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At Delivering Happiness, we believe happiness supports a company’s success at work. Success without happiness or fulfillment could feel like the biggest failure.
I recently interviewed Sean Greene, the CEO of Bambino, another company that believes happiness comes before success. Sean believes that family happiness should spill into work [I think it’s both ways!].
He shared with me his journey of taking his company to 200,000 users nationwide in 3.5 years.
Bambino was launched in May 2016 after Sean couldn’t find reliable babysitters for himself one day. Three and a half years later, the Bambino app is across 30 different cities and just finished a fundraising round to go into every neighborhood.
Up until his last fundraising round in thanksgiving 2019, he did all these with a fully remote team but a family like culture. How does Bambino create this culture?
Family Happiness Spills into Work
Nearly the entire team is made of parents. They all share this same thing in common with their colleagues and customers they ultimately serve. They understand the stresses of parents and just in life in general.
The company provides an unlimited vacation policy. If team members need to take a vacation, be at a football game, or science fair, they schedule their work around their life.
Since everyone is focused on the purpose of the company of lightening the loads of parents, work is so purposeful for them that they don’t want to take off from work often. The sense of control and trust are at a level that create a strong team.
Where can you give more control to your team to develop ownership at the same time giving them a sense of freedom?
A company culture that is like family that helps families
Sean mentioned that having a family like culture starts with him sharing the good and bad with the team.
By opening up, others on his team are willing to open up more too. Other than utilizing all the technology, Bambino has team building with the employees and even takes trips together to stay in the same house.
While many of their investors are friends and family, their user growth has also been through families that want to have them in their neighborhood. They have 89 community coordinators across the country now that are helping them grow in each neighborhood. They are planning to reach every single city in the US and expand globally afterward.
How can you foster a more trusting culture through your team, your clients and the community you serve?
Create a purpose driven team
The entire team is focused on their purpose of improving the lives of families. The team is very passionate about what they are doing and the impact they are having on people's lives, sitters and parents.
A working mother had come up to Sean to say that Bambino had saved her career and life. In another instance, a mom explained that the kids thanked her for hiring someone to play with them. It’s not to replace the attention of parents, but to have them keep focus on the kids while they are with the kids.
One sitter that Sean used through Bambino told him that the app helps put her through college.
Their mission in making parents happier, marriages stronger, kids safer, and young adults more independent has kept them focused on working hard for the growth.
With that, all community coordinators are proud to represent Bambino and everyone on the team is proud of their product and mission. Your team would go that extra mile for you if they believe what they are doing is making a difference.
Even Sean said he could be getting paid a lot more himself if he was to work this hard somewhere else, but it is all so worth it to help families live better lives.
When your top talents have a choice of not only working at another high paying job at another corporation but also another heavily funded start-up or starting their own company, what can you do to keep them?
Download our free eBook: 3 Signs You Should Commit to Culture First
