4 Ways I Motivate Employees to Love the Company

In the first 2 years of building Budsies, the excitement of the growth was enough for me. I was thrilled each time we reached a milestone. First the 100th order, then the 1,000th, then the 10,000th. But 3 years into it, the thrill of innovating our product was overshadowed by the zeal of innovating our people.

My friend and mentor Tal once reminded me that a startup first erupts because you have a killer product, but the sustainable company is built because you have incredible people who outlive any single product’s heyday. As time moved forward, my role changed from producer to enabler. I shifted the fiery passion I wielded to excite our investors and our early customers towards impassioning my colleagues.

While some interpersonal skills took practice, inspiring others comes naturally to me. Here’s what I learned.

Motivate by Money?

Why Money On Its Own Is a Toxic Incentive

For the creative, ambitious, analytical employees Budsies and most modern tech-enabled service businesses require, you want your employees to experience the highest levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs from the company. Motivating employees solely with money creates an environment where the money, as opposed to your company environment, becomes the means for achieving that happiness. In other words, the employee is happy because they blew a thousand bucks on bottle service or a shiny new ring to brag about to their friends. Not because they built an amazing customer experience. You are reinforcing the fact that happiness can only be achieved by consumption, which creates a spiral of superficiality and self-interest.

Pay your employees well. Give them a salary such that they don’t have to worry about the day to day and then some. Just don’t celebrate salary as the measure of success.

What About Perks? Free lunch, lounges, game rooms

During the Silicon Valley boom bubble, many unicorns attracted top talent through lavish corporate offices and corporate perks. I also worked at a tech company like this (which has since gone bust). I question the culture this creates and the employee it attracts. Would you prefer the coder that joins your company because she believes in your mission or because she likes your snack cabinet? When the company is going through a rough patch and can no longer afford an in-house barista, will this employee stay motivated or trade up? How about when a competitor builds a cooler xbox room: will she jump ship?

Here’s the thing: our office is awesome. It’s fun and has a vibe that matches the team culture. We have comfy couches and a ping pong table, which is rare in South Florida. But people rarely play ping pong or chill on the couch with a cup of coffee. Why? One reason might be that employees don’t want to appear lazy in front of their peers, which is an externality of the clan mentality I explain below. But the other reason is that they’ve found purpose and excitement in non-material aspects of the job. Whether it’s accomplishing a milestone or doing the current monthly team fitness challenge or filming a silly Snapchat hotdog filter skit, the employee is bonding with an aspect of our Budsies environment that cannot be bought.

The 4 FEELINGS You Must Provide

The most fascinating concept for my rational mind to grasp was that the most important forces to motivate a team are emotional. This isn’t to say salary does not matter. Trust me: it does. And we compensate our employees well. But that’s just the foundation of the pyramid.

Here are the 4 things I give every employee to motivate them (and how I do it):

1. Feeling of ownership and pride

Every employee should feel that they have full agency over their projects. They must get that “I did it” feeling every time they cross something off their task list. From the first interview to the first day every employee joins, I make it a point to declare my commitment to letting her own her projects. Her manager will provide direction and support, but not step in to take over.

This requires a lot of discipline from our management team. We must set clear goals, take the time to ensure the employee has a clear roadmap for how to achieve the goals, and most importantly, keep our hands out of the kitchen while the projects are being prepared. I’ve intentionally stood back and watched an employee drive a project to failure simply because she needed to experience the ownership of failure and believe that she has full agency over her success.

