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Empathy Over Profit: Business Reimagined with Gee Ranasinha · The Heart-Led Business Show

• 0:01
  Speaker: Welcome to the Heart Led Business Show, where compassion meets commerce and leaders lead with love.
• 0:09
  Speaker: Join your host, Tom Jackobs, as he delves into the insightful conversations with visionary business leaders who defy the status quo, putting humanity first and profit second.
• 0:20
  Speaker: From heartfelt strategies to inspiring stories, this podcast is your compass in the world of conscious capitalism.
• 0:29
  Speaker: So buckle up and let's go.
• 0:31
  Speaker: Let your heart guide your business journey.
• 0:36
  Tom: All right.
• 0:36
  Tom: Gather round groovy gang, gear up as we greet the great Gee Ranasinha.
• 0:43
  Tom: This gallant and good hearted guru guides a glistening heart-led hustle.
• 0:48
  Tom: Great insights are guaranteed as Gee gallantly shares the gospel of his galactic business journey on the Heart-Led Business Show.
• 0:56
  Tom: So hold tight.
• 0:57
  Tom: It's going to be a genuine conversation.
• 1:00
  Tom: Hey, Gee welcome to the show.
• 1:01
  Gee Ranasinha: Thank you very much, Tom.
• 1:02
  Gee Ranasinha: Delighted to be invited.
• 1:03
  Gee Ranasinha: And I never thought you'd get so many G's in that alliteration intro.
• 1:08
  Gee Ranasinha: Very well done.
• 1:09
  Tom: Well, you know, the first question I always like to ask is what's your definition of a heart-led business?
• 1:16
  Gee Ranasinha: Okay.
• 1:17
  Gee Ranasinha: Well, a heart-led business to me is quite simple, really.
• 1:23
  Gee Ranasinha: It's a business that seeks to make a beneficial, and honest valuable contribution to the lives of everyone it touches, whether that's clients, partners, or employees.
• 1:37
  Gee Ranasinha: And that's pretty much it.
• 1:39
  Gee Ranasinha: Short and to the point.
• 1:39
  Tom: Yeah.
• 1:40
  Tom: Short and sweet.
• 1:41
  Tom: And very direct as well.
• 1:42
  Gee Ranasinha: Yeah.
• 1:43
  Gee Ranasinha: I'm very direct.
• 1:43
  Gee Ranasinha: Yes.
• 1:44
  Tom: So tell me a little bit about what inspired you to start your heart-led business and maybe in there, talk a little bit about what your business is.
• 1:51
  Gee Ranasinha: Sure.
• 1:52
  Gee Ranasinha: Well, you know, we're a marketing agency that focuses on helping startups and small businesses.
• 1:57
  Gee Ranasinha: We work with organizations in about 20 countries, but primarily in the US.
• 2:03
  Gee Ranasinha: We're in a distributed working environment.
• 2:05
  Gee Ranasinha: So we're 19 people in nine countries.
• 2:07
  Gee Ranasinha: None of us are in the US.
• 2:08
  Gee Ranasinha: The rest are in Europe, South Africa, and I have two people in Australia too.
• 2:12
  Gee Ranasinha: But to get back to the point, we're 16 years old.
• 2:15
  Gee Ranasinha: So if we cast our minds back to 2008, all those years ago in terms of what inspired us at the time there were three of us.
• 2:25
  Gee Ranasinha: There wasn't really a light bulb moment, an aha moment.
• 2:30
  Gee Ranasinha: There wasn't nothing there that particularly inspired me.
• 2:34
  Gee Ranasinha: I think it's always been the way that I've operated throughout my working life, right?
• 2:38
  Gee Ranasinha: You know, whether it was washing cars during school summer holidays when I was 14 or when it was when I ran my first business as a advertising photographer, working with brands such as Ford, Nestle, BAT or Hilton Hotels, or indeed when I was a global CMO of a software company, we're working with companies like Apple, Timing, Airbus or Marvel.
• 3:02
  Gee Ranasinha: You know, regardless, I've always come to the situation, whether it was a business situation or otherwise, to be honest, from an empathy perspective, you know, an empathy point of view.
• 3:12
  Gee Ranasinha: And you know, clearly there's, there's something there which people subconsciously or consciously pick up on because, you know, there is something that happens.
• 3:22
  Gee Ranasinha: I'm sure it's chemically, right?
• 3:24
  Gee Ranasinha: When you find a like-minded person, okay?
• 3:28
  Gee Ranasinha: I'm not talking about soulmates and that sort of thing, but just people that you click with, that you know you're going to get on with.
• 3:34
  Gee Ranasinha: And it's always been like that.
• 3:36
  Gee Ranasinha: You know, it's a trite comment now because I've been saying it for 16 years and, you know, the team will tell you that they're sick to death, sick to the back teeth of hearing it.
• 3:45
  Gee Ranasinha: But I always say that we don't have clients.
• 3:48
  Gee Ranasinha: We have friends that we do business with.
• 3:50
  Gee Ranasinha: And I think that's a key differentiator because we're very selective on who we take on.
• 3:55
  Gee Ranasinha: Okay.
• 3:56
  Gee Ranasinha: Because we're a small agency, 19 people, right?
• 3:59
  Gee Ranasinha: So we, we can't take on everyone that we could because then we'd end up being a 59, 159.
• 4:06
  Gee Ranasinha: person agency.
• 4:07
  Gee Ranasinha: And that's not what I want.
• 4:09
  Gee Ranasinha: That's not the goal of the organization at all.
