Creating a Compelling Company Culture with Mary Morrissey - Genius Network Episode #200

In a virtual business, the person who is the vision holder holds the vision, and it's very strong. And then your goal, of course, is to transmit that vision into the minds of the people that are working closely with you. If you're in a brick and mortar building, it's easier to transmit on a regular basis and also see who is not in congruence or alignment with your vision. And then as you grow another whole ring, it just fades. And I was experiencing this, and I had no idea how to solve it.

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How one idea earned me and our company $15 million. And how you can take that idea. Not my idea, but one of these ideas do the same. I sat here in the Genius annual meeting. I had just hired my oldest son, who I'd been consulting with. He built a $65 million business in Cabo San Lucas. I was growing a business, and I knew when we sat in that meeting, we'd grown from 6 million to 10 million during the two years he'd been with us. And we were at a new challenge. And I knew what the challenge was, but I had no idea how to really solve it because I was not wanting to have a brick and mortar building. We wanted to build a virtual business. And we were doing that. And in 2009, we had four people working for me. By 2013, when I hired John, we had maybe 12. And in two years, we'd grown to 50 people. And in a virtual business, the person who is the vision holder holds the vision, and it's very strong. And then your goal, of course, is to transmit that vision into the minds of the people that are working closely with you. And the first ring out, it can be pretty strong. If you're in a brick and mortar building, it's easier to transmit on a regular basis and also see who is not in congruence or alignment with your vision. And then as you grow another whole ring, it just fades. And I was experiencing this, and I had no idea how to solve it. So I came to Genius. Dan Sullivan spoke about this, about the idea that if you tell your brain what you're interested in, it really does a good job looking for that. So I had in my mind this challenge that we were facing. And there's something called meta listening. So for a moment, notice. Notice that you can notice your body. Notice that you can notice the feeling of your shoes on your feet. Notice that you can notice yourself being supported by the chair you're sitting on. Notice your feet and your ankles and your calves and your knees and your thighs and your bottom and your belly and your chest and your back and your shoulders, forearms, elbows, palms, and wrists all the way to the tippy tip of your ten fingers, your chin, your nose, your cheeks. Notice that you can notice. And that noticer will. Will go where you direct it. That's really helpful to know that we don't have to just respond to what's coming at us. We can actually have a meta listening, a listening beyond the things that are happening for us. And so I came with the meta listening. I decided there's somebody here who knows there's something that will be spoken from the stage. There's something in the hallway. Somebody knows how to create a great virtual business where the rings of all of us who are working together, that somehow we're able to transmit the passion, the compelling call, all of the things that matter to me throughout this business. And then a woman named Dina Dwyer spoke. And this was. Might have even been day three. It was a ways into it, and she spoke about having inherited a business from her dad and a business that she wasn't even sure she wanted to have at first. But as she had grown this business, she had a brick and mortar building, but as she grew and grew her franchise, she was experiencing a version of what I was experiencing. And she said it took her a while to realize what was missing. And what was missing was that the business her dad had grown had such heart to it. And people knew the brand not by just the good quality of the product, but they knew the brand by the great quality of the way people felt when they did business with this company. And she realized that when her dad was alive, that they had always had. No matter who worked for the company, they had 90 days to learn the core values and. And be able to memorize them so that at any time there was a conversation, anybody after that could be asking, what are our core values? And if they didn't memorize them, they were given a warning. And after that, they were let go. Because often people would say, well, let's see the core values. I filed them over here. I've got them in a file in my computer. But when our core values are outside of us, there's no way we know how to make decisions based on the core values, because they're out there. And I had been doing some research about the cost of poor culture. The studies show, of course, that losing an employee, it's one and a half times their salary to two times their salary when you have to transition somebody and bring the new person in. And I was reminded of Simon Sinek's work where he said, most people can tell you what they do. Here's my company, here's what we do, here's how we do. Even fewer companies can tell you how they do what they do. And almost no company can tell you why they do what they do, why they do what they do, which is where our purpose and our cause and our belief is. And I wanted that in my company because shared beliefs drive loyalty. So remember in 1997, with his marketing people just screaming at him, Steve Jobs decided to do a marketing expression of something that mattered to him.

Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes, the ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them, because they change things. They push the human race forward. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.

Now, obviously, you know, his death date wasn't in that video, because he had. He was just coming back to Apple. But there's no computer. There's no computer in that ad. But there was a compelling, this is who we are, and this is why we do what we do. Yes, we build great computers, but why we do it is because of this. And so after Dina spoke, my CEO huddled up and we talked about, how do we take this idea and transmit this? So we dreamed up that we would bring all of our executives and their main people they worked with. And it was at that point, 38 people were going to bring together not the whole company, but 38 people to a Ritz Carlton, Laguna Niguel, California, for three days and really help coalesce our core values and our mission. I knew what they were, but I wanted there to be a team community around that. So we held that retreat and we took the words that I had been living from all the years I've been building businesses for decades. Now. This was a newer business, started in 2006. So I wanted to share with you my core values and the core values our company operates by. And as our first opportunity was really enroll the people to do an experiment with us And I was a minister for 23 years, and I learned some things about moving large groups of people with you anywhere. And it's always helpful to say to them, let's do an experiment. We're going to do an experiment for 90 days, and then we'll see how we like it. Because those who are going to say, it's a good idea, and there's those who are going to say, this is a really crummy idea. And if you say, we'll do an experiment, those who are sure you're wrong or just less resistant, because all right, 90 days, you'll find out it's wrong. And if it is wrong, you're going to change it anyway. And if it isn't just helpful not to have so much resistance. So we're Life Mastery Institute, and as you think about adding $15 million to your bottom line, $15 million in income, $15 million, or any other number, remember, it's not really the money, it's what it does. The ability to give raises, the ability to transmit your values to things that matter to you, to invest in your business. So at Life Master Institute, and how we employ this is whenever we're in a virtual meeting, which we're in all day, all week long, two or more of us, if there's three of us, it takes less than a minute to say these core values. It informs the decisions we make. Everybody in the company is given permission to say, well, how does this fit with value number two? I think we're missing value number four over here. When we're doing this, everybody's empowered. It has made all the difference. Life Mastery Institute. We empower people to create and live a life they love living. We believe in people. We know that what's inside every single person is far greater and contains way more potential than any circumstance, situation, or condition. We believe in love and care. We bring sincere love and care to every interaction. We seek to delight and surprise our clients and each other by anticipating wants and seeking to exceed expectations. So it's not only the value, it's how it's lived into. We believe in integrity, so we live what we teach and we deliver what we promise. We believe in fun. We create joy, laughter and fun in all our work. And we believe in growth, and we grow by achieving our goals and exceeding our best. We are not perfect at these values. We are not perfect at living into them, nor do we pretend to be. Because this place called perfect doesn't really exist, but a place called progress does. So what does? Having a great culture look like for you. And regardless, I know that there's an idea here for you, for every single one of us that takes us to the next whole level of what we dream of. Thank you very much.

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