Grant Botma, Founder of Stewardship | The Problem Isn't Their Paycheck

The only podcast you need for your business, let's do this. Welcome to the sales versus marketing podcast. I'm your host, Scott. Join me as we explore and demystify the latest trends, technologies and strategies used to achieve massive growth in 10x businesses. I'll be sitting down with sales, marketing, and business leaders. The sector, what's worked for them, the spell myths, and deliver actionable insights that you can use to ensure repeatable, sustainable, and predictable revenue in your business. Welcome to the sales versus marketing podcasts where we speak with sales, marketing, and business leaders. I'm your host, Scott. And today we're speaking with Grant Botma. Now, Grant is a successful serial entrepreneur in his own right, having founded his own financial consulting firm scaling it and being extremely successful in building out his business over the past 11 years. But Grant's claim to fame is not just his success as an entrepreneur. He built a company culture within his company that was so successful and attracted such top notch talent that he has actually become known and regarded as a thought leader and a subject matter expert in company culture. And now he regularly speaks and conducts courses and trainings on how to build culture that attracts talent and makes employees your greatest asset, agnostic of whatever industry you're in. He's spoken at several events as a keynote speaker. He trains, he teaches, and he educates. And he also just released a book entitled The Problem Isn't Their Paycheck How to Attract Top Talent and Build a Thriving Company Culture. So I'm very excited to speak to Grant because culture is so important, especially in this day and age, where the paycheck is no longer just a differentiator. People want to work within an organization and they want to feel emotionally invested in an organization. So I'm going to speak to Grant and I'm going to let him give a little bit, a little bit of an explanation as to how he came to be such an expert in building out this culture. His past, his successes with his financial consulting firm. And also what he trains and teaches over in both his course and what he speaks about in his book. So Grant, take it away, give us a little bit of a background about who you are and what you're doing now. Okay, cool. Yeah, so obviously my name is Grant Botma and I think what most people in my community know me for is the company that I own called Stewardship and at Stewardship we are doing at home loans, insurance and investments and over the years, we're doing this now a little over a decade, we've experienced some success and have had a really cool impact on our community and that community has told other people about us which allowed us to continue to grow and what we're doing and how we're doing it. And through some of that success that we've had, it's turned into some other things bleeding out which is the book and which is a culture course and teaching other people how to develop and create strong company cultures. So that's a little bit of the things that I've got going on right now. So you have a lot going on and you're obviously very entrepreneurial. How did you start out? What's your background? You work for somebody first, you go right into building your own company. What's that story? Yeah, that's kind of a funny story. So go back to when I was 15 years old. There was a job fair at our high school, Discover Card was coming to do like a little job fair. And because it was at the high school, they had to allow everyone to be a part of the process whether you were of age or not. And even as a 15 year old, I signed up because I didn't want to go to class that day, right? So I signed up and I go and they do like this mock interview thing. And one of the mock interviews was like a fake phone call where there's a Discover Card employee, a recruiter who's sitting there and trying to do like a mock phone call. And I guess they liked what I did because by the time I went home, there was a message on the answering machine from my dad. And they were asking for permission if it was okay if I came to work for them. So starting at the age of 15, I worked for Discover Card has actually a credit card collector. And I... Dude, that's a tough job. Yeah. Yeah. And the worst part was, man, I have like first off this baby face and I was a total late bloomer. So I just didn't have a very mature or deep voice. And you know, many times people thought I was a female when I was calling them and trying to collect. So it was a really unique situation. But I had success doing it and not because I did what most collectors did. I didn't call and threaten people and like, hey, I'm going to take your house if you don't pay. I learned that people, if they were past due on a Discover Card, there's a good chance they're going to be past due on a bunch of other stuff. And they either were trying to take advantage of Discover Card or they had something happen in their life. And most of the time, it was door number two where they had something going on, life happened to them. So I would just listen. And I would never even ask for money on the first call. I would just listen and be like, hey, what's going on? And I would hear their story about how they lost their job or they had this medical thing or somebody in their family, whatever. And I'd just take notes and empathize with them. And then when I called back, I would reference that. The notes would show up on my screen and I'd talk to them, like, hey, you ended up finding a job or how's your leg doing or how's grandma or whatever, and I built a relationship with them. And the next thing I know, months later, my inbound line is just ringing off the hook because when they got money, they remembered me, especially compared to everybody else who was a jerk, and they started paying me. So as a result, I'd like to start breaking all these records, that Discover Card, it was a 15, 16 year old, and that kind of drew some attention. So then fast forward now, I'm like 18 years old in high school, and I'm doing okay for myself as a high schooler who's a credit card collector, and I'm getting some decent commissions and spifts and some of the stuff that we're doing, so I'm in the youth group of my church, and it was like kind of like a last senior trip where all the guys were going to go to the beach together in California and take a road trip. I don't know if you've ever been on one of these trips, but typically, man, it's just a bunch of high schoolers throwing together in a 15 passenger van and just like the surfboards in there and everything's in there, and you just find a place to sit, and we all had to take a turn