Matthew Ross of RIZKNOWS: “To Create A Fantastic Work Culture Promote Social Interaction”

Promote Social Interaction. Encourage your employees to develop friendships with one another. When employees have friends in the workplace, they’re happier and more excited to come into work. I try to promote friendships by organizing company events every other month. Sometimes it’s just a simple happy hour and other times it’s more of a team bonding event. For example, last year I took everyone to a minor league baseball game. It’s these types of events where employees seem to truly develop friendships.

As a part of my series about about how leaders can create a “fantastic work culture”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Matthew Ross.

Matthew is the co-owner and COO of RIZKNOWS and The Slumber Yard, which operate multiple internet properties, including popular websites, YouTube channels and a mobile application. The company focuses on providing high quality, insightful, and entertaining reviews of popular consumer products.

Prior to starting his own company, Matthew worked as an investment banker for the global finance firm Duff & Phelps where he helped entrepreneurs raise capital, restructure their balance sheets, and sell their businesses.

Matthew has a bachelor’s degree in Business Finance from San Diego State University where he graduated summa cum laude.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

Thanks for having me. I know this probably sounds pretty cliché but my career path has been somewhat unique. When I was in college, I sent a brutally honest cover letter to an investment bank that ended up going viral. The cover letter was featured in outlets like The Daily Mail, CNN Money and Business Insider. Luckily, I was able to get my foot in the door with the finance firm Duff & Phelps thanks in large part to the letter and resulting media coverage.

During my time at Duff & Phelps, I primarily worked on mergers and acquisitions in the $10-$250 million range. I was exposed to a variety of different businesses and had the chance to meet and work closely with successful executives and business owners. Working on these large transactions, it quickly became clear to me that if you want to truly generate wealth you have to work for yourself. Yes, I was paid well during my time with Duff & Phelps but that was peanuts compared to the money the business owners were making on the transactions I worked on. Plus, it just seemed like the business owners were much happier and had much more flexibility in their day-to-day lives. I envied the passion that they had for their companies and how they didn’t answer to anyone. A colleague of mine felt the same way so we decided to leave and start a company of our own.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?

Oh man, this is a tough one. There’s been so many ups and downs since starting the company. There are a multitude of stories I could tell.

I guess if I had to pick one, I’d say it was the first time I realized how much our services actually help consumers. To make a long story short, I was actually on vacation in Thailand when I struck up a conversation with another tourist at my hotel. We got to talking and he started to tell me about his health issues and how it was affecting his day-to-day life. He then proceeded to tell me that he recently purchased a new mattress that had done wonders for relieving his back pain. Without me saying a word, he casually slipped in that he purchased the mattress because of a review site that highly recommended it. That comment obviously grabbed my attention and it turned out he was talking about our website. It was just one of those “wow, what a small world” moments. To be halfway around the world and randomly run into a consumer who loved our website was quite unexpected. The whole experience really opened my eyes as to how much we actually help consumers with their purchase decisions.

Are you working on any exciting projects now? How do you think that will help people?

My business partner and I are constantly searching for new categories and industries to enter. For example, one idea we’ve been tossing around is getting into the insurance reviews space. We feel like consumers are often confused with the different types of insurance out there and would greatly benefit from independent review sites that help them figure out which plans are best for their particular situations and needs.

Ok, lets jump to the main part of our interview. According to this study cited in Forbes, more than half of the US workforce is unhappy. Why do you think that number is so high?

I’m actually not shocked by the 53% number. You could have told me it was 65% and I still wouldn’t be surprised. To me, in order to be happy with your job, you have to be either satisfied and proud of what you do or somewhat successful at it. The ultimate goal is to check off both boxes but unfortunately, the hard truth is the majority of the American workforce can’t check off either box.

Now I know the easy answer is just to tell an unhappy person to quit or make a career change but life is more complicated than that. I think career unhappiness can often be traced back to teenage years believe it or not. Think about it, you’re grades at 15–16 years old affect which college you can get into. How can we expect teenage boys and girls to think that far ahead? Then once you get to college, you’re expected to choose a major at 18–19 years old that will in large part shape the direction of your career. Again, we can’t expect such young individuals to make the correct decisions. Plus, throw in personal agendas and emotions and you can start to see why people end up in bad situations. For example, think about the people out there that decided to go to law school to make their parents happy when in reality they would have been much happier in life as a school teacher. I know that was a long-winded answer but I feel like the decisions we make as teenagers and young adults often go overlooked when talking about happiness.

Based on your experience or research, how do you think an unhappy workforce will impact a) company productivity b) company profitability c) and employee health and wellbeing?

That’s a good question. First, in my eyes, productivity and profitability are intertwined and unfortunately, I do think unhappy employees have a negative effect on both. It’s pretty simple. In my experience, unhappy employees just don’t care as much, their attention to detail lacks and it takes them longer to complete projects and tasks. As you might imagine, this type of poor performance from both an efficiency and work product standpoint hurt the bottom line. The company is essentially paying unhappy individuals to complete mediocre work at a slower pace than happy employees who produce good work more efficiently.

Moving past company profitability and productivity though, extended periods of unhappiness can have detrimental effects on a person’s health and well-being as well. Let’s face it, the majority of people out there spend more than eight hours a day either working or commuting to and from. That’s over 33% of each day. If you’re consistently unhappy with yourself and your situation, it’s going to stress you out and make you a more jaded person over time. That means you might develop a short temper for example or just more of an irritable disposition over time. Obviously, these types of changes are not healthy or ideal for both you or the people you live with.

