Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Houston, Texas. It’s time for Houston Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Trisha Stetzel: Hello, Houston. Trisha Stetzel here bringing you another episode of Houston Business Radio. Today’s guest is Daniella Granzotto, chief growth officer at Wednesday Waffles, the app that’s redefining digital connection by prioritizing authenticity over algorithms. Daniella is leading their go to market strategy, driving growth and engagement as the platform takes on the loneliest epidemic and positions itself at the forefront of the anti social media movement. Before this, she spent eight years in senior leadership at Shopify, including as head coach, head excuse me, head of Shopify VIP, where she worked with some of the companies most influential brands and highest revenue merchants, shaping executive communications and building scalable teams that delivered multimillion dollar impact. At Wednesday Waffles, she’s bringing that expertise to turn a viral trend into a cultural shift. And she’s here to tell us how. Daniella, welcome to the show.

Daniella Granzotto : Thank you so much for having me.

Trisha Stetzel: I’m so excited to have you on today. When, uh, you and I engaged quite a while back and I was like, What is Wednesday waffles? And we got on the phone and I was very excited about what you’re building and these communities of people that you’re bringing together. Uh, and it’s lovely. And we’re going to talk about that in a few minutes. But I’d really like for the audience to know a little bit more about you. So tell us about Daniella.

Daniella Granzotto : Sure. I have a very unconventional career path in history. I, uh, am a theater school dropout, uh, by Education and, uh, spent a lot of time doing a lot of odd jobs before I eventually landed, uh, at Shopify as an executive assistant. Um, I applied seven times before they let me in. And on cover letter seven, I said, I have cover letter eight and nine ready to go, so let me know when you want them. Um, and I didn’t need them, as it turns out. And so I started right at the bottom and through the last eight years, worked my way up to, as you mentioned, head of VIP, where my team and I oversaw all of the biggest brands that utilize our platform. Um, and really the focus was around commerce, entrepreneurship and helping brands succeed in their own entrepreneurial endeavors. Yeah, yeah. And then from there, I, after eight years, decided it was time to take a leap into my own entrepreneurial journey myself and had, uh, owned a couple businesses in the past, had owned a wedding and events planning business. I owned a fake lash line at one point. Um, but when I came across this concept Wednesday. Waffles, that’s when it really spoke to me that this was the thing that I was supposed to do.

Trisha Stetzel: Mhm. Okay. So I’m sure if people are not familiar as they may not be around Wednesday waffles tell us exactly what it is.

Daniella Granzotto : Yeah. So it started by one of our founders, Zach from Australia about a year and a half ago, uh, took to TikTok to just share. Hey, my friends and I have been doing this thing. We call it Wednesday waffles. Uh, waffles in Australian and British slang, kind of means just the gift of the gab. Just chatting on about nothing. And, uh, they just waffle on about what’s going on in their day. And so every Wednesday, they would record a 2 to 3 minute video of just letting their friends know what was going on in their life. And it could be anything from the mundane to the challenging to the the winds that they’ve been having. And you just pop that in a group chat. And it allowed everyone to stay connected in a way that actually let people know what was going on in their life. And so I saw this, uh, TikTok go viral, and I was about to make a move across country, and I sent it to my girlfriends, and I was like, we need to do this. And so we had started doing it just in a group chat. And as I was doing it in the group chat, although it technically worked, there was a lot of limitations. It takes up all of your phone storage as the sender. It would look like my whole video sent, but as the receiver it would get cut off halfway through and it just wasn’t as good as an experience. But I had seen tremendous value just from the act of doing it already. And through that I was like, okay, this this is very valuable, but it needs to be better than this and it needs to be an app.

Trisha Stetzel: I love that. So, uh, you had I’m assuming that you got involved because you had a need. It looked like a really great idea. It was a way for you and your friends to stay connected. So how did it go? Daniella, from just this concept of hanging out with your girlfriends and figuring out how you were going to use different tools to stay connected without using up all the storage on your phone to where it’s at today?

Daniella Granzotto : Yeah, I think as we started to do more research into what the activity of recording a 2 to 3 minute video, it sounds simple. It sounds okay. Obviously I can let people know what’s going on in my life, but the benefits of it are it’s just hard to ignore. Despite being more connected by technology than ever, 30% 36% of Americans report being lonelier than ever. The traditional social media outlets that we have today are highlight reels, and it becomes a place of, honestly, more loneliness and depression for more people than support and community. What it might have originally been intended to do, which was, you know, originally sharecropping photos of what you ate for lunch on Instagram, how it’s evolved today does not have the same, uh, outcome. And so being able to take everything out of what social media has become that we don’t like and distill it down to authentic connection between the people that you love, that want to know the mundane, want to know what’s going on in your life, and being able to share that in a close circle has been so much more beneficial than feeling performative on our traditional social media outlets that we currently have.

Trisha Stetzel: So it sounds like I record my video and I do my waffle, if you will, on my own. And then whenever my group has availability, then they can watch my waffle and reply or um, I guess, uh, have an emotion to it. I’m guessing I know it’s not social media, and we’re trying to get away from that. Um, am I on the right track?

Daniella Granzotto : Yeah, we’ve designed it in a way that we don’t want you to stay on it forever. We don’t want you to be doom scrolling. It’s not something that’s created to suck you in. Which is why Wednesday waffles. We do limit your Wednesday to recording only on Wednesdays. You can only record on Wednesdays. We do have a feature that allows you to record on Thursdays. You just have a moldy waffle if it’s a little late. Um, because we want to give people the benefit of the doubt. You know, life happens and sometimes you can’t record on Wednesday. And so but you just record your 2 to 3 minute video that day, and then you have access to watch everyone else’s waffles all throughout the week. So it’s not meant to be this. We also don’t want Wednesdays to be treacherous for you, right? It’s you can consume all throughout the week. Your friends can common, they’ll react. So you’ll be able to see in real time. If you say something funny, the laughing emoji will pop up on the screen and you can see all of your friends laughed at that moment. Um, we have a little notes section where you’re able to go in throughout the week. If something really exciting happened to you on Monday, you want to make sure you didn’t forget it. You can pop it into your notes so that it’s all ready to go. Once you are ready to record your waffle. Um, and then you can have as many groups as you’d like. We don’t. We know that every group in your life is intimate, and you might want to share different things with different people. So I have a girlfriend’s friend group I have a friend group with. I have a waffle group with my siblings. I have a waffle group with some of my really close coworkers, and that way you can maintain those relationships while not having everyone have to see the exact same side of you.

Trisha Stetzel: Okay, I love this. So I’d like to kind of move into how does this play out in the business world? So I, I heard you say with some of the people that you’re close to in business, so does this play out or is it useful in business as well?

Daniella Granzotto : We have seen what’s really interesting. Some business use cases for it, in particular with stand ups. So a lot of teams will have their weekly stand up where everyone gets on a call, tells everyone what they’re working on, what they’ve got going on and projects wise. And to be able to do this asynchronously actually gives you and your team more time back, but allows you to still feel connected and up to speed with what everyone’s got going on. So it has been really fascinating to see, although we’ve definitely created it to tackle the loneliness pandemic that’s currently going on right now. Um, there are many use cases to be able to use Wednesday waffles.

Trisha Stetzel: Okay, I love that. I think that’s fantastic. And I think we’re all tired of the let’s all get on a video call together and wait for each person to say what they need to, and waste an hour when we could do it in 2 or 3 minutes and then on our own time, go back and see what everybody else has going on. I love this, this is awesome. So take me through how someone would actually use the app. You talked about different groups and recording the video. What? Maybe it’s just day in the life of a user or week in the life of a user.

Daniella Granzotto : Sure. So when you sign up for Wednesday waffles, we actually have our own little waffle mascot named Wally. Um, and you’ll enter a group with him and the Waffle Gang that he has. Every waffle needs friends. And so they’ll actually walk you through exactly what waffling is, what sort of things you can talk about, um, what the concept is like and who you should invite. And then from there it will give you either a link and you can record a little video of yourself that you can send directly to your friends saying like, hey, I want to start waffling with you. They’ll get that same invite process. A lot of times when we say Wednesday waffles, the first thing is, what is that? And what does waffling mean? And so we need Wally or Waffle to be able to explain it to people. And then you’ll get a notification on Wednesday. We are very intentional about not overloading you with with notifications. Again, we don’t want it to be something that you’re sucked into. And so you get a notification on Wednesday. It’s time to record your waffle. You’ll get a notification that your friends have recorded their waffles. Um, you will get a notification at the end of the day. If you still have not recorded your waffle, you have an hour left before you know you might want to get that waffle in. Uh, and then you’ll be notified once you’ve eaten all your waffles, once everything’s been eaten and you’ve watched all the waffles for that day, you ate and you completed the task for that day.

