In this week’s episode of Love in Leadership, we’re joined by three superstars in the Life You Love LaboratoryTM team at BIGGBY® COFFEE. Join us as we talk about why the language we use in our organizations matters, what it means to be a mentor, and how fostering healthy workplace culture is everyone’s responsibility.
Words, Actions, and Where They Meet (featuring Alisha Beck, Jeremy DeRuiter, & Brie Roper)
A dive into the principles guiding the Life You Love LaboratoryTM
GUEST BIO:
Alisha Beck, originally from southeast Michigan, has a rich background in people-oriented roles. Starting her career at Dunkin Donuts, she transitioned to BIGGBY® COFFEE where she has held various positions at store and home office levels, including personal development mentoring, culture development, and employee coaching.
Jeremy DeRuiter’s journey began as a barista at Michigan State University, leading to various roles at BIGGBY® COFFEE. With an initial ambition to become a high school teacher, he found his calling in training and operations within the company. His experience covers a broad spectrum, including training, operations, and marketing. Jeremy is now a key figure in the Life You Love LaboratoryTM, focusing on leadership development and improving workplace culture.
Brie Roper made her way from a job at TGI Fridays to a significant role at BIGGBY® COFFEE. Beginning as a barista, she moved through various positions including store leadership and business coaching, and now is a part of the home office team. Brie is loved at BIGGBY® COFFEE for her enthusiasm, commitment to positive workplace culture, and her role as a people development mentor.
CORE TOPICS + DETAILS:
[1:00] - The Power of the Words We Use
Why it’s more than just semantics
One thing that sets BIGGBY® COFFEE apart from some other organizations — and may seem at odds with its unconventional, progressive approach — is its emphasis on using the right language. As Laura says: “It’s really freaking hard to keep language straight within an organization.”
So, why does language matter? Because language shapes culture. The collective understanding and use of specific terms play a crucial role in defining the values and beliefs that underpin the organizational culture.
[13:48] - Empower Individuals, Empower Organizations
Focusing on the one elevates the many
If you want to make your organization more successful, you have to focus on making your people more successful — not as employees, but as human beings. When you develop people from a holistic perspective, helping inspire personal growth, you ultimately enhance workplace culture and create a sense of well-being that leads employees to genuinely love working for your organization.
[48:26] - Engagement: More Than a Buzzword
Why employee engagement should be a top priority for any company
Jeremy brings us back to basics with a simple, unavoidable question: “Are your people engaged, yes or no?”
This might seem like an oversimplification, but the truth is that employee engagement might just be the #1 most effective measurement of success at an organization. Why? Because engaged employees indicate a culture of trust and psychological safety, both critical for a thriving work environment.
[1:10:06] - What We Expect from Our Workplaces
It’s not 1920 — or even 2020 — anymore.
Too many companies are still trying to give their employees what people were asking for a hundred years ago — or even five years ago. But what people want now is flexibility and openness. They want reasonable work arrangements, nurturing environments, open communication, and genuinely fulfilling relationships within their organization.
Great human-centric leaders focus on giving them those things. As Mike says, “I want every employee to walk into work and demand human-centric leadership.” The goal is to transform workplace culture into one where leaders genuinely care for the well-being and development of their team members.
RESOURCES:
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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.
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Laura Eich:
Welcome to the Love in Leadership Podcast. This is Laura. As always, I'm joined by my favorite co-host in the whole world, Mike McFall. Mike, how are you doing?
Mike McFall:
Wonderful. And your only co-host, which ...
Laura Eich:
I mean, for now.
Mike McFall:
We'll see if that holds up over time.
Laura Eich:
Yeah.
Mike McFall:
Things are good. How's Blueberry, how are things?
Laura Eich:
Blueberry is good. Blueberry's nickname for baby girl that I am currently cooking, and she's doing great. She's taking up a lot of space and that's all.
Mike McFall:
Yeah.
Laura Eich:
Yeah, ready for eviction soon.
Mike McFall:
Is she [inaudible 00:00:43], or no?
Laura Eich:
I think so. Well, she seems to get upset if I relax. She's like, "No, you will not relax." That's going to have to end when you come out, baby girl, because we need to relax a little bit. But yeah, we're doing okay.
Mike McFall:
Good. Good, good, good, good.
Laura Eich:
So something that I've been thinking about this week, I was just in a Sea Hive meeting. Sea Hive is the name of our executive leadership team at the Biggby Coffee home office. We were in a meeting yesterday, and I was taken by the complexity and difficulty of language in that meeting, organizational language especially. And I'm curious what your thoughts are about this, because it's sort of breaking my brain, if I'm being totally honest. The idea that everyone has different definitions for the same words and sometimes when we're talking about things, we're talking about them in a way that we're pretty sure we know exactly what the other person means. And then you get to the end of the conversation and you realize you're on completely different pages about completely different definitions about the same word, and it's really freaking hard to keep language straight within an organization, is basically the concept that's in my mind.
And the idea that language is just a construct and you have to apply meaning to words, agree upon the meaning to those words, especially within an organization. And then you have to keep doing that repeatedly so that you don't lose the definition of the words. I don't know. It hurt my brain and it's been going around in circles in my mind ever since.
Mike McFall:
Some would say that your culture is the words you choose and how you collectively define those words.
Laura Eich:
Mm-hmm.
Mike McFall:
And that makes that whole conversation way more meaningful, because you're essentially describing the culture of your organization with the words you choose. But then, oh boy, there's a lot to the meaning that you attach to a word. And I guess I'd love to explore, if you are willing, what are the words that are breaking your brain?
Laura Eich:
Yesterday it was the word strategy, and sometimes the word alignment. Strategy, though, I think is the one I keep coming back to, where I don't know if anyone knows what it means, is the actual thought in my mind. I don't know if we know what it means. I don't know if we know what it does. You and I have spent lots of time talking about certain words in the world, love, love in the workplace, workplace culture, healthy workplace culture. We've talked about these things. I feel very solid that when we're talking about those things, we're talking about the same thing. But when we talk about a concept like strategy, strategic planning, visioning actually sometimes pops in here too because I think it's connected. I think we all get a little bit lost sometimes, or we think we know what we're saying, and then you get to the end of the conversation, you find out that you don't know what you're saying.
Mike McFall:
Yeah. And the problem I find is that everybody thinks they know exactly what it means. And they do, they do for themselves, right?
Laura Eich:
Yeah.
Mike McFall:
And I think that's the rub right there.
Laura Eich:
Yeah.
Mike McFall:
Is that you think you know, and oh, by the way, you do know, but it's only an association with you and it's not taking into account how everyone else is defining that word and using that word. So we get caught into it all the time. For me the big ones that I see in the world that I think everyone has different meaning around is purpose, vision, and mission.
Laura Eich:
Yeah, that's it.
Mike McFall:
Purpose, vision, and mission. They get used interchangeably and I'm like, "No, no, no. These are really different concepts." And so unless you have alignment around what mission is in relation to vision and then in relation to purpose, yeah, you're not having a meaningful conversation at that point.
Laura Eich:
Right. Right, and I think it's so important that organizations do this work, but I know it can be frustrating even sitting around that table taking the time. You're trying to talk about your actual strategic plan. So this was yesterday as the example, we're actually trying to talk about the strategic plan, and someone like Laura shows up and is like, "What do we mean? What do we mean by strategy? What do we mean by strategic plan?" And I can see people's blood pressure rising because they're like, "We don't have time to talk about that." And I'm like, "No, we have to talk about that. That's how we've written down things like our vision, our purpose, our values, our operating core values, our operational philosophy, our operating mission." We do have all those things written down.
Mike McFall:
And we spent, I remember the conversations figuring out what the heck purpose was and why it was important.
Laura Eich:
We spent like a year, to be clear.
Mike McFall:
Yeah, what the heck vision is and why it's important, what the heck mission is and why it's important. And the thing is, so I'm so excited, I'm so excited, Laura. Can I tell you a secret?
