Unknown Speaker
Hello,

Jeff Ma
and welcome to love as a business strategy

Unknown Speaker
where we're going to be diving into business through the lens of humanity, and people.

Jeff Ma
So happy to have you guys along here. And we're going to be unpacking the role that love or concept like love might play in a successful business. My name is Jeff Ma. I'm a director at soft way. We're an agency that's based out of Houston that specializes in digital transformation, culture, and branding. And we wanted to kick off this this show this very first episode, and I really wanted to give the audience a good understanding of what we what we really mean when it comes to love as a business strategy. And I've invited a few of my colleagues to join me today to kind of share that message. So I'm going to start with the guy who wrote the book on love his business strategy, kind of inside joke, President and CEO of soft way, Muhammad Anwar. So mo How are you doing today?

Unknown Speaker
And then good, Jeff. Good to be here.

Jeff Ma
Yeah, I kind of made the joke about the book we're writing a book is more more accurate. But love as a business strategy is kind of coined by you essentially, you know, can you in a short, succinct one liner, just getting just adding pressure for you? What is love is a business strategy. I mean, just for for for starters.

Unknown Speaker
Sure. I'm going to try my best to get it in one sentence. But essentially, it's a way of approaching business as a business owner of this digital agency. I had to try to find a way to apply humanity and people at the core of the business and I found that love works well as a business strategy. So that's how I came about it.

Jeff Ma
Yeah. And we're going to dive deeper into that for sure. So really excited to have that. Next up. Our beloved Vice President, Mr. Chris Peachtree Chris. Welcome.

Unknown Speaker
Welcome. Thank you. Glad to be here.

Jeff Ma
Yeah. Chris 2020 has been an interesting year, fixing this camera for us. Yeah. What's it? What's it been like doing business in this landscape of 2020. so far? Well, it's been interesting.

Unknown Speaker
Unprecedented is that I think the word of the century.

Unknown Speaker
And it's actually been for at least from my perspective, it's been enlightening just to see what is possible when you aren't sort of around all of your conveniences such as an office, such as a vehicle such as, right, equal access to a grocery store, right, like when all those things are stripped away, like the resilience that I've been able to witness and experience has been, you know, to me remarkable and seeing that transfer into business. And how teams who are effective can come together and support each other but still sort of get tasks done that aren't as maybe directed or pre scripted has been interesting to see. I would say. Sure.

Jeff Ma
That's a great way to look at it. I was looking more for like it's been a cluster, but you know, that that works. Like. Last but certainly not least, Mr. Frank Danna. He's our Director of culture at southway and bring him in here. Hello, Frank. Hey, what's going on, Jeff? Yeah, and those of you who are watching video can see that we're actually we all decided to come into the office. We missed each other so much, but social distancing is still in place. We are in the same building at opposite ends and corners of our office, social.

Unknown Speaker
I'm about 4545 seconds away from Jeff if I walked to him right now.

Jeff Ma
So 2020 we just talked about Frank and and yeah, with that, with that climate in place, what do you Why is this the time to start this show? I mean, you and I were partners in crime, we've always wanted to do a show very, we're very passionate as a group about this topic. Why is now the right time to do it?

Unknown Speaker
I think it's Paramount that today as we're talking about the way our our culture and our global climate and all of these things are happening, we have to look at the fact that the only thing that conquers hate is love, right? And so, as we're talking about how people need to come together, how we need to take radical approach is to the way we treat each other the way we include each other and even the way we work. I think right now, this is the this is the right time to talk about something that may make people feel a little bit uncomfortable because what 2020 is showing us is that in order to grow, we have to be uncomfortable. and in this situation, now is the time because I mean think about it like we are We spend more time with the people that we work with more awake hours, as we like to talk about as a team, then we do with our own families, right? So if we're spending more time at work, or in our places of work or engaging with people at work, we have opportunities to show love to show respect to show inclusion, to show humanity to the people we engage with. And so this is the right time so that when we all step back into whatever work looks like, we're better prepared.

