[EP 22] Cultivating Love for Success in Business & Life with Steve Farber

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Hello, I'm Jack Kimfield and welcome to this week's podcast where today we're going to be diving into the heart of leadership with a very special guest, Steve Farber. Now, Steve is not just a fellow member of the Transformational Leadership Council and a good friend, but also a visionary in the world of leadership who's been changing the game with his groundbreaking concepts. His books, including Greater Than Yourself and Love is Just Damn Good Business, have inspired countless leaders to rethink what it means to lead with impact and heart. And Steve's work emphasizes the transformative power of expanding yourself, giving of yourself, and replicating your values and skills in others. A true testament to the greater than yourself philosophy. And if you've ever wondered how love fits into the business equation, as you'll hear and see today, Steve's insights on how genuine care and connection can drive success are both inspiring and truly eye opening. Now today we're going to explore these powerful ideas and discuss how they're not just theories, but practical approaches that anybody can apply to lead more fulfilling and successful lives. So whether you're leading a team, running a business, or just looking to amplify your own personal growth, you're in the right place.

But.

But before we jump into the discussion, I just want to read you some other information about Steve from his bio because it's really so impressive. You can blush Steve if you want to while I read all this.

I'm working on it.

Okay, good. It says ranked on Inc. S global top 50 leadership and management Experts list. Steve Farber is a Wall Street Journal in USA Today best selling author, founder and CEO of the Extreme Leadership Institute. His first book, the Radical A Personal Lesson in Extreme Leadership was named one of the 100 best business books of all time. His fourth book, Love is Just Damn Good Business was listed by Book Authority, is one of the top business strategy books of 2020. And his most recent book, which I only found out about when I was doing research for this intro, Twisted Business Lessons from My Life in Rock and Roll, co written rather by J.J. french, the founder, manager and guitarist of the iconic rock band Twisted Sister. I did not know that about you, Steve. And Steve, I did know about this, has been writing songs and playing guitar for 50 years and it doesn't take much to convince him to play during one of his keynote speeches which he delivers frequently in the US and around the world. Welcome Steve. Thanks for joining us and I'm really thankful for sharing your wisdom with us today. Yeah, great. Glad to have you here. Thank you so Much as I'm sure you had to confront when you wrote your first book, you're talking about Love is damn just good business. Not wrote your first book, but when you first wrote that book, many people probably thought love in business is an oxymoron. I don't get it. Why don't you think it's an oxymoron?

This all started many years ago, actually. So my first book, which is called the Radical Leap, came out in its first edition in 2004, so 20 years ago this year, as of this recording. And LEAP is, is an acronym that stands for Love, Energy, Audacity and Proof. So I've been on my soapbox about love being the foundation of business and great leadership for a couple of decades. And with Love is Just Damn Good Business, which came out just a few years ago, it's the first time I actually put it explicitly on the COVID Right? So it's like if you go to my website, it doesn't say the love guy, it says extreme leadership. So I've been kind of using this approach where people engage with me, whether it's through a speech or they read a book or whatever, engage with me because they're interested in leadership and business. But then they soon discover as they walk down that path, this whole idea about cultivating love is really the whole thing. So by putting it on the COVID it kind of maybe acted as a little bit more of a filter for what kind of people would pick up that book to begin with. Because if you react to that idea, that explicit idea in a negative way, you're probably more likely to not crack that book in the first place. So, interestingly enough, and maybe, maybe you'd find this surprising, Jack. I don't know. I found it surprising in the beginning. I get very little resistance to this idea. I really do. There's some resistance at first. At first blush, because the word love has a lot of connotations to it. It's got a lot of baggage associated with it, and we interpret it in lots of different ways. So at first blush is like, yeah, it's going to be California, touchy feely, hoo, ha crap. But if you just dig a little bit deeper and it takes a nanosecond to do it, every business person worth his or her salt understands that our competitive advantage as a business comes from creating an experience that our customers will love. We all agree with that. So why not embrace it and really delve into what that means and what that looks like? It is not an oxymoron. Except for Those people that treat their businesses as nothing more than a way to, than a way to make as much money as possible and not caring about the cost on other people. But I don't think that's what the business world overall is really like.

So we need.

And you see, by the way, I am short answer challenged.

Just, just fine. I like long answers. I like, I give long answers as well. I might even ask you a long question. We'll see what happens. Anyway, so when you talk about love in general, love in the workplace, how do you, how do you define. Someone says, how do you define love? What are you referring to?

