Going Deeper into Core Values with Todd Smart of Chicago Traction Center
Todd Smart is the CEO and founder of Chicago Traction Center, a company which helps entrepreneurs and their company leadership conceive and develop core values which encourage healthy culture within their organizations.
Todd is a lifelong entrepreneur who started his first business in 1991, when he was only 23 years old. He has started many other businesses since then, including EO Accelerator, an entrepreneur training company.
Want to hear more from Will?
Subscribe to Culture Czars podcast on:
In this episode, you will learn:
[02:50] What corporate culture is to Todd
[14:50] Trust is at the core of core values
[25:48] Client success as a metric for measuring the quality of culture
Resources:
Connect with Will:
Episode Transcript
Speaker 1: From Core Values To Valued Culture. Here is your host, Will Scott, interviewing another CEO about leading culture in their company.
Will Scott: Okay, listeners, and welcome to another Culture Czars interview where we talk to CEOs that care about corporate culture. We call this series From Core Values To Valued Culture, and Todd is a czar of culture not only in his own company, Chicago Traction Center, but also for his clients. Hi, Todd.
Todd Smart: Hi, Will. Thanks for having me.
Will Scott: Absolutely. Thanks for coming on. Todd and I have known each other, wow, a good time now. Todd, I know I've learned a lot from you, and I think the listeners are going to love what you're going to share with us today. Please start by just telling us a little bit about Chicago Traction Center.
Todd Smart: Sure, and I can tell you a little bit about myself as an entrepreneur also. I started my first business in 1991 when I was 23 years old, and that business took off. We grew that to 85 employees in the first year and a half, and I was swimming lost as a young entrepreneur, not knowing which way was up. In the last 27 years I've had eight startups or acquisitions, eight businesses that I've been substantially a part of, and today my entrepreneurial life consists of three primary things, and that is the Chicago Traction Center where I'm a coach to leadership teams using EOS or the Entrepreneurial Operating System-
Will Scott: Know it well.
Todd Smart: And also a co-founder of Traction Tools, which is forward for EOS, and I am a partner at OSM, a SaaS [software as a service] business that provides content management software for fast food restaurant digital menu boards. So there's different cultures in all three organizations that I'm currently a part of, plus my 19 clients that I coach, so as we go through this, I'm going to balance between those different conversations.
Will Scott: Todd, I'm proud to say that I am a client of yours on both counts. I know you've helped me in my companies implement traction and of course, as you know, I'm also using your software Traction Tools at my companies, so thank you for that.
Todd Smart: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.
Will Scott: Culture can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. Todd, what do you think of when we talk about corporate culture?
Todd Smart: I think of a screening tool and a simple set of characteristics as the foundational things. This comes from EOS, of course. You know, how simple and clear I get about culture right now has a lot to do with how EOS preaches culture. I identify like there's 30 characteristics that you could have as a person. All cultures have three or four of those characteristics that are non-negotiables, whether they're stated or not. All we do when we go ahead and identify a company's core values or the most important characteristics of the folks that work there are get everybody aligned around a simple three or four. And I find that when everybody is aligned around a simple three or four, culture happens, maybe spontaneous isn't the word, but easier.
Will Scott: Yeah, for sure. For sure. I agree with you. Once everything is defined like that, things feel more aligned and things do get easier. That's a word I get a lot from CEOs who were operating without it before, when everything felt hard, and some months or maybe it might take a year after defining culture that things just get easier.
Todd Smart: It's not supposed to be hard work to build a great culture. It doesn't need something that is somebody's full-time energy, if you are actively hiring and firing based on some key characteristics, and it really doesn't matter what the characteristics are. Just so that everybody there is aligned around those characteristics.
Will Scott: I quite agree, and I like the way that you mentioned three or four. I think that's an optimal number too. Any more than that and people find it hard to remember them. But what process have you used with your clients then, to get to those three or four key characteristics?
