Summary:
Guidant Financial is a company that focuses on helping people use retirement funds to buy and start small businesses. They also provide ongoing support as a third-party administrator of 401k plans. The company strongly emphasizes caring for its employees and creating a positive work culture. They send out weekly emails from the CEO, Jeremy, that include value stories, updates on strategic goals, and closing thoughts. They also have a buddy system called 'Partner in Crime' where new employees are paired with a more experienced team member to provide support and guidance. The company values continuous improvement and learning, and they prioritize setting clear expectations and maintaining a strong company culture. Guidant is a fully remote company that prioritizes connection and culture. They focus on creating a positive work environment and recognizing employees for their contributions. They have implemented various strategies to foster connection, such as leadership coffees and virtual connection events. Guidant also emphasizes work-life balance and allows employees to have more time and energy for their personal lives. However, they face challenges in providing affordable healthcare options for their team members. It was an honor to have Jeremy Ames and Cory Sanford on for this episode of Best People: Best Place.
Keywords:
Guidant Financial, retirement funds, small businesses, employee care, work culture, weekly emails, value stories, strategic goals, buddy system, Partner in Crime, continuous improvement, learning, clear expectations, company culture, remote work, connection, culture, recognition, work-life balance, healthcare
Takeaways:
-
Guidant Financial helps people use retirement funds to start small businesses and provides ongoing support as a third-party administrator of 401k plans.
-
The company prioritizes caring for their employees and creating a positive work culture.
-
They send out weekly emails from the CEO that include value stories, updates on strategic goals, and closing thoughts.
-
They have a buddy system called 'Partner in Crime' to provide support and guidance for new employees.
-
Guidant Financial values continuous improvement and learning, and they set clear expectations and maintain a strong company culture. Guidant prioritizes connection and culture in their fully remote company.
-
They have implemented strategies like leadership coffees and virtual connection events to foster connection.
-
Guidant emphasizes work-life balance and allows employees to have more time and energy for their personal lives.
-
Affordable healthcare options are a challenge for the company.
Titles:
-
Weekly Emails and Value Stories
-
The 'Partner in Crime' Buddy System Creating Connection and Culture in a Remote Company
-
Fostering Work-Life Balance
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
because it will record on your computer and my computer.
And then at the end, just don't close out the thing because it will pull it all over toall up line.
And then the other part of it is if for some reason you guys get cut off, just come backon.
(00:21):
It will continue going the way that it's needed.
So cool.
Well, we will get after it.
I'll start it up for us.
All right, everybody.
Welcome to Best People, Best Place.
I am excited to have guided financial here this week.
We have Jeremy, we have Corey, we have both of them on and we are so excited because inthis space, this industry, it's one thing to care about your clients to make sure your
(00:48):
clients are getting the financial benefits of working with you.
But the way you all care about your people and a lot of your people spread out all overthe country, really all over the world is absolutely amazing.
So Corey.
Jeremy, thank you for coming on.
Jeremy, do me a favor, quickly introduce yourself, then we'll jump over to Corey and getto know Corey.
(01:08):
I'm Jeremy, I'm the CEO and co -founder and been doing this for 21 years.
We've helped almost 30 ,000 people get started with their own small business.
Awesome.
And then Corey, introduce yourself real quick.
You bet.
Hi, I'm Cory Sanford.
I'm the vice president of culture and talent at Guidant Financial.
I've been at Guidant over five years and help support our employee base of around 250 teammembers in eight countries.
(01:38):
That's awesome.
Well, Jeremy, give me a quick understanding.
What does what does guided do specifically?
Yeah.
Well, there's two core things we do.
One is we help people use retirement funds to buy and start small companies.
And by nature of doing that, we also end up with ongoing customers that we support as athird party administrator of their 401k plans.
(01:59):
And then also to support those companies will do things like payroll, bookkeeping and tax.
So you can think of it as we help people get initial funding and initial funding fromtheir own retirement plans to start these companies.
And then we do a bunch of the hairy paperwork that's way more complicated than it needsto, because it's all ends in a government form filing or payment.
(02:19):
Got you.
Awesome.
All right.
So when we do this podcast, we break it down into three separate sections.
First is going to be how are you all pouring into the employee specifically?
Then it's going to be how do you pour into the person?
And then finally, what good are you doing in the community?
So neither of you have reviewed many of these or any of these.
(02:40):
I don't even know if you've reviewed any of these, but we're going to share them with youpretty raw.
So
I promise you it literally it's about 15 pages of good stuff.
So you guys did a great job.
And we're just going to ask you kind of what what it is you do now.
The first thing that comes up with being a good employee and what are some of the thingsthat you all do to help Jeremy this is going to come to you because there's something
about weekly emails that you send out that came up multiple times.
(03:02):
They said I love one one of the lines right here.
I love Jeremy's weekly emails usually a life lesson in there along with the transparencyguard or guidance provides everyone.
It's very refreshing.
What are these emails that obviously, again, there's probably five or six responses aboutthese specific emails.
What are these emails you send out?
What's the thought behind them and why would they stand out over a generic email that'ssent out from a CEO?
(03:28):
Well, mostly by length, Matt, because they were very long.
I think the reality is, as we have scaled the company, it's gotten harder and harder tohave relationships with everyone in the business.
And I have both been really inspired by the ability of social media to have an impactwhere you can have a relationship of one to many in a way that can scale.
(03:54):
As well as I was pushed really hard by an old business coach.
coach who said you've got to find a way to consistently be in front of your team andmessaging.
And so what we came up with was a weekly email and I use that weekly email to highlightvalue stories.
So we tell at least three or four stories every week that are.
(04:16):
members living our values and principles in action.
And it gives me sort of ways to.
to give people kudos, but also to tell the stories that matter about how these things showup in real life and in what we do every day.
I usually throw a quote in there.
I can give some updates on where we're at in terms of our strategic corporate rocks.
then I do something that I call closing thoughts, which is usually a story from me that'sreally trying to teach people how to think about our customers, to think about our
(04:46):
business, to think about our values.
And that maybe is what they're talking about in terms of the life lessons.
Cause a lot of times I'm just sharing life lessons that I'm taking away.
taking.
Well, and I think it's something like that.
Whenever I do these podcasts, I want to give things that other people can go, how do I getstarted with that?
So was that something you kind of that developed into this or you started it with a clearunderstanding of what you wanted it to be?
(05:09):
And if you had someone listening who was like, how do I start a weekly email that either Ias the CEO or as the HR director, right?
Or the talent director, whichever level you are, how would you suggest they go about evencreating that framework?
What works?
What did you try that didn't work?
How would you go through that process with them quickly?
Well, my old business coach gave me a template of an email that another one of his clientshad used.
(05:33):
And I went through that and I figured out what did I like or not like about this.
So the closing thought, for example, is something that I added.
I wanted a chance to communicate to the team and be able to do more storytelling.
And it's just sort of evolved from there, but I think the core components are, and what Ileft out was wins.
So.
for me it's wins, it's value stories, it's updates on where we're at in terms of ourstrategic rocks, and then it's some form of closing thought which is storytelling to
(06:01):
connect with the team.
Cool.
And that goes right in another one, Corey, I'm going to ask you this to give aconversation about, but guidance is always supportive of the whole person.
Whenever I have family or personal needs, I can count on the sympathetic ear and supportwhen I'm actually in need.
What that ties back to is another conversation about having accessibility to all referencematerials and how approachable all the people are.
(06:26):
So when it comes to the culture of what you do and how you design it, how are you able todo this?
with people being remote, spread all over the world, but yet still feel valued andexperienced in that high level culture that you all obviously intentionally put into play.
Yeah, that's a great question, Matt.
So a couple of things.
(06:46):
First of all, I just I love hearing that that's some of the response from the team.
We work really, really hard for that.
Part of it comes down to our employer brand.
Right.
The three things that we try to offer all of our team members is an amazing, fully remoteexperience.
We believe we do that really, really well.
Second piece is there is lots of opportunity to grow and advance.
(07:07):
And we do that in a lot of different ways.
We target at least 30 percent of our team.
getting advancements every year.
And we've met that the last three years.
And then the third piece is we just, we believe we hired the best people, the bestteammates, and we really filter for that upfront.
We're really clear about what our values are.
And that's the bulk of our interview process is how well are these people aligned with ourvalues today?
(07:30):
What examples can they share of times they've lived those values in the past?
And we include what I like to call culture champions, people that are already living ourculture, whether they're the hiring manager or not, or just teammates.
They're part of the interview process to help us filter, to continue us hiring greatpeople that are approachable, they're kind, they're patient, they're smart, they're
(07:51):
curious.
And that is a way that we sort of have created the culture and perpetuate the culture isthrough our hiring and training processes.
Alright, so back to you Jeremy, this concept of advancements, right?
It's a pretty obvious, it's a word that people use in their normal life, but you said thatCorey, as if that was like a term that you use as far as what you're structuring.
(08:11):
So there's promotions versus advancements.
Jeremy, how would you differentiate using that word of advancements in your guys'workflow?
Yeah.
So how we define advancements is really two things.
One, it could be a promotion or transfer to a new role, or it could be movement to ahigher level, higher paying level within a given role.
(08:34):
So one of the things we recognize is we didn't want to have a culture where the only wayto grow and continue to progress was to have to go take a different job or progress to a
new role that didn't fit.
We did the whole thing when we were in the early stages where we'd take our very bestperformers and put them in managerial positions and then they would flounder.
(08:55):
So we spent a lot of time creating this secondary advancement path, which is just saying,Hey, if your passion is being really good at this thing that you do, like 401k
administration or bookkeeping, then we're going to give you opportunities to level upwithin that where you can take on more complicated issues.
You can learn more technical things.
You can be supporting more as.
(09:16):
an expert within a given area and still have large social credibility and an ability tosort of move up the compensation ladder.
And so we track those together and to Corey's point, we have a target for it that we'reshooting to hit every single year.