Yeah, great question. I don't, I don't. I mean, I mean, I simply don't. And there's lots of ways we, we could define it. And actually in, in love is just am good business. I do a little bit of defining it, you know, around the different kinds of love, like, you know, the, you know, Agape and, and Eros and the ways that we've talked about it before. There's romantic love, there's brotherly love, there's divine love, all that. But in a business context, it's more like we know it when we see it. I mean, I know when I have an experience with a company or with a brand that I'm going to respond in an emotional way. I'm going to say, that place was great. I love it. Or I'll never go there again. And people will rarely ask me, well, you know, define love. They'll say, define, describe your experience. Tell me what that looked like. So that's what I'm more interested in. What should that look like to create that experience? So it's kind of like if I'm having a conversation with my wife and she says, honey, do you love me? And I say to her, define love. That's not good. That's not going to go very well for, for me. So instead, the work that I do is really about challenging leaders and the organizations that they lead to put everything through a very simple but really challenging filter, which is what should love look like in the way that we do business? If we want our customers to love what we do for them, what would would we do differently? And the logic for all of this is it has to go beyond simply leaving it at the customer experience. Because if we say, you know, all we gotta do is tell our customers that we love them. Well, that's easy, right? We print the banners and the buttons and we say we love our customers. We've seen that forever. But if we really want to create that experience. This is where it gets really challenging, is we have to create an environment otherwise known as a culture that people love working in. And as a leader, I can't create that kind of a culture unless I love the business, the people that work with me, and for me, the mission of the company, the customer, myself first. So it all gets very personal very quickly. But really, again, what it comes down to is if that were really true, if we're not just saying it, we're not just printing it on a poster, what would we do differently? And when you start to get into that, that's where it becomes challenging. And you very quickly see that this is not touchy feely, woo woo hoo ha stuff. It's hard work.

I went to your website last night and I looked at some of the talks you gave and some of the excerpts from it that you put up on your website. And I, I walked away thinking about, it's about how much do you care? In other words, if I care for you and I give a darn about how you experience me in our relationship and I really want to be of service to you, then what would that do? You know, you see these bracelets? You know, what would Jesus do? What would love do? And I, you know, you ask, okay, here's the situation and how would I do differently if I was really coming from a place of caring and loving?

Right.

I want you. You work with a company that I think was down in Florida. It was looked like they were doing containers and so forth. That culture shifted totally after losing I think three or four CEOs in a very short period of time. Can you talk about that experience? Because I think that really explains it in a way that really is understandable for people.

Sure. To date, one of my all time favorite examples for a number of reasons. So the company is called Trailer Bridge. They're based in Jacksonville, Florida. Their history is, and I mean this in the nicest of ways, they were terrible. It was by their own admission, it was a toxic place. They had gone bankrupt. As you said, they burned through number of CEOs in a short number of years. Turnover was really high, customer scores were terrible. And you know, they were in bankruptcy. So it meant that, you know, economically they weren't doing so well either. And one of the senior executives who had been recruited kind of late in the game was tapped to be their next CEO. His name is Mitch Luciano. And the board came to him and said, we'd like you to turn this place around. And he said, no, so he didn't want it. And he didn't want, for one thing, he didn't want the title of CEO because there was such a terrible history just built around that title. So the deal that he made with the board was, I'll do it, but call me president. Don't call me CEO. I'll earn the title of CEO from the people that work there. And you gotta let me do it my way, because I'm a love guy. Now, he didn't say that. He didn't say that to the board, but that's what he meant, right? So think about how radical this was at the time. He understood. And I'm happy to say that what inspired him in all this were my books. He'd been a practitioner of the radical leap for quite some time, which is why he was an effective leader to begin with. Again, according to him, not according to me. So he said, I've got to create a different environment here, one in which our people will love coming to work, which is a radical concept because they hated the place, right? So here's what he did. He put everything through the filter that we were just talking about. What would we do differently in order to facilitate that experience that people would love? So he looked at everything from systems, policies, procedures, to the actual physical environment of their main office, which at the time was cubicle city, floor to ceiling cubicles. So he said, all right, if people are going to love it here, that means they have to get to know each other. And at the time, this was a company of like 120 people. Okay? So it was a long standing policy there that people had to wear name tags. So the first thing Mitch did was two things simultaneously. He lowered the heights of the cubicles and created a big open space so people could actually look at each other instead of having to send each other emails to communicate. And he abolished the name tags. Pretty simple. We're 120 people, we should know each other's names. And of course, that meant that him, as the president at the time, needed to learn everybody's names himself. He had to create that example. So then he did other things too. Like he created an experience in the break room where people would want to hang out. So put in a foosball table, ping pong table, popcorn machine, and then he started bringing in a food truck every Thursday and fed lunch to the whole company. So people would gather together and eat together once a week. Now, again, the reason for all of that was to foster relationship and connection among the people that worked there. So they would love coming to work. And then they looked at their, at their policies and procedures. For example, you could say pretty confidently that at the time their customers did not love them. Whatever the polar opposite of that is, that's what their customers experienced. The only reason they, they would use trailer bridge is because they were the cheapest. And the reason they were the cheapest was because that was the only way they can get customers. Right. It's pretty obvious. We've seen that happen. So they looked at their policies. They had a long standing policy that said that. So just to back up for a second, they ship barges of containers of stuff from primarily from mainland US to Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, maybe a couple other places. Right. So their long standing policy was unless a barge was at least 75% full, they would not sail. Why? Because they would lose money at 75% or less. So a bottom line balance sheet decision says, well, obviously we're not going to sail if we're going to lose money. But then they said, well, what does that look like from the customer's point of view? So I'm a customer. I'm shipping a car to my family in Puerto Rico and I'm told that it's going to arrive at X date. It doesn't. I call trailer bridge and I say, where's the car? They say, well, it's still sitting in the harbor. Why is it still sitting in the harbor? Because we haven't sold enough space yet. What? So then the question that he asked was if we loved our customers, what would we do? And the answer then was really simple. We would sail. And that's what they started doing. And you know, a little bit of a gulp factor at first because that meant they lost money on this shipment or that shipment. But pretty soon, that among hundreds of other things, no exaggeration, started to change the experience of the customer to I love doing business with them. So fast forward, okay, I mean, I'll just kind of cut to the chase on this. And the story is on, it's ongoing. They've been voted number one best place to work in Jacksonville several years in a row. They made more money in a recent three year period than they did in the previous 25 years of the company combined. They've won all kinds of awards, customer awards and best place to work in various categories. They spend zero money on recruiters because everybody wants to work there now because their best recruiters are the people that work there already. And just one, it's just a whole litany of wonderful things. And if you Ask Mitch, which I recommend anybody do if they have the chance, what the key was. He will tell you that it's. He wanted to create a place of love. Customers love it, the people love working there. And none of that would have worked unless Mitch loved the place, the future they create, the people there himself first.

