Episode 78: Building Company Culture

In this episode of the Acima Development Podcast, host Mike opens with a gardening metaphor to frame the episode’s central theme: cultivating healthy company culture. Drawing from his personal experience transforming barren soil into fertile ground, Mike contrasts short-term fixes like chemical fertilizers with long-term strategies like feeding the soil itself—likening these to how companies often rely on perks or high salaries to attract talent rather than investing in sustainable, growth-focused environments. This sets the stage for a broader conversation about what truly nourishes both plants and people—ecosystems, relationships, and meaningful investment. The discussion evolves into a rich conversation among remote team members, including Justin, Javier, Jorge, and Will, who share their experiences working in international and distributed environments. They highlight the importance of communication, inclusive documentation, and feeling culturally and professionally supported. Javier and Jorge reflect on challenges faced by Latin American contractors, including language barriers and differing communication styles. They emphasize that well-documented processes and clear expectations can bridge time zones and cultural gaps, especially when employees are empowered to grow and contribute meaningfully. The group critiques superficial attempts at building culture, such as gift cards and perks, and stresses the importance of leadership that fosters personal growth, purpose, and strong communication. Leaders who spend time mentoring, understanding their teams, and clearing barriers can create “fertile soil” where people thrive. Whether it’s through offering growth opportunities, creating psychological safety, or enabling people to do impactful work, the team agrees: you can’t shortcut your way to a strong company culture. You have to invest in it intentionally, consistently, and with heart. Transcript: MIKE: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Acima Development Podcast. I am Mike, and I am hosting again today. With me today I have Justin and Javier. And this should provide some good perspectives. Justin previously worked for Acima [laughter] [inaudible 00:39] and is now elsewhere; I'll leave unnamed [laughs]. Javier is a contractor that works outside the office, outside the country, which will provide some good perspective because we'll get good perspective to the topic today. I'm going to announce the topic in a minute [laughter]. Although you could probably see it from the title of the podcast recording but, you know, at least I'll pretend to leave some suspense there [laughs]. JUSTIN: I'm looking for a good story, Mike [laughter]. MIKE: I'm going to talk about my garden. JUSTIN: Oh. MIKE: I've enjoyed gardening since I was a kid. I like growing things. I like being outside. I do have a garden. To be honest, it's maybe a little neglected as of late, but [chuckles] I do have a garden. And I say neglected, I've let some things grow and spread. So, I've got a big patch of raspberries, for example, because I love raspberries. What's wrong with letting the raspberries spread [chuckles]? They're delicious. I've got quite a bit of garlic, and I've got some other berries. I’ve got some goji berries, some garlic chives. So things that have kind of spread some, but I like them, so it works great. And I have a lot of kale because I love kale. I eat kale every day. I've read a lot about gardening. I, at one point, considered changing careers. I was going to work for a gardening company on their tech side for a while. I didn't end up doing that, but strongly considered it. And my original major was botany, so definitely very interested in this topic. I've got, like, a hundred cactus plants in my office that I love. Most of them I grew from seed [laughs]. I like plants. Pandemic, you know [laughter]. So, I'm going to talk about a thing that people regularly get wrong, and even to the point of agriculture sometimes gets wrong, and they're turning from this. And there's been a turn over the last few decades to fundamentally shift the way people think about not just gardening but farming. Where I live, I have quite a bit of farms nearby. In the state of Illinois, there's a lot of corn and soybeans. If you've ever been there, you know what I'm talking about [laughs]. There's a lot of corn and a lot of soybeans. They used to just plow everything under every year or just treat the waste from the previous year's corn and soybeans as waste, and just kind of ignore it, let it blow away. And when they’d till it under in the fall, the soil would blow away all winter. And there's places you can go and they'll show you how deep the topsoil used to be and how deep it is now [laughs]. On the rest stops on the side of the road, they'll show you how much topsoil has been lost because it's a big deal, like, half or more of the topsoil has been lost in areas. And it's a really serious problem because now you ...