Finding the best time to build a company culture doesn’t just happen—it’s time you must intentionally set aside. So… when should you do that? Does it count if you only work with contractors? And how do you keep that culture alive? Josh Dykstra is back with us to discuss how and when to actually design your company culture.

Josh also shares the direct benefit to your ROI from having a company culture, the exact steps to make your guidelines tangible and actionable, and the biggest misconception about company culture. No matter if you’re just starting your design firm or if you’ve had your agency for years, this can be a great moment of reflection for your business. Stay for this week’s Coaching Corner where I share my journey with company culture!

In this episode, we cover:

• How to define and design your company culture

• If it’s possible to build company culture with just one team member

• How company culture directly ties to your ROI

• How having a company culture impacts your decision making as the founder

• Who the internal and external stakeholders are in your business

• The biggest misconception of what company culture is

• The exact steps to make those company culture guidelines tangible

• How to get contractors to buy into your company culture

• How to integrate this company culture into your business

It’s pretty wild just how much the culture of your company impacts every aspect of your business, don’t you think? I hope you’ll take this as an inspirational jumping off point to reflect on the culture you want to create. We’d love to hear from you—share your insights with us on LinkedIn!

More about Josh Dykstra

Josh Allan Dykstra is a recognized thought leader on the future of work and company culture. He is an author, TEDx speaker, and the CEO of #lovework, where they use technology to heal burnout and create astonishingly great places to work.

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More about Success by Design: Mastering the business of interior design

As an interior designer, do you struggle with balancing your passion for creativity with the practical demands and hopes of running a successful business? Whether starting a new venture or scaling an existing firm, the complexities can be overwhelming. Welcome to “Success by Design: Mastering the Business of Interior Design,” a podcast designed to bridge the gap between creativity and entrepreneurship. 

This masterclass is hosted by the dynamic Katie Decker-Erickson, a seasoned expert with nearly 20 years of experience in interior design, a Master's degree in Business Administration, and creator and owner of a multimillion-dollar interior design firm. 

Each episode offers innovative and actionable business strategies, engaging conversations, and practical guidance to help you build and grow a successful design business. Tune in every other Friday on YouTube or any of your favorite podcast platforms to ignite your creative spark and sharpen your entrepreneurial skills. (Topics and language are kid/family friendly.)

This post may contain affiliate links, so I may earn a small commission when you make a purchase through links on my site at no additional cost to you. 

This episode of Success by Design: Mastering the Business of Interior Design is brought to you in partnership with Leah Bryant Co.

The unedited podcast transcript for this episode of the Success by Design: Mastering the business of interior design follows

Katie Decker-Erickson (00:04.49)

Hey Josh, welcome back to the show.

Josh Allan Dykstra (00:18.131)

Ha ha

Josh Allan Dykstra (00:29.71)

Thank you so much, great to be here.

Katie Decker-Erickson (00:32.306)

We're so glad to have you back, especially as we do this series on starting your own design firm. How do you do it? What do you need to know? And you're quickly becoming our company culture guru. CCG for short.

And we wanted to talk with you about how do you create company culture? Because if I'm sitting out here and I remember when I started my business and it was me, it was the me, me and me show, right? And then it was time to bring on the first contractor and then it was the me plus one show. And I wasn't thinking company culture, to be honest with you, because there's one other person and maybe that person is even a contractor and not even an employee. Is it possible to build company culture with one on the person on your team, especially if they're a contractor?

Josh Allan Dykstra (01:19.702)

Yeah, I think you can think about this at any stage. And I think it's honestly really good to think about this stuff even before you have a person or a contractor, right? Because what it does is it clarifies your thinking as the founder. Because what's happening when you create an organization and as you try to grow it, is it is going to have an operating system.

Right, like just like your computer or your phone has an operating system, it cannot function at all without an operating system. So think of your culture like that. And whether you pay attention to the operating system on your phone or not, it's still there and it's still making decisions for you, right? It determines which apps you can run and what you can't and how they work and what can access the camera and what doesn't, right? Your culture is the same. And whether you think about it or not,

Katie Decker-Erickson (01:46.444)

Hmm.