And that's how we stay accountable to it.
(09:54):
That's awesome.
my skills, confidence, and dedications to excellence.
Now, here's why I read that.
That sounds like someone applying for a job.
You
the thing I love most about what you guys have is these are already people who have beenhired, right?
Like this is an anonymous survey and they're answering it better than most applicantswould of why should we hire you?
(10:18):
It's one thing if you had everyone in a room and you were just sitting there forcing themto memorize these things.
When you talk about a hundred percent remote, like that's a lot of people in today's worldare like, how do you do this?
Corey, back to you.
How do you create a culture remotely that
I didn't even have time to go through all your answers because your people are so gratefulfor what you do.
(10:38):
Like that's a really difficult task.
And obviously COVID has forced a lot of people's hands this way, but was COVID the initialreasoning for you guys to do this?
And if not, what was the reasoning and how did you make it work?
Yeah, so there's a lot there.
I'll try to speak to each of those elements.
The first is around the culture piece and the Foley remote.
(10:59):
So it's really funny as we were heading into 2020, we were already recognizing that one ofthe competitive advantages that we need to have was more flexibility.
So we were already exploring more distribution.
We were exploring more flex schedules and we were exploring more opportunities.
to be fully remote or have days that were remote.
(11:21):
And so we actually had a runway where we were preparing policies and communicationstructures and equipment to be more fully remote.
And so in 2020, when COVID hit and March 16th was our day, March 16th, 2020, that's whenwe went fully and permanently remote.
We realized, hey, we are prepared for this.
We leaned into it.
We've learned a lot along the way.
(11:42):
I like to say culture is connection.
And so what we recognized is
As we get more distributed, we needed to rely more on principles and less on policies.
And so when we think about culture as connection, we approached it three ways, connectingour employees to the purpose of the organization, the clients that we serve, the reason
that we exist, to the senior leaders in the organization so that there's trust there, theysee the vision, they understand and live the values, and then connection to each other.
(12:08):
And so we've created opportunities for everybody in the organization to connect to thosethree pillars.
And so then when we hear comments like that, it's reassuring for us that people feelconnected to each of those three options.
I think they hit all three of those in that great comment, right?
(12:30):
And it's because we've been deliberate about how we approach each of those elements.
And so as we've got further distributed, connecting people to those three elements hashelped align everybody and to feel a level of support and a level of excitement about
being here.
and getting better and serving our clients.
Got you.
Here's a line.
(12:50):
And again, they have a quote.
So Jeremy, I'm going to ask you, is this a company motto or is this just them being veryclever themselves?
It says, we are quick to learn, not quick to launch.
Has been a guiding principle since my stay here at our guidance.
It's important that we know our product through and through before we launch to ouraudience.
(13:12):
It helps me.
to know that we have a very supportive team who helps us navigate through challengesencouraged on a daily basis.
We are quick to learn, not quick to launch.
Is that their term or is that your term?
And if it's your term, explain it.
Yeah, it's, it's our term.
It's one of our underlying principles that support our values.
(13:34):
and even that story is kind of interesting, Matt, we've had values for a lot of years andthose values have evolved at different times as we've gotten more clarity on how to
communicate them.
And maybe seven or eight years ago, we actually created our first list of principles.
Cause one of the things we were struggling with is we had these values, but how peopleinterpreted those values was very different.
And we wanted to come up with much more actionable ways.
(13:58):
to think about how we demonstrate those values.
So fast to learn, not fast to launch is one of those.
And it's all tied to our principle of adaptability.
And we just believe in order for us to succeed as a smaller business, like we've got to bequick, but we got to be smart about where we're quick.
Cause it's not about how quickly we get new things out there.
(14:21):
It's about how fast can we learn.
And that also comes with
a certain amount of humility that just recognizes, Hey, half the time we're going to bewrong.
So it's not about getting something launched and then realizing 50 % of the time it'sgarbage.
It's about, let's get something out there so we can learn as fast as possible and thenadjust and make it better.
Speaking about getting something out there and launching and it's garbage is 10 is what Itend to see people do with core values Like they just want to make a list and they throw
(14:50):
it out there and I tell every client of mine I always talk about core values are not yourambition Core value values are who you are to your core and it's the external showing of
who you are So with that, I mean, I mean you got people who are just pouring into thiscore value core value and they're using line That's why I said I can tell like either you
have really clever
employees, which I'm not saying you don't, but like they have really good thought out workterms like that.
(15:16):
Corey, how do you embed that where the core values are tied to them and they meansomething to them?
I've gone to some of the largest companies in the world, and I'm not going to use theirnames on here.
And I've asked HIA, VPs, what are the core values?
And they didn't know and they were plastered on the wall.
They didn't even recognize that those were the core values.
I mean, this is one of the largest companies in the world.
(15:37):
I've had other conversations with HR directors.
in big financial institutions that we all use and their stuff's in our wallets as we payfor things.
And they couldn't even tell me on a phone call what the company's mission statement orcore values were.
Your people are literally living it out.
Why?
What's different about you guys?
yeah a couple things the way that we develop them is unique and in a line with ourprinciples of Seeking feedback and being fast to learn not fast to launch before we
(16:06):
published the values and we just did a total overhaul or a revision of in 2024 But beforewe did that we sought input from all kinds of people.
What do you think?
What are you seeing?
Where are we doing things?
Well, where could we evolve what resonates with you and
So people had a chance to weigh in on what was most meaningful.
So that's a really, really important key.
(16:27):
And then as we go to live then, we've mentioned a couple and I'll mention a couple more.
We've mentioned Jeremy's weekly emails where we're celebrating people that have livedvalues, values and principles.
And the way that Jeremy gets those stories is the leadership team submits a weekly reportto the rest of the team where we're expected to include stories that we've gotten from the
team or throughout the organization.
I've also mentioned having values aligned questions be part of our
(16:52):
hiring process is really important to us.
A couple of additional ways that we do that is twice a year we have what we call a peoplecelebration.
And the team is like a people's choice award that people nominate their peers based on howwell they've lived values and principles and using specific stories.
And we recognize and celebrate those people that are living values and principles, rightthen and there.
(17:15):
And then we also have what we call our Cheers channel.
We use Microsoft Teams to communicate.
We have an entire channel.
that's completely organic and it's completely exciting and inspiring to see how muchactivity there is because people are recognizing their peers or their supervisors or their
teams and most often using values and principles to show the reason that they're beingcelebrated and recognized.
(17:39):
So those are a few ways that we have established our values and principles.
We recognize and celebrate those in the organization.
So one, people know what they are.
They know how to live them and there's opportunities for storytelling, for recognition andreinforcement.
Got you.
Well, here's a story for you, right?
Because this is just, I love getting these.
This line came from one of your people.
(18:00):
I'm able to provide and take care of my family.
To be honest, two years ago, my father died when he was confined for two months in thehospital.
I was beside him at his death bed.
I was on training for advanced cases.
I was able to do both, take care of him and provide because of this job.
(18:22):
Jeremy.
when you first started this company, hearing a story like that, when people are sittingthere going like, how do I take care of my people?
That you have an individual who's able to share a story like that and see the lightbecause of what you all provide for them.
What does that mean to you as a leader, as a CEO, as a co -founder in a company like this?
(18:49):
Well, I love hearing it.
First of all, it makes me feel good.
It makes me feel fulfilled.
You probably know this, Matt, as, as the CEO, most of the things that float up to yourdesk are the problems, right?
I get very few client escalations, but when I get them, they're not generally reaching outto tell me how great of a time they're having with guidance.
(19:10):
It's, you know, some issue that they've run into that the team is working on trying toresolve.
So,
I think it's really just a function of hiring people that really care about other people.
And it's gotten harder.
It's actually really easy when you're small.
When we had 15 people, it was not hard to be that flexible and that open.
(19:32):
Right?
Somebody has an issue.
You're talking with them directly.
You figure it out where it gets hard is in this messy middle where now you've got two orthree layers of people in between connections and trying to maintain that.
And that only happens when we have.
good leadership that we're constantly investing in trying to better understand this is howwe want to show up.
(19:54):
But one of our principles, Matt, is catch people doing things right.
We just believe it's the best way to teach.
The best way to teach is by helping them see they've already done it.
And here's where that shows up.
Gotcha.
All right.
Now we're going to move from the employee to the actual person, right?
(20:14):
Which sounds crazy because it's like, we just talked about people who lost a lot.
Like when you guys do as good of a job as you guys do, it kind of flows as it should,right?
Partnering crime.
This popped up quite a bit.
People use this term.
Corey, you're smiling big.
What is a partner in crime?
It says having a buddy system like partnering crime helps me a lot in guidance, earlystages, and also enables me to be the best.
(20:39):
PIC, I'm assuming that's partnering crime, for our newest team members.
So that means there must be kind of like a lineage of partnering crimes down the ladder.
So strange concept, haven't heard of it, I have some ideas of what it means, but walk methrough how this works, how someone else could put this into their business.
Yeah, you bet.
So here's something that I recognized in my human resources careers.
(21:01):
There's a lot of things that I could do, but I need to maximize my time and my leverage.
And what I recognize is where there's high emotions.
Whenever there's high emotions, there's a time for high impact.
And when somebody starts a new job, think about the feelings that people have when theystart a new job.
They could be anxious, they could be embarrassed, they could be scared, they could feelinadequate.
(21:23):
Those are really common feelings.
And so when those feelings are strong, that's a really great opportunity for us to lean inand create safety and connection.
And so one of those ways that we do that is everybody that joins the company has anassigned partner in crime, somebody that we know that they're going to get along with.
It will be a great resource and they meet them day one.
(21:44):
And that's the person that they can go to to say, Hey, who is that person again?
Or what day is payday?
The questions that they may be too bare.
Are they related?
Some of those questions that they may not be excited to ask another teammate or asupervisor.
