Episode 48: The Principled Leader with Author, Andreas Widmer

Can you look at your customers and say tivoglio Bene and deliver what is the good you wish for this customer? Are you giving them goods that are truly good? Do you provide services for them that truly serve in the Tivoglio Bene sense? Are you bringing good to them to find that good?

This is the Leadership Foundry podcast. I am one of the hosts this week. Brandon Smith, my co host and business partner and colleague and co founder Randy Haine is also on our show today. We have the wonderful pleasure of having Andreas Widmer on our show today. Andreas is the associate clinical professor of entrepreneurship at the Catholic University of America's Bush School of Business and Economics. He's also the director of the Art and Carlisioka center for Principled Entrepreneurship. Our conversation today is really going to be about Andreas most recent book, the Art of Principled Entrepreneurship. But we do a deeper dive into what does it really mean to be not only an entrepreneur and not only what does it mean to be a leader, but to truly live a calling and vocation and share that with others. So I want you to listen really closely to some of the key points that he gives us as leaders, to not only live a courageous life, but do good in the world and do it for others. So stay tuned to the very end and Randy and I will share our highlights. I know you won't be disappointed with this great conversation, Andreas. So good to have you on the show today. So excited for you to not only share your journey and your leadership lessons along the way, but also for us to talk about this great book, the Art of Principled Entrepreneurship. Randy and I have both gotten a chance to not only go through the book, but identify some, some questions for you. But before we jump into the book, maybe for our listeners, it would be very helpful for you to share a little about your journey, tell us a little more about what ultimately got you into the seat you're sitting in today, and then we can pivot into this amazing book.

Yeah, I'm gonna have to give you the Cliff Note version of this. Otherwise we're gonna be here for a couple of hours. I'm not the youngest guy, so I, I'm from Switzerland. Sort of struggled to figure out what to do with my life or, you know, find my center. Eventually went to the military, found out that I could become a bodyguard and go into the special in these kind of special forces. Then joined that and found out I ended up being a bodyguard for the Pope in the Swiss Guards. And kind of that led. At first I wanted to leave Again, but you couldn't. And then I actually did meet. I, I protected John Paul ii. And I did meet him. Well, I mean, you know, if you. It's like the Secret Service, you're with the person 24, 7. So that had a huge change in my life. A pivotal inflection point in my life was to meet him and him, in a sense, ministering to me. Like he evangelized me, quite frankly. And I, I found my faith in Jesus Christ through John Paul II by him introducing me and teaching me to pray and so on. And then I, I also, I sort of had the big questions in my life during those very pivotal years. Met my wife in Rome, who was American or is American, and that I didn't speak a word of English. I was 23. I didn't speak a word of English. And I'm like, well, I do the thing that you ought to do. And I, I actually introduced her to John Paul ii and he thought she was a great young lady. And so, so I left the garden, I moved to. I pursued her to America and started. The only way in was to study and. But I, But a school gave me a break so I could start studying without even speaking English. But they just let me in and gave me a semester. I learned English. Then I went to Boston, Massachusetts and I started to, aside from going to school, get involved with software startups. We're talking about 89, 90. And my first company that I was privileged to be in was called FTP Software, and we ported TCP ip, the Internet Protocol, to the PC. It was, I mean, amazing success. Is this understatement like, we brought the Internet to the PC and before that, I've never, I had never used an inter. A computer, never mind the Internet. And, and we brought in public and, And I sort of lost. Yeah, I kind of lost the joy of it. And, and met another couple in, in, in Boston, Jim and Janet Baker, and they invented speech recognition. So then I was part of Dragon Systems. And again, the rocket ship going through. We ended up selling the company in 2000, I think it was 2000. Had mixed experience with that because the company we sold it to was fraudulent. And so we saw you sell a company for $600 million and you find out that the company's fraudulent and you get back exactly zero. That's a big hit. In terms of your questioning the free market economy, all that kind of stuff, that gave me a point to go back and sort of say, okay, what am I not understanding? Is, Is the economy, is capitalism, is this Evil or not. And I went back to two sources. On the one hand, I went back to John Paul ii. And on the other hand, I decided to run a. I didn't want to go to MBA anymore, but I. I ended up running one of Harvard Business School has a consulting firm called Monitor Group or called Monitor Group. And I ran one of their subsidiaries. I actually spun it out. And I felt like if I'm running this company and with, you know, it's. That's what. That was my mba. If you. I wanted to go and find out did. Am I misunderstanding something here? Like, am I playing the wrong game? And on the spiritual side, I want in moral side, I wanted to find out from my church, from Christianity, from Catholicism, is this intrinsically evil? Right. I brought the two. So I did both of this. I got a master's degree in ministry, and I did this MBA by running this company called on the Frontier OTF Group. And the whole thing came back together in a book that I wrote called the Pope and the CEO with My Answers in it that led to the Pope's University here in D.C. in the Pope has a university in every country, pretty much every country in the world. And the Pope's university saying, hey, this is very interesting. We'd love to build a business school around that idea or know me along other people. And I actually moved to D.C. to help build this business school at the Catholic University of America. And that's what I've been doing for the last 10 years. And I followed that up with. With the Art of Principled Entrepreneurship, which is what I'm teaching. You know, it's sort of the development. And the reason why I'm sitting in this seat is also because when I came out with this book, there were two other people who came out with books at the same time. And one of these books I read, and it was exactly saying what I'm saying, but from another person's perspective. And that other person was Randy Heim. And so I always felt this kinship with Randy because we're saying the same thing and we found the same thing through our respective experiences in life. And so I'm very happy to be here.

