Dave Cain: Welcome to unsuitable on Rea Radio, the award winning financial services and business advisory podcast that challenges your old school business practices and the traditional business suit culture. Our guests are industry professionals and experts who will challenge you to think beyond the suit and tie while offering you meaningful modern solutions to help enhance your company’s growth.
I’m your host, Dave Cain. Over the course of my career, I’ve talked to many business owners. Our conversations cover a lot of topics, but the stories I like the best are the ones that reveal why their business is unique. I particularly like these stories because they are the ones that best articulate their company’s culture, which just so happens to be the topic of this episode or unsuitable on Rea Radio today.
Here at Rea & Associates, we are acutely attuned to the unique culture of our firm. As we look to the future, we are actively carrying this culture over to a new generation of Rea team members. Over the years, Annie Yoder, a leader at Rea, has been a vocal advocate of passing on the firm’s tribal knowledge. She’s joining us today to talk about the importance of company history and how a business can use tribal knowledge to catapult itself into the future. Mike Taylor, who has been with the firm since 1970, is also here to share his ideas and perspective. Welcome to unsuitable, Annie and Mike.
Annie Yoder: Thanks for having us.
Mike Taylor: Thanks, Dave.
Dave: I wanted to just go back to the introduction. Did you notice how in the production notes, our marketing team wrote a pretty good intro to Annie, and Mike, they just referred to you as being old.
Mike: That’s been the story of my life for the last decade, so I’ve come to accept that.
Dave: It’s interesting to note in our notes that you’ve been with Rea & Associates since 1970. That covers, by my math, five decades. So, I think you’re somewhat of an expert on culture and company history.
Mike: I think I am. I’m the senior person in the firm today. I think we’ve worked hard at developing a culture. I believe people like Annie are going to continue that forward.
Dave: You bet. When I saw today’s guests, Mike, you are with Rea & Associates in the Millersburg/Holmes County area, and Annie, actually you work all over the state of Ohio, all over the world I guess, but are attached to the New Philadelphia office in Tuscarawas County, I thought we were going to talk about mushroom hunting since those counties are rich in mushrooms.
Annie: I’ve been mushroom hunting, by the way.
Dave: You got any tips?
Annie: Stay with someone that knows what they’re doing.
Dave: There you go. So, with that, we’re going to dive into the culture and history. Of course, this does get a little difficult because everybody has their own definition of what culture is. Let’s maybe start there. If you can define in your words what you feel what’s important to you about culture when you hear the word “culture”, what’s that mean to you? Annie, we’ll let you go first.
Annie: All right. I would say for us at Rea & Associates, I want to point out strictly the Rea way. For me, that’s a our culture statement and that’s the foundation. That’s why I think it’s so important that Mike is sitting here, because he was part of that process. So, the pieces and parts of being connected to your family, the community, what our vernacular is, so the Rea-isms, that’s part of our culture.
The other thing is, I want people to know that you have to be intentional about your culture in an organization. So, I take here what we have at Rea and what we’re doing, passing it from one generation to the next to our clients. I liken it to a small family-owned business that is going from one generation to the next. What were the principles they were founded on? Culture’s a big piece of that. I think how thing can get lost from one generation to the next if you aren’t intentional about passing it on.
Dave: Thanks, Annie. That’s a good insight. Mike, how about you?
Mike: I think what she said is right about providing a foundation for the future. I’m the only one in the firm, I believe now, that actually worked with Dick Rea. He was really always looking to the future. He had a vision for the firm and he passed that on to a group of us back in the early 70s. Then from that eventually came what she referred to as The Rea Way. I think it’s a document, I was involved in that, so I’m a little bit prejudiced, I will tell you that. I think that has become truly a living document for this firm. I think it will set the tone for people that come after me, and hopefully into the next generation after that, even. So, I think you have to have a culture.
It’s interesting. Every office in our firm, I think, has a little bit of a different culture. So, it doesn’t mean that anyone is right, although I think I’m right in our office. But doesn’t mean that anybody’s right and anybody’s wrong. It’s just a different culture. But for our firm, the Rea way is the overriding foundation for our culture. That’s what I like about it. Really, every office buys into that.