Jeff Ma
That's a great point. I remember when the quarantines first started the weirdest part wasn't how much I was seeing my kids that was how little I was seeing you guys. And that was that was the adjustment is very different. Well, let's kick it off. Guys. Let's go into this is our very first episode and the topic is very straightforward. The topic is love as a business strategy. I know that's the title of the show, but the only way we can properly kick this off is really helping understand what we mean when we say hello As a business strategy, and rather than attacking that topic head on, I kind of wanted to, I kind of prepared a few just general questions that maybe we could talk about and elaborate on and debate to try to understand to get to the root of this, if you will. So, moe, I'm gonna start with you actually, in your opinion, why don't we hear the word love in business more often? Like, why isn't that word used?

Unknown Speaker
So, I'm probably not going to answer that question right away.

Unknown Speaker
But what I would,

Unknown Speaker
I would say is, why do you use all? Yeah, why we use it here in software is what I would like to answer. So part of the reasons why I even decided to introduce love as a business strategy at software was inspired by American football game college football game that I was attending and I had just witnessed one of the best comebacks in university of Houston's football program. Where they came back to wipe a deficit of over 20 points in the fourth quarter to end up winning the game. And having watched that game and seeing how that team that had less than point 1% chance of winning that night, ended up winning and having heard their coach speak about how they ended up fighting till the very end when that game was all based on this culture of love that existed in that sports team and exist in their locker room and, and the love the team had for each other. And having watched that I started asking myself the question like, you know, at a workplace, we, we use sports analogies all the time, like, Hey, you play quarterback, I'll be defense, you'd be offense. But when it comes to the culture, at a workplace, why don't we also have similar cultures at a workplace that sports teams or sports cultures have and And thinking about that more, I decided to try and experiment that and practice it. And try to ask myself how I can create a culture of love inside of the world of software, and started that about four and a half years ago. And today, it's it's like taken off to create a culture of love inside software. And as Peter Drucker rightfully stated that, you know, culture eats strategy for breakfast, I have noticed that ever since our culture has transformed to that of love and support of one another, we've seen our business take off, we've seen tremendous results from 2016 to 2019. We tripled our revenue, increase their profit margins, and I attribute a lot of that to love and the culture love and hence, I look at love as a business strategy.

Unknown Speaker
I think from listening to that, and then going back to your original question, Jeff, I think the question is Why

Unknown Speaker
don't you hear that in other companies? I, I feel like there's this sort of

Unknown Speaker
this desire to not want to use a word that would mask the toxic behaviors that you see among teams, between leaders and those teams, and even among leaders, and have that word sort of misconstrue the behaviors or I think, send a message that there's care when there isn't that there's concern when there isn't that there's a desire to truly come together and succeed as a true united organization, when there isn't that desire. Every body is in it for themselves. That's how you've been taught in college and Business School in life, right? That like nobody cares about you. Nobody's gonna to come and save you, right and to some degree that that there is truth in that. But when you think about the construct of business, when you think about, you know, a knowledge worker society where one person can't do it all, it goes against that notion that, that you have to do it by yourself, but you have to do it alone, and you're the only person that can watch your back. And so, in operating with so many different customers, we see that I think come to pass and sort of come out in conversation where we try and bring out a concept such as our word love, and we get greeted with them. I assume that we can use that word here, take that out. Don't say that. Right? Because that that does bring about a sense of weight if we actually say that we have to meet it. And in order to mean it, we have to behave like we mean it and I'm not ready to do that. I don't think anybody here is ready to do that. And

Unknown Speaker
the level of accountability almost

Unknown Speaker
Yes, level of accountable It's a, to me it's a deeper commitment to the people that you work beside that I don't think some people are willing to give an offer and commit to and vocalize and verbalize. And I think that you create a social contract when you use that word, whether you like it or not. Yeah, and I don't think a lot of executives, new hires, anybody that has sort of been groomed to be individualistic, is ready to say that to their peer.

