Red Threads is presented by:
PRDs by voice. Bug reports by voice. Ship faster.
Dictate acceptance criteria and reproductions inside Cursor or Warp. Wispr Flow auto-tags file names, preserves syntax, and gives you paste-ready text in seconds. 4x faster than typing.
The Red Thread This Week:
“Culture is not an initiative. Culture is the enabler of all initiatives.” — Larry Senn
We just wrapped Season 1 of Slackers, (the podcast I co-host with my good friend Jonathan Sasse.)
Jonathan and I spent the first season the way most people spend their first outing: figuring out what we were doing!
It landed as the two of us talking the way you might at the hotel bar, through ideas/frameworks we'd learned from years inside strategy and business.
It was a lot of fun. We’re both proud to put our name on it. And it definitely left us wanting to build more.
So season 2 is already in the works, and it's going to be a little different.
We're bringing in real operators. Founders, builders, people who are in the middle of making something and willing to let us get under the hood with them.
The model will be 2 parts in some cases. First, a real discovery conversation. Then Jonathan and I will go do some work, build a few deliverables, and bring it back live on the show.
A lightweight strategic workshop, done in public.
We've already got a few of these in the can, so as a bonus to close out Season 1, we're releasing the first part of our conversation with Jared Eichelberger, who runs a youth baseball training program called 5ive Tool Baseball Academy.
Jared's a former pro ball player who’s now very much in the trenches of building his business, and one of the most naturally compelling people we've had on the show.
Towards the end of our first conversation, almost as an aside, Jonathan nailed it when he said "Jared, you've been talking for 90 minutes, and you've barely talked about the business side of your business."
He was right.
Jared talked about the kids. The parents. The coaches he's hired. The way they think about their uniforms. The Mariners jersey he wore to the very first clinic he put together, when nobody else was in uniform and nobody asked him to be.
He talked about the culture inside of 5ive Tool Baseball.
He wasn't avoiding the nuts and bolts of running a business. He just doesn't see those things as separate.
That's what I loved about the conversation. And it's what got me thinking about this issue.
The thing that makes Jared's culture work is also the thing that makes it hard to grow his business.
Because so much of it lives inside him.
In the decisions he makes before anyone thinks to ask. In the standard he held before he had a team to hold it with.
So the Red Thread this week is about how culture gets built, where it actually lives, and what happens when you try to grow something whose foundation is you.
~ Jaime
🔑 The Unlock
1️⃣ Culture is transmitted, not declared
Jared showed up to one of his first clinics in full spring training gear.
Mariners jersey, baseball pants, hat facing forward. Nobody asked him to. Nobody else was dressed that way.
And what happened was, parents looked at him and thought: okay, this person knows what they're doing.
One small decision to intentionally send a signal.
No memo. No deck of slides explaining culture to the team.
It reminded me of Seth Godin's definition of culture (which is my favorite,) people like us do things like this.
That's it. Culture is the operating agreement a group reaches, mostly without words, about what behavior looks like around here.
You don't transmit it in an all-hands. You transmit it in a thousand small decisions that maybe look unrelated on their own.
What time you show up. Whether you carry your own bag. Whether you recognize the person who had the great idea, and make a real deal of it, in front of everyone.
For builders: what are the signals in your organization right now, and did you put them there on purpose?
2️⃣ A promise kept or broken
When you've built a culture, you've made a promise. Sometimes explicitly. Usually just by how you show up every day.
(Spoiler: you’ve already got a culture whether you like it or not. Even if you never designed it, culture shows up anyway.)
And when someone breaks it, the damage is real. Same as a brand that stops delivering on what made people trust it.
Jared didn't announce that 5ive Tool was serious about professionalism. He wore the jersey, alone, to a field with 12 kids ready to train. He kept showing up that way.
Eventually his coaches did too. Not because he mandated it. Because the promise was already visible.
For builders: what promise are you making every day to your team, whether you're thinking about it or not?
3️⃣ What can travel
Jared's cultural foundation with 5ive Tool scored near-perfect. Strategic empathy, passion, identity, team alignment. All of it at the top.
His gaps were operational: systems and infrastructure that would let the business run without him.
That's not a shocker because the two things are connected.
The culture at 5ive Tool lives in Jared's body. In the way he carries himself. In the standards he models before he names them. In the signals he sends without even thinking about sending them.
That's what makes it powerful. And exactly what makes it fragile.
It’s an incredibly common dynamic with founder-led organizations, because the thing that makes your work great in the early days is, often, you.
Your standards. Your taste. Your willingness to wear the jersey when nobody else does.
But at some point, growth requires making that portable. Turning what lives in your natural behavior into something the whole team can carry.
For builders: The question isn't whether you have culture. You do. The question is whether it can travel.
💡 Mindset Shift
Start noticing what you're already doing.
Most builders, when they decide to "work on culture," reach for a document.
A values statement. A team charter. A slide in the all-hands deck.
Those things aren't useless. But they're usually not where the culture actually lives.
The more useful exercise is observational.
Spend one week treating yourself like a subject of study.
What do you do before anyone asks you to?
What do you notice that your team walks past?
What gets your attention and what doesn't?
That pattern, the thing you're already doing unconsciously, is the culture you're actually building.
The trick is deciding to do it on purpose.
🎲 Prompt Playground
The Cultural Signals Audit
Most builders can describe their values. Fewer can describe the specific behaviors and decisions that actually transmit those values day to day.
Copy + paste this prompt into your AI tool of choice:
Prompt
You are a strategic advisor helping me understand the cultural signals I send in my organization, business, or creative practice.
My situation:
What I'm building: [describe your business, project, or team]
My team or collaborators: [brief description]
Something I do consistently that I've never named: [a habit, standard, or decision that feels like "just how I do things"]
My question: [e.g., "Why does my team replicate some of my behaviors but not others?" / "What signals am I sending that I'm not aware of?" / "How do I make the culture I've built portable as I grow?"]
Help me think through:
What are the 2-3 most visible cultural signals I'm probably already transmitting, intentionally or not?
Where might there be a gap between the culture I think I have and what my team is actually experiencing?
What's one specific habit or decision I could introduce that would make my most important value more visible to everyone around me?
Be direct. Tell me what I need to hear.
⚡ Before You Go
Need a new podcast?
I co-host Slackers with Jonathan Sasse, a show for leaders, builders, and creators who want to make work better.
We just wrapped season 1 and cross my heart, if you want to deliver better work, it’s worth a test drive.
Here are other ways I can help:
🗓️ 1:1 call: Grab 15min on my calendar.
🎙️ Podcast support: Get pro-level guidance without hiring full-time.
🚀 Speaking & workshops: Hit reply, let’s talk.
🤖 AI Prompt Library: 12 prompts to use AI as a strategic thinking partner (free)
And I’d appreciate your help:
🧶 Take a 2-minute survey to help improve the newsletter.
💬 Leave a short testimonial if this newsletter has helped your work.
Both make a real difference.
Thanks for spending time with Red Threads this week, I’m glad you’re here.
~ Jaime