On the first-ever episode of Love in Leadership, we get to know our co-hosts Mike and Laura, as well as learn a bit about the themes, ideas, and topics that this show will be all about. And what are those themes, ideas, and topics? They’ll range from workplace culture and the process of building extraordinary workplaces to helping people (who just so happen to be employees) become better in their lives, not just in their careers. Welcome to Love in Leadership.
Welcome to Love in Leadership
Our first episode introduces the themes and mission of this podcast
CORE TOPICS + DETAILS:
[0:39] - BIGGBY® COFFEE and the LifeLabTM
Telling the story of how we got here
At the episode’s start, Laura and Mike dive into a brief history of BIGGBY® COFFEE, LifeLabTM, and the concept of Love in Leadership.
After a handshake agreement with an employer who hired Mike as a barista, the BIGGBY® COFFEE brand was born. As the company has grown, Mike and his partners developed an interest in going beyond just being a company that tried to turn a profit. They wanted to be the best place to work and help create the best people. After a company report showed that they were falling well short of this goal, they realized it was time to make a change.
That’s when they launched LifeLabTM, an internal department at BIGGBY® COFFEE dedicated to supporting the human being behind all of their employees. The principles developed and implemented through LifeLabTM form the basis for much of what will be covered in this podcast.
[15:24] - The Culture You Want and the Culture You Have
When company values become a punchline
The early part of the BIGGBY® COFFEE's story is a cautionary tale that shows how wanting your company to embody certain values doesn’t always mean it will. BIGGBY® COFFEE’s tagline for a time was: “Be happy, have fun, make friends, love people, drink great coffee.”
But after a report showed that the reality was far different — and that people across the company were unhappy, unmotivated, and unsupported — Mike and his team decided the time for change was now. They read the report to the company’s employees, and from that day forward determined to identify their true values and genuinely operate the company based around them.
BIGGBY® COFFEE’s new, simplified Purpose? “We exist to support you in building a life you love.”
[21:30] - Finding the “Why”
Simplifying BIGGBY® COFFEE’s purpose to amplify its impact
Mike discovered that what he and his partners truly wanted was for people to feel empowered to show up to work and be their true, authentic selves. They wanted to support anyone that touched the company in building the life they loved.
Then came the vision. That was where the “why” became the “how.” How are they going to support people? They started with workplace culture. They recognized just how responsible a company is for the wellbeing of the people they employ, particularly considering how big a percentage of their lives they spend in that employment.
[31:32] - The Next Phase
Taking the message global
Today, LifeLabTM and the entirety of BIGGBY® COFFEE's unique approach to company culture is still a work-in-progress. It’s an ongoing experiment. But the purpose of this podcast is to invite the world to participate in that experiment — to see employees as human beings before employees, as whole individuals with needs, desires, values, and goals.
That will be the journey of Love in Leadership, and it starts now.
RESOURCES:
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Follow BIGGBY® COFFEE & LifeLabTM:
ABOUT LOVE IN LEADERSHIP:
At the Life You Love LaboratoryTM and BIGGBY® COFFEE, we’re out to prove that financial success and healthy workplace culture aren’t two separate goals. BIGGBY® COFFEE's own cultural transformation is proof that not only is it possible to have a successful company where people aren’t miserable at work, but that the happier your people are, the more your business will grow. Each week, join host Laura Eich, Chief Purpose Officer at BIGGBY® COFFEE, and her co-host and BIGGBY® COFFEE co-CEO Mike McFall as they’re joined by guests from around the world to learn how they are fostering a culture of love and growth in the world’s most innovative and people-centric companies. Get inspired. Get real. Get ready to transform workplace culture in America with us. This is the Love in Leadership podcast.
Learn more at: loveinleadershippodcast.com
ABOUT THE HOSTS:
Mike McFall began his journey with BIGGBY® COFFEE as a minimum-wage barista at the original store in East Lansing in 1996. Over the span of 23 years, alongside business partner Bob Fish, he has helped create one of the great specialty coffee brands in America. Today Mike is co-CEO with Bob, and BIGGBY® COFFEE has over 250 stores open throughout the Midwest that sell tens of thousands of cups of coffee each day. But more importantly to Mike and BIGGBY® COFFEE, the company is a profoundly people-first organization.
Mike is also the author of Grind, a book which focuses on early stage businesses and how to establish positive cash flow.
Laura Eich is BIGGBY® COFFEE’s Chief People Officer, having worked in a variety of roles at BIGGBY® COFFEE for the last 11+ years. She helped launch BOOST, the department at BIGGBY® COFFEE which ultimately became LifeLabTM — BIGGBY® COFFEE’s inhouse culture cultivation team designed to help people be the best versions of themselves and help companies support them along the way. In her role, Laura helps people build lives that they love through the process of building profitable businesses and robust, growth-filled careers.