Laura Eich:
Yeah, yeah.
Mike McFall:
So no one knows this yet. The podcast will be delayed so I can go ahead and announce it, because I think it'll be ... Well, we'll hope it's public by then, but if not, hey, we're just ...
Laura Eich:
It's fine.
Mike McFall:
So Bob and I are going to do a series of interviews that are going to be, I think, about this topic really. It didn't dawn on me, but it's going to be about this topic, which is the fundamental questions and the fundamental ideas around Biggby Coffee. And we're going to do like a 12 to 16 series where we do a deep dive on every single one that we can think of, and then we've set it now. You know?
Laura Eich:
Yeah.
Mike McFall:
Because up until this point, we don't have a place to go to talk about what the heck these words mean. And I want to be vague like that, because these words are every word. It's everything.
Laura Eich:
Right.
Mike McFall:
So yes. And then, okay, let me also say one other thing about that. You showing up to a meeting and saying, "No, but what do we mean by strategy?" Sure, it sounds a little simple and it sounds like you're the dumb one that doesn't get it, but the smartest person that I've ever worked with and known, he believes his job is to show up and ask this simple, dumb question. And that's what you were doing yesterday. All people want to talk about is this strategic whatever that thing is, but it's like, what do we mean by that? So I love that you're showing up and asking the questions. Did you get a reasonable result, or was it a little rough?
Laura Eich:
No, it was rough, but I think we made progress. I think we understood that we have differing definitions of strategy, and so that's the first step, I think. It's like recognizing you have a problem. That was the first step in us getting to hopefully an agreed upon definition in the future.
Mike McFall:
Yeah. By the way, I had a conversation with Gilkey the other day where he told me, he said, "Mike, what you're talking about is not strategy." And I was like, "Oh, oh, but I think it is." So that's exactly what you're talking about.
Laura Eich:
That's exactly what I'm talking about. Yeah.
Mike McFall:
He's not wrong.
Laura Eich:
He's not wrong.
Mike McFall:
I'm not wrong.
Laura Eich:
No.
Mike McFall:
We just have different definitions or ideas around what that word means.
Laura Eich:
Yes. And for Biggby Coffee, we're going to need to agree upon a definition for strategy. And we'll keep doing our strategic planning, which is its own whole thing. Where are you going to be publishing this interview series?
Mike McFall:
It's just going to be an internal piece. It's just going to be an internal piece.
Laura Eich:
Okay. Very cool.
Mike McFall:
We're not going out in the world with it. It's really just for alignment around things like the history of and what the core values, the history of the core values, how we got to them, what they were, and then maybe it's going to be the history of position priorities. Maybe it's going to be the history of why we set up the marketing fund the way we did. It's going to be all these very specific things that people I don't think know. And so it'll be for franchise owners, for employees at the store level, be employees at Global Orange Development. And yeah, the intention is definitely not to go public with it, because we want to be able to just talk freely. He and I are just sitting in a room bullshitting about it.
Laura Eich:
Yeah. Okay. Very cool. Well, speaking of sitting in a room and bullshitting with each other.
Mike McFall:
Speaking of that, right?
Laura Eich:
Segue into introducing our guests for today. Today is really fun because it's a group of people from the Life You Love Laboratory, which is our team at the Biggby Coffee home office, and we've got three friends that are going to be joining us on here, Alicia, Jeremy, and Brie. And they're going to tell you more about what it is that they do, what it is that they care about, but I'm just really excited to dive in with a couple of friends. I think everyone on this call, we've all been working together for a decade at least, two decades with Jeremy, so it's just going to be a cool conversation. I'm really excited to dive in.
Mike McFall:
And I'm so excited. I think of this group, this Life Lab group that's going to be on, it's some of our most seasoned people in our organization. In fact, I did a little math on my phone calculator here, and we have, I believe, it's 18 years on average tenure, 18 on average.
Laura Eich:
Yeah, that's nuts.
Mike McFall:
So it's like 87 years of collective experience at Biggby Coffee. And we're also, well me, I'm not, but you all are so young. That's what makes it so cool. You all started in the stores as baristas probably whatever, 19 years old, and so everybody's still so darn young and we've got an amazing amount of tenure experience on this group.
Laura Eich:
There's a lot of history, there's a lot of passion. I think we should just jump right into it. Let's get into it with the Life Lab team.
Hello, my friends. How are we doing?
Brie Roper:
Good.
Jeremy Deruiter:
Good.
Alisha Beck:
Pretty good.
Laura Eich:
Yeah, we're good? All right. This is such a fun one. It's a unique group of people where we all happen to know each other real, real well. So disclaimer for the day, this is a little less get to know you and a little less showcase our team and our relationships and our goodness. So we're going to jump right in with, first question I'm going to point to, I don't know, this will be exciting every time because we have three guests and that's a lot to manage. So let's go to Brie first. Brie, can you tell us who are you, where are you from, and what is it that you do?
Brie Roper:
Yeah, sure. So hi, I'm Brie Roper. I'm from just outside of Lansing, Michigan. I live in a little town called Grand Ledge, and I am a people development mentor at the Biggby Coffee home office and a proud member and founding member of the Life You Love Laboratory in the Boost Sphere.
Laura Eich:
Awesome. Jeremy, same questions. Who are you, where are you from? What is it that you do?
Jeremy Deruiter:
I am Jeremy Deruiter. I am from the Grand Rapids, Michigan area. I'm also a personal development mentor, and it'll be interesting to distinguish what constitutes founding member of Life You Love Laboratory versus Boost Sphere. That's some nuance we can maybe get into inside this conversation.
Laura Eich:
I think you're all original enthusiasts. I think that can be said for everybody on this call. Alicia, tell us, who are you, where are you from, and what is it that you do?
Alisha Beck:
Hi guys, I am Alicia Beck. I live in Farmington, Michigan, which is in the southeast Michigan area, and I am also a people development mentor. I also had the same exact question when she said founding member. I was like, "Wait, do I count?" I have to dig into that one.
Laura Eich:
I think everybody counts here. So you're all people development mentors. Can I have someone explain what the heck that means?
Brie Roper:
Let me take a stab at it. Yeah, let me see what happens here. So the people development mentors are a group that belong to the Life You Love Laboratory, or Life Lab for short. And we spend our time doing a few different things. Our main goal is to support baristas out in the world, and we want to support our franchise owners in making their Biggby Coffees the best place to work in their local community. So that's one subset of what we do. We also create content, we develop materials and tools to help people in their journey toward building a life they love. And then finally, we all offer a coaching program for the folks that work here in our home office, where they can get support on whatever's going on in their own life and we coach them. We are working on helping them take the next right step in their lives. So that's a brief overview of the different lanes that we drive in, I guess.
Laura Eich:
Good. Anybody want to add anything to that? Awesome. Jeremy, will you explain what the Life You Love laboratory concept is?
Jeremy Deruiter:
Yeah, so I think that it is the Biggby Coffee leadership institute. That was the original dream that goes back many years now, and it is an opportunity for us to help develop leaders inside of Biggby Coffee. And that is a direct way to go to work on Biggby Coffee's vision of improving workplace culture in America. Great leaders are the key to great culture, and so Life You Love Laboratory is like the R&D wing of Biggby to help develop, like you heard Brie say, the tools and resources that people can use to become better leaders and to further their culture inside of their individual organizations.
Laura Eich:
Yeah, very cool. Okay, so I love hearing about Life Lab, of course, because this is what we do with our time every day and that's amazing. But I also want to dig in a little bit more to each of your stories. Because you referenced even, what does it mean to be a founding member? What does it mean to be an OG around this concept? So let's talk about some of the highlights of your personal journeys that have landed you within the Life You Love Laboratory now at Biggby Coffee. So Lic, I'm going to come to you first. How the heck did you get here? And it might be that you go all the way back to, I don't know, Dunkin days. Whenever you want to pick up your story as far as how you landed doing this people development work.
