Episode 195: 7 Deadly Myths That Will Destroy Your Company Culture | Anita Emoff, Boost Engagement

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All the experience that you have had is exactly of creating— what, how can I create the ultimate customer experience? And we are so focused on that that we are forgetting that the people that are creating that, we're not treating them the same way.

That's the voice of Anita Imhoff, chairman and owner of Boost Engagement and author of the new book 7 Deadly Myths That Will Destroy Your Company Culture, Workforce Engagement, and Sales Growth. Anita oversees operations at Boost and sets the example for a driven, positive culture for the company. Both Anita and her husband, Michael Imhoff, have been critical leaders in designing new technology solutions for clients. And with over 20 years of sales and management experience, Anita has led Boost Engagement to become one of the 50 fastest-growing women-owned businesses in the world. Anita was designated as MVP with the National Association of Women recognized as a rising star by PPAI, included in the Counselor's Hot List, has been featured multiple times as a Dayton Business Journal's Biz Women Power 50. Today, of the 7 myths Anita writes about in her book, we unpack 4: just give them a raise, remote workers are hard to manage, millennials are just needy, and incentive programs take care of themselves. We also talk about how we're all familiar with the client journey, but how about the employee journey? And the power of peer-to-peer recognition, building team affinity and loyalty, and how compensation has changed, how our industry has evolved from commodity-based selling to service-based selling and its impact on our compensation structures, and more. Hi friends, I'm Bobby LeHew, the Chief Content Officer at Commonsku. Before we chat with Anita, many of you attended our product summit, which was focused exclusively on sustainability, and we had such a tremendous response and such positive feedback from that experience we wanted to continue this highly concentrated combination of strategic selling with innovative product ideas. So this week we opened registration for Product Summit Holidays, which is built specifically for gifting experiences of all kinds, employee engagement, client recognition, community engagement, holiday gifting, and more. Our new summit features expert advice from distributor pros in the business, as well as creative ideas shared by the industry's leading suppliers. Plus we're kicking off the event with a conversation with Jesse Genet with Lumi on how to build beautiful unboxing moments. Bring your team for a concentration of a few hours that combines sales strategy with tactics and the latest in product trends. Product Summit Holidays will be held on September 14th from 2 to 5:30 PM ET. You can register in advance at commonscube.com/productsummit. This episode is brought to you by CommonsCube, the work from anywhere platform that powers your connected workflow, enabling you to process more orders, dramatically grow your sales. To learn more or to begin your free trial now, visit commonskew.com. Now here's my conversation with the always energetic and optimistic Anita Emhoff.

Anita, in your book, you quote Simon Sinek, who said this: when people are financially invested, they want a return, and when people are emotionally invested, they want to contribute. What I love about your book is that you use a phrase I hadn't read or heard about yet, emotional loyalty, at least not in that sense. What do you mean by that?

I love that question because that's exactly what a lot of employers, they dismiss. It's that human deep connection. And I think in our work environment, everybody's so focused on strategy and they're focused on P&L statements and they're focused on the revenue. Which is part of your culture and part of the strategy. And we'll touch on that. And I love the millennials for that. They brought that to our work environment.

Yes, exactly.

They're saying, well, wait a minute, this is all great, but what's in it for me? What are you going to do for me? And by the way, how are you going to communicate with me? How are you going to connect with me? And how are you going to show me the path? So emotional loyalty for us is like, I have 3 steps for it. It's very clear and we can touch on that. It's affinity, attachment, and trust, period. In my mind, you have to be able to emphasize those 3 levels to have that pure brand connection. And if you want your employees to love where they work and what they do, you have to dive deeper into those 3 buckets and understand how am I aligning my culture when it comes to affinity? What does that mean to an employee? And how am I making deeper connections? Meaning, how am I communicating? How am I being clear and precise in terms of what employees can expect from me and vice versa? And I don't think a lot of employers, they really create that strategic journey and that emotional journey for an employee when they start working for somebody. So, so how can you create that deeper, ultimate emotional connection?

Right. When you say affinity, I'm assuming what you mean is folks that move from this is just my job to I really love this company, I like this company, and then it's an evolution. Okay.

Yeah. They like the brand. Obviously, there is something about it on the surface that they like, and maybe there's something underneath the surface that attracted it to them. It's really like a relationship. And then you start getting into deeper and you start peeling off the layers and the layers in for a brand is not just what they sell and what they do. It's what they do outwards. It's what they do to the community, to the environment, to other people, to their peers.

