How do you ensure that your business is guided by your core values…
Even when the unpredictable happens?
My guest Jonathan Cotten calls this radical integrity.
As the President and CEO of Easy Step Enterprises, Jonathan leverages his business to transform lives and reflect his core values.
In this episode, he’ll share:
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How to lead your business with radical integrity
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Why you need a cultural framework—not a business strategy
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Why the employee is king—not the customer
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The importance of adversity
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And more
Mentioned in this episode:
Transcript
Jonathan Cotten: If you treat your employees like royalty, they will treat your customers like kings and queens.
Voiceover: You’re listening to the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast with professional speaker, coach and consultant Nicole Greer.
Nicole Greer: Welcome everybody to the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast. My name is Nicole Greer, and I am here to help you build a vibrant culture. And I am so excited today I have a wonderful, wonderful guest on my show. His name is Jonathan Cotten. Let me tell you a little bit about Jonathan. First of all, he’s a guy after my own heart. He loves Jesus. He loves his family, he loves his employees, don’t miss that, you have to love them. He loves people. He’s been married for 37 years.
So he and the missus are beating the odds. And he is the father of five and the grandfather of 12. I’m curious about the grandchildren. I don’t have any yet nothing. No prospects ahead. But I bet you it’s fantastic. He’s the President and CEO of Easy Step Enterprises with 15 locations of The Good Feet Store. Now I know what you’re thinking, my feet hurt. Well, we might talk about that a little bit. He’s passionate about the mission of business and leveraging businesses to transform lives. Please welcome to the show, Jonathan Cotten. Hello, Jonathan.
Jonathan: Hi, Nicole. Thanks so much for having me. This is great.
Nicole Greer: Yeah, I’m so excited you’re here. And we’re delighted to have you. I know that I sent you a little goodie package in the mail. And so here’s what I want to ask you right out of the gate. I’m collecting definitions. I’m trying to get my head wrapped around this thing, leadership. It’s so big. It’s so broad. It’s so amazing. And it’s key to building this vibrant culture. So I want to know what your definition of leadership is.
Jonathan: I don’t know where I first latched on to this, but I think it’s somewhere along the line of reading Henry Cloud, Dr. Henry Cloud’s book on integrity. And Nicole, we define our kind of the foundational value within our company as radical integrity, okay. And how we, what we, how we define it and kind of descriptors around that is radical integrity is a wholeness, its alignment, its consistency, it’s the courage to truly see ourselves, relate to others and to face the demands of reality. And that, that phrase to face the courage to face the demands of reality came from Dr. Henry Cloud.
But I think that’s really what’s necessary. If you don’t have that, you’re not a leader, there’s no way. And I think leadership from there can take a lot of different forms, as far as based on someone’s interests, their passions, their their personality, their strengths, that kind of thing. But the radical integrity is the glue that holds it all together. The radical integrity is the is the flame that the moths want to gather around. And that allows you really what leadership is is influence in people’s life. And if they see a lack of integrity, you will immediately your your influence will stop.
Nicole: I love that. And so for those of you who have never heard us name, drop Dr. Henry Cloud on this podcast before. He is also a genius, not only around integrity, but around putting up proper boundaries in your life and all sorts of things. So genius, genius, okay, I love that. So radical integrity. And you know, that’s part of my coaching methodology, Jonathan. I, I tell people when I coach, we’re gonna do self assessment, which is something he mentioned, don’t miss this people.
You know, your interests, your personality, your strengths, you got to figure all this stuff out in life, you know, and then put it to work in the world. That’s like kind of your responsibility. Then I talked about habits. And then I talk about the fact that you’ve got to really focus on integrity. You know what I find Jonathan that, that people think they’ve got integrity all the time. And I tell them, no, it comes and goes. It’s when you lose the awareness that it slips, it slips a little bit, you know, you slip out of gear. Yeah. What do you think about that idea that we kind of waffle?
Jonathan: Yeah, well, it’s not it’s an aspirational value. It’s not something that you attain. If you ever get to the point to say, I’ve got it, you know, it’s I’ve claimed this, then you’re in trouble, really. And it’s, it’s a constant thing, I find myself to be challenged. And in every offer letter that we write to an employee, we we asked them to, we say that the success is to embrace our mission and values. And if ever, they feel like that we as a leadership team have ever strayed, then they they should hold us personally accountable to that. And I think that’s part of that’s part of that radical integrity. If you believe that you’re above being accountable to if you want to call them the least of these, you know, the people that have the quietest voice or the smallest stature, if you’re above being accountable to them. Then again, you’ve, at that moment, you’re no longer leader.
Nicole: Yeah, okay. So everybody, you just got your first to do from Jonathan. You know, he’s the leader. He can’t help it, he’s telling us what to do. So I think you need to get your offer letter out. I think you need to look at it and put a sentence in there. This is so genius. You know, our success is about you embracing mission, our mission and our values. Oh, I totally love that. And then an invitation to hold Jonathan or the leadership accountable. Fantastic. All right. So there’s your first to do, get your get with your HR folks get that straight. I love that. I totally love that. Well, we were talking before we got started. And you know, I should just turn on the recording before we get started and have that little messy bit in the beginning. But you said something you said, you know, I looked at business as a mission. So gosh, I love the word mission. Okay, so talk about that Jonathan Cotten.
