Love is Just Damn Good Business

Episode 911: Love is Just Damn Good Business, with Steve Farber

Love is just damn good business, a podcast with Steve Farber. It’s time to understand why love is just damn good business.

From his book, Love is Just Damn Good Business, Steve Farber will share to us the importance of showing love not just for your business but also to your customers or clients. This podcast episode is sure to be filled with “love” so make sure to tune-in and enjoy!

Steve Farber is the founder of The Extreme Leadership Institute, an organization devoted to changing the world through the cultivation and development of extreme leaders in business, nonprofits, education, and beyond. Listed on Inc.’s ranking of the Top 50 Leadership and Management Experts in the world, and #1 on Huffington Post’s 12 Business Speakers to See, Farber is a bestselling author, popular keynote speaker, and a seasoned leadership coach and consultant who has worked with a vast array of public and private organizations in virtually every arena.

What you will learn from this episode about love is just damn good business:

• Why Steve named his new book “Love Is Just Damn Good Business: Do What You Love in the Service of People Who Love What You Do”
• Why it’s important to consider how you show the love you have for your customers or clients in a clear, repeatable way
• Why there is a common and persistent belief that love has no place in business, and why Steve set out to prove otherwise
• Steve shares key takeaways and lessons from his book that can directly contribute to a business’s growth and success
• Steve shares an example of a real company that had high turnover and went through bankruptcy and how they managed to turn things around by creating a great culture
• What first actionable steps Steve recommends you take to be able to identify and more consistently show your love for your business and customers
• Why Steve’s strategy is applicable to every kind and size of business in an industry-agnostic way

Resources:

• Website: www.stevefarber.com
• Love Is Just Damn Good Business by Steve Farber: https://amzn.to/2Wu2mu1
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stevefarber/
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/stevefarber/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/stevefarber
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevefarber/
• Watch this episode about Love is Just Damn Good Business here

Additional Resources:

• Sell With Authority by Drew McLellan and Stephen Woessner: https://amzn.to/39y7x13
• Predictive ROI Free Resource Library: https://predictiveroi.com/resources/
• Stephen Woessner’s LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stephenwoessner/
• Combine what you’ve learned about Love is Just Damn Good Business with some ultimate customer experience and come out on top!

 

 

Love is Just Damn Good Business: Full Episode Transcript

 

Get ready to find your recipe for success from America’s top business owners here at Onward Nation with your host, Stephen Woessner.

 

Good morning, Onward Nation. I am Stephen Woessner, and if you’ve been listening to our episodes for a while now, you know I’m a big fan of relationships and how you can best invest in building relationships with your team, with your clients, and with your prospects. That doesn’t happen by accident. And I know you might find this maybe a little bit silly, maybe even a bit uncomfortable, but my teammates here at Predictive ROI, they know that I love them.

 

They know that because I tell them that quite often. I share that with them, because I know that company leaders who aren’t afraid to express their love toward their team and their clients will likely keep those teammates and those clients for a really, really long time in today’s hyper competitive market for top talent Onward Nation, you know that you need every single advantage that you can get in order to stand out.

 

Check out this episode about Love is Just Damn Good Business here

 

Love is Just Damn Good Business: Steve Farber’s Introduction

 

Well, that’s why I am super excited about today’s encore interview with bestselling author and founder of Extreme Leadership Institute, Steve Farber. He is back to walk us through his new book entitled Love Is Just Damn Good Business. Steve and I are going to talk through some of the biggest lessons for business owners inside his new book, and how you can take them and apply them to Onward Nation after listening to this great episode.

 

This is going to be one of those conversations that a course Steve is going to make you think it might even push you, maybe even push some of your boundaries. But in the end, I think you’ll agree that Steve’s expertise will help you move your business and your team onward to that next level. So without further ado, welcome back to Onward Nation, Steve.

 

Check out this episode about Love is Just Damn Good Business here

 

Love is Just Damn Good Business: How The Book Got Its Name

 

Thank you Steve, and what a great intro. I can’t wait to hear what this guy has to say. You know, he’s really not that smart, actually. But thanks for having me back, man. I really appreciate it. Well, thank you for saying yes. And in all seriousness, Onward Nation, of course, I am very grateful to have Steve back and in because of these insights.

 

So, let’s dive into your book and into the lessons and so forth. But let’s start with the title. Like your title, it’s fun. It stands off the page. It’s provocative. So give us a little bit of insight into why you decided to name like because I know the strategy behind it, too. So tell us why you decided to name your book.

 

What you decided to name your book. Yeah. Which is, of course, love is just damn good business. So there’s actually quite a number of, a number of reasons behind it and, and a lot of, a lot of experience behind that title. So for one thing, it’s just, I’m being presumptuous enough to quote myself.

