With sports teams you can tell if certain principles work. You know if a leader has the buy-in from their team. You know if a team is together and united. It’s even clear during a 16-week football season. But with businesses and organizations, leadership and team-building principles often take a little longer to reveal measurable benefits and success. Michael, unfortunately, would learn this firsthand, as his business didn’t rebound as quickly as his daughter’s basketball team.

As soon as he arrived at work on Monday he called an all-employee meeting and shared the carpenter’s three greatest success strategies along with the Heart of Success model with everyone. He talked about his recent health scare and his fear of losing his company and his life. Sarah also shared all they had been through and the challenges she faced. They were vulnerable and transparent about their obstacles as a family and the leaders of Social Connect, and yet they also expressed their passion, vision, and optimism for their future as a company.

The meeting rallied everyone around Sarah and Michael and their vision. They agreed on a short-term plan to acquire a few more customers to keep them afloat and improve customer service, and a long-term vision to grow and prosper. Everyone knew what they needed to do and was excited about doing it. They made signs with paper hearts with the words Love, Serve, and Care and put them up around the office to remind everyone to go above and beyond for their clients.

Unfortunately, all this excitement didn’t have an immediate impact. A week went by and they had yet to acquire a new customer. Then another week went by, and still no new customers. Michael was making one call after another with no success. He stayed positive and approached everyone and everything with love, and yet he had nothing to show for it. To make matters worse, their customer service wasn’t getting any better despite their best efforts. Michael knew Social Connect was working to hire a few more people to handle the volume, but there were still other issues he couldn’t quite solve. It was time to go see the carpenter.