Jeff Ma
Hello Hello, and welcome to Love as a Business Strategy podcast that brings humanity in the workplace. We're here to talk about business, but we want to tackle topics that most business leaders might shy away from. And we believe here that humanity and love should be at the center of every successful business. I'm your host, Jeff Ma. I'm joined today by my friend and co host, Mohammad Anwar. Hey, Moh, how's it going? Good, Jeff. Awesome. And as you know, we're here to have conversations and hear stories with real businesses, real people real stories. And today, our guest is the co founder and CEO of Evolv Consulting, Eric Neef. In addition to his role at Evolv, he's also passionate about improving the gap in our American education system and closing the gender in gender income inequality gap that also exists in corporate America. I'm really excited to talk about all those things. So it's a pleasure to have you here, Eric, how you doing today?

Eric Neef
Doing? Well, it's good to be here. Thanks for having me.

Jeff Ma
Awesome. Absolutely. And I don't know I kind of considered like Moh, you're here today. I always have to give because nowadays we do shows where I'm typically solo hosting. But today, I've brought you in Moh. Why are you here today? Why are you joining me today?

Mohammad Anwar
I'm here because of Eric. And you know, I had this amazing opportunity to meet Eric through LinkedIn, and we got in touch with each other. And I feel like since then, we've hit it off. Because we're so well aligned on the culture of love and the values that we aspire for our businesses and our team members and our customers that I'm incredibly excited to be here because I I feel like Eric is a living example of a leader who believes in culture, love and practices that in his organization, and I'm excited to have him share his story with us.

Jeff Ma
Are those are some high expectations for you today? How are you feeling about that?

Eric Neef
Well, thank you, Moh. And it's good to be here. We've had this culture of love without not knowing what to call it. Although the name of our company does spell love backwards. When I came across the book. Back in, I think it was December. And I read that and I thought this is great. This book. And these individuals that become get to know pretty well over the past few months, are really able to put this into a format that can almost be a playbook for how we're running our business. And like Mohammad said, when we're able to connect via LinkedIn and email and build a relationship and get to know each other, it's great to be building our companies side by side and learning from each other as we go.

Jeff Ma
Awesome. Absolutely. So, Eric, if you could start us off, I always like to start from a place of passion and purpose. Tell me about your passion. How did he How did you get to that passion, today?

Eric Neef
Sure. So there's a couple of things that we're passionate about. One is really just loving our team members, starting by calling them team members, not employees. Philosophy I learned a long time ago by reading something from Richard Branson, where if we love our team members, they in turn love our clients. So we started out thinking about things that way, but the real passion and inspiration for the business started out. Gosh, at this point, it's probably eight years ago, when I was in a senior executive role at a different company and I saw a female aspiring executive almost get passed over for promotion due to being out on maternity leave and missing some objective criteria. I had previously written a big, hairy audacious goal for myself that was to make a positive influence on the world by being in a position or authority sorry, being in a position of power or authority where I could make material change. So when I was in that situation, and I saw that happen, or almost happened, I should say, I thought this is my purpose. This gives me an opportunity. And over the past years that's evolved from just gender equality and pay to equity across the organization. And when I say that, the difference in the example that I use is the quality across the organization means for example, if everyone needs to have a scissors to cut paper, everyone gets a pair of scissors. Equity means finding out if there's any left handed people that need the left handed scissors. So it my passion became inclusion which starts by getting people included across all different groups, not the three colleges that I and my co founders went to where all the people look and sound like us. But to branch out into other universities to begin with, creating an environment of equity where people have what they need to be successful in their jobs, the opportunity to see the office space we're building out, it includes an area for neurodiverse individuals. So that's just one example of a way we're doing things to create equity across the organization. And then diversity is just a measurement of how well we're doing in the first two.

Mohammad Anwar
I loved visiting Eric and seeing his office space. And when he introduced me to the neuro diverse section that they're envisioning, I was very, very much like, impressed, inspired, and, you know, sold on the concept that okay, this is this is for real, like Eric is really taking this seriously in building an inclusive environment. For all elements of diversity, and people from all backgrounds. I was very appreciative of that.

