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[0:00:02] Female Voice: Welcome to the Triple Bottom Line, where we reveal how today’s business leaders are reaching a new level of success with a people-planet-profit approach. And here is your host, Taylor Martin!
Taylor Martin: Hello, again! Welcome back to the Triple Bottom Line. I have today a very special guest, a client of Design Positive, Michael Kurland, the CEO of Branded Group. You may think, “Oh, what's this self-promotional thing going on here?” But it's not that at all! And the reason why is because Branded Group came to us, Design Positive, like I said, about six years ago. They were just starting out literally from nothing. I spoke with Mike Kurland about his vision for the company, and there was something about the guy that just really resonated with me. I have been there from the beginning until they hit Inc. 500 list, and I have had a front row seat at watching this unfold. And I got to tell you, how they did it. I was like, “This is a story that so many small businesses need to have a front row seat at and to understand.” So, I'm extremely happy to have Michael Kurland, the CEO of Branded Group, on the Triple Bottom Line to tell his success story about how they went from zero to Inc. 500 list. And I don't mean just, like, you know, barely making it into the Inc. 500 list. They made it to 311 from that in five years. That to me was just a huge accomplishment. And so, Mike, I'd like to introduce you to everybody who's listening. And if you wouldn't mind, just tell a little bit about yourself, your background, and a little bit about Branded Group.
Michael Kurland: Sure, Taylor. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for the kind words. Before I get into who I am and what I do, I'm going to do what I always do and be authentic and tell your listening audience. And this is not a plug and you didn't know I was going to say this… But the best man in the business.
Taylor Martin: Ohhh, boy!
Michael Kurland: Nailed our website on the first try with… I mean, I had to fill out a lot of painstaking questionnaires, but it was all worth it because you got my vision on the first try way back in 2014. And we still utilize that logo to this day. You've been with us for all six years. We wouldn't be where we are without you and your marketing efforts. So, anyone listening to this, if you have marketing needs and you don't hire this man, I will say that is a mistake.
But that being said, thank you for my introduction. I want to tell you a little bit about me. So, my name is Michael Kurland. I have a company called Branded Group, and we are a facilities management company. And what does that mean? Nobody ever knows. So, basically, we're a brokerage for facilities management for retail, restaurant, anything brick and mortar these days, which during these times is getting a little bit less and less, but we're still managing to thrive out there. So, we go in, and we hire a plumber to fix a toilet for someone like Apple. They'll hire us as the middleman, and we'll hire the plumber in whatever small town that Apple store might be in. So, that's what we do.
My background is I started off in retail facilities management in 2004, working for a company called Jones Apparel Group. And they are no longer in business, but I ran 333 facilities across the nation for them, fixing any of their issues from HVAC to plumbing by hiring third-party or direct to the tradespeople. And then I left there after three years and went to work for another company similar to mine. Was there for seven years. Learned everything I needed to know about both sides of the industry. At the end of 2013, I was unceremoniously let go for whatever the reasons may be. And I just kept saying to myself, “I can do this better. We can do this better.” So, like I said, I learned all the good stuff. I also learned all the bad stuff. And I decided… I had just gotten divorced at the time, and I decided to uproot my entire life even more, move across country from Long Island, New York to Southern California. And, you know, best decision I ever made. I've been here for six years. Like you said, got an Inc. 500 listed company. I love what I'm doing every day and really been able to settle into what I love most about being an entrepreneur, which is driving culture. So, that's a little bit about me.
Taylor Martin: That's awesome, man. Still blown away about in five years what you guys have accomplished. You mentioned the website that we did for you guys. One of the things that is very new for us is that, you know, companies want to have a new website. And we talked about the marketing aspect of it, and rightfully so, everybody's got to sell a product or a service or whatever it is that they're doing. You know, when you guys came to the table, it was actually a jolt to us though because we do the same thing in and out, in and out, in and out of all of these different clients. And then you guys came to us and said, you know, "We want to really promote our culture." And to be quite honest, I was like, "Yeah. Yeah. Okay, Yeah, I get it." And then we started to roll into it and then you're like, "No. We really want to do it. We really want to push our culture forward and into the forefront of what we're communicating." And when we sat down and had… I think it was like our second or third intense meeting and questionnaire, you know, results and discovery, it was then that I really got the grasp of the magnitude of what you were trying to do and how you were trying to do it. And then once we got our heads wrapped around that, that really pushed us forward. And that was the first time that we've ever had a website solely focused so much so on really promoting the brand culture- the culture of the company- as the marketing point of a company.
