Ep 248 Creating your Company Culture with Stephanie Angelo
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the bold goal crusher podcast for anyone looking to stop letting life get in the way and start crushing bold goals. I'm your host, Sara Mayer, and I'm thrilled to navigate this journey with you because it's time to start boldly achieving without working double time. So let's dive in.
Hello, bold, gold crushers. I'm super excited about this episode today. I think you are in for a treat. I have a very special guest on today. She's my friend and we've also worked together in an organization, a nonprofit organization. And it is truly my honor to have Stephanie on the [00:01:00] show today. So let me introduce you to Stephanie.
So Stephanie creates built to thrive organizations that slay the villain of crime. Culture stagnation. She invented the popular board game, company culture, a game of workplace traction, not transaction, which is an exclusive element in her company, culture workshops. And can be experienced in person or virtually.
And what's really cool is in August, 2023, she was the 92nd recipient of the prestigious Toastmasters International accredited speaker designation for professional speaking excellence. She loves to hike, read books that make her laugh. And she slaying her own villain of stagnation by studying German. Oh, wow.
German.
I heard that's a very difficult language to learn. It is. And I [00:02:00] love your introduction. If I could just jump right in saying that we're friends because we are. And when a friend asks you, like in your case, asking me to be a guest on your podcast, it's really meaningful. You really want to help your friend and your clients, Sarah.
I hope that your clients, the people that list your podcast will find a lot of valuable gems in our conversation this morning. Oh, thank you. And it's truly my honor to have you on the show. I think what's really. Cool about Stephanie that you'll find listeners is that she does a lot of great things, but what she's really good at is crushing goals.
And I want to start there because I know you do work with a lot of company culture and can help with new entrepreneurs building their culture. But You had a very big, bold goal and it was not easy when you wanted to become an accredited speaker. And I don't know that many [00:03:00] people know what all goes into that because it's not just one weekend of your life.
So let's start there. Why did you decide to go for this? And what is an accredited speaker? Yeah, that's a great question, because even in Toastmasters, there are many people that have never heard of it. They don't know what it's for and Toastmasters leans in a whole lot more into winning contests, like the world champion of public speaking or getting a DTM, which is not a speaking thing.
It's more of a leadership role that you go through or several roles that you go through. So accredited speaker doesn't really get a lot of. Airplane the accredited speaker designation is 1 that is carved out specifically for people that have a professional speaking career and can prove that by showing the speaking engagements that they've had in a 3 years in a rear's look back.
Okay, and you have to have certain criteria [00:04:00] met with each of the 25 speaking engagements that you need to show. You could have had 80 speaking engagements. But 25 of them have to have had an audience of 20 members or more. It cannot be a Toastmasters group in any way. You do have to show that you were paid for 15 of those 25 and there are additional criteria that go into that just in getting the application part filled.
1 of the toughest things for me was the video because. In the accredited speaker designation, the video proof that you have to submit must be up to a 20 to 60 minutes of presentation. Oh, wow. Zero editing whatsoever. Now, that might sound easy, but most of my presentations are for conferences and conventions.
I do workshops primarily over [00:05:00] keynotes. That means that my presentations are typically an hour and 15 minutes. Or more sometimes four hours for me, getting video that was under 60 minutes. Without editing was really difficult. I looked at a whole body of work that had nothing that fit that criteria.
And I very fortunately spoke for one human resources conference. That was a virtual presentation, 58 minutes long. And I asked them if they would record it because it was on their zoom. And I said, could you please record it in. Speaker mode, assuming that the accredited speaker committee would not want to see all of these different audience members.
They would want to focus on me as the speaker, because they're judging me. It's a 3 page [00:06:00] judging ballot that we go through, and you have to get 80 to 100 points in all of the criteria. And that's just for level 1. There's a different. Ballot for level 2, which is when you speak at the international convention.
For me, submitting was very difficult because I couldn't get all the criteria in 2022 to be quite honest with you. I submitted for the 1st time, Sarah, and I had read the instructions because the sentence was 25 speaking engagements, 15 of which needed to be paid and an audience of 20 or more. I thought that meant 15 out of the 25, but the syntax was a little bit misleading.
They meant 25 speaking engagements, 15 of which needed 20 or more people, but all 25 needed to show payment. Oh, and so 7 of my presentations and [00:07:00] remember, you don't really have any control of the audience size. 7 of my presentations were rejected. So I lost out on 2022, but I argued with them over the syntax of that question of that.
