 This is StartupStoreFirm. If you're anything like me, the pandemic has completely changed your view on office work. Why go in when you can ditch the commute and work from home? On the surface, this seems pretty straightforward, but it puts founders and entrepreneurs in a tricky situation. Remote work can make it extremely difficult to develop a real sense of culture. The lack thereof negatively impacts employee retention, recruitment, and overall satisfaction. This is part two of a three-part BrightLive podcast series where we break down how to build a distinct brand. In this episode, we are honing in on developing company culture in a time of uncertainty. On the panel, we have Jacob Peschenich, the founder of Let Us Grow, Manu Sivi, the founder of Alpha IO, and Lauren Brocastle, the founder of Sweet Lawrence. In this segment of the series, we discuss how to nurture and develop talent from within your company, how being open about your mission statement can attract the right candidates to you, and how to put out fires when key members of the team are on vacation. Hey, welcome back. This is the second hour of our how to build a distinct brand conversation. On this hour, we're gonna be discussing culture. We just discussed leadership, and then coming up later, we've got navigating setbacks. I'm Nick, this is Diego. On my right is Manu Sivi from Alpha IO, Lauren Castle from Sweet Lawrence, and Jacob Peschenich from Let Us Grow. All right, let's jump into it too. I remember having this conversation and it's about mission, right? So it's like, what is the mission of the business, and then ultimately, how does culture move around that? The problem with having mission statements or vision statements for a company is sometimes not everybody agrees at the company, especially in an executive environment. At least I've seen that firsthand where it's like 50-50, the company has two missions essentially, which means the culture just goes to crap. But how did you guys think about a mission-first type of culture? And we'll start with Manu. Yeah, for sure, and I've been asking myself that question. What's prompting the question? You know, you gotta start with why. Why is it that this matters so much to you? Because if you're starting a company, it's gonna become your life, and the one piece of advice that I always give to other founders is don't even think of starting a company if you can't not, because it means that it's something that's so deeply ingrained with you. And so I've given it a lot of thought. And my why, what lies behind, technology, anything that you see in the front is community and being of service to community. And that's exactly like, you wouldn't think that a technology company does that. But maybe in a year it'll be something more related to diversity, because diversity also comes from community, we can start going a little bit deeper. So it'll change a little bit. And you have to ingrain that into the philosophy that it's always gonna be something, but it's evolving. Yeah, it's like a moving target. I'd love to hear your culture, since you have such a delicious product that makes so many people happy. So, all-natural cookie dough is our product. The number one all-natural cookie dough. The number one natural, exactly. The number one brand for natural cookie dough. So at Sweet Lawrence, I think, honestly, a lot of people are attracted to us because of the story behind Sweet Lawrence. So I started the company because I overcame cancer in my early 20s and thankfully was cured, but it really changed the way I looked at health and I got really frustrated by the food industry and just didn't want any processed food or chemicals or preservatives really in my body. And when I saw that there weren't many ways to satisfy your sweet tooth that were delicious but also made of good ingredients, that's when I started the idea for Sweet Lawrence. So that story, I think, honestly attracts a certain type of person that really cares about health and wellness or someone that's been affected personally or someone in their family has been affected by health and wellness. And I think they're not just working for a food company, they're working for a product and a mission that's about making cleaner food delicious, accessible, bringing joy to people and creating a new paradigm that cleaner food can be better for the planet and better for you and we don't have to rely on these archaic old companies. And so, I tell the story all the time and it's on the back of our package and I think it's just very much part of who we are and who we attract because it attracts fighters and it attracts people that really care because otherwise there's a bunch of different kinds of food companies you could join. And the culture is, I think, growing. I think at the same time, we want people that are passionate and mission-driven but at the same time that are winners and are in it to win it. So it's like, how do you combine this culture of we really, really care about health and wellness and all these things but we also care about building a really great business and really great product and those are two very different things that you're looking for in someone. When we first met Jacob, he started his company, you mentioned your kids. It was like the first thing you brought up. Yeah, exactly. You were becoming a father and it really set the trajectory for this amazing concept next to you. Yeah, I never set out to do this. It just seemed like I had to. Yeah, share a little bit of that and then how ultimately it set the culture for your business. Yeah, for me, I found out I was gonna be a dad and we started to look at the food we were eating and I saw chemicals and everything. It was like, let's just see food as nature intended and we'll have a perfectly healthy baby. And I just saw the price point of food as nature intended it and it was so much more expensive than all the processed stuff. So I ended up starting a farm to see if I could make organic food more inexpensively. And