Katie Decker-Erickson (02:05.004)

Hmm.

Josh Allan Dykstra (02:15.494)

it is doing the same thing for your business, right? It's going to be making decisions for you. So it's gonna like, and all of this is going to come from the instincts of the founder, unless the founder gets really intentional and deliberate to outline what it means. And so even if you are a company of one, this is a really great exercise for you to make sure that you're being intentional and deliberate about your operating system.

Katie Decker-Erickson (02:26.274)

Hmm.

Josh Allan Dykstra (02:43.154)

And not just flying by the seat of your pants, like in terms of like what's, what's instinctual for you, because the reality of for, for a lot of us is that sometimes our instincts around business, especially are not great, right? Because we've the, the reality is more managers out there are bad than good, right? They're they, and oftentimes, you know, fault of their own, but overall managers and like the folks we've worked for in the past, maybe didn't set a great example for us. And so.

If we don't know any better, we don't learn any better, we just end up repeating the mistakes of the bad habits we've seen. And that's, so it just keeps getting passed on and passed on and passed on. So absolutely think about this because it will just make you a better business owner, even if you don't end up hiring anybody, because you'll be intentional and deliberate about the kind of system you're creating.

Katie Decker-Erickson (03:36.382)

I love that from the mere fact that it is going to directly affect the lens through which you interact with both your internal stakeholders and your external stakeholders. Let's talk about that. If you don't have employees, you don't have contractors, your internal stakeholder is you, right? Like you are the internal stakeholder. But let's say you do bring somebody on board. Let's first define the terms, internal stakeholder, external stakeholder. Let's start there.

Josh Allan Dykstra (04:04.83)

Yeah, sure. So yeah, essentially what you've got on the inside is anybody who works with you or for you and they have a stake in what you're creating and what you're building to create value for someone on the outside.

Right. The people who buy your services or benefit from your product. Right. So those are the people kind of on the outside. And so, um, yeah, on the inside, the, what happens is the more you can align your, your internal stakeholders, right? The people who are building the service or product to create value for other people. Um, the more you can get those people aligned, the, the better product you create, right, the better service you deliver, uh, the more.

delightful, you make the customer experience. Everything works better when your internal stakeholders are aligned and pulling in the same direction.

Katie Decker-Erickson (05:05.666)

That's so well said. I think sometimes we create a false dichotomy between internal and external stakeholders. And this especially comes up in business school. It came up when I was in business school, when I was teaching business school, it's very common to pit them against each other. But I think you made a really key point. If you keep,

and understand what your internal stakeholders need, the odds are they're gonna go what we affectionately call in our term, or in our firm, the extra 5%. And the extra 5% is what sets you apart from your competition, the extra 5% is what is the deliverable that goes above and beyond for that external stakeholder. And when you take care of those people to use an old Harvey McKay networking term, but dance with the ones that brung ya, so to speak, when you take care of those people taking care of you, they're gonna take care of the people

Josh Allan Dykstra (05:52.823)

Yeah.

Katie Decker-Erickson (05:56.3)

that are on the outside writing your paycheck, taking care of you. And understanding that I think is so incredibly critical. When you say company culture, how do you even define company culture? It's a really lovely term and we know it's important and we need to be intentional. But if we don't understand what it is, how can we be intentional about it? So can you explain that a bit to us?

Josh Allan Dykstra (06:00.728)

Right.

Josh Allan Dykstra (06:21.642)

Yeah, let's, let's go back to the operating system metaphor. Cause I think that's the best way to understand what culture is. Otherwise the culture is just almost by definition, um, absurdly complex, right? If we think about just culture out there in society, right? It's just, right. It's almost understandable. It's so complex, but if we think about it as an operating system, right? So we go back to that example. Now it becomes more tangible.

Katie Decker-Erickson (06:34.998)

completely.

Absolutely.

