Welcome to the Faith Based Business Podcast with your host, Pastor Bob Thibodeau. On this podcast, we interview fellow entrepreneurs who are willing to share their stories, their trials, and their triumphs in business, all in an effort to help you avoid the same obstacles and to achieve success faster. But at all times, continue to rely on our faith to see us through to victory. Now with today's guest, here is your host, Pastor Bob Thibodeau. Hello, everyone, everywhere.
Pastor Robert Thibodeau here. Welcome to the Faith Based Business Podcast. We are so blessed that you are joining us today. Have you ever wondered why some companies seem to effortlessly reach their goals while others struggle despite having all the right tools? The answer often lies. And one of the most overlooked aspects of business success, company culture. It's the invisible force that guides every decision and action.
But far too often, the culture we envision doesn't really match the reality we live every day. To help us unravel this mystery and learn how you can shape and transform your company or your business culture to align with your vision, I'm excited to be joined again by Wayne Mullins, the founder of Ugly Bug Marketing. Wayne's expertise goes far beyond just creating a nice website.
He and his team focus on helping you to achieve the results you want through effective marketing, social media, events, SEO, and much, much more. Wayne Mullen and his team are always results oriented and everything that they do. This is why they believe Ugly Mug marketing can help you build the business of your dreams too. Amen. Wayne's also the author of the book Full Circle Marketing as well.
Praise God. Now, if you're ready to learn how bridge that gap between where your company culture is and where it needs to be, this conversation is one you can't afford to miss. Amen. With that being said, help me welcome back back to the program, Wayne Mullins. Wayne, it's a blessing to have you back with us again today, brother. Thank you so much. It's a beautiful day today. No matter what the weather is outside, we have that choice to make today beautiful. So I'm glad to be here.
Amen. Amen. For those that may have missed our prior interview, I believe it was episode 1528. If you did miss that, folks, go back and listen because Wayne was dropping several value bombs there. That'll definitely help you in your SEO battle. Amen. But Wayne, for those that may have missed that, can you tell us in your own words, who is Wayne Mullins? Sure thing. I am a husband and father of four amazing kids. I happen to also run this agency called Ugly mug marketing.
And through the work that we do here, we get to impact a lot of other entrepreneurs and subsequently all of the customers or clients they interact with. So it's. It's a very exciting and challenging thing that we're up to here. Amen. Amen. And last time when we did our interview, it was about what you do and how you help businesses and entrepreneurs with SEO and all that.
Today, I wanted to focus on, like I said, one of the most important aspects of running a successful business, and that's of company culture. And I know I've worked for companies where I dreaded going to work, you know, and I've also worked for organizations where I actually looked forward to going to work because I love the job, I love the people, and I believed in the mission. How important is company culture in the success of a business? It is the thing, Pastor Bob. It is.
It is the absolute most important piece or element. It was Peter Drucker who once said that culture eats strategy for breakfast. And what he meant by that was simply this. You can spend all your resources, you can spend all the time, you can hire the brightest minds in the world to help you come up with a wonderful, beautiful strategy for your organization.
But if your culture is one of disengagement, of disinterest, where people don't want to be there, it doesn't matter what strategy you have, it's not going to be implemented. And it. If it is implemented, it's not going to be implemented in a way or in a manner that is impactful. So culture is the thing. Amen. Well, what exactly makes up a successful company culture?
Yeah, I think it's important to start with understanding kind of what is the root word or where does this thing called culture come from. And the word culture actually shares the same Latin root word as cultivate. And so when we think of the term cultivate, that's typically a gardening or a farming term, Right? It's to cultivate the soil. And I love to think about organizational culture as just that. The culture is the soil in which the teams, the clients, the customers, everyone interacts.
And it is our job as leaders to ensure that that soil is cultivated in such a way that when the seeds, when the teams are planted in that soil, they can thrive, can grow, and they can produce amazing results. Sadly, we often try to manage the people, ignoring the culture, ignoring the soul that we've planted them in. And so we spend our days as leaders frustrated, trying to micromanage, trying to get people to come along and to pick up their game and to, you know, be motivated.
