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Empowering your way to success

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THE CREATIVE CHALLENGE: Finding a way to empower those connected to your business to build loyalty, enthusiasm, and a commitment to your values—and sales efforts

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When it comes to selling a product or service, a sense of empowerment can be priceless. Empowered individuals radiate confidence, passion, and pride. If you are able to instill this attitude in those connected to your business, from employees to suppliers and distributors and even your customers, you will have a powerful advantage in not only increasing your sales but developing long-term and highly loyal relationships.

In this chapter we will look at some ways that businesses have managed to foster empowerment while taking their companies to new levels of success. For them, empowerment is all about good business practices that contribute to profitability.

Quite often, empowered individuals are the ones who take a leap of faith in the business world and try something new with the thought that it will boost sales or streamline how products get to customers. Or they rethink an old distribution method and retool it so the system is leaner and more beneficial to the company’s bottom line. And sometimes an empowered business-person decides to change direction altogether, even if this means that sales may temporarily slump while a new and better strategy is put in place.

In the following examples, you’ll see how empowering others can help you fulfill your sales goals. This may mean immediate increased profits or a more visible presence in the marketplace (which can translate into future profits). Or it may mean you’ll create a healthier, happier work environment that results in greater productivity. People who are empowered feel better about themselves. If they are employees, they may work harder or make a stronger commitment to your organization. If they are your customers, empowering them may result in larger sales or repeat sales, even when someone else offers a better price. And if they are members of your community, you have an opportunity to create synergistic relationships with them, which 65could result in an environment that helps you attract a more educated and enthusiastic workforce or win-win partnerships.

To empower means to give strength—in one’s convictions, in one’s self-confidence, in one’s ability to make positive changes. There are many ways to empower those who are related to your business and its day-to-day activities as well as its overall success. Your choice as a business owner is to determine what empowerment means to your business and how it will translate into greater sales or more efficient distribution.

We’ve divided this chapter’s lessons into Empowerment Strategies. Of course, the first person who must be empowered in your business is you. You must believe in your idea and your ability to make it work. However, by empowering others, you can improve your entire organization and your ability to make more sales.

EMPOWERMENT STRATEGY NUMBER ONE:
Educate your suppliers.

Starting at the source can be a powerful way to improve your bottom line as well as provide more profits for your suppliers. If your product originates from a culture not familiar with modern marketing practices, you will improve your ability to sell the product if you help your suppliers understand the value of high-quality raw materials and uniform standards. Training them on ways to improve their techniques and efficiency is important, and it may be beneficial to provide them with equipment or better (e.g., cleaner, more spacious, or more sanitary) working conditions so their productivity increases. Developing a flexible payment plan can help them procure materials and meet your order deadlines.

Education translates into empowerment when you show someone how to make a better product more efficiently. And if 66working conditions are improved, suppliers are more likely to receive more for their work and provide you with the product quantity you need to help you grow your business. This results in a powerful win-win situation.

Empowering your suppliers—no matter who they are or where they are located—often has long-term effects that can pay off handsomely. Investing in your suppliers’ businesses may enable them to improve their day-to-day operations so they turn out a better product. Educating them on how to find higher-quality ingredients can also give you a more saleable product.

Here’s an example of a company that created real power— for all concerned—and more sales by educating its suppliers.

Watering the Seeds

Indigenous Designs Corporation has created highly beneficial relationships with the indigenous artisans who weave the company’s articles of clothing. The company’s garments are produced by family-owned enterprises or artisan-owned cooperatives primarily in Peru, Ecuador, and India. The company adheres strictly to Fair Trade and ecologically sustainable business practices and ensures that its suppliers also follow these practices with all raw material procurement and production related to the business. In addition, Indigenous Designs focuses on helping local artisans preserve their family and social infrastructure and culturally based skills.

