February 24, 2025 • 41 mins
Company: Focus Lab
Owner(s): Erik Reagan, Bill Kenney, & Will Straughn
Year Started: 2010
Employees: 26 – 50
In this episode of An Agency Story, Russel Dubree sits down with Erik Reagan, co-founder of Focus Lab, to discuss how intentional culture isn’t just a feel-good concept, it’s a key driver of business success.
Erik shares how Focus Lab went from an unstructured team to a culture-first agency, where values aren’t just words on a wall but integrated into daily operations. From the creative patch ceremony that recognizes team excellence to the power of learning out loud, Erik breaks down actionable strategies any agency owner can use to build a workplace that inspires performance, engagement, and growth.
If you’re looking for proven ways to create a culture that fuels success, this is an episode you won’t want to miss.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Welcome to An Agency Storypodcast where we share real
stories of marketing agencyowners from around the world.
From the excitement of startingup the first big sale, passion,
doubt, fear, freedom, and theemotional rollercoaster of
growth, hear it all on An AgencyStory podcast.
(00:24):
An Agency Story podcast ishosted by Russel Dubree,
successful agency owner with aneight figure exit turned
business coach.
Enjoy the next agency story.
Russel (00:41):
What if I told you that culture isn't just about happy
employees.
It's the key ingredient to highperformance, engaged teams, and
long term success.
Welcome to An Agency Storypodcast, I'm your host Russel.
In today's episode, I sit downwith Eric Reagan from Focus Lab
out of Savannah, Georgia touncover how he built a culture
(01:02):
that doesn't just retain talent,but inspires peak performance.
From core values that actuallymean something to creative
recognition systems that fuelmotivation, this conversation is
packed with insights everyagency owner needs to hear if
you've ever wondered how to turnculture into a competitive
advantage, stick around.
This episode is for you.
Enjoy the story.
(01:24):
Welcome to the show today,everyone.
I have Erik Reagan with FocusLab and Built On Purpose.
Thank you so much for joiningtoday, Erik.
Erik (01:31):
Pleasure being here, thank you.
Russel (01:32):
I'm excited to get to today's conversation.
Want to definitely hear aboutthe agency you've built, but and
then get to a topic that, uh, isjust really passionate, uh, for,
for myself and for you as well.
If you don't mind, start us off.
What does Focus Lab do and whodo you do it for?
Erik (01:48):
Focus Lab is a B2B brand agency.
We started about 13 years agoand, uh, we primarily serve kind
of B2B tech, uh, companies.
Most of them are in some form ofgrowth stage in their, in their
business.
We also started a second,smaller agency kind of within
the same organization, but it'sa separate brand called Odi, O D
(02:09):
I, and that's doing somewhatsimilar things for earlier stage
businesses.
Still B2B in tech, and that'sour audience that we serve.
We just work on the brandingfoundation for these
organizations, the verbal, thevisual things, um, and try to
equip them really well as theythen start to try and change
some things about theirmarketing approach and how
they're positioned and, and howthey communicate with customers
(02:30):
and others out there.
We're about 13 years old andwe've evolved over that time,
but that's how I would describeus, uh, right now and how we've
kind of planted our flag.
Russel (02:38):
Lovely.
How did you come up with thename?
Erik (02:40):
Oh, man, what a question.
I met my co-founder, BillKenney, in 2006, and he was
doing freelance work under thename Ideal Design.
I was doing freelance work,development work.
He was doing mostly design.
I was just going by my name,basically.
When we met, I didn't have aname.
I just kind of decided once wedecided to kind of work on
(03:02):
things together, we were justgoing to be Ideal Design.
To make it feel more official,we added the word Firm, so he
became Ideal Design Firm.
We were basically two guys withday jobs who had a side hustle
trying to build an agency.
For about three years, we, theway that I talk about is we kind
of co-freelanced, uh, with a, adesire to start an agency
full-time someday.
But no, no real plan or evenunderstanding of how to do that.
(03:25):
We just figured, okay, let's getmore clients and then someday
we'll be able to do this as ouronly job.
In 2010, we got to that point.
We reached the point where wehad enough income in the
business to both of us just gofull time.
A few months after that, wedecided we didn't really care
for the name, Ideal Design Firm.
We wanted to name it somethingdifferent that took the word
design out, partially because wehad a ton of development or code
(03:49):
work that we were doing.
We started to explore words andwe landed on the word Focus.
We love the word Focus.
We've never run a business.
We had no experience intrademark, naming companies.
We didn't know any of thisstuff.
We just kind of thought we couldregister a name of Focus, like
LLC or something.
It didn't take us long to figureout that that's not the case.
We would not be able to do that.
(04:09):
Then we just started to look fora small second word.
It's as boring as that.
We just said, all right, well,what's a word we can tag onto
the end of the word Focus thatwe do like?
And we landed on Lab.
We got a name change to FocusLab LLC and when it comes to
names, you got to get thatdomain name, right?
You got to get your dot com.
That also played into thedecision.
(04:30):
Focuslab.com was available.
We said, okay, this is a goodthing.
We registered the new name andthat was kind of the origin of
where the name came from.
The really sad part of the storyis we went to register the
domain about 30 days later.
It was gone.
Russel (04:44):
Oh, wow.
Erik (04:44):
So to this day, we still do not own Focuslab.com.
But, uh, that's where Focus Labcame from.
Russel (04:50):
Wow.
It is funny, just the, the, thenaming process and the, and the
journey it goes through.
I think we went through the samething.
We had Design in our name in theearly days and, and then we got
tired of the word Design andthen, and then our new iteration
we, you add the random adjectiveof media and what does that
mean?
We figure it out eventually, itsounds like.
Erik (05:09):
That's right.
Russel (05:09):
What was young Erik doing?
What forged your path to beforeyou were, before you actually
started your agency?
Erik (05:14):
Young Erik got interested in writing code.
Cause that's really the, thething that I was bringing to the
table with the agency waswriting code.
I got involved in, in that justcause my dad saw this
developing, this budding kindof, um, market and industry of
websites.
He said, hey, you might beinterested in this code stuff.
At this point, this is 1996 orso.
(05:37):
He just handed me a book on HTMLand showed me how to build and
test things with notepad andbrowsers.
I was hooked.
I thought it was loads of fun.
That was kind of just a hobby,you know, as a, as a kid.
Then into um, I don't know whatyear this would be but somewhere
in high school, college age Iended up with quite a few
(05:57):
friends who were in bands or ifthey were solo musicians they
needed a website.
They knew that I liked to tinkerwith the stuff so they would
start coming to me.
Hey, can you help me with awebsite?
I would make them a website andum, that itself eventually got
to a point where somebody waspaying me for a website, uh,
pretty much nothing, but stillpaying me.
That I think kind of gave me alittle glimpse of what was
(06:20):
possible, uh, and kind of takinga hobby into a potential career.
I'll leave a lot of the boringpieces out or maybe the pieces
we don't have time for.
But it's, it's stayed a hobbyfor quite some time and, uh,
then it became really part of acareer trajectory.
I worked at a couple of placeswhere I was a developer on
staff, um, but really only for afew years, uh, cause I'd met my
(06:40):
business partner, Bill or myfuture business partner, Bill,
and met someone who had an equalinterest in being good at a
craft and being able to make itwhat keeps food on the table,
what keeps lights on.
Very little practical experiencein building or running a
business, even marginalexperience in being employed.
But we started, started thebusiness.
Started as a hobby.
(07:00):
Dad was kind of the catalyst andjust, um, playing around over
the years.
Grew it to a point where peoplewere willing to pay me to do the
stuff.
Russel (07:07):
Hobby turned career.
Love those stories.
As much as I would love to focuson your entire agency journey,
we have other topics we want toget to, but, but maybe just for
the folks at home, if you canjust give the highlights of from
when you started the agency towhere you're at today, and then
we'll, we'll get into the goodtopic of culture.
Erik (07:24):
Officially, we say we started in 2010 because that's
when Bill and I were doing itfull time.
We use 2010 as sort of ourbirthday, if you will.
It was me and it was Bill and wewere just doing what we could.
It didn't take too long for usto have more work than we could
do on our own.
Within about a year, we had acouple of people helping as
contractors.
Go forward another year, we weremaybe five people.
It was maybe three years in orso we were at maybe eight or
(07:46):
nine people.
Somewhere in there, we kind ofhad our first million dollar
year, which we were just blownaway by.
I want to say around 2014, 2015,we were 15 people.
We hit our first big bad season,had some layoffs.
That was hard to learn from andnavigate.
Another two or so years go byand we're up to about 18, 19, 20
(08:07):
people, uh, doing a few milliondollars a year, I think.
It was probably around that timewhere my personal interest
actually started to shift awayfrom code and into culture and
team building kind of stuff.
Last year we got into the mid30s, uh in headcount.
Hands down, my favorite part ofall of this is the people stuff.
It's the culture stuff.
For maybe five years now, Ihaven't really done any code,
(08:29):
definitely any code for a clientprojects anymore.
Then we even stopped offeringthat as a service as we defined
who we as an agency are.
That's been a little bit moreabout the evolution around the
size and even some of theservices, how I connect to them.
Russel (08:41):
There's gotta be a billion stories in beneath that,
but we'll maybe just focus onthe culture piece.
Obviously something you'repassionate about, again, share
that same passion with you.
Was that something that wasevident to you when you started
adding your first few teammembers back in the day?
Erik (08:56):
I went back and was reading through old kind of
journal entries of my own, uh,from when we were getting ready
to start the business.
This was maybe six years ago orso.
I was just revisiting the past,some things I'd written down in
the 2010, 2009 timeframe.
And I had written kind of myhope, my desire to build a
business that was a great placeto work and that contributed
(09:20):
back to the community that I'mfrom and living in.
That being said, the first fewyears, I don't think I was
thinking much about that.
In fact, I'm pretty sure Iwasn't at all.
I was just trying to make surethat we did have income coming
in.
Russel (09:32):
Kept the lights on, yeah.
Erik (09:32):
Exactly.
Not even just for us, but evennow the contractors or the first
employees.
Those first few years, I'mpretty sure I was just almost
distinctly focused on sales andcode.
Sure, I felt like, I feel like Iwas treating people well and
creating a decent workenvironment, but it wasn't
really intentional.
It was just kind of how it wasworking out.
It was probably five or so yearsin where I started to realize
(09:55):
that, you know, I've enjoyedbuilding websites for a long
time, but I'm starting to get aglimpse of what it's like to
build a team and to build acompany.
