From Disney Magic to Startup Momentum: Diane Yarborough on Building Teams That Thrive

Freddy D: 00:01:45

Hey, superfan superstar Freddie D. Here in this episode 120, we're joined by Diane Yarborough, the visionary behind Castaway and Company and a powerhouse in the world of culture driven leadership.

With over 20 years of Disney experience under her belt, Diane now helps organizations rethink, re, recruit and retrain, transforming employee experience into a true competitive edge. She's on a mission to build contagious cultures and contagious leaders, all while guiding teams to unlock performance, purpose and profit.

Whether she's working with executives or leading Dream Discovery workshops across the country, Diane is all about helping people and organizations thrive. Get ready for an energized conversation on how to design a culture that lasts from the inside out. Welcome, Diane, to the Business Superfans podcast.

We're excited to have you here and get into a deep dive of what it is about your contagious culture that you talk about.

Diane Yarborough: 00:02:52

Wonderful. I'm glad to be here. Can't wait to tell you all about it.

Freddy D: 00:02:56

So, Diane, let's go back at the beginning and what's the backstory of how did Castaway and Company come about? And you have on your website that one of the things that you do is create contagious cultures in different companies. So let's get into that.

Diane Yarborough: 00:03:12

Absolutely. Castaway and Company was founded probably 12 years ago. Officially.

I had worked for corporate America and spent a good chunk of 20 years at Disney World and Disney in Orlando.

My teeth were chopped on business and leadership through that Disney culture and the work that we were doing in Orlando to bring Disney through the resort era when we were growing immensely in their guest space. I had a number of roles or positions that we call them in the real world.

I finally left the company in: 2006

I sprung board into a new city, new town in Charlotte, N.C. started to find out what working in the real world learned very quickly that not everybody does what I was used to doing at Disney.

And so I automatically saw a vast difference between the culture that I grew up in and the corporate cultures that I was now working within and faced a lot of disparities and anomalies in what I was used to seeing and the successes that we found in running one of the largest single side employers in the country with at my point, 65,000 cast members, which has grown substantially. The way we were able to do that and the ecosystem that we created at Disney, I did not find anywhere else. So I realized I needed to do it myself.

I found that organizations were probably 20 years behind where we were in reference to their employee and personnel structures, their processes, their initiatives, and specifically employee related processes. So performance management, talent development, employee engagement, and really just resource utilization.

And the focus that we really put on our cast as much as we put on our guest and our business. So we refer to it as a three legged stool. But if you don't have the focus on all three equally, there will be some challenges.

So I realized coming out of Disney, coming into corporate America, that it was going to take me a really long time to convince some leaders who are working with some of the roles that I was working with, some of our senior executives who had planted and trying to reshape culture. I was not in the right roles to enable myself to come up to the right levels.

After a couple years and a couple organizations where I kept seeing the same problems over and over again, I decided I needed to go out on my own, maybe work with some other organizations who would be willing to be more nimble, maybe organizations who were open to change and had such a passion as well for the employee experience, success in passion for that type of culture. So Castaway started because of some work I did at Disney Cruise Line. After being an HR manager for the start of the Disney ships. Magic and wonderful.

I was on Castaway Cay for six months, opening up our private island, hiring all the local crew.

Freddy D: 00:06:51

It's a wonderful story because really at the end of the day, the crew is the interaction between all your customers. So that's the front line.

And one of the things that I think businesses overlook is they don't put enough emphasis on really taking care of the front line.

The people that are engaging with the customers, the people are engaging with the suppliers, the people that are engaging with the distributors, the people engaging with complementary businesses. And really the brand is its people. At the end of the day, logo is one thing that's wonderful. The letterhead looks cool.

But at the end of the day, the brand is the people. The interaction, the communication, that energy. Because you can't fake it. You've got a situation where an organization is running flat.

That tonality comes across, it even comes across in emails because you can look at the choice of words that people utilize. And I've gone to Disney in Orlando, I've been to Disney in California, and I've been in Disney in Paris.

And one of the things that I noticed is that it was exactly the same. The energy was the same, the people were the same, even though they were multicultural people.

But the bottom line was the experience was pretty much the same.

Diane Yarborough: 00:08:17

Right. And that takes training, but you have to be able to. For me, I think about establishing the culture.

So when I think about shaping contagious cultures, those are cultures that people want to emulate, and those are cultures that people gravitate to. And I think I was spoiled. Not everybody got to spend 20 years in a culture like that. And it's just our language. It's how we speak, it's what we do.

