Business Love is Looking After People, Part One
Volume 11, Number 37
Issue 533
A great friend and client of mine who owns a successful business was at my office the other day and used the excuse "that he wears his heart on his sleeve" to explain why he had been on the "losing" end of a business deal. But, I didn't think that he had been on the losing end at all because I consider the chief engine for his overall success to be the strength of that heart of his. He might not have gotten all of the monetary reward that he could have (this time), but he reaped wonderful benefits on a personal level in the transaction that we were professionally worrying with. I think that he knew this, but he was just a little worried that I would wonder why he would walk away from financial wealth and choose relationship wealth. As he gets to know me better, he'll know that I'll usually take the relationship reward myself, too.
The most successful businesses that I have ever seen have had love as a critical component of their managerial strategy. Since love is so multifaceted, there are so many different ways that it can be used, including those involved with entrepreneurialism. More business people need to recognize that love is the most powerful tool to use in the business world. At a basic level, it is a simple "love what you do." At a slightly more advanced level, it is a "love your clients as if they were family and business will flock to you" like I wrote about in last week's issue.
At a very advanced level, it involves not being afraid to let love shine through as a key managerial strategy to let all those around your company feel that they are "looked after" and cherished, whether they are customers or employees. If we wanted to write an entrepreneurial thesaurus, I would think that "love" would also mean "loyalty," especially the type that I recently wrote about in an issue that referenced Bill Clinton and James Carville.
Love also means commitment, patience, willingness to serve and the fact that you want to make the world a better place by doing something risky without having to worry about failure because, by spiritual definition, love forgives failure.
Using love in the business world means looking after your employees and your customers. If an entrepreneur uses it gently and in a caring fashion, using judgment, more happiness, greater self-esteem and more rewards will come. Remember, there are two ways to be rich: rich in money and rich in relationships and the best way to be rich is to be filthy wealthy in both. I've found that if you have business relationships where the key emphasis is not on money, those relationships lead to those that do grow money, which gives more time to dedicate to relationships that do not pay their dividends in money, which for some strange reason brings even more relationships that are financially profitable.
An entrepreneurial use of love isn't learned by any special training; you must do it by trial and error, just like you did when you were a teenager and you wanted a relationship, but, obviously, this will be an adult application of platonic love. You'll know what type of love to give each employee, each associate, each client--go by the platinum rule, not the golden rule. Where the golden rule is "treat others like you would like to be treated yourself," the platinum rule is a higher standard. The platinum rule is "treat others the way they need to be treated." By trying your best to figure out how to use love in every business venture and at what level, you'll make mistakes, but you will get better and better at it and, remember, failure doesn't matter, because love is forgiving. It will be bloody and you will get your feelings hurt, but you will get better and better at using love in the business world and you will became very enriched by the results.
David B. Robinson, CPA
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