039 Barry Glassman | Creating Company Culture

Have you wondered what makes a company a great place to work? Is it something you should be striving for within your own organization? Our guest for today, Barry Glassman is a renowned expert on company culture. His company, Glassman Wealth, has been voted as the best place to work in Washington DC by multiple local publications. On this episode of Grow My Revenue Barry joins us to talk about what makes his company's culture a great place for employees and for their clients, why having a purposeful culture is so important and how to show people what your company is about rather than showing them. Listen to this episode and discover: - What questions should you ask to find out what your clients really think of you? - Why Barry prefers steady growth over quantum leaps. - How his passions for cooking and photography translate to business success. - What does he wish more perspective clients would ask? - The story of the Starbucks gift cards, and what you can learn. And so much more… Episode Overview While Barry is an exceptional financial advisor most of our conversation on today's episode was about the culture he and his team have created at Glassman Wealth. In the Washington, D.C. area the Glassman company is known as the best place to work in the area. Creating that culture began a few years ago, Barry and his team wanted to create a purposeful culture. They wanted to be very clear about why they are doing what they are doing, and who is on board with what they do in terms of employees. They also wanted to delineate what experience they wanted the company to have internally, and after all of that, then and only then would they look at what they are doing for their clients. Because of all of this shows up both internally and externally they asked external questions to find out what clients valued about them, and how those clients perceived about Glassman Wealth. Specifically a question they asked was: How would you describe us to your friends? The answers to this question, which you can also use, showed them what was valuable about the firm and how their clients saw them. Barry has also found another key to being a great place to work: show people, don't tell them what you're about. The Glassman Wealth firm prefers to listen to the questions clients ask, and answer them. They then share the information from those answers with other clients, This is vastly different than a lot of people in the financial services industry who simply want to show people how smart they are, rather than show they care about their clients. The firm is smart and innovative, but they take approach of showing and not telling you that is who they are. On their web site, for instance, they share videos explaining how they think about investments. Those videos educate their clients, prospective clients and the world on how things work. The videos show that Glassman Wealth open, honest, transparent and also that they are smart and innovative! This is also what Barry calls "interrupting the pattern". Wealth management firms all say the same thing; everyone is about telling you they stand for trust, objectivity and that relationships are important to them. They all are saying the same thing, which leaves potential clients searching to find out what is different about each prospective firm. So Glassman Wealth interrupts the pattern of what those potential clients are expecting to see, and they set themselves apart from everyone else. Also on today's episode Barry shares his one piece of advice on how to make your company a great place to work and how to build a recipe for success within your business model. There's so much to learn from him on this show so listen in and then take action to implement his suggestions. Discover more at http://www.ianaltman.com/business-cast/