Building a Winning Company Culture

Episode 904: Building a Winning Company Culture, with JT McCormick

Building a winning company culture is something to strive for. Listen to JT McCormick and start building a winning company culture today!

Do you want to start building a winning company culture? Then you’re in the right place because this is what our guest, JT McCormick, will talk about in today’s episode. JT is the President and CEO of Scribe Media, a publishing company that’s created an entirely new way for you to write a book. The company has worked with nearly 1,000 authors and was recently ranked in their category as the #2 best company to work for in Austin and #4 in their category for all of Texas. JT is also the author of “I Got There: How I Overcame Racism, Poverty, and Abuse to Achieve the American Dream.”

What you will learn from this episode about building a winning company culture:

• How JT grew his startup from 6 employees to 50 without any outside money
• Why JT’s approach to building a winning company culture has been lauded and celebrated by outside sources and how to build this kind of culture
• The values and principles of JT’s company and how the employees live those out
• The three rules JT lives by as a CEO and how it helped him in building a winning company culture
• Why 90% of salespeople suck – and how they can be better
• JT’s personal and professional definitions of success
• What JT looks for in employees that will make them a great fit in his “tribe”

Resources:

• Website: https://scribemedia.com/
• Read about this book and be inspired in building a winning company culture

Additional Resources:

• Sell With Authority by Drew McLellan and Stephen Woessner: https://amzn.to/39y7x13
• Predictive ROI Free Resource Library: https://predictiveroi.com/resources/
• Stephen Woessner’s LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stephenwoessner/
• Download this PDF from Predictive ROI on building a winning company culture

 

 

Building a Winning Company Culture: Full Episode Transcript

 

Get ready to find your recipe for success from America’s top business owners here at Onward Nation with your host, Stephen Woessner.

 

Good morning, Onward Nation. I’m Stephen Woessner, and say before I introduce you to our very special encore guests today, I want to share some additional context about JT McCormick and why I was so excited. I’m like, over the moon, excited when he said yes to come back for another conversation. So you may recall that JT is the president and CEO of Scribd Media, which is a publishing company that is based in Austin, Texas.

 

And they help business owners, thought leaders, and experts. They help write the book, publish the book, and then market their book, which is awesome. They’ve done that with over a thousand authors. And then entrepreneur magazine recently ranked Scribe. And this is incredible. I mean, these types of things that don’t happen by accident are, you know, Onward Nation. Entrepreneur magazine recently ranked Scribe as having the top company culture in America, or one of the top company cultures in America.

 

Again, that type of accolade, that type of recognition. I mean, clearly he and his team are doing something special inside the walls of Scribe. And we’ll talk a little bit about the culture piece of that. He’s also the author of the great book I Got There, How I Overcame Racism, Poverty and Abuse to Achieve the American Dream. And then Onward Nation, there is this incredible.

 

And I’m not trying to sound like hyperbole here or using hyperbole. There is an incredible turnaround story that is taking place at Scribe. So you’re going to hear JT walk us through portions of that story, like more specifically where they were just a few short years ago and where they are today at 50 employees and literally bursting at the seams at their office space in Austin.

 

It is an incredible story. So I’m really, really excited for you to hear that. So without further ado, welcome back to Onward Nation, JT. 

 

Want to start building a winning company culture? Then learn more about it here.

 

Building a Winning Company Culture: JT McCormick’s Introduction

 

My man Stephen the man now. That was awesome. How are you, sir? I’m doing well, my friend. And so, all joking aside, thank you very much for saying yes. I know that your schedule is compressed.

 

I know that you guys are going through a very significant expansion. I do not take it lightly that you said yes for a second time to come back and onward. You can certainly go back to episode 787, learn more about your story. But let’s talk about what’s new. And because there’s a lot of this news. So bring us up to speed with the expansion.

 

Bring us up to speed with the turnaround story. And then I’m sure we’ll slice and dice some of that, because there are some really big takeaways that I want to make sure Onward Nation takes out of this conversation. So bring us up to speed with what has you excited about the road ahead. That’s what we’ll start. Oh man.