There's just this immediate connection with an individual that their sole purpose is tosupport them, their questions.
(22:05):
They check in every day the first week.
How did your first day go?
How did your first couple of days go?
What's going well?
What do you have questions about?
And there's just this embedded partnership that has become a strong part of our culture.
And those people that had a good partner in crime experience get
ecstatic when they're asked to then be a partner in crime for somebody else because itsort of perpetuates or continues just this history of us caring enough about our people to
(22:33):
assign them an individual that is there to support whatever that they need in a time wherethey're going to have some strong emotions between excitement and embarrassment and
nervousness.
And so we try to mitigate that with an individual that's there and, you know, constantlythere checking in to be a resource for them.
Gotcha.
Now walk me through, Corey, how does that work when you're remote?
(22:56):
Yeah, we make a remote introduction on day one.
We say, this is your partner in crime.
This is what that means.
Here's what you can go to them for.
And here's how this fits into everything that's going to happen in your first day, in yourfirst week.
And here's how you can contact them.
I mentioned earlier, we use Microsoft Teams.
So they're a quick chat away.
(23:18):
Hey, do you have a second?
We can chat.
Or, hey, I had a quick question.
Or, hey, can we check in for 10 minutes?
Let's pop up on a quick Teams chat.
And so we just help them understand the way to communicate with a partner in crime, thereasons you might want to connect with a partner in crime, which by the way is anything.
But here's the mechanism to do that.
So that they just understand that this person is really dedicated to you.
(23:41):
This is how you can contact them and utilize them and develop a strong relationship.
And as you can hear from that comment, sometimes that relationship goes way beyond thefirst day and the first week and the first month.
And that's what we hope for.
So when we talk about culture as connection, that's another example of something that wedo that we're trying to create connection long -term and throughout the whole
(24:02):
organization, not just on somebody's team, but throughout the whole organization.
The thing that I love most and you two are the only two individuals in the entire companyI've ever talked to, right?
But through these answers, I'm able to sit back and we've done enough of these.
We've worked with enough clients.
The one thing I have to assume you guys do and Jeremy, you can touch on this is you setexpectations very clearly from the beginning and not just on like the work we expect, but
(24:26):
the culture that we protect, right?
Like, like
fact that you don't it doesn't sound like you just offer this partner in crime is like anadded benefit if you'd ever want to know it's like this is what you have.
This is who this person is.
So if you come to me as Matt on something that you should go to your partner in crime withI'm going to point you back to that.
We put this in place for a reason.
How do you make sure your expectations are set again so it's not just like this fluid yesget your job done but we also expect you to be part of this culture and embrace this
(24:55):
culture.
How do you protect that again.
Forget the remote thing, I'm gonna stop asking that.
It's hard enough to do this in person, so tell me how you do it in person because mostpeople can't do that.
Yeah, it's interesting.
one of my favorite stories that I remember is coming into a leadership team meeting andreading Corey's update.
And he was talking about a gentleman we had hired who quit on the first day.
(25:19):
And, you know, Corey is somebody who just loves people in general.
So he doesn't want anyone ever to leave.
And he's, I asked him a few questions about this and he's downloading the story with me.
And I'm thinking to myself, this is an example of the system working.
We.
so communicated to this guy, what it was going to look like to work here, that he waswithin 24 hours able to say, I need to get the hell out of here because this is not the
(25:46):
right place for me.
And to Corey's point, that's pretty rare that it even gets to that stage because somebodydoesn't get through our interview process unless they're comfortable answering these
values -based questions.
And you can feel when you're in an interview.
when you feel connected to someone because what they're talking about is jiving with howyou think about the world and you can feel the disconnect when it's not.
(26:09):
And I think that sets the stage for everything else.
And there's obviously things we reinforce within the culture, but we also try to besensitive to the fact that people participate on a different spectrum.
Some people are high introverts and expecting them to be out there cheerleading,
(26:31):
you know, volunteering in the Monday morning stand up to step up and say something about,you know, a coworker.
That's just not, it's not a fair assumption.
There are some people who show the culture in that way.
And so we try to think about it as there's lots of different ways to opt into the cultureand you can find the system that best suits you, whether it's more of an introverted, Hey,
(26:52):
I'm going to send you a cheers via email or maybe I'm
maybe on somebody who's comfortable putting it on a cheers network, or maybe I'm someonewho wants to make a big deal about it.
but the principle is we catch people doing things right.
And that's not just applicable for me and Corey, that's everybody in the company.
in the room.
Here's the other part that's so powerful, but what you guys do.
(27:12):
And I keep saying, but you're remote, but you're remote.
All of these things you're doing, the biggest pushback I get is we don't have a budget forthat.
We don't have a budget for that.
So far, everything your people have talked about has not cost a dime to the companyoutside of maybe Jeremy, you said you have a long winded email, right?
So that's, you can make that shorter if you'd like, but like, but like, but when you gothrough it, I'm sitting there going, if you were listening to this, I'm just taking one of
(27:37):
our other.
(27:58):
Hahaha!
last to know when something's going on, but if there's a partner in crime that they canactually get with and have a conversation with and talk through some of that stuff.
It saves a lot of the headaches, Jeremy, like you were talking about that comes acrossyour desk.
I just think it's so as you're listening to this audience recognize they're not bringingpeople together for happy hour.
Right.
Now you do do coffee meetings.
(28:19):
It looks like.
Right.
But I'm assuming they bring their own coffee too.
Right.
So walk me through because that was talked about that was talked about a couple of times.
So how do you instill that into an organization?
Corey, if you could take that.
Yeah, well, you mentioned cost is one and I'll just sort of double down on that or doubleclick that is I'm a pretty scrappy human resources leader.
(28:42):
I use very few, I use very few software programs.
I just realized that connection happens sort of organically and naturally.
And if you're, as long as you're intentional about it, there's a lot of things that youcan do for free.
Another good example is, you know, we, every time we get a five star review, we celebratethat with the whole organization.
That's free.
That's awesome.
reinforces values.
(29:03):
And then, so as you sort of talked about, you know, how to infuse some of these into thewhole organization, you know, inexpensively is we just look for ways that we can connect
each other and to really recognize that simple is often the best.
(29:24):
It doesn't need to be a happy hour, but it can be a leadership coffee.
So one thing that we tried and we've evolved is this idea of connecting people to seniorleaders is once a quarter, our new hires are sort of automatically enrolled into that.
Our long -term employees can opt in, back to Jeremy's point, we sort of create a menu.
(29:48):
You opt into what's most meaningful for you.
And this is one of those opt -in events.
And once a quarter, people can sign up to have a leadership coffee, we call it.
But it's a bring your own beverage situations, 30 minutes, and it's really casual.
Sometimes we talk about the business, sometimes we play some games, sometimes we get toknow you.
It's different for the leader and it's different each time.
(30:09):
It's an opportunity to disconnect, get to know a senior leader, get to know each other onthe team and to create that connection that's gonna sustain us even in a remote
environment through our work and connect us to our clients and the purpose of ourorganization, which is to help people succeed in small business.
And I think one thing that's, yeah, go for it, Jeremy, drop in.
(30:30):
I was going to share something on top.
one of my absolute favorite books is a beautiful constraint and we read it together as aleadership team.
I reread it every year.
And the reason I love that book is because more resources is a cop out.
It is a, an excuse to not innovate.
And we go back to this regularly when we run up against these things where we feel like wehave a problem.
(30:56):
problem.
think we need resources to solve it.
The question is, how can we innovate here?
How can we use this as an opportunity?
Cause the reality is if you can throw money at it and solve it, so can everybody else outthere.
That's not even an interesting problem worth solving.
You're not going to get any better from it.
And the company is not going to get any better from it.
How we're going to get better as a company is because when we run up against theseobstacles, we're going to say, how can we do it differently?
(31:20):
So when we say, Hey, connection is hard when you're remote.
Well, yeah.
So.
So how are we going to do that?
Because we've made the decision that we're going to be remote.
We think this is a wave that is not going away.
And we've decided that because of that, we're going to figure out how to be really greatat doing it.
(31:40):
And it's going to become one of our competitive advantages as an employer for the peoplewho want that.
And that's not everybody.
And we knew that and we actually lost some team members because of it, but that's okaybecause this is who we are and this is who we're going to be.
And.
I would encourage anyone to read that book.
I think it's one of the best books to read as a leadership team, because if you are a CEO,I promise every day you get something coming to your desk where it's like, Hey, I have
(32:08):
this problem.
I need more money.
Yeah.
so, and it's so funny because I always talk about just culture is not a commodity toexactly what you're saying.
And what a commodity is, is doesn't matter what's coming.
It's what's the price.
It's a dollar to dollar comparison.
And if you're battling dollar to dollar, who's happy hours are better.
You're going to lose.
(32:28):
You're going to lose money.
You're going to lose people.
Whereas what you're talking about is culture is not based on how much dollars I could puton it.
It's how much value is built by it.
Well said.
that's what I love what you guys are doing because I keep trying to explain to clients,right?
And some of my clients are gonna be like, he's talking about me again, because they'rejust beating them over the head going like, you're burning cash on some of these things
(32:49):
you're doing, but yet you can customize it and care about what the individual actuallythinks about and go from there.
Here's a question that came up.
It says, Guardian cares about its employees, right?
And that's not new.
You've heard me say that a thousand times.
I love the connection events.
It's so fun to meet folks that I don't work with every day.
Guardian has created a culture that is open and welcoming with good people who aren'ttoxic.
(33:15):
What's the connection event?
I'll let whichever one of you pick to take this one.
I think Corey should answer this one because this was, this was, this was a project givento Corey and said, Hey, we used to do once a year, we do these all team parties and we'd
fly everyone in.
And as we went remote and we became more geographically distributed, it just wasn'tfeasible.
(33:38):
And so the project for Corey was how do we create the positive dynamics of gettingtogether, but do it in a remote environment.
And what'd you do, Corey?