Dave: Mike, in the intro, we were joking about being with the firm and being a little more mature than some of the other people in the room. But being with the firm since 1970, that’s going on 47 years. Obviously, a challenge I would expect is how do you pass on the culture from one generation to the other?
Mike: It has to be intentional, number one. It doesn’t just happen on its own. A lot of it, I think falls back to leadership. I have a very good friend named Paul Weaver that once told me, “A lack of leadership is the result of a lack of leadership.” So, if you don’t have leadership to pass on that culture, you have a problem. So, you have to be intentional about it. The leaders in the firm have to buy in to the culture. They have to promote the culture.
I think we do a really good job in this firm of promoting the Rea way, making sure everybody that comes on board with the organization gets indoctrinated to that. Then people like Annie, they’re coming along and developing the next generation of leaders in this firm, will continue to pass that on.
Annie: I actually have to interject there.
Dave: Interject or interrupt?
Annie: Both. I like to do that. It was less than probably two weeks ago, I was actually listening to Paul Weaver, who he just alluded to, talking about culture in his organization and what he’s done with that. So, I took away from that the being intentional and showing appreciation for our employees, and the same in organizations outside of Rea, showing appreciation for your employees and giving them credit for what they’re doing. Even if it’s a certificate showing them and showing the public as a whole what folks have done. So, I think that’s super important as well.
Dave: We have a lot of listeners on the podcast, based on the feedback. There are a lot of leadership topics and culture topics, and we get a lot of comments about that. But we also run into, and you guys have as well, with clients or friends who the culture maybe isn’t as strong in their organization as maybe what it is at Rea & Associates. What advice would you give to a business owner to help them improve their culture from within? Annie, why don’t you start the ball rolling here?
Annie: This’ll probably be short. I’d say look in the mirror. As a leader of an organization, you need to be self-aware. Be self-aware of what tone you are setting and make sure you surround yourself with people that are smarter than you and can help push whatever initiatives. That’s something our CEO has always done and has always. He will tell you, “I make sure that when I hire, I’m hiring people that are good in their wheelhouse so that we can put their aces in their places.”
Mike: I made a 46 year career out of hiring people smarter than me. I think if you don’t have a strong culture, what she said is you do need to take a look at yourself. If you’re a founder or a leader in the company, you need to look at what it is you’re doing, the example you’re setting, the tone you’re conveying. I’ve seen business where people walk around and don’t talk to other people. You can’t build a culture that’s going to last for generations if you do that.
I’ve been intentional at making sure I go around in our office on a regular basis and talk to people. I just did that here in Dublin. If I come to Dublin, I walk around the office and I talk to people. I think for senior leaders in a firm, they have to set the example. You can write any document you want to, you can put it on paper, and you can hang it up on your walls. But if you don’t live that document, it is of no value.
Dave: Annie, as the director of the Rea Academy, you do have culture and leadership tracks built within that training program. But one of the things I’ve heard you mention is that business owners throughout the country and throughout our services areas must share the wealth of knowledge with their team, with their staff.
Annie: Absolutely. They need to spread their knowledge, not just from a technical standpoint. Let’s say it’s an auto part dealership, if that’s what they’re doing. Yes, there’s the technical side of it there too, but what are the principles, again, that they’ve been founded on? They need to continue to include the managers or include the people below them so that they can continue on into the future.
We have something really cool at Rea called “ride-alongs”. Our principals and our managers getting younger staff out in front of clients, that’s another way to push our culture and to get them in front of our clients so that it can be disseminated and move from one generation to the next.
Dave: Mike, you’ve been a big cheerleader for sharing knowledge, mentoring, teaching, and coaching from within. I’m not talking about the debits, the credits, and the technical stuff. It’s the soft skills, the communication, building relationships. Again, maybe a tip or two on how you pass that along.
Mike: I think you do have to involve younger people in the process. I look back and some days I think I’ve done a good job at that. Some days I think I really just haven’t done all that I could do. It’s hard to do that when you’re caught up in the day to day operations of the business. There’s constant deadlines, there’s constant pressure pulling you in different directions. But I still think a lot of it comes back to people just observing you. You don’t know what impact that has, and it’s really hard to measure that, I think.