The heart of Indigenous Designs’ business is these family-run enterprises and cooperatives. The company has developed a finely tuned global production infrastructure within these communities, forming a network of over 260 artisan production groups around the globe. To help support these communities, Indigenous Designs pays two to three times the average wage for hand-knit apparel. This income has benefited indigenous artisans in remote communities all over the world.²

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This emphasis on the family structure has guided the company in several ways and has enabled it to improve the lives of these artisans and their family members. An important point to remember is that by improving the lives of these people, Indigenous Designs is helping them to be more productive. Again, this creates a cycle of positive results: The artisans produce a higher-quality product that is more saleable and can be sold for a higher price. This gives them more profits and in turn helps Indigenous Designs grow as a business so it can continue to place orders.

Another way the company supports the artisans is by providing them with better equipment. In the past, before knitting garments for Indigenous Designs, these artisans had no way to assess their true market value and frequently exchanged their hand-knit products for food. The artisans also often used old bicycle spokes as knitting needles. Indigenous Designs has been able to provide them with appropriate needles at no cost. By teaching these people the value of their work and finished products, the company has been able to help them work more efficiently and obtain higher-quality yarns. In addition, the company offers free training and the opportunity to advance as a trainer.³

The company helps support the family unit through its payment system. Although the company does not interfere with the family infrastructure, it has been interested in paying— directly—the women who actually do the work. In many of these cultures, it is traditionally the men who collect the money earned within the family. Because Indigenous Designs uses NGOs to help distribute the women’s earnings through the cooperatives that are formed, the women have become part of a collective group. As part of this group, the women receive support and guidance that help them in all aspects of their daily lives and as wage-earning artisans.

“There’s a strong partnership with these women,” says Scott Leonard, Indigenous Design’s CEO and cofounder, “where they 68are congregating and putting their voices together. And that’s really powerful.”⁴

Indigenous Designs has found that if the women receive the money, they use it to make life better for their families. In this way, the women are “really watering the seeds of everything in the home,” adds Scott. “And the idea is that, lo and behold, when you start to give money to these women in supporting the family unit, guess what the purchases tend to be about? They tend to be about things like good food, school supplies, things that really embrace the family unit.”⁵

Scott has discovered that education—in a variety of ways— can empower entire communities. From providing flexible work hours to healthier work environments to instruction that helps the artisans set a fair price for each garment, Indigenous Designs is improving its suppliers’ lives as it builds revenue for the company.⁶

EMPOWERMENT STRATEGY NUMBER TWO:
Seek input on how you make or market your product from your entire customer base.

Consider your target audience or customer. Now look a little deeper. For example, if you’re selling an innovative software program to elementary schools that helps teachers manage their class schedules, students, and assignments, find a way to involve teachers in your product development and marketing. Even though they aren’t the ones actually buying the software, they are the people using the software. And making them happy could be good for you when you approach the schools for future orders.

You can engage your customers in many ways as you go about strengthening your product line, service, or distribution 69methods. From research and development to outreach initiatives and strategic alliances, involving your customers can be educational and profitable for you and rewarding for them. This is especially true if your product serves a particular segment of the population. If you open your mind to a wide range of possibilities and listen to those who may have a need for your product (or a variation of it), you will find that innovation never stops— which is a big plus in increasing and maintaining strong sales.

Focus groups are common in the world of marketing, and you can create your own. Whether you’re considering packaging, product design, color, name, or any of a host of other questions regarding your product and how it will be perceived in the marketplace, solicit feedback from individuals in your target group and beyond. People like to be asked their opinion, especially if they feel they’re part of a special group or team that is responsible for helping to make important decisions. An advisory panel is a great way to get people on board, and it offers the opportunity to routinely add and replace participants over a span of time. Again, seek counsel from a wide range of individuals connected to your product or business.

Wild Planet Toys found out early in its development that some of its most valuable product allies were short on years but long on creativity. Here are some ways this innovative company has used this valuable segment of the population to help add new products to its line and boost sales.

