Engaging The Next Generation Of Employees | ft. Lisa Ryan | Ep 129

People seem to forget if you change today, today will change your life. Hello, Lisa. How are you doing?

I am awesome. Thanks.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being with me and being on this podcast today. And first question really is to ask, how are you doing? Just during this crazy pandemic, during this.

Crazy time, you know, I went as a speaker who speaks at live conferences across the country. I went from having a very full April and May to an extraordinarily empty April and May. And I've learned a lot. Several of those events went to virtual and some of them postponed till later in the year and next year. So I really never thought that I would miss airports and travel as much as I am right now. But I'm really excited at some point, not in the too near future, but at some point to get on that first airplane ride and go to my first event, which right now is slated for August. Still kind of keeping my fingers crossed on that one. But I also have events in September, October and November that are slated, and right now it looks like they're good to go.

Great. Well, I'm glad you sort of, you know, building that schedule back up before I get you to maybe introduce yourself a little bit more for the people listening is just to ask you the question, because I think a lot of people that they're just sort of running on autopilot every day in terms of their busy schedule, in terms of everything else. And this is an opportunity and you just sort of touched upon it when everything just slows down all of a sudden. And it is an opportunity for people, some people to reassess, you know, maybe that they travel too much and they get too many early flights or they do too much this or whatever. Is there anything that's happened recently in terms of your schedule, of course, having changed that's made you think, you know what, when I go back or get back into things, maybe I'm going to adjust how I live my life ever so slightly. Is there anything that you thought this has given me an opportunity either to be more grateful for something or opportunity to try a different strategy in terms of how you move forward?

Well, one thing I think the biggest thing that has come out of this was about two months ago or so when it. At the beginning, when it started, I asked my mother and my family, because we have family text time, of course, and I said, why don't we all jump on a zoom call? And my mother said, oh, no, I'm not going to do that. I don't know anything about Zoom. And My siblings were like, no, I'm not going to do that. So the first one. So I forced my mother. I could have been just like, okay, we can do FaceTime like we've been doing. But I forced her to go on Zoom. And there was just me, my mom and my stepsister, the first one, and then the next one. My sister and her husband joined us, and then my sister's two kids joined us, and then my brother and his wife joined us. And so we got it up to nine family members that we were doing twice a week, Wednesdays and Saturdays. And then about three weeks ago, we decided to. We have a cousin in London who wanted to join the Zoom calls. And so we said, well, if we're having the cousins from London, why don't we reach out to the rest of the cousins? So for the last three weeks, we have literally had international Zoom calls with London, Trinidad, Barbados, Canada, and then in the United States, California, Nevada, Texas, Massachusetts, Georgia, Florida and Ohio. So we are having these amazing two to two and a half hour conversations twice a week with my family, one US based, and then the Saturday calls are international. And it's just been this magical time of connection that we would have never had. I have not spent this much time with my family in my entire adult life, and it's just like sitting around the living room with your favorite beverage and having a conversation. And it's been a really magical experience. And my mom on just about every call says, I hope that we continue to do these when life gets back to normal. And it's like, we absolutely will.

Yeah, yeah. Face to face engagement for, you know, for people listening. A lot of people day to day life, they do two things. They either do see someone in person or they text. And I think for a lot of people, they've stopped seeing people in person, then they've got to texting. And that's not, as you're an expert in terms of, you know, especially in employee engagement, but you'll know from an engagement point of view anyway, that's not good. That's not good enough for your well being in terms of just texting, stuff like that. So I think you're absolutely right. I think with all this kind of video technology that we have is keeping, you know, keeping that always in your back pocket as a tool going forward, I think is going to be incredibly important for people. So before we carry on, Lisa, just for the people listening, just love to hear a bit more about your background and for the people listening, just to understand a bit more about who you are and what you do.

