, it's not activity, it's just atmosphere. It's. We occasionally have fun activities, but the movie scene is everybody's excited to come to work every day. Everybody has their best friend at work. It's a laid back atmosphere.

Got it. Here's the thing.

I've gone on your tour, by the way. I've tried to replicate it.

Don't do that.

It's awesome.

It's, it's, it's. It's all about creating a unique culture for you. The here's what. And this comes from thousands of conversations with people about culture. This is the big theme is that we can't solve anything in the abstract. Everything when it's in the abstract, it is an unsolvable problem. And so when we. It's great to know it. It's great to know what feelings we want and what core values and they guide behaviors. But the culture hacking process is all about gunning down to a single moment. Because what hackers do is they don't look at the whole computer system. They find the vulnerable moments in Cult. Like for example, a vulnerable moment in culture is the interview. That's why we hacked it for these key specific questions, alignment with the core values in that moment of the interview. So we actually can't solve the problem at an abstract level of I want more fun. We need to get down to key moments that can shift. Because if you want to experience it in all those moments, we need to just start with one moment. That moment can be when you walk in during the day. That moment can be that first meeting when you where you're all like gathered together for a five minute check in and you say something that you're grateful for. We need to find a moment and start with just one moment.

Let me share something on that that we started doing about a year ago is we started a Facebook group just for our team. And every single day our team members, all of them, post what we're grateful for. And you'd think maybe your team's gonna go, oh God, I gotta do that. And maybe it even started with that at my company, I don't know. But they all got so into it posting what they're grateful for. And I mean, it could be I got to spend time with my grandmother or. And then it shifted to giving kudos and we created something called the Rad Report where we talk about what so and so did in the company. That was totally rad. But every day in the morning is what are you grateful for? And we have people even doing it on the weekends and they say that when you are focused on gratitude, that happiness goes up 25%. It completely. It was such a shift in our business. Energetically more connectedness and also, gosh, you just feel better when you're focused on what you do have and what you're happy about than what's missing.

It's a fantastic idea. Now what I would add to that is to add the story factor. Say, hey, we're gonna do the gratitude on our Facebook group for three weeks or whatever period you Wanna pick. And then that adds that story factor of they say, okay, we can do this easily for that long. And then you say, we don't know. It's an experiment of fun in our culture. Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't. And that's a humility that they're going to love as well. So I would take that idea and do it within a time box.

Yeah, absolutely. Great. Anybody else? Yes.

Well, we're a small company. We've got one employee in the warehouse. So how do you create this culture? When we're interviewing somebody and they go, well, here's your corporate culture, but I'm the only employee. It only takes one person to have values. In my book, the Culture Blueprint, I outline a whole practice of how you can figure out what those are. But then it just becomes a conversation with that one other person of, hey, these are what the values are for the company or what I want them to be. Do you feel like we're in alignment with them? How do you live them? How do you experience them? Where do you feel that they're lacking? So it can just be a one on one conversation about what you believe that you value for the workplace and what you value for the customer. Good.

Hi. Thank you so much. I really learned a lot from you. But my question is, so you talked about employees. I have employees, but I also recruit a lot of independent contractors. Do you guys do that at all? And if you do, do you have any words of wisdom on how to retain them and keep them engaged in the product and services that I have? Because they also do other things.

Yeah, I mean, a lot of this still does apply in terms of the basic concepts like the games, like that. Do you just welcome them in or do you say that you have standards and say, this is how we work with independent contractors. This is what's okay, this is what's not. We're going to put you on this test for this amount of time. If you do that, we're going to continue to work with you.

Oh, okay. That's great idea. Thank you.

They're still an extension of the team.

Yeah, they're very much an extension of the team. I would just say before we close, my book's the Culture Blueprint and my gift to you guys is the entire audiobook of it for free if you'd like it. Yeah. So just write down this address. I'll write it here as I'm saying it, but write down cultureblueprint.com and then/ audiobook and then it's available for download in all kinds of different forms wherever you listen to music or anything like that. And it's the entire book.

Awesome. So we have one last question. Yes.

Hi, Robert. I've listened to you in the past and was quite impressive as it was today.

Thank you.

We have a bridal boutique, storefront retail, and I know that most of the brides come in with a whole box of Zappos shoes, maybe 20 pair at one time, and they try every single one of them, but they know that they can return them if they're not happy with it. So that was one thing that you left out, which I think is the low risk, a lot of left out process. But what I wanted to ask you is that clearly we are in the sales platform and we conduct a heavily training program because we have a system and a process in place for every single bride coming in through that door from beginning of the appointment to the end, so that we're not only mindful of the financial goals, the experience, the amazing wow experience factor, and as well as bringing joy at the end of the appointment where they found their dream dress beautiful.

Well done.

To the biggest day of their life. Right?

Yeah.

And in the given day, we could have as many as 15, 20 appointments. So when you look at the weekend at the end of the week outcome and you look at the number of appointments versus the sale conversions, it may not always translate in a positive way. And when you go back to your staff, our biggest challenge is to always remain positive and not sound like you're criticizing. But often when you're offering advice how to increase the rate of closure, it appears that you're being critical. So if I can just get your opinion on that.

Sure.

It'd be the better way to approach that.

Sure, sure. So it always comes down to that. That keyword, like tattoo it, co create. If it's co created, people feel like they're a part of it. If they feel like they're being talked down to, then they check out. So, you know, there's, there's. And again, all of this stuff takes experimentation. There isn't a best. I hate that word, best practice, because it's. It's whatever works best for you and you've got a hack and experiment to play with that. So that can be just starting off each time with a really interesting, curious question. One of the things that we do with my team is we do stop, start, continue. Okay, what do we need to stop from what we did last time? What do we need to start doing differently? What do we need to make sure that we're continuing the other. We'd even experiment with things like pre mortem. Anybody heard of a pre mortem? Yeah. Say like what are all the things that could go wrong before we start up today? How can you make it fun and experimental and play in curiosity and how can they speak first? That's what you want to create. And this feeling like this is what I think it ultimately comes down to for leaders is are you humble enough to say I don't really know what the problem is and if I don't, maybe they do and maybe we can figure this out together.

I love that. So this is fantastic. Y' all took a ton of notes. All right, well, this has been wonderful. I really appreciate you coming and sharing all your wisdom here and I believe this is going to help everybody step up their teams.

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Yeah.