COO Wayne Sleight talks about what makes 97th Floor great, from the employees, to the work to the partnership with clients.
"We've got a group of people that just truly have a passion for marketing," said Wayne.
In addition to being a Silver “Stevie” finalist for “Marketing Agency of the Year” from the American Business Awards, 97th Floor was recently named as Inc.’s The 50 Best Places to Work in 2016.
97th Floor was announced as Inc.'s The 50 Best Places to Work in 2016. Over 500 companies were judged in three categories, including how well companies look after their staff's financial security (retirement, insurance, benefits, PTO), employee feedback and performance innovation.
As a recent Silver "Stevie" finalist for "Marketing Agency of the Year" from the American Business Awards, CEO Chris Bennett shares his thoughts on cultivating an excellent culture, one that attracts and keeps the best people.
For the full list of The 50 Best Places to Work in 2016, visit the official website.
COO Wayne Sleight is a recent finalist for "Maverick of the Year" in the 2016 American Business Awards. In the last year, Wayne has also been recognized by Utah Business Magazine in their first-ever Twenty in their 20s awards program, joining other "young, business-savvy executives bringing new ideas and a fresh approach to Utah’s business community."
Wayne talks success and what motivates him to achieve his business and life goals:
97th Floor has been honored with a total of eight Stevie awards at this year’s American Business Awards which will be presented at the 14th annual American Business Awards banquet on Monday, June 20th, 2016 in New York City.
For the full list of winners, visit the official website.
97th Floor recently met again for our monthly book club meeting. This month, we read and discussed The Happiness Advantage, by Shawn Achor. Achor is the founder of GoodThink, co-founder of The Institute for Applied Positive Research (with his wife Michelle Gielan), and advocate for the field of positive psychology.
After a meal of Greek kebabs and salad, we dove into the discussion. In his book, Achor lays out seven different principles of positive psychology:
While we would have loved to dive deeply into each one of these principles, we knew that time would be a constraint, and so those participating decided on a few specific points to focus in on:
The 20-Second Rule discusses the concept of making the things you want to accomplish easier to access, and making behaviors you want to avoid more difficult. Adding or removing as little as 20-seconds worth of effort has an impact on how likely or unlikely you are to engage in an activity.
The Tetris Effect cites a study in which people who played the popular puzzle game Tetris for prolonged periods of time would begin to see the world through that lens—imagining ways to rotate real-world objects in ways that they would fit together. The principle explores how people are able to train themselves into different mindsets. This includes viewing things in a positive light or a negative one. As you try to recognize positive circumstances, it becomes easier, and eventually, it becomes natural.
The Zorro Circle refers to a training method seen in the film The Mask of Zorro, wherein the student is placed within a series of concentric circles. The first circle is particularly small, but the student is instructed to consider his entire world to be contained within that circle, excluding everything outside of it. As the student masters that inner circle, he then progresses to larger and larger circles. As we master our own spheres of influence, not focusing on the things that we cannot change, then that sphere of influence grows. Rather than despairing of the things we cannot change, or the overwhelming amount of work ahead, we can take each step as it comes, and eventually reach our goals.
Social Investment was the last principle we were able to discuss before separating. Too often, when faced with trouble, people will isolate themselves from others. This principle discusses the detrimental nature of this tactic, as social investment often is what gives us the energy to follow through with our work. Genuine connection with other people fuels our work, while isolation taken to extremes often leads to loneliness and despair, both in our personal and professional lives.
Overall, there was a very positive response to the book, and we definitely recommend it. You can also view the author’s TED Talk.
Due to the holidays, we will be reading our next book over the course of December and January. This time, we will be reading Drive, by Daniel H. Pink. As always, you can follow the #97thbookclub hashtag on Twitter for updates.
Previous Book Club books:
Creativity, Inc., by Ed Catmull
REWORK, by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
How many ways can “20” help? 20 isn’t a particularly large number, but in the right context, it can make a big difference in someone’s life.
Last year, 97th Floor sent holiday cards, along with a video, to clients, partners, and friends and encouraged them to set aside $20 to help someone around them. Each card included an additional $20 bill to help them jump start the giving. People could then use the #20helps hashtag to spread the message to others.
This year, in addition to the $20, we are taking it one step further. Instead of focusing specifically on money, we are encouraging everyone who sees this year’s card and video to look for any way in which “20 helps.”