Jonathan: Yeah. Okay. So you know, it’s interesting Nicole, I’m going to have to weave this back into kind of how I got into business. I was in account sales for 25 years, loved it. Loved all the people that I met. Had the opportunity to interface with some of the most fascinating people in America and including, you know, the recent college graduates all the way up to those who occupied the highest positions in business and government and other places. And that was a fantastic training ground for being a an owner. When I came to I came into the Good Feet Store as a customer. I had plantar fasciitis was a lifelong runner, and was getting to where I can only run a mile and a half, two miles.
I came in and I tried all kinds of things, you know, over the counter and different things and nothing seemed to work and I got the arch supports from The Good Feet Store. Simultaneously with that, our daughter Kayla had was at the very beginning of a very difficult health journey. And that year, she was hospitalized. And, you know, there’s a verse that says, be still and know that I’m God. And as an activator, somebody who is you know, that’s my number one on the Strengths Finder thing is is an activator. I can I interpret that verse as just run longer mileage, you know, kind of a Forrest Gump, you know.
And, and in the process, I began to run longer. And finally, one day I said, I think I can run a marathon, if I train for it, even though I didn’t train for it properly. And I did ran my first marathon we continued on, and Kayla’s health journey. Came back in the next year to be prepared for my second marathon. And I told the owner of the store at that time, I said, I’ve never had a product transform my life like these arch supports. And she literally pivoted and looked at me and said, you want to buy the place. And, you know, I kind of laughed and left. I came home, and I told my wife about what just occurred. And for some reason, Catherine responded like this.
She said, well maybe oughta check it out. Now, if you if you for those that no one knows Catherine, but she is on the risk averse scale. She took two significant risks. One was saying yes to an 18 year old who had no money. Not much education, no real job, no real career going on. She said yes, at that time. And the second was most when she said yes to pursuing this opportunity with The Good Feet Store. And so a week later, I came in and I told her, I asked her, I said, Mary, were you really serious when you said, would you like to buy the place? And she said, yes, I’m not cut out to be an owner.
And so I left a 25 plus year career, had no idea whether this would even pay the mortgage. I said, we’ll do it for a few months. And if it doesn’t, I can get a part time job. And the rest is history, you might say. So but but the attraction to that Nicole was that I saw something that had transformed my life. And I saw the opportunity to take the business and really put into practice a lot of the things that I believed I’d wanted the opportunity to do, you know, myself, and and it just kind of fulfilled so many things. So that’s a very long answer to your question. But that’s, that’s the story.
Nicole: No, it’s a beautiful story. And we learned from stories, Jonathan. It’s a much much needed thing in this life is we need to hear stories of people who who follow, you know, their dreams and little prompts that, you know, like God plops down in their life. Like I mean, I think that that was like a I call it a God wink. You know, when she says want to buy the place? Yeah, it’s kind of like, right, yeah. And I actually have a little exercise. So Jonathan is prompting me to give all of you listeners a an assignment.
Okay, so here’s your second to do, you should walk away from these things with to dos. Alright, so your second to do is to email me at Nicole@vibrantculture.com. And I’m going to send you this exercise called Points of Light. So little moments where you got a God wink or like, things lit up in your brain and you were like, oh, is this for me? And so Jonathan had that, sounds like Catherine did you say that was your bride’s name? Okay, and so Catherine had two little points of light, and I’m sure she’s had many since then.
But gosh, I love I love a gal who’s who’s good at rolling the dice on a guy who’s who seems to have a little hutzpah. So I love her already never met her. All right. So you said something that I thought was so great inside of your story. You said it would give me an opportunity to ask act on some of the things I believed. You said I could act on some of the things I believed. So can you tell us what you wanted to act on that you believed in? I’d love to hear what you believe in. I think beliefs are huge for leaders. You got to know what you believe.
Jonathan: Yeah, that’s interesting. Go back to the Strengths Finders. Activators is number one, beliefs number two, and woo is three. Okay, so. So what that means is I start doing stuff, and then I got to figure out a wait a minute. What, how does this, how does this correlate to what I believe you know. So it’s probably a little bit backwards there. But anyway, but you know, that the thing is, I think that I had the privilege of working for some companies that had created some, did some very good things with their people, and really respected their people.
And I really enjoyed it. And that’s why for many years, I never thought that I would go into business, it’s kind of like, why, you know, I’ve got, I’ve got such a good deal. But I think the more that time goes on, you just realize, and some of the things when I look back on my on my career, I realized that I would have conflict at times with my, with my bosses. Because I looking back, I realized that I was trying to be an owner, and I wasn’t an owner, you know. That doesn’t work, you know, I was so passionate about certain things. And, and I would, and I would express things in a way that that really wasn’t probably the most subordinate type of thing that you’re supposed to in a hierarchical type of structure.
But, but several things. One, is that within a business, you know, kind of like, what’s the purpose of the business? Is the purpose of business to make money? Is that Is that what we’re about? Or is the purpose of a business to be able to provide kind of an incubator for growth. Whether it’s for our own growth, or the growth of employees, to do something that’s meaningful to customers? So I’ve always reflected a thought about business is that if you look at some businesses, and including some that would be in the Fortune 500, you know, what they do with their best customers, Nicole?