He Really Wants to Get Back to His Homework

Founded in 1993 by Daniel Grossman, San Francisco, California–based Wild Planet is all about toys. And who knows toys better than the people who play with them: kids. And that’s exactly the people Daniel and Wild Planet are empowering with their innovative programs.

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Getting children involved in the business as “inventors” and “advisers” happened very organically for the company. Although the company was committed from the start to providing community service, the idea of asking kids to help create toys evolved from a Wild Planet curriculum that involved working with kids on inventions. “One of the kids came up with this idea,” explains Daniel. “And when we got back to the office, we sort of sat around and looked at it and said, ‘Hey, you know, this is something! There might be something here.’ So we mocked it up and made a model of it.” They began to show the prototype to children, who loved it. On that basis, the company took the toy to market, and it was very successful.⁷

The product that materialized from the young boy’s thinking was the Light Hand, and the inventor is still receiving royalties ten years later. This experience led to a collaboration with a boy who was nine when he started designing toys for Wild Planet. The boy’s first toy was an underwater walkie-talkie called the Water Talkie, and he went on to invent a line of toys designed for the swimming pool. Three years later, at age twelve, his parents told Daniel that the boy would like to sell his “company” because he really wanted to get back to his homework. “That experience of working with this boy at that level and understanding his motivation and fulfilling his dream,” adds Daniel, “in many ways was a huge impetus toward continuing to move in the direction of working with kids on that basis.”⁸

The youthful ingenuity exhibited by these two boys helped Wild Planet develop its Kid Inventor Challenge and TOP (Toy Opinion Panel). The Kid Inventor Challenge invites elementary school children between the ages of six and twelve to invent their own toy. One hundred winners are selected each year to join a panel of special advisers—toy consultants—to the design team at Wild Planet for an entire year. After all, “Nothing motivates71 kids like a chance to have fun, be creative, and do something original—like inventing a toy.”⁹

TOP is a program that invites parents and children to help Wild Planet design the toys of tomorrow. The company has created ways for families to participate whether they’re in northern California or clear across the country. Those not in the San Francisco vicinity test “top secret” toy ideas by joining Wild Planet’s Toy Advisory Panel. Throughout the year they receive e-mail invitations to participate in surveys or online discussion groups. Panel members have an opportunity to offer opinions on everything from new toy ideas to their taste in music. And children have the chance to win cool toys (with their parents’ permission).

Those who live in northern California are encouraged to host a Toy Opinion Party at their school or home, for which they arrange for a group of five or six kids to get together. Wild Planet representatives then go to the location with toys to demonstrate to the group. The sessions are about an hour long, and every child receives a toy. Adults are also rewarded for acting as hosts. In addition, Wild Planet invites schools and community organizations to participate in the TOP program, with hosts qualifying to receive a donation for their class or program.¹⁰

For Daniel, the heart of what Wild Planet does is really wrapped up in the company’s approach to creating popular toys and what that means to kids. “Parents really love this [invention] program,” says Daniel. “They intuitively understand and they see in their kids’ reactions and their faces that it’s such a huge boost in self-esteem to them when they get respected by adults for something that they do.”¹¹

As Daniel Grossman and Wild Planet are demonstrating, empowering children is one way to make a difference in the world. Children are learning at an early age that their opinions 72count and that they are free to be as “outside the box” as they like when it comes to creating a toy. They’re also learning the power of focusing on an idea and believing in themselves as they develop those ideas.

We add one other thought to this lesson: will these children think of Wild Planet when they’re buying toys for themselves (and their children) in the future, and will their parents and teachers think of Wild Planet today? We believe the answer is a definite yes.

EMPOWERMENT STRATEGY NUMBER THREE:
Instill passion—and loyalty—in your employees through education.

Mentoring is nothing new in the business world. But it may be the last thing you think about when you’re putting together a business plan and building strategies for selling your product or service. However, most businesses, especially if they experience rapid growth, are always looking for capable and dedicated employees.