And yet what we don't realize is we've planted them in this toxic, very nutrient depleted soil where there's no room for them to put their roots in. There's no room for them to thrive. So that is why culture matters to organizations today. Amen. Amen. I know, you know, you list three mistakes that sabotage company culture. Can you go over those three common mistakes for us? Absolutely. So I'm going to go through them quick and then we can dive in as much detail as you want in each one.
But the first one is this, that as leaders, we believe that company culture is something we will get to one day. Right. So for years my experience was that one day, once things you get to a good level, once we plateau, once we get to this point where we have plenty of money coming in and everything seems to be operating well, I will then get to company culture. And so that's mistake number one. Company culture is not something you can wait until you get to.
I love to say this, that, that if you are unintentional about building a great culture, then you are intentionally allowing a dysfunctional and a low performing culture. So that's mistake number one. The next mistake is this the confusion between alignment and autonomy. I see this so often with leaders. They want to give their team autonomy to go execute, right? They, they don't want to have to micromanage.
But it seems like every time they send their people out to go do things to go, they are frustrated because their, their team member didn't do things the way they wanted it done or completely went down the wrong path. And then the team members frustrated because they just did what they thought was best. And now you're upset with them and they're upset with you. And so it's just this negative thing. So we have to understand the balance between alignment and autonomy.
And then the final one is this. There's a big difference between implicit and explicit communication. And so often as leaders, we make the assumption that we have made everything explic. In other words, it's crystal clear what we expect, what our values are, et cetera, when in reality most often some of those things are still implicit, they're implied. And it's our responsibility to clearly articulate and to make the implicit explicit. Yeah, and I want to go back to the second point.
Then I want to come back to three, because a lot of times those organizations that I was in where it was toxic, they say, okay, this is what needs to happen, it needs to be done. By here, make it work. And that's your instructions, you know, and it's up to you to figure out exactly, okay, should we do this abc, or should we do CDE first and then come back to A and B? And when you implement, then like you said, it's, no, that's not what I wanted.
But there is no, you know, and then they get really upset because now they're going to dive in and fix it so it meets a deadline and. And all of that goes on. How can leaders not allow that to happen? Yeah, this, this the million dollar question, Pastor Bob. This is the thing that I see so often in organizations where they get stuck. And what happens is as leaders, we get so busy, right?
We have so many different plates up in the air spinning or our balls that we're trying to juggle, that we're trying to keep up and going, that we neglect some very fundamental things. Some things that we all agree are important, like our vision, our mission, our values, our expectations. We all across the board understand that those things are important. But what happens is we push those things to the side because there's so much more, more that is screaming at us right now, right?
There's so many more things that are urgent that we need to focus on, and those are the core elements that we must create alignment around in our organizations. So when, when we think about these things, every single person on your team needs to answer these four questions. Number one, where are we going? That is the vision. Like, where are we trying to get to? What does our future look like? The next question is, why does this matter?
In other words, we're trying to get to this destination, to this future. Why does this matter? And that's our mission, right? Why do we exist? We exist, for example, here we exist to help entrepreneurs sleep better at night. That is our mission. That is why we exist. And what that does is then that creates the picture for what we're trying to create. That also creates a deeper meaning behind the work that we do, right? It's no longer just about a marketing campaign or a website.
It's about how do we make it so that these businesses grow so that entrepreneurs don't have to worry about their growth. So, you know, where are we going? Why does it matter? What's expected of me as a team member? So in relation to those two things, what's expected of me and my role? And again, there's a huge gap here.
Most often when people are hired and they review their job description or their role statement, that is the last time that there's conversation around how this person's role fits into accomplishing the mission and the vision for the organization. And then the final question is this. How will you measure my performance? We just want to make that crystal clear. Here's how we are going to measure your performance. Your performance is going to be measured on A, B, C and D. Now here's the thing.
It's our job as leaders to ensure that they can clearly understand how they are doing at any point in time. It shouldn't be this big mystery. I see this time and time again in organizations where, you know, they do maybe it's a quarterly or, you know, it's every six months or an annual performance review with their team members. And the entire time in between those things, the employees have no clue how they're actually performing.
And then when they show up to these performance reviews, it's like this big mystery. Are you gonna be. Are you gonna be happy with me? You're gonna be mad at me? Are you gonna be somewhere in the middle and different? Like. So we need to ensure that our team members have tools so that they can quickly and easily determine how they are individually performing in relation to what we just talked about, man. Amen. Yeah. And I tried to be a leader as when. And this, I think, goes back to the culture.