That's great.

One of many.

So let's, let's take it down to a smaller level. So it's a big company, 120 employees. Tell us the story about Joe the pizza guy. I love this one.

Yeah. So Joe Giros was a. Was a pizza delivery guy for a company called Marco's Pizza. And Marco's now is, you know, very fast growing pizza delivery company. At the time, it was still kind of making a name for itself, and Joe lived in Ohio and was just delivering pizzas. And if you were to ask Joe at that time if he saw himself delivering pizzas for the rest of his life, he would have told you no. But if you asked him a different question, which is essentially, what do you think about your customers that you're delivering pizzas to? He would have told you that he loved them. So again, the question is, Jack, we've been talking about. So what does that look like? That's easy to say. What does it look like? Or what did it look like for him? So here's what he would do. So if he were to arrive with a steaming hot pizza at a customer's house, and he's walking up the walkway, and if he noticed that the light bulb in the porch of this customer was burned out, he would change the light bulb, change the light bulb, deliver the pizza. And he lives in Ohio, and Ohio is a place that they, they have this thing it's called. It's called winter. And in, in winter, oftentimes you have, you know, this stuff called snow. So if he was delivering a pizza, you know, after a snowstorm or during a snowstorm, and he walk up to a customer's house and he noticed that the walkway was covered over in snow, what do you think he would do? Shovel the wok, shovel the walk, deliver the pizza, Shovel the walk, change the light bulb, deliver the pizza. And again, if you asked him, why the hell are you doing that? Because it doesn't say it in the employee manual, right? It doesn't say shovel, walk, change light bulb. It just says, deliver pizza and whatever else. And he would have said, because that's what you do when you love somebody. You take care of them. You go out of your way to make life better for them. So what started to happen, no surprise, was that pretty soon at that Marco's store, people would call to order a pizza, and they would also order, Joe, I'd like a pepperoni, please. Can you have Joe deliver it? So this caught the attention of the owner. This is a franchise operation, right? The owner was so impressed by Joe that he ultimately made Joe a partner in the store. And now Joe owns. At last count, last time I talked to him, I think it was four Marco's stores, very mostly, you know, in the Midwest, but also I know he opened at least one, maybe more in Florida. And. And it's just. Just goes on and on. I mean, it's a very simple thing. So what I learned from that, and the reason I love telling that story is for one thing, Joe is the real deal. He's just a beautiful, caring, loving human being. But also the lesson in that is nobody is exempt from this, right? I mean, anybody can challenge themselves to that question. How can I show the people that I work with, work for, do business with, that I love them? We ask the question all the time, or at least we should, or at least it's not an unusual question to ask that of our, you know, spouse, child, significant other, friends. You know, we always want to show them that we love them, if indeed we do, obviously, the ideal stages that we do. But then you put it in a business context, and suddenly it's weird, it's ridiculous. Which is why I wrote a book called Love Is Just Damn Good Business for a very simple reason. It's because love is just damn good business.

There you go. So I'm going to ask you to tell another story, and then I'm going to tell you one from my experience about this, and then we'll move on maybe to talk about some other topics. Tell us about Rosella the bank teller.

