Jim McCann - 1-800-Flowers Founder | The $1.2B Flower Empire That Almost Failed

I went into it not only to be a florist, which of course I became, but I went into it to try and build a business. So that's why six months after I bought the first shop, we opened the second shop. Jim McCann is a pioneer who revolutionized the flower industry. From a small flower shop in New York to founding one 800 flowers, he transformed how people buy and send gifts. I wanted to force myself to build a company, but we're not at my dream point yet. We still don't know. We still have a ways to go. I kept my full-time job when I bought the flower shop. I didn't have any savings or assets. It was important to me that I'd be able to pay the mortgage. So if I was awake, I was working, but I realized there was no economy in owning a bunch of flower shop. I have 40 flower shop, but I realized this isn't really working out that well. In 1986, he made a bold move, purchasing the one 800 flowers number, setting the stage for nationwide expansion. By the early 90s, he was ahead of the curve, making one 800 flowers, one of the first retailers online through Compuserve, AOL, and later one 800 flowers.com. Still learning every day, which is all about relationships. And you don't have a relationship with a group of 10. You have 10 individual relationships. It took a while for me to get that. Today, as executive chairman, Jim continues to shape the brand's future. He's an investor, speaker, and minority owner of the New York Metz. This episode is about vision, innovation, and taking bold risks. Successful, I'm not just to find his business success, but our journey in life is always trying to be our best self. Work is a lot more than a paycheck. It's also very, very social. Welcome to Success Story. I'm your host, Scott Cleary. The Success Story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast never, but HubSpot doesn't just have great podcasts. If you're an entrepreneur, if you're a builder, they've got your back. Now, why is that important? Because if you're building anything, you know that marketing in 2025 is absolutely wild. Now, why is that important? Because you know if you're an entrepreneur, if you're building anything marketing in 2025 is wild. Savvy customer spot fake messaging instantly, anything AI generated, they sniff it out. Privacy changes, make ad targeting a nightmare, and everyone needs more content now than ever. And that's why you have to have HubSpot's new marketing trends report. It doesn't just show you what's changing. It shows you exactly how to deal with it. Everything's backed by research but focused on marketing plays that you can use for your business tomorrow. If you're ready to turn marketing hurdles into results for your business, go to HubSpot.com slash marketing to download it for free. A huge shout out to Lingoda for supporting today's episode. Now, if you're ready to master a new language, Lingoda is the online language platform trusted by over 100,000 students worldwide. Lingoda offers live classes with real teachers available 24-7. You can choose from German, English, business English, French, Spanish, or their newest addition, Italian. What sets Lingoda apart the smallest class size in the market? It's just you and up to five other students. Or if you want, you can go one-on-one for personalized attention. Their native level teachers don't just teach language, they share culture too. And you'll speak confidently from day one with Lingoda's flexible scheduling and proven curriculum. Students report being able to navigate real conversations in weeks, not years. And if you're using Lingoda for business, their CEFR aligned courses ensure that you're learning internationally recognized language standards that employers value. Between sessions, you're going to reinforce your skills with downloadable materials and bite-sized practice exercises. And all success story listeners, they put together a special deal. Try Lingoda free with three group classes or one private class. Plus, you save on any course with my link, try.lingoda.com slash success story and code Scott 25. Don't miss this chance to transform your life through language learning. Today's episode is brought to you by Vanta. Now, listen up, this matters for your business. In today's digital landscape, security isn't optional, it's essential. Without it, deal stall, sales cycle stretch on and scaling becomes very difficult. Now, why? Because investors, customers, and partners all expect businesses to demonstrate strong security practices before they commit. If you can't prove trust, you lose opportunities. So whether you're a startup founder, trying to land that first big client or an established company scaling your security program, Vanta helps businesses of all sizes prove that they're trustworthy by automating compliance across 35 frameworks like SOC2, ISO27001, and HIPAA. The exact certifications your prospects are demanding. Here's why you need to pay attention. Vanta gives you back precious time that you're currently wasting on compliance. Their platform automates up to 90% of the tedious compliance work. It helps you respond to those endless security questionnaires at the five times faster, and it connects you with experts to get your security program running immediately. The results speak for themselves. A recent IDC report found that Vanta customers achieve over $535,000 per year in benefits, and the platform pays for itself in just three months. So you're going to join over 10,000 global companies like Atlassian, Korra, and Factory who use Vanta to manage risk and prove security in real time. And don't miss this. For a limited time only, my listeners can get $1,000 off Vanta. That's real money back in your pocket. Visit vanta.com slash Scott right now before this offer expires. That is V-A-N-T-A. Vanta.com slash Scott. When you bought your first flower shop, if you go back to that moment in time, you invested $10,000 into the first shop, did you have any idea in your mind about how big this was going to get? Yes. I hoped I dreamt, but we're not at my dream point yet. We're still going. We just a lot of ways to go. So yeah, I went into it not only to be a forest, which of course I became, but I wanted to try and build a business. And so that's why six months after I bought the first shop, we opened the second shop. Because I want to go force myself to not just run a good shop is to build a company. It looked to me like there was no real powerful player in a flower shop in a florist business. I thought there was an opportunity to build a bigger company. And you had the foresight way back then to see the opportunity. I mean, I wouldn't give myself any credit for seeing the opportunity. It just wasn't a big player. I found out why it's hard. And I kept my full time job when I bought the flower shop. Because you make decisions. I married very young. We started a family very young. And it has consequences. You know, you're not as risk tolerant. I didn't have any savings or any assets. So it was important to me that I'd be able to buy groceries and pay the mortgage. So I kept my full time job and hired people to run the flower shops. So if I was awake, I was working. Not much has changed, by the way. But the kind of work I was doing then was different now and different from what I do now. And it's a lot more fun now. But it was, you know, really hustling, opening up shops and always doing the making the last delivery when no one else wants to. You know, you'll do it on the way home. And two hours later, finally rolling home. But it worked out. But I realized it was no economy in owning a bunch of flower shops. There was no kind of economies of scale. In fact, maybe the opposite. And so I said, you know, I have 40 flower shops now when I realized, hey, this isn't really working out that well. So I mean, to get to even 40 flower shops, it's still impressive. So something is working. But when you were thinking big, you were thinking, national nation way. So what was the friction that you were, that you figured out was the issue with flower shops. And maybe not even just flower shops, maybe just talk about like to the audience. A broader lesson about business opportunities and friction and what's scalable and what's not. Because I think that you know, Paul Graham. So Paul Graham, the famous article, you do things that don't scale and you figure out how to make them scale. It's very romantic and it's a very nice idea. But more often than those and talk about the roadkill. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And in that case, this is a reason why flower shops are often very often family businesses. You know, Uncle Joe, who works for, who works for Pfizer, the big chemical company, doesn't take his personal day. Is one person a year or is one of his two personal days a year. A Wednesday before Thanksgiving so that he can deliver flowers for his cousins who own the flower shop. Unless it's family and he wants to be invited for Thanksgiving dinner. And that's what the strain on flower shops is. You have peaks and valleys of business. So that's why the family businesses. Who else will work that hard? Who else can you be sure is going to be there and work on those key weeks and months or weekends that are very, very busy. So it's, it's tough to go because your business will go 10X. You know, one week, 10 times busy next week, that's hard to manage. Well, it's stressful and then I'm assuming that a lot of stuff breaks when you have those 10X periods. Okay, so 40 flower shops in what was the light bulb moment that allowed you to say, okay, so this is not what I, what I signed up for is not what I'm getting. Or maybe I didn't, I was too ignorant to even understand what I was signing up for at the time. Yeah, pretty much. How do I, how do I take this and systemize it and build a real business around it? I think we were, we were learning all the way into what you do in a shop and what you do outside of a shop because a retail flower shop is complicated in this sense. You're paying a lot of money to be in a retail location with this traffic. But the majority of the business is behind the curtain. It's