Well, hey everybody, welcome to another edition of Vanderblumen Leadership Podcast. We spend a lot of time this year uh talking about leadership and not really doing the hey, I've got a book, come on the podcast, but this one's special. Uh, I have a dear friend, Jenny Catron. Yes, it's Catherine. It's not Katrone. If you tend toward Katrone, maybe you've been drinking something that rhymes like that and you need to get in a group. But let's go with Katrin. Jenny, welcome to the show. Glad to have you here.
SPEAKER_02William, thanks for having me back. I always love catching up and appreciate, you know, just your friendship through the years. So this is fun.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and and I I'm not kidding when I say it's uh it's one of these things that I want to highlight. You Jenny works on making your culture healthy. We do some of that, but she does as that's kind of exclusively what she does. And she's written a book about it. Well, William, why is that important? Well, you know, in our work, helping churches find the right staff people, you know, when we talk about how do we let the world know what we do, I'm like, uh, we live in Houston, and in Houston, um we have a hospital called MD Anderson. It's it's maybe the leading cancer hospital in the world. Like the Saudi family flies their people here when they're sick. So it's it's like where you go. Well, how in the world do you market for that without looking like an ambulance chaser? And you know what they do? They focus their efforts on cancer prevention centers.
SPEAKER_03Oh, interesting. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I think building a healthy culture is very similar.
SPEAKER_03That's right.
SPEAKER_00You want to stop it before it becomes a problem because if once it's a problem, it's it's a real problem.
SPEAKER_02For sure.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And to put real teeth on it, this is airing on uh Thursday, the ninth. Um, you know, you should, if you're the Philadelphia Eagles, you should make sure your quarterback doesn't get a concussion before they have to play Jenny's Packers.
SPEAKER_03That's right.
SPEAKER_00On the weekend. So I know you guys are not praying that he stay in concussion. I know you're praying for Jalen Hurts' health, but kind of a big deal. So probably should have kept him on the bench a little bit instead of getting injured right at the end. And we love Jalen. He's from Houston, so we we pull for him when we can. But all of kidding aside, today I want to talk. And Jenny, I just want to give you a minute to talk about the why behind what you do. I mean, what in the world makes you want to go work on culture? And seriously, you you've got a story and a journey that has I correct me if I'm wrong, but it's birthed kind of a burden inside you for this one thing. So tell us a little bit about your story and your journey and and what's led you to this current place.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. William, thanks for that setup. It is funny. Sometimes I'm like, God, why did you give me a passion for something that seems occasionally hard to convince leaders they need to care about? Which again feels crazy, but I'll give you, I will give you the backstory. Um, I there's really two different stories in my my journey that have impacted this, but the one very vividly was I was in the music business. Some of your listeners might remember that from past episodes. I worked in the music business when I first came out of college. That was a dream job, absolutely loved it. But I unknowingly was in a phenomenal culture, like a great organization, great leadership, amazing team, highly productive. We worked hard. We were, this was back in the era and heyday of DC Talk releasing in the mid-90s. And so we were topping all the record charts, but we were working hard. So it wasn't like this cushy job. It was a very intense, high expectation, but it was an amazing team of people. And there was such a high belief, there was incredible clarity around what we were doing and why it mattered. And then about eight years into that job, we went through a corporate merger and they merged us with another division of the company. And overnight, my experience with my work went from amazing to kind of awful that the new team, there was a bunch of tension, there was infighting. And in defense of the team that we merged with, right, they had to adopt this other team inside of their organization. So nobody was happy. Like we were all fumbling around trying to figure out, you know, our new experience working together. My job description had not changed. Um, you know, my core responsibilities had not changed, but who I worked with changed. My leaders changed, my team changed, and the culture changed. The culture significantly changed. I stayed about a year. I was over it. I was like, I this is not the spot for me. And I ended up going on staff at the church that you you and I met originally when I was on the Cross Point staff in Nashville.
SPEAKER_00And well, that's a little ambitious. We met in a uh elementary school cafeteria, which is where the church was the time, I think.