Alisha Beck:
Yeah, so you mentioned Dunkin. I actually right out of the gate when I was looking for a job, I knew I wanted to work with people and connect with people, and so I actually became an employee at Dunkin Donuts, Baskin Robbins back when I was like 17 years old, and I worked there for probably about seven years. And I had sort of reached the top of the ladder at the store level and I wanted something more. I know I wanted to grow, I wanted to develop, I really liked working, and so I was sort of going to school, but I really, really wanted to figure out what the next step was. So I took a huge risk. I moved across the state, and I had no job at the time, and so I started job searching. And I knew I had a set of skills, and so I stumbled upon Biggby.
I worked at a store for probably about two years, and I met a girl who worked at the home office who came in and did our store inspections. And I was like, "I want to do what she does." One, because she was just magical and delightful and I really liked her. And also, I knew that there was more for me outside of the store level stuff, which I had been doing for so, so long. And so that's when I jumped into the home office. And I was hired in as a home office percolator, and I did new store openings and trainings and something called our PERC pop-ins. And so I did the mystery shops, and I just worked my way through over the course of the last 10 years. I was a business coach for a while. I worked in product development for a minute.
I've had a lot of jobs. I've overseen project management, things like that. But I've always known that I've loved working with people. I love coaching with people, I love helping people realize their potential. And so as soon as we started exploring this world of truly leaning into people and culture development, I was like, "That's me. That's me in a job." And so I over the course of a few years started taking little bits and pieces to find my way over to this team full time. And about two years ago I was able to move into this role full time. But yeah, I hope that covers it.
Laura Eich:
Yeah. Yeah, you did great.
Mike McFall:
Hey Laura, Laura.
Laura Eich:
Hi.
Mike McFall:
I am just overcome sitting here looking at all of you, and I know we all know this, but all five of us started as baristas.
Laura Eich:
Oh, yeah.
Alisha Beck:
Did.
Mike McFall:
Isn't that crazy?
Laura Eich:
That's wild.
Alisha Beck:
It's cool.
Laura Eich:
I always warn people, when I came and visited your class a couple weeks ago, Mike, and I found out who the baristas in the room were, I gave them the heads up. Watch out, it'll change your life. It's changed all of our lives becoming baristas at Biggby stores.
Brie Roper:
And you might not even expect it to do that. You might not even know it's happening.
Laura Eich:
No, not at all.
Mike McFall:
That's amazing, right?
Laura Eich:
That's so cool. So speaking of that, Jeremy, what about you? What's your journey that has led you where we are now?
Jeremy Deruiter:
Yeah, also as Mike mentioned, started as a barista. And so I went to Michigan State University, with Plan A being a high school teacher. And when I moved out of the dorm, I'd been working as a dishwasher in the cafeteria, I'm sorry, dish room lead supervisor, thank you very much.
Laura Eich:
Oh, yeah.
Jeremy Deruiter:
Yes, leadership qualities had emerged early. And I needed a job that was not involving me having to walk back into campus. And saw a help wanted ad in the newspaper. We can put something in the show notes maybe explaining what help wanted ad and what a newspaper are for some of our listenership. This is back in 2000, and I got hired on the spot. I thought it would be a fun job working with coffee and I was a coffee drinker. I'd been to a couple of the stores that were in the east Lansing area as a customer, but didn't know much about the company at all. And it got good to me. I ended up working at the store for three years. I ended up taking over managing the store, and I ended up getting recruited by Biggby cofounder, co-CEO Bob Fish to come do part time data entry work at the little home office that existed back then, I think there were six employees including Bob, Mike, and Mary, if memory serves.
That was my foot in the door position. But I quickly found my way back to education. I ended up becoming director of training, and then that led through a series of different roles inside the organization, kind of like Alicia was saying. I helped out in a lot of different spaces. As a small company, you have to wear a lot of hats. At one point it was just Bob, Mike, and Mary wearing all the hats. And so same thing for those of us who have been around a while, we've had to wear a lot of hats. And so training, operations, marketing were the big positions before coming to Boost in 2018.
And so I would note one other intersection point that I think is part of this story for me and for everyone on the call, which would have been the first time we all went out into the woods together, which was part of a trial run test run that involved Bob, Mike, and a bunch of then operations team folks before we launched our first leadership forum. And I would be surprised if there weren't seeds planted in everyone's heart in that moment that eventually came to fruition inside of Boost and inside of the Life You Love Laboratory. So that would be the only other thing I'd add to maybe modify Alicia's story, other than the fact that, Alicia, you very rudely cut out the fact that I was the person who hired you at the home office.
Alisha Beck:
It's like a highlight, a true highlight. Thank you.
Laura Eich:
Just because I have a feeling at least one person out there was like, "What do you mean you went out in the woods?" Because that just sounds weird. Could you please explain what that means, and what were we doing and what did we end up doing in the woods?
Jeremy Deruiter:
Yeah, so that was a chance to work with a company called Crux Move Consulting. And Michael had had the idea, this might be better actually having Michael sum it up, but Michael took the idea of having basically a support group for franchise owners that you drew from your YPO experience, I believe. And so that was what we were testing by going out in the woods to work with this team that helps you build a solid trusting foundation as a team. And that was what we were doing out in the woods, we were working on that.
Mike McFall:
I was rereading some stuff this week, and we actually didn't go on the retreat as a leadership retreat for our team. We went on it to test them for the forums, because we didn't need a retreat. What the heck would we need a retreat for?
Laura Eich:
We're just a random group of people.
Mike McFall:
Culture was a little different then.
Laura Eich:
Yeah. Amazing. Perfect. Okay, Brie, your turn. How the heck did you get here?
Brie Roper:
Okay. So yeah, how the heck did I get here? I'm going to go way back into the very childhood of me as a human, where I learned that I don't sit still very well and I'm very active. And the one thing that I've always brought to the table is jumping in headfirst and being enthusiastic about doing stuff. And that led me to basically becoming a performer. By training I'm an actor and a musician, and just being energized, being on my feet, going, going, going, always being the kind of person who's like, "What can we do next? What can we do more of? How can we do it better?" That runs through my core. And so in college I worked a job as a waitress at TGI Fridays. I liked that company a lot. It was high energy. I got to be really active, I got to be friendly, I got to perform a little.
If you've ever waited tables, you realize a certain element of doing that is performing. It's making people laugh, it's making sure they have a good time, it's hospitality. I loved that. I went through a phase in early adulthood, late adolescence, whatever you want to call it, where I was like, "I'm going to freelance. I'm going to work a serious office job 9:00 to 5:00 and then I'm going to freelance in the evenings." That serious office job really, really took it out of me. And I spent about 18 months with a bank. Oh, my gosh. And it was quiet and it was boring, and I was really becoming disenchanted with that idea. So I picked up, I moved to the Lansing area, where I spent my days being a nanny for my nephew. He was an infant at that time. And I recognized that I really needed to talk to some people who were not an infant during that time.
And I literally went around the block from where I was living and found a Biggby Coffee. My sister and my brother-in-law were obsessed with Biggby. They took all of their friends there when they would come to visit, they took all of their family there. They loved the vanilla bean, just in case you're wondering what they drank. And so I went around the corner and I was just like, "Hi, you should hire me. I talk a lot and I have a lot of energy and I'm super reliable and I love coffee."
And the person who hired me still tells the story of how I was just like, "You need to pick me. You need to pick me. Are you picking me?" And I started in that store in July of 2008 and I haven't left Biggby since then. I worked as a barista, percolator, store leader, joined the home office team to work in franchise support doing trainings and openings and business coaching for our franchise owners. That little retreat that you guys heard Jeremy talk about and Alicia talk about into the woods was a turning point for me. In fact, I remember at some point turning to either Bob or Mike, I'm not sure, at the end of that retreat and going, "We need one of those ropes courses on the roof of our building, because we have a lot of teams around here ...
Mike McFall:
We're still working on it, Brie, we're still working on it.
