What's Love Got to Do With It?

Think business and love don’t go together? Think again.

We use love to describe products and services that we connect with all the time. 

“I love that store downtown, they know my style!”

“I love my florist, they make it so special for my family!”

 “I just love how this facial makes me feel!” 

If you think about it, love lives in our wallets too. We want to feel seen by the businesses we spend our time and money with. We want to love the products that we invest in, and we want to tell other people what we love about them. 

Love is as important in business as money is. 

We want to love our customers back.

We want to love the products and services we offer.

We want to love the business we’ve built.

And in small towns, I have found that women in business want to love their community too.

Is love really the goal?

I’ve been questioned before by other business development professionals about why love is important to identify as a goal. “ Love doesn’t belong here,” they’d say. But what I’ve learned through my years of coaching swimming and the power of loyalty at the sport  level is that if I coach with love, I retain more swimmers and I make a bigger difference. A bigger difference in their lives, a bigger impact on my own life, and a long lasting impact on both of our futures. 

In fact love plays a huge role in sport in general just like in business. 

If you’re a sports fan just think about it. 

You love the game. 

You love the players.(sometimes) 

You love the team. 

You love the stadium. 

You love the stadium food.

You love the social time. 

You love cheering and communicating your love. 

Athletes see it in a similar way. 

They love their sport. 

They love challenges and competing. 

They love their coach and work their asses off for them. 

They love the feeling on the podium. 

They love the journey of training and developing.

They love their teammates. 

And to bring it full circle, we must acknowledge that the coach loves it too.

The coach loves the thrill of serving, winning, and competing. 

The coach loves the athlete. 

The coach loves the game. 

The coach loves the life outcomes that are made possible through sport.

Love motivates. 

I have seen that love is the most powerful motivator on this planet. Just think about it. Athletes skip many social opportunities, parties, and other “fun teenager stuff” for the love of the game. Coaches wake up at zero dark hundred to support their athletes for the love of the game. Fans scream at the television through years of seasonal losses, time and time again, for the love of the game.

We will stretch, reach, sacrifice and strive with love as the motivation.

Imagine if the intensity of love in sport could translate directly to love for your business and for your products and services?

What if your customers and team members loved your business, offers, and mission just as much as you do? 

Why is love the goal? 

I tell a story sometimes to my clients about a pub in my university town that sold British fare and beer. One time a man named George who had immigrated from England found the pub and just loved how the food, atmosphere, and service reminded him of home. He would come in every day after work and have a pint at 4:30 p.m. to kick off his evening. On Fridays, he started sticking around for fish and chips with his pint. Then, because the fish and chips (and bangers and mash) were so good, he started inviting friends to come with him. 

One day I went to this pub during lunch hour, sat at the bar, and welcomed the opportunity to speak with the business owner. As an eager, bright-eyed business student, I quizzed him a little more than he might’ve liked about the restaurant and the hows and whys of what he’s done. And during that conversation, one answer he gave me to one of my questions has never left me. 

I asked “why did you call your pub 100 Georges?” 

He replied, “I’m not here to attract thousands of customers that come and go. All I need to do is welcome 100 Georges and love them back.”

How does he love George back? 

He loves his business model and so he takes great care to send messages that reflect it’s awesomeness. 

He loves England and so he brings those feelings of home to people who are missing theirs. 

His chef loves making food that speaks to the soul and so he empowers his chef to have what she needs to make it come alive. 

His servers love seeing their customers happy and so he motivates them with support, a living wage, and a great place to work because he loves them too. 

He loves the neighbourhood and wants to make it better so he keeps up the property and contributes to community events. 

Getting the picture? 

This is the power of love in business. 

Some industry speak refers to it as brand loyalty, but in small towns that brand loyalty happens face to face, shoulder to shoulder, heart to heart, and can be experienced in a multitude of ways specific to rural and small town contexts. For mission driven founders and business owners, love is even more important. Regardless of whether they are in a small town or not, these people are so passionate and driven to create change that love, sometimes, is the only thing that sustains them and is sure to magnetize the people in their audience who love the same thing.

What is your love language? 

When I get into the nitty-gritty with my clients about tactical approaches they can take to really spice up their relationship with their clients and staff, I start to think about what makes love happen. In my world I have experienced all different types of relationships just like you have I’m sure. When you look back at all of those relationships there’s something about what’s common among them, that someone coined as your “love language”. 

A love language is the way that you show how much you love someone with the exact actions that you take (and in return how you like to be shown love). Some people show love through touch and affection. Some people show love through service. And some people want affirmations from the people they love to explicitly say it. 

At With Chéla Inc. we help our clients to fall in love with us, and us with them, in a number of ways. 

The first and most important way is that above all else, we care what our clients' needs are and where they want to go. We honour their journey, their vision, their definition of success and potential, and we walk beside them, supporting them to achieve their goals and dreams, exactly how they define them. This gesture of absolute co-development and partnership sends the genuine signal that we are for you and you are for us. A sense of belonging begins to form and connection develops and as we go through our processes together.

We fall in love. Not that notebook kind of love, but the kind that makes you believe that this person sees you for who you are, gets you and totally has your back 100% of the time. It’s unconditional. Experiencing that in a customer setting is unique and above all other experiences, it’s magical according to our customers. They may not call it love but it is.

The next way that we show our love for our clients is by unapologetically and wholeheartedly committing to reducing gender inequality in small towns. As a firm, we work to disrupt systems of power that have held women back. We work with governments, NGOs, and community organizations to help them rise in their service capacity for women, their ability to create accessibility from a gendered lens, and to do better by the needs and barriers people face due to their gender. We know that by applying an intersectional feminist lens to strategy work,  communities rise. And when communities rise, women rise too.  

This work reminds me of how I support my swimmers. I coach them on deck, I plan practices, and I support their assistant coaches to meet our values and training commitments. But, in a larger context, I also contribute to the overall conversation in Swimming Canada wide. 

By engaging in national conversations about trans youth in our sport. 

By engaging in national conversations about girls retention beyond age 14 in our sport. 

By contributing to strategic plans for our small town swim teams so that every kid, in every town, can find an inclusive club who is also prepared to meet their performance goals. 

Finally, the third way that we show our love to our clients, and what truly makes that love reciprocal, is through the commitments we make. Commitments about our offers, our values, the experiences we create inside of our communities and spaces, and the decisions you can depend on us to make. There’s no question about what to expect at With Chéla Inc. Why? Because we are unwavering in these commitments. 

Regardless of how you send signals of love, it’s important that you do. Knowing your love language helps it feel more you(more on brand) and therefore more sustainable and impactful. Above are our three areas of focus. What will yours be? 

Love is real in business. 

Love is the gateway and guide for your clients. 

Love is what motivates. 

Love is what brought you here. 

Find out what it feels like to be loved by me and Team Radiance. 

It’s pure magic, notebook level shit. 

#swooning 

Ché