Ep 20: This isn’t Rocket Science. It’s Relationship Science. With Ira Gleser, Author of Stewardship for Business and Longtime Leader at Coke and Microsoft

Summary

In this insightful and connection-driven conversation, Lori Pine sits down with Ira Gleser—former Coca-Cola colleague, #1 Amazon bestselling author, and executive coach—to explore how stewardship and relationship-building can transform the way we do business.

From their time working together at Coca-Cola to Ira’s later experiences at Microsoft and as an author, this episode reveals the power of trust, storytelling, and partnership in driving both personal and professional growth. Ira shares the origins of his book Stewardship for Business and offers actionable advice for sales professionals, entrepreneurs, and leaders who want to move from transaction to transformation.

If you believe business is built on relationships—and you want to deepen yours with integrity and purpose—this episode is for you.

🔑Key Takeaways

1. Relationships Are Your Real Currency

Ira reminds us that success in business isn’t about the next deal—it’s about the next conversation. Building genuine relationships grounded in trust and curiosity is what creates long-term value.
Audience follow-up → Who in your network could you reconnect with—not to sell, but to serve?

2. Stewardship Is the New Leadership

Stewardship is about caring for the people, ideas, and resources entrusted to you. Ira believes leaders who prioritize stewardship inspire loyalty, innovation, and lasting results.
Audience follow-up → Where can you shift from ownership (“mine”) to stewardship (“ours”)?

3. Storytelling Builds Trust Faster Than Data

Numbers can inform, but stories connect. Ira shares how narrative bridges gaps between brands and people—whether in marketing, leadership, or customer engagement.
Audience follow-up → What’s one story you can tell this week that shows, not just tells, your brand’s value?

4. Horizontal Thinking Expands Opportunity

When you think across disciplines—rather than only up the ladder—you open doors to creative problem-solving and collaboration. Ira calls this “horizontal thinking.”
Audience follow-up → What adjacent industry or team could you learn from right now?

5. Value Proposition Starts with Understanding, Not Selling

Before you articulate your value, you must understand your customer’s reality. Stewardship begins with listening.
Audience follow-up → In your next client conversation, can you spend 80% listening and 20% speaking?

🔎 Mentioned in the Episode

• Book: Stewardship for Business by Ira Gleser
  
• Companies: The Coca-Cola Company, Microsoft
  
• Concepts: Stewardship, Relationship Marketing, Horizontal Thinking, Storytelling in Leadership
  
• Project: The Coca-Cola case study where Lori and Ira collaborated to enhance internal and external brand trust
  
  

✨ Reflection Prompts

• How do you define stewardship in your business or team?
  
• Where are you building transactions instead of relationships?
  
• What story from your own journey could help someone trust you more deeply?
  
  

🧠 Who This Episode Is For

• Sales professionals and account executives seeking deeper client trust
  
• Entrepreneurs who want to build loyal, values-driven communities
  
• Corporate leaders looking to create more connection and purpose at work
  
• Anyone interested in turning relationships into a legacy of stewardship
  
  

📩 Want to Go Deeper?

• Grab Ira Gleser’s book: Stewardship for Business
  
• Follow Ira on LinkedIn for more insights on relational leadership
  
• Connect with Lori Pine at loripine.com to explore coaching and leadership strategy
  
• Subscribe to The Joy CEO Podcast and leave a review to help other heart-centered leaders find the show
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Transcript

Lori: So glad to have you here with me today. You are gonna get to meet one of the people in my career who had an impact because the work we did together [00:01:00] is one of the top five moments of my career. Ira Glaser was a friend, a mentor, a colleague when I was at the Coca-Cola company, and he's gone on to do some tremendous things since leaving Coke, and you're gonna hear about those things.

You're gonna hear about the project that we did together and the success of that project. But what you're really going to hear is his deep and profound understanding of what it takes to lead customers, to understand customers, and how that can really transform you as a leader, and it can certainly transform an organization.

So without further ado, let's get into my talk with Ira. Hello and welcome to the Joy CEO podcast. I'm your host Lori Pine and I am so thrilled to have with you today Ira Glaser. Ira is a dear friend and former colleague. We worked together at the Coca-Cola Company. We [00:02:00] worked on an enormous project together that was highly successful, if I must say so myself and so it is with great pleasure that I get to introduce you to my friend Ira.

Welcome.

Ira: Thank you so much, Lori. It's, it's no pun intended. It's a joy to be with you today.

Lori: Well, it is certainly a joy to be with you today, and it's been a while that since we had been in touch, and I of course reach out to you because you are now a number one Amazon bestselling author.

Ira: Yeah. It's, it's kind of

Lori: congratulations.

It's

Wow. Talk about joy.

Ira: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's fun.

Lori: How's that feel?

Ira: It feels good. You know, it's like any, anything you're, you're really passionate about or something you keep saying, I, I really want to get this done. Whether it's a workout or you wanna try a new recipe, or you wanna write a book. It's how you feel when it comes out of the oven and you put it on the table.