 

So in other words, when I give my keynote speeches, I just find myself saying those words over and over again. Right. Creating the case that, you know, love is not, you know, California touchy feely hoo ha crap. That love actually, you know, if when operationalized in the right way and we’ll talk about this, it goes right down to the bottom line, that love, in fact, is just damn good business.

 

So I just kept, you know, I was saying that a lot. And I thought, well, you know, that that’s a damn good title, too. So I wanted to put this front and center. You know, I’ve been teaching this, speaking about this coaching around this consulting around this idea for just like, 20 years now. And the Radical Leap, which, of course, is my first book, came out in this first edition in 2004.

 

This is where I first presented this idea, but it wasn’t on the cover, right? It was kind of once you got in there and learned about extreme leadership, then this love thing emerged as, as the the core to it all. But I never actually just slapped it right there, front and center on a cover. And I thought it was time to do that.

 

But also, you know, the wording itself, something about the juxtaposition of seeing the word love combined with the phrase damn good, which is it creates a little bit of, I think, the right kind of cognitive dissonance. And, and it also serves to begin to dispel the assumption that love is some kind of, you know, just a soft, a soft thing.

 

And so the language, I think is important, it sets up the right kind of, the right kind of dynamic. And, and that’s the tone of the book, right? That this is really about business, and it’s about understanding the impact of the, you know, the influence that we have on the heart of work all the way down to the bottom line.

 

Check out this episode about Love is Just Damn Good Business here

 

Love is Just Damn Good Business: Operationalize Love in Business

 

Okay. So I’m frantically trying to take notes and keep up with you. There are some really, really big nuggets there. And one of those, you said a few minutes ago about, like, operationalizing. So, to give that back to you, do you think it’s possible then for a company and its leaders to truly operationalize love?

 

Yeah. Yes. So in a word, yes. You know, and it’s funny because there’s that old saying that, you know, love is a verb. You know, love is about action. This is not about love, it is a sentiment. It’s not about love but a bumper sticker. It’s not about love as, you know, a paper hanger from a dry cleaner, right?

 

I mean, like, every dry cleaner on the planet has, you know, we have our customers on their hangers, right? So that’s really easy to do and that’s easy to say. But what we have to do is take that and turn it into action, into observable, repeatable, quantifiable behavior. And it’s not enough to talk about a good game. We have to prove that we mean what we say through our actions.

 

So when I say operationalize love in business, it’s really about striving to answer the question, if we really did love our customers, like the bumper sticker says, what would that look like? How do we show it in the way that we conduct our business and the way that we serve our customers in our policies and procedures are, you know, if everything tangible in our business, how does it reflect love as an action, not as an empty sentiment?

 

Check out this episode about Love is Just Damn Good Business here

 

Love is Just Damn Good Business: Prioritizing Love In Your Workplace

 

Okay. So then my guess is in your research and all the work that you and your team do in the trenches with clients, and I know that you speak all over the place for, you know, organizations to help them improve. My guess is and doing all of that body of work that you’ve seen a real disconnect between or maybe lip service of we love clients and so forth.

 

But then when it comes down to, you know, actions repeatable, observable, actually having a strategy in place, they don’t. They’re just saying it but not actually doing it. Yeah. I think there’s a lot of that. There’s also and by the way, that’s very easy to do. Right? Just saying the words is the easy part, but there’s also a lot of not even saying the word.

 

Right. There’s a lot of, you know, love that has got no place here. Love is not a business thing. It’s something you reserve for, you know, the important stuff in your life, like friends and family and all that. And then. But business is a purely rational, endeavor or transactional endeavor.

 

And people are there’s companies that act this way that people are just kind of necessary to put up with in order to get stuff done. And if you think about the absurdity of that point of view, but yet we have this cultural conditioning, I believe, that says love has no place in business. So I think a lot of companies understand that it really does.

 

So they go from the nonexistence of love as a priority into just using the language, like the aforementioned buttons and bumper stickers, etc.. And feel like, well, that’s it, that’s enough. You know, we even put it on. I know some companies now, and I’m seeing them more and more. They will actually put the word love in their vision, mission and values.

 

Right? Which is great. But the trap there is, well, because we put it in words, we’re doing the thing and that’s not the case. So we’ve got to take it one more step, which is to translate it into action. So I think the danger here is we can con ourselves into thinking that we’re actually practicing this just because, you know, we have in our own and our own sort of way, we walk around saying, I love you, man, I love you, man.

 

And whatever form that takes, whether it’s a vision statement or a marketing campaign, and that is just not enough. Okay. That’s great. Let’s slice back or maybe peel back another layer there because you I like to see if you can, I know that you can. Let’s address or have you address the cultural conditioning.

 

Check out this episode about Love is Just Damn Good Business here

 

Love is Just Damn Good Business: Cultural Conditioning

 

So because you mentioned, the cultural conditioning has us thinking that love doesn’t belong into business, why do you believe that that’s the case? Well, I’ll answer that, but let me just put, kind of an exclamation point on that. I believe it is the case as to why we’ll go into that. One of the reasons that I know this is because I see how people respond with surprise to the title of this book.