But it's very intentional. That culture is very intentional. And there's many millions of organizations and people out there telling you what Disney does and how they do it.

And every ex Disney cast member is out there talking about it because it is something that organizations still stumble with. For us, it was so basic that we just knew how to invest in our people the right way. We knew how to interview and hire the right people.

We would know how to recognize potential. And to your point, I can't train attitude. I can't train that.

So attitude is something that we look for right away in our casting offices and all the way down the line. But it's also, for me, it's the entire life cycle of the total experience. And it's not just hiring and training. It's recognition of rewards.

And to your point, it's communication. How do we speak to our cast? And how do you speak about our cast? And then all the way to the very end.

So how are we handling it when we have poor performers? How are we off boarding our cast? How are we handling sunsetting someone's retirement or behavior problems?

So it all of you, all the people who are listening, I'm sure, have a number of situations in their work life that cause them some concern. And it might be personnel related. Um, but I'll be the first to say that it's a leadership issue, probably, and it has to do with your culture.

In most employee situations. Have to do with culture or leadership.

Freddy D: 00:10:24

Totally agree. Totally agree.

And one of the quotes in my book called Creating Business Superfans is people will crawl through broken glass for appreciation and recognition. And unfortunately, we don't give it enough. And same thing with gratitude, expressing gratitude.

It's one of the things I've seen and learned over the years is it's one thing to say, hey, Diana, I really appreciate the effort that you did on this particular project. Grateful for the time that you put in. You feel terrific.

But now if I turn around and says, hey, everybody, I want to take a moment to recognize Diana for her going above and beyond on that project. Now you feel like a rock star because in front of your peers, you're recognized. Your peers say, wow, that's pretty cool.

So everybody levels up their game because they want to be that person that gets recognized. And that whole energy becomes contagious versus, versus not doing it right. And it's expected. And the mindset is you're just doing your job right.

Diane Yarborough: 00:11:29

Yeah, it's definitely a mindset in our leaders who want to do that. And rewards and recognition look different for everybody. We know. But at the end of the day, is there a process with which they do that?

And then I think about basic communication. What are their mechanisms to share those? Sometimes public and private is fine.

But I look at the abilities for employees to have opportunities for growth, to be contagious as a culture employees will want to stay.

That really ultimately, is to retain your employees, to create a culture so that employees don't want to leave, so that you don't have to be the employee of choice on some award and have some plaque hanging your wall. You need to be a place where employees want to come and where they want to stay. Because nothing's worse than losing great people.

And I think, to your point, just as much recognition people will follow a good leader anywhere.

If you have great employees who honor and value and you inspire and motivate, those people will follow you to the ends of the earth and will stay even through those tough times, even through those challenging times, even when they may get asked to get their pay cut by 15% just to keep them. The leaders who have great leaders keep great employees.

And so that's the other piece of what we do at Castaway, is I want to shape great leaders, grow great leaders, and understand what great leadership looks like. Not just leadership. There's a million leadership books out there. We all should be great leaders by now.

But shaping young and aspiring leadership and then retaining our leaders, not just retaining everybody. We have to retain the leaders that we love that are doing their jobs. So I think about leadership as anchor for great culture. For sure.

It's like the captain of the ship, right?

Freddy D: 00:13:25

And to emphasize the point that you made, Hannah, is really, when you create a kind of a culture, I use a different term, is you create super fans within that organization. And when you've got super fans of your team, the team may be super fans of their leader. Okay?

And then that's transcends to everybody they're talking to, because they're talking to their friends. They're talking to family man. I love my job. What a great company. And that word of mouth, you can't buy that kind of pr.

Diane Yarborough: 00:13:57

Right.

Freddy D: 00:13:58

And that carries on and on. And now you've got these people that are championing the brand. As a super fan.

Diane Yarborough: 00:14:06

Right.

Freddy D: 00:14:06

That is completely game changing for that business.

Diane Yarborough: 00:14:11

Yeah. And that's where I think I say your culture is your brand. Right. So your culture will speak to people before they even homework for you. Right.

What's the word on the street about your organization? What are people saying about you?

Hopefully it's the right stuff and hopefully you're being fairly represented before people even want to come learn about you. So I say recruiting starts way before you put a posting out somewhere on. Indeed, you have a reputation now that could break or make you.