Sure. Well, I have a company called Gradigy which literally is gratitude and strategies mushed together. So although I work primarily with association, I speak at associations to help them to keep their members, to keep their top talent from becoming someone else's. So I really focus on employee engagement and retention. But we do this with gratitude strategies to create the type of culture where people feel acknowledged, recognized and valued for the work that they do. So I have been. This is actually my 10 year anniversary this year for Gradigy.

Congratulations.

Thank you. Yeah, it started on October 12, 2010, because that was the day that my lucrative medical sales position was eliminated via group conference call with 10 people getting canned at the same time. So it's kind of been an interesting decade because you figured that my business was begun in a time of financial collapse. And through this year, just going through and seeing that same level of disruption in business and being able to just figure it out. You know, I think about it now going well. Starting a business in 2010 was probably not my most brilliant idea. But 10 years later, I have the tools and the creativity to get through this and I'm learning a lot. And even, even though I know things will never go back to the same normal that they were before, a lot of good is going to come out of this and I'm just excited about the future.

Yeah, I think that, you know, and that goes on to the point you said about 2010 as well, is that actually a lot of people would look at it and go, that's just madness. But often there's, you know, as the market changes, as industries change and whatever, and for anyone who is struggling at the moment, is that actually when there is a struggle, there is always opportunity in there. There's always an opportunity for someone in there to step up into that place. And it's not to take advantage or anything like that to provide the service that's required at that time. Right. So whenever you have a problem. So absolutely. Yeah. And I think you're right. I think a lot of good can come from this particular period if people can see the opportunity through what is obviously a very difficult time. Can I ask you what made you want to work in employee engagement? Because, you know, I have a corporate background myself and I could make a commentary on what I thought the employee engagement was like there, but it's such an incredibly important part, but sometimes in a lot of ways hard to quantify against, you know, leadership metrics and all of those sorts of things. So what made you want to get into employee engagement.

Well, the funny thing about it was, in 2010, my message was going to be about gratitude. I was going to bring gratitude into the corporate environment and teach them how to create, you know, how to thank their employees more. And until one of my friends, basically, I was all excited, told her about my vision for my business, and she just kind of patted me on the arm and said, you know, nobody's ever gonna pay you for that, Lisa. And I thought about it going, you know What? And in 2010, she was pretty much right, because we weren't really putting the numbers to appreciation in the workplace like we do now. So I said, well, what are companies paying for? And it was employee engagement. So it's the exact same message, but told in a way that companies understand, because when employees are engaged, they know that they're more productive and more profitable and more committed and more loyal. But we can actually get there through this culture of appreciation. So it was the same message. And for me, it was my own personal experience by keeping a gratitude journal. I had gone to a four day seminar with some of my friends that included a firewalk, and my friends and I were driving home from Chicago. We were really fired up, you might say, as a result of that experience. But we also knew that unless we took action, we'd go back to where we were before. So we decided to open up a Facebook thread. And every day we shared with each other, people we met, things we learned, experiences that we had. And one of my friends said, well, why don't we share three things that we're grateful for? And I was like, okay, that's fine, you know, and we held each other accountable. We did that every day. And it was that gratitude practice that I started in 2009 that literally changed the course of my life and of my career. And I knew down to the core of my being that that was the message that I was supposed to share. Because I'd always wanted to be a speaker, but I didn't know what I was supposed to speak about. I mean, I was in sales, but I really didn't want to speak about sales. I had done some network marketing, but again, it wasn't that much of an interest to me from a speaking standpoint. But when I had this, when I saw the benefits, when I saw what happened from simple acts of gratitude and keeping track of them in a journal, that was the message. And it resonated to me back then. It still resonates. And thankfully, I've been able to bring that message to thousands and thousands of people in the last 10 years, when.

You said about it, sort of, you felt it in the core of your being. So I know what that sort of feeling is like where you don't. You don't hear in your head, you kind of feel it in your heart. Completely different feeling. But not everyone listening maybe has got to that point, maybe is unsure of whether they felt it. And I think it's one of those things that you know it when you feel it. It'd be great if you can describe. If you can describe what you felt in the core of your being, what that. How would you articulate what that is to you? Because that is such a different experience for different people. But some people talk about feeding their bones or whatever else, but, you know, how did it feel? What was the sort of visceral reaction it had for you?

