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What if your company culture didn’t just feel good but actually printed money? In this episode, Sharran shares four powerful lessons for building a culture that drives profits and performance. He reveals his blueprint for building a culture that not only feels good but also actively drives business success.
Drawing on his experience scaling two billion-dollar companies, Sharran breaks down four key principles that can help you create a culture that impacts the bottom line. From sharing credit and recognizing individual contributions to addressing poor attitudes and promoting team engagement, these strategies are practical and actionable.
Sharran also emphasizes the importance of consistency and inclusion in fostering a culture that promotes high performance. Whether you’re running a small startup or a growing enterprise, these insights will help you transform your company’s culture into a powerful, money-making engine.
Ready to build a culture that fuels your business success? Tune in and start applying these game-changing strategies to your company today!
“Inclusive language is insanely important, and it boosts engagement because people feel a part of who you are and what you do.”
– Sharran Srivatsaa
Timestamps:
01:18 – Culture as a money-making machine
02:23 – Big idea #1: Share credit with specifics to drive performance
03:28 – Big idea #2: Call out bad attitudes quickly to protect productivity
05:06 – Big idea #3: Weekly shout-outs to boost morale and keep focus
07:01 – Big idea #4: Swap “I” for “We” to foster collaboration
09:23 – How to implement these cultural shifts in your company
10:06 – Using the “shout-out channel” to create a culture of recognition
10:45 – The essence of culture
Resources:
– The Next Billion by Sharran Srivatsaa
– Join the Future Proof Community
– Join the 10K Wisdom Private Partner Podcast, now available to you for free
– Join Sharran’s VIP Community
– ARC Multifamily Real Estate Investing
– Sharran’s Partnership Program
– Grab Sharran’s 4-Week MBA for Free
Connect with Sharran:
– X
– YouTube
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Hey, this is Sharran Srivatsaa. Welcome back to the Business School Podcast. And in this episode I’m gonna show you how to not build something fluffy. Meaning whenever you ask somebody about a culture, they say, oh, it’s just a feeling. Well, no, let’s get a little capitalistic for just 10 minutes because I wanna show you how you can have a culture that.
[00:00:18] Prints money. In fact, if you do these, uh, four things, these four big ideas that I learned from building $2 billion companies, I’ve realized that just changing the way you think about what you actually think works could help you a lot. I break down these four big ideas down for you step by step, all starting right now.
[00:00:42] One thing is for certain, just because it’s tried and true doesn’t mean it’s working right now. So the big question is this. Where can you learn what is working right now? The strategies, the tactics, the psychology, and the exact how to. How to grow your business, how to blow up your personal brand and supercharge your personal growth.
[00:01:04] That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Sharran Srivatsaa and Welcome to Business School.
[00:01:18] So for most people, culture is like just a soft word, but how to build a culture that prints money. Now that’s completely different. So that’s what I’m breakdown for you, whether you have, uh, one VA in your company or a thousand people, if your team isn’t sharing the credit specifically or calling out bad attitudes or swapping the I with we, your growth will stop.
[00:01:38] And let me explain exactly how this works. So. In my past company at Real, we are publicly traded and we grew it from 6,800 agents to 28,000 agents. Uh, over a billion dollars in revenue, over a billion dollars in valuation, all in under two and a half years by using three of my personal simple truths that I didn’t share with a lot of people, which I wanna break down for you.
[00:01:58] And most of that was related to this big idea of to work hard. Be kind, but to make more money, which is why I wanted to structure this episode as you know, how to build a culture that prints money. So I, I tried to make this episode kind of very easily actionable for you, where you can actually take the idea and actually do something with it.
[00:02:19] And so to, with that idea, let’s actually break it all down with big idea number one, which is to share the credit with the real details. Not generically. The, the whole nice job team fails because, hey, a great team effort. It feels fake. People know that and people know that. You’re just saying your, you do it as a false ego thing because, oh yeah.
[00:02:43] The team, team deserves credit for that. You gotta name people on the team because we know that teams perform better, 35% better when the leaders call out exactly the people and the deeds of exactly what was done. So what should you do in this process? Let’s say I. You just start to name the teammates in your update.