Yeah, well, we said, hey, this is a beautiful constraint.
This is an opportunity to think differently about this.
And so I went to my network and I said, hey, we typically have done an all day event inperson.
(34:02):
We're now fully remote.
We want to lean into that.
And here's our budget.
And people in my network said, you're nuts.
Good luck.
And all day, an all day event virtually sounds like a nightmare.
And we said, well, we're going to give it a shot.
So we tested and
something that we do well in our culture to sort of reinforce our values.
(34:23):
We say, hey, look, we're going to try something.
This may be awesome and it may be a disaster.
Either way, can we just agree that it's fun to try something and you let us know and we'lllearn together.
So that sort of creates a really high safety net for us.
And so we did, we tried an all day virtual event three years ago and we did four one hourevents with 30 minutes in between because we're like, how do we solve for lunch and how do
(34:45):
we solve for, you know, and so we use things like
Grubhub meals and for a fraction of the cost, when I say a fraction, I'm talking onetwentieth, well, we had budgeted over $100 ,000.
We spent about 20 to do something virtually and that was food and celebrations andpartnering with some folks.
(35:05):
And so we did an all day connection event virtually.
And the comments that you're hearing is on the heels of the one that we just did thisyear, which was our third year that we did it.
And so you can see there's a lot of energy and excitement behind what just happened thatday.
And the one that we did this year, because we measure culture as connection, we measureour connection, we ask people on a quarterly basis, how connected do you feel to the
(35:28):
purpose of the organization, to the leaders of the organization and to each other?
And we noticed that we were getting lower scores on the purpose of the organization.
So we dedicate an entire day for our virtual, we call it our Guidant Connection Event.
And all four of the events were client related.
We did a client of the year event.
We did a business simulation event.
(35:50):
Jeremy told his story about becoming an entrepreneur.
And the fourth event that we did was we call it Meet Main Street.
We gave people money to go and spend at small businesses in the area.
So we took an all day event, 200 people.
We brought them together virtually and we put a thoughtful event together.
And that's something we do every year.
We also have a
we call our connection opportunity and growth committee.
(36:13):
We have an entire committee that's connected, that's committed to this.
And they do a monthly connection event that varies every month.
One of those is sort of this, you know, casual conversations with, with other team membersand things like that, similar to leadership coffees, but without the leader.
And so they could be talking about both a monthly connection event or this annual event,but I suspect they're talking about the annual event because we did the survey right on
(36:36):
the heels of that.
And the connection that people feel coming out of those is really palpable, as you can seein some of the comments that you're reading.
All right, I'm going to wrap up with this comment before we go into some of the ups anddowns and roadblocks you guys get into, right?
It's not all good.
It's still business.
There's still things you got to deal with.
Guardian is the best place to work because of one, we got three of these, so get ready.
(36:57):
The work from home arrangement, which gives back to the employees the most valuableresource, which is time.
Two, the Monday morning standups, which we didn't get to that, says it's really nice toregularly get a view of how the company and its various departments are doing.
instead of only knowing your department's performance and being clueless about everyoneelse.
Three, the company's activities.
(37:17):
It's been a real treat joining these events that I didn't think I would actually enjoy,but once I started going, I thoroughly enjoyed hearing the inspiring stories about the
people we work with and getting a chance to talk to them who we don't really get toconnect with on a regular basis.
Truly promotes work -life balance, and I feel so lucky to be a part of it.
(37:40):
What's the Monday morning standups?
Is that company wide?
It is, we have a meeting every Monday, 10 o 'clock mountain time.
That's my time.
So I guess it's nine o 'clock Pacific.
It's 12 o 'clock for those people on Eastern time zone.
And we get together for 15 to 25 minutes and we rotate members of our leadership team.
(38:01):
We have 12 members of our leadership team.
So every one of those leaders hosts once a quarter.
supporter and we have a pretty set agenda that we go through.
We go through any key updates people need to know.
We introduce new people to the organization, celebrate anniversaries, we talk about who'sleaving and we give some business updates.
And generally there's an opportunity for the individual leader who's hosting to talk aboutsomething that's relevant that
(38:27):
or their teams are working on.
So today, Melissa Hitchner, who's our director of engineering hosted.
And so she had one of our.
product owners come on and talk about this new AI system that's being built to help ourclients get rid of some of this paperwork pain where they may get data in four or five
different sources.
So how can we create something where they can just drop it one place and the system canfigure out what's what, and then get it into the format that we needed and not put that
(38:55):
burden on the customer.
So that's an example of one thing, but what Corey's team with HR might do might lookdifferent.
They might talk about.
a different recruiting policy that we're working on or something on a values base.
Gotcha.
So what is it when it comes to doing good and pouring back in the community?
You've already talked about letting people go Main Street, going to buy and support localbusinesses.
(39:18):
How do you make a positive impact outside of your business?
Because I'm again, you pour into your people, you luckily pour into it's just, it's just aculture of life, right?
It's not like you've changed at work than where you are at home.
How do you guys make an impact in the communities that you are a part of as well?
Is there any structure to that or any strategy behind that?
Corey, can you touch on that?
(39:40):
Yeah, the biggest thing that we do is that we're fully remote.
And what that does, so a couple of years ago, I calculated for our US team members only,so for about 120 -ish, 125 team members only, we take about 600 ,000 miles off of the
roads every year.
(40:02):
So taking those miles off of the road,
also equates to people not being stressed in traffic or spending time driving.
And, you know, my vision for the workplace is that the workplace is a place where peoplecan do their best, be their best and feel their best.
And then they come to work and get energy that they can take back to be whatever otherroles in their life, a spouse or a parent or a pet parent or a pickleball player, you
(40:30):
know, whatever it is that they're excited about.
The world so much is structured and people give everything that they have to work and thenthey drive home exhausted, frustrated, and they have very little energy for everything
else.
And so we have found that just by being fully remote, leaning into that with even withsome flexible schedules where possible, people now have more time and more energy to be
(40:53):
important people outside of guidance, which is equally important to us.
And so they can go out and be parents and coaches.
and civic leaders or church leaders or things like that with some energy to invest there.
That's so good.
All right.
So we talked about all the amazing thing you guys do.
And again, there's a lot there's like I said, we don't have time for all of them.
(41:16):
What are some of the roadblocks, right?
No matter how much you try, business is still hard.
200 people is hard.
Remote is hard.
Shoot 15 people, right?
Jeremy back in the day, that was hard, right?
Like it just, it's just a hard thing of what we're trying to do.
Even though you guys provide an amazing service, you have great systems.
When it comes to working with your people.
(41:43):
I'm going to go ahead and close the video.
One of the things that remote creates is a need to have Uber clarity about outcomes thatyou need from people.
(42:05):
Because you're not standing over their shoulder.
You're not measuring them by how long their butt is sitting in the seat.
You're measuring them by the work that gets done.
And in many roles, that's been very effective for us.
In other roles, we found some friction.
because we have sometimes metrics that are really good on the quantity side, but may notaccurately measure what we need on the quality side.
(42:28):
Or like right now we're working with the 401k administration team because not every fileis the same.
And we have kind of a point system for how we think about these files that come in, buteven within those categories, one might be 10 X the work of another one.
So it's a hairy problem to figure out how we.
how we piece that apart and give someone clarity what success looks like on a daily,weekly, monthly basis but doing it in a way that's fair and equitable
(42:56):
the team.
And that's one we're wrestling with right now.
Gotcha.
Remind me, I'm going to talk about the 90 day gold rush after this, but that's, that'ssomething that's pretty interesting.
Corey, what would you say is your biggest?
Sorry, we, we do, we do gaps all the time.
Right.
So I kind of set it up and I can't help, but say one solution with that.
Corey, what would you say is your biggest gap that you're seeing when it comes to havingthe people the way you have them and growing the company?
(43:22):
Yeah, I mean, a guidance.
I mean, Jeremy spoke to one.
It's not super sexy or maybe it's it's a little off topic, but we continue to wrestle withhealth insurance with the size of our organization.
That is such a pain point.
And where we have a value or a principle around the well -being of the whole person, weoffer a couple of different free individual health plans, dental plans and vision plans.
(43:46):
And as health care costs have just skyrocketed, it's been harder and harder.
It's put a lot of it's put
a lot of pressure on the value that we can really deliver to our team in terms of totalcompensation.
And so trying to navigate that has been a real pain point for us the last few years.
And this year in particular, it's getting even, even harder to balance the needs of theorganization to be thoughtful and frugal while still adding the value that we need for
(44:16):
people to have adequate healthcare.
That's good.
All right, well, hey, no, no, you go, Jeremy.
Add on to it.
Let's say one of the things about healthcare that we find so challenging is it's, it's sodisproportionate the benefit that it provides.
Some people get very little to no benefit out of it.
And some people take a massive benefit from it.
(44:37):
And so that lopsided nature of it makes it not just expensive, but really chunky when wethink about where dollars are going to try and best support the team as a whole.
That's good.
Well, hey, you guys have done an amazing job.
Like I said, I'm so grateful for you guys coming on, sharing all this.
(44:58):
If somebody wants to get in contact with you, what's the best way for them to learn aboutyour services, connect with one of you or both of you?
How can they connect with you?
Jeremy, you go first.
How can someone connect with you or get ahold of guidance to figure out if they can maybetake some of the retirement and get a bit of return on and doing something else?
Yeah.
If you're looking to take control of your life and possibly start a small business, youcan go to guiding financial as an easy place to sort of register and someone will reach
(45:25):
out to you and get you some more information.
as far as me, anyone can follow me on LinkedIn.
You can connect with me.
You can send me a DM if you want.
I'm happy to, to connect with anyone out there that, wants to talk about retirement fundsor, you know, I write regularly on LinkedIn as well.
If anybody wants to talk about those topics and,
If anyone is looking for a job or a role, we have a careers page on our website andthere's a place there where people can submit some information as well or, or see what
(45:55):
roles are available at the current time.