Jeff Ma
Thank you, Eric, talk a little bit about your, your personal kind of journey here. So like, what what, you know, what brought you, you know, personally into this, this this place that you now occupied today?

Eric Neef
Well, that's a big question. So, like life, upbringing, background.

Jeff Ma
It any of that would be, I want to get to know you a little bit, I want to get to just pick your brain and get in there.

Eric Neef
Sure. So I grew up on the East Coast, and I went to a predominantly white Catholic, a fluent private college. So when I came out of college, I went into work in the Big Five consulting firm with a lot of those similar people from similar colleges, and pretty much spent the first say 10-12 years of my career, working between mid atlantic East Coast and Denver, Colorado, very non diverse areas. And then I found myself almost 12 years ago, moving to Dallas, Texas, which is a little bit more diverse, as a place to work, but still not having the opportunity to be exposed to some of the things that have become a passion of mine. So I am very fortunate to have married a woman who do a lot of these things and doesn't impose those things all at once on other people. But she and I have grown together over the past almost 12 years, we're raising three beautiful children that are nine, seven, and five. And as I started raising them when they were two or three, and I watched my children, not see things until they were getting to the 6 -7-8 years that they were being told by other children. And I specifically recall being at a daddy daughter camp out. And I and my daughter was describing one of her good friends, and she has very dark skin. And that wasn't a deciding factor. My daughter was describing her shirt and her speed. And I thought that was really it really caught my attention about I think it was four years ago. She was five, maybe six. And I thought that's a beautiful thing that my daughter is being raised in a way that she has no inherent blind spots, and how can we apply that to the workforce and our lives and extended outside of just what we do in our day in our work? So yeah, that's that's kind of the background and who I am.

Jeff Ma
I know that you also do a lot of work and have a lot of passion around gender equality in the workplace. How did how did that come about in your life? Or what presented that passion for you?

Eric Neef
Yeah, so that that was a story I alluded to earlier, but my business partner and co founder and I were in a promotion review meeting. And one of the top performers by subject subjective criteria was almost passed over because she missed some objective criteria. She just happened to be out for three months on maternity leave. And when I saw that almost happened, and it was my business partner that noticed it and spoke up and she ended up getting the promotion and that was great. But I realized if he hadn't spoken up, how much more often would this have happened. And when we started the company, we agreed we're going to pay across gender lines with equally based on capability and skill set. And the first person that we all even for to say that we decided we're going to ask people what they want to earn, not what they do earn because the beginning of gender inequality, but also racial inequality and other inequality and pay starts with asking the question, what do you make? And that just becomes a systemic recurring issue of paying them more than they're currently made. Again, but if they're starting at a lower number, it creates a unfair disadvantage. So the first person we tried to bring in happened to be a young female who were fully prepared to pay a lot more than she asked for. And we asked her to, we repeated the question, not what do you make? What do you want to make? And she told us the same number. So we offered her more, and she really didn't know what to do. But it was good experience. It was a good experience. And one we've repeated numerous times, and I don't keep track, we do have someone that keeps track of how often we do that. Because we do want to be able to when we get bigger to be able to record on things like how we bridge that gap, but I want it to be continued to be genuine and not done as a way to, it's not for marketing or anything like that.

Jeff Ma
Awesome, awesome. Well, now that we get get to know you a little better, I want to bring it over to Evolv. And I think, you know, while we're in different businesses, I mentioned at the front, there's a lot of similarities in the types of things we're trying to do in the workplace. And so I have a lot of just curiosity around that journey, you know, trying to bring culture to the forefront trying to make sure culture is it's tricky, right? It's, it's not easy. And so I'm curious, what are some of the, you know, high level to start ways that you, you know, practice and adopt and kind of apply culture within the walls of Evolv? So, what are some of the intentional things you can do?