Great point.

It's like a whole tracklist of stuff. And if you can create a strategy around that and become lucrative in terms of how you recruit, In my opinion, I think you are really, really— well, you have the ultimate emotional loyalty, right?

Right. I love what you said about millennials and younger generations in general. What they do is instead of us looking at them as some strange species that's not a part of us, they are evolving the work culture. They are a really important part of evolving where we need to be next and where we need to go. That's what I love about what they brought. They brought warmth. Humanity. They brought a lot of connection to the workplace. For those of us that have been doing it a while, it's a really welcome change.

I think so too. And it's, but it's hard and I get it just to flip around a little bit and say, hey employers, I get it out there. It's not something you just flip the switch. And especially when you take like my generations or even above that, cause we've been so used to behaving in a certain way and operating in a certain way. And they're like, and now, What is it up with this, like, feelings and these emotions and all this kind of stuff? And it's like, I'm used to black and white. And yeah, we recognize people once in a while, but, you know, I feel like you can really create legacy that way too.

Yes. Yes. Great point.

If you want to talk about legacy, that's legacy in my opinion, where you can sit down and actually talk about what you have done for your organization.

Yeah. Let's talk about the Seven Deadly Myths, your book. I loved it. Thank you for the copy. I digested it. I just consumed the book. It was phenomenal. And you know, it's funny when you read titles like that, you're typically going, "OK," and you have certain expectations. But I really dug this. Let's get into some of these myths. We won't cover all of them because we won't have time to cover all of them. But let's go from the biggest myths on through a couple that I really wanted to talk about. Number 1, one myth about motivating, inspiring, and engaging employees was just give them a raise. Myth number 1. This has to be the biggest myth that we all still deal with and that we're like hardwired to live with as employers, right? One quote from your book, T.A. Atchison summed it up this way: as soon as money is predictable, it becomes an entitlement, not a motivator. So how do we— Anita, you run multiple businesses, you've been running multiple businesses for a while. How do we balance money and motivation?

Well, it again comes back to that long-term employee experience journey. So it's part— I think your salary is a stakeholder, right? I mean, it's like, yes, because we got to live. We got— I mean, we got to pay the bills and all of that. And it's part of the negotiation. But it's again, it's getting away from creating a strategy just around revenue generation. You have to create a strategy and a journey around connections, about communication, about culture. And culture is not just about lunch, luncheons, and giving people stuff and, and giving time off. It's really truly part of your operational system as well in terms of obviously the systems that you make available. We know that. And sometimes it is what it is. I mean, look at our industry when it comes to technology. We have gone through that, but it has to be part of your strategy. It has to because you can't just focus it on the benefits package.

Yeah. Am I wrong in looking at our industry now, particularly, and really in a macro sense in the world, what's changed, but in our industry specifically, there's been lots of changes around compensation over the past couple of years.

Yeah, thank God.

Yeah, exactly. So, we've seen this world from 50/50 splits and this amalgamation, if you will, of salary bonus. But what are your thoughts on compensation now? Like, are we at some new marker when it comes to how we are compensating employees, and have things changed from where they were?

I think they have, because I also think we're getting away from the commodity selling to more service, service-based selling, and therefore we can adjust our, our compensation as well to leverage that, you know, we can charge for more things. I think we've gotten better at understanding our value proposition to our clients. And, and it's not just a product we're selling, but it's a full service. Nearly. I hate to— I don't want to say the word agency because I don't, you know, that's not what we are. But I think there is so many more things that we, we provide to the clients than what we've done, done in the past. Like for us, it's the journey evolution. I mean, it's not just— we don't talk product, right? We talk about how can we evolve your brand through the journey? How can we evolve your brand when it comes to your employees through the journey? And I think we can compensate in a better way to our employees as well.

This also seems to be this almost— I keep saying this phrase and I need to find a better one— democratization of sales where we have more people working on an account. Than we used to maybe back in the day when it was a commoditized sale. So we have this interesting challenge where we are now trying to find creative ways. Have you found creative ways that have worked for you and your organizations on compensation that are outside of some of the traditional compensation packages?