I like the way it feels.
Pausing to really notice that iswhat I think kind of set me in
this newer direction to focusmore on culture.
Russel (10:09):
Yes.
I think a lot of, a lot ofowners start out, and I think we
were the same way, I had thisidea, it was like, yeah, I want
it to be the fun, great place towork, but I don't think I
understood of how you actuallymanufacture that.
I think it was more, on my part,at least and I think I run into
some others like, that'll justhappen if you just.
It'll just happen and, and it,and clearly it doesn't work that
way.
That's actually how, uh, culturecan certainly run amok in my own
(10:31):
experience.
When you think back, was there acritical moment or, or, uh,
something hit you in the facewhere that became a thing?
Was it just more of a, just apure evolution of thought
process?
Erik (10:40):
I can't pinpoint a moment.
I think it was a series of smallthings that eventually I kind of
turned around and lookedbackwards and went, wow, this
is, this is a really greatplace.
Actually, I'm also willing tobet there's probably some
comments from employees thathelped me start to see that
because I've worked withamazing, phenomenal people.
You can probably relate to this,when you get positive feedback
(11:03):
from an employee that it is agreat place to work or that they
appreciate, you know, thisaspect of the culture or that
benefit or this mindset orwhatever, that stuff is, is, um,
it's just fuel.
It's pure fuel for me to justkeep doing that type of work.
I think it was a series of smallthings that, that builds up into
some, some type of snowballrather than a distinct moment
(11:24):
for me.
Russel (11:24):
Yes.
Sharing in my own example of, Ithink at first, our hiring
practices were so bad in thebeginning.
It was like, we might get threeor four people to apply and I
was like, all right, who's thebest of that small group, uh,
that applied through Munster orCareerBuilder or whatever we
were doing.
The mindset shift for us waswhen I finally, we took the time
to really search out and seek,you know, someone we, we felt
(11:44):
really strongly about, hey,they're, they're good and
qualified and waited for thatperson.
Once I saw the difference of howeffectively they worked, it's
like, like buying a nice newcar.
It's like, oh man, I want tocreate someplace where, you
know, this, this person thatworks really well doesn't ever
want to leave and, and start toanswer those questions.
Thinking back to when, when youkind of, early part of this
evolution, what were some of theinitial initiatives you started
(12:07):
doing that, you know, where youwere getting some of that
positive feedback from and, andhow that evolved?
Erik (12:11):
One of the first things that comes to mind is, is there
was a very physical milestonewhere we moved from one office
space to another.
Just a little bit more contextto this, I live right outside of
Savannah, Georgia, SoutheastGeorgia.
I'm born and raised in Savannah.
We had an office in the downtownSavannah area and from the very
(12:31):
first hires that we did, we've,we went from me and Bill in one
space and place in Savannah tohaving at least one other person
from a remote off, the homeoffice location.
Almost from our beginning, we'vehad a hybrid or fully remote
kind of model.
We're fully remote today.
We went from a small like 220square foot office to a like 10x
in size office in the samebuilding.
(12:53):
That's a big change in space.
When we made that change, wedecided that it maybe was a good
time to really get serious aboutcapturing, defining, shaping
some core values for ourbusiness.
We didn't call them core valuesat the time, we called them core
standards.
We had nine of them that wedeveloped and wrote some
language for.
Given the nature of our work,we, we had somebody on staff who
(13:15):
was a great writer andinterviewer.
These came from interviews fromsomebody on our team, able to
talk with me, with Bill, andthen create just great language
to describe and bring them tolife.
These core standards I'd say is,is one of the things that, you
know, uh, it was an early kindof mile marker for me in getting
intentional about our cultureand they were received really
(13:37):
well by our team.
They became great tools to usewith each other.
A great shared language that wecould reference.
The word standard was reallyhelpful for us because we wanted
to be holding one another togood standards, to high
standards.
We received great feedback onthat.
To this day still receive reallygood feedback from our team and
from our clients about our useof our integration of, uh, core
(14:00):
values in our, in our business.
Russel (14:02):
Are you sure we didn't run the same business or is, are
we just discovering thatbasically?
Erik (14:06):
Are we from different universes and like this
multiverse out there?
Russel (14:09):
Went through the exact same exercise and at least have
the comparison point in myyounger naive days.
I sat down and I created allthese things and I said, this is
what they are.
It was not even close to what weare.
But several years later, oncewe'd gone down this path, I took
exactly what you're saying.
I took the journalistic approachand said, let me just observe
and then I'll write what we are.
Not what those wereaspirational, what we wanted to
(14:29):
be.
It kind of had the exact sameeffect.
Once you had those in place, um,and kind of had those out there
and you said it came in thiscommon language and vernacular,
what kind of things did you doto support them?
How did they actually live outin the business?
Erik (14:43):
Man, we've had a lot of fun with this topic over the
years.
We try to bring our values intoour literally daily work.
I'm going to pick a fewexamples, but we have a lot of
examples.
Russel (14:54):
I bet.
Erik (14:55):
One of my favorites is that at some point at this, I
don't remember what year thiswould have been, let's call it
five, six years ago, we created,we wanted to create something
that felt like, swag-like.
Branded stuff that's for thecompany, but something that we
never sent to anybody else.
You absolutely had to work hereto receive it.
The reason for that is wedeveloped or designed and
(15:17):
created a lot of fun swagelements that we'd take to
conferences and send to people,uh, as a surprise over time.
But we wanted to take, um, thetime to create something that
only people at Focus Lab wouldever receive.
What that resulted in was a setof, uh, patches.
Literal patches that you couldiron on to something.
We're a brand agency and sowe've got some phenomenal
(15:37):
designers.
We've designed some reallyawesome patches and a set of
them center around our corevalues.
Team members can nominate oneanother for these core values
patches, and if you've earned italready, you can actually level
up and earn higher levels of thesame kind of core value.
This system, it became a waythat there was almost like a
ceremony.
(15:58):
We literally call it a patchceremony.
A ceremony around a personreceiving recognition for how
they live out the value.
That's one of my favorite thingsthat we've, we've added to the
mix that brings these values tothe forefront, brings them to
life.
If I go to almost the other endof the spectrum, the small,
easy, fast side of the spectrum,we give each other kudos and
(16:18):
praise all the time.
One of the things that we do isin, we use Slack, like a lot of
agencies.
In Slack, we have a littlemechanism where people can give
each other shout outs and tiethem to values at the same time.
That's part of the daily side.
We see that stuff prettyregularly.
The fact that we tie values toit on purpose is, again, yet
another way that we can keep thevalues in the forefront.
(16:40):
Because really, that's, that'swhere VetCore values for any
organization actually becomevaluable, is if they're just
part of the daily language.
Russel (16:47):
Beautiful.
I can't lie and say there's nota little bit of jealousy, tinge
in the whole patch thing.
I think I had a similar idea atone time and whatever reason,
can't remember why I just neverkind of brought it to fruition.
I imagine there might even besome people out there thinking
that's a little, that's a littlecorny or cheesy.
But I'm like, no, that's, that'sreally cool.
There's a reason why motorcyclegangs are so tight.
Erik (17:07):
Seriously.
It's something that people onour team also get a lot of
excitement and pride out of whenthey can be part of creating the
patch itself.
We don't just have this patchthat's a visual product, but we
also have very intentionallywritten short descriptions about
each patch.
So when you receive one, we havethese small little like, I don't
know, two and a half by fiveinch sort of cards that the
(17:28):
patch is attached to, but itincludes some language that
describes what this patch isfor.
I know that if if folks are justlistening to the audio they
won't see this but for the videofolks on the, i'll hold one up
real quick.
This says sauce and this is ourfirst level of sauce patch.
Sauce, I can explain If you'dlike, but it's just basically
our word for customerexperience.
(17:48):
The level one sauce patch isketchup.
This is designed as like aketchup splat with just the word
sauce written across it and someother supporting language.
But, um, if you join a videocall with somebody from our
team, I think maybe one inthree, maybe one in two people
on the call, will have patchessomewhere in the background
because they're proud.
(18:08):
They received this as anomination by one of their peers
to recognize something that theywere, uh, thriving in or
excelling at, or even displayingwhen it was hard.
One of our values is lead withcourage.
They put them on display.
They're proud of them.
We're proud of them.
It's a big deal.
Russel (18:23):
I was going to ask where, where do, where do people
keep them?
I didn't know if you had theactual cut vest or not.
Erik (18:28):
No vests yet.
Russel (18:29):
No vests?
Okay.
Maybe the next iteration.
Just knowing you and, and again,someone focused on culture, I
can't imagine that how you growand develop and teach and kind
of nurture employee growth anddevelopment wasn't a critical
part of, uh, your, your journeyin that as well.
Can you speak to some of thethings you might've done on that
front?
Erik (18:47):
When it comes to developing, growing
individually, my thought is thatfirst that we just got to lead
by example.
If I have any hope orexpectation that people on my
team are investing time todevelop themselves, I need to be
putting that on display formyself.
I need to be doing that kind ofwork.
We try to talk about what itlooks like for us to be growing,
(19:08):
developing.
There's a phrase that I like touse personally, uh, which is to
just learn out loud.
The spirit of that is, first offthat if you, if you learn in a
group setting, you're probablygoing to teach people as you
learn.
But also there's like a, there'salmost an exponential growth
that can happen, and thenthere's the little bit of
inspiration that can happenalmost as a little bit of a side
effect where somebody might seethat and say, you know, I've
(19:30):
been, I've been thinking aboutfiguring out if or how AI could
fit into my workflow and I'vejust been putting it off because
I'm maybe a little tooreluctant.
Maybe I should look into that.
Or I've been, I've been thinkingabout sort of managing conflict
and client calls better, but Ihaven't really taken the time to
do that yet.
I've seen so and so over therework on something.
Maybe I should work on somethingtoo.
There's that aspect of it aswell.
And then there's the verypractical side, where we want to
(19:52):
provide money and time to teammembers to invest in themselves.
We try to lead by example in ourown individual growth, and then
we also try to prompt it andcreate space for it, uh, as
well.
We have a few spots where wetend to teach lessons, if you
will.
Some of them are directly tiedto core values, actually.
And then others are maybe feelkind of one off or random, but
(20:14):
can be applicable to anybody atthe team, no matter, no matter
what seat you sit in.
Russel (20:17):
Again, similar universes here.
