Unlocking High Performance: Jaime Raul Zepeda on Workplace Engagement
Episode 117 Unlocking High Performance: Jaime Raul Zepeda on Workplace Engagement Frederick Dudek (Freddy D) Copyright 2025 Prosperous Ventures, LLC
We're diving into the world of workplace culture with Jaime Raul Zepeda, a true expert who's all about transforming the way we experience work. Jaime's been in the game for over 15 years, helping more than 4,000 companies create environments where employees feel engaged and empowered. He emphasizes that happy employees are not just a nice-to-have; they're key to driving success and innovation.
We chat about how recognizing and appreciating team members can lead to a thriving culture, where folks feel proud of their contributions. So, if you're looking to reimagine your workplace and boost performance, this episode is packed with insights you won't want to miss.
Discover more with our detailed show notes and exclusive content by visiting: https://bit.ly/4eJMjAf
Workplace culture is often seen as a buzzword, but for Jaime Raul Zepeda, it’s a core focus that drives organizational success. In this episode, we explore the critical role of workplace culture in achieving business goals, as Jaime shares his insights from years of experience as a workplace culture architect. He discusses how his journey has shaped his understanding of what makes a thriving workplace, drawing from his time at Best Companies Group, where he has worked with over 10,000 organizations to elevate their employee experiences.
One key takeaway from our discussion is the importance of public recognition in the workplace. Jaime points out that when employees feel recognized for their contributions, they are more likely to be engaged and productive. This isn’t just about making employees feel good; it’s about creating a culture where everyone understands what success looks like and is motivated to achieve it. By implementing simple practices of recognition, organizations can transform their culture and see measurable improvements in performance.
Additionally, Jaime emphasizes the need for leaders to step back and allow their teams to voice their ideas. By being the last to speak in meetings, leaders can create a safe space for open dialogue, facilitating innovation and collaboration. This approach not only empowers employees but also cultivates a sense of ownership and accountability within the team. As Jaime shares, the little things matter—whether it’s a simple thank you or inviting input on critical decisions. These actions can lead to a more engaged workforce, ultimately driving greater success for the organization.
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Takeaways:
- Jaime Raul Zepeda emphasizes that a thriving workplace culture significantly boosts employee satisfaction and productivity.
- Recognition in the workplace is vital, as inspired employees are proven to be over twice as productive as their peers.
- Creating a supportive environment involves listening to employees and making them feel valued and essential to the organization's mission.
- Investing in employee growth is not just good ethics; it's a strategic move that enhances overall organizational success and performance.
Links referenced in this episode:
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- Best Companies Group
- Great Place to Work
- Hear.com
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy
Podtrac - https://analytics.podtrac.com/privacy-policy-gdrp
Podcorn - https://podcorn.com/privacy
Transcript
Hey, Superfans superstar Freddie D. Here in this episode 117, we're joined by Jaime Raul Zepeda, a workplace culture architect and executive leader passionate about transforming how we experience work. Jaime has dedicated his career to helping companies create environments where people feel fulfilled, engaged and empowered.
From his rise to an executive role, a great place to work, impacting thousands of organizations, to his current leadership as executive Vice president at Best Companies Group, he has helped over 4,000 companies build thriving high performance cultures.
With deep insights from years of research and an MBA from Berkeley Haas School of Business, Jaime believes true success comes from employees who are both happy and growing.
Today, he partners with business leaders nationwide to measure, understand and transform workplace culture, proving that investing in people drives success for everyone. We're thrilled to have him here to share his experience and inspire us to reimagine our workplace.
Welcome, Jaime, to the Business Superfans podcast show. We're super excited to have you on the show. How are you today?
Jaime Raul Zepeda:I'm doing great, Freddie, how you doing?
Freddy D:And I'm excited about this conversation. Really wanted into really what Best Companies is all about. And we had a great conversation before we started recording.
So let's continue that conversation. One of the things noticed on your website is the fact that the team is first and the leadership is on the bottom.
Where you go to a majority of websites, it's the other way around. It's the leadership first and then teams at the bottom. And as we talked, the team is really what makes the company role.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:It's really the team.