Trisha Stetzel: Wow. That’s amazing. And don’t don’t have a moldy waffle. I, I love that.

Daniella Granzotto : Yeah. We try, we’ll get we’ll give you the pass. We don’t want to, you know, judge anyone, but it will be a little moldy, that’s all.

Trisha Stetzel: I think that’s fantastic. So we’re about halfway through and I know people are already curious. Daniella, about Wednesday waffles. What’s the best way to connect with you or even learn more about Wednesday waffles?

Daniella Granzotto : Yeah. Our app is available on both iOS and Android, so either the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store. You can follow us on Wednesday Waffles app on all social media channels, and you can check out our website, which is Wednesday waffles.com.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. And so this solves the problem. Or is part of solving the problem of feeling lonely, right, where you have a place to go and connect with people.

Daniella Granzotto : Yeah, I will say the thing that keeps. I’ll speak for myself out of our team. Me motivated and and driving forward is the initial feedback that we’ve received from launch about how helpful this has been for people’s mental health and their connection. I’ve. We’ve received multiple messages from people who’ve said, if my brother had this, I think he’d still be around today. Um, we’ve also received, honestly, heartbreakingly, people who have lost someone to suicide. But the fact that they have all of these waffles of every single week, these memories with this person, has been super helpful with them on their journey. And that’s something that we are specifically really passionate about, is how can we create an environment that feels like a safe space where if you’re recording yourself every week, the people closest to you can maybe kind of pick up on some of those hints that, hey, things aren’t going as well as they would have liked, or I’m not doing so hot and being able to see the recording. I know a lot of people generally feel quite uncomfortable recording themselves on a screen, but if it’s just your intimate friend group and we can get them to a place where they can pick up on some of those nuances and maybe reach out because someone does need a little bit of extra help, rather than just sitting at home not feeling like they could reach out to anyone. We feel like if we can make that happen, even just a little bit more than we’ve won.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. That’s amazing. So I got goosebumps and even, like, a little frog in my throat as you were talking through that and being able to connect with someone who’s now no longer with us, which is super meaningful to most of us, and also it hearing just the kind words that people have shared with you about what you’ve created here. So if it’s okay, I’d like to shift to this business builder entrepreneur blood that you have running through your veins. And you said that you’ve had some other businesses even before Wednesday. Waffles. Listen, this was something a TikTok viral video that you latched on to. So how do you go from this viral video like, wow, this sounds like a really good idea to actually building a business around it.

Daniella Granzotto : Great question, I think. So having done a couple of businesses in the past, there’s a a metaphor I suppose, of. It’s going to it’s harder to create your own wave than it is to surf a wave that already exists. And so once I saw this, it had already gone viral. It means that people are already engaged with the concept. They just have either started doing it in a way that isn’t effective, or they’re interested, but they haven’t started doing it yet. And so having tested it and seeing, okay, there is area for improvement here, I can make this better. I, I’m not an engineer by trade. I, um, may have influenced slash stolen a couple of employees from my past to, uh, get on board and do this with me. And then I reached out to Zack. I found the original TikToker. It was his idea. He obviously is going to be more passionate about it than most. And I reached out to him and said, hey, I’m I’m going to build this thing. I’m going to build it with or without you. But I would love for you to be on our team and join. And he was on board after meeting all of us. And so it started with just the basics, right? What is the most painful part of doing it on a group chat? Because anyone can technically do it on a group chat.

Daniella Granzotto : And so storage was one. Um, and also being able to if you’re doing it in a group chat, you scroll and scroll and scroll to get to every Wednesday because there’s all this chatter in between. And so being able to host your videos separate from your chat and have it stored on the cloud so it’s not ruining all of your storage where our three biggest pain points. And so we started from there of like, okay, how do we solve the pain points. And then as we grew and expanded, it was how do we now make this even better? How do we make this a really unique experience that allows people to take their experience from inside the app and actually bring it outside? And so we’re now working on gamification. And if you and your your waffle group waffle every month and you hit a streak, then you’ll get entered into a draw to win a $500 Airbnb gift card. And that way you can take your friendship out of the app and into real life where it really matters.

Trisha Stetzel: Wow. Wow. That’s really cool. So I’m sitting here thinking, you know, one of the questions I would ask you is what’s next for Wednesday waffles? But we’ll wait for that until the end, because I’ll bet there’s a next. Next beyond this gamification, which sounds really cool. So as a business builder, really smart obviously that there’s a problem and you build the solution for it. So many entrepreneurs and people with great ideas go and build the solution and then try and find people that it fits. So what would you say to people who have this really great idea, but they don’t yet know who to put it in front of?

Daniella Granzotto : Great question. I think never underestimate the power of talking to people. Like, go find those people first and ask them what their problems are, because they will be so quick to tell you their frustrations, right? Everyone has them in any industry. And if you say, hey, I’m. It could be as simple of I’ll use the wedding industry because that was my previous background. I’m looking at getting into the wedding industry. You work in the wedding industry. What’s the most frustrating part about it? And someone will immediately be like, oh, it’s like I can’t keep my contract straight or vendors are so slow to respond or like nothing fits in. Everyone has their own platform and you’re like, okay. And you start to get your, um, ideas racing about what do all of these problems mean, where it can still be in an industry that you’re passionate about because that’s important, too. It’s going to be hard work and it’s going to be treacherous, and it’s going to be lonely, and it’s going to be frustrating. So you want to make sure that you have your why or something that you are very passionate about that keeps you going, but at least it’s a problem that, you know, other people have in that area that you’re interested in and not the other way around.

Trisha Stetzel: Mhm. Beautiful. Uh, we don’t want to go build something in a silo. We need to really understand what the challenges are of those we want to serve.

Daniella Granzotto : And I think to that point, one of the things that we have found the most humbling, but also the most helpful, is we did build this out in the open because the concept had already been, um, reached. People already knew about it. They were already aware. We said, hey, we’re building this thing. We got a ton of engagement and followers before we even had built the thing, because people were interested in the concept and they were like, yeah, great. And because we had interest, we built our V1 in three months, super scrappy, super fast, and it showed. We launched it and it it broke and it was there was a ton of bugs. And so then we had to get back on and people told us they weren’t shy with their feedback and we had to get on and be like, hey, we promise we’re good at this. We know, we know tech. We we did it very quickly and that was a mistake. We’re now going back to the drawing board to do it a little bit better. And thank you for staying with us on this journey. And that is it can be very humbling, humbling or even embarrassing to put something out that you’re not necessarily proud of at first. Uh, but the feedback we received as a result were people were immensely kind, sending us paragraphs of feedback of just like this button didn’t work, but I want it to work so badly because I’m just waiting to do this with my friends. And I’ve never, I don’t know about you. I’ve never sent such kind and robust feedback to an app before in my life. Like, if it doesn’t work, I’m moving on to the next thing. Yeah. Um, and so it is. I would recommend for anyone that is starting out, like put your crappy first version out fast and it allows you to reiterate and don’t be, uh, don’t be so attached to the results of it and what people think of it. It has no reflection on you and your capabilities. It just allows you to reiterate faster and get to the finish line of the product that people want faster.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, and being honest about it, and I’m assuming that’s why you got so much great feedback is because you were honest. Yes, we brought it to market. It certainly wasn’t ready yet. As you can see. We need to know from you what did it feel like? What’s broken? Right. Yeah. And being transparent.

Daniella Granzotto : The basis of what we’ve built Wednesday waffles on is authenticity, right? We want to create a friendship deepening tool that allows you to be your genuine and authentic self in an environment where you feel safe. And for us to build that with the goal in mind and not be authentic ourselves as the creators of this app and not feel comfortable to come out and say, hey, we missed the mark. It’s not that great yet. It’s going to be better. Were deeply invested in making it good. And we want you to stick around for the journey that resonates. Because if we can’t do that, then we can’t build an app. On authenticity. It just won’t work.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. So I think we have a glimpse into who your audience is, your ideal market, if you will, for Wednesday waffles. Do you can you describe who your ideal market is? So if we’ve got folks that are listening, they can either connect with you directly, or they know someone who may be very interested in using the app.