Brie Roper:
... that could really use this kind of ...
Mike McFall:
We're working on it, I promise.
Brie Roper:
And then when we got the opportunity to invest in this Boost Sphere idea, this people development sphere idea, I didn't hesitate to sign up for that, to get myself in that door. Because I knew it was going to be fun, exciting, I knew it was going to be meaningful and active, and I knew we were going to have the opportunity to make the world a better place as far as workplaces and employment is concerned. And that's what we're doing now. And every day I still wake up jazzed to go to work and to do what we get to do.
Laura Eich:
Yeah, So cool. So let's talk a little bit about the history of Life Lab, because I think now we've successfully muddied the beautiful waters by referencing Boost, referencing Life Lab, referencing the leadership institute. So Life Lab started as a concept born, I think, out of that retreat truly, where we were like, "We need to do this. We need to offer something to the world, to our company, that has never existed, I don't think, in a franchise organization before, which is this human sphere of attention. And I think Jeremy used the words R&D department kind of thing, human R&D department. I love that idea. So could someone clarify the difference between Boost and Life Lab specifically? Jeremy, how about you do this?
Jeremy Deruiter:
Yeah, I've got theory on this. So it's more clear if we rewind the clock just a couple years. So Boost is the main department, would be its analog inside of other organizations, and Life You Love Laboratory is a team within it. And so two years ago there was a second team inside the Boost Sphere, which is the HR team. And so they were separate teams with aligned missions but focused on different things. And since then, with some minor reorganization by bringing in Jody Latusa, who's an amazing HR person, pro, we've ended up separating that team outside of the Boost Sphere. But anyway, that to me is a distinction between Boost and Life You Love Laboratory. Today I view them as functionally synonymous.
Laura Eich:
Yeah, I think so. I think we're still called Boost on the budget, that kind of thing. Sorry, Mike, did you have anything? I feel like I'm driving the bus.
Mike McFall:
No, go, I love it.
Laura Eich:
Okay, cool.
Mike McFall:
[inaudible 00:29:12] driving the bus, just drive it hard.
Jeremy Deruiter:
Let me add one more distinction, though, that I think is worth saying. Because Life You Love Laboratory, though, specifically was also born out of the new world that was the COVID shutdown and the immediate after effect, which is, people have time on their hands right now, for people that were part of the shutdowns and locked in at home, basically. And they're out there doing things. And we've had these resources, these workshops, and so why not put them on offer to especially our stakeholders, but the public at large? Why not? But to have a go to market, it helps to have a brand. And Boost Sphere was not a brand. And so Life You Love Laboratory is a brand. And so that's another key distinction for me. So yeah, Boost is something that shows up on a budget item, Life Lab or Life You Love Laboratory are things that show up on shirts and on signage and stickers and et cetera, et cetera.
Laura Eich:
Yeah. Alicia, can you talk about some of the things we offer out of Life Lab that are the specific things we're trying to give, offer as a benefit, offer as a boost to the Biggby Coffee system? What are some of the things that we actually do with people?
Alisha Beck:
Absolutely. So Jeremy just mentioned the workshops. So we have five total workshops that are available for free for those within Biggby nation. We do offer them for people who are outside of Biggby. People have stumbled upon us and actually joined our workshops and then joined as franchise owners, which is amazing. But yeah, we have our workshop program, where people can really go to work on themselves and develop and take the time there. And we also have a ton of team building stuff. So we do that with our internal staff, but we've also done a lot of team building consulting with our stores as well. And so we'll go in and we'll work a little bit with teams, figure out what they are trying to go to work on, whether it's, they're trying to learn a little bit more about each other, whether they're trying to tackle a specific issue, get more camaraderie, whatever it is, we have a tool belt that we can pick and choose what works best for people.
Brie mentioned in her intro, or maybe it was earlier, I don't remember what part, but we offer coaching as well. So we offer one-on-one coaching with our home office staff, where we just go to work on supporting them and building lives that they love, whether they can be setting goals or working on growing, developing, just having someone to talk to, whatever that looks like. And that's all that's coming to mind right now.
Mike McFall:
Can I interject?
Laura Eich:
Yeah.
Mike McFall:
I'm not going to designate, because I don't know who would get the feeling to answer this. So here we've got four of our most seasoned people in the entire organization working in this concept, Life Lab and the Boost Sphere, which is about people development, leadership development, what I'm beginning to call human-centric leadership. Why would a company do this?
Laura Eich:
I was going to ask you that. I was literally, why would a company finance it?
Mike McFall:
I don't need to answer it.
Laura Eich:
You do.
Mike McFall:
Anyone on this call is equally capable of answering that question, I am very confident. I would prefer someone else answers it.
Laura Eich:
Okay. But I'm still going to ask you later, just FYI.
Mike McFall:
Okay.
Jeremy Deruiter:
I like Brie for a general answer, and I've got a specific answer for why Biggby is doing it. But I like Brie for the, why would an organization do it? Because I love your brain on this topic.
Brie Roper:
Yeah. Gosh, I don't know. Now I'm worried, because I don't know where you want me to go with it, but I'm just going to go where I go because that's how I do. But I think that the world, there's this reality in the world that the workplace is not a great place to be. And we see it in movies and television. We see bad, toxic workplaces being a central comedic plot line for a lot of people's lives. We see it in dramas, we see just toxic bosses. Think of Michael Scott. We see this out there in our culture. And I think that what we can recognize is that society's accepted that that's what workplace is going to be. It's going to drag you down, it's going to make you tired, it's going to make you desperate for Friday at 5:00 when you can be done. It's going to make you sick to your stomach on Sunday at 5:00 when you know have to go back the next day.
And the world is just kind of like, "Okay, I guess that's what we do." And I think that what we've got going on here is a group of people who are like, "Hey, I don't think it has to be that way. I think it would be cool if the workplace wasn't killing you. That sounds possible and it seems like it's something we could do." And imagine being a business owner who's sitting there going, "Oh, I don't want my people to be sick and calling in and psychologically unsafe and stressed out about everything else in their life. I want people to be coming in energized, focused, feeling supported, feeling cared about, and ready to go."
Who do you want selling your coffee at that point? Do you want the person who's coming in dragging a backpack full of toxic nonsense with them, or do you want the person coming in who's like, "This workplace loves me, I love my boss, I love my coworkers, my customers are awesome." Who do you want? Who's going to be better for your business in the long run? And I think he story should be, the narrative should be, healthy people make healthy workplaces and healthy workplaces make healthy businesses, and healthy businesses make healthy communities. And healthy communities can take care of their environment and the other people in them. And that's why a business should do this, is because healthy people will be the answer to everything.
Laura Eich:
Podcast over.
Alisha Beck:
Wow.
Laura Eich:
That's why Jeremy volun-told you for that.
Brie Roper:
[inaudible 00:35:30].
Jeremy Deruiter:
You had that. The only thing I'd add from the Biggby specific context, and this is going to sound kind of underwhelming after what Brie had to say, but from the big context to me it was a natural outcome that we would become involved interested in doing this, with a really major asterisk on this. To me it's a natural outcome for Biggby to get involved with taking care of people and helping to improve the workplace. But that's because we've always been about people. Since the beginning it's baked into our DNA. And so when I remember going through my very first barista training, sitting outside of store three on the patio and reading the first page of the training manual after the table of contents about our operating philosophy, PERC. And I'd worked all kinds of different entry-level type positions inside of retail and food service before, hadn't seen anything like it.
And it's an acronym. E and R are the things that are special to me, which, every customer leaves the store in a better mood than when the customer arrived, and R is recognize each customer as an individual. That one is the one that I think should be on a frame inside of every room of Biggby Coffee, or any organization for that matter, because that's all about making sure that your people feel special. And that was there from 2004, and I know it was written shortly after store one was opened, before store two opened, from a history lesson standpoint.
