Jeff Ma  
Hey folks, if you follow the show or you've read the book, you've probably heard of Seneca leaders, a unique one day experience that helps people transform mindsets and shape new behaviors. I'm so proud to host the facilitate these sessions alongside my co authors and colleagues. And I would really love for you to come and join us learn more about it by visiting Senecaleaders.com. And now on with the show.

Mark Mears  
I think that the great late poet laureate, Maya Angelou said was, I've learned people will forget what you've said, they'll forget what you've done, but they'll never forget how you made them feel.

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 where we want to tackle topics that most business leaders shy away from. We believe that love and humanity should be at the center of every successful business. I'm your host, Jeff Ma. And I'm here to have conversations with real people and hear stories from the real world. And my guest today is Mark Mears mark is a number one best selling author, keynote speaker, consultant and visionary business leader. And he has a significant track record of building shareholder value driving innovation and profitable growth among world class high profile brands. I'll just name a few PepsiCo Pizza Hut, McDonald's Frito Lay JC Penney, NBC Universal, and the Cheesecake Factory. All names we know well. So today, Mark serves as chief growth officer for LEAF Growth ventures LLC, which is a consulting firm, helping individuals teams and organizations find purpose in fulfilling their true growth potential while making a positive lasting difference in the world. Mark is also a member of the senior leader network within conscious capitalism Inc, who has just released a new book titled The purposeful growth revolution four ways to grow from leader to legacy builder. So there's so much to dive into with just the intro here alone, but welcome, mark to the show. How are you doing?

Mark Mears  
I'm great, Jeff, thanks so much for having me on. It's an honor.

Jeff Ma  
Awesome, awesome. Mark, I have to ask, so much has gone on clearly in your career here, but I want to dial it back in here. You know, starting from a passion point, where you come from, where's your passion today? And where did that sprout from?

Mike Mears  
Yeah, it's actually been something that is been growing in me throughout my life and career. And, you know, I refer to it as my purpose and I years ago wrote a kind of purpose statement that, you know, as a, as a marketing executive, I decided I was going to drink my own Kool Aid and put together a personal brand plan. Because I've been working on some of these illustrious brands that you named. And I've learned from some of the best, I've been working with wonderful agency partners and peers and mentors. And so I thought, I want to put this to work for my my own life and my own kind of ecosystem of those who I may have an influence on. And it was really a simple phrase. And I said, I don't want to just make money and retire, I want to make a difference and inspire. And that means making a difference in the lives of others, and inspiring them to want to do likewise, which creates this virtuous cycle of reciprocity, or what I call paying it backward, helping others along their growth journey. And that's what gets me up every day is this notion of purposeful growth, that really what the book, the purposeful growth revolution was all about, is starting a movement toward a more humanistic way of working and leading. And that's the ethos that I know you share, which is why I'm really excited about this conversation today.

Jeff Ma  
Yeah. Was there a specific moment in your career that had you I'm sure it happened over time. But was there a moment that you can think of that, that had you crossed over to this realization?