Todd Smart: One of the mistakes I see people make regularly is that they think identifying these characteristics or values as a creative activity where they dream up what they wish it is, and that's the aspirational core values-
Will Scott: How do they work?
Todd Smart: But even the folks that are in the room don't meet the aspirational core values most of the time, so it's a discovery, is the real simple approach to figuring out what your characteristics or core values are that you're going to align your company around. And they are the things that have always been true about your firm, and the ones I trust the most is when they haven't been made too pretty, when they haven't been made polished enough to be on your website or in your marketing. I actually question the core values that are touted to the outside world, where I really love them as like an internal secret. Everybody that works there knows them in spades, but to the outside world they are not promoted. It's our HR filter. Why would we tell everybody in the world about our hiring and firing filter? But I want everybody internally to know, of course.
Will Scott: Yeah. I certainly agree. I like it when companies also make them somehow personal or unique with some unique lingo or phrases or some traditions that have built up as arrived at the words that they use for their culture as opposed to integrity and respect, which everybody seems to like to put on their wall and it's really [crosstalk 00:06:17].
Todd Smart: Yeah, and really those that you bring up along with honesty and smart and hardworking are some of the permission to play core values, and so in the way that I teach core values to my coaching clients is like, "You're going to screen for smart and honest in different ways in the interview process. You do not need to make smart and honest part of your core values, right?" There's a half dozen different ways to screen people for intelligence. You could simply talk to them and figure it out.
Will Scott: Right, right.
Todd Smart: And honestly, you're going to check references and other ways to check whether they're honest, so not only are they kind of givens in the workplace, there are other more effective ways to screen people out of your hiring and firing process if they're not those things.
Will Scott: Yes. You mentioned hiring and firing, and Traction encourages us to use a very simple sort of measuring technique, don't they? At least for the firing part, for measuring. I'm thinking about the GWC and then you put your core values and you just give everybody a number. I know with my clients I've been able to see. When there are some folks that are kind of in the red zone at the bottom, when you get those folks out, how that is one of the quickest ways to transition your culture in a company. Have you worked a lot with your clients on that simple measuring technique?
Todd Smart: Yeah, and so for your listeners, GWC stands for Get It, Want it, and Capacity, and it's the way that we figure out if somebody is in the right seat. On the core values we simply give people a "yes, they exhibit that core value most of the time" or "no, they don't most of the time." Or it's sometimes yes, sometimes no, a plus or a minus, or a plus/minus. That's all in a tool called the People Analyzer, which I find to be a brilliant tool because of its simplicity. The difficult thing is when you've got the wrong person, they don't meet your core values, but they're in the right seat. They are literally and quantifiably succeeding at their job, but yet they're taking a little dump on your culture every day when they come to work.
Will Scott: Yeah, and CEOs, they hate tackling that individual, don't they? Because they're delivering, but at the same time they're negatively affecting the rest of the team.
Todd Smart: Fear your top sales person because they're not a good culture fit. You know, show me a CEO doing that. I'll show you a CEO with a bright business future.
Will Scott: Yeah, so how do those conversations go when you're speaking to your clients about, wow, this guy just doesn't fit your culture?
Todd Smart: By the time that my clients have decided to use a professional coach around this like myself or you, they're really ready to start making the bold moves. I do find there's-
Will Scott: They’ve dealt with the frustration long enough and they just want to get it fixed. Yeah.
Todd Smart: Yeah. One of the reasons they're finally ready to take this seriously and get a coach for EOS is that they're ready to make the moves. Yeah. They're ready.
Todd Smart: As I look at my clients and how quickly they make their businesses better and start growing faster and getting everything they want from their business, how quickly and decisively they make their people moves is one of the leading indicators for how well they're going to do and how fast they're going to get their business on track or to doing better than it's already doing. My teams that procrastinate, the difficult or obvious people decisions are the ones that move slower towards their goals.
Will Scott: I quite agree and I've seen the same thing, and it's amazing how people feel and it is a feeling walking into the office or the space 12 months after that started where, oh, this feels better, you know?
