566 | Why Prioritizing Happiness Drives Business Success

Chris LoCurto:
Processes, meetings and communication are essential for productivity. But is happiness a missing ingredient in your team that is coming up next?

Welcome to the Chris LoCurto show where we discuss leadership and life and discover that business is what you do, not who you are.

Welcome to the show, folks, I hope you're having a fabulous day, wherever you are, I hope you're having a happy day.

We're getting into something today. And I again, I think if you've, if you've been following me long enough, you know that we don't just hit surface level stuff. So the topic today of discussing happiness isn't saying, you know, oh, you just need to be happy, everything's going to be great. If you're happy. That's not what we're talking about, we're talking about the effect of happiness on your team.

Now, as we get into this, one of the things that I want to point out, we do talk a ton of, you know, soft skills that go along with the hard skills. So as we're teaching things like accountability, and, and or teaching, you know, great communication and culture, all these different aspects of here's things that you do, here's things that you plug in, here's things that you accomplish, there's something that's important, and that is the soft skills, the leading people aspects, we teach on both hard skills and soft skills, those hard skills of of implementing amazing things like incredible accountability, or incredible communication, great culture, all of this stuff that we teach on, here's how to go accomplish this, the, the HR aspects, you know, hiring, firing, all that kind of stuff.

But the soft skills are just as important those aspects of leading people, right, of helping people to become better versions of themselves, and understanding why people struggle with stuff, all that kind of fun stuff when it comes to soft skills. And today, we're kind of talking about another soft skill. But as I go into this, what I need you to hear me say is, you cannot shift your business to nothing but soft skills, you still have to have the tactical hand to hand combat, you still have to have the stuff that makes the money happen, right? If you will do that, and add this in, then it's amazing how much it blesses and benefits your business.
So we're talking about happiness today. Because it is it's something that people just think, oh, that's just an emotional thing that you're trying to get us to do or be Chris. And that's just ridiculous. We just need to sell more stuff. Well, I can promise you something: If you have an environment where people are choosing to be happy, then what you will discover is you'll get more sales, you'll get more more clients service, you'll get more things taken care of. So just follow me as I go through this.

Okay, so the two things that I want to hit there on the very front side is soft skills must be applied, along with the hard skills as well, the tactical stuff as well. Second thing is, is we're not just talking about being happy now, what does it mean to be happy? You have to actually choose happiness. You have to choose it. But here's an interesting thing. Happiness can be somewhat contagious. Well, Chris, you just said it was a choice. Yes. But interestingly enough, you know, the old saying misery loves company. If I'm around miserable people, if I'm around, you know, gossip, and backstabbing, and infighting, and all that kind of crap, then it is going to affect my mood, and it's gonna affect my choices. It makes it very difficult to choose to be happy in an environment like that, right?

But if I'm around other people who are being happy, if I'm around other people who are being positive, then an incredible thing happens. I start deciding I want to be as well. I want to experience what they're experiencing. So as we get into this, a glaring thing that needs to be understood is that people don't usually leave jobs. They don't usually leave jobs. More than not people leave bad cultures. Bad leaders, bad bosses, right? Bad teams.

Usually people don't just leave a job because they don't love the job. Now yes, people do leave a job. But when you're in a culture, that is a great culture, it sure makes it a heck of a lot easier to hang on to that J-O-B because you're around people that you enjoy to be around. You're in a culture that you enjoy right now. That's not what we're looking for. That's not our goal. We don't want people to hang on to a job.

You know, we want people to move on to what's best for them. But the point I'm making is usually people don't leave good cultures. They leave bad ones. They leave bad leaders. So what does that mean for you? Well, if you're a leader listening to this, if you're a leader, a business owner, even a team member, doesn't matter who you are a parent, a child does everybody listening to this, you need to understand something, your attitude, your mood, the way that you communicate, is going to affect the people around you.

So if we're talking about this in a leadership situation, what you need to know is that how you act, how your attitude is how you treat people, if you're choosing to be happy, if you're choosing to be miserable, those things are gonna affect the people around you. I'll give you a couple of examples. You know, years and years or decades ago, I worked with a guy, phenomenal heart, one of the biggest hearts, just incredible guy. But in his day to day when that clock turned and it was time to do work, he was not very personable, his head was down. If you walked past him in the hallway, his head would be down. If you said hi to him, he probably didn't say anything to you.

