Barry Gottlieb on Making Smart Business Decisions and Living Authentically

Episode 147: Barry Gottlieb is a trusted business advisor and personal mentor, with a successful practice offering counsel and guidance to both private individuals and corporations.

In this episode, learn how to make smarter business decisions, discover insight into top performance, and resources you can use to become more successful as a leader.

Barry and his partners successfully started and Continental Farms in 1976, and after twenty-two years of positive growth, sold for $75M. Barry's mission is to inspire and empower others to reach their full potential, and we're delighted to share this special episode with our listeners!

About our guest:
Barry is the Founder and President of Coaching the Winner's Edge organization. He is both a life coach and a business coach with a successful practice offering counsel and guidance to both private individuals and corporations. Barry is a dynamic speaker and is sought after by corporations and organizations of all sizes to deliver keynote addresses and specific training modules.

Barry's Books:
TGIT
Brilliant on the Basics
TGIT 2.0 A Manual for Life

Sponsored by:
Flower Clique
Flower Clique Prep School
Real Life Retail Florist

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:02

And so I said, well, thank God I picked the right purpose in my life, right? And this just this sort of just verifies it. So getting back to the point, to me, it's all about helping people. If you help the people that work with you, they will perform at a much higher level. And that's one of the greatest challenges that every business faces right now.

SPEAKER_02 0:29

Welcome to the Business and Pleasure of Flowers. We're your host, Bonda LaFever, and Lori Wilson.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

And we believe that business and fun are a perfect combination. I don't like this, Vonda. All right, well, Vonda. Good morning. I'm super excited. Today's the day.

SPEAKER_02 0:51

I know Lori. You are so starstruck, and I'm so excited for you today. We're we're both blessed to have a special guest today.

SPEAKER_04 0:58

I'm blessed to be here.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Well, we're just excited, very gauntly. We are so grateful that you emailed me back quickly and said, let's do it. I was like, oh my gosh. At the most recent SAF, I saw that you were going to be speaking, and everyone in Flower Click knows I was like so excited because I the first time I ever heard you speak, you talked about the emotional IQ book. And I had not really heard of you before. Not, you know, I probably heard your name, but I didn't. And it really did um it changed my life. Ellie and I went to your um session, and I I don't know. It just just hearing you and and I got the book and I took the test and it just assumed that I had value in this world because I scored super high on two things, which was um self-awareness and the empathy. I mean, the whole like you know, those were like my two main things. But you placed value on those things in the corporate world, which you've been around a while, and a lot of people have never placed value on everything, right? So that's when I was like sold. This guy knows that he's talking about anyway. So I've kind of followed you ever since. And then when I saw you again at the SAF this time, I had I was gonna be super brave. Bonda and I had just come to class, and I ran to your class, and I wanted to introduce myself and ask you if you'd be on the podcast. And there was just too many people up there excited to meet you too.

SPEAKER_02 2:49

So I was like, Hi, my name's Lori. Her one goal, one goal at SAF was to introduce herself and get you on the podcast. And she walked away going, No, I didn't do it. I didn't ask him. He was too big.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

Oscar was right there, and I'm like, I'm not gonna, I'm he's he's more important people in line.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

So anyway, so that's when I reached out to you, and I was just so giddy when you said you'd be on here because I think you speak not only with a lot of knowledge and a lot of experience, but you speak from your heart. I think you're a very authentic person, just like you know, just like Vhonda's saying, we can edit, and you're like, yeah, we don't need to edit this.

SPEAKER_04 3:33

Yeah, no, thank you. Those are very kind words, Lori. And and and you should be very proud of yourself, you know. Too often, there are times when people would like to reach out to somebody and they don't. And one of the things that I've taught through the years to people is that there's no such thing as a missed opportunity. Somebody else gets it. Yeah, somebody else takes that opportunity, so you should be very proud of yourself for first for stopping and saying hello, but then because you didn't ask me to be on this, you then sent me a follow-up, which I was delighted to receive. So, yeah, I'm honored. It's it's it's a privilege for me to be here. I'm always happy to give back in any way that I can. So thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

Well, you are welcome. Um, so sometimes when we have guests on, we like read a long bio and and I have a lot of your bio. But what I would rather do is have you verbally talk about in the short, in the short sense, your bio. Like what is your experience? What is your background? How do you get to where you are now, which we both have in common, we were both elementary school teachers, and so that's the connection we had.