An internship or mentoring program can be highly beneficial to a business. Here are a few ideas: Create a program that allows college students to gain experience by working at your company. Develop a partnership with a local university so the students earn credits for their work with you. Organize outreach programs that promote an exchange of ideas with individuals in the community who share some of your business goals.

As you are planning your mentoring program, think about what you wish you could have learned at a younger age. If your interns are high school or college students, consider the practical aspects of your business that will benefit them when they are looking for a job after graduation or possibly running their own businesses. These may include how to write a business plan, 73how to read a profit and loss statement, or even something as routine as how to pack and ship breakable merchandise. And learning at an early age how to treat customers with courtesy and respect is a skill that will stay with a person for a lifetime.

In addition to teaching skills to your interns, take time to listen to their ideas and seek their feedback about your operation. The more you can engage these business leaders of tomorrow in your operation, the more passion you will foster within them. And increased profits often begin with embracing the enthusiasm and creativity of those around you.

Hidden Beach Recordings is dedicated to giving artists the opportunity to present their music as they truly want it to be heard—and felt. But as the next example shows, the company has also discovered the dynamic potential that exists within those who are passionate about working in the entertainment industry and are willing to learn on the job.

Staying True to Your Soul

Hidden Beach Recordings is using the power and gift of music to empower individuals in diverse, innovative ways. Steve McKeever, the founder of Hidden Beach, based in Santa Monica, California, acts as the company’s chief executive and oversees all of Hidden Beach’s day-to-day operations. The company’s mission is to present passion-filled artists and encourage them to stay true to their soul and emotional center. A former executive with Polygram Records and Motown Records, Steve is well versed in introducing new recording artists to the public and turning such talent into successful endeavors for the companies that represent them. His company is the culmination of his professional vision of creating a uniquely independent music outlet committed to setting new artistic and business standards for the entertainment community. In short, he wants to build one of the new industry “brands” consumers can trust and embrace.¹²

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In addition to creating a safe artistic haven for his artists, Steve has initiated a program that helps young people become involved in all aspects of the music business. Hidden Beach Recordings’ College Internship Program is an international effort that provides college students with hands-on music-business experience. The company has had as many as 540 students in the program, and Steve hopes to up that number to 2,000 and make it a model for the entertainment industry.

Steve has long dreamed of fostering a program of this kind. He calls it the “heartbeat of what we do here” and considers it to be symbiotic with the company. He started the College Internship Program because he wanted to create something that he wished had been available when he was young. The idea for it began to germinate fifteen years ago when Steve was an executive at Motown. But the legal concerns that tend to percolate in big business derailed the program, and Steve was forced to abandon the idea.¹³

When Steve formed Hidden Beach Recordings, he resurrected the idea and discussed it with a student helping him with the business. The young man presented the program to his class at the university he attended, and Steve instantly received thirty-five enthusiastic e-mails from the students. “They were so desperate to learn about the business of how things really worked and get hands-on experience in a place where it was really tough, that they would do anything,” says Steve. Realizing he needed more help to manage a program like this, Steve spent over a year brain-storming and fine-tuning the details of his College Internship Program. He focused on the skills and knowledge he wished he could have gained as a young man and how he could empower college students eager to learn about the recording industry.

The application requirements for Hidden Beach Recordings’ internship program are simple: the students have to be enrolled 75in a college class, must write two essays, and must provide two letters of recommendation. Steve is looking for students who have a real passion for the business and who really want to learn, as opposed to those with a stellar grade point average. “Anybody who’s passionate, for the most part, comes in the door,” he says. “What they’ve learned is ‘My ideas are extraordinarily valuable.’ And most importantly, they get empowered to learn that if they follow their passions about what they love and do what they love, then it will reward them ten times over.” Hidden Beach’s interns do real work, working directly with the artists the company represents. In the case of one of the label’s superstars, Jill Scott, interns were involved in every phase of the marketing campaign that helped propel her from unknown to Grammy Award winner.¹⁴

Steve is especially proud that he’s been able to hire interns to fill positions at Hidden Beach—even the head of the internship program was once an intern. He likens the program to a baseball farm team, where the outstanding players are recruited to play for the majors. In addition, the company holds conventions around the country where the interns are invited to gather and talk with members of the home office. The interns have also created a little viral network of their own, a kind of fraternity or sorority, so if they need help or a contact in a city they’re visiting, they can call on one another for support.

