155: Best Of: Building a Spectacular Team with Jeff Hoffman

Are you thinking about how to grow your business with near and offshore staffing, but you're also wanting to make sure that it's reliable, cost effective and really well done? I think docsa talent is the way to go. Here's why. They don't just fill your jobs. They bring integrity, top talent and a people first approach that's hard to find. I've known the people at Doxa talent for over 20 years now and I say that you can count on them. I have. Talk to docs of talent and you won't be disappointed. Go to docsatant.com Bill G. Again, that's doxatant.com Bill G. One more time. Doxatalent.com Bill G. Check it out today. Well, the top thing that we hear about the main challenge from all of our clients, not just mine, but pretty much all the coaches all over the world for at least the last year, but probably more like two years now, is people. How do we get, attract, retain and engage people? There's a big shortage of people, especially in the United States, but certainly in some of our other markets as well. Finding and attracting people is the top concern. Today's show is a best of episode from a guy who's really a master at connecting with people. What is it that makes people tick? How do you become the company and the leader that attracts and retains the best people gets the most out of people. That's what today's show is all about from a master, an unlikely master, really. A guy with an engineering background who developed a deep love and connection with people. It's all about building a world class culture that attracts and retains the right kinds of people from a guy that built Priceline and a lot of other businesses. Jeff Hoffman, listen in. Hello and welcome again to the Scaling Up Business podcast. I'm your host, growth coach Bill Gallagher. On the show with me today is Jeff Hoffman. So Jeff, oh, Jeff is a lot of things and I'm going to actually have him tell you like some of his background as an entrepreneur. He'll do a much better job of it. Jeff wrote a book called Scale. He's grown a couple business pretty substantial. He's worked in a variety of sectors but he's like a lovable engineer. He's talked to our summits a couple of times, the Scale up summits. He'll be back to train the coaches at our next session and I've just loved getting to know Jeff, so I'm so happy to have him on the show. We're going to talk about Team building today. And you're in Ohio, right?

I am in Ohio today, and it's actually one of those beautiful Midwest days.

Beautiful Midwest day. And you're just back from Asia and then going back there in between stuff, right?

Yep, I just came back from Asia and I'm about to head to work with entrepreneurs in south and really in Southeast Asia.

So I like your career and stuff is a little overwhelming in a good way. And before we talk about team building, I'd love if you would share with us a little bit of the arc of that, you know, from whatever starting point, you know, as a kid or whatever it is, and give people a little bit of that background that don't know you.

Sure. So there's a really common theme, though, which is using entrepreneurship to basically create the jobs that I wanted and probably didn't exist or I probably couldn't have got them anyway if I hadn't just created them. Now, that being said, I never set out to be an entrepreneur. I just set out to do the stuff I wanted to do. The first one being as a kid, all I ever wanted to do was see the world. And I really thought one of my childhood goals was, before I die, if I could have visited 50 different countries in my life, you know, that would be a fulfilling life for me. But I had no money and no method to do that. So many of the companies that I started were travel companies. It's just that the backstory is I started travel companies to create for myself an opportunity to travel. One of my first products was the check in kiosks that are in airports now where you get your boarding pass. Those didn't exist and we created the first ones. And so by definition, my job was to. I'd get a phone call from a different airport or airline somewhere in the world every week, and I got to go see the world because they would call and say, can you come install those in the airport in Amsterdam for KLM or wherever it was. So that's the constant theme, you know, being part of companies like Priceline was the same theme, right. Was trying to be involved in the travel space later. So I've done a bunch of startups, mostly consumer tech, a lot in travel. And then later I. Music, film, entertainment is a big passion of mine. So I had a startup music company to start up, film company, but with the same goal. I wanted to be in the industry, so I just created my own job instead of trying to find one. That's the common theme really, of my whole career.

Super entrepreneurial, right? And the entrepreneur founders listening in will totally get and appreciate that you guys got to get. I don't know, depending on your age and generation, anybody who hires William Shatner with equity is a hero in my world. I grew up with Star Trek as like a major inspirational thing. Right. Of being of a particular age.

Oh, of course. You know, it's funny because the company since I'm long gone, but the company since had to add Kaylee from Big Bang Theory because the younger customer did not know who William Shatner was. So they went and got someone else from a high tech success. Cool show.

Right?

From Big Bang Theory. So kind of funny.

Yeah, it's. Yeah. My kids wouldn't know who. Well, my son might know William Shatner, but for the most part they would know. Chris Pine, maybe.

