Lessons - How One Man Built the Flower Industry's Biggest Success Story | Jim McCann - 1-800-Flowers Founder

In this lessons episode, discover the story behind load star and the ten timeless pillars of success that shape a fulfilling life. Learn how building meaningful relationships drives true achievement. Learn how collaboration with brilliant minds unlocks personal growth and learn why reinvention and resilience are essential for navigating uncertainty. 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 ten 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 would consider the core principle or these things that worked out for you and may not be the best playbook for another entrepreneur? I wrote 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 not all of them had computers. We didn't have the technology in place. Because Vanguard Zoom was already around, but we hadn't really been using it much. All of a sudden, well, we got to get people up and running on the network. We didn't know if anyone was 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, and especially in our food businesses, like Harry and David and popcorn factory. You could sell some nice big tin of popcorn, three different flavors of popcorn in it. Especially if they had kids at a kid in busy, and 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 waiting on you because you'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 forever, but I hope we have occasion to chat someday. So he went back to me and said, well, 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 people, 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 did the school I haven't gotten to Zoom classes yet. And I wasn't qualified to answer you. So I built a little network of the 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. So two and a half years ago, and Naples, Florida, driving with my wife, phone rings. 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. I said, yeah. He says, why don't you and I do a book together? On so all this work we're doing around relationships. And I'm thinking, what's the right of this man's brilliant, right? 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 of the other. And so I said, love to George. She waxed me in the arm. And so I was over two and a half years ago. And it was sort of a real long work project, but it was not easy to read. 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. I think 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 and 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, 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 and thought figured out got properly diagnosed and figured out how to rewire his own brain so that he could become a scholar, which he has. 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, so he became an accountant. Then he 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 be to know the music. Wonderful saxophone player. He became a bodybuilder. He was a consultant to the U.S. weightlifting team, improved their weights. One Olympic, over the others, but most of it's ever 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 did you, you should have told me before I want to put it on the table. Well, we get it out here. It's interesting how the words are so important, right? Well, 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 been. We're not him. 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 and 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. Load style 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 impacted. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.