And we want to make sure that in every way that we can, within the way that we work, our processes, how we work with each other, our systems are set up. We tell our employees, our team, that they are the ones that are making the business run. They are the most important people in our organization.
We looked at a lot of research that shows that whenever you have an inspired employee, somebody that feels like they're really, truly connected to the organization's mission, they are over two times more productive than an average employee.
It's intentional because we want to make sure that we have an employee first organization, but also a little bit selfish because we know that it's going to help us have a much better and stronger organization. And we talk about that too within the team.
Like I tell all my leaders to tell their teams and I talk to the team directly, is we're here to serve you, we're here to support you, we're here to make you successful. If you're not successful, nothing happens. Absolutely correct.
Freddy D:So let's go back to the beginning and what's your backstory? And how did you get involved with the organization?
Jaime Raul Zepeda:Yeah, so it started when I read a book that I'm not sure if you read. That really just hit me hard. It's Drive by Dan Pink.
Freddy D:No.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:And I'm not sure if you've seen that. It's a great book. It talks about what motivates us at work, what's the thing that keeps us going and actually makes us want to do better.
He breaks it down into really, we want to feel really good about the work that we're doing. We want to feel like we're making progress, to feel like we have some agency in the work that we do.
And we want to feel like we belong to something bigger than ourselves. I think we can all agree that's something that's really important, regardless of whether it's work or family or community.
I started thinking, how much of our time do we spend at work? We spend more time at work than we do with our families. We spend more time talking to our manager than we do talking to our spouse.
So why not make that the best experience we can make? And as I dug deeper into it, found out that it's not just good for the employee, it's good for the organization.
There's a lot of information out there that shows that if you're a Best Place to work, if you're an organization that does that really well, you beat the market, you are more profitable, you are more innovative. And so that started my career in this space. Now I've been in it for 15 years. I started when I was at Great Place to Work.
Great Place to Work is the research and analytics firm that helps Fortune magazine create the 100 best companies to Work for list every year. So whenever you go to your grocery store and you see that there, that's the company that does all the work on the back end.
And then I did a couple of roles in HR to really live that role and understand it better.
And now I have the privilege of leading Best Companies Group, which works with over 10,000 organizations to help them understand and then evolve their workplace to become one of the best in the country.
Freddy D:What a great background. And the variations of different areas that you worked in to give you the background that you have to do what you're doing today.
One of the quotes that I wrote in my book Creating Business Superfans is, people will crawl through broken glass for appreciation and recognition.
Freddy D:Yeah.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:And it doesn't happen as often as people think.
Freddy D:Correct.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:Especially leaders think that they recognize more than they actually do. They recognize at a level that's sufficient. And the data proves that's not true.
The difference between employee who gets recognized weekly is three times more impactful.
Freddy D:Right.
Freddy D:And the other thing, too, is Jaime, is that if I recognize you personally. All right, that's wonderful. That's great.
But if I stop and say, hey, everybody, I want to take a moment to recognize Jaime on this extra little project that he's done, and he really killed it for us. Everybody gets excited. You feel like a rock star. And then other people go, wow, I'm going to step up my game.
And it just changes the dynamics just like that.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:And just like that.
And sometimes that's too much for some organizations, the organizations that, over time, we don't hear about anymore because they go out of business, Culture becomes a culture becomes toxic.
Freddy D:People leave because everybody's distracted and they're talking about the negativity, and the negativity just keeps spreading because you get the pollution, I'll call it into the work environment.
Freddy D:Yeah.
Freddy D:That tonality, you can't hide. So someone calls up on the phone, a prospective customer, and someone's not happy about their job, that's going to come across.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:Absolutely.
One thing I want to pick on, that you just mentioned, Freddie, in your example, is if that happens when you have an employee that gets recognized in front of others. Yes. You get the boost of that employee right away. They feel great.
They feel like a superstar, and they're going to be more motivated to do even more and go above and beyond. An inspired employee is two times more productive than an average one. So you're putting energy into there and keep going.
The other thing that it does, and this is the part that a lot of organizations don't think about, is that it tells the story of what it means to succeed in that organization. Because when you say, brennan, you did a fantastic job on this project. I appreciate all the great work you did in front of everybody else.
