How to motivate employees in 5 easy steps with Jenn Lim of Delivering Happiness | #395

Tim Reid

Wow big company.

Jenn

Big company and their revenues have been steadily rising from I think it was about a billion, back in…

Tim

2010?

Jenn

Let’s say, no even before that actually the goal was to hit it by 2010 but they hit it earlier than that. And then it raised two billion and since the acquisition, they’re not as open, let’s say Amazon is not open with the exact numbers on the revenue side.

Tim

It’s quite interesting you say when Amazon bought Zappos, part of the agreement was to kind of paraphrase that Tony and the team could maintain the company culture. Which is also always scary you know you hear about businesses getting sold and being gobbled up by the big guy and that’s the end of that wonderful little business. How do you do that?

Jenn

Yeah, it’s a great question and it’s actually very surprisingly simple. It was part of the negotiation points coming on to the negotiation table so knowing that company culture was such a high priority for Zappos. There was a lot of other discussions with different companies and whatnot, but one of the big alignment points was Amazon’s because basically Jeff Basis and Tony Shay share a similar long term thinking and I think that’s what really made the whole acquisition make so much sense on both sides. So literally on a piece of paper within the agreement’s part of the understanding going forward was that culture will remain untapped and separate from the mother company.

Tim

Well very insightful, clearly. But the reality is delivering happiness was the strategy that probably attracted Amazon to Zappos in the first place. Like Jeff is going, “I’ll give you lots of money but do not change anything”. Right? [With] Zappos’ 2000 employees, is it too big now to seriously be able to deliver happiness?

Jenn

I would say no because we’ve been able to see how happiness can scale in an organization. Zappos is just one of those companies that happened to put priority in culture but at the same time be able to grow in better directions and with more positivity not just with the bottom line and profitability but also caring for other people. So, I think that because of that example and the work that we’re doing delivering happiness with other organizations around the world, the key is to be able to be mindful and on top of you know wanting to scale that happiness throughout the company.

Tim

Well I like that because as I said to you before we hit record there’s a lot of small business owners listening and part of the concept of this show is listen, implement, take action around the ideas you hear and grow. So even the five-man plumbing business can grow into five hundred men and women plumbing business and still be delivering happiness. That is reassuring. What do we, what do you mean, it sounds obvious, but define delivering happiness.

Jenn

Well in our view and we’ve been really a big stickler on this because we believe happiness is not just about rainbows and unicorns although that’s one form of it. (laughs) Yeah, well for some not all, but we really go back to the science of happiness and positive psychology.

So this is actual research and data drawn from all these different studies around the world as to what true long term meaningful happiness can be and regardless of all the studies you look at, it boils down to pretty simple things which is being true to your authentic self. Leaving out a sense of a life of purpose which is doing something greater than yourself and there’s other sort of levers of what happiness can mean like sense as a control as is progress and meaningful connections. But basically, those are the two things that define what we believe to be scientific happiness is. Higher purpose and living true to your authentic self.

Tim

You got a lot of people listening and I’m sure you get this when you do your keynote speaking, but you mention things like higher purpose and authenticity. What do you say to the business owners that are going “Jean, come on make it soft. I’m running a business here. I need some harder metrics. I need a bigger, I need a more strategic business model.”?

Jenn

Well we get these areas all the time and those are actually my favorite people to talk to because oftentimes by the end of the keynote or the end of our workshop those areas are actually become our biggest advocates. So, what couldn’t be perceived to be soft is actually more and more rooted in the data. Of how these procedures soft things actually translate to metrics and KPIs. So, I can bring up a whole bunch of studies let alone you know the case study we have a Zappos but really companies internationally that have embraced this idea of and they can call whatever they want. It doesn’t have to be called happiness per say. It can be called well-being or basically putting your people first. And time and time again when you have that focus and commitment at a strategic level, not just that at HR level you, see that those companies actually outperform those that don’t. So, for example here in the States we had the Fortune’s best hundred companies to work for. In the last 15 years for those companies that landed on that list, those that you know care for their people they actually outperform the S&P 500 over the last 15 years consistently era after year. So that’s just one really bright example but I could talk to you about how are you know the soft core to core things are really translating to hard coded KPIs and bottom line.