sitting on the hump in the front of the van, and when it was my turn to do that, the youth leader who was kind of volunteering at the time would try to like just embarrass you. And he's like, Grant, you got this nice card and you got these nice things, tell me about your job, what are you doing, and I was like, I'm a credit card collector, so then he did a mock credit card collecting call, and it was hilarious. He had the van rolling, right? But eventually I got him to pay me, and we get out of a van, and we're going to like Wendy's or something, and he pulls me, and he says, hey, after this trip is over, I want to talk to you, and I'm like, okay, and sure enough, after this trip is over, he owned a mortgage company, and he asked me to come work for him. And so then about the age of 19, that's when I got into the mortgage industry, and learned about personal finance on that level. And obviously, the talents and skillsets, you're talking about being empathetic, being real, building that relationship, that's sales 101, but especially when you're dealing with either very dramatic experiences in people's lives, so when they lose their jobs or what not, they're going through these collection processes, or obviously I'm assuming you are very successful in mortgages for dealing with people that are buying the single-largest purchase in their entire life, that's being able to connect with people's a good skill to have, right? And yeah, it was super helpful, man, and it was kind of weird again, so I'm still only 18, 19 at this point, and I'm helping people get these mortgage loans to buy these houses and or refinance hundreds of thousands of dollars of their money, right? So I'd show up to their home to sign the loan application, this was a four-dockie sign and all that, and I would knock on the door, and I'm like, hey, I'm Grant, I'm here to walk you through this, and they'd talk to me on the phone, and they'd like, look behind me, like, okay, well, where's your dad, you know, like, like, who is this young kid? And I would just lose all credibility because of my age and my baby face. So I had to really lean into that piece of what I learned in the credit card collection side, which is, be really empathetic, really listen to their needs, and help meet them on a personal level. So it normally didn't take, but 10 or 15 minutes, but after about 10 or 15 minutes, people would recognize, like, holy cow, this guy cares about me, and he knows what the heck he's talking about. And that allowed me to create unique experiences for people. And kind of what I did was map out an engineer what I wanted my ideal customer to experience during a mortgage loan process. And then I thought to myself, okay, as I look at this map, what are the times when emotions are heightened the most? When are things where they're going to be extremely excited, or they're going to be extremely down? And I would try to be ready for those moments when they're extremely down to kind of soften the blow. And then the times when I knew they'd be extremely excited and up, I would try to add more to it. And I would intentionally ask for them to tell others about me during those high points. And you were mapping this out when you were 19 years old. Yeah, yeah, dude, that's, that's very impressive because I, did you know what you were doing? Did you know like this is, this is the way that even you're targeting when there's a meaningful event in like a customer lifecycle, which is really what you're doing. Did you know that that's what you were doing? Did you know that that's how you are successful or how do you come to this all on your own? Well, I came, kind of came to it because I was, I didn't want to keep dialing numbers in a phone book and I didn't like that and I didn't enjoy it and it just wasn't fun. And I, I always told my dad, you know, I grew up on a farm and I'm the middle of seven kids and he, I always gave him a hard time and I'm like, Dad, I'm not going to be like you. I'm not going to work with my back and I would point to my back. I'd say, I'm going to work with this and I'd point to my head and I just, yeah, he was like whatever year. Get out of my way son. And, you know, I, I just, I just wanted to really lean into that. Like, what are, what are things that I could do so I, I could still serve more people and not have to waste my time and thought to myself, okay, if I can make every single person I'm working with, if I can turn that into two more transactions, so like double and multiply everything, that's, that's the goal and that would be the win. So how can I do that? Well, I need these people to tell others about me and that just kind of brought me like, how can I get them to tell them about me and I just started thinking about the thought process of what the mind of what somebody's going through when they're, when they're doing a mortgage. I mean, obviously it sounds cool. Like, oh, you're an 18, 19 year old, you're doing that, that yearly, that's impressive. But like, it was always been a process, right? I failed that. I didn't do it right. I think the idea was good and novel, but it took months and years to continue to progress and perfect. Cool, man. Okay, so you, you're, you're killing it at mortgages, you're 18, 19. So what's, what's next, what's your next venture after mortgages? So I'm doing mortgages and then I decide that I want to go to school. So I go to college and I decided to go to the small Christian college and because I thought I wanted to be a youth pastor because of the youth pastor at my church was really cool and I wanted to be cool like him. But what I realized is that I just, I wanted to hang out with kids and I wanted to teach him and mentor him, but I didn't really want to deal with all the other stuff that has to go on with the church. So I actually ended up instead of switching my major, I doubled majored, doubled majored in Christian ministries and then in business. So I was doing that and then I was playing basketball at the school while still doing mortgages. And while I was going to school, I recognized kind of this need and this problem in my community. And that was, there really wasn't, quote unquote, safe place or environment for customers to get their finances handled so that customers could get that taken care of with confidence. The sad reality, especially in the mortgage role at the time, was that mortgage lenders were incentivized to put consumers and products that were not the best for the consumer, like they literally paid more. I mean, there were representatives from lenders coming to our office all the time begging us to put customers in these loan programs just so that they could earn a trip to the next Puerto Rico thing or whatever, or an extra