And you tell the story of what exactly did Freddy do to be such a superstar? He thought about the customer. He was proactive. He searched for an answer. He didn't give up.
That if I want to get ahead in this organization, I gotta be like Freddie, I gotta be proactive. I gotta take initiative. I gotta be customer first. And so that's how you create culture.
You create culture by the things that you promote and the things that you do not allow.
Freddy D:Right.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:There's two powerful questions that any leader out there, especially if you're a Senior executive or executive think about. To think about what is my culture and how do I preserve it is one, what are the behaviors that I'm observing that are making us successful?
Those are things that you want to keep happening and you want them to grow and you want more people to do right. So kind of like this example, what did Freddie do to be successful?
And then two, what are the behaviors that are not happening that are making us successful? These are the things that you do not want to see grow in your culture like weeds. You want to make sure that you don't allow people to do that.
You tell them that's not the way that we do it here. And then eventually maybe you fire them if they do exhibit just those two questions.
You obsessing about those and thinking about those, you'll create the culture that you want.
Freddy D:And what that does is that transform that team into super fans of that workplace. And so now they're out there promoting to their friends, their family, and their circles of influence. Man, I love my company. I love my job.
I look forward to go to work versus oh, I gotta go to work again. A whole different energy. My wife works from home. She's in the other room right now. She works for a company called Hear.com, hearing aids.
Most of her team is remote, but they do activities, they do online activities, they do recognition. She wins gift cards. They fly her out for company meeting, and everybody gets in together. She loves.
She's going on past seven years now at the same company. She's one of their top people. She's got picked to be on a special project, so she's even more motivated.
One of my other sayings is the little things are really the big things.
Freddy D:Yeah.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:Say more about that. Like, what do you. What do you mean the little things you're talking about? Like the behaviors that we're talking about right now.
Freddy D:Yeah.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:The simple.
Freddy D:Thank you. Hey, you know what, Jaime? I really appreciate that extra effort today. That's it. You don't have to recognize it to everybody. Let's just take.
You went above and beyond. Thanks for taking care of that. I appreciate it. Or me take you out to lunch.
Just little things that don't cost a lot of money but have really high value to that individual because then they go home and go, hey, guess what happened? When I get positive reviews and stuff like that for this show, I get all excited and I go share it with my wife.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:Because you're. You get the feedback of my work matters and.
Freddy D:Exactly.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:Which means I matter. Which means I matter to this organization, which means I really care about this organization now because it's a virtuous cycle.
A lot of businesses, those that do not care about this, don't think of it that way. They think of it as it's a transaction where we get all the value.
We hire an employee, we pay them money, and then we extract all the value we can out of that employee for as long as they want to keep getting the money. I'm being very crude about it, but that's what they think of it like, right?
Freddy D:Absolutely. I worked with a company and we were working with contractors and the mindset, they should be grateful because we're giving them work.
And my mindset was, you've got that completely backwards because they're happened to go to customer as an independent representative of our company. So guess who's the front line? Not you. It's the contractor. That's the front line.
It doesn't matter what industry, home improvement or commercial improvement, interpreting services, they all use contractors that you need to make sure they're super happy about working with you because that's the representation and they can work for anybody.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:Yeah. Just imagine if that thinking was really taken to the logical end.
Freddy D:Right?
Jaime Raul Zepeda:If you were at Amazon and you're spending millions of dollars on advertising, you're putting out a huge super bowl ad that makes you look great and shows people what you can do and makes people think of Amazon.
But then at the same time, all of your employees, especially those that work in customer service, delivering a terrible experience, are you really getting ahead? Are you really?
Freddy D:You're sinking backwards.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:You're sinking backwards and you're spending money, wasting money, because you're putting the focus on the wrong thing. And I'm not saying that you shouldn't do those things, but they all go together. You have to think about your employees.
As you mentioned here, Freddie is they have to be your superfans.
They have to be excited about talking about where they go to war, talking about the products, talking about the services, potentially bringing in new customers because of how excited they are about the work.
Freddy D:Because the sale, the transaction is not the sale. I've been in sales for many years. The sale begins.
Everything that happens after the transaction, that's the sale, because that's the impression, that's the mindset, and you need to transform that customer into a super fan. So they're telling other people and it snowballs.