Because he was busy. And he wanted people to know that he was busy. But the moment the end of the day came, this was a guy who wanted to spend time and just, you know, be with people and have fun. And very often I mean, he's the kind of guy who would take 10 people out to dinner and buy everybody's dinner or you know, take them on trips and things like that just, again, a great guy, great attitude when the clock was off right when he was off the clock. But when he was on the clock, it was as if he was sending a message to everybody to say, Listen, I'm super busy right now, please don't bother me now. To talk to him and express that to him.

I remember at one point, it was kind of a shocker that he didn't think that that's what he was portraying. He just knew that he had things that he had to get done. And, and sometimes some people like to talk and he didn't have time for talking yet time to get things done. That was it. So it was kind of surprising to a person who loved people that he was coming off as somebody who didn't want to interact, didn't want to talk to his team didn't want to talk to people didn't want to answer questions, any of that kind of stuff. So that's that's one situation that was kind of surprising. But it was, you know, unknown to the leader at the time, a situation that we had in our business and I it's not even a situation, it's just one instance.

But years and years ago, we had a young gal who I just absolutely love that worked with us phenomenal person, just, you know, great attitude, did a great job. And I was close to this young girl, just because, you know, she kind of looked at me as like a dad. And one day she came in, and I was about to do an event. And my head was down, I was sitting at a table. And my head was down focused on what I had to get done before clients walked in the door. And we never had a bad communication with this young lady never had any issues or anything like that.

But all of a sudden, I noticed that she had this attitude, this strong attitude, and I'm over there being busy. I'm trying to get things done before clients walk in the door. I've only got I think I had at that time, 15 minutes to knock out what I had to knock out. And so at one point, she says to me, what did I do wrong?

And I looked up from my work and I was like, I just took a okay. What.. What do you mean? What did you do? What did I must have? Obviously, I did something wrong? Why did you obviously do something wrong? Because you're not talking to me? What? What makes you think that I'm not talking to you? Because you haven't said good morning.

And in that moment, I just started to really assess the situation, assess the words that she's using, obviously, this the type of stuff that we would do in like a Next-Level Life and start thinking through instead of responding to what's being said or being defensive or any of that I instead I started to think through what is she talking about? Specifically, she's talking about being ignored, that it appears as though she's done something wrong, and I'm ignoring her because I haven't said good morning. So my first question after her last comment was who used to hold love back from you when you were younger?

And she said my grandmother did. She said whenever I did something wrong or ever, you know, whenever she was disappointed in me, she always held love back and I said "and this situation this morning appears as though I'm holding love back from you." And she goes "well. Yeah." And I said "okay, well let's change the perspective. So you've walked in the door. I did not say good morning. I'm sorry about that. Good morning. So glad you're here. But let me change the perspective for you. I'm actually I only have 15 minutes to get something done before our clients walk in. And I was trying to knock that out before I spent time talking with anybody.

So my goal was to talk to people after I get this done." And you could just see her face just "oh my gosh, I can't believe that. I just did that. I can't believe that I just responded that way." Here's the deal. It wasn't anything that she was ever used to experiencing from me. Why? Because once you walked in the door, I was happy. I greeted her I did things now, is that an acceptable situation? Of course, it's not an acceptable situation. That's not okay to put that on me. That's not okay to respond that way. But the point is, is that my what appeared to be her perspective of my attitude, set hers. Now should that happen? Of course, not technically, no. But we're all dealing with this thing called a Root System. You've heard us talk about Root Systems and Next-Level Lives. And if you've not been through, get your butt in, it will change your life, I can tell you that.

We all have this Root System that we come from, we all have these influences and things that have affected us when we were younger, growing up, or currently, whatever's going on. That causes us to have certain perceptions, that causes us to see things through the lens that we currently have in her life, the lens that she grew up with is if she did anything wrong, or is disappointing in any way, then ignoring her was her consequence. That said, you've done something wrong, and I'm upset with you. So when she saw it with somebody else that she cared about, she immediately assumed that it meant the same thing. Now, what does all of this have to do with happiness? I'm giving you two examples of how people perceive a person because of how they interact with that person. Oh, geez, Chris, what are you saying? I've got to walk around with a smile on my face all the time. I've got to be happy 24/7 Just so people don't do that? No, that's not what I'm saying.

What I am saying is what happens when people experience you as being happy.

What happens when people experience you as not being miserable, not being too busy for them? Not being so focused on what you're doing that they never get any of your attention whatsoever? Right? Well, I'm not paying them for my attention. Right. Okay. Let's go back to the very beginning of what I talked about, how much could it impact your business success? If your culture was one that had happiness in it?