SPEAKER_04 4:48

Yes. And and here's the cool thing about that, okay? Vonda Lori, I'm gonna tell you. Oftentimes people go through life and they never feel like they actually know what their purpose is. Mine has been crystal clear since the eighth grade. I've always wanted to be a teacher. And the most so my purpose in life has always been to teach. And what we learn from this is yes, so my quick bio is I started in elementary education in early childhood, you know, got my bachelor's in it, got my master's in it, started on my doctorate, taught at Santa Fe Community College, taught at the University of Florida College of Education, and then my former college roommate, a very good friend of mine to this day, he got his degrees in, and uh he's a CPA and a tax lawyer. And and he left and moved back to Miami, and I stayed in Gainesville because I was there teaching, right? And and he kept, he one day he calls me and goes, I'm leaving my law firm. I go, what are you gonna do? And he goes, Well, I have these three Columbian clients that have thousands of acres of land, and they they want to grow something legal because back then we were both long. If you saw a picture of us in college, you would see these two long-haired hippies that look like rock stars, right? Oh yeah, and and so I said, Yeah, this is really legal, and he goes, Yeah. And so he kept saying you should join us. We're trying to build this company, trying to build this company. And finally, you know, um, I I called my old man up and I said to him, Hey Pop, you know, Jimmy wants me to come and join him in Miami, but you know, I just got my tenure at the university. And my father, great words of wisdom from a guy that only made it to the eighth grade. My father said, son, what's the worst thing that can happen? You can always go back and find another job teaching somewhere. And if Jimmy's doing this with his background as a CPA and a tax lawyer, maybe this is going to be something good. So I left Gainesville, moved to Miami. We started Continental Farms, we built that up to a $75 million company, sold it in 1998, but all along going back to being a teacher, my role ended up being the guy in our company. Jimmy took care of the books, right? The accounting, all that kind of stuff. I took care of the sales and marketing. We went from just literally a handful of us to when we sold the company in Miami. We had 450 employees.

unknown 7:30

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 7:31

And my job was to build that sales team. And how do you build a sales team? Well, you know, the great things that I learned in college was that this is this is all about continuous learning. We should always be learning, we should always be hungry for something else. So we got into business, and great, you're a tax lawyer, I'm a teacher, but what do we know about business? So I I started, you know, back then we didn't have the internet, we didn't have podcasts, we didn't have all of this. So I started flying around the country going to lectures of people that I thought were the thought leaders of the world, or I was reading their books, or back in those days, I was listening to their cassette tapes. Yeah, yeah, that's right. I became hungry for those. And as I became hungry for them, it's for me, I never once found a series of cassette tapes where I listened to it once or read a book and thought that I you don't learn it just from going through it. I would listen to those tapes over and over. My ride to work every day for over 20 years was listening to a mentor. My ride home was listening to a mentor. I was never putting on the radio, never listening to negative BS. I was filling my mind, and then I was taking it and applying it at our company. I would love to say that it all worked, but it didn't all work, but enough of it worked that we were able to build a very successful company. And in 1998 we sold it, and after that, basically what I've done is a lot of mentoring for private individuals from the lessons that I've learned. Because I wasn't just going to mentors about business, because I've always believed that the heart of a business are the people, and if you really, really, truly want to have a successful business, what you should be doing is helping everybody that works with you have a better day, a better life, help them to grow. And if you do that, guess what happens when they come in the office? Productivity soars. And so I have always been this teacher, this coach, and it's really interesting. A point of view for any of your listeners that are out there there's a man by the name of Ray Dalio, and Ray Dalio was the chairman of Bridgewater, which was the largest financial company in the world, okay? And and Ray Dalio wrote a book called Principles, which to me is one of the most important books written in a long time. And and so here you have this guy that was the former chairman of Bridgewater, and he gets together with Adam Grant, and Adam is the um organizational psychologist at the Wharton School of Business. Okay, so the two of them get together. Ray gets Adam to do this, and he goes, Look, this is what I want to do. I want to create a personality assessment test that's really accurate. But I want to offer it for free to everybody. So he created this thing called Principles U. So you can go to PrinciplesU.com and they do a 20-minute assessment that helps you sort of figure out what are your strengths, what what do what might you be, not definitely what you are, but what might you be best suited to do based upon if you're true and honest and transparent objective in this assessment, it'll give you some guidelines. So, you know, before I ever recommended it to somebody, I said, okay, uh great. I love this book. I read his post every single day on LinkedIn, Ray Daliu's post, and I suggest you follow him because they're short, they're brief, but they're just nuggets of gold, right?