 

Tim

You’ve got some research on your website for the delivering happiness agency companies with a higher sense of purpose outperformed those without by 400 percent. So, you’re wrapping some science and numbers around it because it would there’d be a lot of naysayers. I mean you know you deal with the top end of town. I get that, but you get small business and it’s hard. And when you tell them to do things like “guys, you just need to deliver happiness. You need to make them happy. You need to do some wacky stuff” which all by the way listeners we’re going to be talking about shortly. You know they could just kind of glaze over and say “Right oh well good luck with that.” So let’s hope by the end of this conversation that is absolutely not the case.

Jenn

Yeah, I’d love to talk more on that.

Tim

Yeah. Well did you just raise it because you know more about delivering happiness than I do, Jenn.

Jenn

Well you know when you say there’s like examples of small businesses and you know we know that is hard to run a small business. The percentage of those small businesses around the world is pretty. The odds are stacked up against that.

Tim

Yes.

Jenn

But what’s been very incredible to observe and especially after the book came out are all these different stories and CEOs reaching out to us or he doesn’t have to be a CEO you know just an owner of a company across all different industries from refrigeration to auto parts. I mean it just you know that is very wide and that’s what made us feel a little bit more I guess gave us a a little bit of assurance that our methods/message was worthwhile.That is not just about what’s Zappos did but is really about how we, as business owners can actually use these principles towards not just ourselves as beings and create meaningful lives, but also be more profitable and sustainable because of it.

Tim

We’re talking to Jenn Lim who is the Chief Happiness Officer at the Delivering Happiness agency in San Francisco and a long-time employee of Zappos up until Wengen?

Jenn

Until the book launch actually. So right around 2009, actually I was a consultant there. To be totally transparent, but yes, I was there for about eight years.

Tim

Yes, please be transparent anyway. There is no lying in this on this show.

Jenn

No, no. Not of our values either.

Tim

Correct I’m guessing that. Now let’s get stuck into these five ways to deliver happiness because I think they’re absolutely fascinating. Let’s break them down. Let’s give listeners a way of implementing them and maybe back them up with a story or two the first one is deliver happiness to your employees first. Goodness mate, I thought the customer was always first, Jenn.

Jenn

(laughs) Yeah, and that you know was a lot of writing sentiment for many years and a lot of companies actually still believe in that and we’re not saying don’t cater to customers that’s not the point. We’ve come to this really simple equation that where we say if you can make your employees happy first, that’ll actually equal happier customers. And that actually equal a more profitable and sustainable business. At the same time when you’re doing this it becomes more natural that you’re bring more authenticity to your own brand. So it sometimes can be a little counter-intuitive but only we’ve seen a lot of examples and not to over hype, there’s Zappo’s story. But just a reminder to all your listeners that Zappos was a small company once upon a time and seeing the days that they were struggling.

You know from 30 employees to where they are now over all these years, I think it is some testament to the fact that when they first started it was all about selling shoes. But then they grew up a little bit and said “you know what, we want to be good at customer service”. But then they grew up again and this is where their maturation points really hit a certain peak. They said “you know what, we actually know we would have to make our employees happy first” and through that process they were able to really turn their business model into something that’s people first. And essentially that’s what makes them such great customer service and therefore become the successful company they are right now.

Tim

So, this concept of making employees first is this, this is more about giving them a ping pong table and the hockey table and free coffee.