 

Our growth has been incredible. You know this was a four year old company. Many would, you know, say we’re still somewhat in startup mode. And it’s just been an incredible journey. I joined the company. We’re four years old. I’ve been with the company for three years. So a little over they were a little over a year old when I joined.

 

And we’ve gone from, six people sitting on a picnic bench in our coffee founders apartment. Then we went to work at the co-sharing facility. We got an office there. We outgrew our first office there in 30 days. Then we went to the next office. We work, and we outgrew that 1 in 90 days.

 

But we were stuck there for a while because we needed to find an office space. So here we are now, in the office space that we had. We found a place for us here in Austin, and it was 3000ft² when we moved in. And here we are, expanding into the suite next door. They’re going to knock out the wall in between and put the offices together, because, like you said, we’re pushing 50 people now.

 

And so the growth has been incredible. And so much of that is just, attributed to the culture we have, the people we have, the model in how we serve our authors. So it’s been a great ride when sometimes you’re going so fast, you forget to stop and take a look at, you know, what’s been accomplished, where you’ve come from.

 

You know, I look at it as a road trip. Sometimes you see the mile marker and you just. Okay, there it is. Keep going. All right. And so you don’t really stop in and hit the rest stop and just take a look at, you know what? What’s been accomplished thus far. Well, it is impressive. And you know, onward should just be in full transparency a couple weeks ago and I connected just to kind of get caught up in the business and in preparing for this encore.

 

And, and I hear this noise in the background, I’m like, what is that noise? And, and we start talking about construction and I’m like, oh my gosh, what are you guys doing? And he tells me all about how, you know, 6 to 50 and all of that. I’m like, that would be an incredible story. So let’s talk about the turnaround.

 

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Building a Winning Company Culture: Keeping The Momentum Going

 

So you’re at six people and then now at 50 in a relatively short period of time. Right. And so talk about some of the building blocks because I’m sure at six it’s like ambitious ideas and want to serve and how to do it. But then there’s all these constraints like how did you guys start making that momentum stick to go from six to the next, to the next to now at 50?

 

Well, so I’ll throw this out there as well. One of the things that we are extremely proud of is that we’re a four year old company, a four year old startup and, you know, the time period that we live in right now, for me to be able to say what I’m going to say is unheard of. We have no debt, no loans, no private equity, no VC, no outside money.

 

And, you know, we live in a world where you tell someone you’re a four year old startup. The immediate question is, so, what round are you on? Are you a series B or series C? And it was funny when we were in we were we were what, two years old. And I remember a gentleman came up to us because you got a ton of startups, VC backed startups, and we work.

 

And a gentleman came up to us, myself, the co-founder, and he was like, oh, wow. What round are you on? We say we totally don’t have any outside money. And he goes, did you take any angel investing? And I go, and I don’t know how else to say this. We have zero outside money.

 

And he looked at us just, like, almost angry at me. And so we’re very proud of that, because, again, you know, it’s that outside capital sometimes is a detriment. I’m a big believer, and I know I’m going to offend a few people with this one. It’s statistically proven. 70% of all VC backed companies fail. They go under. And why?

 

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Building a Winning Company Culture: Managing The Company’s Growth

 

I personally believe there’s a little bit of the reasoning for some of that is VC companies, not all VC companies who receive money are kind of like lottery winners. And what I mean is, if you’ve never had to manage $18 million, how in the world are you going to come into $18 million and know what to do with it?

 

And so, I find, I don’t find it interesting at all that a lot of these VC companies fail. And just like lottery winners, when they go bankrupt three, five years later after they win, it’s the same thing to me. So we’re proud of that because we have to manage every dollar. We look at the income statement every month.

 

We make it transparent for the whole tribe. Everyone can see what the expenses are, what everyone’s salaries are, what we’re spending money on. How much is free food Friday? Everyone can see every dollar within. So we have to manage that for our growth. We can’t get too far ahead of our hiring versus the amount of business in cash that we bring in.

 

So it’s a great balance. But in my opinion, it makes you a stronger company. Well, it does because it forces fiscal discipline, right? Yes. It forces you to make the right investments, the right decisions. And the teammates also invest in the right teammates to help you grow. 

 

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Building a Winning Company Culture: Making Some IPOs As an Example

 

So I love the discipline. And here’s the other thing that I really like about your story.