Like you said, if someone's doing a great job, let them. Man, you really did good on this. And here's what you did that we weren't expecting. But man, the client really loved it type thing that lets them know their vision, their success was because of their initiative. And then I've also had conversations with, you know, you go back in and say, well, what's, what's the status on this project? Oh, well, I was working over here, so I had a chance to get to it yet.
Well, you know, that's due by end of business Friday. Right. You know, you need to bring me at least an outline in so we can go over it and make sure you're on the right page. And that type of input from the leader is so important because this person was thinking, well, I know he gave me this to do, but this is also important.
So I got to take care of this first because he gave me that first, you know, and really this Project B now supersedes the importance of project A because you get to A later, you know, and by having that type of constant feedback, and not constant, that's a bad word, periodic check in and feedback during the course of the project. You know, I used to have meetings Every morning.
And you know, we had like a team meeting in my agency on Friday afternoon before everyone disappeared for the weekend, talking about what's coming up next week. Okay. And then we'd have a meeting, just, I mean a very informal type thing, you know. Okay. What are you working on today? Okay, great. Oh, okay. Something's changed over the weekend. We need to change this. Instead of that being due Wednesday, I need it this afternoon type thing.
And just to have that, that type of information before they even get started down, you know, the 32 page report that they got to type up, you know, have that 10 point checklist done by 10:00am instead of 2:00pm, you know, just, just to let them know. So you didn't walk out at 1:30 and say, hey, by the way, last week we talked about that checklist. Have you got it done yet? Oh, I thought it was due tomorrow. No, I need it in like 20 minutes, you know, type thing.
So that, yeah, that constant again, the constant is a bad word. That Continual, continual updates and just checking in. Hey, you know, do you need, you have any questions on this? You know, I got some free time. I can make some phone calls for you if you don't have it. And by doing that, our agency grew within about 18 months to be the number two selling agency for the major, for the company we were working with nationwide. You know, just starting off from scratch.
I mean, we shot up the charts quick. And, and that was, that was because that's how I tried to organize. We're all a team. It's not me, boss, you employee. We're all a team. You know, I could go off on a business trip and not even worry about having to call into the office, see what's going on. Because they all knew what they had to do. Yeah, yeah. I think what you're, what you're describing right there is exactly what we were talking about.
We were talking about the difference between explicit and implicit communication. When you have those regular, that regular cadence for feedback and conversation, what you're doing is you're bringing forth the things that may have been implied, right. In the communication. You're bringing them, you're making them explicit, you're explaining them, you're making sure that they're hearing it correctly, that they understand it.
I know that so often in our leadership journeys, what happens is we believe we've clearly communicated or clearly articulated something to our team or to an individual on our team. And what happens is we have such a different context, a different lens through which we are looking, that we are we are imparting some of those things implicitly. Right. We're implying that they understand, they know these things. And again, we have to switch that.
We have to flip it through their lens and we have to make sure that we are over communicating and that we're spelling out in more detail than we think is necessary to ensure we are on the same page. And your, your description of kind of the, the frequency of communication there is a wonderful method of ensuring that everyone is on the same page, everyone is pulling in the same direction. I think sometimes as leaders, we think, well, I don't need to do that. Right? I have a team.
They should know how to do this stuff. We shouldn't have to meet every, every week or every day. But I can tell you it's the discipline of doing those things that makes your life and makes your culture so much stronger. We as leaders have to set the precedent for that. We have to show up for those. We need to be on time, we need to be prepared, and we need to hold those regular communication rhythms as a high priority in our organizations.
And when we do that one, it just cuts through the noise and creates immense clarity for everyone on the team. Amen. Amen. So what makes a company culture toxic? Yeah, I think when it comes to our company culture, again, if we go back to the soul analogy, what happens by default is we tend to look at individual people, right. When we think of a culture, we think of we've got people with bad attitudes or people who aren't performing or people who are disengaged. And I think that's a mistake.
We have to go a layer deeper and we have to look at the culture. And when I say the culture, we have to look at what we tolerate and what we embrace as leaders. Because at the end of the day, the most difficult person that you or I will ever have to lead is not someone else on our team. It is the person who looks back at us in the mirror every single morning. That is the person we must start with.
