business book – Business Book Spoilers

Don’t just feel our pain – remove it and you’ll earn our loyalty (review of Joe Polish’s What’s In It For Them?)

Joe Polish first learned the meaning of true appreciation in a janitorial supply store in Chandler, Arizona.

Polish was a recovering drug addict and dead broke carpet cleaner living off credit cards in the 1990s. “I started my own carpet-cleaning business with all my savings – $1,500 – because I wanted a better future and I didn’t have any better options,” says Polish. “I quickly learned that carpet cleaning is dirty, hard work.”

A client asked Polish to clean a sofa. The job needed equipment that Polish didn’t have and couldn’t afford to buy.

Polish went to the supply store and asked if he could rent the equipment. The store owner had a better idea. He let Polish borrow the equipment along with the cleaning chemicals.

“If you need something, just let me know and take whatever you need,” the owner told Polish. “Build up your business first and then come pay me back later.”

Polish’s cleaning business took off and he stayed loyal to the store owner. “Even as my business grew and grew, I would still go back to the same store to buy all my supplies – even it meant driving 45 minutes across town.”

Polish built a million-dollar cleaning business and eventually moved into sales and marketing, with cleaning companies as his first clients. Today, he’s the founder of the Genius Network for entrepreneurs, a marketing consultant, a host on three top-ranked marketing and business podcasts, founder of Artists for Addicts and Genius Recovery and even the co-owner of a 40-acre ghost town in Arizona.

The store owner’s generosity also let Polish in on an invaluable secret.

“The secret to success in life and business is learning how to connect and form relationships with other people – and most people don’t know how to do that,” says Polish in his book What’s In It For Them?

So what’s one of the best way to connect and form strong relationships? Do what the store owner did for Polish.

Ease other people’s pain. Figure out how they’re suffering and how you can help. The store owner knew Polish was struggling to make ends meet and needed a break.

“Suffering is pain,” says Polish. “Suffering can be physical, emotional, mental or spiritual. There’s suffering everywhere and there’s much more than most people realize.”

To get at the root of someone’s suffering, ask three questions – where are you, where do you want to go and how are you going to get there?

According to Polish, we all want to connect with others, feel special, cared about and appreciated and have our problems solved.

Meet our needs in authentic, useful and valuable ways and you’ll earn our appreciation, trust, loyalty, business and friendship.

“Connecting with people is about helping them get what they want and helping them reduce or remove what is causing them suffering.”

The added bonus in helping others? You help yourself in ways that go far beyond monetary rewards, says Polish.

“By connecting with others, you reduce your own suffering, improve your own life, have richer relationships and make the world a better place.

“If you’re a person who cares about others and can solve their problems – someone who understands what’s in it for them – there’s no limit to what you can accomplish or the peace and joy you can find in your own existence.”

The owner of the janitorial supply store did it for Polish and Polish returns the favour by offering dozens of exercises and action steps to help us do the same should someone who’s struggling and suffering come into our businesses or lives in need of a helping hand.

Jay Robb serves as communications manager for McMaster University’s Faculty of Science, lives in Hamilton and has reviewed business books for The Hamilton Spectator since 1999. This review first ran in the Jan. 13 edition of The Hamilton Spectator.

Every business is in the entertainment business (review of Jesse Cole’s Fans First: Change the Game, Break the Rules & Create An Unforgettable Experience)

You can chase after customers, clients, patients or students like everyone else.

Or you can build fans.

Jesse and Emily Cole spent months chasing customers after buying an independent-league ball club and the keys to a 1920s ballpark in Savannah, Georgia. It didn’t go well.

“We worked tirelessly to connect with the community,” says Cole. “We marketed the team through newspaper and radio ads and posted on social media. No one was interested. The city’s message was unmistakable: no baseball team had ever made it in Savannah before. Why should we be any different?”

Cole says it was a fair question and one they couldn’t answer. “Because we weren’t any different. We were acting like everyone else. We were advertising and marketing and selling by the normal rules.”

They started doing the opposite of normal when the money ran out five months before opening day. Cole and his wife drained their savings, sold their home and slept on air mattresses in a rented duplex.

This is when the team adopted the mission of Fans First, Entertain Always. They let a fan name the team the Savannah Bananas. They switched to general admission tickets that cost $15 and included all-you-can-eat-concessions. Advertising was pulled from the 1920s ballpark. The team went on social media to introduce the Banana Nanas, sports’ first senior citizen dance team and went into a local school to unveil their mascot Split, the Prince of Potassium.

