Speaker 0:01

Welcome to The Heart-Led Business Show, where compassion meets commerce and leaders lead with love. Join your host, Tom Jackobs, as he delves into the insightful conversations with visionary business leaders who defy the status quo, putting humanity first and profit second. From heartfelt strategies to inspiring stories, this podcast is your compass in the world of conscious capitalism. So buckle up and let your heart guide your business journey.

Defining Heart-Led Business

Tom Jackobs 0:36

Gather round for a heartwarming tale of entrepreneurial excellence. Today we have Justin Ricklefs, Kansas City native, devoted husband and father of five. He is the mastermind behind Guild Collective where clarity, connection, and creativity harmoniously collide. We'll dive into Justin's journey of transforming brands and businesses with heart-led magic. So, buckle up as we explore how he's not just growing companies, but cultivating caring communities. On this episode of the Heart-Led Business Show. Justin, welcome to the show. I'm really excited for today's conversation and especially how you've been able to kinda build these communities and with heart and still making profit doing it. So I'm really excited to dive into that today. But of course, the first question I always like to ask is, what's your definition of a heart-led business?

Justin Ricklefs 1:30

That's a great question, Tom. In its most simple form how I like to begin conversations like this,'cause I'm exploring it as well for myself at our business is using care as a competitive advantage. That's the most simple way I've tried to condense this thinking is, Hey, companies, cultures, corporations, we can use care as the competitive advantage. And of course, you can't care if you don't have heart. And yeah, does, do businesses have hearts? Do brands have hearts like I, I don't know. But if we can have care as our competitive advantage, that to me signals that the heart is incredibly important, and of course it is.

Tom Jackobs 2:11

Oh yeah, of course. Now, how do you define the care?

Justin Ricklefs 2:16

So interesting timing. We, I just launched my first book into the wild and it's called Give A Damn.

Tom Jackobs 2:22

Congrats.

Justin Ricklefs 2:24

Thank you. It was quite the journey, which we can talk about if we want, but thank you. And the title's Give A Damn, the subtitle is the catalyst for Caring Companies, and the thesis was, it really was my own exploration, which we've said Give A Damn in our business legitimately, almost for a decade now. We're about almost 10 years old and we've said this phrase, Give A Damn. We put it on stickers and coffee mugs and t-shirts and hoodies, and we just, it's like this, it's become this thing that, that people know us for and that's wonderful. The phrase is compelling. It's catchy. It's got some, it's slightly provocative, right?

Tom Jackobs 3:04

Yeah.

Justin Ricklefs 3:05

And we didn't make it up. We're not the only ones who say it but, in our community, we've become like the give damn people. And underneath that, as I started to sit with the work was okay, it is a, it is messy. Humanity's messy. Business is messy. It's hard. There aren't perfect formulas to follow that perfectly predict success. It's not always up until the right. One of my fellow entrepreneurs said, he is not everybody's crushing it all the time.

Tom Jackobs 3:32

Right.

Justin Ricklefs 3:33

And so to get to the point of your question underneath that packaging of Give A Damn. The mantra of the mindset, the movement, what, however you wanna describe it, is our four really core Cs, the letter Cs, and for us that ladders back up to a caring company, and the four being curious, being compassionate, being clear as leaders, which that one's my most difficult, frankly. And I talk about that in the book. And then ultimately being consistent, like doing it again and again. When you screw up and you fall down and you make a mistake and you fumble it, you get back up and you try again at being curious. Clear and compassionate. And so is that like Webster's definition of care? Probably not, but it's ours and it's what form, bakes this, the actual analogy we use in the book is a fire, like a really curated, messy, organic thing that ultimately fire takes forever to get going. And then once it's going, it provides heat and it provides warmth and it does, give to others. But that is a very long-winded, meandering way to answer your question, but care to us is, care is part of it for sure, but it's built on these other pillars of those four Cs that ultimately, if we stay at it long enough, care can be the competitive advantage because then talent wants to come, be, stay, grow, invest. Clients are attracted to retain experience something great, right? It's, and again, it's not simple. It's not black and white. It's not either or, it's not super easy, but it's, that's the movement of the leader. And ultimately then the business is towards how do we develop, how do we prioritize care as our competitive advantage? Because we can all just tell a million stories about experiences we've had as employees, as leaders, or as clients when the thing didn't care much about us and it didn't feel great.