Oh, boy. You know, sometimes what happens in our life is we try to control everything in that what we're supposed to do or we know what our goals are and we try to figure out how to it has to happen. And Mike Dooley, who is one of my favorite daily emails with tut of thoughts from the universe, talks about the cursed hows. And sometimes it's just letting go. Like, I knew I wanted to be a speaker, but I didn't know how that journey was going to happen. I didn't know, you know, what I was supposed to do, how I was supposed to do it, but being open to, you know, what, whatever, you know, whatever showed up. And sometimes, you know, and people will say things like, you know, find your passion and the money will follow. You know, it doesn't always do that because if your passion is drinking beer, eating potato chips and watching television, nobody's going to pay you to do that. But on the other hand, so it's being conscious of how can I make a living doing what I love, finding a problem to solve that will help people. And the thing about gratitude is that it's so easy. It's easy to do. It's also easy not to do. But I'm not coming in with 52 steps to putting together a corporate business plan or business strategy or something. It's these simple things of connection, of looking for the good of even when you are in the depth of despair to feel whatever that emotion is. But when you start to come out of it to find one good thing. Okay, what's one good thing about this car accident I just got into? Well, number one, I didn't die. Number two, I'll get a new car out of it, so we just, you know, we focus on the good. So it's just these little strategies that in my programs, I actually, you know, start there because even though I'm talking about employee engagement, unless people can find the good in their own lives, it makes it difficult to start with employee engagement. We have to start to condition ourselves to look for the good, to be on the lookout for that in our lives. And then it makes it much easier to bring that more positive, grateful person into the workplace.

Yeah, absolutely. And I, and I remember, I remember coming across something basically said from a scientific standpoint that it's impossible to be grateful and depressed at the same time. You can't have both emotions existing. And from that point on I always talked about it from a positive tower and a negative tower. And it doesn't require any conscious effort to build that negative tower because our brain, because our brain is designed to help us survive. It will spot what's wrong, it'll spot the dangers and it will stack them and add them up and it just builds this negative tower. But it requires conscious effort to build the positive tower. And so similar to you, every single day I've, I add, you know, I've got, I used to have it as a list on my wall, but now I've got it as a sort of list on my phone every single evening. Adding something to that. And you're absolutely right, the difference it makes where it's a consistent practice, it just start, all of a sudden your brain starts to look for it, which I just, you know, your brain, I love how your brain can be sort of so clever and so stupid at the same time where if you, if you just tell your brain to go over here, it's, it sort of just looks over there and all of a sudden starts looking for something. I just find that so interesting. So, and I'd love to know, you know, those two elements. And your journey seems to be kind of similar to mine because my thing was a cripplingly low self belief and I knew that I had to build confidence. But then of course you've got to look at what is the market asking for. Is exactly what you said. You can't just get paid for whatever you want. So then I had to create programs for confidence in different areas. So what I'm really keen to know is you had this understanding of gratitude, really felt it, you know, internally, then you realize that employee engagement was this area to that gratitude could be maximized to have really positive effects. So talk. If you could provide a few ways that you go into business, you know, talk to business, and how you get them to incorporate those elements. I'm sure lots of people listening will be thinking, oh, please, my company doesn't understand me. They don't understand how to keep me engaged. I'd love to know some of the things that you. That you could suggest for companies to be doing.