Well, Andreas, great story. I love that rich story. We could spend the whole time just digging into your story, but I'm curious, so you are really trying to explore, is capitalism evil? What is it? What did you finally decide or uncover?

So, first of all, the most, most profound thing I discovered, good and evil goes through the human heart, not between human people. Good and evil is a matter of Straight going through you and you controlling by you being good, you make the world good. It's not. There's intrinsically evil things like a, like a suicide machine and drugs, certain drugs and stuff like that. That's an intrinsic evil. But in most, like in the economy and everything, most things are somewhat leaning towards the moral good. But it depends how you use them. And I found that we are severely neglecting the character education of people. And just think we're going to rely on the laws and regulations to make people good, behave well. But this is actually something we need to form people's hearts to seek the good, the true and the beautiful. And if we focus on that, we do much better than building up 50,000 rules that nobody can see the forest for the trees anymore or the trees for the forest. And then. But the market economy per se, I just so love this. What I found is that my favorite sentence in business is how may I help you? Isn't that beautiful? You go to a store and somebody says how may I help you? And then through my God given talents, which is something I, I didn't do anything for, I just have it, I can acquire skills to create value for you. And if you value this more than it costs me to make it, I make a business. It's like the, it's like the loaves and the fishes. Like I can multiply value through my God given talents. Right. And that to me is such a deeply human. Like this is like a human and spiritual at the same time. This, it's like our participation in the, in the continuation of God's creation. And so the market economy, as long as you don't force either one of us is actually leaning very strongly towards the good in the world. And so I'd have to come down that with all the economic models that you could have, the market economy probably has the greatest potential, innate potential for goodness, for humanity.

I love the way that you framed that up. That it really allows us as individuals and as unique beings to unlock our strengths, our gifts, our unique talents that we've been given and bring good into the world and spread that. And so there's a sense of kind of purpose and fulfillment and meaning and vocation and everything you talk about. So I'm glad that's, that's where you landed on this Andreas. That's a. It's a good place to land. Well, I've got plenty of questions but Randy has just as many. So Randy, I'm going to let you kick off the next question.

You know, it's Interesting. Andres, you and I have known each other for years. I certainly am familiar with your story, but I don't think I've ever heard you describe so beautifully and eloquently, you know, the journey itself and how you arrived at some of these really big answers. And I suspect in knowing you that you probably have the humility to say that I don't have all the answers, but I'm still seeking them. But you're closer than you were.

