Matt Vance: Welcome to Our Special Origin Story Episode After 10 episodes. All with prestigious guests, we’re taking some time to share. Why we started this podcast, the impact it is having and answering some get to know you questions. So we want to kick off this episode by talking about why we started the culture Prophet podcast. When this idea first came up Chris and I were talking about this. We wanted to

Matt Vance: Have some conversations about putting people first and how that’s good for business. So through this process we started looking at some other podcasts and how they framed theirs and we ended up coming up with an idea of having an anchor question. We wanted one question to base some consistency and fluidity from episode to episode for the podcast. And ultimately it’s the anchor question that you can see right on our home page. How can company culture drive great profits? So that was the first reason we wanted to just have some great conversations around putting people first. The second reason was to make new connections to meet new people, the guests and people listening. Other people that were

Matt Vance: Caring about putting people first and building intentional company cultures and it’s certainly accomplished that goal as well. We’ve met some cool people. So that’s kind of my take on why we started the podcast. What would you address? to add to that. I think no company is going to make changes that cost money if there isn’t a clear ROI and so we want buy-in from companies to make employees’ lives better. And so that’s the whole point of the topic that we’re covering and then, of course, it’s been amazing meeting all of our guests. They have so much experience to draw from, and I have both learned so much from them and have just made some connections that we wouldn’t have had otherwise so it’s been really cool. We’ve also learned some things about what not to do.

Matt Vance: If you go back and listen to episode one, we accidentally recorded all the audio with the really cheap camera. We have this nice microphone to use and we didn’t realize that the setting was Recording from our camera, which obviously doesn’t have a great mic. So, yeah, we weren’t pleased with that. But can’t really redo that after we already recorded it with our guest, and so sorry about that. But hopefully you still gain some insights from episode one. And it’s also been really interesting working together, husband and wife, Matt. And I have done a lot of work together, over the years. I mean, he worked at Malouf and I fit while I was working at Utah State University part-time.

Matt Vance: And so during that time it was mostly he would tell me about work, I would tell him about my work and then he started working on his book and we had a lot of collaboration with that. I think my role was pushing him forward for that as well as I did the editing and the citations which were things that just stressed him out. and of course, I don’t have the knowledge that he has and so Able to put all the content in there and make it something that was useful for people. So that’s kind of the work we’ve had beforehand. And It’s been a new experience doing a podcast together and just having conversations together and then with another guest, it’s been really cool. I think it’s been really positive, we’ve only had a couple maybe

Matt Vance: Not disagreements, but just differences of opinions on what the episode topics or questions should be. But I think we always learn from boxing gloves. No. We always learn from each other and we do have different perspectives and opinions even though we’ve been married 11 years now. So hopefully that brings better episodes and content for you guys.

Matt Vance: I will say Crista is maybe underrepresenting her role in us working together. I have some friends who have worked together with their spouse and it hasn’t worked like one friend in particular. They started a business together. And after about a year or so, they just had to stop talking about work and they just did their own career stuff like that. They left work at work. They came home and they were home for me and Crista. It’s never really been like that. We’ve always worked on everything together and it’s been a really fun, rewarding and unique experience. Now, doing this project together, I wasn’t really nervous when we started this project. It could be challenging to work together because like Crista said, we’ve done a lot of projects together, including the house that we live in. We

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Matt Vance: flipped this house essentially it was a complete remodel. We gutted it and moved walls like substantial projects and that definitely was a test of working together and collaborating. So being united in our business efforts as husband and wife has been pretty cool and talking with these guests and having these conversations together. It’s been pretty special, I would say, Yeah. I mean it hasn’t been perfect. At least set some boundaries along the way, and we have to have open communication to just. Make sure we’re on the same page. So,

Matt Vance: We’ve made it through this far so we have made it this far and before we go on I just want to tell one more insider piece about the origin of the podcast. So the name of the podcast is the culture profit and profit is spelled PR O F. I T. Now we also thought of if someone’s just hearing this verbally from a friend, they may wonder what the spelling of profit is. If it’s like religious profit, that’s not what we were going for. We’re not trying to claim that we’re

Matt Vance: Forecasting how things are going to go. But this is the financial word profit and to overcome any potential confusions, We actually bought Both domains the culture profit spelled both ways and they both redirect to our website. So we’re here to connect the dots between putting people first and culture, and the financial benefits and using company culture as a legitimate and proven financial strategy for your business. So kind of a little tidbit for you, you can actually try the redirect on the website if you don’t believe me.

