The ROI of a Strong Company Culture
With Guest Kate Volman
Why clear expectations might matter more than fancy perks
The How to Sell More Podcast
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November 6, 2024
In this candid conversation on "How to Sell More," host Mark Drager talks with Kate Volman, CEO of Floyd Consulting, about the hidden costs of poor company culture and the surprising ROI of getting it right.
Kate breaks down why your best employees might be silently planning their exit, and how simple changes in leadership approach could keep them engaged and productive. She challenges the "just pay them more" mentality with real examples of how investing in people development has saved companies hundreds of thousands in turnover costs.
If you've ever wondered why top performers leave or how to build a team that stays, Kate's insights might just change how you think about the real value of company culture.
When you create an environment where people feel like they can tell the truth and they can make mistakes, and we're all working to build something together, and people have trust in their leadership—that's when you have different conversations. -- Kate Volman
Top 3 Reasons to Listen
Learn about the real cost of poor culture: The concrete examples of financial impact and near-misses provide compelling evidence for why culture matters to the bottom line.
Master employee engagement: The unique approach to combining personal and professional development offers a fresh perspective on retaining top talent.
Build trust-based cultures: The practical insights on creating open communication channels and psychological safety provide actionable steps for improving team dynamics.
Follow Kate Volman on Social
Listen to her podcast "Lead with Culture"
Check out her book - "Do What You Love"
More About Today's Guest, Kate Volman
Empowering Teams to DREAM & Engage | CEO, Best-Selling Author
Kate Volman is the CEO of Floyd Consulting, a company dedicated to helping individuals and organizations become the best versions of themselves. With over 15 years of consulting experience, Kate provides training, coaching, and consulting services, including Floyd's cornerstone Dream Manager program. She's a sought-after speaker who has worked with major brands like GoDaddy, Entrepreneur.com, and StartUpNation.com. Kate is the author of "Do What You Love: A Guide to Living Your Creative Life Without Leaving Your Job" and co-hosts two podcasts: "Create For No Reason" and "Lead With Culture." Her expertise spans marketing, business development, leadership, and entrepreneurship, making her a valuable resource for professionals seeking personal and organizational growth.
Key Takeaways
- Impact of organizational culture on business success - Strong company culture is built on intentional leadership, clear expectations, and investment in people's growth. This foundation directly affects employee engagement, retention, and ultimately, business performance.
- Importance of comprehensive hiring and onboarding processes - Success in building great teams requires systematic approaches to hiring, clear role definitions, and proper onboarding procedures, rather than relying on gut feelings or rushing to fill positions.
- Value of employee development and coaching - Creating a coaching culture where employees feel supported in both personal and professional growth leads to higher engagement, better retention, and improved business outcomes.
A Transcription of The Talk
Mark Drager: We've had the chance to have a ton of different conversations, on stages, on digital stages, on each other's podcasts. And when we connected, and I was like, "You should come on the How to Sell More podcast," your first response was like, "What are we going to talk about?" And then when we had the chance to reconnect, we realized very, very quickly that there’s so much overlap between what we talk about on How to Sell More and what Floyd Consulting does.
So, one, I want to welcome you, and two, can you just help fill the audience in a little bit on what you do as CEO of Floyd Consulting?
Kate Volman: Yes, and first of all, so great to see you. I love when we get to reconnect—it is always so great. And I love the fact that we haven’t talked in so long, but we just jumped right into the conversation and got to catch up a little bit, which is great.
As the CEO of Floyd Consulting, I get to work with a team of incredible individuals, and our whole mission is to help organizations become the best version of themselves. Our mission is to grow people, and we believe that an organization can only be the best version of itself to the extent that its people are becoming better versions of themselves. And so all the work that we do is around that.
Our flagship program is The Dream Manager, which is based on Matthew Kelly’s bestselling book The Dream Manager. It’s an employee engagement program that we help companies implement to really help enhance their team members. It boosts engagement, it helps increase retention, and it’s really beautiful work that helps the whole person—not just about becoming a better leader or a better team member, but about becoming a better individual. Because if somebody is growing personally, they’re growing professionally.
Mark Drager: I don’t know if you’re a fan of Ramsey or not—Dave Ramsey. For some reason, over the last maybe eight or nine months, he has completely dominated my YouTube channel, so I guess I’ve become a fan of him and his organization, his daughter.
Kate Volman: It’s the algorithm, Mark. It just keeps feeding you!