For Steve, his College Internship Program is an idea that took years to come to maturity but is finally paying off with handsome dividends. “I was this kid who would have done anything, anytime, anywhere, just to be in the industry,” he adds. “Sweep floors, whatever it took to get in because that was my passion.” And now, that kid opens new opportunities in the lives of the students who intern for his company. “If you’re in the program, you’re completely empowered to go for it.”¹⁵

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EMPOWERMENT STRATEGY NUMBER FOUR:
Use financial incentives coupled with a strong sense of belonging to build loyalty and confidence among your sales force.

Let’s face it: when you’re the one paying the bills, coming up with the marketing plans, and struggling to keep products in the warehouse and shipping them on time, it can be tempting to squeeze out every possible percentage of gross income. When you have a large sales force, as direct-selling companies have, you might be tempted to keep the commissions as lean as possible. However, if you reward your sales force as much as you can, the long-term gains may outweigh the short-term pains.

Later in the book, we’ll discuss the benefits of recognizing and celebrating the accomplishments of your sales force. But another factor can build a strong sense of unity among the members of a sales team. It is the notion of empowerment shared by a group of like-minded individuals. Although individual achievements play a significant role in meeting sales goals for any organization, the concept of creating communities of support can be a powerful way to foster a ripple effect of success.

This concept is especially applicable to direct-selling companies since commissions and bonuses are often paid to sales representatives based on the performance of their entire group. However, in many businesses, sales representatives are paid bonuses if the organization as a whole meets its sales goals. By promoting an atmosphere of team building, you can help each salesperson be more successful, which leads to more success for your business overall.

In the case of Warm Spirit, which has continually paid between 10 and 15 percent more in commissions to its consultants than the industry average, one of the most powerful aspects of its organizational support system is the strong sense of community 77Nadine has fostered since the company’s creation. This goes back to her belief that black women need opportunities to feel good about themselves and to understand that it is possible to achieve new goals and make dreams come true. The philosophy appears to be paying off as the company continues to realize steady growth in both revenue and the number of new consultants.

The Beauty of Community

Nadine’s mission of empowering African American women is paramount to building not only a strong company but also more confident and successful consultants. As Warm Spirit consultants have embraced the company’s business opportunity and the benefits of its products, they have reached out to other people and created organizations of their own, which have become individual communities of empowerment. Here, women and men are able to coach one another and help each other reach their goals and also feel comfortable sharing their spirituality and stories—the challenges as well as the successes.

To Nadine, a community is a place where people are like-minded and supportive and share common goals. It’s where people are able to exist together in a respectful way. Nadine feels Warm Spirit has created communities of empowered entrepreneurs who are business savvy and upwardly mobile and understand the value of money. For her, this sense of community and the network of people that has been created around the country is priceless.

Fostering communities where people feel safe and comfortable yet challenged to grow is a large part of what Nadine stresses when she talks about Warm Spirit. She wants the consultants to be able to tell their stories and have people bear witness to their transformation as more empowered individuals. And once this transformation takes place, they can begin to experience a real sense of accomplishment and self-esteem.

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As the self-described “mother hen” of this community, Nadine also feels protective. She is approached routinely by people who want to reach this community of consultants—people from other companies who want access to these individuals so they can sell them their merchandise or services. She must carefully weigh the opportunities that are presented and choose the relationships she feels are most beneficial to the consultants and compatible with the company’s values. Her first concern in considering these opportunities is whether they really add to the quality of the consultants’ lives. In evaluating each one, she asks, Will it help them build a more successful business? Will it improve their lives spiritually, physically, or financially? Or is it simply an item that consultants are asked to invest in but really has no long-lasting value?

