The Role of Culture in B2B Branding

In B2B, your brand isn’t just a logo or a tagline, it’s the culture behind the company. From how your teams work together to how they show up for clients, culture shapes the story buyers believe and trust. In this episode, we’ll explore the link between culture and brand, why it’s a competitive advantage and how companies can intentionally build culture that drives growth. 

Chit-Cha Toddy
The Chit-Cha Toddy was created by Shawn Chen, beverage director at RedFarm and principal bartender at Decoy in New York City. Chen drew inspiration from the traditional Chinese tea ceremony, aiming to honor tea and his cultural heritage. The drink features osmanthus oolong tea from Taiwan, prized for its delicate flavor and faint nuttiness. At Decoy, it’s often served in a Chinese gaiwan, though it can also be served in a hollowed-out mini pumpkin for a festive twist. The name “Chit-Cha” comes from the respectful way of serving tea in Chinese culture.

Ingredients:
9 oz. George Dickel rye whiskey
3 oz. Benedictine liqueur
6 oz. lemon juice, freshly squeezed
6 oz. ginger syrup*
3 oz. blossom honey
32 oz. osmanthus oolong tea, hot-brewed**
Garnish: 12 lemon half-wheels studded with cloves, mint leaves and cinnamon sugar

Directions:
Add all ingredients into a large hollowed-out pumpkin or a punch bowl, and stir with a wooden spoon until combined.
Divide into 12 hollowed-out mini pumpkins or punch cups.
Garnish each with a lemon half-wheel studded with cloves, a mint leaf and a sprinkling of cinnamon sugar.
*Ginger syrup: Juice 4 ounces fresh peeled ginger root. Add 1 cup extra-fine sugar and stir until completely dissolved. Will keep refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks.


**Oolong tea: Steep 8 tsp osmanthus oolong tea with 32 ounces water for 3 to 5 minutes.

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Hosts: Rich Mackey & Catelin Drey
Producer: Zac Hazen

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Transcript

Brand Is Culture, Not Logos

SPEAKER_00 0:06

In B2B, your brand isn't just a logo, it's your culture. How your teams work, how your teams show up for clients, and the story you tell every day shapes the trust buyers place in you. Today we're unpacking why culture is so important in B2B branding.

Framing The Big Questions

Cocktail Detour: Chit Cha Tati

SPEAKER_02 0:21

Wow, Zach with the cold open there, like pulling an SNL, just like right into it. Good to see you though. Yeah, good to see you. All right. So yeah, so how does company culture influence B2B branding? Why does it matter? And why does it matter now even more than ever? So that's that's gonna be a hot one. So um okay. Why don't we uh do this cocktail? Because it's a weird one.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Yeah, let's just get right into the cocktail. It's a fun one. So the the Chit Cha Tati. The Chit Chit Cha Tati, which was created by Sean Chen, beverage director at Red Farm and principal bartender at Decoy in New York City. Red Farm is a dim sum uh restaurant. They have several locations in New York.

SPEAKER_02 1:08

So a fun tangent, because I think we don't do enough tangents anymore. So um Caitlin was really our tangent like leader. Um in Australia, dim sum is called Yum Cha. I had no idea. Which now I'm seeing this the Chit Cha, and if it's Yum Cha, that Cha must mean something to do with um I don't know, something to do with it. But anyway.

Tea, Heritage, And Presentation

SPEAKER_00 1:30

It must. So Chen drew inspiration from the traditional Chinese tea ceremony aiming to honor tea and his cultural heritage. The drink features osmanthus oolong tea from Taiwan, prized for its delicate flavor and faint nuttiness. At decoy, it's often served in a Chinese I'm Gaiwan, though it also can be served in a hollowed-out mini pumpkin for a festive twist. The name Chit Cha comes from the respectful respectful way of serving tea in Chinese culture. So there's your answer to the Chicha.