 

Okay. So to me, because I’ve been so immersed in this for a long time, to say that love is just damn good business is really stating the obvious. And for most people it’s like, wow, hadn’t hadn’t really? Are you sure? You know, I hadn’t thought about that. So, for example, I was at a really big bookstore in a really big city recently.

 

And I don’t want to call this person out because, you know, I just say big bookstore, big city with a really prolific business section. And I met the general manager of the store, and she was lovely, you know, and she was just telling me about her work, and she had this great kind of enthusiasm about her and I said, you know what?

 

I think you’re really going to enjoy my new book. And she said, oh, good. What’s it called to? It’s called Love is Just Damn Good Business. And she went and she had this look on her face. She was like this shock, but with gleeful shock. And she said, wow, I’ve been doing this work for 30 years.

 

I’ve never heard a title like that. She said, that’s so true. And I’m thinking one thing I’m thinking is, well, that’s a great thing for a bookseller to think. I’m glad she does. Right. But the other thing that I found myself thinking is really are you serious? You’ve never really thought about it in that way before.

 

You’ve never seen it expressed that way. So that just tells me we live in an environment that considers this to be a radical idea. Okay. Now as to why I think it goes way back to the, you know, it’s kind of the industrial revolution almost. Right. When we took an industrial model of, you know, making widgets in a factory.

 

And we started to apply it to the human dynamics in a business, it’s the proverbial treating, you know, human beings as cogs in the machine, as human resources, as our most important assets. Right? So all of these, you know, resources and assets and functions that we do all come out of this idea that that life that any kind of life associated with receiving a paycheck is some version of an assembly line.

 

I think that’s where it kind of started. And then, you know, of course, as I don’t want to get too geeky with this, but, you know, as the, you know, the knowledge economy came into play and we started talking in terms of knowledge workers in the, you know, late 80s, early 90s and then, you know, moving from what’s known as theory X, you know, top down command control kind of management and theory Y, which is more people oriented, you know, started in large part by one of my mentors, Tom Peters, that, you know, business started to become more, more human.

 

Which again, it sounds bizarre to even have to say it that way, because business is always human. We’re all humans and working together. Right? So I think that’s what I mean by this cultural conditioning. There’s this kind of history where even if we’re consciously aware of it or not, we have been trained to believe that love has no place in business because we’re machines.

 

Check out this episode about Love is Just Damn Good Business here

 

Love is Just Damn Good Business: It’s About Figuring Things Out

 

So why would we need it? And obviously we’re not machines, and obviously we live more and more of our lives at work. And it’s obvious. It is just obvious that there is no such thing as a person who would say, at least I haven’t met this person yet, who would say, you know what? I would prefer my work experience to be miserable.

 

I kind of like, you know, I like being treated as just another slot filler. I like that my boss just tells me what to do and doesn’t tell me why, and that I can’t wait until Friday evening when I can go home and live my life on the weekend. That’s what I prefer. Thank you very much. Nobody prefers that.

 

And we all know that when we love the work that we do, when we enjoy the experience of being at work, when we’re around great people, when we’re doing great things, when we’re providing great products and services that have a positive impact on our customers, and we see the value that we provide to the world around us, that we work better, we work harder, we’re more productive, we’re more creative because we’re bringing ourselves into our work.

 

It’s just freaking obvious when we look at it from our own experience. But what I’m trying to do is just really shine the spotlight on it and say, okay, let’s acknowledge the power that it holds. Now let’s figure out what we’re going to do about this. 

 

Check out this episode about Love is Just Damn Good Business here

 

Love is Just Damn Good Business: Big Lessons for Business Owners

 

So let’s take the spotlight there and let’s shine a spotlight on the book. From your perspective, what are maybe the 2 or 3 of the biggest lessons that you’d want our audience of business owners to take away from this conversation? I obviously want them to get a copy of your book straight away. But from your perspective, what are a couple of the biggest lessons that you think business owners can really pull, take and apply?

 

Yeah. So let’s start with the purest business motive in this. Okay. All of us, whether we’re, you know, business people in the context of a larger corporation or smaller, you know, entrepreneurial ventures or solopreneurs for that matter, there’s fundamentally one thing that is going to contribute to our success and growth and sustainability over time. And that is we produce a phenomenal customer experience.

 

Right? So every business person by now, every business person should understand that we need our customers or clients or whatever terminology you use to love what we do for them. If they’re just satisfied with us and they think we’re okay, there’s nothing sustainable there because they’re just as likely to go down the street to somebody else. That can also be satisfactory, maybe save a few bucks in the process.