Nicole: Tell me, tell me tell me.
Jonathan: They kill them.
Nicole: Oh, not good.
Jonathan: Not figuratively, literally, they kill. Think about it. Think about the cigarette industry. What happens to their best customers? Think about many of the consumer product companies. The customers that consume their products the most, they die. Okay. Now, I don’t want to be in those businesses. That’s not that’s not what I want to be a part of. I want to be in a part of a business that transforms people’s lives. And I’m so thankful that we have customers coming in that says, my life is forever changed because of the visit to your store. We have employees who say my life has forever changed.
Because I came to work here, I get so thrilled at having a 22 year old employee who says, guess what, I’m gonna buy my own house, you know. Or someone who says, guess what, I’m in my early 20s, I’m making more money than my parents. Or guess what I took this job while I was in college thinking it was just going to be like a job to get me through college. And I’m going to graduate now with no student loans.
Nicole: That’s right. And I got I got I got discounted running shoes the whole time.
Jonathan: Exactly. And, and so those things, and then beyond that, I think there’s ways to leverage your business, to do things in the community that you just individually, you’d have to be such an Uber wealthy person to be able to do the same things. But business provides a platform, it provides a platform for, you might say, a bully pulpit using that in the proper sense, you know. It just gives you kind of an amplifier to be able to, to, really, it’s not to spotlight our message, but often come along and help other people with their message, you know, what they’re passionate about.
And so early on, in our, in our company’s, you know, formation, actually I’ve been associated with an organization called TAPS, tragedy assistance program for survivors. And before we had any discretionary money to do anything with, we said, we’re going to still use whatever networking we can have, or whatever to continue to help and, and this organization, and we’ve continued to do that. And one of the joys that I have had was in 2018, I was invited to TAPS’, annual banquet up in DC. And in their banquet, they had a presentation and the preceding person who came up to speak was an aero defense contractor, who had given them a million dollars.
And they were being recognized. Now that time, our annual revenues we’re not, I don’t think let’s see in 2017, our annual revenues would have not even been $2 million yet. Okay, so our annual revenues. And so, so here’s a defense contractor that’s given them a million dollars, and the next person that they invite me up to be recognized as our community partner of the year. And we didn’t do that through money. It wasn’t through money, but we simply did it through just figuring out how we could use the the various access to media to other things and and help and support them. And I think that’s just the that’s, that’s just one of the many joys I have of being in business. So anyway.
Nicole: I absolutely love it. Okay, now I want to go back to this thing about the purpose of your company. So I want to tell you a little story, Jonathan we’ll share stories here. So I was standing in the airport, and in the line, you know, one of the lines, one of the many, many lines in the airport. I don’t know, I can’t remember which one it was. Anyway, I’m standing in line. And I, you know, I’m being myself. And I have woo. Woo was my number one. So I’m sitting in there, and I turned my woo on, because I’m bored. Right? So I’m like, let’s, let’s, you know, let’s do Dale Carnegie, let’s, you know, what, you know, win over people and make friends and all that.
So I’m just chatting it up with everybody in line and entertaining people as best I can. And making the line, you know, not so painful. And this guy says to me, he says, you know, I have really enjoyed talking to you. I said, well, thank you. I’ve enjoyed talking to you. And so he hands me his business card, and it said something or other tobacco company on it. And he says to me, he says we could really use somebody like you. And I said to him, I said, I would love to be LinkedIn with you, I’d love to be friends with you, but I could never work for you. This is just violates my core values, you know, I can’t do that. And he goes, yeah, that happens to me a lot.
Jonathan: Yeah. Wow.
Nicole: Yeah. So you know, it is a thing. So you know, and here’s the thing, I love what you said about earlier, you said, embrace your, our mission and our values. You know, companies pick these core values out. And, you know, I give I give a lot of companies heck about it, because they don’t utilize them as a tool. And that’s what they’re really for. And you’re using utilizing it in your offer letter. Can we go back to that for a second? Because I’m sensing your core values, again, like to be helping is a core value of yours or somewhere like that. So what are the values you guys embrace? And then like, how do you instill that? I think a lot of CEOs leaders struggle with. Okay, so now I got these values I picked out I read in a book, I should do it. Now what do I do with them?
Jonathan: Yeah, I think it’s got to be, you know, Nicola, if it comes kind of from outside of you. And it’s something that you’re superimposing on the business, it’s never going to work. It has to come from inside. You have to connect to your own values in your own beliefs, I believe for them to, for them to be able to have meaning and for them to have life from that standpoint. So our vision and mission values, we talk about them all the time, they line in our conference room walls, which that happens with a lot of companies. It’s something that we just integrate into who we are.
So, you know, first is our vision as a company, as an employee, Easy Step Enterprises is committed to providing a safe, respectful environment full of opportunity for anyone willing to embrace our mission and values. As a retail business, we sell more than solutions, our customers are buying hope. And as members of our community, we walk beside people on their journey, regardless of their need, because we are people who love our neighbors, and who believe it is more blessed to give than to receive. That’s our, that’s our vision. So there’s three aspects to that. It’s customers, employees, and community. And our and our mission is very simple, helping our communities live an active and healthy lifestyle, one step at a time.