If I had. If I had a great Boston accent, which I don't, it would be Rosella the Teller. Rosella the Teller. Yeah. So I was. I was out in. In. In Boston to give a speech for the senior management team of a company at the time was called Sovereign Bank. Now it's part of Santander. And I lived in San Diego at the time. Sovereign bank was a regional bank in the Northeast. I'd never heard of them. So, you know, I talked to the senior couple of the senior executives ahead of time to learn a little bit about the company as we do when we're preparing for this kind of a thing, you know, But I'd never actually been in a sovereign bank, so I Got out to Boston a couple of days early, and I had some personal business that required getting some documents notarized. So I went to the concierge of the hotel I was staying at, and I said, you know, I need a notary. And he said, well, you know, there's. Across the street from the hotel, there's a sovereign bank branch. I'm pretty sure they have a notary there. So I thought, well, that's convenient, because now I can go get my personal business done, and I could do a little reconnaissance work, you know, do a little ghost customer thing, because I was going to be speaking to the big bosses of the company the next day. So I walked across the street, and it was a small branch. There were two tellers sitting side by side. I walked up to teller number one, asked for a notary. She pointed to teller number two. She said, well, that would be Rosella over here. She is a teller, but she's also a fine notary. So I said, thank you. So I stepped over to Rosella's desk, and we started doing the usual notary stuff. Now, what you need to understand, Jack, is that I didn't say anything to Rosella about who I was, what I was doing there. You know, my philosophy of leadership. I mean, it was just. I didn't say that I was going to be talking to all the bosses of her company across the street the next day at that hotel. I didn't tell her any of that. I just. It was just signing and stamping, and she was lovely, you know, and it was all small talk. And after she stamped the last stamp, I asked her the same question that I've asked every notary that I've ever used. Pretty simple. What do I owe you? This is really funny to me now, because my wife, during COVID went out and got her notary license. So my wife is now a notary as well. And she gets paid for it, right? So I said, what do I owe you? And she said, oh, no, you don't owe me anything. This is just a service that we provide to our customers. And I said, well, that's very nice, Rosella, but, you know, I'm not a customer. And she said, oh, that's all right. Maybe you will be someday. I thought, that's pretty damn good. So then I thought, okay, this lovely person. I bet I can learn a little bit about the culture here. So still kind of incognito. I said, hey, Rosella, would you mind telling me, how do you like working here at sovereign bank? And without any hesitation, she said, I love it. Just like that. It's a direct quote. I love it. And then she started. She kind of lit up, you know, and then she started telling me about that other bank that she worked for and how terrible that place was. But this place was so different because people took care of each other. And then. And then she started telling me about her customers, again, unsolicited, right? Her customers are so. I love my customers. And she loved her customers because they just had that kind of, you know, relationship with each other. And sometimes her customers would stop in just to say hello, even when they had no business to do, because as the kind of relationship they had. And she's going on and on like this. And I'm writing notes, right? Because it's just like, I could use this stuff. And I'm writing notes on the back of one of these documents. So one of the things she said to me, and this is a quote, is I love my customers, and I get great pleasure from serving them, so I'm happy. So she was telling me about how serving them makes her happy, and when she's happy, she serves them better. And then it creates this relationship, and then they stop in to say hello. This beautiful kind of virtuous cycle. And it was so beautiful. So at one point, I looked up at her, I said, hey, Rosella. Because now I'm thinking about the speech that I'm doing the next day, right? And I'm writing all these notes. I said, hey, Rosella, would you mind if I quoted you on this? And she said, would you like me to notarize it? And I said, why? Why, yes, I would. So she took out her business card, flipped it over on the blank side, wrote the words I love my customers across the top of the card, stamped it with her notary stamp, and gave it to me. And I ran across the street. And by the way, that was the time where I told her who I was and what I was doing. I said, I'm going to share this with these people. So I ran across the street, took a picture of it with my iPhone, stuck it in my PowerPoint deck, and the next day, I showed that to the senior team. And I said, folks, look what you have going on right across the street. This is Rosella Vitella. This is. This is. She's amazing. And the big boss was so blown away by that that he ran across the street to say thank you to Rosella. You can imagine how that blew her mind. And on it goes. So, again, really, really simple, but a huge impact Right. So I love that example because it shows how Rosella's experience in working there automatically reflects on the experience that she creates for her customers. And that's the point. So for anybody in a leadership role to think that you're going to get away with treating people like shit and then saying, now go be nice to the customer, it's absurd.

So.

So it's. But it's. But it's got to be real, right? So it's not about appearing to care, appearing to love. You've got to cultivate that in yourself. And frankly, some people have no interest in it. And that's cool. They're not my clients, they're not my readers. So the people that I get inspired by are the people that already get this. They just haven't really acted on it because they thought maybe there was something wrong with them, with themselves. And so I'm here to disabuse you of that notion if you feel that way.

