Marc Reifenrath - Attract & Retain A-Players

Foreign.

Oh, there we are live again. We are talking today. Oh, I gotta start record here. We're live again. And we're talking today about attracting or retaining a players. How do we get and build an a player culture? Look, everywhere we go right now, people are constrained trying to attract anyone, let alone a players, and they are starting to head more towards that other. Like, just give me somebody who could fog a mirror. So looking for talent, attracting, retaining talent is a big topic and that's the subject of our show today. My name is Bill Gallagher, scaling coach and host of the Scaling Up Business podcast. We bring our show to you every week. Hundreds and hundreds of episodes. Now, wherever you get them, wherever you're getting this right now, like it, subscribe it, you know, get on board so that you don't miss an episode. You have a choice. We cover all the subjects of people, strategy, execution and cash. Today is a lot about people and about leadership and then the intersection into the world of execution where you're tying together the people within the company. So that's the whole subject of our show. You'll find them all wherever you get this. Or you can go to scalingcoach.com scalingcoach.com Easy to remember. You can find all those, plus the links, downloads, offers from our, our guests. You'll find all that. All right, we're gonna bring on Mark Rifenrath. He coached me to say it, right? I should have come on and just whiffed it though. Mark stuff. No, it's a mouthful, right? Mark Rifenrath. It's actually pretty easy once you get it. Mark, welcome to the show. Mark's based in Iowa, guys, and he's the CEO of a company called Spy New Tech that does all kinds of web marketing and website development. You know, you know a lot of companies like this, but Mark's company is a little bit special and different. They're over 170 people now across five offices in many states, including their remote workers. So really a lot to share about how they've built their culture, how they've gotten good at retaining their folks. So this is really a personal experience. Share. Not like, you know, he's not like written some book on what Fortune 500 companies have done. This is what he, he did with his business. So, Mark, thanks for joining us.

Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm super excited to be here and sharing a little bit and hopefully we can both learn something.

Well, hopefully you'll teach me and our listeners something.

There you go. Happy to share.

So anyway, talk about this. So this business you started with while you're in school and has been your only business ever. Right.

So started when I was a junior in college with a couple of friends that I knew from college. We did start some other businesses and I've invested and been a part of other businesses, but this, for me, myself, this has been my primary job for the last 20 gig. 22 years. Yep.

Nice. So what was it like? Where did you get this bug or decide what made you who you were in the world of business, you know, with really one company that's gone to this point?

Yeah. I don't know if there's anything specifically from when I was growing up that. That led to this, but I always was interested in business. You know, selling baseball cards, trading baseball cards as a little kid, I think was something that I kind of treated it like my own little business. Had a little desk in my closet. Yeah, Stuff like that. And so I think if you would have asked me, I don't know if I would have said I was going to start a business, but looking back, it kind of makes sense that I did. There was maybe indicators. I've always been somewhat of a natural leader, I believe, and so just kind of paid my own way and that's what worked out.

And did either your parents or any other family members, entrepreneurial parents?

My parents were both educators. My brother had started his own business. My sister kind of. They bought in some franchise stuff and had some Harley dealerships for a while, so. And some relatives that had. So it was, you know, on the radar a little bit, but not heavily.

Yeah, well, so why don't. Let's get into it then. Talk to us about growing this business. Why'd you start it? What were you thinking? How. Talk to us about the first years and the people you worked with.

Yeah, you know, we started when we were pretty young and green. So you don't really think about core values or culture or. I think one benefit we had was we weren't tainted by the real world. We. We weren't in corporate America to really shape some of our thinking. We just kind of treated everything of if we were in these. We made the business we wanted to work at. And we always said if it's not a place we wanted to work at, then we were done. And so those first few years that we were small, we had, you know, the three of us, the three original partners. We still have our first team member. He just celebrated his anniversary. And so we slowly brought on people as we could, but there was no specific goals of we Want to grow to a certain dollar in revenue or people size. It was just keep doing great work and growing and getting great clients. And slowly we were building something I think bigger and better than we thought because we were just methodical and intentional about every decision. And you have some hard knocks in there for sure. You learn from your failures, right? So you fail first attempt in learning. And we had plenty of them in the beginning that kind of punch you in the face or the gut and you learn from those, recalibrate and move on. We were fortunate in the first few years to win some pretty significant clients. There may be a little bit of fake it before you make it mentality with some of those to win them. But they trusted us, took a chance. I think they bought into our scrappiness and you just kind of catapult that forward. So the beginning is. I think it's. People show up in the business today and think it's always been this way and it's hard to show them what it looked like 22 years ago, 20 years ago, 15 years ago even. It's just changed a lot. But we've. I would say the core values have always been there. They've just gotten. One of our team members said this recently. They just gotten louder over time and. Which I think is a really cool statement.