Jenn

Once upon a time that was true, especially during the heydays of that calm, the first outcome here in the late 90s which I was a part of. So, I had participated in those ping pong matches and free beer on a daily basis but it didn’t really amount to much. Those are very extrinsic type of benefits that’s just a very temporary high but the realisation of what we’ve seen in the science of happiness and positive psychology. The more meaningful if not intrinsic factors of a person is what we mean by happiness. So, what I had mentioned earlier is how do we give our employees a greater sense of freedom at the same time a greater sense of accountability. So it’s not that they’re running around and not showing up at work and whatnot. But it really is trying in the sense of “Look, we appreciate you for who you are and what you can bring to the company and be accountable for it. So therefore, that’s how we got to work together”. There’s a lot of examples on how to bring those more intrinsic type of benefits that are not about free coffee or beer at a pingpong table.

Tim

Okay, give us a couple. How can a business or give us examples of businesses that are delivering happiness to their precious employees first?

Jenn

So, another example lever of happiness is what we call perceive progress so how can you give the employee a greater sense that they’re getting somewhere quicker than they were before. So as an example, if there is a program that you have a training program that you have your employees go through that usually lasts maybe six months or a year. Sometimes it actually helps for the company to say look if this is the full training but we’re going to divvy it up so every two months, every three months we’re going to reward you in some way. It doesn’t have to be to compensation in fact that’s all beside Zappos. The merchandising did that in their department and there was no compensation reward but just by acknowledging and giving recognition so that it’s not as full on year that they had to go through. But you know every couple steps of the way there is a sense of progress that they’re making and just by that act alone the merchandising department actually felt happier and they were actually more productive. So that’s just one example of using our principle happiness progress to apply it to your employees to make sure that they feel they’re not just stuck in the same rate that they’re actually you know. There’s mobility and an opportunity for advancement.

Tim

So just to be clear there is nothing wrong with free beer within reason and an air hockey tables. But part of delivering happiness to your employees is recognition, is acknowledging, is giving them suitable training. All the obvious things that’s going to make someone feel as though they belong and that they are absolutely needed in this organisation.

Jenn

Yeah, I think it’s nothing new in some senses but I think the difference of what we’re coming from is that these types of training, recognition it needs to be a little bit more authentic and aligned to what these individuals are. So, it’s not about the company always per say, it’s actually about the people that make the company that it’s important to align with and understand you know their whole purpose their own values of what they’re doing on a day to day basis of making it so it’s not about you know the boss making more money. It’s actually about the collective team doing something bigger than just themselves and making more money.

Tim

You mention the word authenticity a lot and I hear it a lot being in marketing. What do you mean by it?

Jenn

I think that authenticity in a very base of it is just being transparent and so that is one of the biggest lessons we learned along the way at Zappos and the sense of transparency what does that really mean. So it could actually exist on so many levels because there is the authenticity of your brand, which you know as a company and we believe the flip side of the same coin is authenticity of culture which makes of people. And then there’s the authenticity of communication amongst the senior leaders and then there’s authenticity of individuals and that essentially equates to being true to yourself. And that means for people to be truly themselves they don’t have to feel they have to keep their home hat at home and put their work hat when they enter the door. It’s really wearing one hat because in the end, is just life. All trying to live.

Tim

I think an example is I remember interviewing a fellow who was responsible for bringing what at the time was called Virgin Blue out to Australia it’s now called Virgin Australia but the airline and he talked about the fact that either the Virgin brand is so strong everyone wants to work for it. So, he never he didn’t have an advertising build to recruit people. Right because they came to him and one of the things he did when he employed people was that he would say “Okay this is the Virgin brand be authentic to that. Be true to that but bring some of yourself along.” And I remember him using the example of cabin crew person he employed. Now this woman up until becoming a host on Virgin Blue plane was a face painter at kid’s parties. And so, part of her shtick as now part of the Virgin cabin crew was when a kid mucked up in the play and was sad or was crying or whatever, she could go down and off at a party face or her face. So, she was bringing some of her thing into the Virgin brand and as a result I’m guessing she loved working there.