And you're absolutely correct, Jaime, is the fact that that employee, if they're excited and customer calls up, they're going to handle that in a very different way than somebody is there for a paycheck because they feel underappreciated, they're not recognized. And so they're just going to go through it from a transactional standpoint. And that may be a good or bad experience.
You're flipping the coin over that. But what we're talking about is really making sure that experience is solid. So that person goes, wow, that was a great experience.
I'm going to write these guys a review. Because today reviews is the new word of mouth.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:It is. You go out there, you can't go to a restaurant without first checking reviews. You want to find out if it's good or not.
And now there's a form of reviews or workplaces, right? More and more in the experience of what people feel at work is becoming transparent. And we play a big part in that too.
And we're proud of doing that because we do the survey to directly to employees and ask them all of these really tough questions. Their responses go directly back to us, the organization, the employer does not have anything to do with that.
And then we from that data decide, are you truly a best place to work or not? And it's the employees experience that we gather, right?
That's the process that we go through whenever somebody works with us, either through employee engagement surveys where we help them understand the data and then build a better workplace, or when they want to get a good fence. Are we really the best place to work already? And if so, we'd like to be recognized as one. Do both of those things.
But the experience comes directly from employees. And then we publish that we show the world these are truly best places to work. Here's the data that shows why they are. It's transparent.
It's out there. Everybody, even if it weren't out there in a number, people are talking about you as an organization, whether you like it or not.
They're saying things.
And ideally, if you're really putting your back into it and you're thinking about it, right, they're saying great things about you so that the word spreads.
And there's a lot of research that shows that organizations who are known as best place to work in some way, shape or form, either certified by a third party or they're just known for that, are much more likely to have a positive reputation within the community, which then means a higher number of them are going to become customers. Because what's happening now is a lot of people are buying with their values, right?
I'm not going to Shop there because I heard this thing and how they treat their employees. Am I going to shop there because they didn't believe in the things that I believe in and have options.
It's not like it was 40 years ago where, oh, you got to go get something. You go to Sears, right? Because that was it. That was it. I gotta go there. I gotta get the big fat catalog, which I used to get.
And I would get a dick out of it. Now you can go anywhere. Okay, so now I can go anywhere that's for monetized.
I'm gonna go where I feel like my dollars are really being put to something that I care about. Do they care about their employees? Have a good things about them? Do I know if they pay well or not? Do they follow the same values that I do?
You got to think about that stuff.
Because now, not only on the employee side, but on the customer side, there's a demand for organizations to walk the talk and be fair and respectful to their people.
Freddy D:It goes beyond that and it also goes to, you got the suppliers that you're dealing with, you've got the distributors that you're dealing with. You got complementary businesses that are part of the equation. Your CPA, your law firm, etc.
The janitorial service that comes in that cleans the place. All those come into play because your team is interacting with all those different individuals.
And you want to make sure that in that whole ecosystem, it's a good ecosystem versus a toxic ecosystem.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:Absolutely. It's all connected. It's all connected. All the stakeholders matter and the best organizations know that.
Freddy D:So let's dive deeper into what it is that you guys do and how do you work with companies.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:Yeah, absolutely. So we work in two major ways.
Work with a lot of leading media publications in the country and the world to recognize best places to work either in a region or in an industry. For example, we have the Sacramento Bee. We worked with the Sacramento Bee to find the best places to work in California.
We've done that in Chicago with the Chicago Sun Times. We've done that in Seattle with Seattle magazine. We serve as the research arm to a lot of these programs where they participate.
Company signs up, says, I want to participate in this program to see if I can be recognized. No promise of made you participate. And then we survey your people and if the data is right, then you can be recognized. Sometimes that doesn't happen.
Better luck next year, right? That's one of the things that we do.
And then the other one is because we have worked with over 10,000 organizations and have recognized thousands of organizations across those 10,000 as truly amazing workplaces. We have a lot of data, a lot of benchmarks, a lot of best practices on what it takes to become a great workplace.
And so we consult organizations that want to go through that journey, starting with understanding what their employees are spending in the moment.