So, wow. I did that [00:03:00] and it actually tastes pretty good too. So, uh, it's been very gratifying. Thank you for asking.

Lori: Well, I have to say, I'm actually not surprised that your creation came out of the oven and was very well received by the world because you have really had this great career and you have a lot to share with the world.

And when you combine that with being trained by some of the world's greatest companies, it really. That alone is a recipe for success. So let's just talk a little bit about you, what you've done and some of this really great history.

Ira: Um, sure. You know, I still, I, I still enjoy talking about so many things other than talking about me, but for you.

I'll, I'll keep it short and sweet. Thank you. I appreciate what you just said. Look, I've been, I've been very fortunate and very blessed. I've had, uh, it's been an interesting journey. I've met some amazing people along the way and I've also been fortunate. [00:04:00] I had some tremendous leaders. I had some excellent managers, and I had mentors. And mentorship is so important.

And at this point in my journey, I'm trying to be a mentor to, you know, to younger folks. I'm trying to pay it forward because it had such an impact on, on my journey. We used to call it an elevator speech, but since. We're not all back in the office who's getting elevators to go to work, but it used to be I'm a marketer who knows how to sell. I wonder at this point in my career if maybe I've been fooling myself.

Maybe I'm just a salesperson that knows how to market. But either way, and I know you can relate to, to that. I spent most of my journey, Lori in, in early three areas, marketing, communications, business development, mostly on the business to business side. Although I did learn all around all about brands and probably the greatest university on the planet. The Coca-Cola company.

Yes. But the common thread throughout my journey has been clients and customers. Because [00:05:00] ultimately I've sold everything from soft drinks to cloud platforms, from AI to basketball brunches and painting tools, and is probably a few other things.

Lori: I saw that you started out at Charles Schwab.

Ira: I, I've done a lot of things.

Lori: You've done it all.

Ira: My, my, my one favorite story about Charles Schwab, and I'll keep it short and sweet, is my team did a lot of work putting on events for affluent consumers. Not a, not a bad, not a bad gig, but I have the opportunity to meet Mr. Schwab. So Mr. Schwab was the Coca-Cola can, except he was a person, a person, our badge on.

He walked up to me and he looked at my badge. He said, okay, what's your real name? No, that's my name. He said. He shook my hand. We got a just, uh, an amazing human being. He said, let me tell you something, we'll see each other again at other events. I will never forget your name 'cause you know we sell IRAs. I said, yes, my, that's my one [00:06:00] Charles Schwab story.

Lori: You're a walking product.

Ira: He, he was the brand, but the common thread's really been client clients and customers, whether it was reaching them with engaging messaging, really trying to connect with them in person, in print, online. That's been the common thread and it's, it's been a passion of mine because like you, I had some great training earlier in my career.

I think some of the best sales training on the planet and what I've done on my journey was really back to recipes, kind of added, you know, my own special ingredients. And tried to make it work for me. And, and, and what I say is I put together a playbook that regardless of my situation, the brand I was affiliated with and even when I started my own consultancy, the playbook is the playbook.

And it's something I know we're gonna talk about here over the next few minutes. It all comes back to relationships and building trust. It really does. And so that's been a passion point of mine and it's been, it's been a fun journey for sure.

Lori: Yes. [00:07:00] You know, there's people who are gonna listen to this episode that are in all stages of their career.

So at what point in your career did you know that you actually had a playbook?

Ira: It's a great question. I knew you were gonna ask me great questions. I would say when, when I really started to get out there and put, put the world of Coca-Cola behind me, it was a wonderful world and starting to work with some other organizations.

And really when I started my own consultancy, what, what I found is that the, the situations I walked into or the opportunities that presented themselves. I always use the analogy, wait a minute, I've been to this movie before and in the original movie it was Burt Lancaster, or it was Steve McQueen. Now it's some, some new actor, but you know, like the movie The Getaway, great original Steve McQueen, Ally McGraw.

Then they remade it, but it's the same movie. So when you find yourself in those similar situations, you [00:08:00] say, wait a minute. What did I do last time? I don't want to go off the cliff like Thumb and Louise, sorry for all the movie analogies. You fall back on what worked. Right. And it might need a different coat of paint, or it might need to be tweaked a little bit.

But one of the great things about having had a lot of experiences. Is you trust your gut more and if your gut says, Hey, we've had a customer like this before, here's how we might wanna approach her this time. So we really engage. There wasn't a lot of reinventing the wheel. The other part of that, because I'm anticipating you're gonna ask me this, the other part of this was how you incorporate that into coaching others.

Particularly when I was in management roles, you may see the vision, but you have to take that extra time to coach so that folks can see the same vision that you had from the experience that you brought to the table.

Lori: Yes. And if you don't, they're so [00:09:00] disconnected to the why. And you can't understand as a leader why your team's not motivated, why they're not going after the the goal, right?

Like that you want them to with the same passion and fervor that you have. But it's because there's that disconnect that because you haven't taken the time to explain the why and coach them into the same vision that you now have. That is such a critical part and such an important insight.