Care in Action Stories

Tom Jackobs 5:33

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. When you do have those caring moments from, another company, it stands out by far from every other experience. And it's just wow, why doesn't everybody do this? And I remember one, one time I was, taking a flight and it was on my birthday and I was just sitting at the gate and United, it was United Airlines and my name gets called up to the gate. And I was like, oh, cool. I get, I was like, that's weird. I've already been upgraded. Huh? So I go up to the gate the lady said, oh, Mr. Jackobs, we understand it's your birthday today. I said, yeah, it is. And she handed me a birthday card. And then when I got on the flight, of course I'd been upgraded and the flight attendant comes over with a nice glass of champagne and it was like, yeah, happy birthday, Mr. Jackobs. Would you like some champagne? I was like, it's eight o'clock in the morning. Of course I would.

Justin Ricklefs 6:26

A hundred percent.

Tom Jackobs 6:28

That was care. United Airlines is doing that. I was like, maybe only for their platinum flyers, but still it makes you feel good.

Justin Ricklefs 6:37

Yeah. Did the champagne cost something? Sure. Did the birthday card cost something? Sure. But they have, and that's what's fascinating, Tom. It's a perfect story'cause it's like, it's already in their system, their CRM, their billing info, like they already know it.'cause you had to fill it out on the front end. Someone like United and certainly Southwest is, and other bigger companies like Chick-fil-A, like people are realizing, oh, this isn't just like this cute thing that maybe every once in a while would be nice to do, it's like, no, now Tom's talking about United on his podcast and he cares a great deal about, and he probably makes buying decisions now based on how he felt in that moment, on his birthday, waiting for his flight. It is a direct economic advantage to give champagne to Tom and upgrade him to first class on his birthday day.

Tom Jackobs 7:25

That's right. Yeah, exactly. And the, the recognition, and I think more and more businesses, need to be doing just those little things. And I think we overcomplicate it sometimes and the businesses and we're so focused on what do we need to do to grow our business that we're not thinking about the customer all the time and the care that we should be giving to them.

Justin Ricklefs 7:46

For sure and I love telling Chick-fil-A stories'cause I've got a couple buddies here in Kansas City who are owner operators of Chick-fil-A's. And if you think about it, it's a pretty dangerous business model to staff your frontline worker with, as with 16 year olds. I have a 16-year-old and it's a dangerous proposition.

Tom Jackobs 8:09

Yes.

Justin Ricklefs 8:10

What's true though, not all the time, of course, but what's true about their brand is it can be 34 degrees in Kansas City, freezing, freaking cold. And you roll up, you get, pull the app out, you pull your apple payout, you order a$14 meal. And the child the teenager's standing in the elements. You're not talking to'em through a screen. They're in the drive-through line. And they got, you know, they're freezing cold. Their face is red. They got hoodies on, and all the gloves. And they got, they're juggling like the iPad and the tap thing. And almost every time you, it's a pleasant exchange. It's a delight.

Tom Jackobs 8:54

Yeah.

Justin Ricklefs 8:54

At the end you're like, thank you. And they say, my pleasure. And if they don't say My pleasure, you think they should instantly be fired? You're like, what are you doing here? Working here? You don't say My pleasure. And it's like that's right. That's care. And it's, and it would've, it honestly, it would've been cheaper from a staffing standpoint to just have the drive through big menu board, they like, there's a million other decisions they could have made, but they've prioritized that as competitive advantage. And oh, by the way, it's also more efficient. You also get more accuracy on the order. You get more frequency of return of visit, and they're crushing their competition in terms of like per restaurant revenue, and they're only open six days a week.

Tom Jackobs 9:33

Yeah. Four times. What I understand or saw recently is four times the revenue. The average is four times what a McDonald's would make, and they're doing it six days versus seven days.

Justin Ricklefs 9:45

That's right.

Inside Guild Collective

Tom Jackobs 9:45

Just unbelievable. Yeah. But it comes down to that care. What a great case study too for a business that cares for people. So sorry we didn't go through this sooner, but tell me a little bit about your business or tell the audience a little bit about your business and, and what makes it heart-led.

Justin Ricklefs 10:03

Sure. Yeah. Nothing to be sorry about. It's, Guild Collective is a brand consultancy. So we're about 10 years old based in Kansas City, team of seven. So we're not a massive group in terms of numbers, but we are heart-led and in part it's because, it's really interesting you asked that'cause we're in our own, I'd say evolution as a business to be more declarative. This has always been true and it's always been in our essence, but we're being more declarative about building human first brands, especially in their lovely conversations, but there's lots of conversations about tech, right? AI and all this impact of that. And those are necessary and needed. They're not bad, but what's, and all these things we're talking about with United Southwest, Chick-fil-A, local restaurants, Wilber's concepts of unreasonable hospitality. The businesses that are just generating so much good and connectivity are doubling down on humanity. They're going all in and we use this little kind of provocative phrase of injecting humanity into your brand.