I announced my retirement at our-
Dave: Eight years ago, wasn’t it?
Mike: Yeah, eight years ago. This is actually the third retirement I’m talking about. But some of the comments I heard after that were really encouraging to me about the example I’ve set in the firm. So, you go about your day to day activities and leading the organization, the office, or whatever you’re involved in, the next generation program. If you do it right, people are paying attention to that. So, you just need to set the example and you need to be intentional about setting the example.
Annie: I think that speaks to, when he said “observation”, that’s why we’re sitting here, is that when he announced it and was up onstage with him and Frank Festi at retreat, it’s the last group of partners that actually have that intimate knowledge of what it was like to be here when we were smaller and have gone through all those growth pains that we’ve gone through.
So, watching them up there was like, “Okay, we can’t lose that. We can’t lose that knowledge.” Becca was able to pull information from a, it was a group that got together to talk about the Rea way. So, it was Ruth Gertz, Taylor, couple other folks. I went through that and read it, and Becca saw it too. It’s just phenomenal that the issues that they were talking about then are the same exact issues that we talk about now.
Dave: Who’s this Becca that you’re referring to? Is that your mystery friend?
Annie: The Director of Practice Growth.
Dave: One of the takeaways after listening to both of you is that business owners must be intentional in this whole culture and training process.
Annie: Absolutely. You can’t take it for granted. Mike also talked about what we call “the whirlwind”. Sometimes you have to pull yourself out of that so that you can actually work on your business instead of in your business.
Dave: Mike, earlier, you referred to The Rea Way. Within Rea & Associates, I think the firm does try to be intentional as the firm is built over the years many tools, such as the Rea way, the Rea vision statement, and the Rea Academy, to keep the firm’s history at the top of the minds, continue to pass that along. Are there any other things that you can think of, marketing materials, internal stuff that we do, or a client should do, to pass this on?
Annie: Podcast with your patriarch.
Dave: Podcast with your patriarch.
Mike: I think we do a lot of things that probably, it doesn’t exactly seem like at the time we’re building the culture. But I think we do that. We do that and we’ve done that in our partner’s retreats over the years, our shareholder retreats, and then ultimately with the Rea retreat where all of our team is there. So, those are the kind of things that we have evolved into doing. A lot of it stems from who we have been, who we are today, and who we want to be tomorrow.
So, I don’t think you have to do a tremendous amount of advertising to make your vision a reality. But I think you do have to continue to practice and develop different programs and different ways of communicating. I think we’ve done a pretty good job of that, actually. Most of that has nothing to do with me.
Dave: You’re not taking credit for that.
Mike: I’m not taking credit for that. I’m not.
Dave: Both of you, I’ll start with Mike on this one, just based on some of the consulting experience you’ve encountered over the years. I’m sure you’ve been in organizations where the culture isn’t that strong, isn’t that obvious, or isn’t being passed from one generation to the other generation. Do you sense or do you feel that that impacts the bottom line?
Mike: I don’t think there’s any question about that. The most successful companies and business owners that I have ever worked with are intentional about their culture. I live and practice in a unique area. Holmes County is a good place to live and it has a great business climate. It, in and of itself as a county, has a culture. It’s conservative, Amish, Mennonite to a large extent. Those business owners, the take culture seriously.
But you see businesses that have a great culture and some that don’t. If they don’t, they’re not going to have the most successful business that they can have. They are not going to be all that they can be. They’re just not. So, it’s important. It really is.
Annie: There’s a Covey book out called Speed of Trust. So, you asked, “Does it hit the bottom line?” The answer is, “Absolutely.” It hits return on investment. High trust, high speed equals low cost. So, if there isn’t trust and leadership, i.e. a bad culture, then it’s not as efficient. Therefore, your cost increase and it hits the bottom line.
Dave: Annie, and I know you’ve done some research in this area. But I would imagine that a firm that struggles or a company that struggles with culture, their turnover rate is just going to have to be off the charts, which is, again, is a hidden cost that impacts the bottom line.