Mark Drager: I guess so! And I’m not going to touch on how much he likes debt or doesn’t like debt, but he said something in a clip that really caught me, which is, "You can’t win the Kentucky Derby on a donkey." And I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone—maybe it’s that southern charm—I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone put it quite that way. But it struck me that so many business owners are working with what we feel is the best team we can, based on budgets, based on skill sets, based on availability.
But if we’re being honest as leaders—if you’re listening to this and if you’re really being honest as a leader—it is so much work to level up staff or teams, to build better systems or processes, to worry about replacing someone, and to wonder, "What if someone is not as good as they could be?" or "What if we’re having super high turnover in our organization?" All of this stuff is so much time and so much work, and so often, I think we’re just more comfortable trying to ride the donkey and hoping it’s going to help us win the race. But if we’re building great organizations, if we’re building great teams, and we want to grow our sales, grow our businesses—that’s not going to happen without great people. I’m totally softballing this to you, Kate, but isn’t that right?
Kate Volman: Yes, yes, and yes! It’s so interesting because we are fortunate to work with incredible leaders who understand the importance of culture and people development. A leader’s number one role is to help their people grow—that’s what we need to do. If we expect our people to be on board with the mission and the vision, then we have to be very intentional about culture—creating a culture that people want. They want to come and work and be part of the mission that you are driving toward, so everyone on the team can do their best work.
We have to look at all of the different areas of what impacts culture. I mentioned The Dream Manager—Matthew Kelly also wrote a book called The Culture Solution, and a lot of the work we do is based on The Culture Solution, where he shares the six principles of a dynamic culture. Principle number four is about creating a coaching culture—having a culture where people feel like they’re actually growing. Because when you have really good people on your team, they want to grow, they want to get better, they want to develop. They want to be part of a winning team. And they want to know that they have a leader who believes in them—not only because of what they can do for the organization, but because the leader believes in them as a person and wants to help them grow individually.
It’s a beautiful thing. We get to work with leaders who are already bought into the fact that culture matters. I would assume that your listeners, because they’re listening to this show, are those types of people. They’re building great cultures, and they’re intentional about what that looks like.
Mark Drager: Can I tell you, you know a bit about my past, and I think the listeners know that we’ve been in marketing for a very long time. I’ve had clients come to me in the past, and they’ve literally said—I’m thinking of an industrial manufacturer out of the States—“Listen, our product is harder to work with, it’s more expensive, and everybody hates it. How are we going to sell this thing?” And I’m thinking, "Oh my gosh." I’m sure you’ve run into organizations where it's like, "Listen, our people aren’t very good, our systems are kind of terrible, it’s embarrassing, we get terrible customer reviews, and we make mistakes all the time." Like, okay, so if that’s you—you’re probably not listening to this podcast. As you mentioned, if you’re listening to this podcast, you’re on the other side of that, which means you care about your business, you care about your team, you care about your customers, you care about your clients. You want to get better. You want to be able to progress.
But things are so much easier—if we’re tying this back to sales—sales is so much easier when you can confidently count on your team to be able to deliver and help the client and hit the goals that you want to hit. And customer service is so much easier when you are in a culture of trust, and you’re not worried about constantly making mistakes. You can maybe break protocol or break the SOP in order to make the client’s problem disappear. So much of this stuff comes back to—especially for service-based organizations, especially in B2B—our entire businesses, if it’s a service-based business that is built on people, yes, there are systems, and yes, there are processes, but your entire company is built on your people.
So, I would love to know, what are some of the common challenges that medium-sized businesses like ours, like our listeners, are facing, and how do we go about fixing those problems?
Kate Volman: The biggest challenges that we see—there’s a couple. The first is hiring and retaining. Right? All of our leaders—we work with a lot of CEOs, a lot of executives—and hiring is always number one. How do you find the right people? How do you get the right people on board? And then, not only that, but most people don’t have a hiring process. That’s the problem. They do not have a process for hiring. And so, if you don’t have a process for hiring, then you’re making all the common mistakes we make, like going off your gut, or you like that person, you want to be their friend. Right? Like, we’ve all made a hiring mistake. What’s crazy is, we do it because we’ve got to fill the seat. We don’t want to deal with it. We don’t want to take care of the work.
When really, we all know it takes way more work if we hire the wrong person. And we know within a week, or within a couple of days, when we’ve made the wrong decision. And what happens is, oftentimes, we will keep that person way longer than we should. So, we work with a lot of executives, and they’ll constantly come to a coaching session with a challenge with the same person. So, we’ll get on the call, and I’m like, “All right, what are we talking about? Again, this person?” And they’ll just laugh and say, “Yeah.” So, finally, you ask the question, “Okay, if this person quit today, how would you feel?” And their response is always, “Oh my gosh, relief. I would feel amazing. It would be so great.”