So what were they in the beginning and how did they evolve? What it. What were the quirks? How did you operate?

What.

What does it mean to have a culture? What was the culture?

Well, I would say not micromanaging, laid back, but just, you know, hard work and doing in a. In a standard of excellence. Like we had to do our best work all the time. I don't think that we realized we even had a culture until 2008. We went to south by Southwest and heard a bunch of speakers and somebody talked about it. And on the plane ride home, we all were sitting in the same room. We just asked ourselves a bunch of questions. Why are we doing this? Why are we doing that? Do we need to be doing that? We need to be doing more of that. And that was probably the first ignition switch that got hit to really draw it out more. And so it wasn't. We just didn't written a lot of that down. And we probably went several years beyond that before we even wrote down some of our actual mission statement and core values and stuff. It just wasn't a focus for us. But in the last 10 years that's definitely become louder and there's been a few evolutions of it, but we've really boiled it down to some pretty simple standards. Culturally, it's we, you know, work hard, play hard. A lot of people I think, say work hard, play hard. They have to be two separate things. I think you can work hard and play hard as one thing, and that's going to reduce stress, produce better work. And I'd rather have a lot of fun while we're doing work than being stressed and then go play. And so we try to have a playful environment that we think is going to produce, you know, stronger work and just to have a better balance for life.

So what does that mean to you to have a. To play at work?

I'll share a story. So we were going, this is the thick of COVID So December of 20, big pitch. We have to go to Dallas. We're checking in to go into this building. It's an in person meeting. One of our first in person meetings during COVID And during pre Covid times, we always play. If you're an office fan, Dwight would play Kickstart My Heart before his sales calls. That's something we always did in person when, like pre Covid and Dustin, a guy on the team, we're about to get on the elevator to go up to this meeting and I have my phone. I hit play and I drop it in my pocket. He looks at me and he's like, man, seriously, some random dude gets on the elevator. I just let it keep rolling. And so then the thought occurs to me, what if this guy's in our meeting? But he luckily got off the floor before us. And, you know, we walked into that meeting laughing, smiling, versus that minute elevator ride or whatever, sitting there going, oh, man, this is a big pitch. Don't screw it up. We got to do our best. Like, you're stressing yourself out. And I think people, team members, clients, they feel that energy when you walk in. And sometimes there's that thing you want to buy into that you don't even know what it is. It's that intangible thing, but you're drawn to it. And that's, that's why I think, you know, we lighten the mood in those situations. So it's just trying to, you know, we're not saving lives with what we do. I like to say that a lot to our team and so we can have some fun. And we're in a creative space, so why shouldn't we? Let's, you know, we don't have to stress out about it. We've just got to try to be playful as much as we can to do great work.

Yeah. I think that's a thing that we forget, and maybe because you started early when the stakes were low, and that kind of thing is that notion of being playful at work. It's a game, it's something to play at. And I think we get into this place where and the stakes are real, right? Like, oh, your savings, your house is on the line, your job, your rent, whatever it is right for you is on. And I think it gets a little weird there. Right.

For sure.

How do you maintain that over time, then? How do you keep that going as the stakes?