Ira: Yeah, I, I really appreciate you saying that.

I'm with you. I'm with you 100% the why. The why is so important, and I think part of how you convey the why is through storytelling, which is another word I've used in my elevator, my elevator introduction. I don't think storytelling ever goes outta style. Storytelling started back in the days of the caveman on the walls.

Now the challenge today is we're all barrage with so much information are. [00:10:00] Our ability to really process a good, A good story takes time to tell. It's hard to tell it in 200 characters or a 92nd video, although we've all gotten better at it. But somehow for me, what worked is I would answer the why with storytelling.

You know, back in the day when you and I were interviewing for corporate jobs, there was a format called Star Situation. Yes. Section result. And I would use that format to say, look, um, here's what I think the approach would be. Let's talk about the why and to help dimensionalize the why. I would tell stories and, and I would also self-deprecate a little bit and say, okay, look, everybody, A good story is gonna take a little bit, just like a great joke.

Takes a little bit, but I think that's, that's how you make the why entertaining. I think people wanna hear real examples. Of what it's like out there in the marketplace. We're all, we're all trying to sell something to somebody at some point.

Lori: Yes. Yes, we certainly are. And [00:11:00] storytelling really can change how you feel about a situation, how you feel about a person when a story connects with you and you can lock into it.

I mean, it just brings it to life for you. There's so many stories that I've repeated because I've heard, told from a good keynote or a good training or a good leader because they made an impact, I could visually connect with whatever it was meant for me to connect with. So I think you're right, like the, the power of storytelling cannot be undersold.

Ira: It, it really can't. And not to, not to jump ahead in this transactional world we find ourselves in now, we're missing the human element. I, I was on, I was on a call earlier today. I'll leave out the, the why, but, uh, the, what made the call great. Is we spent a few minutes on the human element. We told each other stories, we found common ground, and then and only then did we commence to have, you [00:12:00] know, the conversation that we are scheduled to have.

Too often. I think when we jump right into it, we're missing an opportunity. Connect as people and you know when the call's over the meeting's over. How do you want to be remembered? Do you want be remembered as, you know, Mr. Transactional or, wow, that was a great story. He told about fill in the blank, and that that artfulness that skill.

I fear. It's not being talked the way you and I were taught.

Lori: Right?

Ira: Because that connects to building trust and building great relationships is how, how you're remembered and what kind of reputation you build for yourself.

Lori: Yes, yes. So good, so true. You know, in this AI world where. We just really want to connect with people post COVID.

I, I think it's so important. Okay, so I met you at a time when we were working on an initiative at the Coca-Cola company. Yeah. We were in two very different [00:13:00] departments, but we really set out to do something rather remarkable. And I think Ira, it's because you knew some of your own unique abilities. This special sauce, if you will, that you could bring to a project that really brought that project to life in a way that without you on the project, it just wouldn't have been that special.

So let's, let's share with everybody what we worked on.

Ira: Are we gonna name names, or are we gonna keep this?

Lori: Yeah, we name names. Okay.

Ira: Sure. Okay.

Lori: Give credit where credit's due.

Ira: First of all, I'm being very kind and gracious because I think part of the reason this was widely successful is we had a little band of people that were all passionate and wanted to win, and everybody leveraged each other's unique expertise.

Yes. And there were no egos in the room. And that's I think what made it super [00:14:00] special. And when I go through my ESPN Sports Center, top 10 of my careers, what we're gonna talk about here for the next minute is it's top five be because of those reasons. So the opportunity was really simple. The Coca-Cola business is not complicated.

It's all about getting Coca-Cola products in the hands of the consumer. And you get there by going through retailers. Or restaurants or stadiums, any place where people might enjoy a, a beverage of some sort while they're being entertained. The challenge of the business. That value chain is how do you build those trusted relationships with those retailers, operators, et cetera, and make them feel good about partnering with you?

And we can spend the rest of our time talking about that. And that's where things get a little complicated. But the headline is. This was an opportunity to really plow some new ground, an area that that Coca-Cola really had not delved into. And so it was a combination of having the team that you are a part [00:15:00] of called New Business Development, which got my attention immediately because wait, we work at a hundred plus year old company and we're gonna go.

Find some new ground to plow. Yes. That's pretty exciting. And And then it was bringing the playbook of, okay, here's an organization called the National Retail Federation, the most respected retail association on the planet. That puts on one of the largest conferences in the United States every January in freezing cold New York City.

Lori: It's freezing Cold Sub-Zero.

Ira: Freezing Cold Sub-Zero. So wait a second. Coca-Cola goes to lots of trade shows and conferences, but hasn't really done anything with National Retail Federation. And then it was a colleague of yours who we're not gonna name because he's getting enough PR as it is.

Lori: We love you, Justin.

Ira: Who said, Hey, I'm speaking at this retail thing in New York.