Yeah, top of the application. They have actually since then changed that. The other thing that they changed, Sarah, that you might find interesting is I was speaking for a group called Vistage. Vistage is an international organization. It's very difficult to become a speaker for Vistage and they hold what are like mastermind groups for CEOs, CFOs, executives.
They deliberately keep these groups to 12 or fewer members. Yeah. So speaking for a Vistage group is not easy to do. I spoke for a few of them, but the audience size was Below the 5th, the 20 yeah, those were rejected to among the 7 that has also changed. They now say, if you can show a reason why it's a smaller group and we approve of that reason, we will accept it.
In 2023, I resubmitted. I made [00:08:00] it through level one. That meant I had to speak for the International Toastmasters Convention. And we had our choice now that they go hybrid to do it either virtually or in person. And as because you were in the Bahamas with me, basically as a calming element to my day, thank goodness, you saw that I did deliver that.
Required speech at the Toastmasters International Convention. Here's another interesting thing that people may not know. The length of the speech that you give at the International Convention is decided based on how many people get through to level 2. Oh. Yes, because in 2022, there was one individual and that person got 26 minutes because it's like a 90 minute session.
So Dr. Kevin Snyder got 26 [00:09:00] minutes for his speech. I actually know Kevin really well. Yeah. And I know him casually but probably not as well as you. Yeah. And so when we found out there were four of us that made it through to level two, when we found out we had to be between 15 and 18 minutes. It was a whole different thing because you have to show something that is really indicative of what your clients receive.
Now, how do I take a 4 hour workshop, which is what I primarily do choose 1 of those, which is the right 1, which is the right 1 that these judges are going to want to see. And then narrow it down to 18 minutes, 15 to 18 minutes, right? Because it's not a competition. You can go over. You're not disqualified.
However, the judges can deduct points. And since you have to get between 80 and 100 points in each of the criteria. You don't want to lose points. So making it in that time frame is still really important. I did not realize that. That's really [00:10:00] interesting. And I guess it makes sense because that this, the accredited speaker program presentation is a part of a larger agenda for convention and they can't run over.
They can't, there's something else that people need to go to in the speakers, the judges and the audience. So that makes sense. But I didn't realize that. Yeah, and, the points do matter a lot. We, there were 4 of us. And as because you were present that evening, 1 individual unfortunately did not make it through.
Yeah. So I hope they try again. It was actually this individual's 3rd attempt. And I think people don't understand. There are accredited speakers that have tried 6 to 8 times. Wow. Gone through. Yeah. It's extremely rigorous. The stress is in credible, but you're right. Your podcast all is all about big goals and achieving those goals.[00:11:00]
So setting out to get the accredited speaker designation was a huge one for me. And it basically encompassed 2023. Wow. But I would argue probably more than that because you had to do all that work. You had to make sure you had all the speak, the speeches and everything like that. And we talk a lot about on the show, the things that are really important usually are things you can't accomplish in a year.
They are. They are things that you need. Yes, you probably did the accredited speaker. You filled out the application and you did that in a year, but the legwork that went into that took years, maybe even a decade to become a speaker, to learn how to present, to get these workshops, to then get paid for these workshops, to then have enough that actually qualify.
That is a long, Goal path, from, and you may not have started out [00:12:00] with the goal of, I want to be an accredited speaker. So I need to figure out how to become a public speaker that later became a goal along your journey. You nailed it on that. Because one thing that I have told individuals is.
You cannot start a speaking career with the accredited speaker designation in mind that designate the designation of accredited speaker is meant for people who already have existing careers. I've been speaking professionally. Initially. I started when I worked internal human resources at 2 different organizations, a hospital organization, and also a hotel organization.
Chain doing orientations and trainings and things like that. And then I was hired by a couple of different organizations to do career transition training and other workshops for them. When I started out on my own, this is 20 years ago, I began my professional speaking career 20 years ago. And so I didn't even know about the [00:13:00] accredited speaker designation until.
I believe it was. 2018 or so when handling Mendoza reached out to me, or I reached out to her and said, what is the Toastmasters Bureau speakers Bureau all about? At that point, I hadn't even heard of the accredited speakers designation or as. But it truly is for people that already have existing careers.
It is way too rigorous to try and develop a speaking career just so that you get the accredited speaker designation. Yeah. It's quite an honor, but not, yeah. Yeah. It's way too difficult. You really have to already be speaking. And I think that, The stress of finding those speaking engagements, putting out proposals, working on negotiations, running it like a business.
Because Sarah, I also tell people it has to be a business. You've got to get your bookkeeping, your record, keeping all [00:14:00] of those in. But files your taxes, it's an entire business. You really have to think of it as a business. And so if you don't have all of those things insisting, it's going to be really difficult.
