Marty Levine  
If you think about those those folks in war in the trenches together, and you always say, What were what were you fighting for? I was fighting for the guy next to me. Right? You think about those people in war who jump on a grenade? Why the heck would they do that? Right? They did it for the other. They did it for the other person. They did it because they could. Yeah. And the same thing applies to the employer. What do we do? Well, we do right for you because we can.

Jeff Ma  
Hello, and welcome to Love as a Business Strategy, a podcast that brings humanity to the workplace. We're here to talk about business. But we want to tackle topics that most business leaders shy away from, we believe that humanity and love should be at the center of every successful business. Hello, I'm your host, Jeff Ma. And as always, I want to have conversations with real people, and hear real stories about how the real world works with love. My guest today has just recently retired from a 37 year career with Exxon Mobil starting back when it was still Exxon chemical. He's worked in engineering, project management, sales, account management, sales, management, market development, technology, licensing, change management, I'm missing a bunch here. But ultimately, training and consulting across the entire enterprise as well, though he's here today, not just to talk about that. But I'm interested in him sharing the inspirational philosophy and wisdom that he's built over those years. His name is Martin Levine. And I'll be calling him Marty today. Welcome to the show. Marty, how are you?

Marty Levine  
Oh, thank you. Great to be here. Sorry, if there's a cat in the background? I can't help it, they just wander around.

Jeff Ma  
I think in the world of virtual, I think animals are are common, though.  

So you spent almost four decades at Exxon Mobil? Just let's start there. What's that like?

Marty Levine  
Well, you know, I it was, it was a good career. I, I'm one of those guys that did not come from a professional background, really, I worked in a lumberyard. I went to Georgia Tech. And then I got I went to work at Exxon Mobil. So it was kind of a totally new thing for me, but you know, you you, you learn you, you put your head down, you make some mistakes, you try to keep a good attitude. You try to build a network, and try to just do better. And so for me, you know, it was always a learning experience. I always enjoy new challenges. I learned early on that I really liked. I was an engineer by training, but I learned I really liked to do people oriented things. And in particular sales and marketing, and later I got into procurement. So I always tend to say I like to be at the tip of the spear, right? Where we're money is going out or coming in or whatever. To me, that's the the exciting part of the business. So it was it was good.

Jeff Ma  
Awesome, what what I guess is your passion, maybe, that that kind of goes down the spine of that entire experience, like what what's your passion?

Marty Levine  
Yeah, you know, the last few years of my career, I was able to really work on that, actually. And it's really this, this understanding of how people do business, and how sales people operate, how procurement people operate, how strategies work or should work and how they should be put in place. And really just helping people understand that because I found there's a lot of sort of inefficiency in those relationships, because people are hiding stuff that they probably don't need to hide, and people need to cooperate and collaborate more than they than they really do sometimes. Right. And so it really is probably where my passion is, is to try to help people do better business by being more open appropriately, in order to get things done.

Jeff Ma  
Well, Marty, I got really intrigued to talk to you today. Because you had started explaining a few things to me about love. And I know that you're this is this could be connected to your Exxon experience. I don't know you can tell me. But I know that you have studied quite a bit and been very passionate about a book by CS Lewis, the four loves and what you had to say about that really, really intrigued me. And I was wondering if you could start there for me a little bit what what is what is love? For you? Sure.

Marty Levine  
Yeah, I don't think this is particularly tied to my career. This is more of an interest of mine. I had read CS Lewis's book some years ago. Well, actually, it's a series of lectures, you guys listen to them on Audible. They're quite interesting. But, you know, CS Lewis, he lived back, he was probably one of the great minds of the last century, he was an English literature. Sort of, I guess, critic of sorts at Oxford and Cambridge, we also did a lot of, you know, fiction works that Chronicles of Narnia. And then as a Christian, a lot of apologetics most, is best known being Mere Christianity. So, anyway, he tackled this subject of love. But this was, I think, back in the 40s, actually. And what he did is he laid out really to two types of love. So there's, there's gift love, and there's need love. And gift. Love is like the love a parent has for their children, right? They all they do is give, and they don't really, you know, necessarily get anything back. Need loves what the children have, they actually need the love of the parent, right? Because they need to live and be raised. So he explained those two things first. And then he got in talking about sort of four expressions of love. And this is what I when I, when I read the book, actually Love as a Business Strategy. I said, Well, that's interesting, how can we unpack what CS Lewis had to say about love in the context of this book, to maybe help understand how we might better apply this concept of love is sort of in the workplace. So Lewis really describes three when he calls natural loves. One of them is affection, or he calls it storge is the Greek word for it. The second one is philia, which is friendship, the love for friendship, I guess, philia. And the third is eros, which is romantic love. And so he describes those three isn't we calls natural loves. And what I mean by natural as they, they're, they're subject to corruption in the sense, they can be wonderful, beautiful things, but they can also become sort of bad things. And he talks about the fourth love, which is, he calls it the Greek word as agape. Sometimes we use the word charity, it's, it's an assessment, in essence, God's love and is the basic premise of the lectures is, and this is, again, from a Christian perspective, we're trying to apply this to a business perspective, is that there's this charity, this love of God, it will set these other three loves, right so that they can be in a sense be perfected, otherwise, they can become in an essence, bad things. And if you want, I can go through each one of them. Explain how that might happen? Because maybe it's not it's not obvious.