[00:03:03] Say like, Hey, um, Maria fixed our paying plan, or James ran that analysis and closed our biggest deal. You’re calling out specifically what they did, and then you’re tying it to the impact and you can say, Hey, because of that, we booked, you know, $10,000 more today. If you’ve not done this, you should also pin a shout outs channel at the top of your slack and post it there specifically Tell what Maria did.
[00:03:24] Tell what James did, and that’s what makes sense. Here’s big idea number two, which is to call out bad attitudes fast. Here’s why it matters. One toxic person can cut the team productivity by 10 to 15% by just being around just being there. I don’t know if you know about Zappos, but Zappos actually had an offer to quit.
[00:03:47] They would say, Hey, as part of this onboarding program, if you don’t think it’s the right fit here, they, they paid you like $2,000 to actually quit and walk away, which is crazy if you think about it. Uh, and how it all started was, so they had this customer service training and they would just say, Hey, um.
[00:04:04] Up to $2,000 if you quit and if you don’t fit the culture crazy part is only under 5% left, ensuring that those who actually stayed were fully committed because they were given the option to quit if needed. So here’s the big idea when, if you ever hear someone in the, in, in the business or on your team that says, oh yeah, that’s not my job.
[00:04:26] You gotta like run for the hills, because what you should hear them saying is, Hey, I heard you say that. That’s not your job. What’s happening? That’s all you have to ask somebody. ’cause someone said, oh yeah, I’m, I’m not filling on that report. That’s not my job. You just say, Hey, uh, Sharon, I heard you say that was not your job.
[00:04:42] What? What’s happening? Right? And so they will tell you the story, they will rationalize, et cetera. And then what you do is you’re like, Hey. Explain your thing to them and just give them some time to fix it. Hey, say, Hey, are you able to do this and show it to me by Friday? Now I’m giving you the actionable stuff to use.
[00:04:56] And the crazy part is if nothing changes, you know that they’re not a good fit. Remove them from the channels, make them meet the bar. Whatever’s need to, needed to do, but you’ve got to get them to do something right. And here’s big idea number three is you gotta have some kind of weekly shout out ritual.
[00:05:11] You don’t think it’s valuable, but it’s insanely valuable. That’s what people want to hear. That’s what people know is important. They want to hear these things, and it’s super, super valuable and crucial. So, here’s the crazy part. The rituals are good because when you have these short, irregular celebrations, they keep the morale pretty high.
[00:05:31] And, and, and keep, also, keep the projects on track because people feel like they’re doing the right thing to actually help your business. Um, the company Pixar, I dunno if you are, uh, are aware of it. There was a brain trust and that it created this idea where in 1999, I, I, I think I, there’s one that toy story twos, uh, thing was happening.
[00:05:49] There was like a rocky edit. Things were not going well, and they realized that, hey, we should probably work with our team closer. So they had these weekly story only feedback sessions where everyone could speak freely, [00:06:00] not just the bigwigs. So. All that people did was focus on the story. No one defended anything.
[00:06:05] The directors just listened and they just chose to decide later. But here’s a crazy outcome. It saved Toy Story two, which ended up being like a $500 million box office hit for an animation and it became, this whole thing became core to Pixar’s process. So what’s the big idea here? If you can block just five minutes once a week, like on a Friday, I call it my lightning shout out.
[00:06:28] Five minutes and it forces me to stop and think, who do I shout out today and who do I like? Who do I name? What is, what is the one person can I see? Hey, Nicole. Congratulations, you did a amazing job by for this win. Hey James, congratulations. You did an amazing job for this win. Hey, Leo, congratulations.
[00:06:44] That’s without you, we could not have done that. That is super, super important, right? To call out the person and the result so that everybody knows exactly what they did instead of saying, great job team. Great job team. Bad calling out Nicole. Good. That’s exactly what you wanna do. Alright, here’s big idea number four, and this is gonna be hard for everybo a lot of people, which is to swap the eye.
[00:07:07] For the me right. Swap the eye. For the we. And what I mean by swapping the eye for the we is the first thing is nobody built anything great by themselves. Right? We is greater than me. I, I was, uh, recently listening to the CEO on, on a podcast of a pretty large company that I, I know what very well. And he kept saying, oh, I have this, I have all the answers.
[00:07:27] I have the keys to the kingdom. Exact phrase that he used. I have the, the products that I can sell. I have the relationships. I have the funds to buy that company. It was all about, I Now, here’s the crazy part. You may not sound crazy in a conversation on an interview. Guess what? Their company hasn’t grown in four years.
