Love Is the New Business Strategy

Most companies overlook a game-changing ingredient that drives success, trust, and innovation — love. Owen Burns reveals how leading with love in business isn’t just a feel-good cliché, but a proven strategy that can transform your organization, boost performance, and even improve the bottom line.Imagine a world where fear, not hate, is the root of most workplace conflicts, stagnation, and poor customer experiences. Owen walks us through how fear blocks growth, while love and trust unleash creativity, collaboration, and resilience—especially when everything from AI to organizational culture feels uncertain. This eye-opening episode explores how love isn’t just an emotion; it’s a leadership tool that enhances relationships, sparks authentic connection, and fuels significant cultural shifts.You’ll discover:

• The surprising science behind love and trust as the foundation of effective leadership

• How companies like Patagonia, Panera, and Microsoft harness love-led strategies to outperform their peers by 20-1200%

• Practical techniques for leading with love during crises, layoffs, and digital transformation—including reprogramming your neural pathways with the “love switch”

• Why fear is the true enemy of innovation and how to turn it into a catalyst for growth

• The role of vulnerability, authenticity, and emotional intelligence in a post-AI world that craves human connection

This isn’t just a feel-good chat—it's a blueprint for building resilient, purpose-driven organizations that stand out in a crowded, increasingly automated landscape. If you’re a leader, founder, or executive aiming to build trust, inspire loyalty, and create a culture where people thrive—this episode is your must-listen. Owen Burns’ insights challenge conventional business wisdom and invite you to embrace love as the ultimate competitive advantage.Perfect for entrepreneurs, CEOs, HR professionals, and change-makers committed to elevating their leadership game and redefining success in the age of AI and uncertainty.

About Owen Burns:
Owen Burns is an executive coach, author of The Power of Love in Business, and a restless seeker of how love and trust can revolutionize organizations. His work empowers leaders worldwide to lead authentically and create cultures rooted in genuine human connection.Join us to unlock the transformative power of love and discover how fear is holding your business back. It’s time to lead with your heart—and see your organization flourish like never before.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello.

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I'm here with Owen Burns. He is today's guest on liftoff journeys. And wouldn't you know the most amazing people sometimes are right in your own backyard. Literally, Owen is just a few streets away from me. And so I'm so excited to know him, to meet him, to be able to see him at French Market when we when we want to get some breakfast or a coffee. And also to have him on the show. Owen, thank you so much for being on Lift Off Journeys.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

I'm so glad to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So we we met through kind of a mutual friend, someone that lives in the community. And then I think, you know, just so everybody knows the backstory, we completely had a mind meld when you shared with me your book, which I'm holding up for the people that can see the video version of this called Power of Love. And my book, I'm gonna grab and hold that up too, which is The Trust Threshold. And they both talk about authenticity. They both speak to relatability. They both talk about, you know, how important it is to be authentic in leadership and in business. But your whole world and your whole career has been about making sure that businesses remain successful through leadership and staff and creating the right cultures, right? Or am I wrong?

SPEAKER_01 1:13

Exactly. No, you're right on your spot on. Well, you're right, our books align because right, it everything comes around, every business and every relationship is based on trust. So I love your book, and I do have a copy of it. It's so important, but before trust happens, before things start moving where there's a partnership, there's got to be this thing called love, this thing that we connect, and all of a sudden we're co-creating something, then everything is comes from that, right? When we have this great conversation and Genio and having this conversation, we are bringing something magical together. And we call that love, you might call it passion, you could call it something else, but love is that universal thing that brings us all together. And that's why I wrote my book, The Power of Love in Business, because that has to happen first.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Yeah. And it's so true. It's so true. But but let's go back in your life to I know, when you were little. Did you grow up with this feeling that you just brought to everything that you did? Did you bring love to any activity, whether it was sports or just growing up, or is this something that you found when you got older and started working or as your career developed?

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Yeah, interesting story. You know, I've a very large family and typical Irish Catholic family with six kids and you know, grew up in the 60s, 70s. So it's this kind of thing. So love was always part of it for sure. My parents were amazing people. I just couldn't say enough about them. My brothers and sisters are amazing. So we just had a great family. And I also have some really great friends. I've still my same friends since I was born, you know, there's seven of us. We grew up, we're growing up together. But as I got through my career, you know, you saw that love was so important. You know, it really was that thing that felt relationships. And I think, you know, even as a young age, we had small, we had our own little businesses and we hustled. But a lot of it was about, you know, being that authentic person, being connected and showing up as your true self.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

Well, it's really interesting that you say that because with with six kids in the family, where were you? Were were you the oldest, the youngest? Were you in the middle?