You should come up and check it out. [00:16:00] So he was really the catalyst and, and I remember sitting in the room watching, watching Justin and a few other of my colleagues give this talk to a packed house. The thought just hit me. Why are we more involved here? Because there are a lot of retailers that attend this conference.

That have never thought about carrying soft drinks or bottled water or anything. And in the spirit of creating great shopping experiences for consumers, it's not a, it's, it's, you don't need a PhD to make that connection. So really just having some conversation and exploring the opportunity and leaving out a lot of detail here.

The, you know, the, the concept was very simply that we wanted to come in, in a big way. And we wanted to create a destination. And the big idea, the creative idea was this at the time, and I'm gonna date myself, Coca-Cola's national ad campaign was Open Happiness.

Yes.

[00:17:00] By the way, great campaign. Because it was all about hitting on the extrinsics of how, you know, most of the time we enjoy soft drinks with our friends and our family.

That's, that was the big idea. So we went in and said, Hey, we want to take this 250,000 square foot area at the Javit Center, and we're gonna turn it into a Happiness lounge, and we're gonna use it as a way to showcase everything that the Coca-Cola Company can bring to you, the retailer that's going to engage your shoppers.

Grow your business and demonstrate that, you know, softdrinks might have a, a meaningful, profitable road play for your business. So we literally set up, and I don't think it, it had ever been done,

Lori: never

Ira: where a national retail federation attendee could walk into this hall that was painted red and literally could just take a tour.

Of every way the Coca-Cola company supports their customers. And that was the big idea. And the way we brought it to life was [00:18:00] partnering with you and the new business development team and, you know, passing the cup to get funding so we could pull this thing off. And if I'm not mistaken, Lori, without looking at my notes, it was one of the highest ROIs.

Return on investment that I've ever seen for any event or sponsorship or activation I was ever part of. I remember it was something on the order of 300%, which basically means we went in saying in in Coke speak, we used to call them dry accounts, right? One that comes to mind is Pier one. I don't think about buying a soft drink when I'm shopping at Pier one, but.

You put a little display of smart water by the checkout stand and a shopper might say, you know, I'm really thirsty and it's 95 degrees outside. This is great. I'm gonna grab a smart water. But we were able to convert a great deal of new business, thanks, of course, to, to you and your former colleagues, but also just by having, you know, a strategy and the right messaging [00:19:00] and doing it in a, in a way.

That only Coca-Cola could do. That's a, my attempted, a quick summary of that.

Lori: That was a great summary and that was a great project and we did land some fun new business and, and really connected the why for the company, the consumer, and our teams that were really executing that. So it was so fun and to be at the Javit Center, to meet all of those retailers, to have those conversations.

I mean, I was having conversations with. Michaels and Toys 'R Us and Macy's and I mean, I mean some really fun retailers. So a lot of fun to be had done.

Ira: Yep. And I'd, I'd only had one other quick thing 'cause I think this is important for your listeners. We had fun as a team. We worked hard so hard because we had the passion.

So we had the passion, we saw the goal, we had the vision. And I will tell you with 100% certainty that I still have great relationships at the National Retail [00:20:00] Federation and their senior leaders still talk about that. I love that. Talk about that program, that project, because really only a consumer packaged goods company could could come in to an environment like that.

Just do something that was gonna resonate. My favorite and the videos on my, on my consultancy website where the CEO says, one of our most important and longest term members came up to me on day one of the Happiness Lounge and said that Happiness Lounge is why I'm proud to be an NRF member. You just don't get sound bites.

Nester like

Lori: what an endorsement mic drop. We did our work here. Mic drop. Yes. A top five for my career as well. That was, that was a great project. And so it was out of that experience, that work stream, those late nights, those that project that you and I really became so close and became great and you mentored me, [00:21:00] and as I was leaving the Coca-Cola company, you gave me some of the most solid advice anybody could give a person who is on their way out of a company.

Do you remember what that was?

Ira: Yeah, I do, because I just said it to somebody the other day.

Lori: Please share.

Ira: Uh, I think a version of what I said is this. As you start a new chapter, you're going to discover that folks that you think you can count on are going to let you down, and it's going to be really disappointing.

On the other side is folks that you never thought of or you may never have met, are going to pleasantly surprise you. And it's, and it's that balance that I think makes life the greatest reality TV show. That wouldn't close to what I said.

Lori: Yes. And it was so true. You know, it wasn't necessarily some of the closest people that I'd worked with who were the ones calling and saying, Hey, I know of an opportunity for you.

But it was a customer who said. I saw a [00:22:00] presentation you did once, and I know of another vendor who has an opportunity. It was a former colleague at the same company I had worked for that was now at a new company and found me on LinkedIn. We'd never actually met in person, but knew my track record, knew what I must be made of because I had worked for that company and said, Hey, I have an opening.

Would you be interested in at least having a conversation? So, and I remembered so distinctly when you said that I was, it was, it was like, wow, is this how this is gonna go? But you know, in the end it really all does work out. So.

