rituals are the part of your culture that people can witness and see and like , attach meaning to and say I was there when they talked about that . It doesn't have to be these big , well-planned out things . It possibly is something you've already accidentally done , it's just not repeated at a predictable rhythm .
If you don't have these , or maybe you feel like they could be better or more intentional , we want you to look around and say what is a part of our culture ? Because it's happening on accident , so let's make it happen on purpose .
Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast . Today is Maven Monday . I'm your host , brandon Welch , and I'm joined by Caleb, Guatemala, Agee .
Hey Guatemala . Guatemala Tell us about guatemala uh well , it is a country in central america . Um , I had the pleasure of going there a couple years ago now . Um , my grandma lives there . Founded an orphanage um gosh 15 or 20 years ago , I don't even know how old it is now .
And she's lived there for a long time , and so it is the worst place in the world for women and children to live because of their justice system , and so if you're curious about that , it is James Project of Latin America . You can go check that out . I think I don't remember the . It's the org , but I can't remember the exact .
URL yeah , because you are super generous awesome prosperous folk listening to this prosperous podcast you're going to go do that , jamesprojectoflatinamericaorg . I think so . Go give some money to this cause . I'll let you read more about it .
Didn't plan on endorsing that today . Yeah , that was not a plan .
It is sincerely the Lord's work in its finest .
Yeah , and it's a very , very cool thing they're doing . It's shifted from if we're going to sidetrack for a second it's shifted from more of an orphanage thing to it's actually more of a foster care model . Okay , because a lot of orphanages were not a great .
It's just long-term , indefinite care and so the goal is to get kids back with an actual adult in their life instead of being in a big group home and so . But for those months that they're there , they get their lives changed , which is pretty cool , love it .
Yeah , well , hey , speaking of big things , this is the place where we help you conquer your big dreams by eliminating waste and advertising so you can grow your business , and then achieving that big dream .
You see what I did there .
It's a big dream .
That was a B minus transition . Big dream sandwich right there .
Big dream sandwich . But that is why we're here . That's why we're here every Monday and we are unpacking the essence of why small businesses grow , and we're doing that through marketing . We're doing that through culture . Today , we're going to talk about something just slightly different . This is a leverage on all things that you do .
If you do these things we're going to talk about today , I promise you your marketing will work better like magic . You won't have to change a single thing in your budget . You won't have to change a single click or platform or ad , and everything will just work better , because it is about people and there are some tie-ins to marketing .
But we're going to talk about rituals and rhythm . What is the underflowing current in your business ? And these are things you can do as the leader to put your team in this predictable feel-good extra output , tying the thing to a bigger thing than just the work you do .
And I don't care if you are cleaning trash cans for a living or building orphanages or running a ministry or selling roofs or doing legal services . This works at all levels and it's borrowed from some of the highest and best run organizations in the world .
We're going to talk about some real studies where , just by doing these ritualistic things we're going to talk about today . I'm talking 30 , 40 , 50% increases in profitability .
Yeah , and I think the- .
Byproduct , by the way .
Yeah yeah . Profitability is a by-product , it is a , it's a bonus , the we'll talk about the primary product , which is how it affects your team , your team members . Um , I think the danger when you look at these things is that you can see it as maybe a waste of time . You can see these rituals as um boring or annoying .
Hope you're probably doing them wrong . If that's what it is , there will be days that you show up for that ritual and it's like I don't really want to do this today , but you need to show up anyways and do it anyways and um , but they , they change things .
If you think about your own personal life , uh , unless you eat the right things every day , show up to the gym consistently . Read the right books or avoid the right amount of poison or whatever you won't be a healthy human , you won't have progress toward the things you know , the growth you want to see as a person .
The same is true with your team , with your organization , your kids , your marriage .
Yes , your friendships .
You've got to show up , and you've got to do it on the regular . You can't just randomly find it , and so that's what we're going to talk to you about today .
On the other end . If you look at these things as hacks , I think you'll miss the mark completely . You'll miss the impact and really the opportunity to build something awesome . So what in the heck are we talking about with rituals ? What is this ?
We have , like you know , robes and essence , or what do they call those Incense not essence Incense , the essence of incense , emerald essence .
yeah yeah , get a guitar out and play kumbaya around a fire .
I mean maybe . Maybe we may have been known to do that a time or two . Yeah . So what the heck are we talking about with rituals ? What is a ritual , Mr Caleb Agee ? Yeah .
So most of the time , I think , when you think of rituals which is why we made the joke just a second ago about kumbaya and- .