SPEAKER_02That's exactly right. Yes. So imagine this.
SPEAKER_03I I'm doing this amazing job in the music business. It is a dream job. And but I'm I'm unhappy because I'm in it in a culture that I'm not thriving in. And the church that I'm a part of, Cross Point, is a couple years old, growing fast. They hire me. We're meeting in a school cafeteria. So there's nothing flashy about the experience, as you know. And um I'm hired as the executive director. I'm number two of, you know, and there's five of us on staff. But I remember William thinking very specifically, very intentionally, that I was now in a seat where I was shaping the experience of our employees, our volunteers, our congregation. Like I had a seat of disproportionate influence on what the culture would be like.
SPEAKER_00And I vowed probably on a very fragile organization.
SPEAKER_03Oh, completely. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00No matter how you know, maybe one of the most successful church plants ever is Andy Stanley at North Point. And when they were about that size, he tells a story of how they would get the mail back when mail came in these things called mailboxes, and they would open the mail to see what offerings came in, and they take turns who opened the mail. And whoever opened a piece of mail with a check opened the rest of the mail. Superstition.
SPEAKER_03That's amazing.
SPEAKER_00That's what it's like for all you that romanticize startups and all that. It yeah, it's fun and you've got undue influence, but it's a fragile time, and you are shaping at a very high octane uh level.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's exactly right. That's a because it was. I mean, I literally had coworkers from the music business saying, You are committing career suicide. What in the world are you doing? Going over to work for this young church. But obviously, we know that that was one of the best decisions I've ever made. But I remember like, I am now in a seat where I am shaping the experience. I'm shaping the culture for the, you know, for the future of this organization. And I never want an employee, a volunteer to have the experience that I had just had in, you know, that last year of my corporate world. And um, that's kind of what impressed upon me, William, the importance of culture, that the environment you're in radically impacts your experience. You know, I rewind back to my high school years and I had a very similar dynamic. I worked for an ice cream shop that was phenomenal. It was this fun little, quirky little mom and pop ice cream shop that uh was just a blast. The owner was amazing, the coworkers were great. You know, you're serving ice cream. What more could you want? And then my winter job was working at a uh a Christmas tree farm making Christmas wreaths. Well, again, beautiful Christmas wreaths. It's the Christmas season.
SPEAKER_00Are you the Hallmark lady? I mean, almost.
SPEAKER_03Except it was awful. Like, William, again, it was like the horrible experience. Everybody was cranky. We worked in a cold metal shed. Like, I mean, it's Christmas, but you would have thought we were all the Grinch. And and both experiences should have been awesome, right? Like it, you know, who doesn't love ice cream and who doesn't love a Christmas wreath? But again, it all came down to the environment. It came down to the culture that was set significantly by the leader, but then by the rest of the team. And so those two, you know, just stark experiences were the things that just impressed upon me the importance of creating a culture and a climate where employees thrive, because you know this as well as I do. When when team members are thriving, when they're engaged, when they have clarity of their responsibilities, when they know the goal, when they know their responsibilities, like they come alive, they want to contribute. Like, you know, we're not hiring people because they want to sit around. Like they want to contribute in a meaningful way, but we've got to create the environment that allows that to happen. And so that became, you know, that's the why is those different experiences that just impressed upon me how critical the environment is to an employee's success. And so here we are a couple decades later, and I'm finally putting it all, the framework into a book to say, hey, here's here's what I think a culture operating system looks like. This is what I think it takes because it's more than kumbaya moments, it's more than staff fun days, it's more than employee perks. There's really a system to building healthy culture that is the thing I want to help commit to uh contribute to the world.
SPEAKER_00That's awesome. Uh tell us the name of the book and where people can find things in the book. And we'll put it all in the show notes, but but sure put that out there now. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, Culture Matters Book.com. The book is called Culture Matters, a framework for helping your team grow, thrive, and be unstoppable. And uh yeah, it really I walked through, William. What I identified was five phases of work that are really critical to helping establish culture. And so that's what we're breaking down in the book and um and helping leaders kind of walk through.