 

And it is not only it shows your fiscal discipline. How do I say this? Like not wanting to offend anybody either, but it’s the discipline that you show within the Austin market, I think is remarkable because there’s a lot of money in that town. There’s a lot of money in this. Right. And it would be really easy based on your growth trajectory and the connections and so forth, for you to walk into a VC or to an angel and do multiple rounds of financing.

 

And you didn’t do that. So, I find that really remarkable there too, because your access to money is really short because of where you’re located. What’s crazy? Stephen is like you said. Yes, there’s a ton of money here in Austin, but you made the comment. We could walk into any VC office and easily raise capital.

 

Hell, we don’t even have to walk into the office. They come looking for us because they’re like, wow, okay, four years old, you guys have done this, right? That’s a strong investment in. So, you know, you don’t see that too often and not to knock them but you know, lift their IPO. They just went public today but they’ve not made any profit.

 

If you look at the last three years, the great majority of the companies who have gone IPO, none of them have made a profit. And everyone can sell the dream of well, Amazon did neither. Okay, you’re right, Amazon didn’t. But I do remember a lot of.com companies that came out around the same time as Amazon that are no longer around.

 

And so when I look at the climate of, you know, IPOs and companies right now, it’s actually a little bit scary because I see it is a bit of a repeat of that.com era where you’ve got a lot of companies going IPO right now that have never made a dollar. And you know, then you hear but my favorite is when they say, well, we could be profitable if we wanted to be.

 

Yeah. Oh come on, maybe you should want to be right. Right. And I don’t get me wrong, I understand investing all the dollars back into the company. That’s exactly what we’re doing. You know, our goal is to run at almost zero profitability because we want to pour the dollars back into the company. I get the reinvestment argument.

 

Yes, I do, but when your revenues are 9 billion and your loss is 911 million, I’m going to argue with the oh, we could be profitable if we wanted to be. And I just, you know, my again, one man’s opinion. Well, but seriously though, the numbers at some point do not add up.

 

Right? Right. Exactly. I mean, you can only lose money for so long. Yes. I get the whole Amazon argument like what you mentioned there. But they were constantly expanding, going into new services, B2C, B2B, they were constantly reinvesting in infrastructure and that kind of stuff. So like with the Lyft model, I saw that this morning too, and I think it was Morning Brew.

 

Who did a story on that IPO this morning when I think, okay, you know yes. Multiple billions of dollars in revenue. Great. Lovely. Lost almost $600 million I think, if I remember correctly, last year. So the losses are continuing to go deeper. Revenue is going up. But I agree with you. It smells a lot like the 1999 IPO. Totally, totally.

 

And I know a lot of people don’t want to believe that. But you know, as we’ve all heard before, history has this weird way of repeating itself. And it’s just for me, it’s a shaky economy in itself anyway. You know, I don’t want to go too far off path here, but if people think the housing crisis, the, you know, the Great Recession, that was and it was by way of the housing crisis, if people think that that hurt, well, let me explain something real quick.

 

If someone forecloses on a house and someone loses their house, well, there’s still an asset there. There’s still something that you can repossess, take back, and you can hold on to it and wait for the economy to recoup, come back around. Well, student loan debt. This isn’t like I can go and repo someone’s degree, right?

 

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Building a Winning Company Culture: Growth Creates Chaos

 

You know, so when you have trillions of dollars in student loan debt and there’s nothing attached to it, that’s a scary place to be. Yeah. And there’s. And there’s no way to forgive the debt. You can’t exactly get rid of it. Exactly. Totally. So let’s go back to the turnaround story here because you mentioned culture.

 

You’ve obviously been celebrated by third parties for the culture. And so you’re not only building a company that is growing and growing well and growing fast and expanding, but you’re also doing that intentionally, making sure that you’re also building a great culture that walks alongside that which is not easy to do, because oftentimes growth creates chaos.

 

And then everybody’s like, you’re a team can fall apart, as you well know, and you haven’t been doing that. So give us a few ingredients to the recipe here. That kind of culture recipe. What are some of the ingredients that you and your team are really intentional about that’s building this great culture? I’m asked numerous times about culture and they said, well, what’s one piece of advice you can give about culture?