Sure. And it really does start at the top. When employee engagement is just an HR function where the top leaders of the organization don't believe it, it's not going to work. When I have somebody come up to me after a program, they're like, oh, my company really needs you. I know that there is a very, very small chance that that company would ever bring me in, because it's the companies that are already doing things well and want to do things better that are the ones that succeed. And I will tell employees that, you know what? Life is too short. And you have all of us, no matter what level we are in the organization, whether president, CEO, owner, or janitor, we have a choice every single day to make somebody's day a little bit brighter or to make somebody's day a little worse. But it reaches the point that if you are doing everything you can as an employee and the leadership of the company is just toxic, then you have to make the decision. And unfortunately, I have had bosses on both ends of the scale, like most people do. When I was in the welding industry, my boss, Dale, was one of still, I haven't worked for Dale since 2003. He's still one of my very best friends, and we talk regularly because with Dale, he was there when I needed him. He could talk me off the ledge when I was having a horrible day. He would celebrate with me when things were going well. I can use whatever colorful language that I needed to to express my point. And he was never offended. And, you know, and he was just always there, and he was proud of me. And I had another boss that I simply referred to as he who shall not be named. And it was just the opposite. He was a boss that you could only tell him what he wanted to hear. It was not safe. You could have a conversation that you thought was resolved, the issue was resolved, and a year later, he would bring it back up on your employee review. And that was a company that made it really easy to leave. So, you know, you look at the fact of that these are not soft skills. There is nothing soft about gratitude. There's nothing soft about employee engagement. Because when employees feel connected to your company, they're going to give you, their heart, their soul, their commitment, their loyalty, where if you never express appreciation, if you don't even know their freaking names, you know, then somebody else offers them a job down the street, you know, for 50 cents more an hour, they're gone. And you just. All the money that you just spent on them in their training and their onboarding and everything that's out the door. So if we can start putting the numbers to the cost of engagement, then leadership realizes that, hey, you know what? Maybe if I start catching my employees doing things well instead of beating the heck out of them all the time when things aren't going well, maybe I won't have such a turnover in my company. But until they start doing it and start seeing the positive results that come as a result of these little things, it's not likely to work. That's why I start with such a foundation of gratitude, because I figure if these people are, are seeing the benefits with their spouse and their kids and the other people in their life, then it makes it easier to bring that person into the workplace. So it's a full. It's a cycle of appreciation. And when you can complete that cycle, that's when the beautiful things happen.

Okay. And I was to look back at maybe one of the top things, you know, I think for most people in the business, of all the things that they want to be supported with or appreciate, they just want to feel understood. And I'm amazed if that's all it really comes down to how businesses can have such a poor understanding of the people that work for them. One of the top things I remember being a problem is support in terms of career development. And I know that you've done work that sort of touches on that sort of subject a bit. And, you know, working companies where, you know, they're asking for lots of lateral movement first to get lots of experience, they don't necessarily have a sort of a, an X's and O's way of showing, you know, once you do this, you will get that progression and everything else, or in terms of providing realistic incentives and all of that sort of stuff, how can businesses be doing a better job in terms of supporting career development? Because it is a tricky subject. You want to, you know, there's only so many positions. How can people one do better work themselves? Because it's always, as you sort of say, it's always the business's responsibility, but our own responsibility as well. It's on both sides of the coin. How can career development, how can we make that easier? How can an individual in a workplace make that easier. And how can the leaders do a better job in supporting that?