We gave people the personaldevelopment budget that they
could pretty much use towardsanything that was, you know, you
could say is growing, growingand learning, whether that was
actually related to their, theirrole, or even sometimes outside
of we had a very total personconcepts.
Another thing that I think of, Idon't know if you had a
construct, uh, similar to this,we called it Lifeblue
(20:38):
University, that was the name ofour business.
Started out just kind of like around table by the fire, just
let's chat about things, butthen it evolved into this, um,
once a week we'd bring in lunch,we'd bring in speakers related
to the field.
We'd bring in nutritionists,we'd bring in financial experts
to talk about how to, you know,set up your will or just all
kinds of things like that.
It was really fascinating justto even see a construct like
that evolve.
(20:58):
But in your own journey, isthere something that you can
think of that, it kind ofstarted out just as a little
spark?
And then it's like, what it'sbecome today is, just something
you can really sit back and beproud of?
Erik (21:08):
There are probably multiple things.
One of them, man, it's been anumber of years since I was the
one to initiate one of these,but we occasionally will just do
like book clubs.
It doesn't mean that everybodyon the company's doing them.
That would actually be a littlemuch if you know, 30 some odd
people are trying to talk abouta book in a small period of
time.
Somewhere in 2015 or so I think,the first book that we, that we
(21:29):
read as a group was probably, ifi'm remembering correctly, it
was a Brené Brown book.
Daring Greatly I think is thefirst one we did.
I think later we did Dare toLead in another setting, but
just getting together anddiscussing a book like that.
I love to read.
I love to talk about what I'mreading.
That's actually one of thethings I try to do on purpose so
that I retain what I'm reading,the value of the things that
(21:50):
stuck out to me that werevaluable in that moment.
I brought that to work with me.
I asked others, hey, doesanybody want to get together and
read a book?
Just to kind of talk about it?
The interest was good.
The conversations were great.
Then we got busy and, you know,maybe demand picked up or
something and it becamedifficult to almost give
ourselves permission to slowdown and discuss a good book.
(22:12):
We kind of had an ebb and flowto this aspect, but there was
the first few years of it whereit was just somebody in like a
leadership role would need toinitiate that.
That's not really the caseanymore.
This year we've had four or fivebooks that people have gone
through and anybody on the teamcan kind of prompt that
opportunity and say, hey, I'vebeen thinking about reading this
(22:33):
book over here.
Anybody want to read it with me?
Next thing you know, we've gotfive or six people meeting each
week and just talking through abook that is sometimes obviously
related to our work, but in mostcases not obviously, but
certainly related to people andhow we can use ideas from a book
in work, outside of work.
That's been kind of fun for me.
Especially the past maybe 12months or so seeing four or five
(22:55):
of those groups get together andI've had zero involvement.
It's just been fun to, to seethat happen and I'm not saying
that all of them happenedbecause I did something
necessarily, but, um, that's thefirst example that comes to mind
when you ask that.
Russel (23:07):
You may have started the spark, but, uh, people carried
the, the fire or the torch, um,after that.
Very cool.
We had a book club as well, butwe didn't continue ours.
That is a regret of mine.
I probably have 8 billion morequestions, but, uh, I don't
think, um, I don't thinkanybody, maybe they'd want to
listen to an eight hour podcastepisode.
A few things left I want to,want to pick your brain about.
Talk to me about a mistake thatyou made in your journey when it
(23:29):
relates to culture that, thatwas a hard lesson to learn.
Erik (23:32):
Which one to choose?
It's tricky, right now.
The mistakes that are closest tomy heart as things that I care
about learning from are onesthat I actually can't share
because there's a confidencelevel to them.
I got to keep certain details inconfidence and even just sharing
little pieces would be enoughfor at least a couple dozen
(23:53):
people to go, oh, I know whathe's talking about and I didn't
know that part.
The mistake I would like tohighlight is part of my own
learning journey, part of my ownprofessional development, going
back to that theme.
I got to a point where I wantedto just learn to tell stories
better.
I wanted to learn to be a betterpresenter, a better, like,
(24:13):
visionary voice to a company.
I started to practice.
What does it mean to, to delivera message through the vehicle of
a story?
How can I use that with my team?
How can I use it to cast abetter vision of where I feel
like we can go and we'll go?
We had, uh, a retreat inTennessee or North Carolina?
I don't remember.
I think we were in NorthCarolina.
We're on a retreat and, uh, atthis point, maybe 20 or so of
(24:36):
us, it was a week long and wewere starting this retreat with
what was supposed to be a reallygreat kind of like vision
casting speech and unveilingsome new things to the team.
Our team was in a bit of atransition of anyways so it felt
like just a good opportunity toinfuse some energy into the
(24:57):
culture for where we're headed.
I did not prepare for it verywell.
The content was not that big ofa deal, but it involves some
changes.
I've never really gone throughany change management at this
point so I prepared enough tofeel okay about it myself.
But the changes that we shared,that I shared, cause I was
basically the one on stage.
(25:17):
It was basically in a big Airbnbliving room.
Wasn't a stage but everybody wassitting down except me so that
was the stage.
I shared these things, had someslides, kind of showed what was
going on, the decisions we weremaking and the direction we were
heading and it didn't go at allthe way I hoped it would.
Now in the moment, people onaverage were like cool.
This is great.
Sounds good.
But I knew once I was done thatnight that it just didn't land
(25:42):
the way I, I wanted it to.
Russel, I kid you not, I wantedto drive home that night.
I felt that bad It sucked for meand then even a few days into
the retreat, I'm catching windof some things.
I'm like, yeah, confirmation.
It did not land the way I wantedit to.
This is not cool.
Now the retreat was still reallyfun.
A lot of us really had a reallygreat time.
There were good things comingout of that time, but that
(26:04):
aspect of it definitely goesinto my mistake category, my
mistake experience.
John Maxwell says that, uh, hekind of has a little contrarian
view on the statement thatexperience is the best teacher.
He says, no, experience is notthe best teacher.
Evaluated experience is the bestteacher.
I was committed to evaluating.
What did I miss?
What did I do wrong?
I had a conference I wasspeaking at the next week and I
(26:26):
was sharing this experience witha close friend, somebody I know
I can share details with andknow he's going to stay just
between the two of us.
For the maybe 10 to 12 monthsleading up to that retreat, I
kept having great friendsrecommend a book to me that I
was like, I have a long list ofbooks I want to read.
I imagine you might as well.
That book just kind of like satsomewhere in the list in like
this vague spot, not priority,just kind of like, I'll get to
(26:49):
it.
I'm sitting there telling myfriend about how poorly this
experience was or how it wentand he said, hey, have you ever,
uh, read this book?
And he he named it and I'm like,oh my gosh I've been hearing
that title for a year.
Please don't tell me that itwould have prevented what I just
did.
The book was Traction by GenoWickman.
That led us to Implementingentrepreneurial operating system
(27:09):
or EOS, and that failure ormistake on my end became the
catalyst for one of the bestthings we've ever done in our
business, which is to implementEOS.
That's a story of itself to, itkind of sets up a whole other
story, but, um, yeah, that wasa, that was a memorable one for
me.
Russel (27:24):
Thank you for sharing that.
Sounds like a less than funmoment, but, um, sounds like it
also, you were able to turn thatinto quite a meaningful moment
as well.
That's all we can do in thisgame.
Obviously there's, I think someowners that, you know, for
whatever reason, however theirevolution, maybe it's their
personality, this, this, youknow, either comes naturally to
them or gets forged naturally tothem in the course of their
(27:45):
businesses, it's just a hurdleyou have to solve.
For those that are maybe notquite there yet in their
journey, or, or maybe it doesn'tcome as naturally, how do you
sell or convey the importance ofwhat culture is to maybe someone
that's still in that, maybesurvival money focused route?
Erik (27:58):
There's a, a short phrase that I will steal cause I can't
remember the author's name togive him credit.
Otherwise they call itborrowing.
Going back even a few decades,you've got somebody like Peter
Drucker saying the phrase thatat this point is classic, which
is culture eats strategy forbreakfast.
Good grief was that man ahead ofhis time with that statement.
We didn't have a lot ofmeasurable ways to prove that's
(28:20):
the case, but at this point,we've actually got plenty of
research that even just provesthat a healthy culture has a
tangible impact.
But there's a small phrase thatI really like.
I really wish I could rememberthe author's name, but just
searching the title will, willfind the answer.
The book that he wrote is calledCulture Wins and his just simple
premise in the whole book isthat the statement applies no
(28:41):
matter if it's a good culture ora bad culture.
If you've got a good culture,it's going to win over and then
he kind of gives some exampleslike Drucker White say strategy,
but he also says if you have abad culture, it's going to win
over a good strategy.
Your culture is going to win.
You might want to make it good.
There's plenty of research, itdoesn't take long to find some
pretty decent evidence to showthe, the bottom line impact of a
(29:03):
healthy work environment, of ahealthy work culture.
We've we said culture a lot.
I'm not talking about the, thecheesy stereotypical things like
games.
Russel (29:10):
Ping pong tables.
Erik (29:11):
Games at work, weird perks that sound cool.
We're talking about what is itlike to work here?
That's the culture.
Russel, you described earlier,this feeling of wanting to build
a place, um, where people don'tnecessarily want to go somewhere
else.
That resonates a lot with me,um, because when I think about
creating a strong culture, Ikind of want one of the outcomes
(29:33):
to be that it's really hard toleave and not because people are
tied to it or like, or liketethered in some way, but that
it's just hard to decide to gosomewhere else.
Even if that somewhere else is areally great offer or
opportunity.
Talking to people who have thosecultures can also be a helpful.
If you're not sure if it's worththe hassle, just talking to
people who, who say that, youknow, culture means something to
(29:55):
their team.
Russel (29:55):
Beautifully put.
I do some speaking aroundculture as well and I really
quantify it as, yeah, thatculture eats strategy for lunch,
and then to break that down evena step further, that culture is
beyond just the fun stuff, likeyou mentioned.
That culture is the accumulationof all the behaviors in the
business and those can bepositive behaviors or those can
be negative behaviors.
And if you can tip the tide tomore positive behaviors, then
(30:16):
you're, you know, you're on atleast the winning path.
That's a great way to quantifyall that, so thank you for
sharing that.
Have you come across or, orimplemented anything that
measures, uh, in terms ofculture and where you can not
just feel good about it, but youcan actually say, hey, you know,
we, we are what we want to be,or at least down that path and,
and can actually quantify thatin some way?