Jenn

Yeah. And I love that example because what we’re also seeing is that it just doesn’t necessarily need to apply to your customers. This actually can apply to your co-workers as well and that’s when a shell company culture becomes because everyone has different sorts of skills or you know passions and hobbies outside of work when they share that amongst their co-workers and their teams then it actually creates a bigger sense of connection and community.

Tim

Love it. Pretty obvious really isn’t it. Much. Okay. We are moving on a second way to deliver happiness in your business is to establish or revisit your company’s purpose statement. This freaks me out a bit Jenn. I know you’re going to simplify, but I’ve seen a lot of big corporations where the purpose statement has been on the wall in reception. If you go then into the bowels of the business and ask people what’s the purpose statement. People go on and “I don’t know. Never seen it”.

Jenn

Yeah and there’s a sense of it. Hundred percent. I used to be a consultant at KPMG and going through so many different industries and companies. It was the same exact thing the plaque on the wall a beautiful funeral and the words could be beautiful too. But you know walking around. No one really remembered it. So, purpose statement is taking even a step further than mission statement because we’ve all seen those before. Purpose statement, if I could define it, it’s less of a mission of what our business is going to do operationally or strategically even but really is a more aspirational statement for what our business stands for, more than just making money. I’ll give you some examples but give it a go and here’s sample really quickly, example we first started just trying to sell the most shoes but evolving through the time and realise you know we don’t want to be shoe sellers per say so essentially changed that purpose statement to delivering happiness. And if you notice there has nothing to do with shoes. No one would ever know there’s a shoe company and what we’re seeing more and more of these really successful companies that are building their global brands so they’re doing the same exact thing. So for example familiar with Airbnb? Is a pretty big in Australia? So, you know this is a company that started nine years ago and now they’re valued about 31 billion. But remember once upon a time there was one company…

Tim

Yeah, two guys, two designs.

Jenn

Yeah exactly. And so, their higher purpose that they shared and probably spent a lot of good money on a separable campaign on this list last year was belong anywhere and that’s it. Belong anywhere is your higher purpose and everything that they do actually is driven from that statement alone. Same thing happened with Facebook. Zuckerberg actually announced earlier this year instead of their original purpose mission statement. Their new one is to bring the world closer together. And you notice in both examples they have no reference to what they do as a business. So, it really is more an aspirational and humanistic level of what truly these companies represent and what they’re doing on a day to day basis.

Tim

Is this like Walt Disney was make the world a happier place?

Jenn

Yeah very similar to that. Yes. He totally was able to imbue that through all of his properties.

Tim

Is this not necessarily this idea of a purpose statement. It doesn’t have to be a tag line. Airbnb, I think is belong anywhere that actually sits under a logo somewhere whereas I’m not sure bringing the world closer together is customer facing for Facebook. Is it most important that first and foremost your purpose statement is just known all by your employees?

Jenn

I think that is probably most important that this statement is not only known by the employees but also aligned by them. In fact, it’s part of the recruiting process that we recommend is that you know if this person is aligned with this purpose statement is and core values which we can talk about later. But essentially that’s going to be a right fit for your company. So yes, of course it’s important for the employees to know but I also think it’s more important for external people within your ecosystem to know as well. So, your partners and your vendors and obviously your customers because it gives that much more reason to align with your brand than another brand that may or may not have a purpose statement only now be living up to their purpose statement.

Tim

How do you filter out employees? Let’s use Zappos as the example. How do you know when someone is going to deliver happiness if they’re going to be on purpose?

Jenn

Yeah. So, it’s pretty rigorous in terms of the recruiting process and it’s not just about living up to the purpose but is also living up to the core values which is actually another point that I want to make in terms of delivering happiness to two people. So by going through not just you know, the traditional type of interviews, it actually is and this is not just at Zappos, this is something we believe that the HR will recommend as well as actually interacting with people outside of the interview. That’s really important. One of the things that Zappos did back in the day was essentially they had the shuttle driver pick up a candidate to take him to Zappos, do the whole interview and then return them to the airport hotel wherever they going and what would happen then is the recruiter would actually talk to the shuttle driver and talk to the receptionist to see how they would treat it. And so they were treated with respect and it’s just a no brainer even if they interview is extremely well, it wasn’t a good fit. And so now that this story is very prevalent, we can’t do that anymore. Most people that are interviewed at Zappos knows the story now.