If that is your answer, why do you still have this person? And so, I could go on and on about those types of challenges that people have. It really comes down to having a really great hiring process so that you do find quality people, and then you onboard them correctly. They feel like they’re part of the team. They know what their mission is. They understand the role, and now you’re building a great team.
Mark Drager: But you’ve just covered off a whole bunch of things that I, as an entrepreneur, tend not to think fully through. And I imagine most business owners may not either. So even there, where you’re like, “Okay, so we do this, and then we do onboarding, and then we do this,” onboarding assumes that you know how to onboard someone, and that you have a program or ability to teach them the role. It assumes that you have SOPs or standard operating procedures or ways to handle certain things. Being able to do check-ins, weekly or monthly check-ins, or whatever it might be, assumes that you have a process for checking in with people, and that they have a clear job description, and that they understand the KPIs that they’re going to be measured against.
I can rhyme these things off, but if you ask me whether my team had these things, I mean, frankly, they don’t.
Kate Volman: Honest, Mark! I’m going to be honest.
Mark Drager: I’m going to be honest here. We’re a small team. I’m an entrepreneur, so I am constantly, rapidly prototyping. I’m constantly changing things to the point where—there’s not corporate whiplash, not that—I mean, I’ve learned that the hard way. But, you know, when you’re building something, it’s not the time to optimize, right? Optimization comes later. But I feel like, even as you rhyme those things off, there’s so much work that goes into each of these elements. You know what I mean?
Kate Volman: Yeah, and that’s why people don’t do it. Exactly what you just said. Because it is a lot of work to put together a hiring process. It’s a lot of work to sit down and write a role description and a scorecard for every single position that you fill. I can’t believe how many companies hire, and they actually don’t really know what the role is. They’re like, “I know I need someone, because we’re all really busy, and we need to bring somebody else on board.” Do you? Maybe you don’t.
So, before you even think about hiring your next person, what is their role description? What’s the scorecard? How are they being— to your point—how are they being evaluated? What does that look like? Because that’s another challenge that we see in a lot of these businesses. It always comes down to the expectations gap. There’s what we expect to happen, and then there’s what actually happens, and then there’s this huge gap in between.
That happens every day. The leader is working with someone, and they’re expecting work to get done, and it doesn’t get done. So, both parties are frustrated because the team member thinks they did the job. The leader says, “No, this is not what you’re supposed to do.” So, if those people came together and you asked them to write down, “Okay, what do you think was expected of you?” and asked both of them to write that down, oftentimes they’re not the same. The expectations look different.
Mark Drager: This actually costs the business. I’m not asking you to quantify it in an actual number, but you know, I had a very, very large client—they were in business for 150, 160 years, publicly traded company—and they lacked… when I came into their business, looked at the branding, looked at the marketing, looked at the messaging, sales. When we analyzed the business, they were missing so many core components, in my opinion. And I remember sitting down with the leader, and I turned to them and I said, “If you are this successful, and your shareholders are this happy with things being as broken as they are, imagine how great it will be when we fix these things.”
And so, if someone is turning to you, and if a leader is turning to you for coaching, they know there’s a need. They know there’s desire. If they’re looking to create a stronger team, again, I love that intention. And if you’re on your last legs, or up against bankruptcy, or you’re struggling to get by, you’re probably not focused on some of these things—you’re probably just focused on, “Let’s go out there and let’s sell.” But I’m curious how much this is actually costing businesses in the day to day.
Kate Volman: Well, obviously every business would be different, but if you actually quantified it, I bet we would both be surprised at the number for businesses. I’ll give you an example. I talked to a woman today, Mark, and when I tell you she is so frustrated with her leader—this was an hour-long coaching session—on how frustrated she was. She wasn’t going to be able to work today. She just couldn’t get out of her head. How much productivity is being lost because she’s so stuck in her head, because she’s so upset about this situation that her leader has no idea about? Her leader has no idea that she’s sitting here stewing about this when she should be working. Right? And this happens every single day in organizations all over the world.
Mark Drager: One, it does, I imagine it does. I can't personally imagine spending a day not doing anything because I'm angry. I mean, I’m a business owner, right? If you're a leader, if you're an executive, you’ve got stuff to do. I’m sure it happens, but to me, that just seems mind-boggling.