Ingredients, Scale, And Method

SPEAKER_02 2:04

Yeah. Um, and a gaiwan is like a little bowl with a lid on top. Um, a lot of times in a Japanese restaurant, you'll get miso soup in one that's basically kind of the same thing. Oh, okay. Where it's they've got the little little topper on it with its little foot. Um, I had to look that up and see. Um but yeah, serving it in a hollowed out pumpkin. Okay, so what on earth is in this? Um, oh, this is not one that I'm not drinking this one. I'm just going through it and I'm like, yeah, no, this isn't happening to me. Um, all right, so this will serve 12 people. So I'm with when they say hollowed out pumpkin, I don't think they mean a mini pumpkin. I think they mean like you put it in a big pumpkin, like a punch pumpkin. Like a medium-sized yeah, like a medium-sized uh pumpkin. So add up the ounces on this. Um, but I mean there's like 32 ounces of just tea. So it looks like this is probably like a 50-ounce kind of thing. Okay. So nine ounces of George Dickle rye whiskey, or your favorite wet rye whiskey if you want. But this is the one that Sean, whatever his name is, uses. Um, three ounces of Benedictine liqueur, which I am not familiar with Benedictine liqueur. Um, so Zach will Google that real quick and we'll we'll tell you what that is. Uh, six ounces of lemon juice, freshly squeezed. It's gonna be a lot of lemons to get six ounces, by the way. Um so then, oh go ahead, Benedictine liqueur. What is it?

SPEAKER_00 3:26

Herbal liqueur produced in France uh in the 19th century and is flavored with 27 different flowers, berries, herbs, roots, and spices. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 3:36

Presumably made by Benedictine monks. Like, because that's that was a thing. Like, that's just a thing. Like Christian Brothers brandy and stuff like that. Okay. Uh so then six ounces of ginger syrup after the lemon juice, three ounces of blossom honey, 32 ounces of osmentus oolong tea hot brewed. Um, so Zach will put in the notes how you hot brew that. Um, it is a delicate tea, so you've got to be careful. Um, my guess is it's probably like 160 degree versus boiling water or something like that. Um 12 lemon half wheels studded with cloves, and then your garnish is mitt leaves and cinnamon sugar and those half wheels. So this is a lot of stuff. I'm guessing it doesn't go in a shaker, um, especially since you're putting hot tea in there.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

Nope, it's more of a punch, so you stir it into the pumpkin. All right.

SPEAKER_02 4:26

So, Zach, how do we make all this work?

SPEAKER_00 4:28

So you add all your ingredients to a large hauled out pumpkin or punch bowl, which is probably more practical, so you don't have to, you know, clean an entire pumpkin out.

SPEAKER_02 4:37

It's October, pumpkin. Do the pumpkin.

Serving Warm Punch, Fall Vibes

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Go for it. Honestly, the ginger syrup, the honey, the tea, the cloves, the cinnamon, all great fall flavors. But uh, you stir with a wooden spoon until combined. Then you divide out 12 mini pumpkins if you want to get even fancier for cups. But I would say for this, go punch cups. So you don't have to do that many pumpkins. Then garnish each with a lemon half-wheel stutter of cloves, a mitten leaf, and a sprinkling of cinnamon sugar. And then the ginger syrup, you juice four ounces of fresh peeled ginger root, which could be tough if you don't have a juicer. Then you add one cup of extra fine sugar and stir in complete stir completely until dissolved. And this will keep refrigerated in an airtight container for up to two weeks. So if you want to do anything else with that ginger syrup, and for the oolong tea, it wants you to steep eight teaspoons of osmanthus oolong tea with 32 ounces of water for three to five minutes. So not really specific on the temperature, but I'm sure if you wanted to look it up, you could probably figure out the correct temperature for it.