 

So, you know, see you later. So when our customers love our product or service or experience or all the above, that’s the payoff. That’s where all the good stuff happens. Like more money and more referrals and more brand loyalty, etc.. So we all know that. So what I’d like people to understand is that we have to continue to break that down, back it up and look, look at it from a causal standpoint.

 

Check out this episode about Love is Just Damn Good Business here

 

Love is Just Damn Good Business: Creating An Environment Where People Will Love Their Work

 

So here’s the next step. The only way to create that experience for customers in a meaningful and sustainable way, over time is to create a culture or an environment that people love working in. If I don’t love working here, it’s much more difficult to create that kind of experience for customers. So let’s back that up one more step.

 

And this is where it all gets very personal, very quickly. I can’t create or contribute to that kind of culture that people love working in, unless I have it myself first. If I don’t love it here, if I don’t love this business, if I don’t love what we’re trying to do, if I don’t love our customers for that matter, then I’m in a position where I’m saying, okay, idiots, go out there and do something good for customers.

 

I mean, you know, it’s it creates it creates a dilemma. Right from the root. So this is about authenticity and it’s at its core. So for business people, let’s understand this is not a nice to have. This is really all about creating the kind of experience that allows us to be more and more profitable and to grow over time.

 

And that experience is our customers loving us. Okay. So let’s get into the trenches in a business situation where, as you know, sometimes whatever the right word is, is a juxtaposition. I’m sure there’s a better word for it than that. But essentially where and how it may be the key to solving and maybe having those difficult conversations when a difficult conversation needs to come up with a client.

 

And ultimately, your goal is to create that phenomenal customer experience using your words. Does that because you’ve been so focused on having the right culture with your team and then creating that experience over time, that likely then makes it easier to have a difficult conversation that comes up. I mean, you have to have those sometimes in relationships, but because you did all of that investing upfront, that probably makes the difficult conversation then that much easier, as opposed to conflict or friction.

 

Check out this episode about Love is Just Damn Good Business here

 

Love is Just Damn Good Business: A Memorable Experience For Your Customers

 

Am I making the right assumption? Yeah, yeah, I think so. I mean, you know, love looks like a lot of things. It also looks like having difficult conversations. There is such a thing as tough love. Right. Okay. There’s some times where I love having customers, but I don’t love this particular customer, and it’s not a good fit.

 

Okay, there is such a thing as firing customers. So let me give that back to you. So then for our Onward Nation business owners who are listening, thinking, okay, I can love my customers, but that doesn’t mean that I have to get run over by my customers directly, because I’m also loving my team.

 

So sometimes I need to say goodbye to a problem with a client in order to love my team. Yes, and vice versa. So, you know that old adage that the customer is always right? There’s a technical term for that is bullshit. The customer is not always right. I mean, because human beings are not always right, but I looked that up in my psychology textbook, the technical term like the thing is that I can still come from that place where the right thing to do is to create an experience that my customer is going to love.

 

And I need to make very, sometimes difficult decisions and sometimes risky decisions to play that out. I want to give you an example because I’m speaking a little bit abstractly. Okay. So let’s hang a couple of specifics on this. It’s a case study that I’ve been talking about quite a bit lately.

 

It’s, you know, in the book is filled with example after example after example of people and companies that are, that are operationalizing love. So one of those, and I’ll tell the efficient version of the story because it just goes on and on, in a good way. There’s a company called Trailer Bridge.

 

They are, shipping and logistics company in Jacksonville, Florida. So they ship containers from the mainland to Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic. They’ve been in business for 30 years. They came from, let’s just call it a toxic history. It was a terrible place to work. They had terrible customer reviews. They were seen as kind of the, you know, the cheap alternative shipping stuff.

 

They went bankrupt. They burned through four CEOs in three years, four heads of HR. In the same period of time, people were scrambling to get out of that place. They couldn’t find a better job somewhere. They would. They’d be gone in a heartbeat. And they, you know, but they still had to keep trying.

 

So they tapped one more guy on the shoulder to take over that CEO role. And I, Mitch Luciano, the board went to Mitch and said, can you turn this around? And he said, I’ll do it. But there’s a couple things you need to know. Board number one, I will not take the title of CEO because there is too much baggage, for one thing.

 

And also I have to earn it after earning that from our employees. And number two, I’m a love guy, so you need to give me carte blanche to do what I see necessary, because I believe that we can create an environment that people will love working in. And I believe that if we do that well enough and we really and really focus on our customers, we can create a service that our customers will love, which was a radical thought at the time.

 

Check out this episode about Love is Just Damn Good Business here

 

Love is Just Damn Good Business: What Should Love Look Like in Your Business?

 

Right. So the question and this is kind of the point to this whole story, Stephen, the question that they strive to answer and that all of us should strive to answer is what does or should love look like in the way that we do business? So again, it’s not about printing the banner that says we you know, yesterday we treated you like dirt customers.

