Marissa Levin is the co-founder of Successful Culture International, which applies a proprietary Culture Development Lifecycle (CDL) to help organizations move from current state to desired state, and helps leaders reach their greatest personal and organizational potential.
As founder of a 23-year old, multimillion-dollar business that pivoted seven times in response to market shifts, Levin has personally overcome every business challenge her clients have faced, which uniquely qualifies her to lead leaders through change.
She is also the author of Built to Scale: How Top Companies Create Breakthrough Growth Through Exceptional Advisory Boards.
Connect with Marissa on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
Transcript
Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia, it’s time for GWBC Radio’s Open for Business. Now, here’s your host.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:18] Lee Kantor here. Another episode of GWBC Open for Business. And this will be a good one. Today, we have with us Marissa Levin with Successful Culture. Welcome, Marissa.
Marissa Levin: [00:00:28] Thank you, Lee. So happy to be here.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:30] Well, before we get too far into things, tell us about Successful Culture. How are you serving folks?
Marissa Levin: [00:00:35] So, our mission is to help create extraordinary places to work. We do that through a proven culture development lifecycle, as well as comprehensive education and training curriculums that we have that really help leaders set up environments that allow employees and leadership teams to reach their greatest personal and organizational potential. So, our goal is to make sure that environments and cultures are places where employees feel seen, heard, connected, appreciated and safe. So, that’s why we exist.
Lee Kantor: [00:01:15] So, how did you get into this line of work?
Marissa Levin: [00:01:18] So, this is my third company. My first company, which is 28 years old today, which I grew to about $14 million before exiting that company nine years ago. I’ve always been committed to developing environments where employees can thrive. And really being a leader as an organization, that was really one of my favorite things to do was to create an environment that I walk in every day and making sure that as the CEO and, really, as the servant leader, making sure that my employees had everything that they needed physically, emotionally, intellectually, financially, everything that they needed to be successful in the organization. And it just gave me a lot of pleasure to be able to create an environment where people can really thrive. And so, when I left my first company, that is really kind of what I took with me and I wanted to do that for others.
Lee Kantor: [00:02:21] So, what about that kind of resonated with you of, okay, this is really a secret sauce. This isn’t just something that happened by accident. This is something you can do on purpose and it can be replicated?
Marissa Levin: [00:02:32] Oh, it definitely is very intentional. All organization have cultures, whether they are intentional or by default, and they all start with the leadership team, although they cascade through the organization. And it is incumbent upon everyone in the organization to make sure that the culture is healthy, not just the leadership team, but it starts with the leadership team when they set the core value system of the company, which really is the the DNA of the company. It’s the destiny of the company, if you will. And the culture, that’s defined by the core values. The core values are the moral compass and the North Star. They really determine what an organization stands for, what behaviors are expected, what behaviors won’t be tolerated. Core values drive every single business decision in a company when executed correctly, and they also help to drive the mission and vision. So, when an organization has the values, the mission and the vision clearly defined and is truly living those elements, that’s when the culture can really thrive.
Lee Kantor: [00:03:40] So, what do you tell those entrepreneurs that maybe weren’t intentional, that are like heads down, we’ve got to make sales quota or whatever? They were focused on something that maybe wasn’t a true, true north, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. And then, maybe, they’ve gotten a culture there they’d like to change. Is it possible to change a culture that’s kind of off track or is it something you kind of stuck with?
Marissa Levin: [00:04:02] Always. Yeah. Yes. No, no, no. Cultures are always evolving. They’re fluid, and dynamic and evolving entities. So, it’s always possible to change a culture once you are aware of it. Now, of course, when you’re launching a business, if it can be something that’s top of mind when you start, then you’ll have much greater success and a lot less pain, making sure that you’re attracting the right talent, that your environment is one that is very productive, and constructive, and effective and safe rather than being like the Wild, Wild West.
Marissa Levin: [00:04:39] And I always say that, especially for first-time entrepreneurs, building your first company is like building a plane while you’re flying it. You’re literally making decisions moment to moment, hoping that you’re steering it in the right direction, and that it’s not going to come apart, and that it’s not going to crash. And so, when you have some type of roadmap, a guidepost that can lead you down the path in terms of what you stand for, where you’re going, why you exist, it certainly makes your journey a lot easier. But if you haven’t done that work upfront, yes, you absolutely can go back, and re-engineer, and reverse engineer, put the right values in place. It’s painful. It can be painful to re-engineer and reverse engineer when you haven’t done it, but it, certainly, can be done.