Yeah. So why did you become a professional speaker? What got you on this journey in the first place? A few things. I've always had acting in my bones and in my soul. A lot of people don't know that I've been a member of Screen Actors Guild and AFRA, the American Federation of Television and Radio Association.
So I've been SAG AFTRA for many years, since the 80s, having done some movies. And so I've always had that in my bones. Blood, I've done a lot of theater and so being on stage in front of people is something that I've always loved. And when I had to do training as part of my HR career, loved it. I ended up leaving my last.
HR job because [00:15:00] my position was being basically absorbed into the organization and made into a full time recruiter job. That announcement came 20 days before my daughter was born. And I thought, 1st of all, it was an hour drive to get to this particular location. I didn't want to be a full time recruiter and I didn't really want to do a job.
Didn't love only to leave a baby that it took me four years to have yeah, there were all kinds of things In that mix, so I decided to leave corporate America and I started my own business. And with that, it was just in my blood to be a speaker. And I was very fortunate Sarah to be offered jobs by a couple of different companies to come do trainings for them.
And so it was very organic, and I did those. Come those trainings for these organizations for a couple of years and then said, I'm going to start developing my own work and start putting it out there. 1 thing. Sarah. A lot of [00:16:00] people don't know is the 1st, 16 years of my speaking business. I focused on intimate partner violence and it spill over to the workplace.
Yes, I found that human resources professionals and leaders and managers were woefully under trained in the dynamics of intimate partner violence and how to address it at the workplace. I had seen my own colleagues re victimized victims and I was just like, I can't. Allow that to continue both from a personal aspect of having gone through that in my earlier life, childhood, and then a 1st marriage and then seeing it in the workplace.
I so that was what I addressed for 16 years. I even wrote a book on called serrated with another. Person who had survived a hellacious attack of domestic violence in which her mother was killed. And so I did that for 16 years and I spoke all over the U. S. I even had opportunity to [00:17:00] speak in Europe, but after 16 years, I was so burnout on the subject matter, it was just emotionally, very draining and very tough. And clients had started to ask me questions about company culture. And I felt that in helping them with those issues, I thought there's that saying, right? Give your clients what they're asking for. And so that was my opportunity to make a shift.
I also ran a mastermind groups, excuse me. I had a little brain blank there. I ran mastermind groups For entrepreneurs, like you're doing a podcast for entrepreneurs. I ran mastermind groups for entrepreneurs, people who own their own businesses, small businesses for about 2 years. And then I said, wait into company culture, speaking, training and consulting.
And that was around 2017. Wow. And many people know on the show that I was in corporate America for many years and I saw a lot of stuff when you're in corporate America, you see some really [00:18:00] great cultures and then you see some cultures that are not so great. In fact, I worked for a company that.
Was sold, which was fine. And then went through two years later, a bankruptcy and our company culture was very interesting. And some of us are still, we're still really great friends because we bonded over that experience. Now you work with. Companies and individuals on culture. If somebody is listening to this and they're like, I want to be an entrepreneur.
I want to build my own business. Cause what's going on over here is not what I want to be about. What advice or suggestions might you give them as they then are building their own company and creating their own culture? I think that you start out by. Truly deciding what your own personal values are. And I don't mean a long, lengthy [00:19:00] list.
Three to five things that mean the most to you. And then focus on that and you live it, breathe it, walk it, and talk it in everything you do because it will spill over into those that you touch and those people, and I don't mean physically touch, but those that you're alive. The people that work for you, the people that interact with you, it becomes evident in everything you do and company culture is something that goes from the top down, but it also builds from the bottom up when you look for people who you will have working with you find those That are not maybe cookie cutters of yourself.
I think that becomes very monotonous if they are just like you. You still want people who have the same core values that you do because they will not want to follow you. They will not want to support you. They will not [00:20:00] believe in you if they don't. There has to be a tie in with those that you. Bring into your organization, I'm doing the very same thing.
I'm really excited that the company culture board game that you mentioned, and you said that it's an exclusive element in my workshops starting in about 2 weeks. It won't be I have licensed my. First facilitator. She's like a clone of myself. And she will also be able to do this in her workshops with her clients.
And I'm going to be retailing the game as well so that people can purchase it, use it at their organizations or their homes or whatever they want. But it's really organization based, whether it's a nonprofit or corporate, a mom and pop small shop, but it's all based on first starting out and finding out what your core values are.
And of course, the second thing is, me. Bookkeeping, bookkeeping document. Yeah. I love that your journey really is, it's almost like a [00:21:00] masterclass or a blueprint for goal setting because you created a, you identified issues in culture, you created a game, you started facilitating this, and now you have trained somebody else to do it, to spread that message.
