Episode 635: Love Is Good Business / 第635集：愛情是個好生意
第635集：愛情是個好生意
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第635集完整記錄
Episode 635: Love Is Good Business
Synopsis
Steve Farber, president of Extreme Leadership, Inc. and former vice-president of legendary management guru Tom Peters, joins Dr. Misner on the podcast today to talk about his new book, Love Is Just Damn Good Business.
Love is at the core of what makes great leaders great and at the heart of what makes great businesses great. Your business will not have a competitive advantage unless you, your employees, and your customers all love what you do.
Be overt in your intention to create a culture of love. Instead of asking “How can we improve our customer service?” ask “How can we better show our customers that we love them?”
You’ll get a different quality of answer, and you’ll show everyone on your team that we all need to love our customers. But your employees can’t create a a great customer experience unless they have a great experience as employees.
This applies to your BNI chapter as well. Visitors have to have a great experience in order to join, and they can only have that if the members of the chapter love BNI.
“Givers Gain” is an expression of love. It’s a challenge to us to demonstrate what we can give.
BNI loves Steve’s content so much, it’s coming to BNI University. Visit https://bniedge.mentored.com/ for a free module of The Extreme Leadership Edge, and get your own copy of Love Is Just Damn Good Business.
Complete Transcript of Episode 635
Priscilla:
Hello and welcome back to The Official BNI Podcast. I’m Priscilla Rice and coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, CA. I’m joined on the phone today by the Founder and Chief Visionary Officer of BNI, Dr. Ivan Misner.
Hello, Ivan. How are you doing today?
Ivan:
I’m doing fantastic, Priscilla. I have a guest here today who I’m really honored to have on the BNI Podcast. Today’s guest is Steve Farber. He is the former Vice President of the legendary management guru, Tom Peters. Now Steve says that you have to be 50 years old or older to have to know Tom, I’m not sure that’s true, but I know Tom. Tom Peters and his book, In Search of Excellence was a seminal book for me in starting BNI and developing BNI. It’s an incredible book and he is an incredible consultant and to have this opportunities to meet and get to know Steve who was Vice President of that organization. It’s truly fantastic. I met Steve in the Transformational Leadership Council, which I’ve talked about on my podcasts. I went to an event that he did at TLC and the presentation was called, “Love is Damn Good Business.” I remember thinking, “Should I go to this?” I wasn’t so sure but I went and I am so glad I did because Steve has come out with a book now called, Love Is Just Damn Good Business and he was also a speaker at our convention last year, which was incredible. Steve, I am honored to have you on BNI Podcast.
Steve:
Thank you, Ivan. I’ve really been looking forward to this!
Ivan:
It’s great to have you here. I love your book, it’s incredible. I love your book about love and business. First I thought, “Seriously, that’s a little woo-hoo for me.” But when I really thought about it and heard you talk, it’s all about loving what you do and loving the impact that you make on others with what you do.
Steve:
Yeah, exactly! You know we’re really not accustomed to use it the word ‘love’ and ‘business’ in the same sentence. No matter what part of the world you are in, it seems to be a really common thing. It’s really unfortunate because not only is love not inappropriate in the context of business, it’s really at the very foundation of what Greta leadership is. I’ve been studying leadership, coaching leaders, writing about leadership and consulting about leadership for 30 years. So I don’t use that word lightly. Love really is at the core of what makes a lot of great leaders great and it’s at the heart of what makes great businesses great. But it’s not love about love as in the way you think about love in terms of your spouse or child, it looks different but it’s still love and it can really give us a significant competitive advantage.
Ivan:
There’s no doubt about that and I see that in BNI members and Directors who love BNI who say the bleed burgundy because they enjoy what they do. Sometimes people say that BNI is kind of like a cult. There’s a few things I want to share about that; first of all, if BNI were a cult, everyone would do what I tell them to do, and they don’t. I try to get the to do what I tell them. Here’s the thing, ‘cult’ is part of the word ‘culture’ and I think that people don’t really understand that an amazing corporate culture, from the outside might feel cult-ish, but it’s really just a great culture where people love what they’re doing, love the impact that they are making on others and it’s a positive supportive impact. What would you say about that?
