Ep:39: Red Shoes Living: 5-Step Framework to Stand Out in Business and in Life

Miriam Allred (00:08):

Welcome to Vision | The Care Leaders’ Podcast, I’m Miriam Allred with Activated Insights. My guest today is Lonnie Mayne, the Founder and Author of Red Shoes Living. He’s also the host of his own podcast, the Red Shoes Living Podcast. He’s a great friend of Activated Insights. It is a treat to have you on today, Lonnie.

Lonnie Mayne (00:26):

I’m doing great. And it’s completely my honor to be with you.

Miriam Allred (00:29):

We’re really excited to have this conversation today. I just, you know, kind of mentioned a few things, but briefly introduce yourself and introduce your organization, Red Shoes Living. What is it exactly?

Lonnie Mayne (00:37):

Yeah. So I’m Lonnie Mayne. And as you said, the Founder of Red Shoes Living and what the organization is that actually was founded 30 years ago. It didn’t call it Red Shoes Living until I was president of a technology company and kind of a quick story behind the red shoes aspect of that. I came from corporate America, went into technology. So I went from wearing suit and tie. Most of the time to technology, where I wore a black hoodie, a pair of jeans and a pair of red tennis shoes. My kids gave me. And so this concept is I was addressing our small team at the technology company. I said, look, we want to stand out in everything we do from how we serve our clients and how we serve our vendor partners, to how we serve each other. And the head of marketing at the time looked down as I was kind of giving this speech. And he said, I totally get what you’re saying. You want to stand out just like those red shoes stand out. And it stuck. Everybody liked the idea of it. So it became a reminder of how we wanted to show up as human beings and how we wanted to do our work every single day. So that’s where the little funny little red shoes thing came from.

Miriam Allred (01:41):

Yeah. I love that. I love that before this conversation, we were talking about who you’ve worked with, you know, organizations, individuals just high level, you know, tell me about this framework and who you’ve helped implement it with.

Lonnie Mayne (01:54):

So the, I, you know, the idea of it way back 30 years ago was it was involved in mergers and acquisitions and bringing companies together, different companies together. And whenever you do that, you have different cultures, almost different families. And so sometimes it’s very difficult to kind of blend all of that. And we made lots of changes back in those days as well, where we were asking people to take on new roles and asking people to move, even in some cases asking people to, to part the company. So when you do that, it creates tremendous fear and what I call compression in a company. And then we would stand in front of all these people and say, now we want you to trust us, even though we’ve kind of created all this change and we’re going to, we’re going to grow our businesses and we’re going to do all these great things.

Lonnie Mayne (02:36):

And because we created fear and compression that the human spirit kind of went away. And so we created red shoes living in the framework of that to re-ignite people, to, to rehumanize business and ignite the human potential. And it was difficult work. We had to do it one person at a time as we did that work, though, we found that people would start to lift their heads up and they would start to perform and they would start to take chances and put themselves out there, which is exactly what we needed. And so, as we were doing that work, we realized that we could keep a very simple framework, a very simple model and put it at the center and that if people got a little bit lost or that fear crept back in again, they could go right back to that framework of really five things to just remind them of, you know, how to show up every single day.

Lonnie Mayne (03:25):

And so the philosophy, the mindset and the framework, the philosophy is just simple. It’s standing out for the positive in the work that you do and the way you live your life. And then the mindset was a question and the question kind of tying back to red shoes, which became the symbol of all of this was, is what I am about to do red shoes, meaning will it stand out for the positive in the email that I’m going to send? And the way I communicate with somebody, when I talk with somebody in the services I deliver, et cetera, and then we created a framework, we wanted something that people could go directly back to and say, okay, let me start, you know, with these five things and that’s how it was developed. So that the only other thing I would say to that is we, we take this now this framework and we apply it to leadership, we apply it to the culture of whatever organization or the agency. We apply it to the service we provide to the patient, or whoever is standing in front of us. And then we we also apply it to our personal lives and that’s what made it so popular as people started to use it as they went home.

Miriam Allred (04:28):

Oh, I’m so excited to let you kind of unleash what this framework is because our industry, like I’ve mentioned may not be super familiar with this, but we are a human to human industry in home care. We are providing that client care that one-on-one care in the home. And what you’re about to talk about is relevant to not only the agency owners or the providers listening down to the individuals and the caregivers that are providing that one-to-one care to the seniors. So I’m just going to kind of let you unleash, you know, what is this philosophy and what is this framework, walk us through those five steps. And then we’ll kind of get into how our listeners can implement it.