Eric Neef
Yeah, you know, it's, that's a very interesting topic to me, because I didn't realize the paradox in this statement, I realized the paradox. Now, I did not realize it when I used to say this. But I've never been a fan of forced fun or forced culture. So I was very passionate in the beginning of starting the company, of not creating the culture, but letting the culture Evolv from the people we hire. And then we probably about a year ago hired a really smart Ivy League guy who came in and wrote us a Glassdoor review that said, this is a really unique hiring approach. They say they don't create the culture, they let the team members create the culture for the company. But they have a very ambiguous way of interviewing and hiring such that I didn't know if I was getting a call to get an offer or to be told I didn't make the cut. And I can't articulate as well as he did. But his background and education caused him to write this really interesting paradoxical review. And it was a very positive review of how we screen for things that we don't have written down on paper that have led to people that are fun. I've heard recently, the past month, which I love hearing, but we're not telling people to do it. Everyone's smiling all the time, which just makes me happy. I guess we probably subconsciously look for people friendly on Zoom, when we interview them. Now they're starting to come back into the office, but for the past two years. The other one I continue to hear is that people are genuinely nice. I'm just I'm really excited about that. But it's it is a paradox, because what we set out to do is evaluate people almost kind of like you did with question you ask, we try to get to know people in their character first, and then their capability and skill set. Second. We feel like we can train and teach skill sets. But we can't really train people or teach people to not be self serving or mean to each other. That's something that's pretty bred into us throughout our childhood and upbringing.

Mohammad Anwar
So Eric, I have a question for you. Just to challenge you a little bit. You think it's because you've hired people who smile a lot? Or is it your environment that makes them smile a lot?

Eric Neef
You know,I don't know. This is new to me since I last saw you or talk to you. It is it's a it's a chicken in the egg. Too few of us smile. And that led to people smiling. But I mean, if I've walked down the hall now, ever since it's been pointed out to me the last month or six weeks, I do notice people are smiling and smiling back. So it matters. I mean, I don't come in here. You know, our company is like any other company that has difficult days. It has stressful days. But it's it's like, it's like a team. I don't call it a family. Because we don't get it family members that are mean you don't cut them out of the family or most people don't. But I just told this story today, we're very intentional about our core values, and one of them is teamwork and collaboration. I didn't watch squid games, but I heard about a very interesting analogy there. I usually tell the story since we live in Dallas about a rod getting traded as the best shortstop. To the Yankees, who also had Derek Jeter, and he became a third baseman, our core values, teamwork and collaboration, you can be at Team pulling in the same direction. But if you're not all collaborating, it really doesn't work.

Mohammad Anwar
I'm going to throw it out there, I think it has a lot to do with the leadership, right, because having met you having met leaders, at your organization, you're one that makes everybody feel welcome. And all your staff, your team members, your guests, including, you know, when we showed up, we were met with, you know, at the hotel, with a gift basket, and we were never anticipating that and you made us feel whole, like it was home, you made us feel comfortable, we came into your office, you gave me a hug. And I saw that extend to all your other team members as well. And so I'd have to say, whether you want to believe it or not, I think your leadership, and you personally as the CEO of the company has a lot to do with the culture of the company. So I want to give you that credit. And from my observation as a, as a third party, and as a visitor who, who has embraced inside of your organization, just having that short visit, I can naturally see why people are smiling, and they're happy. And I think recruiting is definitely an aspect that you guys are doing a great job. But I think you're also doing an amazing job, setting the tone as the top CEO of the company. And I want to give you that credit, and kudos to you.

Eric Neef
Well, thank you, I appreciate that. We got that idea from your book. And in particular, our team all read your book when they heard you recovering, not just the people that you were meeting with. And it was actually, Aubrey who said, We should do this, it's a good idea. Give a gift basket a gift bag. And I'm glad that made a big impact. And I'm glad our team takes things like this seriously. And hopefully, I'm practicing one of our other core values, which is humility. We don't want to be taken credit for the things that we didn't invent this stuff. So thank you, though, I appreciate the compliment.