So we do surveys, we do assessments, focus groups, and then what do we do with the data to help create a better workplace for everybody, where everybody thrives?
So we advise the leadership team, we put together action plans, we support EHR teams in using that data in a helpful way to create some actionable outcomes.
Freddy D:Oh, okay.
Freddy D:So really you're taking the data and playing it back to the leadership team anonymously. But more importantly, it's giving them a real assessment of what their environment is at the workplace.
Because a lot of times people have a fallacy that everything is wonderful and it may not really be wonderful.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:Yes. Or they don't know what things are like, but they have a little voice in the back of their head saying it's not very good.
So as soon as they get the data back, they just walk away from that spreadsheet very slowly and never touch it again. There's a lot of that where they have the data but they decide not to do anything with it.
Which is even worse than if you did not ask your employees how they feel.
It's better to do this kind of project where you're trying to improve the workplace and asking your employers how they feel when you do have a plan to act on the data. Otherwise, don't do it. It's just a waste of everybody's time, waste of your resources that you're not ready to act on the feedback. Don't ask for it.
Simple.
If you are, ask for it, get the feedback and then set up a system where the data becomes a conversation in the leadership team, which then turns into action plans that the leadership team is accountable for.
There's publicly across the organization and that there's an accountability system where it's not something that starts and then fizzles out a few months. We help organizations with all of that setting up.
Here's how you take your data into a 12 month action planning system where in 12 months you will have worked on all of these things and we guarantee there's going to be some movement in the data because you are acting on it. A lot of organizations drop off after they kick it off.
Freddy D:Really I'm surprised because I would think that data would wake somebody up and go, man, I Got to do some things different because as we know, a thriving culture in a company fuels the growth and doesn't cost a lot of money. And more importantly, it creates longevity of employees.
And people will stay where they could be offered more money, but they'll stay where they're at because of the fact that they're happy with what they're doing. They know that they're making a difference, and they love where they're working.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:Yeah. And I think it often gets stalled because there are good intentions.
But let's say you're the CEO of an organization and you get your results back and you find out that they're not as good as you thought they were. People are not as happy as you thought they were, and they have specific gripes about what's going on. It's hard to understand, where do I start?
How do I work on these things? How do I change it?
This is not as easy as looking at a P and L and trying to find out where do I cut cost or what are some products that I can start, you know, putting some R and D money into to throw out there. It's a lot harder because it's people.
Freddy D:Right.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:People are complicated and people change, and people sometimes are not fully clear. Sometimes you get data, but you don't understand what it means. We help those organizations by bringing it down to a handful of recommendations.
We do a lot of statistical work on the back end to find out what are the things that if you were only to work on two or three, they would make the biggest impact to the entire culture. I know that time is finite. We know that attention is finite. I saw our resources.
So what if we look at the top three that will help you lift all boats, and then we present what that looks like and how you can actually work on it. A lot of leaders just don't know how to go to that. Even within hr.
Some HR leaders look at that data and think, okay, I know I gotta work on this, but it's so overwhelming and it's incomplete because I'll just put.
Freddy D:It in a drawer and ignore it.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:Yeah. I'll just say thank you for your feedback, everybody. Appreciate it.
Here's our numbers and pizza party next Friday, you know, and they think that's gonna help, and they know that it won't. But a lot of it sometimes feels like it's intimidating to start working stuff like that. So we try to help.
Freddy D:So can you share a story of how you guys worked with a company and transformed them to where their whole environment changed and they became a super fan of you guys and recommended you to other companies.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:Yeah, absolutely.
So it's the story of a biotech company that we work with where part of the project was us having a conversation with the leadership team to understand why their innovation had gone down. They were not putting out as many patents as they had in the past. That had dropped off quite a bit recently.
And they are sizable enough organization where they thought, nothing's really changed. So what's going on?
So they brought us in, did a little bit of research, and then we had a conversation where we presented these findings to the executive leadership team. And in that conversation, we found something that ended up transforming their organization for the next few years.
One of the observations we made is people don't feel proud about the work that they're doing anymore. Pride levels in the work that they're doing have dropped off the last few years. Why do you think that is?