Kate Volman: I know. But, well, first of all, you could go down the rabbit hole with this—there are all different types of personalities. So, everyone on your team has a different personality. Some people, if they’re upset about something, it’s going to take a toll. Obviously, you're going to get work done, but think about when you're upset, frustrated, or feeling down about something—it’s still in the back of your mind. Whether you believe it or not, it's influencing the work that you're doing. If it's really bothering you that much, it’s there. So, it's just interesting when you think about how many leaders aren't asking their team, "How are you? What’s going on?"
Mark Drager: You know what? We’re all afraid of the truth. I remember watching this movie a few years ago—maybe it was a TV show—where this character said the reason she really loved her dad was because they used to say, "There’s no... you should never be afraid of the truth," or, "There’s no fear in the truth." And so, I know that asking a client, “Hey, what did you think of working with us?”—most people won’t do it because they’re afraid of the possibility of a negative comment. When that negative comment could point out something that can make your systems and company better.
A lot of people don’t want the accountability of tracking KPIs, measuring, and tracking because they’re worried it’s going to be reduced to ROI, productivity levels, or KPIs they just won’t live up to. A lot of people don’t want that accountability or they don’t want to be measured. And I think a lot of leaders and teams are afraid to ask their staff or address these issues because they don’t want to bring it out into the light.
But, in my experience, we shouldn’t be afraid of the truth. We’re kicking off a brand new campaign with a client tomorrow, and we’ve been auditing their numbers. It’s a brand new activity, a brand new campaign, so some of the numbers are coming back with zeros. Now, I know it’s not that they haven’t done anything; it’s that tracking hasn’t been set up. And because tracking hasn’t been set up, we don’t have access to the numbers. So now it’s going to take a few months for us to benchmark these numbers, and these numbers that come back might be good or they might be terrible.
But should we not do the campaign at all because, in the first few months, things don’t look good? Or should we start fixing the teams? Should we start engaging with our employees? Should we start coaching? Should we start talking about the issues that are here? Because if we don’t look at where we’re starting from, we can’t just jump straight to everything being fixed. Do you know what I mean?
Kate Volman: Yeah. Well, there are two things that I think of. One, going back to what you said about not being able to imagine being upset for a day—that’s why coaching matters. Because when you create an environment where people feel like they can tell the truth and they can make mistakes, and we’re all working to build something together, and people have trust in their leadership—when you’re building that, you have different conversations. That person won’t be upset for the whole day because they know they can go to their leader and talk about it, and it gets taken care of in five minutes rather than five hours.
So, what you were just talking about, I wrote down trust, culture, and coaching. We have to have trust in our leaders—that they actually want to help us get better and grow, that they believe we are part of the team, and that we believe in the mission and want to grow. And what does that mean? That means having conversations like, “Hey, this is going to be uncomfortable because we’re going to see numbers and we don’t know what they’re going to look like. And guess what? They may be really bad, and we have to be okay with that. We have to be okay with the fact that maybe they’ll be bad for six months or a year.”
When we’re talking about any type of new initiative, it’s important for the leader to very clearly define what this new initiative is. But when people hear that, what are they thinking? They’re thinking, “Okay, this is the mission, this is where we’re going.” But also, what are they thinking? “What does that look like for me? How is that impacting me and my role?”
Leaders have to be aware of that. Sometimes, leaders get so focused on, “Here’s the vision, here’s the mission, we’re all going in this direction.” But you also have to think, “Who’s on my team? How do they learn? How do they grow? How do they communicate?” Because everyone communicates differently. Some people are very comfortable being in what I like to call "the messy middle." Some people are very uncomfortable. They don’t like it; they want to know, step by step, “Where am I going? What am I doing? What’s my role?”
And when you’re implementing something new, there has to be this kind of fluidity of, “Alright, we’re doing this together as a team.” But so often, we have team members who say, “Hey, we’re doing this as a team and working together,” but then they get reprimanded for bringing things up or having conversations that they thought were open but weren’t. And that’s where the challenges lie.
So, if you have a culture—if you have a coaching culture—where everyone really believes, “Hey, we’re here to have conversations, we’re here to voice our opinions and our concerns.” Not everything that you bring to the table is going to be used. But if you feel like, “At least I know that my leader will listen to my ideas,” then you're going to hear a lot more of them.
