The Power of Emotional Intelligence in Business with Brendan Kamm

**SPEAKER_2** (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** (0:16)
Well, welcome back to the show everyone. I'm Stephen along with my co-host Mike. We spent a lot of time looking at systems that build connection and gratitude and love into business. And I'm excited for today's show because this is one of those systems we've used for a few years now. And if you're worried that you can't sell something like this into your company, well, there's a lot of stats around building emotional connection. You've probably heard us talk about as a marketing agency, the importance of that. That's where that lifetime value skyrockets. That's where your customers become your best marketers with word of mouth. So if leadership is struggling with the EQ, this is a way you can build a piece of that into your company's DNA. Mike, introduce our guest today.

**Mike Liwski** (1:03)
And Steve, I got to say, if you have a tough time selling thanks through your company, it's probably the wrong company that you're working for. Yes, our guest today is none other than Brendan Kamm. He's the CEO of Thnks. It's the first global platform built really on the principles of the gratitude commerce. And we use it here at Zero Company for this reason, right? Thnks really empowers us as professionals to strengthen the relationships, really through personalization, through thoughtful gestures, as well as being able to combine that with human connection through this technology.
With more than 20 years of experience in media, technology, sales, and client engagement, Brendan has seen how the absence of gratitude can really erode trust and consequently weaken business relationships. And that insight really led him to find Thnks, which today is being used by 120 of the Fortune 500 companies and more than 20,000 teams globally. As well, the platform has even facilitated millions of dollars in charitable donations, while redefining how appreciation drives loyalty and engagement in business. Brendan, we are so no pun intended, thankful to have you on the show today here with us. Welcome to the show.

**Brendan Kamm** (2:35)
Thank you, Mike, Stephen. I truly appreciate it. I mean, part of our mission at Thnks is to educate on the power of gratitude in business, and it's exactly what you all are doing, so I couldn't be happy to be here with you today.

**Stephen Sakach** (2:46)
Yeah, this is going to be a fun conversation. Looking forward to it. Brendan, you've said that transactional interactions of road trust, I think we've all felt that sometimes in our lives, where you get that feeling with some aspect of doing business with someone. What was the turning point where you realized gratitude and emotional intelligence needed to be built into business itself?

**Brendan Kamm** (3:09)
Yeah, it came over time. I started my career in media and advertising, and that business, at least at the time, was purely relationships. When you were dinners and lunches and games, and the sales reps were in your office and the agency, and you were just in this constant interaction. So that was normal to me as I started my career. As I evolved in my career and I moved into more technology and startups, tech is great, but it just moves at hyperspeed, right? Grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. And so everything became much more transactional. And I don't think I realized it at the time. And then all of a sudden, it's like years pass, seven, eight years down the road. And I'm looking back and I'm going, man, every relationship I have in business is from my early days in media and advertising, right? I don't really have a lot of people I'm just calling up from all the tech and we did hundreds of tech deals, right? But it was missing, right? And I started thinking about that and I'm like, man, the first people I called when I would take a new job or start something new, were always the media people, the advertising people. And you just quickly realize, well, it's because we had a real relationship. And we talked about things outside of the deal and the transaction. It was, what is your family up to? What's your favorite sports team? It doesn't have to be anything super deep. It's still business. But I think having that experience, and then if I do tie it into one moment, there was this one time, there was this small unexpected gesture that really turned the tides on a big deal. It was a challenging relationship we were having. We were in an RFP trying to renew this deal. It was actually my now co-founder, who I was working with at the time, who had come to me and was like, you know what, just out of Pure, they seem super busy, they kept mentioning how they're working all night. So he's like, let's just gather up, we need to send something, let's send over dinner and just have it for them. Don't ask for anything, just send it over. I look at that as one of the basis points of how we started Thnks, because that was painful to do, to be honest. It took a long time to figure out where is it going, and are they going to be there, and all these experiences like, and this is what we should be doing all the time though. Then actually did change the tender of that deal, and it just changed the way we interacted following that. That little thing that was just, we hear that you're super busy and this is stuff for you, we're there for you. So all these things start to click and you're like, man, this needs to be something that I can do. That was really the basis of Thnks. I don't want to send swag and that's all fine, that's marketing, but it's not relationship building. It's got to be thoughtful, it's got to be in the moment.