0:00:00 Ben Wright: I’ve been trying and, you know, I’ve been tested.
0:00:06 B: Welcome to the Friends in Business podcast with your hosts, Ben Wright and Jemima Ashley. Ben, known as the sales strategist, and Jemima, our resident visibility expert, are here to share their wealth of knowledge and experience with a little fun along the way. Whether you’re a leader, entrepreneur, or aspiring business owner, this is the podcast where we share everything we know about business to help you succeed.
0:00:31 B: Let’s get started. Welcome to the Friends in Business podcast.
0:00:43 Ben Wright: Jemimah. Welcome to Friends in Business. Episode take two.
0:00:47 Jemimah Ashleigh: What happened to take one?
0:00:49 Ben Wright: Ben forgot to press record.
0:00:51 Jemimah Ashleigh: Great, great, great, great. And so it meant we lost the best commentary.
0:00:56 Ben Wright: It was a good start, but there was only a few minutes. And, you know, to summarize it, you tried to kill my wife’s octopus trinket. We then evolved the conversation that we’re gonna have to start recording at your house. I mentioned that you got a cat that I could terrorize. You got really upset with me, and then somehow we got onto the animal theme being one that you’re having at your 40th birthday. I am Jurassic park in Hawaii.
0:01:18 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes. We are going to Jurassic Park. Let me be really clear about this because you telling people I’m having a Jurassic park themed birthday is not totally true. Jurassic park is my favorite movie. I love dinosaurs. That’s not a secret
Ben Wright:
T. Rex cave.
Jemimah Ashleigh:
Absolutely. You bet. And my favorite movie, Jurassic Park 40th is in Hawaii. And we’re going to go to Kwai Ranch where they film Jurassic Park.
0:01:41 Ben Wright: She hold up in one room. Since you sent the invitation out to be 40th, I’ve been wondering if you’re going to wear one of those dinosaur costumes with a big long tail.
0:01:48 Jemimah Ashleigh: I am going exclusively dressed as Sam Neill and you guys are going to be wearing dinosaur outfits.
0:01:54 Ben Wright: Oh, you know those outfits that kids wear and, you know, they’re in their T. Rex outfits and they come with that long tail and they got the hood over the top and they’re very, very cute. I think you should wear that.
0:02:03 Jemimah Ashleigh: I think you should wear it. And we’ll get you the inflatable one.
0:02:07 Ben Wright: Do you know, you know me well enough that I would have no problems doing that?
0:02:10 Jemimah Ashleigh: No, I know.
0:02:10 Ben Wright: Self deprecation is something I’m very, very cool with. And if it means it’s a T. Rex, then I’m happy to be a killer in disguise.
0:02:18 Jemimah Ashleigh: That’s no disguise, my friend. No disguise. But yeah, I’m turning 40, which I had some hesitations about. Honestly, I always thought 40 was really an adult, very grown up. I don’t know if I feel like a typical 40 year old.
0:02:31 Ben Wright: Well, here’s some of the telltale signs from a 40 year old. You start to make parent jokes, dad jokes or mum jokes.
0:02:38 Jemimah Ashleigh: I’ve done that since I was 21.
0:02:40 Ben Wright: Right, well, then you’re on your way. You repeat your stories.
0:02:45 Jemimah Ashleigh: Sometimes. Not as often as you, but sometimes.
0:02:47 Ben Wright: Yeah. Yeah. The room gets too noisy.
0:02:49 Jemimah Ashleigh: Oh, Tick.
0:02:50 Ben Wright: Yeah. I want quiet. I can’t hear myself think.
0:02:53 Jemimah Ashleigh: I don’t want to go to a bar and not have to scream at people. That’s exhausting.
0:02:57 Ben Wright: Yeah. Definitely start saying things like, back in my day.
0:03:00 Jemimah Ashleigh: I did say I was born in. Someone did refer to me as born in the 1900s the other day.
0:03:05 Ben Wright: Yeah, perfect. And the last one, which I think is my favorite, is when you start to think all the behaviors of the next generation coming through are unique to them and you didn’t do it. And the classic one is this generation is so entitled Tick.
0:03:18 Jemimah Ashleigh: Tick. All right. I’m old.
0:03:20 Ben Wright: I think. I don’t know a generation that hasn’t said the next generation coming through is entitled. So welcome to the 40s.
0:03:25 Jemimah Ashleigh: Thank you. I’m instantly hating this.