SPEAKER_01 3:09

I was the youngest. Yeah. I was the youngest.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

So you were the baby. So you had to be yourself in order to get attention. Yeah, basically.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

That's right. Yeah, we definitely had to fight for everything for sure.

SPEAKER_00 3:20

Yeah, absolutely. But you know what, it's really interesting because you you talk about that, and in a family with so many children, I mean, you almost have to be yourself in order to create that individuality so that you're seen within the family and get some attention. Do you think that's what inspired you as you build a career?

SPEAKER_01 3:40

I think so. There's definitely things that I've taken away from that. And being the youngest, what you do see, and especially during that time, we had a lot of friends over. My brothers and sisters were very popular. We had friends over all the time and relatives over over the time. So there's always this spirit of connecting, community. And community, when you have community, you have to show up as yourself. You know, if if you get too big, people are gonna let you know. You know, if you're too small, they'll say, hey, they'll bring you up, you know. So I think that aspect of community is so important, whether it's in a family or certainly in a business, it sticks with you. And, you know, when you work through sports teams, it's the same thing. And then college, it's the same kind of community, you know. You I was in a fraternity, and what is that aspect? It's brotherly love, you know, and this is this wasn't a wishy-washy type of fraternity, it was a sports fraternity, you know. But the idea is it was this concept of love, and that's that connection. So I think that thing is that thing of we call love has been there all along. And I think it's just becomes who we are, and that how we express ourselves is is so important. And that that becomes part of the relationship, as we said, you know, when we we co-create, we become something greater. And that gives us fuel, that gives us that fire.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

Yeah, it and I love in the book where you talk about what the absence of love is. So I don't know. Do you want me to spoiler alert and say what that is? Do you want a spoiler alert and talk about that? I I think, you know, it's something that people don't really think about in the way that you talk about it in your book. But once you hear it, you become introspective and you start to process it. And it really makes a difference in your future thoughts.

SPEAKER_01 5:13

Absolutely. And and the more we talk about this, this aspect is of love and the opposite of love, it becomes more pervasive and we start seeing it play out. And I'll I'll get right to it. The opposite of love is really fear. And and that's that's just uh the value sometimes. And I have this conversation with my wife a couple springs ago. We're in the backyard and we're having a nice glass of wine. I said, you know, the opposite of love isn't hate, it's fear. A lot of people think it's hate. And she's a school teacher said, No, no, it's it's hate. I see it on the school playground all the time. Well, so we had this big debate. Four hours go by, probably had too much wine, and we put out the fire at 11 o'clock at night, and we go to bed and wake up at uh this is Saturday night, we wake up Sunday morning at eight o'clock mass, walk in, the priest gets up in the pub and takes a deep breath and says, the opposite of love isn't hate, it's fear. And so we we laugh out loud, and she said, Oh my gosh, you know, everybody's turning around. Why are you laughing? But the thought is, you know, well, she's turning, so you have to write this book, you know. But the idea is when we look at what is driving our our our society today and what's what's really wrong with it. It's this concept of fear. Because fear keeps us isolated. Fear keeps us from, that's why this person doesn't walk across the bar and talk to the beautiful person on the other side of the room. It's not hate that stops him, it's fear or why we don't innovate, why we don't create, why don't we solve our problems? It's not because we're we don't like the problem, it's we're afraid of failure, we're afraid of not being enough, we're afraid of being ridiculed or ostracized, right? This is part of our our DNA. But when we look at that, when we think about the opposite of of fear, then love becomes extremely powerful and can really be transformative in any relationship and really anything you try to do.