PRODUCED BY DETROIT PODCAST STUDIOS:
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As a nod to the past, Detroit Podcast Studios leverages modern versions of Motown’s processes to launch today’s most compelling podcasts. What Motown was to musical artists, Detroit Podcast Studios is to podcast artists today. With over 75 combined years of experience in content development, audio production, music scoring, storytelling, and digital marketing, Detroit Podcast Studios provides full-service development, training, and production capabilities to take podcasts from messy ideas to finely tuned hits.
Here’s to making (podcast) history together.
Learn more at: DetroitPodcastStudios.com
Laura Eich:
Welcome to the Love In Leadership Podcast. My name is Laura Eich. I am joined by my lovely co-host, Mike McFall. Hi, Mike. How are you doing?
Mike McFall:
Good, Laura. I thought you might say favorite.
Laura Eich:
Well, that's still to come. We got to prove that. We got to prove that out.
Mike McFall:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I can say you're my favorite co-host.
Laura Eich:
Oh, thank you. You're actually my favorite too, though we are each other's only co-hosts, I believe, at this moment in time. Since this is our first episode of Love In Leadership, I do think we should give a little background on who we are and how we got here and why the heck we're doing this, other than everybody has a podcast. So who are you, Mike? Where are you from? How'd you get here?
Mike McFall:
Yeah. All right. All right. All right.
Laura Eich:
We'll see where we go.
Mike McFall:
We both started as baristas...
Laura Eich:
Correct.
Mike McFall:
... in our organization, which I think is a very cool nugget. Started out as minimum wage baristas. But the brief quick rundown on me is I grew up here in Michigan, a small town, Milford. I went to Milford High School, graduated from Milford High School. I did have some unique experiences when I was younger. I sailed around the world when I was 15 years old. That set me up on this course of life's going to be an adventure. And after that, you're always trying to live up to that. So anyway, I got set off on this trajectory of this thing called life's going to be a bit of an adventure, Mike, and here you go, have at it. And so I graduated. I ended up going to Kalamazoo College, which I'm going to speak at tonight, my alma mater, which is fun. And so I went there and had a really interesting and very unique college experience. Loved it. Loved everyone I was there with. Still have very good friends from K College that I enjoy.
And I did have a unique experience in college though as I lived in Sierra Leone and West Africa for the better part of a semester, a little bit longer. And when I was there, it was the poorest and least developed country in the world, and it taught me a whole different perspective on life. And that no matter where you're in the world, or whether you're from the richest country, richest neighborhood, or whether you're from the poorest country, poorest neighborhood, we're all doing the same thing in life. And that is, in my opinion, we're all searching for love. We're all searching for security. We're all searching for meaning. And so that was a really eye-opening experience for me, heart-opening experience for me, to live in Sierra Leone and realize, holy smokes. You know what? We're all here. We're all looking for the same stuff.
And so that led into whatever on my career. I came out as a straight commission sales rep. I got involved in the business with Bob and Mary back in the day. I started as a minimum wage barista in our very, very first store. And I did that for about six months. And then Bob approached me about taking a bigger role in the company and becoming a manager in the business. And so, strangely, Bob and I sat down interview style, and that doesn't work for either one of us really.
Laura Eich:
No.
Mike McFall:
As you get to know us better. So we jumped up. It was a beautiful spring day. We jumped up, we went for a four-hour walk around East Lance, and at the end of that walk, we shook hands. And that handshake, we didn't know each other. And that's a part of the story I don't think most people realize is he worked the night shift. I worked the opening shift, and so we rarely saw each other. So we didn't even know each other when we launched into this walk, and Mary had recommended me to Bob. And so anyway, we shook hands at the end of that, and that's it. That's the origin story.
Laura Eich:
And that launched the Biggby Coffee franchise system
Mike McFall:
That launched-
Laura Eich:
The business.
Mike McFall:
... Biggby Coffee, the company that we were going to use to grow and develop the brand and so on. And then we've been doing that together since 1996, and the company started in 1995. I didn't start the first door, but the company that we all work for today and so on, Bob and I founded that together. So that's a little bit of my story, and there's a bunch of detail between there and here. And I presume we'll get into some of that over time, but that gives a little bit of a flavor of my background.
Laura Eich:
And so what do you do for Biggby Coffee today?
Mike McFall:
Today I'm the co-CEO with Bob Fish, and co-founder. And so we have three responsibilities in the organization. We're responsible for maintaining the culture of the company. We're responsible for maintaining the key relationships, and then the strategic direction. And so we don't manage the company day in and day out. We have John Gilkey. John Gilkey is president of the company. He manages this business minute in, minute out, day in and day out. But Bob and I are responsible for those three things, and we take them quite seriously.
Laura Eich:
And your favorite job, of course, is co-hosting a podcast with Laura.
Mike McFall:
Well, of course. It took me, what, three years to convince you that we should do this?