Here are a few ideas, just to get you started:
There are countless possibilities. Remember, 20 may not seem like much… but 20 helps.
This year's card includes the same $20 as last year's, which recipients are asked to use to help someone else, plus two artisan chocolate bars from Taste in Provo, UT
Last week, marketing executives, e-commerce managers, analysts, and more gathered in Milan, Italy for SMX Milan. SMX is one of the leading international digital marketing conferences, and is organized by Business International and Third Door Media. Sessions focused on SEO, paid search, social media marketing, mobile marketing, analytics, and more.
Paxton Gray, 97th Floor’s Director of Marketing Operations, was a featured speaker at SMX Milan this year. His presentation, The Elements of Viral-Worthy Content: Technical Operation, focuses on what it takes to create a consistent, targeted, and well-optimized content campaign. “How do I get my content to go viral?” is the wrong question to ask, according to his presentation. “If your goal is virality, you’ll probably miss the things that can help you go viral.”
“Viral” content is unpredictable; however, Paxton laid out three characteristics that are necessary for content to be considered viral. First, it reaches a mass audience. Second, it is promoted by its consumers. Finally, it is inexpensive to spread. Paxton then further breaks down the process, especially focusing on keyword research.
.@paxtonmgray #smxmilan: Build #content round #KW research. You’ll go #viral pic.twitter.com/5nia8NA7bx
— Filippo Poletti (@filippo_poletti) November 12, 2015
@paxtonmgray 60% of content market goes unused #smxmilan #11
— Mamadigital (@mamadigital) November 12, 2015
So what's the recipe for compelling #viral content? Wrong question! @paxtonmgray on stage at #smxmilan @smx pic.twitter.com/pkKCkr7MTr — Anna Chiara Sai (@chiarasai) November 12, 2015
In the end, the presentation was very well received. Paxton enjoyed his visit to Milan, and he was able to connect with people in several different industries, both in the US and Italy.
Great job, Paxton!
View the full deck from his presentation below:
At the end of October, we met for our second monthly book club meeting. This time, we read the book REWORK, by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, the founders of 37signals, now called Basecamp.
REWORK is broken up into several bite-sized essays, none longer than three pages. Each essay focuses on a specific business principle the authors recommend, and is accompanied by a simple drawing that illustrates the principle being highlighted.
For example, one section, entitled “Draw a Line in the Sand,” emphasizes deciding precisely what your company’s identity is, and figuring out exactly what aspects of that identity you are willing to fight for. “As you get going,” the writers recommend, “keep in mind why you’re doing what you’re doing. Great businesses have a point of view, not just a product or service.” Not only does this help to create a cohesive identity for the employees, it also simplifies all future decision making. “When you don’t know what you believe,” the section continues, “everything becomes an argument. Everything is debatable. But when you stand for something, decisions are obvious.” Some of the other sections we discussed in our meeting include the following:
These are only a few of the topics the discussion touched on. The interesting thing, however, is that among those who attended, there were some strong disagreements on a few of the points made in the book. Each person had their own perspective, and offered different insights. Far from being divisive, though, the discussions led to new ideas on ways we can continue to improve 97th Floor.
This month, we will be reading The Happiness Advantage, by Shawn Achor, a Harvard graduate and founder of The Institute for Applied Positive Research. Follow the #97thbookclub hashtag on Twitter for updates!
Read about last month’s book club meeting, where we discussed Pixar Animation Studios president Ed Catmull’s book Creativity, Inc., here.
This week, MountainWest Capital Network announced the rankings for their 2015 list of Utah’s 100 Fastest Growing Companies. 97th Floor made the list, sitting comfortably at #72.
Thanks to everyone that was involved in the MWCN Utah 100 yesterday. It was a huge success and we had a great time. pic.twitter.com/O81DoeeEQ9
— MWCN (@MWCN) November 4, 2015
According to the Small Business Administration, only one in three companies survives 10 years or more, and just over a month ago, 97th Floor celebrated our tenth anniversary. It’s understandable, then, that ranking in the top 100 fastest growing companies in Utah, the state with the highest job growth rate in the nation according to Kiplinger, has us excited.