So we talked about that for a second, and then through the conversation, we found out that if you walk the halls of their office, of their main headquarters, you would not know that they're a biotech company. You would not know that the work that they're doing is actually saving lives and improving lives of the people out there.
So we said, what if we brought more of that in, somehow telling those stories of patients who have been transformed because of the medicine that you created.
And so it's something as simple as putting up some posters, telling stories of patients, bringing in patients to town halls every now and then to talk about how the pulmonary disease medicine that they had help change their life in front of all the employees totally boosted innovation. So for the next few years, they were more excited and more and more proud. And they were putting out patents like never before.
Sometimes it's something as small as that, right? And you need sometimes a third party that does not live it every day to make those kind of observations.
And it made a big difference to what they thought was possible and made them much more innovative than they were before.
Freddy D:You could clearly say that they're a super fan of how you transform that.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:Super fan. Yeah, they're a super fan. And they told us.
We really appreciate that you just came here and told us something that we have lived and seen for years, but we never understood because we just live in it. It's always hard to describe the place you're in, because you just take it in and you just know it and you don't see the details of it anymore.
So when we did the research, we asked employers how they felt. And then we zeroed in on a couple of key changes that they can make to make some big impact. It mattered, and they were really excited about it.
Freddy D:Yeah, it's like recognizing the janitor in the hospital because their job is to keep the place clean, keep the germs down and everything else. So they're saving lives by what they're doing.
So that's exactly what you're talking about, is making that person feel empowered and go, man, I make a difference.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:It's funny that you say that, because it reminds me of another quick story where we were working with this healthcare system and we were presenting the findings to their leadership team and trying to find some areas that we could focus on for the next 12 months for them to act on.
And so in one of the breaks, I make my way to the bathroom, and on the way back, I bump into a janitor was cleaning the halls, and we talked for a second. We exchanged where we're from, and I asked him, like, so what is it that you do here?
And I'll never forget his response because it totally encapsulates what you just mentioned. Freddie, instead of saying, I mop the floors and I clean the bathrooms and I sweet the offices.
Freddy D:Right.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:He said, without missing a beat, is I help doctors save lives. It wasn't an ounce of irony in there. He looked at him, he looked frowned, like, I hope Dr. Save lives by keeping their offices clean.
And I believed him. He was definitely a super fan. He was definitely someone that loved his job and saw the greater purpose in his job.
Freddy D:Yeah, completely game changer. Complete game changer. It's a little mindset click and whole different attitude.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:Absolutely. And he was so proud of it. And never forget that Norman, in that face, he looked like he was the CEO. Yeah.
Freddy D:He was acting like he's the CEO of what he's doing. At the end of the day, he's empowered. He feels empowered. It's his responsibility.
So it's a whole different ball game than me saying, hey, John, you need to mop all this stuff and clean it out. You're in charge of this, and it's your responsibility to take care of that. Whole different approach.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:And like you mentioned earlier, like, the small things are the big things is he didn't get there just naturally. He got there because many people, managers, coworkers, the way that he was onboarded gave him all of these signals saying, you matter.
You're part of this larger mission to save lives, and here's how your role impacts that mission. And we are appreciative for all the great work you do to help everybody else do their job.
Freddy D:Bingo.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:You tell that. Yeah. You tell all those messages. Right. In different ways. And then he's. Yeah, that's right.
Because people sometimes forget that stuff, even if it's completely true and everybody knows it in their mind. People focus on their work, they're busy. They're going through their spreadsheet, they're going through their chores.
And if you don't remind them of how important they are to the greater mission, they'll forget. So you have to like rinse and repeat every single day.
Freddy D:Yeah, absolutely correct. I use this example a lot, but it's the best example that I can utilize. Think of a racing rowing team. You got eight people in a boat.
Everybody has a single oar. You gotta get everybody in, going into one direction, one mission, and more importantly, in synchronization. Otherwise that boat's not going nowhere.
It's not even going in a circle. So it's just wobbling like this, going no place. So what you're talking about is really is getting everybody onto that racing rowboat.
They all know what the mission is, they're onboarded in the right way and that boat flies through the water.
Freddy D:Yeah.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:Clarity. The clarity of knowing why is it important and how do we succeed?
