The School of Greatness - 831 Cultivate the Right Culture

Episode Date: August 2, 2019

TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR NARRATIVE. What stories are you telling? The ones you repeat will end up shaping your life. When you’re building a work culture, storytelling is key. They will determine how employees behave. They will shape the narratives they tell themselves about their coworkers. And they will inspire them to work even harder. How can you harness the power of storytelling to create an ideal environment for you and your company? For this Five Minute Friday, I revisited a conversation I had with Bryan Johnson where he shared how he used town hall meetings, stories, and unconventional hiring methods to make his ideal work culture. Bryan Johnson is the founder of Kernel, OS Fund and Braintree. In 2013, he sold Braintree to Paypal for $800 million. Bryan set a high standard for his employees that let them know they had to be at the top of their game at all times. Learn how to build an amazing work culture on Episode 831. In This Episode You Will Learn: How to communicate your vision to your team (02:30) The interesting job ad Bryan placed to find employees (2:45) Why Bryan used Town Hall meetings at work (04:00) How storytelling is key for the culture you want to build (5:15) If you enjoyed this episode, check out the video, show notes and more at http://www.lewishowes.com/831

This is 5-Minute Friday! Welcome everyone to today's episode. We have a fantastic guest on today. His name is Brian Johnson and he lived in Ecuador for two years in his early 20s and became inspired to devote his life to improving the lives of others. In January 2007, he founded a company called Braintree, which was twice named one of the fastest growing companies in America by Inc. Magazine.

Then in 2013, eBay and PayPal bought Braintree for $800 million in cash. In October 2014, he launched the OS Fund, which is investing in world-changing technologies that promise to rewrite the operating systems of life. He's an outdoor enthusiast, pilot, children's book author, and has climbed some of the tallest mountains in the world. He's a father, an all-around incredible human being. We set the tone internally that we wanted the very best people, that we just didn't have a safety net internally. If someone wasn't up to par with what they were supposed to do, we didn't have a training program to help them. We didn't have another department to shift them. We just said, go out and be awesome, and we want people to praise you and write you love letters. And so we did small things.

For example, I would post job ads on Craigslist, and I would put on the very top, if you refer someone for this position, I will pay you $5,000. Because my first assumption was if you're reading the job ad, you're probably not the person I want to hire. Which was – I mean all irony aside, I was a guy looking on a job ad a while back myself, but the most exceptional people are typically satisfied with their job. And so then I would list out, please do not apply if, and we'd try to list out characteristics that weren't consistent with our environment that we'd do, please do apply if. But the goal was we wanted the very best people to jump out of their chairs and say, yes, like, this is it. This is where I want to work. And so we tried to build on that culture where everyone felt that they were working with

someone who was just as exceptional as them. That's amazing. And how many employees did you end up having? I believe it was around 150 or so at the time of acquisition. Okay. Wow. What was the biggest challenge running a company of 150 employees for you when previously it looks like you were running smaller companies than that? Was there a challenge when you scaled it to that level or was it fine for you? No, it was perpetually a challenge. I mean, constantly a challenge. So I learned a couple of lessons I thought were useful. One is that everybody always has a pebble in their shoe.

Everyone's always upset about something, a relationship, a process, a job, responsibility, like whatever. And so I did these weekly town hall meetings where we'd get together and I didn't want to talk about – I mean I'd do a quick company update. But then I just wanted to spend time talking about how people felt about the company, what was bothering them, what were they excited about. And I would just let this awkward silence sit. And I would invite – because I knew what the scuttlebutt was. I knew what people were worried about. I knew what people were talking about in the hushed whispers. But we'd finally get it out on the table, and we'd talk about really honest, true stuff. And it was like group therapy.

And we got it on the table, and we established this culture of true stuff. And it was like group therapy. And we got it on the table and we established this culture of true transparency. And it just set the tone for how we could weather the challenges together because we inevitably had so many challenges, but our ability to maintain an honest relationship was really the glue that allowed us to weather it and go through all the challenges that you inevitably do growing a company to that size. So do you recommend any company, you company, a thousand employees or five employees, do a town hall meeting? Did you do it once a week? And do you recommend that anyone should do this? Well, I mean, at a certain size, I can't speak from experience once you get to a thousand or two thousand or five thousand. But I will say that one of the biggest government agencies that works on keeping the country secure came in and toured the company one time, and they had this problem where they called it the Steve problem.

And there was this guy within the organization, Steve, that was a real jerk. He was rude to people, and he stomped on them, and he pushed people down on his way up, and he kept on getting promoted. him and he pushed people down on his way up and he kept on getting promoted and so a whole bunch people like like little steves popped up like everybody wanted to be like steve because that was the type of personality people wanted they saw that was what was getting rewarded and so i'd spent a lot of time telling stories about people inside a brain tree who went above and beyond the call of duty and who got people to write them love letters because they were so exceptional what they did because i think storytelling was a big part part of identifying people who truly exemplified it and keeping that as the key metric for what kind of culture you want to build. I mean, it's the narratives you create, it's the stories you tell, and it's repeating that

again and again and again to reinforce who you are, what you stand for. And I think those things can be done at all levels because you set the tone on what is desirable and undesirable behaviors. The free book I'm giving away right now, it's called The Millionaire Morning. It includes some of my best tips for starting off your day with a millionaire mindset. Get your free copy at themillionairemorning.com and just pay shipping. Again, check it out right now, themillionairemorning.com.