Party Ideas And Presentation

SPEAKER_02 5:40

Yeah, I've got a tea, an electric tea kettle, and it's got different um like white tea, green tea, herbal tea, and then black tea. Black tea is the only one that it boils for. Everyone else is like a 185, 160, whatever. Um, but typically with the more delicate teas, you don't uh you don't boil them because it can um it can ruin some of the flavor. So this is interesting. So I mean, there might be enough stuff in here. Like there's only nine ounces of rye whiskey, and there's 32 ounces of tea and a bunch of other stuff. So it might balance out. This might actually be one I would try. Um, I think if you really want to be extra when you hollow out the mini pumpkins, you can get some like little hooks or plastic hooks or whatever and like hook them on the outside of the big pumpkin so people like get their mini pumpkin and then like scoop in whatever they need. Um, this is a great one for a Halloween party, though. If you're gonna go all out for Halloween, this would be a fancy Halloween party. Yeah, really interesting one to have kind of as a centerpiece. And obviously, you can um you can double it, you can triple it, you can, you know, have extra sitting somewhere, you know, on a on a I don't know, you'd probably want to keep it warm, I guess. Because this is served warm, right?

SPEAKER_00 6:51

Yeah, so it would probably be pretty warm because you're stirring in warm tea.

SPEAKER_02 6:56

Yeah, the tea, you don't let the tea cool, you don't refrigerate it or anything. Yeah. Um so yeah, I mean that would be, I think this is this is a neat one. I think it's fun. It'd be funny.

SPEAKER_00 7:07

You probably could. Yeah. I think uh it's almost like you're serving like it in a cauldron, which is kind of cool. And uh, like you said, it'd be a really good centerpiece. I'm really interested by the flavors and like the concept behind it. It's just like a play of like doing a Chinese tea ceremony in a giant cocktail pumpkin punch bowl. So definitely ride up my alley.

Back To Branding

Stats: Values And Authenticity

SPEAKER_02 7:29

Yeah, I do think the cauldron would be, I mean, you could do a cauldron and like skull cups or something if you want to do Halloween y. I mean, you're getting away from the traditional like high-end tea ceremony there. But um I think you and Chloe should do this. You should have a Halloween party or go to somebody's Halloween party and you should make this and take it with you. That'd be so much fun. We should. That's my that's my assignment for you. All right. So that comes from liquor.com. Those people always have good stuff. I mean, it's right there in their name, liquor.com. So shall we uh take a break and come back and talk B2B and branding? Let's do it. All right, so Zach, I was a Slacker. I brought no stats for this section uh because it's what we usually start with, some stats and some interesting numbers. But um, if you've got stats, fire them away. What do we what do we got?

SPEAKER_00 8:18

All right. So, Rich, what percentage of B2B buyers are more likely to purchase from companies whose cultures and values align with their own 71. It's 71.

SPEAKER_02 8:32

Is it really? Yeah Oh no, that is so wild. That's the first time that's happened for us.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

As soon as you said 70, I was like, oh, he's gonna be pretty close. And then 71, I was like, wait a second, he he got the nail on the head. So yeah, 71% of buyers are more likely to purchase from companies whose culture and value align with their own, which is kind of hits on one of your points that we're gonna talk about later. But uh that's big, right? Like that's huge.

SPEAKER_02 8:58

Like I knew it was big, like in my head, but the first pop did in my head was like 80, 85. And then I was like, I'll bet it's not quite that high. And then I was like, I was like, oh, like maybe 75, 70, and then I was just like, oh, 71 sounds like a good number.

SPEAKER_00 9:10

It was a good guess. But that's awesome. Yeah, no, it makes a lot of sense. I mean, that's the whole point of this episode, right? Culture is important to your actual brand. If you don't have a good culture and values, then you probably don't have a good brand because your brand should basically be those culture, that culture and value, those values.

SPEAKER_02 9:30

Right. Yeah, brand is a feeling. Like a brand should give a feeling, it's not just your colors and your logo and all that, which we've beaten that point in other episodes too. Um all right, cool, cool. So I nailed that one. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 9:42

Let's see if you can get the second one. What percent of buyers consider authenticity a clue key factor in evaluating their B2B partnerships?

SPEAKER_02 9:52

Um, I'm guessing it's not 71%. So I'm gonna say I'm gonna say 86%.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

Oh, it was 85%.

SPEAKER_02 10:00

Oh, I was gonna say 85%, but I was like wanted to make it weird, so I made it 86. So wow, I'm good at this.

