In Hug Your Customers, Jack Mitchell showed business readers how to keep their customers happy – and their profits booming. In Hug Your People, he elaborates on his big secret: hiring, motivating, and keeping your biggest asset, great employees!

“Giving great personalized customer service has always been the foremost goal of my family, but one thing we never lose sight of is that you can’t possibly deliver great service if you don’t treat your own associates right.” So says Jack Mitchell, CEO of his family’s astoundingly successful chain of clothing stores, where some associates have worked for more than 40 years. In Hug Your People, he shares his secrets for creating happy employees, secrets as simple as they are revolutionary:

• Be Nice to them (and hire nice people to begin with).
• Trust them (they deserve it and will work even harder and smarter to continue to earn that trust).
• Instill Pride in them (they are more productive when they are prideful).
• Include them (since you can’t do it alone).
• Generally Recognize them (and not only with money – but don’t be chintzy, either).

Just like Hug Your Customers, Hug Your People is filled with real stories about real people. Jack offers his principles on “hugging your associates – whether they are on the selling floor, the cleaning staff, the delivery people, the backroom financial wizards, the marketing and advertising teams, or outsourced staff. And just like Hug Your Customers, it’s exactly what today’s employees and managers need.

Jack Mitchell is the author of Hug Your Customers and the CEO of Mitchells/Richards/Marshs, three of the most successful clothing stores in the business. He lives with his wife in Wilton, Connecticut.