Laura Eich:
No, no, no. No. Oh, we're going to have our first fight on our first episode. This is so nice. What a moment. No, no, no. Laura put on the three-year picture back the first time we did the three-year picture, which for those of you that don't know, we are in an EOS company. It's the entrepreneurial operating system. We create a three-year picture that guides our vision, guides our planning for the future. On the first three-year picture, I put that we were going to have a podcast.
Mike McFall:
Okay, well, that's your story. So Laura, how about you? Give us a little flavor. What's the Laura Eich entry-
Laura Eich:
The journey.
Mike McFall:
... pre-Biggby, and I know it, but...
Laura Eich:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I also grew up in Michigan, grew up in Oakland County, Michigan, which is where I live today. I don't know that I had any informative high school experiences other than I swore up and down that I would never work for a corporate job, which is...
Mike McFall:
You swore?
Laura Eich:
... I still think hilarious. But I was absolutely certain that that was the worst idea for me, so I worked at overnight camps in the state of Michigan. I worked in hospitality at a couple of hotels, loved that, loved all those worlds. And strangely, I've been able to put them together now, the things I grabbed from those jobs, which is so much fun. But in between those jobs, I of course went out searching for a "part-time, nothing job," that would be a disposable job as soon as I found what I really wanted to do. And of course, that was that a Biggby Coffee location in southeast Michigan.
Fell in love with the job, fell in love with the regulars, fell in love with the culture and the people, and ended up joining the Home office. And I've been with the Home office since 2012. I have to remember, Matt, time has no meaning all of a sudden. So since 2012, I worked in our operations team. I loved the store operations. I thought that was so much fun. And then some things happened that I think are part of our story that we might want to touch on today around our company and around a cultural shift with our company, really. A doubling down on this idea of loving people, this idea of caring for people through their jobs and that sort of thing. And over the course of that cultural change, we founded what is now known as the Life You Love Laboratory, which is what I have the honor of overseeing and shepherding forward through my role with the company. And I think that's the fast version of the Laura story.
Mike McFall:
Otherwise known as Life Lab.
Laura Eich:
Otherwise known as Life Lab. Yep, yep, yep.
Mike McFall:
All right, so let's get into this Life Lab thing a little bit. Tell me about it. I'm very involved in it with you. You are absolutely charged with it though, as your day-to-day. Talk me through what Life Lab is, what we're trying to do with it, a little bit of its origin story maybe.
Laura Eich:
Yeah, yeah. So Life Lab is, in the crass version, it's a department within our company. And I think that's an important thing to know, because sometimes we talk about it like it's an idea or a philosophy, but it is a team that is doing work on the ground for Biggby Coffee and beyond. It was founded basically with the ideals of improving workplace culture, helping us all live within and help develop extraordinary workplaces. And so where we prove that work right now is within Biggby Coffee, within Biggby Nation. We have some longer term dreams of taking our work beyond Biggby Nation. But we've started with, I'll give some of the nuts and boltsy stuff, because I know we're going to have the Life Lab team on later this season to talk about maybe all of the things.
But just to give a little bit of a flavor of what we do, we run a couple of programs ourselves, so that includes an in-house coaching program. So our team coaches with home office staff right now. We have a dream of taking that to the rest of nation too. But we coach with our home office team. We have a couple of certified coaches. The whole point is that they are not that person's boss, and they're just there to help them with whatever they need. If it's chasing goals, if it's practicing their words on how to bring a tough idea to their boss, you get the idea. They show up to coaching, they get coached, they head back out into the world.
Mike McFall:
It's not about making them better employees. That's not the coaching. It's like life coaching. And so you're not talking to your boss about how to become a more powerful widget within the organization. You're talking to your coach about how to become a more powerful human being in the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Big distinction for me. Huge.
Laura Eich:
Yes. And very importantly, there's a reason we had to pull this group of people outside of other teams because we didn't want them to be too involved in their actual work stuff. They can just coach from the outside and that kind of thing. It's pretty magical. We also run a program of workshops that are based on some foundational elements we think that everyone needs to have in place in order to begin the work of building a life that they love, and so those workshops are really conversational. We bring people together. We don't claim to hand out things like medical advice or financial advice, but we bring people together. We offer some tools, and we offer the opportunity to talk about some things like your personal and physical wellness, like your financial wellness, like your goals and your dreams, and help guide you through the process of writing down goals and dreams and that sort of thing.
So we run a workshop program. We run this coaching program. We do a bit of team consulting. So if a team is having a hard time, we can come in and do team-building activities, communication-building activities, relationship-building activities. We've got a whole tool bag of activities that we can come work with people on and that sort of thing. So those are some of our primary ones. We have a whole bunch more, but I think we'll be able to talk about those later. But really, what the team is focused on is what this podcast is focused on, which is why we wanted to launch this, where it's about leadership. It's about bringing love into the workplace, elevating the workplace experience.