And so how are you handling that? Right.

Freddy D: 00:14:45

Yeah. The street talk. I had a guest on an earlier podcast episode and he talked about the relationship he built with a particular supplier.

They get together for lunch every now and recognize them on their birthdays and stuff like that. When the pandemic hit and everybody's going home, he needed 500 laptops like immediately.

And everybody was going to this particular supplier for laptops right away. Guess who got his laptops?

Diane Yarborough: 00:15:16

The relationship. Right, his relationship.

Freddy D: 00:15:19

So that was his relationship. He got his laptops before anybody else.

Diane Yarborough: 00:15:23

Yeah. I always say this. Our senior vice president of HR became the president of Disney World. So she was well revered in the organization.

Our executives used to give a leadership series and she used to come speak to young leaders, basically sharing her top 20 things she would do differently. And one of them was that she says you sell and market yourself every day and how you speak and what you say.

And you don't have to be in sales and marketing just to know that.

So that was one of my favorite things that she said, is it doesn't matter what role you're in and whatever you're trying to do, you're always trying to sell yourself or sell something about yourself every day to somebody. And that is also leadership in how are you selling, who are you and what you're about to your peers, your bosses in your team every day.

You walk into work every day wanting to win them over.

Freddy D: 00:16:13

Yeah. It's all about empowering people.

You look at Sir Richard Branson, I always use this example, but you don't see him cleaning the windshield of his airplanes or making sure that the gas is topped off. He's busy playing flight attendant, engaging with the customers. Same thing on Virgin Voyages. He's not piloting the ship.

He's not making sure that the food is all prepared correctly. He's not having blast with the customers. That's right.

The thing I want to really emphasize is good leaders empower their teams to become responsible and they can make the decisions and they can do the things that they need to do and don't have to run a mom or dad to ask for permission. Do what they need to do and most of the time they'll make the right decision.

Diane Yarborough: 00:17:02

And we had probably 20,000 cast members that were empowered to do that. When they were interacting with their guests day by day.

The managers weren't the ones talking to these guests who traveled 500 miles, had four airplane flights, had three kids hungry, screaming, tired, wanting to just get at to Disney. Showed up at seven o' clock at night, were exhausted and they lost their luggage. And I, as a cast member at the front desk could do something.

I was empowered to handle that.

So if I needed to give them a free voucher for dinner, or if I needed to take the little kids and make sure that they had free ice cream cones around the corner, I was empowered. And that was part of our culture, was that we, even as the lowly non salaried cast members, were empowered because we were.

The most important interaction was between the customer and us. The managers couldn't handle 20 chicken stations at the contemporary front desk. But I think empowerment was a big one.

But I also think to your point, I think those leaders were role modeling. Right. So they were talking to those customers, but they were role modeling to the other employees.

Freddy D: 00:18:11

Correct.

Diane Yarborough: 00:18:11

What it looks like, some people need to see it, some people need to hear about it.

And I think watching it and then calling it out, and I think the word intentionality, being intentional about the fact that we explain that this is how you handle it. We would have like 700 check ins at one day for a busy convention group.

And our leaders were out in the lines in the lobby talking to the customers, making sure our guests knew we were going as fast as we could. But they went to the back hiding. They weren't in their offices, they were out amongst the masses where the majority of the business was that day.

ttention. And I remember from: 1992

Freddy D: 00:19:03

Sure. And the other thing that I want to reemphasize is that you were empowered to make, you know, little things.

One of my sayings is the little things are really the big things. And give kids a free ice cream cone is a little thing, but to that kid, that's a monster sized thing.

Diane Yarborough: 00:19:21

Yes, yes.

Freddy D: 00:19:22

You know, so those. That's where he's got good leadership is they recognize that the little things are really the big things. And those are what people will remember.

Diane Yarborough: 00:19:33

Right, right, right.

And the other thing I'm working with, I try and think about for some of the work I do with my current clients and the work I do for this Margaritaville internship I run is emulating a lot of things, but one of them is emulating the customer component and making sure that stuff like kids used to knock their ice cream cones off. They could get so excited. They get these ice cream cones and then on the street, so you go back and get another one. And that's unheard of.

You don't just get a free ice cream because you drop something. So we emulate that. And a lot of the leaders from Disney are in Margaritaville now.

So they take some of those processes and some of that culture work and have built it into some of the language and culture inside Margaritaville. So naturally, it's a language I'm used to seeing. Same thing. I used to work with the Disney stores and same thing.