Freddy D:Right. Yep.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:Answering those questions constantly for your employees. Themes, basic. A lot of organizations don't do it. If you can answer those questions.
If you're a manager, you can answer those questions for your people on a regular basis. You will see your performance skyrocket. Because most money, they forget. It doesn't cost you any money. It literally costs you five minutes per.
One on one.
Freddy D:Right.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:On a weekly basis with each employee. That's it. It's the best return on investment that you can have out there.
More than anything else that gets spent on is just spending five minutes in your next one on one with your employee. Say, hey, let me remind you why your role is so important to the work that we do here. Going through that, does that make sense to you?
Do you understand now what I hope you can achieve? Because I have high expectations for you. Goes back.
Freddy D:The little things are really the big things. And that's a little thing that really has a big impact.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:Absolutely.
Freddy D:And now you're getting everybody fired up. And then that energy is contagious, number one. Number two, it transcends to all stakeholders because the conversations are different.
I had a guest on a couple shows back and he talked about the relationship he had with the supplier. They'd get Together. They'd have lunch once in a while, had a good relationship, and they were a super fan of him.
When the pandemic hit, he needed 500 laptops like that, and other people were scrambling for laptops like that. Guess who got him first.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:That's right. It pays to do stuff like that. You never know when you'll need it.
And I think it also then transcends the relationship from just business, which is important. We all got to do it.
But if the relationship is just business, where you give me this, I give you that, and then we'll see you next time the contract renews. It's a commodity. They can get that anywhere else.
If you're a vendor, if you're a customer, whoever is, you can get that anywhere else because it's what everybody else is doing. But if you're able to find a way to transcend that and really invest in the relationship and treat people like people, you automatically stand out.
And the next time you might need something like that, you're going to focus on the people like, hear about this person more than just a transaction. I'm going to see what I can do to help them. And that goes the same way with employees.
Freddy D:Right.
Freddy D:That's how you create super fans.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:You create superfans.
It's like it's a virtuous cycle, because whenever employees see that their organization is going a little bit above and beyond what they would be in other organizations by either investing more in their training or asking their thoughts on an upcoming decision, or listening to their feedback on recent changes, they are then going to go above and beyond for the organization, which then gives the organization an opportunity to go above and beyond fact to the employee, because things are getting better.
Freddy D:Right.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:So it's a virtuous cycle. It's like they're depositing in each other's checking accounts and it's growing.
And you're having people that thrive and organizations that thrive at the same time. There's no trade out there, Right?
Freddy D:Absolutely right. And then the revenue line goes.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:Exactly. Yeah.
Freddy D:It's a W for everybody.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:Absolutely.
Freddy D:So what are some of the things that you've encountered that are really simple things that a business owner could do right off the bat from this episode, that they could do a simple assessment of themselves and apply it right away to their business?
Jaime Raul Zepeda:That's a great question.
I would say there's two things that anybody out there can do right away, tomorrow, and I can assure you that it will have an impact on how your people feel about your organization. And this Is especially true if you are in the C suite. Senior leader, executive. If you can show this or do this, the next time, you can watch out.
You're going to just see a radical change.
And so, one is the next time that you're in a room with people that are in lower roles or have less power than you do and talking about a problem or you're thinking through a solution, be the very last person in the room to speak. Do not share your solution. Did not share your thoughts. Did not share your perspective on it.
Put it out there saying, this is something that we're trying to figure out. I'd love to get your thoughts and be quiet until it's uncomfortable.
You want the rest of the room to be able to share what they think in a way that feels safe. And in order to do that, you need to be quiet. Because as soon as you say something, everybody will have to make a decision.
Do I agree or disagree with my boss?
Freddy D:Right.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:And if I agree, then you're really losing innovation power right there. Because then they're just gonna say, yeah, okay, I guess I don't have to think about it so much more. I'm just gonna go ahead and follow the line.
If you disagree, you're gonna think, do I feel comfortable and safe enough to disagree with my boss in front of everybody else? Even if it's in private, Do I feel just comfortable to disagree with my boss, period?
Freddy D:Right. Right.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:Or do I feel comfortable disagreeing with the CEO?