Well, we charge for our services, right? For our creative services that we provide and, and for, for the different ways and the people that are involved on these accounts, because it is exactly what you say. It's not one person anymore. I think there's still pockets of the old-fashioned way because it's just what the customer asks for. So I think it depends on the client and what their needs are. But I think we have gotten better at charging for marketing, digital service, and other things, fulfillments and those kinds of things, because there are people involved and we've become more customer-centric in that aspect. And we charge for reporting. Yeah, we report for—

that's a great point. Yes, exactly. I see your point. Really well, point well taken, which if I'm a distributor listening, then if I'm still stuck in some of these ways where I have a traditional structure, traditional setup, the question then is, are you charging for your services? It's kind of more just an open rhetorical question, but are you charging for services? That's one way you can go and capture that so you can pay more. You use the phrase ultimate loyalty, and I love how you start with— it starts with affinity and it gets to a crescendo almost, doesn't it? What do you mean by ultimate loyalty?

That is that affinity, attachment, and trust. If you don't have trust in the end of the day and that full in-depth, and it nearly comes into customer loyalty because we lived in that world for a long time, but we haven't pulled in that system into when it comes to engagement or in employee engagement, because that's just been the word recognition. And that's not what it's about. It is truly about loyalty. I mean, we talked about job hopping. There's a reason for that. They don't see themselves long-term or they don't have that trust factor and that attachment to the brand that they're working for. So how do you create that ultimate loyalty within the employee journey in the different areas? And we have specific ways. It's being authentic, it's being communicative, it's creating all the different channels from both technology and access. Within your business that the employee feels like I have a voice, I have a way to connect with whoever. And I'm not talking manager on down, I'm talking across the board because that's also the piece about engagement. It's not about feedback only from the manager. It's allowing them to give them an environment where they can cross-connect, cross-communicate. Yeah. And they have a voice and it's authentic, right?

Yes. Yes.

It's not just another mechanical reason to make money.

Right, right. And it's about creating this culture where you have permission to share your ideas, where it's, you know, rather than having to beg people for their contribution. One quick thing, and we don't have to camp out on this a lot, but you do such a great job with your marketing and branding. I've noticed this shift with recruiting and hiring in that we would typically focus our branding and our brand toward our customers. And now what we're seeing is digital is the doorway to sales. Digital is the doorway, digital experience, meaning our websites, our social presences. It's also the is the number one doorway for recruiting because of what people do when they are interested in working for you. They go and check out your website, they go and check out your social, they go and check out everything about you. That's an interesting shift that's happened, and now it's a number one— it's a main driver for attracting talent. Have you seen that shift change?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's how do you communicate your brand out there? I mean, how do you attract— I mean, we know it's hard to— I mean, just look at us. I mean, and depending on where you have your business, You know, getting great talent and getting the right talent and the right culture in the door to evolve your business is always a fight out there. So it starts there. And the journey is how are you as a brand and not just swag. Swag, you know, aligns it and helps you create that communication barrier. But how do you communicate and how do you position yourself as a brand when you're out there attracting your talent? You know, are you just going through again the checklist of stuff, or are you actually connecting to them from an emotional perspective? How are you creating that connection in the beginning throughout the journey? And how are you involving them when they get on board and you're recruiting? And what's that process look like? And is there a clear roadmap for that employee long term?

Yes. Let's get to my favorite myth. And it's my favorite myth right now because it's something we're all struggling with. It's also something that All of us have a very passionate opinion about myth number 3 in your book, remote workers are hard to manage. It's probably— I recently saw, I saw someone on a social say remote work doesn't work, which is why we're not doing it. To which I really wanted to reply, won't you just confirm your bias? Aren't we sort of all deep-seated with a bias of whether it will work or whether it won't? Am I being too far removed from the situation to suggest whatever our bias is, we're probably going to prove it? Because if you're a business owner and you have no choice but to recruit and hire and work with a hybrid team, you're going to find a way to manage well. Many of these concerns come down to communication. Can you comment on that in general?

Oh, I'm with you. It's totally debuffed. Get over it. We proved it. We proved it, right? I think it comes back again to, if nothing else COVID put in front of us was Oh my God, are we reevaluating everything we do from a work perspective? Yeah. Not only personally and quality of life and mental health and all of that, but I think it proved that you as an employer have to be flexible. And if you're not, well, you're going to miss out. I mean, I could use a worse word for that, but I mean, you're crazy.

Meaning you miss out, meaning attracting good talent, missing out on evolving your business.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, people are going to say, if I can't be flexible and potentially work from home, I'm not going to work for you.

