In this episode of Yes, And with Avish Parashar, I sit down with Greg Offner, a former dueling piano performer turned keynote speaker, to talk about his unique approach to leadership, employee engagement, and preventing burnout. Greg’s philosophy, highlighted in his book The Tip Jar Culture, draws from his background in music to create an experience where managers lead with a servant mindset, helping their teams thrive. Greg shares valuable insights on how leaders can remove obstacles for their employees and create a workplace that feels more like an interactive, engaging experience. Tune in to hear about Greg's journey, his leadership principles, and why creating a culture where employees feel valued is essential for success.
Key Takeaways
Leadership is about helping your team be their best by removing obstacles and creating opportunities for engagement.
Employees are more likely to stay engaged when they feel like they’re contributing to a greater cause.
Burnout in the workplace is often caused by unnecessary friction in day-to-day tasks.
Greg’s “Tip Jar Culture” focuses on building relationships, encouraging participation, and reminding employees of the meaningful impact their work has.
Engaging with your team like an audience in a piano bar can foster creativity and connection in the workplace.
Relevant Links
Learn more about Greg Offner: gregoryoffner.com
Get Greg’s book The Tip Jar Culture: Available at major book retailers
Unedited Transcript
Avish Parashar
Hello, Greg, and welcome to Yes And. How are you, my friend?
Greg Offner
Avesh, I'm great. Yes. And thank you for having me.
I really appreciate it.
Avish Parashar
Absolutely. I've been I've been looking forward to this. You and I have met a few years ago through the speakers association and kinda chat a little bit. And, you just as as everyone here will find out is, you know, you've got a really interesting approach, which is very different but sort of similar to what I do. And so I was really kind of excited to to chat both about your content, but also a bit about your performance and your process because I find that very interesting. So before I get off and running and and picking your brain about stuff, for people who are unfamiliar with the Greg Offner experience, could you just give people kind of a quick one minute overview about, kinda, who you are and what you do?
Greg Offner
Yeah. Sure. I came into the world of speaking via dueling pianos. Like all musicians who aren't Beyonce or Taylor Swift, I I did have a day job in sales and marketing, but I I really enjoyed playing the piano, singing, entertaining others. And that transitioned well onto a keynote stage, as I bring the piano with me. And I use music as a metaphor to help audiences think differently about their daily performance at work and in their home life and share some of the strategies we were using in piano bars to drive engagement, make sure our audience didn't get burned out too quickly and that that they would stay as long as we could get them to stay and how those can be applied to the work world to minimize burnout, improve talent retention, and and and drive or maintain employee engagement.
Avish Parashar
Yeah. And that's it's so interesting, Ryan. This is one of the things I said we're we're sort of similar. Right? Because I did this random improv comedy thing, and then all of a sudden, it's like, oh, yeah. That now to me as an improviser, it was totally obvious. Ask someone who worked in the corporate world, like, oh, yeah.
Here's the improv principles. Here's the corporate principles. But a lot of people on the outside are like, oh, wow. I never thought about that. So I'm curious, like, what was your if you when you made that transition from, and you have a really interesting sort of unfortunate story about one of the reasons why. But when you made that transition from doing the piano bar thing to, becoming a speaker, kinda what was your thought process, and how did people kinda respond to it initially?
Greg Offner
I think the, it was it was quite literally a process. I mean, the the the vocal cord injuries aside, the whole reason that I had to stop being a performer was all those vocal cord injuries, and we can talk about that in a little bit. But when I first entered the space of of keynote speaking, I wasn't really sure how it fit. I didn't immediately see that connection or or see the need to make that connection. So I started speaking about disruption. The program was called dueling with disruption, and it sort of played on how we would not know what songs were going to be requested each night, and yet we still had to deliver a performance that resonated with audiences. And at work, we're not sure what changes are going to come, but we still have to deliver a performance that resonates with our audience, our, you know, our customers, our colleagues, etcetera.
And it was received pretty well. Folks wanted something experiential. They saw it as the something different type speaker. So were
Avish Parashar
you doing the piano playing and singing in that keynote as well? Like, I've always been a part of it? Okay.
Greg Offner
Yeah. It was my my first, coach in this business. And I think that if if I've achieved anything yet in my career, it's because of all of the people who have rallied around and helped me and coached me and mentored me. And my first coach said, like, you are an idiot if you don't use the piano. It's such a competitive advantage. And I was like, okay. So, that that was well received, the the the difference maker, I think, for me in in a lot of early sales opportunities.
But as I spoke and and got valuable feedback from audience members and clients, it became apparent that there was more value. And I think interest really for me too in the engagement space and the conversation about burnout. And and there it felt like too there is more room to grow there. And I guess that's partly due to the pandemic. You You know, I started in in June of twenty nineteen speaking full time. And then in January, the world sort of knew the pandemic was coming. And in March, America figured it out. Yep. And and, like, overnight, everybody's living the biggest disruption you could imagine.
So I kinda felt like I was preaching to the choir or at the very least in a very crowded pool, and that I was the least competent swimmer. So I was like, I gotta get out of this pool and and find a place where I I think I'm a better fit. And that's how I wound up in the engagement, burnout, and talent retention space.
