Jonathan Rosen  
If you ask survey every fortune, 1000 company, and you say, tell us who your best customers are,

if they're being honest, I truly believe that they will not say the customers that have brought them the most revenue.

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. 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. I'm your host, Jeff MA and as always, I'm here to have conversations and hear stories with real people about real businesses and real life. My guest today is Jonathan Rosen, and Jonathan is the founder and CEO of Collaberex, a unique peer advisory and professional development community. But Collaberex is more than just a business. It's built on a powerful mission to foster meaningful relationships as the foundation for individual and business success. Jonathan brings with him over 35 years of experience to the table. He's been a CEO, COO founder of multiple businesses, giving him invaluable insight into the challenges that entrepreneurs face, and with a background that includes a law degree and a master's in finance, he adds a pretty multi dimensional perspective to our conversation. And so with that, I would love to welcome to the show. Jonathan Rosen, how are you doing? I'm doing great, Jeff, it's so nice to be here to talking about something that I love to talk about, well, you know, love is in the name of the podcast. Glad you have something you love. And I wanted to start my conversation with that kind of vein of questioning, which is, what's your passion? Jonathan, what? What are you passionate about? And how did you find that passion? So,

Jonathan Rosen  
you know, when I look back on my career and in law and business ownership and all the businesses that I've owned and everything that I've done and even my personal life, if I would boil it down and think about what has been the single most important factor that has led to my meaning and success in anything that I've done, and it's always been the the meaningful, impactful personal relationships that I've built, and that's the same personally, it's the same In business when I think of relationships that I've had with employees and colleagues and even competitors and prospects and and strategic partners and clients, it's always been the quality of the relationship that's led to the most results and meaning and and kind of long term satisfaction. And so, you know, I talk about relationships, and, you know, relationships are, you know, they, they, they kind of have a lifespan, and they start from meeting someone and liking someone, and, you know, hopefully falling in love. And if you can expand that relationship in business to, you know, you hear companies say, oh my god, I love my clients, or you, or you feel about some product that you're using, and you feel an emotional connection to them. It's, it's love, it's, it's that it's like a sense of caring, a sense of connection, and those are the things that we have to work on cultivating. I mean, it's something they should teach in business school.

Jeff Ma  
Well, speaking of which, you've had quite the journey and experience, have you? Is this something that you learned early on? Was there a relationship that taught you this? Or where did you because I think a lot of us will start our careers with the money and the success and these other factors in mind. And at this point, you're saying, you know, what? Looking back, it was relationships. It's always been relationships, but, but where did, where was that turning point for you? Or were you just born with relationships in mind,

Jonathan Rosen  
you know, maybe it was something that was innate. You know, I felt like I was always the like the kid in fourth grade that organized the kickball games on the playground. And, you know, would like get everyone together and say, Come on, people. We only have 45 minutes of recess. Come on. Let. Do some, you know, get everyone together. So maybe that was something that was always in me, but I had a very typical kind of career and upbringing and programming, you know, very kind of mainstream parental programming of, you know, get good grades and behave in school, and, you know, go to a good school and get a good job or own a business, things like that. And the relationship part never, never occurred to me. I just kept forging ahead. And, you know, going to law school and business school and creating businesses and going to work every day and doing all that. It was only until about, I don't know, about 10 years ago. Maybe it was like my midlife crisis, and instead of buying a red sports car, I had this realization that this is what's always been important to me. And my mission, looking back is, you know, it was, I was focused on the things that were meaningful to me, which which were, you know, my marriage, my relationship with my kids and my friends and things like that. And only then did I decide to make it into a business. And start a relationship focused, you know, peer advisory, professional development business, when I speak to people that I knew in law school or business school, and they go, so how are you doing? Jonathan, like, what are you up to? And I tell them, they look at me, like I have three heads. And they go, you're doing. What is that a thing? They go, Well, we made it a thing. Yeah.

Jeff Ma  
Well, what, I guess, starting point or advice to kind of kick us off into this space. What when you, when you speak to somebody else who's at that maybe 10 years ago, you mark, you know, like they've been doing their career thing and they're hearing you for the first time, kind of maybe open up a new new direction or space to consider In business and work, this whole weird focus on relationship. Where do you start with that? With that person, you know, they're, they're in their careers. They've been working one way for a long time. What's the kind of big first move here?

