Transcript» Tastefully Simple presents: Turn Em On Turn Em Loose! 1 of 6 Turn Em On Turn Em Loose! Transcript Narrator: I ve done hundreds of these kinds of stories studied businesses large and small. But this one, this story, right from the start, I knew we were onto something special. When asked, most business leaders will tell you their employees make the critical difference in the company s ability to perform at extraordinary levels. Yet creating a culture that breeds free thinking and fuels productivity and extreme levels of performance continues to elude many organizations. And happiness, gratitude and joy, if you will, are emotions rarely associated with the workplace. This presentation is the study of one business, a relatively small privately held direct sales company a firm that s enjoyed tremendous growth and success by creating a unique and astonishing culture. Troy: Working at Tastefully Simple is like coming to work to PARTY! Rose: We have fun, we play, we play, we play. Greg: It s fun. Susy: It really is an atmosphere that once you get in it s kind of contagious and you want more of it. Linda: And then you walk in the door and you look around and you go, Wow, I get to work here. Narrator: Perhaps you re a small business seeking to energize a budding workforce. Maybe you hope to breed life into an evolved, once-robust culture that s seemingly evaporating into thin air. Possibly you re simply an individual looking for more meaning in the work you do and in your relationships with others. We ll study the Tastefully Simple model. We ll examine Tastefully Simple s methods, their core values. And we ll gain an understanding of what drives their guiding principles of abundancy (their word, by the way), magic and realness (another coined expression). Undoubtedly, your circumstances and therefore your methods and solutions will be different. But an understanding of what this amazing company has done with its people is enlightening, and quite a nice little story. Join our crew for a visit to a small city in west central Minnesota called Alexandria and a look at the phenomenon known as Tastefully Simple. Director: And, cut! Very good. Strike this location and move on. Narrator: Tastefully Simple s core business is marketing gourmet foods sold by a national network of independent consultants largely through home taste-testing parties. Innovative, convenience-driven, quality food products and a highly successful direct sales concept helped Tastefully Simple earn a ranking on Inc. magazine s list of the fastest-growing private
Transcript» Tastefully Simple presents: Turn Em On Turn Em Loose! 2 of 6 companies in the nation year after year, shortly after their humble beginnings in 1995. It wasn t always like this. In the early days they worked in a shed with no running water. Their remarkable success is a story all its own. One of the most extraordinary attributes of the company is the energy and universal enthusiasm of the members of their workforce. These people are turned on, cranked up, turned loose and intense. Linda: It s just so special here. I have worked in other places in my life, and I ve always had a good time in my jobs and I have fun wherever I go but it s special and I don t even know what else to say about it or what makes it that way. Matt: I ve worked in a business, corporate, stuffy environment my entire career before I came here, and now I get to be myself, I get to have fun, I get to be real. Joani: It s not unlike what you put in your body when you eat. You know, if you put good things in your body your body s gonna do good things for you. You put good things in people s hearts and their minds, good things are gonna happen. And we re putting good things in people. Connie: It s like Tastefully Simple is alive. The place vibrates with passion. Theresa: Everybody smiles. Everybody says hello. Everybody is positive. You know, when you re here sometimes you don t realize the atmosphere and the enthusiasm and the excitement and how contagious that is. Narrator: Contagious enthusiasm how do you spread a germ like that in your organization s culture? Narrator: Tastefully Simple has created three principles designed to define expectations and influence attitudes and behavior. These are steadfast truths the company holds dear, guidelines used to facilitate sound decision making, criteria formed to shape consistent conduct and the belief system they consider the driving force behind their core values. Jill: We developed the core values first. So I really looked at what are we all about and who are we as a company and then developed our three principles, which are the Law of Abundancy, the Law of Magic and the Law of Realness. And all of our seven core values fit under one or more of those principles. But it was really saying, Who are we as a company? and sort of even a bigger umbrella over those core values. Where in the beginning they were more specific and they defined the behavior that we are looking for. The principles are we need to be abundant in our mentality, we need to create magic through how we celebrate and through excellence, and then we need to be real and we need to build humility and trust through humility. Susy: Lots of times I think we have to live a double life and we have to leave at home what we believe in to go to work and just say, Let me get through the day and then I can go home and be the person I want to be, where those principles really enable us to incorporate the person that we want to be every minute of the day, and that s a cool atmosphere to be able to work in. Narrator: Their principle of abundancy: fostering peace of mind through win-win attitudes. Within this concept we find an atmosphere