Mark Mears  
Yeah, and it was actually had specific moment an epiphany, I call it I was serving as president of a half a billion dollar casual dining restaurant group that was a unit of a bigger, broader, publicly traded enterprise and was recruited from the Cheesecake Factory where I was the senior VP and Chief Marketing Officer to take on this broader role to reinvent the brand. reposition it put a new concept in the ground to where the The publicly traded parent company could put more capital as a growth engine. That was attractive for me. While we were down double digit negative sales, when I got there, we were told to do all these things so that we could earn the right to capital for future growth. Right when I got there, most of my executive team had kind of had it from just, you know, prior regime, and I had to recruit new team, establish a new vision, get everybody excited, motivated. And we did that. And we did it quicker than I think our parent company thought. And instead of giving us the capital to grow, as we were promised, they decided to strike while the iron is hot, we turned the sales around, we put a new concept in the ground, we had a new brand positioning, we refreshed the concept. And in our tests, we were just, we were killing it. And we were well, in front of our return on invested capital timelines. And so that's really what everything was driven by were numbers. And it was great until we were told, oops, we're the board's decided to move in a different direction. And we're going to seek strategic alternatives for the brand, which really means we're going to put it up for sale. But don't worry, we're going to put you in charge the process. But you can't tell your team you can't tell anybody due to confidentiality, because if the sale doesn't go through, it's going to be business as usual. And we don't want to disrupt everything. Okay. So imagine all that pressure of having to recruit a new team, you know, having done so, having accomplished all of our objectives, faster than we thought possible to now have to hold in this idea that oops, we're, we're now going to have to prepare them for something else. But we thought it would be good because the person or the company that purchased the brand, was a strategic play, and not just a private equity firm that was going to kind of dismantle it and sell it five years down the road for a profit. They were someone in the business and someone that really we felt was going to be the parent that we really needed to grow. Well, this was in Southern California, where I was living at the time, and this was like late February, but that's about the time where spring starts to emerge. And the deal closed on a Friday. And on that Monday, it was supposed to have a meeting with the new CEO to kind of have a week of strategic planning discussions with our joint executive team. The meeting started at eight o'clock and 805, I'm out the door, we've decided to move in a different direction. And they wanted to bring in their own team. And so I was not anticipating that at all. It was complete surprise and shock. And I realized as I was driving home, the next morning, when I got up, I took the dog out. And Jeff as God as my witness. The sun was coming up over the wall in the backyard where we had this big tree, it was barren from those five or six or seven weeks of winter, we do get in Southern California. But there on the end of one branch was this tiny green sprig of a new, fresh new butt of a leaf that was just starting to form. It was there I got this epiphany, took the dog in and I started working on this treatment for this idea that a leaf is a symbol of growth and rebirth, a metaphor if you will. And then as I started writing, I got further into it thinking you know, it's really also an acronym, I had been leading with what's called the rule of threes. If you focus on three things well, and doing well, you're gonna get more traction than if you try to do too many things, right. And my three priorities for my team became my mantra, leadership, engagement and accountability. Those were the three things I felt we needed to accomplish our huge goals. And we did. But what was missing was the F of leaf as an acronym, which stands for Leadership, engagement, accountability, and fulfillment. We were missing the fulfillment. We were chasing numbers for the sake of numbers. We were working on all hours the day at night and weekends and traveling and spending time in restaurants and, and training and getting the whole place ready to rock and roll for this new growth. That didn't come the rug was taken out from underneath us. And so we didn't allow ourselves a sense of fulfillment and I as a leader did not provide an environment for that fulfillment to take place in all of us. And that's when I got this epiphany there's more to work and there needs to be a more loving hue. monistic a way way to approach leadership. And that became my journey to learn how I could be a better leader, and demonstrate through a more humanistic, more loving approach, how to build other leaders and how to engage my team and our organization, from the boardroom, all the way down to the break room and everywhere in between.

Jeff Ma  
Wow, I love that. That's an incredible story. And I want to I guess, I want to ask a potentially provocative question, I guess around this. If, if you went back in time now with the leaf, and the F, the fulfillment, understanding that you have, knowing that in that situation, you may not have had control over who was buying or selling, you know, what business and what, what the what the decisions they were making, for your team on behalf of you. And in a way you were you were being moved around as pieces in that game? Yeah, but But what would fulfillment have changed? How would you have done things differently from your position in that story?