 

First and foremost, there’s never one thing in which cultures are not built on one thing. And so but if I had to give one, if you are a company that intends to grow, first and foremost, embrace the fact that your culture will change. I hear so many people say our culture will never change. Well, if you plan to stay in a ten person company and never expand, never grow, never scale, you may be able to pull that off and say, our culture will never change.

 

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Building a Winning Company Culture: Culture Should Be Upheld by Everyone

 

Okay, that may be possible, but if you have growth plans, if you plan to scale, your culture is going to change. The question is, is it going to continue to grow and enhance, or is it just going to fracture and crumble depending on how you operate your culture? So for us, we firmly believe that one person does not own culture.

 

If one person is responsible for culture, you don’t have a culture. And so that one person does. But the company at hand does not. So for us, the culture is upheld by everyone. And I don’t personally like the phrase that starts at the top. I don’t I’m not a big fan of I’m at the top. And in fact, here’s a great culture piece for you.

 

When I hear people say they work for me, no one works for me. People work with me. And that in itself is representative of our culture. No one works for me. People work with me. Everyone is valued. Everyone is needed. Everyone has a role to fulfill within our company. And we had a big debate the other day about a month ago.

 

I kept hearing throughout the office low level tasks, low level tasks. And so finally, you know, I heard it in marketing. Then I heard it over in the finance department and I heard an operation. So I said, finally, I said, hold on, time out I go. What are these low level tasks you speak of? And I said, the reason why I’m asking is because there are no low level tasks.

 

I said, I’ll take out the trash. I said, everyone in this office has seen me take out the trash. I have cleaned the storage closet so there are no low level tasks. There are only tasks, duties and responsibility. God knows who would ever want their responsibility referred to as low level, and then you expect them to want to execute on it to the fullest.

 

So those are all of the little pieces that make up our culture on how we interact, how we work with one another, the expectations calling ourselves out, holding ourselves accountable. And so, you know it. Culture is composed of our values, which we have, number one being result results. Number two being, people three is learning, you know, so we have our values and then our principles.

 

We’ve got a slew of them. We teach what you learn. The glass is already broken. So we’ve got these principles and values that we truly live by. And we even make our culture doc, public facing, so anyone can go and see our culture doc and see how we operate and what we live by.

 

Great mindset around the, you know, the no job is too small. I love that nobody’s pulling rank. Nobody’s acting bigger than the position. I think that is awesome because through what you just shared is a great way to illustrate that all the oars are rowing in the same direction, which is, you know, it’s the team gets bigger and bigger and communication becomes more complex.

 

That is harder to do. But you recognize that that is also going to be an ongoing thing that you have to tend to when you mentioned, like, well, if your company is going to stay ten, then maybe you can. Your culture will never change, which it will, even at ten. Right? But as your company is growing you are constantly sort of at the helm of that and that’s awesome.

 

Like, no asleep at the wheel. Well well said sir, I appreciate that. You know, and again, it’s composed of so many little things. Here’s a big one for me. Huge one. You hear people say do you have a training program? How do you train your people? Okay. First, we don’t train anyone. You train dogs, you train dolphins, you train horses, you train your body when you go to the gym.

 

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Building a Winning Company Culture: JT’s Role as A CEO

 

So we teach coach and mentor. And that’s very important to me because we train. When I think of training someone I don’t mean to be offensive when I say this, but I think of training someone to put the same bolt on the same place over and over and over. We want to teach people, because if I teach you something, you feel that.

 

Oh, okay. They’re teaching me so I can learn. Regardless if I stay with this company, this is something that I can take with me regardless of where I go. So we teach coach and mentor. I’m very particular on vernacular, and because words do mean to mean something, you know, that old thing, sticks and bones may break my bones, but words never are.

 

Yeah, I don’t agree. So it’s we’re very intentional and then this last piece as far as the hierarchy, if you will, if you go to our website and you go to the about this page, I’m at the bottom of the page. We live in a society where everyone talks about servant leadership, servant leadership, and some people kind of are just kind of status signaling by saying it.

 

I’m a big believer that in my role as the CEO, my role is to support and serve the organization. So with that, I’m at the bottom of the website because if you’re looking for me, I want you to have to go through and see all of the people who actually do the work long before you make it down.

