C (2:25)

E. Petrillo, the founder of Mongoose Media, who has great sunset vibes happening behind me. If you're watching online, and I think.

A (2:33)

It'S really important for you to get over to our YouTube channel to see Lauren's glowing Colombian, not Bolivian hair.

B (2:43)

Because the sun's going down where you are and it's like almost midday where.

A (2:47)

I am and I'm in the future 18 hours. So unfortunately being in the future from Eastern time zone doesn't help you betting. By the way. Like, you know, the episode is like the. I think it was like Back to the Future 3 where Biff like gets like goes back into the.

B (3:08)

The.

A (3:10)

He goes, he goes back to the future but then bets on all these like sports things that makes millions of dollars. Like when you're 18 hours ahead, you can't do that. And my buddies have been joking about that because my Patriots are now in the Super Bowl. By the way, hello yet again. You know, so pretty excited about that but couldn't make any money off it Even though I'm 18 hours in the future. So why are we talking about this? Well, you know, why are we talking about anything on this show? It's because we are predicting the future all the time. Telling you what's going on in the present but also letting you know what is coming up. And one of the cool things about running a virtual company just to the side here, you're in South America, I'm in New Zealand and we both have kick ass teams and you just got like a very cool message which I think if you are a director of marketing or a marketing manager or a VP of marketing or cmo, you should have staff that does this. You had a piece, you have a member of your staff that actually created an sop like without you asking. This is my understanding. Ask didn't ask.

C (4:16)

Like we had fragmented ones. Like so it's an SOP for Slack communications and internal comms in general. And so we've had like some where it's like hey, this is what our emojis mean and like here's appropriate use. And when someone onboards like we we do some training on how to communicate via Slack, which is our internal main thing. But she took this completely upon herself and like had shared a message to the general channel and and was like, hello everyone. I've consolidated our Slack and comms rules into one document. An SOP for communicating in the Mongoose. Mongoose verse. It isn't just reading, it's I need your feedback. I want to make sure the rules actually make your life easier, not harder. This SOP will be our one source of truth. The goals, less noise, fewer pings and faster answers for everyone. Like it was just completely managed and saying hey, you know, we work across different time Zones, different languages, different countries, different. Let's communicate in one babble, right? Was it like the babblestone for remote working? And I'm like, going through this, and it's so professional. It's clean, it's so direct. It's like a manual I would have gotten at a job back when I worked in an office. And I'm just like, whoa. Sorry. I was like, well done, Irish. You're amazing. Totally unprompted. But what a benefit, especially because she's, like, consolidated from fragmented pieces into one source of truth.

A (5:43)

Like, yeah. So good. It's so good. And I think, just as an aside, the reason why I'm actually in New Zealand is because I went down to. My leadership team is all based in Australia, so why should they come to the us? Why don't I go see them? Which was actually very cool. And one of the things that we do now, this is our annual meeting going back to what you just said, and I think it is important if you're running a department or you're running a company, is to constantly reevalue your core values. And one of those core values for us has always been initiative. And we reconfigured it a little bit. I won't give it away now because we have yet to present it to the rest of the company. But it's a slight alteration of our five core values, which we've had for the last year or so, and we put them all up on the board. And then this is usually the way that you do this. You say, okay, which employee or which person within the company would you, like, just love to clone and have people that are just like that person? I mean, everybody's going to be different. Obviously, you don't really want to clone them, but, like, their core values, like who they are as an individual. And we had one individual that we sort of put up on the board in this way. The odd thing is, the first core values I ever did this, the person that we used is now on my leadership team. Oh, no way. Isn't that so cool? So anyway, so it has shaped us as an organization through the years. So I think having core values and one of those is an initiative kind of not being asked without being asked, like, just sees it needs to get done and then goes and does it. That's what I love about this story right now, because that's the type of.

B (7:28)

Individual that you can really build a.

A (7:31)

Great department, a great organization, a great company, a great legacy around those type of individuals. And as Jim Collins said, And good, great. It's not people create a great company. It's the right people, especially when you get the right people in the right seats. So certainly seems like that's the way with that individual, which is awesome.

C (7:50)

Oh my gosh, I'm, I'm so excited. And I love that you talk about the core values. I, I never even thought about intuition or like that, like moving fast and, you know, providing value as a good one. Like two of our, like, core values at Mongoose Media at are transparency and continuous learning. Like you and I have been talking about how.

A (8:08)

Absolutely.

C (8:09)

I have a new YouTube channel manager and his requirement by Valentine's Day is to present to me the three masterminds that he's interested in joining. And then he has to enroll in one and become one of the top three contributors. Like, he's young, he's new into this position and he's empowered. Like he's required to be in a peer led training program because that's not my background. And we need to make sure that he's empowered to learn at the pace and vehicle that he wants to.

A (8:39)

And he can learn from other people who know more than he does, which I find. I hate to stereotype this, but our business is a lot of millennials, you know, a lot of Gen Z, a lot of millennials. And I find that the lattice, not the ladder, is really, is like. I don't know where I picked that one up. But anyway, somewhere along the lines it's like gathering different skills along necessarily.

C (9:03)

I don't know what lattice, not the latter means.