Robes .
And robes and you get these images in your head because mostly the definition of it has to do with religious procedure . It's like , if you want a big word , liturgical , which is the common practices that you have inside of maybe a religious service .
It's a $13 word . Yeah , there you go . You know you can count on Caleb for a $13 word , that's right .
No more . I can't give you change for anything else . But yeah , so some definitions an established or prescribed procedure for a religious or other rite , a system or collection of religious or other rights , observance of set forms of public worship . So that's what we typically think about and those are some of the most common denotations the dictionary definition .
Is that my buddy Webster there ?
That's my buddy dictionarycom . Dictionarycom the app .
So I think what we're talking about is more what Chip Conley . He was like a hotel founder . I found this just in my study of rituals . He says rituals are the invisible architecture of brand loyalty . When you think about brand , we think often outward what does the world see ?
But arguably way more important and way more foundational , I don't know that you can have a healthy outward brand if you don't have a healthy inward brand . He says rituals are the invisible architecture of brand loyalty .
Another guy from IBM , ceo of a little company called IBM , said culture is not just one aspect of the game , it is the game and rituals are how culture becomes visible . So these guys are connecting it to culture . And then I think what we defined it as just writing down something more practical .
A ritual is a repeatable , intentional action that reinforces a shared value , belief or identity within a group . And the group we're talking about is your company , your organization , your thing that you're leading .
Yeah .
And so we all do rituals to some degree every day , right we ? Have you know teeth brushing , that would be a good one .
Hopefully , yeah .
Hopefully . Do you have a ritual with your wife and kids before you leave the house ?
Yeah , I mean I always make the coffee first and then Sierra and I make bagels . That's the next thing . Wow , it's whole wheat , bagels and cream cheese . And then we split up and have separate quiet time . Oh , love it . It's kind of I don't know why . I like the dinner table . She likes to sit on the couch , so that's like our own little quiet time .
We try to get up before the kids . Then the kids wake up , then we get ready . Not so quiet time . So not so quiet time . So , yes , there's a morning routine , and the same is true in the evening .
Yeah .
There are those set up and tear down of the day to set you up for it .
Yeah , love the quiet time . One Val and I both did the same thing in our own ways . I try to have a meaningful conversation with each kid before .
I leave the house , yeah .
There's some days that has to be earlier than they're up , but either you know , either morning or evening we have some like affirmation statements . We read back to them .
Yeah .
And that's just a really powerful thing we've done since before they could talk .
Yeah , I'm not allowed to leave without at least saying goodbye and giving a hug . Yeah , everybody could talk . Yeah , I'm not allowed to leave without uh at least saying goodbye and giving a hug .
Yeah , everybody gets a hug and kiss on the way out , yeah and if I , if I , if they feel like I didn't do it properly , um , they're running out in their pjs through the , you know , through the garage , you know , and like all right buddy , let's go , you know yes , and that .
so in that same way , uh , rituals help people know who they are and remind them what they're a part of . And would there be any more useful virtue in your business than people knowing why they're coming to work , to give you the hours of their life ? And that's what we're talking about here .
So a lot of people listening to this podcast , you do a lot of this stuff , right , yeah , you . It was either just a byproduct of what happened when you were small and it continued . You have some regular celebrations , some regular ways of doing things .
I think Randy Mays says culture is the way things are done around here , and so we're kind of talking about that . But what if we added just a little bit more intention to it and possibly made it a little more fun , a little more sticky , and we're calling that part rhythm , right ? So rituals and rhythm are kind of closely tied .
The ritual is the thing , the act , but the rhythm is how often you ?
do it right Frequency yep .
So culture is not what you say , it's what you repeat . We're talking about creating momentum , reinforcing identity of your company . You don't just work somewhere , you belong to a bigger thing .
You are creating clarity about what's important and then inversely and like , just as a byproduct of that , when you have clarity about what's important , that's accountability to what's socially accepted amongst your peers , whether that be five of them in a small working group or 500 of them in a company .
But I want to ask what are you repeating in your business and give some examples about you know , it could be really small things . We're going to share some stuff from our world and then our clients , but give us some ideas about what it could be .
Yeah , this could show up in you , up in a daily , weekly , monthly ritual . It could be a quarterly ritual . I would encourage you to have definitely some weekly ones . But I think at every level there are different versions of a ritual . So you could have like a daily stand-up meeting in the morning . Go over your list , like Big Rock .