SPEAKER_00 10:07

That was crazy. I should go buy a lot of ticket. I mean, we gotta see how how well you do next, like next episode too, because wow, that's that was really freaky.

SPEAKER_02 10:16

Yeah, so um just recap that one again, because like I think our like being so close, we get over we overpower like what the actual stat is and what it means.

Why Culture Drives B2B Choice

SPEAKER_00 10:25

So 85% of buyers consider authenticity, authenticity a key factor in evaluating B2B partnerships. So I think that's just another thing of your culture, right? And like your values as a company. If you don't have good values and you're putting out, you know, a bad brand, uh like I think in B2B a lot of brands get lost in the mix, right? And so having a good brand can be really difficult. And if you have bad values and bad culture, then that's just gonna compound the problem. Yep.

Banking Story: Culture In Action

SPEAKER_02 10:56

So uh and you can't just invent culture, culture has to be authentic, kind of by definition. You can't like creating a fake culture is impossible to do in a company. Um and people will find you out and see right through you. And that's so what's really interesting is like that really just dovetails right into my first point. Um, is you you nailed it like, you know, a lot of people just ignore brand and culture in B2B because you're providing a service for money. Boom, it's transactional, that's it. Um but so why does culture matter at all? Like, and I think the stats that you shared show that like you might think you're just providing a service for money. And I think about like um like business banking, same thing. Like they're providing me a service and I'm paying them some sort of fees or interest or whatever. Um but we went with a smaller local bank that has a fun logo. Their branding is really cute, their um spaces are oddly enough very similar to our spaces uh in our our physical offices that we've had with like brick and wood in older buildings. They've repurposed buildings, they're very big on community. And that's where we went instead of the very, very large regional bank that could probably give us better rates and things. But I know the people I talk to. Um, I feel comfortable when I walk into their space. Um, and they've also just been like, I don't know, nicer, friendlier. They know who we are. Like we had um we had an overdraft, which happens with bank accounts all the time. We have three accounts, and so one of them will go negative and the other two are like really big or whatever. Um, and like so it was like our um our media purchasing account like went negative. They called me on a Saturday morning to ask me to transfer some money so I wouldn't have an overdraft fee. Um Yeah, like and that's business banking. That's B2B. I mean, don't well, first of all, that never happens in consumer banking. They're like, oh, we're getting the overdraft fee.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

That's like we're waiting on that overdraft fee.

SPEAKER_02 13:05

Yeah, but we have uh we have a 24-hour grace on any overdrafts. Um and so, yeah, and but Saturdays count, Sundays don't. So by Monday morning, we would have had an overdraft fee. And they just called me and said, hey, like, you know, you just went negative. It was, I don't know, we were negative by like$500 or something stupid. And we had thousands in the other account. He's like, Can you just like transfer? And uh part of me is like, I should probably set up an automatic transfer. Like, if one account is negative, just pull it from another one. Um, but that's part of it. And that's like our culture, that's their culture, and that mesh um makes it work. I mean, and we went above and beyond to use that bank. They don't have any branches in Sioux City where a lot of people mail us checks to Sioux City. So we've they increased our mobile deposit limit. Um, so we can multiple, do we deposit like 30 grand per day or something like that now? I don't know what it is. Um, but they also sent us like a machine like the tellers have that Jessica has on her desk where you can scan the checks. Um nice. So if we have a really huge one, we can we can do that. And then we can also like they'll send us envelopes if we need to mail checks to them. Um, they'll give us the envelopes to mail them. We have to put a stamp on it. But um so yeah, so right there, I mean it's an anecdote, it's a little bit of a tangent, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 14:27

But when you it's a clear signal, like I mean, that whole story is awesome because it's just like a clear signal of that person that bank's uh, you know, like values and culture. And like you said, it aligns with us and we want to work with them, and that kind of support and values they have and uphold are like really authentic and really awesome.