Mike McFall:
Let's get into a little bit of the background on our purpose, our vision, which-
Mike McFall:
... And our purpose, our vision, which ultimately led to us creating LifeLab to, I mean, really to me, LifeLab is about supporting our organization in its purpose and pursuing our vision. That's ultimately, in my opinion, because our vision is to improve workplace culture. So let's just spend a minute or two on that whole purpose and vision thing. And why don't I start with the quick origin story of that whole process. And then I want you to get into what it was like, and how we ended up where we did and so on. So-
Laura Eich:
You got it.
Mike McFall:
... How it went for us was, Bob and I had this company, by most measures from the outside looking in. Bob and I were successful entrepreneurs we're getting asked to do speaking engagements, we're successful entrepreneurs living the American dream and so on. And yet every single week that went by, we were losing motivation and inspiration to come to work, and we just didn't know why.
And so this would've been 2014, probably '13, '14, '15. And it was like, what the heck's going on? And everything we thought of in terms of how to get more inspired, things we could do, like make an acquisition or start a new company or whatever the heck it was, it was always like for what though? And it was like, well, to grow, but to grow for what? And that was this question we couldn't answer, was it to make one more dollar? Because that wasn't inspiring to us. And so we didn't know what to do. We were talking about it. We were talking about it for years, couple of years about this thing that was going on for us. Well, then I end up on this camping trip. No bull shit. I end up on this camping trip on South Manitou Island, which is incredibly remote. It's off of Leland, it's out in the middle of Lake Michigan. You can only get there by boat. There's no retail, there's no restaurants, there's no hotels. This is campsites, campfires swimming in the lake, boom, going on hikes.
So I go out there and I'm with my son, who's nine at the time, and my brother. And so we're out there, we go for this long hike. I look over, we're probably seven, eight miles across the island from our campsite. We're on this beach. I look over there's, there's a husband and wife kind of nestled down inside of the bluffs of the beach, and they're like making tea. I have this moment. I'm like, "God, that's so peaceful. I've never had anything that peaceful in my entire life." But anyway, so they're sitting there making tea together, and then we end up that night, we have a communal fire pit. And lo and behold, this same couple comes up to the fire pit and sits down and we're finishing up dinner.
My brother and I are drinking a little bit of whiskey. They're drinking green tea as it goes. And so Nathan Havy ends up telling my brother all this stuff about his work in conscious capitalism. Bingo, right? I'm listening. I'm not really involved because I'm hanging out with my son and I'm listening, and I'm listening, I'm listening. And then the next day I just hand Nathan my business card and I say, "Hey Nathan, I'd love to learn more about your work. So if you can call me whenever." He calls, seven minutes into that conversation, I stop him and I'm like, "We got to get my partner involved in this." So then he says, "Okay." He drives to East Lansing, we get together the three of us, and we start having the conversation about bringing him in as a consultant to do the work. I want you to explain. So that's how we got Nathan. And it's just, to me, it's such a fascinating story. Right?
Laura Eich:
Well, let me talk a little bit about what it was like too at the same moments that you and Bob were having sort of these, your maybe existential crisis. Also, we're going to have Nathan on the podcast real soon. So if we want more of that story, we get to talk about it really, really soon, which is very exciting. But what it was like as an employee of the company, I was in the ops team at that moment in time. I did not know you and Bob were wrestling with this sort of crisis of faith, crisis of purpose and everything like that. But I did know that things weren't awesome at the office. There was a bit of, our culture had almost become the joke, make sure you're happy, make sure you're having fun. And all these things that had been cultural,
Mike McFall:
Make friends, love people, drink-
Laura Eich:
Be happy. Love people.
Mike McFall:
What was our tagline? Be happy, make friends, love people, drink great coffee. Something like that.
Laura Eich:
Be happy, have fun, make friends, love people, drink great coffee. Yeah, that was our cultural values.
Mike McFall:
And that became a joke, is what you're saying, right? That was a joke.
Laura Eich:
Yeah. They were all kind of an eye roll.
Mike McFall:
Miserable. Yeah.
Laura Eich:
Yes. I mean, yeah. So Nathan came in and I remember as an employee, all of a sudden I was hearing all these things about this mysterious man who may or may not call me for an interview and that I should pick up the phone. I should answer. Because I was a road warrior. I was never at the office. And so, "If a guy named Nathan calls you, make sure you talk to him." Well, he never called me, which I give him a hard time about to this day. It's fine. But he was conducting a survey for our company. This is obviously what you and Bob had finally sort of agreed upon as a starting place. And he was trying to assess the state of our culture and the state of our culture for our whole organization, including franchise owners, baristas, everything like that.
Mike McFall:
Well, it was a stakeholder survey. So he was interviewing all six stakeholders in the conscious capitalism, stakeholder capitalism, genre of business.
