Culture Eats Strategy

Our guest today is Dan LeFave, a “No Excuse” prepare-for-success Coach and mindset engineer. He shares with us his amazing tips and tricks to achieve life balance. Since 2012, he’s helped entrepreneurs cut the time to achieve success and reach their goals and boost their productivity.

Gym Instructor to Life and Business Coach

Dan LeFave has been featured in national publications including Business Magazine and Success Profiles Magazine, and interviewed on radio shows and podcasts from New York to the UK.

He actually started as a spinning coach in a fitness gym and he shares how the concept of “no excuses” started from there.

“I would sit there in the front of the class and say, ‘this class is all about you becoming a better person, better version of yourself’ and I said ‘there are no excuses in this class’ so if you come in and you have some excuses, I would actually invite them to leave.” – Dan LeFave 

No Excuses

Dan shares that the concept of “no excuse” is all about taking ownership. He believes that we’re all owners of our own lives, choices, and decisions. Furthermore, he shares that the second part of preparing for success is already innate for most people. They don’t realize that they’re actually doing it all the time.

“Why don’t we go into the future. Let’s look at your future self and see what that looks like and then let’s connect the dots, go looking backward and prepare. Who do I need to become? What do we need to do? Who do I need to study? What kind of practices and rituals and patterns and habits do I need to have to get to that place?” – Dan LeFave

Recommended: Know more about Dan’s  solution for taking ownership and having more time through this link. 

The Expectation Bridge

Dan shares his system and model which he teaches to clients called the “Expectation Bridge.” With this activity, Dan creates a mental exercise where you have to build it first in your mind, then your body and the environment both catches up. He believes that’s how it always works.

“You’re looking from your reality, you cross the bridge and say ‘Okay this is where I am. These are the things I know, these are the capabilities I have. Then go over to the other side and say okay ‘What does it look like over there? What does it feel like when I’ve achieved these when I have this business and the lifestyle the way I wanted?’” – Dan LeFave

Download and listen to No Excuses: Taking Ownership of Our Own Life Decisions For Success to learn more. Remember to let Dan know you heard about him on Culture Eats Strategy with Jaime Jay!

Connect through the links below:

Facebook Page: DanLeFaveCoaching 

Twitter: @DanLeFave 

Linkedin: Dan LeFave

Instagram: @danlefave

Website: Save Time Now

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Alexander Noren, the co-founder of Forgeant, joins us today to discuss the power of conversations in forging employee experience. He further shares why entrepreneurs and business owners should give importance to employee sentiments and feelings towards work. 

Employee Experience Zealot

Alexander is a proud husband and father. He is also an MMA fighter and he commutes on an electric skateboard. Most interestingly, he considers himself an employee-experience zealot who helps organizations understand how to create the best experience for their employees.

“Work is not optional, you have to do it. Why do something that is not optional be so terrible? I think we’ve all had that experience. Forgeant is a place where we are building solutions so that folks don’t have to feel that way.” – Alexander Noren

Focus on Communications

Alexander and his team at Forgeant believes that every employee should be able to contribute meaningfully in a way that makes them happy. He believes that the first step in creating happiness at work is facilitating communication. 

“You know human behavior. We have the tendency to just go with the flow. Keep doing whatever we’ve always done and that is one of the leading contributors to why things don’t change. If we want to start change, change starts with conversations.” – Alexander Noren

Another aspect of encouraging open communications at work is employers can keep track of employee sentiments and feelings. For example, Alexander highlights the importance of employee’s alignment with their work.

“Make sure in everything that we do, we’re aligning people with where they want to be. With their strengths, with what they want to be doing.” – Alexander Noren

The Change Mindset

Alexandar shares that whatever he does, he makes sure he and his team are adaptive. When considering company culture, or improvements in their software or looking into the future and asking “what’s next?” he makes them ask themselves how they can be better.

