Money Printing Culture

Summary

Business School with Sharran Srivatsaa: Episode Summary - "Money Printing Culture"

Release Date: July 8, 2025

In the "Money Printing Culture" episode of Business School with Sharran Srivatsaa, host Sharran delves deep into the intricacies of cultivating a robust company culture that directly contributes to financial success. Drawing from his extensive experience growing Real (TSX: REAX) into a billion-dollar enterprise and his tenure at prominent financial institutions, Sharran presents actionable strategies to transform organizational culture into a profit-driving engine.

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Introduction: Redefining Culture for Profit

Sharran opens the episode by challenging the conventional perception of company culture as a mere "feeling." He advocates for a more tangible, capitalistic approach to culture, emphasizing its direct impact on profitability.

"Culture is mechanical cadence. Culture is an agreed-upon set of behaviors. The reason you have great culture is because you all behave the same way." (00:42)

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Big Idea 1: Share Credit with Real Details

Sharran emphasizes the importance of recognizing individual contributions with specificity rather than generic praise. This practice not only boosts morale but also enhances team performance.

• Specific Recognition: Instead of saying, "Great job, team," highlight individual efforts, e.g., "Maria fixed our payment plan," or "James ran that analysis and closed our biggest deal."

• Impact Tying: Connect each recognition to tangible business outcomes, such as, "Because of that, we booked $10,000 more today."

• Practical Implementation: Establish a dedicated shoutout channel on platforms like Slack to consistently acknowledge individual achievements.

"Teams perform better, 35% better when the leaders call out exactly the people and the deeds of exactly what was done." (03:15)

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Big Idea 2: Call Out Bad Attitudes Fast

Addressing negative attitudes swiftly is crucial for maintaining team productivity and morale. Sharran underscores the detrimental impact toxic behaviors can have on an organization.

• Productivity Loss: A single toxic individual can reduce team productivity by up to 15%.

• Proactive Measures: When encountering phrases like "That's not my job," engage in a dialogue to understand and address the underlying issues. For instance, respond with, "I heard you say that was not your job. What's happening?"

• Enforcement: Set clear expectations and provide opportunities for improvement. If negative behavior persists, take decisive action to protect the team's integrity.

"One toxic person can cut the team productivity by 10 to 15% by just being around." (04:25)

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Big Idea 3: Establish a Weekly Shoutout Ritual

Regular recognition fosters a positive work environment and keeps the team aligned with business objectives.

• Consistency is Key: Allocate five minutes each week (e.g., Friday) dedicated to acknowledging team members' contributions.

• Boosting Morale: Celebrating achievements regularly keeps morale high and reinforces desired behaviors.

• Case Study - Pixar: Sharran cites Pixar's Brain Trust meetings during the production of Toy Story 2, where weekly feedback sessions saved the movie, turning it into a $500 million box office hit.

"If you can block just five minutes once a week, like on a Friday, and shout out specific people, that’s super, super important." (06:40)

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Big Idea 4: Swap "I" for "We"

Shifting from an individualistic mindset to a collective one enhances team cohesion and engagement.

• Inclusive Language: Replacing "I" with "We" fosters a sense of unity and shared purpose.

• Impact on Engagement: Inclusive language has been shown to significantly boost team engagement and participation.

• Example - Satya Nadella at Microsoft: Under Nadella's leadership, Microsoft transitioned from a "know-it-all" to a "learn-it-all" culture, introducing initiatives like hackathons and learning budgets, which tripled the company's market cap in five years.

"We is greater than me." (08:10)

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Big Idea 5: Create a Dedicated Shoutout Channel on Slack

To institutionalize the recognition process, Sharran recommends setting up a specific channel for shoutouts.

• Visibility and Engagement: A dedicated channel ensures that acknowledgments are prominent and regularly updated, keeping the culture vibrant.

• Encouraging Participation: Encourage team members to consistently use the channel for recognition, making it the most active space in the company's communication tool.

