You Can’t Taste Love©

Larry Winget

Pitbull of Personal Development

[email protected]

www.larrywinget.com

I watch a lot of Food Network. I love food. I love to eat. I love to cook. I also love watching other people cook. One of the things that always makes me laugh is when someone is talking about their recipe and they say something silly like, “And the secret ingredient in the recipe is love.” They talk about love like it’s an ingredient. It’s not. They might love cooking but you can’t taste the love in the food. You can taste the salt or the pepper or the myriad of other ingredients, but you can’t taste the love. Love is an emotion, not a tangible part of the end result.

People love to claim that you have to love what you do in order to be successful. Wrong. You don’t have to love it, you have to be good at it to be successful. If more people loved what they do for a living enough to become really good at it then they would experience more success. Instead, they love it just enough to get by at it and wonder why they aren’t successful. Love is a feeling. Business success isn’t measured in feelings; it’s measured in money.

These are examples of just how ridiculous much of our language has become when it comes to talking about business. We talk about emotions like love and passion as if they were ingredients in our product or service. Nonsense. There is no love in your food any more than there is love in your lawnmower. If you sell lawnmowers and I’m buying a lawnmower, I am paying for quality, value and service. I’m not paying for any love. Love won’t cut my grass. And in your case, love won’t fill my stomach or keep me coming back to eat your food.

Yet, we have been led to believe that when people say they are passionate about what they do or that they love their work, their work will automatically be of higher quality. We have all been burned by people who were passionately incompetent and by people who love what they do but the fact is, they suck at it.

You can love to smoke meat and love barbeque. I sincerely hope you do. I love it too. But it’s not my business so I don’t have to be great at it. I just have to make my family and friends happy when they eat it. Barbeque is not my business. It is your business. You better be good at it if you want people to pay for it. You better have great quality, lots of value and provide great service. If you don’t, next time your customers will go on down the road to the next place. The guy at the next place might not love it as much as you do, but if he’s better at it than you are he will get the business and end up more successful.

The lesson for each of us regardless of the product or service is this: Focus on quality, value and service. That’s what your customers pay for. Those things are not emotions, they are tangibles that can be measured and quantified. I will always happily exchange my money for a tangible benefit but will never turn it over for a meaningless emotion.

Larry Winget is a six-time New York Times/Wall Street Journal bestselling author. His newest book is What’s Wrong With Damn Near Everything: How The Collapse Of Core Values Is Destroying Us And How To Fix It. He is a member of the Speaker Hall Of Fame. Has starred in his own television series and appeared in national television commercials. Larry is a regular contributor on many television news shows on the topics of money, personal success, business and parenting. Find out more at www.larrywinget.com and follow him on facebook at Larry Winget Fan Page and on twitter @larrywinget.