Josh Allan Dykstra (06:47.838)

Right? Because even though you might not understand how your operating system on your computer works, right? Like neither you or I build those things. But I think conceptually we can understand that, you know, this, this thing is running in the background, right? It's, it's there. It's on all the time. Whenever I'm using the computer, it's, it's running and it's making decisions for me as the user, right? Like this is very, very similar to what the way I understand culture.

Katie Decker-Erickson (07:08.086)

Hmm. Yeah, it is.

Josh Allan Dykstra (07:17.45)

and the way I recommend we understand culture. Because if you think about it that way, it's like, okay, it's also, right, it is complex, right? So there is complexity there, but there's parts of it that we can manipulate or control, right, like I can customize my operating system to a certain extent, and I can change the colors, and I can, you know, change the size of the dock and the windows, and I can make it work for me. And you can do this with your culture too.

Katie Decker-Erickson (07:25.654)

Hmmm

Katie Decker-Erickson (07:37.302)

That's true.

Josh Allan Dykstra (07:46.634)

Right. Um, and so you just have to make some. Decisions about things like, how are we going to talk to customers? Right. Like what is okay for us to say? What kind of refunds are we allowed to give? Right. How do we dialogue with each other and the internal stakeholders, right? Like how do we talk to each other?

Katie Decker-Erickson (08:05.778)

Mmm. Mm-hmm.

Josh Allan Dykstra (08:07.278)

So these are all things that your culture basically decides and it will be decided for you, right? Through your instincts and the choices you make as a founder, unless you make it deliberate, right? Unless you do some design work on your operating system. These things are just going to, they're going to happen. And so yeah, best to best to craft them, best to think about them. But does that make sense with the operating system metaphor? Is that?

Katie Decker-Erickson (08:20.942)

Mm.

Katie Decker-Erickson (08:35.814)

It really does.

Josh Allan Dykstra (08:36.449)

help you understand what it is we're talking about.

Katie Decker-Erickson (08:39.402)

Well, and I love what you said about you have to design.

your operating system. Because I think it's easy too, as design professionals, we operate very strongly on the right half of the brain. We're very happy hanging out in that space. But when you say, oh, it's an operating system, it requires intentionality, et cetera, et cetera, sometimes that deviates into the left side of the brain where you're like, oh gosh, I'm not sure I have that in me. But if you look at it like a design project where you're getting to create your culture, you're getting to design your culture, you're getting to ask those questions

Josh Allan Dykstra (09:06.87)

Hmm? Very much.

Katie Decker-Erickson (09:12.252)

how do you want, just like a good design plan, how do you want this to look and how do you want it to perform? And your culture is no different.

Josh Allan Dykstra (09:20.47)

Yep. Yeah, well this is the other thing, right? Oh, sorry. Yeah, so the other thing I was gonna mention here too is this that often comes up for me at least when thinking about this is a design concept and it's a quote from Steve Jobs. So back in the day, right, Steve said, most people make the mistake of thinking design is what something looks like. It's not, right? Design is how it works.

Katie Decker-Erickson (09:22.462)

So what do we do? Yeah, go for it.

Katie Decker-Erickson (09:40.49)

Mmm.

Josh Allan Dykstra (09:50.902)

Right? And so as design thinkers, right? Like this is a really powerful principle to understand and helps us understand culture. Culture is the same. Culture, many people make the mistake of thinking culture is the perks, right? Culture is like the whatever, the casual Friday and.

Katie Decker-Erickson (09:51.008)

Yep.

Katie Decker-Erickson (10:05.942)

Hmm, hmm. The benefit package.

Josh Allan Dykstra (10:11.662)

Yeah, your benefits and you're like, you know, taco truck that comes by once a week. And it's like in your ping pong table room. And right. It's like, no, those are that's the veneer. Right. That's just what it that's just what it looks like. Right. It's not it's not what it actually is. Right. Culture is how you work with each other in a day to day way. Like that is what your culture actually is.

Katie Decker-Erickson (10:23.695)

Oh, that's a great term.