I learned through the process, I had nothing to do really with the farming method. It had all to do with the distribution and we're very efficient producing food in this country but very inefficient in distributing it. The average piece of produce travels 1500 miles is 10 days old, it's lost half of its nutritional value and half goes bad. So for me, I think it's ridiculous to go to the grocery store to buy fresh food. But we just accept it. But I think when grocery stores first started selling fresh food, everyone thought it was ridiculous back then. We've just grown accustomed to it but I just saw this problem it wastes so much environmental resources. So much water goes into agriculture and then half of it's just wasted. So it's like somebody's gotta do something about this. So this is what it came up with and it was really to work with consumers to lead the transition to a more sustainable food system. Not only in delivering consumers food but giving them the experience of being a farmer and a caretaker for the earth in a way and help them become a much more conscious consumer not just with our product but with every product out there. Our whole focus in the company isn't selling more product, it's customer success and it's making sure every single customer is happy and successful with it. So whatever the customer needs, we're gonna do whatever we need to do to make them happy. And yeah, financially like one customer or two customers costs more but they're gonna be successful, they're gonna embrace it, they're gonna create a lot of change and the benefits are gonna come back. So for the company culture, it's all customer. It's just like make the customer happy, whatever. I tell people a lot of the time you've decided to solve the hardest problem in the world. Like if you think about this problem here, first you're growing your own crops which if I feel like me, you're terrible at it and you don't wanna even think about watering every day in this thing. So you've automated the water, you've automated the nutrients, you've made it into a system that looks nice at someone's house and then you have a farm where people can just reorder seedlings. That's insane. Like that is like the craziest thing in the world when I think about cost, how you've even gotten, it's amazing. Like honestly, it just blows me away because I think that's the hardest problem that you've made everyone an urban farmer and it looks cool. Doing a job. Yeah, yeah. Well, it seems like the one through line that each of you mentioned was that by putting your mission statement out there, by focusing on that, like you actually attract a lot of people who are like-minded to come work with you and who have the same goals, have the same beliefs as you and therefore it's kind of easier to steer the company that way and I wanna kinda jump ahead. And clients, right? Yeah, yeah. Because you end up attracting clients that wanna be inspired by our philosophy, which means that you get to build things with really cool people. What's your mission statement? It changes all the time. Yeah, yeah, what is, what's the first word of your mission statement? Community. Community. What's your first word in your- Community. It's all about connecting for us. Joy. Jacob. It's like an enable or something like that. Or ours is fearless. Which is also scary. Like I think mission statements in culture can be kinda scary. Like I'm a very fast paced individual and that can be a little off-putting to some people. When you guys first started, so every company when they first start, the culture can be amazing for the founders or for the founding team. Cause you guys are working probably like seven to seven and you're all lunatics and not taking really good health, right? You're just like really missing a bunch of stuff. You're just focusing on the business. As it got to you guys hiring a bigger team, did the culture shift? Did you change the culture so that not everybody there- Just a bigger group of lunatics. Is that right? No, I'm kidding. Obviously like I start, I come from finance. And so my initial take on vacation is there is no vacation. When I started off and I kind of like softened up a little bit over the years. But like I take it, like I do the same. Like I don't really take more than a week vacation a year. Like that's just it. Like I'll work remotely from like different locations and I'll make sure that I'm getting enough of everything that I need. And so I guess the team kind of like feels the same way. But if they want to take two, three weeks vacation, they can take it. You know, it's just like, we're just- You're sure? I'm not convinced. I'm up for you. I'm very much just about like, is the job getting done? Cause if, as long as it's getting done, I want you to take three weeks vacation or whatever we've decided. You know, it's like, I think life is so short and so precious. I want people to like have it all. And I also think like the happier they are with their like partner or like being able to go on vacation and like they come back re-energized and they feel like, oh my God, like I'm part of this great company where like I get to like see Europe or whatever take off time. That's not to say that like, if you're a high level person in the company, potentially you could get pinged on your trip to Europe where we're like, I'm sorry, but like we actually need you to like, like this crazy thing just happened and we like need your help. And I think that that give and take then people are like, I'm happy to jump on for a couple hours and help you solve that problem. But again, as long as the job is getting done, like I really want to build a sustainable work environment and I want to build have like this is a marathon. This is not a company that will be done in a year. Like we have huge goals over the next five years and I just want to make sure it's sustainable and people are full. It's about getting our goals hit. So as long as you're hitting your goals, like you're doing a