• 4:12
  Gee Ranasinha: At the same time, we, everybody works on the same project.
• 4:15
  Gee Ranasinha: So we don't have like, you know, larger agencies to have like an A team to work on the key accounts, whatever that right?
• 4:22
  Gee Ranasinha: And then you have the B team that works with the guys who basically pay to keep the lights on, right?
• 4:28
  Gee Ranasinha: So we don't have an A team and a B team.
• 4:30
  Gee Ranasinha: We have the team.
• 4:31
  Tom: Right.
• 4:32
  Tom: I hope.
• 4:33
  Gee Ranasinha: So, you know, consequently, we have to be quite selective in who we choose to work with.
• 4:39
  Gee Ranasinha: And part of that has been this, I won't call it something that we, you know, actively went for, but it's something that came out of the the philosophy that I had with the company, which is the three rules that every new client needs to fulfill before we can take them on.
• 4:57
  Gee Ranasinha: And, I mean, it's not something unique, Tom, I'll say straight away.
• 5:00
  Gee Ranasinha: Okay.
• 5:01
  Gee Ranasinha: At the end of the day, I ripped it off McKinsey.
• 5:04
  Gee Ranasinha: Okay.
• 5:05
  Gee Ranasinha: There was a guy from McKinsey by the name of Marvin Boer.
• 5:08
  Gee Ranasinha: He was the ex-managing director of McKinsey from about 1950 to sort of late 60s, but he stayed with, you know, involved with the organization for years afterwards until he, I think until he passed away anyway.
• 5:20
  Gee Ranasinha: And, you know, he was considered like the father of modern management consulting.
• 5:27
  Gee Ranasinha: And by all accounts, he was an extremely principled and pragmatic person and insisted on extremely high, impeccable professional standards in substance, in ethics, in style throughout the entire organization of McKinsey.
• 5:42
  Gee Ranasinha: Okay.
• 5:42
  Gee Ranasinha: There's actually a story.
• 5:44
  Gee Ranasinha: I think it was in one of his biographies that he strongly protested at being named by Businessweek as one of the top business people in the 20th century, because as far as he was concerned, he was a, professional rather than a businessman.
• 6:00
  Gee Ranasinha: Anyway.
• 6:00
  Gee Ranasinha: So McKinsey famously have these sort of core tenants of who they are and how they serve.
• 6:07
  Gee Ranasinha: And I sort of took that on board and sort of, you know, gave it a little bit of a riff that works for our agency.
• 6:13
  Gee Ranasinha: And we have three rules and they're very simple.
• 6:15
  Gee Ranasinha: Rule number one, which is if we can't be as enthusiastic about your business as you are then we won't accept you as a client.
• 6:22
  Gee Ranasinha: And that's simply because it's not a logical, rational, devoid of emotion type of relationship, right?
• 6:30
  Gee Ranasinha: There needs to be an emotional involvement into the why, you know, what you're doing, why you're doing it, who you're, you know, what change you're trying to make, you know, within your customers, within your industry, within the world, whatever it may be.
• 6:43
  Gee Ranasinha: And we have to buy into that because otherwise it's false.
• 6:46
  Gee Ranasinha: What we're doing is we're just, going through the numbers.
• 6:48
  Gee Ranasinha: We're just, you know, we're on cruise control and we can't give you the best work if we're doing that.
• 6:55
  Gee Ranasinha: So that's rule number one.
• 6:56
  Gee Ranasinha: Rule number two is that based upon what we call diagnosis, which is basically looking at the business, what you're doing, how you're doing it the budget available your go to market strategies, your business philosophy, your P& L, all of that stuff.
• 7:12
  Gee Ranasinha: If at the end of that process, we feel that we can't make a meaningful difference over and above what you're already doing, we won't accept you as a client.
• 7:20
  Gee Ranasinha: Because what's going to happen is it's all going to end in tears, right?
• 7:24
  Gee Ranasinha: There's going to be loads of finger pointing.
• 7:25
  Gee Ranasinha: And, you know, life's too short.
• 7:27
  Gee Ranasinha: I don't want to go down that route, right?
• 7:30
  Gee Ranasinha: You know, if we don't believe we can move that needle, then why are we doing it?
• 7:35
  Gee Ranasinha: You know, it's a bait and switch type operation.
• 7:37
  Gee Ranasinha: And that's, you know, there's, there's a reason if you Google me or you Google our organization, you won't find a bad word said against us, right?
• 7:46
  Gee Ranasinha: Because, we talk the talk and walk the walk.
• 7:49
  Gee Ranasinha: So that's not, that's rule number two and rule number three, which is sort of, let's say, inspired from McKinsey, is that if we feel that we would be too much of a drain on your finances as the state of the business is today, we won't accept you as a client.
• 8:05
  Gee Ranasinha: The way that McKinsey phrased it is that the value to the firm has to be less than the benefit to the client.
• 8:13
  Gee Ranasinha: So, there has to be a positive accumulation in value on behalf of the client, regardless of the numbers that we're talking about, you know, whether it's a very small investment or whether it's, you know, some huge multinational, multilingual, multi-channel extravaganza, it doesn't matter.
• 8:32
  Gee Ranasinha: You know, at the end of the day, marketing is there to move product, right?
• 8:37
  Tom: Yeah.
• 8:37
  Gee Ranasinha: We're here to sell stuff.
• 8:40
  Gee Ranasinha: I said stuff.
• 8:41
  Gee Ranasinha: Okay.