Mohammad Anwar
No worries, I was gonna ask you, you know, this concept of love and love as a business strategy or the culture of love which you you are naturally practicing in your organization. And now that you put a label to it, how is it being received by your team, your customers? Or have you seen reactions, because you, you talk about it more openly, or what's been your experience, Eric?

Eric Neef
I think I laugh because my personal experience is after having your book at my disposal. It gives some validity to what I what we were setting out to do. And what I've said, I'm not gonna lie in the beginning, I got some criticism that this was too soft and mushy of an approach. And I don't know if this come across or if it's a mirror image, but I hold up the card with our business name on it and show when I started and came up with the name. And it's love spelled backwards. And distinctively remember a conversation that was that's goofy, that's corny. Goofy was the term that was used. So I dialed it back for a little bit until we got I still told everyone on the interviews. But I didn't make it core to who we were. So I think now especially after your visit, and people getting the book, we now I don't know if you know this, but we give the book to everyone on their first day when they start they get two books now. years and one that we've been giving all along. I think it gives some credibility to a philosophy, a philosophy that we had and probably didn't have much organization around what that meant. It was maybe a purpose without a plan. And now people take it a little more seriously.

Mohammad Anwar
I don't know appreciate that. Jeff,

Jeff Ma
yeah, I I'm, I'm curious. You know, a lot of it. It's great to see that so much of this form, you know, in some ways, from what you're saying organically, just through the desire. What have you done in your mind? Maybe it's like values or mission statements like what what are some of the intentional parts? I think a lot of people want to know, like, even if it's not, you know, one to one align to what the book says are what the right you know, terminology is, what in your mind did you do, you know, as as intentionally as possible along this journey here

Eric Neef
So the the other book that I referenced is one we had read about 10 years ago. And two of the key things I took away from it then, and I've read it probably 20 times, but it talks about vulnerability and transparency. So being transparent about mistakes you might make, or the fact that we're human and being vulnerable for feedback and hearing criticism, and it is a self fulfilling prophecy. If people know that you're willing to accept feedback, they give it to you. So we start out with that as kind of the premise let's, let's practice this in our day to day. And let's hear what people have to say that intentionality has bled over into core values as a specific thing. So I mentioned, I kind of stuck fumbled around the original mission earlier when I talked about having material impact on the world. But we set out on a mission to create a consulting firm that changes the world with the foundation of love. And that was written on my whiteboard before I found this book. And I think I left it there for when you came to our office, Mohammad, I don't remember if I point that out to you or not. But you know that that culture of transparency has become fun, because we have five core values. But one of our team members was asked to do the presentation of core values to one of our all hands meetings. And he had a funny way of saying we actually have nine core values, we just mash them up into three words, two sets of two words, in individual words, but what makes me laugh about that is, it was great feedback in some companies, people wouldn't have been comfortable saying that. He was having fun teasing me, Mohammad sort of this gentleman speak talking about birthdays and other things. And he's just a fun guy. But I took that, that comment somewhat seriously to realize if someone looks at those values and says it are intended to be five, but there are nine words, we must not be explaining them well. So I've gone through a couple of them and I, they're very intentional. So I've talked about inclusion, equity and diversity. That's three words, teamwork and collaboration. And I've already explained the intentionality behind that it's not just about working as a team, but it's about collaborating together as individuals to make an effective team. When I hadn't mentioned yet, its honesty and integrity. As you asked earlier about personal life, I learned that from watching my at the time, my five year old daughter received the character award at school and they defined the character word is something you give to a student who does the right thing when no one's looking. The core value of honesty and integrity is a lot of companies say honesty and it's just something they stick on the corporate wall. Honesty is what you tell someone when they ask you a question, you tell them the truth. Integrity is doing the right thing when there's no one there asking you the question. And then humility I mentioned in the last one is passion. So when Milan said that about how many words there were, we've made an intentional effort to be more vocal about the meaning behind those words, and why they're in the order they're in? Why does honesty come before integrity? What is teamwork come before collaboration? What does inclusion come before equity, and both before diversity? So yeah, it's it's been an ongoing journey. And that's something I've also learned more from you, you peep all of you individuals, as people more than I have from reading the book. But it is a journey. It's not something that we had made, put on the website, put on the walls and just be done with we talked about before every quarterly meeting we talked about before every all hands meeting. And, you know, a couple of weeks, we're sending the employee, sorry, team member survey out that's it's literally on a platform called employee surveys, which I don't like but it's our team member survey. And one of the masks to tie that back to the questions that are pretty standard in corporate surveys. But how does that How are we living at our core values as it relates to this question and that question?