“Attention beats marketing,” says Cole. “We’d finally cracked the code on how to get the city’s attention. Savannah had dismissed all their previous teams for being just like most baseball teams – long, slow and boring. We couldn’t go after Savannah’s hearts until we had their eyes and ears. Eventually, that attention led to ticket sales, which led to our first sellout. And then our second. And then our third.”

And the rest is history. The club now has 50,000 people on a wait list to buy tickets. More than 1,000 ball players reached out to join the team this year. And they’re selling millions of dollars worth of merchandise to fans around the world.

“Every innovation, every new idea, everything we do starts and ends with the fans. First, we ask is it fans first? Then, after we do it, we ask again, was that fans first?”

What works for the Savannah Bananas can work for any business or organization, says Cole.

His tried and true Fans First Way has five Es:

“Eliminating friction is about putting yourself in your fans’ shoes and looking at every possible pain point, every possible frustration, every possible policy that slows things down, heats up tempers and punishes fans,” says Cole. Pay particular attention to microfrictions. Cole and the front office crew take turns being an undercover fan at every game and then report back on what could be improved from the moment fans arrive to when they head home (staff holding umbrellas and walking fans to their cars during downpours is a nice touch).

Entertain always. “Every business is in the entertainment business. If you are not entertaining your customers, you won’t have customers to entertain.” Or heed this advice from Walt Disney. “I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained.”

Experiment constantly. “Everything is about the experience. A lot of companies don’t try new things. They do the same thing over and over again. That creates boredom.”

Engage deeply. “Human connection is everything. It’s not about the number of followers, ticket sales or customers through the doors. It’s about engaging deeply. If you want fans to be there for you when you need them, then your job is to be there for them always.”

Empower action. “If you want to empower action in your team, start by changing the mindset of your organization. Instead of focusing on failure, focus on what you’re trying to do.

The Fans First Way comes with one not-so-small cavaet. If you’re the boss of your business or the leader of your organization, you must be the first and biggest fanatical superfan of your employees and customers. There’s a reason why Cole’s at the ballpark for every game in a yellow tux and putting on a show.

“When you care for your people, they’ll care for your fans, and your fans will take care of your bottom line,” says Cole.

I’ve reviewed more than 600 business books over the past 23 years. Fans First is one of the best. So buy it, read it and then find ways to put fans first and entertain always.

Jay Robb serves as communications manager for McMaster University’s Faculty of Science, lives in Hamilton and has reviewed business books since 1999.

Serve up community in your post-pandemic lunch room (review of The Lonely Century)

Putting communal tables in your lunchroom may be your best post-pandemic recruitment and retention strategy.

To fill those tables, encourage everyone to break for lunch. Discourage us introverts from always eating “al desko.” Introduce dig-in potlucks and occasionally splurge on ordering in a meal. Keep smartphones out of the lunchroom so we look up, look around and strike up conversations with our coworkers. And make cleaning the lunchroom a shared responsibility. If you’re the leader, volunteer for the first week of cleaning duty.

“Eating together is one of the easiest ways of building a greater sense of community and team spirit in the workplace,” says Noreena Hertz, academic, thought leader and author of The Lonely Century. “So as companies seek to rebuild a sense of community and help their staff to reconnect after months of forced distancing, reinstituting a formal lunch break – ideally at a set time – and encouraging workers to eat together should form part of their strategy.”

This is especially important if you’re looking to hire and hold on to 20-somethings. Hertz says this demographic, despite all their friends and followers on social media, is among the loneliest in society and the group most craving connection and community. More than half of Gen Zs in the workforce report feeling emotionally distant from their colleagues.

The rest of us aren’t faring much better. Forty per cent of office workers worldwide say they feel lonely. In the US, nearly one in five people don’t have a single friend at work,

According to Hertz, there was a loneliness epidemic long before the pandemic hit. And there’s a good chance our social recession will continue when the pandemic’s behind us thanks to advances in technology.

Hertz isn’t optimistic the booming loneliness economy will save us. That economy includes everything from RentAFriend and increasingly lifelike social robots to mukbang – the practice of watching someone eat on-screen while you eat alone at home.