Awesome.
And I will say, Jeremy, you're a great follow on LinkedIn.
So I do appreciate that.
Corey, what do you got?
How do we connect with you?
A lot of what I've talked about today I just recently put into a book.
It's called HR Are You Kidding Me?
And surprisingly simple steps.
Yeah, surprisingly simple steps to unlock the power of people.
(46:18):
Just a lot of lessons that I've learned over my HR career.
LinkedIn's best place to connect with me as well.
I try to write and share.
anecdotes and tips regularly there.
There's a few Corey Sanford's out there, but you'll just type Corey Sanford.
You recognize this big goofy grin.
I'll be easy to find, but you're happy to connect with me on LinkedIn.
Send me a message if you have questions or comments about what you heard today.
(46:40):
Happy to chat.
Man, well thank you two so much.
I know you guys are busy.
We will wrap this up here.
Very much appreciate Corey Sanford and Jeremy Ames.
Very much appreciate you listening.
Best people, best place.
We'll see you on the next episode.
Thanks for having us, Matt.
Appreciate you.
because it will record on your computer and my computer.
And then at the end, just don't close out the thing because it will pull it all over toall up line.
And then the other part of it is if for some reason you guys get cut off, just come backon.
(00:21):
It will continue going the way that it's needed.
So cool.
Well, we will get after it.
I'll start it up for us.
All right, everybody.
Welcome to Best People, Best Place.
I am excited to have guided financial here this week.
We have Jeremy, we have Corey, we have both of them on and we are so excited because inthis space, this industry, it's one thing to care about your clients to make sure your
(00:48):
clients are getting the financial benefits of working with you.
But the way you all care about your people and a lot of your people spread out all overthe country, really all over the world is absolutely amazing.
So Corey.
Jeremy, thank you for coming on.
Jeremy, do me a favor, quickly introduce yourself, then we'll jump over to Corey and getto know Corey.
(01:08):
I'm Jeremy, I'm the CEO and co -founder and been doing this for 21 years.
We've helped almost 30 ,000 people get started with their own small business.
Awesome.
And then Corey, introduce yourself real quick.
You bet.
Hi, I'm Cory Sanford.
I'm the vice president of culture and talent at Guidant Financial.
I've been at Guidant over five years and help support our employee base of around 250 teammembers in eight countries.
(01:38):
That's awesome.
Well, Jeremy, give me a quick understanding.
What does what does guided do specifically?
Yeah.
Well, there's two core things we do.
One is we help people use retirement funds to buy and start small companies.
And by nature of doing that, we also end up with ongoing customers that we support as athird party administrator of their 401k plans.
(01:59):
And then also to support those companies will do things like payroll, bookkeeping and tax.
So you can think of it as we help people get initial funding and initial funding fromtheir own retirement plans to start these companies.
And then we do a bunch of the hairy paperwork that's way more complicated than it needsto, because it's all ends in a government form filing or payment.
(02:19):
Got you.
Awesome.
All right.
So when we do this podcast, we break it down into three separate sections.
First is going to be how are you all pouring into the employee specifically?
Then it's going to be how do you pour into the person?
And then finally, what good are you doing in the community?
So neither of you have reviewed many of these or any of these.
(02:40):
I don't even know if you've reviewed any of these, but we're going to share them with youpretty raw.
So
I promise you it literally it's about 15 pages of good stuff.
So you guys did a great job.
And we're just going to ask you kind of what what it is you do now.
The first thing that comes up with being a good employee and what are some of the thingsthat you all do to help Jeremy this is going to come to you because there's something
about weekly emails that you send out that came up multiple times.
(03:02):
They said I love one one of the lines right here.
I love Jeremy's weekly emails usually a life lesson in there along with the transparencyguard or guidance provides everyone.
It's very refreshing.
What are these emails that obviously, again, there's probably five or six responses aboutthese specific emails.
What are these emails you send out?
What's the thought behind them and why would they stand out over a generic email that'ssent out from a CEO?
(03:28):
Well, mostly by length, Matt, because they were very long.
I think the reality is, as we have scaled the company, it's gotten harder and harder tohave relationships with everyone in the business.
And I have both been really inspired by the ability of social media to have an impactwhere you can have a relationship of one to many in a way that can scale.
(03:54):
As well as I was pushed really hard by an old business coach.
coach who said you've got to find a way to consistently be in front of your team andmessaging.
And so what we came up with was a weekly email and I use that weekly email to highlightvalue stories.
So we tell at least three or four stories every week that are.
(04:16):
members living our values and principles in action.
And it gives me sort of ways to.
to give people kudos, but also to tell the stories that matter about how these things showup in real life and in what we do every day.
I usually throw a quote in there.
I can give some updates on where we're at in terms of our strategic corporate rocks.
then I do something that I call closing thoughts, which is usually a story from me that'sreally trying to teach people how to think about our customers, to think about our
(04:46):
business, to think about our values.
And that maybe is what they're talking about in terms of the life lessons.
Cause a lot of times I'm just sharing life lessons that I'm taking away.
taking.
Well, and I think it's something like that.
Whenever I do these podcasts, I want to give things that other people can go, how do I getstarted with that?
So was that something you kind of that developed into this or you started it with a clearunderstanding of what you wanted it to be?
(05:09):
And if you had someone listening who was like, how do I start a weekly email that either Ias the CEO or as the HR director, right?
Or the talent director, whichever level you are, how would you suggest they go about evencreating that framework?
What works?
What did you try that didn't work?
How would you go through that process with them quickly?
Well, my old business coach gave me a template of an email that another one of his clientshad used.
(05:33):
And I went through that and I figured out what did I like or not like about this.
So the closing thought, for example, is something that I added.
I wanted a chance to communicate to the team and be able to do more storytelling.
And it's just sort of evolved from there, but I think the core components are, and what Ileft out was wins.
So.
for me it's wins, it's value stories, it's updates on where we're at in terms of ourstrategic rocks, and then it's some form of closing thought which is storytelling to
(06:01):
connect with the team.
Cool.
And that goes right in another one, Corey, I'm going to ask you this to give aconversation about, but guidance is always supportive of the whole person.
Whenever I have family or personal needs, I can count on the sympathetic ear and supportwhen I'm actually in need.
What that ties back to is another conversation about having accessibility to all referencematerials and how approachable all the people are.
(06:26):
So when it comes to the culture of what you do and how you design it, how are you able todo this?
with people being remote, spread all over the world, but yet still feel valued andexperienced in that high level culture that you all obviously intentionally put into play.
Yeah, that's a great question, Matt.
So a couple of things.
(06:46):
First of all, I just I love hearing that that's some of the response from the team.
We work really, really hard for that.
Part of it comes down to our employer brand.
Right.
The three things that we try to offer all of our team members is an amazing, fully remoteexperience.
We believe we do that really, really well.
Second piece is there is lots of opportunity to grow and advance.
(07:07):
And we do that in a lot of different ways.
We target at least 30 percent of our team.
getting advancements every year.
And we've met that the last three years.
And then the third piece is we just, we believe we hired the best people, the bestteammates, and we really filter for that upfront.
We're really clear about what our values are.
And that's the bulk of our interview process is how well are these people aligned with ourvalues today?
(07:30):
What examples can they share of times they've lived those values in the past?
And we include what I like to call culture champions, people that are already living ourculture, whether they're the hiring manager or not, or just teammates.
They're part of the interview process to help us filter, to continue us hiring greatpeople that are approachable, they're kind, they're patient, they're smart, they're
(07:51):
curious.
And that is a way that we sort of have created the culture and perpetuate the culture isthrough our hiring and training processes.
Alright, so back to you Jeremy, this concept of advancements, right?
It's a pretty obvious, it's a word that people use in their normal life, but you said thatCorey, as if that was like a term that you use as far as what you're structuring.
(08:11):
So there's promotions versus advancements.
Jeremy, how would you differentiate using that word of advancements in your guys'workflow?
Yeah.
So how we define advancements is really two things.
One, it could be a promotion or transfer to a new role, or it could be movement to ahigher level, higher paying level within a given role.
(08:34):
So one of the things we recognize is we didn't want to have a culture where the only wayto grow and continue to progress was to have to go take a different job or progress to a
new role that didn't fit.
We did the whole thing when we were in the early stages where we'd take our very bestperformers and put them in managerial positions and then they would flounder.
(08:55):
So we spent a lot of time creating this secondary advancement path, which is just saying,Hey, if your passion is being really good at this thing that you do, like 401k
administration or bookkeeping, then we're going to give you opportunities to level upwithin that where you can take on more complicated issues.
You can learn more technical things.
You can be supporting more as.
(09:16):
an expert within a given area and still have large social credibility and an ability tosort of move up the compensation ladder.
And so we track those together and to Corey's point, we have a target for it that we'reshooting to hit every single year.
And that's how we stay accountable to it.
(09:54):
That's awesome.
my skills, confidence, and dedications to excellence.
Now, here's why I read that.
That sounds like someone applying for a job.
You
the thing I love most about what you guys have is these are already people who have beenhired, right?
Like this is an anonymous survey and they're answering it better than most applicantswould of why should we hire you?
(10:18):
It's one thing if you had everyone in a room and you were just sitting there forcing themto memorize these things.
When you talk about a hundred percent remote, like that's a lot of people in today's worldare like, how do you do this?
Corey, back to you.
How do you create a culture remotely that
I didn't even have time to go through all your answers because your people are so gratefulfor what you do.
(10:38):
Like that's a really difficult task.
And obviously COVID has forced a lot of people's hands this way, but was COVID the initialreasoning for you guys to do this?
And if not, what was the reasoning and how did you make it work?
Yeah, so there's a lot there.
I'll try to speak to each of those elements.
The first is around the culture piece and the Foley remote.
(10:59):
So it's really funny as we were heading into 2020, we were already recognizing that one ofthe competitive advantages that we need to have was more flexibility.
