By Winn Claybaugh
Author of Be Nice (Or Else!) And What's In It For You


A lovely woman taught me an amazing principle for creating career success. She calls it “creative love,” and it’s divided into three different functions and thought processes:

1. Love what you do (your job)
2. Love who you do it with (your co-workers)
3. Love who you do it for (your customers)

To find professional balance, one or two of these elements is not enough; it takes all three. Here are some guidelines to make sure you keep it all together, in all three categories.

Love What You Do: Invest in Your Education

In life, if you want something to grow, you must continuously cultivate and nurture it. The same is true of your career. If you fail to nurture it by investing in more education and knowledge, it will soon become tiresome and boring.

In my schools, we have a philosophy that I love: You play like you practice. If you want to play big—meaning earn more money, drive a better car, advance in the company, and be more successful in your careers—you have to practice big. There are people who say they want to play big yet they don’t want to practice big. A company training is announced and they whine, “Do we have to go?” They want the results without the effort.

To maintain the professional balance you need for happiness, you’ll have to make an ongoing commitment to reading and studying industry-related books and magazines, as well as attending educational classes and seminars. You never want to find yourself in the position of thinking that you’ve “learned it all.” Your career learning process will go on forever.

Love Who You Do It With: Build Successful Relationships

No matter the size of the company, no matter the product or service, all companies are made up of human beings who work there, and who sometimes spend more hours with co-workers than they spend with their own families. I would like to propose that your relationship with those human beings is far more important than getting the task accomplished.

At one of my business locations, we have a catchall storage room commonly referred to as “the dungeon.” Anything and everything can end up in the dungeon, and venturing into that room is often preceded with the announcement, “Cover me, I’m going in!” One of our team members is a task-oriented clean freak. Occasionally, when he was feeling extra eager, he’d attack the dungeon with a vengeance and resurface hours later, proclaiming it clean and organized. Unfortunately, in the process of “civilizing” the dungeon, he’d exterminate relationships with his fellow workers. He’d accuse this co-worker of making the mess, annoy another person with the “drama” of cleaning, and belittle another co-worker for not offering to pitch in.

Eventually, he’d come to me with the proud announcement, “Look! The dungeon is clean.” I’d respond, “Yeah, but you left ten people in your wake. Ten people dislike you and detest their jobs. Now that the dungeon is clean, please go back and clean up your relationships.”

Let me reemphasize that, for every task that must be performed, human beings are attached to those tasks. Your relationship with those human beings is far more important than getting the task accomplished.

Love Who You Do It For: Practice Customer-Focused Leadership

When it comes to being successful in any business or industry, we all need to remind ourselves of how we make money. Who writes your paycheck? Your customer.

The only reason you can buy the clothes you wear, live in the house you live in, take the vacations you take, send your kids to college, and drive the car you drive is because of your customer. Yet some businesses treat customers as if they were undesired interruptions, rolling their eyes as if to ask, “Why can’t you find someone else to help you?”

A good friend of mine who’s also a successful attorney recently planned a dinner party for a large group of friends and associates. She ordered engraved invitations, flowers, catering, live music, gourmet desserts, a car valet, and more. As my friend made arrangements with business after business, she noticed that some of her experiences were pleasurable and some were not. She said that the painstaking process of ordering the invitations—choosing the paper, the font, the color of the ink—was a wonderful and fun experience, whereas the simple, onetime conversation with the bakery employee gave her an awful, “How dare you interrupt my day” feeling. With which company do you think my friend will continue doing business?

Make no mistake—your customers are attracted to you more by your enthusiasm than by your marble floors; more by your cheerful disposition and love for what you do than by your sleek business cards; more by your company standards for respecting human beings than by your multimillion-dollar advertising campaign. When you make being nice to your customers and co-workers a daily priority, your company or business will reap the rewards.