We would have a Big Rockup meeting in the morning . Go over your list , like big rock . Or we used to have like we would have a big rock meeting sometimes in the morning . Um , you could have a weekly all staff meeting or um . You could um a huddle ? Yeah , a little huddle or or sit around the conference table . However that works .
Um you know you can have awards or accolades , so you could , you could , recognize somebody . Um , in a know you can have awards or accolades . So you could , you could recognize somebody um in a specific week you could have um . You know , I would encourage you to like give those things names , like funny names or uh or just you know , go for that .
So , um , we also have . We have a , a gong .
I was literally better mentioned . I'm looking right out our studio window here . Yeah , we have a gong . When something big happens , either personally or professionally , or on the team , or a client had a big win , that gong is going to ring .
Right that gong is going to ring Right , yeah , and people you know what are are probably more than our employees that noticed that Cause it just becomes part of the thing over over a while Like um , I've heard more clients come in and say what is that thing ? Yeah , or , or prospects or people .
A couple of them have copied it and they went and got their own gong , yeah , so you really big gong like really expensive , like a yeah , the full size , the big mallet yeah . Yeah , those guys are huge .
Ours is like a 22-incher , yeah , so you can do celebration rituals , you can do clarity rituals , you can do safety rituals . If you're in some sort of a high-risk environment , you should always , I think , do missional and visual rituals , and Nate can show you one of ours right now . Why are we here today , nate ?
We're here to create a world where entrepreneurs can confidently grow their business without wasting money on advertising . Hey , let's give him a hand . He got it . We didn't even know we were going to do that . Yeah .
But anybody in these four walls , or maybe I don't know . We have about 16 walls .
We have more walls than four , but yeah anybody could do that here .
And then we have six core values . Name a few of them Nate Fill one glass at a time . Yeah , fill one glass at a time . Best friendships are forged around fires and food . Best friendships are forged around fires and food .
Your eyes are asking me right now . Well , the first two should be evident .
You've heard one of them . This podcast has a ritual .
Yep , we believe in saying what needs to be said , even if you don't want to hear it .
Yeah . And the second one is we believe marketers who can't teach you why are just a fancy lie pulled right from our value of being a maven right . And so there are three others that we didn't mention , but those are literally how we start our week . Those bounce off of our walls . We hear each other saying it and it goes back to that .
Rituals are the part of your culture that people can witness and see and like , attach meaning to and say I was there when they talked about that , and so it doesn't have to be these big well-planned out things . It possibly is something you've already accidentally done , it's just not repeated at a predictable rhythm .
Yeah , I think there's , and that's the part that we want to encourage you to do today is look around . If you don't have these or maybe you feel like they could be better or more intentional , we want you to look around and say what is a part of our culture ? Because it's happening on accident , so let's make it happen on purpose .
Yes , what's a part of our culture because it's happening on accident , so let's make it happen on purpose . Yes , what's a part of our culture that reinforces who we are ? that tells other people who they are and find a way to bake those into a regular interval that everybody expects . Everybody knows it's coming and they're excited about it .
Yeah . Most importantly , you don't know , I'm going to ask you this , but can you think of , like , the most visible ritual that literally probably everybody this week has seen in their town from a company that we all know of , the one I'm thinking of . Could you guess it ? Oh gosh Promise , you've been there .
I've been there , mm-hmm , this week .
Mm-hmm , yeah , with you know it's reasonable .
You'd have been there multiple times this week . Wow , I don't know , I don't know .
Maybe , maybe a restaurant this week . Okay , it has a drive through . Yeah , okay , I'm like gosh , I don't know it just immediately comes to mind as rituals Like yeah , of I was like gosh , I don't know it just immediately comes to mind as rituals Like , of course , my pleasure , right , yeah , so , and they have so many other things in their training .
I was really counting on Caleb to make he and I both look like a genius there , yeah .
He really screwed it up . Yeah , he just . But yeah , think of Chick-fil-A . Think of your favorite companies , think of the way people answer their phones . These are rituals , right ? We talked about that last week . Yeah , think of the follow-up touch points you get .
Think of , I mean , cleanliness and just the presentation of your company and the feel and the look and the smell of it is a ritual , right yeah . And what are you doing on purpose to create an obvious sense of who you are , so that you attract the people you want to work with ?
obvious sense of who you are , so that you attract the people you want to work with both side by side in your business and work with as clients , customers and the world that you want to just be a magnet for . So I know some accountants and I love you accountants , I know you're going here , but what does it cost ?