spiff, you know, I just wasn't down with that man because what would happen, this was quite literally happening, you would help somebody, I would see somebody get put in one of those situations. And then years later, they would come back and they would want to refinance because they got a divorce. You know, like the crappy money situations was dramatically negatively impacting their relationships. I'm just like, man, I just couldn't give a high in that. So I wanted to create a place that was genuinely putting the customers needs first whether they knew it or not. So I created this kind of business plan or whatever and went to my boss at the mortgage company and I'm like, hey, look, this is how I'd like to do business. Can I do that here? He's like, man, Grant, that sounds really cool, but I won't make any money. So we can't do that. I'm like, okay, well, I want to do it. And he's like, that's totally fine. And he supported me and he was great. Not only did he teach me the industry and give me a place to work while I was going through college, but he helped me start my brokerage. So right out of college, essentially, I started my mortgage brokerage and the plan the entire time was not just to do mortgages, but to create a place where people could get all of their finances handled. I mean, sadly, finances are extremely important, but they don't teach us how to handle it in school. Society is set up to win, man. And they don't know how to look at it. They don't know how to set the bad actors, too, which is another issue. If you don't know what, if you don't know anything about finance, you don't know what the guy's selling you is absolute BS, so. Exactly. Yeah, that's why it's important for me to repeat that part where I said I wanted to create a safe place for people to get their finances handled, whether they knew it or not, because most people don't know, right? And not to say that I'm like, you know, a knight on a white horse trying to save the world. There's plenty of great finance companies out there. I just wanted to be another one. So yeah, man, though, the goal the whole time was to also help people with their insurance. So we added the auto and the home insurance, then we started you in health and life and all those. And then we added the registered investment advisory. So we started helping people with their investment management and then their financial planning and, you know, we're going to continue to grow. We'll eventually be adding a real estate company to what we're doing in some taxes and everything else. Yeah, that we're doing that now for a little over 13 years. And how do you, because that's like a highly competitive industry, because like everyone and their, you know, and their mothers in finance or investments or whatnot or, you know, how many I don't know about where you're at, but I'm in Toronto and the amount of real estate agents, market agents, mortgage, like everybody has their license, right? So how do you differentiate yourself and how do you, how do you win people where because you said, whether they like it or not, well, they don't know. When they first come speak to you, you know, you're, you're just another guy with a license who's trying to sell them on, on whatever. So what do you do? Right. Different. Well, I think it goes back to kind of what I was learning when I was 18, 19 years old and trying to act on and that is just understanding how our brains operate and how we work. And we are designed to want freedom. We want autonomy, which is why we love technology when we're engaging in certain products or services. So that people just want ease of use. So I tried to make things as easy as possible on people, one, but then the other thing that I recognized about people is although they want ease of use and although they want freedom, all of us want to know if we're doing it right. All of us want a guide and advisor to walk alongside them. That's why the reviews section is the most clicked on section of anything on Amazon. It doesn't matter if they're getting a mortgage, which is a big thing or a toothbrush, you know, people are clicking the reviews because they want to know if this is the right thing for me. So I understood that the human psyche of like, hey, we want to make sure that it's as simple and easy for people. Let's remove barriers, but they want to know if they're doing it right. So kind of my thing is, okay, how do I say I'm genuinely wanting to create a great place for people whether they know it or not. It turned into our differentiator was our empathy. So our kind of right on the header of our website is we do home loans, insurance and investments with wisdom and love. And that word love sounds crazy, weird to people. That's a different one. Yeah, it is. Exactly. The finance world, that's really weird, you know, but it's an emotionally charged word and it's genuinely who you are and what we do and people want that. They want to have a wise advisor, a guide that genuinely cares about them to let them know if they're doing it right. And that's kind of been what we do. But of course, you know, we innovate and we're transparent. We add a lot of technology to try to make the experience as simple and easy as possible as well. So you're talking about optimizing experience, the whole user experience, what does that mean for your customers when they reach out to you, what differentiates you in that regard? Yeah, so I think that they're, you first have to understand there's a difference between micro experiences and macro experiences. So the macro experience is what you want them walking away from the transaction, kind of feeling and thinking about the transaction as a whole. So thinking through that, that's important. But understanding that the micro experience is the little things that they experience throughout the customer and journey, add up to impact that. And it goes beyond understanding, hey, these are the potential low points that they'll have throughout the customer journey. These are some of the high points. But also looking at the customer journey and saying, okay, how can we intentionally engineer this to further differentiate? So I'm not sure if this podcast is going to be videoed or not, but if you see behind me, there's a couch behind me, right? This is my office. So all of our offices look like this where there is a couch and I'm talking to you now on a 50 inch monitor. So we create all of our offices to look and feel like a living room. And when you walk into our lobby, it doesn't feel like a doctor's office. It feels like a coffee shop. We literally have a kegerator with cold brew coffee on tap. We know and understand that when you're talking about your finances, there is either a conscious or subconscious