0:03:28 Ben Wright: Yeah, great. Well, you’re going to celebrate it with a Jurassic park thing. Looking forward to it. All right, today we are here. We’re actually here to talk about celebrations.
0:03:35 Jemimah Ashleigh: It’s amazing.
0:03:36 Ben Wright: It’s funny. We didn’t actually line that up about a birthday. And talking about celebrations, all lining up for terrific episodes of Buckling.
For me, celebrations are huge. I have five pillars of any team that I work with. Strategy, sales process, behaviors, metrics, rituals and celebrations. And finally training or coaching. We had a really deep dive into the piece around changes in our business and training came up in that. We spent a number of podcasts around Strategy and episode 31 and 32, we actually spoke about the sales process. So we’ve covered a lot of this over the last 40 weeks or so. But today I wanted to have a good look at celebrations, why they’re important and how I see some terrific teams. Roll them out.
0:04:23 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah. Because it is one of the things that as business owners, and just taking it a little bit from the teams to the sort of the macro level a little bit here. As bosses, as entrepreneurs, as business owners, how rarely we celebrate our wins. There is this moment where you would have been to. I know you’ve got Amali. A one year old’s birthday party. Is that for Amali or is that for the parents?
0:04:47 Ben Wright: Damn straight its for parents
0:04:49 Jemimah Ashleigh: You guys made a year. We need to be celebrating that you guys, like you went through a rough year. That is a celebration just for them, really. And the one year old’s not going to remember it. They might get some cool toys, but it’s for mum and dad. As business owners, we are always looking for the next thing. I’ve always likened any successes that I’ve had to climbing like Everest. And like, you get up to the top, it’s great. You get up to the beautiful vista, you do the view and then you look over and you’re like, what’s next? We very rarely take time to start looking at that view and going, look how far we’ve actually come. And I think it’s to huge detriment and more importantly, I think it’s huge detriment to our teams.
0:05:31 Ben Wright: Yeah. Look, as leaders, I don’t know many leaders that when I ask the question, and I ask this all the time, who thinks they celebrate enough for their team? It’s very rare that I have one put their hand up and say, yeah, I’m outstanding at that. Whereas I will, when I say, who thinks they’re on the top of their game at sales? I’ll get hands go up. Who thinks they’re a good leader. Yep. Hands go up. Who thinks they’re engaged in the development of their team and want to see them succeed? Hands go up. Who tells their team that they’re doing a good job enough. You can hear the birds chirp. Very, very rare. So for me, that’s why I think it’s worth spending some time. And I’ve actually got some hacks or, you know, some strategies actually that float down into hacks that work really well.
0:06:08 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:06:08 Ben Wright: Around how you can celebrate as a team. So if you can, we might.
0:06:11 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, let’s go for it. We’re not just talking about birthday parties here, right?
0:06:15 Ben Wright: No. Look, at a fundamental level, the real basic is get someone in your team, a virtual resource to document anniversaries, birthdays of your team members, spouses or kids. All that easy stuff that’s nice to celebrate. Like the footy team that they go for, you know, the sports that they like. Again, any significant periods in their life that are worth that celebration. So easy. I have it documented in my diary, my whole team. I know their work anniversary and I know their birthdays and every year they get at least a message. But often they get a little gift from me as well. To recognize that. And I will say, I certainly Am not one that’s always been fantastic at celebrating progress. I think I’m getting a lot better at it as I teach it.
But for me, where celebrations are really, really powerful is when we can align a team around a consistent purpose that we celebrate. And let me give you an example by breaking celebrations down into two types. We have the rack and file type of celebrations around what we’ve just gone through. Birthdays, anniversaries, you know, anything around tenure within the business, Anything even around hitting great sales results, hitting budget, hitting targets. Right. That’s rack and file. We see ball, we get ball, and we celebrate. And for me, that’s all about making sure that we have reminders to celebrate that piece. Those reminders come down into diary entries and making sure that we habitually are rolling into our meetings, whether they’re sales meetings or operational meetings or anything else. That we have a section of that meeting that celebrates successes. I’m going to talk about process behind making sure we do that in a moment.
0:07:46 Jemimah Ashleigh: So really, you’re looking at a team member slash immediate supervisor level, not like call outs. Absolutely. Discussing the wins at the table.