"If your shout out channel on Slack is the only channel in your company that is always bold, always lit up, always where you're contributing, you can have an insane culture that helps you print money." (10:30)

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Key Takeaways: Building a Culture That Prints Money

1. Name Individuals Specifically: Achieve up to a 35% boost in performance by recognizing team members with precise details.

2. Address Negative Attitudes Promptly: Prevent a 10-15% drop in productivity by swiftly dealing with toxic behaviors.

3. Implement Weekly Shoutouts: Maintain high morale and ensure team alignment through regular recognition rituals.

4. Adopt Inclusive Language: Enhance engagement by replacing "I" with "We," fostering a collective mindset.

5. Dedicated Recognition Channels: Create and actively maintain a shoutout channel to institutionalize recognition and keep the culture dynamic.

Sharran concludes by reiterating that a "money printing culture" is not about vague sentiments but about consistent, actionable behaviors that align with the company's financial goals.

"Culture is not talking about culture; culture is doing it. The behavior aligns with the thinking and that's when good things happen." (11:30)

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Final Thoughts

"Money Printing Culture" offers a pragmatic roadmap for entrepreneurs and business leaders aiming to harness the power of culture to drive substantial financial growth. By implementing Sharran's four (plus one) big ideas, organizations can transform their internal dynamics, leading to enhanced performance, higher engagement, and ultimately, increased profitability.

For more insights and resources, visit Sharran.com.

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Timestamps Reference:

• 00:42
• 03:15
• 04:25
• 06:40
• 08:10
• 10:30
• 11:30

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Note: This summary excludes the promotional segment at the end of the episode, focusing solely on the core content delivered by Sharran Srivatsaa.

Transcript

[A]

Hey, this is Sharan Tribata. Welcome back to the Business School podcast. And in this episode, I'm going to show you how to not build something fluffy. Meaning whenever you ask somebody about a culture, they say, oh, it's just a feeling. Well, no, let's get a little capitalistic for just 10 minutes, because I want to show you how you can have a culture that prints money. In fact, if you do these four things, these four big ideas that I learned from building $2 billion companies, I've realized that just changing the way you think about what you actually think works can help you a lot. I break down these four big ideas down for you step by step, all starting right now.

[B]

One thing is for certain, just because it's tried and true doesn't mean it's working right now. So the big question is this. Where can you learn what is working right now? The strategies, the tactics, the psychology, and.

[A]

The exact how to. How to grow your business, how to.

[B]

Blow up your personal brand and supercharge your personal growth. That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Sharan Srivatha, and welcome to Business School.

[C]

