How Culture Is Built Not Just Talked About with Bill Schomburg

In this episode of [radically candid], host Ava Hinds sits down with Bill Schomburg, one of [cognition]’s founding advisors, to go all the way back to the beginning and explore how culture, values, and relationships built the foundation for everything the company is today.

Who’s This Conversation For?

This conversation is for anyone who wants to understand what makes [cognition] different from the inside out. Whether you’re a new hire trying to understand the DNA of the company, a long-time team member who wants to hear how it all started, or someone on the outside curious about what a values-driven ad tech company actually looks like, this one’s for you.

What You’ll Learn By Listening

1) How It All Started Before It Started Bill wasn’t looking for an advisory role, he didn’t even know it was a possibility. After connecting with Carson at a digital dealer meeting and having a two-hour conversation, an unexpected email and phone call changed everything. He joined [cognition] before most people knew it existed.

• The Payoff: Sometimes the most important roles aren’t ones you apply for. Community and genuine connection open doors you didn’t know were there.

2) The Founders Learned to Disagree In the earliest team conversations, Bill noticed a problem: nobody pushed back. Everyone agreed, which meant most of the room wasn’t adding value. Today, that dynamic has completely flipped. Different opinions are welcomed, and that shift is one of the biggest reasons the company has scaled the way it has.

• 💡 Key Takeaway: Agreement isn’t alignment. Real growth starts when people feel safe enough to challenge each other.

3) DIRT Values and the SOIL Framework Dare, Innovate, Respect, Trust, the core values that spell DIRT aren’t just a poster on the wall. Bill connects them to his own framework, SOIL (Signs of Intelligent Life), drawing on his upbringing around Nebraska farming to explain why healthy culture, like fertile soil, has to be intentionally tended season after season.

• Culture isn’t maintenance. It’s constant effort, accountability, and expectation, and [cognition] treats it that way every day.

4) Failure Is the Fastest Way to Learn Bill shares the image of a brick wall where the failure bricks far outnumber the success ones, and that’s exactly how it should be. At [cognition], failure isn’t a setback. It’s expected, encouraged, and treated as the engine behind innovation.

• The company is on a rocket ship trajectory, and the people who thrive here are the ones who let go of the idea that failure is a negative.

5) You Can’t Teach Someone to Care When it comes to hiring, Bill and Ava land on the one quality that matters most: caring. Skills can be taught, products can be learned, but showing up every day wanting to make an impact is something a person either brings with them or they don’t.

• That’s the filter. If someone cares, everything else [cognition] needs from them can be built.

Ready to get all of the lessons?

Listen to the Full Episode Now → How Culture Is Built Not Just Talked About with Bill Schomburg