How much could it impact you? How much could impact your team? How much could impact your clients? How much could it impact your sales?

Nobody wants to feel miserable. Nobody wants to be in a miserable invite. Well, most people nowadays, I think there's a lot of people are actually wanting to be in a miserable environment. Most people most good people don't want to be in a miserable environments. They don't want to be treated like an employee, they don't want to be taken advantage of. They don't want to be treated as though you don't have time for them. And, and you have no desire to help them to become better, stronger, anything, what they would like, is a great culture. What they would like is to be in a place where they feel like people are happy and they're choosing to be happy, and they're choosing to be there. These are the things that people are looking for. And what happens when they do experience that one big word, productivity.

Let me say that one word again, productivity.

So I want you to ask yourself, How much stuff do you get done? When you feel really good about yourself? When you feel happy when you're around other people who are not miserable and complaining and gossiping and whining? Or not talking at all? Because it appears as though they've got some problem or some stick up there, you know, took us how much do you get done when you're in a quality environment?

How much more productive and I do know I'm talking to a lot of folks that follow this show you you're gonna get things done no matter what. But think about it. It's like the multiple horses pulling the cart, right? You put one horse on a cart, it pulls 800 pounds. You put two horses on a cart working in tandem working as a team working together and they pull 3200 pounds.

It's not twice the amount is four times. So if you can understand that you do better when you're happy. When you do better when you experience a good culture. Think about your team. How much more will they get done?How much better work will they do? How much will your clients experience this? I think all of us have stories of having walked into a retail store or a client that the atmosphere is just fun, it's happy. It's it's a positive atmosphere, and you walk out going, Man, I feel better about myself.

15:09
Let's think of the converse. How many times have you ever walked into a coffee shop, and everybody just seems miserable. And it's like, Y'all need more coffee in you, because everybody's miserable. Nobody seems happy. Nobody wants to talk to anybody, you know, versus the coffee shop, you walk in, and you're just being taken care of. And, and, and people are, are glad that you're actually there, and that you're putting money into their business and, and helping to pay their people. Think of the differences of what you experience. Now take a look at your culture.

So all of this, every bit of this starts with us, the leaders, if we as leaders cannot put this in place, how in the world, we think anybody else is going to drive it in our culture. Now, you might have some folks that are happy and always happy and have great attitudes on your team. But that one or two people doesn't necessarily drive your whole team's culture, especially if from top down, it appears that you are unhappy. So once again, all of this starts with us, the leader.

So let's kind of talk about a few things in the culture that can make, you know happiness occur in business. First thing we need to talk about is what's acceptable and what's not. And this is something you're going to have to come up with on your own. But I will tell you, for me, things that are unacceptable in my business, I do not accept that attitudes. I don't mind having a problem. I don't mind having a situation. I don't mind struggling through a failure. There's a whole lot that is acceptable when it comes to an attitude that's built around something that got messed up, or, you know, a bad experience or, or, but here's what I do not accept in my business, and neither does my leadership team.

We don't accept people walking around being pissy you know what I mean? Having bad attitudes, just acting like they got to stick up there took us and maybe they have a reason, but they're not doing anything about it. They're just continuing to be negative, they're just continuing to be rude. They're just continuing to be unhappy. So understand the difference between acceptable and unacceptable. It is completely acceptable for you to experience a failure to you experience a bad situation and have a bad attitude in that moment.

Take a couple of minutes and have that bad attitude, then get over it. Move on, fix this, do something about it and move on. What is not acceptable is to walk around half a day or all day or a couple of days or all week long, and have a bad attitude. Well, but Chris, you don't know what's going on in their personal life? You're absolutely correct. I don't. So here's what we do. We ask you, Hey, what's going on? Hey, what's happening? Hey, what are you experiencing? Hey, it appears as though you're unhappy, or you have a bad attitude. Or I'll ask all these questions to try and gain quality perspective and give the person the opportunity to fill in that information for me. Right. And sometimes once in a great while, what you'll discover is that the person isn't they don't have a bad attitude. They're just tired or, you know, something's going on many times. What when I'm tired. It's so funny because my life there's times I get quiet.

And, you know, I am not a 99 I I'm not somebody who runs on people all the time. I'm an 88. So I'm a 67 I. So there's times I definitely can, you know, be in there and mix it up and network with people. And then there's times I'm just tired, and I'm super quiet. And in the early days of our marriage, my wife would be like, what's wrong? What's going on? What did I do? And I'm like, What makes you think you did anything? Well, because you're not talking. I'm tired.