Lonnie Mayne (05:06):

Perfect, perfect. Then I’ll, I’ll walk through that. And before I do, I know part of your question too, is, you know, what are some of the types of businesses that we’ve been able to work with? And it’s been very diverse, which is interesting because we are talking about something that’s very human. I believe, you know, within home care and healthcare, this is a red shoes. Living probably fits there better than anywhere, but we’ve worked with Microsoft and Nike and the Chicago mercantile. And we’ve worked with the house of Lords in London. And, you know, and we’ve worked with pet resorts, you know, and food services and financial companies. So it’s very, very diverse, but within, you know, home care and health care, when you really think about that, that human to human connection is where this fits the best. So the framework is five things.

Lonnie Mayne (05:49):

And these five things for me are kind of linear, but at times one or two of them might show up. But the first one awareness that’s one of the behaviors, one of the principles or one of the pillars of Mindshare, or excuse me, of of our red shoes living. And when you think about awareness, it’s really the gateway to everything that we do. So it’s saying that we’re going to increase our awareness of who’s standing in front of us or how we’re serving a client or how we’re serving again, anybody that’s standing in front of us. So when you increase your awareness you, you’re looking to create an opportunity to create a red shoes experience for somebody. So the rule behind awareness is you either have to watch or witness somebody else creating a red shoes experience, which is an experience that standing out, or you have to be creating that red shoes experience for the person standing in front of you.

Lonnie Mayne (06:43):

So it’s a heightened level of awareness. It says, let’s quiet, the noise down, that’s all around us and focus on the human being. That’s standing right in front of us and how we can serve them, how we can take care of them, how we can perform for them. The second one is gratitude. We’ve done a lot of research on gratitude, you know, especially if you think about COVID and you know, we’re just North of a year of when we entered into this crazy world and probably what we were grateful for before COVID is a little different than what we’re grateful for today. So if you take awareness and you take gratitude and you heighten the level of what you’re grateful for, what we found is that if you’re a grateful human being and you focus on gratitude from the job that you have to, you know, the clients that you serve to, even the paycheck that you make, if you flex that muscle all the time, your world opens up to you.

Lonnie Mayne (07:33):

And so if you take the awareness, take the gratitude and you focus on those things, and you’re grateful for everything around you. Everything starts to change opportunities. Start to step your way. You start to see, you know, areas where you can create those red shoes experiences. And then the opposite of being grateful as ungrateful your world is a little more small and cynical, and you can’t see the opportunities to serve or to create red shoes experiences. So those are the first two and the framework is awareness and gratitude. And then the third one is everybody has a story. So, you know, in your world here, the stories are incredible of the clients and everybody that you’re serving and taken care of. And those stories change every single day. So if we’re aware of them, and we’re grateful that we have the opportunity to do our jobs and serve, and we understand and connect with everybody’s stories, then things start to change.

Lonnie Mayne (08:25):

And so that’s the third one is everybody has a story, even before we went on the air. You and I were chatting about that. You know, we were grateful that we were, we were getting ready to do the podcast. We were aware of each other. And we started to ask questions to understand our stories. So these, you know, these components become critically, critically important to how we navigate and move in business. And then the fourth one is kindness and respect. And I always like to say, I’m fiercely competitive. I’ve been competitive my whole life and have to grow the businesses that I’ve been involved in, the businesses that I work with, but I want to be kind and respectful, you know, in a world where we’ve seen so much negative noise, kindness and respect really stands out, which is the idea behind it. We’ll see kindness once in a while, shift to the left or shift to the right a little bit, but respect can never leave.

Lonnie Mayne (09:14):

It has to be at the center of everything that we do. And then finally, the fifth one is putting yourself out there. You actually have to do something you have to serve. You have to create a red shoes experience for somebody. So that’s the framework. We take those five things. And again, we apply them as a leader and how we show up. We apply them in the culture that we’re contributing to for the business that we work for. We apply them into, you know, the, the experience, the patient experience, the client experience or whoever it is that we’re serving. And then we take them and we put them into our personal lives. And so that simple framework, believe it or not, that started 30 years ago. Now it gets supplied with sales teams, get supplied with, you know, the finance department gets applied in legal and gets applied everywhere in the business. And it’s a reminder that, look, if we do these five things consistently, and it’s our own version of red shoes, if you will, because we all have our different versions, then we will stand out as individuals we’ll stand out as a company, we will perform. And we will continue to do things that we know are right to do in the world.

