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Here’s an exercise that you can do. Okay. Walk through the halls of your business. Pull people aside and just ask them a simple question. Why does this company exist? What is our purpose? And if you and if everybody that you pull aside doesn’t give you the same answer. You’re not saying it enough.

Welcome to The Fast Slow Motion Podcast, where we teach you how to build a business you love while enjoying your life. We’ll talk about key learnings, cheat codes, hacks and principles that have served us on our journey in the hopes that they serve you as well. I’m your host, Sam Donaghey, and today I’m joined by none other than Matt Dyar, FSM’s Chief Operating Officer.

Hey, Matt, how are you today? Wonderful. Thanks for having me, Sam. Awesome. It’s great to see you today. And I’m really excited about today’s episode. Matt, look, you’ve been involved in building a couple of different businesses, and I know that you’ve learned a thing or two about what makes a successful business and what it takes. And when I think about it, you know, what’s unique about yourself is that you’ve helped build something incredible here at Fast Slow Motion.

You know, this company isn’t just a financial success. It’s also a success story in terms of having a really healthy work culture and being a place that our team actually wants to be. So can you tell us a bit about why building an amazing culture here at Fast Slow Motion was such a priority? Absolutely. I think every entrepreneur wants a successful business.

They want a high performance organization. And I think one of the things that they can do to make that happen is be very, very intentional with the culture. So I’ve been really blessed. I’ve worked at several organizations where we’ve had the opportunity to focus on the culture of the organization. And I think the key to that is intentionality, because every company, every group of people has a culture, whether they want to admit it or not.

You either have an intentional culture or you have an unintentional culture. So if you’re going to choose between those two, why not do intentional work on building a healthy, growing organization, build a bulletproof culture while you’re doing it somewhere that people enjoy their job, love waking up every day and loving what they’re doing and loving who they’re doing it with.

You mentioned the phrase bulletproof culture. So what exactly does it mean to have a bulletproof culture? So when I think of a bulletproof culture, I think of a culture that can survive adversity. I think adversity, it’s not a if it’s a win, whether it’s economic headwinds or people issues, every organization is going to run into. And what you want to do is build a healthy organization.

So when that adversity shows up, you actually get stronger. You know, a lot of times you see families that have a tragedy and it really brings them together. I think businesses can be a lot and the same where when times get hard, you don’t want the foundation of your business to fall apart. If you’ve done it right and you’ve built a strong team of the right people and you’re continuing to focus on doing healthy activities as a group, the team actually gets stronger during these times, kind of like a bulletproof vest.

When a bullet hits the vest, it tightens up, it helps you survive. I think a bulletproof culture is the same way. How much does adaptability play into that bulletproof culture, would you say? 100%. I mean, one of the keys to building a healthy organization is having an agile group of people. You’ve got to be adaptable. Otherwise, you have a group of people who are fine as long as there’s no chaos and everything is process.

But part of building a healthy organization is that adaptability to deal with the adversity. I think it’s core. Okay, So the leadership team had this vision of what you wanted the culture to be like. You know, how did you begin to build that culture and make it a reality? I got lucky. First of all, every organization that I’ve ever worked for has been willing to invest in the culture.

And when this company started, the same reason I think our culture has continued to improve is the same reason why I decided to come and work here when John Burdett started this company. He took his time and he really thought about those core principles that were foundational. And I’ll run through those because I think they’re very, very important.

When he started this business, he decided he wanted to create an impact. And I know that’s easy to say, like create an impact. But very specifically, he had worked with small businesses. He loved small businesses. And I think if you look at most of the people who work here, a lot of them have run small businesses or worked in small businesses themselves.

So that impact that we wanted to create was very, very niche. We wanted to be a blessing to growing small businesses as they grow and scale their company.

The other two core principles were really more internal. We wanted to do this in a flexible way, meaning I can work how I want, where I want, when I want. And we did it when remote wasn’t cool.

You know, we’ve been doing this for ten years now. This wasn’t a shift that we made during the pandemic. It was something that was very, very foundational to the purpose of the creation of this business. And then third, the third core principle is a little unique. I honestly haven’t heard this out there in the ecosystem very much. But our third core principle is winning.

So impact flexibility and winning. We want to run this business in a way where we’re going to be around for the long haul because you can bless yourself right out of business if you’re not careful. And a lot of people are too afraid to run a profitable organization. But winning and running a profitable organization allows us to make good decisions and be around the long term to create impact.

I wonder, was it easy to implement, though, because it all sounds great in concept.

I mean, did you make any mistakes along the way? No. Nothing worth doing is easy. Well, look, let me say there. But I will say we’ve made a lot of mistakes

and I’ve seen a lot of companies make mistakes. And while we could probably have a whole podcast just talking about mistakes, let’s boil it down to just one and talk about it for a second, because I think the biggest mistake that a business leader or a leadership team can make is not talking about their purpose enough.

It’s kind of one of those things where it’s like, Well, we told you what the purpose was when you joined the organization. Why do we need to keep reminding you? And the reality is you need to remind people every single day why they’re waking up, why they’re working hard, why they’re being greedy, why they’re doing what they’re doing.