Yeah. I was going to say I told a kid recently, a young person, Captain Kirk, and he said, you mean Chris Pine? And I said, you know what, we can just stop here.

Yeah. So right here's a guy, Priceline Ubid Color jar from travel and then in entertainment, following your passion, but building stuff along the way. And I think that through all of that you built teams. Talk about the teams that you built, your approach to it, how big they got. Start to bring us into that.

Sure. And I think that's probably one of the most important lessons I learned about scaling anything is that as a founder, leader, CEO, whatever you are, you believe it's your job to run the company. When you started the company, it might have literally just been you. So of course you had to start, you had to do everything because you were the only person there. The problem with that is if it goes well, you start to think you're pretty good at all this and you're running the business and you're handling all the parts. And then later, this is the phone call that I get the most. Company people tell me, quote, I'm working harder than I ever have, putting in more or hours than I ever have before, and I've stopped growing. And they don't see the connection. The connection is you are never going to do anything massive or at scale or exponential by yourself. It's 100% a function of the team. So what happened to me was over time, I was not smart enough to know this at the beginning, but over time, what I realized, and this is one of probably my most important messages today to your listeners, is that the day you start taking some of your time and saying, my job is not to run the company. My job is to find people smarter than me, let Them run the company and let them run, let each of them play the position on the field they're best at. Which means you have to put everything down. You have to literally. I started scheduling days where I said, I'm not coming to the office Friday, because what I'm going to do Friday is I'm going to get out of the office and I'm going to try to find those people smarter than me in all these areas and bring them in to handle their area. So scheduling time to find those people. They're not going to wander into your office. Right. So you're so busy working all the time that you make a minimal effort to find people. You run an ad job posting, really, because the best people in the market aren't looking for a job. They're not going to read your posting. They're not going to come in your office. You literally have to go out and find them. I had to go visit airlines and go to airline conferences. When I needed to hire some airline people, not one of them came into my office and said, please hire me. But I went out and found the best people. And then the second part of that is you've got to. You got to get out of the way. Your job is to literally to build a workplace, a culture and an environment where the best people in your industry who could work anywhere they want to work, all want to work for you and never want to leave. And that's when my companies really started to scale, when I comprehended that that's my real job is to build that place and then take care of those people so that they never wanted to leave.

Yeah. I was talking with this, with a young entrepreneur at a very early stage of his company as an idea, and he's really out to grow and develop himself. And I'm like, you know, and talking to you, I keep hearing like, it's all about you. And the next shift for you is to get that it's really all about your team. And you give your team a particular vision, mission or goals, that kind of thing often. And then they give you their heart and soul and the best work of their life. And your job is to keep taking care of them and setting them up for success and like that. Right. And they'll give you all the other stuff you want. You could stop worrying so much about yourself. You'll get the money you want, that kind of thing.

That is exactly right. It's funny because one of the quotes, and this quote, actually, I said it one day just off the top of my head. Because it's what I believe. And I noticed that everybody in the entire room tweeted it. So I made a mental note, okay, that apparently resonated and I'll tell you what it was, and then I'll tie it to this. The quote I said one day is, don't chase money, chase excellence. Money follows excellence. Because everybody's talking about their exit strategy. And I'm sitting there thinking, what is your entrance strategy? What are you exiting your PowerPoint? You haven't built anything until you build something amazing in the world. There's no exit anyway. But let me say this. When you build something amazing in the world, you don't ever have to have an exit strategy. My doorbell ring, you know, rang and people kept showing up and saying, you know, can we buy your company? Companies. I was never selling exit strategies. I was never pursuing, except for one thing, pursue excellence. We always focused on my job was to get the best people like we were talking about, and make sure they're highly motivated to build the best products. And if I can keep them doing that. That's exactly what you just said is true. You'll never worry about money. It'll find you. It'll find you because you got the best products in your industry.

Well, so a couple things I hear in what you're saying. First of all, we did a show recently with Tom Peters on excellence. So if you didn't hear that, go back and listen to that. Right? Self plug Tom Peters on excellence. And then the other, and he was speaker at the same summit you last spoke at. Um, the other thing I think that's cool is this notion of taking care of Bill. Like you're not going to build anything big on your own. So you've got to get good at dealing with people and the person that you have to like, you have to transform your whole way of leadership from shepherding and launching an idea to then building the team that carries the idea forward into the future. You have to pass the torch, engage more people, or multiply the torch. Right. So that lots of folks are taking care of it.