Ira: It does. And um. It's, it's funny that you brought that up because again, I have some friends that are business friends, you know, there's real friends, there's business, there's acquaintances, but I have some folks that, and we've all named names, you know, there, there's been a lot of layoffs this year in our wonderful country and.

There are folks that have never been impacted before. You and I could [00:23:00] probably write a book together on that, but you know, folks that haven't been through it before. And again, in the spirit of paying it forward, I'm happy to share. I'm happy to give back. And I just used that line with somebody the other day, I know a few months ago, and he reached out to me about a week ago and said, how, how did you know?

I said, just experience. It's just how, it's just how the human element works sometimes.

Lori: Yes. I think I lost count at 14 reorgs that, so that's the number I go with. I went through 14 reorgs. So reorgs. Yeah. Okay, so you leave a Coca-Cola company, go do another thing, a couple other things, but then you end up making an entire industry shift.

I, I wanna talk about this 'cause it's remarkable.

Ira: We're talking about the little tech company.

Lori: Yeah. That little small startup tech company you were working for.

Wink, wink.

Ira: There's, there's, there's, so, there's so, there's so much to unpack there, but I [00:24:00] think in the spirit of keeping it succinct and tight and compelling, I gave a talk to a, um, a young professional group as part of the Atlanta Rotary here in Atlanta, and I was a few slides through my presentation and I said, this isn't landing because these people don't have enough battle scars yet.

So they don't. They can't say, oh yeah, I remember that. They're still so early and so fresh, and I, I just shut my computer off. And I said, okay, how many of you would like to hear how I got a job at Microsoft? And I just told that story, and here's what I said. I don't have my phone near me, but I held up my, my phone.

I said, these are evil. They play a role. I said, the key learning from how I got a job at Microsoft is you have to stay in the moment. You just never know when an opportunity's gonna hit you. It could be the person sitting next to you on an airplane. Maybe you're waiting for a friend at the bar in a restaurant.

You just strike up a chat with somebody. In my case, I was at a restaurant industry function. [00:25:00] The primary reason for me to be there changed 10 minutes after I showed up to the opening reception, so I could have won, go back, gone back to my hotel room and sulked and watch bad TV two, try and get an earlier flight or three.

You know what? I'm just gonna go meet some new people and make some friends within five minutes. Someone I hadn't seen in years came up, told me he was with Microsoft. We talked about that and then he said, by the way, my boss is here. He is the opening keynote. You need to meet him. Wow. Six months later, COVID happens.

I'm wondering what's next for me? And my LinkedIn goes Ping. And instead gentleman saying, Hey, I'm putting a new two, a new team together, and I would like to talk to you about joining us. Never saw it coming. And of course I have to say this because it's one of the funniest lines I've ever heard. His name's Chris.

He's just one of my favorite people. I said, Chris, I don't know. Yeah, I've kind of done this big company thing. I don't know if I wanna do another. And he got quiet, he said. You're not gonna do another big [00:26:00] company, you're going to go do the biggest company, the biggest company. So it really was just that simple, Lori.

It was stay open, be in the moment. You just don't know an opportunities are going to happen. And in this particular case, because I was able to articulate my value proposition. In a compelling way, he remembered that and without going deep on the opportunity, it was just a perfect fit for me. And I will tell you, when I posted that on LinkedIn that I was joining Microsoft, the comments I I received from people I've known for a long time were really very funny.

Like, what do you know about tech? And more funny things like that. But you know.

Lori: Like, do you know how to turn on a computer?

Ira: You know what, what happens still? And just a lot of funny things you can imagine. But you know what, to, to kind of bring it back to what we're talking about today. I said, you know what?

I'm gonna learn the same way I learned about brands in [00:27:00] Coca-Cola. I'm gonna learn more about technology, more about cloud, more about AI at the greatest university on the planet. And you know something, this is a customer facing role and I sure do know a thing or two about customers, whether they're buying cloud or soft drinks or financial services or wrenches.

Customers are customers. And the playbook will work here, and it did.

Lori: And so, is that what you mean about your value proposition? Do you wanna say a little bit more about that when you say, I knew my value proposition?

Ira: I, um, and this is feedback I've received, so it, it sounds smart and I can't take credit for it.

I've lived and, and, and, and really built my expertise at the intersection of customers and communication. So what I mean by that is it's everything from how do we want to communicate to a customer, in person, meaning a sales call, maybe it's at an event or a conference, maybe it's thought leadership being delivered on a stage or [00:28:00] through other medium, maybe through advertising, but it's also engaging with with customers.

And meeting them where they are, which everybody says these days, by the way. But I don't know if everybody really knows what that means. It's just one of those lines that everyone's using. But understanding how to meet the customer where they are, and we'll talk more about that I think in a minute or two.

But being at that intersection. Really understanding the power of engagement is my value proposition and the fact that, again, back to the playbook, it having that flexibility of seeing things. This is something you and I talked about a long time ago. See things horizontally. We, in the workplace, I think, from what I've experienced is we look at things vertically.