And. When we think about goals many listeners will say I have to have it all figured out and I bet you when you first started this, you didn't say I'm going to create a board game and eventually I'm going to license it and then it's going to be in retail and no, it didn't go that way. Yeah.
I didn't at all. And here's the thing too, is back when I did the domestic violence work that I mentioned to you, I was doing webinars and occasional trainings with another individual who had counseled some 3, 200 domestic violence offenders, both male and female. And one day at the exact same time, he and I said, we should invent a game.
And we invented a domestic violence educational board game that was used as part of the curriculum for offender treatment groups. [00:22:00] That was some 10 years ago. No, you're right. When I was doing the company culture work, there was a day in around 2019, the summer of 2019. I was literally sitting in the Papa's on chair.
That's in my office. You can't see because the virtual background I have and I suddenly thought, oh, my goodness. I've created 1 game. Why can't I do that again? Yeah. And so I started all over again with the development of the game. It follows some of the same game type principles as the other 1. but everything in the cards comes from something that I dealt with in human resources.
These are all very real things. All the negative things that make you go backwards and all the very positive things that make you go forwards. It's all based on real life, but you're also right in the fact that this wasn't my end goal. It wasn't until the fall of this past year, you may or may not know that I took a five week trip to Europe and I was in 10 countries.[00:23:00]
Yeah. How exciting. But during that time, Sarah is when I had a moment to breathe and I had time to reflect and think. What do I want my life to be? And it was on that trip, in the fall of 2023, that I said, You know what? In 2024, I'm going to license some facilitators. I have decided it's probably going to be no more than 5.
I'm going to keep it very exclusive. Yeah. And I'm going to start retailing the game. And so when I came back from that trip, had the holidays, Starting January 1st, boom, I started and those were my 2024 goals and you will start to see in social media as in the Phoenix metro area sometime beginning in the probably the beginning of April, there will start being social media ads.
If this podcast airs in May. Those campaigns will have started to launch. So I'm very excited. How [00:24:00] cool. And I love that it's changed over time. The goal still is to address company culture and to do all the things that you're doing in your mission. But over time, you've had these mini goals and these sub goals that you've crushed.
And that's the beautiful thing about. Just getting to work, I think, and getting started. It doesn't need to be perfect. You don't need to know the whole plan. You don't pardon me. And in my intro, you said that I make built to thrive companies that slay the villain of stagnation and being built to thrive means that you will outlive and outlast and outperform your competition.
And I actually have definitions of that on my website. And then slaying the villain of stagnation means Getting out of your comfort zone, not being one of those people or those organizations that kind of crosses your arm figuratively or we've always done it that way. We've always done it this way.
We don't want to change. [00:25:00] Yes. We're afraid to change or whatever they're saying. So I have to slay my own villain of stagnation. And it's not just about learning German. It's about getting off my comfort, my comfortable self and doing things like. Reaching out to organizations, like calling marketing teams and interviewing 1 before I find the right 1 to work with by looking at people who I might want to have license my program people that follow the same vision and values that I have and so forth.
I have to slay my own villain of stagnation. If I'm going to walk my own talk and set an example for what I want my clients to do. Oh, yeah, you have to set
your clients may not know you had a freeze. Yeah. Yeah. All right. I think we're back. I'll edit that out.
All right. So when you're thinking about company culture and somebody is building that for themselves as an [00:26:00] entrepreneur, I know that we shared a lot about what you do and we talked a lot about getting out of that. Stagnation and getting to work if somebody's okay, I really want to make sure what I create that culture is not what I came from.
It's not that toxic culture. What would you say are maybe the two or three top tips that they would want to really focus on to ensure that they don't. End up creating business that has a toxic culture. I think, pardon me, find, like I said before, finding your own value system, but listening to the value systems of the people around you, the people that are going to work with you, there may be things that are very important to them that the leader of the organization may resist.
I know a really good human resources manager that left a company because they would not offer her a flexible schedule. And mind you that only meant. [00:27:00] Leaving at 4 o'clock on Fridays to get to her job at a restaurant 1 hour from somebody who was willing to work through lunch or come in early, but they wouldn't do that kind of flexibility.
And if you'll allow me to just plug a little bit. Yeah. Which you may see on camera a little bit and flip it around. I think it's just here. Flip it around. Oh, there you go. I apologize. It was upside down. Yeah. So for those who are just listening, I'm holding the company culture board game and. This is a way to have your members of the organization able to speak to the leaders.