Laura Eich:
And what he found was exactly what I just described, which is that our culture felt more like the butt of a joke than the reality that I think you and Bob had dreamed up at that point, and especially for the home office stakeholder group. So in comparison with the scores from the other stakeholders that he had explored, the home office was needing some loving care and attention is maybe the nice way to put it. And so I remember you and Bob coming to a staff meeting after you got that report. One of the, to-dos Nathan had given you guys was to read the entire thing in front of all of us so that this was sort of an explosion of transparency for our company, something we had never experienced before.
I remember you and Bob talking about how you guys basically were hurt in not like someone attacked you way, but in a, I can't believe this is the company we created way, and you had cried over this report and that kind of thing. I remember my heart beating very fast during that meeting. It was a moment. It was a big moment. But then we went to work, and this is really where so much of our journey honestly started. I know the company started in 1995, but so much of this very new journey started in, I think it was in 2015 when you guys read that report, ended up making major sort leadership changes that were very lovingly done and carefully done.
Mike McFall:
Well, and just to add a little bit of color. So I opened that report on Friday morning, and we had the staff meeting that afternoon, the all company meeting.
Laura Eich:
Oh, I didn't realize that.
Mike McFall:
And that morning I opened it and I read it, and I remember sitting at my desk at home and it was like I started crying and I couldn't stop crying. And I finished it, ultimately, and I called Bob and I was like, "Well..." It was early in the morning. And I said, "Well, we got..." He had read it the night before, and we just sat there for a second and it was like, there's nothing to do here other than follow Nathan's recommendations because otherwise we're going to put this thing in the circular file and we're just going to continue as is, as if we know how to improve, which we didn't. We didn't know what to do. And so we just agreed, as is so often the case with Bob and I, we just agreed, and then we got up there and we read the thing. So that's, that moment. It was all in the same day for me. It was a big day.
Laura Eich:
I didn't realize that.
Mike McFall:
I wish I knew the date.
Laura Eich:
Oh, we could go find it. It's probably still in my calendar somewhere. We can do that later. So yeah, so much went under construction culturally for our company at that moment. I remember I thought, "Hey, we'll work with this guy for six months to a year and we'll have solved it all." Little did I know seven years later, we'd still very much be... This would be our everyday work, and this is constantly being attended to and constantly being worked on. We started with some basic things like we needed to overhaul our compensation program and our review process. Some very basic really complex hygiene factors for our company. Ended up, like I said, revamping the leadership team, establishing a new leadership team, and we've gone forward from there and establishing what became Boost, which is what became LifeLab. So you'll sometimes hear us talk about Boost, you'll sometimes hear us talk about LifeLab, Boost was the original establishment of this team that is really trying to stay on the forefront on behalf of our company for building extraordinary workplaces. And through that, we should talk about how we found our purpose and our vision. That was a big part of the story, and I'm hoping to kick it to you for that.
Mike McFall:
Sure. Well, so I'm going to give this and I'm just going to give it, right? I'm not going to worry about softening it. So really, our purpose started with a conversation with Nathan where Bob and I talked about how important we felt like it was that people could show up to work and just be themselves, be our authentic selves. And we had always done that, or we always felt that we had done that. It wasn't true, right? You look back on what you thought you were aware of back in the day and you realize... But anyway, so that was kind of the starting point of that conversation. You colored that page in pretty dramatically too with your moonshot and how it filtered in. And we worked through this for a year, and really at the end of the day, it was about supporting you and building a life that you love. That is our purpose. And meaning you think you need to be in relation to be in the position you are in our company, but you as a human being show up as you authentically, genuinely bring that, right?
And so that was the purpose. And then we got into, okay, well the purpose is why. The purpose is why you're doing what you do. And the why for us was to support anyone that touched our company in building the life they'd love. Then we got into this, the next conversation was on vision. And the vision. If you reach your vision, so we had a 2028 vision, which is 10 years out. If we reach our 2028 vision, then we can definitively say that, "Yes, we are living our purpose." And so it was like, "Okay, well how are we going to support people? How are we going to support you in building a life that you love?"
Well, one thing that we could do is that we could improve workplace culture. And that became the way that we decided that we could influence the world and support people, support you in building a life that you love. And why is that so important? And this is where all of a sudden things like we added rocket fuel to our company. Because for me, and I know you've got a different version of this, but for me, I was sitting there and I was like, "Okay, well, let's see. The leading cause of death in the United States is chronic disease, okay? No one doubts that. The leading cause of chronic disease is stress and anxiety. The leading cause of stress and anxiety is workplace and finances. Both of those things. We as leaders of private enterprise-
Mike McFall:
Because of those things, we as leaders of private enterprise can take those square on. We can start building environments where people show up to work and they are invigorated, they're fulfilled, the place is nurturing and supportive. And then, by the way, when we do that, we're going to build these incredibly powerful teams inside of corporate America. And that the companies that live that way, live into that are going to become incredibly high performing and then we can pay people more. And then all of a sudden, we've taken care of the two leading factors into chronic disease and the leading cause of death in the United States. Oh, my gosh, we just went from being a coffee company, serving cups of coffee every morning to taking on the leading cause of death in the United States. What isn't inspiring about that? That's insanely inspiring to me. And then that's what we've been doing ever since.