“It’s great to be recognized as an Utah Top 100 company in terms of growth percentage,” says Chris Bennett, 97th Floor’s CEO. “The best part is that we were not pushing to grow last year; instead, we were perfecting our systems and client services, which resulted in a 93% retention rate. Our inclusion on the list was a result of not ever losing clients, which I am very proud of.”
97th Floor’s growth as a company is largely due to an environment that encourages growth in its individual employees.
“Our culture of learning and growth has helped us to attract some of the brightest minds in the industry,” says Paxton Gray, Director of Marketing Operations at 97th Floor. “As we attract skilled marketers, the quality of our work improves, which has been the main driving force behind our growth.”
“At 97th Floor, we focus heavily on testing and innovation, which has helped us to produce better and better results for our clients. That consistent investment in development and experimentation is really what sets 97th Floor apart and has helped us to build comprehensive campaigns designed to deliver award-winning results.”
This rapid growth means that there is always work to be done. As we continue to build 97th Floor, we look forward to increasing our ability to elevate our clients’ brands, and to offer the highest quality marketing in the industry.
On September 30, 2015, we at 97th Floor had the first meeting of our book club. Every month, we plan to read a different book, then come together over dinner to discuss any ideas that stood out to us and how they could be applied to improving both 97th Floor and ourselves individually.
For our inaugural meeting, we read and discussed Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull, the president of both Pixar Animation Studios and Disney Animation Studios. In the book, Catmull presents the history of Pixar, introduces key players in its creation and growth, and discusses several of the underlying philosophies behind the company’s operation and composition. Perhaps more importantly, though, he discusses several of the company’s failures and the lessons they learned from those failures. Several times, he mentions his colleague Andrew Stanton’s mantra of “Fail early and fail fast.”
He also emphasizes fostering an environment that welcomes candor, where people are encouraged to speak up if they feel they have something to add to a discussion or project. 97th Floor’s book club attendees seemed to embrace this idea, as people from all parts and departments of the company put forth their own insights from the book and had a lively discussion of ways we can continue to improve 97th Floor. Several suggestions were made, some of which may be implemented in the future.
So far, the book club seems to be a great success, and several employees who were unable to attend September’s meeting have already expressed interest in coming to our next meeting later this month. At that meeting, we will be discussing REWORK, by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, the founders of 37signals and creators of the Basecamp project management software. Follow the #97thbookclub hashtag on Twitter for updates!
On September 30, 2015, 97th Floor officially marked its 10th anniversary, and to celebrate this milestone, we decided to throw a party! We rented out Cornbelly’s in Lehi, Utah, and invited clients, employees, former employees, friends, and family to come help us celebrate!
At 5:00 pm, people started arriving, and the celebration commenced. Attendees enjoyed a variety of activities for people of all ages.
The kids enjoyed “Corncob Beach,” where they played in a pit filled with thousands of kernels of corn,
and they had the chance to meet the Pumpkin Princess and the Pumpkin Fairy.
Meanwhile, the adults socialized with their friends, families, and coworkers,
got lost in the 12-acre Corn Maze,
rode the mechanical bull,
and enjoyed great food.
97th Floor’s Swag Machine also made an appearance, giving out phone chargers and 97th Floor t-shirts in exchange for a tweet with the #10yearsof97 hashtag. It was a big hit! You can see what everyone was saying about it here.
As it got dark, people began to gather around the firepits, and 97th Floor provided everyone with marshmallows, graham crackers, and chocolate to make s’mores.
Chris Bennett, our CEO, stood up to thank everyone, said a few words, and announced the winners of the three grand prizes from the Swag Machine — Congratulations to Jacob Parry, who won a set of gift cards to Burgers Supreme; Emily Paulson, who won a Golf Package, including a set of ladies’ golf clubs and two rounds of golf at the Thanksgiving Point Golf Course; and Kaylen Carter, who won an Apple Watch!
Altogether, there were almost 800 people there to help us celebrate! We want to thank everyone who came, as well as everyone who has given us your support over the last ten years. We’re looking forward to the next ten!
Take a look below for more pictures of the event.
We’re excited and proud to announce that 97th Floor is now officially a ROWE™ Certified Organization!