 

To me, my role is to serve and support, and one of the ways that I do that is I live by these three rules. First and foremost, my role is to surround the company with people far smarter than myself. Number two, surround myself with people far smarter than myself. Number three repeats number one. 

 

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Building a Winning Company Culture: The Importance of Coaching and Mentoring Your Team

 

That’s awesome. Well, so yeah, I think sometimes when we think about growth or we think about turnaround, it’s really easy to think about what we just need more sales. We need more customers. We need more of this. We need more of that. Whatever. And of course, growing revenue has to be part of a turnaround story.

 

Right? Absolutely. And to your point, earlier point profitable revenue. But you know, you can sell as much as you want, but if you don’t have a great team that has been taught, that has been coached, that has been mentored, then you’re just going to create a whole bunch of unhappy customers faster, right? So the way that you’ve invested in your culture, as well as building the actual model is really smart.

 

I appreciate that it is. You have to fill your and I say this from a person who prides themselves on having been a sales individual. I had the utmost respect for sales individuals because it is a very tough role, you know, to prospect, and be told no over and over again. I have a great respect for that.

 

That career where most people look at salespeople and they look down upon them. Now, I will say this and again, I’m going to offend some people here, but 90% of all salespeople suck. And if you are offended by that comment, it’s because you fall in the 90%. So because most people aren’t willing to put in the work that’s required to keep taking the nose to do the follow up to be consistent.

 

So many people send out a few emails, make a couple calls, and they say, oh, me, you know, I was prospecting all day. Okay. There was one day prospecting, in my opinion, and this is life in general. It’s kind of like going to the gym. You don’t go to the gym needing to lose 30 pounds, and you went to the gym one day for two hours and, hey, I killed it today. It’s consistent. 

 

So to your point, you can have a phenomenal sales team that’s just bringing in all kinds of business. But if you don’t have the people in the processes set up and structured, oh, you’re just going to wreck your company. So I live by the three P’s. People, process and profits. If you have great people, you can build great processes and the profits will come.

 

Unfortunate. We live in a society where some people put those P’s out of order. Some people want to put the process first. I’m a believer that you can have a flawless process, but if you put bad people in that process, they will wreck your process. And then unfortunately, especially with publicly traded companies, not all, but the great majority, they put profits first in the publicly traded world, people can argue and say this is not true, but it is true.

 

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Building a Winning Company Culture: JT’s Path and Journey

 

If you are a publicly traded company, the thing you put first are profits, second are shareholders, third are your customers, fourth are the employees. And if anybody wants to argue that, they’re full of it, like I said, not all publicly traded companies, but at least 90% of them. Well, let’s put a spotlight on your model here in Onward Nation.

 

It’s not because, you know, I want to sound promotional for Scribe, although I do think what they’re doing is phenomenal. I think Stephen. It’s really phenomenal. Clearly in the numbers. But the reason why I want us to put a spotlight here, JT, in Onward Nation is because JT is a perfect example of really walking the walk, talking the talk, being the epitome of what it is that they do.

 

And here’s what I mean by that. So what I mentioned in the intro, you know, JT is an author, JT does quite a bit of speaking. So he’s being invited on stage because of his thought leadership. Now he’s there to add value to the audience. But there’s also the opportunity that because he’s been on stage in front of large audiences, that also has a business development thing for Scribe as well, a business development benefit and a thing of benefit for Scribe.

 

And then it’s just this flywheel with momentum, Onward. So JT walked us through the model here because I think you’re a living, breathing example of how this is working really, really well to take your thought leadership and then also drive biz dev for Scribe. Well, I have the ultimate fortune and blessing of how this whole thing came together.

 

You know, I wasn’t always the CEO of Scribe. I’m not one of the original founders. There were two original founders. I got introduced to them, came to them to do my book. While we were in the process of writing my book, I fell in love with the model, the business model, the culture, and woke up one morning, became CEO of the company when they were a little over a year old.

 

And what this has turned into is once my book was completed, one. I never wanted that book to go public because of some of the stories that are in there. Never wanted that book to go public, but through a lot of encouragement, a lot of support, I agreed, okay, let’s make the book public. And it took on a life of its own.