the back room, which is where you're really doing the work where you're designing and making your product and prepping your product. And so you're paying retail rents for a warehouse kind of work. And some people who've been successful around the country have figured out how to separate that. So I had to pull out of that retail flower shop that bulk heavy work, put it someplace else and allowed a flower shop to focus on their retail business. You have a nice merchandise because you have a good looking shop and then how it comes and you crush it because you need every square wrench to fill in. So it's a is realizing that you have a manufacturing distribution business and a retail business all in the same location paying retail rents when you don't really need to. So we've started to find efficiencies taking that kind of work out of the shop having production facilities that could do it efficiently and do it for 10 shops at a time. Did you come from an entrepreneurial background at all? I wouldn't say entrepreneur. I'd say small business and I think there's a difference. My dad was a painting contractor. So his dad before him was too. So I grew up around that business a lot. You know, when was a kid? My father thought old enough to walk, old enough to work. And when my grandmother inherited a business when her husband died at 48 years old and she made my father and charged the business at 21 and so just added a Navy to say, okay, you run the business because I'm not going to take some little five foot tall Irish lady and she's going to boss around 25 men or so. So she made my father the boss and so I was around it all the time her kitchen table was the boardroom. So I heard a lot about business. So I always and I worked in a lot of small businesses mostly retail. So yes, small business background, not entrepreneurial. After starting his business entrepreneur work wasn't used very often. I know now it's. It's only in the last generation. It's true. You said you had it. You had an interesting. I would say you had a lot of interesting experiences. So also another experience in years in your life in your, you know, in your backstory was the group home experiences. Well, I'm trying to figure out and tell a little bit about that experience and how it impacted you as well. But I'm trying to figure out and I always like to do this. What are the experiences that lead to your success and all these experiences? Obviously impact how you think how you operate who we are, who we are. Do you feel like that small business experience from your parents, your grandparents? Do you feel like the group home experience? What do you think was the most impactful? I don't, I couldn't say which was most both extremely impactful. So growing up around a small business has a big impact on my mother's side. My, my, her, her father's stepfather was a, he ran the Speakeasies. And then when there was legitimacy, he ran bars and restaurants. So I was around that. I heard all of that all the time. And I've always been with the painting business. So I heard about that all the time. Customers, estimates, problems, challenges, you know, all the things that small business people have to deal with. But from a personal development point of view, getting that first job in a group home as a live-in counselor was hugely impactful on who I am, how I thought about things and developing my confidence, self-confidence. So it had a huge impact on me. And frankly, the things I learned working with those 10 kids, by the way, kids, I was six months older and the oldest one when I started the job, had a huge impact on me. What, explain. Well, you really learn about yourself. You know, here I am. 21 years old. And I became my father. I found myself saying the same things to I. No, they said to these kids, they were only a couple months younger. Well, that was just a one. I had them from a 14 to 20 years old. And if you are in any way inconsistent, they will let you know. If you show any kind of fear, it will take advantage of that. So these were tough kids. They came from horrible circumstances. And I learned a lesson. I'm still learning every day, which is it's all about relationships. And an important lesson I learned because I really wasn't very good at this work, especially in the beginning. I learned to be better at it. I think I learned to be good at it, but it was because I had good mentors, good role models to learn from and watch and observe. And I really had a passion for it. So I worked hard to get better at it. And the key I learned was relationships. And you don't have a relationship with a group of 10. You have 10 individual relationships. And it took a while for me to get that. I tried to, you know, hurt this crowd. You try and bulk. You try and, you know, group them together. I'm going to have one leadership style. And I mean, obviously there's a lot of similarities in what you're dealing with in this group, and what more people deal with with their companies or teams or whatever. That's what I learned. I didn't realize I was learning that. That's exactly what I learned, which is the management skills I learned to keep kids out of trouble and doing well in life and going to school and growing. The same skills I've been using the rest of my life in anything I've been involved in in any workplace. It's all profit, not for profit. It's all about helping people to set goals, measure things, convince them that they can achieve things that didn't think they could achieve. Teaching them work in teams, creating currencies that help you to reward things and incite others to do things and how to show recognition. So the things I learned working in that group home and then later running all the group homes and then running the home boys. So we had a main campus with about 175 boys and then group homes of 10 boys each. But as a young person, you get a disproportionate amount of responsibility if you're willing to step up and take it because it doesn't pay well. So it doesn't attract a lot of people who can do it for a career. Now, where I worked, there were many people who did it for a career and God bless them because it was hard work and they were good, good people doing good work. You mentioned something that's really interesting. So when you have a group of people that you're trying to influence or lead or do really anything with each one of those people, that's a personal relationship. It can't be a group relationship. How does that? Because I'm assuming that idea has sort of been a really important idea in all the companies you've built in all the teams you've led in all the customers you've served. So that idea, what you don't have relationship with groups, you have relationships with individuals, how do you scale that? I think it's quite easy. In concept, that is people, you can have relationships. We have 5,000 people who work in the flowers companies now. And Harry and David Brand, the 1,800 flowers brand, Sheryls, our cookie brand, the Schofenberger, our newest chocolate brand. So 5,000 people all in. So I don't have relationships with 5,000 people. But the people I do know and have relationships know that they're genuine relationships. And I encourage them to have relationships with their people. And so you and I were chatting earlier about the changing place of media and to run a company, you have to be at least media savvy, media sensitive. Because you only have a few ways of communicating what you're, what's important to you. So from a, every group home had a culture. Every office department in the main agency had a culture. It's different. It was one culture for the whole place. But we can't control that culture. The best we can do is influence it. And as business operators or managers, we have a few dials available to us to influence the culture. So we're cultural engineers, but we cannot control it. So how we role model what we want to see, who we hire, who we don't. How do we do we reward people and how, what do we tolerate, what don't we tolerate. Although those things are signals that influence our culture. Again, we can't control it, but you can signal. So I think some of the business leaders I follow and most respect are really good at managing the message. You know, I think people in the public eye like a Jamie, Jamie Diamond runs JP Morgan, brilliant at simplifying things. And letting people know there's a right way to do things and there's a wrong way. He won't tolerate the wrong way. And so, but he has 260,000 people who work in his organization. He can't possibly know them. He'll never even see most of them. But they know him and they have a sense of what his compass is, his moral compass. And it's effective use. He has to be effective in using media to get his message out. So there's 260,000 people all over the globe when you know when you know your core, your core culture that you want to create and you can influence. Then there's a down line of people building individual relationships with each member on their team through the lens of that culture that you're championing and disseminating and communicating. I think that's very important. I think that that's really the best way to influence 260,000 people or we're talking internal. Even even building relationships with their customers. I mean, every customer, it's not easy, but every customer should feel that you are building an intimate one-on-one relationship with them. I mean, it always starts. I'm vocabulary matters there. You see it every day in terms of really well-run organizations. You look at like a Ritz-Colton hotel. If you ask someone directions, they wouldn't say, yeah, it's down there. They'll walk you over there. And so there are certain linchpins that are important to maintaining their culture around the globe again or the fact that they always, if you ask yourself, my pleasure. They don't say, oh, thank you. My pleasure. It's all those little signals that says we do things differently because we're different. When you were building 1-800 flowers, and then obviously now listen, I have a list of a whole bunch of other businesses that you've now built since, but that is the one that I think you're most well known for. When