One of the best ways is just called the stay interview. You know, we've talked about exit interviews and people already out the door. Why would you interview somebody that's walking out the door? It's like, hello, why are you leaving? Versus if you sit down with that employee and say, what keeps you here? What do you like about your job? Where do you see yourself going and how can I help you get there? Because maybe that employee says, you know what, I've been taking nighttime computer classes at work. I, I really like it. If there was something I could do more to use those skills that would make me really happy. So it's not like that employee saying, well, I want your job. But otherwise that person comes because they're taking these night courses and they found another job using those skills and you didn't even know about it because they gave you their resignation and you're like, well, why are you leaving? Well, because they hired me for these new skills where if you would have known that before, you could have maybe figured out a career path for me. I remember when I was in the welding industry, I had had one job where I was promoted into management way too early. It was with an executive search firm that I was at. I was 23 years old and it was just a bad experience. They gave us all basically psychological tests to see which one of us would be the best person in management. And for some reason they chose me over the 40 and 50 year olds that I was working with. Probably because of my energy and enthusiasm and all of this kind of stuff. But I didn't have the street smarts like I knew what to do. But I hadn't built up that track record of respect. And management at that time always just left a bad taste in my mouth. I didn't want any, anything to do with it. And so for my careers afterwards, like when I interviewed with Dale for the welding industry, I told him, I said, at some point you're going to want to promote me into management. I don't want it. I want nothing to do with management. I just want to be a salesperson and be responsible for myself. And Dale respected that. Now every once in a while he would bring it up, what about no? Well, what about no? And so traditional management thinking is when you have your best salesperson or you have your best person in production, you know, oh, we should promote them. They want to be promoted. Not everybody does. So sitting down and asking them, what do you see yourself or, you know, giving people the opportunity to try out different jobs and keeping an eye on them of what makes them light up, because maybe you hired them for one thing, but now they took over for Betty sue while she was on vacation, and they are just smoking it in this new position. I'm paying attention. It's like, ooh, maybe I can keep Joe, because I'm going to give him more responsibility in the area that he likes more than what he was doing before. So a lot of it comes down to paying attention, talking to your employees and asking them, because in a lot of cases, the answers that they give you of the things that they want are much less than what you think they're going to demand.

Yeah, when I think of that, I sort of use the analogy of, you know, if you ask someone how much they want to make, and someone might come up with a number like, oh, I want to make 100,000 a year. And you ask them why, and they go, oh, it just sounds good. And if you actually just do the, you know, work out the numbers of why do they. What. What do they need in their life to pay for what. What sort of level of entertainment do they want? And that number is always lower than actually this astronomical. So. So very similar to what you're saying, which is it's. You know, sometimes we have. Unless we actually do the work to actually investigate what the specifics and the motivations are, then you actually can find out, actually, you're saving yourself a lot there. So I totally get that. I totally get that.

It's funny, because when I was in medical sales, I was making six figures, and I thought. And that was the reason I didn't quit, because I was like, oh, I have to make $100,000 a year or else I will just die. Well, when my position was eliminated via group conference call, like I said, what I discovered is that you can live on a lot less when you're happy. I thought my husband would be like, oh, girlfriend, you are going back to work. Because I started, like I said, started my business in 2010, for goodness sake. And I took loss after loss, the first four. It took me four years just to be profitable. But in that time, I loved everything that I did. And it was such a realization that we have these numbers in our head of what we think we need, but when we really, truly love what we do and we're passionate about it, we can make so much less and really be able to enjoy life. And now, you know, again, 10 years later, I've Built up a really nice business. But I just figure that I do things until they're not fun anymore and I am still having a blast and I can't. Scott, my husband talks about retiring. I'm like, dude, I am never retiring. Just not going to have.

Good. And so on that train of thought, if you don't mind me asking, is what is the most important thing to you.

As far as far as anything?

Because when you talk to me about, you know, the thing you said a minute ago, which is, you can, you can do. You can, you know, if you're happy, you can be earning a lot less. And when you say that, when I hear things like that, which I really hope people listening take that sort of thing in, because it's not just some people kind of nod along and go, yeah, I understand that intellectually, but not everyone has got to the point of feeling what that feels like yet. I just curious as, you know, and you start talking a bit more in terms of, you know, not wanting to retire and finding the happiness and all of that stuff is what is the most important thing to you right now? Now that you've, you've had your sort of, you've had your success and you've had this and, and you're now just trying to find that blend of everything. What's really important to you at the moment?

You know, I really love my life. I love being on stages, I love speaking, I love the travel. But I also told my husband several years ago that if my travel ever gets in the way of us, you need to let me know, because my husband, Scott, we just celebrated 24 years of marriage.

And congratulations again.

