Trust, Community and the Conversational Enterprise

Business Brain the Entrepreneur show episode 424 for Wednesday, February 15, 2023. Greetings, folks and welcome to welcome back to Business Brain, the show where we take a concept, sometimes two concepts, and, and we apply our business brains to them. And it could be our. The concepts could be work, it could be our personal lives, it could be a mix of both because our business brains have application everywhere and the goal is to figure it all out and share with each other. Sponsors for this episode include HelloFresh. Go to hellofresh.com businessbrain65 code businessbrain65 takes 65% off your first box. We'll talk more in depth about that in a little bit. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, using my Business Brain, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean. I'm ready to talk Business Brain concepts again. Always good to get together.

Yeah, man. Yeah, absolutely.

It's good stuff.

Absolutely.

I'm still enjoying these shorter episodes. I think it's great to drill deep into one concept and then jump out, come back.

Anecdotally, I have heard from many of you, some at FeedbackUsinessBrain show, others via other channels, and it seems like, like the positive comments are universal. I have not heard one person say, I wish the episodes were longer. So here we are.

Hey, it's a hit.

Speaking of keeping it moving at the end of an episode last week you said that we were going to talk about the conversational enterprise this week.

Yes.

And that. That is very buzzword compliant that, that title there. What the heck does that mean? Can we, can we break this down a little bit?

Yeah, that's the first thing we're going to do is we're going to come up with a. Because, you know, I use this app called Grammarly. You may be familiar with it for sure. And I love changed my life dramatically and made me a much more confident writer. Just for nuts and bolts, aspects of writing, grammar and all that kind of stuff. And they've grown and expanded over time and they do things like tone and they do one thing that I just learned about that is related to this, this study they had done. And it allows you to set what they call style guides for all of your employees if your team uses Grammarly and so you can create. Yeah. And I was like, that's brilliant. Like, oh, we want the, the name of the company or capitalized this way or this is the way we respond to people. Customer service. Because, you know, we, we talked about for years it was an app we Used to use, called Help Scout, which allowed you to craft customer service messages so to be consistent with all your people. And I think you can. You could do the same thing with this Grammarly tool, which I thought was great. So, so they paid for this study. Idc. This is data. I don't even know what it stands for. International Data Corp. Is that maybe. Yeah, yeah. And so they did this study all about hybrid work and remote workers and how important connectivity is and kind of, you know, creating a sense of belonging for a team that some of them are maybe in person, some of them are remote hybrid. And I thought it was really an important thing to talk about. And I. Dave, I know you've had a lot of experience with this, a lot more than me over the years. Um, and I've had some not great experience trying to keep teams together and keep things focused. And so let's talk about it today.

Yeah, yeah, let's do it. Yeah. No, this is, this is interesting.

Yeah, yeah, it is. And, and conversational enterprise. It just, you know, like I said, it's kind of wordy. And, and, and the study that we'll link to in the show notes, it's full of corporate jargon and stuff, but there is still some. There's some good stuff to get out of it, but it's almost like the connected company or, you know, you're connecting all aspects of your business. And I don't have a great catchphrase for it, but it's people that don't come in every day and how do you keep them kind of focused on the same priorities? And one thing that I, when looking at this study that jumped out at me is how do you build trust right between your team and this sense of community that I really never thought about because I've always been in person with, you know, companies that have got a bunch of employees. And I've seen how hard that is to do when working remotely with partners, whether it's, you know, I tried to start a company in Amsterdam and it was so difficult getting everybody on the same page and the time shift was different. And I know you've had experience with some international folks.

Oh, yeah.

You know, so what, you know, like, I use Slack and I'm learning more about Microsoft Teams and everything. How do you. How do you try to. Are there special things you do to try to keep people connected like this to get everybody going in the same direction?