Freddy D:Right.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:And if you don't, you're not gonna say anything. You're gonna be quiet and be like, oh, okay, Yeah, I think I like that too. You're not going to say what you really believe. So you got to be quiet.
Be the last person to speak because you have power. You need to give power back to the rest of the room. You show that by showing them that they're important and you value their feedback.
Two, and this one is a little bit trickier, is look at the information that maybe you're not sharing with your people about how the organization is doing and see how much of that you can share in a comfortable way. What I mean is, right now we're going through economic uncertainty. Regardless of where you are. We just get this all the time.
People have questions about what is the year going to look like? What can I expect? How do I prepare my business for that? All the employees are reading the news that you're reading.
If all that they're hearing is positive, rosy statements, they're gonna think they're not telling Me something. Either it's so bad that they don't want to say anything about it, or they have no clue how to address this.
And then I don't feel very confident about my leadership. You have to say something.
You have to acknowledge the situation, even if you don't have a plan for it that is much more positive and helpful to your employees than if you're completely quiet about it and only share the rosy good news. Again, it shows that you can be transparent. It shows that you trust their perspective and that they can handle the truth.
And also, you fill the information vacuum that otherwise is really going to hurt you.
Freddy D:Yeah. Very well said. Very good advice.
Because I was running a company a few years ago, and they had a negative net income, the revenue was spotty, and all that kind of stuff. And I shared it with the team because I was general manager. This is where we're at.
And I solicited ideas of what we can do, and people came up with some. And I did what you said. Shut up. And people came up with some great ideas that we implemented, and it made some big differences.
So sometimes, just as you said, Jaime, you kind of just step out of your own way.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:That's really it. And it's super simple. You just put it out there, be quiet, and people will ask you, what do you think we should do?
Freddy D:Right.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:You might get that. And you can say, I trust everybody's judgment here. I'd love to get your thoughts. I really want to hear from everybody here. What do you all think?
And if you really want to take it to the next level is if you hear everybody, you share your thoughts on the situation, and then somebody disagrees with you. That's a great thing. You want to celebrate that like you won the lottery. Thank you so much for pointing that out. I think you're right.
I think I did miss that. So thank you for hearing your feedback, Betty. I'll take that into consideration.
That is another signal that you send to the rest of the organization that it is okay to disagree as long as you do it respectfully, because then we all get better.
Freddy D:Right.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:You don't want to go ahead and say, well, no, better. You're not. See, what you're not understanding is that this happens, and that happens right away.
Freddy D:You're kind of condescending.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:You're shooting down innovation in the future. Exactly. So that's another quick way. Elevate your team and empower your team.
Freddy D:Yep.
Freddy D:The little things are really the big things.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:They matter.
Freddy D:They matter.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:They have to.
Freddy D:Jaime, as we get close to the end of the show here. How can people find you?
Jaime Raul Zepeda:Yeah, so I'm on LinkedIn. Happy to connect with anybody out there that wants to talk more about this.
You can also contact us at Best Companies Group by going to bestcompaniesgroup.com and sending us a note. We'll give you all the information about what we do and how we can help you.
If you want to contact me directly, you can just go to my website too@j Jaime raulsapeta.com and have some resources there. I also sometimes speak on these topics if that's of interest.
If anybody out there wants to hear more about it, or if you just want to connect and get to know each other, I'd love to talk about you.
Freddy D:Great.
Freddy D:Well, we'll make sure that's in the show. Notes thank you so much for your time. You and I could probably talk on this for days.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:Had a great time.
Freddy D:Thank you so much and we look forward to having you on the show down the road again.
Jaime Raul Zepeda:Sounds good.
Freddy D:Before we wrap, 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 Start Strategic positioning and purpose.
You 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.
Freddy D:Here's this episode Superfan Success Park E Elevate every stakeholder experience so here's the top insight an inspired employee is over two times more productive than an average employee. When you recognize somebody publicly, you're not just fueling their motivation, you're telling the entire team what success looks like.
Jaime Raoul Zabeda So here's the 24 hour action step. Pick one team member who went above and beyond this week and recognize them in front of your entire staff.
Be specific about what they did and highlight how it ties to your company's mission. Thank you for listening and please be a Superfan superstar and subscribe to this podcast. Thank you.