Daniella Granzotto : Yeah, absolutely. I think there’s two different categories that we really serve well. The first is that high school university student, like going from high school to university is the first time in your life that all of your friends are no longer going to be in the same spot, right? And similarly from university than graduating out into the real world. Those are the first times where, hey, suddenly my friends aren’t just located down the street or on the same block as me, and if I want to maintain those relationships, I have to find a new way of doing it. And so we’ve seen a ton of usage from those two groups. And then the second group, where we’ve seen a lot of usage is also that late 20s, early 30s. I think particularly women, although men too. But that’s the stage where suddenly everyone’s starting to have kids. Your hangouts don’t happen as frequently as they used to. You can’t get together at the same cadence, and to be able to connect with those people still, in a way that’s light lift, low stress, it doesn’t feel burdensome. Um, has been really a target audience for us, too, that we’ve seen benefit greatly from it.

Trisha Stetzel: I love that that’s beautiful. And there’s use case for business as well. I’m just putting that out there because I can see even in my own space that this could be very beneficial to the area that I work in, uh, and even with client work could be very beneficial as well.

Daniella Granzotto : Yeah, absolutely. Having a like for coaching or mentorship, having an accountability partner, being able to create groups that hey, you check in once a week, you see how you’re doing. There’s a lot of benefits to it. And what is relatively a simple concept that we’ve made, we’ve just made better.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah I love that. And I love your authenticity. I love that you’re so transparent. Um, and sharing your story. How do you get through the hard times in your business when things get really tough and really low? How do you get past those?

Daniella Granzotto : Honestly. Great question. In the spirit of authenticity, I was having a tiny little mental breakdown before getting on this call. Um, because especially when you’re doing go to market for a new product, and I think also I’ll speak for myself. I worked for a very well known company, uh, you know, three months ago where anytime I emailed someone, I would get an email response right away. And so going through that shift again of back to nobody knows who I am, nobody cares what I do. It is a it can be discouraging. And I think staying true to your mission and being reminded of your why is super important. And then also for entrepreneurs, if you are privileged enough to be creating alongside other people who you you choose to be, your team is makes the world of a difference. And ultimately, I think if your first if you have a group of people who are committed to building something together, even if your first idea doesn’t work, if you have intelligent, hard working people by your side, you will. It will work out for you. And it could be idea one. It could be idea three it could be idea five. But that’s something I highly recommend when you are looking to start a business, be very careful about how you choose your partners. Get everything papered. I do recommend that. Don’t be foolish. However, having a team that is there to support you and lift you up when you’re feeling down is crucial.

Trisha Stetzel: Amazing. Well, I hope that. I hope that this was in your day as you came into this conversation.

Speaker4: It was. Yes.

Daniella Granzotto : It’s definitely a highlight for sure.

Speaker4: Good.

Trisha Stetzel: Uh, okay. Last question. Daniella. You gave us a sneak peek into what’s next for Wednesday waffles with the gamification. But what’s next? Next? What do you see in the future?

Daniella Granzotto : Yeah, I think so far we’re not a friendship binding tool. We’re a friendship deepening tool. And so this we’re very intentional about this is for deepening the relationships you already have. We want those relationships to be very strong. And we believe that even a few strong relationships are better than many fickle ones. And so that’s where we’ve started. And you don’t. I also say waffle groups. You can waffle 1 to 1 with one person. It does not need to be a group of 5 or 6 of your closest friends. Right. And so I think once we’ve nailed that and tackled that and been able to give people an opportunity to take their friendship in app, celebrate it out in the real world, it then takes the next step of okay, how can we become a friend finding tool as well? And what does that look like? And I think we have a unique capability to do that because we have, you know, people record two minutes about what’s going on in their life every single week. And so hopefully in the future, there’s a way for us to maybe, hey, like, this person cares a lot about knitting and so does this person over here. And they are not in the same waffle groups, but they have a lot in common. Maybe we could introduce them to each other. And so that’s next. Next. We’re not there yet. Um, but that would be the long term goal is if we can be a friendship deepening tool as well as a friendship finding tool.

Trisha Stetzel: Fantastic. Daniella, thank you so much for spending a little bit of time with me today, talking about Wednesday Waffles and about Daniella. Your story is amazing.

Daniella Granzotto : Thank you so much. It was a pleasure chatting with you. I’m happy to be here.

Trisha Stetzel: That’s all the time we have for today. Guys, if you found value in this conversation, please share it. Share it with a fellow entrepreneur, a veteran or Houston leader ready to grow. Be sure to follow, rate, and review the show because it helps us reach more bold business minds just like yours. Your business, your leadership, and your legacy are built one intentional step at a time. So stay inspired, stay focused, and keep building the business and the life you deserve.

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Houston, Texas. It’s time for Houston Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Trisha Stetzel: Hello, Houston. Trisha Stetzel here bringing you another episode of Houston Business Radio. Today’s guest is Eric Mulvin, CEO of Pac Biz Outsourcing, where he built a 250 person remote team without outside capital. And we’re going to talk about that a little more later to. Eric’s company specializes in helping B2C e-commerce businesses scale with a powerful mix of human intelligence and AI tools, improving support, dispatch, and finance functions while keeping service quality at the forefront. He’s passionate about creating systems that allow leaders to delegate like CEOs lead effectively across time zones and protect a company culture, all while driving growth and client satisfaction. I’m excited to dive in to his journey of building and leading a global team the smart way. Eric, welcome to the show.

Eric Mulvin: All right, Trisha, thank you so much for having me. And that’s an awesome intro. I’m going to have to write that down. That’s a great one.

Trisha Stetzel: You can always come back and look at the recording, right? I’m just saying you can listen to the podcast. Well welcome. I’m so glad to have you on the show today, Eric. Um, when we had our initial conversation, we really connected. And I think there’s a lot of things that we have in common. I’d first love for you to tell the audience more about Eric. So tell us a little more about you.

Eric Mulvin: All right. Uh, a little bit about me. Uh, I’m Phoenix guy, uh, Arizona native. Um, and if you know people from Arizona, you know that there’s not too many of us. Everyone here probably like Houston, Dallas, you know, those a lot of people from all over the place. Uh, yeah. And so, uh, that that’s a rare part of me, but I. I love being here in the desert. And I always knew that I wanted to start a business one day. I used to tell people that all the time. And, uh, there’s some really cool stories out there about some of the businesses that I started over the years. I just had no idea, as this entrepreneur, from building a Lego City when I was five years old and charging charging my parents admission. Um, my first business card I ever made for myself was in I think it was like sixth grade. I built a Kobe’s card Shaq basketball card, uh, where you could buy and sell cards for all the neighbor kids. And, uh, thanks to that, I’ve got some Kobe Bryant rookie cards that are locked away, uh, that are pretty valuable. Uh, but I’ve gone on and on and made a lot of businesses. I didn’t realize, though, that, uh, that was my career. I actually tried to go into marketing. Um, tried to. I was one of the first content creators out there in 2009, writing YouTube spots for, like, the Arizona Lottery, uh, casino Arizona out here, Arizona Department of Health and uh, then went on to Yelp, worked at that.

Eric Mulvin: That was a Yelp as a startup. Uh, so that was a fun time. Um, and I took my last paycheck from that job and used it to get a loan for my first taxi, because I wanted to get into something I wanted I could disrupt. And being in college out here, uh, growing up, you know, I was I graduated college, like, 0708. Um, the taxi industry, that’s how you got home. If you were drinking at night, there was no Uber, there was no Lyft. And for those of you guys that remember what it was like back then, like everyone leaving the bar and there’s like how many taxis to take people home. So it’s a mess. You know, it’s a it was a broken system and no innovation for decades. And so I wanted to get into some place I could disrupt. And I was like, taxi, why not? So that’s what like was my first official LLC, my first business. And, uh, that got me into the entrepreneurship world. Um, but I should say really big important part of that story is nine days after I started the business, like I got the taxi. Uh, I met my wife. Uh, so we, like, there’s a crazy connection there. And she’s a business owner as well. So, um, but, yeah, that’s all part of the story. Uh, and then it kind of grew from there.

Trisha Stetzel: Well, okay. So first, congratulations. So the two of you been together for quite a long time, and two, it sounds like there’s some serial entrepreneurship happening in the household. I’m just saying lots of that.

Eric Mulvin: Yeah. Now starting to rub off on our kids, too. So, yeah, there’s definitely a house of, uh, entrepreneurs here for sure.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, I love that. So let’s talk a little bit about Pac biz outsourcing. Tell me what it is. Uh, describe for the audience who you serve and why you serve them.