Matt Vance: So let’s have a little recap of how things have gone. So we’re 10 episodes in here. We have episode 11, we have published to six pod podcast platforms. We’ve all been posting on LinkedIn and Tiktok. We have over 26,000 listens and impressions. So on YouTube alone, that’s 2,000 listening hours. And then it’s like, yeah, a whole year of work, two thousand hours. That’s thank you everyone. For listening that’s tuned in, we appreciate it. It’s pleasantly surprising. I, yeah, thank you so much.

Matt Vance: So amazingly, I mean, I think a lot of you have come here not to listen to Matt and I is amazing as we are but to our incredible guests that we’ve had tech founders, leaders company, culture, experts, and consultants from several countries across three continents that has been so cool to talk to people around the world. Across many industries from manufacturing to professional services, and software. And now we wanted to read a couple quotes and reviews that we’ve received from listeners. So, here’s a review, on Apple podcast. This podcast is incredible. It talks about how treating people, coworkers, employees management, etc, with dignity, respect and care is the key to thriving as a business.

Matt Vance: And then another one that we received was a great episode, the key tie between marketing and was insightful. It’s always a good day when I can learn something new. So we love the feedback. It’s great to get anything that you want to share with us of how we could be better. We welcome all of it, especially the critical feedback that is what helps us get better? So, Open communication. So one thing we talked about is What have we learned so far from doing 10 of these episodes around this topic? So Matt, do you want to go first? Yeah, surprisingly or not surprisingly, it’s been interesting to see some very consistent themes from every guest through every episode. And those have been when you put your people first, everything just runs better. We’ve had some examples shared

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Matt Vance: Specific examples of how turnover decreases, how it’s easier to hire and recruit and how productivity and engagement increases, how your employees are more willing to talk positively and be an advocate for your brand and your company. Those things are directly connected to the way that you treat people and it’s really not surprising, right? I mean, businesses are made up of humans and the business itself. Has needs to operate financial needs predominantly and productivity and deliverability needs for products and services, but a business in and of itself doesn’t have emotions. It doesn’t have those innate desires and needs as people do. When we can understand how people operate and appeal to their needs as humans. Then we unlock

Matt Vance: Loyalty, greater trust and a stronger willingness to give of our discretionary effort, not just that level of effort that we’re obligated to give based on that employment relationship. So I would say that the big thing for me is just the consistent theme. We’ve seen echo through the episode so far. Yeah, I was gonna second that it’s obvious. People just want to feel cared about when they work for a company. They’re spending many hours of their life working and they want to feel cared about, and they’re several ways that especially leaders can show that to employees. and those themes have come up over and over again, just being a good listener, checking in with them one-on-one and understanding their expectations from the company, as well as if they’re meeting those expectations of the company.

Matt Vance: As for them and I guess more specifically, I really enjoyed hearing. When we had our episode from Donde Riley Butters, and she shared it with us, many stats about How I guess it comes back to Americans, not taking their time off. So I did my degree at Utah State and then worked there for many years. But my degree was in family consumer health and development.

Matt Vance: And one of my classes with Dove into this and it talked all about Europe and how they just really take care of their employees. If one of them has a child, a lot of companies or even countries have laws surrounding time off after you have a child and I mean, it’s like, 18 months. So, some places here may give two weeks and that’s really good in America. So I really appreciate her stats about that. and then, to hear how we can,

Matt Vance: Actually use our time off in a better way because I think Americans were just all about that American dream to work hard and then you can play hard but we often use our time off to do projects on our house. In fact, Matt definitely used time off too, he mentioned our home renovation, he definitely used some time off for that and while that was good and feels good to get things resolved in your life, it wasn’t a break and it didn’t lead to preventing burnout. And so, I really appreciated all of her stats on that topic. Yeah, and just kind of building upon that. I really liked hearing both from Riley Butters, that’s a relatively new software that’s helping systematically support people.