A (9:06)

Oh really? It's, it's basically, it's the lattice means instead of just ascending through the ranks like, you know, you start off as a media buyer, then you become a media buyer two and a media buyer three, and then you're the director of media buying and then you ascend to the VP of ops role or whatever it happens to whatever your sort of, you know, your ladder of success is oddly enough that individual that we shaped the core values around seven or eight years ago at tier 11, started off as a media buyer and then sort of moved within the ranks and then became media buyer 1, 2, 3, and then media buyer director and then eventually like VP level. And now it's sort of stayed that level. Now she's on our own senior leadership team. The point is this, is that that ladder is not necessarily where the younger generation. I'm just, I'm generalizing. This is. They want, I find in my experience they want lots of skills to teach and Learn skills along the way and have people to mentor them to achieve their objective, which is to be more well rounded and have do interesting work and then work for an organization where they feel like they're making a difference and and is actually going somewhere. And you're trying to like, we always say this to our level. We're trying to build something great with great people. So like being a part of that and it's not necessarily just ascension, it is sort of lateral skills that you learn along the way. And in so doing you do ascend in your career. And I find that's super, super important. So that's kind of what the lattice is. I think we actually I stole that from like the Vistage group that I was in like way back when. But anyway, it definitely holds true and sounds like you've got that with this new individual because you don't have somebody on your staff who has that subject matter expertise. They're going to learn it from somebody else through a mastermind. And you're empowering them to say, all right, find it and then go out and do it.

B (11:08)

Which is another initiative kind of thing.

C (11:12)

Exactly. Yeah. We say you find, we fund. So it's like a big component of continuous learning. So our project manager had to join a group. It's adding different things where if you feel that you are not getting the training, we do a webinar every Friday where it's informal but ideally informative. Like I'm literally teaching my team on the webinar and then like we air it on YouTube. So if anyone else wants to watch like behind the scenes, they can see it. But if there's stuff in your position that we're not training you on, great. You find the course, you find the mastermind, you find the webinar and we'll fund it. We will fund it. You have to present it. Like in this example. So Ben, you find the three. We gave him some suggestions and then by Valentine's Day he'll have a presentation, show us the three that are his favorite, and then present the one that he likes the most and defend if the others are okay, to which then we will fund the one that makes the most sense. So we, we say that we like, you'll get paid all the time that you're in it and participating like that's part of your job. And then part of my compensation package is equipped equipping you funding those programs. Like we have another individual that had joined a. An X training. So like we're going deep on like X and threads and even Blue sky and trying short form social media. And I was like, no one is equipped to teach you on that. And so we got two courses. They're a membership of a circle community that has it. So for us, like our core, like we have transparency and we have continuous learning. You find we will fund.

A (12:43)

Hmm, I like that. You find we will fund. And then of course, like the business case part of it. All right. There has to be a, like, you have to analyze whether or not it's worth it based upon the outlay of cash for how much it's going to cost.

C (12:56)

But that's in their presentation. So they'll say, here's the impact and what I'm going to contribute. Here's what I believe I'm going to bring to the Turtle, right. When you fund and invest in me to join this, you know, thousand dollar a month program or to get this $4,000 course, here's what I'm anticipating bringing back into Mongoose. So it's like our almost own mini shark tank where I'm investing in you. And like we had talked about earlier and you had said, like we both talked about how a lot of people are so afraid of investing into their team because you're like, I put all this money and I invest in them and then they leave. But like when I was at Disney Institute and was consulting with Disney, like a huge core principle that was sure, you can invest in someone and they can leave. That's the. They're right. You don't know why they're leaving. There could be a whole bunch of other reasons. But the other side of that scenario is what if you don't invest in them and they stay?

A (13:47)

Hmm. You're running that risk. I mean, I think the, the, the counter argument is, is that you don't do it at all. And then what you have is you have a mediocre staff who probably is going to leave anyway because they're just unhappy where they're at because they're not improving any of their skills. Like that lattice versus the ladder thing, like if there is no room for advancement versus I need more skills. Like you need to find out what that type of person is. And this isn't, this is getting more into an HR discussion here, but like having a one on one with that individual, like, where do you want your career to go? Like, we just hired a new marketing manager that is being overseen by a fractional CMO and his goal is he wants to run the marketing department and be a vp or like there is Like I, in the interview process we went through that is relatively new. So the point is this is that understanding from a one on one perspective what the goal is and if that goal is in alignment with your company and or your department, great, do it and empower those people as much as you possibly can. You always are going to run the risk that they're going to go off and do their own thing. It's like that was the world that we live in. So don't be reluctant to invest because you're fearful of that. I think that's where companies make big mistakes.

C (15:07)

Well, even in like creators and brands and like info product companies like they're. I want to get keep. I don't want to show my stuff. I'm too afraid that someone's going to steal and copycat like that. If you're familiar with Meerkat and Periscope, those were two brands that came out Lyft and Uber. There's. If you're going to be in the scarcity mindset, then you have to remember that someone is going to beat you. If you think that someone's going to steal your idea, just know it's going to happen. So you have to build this moat around yourself. And in similar like with the team, it's just like trying to build a moat and build a community. Like we have team members that are sending each other birthday gifts and I didn't even know they talk to each other. Like I literally found that today. I was like, what do you mean you sent them a birthday gift? They're in an entirely different part of the world. They're like, yeah. I was like, and it's amazing. I just didn't know that they were friends. So you build a moat where yeah, you can train them and they can leave and maybe they will start their own thing. But you want to build a moat. Why would someone want to continue growing at your company and how you invest? But we're talking about HR stuff because I was really excited we've hired an HR executive and so I'm like, oh my God, I'm so happy. I was always afraid of hr, especially with my potty mouth.

A (16:19)

But well yeah, there was that. But overall I actually believe that like we've had an HR director for quite some time. He's now VP of I always forget keeping people happy or he's success I believe is now what his goal is. He's actually been on the show but he's been in that role for two years and I think we've always over Indexed on the HR side because I do believe that, that happy people do create great results and create happy clients. I'm just a big believer in that. And I think we've strayed from it in some cases. Like, we're not perfect, like by any stretch in our evolution as an organization, but nobody is. The point is this is that I think you doing that I think is a really smart move. It's going to. It won't be a direct return on investment, like within weeks or months, but over time it will be a. I agree.