you were building 1-800 flowers, what were the things that, because we can talk about the tactics, we can talk about the fact that you had a phone number as a name, which are all interesting stories, I'm sure. We can go into any of them, but you just made a good point. You have to do things a little bit differently. When you look at sort of the legacy that you've built, what are you most proud of having done differently? I think what would help us to be successful, and clearly not a straight line of diseases. It never is. Never is, is our willingness to say, look, when your name is 1-800 flowers, you're the first company whose name is its telephone number. It screams convenience. And that's been our mantra ever since the earliest days of founding the business is to let's be as convenient as we can. And the attitude we took was, we really count on people to be, we're counting on people to be thoughtful. And to express themselves, and to express themselves with a gifted and in the earliest days as a gift, we were pedaling with only flowers. So if you want people to be thoughtful and act on that thoughtfulness, you ought to be convenient. Because from the idea to the intention to execution is fraught with interruption. And if you're quick and convenient, then then you have a better shot of being successful. So that was always our driving influence. And technology was always the thing that we look to to say, how can we use technology to be more efficient, more convenient, more accessible. So when we realized flower shops limited number of hours, we're open seven days of course. But when we first bought the company that had the telephone number in it, we had to take a leap of faith that this new convenience would be important to enough people to make it worth a while. And I assure you that the people who were already in the floral business didn't think people needed to have an 800 number to call. That they certainly didn't need to do it seven days a week, 24 hours a day. And they didn't want to, we would told they would never use credit cards over the phone. All of which was wrong because it was convenient. And yeah, there are people who work overnight and want to call and order something or now do it online or do it on their mobile device more conveniently. And so it was, how do we use technology? So for each step of the way, the stores, we never walked away from any of those technologies. So I mean, but as we had stores, we still have stores. We don't own them now mostly owned by our French high seas because I had to sell the stores back then to raise capital to fund this idea of building up this brand when you're under bars. You were always taking risks then. That's a risky move. Yeah, the very has to very risky move because so even at that point and I want to I sort of I think it's important to drop this right now because obviously this is sort of your most recent work. So you wrote the book load star, which are tapping into 10 timeless pillars of success. And as we sort of walk through your journey, I do want to highlight some of those sort of universal fundamental pillars and how they impacted you. So I think that this is, this is, well, I mean, if you look at risk taking evolution, reinvention, disruption, sort of blue ocean ideology, things that I think that you've also sort of alluded to in even this early part of your story. How important are some of these ideals in success? Are these what you consider a core principle or these things that worked out for you and may not be the best playbook for another entrepreneur? I wrote a load star with my friend and partner in this journey because I think these are the lessons I've learned that are most important and have been most impactful on my life and the lives of so many other people I know in terms of helping them to be successful and successful, not just to find his business success. But our journey in life is where we're trying to be our best self, most people are trying to be their best self. And I'll tell you the story load star because it tickles me that this accident happened. So at the very beginning of COVID, which would have been March of 20, we didn't know what was going to happen to our business. All of a sudden, anyone who could work from home was at all of them, had computers, we didn't have the technology in place. His Vanguard zoom was already around, but we hadn't really been using it much. All of a sudden, well, you got to get people up and running on the network, you got to get, and we didn't know if anyone's going to hold it or anything from us. And for a few days, they did it. When we first went into lockdown, those people were just too distracted. And then all of a sudden, it was a boom for our business because people couldn't get together. And they wanted to express themselves, especially in our food businesses, like Harry and David and Popcorn Factory. You could sell someone nice big tin of Popcorn, three different flavors of Popcorn in it, and they, especially if they have kids at a kid in busy, you know, no, I love that, I love that. So it turned out to be good for business, but in the very beginning, we did not know what the impact would be. So that accelerated a lot of technology changes in our business, but in April of that year, I'm reading an article in Psychology Today, written by this professor, a psychologist at Johns Hopkins. I thought it was brilliant because, you know, we've already talked about my feeling about the importance of relationships and everything we do. And he was speculating how this lockdown, how this COVID experience would impact our relationships. Major relationships, marital relationships, family relationships, and casual relationships, like not seeing a regular barista who you give a wave to even if they're not reading on you because they've become a developed a little relationship with them. And I thought it was brilliant, so I wrote them a fan letter. I said to Dr. George Evelier, I read this piece, I thought this was terrific, but I hope we have occasion to chat someday. So he wrote back to me, so I'd love to chat with you. Why don't we do it? And so we did, and we became friends. And we were working together because at the same time, when businesses interrupted like that, I said, what are we going to do with our customers? Are we going to advertise to them and say, hey, if you're in lockdown, we have the perfect gift that can't do that. So a young lady who is my cheapest staff at the time, still with the company, but now she runs marketing for us. She said, well, why don't you just write to our customers and tell them what we're going through, what we're experiencing, how it's impacting us. And so I did that. I wrote a newsletter we put out on Sundays and never try and sell anything in that newsletter. But four and a half years later, I'm still writing that letter. And we now have over 10 million subscribers. And it's all about relationships. I write about it. And now it's interactive. People are writing and asking us questions in the beginning. How do I think about how this is impacting a seven-year-old who's not in school now and is too distracted to pay attention to Zoom and maybe they didn't... The school I hadn't gotten to Zoom classes yet, and I wasn't qualified to answer you. I built a little network of half a dozen, maybe eight great scientists, scholars, psychologists. And I asked Dr. George Eppley if he would be my first member of what we call the Connectivity Council. And he said, sure, I'd love to. And we had Dr. Dan Willingham from University of Virginia. We had Dr. Angela Jackson from Hobbit. We had Dr. Chloe Karl-Michael from New York now from Orlando, as well, who are these just brilliant people. I was so enjoying bringing able to ask them questions that our community was asking us. And we'd create some webinars over some important topics that people were really interested in. But I really was doing a lot of work with Dr. George. Two and a half years ago, in Naples, Florida, driving with my wife, phone rang, so I answered on the speaker in the car. And it's George. And I said, Jim, you know, I'm really enjoying this work we're doing. And I think we're doing some really important stuff. He says, I have a suggestion. And I said, yeah, he says, why don't you and I do a book together? On this all this work we're doing around relationships. And I'm thinking, what's the right... This man's brilliant. I wrote a book with me and my wife's looking at me like, don't you dare. She might think I'm over committed or should be committed, one or the other. And so I said, love to George. She waxed me in the arm. And so it was over two and a half years ago and it was sort of a real long work project, but it was not easy to write. It's not easy and it's exciting for me because being able to spend that much time with someone who I've already come to like a lot, but now it's just so smart. And the work sessions, you know, a couple of few hours at a time. I started recording them because I couldn't keep up with all I was hearing and learning. And he could, by the way, let me tell you a little back on Dr. George. The best way to tell you about Dr. George is he had severe ADHD and he was had terrible dyslexia, but not diagnosed. He's a junior in high school in a nicer, leave it to be for kind of town. He describes it outside of Baltimore in Maryland. And his dad gets a call from the guidance counselor at the high school closes dad in and says, George is not going to make it in high school. He's certainly not going to college. So my suggestion is yank him out now and get him a job before his graduating class gets out of here. And they're all competing for jobs. Maybe you can get him a job in the civil service or maybe a factory worker someplace, but he's not, he's not a student. He's not that bright. Well, his dad told him that story the day he got his first PhD. And George said to him, that why did you never tell me that story until now? He says, because I didn't want it to become self-fulfilling. So George figured out how to rewire his brain when he talked his way into college. He thought, figured out, got properly diagnosed and figured out how to rewire his own