Todd Smart: Yeah, yeah. You were-
Will Scott: You just realize they did it.
Todd Smart: You were saying something while I was talking over the top of you there. What were you saying?
Will Scott: I want to say that they just feel so glad that they did finally make those tough decisions around the people, and now months later the whole team and the whole environment, the culture just feels so much better to them, that they finally did it, yeah.
Todd Smart: You should like coming into work at your own business, right? I know a lot of entrepreneurs and people in leadership teams that don't like coming to the office because of the culture that they've created, and what a shame.
Will Scott: Yeah, and I would probably challenge them as, "You created that culture." It's just developed by default, because they didn't really create the culture.
Todd Smart: You're right.
Will Scott: That's one, but I think CEOs are kind of often slow. They're so busy managing clients and growth and stuff like that, they don't actually manage the most important thing in their business, which is the people and the greatest thing they can give those people is a great culture, right? And then the other things tend to fall in line, has been my experience.
Todd Smart: Well, everything else is easier if the culture is working and there's trust built.
Will Scott: Yeah, yeah. Then what are some of your clients doing once they've established their core values to keep those ... Well, first of all, to bring those core values alive and then to really make them thrive so that they're not just words on the wall?
Todd Smart: You know, I think all of the things that you would see, Will, as being ordinary, given how well you've done this in the past, but the typical thing, so four times a year a one-on-one coaching between every boss and employee that we call the quarterly conversation. It is not a review or a time for a raise. It's simply a conversation about how well they're doing, and one of the three components is how well they fit in the culture and what their biggest room for improvement is. There's four times a year an all-company meeting where we go through the core values in detail and tell some stories about them and establish folklore. It is the leadership team's job to come up with these stories as folklore that's memorable, and it becomes woven into the culture and at some stage everyone throughout the company can tell some of those folklore-like stories about the core values. That goes a long way.
Todd Smart: I also really like core value shout-outs where you're in groups of people, your employees, and one person to another is giving a shout-out referencing the core value. "Oh, core value number two. We make lemonade. I want to give a shout-out to Sally. She really came across a difficult situation with one of our clients and just turned it around and they're delighted."
Will Scott: Turned lemons into lemonade.
Todd Smart: Yeah, yeah.
Will Scott: Yeah, and there's a shout-out. I agree, yeah. Some companies do monetary awards. Some companies just do the shout-out and that can be enough.
Todd Smart: I have one of my clients doing the shout-outs on a weekly basis. They have an all-hands stand up for 15 minutes on a Monday morning, and part of that is core value shout-outs, but at a minimum there are shout-out and recognition around these core values on a quarterly basis in front of all the folks.
Will Scott: Yeah, yeah. Do you have any sort of ... Speaking of stories, are there any stories that you can think of from your clients where it is a story, is a folklore, and it just helps, again, bring alive the core value? When you bring somebody in and you tell them some of those stories, that's the thing they're going to remember the most about the culture and how to sort of fit in.
Todd Smart: Yeah. You know, I don't have specific stories. When I do use the word folklore, though, it really resonates with my clients that, "Oh, that's what we're doing. We are creating those types of stories that can be handed down generation after generation, and maybe within the corporate structure it's handed down layer after layer after layer rather than decade after decade after decade, but that's the stuff that I really appreciate about that, is the making of the stories. I would love to segue into trust a little bit as we talk about it. I do find these two topics to be really intertwined that the culture and the trust. Just one without the other is not nearly as powerful and maybe you can't even have a good culture without trust. So regardless of what you've identified for your core values, if there's not trust, it's all for not.
Will Scott: Yes, and you might wonder which comes first, right? But of course one of the things for sure we want to do in creating a deliberate culture as opposed to a default culture is one where there's trust, because we know trust in a team sense is just so important to performance and really allowing each individual to perform at their best and to feel comfortable in the environment.
Todd Smart: Yeah. I do work with some leadership teams that don't have full trust developed. They're on the journey to doing it, and everything that they're working to accomplish is more important than the teams with full trust.