C (17:10)

I feel I've had an immediate relief, at least of investment. Even better for me, I would find myself in like the mental strain. Like, I know where my skill is, my skills for sure, it's strategy and wanting to lead the team and being people. Like, I mean, yeah, that makes me happy. But if there's someone else that's better than, like, why am I the bottleneck? Why am I getting in the way? Or like the mental T that goes into like having compensation plans and building roadmaps to accelerating your career. Like, I want to do all of that, but it takes me 10 times more time to do it. So when I've now been able to delegate, like, great, we had our social media manager promoted into a creative strategist role and that's a different compensation plan. So one of the first things that Jennifer is taking on is building a proper compensation and ascension plan for a career roadmap where someone has shifted from organic to the performance paid side of the department and then empowering them them to continue to grow within that role if they so see fit. And the amount of time of organizing that and stuff. Like, for me, the mental load, the mental lift off of what that would have taken. For me, I've already seen an immediate return because now I had three private client calls where we were mapping out, you know, one to $4 million campaigns that may not have had the same amount of energy available. Because I was like, okay, hold on, I want to make sure I can do this and let me figure out career roadmaping. Like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. Now we have someone else that can do it. And then the other thing is, like, they can be like, yeah, I want, I want this promotion. Or I'm entitled to this, like, absolutely, like, come position this conversation and someone can coach them into show the value and how that corresponds to a pay increase. And then absolutely. Or again, another thing of here's the course I want to go to. I don't have to continue to sit through the presentations of what they find and what will fund. I now can delegate that hour to someone else. It's not that I don't want to see it, it's just there's better use of my time.

A (19:06)

Yeah, super.

C (19:07)

Good.

A (19:07)

Well, speaking of moats, if you can create a moat around your department, around your organization, around your business, fabulous. One of the ways that you do it is you get great people and the right people put them in the right seats. I think there's a company that we talk about here quite a bit that has done that and created an incredible moat. Not necessarily just on the employee side, but also, can you name another business out there that competes against Meta? Like, how big is that freaking moat that they have created? And like, they're like, at this point.

C (19:48)

Is there any AI space? Yeah, there's like, if you're in AI development, I mean some of the things that they've been doing, the people that they've been investing, like if just because like I really like following the AI side of Meta. Like, I mean, yes, I love the paid ad side, but there's organic and there's, it's a thousand and a half different departments at Meta. But if you're looking at the talent acquisition pool and the mergers that they're doing from the AI space, like it's becoming like the cool kids table.

A (20:12)

Hey, real quick, if you're looking to.

B (20:14)

Get your brand in front of growth minded marketers, CMOs, directors of marketing and agency owners, we're opening up our sponsorship spots for Q1 and Q2 of next year. Get in front of a quarter of a million marketers every single month at Perpetual Traffic. All you have to do is head on over to perpetualtraffic.com for the details or check out the link in the show notes to apply.

C (20:37)

And yeah, I think you're right. Like, it's really hard I think for like Apple to go after emerging AI products. I mean they're definitely doing, you think like, who are the. It's like the bigger companies, but especially if you're developing something innovative in AI again, if that's a find and fun mentality that maybe Mark Zuckerberg is employing. Like, you find me an opportunity of how we can leverage this for Meta, I'll fund it. And then he's buying companies in these like Aqua hires. So it's like it's acquire, but it's an aqua hire. So it's, it's absorbing really young talent that are a part of this vision building he's got. So he's Got a remote that's built around, hey, look what we've done with WhatsApp. Look what we've done with Instagram. Look what we're doing with Metaverse and Ray Ban for example. Like that was a joke for so long and now like the metaglasses are really taking off. So it's. They built a moat of partnering on the future.

A (21:29)

Yeah, they have a partnership with Oakley now, which is, you know, which is amazing. Just. Yeah, I think they've, I think there was a time four plus years ago where I actually stated on this podcast that I thought Zuckerberg should step down because he was sort of driving the ads business into the ground and then also went in this metaverse thing. Like just everything was off the rails and nothing was really like then there was the layoff of 15,000 people which were largely engineers and people that didn't unfortunately sort of, you know, work in the non office environment, revenue generating side. Yeah.

C (22:12)

Oh, okay.

A (22:13)

Yeah, there was a huge shakeup. This is three, four years ago.

C (22:17)

I was on campus when that happened. So I was speaking to an event where there was like 75,000 people. Meta brought me on and I was on this panel with Dr. Jordy and I remember it was like the day after it happened and it was there was a gentleman who was in charge of NFTs for all of Meta. So he was the top person because that at then like again show like where this was in that timeline, someone's like, nft what? Like no fucking truth here. But anyways, there was a time when META had an NFT department and the gentleman who was in charge of it was like, you know, it's if NFTs or like crypto art goes away, I'm going to be on the chopping watch just as like it was very somber moment on campus and like I was there. META had flown me in, two people from Italy, an individual from the uk. Like there were eight of us that they flew from all over the world to come together for this program. And yeah, that was, it was hard. It reminded me like so when I worked at the Walt Disney company way back when. We'll just pretend it was like yesterday, but I remember like there's this huge massive layoff like for people that don't know know, like there was a specific division of the company that Contributed to like 44 of their marketing teams budget. And when people started cutting the cord, ESPN was no longer bringing in the type of budget that was contributing. So that there was huge, massive layoffs. And it was hard. Christmas was hard. Like people like just. It was a huge let go and so that gave me like those kind of moments. So anyway, sorry. Like.