So we were already exploring more distribution.
We were exploring more flex schedules and we were exploring more opportunities.
to be fully remote or have days that were remote.
(11:21):
And so we actually had a runway where we were preparing policies and communicationstructures and equipment to be more fully remote.
And so in 2020, when COVID hit and March 16th was our day, March 16th, 2020, that's whenwe went fully and permanently remote.
We realized, hey, we are prepared for this.
We leaned into it.
We've learned a lot along the way.
(11:42):
I like to say culture is connection.
And so what we recognized is
As we get more distributed, we needed to rely more on principles and less on policies.
And so when we think about culture as connection, we approached it three ways, connectingour employees to the purpose of the organization, the clients that we serve, the reason
that we exist, to the senior leaders in the organization so that there's trust there, theysee the vision, they understand and live the values, and then connection to each other.
(12:08):
And so we've created opportunities for everybody in the organization to connect to thosethree pillars.
And so then when we hear comments like that, it's reassuring for us that people feelconnected to each of those three options.
I think they hit all three of those in that great comment, right?
(12:30):
And it's because we've been deliberate about how we approach each of those elements.
And so as we've got further distributed, connecting people to those three elements hashelped align everybody and to feel a level of support and a level of excitement about
being here.
and getting better and serving our clients.
Got you.
Here's a line.
(12:50):
And again, they have a quote.
So Jeremy, I'm going to ask you, is this a company motto or is this just them being veryclever themselves?
It says, we are quick to learn, not quick to launch.
Has been a guiding principle since my stay here at our guidance.
It's important that we know our product through and through before we launch to ouraudience.
(13:12):
It helps me.
to know that we have a very supportive team who helps us navigate through challengesencouraged on a daily basis.
We are quick to learn, not quick to launch.
Is that their term or is that your term?
And if it's your term, explain it.
Yeah, it's, it's our term.
It's one of our underlying principles that support our values.
(13:34):
and even that story is kind of interesting, Matt, we've had values for a lot of years andthose values have evolved at different times as we've gotten more clarity on how to
communicate them.
And maybe seven or eight years ago, we actually created our first list of principles.
Cause one of the things we were struggling with is we had these values, but how peopleinterpreted those values was very different.
And we wanted to come up with much more actionable ways.
(13:58):
to think about how we demonstrate those values.
So fast to learn, not fast to launch is one of those.
And it's all tied to our principle of adaptability.
And we just believe in order for us to succeed as a smaller business, like we've got to bequick, but we got to be smart about where we're quick.
Cause it's not about how quickly we get new things out there.
(14:21):
It's about how fast can we learn.
And that also comes with
a certain amount of humility that just recognizes, Hey, half the time we're going to bewrong.
So it's not about getting something launched and then realizing 50 % of the time it'sgarbage.
It's about, let's get something out there so we can learn as fast as possible and thenadjust and make it better.
Speaking about getting something out there and launching and it's garbage is 10 is what Itend to see people do with core values Like they just want to make a list and they throw
(14:50):
it out there and I tell every client of mine I always talk about core values are not yourambition Core value values are who you are to your core and it's the external showing of
who you are So with that, I mean, I mean you got people who are just pouring into thiscore value core value and they're using line That's why I said I can tell like either you
have really clever
employees, which I'm not saying you don't, but like they have really good thought out workterms like that.
(15:16):
Corey, how do you embed that where the core values are tied to them and they meansomething to them?
I've gone to some of the largest companies in the world, and I'm not going to use theirnames on here.
And I've asked HIA, VPs, what are the core values?
And they didn't know and they were plastered on the wall.
They didn't even recognize that those were the core values.
I mean, this is one of the largest companies in the world.
(15:37):
I've had other conversations with HR directors.
in big financial institutions that we all use and their stuff's in our wallets as we payfor things.
And they couldn't even tell me on a phone call what the company's mission statement orcore values were.
Your people are literally living it out.
Why?
What's different about you guys?
yeah a couple things the way that we develop them is unique and in a line with ourprinciples of Seeking feedback and being fast to learn not fast to launch before we
(16:06):
published the values and we just did a total overhaul or a revision of in 2024 But beforewe did that we sought input from all kinds of people.
What do you think?
What are you seeing?
Where are we doing things?
Well, where could we evolve what resonates with you and
So people had a chance to weigh in on what was most meaningful.
So that's a really, really important key.
(16:27):
And then as we go to live then, we've mentioned a couple and I'll mention a couple more.
We've mentioned Jeremy's weekly emails where we're celebrating people that have livedvalues, values and principles.
And the way that Jeremy gets those stories is the leadership team submits a weekly reportto the rest of the team where we're expected to include stories that we've gotten from the
team or throughout the organization.
I've also mentioned having values aligned questions be part of our
(16:52):
hiring process is really important to us.
A couple of additional ways that we do that is twice a year we have what we call a peoplecelebration.
And the team is like a people's choice award that people nominate their peers based on howwell they've lived values and principles and using specific stories.
And we recognize and celebrate those people that are living values and principles, rightthen and there.
(17:15):
And then we also have what we call our Cheers channel.
We use Microsoft Teams to communicate.
We have an entire channel.
that's completely organic and it's completely exciting and inspiring to see how muchactivity there is because people are recognizing their peers or their supervisors or their
teams and most often using values and principles to show the reason that they're beingcelebrated and recognized.
(17:39):
So those are a few ways that we have established our values and principles.
We recognize and celebrate those in the organization.
So one, people know what they are.
They know how to live them and there's opportunities for storytelling, for recognition andreinforcement.
Got you.
Well, here's a story for you, right?
Because this is just, I love getting these.
This line came from one of your people.
(18:00):
I'm able to provide and take care of my family.
To be honest, two years ago, my father died when he was confined for two months in thehospital.
I was beside him at his death bed.
I was on training for advanced cases.
I was able to do both, take care of him and provide because of this job.
(18:22):
Jeremy.
when you first started this company, hearing a story like that, when people are sittingthere going like, how do I take care of my people?
That you have an individual who's able to share a story like that and see the lightbecause of what you all provide for them.
What does that mean to you as a leader, as a CEO, as a co -founder in a company like this?
(18:49):
Well, I love hearing it.
First of all, it makes me feel good.
It makes me feel fulfilled.
You probably know this, Matt, as, as the CEO, most of the things that float up to yourdesk are the problems, right?
I get very few client escalations, but when I get them, they're not generally reaching outto tell me how great of a time they're having with guidance.
(19:10):
It's, you know, some issue that they've run into that the team is working on trying toresolve.
So,
I think it's really just a function of hiring people that really care about other people.
And it's gotten harder.
It's actually really easy when you're small.
When we had 15 people, it was not hard to be that flexible and that open.
(19:32):
Right?
Somebody has an issue.
You're talking with them directly.
You figure it out where it gets hard is in this messy middle where now you've got two orthree layers of people in between connections and trying to maintain that.
And that only happens when we have.
good leadership that we're constantly investing in trying to better understand this is howwe want to show up.
(19:54):
But one of our principles, Matt, is catch people doing things right.
We just believe it's the best way to teach.
The best way to teach is by helping them see they've already done it.
And here's where that shows up.
Gotcha.
All right.
Now we're going to move from the employee to the actual person, right?
(20:14):
Which sounds crazy because it's like, we just talked about people who lost a lot.
Like when you guys do as good of a job as you guys do, it kind of flows as it should,right?
Partnering crime.
This popped up quite a bit.
People use this term.
Corey, you're smiling big.
What is a partner in crime?
It says having a buddy system like partnering crime helps me a lot in guidance, earlystages, and also enables me to be the best.
(20:39):
PIC, I'm assuming that's partnering crime, for our newest team members.
So that means there must be kind of like a lineage of partnering crimes down the ladder.
So strange concept, haven't heard of it, I have some ideas of what it means, but walk methrough how this works, how someone else could put this into their business.
Yeah, you bet.
So here's something that I recognized in my human resources careers.
(21:01):
There's a lot of things that I could do, but I need to maximize my time and my leverage.
And what I recognize is where there's high emotions.
Whenever there's high emotions, there's a time for high impact.
And when somebody starts a new job, think about the feelings that people have when theystart a new job.
They could be anxious, they could be embarrassed, they could be scared, they could feelinadequate.
(21:23):
Those are really common feelings.
And so when those feelings are strong, that's a really great opportunity for us to lean inand create safety and connection.
And so one of those ways that we do that is everybody that joins the company has anassigned partner in crime, somebody that we know that they're going to get along with.
It will be a great resource and they meet them day one.
(21:44):
And that's the person that they can go to to say, Hey, who is that person again?
Or what day is payday?
The questions that they may be too bare.
Are they related?
Some of those questions that they may not be excited to ask another teammate or asupervisor.
There's just this immediate connection with an individual that their sole purpose is tosupport them, their questions.
(22:05):
They check in every day the first week.
How did your first day go?
How did your first couple of days go?
What's going well?
What do you have questions about?
And there's just this embedded partnership that has become a strong part of our culture.
And those people that had a good partner in crime experience get
ecstatic when they're asked to then be a partner in crime for somebody else because itsort of perpetuates or continues just this history of us caring enough about our people to
(22:33):
assign them an individual that is there to support whatever that they need in a time wherethey're going to have some strong emotions between excitement and embarrassment and
nervousness.
And so we try to mitigate that with an individual that's there and, you know, constantlythere checking in to be a resource for them.
Gotcha.
Now walk me through, Corey, how does that work when you're remote?
(22:56):
Yeah, we make a remote introduction on day one.
We say, this is your partner in crime.
This is what that means.
Here's what you can go to them for.
And here's how this fits into everything that's going to happen in your first day, in yourfirst week.
And here's how you can contact them.
I mentioned earlier, we use Microsoft Teams.
So they're a quick chat away.
(23:18):
Hey, do you have a second?
We can chat.