Right , Before you ask that , I'm going to tell you what it gets you , right , Because some people are adding up . Well , this takes a lot of time , or this takes paying hourly employees to be in this room , and we've actually calculated it up we spend tens of thousands of dollars in our company every year on lost time .
On rituals , essentially On really rituals , right .
Yeah , but you might be interested to know that a research from gallup indicated that teams engaging in regular celebrations or traditions of experience have a 19 increase in productivity compared to those without 19 . How would you like to add 19 productivity to your output without spending any more money ? Wow or a very small amount of money right , that's crazy .
Mckinsey and Company revealed that organizations with clearly defined SOPs , which are generally can be ritualistic , outperform their competitors by 31% . I would just like to have a 30% gap on your competitors . That's crazy . It'd be wild , wouldn't ?
it yeah .
Go ahead with the Harvard Business School , harvard Business .
School found that performing group bonding activities , such as regular rituals there's the keyword led to a 16% increase in how meaningful employees judge their work to be .
And isn't that everything ? Yeah , if you don't believe you're doing meaningful work , will you do meaningful work ?
Not on purpose , no , says aye .
Yeah , University of Toronto a few years back kind of looked at this from a different lens . The researchers measured that error-related negativity , what they call ERN , which is basically you're in the rhythm of doing something , so you continue to do it the right way because it's ritualized .
When that's in place , your air-reduced negativity , which is essentially job dissatisfaction , was reduced after subject performed the rituals . In other words , participants were less focused on their mistakes and that helped them stay closer to the moderate level of engagement with their performance under the Yerkes-Dodson law .
So give us some other real examples from we're going to talk about stuff inside our company and then stuff we see people we really like and admire and work with .
Yeah , we already mentioned the gong right , that one actually it's a ritual but it doesn't have a regular interval , so that one I would say maybe is an outlier as far as our rituals go . Some things we do consistently as a team is we always end and start our week with wins . So every Friday everybody sends an email . We get it like a group email .
Everybody replies with their work wins from the week , because guess what ? The weekend erases your brain ? Um , it's actually sleep that does it .
Yeah , we started in our Monday morning meeting and we started in our week . I love that . Yeah , yeah .
And then we , we go over them on Monday , which is pretty cool . Um , we have this guy . This moss ball is uh it's . We named him Edgar . He , uh is . Ha , he has some bald spots . Now it was literally just a piece of decor that we had a designer , uh , that you know , was interior designing our office and brought a bunch of orbs .
I wonder how much we paid for this .
You know , hobby lobby orb , yeah , and like a hundred or like hey , we need something to acknowledge people , and so we grabbed it . And then each week , somebody acknowledges somebody else they saw being a solid rock is what we call it ? Yep , and why ?
is it a solid rock ? Because this is something I just totally improvised . They were like , why is it a moss ball ? And I'm like , well , it's solid rock and it's moss , because a rolling stone doesn't collect moss . So if it's not , a Rolling Stone .
It must be solid , right . It must be covered in moss .
It's a solid rock award . It's been a slide in our Monday morning presentation , or you know ritual for seven or eight , nine years maybe , and uh , yeah , we over , had it last week passes it to the next person and it's just awesome . You . I think , once in a blue moon I get it .
Yeah , you got it .
So some friends of ours do this with a shoe an old shoe , yeah and they have a story as to why it's a shoe . I can't even remember what it is . Yeah , it's an old rusty speaker .
It's like an old 80s converse or something . Yeah , we have a quarterly ritual that we try to do which is called . We call it Frankenmaven Day , that's that we try to do um which is called . We call it Frank and Maven day . Um , that's where we get away , uh , and have like a team . Like team building can be a ritual .
Yeah .
And that's a very intentional . It's not like we just goof around and play , but we also just work . We talk about how our company can be better where it's going and get everybody back in alignment and um . And then also we spent intentional time together , yeah .
We have a lot of clients that have a daily text type ritual with either their sales teams or something like , and just , either you could start out the day with an inspiring quote or an inspiring thought . I love one that my buddy out of St Louis does .
He has , like gosh , he has 14 or 15 branches around the US and they all text in their sales numbers for the day at like 5 o'clock Like how many people they saw , how many deals they closed , and it's just . It creates a little friendly dialogue . Maybe a little banter , yeah , definitely some accountability .
Yeah , because you don't want to be the guy showing up on that text group with goose eggs , yep . And then it gives the business owner really good visibility as to who's happening . Speaking of that guy , he's calling me right now .