A (23:49)

Oh well, I mean I think they have certainly pivoted over time and now there's, you know, we're. I think we're reaping a lot of the benefits right now, both on the organic side to a certain degree, but definitely on the paid ad side. Now with all the decisions that have been made, I think there's been some missteps along the way. Like plenty of.

C (24:09)

Well, that's with everyone. I mean. Oh yeah, everyone I don't think is a misstep. I. I know.

A (24:16)

Yeah. I think it's still there. It's not the investment that it once was. I would have to double check on the numbers but now it's.

C (24:23)

No, it's. There's nowhere near it. Like they cut bajillions but like I have. I like love Beat Saber. It's my favorite. Like I've been ranked for Lizzo's for one of Lizzo's song on Beat Saber. But like even I want to say like a month ago they did this huge partnership with Coldplay when they performed at Wembley Stadium. So it's like you know, one of the like premier soccer stadiums in the world. Coldplay had performed there and Meta had done this massive partnership. So you were able to have a 3D experience of this Coldplay concert live in a way that's really bringing immersive entertainment and where Mark over index on how much he invested. I still believe that it's a huge opportunity. He was just a little too early. I mean what Snoop Dogg made like $10 million selling real estate in the Metaverse. It's not going away because you did. You know this.

A (25:15)

Yeah, I have heard that. Yeah. When all this was stuff was going down like all of those headlines were just crazy. I mean now it's. I hate to say it's in the distant past because it really wasn't that long ago but I mean everything now is all about obviously AI. I mean when chat GPT had sort of the eye for moment back in what was that? November of 2322. Now I'm forgetting like when it was. The point is like all of that stuff kind of go well like was pushed to the background especially.

C (25:43)

Yeah.

A (25:44)

On Meta. Like you don't hear much about it now but we hear about what you read about and what we're now seeing with everything that we're talking about on this show and what we're going to be Talking about on today's show is all about AI and the investment that Meta has made. And you know, for that matter, Google of course on the other side. But I mean the Meta side is just, oh my God, it's transformative.

C (26:06)

So, so again that moat because you're a part of the biggest investment from a US based company and like where like the vision that he has, it's like this like, you know, like Elon Musk has all this visions for if you're in the space race, right, it's like you want to be a part of him colonizing Mars, but in the like the AI space. I do believe that Zuckerberg is building like one of the strongest modes now. It's going to be an anti melt for those that are looking for more of a scrappy type of like anti corporate model, which is fine, but like it's, it's, it's really cool what they built. I'm just going to leave it on the, like, I don't think that the Metaverse and all that stuff will disappear because if anyone looks up Dr. Jordan Wynn, like he's got amazing case studies where he used virtual reality and helped an individual who was a quadriplegic from a, or had a paralysis from a motorcycle accident be able to receive simulation through his legs by doing rock climbing. In Metaverse, there's been a lot of advancement where hospitals are doing surgical practice using virtual reality. I, I really believe that that's going to come back in a way that will have this huge AI adoption. It's just not there yet. The, the machines are too heavy. I get car sick in them. I can't, as much as I want to play beat saber for hours and hours, like I can't go more than 20 minutes or I'll be nauseous. But it's, it's just out of the limelight because when it was the focus, it got all the bad rep and AI is going to fund it. So I'm excited.

A (27:30)

No, I actually that's, that's my point is that AI is funding all of it. It's not getting the headlines, but it's a lot of the similar technologies. If you actually compare technologies between AI, what's happening in that realm and the Metaverse, there is very, very, there is a Venn diagram of overlap between the two technologies due to the fact that the tech, the hardware is very similar as to how it's actually being utilized. So the headlines are on AI, but in the background to your point, and I agree is Metaverse is Still there. It's just not the one that. It's not the thing that's getting the headlines. But all of this, you know, billions of dollars in investment will help fund the Metaverse at a later date using the same technology platform. But it's just, it's not the thing that's driving everything now. It's certainly not driving the stock market. It's not driving like what everyone's talking about, a news cycle.

C (28:31)

No one talks about that. Yeah, the advancements of medical in virtual reality. And then even with AI, Like I had the chance to speak with like heads of AI from Nvidia and Siemens and Google when I was at south by Southwest. I had this like very private invite only room where I was like one of four women. I was like super happy that there were at least three other women in the room speaking on this. But I think like, there's a lot that's hidden from the conversation. And like in the medical use case, especially with drug discovery, those aren't the sexy headlines that people are jumping onto the conversation. And I would just wonder if the amount of money that Zuckerberg had previously invested into Metaverse and the hardware required, I wonder if it gave him the first layer of a moat because he had the technology, servers and hardware to facilitate one of the fastest AI implementations, like with Meta AI and Programmatic AI and all these other cases. I'd be curious if it was part of what helped launch them so much further than what I believe are the other big name brands where you're saying, like, are they really in competition with them? Like Microsoft does a lot with Copilot, but they're not attracting the level of talent that like Mark Zuckerberg has a line out his door.