Mark Mears  
That's a great question, Jeff. And I think I need to break down the leaf model a bit for you and your listeners so that they can understand in context, leadership, is that metaphor of growth, and you were asleep, like I was in science class, you may have missed it. But all growth happens in a plant or a tree through the leaf through the magic of photosynthesis. And so the idea of leadership is it represents the seed and the root system, because we know we have to have a strong root system for any plant or tree to grow. And likewise, we have to have strong leadership in an organization for it to grow. But if you just do that, and that all leads to alignment, by the way, so you need to make sure there's alignment, there's an outcome for every one of these letters. And I'll try to remember them for you. And then if you have that, you just have a stump. So you need the trunk, the branches, and the system of nourishment, which in Spanish is called sabia and translates directly to life blood. Well, what's the lifeblood of any organization, its people. And so you want to engage them in a way that leads to empowerment. And we know that empowered people and teams are, are more engaged, they do have a deeper sense of ownership. And they're usually able to achieve better results, which gets you to the next part of the acronym, which is accountability. And accountability is this notion of leading to achievement, it's making sure that we're accountable to ourselves to you know each other, as well as to the broader organization. And then that, again, leads to achievement Well, finally, this idea of fulfillment. Think of it as a nurturing environment. This is the ecosystem, the soil, the sun, the rain, that photosynthesis that can occur happens when it's in an optimal environment for growth. And today, we know that in business to be a culture, and I prefer the word community, which we'll get into later. So the culture has to be a nurturing environment for that plant. To achieve its greatest aspirations, that fig tree in my backyard only knows how to be a fig tree. Right? So it's, its goal is to bear fig leaves, for that plant to grow that lead to fig fruit, that allow for that, to be productive, in whatever way, shape or form much like all of us. And in the notion or in that metaphor, I believe those who have the ability to bear the most fruit, have the opportunity, and I'll say, the responsibility, the scattered the most seeds. And that's what all nature is designed to do. And any living organism is isn't is designed to do. It's to grow and thrive and reproduce. So that idea of fulfillment is about how could I have created a better culture. While we were under some really difficult circumstances, doing something that we felt was noble. To have maybe given people a deeper sense of fulfillment no matter what the outcome was that I could not control? How could I have led differently during the time that I knew something they did? How could I have created a more empathetic style of leadership? Once they did find out and then craft the appropriate communications and exit plans to allow people to exit with dignity and with grace and honor you I did my best with what I could do. But I think now that I look back, there's probably many things I could have done different, better, to have made that whole experience fulfilling, I still stay in touch with these people. So it's a bond that we shared together that will never be broken because of that experience that we, that we all experience together as a team.

Jeff Ma  
Yeah, that's, that's a beautiful analogy for that. And I love the way that frames things through actual growth in nature, that's it makes a whole lot of sense to me. I know your book, The subtext, even says, From leader to legacy builder. And when I hear about you still in touch with, you know, previous team members and things like that, it speaks to that legacy side of things. And that really calls to me because I think many people as we develop in our career are working towards a legacy. And I think we have in the back of our minds, that we want to make an impact, we want to make a difference. And I think we work so hard on these bottom line issues, like just revenue numbers, and but when really stop and think about those who have come and gone in our lives, our prior leaders, our previous CEOs, and we think about their legacies, how often do we think of the the numbers that they created, or the the trades that they've they've landed, it's, it's often been the leaders will remember is is how they spoke to us how they treated us in the elevator, how they said hello, or did not, or if they were cold, or they were warm? I think those are the legacies that actually last. And I think with your kind of leaf approach, you're really putting that front and center.

Mark Mears  
Yeah, I think the idea of my broader mantras, sounds very similar to yours is want to put the human back in human resources. And that idea of human goes back to some of the most basic needs if we go back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you know, being seen, being heard, being valued. And then the idea of being empowered to be your best all that kind of speaks to this idea of love that we'll get into. But I think that the great late poet laureate, Maya Angelou said was, I've learned that people will forget what you've said, they'll forget what you've done, but they'll never forget how you made them feel. And that has stuck with me. Because when you think about a relationship and your point, there are little touch points. And I've learned as a leader, people, you're under a microscope, whether you know it or not, people are watching your every move your every word. And some of it is certainly out of respect for the title. But but they want to see how you make them feel and whether you're someone they want to sign up for, to follow. Because you can't be a leader without followers, right? You look like Jerry Maguire with the goldfish in that movie, right, Tom Cruise. And so the idea of being able to treat people, as people, not as just resources, got me thinking just about how to be more human, and how to be more caring, and how to be more empathetic and how to be more loving. And I think that leads to that idea of legacy. Because I'll have people that will call me up to this day and say, Hey, Mark, what was that phrase you used to use? Or, Hey, I remember when you said or did such and such, you know, can you can, I tried to say that in the meeting or whatever. I don't know if I remember the exact context. But that really spoke to me at the time and I wanted to share that with others. You see how that's about paying it backward. You don't wait till you're dead to bequeath something of value to others. You do it every day with every single touch point, because they all add up to this broader idea of how does Mark make me feel? And if you think about that, and some days, I'm better at it than others, to be honest with you, Jeff. Some days I have to go back and repair, you know, some damage that I've made if I said something, or I wrote an insensitive email or whatnot, but I always found that by being vulnerable, and you know, admitting, you know, I made a mistake and I didn't handle the situation exactly the way I should have. Or I regret something I may have said or done in the moment. You know, that goes a long way with people and they will remember that as well.

