IAM2278 – Managing Partner Builds a Strong Corporate Culture through Employee Empowerment

Title: Transcript - Mon, 28 Oct 2024 03:10:27 GMT

Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2024 03:10:27 GMT, Duration: [00:16:53.15]

[00:00:00.44] - Kent Lewis

It doesn't matter so much where people work. You have, you can, you can and should adjust. It's. It's not that you can't, it's that you can. You just need to want to, right? So those people you value, you will adjust for them. And I believe high performers deserve the respect. But they also will roll with you to say, I need you here two days a week for this reason.

[00:00:20.66] - Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I Am CEO Podcast.

[00:00:48.04] - Gresham Harkless

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gretch from the I Am CEO Podcast and I have an awesome guest back on the show today. I have Kent Lewis. Kent, excited to have you back on the show.

[00:00:55.89] - Kent Lewis

Thanks for having me.

[00:00:57.34] - Gresham Harkless

Yes, I'm super excited to have you on and talk about all the awesome things you've been working on. And of course before we do that, I want to read a little bit more about Kent so you can hear about some of those awesome things and Kent is Managing Partner at Anvil Unlimited, where he advises business owners on digital marketing strategies and tactics. He speaks internationally, writes for industry publications like Smart Brief in Portland Business Journal, and has been an adjunct professor at Portland State University since 2000. He's founded or co founded four agencies and two organizations since 1999, including PDX Mindshare and SEM PDX in Portland. Louis volunteers his time with SCORE teaching a social media workshop since 2017 and has been a board and marketing committee member and is currently volunteer reader for Smart Reading. He's been named a Top 40 under 40 Marketer of the Year by AMA Organ and a top 100 digital marketing influencer by BuzzSumo. And he was a guest on episode number 440 of our IMCO podcast. So super excited to have him back on the show. One One of the things that I really loved about what we spoke about last time is he really emphasized the importance of working in the business as well as working on the business. We talked a little bit around how you can lose touch by not working in the business or having at least some quote unquote skin in the game. So I thought that was so powerful. And of course I love that he has a very Steve Jobish story where he was fired for some of the jobs that he ended up founding. So I thought that that was pretty exciting as well too. So Kent, excited to have you on the show. You ready to speak to the IMCO community?

[00:02:27.62] - Kent Lewis

Sure, let's do it.

[00:02:28.88] - Gresham Harkless

Let's get it started then. So to kind of kick everything off, let's rewind the clock, hear a little bit more on what you've been working on. What I call your CEO story.

[00:02:34.62] - Kent Lewis

Yeah. So started out in digital marketing in 96 after a brief stint in PR and less than four years later I co founded my first digital agency. The first time I was fired was as a co founder a year and a half later. So a week after that In October of 2000, I started my own agency. Figured it was easier to work for myself than somebody else and ran that for 21 plus years. Sold it in March of 22 and was briefly a chief marketing officer at that agency. Then we parted ways last May. And so since then I've just been doing some light consulting on what I know, which is digital marketing. But more interestingly, I wanted to kind of talk on my pivot, which is from a as an owner I was I knew it would be easy to run an agency and you know this Gresham, if we didn't have clients and employees running an agency would be easy. And so I had lost touch per the episode 440 where I had worked too much on the business, not enough in the business, lost touch with my team, my clients, my discipline. So I've been. I'd regain that. I have not lost touch with it again and I can we'll talk about some other of my many tips or advice over the years that I've learned. But what I would say is that I felt, I felt that I still truly only work really well for myself. However, I found a new passion for employee engagement. Switching gears from 21 plus years of being my own boss to being somebody else's employee. And I was not having fun. I did not feel appreciated or respected and I just wanted to leave. So when they let go, let me go. It was kind of like a. A blessing. So since May of last year I've taken up this, been building content expertise around employee engagement, employee retention, employee experience and have written and spoken about it extensively. I don't want to consult on that. I just, I'm always. I basically love to speak about it, get evangelized to entrepreneurs. Do not forget your people. It's easy to forget what it's like to be an employee if you've been an employee, if you've been an entrepreneur without Having a boss for more than a year or two, you quickly. It atrophies. You forget what it's like. So I'm trying to evangelize that in my day to day. More, more moving into the future as I transition sort of coast out of digital marketing into this passionate area of employee experience.

[00:05:03.73] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I absolutely love that. Do you feel like one of the things that hangs leaders up is looking at trying to create that engagement, that opportunity to kind of see those goals to come to fruition is because we're looking at it from a work, from the office standpoint. Do you feel like we have to kind of like reframe, reinvent, whatever. Re might be the right word to see how this new norm was going to be 100%.