Now that’s separate and distinct from our franchisor but we also have, we also embrace the franchisor mission too that relates to exactly what you know, the easy The Good Feet Store, and kind of what we do in the store. So then, the values are something that really, everything rests on. So you think about four pillars to a building. And so that’s that radical integrity is that first one, speaking of the wholeness, consistency, alignment is the courage to truly see ourselves, relate to others and to face the demands of reality. Without that, and we say that there’s two things that an employee must have. They don’t have to have radical integrity when they come to us.
But they have to have baseline integrity, and they have to have desire, we can’t teach either one of those, that they have to possess both of those things when they come. We can teach them what radical integrity is over time. But they have to have that baseline. We can’t teach desire. So the second thing is passionate persuasion. We are our business is you know, it’s a sales oriented type of business. So it without that, but in thinking about that is how do we embrace that without becoming manipulative? You know, we start off that also has three components. Believing to the core in the value of our products and services. We participate in transforming lives, achieving dreams, and realizing potential. We’re unabashed advocates for the health and well being of our customers.
So to the degree that we believe to the core what we’re doing, to the degree that we understand how much we impact other people’s lives. It allows us to be unapologetic for saying, hey, this is what it cost and it’s not cheap. Okay? People are often surprised at that. But so that’s, that’s the second, one passionate persuasion. So it’s not manipulation. It’s just believing. And Dan Sullivan talks about in Strategic Coach talks about always be the buyer. And I love that thought so much, Nicole, because we’d already had this value in place. And then I said, always be the buyer defines passionate persuasion, that’s what this is, this is not trying to get something, people to do something that we don’t believe in, this was just letting it come out from inside, you know, and then unwavering positivity is, in a world filled with anxiety, we choose to be messengers of hope.
You know, that’s, that’s really the, that’s really the essence of unwavering positivity is, there’s all kinds of things that hit at us and, you know, clog up our burned brains or whatever. And then the last one is persistent diligence, having a champions commitment to excellence. We embrace the truth of the timeless proverb that slack habits and sloppy work are as bad as vandalism. And thats from Proverbs 16. And so a lot of times what we think of, and we think of motivation, and it particularly in sales, you can think of a lot of, you know, glitzy type of things, but a lot of it comes down to do your job and do it well.
And be committed to it being the you know, don’t shy away from when you need to be sharpened, when you need to have the rough places taken off or whatever that’s that’s impeding progress. So that that’s those are, that’s our vision, mission and values. We incorporate it all the time. We talked about it all the time. It’s something that we have them hanging in all the stores, where we incorporate it into what it means when you’re with a customer and what it looks like as you engage with your your fellow employees. What it looks like in a performance review. Our performance reviews all relate back to those, to those those core values.
Nicole: Okay, so first of all, you know, Jonathan’s not gonna get a big head because I know him. He’s humble. But I just, I just want it want y’all to just maybe rewind. Okay, so that’s, that’s a woman who’s 55 telling you to do that. No, move the cursor on the screen backwards on your little screen on your I pad, iPod, whatever the thing is, you’re on right now. Move backwards and just listen to him talk about his mission vision, core values again. Now, here’s the thing, there’s a video going, you may not be looking at the video, but he just ripped it off people. It’s in his soul. Okay, I’m gonna say it like that. So I’m waking you up those of you who are on the treadmill.
So it it wakes you wake up, he’s got it in him. He doesn’t have to think about what are my mission, vision, values. True story, Jonathan. On Monday, I was in a room. And I had people that were signed up to take this class at a manufacturing facility, and they were going to take this class on time management. And so I think time management is such a funny subject. But I’m like, okay, I can do something on that. But the way I approach time management is like, what do you spend your time on? You know, that old adage, if, if you let me look at your, you know, the things that come out of your bank account, you know, I can tell you kind of the quality of your life, you know that one? Yeah.
So it’s the same thing with your time. If I looked at your calendar, I gotta know what kind of life you have, you know, if I look at the calendar. And so I approach it from that standpoint, and I will tell you, I go so many places, and I’m like, okay, so you guys have core values? And so how does, how does the value the value intersect with what you’re spending time on? Now, look at Jonathan’s radical integrity, passionate persuasion, unwavering positivity and persistent diligence. Those have everything to do with time too.
So you guys get a lot done, don’t you? What else are y’all getting done? Talk to me about your strategy. I mean, I think you’re probably killing it. What? How do you do your strategic planning? I know these are undergirding all that. Like, how do you guys figure out what you’re gonna do in the year? And my imagination tells me either everybody bought a ton of shoes during COVID or they were you know, or they were on the couch. How did COVID effect what are you guys doing to overcome all that?
Jonathan: Well, first of all, Nicole, if I was in the shoe business, I’d be bankrupt right now. Okay, all right. Okay, so I don’t we sell shoes, but it’s such an insignificant part of our overall our overall revenue. What it is, is the arch supports that go into the shoes. That what trend that that’s the transforming part of our lives. So these these little things here.
Nicole: Oh, he just took it out of his show. You gotta watch the video. Okay.
Jonathan: That didn’t look so good either as I realized that that’s that’s a huge arch support right there. Okay, right.
