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Transcript: Lewis Green - LG Consulting
Aaron Strout:
I'd like to introduce today's special guest. We have author and chief communications office/founder of L&G Business Solutions, Lewis Green. Lewis, welcome and thank you for joining us today.
Lewis Green:
Thanks for inviting me, Aaron. I'm excited about this.
Aaron Strout:
Good. So, Lewis, you and I met several weeks ago. You were kind enough to invite me to a panel that you had for the – I always get this acronym wrong, but the IMCNE, which I think is the Organization for Management Consultants in New England. I always forget what the I means specifically.
Lewis Green:
International.
Aaron Strout:
International, thank you. So, do me a favor and tell some of the listeners a little bit about yourself. I've obviously mentioned that you're an author. We'll talk about your book in a minute, but talk a little bit about your background and maybe what you do as the chief communications officer at L&G Business Solutions.
Lewis Green:
Sure. After eight years in the military and then college I started out as a reporter, actually, a sports writer for the Gainesville Sun down in Gainesville, Florida. That was in 1975, and since then I've moved through a number of phases as writer, editor and communications person and VP of marketing, spent 12 – 16 years in the corporate world, and this is my third entrepreneurial startup. Actually, it's a reinvention of the second one which was out in Seattle, and when I moved it here I changed the operations and the structure of the business a little bit. And we're a marketing and communications firm. I think that's pretty much where I am in terms of background keeping it as short as possible when you've been doing this for 35 years.
Aaron Strout:
That's pretty impressive, and it sounds like you've had several lifetimes' worth of careers, so quite the interesting background. Now, that's a lead-in to your book that I've just started reading called Lead With Your Heart, and I think if I could sum it up, the general premise is that if you can sort of imbue your company with happiness or the goal of achieving happiness both for your employees and your customers success will follow. I know that may it may seem overly simplistic when you first start reading it, but hen you talk about some of the principles behind that. What led you to write this book, and talk about some of the feedback so far?
Lewis Green:
Sure. This is my fifth book, first business book. Really I started thinking about business models back in the late '80s when it just seemed to me that sort of the buzzwords going around such as "satisfied customers," "putting customers first" seemed like reaching for mediocrity. When we satisfy customers or when we satisfy employees or when we satisfy executives that's not much of a stretch. So, I wanted to come up with a business model that always strives to exceed expectations, and I use the word "happy" to mean that your customers and your employees aren't satisfied with your products and services or with their job; they get excited about your products and services and your job.
So, everything we do in our business we do with passion, and yes, we measure all the numbers, but our first goal isn't top line. It isn't revenues. It's to create great customer and great employee experiences, which I believe lead to happiness, which to me is really just another word for passion. And we will have greater success, we will have greater revenues and increased margins if we focus on people rather than the bottom line.
So, I wrote the book, and as you probably know, I wrote it two years ago, and it takes about two years to get a book published with most publishers. The feedback I've gotten so far has been a surprise because the – I probably mis-titled this book. In fact, I'm confident I mis-titled it. It seems like it's soft and warm and fuzzed except it isn't. (Laughter) It really is a hard business model, and it's so hard I think people shy away from it because it's a lot easier to make Wall Street happy than it is to make Main Street happy. I think when we make Wall Street happy we shortchange the most important people in our lives, which are our employees and our customers.
And the inspiration really came – there was a time in my life when I taught nonviolent resistance in my younger years and became a big fan of Mahatma Gandhi, and he says – one of his quotes is, "We must be the change we wish to see in the world." So, instead of complaining about the way business operates I decided to write this book and hope that it influences some businesses.
Aaron Strout:
Now, I think you have that line for Mahatma Gandhi actually in your email signature, which I really – I always enjoy it every time I get an email from you. So, great message to live by. Now, one of the things, just to drill down a little bit more on the book, that I did like, one of my favorite companies, Starbucks, we've been talking a lot about them recently just because of their idea catcher that they launched on this site and their ability to really try to go above and beyond using social media to capture customer feedback.