Yeah, I was just. I was just talking to some students this morning who asked me, well, you know, when you write a book like this, like, it's, you know, they. They had some idea about this, that this was definitive. This isn't. I'm saying the reason why I'm publishing this, the reason why I'm sharing it, is because I want you to build on it. I want you to take it apart. I want this to be a part of the debate, the good. Good and evil, in a sense. And the perfect solution for something is not here or there. It's on a continuum. It's on a movement that's constantly moving. It's like leadership itself. Is it going to be perfect? No, it's tending towards perfection. It never is. It's always becoming. And that's. That's very important to see with these kind of things that the journey, it's just like work. The journey is the goal. Like, don't, don't, don't work in absolutes. Like, enjoy the journey and focus. Make the journey meaningful in one of.

The later chapters of the book. And again, so love the book. So grateful you wrote it. You talk about inspiring and motivating the next generation. So maybe to pick up a little bit on what you just said about the students you're encountering, how are students and young professionals engaging on this topic? How do they see what you're trying to teach in the book? I'm really curious how they're receiving it, but maybe more importantly, what are they doing with it?

Yeah, So I teach because of this. Somebody like John Paul II and several other people. You know, I was not a nice kid. I was not, you know, I was a military kid. I. I used. I solved my problems with force. Right. And so let's just say I'm. I was not a model. Don't think I went into the Swiss Guards because of my piety or faith or anything. I was a rough. I was a rough guy. And so for him, for example, to approach me, it reminds me of this story in the Bible of, like, saying, I have Loved you first. Right. And so for, for a young person to show up and I, I consciously do this. I love them first. I, my, my group, my, my focus in my, I, I have huge auditorium. I have 230 people. I have a huge auditorium. My people are in the back row because the front they're going to be all set. They're going to find their mentors and the professors who focus on them. But if I, when I was a kid I was in the back row. I know exactly. Those are my people. This is my tribe. I will reach them the way you reach them. They're sitting back there because of a low self esteem actually because they had bad experience and I can identify with them because I've been there. So what I'm doing and you're saying how do they react? First of all stop talking about the new generations and how they're bad and everything. They could have said this about us randy. Right in the 70s, 80s they could have said it about us. So I'm not, I'm not going there. I love this about my grandpa by the way who never went that way who always said I and John Paul would always tell me I can't wait to see the great things you're going to do with your life. Do you know how much confidence, you know what I mean? And so I'm using this a lot with, with the students and so I teach the intro class into business. First class in business as a freshman and I show up and I say I welcome you to the business school as studying business. It's a bit like learning to swim. Let's get in the pool. But I'm not going to teach you how to swim on dry land. Let's get in the water. From today on you're going to be a business owner. Let's start a business. And then every one of these 230 students starts a business and I have the confidence first. And they're like I don't even know where to start. I said no, God has already given you the talents. I just need you to now look. And then the rest will find your talents. You employ these talents and they do usually an online thing or something but, but some people do physical things. I have here somebody actually this student makes, makes bow ties. I just bought this. We had the big trade show this week and so they start 230 businesses and all I'm really doing Randy is I'm giving them permission to go find their talents and other directed. Right.

I love that.

And they, and then I say and now that you have those, for the rest of the four years, we're going to teach you the skills to create value with your talents for others. This way you know what you're going to study and you have a direction. And we call this class the vocation of business because this is the calling that's built into you. We're not just physically different, we're inside different. And we're beautifully made, wonderfully made with these talents. And it's my joy to work with the students to find it like to, to work with them, to find these talents and then to show them how they now first go in and then become other director and say how may I help you? And they react with awe and wonder, just like I did when JP to show that to me.

I love that. And just to piggyback on that and maybe go a little further, a lot of the people watching our show are going to be professionals, some young professionals, some more senior professionals. And if they've got an interest in this topic, if they want to go deeper, how might you reach them? I love the story about reaching the students, but someone picking up your book, for instance, what you know, how will they engage with it and how will they move forward? What is your take on that?

