Episode 13: Culture as a Revenue Driver

00:33
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Welcome to another episode of Marketing Moves. I'm your host, Lisa Perry Kovacs, and today's episode explores company culture and the underestimated power it has to serve as an effective marketing tool and top line revenue driver. Our guest Ron Kaminski is the culture connoisseur in Cleveland. I like that alliteration. Feel free to use that.

00:58
Ron Kaminski
That wasn't mine, but I love it.

01:00
Lisa Perry Kovacs
For the low cost of free. He's the founder and CEO of CultureShoc, an organization that facilitates expert EOS implementation. Kolbe Solutions team building and one one coaching with the unique ability of building high performance leadership teams. And he happens to be VividFront's EOS implementer, my personal mentor and a key ingredient in our agency's growth over the last three years and counting. Ron. Welcome to Marketing Moves.

01:31
Ron Kaminski
Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

01:35
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Thank you. Did you know you're my mentor?

01:37
Ron Kaminski
I did not.

01:38
Lisa Perry Kovacs
But you never volunteered.

01:39
Ron Kaminski
Makes me feel special.

01:40
Lisa Perry Kovacs
I just proclaimed it as such.

01:42
Ron Kaminski
Thank you.

01:42
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Speaking of mentors, you have the coolest mentor of all, the one and only Gino Wickman, author of the bestselling business book Traction, and founder and visionary behind EOS, the entrepreneurial operating system, isn't that right?

01:56
Ron Kaminski
That is true. And also his original gangster integrator, Don Tinney. So some would argue one over the know visionary to visionary to integrator.

02:09
Lisa Perry Kovacs
What's he like, Gino?

02:11
Ron Kaminski
Gino? Very intense, very focused.

02:15
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Yeah. Keeps you in line.

02:17
Ron Kaminski
Very much so.

02:18
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Love it. Well, today's episode is not about EOS. We could have a whole different episode on that at a future date. It's about culture and how, like I said, culture can be viewed as a top line revenue driver. So backing up a little, can you tell our listeners a little bit about how you got started in this space of helping companies build culture?

02:39
Ron Kaminski
Sure. So I graduated from John Carroll University.

02:44
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Go blue streaks.

02:45
Ron Kaminski
Yes. Prior to 2000. So graduated in 1999, and the world was going to end in the year 2000. I don't know if youngins remember that.

02:57
Lisa Perry Kovacs
I do.

02:58
Ron Kaminski
Y two K. And I was helping companies sell and implement large ERP systems for manufacturing companies, enterprise resource planning systems. And if you didn't put a new system in, the chance of you potentially being shut down because your business wouldn't run on your software was a big kind of deal. So kind of fell into a gold rush of helping companies do that. And long story short, started helping those companies with their implementations and became pretty good at that. And they started asking me, since we did such a good job with their implementation team, if we would help them with other teams in their business. And the answer was no, we're a software business. That's not what we do. And 911 hit, and It budgets disappeared.

03:47
Ron Kaminski
And at that point, I was kind of more fascinated about the team components than I was the software component. And some of those clients who were asking for additional support are still clients today.

04:00
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Wow.

04:01
Ron Kaminski
So officially started the business in February of three. So this is actually our 20th anniversary.

04:07
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Congratulations.

04:08
Ron Kaminski
Thank you.

04:09
Lisa Perry Kovacs
That's awesome. So how do you and your team at CultureShoc in your 20th year define company culture?

04:17
Ron Kaminski
Well, it's interesting. You guys are the brand play, right? You guys help companies with their brand. So we view brand as the external conversation people are having about you, and we also view culture as the internal conversation people are having about you. That does spread externally, but it all starts here. And so if that internal culture is actually authentic to the external brand, that's a match, and it's a home run from a value proposition to your marketplace. That's where we think it ties into revenue.

04:54
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Yeah. So my three M thought that kind of inspired this topic was I feel like culture isn't typically viewed as a revenue driver for businesses. It's usually bucketed as something that helps us with our bottom line or helps us attract and retain the right talent, sort of. That internal piece you were mentioning, put it on our website, maybe externally, like our core values. And while all that is true, I think culture has far more power, monetary power, than the masses give it credit for. So why do you think it is typically viewed as something that's just internal, and why do you think culture should be viewed as a revenue driver?