So for most people, culture is like just a soft word, but how to build a culture that prints money, now, that's completely different. So that's what I'll break down for you. Whether you have one VA in your company or a thousand people, if your team isn't sharing the credit specifically or calling out bad attitudes or swapping the I with we, your growth will stop. And let me explain exactly how this works. So in my past company At Real, we are publicly traded, and we grew from 6,800 agents to 28,000 agents. Over a billion dollars in revenue, over a billion dollars in valuation, all in under two and a half years. By using three of my personal simple truths that I didn't share with a lot of people, which I want to break down for you. And most of that was related to this big idea of to work hard and be kind, but to make more money. Which is why I wanted to structure this episode as, you know, how to build a culture that prints money. So I tried to make this episode kind of very easily actionable for you, where you can actually take the idea and actually do something with it. And so with that idea, let's actually break it all down with big idea number one, which is to share the credit with real details. All right? Not generically. The whole nice job team fails because, hey, a great team effort. It feels fake. People know that and people know that you're just saying you do it as a false ego thing because, oh yeah, the team team deserves credit for that. You got to name people on the team because we know that teams perform better, 35% better when the leaders call out exactly the people and, and the deeds of exactly what was done. So what should you do in this process? Let's say you just start to name the teammates in your update. Say like, hey, Maria fixed our paying plan, or James ran that analysis and closed our biggest deal. You're calling out specifically what they did, and then you're tying it to the impact and you can say, hey, because of that, we booked, you know, $10,000 more today. If you've not done this, you should also pin a shoutouts channel at the top of your slack and post it there specifically tell what Maria did, tell what James did. And that's what makes sense. Here's big idea number two, which is to call out bad attitudes fast. Here's why it matters. One toxic person can cut the team productivity by 10 to 15% by just being around, just being there. I don't know if you know about Zappos, but Zappos actually had an offer to quit. They would say, hey, by, as part of this onboarding program, if you don't think it's the right fit here, they paid you like $2,000 to actually quit and walk away. Which is crazy if you think about it. And how it all started was. So they had this customer service training and they would just say, hey, up to $2,000 if you quit. And if you don't fit the culture, crazy part is only under 5% left, ensuring that those who actually stayed were fully committed because they were given the option to quit if needed. So here's the big idea. When, if you ever hear someone in the, in, in the business or on your team that says, oh, yeah, that's not my job, you gotta, like, run for the hills. Because what you should hear them saying is, hey, I heard you say that. That's not your job. What's happening? That's all you have to ask somebody. Because someone said, oh, yeah, I'm not full on that report. That's not my job. You just say, hey, Shan, I heard you say that was not your job. What's happening, Right? And so they will tell you the story, they will rationalize, etc. And then what you do is, you're like, hey, explain your thing to them and just give them some time to fix it. Hey, say, hey, are you able to do this? And show it to me by Friday. Now I'm giving you the actionable stuff to use. And the crazy part is if nothing changes, you know that they're not a good fit. Remove them from the channels, make them meet the bar, whatever it's needed to do. But you've got to get them to do something right. And here's big idea number three is you got to have some kind of weekly shout out ritual. You don't think it's valuable, but it's insanely valuable. That's what people want to hear. That's what people know is important. They want to hear these things. And it's super, super valuable and crucial. So here's the crazy part. The rituals are good because when you have these short regular celebrations, they keep the morale pretty high. And, and, and keep, also keep the products on track because people feel like they're doing the right thing to actually help your business. The company Pixar, I don't know if you are aware of it, there was a brain trust and that it created this idea where in 1999, I think it's when the Toy Story Twos thing was happening, there was like a rocky edit, things were not going well and they realized that, hey, we should probably work with our team closer. So they had these weekly story only feedback sessions where everyone could speak freely, not just the big wigs. So all the people did was focus on the story. No one defended anything. The directors just listened and they just chose to decide later. But here's a crazy outcome. It saved Toy Story 2, which ended up being like a $500 million box office hit for an animation. And it became, this whole thing became core to Pixar's process. So what's the big idea here? If you can block just five minutes once a week, like on a Friday. I call it my lightning shout out five minutes. And it forces me to stop and think, who do I shout out today and who do I like? Who do I name? What is, what is the one person? Can I say, hey Nicole, congratulations, you did some amazing job by for this win. Hey James, congratulations. You did an amazing job for this win. Hey, Leo, congratulations. That's. Without you, we could not have done that. That is super, super important, right? To call out the person and the result so that everybody knows exactly what they did. And instead of saying great