Thank you. And he is the kindest, most amazing man I have ever met in my whole life. And, you know, the fact that we've been, you know, stuck together for the last two months in this COVID 19, I'm really blessed that I'm hanging out with somebody that I really have a good time with. So, you know, I love the energy of being on stage. I love the message that makes a difference. I have, you know, my gratitude. Thought of the week has been coming out every week since 2011. I make no money on that. It's not a marketing list or anything, but I love the stories that I hear that people share with me. One of these days, when it does come to, you know, Scott wanting to retire, at that point, I'll make him my business manager so that he can travel with me, because as a speaker, I get to go to some really amazing places. But I also I look at my speaking to create the lifestyle that I want. When I first started speaking, I wanted to be the next Tony Robbins man. I wanted to make $200 billion a year speaking and stuff. And then what I realized is, you know what? No, I don't. I don't want to be on the road 300 days a year, and I don't want to spend my whole life in hotel rooms and stuff. I want to travel, you know, 50, 60 events a year, you know, gives me just enough of that fix without, you know, because I had one year that I did 127 events, and it was. And I was just gone. I missed birthday parties, I missed celebrations. I missed my best friend's mother's funeral because I was on the road. So now that I have gotten it down to, like, I said, that 50, 60 events a year, it gives me the lifestyle that I need. The time that I want to spend with my husband, I still get. You know, I think it just really brings the best of both worlds. So when you look at the things that you value, the things that are most important, because as a speaker, you know, I might mean. You may find this surprising, but there are some speakers out there with really big egos. And sometimes that ego, that being on the road, that adulation that you get creates this, you know, this need for that, and it destroys the relationships in your life. So many divorces and problems and everything else. And I just refuse. As much as I absolutely love what I do, I love being at home, too. And I love the time that I spend with my husband and with my cats and with my family. And that's the important thing. It's really drilling down to, what do you want and what can you not live without? And I can't live without my husband and my family and the life that I've established.

That's beautiful. And I asked that question because, you know, for speakers or people kind of in that space, you know, the traveling is a killer. And a lot of the sort of fears you laid out or in terms of you spoke about the ego and everything else is finding that balance. And it's awesome that you feel like you've got that kind of perspective and everything. And how many people want to be Tony Robbins, but actually at what cost is sort of. Is a big part of it. Absolutely. However, there are a lot of people listening who go, you know what? I'd love to be on stage. I'd love to. That knowledge that I have. And they feel that maybe they haven't found their niche yet, but they just know they've got something inside of them that can provide value for other people. They just don't know how to get on that stage. They just don't know where those people are who are ready to listen to their message. How do people set up a speaking business for people? You know, and I, you know, I've been fortunate to speak for various different companies and things like that. Probably not in the scale that you've done. And how can people get their message across and set up their own speaking business, even? And then second part of the question is, during a time like this where a lot people go, oh, well, that's surely the speaking business ceases to exist. You've improved. We're speaking beforehand of how you can. It's not the case. You can certainly transform what you do into the virtual world. So how can people make that business a reality for themselves?