“It’s about a mindset. You have to have a change mindset. Be willing to be uncomfortable with the unknown of the future. The second you start saying, ‘we’re good, we got it figured out,’ the second that happens, you’re in big trouble.” – Alexander Noren

Download and listen to Forging Employee Experience To Increase Engagement to learn more. Remember to let Alexander know you heard about him on Culture Eats Strategy with Jaime Jay!

Connect through the links below:

Linkedin: Alexander Noren

Website: Forgeant

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Our guest for today is the founder of Cultivate Courage LLC, Dave Cornell. Dave’s powerful presentation, Cultivate Courage, focuses on fear, change, and courage and how they affect individuals and organizations. He shares today how these play a huge role in building company culture.

“A culture of courage is one that takes risks and where people are not afraid to fail, knowing that in failure, we grow.” – Dave Cornell

Work and Personal Life

Dave’s business is focused on three areas; Speaking, Coaching, and Training. Audiences were receptive to his presentation, which also served as a launching pad for

performance development and personal improvement. Parts of his training includes DISC behavioral profile, effective communication, and conflict resolution. 

In terms of personal life, he is happily married for 37 years with wife, Amy. He is a father of two, grandfather of four beautiful grandchildren. On his spare time, he enjoys golf, basketball, and anything with a comedic bent.

Culture of Fear or Culture of Courage

Dave shares that everything has a culture —business, church, school, a family. He further shares that the culture is either driven intentionally or it just happens. As culture is everywhere, oftentimes, a culture is built around fear, but we rarely notice that it is.

“In a culture of fear, people don’t have the difficult conversations that need to be had. People don’t hold people accountable. People don’t do a very good job hanging on to people. There is high turnover, people don’t feel comfortable.” – Dave Cornell

Dave characterizes a culture of fear as a place where people are afraid to have the difficult kind of conversations. On the other hand, there is also a culture of courage, where people recognize the fact that having difficult conversations allows them to grow and work through difficult challenges. 

“We grow when we have those difficult conversations. Cultures of courage are the ones who aren’t afraid to talk about the elephant in the room.” – Dave Cornell

Culture Starts From the Top

Dave candidly shares that he believes the culture of the organization starts at the top. The bosses are the ones who lay the groundwork for what kind of culture he or she wants for his or her company.

“As a leader, are you willing to accept responsibility for your mistakes and not blame others? It takes courage to admit when we are wrong. As a leader, are you willing to allow your people to fail? Or if when they fail, do you chastise them and tell them how much money this cost and if they do it wrong the next time, they’re out?” – Dave Cornell

Dave poses important questions to leaders on what kind of culture they are developing: a culture of courage or a culture of fear. He discusses more interesting points on this episode.

Download and listen to How Fear, Change and Courage Affect Your Organization to learn more. Remember to let Dave know you heard about him on Culture Eats Strategy with Jaime Jay!

Connect through the links below:

Facebook: @cultivatecourage

Twitter: Cultivate Courage

Our guest today is Jono Bacon, a leading community and collaboration strategy consultant, speaker, and author. He is the author of ‘People Powered: How communities can supercharge your business, brand, and teams.’ He joins us today to share insights on the importance of culture in communities.

Community Strategist

Jono Bacon is the founder of Jono Bacon Consulting, which provides community and management strategy, execution, and coaching. Aside from his book People Powered, Jono also wrote the best-selling The Art of Community. 

“My work is: trying to figure out how do you build a great community culture. How do you put together a strategy that can predict that culture? It’s challenging but fascinating work.” -Jono Bacon

A Sense of Shared Purpose

Jono shares how fascinated he is with communities. He defines them as a group of minds, availability, and experience. They are a network of brains. However, the concern lies when these people side on different teams and have a disconnect in terms of purpose. 

“The reason why that is a problem is, there are so much experience and insight living in people’s minds, that when you connect them together, with a shared sense of meaning and purpose, its amazing the results you can get.” – Jono Bacon

Further into this episode, Jono shares he received an email from an African child that made him realize the phenomenal things people would do when they feel that sense of culture and shared purpose.