Erik (30:36):
We have a few things that we do on our own.
We have a couple of things we'verecently explored that involve
outside parties.
One of the very simple thingsthat we do, this might sound
kind of weird to a number oflisteners.
We have a weekly all handsmeeting and about half of that
agenda or time is actually justset up to be an open mic moment
(30:57):
or opportunity where anybody canjust grab the mic.
Usually they're giving somebodya high five or they're sharing a
win of their own.
That's weekly and it's tracked.
We literally count it.
We count how many peoplereceived a high five.
A specific high five.
Not a broad, vague, like, hey,good job.
A specific high five.
This might sound a little weird,but we, we literally measure
(31:19):
that weekly, and watch it ebband flow with seasons.
We view that as one, just onesmall measurement of how are
things right now?
We also use, uh, some software.
There's multiple tools out herelike this, but we use, uh,
something called Lattice, whereone of the pieces of the
software is that every singleweek, our team fills out a
(31:39):
weekly report.
How was your week?
We ask some specific questions,but there's one question that's
numeric in its answer, and it'sbasically a temp check on how
you doing?
One through five, five being thebest, one being terrible, and we
measure that too.
We track the changes and, um,those are pretty
straightforward, but weeklypulse checks on how are things
in general.
For those to be helpful, youhave to have a certain type of
(32:00):
culture.
You can't just, like, do thatanywhere.
You also have to be cautious tonot water it down or almost
manipulate it in a way, becausethat's, some places if you do
this in the wrong place, youknow, I could see a leadership
team trying to convince peopleto rate the week better or, you
know, give high fives becausewe're counting them.
I think that most of our team isaware that we count these
(32:21):
things, but we don't make a showof it.
Only about five or six peopleeven look at the numbers, uh,
from the high fives.
They're just genuine.
It has to work in yourworkplace, but those are a few
things we've done internally.
Externally, we've, we've justrecently worked with some of
the, the organizations thatactually come in and do surveys
of your staff and give you agrade, basically.
A really common one is the, theorganization called Great Places
(32:41):
to Work.
We did one of their surveys forthe first time this year.
There's some investment in thatbecause it's pretty extensive.
That was a really cool one.
I didn't really know what toexpect out of that this year.
I'll admit I was, I went into itthinking that they were just a
business where they, we would bepaying them to put a badge on
our website.
I had a pretty kind of cynicalview of what it was.
But it was, it was genuinely agood survey with good questions
(33:03):
with valuable insights.
I was excited to see that, withno kind of persuasion or
influence, every single personat our company answered those
questions in such a great way.
Literally 100 percent of ourteam said that this is a great
place to work.
And if you go through the GreatPlaces to Work website, you can
kind of click through and seethe scores, the ratings of
different companies.
(33:23):
And a hundred's, not supercommon.
I took a lot of, uh, just joyin, in seeing the fruit of that
and also seeing an externalmeasurement, uh, of how things
are.
Russel (33:32):
There's so many things you mentioned there that I just
want to just go down all thoserabbit holes.
I think we found the same as, weused the Best Places to Work,
uh, those types of surveys.
I can't lie and say I didn'tlove the, the, the credibility
to it.
But I think there's the key wordthat you said that it was coming
from a place of genuineness.
I almost have to say that I feellike that's not a subtle notion
that culture has to be genuine.
(33:55):
You can't manipulate culture.
You can't force it or you'regoing to, you're going to,
you're going to go down anequally terrifying or, uh, uh,
oppositely terrifying path.
If that's the case, I don't knowif you have any other thoughts
on that, but I do think that's avery important thing.
Erik (34:07):
Yeah, I mean, I'll give the, the tweet sized thought on
it.
There's a term that I've beenbouncing around in my brain.
I have yet to put pen to paperon it, but, um, it maybe comes
from because we're a brandingagency.
But I think that there's almostlike a level of brand integrity
that applies here, because ifyour values as a company, the
ones that you talk aboutexternally, if they're not lived
(34:27):
out internally, then there's anintegrity problem there.
A culture that is purely afacade is, um, because it's
really just marketing.
Disingenuous marketing at that.
Russel (34:36):
I think if people can understand that, hey, if you're
not genuine in your approach tothis, you're, you're going to
fail, so however you need tostart, be genuine.
Thank you for sharing that.
We're going to have to wrap uphere, but, um, one, one question
I certainly want to get to isyou've, you're, you're kind of
in a, uh, an interesting spot inyour career and you've got a
pretty cool thing you're, you'rein the works of creating and
(34:56):
moving on to.
If you don't mind sharing,sharing a little bit about that?
Erik (34:59):
For sure.
Part of the work I've donewithin Focus Lab over the years
has led me to just a hunger, adesire to find ways to help
other companies with similarthings with regards to kind of
their culture, their, theirenvironment.
Somewhere along the way, Istarted to think of, what would
it be like to actually own asecond business where that team
just did this type of work?
(35:20):
Started a second company, andthat one's called Built on
Purpose.
It was just born out of kind ofthis simple, but I think kind of
powerful notion that people,people deserve to enjoy going to
work.
That's the gist there.
The work that we're doing withBuilt on Purpose does center a
lot around culture, but alsoaround personal growth and
development.
There's coaching involved.
There's kind of leadershipdevelopment and training.
(35:40):
Then there's sort of just theconsultative side of working
with leadership teams to helpthem create good cultures.
The hard sell on it is thatthat's slow work.
It's not something that you cando quickly.
It's also not something that youcan pay somebody outside to
completely do for you.
They can help identify andunearth things, but the work is
still yours as an agency owneror as an entrepreneur.
(36:01):
Built on Purpose is, is just aresource for entrepreneurs and
owners who want to invest inthemselves and their teams to
make a place that is hard toleave.
That's the short version ofBuilt on Purpose and I'll be,
you know, talking more about itas time goes by.
Russel (36:14):
Love it.
Very excited for you and thatventure.
I hope that is a billion dollarbusiness because if it is, the
world will actually be, uh, anentirely better place.
Good luck to you and congrats onthe new venture.
Last big question for you, Erik.
Are entrepreneurs born or arethey made?
Erik (36:30):
I don't know yet.
I love the question.
Russel (36:33):
That is the first, uh, that, but, but might be the most
genuine answer.
Erik (36:37):
I love the question.
It's something I've ponderedmyself.
I'm rereading Grit by AngelaDuckworth right now.
I read it a few years ago, lovedit and I'm now going through it
with another group.
She mentions in it, this idea ofwhether grit is just innate or
if it's something you develop.
Her answer is is basically like,yes, it's both.
I kind of suspect thatentrepreneurialism is maybe a
(36:57):
little bit of both.
Maybe there's a bit of both in,in, in the answer, but, uh, but
I don't know.
Russel (37:03):
All right.
You come back to us when, whenyou think you've solidified an
answer, but that's, that'sprobably, maybe one of the best
answers yet is who knows?
If people want to know moreabout Focus Lab and Built on
Purpose and your own journey,where can they go?
Erik (37:15):
Builtonpurposehq.com.
Couldn't get thebuiltonpurpose.com
Russel (37:18):
I felt the pain in that statement.
Erik (37:20):
You did.
I had to make sure it was feltbecause it is felt for me and I
try to be transparent.
Builtonpurposehq.com and thenfocuslab.agency are the two
websites.
You can find all of our socialmedia things on both of those
websites.
Russel (37:32):
Awesome.
There you have it, folks, youknow where to go to.
Man, Erik, great conversation.
I wish, again, could continue itfor the rest of the day here,
but I'm sure my wife wants meto, to get onto other things as
well.
So many fascinating insights,um, and I'm so happy to see, you
know, how that's impacted yourjourney and the fact that you're
going to share it with others.
Thank you so much for sharingall that and taking the time to
(37:53):
be on the show today.
Erik (37:53):
Man, thanks for having me, Russel.
I've enjoyed the show.
I've listened to some episodesand that's just a honor to be
part of it so thanks for askingme.
We hope you've enjoyed thisepisode of An Agency Story
podcast where we share realstories of marketing agency
owners from around the world.
Are you interested in being aguest on the show?
(38:14):
Send an email topodcast@performancefaction.com.
An Agency Story is brought toyou by Performance Faction.
Performance Faction offersservices to help agency owners
grow their business to 5 milliondollars and more in revenue.
To learn more, visitperformancefaction.com.
(38:38):
Before I really set off my sights on an agency as a career
path, I actually had my sightsset on music.
I come from a family ofmusicians.
My parents taught music.
My grandmother is a professionalpianist.
I went to college for musiceducation and when I was in late
high school, I started to workat churches doing music in one
(38:59):
way or another.
I was around maybe 19 years oldand I was basically like the
person at the front doing theleading of the music in the
church service there's thissong, it's an old hymn.
It's called I Have Decided toFollow Jesus.
It's one of the, like, simplestsongs with lyric, lyrically out
there.
You're basically singing thesame sentence over and over, and
then you change the sentence andyou sing that one over and over,
(39:20):
you change the sentence, yousing that one.
It's very, very straightforward.
One of the sentences is, um, thecross before me and the world
behind me and I'm leading thiscongregation and music and on
the microphone as the leader Isay the, the cross behind me,
the world before me.
The message is like a complete180 there and I don't realize, I
don't know in the moment becauseof, of, I can't really see
(39:42):
everybody.
I don't know if anybody reallynoticed what happened or if it
was just me.
Then in the same set of music,so we had multiple songs in a
set.
The same set, I'm playing anelectric guitar, and we are in a
moment that's very just chill,very calm, and I have an
electric guitar with someeffects pedals, and I hit the
wrong pedal.
(40:03):
Instead of it being this nice,relaxed tone on my guitar, it
was basically like a overdrive,like rock sound.
It just filled the room throughthe speakers and I was just
like, this is not my day.
Today's just not been it.
I don't think I'll ever forgetthat experience.
Really, what I found is I was, Ithought a lot more about that
than anybody else in that roomwas bothered by.
(40:23):
It was way, in my head waybigger of an issue than it
became but I was like, how did Iswing this?
Both of these things in onesmall set of music?
Anyways, uh, like I said, someof my musician friends will
probably empathize with thatexperience.
Some of my church musicianfriends will probably empathize
even more with it, uh, and thenmaybe some people won't, won't,
uh, won't really understand howto feel that, but man, I was, I
(40:44):
was definitely embarrassed.
Russel (40:45):
I bet.