Todd Smart: Over and over, I see evidence that you do not need to be the smartest person in your industry to win. This is not a race based on IQ. IQ does not equal horsepower in the work environment or in the team trust area. It's a lot of these softer skills are the companies that end up coming out on top.
Will Scott: That's right. Absolutely, yeah. So let's say you have a boardroom where there is low trust and they're kind of trying to develop that. Do you do ... I know, I forget what it's called Todd, but there's an exercise that EOS recommends where we kind of go back to our experience about our childhood and where we came from. What sort of things have you seen that help people build trust and by being vulnerable and open with each other?
Todd Smart: Is it okay if I walk you around a little bit?
Will Scott: Oh, yeah. That'd be awesome.
Todd Smart: Won't get too dizzy. Here, I'll walk out to my bookshelf and I'll get the workbook that you're referencing from a book that everybody listening to this has probably read. Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni.
Will Scott: Oh, yeah. Patrick Lencioni. Yes. Yeah.
Todd Smart: There is a workbook. This is the workbook piece of it, and this is brilliant. This is 100 pages of the exercises you can do with your team around building team trust or psychic safety. With EOS we borrow a number of these. We call them trust builders. They are conversations that you have with your leadership team at first to build trust and then ultimately everybody in the organization is being these conversations. At the foundation of a lot of that is vulnerability, that people trust others who are willing to be vulnerable, so if you're prancing around in your office with your ego and your self-importance and your bulletproof-ness and never show the soft underbelly, it's really difficult for others to trust.
Will Scott: Yes, yes. No, thank you. I quite agree. Vulnerability is huge, and just to mention that book again, yeah, it's The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. He has both, I guess, the textbook or sometimes he writes them as fables, but he's also got the workbook for that, right? The Field Guide, effectively.
Todd Smart: It's called a Field Guide, yeah.
Will Scott: Yes. Yeah. Okay, thanks for that. Where do you think your CEOs place managing culture in the other priorities that they're tackling? You know, they have to think about, as I said before, growth and prices and clients and those things, but is culture one of those things they are considering a priority?
Todd Smart: Yes, all of the CEOs that I coach are definitely making culture a priority, a top three I would say is quite universal. Some folks would say it's number one and it comes before everything else, but all of the leadership teams that seek out a business coach like you and I are in a place where they're ready to recognize this is a really important factor.
Will Scott: Yeah. I don't think you ever worked for anybody, did you, Todd? You basically have always been your own boss.
Todd Smart: Yeah. That's true. Since college.
Will Scott: But some employees or some entrepreneurs I know, we're so frustrated with the culture that they were working in before they became an entrepreneur. That's one of the reasons that spurred them to go and do something for themselves.
Todd Smart: Yeah. Yeah. I know those stories too.
Will Scott: So they could work in an environment that they wanted, yeah.
Todd Smart: Yeah, want to develop a workplace that they want to come to work. Yeah.
Will Scott: Yes, yes. What about within your own companies then, Todd? I know you've had several of them. What are some of the things that you've done there for culture or that you would consider good advice for our listeners?
Todd Smart: Well, I would say that part of the mistake that I made in my first three ventures anyway, maybe first four out of eight, is not prioritizing culture very high, allowing culture to happen spontaneously, but also putting up with people for longer than I should have that were clearly not a cultural fit. I have been one of those entrepreneurs that if the sales person was hitting their numbers, I would keep them regardless of how they didn't fit the culture and I was weak, I want to confess, about that. Not having the guts to make the difficult decisions. I mean, it's easy when people aren't producing and they don't fit your culture. You know they're not the right person for your culture and they also are not succeeding in the role. That's a piece of cake, but when they're succeeding and they're not a good culture fit, oh my.
Will Scott: Yeah.
Todd Smart: That separates the winner from the losers, I would assert, in business.
