I'm going to give you an easy way to know whether or not the people who work for you
or with you care enough about what you're doing.
Hey everybody.
It's Jay Baer, with another Jay Today, where I give you a piece of my mind three minutes
at a time.
Coming to you live today from a Subaru Forester.
Just got this car a couple of minutes ago.
My daughter will turn 16 and a half here in just a few weeks, which is the legal driving
age here in Indiana.
So this is her car.
Really excited for her.
Happy birthday, etc., etc.
This car was sold to me by a guy, Brandon, at the dealership around the corner.
You know it was the typical car buying experience.
A little quicker than usual because I knew what I wanted.
But Brandon made it really a pleasure because this guy is super psyched about this car.
He's super psyched about selling cars, like really passionate about all the features on
the vehicle and the whole process.
He just loves what he's doing, and you can tell in every interaction with him that he
wants to have this job.
He is excited to be in the car sales business, and boy, what a difference that makes.
Now contrast that with an airport experience I had just a few days ago coming back from
Mexico.
I was in the Delta lounge, and this lady was sitting across from me.
She was on the Bluetooth headset, of course, and was having this -- seriously I'm not kidding
-- like an hour-long conversation that was the most inane conversation I'd ever heard.
I'm not making that up.
But beyond that, what really struck me is I overheard her saying to her friend or whomever
was on the other side of the line that she used to have a job where she got 18 paid days
off a year.
She quit that job to take another job because it gave her 29 paid days off a year.
I thought to myself, "Isn't that just the perfect encapsulation of having a job that
you don't care about, that you're not passionate about?"
Look, if you want more vacation, you're not in the right job.
If work feels like work, you're not passionate enough about what you do.
Brandon's passion for selling me this car, and her lack of passion for whatever it is
that she does, other than talk on her headset, could not be farther apart.
Here's my test.
I want to use this.
Go talk to the people on your team, or the people in your company, and tell him this.
Say, "Hey, here's the deal.
We're going to double the amount of vacation everybody gets."
The people who are excited about that, the people who are clapping, the people who are
jumping up and down, those are the people who shouldn't be on your team, because they're
not passionate enough about the work that you're doing.
Look, I know lots of people take jobs that they don't really love.
I'm not a big believer in the, "Hey, quit your job.
Do what you love.
You can crush it.
Cash in on your passion."
I don't think that's very good advice, and it's not very sound advice, and it's not very
realistic advice.
There are thousands, probably millions of people who are stuck in jobs that they really
don't like, but they have financial or life circumstances that require them to do that.
You know who's to blame for that?
Not those people, their employers, because they willingly and consciously hired people
who don't care.
That has bigger ramifications for their business than they will ever choose to admit or ever
understand.
As Amber Naslund and I said in "The NOW Revolution" now more than five years ago, what you need
to do as an employer, as a team manager, as a leader is hire for passion and train for
skills.
Not the other way around.
Today's Sprout Social Shoutout is for my friend, Peter Shankman.
Peter has a fantastic new book just out called "Zombie Loyalists."
It's all about going way above and beyond in customer service to turn your customers
from customers to raving, crazy fans.
Awesome read, take a look at.
It's called "Zombie Loyalists."
Of course, you should be following Peter in social media.
Today's Jay Today episode, as all Jay Today episodes, are brought to you by Sprout Social:
a terrific social media marketing console that I use for my own social media.
And the show is brought you by Candidio.
Candidio makes these videos possible.
I just upload these on my iPhone, including live from a Subaru Forester, and they do the
rest.
They can do the same for you.
Candidio, fast, easy, affordable.
Until tomorrow, I'm Jay Baer.
This has been Jay Today.
Thanks.