Laura Eich:
Yes. And we're constantly pursuing it. I think, for me, that was one of the... The moments where we learned those stats was definitely a sticking point for me. I remember another one was hearing, I think it was Raj Sisodia at a Conscious Company Leaders forum that we went to, talking about how the number one time for heart attacks in the United States is between 4:00 and 6:00 AM on Monday mornings, because of the stress about going to work. And then I think it's further evolved over time. And I know this gets really heavy, really fast, but I started digging into work-related suicides. My husband's work experienced a couple of those, and I was like, what's happening? Why in the world are jobs killing people? And so, now my moonshot is to take that on and stop that from happening. Because there are moments where, as much as I'm so deeply passionate about our work, so deeply passionate about my job, I love my job.
I describe how much I love my job to everyone who will ask me about it. And still, it's just a job. It's not worth your life. It's not worth sacrificing your life. And also, I think your job's responsibility is to protect that, to take on that responsibility of understanding how responsible you are for people's wellbeing when they're in your employment. And I just don't think that that's something businesses pay attention to first for the most part. And I think they should, and I think they will. I think thankfully employees these days are demanding it. They're saying, "I'm not going to work for you if you either severely underpay me or severely overwork me. Or if I'm ending up sick or in the hospital or whatever because of my job, I'm not going to stand for that. I'm going to go find a different job, because there's more jobs out there and that kind of thing."
Mike McFall:
Well, we certainly hope so. That's the idea. I mean, 100 years ago, it was common for people to die on their job because they were unsafe environments, and people were working too long and they were exhausted and so on. And thankfully, we were able to get through that moment and at least get to the point where corporations weren't doing harm. And that's where we are today.
Laura Eich:
At least obviously.
Mike McFall:
What's that?
Laura Eich:
At least not obviously doing harm.
Mike McFall:
Correct, like doing horrible bodily harm. And there's some glimpses of wellness programs and so on, but they all seem incredibly self-serving to me. Which is the employer feels like they have to do that stuff, and no one's really into it. In fact, I've been having conversations with some CEOs out there in the world about all this stuff and just taking their temperature. And even CEOs that I respect and are good people, and they run great organizations, their take on the employees, "Well, yeah, I mean, but isn't that on them? What's my role?" And it's like, well, maybe your role is, is that if we took care of people better and people were inspired to show up to work, and they were unlocked, and they came in bringing their entire self to work every single day and so on, maybe your organization would just be that much better, too, on top of it, and you get to be good to people.
So, to me, it's this incredibly virtuous cycle that we just need to get on and we got to prove out. And we are proving out. I mean, by the way, we're running one of the fastest growing brands anywhere. And a lot of this stuff is what's leading to that, in my opinion. A lot of the thinking and work we're doing is leading to our growth rate. And our company's, it's on fire right now in terms of this traditional business metrics, which is something that we will often reference. It's like, well, what about the traditional business metrics? We always had to be paying attention to those too. But anyway, we're on fire.
Laura Eich:
Yeah. Well, I feel like we should also mention part of the inspiration when we were finding our purpose, finding our vision was very much our franchise owners. Because when we were playing with what could our vision be, so when we were talking vision, we knew our purpose, support people in building lives they love. We knew that that meaning would be different for every person. So, we did establish some of those foundational elements that I referenced earlier when talking about our workshops, about understanding your personal vitality, the ability to exceed your basic needs, knowing who you want to be, having a sense of belonging.
So, we had established those things. When we were discussing vision, what worthy problem could we solve in the world, we very much looked at our franchise system. We're like, what are they already doing? Because there's so much good. We knew that. We admire our franchise owners, we look at those store cultures that they had built, and that was part of the inspiration for... I think we can show the rest of the world through this magical franchising model, how to build extraordinary workplaces at a major scale, because our franchise owners are already doing it. They're doing it one by one, by one, by one, by one. And especially in the recent years since we've established this as our purpose and vision, we have more people opting into our company because they want to do this kind of work, because one of their primary motivators is having a healthy workplace for their staff.
Being a community, I think I used the words community care center with someone the other day, which I didn't really mean, because that sounds like a nonprofit hub where you hand out blankets or something like that. But they care for their community through this tool of a Biggby Coffee location. They care for their staff. They're setting their staff up with this beautiful expectation of what to expect from an employer, since so many of our staff, this is either their first job or it's early in their career. Oh, it's just the virtuous cycle builds because we have this opportunity of a franchise model, which I just think is really cool. And we probably don't talk about it enough.