05:31
Ron Kaminski
Well, I think if you look at a lot of companies P & L statements, culture is somewhat of a it's a line item on the P and L, so it's an if we and by the way, what we mean by culture is it's not foosball tables and team outings. Those are very small components of that. But from our perspective, culture, if we think about this, I think, in a holistic way, is around engaged people getting to engage your marketplace. And if we don't have those individuals engaged, feeling valued, respected, and admired inside of their organization for their unique abilities, the chances of them willingly and openly providing those to the outside marketplace is pretty slim to none. So my grandfather always used to say, don't tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value.

06:37
Ron Kaminski
And I think the same is true for culture. Most organizations view it as an expense. We view it as a generator for us. So cultures, organizations with very weak cultures have to overpay employees. They can only really compete on price, so to Speak, for Talent. Right. If I've got a really strong culture, I've got a lot more quivers on the backpack, and I can pull those out, and I can leverage those to go grab great talent. And it's not just around. I've got to overpay because of our dysfunctional culture.

07:17
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Love that. Do you have an example or a success story from any of your clients of how CultureShoc helped a brand or company drive sales or revenue by prioritizing culture?

07:29
Ron Kaminski
Sure. I was with an organization just yesterday, called Frankel Dentistry. This is an organization we started working with in 2017. So we're talking six years into this process, and we have taken that organization to a 100%. It's actually the first in the country. 100% ESOP owned business. So ESOP is employee stock ownership plan. It's the first ESOP owned dentistry in the country. And the idea there is we've already ten x the business and they will tell you it's because of the culture. And we're about to go ten x this thing again and we're well on the way to doing that. And it's 100% due to their commitment to their core values and their core focus in their business.

08:26
Lisa Perry Kovacs
How do you make something like dentistry appealing and fun from a core values perspective? Like you said, culture is not just foosball tables and beer pong. How do you make dentistry something interesting and appealing?

08:44
Ron Kaminski
Right? So the way we think about this know, I'll give you a great example. There's a company out of Cincinnati that is a janitorial business. These people literally clean toilets for a living. The average turnover in that industry is 360% a year. So you're going to turn over your staff 3.6 times a year. 100% of them, if that makes sense. Their turnover is 60% a year. 300% better than the industry. So if you can have an organization that can help people find a calling in cleaning toilets, you can do it anywhere. And the way we do that is we help organizations identify their core focus and the purpose of why they are even in existence. That purpose is way bigger than a goal. It's not about money. It involves everybody.

09:43
Ron Kaminski
And once an organization has aligned around that purpose, then we help those organizations share that purpose with their people and allow those people to live out their own purposes inside of that purpose driven organization. That can happen anywhere. And So this whole idea of Bloom where you're planted, you can live out your Purpose in any organization that has done The Work to identify why they're truly There. And it's a lot bigger than a monetary goal.

10:14
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Yeah. And I love that you're touching on purpose as something that's fundamental to a culture, because I think that's something that's often overlooked here at Vivid Front. I Think purpose is what keeps people interested In The Work and Then sort of motivates those same People to even talk about VividFront outside of the workplace. And I know that's something you've talked to VividFront about before. Like, why not turn your own people into salespeople and brand reps? So can you talk a little bit.

10:46
Ron Kaminski
About mean, if you listen, if you're proud of the place that you work, you're going to tell people around you about that. If you're proud of the place you work, you're going to tell strangers about that. You're going to proudly wear that logo. And so if you thought about an entire organization as essentially being on the sales team, what stronger way to approach the market, right? Even if I have a controller financial person or even an HR person that's helping us build and support an organization, they're on the sales team, right. They've got to sell talent that this is the place that they want to be. They've got to provide an experience to the customers from a financial process perspective that's seamless and tells them that they care.

11:40
Ron Kaminski
Everyone's on the sales team and most organizations kind of compartmentalize people and put them in their box and we don't think that's the healthiest place.

11:51
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Right. Digging a little bit deeper into that for our listeners to really try and find a couple of golden nuggets from this conversation. I mean, what we just touched on is turning our internal teams into external salespeople. Can we take it a step further and talk about how culture can also help us align with the right strategic partners?

12:12
Ron Kaminski
Sure. So again, this goes back to don't tell me what you value, show me. And are you applying your core values to partners you take on as an organization or are those just applied to internal team members? Are companies that are willing to apply their core values to their entire supply chain, which it could be partners on the delivery side, it could be customers. Are we willing to just sign up to support organizations that share our core values? If so, guess what? We're going to go a lot further, a lot faster together. But if we're saying, hey, anyone that's got a pulse, we're taking you as a client regardless of core values fit, that's a different approach. And I think especially in a business services model, organizations that do that early in their existence because every dollar counts, right?