It sounds like, you know, kindof a, I don't know if the word's
a metaphor, analogy or justsimilar scenario, like a
leadership experience.
You just had it in this, in thismusic scene.
I thought it was going to bemore like I had this, this flash
of back to the future come tomind of like, you know, when he
finishes his rock performanceand everybody's kind of like,
what?
But as you said, you know,people certainly weren't
thinking about it as much asyou.
Welcome to An Agency Storypodcast where we share real
stories of marketing agencyowners from around the world.
From the excitement of startingup the first big sale, passion,
doubt, fear, freedom, and theemotional rollercoaster of
growth, hear it all on An AgencyStory podcast.
(00:24):
An Agency Story podcast ishosted by Russel Dubree,
successful agency owner with aneight figure exit turned
business coach.
Enjoy the next agency story.
Russel (00:41):
What if I told you that culture isn't just about happy
employees.
It's the key ingredient to highperformance, engaged teams, and
long term success.
Welcome to An Agency Storypodcast, I'm your host Russel.
In today's episode, I sit downwith Eric Reagan from Focus Lab
out of Savannah, Georgia touncover how he built a culture
(01:02):
that doesn't just retain talent,but inspires peak performance.
From core values that actuallymean something to creative
recognition systems that fuelmotivation, this conversation is
packed with insights everyagency owner needs to hear if
you've ever wondered how to turnculture into a competitive
advantage, stick around.
This episode is for you.
Enjoy the story.
(01:24):
Welcome to the show today,everyone.
I have Erik Reagan with FocusLab and Built On Purpose.
Thank you so much for joiningtoday, Erik.
Erik (01:31):
Pleasure being here, thank you.
Russel (01:32):
I'm excited to get to today's conversation.
Want to definitely hear aboutthe agency you've built, but and
then get to a topic that, uh, isjust really passionate, uh, for,
for myself and for you as well.
If you don't mind, start us off.
What does Focus Lab do and whodo you do it for?
Erik (01:48):
Focus Lab is a B2B brand agency.
We started about 13 years agoand, uh, we primarily serve kind
of B2B tech, uh, companies.
Most of them are in some form ofgrowth stage in their, in their
business.
We also started a second,smaller agency kind of within
the same organization, but it'sa separate brand called Odi, O D
(02:09):
I, and that's doing somewhatsimilar things for earlier stage
businesses.
Still B2B in tech, and that'sour audience that we serve.
We just work on the brandingfoundation for these
organizations, the verbal, thevisual things, um, and try to
equip them really well as theythen start to try and change
some things about theirmarketing approach and how
they're positioned and, and howthey communicate with customers
(02:30):
and others out there.
We're about 13 years old andwe've evolved over that time,
but that's how I would describeus, uh, right now and how we've
kind of planted our flag.
Russel (02:38):
Lovely.
How did you come up with thename?
Erik (02:40):
Oh, man, what a question.
I met my co-founder, BillKenney, in 2006, and he was
doing freelance work under thename Ideal Design.
I was doing freelance work,development work.
He was doing mostly design.
I was just going by my name,basically.
When we met, I didn't have aname.
I just kind of decided once wedecided to kind of work on
(03:02):
things together, we were justgoing to be Ideal Design.
To make it feel more official,we added the word Firm, so he
became Ideal Design Firm.
We were basically two guys withday jobs who had a side hustle
trying to build an agency.
For about three years, we, theway that I talk about is we kind
of co-freelanced, uh, with a, adesire to start an agency
full-time someday.
But no, no real plan or evenunderstanding of how to do that.
(03:25):
We just figured, okay, let's getmore clients and then someday
we'll be able to do this as ouronly job.
In 2010, we got to that point.
We reached the point where wehad enough income in the
business to both of us just gofull time.
A few months after that, wedecided we didn't really care
for the name, Ideal Design Firm.
We wanted to name it somethingdifferent that took the word
design out, partially because wehad a ton of development or code
(03:49):
work that we were doing.
We started to explore words andwe landed on the word Focus.
We love the word Focus.
We've never run a business.
We had no experience intrademark, naming companies.
We didn't know any of thisstuff.
We just kind of thought we couldregister a name of Focus, like
LLC or something.
It didn't take us long to figureout that that's not the case.
We would not be able to do that.
(04:09):
Then we just started to look fora small second word.
It's as boring as that.
We just said, all right, well,what's a word we can tag onto
the end of the word Focus thatwe do like?
And we landed on Lab.
We got a name change to FocusLab LLC and when it comes to
names, you got to get thatdomain name, right?
You got to get your dot com.
That also played into thedecision.
(04:30):
Focuslab.com was available.
We said, okay, this is a goodthing.
We registered the new name andthat was kind of the origin of
where the name came from.
The really sad part of the storyis we went to register the
domain about 30 days later.
It was gone.
Russel (04:44):
Oh, wow.
Erik (04:44):
So to this day, we still do not own Focuslab.com.
But, uh, that's where Focus Labcame from.
Russel (04:50):
Wow.
It is funny, just the, the, thenaming process and the, and the
journey it goes through.
I think we went through the samething.
We had Design in our name in theearly days and, and then we got
tired of the word Design andthen, and then our new iteration
we, you add the random adjectiveof media and what does that
mean?
We figure it out eventually, itsounds like.
Erik (05:09):
That's right.
Russel (05:09):
What was young Erik doing?
What forged your path to beforeyou were, before you actually
started your agency?
Erik (05:14):
Young Erik got interested in writing code.
Cause that's really the, thething that I was bringing to the
table with the agency waswriting code.
I got involved in, in that justcause my dad saw this
developing, this budding kindof, um, market and industry of
websites.
He said, hey, you might beinterested in this code stuff.
At this point, this is 1996 orso.
(05:37):
He just handed me a book on HTMLand showed me how to build and
test things with notepad andbrowsers.
I was hooked.
I thought it was loads of fun.
That was kind of just a hobby,you know, as a, as a kid.
Then into um, I don't know whatyear this would be but somewhere
in high school, college age Iended up with quite a few
(05:57):
friends who were in bands or ifthey were solo musicians they
needed a website.
They knew that I liked to tinkerwith the stuff so they would
start coming to me.
Hey, can you help me with awebsite?
I would make them a website andum, that itself eventually got
to a point where somebody waspaying me for a website, uh,
pretty much nothing, but stillpaying me.
That I think kind of gave me alittle glimpse of what was
(06:20):
possible, uh, and kind of takinga hobby into a potential career.
I'll leave a lot of the boringpieces out or maybe the pieces
we don't have time for.
But it's, it's stayed a hobbyfor quite some time and, uh,
then it became really part of acareer trajectory.
I worked at a couple of placeswhere I was a developer on
staff, um, but really only for afew years, uh, cause I'd met my
(06:40):
business partner, Bill or myfuture business partner, Bill,
and met someone who had an equalinterest in being good at a
craft and being able to make itwhat keeps food on the table,
what keeps lights on.
Very little practical experiencein building or running a
business, even marginalexperience in being employed.
But we started, started thebusiness.
Started as a hobby.
(07:00):
Dad was kind of the catalyst andjust, um, playing around over
the years.
Grew it to a point where peoplewere willing to pay me to do the
stuff.
Russel (07:07):
Hobby turned career.
Love those stories.
As much as I would love to focuson your entire agency journey,
we have other topics we want toget to, but, but maybe just for
the folks at home, if you canjust give the highlights of from
when you started the agency towhere you're at today, and then
we'll, we'll get into the goodtopic of culture.
Erik (07:24):
Officially, we say we started in 2010 because that's
when Bill and I were doing itfull time.
We use 2010 as sort of ourbirthday, if you will.
It was me and it was Bill and wewere just doing what we could.
It didn't take too long for usto have more work than we could
do on our own.
Within about a year, we had acouple of people helping as
contractors.
Go forward another year, we weremaybe five people.
It was maybe three years in orso we were at maybe eight or
(07:46):
nine people.
Somewhere in there, we kind ofhad our first million dollar
year, which we were just blownaway by.
I want to say around 2014, 2015,we were 15 people.
We hit our first big bad season,had some layoffs.
That was hard to learn from andnavigate.
Another two or so years go byand we're up to about 18, 19, 20
(08:07):
people, uh, doing a few milliondollars a year, I think.
It was probably around that timewhere my personal interest
actually started to shift awayfrom code and into culture and
team building kind of stuff.
Last year we got into the mid30s, uh in headcount.
Hands down, my favorite part ofall of this is the people stuff.
It's the culture stuff.
For maybe five years now, Ihaven't really done any code,
(08:29):
definitely any code for a clientprojects anymore.
Then we even stopped offeringthat as a service as we defined
who we as an agency are.
That's been a little bit moreabout the evolution around the
size and even some of theservices, how I connect to them.
Russel (08:41):
There's gotta be a billion stories in beneath that,
but we'll maybe just focus onthe culture piece.
Obviously something you'repassionate about, again, share
that same passion with you.
Was that something that wasevident to you when you started
adding your first few teammembers back in the day?
Erik (08:56):
I went back and was reading through old kind of
journal entries of my own, uh,from when we were getting ready
to start the business.
This was maybe six years ago orso.
I was just revisiting the past,some things I'd written down in
the 2010, 2009 timeframe.
And I had written kind of myhope, my desire to build a
business that was a great placeto work and that contributed
(09:20):
back to the community that I'mfrom and living in.
That being said, the first fewyears, I don't think I was
thinking much about that.
In fact, I'm pretty sure Iwasn't at all.
I was just trying to make surethat we did have income coming
in.
Russel (09:32):
Kept the lights on, yeah.
Erik (09:32):
Exactly.
Not even just for us, but evennow the contractors or the first
employees.
Those first few years, I'mpretty sure I was just almost
distinctly focused on sales andcode.
Sure, I felt like, I feel like Iwas treating people well and
creating a decent workenvironment, but it wasn't
really intentional.
It was just kind of how it wasworking out.
It was probably five or so yearsin where I started to realize
(09:55):
that, you know, I've enjoyedbuilding websites for a long
time, but I'm starting to get aglimpse of what it's like to
build a team and to build acompany.
I like the way it feels.
Pausing to really notice that iswhat I think kind of set me in
this newer direction to focusmore on culture.
Russel (10:09):
Yes.
I think a lot of, a lot ofowners start out, and I think we
were the same way, I had thisidea, it was like, yeah, I want
it to be the fun, great place towork, but I don't think I
understood of how you actuallymanufacture that.