 

And people really were inspired by the story, my background, where I come from, then, how I got to the company by doing my book and now being the CEO of the company. So you’re right, it’s turned into this ultimate business development that we’re able to capitalize on because now people will pay to have me come speak, go on and tell my story or talk leadership and talk about overcoming adversity.

 

And it’s interesting because I never wanted any of those things to care less about being on stage. And, but it’s been very beneficial for the company. In fact, if you go back two years ago, our company would sponsor events, and we would pay a huge five figure sponsorship fee so we could have a booth at some of these conferences here.

 

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Building a Winning Company Culture: Helping Others Especially Authors

 

Fast forward two years later, here we are. We don’t pay to sponsor conferences. People actually will pay my keynote for me to come speak. And included in that we have a sponsorship where we set up our booth so we can help authors write their books. Okay, so that’s phenomenal. In two years time, what do you attribute that to?

 

Like, are there a couple of ingredients in there? And I know it’s not a magic formula. But is there something or maybe 1 or 2 things that kind of stand out in your mind of like, yeah, we made a good call there and you know, like contributed to to that because that is a big turnaround to, you know, I attributed to, I’ll give the two co-founders all the credit for this one because I’m hard on them for the early on pieces where we were just when I joined the company.

 

Oh my God, we were in disarray. And I’m so hard on them for that time period. But I also got to give them credit for this. I remember a year and a half ago, they told me that I was going to go speak on stage at a conference, and I had never been on stage before. Oh, wow.

 

And yeah, and so we sponsored this conference. It was 20,000 for us to sponsor the conference. Went to the conference. I got on stage, you know, shared my message, and it drove a lot of business. So we washed, rinse, repeat, and did some more sponsorships. So we made an early investment, put me on stage. More people knew about us.

 

And as that investment started taking place, it then started paying dividends when now, like I said, now we don’t actually sponsor events. People bring us in to be at the event. And so that was a combination of them having the vision to say, okay, let’s have Gatsby. We’ll pay the sponsorship upfront. And I got to be fair here as a company as a whole, as a tribe, what really benefited us is that we had our excuse in my language, we got our shit together.

 

You know, we had a nice process. We had a nice system. We were publishing authors. We’ve worked with over a thousand authors. Now our quality is the best of the best in publishing. So we had a phenomenal product, phenomenal service, and all of the pieces just came together. So if I’m sitting in the audience Onward Nation and, and JT is on stage and he’s sharing his story, and I’m learning from JT because he’s being transparent and he’s being helpful and he’s pulling things out of his book.

 

Then as I’m hearing that, I’m thinking and I want to be like, JT, I wonder what it is about his model. What did he do? Like I want Stephen first. I would say this to anyone. If anyone ever says I want to be like JT, okay, I get up and say, okay, don’t be like me. Be a billion times better than me.

 

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Building a Winning Company Culture: Make An Impact to The World

 

Don’t ever just aspire to be like me. Be a billion times better than me. You’re such a great, humble guy. But it’s like, I want to be up there doing what he’s doing. Okay, so how is he able to do that? Well, maybe the book was sort of the starting path of getting his thought leadership out, sharing that, being helpful, building audiences, and so forth.

 

And then my guess is that is not only an inspiring message about, you know, the things in your talk, but then from a business perspective that starts kind of seeding some things with the audience, too. And so there are probably I’m just making an assumption here. Would love for you to validate or contradict. My assumption is that people who are in the audience, whether at the event or post event or whatever, come up to you and say, hey, what you said, really helpful.

 

I want to do that too. Like how do I move my business forward with a book in my thought leadership? I mean, right, I mean, that’s how it happens downstream, right? You’re right. So speaking from that perspective. So someone sitting in the audience, you’re 100% correct. The top three reasons people come to us to do their book is for lead generation, thought leadership, credibility. And we truly believe this. 

 

Everyone has a story. Everyone has knowledge to share, wisdom to share. Leave your legacy, make an impact in the world. And so with that, you can do that through a book. Your book can impact and be here long after you leave this earth. So that book helps the credibility of you getting on stage sharing your message.