Oh, you need to focus on convenience stores. Don't worry about grocery. I'm sorry. Food retailers are food retailers pretty similar. And I know you've seen in your, in your journey, we look at things ver vertically. The [00:29:00] opportunity when I joined this team at Microsoft with my colleagues we're all industry experts with deep experience and wrinkles.

Like me. The power of the value proposition that we brought to our operating unit, Microsoft, is we looked at things horizontally. What's happening in home improvement that might be relevant to restaurants? What's happening in grocery that might be relevant to traditional retail and the sales teams, the enterprise sales teams could not get enough of what our team offered because they said, no one's talking to our customer this way.

So the value proposition is, is looking for how you differentiate yourself and connecting those dots.

Lori: Yes.

Ira: Once you connect those dots, then you have a really compelling story to tell. Because my experience, and I think you'd agree at the end of the day. When a customer agrees to meet with you, they, they know they're gonna get a pitch at some point, but when you surprise and delight them by showing up with insights and you show up with best practices and you're just informing.[00:30:00]

You stop and let them process, they will naturally, especially if it's something that gets their attention. I remember being in front of a national grocery chain. I'm not gonna mention which one, and there was a, a fairly significant story about how Walmart lead on Microsoft because they wanted to take their shopper experience, their online shopper experience to the next level of AI.

And because of the partnership between Walmart and Microsoft, that was the first phone call and there was a video clip of Microsoft, CEO and Walmart, CEO, on stage. And I said, I have to play this for this grocer. And the account manager said, please don't do that. I said, well, I'm gonna do it because it's insights, its best practices.

Lori: And it gives proof.

Ira: It's proof it works. And as soon as the presentation was over, the senior person in the room for the customer looked at the account manager and said. I think it's five words. How do we get some of that? So that's the Ira's value proposition. I, I, I, I've been at that, that, that intersection.

[00:31:00] And I think the ability to, to look at things horizontally, find commonalities, connect dots, and build a story. Without selling anything. Yeah. Because if you're compelling and what you say resonates, it's going to it, it will come naturally. And that's, I think, the artfulness of what I fear might be missing out there today is we're jumping into the transaction and we're, we're losing so much opportunity.

Lori: Yes, agreed. My grandfather used to say, I am not here to sell you anything. I'm just here to bring you some value, and if I don't have value, I don't wanna waste your time or my time.

Ira: What, what do I say to that? It's perfect.

Lori: There we go. Right. Okay. So you have a playbook, you have a value proposition, and now you wanna bring it to the world.

You wanna share what you've learned with the world. Yep. And here comes the moment when you write a book. So tell us, tell us about this book.

Ira: Well, here's, here's the interesting thing. A lot [00:32:00] of what I would say right now we've already talked about. So it's just been,

Lori: I love that.

Ira: An organic, you know, what I'm learning is everyone has a book in them, maybe two or three.

Uh, this is something I always wanted to do and, you know, life gets in the way. You know, the expression, sorry, I won't be PC here, but the original way it was said to me is man plans. God bless. I should probably change it to people plan and God laughs. Yeah. Oh, I'm gonna write it next summer. Oh, I'll write it at the beach.

It, it just never happened and it's probably good. It didn't, because I needed more seasoning. I needed more wisdom. I needed to be kicked around a little bit more. I also needed to see if the playbook would work. And when the playbook was working in Microsoft, that was validation that Okay. This isn't rocket science.

But what I was seeing, Lori, as we talked about already, is I was seeing all the things that, that you and I were taught. All the training we received was seeing short shrift. Short shrifted, if that's a word, because we're [00:33:00] all, we're all under pressures to meet the quarterly goal. We're all under pressure to meet the numbers we're all under pressure to scale, scale, scale, and things were becoming more transactional.

I was seeing that, and that's not to indict any previous employer and I validate that because like you, a lot of my former customers are still friends. That says a lot.

Lori: Yeah, it does.

Ira: And I checked in with a few of them. I said, what's it like? And you can imagine the feedback. Sure. That I heard. So all that said, when I left Microsoft, I said, now's the time.

And I just, as we say here in the south, I just hunkered down. I had a bunch of years of notes because I've given, you know, I've given the stewardship for business talk a number of times, and every time I gave it, every time such a compliment. You know, after you talk, you have the reception line, right? And inevitably there'd be 1, 2, 3 people that would say, do you have a book?

No. You're gonna write a book, right? Yeah, yeah. I'll write a book one day when I get [00:34:00] older. But there was a defining moment that I, I won't waste time on where after this conversation I said, okay, now's the time. So. The other key thing was I needed an editor. I needed a a, a, a wingman wing person, someone who would keep me on the straight and narrow.

But the, you know, the, the impetus for this was what we've talked about. It was my desire to take 25 years of insights and best practices and customer management and share it. But the packaging of it was so important because this will make you smile. I think nobody needs another 400 page sales training book in their life.

Lori: No.