0:07:56 Ben Wright: Yep, absolutely. Second part of celebrations is where we are gearing around specific goals, where we are trying to align the team around a sense of purpose. For example, it might be a goal around systemizing through a CRM. It might be a goal around 200 new customers for the business for the year. There might be a goal around net promoter score at a certain level. They’re really specific goals that we like to set in. Yeah, Right. And for us to make progress on those, we need to be recognizing progress and celebrating wins. And this is where a celebration program can become really impactful. If we can sit down and define, okay, here’s how we’re going to recognize progress. And then here’s how we’re going to celebrate wins. Best one I’ve heard was they used a type of chocolate, let’s call it M M’s. I don’t want to undo the exact chocolate I had. M and M’s. I love this one. They’re rolling out at the moment where each color of M and M defines a certain part of progress or a celebration. Right. That they’re working towards. And they roll them out quite consistently with their team. They’ve got their own cadence and schedule that they do it. But it’s very focused around the key activities of the business now. So it’s beyond the rack and file stuff that you should be celebrating each and every week. As it comes up or every month and it extends into. Okay, so as our team, our focus for the next month is blah to win 200 customers. Let’s recognize progress and celebrate wins. And where I see it work really well is you’ll launch that at the start of the month. And then all of your meetings within your team. So your sales meeting for example, your one to ones, your training meetings, any other company wide meetings, there’s something in each of those agenda items that will recognize progress towards that goal. So we’re building momentum. It’s that one degree piece, it’s that atomic.
0:09:39 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, I love that.
0:09:40 Ben Wright: Where we’re consistently saying hey, we’re going to recognize this progress so that it builds. A blue M&M. A little fun pack of blue M&Ms. It’s not the M&Ms, it’s the fact that we’re recognizing progress amongst our peers.
0:09:54 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes.
0:09:55 Ben Wright: We’re lighting fires within rather than relying on lighting fires underneath the people. And as a team, the tide is lifting. All parties, they’re the types of celebrations where we really need to make sure that we’re aligning our team around what we need to achieve. When we get to the end of that period, right. We look back and say, hey, here’s what we set out to achieve. Here’s where we got. We recognize progress, we celebrate the wins and then we set our goals for the next one and away we go with that next piece of celebration. It doesn’t have to be big parties going. In fact most of the time I’ve had big parties with teams where they celebrate. Someone’s cut up real loose and there’s been collateral damage out of it. I’ve had people vomiting, taxis that I’ve had to take home, kicked off public transport, seen punch ons, you’ve seen all.
0:10:39 Jemimah Ashleigh: It’s usually you doing that so like suddenly you’ve got responsibility for someone else. That’s a joke. That’s not there.
0:10:45 Ben Wright: I know, I know. I’m very responsible. I’m very responsible except when I’m not responsible. So for me it’s very much about systemizing our celebration. We’ve got our rack and file, right. And then finding the common purpose items which is where the real growth in the business comes beyond individual. Where this is step one. Right. Where we’re starting to get self aligned.
0:11:03 Jemimah Ashleigh: What I really like about this is yes, we care about birthdays, yes we care about work anniversari and I like that there was a mention of. We’re going to acknowledge it also. There’s a little gift. Maybe there’s a little gift. And I mean, that stuff doesn’t have to cost the world. That’s the other thing. What I also really liked was it wasn’t focused on we’re going to have a huge blowout every time we do something as a team. The reward can be chocolate. The reward can be we’re recognizing you publicly, we’re giving you the praise. Pat on the back. Thanks very much. And these tiny little reward stuff is really powerful.
0:11:35 Ben Wright: Yeah, absolutely. You’re fundamentally right. So how we celebrate is where this gets interesting for me. There are three types of celebrations. We’ve got internal celebrations that are amongst your team.
0:11:45 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yes.
0:11:46 Ben Wright: So you celebrate, if you’re a small business, you celebrate as your business. Or amongst your team. And they are celebrations amongst you. Team of six. Make progress or you celebrate a big win and you do it through whatever your nominated lever is. Fantastic. Really powerful at growing momentum within the team.
Second piece is around how we celebrate team out and your team goes out to the rest of the business. This is a fantastic type of celebration when you’re trying to build the broader business around an initiative that your team’s doing.
0:12:16 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah. Amazing.
0:12:17 Ben Wright: So let’s just say again, I work heavily in sales. It’s a sales team wanting to really drive a growth initiative. But you need the support of the customer care team. Right. Referrals. You need the support of the customer care team to be looking for those opportunities. Fantastic. We need to be bringing that are internal to the business but external to the team. We need to be bringing that team into the celebrations, which is why I call internal celebrations out once we start to roll them through. And there’s so many cool things you can do with celebrations around building up intrigue. Throwing those M&Ms out on a desk, putting a big sign in the office, you know, have you seen the blue M&M? Ask me where, ask me why, Ask me how. Right. You can really create some fun. And once you get the teams talking about those celebrations, and I’ve seen some terrific examples about celebrations along the journey. One at the moment has worked around pineapple lollies. Love it. And it represents cash, which is that they’re in a finance business and, you know, it’s terrific.