Jeff Ma
Yeah, I mean, we've had, we've had I remember we've used we've introduced this word into our, into our environments A while ago. And then as it kind of trickled into our clients preview, like we put on our website and stuff like that. You can see the tangible kind of distaste

Unknown Speaker
almost fear, fear of that word that just come in. Yeah, I think it is fear. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker
Yeah. I think like I've talked to some people that talk about, like, their initial response is on that surface level of like, Are we talking romantic love? Like, why would you say the word love? Why would you? Why would you say that? Because that that has interested, like, HR is going to have a field day with this, right like that. So and and I can tell you like, as we introduced this word love as a business strategy into our organization, it's not just what we say, right? It's what we do and how we act. And we'll talk about that. But I think it's interesting because like, if we look at HR and Chris, I know you're, you're, you're running HR, have we had any issues, any complaints of, of kind of introducing that word into our organization?

Unknown Speaker
No. And I think the, for me, the reason why is because when we introduced that word, we define that word. And I will find through our behaviors, it was not left open to interpretation or translation. We attached it to certain behaviors that we don't want to see anymore in our organization, right? So that simple word sort of covered a lot of things that we didn't like in our past, right, a lot of misbehaviors by we saw in our team, and so we're not here to say Oh, We used that word to combat things outside of our organization. We said, this is our word. And this is what it means for us. Because we don't like the way that people are leaving our doors, when they go home. We don't like the activities and the experiences that our employees are having that are in congruent with the values that we say we espouse an organization. And so that word, like if you try and make things too complicated for people, you lose sort of the the meaning behind things. And even though that word carries a lot of weight to it, it's simple. When you say it, and you know, the behaviors that are associated with it, everybody can do it, no matter where you sit in the organization, no matter where you live in this globe. And I think for our team, especially HR, it was not met with a dissonance or a combative mindset, because I think everybody at the heart of it, we're looking to be loved, right? If you think about software, like a sanctuary, like people want to come here And spend eight hours with people who love them versus come to a place where you know, you have to look out for yourself in every minute of the day. And you never know when somebody comes to you what their intent is. And yeah, I feel like that that into sort of an untapped want. Which is why it was a met with a lot of resistance, or curiosity and sense of like questioning it to the place where it should be sort of escorted out of our language.

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, so it wasn't, it wasn't just an idea that we came up with. And we're like, we're not going to tell anybody, we're not going to define it. We're not gonna not communicate it. It's a radical word that requires a radical amount of communication and accountability. Right. And I think that's, that's why we've been able to integrate it into our company, and it's not as scary as some people see it at face value.

Unknown Speaker
Yeah. And I think the way that we instituted it at software It started with the leaders, right, like we had to demonstrate what we mean by love At a workplace, and I think what was really crucial for me in trying to apply it at a workplace had to do a lot a lot with the leadership style. And the leadership style that was very aligned to this culture love at a workplace has to do with servant leadership. Because ultimately, when you think about it, when you love someone, even you know outside of work with your kids or family, you will do anything and everything to make sure you are going to keep that family safe, you're going to take care of that person, you're going to take care of your child or your spouse. And, and that's what love does, it makes you think of the other person, more so than even yourself at times that allows you to protect them, take care of them and do things to you know, grow your family members or your children and give them the advice and the coaching from a place of love. Right and when you're able to Do that there's better response from your children, or your family members. So taking it from the sports team side of things, it was all about how, when people go play sports, and they're on a team, they're on the field fighting for their teammates more so than themselves, they don't want to disappoint and let down their teammates. And you can only get to that stage if you love your teammates at that, at that level, right? Otherwise, you're you're going to go into self preservation and look out for my back in my stuff, and then that becomes ultimately toxic at a workplace, I believe so. So that's how we had to like approach it and it started with the leadership approaching it that way.