So customers, guests, products, show. The element of show is big. It's one of our quality standards was this element of look. People pay attention to how things look.

Cleanliness, cobwebs, the little things that you see. The Disney scoop we used to call it was we were all trained to pick up trash. So basically everyone at Disney was a custodial cast member.

Anywhere you go, if you see trash on property, it's your responsibility to pick it up. And that's something you don't see. Maybe that mindset is not the same in other organizations.

I've never seen it in any organization I've worked in since then.

Freddy D: 00:21:03

Wow.

Speaking of organizations, can you share a story of an organization that you've stepped into in and created a contagious culture from a toxic culture that they were in when you walked in and when you walked out, they were transformed.

Diane Yarborough: 00:21:21

I'm actually still working on one now. We're not completely done yet, but there's a. And I wouldn't say it was a toxic culture. People don't know what they don't know sometimes.

And so part of my practitioner process is to go in and assess where some of the culture may be off. And so it's an organization here in North Carolina and it's a small nonprofit.

s of: 1000

Setting up weekly meetings so people know what's expected of them one on ones to make sure that the leaders were meeting and sharing with their teams at least once every two weeks. Just from what's happening. Setting up some, I think very basics. So communications was rough.

The executive director had not been in an operations leadership position. They were taking the reins back for the first time after a while.

And so it was really working with that leader to establish for her some standards of operating business. In reference to discussions, these are the three things you should always have discussions with your employees about.

Where are we on basic employee performance management? Yearly raises, compensation structures. People were just willy nilly giving raises when they felt like they needed it.

We just really understand that there's a process and some more structure so that the employees that are there know what's expected of them and have an employee policy handbook and know the rules. So really had to go in and set up almost the entire employee structure or re establish architect, re establish it.

We had to rebuild it from all things comp and benefits to all things employee policy to basic communications to leadership practices. Even the small companies need structured right?

It doesn't matter how big you are, employees need clarity and communication and effective policies to make sure they know what's expected of them. And then the managers need training on how to then manage those processes and policies.

So that's one piece that we have seen significant changes in all sides and everything from how the employees feel valued enough to be communicated to and how their structures are in place to ensure that they have a place and a time to communicate their concerns with their leader. All the way to establishing a strong, timely compensation and performance management process.

Those are the kind of fun stuff I love to do to make sure that there is a process without a process. Right. If you don't stand for something, you're going to fall for anything. So we put in place of some things that they had to stand for.

Freddy D: 00:24:38

And so you've positioned them for streamlining their operations.

Diane Yarborough: 00:24:42

Right?

Freddy D: 00:24:43

Because now everybody's communicating and knows their objectives, knows the goals of the company. You know, it's like a racing, right? Because it's like a racing rowing team.

Everybody has one oar and getting everybody into the boat, everybody in synchronization of that racing boat. So everybody's rowing at the exact same time because if you're off the boat's not going any Place. It's not even going in a circle.

Diane Yarborough: 00:25:11

Right.

Freddy D: 00:25:12

Like this.

Diane Yarborough: 00:25:13

Right.

Freddy D: 00:25:13

And so what you're doing is you put that whole organization into an organized setup so that the rowing team can start rowing together. And now you're working on getting them synchronized. And once that happens, that boat just.

Diane Yarborough: 00:25:30

Slips through the water.

Freddy D: 00:25:31

Slides through the water. Exactly.

Diane Yarborough: 00:25:33

But, like, we had to put the oars on the boat. Like, we had to find new oars, and so the oars needed to be replaced.

And so it's a great analogy because you need to make sure the boat works and that you need to make sure you have the right oars, and then you got to make sure you have the right people in the right seat. So it's a great analogy to a business.

Freddy D: 00:25:51

Yeah. Because once you get that operating, it flies.

Diane Yarborough: 00:25:55

Yeah, yeah.

Freddy D: 00:25:57

And everybody's energized because everybody's energizing. They know the goal, and that's. Companies got to know where they're heading. Otherwise, they're just in business.

And we've both seen them where they're in business. And what's your goal? To make money. Yeah. That's wonderful.

Diane Yarborough: 00:26:12

Here's $2.

Freddy D: 00:26:16

Right. Exactly.

Diane Yarborough: 00:26:19

Go away. Yeah, I think that's a great point. I don't know if a lot of people understand why they're in.