Avish Parashar
Yeah. And it's interesting there, and I don't remember if I read about this in your book, which for those listening is called the tip jar culture. It's a great book, kinda ties everything you do together. Or if I saw it in your website. But when that everything went virtual and all of the speakers had to figure out how to do virtually. And for people who are kinda 50% performers, as I am, as I assume you are, it was even harder because it's like, oh, we can't just talk at the screen. But you pivoted in a very creative way, in that you just started doing virtual piano bars. Right? Could you talk a little bit about because it's such an interesting approach.
Because, obviously, piano bar, you think you get in person, you have some drinks, you crowd around a piano, but you're like, oh, well, it's a pandemic, so I'm gonna figure out how to do this virtually.
Greg Offner
Yeah. I did.
I I did, I think, literally two speeches, that I had I had booked. And then the the last speech was on March 13 or fourteenth. And, I mean, I started the program, and I had a full room. And by the time I was finishing up, half the room had left. They were all getting, you know, text messages and
Avish Parashar
Yeah. But
Greg Offner
emails. And so, I mean, it was I stepped off, and I said, what's happening? The meeting planner said, everybody's workplace is shutting down, and you should probably get on get, like, get on your way as well.
Avish Parashar
Yeah. Get on a plane before you can't.
Greg Offner
And so I I, you know, a lot of contracts canceled, and and a lot of contracts wanted to pivot, but they didn't really know how they were going to pivot. And so there's this couple month lag where it felt like nothing was happening. I was keeping the Miller Lite business in business for sure. But, you know, while I figured things out, a couple of folks reached out and said, hey, you do the piano. Could you do something just fun that's really not even content driven, but that's just fun for our people. They're feeling burned out. They're sick of the whole wear your college sweater on Zoom or bring your pet on Zoom or, you know, whatever.
And so I thought, well, if I can figure out the sound, how to how to make it sound good on Zoom Mhmm. We can use the chat just like request slips. Yep. So this could work. And being a professional musician helped, because I already had a ton of sound gear at the house. Sure.
Avish Parashar
And that
Greg Offner
was a challenge for keynoters right away is that, like, Amazon was selling out of every pro audio piece of equipment and cable that you could think of. So it took a couple months to really dial in what the sound would look like and make the video quality, you know, acceptable. And and I was by no means making keynote speaker fees for this, but I was working. I was doing something that people seem to enjoy. And it it was a nice pivot point for the business. This this, I guess, we're the world's first virtual piano bar. I nobody's told me otherwise.
So it was a pretty cool pretty cool and also pretty scary time in life.
Avish Parashar
Yeah. I I remember.
It is interesting though how when you pivot properly, I don't know if you found this. So I pivoted to doing improv comedy virtually. And similar to you, I use the chat instead of the, you know, asking the audience for suggestions or they're I'm I'm using the chat. And what was so interesting is I found, in some ways, I got more engagement, virtually because an audience member who might be sitting there not wanting to yell out a suggestion or I play this expert game or I'm the expert on some random topic and people ask me questions, that person is much more willing to just type something in the chat. So all of a sudden, I'm getting more suggestions and better suggestions than I did when I was live. I don't know. Did you experience that or you found I mean, I feel like with music slips, I think you probably got a a good amount either way, but I'm curious if you
Greg Offner
It was it was hit or miss. Yeah. I I play up the miss part in my keynote when I share what the experience was like, but I would say it fifty fifty. There were some audiences where everybody did wanna turn their camera on, and they did wanna engage. And the delay made it really funny when I got a whole group singing along because they're all, like, half a beat off. So it just sounded god awful, but it was fun and funny. But there were some gigs where everybody's camera was off except mine.
And so, you know, things are coming in the chat like, oh, play this song, do that song. But it feels very different when you're playing and you can see other people like
Avish Parashar
Yeah.
Greg Offner
Doing the Carlton or, you know, something to to whatever you're playing versus you're playing a song and you're seeing nothing.
Avish Parashar
Yep.
Greg Offner
It it's kinda like, is this thing on? Like, do you are you people enjoying this? So very different experiences with the whole camera off crew versus the camera on crew.
Avish Parashar
Yeah. And did you find this I because it was same with improv. Right? You we have an audience laughing, smiling, engaged versus, yeah, a lot of the cameras off. And sometimes I did just straight webinars where there was no audience feed. It was just me. But I found it once I kinda got over the awkwardness for me as a performer, I found it useful.
It really just helped my kind of performance discipline of, like, how can I perform my best doing comedy when I have no audience to feed off of? And it really kinda developed this skill I never really had to develop of, like, pushing through, just trusting my own instincts. Like, alright. This is working because I can't get any now I much rather do it in front of a live audience, but I I found it helped me kinda develop that that discipline internally.
Greg Offner
I remember hearing a story about Jerry Seinfeld, doing stand up, and part of his rider is quite literally to blind him with the lights. And there's a piece of tape that they put on stage that's like six inches or so, some distance before the edge of the stage so he can knows where the edge is. But in my understanding is that he has the lights dialed in so bright that he doesn't see the audience. He doesn't care about that feedback. His performance is his performance. He wants them to love it, but it's the performance. I do not have that discipline or at least I've not flexed that muscle.