Tom Jackobs 11:13

Yeah.

Justin Ricklefs 11:14

The ones that, for us, we call that project the human First brand blueprint and and some people might say, is that a tagline or is that a marketing statement? It's this crystallized, distilled phrase that becomes the brand's heartbeat, and that's literally one of our deliverables. Like these workshops, we lead end up distilling into these two to forward phrases that are the brand heartbeat. And what we believe is that when that brand heartbeat is clear and compelling. It genuinely beats through the organization because if the inside of the heart isn't healthy, and we relate that to the inside of the culture and the organization. If the inside is not healthy, you can't advertise your way to a healthy business. You could maybe get it for a little bit and buy enough Google ads or billboards or whatever the like tactic is. But we've got companies that come to us and they think they have a tactic problem, oh, we didn't invest enough in TikTok. And it's no, no, your heart's not healthy

Tom Jackobs 12:15

Yeah.

Justin Ricklefs 12:15

As a brand. And once it is like that sucker beats really well and it pumps blood through the whole organization, and then those people begin to tell the story. Because they love working there or they love being there, or they love the culture and it's a, all that's a byproduct. That I can get super excited about that because I do think brands these days are distracted by these tactic conversations that aren't irrelevant. There is a place for, how does your business show up in AI search? A hundred percent. But there's this other meaningful opportunity and invitation really to diagnose how the brand's heart is and then build a plan. We call it the human first brand blueprint, to begin to beat that heart strong and clear so that the growth happens generatively not in this forced way. And so yeah, all that to say the heart of a brand is really important. And I think to be a, to take it one step further is it's the leader's work, certainly in our organization, not like the leader leadership is not a title, it's a mindset mentality, but it's the leadership team's work on all sides of the equation to do their own heart's work. Vulnerably my own struggle is it's hard to connect the head and heart for me. The head is just like the natural operating system. It's like here's the plan here's the logic, here's the vision, here's where we're going. And it's like, how are we gonna get there? What do you, how's it feel to get there? I'm like, ah, I don't know. That integration is really important.'cause yes, there is a part of our buying process that's head-based. There's part of our buying process, gut based, but ultimately there's a huge part of our buying processes our career decisions that are from the heart. And I do think it's the leader's job to begin to integrate that and do the work required to understand their own feelings, their own heart, their own desires, their own delight, their own fears. And so anyhow, that's a very long answer to your question. It was a great question.

Tom Jackobs 14:20

That was great. And you know what, you were talking too about, you can buy your way into getting more clients, but if you're, you have a leaky bucket, they're going out the back door, then you're not really gaining anything. You're just throwing more money at it versus really working on the heart and the inside of the heart, as you say. And getting that straight so it doesn't leak blood all over the place.

Simple Delight Tactics

Justin Ricklefs 14:45

Yes. Yes. And to your point earlier, some of these ideas are really simple, we get so attached to chasing shiny new stuff, an example, and like its most small business application we work with this guy named Wade Roberts, who's a doctor of physical therapy, and he is freaking awesome. He's built this beautiful golf therapy per, rehab and performance business. And one of our, one of our brilliant marketing ideas, and we sat down, back down with him was, Hey, when your annual clients renew? They all play golf. They love golf. They love being part of clubs, memberships, exclusive stuff. Give them a really nice Travis Matthew quarter zip with your logo on it as a gift at the renewal of the deal. It's not that brilliant. Wade was like,'cause he is building a business, it's so hard. He's oh my gosh. It's, yeah. Like that touch point is so meaningful. And they've invested a year here. They've built friends, they've built community, they've gotten stronger. Their golf game has improved. And that would be awesome'cause they'd actually wear that. And then their friends at the country club would be like, you know what's Robert's PT? Why don't I have one of those? You can go to Robert's PT now and be a client. And so it's just these simple, yeah, again, caring human first movements in a business that we just need to sometimes, clap our hands and wake up and be like, oh, what would our client really love? What would delight them right now?

Balancing Profit and Care

Tom Jackobs 16:07

Yeah. Yeah. And so I'm sure there's a lot of business owners out there that are thinking, oh yeah, this is all fine and great, but I'm struggling just to make payroll on a monthly basis, let alone being heart-led. What type of advice would you give somebody that's in that, I wanna be heart-led, I gotta pay the bills at the same time. Like, how do you balance making a profit and still being heart-led?