Will Scott: You mentioned the difficult decision, but it's also often a difficult conversation that has to be had, right? The firing or the review where you want to counsel an associate on how they're benchmarked against culture and so on, but I find the core values actually make those difficult conversations easier, because you've got like a compass to refer to. So I think again, once you've got those words on the wall, you can step into the room and have that conversation, and it becomes less about you and me and sort of personal and judgmental. It's like, just reference the values, and a conversation of how well is that person fitting and sometimes I've seen folks even kind of nodding and self-selecting. "Yeah. You know, maybe this isn't the place for me." And it just makes the job a lot easier, so to more just another reason to have core values.
Todd Smart: Yeah. I have to concur. A quarterly conversation at a minimum is a one-on-one between all bosses and employees where culture is a primary piece of the conversation, and I look at our core values when I'm sitting side by side with one of my direct reports and I ask them to rate themselves. "Which one of our core values do you have the most room for improvement?" I also pick the core value that I feel like I have the most room for improvement, and then we share our answers. This is all boss to employee relationship filled with love and trust and respect, and then we get to have a quality conversation about what they could do better to make that one better and what I could do as their boss to help or support them in rising up around that core value. Most organizations don't have a loving real direct touch about this, and if you're about to fire somebody because they don't fit your culture but you've never offered them coaching about how to get there, shame on you.
Will Scott: Absolutely. Absolutely. You used the word loving there, but yeah, it's a gift when you will actually have that tough conversation with that person and give them feedback that they can really use to learn from. Yeah. I agree.
Todd Smart: Yeah. I mean, and if business isn't about love, I'm just not interested, and when it's at its best, it's working with people that I love, doing work that I love. It is a win-win for everybody and I want to create a culture where people love the people they're working with and they love coming to work there.
Will Scott: Yeah, yeah. I think it's so easy to forget the human side of things, and we are humans, we have feelings, and if we address that in a positive way, it's just going to be better for the individual, better for the team, and of course better for the company.
Todd Smart: Yeah.
Will Scott: What about the investment? One of the things I like to say, Todd, is what else can you work on in your company where it takes actually a very low capital investment, has a very high return, and is fun? Right?
Todd Smart: Right. It has all three of those characteristics.
Will Scott: Yeah, and if you need to increase capacity and you're a manufacturing company, you got to think about a big investment in a piece of equipment or something, but this is just some time, maybe some printing costs, and yet the return can be just massive and it's fun. So why not make that little investment?
Todd Smart: It's fun for certain leaders. I don't think this conversation is fun or comfortable for all leaders.
Will Scott: Oh, I appreciate that challenge, Todd. Yes, yes.
Todd Smart: Yeah, and you know-
Will Scott: How do we help those guys?
Todd Smart: Let's not assume that the folks that own the business or are at the top and running the business are the best influences on culture. There are people in the organization that can be your cultural leaders and they may not be on the leadership team, and let's recognize them. Who cares where they're at in the organization?
Will Scott: I quite agree, yeah. Thanks for that little segue there, because of course the reason that my colleague is called Culture Czars is about finding the culture czars in the organization who are going to help you take your culture forward. It just doesn't have to be the CEO or leader. Great if it is and you can have multiple of them, but yeah, you can have a champion for the culture that is simply scoring what sounds like is plus on all the core values and is doing the shout-outs and is using the words in everyday language around the meetings and that sort of thing. Yeah.
Todd Smart: Quite literally, with Traction Tools, a company that I was co-founder of three and a half years ago now, we're up to about 36 employees. Our culture stems from our client success department. Client success is a combination of sales and customer service, and the leader that we have there who was one of our first leaders in the organization, his name is Isaiah, and for years when we're together, we're talking about, "We want the culture that's in the client success department to be the culture across all departments." That's our company culture and it's, I think, counterintuitive to some folks that it would start at some place other than one of the founders, but that's absolutely how it started at Traction Tools.
Will Scott: Yeah, yeah. No, I know Isaiah. He's awesome, and Ridges is a pretty enthusiastic man too.
Todd Smart: Absolutely. Well, that whole department has a really nice cultural fit.
