Company-Culture-Development-with-Dale-Carlsen

Are you building an ivory tower kind of culture, or a culture where everyone matters?

Nobody builds a truly great company alone, especially entrepreneurs who are trying to change the world. So, in order to achieve our big hairy audacious goals we need to surround ourselves with the people that will run through a brick wall with us.

In order to attract and retain these rock stars we have to build a strong company culture that our team members will go ALL IN on! The question is, what does that winning culture look like and how do we create one?

In order to answer this question I brought on a man that created one of the best company cultures in the Sacramento area, Dale Carlsen. Dale is the founder of Sleep Train Mattress Center. Dale built up Sleep Train to over 1600 employees, over $500 Million in revenue, gave his employees 25% of the company through an ESOP, and eventually sold to Mattress Firm which was a $117 Million payoff for his employees. 

Dale’s father gave him advice that he has lived by and that he attributes to the success of Sleep Train: surround yourself with great people, treat them well, and make everybody successful. And that is exactly what Dale did. 

Dale shares how he was able to build a strong culture following his father’s advice - What you will learn on this episode; 

(14:25) Why creating a company culture where everyone matters helps make big strategic decisions is important.

(16:35) How much transparency a company should have to build organizational culture.

(17:45) How he created a culture of ownership and eventually made his employees owners - which led to an 800% growth over 5 years.

(19:30) How creating a corporate culture that gave back to their community brought in more customers and more importantly it increased employee retention.

(34:05) Be careful of building an ivory tower culture. Create a work culture where everyone is the same and no one is more important.

(37:55) Nobody buys into top down culture. Creating the mission/vision/values from the ground up with your team is step number 1 to development strong company culture.

(40:25) Creating an organizational culture and leadership that celebrates successes allows the CEO and executive team to get to know their employees even better and strengthen their relationships.  

Dale shares how he DID all of the above throughout our conversation. I could not be more excited to share his wisdom with all of you on how to build a strong company culture. 

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