[00:05:28.79] - Kent Lewis

So employee retention and engagement is about employees feeling empowered. They feel that they're making an impact. They feel valued. Those, you know, those three things and any other variant of those words you'll read by any management or leadership expert. But I didn't feel any of that. And that's what. When I left, it was. The getting fired part was a relief. It wasn't the problem, it was the end result. So I realized that it doesn't matter so much where people work. You have. You can, you can and should adjust. It's. It's not that you can't. It's that you can. You just need to want to, right? So those people you value, you will adjust for them. And I believe high performers deserve the respect, but they also, also will roll with you to say, I need you here two days a week for this reason. You know, you make that case. So I think leaders, yes, the. It is not the where you work, it's how you work. It's purely how you work. What tools do you need? What support do you need? Go nuts. And then there's something that we need, I think, for corporate culture, which is that time together. So sometimes a quarterly. I think a quarterly minimum get together is table stakes. Any less than that and you risk losing some connectivity face to face. I think zoom, you know, you say, just have another zoom meeting. Well, there's so much zoom fatigue that that's an issue too. So they figure out new ways people can connect. I know there's companies like, for instance, that we'll do, they'll send a cooking kit and everybody makes a meal together. Or there's a lot of creative ways that we learned through Covid to do group things together. Remote. It is not the same, but it certainly has impact. It certainly has, you know, helps yeah, absolutely.

[00:07:03.23] - Gresham Harkless

And let me ask you this for what I would like to call your secret sauce. This could be for yourself, the business or a combination of both. But I almost feel like I remember during our last interview like you were like a first mover trailblazer when it came to digital marketing and sounds like you're, you're kind of settling in on being that trailblazer here. Do you feel like that's something that attracts you, that brings you closer to kind of not just see what's going to happen, but actually be where that puck is going to be where it's going to where it's going to skate.

[00:07:28.48] - Kent Lewis

And go go where the puck is. I love that. That's definitely a north northeast coast thing, but I totally get it. Yeah, I, you know, this goes back to something that I've done within my business and be and for other employers, including my most recent employer is I love being a thought leader like you. So I write, I speak and I pitch the media and, and every year for the last 20 years I figure out what is the trend for next year. Then I, and I usually don't know what it is. I don't know much about it. To me, I feel I put way more thought into this employee engagement where others have not or they're coming at it pre Covid, pre AI and I'm post Covid, post AI. So I have a whole, I'm coming from a totally different place and I think it really helps. But yeah, I love being in that place. I feel like I'm learning a new, a new sport, a new hobby. Like, you know, I went from skiing to snowboarding, then I went back to skiing. I feel like this is my third chapter and I'm learning something exercising new muscles and it, it's really fun.

[00:08:24.70] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. It sounds like an absolutely. Love Ed. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book or a habit that you have. What's something you lean on that makes you more effective and efficient?

[00:08:36.20] - Kent Lewis

You said, did you have a clear job description? I said absolutely. Did they fully understand? I was like, they nodded. Did you have regular check ins to evaluate how they're performing against their job description? I was like, well I had monthly walking one on ones right. Say, is there any issue there? How can I help? And largely that was, you would think that was super effective. It was not. So what I was doing was expecting, not inspecting. So a couple years ago, this was five Years ago I had this conversation or longer and I added this check in. There's micromanagement as me second guessing, knowing everything you're doing and second guessing it. Inspection is we set some sort of cadence where they communicate what's going on and then I can then look and verify. Trust but verify Inspect do not expect. I was looking at what they were doing and figuring out how to, how to help them with more tangible data. So for instance, I would send them, I would ask them every Friday afternoon or Monday morning. By Monday morning, send me a recap of the week. Highs, lows, wins, stocks, thorns, roses, whatever. And then what are you working on this coming week and how can I help? So part of it's celebrating their wins and the other half is helping them navigate their stocks in a way that's cogent. And also they're rating themselves on our vision, Vision, values, mission. And I'm looking at that, looking for deltas, looking to see if they're having a tough week or is it a tough month or is it a tough year and they're going to leave. So I use that inspection, just a quick email and a little spreadsheet to do that inspect. And then I rolled that into a monthly, which is part of the roadmap, which is my number one recommendation to entrepreneur or business leaders and managers is give somebody a roadmap from the date from today till they retire at your company. What does that look like? So I had that for 20 years. But what I was missing was that the check ins day to day, week to week. I was just doing monthly. How are you moving the needle on your quarterly annual goals? This got it more granular to where I could see problems because if they were going to miss one, one of their goals, you know, no big deal. But there was a bigger problem under there was a tip of the iceberg. So that's what I learned was that inspection and nobody really complained. It was, yeah, I got to fill this thing out for 30 seconds. But then I feel supported and I feel like he looks at it and he asked me questions. So it's probably not a waste of my time. Then they would roll that into their monthly, the monthly roll into their quarterly review. Everybody wins. Super efficient. But inspect do not expect.

[00:10:56.54] - Gresham Harkless

I absolutely love that. And so you might have already touched on this, but what would you consider to be some of those CEO nuggets, which is kind of that word of wisdom or piece of advice, something you might tell or, or give advice as far as like talks that you're given around this employee engagement and how people can, you know, understand it and pro do it better.