[0:05:35] It's like Zappos, you know… The CEO of Zappos said that "I don't really want to create a business that sells shoes. I want to create the number one customer service company in the world that just happens to sell shoes." And I kind of feel like we did that. You know, we really built the website around the different types of audiences that come to your website, and we served up how your culture produces better for your clients, your vendors, and then better for your team members- your employees. You know, we've never done something quite like that before, and I'm extremely happy with the end product. And I’m extremely happy that, you know, the way we designed it that you're able to build all these really, you know micro landing pages that can talk about anything really quickly and rapidly the way that coding was done. But I digress.
So, what I wanted to know is, like, how did the Be Better Program come about when you decided you wanted to start the program and get like a culture around that? How did it come to light, you know? What were the components that made it just right? Did you create the company values at the same time or was like that the… Did you start there and then a mission statement and then get to the Be Better Program? I mean, walk us through how that journey happened.
Michael Kurland: Sure. The first year we were in business was 2014 and, you know, we did exceptionally well for a first-year startup. We turned a profit. You know, it was me and one of my business partners, Kira. And we had hired a couple of employees. We probably had about five or six by the end of 2014. We started in February of 2014, so we almost had a full year run at it. And so, we had about five or six employees by the end of the year. We turned a profit. And at the end of the year, I'm reflecting on what went right, what went wrong, and I just had this hole in my soul, I guess. We turned this profit, but I was like, “What am I doing? What kind of legacy am I leaving on this earth as a facilities management company for retailers and restaurants? Like, who's going to remember that? Who's going to remember what we've done?” And I just wanted to stand for more. So that's where we came up with, actually with Jennifer Bernheim, who you know well, who is our PR firm. And we came up with the One for One Program.
We decided we would donate one minute of service time to… At the time, it was only Habitat for Humanity of Southern California because I had had a link with them in college. I had done all my philanthropy work for my fraternity with Habitat for Humanity of Lynchburg, Virginia, and I had a great experience there. So, it just made sense. You know, we're a facilities management and construction company. Habitat, you're doing construction, painting, you know, on a really small scale. You're, you know, not doing anything crazy, but you're doing, like, home improvement stuff for a lot of people that either can't do it or you're helping build homes for people that deserve it. We decided to donate a minute at a time through our own employees that we were going to pay for, for every service call we completed. That was very long-winded, but really everything started spawning from there, you know? We had the tagline of Be Better, and we knew what we wanted to… Like, we just wanted to be better to our clients, our employees, our subcontractors, but how? Right? So, we started to get into the how after year one. And that's like I said, that's where the One for One Program came from. And then it's just, you know, exponentially grown from there. We actually can't even call it the One for One program anymore because we still donate time to Habitat for Humanity of Southern California, Orange County. We also have linked up with Suffolk County, New York because we have employees there. We also work with Second Harvest Food Pantry of Orange County, California, and Orange Coastkeepers, which is a beach cleanup in Orange County as well. So, it's morphed into all these other great nonprofits that we donate time to, but we can't do… We can’t call it the One for One anymore because we don't donate a minute of time for every service call completed because we've grown so exponentially, that we would have to hire people full-time just to do service work to keep up with the amount of service calls that we do, which is a good problem to have. So, you know, we just wanted to keep growing and that's where it spawned from.
Taylor Martin: It's interesting. Like you mentioned, you know, your vision is, “Branded Group’s philosophy for delivering on our vision is simple…” And I'm reading this from your website. “Be Better!” and it says, “We accomplished this with a clear set of core values to help us deliver on our Be Better experience. Build a conscious business to inspire future humanitarian leaders.” That is so concise, so simple, but so incredibly powerful. Can you explain a little bit about that? How that came?
