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COMPASSION IS THE COMPETITIVE EDGE

by Guest Blogs

Leading with Compassion While Delivering Results

Our guest blogger is Karin J. Lund, author, speaker, consultant, and founder of G-Power Global Enterprises. She shares how companies are incorporating compassion into the workplace and the positive impact it is having on productivity, employee engagement, and retention.

Can a compassionate workplace culture create a competitive edge in your market?
Can productivity and profitability co-exist with a compassionate, culture empowered workplace?
The answer is YES!

This topic is particularly relevant in the midst, of this pandemic environment. Life events and the aftermath of these events are crushing employees legally, financially, and emotionally. Creating an environment where employees and management can express and acknowledge their feelings and support one another in a work environment, and/or a virtual or semi-virtual environment is crucial if you are going to retain employees while maintaining productivity and profitability.

An estimated $75B is lost annually due to the impact of life events and their aftermath in the workplace. Acknowledging and understanding these events and their effect on employees and management is a fundamental step toward creating a compassionate, culture empowered workforce.

We have all experienced major life events and some degree of loss since March 2020 when most of the world locked down in response to the COVID19 pandemic. Our work lives and our personal, professional, family, and parental relationships have all changed. How we eat, socialize, and plan our lives have also changed.

The silver lining is that we have taken time to reconnect with ourselves, our spouses, family, children, friends, and our employees. Our furry friends have enjoyed more attention and love during this time. CEOs and executives have appeared on Zoom screens with their favorite dog or cat sitting on their laps while they spoke to us about the state of the company’s current financial and operating situation. 

How do we come together through this major life event at home and at work?

For many of us, home and work are the same place right now and will be for the foreseeable future. How do managers and coworkers reach out to one another? How do we talk to one another? With millions of Americans dealing with furloughs, job layoffs, or job losses, working on the front line as a medical responder or uncertain school situations, how can we support each other in managing all of these challenging transitions?

The chapters in my book, Compassion is the Competitive Edge: Leading with Compassion while Delivering Results, to be released August 5th provide an opportunity for discussion around the disruption, the impact of life events, and their aftermath in the workplace, and how the workplace can and does impact our life events. This book encourages workplaces to come together as a team in ways you may not have thought possible

By addressing these issues, it provides a starting point for companies focus on creating, expanding, and refining a culture, and process around caring about, and for, co-workers, while contributing to the financial or service success of the organization.

Jack Weiner, CEO of LinkIn, credits his success to a compassionate leadership culture that he feels has provided his company with an “incredible competitive advantage” over any business strategy.

G-Power Global’s mission is to inspire and encourage CEOs and their organizations to create and support a workplace culture that is driven by compassion throughout all verticals of the operation. It has been my goal to encourage the continual creation of workplace environments that employees, management, and new employees support because the culture respects personal and professional values while being vested in the local and global community.

A companion online program to the book called, Your Journey Through the Islands of Grief and Loss, is an interactive, private experience which guides employees and management, as well as individuals, to confront their own personal issues and questions in relation to different aspects around loss and life events and their aftermath. 

The book and will be available through Amazon on August 5th and the online program will be available around the same time on my website www.G-PowerGlobal.com. If you have any questions concerning additional online programs for your company, college/university, or non-profit group you can contact me at [email protected].

If your company or place of business incurs a sudden loss or life event, G-Power Global Enterprises is available to help your team come together following that event.  Leading with compassion is not just the right thing to do. It’s also the best way to support employees so they can feel valued and do their best work. As Ram Dass says, “We’re all just walking each other home.”

Opens the dialogue to create more productive, empowered, non-toxic work atmospheres. Every corporate leader should read this book!

Michelle R. Donovan, best-selling author of The 29% Solution and A Woman’s Way

A must-read for business leaders and supervisory management. 
This book is a comprehensive prescription for how to live the people value in the workplace.