Making Culture Visible With Content

SPEAKER_02 14:51

So and culture fit is like when you're applying for a job, that's always something that they're looking for, a culture fit. Um, but it's also when we're looking at clients, like when clients are evaluating us, we don't just take every single client who comes in the door. Um, we do evaluate on, you know, values and will they respect our values and our culture, you know, customs and things like that. Um, and do they feel like somebody we want to go have a drink with is kind of how that culture fit is expressed a lot. Um and I think they say that as well. Like, um, you know, we had one who came back to us and just said, like, she's like, I've talked to three companies, you guys feel the most like you what is it? You feel like the most it was basically she wants to work with us because the feeling she gets from us is the better than the other two. Just a feeling, nothing about our services, nothing about quality of work, just a feeling. Just vibes, vibes, yeah, total vibes. All right, so company so culture matters. Like we've got stats, we've got anecdotes, we've got tangents. We know culture matters. So um, I think your next point really gets us into what do you do about that?

Human Signals: Faces, Voices, Space

SPEAKER_00 16:10

So, yeah, how do you share your culture? How do you put your culture out there? Because it's one thing to have a good culture, but if your branding, if the messaging you're putting out doesn't reflect that fun, awesome culture and those values that you uphold, then it's not really gonna, it's gonna get lost, like between your branding and your messaging and all of that. So one thing I would say is uh surprise the content marketing specialist is gonna say content is probably one of the most important things that you are going to be putting out in terms of sharing your culture, sharing what it's like to work with you, sharing your voice. And uh yeah, I would say content is huge with that, right? I mean, this podcast is a really big indicator of our culture and who we are, right? Because you and I are discussing these things in a really you know authentic and easygoing way. And I think we have all other team members on that share really cool messages and really cool honestly, it's it's just a big snapshot of us, right? So your social posts, your blogs, newsletters are a great way to show your voice and share valuable knowledge with uh your clients and prospective clients. I think um something that's really important to sharing your culture in a positive way is showing employee appreciation, showing spotlighting your team members, spotlighting case studies with your clients. Um honestly, I keep going back to the podcast as like a major one. A podcast can be super huge for sharing like who you are, especially to people who might not because we would we want to see who we're working with, right? You don't see who you're working with all the time behind a social post. That could just be a picture, that could be a really short video. But when people listen to this podcast or other people's podcasts in specific, if it's really attuned to what their culture is and their branding and their voice, then you're gonna get a good idea of who you're gonna work with. Like when people tune into us, they see you, Rich, they see me. If if they want their content done or a podcast done, they know who they're gonna be working with.

SPEAKER_02 18:22

And yeah, I mean, and they also see like, you know, sometimes like we're both wearing like polos today. Um but they they see like I was in a t-shirt, I think, in one of the last episodes because I just was like doing so much stuff around my house, getting ready for people to come. And I happen to be wearing a t-shirt that day. I had no client meetings, and it's like, all right, I'm just gonna pop in here. You've got the Lego artwork above my head, like my little lamp and my plant. So you're kind of getting a feel for us. We know you like the color green for whatever reason. That light green is.

SPEAKER_00 18:48

Yep, I'm definitely being green.

Consistency, Spotlights, Milestones

SPEAKER_02 18:51

Um, I think what's um what's interesting about that is you're you're dead right that like this puts the personality in it. Like text or images are good, but audio better, audio video imagery even better because you can get that feel for who it is. And I think that's where like the Zoom calls are so much better now. I don't know anybody who really does phone calls anymore. You like generally schedule a Zoom meeting where you used to do like a big conference call, people would mute it, you're distracted, you're not paying attention. You can see on this that like I do get distracted. Like I run the company, and so sometimes there's something on this screen that pulls me over, and I'm like, what's that over there going on? Um, or you know, I'm waiting for my my lawn people and they might be outside, but it's raining, so I don't think they're coming, but they haven't canceled yet, so who knows? Um but I think having those moments where you can showcase employees, and oh, I remember what I was gonna say. Like we share, like today, there should be a post on all of our socials about Caitlin's birthday because it's her birthday today. Yeah. And we do that, and that's not anything about the services we offer, anything like that. But the fact that we share birthday posts and anniversary posts, it tells you just a little something about our company that we actually care about people and we do acknowledge like individual and personal milestones as well as company milestones. So little things like that go a long way. They also get shared like crazy, which is so stupid.