Absolutely. In fact, let me share probably the most relevant story for me. And when I learned that, and it was interesting because I was building my company and somebody that was doing their own company startup called me and he said, I need a team, I need some people and would you come interview? And I started to open my mouth and say, well, I can't. I've got my own company. But I realized I don't really know much about interviewing. I should go just So I can learn how a good interview goes. And when I went, this is what I heard at the end, I was thinking, he told me his dream. He's the owner. He's the founder of the company. This is his dream. This is his vision. This is. The way the job interview came across was, jeff, here's a list of tasks I need you to do so one day I can sail away in my big boat. And I was like, yikes, this isn't very motivating. You want me to bust my butt to achieve your dream? Then I'm driving home and I thought, holy crap, that's what I do. That's what we all do when we interview somebody. We say, here's my dream as a founder. I launched this company to do these things, so I need you to pick up a shovel and start digging. And I realized, how is that motivating to people if it wasn't to me? So I started something new. And what I started doing was asking employees, what was their dream? What is the thing? It was my question, literally, tell me one thing you need to do with your life so that when you look back one day, you say, wow, what a life well spent. You know, I really achieved my mission. And I asked. I had an interview the next day with a tech guy. His name was Chris. And I called Chris into the office, and I said, chris, before we start the interview and before I tell you anything about me and my goals and my company, I want you to tell me about you, and I want you to tell me one thing. I want you to tell me. Just tell me one thing, Kris, that you need to achieve in your life so that you'll look back and say, your dream was fulfilled, your life was worth living. And you know what? He answered immediately. I didn't know what he was going to say. He said, oh, that's easy. I need to buy my mom a house in Florida, fully paid, so that she can live the rest of her life comfortably and in the sun. I was like, yikes, that's very specific. Tell me about it. And let me tell you what Chris said. He said, jeff, I grew up poor and so poor we lived in a mobile home park, but we were the poor people in a mobile home park. He said we had a trailer, an Airstream trailer. Everyone else had at least mobile home. And he said our trailer was so old, it was metal, it was rusted, and we were so poor, we had one blanket, and the snow came in through the holes in the sides of our trailer. And so at winter, I Had to take the one blanket me and my mom and my sister had and use it to keep the snow out and cover the wall. And I said, how did you get through those days? And he said, I sat there all night, shivering, looking at my mom and swearing, someday somehow I'll be successful enough in business that I can buy her a house in Florida in the sun, fully paid as a thank you for her sacrifices in raising me. So I'm going to tell you what I did. I printed a picture of a house in Florida and I stuck it on the wall. And employees came in the next day, and they said, what is that? And I said, it's the reason Kris comes here every day. What's yours? And I went around and I started asking every single one of my employees, tell me the same question. Tell me one dream in your life that you need to make come true, and I will try to figure out how to make this company, this career, be the path to that dream. And that changed everything. If you come to my office today, there are posters, not posters, pictures near where everybody works. And they look random, but they're not. They're the thing in life that each of my team needs to achieve to make their life good. And I made that part of my mission. How do I help them achieve whatever it is they dream about? Not what I dream about, because if they're motivated, if Chris is motivated, which he is, by the chance to take care of his mother for the rest of his life. Imagine what kind of employee that's going to be. And that's what happened. That's what it turned out to be. Kris, every day, knew that I knew what he was working for and that I cared whether or not we ultimately were successful enough as a company to take care of his mother and his production and all my employees production for their own reasons. You're the beneficiary. Right. So I stopped worrying about me, and I started worrying about them. And what they started doing was delivering. And we were phenomenally successful. And Chris mother got a house. And a lot of my employees were able to take care of their dreams and their lives because I focused on trying to figure out what I could do to make those happen for them.

Not for me, just to make it real. I know I've heard it before, but for our listeners, tell about the delivery of the house.