A (29:42)

So I think Meta has done an extremely good job of creating their own sort of internal moat. Like not only internal for the individuals that work there, but also externally as a business. The real question is, is how do you create the same kind of thing within your department? And or so you're running a marketing department, you have video producer, you got social media people, you've got content writers, you've got ad buyers, or you know, you're even running an agency for that matter. Or you're running a company and you're figuring out like, what am I going to do to create a moat for my business? Because there is the external like competitor's moat, which I constantly think about as the business owner. But then really like when I do these quarterly meetings, a lot of it is about how do we create our own internal moat so that we attract the right individuals in order to drive the growth forward for tier 11. And then that always sort of comes back to this exercise that we do yearly, but we review it every quarter. And I don't know if you do this or not, but I mean, I'll say this again, because we talked about a couple of times here on the podcast is that we subscribe to this traction model, this entrepreneurial operating system, or eos. Gino Wickman, look it up. We'll leave links in the show notes to buy the book. One of the best books, man. I. I almost, like, reread it every single time I run a meeting, because I'm running the meetings now. We did have an integrator that ran our meetings for a year, two years. We got a little bit off track. We got a little bit bloated. We've changed a lot. We've altered everything. And we relook at our core values, which is the thing that attracts and we promote and then we ascend people within the organization based upon these core values. And we realize that our core values actually needed a little bit of a tweaking. And we realized that the. The moat that Tier 11 creates is around these core values, because those are the things that kind of keep people there in a lot of ways. And if you have not looked at this within your department or your organization, I highly encourage you to do so. And like I said before, one of the easiest ways to do it is to take your best employee or best person and then just list out all the characteristics that they have and how. Like the one person that you say, all right, this is the person you use the example when we started the show here, somebody who showed a lot of initiative. My guess is that part of your core values should probably be initiative or something.

C (32:11)

I literally wrote it down and I was like, we've never incorporated, like, that's so good, but it's a piece where I want to have, like, agency. Brian. So you had done this. You had, like. Tell me about, like, how you found your core values and how you reshaped them. Because, like, we have some. But I made them up. So I don't have ownership or buying. I set the tone. But you. You did. You. You evolved yours because you had team participation. Keep. I'm taking. No.

A (32:37)

Yeah, yeah, we did it just because we're like, we looked at our old list. I'm not going to say what they are, because we. We are going to. And they are a slight alteration. They're refinement. Because as you grow as an organization or the, the landscape changes. Like one of the big things for us is, you know, AI adoption. So you have to be, this is a core value that we've always had. I'll just tell you this one because it's not going to be a surprise for anybody that's listening from 2 or 11. Is Hu hungry? You have to be hungry. You have to be like, get after it. You have to have this drive to succeed, drive for self improvement, drive and want to be the best. And in doing so, you need to adopt and you need to integrate new technologies in new ways of doing things. We talked about this in our last show. It's like if you're doing running ads like you did 10 years ago, you are jobless right now or you're getting crappy results because you have not adopted and adapted to the algorithmic changes within Meta, within Zoolog and all the platforms that we talk about here.

C (33:43)

So we're a trust fund child, so you didn't care or you're a trust.

A (33:45)

Fund child and you're just like, you know, suck off the teeth, so to speak. So anyway, so the point is this is that like hunger is one of those core values which really hasn't changed. We've changed the incarnation of it and the list of it. But it's one of the five that we have. And so we talked about this for, you know, 20, like at least 20 minutes. And then we did a workshop for an hour where we're like, let's go through all these and make sure that it's really right. And then we put that one person up on the board, I'm not going to say who it was. And then we listed all, I think, I believe it was her, her core values. And we're like, how do we replicate that? And then the second step of it is once we decide on what the five or it can be three. And another great book for this is Patrick Lencioni is the ideal team player. Anything by him is great. He usually has like three core values. The traction model or the EOS model is then to list all of the people in your organization. And then on the top you have all your five core values or your three core values. And then you determine are they a plus, are they plus minus or are they A minus? Minuses don't have it. Plus minus is they do it.

C (35:07)

Not.

A (35:07)

All the time, inconsistently, inconsistently. And then a plus is they do it most of the time, not all of the time, because no one's perfect. And then we oftentimes will assign a plus plus.

C (35:18)

Hold on. Mary Poppins taught me otherwise. She was practically perfect in every way.

A (35:23)

Oh, she was, yeah. And so is my wife, by the way. She reminds me all the time. Um, just, just this morning, as a matter of fact. So anyway, so plus plus is like literally like all the time. Like you, you could not think of an example where they ever did not show this core value. And so the, the rule is you can get by with two plus minuses. If you have three, then you have to figure out, like, if you have five core values. Okay, if you have two plus minuses, borderline, you can just chat. GPT this because it depends on if you're a five or your three or your two core values, whatever it is. I would say no more than five. But if you have one negative, one negative means they're out. And that's all. Yeah, so, so do you.

C (36:15)

But are you doing this with like, people that are up for review? Are you doing this with people?

A (36:19)

No, we do it every year. We do it every year, but then we do a modification of it every quarter just to kind of keep us on track. We haven't been doing it every single quarter. We do have done like every six months. But when you redo or re. Reevalue your core values like we did in this meeting, it's the reason why I'm here. Like, you gotta do this in person with your leadership team or you do it with one of your trusted advisors, like on your, on your team, whoever that person happens to be. Or you do it by yourself. Like you can, you know, it doesn't. You don't necessarily have to do it with your leadership team, but you have to hold fast to whatever you determine and be brutally honest. So we sat there for like an hour and a half and analyzed every individual. And then to, you know, to our great surprise, there were lots of people that had practically perfect plus pluses across the board. And there was many that had like a all pluses, which is great. Like plus pluses is like insane. Pluses are really good.

C (37:27)

Like you're emphasizing. You're like, okay, cool, I know who my next round of leaders is about to be.

A (37:34)

Hey, real quick.

B (37:35)

If you're looking to get your brand in front of growth minded marketers, CMOs, directors of marketing and agency owners, we're opening up our sponsorship spots for Q1 and Q2 of next year. Get in front of a quarter of a million markers every single month at Perpetual Traffic. All you have to do is head on over to perpetualtraffic.com for the details or check out the link in the show notes to apply.