The leaders participate the members of the organization. All levels can participate and you want them to and the playing cards are made so that. You can be an hourly person in the role of the senior management and vice versa. So you really get to hear about what's going on with other people and how they think about certain things in the organization.
I'll [00:28:00] never forget. For example, Sarah, 1 time when a CEO was sitting next to somebody who said something relative to 1 of the cards, the CEO said that happens in our company and the guy next to him said, it does.
And so I would say do that. Of course, it's a bit of a plug on the game, but this was made to help organizations speak to each other and open up that dialogue. Yeah. And I worked for a company that I was put on this like little many listeners have heard this story, but I was put on this little training program and they wanted to train people how to in sales and.
Found out that really our top salespeople were not top salespeople. They were just overworking everybody else. They were doing 60 to 80 hours a week. And when we aggregated the data, cause I'm a nerd realize that they were actually middle to bottom performers. And we, I went to HR and I said, I want data on all these [00:29:00] people.
And they actually track the divorce rate in the company through who's going on and off insurance. It's an easy metric and. They have to tell you're getting divorced. And what we found is that some of the employees that were actually top performers, but they were just working a ton of hours. So they really weren't.
They had a very high divorce rate, whether it attributes to their job or not. It was a metric, a point of data. And. The C suite was shocked. They had no idea. And then they started asking other companies, what's your divorce rate? And they're like, I don't know, let's look at it. And we were three times what other companies in our industry were.
And that's when we started to look at the metrics. That's when we started to say, have we set a culture here that in order to be successful, you have to work all the time. And then the next question was, is this the culture we want to have at our company? Is this why we have high [00:30:00] turnover? Is this why we have low retention of our employees?
And those conversations were opened just by simply somebody saying, create a training for these top, for these. Lower performers. And I just said, I'm going to go see what the top performers are doing. And then I realized they're just working all the time. There's no magic story. There's no magic sauce over there.
Thank goodness for self proclaimed nerds that will find that kind of data and unpack it because you're right. There are some industries that are so Prone to divorce, for example, police fire, they're also prone to high suicide rates, really difficult things. And it's the work that contributes to it.
But it's also those factors that when they're so problematic in the person's life, contribute to trouble at work. It's a vicious cycle. So it's we have to find ways to help individuals with that. And so thank goodness you looked at that metric. [00:31:00] I didn't even think about it. And then I just stumbled upon this little pot of gold of data and was like, huh, there, they might not even be our top performers here when we really look at it.
And they were great. They were very loyal to the company, but that's not healthy. We can't work that way. That those kind of hours for a sustainable amount of time. No, you can't. And it does have a very negative Affect on the culture as a whole. And you don't really know what other things could be fractioning off as a result of that.
Does that person who's frustrated with the divorce at home, then snap at somebody else in the workplace? And does that person then snap at somebody in the next department? That's like a chain of dominoes. Precisely. And then they go home and kick the dog, and, all of these kinds of things happen.
Things are, that's why I believe so much in company culture, because I feel like if we can make our cultures really great places to work, and I don't mean that they have to be follow along. There's the reality of work, [00:32:00] but if they can be really good places to be, then we go home and we have better lives at home.
And that's still is over into the other people in our families. And that helps the people that they interact with. It helps the community. And the wider world around us. And I know I sound idealistic, but it's my belief system. Yeah. I could have this conversation all day long, but if somebody is listening to this show right now and they want to reach out to you, connect with you or work with you, how might they find you?
That's so easy. Just take my name, stephanieangelo. com. And that's right to my website. That has, I love that. Yeah. That's my phone number on it. StephanieAngelo. com. There you go. But the other thing that's really exciting is now you can also go to companyculturegame. com and have a landing page just on the game.
So I'm really findable. I'm on LinkedIn and I'm in all of the places [00:33:00] like Facebook and so forth. So StephanieAngelo. com is definitely a great place to start. Oh, Stephanie, thank you so much. Again, we could talk all day. This could be a workshop, actually a podcast workshop, because it's so important that we create as we build businesses, or even if we're sitting in our nine to five dreaming about building a business, that we really create a culture that we can be proud of, that everybody loves to come to and that it's intentional.
And so you may be sitting in a culture that's not. What you're looking for. But when you create your business, you have that opportunity to create a culture that impacts your team. So true. Thank you so much. Yeah, you're right. We could talk all day, but I know you've got work to do and I do as well. So this has really been a great start to the morning.
Oh, thanks. All right. Bold, gold crushers. It's time to get out there and crush your goals because you do not have to work double time. So [00:34:00] let's get to it.