“He told me when he was walking 2 hours back that he felt this real sense of ‘Im part of something, something bigger than I am.’ Locally, he was the kid in a rural village in Africa, but when he was part of that community, he was a machine that could have a transformative impact.” – Jono Bacon

Motivating People

Jaime Jay poses the question most leaders would ask, how do you motivate the creativity of people? Jono answers candidly that he believes that every individual tactic that we work on to build a community or a company, has a genealogy that translates back up to the value of why we’re doing something. This motivation varies, depending on the kind of people we want to attract and the kind of community we are building. 

“We, first of all, have to figure out what that core motivation is, realistically. The second thing is, we need to design an experience where you can very easily commune into a community as a window shopper, ‘cause all community, people, first of all, they browse first and see what’s going on here. If they see a reason for them to play a role in this, they sign up and they participate.” – Jono Bacon

Download and listen to How Communities Can Supercharge Your Business, Brand, and Teams to learn more. Remember to let Jono know you heard about him on Culture Eats Strategy with Jaime Jay!

Connect through the links below:

Twitter: @jonobacon

Facebook: @jonobacon

Linkedin: Jono Bacon

Book: People Powered

Today’s guest is Christopher O’Donnell, SVP of Hubspot Product and songwriter/guitarist for the band The Providers. He shares with us today his role as a product manager and how he relates it to culture management, both in his music and tech career.

Leading and Supporting Teams

Christopher is a technologist, musician and public speaker who has built dozens of web and mobile products. Today, Christopher serves as Senior Vice President of Hubspot Product, which he led from startup ($50M in revenue) to successful publicly-traded company ($600M in revenue). 

Moreover, Christopher has become a staple in the product management community and was recently named one of the Best Product Leaders of 2019 (via Comparably). As an experienced leader, he is passionate about leading and supporting teams to build anything, from developing tech products to creating rock & roll records. 

Software and Music Production

Outside of his day job, Christopher spends his time as a songwriter and guitarist for his band The Providers. He actually majored in Electronic Music in College and has been enjoying collaborating with producers and his bandmates. He excitedly shares the similarities of creating music and creating software.

“It’s just amazing how many of the dynamics that we’re after are similar to making software. Our people have roles, who’s in charge of which piece of the puzzle. Building trust and having relationships, celebrating these little wins, getting excited about a project together.” – Christopher O’Donnell

Moreover, Christopher stressed the importance of creating a psychological safety environment that encourages different ideas, both in his workplace and in his music collaborations. 

“To try to make something really amazing and really great, you have to have the security, culturally, to push each other. Find a way to say things like: ‘how about we try this other way?’ or ‘we’re not happy, it’s not good enough or ‘we need to go back and re-do this from the ground up.’ I see those both in the studio and also everyday here at work.” – Christopher O’Donnell

Shepherding People 

Christopher considers himself as someone who alleviates his team’s anxiety. He admits he is in continuous search on how he can effectively spend his time to address issues if his team. 

He further encourages leaders to introspect on how effectively they can manage their time to spend it with people. This holds true not only with teams directly reporting to him but those who are on other departments as well. 

“I am the Product Manager, which is like the record producer of software. These are the people who are not necessarily gonna play the instrument, not writing the code, but they are the ones in-change of shepherding the creation of a shared vision.” – Christopher O’Donnell

Download and listen to Why Product Management is Highly Relatable to Culture Management to learn more. Remember to let Christopher know you heard about him on Culture Eats Strategy with Jaime Jay!

Connect through the links below:

Linkedin – in/markitecht

Hubspot

Today’s guest is Chris Tuff, author of USA Today bestseller The Millennial Whisperer. He shares with us today the importance of bridging the communication gaps between generations in the workplace, focusing on the world’s largest generation, the millennials.

The Millennial Whisperer

In Chris’ book, he offers research-based, time-tested strategies for bridging communication gaps between Millennials and the rest of the workforce.