Tim

Ah, love it! I love it. Busted! Don’t you also, to speak, and this this story may live elsewhere tell me if it does. But coming to Zappos and maybe recommend this to other clients now but you offer an incentive for people not to take the job?

Jenn

Yeah that’s right so it’s part of the pay people to quit program that they have and essentially every trainee that comes to the door at a five-week training program they have a standing offer to take a check and just walk out the door no questions asked. And the reason why is because if they don’t really align with Zappos’ purpose and core values then it really is not going to be a good fit. And so the business sense of that is that because of this program they are actually saving Zappos’ money in the long run because we now know that it actually cost companies about 150 to 300 percent of that person’s salary to realize it’s a rough hire and to rehire someone new. So at the end of the day it’s actually saving the company’s money to be better at that recruiting process than to have to deal with it later.

Tim

How big is the check and how long do they have to claim that check before or once they’ve started?

Jenn

Originally it was only 100 bucks. It’s actually at 5000 and they keep on raising that because not enough people are taking it and that’s not a joke. They have five weeks at the beginning of their training time and the duration of their training time to take that check.

Tim

I love it. So, it’s so counter-intuitive but I love it you know it also makes a whole lot of sense I’m talking to Jenn Lim Chief Happiness Officer, Delivering Happiness and past Zappos employee. I’m guessing Zappos is still a number one client but delivering happiness Jenn?

Jenn

Well actually, I used to consult there since I branch out and Tony and I started their company. I’ve been focusing on trying to really scale this concept to everyone around the world organisation so that’s been my focus since I came here.

Tim

The third way of delivering happiness is to establish or revisit your own DNA via core values, Jenn. There’s a lot of there’s a lot of big words in there what do you mean?

Jenn

Well yeah well, I’ll bring it to you the simple thing about core values and I know that sometimes even or especially for small businesses can sound kind of corporately, like “What are your core values?” and we felt the same thing that Zappos when we first started thinking the big question was, “well okay we built a decent company but now our biggest worry is how are you going to maintain our company culture?” And so that’s when core values were introduced. That was about, “oh I’d say four or five years into the existence of Zappos and what makes us different from those you know shiny plaques on the wall with values on it is that we actually went to every single employee to ask them to submit their own personal core values and it took about a year’s time and doesn’t necessarily have to take this long for other companies, we’ve heard different examples across the board. But essentially through that years’ time was able to boil them down to the ten values that they have today and essentially kind of test them to see whether or not they stand up to different circumstances and you know conditions between the employees in communication and they actually were able to survive the test. So, what those values mean is being able to not just put those meaningless words on the wall but actually define specific behaviours out of them. So that it’s you know is that sort of a grey area. It’s more of a black and white interpretation of what well let’s say the word integrity means. A funny example that we have in back in the day here is Enron’s, one of their values was integrity and we all know how that company went. So, the difference is that if we are defining values and behaviours then there’s clarity for all your current employees and even more importantly your future employees of what your values are. Because as you grow and you know we all want that and we want that at great scale but unless we have these senses of values and purpose and place that origination which is why we call the DNA it gets lost the origination of why we started the company? The origination of how we started our culture and what we really believe them. Unfortunately, as companies grow and size gets put on the back burner. But the point is that it’s too important to not have them consistently in place with your growth.

