Becoming a “Best Place to Work” with Travis Snyder, Dream Manager at TrueScripts Management Services

Travis Snyder: 00:00:00

Matthew Kelly had said, you only know 1% of the impacts that you make as a Dream Manager to the people that you're working with. I always tell them I think of the role model you're being for your kids, your spouse, your friends, just identifying those dreams, working towards them, and achieving, like, what better role model could you be for the people in your life?

Kate Volman: 00:00:18

This is lead with culture. I am Kate Volman, and on this episode, we're talking about the impact of the Dream Manager program. In fact, it helps one company go from number six to number one in best places to work for medium sized companies. I'll be joined by Travis Snyder, the dream manager of TrueScripts, located in Washington, Indiana. They launched the Dream Manager program in 2021 and started seeing the benefits immediately. Please enjoy my conversation with Travis. I am so excited to chat with you today, Travis. Thank you so much.

Travis Snyder: 00:00:50

Thank you for having me.

Kate Volman: 00:00:51

So I'm excited to dig into this conversation around Dream Manager. There's so many incredible success stories. I get so excited every time you send me an email and to tell us about the dreams that are being achieved over there at TrueScripts. But before we dig into that conversation, why don't you share a little bit about TrueScripts? What does the company do? How many team members do you have?

Travis Snyder: 00:01:14

Yeah, absolutely. So, as you said, we're based in Washington, Indiana, the southwestern side of Indiana, and we are a prescription benefit management company. So we managed the prescription plans for self insured companies, helping make sure people get the right medications and at the cheapest cost and hoping to save them on the prescriptions. I've been there since June of last year, so still pretty new. We were founded in 2013 with our three owners, started with a team of five, including those owners. So we've grown, you know, since then. So only nine years to over 100 people. We surpassed 100 this year. I know our president, CEO Dean Murder, was talking about when he came on board four years ago. We were at like, 25. So you can see the growth in just a short time has been amazing. And that's been one of the things we wanted to focus on, obviously, is it's easy to have a great culture when you have five people. So how do we keep that amazing culture when we have over more than 100 people and beyond and really show that care for our people? And the Dream Manager program is obviously a huge part of that.

Kate Volman: 00:02:06

And what I love about this program is that we get to talk to so many leaders that have a very unique path on how they found it. People have obviously read the book, and that's really the introduction to Dream Manager and their interest. But I'm so curious to hear how you discovered Dream Manager and how did that all come about to decide to actually implement it into your organization.

Travis Snyder: 00:02:31

Yeah, absolutely. So we have a great story. One of our owners, John Bell, and our President CEO, Dean Murder, they had worked together at a previous company. They read The Dream Manager, I think close to the time it came out. I think it was 2007 range, and they were just impressed. They're amazed that this can't be real, it can't be a thing. And they're like, wouldn't that be an amazing thing to work for a company that has this Dream Manager program that helps take care of employees in this way? It cares about them both personally and professionally. And so it was kind of a dream of theirs and probably something that they maybe never thought would be a reality or maybe put it on the back burner and then fast forward to of course, we were founded in 2013. Dean came on board four years ago and they decided it was a reality. We wanted to keep this amazing culture as we continue to grow. And that was a big thing they wanted to implement, was this Dream Manager program. They ended up ultimately hiring me last year, and then we launched the program in August of last year. So a little over a year ago now. And so just the launch of the program was kind of the first dream we accomplished through the program of making the stream of Johns and Deans from many years ago happened. So it was like our first dream was just making this whole program happen. And it's just obviously been so many amazing things since then.

Kate Volman: 00:03:36

I love that so much because things are meant for us, right? Like, you read a book years ago or you meet someone or something happens and you just know somehow it's going to come together. It might not have been the right time. You maybe just didn't have the right team in place. And how it all comes about is so interesting. It all works out the way that it's supposed to in the end. So now, Travis, you're a full time dream manager. Most organizations don't have a full time Dream Manager. It's kind of unique, right? Like a lot of people, they'll start with maybe part time, or they'll start with somebody in more of the HR department. So first of all, it's amazing that you get to be a full time Dream Manager, but I would love to hear your perspective. We get a lot of questions from organizations around how does this work? What happens after certification? It seems like it might be just too hard for us to actually implement it. Can you kind of share your journey of getting certified and then bringing it back to the organization and actually implementing it successfully?

