Loyalty In Today's World

What Does Loyalty Look Like?

I am going to say some things here that some people are not going to like. I am sure they will send me comments about how their circumstances are different. This is a huge subject and I am not sure I can do it justice in a few paragraphs, but it is a topic that has been of great interest to me for a long time.

Dogs are Loyal2U
even when you are undeserving
of loyalty...

To me it seems to be a funny world when people don’t know what loyalty looks like. I think it used to be more common. When a person got married 100 years ago, they usually stayed married to the same person for the rest of their lives. It took a death or a disaster of some kind to make people deviate from their marital course. I have read stories from the Victorian era about men who cheated on their wives and they used the rational that they were protecting their wives from the burden of additional child bearing or the suffering of sex. I am not saying they were right, but even when they cheated they had more loyalty than we see nowadays.

When I was a Pastor I did a lot of reading about a movement in Columbia and Argentina where hundreds of thousands of people were joining a church group. The common motivating factor was loyalty to a leader. Several evangelists here in Canada tried to adopt the model to bring on growth and overall it failed miserably. What was missing? Loyalty. The average Canadian would say they are loyal but in reality they don’t even understand the concept. Somewhere along the road we learned from McDonalds that things can be thrown away. We stopped valuing stuff and we also stopped valuing people. Relationships could be replaced. Leadership became a dirty word and people were afraid of domination. We forgot how to be loyal in a positive way.

Loyalty is faithfulness or a devotion to a person, country, group, or cause. Sounds simple enough but in practice, not so easy. These days we question everything. Questioning is not such a bad thing, it helps us to understand, but it has come to the point where many are rebellious against every form of authority. Sure we all want to be free, but even in freedom somebody with authority is keeping the peace. Without any loyalty to a cause, or a system, or a leader, there is anarchy. There is nothing to hold the fabric of society together any more.

If we can’t tell how loyalty looks in relationships or in a cause then we certainly don’t know it in business either. Once I had a businessman invite me to talk about the kinds of social media marketing that my company Loyal2U does. We had a good conversation for over an hour and he invited me back later in the week saying that he would like to add our services to his offering and white label it. He suggested a partnership of sorts where we would each profit from the enterprise. On the next visit to his office however, I overheard him telling a client that his company would use our marketing technique and he offered it to them for a third of our price. There was a flyer on his desk with the language taken right from our website. My impression of this man was that he is a snake oil salesman. The main flaw being: He lacks loyalty.

Another gentlemen asked me for coffee one day and then wanted to know how business was going. He asked a few questions and then told me about the real reason for his inquiry. He wanted me to forfeit all of my hard work and my relationships to join him with a competitor. I have watched that individual jump from job to job, and business opportunity to business opportunity many times over the last few years. What is the real problem? He lacks loyalty.

If you have ever taken part in training with a good network marketing company they usually try to train people on loyalty. They tell their members not to poach the recruits of other members. They teach the members to honor each other and to say good things about one another, and to lift up the leadership. It is a funny thing that this needs to be taught, but it does. I was at a meeting with a reputable company only months ago when a friend that I was with noticed a mutual acquaintance of ours came in with another person we did not know. She leaned over to me and said, “Kerry, you should go get that gal on your team before they sign up with that guy.” I was shocked. I told her that would be really improper, but the point is it smarts of a lack of loyalty. If I had done that, I would be teaching everyone who seen it that poaching is fine. It is not fine. It is without integrity. It smarts of a lack of loyalty.

What Does A Lack Of Loyalty Look Like?

• You don’t like the discomfort of living with others so you can all work together to gain a better lifestyle or buy new homes for each family member. This is something we see immigrants doing, but we would never do. 
• Your young adult child is selling vacuum cleaners and you buy a vacuum cleaner from a stranger at the door instead of supporting your own child.
• Your grown child has financial struggles and needs a hand but you let them land on the street even though you are in a position to help.
• Your brother opens a gas station and you drive across town to avoid buying there.
• Your sister-in-law joins a multi-level business and you take great joy in stealing her dream by telling her how she is going to fail. No matter what she sells, you would buy it anywhere but from her.
• Talking about someone that you are supposed to love in a negative way when they are not present, or even when they are present. That is not only a lack of devotion but spiteful as well.
• No desire to look after the needs of one’s child, mother, brother, sister or relative. No pre-planning for the future.
• You have no respect for your manager at work and go over their head to tell on them. You are an adult tattle tail…

Have you ever watched the Godfather? I am not saying we should cut the heads off of horses or shoot people who disagree with us, but the Godfather had one thing right. He was loyal to a fault. He taught his family to be loyal to each other and to have each other’s back. They could count on one another to be in their corner, even when they were wrong and no matter what the cost was. They didn’t throw each other under the bus to avoid personal repercussions and they all ate together regularly even when there were family tensions.

What Does Loyalty In Business Look Like?

I have a couple of businesses so let me explain what loyalty looks like to me from that perspective. Loyal2U is a marketing company. So if have a client we are a defender of that brand. We write content for the business as though we are them. We try to understand their heart, their values and their culture and we create the message accordingly. We make sure the client sees the content and signs off on it before it goes live. We watch the responses on social media and report back promptly with both negative and positive comments. We make your clients more Loyal2U so they buy again and again.

The CIBN is a chain of networking referral clubs and we also offer educational events and mastermind sessions. We do business with the people who do business with us. People contact us every week wanting us to promote them for free. They don’t want to pay us for a membership and they have no loyalty to any member of our clubs. We on the other hand look for ways to add value to our members lives and businesses. We work tirelessly to add programs that are of benefit to our members. If we need a service we get it from one of our members. If we need a product we look at our members first. We give leads and referrals. We teach our members how to give leads and referrals. We try every day to create win/win situations and build strong and valuable relationships. We are loyal to our members and sponsors and we encourage them to be loyal to each other as well.

So is loyalty important in your business? Is it important to you in your life? What does that look like to you?

Sincerely and always,

Loyal2U

Kerry