There you go. I love it. I want to share a story with you. I'm working on a book with Raymond Aaron called the Power of Wow. How do you create wow experiences for your customers? And we were interviewing the head of culture for the Ritz Carlton hotels. The Ritz Carlton have a great reputation for being a great place. They take care of people. And one of the things we learned is that everybody at the Ritz Carlton who works there has the ability to make a decision without referring to a boss, up to a certain amount of money, depending on what their job is, to fix something, to make it right, to do whatever it is. You know, let's say you're there and your alarm didn't go off and you missed your flight. And so now the guy that's like at the desk can make a decision to buy you a new flight, pay for it, make your next day at the Risk Garden for free. You know, ask you, how did you lose money on that? Can we reimburse, you know, whatever it might be? So they have that sense of, I'm, I'm supported, I'm acknowledged, I'm empowered. So my favorite story I learned that day was it happened the Grand Caymans, that this little boy left his pet. Not pet, but a stuffed giraffe. Think about a six year old boy, three year old boy, whatever. And he left it at the hotel. And they get to the airport and the parents notice it. The boy becomes inconsolable. And they call the hotel and say, you know, boy has lost his giraffe. And they said, well, let us go look for it. They go look for it, they find it, and they say, let me talk to your son. And they say, you know, the giraffe had a name. I'm going to make it up. Donnie, let's say, you know, we have Donnie. Donnie said he was having so much fun, he didn't want to go home yet. He wanted to stay for two more days. He wanted to go to the spa, he wanted to play golf, he wanted to get a massage, whatever. So then they took this damn giraffe to the spa, put cucumbers over its eyes and showed it getting massage. Showed him outside in the sun on the, the tee with a golf cart, you know, whatever. And then they took all these pictures and printed them, put them in an album along with the, the, the, the, the, the, the animal, sent it to them in the. In, in. I think they were from Ontario. And then sent something else for his brother so his brother wouldn't feel left out. Now that family, guess where they go for vacation every year? They go to that same damn hotel. Another story was this boy was there and he was sad. And this woman, woman who works there said, you look very sad. He says, yeah, my, my, my. My pet goldfish died. And what was his name? And I told him, they go on, the family goes out, they come back later, and there's a goldfish bowl in the room with a little sign that says, hi, my name is Lester. I was a cousin of your goldfish, and he asked me to take care of you while you're here. You know, it just goes on and on with these kind of stories of loving care because they felt loved in their job, they love their job. They were empowered to do whatever it took to make it right. And that's why, you know, they have such a great retention, as you said, and people want to come back. And I think if we do ask the question, you know, what would love do? Or what would a loving way to do this be? Then you get an answer that's a different answer than like, how can we save money, you know, by not shipping the boat because it's only 3 a 1/4 full yet, so. Absolutely.

Those are great. Those are great stories. And what I love about them is, is first of all, it's a reflection of the culture of the place, right? So, so instead of just saying you're, you're hoogie boogie boogie, you're empowered. Don't screw it up. And before you make any decisions, check with me, which is what empowerment looks like in a lot of places. They're Given clear parameters around it, and then saying. And then told. Use your imagination. So those are very imaginative, very creative things. And you can. And you can imagine. I can imagine how much fun they had in doing that. Right. So there's a feedback loop that gets created because now the employees want to do more of that. And of course, the customer wants to experience that more. And of course, you know, they tell everybody on the face of the earth that they can. And in the days of social media, that's a lot of people that you can tell. But the other thing is that it's a great story of a renowned brand. This is the kind of thing that can be done on some level. Think of Joe the pizza delivery guy, by anybody in any context. So it starts with us. So it's kind of easy to sit back and say, well, yeah, they can do that there, because that's the Ritz Carlton. But. But at my company, they never let me. Well, you know, you don't. You don't really know how much you can do until you. Until you try. So you don't have to wait for the culture to change. That's how you change the culture, is by setting a different example from wherever you are, if you're. If you're in a company like that. Beautiful stories.

You know, it's interesting. I actually did a keynote talk for one of the Marco's pizza conventions, and I met a guy there who owns, I think, eight different Marcos places. And I asked him why he got into the pizza business, and I said, do you love pizza? He says, no. I said, well, why'd you do it? He said, I love growing people. All my employees are usually like high school kids, college kids, and I get an opportunity to teach them the success principles because he ends up taking my trainings and to help mold their character and get them to believe in themselves and so forth. So you can imagine how much these kids are serving the customers because he's there. Serving. Serving them.

I'm really glad you said that, because you were. You reminded me of something.

Oh, go ahead.

That you're. The person you're talking about is Brian Stevens. Brian Stevens was the president of Marcos, and that's where I first met them, was I came in to do a keynote the year after you had been there.

Ah, interesting.

Brian went to your program before I met him. Right. And. And he had, you know, he had read the Radical Leap years before. That's why he invited me. So. So that this. This whole connection, when I got to know Brian, that whole connection with you and And, and, and him. And then he got involved, you know, with. With the work that we were doing.