[0:10:17] Michael Kurland: So, that was the end of year one. The end of year two, we were having a bit of an employee morale problem. Because anyone who has ever worked in a facility management company, it's not a call center, but it's very similar where you're fielding calls from your client. You're, you know, calling the actual location to verify the problems and then you're calling a technician in whatever that trade is to book the problem and then you’re just… It's a lot of organization and a lot of phone calls. And it's not a fun job, and it's high stress because very thankless. At the end of the day, if you do it fastest, cheapest and best, that's your job. And if you don't do it fastest, cheapest, best then you're getting yelled at by somebody. So, there's never, like, "You did a great job." And, you know, there's exceptions to the rule. You're going to get kudos. But, for the most part, you're doing your job and you kill it and you're still… No one says anything. You do your job. Like, you have a bad day, and you're getting crucified for it. So, the employees were having a tough time dealing with that, and I needed to give them more, right? So, we sat down and decided we needed to do an employee survey. So, we engaged the employees at the time to come up with our values. And so, they put all these Be Dedicated, Be Altruistic, Be Honest, Be Adaptable, Be Humble and Be Better down on paper. And we, as an executive team, voted on which ones were the ones I just said out loud. And there were probably 20 others that they all came up with and then we started coming up with, like, what was our mission statement, which is what you just read, or our vision. And that was, like, put together by all of the employees at the time. So, they had skin in the game and that's really what, you know, brought it to the next level at Branded Group, having them be able to put their input into what they wanted their company to be, as well as our overarching vision of being better. Well, what did that mean to them? This is what we came up with. So, it was a great, great experience. And I highly recommend to anyone who owns a company, big or small, to put an employee survey together for your employees, and ask them what's important to them. Because these are the lifeblood of your company; these are the people that are out there- the worker bees- that are working so hard to make you successful. And to know what's important to them is so important, especially being that we have almost an 85% millennial employee structure, knowing what's important to them, and it's not just money. It's being able to give back. It's having a higher purpose for when they go to work every day.
Taylor Martin: I think that's amazing on so many levels. You know, the fact that the employees were the ones that helped define it. I mean, talk about having skin in the game. I was going to ask you, like, how did the employees react to it or how hard it was to implement it, you know? How hard was it to get everybody on board? But if they're the ones coming up with the wording and they're the ones that are helping craft it, I mean, that's awesome!
So, what about how it evolved over time? And we're talking about… I think you said year two or three, right? I mean in year two you did that and then year three, four, and five. I mean, how did that evolve over time? You know, talk about the tool belt. You know, our listeners have no idea what that is. And I can tell them really quickly. It's basically a physical representation of the values and once an employee gets to master one of those values, they get a little tool that goes into the tool belt. And I know I'm probably doing a little disservice and the employees are probably hating me for that. [Laughing] So, Mike, why don't you just take off where I left off and give a little bit more clarity on that.
Michael Kurland: Yeah. So, after the first year or the second year where we started implementing the One for One Program, the team was getting out there. They were giving back. And you've definitely volunteered before. You know it's a little high you get when you do a good deed, if you will. So, they were getting their highs for going out and fixing homes with Habitat. And as that grew and then, you know, we did the survey, and they were able to build the values. And then once we got the values in place, we really wanted to take it to the next step, which was, like you just alluded to, Be Better Awards. And it was something that they can earn over the course of time. And so, for each value, they were given a task that they had to complete, and when they completed their whole tool belt… So, for being dedicated, they had to demonstrate loyalty to colleagues and customers. And the way they got this is when an employee received positive feedback for superior service from a customer. So, if, you know, one day they were working on a job for Apple, and the facility manager said, "Hey. You know, Carly did a great job. She was really on top of it, so she got her tool for that." And, you know, there was one for Be Dedicated, Be Honest, Be Humble, Be Altruistic, Be Adaptable, and then Be Better.