barrier that is going to be put up because there's hesitation, whether they got screwed over before, they heard about somebody got screwed over or they just don't know and they don't have confidence and they're apprehensive. We are creating micro-experiences when they come and visit with us that help make things more down to earth, more on their level, more comfortable. So it's thinking through stuff like that. It's also thinking about the technology in the systems, meeting people where they're at. Do they prefer to be talked to on the phone or do they prefer text messaging or is it email or is it chat feature, is it social media? It's those things like that as well. It's creating our content. Where do they consume content? We have a podcast but we also have a YouTube channel and we also have our Facebook videos. I'm doing Instagram stories every day. We have a blog. We're going to about to get on Alexa to do daily briefings. We're going to have a live event. It's taking this content and producing it and putting it in multiple areas because we have to understand that our audience is multifaceted and they might want to consume that in different areas. It's just really genuinely putting yourself in the customer shoes and understanding what are things they might appreciate. Do you notice that it's very intuitive what you're doing there and I think that there's a lot of value and a lot of lessons that can be learned in that. I'm wondering if other companies in finance do you see that there's a paradigm shift in the way they do business or are you still like an outlier because everything you're talking about, I agree with and I think that meeting a customer where they're at is something that more innovative companies do. I don't know that that's usually associated with a finance firm. Yeah, you know, I think more and more businesses are starting to realize this but here's the problem. The problem is when you start a business, most people feel and understand that because it's quote unquote business that the focus has to be on the profit and they're looking at the profit and loss statement and look, I'm not a not for profit organization even though I say wisdom and love like we're trying to profit. We want an ink 5000 fastest growing company in America award because of our profit and loss. They literally look at our tax returns, right? We are definitely trying to be a profitable company but what I do instead of focusing on the numbers, I focus on the customer and I do that genuinely and here's why I don't believe that I could even have a business if I wasn't finding needs and filling them. Without that, you don't have a business. Businesses exist because there's a need and then you're going to fill it and I genuinely believe that the best way to fill that is to do it by serving the person genuinely serving them and that mindset and that process and that being permeated throughout your entire company culture whether it be internally or externally is unbelievably important because people are attracted to that and it helps you create some of these micro and macro experiences that customers actually appreciate. So I think it's a mindset of just understanding like, yeah, money's important but we have to serve people and then the money comes. Does that make sense? 100% and that's going to segue into where I want to go next because you mentioned this before we jumped on this podcast before we started recording about your book and your course, I actually explained maybe explain a little bit what it is so I'm not misinterpreting but you said that your experiences with your business led to the venture that I'm talking about now. So what was that story and what's that all about? Yeah, so we started experiencing some success and getting some attention from other business owners throughout the country and I was being asked to speak at different events and it was just a blast. It was fun. But then my assistant looked at my schedule and was like, hey Grant, we're having a hard time getting some of the things done that we need to get done because you're out of town a lot. So we need to do something about this. So then I started kind of learning about this online course world and I thought to myself, okay, I still want to make an impact and help other businesses. So how can I do this without you know, being away from my business or being away from my family so often. So just recorded a lot of the stuff that I teach even took some of the stuff that I do in my own business and put it in this online course so people could literally copy and paste it and do some of the things that we do. Because the reality of our success has a lot to do with our team and our people. They are unbelievable and if it isn't for the awesome culture that we have, we don't have the success that we have. So I put this in an online course and then there was a student who went through it who actually worked for a publisher and the publisher was like, hey, you should take some of this and put it in a book and I'm like, oh, yeah, maybe I can't, you know, so then I went through and wrote the book and that is going to launch November 19th this year and the name of the book is the problem isn't their paycheck and it tells people how to build a thriving company culture and how to attract the top talent and really what I teach in my course and the kind of like the paradigm shift and the framework of it is that money is important and it's a motivating factor but it's not the most motivating factor. There are three other things that the human brain desires ahead of money and you have to make sure you focus on those within your culture if you want to have a healthy sustainable long lasting culture. Is that something that is like built out from like a Maslow's hierarchy of needs framework or if you can, if you can walk through a little bit, I don't want you to go into everything about the book because I want people to still buy it and download it and read it but I'm curious because that what you're talking about, there's so many levels of what's required to feel safe, right? Is it human? Yeah, yeah. Well, first off, I'll give everything away of the book in this podcast. Anything I could do to add value to your audience, man, I'll give it away. So you feel free to ask any question you want and I'll be as transparent as possible. So it comes from a combination of not just Maslow's hierarchy of needs but even some stuff like a Bain & Company, they put together a hierarchy of decision making that humans make. There's a guy named Daniel Pink who studies a lot about social science and behaviors, talking about guys like even back from World War I and Victor Frankl, you know, he and all these people from hundreds and hundreds