13:16
Ron Kaminski
Trying to grow a sustainable organization, once you get to that place of hey, we've got sustainability, are we a little bit more selective with who we're saying yes to? If we're saying yes to core values fits, those clients tend to be high maintenance, low performing relationships that don't drain the soul out of an organization, right? So I think that's something we can all appreciate working with like minded people. So how disciplined are we with applying that to the whole supply chain?

13:47
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Right? And if it's a core values match, the more likely it is that they will spread the word about your organization and become a salesperson for you as well. Building that referral network, that's something that has worked really well for VividFront under your leadership. One of our core values is Entrepreneurial Spirit, and we share that with some of our prospective clients, and we tell them our team is curated with Entrepreneurial Spirit in mind. So we try to attract and retain talent that has a little bit of business acumen so that we can think about your business beyond marketing and branding and think about how we can help you from your bottom line. And clients are usually like, wow, that's a little unique for a marketing agency to do that.

14:31
Lisa Perry Kovacs
So that's an example of how we've used one of our core values as an external marketing tool.

14:36
Ron Kaminski
Yeah, and just we're going to flip the script here for a second because I want to point something out. Vivid front and under your leadership, by the way, I've helped over 100 companies implement EOS. The way that you guys have taken this and run with it and stuck with a pure implementation and have pushed this through the organization top to bottom is literally world class. I get to see the inside of hundreds of organizations a year as a company at CultureShoc, and I will tell you guys are easily in the top 5% of organizations that have taken those components of vision, traction, healthy, and literally cemented those into the entire business. And that is no small feat. So kudos. The fact that we're sitting here talking about this is great proof that you guys are doing that, right?

15:35
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate you saying it. That's the clip we're going to use for our marketing, by the way. Please, all that praise on Vivid front of my leadership. No, I appreciate that you can give us the tools, but obviously what companies do with the tools is what really matters. And I want to kind of round out this conversation with something that you just touched on about pure implementation, because VividFront tried to do implementation of our own core focus and our core values and tried to figure out who were as a culture early on, before we met you, Ron. And it did fizzle because weren't able to keep that discipline and that focus and really implement it top to bottom. Like you mentioned, were only able to do that when we hired professional implementation.

16:18
Lisa Perry Kovacs
So why do you think that companies struggle so much to self implement? And why do companies need a partner like Culturestock to help them stay focused and stay on track?

16:28
Ron Kaminski
Yeah, so you're probably going to want to cut this, but I'll liken self implementation of EOS to the teenagers out there that are saying that they're having sex, right? Everyone says they're doing it. No one's doing it really well. So probably a terrible example. But here's the thing. We came to EOS as a client first, so I don't know if you know this, but were the Cobbler son that had no shoes. Right. I was not living my EOS life. It was burning me out. I burnt through my first marriage as a result of it, and it was literally sucking the life out of me and the team. And so we hired an implementer and went down that path. And still to this day, I don't implement my own sessions, really.

17:21
Ron Kaminski
And I just find it very difficult to solve strategic issues without someone objectively holding up a mirror as to how you guys are thinking through those things and how you're shown up as a team for the rest of the organization. And so I think we're trying to put our money where our mouth is on that and kind of drink our own champagne. So it's hard to fix a system that you're inside of. Right. The whole idea of watching it from the outside and then someone objectively holding up a mirror, holding you accountable, I think that's why it works. Right. And I think the other piece of it is understanding the nuance of just a simple tool in EOS, like the accountability chart, like how we use rocks, right. Simple things like that, how a team issue solves things on their issues list.

18:16
Ron Kaminski
There's nuance in there that we get the advantage of seeing a thousand times with other teams doing it versus just, here's how we do it here. So it's hard to bring that into any team without if you're the expert on running your business, probably not the experts on implementing an operating system like EOS, why not outsource that?

18:40
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And ever since professionally implementing Vivid Grant has grown over 80%.

18:49
Ron Kaminski
It's amazing.

18:50
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Yeah. We really appreciate all that you have done. It was really an accomplishment for us to even get on your calendar. You're like one of the most sought out people. And I remember Andrew being like, if we could get Ron Kaminski, we're going to be unstoppable.