So I have different levels. You know, I purposely. The second book I made it the Art of Principled Entrepreneurship. Because when you write a book. My first book is called the Pope and the CEO. It's not exactly inclusive. It doesn't. It turns some people off, let's say. But you know, my book is actually not primarily Catholic. It is spiritual, but it is on an individual level. It's not dogmatic. You can read this as a non Catholic, not a problem. So out of that I turn it. I now do the Art of Principled Entrepreneurship. Because all I'm really insisting on and showing you is that there is a God and that you're wonderfully made and through your work you can actually become more like God because you imitate God, the creator. Right. And so I have a couple of things. I have a website called andreas-whitmer.com which is the website of my book. And there I have all kinds of videos on there that explain each one of these pillars, as I call them, on the. But I'm. But in this new book I'm not going very spiritual. Although I would encourage you to see happiness is the alignment of your physical and spiritual reality. And that opens up a horizon that is amazing. So I do encourage you to do this. And so in order to show you that and just approach it without prejudice. Out of this book to Pope and the CEO, I created a eight part video series. It's free@siokacenter.com and I created this eight part video series in which I just give you the underlying understanding, the metaphysical understanding of what your work means, what your leadership in your company means and what the, what the outcome can be of work together. When 1 and 1 is 3 and 4 and 5. The, the, the amazing part that, that works, that creates like I, I, I talked about the loaves of fishes. So that's an eight part video series. And then we do all kinds of, I mean of course I, I give talks and go around and I, I do things. But we teach of course at the Catholic University. And then we also developed a program around this very same thing for high schools. We call it the seed program c d e program.com I think. And that's a free program that high schools can adopt and just expose people earlier to it. Like by the time they come to college, it's in graduate school, it's too late. Right. You need to in a sense absorb this early to really embrace it. There is an opportunity again that once you're in management, either you begin management or you're a while in management, you're starting to see an aspect of our economy, an aspect of humanity, that you start to understand that there is more to life than what meets the eye. That's a time again to engage with us with this message and I think you get a lot out of it.

So Andres, I want to build on that a little bit. So the title of the book is the Art of Principled Entrepreneurship. Principled is an important word. You talked earlier about the importance around character education and you're so excited and we can feel your energy and passion for unlocking all these innate gifts inside people. And entrepreneurship is such a freeing vocation because you can do essentially anything with those gifts and you can really break a lot of, a lot of barriers and bring some newness and greatness into the world. That said, because there is so much freedom, it can be challenging to stay on the light side of character and not the dark side of character. So let's go down that path a little bit because if our students are successful, then they're going to have some of those dangers in front of them. How. So here's a long setup to my question, Andreas. How do we stay principled as leaders?

Yeah. So let me tell you a brief story that the way I wrote this book is actually it Was I could have never written the book without Covid. You know, I owe something positive to Covid, even though it was a horrible thing and so many people were hurt by it. When Covid broke out and I was actually stuck in Rome for a while, I think Randy knows about it. And I called my friend. So I wanted to write this book, and I actually already had written it, but it was horrible. And so I just threw the whole thing away like it was too, too theoretical. I need to tell somebody's story. You can tell. I'm a storyteller. So I called my friend artsioka, who is one of the. He is an old friend of mine from the past. He's the benefactor of the center I run because, long story, it's in the book. I called Art and I said, art, I need to tell a story with this book. Otherwise this is like a sandstorm. Nobody's going to find this interesting. And I want to write about you as the red thread to it. And he told me, well, I have good news and bad news. And I said, well, give me the bad news first. And he says, my cancer has come back. I have three months to live. And I say, okay, what's the good news? And he says, I have no appointments until then. This is it. But I'm going back and I'll come back to this. This is his attitude in life, right? And he says, let's do it. And I said, okay, Art, I'm going to record you. I can finish the book after you're dead, right? And so this, this talk about finality and death was in our conversation the whole time. And he didn't just live three months. He lived for two years. He died. He passed away. Exactly. It's going to be two years. This coming, this in. In like 10 days. And he. He died two days before the book went to print. And one of the things he wanted to really impress on me, there's, of course, both of us in there. I am responsible for the book and everything, but I have hundreds of hours of recordings of Art, who is the founder and the creator of the second largest wine company in the world, is like an entrepreneur like you wouldn't believe. This guy read the book. It's amazing. What this guy did and what he kept telling me is he said everybody should think like an entrepreneur. And to him, an entrepreneur is not a founder of a company. He was not the founder of his company. He was a management buyout. He was hired, and then he bought out the company. To him, entrepreneurship is a mindset. It's a way you look at the world. It's like a set of glasses. And he says, there's two kinds of glasses in the world. There are harvester classes and creator glasses. And he says, I'm in the agricultural business. I grow wine and vineyards and everything. If I would run my vineyard from the perspective of always a harvester, my vineyard will be dead in seven years. It's the ag cycle, he says, but I don't focus exclusively on the harvest. Actually, what I focus on most is the dormancy of the vines. And when the vines don't need to be harvested, the harvesting is the easy part. The reason why the vineyard is successful is the other part, when you think nothing is going on, which is actually producing the harvest. And so he says, business is the same way, humanity is the same way, and leadership is the same way. You have to have a creator mindset rather than a harvester mindset. What I'm adding to this is, of course, the reason why you ought to have a creator mindset is, guess what? You were made in the image and likeness of the creator, and that makes it, you know, it's the why. It's the. It's the why behind you. It's a mental model that makes the difference in how you interpret what's going on in front of you. And to me, that's the deepest lesson of this book. Entrepreneurship is about creator. Being the creator and looking always. That doesn't mean you never harvest, but even the harvesting is done with the creating in mind. This is a constant cycle. And at heart, you're a creator, not a harvester.