Sure. In the live world, when we get back to live meetings, it's, you know, there's a saying in the speaking industry. If you want to speak more, speak more. So what that means is at the beginning, you're going to. You're trying to speak at every Rotary, Kiwanis Chamber meeting. The nice thing about rotaries and Kiwanis and those type of civic organizations, they have meetings every single week. Now, you are not going to get paid. You'll get a free breakfast or a rubber chicken lunch. You know, they call it the rubber chicken circuit. But what you're doing in building that is, number one, you're always recording either setting up your phone at the back or doing something, because what you want to see is what is working with your message. Where's the audience really engaged? Where are they laughing? And then study that and keep building that, because what happens the more you speak and you're paying attention to it and you're building your speech with something that connects with people. At some point, somebody will come up to you after that meeting and say, oh, you're really good. I'd love to bring you into my company. How much do you charge? And at that point is when you're ready to start, you know, making a business out of it. There is no such thing as the speaking circuit. The mythical circuit, okay? You're not going to jump on it. So let's just, you know, get that out of your mind. It's probably the hardest that you will ever work. The longest hours for the least amount of money, and it takes years to do. And I put that out there because, again, there's this perception that speaking is easy. Oh, I won a Toastmasters contest once. Or my friends told me, you should be a professional speaker. You could have the greatest speech in the world. But unless you're an amazing marketer, it's better to have a good speech and be an amazing marketer than an amazing speech and not want to pick up the phone and not want to market your speaking. Business people also feel that they should hire somebody to do their marketing for them, and that doesn't work either. Number one, unless you have gobs of money to pay somebody who can't sell yourself nearly as well as you sell yourself, I still pick up the phone. I probably out of all the events that I did last year, 80% of those events were because of my outbound marketing. And that's what's also getting me through right now because I'm still connecting with people. I'm coming from a different area of more of service. Like the first couple weeks, I was just, we were all shell shocked. I mean, I didn't want to pick up the phone, I didn't want to do anything. But now I'm back in the groove and I had two conversations yesterday where they wanted to hire me and bring me in. And we are in the midst of a pandemic. So if you're willing to do the work, build your skills, hire coaching. But by the same token, I also put the disclaimer on this. This is the real world, not the unicorn and rainbows version. There are a lot of speaker. There are a lot of people out there who prey on beginner speakers. So before you invest in any programs or coaching, make sure that those people actually have a track record behind them. Instead of how to make a million dollars speaking, the only ways and they're making a million dollars speaking is they're paying speaker wannabe or speaker wannabes are paying them, but they've never been on stage and they've never sold a speaking gig in their life. I've spent a lot of money. I've spent more than $100,000 on training and coaching and marketing and everything in the 10 years that I've been speaking. And I continue to invest in myself, but I've also made really smart decisions with who I've worked with and what I've done. So I mean, that's a whole other conversation. But it's like I said, it's a great, it's fantastic. But the what speakers? And I'd say newbie speakers or speaker wannabes. The perception that they see of being on stage is such a small Piece of the business that's maybe 5% of the speaking business. The other 95% is, is making the sales calls and having the sales conversations and getting on planes and getting travel bumped and hotel messed up and stuck in traffic and missing your flights and sleeping in or having to sleep in a city. I've slept in two airports, Minneapolis and Chicago Midway. Not fun with 300 of your closest friends when you get stranded. Everything else, but it's almost like, and this, this analogy just came to me, that if you're a golfer and you are having a horrible, horrible game for 17 holes, your life has just sucked. You weren't able to get even close to the hole. You have this, and then it's the 18th hole and you have that beautiful, perfect drive that makes you want to come back and play golf again. It's the same with speaking. All of this work, all of this pain, all of the struggle that you go through for that magical hour on stage, it just makes you want to do it again.

I can resonate with that. So from a business point of view, in terms of at the beginning, you know, with it, speaking or coaching or anything like that is at the beginning, you, that first time you hear something, and I remember, I remember it was a boring.

You.

The detail, watching a particular video and going, that's it. That is exactly what I want to do. And feeling that feeling of excitement and burning inside of me. And then you have this, you know, when you, when anyone starts anything, you have that excitement, but you have this, I guess, unconscious awareness. You don't know what you don't know yet. So at that point you're like, yeah, I can do this. And you hear, oh, that person makes 50 KSP. Oh, yeah, I can do that. And then you start finding out what you don't know. Obviously makes you a lot better. But then you come to realize as you go through this process, is that exactly what you said? Most of what you do isn't the stuff that you thought of at the beginning. The marketing, the sales, all of that stuff. You have to love it beyond any shadow of a doubt, that thing for that 5%. Because, you know, I've had people say to me along the way, the amount of work I put in, was it worth it? Now it gets to a point where you sort of look back and think, well, that was a lot of work to get that point. But you're right for those individual moments, yes, it is. But if someone told me all of that work that be required at the start, would I have started? I Don't know. And so for people listening who sometimes kind of go, you know, I want to know more. I want to know how to do everything. I want to know how it all works. And at the beginning they go, I want to know everything. The thing is, if they knew everything, it would took. It would take. It'd be quite daunting. So sometimes it's quite good at the beginning, not knowing the full picture, because at least you get going. And I resonate massively with what you're saying where it's just. Just for that individual moment where you can then look back and it's so worth it. So absolutely. Can. Can. Can. Can relate to that. Something else I sort of want to cross back and forth between the speaking and the employee engagement is you've spoken about reducing the stress response. That was something that I've noticed. I saw come across you. And when anyone talks about this sort of thing, and I have a huge interest in it, because my. My thing is that whenever you look back at an event in your life, you look back at how. You don't look back at the event, you look back at how you saw the event. Therefore, how you define it in the moment is incredibly important. Not always easy to do to. It's not about putting sunshine and rainbows and unicorns all over it, but actually defining it in a way that allows you to learn and grow. So actually, part of that is reducing the stress response. I'd love to know from your point of view, what you think that looks like. And I'm sure for lots of people listening who go, I'd love to just some, you know, find a way to reduce my stress. And if we had ways of doing that in a second, then we'd be earning millions every month. So it's not always. But I'd love to know your opinion in terms of reducing the stress response, what that looks like to you.