Or, hey, I had a quick question.
Or, hey, can we check in for 10 minutes?
Let's pop up on a quick Teams chat.
And so we just help them understand the way to communicate with a partner in crime, thereasons you might want to connect with a partner in crime, which by the way is anything.
But here's the mechanism to do that.
So that they just understand that this person is really dedicated to you.
(23:41):
This is how you can contact them and utilize them and develop a strong relationship.
And as you can hear from that comment, sometimes that relationship goes way beyond thefirst day and the first week and the first month.
And that's what we hope for.
So when we talk about culture as connection, that's another example of something that wedo that we're trying to create connection long -term and throughout the whole
(24:02):
organization, not just on somebody's team, but throughout the whole organization.
The thing that I love most and you two are the only two individuals in the entire companyI've ever talked to, right?
But through these answers, I'm able to sit back and we've done enough of these.
We've worked with enough clients.
The one thing I have to assume you guys do and Jeremy, you can touch on this is you setexpectations very clearly from the beginning and not just on like the work we expect, but
(24:26):
the culture that we protect, right?
Like, like
fact that you don't it doesn't sound like you just offer this partner in crime is like anadded benefit if you'd ever want to know it's like this is what you have.
This is who this person is.
So if you come to me as Matt on something that you should go to your partner in crime withI'm going to point you back to that.
We put this in place for a reason.
How do you make sure your expectations are set again so it's not just like this fluid yesget your job done but we also expect you to be part of this culture and embrace this
(24:55):
culture.
How do you protect that again.
Forget the remote thing, I'm gonna stop asking that.
It's hard enough to do this in person, so tell me how you do it in person because mostpeople can't do that.
Yeah, it's interesting.
one of my favorite stories that I remember is coming into a leadership team meeting andreading Corey's update.
And he was talking about a gentleman we had hired who quit on the first day.
(25:19):
And, you know, Corey is somebody who just loves people in general.
So he doesn't want anyone ever to leave.
And he's, I asked him a few questions about this and he's downloading the story with me.
And I'm thinking to myself, this is an example of the system working.
We.
so communicated to this guy, what it was going to look like to work here, that he waswithin 24 hours able to say, I need to get the hell out of here because this is not the
(25:46):
right place for me.
And to Corey's point, that's pretty rare that it even gets to that stage because somebodydoesn't get through our interview process unless they're comfortable answering these
values -based questions.
And you can feel when you're in an interview.
when you feel connected to someone because what they're talking about is jiving with howyou think about the world and you can feel the disconnect when it's not.
(26:09):
And I think that sets the stage for everything else.
And there's obviously things we reinforce within the culture, but we also try to besensitive to the fact that people participate on a different spectrum.
Some people are high introverts and expecting them to be out there cheerleading,
(26:31):
you know, volunteering in the Monday morning stand up to step up and say something about,you know, a coworker.
That's just not, it's not a fair assumption.
There are some people who show the culture in that way.
And so we try to think about it as there's lots of different ways to opt into the cultureand you can find the system that best suits you, whether it's more of an introverted, Hey,
(26:52):
I'm going to send you a cheers via email or maybe I'm
maybe on somebody who's comfortable putting it on a cheers network, or maybe I'm someonewho wants to make a big deal about it.
but the principle is we catch people doing things right.
And that's not just applicable for me and Corey, that's everybody in the company.
in the room.
Here's the other part that's so powerful, but what you guys do.
(27:12):
And I keep saying, but you're remote, but you're remote.
All of these things you're doing, the biggest pushback I get is we don't have a budget forthat.
We don't have a budget for that.
So far, everything your people have talked about has not cost a dime to the companyoutside of maybe Jeremy, you said you have a long winded email, right?
So that's, you can make that shorter if you'd like, but like, but like, but when you gothrough it, I'm sitting there going, if you were listening to this, I'm just taking one of
(27:37):
our other.
(27:58):
Hahaha!
last to know when something's going on, but if there's a partner in crime that they canactually get with and have a conversation with and talk through some of that stuff.
It saves a lot of the headaches, Jeremy, like you were talking about that comes acrossyour desk.
I just think it's so as you're listening to this audience recognize they're not bringingpeople together for happy hour.
Right.
Now you do do coffee meetings.
(28:19):
It looks like.
Right.
But I'm assuming they bring their own coffee too.
Right.
So walk me through because that was talked about that was talked about a couple of times.
So how do you instill that into an organization?
Corey, if you could take that.
Yeah, well, you mentioned cost is one and I'll just sort of double down on that or doubleclick that is I'm a pretty scrappy human resources leader.
(28:42):
I use very few, I use very few software programs.
I just realized that connection happens sort of organically and naturally.
And if you're, as long as you're intentional about it, there's a lot of things that youcan do for free.
Another good example is, you know, we, every time we get a five star review, we celebratethat with the whole organization.
That's free.
That's awesome.
reinforces values.
(29:03):
And then, so as you sort of talked about, you know, how to infuse some of these into thewhole organization, you know, inexpensively is we just look for ways that we can connect
each other and to really recognize that simple is often the best.
(29:24):
It doesn't need to be a happy hour, but it can be a leadership coffee.
So one thing that we tried and we've evolved is this idea of connecting people to seniorleaders is once a quarter, our new hires are sort of automatically enrolled into that.
Our long -term employees can opt in, back to Jeremy's point, we sort of create a menu.
(29:48):
You opt into what's most meaningful for you.
And this is one of those opt -in events.
And once a quarter, people can sign up to have a leadership coffee, we call it.
But it's a bring your own beverage situations, 30 minutes, and it's really casual.
Sometimes we talk about the business, sometimes we play some games, sometimes we get toknow you.
It's different for the leader and it's different each time.
(30:09):
It's an opportunity to disconnect, get to know a senior leader, get to know each other onthe team and to create that connection that's gonna sustain us even in a remote
environment through our work and connect us to our clients and the purpose of ourorganization, which is to help people succeed in small business.
And I think one thing that's, yeah, go for it, Jeremy, drop in.
(30:30):
I was going to share something on top.
one of my absolute favorite books is a beautiful constraint and we read it together as aleadership team.
I reread it every year.
And the reason I love that book is because more resources is a cop out.
It is a, an excuse to not innovate.
And we go back to this regularly when we run up against these things where we feel like wehave a problem.
(30:56):
problem.
think we need resources to solve it.
The question is, how can we innovate here?
How can we use this as an opportunity?
Cause the reality is if you can throw money at it and solve it, so can everybody else outthere.
That's not even an interesting problem worth solving.
You're not going to get any better from it.
And the company is not going to get any better from it.
How we're going to get better as a company is because when we run up against theseobstacles, we're going to say, how can we do it differently?
(31:20):
So when we say, Hey, connection is hard when you're remote.
Well, yeah.
So.
So how are we going to do that?
Because we've made the decision that we're going to be remote.
We think this is a wave that is not going away.
And we've decided that because of that, we're going to figure out how to be really greatat doing it.
(31:40):
And it's going to become one of our competitive advantages as an employer for the peoplewho want that.
And that's not everybody.
And we knew that and we actually lost some team members because of it, but that's okaybecause this is who we are and this is who we're going to be.
And.
I would encourage anyone to read that book.
I think it's one of the best books to read as a leadership team, because if you are a CEO,I promise every day you get something coming to your desk where it's like, Hey, I have
(32:08):
this problem.
I need more money.
Yeah.
so, and it's so funny because I always talk about just culture is not a commodity toexactly what you're saying.
And what a commodity is, is doesn't matter what's coming.
It's what's the price.
It's a dollar to dollar comparison.
And if you're battling dollar to dollar, who's happy hours are better.
You're going to lose.
(32:28):
You're going to lose money.
You're going to lose people.
Whereas what you're talking about is culture is not based on how much dollars I could puton it.
It's how much value is built by it.
Well said.
that's what I love what you guys are doing because I keep trying to explain to clients,right?
And some of my clients are gonna be like, he's talking about me again, because they'rejust beating them over the head going like, you're burning cash on some of these things
(32:49):
you're doing, but yet you can customize it and care about what the individual actuallythinks about and go from there.
Here's a question that came up.
It says, Guardian cares about its employees, right?
And that's not new.
You've heard me say that a thousand times.
I love the connection events.
It's so fun to meet folks that I don't work with every day.
Guardian has created a culture that is open and welcoming with good people who aren'ttoxic.
(33:15):
What's the connection event?
I'll let whichever one of you pick to take this one.
I think Corey should answer this one because this was, this was, this was a project givento Corey and said, Hey, we used to do once a year, we do these all team parties and we'd
fly everyone in.
And as we went remote and we became more geographically distributed, it just wasn'tfeasible.
(33:38):
And so the project for Corey was how do we create the positive dynamics of gettingtogether, but do it in a remote environment.
And what'd you do, Corey?
Yeah, well, we said, hey, this is a beautiful constraint.
This is an opportunity to think differently about this.
And so I went to my network and I said, hey, we typically have done an all day event inperson.
(34:02):
We're now fully remote.
We want to lean into that.
And here's our budget.
And people in my network said, you're nuts.
Good luck.
And all day, an all day event virtually sounds like a nightmare.
And we said, well, we're going to give it a shot.
So we tested and
something that we do well in our culture to sort of reinforce our values.
(34:23):
We say, hey, look, we're going to try something.
This may be awesome and it may be a disaster.
Either way, can we just agree that it's fun to try something and you let us know and we'lllearn together.
So that sort of creates a really high safety net for us.
And so we did, we tried an all day virtual event three years ago and we did four one hourevents with 30 minutes in between because we're like, how do we solve for lunch and how do
(34:45):
we solve for, you know, and so we use things like
Grubhub meals and for a fraction of the cost, when I say a fraction, I'm talking onetwentieth, well, we had budgeted over $100 ,000.
We spent about 20 to do something virtually and that was food and celebrations andpartnering with some folks.