Katie Decker-Erickson (10:32.342)

Cough cough

Katie Decker-Erickson (10:36.426)

how you function and how do you think your external stakeholders feel that? Because there is a very different feeling walking into one business as compared to another. I mean, we feel it.

Josh Allan Dykstra (10:44.354)

Hmm.

Katie Decker-Erickson (10:49.45)

But how do we create the feeling we want our clients to have? How do we create this culture that's so, even though we're talking about an intangible concept, it becomes so powerful, it becomes tangible to our clients, it becomes tangible to our vendors, our manufacturers. They understand, oh, you're working with ColorWorks Design, this is how they're gonna run and do that.

Josh Allan Dykstra (11:10.68)

Hmm.

Josh Allan Dykstra (11:15.626)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. No, it's, it, it does, it impacts, it impacts everything, right? It really, um, so it bleeds into the way that everybody experiences everything. Right? So whether you're talking about your internal or your external, right? All of these things are impacted by how we've, we've decided we can work together. So the way we like to define this is we, a lot of companies talk about things like values, right?

And values are fine, right? Certainly that's one way to think about kind of the operating system of your company, it's beliefs, right? It's like core beliefs and values. The way we would recommend doing this though is to take it one step further and actually talk about vital behaviors. So, okay, we believe these, yeah, we believe these things, that's fine.

Katie Decker-Erickson (11:48.843)

Hmm.

Katie Decker-Erickson (12:01.474)

Hmm. Ooh, I like that term.

Josh Allan Dykstra (12:09.066)

What does it look like if those are turned into behaviors that I can see and you can see me do and I can see you do or not do? And so that's what helps make these things tangible. So one of the first steps that I would recommend if you're starting to think about how do I design my cultural operating system? Start by out taking your core beliefs and values and that's fine if you've thought about that, but take them and translate them.

into vital behaviors. What are the behaviors that are most vital for your people or just you to do? How do you, like, and really try to get a list of probably three to seven of these. Right, you don't want too few and you don't want too many, but make them action-oriented. They should be phrases that probably start with verbs, like ours are things like run the experiment.

Katie Decker-Erickson (12:44.815)

Mm-hmm.

Katie Decker-Erickson (12:51.205)

Mm-hmm.

Katie Decker-Erickson (12:58.858)

Hmm.

Josh Allan Dykstra (13:02.374)

Start with energy, share the love, right? Like all of these, they start with verbs and they're things that you can, and then we define what those things mean with a few bullet points underneath. And so this is absolutely where I would start, right? Is to think about your vital behaviors, what you want your vital behaviors to be.

Katie Decker-Erickson (13:02.881)

Oh, interesting.

Katie Decker-Erickson (13:22.026)

So if I throw at you one of the core values of our company, which is kindness, actually, I think kindness is something that through COVID has just gotten lost. It's kind of been sacrificed on the table of necessity and survival and getting through. And how would I take a core value of kindness and how would you turn that into actionable?

Josh Allan Dykstra (13:33.464)

Yeah.

Josh Allan Dykstra (13:45.894)

Yeah, so I think what you'd want to do is try to get, cause that's a.

Katie Decker-Erickson (13:47.262)

I'm putting you on the spot here, Josh. I'm so sorry.

Josh Allan Dykstra (13:55.974)

Let's see. So it would be, I mean you could do something like, like share the love, right, would be one way to say kindness. I think, so this is where it has to be uniquely you, right? This is where you get a chance to show, because there's a lot of ways I think to express kindness. So what I would recommend is for you to think about how.

Katie Decker-Erickson (14:05.835)

Hmm.

Katie Decker-Erickson (14:13.372)

Mmm.

Katie Decker-Erickson (14:19.603)

Yeah.

Josh Allan Dykstra (14:22.306)

Like what's most important to us? What's most important to me in that term of kindness? Right, so I would want to like drill down on that with you and say, what does that mean? Right, like, okay, yeah, this, I agree with you. This is, has been kind of getting lost. But like for you, what does an act of kindness look like? Right. And how do you want people to be able to say, oh yeah, I saw my colleague live that vital behavior.