 

Now today we love you that there’s not going to go anywhere. So here’s what they did. They looked at their policies and procedures right. And their long standing policy. So think about this from a shipping shipping company perspective. Right. So we’re shipping a container from the mainland to Puerto Rico. We have to have x number of, you know, products in that container.

 

Otherwise we’re going to lose money on the shipment. So we now have a policy and a long standing policy that says, unless and until our container is at least 75% full, we will not sail. Okay. Well, why? Well, because it’s obvious. It’s obvious if it’s 75% or less, we lose money on the shipping. We’re not in business to lose money, so therefore we don’t sail.

 

So whose benefit does that serve? The companies? Absolutely. They think it does. Right. So now look at it. Look at it from a customer perspective okay. You’re shipping a car to Puerto Rico to your family okay. And you want to get it there in time for your nephew to drive it to senior prom. Right.

 

Okay. This is your gift to the family. So it’s got to be there by a certain date. So you go to Trailer Bridge. I want to ship my car. You deliver your car to the dock, they load it up on the container. They tell you what data is going to sail. That date comes and goes and it doesn’t sail.

 

Oh, so they tell you, well, sorry, we’re not full enough. Okay, that’s not a great scenario. You see why their customer service numbers were in the tank. Absolutely. All right. Now here’s the question that Mitch and the gang started to ask. If we loved our customers, what would we do when you posed it that way? The answer is obvious.

 

We would sail because we told you we would. And that’s what they started doing. And that and a thousand other things. By the way, it wasn’t as simple as that one idea, but they applied that same question everywhere. If we really loved our employees, what we do, what we do differently, what kind of people would we hire? How would we hire them?

 

How would we make decisions? What kind of training would we give them? What would our physical environment look like? Well, we would hire people that are people oriented. We would bring them on board and let them understand what their role in the company is. We would invite them to town hall so they can express their opinion.

 

We would arrange the physical environment to have areas where people can congregate and get to know each other and, you know, play ping pong and foosball and all that is that we would we would bring in a taco truck once a week and feed the entire company so we can all have lunch together, and we would lower the height of the cubicles throughout the office so people could look into each other’s eyes and see who each other is.

 

We would get rid of all the name tags in the company, because we should at least know each other’s names. For God’s sake. We would. These are the things we would do. And they started doing these things, including we would sail no matter what because that’s what you do. So here’s the page, the punch line.

 

Check out this episode about Love is Just Damn Good Business here

 

Love is Just Damn Good Business: The Impact of a Gutsy Decision

 

So this is a few years later. They’ve been voted number one. And number two, the best place to work in the city of Jacksonville. Their last two years with the company revenue for the last two years has exceeded the previous 25 years combined. Holy bananas. Yeah, and they never sail. They never sail. Less than the high 90s and usually 100% full.

 

Because they’re always full. Because their business has grown to the point that they’re always full. So if you go back and just kind of rewind the clock and think about that moment, having to make that decision, are we really going to sail even though we’re losing money on this shipment? I mean, think of how risky that must have felt at the time, but also understanding that the longer term, mid to longer term consequence of that is pretty soon we’re never going to have to sail less than 75% full because everybody knows they can count on us, right?

 

Wow. And it all comes from that’s what you do when you love somebody gut. You’re right though. Gutsy decision. But he clearly had the long term view. And they knew that over time and maybe even quickly I don’t know. But they would start to have fewer and fewer ships that were less than full.

 

Wow. That’s impactful. Yeah, absolutely. And then, you know, again, take a step back and say earlier that if you want to create that kind of experience for your customers, you have to create an environment that people love working in. So that was equally high priority. And now the other one of the other, you know, bottom line benefits that’s come out of this is they hardly spend any money on recruiting anymore because their employees are their biggest advocates.

 

Exactly right. So as before, we had to spend money on recruiters because nobody wanted to work here. So we had to pay through the nose to get them in. Now let’s teach them what they’ve done. Let’s train our employees on, you know, recruiting so that they can help find the right people because they want to.

 

Right? They want their friends and family to come work with them there because it’s a great place. And they, you know, and they, you know, it just adds to their experience. But it’s all got to be the right people. So let’s just teach our people how to do this instead of spending money on recruiters.

 

So you see the direct impact on the bottom line in terms of the money savings. And then of course, the turnover, the rate of turnover, employee turnover is dropped significantly because once people get there they want to stay. So you save money there, you save money all over the place. And you know, you know why? Because love is just damn good business.

 

That’s why that would make hell. It would make a hell of a title for a book. You know, you should write. Could I be as bold to say you should write that book? Yes. Thank you. I’ll take that under advisement. So what would you do? Because my guess is you get this contrarian question all the time. 

 

Check out this episode about Love is Just Damn Good Business here

 

Love is Just Damn Good Business: Love Is as Hard as It Gets

 

And then after this, I’d love to get another lesson, out of your book for business owners, but, what would you say to the business owner says, okay, love the example. Love what Mitch did with the team there. But, if I’m going to start, you know, producing or infusing or whatever the right word is my love for my team.