Ira: No. So I intentionally wanted to create something easy to read 103 pages. You can knock it out by the pool in the afternoon, or on a flight or on a weekend if there's no good TV on. I wanted it to be conversational. I wanted it to be actionable, [00:35:00] and I wanted to convey the eight principles through storytelling.

And I have to give my editor Rob Baskin a lot of kudos because I was having a lot of anxiety about, oh my gosh, this book's not gonna be long enough. And he, to make me feel better, he, he, you know, this was after dinner, he went back home. Probably got a little help from ChatGPT, and sent me a list of the top 10 business books of all time by revenue.

Five of the top 10 were Wonder were 100 pages or less. Number one is a book we've all read. Who Moved My Cheese? 99 pages, $28.6 million. He said, get over yourself. People will love, we're gonna call this a playbook. And even if you didn't play sports, you understand what a playbook is. I'm gonna read it, I'm gonna understand and I'm gonna be able to go do stuff.

So it was really the passion of, I wanna share this, I want to pay it forward. And, and, and that's it. I just, I just, you know one thing about people like you and me, when, when we [00:36:00] focus. We really focus.

Lori: Oh yes. Oh yes.

Ira: I mean, once you put your head down.

Lori: Watch out world. And so you titled the book Stewardship for Business.

Mm-hmm. And inside it is your playbook on how to kind of bring this trifecta together. Really how to take relationships and this playbook of experience and this customer management to a whole new level. And who would you say is the audience that's ripe to read this book?

Ira: Yeah, it's a great question.

Thank you. Just real quick for a second, because one of the things I've learned since, since I was published mid-June, so it's basically. Been three months. Time is just flying, is there's not a really terrific understanding of what stewardship means. And so I did some homework and most, most people's understanding of stewardship really falls in two areas, religion and [00:37:00] spiritual.

And financial services like Joe, my banker, stewards my money. Everyone understands that. But when you look at the original definition of stewardship, it's, it's all about taking care of something. Or oversight. And if you're a salesperson or an account manager, that resonates, right? Because you're being paid to take care of something, that relationship.

And so what I try to do is turn it on ear a little bit and really take a little bit more of a business perspective. And so my definition is around communicating value, which we'll talk about in a second I think getting a competitive advantage. You know, we used to say in my enterprise days. We're one RFP away from losing this business.

And for those of you who don't know what RFPs are, they're request for proposals. And it's a whole lengthy, painful process where you either keep your business or lose your business. And then the last piece of it is all around relationships and [00:38:00] looking for ways to mutually grow the business together. So that's IRA's attempt to take a powerful concept, comes stewardship, and bring it to customer management.

Now, let me answer your question. I would say the bullseye target here, are sales professionals, account managers, business development individuals, relationship managers, but, and. Entrepreneurs, startups, and why do I say that? The common thread there are customers and clients. And this is not, you know, somebody asked me this at a virtual summit earlier this week.

So this is a book for, for big companies and corporations. This is an enterprise book. And I said, no, I disagree. The power of these principles, Lori, is they apply to any size business from a startup to a Fortune 50 company in any industry. Selling either a product or a service. And, and if I could, a really quick way to pay this off is I send a copy of my [00:39:00] book to an individual.

He was excited to read it, and his wife is a veterinarian, very successful veterinarian in the city they live in. She has several locations doing very, very well, and he came home from, from work and she's sitting on the couch reading the book after he asked her, why are you opening my mail? He was two chapters in and said, this is incredible.

I, I never really thought about how can I bring insights and ideas? How can I right. Take what I know to build my practice and how can I take a little more time to understand the special relationship that my patients have with their pets. This is a veterinarian and my, this individual said this to me. I said, well, you just, you just.

Paid off my point. The principles apply really to any business that has customers, and I think that's the, that's the power of it, but that's really the, the bullseye target.

Lori: I love that. And I think that in a very transactional world, and in a world that is moving [00:40:00] so warp speed, it's easy to say that some of these things don't matter.

Some of these principles might not matter. We're just gonna skip over some of them to get right to the end. Right? Yeah. You know, it's like the. The proposal where the customer's just waiting for how much is it gonna cost me? So let's just skip right to the last page, but no, no, no, no, no. We've gotta do all of these principles that you're suggesting to really give the value we have to give in order to, as you said, meet the customer where they're at.

We can't even know where they're at without three of the steps.

Ira: And some of your listeners may say, oh gosh, seven, eight steps before I sell anything, that that is absolutely not the case. There's it. It's really just a practical approach that's all around this one simple idea that I learned from a business owner at my first job in a shoe store in Western New York.

Lori: Love that.

Ira: People buy from people they like and trust. How do I [00:41:00] build trust? I demonstrate an interest in who you are. I demonstrate a, a hunger to understand your business. I go outta my way to demonstrate that no one's gonna take better care of you than me and my company. And I'm looking for ways where we can grow the business together.