I think that I'm a big believer in, as a leader, you give permission to your team on how they can act and things they can do. And so I have to show that I have to still be playful and let them know that it's okay. And so I try to lead the charge on some of that. We just. I was in Los Angeles and Oklahoma City the past couple days and different team members, but Wednesday night in the workout room of the hotel, we shot one of the TikTok trends. And, you know, that was part of my Friday video that I sent out to the whole team, and we'll post it on our social channels. But you got to lead the way with some of that and let everybody give them permission. Just like if I were to yell at another team member, I've now given others permission to yell at other teammates. If I have fun and playful, you know, in meetings and in work environment, I'm giving permission to the team to do that as well. And so you have to. All leaders need to show and set that tone of how you want to be as a company.

So you've gone along now. Now, how many years have you had the company?

22.

22 years. Right. And you're now over 170 people, right?

Around 170, yep.

How's your role as CEO evolved over that time?

A lot. It's been, you know, challenging. There's so much of the things that when you started were so much fun to you that you've had to give up. And that changes and evolves over time. And so I used to be a coder, a designer, an account person, a pm. I mean, every role, basically you did in the beginning and now, you know, I was joking with some of the teams. Like this week I went, I traveled a bunch for a couple of dinners. So I used to be in the mix on everything. So it's challenging for me at times to not want to get back into some of those things. But I have to know my role and understand that I've got to provide the vision and really drive the team towards that, keep everybody aligned, make sure our culture is staying intact, that our core values are lived. We don't want an aspirational core values set or aspirational culture. We want lived core values and culture. And. And I've got to really help maintain that and uphold our quality. And, you know, so it's. It's just different than when I was in the. In the trenches as much. And so I try to meet with the team as often as I can. That Friday video, all team meetings, we do meetups with Mark and just making myself available. Sometimes people just need to be heard, and then there's messaging that I need to make sure they hear from me as well. And a good leader told me one time, you know, if it's important to you, it should come from you. And so if I just want to sit in the distance and let the team try to translate some of those messages, it's not going to come out the same way sometimes. And so it's important that the team hears certain things from me and that I'm not behind, you know, a wall that they don't see, wondering what I'm doing. I want to be very visible and out in front and available for the team as much as possible.

Now, in our prep, you said some of your core team, the people that help you start the company, still work for the company today.

Who.

Who are those people and what are their roles today?

Yeah, so we still have. So a couple fun facts. We still have, I believe, four out of our five first team members. We've made it 10 years with no turnover. So Eric Bonds are one of our design. He leads the design team. Director of design. So he was team member number one. We've got another designer, Joel, who's been around shortly after him. PK is a developer and then another designer, so. And the fifth one that she retired, she was our office mom, Office manager. She retired. So I think it's a pretty good excuse why we don't have the fifth one of our first five, but we're very proud of that. That's. I think it's pretty rare. And I should note, you know, I'm speaking from spiny tech starting. We did a merger a year and a half ago with a company. And so I don't want to discredit any of those people that have been around for a long time either. But speaking from our roots and where we started, that's some of those.

So the spin you, the, the group that you merge with, how, how has the culture merged? How's that gone to bring the two cultures together?

Yeah, it's gone. Well, you know, there's always, it's hard to rewire especially in a merger because it's, it's a, it's a subtle change. It's, it's abrupt, but it's still subtle because work doesn't really change. You didn't change where the physical place of where you worked. And so just getting very intentional about that, treating everybody like it's their first day again. So that we're all kind of getting on the same page with, with some of those things. We did redo our core values to kind of pull from each company and not have it be like, oh well that was so and so's, that was so and so's to try to make it a new owned as everybody. And so I let it came with this term Speedy Tech OGs, Bayshore OGs. And, and after one year I said okay, that's dead. Everybody's spiny tech now because we can't remember the past like that. We've been together a year, we are one team now and we gotta really focus on that. So I just, I think it takes a lot of intentionality as opposed to just assuming that it all kind of figure itself out. Yeah.

Yeah.

So.

What are the values? Can you share them with us?

Yeah, absolutely. So we own it, we do the right thing, we get better every day. And we over me, we over me.

And what? Like how would I know those? Where do I learn them and where do I see them Every day within the company.