[0:15:04] Once they completed their tool belt… And it took some time. You know, there was over 20 hours of community service they had to complete. They'd watch a bunch of TED talks and write an essay on it. And this was totally… They didn't have to do this. This is, you know, a voluntary program. If you wanted to be a part of the culture, you could be a part of the culture. And if you didn't want to be a part of the culture, no big deal. Without even pushing the program when we released it, I'd say 70% of the employees all got some sort of something for their tool belt within the first three months. And, you know, at this point, all of the executive management team has completed it. Anyone who is in a leadership role has completed it. And when people join up, it's part of the interview process now. We're talking about the culture; we're talking about, you know, the awards program. You get a dinner with the executive management team or a happy hour. It's a pretty fun thing for the employees. And that was probably about four years ago, and it's even morphed further. This program still exists, but within the last couple of years, we've also released the CEO Inner Circle and a couple of other programs where the employees can take it even a step further by getting, like, great praise from their colleagues or their clientele. And if they do enough to reach the CEO Inner Circle Award, they actually get a trip to… I believe this year it was going to be Cancun. So, you know, we're stepping up our game in our awards program, and they're stepping up their game trying to get these awards. And it’s a positive thing that gets them excited and, you know, wants them to give back.
Taylor Martin: Yeah. I mean, I could imagine that that's kind of infectious, you know? And you see your other colleagues, you know, getting into it. I mean, 70% everybody getting on board. That's a lot, especially, you know, not having to really push it, and they're just taking it and running with it. I think that's pretty amazing actually. In terms of how it evolved over time, how were the clients? When did they start to catch wind of this or did they? I mean, when clients do hear about it, what do they say? What do they think?
Michael Kurland: Well, so what we initially did was every year when we had the One for One Program, we would, at the end of the year, release an email to each client saying, you know, "Thank you for your contribution of 10 hours to Habitat for Humanity of Orange County." And we tell them how many service calls we completed for them, how many hours it made a difference for someone. And when they initially got those emails, it was like, "Wow. Thank you for sharing that. I didn't even know." But, you know, and in the course of doing business, these facility managers actually made a difference in somebody's lives, and they didn't even know it. And so, we wanted to make them aware of it because, again, that little high when you get back, right? So…
Taylor Martin: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Michael Kurland: So, that was how we first initially got our clients to be involved. But, you know, over the course of time, and I'll kind of get into where we were with the second website. So, Louis Vuitton is one of our biggest clients, and we've been working with them for probably five years. But they have a bunch of subsidiaries underneath them, and they had this big meeting of the minds in New York in 2018. And they invited us out as one of their top providers to come and speak to the rest of their subsidiaries, which are like Celine and Sephora, and they have a couple of others under that umbrella. So, they asked us to come. They said, "Please make a presentation." And it was a sales pitch for us because they wanted to have all of their suppliers aligned across all of their brands, right? Because they had a lot of disconnects between who everyone was using, and they wanted to streamline it. So, they asked us to come out as being one of their top providers. They told us to make a presentation, and they gave us 30 minutes to go in and make a PowerPoint presentation. And in 2018, we're four years in, and we had just gotten on Inc's top 500 list. And I decided, I don't want to go in there with the same old pitch deck and say, "This is what we do. This is how much it costs, and this is why you should use us because we can do this a little bit better than our competition." I decided, I'm going to differentiate it. I'm going to tell them all the awards that we've won and what we're doing. So, I made an entire pitch deck, with the help of my sales team, of what we had accomplished from a culture and a give back standpoint. So, I talked about how many homes we had helped build through Habitat for Humanity, how we had been on Inc. 500 lists, how we… all the awards that we had won across the last four years. And I left there, and I didn't know how it went because I'd never done something like that. And it was a pretty bold move. And two weeks later, Sephora called me out of the blue and said, "We really loved your presentation. It aligned with everything that we stand for as a company, and we want to do work with you." And that was two years ago. Sephora is now one of our top five accounts, and we are still growing at an exponential rate with them. And that was all through the culture. I didn't talk at all. I mean, they knew what we did in terms of being a facility management company, but I didn't talk about anything other than here's the trades we have and here's the geographical area we cover. It was one slide. Obviously, that was it, and then everything else was about 10 slides of culture. And they called us and now they're our top five account. So, I think it resonates with our clients obviously, right? And we picked up some other clients out of that, but that's the story that always rings true to me. It's, like, the culture drives, and people want to align, you know? They want to do business with companies that are doing good.