Tim

Very interesting you would have over the course of a year and asked all Zappos employees what do they value the most which mean that just feels like a massive job. I’ve run core values workshops and generally here is what I like to do. Maybe just taking the easy way out. You tell me but first and foremost if you’re talking to a business owner that person he or she has is the one who had the idea for the business and has brought that business to market and has made it successful through it for whatever reason. Now they it’s their core values it’s their personality it’s their original mission and vision that you could argue is the reason for the success. What I’ve found is that when you cast the net wider and speak to employees who probably don’t have skin in the game i.e. equity shares, you know, any other reason for the business succeeding then well you know I’ll keep my job if it does. You go from being a very articulated brand to a brand that feels very watered down because everyone’s saying “oh yeah I like integrity and I like honesty. I like fun” and all of a sudden you’ve just got this really long list of words that are meant to be core values. Do you see the problem?

Jenn

I do and I think a simple solution or actually a simple question to ask before going down the path of revisiting or creating core values. Is number one is the company and therefore the people within it. Is it representative of what truly the company is about? And if that’s not the case then I would not recommend saying yeah you know a survey everyone in the company because then you’ll get all these different answers. But when it happened was Zappos then when it happened with other companies that we’ve work with today. The assumption is that this company is made up of people that we want to keep. We believe that it actually represents the brand in a fundamental way. So, if that’s not the case, it’s more about picking these people that you think that are really representative that culture and maybe even making them spearhead the project because then against more authentic to the true DNA that you’ve built.

Tim

As we tick off Jenn, these ways of a business can deliver happiness, it feels to me it requires a level of maturity on behalf of the business owners to really stand back and look their staff in the eye and go “this is you and me. It’s not just me I’m not here just to make money. You know I’ve got to make money by you guys being happy”. That’s quiet, again, obvious but requires a level of maturity. I’m guessing you come up against some owners that just kick and scream.

Jenn

That is definitely the case and I’m glad you brought that up because while this all seem to be very… there should be more practical, tactical things that we could do for a company. It really is not going to happen in a sustainable way unless the leadership of the company really has a sense of self and the rest of it, the sense of self within the leader becomes a beacon for everyone else in the company and therefore this value is at its higher purpose. When you just said that it really makes me think of Joshua at plan and electricians because his whole story was about that. He happened to, actually he was gifted the book from someone. And he didn’t you know hadn’t heard of it delivering happiness, hadn’t heard of Zappos and he read it and you know what, he relayed to me it just really changed the way he looked at not just his business but also himself and that’s why he’s such a great example of what this concept can do and not just to you know again move the bottom line and make it a successful as he is today and the rest of all his company but truly change from within and being a part of that and seeing that firsthand was pretty incredible.

Tim

Josh is a great example and listeners for those of you who don’t know we’re talk who we’re talking about. Josh Nichols Pask guest one of the more popular episodes of the small business big marketing show Jenn, and Josh absolutely embraced the delivering happiness business model and the difference being he implemented. He got very excited and excitable young man and he even mentored but he’s also maintained it throughout the years too and there’s a massive difference there. Now speaking of Josh and I’ll put a link by the way in the show notes to that past interview with Josh I love this fourth, this fourth way of delivering happiness. I think it’s my favorite, build meaningful relationships and wows across your ecosystem. Yeah. One of my favorites as well because going back to the science, having meaningful relationships is actually one of the biggest ways to have sustainable happiness in our lives. So, by applying this not just to our personal relationships but in business, you’ve seen such amazing results because essentially when we get together and have a relationship with someone it previously used to be a lot more transactional. But now to make it more meaningful and thinking about it in a way that we no longer live in a zero-sum game in any circumstance or any opportunity in the whole world, and that in itself becomes this platform for consistent win win situations. And one of the things that we’ve always noticed is that you know the expectations for customers and clients no matter where we are getting so high and they’re higher than ever. So, what we say is us do the unexpected and the terminology that they use at Zappos to wow your customer, or wow your colleague, wow your partner and your vendor. And this has really been consistently a huge success factor in making happiness work.

Tim

Give us some examples.