Yeah. So you know, they're on our website, they're on our walls, in the physical offices, they're repeated in our shout out channels. Where do you learn them? Happens hopefully day one of onboarding. So again, if it's important to you, it should come from you. So I do a cultural onboarding with every new team member and we go through that. I talk through those, I share some stories about them, why they're important, the themes of them and really dig into them, ask if they have any questions. We also, I would say manage to them, meaning it's how we solve problems. If there's a problem, it's likely that there's some misalignment with one of our core values. And if you just use that simple framework, you can really solve the problem pretty quickly. So we always say attack the problem, not the person. And you use your core values as that solution to solve it. And you say, well, what, what's misaligned? Or if there's a team member that's a little bit, you know, something's off, you're like, well, they're not really displaying, you know, we own it. They missed a deadline. They're not owning their deadlines. We over me, we use team member intentionally, not employee. And so we over me is that you're a team player. And if they're trying to just do something for themselves, you got to get realigned with that. So it's, it's, it's constant and it's, it's just part of everyday life for us.

Yeah, got it. So you're, you're coaching and managing to them, you teach them on hiring, you post them, you talk about them in your meetings. Right. I see a whole range of things working together. So then talk to us about this recruiting process. We said this is going to be about attracting, retaining A players. What's an A player? How do you recruit them? Talk us through your process.

So I think you have to put people in two categories. And the way we look at it is we're going to hire an existing A player or somebody that has a player potential, and so they have to have one. One of the things we really look for is that lifelong learner, the get better every day mentality. That's our Notre Dame sign. We tap every morning before we go onto the field of play for work. And so finding people that fit your culture and your core values has to be the, that's the first filter. They could be, they could be an A player. They don't make it through that filter for core values and culture, no go, no matter how good they are. So I think when you have those things, you tend to attract more of the same. And those A players that you have are gonna, if it's a great place to work and they like it, they're gonna tell other A players that you should come here. And the best compliment we get in the interview process from clients is, you know, that consistency in the way that the people on our team talk about our core values and our culture. You can't fake that. And so when you get that feedback real time, that's great. So those things are what we use to attract and maintain and retain great people. For us, our assets, it's people. Our human capital is our number one asset by far. In a manufacturing world, you maintain and take care of equipment because it's your largest asset. We have to do the same to our assets. So we care for and care about that team every single day. We have a dedicated person just for culture to put on cultural events, maintain that culture. So you've got to invest in your assets and ours is our people.

That's a big call out. You have a dedicated person responsible. Responsible for culture.

Yep.

You know, it's, it's remark and you're only 170 people.

Yeah. So it's a big investment.

That's a good call because I know people with 500 and they don't have a dedicated person for culture.

I think culture can be a metric that's overlooked so quickly. It's like, yeah, we've got a culture. Check the box. But it's bigger than that because there's a cost to losing people. There's a cost to not to. To having a bad culture that you might not even realize. The clients can feel that. And so whatever you're selling or providing, people pick up on those things and they either want to be more of part of it or less a part of it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a, it's a. So where do you attract people from in the first place? How do you attract candidates to the pool? What, what's driving your candidate?

So what's been beautiful about COVID is we opened our minds to having people anywhere. So we've always had this idea of the best person for the job, but that was within our markets. Now the best person for the job anywhere, pretty much in the US and so we've got a nice dot pattern going down the east coast now. And I tell these people it's beautiful. We would have never met each other a couple years ago, but now we do. And so we're taking advantage of that in a big way. We've got a couple of recruiters on our team that are telling our stories, sharing our stories because great talent isn't always looking. They're typically pretty happy in their role. So we do have to sometimes pull them away from that. And I would say tell and sell, but hopefully it's not selling. It's just really sharing what a great culture we have and how we have a team of very talented individuals. Do you want to become a part of a team that is all really great people and when they start to talk to our team, that's what sells them and gets their buy in on. Man, I want to be a part of something like that. I liken it to we're a professional sports team just trying to win Super Bowls or the championship. And to do that, you've got to maintain not just the culture, but a team of great players. And that culture has to allow them to work together and be collaborative.

So are you recruiting from any particular category or source or lists? Do you, do you use employees? Do you market to any particular communities or anything like that?