Yeah.

And. And really, it all. It all comes from that same place, that deep level of love and care for seeing people grow.

Yeah. And that's. That's such a powerful thing. When people get that, then, you know, we treat other people how we're treated. We parent the way we got parented. You know, it's the kind of thing that happens. So get involved with that. Let's dive into your other book for a minute. Greater Than Yourself. And I believe you introduced three key tenets for Greater Than Yourself philosophy. So talk about these ideas, these core principles, if you will, and what each of them are and maybe how we could apply them in our lives, our management.

Sure, yeah. Thank you. So Greater Than Yourself is. Is one very specific, very powerful application of cultivating love. It is an act of love, a very deep act of love. And it came from an observation that I made after being out there and working with so many different companies over so many years that I noticed, and I'm certainly not the only person to notice this, but it became really clear to me that the greatest leaders that I'd met became that way. And I'm talking about in a business context. I'm not talking about historical leaders, people that I knew, people that I met face to face. The greatest leaders became the greatest leaders by making others greater than themselves. The greatest leaders. Never. They just maybe, I'm not going to say never, Very, very rarely would shine the spotlight on themselves or take credit for this success. They would shine it on other people. And they had these reputations for boosting people and for creating superstar after superstar. So I got really curious about that and said, well, what is it exactly that these people do? Because it's easy to say, well, they're mentors. They're great mentors. Which is true. They are. They're great mentors. But there was something more personal about it. So in Greater Than Yourself, it's my attempt to codify that a little bit. So there are three tenets that emerge from it. Expand yourself. Give yourself and replicate. So the first thing, expand yourself is in. You know, it has a lot to do with the business that you're in, Jack. I mean, it's about development, personal development, self development. So expanding your knowledge, expanding your capacity, expanding your network, expanding your heart, expanding your ability. So we're told over and over again that in order to be successful, we need to do that. This is pretty obvious stuff for us nowadays. The nuance is that in the context of greater than yourself, all of that is true. But the more I expand myself, the more ability, the greater capacity I have to give that away, to give myself to other people. So I'm expanding myself not simply for my own advancement, but expanding myself so that I can facilitate the advancement of others. So that's expand yourself and then give yourself. So giving yourself. I like to think of it, the analogy is like, think of yourself as a philanthropist, right? So the word philanthropy, the origin of it, the way I understand it, it comes from the Greek, which means to love mankind. So philanthropy is literally an act of love. And the way that we usually think of philanthropy, it's like a rich person giving money to a person or a cause that they believe in. In this context, it's a person with the right heart to, to give their knowledge, their network, their experience, their wisdom to another person to boost them up. So it's not an act that's exclusive to rich people with so called means. This is a practice that's open to all of us. So I'm expanding myself and I'm giving myself, and then I'm doing that in a way where I'm encouraging. The third tenet is called replicate yourself, which is a little bit of a misnomer. So it's replicating the process, it's replicating the values in that person that you're lifting up. So to put it all into context, what I like to do is instead of thinking about it as a philosophical aspiration, why don't we make it really specific? So what I encourage people to do is to start with one person. Because, listen, can I claim to be the perfect model of GTY as I call it for short, that I live my life striving to give myself freely to every person that I know to raise them up? No, I mean, I aspire to it. I would like to think that someday I could achieve such a thing. And I'm immersed in this stuff. So I figure if it's a challenge for me, it's a challenge for most of us. So why not start with one person? One person that you can take on as your, I like to call it, GTY project. I know some people don't like being called a project. I get it. But you know, just for the sake of, for the sake of specificity and clarity, one person you could take on as your. As your GTY project, where your intent is to raise that person up above yourself and start with that person and expand yourself so that you can give more to that person. You're not doing it for them. You're there in whatever capacity you could be there, and you're doing this with no strings attached. There's no quid pro quo here, except one thing, and that is you're asking them to do the same for somebody else. It's the old pay it forward idea. So that's the replicate portion of it. And I've seen many people, not just positional leaders in companies, but, you know, people of all, in all positions and stripes and contexts who practice this very thing. They just didn't have a name for it. Right. Again, I didn't make this stuff up. It's based on observation. So all I'm doing is putting a framework around it. But I have yet to see a company that has really embraced this to its core so that you can look at. At the people that work there and say, they all do this for each other. So that's my aspiration, is to see at least one company that does that. Because, you know, we always talk about changing the world, right? And it's become a bit of a cliche, but for all the right reasons, it becomes a cliche because we all want it. We all want it. We all recognize the world needs changing for the better. Is the implication education. But a lot of us, you know, we count ourselves out because we don't think we're. We have the capacity to do that. Well, you do have the capacity to do that one person at a time, and that. That stuff adds up. So I think this is a way that we can. We can change the capital W world by focusing on the people around us that we can. We can lift up. And that is a really deep, pure, messy, at times powerful act of love.