Jeff Ma
We may have already started doing this. But I think if you kind of we if we empathize with our audience here, this is this is a very radical approach for many out there, right? And, and I think the four of us are quite biased in how we've already, you know, and let's be let's be real, be real about that. So I mean, maybe, maybe an exercise would be like maybe if any of us want to kind of help maybe succinctly define what love means to us like, personally, because I mean, I don't think there's a global definition for everyone, but especially when it comes to business. Again, I think some of you guys have already started doing this, but it's still kind of lofty, right? Anyone want to take a crack at defining what love means when we use it in this context? Maybe Christmas?

Unknown Speaker
I didn't speak to the Sure. I can speak to the point of how maybe I won't answer the full question but I can I can answer to how

Unknown Speaker
the trend continues.

Unknown Speaker
How to practice loving workplace, right? Like, I think that angle that I look at is like what does it mean to love your team as a leader, it's, it's, it's, it's as simple as just looking for the goodness in your team or the good qualities of your team members and not focusing on the negative sides. And that's like the foundational step to get on this culture of love and practicing it within your teams. So it's as simple as just when you're when you're looking at your team members and their work or what they're doing, it's focusing on their good qualities and, and empowering those good qualities even further, rather than getting very critical on the negative aspects of their work product or, or our, you know, their qualities or their skills and so forth. So, just a simple practice of changing that lens, to look for the goodness in your teammates, allows you to really get on that journey. of creating the environment of now that your team.

Unknown Speaker
And just to build on that, well, I think once you get to that goodness, then to me love is about the sort of coming together of service and forgiveness. Because when you think about those two things, service, meaning I'm going to do everything possible to make sure you're set up for success, that you're given feedback that you're given the tools necessary to be effective, and any task or initiative that I put on your plate. But then when it comes to forgiveness, when things happen, because mistakes happen, as long as we have people, we're going to have situations that arise and how I respond or react to those mistakes, tells me when I love you, but I'm not going to behave a certain way. I'm not going to yell at you, I'm not going to try and humiliate you. I'm not going to be envious of you if I see that you've done something that other people like I'm not going to go out of my way and delight in your downfall or delight in the things that you have done wrong and have gotten sort of pushed back on or any sort of criticism away from me. Right? Like all of those things that sort of are packaged with unforgiveness. I want to make sure that as a leader, as appear as a, you know, a report t to a leader, that those things are not commonplace, or I'm checking what I'm doing to make sure that if I say, Mohammed, I love you. Even though I report into you. I'm also not in a place where when I see you make a mistake, I'm not like delighting in that. Or I'm not going and telling everybody that Mohammed did. Right, don't listen to Mohammed like you don't know, like, making sure that I'm not creating that type of environment, right? Because I think that there is an accountability that comes when you say, I love you. And it's beyond commitment and obligation, but it is true. Like I'm checking all of those things at the door every minute of the day. And when I feel like there is an issue, the way I resolve it. service and forgiveness should be different. It shouldn't be what I believe is right, it is what is right to you. Right? It is what is established in our commitment to each other.

Jeff Ma
It's really interesting that you put it that way. Because when I'm asked about love and why that word is there, like people have this assumption that just very dramatic thing, right? Like, it's like, love is like this emotional, like dramatic thing. But when I think back and I tried to give people an example of what love of the workplace is, it's actually some of the least when there's the least drama in your life and the times that I've felt the most low is, I think we've all had it To be honest, even if you've never use the word you've been on a team, where you guys were laser focused on helping each other point each other up. You're facing a challenge. Usually you're struggling, but you don't. You don't waste time, bickering blaming you get you're really laser focused. And I think we just translate that emotion to Oh, that was just a high performing team or that was just a great we had great team dynamic, but I think there's an element of love in there. That is actually really, really just very really prevalent if you think about it, right? Yep.

Unknown Speaker
And I think from Oh, God, Frank, sorry.