brain so that he could become a scholar, which he is. He's been teaching at the university level at Johns Hopkins, Harvard for over 40 years. I think he's got three PhDs. And he's also a Renaissance man. So we couldn't really know the music, but his dad was a CPA. He became an accountant. Then it got an MBA because it wasn't really challenged by the accounting work. His dad was a musician, so he became a musician. He toured with Gladys Knight and the Pips and the Temptations. Can't read or know the music. Wonderful saxophone player. He became a bodybuilder. He was a consultant to the U.S. weightlifting team, improved their weights, won the Olympic over the others, but most of it has happened using his visualization techniques. And so I get to hang around with this amazing guy who, by the way, load star. I have a copy for you. Why don't you, you should have told me before I want to put it on the table. We'll get it out here. It's interesting how the words are so important, right? But if you think about, I mean, I didn't even, I didn't even know the story going into this. But if you think about it, if his dad had just told him that story. When he was about to graduate high school, what he would or what would not have. So Georgia musician bodybuilder and made himself an expert in PTSD. So you have first responders. He's been to 40 countries working with public health officials. Studying and working with people on big traumas and how society, a community, a family reacts to that. So the big nuclear reactor meltdown in Japan that happens to result in a tidal wave. George was summoned to come help the government officials there. He studied the impact of the Nazi bombings on London World War II. So he's an expert on stress management stress and PTSD effects. So he created something called the psychological first aid kit that he developed into a program that's still being taught around the world to first responders on how they handle their stress in terms of what they're going to see. And what they're going to deal with. And he's created a whole not for profit that does just this training around the world. So he's a remarkable guy. So a long story. Loadslaw is an excuse for me to hang around with George for a few years. I love that. Learned from him. And really I think do work that right his back on the work that we did, which I think is really impact. A big thank you to indeed for supporting success story because hiring people is one of the hardest things you're ever going to have to do as an entrepreneur as a founder. As somebody who's trying to build a business. It's important to hire well and find the right person. But it takes so much time and it's so labor intensive because like most entrepreneurs you have a thousand things going on. And there's a good chance that you just realized your business needed to hire somebody yesterday. So how can you find that great amazing right fit candidate fast? It's easy. Just use indeed because you don't have to waste time struggling to get your job post seen on all these other job sites. If you're using indeed you can just use their sponsored jobs to help you stand out and hire fast. Your post jumps right to the top of the page for relevant candidates. So you can reach out to exactly who you're looking for faster and the results really speak for themselves. According to indeed data sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed have 45% more applications than non sponsored jobs. And you know what I love most about indeed it really just makes hiring so fast because everything is streamlined in one place. No more juggling multiple platforms or waiting weeks for the right candidate. And how fast is indeed in the minute I've been talking to you 23 hires were made on indeed according to indeed data worldwide. There's no need to wait any longer speed up your hiring right now with indeed. And listeners of success story will get a 75 dollar sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed. dot com slash clary terms conditions do apply. Just go to indeed dot com slash clary a huge thank you to net suite for supporting today's episode now. What does the future hold for business if you ask nine experts. You're going to get 10 answers bull market bear market inflation up inflation down honestly at this point. You just need a crystal ball but until we get one over 41,000 businesses have found the next best thing. They future proof their businesses their operations with net suite by Oracle which is the number one cloud ERP. Imagine having your accounting your financial management your inventory your HR all flowing together in one fluid platform. And here's what makes net suite different. It gives you one source of truth for your business. You get the visibility and control to make quick confident decisions while others are guessing you're working with real time data insights forecasting. You're basically looking in the future of your business with actionable data whether your company earns a couple million or even hundreds of millions. Net suite helps you respond to immediate challenges and helps you grab your biggest opportunities. And speaking of opportunities they put together the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning and net suite dot com slash Scott clary. This is the playbook for understanding how to use AI for your business. The guide is free that is net suite dot com slash Scott clary. I mean you're very you're very gracious. I'm sure you committed and and put a lot of yourself into that. A lot of time in and I bought some practical lessons of people I've seen that I think use was these techniques effectively. But what we did was look we I was certainly not going to say that why know everything there is about how we work on self development. But I've been a student of self development self improvement for a long time and there's lots of people who I think the world of who I think the terrific. But this I learned working on this project with George that there are it's a $10 billion year industry. There are 85,000 books in print on self improvement personal development. It's not all good. It's a lot of good. But it's not all good. Were you ever into this growing up? Are you into self improvement self development? Yeah. And what it's all the reason I'm asking is because there's different ways to be into it. I mean you can go to a Tony Robbins event you can you can listen to like a Mel Robbins podcast or a Jay Shetty part of you read books like this and you can you can look at it from like a personal improvement or you or there's people that are more I need to tactics and I'm curious just from somebody who's obviously been very successful. What a version of self improvement and self development work best for you and do you think there's a reason why? Yes. So I was asked to do a speaking tour 20 years ago. Yeah, Tony. Over 20 years ago. And I agreed to do it. It was a 14 city tour. I agreed to do it because the lead on the program was someone I thought the world of. His name is Zig Ziegler. The Prince of self help and personal development. And it was just such a remarkable guy and I was a fan. I have three kids working on three kids and if I be in a car, it often had one back then a cassette of his on the kids swore they weren't listening to it. Even if they tried not to. You know, it was back before they all had individual devices. And so I agreed to do this tour because it was an excuse to work with Zig who is a headliner. I'm 14 stop. So one of them is in New York where we live. And we were doing a 20,000-seat arena in New Jersey. And we were doing a 16,000-seat arena on Long Island, Long Island, Coliseum. So Zig was going to be in town. So I said, Zig, I'd love to have you over the house with dinner. And it was a weeknight, a school night. And it was a night before we were doing the Long Island gig. So my wife and I, three kids, and they're the teens or young teens at the time, and Zig. So we had dinner early. But one o'clock in the morning, school night, they're still up hanging on every word that Zig has to say. They're asking, tell me the Wilman Rudolph story again. Now they swore they weren't listening, but they knew the stories to ask them. And he was one of the most impactful teachers that I came across before I met George, who had a good and practical lesson. And so many of his teachings are incorporated in these 10 pillars in Low Star, in terms of just managing your time, setting your expectations, willingness to be self-critical. And for him, so much of it was attitude. Attitude was everything from one story I remember until I was a fellow walks up to the counter in the airport and checks on his light and says, oh my goodness, it's going to be delayed three hours. And he's rampant and act ridiculous. Another guy, 20 minutes later walks up and he says, it's going to be delayed. He looks and he goes, he sits down, he takes out a book and he looks quite happy. And Zig goes over and chats with them and says, well, there's nothing I can do about it. She can't do anything about it. It's not helpful. Mechanical problems. I kind of better they found a mechanical problem on the ground. And yes, it's going to disrupt things, but I can be all upset about it. Or I can say to myself, these are an opportunity, this book I've been traveling with for the last three months. I really haven't had a chance to read it. This is my chance to sit down quietly in a comfortable place with air conditioning and read this book. And he just pointed out the difference in what your attitude is and your approach. And I learned so much from Zig and and George is the modern day. Zig is passed quite a number of years ago. But and it's a dear question, who's impactful for me? Yeah, I love that. When you look at, by the way, what does load star me? That star in the sky that guides you, that takes you to the way you want to go. I love that. I've never heard that term before. It's an old fashioned term and sort of fell out of disuse. But when George and I were looking at different things we could call it and we came upon load star, we looked at one another and that's it. I like it. George says the book named itself. Yeah, I like it