I get quiet when I'm tired. It doesn't mean that I have a bad attitude. Right? So sometimes what you may discover is that the person you're asking these questions, maybe they're just tired. Maybe there's something that's legitimately it's not a bad attitude. It just appears to be, but that's what perspective gathering is for. Right is to find out what's going on. Now, I will tell you, if somebody is having a really bad attitude, and it's going on for a bit, we're going to have a discussion.

We're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about how it's affecting other people, how it's affecting the culture, how it can affect clients that they see and how it could affect the vendor if they walk in the door. The last thing I want is somebody sitting around sulking. And everybody's looking at our culture going, what the heck is going on with this culture? Because what does it tell the team members? Wow, apparently we can bring all of our emotional junk to work and just sit there in Waller in our own, you know, mess. Nope, that's unacceptable.

It doesn't mean that you can't have a bad day, it doesn't mean that you can't have something bad going on. And again, obviously, if there's certain heavy duty personal stuff going on, then there's exceptions. But we can talk through them, we can put things in place, we can fix these things. So the first thing you've got to decide is, and then I'm just giving you one example. You've got to look through your culture and ask what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. It is absolutely unacceptable for my team to treat clients badly, period. It's unacceptable.

Now, let me tell you the flip side of that, it is absolutely unacceptable for any of my clients to treat my team badly. We have no problem in firing a client if they want to be a jerk. We don't we don't need that. We don't want that. We don't accept that, right. And we've come dang close on a couple, we've actually had to fire a couple of clients. But we've had some clients that we've come really close to and praise God, they realize what they were doing and change themselves around. It's been it's been used since we've had to experience that. But that's not what we're looking for in this business. I'm sorry, if you want to treat people like crap, go to somebody else. This isn't the place for you. Right?

So I don't allow my team to do it. But I also don't allow our clients to do it either. I don't allow our vendors to do it. Right, we can ship the vendor in a heartbeat. That's not a problem. We want a culture of treat people well take care of people, right? So you've got to go through and decide what's acceptable and what's not. Then what does it look like to protect that culture? Okay? If you allow it to continue, what are you communicating to everybody?

I can't tell you how many times people have this one team member who is, you know, knocking it out of the park in an area. And because they are they're allowed to have horrible attitudes. They're allowed to treat people like crap, you know, you might unusually, it tends to be around the area of sales, right? You might have a great salesperson, who is just, you know, putting the numbers on the board. But nobody likes this person. Nobody likes to be around this person. Nobody wants to help this person out because they're a colossal jerk.

But the owner or leader or leaders, look at the numbers and go, well, we can't sacrifice those numbers. They're doing so good with those numbers. Nope. I'm make it abundantly clear, I will replace anybody. I will replace anybody, if they are tanking my culture. No amount of money that somebody's putting up on the board is worth dealing with that crap.

Think about what it's doing to the other team members who hate it. Think of how much productivity so you've got somebody who's putting you know, a million dollars on the board. And you've got five team members that you're paying, I don't know, somewhere around a quarter million dollars worth of salary, to take care of things. And those people are working at half speed of productivity, because it can't stand being around this person. And they don't want to help them out. And they've got bad attitudes and it's a miserable environments.

That's not worth it.

That's not something that I want. Right? So guess what, it doesn't matter how much money you put up. And the funny thing is, salespeople with these bad attitudes are usually shocked when somebody is willing to protect their culture, over the sales over having the sales. You've got to understand that the more you allow negative things, negative attitudes, negative situations to exist in your culture, that what you're communicating to the people in that culture is they aren't as important as the one you are protecting.

So flip that narrative, help the person with the bad attitude, who's taking the culture to understand they aren't as important as the rest of the team, that you are willing to protect that culture. It's that powerful. You have got to make a decision that when you see things going down, when you see people that are you know, again, treating people horribly or being jerks or being islands, whatever it is, you've got to make a decision that you're going to do something about it.

If you don't do something about it, what you're communicating to everybody who sees it, whether it's team members, other leaders, clients, vendors, what you're communicating is "it's more important for me to get the sales off of this person than it is to take care of the rest of the team." Guess what's going to happen next? You're going to start losing, you're going to start losing team members, quality team members, champions do not want to stay in an environment like that. Next thing we need to do is we need to make sure that we are recognizing the impact of the positive work in that culture on the team. So what you have to do is when you you know, make sure that you're setting up opportunities for positivity, make sure that you're setting up opportunities to be an example of what it means to choose happiness, right?