• 8:42
  Gee Ranasinha: I was going to say something else, but I changed it to stuff.
• 8:45
  Gee Ranasinha: Okay.
• 8:45
  Gee Ranasinha: That's what we're doing.
• 8:46
  Gee Ranasinha: Our job is growth.
• 8:48
  Gee Ranasinha: That's our job.
• 8:48
  Gee Ranasinha: And I think there's too many people who call themselves marketers.
• 8:51
  Gee Ranasinha: I don't call them marketers.
• 8:52
  Gee Ranasinha: I call them people who call themselves marketers
• 8:55
  Tom: I called them mushroom gurus.
• 8:55
  Gee Ranasinha: Right.
• 8:56
  Gee Ranasinha: Who get caught up in, you know, vanity metrics and sort of ego numbers.
• 9:01
  Gee Ranasinha: And, Oh, well, we're doing this and we're looking to make a change in the world.
• 9:05
  Gee Ranasinha: And it's all about likes and comments and retweets and all that sort of stuff, which is all great and wonderful.
• 9:11
  Gee Ranasinha: But at the end of the day, we're doing this to shift product.
• 9:15
  Gee Ranasinha: So how has that made a tangible difference to the bottom line?
• 9:19
  Tom: Yeah.
• 9:20
  Gee Ranasinha: Right.
• 9:21
  Gee Ranasinha: What sales can you attribute to what you've just done compared to doing nothing?
• 9:28
  Gee Ranasinha: Because it needs to be comparison as well.
• 9:29
  Gee Ranasinha: It's not just, Oh, we got 27 likes and we got 16 sales.
• 9:34
  Gee Ranasinha: Okay.
• 9:35
  Gee Ranasinha: But if we didn't do anything, would we have still got the 16 sales?
• 9:40
  Gee Ranasinha: Or would we have got 15 or would we have got one?
• 9:43
  Gee Ranasinha: If the differences between 16 and 15, the margin on that one sale, does that justify the expenditure of that particular campaign?
• 9:51
  Gee Ranasinha: Now, if you're sending something very expensive, large, complicated enterprise level B2B type environment, that takes six months to deploy, yeah.
• 9:59
  Gee Ranasinha: Then maybe.
• 10:00
  Gee Ranasinha: Maybe it does.
• 10:01
  Gee Ranasinha: But if you're selling paper clips, maybe it doesn't.
• 10:03
  Tom: I want to kind of focus in on those three rules as kind of that heart-led piece because I think it really does make a difference when you are choosing who to work with and who's choosing to work with you as well.
• 10:18
  Tom: Because I'm sure there's been times where you've had to make.
• 10:22
  Tom: a hard decision, whether it's like early in the startup phase of your business where maybe cash was a little bit tight and you had a client that was like, Oh, I really need to take this client, but I'm not sure if I can move the needle on them.
• 10:35
  Tom: You know, rule number two, right.
• 10:38
  Tom: Make a, make a difference in their bottom line.
• 10:41
  Tom: So talk to me about like how difficult that can be at sometimes and how you overcome that difficulty?
• 10:47
  Gee Ranasinha: Every frigging day, Tom.
• 10:49
  Gee Ranasinha: I'll tell you.
• 10:50
  Gee Ranasinha: Okay.
• 10:51
  Gee Ranasinha: Firstly, I need to say one thing.
• 10:53
  Gee Ranasinha: We get a lot of inquiries for, for a small agency because I've spoken with many small agency owners over the years.
• 11:01
  Tom: Mm hmm.
• 11:01
  Gee Ranasinha: We get a ton of inquiries in excess of 50 a week, sometimes almost a hundred a week.
• 11:06
  Tom: Wow.
• 11:07
  Gee Ranasinha: Okay, and this is purely organic.
• 11:10
  Gee Ranasinha: It's not like we're not spending money on ads.
• 11:12
  Gee Ranasinha: Okay.
• 11:13
  Gee Ranasinha: This is people finding us from SEO, from podcasts, who knows, from various, various channels.
• 11:20
  Gee Ranasinha: Okay.
• 11:20
  Tom: Definitely from this podcast.
• 11:22
  Gee Ranasinha: And I would.
• 11:22
  Gee Ranasinha: I've, I will be snowed under.
• 11:25
  Gee Ranasinha: I've already got backup resources manning the phones for the instant that this podcast drops.
• 11:31
  Gee Ranasinha: I would say, conservatively, we probably turn down 70 percent of the inquiries we get.
• 11:41
  Tom: Wow.
• 11:41
  Tom: Based on the rules or based on other?
• 11:44
  Gee Ranasinha: Based on the rules, but also, now this is where we get into potential PG territory.
• 11:51
  Gee Ranasinha: Okay.
• 11:52
  Gee Ranasinha: So warning you
• 11:53
  Tom: Okay.
• 11:53
  Tom: I got my,
• 11:54
  Gee Ranasinha: Get, get ready with a button.
• 11:56
  Tom: Okay.
• 11:56
  Tom: Ready
• 11:57
  Gee Ranasinha: Okay.
• 11:58
  Gee Ranasinha: When we started the agency in 2008, there were three of us.
• 12:01
  Tom: In the recession.
• 12:02
  Tom: Great time to start a business.
• 12:03
  Gee Ranasinha: Yeah.
• 12:03
  Gee Ranasinha: Not a great time to start a marketing agency.
• 12:07
  Gee Ranasinha: I have to say, not one of my best business decisions.