Transcript» Tastefully Simple presents: Turn Em On Turn Em Loose! 3 of 6 fostering teamwork, shared values and belief that it is more enriching to give than receive. Joani: Abundancy is about giving back more than you take and believing that if there s enough to go around there will be, and sharing what we have. We re only on this earth for a short time, share it. Connie: And it really is all about bringing others along as we climb. It is about open doors, it is about coaching, it is about helping others into the place in this workplace that they would like to be helping them grow. Theresa: I expect my team members to have a take-charge attitude. I expect my team members, our team members, to be solution seekers. I expect our team members to really be focusing in on what s the right thing to do, and empowered to do that. Narrator: Jill, can you please explain the principle of abundancy? Jill: I ll tell you, Jim, the concept of abundancy was absolutely life-changing for me. Because I really, truly believed and learned that we always move in the direction of our focus. We always move in the direction of our focus. So if we re thinking about scarcity, it s really about being fear-based and we re thinking about what we don t have rather than what we have. And when we move into a theory of abundancy and win-win and a point of being giving and open rather than taking, it changes how we operate on a day-to-day basis and really what comes back to us tenfold. Narrator: Magic: Creating positive energy through celebration and excellence. Tastefully Simple celebrates every accomplishment, no matter how large or small. They have fun. Matt: I think celebration is huge because so often we get bogged down in the day-today that you fail to take a look at what you ve accomplished. People want to feel good about the work that they re doing, and this allows you to do it. The greatest examples of energy you re going to find here is at our All Team Meetings. I first walked in the door at my first All Team Meeting and I had to ask myself what planet am I on? There s beach balls flying all over the place now hitting me on the head, now I m the one hitting people on the head, and I love it. Jim: This is a Koosh ball, and here at Tastefully Simple there re seen everywhere. They re in our meetings, they re out in the warehouse, you could be walking past a department and they get lobbed over the wall at you, and they instantaneously will put a smile on a person s face. Sarah: Well I get Koosh balls thrown at me all the time. So I like to think of it as a little sign of love from my team members. Narrator: In today s world, most adults spend an extraordinary amount of time working. Unfortunately, it s not uncommon for some of us to spend more time at work than we do with our families. Winning organizations make sure they do some things at work just for the pure fun of it. Narrator: Tastefully Simple fosters an atmosphere in which team members are encouraged to appreciate everything. Leaders make a point of
Transcript» Tastefully Simple presents: Turn Em On Turn Em Loose! 4 of 6 acknowledging even small accomplishments. Team member performance reviews are called Success Reviews. And the focus is always on the positives. The work force meets and celebrates together frequently. Even the hiring process, particularly for leadership positions, places emphasis on attitude and an ability to blend with the positive culture. Jill: My belief is that it isn t the culture that necessarily fosters passion, it s really looking for passion when you re bringing people on the team. And it s people that have a passion that continues to foster the passion. And then what is our job as leaders within the company and everybody within the team is to help encourage and nurture that passion. Jim: The principle of magic to me is, in a nutshell, excellence. People naturally want to do the best work that they can. You gravitate to a place that offers that to you. Susy: Everyone does give 110%, I think they have that set up so that s what you want to give. It s not a hard thing to do, that s just the way you do your job every day because you re so invested in everyone that works here is so passionate about what we do that you just normally do it. Edgar: Having the goal setting and being very serious about your work and having very high standards in the midst of having fun and celebration and nurturing the community and being very collaborative, you put those pieces together, that s when the magic happens. Joani: the standards come from the team members setting those standards. They re constantly looking at how can I do things better, how can I make a bigger difference, what can we do differently? They re starting to think outside of the box. And when you start doing that and you re looking at making a difference every single day and you re trying to get better every single day, the excellence is there. Narrator: Realness: Building trust through humbleness. Realness is the capacity to demonstrate strength in humility, and the grace to accept responsibility for all outcomes within your control. Connie: You know, at Tastefully Simple we reserve the right to get smarter. And that is something that we say throughout all teams. And I think that what that does is give everybody, all team members here, the opportunity to say I made a mistake, we learned from it, let s move on and improve. Joani: Realness is about just being yourself. It s about understanding that you don t have all the answers, you reserve the right to get smarter, you make mistakes. But a bigger part of that also is having your team see you as a leader doing things within the organization and that you ask, you don t ask anyone to do anything that you wouldn t do yourself. Edgar: Jill is just very open and real about everything that she does, so she really sets the standard for how this is at Tastefully Simple. And she can easily admit a mistake in front of a whole group. She s very open about all sorts of things with plans, her personal life, all of that. She s just a very real person. And so when you have the founder and the CEO of a company that open and real, it creates great opportunities for other people to also be open and real.