Eric Mulvin: Yeah. So outsourcing, we provide 24 seven outsourced support to businesses across the US, Canada and the UK. Uh, and as Trisha mentioned earlier, we got a team over 200 people out there in the Philippines doing that work. And, uh, we focus primarily in, uh, transportation, e-commerce, uh, software companies. And, uh, we also have a virtual assistant division and that anybody could use. Um, but that’s, uh, pretty much what we do. And then being that, uh, we started it in 2015, uh, you know, I mentioned the taxi business, you know, Uber, Lyft, the whole thing changed. And so, uh, we pivoted to running a call center, uh, because we started the call center to take calls for ourselves. We had five people, um, working 24 over seven in the Philippines. And that’s what sparked the idea for the call center. And, um, from that 2015 to now, we’ve been able to grow it. And we’ve taken like, we’ve done some rough numbers, I think, for some back of the napkin estimates about 30 million phone calls at Pacages. Outsourcing is handled over the last ten years. Uh, and that’s a lot of experience. That’s a lot of data. That’s a lot of expertise there. And so we’ve taken all of that. We’ve learned over the last ten years. And now we’re building AI tools, uh, AI powered tools and software for the industries that we serve. Uh, and so that’s the, uh, 2.0 of Pacages that, uh, that we’re pivoting into.

Trisha Stetzel: That is really cool. Okay. So, uh, I mentioned earlier in your bio that you actually built this team without any outside capital. So tell us the the secret to your madness over there. How did you get this built out? It sounds like it started with the taxi company and the need for having a team. And then you started building it so that you could support others. So how in the world did you get there without outside capital?

Eric Mulvin: That’s a great question. And, uh, it’s, I guess one that I’m pretty fortunate that I because of the marketing and everything I was doing all these years. Um, I got connected with some people, some other business owners, and they really liked what, like what I was doing. Uh, and I actually, for one business owner, I was like, you’re spending TV ads, you’re doing radio ads. I was like, I don’t think you’re getting any results. So we cut about, I don’t know, is it $100,000? Out of his marketing budget? Sales stayed the same. So that was the moment where he was like, ah, whatever business you start, I’ll invest in you. Um, and so that’s what happened is, uh, he was one of the early investors in the taxi business, and then we, we stayed working together for the call center, and, uh, but we actually built it all from scratch. So we took all of the revenue that we created and put it right back into the business. And, um, we were able to grow everything from there. Uh, I look back and I, I didn’t realize how fortunate we were to be able to do that. I just thought, oh yeah, the business is growing. Let’s just keep taking money. Uh, lots of mistakes made along the way about budgeting and finances and and all that. But, um, but we’ve learned all those lessons, and we were able to, to scale it up to where we’re at today and, uh, but and that’s, that’s probably for another, uh, answer that, you know, what happens? How do you get to the next stage? Uh, because it, it, it starts to get very more challenging to continue to just bootstrap yourself, uh, as you want to get bigger and bigger and bigger. But that’s kind of how we got started.

Trisha Stetzel: Okay. Yeah. And so why don’t we. If it’s okay, we’ll dig around in there a little bit. Uh, you know, what have been your biggest challenges in scaling?

Eric Mulvin: Um, well, my business partner, who we’re 50, 50 partners with, um, I joined this this, uh, peer advisory group, uh, that was really beneficial to me. And because of that, I realized after that first session, uh, I went to him and I was like, I need to buy you out. Like, there’s really. You’re not really contributing anything here. Uh, and it was making the taxes a mess, and, uh, it’s just all kinds of stuff. So got him out of the business. And because I knew I could grow this to way bigger heights, and, uh, I was the one doing all the work, so that was part of it. Um, what are some of the other misses? I know being a business owner, you know, like, we I put my house as collateral, you know, for some of this, like, business loans that we ended up having to do over the last couple of years to, to get ourselves growing. Uh, and I think that’s a common thing that you hear business owners, uh, do as well. Um, definitely no credit cards. You know, we haven’t we didn’t build up, like hundreds of thousands of credit card debt, but, um, but I, I maintain really good credit history and, uh, good payment history, good reputation.

Eric Mulvin: So I was able to go out and get some business loans and we, we built stuff up. Like what you hear a lot of businesses go through. You know, we got lines of credit so that we’re not relying on all this short term capital all the time. And that’s helped a lot now. And, you know, we’ve been able to pay off those loans. And now banks are like please it’s funny how that works right. Like when you need the money, it’s really difficult to get when you don’t need it. Everyone wants to give it to you. But we experienced that as well. So, uh, but we’re in a good spot. So if we want to grow now, uh, there’s, we have hardly any debt. And, uh, if I have a choice, I could take on money to to grow and accelerate the growth even faster. Or, uh, we could continue what we’ve been doing, build grow off of our own profits and grow from there.

Trisha Stetzel: I love that, yeah, I heard someone say more than once, uh, the best time to get money is when you don’t need it, right? Or the best time to borrow money is when you don’t need it. Uh, because that’s when you’re prepared to get the money.

Eric Mulvin: Exactly.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. Uh. Let’s talk. You talked a little bit about human intelligence and AI tools and how you’re using those together in your business. So, um, how do you decide just at a high level, what to automate and what still needs human touch, and how does that work in your business?

Eric Mulvin: Yeah. Uh, that’s another great question. You know, we’ve been working with AI tools now for, uh, well, at least at the leadership level, about a year and a half. Um, me personally, over two years. Uh, and I think it’s just because of the industry we’re in, you know, getting disrupted by AI. And so we jumped in sooner. Uh, a lot of you guys listening might be like, you know, it’s not really impacting my industry as much. And so you’re not seeing the pressure that we are. We’re like, hey, everything we’re doing in our call center could be automated by AI. We need to look at what else is out there. Um, but what we’ve done is we looked at what are the job like. We look at everyone’s role and we look at the tasks that they’re doing. What are the things that they could be doing that could be augmented, assisted by AI. And what are the things that could be possibly replaced by AI? And uh, and also what else could they possibly be doing if they’re not doing all these other things that now you’ve taken away from their plate? Uh, and so you go through that and you can do that with any role. Um, but doing that for your company is vital. And I think another step that was really beneficial for us is process mapping, and that you can’t skip that step.

Eric Mulvin: And, uh, it it’s very time consuming, very laborious. But the dollar savings you get out of it, especially if you haven’t done it in a while for your business. Oh my goodness. Like the the money that’s leaking out of your company. Because people are just following a process. Just because that’s the way it was. They don’t question, you know, why is it the way it is? That’s a leader business leader’s job. And I think a lot of people don’t realize, like, how come people don’t think like me? Why don’t they see that glaring like hole in our process that no one has tried to fix? And it’s because not everyone thinks like a business leader, so they’re going to run through those steps over and over again for years until you actually sit down with the team, look at your process, be like, whoa, like this right here. We could totally put AI in this step and eliminate these steps over here. So you go through the whole process mapping and so you clean up your company, um, fix streamline things, but at the same time recognize here’s where we could put AI here and here. Uh, and so that that’s a very basic level, obviously, you know, this is months and months, sometimes years of work. Um, but that’s a high level overview of what to do.

Trisha Stetzel: I love that. So and process mapping gets missed when we see solopreneurs or somebody who gets into business because they’re very passionate about a particular thing. And so they’re doing everything themselves and they don’t write any processes. So in the beginning, it’s bringing the team on. And now you’re in a position where you’re building these process maps with your team and implementing AI. I love that, I think it’s amazing. So we’re about halfway through our conversation. I know people are already interested in having a conversation with you, Eric. So what is the best way to connect with you?

Eric Mulvin: Uh, best way to connect is on LinkedIn. You can find me on there, Eric, Marvin, and, uh, or, um, what’s another good place? Uh, our website Pac Pac biz com. Uh, and we are just, uh, at the time of recording today, we’re we’re rolling out a new website in the next 24 hours. Uh, really excited because all the stuff I’m talking about here, um, hasn’t been on our website yet, so, uh, there’s a lot of stuff about AI. We’re getting ready to do webinars, um, put out a lot of educational material and, uh, getting ready to launch my own podcast. So all that stuff, you can follow me and, uh, look for updates on there.

Trisha Stetzel: It’s very exciting. I can’t wait to hear about your podcast. Okay. Uh. You guys. Eric. Mulvin. And it’s m u l v I n if you’re looking for him on LinkedIn, a great way to get connected again. Uh, CEO of PAC biz outsourcing. So. All right, Eric, let’s dig into you as a leader. Um, many business owners struggle to step out of the weeds, right? We’re so deeply embedded in our businesses. Uh, and you also serve people who are in the weeds and need to get out, right? So not just you, but the people you serve. What systems or even mindset shifts have helped you truly delegate like a CEO?