• 12:10
  Gee Ranasinha: I'll give you that.
• 12:11
  Gee Ranasinha: Right.
• 12:12
  Gee Ranasinha: But you know, we're still here.
• 12:13
  Tom: You did sign, right?
• 12:14
  Gee Ranasinha: So, you know, it worked, but that was a following wind, stars in alignment, but mainly we had some absolutely superhero customers.
• 12:24
  Gee Ranasinha: clients at the beginning who were absolutely phenomenal.
• 12:27
  Gee Ranasinha: But anyway, one of the rules that we had when we started the agency is that we were not going to work with arseholes.
• 12:38
  Gee Ranasinha: You see, when you say, arsehole in an English accent, that's less of an impact as opposed to having a North Atlantic action.
• 12:44
  Gee Ranasinha: And I think I can get away with that.
• 12:46
  Tom: Absolutely.
• 12:46
  Tom: I mean, that should be rule number one, right?
• 12:50
  Tom: You should have four rules.
• 12:51
  Gee Ranasinha: Yeah.
• 12:52
  Tom: The unspoken rule.
• 12:53
  Gee Ranasinha: Well, yeah, but sometimes you have covert arseholes.
• 12:56
  Gee Ranasinha: And sometimes you have people who are being arseholish.
• 13:01
  Gee Ranasinha: That's a word.
• 13:02
  Gee Ranasinha: I've just invented it.
• 13:03
  Gee Ranasinha: So I'm telling you it's a word.
• 13:04
  Tom: From Webster's dictionary.
• 13:05
  Gee Ranasinha: Oh, from, because they're coming from a position of uncertainty, fear, and doubt.
• 13:10
  Gee Ranasinha: Okay.
• 13:11
  Tom: One-hundred percent.
• 13:11
  Gee Ranasinha: Because we're talking about stuff that they don't understand and they're trusting us with their newborn, right?
• 13:17
  Gee Ranasinha: So, it's very easy in those sorts of circumstances to be a arsehole, a jerk.
• 13:23
  Gee Ranasinha: But just to keep me humble, Tom, every so often, an arsehole slips through the net and we, and we end up working with them.
• 13:30
  Gee Ranasinha: And it keeps me humble and it sure, it's sharpens the radar for next time round, but it's also a learning experience for everyone because, you know, not only do we turn down 70 percent of the inquiries we get, which as you can imagine, really cheers up my accountant.
• 13:46
  Tom: You're right.
• 13:47
  Gee Ranasinha: Right?
• 13:48
  Gee Ranasinha: And really gives nightmares to my bank manager.
• 13:51
  Gee Ranasinha: Right.
• 13:51
  Tom: And your sales coach too probably.
• 13:53
  Gee Ranasinha: Well, it's worse than that because even then, even when we get to the point of speaking with a potential client and going through their business, why they're doing it their passion to understand their passion about what they're doing within their business.
• 14:06
  Gee Ranasinha: Okay.
• 14:07
  Gee Ranasinha: Yes.
• 14:07
  Gee Ranasinha: I'm, I'm, I'm the person that the, you know, at the top of the tree, but I then need to sell the client to the team.
• 14:15
  Gee Ranasinha: It's not a given.
• 14:16
  Tom: Well, that's good.
• 14:17
  Gee Ranasinha: And if there is pushback for you know, what would be considered reasonable reasons, ethical reasons, or, you know, maybe the, whatever it may be, you know, tobacco products, or I don't know, whatever.
• 14:31
  Gee Ranasinha: Well I mean, we've not had that come up.
• 14:34
  Gee Ranasinha: But you know, that would be a possible example.
• 14:37
  Gee Ranasinha: Yeah, if, if there's not a ma majority consensus within the team, then I have to per politely decline and have that, dear John conversation with that potential client because it's all of us or none of us, right?
• 14:49
  Gee Ranasinha: It's a very flat organization.
• 14:52
  Gee Ranasinha: I'm totally in my team's hands, because they are collectively, they're a bunch of magicians, Tom.
• 14:59
  Gee Ranasinha: I mean, I can say nothing more, right?
• 15:02
  Gee Ranasinha: They've bailed me out of holes more times than I can possibly remember.
• 15:06
  Gee Ranasinha: Things where, you know,'cause I'm one of those people who sort of knows a lot about knows a little about a lot of things.
• 15:13
  Gee Ranasinha: Okay.
• 15:14
  Gee Ranasinha: So I like to think I know about stuff and I sort of get my hands under the hood and do stuff and break stuff.
• 15:21
  Gee Ranasinha: Because actually I don't know the implications of what I'm doing.
• 15:24
  Gee Ranasinha: Because I won't leave well alone, because I think, oh yeah, no, I don't need to bother anybody else.
• 15:29
  Gee Ranasinha: I can do that.
• 15:29
  Gee Ranasinha: It's a five minute job.
• 15:30
  Gee Ranasinha: Yeah.
• 15:31
  Gee Ranasinha: Crash bang.
• 15:32
  Gee Ranasinha: Boom.
• 15:33
  Gee Ranasinha: And all of a sudden it's something totally different.
• 15:35
  Gee Ranasinha: Or it may be we're working to an impossible deadline.
• 15:39
  Gee Ranasinha: Like we had two weeks ago, we were doing something for an organization based out of Ohio who was doing something in Europe of a very large trade show in Europe.
• 15:50
  Gee Ranasinha: And they set an impossible deadline, but we pulled it out the bag and it was a great success.