Katie Decker-Erickson (14:33.075)

Nah.

Katie Decker-Erickson (14:42.097)

Hmm.

Josh Allan Dykstra (14:51.158)

Right? Like what do you want it to show up like? That's what you've got to get to. It's probably a phrase. Right. It's probably something about, maybe it's spread kindness always. Or right. Or something. Right. It's probably something like that.

Katie Decker-Erickson (14:51.947)

Mm-hmm.

Katie Decker-Erickson (14:56.024)

Mm-hmm.

Katie Decker-Erickson (15:08.386)

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, it even goes back to that, go the extra 5%. Like, that's a kindness thing, right? It's the 5% in your attitude, it's the 5% in the client deliverable, it's the 5% in how you interact with everybody else on the team. It's just that extra 5% that becomes a tipping point, to borrow Malcolm Gladwell's term, it just becomes a tipping point. And...

Josh Allan Dykstra (15:20.046)

Sure.

Katie Decker-Erickson (15:32.786)

Yeah, going the extra 5% it's become an unofficial motto for us. In fact, it's funny, we actually get frustrated when with various internal external stakeholders when we're like, all we needed was the extra 5%, you know?

Josh Allan Dykstra (15:49.994)

Yeah, I think that's perfect though. Like, and that seems, but how much more specific and memorable and powerful is it to say go the extra 5% than it is to say kindness, right? It's just so much more, at least to my ears, my heart, it's just so much more descriptive and poignant, right? So like, I think that's exactly what you should do. It's more things like that.

Katie Decker-Erickson (16:04.004)

Yeah.

Katie Decker-Erickson (16:10.962)

Yeah.

Katie Decker-Erickson (16:18.454)

How do you make sure these are integrated into your business? I think that's a lot of times the problem is there's this values, which I love that you're taking values and you're making them actionable. That's critical, I feel like. Step one, like you've got to take the word and you've got to make it a verb. Absolutely. Then how do we keep these?

actionable verb oriented points from just gathering dust and living on the about us section of our website, right? Like how do we start to breed them into the DNA of our internal and external communications with these people that are writing our paychecks in multiple ways?

Josh Allan Dykstra (16:46.777)

Yeah.

Josh Allan Dykstra (16:58.474)

Yeah. I think of most of this happening kind of behind the scenes with your internal stakeholders, right? So these are activities you're going to do with, with your, your people, right? Your team, whether they're contractors or employees. Um, but what we would recommend is probably at some reasonable frequency, you want to create repetition and you want to have your team call each other out for having seen others live the behaviors.

Katie Decker-Erickson (17:21.186)

Mmm.

Katie Decker-Erickson (17:25.671)

Mm.

Josh Allan Dykstra (17:28.558)

And so whether that happens in Slack or in Teams or yeah, or in your regular weekly all hands meeting or your once a month all hands meeting, wherever it happened, monthly might not be frequently enough for my liking. But however you can do it, do it frequently, get people to start saying, hey, I saw Katie do this the other day and it was fabulous. And it-

Katie Decker-Erickson (17:29.418)

Ooh, that's powerful.

Katie Decker-Erickson (17:55.542)

Hmm.

Josh Allan Dykstra (17:55.81)

you know, she went the extra 5% in this way. And right, what you're doing there is you're showing, you're taking time to do that, right? So just by taking time, you are showing that this is important, right? Like everybody on the team is here, and we are taking valuable, expensive time to talk about this. That is, like just by doing that, you're demonstrating how important it is

Katie Decker-Erickson (18:04.28)

Mm-hmm, yeah.

Josh Allan Dykstra (18:25.678)

to how important it is to you, the founder, like this is not negotiable, right? Like if you want to work here, this is how we strive to live. And that's the feeling you're going for. And it becomes a virtuous cycle, right? Because you're putting time behind it, you're putting effort and love behind it. And then people start to say, oh, this is what it means to work here. And you know, it also feels really good to get kind of like called out in a cool way for doing something great.