a lot. Well, now people use the term like north star, but load star, I like that. I'm going to start using that. When you think about, so I want to take it back to when I first, when I first brought up load star, you were speaking about some of like your own journey and what was happening. One hundred flowers. And now I want to contextualize the question a little bit better that I was asking because it's talking about disruption and innovation. Let's look at the question the different way. Out of all the principles. And I know this is an unfair question, but you have to answer in human beings. But out of all the principles, which one was the most impactful for you? What's the story you can tell about one of the principles and how impacted you when you're building one eight hundred flowers? I touched on it already in that I said that George was able to rewire his brain when he finally figured out what was the matter with him and why he couldn't read. He made a joke when you finish with the manuscript for the book. We send it into a publisher, Simon Schuster and they did it through worth books and Simon Schuster's distribution partner. And they sent it back to say, okay, read. This is the final edit version. Read it very carefully for any last minute changes we have to make. So are you kidding me? You know, he's asking to read this carefully. I can't. But the one that the one lesson I think that jumps to the front of my mind all the time is what George taught me is neuroplacicity. That is our brains are learning all the time. So whatever we do, our brains are trying to get better at it. So if you're a warrior or your wife is a warrior, the most she does it the more you do it, the better you can get at it. And if you're nervous about flying and then you're nervous about getting nervous about flying, you're going to be better getting nervous at the thought of flying. So the idea is we can reprogram our brains. And if we don't, it's doing it on its own, but it's not going to go in a positive direction. It goes to the easier track, which is to be negative. So what we learned reading the research is it less than 20% of us are born optimistic. 80% are born to be 10 to be pessimistic. It's easier to be pessimistic. Our brains sort of go there. It's harder to be optimistic, but optimistic people at 20% or the larger percentage that trained themselves teach themselves to be optimistic. Have more and better relationships in their life. They do better professionally. They have more friends. They're physically healthier. So in every measurable way, optimists have it better than pessimists. So wouldn't you choose a, I hope I was born optimistic? Well, aren't there things I can and should do to reframe things like a Tony Robinson to you to think in a more positive vein, paint a picture of where you want to be and be deliberate about trying to get there. So neuroclassicity, we can our brains are changing all the time. We ought to be deliberate about how we want them to change and we ought to exercise like we would physically our mental functioning so that we're training ourselves to be more optimistic. Now, this is something that obviously you wrote about and based on the research, but was this something as an entrepreneur that you've done over your life? Because it's not, I think that entrepreneurs are probably tested the most because they have the most opportunities to say, oh my God, life is not going the way that I wanted it to go. There's fires every day. It's very easy to default to pass them. Not to say that somebody that works a nine to five W2 does not have opportunities to be pessimistic, but I think that entrepreneurs are very much a roller coaster. And every low point is a new opportunity. Or scientist. Yes, exactly. So they're going to find a, you know, it's like what did Edison say it took a thousand experiments before you know, I think there's 10,000 experiments. And he said, no, that's 10,000, I know it's 10,000 successes because I was learning each of the ways that it didn't work that I could get to the way that it did work. So yes, I think, I think entrepreneurs, business, small business people, it's easy to be pessimistic because there's lots of evidence. I think it's going to go wrong. I was going to say like this is like an interesting point because again, you've built not just one business, multiple businesses to a very significant degree. So now like a multi billion dollar business, everything that could have gone wrong probably at some point did go wrong. So in your life, several times, so how did you not default pessimism? I wouldn't tell you it's, it's a like a light bulb moment. I think I've gotten better at recognizing the signs that I'm going down a wrong path. Not in terms of what I'm doing, but how I'm feeling about it. And by developing with these tools, a self awareness, he said, wait a minute, wait a minute. I got hit the pause button here. I got to reframe that. And lots of times I'll look at a pen and a piece of paper because that's how I learn best by writing. So I'm always taking notes, I'm always writing lists. Because it's how we frame things is how we'll see them. And if we can envision a brighter day, then we have something to work to it. If it's always me, it's never going to work. Just want something to work. So it's something I'm still learning. And I'm a lifelong learner. Most of us are. And I will also tell you my better person today. And then I was yesterday, then I was a year ago, 10 years ago, and I'm trying to be a better person. I think half of it is when you understand how your brain works, then you're more likely to pay attention to it. That self awareness is key. It really is. If you don't, if you don't research, if you don't read, if you don't understand how your brain works, you can just drift through life haphazardly and default to pessimism. Because you don't even understand that you're, you have to go in one direction or the other. Your brain will never be neutral. It will always go down one road or another. So you have to start to think, okay, how did I know that? I'm thinking of a story of a, of parents who are going crazy because they have a seven-year-old son who's the most optimistic kid. It's driving him crazy. And the father in frustration says, I'm going, Christmas is coming, I'm going to challenge this kid. So he's like a nut. He goes and piles manure in the kid's floor of his bedroom at night. And the kid gets up in the morning and father says to the mother, let's see how he makes off of him as a matter of it. And he is his kid yelling, what be it, you be, you be. How could he be excited about this? He goes and says, what are you happy about? He says, with all this manure around, there's got to be a pony someplace. I love it. I love it. All right, so let me, so when you, when you put this together, let's go through a couple of other like key lessons that really, that really impacted you. Like when you're putting together this research, I think that you can, you can sort of describe some other lessons from the perspective of this is something that if I had known at the time, it would have made my life significantly easier. This is what these types of books and these types of works do. So that's why I always love just even just skimming through again. When you, when you go down the road and you buy a book like this, you're not just, well, see, it's 10 chapters. You've got, but you don't just like my point is you don't need to incorporate everything at once. The goal is to understand, okay, these are some principles. Let me apply one principle, master that principle, and then my life will become five or 10% better. So think of a few that are sort of the most impactful for you over your career. And then we can go down that rabbit hole. I think for me, I've already spoken about it without identifying it. And that is the benefit of relationships not only from a social emotional point of view, but from a learning and resource point of view. I am self-aware in terms of my own intelligence. I'm a reasonably bright guy, but I'm not the smartest guy in the world. And I learned that I could be self-aware enough to say, I'm excited when I meet really smart people. I made a mistake of going out of my way to expose my kids to these really smart people I was meeting. And it was only several years ago that I was, we were out on a boat and chatting with my two sons. My oldest is a daughter, but three of us were in a conversation. And my youngest son, Matt said to me, Dad, James and I, his older brother, James and I were talking about all the times you dragged us to a dinner or to meet somebody. We, it really didn't have the impression on us that you were hoping for. It made us feel less adequate because they're always so smart. They're always so accomplished and you were so excited by them and to expose us to them that it was actually having the opposite effect in that we were feeling more inadequate. And it wasn't until we matured that we realized that you were comfortable knowing that these people are so much smarter than you. And that was a growth moment for us when we got to the point where we could say we felt like you that we could be excited about putting ourselves around people who are much smarter than us. And that's been, I've been comfortable with that for a long time, being around knowing that there are a lot of smart people out there. And I, I find joy in that because I love to, love to interact with them and learn what I can. And so I think a, a technique is, is that I'm always investing in relationships. Now, I'll give you a practical example. One thing that my kids will tell you that I did right with them is that I always impressed upon them. I'm a shy person in recovery. And overcoming shyness was an important thing for me to do. And I did it because I worked in retail as a kid. And if you want to eat, you have to interact with people. And so I always counseled my kids and my kids and tell you that I still do it to this day and they've grown. I have grandkids. But I do with my grandkids now too. And I do with the people I work with. We just put on a conference at a, a, a worth media group of two weeks ago called