job, team, great job, team Bad, calling out Nicole Good, that's exactly what you want to do. All right, here's big idea number four. And this is going to be hard for everybody. A lot of people which is to swap the I for the me, right? Swap the I for the we. And what I mean by swapping the I for the we is the first thing is nobody built anything great by themselves, right? We is greater than me. I was recently listening to the CEO on a podcast of a pretty large company that I know very well. And he kept saying, oh, I have this. I have all the answers. I have the keys to the kingdom. Exact phrase that he used. I have the products that I can sell. I have the relationships. I have the funds to buy that company. It was all about I. Now, here's a crazy part. You may not sound crazy in a conversation on an interview. Guess what? Their company hasn't grown in four years. It's a coincidence. I think not. We is greater than me. And here's like, extremely important, why it matters. Inclusive language is insanely important and it boosts engagement because people feel a part of who you are and what you do. If Satya Nadella to the CEO of Microsoft did this learn it all concept, right? Which is super important. So Satya Nadella's first memo as a CEO came as a, hey, let's move from a know it all culture to a learn it all culture. And here are the things that they started to do. They started doing these company hackathons. We learned all culture. They started doing these learning budgets for people so they would go learn more and encourage curiosity. Because you can't learn on your own. You have to learn in a group. Their market cap under Satya Nadella's leadership went from 300 billion to 900 billion in five years. That is insane. That is like bigger than what I built, right? And of course it's Satya Nadella, but the point is this. If you just scanned your last five messages and swapped your I with we, we is greater than me, right? And then if you, every Monday morning before you send your first message, just swap the I for the me. And you should also tell your entire team, hey, let's make this among us, that if anyone sees eyes to be able to be swapped for the me, then the we, we should all call each other out on it. If you are on ChatGPT, you tell ChatGPT, hey, normally I will write things, you know, in this way. But if you think that the I should be replaced with the we, go ahead and do that. Because I want to, you know, I want to use more we instead of I. Inclusive language. Super, super simple. All right, so let me bring it all together for you because hopefully this is, this is helpful. And and actionable. Five big takeaways. Takeaway number one, name the people because you get like a 35% lift in better performance. Name the people in your shoutouts. Not just good job team. Number two, just if you see a bad attitude, stop the bad attitude because bad attitudes. Just being around not even doing anything reduces productivity by 15%. Number three, the weekly shoutouts. You got the simplest thing to keep the pride and progress and accomplishment and effort high because people feel like they're being seen and recognized for what they actually do. Number four, swap the I for the we. Because exactly like what Microsoft did, we is greater than me. And here's the fifth easiest one. If you have not done this yet, create a shoutout channel on Slack and just be very precise when you use it. I will tell you this. If your shout out channel on Slack is the only channel in your company that is always bold, always lit up, always where you're contributing, always where you're doing the emojis, sharing, recognizing stuff, the shout out channel, if you everybody pins it to the top, is the number one channel being used in your company. I will tell you, you can have a insane culture. Not just any culture, a culture that helps you print money. Hey, the reason I recorded this was I really believe that a lot of people talk about culture in a very smooth, soft way. They're like, oh yeah, it's how I feel. It's what someone says and you're not in the room. But when you can have culture is mechanical cadence. Culture is an agreed upon set of behaviors. The reason you have great culture is because you all behave the same way. You do the same thing, you create the same actions, you have the same result. Culture is not talking about culture is doing it. The doing. The behavior aligns with the thinking and that's when good things happen. That's why you want to have a culture that prints money. And hopefully that was helpful. So easy ideas there. If you don't do anything else, at least go ahead and do the shoutouts channel on Slack. Make sure it's lit up, make sure you share the ideas because it'll help you significantly overall. Hey, by the way, I'm not sure this may be helpful to you because I don't get a lot of feedback doing this. So if you like this episode and you feel like you can use culture to print money, can you just screenshot this and post it on social and tag me that way I can make more like this for you. Again, like this episode, just do a screenshot, post it on social and tag me and that way I can make more like this for you. Until next time. Catch you on the next one.

[B]

Hey Tron, I have a cool gift for you since you like this podcast. I actually have an ultra super secret private podcast that I make just for my partner companies and the CEOs and influencers that I advise. It's called 10K Wisdom because I try to wrap $10,000 worth of value in every single episode in just under 10 minutes. That's why it's called 10K Wisdom. It's raw, it's real, it's got no intro or outro or anything like that. It's just straight to the point and to the insights. Since you like this podcast, I think you will like that. So for the first time I'm making it available to you. Just go to 10kwisdom.com the number 10kwisdom.com and my team will activate it for you as my gift. Go to 10kwisdom.com I'll see you there.