Miriam Allred (10:17):

Yeah. I love what you said when you were talking about awareness. There’s so much noise. Each of these principles is so simple, but the noise around us distraction distracts us from even these five simple principles. There’s so much noise in the media, in our lives. We’re just busy. We’re hustling, we’re bustling. We’re living moment to moment because we’re in such a time-based society that we forget, you know, these simplest of principles. I love everyone has a story. I love that concept, especially here in our industry. We talk a lot about caregivers. We talk a lot about the senior populations that we’re serving, but I think we, as an industry, you would need to even do a better job of letting the caregivers, tell their story, letting the clients, the seniors tell their story so that we can draw in more caregivers. I was just on a webinar and envelope, a number of minutes ago, by 2029, we need to attract over 7 million new caregivers to this industry to be able to sustain the senior population that needs in-home care. If we’re going to attract 7 million new caregivers, we’ve got to be applying these principles. We’ve got to be telling the story of these caregivers and of the seniors to bring people into this industry. I want to kind of put you on the spot and ask, is there a story or an experience you can share, hearing someone else, you know, share their story and the impact that had on the organization or the individual surrounding that story?

Lonnie Mayne (11:51):

Yeah. Thank you for the question. I, you know, their stories are what keep red shoes living alive. Not only for our kids, the company, but also within each specific business. And so every day, well, it’s kind of soft science, about 70% of the time, the stories that we get in from our, our clients, our businesses personal in nature. And so I think you start to connect with the personal side of this and they, they take it home to them and there’s all kinds of examples there. And then they bring it back in to work. But you know, if you think about home care you know, I had a health issue a couple of years ago where I actually had somebody come in and I was taking care of me in the home. And one of the first things they did was they really wanted to understand my story and what was important to me and how I was feeling.

Lonnie Mayne (12:36):

And I felt an immediate connection to this individual. And so as we interacted with each other for about a period of two or three weeks it was, it was profound in the fact that they cared so much about me and my health, and it went kind of beyond the actual care. It was also, you know, where it was appropriately, a little more personal in nature as well in terms of what else they could do or support for me. And I’ve never forgot that. And I think that story like that, that happened to me. And I’m still talking about it, you know, years later, or that’s, that’s the deal. That’s what we’re talking about. And I remember sitting down with this person and she said, my work is so meaningful. It’s meaningful work. It’s exhausting. And I work hard and it’s not always easy, but it’s meaningful.

Lonnie Mayne (13:22):

And I remember she pointed to her heart. And so that’s part of what we’re talking about. There’s an exact it’s one of our top clients that we’ve worked for for a couple of years, that called me one day and said, I want to let you know all the work that you had done with the team over the last couple of years with red shoes, living lives in breeze, in this organization, like I’ve never seen. And he was a new CEO if you will coming into the company. But he said, I am not red shoes. I don’t always stand out for the positive. I don’t always have the awareness and sometimes my gratitude drifts and, and I don’t connect with the, the team as well as I should. In terms of everybody has story, would you help me as I worked with him, this individual, I thought, Ooh, this is going to be a tough one.

Lonnie Mayne (14:07):

Hard charging executive has been successful for many, many years, but he recognized that what his team needed was more red shoes leadership from him. So we worked with the other over a period of a year in the transformation with him and his own version. If you will, of red shoes, living has been profound. You know, he slowed things down. He turned the noise down. He was calling people into his office and had it little chats about how they were or experiencing COVID. And sometimes those conversations had nothing to do with work. And he realized that as he opened up and created space for people to be the best version of themselves, still hold them accountable, that they would rise to a level of performance. Like you’d never seen seen before. So you hear stories like that and see things like that. And, you know, that’s what really gets us excited here at the company, because you want both, you want to, you know, you’re spending half of your life at your job.

Lonnie Mayne (15:00):

If not more, there’s 24 hours in a day, you take the sleep time and push it aside. Hopefully we’re all getting eight hours. We’re probably not. But if you push that aside, you’ve got 16 hours that you’re alive and awake. And, you know, you’ve got maybe eight of those that are personal and eight that are professional. I realize it doesn’t work perfectly, but if you’re unhappy and if you’re not, you know, applying these things, that’s half your career that you could be doing some meaningful work and creating these amazing experiences. And so if you’re not, you’re actually not doing that half your life. So we talk about things like this for people, and it changes everything for them as they navigate in their professional environment.

Miriam Allred (15:42):

Yeah. I love both of those examples, your personal experience with, you know, a caretaker there in the home, but also to this executive who felt like he didn’t portray, you know, the lifestyle of a red shoes living person. So I love that concept of recognition. I think that’s a clickable to our listeners here today in that you’ve got to recognize where you’re falling short and then figure out how to make up that difference so that you can personify the employees that you want, you know, to see who you are. So let’s talk a little bit about that implementation these, these principles of this framework are so simple, but what can people do today to take action and start implementing them at a personal level or at an organizational level?