Unknown Speaker
That's all right. People get me confused. Jeff all the time. It's fine. I think that. And Muhammad, we have stories we have stories. today. You know, for me, love is built off of two things. It's trust. And it's feedback. Like if I think of love, it's an action. And like, we've all kind of talked about having real trust with someone trusting that they're going to tell you that feedback and give you that ability to grow and not hold themselves back from sharing what they really feel, is an incredible that That, to me, shows that love is there in that relationship. And as an example, you know, the people in this conversation, they give me very critical feedback. As soon as I can receive it and Jeff's like, Mm hmm. And I think that that's incredibly important because in a relationship I want to know what I can do to improve what I can do to further our relationship with each other. And so if I'm actively pursuing feedback from someone, that means that I care deeply about what their what their what they have to say, and that they know me well enough to give me that feedback that's packaged in a way that I can easily understand and engage with, right. And that's going back to what you were talking about Chris's understanding that person and the way they operate, and helping them see how much they matter to you. And I think that all stems from from that, that idea of trust and idea of feedback as well. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker
And I would like to add that

Unknown Speaker
you know, what it's done from a business lens, like we just went from individual to teams and now from a business lens as a business owner. You know, I've had to rethink our policies or strategies or structure of the organization, down to how we recruit, how we plan our budgets, how we come up with a strategic objectives. And how our policies are defined all of that, eventually stems from love as a business strategy. So we are at software, our success has been we've taken that just from individual behavior change as leaders down to even the organizational strategy. How do we budget right like financial budgeting around our team members and the autonomy that they have and what they can do to leverage that budget for the sake of the team members, even down to ideas like that, ultimately, are driven from that lens of love. And that has really helped us transform how we approach business as a whole, how we approach our clients and also been like changed and informed by that lens of love. So I think ultimately it will ladder up to the whole organization morphing and applying strategies from that lens in every decision that the business is taking. So let me let me segue off of that a little bit, because I think, again empathizing with the audience. Many might be wondering, what are the big business benefits and impacts of love if we're touting it as this very positive thing, but if we're talking about business, there's a reason that some businesses neglected are still successful.

Jeff Ma
You know, what are what are those impacts? And why is it important?

Unknown Speaker
And so

Unknown Speaker
I think it's, it's primarily, we know that all businesses that operate, you know, people are at the core of all of it, right? There's a people component, there's a process and technology aspects. There's three major functions that come together to make business or strategy successful. And a lot of the times, strategic plans are very much focused on process and technology. And even if there is a people component of the strategy, it's Still secondary or third in order of priority with strategy, usually you lead with technology or process improvements. And then people are always concerned last and then strategic planning. So when you when you put when you look at love as a, as a culture that ultimately is extremely important for strategy to be successful, you know, culture is very important. You ultimately are putting people at the first priority of your strategic planning. So, you're always going to start with the people lens. And if you're able to create strategic plans and have the right environment for the people to be successful, to be high performing, then ultimately, those people are the same people who are going to make strategic plans and decisions are on process and they're on technology so you have a better outcome in your business objectives. So, that's why approaching it from that lens laddering up to the culture, you laddering up to the people and prioritizing them. And your strategy has a far reaching longevity to your business outcomes and business objectives. So that's how I look at it and not sort of succeeded at softly.

Unknown Speaker
That would be the thing that I would add. And we're actually talking to a customer the other week about this. The thing that many leaders never consider, or probably don't think about when it comes to establishing a loving culture or culture that's rooted in the elements and sort of behaviors of love is resilience. I remember growing up in hearing the phrase, I grew up in the church, but it's a Bible verse, But love never fails. And I never understood that like, like, until I saw what love means when a team comes together and put something like COVID or a pandemic hits, and there's so much uncertainty. There's no direction, there's no visible way out or rulebook that we can turn to to say this is how you deal with that. And see a team come together and fight for the success of the organization and not just try and find their way out to go and find a new role or a new job or a new whatever or new future and to see a team band around a common objective, which is not just survival but thriving as a business and a new reality. That is something that you can't put money on as a leader, right? I can't tell another leader what it means to have a resilient team around them when time hits and their business which is cyclical ism downturn, and people are still committed to seeing it through. And I think if, if that were capable of being put into an ROI metric, we would have, of course, more leaders and more business executives wanting to bring us in, but until you felt it, you don't know the value of it, and try and articulate it even this moment. Probably doesn't convey that feeling of going to sleep every night as a leader. Knowing that everybody on your team is in it to win it, right. And it's because of the fact that they had been cared for that they have felt love that they have been given the tools and the empowerment and the trust, and that forgiveness to show that, hey, we're going to get through this but your place is needed wants it and and sort of valued in the spite as we overcome whatever adversity that the business is facing. And if if we could have have that on a balance sheet, I can't imagine that being, you know, the biggest reason why somebody would invest in this, that's been our challenge, right?