Eric Mulvin: Oh, wow. Uh, I mean, I think one thing that I’m really grateful for is, uh, we got an outsource company, and that’s where you go to get virtual assistants. And so, uh, after years and years of people coming to me saying, like, do you have virtual assistant? I’m like, no, we just have to call center people, not virtual assistant. I finally like I better start looking into this. So I took one on first. And uh, for a couple of years I did that and I was like, this, this is amazing. I even just this week, um, the assistant that I have working with me now, shout out to man, in case you’re watching this, uh, but, um, we’ve been working together for over a year now, and I can’t tell you how amazing it is to have someone that you could throw any crap that’s coming your way to them and like, oh, there’s a conference coming up. I need to book. Book me for this and the travel. And we’re going to try to host a dinner. So contact the hotel and you know all that stuff. I don’t have to explain anything. I don’t have to, like, double check to make sure she booked the flight, okay? Because she’s booked dozens of flights for me. She knows. And, you know, we talked about, um, process mapping. We document every every time there’s a new task she has to do. It’s documented. And, uh. And if not, I can’t blame her for not doing it right.

Eric Mulvin: We did take the time to document it, so. Alright, let’s do it right this time. And, uh, and so that whole thing has been so beneficial. We’ve been able to put all of that, that we’ve learned into, uh, our virtual assistant program. And the virtual assistant program is far from complete. Uh, because one thing I’ve recognized is business owners come to us at varying skill levels of working with an assistant and delegating. And so I know exactly the challenge that you guys are having. If you’re listening, like, I don’t know where to begin to delegate or I can’t delegate, none of that’s true. Everyone can delegate something. Um, there’s no way that there’s like you, your day is so filled up that you can’t pass things on to other people. Um, it’s just about control. And then creating the system so that you can get that stuff out. Um, and then another thing that I think has been Really beneficial as well. Um, is taking the time to get that assistant, um, some custom AI tools so that when they’re putting stuff together for you, whether they’re filling out like a description of your for a bio for some social media page or, you know, again, I, I use a conference example when you’re registering for a conference, give us details about your business. She knows exactly like he can create anything in exact words of how our business, uh, should should say it. Um, and in any of those processes are all in the AI tool as well.

Eric Mulvin: So she can go to that for questions first before going to me. But even I built the tool where it’s like, what? Like what time of day I like to travel. Where on the airplane I like to sit, you know, if it’s a flight leaving in the afternoon from the Philippines, you know, when should I like? There’s all kinds of stuff in there that I know she can get. Right. And, uh, it also the accountability side is really interesting too, because when you give that I’m talking about virtual assistants, but the same thing applies to business owners and their employees. When they have that level of information. It’s not that you just verbally told them and they need to go do it. It’s like that AI tool has all the information you need to do your job, and if you’re not using that to do your job accurately, that’s a problem. Uh, so we give them those tools to, um, so that now I could just focus on running the business. And it’s taken a while to get to this point. Um, now we’re trying to see how can we bring that, the AI stuff to virtual assistant, because we’ve been doing that for years with clients. Um, we haven’t brought the AI side to it, so I’m really excited about that because that’s going to unlock so much more that a virtual assistant can do for business owners. And this is going to really help people accelerate faster.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. And you’re right about delegation. Some of us may be a little afraid of it, but it’s a learned skill. Not everyone’s good at it, and most of us aren’t in the beginning, right? It’s something we can learn. So go get good at it. And it can start with a virtual assistant. We have one to shout out to Risha. She’s been with us for three years this week and, uh, congrats. Yeah, it was a game changer. It was absolutely amazing. So as you are talking through that, I was thinking about leading across time zones. Uh, and many of us are doing that in our businesses, uh, or even as leaders in bigger corporations. And it can be tough to lead across time zones. So how do you maintain your company culture, uh, and, and even employee engagement when your team is spread across the world?

Eric Mulvin: That is very true. Yeah. So the way we keep our company culture and engagement intact, you know, despite people working 24 seven all over the place. Uh, there’s a couple things. I mean, one really actually focus on culture. Uh, we have a full time person. We’ve had a director of company culture for many years, and we still have a full time person on the team that plans events. They recognize people on their birthdays. Uh, they they do all the fun stuff, uh, in their company. So if you don’t have anybody, if you’re a small company, right, like, hey, we six people. I can’t have a dedicated person. No, that doesn’t make any sense. But why not give someone that responsibility a couple hours a month? You know, a little bit of a budget. What would that do for your company? You know, and so, um, that’s, uh, that’s something that people can do. But how do we how do we manage the 24 over seven thing that that’s been something we’ve been struggling with? Uh, it’s been hard because, you know, we’ll have, uh, the bulk of our work is done daytime in the US. Um, so where we got a lot of people working, which is overnight in the Philippines, but our admin works daytime in the Philippines. So if they need to talk to some of the workers like it’s okay. Come in during the day. There’s been some issues, but we’ve been able to figure that we people in HR to work overnight.

Eric Mulvin: So now there’s a meeting. Okay. You meet with this person overnight. Um, another thing. So we brought in a new COO. Uh, you know, I was earlier level company up. And how you do that. So in July, that’s a major change that we did. And one of the things that, um, she brought to us was a tool called asana. And so, no, I don’t have any promo codes for you guys. Pay me. But, um, just some, some management tool, and I know my wife is. She’ll be like, I’m telling you this for years that you need to get on like some to do list, but that in the last four weeks or so, like August is when we started putting that in place. It’s been because, like, we’re really trying to eliminate emails and meetings and everything into a sauna. And so that again, it’s a skill. It’s it’s taking time to learn. Uh, and getting everybody on board because you’re the way you’re doing your work is different. Um, but already we’re seeing drops like huge drops, number of meetings that has done, um. Emails are down, and, uh, but communication is. So we’re not spending more time in meetings. We’re not sending more emails. Um, we’re working more efficiently. So, uh, I think it comes back down to systems. It’s all systems in business. So, you know, you need a system to help you out with that. And, uh, that’s a good one to, to look at.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. No, I love that. And I think that adopting tools that help us stay out of meetings and can keep us organized and create better communication with our teams is so important. Uh, earlier you talked about your VA service for anyone. And you know, the the language around using a virtual assistant is pretty well known. A lot of people know what they do. Let’s talk a little bit, just for a couple of minutes about the call center. Uh, you gave some examples of clients, but if someone’s listening and they may or may not know if they need a call center. Who are your best clients? And what is the benefit of having a call center?

Eric Mulvin: All right. Our best clients, uh, would be. Well, there are bigger clients. We love those, of course, because if you come to us and they say we need 30, 40, 50 people. Yeah, that’s that’s amazing. Um, but we have these core values at practice. Uh, for us, it’s family, respect, teamwork, compassion and personal growth. And for whatever reason, that family one, um, it shows up in a bunch of different ways. One of them is a lot of our clients are family, business, family owned businesses, generational, multi-generational, like the grandparents started it 80, 90 years ago. Pass it on to their dad. And now they have. And now they’re trying to, you know, whether what how do you transform an 80 year old company into, you know, something that’s still viable in 2030? Um, but that gets us also working with smaller businesses, too. So some of the smaller. Well, obviously, if you have a virtual assistant, you just got one person working for you. Um, but we have some clients that have, uh, 2 or 3 people. So when do you need a call center? Well, it’s you one, you probably have a lot of calls, emails, chats, a lot of incoming stuff coming in. And you got someone from your team that’s doing that work. Now two things happen.

Eric Mulvin: One is the person that’s doing all that work. They’re really good. And you want to give them more stuff, but you can’t because they’re busy with the customer stuff, and you’ve tried to hire somebody to take on customer service and everything. You not really representing your brand or you tried. They worked for a couple weeks and they quit. And now your your person is back to doing the same task again. These are the stories that we’re hearing from customers when they come to us. Uh, and so if you don’t want to deal with hiring, training, managing that person that’s doing the basic work, then that’s where we come in. So we could help with that. Uh, and then you focus on the parts of your business that matter. Uh, I don’t think anyone started a business to run a call center or to manage someone answering email, customer emails. It’s vital, but we can help with that. So that’s where we the experience, the support, all the people to do that. Um, then you could focus on your business. Um, so that’s the, the main thing that typically happens is that then. Yeah, maybe you already have some call center people and you’re trying to cut costs. Again, the having people here in the US, if you do great.