We’re also commercializing community, even though it’s something you make rather than buy or have done for you. Yet community’s increasingly packaged and sold like a product. “If you can’t pay enough, you are not invited in. There is a real danger that community becomes something increasingly accessible only to the privileged. That loneliness becomes a disease that only the wealthy have a chance to cure.”

Hertz recommends we reinvest in public spaces that bring everyone together while also rolling back taxes and offering incentives to pro-community enterprises, like neighbourhood bookstores and cafes that are getting pummeled by online retailers

We also need to reconnect capitalism with care and compassion, says Hertz. A self-obsessed and self-seeking form of hustle harder bootstrap capitalism has “normalized indifference, made a virtue out of selfishness and diminished the importance of compassion and care. Forty years of neoliberal capitalism has, at best, marginalized values such as solidarity, community, togetherness and kindness.”

So now’s a good time to add kindness to your organization’s list of core values. And during your communal lunches, take a few minutes to recognize and reward colleagues for their small, but hugely important, acts of community-building and loneliness-busting kindness.

In a post-pandemic world with rampant loneliness and isolation, it’ll be the friendly, kind and caring organizations that have a definite competitive advantage in recruiting and retaining good people.

Jay Robb serves as communications manager with McMaster’s Faculty of Science, lives in Hamilton and has reviewed business books for the Hamilton Spectator since 1999.

Wondering if there’s more than this? You’re ready to climb the second mountain (review)

mountain climb You went to a good school, graduated into a great job and built yourself a rewarding career.

You’ve earned serious money, status and power.

You’re living the dream and life is good.

But what if it could be exponentially better?

“Most of the time we aim too low,” says David Brooks, New York Times columnist and author of The Second Mountain. “We walk in shoes too small for us. We spend our days shooting for a little burst of approval or some small career victory.

“But there’s a joyful way of being that’s not just a little bit better than the way we are currently living; it’s a quantum leap better. It’s as if we’re all competing to get a little closer to a sunlamp. If we get up and live a different way, we can bathe in real sunshine.”

second mountain Brooks says there are two metaphorical mountains for us to climb.

Most of us are in a mad scramble up the first mountain. We’re decked out in “I’m free to be me” athleisure as we pursue happiness and self-love, build our personal brands, manage our reputations, curate our best lives on social media, keep score and take stock of how we measure up.

“The goals on the first mountain are the normal goals that our culture endorses – to be a success, to be well thought of, to get invited to the right social circles, and to experience personal happiness,” says Brooks. “It’s all the normal stuff: nice home, nice family, nice vacations, good food, good friends, and so on.”

Maybe we’ll reach the peak and love the view. But we may suffer existential dread as we wonder if there’s more than this. Or we could get tossed off the mountain after losing our job, good health or reputation.

Fortunately, there’s a second mountain for us to climb. On this mountain, we trade independence for interdependence and swap happiness for joy. Instead of living our best life, we’re dedicated to making life better for others. Choosing one or more commitments to a vocation, spouse or family, a philosophy or faith, and a community is our price of admission to the second mountain.

“A commitment is making a promise to something without expecting a reward,” says Brooks. “Adult life is about making promises to others, being faithful to those promises. The beautiful life is found in the mutual giving of unconditional gifts. When I meet people leading lives of deep commitment, this fact hits me: joy is real.”

On the first mountain, we have careers. On the second mountain, we dedicate ourselves to vocations.

A career is based on what we’re good at while a vocation is built on what we’ve been obsessively interested in for many years.

“In choosing a vocation, it’s precisely wrong to say that talent should trump interest,” says Brooks. “Interest multiples talent and is in most cases more important than talent. The crucial terrain to be explored in any vocation search is the terrain of your heart and soul, your long-term motivation. Knowledge is plentiful; motivation is scarce.”

Still searching for your vocation? Say yes to everything. “Say yes to every opportunity that comes along, because you never know what will lead to what,” says Brooks. “Have a bias toward action. Think of yourself as a fish that is hoping to get caught. Go out there among the fishhooks.”

If you’ve been blown off the first mountain or find yourself underwhelmed by the view, Brooks will help you find the fishhooks and the courage to climb your second mountain.

This review first ran in the Feb. 15 edition of The Hamilton Spectator. I serve as communications manager for McMaster’s Faculty of Science, live in Hamilton and have reviewed business books for the Hamilton Spectator since 1999.