Right.

I'm not going to do it, you know, because I think— I mean, we even saw in some areas we were more productive.

Yes.

Because nobody was interrupting them.

Yeah.

Let's talk about managing remote employees and what works. You know, 26% from your book, Prudential statistics, 26% of workers plan to look for a different job once the pandemic subsided. 75% of those who are planning to leave say the pandemic made them rethink their skill sets. 68% of American workers who say that having the ability to work remotely and at the worksite is ideal. And then lastly, 80% of workers among those have been working remotely during the pandemic want to continue to. So at the end of the day, you mentioned that employees are looking for 4 main things: appreciation, communication, personalization, and recognition. Now, what I love about your framework is that's something we can use, those 4 hooks or those 4 anchors or like a framework to look at our work and our our team and see how am I doing in these 4 areas. Is that what you've discovered?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we had to learn to connect in different ways. I mean, we had to get deprogrammed in terms of because normally we are so used to being together and having the ability to connect. So we had to get creative. I mean, some people were already there, but I think some people struggled through that, creating that connection through whether it was Zoom or— I mean, nothing takes the place of sitting in the same room. I get it, you know, but I think sometimes because, you know, you have 30 minutes on a Zoom call, you get more done. I mean, you don't, you don't always, you just get more done, you know? So I think the biggest piece that people struggle with and still do, whether it's in person or remote, is the connection.

I was going to ask you about that. So you have appreciation, connection, personalization, and recognition. And the one we struggle with the most is connection. Can you unpack that and tell me what you mean by it?

Yeah. I mean, connection and communication is in terms of how has things changed after COVID? You know, it comes back to that, that ultimate loyalty. I don't think we're good enough in creating meaningful connections. As it pertains to work, not so much. I mean, I want to know about your dog and your home life, but how are you connecting as how the business is doing and how you bring value and how you're doing? How are we having those conversations more and understanding that long-term journey and that long-term goal?

Do you have an example of what that kind of looks like on a practical level of connecting? And so what I mean is that I think that's one of those words that get lost in a very big meaning that means multiple things. But then what does that mean in a day-to-day, especially as you know, in our business, you're interacting with your team all the time. So you could— so some folks are like, what do you mean by connecting? I'm connected to my team all the time.

Yeah, but I also think it's the— I find sometimes when I learn about the people is when I don't talk to them. This is interesting. And what I mean by that is like Commonsku has their social social platform. And I learn a lot about people by looking at that platform. And it's very specific. Well, we have the same thing. I think sometimes if you can set up an engagement program and there is a social interacting and you just allow people to connect freely and communicate freely, you learn a lot about your employees by just sitting back and listening versus having the conversation because sometimes they're on the spot. So I think it's, in my opinion, it's not always about manager to employee connection. It's about allowing them to connect with others and create an environment for them where they can talk freely. And you have the ability to see that. And the same thing with, with surveys, have the courage to survey your employees. Of course it's anonymous, but ask the difficult questions in terms of what's going on in there. But you're not going to get to great engagement programs if you don't get to the root cause of what's going on and what you got to fix. I think many employees, they assume they know what's going on, but they have no clue because they're not taking the time to survey. And that's the trust factor, is create that 360 loop of communication before and be— well, I mean, we as managers have gone through sometimes the 360 But you got to do the same thing with your employees.

Yeah, I love that. I also love that what you're emphasizing is that through the pandemic, I think we as business leaders, because we're so sales-focused, so growth-focused, we actually all learned, we got a master's in listening. We were forced to listen. And so we don't want to lose that as we're heading out of this pandemic. Because many of us were forced to actually exercise that skill that we didn't use a lot prior to this.

Yeah, oh, absolutely. And I think that's, you know, if I dive into my next version of my book, I'm going to dive deeper on that, you know, and understanding specifically the ultimate loyalty. It's like, now we're talking about all the things that can potentially kill your culture if you don't pay attention to it, and you don't create strategies around it. But how do you take what you have learned and build upon that? And I know Not one mold fits all, absolutely. And there's no perfect mold on there. And everything I say is not like, that's the way it should be. I think it's different, but I think we need to learn from it. And I think we need to take snippets of it if we want to be able to survive, quite frankly.