The thought behind that, the third piece, though, so you’re celebrating internally within your team.
0:13:16 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:13:17 Ben Wright: You’re celebrating internally out. Comes from when you’re celebrating externally to your team in. And this is one where the leaders get on board. So and those who work with me, they know I talk a lot about take your celebration, take your initiative to the highest level you can in your business. Get them on board with the blue M&M. Right. Because once they’re on board, they’ll start to look for progress. Your team gets higher visibility.
0:13:44 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:13:44 Ben Wright: I love what happens when you have high visibility. What comes from it?
0:13:47 Jemimah Ashleigh: More opportunities, more success, more things start presenting at your doorstep.
0:13:52 Ben Wright: Yeah. Stuff. Just nothing.
0:13:54 Ben Wright: So I love that when you can get the leaders involved because A, they start to look for opportunities, but B, they start to actually want to celebrate it with you. And that is so empowering for your team. Or if you’re a business owner, Right. When you’re looking at it yourself and you’re starting to celebrate down. It builds consistency, it builds great morale, it builds resilience into your team when things aren’t going well.
So we’re looking at, you’ve got your rack and file celebrations that you should just be doing as a base level. There’s no excuse now.
0:14:22 Jemimah Ashleigh: Bare minimum.
0:14:22 Ben Wright: Yeah, bare minimum.
0:14:23 Jemimah Ashleigh: You’d be shocked how easy calendars are to set up these days.
0:14:27 Ben Wright: Yeah, yeah. And I know from polling so many sales leaders that they find it difficult to remember.
0:14:32 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:14:33 Ben Wright: It’s not intent, it’s execution. The second type of celebration is you start to celebrate around specific activities or goals. Beautiful. We’ve then got ways you celebrate internal within your team. Internal out. And then external in.
The last piece here is around measuring progress of those celebrations. When you see that this works as a leader or a business owner, you start to really buy into it. When your team sees that it works, you don’t get just you buying into it, you get your broader team. So that every time you run these types of initiatives around celebrations, they get better and better in terms of their output and the teams really appreciate them. There is so much to be said around having strong relationships with your people and around them feeling appreciated. And I can absolutely tell you I’ve been in roles before where I didn’t leave the role despite more money or better conditions or a better job being on the table. Because I liked working with my leaders.
0:15:31 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah. People don’t leave bad jobs, they leave bad leaders.
0:15:35 Ben Wright: Yeah, yeah. I’ve certainly heard that a number of times. And I think for me, even where you’re having difficulties within an organization, Right. If your business is not hitting all its targets or if you’re not necessarily getting Everything right. From a customer delivery point of view, when your team feel valued, it can often help ease some of the pain around that. And for me, I think my challenge out there for sales leaders today and for leaders of businesses today, first thing is to go and get your basics right. Your rack and file celebrations today. Why do today, why do tomorrow what you can do today? Way back in episode 27, is to actually go right now and sit down and say, okay, I’m going to put some time in my calendar to roll all anniversaries and birthdays in. That’s number one.
Number two is to then go and start to think about some things you can celebrate together as a team. How you can get everyone engaged and aligned around that and give it a go. And if you don’t have time, nominate someone in your business or in your team to do it. Nominate someone who’s really up and about now and get them in and say, hey, right, your go. You are chief celebrator within the business. Get out and make it happen and back them in. Give them a little bit of money. They don’t have to be big things and away you go. That’s for me, is what I’d love to see come out of today’s episode for people.
0:16:51 Jemimah Ashleigh: Are there any stipulations before people run out and go and do that? Because immediately I’m like, what can you and should you not do? So one of the things that I did a little while ago, I made a mistake, and this was absolutely my fault, was one of our clients had had a huge win. They’d won a huge. The Australian Small Business Champion. I won’t know who it was, but they won and it was a national award. And because of the type of work, I sent over two slabs of beer and a bottle of Scotch. Yeah, it’s a really nice gesture.
0:17:20 Ben Wright: I think it is.