of years of research, I just basically kind of myself became a behavioral scientist and studied all these people and that's where a lot of it came from but basically all of this research and all of this stuff points to the same thing and that is that people are desire freedom, they want that, they want autonomy in their life. So you got to put that within your culture and within your team and in your employees, they want affirmation, people want to know if they're doing it right. But then what's more important and this is the most motivating thing to humans is a purpose and ideally that purpose is something that unifies them and puts them in community with other people because people want to do work that matters. People want to genuinely be able to go into work and make an positive impact on the world and you have to tie that into the work that you're doing when you're leading other people. So if we can actually go a little bit deeper into those three because that's really, really good stuff for leaders, for people that are starting their own business, want to track the top talent, people that want to build up their team, how do you start off with freedom? What does that look like inside a company? Yeah, so I think it looks different for every business. My business because we are a financial services business, a lot of commission based employees really not necessarily 10, 99 but very much have a lot more ownership. For them, it's a huge amount of freedom. I let them come and go as they please, there's unlimited vacation time. They can watch Netflix while they work, they can take personal calls on their devices, they can have their family be here at the office when they want to, they can work from home if they want. Freedom is just huge, but obviously if you're a retail coffee shop, some of those pieces of freedom aren't going to work. The bottom line is you have to put yourself in the shoes of the employees and ask yourself this in what ways or what things am I doing that make them feel enslaved? What things are suppressing any freedom or autonomy that they have? Here's an example. While I was doing the collections, I remember very vividly, there was this phone call that was extremely tough and it was an account that we had been chasing for a long time and it eventually got assigned to me again because I had to experience some success and I finally got this person to pay and it was just a huge win, but it took a ton out of me. I looked at my clock and I saw that my next break wasn't until 40 some minutes later and I did not have the mental capacity to go to the next call. I was forced to compromise my own integrity. I could either go to the next call and not give my best or I could lie to my boss and my supervisor and say, hey, look, I got to go to the bathroom even though I really didn't have to and throw some water on my face. I didn't have the freedom to even take a deep breath after a huge win. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. And too often the traditional management books have us put so many guidelines and guardrails up that prevent employees from being self-directed. And we as managers and leaders, if we really are honest with ourselves, that's what we want. We want a team of self-directed folks, but you got to give them the freedom to not only not feel enslaved, but also make sure that they're not waiting on cues from you. So that's kind of those filters you have to walk through to make it be actionable within your business. But I think it's a great point because if you are a leader, if you're not turning your own team into future leaders, why are you even in that position? Because you should want them to be moving into leadership positions, either within your own organization or another organization, not only to make your own job easier, but to just help facilitate their growth. Because if you're known as a leader that can help facilitate growth, you're going to have people that are loyal to your organization, loyal to you, loyal to your business unit. So I think that it's important to steer people in the right direction and give them the guidance and support, but it's okay to let them make mistakes, let them fail, let them learn. And what you can do that is if you give them a little bit of leeway. So much wisdom and what you said, man, and I cannot begin to tell you how many people struggle with that. There are way too many people that are working in their business instead of on their business. They're a leader and entrepreneur that has amazing ideas and things that they can do to scale their business like crazy. There's a lot of people out there who are great at business, they actually have a good profit in law statement, but they've hit a glass ceiling. They are not able to scale it further because they can't trust people or don't know how to manage other people. And they're scared. They're scared that those other people aren't going to do it as well as them. So they're not only the owner, but they're also the operator and the salesperson and the IT person and everything else. And I'm just going to be real. That was an unbelievably hard transition for me to make to stop engaging with the customers and trust and let other people do it. But now I'm at a place where my assistant literally looked at my schedule this past year and I've taken year to date, we're now almost in December, 67 days not counting weekends away from the office. And this is the most profitable year that our business has ever been. And that doesn't happen without a genuine self-directed team, a team of people who are on a purpose pursuing it like crazy and they have the freedom to be able to pursue it. Yeah, no, I completely agree. Okay, so second point that you mentioned it was really good. Affirmation. So what does that look like in the workplace? All right, so there's the affirmation of high fives, out of boys, good jobs, right? And it's crazy how many people don't even do that intentionally. But this is not just like, oh, all you millennials, you, you know, whatever, like this is not about unicorns and rainbows and gumdrops. This is like a legit thing, affirmation, all of us desire it. And there's other things that you can do, including a live scoreboards, okay? So people want to know if they're doing their job well, people want to become a master of their craft. And all too often we wait till 90 day or annual performance reviews to tell people if they're doing things right. Well, heck, man, if you've been doing a podcast wrong for 90 days and then finally somebody tells you, it's just like, hey, why didn't you tell me that 89 days ago? So I can change it, you know, and that's the same thing that your employees want. That's the same thing that your team