A (37:58)

Absolutely. And so you. And this is what they. They refer to as the People Analyzer. This is. This whole process is called the people Analyzer. So just, you know, like I said, we'll leave links in the show notes for this if you're not familiar with it. But if you're running a department or running a company, I would highly recommend that you do this once a year. The reason why we did it and then what happens is that then you create sort of this internal moat around retention for those individuals, similar to what we're talking about with Meta, but it creates a culture, and that's how you create a culture within a virtual organization, in my opinion. Now, now, how you manifest that is really is up to you. And I think the last two to three years, like, just being completely transparent, I think we've done an okay job of it because we've been more. We've had like, the last couple years have been challenging years in the digital marketing space.

C (38:55)

So we have, oh my gosh, just focused on it. One hit after another, one hit after another. Keeping up with the demands of performance marketing while staying afloat 100%. Like rising ad costs, you know, know, external factors, tariffs, the impact of bad Fed. You couldn't. You couldn't predict a pandemic. You couldn't predict. Well, no, you could predict the craziness that happens when it's an election. Like, there's just all these external factors that it's a. Like, like a duck, your legs underwater are doing all this. And Ralph, you're running a successful agency. You show up for this podcast every single week, and there's just only so many hours in the day. So it. Everyone can always be better. It's not. The goal is never perfection. It's progression towards getting better, incrementally getting better every single day.

A (39:43)

Yeah, I agree. I think there was just a lot of firefighting, and I think we all realized it. And plus, we also reconfigured our leadership team. Like, we did so many things. And the theme of this, of this meeting was this is the year of the fire horse.

C (40:01)

No. Oh, that's so cool. It's the year of the horse for the lunar New Year for those that don't know. And so we're coming out of the ear, the snake going into the earth, a horse. And you're saying the fire horse. That's so funny. Fun, fun, small fact. Draco Maloy, his Name in Chinese is like ma, and, like, ma is horse. Anyways, it's a fun play for the Year of the Horse. If you have a picture of Draco Malo, if you see him showing up in, like, red lunar New Year decorations, especially he's upside down. Just know it's like a fun plan. Words, real.

A (40:34)

That's awesome. You know what's cool, though, is, you know, the sense of optimism in 2026, first off, like, we feel very optimistic about what's going on in the coming year, but 2025, I think that's a.

C (40:46)

Global thing, too, though. Like, even, like, with science, it's. It's like we. We had a lot of political disruption in 2025, and lots of things were happening and going on, and I. I do feel that we're finally in a. We've settled. Inflation has happened. Everyone one's cost of housing and pricing has gone up every single everywhere. No one's now comparing. And we're just at this, like, okay, guys, we've reset.

A (41:13)

Yeah. And that's why 2025 was the year of the Snake, which was shedding old habits. Old, bad habits. And that was. So that was sort of our theme for this quarterly meeting is like. And we looked back, like, how much stuff we either shedded, changed, completely overhauled in 2025. I'm like, oh, my God. Like, we listed it all out.

B (41:40)

Like, oh, my God.

A (41:41)

Like, this was actually before we did any of the core value stuff. I said as a part of that, we need to shed our old identity and alter it slightly, be, you know, to prepare for the year of the fire horse. Because in so doing, we need to evaluate, reevaluate.

C (41:56)

Is it fire, like, how it's every four years? It's like wood, water. Like, there's it every 60 years. Or you.

A (42:03)

Yeah.

C (42:03)

Oh, my gosh, that's even cooler. I thought you were saying, because we're firefighters, we're gonna make it a fire horse, but if that goes into that, like, every four. Oh, okay. Sorry.

A (42:11)

It just made me, like, cooler. Like, it was a cool. Like, everyone was, like, so energized because, like, yeah, I hear the snake, you know, and so, like, we had this WhatsApp thread. It was like the year of the fire horse, like, what's up? Thread, like, in preparation for the meeting. So anyway, that was kind of the theme. So. So anyway, simple, simple stuff here. But I think that's how you create a sense of optimism for the future, but also sort of admit the fact that, all right, you faced some Challenging times in the past and maybe you need to change your core values, maybe you need to change your approach. We've talked about every single episode here in the last 12 months has been about change and about how you can, how you need to. The last episode we just did was about, you can't keep doing things the way that you've done them always, otherwise you're just not going to get the results. Especially when we talk about Meta and Andromeda and all the other AI infused platforms that we're now dealing with. So that's, I think, how you create a mode internally. You don't have to be a meta size in order to have it happen. You can do it with a three person department, you can do it with a 10 person company, you can do it with a.

C (43:17)

It's easier to do it when you're smaller because you can have that. Like that culture starts somewhere and think of how much harder it is for a culture of 10,000 people to then all of a sudden change. Like Tony Hsieh RIP like he. What he had done with Zappos in Vegas and what her mosi is doing in Vegas, what Matt Damon tried to do in Vegas, it's, it's changing a culture of a city that's dependent on nightlife entertainment, where there's a lot that's going on to try to make Vegas a, a new production center in the United States where it's like Matt Damon tried to bring Hollywood to Vegas. I mean there's a lot that happens in Nevada and the porn industry because of tax incentives and stuff. But like it goes alongside that nightlife entertainment, there's these huge change makers in the Vegas community that are like trying to adopt the culture and it's such a hard shift. It's taking so long. So even if you have a smaller person team, it's, it's easy habits you carry and start now can carry into tomorrow and yeah, it's a lot easier.