I really do need appreciation and approval from the audience to know that it's going well. I know that I can perform well, but dueling pianos in a piano bar is very different than a a recital or a concert. True. At at at a recital or concert, folks are opting in to that person. They want to see you perform your songs or a selection of songs you've chosen. The piano bar, whether it's dueling or solo, it's about the audience. Mhmm. I'm a conduit.
I'm there to do the thing that they can't, which is make the piano do stuff. But the the the playlist, the energy, the fun, and, like, that is all a function of them contributing to the performance. And that's one of the lessons and and the realizations that became so valuable for audience members is that Mhmm. Technically, the piano player is in a position of authority. Because I've got the microphone. I know how to play the piano. There are things I can do that you can't do.
But without the audience, it's just a piano player singing to himself in an empty room. It really takes that collaboration and that back and forth to make the experience so high energy and engaging and and and and, energizing. And for me, that was lost during many virtual programs. And so the energetic lift that I had to give to a performance Mhmm. Was ex I mean, it was exhausting.
Avish Parashar
Oh, yeah.
Greg Offner
You turn off the you know, you'd get done. You know, bye. Thanks for coming, everybody. Bye. You click end on Zoom, and the room is quiet. Yep. And you're just, like, well, guess I'll go make a cup of tea.
Like, I mean, just, you know, in
Avish Parashar
very little detail. Hour Zoom keynotes were so much more exhausting than, you know, even even a three hour workshop. Right? Because you don't have nothing's giving you energy. But the thing you were saying about the interaction with the audience, I think, is kind of a nice sort of transition point into some of your content. Because that then is sort of one of the big cruxes of your content is that, you know, it's not didactic. It's not I'm the manager, so here's my thing.
It's about you're creating an experience and what kind of like, as the manager and I you know, obviously, you can correct me if I'm misquoting, but, like, as the leader or manager, you're almost like the the pianist, the piano bar, and your job is to create an experience. What kind of experience are you creating for your employees? And it is interactive. And too many managers, in my experience at least, would would be more one way. Like, well, here's what I need you to do and instead of that interaction.
Was that fair to say?
Greg Offner
Yeah. I think that, I am removing an obstacle for the audience, which is they don't know how to play the piano. Mhmm. They all wanna sing along. They all many know the words to the songs. They're not really sure what order to put the songs in. So that is also a function of my experience knowing when to put this request up in the rotation versus another.
But a manager's role let me a manager's title or a vice president's title is not some honorific because you're so great and you've accomplished so much. Here's your award vice president. That is a tool to be used in service of those that you lead to remove obstacles that they don't have the ability or authority to remove themselves. And I see that missing in the work in some workplaces today that causes trouble in most workplaces. When a manager, leader, executive thinks, I'm the executive, bow down, come into the office and remind me how amazing I am. Like, no, you are the executive to help them be amazing. Yeah. And that is the the the the mindset shift, quite frankly, a friend from military school shared with me.
So I went to Valley Forge Military Academy. That was my high school experience. And once you graduate, you join the ranks of the Alumni Association.
And, Avish, I'm not kidding. When you go back on campus, the cadets, if you're wearing your alumni badge, are supposed to salute you. Super cool. Like, let me tell you, nothing is cooler than being 19, freshly graduated from high school, and come back to screw with a bunch of little kids, make them salute you. Right? But that's what a lot of alumni did. Because it was like, this is my turn to be important. Damn it.
And what my friend shared with me is I was invited to join the the the board of of alumni association, directors. He said, you know what? What I really try to impress upon new members is that we're not here to be important or saluted or yes stirred by the cadets. We're here to use our experience and new authority to help make their experience better. That was a huge mindset shift for me in how I showed up as as an association board member. Mhmm. And I think it is the mindset shift I want to leave leaders in the audience with that. Yes. You must have done something right to be given this role and responsibility, but you weren't given it so that you could be feted and lauded and celebrated.
You were given it so you could help other people do their best work. And that same thing at the piano bar. Like, it is not for you to show up to my piano bar and kiss my ass. There's no other way to say it.
Avish Parashar
Yeah.
Greg Offner
I go, you're such a great musician. Oh, my God. Like, no. I'm there to make you a better audience member by helping bring you out of your shell and show you it's safe to do all this stuff and help you sing along if you don't know the words and have some fun with this experience. When you start shifting from the mindset of I am a musician and they should enjoy my rendition of this song to I'm a leader helping them enjoy the evening. Mhmm. I can help them by doing something they can't do, play the piano, but they can do something I can't do, pick a better song. If I'm choosing all of the songs all night of each, it's gonna be Billy Joel, Elton John, Tom Jones, like the stuff I love to sing and play. Sure. But when I get a cashier request or Britney Spears or Jelly Roll or any country song, it it changes the dynamic and they, the audience, are better positioned to help me know what would change the dynamic because they're amongst the people, and I'm up on stage.