ROWE stands for Results Only-Work Environment, and is a human resource management strategy that was created by Jody Thompson and Cali Ressler. The idea behind ROWE is to give employees 100% autonomy in exchange for 100% accountability. Employees are judged only on the work that they accomplish, rather than on irrelevant issues such as the hours that they spend in the office. Since creating ROWE, Jody and Cali have founded CultureRx™ to train, assess, and certify organizations in the use of their results-only approach to employee management.
To prepare for our transition into a ROWE workplace, all employees of 97th Floor completed an in-depth series of courses and discussions provided by CultureRx. Each employee was then given a test to ensure that as an organization we’d be successful at implementing this new—and very important—aspect of our culture. We passed with flying colors, and are now operating as a fully certified ROWE company!
If you want to learn more about ROWE, I invite you to read about it in Slate, Inc., or HuffPost. Better yet, check out the CultureRx website, GoROWE.com. However, the basic idea behind ROWE is found in this slogan:
“Work whenever you want, wherever you want, as long as the work gets done.”
At 97th Floor, we charge our clients based on the results we deliver them, not on the amount of time we work (other than consulting projects). Our clients couldn’t care less if we spent 100 combined hours or 1,000 combined hours during the term of the contract—as long as the agreed upon goals in the contract are met. As such, it seemed inappropriate to judge our own employees based upon the hours that they work, rather than the work that is being accomplished. This was a wake up call for us.
Despite the obvious benefits associated with ROWE, this isn’t a decision that we made lightly. In fact, we’ve been weighing the pros and cons since the beginning of 2014. It all kept coming back to one fear: How can we know that an employee is working, if they aren’t in the office? This is a valid question, but it is one that is rendered moot by a second question: How can we know that an employee is working even when they are in the office?
It’s normal for management to want to exert some form of control over those on the company’s payroll. After all, employees are expected to earn their pay, and when they choose instead to ignore their duties, it can cause serious problems for the business in question. However, the reality is that a bad employee will find ways to avoid responsibility, even while sitting at his or her desk surrounded by coworkers. In fact, by giving employees a standard of measurement based upon something other than accomplishments, leaders enable low-productivity. In essence, they tell workers that they don’t have to work; they just have to show up.
Well, after more than a year of discussion, we decided that we weren’t content with sticking with a flawed strategy. We wanted employees to be adults. We wanted them to be respected. We wanted them to be in control of their work and their lives. We’ve believed for a long time that our agency has the best talent in the industry. Now we are letting our employees decide how to provide the best work possible for our clients—which, in reality, is what we’ve expected of our people all along. Traditional HR tools such as time clocks, office hours, limited vacation/sick days, and mandatory meetings all just get in the way, and distract employee focus from what is really important. ROWE puts everything back into perspective, making it possible for employees to work at the times and in the locations that are best suited to their own talents, and it helps management improve as well, by freeing it from the need to constantly supervise and ‘hand-hold’ those who work below them. When all is said and done, the only viable measure of success is success itself. ROWE allows us to release control over a number of things that we are now realizing that we never wanted to control in the first place.
Being giving the freedom to work on my own terms has been absolutely amazing. Today I went to see Disney Pixar’s Inside Out with my wife and daughter at 3:30pm, and now that my daughter is in bed and my wife is out with a friend, I’m able to get back to work... albeit in my backyard with my dogs while I enjoy this warm summer evening! And I’m not the only one enjoying ROWE. One of our Senior Graphic Designers, Maggie Call, recently travelled through India for a month with her husband (and yeah, she represented 97th Floor at The Taj Mahal). And while she was traveling, she still produced amazing work and met on-going project deadlines. One of our Team Lead’s, Cole Rieben, just had gorgeous twin girls. Complications kept them in the hospital for a few weeks, and Cole was able to be there for his family as a husband and a father, while still providing exceptional work for the company. Think about what type of work Cole would have produced if he had had to neglect his responsibilities at home in favor of arbitrarily putting in eight hours a day at the office resulting in him being stressed out. What kind of quality would Maggie’s work be if she were burned-out from being forced to choose between occupying a desk and following her dreams? How effective would I be in my position if I was depressed from missing this time in my daughter’s life? The sad truth is that when freedom is restricted, results suffer. According to Gallup, over half of U.S. employees were not engaged in their jobs in 2014. I wonder how many employees would be happier and more engaged if they had more autonomy.
