Software that helps identify workplace culture
We recently sat down with St. Paul entrepreneur Stephen Moore, 42, owner of Culture Booster, a fast-rising employee experience software company. Launched in 2018, the company now has nine employees and is growing.
MSR: Tell me about your business.
Stephen: Culture Booster is an employee experience software company. We help organizations increase employee engagement and performance management so that, ultimately, we can help reduce turnover and increase the engagement levels of the staff.
MSR: What inspired you to launch/start your business?
Stephen: I was a consultant. I’d travel around the country working with large retail automotive groups, helping them to improve their underperforming stores, and then COVID hit. I needed to make a pivot. I had already been working on the software side of our platform. I decided to put all [of my] consulting tools into one platform to offer [myself] as a differentiator in the market.
MSR: How does your business impact the community?
Stephen: There’s a phenomenon called “the spillover effect” that impacts so many. When they have a stressful work environment, that stressful work environment can start to impact themselves first in several different ways. It can lead to increases in alcoholism, sleep deprivation, and also heart disease.
But it doesn’t stop there. If you have a partner at home, it can cause friction in the home. And then that spillover effect can also impact kids and their children in the home. It can negatively impact their outcomes in school. And so that’s our impact on the community by transforming workplaces.
MSR: What kind of feedback have you gotten over your software?
Stephen: We’re on a website called G2. We’ve received several awards for the winter release. Easiest to do business with, High Performer for the Americas, and locally here. We also were nominated for the Startup of the Year by Twin Cities Startup Week, which is really exciting.
MSR: What are the steps involved in your survey?
Stephen: So we look at our model, which has four steps. Employees want to know, do you listen? After that, do you respond? Thirdly, do you care? And then, fourthly, are you fair? So the surveys, that part is all about listening.
But if you don’t respond to that second step—and we call that our goals and tasks—if you don’t listen to the feedback and respond, engagement levels can decrease, and turnover can increase. So the second step is really important in creating actionable plans. After you’ve gathered the insights from your team. Yeah. And then, thirdly, do you care?
One-on-ones is really where culture and transformations can happen. So our structured ones help us to continuously gather sentiment and stress analysis, and we look at the relationship of those two to have timely support conversations so that people can stay with their employers for the long haul.
MSR: What has been your biggest challenge in owning a business?
Stephen: There are so many. Start-ups are hard. You know, 95 percent of them fail. I think the primary challenge is funding. Being that we’re a bootstrapped company, we’re not venture-backed. And so we don’t have this war chest of money to apply toward marketing. We don’t have, you know, the ability to pay for a full staff.
But that’s the definition of entrepreneurship. Doing more with less and achieving more than anyone thought was possible.
MSR: What has been the most rewarding part of owning your business?
Stephen: Seeing the engagement with scores of our clients and then also the personal growth and development of our team members. Seeing them step into roles where they maybe have, you know, one focus area, but now they’re expanding their expertise to help the business to thrive. All of that is exciting.
MSR: What’s your vision and goals for your business? What does success look like for you?
Stephen: I’d love to sell Coach Booster one day. I have a specific dollar amount in mind, and I would love to take those proceeds and do the community engagement work. It makes a difference from a leadership standpoint because you need resources to influence policy, to influence communities. And so that’s what’s exciting about Culture Booster in the long term: selling it so that I can make a change in the community.
MSR: What advice would you give to an aspiring entrepreneur?
Stephen: It’s really hard. Just know that it’s going to take you longer than you thought was possible, and it’s going to take more resources than you think is possible. So really scrutinize every expense and build an amazing team. I could not be where I am today if it wasn’t for my team.