[0:20:33] Taylor Martin: Yeah. I could totally understand that. I mean, it’s like, brands are an interesting thing, you know? How we promote a brand, a company, its services, its products. You know, more and more these days, we're getting into the storytelling business so that people can understand and resonate and align with that brand. And that's basically what you just said. You know, you went up there and told your value structure, you know, about what your company stands for. They knew what you did. You didn't have to tell them that. That would actually probably be pretty boring to them. [Laughing] But you went up there and told them the human, you know, side of your business, the social side of your business, the culture side of your business. And, you know, those kinds of stories resonate with people. We're human beings. We're not just robots, you know, looking to buy, buy, buy. That's one of the reasons why, you know, when I started Design Positive- it was actually Vox Verde- I was trying to really promote sustainability. And then I learned more about accessibility for people with, you know, disabilities and making the web more accessible to them. I realized that's really important. I didn't even know that existed! And once I did, it was like, well, you know, Vox Verde really doesn't align with that, and we moved on to Design Positive to encompass more of that and focusing on the Triple Bottom Line back then.
And, you know, a lot of companies like yours may not have even ever heard of the Triple Bottom Line and what that word means. I think that's exactly what you're doing, you know? You're focusing on your community, your people, your employees, your clients. Doing all that, you're also being a profitable company, and you're also doing your part to help out your community. I mean, I've seen the picture of you guys on the beach, you know, cleaning up all the trash and stuff that comes up on the beaches there. I just think that those type of stories really are the messages nowadays. It's about human connection. I'm really kind of thrown aback. I didn't know the details. I didn't know that the employees were the ones that actually, you know, came up with the value where words. I mean, that's pretty awesome. I'm just loving that because, I mean, when they had the ability to do that and then help build it, you know, it's like giving them the tools. And then they're like, “Yeah. Let's build this together.” It's a win-win-win. I mean, there's no losers in that.
So, having said all of this, that we've talked about, what are you most excited about right now in terms of the horizon for, you know, your business and where you want to take it and things like that? Things that you can tell our listeners. Things that are not top secret.
Michael Kurland: Ah! I mean, I'm most excited for the fact that… I run my own podcast as well, which I'm sure we'll talk about later. And I was doing a pre-interview with one of my upcoming guests for the next show that I'm going to do. And we were talking about that same thing, like, what is it that's going down the pike for you guys? And he was saying, you know… He was just in this crazy time, right? Because that's where we are. We were talking about how we, you know, we were both set to have our most productive, profitable year ever. And then the pandemic hit, right? So, what is it that, you know, is keeping him going during the day? And he said he's enjoying, you know, managing in this difficult time because it's really testing his capabilities as a leader. He's a CEO as well and that really resonated with me. So, I think just, like, sharpening my tools to, like, get through this. Because if you get through this, right? And we're coming through this pretty well. You know, we're doing okay. We're not where we were. We're not going to have the record year we thought we were going to have, but we're going to be okay. And it's really, you know, taught us how to manage in the hard times.
Taylor Martin: Yeah. I mean, being okay is actually being great [Laughing] right about it now.
Michael Kurland: Yeah. For sure! It’s showing us that when we do become, on the other side of this, we're going to be in a much better place because we've just sharpened our tools as managers. For Branded Group in general, I mean, we… The goal right now is to bring all the employees back from furlough. And I know we didn't talk about that a lot. We definitely have a couple still on furlough through the pandemic as we had to figure out where things were going. And so, I actually hired a new salesperson, a third salesperson, to help us get through that. Because I figured if I can't bring them back with the current clientele that we have because we're not organically growing, then I think we're going to try and sell more to new clients. And make up for that loss and bring in the work so that I can bring back the people that are so important to me and at Branded Group. So, that's what's on the horizon for the next couple of months.
[0:25:06] Taylor Martin: Yeah. That's a pain point a lot of companies are having is the employees that are on furlough. You know, they're, like, on the sidelines, just sitting there. And, you know, companies are dying to bring them back, but it's not always the case right now. You know, we have a client in California that has been closed, that's a restaurant. They're opening tomorrow for the first time in four months. And this restaurant has never been closed in 86 years of business. It's never been closed ever.