great job and there should be time to be able to have vacation. For me too, I honestly, definitely the first couple of years I'd never took vacation. And now I'm like, absolutely. I just hired a president that could probably take the first true vacation I've ever taken where I'm not checking in every 24 hours, you know? Well, that's a different question. So from your perspective at Let Us Grow, what are some of the company perks that fit in so beautifully to the culture? Well, unlimited ceilings and unlimited vacation too. Wow. Wow, unlimited vacation. Yeah. What's the most that someone's ever taken? I'm always curious. Probably like two or three weeks. Yeah. Oh, that's not too bad. People don't even use it. They can ask, but nobody wants to take more time because everybody enjoys what we're building. What are some of your company perks besides every delicious treat in the world? Everyone gets cookie dough. Everyone gets, I mean, we're remote at this point too. So I mean, I know a lot of companies are, but we're very... So they don't even get the benefit of a fully stocked pantry. So yeah, I think like, again, I think it really helped us just be like, as long as you're present on like the calls that are on the calendar, no one's babysitting anyone's schedule. And I think just giving people flexibility to like run and do that errand or run with their kids or again, as long as we're getting the job done and being communicating, people actually have been so much more efficient and so much more productive, not going into the office. And so just giving people kind of, saying yes to as much as we can to make them happy as long as the job's getting done. I think there's like a flip side to that too, is at first, during the pandemic, like our business took off and it worked well. People working remotely and it was all about efficiency. And I think like our personal value systems changed. You know, like thinking about like what's important in life and how to live healthier lives and things like that. But our work value system got like all business. And then you start to see people don't want to drive into work. Well, in LA it's like usually a long commute, but people would say, well, I don't want to spend extra 30 minutes because it's not efficient. But then you're losing the culture, the camaraderie. Like also a lot of the reasons why you work in the first place is like, I don't want to work in the first place just to have a corporate machine. You know, it's like to hang out with people and to celebrate things. We've found like a hybrid works, like a combination of bringing people together. Cause it also opens it up for you to hire anyone in the country now, not just LA or in the world. We found that we need to bring people together enough to build that culture and that camaraderie and like enjoy people too. Like cause if people trust each other and enjoy their company, like they just work so much better together. We have a question here. Claire, we're going to bring you on stage. Claire wants to know if there's a moment in the interview process when it becomes immediately clear that the candidate being interviewed is the right fit for the job. And if so, what those qualities might be? I know it immediately usually. Like when I, in the first conversation that I have of someone, I always try to push myself out of my comfort zone as well. So sometimes I like push through the gut feeling and say, no, maybe I can make this work. This person is so good on paper. And every time that I do that, it ends up like not working out. And it's someone that will challenge me some way in the first interview. And I always ask them, I think you said this earlier, is this your dream job? I asked them to define their dream life in the first five minutes. And if I don't see any trace of what we're building in it, cause we're a blockchain company that is building tools to really democratize every market out there. So if it's someone that comes in there and doesn't talk about diversity, doesn't talk about opportunity, doesn't talk about certain keynotes that we know that we need to hit with our product and doesn't see that in their life, then I immediately know it's not gonna work. It's not gonna be a match. It's not gonna be a match because you kind of have to be a little obsessive and crazy about spreading your message because this is an important message. Like the world is changing. We're at the forefront of change. If you can't see that, you should probably go work at Facebook. Thanks to our sponsor, Facebook. I think we look for definitely passionate, like, you know, in a positive attitude and someone who's a real like problem solver and is just a very like, I don't know, savvy business person. I think like, and someone who's like really cares about the mission behind the brand. I feel like if you can, if those five things, you're probably, you know, a really great fit for the company because like our team is just highly collaborative. Everyone is like good, positive energy. Everyone's in it to win it. So like, you know... You gotta have a sweet tooth, though. You gotta have a sweet tooth, but most good people do, but yeah. I mean, hey, you gotta have a sweet tooth. And I think like, yeah, like also like this kind of excitement of being the underdog, you know, about like figuring out how to, as a smaller company, you know, break through against like the big corporation. So those are the kind of things that we see over and over again are like the successful people at Sweet Lawrence. We have a number of employees who came to us as customers, you know, who just had the product, loved it. Like we went, you know, I want to work for the company. So I love that. The people who've done, you know, homework before, you know, showing up and are open enough to offer some opinions even if they're not, or, you know, if I might not agree with them, but I always, I value the investment, you know, that people have made and it shows that they really care, you know, about what