And so it took me a while to realize that we’re all CEOs. We’re all chief repeat officers. Okay.

you’ve got to figure out your purpose. Why the organization was created, which for us was to be a blessing to business leaders. You’ve got to reiterate that over and over and over. And one mistake that a lot of business leaders make is not repeating that enough.

And I’ll say this. Here’s an exercise that you can do.

Walk through the halls of your business. Pull people aside and just ask them a simple question. Why does this company exist? What is our purpose?

and if everybody that you pull aside doesn’t give you the same answer.

You’re not saying it enough.

So why is it so important to have that unified message? And why is it so important to keep on repeating it?

It’s why you exist.

If you choose the right core principles or whether you call it mission vision values, whatever you want to call it, a lot of those terms are synonymous.

But if but if you pick the right ones,

It’s core to the fabric of your culture.

It’s what attracts the right people. It’s what builds that agility. We talked about being agile and adaptable. If you’re adaptable around a purpose, then you’re going to be able to overcome any adversity. So it’s critical that you continue to repeat this day in and it’s kind of like a North Star if you’ve got the right principles in every meeting, in every get together, you can use these principles to help you make the right decision

internally and externally.

So we use this when we’re dealing with clients. We ask ourselves, are we being a blessing or are we creating impact

when we’re internally and we are dealing with issues with our team members? Are we setting up a flexible environment? Yes or no, when we’re looking at our numbers? Are we winning? Yes or no? So it’s critical to make that central to all of your conversations.

We talked a moment ago about why FSM emphasized a healthy culture man. Do you think it’s essential for all businesses to have a healthy culture like Fast Slow Motion? Is there ever an exception to the rule?

There is. I would say there’s definitely an exception to the rule.

Having a healthy culture and running a profitable business are not mutually exclusive.

You can have an unhealthy culture and run a profitable business.

There’s nothing that says you can’t have that. However, here’s my warning. Here’s what I’m crying out to anybody who’s listening. It’s temporary. Okay. If you’re not focusing on culture today, if you don’t have an adaptable organization, if you’re not building a bulletproof culture, your success is temporary, because I assure you there is somebody in your space, there is a competitor who’s got a very clear purpose.

They’ve got a good vision, vision value statement. They’re attracting the right people

and they are going to eat your lunch. It’s just a matter of time. So can you be successful for a short period of time and not focus on your culture? Absolutely. But if you have any sort of long term goals, if you want to be around for the long haul and you’re not investing in your culture, if you’re not reiterating your purpose on a regular basis, somebody out there will eat your lunch.

It’s just a matter of time.

Okay. So it’s clear that a healthy culture matters for all businesses,

Are there any differences across industries or businesses that you can see? I think in the same way, in the same way, No family is the exact same, the way no sports team is the exact same.

It’s the same with business because your culture is really a culmination of the characteristics of the people inside of that company, of that group. So they’re all going to look differently. So there’s no two companies that are going to truly have the same principles or execute them in the same way. However, however,

There are some characteristics that you will see in healthy organizations, and I’ll make a plug here.

I’m a huge fan of Patrick Lencioni, and he’s written a lot of great books, one great book

that he wrote was The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. So while every culture is going to look different, healthy cultures are going to be trustworthy organizations. They’re going to be rooted in trust. That’s going to be foundational.

Healthy cultures are going to be challenging each other. They’re going to learn. They’re going to have the difficult conversation. They’re not afraid of conflict.

When you have a trustworthy organization, when you’re having those difficult conversations, it’s much easier to get commitment from your team.

you’re not going to have fake nods around the table.

You’re going to have people who are truly bought in to the purpose and the goals that you whether it’s quarterly or annual goals, you’re going to have true commitment

and you’re going to create an environment where people hold each other accountable. So I’ll just say those four right there. And if you can accomplish those things, if you can focus on those things, what the outcome is, there’s going to be higher performance in that organization.

In our last episode, we spoke to our CEO, John Burdette, about how to build a business you love and want to keep. And he talked about how setting up good, good processes is key to achieving the outcomes you want. And I know that he often quotes James Clare, who said, You don’t rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. How does the concept of processes apply to building a great culture?

That was a great podcast. John’s the master at this. So anything that I say is just going to be regurgitating whatever he said to me over the last nine or ten years.

But the question that you have to ask yourself is, how do you know when something is broken?

That’s what systems are all about. How do you know when there’s something that needs to be fixed? Because if you don’t have consistency in your processes, you’re not going to have consistency in your data. And if you don’t have consistency in your data, how are you able to look at your data and make wise decisions?

We’re an entire company of CEOs.

I’m just the one who just happens to have the title. But literally everybody in our company could go be CEO somewhere else. So it’s really fun to work with like minded people. But everybody here is very process oriented. And we get it. We build systems for a living.

The systems helps you create consistency.

Consistency gives you solid data. Data allows you to make wise decisions. And I think that’s what every business leader is, is wanting. You know, they’re going to want to look at data, be able to trust that data and make wise decisions from that data.

For a new business owner who might be listening, just getting started, what steps should they take to build a great culture right from the beginning?