Lee Kantor: [00:05:28] Now, how do you help those companies that, maybe, their heart’s in the right place, but maybe they have one or two employees that they tolerate behavior that maybe they’re not proud of, but they tolerate it because they’re productive? How does that kind of impact the team, the culture and really their true north?
Marissa Levin: [00:05:50] Yeah, that’s a really good question. So, individuals who are high performing regarding generating revenue and contributing to that type of bottom line but can be toxic in other ways, we like to consider them to be lone wolves. And it really is a hard exercise to evaluate those types of people, to really determine whether or not they are worth having them stick around, because the cost of a toxic employee, the drain on the morale, the drain on the overall level of trust that an organization has, it really actually can overshadow the revenue that someone might be bringing in.
Marissa Levin: [00:06:37] So, think about if you could fill that position with someone that also can generate that revenue but brings very positive energy and is not toxic, think about how much more that would propel the organization rather than trying to do risk mitigation, or damage control, or to contain a volatile or toxic employee. Think of all of the time, and energy, and resources that goes into trying to control somebody like that. It’s usually not worth it.
Lee Kantor: [00:07:09] Now, when you’re working with firms, do you have a sweet spot? Are you working with kind of startups? Are you working in different industries? Like who is your typical client?
Marissa Levin: [00:07:20] That’s a great question, and I get that a lot. Our typical client is any organization or any leader that truly values the investment in corporate culture and in their people. So, we’ve worked with companies that are very small, a million dollars to two million dollars in revenue, but they truly understand the importance of building the right foundation. So, they’re willing to invest in that. They’re willing to make sure that they’ve develop their values, mission, vision in the right way; that they’ve enrolled any employees, even if it’s just one or two, in defining the behaviors behind the values. They had enrolled in the the process of making sure that their hiring processes not only ensure a fit for expertise and industry understanding but that they are a cultural fit. So, even really small companies are fit for us if they truly understand the importance of investing in corporate culture.
Marissa Levin: [00:08:17] Conversely, we’ve been asked to come in from publicly traded companies. I mean, companies that are in the hundreds of millions of dollars. But if the leadership team is not behind the importance of investing in their people, we’re not a fit for them. We truly have to be a fit regarding whether or not they see the value in our services. And Lee, I’m not in sales. I’m not interested in convincing anyone about the importance of investing in your culture and investing in your people. If you don’t get it, then you don’t get it. And that’s fine. You’re not going to be a fit for us. I’m not in the business of sales. I’m in the business of transformation.
Lee Kantor: [00:08:59] Now, how about some advice for the folks out there that are dealing maybe for the first time with a remote workforce? Having a successful culture is probably difficult enough as it is in pre-pandemic when you’re seeing each other, and you can high five each other, and you can hug each other, and you can see kind of the behavior you’d like to model in person around you. But when you’re only kind of coming in and out and interacting with folks over a Zoom call or a conference call, how do you kind of create that kind of culture remotely?
Marissa Levin: [00:09:35] So, it isn’t just that we are now working with people who are remote, it’s the conditions under which we’re working. And I get this question a lot about, how can I manage my remote people? This is so much bigger than just managing remote people. Leaders today have just the most extraordinary and unprecedented situation regarding how they have to show up for their people and how they have to lead.
Marissa Levin: [00:10:04] It’s only one thing that these people who happen to be remote, okay? It’s the fact that that they’re under a pandemic, that they’re under tremendous uncertainty, that they are under tremendous pressure and stress, and worrying about not only their health but the health of their loved ones, that they are dealing with schooling and educating their students. If they’ve got K through 12, they’ve got college students home, it’s not just, “Hey, all of a sudden now I have a remote workforce. How can I manage them better?” It’s how do you manage the emotional, and the psychological, and the mental toll that is occurring right now with the people, in addition to managing the remote workforce.
Marissa Levin: [00:10:47] And leaders have to recognize both. And what I’ve recognized in working with so many clients is that the commonality across every organization in any industry, large and small business, is that leaders are trying to figure out how to straddle that line between being empathetic, and compassionate, and showing up as a human being for their employees but, also, how are they holding them accountable and how are they keeping them engaged.
Marissa Levin: [00:11:17] And it’s not easy. We have come up with lots of different creative interventions for our clients in terms of how they can stay engaged, whether it’s different perks, whether it’s making sure that they’re doing regular check-ins that aren’t just work-related, being aware of personal situations that they’re going on and going through. Leaders are always under a microscope. We’re always being watched by our people on how we show up in good times and in bad. And more than ever now, leaders are under the microscope to see if they’re showing up in a very humane way. So, leaders have it tough right now, and they need to be really cognizant of showing up both as a human being, as well as a leader and a supervisor that has accountability.