So anyway, people has always been there, caring about people has always been part of Biggby. And so it was a natural outcome that we'd be concerned with it. But here's the asterisk, is it required Mike and Bob and the other leaders in the organization, but especially Mike and Bob, to unlearn all of the things that they would have picked up along the way about what leadership is and what business is. And having walked alongside the two of you as you've gone through that process, I know it has been a process for you. It has been a steady journey of hard work to realign who you need to be to the organization. So it's a natural outcome with a ton of hard work by Bob, Mike, and all of the other leaders who have contributed to this journey along the way. But otherwise it was ...
Mike McFall:
We're still in it, right? We're still in it.
Jeremy Deruiter:
Oh, yeah.
Mike McFall:
It's like percent complete, no idea. 10%, 20%, 30%? I don't know, somewhere in that range. It's not 70%, 80%, 90%, that's for sure. The one thing I would add to this is that we went and found our purpose, and our purpose is to support you in building a life that you love. And that led into a vision, which is to improve workplace culture in the United States. And the reason that was so important to us and the reason that it is so grand in scope, similar to that of colonizing Mars or some of these other amazing purposes that are out there, it's because the number one cause of death in the United States is chronic disease. The leading factor in chronic disease is stress and anxiety. The number one factor in stress and anxiety for people is the workplace and finances. And so by taking on workplace culture, we believe that we're taking on the leading killer, the leading cause of death in the United States. And there is no more noble cause than that, in my opinion.
Laura Eich:
Yeah, I always describe that what our team does is we are taking on a human healthcare crisis in the United States. It's casual, no big deal. Normal Tuesday.
Mike McFall:
And all out of a coffee company. And I just love the fact, though, that the company itself that you have to run is the challenge that presents itself, where we all get to work on and improve. Because you need a challenge to improve. So the challenge is the company. We're all doing self-development work, we're all becoming stronger teams, and then those teams can take on meaningful challenge like we just talked about.
Laura Eich:
Yeah. Mike, I am still going to come back to you with the question, though. Because I think there's an important conversation that we get confronted with with other leaders who are struggling over, "Do I have to set up a Life Lab type department for my company? And how do I justify that? How do I justify that with a board of directors? How do we justify the funding of it?" And at some point you said yes. I'm not sure at the moment in time you knew what you were saying yes to. Because if I remember correctly, for the first two years we were not a funded department. We were more like a conceptual department where we got to put things in our signature lines and that kind of thing. But how in your mind, as a business owner and as a CEO, how did you justify this concept, that we're going to fund a team whose entire job is to just make people's lives better? Other than the fact that it feels good, but there's got to be more to it than that.
Mike McFall:
Well, so there's two parts to that question, which the first one is, why did it work for Bob and I? And it worked for Bob and I because we, at some point we'll disclose all the details on this, but the company was doing well, we were making significant money, the company's value was increasing dramatically every year. And we were losing inspiration. Honestly, every year that would go by it was like, "Well, why are we doing this? Is this just to add another dollar to the bank account?" And so you all know Bob and I well, and it's like, for us it wasn't about Ferraris and private planes. And for a lot of people that's what a business gets them. And I guess that's fulfilling, but that's not fulfilling for us. So we were showing up to work and losing our inspiration, and it was like, there's got to be something more.
This is such a cool company with such cool people, and what the heck are we doing this for? And honestly, it sounds so trite maybe, but you've got to go back to Simon Sinek's why. It starts with why. And it's really truly, why are we doing it? And then once we got into it, and the story with Nathan Havey that we told on the podcast here, that was magical shit going on in the world. Magical shit just appearing out of nowhere. Nathan Havey's like a little fairy coming out of the woods and landing on my campfire. It was like, "Where'd this guy come from?" But then the magical stuff just keeps happening and it just keeps happening. And we've got to stay focused on that. And so that's that question.
The other question, though, is how do we get other leaders to do it, to take on a meaningful purpose? And the answer to that question is, unfortunately we have to math out that this shit will make them more money. Because people are fucking greedy, right? And I'm sorry, and I'm hearing that so often in the world right now. "Well, what's the point if it doesn't make the company more money?" And I want to be like, "Are you kidding, really?" So anyway, but our quest now is to math out, because I do believe in every cell in my body that this kind of leadership, purpose, vision, building teams of superheroes inside of organizations that are taking on meaningful challenges, it will absolutely drive the bottom line more aggressively than the traditional mechanism of leadership, period.
Laura Eich:
Podcast over again.
Brie Roper:
I know, I was like ...
Jeremy Deruiter:
And it will also be more fulfilling for the people involved too. Oh yeah, there's that.
Mike McFall:
Oh, there's that too.
Jeremy Deruiter:
Provided that it's done right. And the thing that I would define as right is, it has to be authentic to the organization and it has to be authentic to, if the founder is still involved, it has to align with who the founder is as a person, what they care about, or otherwise the current leadership. But it has to be authentic. If it's authentic, then it also gets to be super fulfilling and it draws all the right type of people into the organization as well as all of the right customers to your door when you do it "right."
Mike McFall:
Well, and the thing that I'm not sure we've talked a lot about in our history that just dawned on me is that supporting you and building a life that you love really came out of this concept that Bob and I wanted people to show up to work as themselves and not having to feel like they had to show up and play some role. And that's because we lived our lives that way. We lived our whole lives that way, or we thought we had at that point, anyway. It's funny to look back and think, you thought you were aware then, right? But anyway, but that's a big piece of where that concept came from, and then it just evolved from there.
Laura Eich:
I was going to ask, actually, Jeremy, since you mentioned doing things the right way, something I get asked a lot is, what does it even mean to have a better workplace culture? What does it mean to have an improved workplace culture? Is there something that all healthy workplaces, healthy being an unregulated term, you can't see the air quotes that I'm using right now. Is there something that these better for people workplace cultures have in common? And this one's for all you all. So I'm going to look and see whose eyes light up, and Alicia looks like she's ready. Lic, what have you got?
Alisha Beck:
The first thing that came to mind when you asked this question was, how often are you getting pushback? How often are you having people in your organization push back and question change, or give feedback that might be seemingly a critique or something like that? It goes back to that. I'm going to say it wrong, but it's like, if you never hear no, I'm going to question your yes. And it's that. If you aren't hearing those things, you might not be doing it right. People might just not feel like they can say the thing or they have enough built trust there. And so that for me is what came to mind.
Laura Eich:
Yeah. So a healthy culture is going to invite and welcome the pushback, welcome the critiques. Awesome.
Alisha Beck:
Yeah.
Laura Eich:
Brie.
Brie Roper:
I would offer something for that too, and it's going to be a bit of an anecdote, but the thing that came to my mind is open communication. That's something that I think a healthy workplace is going to be working on, is communicating among all of the people that are involved. And the anecdote that came to my mind, a little story that popped into my head, was there was a time when the workplace culture at the home office was not super awesome. It just wasn't great. And the day I knew, the moment I knew that there were leaders in place who wanted to make a change to that came in a conversation that I had with you, actually, Mike. And it was very brief, and I think it was on that first retreat into the woods, and we were talking about workplace and we were talking about benefits. And you made a comment that was something along the lines of, "What if we did something like unlimited vacation time?"
And I was still getting to know you and Bob at that point. And I remember my face made a face and I said, "Well, right now I don't know if unlimited vacation time would do me any good at all, because if I want to take a week off, I just have to work 70 hours the week before and 70 hours the week after, and then I just don't work for five days." And I felt like I took a risk in that moment saying that to one of the CEOs of the company. And your response was, I remember your eyebrows went up and you just said, "Oh, well, we need to work on that."
And that was the moment that I knew it was an investment in getting better. And that was a moment of really risky communication, for me at least, to just come right out and say, "This is how it is, though. That's a great idea, but it might not be real yet." And so it's that communication thing. Can you say what it's really like for you and know that your leaders are going to listen and hear it and understand and go, "Oh, well, that's what we need to work on."