SPEAKER_00 6:52

Especially in business, which since you talked about the power of love in business as the name of your book. And and you know, it's so true. So I we meet in real life and we have this great conversation, and and you know, you gave me your book and it and I brought it home and I was you know talking to my husband, Vince, about it, and he starts reading it and he becomes obsessed. So now the book disappears because it's in his bag with him as he travels around. And and it was great because I I I, you know, love that he connected with it so deeply. But I see him now taking parts of your book and putting it to use in his company where he's a CEO. And I think it's great because when you think about the opposite of love as being fear, it changes the way that you deal with situations in an organization. It changes the questions that you ask potential new employees that you share during reviews with people, that you even consider as a response to work that gets done wrong or doesn't get done at all, because you start to think, well, what motivated that behavior? Now, that might be the psychology degree in me talking a little bit there, but uh I like to think it's your book.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

Well, yeah, for sure. And actually that that concept, Jeannie, actually spurred my next book, which is coming out, it's called uh the love switch. And what is that? Because we have, yeah. So the things we we have neuro patterns that, and this is why we react very often, and that's what spurs fear, you know. And when we when we reprogram ourselves, whether it's ourselves or our community or our society, it has to be something that is a behavior. And so what I came up is and they came out of this situation, people said, Oh, and what happens when we're in that moment when we're trying to lead with love and things go sideways, or that employee comes in late every day, or we just got our business taken over, something really bad happened, right? So what do we do? So I called it, you know, first we just recognize face value, what happens, and then we reset, right? We just take a deep breath, right? Just let it be, understand, just give it some space, and then we reframe it. What would love do in this scenario? Now, when we do that, we're automatically reprogramming our neuropathways, we're automatically how we're going interrupting the pattern. But then we re we respond out of love rather than react out of fear. And that's where the magic happens because too often people say, Oh, that that we just lost this deal, or somebody just raised my quota and I'm so upset. And but that's natural. There's nothing wrong with that. But the idea is how we respond is so important because that's going to make a big difference. And then finally we reconnect. Reconnect means that we celebrate as a group. Now, imagine, you know, we've seen this happen many times where, like even in Starbucks, a major corporation had to go through that same pattern when they were their stock was in the tank and Schultz came back and had to figure this out. And so this is he went through that same pattern. They rest for a moment, but they had well, how well we do. Well, did they really have to give everybody benefits? Did they really have to give them a you know that that Wall Street thought they were crazy? But so this is what love would do. And then they responded with love despite everybody else, despite the fear, and then they reconnect to say, wow, isn't that great that we did that? Isn't that amazing that we responded? We're so much stronger, and now they become a beloved company. And we've seen that over and over. And in fact, I'll stay on that point though, Sate Natalia, the CEO of Microsoft. So they were in a place of ambiguity before, and then now they're in a place of anxiety after all the AI and the layoffs and everything, right? And they said, Well, we actually in the same town hall. He said, we have to go from a place of fear to love because that's what's going to get them through that. So love for the customers. And when you love your customers, they're gonna feel it.

SPEAKER_00 10:18

Yeah, absolutely. Well, and and you brought you brought up the evil AI word that nobody ever wants to talk about, but everybody only talks about. And I I was watching the Superman movie on some airplane somewhere, and Superman's dog was up in wherever he was fighting his battle. And and this robot was gonna kill the dog. And it my response was like, oh my god, not the dog. Like, go ahead, kill Superman, kill those thousands of people on the street. But don't you can't kill Superman's dog. Not the dog. And and you think, and then I started thinking to myself, oh my gosh, in the age of AI and robots, there isn't compassion in decision making, which started me thinking about, you know, you're running to catch the plane and you're the door shut, but you know, you're dripping with sweat and you just made it, you've got to get home. And and that, you know, the kind person that has been in your situation opens the door for you, even though they're not supposed to, and there's compassion and there's love there. But here we are entering this world where decisions are made based on data and facts and algorithms alone without that sense of nurturing or care. So, what do you think is gonna happen to love and business? I mean, do you think that we're seeing the pendulum swing the other way where people, executives are now looking to fill their organization with leaders who understand love in a business sense to balance what's happening with efficiency and you know everything around AI?