the economy I told you about Scott. And what I was really proud of is that so many people came up to me and said, your staff is, goes that way to make people feel comfortable. And two years ago, we weren't that good at that. And it's with coaching and training and, and planning with Josh, I can't tell who's the CEO of that company. We see you over our investment company. Them working with our team to say, I don't care if you're shy. You can make believe you're not because your job is to look for someone in the crowd. Because they're at the cocktail party and not talking to anybody. They don't come to go find them. Redden by the hand. Be the host. Make sure they're in a conversation. And I was so proud. That was the thing. I was, content was great. I was a sell out standing normally. We had great entertainment. It was just all around great day, day and a half. But where I was most proud of the people said, your team is remarkable because they go out of the way. And it's not an accident. They go out of the way to make people feel comfortable and feel welcome and included. It starts when they walk into the building and they go to the reception desk and Kim has a big smile for them. Recognize them, gets their name tag, doesn't say, okay, it's in there. Walks them in. Like, like she worked at the Ritz call. And I go out of my way to do that and have for a long time and taught my kids. Always be the host. Even if it's not your party, there's someone uncomfortable. You have the power to help them. A quick shout out to the HubSpot podcast network for supporting success story. Now, if you like success story, you're going to love other podcasts in their network. One of my favorites is create like the greats. It's hosted by Ross Simmons. Obviously brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network. You're going to join Ross on create like the greats. Ross dissect the genius behind history's most remarkable creators and their legendary work. So you're going to get this blend of history and business and creativity. He has a great voice, always good for a podcast. And he has a decade of practical experience. He's going to break down some of the best creative processes that built influential companies, brands, and stories in a way that anyone can apply. So whether or not you're fascinated by history, creative thinking, or you simply want to improve and systematize your own creativity. Without sacrificing productivity, this podcast is your perfect listen. Go listen to create like the greats wherever you get your podcasts. A huge shout out to Lingoda for supporting today's episode. Now, if you're ready to master a new language, Lingoda is the online language platform trusted by over 100,000 students worldwide. Lingoda offers live classes with real teachers available 24-7. You can choose from German, English, business English, French, Spanish, or their newest addition, Italian. What sets Lingoda apart the smallest class size in the market? It's just you and up to five other students. Or if you want, you can go one-on-one for personalized attention. Their native level teachers don't just teach language. They share culture too. And you'll speak confidently from day one with Lingoda's flexible scheduling and proven curriculum. Students report being able to navigate real conversations in weeks, not years. And if you're using Lingoda for business, their CEFR align courses ensure that you're learning internationally recognized language standards that employers value. In sessions, you're going to reinforce your skills with downloadable materials and bite-sized practice exercises. And all success story listeners, they put together a special deal. Try Lingoda free with three group classes or one private class. Plus, you save on any course with my link, try. Lingoda.com slash success story and code Scott 25. Don't miss this chance to transform your life through language learning. I love that. I think that this is something that has probably made you very successful. You're just a very human first people first relationship first leader. I remember when that was me and I was uncomfortable at that cocktail party. I didn't have any. I didn't know anyone. I didn't know how to start a conversation. So the easiest way to do that is look to someone who's as uncomfortable as you are going to understand how like it seems like such common sense though, but it's not. It's it you can learn it. Yeah, you can learn to overcome those things. You know, that's why relationships are so important. I mean relationships are what. And again, it's like that one on one relationship. It's everything you mentioned at the beginning. It's how the culture you want to influence. If you do it yourself, then the host that's greeting somebody at the door is going to do it as well. And then it's building one on one relationships with a hundred a thousand 10,000 people that come to a conference or 10,000 or a hundred thousand customers all about finding ways to build that one on one. I love it. I've never heard somebody talk about like relationships like that, even though it should be discussed more because business is relationships at the end of the day. And I think that actually it's going to become increasingly important. I'm just thinking about this as we're speaking because I've heard you speak about AI and. And I think that right now we're in a period where people are over indexing on AI and automation. And they're almost using it as an excuse to not focus on the human to human interaction. I mean, if you were to tell me about the phenomenon of people having AI relationships, I don't understand it. I don't understand it. It's not real. But if it makes it feels real to them, I think it's a double-edged sword. It was very sad. There was a kid who was a suicide because of an AI relationship. So I don't think I don't think it's a positive for society. I don't I don't know yet. I in a draw for no. But what about there's a company approached us probably a year ago. And it was building AI robots that they would put in a home of elderly people who live by themselves. I think that could have some positive potential. But whether it have conversation, they'll be reminded to take their meds, to stand up, to exercise, to check, hey, did you fall? I got that on my iPhone the other day. Have you fallen? Should I call her? No, but that's interesting. The technology is there. So you're right. There can be good application, but it has to be done thoughtfully and carefully. And I think that if you rush it and you say, oh, we have somebody that can, if I speak to it, it's going to speak back to me. Well, let me just deploy it company here in town. Do a lingo. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is it AI based training, behavioral training, language technology? What if what if we could take these 10 chapters in load stars and develop a workshop that you can take and interact with that doesn't require a human on the other side of it. Asking you questions, probing you, challenging you, think differently. George, I was just talking about this recently. That could be interesting. So I don't know if the technology say it, but I bet it is. It'll be there soon, if not already. But the second you, for example, say you have a whole customer support team. The second you, because I've experienced this, the second you remove the human and right now today in 2024, for example, you're replacing it with AI. That's immediately it's run off unless the AI is useful. That's the thing. Well, I think I think you're coming, you're, you're young. I would tell you that what we're finding is it's generational. Younger people oftentimes prefer non human interaction. People my age, what do you mean I cannot interact with a human? So it's, it's very different in those five year increments of of age. It's so interesting. Oh, maybe I'm just an old soul. No, you're a nice person. You're a Canadian. Yeah, that's it. That's fine. So I've just like, like I like taught, I found that most problems can easily be solved when it's like human to human. And you know, you mentioned the thing about what you do at your conferences where you get people to, you know, guide people around. And if they feel uncomfortable equal to talk to them, I think that's a beautiful touch. That's something that AI right now cannot do. I think that it is really important to invest in. But it is, it is identifying a warning vocabulary. What do you mean by that? So there are AI tools now that will, that can listen to someone speech pattern and identify potential problems. Depression, dependencies. So that might have some good clinical red flags. I could see that. That might be beneficial. Tell me, I mean, okay, so one of the things that you work on right now is smile farms. And you're working on adult with disabilities. So maybe speak a little bit about, because I love, I love your evolution. And now that you've branched out from, it's so interesting because you branched out from small business owner to operator of large business to operator of many businesses to. Now you're actually back as I guess chairman CEO of 100 flowers or I'm chairman and I'm temporary CEO, temporary CEO. So you, you've dabbled in all the different versions of entrepreneurship. And now you look at sort of the future and you're building something that helps people that have disabilities. So you want to sort of your own evolution and you want to multiple seasons of your own life. So think about building out smile farms. What purpose does it serve? How do you build something like that out properly so that it can still be a viable business? Because I see a lot of nonprofits and similar style businesses struggle because they don't know how to build a fundamental business around doing good and altruistic reasons. But let me talk about how AI can or technology can play into that as well. But I'm just curious how you see your own evolution, what you work on. They're all related. There's a common thread here. When COVID hit and where some people are working from home, I hate it. I'm a social animal. I need to be around other people. There's no question my wife will confirm that I was miserable. But the story of smile