Will Scott: Yeah.
Todd Smart: There's a certain glow in that department, which what a great department to have a real sweet cultural glow to them, the department that's touching all of our clients every day, of all the departments I could choose, I'd rather have it be there than in finance or something.
Will Scott: But I'm sure it permeates the rest of the company too.
Todd Smart: Because we promote it that way, because we're crystal clear, when we're together as a leadership team, all the time. "Just to be clear, that's the culture we want across all departments. That's not just a thing for client success and we're not going to copy the culture going on in another department. We're copying that culture. That's the one we want."
Will Scott: Yeah. Okay. Well, that's very cool. Thank you so much for your time today, Todd. Any final thoughts for us?
Todd Smart: This is an active activity, and it is a people filter for figuring out who to hire and who to fire. It is not a marketing activity. If you're using them in your marketing, I would question whether or not they're your authentic core values or if you've prettied them up for your website. This is an HR tool and on top of screening them during the hiring process, which is all about behavioral-based interview questions with a scoring system that you can delegate down, there has to be a function within the business that fires fast when you figure out that somebody is not a core values fit, because no organization, even with the best interview process and behavioral-based questions and scoring systems for those questions ... There are no organizations that hire perfectly, so when you have somebody that comes on board and in the first three weeks you find that they're not a cultural fit and they get let go three weeks into their job, kudos to everybody around that. That's a high-five situation. That is a leadership win, knowing that hiring, there's no way for hiring to be perfect.
Will Scott: I know. I quite agree, and we haven't talked much about the interview side of things, but you're right. Behavioral interviews that try and screen for folks that are a fit with culture, and one of the great ways I like to do that is you ask ... Again it's the stories. What are the stories in the company? That becomes your question, because that is a what if scenario. What if? You ask your candidate, "What if you find yourself in this situation?" You've got your perfect answer because it actually happens and then you can sort of benchmark a little bit against that with your candidate. Yeah. Then again, if they're not fitting, my experience has been that if someone is talking about an employee too much or talking about ... You know, they're usually the problem employee and then you know, "Hey, maybe we should rank them against the core values and see if they're a fit," because if they're spending too much internal energy talking about what this individual is creating for us, it's probably a sign that they're not a fit or not performing. Yeah.
Todd Smart: Yeah. Having a quantifiable way that a company assesses the core values fit with their folks in EOS, with the People Analyzer, but having a quantifiable way where a person's core fit with your culture becomes more data-driven I find gets my clients to make those decisions faster.
Will Scott: Yeah. I love it. If they're talking and they're not sure, you can step up to the whiteboard, do that quick assessment, and it very quickly shows. You put your best employee up there, maybe an average, and then the one that you're talking about, oh, suddenly the clarity comes there because it's kind of numerical and somewhat less judgmental. Yeah.
Todd Smart: Yeah. Yeah, it certainly has maybe an action more or quicker when it's quantifiable. Yeah. I recently wrote some core values cards where one of my clients is having some really interesting success as a firm where they don't publish their core values, and these core value card decks come with 50 core values listed. What they did is they went through and picked out the five or six that most relate to their core values and then they stacked the deck with like another 10 or 15 that are not their core values. Then when they have interviewees come in, on top of the behavioral interview questions with the scoring system, they're saying, "Hey, of those 20 cards in this deck pick out the five that best describe you."
Will Scott: Nice. Yeah. Cool.
Todd Smart: Yeah. "And then come back over here and sit down in our interview and tell me a story about you and this core value." And they're just paying attention, because the deck is quite stacked. There's six of their cards in there and there's another 14. They just want to see, "Hey, how many of our six do they choose before they know?" If you have core values on your website or you're really promoting them as part of your marketing, you're tipping your hand, pun intended.
Will Scott: Yes, yes. It's hard to do. I certainly say at least take them down when you're doing the interview, but then later on you can of course bring them out and say, "Well, so here are our values and let's talk about how these resonate for you."