Eric Mulvin: You know, and the people that do that I’ve seen be successful. They pay their employees a lot of money, more than, you know, minimum wage for the call center job. So if that’s not in your budget and not in your business model, We could be another solution because the people working in the Philippines. This is a white collar job for them. Many times they’re the breadwinner for their family. And when I say family, it’s not a four person household. It’s like a person household with the grandma, the brothers and some cousins all living under one house. And that person is usually the one making the money for everyone. So these are professionals. The issues that you deal with, people are working, working with people here sometimes, or I hear it from Canada, the US, the work ethic and some of the challenges there. They just don’t have that with the people in the Philippines. Uh, when you’re at least with the people we hire. Uh, so we really so whether it’s us or whether you’re working with anyone else, um, it doesn’t it’s not a magic wand to outsource. Oh, my problems are solved. There are. Even in our tiny city of 250,000 people, there’s like over 100 call centers, some of them having over 5000 employees.

Eric Mulvin: And so there are tens and tens of thousands of options in the Philippines. And then even more so globally. So not everyone’s equal. You gotta look and make sure that the company you’re working with do they take care of their employees? Uh, are they happy? Do they stick around a long time? You know, we’ve been certified. Great place to work in the Philippines now from 2023, 2025. Like going on three years now. Uh, and we do that even though we’re a smaller company, most of them have like thousands and thousands of employees. But I want to show people like we really do take care of the staff, take care of the people there. And and it shows. I’ll, I’ll say this a long answer, but, um, we’ve been I, we have a new CEO. What typically happens in a company when there’s a new COO, there’s a lot of changes. People aren’t happy. Had some people leave and the last two, three weeks not even like the last week, I think it was like half a dozen people that have tried to come back to reapply. So I don’t know that that tells me something I haven’t dug into, like any interviews and surveys and what’s going on with that. But, uh, that’s that’s pretty interesting.

Trisha Stetzel: That is very interesting. Well, and I love that you were able to just tell us your values. And one of those is family. And it sounds like whether they’re in the United States, Canada or across the pond, if you will, or across the globe, they’re all part of your family. And you, um, support family owned businesses as well. So I just I love that you were able to tell us that and you know exactly what your values are. And it sounds like everybody in your company understands that as well. All right. So as we get to the back end of our conversation, um, I have one last question for you, Eric. You talked about a few things that are kind of coming up the pike and things that you’re working on. But what’s next? What’s next for Eric and Pappy’s outsourcing?

Eric Mulvin: Alright a lot. Uh, I was just listing out to my business coach, like the next couple of months. He’s like, what big projects are you working on? And, like, I ran out of room because there was so much. Um, we’re, you know, it’s all again. I’ll. I’ll tie it back to the story of leveling up. You know, we’ve been about the same size for the last 4 or 5 years. We hit the ceiling. Everything that I have tried to do to try to grow this company, going to conferences, doing more stuff on LinkedIn, spending a bunch of money on online ads, you know, like you’re just running around trying all this different stuff and like, something has gotta work. So finally last May, I was like, we’re just shutting down all of our marketing and we’re just going to figure out, like, who are we going to be? Because that was like for us, the peak of the freak out about AI, like, oh my gosh, like the news, the headline, it’s still now, today. But like then it really was like, okay, we really need to do something. So, um. So that’s where, like, now we’re getting ready to get a new website going. We got, uh, I’m launching a podcast, and then hopefully the next 30 days, it’s called Unfinished Business with Eric Walden.

Eric Mulvin: Uh, interview people talking about what they’re doing with their business with AI and, uh, and outsourcing. Uh, and then, um, yeah, we’re getting ready to launch a bunch of webinars. So if any of the services I talked about sound interesting to you over the next 3 to 4 months, we’re going to have a webinar for every one of those, and we’re going to do that all the time. So, um, that’s another thing you could check out from our website. And then the big thing is our AI tools, like the, the first tool that we’ve been working on is a tool that listens to the calls and what we’ve figured out along this journey of like building a development team, um, building this for ourselves and now building for companies is that there’s so much more that you do like. Like for the people that are listening here, if you guys have ever had an AI tool on your meeting, on your zoom calls, you know the power of what that can unlock in your business. If you could take that transcript, you know, what can you do with it? With ChatGPT, you could do a million things for your business. Well, imagine the power of that for every single interaction that happens on the phone, because QA buy for call center, we typically if we’re talking to a company this week, they’re like, we’d be lucky if we’re listening to 0.25% of calls.

Eric Mulvin: Wow. And, you know, we try to go for like 1%, but even then, that’s 99 point whatever percent of your calls. No one is monitoring. It’s completely of no idea. Most the time it’s like this bad thing happened. We need to go figure it out. Let’s go listen to the call. So what you can unlock from that is amazing. And it’s it’s taken this this simple tool that we thought we were building into something massive where it’s going to be able to do coaching for the people on the phones. It’s going to be able to lock in. That’s happening between, uh, in the transportation space, between the drivers and the dispatchers. Um, and then there’s, there’s a whole bunch more so that that’s the biggest thing. And we were we were talking with some pretty big folks in Europe, uh, that are probably going to be on board with us with the next couple of months. And so that’s crazy, like going from a call center to where we’ve got our own development team coming out with software. Uh, it’s I still can’t believe it. That’s the big thing. We’re working.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. That’s amazing. Eric, it has been such a pleasure having you on today. So you guys go out to LinkedIn, you can find Eric Mulvin m u l v I n on LinkedIn. Or you can visit his website at Pacback. And find all of the cool things that he’s been talking about. Because I know the website is already out there. I’ll put all of these things in the show notes so you guys can just point and click as well if you happen to be sitting in front of your computer. Eric, again, thank you so much for being with me today.

Eric Mulvin: Thank you so much. It was awesome being on here. And hello to everyone in Houston.

Trisha Stetzel: That’s all the time we have for today. If you found value in this conversation I had with Eric, please share it with a fellow entrepreneur, a veteran, or a Houston leader ready to grow. Be sure to follow, rate, and review the show. It helps us reach more bold business minds just like yours and your business. Your leadership and your legacy are built one intentional step at a time. So stay inspired, stay focused, and keep building the business and the life you deserve.

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Houston, Texas. It’s time for Houston Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Trisha Stetzel: Hello, Houston. Trisha Stetzel here bringing you another episode of Houston Business Radio. Today’s guest is Dr. Bruno Cignacco, international business consultant, TEDx speaker, researcher and author of the Art of Compassionate Business. For more than 30 years, Bruno has advised and trained hundreds of companies worldwide on international trade, marketing and now on building human oriented, compassionate workplaces. He’s also a university professor and senior fellow of the Higher Education Academy in the U.K.. Bruno’s mission is to show leaders how compassion with stakeholders, employees, and customers doesn’t just feel good, it drives creativity, innovation, and long term success. Dr., welcome to the show.

Dr. Bruno Cignacco : Thank you, Trisha, for the invite. I feel very honored to be here. Thank you very much.

Trisha Stetzel: Very excited to have you today. So would you share a little bit more about Bruno?

Dr. Bruno Cignacco : Okay. Well, as you said, clearly I’m a university professor. I have been always researching on business topics. In the past, I used to research more on traditional business topics such as strategy, tactics, for example, business models and plans, budgeting, and other aspects that are very important for business in a traditional way. But lately I have been researching on nontraditional topics, for example, the importance of kindness on business activities, the importance of compassion, the importance of generosity and gratitude. And I have been also alongside teaching students at different levels at university. I have been also advising companies, as you mentioned, very clearly for many years, a few decades, on international marketing and negotiation. But lately, we have a focus much more on fundamental topics of business that are not very well disclosed in the media, such as the importance of building a psychologically safe workplace or developing strong ties, strong bonds with different stakeholders that will bring about higher profits, higher sales, and also higher motivation and higher, obviously camaraderie in the workplace. So this topic, what I observe in my talks and training all over the world are very well accepted. But there is still some resistance because most companies try to approach business in a traditional way, in a very conservative way. This means only focusing on what can be measured, what can be counted, such as profit, market share, sales. But we try to introduce an alternative view, a view that is much more complete, that includes not only the economic aspect of business, but include also the human aspect. This means caring for people. Understanding the customer is also a human being with a specific need that needs to be addressed very, very clearly. And the same happens with employees, suppliers and other stakeholders such as community members, business partners and others.

Trisha Stetzel: Mhm. So I understand the importance of being able to, um, treat people properly in the workplace. And sometimes it can be measurable and not so measurable in other cases. What really drove you to focus your research and teaching on compassionate business.