All of them. So I mean, the team member recruitment is great if they. We have referral bonuses and we encourage that. And you know, sometimes people are kind of holding back if they're newer to see if it's really what we say it's going to be. But you know, we have people that are probably referred three, four or five people, which is great. I mean, those are the best ones because they, you know, that that person is putting their name on it and they've got to be good otherwise, you know, they're, they're going to be at risk too. So they're going to give you the really good ones. And so that's, that's a great one when we can get it. And then it's just working all those channels because again, a lot of them aren't working or looking. And so we've got to give them reasons to talk to us. And then our recruiters do a great job at that.

Interesting. And so the recruiters are doing outreach to specific companies, looking out for people. Yeah.

Yep.

And you look in any unusual places that others wouldn't look in?

Not that I'm aware of. I mean, I think there's, I always say like, some people are like, we need more of this. And I'm like, hey, listen, if there's a talent pool we don't know about, please share. Because I mean, everybody's having a tough time right now finding great talent. And so I feel like we're turning over every possible stone we can to find that great talent.

So what are the steps of your recruiting process? What actually happens to people? What, what do they do as they go through?

Yeah, so, you know, first of all it's, you know, getting them into the candidate pool, which starts typically either filled out an application or the recruiter has been working with them and then they go through an interview process. It's long, I'd love to shorten it, but it is, it's intentional of getting the team involved. So there might be three to five interviews. Some of those are shorter, some are longer. Final one, being with me just kind of as a cultural check. I asked one question and that's what's your walk up song playing in your head every morning when you wake up? It's a Simple question. It's just supposed to show creativity, thinking on the spot, and just a little bit of personality. And then it's really the reindeer of the time is for them to ask me questions. I'm assuming my team has, you know, talked to them before that has vetted the skill set, the culture fit, all that. I'm just that final gut check on culture and make sure they're all in. And we don't want a yes for a new candidate that's going to be on a team. We want a hell yes. And so we really want to be all in because the easiest time to fire somebody is before you hire them. Right. And we want to make sure that we're not making, you know, somebody isn't going to come in and then leave within three months, six months or whatever. And then from there I would say it really extends. So we have a great 100, your first 100 days onboarding process. It's very intentional. It's the cultural onboarding and then there's lots of things that go into that to get them, I would say the DNA of our culture and core values injected into them as quickly as possible.

Yeah. So what's, how long is that process? What are the steps of your onboarding?

Yeah, so I mean it's always ongoing, but that first 100 days we believe is the most critical. So they're going to, you know, have their basic, all the typical stuff from the HR perspective. But then there's a lot of meet and greets with different people across the company to just understand our service lines and the people behind it just get educated on that. There's just meet and greets to get to know people. Then there's just a cadence, like I send a written thank you or welcome note to every new team member. 30 days in, I do a six month check in with them. Other leaders are doing similar things and it's just making sure that they have access to all of the right people to be successful and trying to prop them up. Now in Covid times, like in. And maybe I don't need to say Covid times anymore, but remote working, we're pretty much fully remote. I tell new candidates, you have to lean in just as much as we're going to lean in as a company because if you're waiting for people to come to you, they may not. We're going to have all this set schedule, but set up a random virtual lunch, random coffee that's virtual, just to get to know who is bill and don't talk about work or Politics or Covid the weather. If you're from the Midwest, talk about what does Bill do at nights and on the weekends so that you know, we're going to go to battle with clients and I want to know how you're going to react in a stressful situation or what are your little mannerisms that show you're getting stressed and I can jump in to help you or vice versa. You know, if we're going on that the playing field of sport or whatever for us work, we got to know that we're all going to have each other's back. And so when you build those bonds and that loyalty, you're going to produce better work and be able to help your teammates much, much better.

Interesting. What is it that either retains people or drives them away in your view?

I mean?

Well, first of all that you've done that have kept people on board or that have driven them away.

So agency space is tough. We're pretty strict about work life balance. A lot of agencies are working 60 hours a week or more work. We try to really maintain that 40 hour work week. So I think the work life balance or harmony is critical to keeping some people growth opportunities is critical. What drives some people away is our standards or our accountability. Some people want to come in and I always say so. When employees come to check clocks and check boxes or sorry, check clocks and check boxes said that wrong. Team members come to be part of something bigger than themselves and do great work with others. There's a big difference between those personalities. And that's why we want team members, because we want people that are passionate about what they do. So if we, if somebody slips through the process and doesn't fit that mold, the culture is going to chew them up and spit them out pretty quickly, typically 90 days to 180 days.

