Saintly CEO: The Eye-Contact ROI: Why Treating People as a Gift is Your Best Growth Strategy
When You Truly Believe In The Human Dignity of Each Person, Your Actions Reflect It. That Benefits Your Business.
Happy Monday folks! Welcome to another issue of The Saintly CEO. Today is short again (skipping Heavenly Hustlers). This time my excuse is, I actually did a good job of observing the Sabbath and just punched this out in the wee hours of the night. I hope you don’t mind the brevity this week. Soon I will be back into a somewhat normal schedule after we find our long term place in Nashville and client work dies down a bit.
If you’re new here:
The Saintly CEO is a newsletter that comes out every Monday morning with the intention of helping you learn how to run your business like a Saint — or rather, how to become a Saint through running your business.
If you believe that you’re called to be an instrument of God’s will in the world, and you’re a business owner, this is probably going to be one of your favorite corners of the interet — nay it will!
[read time: ~6.5 min | word count 1,422]
The Eye-Contact ROI: Why Treating People as a Gift is Your Best Growth Strategy
I recently recorded a podcast with Daniel Tataje of Mercy Dental. Out of the many pieces of wisdom he shared, one has really been stuck in my mind these past few days. He teaches every person on his team to look every patient in the eye and treat them, quite literally, as a gift.
It sounds simple, but I wanted to dig into what that actually means and why it’s so transformative for a business.
It’s Not a Tactic
First, we have to be clear: this is not a tactic you do for the sole purpose of benefitting your business. We don’t do this to make more money or for our own benefit. We do it because it’s the right thing to do — it is a truly Christ-like behavior.
To do this consistently, it has to be part of who you are — a fundamental belief rather than just a habit. You have to recognize intellectually that the person in front of you is a gift, created specifically by God, and there is no other person like them. When that is front and center in your mind, a certain type of communication happens beyond any words that are said. Deep down, they know they’re being respected.
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When you recognize that a customer is infinitely loved by God and is a gift to you at that moment — because their time isn’t being spent with anyone else — it hits you in a certain way.
The impact is tangible. They enjoy the experience, they want to come back, and they tell their friends. But why? It’s because the beginning of a relationship is being formed. That’s all business is: relationships between people.
Customers will recognize that something is different about your business compared to the place that only cares about money, or the place where the employee hates their job and wants to leave every second of the day. You’ll even find they give you more deference; if there’s a dispute, they might go easier on you because they appreciate the relationship.
The Upward Spiral: Leading Your Team
The real question is: how do you get your employees to begin this “upwardly spiraling” positive effect?
It starts with you. You must look each employee in the eye and recognize that they, too, are a gift to you and to all of humanity. Employees will do what you do. If you have that level of respect in the interview phase, top talent will be drawn to you. You might not have the biggest salary or the best benefits, but you can offer something that is free and rare: true respect.
Imagine the impact on someone’s life when you help them recognize their own significance. Nowadays, so many people do not feel any level of importance. When you treat them with dignity, you gain more trust, more deference for your leadership, and a team that is willing to put in the hard hours because they respect the fact that you respect them.
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To get started reach out to admin@catholicfounders.com with what you’re looking for and we’ll get started. The Bottom Line
When it is the core belief of every employee that each person has value, they can’t help but lift each other up. This breeds a workplace where people actually want to be, dramatically lowering the cost of employee acquisition because your people become your best recruiters.
Let’s recap the benefits of this behavior:
Customer Loyalty & Referrals: People don’t just buy; they become advocates. They tell their friends and leave the kind of Google reviews that money can’t buy.
Customer Deference: When a mistake happens (and it will), customers who feel respected are far more likely to be patient and forgiving.
Talent Attraction: You win the “war for talent” not by outbidding on salary, but by offering a culture of significance that high-performers crave.
Operational Efficiency: Trust leads to better follow-through. When employees respect you, they follow instructions more closely and work harder when the pressure is on.
A Self-Sustaining Culture: This creates a workplace that uplift itself. Employees treat each other—and your customers—with the same dignity you show them, creating a reinforcing loop of growth.
And let’s not forget the merit we store up eternally when we make this behavior core to our every day life.
I don’t see how it’s possible not to have benefits from this behavior. But a final reminder: none of this is possible if it doesn’t stem from a true belief in individual dignity. You will see the benefits, but you must not do it for the benefits. Do it because each person is a gift from God, and they deserve infinite respect.
God Bless & Happy Building
~Silas Mähner
Heavenly Hustlers
Check back next week… hopefully by then we will be resuming the HH section…I think?
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If you care about building a family legacy (or if you’re against it) please listen to our episode with Johann Kurtz from last week. He’s the creator of the Becoming Nobel substack and the author of Leaving a Legacy: Inheritance, Charity, & Thousand-Year Families. This episode has a lot of gold in it.
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