Lee Kantor: [00:12:13] And you mentioned all of the different kind of stressors that are on companies nowadays. I mean, you have the pandemic, you have the work from home, you have all the individual people’s needs when it comes to just managing their home, and their work, and all that stuff. And then, you have the social unrest, and that’s into play also. So, there’s a lot of job security, I would imagine, for you and your team because there’s a lot of work to be done for those folks to get them going.
Lee Kantor: [00:12:43] How does an engagement work? What does it look like? I know you mentioned you’re not on the sales, so these people have to raise their hand and truly want to do this kind of work. How do you kind of onboard a new client? How do you kind of go through what the process looks like? And what is a reasonable length of time to see some meaningful results?
Marissa Levin: [00:13:05] Those are all really great questions. So, it really depends on what people want us to be doing. So, some of our examples, we do the values, mission and vision work. And now, more than ever, it’s so important for leaders and organizations to be continuously communicating what their values are, what the mission and the vision of the organization is because now, more than ever, employees are struggling to feel connected to their organization. They don’t feel connected to their company. They don’t feel connected to their leaders. They don’t feel connected to their other employees.
Marissa Levin: [00:13:38] As you mentioned, all of those rituals and those traditions that make up of corporate culture are nonexistent. When I was running my company, one of our favorite things to do every year was to have a huge Thanksgiving banquet where we provided the main courses and all of our employees would bring in all the side dishes, and then we would do a white elephant gift exchange. We had a movie playing in the conference room. And it just was such a wonderful day. And those types of experiences now are gone. So, how are leaders creating those even more so?
Marissa Levin: [00:14:15] And so, for us, some of our clients are bringing in to reinforce their values, mission and vision. Some of our clients are bringing us in to do culture check-ups. We do a lot of culture check-ups, like you go to the dentist, and you go two or three times a year to check for cavities, remove the plaque, remove the tartar and the buildup. It’s very similar with cultures. Cultures have a way of disintegrating bit by bit. It’s not like one day, something happened, and it blows up the culture. They literally start fraying moment to moment, hour to hour, day to day because of things that start to happen.
Marissa Levin: [00:14:53] And so, it’s really important for leaders to be doing check-ins to see how they’re perceiving the culture and what’s happening internally compared to what employers are doing. And I can tell you that a hundred percent of the time there’s always been a discrepancy. And that’s okay as long as you get in front of it and you put it in the right interventions to bridge the gap between how leaders see the culture and how employees see the culture.
Marissa Levin: [00:15:18] So, companies will bring us in to do the culture check-ins, and we’re doing a lot of that now. At the end of the year. They want us to go out and do year-in culture check-ins, see what employees think that they should be doing as we move into the new year. What are we not seeing? Leaders only see the organization from the 50,000-foot level, they’re not involved in the day-to-day. And that perspective and experience that employees have, like during the daily grind on the ground, dealing with the actual work, they have incredibly valuable perspective and insight, and leaders have to make a conscious effort to extrapolate that information and that perspective, so that they know what’s happening. So, we’ll do culture check-ins.
Marissa Levin: [00:16:03] We have a Scale Academy, the Successful Culture Events, Leadership, Education Academy. And the courses that we provide in that are things like self-awareness, using the Johari Window, making sure that people understand how they’re showing up, what their blind spots are, what they’re hiding from the rest of the world, how they can be as transparent as possible, we do a workshop specifically on self-awareness and raising your self-awareness.
Marissa Levin: [00:16:30] We do programming on emotional intelligence. We have two different offerings around emotional intelligence because that’s so important, especially in today’s environment. We have programming on conscious and unconscious bias, and creating respectful and inclusive work environments, which we’ve been doing for years, long before it became the trendy thing to do. We have programs on communication strategies, having difficult conversations, leading remote workforce teams. These are all the things that we have in place that are available online. And so, a lot of our clients purchase our curriculums to make sure that their employees know that they’re investing in them, that they they’re getting the right soft skills to show up in their most effective manner. So, that’s another way that our clients engage us.
Marissa Levin: [00:17:16] So, it’s through values, mission, vision, work; looking at recruitment practices; doing individual coaching. We do a lot of CEO-to-CEO coaching and a lot of executive coaching. Doing the culture check-ins. And then, the scale academy work. So, depending on what you need. We’ve got a client right now that has three acquisitions planned for 2021. They’ve got one coming in January, one coming in April and one coming in October. And we’re retained for the entire year to help with that cultural integration, to make sure that those acquisitions are successful, and that the team, the leadership team and the employees that are coming into those companies are fully, and seamlessly and successfully integrated into the company. We’re doing that work going into 2021 for one of our clients. So, there’s lots of different ways that our client engage us, depending on what their situation is.