Millennials will make up 75% of the workforce by 2030. Because of these, it’s crucial for employers to harness the strengths of this generation. This, in the end, aims to help develop strong leaders for future generations. 

“The greatest thing that is lacking within our walls is for, whatever reason, we have an inability to bring more empathy, more connection into the workplace. For the first time ever, we a generation that, not only craves it, but they require it.” – Chris Tuff

Further, in his book, Chris debunks myths about Millennials, while providing an in-depth look at generational stereotypes. He’ll share practical, real-world-tested solutions to better understand Millennials and effectively recruit, retain, and motivate this passionate generation.

The Struggle For Older Generations

Millennials are the biggest generation in the world today. They are characterized by the younger and old millennials, ranging from ages 23 to 37. They are oftentimes dubbed as self-entitled because they are products of “helicopter parents and participation trophies.” To put simply, the instant gratification generation.

However, Chris acknowledges leaders of today devote extra attention to millennials. He poses the questions: “what are all the things that we need to adapt to create a better environment for millennials? On the other side is, what do millennials need from us to be better leaders and humans?”

“Two sides, on the adaptation for us as leaders, it’s like one thing, at the end of the day, when your head hits the pillow, if you’re not completely exhausted by overly rewarding and recognizing your team of millennials and now Gen Zers and then you haven’t done enough.” – Chris Tuff

Creating a Conducive Environment 

One of the greatest challenges in writing his book was helping all business leaders across different industries. He shares that millennials, regardless of industry are looking for inspirational leadership, autonomy, and transparency.

He shares the “Deloitte Millennial Survey 2018” which states the key things that attract millennials to a company. These are: pay and benefits, positive work culture and work flexibility. 

Download and listen to Bridging Communication Gaps Between Generations to learn more. Remember to let Chris know you heard about him on Culture Eats Strategy with Jaime Jay!

Connect through the links below:

LinkedIn: Christopher Tuff 

Twitter: @christuff

Facebook: The Millennial Whisperer 

In today’s episode, Noelle Cordeaux, CEO and co-founder of JRNI Coaching and the Catalyst Coaching Intensive, joins us in a very insightful discussion on how leveraging the power of community can propel a business forward. 

Life Coach Turned CEO

Noelle Cordeaux is CEO and co-founder of JRNI Coaching and the Catalyst Coaching Intensive, an ICF accredited program with over 500 graduates. She is also a feminist scholar, coach, speaker, and sexologist who specializes in the relationship with the self. 

She has carved out a unique niche in the world of coaching, combining evidence-based scientific methods grounded in positive psychology with traditional, clinical sexology to help her clients gain true progress.

“I’m an accidental CEO, this was not part of my life plan. I did not plan to found the company or to become a coach trainer. I stumble less than gracefully into it around 7 years ago.” – Noelle Cordeaux

Community Rather Than Company

Noelle candidly shares she does not have a business background. She considers herself a heart-driven leader who built an organization to give second chances and careers, even to those whose careers have been derailed. 

The org is characterized as a non-hierarchical, where everyone who has gone through the program is considered working coaches. Noelle sees herself as a steward of the company. 

“It has become a community rather than a company. It’s a ommunity of coaches. What we realized is when you come from a hard-fisted, leader driven perspective, that’s so limiting in scope in terms. Limiting on what you can do and what can you see, cause you only have one lens.” – Noelle Cordeaux

JRNI: Don’t Stop Believin’

JRNI, read as Journey, was inspired by the band and their song Don’t Stop Believing. For Noelle, coaching is two people coming together to discuss concerns and offer real, visceral resources and support for the tough times.

“So we call our company JRNI because we support both our coach and our clients on the journey of life.” – Noelle Cordeaux

Amidst the promising goal and vision of the company, Noelle shares with us that they do have challenges within the organization. One of the challenges includes the economic justice perspective. They try to keep the costs of training low so more and more coaches can afford it, while not sacrificing the quality of services.