I think it was more, on my part,at least and I think I run into
some others like, that'll justhappen if you just.
It'll just happen and, and it,and clearly it doesn't work that
way.
That's actually how, uh, culturecan certainly run amok in my own
(10:31):
experience.
When you think back, was there acritical moment or, or, uh,
something hit you in the facewhere that became a thing?
Was it just more of a, just apure evolution of thought
process?
Erik (10:40):
I can't pinpoint a moment.
I think it was a series of smallthings that eventually I kind of
turned around and lookedbackwards and went, wow, this
is, this is a really greatplace.
Actually, I'm also willing tobet there's probably some
comments from employees thathelped me start to see that
because I've worked withamazing, phenomenal people.
You can probably relate to this,when you get positive feedback
(11:03):
from an employee that it is agreat place to work or that they
appreciate, you know, thisaspect of the culture or that
benefit or this mindset orwhatever, that stuff is, is, um,
it's just fuel.
It's pure fuel for me to justkeep doing that type of work.
I think it was a series of smallthings that, that builds up into
some, some type of snowballrather than a distinct moment
(11:24):
for me.
Russel (11:24):
Yes.
Sharing in my own example of, Ithink at first, our hiring
practices were so bad in thebeginning.
It was like, we might get threeor four people to apply and I
was like, all right, who's thebest of that small group, uh,
that applied through Munster orCareerBuilder or whatever we
were doing.
The mindset shift for us waswhen I finally, we took the time
to really search out and seek,you know, someone we, we felt
(11:44):
really strongly about, hey,they're, they're good and
qualified and waited for thatperson.
Once I saw the difference of howeffectively they worked, it's
like, like buying a nice newcar.
It's like, oh man, I want tocreate someplace where, you
know, this, this person thatworks really well doesn't ever
want to leave and, and start toanswer those questions.
Thinking back to when, when youkind of, early part of this
evolution, what were some of theinitial initiatives you started
(12:07):
doing that, you know, where youwere getting some of that
positive feedback from and, andhow that evolved?
Erik (12:11):
One of the first things that comes to mind is, is there
was a very physical milestonewhere we moved from one office
space to another.
Just a little bit more contextto this, I live right outside of
Savannah, Georgia, SoutheastGeorgia.
I'm born and raised in Savannah.
We had an office in the downtownSavannah area and from the very
(12:31):
first hires that we did, we've,we went from me and Bill in one
space and place in Savannah tohaving at least one other person
from a remote off, the homeoffice location.
Almost from our beginning, we'vehad a hybrid or fully remote
kind of model.
We're fully remote today.
We went from a small like 220square foot office to a like 10x
in size office in the samebuilding.
(12:53):
That's a big change in space.
When we made that change, wedecided that it maybe was a good
time to really get serious aboutcapturing, defining, shaping
some core values for ourbusiness.
We didn't call them core valuesat the time, we called them core
standards.
We had nine of them that wedeveloped and wrote some
language for.
Given the nature of our work,we, we had somebody on staff who
(13:15):
was a great writer andinterviewer.
These came from interviews fromsomebody on our team, able to
talk with me, with Bill, andthen create just great language
to describe and bring them tolife.
These core standards I'd say is,is one of the things that, you
know, uh, it was an early kindof mile marker for me in getting
intentional about our cultureand they were received really
(13:37):
well by our team.
They became great tools to usewith each other.
A great shared language that wecould reference.
The word standard was reallyhelpful for us because we wanted
to be holding one another togood standards, to high
standards.
We received great feedback onthat.
To this day still receive reallygood feedback from our team and
from our clients about our useof our integration of, uh, core
(14:00):
values in our, in our business.
Russel (14:02):
Are you sure we didn't run the same business or is, are
we just discovering thatbasically?
Erik (14:06):
Are we from different universes and like this
multiverse out there?
Russel (14:09):
Went through the exact same exercise and at least have
the comparison point in myyounger naive days.
I sat down and I created allthese things and I said, this is
what they are.
It was not even close to what weare.
But several years later, oncewe'd gone down this path, I took
exactly what you're saying.
I took the journalistic approachand said, let me just observe
and then I'll write what we are.
Not what those wereaspirational, what we wanted to
(14:29):
be.
It kind of had the exact sameeffect.
Once you had those in place, um,and kind of had those out there
and you said it came in thiscommon language and vernacular,
what kind of things did you doto support them?
How did they actually live outin the business?
Erik (14:43):
Man, we've had a lot of fun with this topic over the
years.
We try to bring our values intoour literally daily work.
I'm going to pick a fewexamples, but we have a lot of
examples.
Russel (14:54):
I bet.
Erik (14:55):
One of my favorites is that at some point at this, I
don't remember what year thiswould have been, let's call it
five, six years ago, we created,we wanted to create something
that felt like, swag-like.
Branded stuff that's for thecompany, but something that we
never sent to anybody else.
You absolutely had to work hereto receive it.
The reason for that is wedeveloped or designed and
(15:17):
created a lot of fun swagelements that we'd take to
conferences and send to people,uh, as a surprise over time.
But we wanted to take, um, thetime to create something that
only people at Focus Lab wouldever receive.
What that resulted in was a setof, uh, patches.
Literal patches that you couldiron on to something.
We're a brand agency and sowe've got some phenomenal
(15:37):
designers.
We've designed some reallyawesome patches and a set of
them center around our corevalues.
Team members can nominate oneanother for these core values
patches, and if you've earned italready, you can actually level
up and earn higher levels of thesame kind of core value.
This system, it became a waythat there was almost like a
ceremony.
(15:58):
We literally call it a patchceremony.
A ceremony around a personreceiving recognition for how
they live out the value.
That's one of my favorite thingsthat we've, we've added to the
mix that brings these values tothe forefront, brings them to
life.
If I go to almost the other endof the spectrum, the small,
easy, fast side of the spectrum,we give each other kudos and
(16:18):
praise all the time.
One of the things that we do isin, we use Slack, like a lot of
agencies.
In Slack, we have a littlemechanism where people can give
each other shout outs and tiethem to values at the same time.
That's part of the daily side.
We see that stuff prettyregularly.
The fact that we tie values toit on purpose is, again, yet
another way that we can keep thevalues in the forefront.
(16:40):
Because really, that's, that'swhere VetCore values for any
organization actually becomevaluable, is if they're just
part of the daily language.
Russel (16:47):
Beautiful.
I can't lie and say there's nota little bit of jealousy, tinge
in the whole patch thing.
I think I had a similar idea atone time and whatever reason,
can't remember why I just neverkind of brought it to fruition.
I imagine there might even besome people out there thinking
that's a little, that's a littlecorny or cheesy.
But I'm like, no, that's, that'sreally cool.
There's a reason why motorcyclegangs are so tight.
Erik (17:07):
Seriously.
It's something that people onour team also get a lot of
excitement and pride out of whenthey can be part of creating the
patch itself.
We don't just have this patchthat's a visual product, but we
also have very intentionallywritten short descriptions about
each patch.
So when you receive one, we havethese small little like, I don't
know, two and a half by fiveinch sort of cards that the
(17:28):
patch is attached to, but itincludes some language that
describes what this patch isfor.
I know that if if folks are justlistening to the audio they
won't see this but for the videofolks on the, i'll hold one up
real quick.
This says sauce and this is ourfirst level of sauce patch.
Sauce, I can explain If you'dlike, but it's just basically
our word for customerexperience.
(17:48):
The level one sauce patch isketchup.
This is designed as like aketchup splat with just the word
sauce written across it and someother supporting language.
But, um, if you join a videocall with somebody from our
team, I think maybe one inthree, maybe one in two people
on the call, will have patchessomewhere in the background
because they're proud.
(18:08):
They received this as anomination by one of their peers
to recognize something that theywere, uh, thriving in or
excelling at, or even displayingwhen it was hard.
One of our values is lead withcourage.
They put them on display.
They're proud of them.
We're proud of them.
It's a big deal.
Russel (18:23):
I was going to ask where, where do, where do people
keep them?
I didn't know if you had theactual cut vest or not.
Erik (18:28):
No vests yet.
Russel (18:29):
No vests?
Okay.
Maybe the next iteration.
Just knowing you and, and again,someone focused on culture, I
can't imagine that how you growand develop and teach and kind
of nurture employee growth anddevelopment wasn't a critical
part of, uh, your, your journeyin that as well.
Can you speak to some of thethings you might've done on that
front?
Erik (18:47):
When it comes to developing, growing
individually, my thought is thatfirst that we just got to lead
by example.
If I have any hope orexpectation that people on my
team are investing time todevelop themselves, I need to be
putting that on display formyself.
I need to be doing that kind ofwork.
We try to talk about what itlooks like for us to be growing,
(19:08):
developing.
There's a phrase that I like touse personally, uh, which is to
just learn out loud.
The spirit of that is, first offthat if you, if you learn in a
group setting, you're probablygoing to teach people as you
learn.
But also there's like a, there'salmost an exponential growth
that can happen, and thenthere's the little bit of
inspiration that can happenalmost as a little bit of a side
effect where somebody might seethat and say, you know, I've
(19:30):
been, I've been thinking aboutfiguring out if or how AI could
fit into my workflow and I'vejust been putting it off because
I'm maybe a little tooreluctant.
Maybe I should look into that.
Or I've been, I've been thinkingabout sort of managing conflict
and client calls better, but Ihaven't really taken the time to
do that yet.
I've seen so and so over therework on something.
Maybe I should work on somethingtoo.
There's that aspect of it aswell.
And then there's the verypractical side, where we want to
(19:52):
provide money and time to teammembers to invest in themselves.
We try to lead by example in ourown individual growth, and then
we also try to prompt it andcreate space for it, uh, as
well.
We have a few spots where wetend to teach lessons, if you
will.
Some of them are directly tiedto core values, actually.
And then others are maybe feelkind of one off or random, but
(20:14):
can be applicable to anybody atthe team, no matter, no matter
what seat you sit in.
Russel (20:17):
Again, similar universes here.
We gave people the personaldevelopment budget that they
could pretty much use towardsanything that was, you know, you
could say is growing, growingand learning, whether that was
actually related to their, theirrole, or even sometimes outside
of we had a very total personconcepts.
Another thing that I think of, Idon't know if you had a
construct, uh, similar to this,we called it Lifeblue
(20:38):
University, that was the name ofour business.