Dr. Bruno Cignacco : What we continually see news journals and websites that are sensationalistic, but they show the negative side of business. For example, companies going bankrupt, fighting employees mercilessly, in some cases, exploiting employees, taking advantage of customers, deceiving different stakeholders, polluting the environment. We see all the negative side of business, but I read an article a while ago, a long time ago, that it was about human aspect of business. Harvard Business Review, and it was a bit intrigued because most of the articles in business are much more about strategy, tactics, the traditional topics. And I was intrigued, and I started researching on this for many years, and I started discovering that there are real companies in different sectors small companies, big companies, medium sized companies that are not only successful, economically speaking, they have all the standard of success such as high profit, high, reputation, high market share, good product, good quality, but also at the same time, they have a strong ties with different stakeholders. And this is intuitive because you might say, oh, if we focus on profit, this is the priority. We shouldn’t be focusing on stakeholders. But it’s counterintuitive because when you focus as a priority on building a strong, long lasting relationship with stakeholders such as customers, suppliers, community members, employees, stakeholders will help you build a more successful business. Why? Because there is a concept of interdependence. You cannot succeed without them. You have to help them in order that they can help you succeed. So it’s reciprocal. If you don’t care for them, why will they care for you? So I started looking for research studies on companies that are successful, but also they are building strong bones.

Dr. Bruno Cignacco : And this makes a lot of sense because at the end The most important mistake that I observe. You mentioned briefly in business. The business leader, the most important mistake that they make is that they want everything measurable. They want everything that can be really counted. Measure from year to year. For example, sales can be compared. If the sales were higher or lower than the previous year, but also market share, but also the stock price. If the company is quote quoted in the stock market. So this we call this quantity can be measured precisely and can offer some standard about the how the company is doing economically speaking. However, there are other aspects that are as important as the quantitative aspect that I call qualitative, as it cannot be measured precisely. But that is so important because bring about, for example, strong relationship with customer are more prone to bring about loyalty, loyalty, ties with customers. But also this qualitative aspect also bring about what we call psychological safety in the workplace means that employees feel supported. They feel treated in a respectful way. They can give their own opinions without feeling that they’re ridiculed, and so on. And this brings about much more motivation and so on. These qualitative aspects, an example of qualitative tasks are. Support. Compassion. Generosity. Gratitude. And there is a lot of research on the positive impact of this qualitative aspect on, for example, profit market share.

Dr. Bruno Cignacco : I give you one example. There is an interesting study that was published in a journal that was about companies that develop these loving workplaces, these supportive workplaces where employees feel taken care of, their respective they’re appreciated, their opinions are valued, and that the leaders are requested all the employees opinion because they try to make this participative and everyone skills is enhanced on a regular basis with training, coaching, mentoring. So this employee feels safe and they don’t want to leave the company. In this psychologically safe workplaces, there tend to be higher employee satisfaction. Higher customer satisfaction. Why? Because employees that are happy, they feel supported, they feel in a compassionate way, then to serve customers more effectively. They do this in a loving way. They try to exceed customer expectation. But also in this workplace they tend to they tend to be lower absenteeism. This means that employees want to go to work. Lower stress level. This means that employees are less prone to adopt this freeze fight flight mode. This means that they tend to be more creative, more creativity, more innovation, more motivation, and this impact positively on the bottom line. This means higher profit, better reputation. So the this model non traditional model of business is much more indirect. By caring for people, by taking care of people and respecting them and appreciating them and being generous to them. You indirectly achieve better economic indicator. Why? Because at the end you will need these people to be successful.

Dr. Bruno Cignacco : No company can succeed without customer, without supply, without employees. So this means that you are creating a positive cycle of reciprocity with these stakeholders. And these stakeholders feel compelled in an unconditional way to support your company when you face difficult times. Instead, when you focus only on profits as a priority and you don’t care about building relationships with stakeholders, this stakeholder might feel neglected. They might feel unappreciated, and they might feel, in some cases, manipulated. Customer might feel deceived. Employees might feel utilized and exploited. And other stakeholders might feel also disrespected. And these stakeholders are more prone to withdraw, not to cooperate with your company. So this means that relationships are the best investment that the company can make. Why? Because it’s a long term investment that will bring about a countless fruits and an unlimited return. And human beings, people, customers, employees, suppliers are the most important asset in any company. The most important asset is not. Artificial intelligence is not finance is not technology is not information is the human being. Because the human being can generate all these resources, can generate technology, can generate business model, can generate new products, new business systems and so on. So this is counterintuitive, but I see that there is a shift in understanding and understanding that by being a appreciative, respectful and generous and kind with different stakeholders, they can bring better economic results and better reputation and better and better brand image.

Trisha Stetzel: This is such a great topic and I love the idea of humans just being compassionate for each other. We all need to give each other grace and take care of each other, and it does create a better environment. How does this look in practice? In business, I understand that the employees feel more appreciated, and they’re given more time to talk about the things that they want to get involved in, or be a part of what’s going on in the business. What does it look like in practice? So the question then is, yeah, how do I go from being a business that’s not compassionate to compassionate? What does that look like?

Dr. Bruno Cignacco : Yeah. Very interesting. I’ll give you an example with a supplier. Let’s imagine that the supplier, the supplier of a company, is delivering the inputs that they have to deliver to this company late. This means that this supplier didn’t respect the letter of the contract, the condition of the contract. If we are not compassionate, we will have a talk with the supplier. Probably not in person, but we will have an exchange by email. I will say, You know what? You didn’t deliver this late according to the contract. You will be penalized. You have to pay a penalty because we were expecting these goods on time, right? So we will apply only the the letter of the contract. But in practice, when you are compassionate, you won’t don’t want to break the relationship. You want to not only make the supplier comply with the condition whenever possible, but also be more understanding and understand that human being. We can face some cases, challenges some cases. We make mistakes that are not intentional, and so a compassionate person will approach this differently. We’ll contact the supplier on the phone. Probably they can personal meeting in person meeting and then they will. First they will ask about the reason why they deliver this late. To understand the reason first understanding. To see how they think and how they feel and what situation they face. And after this understanding the reasons a try to offer help support, they say, you know what? It’s okay. The reason is I guess it could be clear or not so clear, but we can say, you know what? We need this on time.

Dr. Bruno Cignacco : How can we help you for you to deliver this on time? Because we want to build a strong relationship. You need us and we need you. And we want the long term relationship with you because we trust you. We don’t want this bond of trust to be breached. So the idea is and try to find solution cooperatively and try to help them whenever possible. So this means that you privilege not only what is written in the contract, right to be delivered on time for the future, but also try to privilege the relationship. So this means that you privilege the substantive aspect of the of the of this exchange means delivery on time, the quality and so on. And the relational aspect of this exchange. This means we want to build a long term bond where the needs of both parties are mutually satisfied. So this is quite important because this is how many companies like Toyota and Honda act, because they have long term relationships with suppliers. In some cases, some of their suppliers have decades of interacting with this company, and nobody wants to change supplier directly. Well, but we know that we all human beings face difficulty. We feel that we’re challenged, we have problems, and a compassionate person will understand this in business, and outside business will try to first try to understand how they think, how they feel, and when they face a problem, try to offer support. This also applies to employees.

Dr. Bruno Cignacco : Employees didn’t achieve the quota that was set up before the period this annual period. Well, instead of penalizing this employee and criticizing negatively, a manager will say, you know what? Thinking about the future. Okay, you know what? We can improve for the future. Our goal for the future is instead of focusing on what they did wrong, focusing on what they can do better, wording in a positive way, wording the possibility of change, and offering these employees a policy. You know what? I think that the quotas can be better in the future and explaining the reason because of this, this, this, but also we can offer you some support. We can offer you some mentoring, some coaching. We can offer you some additional training. You can shadow other employees that are achieving the quota already, because at the end you care for the human beings, and the human beings don’t want to be criticized or micromanaged or treated like naughty children, that they don’t know what they are doing. On the contrary, they want to feel competent, they want to feel cared for. And these are not economically. These are emotionally, but all stakeholders, employees, suppliers and other have different type of they have economic needs, but they have emotional need, need for appreciation. Need for support. Need for being treated in a compassionate way and they have needs to need for stimulation. Learning new things, new challenges and so on. And social need means building a strong relationship with others within the workplace or outside the workplace.

Trisha Stetzel: This what a passionate subject you have and it it’s really sits with me and the way that we treat other humans. Is there a diagnostic or a guide to know what I should or shouldn’t be doing to be a more compassionate leader or owner?