I'm gonna give you a win before I get a win because I know that if I do my job one day, I'm gonna need some help from you, Mr. Customer. And you're gonna say, I remember when you helped me. That's what partners do. Because this is all about building trust and building partnerships. Because if you, if you have built trust and partnership with your clients, you're insulated because, and you and I both experienced this at Coca-Cola, our customers would never envision going to anybody else because they felt that they were working with the best partner.

In this particular product category in the country. That's right. And you don't get there overnight. So there it is, very [00:42:00] conversationally. It's those steps you take. To build trust and partnership. Now, let's be frank, 'cause I'm always frank, when you and I used to be very frank with each other, always frank, there are a lot of businesses out there that do really well.

They sell a commodity, they sell something that we all need and, and on the B2B side, they sell things that are very much needed and they do very well. And a lot of these principles won't apply and they will have no interest. Hey, I've got my business and that, and that's fine. I can't tell you what percent of, of the, uh, of the marketplace that is, but I do know I haven't run into too many people when I asked the question, are you creating real value for your, for your customers?

They can't really answer that because it's very subjective. But when I asked them, would you aspire to be considered a trusted partner, and not one person's told me no. Okay, let's talk about how we get there. Right? Yeah. It's, it's really steps straightforward if this is not a, this is [00:43:00] not a multiple paint, this isn't a gam chart.

This is just the, the steps that if you invest the time, I go back to my boss who ran the shoe store. If you show, if you show that you can be trusted and you, and you take the time and invest it in people, they will like you and they will give you their business. It, it, it's, it really is just that simple.

Getting there is not simple.

Lori: Isn't it amazing how you and I both built a career on that very principle? Yes.

Ira: That chat. Yep.

Lori: So, IRA, where can people buy your book and find you?

Ira: Yeah, thank you. Now's the time where I usually hold up a copy, but it's in, now it's in, it's in another room. But Stewardship for Business is available on Amazon.

You can find it very easily. There's a hardcover option just because I love hardcovers. Soft copy, soft copy or paperback or for novels, it says a 104 page playbook and there's an ebook for people that would, would prefer to [00:44:00] listen to it. No, I did not narrate it. And unfortunately I can't afford Morgan Freeman.

So you're, you gonna have, you're gonna have to read it on your own. So it's on Amazon and, and the other thing, how to find me, I'm on LinkedIn. Very easy to find, you know. I'm a big fan of Dion Sanders, and I love so many of his lines. And one is I ain't hiding. I'm easy to find LinkedIn, but I did. If I may real quick, there's going to be folks that read this book and they're going to want others to hear about it.

And so one of the other things I'm really focusing on is how can I help organizations, businesses bring the principles into their business? To their peers, to their management, to their salespeople. So I have a lunch and learn executive briefing option where I'm happy, virtually, or in person to really just walk through a lot of what you and I have talked about today, and also rolling up sleeves.

There's a half day workshop and there's a full day workshop that can be [00:45:00] perfect for sales meetings, offsite planning meetings, and for those of your listeners. That are always looking for speakers. I am, I'm all about sharing the principles and, and telling some stories in that forum as well, so I feel so passionately about this.

I, I really just want to help folks be aware, embrace it, and, and, and help them bring the principles into their businesses. Sometimes you just need that little push and bring in a third party to say, Hey. Let's talk about coverage plans and let's talk about opportunity customers and, and let's talk about why'd you lose that last piece of business and what can we do to help prevent that from happening again.

So.

Lori: Exactly.

So for all of you listeners, you could be lucky enough to connect with IRA and perhaps, you know, schedule some time with him and his expertise. I mean, how fortunate are we here on the Joy CEO podcast to have the talent of Ira. My friend what a [00:46:00] pleasure.

Ira: It's been great. I've really, I've really enjoyed, it's so much fun talking to somebody.

Who's lived this and understands it. 'cause I saw you smiling a few times, and quite honestly, a lot of the folks who have read the book, I've had some incredible feedback. But my favorite line as we wrap up here is he said to me, do you remember those Bobblehead dogs that everybody used to have in the back of the car growing up, or, yeah.

You know, and the dog would just do this. Yeah. He said, that's what I did for 104 pages. Yep. Yep, yep, yep. Sometimes his validation can be a beautiful thing and yes. Let's be frank. None of what we've talked about today, Lori, is rocket science. It's just practicality and it's understanding the nuance of building relationships.

So I appreciate all your kind words. I, you can tell I've got a lot of passion for this, and if in my own way I can pay, pay it forward and, and, and, and just help, help folks win because remember, you're, you're a case study of this. The ability to [00:47:00] effectively manage a customer relationship is a coveted skill.

So that's the last thing your, your listeners should hear. We all like to win. We all want to get promoted. We all wanna make more money, right? The ability to demonstrate that you can build trusted partner relationships is a coveted skill. People will want that. And I think that's the last important thing to share with you.

Lori: And that is a gift. It is something that you build over time and. You certainly need mentors like Ira to help you along the way. So I'm so grateful that I have had you in my career journey, my friend, and it was a pleasure to have you on the podcast today. Thank you so much for being here.

Ira: Thank you so much.