Katie Decker-Erickson (18:29.194)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Katie Decker-Erickson (18:54.366)

Yeah. Right?

Josh Allan Dykstra (18:55.922)

So that becomes very virtuous cycle too.

Katie Decker-Erickson (18:59.198)

It's such a good point. We call them shout outs, but it's so incredibly valuable to give the shout outs. In fact, we just also did everybody's love languages to reference Gary Chapman. He said, how do you receive love? And it was funny. And I shouldn't really say funny, but it was interesting to sit back and look at like.

Do you need to have an in-person meetup dinner? Do you need those shout outs every meeting? Do you just need to spend time hanging out with me so that you understand where we're going as a company to the point of quality time? And realizing what everybody needs, because some people, their love language isn't those words of affirmation, which was surprising to me, because I thought they were. So I'm giving shout outs to people that are like, whatever, stop talking. I don't wanna hear it anymore, Katie. They'd rather just sit.

Josh Allan Dykstra (19:22.082)

Yeah.

Katie Decker-Erickson (19:47.686)

on a one-on-one call with them during the week and just say, how are you? Where are we at? This is the direction I see us going. And then they're like, oh, now I've got buy-in, I understand. And so just even tweaking that to understand, I wanna give you a shout out, but it has to be in your love language.

Josh Allan Dykstra (20:06.538)

Yep. I think that's, yep. So same, same concept, right? Just make sure you're doing it around your vital behaviors, right? So yeah, great shout outs for doing, catching people doing things. Right. Is great. Anytime. Um, and yeah, make sure you're adding this in there. If you want this to benefit your culture, right? It really has to be around your vital behaviors, right? Like that's cause that's the thing you're trying to reinforce is that. Around here, we work like this. Um, and you've got to get that into the regular dialogue. So it.

Katie Decker-Erickson (20:32.379)

I love that.

Josh Allan Dykstra (20:35.262)

So it doesn't just end up being a picture of a bald eagle on the wall that says integrity in your conference room.

Katie Decker-Erickson (20:39.926)

That's so true. Oh my gosh, you're taking me back to those posters in the like 80s and 90s with like the inspirational quotes and the mallards with the black frame. Oh my, was that a legacy. Talk to me about when cultures go off the rails. So inspirational, no sarcasm noted. Talk to me though about when we see culture go off. When it, I'm sure.

Josh Allan Dykstra (20:46.186)

Yeah.

Exactly. Right? So inspirational.

Katie Decker-Erickson (21:04.57)

A big box retailer, which we can all think of, started out having a great culture back in the day, and its founder had a vision and a legacy, and then it grew and it changed and it morphed, and now it just feels like a vacuous black hole when it comes to culture. When do cultures start to fall apart, and how do you see it early on as someone starting a firm?

Josh Allan Dykstra (21:30.378)

Yeah, I actually tend to think that this starts from the very beginning, honestly. And I think what happens is, you know, sometimes businesses get really successful because they've got a very timely idea, you know, that really meets a need in society. And it really has nothing to do with culture, right? And actually sometimes happens in spite of culture.

Katie Decker-Erickson (21:35.145)

Interesting.

Katie Decker-Erickson (21:43.35)

Hmm.

Josh Allan Dykstra (21:54.326)

Right? Like Amazon is actually kind of a decent example of this in many ways, right? They, they do have a really defined culture, but it's very particular. And in many ways, I would say not terribly healthy, but obviously very successful, right? In terms of money and influence. And so, yeah, sadly, these things don't always go together.

Katie Decker-Erickson (22:09.899)

Mmm.

Katie Decker-Erickson (22:13.427)

Mm-hmm.

Josh Allan Dykstra (22:22.378)

in that way, because you can find examples of great big companies that don't have great cultures. But what you do is if you look at this from another direction and you say, okay, what companies out there do have great cultures and then see how they are performing, generally speaking they actually do outperform other companies in many ways. So

Katie Decker-Erickson (22:43.351)

Hmm.