I've got another one. And then you want to go after me.

Sure, Absolutely.

Okay, so, Andres, I want to take this idea then. So let's say we've got this creator mindset. We're. We're devoted, we're committed.

We're.

We're living our life that way. It's become a vocation. We've started to build a business. Now we get this word that begins with the letter C. Culture.

Yeah.

And you've got a chapter in there around culture eating strategy for breakfast, which we've all heard that adage before.

Yeah.

But I think it's important to get your thoughts on and your insights on how do you take that spirit that's inside you? Because that's another way we can think about culture. It's a spirit that lives inside you. And now we're going to spread that to others. So they're. They're thinking the same way. They're Looking through the same lenses, they, they're moving through life the same way. That's a little trickier. So how do we do that?

Culture is what you do when nobody's looking. It's like the actual thing you're doing. I'm working with a person, with a company right now and they are trying to put values into their culture and say we are, you know, they want to do ethical, moral, you know, life giving, positive stuff in the marketplace. And what I work with him is to do the survey sort of in the company, to have the discussion of saying if we want to be that, what needs to change. And a very courageous salesperson came up to this CEO and said, look, you're sending me two messages. My paycheck is determined by how many of these things I'm selling. That's what you're putting in front of me. But then you're telling me on top of that, something that's actually contradictory, that I need to be transparent and honest and respect the competition and this and that. But you know what? You're throwing me into a life or death match here, which is a zero sum game. Either I make it or I don't. So which one is it? This is a very courageous person. And that's very true. What we need to do, if we want culture, we need to back up culture in a seat in the company, that the culture has consequences. And I'll give you the example of art and I'm not saying I work with this person, I'm saying maybe in your industry you don't do it like this. I just want to give you an example. Art called this and uses the same word as one of John Paul's favorite words was radical. A radical change. It comes from a root. Radical comes from root. A change in the roots which bears fruit. A radical change. He was in the retail business, in the distribution, retail business of wine. And he said there are so many things being sold for the wrong reasons and pushing a truck out the door to meet the quota and everything. He got rid of all sales incentives. No quotas, no sales, no commission. Everybody said, you're going to kill the company because the best salespeople aren't coming to you anymore. And he says, no, no, no, it's not the best. The best salespeople who want to make a quick buck are not coming to me. The ones are coming to me is because I'm giving them a seven year prospect, which is, by the way, the agricultural cycle. So they will have the whole piece and I will put my Incentives for them on the seven year cycle. And they will make plenty of money because they're smart, they're thinking long term. Yes, the short term guy goes away, but that's not my athlete. My athlete is the other one. And so he says if you hoist the flag of your top value, you will attract those people. And so he was the only vendor, the only producer like this who, who went, went without these. And he became the second largest wine company in the world. And then when he actually retired, the company fully went and they brought back sales incentives. Within three years, they pulled it away again. Now the company doesn't use it anymore. So it's just an example. But turn that into your company. What's the top value? And look, we all worth ship something. There is one value you value more than others. It's the one you give the most worth to. What has the most worth for you. That's what you worth ship. And you can make that money or another value. We do this, you're already doing this because you're not having slave labor. It'll be very profitable. If it's just about money, it's very profitable. You don't have child labor or you know what I mean? Like we're already doing. We already have some values that are above the pure profitability. Now let's also put like profound values on there that go beyond the law. You know, in a way you're putting the law as the top, but let me put value on the top. What you will find out in the long run in your life and in your company is that prosperity, true prosperity follows from putting values first. And in the long run, that is actually what unfolds the human genius and creates true prosperity.