SPEAKER_01 11:49

Yeah, it the pendulum is definitely changing, but I think what we're seeing is that those things that are most personal and and that are we're called human are even more important today, right? When we're thinking about if these decisions are being culminated and brought into a funnel where there are fewer decisions or it's being met at a very high level, it's even more important to have our leadership plugged in at the top to have good moral judgment, um, exercising proper standards, which has to come from love, right? Not just meeting the standards because that becomes an analytic, but then really also leading with empathy and care and leading those companies. Now, there are metrics around this, right? We know that there are companies that lead with love. Well, we call them out, uh, you know, whether it's Barry Waymiller or Patagonia or Campbell Sue, those companies outperform their peers by 20% because they have that love-led leadership at the top. And there's mountains, mountains of data. Jeannie, it's in my book, you've seen it as well, but there's there's tons of data out there. And it talks about that. Take a company like uh Panera, right? There's another one right there. They outperform their peers dramatically, like I think it's 1200%, but it's all about love and connection and with their customers and how they put their customers first. But it's more than that. When we look at AI and they start making these decisions, the pendulum is coming back and saying, and it was just an article in the Wall Street Journal this week, saying that they they overestimated the impact of that, that in fact they didn't have to lay off that many people. A lot of the stock, a lot of that was more for stock purpose and showing. But when we look at the purpose of AI, it's going to make us more effective, but it also makes us more isolated. It makes us more focused on it. And we need to be stronger in our approach on leading with empathy and care and building that trust. Because, you know, if we don't use that, we have to wonder, well, who actually owns the company? Who's making the decisions? Is it AI or is it us? And then where do we want to go with that company? What makes our company unique and individualized? And that's got to come from this period of trust uh with your customers. And it's got to be that passion, that love that comes through it.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

Yeah, that's so interesting the way that you frame it all. But, you know, I've got to put my CEO or my investor hat on and ask the question of you're starting a business, right? You're you're starting a business, you have this great idea, you're, or you're looking for funding, you've got a small business. How do you raise money for love? How do you get an investor to invest in the what it takes to create a culture filled with love? Because I mean, we all try, or at least I like to think, that everybody tries really hard to create a great culture, but especially with PE-led companies, it all comes down to the bottom line. So, so how does that play a role?

SPEAKER_01 14:29

And so we're really not selling love, we're selling outcomes, right? We're selling the outcomes. We're we're we're selling customer service. If you have a customer facing a product that's customer service facing, such as Apple, right? There people love the brand. That's what they're, but their customer service has to be spot on, right? And it takes, as we know, it takes if you're a financial person, it takes seven times more to get a new customer than to keep your current customer, right? So you think about do the math on that. So all of a sudden it becomes so important that customer experience, that customer service has to be spot on with love, that compassion, connection. How many times you had a great call, you're like, this was the best situation I ever had. I had one with Southwest the other day. I come look, this was the best call. And they we'll laugh. But the idea is we've also been on calls when the person wasn't helpful, they were rude or obnoxious, and you're like, I'll never use this company again, right? That's when we're looking at numbers and metrics, that's it. Now, if you're a PE firm, you're looking at these companies, that's a perfect example. First of all, when you are a founder of a company and a CEO I've been there, that's a very lonely place. It's it's very lonely. There's a lot of pressure at the top, and that's when you really do need somebody. But we've coaching and we we I spend a lot of time with those folks as well if do my coaching. But the idea is when we lead with love and have that connection, you can better equipped with your employees, you're more charismatic and connected. So it's not one or the other, it's both.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

Yeah, that's true. And I love the way that you framed that. So if you're looking for advice on how to get investment in your business, I think what you said is so spot on that everything has to be translated into outcomes and that this is a core piece of a business plan that you can't afford to miss, which which many people probably do. And we all need pocket versions of you, maybe the AI version of you that goes into the CFO conversation. Because I think we've all been there where it's hard to do that. It sounds good on paper, but it's hard to do it when you're you know on a phone call with the CFO. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I love the point that you made about um the Wall Street Journal article because I saw that article and similar article saying, you know, everybody said that there were going to be no more jobs and now everyone's pulling back on it. There's actually jobs. And I think we've both heard stories from you know, people, peers, and other people in the space that companies have gone through massive downsizing for efficiency to realize that they caught too far and now they're struggling to get the right people back again. So um, you know, between that, global warming, climate change, the state of the political world, the geopolitical world, and everything else that's going on, I think the world's just a hot mess right now. But hopefully it'll it'll sort itself out for the up and coming generations.

SPEAKER_01 17:08

Ginny, are you there?

SPEAKER_00 17:09

That was really weird. Okay. I dared to talk about the state of the world, and the world came and knocked me down.

SPEAKER_01 17:16

That was a little creepy.

SPEAKER_00 17:18

It was super creepy, right? That's really weird.