Specific Tactics I Use

• At our weekly or monthly all-hands meetings, I try to let each employee talk. It’s not the “Alex Show”. No matter how trivial, each employee should have the chance to proudly declare to the group what they are working on
• Always give credit to those beneath you. One of my worst memories of investment banking was how the analysts would slave for sleepless nights and the associates would take all the credit when presenting to the VP. By the time a Managing Director presented anything to the client, the analyst’s name was never spoken. The analyst was just a nameless scapegoat in case the MD’s pitch was off the mark. Nowadays, any chance I get, warranted or not, I try to shift the external praise to someone specific on the team (even if nobody from the team is there to hear it). That sets a culture that permeates throughout the organization. Frankly, I feel uneasy writing this entire article given how many “I’s” I need to use instead of my usual “we”.
• Each week, every employee sets their goals with their manager. Whether it’s a set of rocks or a checklist of metrics, there’s a very clear understanding of expectation. This is also the time for manager and employee to talk through tactics for achieving the weekly goals. After that, the employee is on her own. The manager should not step in unless asked by the employee. This delegation and separation is our best defense against micromanagement.
• On everyone’s first day, I walk them through the four levels of questions and challenge them to reach Level 4 for the day-to-day tasks within 90 days of starting at Budsies. Level 1: I have a problem. Level 2: I have a problem and here are some possible solutions I’ve researched. Level 3: I have a question, here are the possible solutions I’ve researched, and here’s the solution I think we should implement. Level 4: FYI there was a problem and I implemented this solution. My friend Elena taught this to me years ago and I’ve embraced it ever since

2. Feeling of a greater mission

Most of the daily blocking and tackling we do is just that. It’s not glamorous. What adds the glamour is purpose and impact. The mission is not something that is forged out of a powerpoint slide. It’s something that must be felt deeply by the founder/ceo and reinforced at every interaction. Each employee should believe at the core that they are doing something great. Because they are doing something great.

As Yuval Noah Harari explained on the TED stage, the ability for humans to imagine and believe in something greater than the tangible world allows us to collaborate on massive scale. Taking your mission seriously is critical if you plan on growing your company to hundreds or thousands of employees.

Successfully creating this feeling requires two parts: (1) articulating the mission and (2) ensuring every employee feels connected to that mission.

At Budsies, our mission is to make a huggable world. All of our products resonate this goal, from bringing kids’ drawings to life to letting kids hug their dads serving overseas to people “reuniting” with their past pets. I make sure that every employee, contractor, and collaborator feels the impact our products create.

Specific Tactics I Use

• We have a company-wide group chat where anyone and everyone posts the latest photo or story of a happy customer. This insures everyone feels the impact of our plush, even if they aren’t on the customer front lines.
• At monthly all-hands meetings, our director of operations highlights her favorite customer d’awww moments for everyone to cheer (yes I really mean cheer!). I myself get emotional at these meetings and go on rants about how much joy we bring to the world. If you don’t feel your mission, your employees definitely won’t.
• We package the best photographs and send them down to our production lines so the fabulous seamstresses sewing the stuffed animals see the impact of their impressive work

Some may argue that this feeling is only possible for us because our service is so emotional. I disagree. Looking back at my investment banking days, there were plenty of people wholly passionate about the bigger mission of making as much money as humanly possible. Most of our Budsies team (myself included) would likely find banking unfulfilling just like most successful bankers wouldn’t get why we get the same euphoric response we all do when a customer sends in an adorable photo of their pup with its Petsies doppleganger.

3. Feeling of being part of a supportive clan

I want every member of the Budsies team to feel loved. To feel like she belongs. I believe humans are pack animals and we feel most whole and creative when we are a part of a group that we trust.

Like the pimped out offices I mention earlier, this feeling cannot be bought by cheesy corporate outings. It comes from an environment of acceptance, empathy, dialogue, and genuine connection. The same principles your therapist told you about improving your personal relationships probably apply to your office environment.

This feeling is perhaps the most difficult for me to achieve in our company because I am the only male in the office. And while this unplanned situation has brought me great personal growth, it also means that there are certain relationship lines I’ll never cross. I don’t relate to all the pop culture references or memes, I’m not the first to know about everyone’s relationship updates, and I’m not very useful the day after the latest Bachelor airing. That said, I do have the responsibility of enabling others to lead this culture.