There's this whole Simon Sinek y thing, but making money is one thing, but this is your passion. People started business because they're passionate about something, not just making money, but there's that thing that they're passionate about.

And I don't know if everyone really understands that their passion needs to then be set up in a such that they're able to motivate and inspire the people they're hiring to get them on their same or passion. Because no man's an island. You can't do it by yourself.

And those of us who are out here doing it with a limited staff know that the boat works a lot better when there's more people in the boat with you.

Freddy D: 00:27:04

And on the same page, that's the. Really. The bottom line is they got to be on the same page.

Like you just mentioned, they got to be passionate about what the goals are of company because that's transformative. Now you've got everybody going at their. They know what the mission is.

I've recently worked with a company, and we grew by a million dollars in a year because we set up a mission, the goal. Everybody was passionate about what they were doing, and we created super fans internally, and we still had some internal issues.

They don't go away just like that. They take work and it takes a skill. And that was some areas I needed to work on to deal with some of the confrontations or become transparent areas.

Sometimes it's not as easy as you think. You can sit down with people and talk about different personality types and how people still interact, but they're still in their own mind.

An individual's perception is their own reality. Right or wrong, it is. That's the reality. And you got to deal with it. You got to respect that.

Diane Yarborough: 00:28:05

That's what I call it, shaping. Right. We're constantly remolding and reshaping people's mindset or people's thinking. At the end of the day, people have jobs. We have to work.

The people that we employ have to still do the things that we need them to do. While they may not jump up and down every five minutes, we need them to find some joy in it and to be content in a way that they, again, retention.

They stay longer than five minutes. And everybody who knows how to hire and rehire, it's not easy.

Freddy D: 00:28:36

The cost is enormous because you onboard somebody, you spend time training them and you do a poor job of managing them and setting expectations. So they last 90 days and said, this isn't for me. I'm out of here. So now you've got to hire somebody else.

You forget someone's got to train them, and training them isn't doing what they need to be doing because it's a snowball. You're losing productivity. You've got onboarding costs, you've got training costs, you've got marketing costs to attract the people.

The amount of money is just ridiculous that you're wasting. Had you just done a better job of working with the team.

Diane Yarborough: 00:29:17

No one's thinking about the fact that employee came in for 90 days and left and is now talking about you.

Freddy D: 00:29:23

That's back to what we talked about at the beginning. That's the word on the street.

Diane Yarborough: 00:29:26

That's the PR piece.

So everyone really should spend better time hiring the right person so that in 90 days you don't have that happen and almost anticipate the fact that in 90 days this person could leave. So what could you do on the front end to ensure that they're the right hire?

And so maybe it's going in and doing a culture fit as part of your interview process is you go in and have them meet the team and you see how that works. That can be a part of the interview process as well. I think people think I hire I bring them in, I train them.

But what's your interview process looking like and do you have the right people interviewing them? I've been in corporate recruiting, I've worked with staffing firms.

So it's a big deal is the acquisition of the person is something I think people just leave to technology and they hope that indeed or zip recruiter hires and finds their right resume. But I've read resumes for 20 years and they are still scary. Resumes are just still so very not done well.

We're still not doing good resumes and people aren't looking at the resume enough to pull the right question out to ask the right question at the interview. So I feel like that process just gets skimmed over because they just want someone. They just want someone.

Freddy D: 00:30:45

We gotta fill that spot.

Diane Yarborough: 00:30:49

I'll train them, we'll figure it out. That two weeks prior to first 90 days could be so much better if we focused on that first part.

Freddy D: 00:30:58

And you bring up an important point, Dan, that I want to really reemphasize is having the new candidate meet with fellow team members. Because that's how you're going to find out whether there's chemistry or not.

And you're going to get different feedback and a different perspective because it might be that these two might be co workers. And if the vibe isn't there, that's a telltale sign right off the bat and you can't force it.

And if that person says they're okay, but I'm not sure, I'm not sure you need to say okay, maybe that's not the right candidate. We need to keep looking, work it.

Diane Yarborough: 00:31:39

Out or include some of their peers in the panel interview process and let them interview them and ask them questions. And because we're quick to judge people these days, give them a chance to be part of the process. So there's a lot of things yes, we can do.

But again, I think a lot of people rely on if there's a corporate recruiter, is the recruiter doing their job? Are they picking the best candidates? It's all over the gamut from acquisition to offboarding.