Fred Bentzel, Managing Partner, 10x Solutions Inc., www.10x-solutions.com

A great tool for both managers and employees in helping build a more cohesive and caring work environment, which can lead to stronger employee retention, engagement and productivity.

Lori Gallagher, Senior HR Consultant

About the Author: KARIN J. LUND, author, speaker, consultant, and founder of the G-Power Global Enterprises. Through educational and professional input, she has authored books, created corporate workshops and online programs that encourage the development of a compassionate, culture empowered workforce that also supports productivity, services, and profitability. As a civilian responder after Hurricane Katrina and 911, Lund experienced first-hand how different kinds of loss impacts management, employees, and entire business and local communities.

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BOUNCE-UP™ WITH PROACTIVE FUNDAMENTALS

by Guest Blogs

Our guest blogger is Mj Callaway, author, speaker, and trainer. She shares her personal story of overcoming adversity and some fundamental tips on how to Bounce-Up™.

Click the image to buy on Amazon

Have you ever wondered why some people seem unshakeable in the face of adversity, while others become immobilized? Though it might look like they’re equipped with an extra something, more than like, they’ve implemented core fundamentals into their lives. When a crisis happens, they’re proactive.

During an interview with Youngstown State University President Jim Tressel [for my book], he said, “It isn’t if adversity will happen, it’s when will it happen.”

The same way we prepare for destructive weather, we need to prepare for adversity because it impacts our personal and professional lives. Having thrived over three crises in 10 years—I know. During the second crisis in 2016, I had a 20 percent chance of surviving if chemo didn’t work and chemo had a 50 percent chance of working. Through the journey, fundamentals [and faith] kept me proactive with my health, maintaining and rebranding my business while leading the National Speakers Association (NSA) Pittsburgh as co-president.

Here are three proactive fundamentals to help you Bounce-Up™.

  1. Flip It™ for Positive Mindset.

During disruptions, verbal drama, aka negative chatter, bounces inside your head like a superball. Unless you shift that negativity, it doesn’t stop. Be proactive by creating two columns on a sheet of paper. Write Verbal Drama for the left column and Flip It™ for the right column. Under Verbal Drama, write the negative chatter. Consider how can you Flip It™ to a positive message. Write the positive “flip” under the Flip It™ column. Chemo has such a negative connotation so I Flipped It™ to Magic Wand. Radiation became Buzz. The machine size and clicking sound reminds me of Buzz Lightyear. Clients love this exercise because it can be fun. Try it.

  1. Improvise to Spark Momentum.

When life spirals downward, what worked before doesn’t now. Think about our new normal. Focusing on the situation, loss, and the disruption keeps us stuck. To create momentum, I use what I call “Momentum Questions.” “What can I do right now with what I have?” Questions engage our brain to segue into solution-based thinking. As a speaker and trainer, the current situation could’ve destroyed my business when events cancelled. Asking “What can I do right now with what I have?” my mind shifted to improvising. I transitioned to virtual meetings and programs, and I converted a live training workshops into online courses.

  1. Spy an Opportunity.

Do you remember the I Spy books full of objects to find? Sometimes the objects like opportunities are smack in front of you. In sharing a photo with the National NSA president on Facebook, a North Carolina speaker reached out. He mentioned his search for a house in Pittsburgh and his realtor didn’t get his young family’s lifestyle. Hearing an opportunity for a colleague who had little kids, I introduced them. The outcome, his family found the perfect home and moved. For me, I read repeated posts about business owner and colleagues who felt stuck. Those posts prompted an interactive online course, Bounce-Up™: From Stuck to Success and an opportunity to help.

As we journey through out new normal, what messages need a dose of Flip It™? What can you do right now with what you have? How can you spy opportunities? While you can’t control life’s face plants, you can control your Bounce-Up™.

About the Author: Mj Callaway is an award-winning author, resilient speaker, and corporate trainer known for shifting attitudes and converting strategies into results. As a Certified Sales Professional (CSP) and two-time survivor, Mj’s experience includes being the only female sales executive of a national male-dominated company to sell three times her quota. She’s the creator of Revenue Rescue Audit and her eighth book, Bounce-Up™: Outpowering Adversity, Boost Resilience, Rebound Higher, launched April 28th.