And isn't that a lot like in the workplace? The executives are in their office, Ivory Tower, whatever you wanna call it. Mhmm. They're really not in touch with what's happening day to day as much as they wanna be, as much as they think they are. When they say they're doing a a location visit, that location cleans everything.
Avish Parashar
Oh, yeah. You know, it's
Greg Offner
this isn't the real state of the office that you're getting to see. There was some joke I heard about the Queen of England thinks every building smells like fresh paint. Like, it's just
Avish Parashar
that's oh, and what I love about what you're talking about is it's very much like a servant leadership type approach, which, you know, in my language, yes, and, yes, but. It's very much like a yes, and approach. It's not like, oh, but I'm in charge. But yeah. And let me hear what you have to say. Let me involve you. Let me help you, which I think is very, you know, and it's it's funny that you kinda mentioned, like, the people say, oh, bow down to me.
And I think most people there's probably a few people who are that explicit. But, you know, for a lot of people, it's it's very subtle, but it comes across. The the, like, I'm too busy or I'm too important or no. I'm in charge now, so you gotta do what I say. And I love this, approach you've got here, which is about helping and I I haven't really heard that before. Like, literally trying to remove the obstacles from other people. You do it for your audience in a piano bar, and managers and executives can and should do that for their employees. And I it's a nice way of looking at it.
I haven't really heard it that way, which brings me to something else that that stuck out when I was watching your keynote. Another phrase that you used that I really liked and hadn't really heard before is, and I forget. I wrote it down somewhere, but I got, like, pages of notes, so I'm not sure. You have to you'll you'll give me the exact one. Oh, here it is. You said the problem is not burnout. The problem is not stress.
The problem is the experience people have doing the work every day.
Greg Offner
Yeah.
Avish Parashar
And I thought that was really kinda simple and elegant way of expressing this. Could you kind of explain that a little bit more, like, what what you mean by that?
Greg Offner
So people don't walk into a office by accident. There's generally a a process they have to go through. We call it an interview. Mhmm. And similarly, people don't just wake up inside a piano bar. I mean, maybe if you're on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, maybe. But it it was a choice and a a active participation in the interview process that landed them the job.
Similarly, it was a choice to walk through the door, maybe pay the cover at the piano bar. These are people, employees or audience members who by definition start out engaged. The problem isn't engagement. They were engaged or they wouldn't have made it through the interview process. Yeah. They wouldn't have come to the piano bar. They they made the decision to be there.
The problem is why are they making the decision to disengage? It has nothing to do with whether or not you have a happy hour every Friday or comfy couches or ping pong table in the office. It's that working here is harder than it should be and management isn't doing anything about it. The experience of doing the work, not being in the workplace, although, of course, we should address hostile work environments or substandard things, but it's mainly that I have told them 15 times this fricking copier is broken, and now I gotta stand here, like, fix the damn copier. That's why you're a vice president because you can authorize the payment to fix the copier. Do it. Do these things to make doing the job easier and people will do the job more often.
We love it when things are easier. That was Uber's whole approach. They they certainly didn't have better cars. They didn't have they don't have any cars.
Avish Parashar
Yeah.
Greg Offner
They just had a better way to get a car. They made getting a ride easier. They didn't do anything about the actual ride itself. And so that's the challenge in the workplace when it comes to burnout. I mean, think literally I hate it when speakers do this, but I'm gonna do it. Literally at a racetrack, when a car is burning out, it is spending gas and spinning the tires furiously and the vehicle's going nowhere. That is that is burnout.
We are using so much energy and yet getting so we're get we're going nowhere.
Avish Parashar
Mhmm.
Greg Offner
And so if that's happening in the workplace, the very natural human reaction is, I don't wanna do that anymore. And so that's where this disengagement comes from. Mike, this guy who owned the piano bar, his name's Mike Marguerite. So Mike used to say, as long as the audience believes you're gonna give them what they want, they'll stick around. And he was saying that in the context of, hey, man. It's okay. If you get a request and you don't know the song, it it's alright.
Like, just on your next break, go try to figure it out. Like, listen to it. They'll stick around as long as they think you're gonna at least try to give them what they want. Mhmm. And the same is true in the workplace. Our our workers, maybe instead of thinking of them as employees, maybe we should think of them as audience members. Right? So an audience is a customer of of a of a musical experience, of a comedy show.
Like, the audience is the customer. Right? But also the coworkers, the staff, the bartenders, the talent manager at that comedy club, like, they're also audience members. They're internal, though. Right? They're not external like the client. They're internal.
So what if we thought about employees as our internal audience? They're gonna stay as long as they believe we'll help them get what they want. So what do they want? I mean, there's a lot of ways to answer that, but one thing they all want is they want work to be easy or at least not unnecessarily difficult.
Avish Parashar
Mhmm.
Greg Offner
Because some things are just hard.
Avish Parashar
Like, more frictionless, like less
Greg Offner
Yeah. Exactly. Unnecessary. Some friction's good.
Avish Parashar
Sure.
Greg Offner
Right? You need friction to walk. But unnecessary friction, walking uphill at a 80 degree angle, like, if you can avoid it, maybe go around the mountain. Right?