Justin Ricklefs 16:32

Yeah, I obviously, everybody's context is gonna be different for me. The BS belief I used to have that it was either or and it was this, Hey, you gotta crush it, check the humanity at the door, crush it, drive profit at the highest possible level, and f all the humanity part, or this like super soft coddly, codependent. You just have to be so nice. And there's a big distinction between nice and kind, and niceness sometimes is like really self-protective and not clear and kind can be really freaking clear.

Tom Jackobs 17:17

Yeah.

Justin Ricklefs 17:17

And still have a heart. And so I'm in process on all this and there was a period of my entrepreneurial life where I would prop up the, I'd call it care. It wasn't even really care, it was more. Please stay here and work here please. It was just this kind of soft, squishy, definitely more nice than kind and I've, I'm growing, I'm in process and I'm getting clearer and stronger on my, my, my belief of oh, no. True. At Kathy, the founder is, Chick-fil-A is right. Care and commerce can coexist. That's the rumor. One of the, his rumored kind of go-to phrases was care and commerce can coexist. And I was like no, that's it. That's the mission. The journey I want to be on is how do you accelerate care and accelerate growth from a healthy business profit perspective? We've learned this. Most of the time, the hard way when you aren't, when the business isn't generating enough margin and return, the leader is then afraid and fearful and scarce minded really hesitant and honestly not healthy. At least that was my kind of journey.

Tom Jackobs 18:18

Yeah.

Justin Ricklefs 18:19

And, but when you start to begin to get clear and you have the right team size, some of it's like you gotta, and this in the United Airlines sense with the United Airlines flight that you were on your birthday was going down. And all those oxygen masks popped out, you wouldn't grab that sucker and be like, Hey, random stranger, here's your oxygen. They tell you to put your oxygen mask on first. leaders have, especially the ones that like tend towards the nice scale, they're like out there just putting oxygen on clients and the community and their team and the me Meanwhile, they're their whole, they're like gasping for a big, deep breath. And I think once you put that on yyourself, you get clear enough in your heart, in your head connection to go, oh, what is the best thing for me. Not the greedy thing. What's the best, healthiest move for me as the leader? How do I then from that place, give clarity, consistency, curiosity, and compassion so that others can benefit too? I don't know if that's helpful from a metaphor standpoint, but I do think the, the tension's real. And it's too simple to think, it's a binary choice of, oh, it's gotta hammer profit, or you gotta be super kind or super nice. I think the, blend that we're all trying to find is no, how can care and commerce coexist so that we have these cultures that are healthy, strong, generative, and ultimately, just like a good campfire would, is a gathering place for people who want to come and be around it because it's putting off warmth, not causing a lot of damage.

Tom Jackobs 19:53

Yeah. And I like what you said, the distinction between care or of kindness and being nice. Being nice versus being kind. And I think some, sometimes, especially in sales conversations where, you know, you might be struggling and you're like, I'm not sure if I really wanna take on this client, but I need the money. The kind thing to do would be to tell that client, look, I'm not gonna work with you. And this,

Justin Ricklefs 20:18

yes.

Tom Jackobs 20:18

Let them go because at the end of the day, if it's not a fit, it's not a fit. That to me takes a lot of courage for somebody, a business owner to say, you know what, I don't want that business because it's doesn't fit into my heart-led approach. And let that, let it go. Yeah.

Justin Ricklefs 20:36

Yes. And I think, to get maybe a little woowoo with you, I think the heart is the, it is the, it's the source. It's the energetic field. It's the field of desire and longing and in that is also fear. And I think back to your practical point of if the leader's feeling that stuff and not naming it, everybody else experiences it anyway. Like they're, everybody's running around on eggshells and tiptoes because they're like, oh man, just a fearful mess. And he's out there like trying to hustle stuff.'cause he's afraid like they, they pick that up. They feel it anyway. As oppose of going, whew. I think transparency buzzword that's been botched a lot of ways'cause it's not leader's job to overly transparent cause that's weird. But to name Hey, whew, we got our work cut out for us. Y'all I'm honestly afraid of what the next 90 days look like. What do you guys think we should do? Because it's like the closer I get to the heart of people building whatever size of businesses, it doesn't even matter. Nobody knows. Nobody has the perfect answer. Everybody's trying to figure it out. And so when the leader opens their hearts and says eh, I don't know what to do here, guys, what should we do? The team is like, here's an idea, here's an instinct. I appreciate you've being honest. I already knew the revenue was down. Let's make a damn plan and figure it out. It's a much more vulnerability in a, in an appropriate professional context is really freaking awesome.

Tom Jackobs 22:05

Yeah. Yeah. I had a fitness center before I, am doing what I'm doing now, but I will love the employees there on the first and the 15th, they knew not to come see Tom because that was payroll day instead, especially on the first when payroll and rent were due. He like, do not come see Tom.