Mohammad Anwar
Awesome. Eric, in conversations with you, you're sharing with us some of the benefits and programs you've instituted for your team members. And I was quite inspired by hearing some of the trust, vulnerable trust you've taken in instituting so these programs, especially like your leave policy, would you be willing to share with us what it is and how you found results from that leaf policy?

Eric Neef
Yeah, that's a fun one. And we did take your advice. I think I told you we were going to do this, but we followed through on it and we got rid of our non compete and non solicitation agreements. For the same reason that we talked about, you know, those are things that we put in place because we thought we were supposed to and at the end of the day, we're asking people, we haven't officially said sign an ethics agreement, but we're asking them to abide by an F Next agreement, which is to do the right thing. And we employ a lot of technologists who tend to have a mind of gaming, and I don't mean video games, but like how to write code and solve problems. And when I vetted the idea with them, I was fascinated by the response, which is if you give me a contract, I'm figuring out ways to get around it, whether I want to or not, if you asked me to do the right thing, and I shake your hand, I'm going to exceed that expectation. So that led to just April 21, we had our quarterly meeting. And we, we didn't have a problem to rip the contract up. But we said, we're officially ripping up the non solicit non compete clauses, and we're just going to ask you to do the right thing. But specifically to the one you asked about another kind of uphill battle in the beginning, I didn't think it was such a crazy idea to do unlimited vacation. I got pushback from our benefits, team, HR benefits team. Those that administer the benefits the company we use for that. And fortunately, people agreed to at least give it a try. I think what you the story you might have heard was the person that at the end of the year, when we had a very small team at the time, I think we might have had 12 or 15 people turned out to be at the very top of the amount of production from billable hours and revenue generated. She also was at the top of the most vacation days. And it was fascinating to see because she was someone that quietly would take a Friday and a Monday at one point took a stretch for honeymoon she took, I think it was three weeks actually consecutively. But no one noticed because she did such great work and for four days of this week and four days of that week. But when it was entered in the time system, we thought this is exactly why this work, she took a lot of a lot of good time for good purpose. She recharged she got married, she went on nice honeymoon. But she at the same time performed exceeded performance in her job. And beyond that we have tons of other examples. But people don't abuse it. People enjoy it. They like the freedom to be able to work when they can they like we like the engagement outside of normal hours. So I have kind of been a anti work life balance philosopher, I think that means both have to be an equal. But in the consulting world, the reality is there are weeks where you have hard deadlines and things have to get done. And we work hard. We're very fortunate we have some really good clients. One of them in particular, gives random days off four day weekends after a quick push. So we follow suit and give that particular team the day off. Unlike the old days that we grew up in, they don't have to come sit in the office doing nothing to be seen because it's not an Evolv holiday. Can people really enjoy that? And we really enjoy the fact that no one's taking advantage of it. Currently under 17. Team team members a little bit very

Mohammad Anwar
quiet. Yeah, I heard that Jeff and I was like, Okay, this is this has to be shared with the world. I was also going to ask your traditional consulting services firms and many other organizations out there. Why do you think companies are resistant or hesitant to give that level of flexibility? What do you think comes in the way of that?