I'm a firm believer in this idea that our businesses, our organizations are merely reflections of ourselves. So if, if our business is showing up as disorganized and chaotic, chances are that's a reflection of us, right? That's a reflection of our mindset. And so I believe that a toxic culture starts when you as the leader, point blame at everyone else.
So when, when the issues are everyone else's problem, and if you find yourself as a leader complaining about people don't want to work anymore, that they're Lazy, they don't want to show up all of these things. You are the one fostering a toxic culture in your organization.
Instead, if you choose to believe that the people you have chosen to be on your team are amazing human beings who want to show up, who want to do a good job, when they come to your place of business, then it changes your whole mindset. Yes, they may make mistakes. Yes, you may have to coach, you may have to guide, you have to. May have to be persistent. But again, look at ourselves.
How often do we set intentions in a certain area and say we're going to do certain things, whether I'm personal or on business side, and we get into it a week or two weeks, and we fall off the track, right? We. We lose our commitment that we've made to ourselves so our team members do the same thing. We need to learn to have grace for them in the same way that we have grace for ourselves.
Amen. Amen. Well, if you're the business owner, then, and based on what you just shared as the owner, how can we begin to make a successful cultural change? The first place you have to start with cultural change is in the mirror. That is, number one. It starts with you. I see this again time and time again when I talk to entrepreneurs and business owners. The constant complaint is this. No one wants to work anymore. They're lazy. They're always on their phone.
They're this, they're that, they're this. They are speaking into existence, the culture that they're willing to tolerate. They are speaking that into existence. And so the more that I focus on those things, the more I focus on, they're lazy, they're entitled, they're whatever those words are, the more I'm going to look for evidence of those things. What we focus on expands.
So it starts, number one, with, with me and my understanding that if my team, If I feel today that my team is lazy, entitled, you know, whatever those words are, I have to work on shifting my belief first. That's number one. Number two, you have to go to them with an apology. You have to take full ownership. You have to go before your team and sincerely apologize. And when I say sincerely apologize, that's why it's so important to. To start with us.
That's why it's so important to understand that the culture we have today is a reflection of what we've tolerated up until this point. Yeah, we have to go to them, we have to apologize. We need to go before the team and say, look, up until this point, I apologize, I'VE allowed us to slide into this place. I've allowed us to slide into negativity. I've been focusing on the wrong things. I have been focusing on things that are disempowering. They're not encouraging. And I'm apologizing to you.
I am going to focus on the good. I'm going to be a good finder. But there's going to be some expectations from you as well. We are no longer going to talk about each other behind each other's backs. We're no longer going to look for the bad. We're always going to look for the good. So again, number one, start with the person in the mirror. Number two, go before the team and apologize. And then the third one would be pick one of the things we've already talked about.
You know, either focus on making the things that are implied more explicit or focus on getting alignment around those things that matter most. Your. Your vision, your mission, your values, your expectations. Yeah. Amen. Amen. Well, is this something that needs to be done gradually so no big changes, you know, or is it better just to, you know, identify the problem and dive in? And let's get it straight. I would say the answer depends on you and your temperament as a leader.
So by default, this is a broad general generalization here. But entrepreneurs tend to jump from thing to thing to thing, right? The next big idea is the thing we're going to. We're going to pursue. We're going to run down this path. And so what I caution people to do is if that has been your temperament, in other words, that has been the way you've operated your organization, you're always heading down a path. And then another big idea, we're going to go down this path. Another big idea.
What I want you to do is temper this. I want you to slow this down a bit. So I don't want you just to jump in. Because what's going to happen is everyone's going to say, oh, here comes the next big initiative. This will last about two or three weeks, and then we're on to the next thing. So instead, I need you as a leader to put together a roadmap, put together a plan, make some commitments to yourself that you're willing to uphold and honor. So back to what you. What you explained.
Whether that's a Friday afternoon, you know, all hands on deck type of meeting for, for the plan of action for next week, whether that's, you know, a weekly team meeting, whether that's weekly one on ones, whether that's Weekly education with your team. You need to commit and be serious to committing to whatever those things are that you know are broken in your organization.