Katie Decker-Erickson (22:48.764)

Mm-hmm.

Josh Allan Dykstra (22:53.406)

What I think we can take from this is to say, you can't build a company without having a great culture. And if you hit it just right, whether you hit the timing right or you hit the product right, you might get lucky. But just think about how much greater you could have been if you had not squashed the human spirit out of everybody on your way there. And this is what I think about a company like Amazon. Like.

Katie Decker-Erickson (23:12.438)

Hmm.

Katie Decker-Erickson (23:18.11)

So true.

Josh Allan Dykstra (23:21.006)

How much better could they be had they not squashed so many human spirits on their path to being this empire that they are now? And so that I think is the interesting question for me. But I do think they kind of go off the rails from the very beginning because so much of this stuff gets imbued into the cultural operating system by the mindset of the founder. You can see this again at Amazon. Look at the leadership principles.

Right, so much of this stuff like Bezos put into that, it's still there, right? It is enduring so much of this cultural stuff for better or worse, right? Think about the way Jobs thought about Apple. A lot of it's still there, right? So this stuff, it lasts, it endures, and you really do want to think very, and I would let this be an encouragement to us, right, to think.

Katie Decker-Erickson (23:55.902)

Yeah. For better or worse.

Josh Allan Dykstra (24:17.678)

cautiously, think carefully, think intentionally about the operating system we're creating from the very beginning.

Katie Decker-Erickson (24:24.714)

Well, and the word that keeps coming to mind as you're talking is sustainable. Like what is sustainable? What is pragmatic?

and what is the ROI. And so we can say, well, culture's a really nice pie in the sky concept. The reality is your culture is directly linked to your ROI. And I don't think a lot of businesses understand that. But if you have, to your point about Amazon, if you have a company culture that is soul sucking and built on the backs of people, every time you have to train a new person into that position because someone left completely frustrated, irritated,

annoyed and depleted, it is costing you a bunch of money to get a new body back in that chair, whether you're building a widget or you're doing critical thinking at a C-suite level, it is going to cost you an intense amount of money to get that person up to speed on their job, on their co-workers, on their external stakeholders. I mean, it's exorbitant when you really think about it.

Josh Allan Dykstra (25:26.794)

Yeah. No, it's yeah. And unfortunately, we, we have a lot of mindset still in the world of business that these costs of turnover and retraining and re-skilling and backfilling. And this is just kind of like acceptable cost of doing business. And again, it's just like, why, why? Like, why would we do that? That's just so.

It's so silly, like you could be so much better. You could be making so much more money. Like if you wanna put it in that lens, we could talk, right, like exactly to your point, this is inordinately expensive to lose people and have to retrade people, have to hire and recruit and backfill. Like it's just, it's insane to me that we can't have a little bit higher of a bar in business than where it's kind of currently at.

Katie Decker-Erickson (26:21.835)

I wholeheartedly agree with you. 100% agree, and I think especially as we're sitting here today recording this, unemployment numbers are exceptionally low. And I always, and arguably that's a really good thing.

I think it also puts the onus on the business owner to really work with the people that are on your team and try to figure it out. As I like to say, there's no one coming behind you. And that's becoming more and more of a thing because we never want to look at people as disposable. But when the unemployment rate is high, it's much easier for large companies to do so. We have to take 7% out of this many people at this salary level. It doesn't matter who they are in output or they go.

yeah, to retrain and re-bring and re-do costs so much. How does company culture retain employees as well? How do you think that is a value add? Because like you said, a lot of people just see it as the benefit package or the foosball tables or whatnot. But long-term, how does that keep people on board?

Josh Allan Dykstra (27:28.562)

Yeah, one really great way to see this is one of my mentors says, you can pay someone to come to your company, but you can't pay them enough to stay. And what he, what he means by that, right. And we saw this a lot during the great resignation and that, that time period where people were jumping, they were jumping for an extra $20,000 or whatever across the street to this other company. And then they found out that company culture was garbage. And then they tried to go back to their old one.

