The BEST Road To Travel Is The One On Which The Ride Is Enjoyable
By George L. Rosario, CEO & Founder at GC Rosario Group
Let's face it. Today's marketplace creates a level of tension never felt before. From trying to figure out how to address your customers and clients without mislabeling them or offending them, to competing with today's ridiculous economic issues, to complying with the ever changing legal requirements, building a successful organization can stress even the most calm & confident entrepreneur.
Whatever we label it, today's stressful professional world has led to people resigning from their positions and changing careers in what we call the Marketplace Exodus. The analysts, consultants and professionals at GC Rosario Group believe that history will show that the companies that grew through this reset were those that made their work environment and culture more enjoyable.
What has the Marketplace Exodus taught us so far?
- IT'S ABOUT MORE THAN "SHOW ME THE MONEY"
If you want to attract top talent, you have to focus on more than just the money. Sure, if you don't pay your top talent adequately, you will lose your top people to someone who will. But, there are some of the workforce's top producers who are shifting to other companies, and even other fields/industries, and they are willing to take a paycut to do it. Sometimes offering the right perks, like working from home, having better health and life benefits, gym and country club memberships, stock options, company discounts on goods and services, partnership options, etc. - YOUR COMPANY CULTURE WILL ATTRACT WINNERS
Those who possess superior talent know that the money will flow better in an environment that is more enjoyable. So they don't base their decision solely on how much the boss offers to pay, but how well an organization's leaders will treat them and address them. In today's marketplace, culture matters more than money.
Our research team interviewed 10,000 professionals around the United States, from major cities to small towns, who chose to change companies and/or industries in the past 12 months. We learned that the decision had much more to do with culture and opportunity than it did with income and perks. They went to companies that treated them, their clients, their team members and their families better.
One of our favorite professionals, who asked to remain anonymous, said he changed companies because he was allowed to work from home most of the time, and was encouraged to bring his dog to the office with him on the days when he came in. We will be writing two blogs in the upcoming weeks about these two topics (Professionals, Producers & The Pets They Love: The Love Affair Between Americans and Their Pets, and From Here To There, Working From Anywhere: The Rise Of The At Home Professional).
Gunner aka #GunnerTheRunner and George L. Rosario by The Office
There is no reason why a successful entrepreneur, a top producing professional, or a team of business people shouldn't enjoy what they do. Want to get people to return to the office? Give them a reason to come back.
Our friends at AXE Equipment Finance, a subdivision of AXE Trailers have mastered this. They are the fastest growing truck and trailer financing and dealership in the entire continental United States. Walk into their headquarter office in Delray Beach Florida any day and you will see a high energy environment where the people proudly wear AXE Equipment merch as they laugh and interact with each other and with their clients. It's such an enjoyable environment that they have attracted some of the top sales professionals and leaders from all industries without having to recruit them. The company is growing and is has already signed a lease on an office space that is more than 20 times the size of their original headquarters. See what creating a fun, enjoyable, high energy, success driven environment does for a company?
- DON'T FORGET THE "MAKE IT FUN" PRINCIPLE WHEN YOU BEGIN TO GROW!
Many companies forget about the heart of their company as they begin to grow. This forget-about-them syndrome has caused many growing organizations to fold under pressure. Make sure your people enjoy being a part of your organization and are proud to brag about your workplace culture. This is what will drive your company size increase and bottom line revenue growth. In other words, as a leader, you are either setting your company up for explosive growth or an implosive exit in your industry. Don't lose sight of the importance of culture when you start to grow!
* For a detailed evaluation of your company culture's effectiveness, reach out to GC Rosario Group.
As promised in this blog's title, here are the seven principles we've used to build a successful team while still enjoying the ride. GC Rosario Group lives and dies by these principles, and so should you:
- TOP PRODUCERS FIND THE IMPOSSIBLE, ENTICING
Building a strong reputation and successful career is like riding a roller coaster. Building a reputable corporation or LLC in today's marketplace is like riding the world's tallest roller coaster without any safety equipment on. It is very scary on the way up, and deadly on the way down. The sweet spot is that moment when you are at the top. Attracting problem solvers who love to do the impossible is like hiring an engineer that helps extend that brief moment at the top, and figures out how to add safety equipment on that roller coaster so that the way up (which all growing organizations experience), and the way down (which anyone willing to take a risk will experience) safer for the rider (the business owner). The best part of it is that you will never regret riding that roller coaster, no matter how scary it may seem.
- TOP PRODUCERS DON'T DO BORING. TOP COMPANIES SHOULDN'T EITHER
If you are an underachiever, you'll be happy to be part of a boring organization and never dream of doing anything bigger. Top producers cannot survive in this type of environment. They see boring as being the equivalent of suicide. The mundane sucks the life out of them. Creating an exciting environment (like our GC Rosario Group office, the workspace at AXE Equipment, or the dugout at this year's NY Mets home games at Citi Field) will attract talent to your team.