Jeremy Deruiter:
And I think the thing that underlies both of those concepts for me is, it's about trust. It's about vulnerability based trust. It's about creating psychological safety for the people inside the organization. And we could do three more episodes on that topic alone, I think, right? There's so much to say and it's a topic I'm really passionate about. But if you are a leader inside your organization wondering whether or not you have a problem, one of the things I would recommend you to look at is go Google employee engagement and pick a tool off the shelf that will help you measure employee engagement. Because to me that is, one, there's lots out there. Gallup is I think probably the most famous version of that, but measure employee engagement. Because it will all tie back to whether or not the leaders inside the organization are using practices that help promote a trusting workplace environment.
Or the alternative is you're kind of doing it or doing it in pockets or you're not doing it at all. And the end result is people are not saying the real thing. Like Alicia said, they're not being themselves, they're not freely communicating, you're not getting the best ideas to the table, et cetera. So again, I could go on, there's so much there, but that would be the thing I would recommend a leader look at first, is, are your people engaged, yes or no? And then start diagnosing from there.
Laura Eich:
What I heard in all of those is, I think at some point in time the world thought a healthy workplace meant fun and stress-free and smiley or something like that. And I think in the end the actual measure of healthy workplaces is that there is free flowing communication and that kind of thing, very free flowing feedback, free flowing, there's a lot of trust between human beings. It's not necessarily stress free, it's not necessarily ping-pong tables and video games every day and that kind of thing. It's much more about the actual healthy communication amongst the human beings within the organization.
Alisha Beck:
I think there's a perception that this, this type of healthy workplace culture can be all rainbows and sunshine. But at the end of the day, we all know, we live it, it's not easy. You have to have real tough conversations sometimes. It's hard, but oh boy, is it freaking fulfilling. It's seemingly rainbows and sunshine, but it's hard work. But you really get to the root of it. And I think we're talking about leaders here, and it's like you've got to be ready to hear the real stuff too. Because it's not going to be all good. You might have to hear some bad, and you have to brace yourself for that.
Mike McFall:
Personal growth is incredibly fulfilling and inspiring, but growth is hard. And that's what I just heard you say, Alicia. And what we need is we need meaningful challenges that we work together collaboratively around. We're communicating in a healthy way, and that at the end of the day we feel amazing over what we're accomplishing. And yeah, by the way, there's a lot of stress in that. There's a lot of anxiety in that. There's a lot of ... But you feel so good about it, right? It's like getting the end of a hard workout or a long hike. You do, you feel great about it, you have endorphins around it. And that to me is a strong, powerful workplace. And you're loved, right? That's the piece, that's the other piece. It's a challenge, but you know everybody's got you. And that's what powerful teams do together, is you work hard, you're challenged, there's tears, you're swearing at each other. That's all okay because at the end of the day you all love each other.
Jeremy Deruiter:
Oh my gosh. Could you imagine if we actually had a volumetric measurement of the number of tears shed on this team over the course of doing this hard work together? There's an actual number.
Brie Roper:
Oh, God.
Jeremy Deruiter:
[inaudible 00:52:47].
Alisha Beck:
Some may have shed a few more tears than others. It's fine. It's fine.
Jeremy Deruiter:
Yeah, you top the leaderboard probably, Alicia. I think that's true.
Alisha Beck:
I just have a lot of feelings.
Laura Eich:
No, I always brag about to people on planes or strangers or whoever, I brag about the fact that very often on our team meetings we hang up, and when we're hanging up, we're saying, "Love you, bye. Love you." That's weird, I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure that's weird for the world, to have a team of coworkers very actively, we say it on this podcast, Mike and I tell each other we love each other at the end of every episode, and that's part of who we are. I want to talk a little bit, because we just dabbled in the realm, and I know I need to start wrapping up things soon, but I want to talk longer so we're just going to keep talking.
Mike McFall:
Every episode is like, "Really? We're going to cut it right here? We're just getting started."
Laura Eich:
I refuse today. So we just talked a little bit about how leaders need to be prepared to hear the real thing. Because that is for real. When we started inviting feedback, man, that was hard to hear. That was the first time I think I heard Mike talk about crying because of something at Biggby, kind of thing. Because he heard the feedback from our staff and it was really, really hard to hear. I also want to talk about what the employee's obligation or responsibility or view on this maybe should be if they're listening to this right now. I believe it's, of course the leaders of a company, formal and even informal, are going to know that it's their responsibility to try and make these improvements. Improve the communication, improve the level of trust, improve whatever the actual practical things are that need improvement, like being able to take vacation time and that kind of thing. What's the employee's responsibility in that? And what do we say to them if they are not in a position of leadership, of feeling like maybe they can make dramatic change with magic wands? Brie, I saw your face.
Brie Roper:
Yeah, that's always something that I'm really intrigued to consider, is, what should an employee be bringing to this conversation? And that's partly because, I think I referenced working at TGI Fridays when I was in college, and they took us through this very early leadership or their employee engagement program that's called Fish. It's all about the Pike Place fish market. There's a book, there's a movie and stuff like that. But there's some things about the book that didn't age well, so just FYI there. So there's some stuff in there that I'm not super on board with any more. But one of the major things was the notion that an employee is in charge of choosing how they show up. And that is something that an employee can almost always be in control of and have autonomy over. And the employee gets to choose what risks they take, what conversations they have, what vulnerabilities they share with other people.
But on a very surface level, an employee gets to choose what attitude they're coming in with to any job. They get to choose how they're showing up. And for me, that's something that I would encourage. It's not a silver bullet, it's not the be all and end all of what they can do. But I would encourage anybody who's listening to this who is an employee of a place to think about what they're taking with them when they go in, and how high are their walls when they're going into their workplace, or how low are they? What kind of energy are they bringing into a space? Because I think a lot of great work can begin with an enthusiastic attitude with somebody who's going to try to see what's positive, not in a rainbows and unicorns and rose colored glasses way, but literally go find what's good.
And that's the thing that I would say, is, look at how you are going into the space. What are you taking with you? And if you are not feeling great about what you're taking with you, do a little work on that. There's work you can do for yourself on your attitude and how you're showing up. And so that's something, we exist to support you in building a life you love. We're going to improve workplace culture in the United States. And something that I think to myself almost every morning when I come to work is, I'm going to work to love people. That's what I'm going to try to base everything on. I'm not always 100% at it. Everyone has bad days. We fail a little. It's okay. But I do remind myself every day when I come into work, I am here to love these people. I am here to take care of them to the best of my ability. That's the attitude I'm choosing. And so I think that's it, choose your attitude.
Laura Eich:
Very cool.
Jeremy Deruiter:
I'd modify that too, or not modify, but add onto. To me, a specific tactical thing a person could do in the process of taking responsibility for how they show up at work and how they interact with other people is to go to work on their own self-awareness of their work style. I think that's a specific thing that we've done inside, going back to, it really started in the woods that day. That was the first real blush I think we took at it, or maybe StrengthsFinder. Anyway, doing some work around figuring out how it is that you filter the world and what your strengths and weaknesses are in terms of how you interact with other people.
That will help you be able to see a few different levers that you've got a little bit of control over once you know that they're there. And it gets that much more powerful, the more people around you, you can get involved with that too. So if you can get a teammate who seems aligned with you who might be up for playing around with it. Yeah, let's go do a Myers-Briggs, or if you can get the DISC assessment grade, or even a Hogwarts school, whatever, doesn't matter. Whatever you want to do, so long as you're building a little bit of self-awareness about yourself and others and how those styles come together, I think you'll start to get a little bit of traction. And that's something you can build from.
Alisha Beck:
Yeah. It's so funny that you mentioned work styles, because my advice was straight into my own work style. I love collaboration. I love working with the team. And so if I'm seeing that a change needs to be made or I'm trying to push some sort of thing to the front of leadership's mind, I'm going to check with my teammates first, and I'm going to be like, "Hey, do you guys see this too?" One, they're going to be able to tell me other perspectives that I might not be seeing. They'll be like, "Hey, maybe you aren't looking at it this way. Maybe you aren't looking at it this way."
