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What are the best brands doing to stay relevant, build trust, and create content smarter?
At Share Your Genius, we have the same questions, so we're tapping the best in the space for their answers—one voicemail at a time.
Join us each week for quick hits of insights from b2b marketers and leaders.
Rachel Elsts Downey (00:00):
Rachel Downey, when you're scaling fast trust can't be assumed. Matter of fact becomes a discipline, becomes a value within your organization. And Jeff Perkins, he's built his leadership playbook around that understanding as now the CEO of Sounds Stripe. He's navigating rapid growth once again, while keeping trust at the core of how his team operates. And with past stents at Park Mobile and Greenlight Guru, he's no stranger to leading in high growth environments. But what makes Jeff different? In other words, why did I call Jeff? Because he doesn't let speed compromise. Clarity. His approach is rooted in transparency, consistent, steady communication. That kind of consistency that earns buy-in creates an environment for trust to thrive, which is so critical, especially when things move fast. So of course I had to call him when I wanted to know how do you maintain trust in a fast growing environment? Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system. At the tone, please record your message.
Jeff Perkins (01:22):
Hey Rachel, hope you're doing well. Thanks for that question. I always believe that trust is super important to whatever company you are in. If you have employees that have a high level of trust in the organization, in the leadership, in their peers, generally they're going to be happier. They're going to perform at a higher level, and they're going to do much better work for the company and they're going to help your business move faster and be more successful. So how do you build trust, especially as you go from a smaller team to a larger team, as you go from a smaller organization to a larger or scaling organization? I was at a company called Park Mobile. When I joined Park Mobile, we had about 75 employees. We had about 15 million in revenue, and we grew that business to about 50 million in revenue and almost 200 employees.
(02:12):
And I remember talking to a lot of the people in the organization as we were growing and they would say things like, it just doesn't feel the same. It felt like we were a family when we were smaller, and now we're so big and I don't know everyone across the organization. And that's very natural and that's going to happen. And there's really no way for leaders to make a big company feel small. But what's really important is that as you grow and scale, you are really focusing on transparency and letting the organization know what's going on, letting the organization know where you're headed, where you're going, what the key strategies and programs are. So everyone kind of feels connected to the organization. Everyone feels aligned. It's really important. So how do you do this? One of the really important things is that you have to not just communicate things once.
(03:05):
You have to communicate things multiple times. And the rule of thumb is always you have to communicate one message about seven times before it actually breaks through and before it kind of connects with the people you're trying to communicate to. But you just have to keep that in mind. Some strategies that I have used in my career to really make sure everyone's aware of what's going on. Frequent all hands meetings or town halls where the leadership is actually speaking and talking about what's going on in the business and being very transparent about what's working, what's not. What are we trying that's new? What are we cutting that has failed? It's really important. You have a steady cadence of all hands meetings where people get together. You're talking about the business, you're sharing results, you're sharing what happened over the last three months, what's coming next?
(03:52):
That's really important. Sharing company updates on a frequent basis is super critical. I've done a lot of employee surveys in my career and one thing you always get feedback on, really every employee survey I've ever done is that people have this sentiment that I feel out of the loop or I don't know what's going on, I don't know what's happening. What I try to do is really push out as much information as I can about what's going on. So you don't get that feedback. I want everyone to know what's going on. I want everyone to really understand what we're doing, where we're going, what the company's priorities are, and then I just keep communicating it almost ad nauseum until people just can't take it anymore. And you know, kind of win when they start playing it back to you, when they start repeating the strategy to you.
(04:38):
That's always a great sign. Communicating frequently in channels that you have, whether it's Slack, whether it's email. I've done a weekly intercompany email newsletter where you just highlight every week things that are going on. Don't be afraid to communicate, really tell people what's going on on a frequent basis. Make sure that your leaders in the company are communicating to their employees in their status meetings or one-on-ones. I need to make sure that the employees in the company really know where we're going. And it's really an area where I probably spend a lot of my time and energy is communicating with our employees and making sure they clearly understand where the organization is going. And as a result, I think they have a high level of trust in me. They have a high level of trust in our leadership team that we're steering the ship in the right direction and everyone's aligned on where we're going in the future. So Rachel, I hope this long voicemail helps you think about issues as far as scaling businesses and trust. Look forward to our next conversation and yeah, hopefully talk to you soon. Take care.
Rachel Elsts Downey (05:50):
Thanks for listening. Want your podcast to do more? Subscribe to Genius Cuts because it's never just a podcast. You can find it@shareyourgenius.com.