Yeah. Let's debunk another one of my favorite myths. Millennials, or let's say any younger generation, they're just needy. They're job hoppers because they have no emotional loyalty to the company. I thought this was a great phrase, actually. You know, they're job hopping because there's no emotional loyalty. Plus, let me ask you this, is job hopping an antiquated idea now that we live in the gig economy? Okay. Okay.

It is, right? But we got to put it out there as a word because we want them to grab it. And I mean, you know, a lot of my generations and older, I sound like an old person when I say that. I should not say that, but you know, we It is frustrating because we think of it as like, oh my God, I'm investing so much money in all of these things and then they jump. Well, have you ever thought about maybe you haven't created the darn path for them and they haven't figured out how to connect with you because that is important to them? Have you ever thought about there's not a complete feedback loop where they have the ability to be voiced? So the word needy, Yes, in essence, they're needy, but the value proposition of the need is the emotional connection that they need. And that is our future, whether we like it.

Yes.

Yes.

And if you look at where I'm from, that's pretty much how they are. I mean, they are— they need to feel emotionally connected to the brand or to the people that they work with.

We're seeing this impact consumers and the way they spend. They want an emotional connection to even to the consumer products they buy. They want to know where it's made. They want to. There's a lot of emotional connection happening around this. So the old idea of job satisfaction is definitely an antiquated idea. It really is about engaging on a deeper level. And I love how you just keep hammering the word emotional because that's a big part of it. What does it look like? What does engagement, real engagement look like? What does it feel like for a millennial or a millennial-minded employee from their perspective to be truly engaged with the company?

So we can look at it tactical or we can look at it emotional. Let's take it tactical first, because if we look at a person like me, you know, I would get into a business and I would have to prove myself in the beginning before I could even ask, start asking for anything. It's like metal to the pedal, right? It's like how we do it. It's like half the 50 hours a week. I think millennials, they need that long-term even before they have proven themselves. They are like, well, that's a given. I am going to prove myself, but I need you to prove to me.

Yeah.

Why are you saying? Yeah. It's like, why? Why should I? So they flip the coin around, which we're so not used to, you know? Well, I'm like, I can just remember the first time I heard it and even Mike heard it. He was like, who do they think they are coming here asking me what I should prove to you? And in the past, That's the benefits package, right? That's not what this is about. You know, it's about, you know, what's your commitment to the community? How do you give back? How can I be involved in a way that's more than just what my job description are about? How do I go outside of that and become more involved in what you're involved in, in the community? And what does that mean for me and my family and my friends?

Yeah. One of my favorite questions to ask when I was interviewing candidates was, or to tell them, it was just to throw it out on the table and say, by the way, I understand that you're interviewing me as much as I'm interviewing you. You're just not in a position to ask the questions. I'm going to let you do that though. And then we get into that because it's definitely even in a 90-day trial phase, so to speak, that nobody talks about. There is that trial phase going on. One thing I wanted to ask about too is that culture as a business term is another one of those like engagement that sort of get lost in a big meaning and means multiple things, and in many ways, it comes down to being nothing. It's critical. It's vital. But we saw, we went through what seemed like this evolution that culture looked like foosball tables and fun lunches, and it looked very synthetic. It looked very exterior. And you had a great phrase in the book that if you work at a theme park, it starts to look like and feel like a theme park over time. What did you mean by that?

Right. I mean, so there's different ways you can slice and dice that, right? I mean, it can be like, I'm coming to work at a theme park and it's just an entry level. I like the brand, but I don't love it yet. And then you learn to love it over time with those emotional connections, right? Which is what we're talking about— affinity, attachment, and trust. And then I love it. On the other hand, it can also be you come into the environment and you think it's going to be a certain thing and then it's just a bunch of crap, right? Because it's all surface and it's not what you expected, you know? And I think the second one is there many times. We have a tendency to paint a beautiful picture with all these promises. We lived in that. I mean, that's why we're divided, right? I mean, so, but this is the same thing for an employer is that you really truly have to, from a cultural perspective, be authentic. And I think it's okay. It's exactly what you said. Culture means many things for different people, but you have to find where you fit well in a culture. And it's like a family. I mean, it truly is. It puts perspective back into who do you want to hang out with every day, both emotionally but also career-minded.

Yeah. How can we affirm and at the same time challenge millennials, younger generations, or just millennial-minded people? How do we, how do we do both? How do we encourage them and affirm them, but we also challenge them?