“We kind of get bottleneck, so are looking for ways to diversify our offerings, build new aspects of the business, bringing in new strategic partnerships.” – Noelle Cordeaux

Download and listen to Leveraging The Power of Community to Propel Your Business Forward to learn more. Remember to let Noelle know you heard about her on Culture Eats Strategy with Jaime Jay!

Connect through the links below:

JRNI – Life Coach Training Program

Instagram: @jrni_co   

Facebook: JRNI Coaching 

Leave us a 5-star rating and review if you enjoyed the show! Thank you and meet you again next week.

Commitment to your family and to yourself is no ordinary feat, especially if you are a budding entrepreneur. Richard Matthews, our guest today, shares to us how to perform at your peak through recreation and travel, as he is a successful entrepreneur on the road and a proud father and husband. 

Business on the Road

Richard Matthews started his business back in 2009 and it has morphed into Matthews Enterprises — a consulting service that helps authors, coaches, consultants, and service professionals. 

Over the last 10 years, Richard and his clients have sold over $2,000,000 worth of online courses and coaching. This is an amazing feat, considering he is living in an RV with his family and has been running his business on the road.

“I sold everything I own. After getting on the road, my business has grown 4x, which is cool and there’s some reason I think that happened.” – Richard Matthews

Routine is a Creativity Killer

In the process of thinking through some of that mindsets into growth, Richard shares to us how traveling greatly impacted his creativity. He says that living in a typical residence incites routinary living which leads to a routinary approach to life.

“You have a routine but when you’re life is a routine, your mental capacity is also routine. The way that you’re thinking and the stuff that you’re actually doing with your clients become routine because its the pattern you’re setting up with your life.” – Richard Matthews

Further, into this interview, he shares that when he moved into the road, it forced him to live in the moment, which is very important. He says that living on the road impacts his thinking and he is forced to strategize. 

“I think my copy has gotten better, my instructional design has gotten better, my ability to communicate with clients has gotten better and a lot of them is just practice in life when you’re constantly doing things, so I think, traveling has a lot of positive impact on my business growth.” – Richard Matthews

Permission to Play for Peak Performance

Richard also shares what he has been constantly telling himself, his staff and his clients: “you have to have permission to play.” He believes this is a huge activity that entrepreneurs often overlook for themselves or for their employees.

“We think of rest and recreation and stuff like that, as a benefit that you get yourself for working. Its a reward, I can earn it. That’s the wrong way to think about it. Recreation is not something that you reward yourself with. Recreation is the foundation that you have to have to perform at your peak.” –  Richard Matthews

Download and listen to Performing At Your Peak Through Recreation and Travel to learn more. Remember to let Richard know you heard about him on Culture Eats Strategy with Jaime Jay!

Connect through the links below:

Facebook: AKATheAlchemist

Youtube: AKATheAlchemist

Leave us a 5-star rating and review if you enjoyed the show! Thank you and meet you again next week.

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Today, energetic and enthusiastic leader Andrew Marotta joins us to discuss how he expanded his impact on the educational leadership community. He is a High School Principal at Port Jervis HS, New York and has recently released his first book entitled The Principal. Join us as he shares how he navigated and left a positive imprint in the hearts and minds of students through the creation of positive culture.

The Principal

Andrew is a loving husband to his wife, Jennifer, and a supportive father to their three young children. In his professional life, Andrew has been at Port Jervis HS for fifteen years, serving as Assistant Principal for seven years and Principal for the past eight. He has led the transformation of PJHS, helping to raise the graduation rate from a low 60% to mid and upper 80%. 

Moreover, he recently launched a book entitled THE PRINCIPAL: Surviving & Thriving. 125 Points of Wisdom, Practical Tips, and Relatable Stories for all School Principals .

Through the book, he shares with readers tips, tricks, procedures, and methods he uses to juggle and navigate the educational system. 