SPEAKER_00 20:17

But it's because people love seeing, you know, family members, friends getting spotlighted by the work that they do with for the work that they do. I mean, my friend, I have a friend that'll like and like send me every video that we've posted that I'm in, and he'll be like, Hey, I watched this, you were in it, like it's pretty cool. And it's kind of a joke, but like it's also really cool because like that stuff matters, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 20:44

Like, yeah, and you're like, you're like, yeah, I know. I recorded it, I edited it, I posted it, like I'm familiar with this video.

SPEAKER_00 20:52

Yeah, Chloe asked me, Did you did you see this post you guys put out? Like it was pretty cool. I'm literally the one. What do you mean that I see it? Yes, I'm literally the one that like you know, like is pulling together the whole calendar.

SPEAKER_02 21:05

Where if you ask me, like, hey, did you see this post we put out? I'll be like, I don't know which one, like, because maybe, maybe not, because I don't go through those. I'm not a part of the approval process forum, I don't micromanage that stuff. Um, so I see them like anybody, any normal person would. Like, I follow us, of course, on social media and stuff. But you know, if I'm not really on Facebook, then I might not see it. You know, like I haven't been in LinkedIn a bunch, and we had an episode on there, and I'm like, oh crap, I should reshare this episode because I forgot to do it last week. Um, and so I did. But yeah.

Case Studies As Culture Proof

SPEAKER_00 21:34

But no, yeah, I think something like main point here is your content is really important for sharing your values and culture. Uh, it needs to be consistent, have like really good messaging. I would recommend doing things like team spotlights behind the scenes of like the work that you do, because that's also like a really good way of showing who you are and how you do things. And honestly, like you said, simple stuff. Sharing birthdays, sharing anniversaries. If we have a big milestone of a client, our clients like seeing that and being able to share it. We love sharing that, and it shows just who we are and why you should work with us. So content is the megaphone for your branding and your voice.

SPEAKER_02 22:16

So yeah, and I think um the other piece there is like sharing your your customer success stories, like things that you do for your clients. Like I know we had the the case study and whatnot, and we shared a reel, I think it was, or a slideshow on the people perspective and how we did their build out, which was like a really fun custom HubSpot build out. We were super proud of it, they were super happy with it. We continue to work with them. Um, great quote from the client. So, shout out to Christy and the folks at the People Perspective uh down in Texas.

SPEAKER_00 22:45

Um Yeah, that looked like a really fun project.

SPEAKER_02 22:47

Yeah, but it also tells people like how we feel about our clients. And you want to work, you don't want to be in a place that's like, oh god, it's another client. Like you want to be in a place that's like celebrating the joint wins, which is really important. Uh all right, we beat that, we beat that point to death, I think.

Employees As Brand Amplifiers

SPEAKER_00 23:04

Oh, 100%. I think I think they get it. I think they get it. But that kind of dovetails into our next point is your culture is nothing without your team and the people that are shaping that culture. It's like you said, you can't fake good culture, and getting people to buy into a culture that they believe in is not only just valuable for morale and keeping everyone happy and working hard, it's also just valuable for you know, like your customers because they want to see. So I have some stats to illustrate this point before I go too far into it, but 64% of companies credit their employee advocacy programs with attracting and developing new business, and 45% attribute new revenue streams to those programs. So this is kind of just a point of where if employers are sharing your content and sharing um your culture, your brands, like they're resharing like posts, they're actually going out of their way to say, hey, like we're doing this really cool thing at our company, like check it out. That is huge. Um, not just for like, like I said, not just for morale, but also for your customers and your the people you're going to be, you know, providing your service to. And uh I mean, here's another one. This is a pretty big one. Employee shared content achieves eight times more engagement than employer brand content. So we do a lot of employee advocacy here. Um, like you'll probably like notice a lot of our social posts, we're our biggest cheerleaders, and that's because sharing that stuff and sharing what's important to us and knowledge and information and thought leadership is super important to what we're doing with our content. And uh if your employees aren't aligned and bought into the brand vision vision and culture that you have, you're you're in serious trouble.