Yeah, I don't think there is ever short for being challenged. I think they have just seen us work our asses off, you know, and I think that's the problem. And I don't think they're enjoying the life balance that we're creating, you know, and having time for the things that are important. And that's what they want, in my opinion. I mean, I have an even younger one who looks at things even completely different, you know, that I'm getting used to. So you think millennials are something, just wait till you get my son into the work environment. And let's talk about what that's going to look like because that's a whole— they'll probably be in a VR environment. Well, completely remote. We won't even be together.

Yes.

You know, we'll have avatars in a program and that's how they operate.

That's how we interact. Yeah.

No, but honestly, when I look at him and thinking about the progression of where we're going and how we're engaging with each other, that was his saving. Being on VR and being in creating and hanging out with his friends in a virtual environment.

Yeah.

And he's like, that's the experiences we're going to go look for. It's that how we're going to have meetings. We're going to go into these virtual reality rooms and start having meeting and interaction. And by the way, they even have things where you can buy the tools that they have. You can feel and touch each other. It's the weirdest thing.

But a valid point, like if you don't like the whole hybrid workforce just at the beginning, just hang on because it's going to get wild. Like it's going to get crazy. We're going to see this trend. And we saw this trend. There was a study put out by a Washington research firm that, that showed the shrinking footprint of the office before the pandemic nationally. And so then the pandemic happens. Let's shift a little bit to one thing you referenced early in our conversation. One survey cited 74% of employees weren't reaching their full potential at work. One of the things that I think probably you and I have learned learned running businesses through the years is that what you see on the surface isn't truly the reality. So you might be getting all the right signals, you might be getting all the right feedback, but you could have some truly discouraged people. What are some ways that we can actually help folks reach their full potential? One idea I like is the one you talked about, mapping this journey where they're going, because for one thing, younger generations need to be challenged. And that's— they don't see that in their job. They're going, Can you speak more to that journey and what that looks like?

Yeah, I think it's back to connecting and communication more often because having you many times. Okay, so if you, if you hire a younger one, they don't have a lot of experience. They only have what they're dreaming of, right? I mean, do they really know what they want to do? Probably not. But they typically have hidden talents that we don't know about. And they don't come out other than having connection, communications, or challenge them. And it's like, I've seen snippets of this and I think we just need to get way more connected to who we work with to get that understanding. And it starts from the beginning. And I think HR needs to have more surveys and be more connected to the individual. It comes back to a little bit of the customization, right? That's a good point. Or personalization. Oh my God, that one was a tongue twister for me. And understanding and create. And there's a lot of great HR platforms out there where you can start, I think, creating a library on the talents that they have and understand it better because that way we can challenge them better too, because we only know what we know. Yeah, that's the problem. We don't take our time to really fully understand what their talent levels are.

That's probably one of the biggest changes we saw is that leaders, particularly those of us that are sales leaders that are managing teams, have to make time in our calendar and our day for our teams because we're so busy running and trying to grow sales that that shift has to happen. And that's only the way— that's the way you're going to get to know your team, that personalization and getting to know what their true talents are, where they are, because there's the job they're doing, then there's their capabilities. And the job they're doing could be the tip of the iceberg often.

Often?

Oh, I think most of the time.

Most of the time. That's a great point.

I mean, even, even in our organization, I've just seen people evolve in different positions because I just found out by just having a 5-minute conversation with them, you know, and I'm like, you can do what? And I'm like, well, let's try that out. You know, I mean, so you have to hire around it, you know, I mean, we have a cultural team, but it's completely changing seats every 3 months. So everybody gets to sit on the culture team, you know, and it, but those are more event-driven and so forth. But we have executive team, we're constantly looking at our employees and trying to evaluate them in a good way and understanding hidden talents that they have to make sure that we, we put them on that right path on a journey. Cause you know that, I mean, it comes back to, people are not happy with what they do, they, you know, the engagement goes out the window.

Yeah.

Let's jump to the final myth that we're going to discuss here. We didn't discuss all the myths, so I encourage folks to go out and get Anita's book, 7 Deadly Myths. But the last myth I want to talk about is almost a general idea that incentive programs take care of themselves. But let's put this under the umbrella of culture takes care of itself. There's— I think there's this idea that if we just hire the right people, culture will kind of happen. Or if we just invest in the right program here, then the incentive program will take care of itself. I can tell you as an employer that each time our health benefits package came up, renewal came up, it's like a shock because we were, we were hoping to manage that on autopilot. So what did you mean by busting this myth incentive programs take care of themselves?