I love that. Andreas, the book has been out for a while now, at least a year, correct? Has it been a year yet?

You're over a year, year and a half.

So I'm curious. You've obviously had enough time speaking, you know, talking about the book, getting feedback on the book. What are some of your favorite or maybe your. Or what is your favorite story about how people have taken in the work and received it? You probably are getting all kinds of, you know, thoughts on how they're applying it, what it means to them. But are there any that really kind of bubble to the surface that have been your favorites in terms of how people are receiving the work?

One of the favorites is when I see. So all of this was. I didn't come up with this. This is almost, you know, these are gifts from, from, from my Time as a strategy consultant, and my time and a lot of gifts from the tradition of the, of Christianity, like, this is stuff that is just there for everybody. And I just basically used this to use through my lens to see what I'm seeing as an entrepreneur, as a business leader, and what I'm seeing. I just got a message the other day from somebody saying, hey, he was sick. And somehow my book was one of the things that was lying around. And he read it, and then he sent me this message saying that he works in the prison system. And he said, you know, I'm. Now I'm going to use this lens you're giving me and these pillars in the prison system. Of course, this is not. This is a completely different topic. But he said, once you ring the bell that you rang, I can't unring it. And now I'm seeing my environment in that environment with that knowledge, like, with that recognition. And especially he said that that whole idea of everybody's vocation is to be. To become fully themselves and to. To in a way magnify the talents and the potential that was given to them. He says changes the way that he sees the inmates. Right. You. You see them. You and I, I would promote that. We. We need to see humanity with hope, not with despair. And, and to me, that's like, bingo. If I wrote the book just for this guy, I would have done it.

Yes, I love that. One more thing that I'll turn it over to Brandon. I just find it interesting as I, as I read the book and I went back through and was just looking at some notes that I'd written. This book is as much a recipe for living as it is a recipe for how you think about business. There are so many applications in here to marriage, to parenting, to serving others. I mean, it's very clear. This is. This is basically a roadmap to you will do well when you do good. And I love that. So more of a commentary than anything. Was that always your intention?

It. It is a natural result of bringing in a way, bringing the faith and bringing godliness into the picture. Because you can't. God isn't going to work in one area of your life and not the other one. It's. It's an integral approach to life. Right. And I'm. I often witness to my students that I try to live for a while in my business, like in a compartmentalized way. And I'm telling you what happens, because I've experienced it myself, is if you are one person to some people and another Person to other people. In other words, that's. In clinical terms, that's called schizophrenia. And it does not lead to good things. It makes you depressed, depleted, and. And sad. Not. It's the opposite of happiness. And so I try to bring together this integrated life, which very quickly, once you change your path, brings out. I like to call it flourishing because it's a more profound happiness. It doesn't mean that things are not difficult. Look, I. I've struggled with profitability in a company. I took a company over that had three months to live, like, with cash, and we. We eventually turn it around. But you know what the stress of that is? I mean, you don't know how to pay people in the. In the evening. But I'm telling you, once you change this, the joy you're getting from it, even through the painful aspect of it, the joy you're getting from dealing with people as a full human person in front of you, rather than just making an overall judgment of saying you are no longer profitable, you're out of here. But to actually deal with the humanity of the person is difficult. I know, but it is the path to flourishing, both for yours and for your. And for your employees and for your company.

Andre, what I love about our conversation and the book is it's really an inspiring call, all this. This is an inspiring call. And you're doing such a masterful job of painting the picture of when you arrive in that place, what it feels like, there's flourishing. You've got a sense of vocation, you're doing what you're called to do. And I think there's. There's this beginning state and there's. There's that end state of flourishing. And in the middle, somewhere in there is courage.

Yeah.

So I would love for you to comment a little bit on courage, because even when you give the example of that leader saying, we're going to put our values up on the flagpole up high, and the right people are going to be attracted, that's an act of courage. We're going to. Because as you've learned in the strategy world, part of strategy is knowing what to say no to. We can't be all things to all people. So I'd be curious your thoughts on this.