Steve:
Yeah, exactly right. Let’s look at BNI but let’s also look at the various businesses that BNI members are running and are a part of everyday because the same principle holds true there. It all starts with the customer. If you look at it from a BNI prospective, you guys would not of had the growth that you have the around the world for so many years, it’s such a trajectory, if the members did not love being a part of BNI. You don’t have that kind of growth when people are just ‘okay’ or ‘happy’ or ‘it’s just alright’ with it. You grow because people love it. It because a part of who they are and it becomes something they look forward to and what I would suggest is true for every BNI Member’s Business, whether it’s a law practice, insurance practice or whatever it is maybe a big company even, what we all have in common as business people is customers. We all have customers. Our competitive advantage comes from creating an experience that our customers are going to love whether it’s our product of service or a combination of the two. Anything short of that does not give us a competitive advantage. I think we can all agree on that. But then, we need to back it up one more step to your point Ivan, the only way we can creat that experience for customers in a meaningful and sustainable way over time is to create a culture, or an environment if you prefer to use that word, that people love working in. You can’t create that kind of culture unless you love it yourself first. The thread runs all the way through, I like to think of it in the business cases start with customer, but when you really trace it back, it comes doe a to each and everyone of us individually. Do you love the work that you do? Do you love to the point where you can create and environment, whether it’s a team of two people or 200 people, love coming to work everyday on behalf of your customers? If you can nail that down and weave all of that together, then you’ve got a tremendous competitive advantage in the market.
Ivan:
A huge one. Now let me ask you a question that we didn’t talk about before hand, it’s easy for me as the owner to have that feeling about my clients, but how do you get your employees to have that feeling? We’re talking about BNI Member’s, many of them have employees, they believe that but how do they get their people to believe that and to have their clients have that experience?
Steve:
That’s a great question. There’s a number of ways to do it but essentially it’s being overt on the intention. For example, one of the things that I recommend to my clients a lot and I talk about this quite a bit in the new book, is a lot of this depends on the way you frame up a question. So if I bring my team together and I say, “Okay, folks, let’s figure out how we can improve our customer service.” That’s the typical question that gets asked. “How can we improve our customer service?” Maybe you do a little brainstorming around that. It’s a good practice for any business to engage in and you’ll get some good answers. But if you frame up the question a little differently, “How can we better show our customers that we love them?” You’re going to get a different quality answer and it’s going to be at w higher level because you just raised the expectations and the message that you’re sending is that that’s all that we all need to be doing; loving our customers. Now again, it goes back to what context you’re asking that question. If you’re asking it in a place where people really hate working at, the the response is going to be a lot of eye rolling and heaving sighing because it seem in congruent. It doesn’t line up with their own experience. That why you have got to create an environment and a team that people love being on, then that question about customers is a natural extension.
Ivan:
That really fits with wha the talk about in BNI in terms of people having a great visitor experience and a great member experience. They have to have a great experience during the meeting in order to want to join or want to stay. You’re talking about it in terms of the client wanting to have a great experience in terms of what the individual entrepreneur provides.
Steve:
Yeah, exactly. Obviously it applies in all places. For BNI when you look at the principle of Givers Gain, you as a culture- and I’ll never forget the experience when I spoke Bangkok at the convention last year, the year you asked the question, “What do we stand for?” 3000 people in unison answered, “Givers Gain.” That’s something you don’t see everyday in this business working with a lot of different companies. You guys as an organization put a stake in the ground and said, “This is what we stand for.” Now if you think about, and this is going to be really rhetorical because obviously you thought about this, if you think about what Gives Gain is it’s love. It’s coming from a place of, “What value can I provide to you?” And my value will come back from that, then it raises the standards of what people expect when they visit a BNI chapter for the first time. Do I see this I play and demonstrated, or is this just nice sounding words? So it’s true for all of us. Whenever we declare a value that’s important for us for example: if I print out a lot of buttons like a lot of companies have that say “we love our customers!” That’s easy. Anybody can do that. Any paper hanger and every dry cleaner in the planet says “we love our customers.” That’s easy. But if we take that as a challenge, and we should if we are going to say the words, to raise our standards and act congruently with that hat chase everything. It changes the way we do business. It changes everything from the kind of people you hire, the policy and procedures, the quality of the work and all the way down the line.
Ivan:
That’s so true. I would love to do an hour podcast with you, Steve but it looks like we are out of time. We love your material so much, we are doing content in BNI University, so any BNI member has access to it, and we’re going to have content with Steve up there. Some of the content there’s a link that the public can get to. Do you want to share that link now, Steve?
Steve:
Sure! So we have a free module of an online program called the “Extreme Leadership Edge”. You can find it at BNI University and also at BNIEdge.Mentored.com.
Ivan:
And the content is all available at BNI University. If you have not gone on to BNI University yet, you should do that soon. You can also go to Steve’s website at SteveFarber.com. The name of Steve’s book is, Love Is Just Damn Good Business. I have recommended any books in the last 35 years, this would rank in the top 5 that I would recommend. I urge you to go to Amazon.com and look his book. Steve has amazing content. He walks the talk and is an incredible guy.
Steve, it was fantastic to have you on the podcast today. Thank you for being part of it!
Steve:
Thank you so much for having me!
Ivan:
Back to you, Priscilla.
Priscilla:
Okay, great. Thank you both so much!
This podcast has a new sponsor! Go check out the great content available over at www.IvansInnerCircle.com where Ivan has created a wide array of topics and you’re invited to participate!
Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice and we look forward to you joining us again next week for another exciting episode of The Official BNI Podcast.
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