Specific Tactics I Use

• I get out of the way of culture. Rather than making up events that sound fun for me, I encourage the team to organically orchestrate what’s fun for them. We’ve had “Dress Like Your Chair Day” (everyone has different color chairs), a puppy birthday party, and monthly workout challenges
• I hold 360 reviews with each employee (once a month for the first 3 months; once a quarter going forward). These are done off-site at a local coffee shop. My favorite question to ask is simply “how are you” and then shut up and listen. At first, employees will likely say something like “Everything’s good” or “I’m fine”. But given enough awkward silence, you’ll often get a “Well, there’s this one thing…” And this is where I have really learned to listen, because this is where any rifts in the office clan come out.
• I encourage my management team to hold similar 360 reviews with their direct reports
• I am lucky to have a highly empathetic and talented Director of Marketing Frankie, who is the team’s first line of defense if there’s something going on in the office and someone isn’t quite comfortable speaking to me about it. I’ve found that most organizations have such a person. The one everyone opens up to. Figure out who this person is and give them the agency and support to keep the organization healthy.
• We have a weekly “thankful for what” meeting, where everyone shares something work-related that they are thankful for. Often, this turns into people calling out supportive colleagues by name while everyone cheers.

4. Feeling of Personal Growth

I believe happiness comes from progress, while stagnation can lead us to feel restless or worthless. I do my best to challenge employees to grow professionally and give them reach goals during their 360 reviews. I remember hearing an interesting segment on NPR about why 1st generation immigrant children tend to overachieve. One reason is their belief that they are meant for greatness one day but are not yet there today. This tension between what you are destined to be and where you are now creates a hunger for and appreciation of growth. I try to balance celebrating an employee’s victories of the present with establishing the goals of tomorrow. Employees should always feel personal growth.

My main strategy here is the same strategy I apply to my entire life: never boring. Figure out which of your employees are truly hungry for growth and keep throwing them at new types of projects. More specifically, I’ve found these tactics help:

• Quarterly 360 Reviews outside the office are essential for forcing both you and the employee to stop and think about her focus and any feelings of stagnation.
• Make it a point to continually remind the employee about where she will be in one year
• Weekly Rocks help an employee look back at the past quarter or year and recognize all the growth they achieved. We innovate so rapidly at Budsies that we barely remember what happened last month let alone last quarter. Try to save your employee’s rocks and print them out at the end of the year (or make one google doc to save paper!). Help your employees see the incredible journey you’ve given them

Am I Playing Mind Tricks on My Employees?

Some may label these techniques as hacks or tricks. But they aren’t. A hack or a trick is one where the person is somehow being used or is unaware of what happening. On the contrary, it’s my duty to ensure each person is gaining more value than they are giving to the company. If this balance goes awry, I lose my best employees! Further, I’m extremely transparent about what I’m doing. I directly tell my employee: “I want you to feel ownership over this task. Here’s how I’m going to do that.”

There are no slights of hand here. Just honest care.

You have to believe what you preach. If you don’t believe in giving your employees purpose, ownership, family, pride, and growth, you should not be a CEO.

What It Means to Me

I’m still ecstatic about every new product we launch, but I was equally excited when Melissa announced she longed for the office halfway through her annual off-the-grid vacation; or when Sammi declared out of nowhere she wanted to shadow me to learn photography and photoshop; or when Frankie single-handedly led the launch of our Budsies Market; or when Bridget selflessly stayed an extra two hours because our USPS pickup was late. It’s these little interactions that make me the proudest.

I’ve read interviews with people at the end of their lives wishing they spent less time at work and more time with the people they loved. I’m proud to say I get to do both every day.

About Taxonomy

In this article, I often use the word “employee”. I hate the word. I hardly ever use it in real life. In fact, when an insurance form asked me to count my employees, I felt my lips curl as if I’d just bitten into a rotten tomato. Instead, I’ll always use “team” “colleague” “coworker” or “friend”. Not because I’m trying to be politically correct, but because that’s how I feel and that’s how they feel.