Whether or not you’re starting a company. You’re a start up. And you’re right out of the gate whether or not you’re a legacy organization. You’ve been around for a while. I think it’s the same playbook that you need to run. Maybe you skip a chapter, too, but I really think everybody goes back to the beginning.

One of my favorite books is Start With Why by Simon Sinek.

going back to this message of it’s hard to build a company unless you know why the company exists. So the first thing that you can do when starting an organization as a leader is ask yourself, why am I getting up every single day and doing what I’m doing?

Why do I exist? What is my purpose?

This book does a phenomenal job. Simon Sinek breaks down what he calls the Golden Circle. There’s tons of information out on Google, so we’re not going to go into it too much. But when we have new team members start our company or start in our company, the very first thing they do in onboarding is watch Simon Sinek TED Talk on the Golden Circle.

Start with why. That’s the very first thing that they do. Day one, Hour one. We have that video playing. We reiterate that the thing we do right behind that, John Burdett, our CEO, has recorded a video, about Fast Slow Motion’s “Why.” So the first video is about 15 minutes long. The video that John made is about 15 minutes. So the first 30 minutes of exposure that anybody gets to our organization is understanding our purpose, understanding our core principles and why we created those principles, why they exist and how we use them on a daily basis.

So the first thing that I would say to an entrepreneur is understand why you exist. Create a clear vision or core principles, whatever you want to call it.

The next thing that I would say that everybody could look at is there’s this wonderful concept called radical candor. And what you will realize is just about everything else that you need to run a business falls under this communication umbrella,

It’s all about how we communicate with each other, business businesses about people. So it comes back to, “How are we communicating with one another?”

This book by Kim Scott, Radical Candor is just an amazing framework. We’ve done entire company retreats just on this book, just on this subject. And there’s a lot of information out there on it.

But there’s really two things that she talks about: how you care personally and how you challenge each other directly.

and I think that’s something that most business leaders can look into, is how are they caring for their people? How are they challenging their people? And maybe more importantly, how or how are they allowing their people to challenge them?

Those are two very, very tangible steps that an organization can make when they first get started or they’ve even been around for a little while. Clarify your mission. Start communicating well with your people. And if you’ve got a system like Salesforce or HubSpot, you may even want to build an application that allows you to run monthly one on ones.

I’m just a huge fan of this – weekly, bi weekly, monthly touch points. We like monthly, monthly calls between managers and team members.

There’s a lot of literature around why you run one-on-ones, and if you don’t have a system, there’s a lot of great tools out there. One tool that we’ve seen some people use as a tool called Leader LDA, ADR.

It’s just a platform that allows you to run one-on-ones with your team. So for anybody out there who’s very interested, I would highly recommend looking at that platform or talking with an implementation specialist on how you could build this into your system today.

Okay, great. So you’ve touched upon some really great resources that business leaders could be using out there. Are there any other resources that you can mention, any other culture building tools that you want to talk about? I’ll mention one,

This has been super influential to both me personally and Fast Slow Motion.

And at the organizational level, there’s nobody that does entrepreneur research better than Jim Collins. He is the master. He’s got a great series of books. But there’s one in particular called Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0, and this is a phenomenal resource. I highly recommend this book.

And what it reinforces is this concept that Jim Collins talks about, and he calls it the map.

really a map of how to build a lasting organization. And even if you go to his website Jim Collins dot com, he’s got he’s got the map laid out under concepts on his website and it’s it’s very much in line with what we’ve talked about today and he gives four very distinct stages that organizations need to go through in order to build a lasting company.

So this has a lot to do with the culture and it starts with disciplined people. So we’ve talked a little bit about clarifying your mission. You can’t recruit the right people until you know why you exist.

He even talks about building disciplined people, building the right team is critical to your culture. And he goes through three other stages, right?

Disciplined action and things you need to do to build to last. So I highly recommend that. This is maybe about my last resource for the podcast for anybody out there. Check out jimcollins.com. Look at the map. It’s a phenomenal resource. It’ll blow your mind.

Awesome. I thank you so much. Well, we always like to wrap up each episode with a great quote that provides some wisdom about whatever we’re discussing in the episode.

So, Matt, do you have something that you’d like to share today?

There’s an easy go-to when we talk about culture. And you know what we didn’t even do in this entire call? Define company culture. We’ve talked about it a little bit, but the best definition that I’ve ever heard and it’s really, really stuck with me is your culture becomes the things that you praise and the things that you tolerate.

So take that away and realize if you’re building a healthy organization, you’re building a healthy culture. The two things that you need to focus on more than anything are what are the actions of your team that you’re praising and what are the actions of your team that you’re tolerating? If you focus on those two things right there, you build a bulletproof culture and you’ll be well on your way to success.

Thanks, Matt.

Well, that’s it for today’s episode. We hope that the wisdom Matt shared with us today will be super helpful to you.

We know the power that great culture can have in the success of your business and in the lives of the people who work for you. And we hope that you can reap the benefits as well. So remember to subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast platform, or you can find archived episodes at fastslowmotion.com/podcast.