Katie Decker-Erickson (27:38.254)

That's great.

Katie Decker-Erickson (27:43.958)

Yeah.

Josh Allan Dykstra (27:57.066)

Right? And right, because you just can't, you can pay me to come. Right? I will check it out. Right? I'll, I'll jump over and see what you've got. But goodness, right? I will burn out, right? If your culture is crap, right? I will burn out and your leadership, right? Is subpar. I will burn out. I will get sick of it. And I will stay as long as I have to, you know, ride out my golden handcuffs. And then I'm getting the hell out. Right? Cause you just can't pay me enough to stay in an environment like that.

Katie Decker-Erickson (28:11.115)

Yep.

Katie Decker-Erickson (28:23.126)

Totally.

Josh Allan Dykstra (28:27.058)

So it absolutely makes a huge, huge difference, right? Culture is the reason. Culture and the people I work with and the mission I work for, these are the reasons people stay at a company.

Katie Decker-Erickson (28:38.526)

And my final question for you is how do you relate this to contractors? Because maybe you hire a contractor. Our team is predominantly, we have all contractors. We don't have one employee. And I would love to think we have a really great culture. We keep our contractors, they go the extra 5%. They see themselves not as a contractor to ColorWorks, they see themselves as ColorWorks. And I have worked.

So hard for that and I love those people so much. But how do you see that tangibly happening when you could just say, well, they're a contractor, they're doing the job we asked them to do, but they don't really understand who we are as a company.

Josh Allan Dykstra (29:22.602)

Yeah. How do you think you do that, Katie? Like what would, like, so you feel like that your contractors are connected. What, why do you think that is?

Katie Decker-Erickson (29:32.254)

It's all our C words, our kindness, connected. I love that you said connected. I think it's care. To me, it's really caring. And your internal stakeholders, your clients feel if you care, your, I should say your external stakeholders, your internal stakeholders very much care. We've created an environment, I want to say, we've created an environment where it's okay to not be okay. If you have, it's summer and you have kids home from school and you need to...

Change hours or you need a meeting moved or you want to attend but can't be there. So we'll record it for you it's an environment of transparency where you can be true to who you are what you believe and what you can deliver and That for us has proven sustainable Because that's a place where We work together not against each other and I think that's a big thing, but that's my myopic view

I mean, you're seeing a lot of organizations doing all sorts of different things. And I mean, does any of that parlay or you what is your perspective?

Josh Allan Dykstra (30:39.37)

Yeah, no, that's why I wanted you to answer this, because I think you've got it, right? Sometimes we think this stuff is actually more complex or difficult. Yeah, we think it's more complex or difficult than it actually is. When really, if you do the things that you just talked about, try to create transparency. Try to let, show that you actually care. Be kind to each other. Treat people like...

Katie Decker-Erickson (30:45.644)

We're trying.

Josh Allan Dykstra (31:06.038)

the adults that they are with complex lives that happen outside of work and let there be some flexibility. Well, like none of this stuff is like rocket science complicated. It just feels difficult because most workplaces don't fricking do it. So it's not actually difficult, it's just different. Because really what you're talking about is.

Katie Decker-Erickson (31:10.246)

Yes.

Katie Decker-Erickson (31:27.934)

It's so well said.

Josh Allan Dykstra (31:31.134)

Yeah, this is the stuff that makes a great culture. It's actually letting people be humans. And that's hard, but it's not hard for the reasons we think it's hard. It's hard because there aren't a lot of great examples that do it that way.

Katie Decker-Erickson (31:37.302)

Mmmm

Katie Decker-Erickson (31:47.358)

I can't think of a better note to end on Josh. Utterly brilliant. Once again, thank you for speaking into this space, taking something that feels big and voluminous like a cloud and breaking it down into something that's tangible that we can implement and integrate. And your time and your truth speaks volumes. Thank you for joining us today.

Josh Allan Dykstra (32:07.428)

Thank you for having me.