Yeah. So I do have to say that was literally one of the best days of my life. And I'll tell you why. We worked really, really hard. And, you know, I learned as well that employees that are driven by passion and purpose are far outperforming any employee that's driven by a paycheck. Chris was not going to stop. The days that we had tough times at work, Chris would say, point to the picture in the office. And he'd say, look, man, my mom's counting on us. The rest of her life is. So let's just figure this out. And everyone in my office had their own reason. And so I had a very motivated team. We succeeded, and we actually sold that company, and I gave everybody their cut. And it was amazing because the first thing Kris did was, you know, we went down to Florida and found that house, and we decided to kind of set up his mom, which actually was kind of fun because what we did was we got her out of the house in Florida, and she. I think she thought she was taking a little vacation. Excuse me. Out of Pennsylvania. That's where it was. I think that she thought she was taking a little vacation. And when she got. So we got her out of. Out of Pennsylvania, out of the snow, we got her into Florida and we took over the house. And she actually thought, well, this is the setup, that the house was mine. She got very, very upset. She said, why on earth? She turned to her son and said, kris, why on earth would you take me to Florida to show me that your boss bought a brand new house in the sun when I live in this piece of crap rusted out mobile home park? And I turned. Where? She turned to me and she said, take me to the airport right now. I want to leave. And I said, all right, I'll take you to the airport, but I want you to do me one favorite. She said, what? And I said, I just want you to come down the hall and look at my bedroom before you go. And it was kind of funny because she turned to her son and said, son, this is getting really weird, right? Your boss is trying to take me into his bedroom. And it was funny because Chris said something. I had to turn away because I didn't want her to see me laughing. He said, there's nothing I can do, mom. He drove. So he said, go on a ride to the airport. Just humor him. So we go down the hall and she goes, fine, look at your bedroom for one minute, then get me out of here. And we go down there. Well, the reason that she thought this was my house was because she lived in a one room trailer. And so she had no furniture because she had no rooms. The only furniture she had was literally her bedroom. And so Chris had bought all new furniture for his mom. So that's why she thought it was not her house. All the furniture was new. But what we did was I had them while she was traveling. I had them send me photos. We shipped everything out of her bedroom, out of the trailer, and I had them send me photos of exactly our bedroom was. And I recreated her bedroom exactly the way it was, including she. Because when she'd get really insecure at night, she would brush her hair. It was like kind of a comfort thing. So she left her hairbrush in her nightstand at like a 90 degree angle so she could reach it. So I even took the hairbrush and put it at a 90 degree angle. And when she opened the door, I have to tell you, and looked in the room. And the moment she realized then that the house was hers, not mine, was one of the coolest moments of my life. We were all crying. She turned and she looked at us both with tears in her eyes and she said, this is my house, isn't it? And I gotta tell you, it's not even my mom. And I was sobbing and we both said, it's yours for the rest of your life as a thank you. And we were all three in a hug, crying. And it was this moment that I felt so good, like I'd done something that actually mattered in the world. And I have to tell you, the end made me even prouder because I thought Chris was going to turn to me and say, jeff, thank you. Even though I had him to thank, it was his hard work that made our company successful. I thought he was going to say, thank you. I got mine. I'm done. You know what he did? He said, hey, boss. I said, what? He said, we should get back to work. I said, what, you want to go back to the office? He said, yeah, let's go see who's next. And I got to tell you, never been more proud of the kind of team that I built when what he wanted to do was make somebody else feel this way. So that was a moment that made me realize all the hard work we do. If you're doing it for a reason, it changes everything.

I love the story. I love the beauty of it. I don't think we're even numb to it yet, even though we now have TV shows that do exactly this kind of thing.

Yeah, that's true.

It's different than being earned, though. And I hear in it, and I'm reminded of a definition of leadership I heard years ago, which is that a leader creates opportunities for others to produce expanded Results, that's fantastic. Right? And then. And when you create opportunities for other people to do the thing, and if ultimately the. Ultimately the most satisfying thing that we want to do, we learned from Maslow, which is not to take care of our own security or get our own house, but to do something beautiful in the world, to do something that's extraordinary, that's a gift that people will talk about us after we're gone. Right. When I want to work with teams on purpose, we look and we inquire. Like, my favorite exercise is really, what do you want said about you at your memorial service? And in that, people start to touch on something, and it's about family. It's about making a difference with some kind of flavor. It's about being a contribution. And leaders not only do that, but they create opportunities for lots of other people to do that, right?

Yeah, absolutely. I think that gets it in a nutshell. When you create opportunities for talented, motivated people, they will deliver. But if the only opportunity is to help make you rich, not very motivating.