And what I can tell you, and you pointed this out earlier, is that oftentimes we believe we're communicating, but we're not. And so you need to increase the frequency of communication with your team. Amen. Amen. What about someone who's working at one of these companies we're talking about, how should they, or how should they approach the boss or department head about implementing changes?
I think first of all, from my perspective, you know, as a leader, I would love for someone to approach me and say, hey, here's some things I've observed. This is not a critique. This is not a criticism. This is just something I've observed. And I would love to work with you and figure out how we can go about shifting this and making this transition and turning our culture into something different, something better. And so I would first see if there's response, a positive response to that.
Because if there's not a positive response to that, then you're going to be fighting an uphill battle. And depending on your level of authority within the organization, it may be a battle that you're never going to win. So I would begin there. If there's receptiveness to that, that message, which in most organizations I would love to believe that there would be positive response to that, then what I would do is I would create the dialogue between you and your boss, you and your leader.
Allow them to feel as if some of these things are their ideas. When we allow other people to feel that they've created the ideas, the buy in is so much better. And then we can come alongside them, help guide and help steer those conversations. So what I would say is, regardless of position, regardless of title in the organization, that is the place to begin. The place to begin is, hey, here's some things I've observed.
I have some ideas around how we could to could work through those and transition. Would you be willing to put some time on the calendar to chat about these things on a, you know, weekly basis for the next few weeks? Yeah. Amen. You know, as you're talking about that, I was thinking back when we had our agency, you know, if we had to make copies of whatever we, you know, the copy place was just down the street, you know, go down there and make, you know, 100 copies.
So we pass them out to all the agents and all this stuff. And you know, you're doing this half a dozen times a week, maybe and, you know, and someone came in and say, you know, instead of paying, I think back then it was like 5 cents a copy or something like that. You know, this is back in the early 90s, 1990s, and they said, I did some checking with the copy store down there. We can rent a copier and have it here in the office for just about the same amount of money we're paying them right now.
And people leave in the office to go make copies a couple times a day, you know, and so. Oh, that's a good idea. Let me, let me see. Check into that. And we end up getting a copy machine in the office. And it cost us probably 20 bucks more a month than what we were paying, but it was saving people from having to walk, you know, four doors down and then come back up and, you know, all that. They were staying right there in the office. Yeah. So for us, that was a good investment. Absolutely.
And that's a great example, though, of, you know, I think that is true for most leaders, not all leaders, but most leaders are open and receptive to ideas that make things operate more smoothly, that benefit the business, that benefit the customers, that benefit the team. Team. But sometimes I think that the people on our teams feel intimidated. They don't feel it's their place, and that's a mistake.
Because you, you know, when we think of leadership, we often by default, we think of a title or a position. Leadership, at the end of the day, is about one thing, and that's influence. And I. I genuinely believe that anybody, regardless of position, can have influence on the entire organization. Amen. Yeah, that's right. That's right. This is, this is so interesting. Do you go over any of this information in your book, Full Circle Marketing? I don't, actually.
So the marketing book is solely about marketing. But. But what's fascinating, Pastor Bob, is this, that, you know, we are a marketing agency. People bring us in because they need help with marketing or websites or whatever the thing may be. But as we get into the organizations, as we start helping them deploy these things, one of the things that we quickly discover is that there's some culture issues within the organizations.
And we know that if we can help them overcome those things, it's going to benefit the organization as a whole, is going to make their marketing that much more effective. Because when customers call or prospective customers call or stop by. Right. The team's going to be on the same page. They're going to be engaged. So the culture piece is something that, you know, just over time, in working with Literally hundreds and hundreds of business owners.
We've seen there's such a need in the marketplace. And as we started the conversation, this is, in my opinion, the ultimate point of leverage in any organization. The power here is so incredibly profound. It's more profound than any marketing campaign. It's more profound, in my opinion, than any leadership conference or leadership seminar you can do. If you can get your culture right, you know, it transforms everything else.
I think it was Gallup who did a survey semi recently and what they found out is that 70% of employees today are disengaged in the workplace. 70%. So you think about that. Two out of three are disengaged. They're showing up not engaged. And as a leader, if you look across your organization, and that is true for your organization, that is the thing to fix, right? That is the place that you must begin. It is the, it is the linchpin. When you fix. It's the fulcrum.