Can you share 5 things that managers and executives should be doing to improve their company work culture? Can you give a personal story or example for each?

Give Employees More Freedom. This one is pretty simple. Don’t micromanage your employees. They hate it. This is the quickest way to piss people off. They don’t want to feel like they’re constantly being watched, judged or controlled. For this reason, I give my employees a lot of freedom. First, I don’t dictate when they need to be in the office by. As long as their work gets done, I don’t care if they show up at 11am and work until 7pm or if they show up at 7am and leave at 3pm. Further, I let my employees take breaks and work from different locations. I know how boring it can be to sit in the same chair and stare at the same computer monitor all day. Sometimes a little change of scenery can be quite refreshing. For this reason, I let my employees work from a local coffee shop when they feel they’re hitting a wall.

Promote Social Interaction. Encourage your employees to develop friendships with one another. When employees have friends in the workplace, they’re happier and more excited to come into work. I try to promote friendships by organizing company events every other month. Sometimes it’s just a simple happy hour and other times it’s more of a team bonding event. For example, last year I took everyone to a minor league baseball game. It’s these types of events where employees seem to truly develop friendships.

Regularly Provide Compliments. Employees want to feel appreciated and important. If they don’t, that’s when unhappiness can start creeping in. As such, I try to regularly compliment employees when they do something good. Sometimes I’ll give them a gift card and other times, it’s just a simple “great job, keep up the good work” type compliment. Either way, it seems like employees are more motivated when they consistently receive positive reinforcement.

Make Employees Feel At Home. You want to try to make the office feel like a home away from home for each employee. The more comfortable they feel, the earlier they’ll arrive and the longer they’ll stay. I try to make my employees feel comfortable by stocking the fridge and kitchen with snacks and beverages they like as well as providing games like ping pong and cornhole for use during their breaks.

Give Employees A Voice. Employees do not want to feel like they’re just taking and executing orders. That kind of culture will quickly grind employees down. Instead, let your employees feel like they have a say by coming up with ideas and suggestions to improve processes and company strategies. I do this by holding a monthly company-wide meeting where employees can ask questions about the direction of the business and suggest ideas to be discussed among the group.

It’s very nice to suggest ideas, but it seems like we have to “change the culture regarding work culture”. What can we do as a society to make a broader change in the US workforce’s work culture?

That’s a tough question. To be honest, I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to truly change work culture. At the end of the day, there are always going to be issues between management and employees. It’s just the nature of the relationship.

However, with that said, I do think there is one change society as a whole can implement in order to at least improve work culture. In short, I believe people need to reduce their interest and desire to use social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. I think these types of platforms and networks cause people to form unrealistic expectations about life and work. They see other people posting pictures, getting promotions and updating their statuses and as a result, it makes them feel bad about their own life.

If people didn’t care as much about their profiles or what everybody else in their network was doing, I think society as a whole would be a lot happier and more carefree, which would obviously carry over into the workplace.

How would you describe your leadership or management style? Can you give us a few examples?

In general, I’d say I have more of a laissez-faire leadership style. In other words, I’m a pretty hands-off manager. I trust my employees and give them space to get their work done. For example, I don’t require them to check-in with me daily or give me constant status updates. In fact, an employee of mine has been working on a three-month project and I think I’ve checked-in with him a grand total of two times so far.

However, there are some downsides to this type of leadership style. In some cases, I’ve found that certain employees tend to take advantage of my laid-back disposition since they know I’m not watching their every move. To combat this, I try to set concrete deadlines and stick to them. If someone doesn’t hit the deadline, we have disciplinary protocols in place to make sure it never happens again.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I’m particularly grateful for my business partner Jeff Rizzo. Without him, our company wouldn’t exist. We actually worked together back in my investment banking days and have been good friends ever since. Although we share the same vision and work ethic, we’re also opposite in a lot of ways, which I think has actually helped the company as a whole. I know this probably sounds cliché but our relationship and combined management style is somewhat similar to the Chinese philosophy of yin and yang. In other words, we complement each other extremely well.

For example, he’s much more outgoing and animated. He’s not afraid to speak his mind regardless of whether you like it or not. As I’ve mentioned before, I tend to be a little more reserved and laid-back. Given our opposite styles, this allows us to effectively manage all different types of employees. Whenever we need to have a delicate or rather sensitive conversation with someone, I’ll usually take charge to make sure it flows well. However, whenever we need to have a tough or disciplinary conversation with an employee, Jeff takes charge since he’s much more commanding.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

As you might imagine running a mattress reviews website, we have a ton of extra beds (effectively brand new) that we end up not needing. Given this, my business partner and I make a concerted effort to donate the extra beds to people in need. Over the past 12 months, I’d estimate we’ve donated over 20 beds to different homeless shelters, foster homes and domestic violence centers. I’m expecting us to reach a similar number this year as well.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

My favorite life lesson quote is “see the forest through the trees.” This is something my father would repeatedly tell me as a child. In my eyes, the quote means focus on the big picture instead of inconsequential details. As a co-owner, I try to constantly keep this quote top of my mind so that I’m focused on the long-term strategic direction of the company.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

Education. Last I checked, over 70 million children around the world do not have access to proper education. As these individuals grow up, they lack the awareness necessary to improve both their living conditions and those of their children.

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We wish you continued success!