• 15:57
  Gee Ranasinha: And, you know, there were pats on the back all round and everybody was happy to do it.
• 16:02
  Gee Ranasinha: Because everybody was pulling in the right direction as to the reasons why they were doing it.
• 16:07
  Tom: Now, you know, talking about, like, the ones that slipped through, though, like, have you had the opportunity to fire clients?
• 16:16
  Gee Ranasinha: Oh, yeah.
• 16:17
  Gee Ranasinha: Oh yeah.
• 16:17
  Gee Ranasinha: I fired one a month ago.
• 16:19
  Gee Ranasinha: It was a startup in the in the consulting category.
• 16:22
  Gee Ranasinha: And it was trying to work with these people, it was like trying to sort of swim through treacle It was just impossible.
• 16:29
  Gee Ranasinha: And things which should have taken a week or two, were taking months.
• 16:33
  Tom: It didn't solve any of that.
• 16:34
  Gee Ranasinha: Yes, it was.
• 16:36
  Gee Ranasinha: I mean, it was a small organization that were growing pains and all the rest of it.
• 16:40
  Gee Ranasinha: And it was one of those things where I said, yes, what we're doing here is something which is vitally important.
• 16:46
  Gee Ranasinha: But so are the hundred and one other things that we're doing every day, which are also vitally important.
• 16:51
  Gee Ranasinha: So it's like, well, okay.
• 16:53
  Gee Ranasinha: Well, clearly.
• 16:54
  Gee Ranasinha: It's a timing issue.
• 16:54
  Gee Ranasinha: Okay.
• 16:55
  Gee Ranasinha: You're trying to do too much at the same time.
• 16:57
  Gee Ranasinha: You're, you know, under resourced, you know, attention is focused on revenue rather than other things, all the rest of it.
• 17:04
  Gee Ranasinha: This is not going to work.
• 17:06
  Gee Ranasinha: Let's shake hands and part as friends.
• 17:09
  Gee Ranasinha: Hopefully, you know, restarting something down the road.
• 17:12
  Gee Ranasinha: But this wasn't something that I was prepared to put my team through for any longer.
• 17:18
  Gee Ranasinha: The whole project was supposed to be about six to eight weeks.
• 17:20
  Gee Ranasinha: And, you know, we were getting to like four to five months.
• 17:23
  Tom: Oh, wow
• 17:23
  Gee Ranasinha: and we still couldn't even see the light at the end of the tunnel.
• 17:27
  Tom: Yeah, well, that's a strain on the whole team then at that point, and there's...
• 17:31
  Gee Ranasinha: No, exactly, exactly.
• 17:33
  Gee Ranasinha: You see, the thing is, you know, as you can probably appreciate, you know, when you get work in, you get some client work, you, you book resources within the team so that we can comfortably get the work done to the level that we're all expecting it to be quality wise.
• 17:50
  Gee Ranasinha: Right.
• 17:50
  Gee Ranasinha: And if that doesn't happen, then all of a sudden we're into the next block of time, which has been apportioned to a different client
• 17:57
  Tom: Yeah.
• 17:58
  Gee Ranasinha: Like I said, we're a small agency, right?
• 18:00
  Gee Ranasinha: So, you know, we can't pat her head and rub her stomach at the same time.
• 18:04
  Tom: Right.
• 18:05
  Gee Ranasinha: Right.
• 18:06
  Gee Ranasinha: So something has to give.
• 18:07
  Gee Ranasinha: And, okay, especially when it's a new client, by a new client, I mean a client who's new to the marketing or to working with a marketing agency.
• 18:16
  Gee Ranasinha: So they don't, they don't know what they don't know.
• 18:18
  Gee Ranasinha: So we know there's client education that we need to sort of set expectations and all that sort of stuff.
• 18:23
  Gee Ranasinha: So we have to allow for all of that.
• 18:25
  Gee Ranasinha: And I am pessimistic with timeframes.
• 18:28
  Gee Ranasinha: I, you know, I'd much rather under promise and over deliver, right?
• 18:31
  Gee Ranasinha: You'd be happier if we got this, if I told you it was going to take six weeks and I delivered in four, then we all look like heroes, don't we?
• 18:38
  Gee Ranasinha: Right?
• 18:38
  Gee Ranasinha: You, you, as well as, us.
• 18:40
  Gee Ranasinha: So I try to do all of that.
• 18:41
  Gee Ranasinha: So I allow for a little bit of fat within that block of time that I'm booking for resource,
• 18:48
  Tom: Yeah.
• 18:48
  Gee Ranasinha: But when it's like never ending, and it's not like I can charge for that.
• 18:52
  Gee Ranasinha: Cause that in my book, unethical as well, because it just doesn't.
• 18:56
  Tom: Well, and, and it violates, you know, two of your rules as well.
• 18:59
  Tom: Can you make a difference?
• 19:00
  Tom: Well, no, because nothing's getting done.
• 19:02
  Tom: And two, is it a drain on finances?
• 19:04
  Tom: Well, obviously if you continue to work with something and no deliverable, yeah, or, and probably the first rule as well, you're not being enthusiastic or they're not being enthusiastic.
• 19:14
  Tom: And so your enthusiasm has to drop to below what standard.
• 19:17
  Tom: So that I love those rules because they can be really guiding principles in making heart-led decisions within the business.
• 19:27
  Tom: And I mean, I don't think I've heard that from any of my guests so far in terms of these are the clear rules that we have to be heart-led business owners to make sure that we're delivering a product or service at a high level.