 

And then I got to fire some of them as part of this turnaround. I am contradicting myself, RNA just doing lip service. I don’t want to get too close, Steve. If I got to make cuts. So help the business owner and our audience who might be thinking that. Yeah. No, it’s a perfectly valid question.

 

So what? You know, this idea that that love is a soft to soft idea. Nothing could be further from the truth. Oh, okay. Love is as hard as it gets. This stuff is hard. And for example, that scenario that you just laid out is one of the places, one of the classic places where this gets really challenging because there are times when my love for the business and my love for the individuals in that business smack up against each other.

 

Check out this episode about Love is Just Damn Good Business here

 

Love is Just Damn Good Business: Letting Somebody Go Can Be a Great Act of Love in Some Way

 

So, for example, I could love this business and we could hit, you know, hit a rough economy. Or maybe I made a bad business decision as an owner. And the consequence of that is that I’ve got to let people go. So, yeah, I have a fiduciary responsibility to my business and to my stakeholders. And there are times where I might still have to let people go.

 

And that’s just the nature of the beast. That doesn’t mean I was. It doesn’t mean I was inauthentic. It doesn’t mean that I was being. That I was pretending to love people. I can love you and fire you, you know? And and that’s the nature of the beast. But whatever I do, if I’m still coming from that, that place of love, whatever I have to do and however, you know, whatever circumstance I find myself in where I’m doing something unpleasant that needs to be done, I can always do it with kindness, and I can always do it with utmost transparency and just let people know why this is happening and understand that may not, you know it. 

 

It may not make it easier. It may not heal this thing, but it’s necessary. Now, of course, we want to make sure that that’s the last resort, not the first resort. So let’s take another scenario. It’s not that we’ve had an economic downturn or it’s not that I made a bad business decision, or it’s not that something unforeseen happen, it’s that you’ve worked for me, with me, around me, you know, for the last whatever it is, a couple of years and it’s become really, really clear that you’re not the right person for this job.

 

I’ve given you every opportunity. I’ve given you lots of coaching. I’ve given you lots of feedback. I’m giving you lots of opportunities. You know, I didn’t, you know, cut directly to the conclusion that you’re not right for this job, but this is the conclusion that I’ve come to. So I love you and you’re fired. It can coexist. And, you know, one could argue that maybe that is a great act of love to let somebody go from a position that they’re ill suited for.

 

And, you know, we could debate that, philosophically, but I can still do it with kindness, and I can still give them every opportunity ahead of time. So this is not all hearts and flowers and, you know, just, you know, group hugs in the hallway. This is tough stuff for the leader or leaders who are applying that strategy and they need to off board somebody on their team who can do that in a very humane way, right?

 

They can maybe help them find a position. They can, whether that’s through severance or whatever. So, if that’s part of the culture, then they’re really good ways to help somebody who’s on the wrong bus, not just in the wrong seat, but help them find the position that they will be great at. Right. Yeah. Exactly, exactly.

 

And, you know, and to do it with the expectation that I am doing I will do whatever I can to help you. And I still understand that, that it may not make it pleasant for you the way. Right. So, if you have this expectation, well, if I treat them with kindness and I help them get a job and all that, then they’ll just, you know, pack up their desk whistling a happy tune.

 

Not likely to happen. And that’s fine. That’s just part of the human experience. You know, sometimes we get upset and disappointed. So let’s put our spotlight back to the book. So give us another, what you would consider a big lesson for our audience of business owners. So the subtitle of the book is also kind of the structure of the book is you do what you love in the service of people who love what you do.

 

So, the overall framework that I’d like for people to understand is that this is not simply about doing what you love. It’s a foundation in this whole thing, but it’s using that, using the power of your own heart, as it were, in the service of people. So in the service of people is the context.

 

Check out this episode about Love is Just Damn Good Business here

 

Love is Just Damn Good Business: Why Do You Love This Business?

 

So I have a personal connection to this, and I’m using that to serve you, to serve my customers, to serve my employees, to serve my family, my community, whatever it is. And I’m serving them in such a significant way that they love me in return. Right. So we’ve been talking through some examples of this, but what I’d like people to understand is that this really starts with a personal exploration.

 

So that step number one that I would recommend to all of your listeners is, you know, we have a tendency we want to go right to the right to the kind of systemic or, you know, transactional quote unquote solution. You know, what are the things that I should start doing right now?

 

That’s a good question. But instead, to start with a personal question, which is some variation on why do I love this business? I mean, I would like for all of your listeners just to start there, think about whatever context you’re in, whether it’s your own company or you work for somebody else, or you’re running a team, you’re running a project, whatever the context is.