Justin Ricklefs 22:24

And like, how's it the first again, we are just here.

Tom Jackobs 22:30

Rents do. How am I gonna pay for everybody? Once I figured out the margins and got the heart involved into that business, it got a lot better. And then the stress goes away, which opens up, your pathway to, not scarce scarcity mindset.

Justin Ricklefs 22:47

Yes.

Tom Jackobs 22:48

That growth mindset.

Justin Ricklefs 22:48

This one little quote that I'm, I might butcher a little bit, but this guy, I think his last name is Brennaman. He was like the chairman of Home Depot. He's a Kansas guy. He has this quote in his leadership book, again, I might butcher it a little bit, but the concept was the leader's job is to absorb fear and exude hope. And again, I don't, that, I don't think that means don't tell the truth or don't be like, don't be real. It is yeah, the first and the 15th, it's eh. I think the belief of everybody should act like an owner. It's bs. Like no, they shouldn't. They don't know what it takes it, it's not their job to be afraid on the fifties. That's right. Yeah, that's right. And so I just like that concept of, yeah, the fifth because I felt the same stuff of oh my gosh, like how are we gonna make it? What's gonna happen? This and that.

Tom Jackobs 23:35

Okay.

Justin Ricklefs 23:36

Moments on the calendar are really tricky and I think a leader needs some outlet for that, whether it's a partner, spouse, a friend. I think it's really important to be in a community of other CEO types that are trying to figure this stuff out.'cause you can go, oh man, I'm a mess. And they're like, yeah, me too. Here's what I did when I hit that spot in the journey. It was just so helpful to be connected like that.

Tom Jackobs 23:57

Yeah, it definitely is. I'm lucky enough to be in a couple of those type of masterminds where we can share and.

Justin Ricklefs 24:04

yes.

Tom Jackobs 24:05

understand what's going on and do some deeper work, which helps the business in so many different ways. When you're in an island, especially now with more remote work, you're, doing things by yyourself. You don't always have that outlet to, work with other people. Yeah.

Justin Ricklefs 24:21

yes.

Where to Find Justin

Tom Jackobs 24:22

That's awesome. Justin, tell us how can people learn more about you and I know you have a book coming out as well, how can we learn about you and potentially work with you?

Justin Ricklefs 24:32

Yeah. No, I appreciate it. It's a joy to be with you and have these conversations. Tom, I, yeah, practically we, I write on LinkedIn four or five times a week. Just whatever's kind of top of consciousness there. So you just search my name in LinkedIn. Would love to get connected there. I think that's a cool place where people that are sharing heart-led stories. Building little communities of cool conversations. And then, yeah, on Amazon you could just search, Give A Damn, and there's a big, bright yellow, I've got a copy of it right here, but big, bright yellow. This is the author's copy. It has this not for resale ugly banner, but yeah, big yellow, book and a bright orange flame from a match, which is a story y'all have to read about in the book. So yeah, those two ways are probably the most practical. But yeah, I appreciate the ask.

Tom Jackobs 25:18

Awesome. Justin, thank you so much for being on the show today and sharing your wisdom with the audience. Any last words of advice that you'd like to give?

Justin Ricklefs 25:26

I don't know about advice, but what I would say is, we all need more conversations like this about how we can build care as a competitive advantage. I think that when we start telling those stories of the United Airlines and the Chick-fil-A's and the Roberts PTs, like corporations get better and therefore it has a huge impact on community, on family life, on income levels on. Quality of life on job satisfaction, like work shouldn't suck. This movement towards, hey, how do we, how do we build and, and go to places that are heart-led? So I salute you for the work you're doing to generate conversations like this, Tom.

Tom Jackobs 26:04

Awesome. Thank you again for being on the show. We really do appreciate you.

Justin Ricklefs 26:07

Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Tom.

Tom Jackobs 26:09

Absolutely. Great, and thank you listeners for tuning into the show today. We really do appreciate you as well, so make sure you're checking out everything that Justin is doing. We're gonna include all that down into the show notes, so you can just click there, go to his LinkedIn profile and go check out the book on Amazon as well. And while you're down there clicking around in the show notes, there might be a little button there to give a show a rating and review. So if you could do that for us, I'd appreciate it. Just help spread the word about the Heart-Led Business Show and helps those that are wanting to be heart-led and make a profit feel good about getting some advice and, help them out along that journey. So, until next time, lead with your heart.

Speaker 2 26:53

You've been listening to The Heart-Led Business Show, hosted by Tom Jackobs. Join us next time for another inspiring journey into the heart of business.