A (44:24)

Yeah. And I think the carry the carryover is, is the hardest part. Like you can, you know, throw a stake in the ground and say, all right, well this is our. You're the fire horse. But now it's up to us to. You know, my VP of employee success is going to love this. Now it's our turn to inculcate that within the organization.

C (44:44)

Oh my gosh. I remember when he would use that term. And from me to the episode of oh my gosh.

A (44:50)

Yeah. Anyway, it's his favorite word ever. But it's true because it's like all Right. Oh, well, now, you know, the, the common wisdom is like, oh, God, now we're shifting again. But. And you actually live, breathe it and do it. And every. Like, we do this show twice a week. We're going to be talking about this. Like, this has constantly been a thing. This isn't a new thing. You know, shed the old and being optimistic about the new. It's, what are you going to do about it? You know, how are you going to excel in this new world? And I think that's exciting and that's. You're on to something if you're doing that, even if you don't get to the goal. We talked about this about a year ago, and we talked about, like, bigger goals or better goals. Like, you know, 10x is easier than 2x. I don't know if you remember that theme from a year ago.

C (45:36)

Oh, my gosh, I love that.

A (45:38)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, you know, when you make a dramatic shift, you've got to. To pull it through the entire year. It's not like this thing you do for two weeks and you're on to the next thing. Like, as a leader of a department or a company, you have to inculcate it and consistently drive towards it. I've said it now.

C (45:54)

I hope that becomes like a spelling weave term. Like, I want to see 5th graders duking it out over. Over that. Yeah. Bring that vernacular into it. But I mean, I love. I mean, socially, I love this because obviously I look up to you and like, like, your business has been growing and like, the things that you do and everything that I learned, I mean, I, I listened to this podcast for years before I had the privilege to prove myself funnier than Kasum. But, like, I love that even, like, in the spaces that I'm growing, like, there's. There's things that I'm, you know, we can make changes now. And like, I've been this whole time been taking notes of, like, okay, do we evaluate our core values? And you had said initiative, and I was like, okay, I'm thinking of Tanya. What does she emulate? And it's solution forward. Like, that's just everything. It's like, you know, you don't come to me with problems. Like, come to me with solutions. And so I'm, I'm going to take your initiative and invite my team to say, like, hey, if we. We add solutions forward. And like, because I think of, like, continuous learning, trans transparency and challenge. Like, challenges a thing. Like, I want you to challenge the norm. I want you to Challenge the data. I want you to challenge the team. Like, my best team members are always the people that will tell me I'm wrong. I don't mind being wrong. I mind you being silent. Because if you know I'm wrong, if I'm leaning off of wrong information and you don't feel comfortable, push back and challeng. You're not going to fit in our culture. And there's been a lot of great people that we have worked with that were not great fits for us. Not because of their skill set and their personality. It's just the. If you are going to be okay with me saying something that's grossly incorrect, I am not going to be okay with you sitting there. Now, you don't have to, like, embarrass me publicly. I don't mind. Like, my ego can take a knock every now and then, but still, challenge is a core one for us. And so now I'm adding, like, solutions forward because of those type of things. I'm just. I'm like, really grateful that we can have this conversation. And I know this is, like, kind of off topic to, like, the normal stuff we do, but I'm. Thanks, Ralph.

A (47:53)

Well, I think it's. I think it's really important, and I think everything that you're talking about here is like, you're. You're circling around a lot of our changes in our core values. And I like, one of our core values for years and years was radical cancer. Her, it's now more of an adjective that we have now chosen, but that is it. But you have to mix that with emotional intelligence. It's like, if you're going to challenge Lauren, you need to do it in a way so that you don't embarrass, like, she's still the boss. Like, you have to do it in a cohesive way. Like yesterday, my, like, my Slack threads are, like, all over the place. It's strange being New Zealand because they're all, like, out of time depending on when I. It's the weirdest thing with Slack. But anyway, so I saw something. I was like, my salesperson said something out of Slack, and I was like, that's just so not right. But I didn't, like, respond in the Slack channel, and I forwarded to her and then I called her and I'm like, I know this isn't what you meant, but it's like I had the emotional IQ to not put it in the thread because it would have embarrassed her. You know what I mean?

B (49:08)

That's one example.

A (49:10)

So that's like another core value. Like you have to go along with radical candor or like the adjective that we're now using. I'm gonna say what it is. But anyway, the point is like you have to be able to tell people what you really think, but you have to do it in an emotionally intelligent way. And those are things that are super important in a virtual company. It's like, you know, I just saw that SOP that you put together or that you're, you're a person put together who exhusable.

C (49:38)

Yeah. Oh, that I'm taking four values for 100. It's like, but a lot of like.

A (49:44)

What that is, is like don't overuse emojis. Like, but then use emoji and like use a. Yeah, no animated GIF in the right way. It's like all of that stuff that's kind of like emotional intelligence. It's like that discernment to be able to know like when to do something, when not to do something is so important. Like that's a core value.

B (50:02)

You, if you have all people.

C (50:04)

But now it empowers people, right? It's not every generation we work, we have people from Gen Z up and not everyone uses and communicates via emoji. Like that's, it's a different habit. And so it's just like, hey, it may seem obvious, but let's like my, like, I don't like assumptions. I hate assumptions. And I, I don't like intentionally excluding people. And if you speak via GIF or you speak via, via emoji and someone doesn't understand and they didn't challenge you, like, wait, what? I've never heard that term before. What, what does this emoji mean? Like, I use the fax machine emoji a lot because I use it as the word fax. So when someone says like, hey, Samir did this amazing initiative with Blue Sky, I'll be like fax machine emoji. But if we can't articulate what some of that means, you're intentionally excluding people from the conversation because you weren't able to scope it out. So like, I mean, I love so much about the SOP because I, it's, it's, it's a making no assumptions and bringing everyone in this great equalized conversation format so that we can also respect boundaries and timelines. Like there's a whole page dedicated to our check in channel. And it's like the intention of the check in channel is because people want to know when you're on, if you have not checked in. We are not going to huddle you. Yeah, because.