Dr. Bruno Cignacco : That is it. That is a very simple diagnosis. If in any organization that you work for or you are related to as an advisor or consultant or an external stakeholder, there is a bit of fear. This means that there is not so much compassion. Why? Because fear and compassion are incompatible. Let’s give an example. Let’s imagine that a manager is continually micromanaging his or her employees. Micromanaging. We know, according to research, that micromanaging is never good because it doesn’t bring about positive results. You are treating employees other people like they are naughty children and even like babies, newborns. And so. And people are not newborns. They have discerning skill. They have experience. They have the expertise. So why why micromanaging occurs so frequently? Because of fear. Because micromanaging. When you look inside micromanaging, you are fearful that they do not achieve on their own the result that you expect from them. So you are fearful of delegating. You’re fearful of confiding instead of trusting them. What is very bad because when you don’t trust them, how they can trust you so you don’t trust them. Will they feel good because you don’t trust them? Will they be more motivated when you micromanage and they have to ask for permission for every single step? Well, this is based on fear. And there are different types of fear that I define in my book. In the workplace. Fear of being micromanaged. Fear of being fired. Fear of being, for example, rocking the boat, making suggestions that are beyond the traditional. And most companies are pervaded by what we call groupthink. There is a very common idea accepted by everyone in this company, and nobody wants to challenge this idea.

Dr. Bruno Cignacco : If you come with a crazy or nontraditional ideas, you will be criticized, ridiculed at the beginning. And they might try and then they end up working. And this becomes also a main idea. But in most cases, they are not accepted. Nontraditional ideas. So this means also fear of being outpaced by colleagues. You see very important and competitive workplaces where instead of cooperating, people are not trusting their colleagues because they will get a new promotion. And so how you can be loving if you are feeling fear. Why it’s impossible, biologically speaking. Speaking why? Because you are activating your survival mode. The free fight flight mode, and your listening skills are narrowed down and temporarily impaired, and you focus only on the perceived threat that might not be a threat at all. And that is your colleague, your manager, the performance label, and so on. And this doesn’t allow you to be creative, doesn’t allow you to be used. Your critical analysis skills doesn’t allow you to be innovative, doesn’t allow you to be cooperative, doesn’t allow you to be trusting with others. So this means that a very important parameter, a clue that many people can observe is their fear in this workplace is their fear. If are people fearful of raising their voice with their ideas and all decisions concentrated in one group, they lead and nobody can participate, not even with anonymous suggestions that are there any Know-It-All in that company that is monopolizing the decision making process, and anyone will feel fearful of challenging this decision making process? So it is not participative. There is a lot of micromanagement and there is a lot of punishment.

Dr. Bruno Cignacco : If people are competing with one another and it looks like a win lose game or zero sum game. We have to be aware that something needs to be changed and the and try to dissipate this fear gradually. It’s very well ingrained and part of the company’s culture. Organizational culture. A but it’s very difficult because when you are fearful, you cannot be aware of other people’s needs. You focus on your own survival. So this is a very interesting question. And this is the most important indicator that we observe when we advise companies when we deliver some Consultancy project on this type of topic because it’s actually the policies in this company. The rules, the internal rules are structure on purpose or accidentally to foster fear. So this means that there will be penalties that are very harsh for people not complying with the quotas that are already in the company’s policies. It’s impersonal. Nobody can argue them. So they have to apply the policy. Nobody can be responsible and can be considered non-compassionate. I’m applying the rules, but the rules in some cases are completely outdated and they are not human oriented. So a very important point is to review the rules, the policies. Now I’m finishing my new book that I talk about rules a bit more and other rules, human oriented or not. Are they caring for the individual or not? We have to review. Oh, but these rules have been for decades. Maybe they are completely outdated and maybe they work in the past, but they were not adapted to the new reality.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah. So I’ve heard you say a couple of times that when we have a compassionate workplace, we have more creativity and more innovation. It may seem very obvious to some, but not to others. How do creativity and innovation actually help with our long term business performance?

Dr. Bruno Cignacco : Very interesting. Well, the last two chapters of the book are about creativity and innovation. And some people find some challenges to connect the two concepts because the compassion, kindness how this connect to innovation and creativity. Well, creativity. A very famous thought leader, Edward de Bono, wrote many books on creativity, observed that creativity is the main resource of any individual. It will be the metal resource most valuable resource in the 21st century. So this means that it’s your most important personal asset, but you cannot access this creative skills if you are feeling fearful. Research is very clear with this creativity is more prone to be your creative skills, are more prone to be fostered and prodded when you feel positive emotions, when you’re not in a survival mode, when people feel much more at ease, much more relaxed, and when they can have, for example, some free thinking, they’re not continually pressurized by deadlines, they’re not stressed, they’re more prone to have free flowing of ideas that can be connected on an unconscious level and can bring about new business models, new products, new packaging, new way of promoting and creativity is key in business. Why? Maybe because of an obvious thing, because you can always add more value to stakeholders. Because the most important purpose of companies in the marketplace is not to sell product or services. It’s to add value to customers, customer by product that add value to their lives. If you don’t add value to them, the product might look good, but they won’t buy this product or service. So, and creativity P implies that you are finding innovative ways to add more value to satisfy the needs of this customer in a much more effective way, much more quickly, with better quality, better design, and so on.

Dr. Bruno Cignacco : And customers appreciate this. They are open. They might have not thought on their own that a product like this could exist, but companies, by adding more value, making their life easier, much happier, more relaxed, less stressed, you are addressing the needs of customers. Customers are very appreciative and when the company fully fulfilled their needs, they lead positive reviews. They bring about a better company reputation. They support this company even in challenging times, the recommended product or to other customer. So creativity is key. But when you have a very stress based workplace, when people are treated in a very malicious way or disrespectful way, how people can take the chance to imagine new ways of doing things and essentially what they’re trying to protect themselves. They try to adopt a defensive mode defensive attitude, and they cannot bring about. They cannot enhance their natural creative skills. There are different type of creative techniques that are mentioned in the book, but the main conclusion of our research is that we are all creative, naturally creative, and this with this you can obviously harness this natural skill and obviously probably it will be easier for you to develop some new ideas or new products or new system and so on. But we are naturally creative. But by being fearful or by being feeling disrespected or untrusted, well, this will not be accessed at that moment. Why? Because we are adopting a defensive.

Trisha Stetzel: Okay, I know our time has gone by so fast and we’ve mentioned the book a couple of times, but I want to talk a little bit more about the book and the work that you do with your clients. So the book is called the Art of Compassionate Business, and I would love for you to talk a little bit more about any part of the book that you want to bring out to the audience, where they can find it, and how your work with your clients really is a part of this book that you’ve written.

Dr. Bruno Cignacco : Thank you very much. Well, the book is in its second edition that was published a very short time ago. The book is published by Routledge and can be found online and offline in any bookshop worldwide. It’s a very big publisher and this book, as compared with the first edition, include hundreds of cases of compassionate organization, nonprofit organization and profit organization from different sector, but include also a lot of research and include additional topics such as leadership, trust based relationship and others, which the book is quite long, but it’s very The illustrative examples. All chapter include a lot of examples and include topics such as forgiveness in business, generosity in business. Gratitude in business. The importance of developing a mission which include the economic aspect, the human aspect, the environmental aspect include two chapters of creativity and innovation include also the importance of nurturing relationship with each of the stakeholders, such as suppliers, community members and customers. They have separate chapters for each stakeholders, and they have also some appendices, such as the importance of reducing stress in the workplace, a some aspect of marketing and manipulation. How can we reduce the use of manipulative techniques in marketing and be more transparent and honest, among other topics?

Trisha Stetzel: What a beautiful message you have, doctor. Thank you so much for being with me today. Is there one thing that you would like to leave with the audience as we close the show?

Dr. Bruno Cignacco : Yes, I want to leave the audience with this self-reflection question. Whatever the relationship that you have with a company or a nonprofit organization, you should ask yourself this question how can I be more supportive to different stakeholders? How can I be more generous and grateful to different stakeholders? How can I add more value on a regular basis to different stakeholders? By asking yourself this question, you can bring about a positive cycle of reciprocity, and you are more prone to see that the relationship with these stakeholders tend to be strengthened and brightened over time.

Trisha Stetzel: I love that, so if people want to connect with you, doctor, what is the best way for them to connect with you or find the information that you talked about today?

Dr. Bruno Cignacco : Cool, cool. They can find me on LinkedIn or they can visit one of my website that is w-w-w dot co double.com.

Trisha Stetzel: Perfect. So it’s w w w b r u n o c I g n a c o.com. Bruno, thank you so much for being with me today. It’s been my pleasure to host you.

Dr. Bruno Cignacco : Thank you very much Trisha. I feel very honored to be here. Thank you.

Trisha Stetzel: Thank you. That’s all the time we have for today. If you found value in this conversation that I had with Doctor Sancho today, please share it with a fellow entrepreneur, veteran or Houston business leader ready to grow. And be sure to follow, rate and review the show. It helps us reach more bold business minds just like yours and your business. Your leadership and your legacy are built one intentional step at a time. So stay inspired, stay focused, and keep building the business and the life you deserve.