Avish Parashar
Right. Like a copier that always breaks or an overly negative manager or
Greg Offner
Yeah. Or or like Yeah. Or or any number of things that make the act of doing this job worse than it ought to be. And I don't think, unless they've read my book or have heard my keynote, there's a whole lot of people that are spending time thinking about that. Instead, we've spent twenty plus years talking about engagement from the lens of how do we make the workplace more enjoyable? But could we have chats every hour and just talk about feel like, there's nothing wrong with that, but that's not fixing the real problem.
Avish Parashar
Mhmm. Ed, you, I'm jumping ahead a little bit, but you cited a study. What I love is I I get the feeling you're either closeted or maybe an overt, a bit of a nerd. I can't quite tell. But
Greg Offner
Overt. It's quite overted ish. Thank you.
Avish Parashar
Based on listen, your keynote in your book, I'm like, oh, I like yeah. You talk about the music and you play great songs. But, you know, you'll throw in, like, these nerdy, obscure studies. You like site studies that I it's they're not the ones that every speaker talks about. So you mentioned, Carl Grus, who I had not heard of before, talking about this idea of the joy of being the cause. Mhmm. And so if you can share a little bit that because me, I mean, it's a little bit different than what you're talking about, but we're talking about engagement.
And a lot of that comes to some stuff I've researched, some of the more well known stuff that people would be the the relationship between autonomy and motivation and engagement, which kinda ties a little to that. So could you just talk about this call group's joy of being the cause thing and how that fits into what you're talking about?
Greg Offner
Yeah. So, you know, we I brought up a couple of concepts, out of order in in terms of my keynote, but this idea of thinking of the audience, our employees as as an audience. Right? At the piano bar, I've got maybe 50, maybe 250, give or take, people in the audience. What do they want? And not just like, what do they want on their request slip? Like, what do they expect this evening's going to be like?
Some of them, just wanna watch. Some of them wanna be the star of the show. They're hoping they can figure out a way to get up on stage and do some silly bit with us. Uh-huh. And there's all this stuff in between. But what I've learned over the many years I worked at piano bars is there's three buckets of people. I call them archetypes. Mhmm. And they're keepers, leapers, and sleepers.
So those are the three archetypes, keepers, leapers, and sleepers. Now the keepers are the regulars. They're the folks who, when they travel to Milwaukee, they're googling, what's a piano bar in Milwaukee we could go to tonight? They are the folks who know the songs they wanna request before they walk in the door. They're there. They're clapping. They're singing.
They're having a great time. Like, that's their jam. The leapers, they could be there for a corporate party or a birthday party or a bachelor bachelorette party or a girls night out, whatever. They're there for a good time, not a long time. Mhmm. So they want something that's gonna deliver an experience that they can enjoy and then let them move on with their day. Go ever wherever it is that they're going.
And then there's the sleepers. What do they want? I mean, they're not literally, hopefully, asleep, but more like energetically, they're kinda dead. And so how do we engage them? How do we how do we put on a comfort a an experience that engages all of them? In my keynote in my book, I go into each of those groups specifically. But what Carl Gruss has to do with this is what all of them have in common.
They're all human beings. And at 18 of age, humans learn that we have the ability to change the world just by doing stuff.
Avish Parashar
Right? It's like I got
Greg Offner
to see this in my daughter, Francel. We call her Frankie. When we were outside, when she was about 18 old, playing with sidewalk chalk. And she had a piece of sidewalk chalk in her hand. She wanted a different piece, so she put it on a table. The table was rickety.
It was from HomeGoods. So, you know, it's missing one little rubber stopper on one of the legs, so it wobbles. So the chalk rolled off the table. I pick it up, hand it back to Frankie. She doesn't want this piece. She wants another piece. So she puts it back on the table, rolls off again.
I pick it up and hand it to her. She puts it on the table again, but she's not even looking for another piece of chalk. She's looking right at me, Avish. And as it rolls off the table and I start to bend over, this huge smile erupts on her face. That was when Frankie realized, oh, I can make daddy bend over just by doing this thing. And she was fascinated by this this new autonomy and power she discovered she had. That doesn't go away just because we get older and maybe some of us get less fun.
We still have that deep drive and desire to be the cause of something. At the piano bar, the request slip allows the audience to be the cause of a song. Just by virtue of being there, they can be the cause of the audience going crazy, and the piano player goes, you folks are amazing. This is so loud. This is the best audience ever. They go, woo hoo. Mhmm. And request slips aren't just limited to the piano bar.
We see them in the real world. Like, if you go to a concert, people bring signs. You know, to Bruce Springsteen concert. That guy doesn't need your help choosing a song. He's in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, been selling out places for forty years. But yet the minute he points at a poster and goes, hey, little girl, I see that poster. Let's play that song.
The hope that area of the crowd goes insane. They go berserk because now they're a part of the show. They caused this thing to happen. They're more deeply engaged. They're reenergized. That's what I want in the workplace. That's what I think you want, we want in the workplace. Mhmm. So how do we deliver that?
Well, we give our employees, our colleagues, the opportunity to be the cause. And part of that is an invitation to contribute and collaborate on the work that we do. So doing the work like we talked about earlier. Mhmm. And part of that is a reminder that what we do matters because it's very easy in the workplace to get what I call stuck in the request slips. I mean, at the piano bar, if all I'm focused on is I got this request and that request, I gotta play this song and play that song. I'm not focused on the audience.
