Hippie CEO Life #50 - It's All About the People
A behind the scenes view of building a more humanistic company.
March 24, 2023
“Put people first. Our teams, our customers, our stakeholders. Be a force for good in people’s lives.” ~Aaron Fossum
i spent this week in Las Vegas attending Adobe Summit and i spent a lot of time just observing — observing how people networked, observing how businesses used the time to prospect, just observing how people interacted in general. The one major thing i walked away with was the importance of seeing people as people and not as a “prospect” or a “sales opportunity” or a “professional connection” but as fellow humans.
My friend Aaron Fossum, who leads digital analytics at Norwegian Cruise Line, wrote about the topic this week on LinkedIn, as Aaron said, “Put people first. Our teams, our customers, our stakeholders. Be a force for good in people’s lives.”
At Adobe Summit this week, there was still a lot of the traditional business games being played where networking isn’t really about connecting on a human level but more seeing others as transactional relationships. And i get it, that’s the way business has been done for a very long time.
But for me, long ago, i chose a different path. i wasn’t interested in transactional relationships, you know, those relationships where there is always an expectation of some quantifiable “return on investment.” My interest was, and still very much is, in connecting with people on a human level. That led me to build a company that was designed from the very beginning to do business in a more humanistic way.
So being more human is how i spent this week in Vegas. Not maximizing the number of people i could meet, not maximizing the number of leads i could generate, not maximizing the number of deals i could close. Rather i focused on maximizing the quality of time i could spend connecting, really connecting, with people on a human level. No expectations, not looking for anything in return, other than authentic, human connection.
This is where i’ve been told in the past that this is no way to run a successful business but it’s all i know and it’s what works for me so i’m going to keep on doing it.
✌️💛