But I'm also going to try to come up with possible solutions, like, "Maybe we could try doing this or this or this," and working with those people to come up with those and getting people on board with me so it's not just singular me saying, "Hey, I think we need to make this change," but now we have this whole group of people who feel really passionate about this change, and we have a proposed solution. And we can be like, "Hey, let's try this. It's not on you to fix this. I'm not going to point the finger and say you. It's we. We're all going to be able to do it."
Mike McFall:
By the way, it's all just so beautiful. When people will ask me what my truly biggest inspiration or aspiration is around Life Lab, my answer is, I want every employee to walk into work and demand human-centric leadership. Because once the employee starts demanding it and saying, "I'm not going to work here if you're a jerk. I'm not going to work here if my boss is a jerk," then we'll actually start to see change. I really believe that. So it's sort of like a grassroots movement. And I think back to the days when workplaces actually hurt people. You think back to John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil and the trains and all that. Unions came along to just give people basics like safety, a reasonable amount of pay, things like vacation, and so on.
Well, what's the word for the next level union, where you actually expect personal growth and development and a nurturing environment that takes care of me and supports me, where I go home in a better mood than when I came in? And so it's just the evolution of that. 100 years ago we were killing people in the workplace, and it was acceptable. It was acceptable 100 years ago-ish. And so anyway, that's my greatest aspiration for Life Lab.
Laura Eich:
Yeah. I think the current stat is that approximately 120,000 deaths are still attributed to workplace stress every year. So we are still killing people, it's just much quieter.
Mike McFall:
Right.
Laura Eich:
That's exactly why we're here. That's why we're talking about this stuff.
Mike McFall:
Yeah, thank you for that. Good catch.
Laura Eich:
Yeah. Well, and if we want to go for another hour, we could talk about how the expectation of the workplace is starting to change. Thankfully, I think the post-COVID great resignation, a lot of people thought it was just about pay. I don't think it was just about pay. I think it was about raising the expectation of employers, people unwilling to work somewhere that they find no joy and no fulfillment, and being unwilling to take just bottom of the barrel anything, any sort of expectation around their employer. And I'm so thankful. I know that sounds weird to say, but I'm so thankful that that moment in time happened, because it did feel like a grassroots movement.
It felt like a movement is really happening, and not just with some progressive companies who are trying to do things a little bit different. It is employee led, because employees have the power, man. They outnumber the formal leaders 10 to one or something like that. So I think it's very cool. Because I do want to respect time and my bladder because I am pregnant, and that's a serious thing, I do want to start getting to some of the wrap-ups. I'm going to challenge you all first with your favorite singular, and you do have to choose one, either personal development or leadership or business book or podcast or resource of some sort. And you can take that wherever you like, but you have to choose one. I know, I'm so sorry. Everyone's giving some tough looks right now. I'm going to go to Jeremy first on this one.
Jeremy Deruiter:
Yeah, I can't not recommend our book, the Moonshot Guidebook.
Alisha Beck:
Yeah, nicely done.
Jeremy Deruiter:
Yeah, it's more than a shameless plug, though. If I think about, of all the books on this shelf behind me, which one has had the most profound impact on my life? It's Moonshot Guidebook by a mile. Because it's a visioning tool that helps you figure out what you want to be in your life, how you want to be as a person, and also what that ultimate goal is, and then helps you get there. So yeah, for me hands down for an individual or a leader, Moonshot Guidebook.
Laura Eich:
I appreciate that. I would not be pregnant right now if it wasn't for that freaking book.
Jeremy Deruiter:
All right. Might need to unpack that later.
Mike McFall:
Oh, I'd love to tell that story, listeners.
Laura Eich:
Mike, we can tell it in the outro.
Mike McFall:
Oh, yeah.
Laura Eich:
There we go. We'll do that later.
Jeremy Deruiter:
Also, it's online for people freely to get to. biggby.com/visioning is a video of you doing an activity with Randy Neelis from a former Biggby Nation Summit, where you tell the story, and this is years before you actually followed through.
Laura Eich:
I didn't even even know that. Where is that?
Mike McFall:
Where is that?
Jeremy Deruiter:
Biggby.com/visioning.
Mike McFall:
No kidding. Wow.
Laura Eich:
Alicia, what about you?
Alisha Beck:
I was really hoping you were going to call on Brie because maybe she'd choose the other, because I have two in my brain, but it's fine. I think Dare to Lead is what I'm going to go with, by Brene Brown. I love, capital L, love her. We all do. We are all avid, avid Brene lovers. But what I love specifically about this book is that it teaches people that vulnerability doesn't have to mean bad. It's actually a superpower, and it's a way to build trust and build fulfilling relationships that actually mean something. And so I think that and the Book of Leaders could change the world. So that's the one I have chosen.
Laura Eich:
Awesome. Brie?
Brie Roper:
That's awesome. That was one of mine. But I'm going to go back in time. So I like to read books that will help me get into arguments with the author. I will want to challenge what they're writing, challenge what they're saying, really unpack it and try to get to the bottom of it. And the first book that I remember reading in the realm of leadership that really got me fired up to try and pick fights with this author was actually Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek. And this would have been, gosh, probably like 10 years ago that I read that book for the first time.
And that's what it did for me, is it challenged me to want to challenge back. And I think that that's an important skill for leaders to play around with, is this idea that what you know and what they know might be different. And it could be that one is right and it could be that one is not right, but that conversation that can come out of it is what I really love. That's where I learn, that's where I grow, that's where I get the bumps and bruises that are needed to try to change position, to try to become a better leader or a different leader. And I learned a lot from that book.
Laura Eich:
Mike, what about you?
Mike McFall:
Multipliers by Liz Wiseman.
Laura Eich:
Oh, that's a good one.
Brie Roper:
That's a good one.
Mike McFall:
Firms of Endearment. Oh, we're not allowed to give two, are we? Sorry.
Laura Eich:
We're not allowed to give two.
Mike McFall:
My bad, sorry.
Alisha Beck:
Can we all give two now?
Laura Eich:
No.
Jeremy Deruiter:
Yeah.
Brie Roper:
Now we all get two.
Mike McFall:
As long as you just give title and title and author, let's just do that, right?
Laura Eich:
Yeah.
Mike McFall:
We don't have time to go into explanation each one. So mine would be Liz Wiseman, Multipliers, and then Firms of Endearment, Raj Sisodia. You can give another one, but just title and author.
Alisha Beck:
Radical Candor, Kim Scott.
Brie Roper:
You stole mine. That's what I was going to say.
Jeremy Deruiter:
I've got to go with Your Brain at Work, David Rock.
Mike McFall:
Oh God, I can't tell you what to do, Brie. I'm sorry.
Brie Roper:
[inaudible 01:08:33]. I bestow my second to Mike. Mike, you can give [inaudible 01:08:37].
Mike McFall:
Well, there's Radical Candor, but there's also Fierce Conversations by not Kim Scott, but, and it's as good too, Fierce Conversations by ... Oh shoot, something Scott. It's not Kim, it's the other one.
Brie Roper:
I don't know.
Laura Eich:
I don't know either. It's okay.
Brie Roper:
Can look it up.
Jeremy Deruiter:
I had instant regret, by the way, because I realized, no, it's the Fifth Discipline by Peter Savage. It would be, yes, I want everyone to read that book.
Brie Roper:
Susan Scott is the author that Mike was talking about.
Mike McFall:
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Susan Scott, Fierce Conversations. And then there is this book called Grow that some dude wrote. That's not bad.
Laura Eich:
Okay, so I was going to say that, but then I thought I might get made fun of.
Mike McFall:
You would have gotten made fun of. That's why I said it.
Brie Roper:
You know we were all sitting around going like, "Should we say Grow, should we not say Grow?"
Mike McFall:
No, I know, I know.
Alisha Beck:
Should we, should we not?
Laura Eich:
I think if anything, you should all read the foreword to Grow, because it's exceptionally written.