Started out just kind of like around table by the fire, just
let's chat about things, butthen it evolved into this, um,
once a week we'd bring in lunch,we'd bring in speakers related
to the field.
We'd bring in nutritionists,we'd bring in financial experts
to talk about how to, you know,set up your will or just all
kinds of things like that.
It was really fascinating justto even see a construct like
that evolve.
(20:58):
But in your own journey, isthere something that you can
think of that, it kind ofstarted out just as a little
spark?
And then it's like, what it'sbecome today is, just something
you can really sit back and beproud of?
Erik (21:08):
There are probably multiple things.
One of them, man, it's been anumber of years since I was the
one to initiate one of these,but we occasionally will just do
like book clubs.
It doesn't mean that everybodyon the company's doing them.
That would actually be a littlemuch if you know, 30 some odd
people are trying to talk abouta book in a small period of
time.
Somewhere in 2015 or so I think,the first book that we, that we
(21:29):
read as a group was probably, ifi'm remembering correctly, it
was a Brené Brown book.
Daring Greatly I think is thefirst one we did.
I think later we did Dare toLead in another setting, but
just getting together anddiscussing a book like that.
I love to read.
I love to talk about what I'mreading.
That's actually one of thethings I try to do on purpose so
that I retain what I'm reading,the value of the things that
(21:50):
stuck out to me that werevaluable in that moment.
I brought that to work with me.
I asked others, hey, doesanybody want to get together and
read a book?
Just to kind of talk about it?
The interest was good.
The conversations were great.
Then we got busy and, you know,maybe demand picked up or
something and it becamedifficult to almost give
ourselves permission to slowdown and discuss a good book.
(22:12):
We kind of had an ebb and flowto this aspect, but there was
the first few years of it whereit was just somebody in like a
leadership role would need toinitiate that.
That's not really the caseanymore.
This year we've had four or fivebooks that people have gone
through and anybody on the teamcan kind of prompt that
opportunity and say, hey, I'vebeen thinking about reading this
(22:33):
book over here.
Anybody want to read it with me?
Next thing you know, we've gotfive or six people meeting each
week and just talking through abook that is sometimes obviously
related to our work, but in mostcases not obviously, but
certainly related to people andhow we can use ideas from a book
in work, outside of work.
That's been kind of fun for me.
Especially the past maybe 12months or so seeing four or five
(22:55):
of those groups get together andI've had zero involvement.
It's just been fun to, to seethat happen and I'm not saying
that all of them happenedbecause I did something
necessarily, but, um, that's thefirst example that comes to mind
when you ask that.
Russel (23:07):
You may have started the spark, but, uh, people carried
the, the fire or the torch, um,after that.
Very cool.
We had a book club as well, butwe didn't continue ours.
That is a regret of mine.
I probably have 8 billion morequestions, but, uh, I don't
think, um, I don't thinkanybody, maybe they'd want to
listen to an eight hour podcastepisode.
A few things left I want to,want to pick your brain about.
Talk to me about a mistake thatyou made in your journey when it
(23:29):
relates to culture that, thatwas a hard lesson to learn.
Erik (23:32):
Which one to choose?
It's tricky, right now.
The mistakes that are closest tomy heart as things that I care
about learning from are onesthat I actually can't share
because there's a confidencelevel to them.
I got to keep certain details inconfidence and even just sharing
little pieces would be enoughfor at least a couple dozen
(23:53):
people to go, oh, I know whathe's talking about and I didn't
know that part.
The mistake I would like tohighlight is part of my own
learning journey, part of my ownprofessional development, going
back to that theme.
I got to a point where I wantedto just learn to tell stories
better.
I wanted to learn to be a betterpresenter, a better, like,
(24:13):
visionary voice to a company.
I started to practice.
What does it mean to, to delivera message through the vehicle of
a story?
How can I use that with my team?
How can I use it to cast abetter vision of where I feel
like we can go and we'll go?
We had, uh, a retreat inTennessee or North Carolina?
I don't remember.
I think we were in NorthCarolina.
We're on a retreat and, uh, atthis point, maybe 20 or so of
(24:36):
us, it was a week long and wewere starting this retreat with
what was supposed to be a reallygreat kind of like vision
casting speech and unveilingsome new things to the team.
Our team was in a bit of atransition of anyways so it felt
like just a good opportunity toinfuse some energy into the
(24:57):
culture for where we're headed.
I did not prepare for it verywell.
The content was not that big ofa deal, but it involves some
changes.
I've never really gone throughany change management at this
point so I prepared enough tofeel okay about it myself.
But the changes that we shared,that I shared, cause I was
basically the one on stage.
(25:17):
It was basically in a big Airbnbliving room.
Wasn't a stage but everybody wassitting down except me so that
was the stage.
I shared these things, had someslides, kind of showed what was
going on, the decisions we weremaking and the direction we were
heading and it didn't go at allthe way I hoped it would.
Now in the moment, people onaverage were like cool.
This is great.
Sounds good.
But I knew once I was done thatnight that it just didn't land
(25:42):
the way I, I wanted it to.
Russel, I kid you not, I wantedto drive home that night.
I felt that bad It sucked for meand then even a few days into
the retreat, I'm catching windof some things.
I'm like, yeah, confirmation.
It did not land the way I wantedit to.
This is not cool.
Now the retreat was still reallyfun.
A lot of us really had a reallygreat time.
There were good things comingout of that time, but that
(26:04):
aspect of it definitely goesinto my mistake category, my
mistake experience.
John Maxwell says that, uh, hekind of has a little contrarian
view on the statement thatexperience is the best teacher.
He says, no, experience is notthe best teacher.
Evaluated experience is the bestteacher.
I was committed to evaluating.
What did I miss?
What did I do wrong?
I had a conference I wasspeaking at the next week and I
(26:26):
was sharing this experience witha close friend, somebody I know
I can share details with andknow he's going to stay just
between the two of us.
For the maybe 10 to 12 monthsleading up to that retreat, I
kept having great friendsrecommend a book to me that I
was like, I have a long list ofbooks I want to read.
I imagine you might as well.
That book just kind of like satsomewhere in the list in like
this vague spot, not priority,just kind of like, I'll get to
(26:49):
it.
I'm sitting there telling myfriend about how poorly this
experience was or how it wentand he said, hey, have you ever,
uh, read this book?
And he he named it and I'm like,oh my gosh I've been hearing
that title for a year.
Please don't tell me that itwould have prevented what I just
did.
The book was Traction by GenoWickman.
That led us to Implementingentrepreneurial operating system
(27:09):
or EOS, and that failure ormistake on my end became the
catalyst for one of the bestthings we've ever done in our
business, which is to implementEOS.
That's a story of itself to, itkind of sets up a whole other
story, but, um, yeah, that wasa, that was a memorable one for
me.
Russel (27:24):
Thank you for sharing that.
Sounds like a less than funmoment, but, um, sounds like it
also, you were able to turn thatinto quite a meaningful moment
as well.
That's all we can do in thisgame.
Obviously there's, I think someowners that, you know, for
whatever reason, however theirevolution, maybe it's their
personality, this, this, youknow, either comes naturally to
them or gets forged naturally tothem in the course of their
(27:45):
businesses, it's just a hurdleyou have to solve.
For those that are maybe notquite there yet in their
journey, or, or maybe it doesn'tcome as naturally, how do you
sell or convey the importance ofwhat culture is to maybe someone
that's still in that, maybesurvival money focused route?
Erik (27:58):
There's a, a short phrase that I will steal cause I can't
remember the author's name togive him credit.
Otherwise they call itborrowing.
Going back even a few decades,you've got somebody like Peter
Drucker saying the phrase thatat this point is classic, which
is culture eats strategy forbreakfast.
Good grief was that man ahead ofhis time with that statement.
We didn't have a lot ofmeasurable ways to prove that's
(28:20):
the case, but at this point,we've actually got plenty of
research that even just provesthat a healthy culture has a
tangible impact.
But there's a small phrase thatI really like.
I really wish I could rememberthe author's name, but just
searching the title will, willfind the answer.
The book that he wrote is calledCulture Wins and his just simple
premise in the whole book isthat the statement applies no
(28:41):
matter if it's a good culture ora bad culture.
If you've got a good culture,it's going to win over and then
he kind of gives some exampleslike Drucker White say strategy,
but he also says if you have abad culture, it's going to win
over a good strategy.
Your culture is going to win.
You might want to make it good.
There's plenty of research, itdoesn't take long to find some
pretty decent evidence to showthe, the bottom line impact of a
(29:03):
healthy work environment, of ahealthy work culture.
We've we said culture a lot.
I'm not talking about the, thecheesy stereotypical things like
games.
Russel (29:10):
Ping pong tables.
Erik (29:11):
Games at work, weird perks that sound cool.
We're talking about what is itlike to work here?
That's the culture.
Russel, you described earlier,this feeling of wanting to build
a place, um, where people don'tnecessarily want to go somewhere
else.
That resonates a lot with me,um, because when I think about
creating a strong culture, Ikind of want one of the outcomes
(29:33):
to be that it's really hard toleave and not because people are
tied to it or like, or liketethered in some way, but that
it's just hard to decide to gosomewhere else.
Even if that somewhere else is areally great offer or
opportunity.
Talking to people who have thosecultures can also be a helpful.
If you're not sure if it's worththe hassle, just talking to
people who, who say that, youknow, culture means something to
(29:55):
their team.
Russel (29:55):
Beautifully put.
I do some speaking aroundculture as well and I really
quantify it as, yeah, thatculture eats strategy for lunch,
and then to break that down evena step further, that culture is
beyond just the fun stuff, likeyou mentioned.
That culture is the accumulationof all the behaviors in the
business and those can bepositive behaviors or those can
be negative behaviors.
And if you can tip the tide tomore positive behaviors, then
(30:16):
you're, you know, you're on atleast the winning path.
That's a great way to quantifyall that, so thank you for
sharing that.
Have you come across or, orimplemented anything that
measures, uh, in terms ofculture and where you can not
just feel good about it, but youcan actually say, hey, you know,
we, we are what we want to be,or at least down that path and,
and can actually quantify thatin some way?
Erik (30:36):
We have a few things that we do on our own.
We have a couple of things we'verecently explored that involve
outside parties.
One of the very simple thingsthat we do, this might sound
kind of weird to a number oflisteners.
We have a weekly all handsmeeting and about half of that
agenda or time is actually justset up to be an open mic moment
(30:57):
or opportunity where anybody canjust grab the mic.