(35:05):
And so we did an all day connection event virtually.
And the comments that you're hearing is on the heels of the one that we just did thisyear, which was our third year that we did it.
And so you can see there's a lot of energy and excitement behind what just happened thatday.
And the one that we did this year, because we measure culture as connection, we measureour connection, we ask people on a quarterly basis, how connected do you feel to the
(35:28):
purpose of the organization, to the leaders of the organization and to each other?
And we noticed that we were getting lower scores on the purpose of the organization.
So we dedicate an entire day for our virtual, we call it our Guidant Connection Event.
And all four of the events were client related.
We did a client of the year event.
We did a business simulation event.
(35:50):
Jeremy told his story about becoming an entrepreneur.
And the fourth event that we did was we call it Meet Main Street.
We gave people money to go and spend at small businesses in the area.
So we took an all day event, 200 people.
We brought them together virtually and we put a thoughtful event together.
And that's something we do every year.
We also have a
we call our connection opportunity and growth committee.
(36:13):
We have an entire committee that's connected, that's committed to this.
And they do a monthly connection event that varies every month.
One of those is sort of this, you know, casual conversations with, with other team membersand things like that, similar to leadership coffees, but without the leader.
And so they could be talking about both a monthly connection event or this annual event,but I suspect they're talking about the annual event because we did the survey right on
(36:36):
the heels of that.
And the connection that people feel coming out of those is really palpable, as you can seein some of the comments that you're reading.
All right, I'm going to wrap up with this comment before we go into some of the ups anddowns and roadblocks you guys get into, right?
It's not all good.
It's still business.
There's still things you got to deal with.
Guardian is the best place to work because of one, we got three of these, so get ready.
(36:57):
The work from home arrangement, which gives back to the employees the most valuableresource, which is time.
Two, the Monday morning standups, which we didn't get to that, says it's really nice toregularly get a view of how the company and its various departments are doing.
instead of only knowing your department's performance and being clueless about everyoneelse.
Three, the company's activities.
(37:17):
It's been a real treat joining these events that I didn't think I would actually enjoy,but once I started going, I thoroughly enjoyed hearing the inspiring stories about the
people we work with and getting a chance to talk to them who we don't really get toconnect with on a regular basis.
Truly promotes work -life balance, and I feel so lucky to be a part of it.
(37:40):
What's the Monday morning standups?
Is that company wide?
It is, we have a meeting every Monday, 10 o 'clock mountain time.
That's my time.
So I guess it's nine o 'clock Pacific.
It's 12 o 'clock for those people on Eastern time zone.
And we get together for 15 to 25 minutes and we rotate members of our leadership team.
(38:01):
We have 12 members of our leadership team.
So every one of those leaders hosts once a quarter.
supporter and we have a pretty set agenda that we go through.
We go through any key updates people need to know.
We introduce new people to the organization, celebrate anniversaries, we talk about who'sleaving and we give some business updates.
And generally there's an opportunity for the individual leader who's hosting to talk aboutsomething that's relevant that
(38:27):
or their teams are working on.
So today, Melissa Hitchner, who's our director of engineering hosted.
And so she had one of our.
product owners come on and talk about this new AI system that's being built to help ourclients get rid of some of this paperwork pain where they may get data in four or five
different sources.
So how can we create something where they can just drop it one place and the system canfigure out what's what, and then get it into the format that we needed and not put that
(38:55):
burden on the customer.
So that's an example of one thing, but what Corey's team with HR might do might lookdifferent.
They might talk about.
a different recruiting policy that we're working on or something on a values base.
Gotcha.
So what is it when it comes to doing good and pouring back in the community?
You've already talked about letting people go Main Street, going to buy and support localbusinesses.
(39:18):
How do you make a positive impact outside of your business?
Because I'm again, you pour into your people, you luckily pour into it's just, it's just aculture of life, right?
It's not like you've changed at work than where you are at home.
How do you guys make an impact in the communities that you are a part of as well?
Is there any structure to that or any strategy behind that?
Corey, can you touch on that?
(39:40):
Yeah, the biggest thing that we do is that we're fully remote.
And what that does, so a couple of years ago, I calculated for our US team members only,so for about 120 -ish, 125 team members only, we take about 600 ,000 miles off of the
roads every year.
(40:02):
So taking those miles off of the road,
also equates to people not being stressed in traffic or spending time driving.
And, you know, my vision for the workplace is that the workplace is a place where peoplecan do their best, be their best and feel their best.
And then they come to work and get energy that they can take back to be whatever otherroles in their life, a spouse or a parent or a pet parent or a pickleball player, you
(40:30):
know, whatever it is that they're excited about.
The world so much is structured and people give everything that they have to work and thenthey drive home exhausted, frustrated, and they have very little energy for everything
else.
And so we have found that just by being fully remote, leaning into that with even withsome flexible schedules where possible, people now have more time and more energy to be
(40:53):
important people outside of guidance, which is equally important to us.
And so they can go out and be parents and coaches.
and civic leaders or church leaders or things like that with some energy to invest there.
That's so good.
All right.
So we talked about all the amazing thing you guys do.
And again, there's a lot there's like I said, we don't have time for all of them.
(41:16):
What are some of the roadblocks, right?
No matter how much you try, business is still hard.
200 people is hard.
Remote is hard.
Shoot 15 people, right?
Jeremy back in the day, that was hard, right?
Like it just, it's just a hard thing of what we're trying to do.
Even though you guys provide an amazing service, you have great systems.
When it comes to working with your people.
(41:43):
I'm going to go ahead and close the video.
One of the things that remote creates is a need to have Uber clarity about outcomes thatyou need from people.
(42:05):
Because you're not standing over their shoulder.
You're not measuring them by how long their butt is sitting in the seat.
You're measuring them by the work that gets done.
And in many roles, that's been very effective for us.
In other roles, we found some friction.
because we have sometimes metrics that are really good on the quantity side, but may notaccurately measure what we need on the quality side.
(42:28):
Or like right now we're working with the 401k administration team because not every fileis the same.
And we have kind of a point system for how we think about these files that come in, buteven within those categories, one might be 10 X the work of another one.
So it's a hairy problem to figure out how we.
how we piece that apart and give someone clarity what success looks like on a daily,weekly, monthly basis but doing it in a way that's fair and equitable
(42:56):
the team.
And that's one we're wrestling with right now.
Gotcha.
Remind me, I'm going to talk about the 90 day gold rush after this, but that's, that'ssomething that's pretty interesting.
Corey, what would you say is your biggest?
Sorry, we, we do, we do gaps all the time.
Right.
So I kind of set it up and I can't help, but say one solution with that.
Corey, what would you say is your biggest gap that you're seeing when it comes to havingthe people the way you have them and growing the company?
(43:22):
Yeah, I mean, a guidance.
I mean, Jeremy spoke to one.
It's not super sexy or maybe it's it's a little off topic, but we continue to wrestle withhealth insurance with the size of our organization.
That is such a pain point.
And where we have a value or a principle around the well -being of the whole person, weoffer a couple of different free individual health plans, dental plans and vision plans.
(43:46):
And as health care costs have just skyrocketed, it's been harder and harder.
It's put a lot of it's put
a lot of pressure on the value that we can really deliver to our team in terms of totalcompensation.
And so trying to navigate that has been a real pain point for us the last few years.
And this year in particular, it's getting even, even harder to balance the needs of theorganization to be thoughtful and frugal while still adding the value that we need for
(44:16):
people to have adequate healthcare.
That's good.
All right, well, hey, no, no, you go, Jeremy.
Add on to it.
Let's say one of the things about healthcare that we find so challenging is it's, it's sodisproportionate the benefit that it provides.
Some people get very little to no benefit out of it.
And some people take a massive benefit from it.
(44:37):
And so that lopsided nature of it makes it not just expensive, but really chunky when wethink about where dollars are going to try and best support the team as a whole.
That's good.
Well, hey, you guys have done an amazing job.
Like I said, I'm so grateful for you guys coming on, sharing all this.
(44:58):
If somebody wants to get in contact with you, what's the best way for them to learn aboutyour services, connect with one of you or both of you?
How can they connect with you?
Jeremy, you go first.
How can someone connect with you or get ahold of guidance to figure out if they can maybetake some of the retirement and get a bit of return on and doing something else?
Yeah.
If you're looking to take control of your life and possibly start a small business, youcan go to guiding financial as an easy place to sort of register and someone will reach
(45:25):
out to you and get you some more information.
as far as me, anyone can follow me on LinkedIn.
You can connect with me.
You can send me a DM if you want.
I'm happy to, to connect with anyone out there that, wants to talk about retirement fundsor, you know, I write regularly on LinkedIn as well.
If anybody wants to talk about those topics and,
If anyone is looking for a job or a role, we have a careers page on our website andthere's a place there where people can submit some information as well or, or see what
(45:55):
roles are available at the current time.
Awesome.
And I will say, Jeremy, you're a great follow on LinkedIn.
So I do appreciate that.
Corey, what do you got?
How do we connect with you?
A lot of what I've talked about today I just recently put into a book.
It's called HR Are You Kidding Me?
And surprisingly simple steps.
Yeah, surprisingly simple steps to unlock the power of people.
(46:18):
Just a lot of lessons that I've learned over my HR career.
LinkedIn's best place to connect with me as well.
I try to write and share.
anecdotes and tips regularly there.
There's a few Corey Sanford's out there, but you'll just type Corey Sanford.
You recognize this big goofy grin.
I'll be easy to find, but you're happy to connect with me on LinkedIn.
Send me a message if you have questions or comments about what you heard today.
(46:40):
Happy to chat.
Man, well thank you two so much.
I know you guys are busy.
We will wrap this up here.
Very much appreciate Corey Sanford and Jeremy Ames.
Very much appreciate you listening.
Best people, best place.
We'll see you on the next episode.
Thanks for having us, Matt.
Appreciate you.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.