Yeah, I mean, we certainly use some sort of tool these days at Slack. When we started with the Mac observer, you know, 25 years ago, we were using an AOL Instant messenger chat group. And. And we never said the name of it out loud because, like, other people could have found it, but they never did. But it was called TMO Towers. We thought, okay, well, you know, here we. This is our office building, the TMO Towers. Right. But it was a virtual office building. And. And that. That concept sort of stuck with the company all the way through. And. And it helped. Right. Right out of the gate, it was like, right, this is the office. We sort of had to define that. So as silly as it was, it helped. One other thing to your trust building, though. I think that's one of the hardest things to do, but also one of the most important. I've learned that hiring nerds is good. And I don't just mean tech nerds, though. Initially, that's what we had. But after a while, I realized, oh, yeah, if you have people who are nerdy about something, and it's even better if people, multiple people are nerdy about the same thing, but just creating an environment where it's good and okay and encouraged to talk about the things that you're nerdy about. So, you know, with. Again, going back to Mac observer, because that was really my first experience with this. We were all nerdy about Apple stuff, obviously, but over time, we realized that most of the people we had on the team, especially at one point, were super nerdy about Star wars and then also Star Trek. Right. With Backbeat Media, we found that most of the people that we've had it, you know, at any given point in time are nerdy about music. And so being able to just sort of detour from a staff meeting into, you know, we. We had a thing at Backbeat. We still sort of refer to it as Friday Rock Talk. It seems to happen more often on Fridays, though it's certainly not scripted. We wind up sort of devolving a conversation into music and dissecting something, you know, we might like. We talked about the music at Queen recently and, like, dug into that. But that sort of thing builds trust because you're. You're encouraged to share your opinion in a safe way. And somebody might challenge that opinion. But again, like, the stakes are pretty low. It's not like your job's on the line. It's like, yeah, we can disagree and that sort of thing. Especially disagreeing with the boss or challenging the boss and saying, oh, you like that? I don't like that. Or you don't like it? I do. Like, yeah.

Even if you're joking around or something. Right.

Well, joking is the best way to build, well, one of the best ways to build trust. So, yeah, that's, that's definitely the idea behind it, at least at a start, is create an environment. You almost, not almost. You have to intentionally create moments where the staff is going to have what I'll call downtime together. You're going to have meetings, right. Like Zoom or even text meetings. Right. Where you're just chatting back and forth about a topic. Everybody's sort of engaged. But whatever it is, you're going to have those meetings about a work topic. Well, it's good to have meetings that are not about a work topic. The water cooler, if you will.

Right.

And when, when those start to bubble up, let them happen. Encourage them to happen. Because that I think is, is the key. Hey, that sound means I get to tell you about our sponsor for this week, which is HelloFresh. With HelloFresh, you get farm fresh pre portioned ingredients and seasonal recipes delivered right to your doorstep. You get to skip those trips to the grocery store and count on HelloFresh to make home cooking easy, fun and affordable. And that's why it's America's number one meal kit. And that's why we like it here at Business Brain because it kind of combines all of those smart things. It makes things more efficient, makes things more affordable. HelloFresh now has 40 weekly recipes to choose from so you can say bye bye to your recipe rut and, and treat yourself and your family to exciting new flavors every week. This time around, Lisa and I chose to do their pescatarian menu to see what that's like. One of the things on there is creamy shrimp and bacon spaghetti salmon limon. But if you're not into that, you know they've got like pork chops and apple rosemary pan sauce, zucchini and tomato flatbreads. If you want to go the vegetarian route, fully loaded turkey taquitos. They've got great recipes and you can customize select meals by swapping proteins or sides or even adding a protein to a veggie dish. It's so easy to make. The instructions are super clear and it makes it fun because it instantly makes cooking collaborative, which is perhaps my favorite part about using HelloFresh. For you, go to hellofresh.com businessbrain65 and use code businessbrain65 for 65% off + 15 free shipping. Again, that's businessbrain65 is the code to use@hellofresh.com businessbrain65 we'll put all these links in the show notes at BusinessBrain show as well. And our thanks to HelloFresh, America's number one meal kit, for sponsoring this episode. While we're here, have you ever wanted to eavesdrop on a mastermind of successful online business owners? Find out what they talk about and how their unique mindset differs from their competition. You know, because you're interested in the business brain, you might be interested in checking out the Masterminding Success podcast. Every week, Keith Wheeler and Nouria Corby come together to openly discuss all aspects of success, both in business and in life. They cover topics from book publishing and affiliate marketing to how to make your business stand out in the marketplace and a whole lot more. So whether you're thinking about just starting an online business or you've been running one for years, that Keith and Nuria will open your eyes to new and different ways to look at your customers and your business to better your chances of long term business success with the Masterminding Success podcast. Our thanks to Keith and Nuria for doing this swap with us. All right, Shannon, so we've talked about the, the interactivity, the trust, the trust building part of it, hiring nerds. And I really want to stress, I think everybody is a nerd about something. You just got to find it and.

Encourage special interest that you have. Right.

Hobbies. Like yeah, I mean I, I use the term nerd because in my world that's a positive thing. But yeah, finding the things. And, and I've even added that as an interview question. Tell me what you're nerdy about. And I don't care what this, the topic is. What. But if, if someone has nothing to say there, they're probably not going to work out. As part of our team. Doesn't matter what it is. Could be knitting, could be cars, could be like, I don't care. I mean I do, I, I want to be interested and I, and you'll make me interested if you're truly nerdy about this topic because you're going to be passionate about it.

So like, this is like, I call it the concept of the clean garage. And, and I, this is just my own thing. But if I go to your house and I don't know you and I, I kind of get a chance if I pull up in front of your house and I look in your garage and it's perfectly clean and, and all there is is a car or two cars perhaps, and the walls and nothing going on.