0:17:21 Jemimah Ashleigh: Until the boss rang me and said, I’ve actually had to go onto the wagon. I’m no longer drinking. Started to get a bit problematic. And I was like, okay, all right. We’re no longer ever sending booze again. Because sometimes we don’t know as leaders, we don’t know what’s happening maybe to our clients or what that looks like. So do you have any? So for me, one of the tips I would give. I love this. But maybe just check on the alcohol thing prior, if you’re going to be celebrating in that way. But are there any other things we should be thinking about?
0:17:49 Ben Wright: I have three things.
0:17:51 Ben Wright: Number one is Avoid alcohol. It’s actually one of my rules.
0:17:54 Jemimah Ashleigh: Great. Love that.
0:17:55 Ben Wright: Do not encourage alcohol being any part of celebration because it can lead to great celebrations being soured.
0:18:01 Jemimah Ashleigh: Oh, and for me, the guilt level where he was. And don’t get me wrong, I’d had drinks with this guy before I knew that was a drinking team, but it just became a little bit problematic.
0:18:11 Ben Wright: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you just avoid it, right?
0:18:13 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah, 100%. Never again will I do that.
0:18:16 Ben Wright: Yeah, absolutely. You only need to happen once. Right.
Number two. Is around avoiding, and it’s an extension of alcohol. Avoid anything that you think just might be controversial. You know the businesses pretty well. Right. To some businesses, giving teams dinners out is not a problem. To other businesses, when they’ve got an expense freeze and you’re rolling out dinners. Can come across with the wrong message. You just try and be sensible and avoid anything that’s going to be controversial.
0:18:41 Jemimah Ashleigh: Agree.
0:18:42 Ben Wright: And the easiest way to do that, which is number three, is to break celebrations down into small, small surprises. Right. That can go across the whole team. So rather than one big prize, where it’s a big voucher for someone which can create animosity. Right. You might have lots of little vouchers or you might have lots of chocolate. I often will default to chocolate. I happen to have a sweet tooth. Those who know me know that Noosa Chocolate is the brand that, you know, I tend to. To send a lot out of. I was thousands of dollars last year. Nick, if you’re listening from Noosa and Chocolate, we’ve got to have that coffee one day.
0:19:09 Jemimah Ashleigh: Hey, Nico.
0:19:10 Ben Wright: For me, it’s very much about making sure that everyone can participate in the celebrations.
0:19:15 Jemimah Ashleigh: Yeah.
0:19:15 Ben Wright: So you keep them small and chunky and for the most part, that then avoids trouble. In fact, if you get number three. Right, you then very often end up avoiding alcohol because alcohol and controversial stuff. Yeah, controversial stuff. And for me, it’s when in doubt, go food. That’s such a good way to do it.
0:19:32 Jemimah Ashleigh: Everyone eats. I mean, that’s a winner. I love that motto. Let’s just get food. Okay, that sounds great. And I really like the idea as well, because one of the things that I think one of the pitfalls I think we could really see here is people don’t need stuff. We don’t need more things. The idea of giving someone, like, here’s a stress ball that I’m never. I’m gonna put in my desk drawer or something like that, chocolate’s gonna be consumed and even it’s not by them. Someone else on the team will 100% take that off their hands. But there’s always children roaming around somewhere in their lives. But also just the ability to also support smaller businesses. The coffee shop down the road that does a $5 voucher. The little shop on the corner that everyone goes to for lunch.
0:20:15 Ben Wright: Yeah, yeah. Little things definitely work for me. I like getting around a theme of a celebration. Before we finish up, nugget from you.
0:20:24 Jemimah Ashleigh: Today, really big takeaway for me will be around. Just keep it small and we celebrate everything. I like the theme idea, but I really like that it doesn’t have to be the extravagant adventure that most people will go, oh, I’ve got to have a team celebration. I’m up for $1,000 for lunch.
0:20:42 Ben Wright: Yeah, yeah, understood.
0:20:43 Jemimah Ashleigh: This very small, little brilliant, regular pat on the back and how rewarding it is for the team.
0:20:50 Ben Wright: Yeah, excellent. Thank you very much. Well, for me, I did most of the talking, right?
0:20:54 Jemimah Ashleigh: Oh, absolutely. This is your baby.
0:20:56 Ben Wright: Mine would be that I’m going to get photos of you dressed up as a T. Rex and fantastic. I’m in control today, so I’m going to say that’s what we’re going to end on. Have a fantastic week, everyone. See you in seven days. We’ve been your friends in business.
0:21:07 Jemimah Ashleigh: I’m going to go kill this octopus.
