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JULY 7, 2022
Mind Y
ur Business
THE BALTIMORE JEWISH HOME
Marc Bodner & Lee Brower: Gratitude and Motion By Yitzchok Saftlas
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his column features business insights from a recent “Mind Your Business with Yitzchok Saftlas” radio show. The weekly “Mind Your Business” show – broadcasting since 2015 – features interviews with Fortune 500 executives, business leaders and marketing gurus. Prominent guests include: John Sculley, former CEO of Apple and Pepsi; Dick Schulze, founder and Chairman Emeritus of Best Buy; and Beth Comstock, former Vice Chair of GE; among over
400+ senior-level executives and business celebrities. Yitzchok Saftlas, president of Bottom Line Marketing Group, hosts the weekly “Mind Your Business” show, which airs at 10pm every Sunday night on 710 WOR and throughout America on the iHeartRadio Network.
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n a recent 77WABC “Mind Your Business” broadcast, Yitzchok Saftlas (YS) spoke with guests Marc Bodner (MB), CEO of L&R Distributors, and Lee Brower, founder of Empowered Wealth. This discussion immediately followed L&R’s Ignite event, which brought together 1,100 employees to celebrate the company’s core values.
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Yitzchok Saftlas: We’re recording from Monroe, New Jersey, where we just celebrated the L&R Way. Let’s take a step back and talk about the importance for a company to understand that, even from a finance level, investing in your team is so critical. Why is
that so important? Lee Brower: You know, we talk about corporate culture but it isn’t really blue jeans Friday, is it? I think so many people confuse it with “how can we please our employees? How can we make them more happy?” I subscribe to Clayton Christiansen, who was a professor at Harvard, who said, “Great companies, that have great culture, know how to make great decisions and repeat them.” So, if you can create a culture within your company that’s principle based, they’re going to be better decision makers. And when you’re a better decision maker, guess what? The culture is better. That sense of feeling, that sense of pride, that sense of meaningfulness that comes from being a good choice maker and being trusted in making those choic-
es makes all the difference in the world. Marc Bodner: I’ve always said that culture is not software that gets installed. It has to evolve. It has to take on a life. You need to gather the stories of certain behaviors and share those stories so that people can learn from them. I don’t want people to think, “Okay, great. Let’s go work on this for three months, put a bunch of principles on a paper, and throw a party and then we’ll just keep on doing what we’ve always done.” So, we start with gratitude, because if there’s one thing that I’ve learned over the years is that it really begins with gratitude, doing something for someone else with no expectation of anything in return. What does that mean to a business? It means that when I’m doing this thing, I’m not thinking about myself. I’m doing this thing with the mindset
of who is going to have to pick up what I’ve done next and I’m going to make it easier for that person.
YS: It’s two hours after the event. There must be so many emotions going on. What’s your takeaway and feelings from today? LB: We had over 200 people live here today. So, how do you go big and get them to express gratitude? Because the minute you just think about gratitude, science tells us that it releases dopamine and serotonin into your system. Imagine every time you start a meeting, if you can start it by beginning in gratitude, that big burst of serotonin and dopamine you’ll get. I was wondering, how is Marc going to start out? Just one person say-
