Walking up to the front door of Paula Marshall’s house is a bit daunting; everything is in place, all of the flowers are beautiful and blooming and I just didn’t know what to expect when I met her. I thought I would meet a very buttoned-up, high-stress executive without a hair out of place and a navy blue business suit. What I met was a warm, vivacious, beautiful woman wearing earrings that said ‘Love’ and leopard-print flip-flops who I would never think owned a business as successful as Bama Foods. What’s even more amazing is that Paula Marshall has been there and done that and she makes no bones about telling you about her failures as well as her successes; her cards are on the table.
It is clear to anyone who meets Paula for the first time that she has made numerous changes in priorities over the years, but the person she is today is the person she always wanted to be. Paula has not only made Bama into the food industry empire that it is today (she is quick to admit that she didn’t do all the work; she credits her employees with making Bama so successful), she also will tell you that she didn’t always do things this way; it took many years to come to the realization that she wasn’t doing things the way she wanted, she was doing what she thought other companies did, therefore that mode of operation must be successful. Then one day, it all fell apart. Her personal life was in a shambles, her business was nowhere near where it should be and her life wasn’t anything like she expected. Having everything you want isn’t always having everything you need and Paula decided to make big changes in her life…and that included her business. She decided that having stuff did not make a person happy, but taking care of people could. Since then, Bama Foods and Paula’s personal life have both become major successes and when you look at her, you can see that she is one happy, successful person who has it all, even if she happened to lose every penny tomorrow. She has climbed a very steep and rocky road to get to where she is today and she came by this enlightened person honestly. One look at her bookshelves tells you that she has worked very hard at finding the keys to inner success because without them, there is no corporate success. Books by Stephen Covey and Dr. William Deming line the shelves of her bookcases as do beautiful pieces of art glass she has bought in her travels around the world, letting everyone know that she is not just about the business, but about people and about being an approachable person first and foremost.
Our conversation begins with Paula stating that she is a very spiritual person and she has brought that spirituality to Bama Foods. She tells me that she is very concerned about where corporate America is headed. “We have a country built on a house of cards. We need to bring the soul back into the workplace. There’s been no ‘yin and yang’ and the sole value of American business is founded on the consumption mentality of wanting more and more. As part of my research for my book (“Finding the Soul of Big Business”), I went to Websites, books and traveled to countries where I researched ancient civilizations. I found that the ‘kill or be killed’ mentality that we believe was an integral part of these civilizations, and is therefore necessary to survive today’s economic growth, is a myth. People really did care about each other and they founded their communities on caring for each other. Every day, we are asked to balance our ego versus our soul; every minute, every second. If you look at the top ten CEO pay list, you have to ask yourself, ‘when is it enough?’ Does the pay correlate to the value? Bill McKennan (a journalist for the New Yorker) says we are headed into an abyss like climate change. Climate change is cyclical and McKennan believes that we are headed for a contraction where you have go global or go local with no in-between because growth is what kills companies, but what is the end result going to look like? No one is ready to make these changes because they are making decisions based on ego. Everyone is afraid to come to the boss when it looks like there will be a problem because they might lose their job. We base how we act and react out of fear. We use fear of losing your job as a means to encourage people to work harder, faster. We don’t tell customers that there is a problem because we are afraid of losing that customer to a competitor. I call customers six to eight weeks before the upcoming shortage and make alternative plans. It’s a hard phone call to make, but after they calm down, we take time and fix the problem. This fosters great trust when they learn that there is time to fix the problem.”
One thing that Paula does differently is to confer with her employees when a system isn’t working properly or a procedure is not getting the desired results. What comes of these round table discussions are phenomenal results that oftentimes exceed anyone’s wildest expectations. Can you imagine that? A company owner that makes sound decisions based on employee feedback and asking the very people who deal with these things on a daily basis about ways to improve output; what a crazy idea. Sounds like science fiction to many, but it works at Bama Foods and the raging success is all the proof that Paula needs to continue down this path. When so many companies are slaves to corporate expectations, Wall Street and escalating their projections every quarter to appease their stockholders, Paula Marshall is sticking to a plan she developed years ago. She calls it, “The soul of big business” and to keep it simple, she says that there are no surprises allowed. No one is to refrain from telling management about problems they foresee coming down the road. If there looks to be an issue headed this way, NOW is the time to tell someone, not when the black clouds have gathered and the storm is here. No one is afraid to speak to management about foreseeable issues and no one is intimidated by their managers, so information flows and problems get solved early rather than later. Same thing goes for dealing with customers. If Bama can’t get the order ready as promised, they call their customers right away and tell them what’s going on and why. As Paula says, “Leave your ego at the door.” In an age of automated phone answering systems and corporate indifference, Bama Foods is determined to go against the grain and think of people first in everything they do. So far, it’s working… like a charm.

3 Life Lessons for Entrepreneurs:
1. People come first. If you cannot accept this fact, you will not make positive strides.
2. Be willing to change yourself before you ask others to change. If you cannot change your own behavior, you cannot ask it of others.
3. Be present. Listen when others are speaking, leave your ego at the door and get to the real you. That person is in there, you just need to find them. When speaking to a colleague, no matter who they are, listen, engage and put the other person’s interests first.