SPEAKER_00That's great. That's great. And so uh a couple questions about culture. Because we've, I mean, we went through a season where we were in that whatever, whatever the the metaphor is that elementary school for church, we were in, you know, an office that OSHA would have condemned. I mean, we were, you know, it was I think I was in your early office. It was really bad. Well, the early, early when we shared Wi-Fi with the bar next door. Um, I don't think anybody went to that. And uh it's closed now, so we outlasted them. But uh, you know, culture. Here's what I can't figure out. We we won all these awards, we won you know, sixth best place to work in Houston, third best place to work in Houston, top company culture in the country, blah blah blah blah. We even won like best office dog, it got kind of ridiculous. When the flywheel turns, it's kind of ridiculous how it can turn and turn and turn. However, when you hit a slowdown, which happened to us most poignantly during the pandemic when most of our clients were closed, I began to wonder and began to study because we we actually, you know, it's should you write a book or not? And and hey, this is not an either-or, guys. There's room for more and more and more reading on, you know. So buy Jenny's book. We wrote a case study on uh 150 places that win best places work, and what do they overlap? And it's called culture wins. So culture matters and culture wins. That's right. Read them both and then go hire Jenny. Uh, but uh what I found was most places that had a really great culture were growing organizations.
SPEAKER_03Right, right.
SPEAKER_00And it's got me wondering, and you know more about this than I do, but can you have good culture when you're not growing? And if so, how?
SPEAKER_03Well, and here's here's the question mark I have on that, William is that I think some of the metrics that measure culture are measuring the success stories. You know, so like, you know, hitting some of those best places to work and things like that. Um, you know, there's there's a number of factors that they're measuring that I think are related to positive momentum in the organization. And and I do think that, you know, you can obviously you can have really great culture in really successful organizations, but you can also have a terrible culture in really successful organizations, that the success is covering a multitude of sins that eventually uh um emerge once the momentum slows down.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I don't I don't think you could pay me enough to go work at Amazon or in anything that Elon owns.
SPEAKER_03They're both great leaders, but that's yeah, but the cultures are, I mean, they're distinct, but they're intense, right? So they're, you know, not necessarily the culture that most of us would aspire to. Um, so I do think that you can have a culture in a difficult season as an organization, in that um, you know, I saw this happen during the pandemic, that, you know, we all had all of these crazy pressures put on us. We're all trying to figure out what to do and how to survive. And but I saw that that cult organizations that truly had healthy culture by way of, I, you know, one of my convictions is that clarity is a chief indicator of the health of a culture. And that is uh clarity of mission, clarity of vision, clarity of goals, clarity of roles, clarity of responsibility, like anywhere where you can provide organizational clarity, if we understand who we are and how we're working together to achieve our mission, you often see a strong culture. Sometimes in um, so I think that's why successful organizations, we often see healthier cultures, because there's clarity of goals. Now, there might be a bunch of other things in that organization that are not, you know, uh very exciting or, you know, like great about their culture, but at least there's clarity of here's what we're doing and here's how we're making it happen. And so they're seeing that momentum and success. But I do think that what I saw in the pandemic was the organizations that still were clear about here's why we do what we do. Now we don't, we we're having to pivot on how. And they were really honest about, hey, we're trying to figure out how we're doing what we're doing in our new reality. Um, if they were clear on the values that guide them, and I know values are a big part of the culture for you guys at Vanderblumen, clear on those values of this is how we work together. These are the things that guide us. When those two things were clear, even in a hard season or a, you know, an unsuccessful season, I think you still see strong cultures. But what often happens is that you come off of that success, you know, so you you end up in the dip, the leader gets nervous, anxious, scared, whatever the case might be, and they start to lose focus and they start to lose clarity, and you start to see the culture unravel because the team doesn't know what to hold on to, right? And so my definition of dish definition of culture is clarity of who we are and how we work together to achieve our mission. And when those two things are clear, you see cultures hold together in the ups and downs, in my opinion.