 

Why do I love this business, this team, this project, this company, etc.? And see what that stirs up for you. Right now. That’s the beginning. That’s not the end. It’s not about just cultivating a sentiment. This is about translating into action. But it does start there. Why do I love this work?

 

And then part two of that question is how do I show it. So it’s an answering the how do I show it question where all the ideas come from. Now I’m going to give you lots of tangibles in the book. This is what this person did, what that company did, etc., but all of those start with striving to answer the question for yourself. How do I show it?

 

Check out this episode about Love is Just Damn Good Business here

 

Love is Just Damn Good Business: Asking a Provocative Question

 

So why do I love this? You picked the context. How do I show it? How do I better show it? How can I show it more? What else can we do? And that’s a very powerful question. So if you imagine bringing your team together and asking the question like which, you know, countless companies have asked of their employees over the years, let’s brainstorm on this question.

 

How can we improve customer service? It’s a great question and you’ll get some great answers. But if you frame it up differently, see if this feels any different. How can we show our customers that we love them? Vastly different. Because what happens here? Interestingly, that question raises the standards and the expectations. It raises the bar all across the board.

 

And it’s a provocative question, which means that it’s provoking a different level of thought and the ideas that you will come up with in response to that question will blow your mind. But it’s very hard for you in whatever position you’re in, to ask that question without answering for yourself first. Why do I love this? Why am I invested in this place?

 

What do I think we can know, what kind of impact do I think we can have on the world and the lives of the people that we touch? These are really powerful questions. They give you the foundation and the credibility to begin to ask of others. So I’m thinking about these two questions. Why do I love this business?

 

I’m thinking about it as Mitch in your previous example, why do I love this business? And then how do I show it to our customers, in the shipping business. Right. I’m thinking about that. And then and then thinking about how we show it early on in that transformation? They weren’t showing it very much.

 

Right. But by asking that compelling question of the team, made them think of ways how we could show it. And then that led through a very powerful or led to, excuse me, a very powerful transformation. That business, I love these two questions. Sorry about. Yeah. They’re very oh thank you. They’re they’re very powerful. And, you know, the genesis or the evolution of those questions came from, you know, I’ve been doing this work for a long time, Steve, and I’ve been in the field of leadership development now in some form or another for 30 years.

 

Check out this episode about Love is Just Damn Good Business here

 

Love is Just Damn Good Business: Just Inspire Other People

 

So over the years, you know, when I would do a lot of, you know, training and facilitation and coaching and consulting, this was a common question, you know, what are the takeaways? What are the takeaways going to be? And what people used to mean by takeaways is give me the list. Give me the long list of things that I need to do to be, for example, a better leader, which is very kind of transactional.

 

Right. And here’s what I discovered. If I give you, if you really want to be a better leader and I give you a list of 100 things to do, to be to do that, you’re going, there’s a part of you that is going to look at it and say, I don’t have time for this. Yes.

 

I want to be a better leader. But if this is what it’s going to take, I just got to get my job done, man. Right. So, the other extreme is don’t give them anything. Just inspire people. And, you know, by golly, you can do it. You can change the world. I’ll go forth and, you know, be inspired.

 

And then people run out of the room, and then they bump into walls and go out. What do I do now? So where I landed was with the questions. So if I can pose the right question, then you’re going to come up with all of those ideas on your own, and they’ll be yours, and they’ll be highly relevant to what you have on your plate right now, and then you’re more likely to execute on them to actually do them.

 

So that’s where these questions come from. So why do I love this? How do I show it? And you’ll see there are literally thousands of ways to answer that question that will suit your own scenario. So back to Mitch for a second. For example, one of the things that he noticed in their culture was that they had a history of being very compartmentalized and siloed.

 

Right? So everybody kind of had their own turf and they had like all these different levels of management in a company that at the time was only like 120 people. Okay. And people had this expectation that my knowledge, my information is my oh, the old knowledge is a powerful thing. Right? So my job security comes from knowing what I know and you’re not knowing what I know.

 

Check out this episode about Love is Just Damn Good Business here

 

Love is Just Damn Good Business: The Importance of Sharing Knowledge To Your Organization

 

So they were knowledge hoarders in that company. Information hoarders. People would, you know, they’d be locked up in their little office with, you know, I just picture, like, you know, piles of manila folders and, and, you know, all this information that you don’t mind. You get empty. So you said, well, if we loved each other, what would we do?

 

Well, we’d be committed to each other’s development. We’d be committed to each other’s effectiveness. And how do we make that happen? Well, we share information. We have to share information. It’s the sharing of knowledge. This power, not the hoarding of knowledge, this power. So he was very clear. From now on, your information is not your information. It’s ours.

 

Share it readily. Right. It’s very clear that in this case, edict coming from the top of the company, from the new state president. Eventually he became the CEO. But the new president. And what happened? There were people in his management team that said, no freaking way. Wow. This is how I got here. This is how I work.