Brie Roper:
Oh my gosh, genius.
Mike McFall:
Genius, the foreword is genius.
Brie Roper:
Shameless plug.
Laura Eich:
Okay, one more question for my friends here. And I'm going to ask you to do it in just a couple of sentences. We are not looking to open a new door, because we could walk through it and then still be here for another hour. What do you see as the future of the American workplace? No pressure, Alicia, I won't pick you first because your eyes got the biggest. So let's go with Brie. What's the future of the American workplace?
Brie Roper:
What I see in the future of the American workplace is something that has to do with flexibility. And I mean that across the way work is done, the way business is generated, the way people come to work, the kind of work that they are doing, but also flexibility in their relationships that they're building at work with teammates, with computers, with whatever is out there. I think flexibility will be important, but also that's the path we're walking toward, is to be flexible, open, understanding, ready to go.
Laura Eich:
Awesome. Jeremy?
Jeremy Deruiter:
So I think about culture across time being about big pendulum swings. I mean more than workplace culture. And I think the pendulum has already been swinging for a bit when it comes to the American workplace. And so I could point to lots of things, but not in two sentences. And so in terms of what outcomes that means, I think we're already headed in the direction of leaders who recognize the importance of taking deep care of all of the people inside their organization. And weirdly, I'm going to tie AI into this answer too, because that's obviously a big emerging trend inside the workplace. There are a lot of people who are going to re-figure out who they are to their organization in the context of AI. And I think that creates a lot of opportunities inside of that larger context of the pendulum swinging for human-centric leadership and human-centric teamwork to really take hold.
Laura Eich:
Very cool. Lic?
Alisha Beck:
We've mentioned a few of the things over the course of the whole podcast, but I think because millennials and Gen Z make up now majority of the workforce and they care about different things, Brie mentioned flexibility. But at the end of the day, these generations want a work-life balance. And so I think the businesses and the companies that employ people that are offering things like flexibility and caring for whole people, whole people, those are the people that are going to start thriving. They're going to have people wanting to work for them. And the people who aren't caring about things or maybe don't have the systems in place to support those things are going to start struggling. Because we make up, and I say we because I'm a millennial, but we make up majority of the workforce now. And that's the large shift that we felt after the pandemic and that we are starting to feel more and more and more as we grow as a group.
Laura Eich:
Perfect. Thriving people make for thriving businesses. Amazing. I want to thank you guys so much for coming on here and having this conversation. I know I am blessed to have these types of conversations with you all frequently, but I know that people listening will have enjoyed this, hopefully been challenged by this. I think a couple books probably just got purchased on the Amazon storefront, and I just want to thank you guys. Because I love you and I appreciate having this kind of conversation.
Alisha Beck:
Love you too.
Jeremy Deruiter:
Love you too.
Brie Roper:
Thank you, love you too.
Mike McFall:
Oh my gosh, I love that so much. It really truly, it's such a pleasure to work with people that inspire you. And hanging out with that group, I walk away inspired. The nuggets, the morsels, the rants, the everything, it all feels so good. And I think about how long ago it was that we made a transition in our organization with our purpose and our vision, and it really wasn't that long ago. And that's a massive transformation in a pretty short period of time, and this group is representative of that.
Laura Eich:
I was thinking about the woods. Because I think sometimes we forget about the woods, the moment that we all went to the woods based on a crazy idea that Mike had about taking people to the woods and whatever else. But next year that'll be 10 years ago.
Mike McFall:
Oh, is it really?
Laura Eich:
That was in 2014, May of 2014.
Mike McFall:
Ooh, I guess it has been a while.
Laura Eich:
It's been a while, but it feels like a blink. It also is like, oh my gosh, we've done so much and yet we have so far to go. That can be a little overwhelming sometimes.
Mike McFall:
It is, it is. But if you look at it like this, the cliche around, it's not about the end result, it's about the journey. Hanging out with you guys, working on projects with this group, this team, the overall team at Biggby, it's enjoyable and the work is enjoyable. Hard, but at the end of the day, fulfilling. And so it's a cliche, but it's so true. If it's about the journey you're in the middle of, I love where we are and I love what we're doing. And yeah, it's a hot mess most days, but I think it's supposed to be.
Laura Eich:
Yeah, I just love that that's the people that I get to work with every day. I literally hang out with them every day, and we get to have conversations like that every day. And I feel very lucky, very blessed.
Mike McFall:
I know, you guys kind of outcasted me, so I don't get to do that.
Laura Eich:
Oh, stop. We needed to free you up so you could go on a book tour.
Mike McFall:
Is that what it was? All right, okay, that's the story we're telling. The story I do want to tell from that episode is the story around your baby and Blueberry and how that ... Because I love that story and the realization. That moment, to me it is such an incredibly powerful example of what the visioning process can do to you. And so do you mind telling it?
Laura Eich:
No, not at all. I got it. So the Moonshot Guidebook, Jeremy referenced this, it's a visioning tool. It poses a bunch of questions to you about picturing your future and writing it down in detail. And one of the questions in the book is about the last chapter of your life. What do you picture for the last chapter of your life? And I started writing these details one time, and this was not my first time doing the Moonshot Guidebook. I do it usually every year. I think this was my fourth or fifth year doing it.
And all of a sudden the picture in my brain included a gaggle of grandchildren around me, and specifically hanging out in Florida on a beach somewhere with a bunch of grandkids who came to visit all the time. And I don't know, either someone asked me when I was sharing or posed the challenge of, "How are you going to do that if you don't have kids?" Because I didn't have kids in the two-year picture, the five-year picture, the 10-year picture. I didn't have that anywhere. And someone pointed out that that's going to be rather challenging to accomplish without children.
Mike McFall:
Well, I think you'd even articulated to the group that you and Steven weren't planning on having kids.
Laura Eich:
Yeah, that was the plan.
Mike McFall:
It wasn't that children were out of the picture, or it wasn't that they weren't included. I think you'd actually even said, "We aren't planning on having children." And then it was like, "Well, wait a minute."
Laura Eich:
Yeah.
Mike McFall:
Grandkids.
Laura Eich:
Well, crap. Yeah. So I got really mad at my Moonshot Guidebook and I closed it shut and I threw it on the ground, and then I needed to go talk to my husband, because we needed to start the conversation about how to make the grandchildren picture happen. And so that conversation still lasted a couple years, because none of this is an instantaneous process, obviously. And here we are about a month away from having our first baby, who obviously will have lots of pressure on her to eventually pump out grandchildren.
Mike McFall:
Yeah.
Laura Eich:
Different problem for a different day.
Mike McFall:
You're a month away from your first step towards grandkids.
Laura Eich:
Yeah, exactly. We'll just tell her her whole life that we just had her in order to acquire some grandkids out of it. That'll make her feel great, I'm sure. But no, that's what visioning can do. I think it's really magical. I do think people should pick up the Moonshot Guidebook if they haven't yet. It can be found on Amazon or on biggby.com, or biggby.com/visioning. Apparently it has something I had no idea is on there. I'm going to go check out whatever's at biggby.com/visioning that Jeremy mentioned, some clip from Randy and my presentation. Who knew?
Mike McFall:
Yeah, it just goes to a YouTube clip, which is cool.
Laura Eich:
Oh, okay. Interesting.
Mike McFall:
Yeah, I didn't know.
Laura Eich:
I don't know who did that or when, but that's exciting. All right, are we good? We're wrapped for today?
Mike McFall:
I think so, yeah.
Laura Eich:
Awesome. For everybody listening, if you liked what you heard today, you can of course find more episodes of the Love in Leadership Podcast at loveinleadershippodcast.com or wherever you find podcasts. You can follow us on social media, @LifeYouLoveLab. I just want to thank you all for listening today, and thank you, Mike, for, like I said, being my favorite co-host that I've ever had. Love you lots.
Mike McFall:
Love you too.
Laura Eich:
And we'll see you guys next time.