There's a variety of ways that we could just get smarter and better about every step of the process to ensure we have a nice long lived employee with who loves their employee experience. So if the company doesn't have really great initiatives going on for their employees, that might be an area that we focus on.

So I call it a culture scan.

Part of my assessment is what part of this process needs the most attention right now And So sometimes to your point, it's recognition and rewards, sometimes it's onboarding and training. And then a lot of times it could be it's offboarding. We never off board. Right. I feel like that's a gap right now.

We spend so much time on the onboarding, but we don't take time to realize that people don't work at a job 30 years anymore. And so they could come back. Right. There's a revolving door at the end. So those employees could come back to you in a year.

When your staffing levels rise, situations change. And so how are we off boarding to make sure that we keep that door open just in case on both sides?

Freddy D: 00:33:12

Sure. And that goes back to the word on the street. It goes back to what the word on the street is. And because if the off boarding is abrupt.

Diane Yarborough: 00:33:23

Right.

Freddy D: 00:33:23

That's not going to be good pr, that's not going to be a super fan.

Diane Yarborough: 00:33:27

At the end of the day, I think the big piece of all of this also is staffing your hr or if you don't have hr, who does this?

And making sure that your HR teams, if there's one HR for an entire company, is that person really set up to do everything that we need them to do successfully or is it you don't have an HR person because maybe the leader's doing that and that's a facet of the work I do.

Also, sometimes you just need a fractional HR person who can just help manage some of that because not everybody can staff that function and they're not staffing it. There really should be one HR person for every 80 to 100 people.

Do you have labor resources in the HR function enough to do everything that needs to get done as really who else will do it?

Freddy D: 00:34:18

Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Spot on.

That's one of the things that when I took over that one company, that's what we did is we hired an outside HR company to come in and help organized place. And everybody knew what was the expectations, what was the compensations, days off and all that stuff.

And there's still flexibility because you got to be flexible. Life happens.

Diane Yarborough: 00:34:40

Right.

Freddy D: 00:34:40

And you got to be accommodating.

And there's companies that miss that by like a galaxy that it's like, sorry, this is the days and this is what you got to do and you got to stick with it. It's like, remember at the end of the day, I thought we're all human beings.

Diane Yarborough: 00:34:57

Right.

Freddy D: 00:34:58

And things happen and you got to be accommodating. And that's how you Create super fans.

Because you're going to say, wow, my aunt Lucille was sick and they let me go visit her for the day and I got paid for it. Anyway, that's how you create a super fan again. It goes back. That's a little thing that costs you small money.

Diane Yarborough: 00:35:18

Right.

Freddy D: 00:35:18

But it's you employee.

Diane Yarborough: 00:35:20

That word of mouth. Right. And that word of mouth in that PR will do so much better for you. Right. We don't see the forest through the trees.

And I think one of the big things, the concept of these short term decisions with the long term impacts.

Some people are so short sighted in the way they make their decisions that they don't think about the downstream impacts of that one decision and how it's going to reverberate into hey, did you hear that? They asked. Her aunt was in the hospital, she couldn't get off work. And so it goes.

Freddy D: 00:35:48

That becomes toxic in a company culture because that word will go through that company just like that's faster and likewise. Wow, they didn't let her off. This is a great company.

And then they're going to tell their friends and family so and so got off and got paid to go see so and so. And then that can go either way. And the better way is the positive. Right.

Diane Yarborough: 00:36:14

What's the big deal?

I think we, we all get so high and mighty sometimes with our must do, must follow, you know, task, task, task, task, task, money, money, money, money, money. They forget that we're human beings that have luckily Covid taught us, I think a lot of that. They couldn't deny it. There's no way around it.

I remember thinking, Gosh, it was 20 years ago. The thought of a remote employee. Could you imagine? Only the lucky people could telework. Now that has shifted. That paradigm has shifted.

And so I know everyone's still trying to figure it out.

Freddy D: 00:36:50

Yeah. Back in 95, we had a shared executive suites.

I was in a software space and the Internet was just popping up and the company being in a software kind of forefront of everything. They said we don't really need the office anymore. We shut down our executive suites and we started working in 95, 96. I was working remotely.

Diane Yarborough: 00:37:14

Wow, you were one of the lucky ones.

Freddy D: 00:37:17

Yeah, it was in the early days. That was the early adoption of it.