Mike McFall:
We don't talk about that piece enough, you're right. So, in LifeLab, we're doing the last three years, four years, we've been really focused on trying to get it launched internally within our organization. We're still working on that. I would say it's going well. We're definitely not done or near done, though. There's still a lot to be done.
Laura Eich:
Oh, my gosh, yeah.
Mike McFall:
But ultimately, at the end of the day, this podcast and what we're trying to do, is we are trying to take LifeLab and the message of LifeLab and Biggby Coffee to the world to try to have positive impact.
Laura Eich:
Yeah. We should talk about an important point of inspiration for doing a podcast, other than you and I fighting over whose idea it was first, which it was mine. It's fine.
Mike McFall:
Oh, no, it's your idea. All right, I'll consent.
Laura Eich:
But it was actually during COVID, during the height of COVID, the early, early days of COVID. And our company, something we really celebrated, because we had our purpose well in hand at that moment. We knew the vision we had for the future. So, we were very well centered for a moment of crisis like COVID. And COVID was a moment of crisis for all of us. And something we did that felt very naturally born out of our purpose for our company in that moment of time was doing weekly AMAs, ask me anythings with you and Bob. And we started doing those, I think it was right at the beginning of April of 2020. So, right away.
And we hosted those weekly live on Facebook, and I think we even got to LinkedIn and other places for two years, almost two and a half years. And it was wonderful, and fun and it inspired a little bit of confidence where we were like, this is really fun. Because what we started doing, it was great to talk to you and Bob every week for a very long time. But we actually started bringing on guests, because there's only so many times people can ask you the origin story of Biggby Coffee, and what you guys think of-
Mike McFall:
What drink I like when I go in.
Laura Eich:
What drink you like the most, and about your Biggby nicknames.
Mike McFall:
Ask me what your favorite customer story is or whatever it was, right?
Laura Eich:
Yes.
Mike McFall:
Yeah. And really, that also, I enjoy doing it with you.
Laura Eich:
Yeah, that's awesome.
Mike McFall:
So, that was the other piece. We had fun with it. And I agree, the content got stale fairly... Not quickly, but the content did get stale after a while and bringing guests on. And so, that's when this started to ruminate for us, I think in terms of, well, wouldn't it be cool to do this, but do it purposefully around our purpose and vision?
Laura Eich:
Yeah. When we started having guests on, we started having mostly guests from Biggby Nation, franchise owners and area representatives, even some baristas. And those were the conversations that I think you and I started to get sparkly about, where it was like, "Hey, there's a lot of stories out there to explore and people to talk to."
Mike McFall:
Yeah. I mean there's a killer amount of stories. And as we start to work into this a little bit, it's like it becomes even more amazing to me, the number of stories. But I also hope that in this concept of love and leadership, I don't want to navel gaze. And I know we're going to try, and we're going to try to bring in some guests from the outside world too and have conversations about what that means for others. Because here's my premise, this concept is not new. Loving leadership is not new. In my opinion, good leaders in history have always held their people in high regard and brought a very loving culture. And that's what made them high performing teams, because they did create that. We've just never called it love. And so, we're calling it love. And what we want to do is explore what that means for other people and then how they're doing it. There's great stories, like amazing stories in the world.
Laura Eich:
Yeah. And I love how it looks so different on different people. Because I think you're right, we did just have this conversation, because I think I used the words, this idea is so new. And you were like, no, it's not. It's been here forever, but we haven't talked about it. And I don't think it gets talked about enough. I don't think it gets talked about in the context of leadership development. And part of that complexity is how different it looks on every leader. Because caring for people, loving people, how you take care of people and love people, Mike, is so different than how I do. And they're both good, I think most of the time when people are very thankfully free-
Laura Eich:
And they're both good I think most of the time, and people are very thankfully free to tell us when it's not good. But how we actually go about doing that is so different depending on whatever context we live in, whether you're a manager, whether you're a CEO, whether you are an informal leader in a company, whether you're a business owner, it comes out. Then add your personality style and how you actually like to execute on this and it gets really complicated. We might as well just collect all those stories on here and explore that complexity with individual people all in their individual situations and see how they're all doing it. And hopefully spread more ideas, spread more love in the leadership development space.
Mike McFall:
Yeah, and I was thinking the other day about how the only thing that ever gets traction in the world is hate and negativity, really, at the end of the day. That bums me out because I would love to, at the end of the day, have a lot of people hearing these messages, to hear the stories of really powerful leaders who approach their organizations and their teams with just incredible amounts of care and love, and then how incredibly high performing those organizations are. That's it. I just hope that maybe we can have some influence in the world and get a little traction around the idea of the power of love.
Laura Eich:
Yeah. My favorite metaphor, we also heard at a conscious company leaders forum, and it's about the redwood trees in the world. And I know this is a metaphor that people know, but I just love it so much where you look at a redwood tree, if you've ever been to the Redwood Forests in the West, and they are enormous, unfathomably large trees, they kind of scared me.