Lonnie Mayne (16:28):

Yeah. So let me give you a little kind of a little anecdote or a way of thinking about this. And this was actually a story that happened years ago in a retail organization that we were working with, but we, we talked about red shoes living to the leadership team and spent about an hour with them and actually took them through kind of your question in a little more depth. And one of the executives after that meeting left to go home at the end of the day, he was driving his car and as he was driving down the road, he saw somebody on the side of the road. It happened to be a woman that was changing a tire. And so immediately his awareness was at a heightened level because we had just talked about red shoes living. And so was awareness kicked in and gratitude then showed up.

Lonnie Mayne (17:10):

And he literally said to us, he said, I was grateful that it wasn’t me. And then he started thinking about the story of this individual, of this woman. And he created his own story in his head and said, she’s probably on her way home from work. Maybe she’s trying to get home to take her children to soccer, to dance or whatever the case may be. He said, I want to be kind and respectful at this very moment. I want to put myself out there and stop and help her change this tire. So when you apply the five principles, the five pillars in a second, that’s how they show up. And that’s exactly what he did. And he said the interaction with her, her gratitude, his awareness of her gratitude, as they talked, as he was helping her the tire, you know, and he heard a little more about her story and she put herself out there as well and asked for his information and just, I would love to send you a thank you, you know, at some point.

Lonnie Mayne (17:59):

So there’s this reciprocity that happens in those moments. And so that’s how this actually gets applied. It’s very simple and it’s that, you know, place to come home to. So we get all kinds of stories like that. And then if you think about, you know, even you and I right now are using all five of these things, you know, our awareness is we’re communicating and you’re asking the questions and listening to each other. Again, I’m grateful to be here. We connected with our stories. We’re being hopefully kind and respectful towards each other. And we’re putting ourselves out there by you asking the question and me responding and hopefully being the best version of myself for your entire audience. So if you think of it that way, and if you think about writing an email, you know, being aware of the audience that you’re sending the email to being grateful, that whatever the email is all about, that you’re there understanding the story of your response to the individual and wanting to be kind and respectful in the way you write the email and maybe putting yourself out there in that email in a way that says, look, I want to do more or be more for you or whatever the case may be.

Lonnie Mayne (19:04):

So that’s, that’s how this gets applied. We literally put it in every conversation. And every email, every time we bill somebody, we think about red shoes living, how could we stand out for the positive and how we build somebody? Is that even possible? So when you get the mindset, you get the philosophy and then you start to apply this framework. That’s when things really start to get exciting and start to change.

Miriam Allred (19:27):

Yeah. I love everything that you’re saying. It’s so relevant. And I’m just thinking of these home care agencies. The executives set the tone for their entire care team, who then is out there caring for the individuals and it takes practice. You know, that recognition, that awareness, it’s going to take time and it’s going to take practice. But, you know, you want to be the person that your entire staff looks up to and be an individual that gets noticed, you know, at the grocery store or, you know, at a doctor’s appointment, just being that kind of person that gets noticed for the kindness. And then the ripple effect. You do something like you were saying, you know, you do one thing and then it starts kind of taking off because people around you see, you know, those actions that are so simple. And I just love how it can be applied personally, and then replicates inside of your organization.

Lonnie Mayne (20:19):

Yeah. And if you think you just brought up an excellent point, I think the practice side of it, we can practice it anywhere, you know, but even for me, you know, this, this afternoon or this evening, I’ll go to the grocery store and, you know, people want to be seen for the contributions they’re making and people work really, really hard. So when you see somebody for the great and beautiful humans, that they are at the core, regardless of who they are, if they’re a cashier or they’re serving you at a restaurant or whatever the case may be, that’s you creating space for somebody to be seen. And that’s where I practice, you know, just saying hello to somebody, but acknowledging their humanness is what we’re really talking about here. So for me, it’s in my personal life, I put it back into my professional life.

Lonnie Mayne (21:02):

I’m held accountable to be red shoes by my team. This is the other thing that’s, that’s funny and hard once you’re kind of on this path, there’s this accountability to it. So if I’m not red shoes, if I would have been late for this podcast, that’s not red shoes that doesn’t stand out for the positive. So Nancy Williams, our chief of staff before every meeting I have, she says, don’t be late, show up, be prepared, be the best version of yourself. We’ve been working together now for four years. And she holds me accountable to every single meeting because she feels like that’s a representation of her as well. So that accountability part of this is huge. But you really connect with people in a way that’s meaningful. And I keep using that word. And I think that’s, you know, a big part of what we’re talking about.