By continuing to build this sense of community throughout the Warm Spirit operation, she feels the company’s growth will increase as more and more people work together to fulfill their like-minded aspirations.

EMPOWERMENT STRATEGY NUMBER FIVE:
Determine your standards early in the game and base your business relationships on these standards.

The beauty of figuring out your value system when you start building your business is that it keeps you on course. Since people are an integral part of any business, it’s important that you are clear about how you want to treat people connected to your business and why you believe that will translate into more sales and increased revenue growth.

This attitude carries over into whom you hire (e.g., people from your local community), how you involve them in the success of your business, and even how much you pay them and the benefits you make available to them. Our opening example 79highlights a profit-sharing plan developed by Dal LaMagna that ended up paying huge dividends to many of his employees. His determination—from the start of creating his company—to operate with what he calls “responsible capitalism” enabled him to take the steps that would build this program.

Other people connected to your business can also help you build sales and navigate challenges that erupt during the course of running your business. If you treat your suppliers with integrity, they may be more understanding if you need extra time to pay them or want to adjust your ordering process. If they trust you and your ability to sell unique products, they may be willing to experiment with formulas and invest in new ingredients to develop a new product for you.

Your customers also deserve respect and a sense of empowerment in their own right. The values you have set as a company and as a business owner extend to the product or service you are selling. In other words, if you attach your values to your product by offering a money-back guarantee, free repair or replacement, a guaranteed response time for problems, or 24/7 customer service, you strengthen your customers’ loyalty to your brand, which can result in repeat sales, even when a less expensive, similar product is available.

Your investors are a critical component of your operation. You can empower them by making sure your values are aligned with theirs as you develop each aspect of your business. You have far more strength as a team than as individuals who may each have his or her own agenda for how the business should operate or grow. If your investors support your vision and your values as a company, they will be more willing to support you when it comes time to expand or try a new business venture.

You can also empower your community. By making the organizations and people within your community part of your day-to-day business operation, you create long-lasting relationships 80that can support you in a variety of ways: by providing you with a higher-caliber workforce, by giving you strategic alliances for special promotions, by helping you generate publicity about your business, and by fostering a positive attitude that helps promote a strong customer base.

We end this chapter with an example from an entrepreneur who built his company on a strong platform of values. At the end of the day, everyone benefited, proving that using your values as a source of empowerment can yield impressive results.

Tell Him I Don’t Want to Talk to Him!

Dal LaMagna, who created the Tweezerman brand of personal grooming tools, knew from the very start of his burgeoning enterprise that he wanted to run his business differently. He had a beat in his head that resonated in his heart, and he always marched to that rhythm as he took Tweezerman, based in Port Washington, New York, from a business that earned him $100 a day in sales to over $30 million when he sold the company in December 2004. He had specific ideas about how he would treat his employees, his customers, his shareholders, his suppliers, and his community.

For Dal, business growth was coupled with doing right by those who were working for him and providing the day-to-day support that enabled him to promote the brand. Although he was a 1970 Harvard Business School graduate, he knew what it was like not to have income. And perhaps this lack of money proved to be fortuitous in helping him establish his own guidelines for how he would operate his business. In 1980, when he first came up with the idea for his needle-nose tweezers, he attended his tenth-year reunion at the business school. His less-than-impressive annual earnings of $1,280 once caused a classmate to point out that he “had caused the class earnings average to drop by $80.”¹⁶

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In business school he learned early on that many in the business world considered the bottom line and profits to be the governing force for a company. And that wasn’t how this entrepreneur wanted to do business. The notion that the shareholder is king did not sit well with Dal. “I just could not, in my heart, follow that advice,” he says. He had his own agenda items for creating a successful company, and empowering his employees was one of them.¹⁷