I'm not seeing what I call the sparkles and smiles. The smiles on people's faces when they're having an awesome time. The sparkles in their eyes when they see their song being played or when they hear their favorite song being played.
Avish Parashar
Mhmm.
Greg Offner
I'm focused on the request slips. And at work, the same thing happens. It may not be request slips. It might be to do lists, emails, contracts, RFPs, processes, procedures, whatever they are. That's not why we come to work. I see, I believe that work business is solving problems profitably.
Avish Parashar
Mhmm.
Greg Offner
And I think we get this sense of burnout and fatigue and maybe even discussed when we're too focused on the profits and we forget about the problem we're solving and what happens when we solve that problem for someone else. Yeah. We we you need to make money. Business needs to have the profit part. There's nothing wrong with that. But the joy of being the cause comes from being reminded who's helped, what's changed, what problem are resolving, what's different. And to sort of bring it full circle that burnout, we talk about the copier example.
You show up day after day and the copier is broken. And I told him and the copier is broken and I told him, how many times am I gonna nothing's changing. I clearly can't be the cause of something here.
I'm gonna go. Or worse, I'm gonna stay and just disengage.
Avish Parashar
Yeah. It's it's, it's such a great reminder. I love that thing about being caught up in the slips. Because I used to find this in improv would you know, there are a bunch of different improv games. They only have rules. And some performers get so focused on playing the game right. Like, for example and this one I do is in keynotes.
It's one of the more challenging games where we get a letter from the audience like s, and then you and I would have to have a conversation where we were not allowed to use the letter s, and it couldn't be anywhere in the word in the middle at the end. And I'll bring audience members out to play this with me, really challenging game, and I remind them, like, look. That's the rule. But the goal is to have fun and entertain the audience. And what's ironic is when people go really slow and successfully don't say the letter s, the game is really boring because they're slow and there's no energy. But when they go fast and try and they make a mistake, then everyone laughs and that's successful. The same sort of principle like, well, here's the process.
Here's the method. Here's the technique. But if you get so obsessed over that, you lose sight of the bigger picture. That's that's when we get burnout, that's when we get disengagement, that's when we create a bad experience. And that's gonna we're talking about jumping around. Basically, we're what we've been talking about without using the term as much as culture. You know, what kind of culture do you have at your organization?
And you talk about creating a tip jar culture, which is the title of your keynote, the title of your book. And there's really three principles of building a tip jar culture. And I believe we're mostly just talking about principle number two in what we were just talking about. Mhmm. But if you don't mind sharing with people kinda what are the three what is a tip jar culture and kinda what are the the three you know, you don't have to go too in the weeds with it because, obviously, we want people just to read your book. But what are the, kind of the three principles of building a tip jar culture?
Greg Offner
Yeah. The the principles will lead to the tip jar culture. And so the first one I call take a sip. What it's really about is not so much taking a sip of something. And and maybe to give this context, I have to share that at The Piano Bar, one of the first things you'll hear is that what we call the spiel. Yeah. So when you walk in a couple times a night, sort of like the radio DJ, every once in a while, will be like, you're listening to six ten WIP and it's here.
Like, they remind you what channel you're listening to and who they are. We would do the spiel and it's something like, hey, folks. Have you just walked in? Welcome to the piano bar. Listen. A couple of things you need to know whether it's your first time or your first time in a long time. Here's how we're gonna have a great time tonight.
Number one, you're gonna sing along with us. This is a audience participation experience, but but we want you to sing safely, so we've arranged for a bar. Yeah. So go ahead and grab a drink, whether it's water, whiskey, or wine, get something that you can take a sip of from time to time. Second thing, in addition to singing, you're gonna choose all the songs. There are request slips all over the bar. Ask your server if you don't have any.
Write down what you wanna hear. Bring it on up to us. If we know it, we'll play it gladly. If we don't, we'll we'll play it badly. And third, the thing you need to know most of all is if you bring that request slip up to us without something green and presidential, it's not a request.
It's just a suggestion. And that's the spiel. Mhmm. So from that come these three pillars of the tip jar culture. Take a sip, fill out a slip, leave a tip. These are elements of a workplace experience that is thriving. That leaves people energized rather than burned out.
That people want to have again and again and again as an experience. The type of place that I would say, that's a tip jar culture. Because people's tip jars are feeling full through working there. So how do we do that? Well, we talked actually a bit about taking a sip. What that's about is building relationships. Yeah. And so knowing the audience archetypes, understanding what they want from an experience.
And, yes, you'd have to read the book to get into that because if there's quite a lot of content there. But the thing everybody wants, no matter whether they're a keeper, a leaper, or a sleeper, is what I learned from Carl Grews' work. We wanna be the cause of something. And yet you have to choose a cause. I can't tell you what your cause should be. It's something you have to discover or decide. Mhmm. But when you find that cause, you wanna know that you're a part of it, not just a cog in the wheel, but you are a part and participant and contributor towards that solution.