Jeff Ma
I mean, we can talk how many we've seen countless time clients with. Clearly cultural problems being brought forth in terms of people are unhappy people are like they have metrics on that. They they take the surveys, they take the responses, and then their immediate reaction is, well, we need to adjust it through a process or a tool change. And yeah, so many times it's because their processing tools can be measured, they can say, Hey, we rolled this out. Now people have a higher satisfaction about this. But it's like, when we come in and we point out, hey, but there's behaviors here, right? There's people who are still acting out in these ways and feeling this kind of way. And that gets that gets pushed to the side. All too often, right?

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, yeah. It's, it's interesting to me, it feels like what we're I mean, what we're talking about is that because love, as a term is baked into every facet of the organization, the culmination of that results in all of what we've been talking about, right? If love is just a surface level topic, if it's just said out, like many people will drop love into a value statement, or like a vision statement, like, Oh, well, we just we love, you know, and it's never actually lived out. There's no depth to it, essentially. Then you miss these moments of seeing a team that's as resilient as possible of receiving feedback that's critical and and raw. And, and helpful. And seeing a culture that's vibrant, right. And so I think it's just to me, it's it's really interesting just talking about this as a team, because it feels like if it wasn't for the business strategy being built on love, this would not take hold. This would not have been rooted in the way we live as an organization.

Jeff Ma
Yeah, Interesting. Interesting enough, I would say that, that they they don't put love in their vision statement, they transform it to care, or, you know, just compassion and the singular words that try to summarize what, what, what it really should be. And then they put that in a vision statement, and it's like, well character each other and you're kind of like, yep, okay, and how do you get there? I've been

Unknown Speaker
and I think the reason is Jeff, like a lot of the times, I think there's also association of love with being soft. And I've been asked many times, customers Hey, in your culture of love, you know, it seems like To be very difficult to give the critical feedback how, you know, how do you make sure you're able to hold your team accountable? I've been asked all those questions. And I've had to clarify many times, like love doesn't mean you're soft, it actually means like, you're, you can be tough and not take it personally. There were just don't you know, you're

Jeff Ma
just you know, so here's, here's Frank, here's a guy we love. And we beat him down with feedback every single day. He loves it.

Unknown Speaker
I love it. And, and ultimately, we've seen that this culture of love hasn't made a soft, it's actually allowed us to be able to give critical feedback and have it in a timely manner and cut the, you know, the, I don't want to

Unknown Speaker
crack the crack and get to the root cause and let's talk about it. And we're able to do that so much more easily because we understand That we're coming from a place of love when I am giving feedback. It's not personal. I'm not attacking anyone. I'm really coming with this feedback because we need to ultimately solve this problem and get to outcomes. And we've been able to see that justice, cultural love has created an environment of higher accountability and better outcomes and results from our team. And it's it's it's counterintuitive how people look at love as being soft in the business.

Jeff Ma
It's a great point. So we're just to keep us time boxed here and keeping our our show to a schedule. I want to move kind of to our last short little topic here. I know there's a lot more to unpack, but we'll have more episodes in which to unpack them. So I'm excited about that. And so the last kind of piece here for our listeners and our viewers is what is this show going to be? And so we've we've opened up the initial kind of conversation here, but you know, what, what can you expect because we have we've been wanting to do this show. We have grand grand kind of, I guess, ambitions when it comes to sharing this message. But also, I think it's important for everyone to understand just how much we want to learn still about this topic, right? This is we're not, we don't have a trademark on love. We, we just really believe in it. And we think that it belongs, we live our lives by the fact that it belongs in, in our, in our business, in our in our in our lives there. But if anyone wants to add on to that, you know, what's the future state of this, like? What can people expect us to provide in this space?