SPEAKER_00Well, I that's better said than I would have. I would have thought, you know, if I could go put one more chapter in my book, it would be uh culture and fun are not synonyms.
SPEAKER_03That's right. And that's what too many leaders can be.
SPEAKER_00I love coming to the office. That's not a good culture. I, you know, we did a this is embarrassing. Probably shouldn't say this team will kill me, but at the height of our great culture, right? Before pandemic, uh, we did one of these qualtrics or best places to work, or you know, the survey kind of things. And it had all these questions, and one of the questions was pick three words to describe your workplace culture. Okay. No prescribed list.
SPEAKER_03Yep.
SPEAKER_00Just any three words. I think I might be wrong. It's been a while since I've done linguistics, but back when I taught Greek in seminary, uh, English had twice as many words as Greek, and it had more words than any other language in the in the modern world. Like 155,000 words or something like that. Now somebody's gonna Google me and see that I'm wrong, but point being, there are a lot of words in the English language. Okay, I think we can all agree on that. So any three words, two-thirds of our team chose fun as one of their three words.
SPEAKER_02Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_00And I thought that was great. And I didn't realize, oh William, how about meaningful? Sure. How about you know, something that talks about impact or higher vision? And and I really that woke me up and made me say, okay, I don't want to eliminate fun, but like it's gotta be deeper than that, or you won't get through the tough times. And if and if you're a church leader and you're listening today, there is probably an 85% chance that your organization is stagnant or in decline. So, you know, this is not just about fun and how you make it happen. And I'd love for you to share some stories or or thoughts you have about organizations that have kind of been a mess and you've been able to go in and help rewire. I frankly, you know, when now when I think of culture, I think at the beginning of uh the I don't know if anyone knows the tale of two cities.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00The first line, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Worst of times. It's like the Great Depression. I I mean it's speculative, it's a straw man argument, but I kind of wonder would we have won World War II had we not gone through the depression together?
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah, because it it you it unified everybody.
SPEAKER_00There's just a cultural forging that happens. So, what have you learned about in the in the somebody listening today's church is stagnant or in decline and people are crabby and somebody wants to work remote and other ones don't, and we're cutting special deals for this guy and that guy all. What have you learned about turning culture around or creating good culture in a season where you're not growing?
SPEAKER_03Sure. Yeah, exactly. Well, and one of the things that I do in this book, William, is I am sharing is throughout the book, I share a story of uh one of my one of the clients Foresight has been able to work with. Now, names are changed, dynamics are different, you know, like you need to protect everybody. Um, so it's not obvious who it is, but it is based on a true story of a client that we worked with that was a leader I'd I've worked with for a number of years, like just had the privilege of working with their team on and off for a number of years. I call them Steve in the book. And uh this is a great leader, great team, an organization that had been, you know, everything, it was a church up and to the right for, you know, for years, you know, just one of those growing, flourishing churches. And then um he reached out and said, hey, we're stuck. Like, you know, numbers are stagnant, staff are unhappy. This is a couple of years post-COVID. And so they had shifted a lot of strategies. It was a church that had been multi-site. They had um, you know, rearranged the some of the sites. Some of them had to close because of COVID, some of them had to shift, you know, the whole deal, like so many leaders have gone through. And um, and he just said, Hey, Jenny, can you come in and just help us diagnose? What's going on? Like, what in the world? You know, a great leader, high visionary leader, huge commitment to his team. And yet they were just, you know, just struggling. Um, and it was all the typical, like, what I would say are the culture-busting behaviors of um just some disengagement, um, a little more competitiveness than this team historically had had. There was a little bit of like, you know, more silos, a little more territorialism, mistrust was creeping in. And this was a team that historically had been really tightly knit, pretty unified, but they were starting to just kind of, you know, be suspicious of each other. So he's kind of picking up on all of these things. And when I began to dig in, you