Jenn

Let’s see. Actually, not too long ago I was going around on this tour of speaking engagements and it was pretty hectic, 20 cities, three months and I was using a lot of the Marriott brand during that time. And one of the hotels I was in, I don’t remember what city anymore, I walked in and have a really cool Cafe kind of looking like you know your fancy, Starbucks whatever. And I would just every time I go in and grab a whole bunch of stuff and go out to the counter and they would say, ” Oh, you’re okay, don’t, you know no worries, never mind, you’re fine.” And it did again later in the afternoon and they had the same response and so for my social survey purposes, I went and done it. I did this for another five times, i don’t remember, just to see whether it worked and it did consistently and all this to say that there is this sense of “hey if you’re a good customer, if you’re loyal to our brand we wonder why you wouldn’t return”. And that clearly wowed me because now I’ll be more loyal to that brand. What they did differently than any other hotel that I stayed in.

Tim

That seems like an expensive way how about by the way Marriott could probably afford that. But for the smaller business listening is it simple things like maybe a follow up call after you’ve done from the boss, is it that type of little, I call these the one percenters that can make a big difference.

Jenn

Yeah. A hundred percent. That’s an example of where you need a budget for it. But there are so many little things that companies can do, it is those going a little bit further in the personal connection of a handwritten note or you know for their next sort of interaction with them giving something a little different. And then other small businesses do or not do at all. So, the point is it’s not about the monetary value it really is what’s the extra little wow that we can give our customers that no one else is doing.

Tim

Is this an urban myth? I could be wrong but does Zappos employees have a budget that they can spend without seeking approval with any client with any customer?

Jenn

Yeah, they do. And the same thing goes whether it’s Carlton which is renowned for their customer service as well. So, their customer service reps have a budget and everyone actually at Carlton, regardless if you’re in the room at the front desk or housekeeping they have what I believe the last time I checked it was about a few thousand-dollar budget. But again, it’s not about that number. There’s so many things as you know, as we’re all our own experts in our own fields doing something what we call buff. So, it’s best unique or first that other people in our fields or competitors aren’t doing.

Tim

Yeah okay so just to finish up on this fourth one because I do love it. What is the exercise that you take clients through to come up with a whole lot of wells?

Jenn

It’s clearly pretty much a role-playing thing. So, it’s as if you’re mapping out the entire point to point, node by node interaction with your customer, this could be anywhere from the initial e-mail exchange or now more and more using text and that’s actually been a really great differentiator of those that are available via text, knowing the trajectory of where we are going with mobile. So just mapping those things out like where do we touch our customers, aside from in person. And once you map that out then you could actually ask yourself those question with every touch point, “What can I add in there that will be a wow experience that no one else is doing?”

Tim

Love it Jenn. You just confirmed that I was doing something right. Because I literally say to clients, “draw a straight horizontal line, on the left hand far left is when a prospect first comes into contact with your business, on the far right is after they’ve bought from you and everything in between little moments of truth and identifying with those moments of truth. Are those interactions that you’re going to have. What can you do to make them go wow? Love it. Can I have a job at delivering happiness?

Jenn

I was just going to ask you after this interview.

Tim

I’ll bring it to Australia. We’ll talk later Jenn. I’ll get people to talk to your people. Thank you. I know we’re going overtime. Are you okay?

Jenn

Yeah, I apologize. I certainly trying to hold that call.

Tim

No no no. But listen we’ve both got man flu now. Well I’ve got man flu, Jenn’s got the lady’s flu which is not as painful. Don’t go away. I’ve just lost my job at delivery before I even started it. The fifth way to deliver happiness: give your employees more control. My God I think we’ve just lost all business owners. What do they say, the lunatics are running the asylum.

Jenn

Or you know things are going around here but that’s why I think you’d be perfect for delivering happiness, Tim.

Tim

love it, interview is over.