Jeff Ma  
Yeah. And I think one of my again excitements and getting a chance to talk to you today was that we, I guess the English language has the one word love. And we use it in this podcast and the book churns out all the time. And it's, it's absolutely, you know, correct that there are so many different ways that you can mean love, when you say love the different types of love and all these different things. And I don't think I think people can easily get tripped up on that, especially when we say Love as a Business Strategy, like what type of love do you mean? And so I was hoping we could explore that today and you having, you know, read the book a little bit and having all this experience, I was hoping you could help connect those for us today, when it comes to yes, let's Absolutely, if you don't mind, dive into those different types of expressions of love. And then, and then maybe lead to the answer of like, well, what are we talking about, then? When we're talking about love as a business strategy?

Unknown Speaker  
Let me what I'll do, Jeff, let me go through each I'll go through one and then we'll talk a bit about it and then go over the next ones.. So the first one of the simplest one is storge, or affection, right? It's, it's a very humble love, right? It's very innocence familiar. You know, oftentimes, we have affection for things, when when you realize we have affection for something, it's probably already been there for a while you don't fall into affection was something like you fall into love. It's something you sort of develops, and then suddenly you realize it's there. And it doesn't have to be between a person and a person. It could be between you and your dog, or or even some sentimental object, right? So it doesn't really discriminate in a sense. In a sense, you know, for our existence. Affection is necessary, right? Humans are born little babies, we have to be raised. Goodness knows I had small kids, and they can be actually exasperated. And it wasn't for affection. We probably just, you know, given us somebody that can really drive you crazy. Yeah, but so in a sense, it's really sort of, it's really sort of necessary for us. But let me read a little passage from the book just quickly to explain what I mean by this. "But even an animal life and still more in our own affection extends far beyond the relationship of mother and young. The warmth comfortableness the satisfaction of being together takes in all sorts of objects. It is indeed the least discriminating of loves. There are women for whom we can few predict viewers and men who are likely to have few friends. They have nothing to offer. But almost anyone can become an object of affection. The ugly, the stupid, even the exasperating" the language, obviously uses is perhaps a bit out of taste in today's world, but the fact is, almost anything anyone can become an object of affection. It's not it's not particularly discriminating, right? Which is interesting. Now, the problem is, is that there's downsides of affection are? Well, if you give somebody affection, and don't get anything in return, then you tend to get upset about it, right? It becomes it can become injured, it can become jealous. You can say, you know, because I love you and you're my child or whatever, I don't ever want you to leave. Even though leaving may be good for you, you see this actually in a lot of movies, right? Where the, the hero wants to go off and do something great. And someone's trying to hold him back. Right? That's the downside of affection, right? It can it can, in a sense. Trap somebody. And that's that's the problem with it. But it but we need to have, because we need to be raised. We need to be loving to have that feeling that we're being loved. At the same time, it can become a problem.

Jeff Ma  
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I think I believe there is romantic love somewhere down the line the next in the other section. But how is it different just right off the bat? Like How's it different from romantic love?

Marty Levine  
It's affection and romantic love actually kind of go side by side. I think I'm trying to get loose his book. He basically said, maybe this is a southern thing where we have potatoes and gravy. But he often described it as as almost like affection is like the little bowl you make in your potatoes for your gravy, and romances in a sense of what goes in there. Romantic love is surrounded by expressed by affection.