I would like it to be noted that as a person who ran a strategy, I ran one of Michael Porter's strategy companies. Okay. I know business strategy, and I'm using the sentence culture. Eat strategy for breakfast. Okay. Because. Meaning how you put. How you interpret what's going on in front of you and what you're trying to do trumps everything because that comes out in. You know, the proof is in the pudding. You want to talk about courage in leadership in companies, the highest value ought to be love. Now I'm opening that up because it sounds trite. John Paul II used to say, you know, in English, love is an impoverished word because you love your dog, you love pretzels, and you love your wife. And now I'm asking you love your employees and love your customers. It's just a tri. It's a. It's a. It's a heavy word that's carrying too many things in. In other languages, specifically in Italian is how I heard him say it in Italian. You have a much better and more conducive way to say this. In Italian, I love you means ti amo. Amos, ti amo. But you wouldn't say that. I wouldn't say to you tiamo, because that's reserved for an intimate relationship. And so that has its own term for people like us who are friends and we use. The Italians use the term Tivolio Bene. T volio Benedict. I want your good. It's like goodwill, right? I want your good. And that's how they say I love you to somebody that is not family or erotic. You know, it's not your wife or your husband or so. And so this tivoglio Bene, I want you who's listening to this to make that your top value. Friendship, love. Because again, we're supposed to imitate God. And this is the God of love. God is love. It's not. God is not a very loving being. God is love. You can't go wrong with this. So if you make that your highest value, I ask you this. Tivolio Bene. Can you look at your customers and say, tivolio Bene, and deliver what is the good you wish for this customer? Are you giving them goods that are truly good? Do you provide services for them that truly serve in the Tivolio Beni sensei, Are you bringing good to them? To find that good for your employees, ask can you say tivoglio bene, or are you just using them? The human person should never be used as a means to an end. The end for them is the bene the good. What is the end you want for your employees? Have these kinds of discussions, and I promise you that's courageous. I challenge you. If you take the courage and do this, you will reap flourishing. I can't say to you that your business is going to flourish or not. Because quite frankly, maybe your business sucks. So I never judge when my students have a business. I never judge the idea, because what do I know? I'm not going to judge your idea. But you know what? Businesses do not have a right to life. Businesses are an accumulation of an opportunity to pursue something, and maybe that was a bad idea. Don't hold on to the business. There's only people. No companies. Companies are a constellation of something that constantly changes. At the end of the day, there's only you and me and your employee and you and you wanting to good for each other. For each other. Tivolio Bani. If you do that honestly, you will not just have a flourishing business here and there, but you will have a flourishing career and a flourishing life.

So we normally ask this final question. Andres, I almost feel like you in some ways have answered it, but I'm going to ask it anyway. What's one practical tip you have for listeners who are listening to this today? Something they can start doing if they're in a leadership role that would help them be more effective as leaders with their teams and their customers starting tomorrow. What? What's the starting place?

Yeah, there's a. I thought about this. There's a million things. And to the volubility, maybe there is a way introduce new vocabulary to say, I mean, and you see as a leader, you're representing and paying for the sins of every other leader or manager they've ever had. So don't think it's you you're representing. This is like as a Catholic, if I go to somebody and I say, oh, I'm Catholic, you know what I'm paying for? For 2000 years of Catholic history and every mistake any Catholic has ever done, that's what you're doing as a leader. So you pay for Bernie Madoff, you pay for the young woman there with Theranos and so on, that whole suspicion and everybody who's ever cheated them or been mean to them as a manager. So what I'd like you to do is to go in and start to work to change that image. And that is up to you to build that trust. So start to ask them, how can I help you? Flourish. You could say in a more concrete way, what can I do to make your job easier to do or make your job more effective? Start to ask what you can do rather than them and make the path to their flourishing straight in front of them. That's your job. Your job is not to tell them what to do. Your job is make them flourish. Try to write a List of every one of your direct reports and write down what their talents are. God given talents. If you can't do this, go talk to them and talk to everybody around them of what are your talents and I can up you on them, which is what I'm developing with my students. Give me their non talents because those are things. Look, my non talents, I suck at numbers. Don't give me the accounting. I can pass at the minimum level. But you don't want to invest in my accounting skills because the ROI is nil. It's like a fraction. But if you invest in my speaking skills, in my overall pattern skills, you get high return on investment because that's my talent. I know how to express. And I want people to have a conversation where you give true, where your true humility is to say the truth when it's actually true. And so that means that you can go to your employees and say, you know what I really think you're brilliant at is this. And then I'm going to hire somebody who's brilliant at what your non talent is. And once you create a company that matches talents and non talents, you start to have this combination of 1 and 1 is 10. And that's something you can start tomorrow tonight by writing the list of the talents and non talents and then tomorrow by going to work with talk to your people in your company and starting to say how can I make you more effective at what you're doing? And then not just write it down but do something about it. And if this person of course thinks that it's the wrong effectiveness, then you can work with them to correct that.