wants and having live scoreboards to let them know how they're doing is important. But then also affirmation is including negative affirmations, corrections. So when they do something wrong, tell them right away, have the guts to do that. And you don't ambush them at your 90 day or your end with a whole bunch of, yeah. Exactly. And the next thing, you know, they're going into their 90 day review with their guard up and just with all the stress and they hate it anyways. And that's why employee performance reviews are one of the most useless things a company can have. You know, it's like, you have to give people affirmation every single day and you as a manager and leader better intentionally do it on a weekly basis. And for me, that looks like genuinely scheduling it. So I put it in my calendar to make sure that I walk around the office and yeah, I give the high fives, but I look for things that somebody did really, really well or I look for something that somebody needs to correct. And I talk to them about it like I literally am scheduling that to make sure I do it. So yeah, you're, you know, I don't want to go into a whole conversation about coaching because that's a whole other, that's a whole other topic that's really important for leadership. But you're tying that in. And that's, that's very important. Like that's, they're one in the same. So that positive negative affirmation and reinforcement, your coaching is not like what a lot of managers do and correctly worth just like pipeline review or funnel review. Your coaching is truly understanding, like leading indicators of behavior, correcting all the time, both good and bad and, you know, really giving people feedback that's useful, not just telling people to, you know, sell more, close more, and they have no idea how to do it or why they're not doing it properly. So yeah, that's good, man. Yeah. Yeah. No. Okay. So last one, purpose. So how do you give people purpose? Yeah. So the first thing that you have to do is recognize what it is that you do in your business that genuinely makes the world a better place. And one of the things that you can ask yourself is, okay, this, this product or this service that we're providing, we are fighting maybe what injustice or we are saving people from what? How are we making their lives better, right? And then you have to kind of craft that and put that together in a statement. I'm not talking about like a mission statement where you go to a cabin with brandy and cigars with the rest of the ownership and come up with this grandiose thing of $30, you know, dollar words that nobody can repeat or understand, like that's not what I'm talking about. For me at stewardship, our statement is literally this, we love people through finances. And you have to be able to tell a story after that. The reason why that's important is if people don't get loved through finances, their relationships can get screwed up. The number one cause of divorce in this country is money fights. People can quite literally have worse relationships with their children because of money. People can quite literally have poor or lives because of money situations. But at the same time, if money is something that can enhance their life, it can enhance the relationships and enhance their impact of all the awesome things that they want to do. So it's a really, really, really big deal, right? And the only way to properly do this is to make sure that we sacrifice ourselves. So we have to say no to doing business in certain ways, even though it might be more quote unquote profitable or earn us more commission. And that's the other thing that a purpose has to have has to make the world a better place but it also has to require sacrifice because when you do something where you sacrifice, it draws other people in and it then creates a unified purpose, it unifies your team. And you know that you get to come to work to not only do something that matters, but you get to do something that matters with a bunch of other people who are sacrificing too. And that is a huge, huge motivating factor for every human. That's your awareness of how people or the requirements of people to be successful and to fulfill themselves, it's astounding. Seriously, there's not a lot of people that go so deep in on this and I'm kind of out of loss for words because I don't want to mention and overlay everything you've just said with something that's cheap but it's incredible what you're sentimentous towards this. Oh, man. Thank you. I'll be honest. I'm just another guy trying to figure it out, right? I don't always execute everything perfectly, but I'm grateful for all the awesome mentors and the people that have come to my life spoken to me, all the awesome authors and other people who have been out there who have put some of this research together, made it available online. But yeah, man, thank you so much for that compliment. That means a lot. No, no, it's really good. Okay, so just a couple of questions that I like to ask, just sort of frame it up and sort of have some cadence in all the podcasts that I do. If you were going to give your 20 year old self one piece of advice, what would that be? Wow. 20 year old self, one piece of advice. Or for you, it could be 15 year old self because that's when you started to get out. Oh, man, you know, I would say this, it would be, trust is not earned, trust is given. Trust is not earned, trust is given. And it would mean that I would have to get over myself, get over some of my pride, humble myself enough to actually choose to trust because again, I was one of the hardest parts of my business is I was sleeping at the office. I was the owner and the operator. I was really struggling. And I couldn't scale because I didn't have an awesome team because I wasn't necessarily trusting them with enough. And finally, I got over myself and chose to trust people. And where they perfect when they executed it, no, but it got them to the place now where they are, awesome, self directed people and it works. And I think so many business owners and managers and leaders struggle with that. That's giving the trust. And my kind of response is I had to get to the place where it's like, well, if I don't trust them, that's a me problem because I hired them. And so I better hire people that I do trust or trust is something that I got to give. So I better start giving it. So yeah. Good. What are some of the, let's frame it. I usually ask for industry in terms of industry, like I usually ask a question. What are some of the biggest misconceptions or the things that you see in your industry that you really think are poor practices? But let's frame it differently because you're so well versed in workplace culture. So what are some of the most toxic workplace culture traits that you see that you see impact employees negatively more than anything else? Yeah. Way too many managers, way too many leaders, way too many business people do not take a genuine care for the employee outside of the workplace. They don't really put themselves in the shoes of the employee. You guys say they are spending hours upon hours so much of their life in your workplace. So you have to genuinely care for others. And here's one thing that you can do. Wait, let me first ask you this. Are you married? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So you're putting together an amazing podcast. Just be honest with you. I do podcast fairly often and you're a great conversationalist. You're doing a great job asking these questions and you're making it so easy on me. Cool. And your wife probably has no idea how good you are at this. But if I went to her and saw her and said, hey, he's really good at this. He's so good at this that he made it easy for me to be a guest. Like he has skills doing this. And if I said that to her in front of you, how would that make you feel? Incredible. It makes me feel like, you know, on top of the world. Right. That's that affirmation that you desire that you want, but you're not getting. Our spouses, our kids, have no idea how good we are at what we do. They have no idea the amount of energy and effort that we're putting into the office. So bosses, leaders and managers who take a genuine care about the individual are willing to intentionally affirm people when they see the individual's family around them. So whenever the kids come into the office here, first thing I do, I go right to the kids, get on my knee, get on their level, I'm like, hey, did you know that you're daddy or mommy's a superhero? They're awesome at what they do. And here's why they're awesome. And I say it right in front of them, hey, when I see the spouse, give them a side hug. He's, thank you so much for supporting them, allowing them to come to the office. I just want to tell you a story. They did this thing of X, Y and Z where they really helped somebody. It was a really big deal. I don't know if you know, but they're really, really good at their job, you know? And that makes it, that makes your day, that makes more than their day, that makes, you know? Yeah, it makes everything, man. I mean, it is going to not only allow that employee to be unbelievably motivated the next time, but they're going to genuinely care about my business because I genuinely don't care about them. And then guess what? I got people at their house that are supporting me in my business too. One of the last things that you want is to have a spouse or children that loathe your employees, employee employment, because then they don't want to go into the office or they have a negative pressure to not go into the office because their spouse or kids don't want to come in. I want an employee that has people at home that are cheering them on, like, yeah, go into the office. You're awesome at this, mom or dad. Keep doing it, you know? Yeah, no. And it's so simple, but nobody does it. Yeah. And, you know, I just want to say the point you made about having like a cheerleader in the house, I've never heard that. I've never heard it through that lens before, but that's so true because, you know, your home life, if your home life isn't aligned with your work life, your work's going to suffer. So if you have people to say, listen, I love your boss. Like, this is a great, you know, it's a great job, a great career. Like, don't screw this up, like, get your ass out of bed in the morning, whatever. And your wife's doing that or, you know, your kids are supporting you when, when you have to go the extra mile for work and everybody's aligned. Like, dude, that's, that's, that's very, it's powerful. That's good stuff. That's really good. Yeah. And that's why the unified purpose is so important because the unified purpose is not just something that happens within the walls of my office. It's something that I can invite the family members of the employees to also be a part of. So we do Christmas party every year and, and to be honest with you, it's one of the more fun things that I get to do, but it takes a lot of energy of me because at the Christmas party, I'm intentionally taking time to look the spouse of the employee in the eyes and really bring them along to this unified purpose, share with them numbers, statistics, stories about not only how awesome this person is at their job, but how the things that this person is doing, my employee, their spouse, what they're doing is genuinely making an impact on the world and on the community and, and, and the stuff that they're doing matters. And then that again, just brings the family alongside of it. I like to say it like this. The best intentions require intentional actions. I would say if we all really genuinely look within ourselves, we intend for all these great things to happen. Like we would all want these things, but the only way that's going to happen is if you take intentional actions to make it work. And that's kind of a lot of what I give in the book, and especially in the course, is I outline and provide, here's the intentional actions that I have done that have worked. And that's what you can do to have an awesome company culture. Very cool. All right. Let's wrap it up. Last question. I guess last two. I want to, I want to give people to figure out where they can find you and I'll get that in a second. Yeah. You're LinkedIn. But for that, you mentioned mentors, you mentioned, you learn a lot, which people, which sources, which books, audibles, podcasts, whatever, what's your go to, and for people to learn and sort of grow? Yeah. I'd say right now, my go to podcast is a story brand podcast by Donald Miller, a huge fan of that. I think for small businesses, it's one of the best ones that's out there. For just people and mentors in general, I've always just taken the advice of my grandfather. He said, hey, grant, find a bunch of people with gray hair and wrinkly skin and just get ready to ask them questions, right? So. That's nice. Yeah. I mean, in today's fast-moving society, no one really wants to have like a structured mentorship, quote unquote, program. They are especially like really busy people, people who have a lot to share. They're not going to be able to commit to something like that. So whenever I found people that I wanted to emulate or learn from, I had questions in my head, banked, ready to go. So there's been countless quote unquote mentors that I've had that whenever I find myself in a car with them or on a phone call or in a conversation, I'm ready and I ask them a real challenging