When you fix this one thing, everything else gets easier. Amen. How can you and your agency help business owners and make any positive change in company culture? Yeah. So one of the things that I've recently started is actually just going in and helping them figure out where they currently stand in terms of their culture. I think sometimes because we put culture as this side thing that we're going to get to one day, we don't understand the weight that the culture has on everything else we do.
So what, what I've been doing is going in number one is kind of doing an audit, like, where actually are you? Right. Because we have our preconceived notions. The team, our team members have a different perspective about what our culture actually looks like and feels like. And so ensuring that those two things are on one page is so, so important. And that's the starting point. From there, we can outline a blueprint of, here's the plan of action, here's what you need to do next.
Amen. Amen. And like I said, if before we. Because we're almost out of time, before we, we go, I want to make sure that you give a brief synopsis of your book, Full Circle Marketing for our audience a little bit. Absolutely. So the marketing book comes from a couple of core foundational principles that we base all of our marketing around. I'm not going to dive into all of that just for sake of time here. But what I will say is this, that great marketing really boils down to two things.
Number one, psychology, and number two, math. So psychology, because at the end of the day, marketing's job is to make sales unnecessary. What does that mean? That simply means this, that when we are really good at marketing, when we have effective marketing campaigns, we don't need to try to convince, try to persuade, try to twist people's arms, try to beg them, plead with them, because the marketing has done the job right? The marketing has convinced them. Now, the B part to that is math.
And math's important because, you know, we can't just go out and spend a bunch of money and not hold those dollars accountable. So often we hear people say, you know, I'm spending X dollars on marketing. I just don't know if it's working, if it's not working. If that is you, what I can tell you, without a doubt is that you are doing a bunch of tactical things, right? You may be doing some Facebook, you may be doing some SEO, you may be doing radio, television, you name it.
You may be doing a bunch of things, but you don't have an overarching strategy that brings all of these things together and has them working in a synergistic way. Right? They're just random things. None of them are pulling together. And so we see this time and time again where it's like, we're spending a bunch of money, we're doing a bunch of things, but we just don't know what's working or if it's working. So psychology and math are the core of what's in the book.
And it really just walks through, you know, kind of two different marketing principles and how to apply them in your organization. Amen. Amen. That's good. It's a great book, too. It's a great book. So how can someone order a copy of your book, Full Circuit Growth Marketing. I take it it's on Amazon, correct? It is. That's the simplest place. It's on, you know, most of the online retailers. Amazon's probably the simplest for most people. All right.
And like I said, Wayne, it's been so interesting. If someone has a question or they'd like to get in touch with you to discuss their company culture, SEO or marketing, maybe even do an interview like this. How can they do that? How can someone get in touch with you? Yeah. So two things. Number one, our website, uglymug, marketing.com, all of our social channels are there email addresses, are there phone number, contact form?
So there's plenty of ways there that they can get in touch or they can email me directly. And that's just Wayne atUgly Mug Marketing dot com. Amen. Amen. I'll put links all this in the show notes below. Folks, I pray you got a lot of great information from our interview today with Wayne Mullins and that's going to help you develop a better culture climate in your business.
I mean, I know somebody out there had their eyes open to some things that Wayne was sharing today that will positively impact their business going forward. I just know that and that was the purpose of the inter interview. Amen. I heard you. Drop down the show notes. Reach out to Wade Mullins and his team over at Ugly Mug Marketing. You will not be disappointed with the results you receive and the results you achieve.
Praise God. Just drop down below in the show notes, click the links right there. And don't forget to order a copy of Wayne's book Full Circle Marketing. This book will transform your marketing and turn your customers into evangelists. Bring it up. That's just like the book cover says. Amen. Drop down the shows, click the links right there. Wayne, I want to thank you again for taking the time already busy schedule to come back on and visit with us today. I do appreciate it brother.
Thank you so much for the great chat as always and I appreciate your time. Amen folks. That's all the time we have for today for Wayne Wallace, myself, Pastor Bob Remini to be blessed in all that you do. You have been listening to the Faith Based Business Podcast with Pastor Bob Thibodeau. We have appreciate you as a listener and fellow believer and want to encourage you in your entrepreneurial efforts.
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