It's really interesting because early on in the book you published some of the tenants, and I think you said you've worked with George Schultz and some of the senior organization at Starbucks in the past. In five out of the six tenants that you had posted on one of the pages spoke to customer and employee happiness and really trying to make them the best cup of coffee and the best atmosphere, and only one of them was, "Oh, by the way, remember we're about making money as well," which I don't think is a bad thing. Talk a little bit about your experience in working with Starbucks. What in your mind is it that differentiates them versus some of the other companies that may not lead with their heart? They may not sort of understand this concept I like to talk about, and that's the We Are Smarter, which really values employees and customer interactions.
Lewis Green:
I actually oversaw a department at Starbucks and was the executive speechwriter for almost four years, and it was during their heaviest growth phase, which was '96 to '95, '96 to '98, '99. Howard Schultz had a meeting, and for the first time in a long time the company had made its comps. You measure comps based on store growth, and you compare this quarter to the same quarter a year ago. Instead of talking about how we've got to do more to make more money the one thing I remembered was Howard Schultz saying, "We cross the finish line together or not at all."
Of course, I'd heard that before, but it never really stuck with me. It stuck with me this time because, darn it, you could tell this guy believed it, and you could tell it in the benefits and the stock options and all the things that the executives at Starbucks did to make the company a "we company." A company where everybody: customers, potential customers, the community, the world and the executives were in this together. And the passion that was there. Howard's book is called Pour Your Heart into It. He just believes that without passion there's no reason to get up in the morning and go to work. So, that was just a huge influence on me.
I know recently – you know, Howard took a step back from the company a few years ago. He owned Seattle SuperSonics, and it was fine as long as they promote it from within, which had been a policy always, but they brought in an outsider to be the CEO, and I just don’t think that person got it and ran it like most companies run their company. Suddenly the company's not doing so well. Starbucks is not doing so well. Howard has come back in. They let that person go. Howard has come back in to run the company. It's kind of like the Michael Dell story. And I can see that he's – and you mentioned the reaching out for ideas from customers.
The other thing Howard always said was, "We don’t put customers first. We put employees first." They're called partners at Starbucks. The reason for that is customers will never be put first if the employees don’t put them there. So, if you don’t treat employees as if they're the most important people in the world, they aren't going to treat customers as if they are the most people in the world. So, it really brought the idea of service, we serve others, to the forefront for me, and that was also a huge inspiration for the foundation of this book.
Aaron Strout:
So, let's shift gears a little bit. One of the reasons I think why you and I decided we wanted to do this podcast in addition to the fact that you're a fascinating guy and have an amazing series of jobs in your background was you wrote a blog post sort of spurred on by a conversation that we had around community evangelism. And I like this topic because it is something that's a little bit polarizing. I mean, in my mind evangelism is a positive thing, it's a good thing. Some people's mind it's a negative thing, and your blog post on your blog post on your LGBusinessSolutions.typepad.com blog was titled "Is Social Media Evangelism Possible?" You wrote it on May 7th if folks want to find it.
Talk a little bit about your sort of take on social media evangelism and what your viewpoint is and why you think it's such a polarizing term. You and I had a pretty cool conversation around this.
Lewis Green:
Yeah. It never had occurred to me. I think of myself as an evangelist but hadn't necessarily used the word. I did a presentation, and one of the evaluation forms that came back – and the presentation was about social media before we did the panel. And one of the comments that came back was essentially saying, "How can I trust what this guy is saying because he's such an evangelist for social media?"
Well, I'm one of those guys where, first of all, I am not politically correct and I hate PC. On the other hand, I am a communicator, and my job is to create change. I see it as my job, to create change. If a word gets in the way, even though it might annoy the hell out of me that someone is picking on a word as a reason not to adopt or adapt a business tool, I'm going to stop using the word. So, I wrote the post on evangelism saying that at least this one person stopped listening to me because he saw me as an evangelist.
So, that really struck me as weird, but then I remembered how easily offended we all can be by words, and I suggested that if it's going to get in the way, we can still act like evangelists, but maybe we should avoid using the term. You can be an evangelist without talking about evangelism or being an evangelist. It may annoy us because words shouldn’t get in the way of us spreading good ideas, but the blog on BizSolutionsPlus was, even though I wrote it as this is the way it is with declarative sentences, it really was more of a question asking people for feedback: should we use words or symbols or icons that cause us to lose listeners. I don't know the answer to that. For me, I probably will stop using the word, but I'm so passionate about what I believe in that that's not going to keep people from thinking I'm not an evangelist because I am.