And then start taking note of what happens to creativity, collaboration, teamwork, willingness to go the extra mile, how does it affect people's loyalty? How much longer do people stay, you need to start looking for those impacts, because that's what's going to happen. The more you create a positive culture, the more you choose to be happy, the more your leaders choose to be happy, the more the team members choose to be happy, the greater the positivity on your culture. Now, again, as I talked about in the beginning, this doesn't mean that we throw our feet up on the on the desk and sing Kumbaya. We're not, you know, we're not lacking on the tasks and the tactical stuff that we've got to get done. We got to get stuff done.

Can we do it with a positive attitude? Can we do it with happiness, choosing happiness, there have been many times in my decades of leading people, that I will see somebody be like a continuously negative person, you know, little complaints here and there, nothing seems too big. But what happens is, as you start watching the rest of the team and recognizing that people don't want to work with that person, or be around that person, and you have to sit down and have a conversation with them. Hey, I noticed that you complain about things.

Here, you know, in just the last three days, here's the six things that I heard you complain about. Let me ask you what's going on? What are you experiencing? Right? So you've got to do something about it to make sure that you're getting in there and shutting it down? When you do, how does it affect your team, start taking note of the greater creativity, and just create an opportunity one day, right?

Set this up, create an opportunity, you in the leadership team, you know, are you and certain team members that you're gonna go into a situation with greater happiness with greater positivity. And then watch what happens with the rest of the team. See how they respond. You know, make sure that you're continuously staying positive throughout this process, build it around something like a project or something.

So you can see the creativity come out, you can see the collaboration, once you take note of it, you will not be able to unsee it. Once you see it, you'll not be able to unsee it, you'll start recognizing that the more we focus on that, and the less I mean, I think every single person listening to this has some example of some leader being a jerk, and everybody's shutting down. Right? You know, we've talked about this. So what does it look like to create the positive environment, even for one day, even for one project, and we go on with happiness, you know, for me, I am a I'm somebody who loves music.

I don't really care a great deal about the words, the words aren't that important to me. But the melody is, the melody drives a lot of, you know, positivity for me on the you know, the converse of that is the it can be the greatest words on the planet. And you know, there are some christian songs that have such great words, but the melody is so depressing, that it drives me nuts. I can't listen to it. Because it doesn't matter how great the you know, the things are that they're saying. It just emotionally tanks me because it's so depressing. And so down, and so yada yada. Yeah, so blah, right? It doesn't mean that the song is bad. I just find myself going. Give me a positive version of that. Give me an upbeat version of that.

If you give it, unfortunately, this is sad, but I mean, there's songs that I've loved for, you know, 3040 years only to find out oh, that's what they're singing about. Oh, well, I've enjoyed the melody for 30 or 40 years on that song. Didn't realize that's actually crappy verbiage. So when you put this this situation together this project this whatever it is, and you go in with positive, maybe put some positive music on in the background, not something distracting, just something that's upbeat, something that's you know, uplifting, and maybe you spend time you know we do a potluck, we bring in food and we enjoy time together got yatta yatta, whatever it is make it easy, don't make it difficult, but create this environment and watch what happens with the creative. Watch what happens with

Joel Fortner 30:13
Hey, it's Joel Fortner here, I'm the vice president of leadership development on Chris's team and I oversee our Next-Level Mastermind business coaching program. Most business owners and leaders lack a clear path to succeed in business. They question whether the making the right decisions if they're focusing on the right things to really grow their business. If this is you, you need a coach in your life. coaches help you make better decisions, navigate uncertainty lead more effectively, and grow your business without sacrificing your life and your family.

In their first year, our clients typically see an average of 67% increase in gross revenue, and an average of 138% increase in net profit and regained hours of time. Our clients stay in the program for three and a half years, simply because of the results they get. So if you're ready to run your business at the next level, and see the growth you've been wanting, then visit chrislocurto.com/mastermind. Again, chrislocurto.com/mastermind today.

Chris LoCurto 31:14
So what are some things that you as a leader can do, and fostering happiness? Now, I will tell you, you know, I started with the first example of a leader that I worked with decades ago, that just seemed like they didn't have, you know, they were unaccessible is exactly what they were, they were unaccessible. to team members, I have always had an open door policy. Now, I don't actually have a door anymore. But that's what I thought I had an office, I always had an open door policy.

And what that meant was, if my door is open, you can bug me at any time. If my doors closed, set an appointment. That's it. That's simple. And my door was open more than it was not right. If my door was closed, it was because of one of two things I was either in a meeting, or I was working on something that I had to have super focus on. Right? The rest of the time, if I didn't have to have super focus, I would leave my door open. And if you needed me, you know, so there's caveats in this. If you needed me, you can come in my door.