Jonathan Rosen  
So I speak to them in my, you know, my MBA voice, you know, I speak to them on, you know, on the mindset that they have regarding what business means. And I say a couple of things. I say, think of it this way. You know, first of all, I said, if you ask survey every fortune, 1000 company, and you say, tell us who your best customers are. If they're being honest, I truly believe that they will not say the customers that have brought them the most revenue, but they'll say the ones they've had for the longest, the ones there's a relationship of partnership, the ones where they go to each other's daughters weddings, the ones that they are value where the customers value them for the things they provide. It's not as transactional relationship. It's a relational relationship. So I kind of start with there, and I also say, if you look at it this way, you know, two kinds of relationships, there's, there's things that are very transactional. I do something. You pay me. I do that service. We're done. Those kinds of relationships are not, not really emotional, you know, it's just business and they're, they're short term, they have to get renewed each time you do the transaction, it's done, and then you have to, you know, try and get another transaction, and it's usually based on price, Not on value. So therefore, margins are generally lower. So from a practical point of view, these transactional type relationships don't really have a as big a return on investment as has something that's a more relational, whatever partnership relationship which are more emotional, based on mutual need, based on solving problems. They tend to be longer term. They're based on value. They're based on helping, working together to fulfill needs and solve problems and. Generally have higher margins. And so from a, from a kind of a P and L point of view, it's, it's, it's a, it takes more work, and it's more thoughtful, and you have to plant more seeds, but in the long term and companies will be more profitable, it makes more sense to have that kind of mindset.

Jeff Ma  
Yeah, couldn't agree more. I know in my business, as you're speaking, the customers and clients that come to mind immediately are definitely the ones that I spend calls with actually not talking business and cracking jokes, and we text each other randomly for other reasons, and that really comes up as true, like those are very valuable to me, even in business, For sure. I guess my question kind of yields I hear what you're saying. I love this idea of relationships between businesses and between customers and and you know providers does this for you also extend into kind of the internal domain, so relationships within the employees or the staff or the teams. Does that? Is there a reflection? Is there, like, a connection here of how people treat each other on the team, with how we treat our customers and the relationships built outside the walls of our organization as well?

Jonathan Rosen  
Well, sure if people feel that they're more emotionally connected and they're on the kind of the same path, and they're not, they don't have a transactional mentality between each other, you know. Let's take, you know, let's take, like, a family or a marriage, and use that as an example. If, if you have a situation where everyone says, Okay, you do the dishes and I take out the garbage, and you know, I'm gonna clean the refrigerator and this. And everyone has their tasks and are counting, Hey, you didn't take out the garbage. I'm not doing the dishes. It doesn't work out. It never, it never adds up. So in internally, in corporations, when you have teams that think about, I'm not doing it because they didn't do it or but they're all working together towards some common goal, and the culture is that that their needs are being fulfilled by by feeling they're maybe part of something bigger. You get more productivity. Employees want to come to work. They're they're excited to work with each other and have that, you know, that connection, that socialization, that bonding, that coordination of efforts, that become satisfactory, satis, you know, gives them great satisfaction. And then when there's a win, they all win. They all feel that they accomplish something together. And it's not, you know, just hey, one person gets employee of the week,

Jeff Ma  
yeah. So in your kind of experience, in the work that Collaberex does, and in the kind of advisories you do in the community that you work in, you get this. You get to take a peek into a lot of different businesses and a lot of different leaders and see their The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, right? So I'm, I'm curious if you could share kind of a, basically a state of affairs for me, what are you seeing in the corporate workplace today? What is the trend? Are relationships on the rise? Is it like, what percentage of of people are practicing this is it, you know, like, I would love kind of your take on the landscape out in the business world right now, whether we're playing catch up or we're getting ahead?

Jonathan Rosen  
Yeah, I you know my sense from our members, and our members are generally, they're either business owners or professional service providers or employees from larger companies. And my sense is that we haven't really progressed far in the corporate world, there's still much of the same. There's still kind of this post COVID jockeying for position that's going on in corporations where, you know, everyone was working from home, and everyone wanted to generally prove that they could be more efficient working from home, and do do more work and and just be more productive in general. And now corporations are bringing them back to the office for reasons that generally have to do with control and. Or, you know, not wanting the lease that they're paying for to go to waste, or for reasons that that aren't directly related to improving margins and bottom lines. And so employees are, you know, pushing back and everyone it's it's not. People aren't on the same page. They say, Well, you know, why are we going back? We did so well, profits are up. Everything's going great. So I find that because there's still this unease, is one of the reasons that people come to our groups. It's like, Oh, I was speaking to someone yesterday who's a Partner at a big law firm, and he says, I just love coming to groups. It's the only place that I could like show up, not be my title or my position, and just express myself, my vulnerabilities, my challenges, talk about professional development issues that that help me be a better leader at work, but I can do it in a way where no one is is looking at me as, you know, as a particular job title, or someone that it's a made partner, things like that. And so so many people still have that need to find a space, yeah, where they can just be themselves, be who they are versus what they do.

Jeff Ma  
That's so relatable, though, and I feel like a lot of people might be struggling with that. Why can't we bring those things to our work environments, like, what was, what was that person's reason for? Like, oh, I can only be this way here in the safer group outside, away from my title. Like, what were they feeling?

Jonathan Rosen  
Oh, they're they're feeling they work for, they have to put on certain heirs for their, you know, other partners, and they're supposed to behave in a particular way, and they're afraid that if they show, you know, things that they think of as weaknesses, which I happen to think of as strengths, show vulnerabilities, or, you know, express things that you know they don't know the answer to that they'll be looked at in, you know, kind of a lesser capacity than they normally would be. It's, it's kind of business as usual. How it it's old school business when we know that, for instance, in our groups, when people can discuss things on a personal level and build those relationships, the learning and the takeaways is just so much more you you you hear about, you know it's like in sales. You know, if you just, if you're doing all the talking, you're not going to sell anything, but if you do more listening and and ask questions, you're going to find out what the problems are, and therefore you'll be more equipped to solve those problems versus, you know, old school sales of features and benefits and trying to convince something to do something that they might not be likely to do.