SPEAKER_01 17:21

Um that was a little creepy though.

SPEAKER_00 17:27

But uh where we left off, let's see. So we were talking about hopefully the world's in a better place right now. And I think, you know, we can all look forward to the elements of your book and everything that you do from a career perspective to help move businesses forward. So before the internet gods take away our conversation again, tell everybody that's listening what you actually do for a living outside of being an author and and how you're contributing to making the world a better place. Because I think it's a great story.

SPEAKER_01 17:58

Yeah, yeah. So I'm a when you write a book, what do you do? Well, you go out and you you start speaking around the world on this, and we build different ecosystems and doing podcasts. I have a podcast of Two River Exchange, and then we also have coaching and do executive coaching, and which is extremely rewarding because we're working with folks that are trying to lead with love and trying to find that way, and we're solving problems with love, which is amazing. And these are CEOs, these are folks who are working on major things in and big US companies and global companies, or even startup people, right? And so there's a lot of scenarios where when we lead with love, good things happen. It accelerates things, it accelerates our who we are, we become our authentic selves. When we show up with our authentic selves, everything gets better. So it's the, you know, the coaching, the book. I'm doing off sites now, which is great. So if you want to have an executive office, we come out and, you know, meet with your team and get everybody aligned around this concept of what your outcomes are, but our our philosophies nonetheless are focused around love. But the outcomes are there, as we said. It's really not about selling love, it's about the outcomes, which is better relationships, greater connection, more alignment and trust.

SPEAKER_00 19:05

That is that is a perfect segue into what we were talking about earlier, which is with everything that's happening with the influx of AI. Um, you know, what I'm seeing from a marketing perspective are in the executive rooms, the conversations are different and the reliance on different executives between parties is shifting. You know, in the past, marketing could go off and do marketing, the product could go off and do product, and everyone stayed in their same lanes. But now everything is contingent upon technical capabilities, product design, and that all relates to the end final customer experience. So, how are you seeing an increase from an executive coaching perspective of teams that are looking to work more effectively or functionally together?

SPEAKER_01 19:54

Yeah, I think that's part of they're trying to break down those silos. We still see that, but it's it's even more pervasive today because people are so isolated. The coming together is important. Certainly when you think about using AI and marketing and bringing sales together. Well, here's one of the things, Jean, is a lot of those roles are being merged together. You know, maybe you're a market and you didn't like the salespeople. Guess what? Now you're doing sales, or vice versa, right? And we're saying, wow, I, you know, these salespeople didn't like operations people, but you're doing part of their job too, because a lot of the roles are being shuffled. And so what's happened is people have to really rethink their careers, but that also changes our identity, right? How many times say, well, I'm a salesperson, I'm a marketing person, I'm in operations, but now you're doing more things that are blending together. So AI is changing that. We're seeing a lot of uh morphing of different roles and goals. But I think this aspect of where we lead with trust and building that becomes more important because now we really have to say, be a little vulnerable. So, you know what? I don't have all the answers. I don't know all my marketing and things that that shift in your world and we have to be more open, more collaborative. So these things are more important today than just going out and just showing up and doing our job. It's really showing up with this being a little, again, vulnerable just to say, I don't have all the answers and let's work together.

SPEAKER_00 21:06

Yeah, yeah. And and you know, I call that as part of my error method. That's in my authenticity piece of it, because if you have all the answers, you're probably making them up or lying. So, you know, nobody has all the answers. And in in this world where things keep changing faster than many of us can keep up with it, you know, it's it's okay to not have the answers. We're all kind of forging new ground, which is exciting and cool at the same time as being a little scary. So this is fantastic. Well, Owen, where can people get in touch with you?

SPEAKER_01 21:34

Well, you can find me on LinkedIn or just shoot me an email at Owen at Owen-Burns.com.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

Awesome. And they can find your book on Amazon and everywhere else. Right.

SPEAKER_01 21:45

That's great. It's on Amazon.

SPEAKER_00 21:46

All right, awesome. Well, Owen, thank you so much for coming on the show. I feel like we could talk for hours, but the internet gods might not allow that. So I think, you know, we'll just reconnect in real life in a few weeks. And I'm looking forward to seeing you.

SPEAKER_01 21:59

I look forward to it. Thanks, Jeannie.

SPEAKER_00 22:01

All right, thanks so much.