Nicole: That’s right. Heavily used and loved.
Jonathan: Yes, but the thing is, is that most people so just to give you a very quick, very quick, commercial on the arch supports most people don’t realize you have four arches in the feet, and they all have to be properly supported. The shoes that we have, don’t do that. The shoes are primarily most of the footwear industry is, is around comfort, okay. And so most of the products that are in our space are a reaction to symptoms, what we are doing is providing a response to the cause. Whether it’s before somebody has pain or after they have pain. It’s to address the cause of the pain in a non surgical nonpharmaceutical approach, holistic approach to health. And that’s the beautiful part of what we have what we do. So that’s what we do. Now back to your question about strategy. I feel like in some ways, I’m the worst at strategy.
Nicole: Oh goodness. I’m surprised,
Jonathan: Okay, and so here’s, here’s why I say that is that when when I bought January 2, 2014, I walked into the Good Feet Store as an owner, and Nicole, I literally spent an hour and a half in the store prior to that. Here, I was basically risking everything that I’ve worked for, on something that I hadn’t done at a huge, you know, research paper on the on the arch support business, or just, you know, everything like that. I just, I think comes back to that belief. It’s just saying, I think this can work. Okay, and so we launch off, and I didn’t, there’s nowhere there’s no paper written that eight years later, we would have gone from one location that in 2013, the year before I bought, it had done about $440,000 in sales.
One location and one other employee, to today, 15 locations, 110 employees. And, you know, we’re tracking to be up to about $30 million in revenue this year. So so it’s just I kind of find it hard to even talk about strategy in the way that you would think about of a Wharton Business, you know, kind of case study on strategy, that kind of thing. But I do believe that, I think it still comes back to culture, and how that guides your thinking and everything else. Because how do you predict a pandemic?
Nicole: You don’t.
Jonathan: No. Who had the who had the crystal ball to see that coming? All right. And so, so much of strategic plans. And that’s where again, to go back to Dan Sullivan, that talks about, he plans for what’s going to happen in the next 90 days, and what’s going to happen 25 years from now, because really outside of that there’s not a lot to, you know, to think about the things in between is really, really hard. So when we’re confronted with both opportunity, and with challenges, it’s in figuring out what to do in those in those instances.
And if you don’t have a good cultural framework, that’s provided by the values, then I think your strategy will go awry. And so in, in the pandemic, you know, we shut down for six weeks, zero revenue. Well, almost zero revenue coming in through the stores, because everything happens in a brick and mortar type environment. But it was so instructive during that time, what we realized is that we needed to change our entire training. And we were having so many variances in the stores that was that was hindering our success.
And so post, pandemic post, you know, kind of the heart of the pandemic, our growth has just been amazing. And a lot of it is because of those changes that we made. During that time where revenue goes zoop and you know and you’re like, oh, what do we do, you know, kind of thing. And so I think that’s more of how I think about strategy. And I don’t know if that’s probably not anything that’s, you know, brilliant or anything like that, but it’s just, it’s, it’s just yes, you have to plan. Sure you have to think about growth, but it all has to be done within that cultural framework.
Nicole: Perhaps the strategic plan is equal sign the cultural framework. What do you think?
Jonathan: Yeah, yeah, I think so. And I think I’ve gotten to where I can embrace that more, you know? Yeah, it’s just, it’s kind of it’s really cool to be kind of surprised by success. And, and and as far as you’re not like, you’re not like, yeah, this is I knew this was happening. No, actually, I didn’t know it would happen. No, actually, I didn’t. I didn’t think I was I’m not that smart. I’m not that I couldn’t see that far into the future. And that and that wasn’t that didn’t have that ability to say, well, here’s, you know, let’s look at all the market forces. And let’s put all this together. And, you know, this is how it’s all gonna play out. No, I’m not. I’m not Bill Gates or anything like that. I’m just somebody that’s, that I believe, if we’re true to our, whether we have success or failure. If we’re true to our hearts, if we’re true to our culture, then we can be at peace with that.
Nicole: Oh, I love what you’re talking about. Awesome. Awesome. Okay. So I like that. I’m running with that the cultural framework is the strategy. That’s what I’m working. I’m going to work with that for the next week or two or three or five. All right, so okay. All right. So you said during this whole thing, you changed your training. Alright, so of course, Nicole Greer trains people, that’s what she does. Okay. So like my little radar went crazy when you said that. So it seems like you might believe in training. Right? So, you know what Jonathan, there are leaders out there that are not sure training is a good investment. I’m just like, yeah. What are you talking about? Yeah. So so first of all, dare I ask this question, but like, why do you train your people? Like, what’s the point? I’d love to know your thoughts.
Jonathan: I know, you know, the quote, I’m probably not gonna get it, right. But you know, the person that says, Well, what if we invest in all the training and they leave? And somebody said, somebody else said, what if we invest, what if we don’t invest in the training and they stay? That’s more the question. You know, right. That’s really kind of what we’re looking at. So we did, we really hire a lot of entry level people that many have not had even like a real job, a real career type of job before. And when we bring them to Richmond, whether they’re going to work in the Annapolis store, or the Winston Salem store, or wherever else. When we bring them to Richmond, put them up, not not in a fancy hotel, but just in a good hotel for five nights and invest in them.