Do not confuse boring with structure, or fun with chaos. Top producers become the best of the best because they have a system that works for them. They are well structured, follow their schedules and focus on their craft. What the do not do is lose the fun edge that makes going to work every day a treat.
If you want to attract your industry's top producers to your team, don't try to recruit them. Instead, give them something to look forward to. Let them enjoy joining your roster and hitting home runs for you.
- IT'S A LOT EASIER TO BE SERIOUS ABOUT SOMETHING YOU ENJOY
At 5'4" tall, most thought I wouldn't make the basketball, baseball, or football team in high school. People, including some of the coaches, told me I was simply too small to play these sports. They went as far as to tell me that I wouldn't even make the swim team because I had shorter limbs than the other competitors. What they didn't know is that George L. Rosario is a go-getter that loves a challenge, loves solving impossible problems and loves to prove the naysayers wrong. So, not only did I play all these sports, plus handball, soccer, boxing, mixed martial arts and volleyball in high school, and then went on to play these in college (at my community college...lol).
I approach my business endeavors with the same determination. To top producers, business is serious stuff; and they enjoy the seriousness of improving on their skills every single day. We are intentional about everything we do, even when things seem to drop on our laps out of nowhere. I love to tell people that I've succeeded in life by mistake, on purpose. Thomas Jefferson is quoted as saying, "I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it." Mark Twain shortened it to coin the phrase, "The harder I work, the luckier I get." Marc Anthony said, "If you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life." Whichever you like more, understand that they are all talking about enjoying whatever it is you do.
As a leader, you need to understand that all the leaders you hope to attract to your team will only join your team if you make it interesting, attractive and enjoyable to them. Guess what, your customers and clients will do the same before they do business with you. No one likes to do business with someone they detest being around. Your customers buy you before they buy your product. Your clients hire you before they hire your services. Give them something to look forward to.
- ENJOY LIFE; YOURS, YOUR TEAM'S & YOUR ORGANIZATION'S LIFE
Pay attention to life before it passes you by unnoticed. We are on this planet for a brief moment. What you do in that brief moment matters. There's a poem I cannot read through without crying. It talks about the dash on your tombstone between your date of birth and your date of death. Read it below:
By: Linda Ellis
Since we are talking about your business' level of joy, let's not ignore the importance for us to develop a great work-life balance. The most important part of that balance exists in that dash (-) between the word work and the word life. What are you doing to make that dash count? How are making sure that your people don't get lost in the transition between their time at the office and their time at home. Respect their time. Let them know that you care more about them and their well being than you do about the company's bottom line profits. See, if you do not practice good human resource appreciation, you will soon find yourself with an organization full of disgruntled employees.
Learn about your people. Learn about their lives. Learn about what makes them tick. Know their birthdays. Know their anniversary date. Know their children's names. Know the family dog's name. Know what they do on their downtime. Take the time to notice when things are going well for them. Help them make it through the tough times.
As a leader, find the humor when things are not going well at the office. Make light of difficulties and approach them without losing your head over them. It is natural to become emotional in life and in business. Leaders must never make their own emotional struggles a part of the office's energy. Instead, learn to focus on your team. When we help them solve their problems, we often find that we uncover solutions to many of our own problems. Make the office a place where your people can come to you when they are going through a tough time, be it in the office or at home. Not everyone will share, but those that do will love you for caring enough to listen.
- MAKE GRATITUDE PART OF YOUR COMPANY'S CULTURE
At GCRosarioGroup.com, we express gratitude to our team members and to our clients alike. We believe in being grateful for every blessing we receive, even if the blessing is disguised in the form of an obstacle. We approach the happy moments are reasons to celebrate they smiles they inspired in everyone involved, and we approach the not so happy moments as reasons to celebrate the lessons we learned through them.
When we set out to create our consulting firm, we said we were going to remove the stigma that consultants are only interested in numbers, graphs and statistics, and that we would instead focus on people, members, clients and in our associates & staff. We made it about the people and not about the money. This could only be accomplished through an attitude of gratitude. The #AttitudeOfGratitude approach has created an environment in our organization that people want to be a part of.
Gratitude is about more than offering free snacks, coffee and food (although we all love those). It wasn't about free gym memberships and little bonuses. Gratitude for us meant paying for our team's gas when gas prices climbed to record highs, offering reimbursement for any outside training our team got into, paying the cell phone bill for our team, planning graduation parties for all the graduates related to any member of our staff, having a private car washing professional come out once a month to clean our top 10 producer's cars, and doing collections for those who were going through a hard time.
This is how our team has remained so close and so loyal. This is how we've continued to grow. It's all about appreciation and gratitude for the blessings we've received. We are genuinely thankful for our team, even those who work remotely and almost never come out to the office.