Success doesn’t breed happiness; happiness breeds success—that’s the happiness advantage (read Shawn Achor’s book). If we’re tired, stressed, burned out, or just having a crappy day, we don’t need to just sit at the office anymore and fake it. We can do something else and get back to work at a better time. Now our clients are getting work from happy people who are ready to share their own excitement and heart in everything that they produce. Our work in the past has been amazing—just look at our retention rate and the awards that we win. With this improvement to our culture, we can’t wait to see just how much better our work will be!
While one purpose is to attract and retain the best talent, another purpose is to increase productivity. Leaders at 97th Floor no longer have subjective conversations about how hard their team members are working. Now, they only focus on the results. This gives 97th Floor 100% accountability from all employees. To put it simply: No results, no job. That’s how clients treat us, so that’s how we need to treat employees. Does this mean that if an employee has a bad month, we simply fire them? Probably not. Clients usually don’t cancel on us if we have one bad month, or if one campaign fails to perform as expected; they look at the overall track record of our work. 97th Floor will do the same with employees. So while we’re not absolutely cutthroat, we are completely serious about maintaining an A-Player culture. This requires fast firing, regardless of how hard an employee is working. Our clients deserve the best talent working on their accounts, and our employees deserve to be surrounded by the best individuals. ROWE helps us recognize those individuals, and to offer them the best possible environment for them to be able to reach their full potential. In the end, it is the employee who achieves the best results that is recognized and rewarded, regardless of how many hours he or she has spent in the office.
We’re excited about this as a company! If you are a client or a prospective client, you should be excited as well. 97th Floor will be even better than what we’ve been in the past! If you’re a prospective employee, you should be excited as well. Come join us, and see for yourself just how great of results you can achieve!
There is obviously much more to be said about ROWE and what it means to us here at 97th Floor. I’ve talked enough though, so I’ll now let our work and our culture speak for themselves.
Here at 97th Floor, we believe that the best gifts are the ones that provide the recipient with an opportunity to help others. This is why for our holiday card this past December, we created the #20helps campaign. We wanted to be able use our success as a company and as individuals to help others. More than that, we wanted to inspire our clients, partners, friends, and anyone else who might be interested, to join in the spirit of charity, and to give back a little something to help those in need. You can read more about our holiday card here.
The holiday card was also a hint at some of our big plans as a company for 2015. Last year was the year that our company really came into its own. To accommodate our extraordinary growth, we moved into a new and better office. We upgraded our equipment to take better advantage of recent technological advances. We created and filled several new positions in order to further improve our overall performance. However, for 2015, we feel as though we need to mature as a company and start helping others. So, at our company holiday celebration last month, we announced our plans to become much more heavily involved with charitable organizations in 2015.
The first aspect of our plan is to donate 1% of our gross revenue to charity. Based on our projections, we estimate that this will mean $65,000 donated by our company to charities in 2015. Each employee of 97th Floor will be able to select a charity of their choice, and 97th Floor will donate a portion of the 1% to that charity. The 1% pledge was inspired by Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce. To learn more about The Salesforce Foundation and their 1% model, go here.
Charitable organizations are always happy to accept monetary donations, but sometimes the donation that does the most good, is a donation of service. The second phase of our 2015 charity plan is to provide a substantial amount of pro bono work for these organizations. We’ll be doing this by bringing on charities as we would normal clients, however, the work that we do for them will be done completely free of charge. We’ll have two charities as clients at all times, and we’ve already built a team at 97th Floor dedicated to service these charities. Our first two charity clients are both local organizations headquartered here in Utah: The Road Home (helping people step out of homelessness and back into the community) and United Way of Utah County Women’s Leadership Council (promoting programs that empower children). 
We have a great deal of respect and admiration for both organizations and for what they do for the communities in which we live and work, and we look forward to a long and fruitful relationship. We are just getting started, but over the next few months, expect to see some great things coming from these partnerships! The work itself that we’ll be donating in 2015 is equivalent to $360,000.
Above all, we realize that it’s our amazing clients that keep us in business and allow us to give back to the world that has given us so much. To quote President John F. Kennedy, "As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them." We believe that brands work with us because of the results we’re able to help them achieve. However, we also believe that people do business with people. Through our ongoing charity efforts, we intend to focus on the human side of digital marketing, and to improve not only our clients’ businesses, but also the lives of those with whom we come into contact. Thank you for partnering with us on your digital marketing efforts!