They feel so valued. And I think the thing is, Nicole, my thing is, what I’ve realized is that I read a book a number of years ago called The 10 Commandments of Business and How to Break Them. And the first, the first command was the customer is king. And I can’t quite remember the author now. But anyway, he said, the customer is not king, your employees should be. If you treat your employees like royalty, they will treat your customers like kings and queens. So I view my customers are my employees. And how many times have you been in a restaurant or have we been in a restaurant, and we’ve seen a manager and the manager will trip and fall over a customer come into the store.
And then if you catch them as you’re going to the restroom or something like that you happen to walk by the kitchen, you see them just berating one of their employees. And that’s so messed up, you know. And I think our, your employees need to know that you’ve got their back, they need to know that you care for them when life gets hard. And we have to be intentional as business people to seek those opportunities out. We’ve got to teach and and I constantly affirm to our managers, please let us know when someone is going through a hard time in life or a good time in life.
Let’s celebrate with them. You know, Jesus said, to rejoice with those who rejoice or weep with those that, you know blessed are those that mourn for they should be comforted. I think it was actually the Apostle Paul said rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep, you know. And so I think that type of intentionality, it’s not always a lot of money that you have to do is simply a note, a call or something like that, to say, hey, we understand you’re having a hard time, let us know how can we help you?
How can we come along beside you and just and work through this. And those things have happened over and over again. And that’s why I look at business as mission and almost like a ministry too, it’s like a calling. And if you don’t have that, you probably should just buy a piece of real estate somewhere and you know, or some stocks and just, you know, let your money accumulate like that. And that way you don’t have to deal with the people. The people part of it can be your biggest headache at times, but it also is your greatest joy.
Nicole: Yeah, 100% Yeah, I tell people all the time, I’ll use this language, Jonathan, I’ll say hey, listen, we got this big manufacturing facility out here. We’ve got these these all these Good Feet stores out here, we’ve got you know, all this, you know, the convenience stores or whatever client I’m working with. And you know, here’s the truth. If we, if some of us get raptured out of here this afternoon, ain’t nothing gonna get done. I mean, you can have you can have all the merchandise on the on the shelves, you can have the POS system in place, you can have everything cookin’ you could have it so you know, systemized, it’s like crazy. But we, you know, AI has not gotten to the point where, you know, we can operate without humans, right, so.
Jonathan: Absolutely. And actually, we found in that as we came through the pandemic, and as things started to open back up, we could sense customers almost craving even though we had to respect all the, you know, social distancing, but we’re in a very personalized touch type of environment, but they would almost crave that opportunity to have that after being kind of shut up for so long. They’re gonna crave that that opportunity to have that human interaction. I think it’s critical and yeah, there’s something else too. I think that we referenced this offline but you know, we all go through seasons of life.
And if your business we know when everything is going great, whether it’s in business or in your own personal life, then you know, it’s going great. The challenge to me the test of whether what you’re doing is meaningful is when life gets really, really hard. And I spoke of our daughter and her health journey, how it kind of just corresponded to our going in business. And, and her health journey has continued over the last 10 years. And, and she recently, you know, just made the decision to go on hospice, because.
Nicole: I’m so sorry.
Jonathan: I feel like the the, the underlying condition of mitochondrial disease that she has, is just kind of like a incremental type of type of thing. And so, so it’s a hard time, Nicole. It certainly is. It’s one that tests your faith. But the thing is, and this is not why you do all the things that you do, but the blessing of having employees who come along beside you during a time like this, and the relationships that you’ve cultivated, and now they’re, they’re ministering to you, that’s such a humbling thing.
And it takes, if you have a lot of ego, and that kind of thing, that’s a good way to have the ego deflated. And just to really understand that we’re all in this on an equal level, and we have different roles, different responsibilities, but, but we just need to see things in that in that way. And it’s an it’s such a blessing. And it to me, it’s it’s it is absolutely a gift from God. It’s something that it’s a provision, I believe that, that that God has used the business as a provision in our lives to help to help me navigate so many things, that have just been things I couldn’t imagine.
And then, but then it’s like this both an outlet for pursuing that mission, but also, then it’s almost kind of like being in church, you know, just in a church community, in a sense, you know, in that way. And it’s that doesn’t mean everybody has to align, you know, say it all the time people will have to align with all of my it’s not that not everybody has to look just like me, I think that’s unhealthy, actually. You should absolutely have and one of the things.
Nicole: Diversity of thought, diversity of belief, diversity of different things, but it makes it more interesting, right? And you can learn, wisdom is everywhere if you’re looking for it.
Jonathan: You’re exactly right. You’re exactly right. And one thing in this environment, if you hire for adversity, you will get diversity. If you hire for adversity, you will get diversity. Meaning that if we interview somebody, and we asked him to talk about adversity in their life, and they say, well, when I was a senior in high school, you know, the tennis club at the country club, we lost our championship match. And if that’s their definition of adversity, probably it’s not a good fit here, you know. But if they talk about adversity, meaning that they lost a parent, when they’re going through high school and had to help care for their, you know, their siblings or whatever, whatever the situation might be.