farms is one where so I'm the oldest of five kids. I have a youngest, my youngest brother, 10 years my junior who was the CEO of flowers. He's still on the board there, but health issues he had a step down. And I have two sisters and my middle brother Kevin was born, development is disabled. So that had a big impact on our lives close on his life on our lives too. And we grew up seeing my parents who didn't have a lot of means in those early days. Struggle because this is a dark age is on on mental health. And it were in a lot of programs and so they can be in our community. They'd rent a church hole on a Saturday morning and invite other families who had kids with challenges to come and put on a big pot of coffee. Unfortunately, they'll be smoking cigarettes at the time, which is why they're not around anymore. But they don't share, you know, the kids could play in a safe environment. The other siblings, we get to know other siblings who got with the same challenges. We weren't the only ones. It was a hot scrabble community. So people weren't always kind to people with disabilities. In fact, often not. So, but they sought out social connectivity, my parents, and told us that it was our responsibility to take care of Kevin. And to make sure he was protected and to make sure you helped other families had similar needs. And they can pay notes, hey, I heard the school is developing a program over here. Maybe you can get your kid into that program or there's a law pending that'll change. So it was there support and that we learned the benefit of community and we learned watching our parents do that. So, smile farms. So Kevin, good news is he lives a wonderful agency started by a good friend of my brother and I. His name is Walter Stockton. 45 years ago, he was teaching in college and there was a place in New York called Willowbrook, which was a state hospital. And a reporter for ABC News named Haravler Rivera. Did an ex-plase on the horrors of the conditions in this state hospital, of how people and development of disabilities were being abused that. So the government at the time, the first governor Cuomo shut it down. So we're going to show all these places. What year was this? This would be in the 70s. No, it's so recent enough that it's just 70s, 80s. Yeah, 80s, early 80s. And we're going to get they're going to be cared for in the communities while they really weren't services in the communities for them. But that that changed the attitudes in this country about mental health and delivery of services and Haravler Rivera with his undercover reporting was the lit the fuse. And he created a foundation. And my friend Walter applied to the foundation and got a grant of $10,000. And he passed the hat in his local community on Long Island and said, hey, owner of the transmission shop dentist. You know, these people being put out of there, a lot of them come from this community. Let's pass the hat and I'll open up a group home. It leads to be going to help attend of them. And he did fast forward. They take care of 8,000 people a day. They have hundreds of group homes around Long Island and we're fortunate enough that my brother Kevin lives in with those group homes that has since 1994. And he's doing well. But 10 years ago, Walter called my brother Chris and I and said, you know, your brother would be doing a lot better if I could find him some kind of a job in the community. You just have enough to do. And frankly, I have hundreds of people like him who are in our group homes and our programs here. All of whom could use jobs in the community. And I can't find jobs for any of them. But I have an idea. Let's have dinner together. Bring your checkbook. And his idea was why we buy this five acres. It's available. Build some greenhouses on it. And because you guys know this business, you know, how to grow stuff. Let's grow flowers and plants and your florists will buy them from us. So we know they have a built in market and will create work. And my brother Kevin still works there at the original smile thumbs and merch is Long Island. And we have 36 people work full time there. All of whom have developmental disabilities. And the program's going great. But if we're going to be involved in something, we want to grow it. And we know it always is an entrepreneur. Well, if you're not growing, you're fading. And so we have 13 campuses like that now where we employed some of which in four and five hundred people full time. A growing product. And now we're moving into hospitality too. So I ate at a wonderful restaurant in New York last night called Kraft. And Kraft is a restaurant owned by a famous chef who's on TV. He's been on TV. He's been on TV. He's on Iron Chef. Tom Cliqueo. It's a fabulous restaurant. Tom now has about eight of all people who work in his restaurant. He had one guy who is the best glass polisher in the world. He said the world's best wine glass polisher because he never wanted any hint of a spot on the glass. It would be polished before it goes on the floor. And that fellow now works was promoted about a year ago to work on the cooking line. And they have a team meeting every night at Kraft where the whole team gathers. And whoever's the general manager explains his what we have tonight. We have these many people coming in. We have these many reservations. He is our specials tonight. Chef, where we got here in the whole team gathers. And our one guy, it was his first night going to be on the line. He was spoken out to anybody in the place. He just quietly did his work. That night he gave a little thank you. It was so proud that he had been promoted to be on the cook line that night. And my buddy tells me it wasn't a dry eye in the house. So we're starting to move now to train people to work on hospitality industries because they're always looking for people. And we just happen to have a few friends in the Long Island in New York area who are proprietors of restaurants and hotels that are saying. If you can help me train people, I'll find jobs. I mentioned something before. I don't know if you agree with it or not. But I personally found my opinion that many, again, many companies that support underprivileged. They're not run exceptionally well like for profits. And I feel like they're always mismanaged. So when you build something like this, obviously, successfully, what are the things that you take into consideration when you're serving this group of people? So you can actually build a really good business that ultimately will end up serving this incredible group. I think it's the same. It's all about relationships. You have to be creating value. You have to find a way to sustain it because you can't look, we raise, you know, we raise money for our charitable efforts. But our goal is to make each of them get to the point where they're self-sustaining so that we can open another. Because the need is enormous. 80% of adults with disabilities are unemployed. It's crazy. The good news is the tough employment environment that we've seen the last few years has caused more companies to say, hey, it's the right thing to do. And it's a pragmatic thing to do if I can get people to tend to stay forever. So the tight employment situation has actually had a benefit. Not enough, but some benefit on this disabled community because more and more people are resilient. There's an agency in New York now. It's a staffing agency that only employs people on the spectrum. And they're superpowers that they find out what is this guy really good at. And they have this one guy who told me the story a couple of years ago. He's unbelievably good at spatial recognition, which is very good for certain kinds of technologies. But he's most productive. He's frankly only productive from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. So they had to figure that out and took a long time. But now they contract him out and he works on 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. Those five hours he is unbelievably productive and companies really value his skill because it helps them through some difficult issues. So it's happening, but I'll tell you, you're right. There's not enough good business management in the nonprofit world, but this is amazing entrepreneurs in that world too. Walter Stockton, my buddy, I told you about one of them. I'll tell you another one that I'm a huge fan of. I swear I don't talk to the person next to me on airplane, but I can tell you about 10 friends I have because I sat next to my airplane. And one of them is a lady by the name of Monica Block. So this is probably coming up on three years ago, January, three years ago. I'm returning from California and fly to Atlanta. I was a football player of Sunday. We had a little screens on the plane. Everyone's watching the football games. They were very exciting. And she said she's not a football fan, but everyone on the plane's watching the games and she's getting into it. She tells me a story, a young woman, but her husband had died that year. And what was her concern? Her concern was that her husband started a charity in Atlanta. And she was afraid that it wasn't going to keep on going because he wasn't around anymore. And we had already had smile phones up and running. So I said, well, why don't you put me in touch with the people who run it. And I'll introduce them to our smile phones team and our flowers teams. Maybe just something we can do together. Name of the company is called first step. It's a nonprofit. But here's how they go about this. They focus on a community. So can you imagine if you had the horrible misfortune of being homeless? How do you get out of being homeless? How do you change that? Or you get a job? How do you get a job? Oftentimes don't have a phone. So you can't call and apply. And they have you got to resume. You don't have anything to eat. How do you get showered? So there's your show up to work. People are running around away from you because you're stuck. How do you get a shave? How do you get toiletries? So first step stepping. Our husband. Marcus husband created this in Atlanta. It's not spreading around the country. And they're getting increased all over the world because