Miriam Allred (21:46):

And I’m thinking back to putting yourself out there. You know, I’m just thinking people we’re so tapped into our phones at their grocery store, wherever we go, people are dialed in to whatever it may be, a game messaging, Facebook, whatever it is, but it’ll take putting yourself out there to put the phone down, say, hello, strike up a conversation, chain, help someone change their tire. Like we will have to be putting ourself out there all of the time to stop some of the habits that are so ingrained in us, primarily through technology. And so it’ll just take practice and familiarity to start implementing these things, but it will change this world if we can all start implementing these things slowly and surely.

Lonnie Mayne (22:30):

Well, now it’s a great point you make now is the best time, maybe the best time that I’ve ever seen in my lifetime to apply red shoes, living into actually share, you know, the, the mindset and the philosophy and the framework of it because we’re reemerging into a new world. And for some, it’s a little scary for others that are excited, but it’s different. It’s completely different. I had two CEOs fly in to park city, Utah to have meetings and independently of each other, but I took them to dinner, socially distancing. And one of the CEOs said to the two of us, I’m going to receive a phone call tonight. And I want to apologize before I do, because I have to take the call, but I wanted to let you know upfront, cause I didn’t want to be rude or disrespectful that moment right there.

Lonnie Mayne (23:17):

That little thing was red shoes living. And we actually talked about it. And because I’ve worked with both of these individuals for quite a while, and as we chatted about it, I asked the individual that was receiving that response, how he felt. And he said, I felt great because I knew when it happened, it was, it wasn’t being disrespectful. And the other individual said, well, I didn’t use to do that. You know, I was a, a big time CEO and still am. And if I took a call, I took a call. I just didn’t really ever care. But I have learned how disrespectful is. So the phone is a funny one because, you know, I think even for me, when I go to a restaurant, I don’t put the phone on the table anymore. You know, sometimes I turn it on silent because the person sitting in front of you is the most important person in front of you. Unless there’s a caveat, you know, like this individual said, I gotta take this phone call. I hope you forgive me. So when you start to think about red shoes living, and you start to apply it in every aspect of your life opportunities to create red shoes, experiences, positive experiences for people are everywhere. And you know, when, when we’re doing that, that reciprocity comes back to us, life gets a little bit better, you know, our tough days turn into a little better days and, and it’s a muscle. You have to practice it.

Miriam Allred (24:30):

I love it. Lonnie, we need more red shoes living in this industry. I think we’re practicing it without knowing it. And we’re practicing bits and pieces of it. But if we could implement all of this inside of our industry, I just know we would press forward leaps and bounds. So I just want to give you a minute to talk a little bit about the book and where people can get access to that. And also, you know, your website, you’ve got your own blog podcasts, where are some good resources or places that people can go to learn a little bit more.

Lonnie Mayne (24:57):

Yeah. Greg, thanks for letting me talk about that. Yeah. So we wrote the book and the book is an extension really of what we talk about. So it’ll give stories and anecdotes and, you know, it’s, it’s application of how you can apply this. And so the book is available on Amazon and all the major outlets. You can also buy it, you know, off of our, our website as well, which is lonniemayne.com or redshoesliving.com. They both point back to the same place. We’re getting lots of requests to put more content out on social media. So on Instagram you can follow us @LonnieMayne. Literally just got off a meeting where, you know, we are now sharing other leaders, other people’s versions of Red Shoes Living. It’s no longer mine. The ideas that come into the company now are incredible on red shoes. So we want to share that with our community and with yours. And so yeah, on all the social channels, you can follow us out there too. We want to, we want to share and be inclusive with the idea of Red Shoes Living.

Miriam Allred (25:54):

Yeah, fantastic. Well, Lonnie, the time has gone by very quickly, but I appreciate you sharing this philosophy in this framework with me and with this industry. And I hope that, you know, over time we can continue to adopt it and hear more from you so that we can really all be influenced by this, this wonderful ideology.

Lonnie Mayne (26:11):

Thank you very much. It was a pleasure to be with you today.

Miriam Allred (26:15):

Thanks for listening to this episode of Vision. If you’d like to learn more about our guest today, Lonnie Mayne or his organization: Red Shoes Living, hop over to our website, homecarepulse.com/podcast, to learn more and view the episode related resources. Thanks again. And we’ll see you next time!