Ep 22: DRIVEN: The 5 Love Languages of Leadership

Craig Harvey rides solo on this episode of The Drive to walk through the five R's inside his book Driven — a framework he has seen change the trajectory of careers, teams, and lives across the board.

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Most people assume the highest performers are just more disciplined or more talented. This episode challenges that. Craig breaks down the actual forces that keep elite people moving long after the money is made, the awards are won, and the goals are checked off. It is not what most people expect.

Here is what gets covered:

Revenue — why it is the necessary starting point and why it is never the finish line

Recognition — the most underused tool in any organization and why people will outwork themselves just to hear their name called

Rivalry — how competition, even the uncomfortable kind, pulls performance out of people that comfort never will

Revenge — why the pain, the setbacks, and the people who counted you out are some of the most powerful fuel available if you are willing to use it

Relevance — why significance becomes the thing people chase once the checks stop being exciting

Respect — the R Craig almost left out, and the one that ties everything together

If you lead a team, run a business, or just know there is more inside you that has not come out yet, this one is worth your full attention.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

All right, Craig Harvey back on the drive. Listen, riding solo today because I'm going over my book driven, kind of walking through these five R's that I have seen make a difference in so many lives. For the first hundred people that leave a comment down below as to which R speaks to you most. I'm going to sign a copy and send it to you. I hope you're one of the hundred. Hope you enjoy this. All right, guys, let's get in. I I I really always wanted to write a book. I didn't know what uh to write about, to be honest with you, because you you think you want to write a book. It's like 20, this was 26,000 words. That's a lot of damn words, man. Even if you can talk for a living a little bit like I have. And I remember going through a class uh in my first marriage on the five love languages. It was by Dr. Gary Chapman, best-selling author. Uh, he sold 13 million copies uh of this book. And what it what it talked about was uh the ways that a man or a woman love each other, or the way a woman and a woman loves each other, or the way a man and a man loves each other. It wasn't gender specific. And the reason that really spoke to me was I just looking at them, you have acts of service, you have receiving gifts, you have physical touch, quality time, words of affirmation. And every person watching me right now is moved by one of those languages more than another. Now, if you're like me and you're a sales guy, it's generally words of affirmation, generally physical touch. But I can tell you, my wife, Alex, uh, she is not moved by either one of those things. I can tell her how beautiful she is, I can rub her back, uh, I can try to hold her hand. That really doesn't spark uh the electricity in her because that's not the language she speaks. She's more of a quality time or an acts of service kind of human. And so as I really began to look at this, look at my first marriage that that wound up failing, a lot of my friends' marriages that wound up dissolving. I realized that most of those marriages failed because not from a lack of love, but lack of loving their partner the right way. In other words, you can speak a language that your partner doesn't speak, and guess what? You're not going to get great results. I started to think about that as I built my company. And I realized and looked around that, you know, most of the guys that were kicking ass spoke a language. Most of the guys that were really elite, there was something in them that I had to unlock. Listen, if you can love someone the wrong way, does it stand a reason that you could lead someone the wrong way? I mean, think about it. As a coach, you you've got to be able to not just, you know, do you in every scenario to every different personality type on your team, but you have to be able to know what language, what motivates this guy. I I've had uh players that in my career throughout athletics that some guys you could get up in their face and they would respond to that. Other guys you had to kind of put your arm around, talk slow to. Other guys were visual, other guys were were audible, right? So let's talk about these five uh sales languages today, because I do think there are five sales languages that as a leader, if you're trying to lead everyone on your team the same way, they all don't speak the same language. The same way there's love languages, there are sales languages. So the the first I just want to give you is revenue. I'm just gonna give you these quickly today. Hopefully uh you'll you'll you'll uh either get the audible, not the edible, the audible, uh, or you'll get a copy of the book and read it because I think it really will help you. Revenue, plain and simple, is money. And the reason people have come to our organization, quite frankly, is they weren't making the amount of money where they were that they needed to be able to sustain them. Even if they were making a decent living, perhaps they had absolutely no time. It's one thing to have a great career. It's another thing for that kind of career to own you. And if you're not there, you're not getting paid. If you're not uh, you know, solving problems every day, every week, every month, the money stops. It's one of the reasons I kind of fell in love with insurance is because you don't just get paid for the transaction today, call it mailbox money, trail money, monies that follow you. There's something called renewal, and renewal is real. All of us get into business flat out for revenue. Revenue is important. But one of the things I've learned is that money just kind of makes you more of what you already are. In other words, if you're a butthole and you get rich, you're gonna be an asshole, son. It's just that simple. I mean, money is kind of an accelerant. Money is a magnifier. And as great as revenue is, it can't all be about the money. Now, again, until you have the finances in your account, it's about the money. But damn it, trust me, for from those of us that know that have made millions, once once that happens, once that itch is scratched, I promise you something else in you is going to itch. And so the second R that I wrote about was something called recognition. I'll never forget the great Alan Thomas, a friend of mine for years, teaching me, hey, Craig, people will work for money, but they'll die for recognition. And so in your organization, there has to be a way to highlight the elite. There has to be a way for you to spotlight those that are going above and beyond and just doing it at a level that that no one else is doing it. We uh created some awards at our company. It's so funny. When you start a company, you can kind of do what you want. If it fails, it's on you. But when it's great, you're like, damn, I