Mindfulness in the Workplace with Michael Nicolais

**SPEAKER_1** (0:03)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:17)
Remember summer break when you were a kid, how it lasted forever? We were talking about that before the show. I think we were very much in the moment as small children back then, and now those months seem to just whip on by. Welcome back to the show, everyone, where we explore empathy, connection, and purpose and how it transforms businesses from the inside out. I'm Stephen, joined again by Tullio, and our special guest today where we're going to talk about mindfulness. According to research by the American Psychological Association, workplace stress costs US businesses over $300 billion annually in loss, productivity, turnover, and health care costs. But organizations that embrace mindfulness see measurable improvements in focus, collaboration, and employee well-being. Today, we're exploring how mindfulness is reshaping leadership and culture. Tullio, introduce our special guest today.

**Tullio Siragusa** (1:15)
Absolutely. Today, we want to welcome Michael Nicolais, who is the CEO of Loyalty Business Brokers. This is where he leads with a focus on intentionality, presence, and building sustainable success for both the clients and the teams. Michael's approach combines the discipline of entrepreneurship with the practices of mindfulness, helping businesses grow while also maintaining balance and humanity. Michael, welcome to the show. To get us started, can you share how mindfulness became a key part of your leadership philosophy? Maybe before that, give us a little history about what led to creating Loyalty Business Brokers and how you adopted mindfulness as your leadership philosophy.

**Michael Nicolais** (2:06)
Thanks, Tullio, and thanks for having me today. Yeah, so Loyalty Business Brokers, when I first met, one of my partners were a subsidiary of Loyalty Brands, and I met John Hewitt, and it was really interesting in that I read his book, and his book was how he had grown some other businesses. And of course, when you're looking to do business with somebody, you want to make sure that you kind of have the same philosophy, if you will, to... because you're going to be obviously partners with them, right? And when I read the book, it was a lot of... most of the philosophy of doing things and creating your business for service. And to do it, not so much for yourself. Of course, we all do things for ourselves because we're humans. But if you truly think of your clients, your employees, your co-workers, and you treat everybody with a service mindset, that's why I joined Loyalty Business Brokers.
And it's been my philosophy in my professional career. Well, actually, let me say that. Let me correct that. I've tried to make it my constant philosophy every day, but as I mentioned, you have to work on it, because we are fallible humans, and we have businesses is not linear, especially small businesses and entrepreneurs. And you have to be mindful, consciously mindful, to keep yourself in that service mode.

**Stephen Sakach** (4:23)
Yeah. I imagine selling businesses and brokering business can get a little emotional at times, and dealing with these are big life decisions, and sometimes is deeply personal. How has it helped you stay grounded or keep the parties involved grounded during that process?

**Michael Nicolais** (4:42)
Yeah. Thanks, Stephen. So I approach it in business brokerage and M&A advisory, and you hit the nail on the head. I mean, again, we do business, we're chatting with lower middle market companies, $10 million and below.
These businesses are most, a lot of them are family businesses. They're very emotional. Their retirement is set up. Typically, it's their largest asset for retirement. And when you're involved, when they're selling their business, it's, as you know, as you just said, very emotional. And that's a big part of what we do. And we are, we say we're psychologists oftentimes, besides advisors, in the ups and downs of the negotiating, valuing a business, and really giving the assurance to our clients that everything's going to be OK. And we, because it can, it can get very, very, it's stressful, and on both sides. And you don't know, oftentimes, a transaction, a deal can fall out at the last minute. A lot of times, based on emotion and not being mindful of everybody remain calm, it's not the end of the world, and you need to kind of sit back and talk about things in a rational way. Because a lot of times, we all can be irrational.

**Tullio Siragusa** (6:43)
So much to unpack there. So true, so much to unpack there. I mean, you said some things that really reminded me of a coach or mentor I had years ago, a very spiritually inclined coach, who would say, we are born with the evil inclination. So no matter what you're trying to do, be of service or do the right thing, the inclination is to do the wrong thing. We're born with it. And it just reminded me of what you were just talking about and how difficult it is for people to have self-realizing, creating a business and then having to step away from that. I can't even imagine.