 

I’ll give you a great statistic we have internally. Again, we’ve worked with over 1000 authors, and we’ve got a big number of authors who have never sold more than 250 copies of their books, but they’ve landed multiple seven figure contracts. The book did what they set out to do. Not only have they now left their impact on society and shared their wisdom with the world, but they’ve also been able to capitalize on that credibility, thought leadership, and lead generation by doing their book.

 

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Building a Winning Company Culture: The Definition of Success

 

Super, super smart. Let’s now shift our kind of spotlight toward, the definition or your definition, to be precise, your definition of the word success. And here’s why I’m asking you this. Because my guess is, or maybe it hasn’t. Has there been any ebb and flow in how you define success, going from six people on a, you know, picnic table, moving to now 4 or 50 people, excuse me, in a rapidly expanding office in Austin.

 

So you know, that word sometimes is really kind of squishy and difficult for business owners to define. So sometimes, you know, hearing a definition from somebody like you can give us perspective and context. So how do you define the word success? Getty. So the definition for me, I’m going to give you from the personal side and from the business side, I’m asked this question a lot.

 

I’ve been so fortunate and blessed to be financially in a good place in life. So, so many people will say, okay, JT, why do you keep working? Why don’t you just retire and lay on the beach somewhere? And my response is always this: why doesn’t Warren Buffett, he’s got more money than I do and he keeps going.

 

So it’s there. There’s obviously a true love affair with what Warren Buffett does. And I would say the same for me is success for me at this point. It pertains to work now as I enjoy seeing that we provide a career opportunity, not a job, a career. If you want a job, go work at somebody. You want a career, come here.

 

And so it’s I enjoy walking around and seeing that we provide benefits for, you know, health benefits, dental benefits for our tribe members. A 401K plan. We’ve helped numerous people work themselves out of credit card debt within our company. So I enjoyed the people aspect of it. You know, when you notice I said we call ourselves a tribe.

 

We don’t say employees. Employees, unfortunately, in the world we live in have become expendable, in my opinion. You know, you know, 5000 employees just got laid off. So I look at it as we are a tribe and we want to serve our tribe. And how can we best do that? By driving results, but also helping people with their career as well.

 

So I do what I do and I define success. And it’s not. The profits are good. Profits pay for people’s homes, benefits, vacations, all of those things. But it’s also the quality of life for me that we provide our tribe members. That’s the definition of success. Because you’re right. If it’s just all about money, I don’t need to be the CEO of the company.

 

But I enjoy looking at the fact that, wow, we were at six people, now we’re pushing 50 and look at the impact we have or on the people who work with us. Now that is such a great perspective. In fact, that takes us into something else. I wonder, ask you about when we’re talking about people, when you’re talking about your tribe and whether we want to put monikers on it like a player’s, you know what?

 

Whatever term, clearly a company that is growing at the clip that you guys are growing has been successful in attracting the right talent. 

 

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Building a Winning Company Culture: Finding Culturally-Fit Team Members

 

So when you think of the team members in your tribe, like, what makes them special? What are some of the attributes or characteristics or whatever term you want to put on it, like when you’re recruiting, what is it that you’re looking for to know that that person’s going to be a great fit for your tribe?

 

You know, one to the best of our ability, we hire for culture first. And when I say the best of our ability is sometimes it’s got to be a one for one meaning they’ve got to have the skill set and be a culture fit. But we’re always looking for culture fit first, because you don’t want to bring in a bad culture fit that will wreck your culture.

 

And I’ll say this to anyone always, always, even if you’ve got to be patient, you’ve got to wait. Hire the best person, not the best available. So many companies find themselves hiring the best available because they’re in this race of speed. We gotta get this role filled, and you end up spending more time with the wrong person and exiting them out, and you end up spending more money and time bringing on the best available versus being patient and waiting for the best person.

 

So we are very, very, hard on making sure we hire, culture fit first, skill set second. And that’s really the model we go by is, okay, is this person the culture fit? We have them. Interviews were 5 to 7 of our tribe members will interview the possible candidates. And afterwards we all collectively get together and we share our opinions, our thoughts, and we make a decision.