I always am like, hmm, yeah, there's this suspect yeah.

What do they do? I'm always, it's. This is sketchy because other folks, and mine included, you know, there's kayaks and tools and a workbench and, you know, bikes and just like I'm constantly moving stuff around and cleaning up and when I pull up to someone and I look in their garage and I see all kinds of stuff, I'm like, well, this person has hobbies and stuff they're interested in.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, they do stuff. Yeah. One of the things that stuck out in this, in this study, again we'll link@businessbrain show was this concept of augmented conversations. And I didn't really understand it, but I think I grasped it too. Of course, Grammarly sponsored this study. So they talk about using Grammarly to help things along, but almost. I also think you're commenting about this Wednesday water cooler chat or zoom just so people can have a chance. You, I think you as business owners, supervisors, managers, whatever, I think you can, you kind of have to either use, sometimes use a tool to help prompt those things to happen or, or go over the top to make them happen and really make sure and go out of your way. It's almost like when I started really communicating a lot in this social commerce business, I had, I have, I had a heck of a time getting comfortable using emojis in my conversations, but I quickly realized the most successful people who I was studying, that's just the way it was and it was widely accepted. And so if you're in Slack or teams or some chat thing, whether it's imessage, I think you have to be intentional about setting this stuff up because I don't know that it happens naturally or that your employee, employees are going to push this. It's either come from you or if there's someone who's a nerd about connecting people in your organization, maybe you could put them in charge of that. Hey, how do we connect? Let's have a connection thing. And I know you do it for all your podcasters, Dave, with Backbeat Media.

And the one thing I cannot take, I mean I can take credit for facilitating it and organizing it and being the host of those meetings. But. But the concept behind that is exactly as you were describing this. I was like, oh yeah, here at Backbeat, that's Jeff Questad. He is the one who has spearheaded that and, and quite frankly beat me over the head with it virtually. Not, not really. Yes, but, but like telling me we need to be doing this, we need to be doing this. And, and he's Right. And, and we should have started doing it years before, but we didn't. But whatever. The second best time is is today, you know, so. Yes. Yeah. So. But it absolutely was spearheaded by him. He's like, we just got to get these people together and hang out. Like, oh, yeah, I guess so.

Sure.

You know, and he's like, no, like, okay, okay, okay, okay.

Yeah, that's. It's exactly what I'm talking about.

Yes.

There has to be some intention as, as business owners, we're so busy and we got all this stuff going on, we probably don't think about this very much. And one of the pitfalls is, you know, when using your business brain, is thinking that your employees think like you, because I guarantee you they don't.

Yeah.

And so, you know, you may not feel the need to get together, but they probably do.

Yes.

And so this, this study has this. They keep talking about this augmented conversations a lot. They don't really give you solutions. So that would be one thing I'd love to hear from you that are listening at home or in your car, wherever you're at. What do you use to augment. To kind of make those conversations happen? Because I want to learn from this as well, because I don't have the answers to this question, but I think it's important. And one of the things I really like Dave, about the podcasters getting together is it's just whoever can make it.

Yes.

I think that's big because if you make people like your employees, we're all getting together and we're going to laugh.

Yes, we must. The laughing shall commence.

Yes, it doesn't do it.

But if you say meetings will continue until morale approves. Right. Yeah.

Right. But if you're gonna go, hey, the, the water cooler chat's opened at, you know, two o' clock on, on Wednesday that whoever can make it come on in because. And maybe you have to have an enticing. Oh, I want to make an announcement about something that I'm working on, but you don't have to come. But, you know, you're trying to encourage them to come.

Yes. Yeah. Like, I have a thing to, to, to discuss and if you can be there, that'll be great. Otherwise, I'm happy to catch you up. Yeah. Oh, no, it's, it's good, Stu.

I think it's great. And so, yeah, so I think this is really important, especially this connectivity, trust, the sense of community.

Because I just, just, just turning on the tools, the slack that all that. I mean, it will like conversation will happen if you, if you turn, if you, you know, sign up for slack for your business. Like, that is step one. I think in today's world, if you're, if you're running a, a remote company or parts of your team, you have to have it, but you also need to, to, like, think about how you want your people to communicate and, and be intentional about it. I got lucky. It sort of happened by accident over time with over observer. But then it was like, okay, wait, wait, I need to replicate this at these other things. And of course that takes intention and it's fine. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's cool.

I think it's an important topic and you know, Again, feedback at BusinessBrain Show Share, you know, the way you do it, how you interact with your remote employees, tricks and, you know, remember, if we feature on the show, we're giving away a MacBook Air for this season of Business Brain, and we'd love for you to win it.

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