So you're, you're working people out of the system, but you're not doing it like overnight or anything like that. Yeah. What else do I want to ask you about? Oh, how has the culture shifted? What does it look like now? How do you actually have culture now versus before? So before you were largely focused around your offices and now you're mostly remote. What are the touch points of that culture? How do we see it and feel it?

So there's tons of virtual events. Obviously we're trying to get the teams in person bring. So like the SEO team or the account team, they just, the account team just got together last week, I think in person. The whole team came to Des Moines, got together in person. There's Virtual events, we do learnings, we'll do trivias. Thanksgiving, they did a virtual cooking show. I thought that was awesome. Somebody showed how to make the turkey and some of the fixings and somebody shared a cocktail and the team was really into it. That's what was really cool to me is they put a lot of effort into, you know, preparing that. And so those are the things, it's work related and non work related items to kind of bring people together. And the other thing I'll share is I think in this current environment the shelf life of an idea is pretty short. So one thing might work for a few times and then you got to cash it and do something different.

Yeah.

And so but it's, it's trying to maintain some physicality of those relationships to bring people together. Mixed with the virtual events and you know, with our offices, what we've said is we need to create 75 to 100 reasons a year for people in market of an office to come to an office. Otherwise they're not going to. It's very so easy for people right now, even if they live a block away, to just simply not go. And so we've got to create those reasons. We just redefined how we work. So manage the person to their role, not their location. You just got to put a different lens on all of it. And we used to have happy collisions in an office where you would talk to people. We need to have forced collisions virtually now so that we get to just still have the water cooler, talk the in and out of meeting talks and stuff like that.

Do you have any plan or idea yet about how often and when you're going to meet in person?

So for sure every team will get together once a year. A whole company for us at our size is pretty challenging. That'd be very costly and disruptive. So that question gets asked. I don't know if we can pull that off. We are trying to reduce our footprint of office size to then reallocate those. So the ROI on those dollars for our culture right now is very low. If we can reapply them to get a higher ROI for the team, that's what I want to do. So we're looking hard at just how we're officing right now to redefine that and then reallocate those dollars to bring people together hopefully more frequently or provide other opportunities virtually that would, you know, create those bonds.

So are you going to get rid of office or are you going to reconfigure the office for meetings?

Just. Yeah, I Think think of it as collaborative space. So a couple of conference rooms and then just collaborative open kind of hotel desks.

Yeah, changing up in that regard. And how many of your team come to work every day or what percentage now is actually coming in on a regular basis?

Maybe 15%. I mean, it's pretty low now when we have an event, we can have a very full office. But on a typical day where that's not happening, it's not a high number.

Interesting. And do you notice that's different for any category of people than other people?

I don't know about like what team they're on? I think some people that live close to. It's like for them they have to go to an office to be productive. Just like some people have to dress a certain way to be productive. I have to wear a suit and tie to be productive. Well, some people have to physically go into an office to be productive. And so, you know, we want to give them that opportunity. And I think it's great. I think also trying to maybe create patterns, you know, like, hey, if we have five people on this one team in Chicago, every other Tuesday we're going to go to the office so we can collaborate and be together and stuff like that. So just trying to rethink all those things. But I don't know if it's a specific team. In Cedar Falls, we've got several designers that are coming in, which I think is great. They're able to collaborate on projects in person, but there's. They're also collaborating with several other designers that are all over the country. So you just, if you have multiple offices. We were kind of already thinking remotely because we don't do work just based on office teams and accounts are based on the best person for that account, regardless of where they're at. So we've kind of been prepped for this for years.