we're doing, but the work-life separation, it kind of blends into each other. So I look for people who like, this is a part of their life. You know, I want to have healthy separation. So it's not like they're working all the time, but that it's just a natural part of their life to be working on this. We'll bring up JJ, JJ, come on stage and you can ask your question. JJ wants to know what happens when a key team member goes on vacation and a situation arises where you need their help. How do you put out fires when a crucial member of the team is on vacation? It happens every vacation that I take. Yeah. I mean, sometimes you do need to call the person. Yeah. You interrupt them, I think, just to take time. But if you can wait till they get back or you gently send a message and say, I know you're on vacation, but if you would like to help, this is happening right now. We desperately need it. And they usually are looking forward to helping quickly and then we'll send them back in their vacation. I mean, what we try to do is like, you know, when someone was on vacation, there's someone else trained to take over as much as possible. But if they're really like that key person that has to answer or help during that time, that's part of the responsibility of I think being part of a company, like try to respect their time as much as possible. But if something's urgent, someone should be able to get wifi and like help out a couple of hours or whatever you need, try to minimize it as much as possible. But again, if you have someone who's really in it to win it, like, and they're gonna see that this is like, needs immediate attention, like they're gonna feel responsibility, I think, to not ignore you, but help fix it. So, but I think like the smartest thing is to have more sustainability and like having enough people trained in the company that someone can truly go on vacation and someone else could cover. Well, like you touched on before, I think setting the expectation ahead of time that, okay, yes, you can take your vacation, but in the event of an emergency, we will be needing to contact you. I think that that right there sets so many like boundaries and also the ability to sidestep them, you know? I think that most reasonable people understand that if it is an emergency, they need to be on a Zoom call or whatever it might be, Slack channels, whatever, and helping navigate the problem. And then once it's done, they can go right back to whatever they were doing. But I think, like you said, setting that expectation from the get-go alleviates any problems down the line. Do you guys have an example of someone at your company that came in, maybe was like a lower or a mid-tier employee and then really just bought in and now they're like maybe one of your executives or top people at your companies and what it is about that person that made them ascend to where they are today? Yeah, my chief of staff, like she started as an unpaid intern and she reached out and she was like, I really believe in what you're doing and I really wanted to, you know, find a way to start interning and she was graduating from Parsons and she's like, she's relentless. Like, you know, she's asked me for raises. I've given her, I think three raises already and like she asked me and she like, you know, follows up with me and she said, after the fundraise, my raise was gonna be even bigger. I'm like, the fundraise isn't over yet. You gotta like wait. But she's relentless. She reminds me a little bit of me when I was like getting started. Like, you know, you're not afraid to ask. But how about for you, anybody at your company that came in and then they ascended? No one has like started really low and then like all of a sudden risen but I will say I had someone come on kind of as an advisor. I just gave her like a C level title because, you know, she just was like, let me just jump into the business and help a little bit. Five plus years later, she's still that role, like full time, you know? So I think my VP of sales was my first sales person hired like, you know, five years ago. I didn't even, I had no idea what was gonna happen with us and she's just risen to the occasion every year. Blows me away all the time. So it's like, they've taught me a ton. And so I'll say that like hiring people much more experienced and better than you is just like, it's part of the reason why we've been successful. I'm always looking for, you know, the person that rises. And I think I tell people when I hire them like they could be for like customer care position but I'm like, you could be the head of sales in two years if you, you know, it's all up to you. I'm not boxing you, pigeonholing you, limiting you in any way. Like you have an opportunity and you can, you know, do what you want with it. But I think there's very few people who actually take that opportunity and move. But we've, I've definitely had examples of it. You know, we, we brought on someone because we do local delivery in LA. So someone who's is an Amazon delivery driver and then he was really great and we moved him to dispatch. And now he's like on the operations team like we help them learn Excel. And then he's on the ops team like dealing with like more critical, you know, logistics issues and things like that. It's just finding the right people who really want to rise and then giving them, you know, what they need. I think the takeaway here is for people watching that are interested in applying, it's follow your passion. I think it's probably the thing that's going to set you to do well whether you're starting a company or just joining a company. Yeah, cause then you'll stick it out. Jacob, something you mentioned earlier about your delivery driver, you know, growing within the company and eventually, you know, becoming operations and all that good stuff. Maybe have a question. When does it make sense to promote from within your company versus hiring from outside your company? I think if someone's got the talent, you know, within