Mark Drager: I really like that. Can I ask you a tough question that you may or may not be able to answer? And you know, if this doesn’t work, we’ll just cut it out. But I find that there’s this idea of perception, and I don’t know if it’s on the employer side, the employee side, or if it’s just a cultural media narrative, that companies would always rather spend more money on light, fluffy bullshit, as opposed to just paying people more. And employees say, "Don’t spend money on the Christmas party. Don’t spend money on the coaching. Don’t spend—just give me the money. I want the $4.50 or the $85 or whatever it is." I don’t really think either one of them is right, but did you find that companies would much rather underpay employees but then hope that some of the initiatives you’re talking about will make up for that? Or is that a narrative that’s out there that’s not real on the ground?
Kate Volman: Well, it’s obviously real because you hear people joking about it, right? You hear team members talk about, "I don’t want the pizza party, and I don’t want to get together." It’s all like the fluffy stuff. So, I think leaders don’t always take the time to really explore what would be beneficial for their team. First of all, I’ll put this out there first—people should be paid well. If you’re hiring a team member, they should be paid well for the role they’re in. And I think that the organizations we’re talking to, or that you and I are working with, are compensating their team members appropriately. The additional things people do—leaders don’t always think through what those benefits should be, so they opt for the pizza party or the little gift card or things people laugh at because they don’t mean anything to them. That’s why they joke about it. Whereas, if you’re implementing a program like ours—the Dream Manager—where you’re investing in people as individuals, helping them identify personal dreams and supporting them in those dreams, or other programs that help individuals gain new skills and become a better version of themselves, well, no one’s saying, "Don’t give me a coach. Don’t invest in me as a human being." People want to be coached; they want development programs that help them grow both personally and professionally.
When you’re focusing on that, it’s incredibly valuable. I can’t imagine a team member saying, "No, don’t invest in that." Coaching programs can cost thousands of dollars a year, so yeah, you could give them that money, but when you invest in their development and they’ve never had a coach before, they realize the massive value of what they’re being given. We see it every day—people saying, "I can’t even imagine going through what we’re facing now without having gone through this program." They learn so much about themselves, their relationships, communication, handling stress, and so much more. It’s good for them and good for the organization. So, I don’t know if I really answered your question, but—
Mark Drager: You did, and I’m totally sold. No, I was thinking—I have a friend who was an NFL player, and we’ve sat down and really gone into detail about his journey from high school to the NFL. If anyone knows or has been a professional athlete, the amount of coaching—mindset, physical training, and resources—that organizations pour into these athletes is remarkable. And as a business owner, if you have the right mindset, you can do this for yourself. You can surround yourself with the right network, learning, coaches, or consultants. You can buy the missing pieces to complement your strengths. But when it comes to employees, we often don’t give them the same opportunity. I was reading a post a few weeks ago about a business owner upset because their top salesperson wasn’t following the SOPs. They’re the top producer but upset the admin team because they wouldn’t follow the CRM rules. The business owner asked the group what to do, and some said, "Let her go; she’s breaking the rules." But others said, "What are you talking about? This is your top producer. She’ll leave, start her own business, and outsell you. Why not hire her an assistant to handle what she doesn’t like doing?"
We don’t afford employees the same opportunity we give business owners or professional athletes. If we identify their gifts and strengths, and we give them the tools to succeed, it makes a huge difference. This is where great managers and great leadership come into play. This is personally where I struggle, but this is where I’d turn to someone like you or your organization for help, right?
Kate Volman: Yeah, what you’re talking about is truly coaching—learning about your team members, their superpowers, and what they excel at. It’s not entitlement; it’s empowerment. Entitlement is when someone feels they deserve more just because they’ve been there for a while, without contributing much. Empowerment is learning about your people so you can give them the tools and resources they need to grow in areas they’re excited about. I always ask my team, "Do you have everything you need to succeed?" That’s their chance to let me know if they don’t. If they’re tasked with something new, I ask, "Do you need a webinar, a program, or something to help you feel more comfortable?" It’s about giving them what they need to be successful. This takes time. Leaders often don’t want to have regular one-on-ones, but it’s important. Your team should feel supported and believe they’re given what they need to succeed.
Mark Drager: This has been such a fun conversation. We’ve actually gone longer than I typically go, because I’ve just been enjoying this so much with you. So, I’ve been speaking with Kate Volman, who is the CEO of Floyd Coaching. Kate, I do have one final question for you, and it’s a question I like to end every episode with, which is: What would be your number one tip or strategy to help all of us sell more?
Kate Volman: Ooh, reach out to your top 10 best clients and have a conversation with them. Learn about what they love about working with you, what challenges they might have had, and ask them directly, "How can we provide a better service? How can we become better in what we do?" And be open to the answers.