it's the only. I'm sure there are others. But it's the one I know that's successfully bending the curve on people with homelessness. Other forms of disability. And people who previously were incarcerated. Who can't get a job. So they bought a stepping agency. They turned it into a knockoff profit. And they appended to it a social service component. Social workers clinicians to help these people. So we have at flowers and Harry and David. We have distribution centers around the country. Christmas is our busiest time for all of our gift baskets and our pairs of fruit baskets and our chocolate boxes. And so we have distribution centers around the country. And we had just built one in Atlanta. So I said, Monica, we're having trouble stepping our center here. We're apparently not in the right spot. But easy for people to get to. So she introduced me to first step stepping. And they're terrific people doing the good work because it's a right thing to do. But they run it like a business. And so right now we have 300 people working in our facility, routing our packages, getting them out to our customers for the holiday. And their on time and attendance performance is 94%. The rest of our population, not 94%. They're better. But they have coaches on site. They have facilities where they take their folks in the morning and they get them showered and they get them clothes. And I hear from them when I talk to the people who have come through their program and are working for us, the word they use the most is dignity. You restored my dignity. I'm able to imagine working with this coach of me getting a place to be able to stay at my own. And you know, as a seasonal work. So they're there with us for a few months. But they then have a few months under their belt. And they have a resume. And they have a track record. And they have credentials. And now they can go to get a job someplace else so they can get back on their feet. And so you're right. They tend not to be the best managed organization in the world. But here's one that I think needs a big old light shown on it because I think they're doing great work. What do you want? What would you wish people knew about this population of people in terms of workforce? Like some things that some myths that you just want to dispel? I think you've talked about it a couple of times already today, which is relationships. And work is a lot more than a paycheck. We can kill ourselves saying, oh, if I didn't need the money, I would never work. And maybe some people maybe. But I told you I hated working from home for the few days that I did that because I'm a social animal. And I think most of us are. And so my for my brother Kevin, you know, what my whole family is involved and has been involved in our business. Because we're florists. We need kids and relatives and uncles and aunts to help us. And my while my dad had his own business, he worked for me the holiday time. Because he wanted to see the rest of his family. My mother ran payroll. My younger brother was running a business and my sister's a talented floral designers and shop managers. And so if it was a Valentine's Day, my father wanted to see the family, he was our best router of our drivers. Because he knew every address, you know, knew where everything went. And. But we get together after all. And so Mother's Day, we gather back at my house now. We gather back at my house now, leading the day like 5, 30, 6 o'clock. And we have a caterer that we use and he makes up some nice platas for us. And everyone got his back. And we talk shop. We can't help it. You know, he's just got done with the exhaust of holiday. And my brother Kevin was never a part of those conversations because he was the only one not a business. Now he's part of the conversation. And I was talking about, oh yeah, but I already, I'm already planting the crop for the fall. We already put it up. We already started our fieldmums. He's in the conversation. The underlying point he has got is work is a lot more than a paycheck. It's who we are. It's who, why we get up in the morning. It's a bad dignity. Yes, it's about a paycheck. Mostly it's social. There was a couple who approached me to dinner. We run in May after Mother's Day. That's a fundraiser for the organization that Walter Stockton runs out. Long as now called connection. And a couple came up to me to thank me for what my family and I do to help connection and now smile farms. And I said, well, you know, they don't really do that much anymore. So it's running itself now. They said, well, let me tell you how it's impacted our lives. I had a daughter. They had three kids. One daughter was disabled. And she had aged out of school and therefore programs. And that's what happens. But this population. The dominant school is nothing more for them to do. And they don't have a job. If they're fortunate enough to have a family that they can live with, they started deteriorating. Because they're not having social interaction. And they told me about their daughter that she, her brother and sister who were married and lived nearby, started coming around less because she was annoying to be around. She was depressed. And she was complaining all the time. And he's the father confessed to me that he was working late a couple nights a week. Not that he had to, but he didn't want to be home to dinner. And he said, we approached Walter. And they tested our daughter to see where skill sets were. And she now works at smile farms. And they said, our lives have changed so much for the better. She's losing weight. Her health has improved. Her brother and sister are reengaged with her because she's not miserable to be around anymore. And her whole life has turned around. They were going shopping the next day because the next week mom and daughter were going shopping. There was a dance and she wanted to get a new outfit. They go to the dance and she was hoping that one of the guys she works with at smile farms had asked her to dance. Work is a lot more than a paycheck. It's also very, very social. I love that. I think that's an important lesson when you're looking to hire people. I've never had this conversation before with anybody when they're looking to hire people. I think at the very least start to think about how you can give people and community an opportunity. Because I don't think that many people do. Well, you know, it has an impact on our workplace positive. Let me explain. So with smile farms, we depend a lot on volunteers. So we run fundraisers. We had a big dinner a couple of weeks ago in Manhattan and New York City. Big success. But we had 45 1-800-Flowers team members who volunteered to work back there. They're checking people in the door. They're selling food stuff. They're working with our farmers on who's getting the farmer of the year. So they're taking their own time and they're all going to, so they're coming to giving their own time to volunteer to work with smile farms. Well, not everybody's going to do that. But those who do are special people. And oftentimes they'll bring a friend with them who doesn't work for us. And a few months later, I see that friend working in our office. And I said, where are you from here? I learned about your company. And I heard there was an opening I applied. I started here on Monday. Like what you represent. Yes. So it's self-selecting. Who wants to be a part of that environment? Who's not comfortable? So when you come to apply for us and you go to Cheryl's cookies facility in Westafield, Ohio. A Westafield, Ohio. And you come in and use in the first person you see as a receptionist who's in a wheelchair. It tells you something. You may not even register. It's something's different here. And it may not be for you. So you've made this item. I really don't want to. I'm not going to mail in that application after I fill it out. Or you might say, hey, this is the kind of place that I want to be. So it creates some kind of selection criteria. And for us, that's been a very positive dress to write people and their friends. Yeah. I love it. Where can people get the book? I mean, we're going to put it in the show notes. So like the Amazon link. So it came out just September 24th. Hit the best seller list the first week. I was right. Drive it out. Thank you. And it's available at all the bonds and novel stores, independent bookstores and a place called Amazon. You may have heard of. Where else do you want to send people? Do you have socials that you like to connect with people on our website? I post a lot of edited versions of our weekly newsletter, which is called Celebrations Pulse, which people can sign up for. And I post them on LinkedIn a lot too. I think LinkedIn is a good self-selecting audience of people. And it tickles me that people read our stuff, listen to our stuff. That's a huge list, by the way. That's amazing. Yeah, I'm knocked out by it. But of course, I wanted to be 20 million now. Of course, of course. Well, hopefully, it's a genetic defect. Hopefully, exactly. Hopefully a few will find it after listening. They will. The last thing I like to ask. I used to ask, what would you tell your younger self? We sort of gone through your journey. So I like to phrase it differently. I would ask, what would be a lesson that you want to lead with your kids? I already talked about the one to be a host. But I don't. I think I've always been curious. And I think it's because I hang around, you know, being the oldest. So I was exposed more exposed more to adults than my siblings were. Because I was working with my dad. I was around him and his brothers and his mother. And so I was around adults a lot. And I just always been curious. And it's always benefited me being curious. And I could be interviewing someone for a job. And sometimes you're five minutes into the interview. You realize it's not a good fit. So you can be rude and ended after six minutes. Or you could say this person has experiences. And they've seen and learned things that I haven't. What can I learn from them? How can I make this a focus group of one? So curiosity is always benefited me. So if there's anything I'd encourage my kids to nurture the curiosity streak and feed it.