Jeff Ma  
I love that that's well put. And, you know, there's no secret that the mission here at the podcast and the book, and for me and my colleagues Love as a Business Strategy, our mission is to bring humanity back to the workplace. So you're speaking my language in terms of really wanting to find a way to make like have a movement in the world, really where the culture in workplaces is no longer what you're describing here in terms of this fear of vulnerability and showing up in our as who we are, and making mistakes, all these things that we hide and have to bring to, you know, safer places to express and release we want. We want a world where that's not the case. So that's our mission. But I'm curious with you here, what's your advice? What do you think? What do you think might get us there? What's your approach? You don't you may not share that grand, global scale of a transformation, but what's one step that you think as you work towards with your group, that we can get closer to that? You

Jonathan Rosen  
know, it's, it's hard, because when we have members that join and pay for their own membership as an investment in themselves, they're all in when we have members whose companies pay for their membership, we know that they're there that. They're, they're 60% there 40% you know, they their ear is thinking, Well, you know, why did my boss pay for this? And I better show whatever results he or she is looking for, and it, it, it literally takes them away from the values that they could be getting because in in our groups, we build relationships as a side effect of those relationships that we build it, it flips people's brains so they want to help you in any way you need help. And that help could be client referrals, but could also be strategic partners or accountability or great advice or just support, and they lose out on, on, you know, maybe those client referrals that the boss is looking for because they're, they're, they're too, you know, they feel under the gun and there's too much pressure, so they, they revert back to trying to, You know, sneak in sales messages, when they should be sneaking in. I don't know, personal vulnerability messages,

Jeff Ma  
yeah. And what I'm hearing from what you're sharing is that there's a level of genuine authenticity that's needed in this work. And like, like you said, the people who paid their own money to come. It's because they genuinely, authentically want to improve in this, and they actually believe in this. They want change, and they're open to change and open to something different, whereas, if you're being told to do something, or you don't actually buy into it, there's always going to be that level of skepticism and or kind of different intent behind what you do. So,

Jonathan Rosen  
yeah, I mean, you know, the way that the traditional corporate structure is it? It's a, it's a vertical structure where everyone you know reports to someone else who reports to someone else. And it's, it's designed to remind people what their position is and where they stand on this, like totem pole of hierarchy. If corporations would adopt a more horizontal structure, they would, I think there would be a greater chance that they'd be able to get everyone on board and increase productivity and find, you know, a culture that that aligns with the needs of the employees equally with the needs of the company. I mean a small example in in my business. So we have, we have 14 groups. I have seven facilitators. I facilitate some groups, they're not doing it because they're going to be able to, you know, go retire and live on some island in the Caribbean. They're doing it because this is something they're fulfilling. The facilitators are fulfilling a need that they have. It's something that they love to do. It's something that that, you know, is very near and dear and heartfelt to them. It makes them feel good. So I have to support their needs. If I support their needs, then they're going to do a, you know, the amazing job that they're doing now, they're gonna feel cared for. It's same thing, you know, it's just on a different, a smaller scale.

Jeff Ma  
I love it, Jonathan, I really appreciate the insights you brought today. I think there's a lot more to talk about on this topic. I think I could talk endlessly on it being it's so aligned with my own personal mission and the mission of the work we do. But I really appreciate the kind of you bringing those 35 years of experience today just kind of like putting out exactly what you're seeing. Because I think that perspective will help people understand especially those who have not considered it yet a different perspective. So I really appreciate what you shared. Is there anything that you'd like to leave the audience with here in terms of more about Collaberex or how to reach out to you?

Jonathan Rosen  
Sure? And first of all, I want to commend you for some so many organizations are afraid to use the word love.

Jeff Ma  
I i was afraid at first. Let's put it that way. But we've been, we've been on, we've been we're all in now.

Jonathan Rosen  
It's an extension of what we should always be doing. It's what you we should aspire to. Thank you, right? So you know, Collaberex works is a membership organization. We have, as I said, we have 14 groups. Anyone could reach me. Email me directly. It's Jonathan at colabs, C, O, L, L, A, B, E, R, E x, and anyone can come as a guest to any groups and experience, I don't know, experience love as a as a relationship building strategy,

Jeff Ma  
awesome. And I'll. Out your information, your LinkedIn in the show notes here for everybody to check out. And with that, Jonathan, I hope you enjoyed your time here as well. I had a great time. And to the audience, I hope you enjoyed it. And you've checked out the book Love as a Business Strategy. Be sure to check out Collaberex. If you get a chance. And with that, we will be talking to everybody in another two weeks. We hope you have a wonderful one.

Jonathan Rosen

Thank you so much, Jeff, you.