Annie: Absolutely. The turnover rate, and on top of that, just the engagement. Brent Ardit did a podcast. If you haven’t listened to it, listeners out there, make sure you listen to it. It’s about employee engagement, and there’s a correlation there as well from turnover, employee engagement, and the effect on bottom line, the negative effect.
Dave: We’d mentioned earlier that we have five generations. Mike, you’ve worked with five generations of Rea employees over the years. Let’s talk or touch briefly on the baby boomers vs. the millennials and this whole culture impact. Do you see anything there that … You’re laughing. I know you can’t wait to get to them.
Mike: I have a pretty unique view of that. That’s that people are people. You hear the different terms for the different age groups. Yes, they’re somewhat different, but they’re all people. They all want to be successful. They all want to succeed in their work and they want to have fun in their personal lives. To me, it doesn’t make any difference what term we put on them.
Sometimes I think that we’re a product of the media in this country in that, all of a sudden, somebody comes up with a term for a certain age group and then they get branded with that. In the end, I don’t think it makes any difference. I really don’t. I think culture trumps all of that.
Dave: So, when everybody calls you an old fart, you don’t really care?
Mike: No, because you know what? That’s what we called Dick Rea. If I can aspire that, I’m perfectly happy.
Dave: Annie, I know you had your hands on that microphone ready to go about that. You want that question? We’ll give you another question.
Annie: No, I was just going to say Mike articulated that very well. I agree 100% with him.
Dave: One of the things, as we were talking about culture, that strikes me about the Rea culture is the giving back to the community. Mike, you shared the Millersburg community, and the other Rea offices have some very close ties within the community. That has to be a byproduct of the Rea culture.
Mike: I think we’ve been intentional about that in this firm. I think that pays huge dividends. We like to think of it as paying dividends for the business, but it pays dividends for the individuals too. It gives them a sense of purpose outside of work. It makes them feel a part of the community, it makes them feel good about themselves that they can volunteer their time.
I think that is one thing that, it is easy to lose that. When you’re busy, if you’re young and you have families and trying to figure out, “How do I manage all that?” But in the end, being involved in a couple of not-for-profits, even if it’s just one, I think it pays big dividends personally. Ultimately, it will pay big dividends professionally.
Annie: I work in the New Philadelphia office, so we’re getting ready to do our community event here soon. I agree with Mike that the impact … I like that he pulled out the word “purpose”, because not only do we want to find purpose in what we do on a daily basis, but that’s just another way to connect us and find purpose and value in what we do.
Dave: Our guests today have been Annie Yoder and Mike Taylor with Rea & Associates, both long-term employees with the firm. Just wrap up a little bit, the three takeaways that I grabbed from our conversations were, number one, business owners, remember your roots. Remember your history. Pass that history along. Point number two, business owners must be intentional. The third takeaway is business owners, you have to share your wealth of knowledge with your team. If not, it won’t go any further.
So, as we wrap up, I want to just ask you one personal question. If you were to have one piece of advice about building culture for a business owner, what would it be? Annie?
Annie: I defer to Mike first.
Mike: I think it is set the tone at the top and stick with it, going back to being intentional about it. The final takeaway for me, in any topic like this, is how The Rea Way ends. That is to have fun and enjoy the journey. You don’t ever want to lose sight of that. It really helps strengthen a culture.
Annie: Have the right people on the bus. That’s my advice, is to make sure that the leadership trusts one another and that together, they’ll be able to push the culture. So, make sure you have the right people on the bus in the right seats.
Dave: You have young children, so you know the song “Wheels on the Bus”.
Annie: I sing it all the time.
Dave: Would you care to share a verse?
Annie: No thank you.
Dave: Thanks again for joining us on unsuitable, Annie and Mike. Listeners can learn more about the Rea culture by checking us out at our website at www.reacpa.com. You can also get additional resources on our podcast page at www.reacpa.com/podcast. As always, don’t hesitate to reach out to us on Facebook, Twitter, or by emailing us at podcast@reacpa.com. Until next time, I’m Dave Cain encouraging you to loosen up your tie and think outside the box.