Tactics: Reminders And Employee Ads

SPEAKER_02 25:06

Yeah, and I think um a hundred percent the thing that really helps us is Megan like reminds us in a channel in Slack, like, hey, we just posted this, go take a look. Um, because sometimes they don't know, and it's not it doesn't hurt to remind. She doesn't ever say like you must go like this, you must go reshare this. It's more like, hey, go take a look at it, like react if you want to, share it if you want to, like, you know, whatever. And and people share certain things and not other things. Um but yeah, that employee advocacy is a huge, huge part of getting things out there. I think the other thing, um, another tip for folks from an advertising standpoint is we've been looking at messing around. I don't know if we've done it yet, but promoting an employee's post on LinkedIn through the company. So the company actually pays to promote a post that an employee made, right? Am I getting that right?

SPEAKER_00 25:54

Employee, yeah, employee ads on LinkedIn. Yeah. So yeah, we're paying, we're basically promoting a post that an employee or a team member puts out. And those are really interesting. Like when I went towards the LinkedIn Well, when we went to the LinkedIn uh I keep thinking back to inbound, but when we went to the LinkedIn ads deep dive, uh that was one of the ads where they said we should keep an eye on it because it's something really interesting and it does show some decent success in certain uh like basically certain with certain campaign goals and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_02 26:28

Yeah, and it's taking that if your employees are getting like an 8x response compared to what your company does, then what happens if the company puts some money behind that and promotes the employee post? Yeah. Um, you know, can you fuel that? So something that's working well organically, what happens when you put money behind it? Which is really the whole thing about social advertising.

Hire For Fit, Let Teams Lead

SPEAKER_00 26:45

Well, and Rich, how do you think people how do you think as like a leader, right? How do you get employees to buy into the culture so that they feel that you know they want to share these things and they want to put these things out? Because, you know, as a team member, I know that when I put out good work or that when I'm getting shouted out and like acknowledged, that makes me more willing to uh push things out there. And obviously, I'm the content specialist, so I greatly benefit from pushing content out there.

SPEAKER_02 27:17

So it helps your own stats, yeah. Um so I mean the short answer is I don't. Like, I do not get anybody to do anything or get anybody to buy into anything. Um, when we hire, we try to hire for a culture fit. Um, our culture is fairly well defined. Um, though I think we do have some folks who would be like, I don't know, I couldn't put it into words because it's just a feeling, and it's like, okay, well, describe the feeling, like, let's get there. Um, but I think that you know, having our um our content be, you know, team specific and acknowledging internally we've got a little system internally where we acknowledge when somebody like does something, even a little small win. Um, and so that helps as well. And I think just let honestly letting the employees run with it has been the best thing for us.

SPEAKER_00 28:05

Um so don't hire people that don't fit the culture is probably one of the biggest things.

Engagement, Initiative, And Outcomes

SPEAKER_02 28:11

Yeah, I mean, and and we have, and it's so they seem like it in the interview, and then you get to it that you get them on board, and you're like, oh god, they're not a good culture fit at all. Um, and then they just start resisting everything that you're already doing and that most of your employees are bought in with, and it creates friction and it's rough.

SPEAKER_00 28:29

And showing appreciation, another big step of that, like you said. Um, just another stat to close out on my point. Um, highly engaged employees deliver up to 20% higher productivity. So if they're engaging the work in the culture that they are bought into, obviously they're gonna work harder. And uh I would say 83% of employees say a strong company culture inspires them to take initiative. So if you don't have a strong culture, a lot of people are just gonna sit back and let things happen and not take the initiative to actually make change.