DON'T HATE ON COMPETITORS. LEARN FROM THEM. BUT, BE WHO YOU ARE!
Listen, there is no such thing as a top producing company, organization, team or individual that is not at least a little competitive. But, the best of the best love to see the competitors win, as long as the competition's wins don't mean that we lose. We can celebrate when others win because there are plenty of wins to go around for us, especially since 80 percent of any industry's biggest wins are experienced with the top 2% of the professionals in it.
Now that I've said that, we (George L. Rosario & Claudia P. Rosario) built our company's environment on healthy competition and healthy evaluation of others in the industry. In other words, the top 2% of consultants in the industry are great friends who love to see us win as much as we love to see them win, and they probably learn as much from us as we learn from them. They often approach us with a grateful congratulatory handshake (or hug) when we solve a tough problem or issue because it now makes it easier for them to solve it when it arises for them.
There's no dishonor in mimicking your competitors or your mentors. The top ones will see it as a sign of respect and honor (as long as you approach us about it first). One of my proudest moments was the one when my coach and mentor came to me with a problem he needed help solving. We combined the efforts of both our teams, and solved a problem that changed our business forever. I'll be writing a blog about it in the future. I'll title it "The Art of Collaboration: How Working Together Is Often Better" (I just made that one up).
While there is nothing wrong with mimicking your mentors or competitors, it is important to stay authentic. That means that if the folks at McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group, or Bain & Company are doing something in the consulting world that is working for their clients and I decide to mimic it, I shouldn't copy it word for word. After all, I am not McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group, or Bain & Company and they certainly are not GC Rosario Group. As a speaker, I could mimic some of Nick Vujicic, John Maxwell, Gary Vaynerchuk, Rick Warren, Tony Robbins, Suze Orman, Craig Groeschel, Dan Peña, Brian Tracy, Jack Canfield, Mel Robbins, David Ramsey, Eric Thomas, Marcus Lemonis, Mark Cuban, Amy Purdy, Robert Kiyosaki, Les Brown, Grant Cardone, T. Harv Eker, David Goggins, Darren Hardy, Brendon Burchard, Jocko Willink, Simon Sinek, Daymond John, Darren Hardy, or any of the other great speaker's I've studied, but I wouldn't try to be exactly like them. After all, should any of them attempt to be George L. Rosario on stage? Or should Gary Vee pretend to be Dave Ramsey or Anthony Robbins pretend to be Melanie Robbins. I've learned a lot from every speaker, every consultant, every business person, every influencer I've studied, but I am not them and they are not me.
Therefore, learn from great people without pretending to be them. Study them, learn from them, mimic them, but always remain authentically you!
* Before I move on to the next one, always remember that healthy competition is nothing more than a game, and there is always for the person at the top to improve. I strive to be a better version of ME tomorrow than I am today.
HOLIDAY PARTIES AND SPECIAL OCCASIONS ARE SERIOUS BUSINESS.
Actively looking for reasons to celebrate shows appreciation for your staff and builds relationships. Just limit the alcohol consumption in these. Nothing more destructive than the guy or gal that can't handle his or her drink in public. It's even worse when they make a fool of themselves around their coworkers. It's 100 times worse if the leader does it!
While many people immediately think of Christmas parties, 4th Of July BBQs and Super Bowl parties, at GC Rosario Group we also celebrate Mother's Day MONTH, Father's Day MONTH, Grandparents' Day MONTH, National Donut Day, National Pets Day, Thanksgiving, National Carwash Day, and whatever else we can imagine. I love surprising associates with a special gifts on these days. I especially love celebrating their birthdays the way each one of them likes to celebrate theirs. And let us not forget graduations, anniversaries, etc. Make it all count!
Whatever you celebrate and whichever way you choose to do it, don't forget to live in the moment. Be present and enjoy your people's company.
CONCLUSION
I hope these 7 points have helped you see how involved you must be in your company if you expect it to be successful. These are not the only seven to-do points one should focus on when building a strong organization. But, they sure are a great place to start.
"Success at the cost of happiness and well being is perhaps the biggest failure in today's business world." - George L. Rosario
What would you add to my list? Let's talk about it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
George L. Rosario is a Brooklyn NY born & raised businessman & entrepreneur turned consultant. He started GC Rosario Group with his lovely wife Claudia. With over 30 years of service to the marketplace in NYC, George has relocated and been graciously adopted by the business community of South Florida. He now travels the country helping businesses and organizations thrive in today’s noisy environment. The post-Covid era forced many to close their doors, but also opened new doors of opportunity, growth and prosperity for innovative thinkers. George & Claudia Rosario help companies, businesses, organizations and teams develop the necessary skillset and plan of action to not just survive, but thrive in this new world. GC Rosario Group helps both secular and Christian based institutions meet their goals.
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