Jenn

So, this again is a counter-intuitive thing, something that we mentioned earlier. But like you said you know, now that expectations are high, it’s better to do the unexpected. So, by giving employees more control, what we’ve seen is that and this is the new day and age right? We hear a lot about the millennials and yada yada yada and what we believe is that it doesn’t need to be looked at that way because at the end the day we are humans and we were in a very fast rapidly changing society around the world. So, it’s a greater more meaningful ask of what employees are asking than ever before. So, by giving them more control over what their role is or what their job is or responsibilities. But at the same time and this is a very big, to make sure they’re accountable for it. We’ve seen time and time again that they’ll actually be more productive more engaged and work harder for the company while staying longer at the company. So here you are addressing all these different points of all the issues that we’re having with this workforce. So, one of the examples I could just mention is there is a doctor’s office and I was talking to someone that came up to me after Aquino and he said “You know I know exactly where you are me because I love going to my doctor’s office” and I said “Alright, tell me more because who loves going to their doctor’s office. I don’t know that many.” And he said “they realized last night because I went to the front desk and the receptionist gave me her usual smile and we talked and were laughing. And then she gave me her business card and on it the title said, the Director of First Impressions”, and then it all clicked because she felt more control of her job she had just a receptionist. She’s going to own whatever she wants to do because she wants to do it. So that’s just a small non-monetary example of giving people more control.

Tim

I guess the proof of the putting of that is, is she really, is that just a title on a business card that’s cool and funk, or is she really the director of First Impressions? Does she have influence, budget, and authority to make changes in that doctor’s practice? And if she does, wow cool.

Jenn

Yeah. Unfortunately, I never did follow up with that guy. I know.

Tim

Can you just get her on the phone maybe call now? Let’s give her a buzz so you can see what the first impression is like.

Jenn

We wouldn’t put out a spoke signal.

Tim

But I get that and great. We agree that you know as long as it’s not lip service and as long as you’re applying these principles is much more than word of mouth, it’s not word of mouth as you know love lip service then you’re on your own when you’re on the way to delivering happiness. Well yeah, I love it Jenn. I mean at the end of the day, I’m guessing with delivering happiness the agency that you now run, what’s your purpose? Can I a guess that it’s to make the world a better place?

Jenn

I guess that would be a generic word, in some ways we are. I would believe

Tim

you would hope.

Jenn

Yeah, I believe in hope but yeah. My purpose revolves around people. And given the level of awareness that we’ve had of, what we’ve been doing and the fact that we’ve been able to impact organisations around the world of this concept towards just positivity and happiness but really meaningful life changes. That’s what I hope to continue to do.

Tim

Yeah lovely. How can people find out more about delivering happiness? Because I guess you guys don’t deal with small businesses but if people are interested how can I find out more?

Jenn

Actually, we do hold workshops and boot camps, and master classes for smaller companies as well so not to preclude anyone at all, one of our missions is to be able to connect and hopefully help every organization. So, if you just come to our website it’s just www.deliveringhappiness.com.  These meds are getting to me, I have to apologize for this.

Tim

Yeah correct. I’m on that website now there’s a fantastic blog and there are some fantastic resources including worksheets and things to download so deliveringhappiness.com. Jenn Lim, thank you so much for fighting your way through the flu and joining us and lifting the lid on you know as I said at the top, soft business strategy on the surface hard underneath. And you know, if you get it right clearly you might be the next Zappos which be kind of cool just to finish on what are two or three other businesses because we talk about Zappos a lot. And why not. They have they birthed this concept. What are two other two or three other brands that listeners could look to see delivering happiness in action.

Jenn

I could name the big ones but because it’s a smaller business I feel that that might not be as…

Tim

Whatever works.

Jenn

See there’s HP, which is somehow familiar with a small company called McDonald’s, who might be familiar with. But given with, you know this is a small business audience, I really want to iterate that if you’re interested in a specific case study as to what how this is impacting small businesses around the world, I think that’s even more applicable to what you’re doing on a day to day basis. So, I would leave it at that and you would like to learn more of that, than just let us know.

Tim

Thanks Jenn.

Jenn

Yeah. Thank you, Tim,