Unknown Speaker
Yeah. I think to begin with, like, the goal of this is to share how a business such as ourselves, which is internationally located, have employees, you know, working from different parts of the globe, and having an influence in so many different customer facets and exposure to all these industries. Be able to share our knowledge and be able to You let other business owners and leaders benefit from our experiences that we are going through as we explore this culture of love. Because you know, we're still on this journey, we're still trying to learn more about how to apply it in the business. We've had our successes, we've also had our failures. And, you know, we just want to make up opportunity give this opportunity for others to learn and hear our stories, you know, from a lens of empathy business owner, the business owner or leader to leader and be able to share all of our learnings, I think that's ultimately the goal.

Unknown Speaker
And I think as practitioners like we are going to be evolving and adjusting based on what we're receiving from our team, what we're learning about from different situations. And that also means inviting some folks into this, this webinar, podcast experience, to help us learn and grow at the same time and to talk about things that we've done and to engage with them on best practices that they've seen as well. So I think it's an opportunity to just for learning, as well. And so that's, that's personally what I'm excited about, we're going to be covering topics that aren't just love, right, but it's how love is woven into everything, that the overarching fabric of our organization, how love can be woven into the technology that you that you deliver to clients, and the, to the conversations you have with people, all the different elements and aspects of, of what a company can do, and what a company is, as as well as just being able to learn from people that have gone before us and to share our insights and the things we've learned as well.

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, I think like for me, part of my reason for watching podcasts or any sort of like, talking style content is I'm hoping and wanting to get into the uncomfortable under discussed topics of business and the realities that come with dealing with people, right. Leading HR but also working with a lot of HR teams and DNI professionals. Right, there's these uncomfortable sort of wanted in certain parts of the organization discussions and conversations that need to come to the light. And I think this podcast and this conversation that we want to continue to have, should allow for those uncomfortable things to be discussed and brought to the surface and allow for resolution, clarity, or even just, you know, the sense of hearing or being heard or being validated, is enough for some people, but like, I would love for us to continue having those sort of, you know, hidden, you know, in the secret most chambers of people's hearts conversations that actually ultimately do end up coming out and real business outcomes. And how do we sort of bring more light to those things? How do we give people solutions? How do we help, you know, businesses and leaders, you know, and nonprofits and government and, you know, public and private sectors? How do we help them Overcome, if not just address those things.

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, I would say Jeff, ultimately we're gonna hit aspects of strategy, the the technology side, the process and the people and we'd love to share our practices around those three strategic components or functions and how we've been able to apply it and discuss it and share it with everyone.

Jeff Ma
Now with my my dad joke brain in full gear, I like to I like to say if you look at the frit the phrase love as a business strategy. You have love on one end and strategy on the other, but you have business in the center of it. And so, we're going to be about business y'all can laugh, but you know, that's brilliant. It's so good. It's so good. You know, it is business at the center of it. This is a business this is something that we want to send around business this is to at the end of the day about business. But you know, I know love is that provocative word that sits there and we talked about it thoroughly today and we will come up to Time and time again. But hopefully, you know, viewers and listeners out there, you enjoy this conversation. We're looking to engage with you, we're looking for your feedback. And we're hoping that this is something that helps you. And that, you know, it helps you in business and also in other aspects. And we're going to pick those specific topics as we go forward, they can really add that value. And and we're, again, looking for that feedback, looking for that engagement out there. So really excited to carry this forward. So with that, I want to thank all of you guys, it's feels we're thanking guys, because, you know, we just, this is what we do, but really appreciate the time that you guys took to join me here in this in this adventure. And we will see you guys in the very next episode.

Unknown Speaker
Thanks, Jeff. Thank you guys.

Unknown Speaker
Thank you guys. Thanks, everybody. Bye

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