Lee Kantor: [00:18:09] Now, looking forward into 2021, are you seeing any trends? Are you seeing any kind of level of maybe grace amongst the leadership and their employees because of just everybody dealing with so much of the chaos that you mentioned earlier and just so much of, now, they’re leaning on technology, and maybe there was a time where there was less patience and grace when it came to some of this but, maybe, now, people’s empathy gene is kind of turned on a little bit more?
Marissa Levin: [00:18:40] That’s so funny that you mentioned that. I don’t even know if you’re aware that I developed the GRACE model to help leaders lead and communicate with grace, which we’ve rolled out to hundreds of different organizations and leaders now. I developed it in March when the pandemic opened or came down upon us. And it stands for great resilience, adaptability, connection and empathy. And it’s a full model to lead leaders through a process to lead and communicate with grace. And it’s been really impactful and transformative for the organizations that we’ve worked with.
Marissa Levin: [00:19:17] And so, I do see the continued need to be educating leaders on how to lead and communicate with grace, because we’re all kind of pushed to the limit, and we don’t know what’s coming and when it’s coming. And we’re all pandemic-weary, we’re all quarantine-weary, we’re exhausted. So, yeah, we’re actually doing a lot of work around GRACE.
Lee Kantor: [00:19:40] So, now, if somebody wanted to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on your team, what’s the best way to learn more? Is there a website or social media coordinator?
Marissa Levin: [00:19:50] Yeah. So, successfulculture.com is our main website. I’m on LinkedIn. You guys can find me, I’ve got about 25,000 followers. So, I’m out there. And my email is marissa@successfulculture.com. That’s M-A-R-I-S-S-A @ successful culture dotcom. And I’m happy to take direct emails. And you guys can sign up for our newsletter, which we put on hiatus, and we’re about to start it back up along with our podcast as we go into 2021. But yeah, there’s lots of ways to reach me and definitely check out our white paper on how to create a respectful and inclusive work environment at successfulculture.com too.
Lee Kantor: [00:20:30] Now, before we wrap up, tell me why it was important to be a certified woman-owned business and be involved with GWBC.
Marissa Levin: [00:20:39] Certification as a woman-owned business is essential, especially if you’re going to be working with state, and local, and federal agencies because you want to indicate that you are a certified woman-owned business, even if it’s through an independent party. So, look, we’re moving into an era now where we have an unprecedented number of women in positions of power. I think our time has come, and I think it’s never been more important for women-owned businesses to get certified as a woman-owned entity.
Lee Kantor: [00:21:11] Now, what do you need more of? How can we help? Do you need more team members, more clients, more people?
Marissa Levin: [00:21:19] Hey, we’re always looking for clients. The other thing that we forgot to mention is I’m the author of Built to SCALE: How Top Companies Create Breakthrough Growth Through Exceptional Advisory Boards. It’s the number one book globally on how to build extraordinary advisory boards. The SCALE model stands for select, compensate, associate, leverage, evaluate, evolve and exit. You can either find that on Amazon or you can go to builttoscale.info. That’s B-U-I-L-T-T-O-S-C-A-L-E dot info. And we work with organizations to help build their best advisory board. So, any organization that is looking for improvements in corporate culture, looking to educate their employees with really, really stellar leadership educational programming, looking to put in an advisory board or looking for really high-impact transformational CEO-to-CEO coaching, please reach out to me because that’s where my sweet spots are. And I would love to work with you.
Lee Kantor: [00:22:18] Good stuff, Marissa. Thank you so much for sharing your story, you’re doing important work and we appreciate you.
Marissa Levin: [00:22:25] No, we appreciate you, Lee, for having this podcast and for letting women-owned businesses get their story out.
Lee Kantor: [00:22:32] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on GWBC Open for Business.
About GWBC
The Greater Women’s Business Council (GWBC®) is at the forefront of redefining women business enterprises (WBEs). An increasing focus on supplier diversity means major corporations are viewing our WBEs as innovative, flexible and competitive solutions. The number of women-owned businesses is rising to reflect an increasingly diverse consumer base of women making a majority of buying decision for herself, her family and her business. 
GWBC® has partnered with dozens of major companies who are committed to providing a sustainable foundation through our guiding principles to bring education, training and the standardization of national certification to women businesses in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.