I would suggest this narrow focus you just outlined is your next book. I will buy it.

And I can't disagree with my colleague next to me.

I'm hugely thankful to you both, but especially you, Randy. You're a mentor of mine and you've helped me a lot in getting to this stage and I'm just humbled that you're interested in what I'm doing.

So Andres, to that end, if people want to learn more about you or buy a copy of this book or your first book or any other books you may have on the horizon, where can they go?

So the books are available at all the, you know, Amazon and all these places. I can be easily found@Andreas-Widmer.com for the art of principle entrepreneurship. I can easily be found at cua. So Catholic University of America, cua. Edu. I'm the only Widmer there. And so if you put that in I'm very easily reachable. I also love to connect with people on LinkedIn. I don't do Facebook and Instagram myself, so I'm there, it's there, but I'm not really the one who does it. But LinkedIn is me, so. Because that's my favorite platform, because I don't want to see people's lunch. I want to see what people do for work. And so on LinkedIn, if people connect with me, I'd be grateful. And I try to post my thoughts and what I'm doing on there.

Great.

Andres. This was an absolute gift. Thank you so much for your time and insights. We both really appreciate it.

Thank you so much. We're very grateful.

Praise God. My pleasure.

Randy, wasn't that a great conversation?

It's. It's one of the best shows I think I've ever, just ever experienced. And I just love his eloquence. I love his passion. I was impressed.

And you can't help but feel inspired.

Yes.

At the end. So I'm going to offer a couple my takeaways, just two. And then I want you to offer two of yours. Absolutely. There's plenty more, of course, folks, than just four. But two things I took away. He really made that opening point a big point, a meta point, but an important one that good and evil go through people. And so he talked about, you know, companies really, you know, it's their collection of people. Probably products can be good, but it's really about what goes through us as people and we have that choice. And so towards the end of the conversation, I love that beautiful phrase in Italian that I'm about to butcher. Tivoli bene, that this idea that, you know, what good can I do for another person? What good? I wish good for you. It's a version of I love you, but it's one that we can do in less than intimate relationships. And I love that he challenged us to think, think through that lens in every interaction, whether it's with our employees or our customers, to make sure we're always giving that good or that love for others. So, Randy, how about you? What were some of your takeaways?

Not that dissimilar, but I really love the mindset that he promotes in this discussion, but also in the book, that there is an intimate marriage and integration between doing well and doing good. You know, we often think about business as profitability, the bottom line, got to make money. Got to make money. Yes. But he marries in our minds through this discussion, how to do well, do good and do well, at the same time, I love that. I think the other thing that really stuck with me was he really challenged leaders to change how leaders are perceived. And the way that he did it was he said, your mindset as a leader should be, I want my people to flourish. You talked about the Italian phrase and what that means, but he said, I want my people to flourish. Therefore, I need to understand their talents and their non talents, and I need to help them really expand and grow their talents. Maybe I need to help them minimize the energy they spend on their non talents, But I loved how he looked through the lens of the leader and said, your mission is to help your people flourish. Two takeaways for me, and I've loved.

Your two as well. Beautiful. And there was a lot more. Folks, I know you might have had some that were different for you. So regardless of what your takeaway was, as with all of our leadership Foundry shows, the challenge for you is what can you start doing today that will help you and your teams flourish tomorrow?