Dal knew that many of his classmates had gone on to work on Wall Street, where it was common for employees to work eighty to ninety hours a week on salary. They worked nights and weekends and never received any overtime pay. He decided to pay his employees an hourly wage so they always got paid for the hours they worked. “I always kept ahead of the curve. I strived to pay what I considered to be enough for a person to live.” He also set up a health plan as soon as he had enough employees.¹⁸

Offering flextime was also important to Dal. He initially had a lot of women working for him, and when a pregnant employee was close to her due date, he told her to go home, have the baby, and come back in three months because he would hold the job for her. To Dal, this was simply a matter of empowering his employees. “I consciously elevated the employee to the same status of beneficiary as the customer and the shareholder. So I had these three critical shareholders.”¹⁹

Another interesting aspect of Dal’s respect for his employees is evidenced by his decision to sell the company when he did. Active in politics, he began to worry that his involvement would cause political enemies to come after him and drive away major customers, which could decimate the stock value. And at this point, Tweezerman was growing 10 percent a year. “I wanted, at the end of the day,” he says, “to protect not only my own wealth which was all in the company, but also the employees. Because the employees had a big stake by this point. I didn’t 82think it was fair to my employees to take them on this political ride.”²⁰

When eight potential buyers appeared, Dal decided to sell. But first, in true Dal style, he had some rules—rules that held firm to the values he had established from day one. One, no layoffs could be conducted by the acquiring company; two, Tweezerman wasn’t to be moved to another location; three, the acquiring company would continue to practice responsible capitalism; and four, the acquiring company would pay “an obscene amount of money.” The acquiring company, the Zwilling J.A. Henckels Company (a German, family-owned business famous for its knives), agreed to Dal’s terms, and today Tweezerman continues to grow and the brand remains strong.²¹

Another way Dal fueled the growth of his company was by empowering his suppliers. He did this by always treating them with respect and being honest with them in the early days when money was tight. And his attitude paid off. “I was very careful not to exploit my suppliers. I was loyal to them.” This loyalty was expressed in several ways: by giving suppliers a chance to meet a lower bid quoted by a competitor; by keeping in touch with vendors when, in the early days, he knew he’d be late paying them; and by paying interest when his payment was late. “They never held back,” he says. “They trusted me, and it just became a very smart strategy to be responsible to your vendors.”²²

Honesty was also important to Dal. He paid for personal photocopies made at the office, and he created a corporate culture of not lying, which put him in the spotlight more than once, especially when he was faced with a phone call he did not want to take. “My assistant would try to catch me in a lie, so she’d come in my room. She’d say, ‘Oh, I’ve got somebody on the phone. What do you want me to tell him? Should I tell him you’re not in?’ I said, ‘No! Tell him I don’t want to talk to him!’”²³

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And how did Dal empower his customers? By offering a lifetime guarantee on his tweezers. At $20, they weren’t the cheapest tweezers available. But by selling “tweezing” as opposed to tweezers, Dal fostered loyalty and peace of mind among his customers. Tweezerman would repair, sharpen, or replace damaged tweezers free of charge and also pay all shipping costs. An added benefit of this policy was that the damaged tweezers did not end up in a landfill, which added sustainability to the mix. Dal could also return each repaired or replaced tweezer with information about other products. He believes this service was the biggest driver for new customers.

With his responsible treatment of his employees, suppliers, and customers, Dal was able to maintain the growth of the company, which in turn made shareholders happy—a definite source of empowerment for them. And finally, the community was another factor in Dal’s game plan when it came to operating under the “responsible capitalism” banner. “The community, for me, was my neighborhood,” he says. “We always strived to hire from the neighborhood. We usually put up a sign in front of the building. But also, we would give back.” The company budgeted 5 percent of its profits to the community.²⁴

Dal firmly believes that Tweezerman’s success is directly related to the empowering and doing-well-by-doing-good policies he built into the company right from the beginning. “I think that practicing responsible capitalism, for Tweezerman at least, probably increased its value, at the end of the day, by 50 percent.”²⁵

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