I remember seeing a quote once says, if you're looking for a great leader, don't ask how many followers they have. Ask how many leaders they've created.

Exactly.

And so I think that you're right. You're onto that. And I think the thing that happens for a lot of people, we think about changing the world. We look around the world. The world's in such chaos at the moment, with wars and potential. Wars. Wars and economic challenges and political divides. And, you know, on and on it goes. And you think about, you know, ecological sustainability and so forth, and the world seems so big, and it seems like kind of, how can I change the world? But you can change one person. You can change your division, you can change your company. As you proved with the company down in Florida, it takes time, takes work, takes commitment, takes understanding. Takes personal development on your own self because you got to change yourself first. It always is the thing you talk about. And yet we can do that. It's the old, you know, think global act local. And so like, you know, I think we use the fact that it's so big as an excuse. You know, I can't change Trump, I can't change Biden, I can't change Washington, I can't change Texas, Texas or whatever, but I can change myself. I can change the way I interact with, you know, like coming from love. I can change the way we compensate people policies, all the policies you talked about with the group in Florida and so forth. And I think when we, it's a cop out at some level to say it's too big, you can't do it. It gives us the excuse of not working on it, where we can work on it, where we have a sphere of influence. And I think what you've seen and I've seen is that as you do it locally, you do it with one person, you do with 10 people, you do it a hundred. And what starts to happen is your sphere of influence gets bigger. And you and I get called to work with larger groups, bigger companies, speak at bigger conferences, have our books be read by more people, and little by little, that sphere of influence enlargens. But it starts with one person.

Yes. You know, I'd love to get your, your thoughts on this. You said something that ironically ends up being an excuse for some people as to why they, they won't do gty. And that's the statement, you need to work on yourself first. And I think you and I would both agree that that's not literally true because a lot of the working on yourself happens concurrently. Right. So, so what I, what I mean by, by the people use that as an excuse. Excuse. It's something like, well, I can't really take somebody on as my GTY project because I haven't, I haven't gotten there myself. I haven't done it. I'm still working on myself. And I think that's. If that were true, none of us would ever help anybody because we all have further to go no matter where we are. Right? So, so it's, it's really challenging that, that assumption that, okay, I'll do that, but as soon as I get my act together. Right. But when I achieve that thing that I've been trying to achieve.

Yeah, it's another.

I've seen, I've seen literally middle school students take on other students as their GTY projects. And just, you know, they don't get caught up in that. Well, I'm not there yet. They just think I can help and I want to help. That's the impulse. That's the love impulse. And by taking on somebody as a GTY project, it is such a huge growth opportunity for the person, you know, who's giving to the. To their gty.

Yeah. As you know, I used to do a lot of work in education. We're always looking at how can we help people develop their self esteem, their self confidence, their competency, their success, faster, more efficiently, more effectively. And one of the things we found, and I actually forget the name of it right now, but when. When you have older kids tutoring younger kids, so the eighth graders are tutoring the seventh graders, the seventh graders are tutoring the sixth graders, two things occur. One is the teaching's better because a seventh grader has a better understanding of what a sixth grader is confronted with and why they don't understand than a teacher who majored in math, graduated in math in college, and those calculus, you know, and then the eighth grader, who's cooter in the seventh grader, they're growing in their self esteem because they're making a difference in the life of someone else. Their life has significance. They matter. And we used to say that, you know, self esteem, which was my expertise for a long time, was feeling lovable and worthy of love, feeling capable and feeling significant and significant meant you mattered to someone else. And when you're tutoring someone, mentoring somebody, coaching them, whatever you want to call it, you matter. And a lot of kids and adults don't feel like they matter. And so the idea of what you know, the greater than yourself, I think it's just a wonderful concept. You've captured a principle with a short phrase and then some steps that can really make a huge difference. And I think you're right.