knew I knew, I knew I had something there, right? So we we created awards called the Velvet Hammer. We had Comeback Agent of the Year, obviously agent of the year rookie of the year. I was watching the CMAs one night uh and I noticed uh that that that horizon award, which they gave away, I think that was it. So I'm like, shit, we're gonna have a horizon award. People would absolutely just just go above and beyond work weekends, work nights to be able sometimes to just be nominated, to have the recognition of being nominated for an award like this. And here's what recognition really is: it's validation. It's validating someone calling your name, someone chanting your greatness, someone noticing the hard work and and the job that you have done. And so we we put chapter two in as recognition because it's so important. I would encourage you as a leader, use recognition to be able to get something out of your people that that if if you're not using it, there's money you're leaving on the table with that person. If you're not highlighting it, if you're not doing little handwritten notes, if you're not sending out text messages, if you're not in some capacity, we did something every Friday called the Pulse. And we would write up in the pulse, obviously, agent of the month, age of the week, spotlighting, female agent of the week, female age of the month. It was it was a powerful tool to be able to maximize what was inside someone. R3 was rivalry. I'm a rivalry guy, okay, I'll be honest. Uh I I love competition, and that's exactly what rivalry is. I've often said that competition drives compensation. And as you have looked throughout time, if it's Home Depot and Lowe's, if it's uh Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, uh, if it's ATT, Verizon, you can go down the list, okay? If it's CNN and Fox, I don't know if that's much of a competition anymore. But nonetheless, you know, you always need something to kind of fight against, somebody to chase down. Dare I say, somebody's ass to kick. All rivalries aren't bad. I'm telling you right now, uh I've looked guys in the eye and wanted exactly what they had, and there was a competitive gene in me that would push me to do more when I was in a rivalry game, when I was in a rivalry fight, than if I was just going up against somebody that I didn't need to hate. Does that make sense? And so if you as a leader can find rivalries within your organization or maybe even outside of your organization, to when I say pit people against each other, what you're looking to do is get every drop of ability out of an individual in a moment so that they can do the max, right? That they can they can live up to the potential that's inside them. Rivalry is so big. Revenge was number four. Um, revenge was big to me. Revenge is vindication. I've learned that I may even do a singular episode on this because this is so near and dear to my heart. All of us have a list. All of us have uh uh somewhere in our notes, in our Rolodex, okay, uh individuals, men, women, young, old, married, single, straight, gay, who have wronged us, who have done something to put a chip on our shoulder, who have said something, who have written something, they've fired us, they've left us, they've divorced us, they've looked over us. Maybe we were the wrong color, maybe we're the wrong gender, whatever it was, it shouldn't have happened. And what I've learned about revenge, it is so powerful as you use what someone did to you. Well, my dad, my dad was a pastor, and he used to say, What the devil meant for evil, God would somehow make for good. Well, it's like, look, look, you some bitch, what you meant to hurt me wound up being rocket fuel to help me. Dude, the R, if you're not using revenge, if if you're not leveraging revenge, man, in your organization to maximize what somebody could do, bro, you're missing out. I'm telling you, revenge is powerful. Relevance uh was the fifth R that I wrote about, and this is so important. Relevance is significance. I want to give a shout out right here to Brian Akins. Brian, I'm gonna drink to this just for you, buddy. Wherever the animal Akins is, somewhere he's a model now, by the way. I don't know if you guys knew that. Um, but for years he worked with us and he was at my house, and I was trying to come up with a fifth R. Had to all, you know, congruent, right? Had to all have alliteration there. And Brian said, Harvey, what about relevance? And I'm like, wow, that that makes so much sense because what I've learned is over time, once you start tasting success, once the checks have cashed, once the boats have been bought, once the cars are owned, once the watches are yours, what you have done in other people's lives, the difference you've made, bro, it's it's so huge. The fact that that your presence in their journey was so relevant. And it's telling you, it's massive because what begins to happen is you realize people never forget your name, either good or bad. People never forget the difference that you helped make in their lives or the the deficit that you helped create in their lives. And so I learned over time that that the relevance of being able to be a positive part of somebody's journey, it's intoxicating. It is electric and it is something that will will drive the decisions you make. It will cause you to do the right thing when you want to do the wrong thing. It will stop you from doing the wrong thing when it just looks and it feels easy. So I wrote about these five R's. First, obviously, revenue, then was recognition, then was rivalry, revenge, and relevance. And I thought I was finished. I thought the book was completed, and it was. But I I I I heard something uh called an epilogue. You guys know what an epilogue is? You know, first time I heard the word epilogue, I'm like, what'd you call me? What'd you what'd you call me? Epilogue is is kind of a PS, so to speak. And so I I wrote about one final R, and that R was respect. When I talked about how you can have all the revenue, you could have used rivalry, you you could have leveraged recognition, uh, you could have uh stood tall through revenge and been vindicated. You can feel that your story and life mattered, but at the end of it all, without respect, without earning, gaining, maintaining, someone thinking of your name, seeing your photo, uh, remembering you from a long time ago, being reconnected with you at an airport, and them not having the respect that ultimately, I remember Dickie May, my famous football coach. Shout out to you, Dickie. You've changed a lot of lives. You've influenced me in a major way. Dickey said, you go through your whole life looking for one thing, respect. Again, I there's people I like and don't respect. There's people I respect and I don't like. But as I've looked at these R's and how they've changed my life, I hope we have built a company. I hope I've been the kind of leader that the people that worked with me respect me. I hope uh this episode has meant something to you. Remember, at the bottom, if you will comment on the R that meant the most to you, send me your address. I'll sign one of these, send it to you. Thank you for tuning in to the drive.