Jeff Ma  
Couldn't agree more. I think that your statement that you go by the put the human back in human resources, I find that even more bold than my own of bring humanity back to the workplace. I'm intentionally vague in mind, listen, back. When you talk about human resources, I mean, can we talk a little bit about what that looks like for you, because human resources, you know, if you look at it from a historical standpoint, this was stood up with the name human resources, but it's always been a function that protects the business, right. And Human Resources is created to essentially prevent lawsuits and make sure the company is protected in a way and people don't really realize that people always think human resources is someone who they can go to with their problems. But if you really think of their job function, they're more interested in making sure your problem doesn't become the business's problem not sorry, to all the HR professionals out there. If I'm offending you, I'm I'm generalizing, of course, I'm not saying you don't care. But talk to me a little bit about what it means to you to put the human back in human resources.

Mark Mears  
Yeah, and I'll defend you a bit by saying that not all human resource professionals feel that way. I think they care deeply. I think there's a there's a deeper systemic issue that has, you know, taken root, I think back in World War Two, and when the war was over, and our men and women came home, and they've got back in the workplace, there was this kind of command and control style that works on the battlefield, because you have to have order or otherwise you have chaos, that they thought would work in the boardroom, and throughout an organization. And so you're right, while the term is human resources, I think the word resources was more emphasized at the time. And so were, you know, I'm putting a stake in the ground and being not intentionally vague, but very direct in saying putting the human back in Human Resources is all comes back to this, you know, incredibly life giving power around the concept of purpose. And I call it purposeful growth, because everybody wants to grow, right? Nobody doesn't want to grow. If you don't grow, you die. And that's not very attractive, right? So we want to grow, but we want to grow purposefully, we want to grow in ways that align with our values aligned with our interests, or passions, our skill sets, and what we believe. And so if you think about it from that perspective, how can we and it's, well, I'll say, there's four dimensions to a brand, most people think, oh, it's one brand, it's Pepsi, or it's Coke, or it's Pizza Hut or whatever, right? There are actually four. There is the personal brand, which we'll talk about, there's the internal brand, which is a collection of all the individuals, there is the external brand, which is essentially our customers, clients, guests in our communities. And then there is the employer brand. And so the whole idea Why call for D brand, growth is about aligning those four brands, well, let's talk about the, you know, the personal brand. Every one of us has one, whether we know it or not. And so when we get into an work environment, most of it is a stripped down to just here's your role. And here's your expectations for your role, how you get paid, and how you get recognized and rewarded. And we really don't want to hear about anything else. Well, I think COVID has given us all a timeout to really deeply reflect on not only what but who matters most in our lives. And if you think about the, what people have been calling the great resignation, which I refer to as the great repurposing is that I think people really want more out of work that just punching in and punching out a clock and getting paid every other week. They think about it as adults who spend, you know, a third of our life asleep, a third of it is work and a third of it awake doing other things, right? Well, why just live a third of your life? Why not be able to integrate your purpose, your purposeful purpose brand, into your employer brand, and create this kind of idea where one plus one can equal three or five if we do it right. And so having a more humanistic way of treating people as whole people, we bring four dimensions I believe, is who we serve is more important than our why. And we all heard Simon Sinek and the start with wine movement, which I think it's fantastic. People want to know why you do before they care how you do it or even what you do. Well, I'll say you start with who and and specifically who you serve, is more important than your wife and it leads you to your why and who you serve. I beliefs are broken down into four kind of categories of service, there is your spiritual realm, there is your personal realm. There's your relational realm, and there's your your. I said personal, okay? So you've got four different ones, spiritual, relational, professional and personal, right. So if you think about that we're whole people. We're not just in the professional realm. And those of us who are maybe spiritually inclined, we don't just put God in one realm and the knees in the box there will see on Sunday and salute and take off in all of them. So we bring our whole selves to work. And we want to feel valued as a whole person, and not just as a worker, or an employee, or, you know, God forbid, an FTE or full time equivalent, right, that's how you're going to get people more engaged, a deeper sense of ownership in the outcome. And that's how they're going to want to stay longer. And they're going to recommend your company to others, because they feel that that that nurturing environment, that fulfillment, that they they might not be able to find for $1.02 more an hour down the street.