Thank you. Can I give you an example you just reminded me of? So when I said middle schoolers, I wasn't speaking generically. I'm thinking of something specific. And what you just described is, is this. This was right around, you know, when the book had just had just come out. And its first edition, which I think GTY came out, first edition was 2009. So it's been a while. And there was a school, a middle school in. In the St. Louis area. The principal at the time was a woman named Jill Schulen. And. And she really just glommed on to this GTY approach. So at the beginning of the year, she brought all of her faculty together and she challenged them with this GTY approach. She challenged them to take on a GTY project. And she didn't put, you know, strict boundaries around it. So they could choose another teacher, they could choose a parent in the community, they could choose a kid in their class. And some of them opted out, but a lot of them really took this on, and several of the teachers chose students, chose a student in one of their classes as their GTY project. Now, what's interesting about that, a lot of things are. But what strikes me is any good teacher does this for all their students, right? That's what teachers do. Their whole job is to create people that will go on to accomplish extraordinary things. You don't see a good 8th grade teacher who teaches math, let's say, and they see one of their kids grow up to win the Nobel Prize in science one day. That teacher's not sitting there going, I can't believe that kid won the Nobel Prize. And I'm still teaching eighth graders. I'm a failure. That's what success means to them, right? Having said that, these teachers, some of these teachers identified a student in their class that just kind of had. There was just something extra there, either some extra need or some extra spark. There's something. But because of the dynamics of the classroom, they didn't. It was all done, like guerrilla style. They didn't say anything. They didn't say, hey, kid, you're my GTY project. Hey, kids, this kid's my GTY project. They didn't do that. It was all. They just did something a little different. So there's. This went on for the entire school year. So at the end of the year, they realized, oh, well, there's that replicate piece of this. So they had to tell the kids and challenge them to do the same thing, right? So they brought all the kids together. At the end of the year, the teachers that had GTY projects, they invited their GTY projects with pizza. I don't think it was Marco's pizza, but anyway, the pizza, because that's what gets them there. And they did the big reveal. This is, you know, that we had a little special relationship. Here's what was going on. And they challenged these kids to take on GTY projects of their own. And one of the kids didn't make it to the end of the year because he. The good news was that his mom, who was unemployed, got a job. The bad news was that it was in another state. So halfway through the year, this kid was an eighth Grader. So he's halfway through his eighth grade year. He formed this really deep bond with his teacher, Mr. Woodmore. So this kid, I can't remember the guy's name, the kid's name right now, but I remember the teacher, Mr. Woodmore, when he found out that he was moving, he went through all the separation anxiety and everything. So Mr. Woodmore talked him through it and said, listen, I am going to. To be here for you. Even though, you know, across the miles, you've got this, because, you know, you can imagine new kid in a new town, middle of the eighth grade year. I mean, it's the most awkward year, most awkward. It's just like the worst thing you could possibly imagine for a kid at that age. But he realized. Mr. Woodmore realized that he had to. Before he left, he had to tell him about what their relationship was. So he explained to him about gty. So this kid arrives at his new town halfway through the eighth grade year. First thing he does was take on a sixth grader as his GTY project. And I don't know, but it seems to me that if 8th graders can do this, there's not a whole hell of a lot of excuses that we can come up with ourselves around. I'm not there yet. I can't do it. I. Everybody can, as long as the desire is there and the willingness is there.

That's a beautiful story. I love it. And that's really. You know, I've often thought, you know, you see these programs that these kids grow up and they go to prison. Cost us like 35,000 a year to keep someone in prison. And all it took was one adult caring about that kid. You could actually pay someone to care about one kid and keep out of prison, you know, and you'd save a lot of money. Not that that'll probably ever happen, but just the idea that one person caring about you, paying attention to you, wanting you to succeed, and having that intention, just holding that intention, and then whatever flows out of that, which is obviously going to be loving, is so transformative, so transformational.

I think the great news and all the great news in all of this is that it's really simple. I mean, it really is simple stuff. We just need to pay attention to it and challenge ourselves to put it into practice instead of saying all the right words. The words are they're super easy. The process itself is a little more challenging and a little messy at times. And it's an endeavor that I think all of us should take up, myself included, more often.

Very Good. Very good. Well, I wish we had more time. We've run out. Tell people how to get a hold of you, where your. Your website, anything else you'd like them to know about what you do and what you offer, and then we'll wrap this up.

Sure. Thank you. So stevefarber.com is a place to find me. There is. I put out a daily audio message that you can opt in too, at the website or you can go to DailyAudioMessage.com I get a lot of great feedback on that, I'm happy to say. Comes out Monday through Friday into your. Directly into your inbox. So if you don't like it, unsubscribe. But I think you'll like it. And also I'm starting to put a little bit more of my music online. So check out. If you're on Facebook, you check me out at Steve Farber, but there's. You can also check out Steve Farber music and see what I'm up to there.

I will tell you every conference I go to because Steve's a member of a couple different associations I belong to. He's always singing and playing the guitar and being part of a group or MCing and singing songs along with it and writing songs and doing more of that now. And it's amazing music. So I really encourage you to check that out as well. It's.

Thank you, Jack.

Quite uplifting.

It's a real, real pleasure. Thanks for inviting me.

My pleasure. Thank you. And thanks to you watching or listening for joining us as well. And please make sure you tune in next time when I'll be engaged in conversation with another transformational thought leader that can help you live a happier, healthier, more successful and more fulfilling life. Until then, remember to do what Steve talked about. Maybe take on a project and don't tell them at first, but start to be concerned about their growth and development. Care more and I think what you'll find. We always find this because we did a whole book once called Chicken Soup at a Volunteer Soul that the people that do that always report back. They get so much more than they think they gave in the process. So it's an opportunity to be of service not only to the person, but to yourself. So see you next time. Till then, be well.