Michael Kurland: Wow!
Taylor Martin: It's open every day. [Laughing] So, yeah. It was a big shift for them, and they are extremely excited. But, you know, they had to do a lot of hurdles. They had to jump a lot of hurdles to be able to be opening tomorrow. So, it’s a big deal for them.
So, how can people follow Michael Kurland and get to know more about you? You know, you mentioned your podcast. Tell us a little bit about that and what you're doing with that and how others can follow you.
Michael Kurland: Well, we're doing the Be Better podcast with Michael Kurland. Obviously, we need to have you on in the near future, and we will set that up. But it was the next step… So, I’ve been asked to be on a lot of podcasts over the course of the last couple of years, and I’m always very humbled when I do get asked. So, thank you for having me on yours. And I started seeing people in, like, what they were doing. They were doing podcasts and then they were taking it to the next level, which was writing a book about their podcasts. And then they took it to the next level, which is public speaking engagements.
So, back to Jennifer Bernheim and her PR company. We were talking, like, what's the next step for Michael Kurland? What's the next step for me? And it was just a natural fit to start talking about culture on the Be Better podcast. So, that's what's on the current horizon. I've just started working on my book as well. It's about culture and entrepreneurship, shockingly. That hopefully will be out sometime in 2021. And then if it's a hit and people like it and people want to want to hear more from me, hopefully we can do some public speaking engagements. I do like to say, I think I'm positioned as an expert on culture and entrepreneurship, mostly culture, company culture. So, hopefully, that resonates with some people out there and they like it. And someone besides just my mother reads the book, so…
Taylor Martin: [Laughing]Always mom! Mom is always reading!
Michal Kurland: [Laughing]
Taylor Martin: You know, I have been listening to your podcast, and I really enjoy, you know, getting the inside scoop from people. And, you know, like, on your podcast, you are pulling out the stories from people about what they're doing. I mean, I loved the one with John Thomas. I've known John for many years, hearing about how Be Better actually became a word. When I mean Be Better to everybody, it's #BeBetter. One word. How that came about kind of made me laugh but knowing John, it made sense to me.
[Both Laughing]
Michael Kurland: Absolutely. It was a good story. It was a good time in life. You know, you look back on those times, and I got a lot of gratitude that that guy came into my life. He actually brought you into my life, and we've been on the upswing ever since.
Taylor Martin: So, thank you, John! [Laughing]
Michael Kurland: Thank you, John. Thank you, Taylor. Yes. For sure.
Taylor Martin: Well, I hope everybody got something out of today's podcast. If you want to follow Michael Kurland, you can follow his Be Better podcast or just #BeBetter just about anywhere in the world. And you're going to be able to find the Branded Group talking about something that they're doing for their local community, for their employees, for their vendors, or for their clients. They're out there mixing it up and making a lot of things better.
And I got to tell you, the Be Better thing when I first heard it, I was like, "What does that mean?" and I got to tell you, after seeing it and being around it, it gets inside you. And you start to think about things, like, “How can I be better in doing what I do?” And then you start to focus your attention on whatever it is that you do; it is effective! It really makes you kind of step back and start looking at things how I can make things better. I mean, it’s just a simple little Be Better statement, but it is a very moving word. And I want to thank you, Mike, for being on today's podcast and for sharing your story with everybody. And I really hope everyone had a chance to listen in and get some golden nuggets because there was plenty in there. So, thank you, Mike!
Michael Kurland: Thank you, Taylor. I appreciate it.
Taylor Martin: Alright. Over and out everybody!
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Female Voice: Thanks for tuning into the Triple Bottom Line. Your host, Taylor Martin, is founder and Chief Creative of Design Positive, a strategic branding and accessibility agency. Interested in being interviewed on our podcast? Then visit designpositive.co and fill out our contact form. If you enjoyed today’s podcast, we would appreciate a review on Apple podcasts or whatever provider you are logging in from. This podcast is prepared by Design Positive and is not associated with any other entity. We look forward to having you back for another installment of the Triple Bottom Line.
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