Back To Basics: The 3 Fundamentals That Everyone Always Forgets About Building A Company That Has Heart
By: Sierra Carter, Head of HR & Ryan Shand, General Manager
At Jammber, we use the adjective “Jammberesque” as the way we describe our company culture. Jammberesque is the perfect way of describing our company’s personality a.k.a. our culture because it’s the epitome and swagger of a Jammberite (Jammber Employee). Culture is extremely important to our organization. Everything we do is the Jammber Way — from the way we track analytics, meet with clients, complete our daily responsibilities and bond as a team.
Striving to be the best place to work and having a positive company culture starts with the leaders of your organization. Our CEO, Marcus Cobb, believes that having a remarkable culture starts with building a diverse team. “Diversity is the completeness of perspective,” Cobb reflects, “This isn’t rocket science. Hire the best candidate with an open mind and from the widest possible applicant pool, and diversity happens.” The diverse background of our employees allows us to individuality shine through, providing light to different expertise.
We live by these 3 fundamentals to build a company with heart:

1.Take action ASAP to prevent Culture Debt! Like all startups, the first few employees at Jammber set the tone and foundation of internal practices, company culture, and the framework to obtain success. These three things go hand in hand to ensure the company stays out of culture debt. Culture debt is the result of bad hires, employees not feeling appreciated, and the lack of professional development. The culture team at Jammber recognize it takes daily effort to stay “debt-free”. We are building a company we are proud of, one with a mission all Jammberites are passionate about because they helped build it. A company we love to work at year after year!
2.It’s OKAY to Make Mistakes! By promoting a culture of ongoing learning, we let our employees know on their first day that’s it’s okay to make mistakes. The one thing we ask is that when you make mistakes, you learn from them quickly! Our CEO always says “If we aren’t making mistakes, we aren’t moving fast enough!” At some companies, people never explore and take risks, because they fear the repercussions of mistakes. The only way to grow and to stumble upon greatness, is by taking chances with the unknown and accepting mistakes as moments of opportunity. Find a culture where your leaders except mistakes and help you learn from them.
3. Employee engagement starts with listening to and investing in your employees. This one sounds simple enough; but research has shown that two thirds of employees all over the world don’t feel appreciated as they should. At Jammber we hire to elevate. We believe investing not only in the right candidate at the time of hire; but we also believe in investing in our employees to ensure they are up to date with industry trends as well as making sure their working environment caters to their work style and vibe! Implementing Jammberesque employee development programs has been a great help for managing productivity, increasing morale & allowing transparency to take place around career goals to ensure they are adding value to our company.
A company we admire and believe does this really well is Hubspot. Here are a few points they live by:
1.Learn to be nimble, adaptable and accountable: Every employee we hire must be able to adapt and be open-minded. If they aren’t it won’t work out, because we are a growing and learning organization. The music industry is constantly changing, so employees must learn to think effectively and be able to stretch their boundaries. We trust them and hold them accountable to do so.
2. Align your teams and get them to work collaboratively: We do this on a daily basis. Having employees in Chicago, Nashville and Colombia it’s key to have efficient communication and processes across teams. Always make sure you find a way to stay connected, if your next to each other or in different states. Find your chemistry, so you are always working together and not against each other. A company without this chemistry leads to culture debt.

3. Get Comfortable with giving away information: This is very true for all of our internal processes and information. We are extremely transparent, because we believe that big decisions should never be made behind closed doors. Everyone’s opinion matters and everyone’s voice deserves to be heard. There is no reason to pull rank or keep secrets, because that just leads to a toxic environment. We also believe in sharing information to the world to educate. To be a thought leader you must share your gifts and knowledge.
Conclusion
Above all, we are a learning organization. As the organization grows, it is important we grow with it. Our employees help us ensure we are continuously adapting to what works and doesn’t work. For today, we like to keep it in lean and hire masters at what they do, remain transparent with ourselves and others as we grow, attract remarkable people, serve our clients, continue to create unique culture initiatives, BE the work-life-balance, and love showing up to work every day. We do this through our clients, employees, and individuality.
“If you have knowledge let others light their candles at it.”- Thomas Fuller