 

I don’t like this new sharing stuff. And he had to let some of those people go, wow. And in his words, you know, he said, this is paraphrasing him. He said, “If you are unwilling to share knowledge and information, you are no longer of use to this organization.” Good for him. That takes guts. And so what is that?

 

Is that love sure is love for the whole team. And he might individually, personally love that person that he let go. There were a couple of them actually. Frankly, there were a couple that he didn’t love so much. But there were some that were like, hey, it’s just not going to work anymore. So see you later.

 

But that that told the rest of his team like that reinforced the love for the rest of it. Exactly right. Exactly right. It was a very powerful statement. It said, I mean it. We need to be committed to each other’s growth and development and effectiveness. And there’s proof because we all know that person doesn’t do that.

 

And we can all see that this person is not here anymore. Right. And that’s why this has been such a great conversation. I knew that I would be so grateful that you said yes. I know that you’re in the middle of a very, very busy book launch. How compressed your schedule is. You said yes, and I am grateful for that, my friend. Just awesome. But so before we go, because I know that I know that our time is coming to an end. Before we go, before we close out and say goodbye, any final advice you want to share? Anything you think we might have missed? And then please tell Onward Nation business owners the best way to connect with you.

 

Check out this episode about Love is Just Damn Good Business here

 

Love is Just Damn Good Business: Final Advice from Steve

 

So my final little thought on this for today, anyway is, I acknowledge that I’m not in the business of convincing anybody of anything. My intent in this conversation and with this book and with this work that I do is not to convince anybody of anything. Because I don’t, I’m not so sure that that’s possible in this subject.

 

I’m not in the convincing business. I’m in the confirmation business. What I’ve seen over and over throughout the years, is people will say to me after reading one of my books or hearing me speak, they’ll say, you know what? What you said. I’ve always felt that way. I just thought something was wrong with me. I didn’t think I was supposed to.

 

And now I realized that my instincts were accurate. So I’m going to act on them now. So my hope is that there are a good number of people listening to this conversation today. They’re going, oh yeah, man,’ve known that. Now I’m going to do something about it. As for the people that really have no interest in other human beings, and that’s, you know, the zone I guess, but they’re not going to be interested in reading my book.

 

And if they do, I’m not sure that it’s going to make that much of a difference. So, I would just, you know, I just like to say that if you have that impulse, you have that instinct. And this has been a confirmation for you. You are far from alone on this. In fact, in my experience, I can’t prove it.

 

But I think most people already get this, on a deep level. We just have to start acting on it, and then we have an opportunity to change. Listen, if we can change the experience and the expectation of what it means to be in business, what it means to go to work, we can actually change that. We change everything because everybody goes to work.

 

Check out this episode about Love is Just Damn Good Business here

 

Love is Just Damn Good Business: How to Connect with Steve

 

Just about everybody goes to work somewhere. That is awesome that I invite you to. Yeah. Just, you know, SteveFarber.com. If you can remember my name, you can find me SteveFarber.com is where my website lives. And then of course on social media, LinkedIn, it’s Steve Farber, Facebook Steve Farber, Twitter Steve Farber, Instagram Steve Farber.

 

This way I never forget my name is very convenient. And I’m really easy to find. Before we go, can I sneak in one last question. Yeah. Okay. This might be stating the obvious but I would love to get your take on this. This is industry agnostic, right? You give us a shipping example. In like a services business example, but this, this strategy of love being just good or just damn good business that is industry agnostic, right.

 

It is. Yeah. And for one, for one very simple reason so far. Anyway, every business in every industry that I’ve had contact with and that’s virtually every industry over the years, every single one of them has one thing in common, and that is that they’re all populated by human beings. So that’s true for now. If you, wherever I take us, remains to be seen.

 

But, so, yes, it’s industry agnostic. If it’s about creating, creating your own culture in your own industry with your unique, distinct human beings, fellow people that you work with every day. And it’ll work in a manufacturing environment, in a professional services firm, in the entertainment industry and health care. I mean, I just can’t think of an industry where this does not apply. Okay. Thank you for that, my friend. 

 

Onward Nation, no matter how many notes you took or how often you go back in relation to Steve’s words of wisdom, which I sure hope that you do. The key is to take this knowledge that he so generously shared with you the experience, the research, the background, the decades of expertise that he so generously just opened the door and shared with you.

 

Take that and apply it into your business right away and accelerate your results. And Steve, we all have the same 86,400 seconds in a day, my friend. And I’m so very grateful that again, that you said yes to come back to the show to be our guide, our mentor, and to help Onward Nation business owners move on to that next level.

 

Thank you so much, my friend. Thank you Steve, and it’s been a real pleasure. This episode is complete. So head over to OnwardNation.com for show notes and more food to fuel your ambition. Continue to find your recipe for success here at Onward Nation.

 

Check out this episode about Love is Just Damn Good Business here