So if you create an ecosystem and that's what this is about, you know, is, is back to that. Take the time to strategize on what you want to accomplish here. If you just want an autopilot program that has your core values and drive that kind of behavior and culture, you have some sales incentive programs in there, you have some open and closed loop programs within the platform. Yeah, essentially they take care of themselves. Now, I think the trick is to partner with somebody that comes back to the customer-centric piece, that kind of manage those things for you because yes, they don't have time. They really don't. And they don't focus on it. And that's reality. So they need to have a partner out there that, you know, they analyze the reporting, they analyze the interaction, understand and has a pulse on what's going on out in the world as what goes on with culture and engagement and can kind of guide them a little bit. But there are great platforms out there where you can kind of put it on autopilot. But nothing is ever on autopilot, but there are programs for it.

Yeah. I know one distributor that actually uses a little boost and incentive program amongst team members. So if a team member notices something, it's through Slack. They can actually give a colleague a pat on the back with merch, with other things. It's a great way to kind of build that engagement internally.

By the way, we have seen a huge shift in that peer-to-peer recognition being way more powerful than actually manager-to-peer.

Really great point. What are you seeing? What can you give us an example of where you've seen one that's been really effective?

They want to help each other. And that's that engagement I'm talking about. When you can create that ecosystem of creating the connections in between the employees and it's everybody helping everybody, even if you can If you have points and you can give the points to another employee, and that's exactly what it is, or nominate somebody for an award because we don't see everything, we just don't, and we can't. So if you can create that ecosystem within your employees, I keep on saying ecosystem because that's what it is, where they are the ones highlighting each other, and that way you are for. So you're listening again because you're saying, I saw this employee do this, and for that reason, they should be recognized. And I'm like, absolutely. So now you're also creating that trust factor and that attachment I'm talking about. And I think that is actually more powerful than me saying good job.

Yeah. I've often thought that culture is the desk next to you. And that's, that's a great example of if your colleagues are recognizing each other for great work, then that's far more than what you can do. Last question, you were visiting with JetBlue and they said they don't even call them incentives anymore. Can you give us an idea what companies like JetBlue are doing and how they treat their ecosystem internally?

It's engagement and it's not just about products. It's an engagement strategy. It's an engagement journey. The first time I heard the word journey, it just resonated with me because people don't look at it. They look at it like, I want to set up a recognition program that recognizes people for behavior or for going above and beyond. Instead of saying, no, I need to create this engagement experience, an employee experience where it's multifaceted, multichannel, meaning part of that is incentives. Part of that is the benefits package, but it's also creating the environment of connections, of communications, and feedback. I mean, we probably have created a complete tornado from HR, but that's why you're seeing the larger companies that can afford it. They have an experience director, employee and experience, or a culture director, or they are over— it's— they are the director of employee engagement. It's not recognition. It's not incentives anymore. I don't even use those words because it's not about that.

Great point.

It's not.

What I love too is that entrepreneurs listening, no matter your size, you might be running a $2 million company, you might be running a $50 million company, is that we already sort of understand the customer journey. We already understand that language. We understand what that's like for them coming in the door and becoming a client and then growing in sales.

It's the same thing.

So if we just turn our focus toward that, it sort of liberates me as an entrepreneur a little bit.

Yeah. All the experience that you have had is exactly of creating— how can I create the ultimate customer experience and we are so focused on that, that we are forgetting that the people that are creating that, we're not treating them the same way. And why wouldn't we shift that focus over to internal and strategize on what that journey looks like from start to end? It really doesn't take a lot of work. I mean, nobody says you have to create like create the whole Kahuna in one day, but it needs to be a long-term strategy. That you need to look at, especially if you want to, you know, get some younger people working for you, because if you don't do it, they're going to choose the next one over.

Well, Anita, thank you so much. I love chatting with you every time. I always learn something and your delight. And not only that, the energy you bring in the room every time you show up just elevates everyone. So thank you so much.

No, this is— I love— I always love talking to you and I love watching everything you guys do. You talk about authentic and connecting and that ultimate connections and loyalty, you guys definitely create it, no doubt about it. And thank you for the time today. Thank you for spending time with me.

Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of SKU Cast. Be sure to keep up with our latest content by subscribing to SKU Cast on iTunes or to our blog at community.sku.com. Www.comandskew.com. Until next time, friends, thanks so much for listening.