unknown 11:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 11:31

And I said, I said, okay, I'll take the principal.com, 20-minute assessment. And it comes back and it says that probably what I'm best suited to be is a teacher or a coach. And so I said, Well, thank God I picked the right purpose in my life, right? And this just sort of just verifies it. So getting back to the point, to me, it's all about helping people. If you help the people that work with you, they will perform at a much higher level. And that's one of the greatest challenges that every business faces right now. And to your point, Laura, you were talking about emotional intelligence and that self-awareness. Many of the businesses that exist grew up in the Industrial Revolution and kind of thing, where it was all about how much you can grind out in an 8, 10, 12-hour, 14-hour day. And we totally forgot about those soft skills of helping people. And that's why to me, when SAF came to me back then and they said, What do you what topic do you think would be relevant for everybody? I said, Well, absolutely, emotional intelligence. And then they asked me to do one on a year or two later on company culture, right? And so I did that. And prior to that, I had done things for them on sales, on leadership, and all this, but fortunately, they were starting to get into the part that I believe is the most important, those soft skills. And and yeah, so that's what, you know, that's what I believe in, that's what I do, that's what I do my best to help, whether it's private individuals or companies. I help them to understand that 95% of their success are the people that they hire, and that as a leader, and a leader being whether you can be a coworker and be a leader, okay? So to me, leaders are people that are helping rise other people up, looking for ways to help them and never looking at it as a threat. You know, it's it's it's not, as Stephen Covey says, a limited pie. There's enough out there for everybody. You know, if you think about abundance, there's enough abundance if we're just willing to share, and if we don't have this mindset of, no, I need it for me, for me, for me, for me, you know. And I I heard this great example of it the other day. Somebody said, you know, people, people that have a growth mindset, if they go to this party and it's a pizza party, and they go to this party and they see the boxes of pizza and they see all the people there, they go over and they say, you know, there's a lot of people here. I'm only going to take one slice to make sure everybody gets some. The people that have this me, me, me fixed mindset, it's all about me, they're the ones that go over to the box of pizza and grab three or four slices because they think it's gonna run out and they don't want to get cut short. So my philosophy is let's take the one slice, let's make sure that there's enough for everybody because there usually is enough for everybody.

unknown 14:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:42

And I told you, I'm gonna rattle on forever, so I'll stop and let you ask.

SPEAKER_01 14:45

So that's a good visual because as you were saying that, I'm visualizing um, you know, children, right? And let's say you're having a pizza party in the classroom, think about and I'm talking second graders, right? They're immature, they are self-centered, they should be because they're seven. They go up, and especially the boys, just because they're boys, and they will grab four or five pieces and hoard them, right? Yeah, it's a maturity thing.

SPEAKER_04 15:20

Lori, that's why I wanted to be a teacher. Because I wanted to be able to have an impact, and I didn't choose secondary education or middle school, I chose early childhood and elementary. Why? Because most everything that we learn in our life, at least 50% of everything we learn in life, we're learning somewhere by the age of five or seven.