It's funny , so you don't have to go religious with this example , but if you're looking for inspiration , do churches do an awesome job . At this Life Church that I'm a part of , there's a Every single message I've been to , whether there's a guest speaker or not . There's just a kind of an affirmation thing you read back at the end of every sermon .
There's also a pretty ritualistic , I guess , flow to some of the things that they do in terms of messaging and cues and things like that .
Yeah .
Yeah , but pastors are really good at that . They should be right .
Yeah Well , and there is security inside of the church or outside of the church . There's security for you as a part of that congregation or organization that you feel like you know what's happening , you feel a part of it , you know what's coming up next , and not in a way that it's boring or a giveaway , but it's also like I know what to expect .
This Monday meeting we're going to have is going to be a lot like the one we had last week , but I'm excited about it because I know what's coming . I think sometimes team staff meetings , it's like we have a joke about family meetings and you can have those , and it's like only when we have bad news or only when we have you know .
It's like , no , that's not the goal . The goal is to make sure that there is a reason for it and that there's . It's good or bad . We're having this meeting .
Yes .
Rain or shine , it's going so .
And you can create some mystery inside the time blocks . You can also throw an Easter egg in there , right yeah ? Sometimes we'll throw in a guest speaker people don't see coming . So I think you understand that . But it's the things you say , it's the things you do . So let's talk about creating your ritual revolution .
I love this idea that you don't need more tactics , you just need more traction , and traction happens when you kind of do the same thing over and over again , right yeah ? So I would encourage you to pick one ritual to start this week either a huddle or a thing you say and be prepared for it , not to stick immediately and don't be one of these .
Well , I tried that . It didn't work . It didn't work because you didn't try it enough .
You didn't stick with it .
That's right . Yeah , give it a name Like call it , we have ours . It's called the Monday morning meeting , that's a really creative name . Or we have the solid rock , or we have the ring . The gong moment or we have fires and food moments . Right , we had the podcast . Right yeah , the Maven Marketing Podcast right .
So give it a name or give it a repeatable phrase , and then I would say these rituals , the lighter they are , the easier they're going to be to repeat . So don't try to climb a mountain . Do something small .
Yeah .
It could be your own internal secret ritual that you just say I'm going to give 10 compliments before 10 am today .
Yeah , that could be great . Wouldn't that be wild ? Yeah , that'd be great . Would that be wild ? Yeah , if you have one that this is really powerful , if you can do it , if you have somebody in your organization , um , who is just on fire about this thing , empower them to lead to lead it .
Or maybe , if you do like a , an accolade like our moss ball that empowers whoever had it last to bring it next . You know , it's like if I got it last week , I'm going to have to name somebody next week and you set the tone off the bat , but also you can empower other people to lead this in a great way .
Love that . So if somebody shadowed your company this week , what would they say you're about based on the rituals and rhythm that you have going on ? Would they even know ? Or would they just be like eh , it's a bunch of people getting together to do work . It's not a good observation if that were to be the case .
And if you're already doing a ritual rhythm that you think would be beneficial to our audience , we would love it if you would put that in the comments . Drop in the comments .
Or your new ritual . Oh yeah , what are you going to do ? Instead , throw that ritual in the comments . Maybe , if you don't have a name for it , we'll comment back and give you some clever names .
Yes , how about five quotes to close us out ?
All right .
We grabbed them . We didn't incorporate them earlier , but very , very smart men and women , reminding us James Clear , this is Caleb's favorite you do not rise to the level of your goals , you fall to the level of your systems .
Aristotle , we are what we repeatedly do . Excellence , then , is not an act , but a habit .
Steve Covey reminds us that the key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule , but to schedule your priorities .
This one's really good . John Maxwell for the win . You'll never change your life until you change something you do daily .
Or weekly , like listening to this podcast .
It's a ritual . You can listen to this podcast every day if you want to , though that's pretty much all you need to do .
Yeah , tony Robbins , of Bring Us Home . It's not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives , it's what we do consistently . So if you're stuck on that , hey , we'd love to help . We'd love to find something that if you're going I'm a recycling company , how do I do a ritual ? It's like we can find one .
Yeah , all my people are in trucks and they drive away from their house every day and I don't know how we would come together for a ritual . There are ways to do these remotely , in different ways . I promise you there's a way .
So love it . Hey , we'll be back here every Monday answering your real life marketing questions , because marketers who can't teach you why are just a fancy lot . I heard a ritual there . Have a great week . There was another one .