A (51:22)

Yeah, absolutely. Like, it's super, but, like, where is that person and. Right.

C (51:26)

Yeah.

A (51:27)

So it's all of those things. I don't think I've ever said this. Like, maybe people are going to listen to this. Like, the biggest, like, compliment I can give in an emoji is that we have an Einstein emoji. It's like, it encompasses so much. Like, that's just smart. It's well said. It's like, whatever it is, like, well timed. It's a really.

C (51:50)

It's.

A (51:51)

It's one of the best emojis. I gave it to a guy last week and I don't know if he realized it was such a great thing, but then I, you know, I gave him a compliment after that. The point is this. It's like, like, what is your culture? And you build that culture around the core values and then how you all interact with each other, and then that creates, in my opinion, your internal moat. Because people want to work in a place where they really feel like they're valued. Nobody's gonna be perfect at this. Okay. They're appreciated, they're doing good work, and they are growing from a personal and professional standpoint. And those four or five things that I just mentioned there are not all inclusive. But I'm just generalizing. Like, that's usually what peop. Where people wanna work because they could work anywhere, you know, and it's hard to do it, hard to inculcate. I've said it a third time. Harry's gonna.

C (52:46)

Oh, my gosh, this is a dream. I have my wing glass.

A (52:49)

Totally.

C (52:50)

And it's now shooting.

A (52:52)

Shooting your. Shooting your water. You're getting drunk in the H2O anyway. But you have to inculcate that within the organization. That's how you create an internal mode. So for those of you who are running companies or running departments, hopefully today's episode has been helpful.

B (53:05)

It wasn't the original intent of this episode.

A (53:07)

We are going to get to the other part at a later date in another episode. But I think this was, you know, just the, the, the memo that you got from your employee sparked a whole different conversation.

C (53:21)

Oh, my God. I just like, like, load. I told her. I was like, you're so amazing to it. I'm super proud of it. Like, I'm almost like, do we do an episode? I'm like, let me just explain how well and how, like, it's not dumbing it down. It's not in a place of anything rude or anything. But she like makes example like, hey, this is a great use of a thread. This is a great use to communicate. I don't have time to look at it, but I've acknowledged it. So I am aware that this is in here and I've set myself a reminder. Like it's, it's common tips that maybe aren't commonly known and it's not done in any type of degrading way. And if someone doesn't know this, you can feel really behind and that's a hard thing. Like when you. Again changing culture that we talked about that shift. Imagine someone's been in the company for six months and they're like, oh, that's what the fax machine means. I, I totally just thought Lauren was telling everyone how old she is that.

A (54:18)

She remembers when a fax is. Yeah, that's good. Well, that's amazing.

C (54:23)

I had to learn that from someone else, by the way, because I didn't even know there was a fax machine emoji. But when someone had used it on me, I was like, oh my God, this is like the phone machine, the fax machine. Sorry. Anyway, so if anyone hasn't used that before, welcome to my favorite. It's then in that cowboy emoji and you can create like Einstein one.

A (54:41)

Yeah, Einstein. Well, look at. Well, I'll leave a link in the show notes how you actually create an emoji inside slack. If people don't know like a slack emoji, like you can create your own.

B (54:52)

And I've even done them.

A (54:53)

I'm like super non technical.

C (54:55)

So anyway, very, very cool people make from the team. So I would recommend that someone from tier 11, if you're listening, turn Ralph's face into Einstein and like give him the crazy white hair sticking out from the side and they got the like Ralph Stein emoji or the burn.

A (55:12)

I wouldn't love that.

C (55:13)

Yeah, that would be my favorite in ours is we have like a crush can because we have a Crushing it channel. So if someone's done, oh that's good, we have Crushing It. So then it's like a can of orange soda, the crush one. So that's one. That's our idea.

A (55:29)

But it's like little stuff like that that I swear to God, like I, I've done so many talks on how to create a virtual company culture. I, I say the emoji is the one of the only reasons how we could ever create a virtual company. And your emojis are different than our emojis and that is your company culture. And that's what makes this whole thing cool. So anyway, figure out what that thing is and, and start working on it. You don't have to do it all at once. But I think in the back of your mind, I think it's really important because that's how you create a motor on your run your company and you know, build something that's worthwhile and hopefully lasting and means something. And that's what today's show is all about.

C (56:11)

So I'm thinking maybe people who are listening, whether you're watching on YouTube or not, if you head over to YouTube or into Spotify, because you can leave some comments like share what are your favorite emojis and let us know how you're using them in your organization. And are there ways that the emoji can transcend conversations in a way that's like super adaptable in the remote working space space or even like the, in office space because you still have internal comms while using teams or Google chats and stuff like that.

A (56:40)

Even in physical cultures they still have, you know, slack and all kinds of like project management systems. So this, this translates over into that world as well. And so many companies are now sort of half and half, you know, hybridized. So it all makes sense here. So anyway, we'll leave links in the show notes for all the stuff that we talked about here today. And of course you can check that out over@perpetualtraffic.com so on behalf of my amazing emoji fied co host, Lauren E. Petrulo, ciao till next show.

B (57:13)

See ya.

C (57:15)

You've been listening to Perpetual Traffic.