Right? Well, it's interesting because I think a lot of people contact the coaches, right. The call I get very frequently starts to go into a conversation about hitting the next milestone. 100 million, 500 million, a billion dollars, you know, And I love when somebody says that they want to hit a billion dollars, and how could we use scaling up for that? That's great. But in order to engage everyone besides them and their spouse and the shareholders, we have to figure out a game that engages everyone. So frequently we go to the purpose of the business, but along the way, there's the individual satisfaction, the personal plan of each and every person who wants to do something for their mom or raise a family or like, whatever the next thing is.

The important thing, again, is that everybody's next thing is different. You know, let them pick it, but taking an interest in it. One of the days we sold, when we. When we did scale and we sold a company and I was doing a television interview, and the. The TV reporter was reading all these stats, but they were numbers. Our revenues, our sales, our profits. She said, Mr. Hoffman, very impressive, or what are you most proud of? And the accomplishment I was most proud of as a leader was that day. The woman that ran HR for me for all those years had called me and said, jeff. She said, I can't. You're not gonna believe this, but I just verified it. I said what she said. I just confirmed that from the day you started the company to the day you sold it, not one person that works here has ever quit. And I was like, that is the single most important thing I've ever done. And I don't know how I did it. So I started calling everybody and saying, how come you guys don't quit? And it was funny. They're laughing like, do you want us to quit? I said, no, I just want to. I just want to do it on purpose next time that we're doing here that makes you want to stay. And what you and I just talked about was they said, we've never worked anywhere where we were asked what our personal mission in life was and where we felt like our mission was on the company's list of things to get done. And I really took that to heart. They said, we actually believe that you consider this company and what you said earlier, opportunity for us to achieve our own dreams, not just yours, and that it's actually important to you that we have that opportunity. And we feel like you're standing right there next to us trying to help us get there. When I realized just how important that was, I said, okay, now I understand how important that is to you. And I'll make sure that we always respect and ask what you're doing here, not just what we want you to do.

You know, it's interesting. So John Ratliff is the CEO now of our coaching organization and longtime practitioner. Practitioner of our stuff. And he grew a company, Apple Tree Answers nationwide and with extraordinary performance metrics for his industry. And then he sold it for an enormous multiple based on taking care of people. And if you look at the way that he ran his business from the program, they had to grant wishes of employees who like call center answering service people are not like highly paid people. But to do the same kind of thing like buy the house or grant the wish or take care of the husband of the whatever. And he's got great stories of that. But that heartfelt kind of thing was central to that thing. And even then down to the practical day to day things like instead of buying the cheap knockoff chairs, buying all of his people air on chairs because they have to sit in that damn chair and answer the phone all day, right?

Oh yeah, I love that story of John's.

It's great story writing about the like other people come in and they buy the crappy chairs and he replaces them back. And you could just hear somebody who cares about people, who challenges them to rise to the best work of their life, to develop themselves and grow all of that. And it's so extraordinary. I remember I did one little Bit like I've often been interested in people, in my team's growth and success, especially as I started to develop myself as a leader and read and think about, about leadership. And once I had an employee who was struggling with something, I really counted on this woman, but she's like, oh, we only have one car. And getting my kids dropped off at school and it creates an issue for me in getting to work. And I learned that, well, she didn't exactly want another car. She had a beautiful vintage motorcycle that she really loved and she just wanted to ride that, right? And so I arranged to have it picked up and taken to a repair shop that specialized in old bikes and lovingly restored to beautiful and full operating condition and then delivered back to her, right, with surprise. And she didn't even notice the thing for like the two weeks that it was off being repaired because, you know, it was sat in the corner with a tarp on it. So we left a bike or something under there. She didn't even think about it for a few weeks while it was getting repaired. And she cried and all that. But, you know, was that like, it's not so much the cash, but all the other things. So, like the personal touches that being seen, heard and recognized, appreciated for what you really love that made the difference. And then giving people purpose, like a purpose centered company, you could, we can translate that billion dollar 100 million goal, whatever it is that your business goal is for the next threshold, even if it's like one guy worked with, he articulated private jet money. I'm like, great. But now we have to translate into that everybody else cares about. And we look at the purpose of the business, we articulate the purpose of the business, we create a multiple of that that ends up giving you the private jet or the billion dollars or whatever it is. And we can do some really powerful things as long as it's not a manipulation, it's not an insincere, inauthentic manipulation that will blow up in your face.

Okay, so I have to tell you a funny story. It's exactly what you said. So I gave this talk that pretty much you and I have recapped here. And a CEO called me over after.

Yeah.