 

Okay, is this person the culture of it? What did you see? What did you see? And those are the measurements of how we bring, our new hires, our new tribe members. And I can tell you this for me, that as the CEO, I speak with every individual we hire into the organization throughout the interview process. And I speak with every author we work with.

 

And someone challenged me the other day, Stephen, they said, JT, that’s not scalable, you know? And I said, okay, as CEO, if my role is not scalable the most important things to our company are the people, our tribe members and the authors we work with. If I can’t make time for those people, then why the hell am I even in the role?

 

Right? And so that’s just I will always make time to speak with every person we hire into our organization and make time to speak with every author. We work with such a great perspective. This is again, onward my guest. As you can see, loud and clear here, loud and clear as to why I was so excited when JT said, heck yeah, I’ll do that.

 

And absolutely I’ll come back for an encore. This has been so much fun. Really, truly incredible. But before we go, before we close out and say goodbye, I know we covered a lot. I just want to ask you for any final advice and anything else you’d like to share? Anything you think we might have missed? And then please do tell us the best way to connect with you, my friend.

 

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Building a Winning Company Culture: Final Advice and How to Connect with JT

 

The best way to connect with me is, LinkedIn. I do my best to share my mistakes over the 25 plus years in business. In life that I’ve had, I notice, if you will, here for a second, we live in a society where we have the audacity to say we learned the most through our mistakes, but no one shares their mistakes.

 

So I’m like, okay, wait a minute. That’s the approach of thinking for ourselves. No one shares mistakes, but we literally say, oh, you learned the most through your mistakes and but if you go to LinkedIn blog posts, wherever, you will see the top five things Jeff Bezos does for success. Top ten things Elon Musk does. And I go, okay, can someone send me the top ten mistake list?

 

I want that one. And so, I do my best to share not only successes we’ve had as a company or myself, but I share my mistakes. What did I do wrong? You know, when I was a first time president of a software company? Good God, I made some mistakes. But I believe you only fail if you stop trying.

 

So, you know, I have got a lot of past relationships that I failed in. But you only fail if you stop trying. And so those mistakes I made are the first time as president. My role is to make sure I don’t repeat those mistakes. But I’ve made mistakes as a parent. You all have. I made mistakes, as a CEO.

 

Don’t repeat those mistakes. Continue to learn. Continue to try and get better and to improve. So, the place to find me easily is on LinkedIn. Or you can email me directly at Scribd. Medium.com. I respond to all of my emails may not always be timely, but I will respond. So that’s the easiest place to find me. And then the last thing that I would share with anyone is, depending on where you are in your career is, again, it’s all about surrounding yourself with people who are far smarter than yourself.

 

I never want to be the smartest person in the room, and in fact, if I’m the smartest person in the room and you’re in there with me, we have got issues. So it’s true, don’t set out to be the smartest person in the room. And the very last thing that I would say is ask questions.

 

Have you ever been in a room? And maybe there’s ten people in there, and in your mind you have a question, but you don’t want to ask it. You don’t want to put your hand up only to find out that someone else asked the question and you said you. So who do they ask? Because I wanted to know the answer to that.

 

Trust me. Whenever you have a question, there are 3 to 5 other people in the room who have the same question. Never be the individual scared to raise your hand and ask the question. Phenomenal my friend. I’m just looking back at my notes, from our conversation like 15 minutes ago, you talked about teaching, coaching, mentoring. And that’s exactly what you did here during this encore.

 

And I am grateful for that. And Onward Nation, no matter how many notes you took and I took a bunch, I hope that you did too. Or how many times you go back and relisten to g2’s words of wisdom, which I sure hope that you do. The key is to take this. This was like a curriculum. This was, you know, JT definitely did the teaching.

 

You did the coaching. He did the mentoring. Here. Take it, apply it into your business right away and accelerate your results in JT. We all have the same 86,400 seconds in a day. And I am grateful again, my friend, that you said yes for a second time to come on to the show to be your guide, to help us move our businesses onward to that next level.

 

Thank you so much, JT. Stephen is always humbled and flattered by my friend. And can’t wait to see you here shortly when you come to Austin, this episode is complete, so head over to OnwardNation.com for show notes and more food to fuel your ambition. Continue to find your recipe for success here at Onward Nation.

 

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