Jeff Ma  
So when you think when you think love as a business strategy, what what percentage, if any of that is is affection type love.

Marty Levine  
I think I think a lot of it, I think a lot of it can in a sense be, you know, affection. Again, they all kind of go together. And I think when we get towards the end we talk about about sort of the ultimate love or charity. What kind of maybe see a bit better how they fit together. But I think you can certainly have affection for your employees. You can have affection you, you you want the best for them, right? That's the good side of it. Affection wants the best for the beloved, right? The downside is okay, and you got to watch out for this. I think all these those we have to watch out. The downside is it becomes jealous, right? You have a colleague you're working with, and you want them to do well. But then suddenly they do well, they're going to be transferred to another department get a promotion? Oh, you know. That's the downside of affection. True affection should always want the best for the beloved. And that that would apply to people who you work with. Does that make? Does that make sense? .

Jeff Ma  
Absolutely.What's the next one?

Marty Levine  
The next one is, is philia or friendship. Now, friendship is in a sense, not as necessary as affection. I mean, affection is what helps us be raised. Romance, in a sense, is what helps us be born. Friendship is in a sense, sort of less necessary, right. And I think a lot of cases, it's declined in modern times, or perhaps in modern times, our friendships aren't as robust as they were in years past. We have all this communication ability now, but do we really communicate with each other? Right? It's it's really, but it has a tremendous value, right? It's, it can really a true friendship can truly help us, you know, soar to levels we couldn't be in before. Most friendships can be around something right? And interest, something you're working on together. I've tried to over the years, develop friendships with other men. Because I find to be very valuable. And I find that you have to purpose yourself to do it. In fact, what I used to do is take guys out on camping trips. And I find that men tend to become friends if they do something together that almost gets them killed. And then they become friends because they sit around they tell the story about what happened and they embellish it or whatever, it gets bigger and they they smack talk the other guy that's that's how, you know these these friendships kind of kind of develop. And so there are way that we that a small group can together do something that maybe you know you couldn't do by yourself.

Jeff Ma  
And it's kind of it's kind of that Add, it's kind of that, I guess, lack of necessity in the effort it requires to Yeah, that makes it all the more special, right?

Marty Levine  
Friendship isn't really jealous. At the same time, you know, if you're friends with somebody or some group or through other people that I sort of said, You're not friends with the other ones, right? And so the downside is people look at a group of friends. And they say, Well, I want in that group. And then maybe they're not brought into the group. Maybe the people in the group didn't know they wanted. Yeah, who knows. But then because of that friendship can become an exclusive thing. And it can put people off and those who aren't in the friend group, feel put out. And that's sort of that's sort of the downside of and obviously, you know, friend groups can work together to do great things. Or there's a lot of friend groups that are involved in crime, for example, right. So it's, that's the, that's the downside of it is its exclusivity that it can bring? And, you know, back to the workforce, the same thing, right? Yeah. You you want to work together to work towards a common goal as a company, right? You want to drive together. And so, but when you get factions in the company, well, that can that can create some problems. I've always, you know, there's a saying that without vision, the people perish. I think it's a proverb, I think it's very important to the company. In a sense, everybody in a company should be part of a friend group in that company, if you think about it that way. Because you're all working together to do something that you could not singly do. And you are exclusive and that you have competition. You have customers, right. And those are separate from you. But you're working together as friends in a sense to do what you could not do alone. That makes sense.

Jeff Ma  
Absolutely. Yes. What's next?

Marty Levine  
Romance is next. This is a tricky one for the workforce. Right?

Jeff Ma  
Yeah. How's go see what you're gonna say.

Marty Levine  
So, you know, lovers are in a state of being in love, as I think what, what Louis said, we often get love and sexual experience mixed up, there are people who have sexual experiences without love. And there's people who have love without sexual experience, right? So those two things are kind of separate, in a sense, right? They come together, sometimes, but they don't always come together. That I think the main thing about about eros or romantic love is, is intensity. It's this is this is burning intensity that it has. And and that is both. It's wonder that, you know, when you're in love with somebody, when you fall in love with somebody, it's all you can do is think about them right as if they all you can do is think about them. At the same time, romantic love in that respect, has has the downside potential of taking the beloved, or even just the idea of being in love. And in a sense, turning into a god or something right, it becomes an almost an object of worship, it will overwhelm you. And I think we've all known people in life who that had that happen to them, they maybe fell in love with the wrong person. They wound up doing things they shouldn't have done. They weren't hurting themselves or hurting others. And they would say it was all because of their love. But it really, it really forced them to make bad decisions. In a sense, it was like a drug they run. So love Love It is set in that sense has a downside. So again, this is intensity is so amazing. But it has the ability on the downside to make you do things that aren't good. That makes sense. Yep. Yep. I think we've all seen that and maybe experienced it ourselves a little

Jeff Ma  
bit. Yeah, God knows I have.