Mike McFall:
Can you say unfathomably again for me, please?
Laura Eich:
Unfathomably.
Mike McFall:
I'm not sure. Okay, go ahead. We'll keep going.
Laura Eich:
Is that not what I said?
Mike McFall:
I think you put a couple extra Ms in there or something. Unfathomably.
Laura Eich:
I'm almost nine months pregnant. I'm just going to blame it on that because some things don't come out exactly right right now, but they're so big. Hard to imagine how big they are. You'd imagine, because we're always taught that roots go as low and as wide as the tree is high and wide. Redwoods are not that way. They have really shallow root systems. They only go 10, 15 feet down in the ground. The key is that they spread out and they connect with the other trees nearby. That's how they stay strong, that's how they stay standing, because it's not reasonable that a tree as big as a building is held up by 14 foot roots, but it's because they're connected as part of this network. I think that's part of the dream of this podcast as well, is to find connections in the world of both like-minded and skeptical people. I think we'd love to hear from the skeptical people too, that think this is crap. Let's talk about that too, because I think that'd be an interesting podcast as well.
Mike McFall:
Well, it's crap if you believe that at the end of the day, people that run organizations like this are motivated by one thing. It's crap then. Yeah. But anyway, so we want to try to broaden that conversation.
Laura Eich:
Before we wrap up, let's talk about, so we have a plan for a first season of the podcast, but what kind of folks are we hoping to have on here? Maybe somebody listening is like, "Hey, I'd like to talk to you guys." Who do we want to talk to over time?
Mike McFall:
Well, I'd like to have a very broad base of conversations. I would love to talk to people about people and their histories that were great leaders and why they were great leaders and people that experienced love in the workplace and what that felt like and why it was important to them, and then how did that manifest? But then also I'd love to talk to leaders about how they try to do that.
Laura Eich:
Yeah. Yep. Awesome. For this first season, I know we're going to have a lot of Biggby folks on. That just happens to be the community that we're part of, and they were easy to talk to and find. We are going to have a couple friends from further out in the world, Biggby friends, friends of Biggby Coffee, but that may have other brands behind them that you've definitely heard of before, which is really exciting. Then next season, hopefully we'll start to expand even farther. Of course, we're going to keep wanting to talk to the friends of Biggby Coffee people within Biggby Nation because like we said, there's so many stories to explore there, but we want to keep hearing from people. Before I wrap us up today, I did want to just invite people, if you're interested in talking to us on this podcast, go ahead and reach out to lifeyoulovelaboratory@biggby.com. If you can't remember that feedback@biggby.com will get it to us too, because that's our primary feedback email and that kind of thing. Mike, is there anything else we want to share before we wrap up for today?
Mike McFall:
Why is this so exciting to you? I am not sure I've ever asked you that question before. I think I know, and I think I could probably answer why you love this work and why you love doing this, but just tell me again.
Laura Eich:
Why all of the work or why the podcast?
Mike McFall:
No, all of the work.
Laura Eich:
All of the work. Okay, that's good. Yep. Okay. So I mentioned at the very start, I didn't ever want to work for a corporate environment. I thought that sounded miserable. I am a full convert and believer that businesses are the biggest opportunity in the world for making the world a better place. I think it's awesome that nonprofits exist. I think it's awesome that people do charitable work and are one-on-one trying to make the world a better place. But business, the opportunity of business is the largest organization in the world. It's bigger than religion, it's bigger than sports, it's bigger than countries, and it means it's the biggest opportunity in the world.
I've got dreams, man, about businesses not just doing no harm to people, not just reducing those suicide rates and reducing that number of heart attacks on Monday mornings and reducing the amount of chronic disease that's caused by stress and anxiety. I think businesses can actually be restorative to people, and they can give people more than what they're taking from them right now, and not just getting it back to neutral, but giving them something beyond what they would get if they weren't part of an organization like this. That's why I'm excited about it.
Mike McFall:
Beautiful. Thank you.
Laura Eich:
Awesome. Okay, so if you are interested in joining us on this journey, this exploration of love and leadership in the workplace, we want you to follow along. You can find upcoming episodes and past episodes at loveandleadershippodcast.com or wherever you find podcasts. You can follow along with the Life You Love Laboratory team on our social media pages @lifeyoulovelab on TikTok and Instagram, and wherever else we are on social media. We can follow along with Mike's journey at michaeljmcfall.com. You can of course explore more about Biggby Coffee at biggby.com. We just can't wait to have this conversation with everybody. Thank you so much for listening in today. We love you a lot. Mike, I love you. Thanks for doing this with me.
Mike McFall:
I love you too, Laura. This is going to be awesome.
Laura Eich:
And we'll see you guys next time.