When Fit Is Deep: Partnership Flow

Red Flags And The Wrong Fit

SPEAKER_02 29:01

So yeah, and you want your employees bringing ideas. Like the worst thing is if I'm the only one with ideas in the company, like that's just not gonna work at all. Um and you know, and everybody has to understand that not every idea is gonna be executed on, not every idea is gonna go somewhere. But sometimes a weird idea or something way off the wall can lead you down a path to something that's actually doable and executable. Um so that's kind of cool. So I think the last one, and I kind of touched on this from the other side with like a vendor that we use. Um, but what happens if your culture fit with a B2B client gets really close, like super close. Um, and we have a client that um we've we've had for years, and we talk about how when they come to our space or we go to their space, it feels like home, basically. Like the spaces now it helps that they designed our space. So that does help. But they designed our space with our input, like they didn't design it for. For them, they designed it for us. We just happened to align to that. And we were actually getting some of that in our other spaces before we had the current kind of space in Sioux City that we've got. Um, but like, you know, what's really funny there is like their colors are similar to ours. Like the space feels similar to ours. Um, the way, but the way that they talk about their team, the way they collaborate, the way they try to inject fun into things on a regular basis, all of that just really aligns with stuff. And I think it's like when you've got um a good friend who you just are so aligned with. Um, one, it feels good. It always feels good to talk to them. Two, if something goes wrong or you have a difficulty, you've got that shared history, that shared culture to fall back on. And you're going to be more gracious in working through anything that's an issue. Where for me, when a culture fit is really wrong, um those clients one don't last, they don't stick around. Um, honestly, sometimes we don't want them to stick around. Um, but nobody will like break up with anybody there. You gotta kind of write it out.

SPEAKER_00 31:14

And I think when there's a culture mismatch too, you see a lot of red flags initially, maybe too. Where there's some places, obviously, like there's some like there's probably some agencies for clients, right? That'll sneak through selling a lot, and it seems like they're cultural alliance, but they might be focused on the wrong things, and then when it actually happens, it's just awful. That happened to my brother. Uh basically, I won't get into too many details about who he works for or whatever, but like they were going to do a site for the company that he worked for, and their strategy was to only talk to the CEO and to try and convince him to buy into this idea, and it almost worked. But my brother said, uh, he literally just told me this. He said he looked at the site and could tell they had no idea what they were talking about, and the way that they were going about obviously just talking to the CEO, shutting everyone else out, and trying to can like trying to upsell a lot of things. He could tell it wasn't a good fit, and he was able to like convince his company not to go with it. And that company went out of business like a couple like six like a few months later. So they were buying in to try and you know save their company with this big deal. But he could tell that's just a good example that it wasn't a good culture fit. He was overselling, they weren't focused on the right things to what the values that he thought hit the company he worked for was, you know, has. And that's just like an example of that.

Choosing Clients With Intention

SPEAKER_02 32:40

But yeah, you do feel those red flags kind of early on. Um, it definitely happens. Um, and so like when it's a mismatch, um, you're you're just gonna be going back through the motions later. Like you're gonna end up in a breakup situation, you're gonna end up not working. And we have taken on clients, especially when money was like really tight, um, where we're like, yeah, I there I saw the four red flags. I'm willing to do those four red flags because we want the income. Um, and those clients don't stick around, they aren't enjoyable to work with, they don't enjoy working with us. Um, and you eventually like break up, but do you get the money out of them? Yeah. Is that who we are? No, not anymore. Like we've been there at points, but um, if we get like big red flags, we we're out. And and you can be gracious about it and just say, you know, I think that you know we probably could work together, but I just don't know if it's a a good fit.

SPEAKER_00 33:36

We're too far apart on a lot of key things.

SPEAKER_02 33:40

Yep, 100%. All right, so I think that um that's an episode.

Wrap: What To Do Next

SPEAKER_00 33:46

That was quite the episode. Uh cover a lot of good stuff. How you can make your culture and value more visible, obviously it's content. Yep. Why it matters, why having employees buy into your culture and then having them be a part of that content creation and content sharing can be really good and engaging. And then, like you said, like if it's a what happens when a culture fit is really close with B2B client, and then we covered what happens when it goes wrong. Yeah. All right, awesome. As always, you can find our agency at antidote71.com and all of our socials there as well. If you have a question you'd like to send our way, head to CTA Podcast.live to shoot us an email. Or even better, leave us a voice message on our hotline at 402 718 9971. Your question will, in fact, make it into a future episode of the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 34:42

All right.