• 19:41
  Tom: I love that.
• 19:42
  Tom: That's, that's that's a really good lesson.
• 19:44
  Tom: I think for any heart-led business is to find out what those rules are and for their own business.
• 19:50
  Gee Ranasinha: And you know, I have to reiterate, this isn't something that we set out to do.
• 19:55
  Gee Ranasinha: We didn't set out to be a heart-led business.
• 19:57
  Gee Ranasinha: This is me and at the time, two other colleagues working the way that we think business should work.
• 20:03
  Gee Ranasinha: And it's as simple as that.
• 20:04
  Gee Ranasinha: And if it turns out to be heart-led, then so be it, you know, if I go back to my career path back when I was a photographer.
• 20:13
  Gee Ranasinha: Way back, you know, it was in days of film.
• 20:15
  Gee Ranasinha: That's how far back it was.
• 20:16
  Gee Ranasinha: Okay.
• 20:17
  Tom: Awesome.
• 20:17
  Gee Ranasinha: Was in days of 35mm medium format and 8x10 transparencies.
• 20:22
  Gee Ranasinha: Okay.
• 20:23
  Gee Ranasinha: So, how does Gee compete with the celebrities of that particular genre who knew the ad agencies and publishers, by name and nobody knows Gee?
• 20:34
  Gee Ranasinha: How did I do it?
• 20:34
  Gee Ranasinha: By being different, but not for the sake of being different.
• 20:37
  Gee Ranasinha: By being what we are now terming heart-led.
• 20:41
  Gee Ranasinha: For example, when I used to do fashion shoots.
• 20:44
  Gee Ranasinha: Everybody else used to schedule their fashion shoots at 8, 9, maybe 10 in the morning.
• 20:50
  Gee Ranasinha: Okay.
• 20:51
  Gee Ranasinha: Now, if you know anything about fashion models, you'll know they're certainly not their best at 8, 9, 10 in the morning.
• 20:59
  Tom: Fair enough.
• 21:01
  Gee Ranasinha: So, Gee used to schedule his fashion shoots to start at 11pm.
• 21:07
  Tom: Oh wow.
• 21:08
  Gee Ranasinha: 11pm was the golden hour.
• 21:09
  Gee Ranasinha: And we'd go on till 2, 3, sometimes 4 in the morning.
• 21:13
  Gee Ranasinha: And then, you know, these guys would go off clubbing and whatever else they wanted to do.
• 21:17
  Gee Ranasinha: You know, I'd collapse in a, you know, in a crumpled heap in the corner.
• 21:20
  Gee Ranasinha: But, you know, these guys would carry on.
• 21:22
  Gee Ranasinha: And so what happened?
• 21:25
  Gee Ranasinha: This spread.
• 21:26
  Gee Ranasinha: And account executives and art directors said, okay, this brief has just come in from this client.
• 21:32
  Gee Ranasinha: Who are we going to work with?
• 21:33
  Gee Ranasinha: I know, let's work with that guy, that new guy with a funny accent who wants to work in the middle of the night.
• 21:39
  Tom: Right.
• 21:39
  Gee Ranasinha: Right.
• 21:39
  Gee Ranasinha: Because it's always a party when we go to Gee's place.
• 21:42
  Gee Ranasinha: It doesn't feel like work.
• 21:43
  Gee Ranasinha: And it all culminated in actually when I was a CMO for this software company.
• 21:46
  Gee Ranasinha: I had to go to a I think it was a publishing conference in New York.
• 21:51
  Gee Ranasinha: It was about 2002, 2003.
• 21:54
  Gee Ranasinha: That's how long ago it was.
• 21:55
  Gee Ranasinha: Yes, I am that old, what can I tell you?
• 21:58
  Gee Ranasinha: And one of the speakers at this conference was a guy called Tim Sanders, who at the time worked for Yahoo.
• 22:04
  Gee Ranasinha: Now I think he's is some sort of bigwig at Harvard Business School or something.
• 22:09
  Gee Ranasinha: Anyway, he wrote this book called Love is the Killer App.
• 22:13
  Gee Ranasinha: Have you ever heard of that?
• 22:14
  Gee Ranasinha: If you have not,
• 22:15
  Tom: We'll link that up in the show.
• 22:16
  Gee Ranasinha: I would strongly recommend you, you pick up a copy.
• 22:21
  Gee Ranasinha: Okay.
• 22:21
  Gee Ranasinha: It's not a big read.
• 22:22
  Gee Ranasinha: You could easily do it in one sitting.
• 22:24
  Gee Ranasinha: Okay.
• 22:24
  Gee Ranasinha: And it turns out that Tim had written a book about heart-led businesses.
• 22:30
  Gee Ranasinha: What is essentially what we're talking about now.
• 22:33
  Gee Ranasinha: Love being the killer app, right?
• 22:35
  Gee Ranasinha: If you remember in the early 2000s, people were looking for the app as in, right, you know, the application which would make you buy into the platform,
• 22:45
  Tom: And make a billion dollars.
• 22:46
  Gee Ranasinha: And make a billion dollars and lose the billion dollars like the next day.
• 22:50
  Tom: Right?
• 22:51
  Gee Ranasinha: 2003 or something.
• 22:52
  Tom: The tech bubble.
• 22:53
  Gee Ranasinha: Anyway, he wrote this book, Love is a Killer App, and he called the heart-led business proponents.
• 22:59
  Gee Ranasinha: He called them love cats.