SPEAKER_03 15:42

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:43

And and so if I could have an impact, if I could have an impact where I could help them understand in that scenario that you just painted, that it's better to share. That abundance, abundance isn't what we have, true abundance is what we give.

SPEAKER_02 16:02

Yeah, right. Lori is the one who takes the pizza and takes it to the people. She's the one who makes sure that everybody has one before she even has it.

SPEAKER_01 16:11

So that's not and the thing is, again, going back to that second grade classroom that we've both been in those situations, it's a beautiful moment when you can gently share with those boys. You know what? Let's start with two. If you're still hungry and we don't have any more, I'll get you more. But I'm and 99% of the time, everyone's full. Everyone's not enough. Yeah, you know, but they don't they don't know it because they're kids.

SPEAKER_04 16:43

Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_01 16:45

Where it gets really scary for all of us is when we have coworkers or people in our life that are still taking all the pizza, right? And they're 40 years old or 50 or 60, whatever. So it's that's that's the part that's terrifying. Um, all right. I want to also touch on uh again, my self-awareness, right? My being very aware. When I went into your session, the most recent one, and you were talking really about mental health and wellness, which is a whole nother topic that gets skirted around in the world. It's just recently, I think, in the last three, four, five years, been more acceptable to talk about. Here's what I noticed, and I even shared this with Vonda. I was I was very surprised and very impressed by all of the pretty high-level business owners that were sitting in your class, spiral notebook, pen, listening intently. And to me, that made my heart so happy because I didn't expect that. I figured it'd be a lot of like employees. Um, but I I think I'm sure some of them came because of your name, but I also think a lot of them came because of that topic. They're like, I can't skirt around this issue anymore.

SPEAKER_04 18:15

And it's an interesting point because when SAF approached me, when I spoke to Kate and Laura, they said, Barry, you know, we're having this in Orlando. Are you going back out into the world and speaking again? Because during COVID, my wife and I were we lived in our little igloo, and that was it. And I and I said, Yeah, I said, you know, chances are I'll wear a mask, but when I'm up on stage, I don't have any problem. I've had all my vaccines and everything. And and so I discussed with them the topic, and and Kate said, I I love it. Amanda said, I love it, Laura said they love it. And and I was a little disappointed because they chose to make it just a session rather than a keynote.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

I agree.

SPEAKER_04 18:59

So I sent them, I sent them a note prior to speaking. I said, Look, I'm still very happy to do this, but I think that this is such an important topic right now that we need to face the realities based upon the statistics and everything that's coming out, and I share some of those Lori there, but and but I'll be sharing them again today and uh in my session with SAF later on. But they said, Well, you know, we already have the schedule for it, and I go, No problem, I'll be there, I'll do it. After that session was over, it was people like Gustavo from Canicott, the president, and and people like Lane DeVries, the CEO of that went to Kate and said, that was great, that should have been a keynote, and and consequently here we are, and I've I've agreed to do three successive Thursdays of talking about mental wellness and and the challenges, but also the last two sessions are really going to be focused on actual taking people through some mindful exercises, some meditation in more detail than I did there, talking about really the different things that we can do, not just for ourselves, but for the people that we work with. But more than anything, we have to get past the stigma that talking about our mental wellness is taboo. Everybody, everybody will tell you about every one of their aches and pains that they have in the office. Anything that, you know, I have a migraine, I drank too much, you know, I did this, I did. Everybody hears about it. But they don't ever tell us that, man, I'm really going through some severe anxiety.

SPEAKER_03 20:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 20:55

Or I'm not sleeping at night. I don't know what to do about it. And some of the some of the clues to that is that the suicide rates prior from 2000 to 2019 are up 30%, and since the pandemic, they're now hitting close to 40% up from the year 2000.

unknown 21:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 21:16

When are we gonna start when are we gonna start talking about this stuff? And and it particularly, it particularly impacts the younger generations, the the millennials and the Gen Zs. And it's it's it is suicide is the number two cause of death for those age groups.

SPEAKER_03 21:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 21:36

And so I'm I applaud, you know, SAF, and I'm applauding you for even allowing me to talk about it briefly here, but we have to start being okay, saying to our friends, to our family, are you okay?