I let my team understand that, hey, sometimes when you walk in, I'm gonna keep working, you know, when you come in, but if it's something that's super important that you know, you need my attention, say, "Hey, can I have your attention for just a second?" Because a lot of times, some people just want to come in and go, Hey, man, had a great weekend. How was your weekend? You know, just glad to see, you know, you were traveling last week. And you know, how did things go? Oh, it was great. It was this yada yada, yada, right? Little chit chat, create that connection be accessible.

Most of the time, what you find is somebody's coming to you with a, hey, here's a situation I have, here's a problem, here's a something, right? I wanted to get your input on this thing, whatever it is. And so you can continue to you know, if you can answer that and solve that or deal with that, great, but sometimes you have to stop completely and give full attention to the team member.

It depends on what the level is, right. So now, that's the caveat with the open door policy is that I am allowing people to come in and just say hi, at what you know, at any time, but at the same time, I'm not going to give 15 minutes to chit chat, right? I don't mind giving a few minutes. I'm accessible, I'm here to get to see you. But I'm not going to spend 15 minutes talking about some sports game that happened this past weekend. It's just that's not that's not going to be me, right? We'll have connection, that's great.

But if what I get, and this is another caveat, if what I get is a constant barrage of interruptions from somebody, then what I'll do is, you know, death by a thousand slashes, what I'll do is I'll have them set an appointment with all of these little questions that they have set an appointment, and we'll talk about all of those keep track of them. And then we'll talk about all of them at one time, what you'll discover is most of the time when that happens, people will solve things on their own. So having that open door policy gave people access to me.

So again, with a couple of caveats in there, what they got to experiences is that they could come see me asked me anything, say hi, if they wanted to. Whatever, and I, I'm somebody who would walk around and say hi to people anyways. But that gave them access to me, which allowed them to feel accepted. That allowed them to realize that I was accessible, that they were important enough to me, you know, again, according to the topic, if you're you're walking in the door to tell me that, you know, your dog learned a new trick this this past weekend, I'm probably not going to stop all of my work to talk about that. But if you're walking in the door, saying hey, I had this phenomenal conversation with my mother about God and yada yada yada. You've got my full attention. Right?

So again, understand the cat based on the context of the conversation, another thing that you need to do is you need to work on encouraging team members to fully express their thoughts. Now, I kind of hit on this a little bit on the last episode, but it is not uncommon for a team member to be concerned about how they're going to be received, or they're going to be accepted is what they say gonna sound stupid, or they're gonna sound stupid.

So one of the things that I encourage you to do is to encourage them to freely express their thoughts. What are you thinking, what are you experiencing? Sometimes people don't know, if they share their thoughts, if they share, you know, they express their ideas, whether or not it's going to be received well, is it gonna make them look stupid is going to make them seem like they don't know what they're talking about. So a lot of times, what people do not do is they don't freely express their thoughts.

Because the concerns that they have on how it's going to be received. Now that can show up in creativity, it could show up in giving input on brainstorming, on ideas on projects, it could show up in, you know, giving information on something that's a struggle in the culture, you know, maybe they're saying something negative, but they're afraid to express that fully.

So if you want to get people to actually become more happy, or choose happiness, help them to understand that their ideas are important, that what they're thinking is important. fostering the the culture of it's okay to share my thoughts, obviously, within certain caveats that come to mind in there, obviously, we're talking about business stuff, we're not talking about, you know, discussing bad relationships in front of everybody or you know, something that you experienced this past weekend.

That is probably not appropriate for discussion. So, I hate that I even have to throw that in there. But it just hits my brain that somebody is going to be thinking, Oh, well, they should be open to discuss anything, that's not we're talking about, we're talking about stuff that is in the context of what you're trying to accomplish, right. So encourage them to freely express their thoughts, their ideas, work hard on building trust in connections with team members.

Now, again, we talked about vulnerability in the last episode, about how much when when you are able to be vulnerable, what it creates is this level of trust in the team, this level of trust and the culture. So it's important for them to learn that they can trust situations that they can trust leaders that they can trust team members, that's going to build a lot of communication, a lot of growth inside of the team.

Obviously, clearly communicating is another piece that you have to do. If you decide that you want to try to gain more positivity, or if you want to create more happiness inside of your business. A big part of that is communication. How many times do people struggle? Because they're not being clearly communicated to? How many times is it difficult for people to do their job, because they're not really sure exactly what their job is or what they're supposed to be doing. So if you want people to choose happiness, help them to get there, set them up for success with communication, make sure that you're giving high levels of quality communication. Another thing is give feedback consistently. Right?