Matt Vance: Chart teams can use a service like that, to make their PTO offering more robust, and more personalized for their team. We also spoke with Microbicus, the CEO of gifted and how we learned a little bit about their software and how they can better systemize personalized giving for rewards and recognition. So, those are just two small examples of how there’s a lot of innovation happening in space right now. The labor market is shifting, there’s increased I guess, leverage on the employee side of demanding, certain lifestyle, enablements elements to their work. And the more that companies can cater to

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Matt Vance: References and provide a better experience. They will unlock greater loyalty, trust and engagement and productivity with their team. So that’s something to note as Yeah. And just then Brady Heider mentioned how effective it is when you use’s They’re given name, people love to hear their name and just so many others that we could mention but hopefully you want to check them out if you haven’t had a chance to do that already. And then I have a question just specifically for Matt And so Matt is such an entrepreneur with the spirit of entrepreneurship. And so I’d love to hear you tell me about one of the first indications you had growing up that you would become an entrepreneur or that you had that affinity for it.

Matt Vance: So everybody listening knows I have a question for Crista too. She doesn’t know I didn’t know her question because we wanted this to be kind of a spot on the spot. So I would probably say, I don’t remember this, but my mom told me this. So when I was like, I don’t know, for something like that. I asked my mom, I said, Can I buy a new toy? And she said, No, it’s just a random day. I didn’t need a toy. So apparently, I went to some neighbors’ houses and asked for kids without toys. And brought that money home. And then showed my mom that I had some money to go buy a toy and

Matt Vance: she either had me give the money back, or we bought some toys and gave it away or something like that. But that was the first. And I’ve had lots of things over the years. I remember Pokemon cards when I felt like they were trending down. I had to liquidate my assets and sold, all of my Pokemon cards when I was in fourth grade and

Matt Vance: I added one more card than a package included at the store and it was 50 cents less. So I minimized my financial losses from my Pokemon card liquidation. I’ve always loved that kind of stuff and the book has been part of that writing the review cycle and now Crista and I are the co-founders of Mogram software company that’s built upon the methodology of the review cycle to help employers manage their online reputation on employer review sites. So it’s been quite the journey. We’re in this new chapter learning new things but yeah it’s been a lot of fun and I’ve really appreciated working on it with you. It’s been a lot of fun Christmas. So thank you.

Matt Vance: Yeah, thanks for sharing that story. I was thinking of even another story but when you’re a kid but that one is awesome. I love that story. Okay, so here’s my question for you, who’s your favorite tennis player on tour right now?

Matt Vance: You can say a couple more or Probably Carlos algoros. I just think he’s so classy and he has the fighting spirit. and the heart for it. He wants to win so badly but He?

Matt Vance: he’s just such a fighter but he’s so classy about his losses, too. which I think is really hard to balance. Was it Djokovic that he just recently lost to? Is where we watched that kind of emotional press conference? Yeah. Yeah. So yeah I just think he’s all around one of the best tennis players and kind of up and coming for sure but he’s got a good classy attitude I think he’s probably one of the most liked tennis players just even by other tennis players But yeah, I played tennis in high school and then have kind of gotten back into it after a gap of raising, our kids and working on our house.

Matt Vance: And the past couple years I’ve gone back into us. A lot of fun. So Crista is really good and when we were dating I was so impressed and frustrated at the same time, no matter how hard I tried to be here at tennis or racquetball, or we didn’t play pickleball back then, but that makes us sound old but very impressed with her drive in athletics, and life and everything. I just wanted to highlight how good a job Crista is. Thank you. Thanks everyone for tuning in. We’re glad that you’re here. We’re excited for

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Matt Vance: continuing this journey sharing more stories, getting incredible people on the podcast for you and for us to learn from. And please Follow the culture profit on LinkedIn, subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and specifically on YouTube. If you can, it only takes some moments and share your honest review of the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Matt Vance: So far, we haven’t been able to launch an episode every single week. That’s kind of like I think the rule of thumb for podcasts and so make sure you subscribe and follow us on LinkedIn so that you can see when we do post an episode and hopefully we’ll be a little bit more consistent with those coming in the future but we are recent discovery and discussion is that we want to hear more from our listeners and What do you want to hear on the show? We know there’s several topics in human resources. That we have not specifically covered, we have covered a lot of them, but what would you like to hear and what topics do you want us to discuss?

Matt Vance: And just what questions do you have and Matt and I have diverse experience. I think both of us have different perspectives and hopefully a lot that we can share with you and our guests as well. They’re so knowledgeable. And then watch for a pull from us after this episode on link. and you can share your opinion on there or you can message us directly through email on the culture profit at mobrm.com. And if you have any specific people you’d like to see on the show, we’d love recommendations. So any feedback you want to share. We’re all ears. Thanks for joining us and we’ll see you next time. Thanks.