Dennis Green began his career as an architect and practiced for ten years before becoming an entrepreneur/inventor. Mary Lou Green started her career as an elementary school teacher. She taught for 18 years before joining Dennis, combining her skill in teaching creativity with his design talents. Together they invented and marketed more than 50 simple consumer products selling them to customers around the world. They've been married for 39 years and have one son, a daughter-in-law and granddaughter.
They became interested in writing about marriage because people kept asking them how they managed to work so closely together and manage to stay in love. What was the secret? That question sparked their imaginations and started an investigation into what makes a marriage succeed? They studied marriage in the same way they go about inventing new products.
They wondered what would happen if they took the customer care principles they had used in business and applied them to marriage. Would it significantly change how we felt toward each other? Would it feel mechanical and unromantic? Would it kill spontaneity and make things feel calculated? Would it lead to keeping score, something neither of them believed in, or practiced? On the other hand, their shared business over the past 30 years was about inventing new products, so why not create a new way to think about staying in love?
First, they studied the works of top psychologists, relationship counselors, marriage therapists and church pastors. Next, they looked at the best practices from successful world class customer service programs. Finally they included their own personal experience from 39 years of marriage and working with customers from around the world. To bring it all to life and make it useful, they distilled everything they learned into FIVE STAR LOVE and what they call our Ten Powers of Passionate Care.
That's how a couple of enterprising entrepreneurs invented a new way to help married couples stay in love.