Travis Snyder: 00:04:37

Absolutely, yeah. To your 1st .2. Scripts has been amazing with this whole program, fully investing in it. They got all in from the beginning of hiring a full time Dream Manager, investing in the program and the materials and everything training for me, they have been 100% in. And I think I was just talking to a couple of our owners and our dean, our president, CEO the other day and they have just expressed how this thing has gone way and above and beyond their expectations, which were high from the beginning because we had an amazing culture before we even started the Dream Manager program. But yes, in terms of certification, I was certified last July 2021. We were doing it remotely at the time because we have COVID and everything, so it was all online there. But we did our training. We came back the next month is when we launched our program at two scripts. We did what's called a dreamstorm, which, you know, but it's just pulling together some really cool questions that I love to ask people. What's your dream car? What's your dream vacation? One of my favorites is if you could have lunch with any living person who would be we actually got to accomplish a dream of that last week, which was incredible. But anyways, yeah, just a fun way to start kick out the program, getting people to dream. Because as Matthew says in the Dream Manager, we dream as children and then we're kind of conditioned to not dream. And as we get older, we're just trying to survive our day to day lives and there's children and we have responsibilities, but it's so we kind of forget to dream. And so that's the first step is just exercising those dream muscles again and remembering how to dream. And so that's what the dreamstorm is all about. And to your point, we have a full time Dream Manager. I don't necessarily think you have to have a full time Dream Manager. If you can't make it, I would highly encourage you, if you can, to have a full time Dream Manager. But if it's someone that's already on staff that's got another job, they can certainly be certified as I know there's a lot of great examples that you guys work with that can do that as a part time. But I know a lot of them are wanting to dream position the full time because I've seen the value of the company and so at any capacity, definitely would encourage any company that cares about their employees to implement the program.

Kate Volman: 00:06:24

Can you talk a little bit about the dreamstorm and the impact it had on your team? How did your team respond? What did they say? What was that conversation interaction like?

Travis Snyder: 00:06:35

It was so fun. So we did do it on teams just because some people were in the office, some people were moat. We wanted to make sure we have employees all over the country, so we wanted to make sure everyone was involved. And with the Dreamstorm, there's a texting service that we use where you can put in a question and you can text in your answers and it brings up this word bubble of all the answers. And it was so fun to see the different answers like Dreamcar or Vacation. Another one that I really like is like home projects. What would you do if you could do anything to your home or whatever? So just amazing, really cool, funny answers. I could hear it, some of our teams laughing in the background as some of the answers popped up. So it was just a really fun, engaging way to dream together and just get people to actually think about dreams for a change. And it is a great segue to the rest of the program of just allowing yourself permission to think big and dream big. And it's a great way to kick off the program for sure.

Kate Volman: 00:07:22

So you implemented the program, you've obviously had a lot of success and it hasn't even been that long, right? Which is what I love. I love that you're able to see an immediate impact because of the conversation change, because you're inviting people to dream again. I mean, that alone. If you do nothing else, all you do is start asking your team members what's your dream and just getting them talking about it already. You're going to see a shift in your people just because you're reminding them to dream again. So let's talk a little bit about what have you seen as far as the benefits of implementing Dream Manager, like, what has happened to your organization, the culture, the people, the leadership, what's going on over there at Screw at TrueScripts?