• 23:00
  Tom: Interesting.
• 23:00
  Gee Ranasinha: Okay, to be a love cat.
• 23:02
  Gee Ranasinha: And it is primarily what we're talking about.
• 23:05
  Gee Ranasinha: It is leading with love, leading with empathy, putting yourselves in the shoes of others and doing stuff that would make sense.
• 23:13
  Gee Ranasinha: So a love cat is primarily what we're talking about.
• 23:16
  Gee Ranasinha: A proponent of a heart-led, a heart-led business.
• 23:19
  Tom: Yeah.
• 23:19
  Gee Ranasinha: It's about empathy.
• 23:21
  Gee Ranasinha: It's about respect.
• 23:22
  Gee Ranasinha: It's about ethics.
• 23:23
  Gee Ranasinha: It's about love, right?
• 23:25
  Gee Ranasinha: A heart-led business.
• 23:25
  Gee Ranasinha: So pick up a copy of the book.
• 23:27
  Gee Ranasinha: So I'd unbeknowingly been practicing what Tim was preaching all of these years from that book.
• 23:34
  Tom: Well, it totally makes sense.
• 23:36
  Tom: Like everybody talks about, you know, fall in love with your product, fall in love with your customers, fall in love with the process.
• 23:42
  Tom: And it makes business decisions better when you have that level of enthusiasm or love for something, you know, it's not, it's better than like, and it's definitely better than hate.
• 23:57
  Tom: And, you know, how would you contrast that with maybe in your, in your career where you've worked for a corporation that is completely profit driven?
• 24:06
  Tom: What do you see as the difference between those two?
• 24:09
  Gee Ranasinha: I think it's a very good question.
• 24:10
  Gee Ranasinha: In our industry, there are a number of agencies which try to do the whole thing by remote control and try to sort of copy and paste
• 24:19
  Tom: Hmm.
• 24:19
  Gee Ranasinha: predetermined recipes and impose them on a client with a view to maximizing client project, the profit on that particular project.
• 24:28
  Gee Ranasinha: And it usually gets them over a couple of hurdles before they come to a grinding halt.
• 24:34
  Gee Ranasinha: Because, it's especially true with a discipline such as marketing, because marketing is not a wholly logical, rational, core tenets of business.
• 24:45
  Gee Ranasinha: If you look at other areas of business, right?
• 24:48
  Gee Ranasinha: If you look at sales, if you look at manufacturing, okay?
• 24:51
  Gee Ranasinha: All of these things are based on logic and pragmatism, and it's sort of quasi Newtonian in their outlook, okay?
• 25:02
  Gee Ranasinha: Two plus two is always four.
• 25:03
  Tom: Yeah.
• 25:04
  Gee Ranasinha: And it can't be anything else.
• 25:05
  Gee Ranasinha: And like in manufacturing, if, you know, from an efficiency-based perspective, if you're making widgets, then you can increase the productivity of your manufacturing process by either sourcing cheaper raw materials or finding efficiencies within the widget making process.
• 25:22
  Gee Ranasinha: To the point where you're lowering input and getting the same or a greater output, right?
• 25:29
  Gee Ranasinha: Efficiency.
• 25:30
  Gee Ranasinha: Right?
• 25:30
  Gee Ranasinha: Mechanical advantage, call it what you want.
• 25:32
  Gee Ranasinha: But this presupposes, like most things economics, it presupposes that you have 100 percent complete information, utility and trust within that system.
• 25:40
  Gee Ranasinha: And in marketing, you don't, for a number of reasons.
• 25:44
  Gee Ranasinha: Number one, the target of our efforts are not logical, rational, contextually independent entities.
• 25:51
  Gee Ranasinha: We're dealing with human beings, and human beings are anything but rational.
• 25:54
  Tom: Right.
• 25:55
  Gee Ranasinha: Right?
• 25:56
  Gee Ranasinha: We are not rational.
• 25:57
  Tom: We're emotional, right?
• 25:58
  Gee Ranasinha: Right.
• 25:59
  Gee Ranasinha: There's a, there's a famous anthropologist called Jill Bolt Taylor.
• 26:03
  Gee Ranasinha: Okay.
• 26:03
  Gee Ranasinha: And she wrote something in one of her books way back when, which has always stuck with me.
• 26:08
  Gee Ranasinha: And it's yet another quote that I tend to, gobble up, but what she says is, I think is very true, is that we think we are thinking beings that feel, when in actual fact, we are feeling beings that think.
• 26:21
  Gee Ranasinha: Okay.
• 26:21
  Gee Ranasinha: So anything you're buying apart from commodities, but otherwise, whatever it is you're buying, whatever product, whatever service, whether it's B2B, whether it's B2C, whatever it is.
• 26:33
  Gee Ranasinha: We buy from the heart.
• 26:35
  Gee Ranasinha: We buy emotionally.
• 26:36
  Tom: One-hundred percent.
• 26:37
  Gee Ranasinha: And we then post rationalize logically.
• 26:41
  Gee Ranasinha: We tell ourselves a story.
• 26:42
  Gee Ranasinha: We buy something, probably for something, something that was too expensive.
• 26:46
  Gee Ranasinha: And then we get it home.
• 26:47
  Gee Ranasinha: And what happens?
• 26:49
  Gee Ranasinha: We tell ourselves a story.
• 26:50
  Gee Ranasinha: Oh yeah, but you know, yes, it was expensive, but to tell you what, look at the quality.
• 26:54
  Gee Ranasinha: It's going to last a lot longer than if I bought some cheap crap.
