S01E05:
Get as jazzed for CULTURE goodr Season 2 as we are! (How are we liking “jazzed”? We’re trying to bring it back...) Join us while we tease each upcoming episode in 2 minutes or less.
THIS WEEK’S EPISODE IN A VERY LARGE NUTSHELL:
“You really find out how strong you are when you’re in a hurricane getting blown over.”
~ Stephen Lease
Season 1 of the CULTURE goodr podcast shook out much differently than we expected. We are grateful to have taken the time to recap how our investments in culture paid dividends during hurricane season, aka Covid-19. In Season 2 we’ll be diving into even more deets about what makes goodr’s culture the whipped cream on top of the sundae. No, not the cherry-- who actually likes those maraschino cherries??! Yuck.
EPISODE 1: OUR ORIGIN STORY… THE FAIRY TALE & F-UPS
In five years goodr has grown to over 60 employees, is sold in over 1,500 stores, in 30 countries, and has won multiple awards. It has been a fairy tale... haha… kind of...
In May 2016, things started to shift. We were at a point where we’d sell out, take all of that money and buy more product. What changed was we asked our vendors for terms, and Stephen walked out of a consulting practice and never looked back. A year later we were picked as Runner’s World Gear of the year (humble brag). This didn’t change our sales, or balloon us, but it was a huge rose and validated goodr in what we were creating.
EPISODE 2: TAKING OUR VALUES FROM BULLSHIT TO BEHAVIORS
Our two core values at goodr are FUN & AUTHENTICITY and we do more than just profess them, we live them. We take pride in taking our values from bullshit to behaviors. We’ve created over 50 supporting and slippery behaviors for our values. For example, a part of “fun” is inclusion. A supporting behavior is that we use models that look like normal people. A slippery behavior is only hiring dehydrated fitness models. By having this system, people now realize when they’re doing something slippery and can easily label their behavior and call themselves out on it.
EPISODE 3: CLEAR IS KIND… AND OTHER LESSONS FROM DARE TO LEAD
Let's be clear-- if you want leaders you need to cultivate leaders. At goodr we use Brené Brown’s best seller Dare To Lead to teach leadership, vulnerability, values, and a bunch of other impactful stuff.
Stephen listened to Brené Brown at Inc. Magazine’s conference in October 2018. She was the keynote speaker, and she blew his shirt, pants, and socks right off of him (imagine how awkward that would be…) He brought his learnings to goodr and did three book clubs around the book before weaving it into our culture via a mastery class that every employee goes through. Go read the book so you know what we’re talking about!
EPISODE 4: NO GOSSIP PLEASE
Starting in every new hire’s first week we teach team members the “Clearing Exercise” and how to have tough conversations with each other. The result is a company with no gossip. By communicating directly we eliminate gossiping and complaining. The team is at a point where they pretty much police themselves. When negative chatter starts to fester we can say, “Cool, it sounds like you need to have a conversation with that person.” A huge part about clearing is knowing the difference between facts and feelings, and also leading by example. Gossip feels like connection, but it’s not. It’s cheaper than a box of Franzia.
EPISODE 5: “SHOULD” IS A BANNED WORD AT GOODR
We empower every team member at goodr to run with any idea and take on any project instead of hiding behind the word “should.” We do this by teaching them GTD (Getting Things Done), a productivity project management system.
“Should” is the new “S” word. You might as well put a penny in the swear jar every time you use it. (HAH, “swear jar!” That’s cute. We don’t have one of those at goodr. We’d be filthy rich if we did.) When the word “should” is used in a brainstorming sesh, everyone knows the response is going to be something like, “...Sounds like YOU should do that… Sounds like YOU just volunteered!” This hands people over the power to take and run with projects themselves.
EPISODE 6: NO INTERNAL EMAIL ALLOWED… SERIOUSLY
Email bog down is overwhelming. We switched over from email to Slack, and when Stephen got emails from employees he’d ask, “Is Slack broken?!” And now it is so built into our culture, that people know better. If you have a question about a launch, you ask it on the open thread. The first person who sees it can answer. You’re no longer waiting for a singular person’s response. There are no backdoor convos, it’s seriously freeing.
We love how customizable Slack is. Our pink and teal custom colors make us so happy. Plus, Doug, our Bike Brand Manager, even uploaded his very own pink Croc emoji. #winning
EPISODE 7: AN INVESTIGATOR, ENTHUSIAST, & PEACEMAKER WALK INTO A BAR
The Enneagram is a personality typing system that we use to further understand our natural habits, challenges, and strengths, in a digestible manner. It teaches us how to harness our unique superpowers by showing us our growth and stress patterns and alerting us of the personal speed bumps we could experience moving forward. It’s not a way of putting people in a box, but it does help us recognize what our default settings are. It allows us to communicate and connect more deeply with each other. Aww… group huggg! Just kidding… no more hugging, only elbow bumps.
EPISODE 8: HOW TO SPEAK FLAMINGO… OUR 3 MONTH ONBOARDING
Corporate America has brainwashed us all. We’ve realized that our culture is so different that we need to de-program all new hires. That’s why we created a detailed three month onboarding.