Make sure it's positive, for the most part, right? You find people doing things right more than you find them doing things wrong. You definitely you don't have a problem finding people doing things wrong. We all understand that we all experience that we all know what that's like. But what we need to do is we need to find people doing things, right.

We need to recognize people for the things that they are doing that's moving in the direction of a positive culture, a positive environment, the more that you see that speak about it, but also when you see struggles, call those out, when you see that people are struggling with attitudes or, or moods or situations or whatever, make sure that you're calling those out as well give feedback on those things. The more that you do that, the more that you will see people will know what you're expecting. They will know what you're looking for.

They will know how to respond. The more feedback they get. And it's again, if it's nothing but negativity then of course, it's going to create nothing but a negative culture. But the more constructive criticism you give, peppered in to positive feedback, the more you will see people start to understand what you're looking for in this environment, how they should act, how they should respond. And if they see that it's done in a way that's building them up and it's about personal growth then you will find them choosing to be happier as well. Now, what does this look like when it comes to happiness versus profits? Right? What does it look like to strike the balance between happiness and profit?

The thing is, is you have to continue to do the hard skills, you still have to do the tactical to get to the profit, there is no change there. There's no difference there. And that is something that has to be done, you have to focus on what does it look like to continue to put numbers on the board, right? If we don't have profit, we don't have a business, if we cannot get to profit, there's no point in keeping the doors open, nobody's going to be happy. You know, if mama ain't happy, nobody's happy. That's, that's what's gonna happen, right? If the profit is not showing up, the owner leaders, nobody's going to be happy. So it's just going to be a waste of time, right?

So we've got to make sure that we're focusing on the tactical. So again, in the beginning, I said, you have to have this balance, it is great to be focusing on a happy work environment, I'm guaranteeing you, the more you focus on positivity, the more you're going to experience positivity in the work environment, right. But if you focus too much on the soft skills, then what you're going to discover is people aren't spending enough time making profit happen, making the business happen, it will become throwing your feet up on the desk and singing Kumbaya, right? That's what we're looking for.

So we've got to make sure that we're balancing this out with, "Hey, we have to go do stuff, right?" So what I find is, is when I spend time going over the tactical stuff, doing it with a positive attitude, putting in accountability, putting in measurables, putting in metrics, then what happens is everybody understands we do the tactical, we do it with great attitude, we focus on having a great attitude. Right?

These are discussions you should be having in your staff meetings, and so on, right? These are the things we're trying to accomplish. Here's the work that we're going after? And what are the great ways we're gonna do it? And what's the great attitudes we're gonna have, as we accomplish these things, you know, make sure that you're filling in the tactical work with, how do we go about it, you know, hit the positive sides of it, hit how we want the team to be very encouraging of each other, you know, helping each other to accomplish this goal. What does it look like to set each other up for success, you hit those things that cause them to want to be positive and work together. Now, a great strategy for leading happiness that creates productivity and profit requires a few things. First of all, rewarding the achievements.

Now again, one thing I struggle with is rewarding people for doing things that they should already do. You know, if you already if this is part of your job, and this is part of your care as well, this is something you should be doing anyways. But what are they achieving by accomplishing that? What are they achieving? By doing their day to day? What are they achieving? What are the goals that you're putting in front of them, right? So as we set goals up, strategies up for them to accomplish things, by doing their job, reward those achievements, even with something simple, you know, could be $100 handshake, it could be taking them out for ice cream, it could be sending them and their spouse to dinner, there's all kinds of things, it can be a bonus in the check. There's all kinds of things that you can do, but reward the achievements.

Next thing is provide opportunities for growth and learning. So as you see people taking that step forward, they're being more positive, they're being more creative, they're being more productive. Don't stop there. When you see somebody taking initiative, create a growth path for that person or persons. Take a hard look at what it would look like to give them opportunities to become better versions of themselves.

What would it look like for them to continue to grow? How could they continue to, you know, if you've got a ladder that they're climbing or to become better at what they do more experienced? Add other things to their to their K RAS take things away and dump them on somebody else. You know, that's just up and coming as well, right? So help them to have growth opportunities. I promise you when somebody feels like they have the opportunity to grow in their business, not everybody, some people love doing the exact same thing every day, day in day out year after year. There are folks that are like that.