Jeff Ma  
So this purpose that we're seeking for ourselves for everyone, I'm assuming this this ties closely to kind of your views of, of community, rather than than culture. I think you mentioned it earlier. Can you? Can you break that down for us?

Mark Mears  
Yeah, I think words matter, Jeff. And you know, so often we throw around words like human resources, without really digging in deeper, and we throw out words like culture, and culture is not a bad word. But if you think about it, and you think about culture as something that you merely belong to, or I'm saying you're part of, I'm sorry, part of, and then community, though, is deeper. That's something you belong to. And why is belonging so important? Well, we talk a lot about, you know, diversity, equity, inclusion, or Dei, or, and, and I'll say that without the be belonging, it doesn't really matter, about diversity, equity inclusion, because if you think about it, diversity just gets in the door. Inclusivity just gets us a seat at the table. Equity gives us an equal voice. But if we don't feel like we belong, we're not likely to be vulnerable to give our very best because we don't want to rock the boat, we're just happy to be in there. Right? So you're not getting the best out of that whole person. If they don't feel they can trust you, if they don't feel a sense of belonging. And a community is what I'll call a community of like hearted people, not just like minded, like hearted, that's another one that's thrown around a lot. People say, Oh, we're like minded. Well, you might be. But that's on a surface level. And sometimes like minded can be divisive. If we just think alike, then we're probably going to dig our heels in deeper on what we agree with. And then we might not be open hearted to hearing what other people have to say. But if we're open hearted, then we're going to have an opportunity to give grace, where it and when it's needed when someone doesn't show up as the best version of themselves on a particular day like I have. And we're also going to see them through a lens of love through that idea of being a sense of belonging in a community, versus just being part of a culture.

Jeff Ma  
I'm going to start using that more, I think you're you're spot on with that, with that change. And again, I think part of it comes from culture being used. So we talk about culture, all over the place now. And whenever a term gets almost overused that way, it starts growing its own legs, and its own kind of taking its own shape. And I fear for the word culture because too often we prescribe a culture to accompany like that company has this culture, that company has this culture and what people do when they hear that subconsciously, is attribute okay, that company owns this type of culture, this specific environment and if I joined that company, I get to consume that culture. We call them culture vultures, or you just, you come in and, you know, hey, you guys all get along. So I'm just going to comment, I'm gonna partake, I'm going to get all the benefits of this culture, it's going to feel great. And the reality of culture those closer to what you're saying is, it's a community in which you also have to be an active participant, since culture is nothing more than what we how we treat each other. Other how we behave with each other. And so the component of the mindset really of coming in and being able to just take culture for your own is so it's so rampant, like people don't say it out loud. But they think that we think that culture is something I can just go sign up for it and just have, and we neglect the part where we actually have to mold and shape it ourselves. Especially if that's what we're what we care about.