know, I just started with um a survey, um, some focus groups, just digging in to listen and hear what's going on. And what was fascinating, William, is that I found at the heart of it was a lack of clarity, right? And so I've already mentioned that, right? Like clarity is one of the chief indicators of the health of a culture. But because so much had shifted and changed, it was clear to the leader, but it was unclear to the team. And that's the thing that I think I see over and over is that as leaders, especially if you're in a more senior seat, your executive team or whatever it might be, it always feels clearer to you than it feels to the rest of the team. And so it was things like the strategy had shifted. Okay, we needed to clarify that. We needed to redesign the org chart. If you're missing an org chart, uh that's chief clarity point number one, is like your team needs a clear organizational chart. Everybody needs to know where they sit. Because here's my conviction on this. You probably share this, William. Your your org chart shows that every role is mission critical. Your org chart should be designed to showcase how every role helps you accomplish the mission. And so a clear org chart helps everybody see their place, right? And we all want to know that we're that we that there's meaning in our work, that we belong to something that's significant. So the organizational chart itself helps people know, okay, this is my place. This is how I contribute, this is how I relate to the rest of the team. So we started with that. And so this is gonna feel really boring and um and probably not terribly exciting for leaders, but it to me is what unlocks culture is providing organizational clarity that helps teams succeed. So we started with that. We got clear on the org chart. Okay, we've we've rearranged the campuses, we've redone some ministries. What does that mean? And what does our team look like now? So we just clarified that. What's everybody's seat? What's everybody's responsibility? And we reshared that. We went back to reinforcing the mission and the vision. Hey, here's what we're still trying to do. This is what we're called to do, and this is how we're called to reach our community. We re-emphasized that. Then we started digging deep into other systems and processes throughout the organization. So I think your book did some of this too, William, but we talk about the employee journey grid, where it's like, hey, at every part of an employee's journey with the organization, how are they being reminded of who we are and how we work together to achieve the mission? So in our hiring processes, to our onboarding, to our performance reviews, to our meeting rhythms, how are each one of those different tools reinforcing the best of who we are and who we want to be? And so Is that's what I did with Steve and his team is we would essentially back to the basics, but this is the thing that I find so many leaders miss is that those organizational clarity pieces are actually the scaffolding for culture, right? Like that's the foundation for culture. It's incredibly hard for people to um uh more deeply engage in the organization if they're missing some of what I would say are like the basic needs. So one of the things that I outline in the book is the culture, what I call the culture hierarchy of needs. Everybody knows Maslow's hierarchy of human needs, right? Well, the culture hierarchy of needs is saying, hey, there are basic needs that employees have that if we don't meet those needs, it's hard for them to actually flourish in our organization. And so, um, and there's a relationship between clarity and trust. You know, we all want a high trust environment. We want that psychological safety that, you know, is so uh such a big thing in organizational circles. But there's a level of clarity that leaders need to provide that builds that basis of trust. And that's what I see in so many organizations, especially in ministry, is we expect, we we want a trusting environment. We kind of expect a trusting environment because we're so relationally wired. But what we often miss as leaders is that we build a good deal of that trust by the clarity we provide.
SPEAKER_00That's awesome. That's really good. So if I were uh uh looking today for one actionable step to start working on culture, I'm not saying the best one or the you know, I hate those kind of questions. They're terrible, by the way. When you're doing interviews, let me just give you a little this is a this is like infomercial on the side. We've learned over 17 years now, I've been interviewing literally hundreds of thousands of people. Asking people a superlative question backs them in a corner. What's your greatest accomplishment? What's the best book you've ever read? What's the and of course the awful one? What's your biggest weakness? No. Tell me one good book you've read. What's something you're really proud you did? Oh, that's good. One actionable step that most everybody listening today could do to try and start working on their culture.