You know, it's funny, I had a web related business in the 90s and actually the first we started the company right in the room I'm sitting in now, which is now my home office. And that was some years ago, 26, 27 years ago or something like that because my son came and disrupted that. So as soon as my wife got pregnant, we started to think about moving. And as soon as I hired my first employee, so hired first employee, we moved the office outside. Right where I'm pointing now is a casita in our backyard, like a little out structure. And that became the first office we could hold. Four people working in that, you could probably hold six reconfigured now, but four to six people could work out there comfortably. And we worked there for a while, and a couple of my friends worked with me and that kind of thing. And then we started to attract more remote people. So we went well beyond that in terms of our contributors. And most of them were like 1099 contractors. But we had a lot. Right. And I remember one time I was in New York, and I forget what it was, but. But somebody said, oh, you're in New York. And I said, yeah. And she said, well, we should get together and have coffee or something. Because she'd been working with me for like, two years and I'd never met her in person.

Right.

Yep. So there was a lot of that in those days. Of course, then this room held kids for years. And then after the kids moved on and became adults and that kind of thing moved out, we made it back into an office and suddenly it's like full circle.

Yep.

But that notion of, like, remote workers and how and when do we connect with them, I think is really interesting, that there's. There's definitely throwing open of all of the patterns where and when people can work. And we've seen most of our clients adopt kind of a hybrid approach, but we are seeing a few. And I. I know one who was like, everybody has to be back in person. We're an in person company. I want to see people, I want to have them under my thumb. And I'm. I think that's kind of missing the opportunity of this last time, of this. The crisis that we've mostly moved through. Maybe move through. You just like, knock on the wood. Like there. We adapted, we learned things. Like even the way that we can show up and communicate with people now. Right. People say, oh, you look like you're on a CNN set. I'm like, yeah, that happened during and because of COVID we, like, upgraded things, got better at things.

Yep.

It's a great, great opportunity. All right, well, I heard some good things here, and we should underscore these before we run out of time. But I hear this notion of continuous improvement. I hear you working with and for the team, having the team, changing your role over time. I heard about ejecting team members and clients who don't really fit what you're up to, and working on getting the whole team better together in building the culture. I heard. What did I hear? I heard advertising it right out from the beginning, training it on arrival, testing for it during the interview, training for it on arrival, reinforcing it in all kinds of meetings, displaying it and talking about it frequently, managing to it over time to keep building it, using it for problem solving. And if it's rooted in values like that, we're probably building a strong culture about that. As I hear the cultural touch points evolving over time where you're continually to reinvent the the way that you're interacting so that what used to be easy, just throw some things up around the office, have an event, now you've got, you're a little more challenged in doing that. But having how to cook a turkey online or sharing how to make a cocktail, that kind of thing, just ways to connect people and that kind of thing. I also hear in the recruiting process being very broad and diverse, trying a whole bunch of different things, having a bunch of different touch points in the interview process before you bring people on. So there's some of my big takeaways. If you want to find out more about Mark and his company, we'll put the link right up there in his email on the crawl there you'll find it. Let's see here in my notes. I think we've got it there. That's probably more than I can say or read out loud.

Markpinnytech.com it's super simple.

Just mark the seat venutech.com and get the spelling right. And anyway you'll find all that there and go check it out. I'm so grateful. Thank you for coming on and talking with us and sharing a little bit of your experience with our listeners. Let me remind everyone, listeners, viewers, we bring our shows to you every week. They're on video on places like LinkedIn and YouTube and Facebook. But you, we get most of our audience on itunes, Stitcher, Spotify, those kinds of places as well. So love having everyone. If you want to know more, find a coach in your area or anything like that, you'll find us@scalingcoach.com where we put all our tools and things like that. Scalingcoach.com and then if you want to send us a note or ask for some help with something or an idea or connection to somebody, infocalingcoach.com is the address there. Big thanks to Wanda Mitchell in the background getting our guests ready, preparing the show, throwing, bringing up our titles, making everything run smoothly and getting it out the door on the back end. And to Vern Harnish, author and creator of the whole Scaling up framework itself, my friend and mentor, Vern Harnish. Folks at Pop Fly Productions produce our show every week. Albert Burge, ANA Codina, Tim McGowan, get the audio ready, the show notes and all that stuff, and out the door. Thanks again, everyone, for listening, for watching, like, subscribe, all that kind of good stuff. Talk to you again next time. Keep scaling up.

Thank you. Yeah.

See ya. See ya.