19:08
Ron Kaminski
That's very humbling. But that also speaks to my ability to still continue to work on my EOS life because I should have more space in it than I do. So it's a journey we're not done.

19:21
Lisa Perry Kovacs
And you have a great team that's helping you. Amazing CultureShoc is growing, and you have other implementers on your team that are learning from you and figuring out how to grow and expand your offering.

19:33
Ron Kaminski
And that's really interesting because here's the other thing that's really taken off for us, is we're doing amazing work with leadership teams and EOS run organizations on helping them with vision, traction and healthy. What we're finding is that there's a large gap of skills kind of between the executive leadership teams and next level leaders in most of these organizations. And for succession planning issues and the idea of as we scale, we need to delegate and elevate more. We've found this awesome opportunity to take our 20 years of experience and culture, build out a curriculum. We call its leaders, which is into the storm. Leaders that helps develop the soft skills of those next generation leaders, those emerging leaders, those high potentials, so that we can close the skill set gap, and then we can more easily delegate and elevate as we scale these organizations.

20:30
Ron Kaminski
And so this Eats Leaders program has taken off for us, and I think it speaks to the idea of people want to be able to promote from within and want to recognize and reward their people in the organization and give them the best opportunity to advance and excel in their companies because they've already identified these individuals share their core values. So why not invest in them as opposed to potentially making that outside hire? That's still kind of a question mark. We don't know for sure, right? We'll never know. Like hiring is never perfect science. There's an art and a science component to it. So EOS is one thing that its leaders, that whole buffalo mindset of developing a whole kind of stable of leaders that can step up as you scale, we think that is mission critical for organizations.

21:22
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Yeah. And that speaks to how to scale culture. We've talked about a lot about culture today and I think culture can be a little bit easier to implement on a smaller level. But how do you scale it? How do you get that buy in from the next level leaders to not just practice but preach those core values? So I completely agree about the importance of that. And we've been investing a lot in our next level leaders and trying to teach them about our core values and how to walk the walk on it. You mentioned into the Storm, you mentioned the buffalo. Can one of you toss me the buffalo because I just want to talk quickly about the buffalo mascot of CultureShoc. Can you just explain to our listeners what the buffalo is all about?

22:04
Ron Kaminski
Yeah, sure. So I actually heard this analogy for the first time in Athens, Greece, at a leadership conference for entrepreneurs organization, and it was in Athens, Greece, but it was a Spanish professor that shared the analogy of the buffalo. And the story goes, buffaloes are known for charging into storms, knowing they're going to see blue skies faster on the Great Plains, and cows as a herd do the opposite. They turn and run from that weather, just guaranteeing they're going to spend some more time in pain. So every business, every person, every team, they've got their storms. We're just trying to help them turn and charge into those and have a mentality of doing that personally as a team, as an entire organization. So that's our mascot. It's our first core value. And if you're not a buffalo, doesn't make you a bad person.

22:56
Ron Kaminski
It's just probably not right fit for us.

22:59
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Love it. I think that's a great way to round out the conversation is this Buffalo mindset for CultureShoc. You're using it internally and you're using it externally. So like we said at the beginning of this conversation, culture can really help drive revenue and help protect your bottom line at the same time.

23:17
Ron Kaminski
Amen.

23:18
Lisa Perry Kovacs
So we like to kind of wrap up with a little rapid fire question.

23:23
Ron Kaminski
So I'm just going to let's go.

23:24
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Ask you three in a row.

23:26
Ron Kaminski
Let's go.

23:26
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Okay. Browns or guardians?

23:28
Ron Kaminski
Browns.

23:29
Lisa Perry Kovacs
One one. Coaching or team coaching?

23:32
Ron Kaminski
Team coaching.

23:33
Lisa Perry Kovacs
And integrator or visionary?

23:38
Ron Kaminski
I mean, I'm a purebred visionary, but I will tell you that the most thankless job on the planet is the integrator. So I'm going to integrator.

23:46
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Woohoo. Love it. I was hoping you'd say that. No, I appreciate it. Ron, thank you so much for joining us. We hope this conversation helped business leaders think a little differently about culture and the power it has to drive revenue. Where can listeners find you if they.

24:01
Ron Kaminski
Want to connect cultureshock.com? That's shoc.com. Ron@cultureshock.com.

24:08
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Perfect.

24:08
Ron Kaminski
Yep.

24:09
Lisa Perry Kovacs
All right. Thanks!

24:10
Ron Kaminski