[00:11:13.50] - Kent Lewis

Yeah, thanks for asking. I would say beyond the employee roadmap from, you know, working back from retirement to today, that has some sort of monthly, quarterly, annual cadence is part of that. And then the augment to that roadmap is a quarterly review of that roadmap. So annual reviews are nearly pointless because you, I don't know where in your life do you only talk to somebody that you spend half your day with once a year to check in and see how you're doing and give feedback. That's ridiculous, right? So what I believe is quarterly reviews that incorporate a stay interview questions. So instead of, you know, Gresham, if you're my boss, you're like, here's what's worked. Congrats. This is great. This, you need to work on this. And let's plan for next year. Standard annual review. How about if you do that? But at the very end, your focus is now, how can I help you be successful here? How can I keep you here? What are we not doing? What do we, what do we need to start doing? What do we need to stop doing? What do you want us to continue doing to keep you engaged and happy? Those, those two to three stay interview questions on pending your quarterly or at least twice a year, biannually will, will dramatically increase engagement. Because nobody's ever asked me that in my entire career and I've been at, you know, 10 companies and nobody said, how can I help you be more successful? What do I need to do to keep you here? It's always, get out, you got a box, put your in it, and you got 15 minutes. That's really happened to me twice, and I hope it's never happened to you. So that's that. That's the main one. And then the other part is that you revisit the roadmap as part of the course correction is you said you wanted to do this. We're visit. You're not checking off the boxes here is are we need, do we need to pivot or do we just need to support you better? So point is, quarterly reviews, not annual. And, and those of course, at least once or twice a year should also include 360 feedback from CO workers, clients, customers, whoever, vendors. But that's my big advice because we were like, we were precision on annual reviews and then we were just moving to quarterly reviews a couple years ago when I sold and they didn't fully migrate over. They love the idea, but I can't recommend Highly enough that annual is not going to get it done quarterly and factor in the stay interview. Work it in once or twice a year or within your quarterly reviews and I think you'll see double to triple the engagement and productivity with just that tweak.

[00:13:34.57] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that makes so much sense. And so now I want to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And our goal is to have different quote unquote CEOs on the show. So Kent, what does being a CEO mean to you?

[00:13:45.63] - Kent Lewis

To me, being a CEO is helping foster a movement to meet a need that is existing out in the world and delivering on that to make people's lives better. It is not about shareholder value. It is not about profit maximization. These are, you know, these are ends to means. Means to ends, whatever they're outcomes in my mind, I think if you are not delivering something for the greater good, then you should not be doing it. So you know, granted, you know, there are certain industries I'm not a fan of. I'm not going to invest in Philip Morris for, you know, producing cigarettes or I grew up with my family spent. You know, my dad and grandfather were Boeing and I can't respect that company anymore because they don't care about their people, their customer. They don't even care about their employees. And people are dying as a result of their obsession with return on investment and shareholder value. And that is not why they are in business. So to me, CEO is shepherding a movement, basically.

[00:14:50.71] - Gresham Harkless

Nice, I love that. And so what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and of course how best people can get hold of you find about all the awesome things that you're working on.

[00:15:01.25] - Kent Lewis

Yeah, well, I think Gresham, you're a rockstar. First of all, thank you for doing this podcast and getting a bunch of different CEO stories out there. I think it's important for whether you're a seasoned CEO in their 60s or a brand new one in their 20s. I think you add a lot of value with your network, including this podcast. All I would say is the best way to find me. Kentjlewis.com is kind of my latest thing is my speaking and writing and, and you know, if you're interested in learning more about the employee or seeing some of my webinars, that's all good because I, because of my non compete, I actually still don't even have a business website. So that's it. You can also check out PDX Mindshare if you're career oriented. You may not you could be a CEO, but if you're probably not a CEO or aspiring CEO, check out pdxmindshare.com because I have a ton of resources in the blog and webinars and podcasts from back in the day. I keep some of that stuff going today just on my own because it relates to employee engagement and experience. And then @KentJ Lewis on the Twitter. Easy enough. And hopefully I'll see you on LinkedIn as well.

[00:16:06.25] - Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. Of course, to make it even easier, we'll have the links and information in the show notes as well too so that everybody can follow up with you. So I appreciate you and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

[00:16:14.49] - Kent Lewis

Thank you. Appreciate it. It's been a pleasure to be on the show. I look forward to sharing it with my friends.

[00:16:18.48] - Intro

Thank you for listening to The I Am CEO podcast, powered by CB Nation and Blu16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at Imceo Co. Imceo is not just a phrase, it's a community. Check out the latest and greatest apps, books and habits to level up your business at CEOHacks co. This has been the I Am CEO podcast with Gresham Harkles Jr. Thank you for listening.