Todd Smart: I would ask and I know, Will, you've had some success in polishing up a set of core values and using them in marketing ... Often I believe that they are not the most effective marketing to your prospective customers, that they care more about your product, service, and price at the beginning of your relationship than they do about your culture, and so although they're out there as a marketing tool, that they're not the most effective marketing tool. And I think they're an awesome HR and people filter, a screening tool for hiring and firing. They're awesome for that.
Will Scott: Yes. No, I agree. Core values in themselves, I don't think they should be used for marketing, especially in a B2C. With B2B I do actually think it can be very effective when a leader thinks not just of managing a company where you're just sort of thinking about the four walls and you kind of think about shareholders and that sort of thing, but thinking about leaders leading a culture, which might extend beyond that. And actually having vendors that align with your culture and just show the core values and say, "Hey, these are the kind of vendors that work well with us." And you're saying for your clients, "If you're in a B2B kind of a space or a consulting space." So I think there are opportunities to take, extended beyond your organization, but yeah, they are not about marketing.
Todd Smart: Yeah, and so you bring up a good point. The core value screening is not just for employees. It's for customers and vendors also, and especially customers in B2B, vendors in either B2C or B2B [business to customer or business to business], you want to screen vendors based on these. To take it a step further, when we talk about using them outside of your organization, if you understand your own personal core values ... You've been screening friendships for your whole life based on your core values. If you bring them to the surface and are able to articulate them for yourself, you'll screen friendships better. Also, we have a set of family core values that I talk to my kids about and it's all about, "This is partially how you choose friends." Then my long-term game on this is I'm hoping that they choose significant others based on these core values, because they are my core values and our family's core values, so I'm trying to stack the deck for my in-laws someday so that they're people that I like to hang out with.
Will Scott: Right. That's very cool. So there again, yes, so there again you're really leading a culture rather than just leading a company, because we're about more than our company. Yeah, I agree, if you can hang with people that have the same values, that tends to be ... Have you more aligned again on your life's path.
Todd Smart: Yeah. I think it's part of what makes EO and YPO [Young Presidents Organization] work so well, is that those are peer groups heavily aligned around a common set of core values.
Will Scott: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Then just going back the sort of the vendor and customer thing, I find that works two ways, especially if you're able to tour a customer within your facility and your culture is up on the wall in the form of your core values and you do the core values speech. These are the kind of customers. These are our values. I think that's a differentiator from perhaps your competitor on the street who's not doing that, and then when you have to do a conversation with a vendor or a customer, and again you can refer the core values, it just makes that go so much easier.
Todd Smart: Yeah.
Will Scott: Okay, Todd. I think we'll finish on the thought about you extending core values to your friendships and to your families.
Todd Smart: Yeah.
Will Scott: Yeah. That's really cool. Verne Harnish talks about that too, doesn't he? Rockefeller Habits and Scaling Up. He talks about having a set of family core values.
Todd Smart: Yes. Yeah, it makes sense. I was not as inspired by the family core values until I was clear that they're for screening people that we surround our family with. This is the active purpose for them. They are not wall art. They are a filter for the people we choose to have close to our family.
Will Scott: Right. If you've got teenage children and there's a friend who you're not too sure about, benchmark them against your core values if you have them and I'm sure it's going to tell you really quickly, "Yep, that's not who we want you hanging out with."
Todd Smart: Right, right. My kids are all in elementary school right now and it's completely my intention to teach them to do this ongoingly themselves.
Will Scott: Yeah. Okay. Well, thanks, Todd, as always and congratulations with your success. Eight companies startup, your current companies, Traction Tools, software for companies using Traction, the Chicago Traction Center where you are an implementer of EOS, and I know you're much loved in this community of Chicago of entrepreneurs. Thanks a lot for your time today.
Todd Smart: Yeah. Thanks for having me, Will.
Will Scott: Cheers, Todd.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. Be sure to click Subscribe, check us out on the web at cultureczars.com, and we'll see you next time.