question, because that's what my grandpa told me to do. That's smart. And I think that just by being aware that you should always be looking for mentors in various facets and aspects of your life. I think that if you keep the top of mind like you're saying you do, I think you'll just be more successful. Because I think a lot of people think, oh, I need to find a mentor. Where do I look? Shit, like I don't know what. I don't know who's good, who's bad, whatever. Just keep an open mind and I think talk less and listen more in general and I think people will just be better off that way. It's not so hard. Yeah. Beautiful advice. Yeah. Talk less and more. You'll find out if they're good or bad based on you listening, based on what they'll say, right? That's all I got, man. So if they want to find you connect with you, get your book, your course, connect on LinkedIn, where do they go? Yeah. I'd say one of the best places to connect with me is Instagram. My handle is at Grant Botma and not only do I post almost every day, but I also do a story every day that you can engage with and chat with me on and sometimes I go live and answer people's questions. That's one way. LinkedIn, Facebook, you can find me all there too as well. But the book, the problem isn't their paycheck is on Amazon. If you just search the problem isn't their paycheck, you can go there and check it out. Or you can go to culturecourse.com forward slash book, culturecourse.com forward slash book and culture courses where you can learn more about the course where you can culturecourse.com forward slash books where you can learn more about the book. Now you may have a free hiring training that you can watch there as well. So very good. Awesome, man. That's all I got. So I'll I'll throw this and I'll edit it up and then I'll post it. Thank you. So a wealth of information, some incredible insights and lessons learned. If you enjoyed this podcast, be sure to connect with Grant on Instagram or any of his other social or LinkedIn and also be sure to go download his book from Amazon. The problem isn't their paycheck. If you enjoyed this podcast, please be sure to share it with your friends, your family, your coworkers, your colleagues, like, subscribe, comment, always leave a rating. Any rating is fine as long as it's a five star rating. You can download this podcast anywhere you can download podcasts and you can also catch it on YouTube. This isn't been another sales versus marketing podcast. I'm always looking for new guests. So if you have somebody in mind who you think would be a great fit for this podcast, anyone sales marketing or business, you can email me directly sdugglesclary at gmail.com or you can hit me up on LinkedIn, LinkedIn.com slash in slash S Douglas Clary. I hope everybody enjoyed. Everybody have a great week. Have a productive week and we will speak again soon by now. Welcome to Scott's thoughts where we break down what we just heard in the sales versus marketing podcast and what I'm going to double down on two points. Grant was great. He discussed a whole bunch of topics. He delivered a ton of insight on how to sell, on how to attract top talent. One thing that I really wanted to focus on was his ability to create experiences for customers. He spoke about not only acting as an advisor, as a subject matter expert, as a thought leader, which is what a lot of companies do when they are building a relationship with their perspectives, their prospects, their clients and their customers. But he broke it down even further. He said you have to focus on both micro and macro experiences. So that being said, what does that mean for a marketer or a revenue leader? You are focusing on the end goal, which is the macro, which is the large picture that you want your brand to be for a customer. But to get there, you have to focus on micro experiences or little things along the way that align with that end goal or that macro macro experience or that high level brand and purpose. He went as far as to say is you have to actually, you have to actually action on these things. This is not just something that's dreamed up in the boardroom and put on a website as a mission statement that never discussed again. Everything that you want your customer to experience, the high level mission statement, purpose, all the way down to the micro, the micro activities that the customer experiences and dealing with your marketing collateral, your sales force when they walk into your office. These are all things that make a difference on a customer journey. And if you can understand the emotional implications of micro and macro experiences on a customer, you can effectively build a meaningful relationship with them and ultimately sell. So that is incredibly important to understand that it is not just one high level, everything that happens in an organization has to align. And that ends up being described as a micro, like a micro event or a micro activity that eventually lends cadence or leads to the macro event. Now the second thing that he spoke about that I would really like to discuss is the ability to attract top talent. So he spoke about three different psychological requirements that are needed to keep people engaged and attracted to an organization in terms of them working there. And all these three things fall outside of just a paycheck, which is the information that he actually discussed in his book that he's going to be releasing. So the three things that he discussed were freedom, affirmation and purpose. And I'm not going to try and re-explain these things because Grant is an expert in this. And if you listen to the podcast, you do a very good job. But if you are looking to attract top talent, I want you to just keep in mind that agnostic of industry, there are these three items that truly allow you to build this culture of talent, of fulfillment, of employee growth, of building leaders from within. These things are so important and if you only focus on your bottom line, you will not be a successful organization in 2019 and beyond. You have to include a focus on culture to be a successful organization in 2019. And this is one blueprint for doing that effectively. So I hope you enjoyed that podcast. It was great to listen to Grant and I really do believe you should go check out his book and consume some of his content because I definitely learned a lot and I believe that all of the things that he was speaking over and discussing, these are the things that will become the benchmark and the blueprint for effective leadership and effective management going forward. So that's been another Scott's thoughts. I hope you enjoyed. As always have a great week, have a productive week and we will speak again soon, bye now.