SPEAKER_03 21:50

Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 21:51

When you say, How do you feel? we have to go, okay. Well, that was physically. How are you feeling mentally these days? How are you feeling emotionally these days? Need to be willing to express that. And what was really interesting, Lori, after that session, I cannot even begin to tell you how many people came up to me to tell me stories about people that were close to them that were going through these kinds of similar challenges.

SPEAKER_01 22:21

Yep, exactly. And I think the other thing, and I think you did touch on it in your um session, and I'm sure you're gonna touch on it in the series, which I am signed up for. All three Thursdays. All three Thursdays, Bonda are both signed up. Signed up will not miss. Um when we ask, how are you? We need to ask in a way that we truly mean it. And I'm okay with getting the uncomfortable answer. Or don't ask it.

SPEAKER_04 22:54

Yes. You said it earlier. To me, we need to live authentic lives. When we ask people questions, we need to be able to really shut up and listen to what they're saying. We we have created a a culture because of social media and everything where where we just want to so quickly respond or react to what somebody's saying that we don't really listen to them and hear them out.

SPEAKER_01 23:24

I just was reading, okay. So this is the book I love. So Vonda, I have both your books, but Vonda went straight to the business one. I went straight to the heart of gratefulness leaders, and I was just reading that. I mean, you talk about active listening. So the listeners, I'm holding up his book that's called T G I T. Thank God it's today, and it was written a while back, right?

SPEAKER_04 23:49

2008.

SPEAKER_01 23:51

Oh my gosh, it stands the test of time.

SPEAKER_04 23:55

Well, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 23:56

I've told Bonda it is the perfect book to put in your guest bathroom, also.

SPEAKER_04 24:00

That's what I tell people. It's it's a bathroom book. Definitely. It's definitely a bathroom book because you sit down and you just whatever chapter, it's only it's two or three pages. That's exactly what you say. It's two or three pages.

SPEAKER_02 24:13

Exactly. That's so funny.

SPEAKER_01 24:18

But you talk about that, about the discipline of active listening.

SPEAKER_03 24:26

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 24:26

And I like the concept of that because it is a discipline. We have to learn how to actively listen. I think for so much of my life, I was creating my response, right? In a discussion with somebody.

SPEAKER_04 24:44

We all are, Lori. We all are. I mean, that's that's how we grew up.

SPEAKER_01 24:50

Right, right. And we also were scared of the pause in a conversation or a lull, right? And so what I've been trying to learn is active listening and being okay if I don't jump straight in for the answer or solution or the you know, whatever. It's okay to maybe take a minute.

SPEAKER_04 25:14

Yeah. May I share something that probably a lot of your listeners will appreciate in their business world that go along that. In when I do training for people, I I teach them about how to handle an objection or a challenge. So let's let's say that you send out an order to a customer, right? This beautiful floral arrangement, and they get it, and something's wrong and they're pissed off.