Aaron Strout:
That's right.
Lewis Green:
It's the way it is. (Laughter)
Aaron Strout:
So, using that as a launch pad to my next question, one of the things I like to do on these podcasts is ask folks that are sort of in the thick of things with community and social media really how do you apply some of that evangelism – without calling it evangelism? How does a company that is just getting started with social media or community go about it, or what are some of the things they should keep in mind? Now, I know this is part of your business, and you advise people on this all the time, so two or three prescriptive things that they could think about as they're getting started.
Lewis Green:
Yeah. The first thing that I recommend no matter what communications or marketing tool we're talking about in social media and social networking is a bunch of different tools that we use is know your audience. Who are they? How do they want to be communicated to? Before you launch anything in social media, before you get a presence on a social networking site, you have to ask yourself– who am I trying to reach and what's the message?
If the people you're trying to reach don’t live where your tool is, I would say don’t launch the tool. Don’t use the tool. On the other hand, sometimes you have to create that community, and certainly that was true. My first blog was an utter failure. So, the second suggestion is, based on why it was an utter failure, I actually put together a plan. Listen, we marketers and we communicators shouldn’t be throwing wet, wadded paper against the wall to see if it sticks. So, let's put together a plan with, in this case we'll talk about how my blog was an utter failure. I put together a plan, identified who the audience was, put some measurable goals in there, decided what my audience wanted to read and relaunched it. It's become a fairly popular blog.
And the third suggestion is really an obvious one. So, the first two are know your audience. Second one is put together a plan to reach that audience, and the third one is please, please, please write – or if it's a podcast, speak to your audience, not about yourself, about them. What do they want to know? What do they need to hear? I have a lot of readers who are social media advocates, and that's why I wrote that piece about evangelism. I didn't write it for myself. I wrote it for all of those peers who visit my site who are very excited about social media.
So, just – we have to know what our customers want and then exceed those expectations I believe. That goes back to lead with your heart.
Aaron Strout:
Great recommendations. One final question, and this is also one I like to ask all of the folks that I have a chance to have conversations with. A little bit trickier, but the goal is to figure out what influences the influencers, so the question is if you had one blog and one blog only that you could read for the rest of your life whose would it be and why? And I will caveat that with I met a few people like Tim O'Reilly who picked Slashdot, and I had Robert Scobel who picked Techmeme, and those are sort of cheating because obviously there's a lot of different authors that roll up into that. Who's the one that you really see sort of standing out that you would swear by?
Lewis Green:
Funny, because I was going to do the same thing they did by recommending MarketingProfs the Daily Fix, which is –
Aaron Strout:
Not a bad recommendations, by the way.
Lewis Green:
Yeah. But I've given this a lot of thought, and every reader should do it based on their personal feelings, and while there are several people who I read out thee almost daily, the one that I always save for last is David Reich's My 2 Cents. He's a PR guy in New York City, but he writes about the newspaper business, and that's – my first job was at 16 working for a newspaper – my first real job – and so I have some of that ink rushing through my blood. I just love going there and seeing what he's got to say about what we today call the traditional media.
So, I'm going to say for anybody who's really interested in newspapers, radio, TV David Reich – R E I C H – the blog is called My 2 Cents, give it a look.
Aaron Strout:
Great. So, wrapping up, where can people find you? I know we mentioned your blog before, but maybe you could call that out again, and if you want to give folks email or phone number or maybe it's just through your blog, what's the best way to reach you?
Lewis Green:
BizSolutionsPlus, all one word Bizsolutionsplus is my blog, and yeah, I often – I feel like we ought to be giving information away and help people as much as we can. So, if people have questions they can contact me at my email address. It's Lewis.Green@L-Gsolutions.com.
Aaron Strout:
Lewis, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been a pleasure speaking with you, and I look forward to seeing you again soon.
Lewis Green:
Thanks, Aaron, it's really my pleasure.
Sat, Jun 07 2008
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