Then they have those stories, that probably means that there’s depth to this person, that that they haven’t, they weren’t necessarily born with a silver spoon in the mouth and always fed with a silver spoon all the way up. But they that depth gives them compassion and understanding and, and everything else. We we also in relate, in addition to our values, we refer to a quote from George Washington Carver that says how far you go in life depends on you being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong because someday in life, you will have been all of these. And that’s what we say is our people’s strategy.
Nicole: Oh, I love that. George. He’s just amazing. How did he do all those things? Talk about adversity, he was just just persevered. persevered. Okay. Yeah, I love what you’re saying. Okay, so here’s the third to do everybody is add the adversity question to your lineup for your interviews, right. So we’re having like a little HR thing, but notice this is this is Jonathan’s whole, and I would also say your strategic plan is highly focused on people. I mean, it is people. Do I have that, right?
Jonathan: Absolutely. Yeah. I went recently went to our franchisors it was it was not a not the actual convention. But it was, you know, a summit they called it and they would refer a lot of things to Jonathan Cotten gets this award. And I came back and, and I said tongue and cheek to our people. So I don’t know what you all have been doing. Because I just got awards for selling millions of dollars of stuff. And it’s like, man, if we get the rest of y’all doing something, we can have just an incredible company. And I said, you know, that’s so wrong, because I haven’t sold anything this year. And we don’t call our corporate headquarters corporate headquarters.
We call it the Store Support Center. Because that’s and I learned that Nicole from visiting. I had McDonald’s as a client one time and at that time, I don’t know if they still do, McDonald’s didn’t have any private offices. They said their sole purpose was to support the person cooking the french fries in the stores. And and so I want us all to have we actually have private offices here. But I want us to have the same thing that everything we do should be related to how well are we supporting those people, as you said, you know, because it all revolves around the people.
Nicole: Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. So I heard a little servant leadership kind of philosophy bubble up right there. Yeah, yeah. Which I love. And the other, this happened, like maybe five paragraphs ago, but this little thing went through my mind when you were talking about how people were hungry to get that one on one face to face service again, you know, and and then I was like, oh, well, he’s, they’re touching people’s feet. Right. And so then I got the whole foot washing thing in my head going through my head, you know.
So it’s really pretty cool. What you’re doing, and I love all all of your references. That’s fantastic. All right. Well, so you know, I’ve got like five more questions for you. I’m not sure how much time we have. But here’s what I want to do. I do want to make sure I get these questions in. This one is so important, because did you hear everybody, he started out, he was in business development sales guy. And then you know, he goes to the store, Mary says, wanna buy it? He’s like, ahh, I thank so. Goes home asks the bride.
She says, check it out. And so here he is. So what are the skills that you think you’ve attained, or, or put to work, that maybe weren’t there fully? Well as a salesperson, because a salesperson is a leader in my mind, you know, I mean, like, you gotta get out there and wave the flag and be out front and come on, buy my stuff. And like you said, it’s you have that passionate persuasion, because you believe in the product and what it can do. The outcomes. But what skills have you learned since you’ve been like the big kahuna? Even though you don’t see yourself as a big kahuna?
Jonathan: Yeah, I think you’d really have to break things down to understand, you know, why? Why do customers do what they do? What are they, you know, what’s important to them? And I think it’s, for me, it was hard, as a business owner, to ask people for money, believe it or not. I almost felt apologetic behind that, initially, because this was very different, I’d always worked for someone else. And I was asking them to give money to someone else, really. And I just happen to be an employee of that company. Now I’m the owner, and sitting in front of you, Nicole, and saying, hey, and you’re saying, you know, and, and you can almost feel like I should cut Nicole break, you know.
But then it’s like you have to understand, you have to clearly understand what is the value of what we do. And that goes back again, to that that passionate persuasion, there’s got to be the radical integrity underneath it. All right, you’ve got to, you’ve got to make sure that you, you know, under promise and over deliver, you know, all those types of things. But then to just to really have to really believe fully in in what you’re doing. And then to sit back and say, a lot of what we do from a marketing standpoint, is tell a story and learn how to tell those and tell both our own stories and our customer stories, and understand how that connects with people, you know, so there’s a lot of that that’s, there’s a creativity aspect of it.
There’s ways to figure out how do we say it differently? You know, I’ll just say this very quickly, that when we first started, we started doing some advertising, had some radio, people doing some endorsements for us. And it was kind of moving the meter a little bit. And so finally, I said, you know what, I’m just gonna tell my own story. So I wrote a radio script. And I said, hi, I’m Jonathan Cotten. And as a lifelong runner, a number of years ago, the pain of my feet was debilitating. I tried drugstore cushions and inserts with no results. Finally, I went to the Good Feet Store and found the answer, arch supports. And they helped so much, I ran my first marathon that year.
And then because I believed in the system, so much the Good Feet system so much, I bought the store. Well, not only did we start to see people coming in, but um, they came in and they started quoting word for word, the ad. Okay. And again, I looked at it and said, now that’s weird. It was just this is not again, this is not MBA marketing stuff, this is coming out. And so but then later, as I said, about always be the buyer, what I realized was, they were responding to an always be the buyer message. This was them saying that this was being the guide, the customer is still the hero, but you’re the guide and you’re showing them the way to go. You know, I lost your question a long time ago. So that’s, I get off in the weeds and start wondering. I’m an interviewer’s nightmare, probably in a lot of ways. But anyway.