SPEAKER_03 25:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 25:43

This is when learning the skills of how to handle that are important. So the first step is that when somebody starts to vent to you, whether it's a complaint or an objection, the first thing when they're doing it is for us to say, would you please tell me more? Okay, so the first thing that we should do after they've complained is to request further information. Once we've requested that further information, what we have to do is we have to zip this and we have to listen, and we have to think of it as the reason I'm doing this is to show them that I respect them, but I also want them to get all of the venom out. Okay? So when you ask them to please, you know, tell me more, tell me more, you're letting them vent. You'll know when they're done because they'll stop talking. So then the third step, so the first step is to request further information. The second step is to listen respectfully and hear them out. The third step is then to say, to play back to them what you heard. So, Mr. Barry, if I heard you right, you had ordered a dozen red roses for your wife. And instead of red roses, you got white roses. Did I get that correctly? By doing that, what you've now said to somebody is that you care, that you've heard them out, that you gave them their space, you played it back to them, and chances are that what they're gonna do is they're gonna say, Yeah, you got that right, or they're gonna add something else. If they add something else, go back to that step too, hear them out, play it back. And then the fourth step is offer a solution. Sometimes you may not have a solution. So when you don't have a solution in the in in the scenario I just gave, it could be, well, please allow me to send a dozen red roses for free. Okay? If you don't have a solution, then it's simply I'm sorry. We screwed up, I regret that that happened. How can I make it up to you? I remember a great story one time at Continental Farms. We we had a lot of boxes of white cushion pom-poms. And I was, you know, our sales manager was trying to get everybody to sell these white cushion palms to their wholesalers, and there were 40 bunches in a box. And so, you know, I would call customers once in a while because I'd like to keep my fingers in the game. So I called this one guy and I said, Look, you know, do me a favor, man. I've got you all these other things. Is there any way you could help me with? We got a lot of boxes of white cushion. What can you do? He goes, send me 40. So I sent him 40 boxes of white cushion. He wanted 40 bunches. So he called me up and he goes, What? And I went through the steps and he's like, freaking out. You sent me all these, and you know, and I did the exercise as I just explained it to you. And then I said, Look, they're yours. Give them away, give them to people, share them with your other locations. I will only charge you for the one box. That's it. Sometimes, you know what? Sometimes when we make mistakes, by the way, it's absolutely okay to make mistakes. Yeah. Right? We've all we've all heard the saying we learn from our mistakes. So, what I'm gonna say to everybody that's listening, then don't be afraid to make them.

unknown 29:23

Right?

SPEAKER_04 29:24

Just don't make when you make them, make sure you learn the lesson so that you don't keep doing it. But we all we all make mistakes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:33

So on that note, okay, so I have a couple questions, and Vonda has a couple questions that she brought that triggered her from not trigger, triggered in a good way, not a bad way. All right, good, good speaking of making mistakes, which again you said we all do. What it would you say, what was your biggest failure, and what did you learn from that experience?

SPEAKER_04 29:59

Besides the white pomps, yeah, which truly even that wasn't, you know, that was nothing. I I would say that wow, what a tough course. There's a couple of things pop into my mind. I loved getting into business and becoming a businessman, but there are times when I thought I should still be a teacher.

SPEAKER_03 30:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 30:31

And so there were times when I thought that that was a mistake, and fortunately, through mentors that I had, they helped me realize Barry, just because you're not in the classroom, yeah, doesn't mean that you can't be a teacher.

SPEAKER_01 30:44

Yeah, I feel that. I every fall I feel that twinge of getting your classroom ready, who's gonna be on my roster, which they gave me the bad kid, you know, all of the stuff, and I miss it.

SPEAKER_04 30:58

I miss it so well, and I and I do believe that my mentor at the time was very helpful because you don't have to be in a classroom to teach. No, you don't have I got into teaching because I wanted truth, is I got into teaching because I was this long-haired hippie that wanted to change the world. I did not want to do it through revolution, I wanted to do it through evolution. And where can I do that best? By teaching and helping others, and and so I never really truly left teaching. And to this day, I'm still a teacher, and I love every moment of it.

SPEAKER_01 31:39

Yeah, no, I I totally agree, but I do I do get that feeling that you are describing. And Vonda reminds me of the same thing. You are teaching, you're teaching every day, you're just teaching adults, which sometimes isn't as fun.

SPEAKER_04 31:53

Yeah, yeah. Well, because they're already set in their ways, you know.

SPEAKER_00 31:56

Right. It's way, way harder.

SPEAKER_04 31:58

So much harder, yes.

SPEAKER_00 32:00

Okay, number two.

SPEAKER_04 32:02

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 32:03

Okay, I'm gonna pause right there. We're gonna save this question and the rest of the interview with Barry until our next episode. So stay tuned till next week to finish the great interview we had with Barry. It has so much more fun.

SPEAKER_01 32:18

Thank you so much for listening to our podcast. We hope you enjoyed spending time with us. We enjoyed spending time with you. Subscribe.

SPEAKER_02 32:40

Please come back and join us in life and the first time.