Diane Yarborough: 00:37:20

But the culture, but we hear now, and those leaders who made that decision realized that they could trust that you were going to get your work done. They had set the culture for accountability and leadership to say, I don't need to be hovering over you.

Just to make sure you're getting your work done when you could do it from home equally.

Freddy D: 00:37:41

I was running the branch office in Chicago, so I was already remote because corporate was up in Minnesota, so I was already running a remote office. So it was just, okay, we're going from an office space to home space, but otherwise I was still remote.

Diane Yarborough: 00:37:57

What do they know?

Freddy D: 00:38:00

Exactly. But the bottom line was it saved them money and the work still got done because that didn't change. We had numerous remote offices.

We had office in Detroit. Corporate was like say in Minnesota, Chicago, west coast. We're all over the country with remote offices.

And they transitioned everybody to work from home.

Once the Internet and email started going and that was it, we would, we would fly in everybody every 90 days for an in person meeting and that was it.

Diane Yarborough: 00:38:30

Right, right.

And think of the monies they're saving by closing down the offices and not running the air conditioning and not running the electrical and not having those static costs all the time.

Freddy D: 00:38:39

So, been a great conversation.

Diane Yarborough: 00:38:42

Yeah.

Freddy D: 00:38:43

As we come to the end here, how can people find you?

Diane Yarborough: 00:38:47

I have a website, castawaycompany.com you can find out about what I do for other organizations and some of the talent management work that we're doing.

We're getting ready to launch a young talent network called the Young Professionals Network for young folks who are coming just out of college and into their early rung of the ladder to make sure that they have a community. So we have a website. I have two Instagram pages, one for castaway and one for young professionals.

We want to make sure that our young folk who are coming into leadership, who are being shaped into the future leadership roles, have a strong network of mentors and peers. So that's that on the website. Instagram. I don't have any of that other stuff. I'm on LinkedIn, but I haven't joined the TikTok community.

I'm not sure if I'm ready for that. That's moving too fast for me right now. I know I need to probably learn more about it, but it still scares me.

Freddy D: 00:39:33

We'll make sure that's on the show. Notes and. But the other thing is that I believe you have something for our listeners.

Diane Yarborough: 00:39:42

Yes. So my new the culture scan and the employee lifecycle assessment, I'm happy to offer to your listeners some free consultation.

If they just need someone to talk to about their culture or their specific situation, happy to help give some guidance for free.

All they need to do is reach out on my website and just indicate they heard me on your podcast and that way I'll know they're part of the team to get that benefit.

And we'll see if we can help more organizations reach stronger levels of engagement and stronger levels of culture and understand and help them shape some of their potential mindset or initiatives to move them in the right direction towards great retention.

Freddy D: 00:40:26

Excellent.

Diane Yarborough: 00:40:26

Perfect.

Freddy D: 00:40:27

And Diana, it's been a pleasure having you on the Business Superfam podcast and we definitely would love to continue the conversation on another day. Talk for hours on this.

Diane Yarborough: 00:40:36

Absolutely. I'd love to. So invite me whenever you have time.

Freddy D: 00:40:39

All right. Thank you much.

Diane Yarborough: 00:40:40

Thank you.

Freddy D: 00:40:43

Before we wrap up, here's your quick debrief. Every conversation focuses on a single pillar of the Superfans framework.

Nine road tested steps that turn a spark of possibility into unstoppable scalable prosperity.

The nine Pillars S Strategic Positioning and purpose U Unite stakeholder synergy P Propel magnetic messaging E Elevate every stakeholder experience R Rally referrals and reputation S Foster financial fitness A Automate for Exponential leverage N Nurture lifetime loyalty S Scale and sustain prosperity each episode concludes with A Superfan's Success Spark, a practical guest driven action distilled from today's conversation that you can implement within 24 hours.

Follow the nine episode cycle, apply every spark and you'll build a proven playbook for turning stakeholders into loyal superfans, accelerating referrals, reputation and revenue. So here's this episode's Superfan Success Spark, a Automate for Exponential Leverage.

So here's the top insight Even the small companies need structure. Employees need clarity and communication. Diane Yarborough so here's a top action to implement the next 24 hours.

Document one repeatable process in your business like onboarding or client. Follow up and outline three steps to automate it using a simple tool like email templates or or task automated software.

We hope you took away some useful knowledge from today's episode of the Business Superfans Podcast. The path to success relies on taking action. So go over to businesssuperfans.com and get your hands on the book.

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