Culture: How an Entrepreneur can Build Their Dream Team with Jason Haugen: An EOFire Classic from 2022

What It Covers

Jason Haugen, CEO of Haugen RV Group — a $100M+ multi-state dealership — shares how he built a 200+ person team by shifting focus from profit to people. He covers leading from the front, customized goal-setting, gamified performance tracking, and experience-based incentives over cash bonuses.

Key Questions Answered

• •Lead from the Front: Avoid the "seagull mentality" — flying in, disrupting everything, then leaving. Instead, physically participate in team tasks, even basic ones like washing vehicles. Employees who see their CEO doing unglamorous work develop measurably stronger loyalty than those who only receive top-down directives and never witness leadership doing hands-on work.
• •Customized Goal Architecture: Build incentive programs specific to each department or location, not one-size-fits-all targets. Include a "stretch goal" that requires near-perfect execution — Haugen's teams frequently hit these seemingly unreachable targets, and once hit, that number becomes the new performance baseline, naturally raising standards without management pressure.
• •Gamified Accountability Systems: Implement a live daily dashboard where every store's individual numbers are visible company-wide. Supplement with a group text thread where managers report daily figures to leadership. The visibility creates healthy competition — no one wants last place — while team-wide incentives prevent the sabotage that purely individual competition structures produce.
• •Experience Over Cash Bonuses: A $10,000 cash bonus gets spent on tires or groceries and is forgotten. A fully paid trip to Las Vegas to race cars — including significant others — creates a permanent shared memory and cross-location camaraderie. Haugen specifically includes partners in events so employees gain home support, reducing turnover pressure from family skepticism.
• •Reframe the CEO Role: The primary job of a business owner is not revenue generation but setting people up for success. Haugen describes a mindset shift from "how do I make more money today" to "how do I make my team more money today." He credits this reframe with enabling him to face employees directly, building trust across 200+ staff.