Travis Snyder: 00:08:06

Yeah, as I was telling you beforehand, I was talking to Dean earlier this week and we're like, we just have such a hard time summarizing all the amazing things that are happening because there are so many great things and it's like, how do you pick and choose? I think the thing I'm most proud of Dream Manager is only part of this, but I think it's a big part is we think about return on investment and things like that. And our focus is solely on our employees in this program because we know that taking care of our employees, they will take care of members and clients, and that will replicate into taking care of our customers and things like that. It's just been amazing. I think one of the things we're most proud of is we were able to fund a couple of dreams, I think it was two weeks ago now where we were able to fund a couple of amazing dreams that are helping other people. Number one is someone going on a mission trip. They had thought about doing this more than ten years ago and now they brought back that dream through this program. And I'm making that happen to another woman who had a more challenging upbringing and she is working on a nonprofit to help other women and children in her community to go through difficult times and to help them with that. And then we have another woman who wrote a book based on her children that she wrote back in 2014 and again kind of left it on the back burner, but has brought got it back through this program and has actually got accepted by a publishing company to get that book published. So she's going through that process now, which is so amazing. And then another woman who her brother had turned 40 this year and he had dealt with some addiction issues and things in the past, but now he's a year sober doing great. And she was just talking about how he's never been on a real vacation, he's never seen the mountains or the beach or whatever. So we were able to help fund them with trips to see the mountains and then going to Florida to just allow him to see the beach and have that first real vacation, which will be amazing. So, like I said, when I got there, the standard was very high. We had an amazing culture. And now that we've implemented the Dream Manager program and some other things we've done in the company, we were actually named number one best place to work in Indiana for mediumsized companies in 2022. And I think the Dream Manager program was a big part of that for sure.

Kate Volman: 00:09:55

I mean, clearly it was it was the reason.

Travis Snyder: 00:09:59

I'm a little biased, but I agree.

Kate Volman: 00:10:02

No, that is amazing. I mean, look, this is what the Dream Manager does, right? If your people are becoming more engaged, they're more excited, that stuff gets talked about. Right now there is this conversation around the great resignation and companies that we want to attract and retain great talent. And a program like the Dream Manager, that's what it does. People are having those conversations. Can you talk a little bit about just that kind of conversation with TrueScripts as far as attracting great talent, retaining great talent? Have you seen an impact because of the program in that regard?

Travis Snyder: 00:10:38

Absolutely, yeah. I was watching some of your interviews with some of the other Dream Managers and you talked about the war on talent, and that's still very much the case. I was watching some of your interviews from 2019 and what's happened since then? Obviously, we had a budget global pandemic that shut everything down. And so many people are working remote now, and there's so many opportunities to work all kinds of different jobs from your home, and there's so much competition for companies to get that best talent. To your point. And like I said at Truscrafts, when I came on board, the bar was already very high. So it was a matter of like, how can we continue to grow this culture, keep this culture strong as we continue to grow as a company? And I think that has been a huge benefit of the Dream Manager program in terms of allowing people to focus on the different areas of the rhythm of life. I was just talking to my supervisor, Hannah, the other day about people going through difficult things in life. I think in the past, you were not supposed to bring those to work, right? You weren't supposed to be yourself at work. You had a work persona, and then you would go home, and there's things you couldn't talk about, whether it's a health issue or divorce, just difficult life challenges. We want to welcome people to be able to be comfortable talking about those types of things and the difficult things, as well as their dreams. In these sessions, obviously, everything is confidential, but we want people to feel comfortable being themselves, and we want them to know how invested we are and them. Our owner. Kevin mesmer, I think said it best. He said we are all blessed at TrueScripts now. We want to be a blessing to others because of how blessed we are and in our training. Matthew Kelly had said, you only know 1% of the impacts that you make as a dream manager to the people that you're working with. And I think that is so true, both from my perspective, but also our team's perspective that are going through the program of telling them to think of the role model you're being for your kids, your spouse, your friends, just identifying those dreams, working towards them and achieving. Like, what better role model could you be for the people in your life than what you're doing and what you're showing them the kind of person to be?