And so that's how we get into the second pillar, fill out a slip. And then finally, leaving a tip is about understanding that, yes, we need to make money from work. Otherwise, it's volunteering. Right? That that that a business needs to make a profit. A person needs to make an income. Yes. However, work is more than just a search for daily bread, as a American philosopher, Studs Terkel, once said.
It's a search for daily meaning too. So this daily meaning, daily bread, two parts of what we need from the workplace, from our work experience. And so what I'm saying with this third pillar, this idea of leaving a tip, is that for others whom you work with or for those you who work for you, if you're a leader, yeah, they need to be paid, but they also need to be reminded of the impact of the problem they're solving, of the cause that they're championing. Show them how that changes because we get buried in these request slips. And I've I've worked with groups in all different industries, and one thing I see is the common experience. When folks start a job, they they very often do the tour and they get to see all the different parts of the building, maybe if you're a teacher or all the different job sites that your company is working on within reason, you know, if you're in construction or or whatever. You do the the tour of the state if you're the governor.
But then as you progress up or as you get deeper into that role, you kind of forget those things are there, and you're just in your own request slips. You start to lose sight of what's really changing out in the world when you do what you do well. And this is that idea of filling up someone's tip jar. It it yes. It's important to get paid. And at the piano bar, we got a shift pay, but we also had the tip jar. Yeah. That was part of the reminder that what we were doing mattered.
For me, I think what I've realized now is that it's actually the sparkles and smiles. It's the eyes and the smiles that I get to see. That's that's the thing that filled me up cause that's what was missing during COVID when the cameras hold off.
Avish Parashar
That's
Greg Offner
true. So those three elements make up the tip jar culture.
Avish Parashar
Got it. And so just to kinda summarize as we're kinda moving closer towards the end here. So when you work with an organization or a group, like, you'll take them through these steps and go in deeper, you know, people who are listening can read the book to go deeper, or you can reach out to Greg and have him come help you build a tip jar culture by taking you through these three things. So real quick, if people wanna get your book or learn more about you, what's the best way to to learn more about you, contact you, get your book, all that good stuff?
Greg Offner
Yeah. Pretty much every website online that's selling books, you know, like the Amazon, Target type of thing, like, they they carry it, so you can go check it there. If you wanna learn more about me, my website, or social media, gregory offner dot com. I'm at gregory offner junior on most of the major socials. It's a great place to connect. You know, I'm answering my DMs. So if you send something my way, I it'll be me.
And, yeah, I'm I'm I think about a quote from Zig Ziglar often that, you know, if you give me an hour of your time, I can change your mind. Pardon me. You know? So Zig would say, if you give me an hour of your time, I can change your mind, but if you read my book, you might be able to change your life. And I I I think of that in relation to how my keynotes are structured. That the purpose of my keynote is not that you walk out of there, like, everything's gonna be different. It's that I hope you have both a reminder and maybe some inspiration of your power and the purpose that you get to champion each day.
But then also that, yeah, things could look different. And these are three areas we could focus on that will make a meaningful impact. So that's that's that's my idea with the keynote is to change your mind. But if you do read the book, there are strategies in place there that could change Yeah. How you feel each day at work.
Avish Parashar
And I do in the time we have left. I do wanna talk about one thing in the book that, that, resonated with me. It ties into some of the one a couple of things I talk about in my keynotes, and it is sort of nestled in the back of your book, so I don't think you talk about it in your keynote. But it's this idea of the root goal analysis, which I think ties into the, like like, what is your cause? Kinda what is your motivation? I kinda talk about using yes, and to dig deeper and get curious instead of just, yeah, butting the idea. So just could you kinda take us through what the root goal analysis is and kinda how you use it?
Greg Offner
Yeah. Give you a real easy example. So I mentioned Valley Forge Military Academy, and I had the opportunity to I've had the opportunity to go and speak to their cadets many times. And these are 13, 14, 15, 16, you know, they're high school age kids. And so I love asking them, who wants to be a millionaire? And a bunch of heads go up. And I guess now with inflation, you gotta revise it.
Who wants to have $10,000,000 or whatever the number is? That's not the point. The point is, why stop there? So let's say you've got $10,000,000. What's that gonna allow you to do? And they may say, well, I'd be able to buy a boat or I could pay off my parents' mortgage or I could, you know, do any number of things. Okay. Well, how's that gonna make you feel?
Really, really good. Like I could do anything. Like I'm really free. Okay. So now I wonder, do you know how hard it is to make $10,000,000 or a million dollars? What if if what you wanna do is really feel free, like, you've got this sense of freedom, what if it didn't take $10,000,000 to feel free? What if there were another way?
And what I'm trying to get at is that the the goal isn't $10,000,000. It's what that allows them to do or feel like. So I had a guy after a speech, this is, god, four years ago, come up to me and ask, what I thought he should do because he wanted to spend more time with his kids, his grandkids and go fishing. And so he had this job that he was working, but his plan was he was gonna, he was gonna buy a 10 unit apartment building. And so once he bought this apartment building, that would produce enough cash flow, that he wouldn't have to work as much, and then he would spend more time with his kids his grandkids. And I I was like, do do you have a background in commercial real estate or anything like that? He said, no. But, you know, this is a these are great opportunities, and I just gotta find the right one.