• 26:56
  Gee Ranasinha: Or look, you know, look how the workmanship is, you know, this is, this is handmade.
• 27:00
  Gee Ranasinha: This is not done factory rubbish.
• 27:02
  Gee Ranasinha: We'll tell ourselves some BS story to justify that purchase.
• 27:07
  Gee Ranasinha: But that initial purchase has been made emotionally and that is the job of marketing.
• 27:12
  Gee Ranasinha: To invoke an emotional reaction, hopefully a positive emotional reaction.
• 27:16
  Gee Ranasinha: And that's why the whole thing breaks down when we start trying to compare marketing to other areas of the business, right?
• 27:22
  Gee Ranasinha: Because if you're talking about manufacturing and widgets, like I was mentioning earlier on, every part of that manufacturing process can be measured using units, which are universally understood and translatable.
• 27:35
  Tom: You can put a cost or profit each one of those, and whereas marketing.
• 27:40
  Gee Ranasinha: Right.
• 27:40
  Gee Ranasinha: We can, we can talk about like electrical watts or kilograms or pounds or whatever, right?
• 27:47
  Gee Ranasinha: Everything can be categorized.
• 27:49
  Gee Ranasinha: But if we look at some of the influences to making a decision to purchase something, some of those factors do not have universally exchangeable units that for instance, there's no such thing as a SI unit of fear or trust or anger, right?
• 28:08
  Gee Ranasinha: But these are all things which influence a buying purchase.
• 28:10
  Gee Ranasinha: And so by trying to create efficiencies within a marketing system, systems thinking, right?
• 28:16
  Gee Ranasinha: You try to optimize each part, the whole thing breaks down, which is where we've got to today where 99 percent of the marketing that we see is absolute junk, which is instantly ignored.
• 28:28
  Gee Ranasinha: But it's cheap.
• 28:29
  Gee Ranasinha: So people think it's a good value.
• 28:30
  Tom: Right, where they slap it together or what have you.
• 28:33
  Tom: You know, I think that's a really great point and it's applicable, I think, to a lot of heart-led businesses that whether it's, it is manufacturing or marketing, there's always those elements that cannot be, you know, efficiently or measured in an efficiency.
• 28:52
  Tom: And if you try to, you're taking that spirit and that love out of it as well.
• 28:58
  Gee Ranasinha: It breaks down.
• 28:58
  Gee Ranasinha: Exactly.
• 28:59
  Tom: That's a great point that you're making there.
• 29:02
  Tom: We've actually come to our time and I don't want to run on too long here, Gee, but this is fascinating conversation.
• 29:09
  Tom: Especially the marketing piece and that you can't compare marketing to manufacturing as well, and, and all that.
• 29:15
  Tom: I love that as well as the three rules that you shared earlier.
• 29:20
  Tom: So if if people are interested in learning more about you and, and your business, how, what's the best way for people to get in contact with you?
• 29:27
  Gee Ranasinha: They should all go to hell.
• 29:28
  Gee Ranasinha: No, no, no, of course not.
• 29:30
  Gee Ranasinha: No, the easiest way to get hold of me is through LinkedIn.
• 29:34
  Gee Ranasinha: You can find me on LinkedIn.
• 29:35
  Gee Ranasinha: Amazingly, Tom, there is only one Gee Ranasinha on LinkedIn.
• 29:39
  Tom: That's amazing.
• 29:41
  Tom: That makes it pretty easy.
• 29:42
  Gee Ranasinha: Yeah.
• 29:42
  Gee Ranasinha: Find me on LinkedIn and let's have a conversation, you know, talk is free.
• 29:46
  Gee Ranasinha: And if it turns out that we work together, great.
• 29:49
  Gee Ranasinha: But if it turns out that I can push you in a particular direction that helps you, and I've got no skin in the game, that works too.
• 29:56
  Gee Ranasinha: Because the point is that we need to have each other's backs, right?
• 30:00
  Gee Ranasinha: That's another part of the heart-led business.
• 30:02
  Gee Ranasinha: Surely.
• 30:03
  Tom: Elevate everybody.
• 30:05
  Gee Ranasinha: You know, we're all on the same side here, right?
• 30:07
  Gee Ranasinha: You know, rising tide lifts all boats and all that stuff.
• 30:10
  Tom: Awesome.
• 30:10
  Tom: Well, thank you so much for coming on the show today and sharing your words of wisdom with us as well.
• 30:16
  Tom: I certainly appreciate you taking the time out of your day.
• 30:19
  Gee Ranasinha: I appreciate the invite, to be honest, Tom, it was absolutely delightful.
• 30:22
  Gee Ranasinha: We should, we should do a part two.
• 30:24
  Tom: Absolutely.
• 30:24
  Tom: Awesome.
• 30:25
  Tom: And to our show fans, thank you so much for listening or watching the show today.
• 30:30
  Tom: I really appreciate it.
• 30:31
  Tom: And I know Gee really appreciates it as well.
• 30:34
  Tom: So make sure you're checking out the show notes.
• 30:36
  Tom: We're going to link up all of that Gee was talking about as well as his LinkedIn profile down there in the show notes, check that out and have a conversation with him.
• 30:44
  Tom: I know all of our show guests really like that when listeners do reach out.
• 30:48
  Tom: And so until next time, lead with your heart.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: You've been listening to the Heart Led Business Show, hosted by Tom Jackobs.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: Join us next time for another inspiring journey into the heart of business.