Kate Volman: 00:12:24

Matthew says, treat people like people like it's simple. It's simple. And Travis, as you're sharing some of the dreams of your people, it's such a reminder because we get this question a lot too, is I think so often people think dreams means have a billion dollars and live and have a yacht, and those are not, yes, that's beautiful. If you want that on your dreams list, sure, have at it. Put it on there. Put it on the list. But I love when you're writing a book, spending time with your family, how amazing that for someone to finally take the steps to go through recovery, that's a huge dream to achieve. But I don't think that everyone sees that as a dream. But those are dreams. Those are dreams of our people. And again, when we stop dreaming, we're not actually engaged in becoming that better version of ourselves, which is what the program is about. And so I love that you are the dream manager that gets to encourage them. And I will say you guys do go above and beyond because you actually do some of the funding of the dreams, whereas some organizations, if they're watching and they're like, oh, well, we don't have that kind of a budget, that's okay. That's not a necessity of the program. The program is to empower your people to achieve the dreams on their own figuring things out. You're empowering them to take control back of their life and become more engaged personally and professionally.

Travis Snyder: 00:13:54

Absolutely, yeah.

Kate Volman: 00:13:56

So, Travis, you get to be a full time Dream Manager, which is amazing for a leader that's watching and they're thinking, okay, this all sounds good, but would it really work in my organization? Or even better yet, we have a lot of leaders that will say, what's the bottom line? What's the ROI? Like, how do you assess the success of the program at True Scripts?

Travis Snyder: 00:14:19

Absolutely. So, as I mentioned before, when I first started, I was meeting I met with our founder, Nathan Gapart, and I talked to him later, defining the mission for our Green Manager program at True Scripts. And I was being a company man. I'm like, I want to build lasting relationships with our team members and the members and clients. And he said, let's focus on the team members because focusing on them and taking care of them, that will help their relationships with members and clients, that will come as part of it. But your job is to focus on the employees and making sure that they feel valued and they're getting their dreams met and everything like that. Our focus in terms of that is, I think, what a better example? We are the number one employer in the state. That is about as good as you can get in terms of marketing and for your company trying to attract talent. And again, just that whole focus on allowing people to be themselves and to be cared for and everything at work is so important. And so I would definitely encourage any company to bring on the Dream Manager program. You won't regret it. I know we've got three owners. We've got a president, CEO that would strongly agree. I'm sure they'd be happy to talk about the program as well, but I can't stress that enough. And as we talked about that, more on talent is not going away. People want to feel valued at their work and feel like they matter. And I think we're doing that through the Dream Manager program and many other things that we do at True Scripts.

Kate Volman: 00:15:30

What are some of the dreams over at True Scripts? What are you working towards over the next year that you're really excited about?

Travis Snyder: 00:15:37

Yeah, we're still really new in the program. We're not even quite a year through the first sessions and everything. So I think we can just continue to get to grow and get stronger in this program. I'm still figuring out everything from my end, so I think year two is going to be better. Our year three is going to be better, and I want to continue to grow it. I want bigger dreams for our people, and I want them to continue to think big. And as we're knocking out dreams, I kind of tally the number of dreams we've accomplished. We're getting close to 40 dreams by, I think, 28 or 29 different people. It's not a numbers game, but it's still so cool. To see 40 dreams accomplished in less than a year is incredible. So I just want to continue to grow those dreams and make them bigger. And just making a snowball effect of people like, I accomplish this, what can I do next? What can any of this bigger? So I just want to continue to grow this program and inspire people that continue to dream big and make those happen.

Kate Volman: 00:16:20

You've shared so many incredible things, but what is the number one thing that you are most proud of accomplishing over this past year? Of Dream manager.

