Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Daren Martin. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Daren thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about a time you helped a customer really get an amazing result through their work with you.

A friend of mine told me the boutique hotel he owned wasn’t doing well and he asked me to go take a look. After a day of one on one interviews with the managing team I called him up and said, “Not only do I know what is wrong, I know how to fix it.”

The GM was running this boutique art focused hotel like a pawn shop. The Head of Sales told me “Social Media can’t help you it can only hurt you” Consequently he deleted guests posts and worse. The Controller, the son of the GM, was shoving checks in drawers which then never got deposited. The Head of Housekeeping said one of his leadership skills is “He is good with the little people”. I could go on and on. Needless to say a big shift in personnel ensued.

I brought in an incredible team to get this amazing property back on track. We empowered the world class Chef, put a very capable housekeeper who the team loved and respected in charge of housekeeping, straightened out the Social Media, updated equipment, rebranded the place, straightened out the accounting disaster, and so much more. All of this was geared around building a Company Culture and mindset that would serve the property well.

15 months later, this property went from #57 on Trip Advisor in Dallas to #1.

Daren, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I started and ran my own business while working on my PhD in Psychology. While running that for 20 years I learned the ups and downs of running a small business. I went through a personal shift and sold me business. Starting from scratch I spent some time figuring out my future and what I wanted to do.

I decided to get in to advising and was brought on by a boutique consulting firm. I established some early wins with them including training and consulting for a number of Fortune 100 companies in the defense industry, oil and gas, financial, technical, healthcare, manufacturing, pools and more. I was brought into a 2.6 billion dollar oil and gas company to do Change Management for an SAP implementation. That turned in to a 10 year running contract where I worked across the organization from the C Level Executives to the people closest to the valve. Following a merger and multiple acquisitions, when i left they were a 20 billion company.

Being in so many companies, I started to see the good, the bad, and the ugly. There were so many consistent patterns for what worked and what didn’t work. I started writing books my observations which proved to be of great interest to leaders and executives. Inspired by authors like Seth Godin, Tom Peters, and Jeffrey Gitomer , I wanted my books to be visual, easy and entertaining read, with high impact content.

Titles include …

A Company of Owners – WSJ & USA Today bestseller. Called “Best book since Good to Great”
Whiteboard: Business Models – the first hand drawn/written business book. Leonard Cohen was a big fan of this book.
The Sink – a super short read about leaving people, work spaces, and the planet better than you found it.
Unbeach Your Company: Learning to Swim in the New Ocean – why companies are stuck and how they can get unstuck
An Evolution at Work – The future of work for the Bold New World
Reach Change Now – a book on change mastery
Architecting a Company of Owners – A roadmap for building an epic company culture (out in Spring 2022)

Books in que are …

think/WOW: A Customer Experience that Wows
VUCA : Thriving in the Bold New World of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity
Name: The Definitive Guide for Evaluating and Creating your Culture

I have provided Keynotes speeches and training for companies including KPMG, Lockheed Martin, Praxair, HollyFrontier, Kysor Panel Systems, Lockton, PayPal, the National Restaurant Association, Select Medical and many more including multiple Associations and Franchise groups.

As an advisor I pride myself on working with companies and business leaders to evaluate the state of their company and design a strategic optimal path for success, developing their leadership, creating a great culture, increasing employee engagement, eliminating silos and more. My work has resulted in comments like the following. “Daren changed the trajectory of our company. We would not be where we are today without Daren Martin.

The unique value I bring to Companies, Organizations, and Leaders include …

A unique and important based on thousands of conversations with business leaders, having devoured over 500 business books, a fresh perspective on problem solving and business building. Bringing an edgier view of the world and work than the traditional stodgy perspectives I was labeled the Bono of the Business World

Several years ago, I Founded The Global Company Culture Association for everyone involved in and interested in that space. Join at www.GlobalCompanyCulture Association.com. I am referred to as the Culture Architect.

I have always been interested in the future and what is coming. Living in the biggest shift in the history of humans I speak out about coming pitfalls and flat out tsunamis, trends and inevitabilities, and how to get ahead of the big shift.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

Every team member wants three things to be truly happy on the team and at the company?

They want to be Going.
They want to be Growing.
They want to be Glowing.

Going – do they see a clear path for their future? Are they being given opportunities to increase their knowledge, learn new skill sets, try out other job functions to see if there is a match?

Growing – aside from work are they growing as a person as a result of their work at the company. Are there non-work related learning, development, and growth opportunities? Does the company do things like Ted Talk Tuesdays where everyone eats lunch together and watches an interesting Ted Talk? Provide on the job speaker or writer training for those interested. Offer wealth building programs to help them prepare for their future.

Glowing – people spend so much time at work it may as well be a rewarding and enjoyable experience. This can only be accomplished through a fun, engaging, challenging (in good ways) work experience. If Team members hate Monday and live for Friday they are not likely to be doing much to truly benefit the company in between those days.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

When I started my first business I had a business partner who was personally financing the company. He saw a great vision for the company and in particular, the potential revenue streams. He funded it, I built it. The problem was the more our revenue grew, the more we spent. We were constantly chasing our tales at times struggling to make payroll, juggling bills, and more. This was years ago and I remember not putting payroll out until after 3 p.m. so checks wouldn’t clear that day buying me 24 hours.

I had never run a business and was ignorant to much of the nuts and bolts that make a business financially viable and solid. After a number of years my business partner was making some life changes and wanted to divest himself of the company and take the debt as a loss to offset the profits from the sell of his company. I was in a total panic knowing we were in big trouble without the benefit of his financing it. It was change or die.

I did a deep analysis of all of our locations and determined which were profitable and which were not. I closed a number of centers outright. I made other changes to fix our upside down balance sheet. Within 30 days we were finally profitable and never struggled again.

It was an amazing lesson for me. I discovered that I had known how to fix it all along, I just didn’t know that I knew. The urgency of the situation forced me to make difficult decisions to fix my struggling business.

Other Lessons Learned

If you are not paying yourself a respectable salary as a business owner you are setting you and the company up for failure.
You can’t spend your way into profitability.
There are aspects of “You have to spend money to make money” which are true but not in the chasing our tail fashion we were doing it.
Profit is power
Don’t get stuck in what I call the Grow, Grow, Die cycle
Don’t wait on a crisis to ask yourself the question if we had to increase our profitability/revenue by X% in 30 days or close the doors what would I do. Then go do that.
There is a reason outsiders (like me) are brought in to save failing companies – they are not emotionally attached and can make sound business decisions.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.DarenMartin.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/darenmartinphd
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrDarenMartin
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darenmartinphd/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/DarenMartin
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CompanyCultureWithDarenMartinPhD

Image Credits
IMG_0239.jpeg – Photo Credit – Will Von Bolton DARENHEADSHOT_byWillvonBolton.jpeg – Photo Credit – Will Von Bolton Office Dynamics 002 – Photo Credit – Brian Burge