SPEAKER_03You know, one of my favorite questions, and I think I borrowed this from somebody somewhere along the way, um, is just ask, have a conversation with your team. What do we look like at our best? What do we look like at our best? Because, you know, that is an example of, hey, there's some good things in your culture. It's not not perfect. None, there's no perfect culture because we're a bunch of imperfect, messy people trying to do good work together. So there's no perfect culture, but there are better and stronger cultures. But there's something in your culture that is making your team stick for some reason or another. Um, and so I love that question just as a conversation starter of what do we look like at our best? Because we're we're drawing people to hope. We're we're setting the aspiration of gosh, if we did more of this, like, and then what you're doing later is you're unpacking what were the ingredients that made that possible. Um, and you're going back and putting some of the infrastructure in. But I would, as a leader, here's here's this is a hard truth, William, but I think it's really important for leaders to hear because I have to remind myself of this every day. Your culture is never as good as you think it is as a leader. We're the last to know. It's kind of like everything else, right? Like we're the last to know the true experience that the employee is having.
SPEAKER_00Well, and chances are the leader loves the organization more than anybody. Totally. And it's kind of like Adrian has uh, you know, a couple of full-length mirrors in the closet, and there's one that we both just love because it makes us look fabulous.
SPEAKER_02There's always one mirror that's the best mirror.
SPEAKER_00And I think that's what I do as a leader with culture. I just find the best looking mirror. I ask somebody who's already happy at work, how's the culture? And they're, you know, that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_03So yeah, and you're gonna, you're, you know, and it like one uh one of the other things I'll often tell leaders is like, you have to mine for the truth of your culture. You know, like you just said, you ask a couple of people that you know are on board, they're gonna tell you what you want to hear. Like you have to work hard to get to the truth of the culture. And uh, and so I think we as leaders need to understand that that it takes a great deal of work. And this is why, like, William, one of my convictions and like probably the vision for me in the work that we do is helping leaders attend to culture before it's too late. Because so many times we as leaders, we think everything's good, it feels great to me, everything's fine, but under the water, there's some stuff bubbling up, right? Like there's there's some stuff going on. And unless we're really purposeful to hear the truth about that, to really mine for um the reality of the experience, it will catch up with us really at the point that it's too late, right? Now we're in crisis. Now we're having to like actually do the heavy lift of rebuilding culture. When in fact, I think culture, like every other key organizational system, is something that you're attending to on a regular basis, that you have a strategy for. Just like you have your strategic plan, you have your vision and your plan to achieve it, like your culture needs a very intentional plan for the nurture and development of it. And so asking that question um and and digging for good clarity around employee experience and being willing to the humility of going, what's really true? Um, and there's a number of different ways to mine for that. We unpack it in the book, but um, but yeah, I think I think the humility to say, hmm, what's not quite as good as I think it is?
SPEAKER_00Um or the vulnerability to let there be some anonymous testing.
SPEAKER_03Yes. Yep.
SPEAKER_00And that stinks. That's like that's like invasive and horrible, like bad medical procedures. You know, it's like nobody wants to do that. But I had a you know, and I pastored uh here in Houston, we had a whole lot of corporate leadership in our church. A whole lot. Our friend John Maxwell says he's never seen more in one church ever. And uh one guy was getting ready to take a CEO job. He was CEO of literally one of the largest country uh companies in the country, and he was gonna do CEO at a larger run. I said, Well, what's why why are you worried? And he said, Have you never heard the saying? Listen to this leaders, have you never heard the saying? The first day you're the CEO, you can say first day senior pastor, first day exec director, the first day you're the CEO is the last day you hear the truth.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yep, yep, yep.
SPEAKER_00Yep, nobody's gonna say anything except yes, boss, yes, yes, pastor. That's such a good idea, Pastor. And uh the anonymous, whoo, it's stinky. Oh, it's terrible. Only way we've gotten better. And uh I I just echo what Jenny has said with this question. We ask a similar one, just in a little bit different way. It's the same idea. If you get people to focus on what's good around here, that's a fun meeting.
SPEAKER_03That's a fun meeting. Yep.
SPEAKER_00And it at least kicks off the conversation in a way where you can have the next conversation without people dreading it.