and they can do it, I would, you know, I would hate to just bring someone outside to put them in that position. I think that would be, you know, bad for morale. So I'd rather elevate someone right to the position they're able to fill. But if they're not able to fill it, right, or they're not able to fill it with some assistance, then you need to bring in. Are you saying that you always look first from within? And then if you can't, then you look outside? Yeah, I mean, I think I'm always looking within. So it's just kind of having a broad like situational awareness of everyone's abilities. And that's why I love to hear from everyone and have visibility right into what they're doing. And sometimes I seek people out. I'm like, you know, like, you know, someone else on one, like on the operation site actually like took the farm stand and like, you know, made holes in it and made like a new product out of it. And I was like, wow, I think, you know, we might be under utilizing you. Like what else would you, you know, want to do? And sometimes you have to like kind of shake it out, you know, like figure out, okay, what could we do with this person? But with that is like the, you know, that person's passion to do more, right? And I think that's something I always want to nurture and invest in. But yeah, a lot of times like you need someone with a specialized marketing skill that your employees aren't going to have. So you need to bring that person in and you're not even going to think about, you know, looking to anyone for that, right? We don't want to reinvent the wheel. Yeah, I think I would say the same thing like if it's obvious and within reach, like within, like, oh, this person, it's just like, it's just a little bit of support. Like they could totally learn Excel and X, Y, and Z and, you know, jump to a different level. But if it's going to require a lot of time and it's not kind of an easy jump, like it just, it's not even an option for me. Like I'm gonna, cause I don't want to waste that time, like training and then maybe they never get there or how long, like it's a lot of time and energy to, you know, I guess invest in someone. So like they have to be really proving themselves and like already like making it very easy to make that transition. Otherwise I think like there's such great talent out there. We want to move fast. We want to continue to fill the roles that we need. And then most of the time we're hiring for those like specialist roles. I think, yeah, obviously every now and then you need to like open up a new role because it's like, you know, an expert in statistics. Maybe there's no one in the company that knows statistics, but any thing that could be reutilized from within, like any person that we could find, that we could train a little, that we could mold, I would prefer to do because I feel like finding people with that great company culture that are not gonna churn, especially in higher levels, begins to get harder and harder. And you know, and that person's already adapted. The person knows your culture. The person knows your ways. And like if they're breathing, you know, that fuel of like, we can do this and seeing all the progress that you've made, they'll be willing to take courses. We've sent people to General Assembly. We've sent people to like, all of our coders start with us when they don't know how to write a line of code. And they're building blockchain platforms. So it's like, yeah, well, you know, they'll write code but you know, they need to be supervised, et cetera. We have a really strong training program and we kind of like let them set their career path. And we're changing lives in Latin America to think of, you know, what a salary here that I would pay a intern that, you know, is completely unprepared. Like there, my developers are like, you've changed my life. You've made it possible for me to buy a house, for me to buy a car. And like, so it's like, pretty magical to have that culture of building not just careers, but dreams. I'll ask a simple question though. If the COO of Pepsi applies to your company, do you accept them? Do you take them on? Now think about it. This is great for fundraising, right? You can all of a sudden get a bunch of capital. It's a huge presser. It's a huge moment of like, wow, Jacob, Lauren, you guys, how did you get this person? Like it could change the game for your business. For better or for worse though. But do you take the risk? Do you do it? I mean, it depends. It depends like, did we super vibe? Do they really feel like the right culture fit? Are their references amazing? Do I really think they are who they say they are? Cause I've definitely heard a lot of companies try to bring in this like magical person with all this corporate training with a huge title. And it completely blows up because it's so different running a small business versus massive corporation with all these layers and tons of budget. And so I think it's rare to find someone that can flex between both. But it's definitely possible. And you know, maybe they're burnt out from corporate America and they want to be part of the startup and they have that corporate training that helps you grow as a company. So. Sheryl Sandberg's on the market. I take Sheryl Sandberg. I take Sheryl Sandberg. Yes, come work anytime, Sheryl. Got a job for you. Well, all right, thank you for tuning in. That was our conversation on culture. We will be back at the top of the hour for navigating setbacks. We'll see you soon. If you made it this far, I bet you loved the episode. So you should join our YouTube channel membership for only $2.99 a month. This gets you access to one, the whole unabridged conversation. Two, you get the episodes on Monday, one day earlier. Three, you get two additional entries to our giveaways. Check out our Instagram to see what we've given away. And four, you get access to seasons one through three. That's over 100 episodes of wisdom and life-changing advice. What are you waiting for? Join.