Travis Snyder: 00:16:29

Yeah. So I'll give you one specific and then a couple of more general. On the general side, one of my favorite things is when one of our team members sent me a message saying, hey, I went for that walk this morning. I went to this class, or I did this X, Y, and Z, whatever it is, just sending me a message, letting me know, being that proactive person, that makes me feel amazing. The other thing I love, part of our mission is building lasting relationships. And one of my favorite parts of the job is connecting people that have certain goals with people that have already achieved those types of goals. So say it's career growth. Let's connect this person with this person who has had great growth in their company and just being able to build those lasting relationships with within our company of people that maybe wouldn't normally interact as much. So that's been something I really love. And just on a more specific side, I mentioned that lunch question of who you could have lunch with. We had a really cool situation last week where this woman had shared her person, which is Dr. Temple Grandin, who is a scientist and she has autism, and she's done a bunch of amazing things, has a movie made about her. But anyways, that was her dream, was to get to have lunch with her. And usually we say that you go on with our lives, but I was like, I'm going to look up. Dr. Grandon and I went to our website, sent her a message, tried to explain my job, and was like, one of my teammates would love to meet you. Is there any way to make that happen? And thinking I'd never hear back. But she actually emailed me back, told me to call her. So I spoke to Dr. Grand and herself, and she said I'll be in the Indiana area later this year, speaking here's, a contact locally to reach out to. And I was like, are you going to be in Indianapolis? She's all be in the Indy area. And then so I did my research, and it turns out she's actually coming to our backyard in Washington, Indiana, which is about a couple of hours from Indianapolis. So it's just amazing how that turned out. So anyways, we got to take her to see her present, but also we got to get her to go to lunch with her. And our team were going to spend about 30 minutes with her just talking about livestock and just everything they wanted to talk about. It was amazing to see that come together. It was so cool. And I think the lesson there is you don't know how close our dreams really are. So we identify them and we start taking some action steps. And a lot of times those dreams are a lot closer than we realized to becoming a reality. Take that first step and identify those dreams and see where you're at.

Kate Volman: 00:18:36

Yes. So exciting. It's so cool. And that is a good reminder. That is a good challenge for people today to break out your journal or a piece of paper or whatever and write down your list of 100 dreams. 100. People get real scared with the number 100, but there's twelve different areas of dreams. And so when we think about that physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, character, psychological, material, all the different areas of dreams, and then you just put six to seven dreams in each of those categories and it starts to build up. So shoot for 100. And even if you don't get to 100, even if you just put ten, it's ten more than you had before, which most people don't write down their dreams. Your team is very lucky to have you, Travis, and I am so grateful for you and your leadership team for implementing the program. We absolutely love working with incredible leaders like yourself, because obviously we're spreading that message that, wow, people actually can enjoy coming to work, and they actually can work for people who care about them as people and want them to grow and get better and achieve their dreams personally. And that is what you get to do. And like Matthew said, you just don't even know the impact that you're making simply by asking your team members about their dreams. And you are all doing so much more than that and really helping to fulfill those dreams. I celebrate you and your success and everything you're doing at True Scripts. And we tease Travis at the office because we're like, he's our little poster in person for the dream manager because you're just doing it in such an incredible way. And I'm so glad that you took some time to chat about the program with us so other people can learn about it and how it can really make an impact in their organization. So thank you so much for taking the time, Travis. I really appreciate it.

Travis Snyder: 00:20:30

Yeah. Thanks, Kate. I really appreciate it. I'm so grateful to True Scripts and Floyd for making this happen. Like I said, it is a dream job for me. So I'm just incredibly grateful to be the person to help others in this manager position.

Kate Volman: 00:20:41

Well, I'm excited to continue to hear the success of all the dreams that you have going on. And we'll have to do this again in a year to see where you are a year from now. I mean, you can't get more than number one, but other things can happen that's magical.

Travis Snyder: 00:20:56

Like I said, we just get started out with the program. We have so many more amazing places we can go. I can't wait to see where it goes and can't wait to share it with you.

Kate Volman: 00:21:05

I hope you enjoyed this episode. I absolutely love getting to talk to our Dream managers. The passion they have for helping people not only achieve their dreams, but just helping them become the best version of themselves, it's so powerful. And as you can see, this program, it just inspires people. It inspires people to do their best at work, at home. It changes lives. And so I love the work that our Dream managers are doing. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you were inspired by today's episode and curious how the Dream Manager could make a positive impact in your organization, I invite you to visit the Dreammanager.com. Thanks again for listening. Until next time, lead with culture.