Marty Levine  
It turns into hate, right? I mean, you see people who were, say they're in love, and then something goes sideways. And suddenly they do say to each other. Yes, it became a it's a seed for something very dark sometimes. So yeah.

Jeff Ma  
So maybe, maybe not fully, at least commonly applicable to the workplace. But why don't we talk about I guess that the last kind of the binding type of love and see what how it all comes together.

Unknown Speaker  
It will kind of explore how it comes together? I think so. Again, he's listed these three natural loves friendship, you know, storge , eros  can be corrupted, and that's in fact what they can be. And the Christian sense, you know that the term Agape is God's love. And incense is a Christian you believe that God created man and then man fell, and then God brought the solution to the problem through Christ. And God did that. Out of His love for mankind. He was it was a pure gift love, right? He he doesn't Need anything back from us, he would like to get something back from us. But only what we need is when we have ultimate need love with God. Now, stop right there, it's hard to apply that thinking to the workplace, right? It's not like the employers, God and the employees are man, right? We in fact, as employers and employees need each other, right, there's things the employee needs those things that the the employer needs. So it's kind of a, it's a back and forth. It's it's a, it's a gift, love and need love together. So you know, analogies usually break down. And this one kind of breaks down there. I think the key point that I get from this, as I read through the book from Lewis, that applies to this notion of this type of love, is the fact that you can't live without risk. When you set out this book, that the love is a strategy, then you read through what you're going to do all those things have a risk. And some people might say, well, because it's risky, let's not do it. If he if you fall in love with somebody, so risk, they might reject you, right? There's always a risk in loving. CS Lewis has a fantastic passive yield, put me indulge me, I'll read it's not that long on this, this notion of the risk of love and why you wouldn't do it. Now, there's two concepts in here. Again, one is heaven, which is where God is, and there's all love and the one is hell, which is complete separation of God, a place you don't want to be. So those two are in here. But let me read this passage of a I think it's powerful, and it speaks to their taking the risk of loving those you work with, "there is no safe investment, to love and all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrong and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one not even to an animal, rabbit carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries. Avoid all entanglements, lock it up safe in the casket, or coffin of your selfishness. But in that dark, casket, safe, motionless, airless, it will change, it will not be broken, it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least its risk of tragedy is damnation. The only place outside of heaven, where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love, is hell. That's a powerful bunch of words there. And that the point is, it is a risk. But it's a risk worth taking. If, when I read, you know, the book, I saw at the start, you know, Mohammad kind of separated himself from his employees, right, he was given advice to not mingle with them, that sort of thing. And in a sense, that's what he was he was doing, he was not loving, he was backing away from them, he was crawling into a coffin and a sense of separation of not being engaged and not being involved, of not risking hearing something maybe he didn't want to hear or whatever. I mean, I'm sort of reading some things into this at this point. But I think that's the message here, to do what you all are proposing, and this book is wonderful, it's a risk. But it's a risk worth taking. Because the alternative is tragedy. Which I think perhaps, you all experienced,

Jeff Ma  
yes. And this is such a great, I mean, this is such an eye opening perspective for me. Because the story as written in the book is, it's pretty black and white and it on surface level, it also just, it makes a lot of logic sense easy to follow. But I've yet to really consider it from this perspective of, of that risk. And if you go, if I'm going back right now, mentally and thinking through, really everything we've done, then and since then, to be honest, has been, you can just characterize a summon up as kind of less, less risk adverse in the sense of we when we practice when we practice love in our work, and in what we preach essentially, we are willing to kind of put ourselves out there kind of exposing ourselves and we talked about vulnerability or willing to be wrong be shown as weak be shown as you know, lesser than and, and kind of embracing that is a big part. Now that I think about it, of how we describe love, and I've never connected to before. I've often considered the elements of fear and things like that, but never really connected. How like the the, you know, the direct kind of polar opposite of fear or really facing that fear is an act of, of opening yourself up to love and that's Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah. 