Usually they're giving somebodya high five or they're sharing a
win of their own.
That's weekly and it's tracked.
We literally count it.
We count how many peoplereceived a high five.
A specific high five.
Not a broad, vague, like, hey,good job.
A specific high five.
This might sound a little weird,but we, we literally measure
(31:19):
that weekly, and watch it ebband flow with seasons.
We view that as one, just onesmall measurement of how are
things right now?
We also use, uh, some software.
There's multiple tools out herelike this, but we use, uh,
something called Lattice, whereone of the pieces of the
software is that every singleweek, our team fills out a
(31:39):
weekly report.
How was your week?
We ask some specific questions,but there's one question that's
numeric in its answer, and it'sbasically a temp check on how
you doing?
One through five, five being thebest, one being terrible, and we
measure that too.
We track the changes and, um,those are pretty
straightforward, but weeklypulse checks on how are things
in general.
For those to be helpful, youhave to have a certain type of
(32:00):
culture.
You can't just, like, do thatanywhere.
You also have to be cautious tonot water it down or almost
manipulate it in a way, becausethat's, some places if you do
this in the wrong place, youknow, I could see a leadership
team trying to convince peopleto rate the week better or, you
know, give high fives becausewe're counting them.
I think that most of our team isaware that we count these
(32:21):
things, but we don't make a showof it.
Only about five or six peopleeven look at the numbers, uh,
from the high fives.
They're just genuine.
It has to work in yourworkplace, but those are a few
things we've done internally.
Externally, we've, we've justrecently worked with some of
the, the organizations thatactually come in and do surveys
of your staff and give you agrade, basically.
A really common one is the, theorganization called Great Places
(32:41):
to Work.
We did one of their surveys forthe first time this year.
There's some investment in thatbecause it's pretty extensive.
That was a really cool one.
I didn't really know what toexpect out of that this year.
I'll admit I was, I went into itthinking that they were just a
business where they, we would bepaying them to put a badge on
our website.
I had a pretty kind of cynicalview of what it was.
But it was, it was genuinely agood survey with good questions
(33:03):
with valuable insights.
I was excited to see that, withno kind of persuasion or
influence, every single personat our company answered those
questions in such a great way.
Literally 100 percent of ourteam said that this is a great
place to work.
And if you go through the GreatPlaces to Work website, you can
kind of click through and seethe scores, the ratings of
different companies.
(33:23):
And a hundred's, not supercommon.
I took a lot of, uh, just joyin, in seeing the fruit of that
and also seeing an externalmeasurement, uh, of how things
are.
Russel (33:32):
There's so many things you mentioned there that I just
want to just go down all thoserabbit holes.
I think we found the same as, weused the Best Places to Work,
uh, those types of surveys.
I can't lie and say I didn'tlove the, the, the credibility
to it.
But I think there's the key wordthat you said that it was coming
from a place of genuineness.
I almost have to say that I feellike that's not a subtle notion
that culture has to be genuine.
(33:55):
You can't manipulate culture.
You can't force it or you'regoing to, you're going to,
you're going to go down anequally terrifying or, uh, uh,
oppositely terrifying path.
If that's the case, I don't knowif you have any other thoughts
on that, but I do think that's avery important thing.
Erik (34:07):
Yeah, I mean, I'll give the, the tweet sized thought on
it.
There's a term that I've beenbouncing around in my brain.
I have yet to put pen to paperon it, but, um, it maybe comes
from because we're a brandingagency.
But I think that there's almostlike a level of brand integrity
that applies here, because ifyour values as a company, the
ones that you talk aboutexternally, if they're not lived
(34:27):
out internally, then there's anintegrity problem there.
A culture that is purely afacade is, um, because it's
really just marketing.
Disingenuous marketing at that.
Russel (34:36):
I think if people can understand that, hey, if you're
not genuine in your approach tothis, you're, you're going to
fail, so however you need tostart, be genuine.
Thank you for sharing that.
We're going to have to wrap uphere, but, um, one, one question
I certainly want to get to isyou've, you're, you're kind of
in a, uh, an interesting spot inyour career and you've got a
pretty cool thing you're, you'rein the works of creating and
(34:56):
moving on to.
If you don't mind sharing,sharing a little bit about that?
Erik (34:59):
For sure.
Part of the work I've donewithin Focus Lab over the years
has led me to just a hunger, adesire to find ways to help
other companies with similarthings with regards to kind of
their culture, their, theirenvironment.
Somewhere along the way, Istarted to think of, what would
it be like to actually own asecond business where that team
just did this type of work?
(35:20):
Started a second company, andthat one's called Built on
Purpose.
It was just born out of kind ofthis simple, but I think kind of
powerful notion that people,people deserve to enjoy going to
work.
That's the gist there.
The work that we're doing withBuilt on Purpose does center a
lot around culture, but alsoaround personal growth and
development.
There's coaching involved.
There's kind of leadershipdevelopment and training.
(35:40):
Then there's sort of just theconsultative side of working
with leadership teams to helpthem create good cultures.
The hard sell on it is thatthat's slow work.
It's not something that you cando quickly.
It's also not something that youcan pay somebody outside to
completely do for you.
They can help identify andunearth things, but the work is
still yours as an agency owneror as an entrepreneur.
(36:01):
Built on Purpose is, is just aresource for entrepreneurs and
owners who want to invest inthemselves and their teams to
make a place that is hard toleave.
That's the short version ofBuilt on Purpose and I'll be,
you know, talking more about itas time goes by.
Russel (36:14):
Love it.
Very excited for you and thatventure.
I hope that is a billion dollarbusiness because if it is, the
world will actually be, uh, anentirely better place.
Good luck to you and congrats onthe new venture.
Last big question for you, Erik.
Are entrepreneurs born or arethey made?
Erik (36:30):
I don't know yet.
I love the question.
Russel (36:33):
That is the first, uh, that, but, but might be the most
genuine answer.
Erik (36:37):
I love the question.
It's something I've ponderedmyself.
I'm rereading Grit by AngelaDuckworth right now.
I read it a few years ago, lovedit and I'm now going through it
with another group.
She mentions in it, this idea ofwhether grit is just innate or
if it's something you develop.
Her answer is is basically like,yes, it's both.
I kind of suspect thatentrepreneurialism is maybe a
(36:57):
little bit of both.
Maybe there's a bit of both in,in, in the answer, but, uh, but
I don't know.
Russel (37:03):
All right.
You come back to us when, whenyou think you've solidified an
answer, but that's, that'sprobably, maybe one of the best
answers yet is who knows?
If people want to know moreabout Focus Lab and Built on
Purpose and your own journey,where can they go?
Erik (37:15):
Builtonpurposehq.com.
Couldn't get thebuiltonpurpose.com
Russel (37:18):
I felt the pain in that statement.
Erik (37:20):
You did.
I had to make sure it was feltbecause it is felt for me and I
try to be transparent.
Builtonpurposehq.com and thenfocuslab.agency are the two
websites.
You can find all of our socialmedia things on both of those
websites.
Russel (37:32):
Awesome.
There you have it, folks, youknow where to go to.
Man, Erik, great conversation.
I wish, again, could continue itfor the rest of the day here,
but I'm sure my wife wants meto, to get onto other things as
well.
So many fascinating insights,um, and I'm so happy to see, you
know, how that's impacted yourjourney and the fact that you're
going to share it with others.
Thank you so much for sharingall that and taking the time to
(37:53):
be on the show today.
Erik (37:53):
Man, thanks for having me, Russel.
I've enjoyed the show.
I've listened to some episodesand that's just a honor to be
part of it so thanks for askingme.
We hope you've enjoyed thisepisode of An Agency Story
podcast where we share realstories of marketing agency
owners from around the world.
Are you interested in being aguest on the show?
(38:14):
Send an email topodcast@performancefaction.com.
An Agency Story is brought toyou by Performance Faction.
Performance Faction offersservices to help agency owners
grow their business to 5 milliondollars and more in revenue.
To learn more, visitperformancefaction.com.
(38:38):
Before I really set off my sights on an agency as a career
path, I actually had my sightsset on music.
I come from a family ofmusicians.
My parents taught music.
My grandmother is a professionalpianist.
I went to college for musiceducation and when I was in late
high school, I started to workat churches doing music in one
(38:59):
way or another.
I was around maybe 19 years oldand I was basically like the
person at the front doing theleading of the music in the
church service there's thissong, it's an old hymn.
It's called I Have Decided toFollow Jesus.
It's one of the, like, simplestsongs with lyric, lyrically out
there.
You're basically singing thesame sentence over and over, and
then you change the sentence andyou sing that one over and over,
(39:20):
you change the sentence, yousing that one.
It's very, very straightforward.
One of the sentences is, um, thecross before me and the world
behind me and I'm leading thiscongregation and music and on
the microphone as the leader Isay the, the cross behind me,
the world before me.
The message is like a complete180 there and I don't realize, I
don't know in the moment becauseof, of, I can't really see
(39:42):
everybody.
I don't know if anybody reallynoticed what happened or if it
was just me.
Then in the same set of music,so we had multiple songs in a
set.
The same set, I'm playing anelectric guitar, and we are in a
moment that's very just chill,very calm, and I have an
electric guitar with someeffects pedals, and I hit the
wrong pedal.
(40:03):
Instead of it being this nice,relaxed tone on my guitar, it
was basically like a overdrive,like rock sound.
It just filled the room throughthe speakers and I was just
like, this is not my day.
Today's just not been it.
I don't think I'll ever forgetthat experience.
Really, what I found is I was, Ithought a lot more about that
than anybody else in that roomwas bothered by.
(40:23):
It was way, in my head waybigger of an issue than it
became but I was like, how did Iswing this?
Both of these things in onesmall set of music?
Anyways, uh, like I said, someof my musician friends will
probably empathize with thatexperience.
Some of my church musicianfriends will probably empathize
even more with it, uh, and thenmaybe some people won't, won't,
uh, won't really understand howto feel that, but man, I was, I
(40:44):
was definitely embarrassed.
Russel (40:45):
I bet.
It sounds like, you know, kindof a, I don't know if the word's
a metaphor, analogy or justsimilar scenario, like a
leadership experience.
You just had it in this, in thismusic scene.
I thought it was going to bemore like I had this, this flash
of back to the future come tomind of like, you know, when he
finishes his rock performanceand everybody's kind of like,
what?
But as you said, you know,people certainly weren't
thinking about it as much asyou.
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