Nicole: We’re just having a talk right. No, but the question was, what skills did you figure out you had to have? And I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you what the skills were so that you know the answer to your own question to the question I asked. You have to, you have to break things down. You’ve got to understand the value of what you provide. And you can’t be you’ve got to be I say this all the time. I’m like, you have to be unapologetic. So people call me like, how much is coaching? And so I tell them, and I’m like, you know, it’s totally worth it. You know, and here’s why. It can change your life. Now, however, I don’t have any pixie dust. I don’t have a magic wand. I you know, I don’t have any spells I can cast on you, you are going to have to work for it to work. But if you’ll play hard if you have, what did you say earlier? Hold on desire. You can’t teach desire. Hold on, what was the other thing?
Jonathan: You can’t teach integrity.
Nicole: That’s right. That’s right, you’re gonna have to be an integrity to this coaching process or to this, this process? It was kind of like, if people buy the inserts? Well, if you don’t put them in the shoes, they’re your feet won’t feel better. Okay, all right. So and the other thing that you said, you have to learn to tell stories, you have to share your own story. That’s very good. And then you have the proper perspective.
So those are all the things that leaders need to do. All right, so here’s what we gotta do. We gotta wrap this thing up. Maybe you could come back, we could play again. Maybe in a little while or something that would be fun. So if you are mentoring a single special listener, and don’t miss this, everybody, he does mentor all his people. And did you hear I’m just want to go back, it won’t leave my brain. He puts his people in a car, a plane, a train, an automobile and they come to, to the Support Center, not the corporate office. And he puts him in a hotel for five days and treats him like a king.
That’s probably the best what three grand he spends ever. So anyway, so I didn’t want you to miss that. People probably work like a dog for Jonathan and love it. And he doesn’t think they’re dogs. I’m just saying that’s an old saying. Okay. So if you were a single, special, or if you were mentoring a single special listener right now, what’s what’s the final like little nugget, you would give them, a piece of advice? You know, here’s what you need to do. Let’s give them their fourth to do.
Jonathan: So I think you have to Nicole, you have to understand your own heart. And this goes back to that wholeness, part of integrity, unfortunately, all kinds of, unfortunately, or fortunately, it all kind of connects back to that radical integrity. If you don’t know who you are, and I think that’s why things like Strenghts Finder and that kind of thing are so powerful. That made sense of who I am when I actually fairly well into my career, and I took that it’s like, oh, oh, that’s why that’s why I hate sitting in conference rooms and looking at spreadsheets you know. I mean, I would literally, I would really get upset.
No, let me go do something because I’m an activator. I’ll make some happen. Let’s go, let’s go. Let’s go, you know, and, and so it but if because if you don’t really know who you are, then if you get into business, you don’t know who to surround yourself with. And, you know, fortunately, I have I have two sons in my business. And Jarrin, my one son is almost like kind of the opposite of me in a lot of ways he’s not is very kind of analytical and how he approaches things.
Nicole: Aren’t you blessed?
Jonathan: He’s a great compliment. You know, Jennings is much more like me. So, Jarrin is really kind of sitting in that COO role. And then Jennings and I’ve realized I need to be more of a visionary and just stay in that space and not try to get involved in the weeds and stuff. And, and then Jennings is leading our marketing effort, and it works, you know, works out very well. But you have to understand that. You have to understand how and the EOS in the EOS model is a great model to you know, to make sense of all that. So, understanding who you are, and really, really understanding your strengths. If you don’t understand that it’s going to be really hard to know how to function and navigate and surround yourself with the right team.
Nicole: That’s fantastic. Okay, so I’m going to say the final nugget is to know who you are, know your heart be in radical integrity, surround yourself with the right people and get the book Traction, which is about the Entrepreneurial Operating System. He just downloaded another book, and the other book was the 10 Commandments.
Jonathan: Ten Commandments Business and How to Break Them. Strength Finders and Integrity by Dr. Henry Cloud. So there you go. There’s your reading list for a while.
Nicole: Okay. All right. Get that get that on the Amazon order right now. Fantastic. All right. Well, Jonathan Cotten, it has been absolutely a delight and a pleasure to have you on the Build a Vibrant Culture podcast. I absolutely adore you and want to have you come back and be on the show. And listen, my husband is going to go to the Winston Salem store because he’s been complaining of plantar fasciitis for about I don’t know, a month, so that’s, guess where we’re going? You guys are open on Saturdays, right?
Jonathan: Absolutely. We’re closed on Sundays but open on Saturdays, so I’m glad to say we’re going because you need to go with him, Nicole so you can understand the full process. There you go.
Nicole: Okay. All right, everybody I’ll send a little report from The Good Feet Store. Check them out on the internet. Jonathan, thank you so much. Have a great rest of your day.
Jonathan: Thank you so much Nicole, really appreciate it.
Voiceover: Ready to build your vibrant culture? Bring Nicole Greer to speak to your leadership team, conference or organization to help them with her strategies, systems and smarts to increase clarity, accountability, energy and results. Your organization will get lit from within. Email Nicole@nicolegreer.com. And be sure to check out Nicole’s TEDx talk at nicolegreer.com.