Before you call that out as overkill, think about this...
WOULD YOU RATHER:
A) When starting a new job, watch a VHS from HR in a room with no windows, and be told, “This is how you log into your computer. Good luck.”
OR
B) Start a new job and on day one lose miserably to the CFO in a Ms. Pac-Man tournament? Although... our epic UPS driver crushed the CFO’s long standing high score this week… 73,060. TAKE THAT BEN.
EPISODE 9: CHILL IS THE NEW BUSY
Imagine a company where the goal is to be “chill” over “busy.” At goodr we have an initiative called “Chill is the New Busy” designed to keep people from working more than 40 hours per week because you don’t need to hustle for your self worth at goodr.
During crazy times Stephen will work over 40 hours. However, he has developed a solid practice: when his day is done, his day is DONE.
“My goal in life is that when people ask, ‘Stephen, how is it going?’ I can answer, ‘CHILL AF.’ Because ‘busy’ is garbage.” ~ Stephen Lease, Chief Executive Octopus
EPISODE 10: WE HAVE NO BOSSES!
“I’m not your boss, you’re your boss.” This a phrase used quite often at goodr. We all say we don’t want a boss… but it’s harder than you think. We built our own performance and review system based on Drive by Daniel Pink with the goal of no bosses.
Corporate America is full of middle managers. We don’t need that. In the book, Pink (can you imagine if we were talking about the pop icon, exclamation mark for an “i”, P!NK? It’s not...), unpacks how money is a poor motivator. It’s all research based. From here we created our AMP (Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose) project. Autonomy is “I have control over myself.” It’s all about proving to yourself and everyone else how you’re crushing your role. It’s about making decisions and standing by those decisions. It does not mean “no accountability.” It actually means more accountability. You’re in charge of what and how you’re accountable.
NEXT ACTIONS:
What are the next actions when it comes to trying to figure out how to change company culture? Sounds like a pretty big bite to take...
First note that there are managers and there are those who lead. Be a leader, lead by example. Courage is contagious. You have to have that courage and want to do something different. If you’re in a place where you get undermined and culture change is impossible, you have autonomy, and you have a choice. You have a choice to go somewhere else where that can’t happen. Peace out with pride.
1. Prepare for Season 2 by watching Brené Brown’s Ted Talk “The Power of Vulnerability.” Here we’ll make it REAL easy for you:
2. Watch Daniel Pink’s Ted Talk “The Puzzle of Motivation”… again… spoon feeding you:
3. Extra credit, go read Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead
4. EXTRA extra credit, read Daniel P!nk’s book Drive
If you do all of that you are a serious overachiever, but we appreciate you for it. Hey, if you figure out a way to prove that you did all four of those next actions, we’ll send you a prize! We dare you to try!!! Season 2 drops when the crystal ball says it does, which don’t worry, will be pretty soon! Stay tuned!
OWLS:
Instead of our typical lightning round we’re going to do a SWOT analysis on Season 1 of the CULTURE goodr podcast. Except we don’t call it SWOT… that’s too corporate for our taste. We call it OWLS, which stands for opportunities, wins, leopards, snext actions (because we make up words all the time, why stop now?!).
Opportunities: Do more retakes, work on filler words, capture questions, more PR initiatives, more actionable plans to leave you guys with, a more fun intro, and Stephen vows to do better talking directly into the mic.
Wins: We did it!!! Preparation in general was solid. Both Stephen and Shaun now have podcast home studios. So much support from our team and with the goal to write a book, this whole initiative is getting us that much closer!!! Stephen and Shaun were also jazzed (still trying to bring it back!) to hear from so many random friends that took the time to listen.
Leopards (threats duh...): Covid of course… The goal is to share goodr’s culture with the world, so we’ll always be competing with ourselves to do “done is better than perfect” and just get the damn thing done. A threat could be getting lax on episode prep. As we continue to do things differently we need to budget in how long new things take. Additionally, Stephen will be launching his personal brand, which will be nifty to see!
Snext Actions: Get together for a deep dive with strategy and tactics. Map out season two more thoroughly, use the same deck-- merging notes, and make a PR plan.
Biggest takeaway: This is fucking awesome and that’s because we put a ton of prep work in and have an amazing team supporting us. Stephen was surprised how hard it was to push this baby out of the nest and was grateful that she flew!
CIRCLE BAR:
Like Augustus Gloop, Season 1 is done! Sharing major gratitude to the entire team: Theresa for being an audio wiz and making the voices of Stephen and Shaun sound so rich and creamy; Shelby for blog, social, and email content creation; Maya for taking the lead on PR; Barbs for social media management; Liz for rad graphics; Cucumber Fuzz for the OG track; Keri for a super profesh intro + outro; Barret for the audio mix. Without the support of our team this once-a-pipe-dream would have never made it to the chocolate factory.
On that note, we leave you anxiously anticipating the kickoff of Season 2.
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