And he said to me, he said, jeff. I said, yeah. He said he listened to everything you and I talked about. This is a quote. He said, how do I get my employees to think I care? And I said, okay, this is going to sound really crazy, but try actually caring. And you know what he said to me? He goes, no, seriously. And I Said, I'm pretty sure we're done with this conversation. I cannot help you. I just could not believe it. He said, no, seriously. So there are. People can see absolutely right through that. As you said, if it's insincere, it's actually worse, right? Yeah, because you'd have been better off saying, just saying, I'm just trying to get rich, help me. Because at least they respect the truth. But when it's insincere and you're manipulating people, then everything you say is subject to question anymore and it all falls apart.

Yep, yep, yep. It all comes unglued. Well, I had somebody who was coaching me years ago in leadership and, and she said to me, you want to take the case or consider that you don't care? And. And I'm like, of course I care. You know, I started to argue back with her and then I realized, okay, wait, I'm actually just working towards some particular outcome that I have in mind right now. And I don't care and I'm not listening. And when I got that, I was moved to tears. And if you know me, I'm easily moved to tears. And in the lacking or the personal shortcoming that I saw in myself in that moment, and I'm like, okay, I'm driven to produce my outcomes and I'm railroading through people and working to manipulate them. And I stopped and I started listening and I just started to appreciate the human being on the other side of the conversation. And what's developed over time is that like I really quickly, when I stop and listen, remember to shut up for a minute and listen. It's not maybe my born bred nature, it's a developed thing because I'm fixated on my own outcomes, right? But I stop, I catch myself now regularly, I stop and I listen. And I'm frequently just deeply moved by people. And sometimes people are like, why are you crying? I'm not crying. Or why are you moved by something? And I'll say, oh, I just saw this about you. And then they get moved because whatever it is that I named was there, they saw it for themselves too. They just weren't speaking it. They're so busy speaking at the surface of life and such a, like, as a leader, you can develop that in yourself, really see the people that you're working with, like one at a time.

And especially because people say it's harder to do obviously as your company gets bigger. But the people you pick as your key leaders to motivate everyone else, especially make sure you are making Time, you know, because that's a kind of the ripple effect. If you are leading by example and treating them that way, then as your company grows, you don't have that problem that you personally can't do this with everybody because they will. If that's the culture that you create in the standard that you set, you.

Know, that's so brilliant. I think it's a great place to probably end this conversation because what I hear you saying is that is like a good news, bad news thing, right? So everything that's going on in the company is your fault. The ripple is you. Right. Like every little thing that you might complain about somewhere, you started it.

I think so.

And that's like, that's depressing. That's bad news. But it's great news too, because you can go to work on yourself. The way that you interact with people around you and then they in turn interact with everyone else is the ripple that is your business.

Yes, I think that's exactly right. And that goes all the way down to customers as well. Right. That ripple continues. I found a case of a. An account manager of mine had been house sitting and babysitting for a recently divorced customer and she thought she was going to get in trouble. When I found out, the customer called in tears and said, you know, I just can't believe how amazing your people are. And she said, the fact that Natalie, since my husband left me and this woman got promoted and she was the VP in charge of our contract, but she said, when my husband left me and I was sad and your account manager asked what was wrong and kind of. And I said, don't worry about it, it's not work related. And she said, well, you can tell me anyway, I'm a single mom. And they wound up that my employee was babysitting her kids when she had to travel on business trips. And she said, I've never had a vendor is what we technically were. I've never had somebody treat me that way and actually care about me more as a person than the value of my account. And the day I heard that, I acted like I knew she was doing that. I said, yeah, that's our culture. And I called Natalie in and I said, she said, am I in trouble? I said, what does it say on the wall behind you? Because our values are on the wall. And one of the giant things I wrote on the wall at my office is humanity first, not profits, not contract. Humanity first. I said, what does it say on the wall behind you? And she said, humanity first. And I said, so do you think you're in trouble for treating a customer like an actual human and extending yourself on your weekends to help? She said, I don't know. I said, well, I'll tell you the answer. No, not only you not in trouble, but they just extended the contract for five more years and said we're the best vendor they've ever had. You are the one that creates. Like you just said, you create the culture in the same way you might have created the bad habits. But you are correct. It's an opportunity.

Yeah.

Create a great culture and everybody will live in it.

And if you don't like the one you got, then you know where to start. With the one in the mirror.

Yeah, I think right now we should be playing off stage to Michael Jackson's man in the Mirror. That should be the theme music for this episode, just as you said.

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