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Cost of a Placemat

by BlogCommunicationsGuest Blogs
restaurant-advertisingW.G. Barrett, Restaurant Consultant & Guest Blogger

Holidays represent a time of year where restaurants, as well as retail establishments, can realize a spike in sales. Each year as seasons come and go many companies must determine what extra money they will spend on specific holiday advertising. For many restaurant owners, there is a constant battle of how they can lower their operating costs all while keeping the tables full day after day. Restaurant Consultant, Gordon Barrett has spent his career in the restaurant industry. Below I share my experience of how one restaurant owner learned the true cost of ‘saving’ money the hard way

The Cost of ‘Saving’ Money – One Business Owner’s Story

While advertising for holidays such as St. Patrick’s Day, Valentine’s Day, or even the Christmas season may cost you a little more, the reward may far out weight your investment. Be careful where you choose to cut your spending when it comes to advertising. Cutting advertising that costs a few extra dollars could wind up costing you much more in the long run.

Every year approaching the holidays, this client, let’s call him Joe, would order disposable placemats for his restaurant that advertised “Ask Your Server About Gift Cards” written in large print in the center of the mat. Joe knew he would gain about $7,000-10,000 in revenue from total gift card sales over the holiday season. The placemats with the gift card advertisements cost roughly an extra $14 a case, with 1,000 placemats in a case. Joe would typically order 6 cases for the holiday season.

This past year, Joe decided that he wanted to save on his holiday spending and cut back on ordering the placemats. He realized a savings in advertising on the placemats of $85 for the holiday season. Joe made this choice knowing he was a well-established restaurant with vast number of regular customers. He didn’t think it was necessary to spend $85 for advertising “Ask Your Server About Gift Cards” for the holidays. The result… without the gift card ad, he was shocked to learn that gift card sales dropped to nearly $2,500 in sales. Saving a little on advertising cost him thousands of dollars in lost gift card sales.

Now here is some additional food for thought. Not only did Joe lose out on gift card sales, but consider these additional scenarios: 1) some gift cards would never be redeemed providing him free income, 2) loss of gift cards to generate new customers that had never been to his restaurant and 3) loss of additional money spent by loyal customers buying more food than the gift card is worth.

While it is impossible to determine these questions without more input from his customers, Joe knows one thing, he lost out on thousands of dollars in revenue to save just $85. He has made me promise him to never let him skip out on the advertised placemats in future years.

Measure Your Marketing

  • Data Collection. Start with collecting data from your consumers. Create a simple survey or ask how customers heard about your business. This will help you to target the advertising which works best for you.
  • Small steps. Consider advertising through social media. This allows you to invest modest amounts of money to gain new targeted customers.
  • Follow up! Make sure that your customers are satisfied and ask for testimonials.

Remember that in business it takes money to make money. Cutting back on marketing is the first thing that comes to mind when owners think about reducing costs. There are many places to put your advertising dollars, but it’s important to track the results. Code coupons in different publications and monitor where those coupons come from. Invest in social media and watch your audience grow. Lastly, advertise in small ways, such as on placemats and table tents. Ask Joe…he’ll tell you about the $85 he has budgeted for placemat advertising for this year.

Want to learn more about how to increase profits, attend the Restaurant Reality Check Seminar on May 3rd.  Register here.

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Blog by W.G. Barrett, Restaurant Consultant & Guest Blogger.

About the author:  Gordon Barrett is the owner of W.G. Barrett Consulting, specializing in restaurant consulting, rescue and rebranding.  With decades of experience, he helps restaurant owners understand the value of strong operational restaurant management, but also how to adapt to changes through web presence, social media and online marketing.   Using a Restaurant Reality Check approach, Gordon has helped dozens of restaurants improve their profitability.