“We’re trying to create a super awesome culture that kids would want to come to. You think about school — its rules, bell and all of that kind of stuff. Yeah, we have that stuff, but we loosen up. As long as the kid is doing his work and is involved in the class.” – Andrew Marotta

Creating Culture in School

Andrew shares a lot of stories that helped him build the positive culture that they have at PJHS. The sense of community from everyone was the greatest contributor to the positive culture among students and teachers.

Andrew points out the importance of culture and relationships. It is a fact that schools need technology in the classroom, good attendance rates, high SAT passing rates and huge graduation rates. However, he points out that what matters most is the process of achieving those high numbers.

“You have a clean school. You have a safe school, you have teachers that love kids  — those things are gonna happen. But if the kid is miserable, they don’t want to  come to school, they’re not gonna do well.” – Andrew Marotta

Mastery, Autonomy, and Purpose

Andrew acknowledges the fact that a business setting is different from a school setting. In a business setting, there are bonuses, a laid-out benchmark to hit and there is an actual product. In a school setting, the students are the product. 

He lives by the concept of “mastery, autonomy, and purpose.” He got it from Simon Sinek from a TED Talk and is proud to announce that he implements the ideology in PJHS. Through this, he respects each teacher’s autonomy on how they want to conduct classes but requires each teacher to set clear expectations from their students.

“People want consistency. People want the rules enforced and they want it consistently. But what might work for Jaime Jay, might now work for Joe Smith and might not work for Mary Jones.”  – Andrew Marotta

Download and listen to Expanding Impact On Education Leadership Community to learn more. Remember to let Andrew know you heard about him on Culture Eats Strategy with Jaime Jay!

Connect through the links below:

Website: AndrewMarotta

On today’s episode, spouses Adam and Kerry Anderson joins us to share their success story in balancing family and business affairs. They are the founders of Whole Life Entrepreneurship, which aims to bring personal lessons learned to other entrepreneurial families to ultimately help them lead better, more fulfilled lives.

The Entrepreneurial Spouse

Adam and Kerry Anderson are the founders of Whole Life Entrepreneurship. They came up with this idea when their business almost ended their marriage.  They struggled for years with feelings of isolation, stress, and fear — all while running a business and a family. 

Kerry wrote a book called “In Bed with the Business: The Entrepreneurial Spouse’s Survival Guide.” The book aims to help other families understand what it takes to move from a place of nonstop conflict — to a partnership that enriches, enhances, and empowers.

“For me, none of these matters on this green Earth if you don’t have relationships. If there was something that’s taking precedent on our relationship, we have bigger problems.” – Kerry Anderson

Is Your Spouse on Board?

Adam shared his experiences when he was teaching MBA courses. He was warning his students to carefully consider their actions before taking a leap in business, especially if their spouses are not on-board with them. Likewise, in terms of marriage, Kerry shared that wives signed up for a “partnership” and not single-parenthood. 

“The thing that we discovered is that we built walls between our different realities. We have realities what a family would look like, we have realities about what business was. “ Adam Anderson

The spouses shared the friction points of their relationship. Most of it involved misalignment of calendars and differences in priorities. The entrepreneur is focused on making a sale whilst the homemaker believes there are more important things at home to give attention to. 

Importance of  Striking A Balance

As soon as entrepreneurs realize that family and businesses should both have a positive culture, the sooner he can strike a balance between the two. 

“By not being intentional what the culture that were creating inside of both our companies and in our family, we are setting up unnecessary strife and conflict and friction.” – Adam Anderson

Husband and wife Adam and Kerry Anderson have wonderful success stories to share in this episode. They also talk about how they settle differences and improve communication to meet demands for both their family and their business. Both believe that you can have a successful business and a successful relationship without having to sacrifice either.

Download and listen to Success Story of an Entrepreneurial Spouse to learn more. Remember to let Adam and Kerry know you heard about him on Culture Eats Strategy with Jaime Jay!

Connect through the links below:

Facebook Group: Whole Life Entrepreneurship

The 3C’s of Entrepreneurial Relationship

Leave us a 5-star rating and review if you enjoyed the show! Thank you and meet you again next week.