Marty Levine  
love drives out fear. .

Jeff Ma  
And we teach this to people as often as we can is that like, you know, the common workplace culture now is one that's driven by fear. Like, the opposite would be fear as a business strategy, right, where you're afraid of losing your job you're afraid of, you know, looking bad fraid of, you know, getting reprimanded, you know, annual reviews, you have all these things that are just designed to keep people in check, but also instills fear in now, and what we get is people who really only work enough to not be afraid, right? Yeah. Only only do the amount of work that will get them safe. Keep them safe, like you said, kind of in in their own comfortable coffin,

Unknown Speaker  
if you want up with mediocrity, then Right, exactly. With the best. There's another concept here that I'll mention that is in the book. And it's really that charity agape love is simply loving, because you can I love you because I can love you. And maybe that's something in the workplace, we think about right? You're working with your colleague right? I'm gonna love you just because I can. You think about those those folks in war in the trenches together. And you always say, What were what were you fighting for? I was fighting for the guy next to me. Right? You think about those people in war who jump on a grenade? Why the heck would they do that? Right? They did it for the other. They did it for the other person. They they did it because they could. Yeah. And and the same thing applies to the employer. What do we do? Well, we do right for you because we can.

Jeff Ma  
Yeah, and such an important and eloquent way of kind of framing, everything that I believe in, at least and that I believe, would help everyone because, yeah, man, I talk about this a lot. But I think this this perspective is very, very important to me. Now, having having talked through it with you, this element of of that type of love, which is the love itself hasn't changed in my mind is just really the way in which is framed around doing things for others, which we've always said, but also just from a place of, of when we define love, being able to just support, lift up, help and be selfless for others out of a place of because we can because exactly, because we don't need to be afraid of the risk. We don't need to be afraid of what that might do to us or cause us in terms of, you know, any setbacks, but because knowing we do it will help others in that. I mean that that that really sums it up. I know that a lot, a lot. There's a lot of other steps for other people to take to connect that all the way back to the to the bottom line and their particular workplace. But now, this is powerful for me, at least.

Marty Levine  
I mean, let me add one of the things, Jeff, is you're talking here about you. So you said earlier, I think you know this this fear, right that people have to do this, right? There are three concepts that there's the people talk about, see people say I've lost my faith, right? What does that mean? They usually means they're fearful, but But what I find is that is that there's really three things, there's knowledge, you what you know about something, and there's what you hope about something. So there's, there's what people know about working at a place, right? And are and it's what they hope about it what what it could be how wonderful it could be how good it could be right? To get from what you you can't have hope and something you don't know about. Yet, you have to start with some knowledge. What what people get afraid of is the risk in between, to get from the current state to the hope for state, which is always involves usually some risk, right? In the in the Christian sense. Faith is that which connects knowledge with hope is the faith that things will be better in the future. And in business, I think a lot of faith comes through our strategies, honestly. They are the action through which we have a sense of faith. But there's always that risky moment. When you say I want to do this thing. And I'm worried it might not work out. But you're driving towards a hope for future and you have faith and doing the right thing. You'll get there.

Jeff Ma  
I love it. Well put and wow. Time has slipped away on this conversation. And I think that there's a lot more I want to dig into especially. I know there's a lot more we can talk about a how that type of love can then connect to the other types we talked about, or at least bind them together and sort them out. But we'll definitely save that for another conversation, I know that this has already been very, very helpful for me. And so Marty appreciate you for coming on the show and and sharing this with us today.

Marty Levine  
Absolutely been a pleasure.

Jeff Ma  
Absolutely. And and I know that this type of conversation, already know a number of people who really enjoy this conversation, because this is one of the big things that we get asked a lot is is what do you mean by love? And I think the English language does No, no service to no favours to the word love because that there's just too many different ways that we can be slicing and dicing that word. And this this conversation thing I'm going to use to help clarify for people what we mean from this point on, so definitely appreciate that. Yeah. To our listeners, thank you so much for tuning in. As always, please do check out the book Love as a Business Strategy for more information. And we appreciate your support all the time. So subscribing rating, leaving reviews and feedback, always helpful. So with that, we hope you enjoyed this conversation with Marty, and we will see you again next week.