Mark Mears  
Yeah, I love that. And if you think about the word culture, the root word cult is not such a pretty picture, right? And I think sometimes we can get into that of joining something. As if we're just earning badge value. By having that brand on our business card, that logo on our polo shirt, whatever it is, you feel like you're joining, something to fit in. But we know it today, even more so than ever before. There are so many headwinds facing business and facing growth potential. Right? I mean, everything from war to inflation to supply chain, you name it. You can't keep doing what you did the year before. And expect to grow right, the old definition of insanity. So we need agitators. We need people who are our, you know, light hearted, not just like minded because with like minded, you can get groupthink. And when you have groupthink, then you tend to just say, Well, I don't want to rock the boat, because it's what we've always done. And yet you're lamenting the fact that you're not hitting your goals? Well, if you have someone who comes in as an agitator, not in a disrespectful way, but but being curious and open hearted, to say, why? Or what if, and those kinds of phrases that question the status quo, because that's really how you're going to get ideas that are truly breakthrough. And so what I call it step function, change growth. And if you think about every, you know, major growth opportunity throughout history is come at it as a result of some kind of catalytic event. Right, whether it's a war, whether it's famine, whether it's disease, or whether it's an invention or discovery, right. You know, think about it not that many years ago, we didn't have something called smartphone. And now we wouldn't know what to do without it. Right, and you think about the genie doesn't go back in the bottle. So we're always moving forward? Well, I think COVID gave us this kind of timeout, as I mentioned, is kind of deeply, you know, think about not only what and who matters most to us, but it's changed the world of work. We're not all going racing back into the office, we've been working remotely or now or in a hybrid situation with many companies. And it's, it's going to stay that way. And we're even looking in the UK there, they've been testing out a four day work week, I really believe the paradigm of work as it used to be is changing. And I'll say on purpose, because if you go back to that ideal, I don't just say idea, the ideal of purpose, which is ingrained in all of our hearts. We want to be that best version of ourselves. And we want to work in an environment that encourages us to be that best version of ourselves. And we've seen all of the research studies that Gallup does a wonderful job with their annual workplace study. And we see the some of the biggest issues with disengagement. So right now I understand there's like 36% of people that are engaged. And like 32%, that or something like that, that are actively disengaged with that list leaves about half of people in that machine metal that could go either way, or what the kids are calling quiet quitting, right, that means you're disengaged or just just working to work that to go do something else they want to do and or they're leaving the workforce to go do something they find more fulfilling within the gig economy, for example, starting their own business or doing something where they feel more purposeful. So that genie is not going to go back in the bottle because all the studies show that from younger end of the millennial generation to now Gen Z and having 25 year old daughter's twin daughters that are in that cusp. I can vouch for the fact that their expectations of work are so much different than mine were as a young pup coming up in the business rank. So it's a it's a new world of work and it's changing on purpose.

Jeff Ma  
I love how you snuck that word purpose in there for that context as well mark. I really appreciate the time and the insights and the wisdom that you've had today, I think there's a lot that I, myself and listeners are going to take back around, finding that purpose for ourselves. But also, I'm hoping that we, we check out kind of the specifically in your book, the purposeful growth revolution, kind of more about then connecting that to what we know about love today.

Mark Mears  
Well, I hope it's been valuable for your listeners and yourself. And I know it has been for me, because I learned every time I come on, and speak to professionals, such as yourself, I just want to leave your listeners with this idea of love. And you know, I'm big on acronyms. But to me, that idea of love in the workplace that we can all practice whether you know, we're leading big teams, small teams, or one person is Love is an acronym stands for listen, observe, value, and empower. So the ability to listen to someone as a whole person, not just as a worker, really understanding who they are, what their motivations are, where they come from, and what their expectations are, will will build that bond of trust from that relationship. And then observe is the Oh. And that really means to not only give them on the front end, clear expectations for their roles, responsibilities, but observing them and coaching them and guiding them along the process. Don't wait to give feedback, at the end of the year, provide ongoing check ins to observe them and make sure they feel the next V is value. The next letter is V for value, they feel valued. And they feel like what they do matters. And so the last one is empowered again, if you can create a environment where your team members feel empowered to be their very best, they'll break down brick walls for you. And they'll make you feel like you're living a legacy that's worthy of them carrying on after you're gone. And so I just leave that last bit of that last nugget of wisdom for your listeners and viewers, to love others as you would love yourself. But to do it by those four ideas. Listen, observe value and empower.

Jeff Ma  
Well, there you have it. Thank you Mark. for that. I'm I wrote it down and I'm stealing it just so you know. So thank you so much. Thank you to the listeners. As always, please be sure to check out Mark's book. But also always plug my own book love as a business strategy. It's still out there still doing pretty well. But shameless plug if you haven't checked out the book, please leave a review. I never I never directly asked for it. But I'm asking for it. Because the reviews help get the book into other people's kind of promoted spaces and more people can check it out so that people can get that message out there to bring humanity back to the workplace. So please do not get bored

Mark Mears  
to get my copy Jeff and digging in and sounds great.

Jeff Ma  
It's in the mail. Awesome. Awesome. So everybody, thank you so much. We'll see you again next week for another episode. Take care. Thanks