Eric Neef
You know, I think at a high level some of the pushback that I got stem from a lack of inherent Trust, which would be contrary to the core. Not value but the the root of our our name Evolv. You know, if we're going to love people that start by trusting them, that we say we love you but sign this agreement and you only get two weeks off. You know, we're not a not for profit, we will one day I'm sure have to have the hard conversation with unlimited PTO doesn't mean you come to work and go away for three months, or six months or you know, and we did have to spend a lot of time and money with all the legal implications of maternity paternity leave military leave. So there are some guardrails and guidelines to make sure everything is legal, compliant and fair. But I think we just took an opposite approach of let's start with love and trust and build back into the guardrails and the requirements. And I think I guess at a simplistic level most companies must start with here are the guidelines and guardrails and let's just put that in place for everyone across the board.

Mohammad Anwar
Awesome, thank you for sharing that. Appreciate it. You know, we're trying something new here. We're trying a four day workweek at Softway and we've been experimenting over the last two months taking alternate Fridays off and consequent you know, consecutive Friday Fridays off and now This month, we're doing two Fridays, often to no meeting Fridays, just so we can see the learnings. And then we're hoping to institute a four day workweek policy at Softway as a result. And so far, we're having a lot of learnings where we're recognizing where we can do better, and how we need to change your mindset around a four day workweek, by taking inspiration from you and how you instituted the unlimited leave. You're like, Okay, let's do it. Let's try the four day workweek. So we'll let you know how it goes.

Eric Neef
Yeah, I'd love to hear how that goes. There's their structure, I can even feel myself moving in my chair that I don't really do in terms of the one day here that doesn't, I'm anxious to see the results. That's really neat to hear how it goes. I think it's a great effort, guys, in terms of doing something for your team that way, I've heard about another company that tried that, and I am I am encouraging you to push forward and learn from and figure out what works. Because when I talked to the people at the company that tried it, they said there's no four day work week for those of us that do x and y. So that's I'm a little excited and excitedly anxious to hear how it goes, because I'm sure it can be done. And I'm looking forward to, because I think that would be great here too, especially for individuals that are not in a project at the moment that they need to get done. As I'm sure we have people coming in on Fridays, that would rather be fishing or something.

Mohammad Anwar
Totally, totally. So yeah, we'll keep we'll keep you posted on how the results come across. For sure.

Jeff Ma
Absolutely. Eric, I'll be honest, my favorite type of of these episodes is when we get to talk, not talk about the theory, but hear hear about it in practice. So I really, really appreciate you being here today and sharing a little glimpse into Evolv in the ways that that love has kind of shown up there. So thank you so much for being here today.

Eric Neef
That's my pleasure. Thank you for having me, guys. It's a I can't tell you how much that book impacted us in a positive way. And you know, it really just accentuated a lot of the things that we had talked about and, and didn't know how to put into practice in some cases. And I'll be honest, I didn't remember. Didn't notice it was a X's and O's like a football play and how it tied to the university, University of Houston game until I'm sitting there looking at it's on my credenza behind me and I was talking about, I use the word playbook and someone pointed to it. And I thought, yeah, yes, I've been looking at this now for three months, and I never connected the dots to the football game. The love is a business strategy. And it's actually the X's and O's. So it's great. We really appreciate what's doing for us in our company in our business.

Jeff Ma
Oh, thank you so much. Yes. And you got it. That was intentional, for sure.

Eric Neef
It took me a while. But I'm glad you guys.

Jeff Ma
All right. So to our listeners, thank you again, thank you so much for joining. And, well, we've been talking about the book, but I'm always going to pitch it one more time at the end of the show. Check out the book if you haven't already. Your local retiming not local, but your online retailers. You should have it. Amazon especially leave us a review if you'd like to book. Eric, have you dropped review on Amazon yet?

Eric Neef
I have not. But I will. There we go. I

Jeff Ma
put you on the spot you now on a podcast saying you will do so so I'll be looking out for that.

Eric Neef
And I'll give it to Aubrey to make sure it gets done. That makes sure I get it done now. I'll hop on there as we hang up. And I'll make sure to do that.

Jeff Ma
Attract you on the on a show live show.

Eric Neef
It's all good. It's all good.

Jeff Ma
Thank you. Thank you and everybody. Thank you so much. We put out a new episode every week. So please subscribe, tell a friend and with that. Thank you Moh for joining as well today. And we'll see everybody thanks