SPEAKER_03Yes, yeah, that's exactly right. William, I don't know if you found this, but I was thinking of this when you're talking about the anonymous survey. Um, you know, you guys have Culture Tool, which is such a great resource. We do a survey with our clients, helping them, you know, assess where they are. And it's always telling to me when we facilitate the survey and we'll get requests from the staff saying, is it really anonymous?
SPEAKER_00Yep.
SPEAKER_03And I immediately know, okay, there's there's a like they they are skeptical of really giving honest feedback.
SPEAKER_00There's your survey right there.
SPEAKER_03Totally, a hundred percent. And but you know, again, the the level of safety that they feel in saying, hey, this is the truth, because here's the reality. They, you know, they're they're there most likely because they really still believe in you as a leader. So we don't want to be discouraging to the leaders and pastors who are listening and going, everybody hates it. No, they're still there because they love the mission, they have a level of regard and trust and respect for you, you know, because they're still there. But there's something they're holding back out of likely out of respect, or it might be out of fear if your culture is really unhealthy. And um, if you can create an environment where you let those things come forward, and you might have to do it anonymously. I know I've got a lot of leaders who are like, I don't like anonymous surveys because then I don't know who actually said it. And but at least you're getting some measure of truth about the experience, because then we can build on that, then we can start taking action. So um, yeah, just such an important such important work.
SPEAKER_00And we'll put links to all those things in the show notes. Um, I I I want to emphasize one thing. I I am trying to learn to be a better writer. And the whole putting books out and how do you get the word out? There's so many great books I've seen that have gone nowhere.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And so many books that I don't know how in the world they sold. Maybe you say that about my books. Go out. You can tell me anonymously. Just send in an anonymous email. That's fine. Um, no, but like what makes a big, big, big, big, big part of the success of a book, or at least giving it a chance at success, is getting the thing ordered before it releases. And that's why we're airing this in February 9th or January 9th. That gives you like four and a half weeks to grab a copy of this to tell friends if you want to buy it for your team. I'm sure there's a way to bulk order. That's right. We'll we'll put all your uh links in the show notes. I know there's even there, and there's some bonus material things for people that are.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, there's we have it's over $300 worth of bonus materials from you'll get in the first part of the book in digital format free immediately as when you pre-order. You'll get a workbook that goes along with that, a masterclass that I'm teaching, access to our summit that's coming up, just a bunch of resources to kind of get you started on building your culture plan. So, yes, thanks for that, William. The pre-orders are a big deal.
SPEAKER_00Well, it's a win-win-win. Everybody that pre-orders gets more stuff and you get a little more traction, and more people get to hear about uh something they don't want to hear about, like MD Anderson cancer prevention, right? Let's not let it become a tumor. That's right. That's right. Get after it ahead of time. So it's great to be with you. I've been a fan of yours for a long time. We're always pulling and praying for you and your work. Thank you. And uh, if you don't know more about Jenny, go to her website. Uh, which one do you want them to go to? If they only went to one.
SPEAKER_03If they only go to one, go to culturumattersbook.com. That'll take you to everything else. You'll that that takes you to my website. But go to culturumattersbook.com, you'll find all the info. Um, learn more about me, some of the work that we do. But William, thank you. Thanks for investing in me through the years. Thank you, investing in so many leaders. Um, super grateful and excited to continue the journey.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, this is important work, and the more the merrier. There's lots of organizations out there and lots of room for people that want to try and help. So thanks for what you're doing and for your friendship. Thanks to all of you who are listening. If you want to get show notes and what's coming up, just go to Vandercast.com. And if you've listened before, you've heard this drill. I will not use that email address to send you Ginsu knife offers or Chia Pets or anything other than let's just send the show notes and have let's let's leave the relationship there. It's a kind of a side hug. So uh Vandercast.com, give us your email and we'll be glad to send those things along to you. Thanks for all you're doing to lead the church. This is an exciting time, might be the last of times, and you're on the front lines. We're thankful for you. And just if there's any way we can serve you at all, please reach out. God bless.