Transcript» Tastefully Simple presents: Turn Em On Turn Em Loose! 5 of 6 Jill: The Law of Realness is about saying I screwed up and being willing to admit that. And people trust that. They would much rather hear that than hiding it under a shroud of some kind. Narrator: These are the principles at the core of Tastefully Simple s success. A clear vision for mission and values, coupled with constant articulation of those ideals, is at the heart of the unified, cooperative spirit we find here at Tastefully Simple. From your perspective, how did the culture evolve? Jill: I think a couple of things that if I were to define what we did that may have been different, it would be a willingness. And the first willingness would be around simply being open to hearing other people s feedback and their idea as a team, because people have incredible ideas. And if we sit up in our ivory towers thinking we know is all, I don t think great things happen. I think it s from the people that are experiencing it and living it. They re able to give feedback that drives the success of a company. And the second things is a willingness to be different. Because it s our instinct as achievers and overachievers in companies that we just want to get the job done, let s just do it quick. And that isn t how excellence in a culture is achieved. It s by stepping back and saying we need to take the time, it s an investment. This isn t an expense, this is an investment in developing something that takes time. Narrator: Every Tastefully Simple team member is aware of the company s core values and can express their feelings about them quite poignantly. Susy: It s not just a plaque on the wall or some words on a page, but it really is lived out through everybody. Troy: Here at Tastefully Simple we live our core values day in and day out. Coming to work, it s like coming to work with a brother, a sister, a mother, a father. We are one big team and together we achieve it all. Jill: Every decision and our behavior each day is really driven, and should be driven, by those core values. Are we being respectful? Are we celebrating? Are we nurturing the community? And it was really the foundation, total foundation, of the company. Narrator: It s interesting to note that nearly all of the seven Tastefully Simple core values focus on interpersonal relationships and/or enrichment of lives and community. Helping employees understand they re engaged in meaningful and significant work is a powerful thing. Lisa: Where else can you go to work besides Tastefully Simple, where on their strategic plan, if you will, they talk about their values and they talk about relationships? You don t see that in every strategic plan. And to me that lines up with who I am as a person because if I m going to give of myself, I need to know that I m aligned with that organization. Jill: People really hunger for feeling valued and they want to feel fulfilled. Too often we think that it s all about a paycheck, it s all about job security and it s all about the money. And I don t believe that. I believe that people ultimately are looking for something that makes them feel good and feel valued.
Transcript» Tastefully Simple presents: Turn Em On Turn Em Loose! 6 of 6 Narrator: It matters little what business you re in. Whether you manufacture a product or deliver a service, successful companies design a culture that s dynamic and charged with energy, vision. Then they make it personal to every employee. Winning cultures like the one created by Tastefully Simple make shaping the company culture a priority. It doesn t happen by accident. Positive cultures are built with intent. Joani: it s important for a business to recognize what they want to be. Because if they don t recognize what they want to be, if they don t train to establishing that culture, they may become somebody they don t want to be. Jill: What happens when the principles are defined, the Law of Magic and the Law of Realness and the Law of Abundancy, it s defining an expectation. This part is very intentional, in saying this is what we expect from you as a team member here. It s to be abundant, to work the magic and also to be real. And so people come into the environment and I think people function better. And I think they function very well when they know what s expected of them. And we re very clear about what we want and what type of environment we want and the people we want to have within the company. Narrator: Jill, how has Tastefully Simple s culture contributed to the company s success? Jill: You know, that s a very good question. And truly, Jim, there are so many great companies that have succeeded without great cultures. My question would be, though, do you really want to work someplace and devote 40 hours of your life per week, or maybe more, for many of us, and not come away feeling valued and feeling fulfilled and feeling energized by it at the end of the week? That to me isn t the life that many of us want to lead. Narrator: Creating a winning culture isn t easy, even though winning companies make it look that way. Easy or not, it s surely worthwhile. And you might even have some fun along the way. When you re building people in addition to building your business, others may look at your company and say, you make it look, well, just plain simple! This has been a special report from Tastefully Simple!