[00:07:44] I. It’s the coincidence, I think not we is greater than me. And here’s like extremely important why it matters. Inclusive language is insanely important and it boosts engagement because people feel a part of who you are and what you do. Um, I. Satya Nadella to the CE of Microsoft did this learn it all concept right?
[00:08:05] Which is super important. So, uh, Satya Nadella’s first memo as a CEO, um, uh, came as a, Hey, let’s move from a know it all culture to a learn it all culture. And here are the things that they started to do. They started doing these company hackathons. We learn it all. Culture. They started doing these learning budgets for people.
[00:08:21] So they would go learn more and encourage curiosity. ’cause you can’t learn on your own. You have to learn in a group their market cap. Satya Nadella’s leadership went from $ 300 billion to $ 900 billion in five years. That is insane. That is like bigger than what I built. Right? And of course it’s Satya Nadella, but the point is this, if you just scan your last five messages and swapped your eye with we, we is greater than me.
[00:08:44] Right? And then if you, every Monday morning before you send your first message, just swap the I for the me. And you should also tell your entire team, Hey, let’s make this, uh, among us, that if anyone sees eyes to be able to be swapped for the me, then the we, we should all call each other out on it. If, if you are on Chad GPT, you tell Chad, GPT, Hey, um, normally I will write things, uh, you know.
[00:09:08] In this way. But if you think that the, I should be replaced with the, we go ahead and do that because I want to, you know, I want to use more. We instead of I inclusive language. Super, super simple. Alright, so lemme bring it all together for you. ’cause hopefully this is, this is helpful and, and, uh, and actionable.
[00:09:23] Five big takeaways. Takeaway number one, name the people because you get like a. 35% lift in better performance. Name the people in your shout outs, not just good job. Team number two, just if you see a bad attitude, stop the bad attitude because bad attitude, just being around not even doing anything, reduces productivity by 15%.
[00:09:42] Number three, the weekly shout outs. You got the simplest thing to keep the pride and progress and accomplishment and effort high because people feel like they’re being seen and recognized for what they actually do. Number four. Swap the I for the we because exactly like what Microsoft did, we is greater than me.
[00:10:03] And here’s the fifth, easiest one. If you have not done this yet. Create a shoutout channel on Slack and just be very precise when you use it. I will tell you this, if your shoutout channel on Slack is the only channel in your company that is always bold, always lit up, always where you’re contributing, always where you are, um, doing the emojis, sharing, recognizing the shoutouts channel, if you, everybody puts it at the top, is the number one channel being used in your company.
[00:10:28] I will tell you, you can have a insane culture, not just any culture, a culture that helps you. Print money. Hey, the reason I recorded this was I really believe that a lot of people talk about culture in a very smooth, soft way. They’re like, oh yeah, it’s how I feel. It’s what someone says and you’re not in the room.
[00:10:44] But when you can have, culture is mechanical cadence. Culture is in agreed upon set of behaviors. The reason you have great culture is because you all behave the same way. You do the same thing. You create the same actions, you have the same result. Culture is not talking about culture is doing it, [00:11:00] the doing the behavior.
[00:11:01] Aligned with the thinking and that’s when good things happen. That’s why you won’t have a culture that prints money and hopefully that was helpful. So easy ideas there. If you don’t do anything else, at least go ahead and do the shout outs channel on Slack. Make sure it’s lit up. Make sure you share the ideas, ’cause it’ll help you significantly overall.
[00:11:15] Hey, by the way, I’m not sure this may be helpful to you because I don’t get a lot of feedback doing this. So if you like this episode. And you feel like you can use culture to print money, can you just screenshot this and post it on social and tag me? That way I can make more like this for you. Again, if you like this episode, just do a screenshot, uh, post it on social and tag me, and that way I can make more like this for you at the next time.
[00:11:37] Catch on the next one.
[00:11:46] Hey, it’s Sharran, I have a cool gift for you. Since you like this podcast, I actually have an ultra super-secret private podcast that I make just for my partner companies and the CEOs and influencers that I advise. It’s called 10 K wisdom because I try to wrap 10, 000 worth of value in every single episode in just under 10 minutes.
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