So you're also going to have to find out personality style wise, does this person want growth outside of what they're accomplishing, right? If so, create that opportunity, the more that you can and I'm not just saying give them a roll, give them a path. If you do this, this this, this this, this, this is this. Here's where you'll be six months from now a year from now. This is a different position.

You know, this is a different pay, or this is a different title or whatever it is right? Help them to see a path for growth, help them to see, how can they learn more. The more you pump into your team knowledge and wisdom, the more you're going to get out of them. Right? Where you can keep paying them and leaving them. They're exactly where they are, right? It's an old Maxwell saying, Would you rather pour money into your team and grill them, and they walk away with that education that you poured into them? Or would you rather than stay, and they haven't learned anything at all right? So you got to take that opportunity. Another thing you need to do is make sure that you are leading healthy accountability without any toxic junk that that demoralizes your team.

So as we do accountability, we have got to make sure that it's a positive version of accountability. We've got to be looking at things and helping them to grow, you know, if we're gonna hold somebody accountable, how do we help them to overcome the thing that they need to be held accountable for? Right, and that doesn't mean that's a negative thing.

It could be anything, right? It could be growth, it could be doing a job, that they're just learning how to, you know, learning how to do it better. And the accountability piece is on helping somebody to accomplish something, right. What we don't do is we don't come in there with toxicity and just beat them over the head, man, you're really sucking up this man, I expected that you should be here by now, I don't know what to do with you, you're not getting this done. We don't put any of that junk in there. We don't demoralize somebody with accountability, right, we don't beat them over the head with accountability. Instead, our goal is to lift them up, to make them stronger, to make them better.

Another thing you need to do is you need to be leading your mission by having a clear vision, and clear strategies of how to get to that vision. So for me, mission is the purpose for existence. Right? What is your business's purpose for existing, that should be your mission, right? Don't don't create some corporate version of something that looks good on a wall for clients who never really walk in your building, right? We don't want something that sounds good for clients, we want to state the purpose for us to exist. That statement should be your mission statement. The vision is where you're headed, you should have one mission statement, you can have 700 visions, we're always casting New Visions, with what we're doing, we've always got the next place we're headed to, the more that you can lead the mission. Here's what we're trying to accomplish.

Here's why we exist. Here's why we show up every single day, it should be it should sound amazing. I want everybody on my team, to hear our mission statement and go yep, that's exactly why I show up. And then the more you lead the vision with inspiration and strategies that help them to see that they're accomplishing it, that they're doing something that they're part of this process, the more that you lead that with inspiration, the more that you're going to discover people are going to have way greater happiness, they're going to enjoy that they're going to have more fun, they're going to experience more positivity.

As they run into issues, what you'll discover as well is that they will become more resilient, they will bounce back faster. So as you do all of these things, then the next piece is is just fabulous. And that is the customer satisfaction, which is one of the greatest reasons to lead happiness inside of your business. I absolutely love it.

Whenever people come to our business, they come to our retreats, they come to our events. And they compliment the daylights out of our team. I mean, it just never gets old. It never gets old. How many times people try and steal our team members. There's always clients trying to steal our team members. That's very flattering. It's flattering to me, because they're looking at somebody on my team going I wish I had that on my team. I would love to have this on my team. So it's incredibly flattering, right? That you know it? No, I'm not fearful.

If somebody needs to go somewhere else, they need to go somewhere else. Great thing is I haven't lost anybody to any of the clients. Why? Because we have a great culture. We have a great mission. Right? It's not that people are truly trying to steal some of them maybe. But it's not that people are really, truly trying to steal people. It's that they're recognizing that they love the environment that we have. So the customer satisfaction becomes huge.

This is a big reason why you're I mean, why did you get in business for the first place? Because you wanted to sell a product or service to somebody and you wanted it to be successful? Well, one of the great ways of making those things successful, is have a phenomenally happy team who was working hard to make those clients dreams come true, at least through your product or service.

So overall, what am I saying? The more that you focus on happiness, not just the concept, not just telling something you'd be happy. But you implement all of these different strategies and pieces into your culture to help people to have a better, more positive day, become happier choose happiness, the more that you're going to be driving, productivity, profit, innovation, creativity, all of these things are going to be working so much better in your work environment.

It's about building that foundation for lasting success. The greater your culture, the greater your people take care of each other. Take care of the clients, take care of vendors, the longer your business is going to last, the more success that you're going to experience. For folks, that's all the time that we have for today, and I hope that this information has helped you. As always, we want you to take this information, change your leadership, change your business, change your life, and join us on the next episode.