And I said, you know, are you open to some feedback and maybe just like a a thought? He said, yeah. Yeah. I said, it sounds like what you wanna do is spend more time with your grandkids. And what you've done is put this big obstacle of I need to buy a 10 unit apartment building in the middle of that. I bet if we sat down and took a look at your schedule and your calendar and thought about how you plan out your days, like, there's probably time that you're not accounting for, or you could go and hang out with your grandkids. I mean, I know for me, I've got two toddlers.
There is definitely time in my day where I could go to the gym if if I sat down and was more efficient with it. But the truth is I'm probably not using it effectively, and so that's why it's not happening. What I shouldn't do is say, well, I'm gonna buy a membership to Equinox in Center City, which is four miles from where I live in Philly. So because then then that they've got all the things that I'm like, what? No. We're talking about a time management issue, not a new gym membership issue. Mhmm. And so many of us do that.
A friend of mine who I just spoke to recently said, I think that once I once I get promoted to senior vice president, I think I'll feel like I'll feel like I've achieved my goal. And I said, well, what's gonna change when you get promoted to senior vice president? You're already a vice president. Like, what's gonna you told just told me you don't need the money. You're well positioned.
You have no debt. You have a lot of savings. Like, what's gonna change? And she thought for a minute. She goes, I don't know. I guess nothing. It sounds like you don't need the SVP title, do you? Mhmm. And it's fine to want it.
You know, if you you arrive at the answer, the final answer is like, I don't know. I just want it. Great. That's okay.
Go get it. But be clear on exactly why you want the thing. And when we try to do that often, I've found, I believe you'll find, the reader of the book will find, it's not actually what we thought we wanted.
There's something else there. Yeah.
Avish Parashar
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah.
Or there's a a deeper reason you want it, which you can, like like, with the grandfather, you can achieve without like, you can set a goal for yourself by doing this root goal analysis. You can be like, oh, wait. This is what I really want. So there's other ways of doing it that don't require me. And in fact, a lot of cases, you find it's a much simpler goal than this giant obstacle you've set up for yourself.
Greg Offner
Yeah.
Avish Parashar
And then I think you could also, you know, talk about culture. You as a manager, you could use that same technique too. Like, if if an employee comes to you with a request, maybe for something that you can't do because it's too expensive. If instead of just saying no, instead of saying, well, why do you want that? Why do you want us to do that? And then really inquiring more, maybe you can find their root goal and and and help remove the obstacle without, you know, you know, like, we're talking about the printer. Maybe they're like, oh, we wanna buy this fancy new hundred thousand dollar printer.
Well, you're like, well, you don't have the budget for that. Instead of just saying, no. Well, why do you want that? Well, it's this. And why do you want that? Oh, and then noise and, oh, look. We can accomplish that same goal by, you know, this $5,000 solution, which we can afford. And, so, yeah.
It's I I just love that technique. So, thank you for sharing that. We'll come back to the end time. I'm gonna finish up with one more question. One final question I'd like to ask everyone. Before we get to that, a reminder, if you wanna learn more about Greg, go to gregory gregory offner dot com. That's two f's.
His book, The Tip Jar Culture, you can get anywhere books are sold. You can check out the socials, and I will link to all of those in the show notes as well. Cool. So, Greg, thank you very much for this conversation. It was great. I learned a lot. Had a had fun time chatting.
And I'd like to finish by asking you a question. This is my last question for everyone. I talk about switching our default from yes, but to yes, and. One of the reasons I feel passionate about that is I think the world would be a better place if everyone just simply started from a default mindset of yes, and instead of yes, but. So what I wanna ask you is what is one small thing that you believe if everyone did, it will make the world a better place? Just one small shift that if everyone did, the world would be a better place.
Greg Offner
Oh my god. Use their turn signal.
Avish Parashar
I love it.
Greg Offner
Just use the turn signal. It's there. Let people know.
Avish Parashar
Yeah. Which, if you're talking root goal analysis, it just be considerate of other people. Right? Like, it just
Greg Offner
Yeah. No. I I I mean, that that that is that is true, but I'll I'll I'll tell you what I think is is the more honest or meaningful answer. I did it I did a keynote in Dallas earlier this week, and it was at a megachurch. And the green room was one of the pastor's offices, and, there is a a whiteboard that they it looked like they had some goals and stuff on, but at the top in big letters said there are children being raised in homes in our community who don't know they are loved, valued, and that they matter. And so what I what I think would make the world a better place is if we all just took a moment to tell somebody, if it's our kid, if it's our spouse, if it's a colleague, a friend, a parent, remind them that they're loved, that they're valued, and that they matter. That, I think, would make the world a better place, Avish.
Avish Parashar
That is a great answer. Thank you very much, Greg, for sharing your experience, your insight, your wisdom, your fantastic answer to that question. And, yeah, everyone who's listening, check them out. Gregoryoffner. com, the tip jar culture. Thank you, Greg. Thanks,
Greg Offner
Subhash. Bye, everybody.