Well, first of all, there. There's a couple different ways, but, you know, the first for me has just been the. The daily keeping up my gratitude journal. Because the nice thing about that is I know that in the 11 years that I've been keeping it now, it has rewired my brain. And basically it's I wake up in the morning and before my feet touch the ground, you know, I write down five things for which I'm grateful with the words I am grateful for and adding a little bit of detail to it. So it's not every day. I'm grateful for my husband, I'm grateful for my cats. I'm grateful for, for my house. I mean, that gets really boring. Does it need to be completely different every day? No. I'm grateful for Scott a lot. But what I do is I add the little things to it, those details, and that helps from a long term basis. And a lot of times I'll ask people if those people who used to have a gratitude practice and got away from it because again, they buy a journal that has dates in it and they skip a couple days and then they feel guilty and then they say, well, screw it. I just, you know, I'm not going to do that anymore. My whole thing is, number one, buy a journal that doesn't have dates in it so you don't have to feel guilty. But that's a long term approach. For a short term approach. It really comes down to the breath and when you are feeling that stress. You know, there are several different breathing practices. Mine, the one that I go to the most, I just call 4, 7, 8, because that's the count of breathing in for 4, holding for 7, releasing for 8. But I also like the box 4, which is breathing in for 4, hold for 4, release for 4, hold for 4. So it just kind of makes that. But anything that you're doing where you're consciously going to the breath and filling up the lungs, because otherwise, you know, when our breath is short, shallow, it's more likely to keep us in that stress response. Also, you know, heart breath, which is going and imagining, you know, focusing on your heart and seeing your breath literally coming in and out of your heart. That visualization, you can either do it with your hand on your heart, which will increase the flow of endorphins, or, you know, if there's people around and you don't want them to think that you're having a heart attack, you could still do the visualization of heart breath. And the nice thing about that is that takes you, that helps you get out of the stress response. One more popped into my mind and this is from HeartMath, the institute of HeartMath, which is in California. And they have an activity called freeze frame that I will also do in some of my programs. But basically in that you start with the heart breath, then you focus on a time of absolute joy. You know, what I have them do first is bring to mind something that is causing them some consternation, something that not going deep into it, but just getting it there. Yeah. And then we go where they put their hand on their heart, they do that heart breath. And then I take them through where they are focusing on just something that brings them pure joy, where they can feel that joy to the core of their being. And then after four, five, six breaths, whatever it is, I'll have them think about that thing that was causing them some problems and then just say to bring that to mind and how can I look at this situation differently? And then listen. And what that does is because we are in this heart space, because we are in this area of positivity, it makes it easier for us to look at a different situation, a difficult situation with a little different lens on. And then, you know, a couple more breaths. But freeze frame. Yeah, you can find that on the Institute of Heart Math. It'll take you through. But that's an activity you can do in one to two minutes and do it as many times a day as you want. Because what we want to do is give ourselves enough tools in our arsenal to that when we are feeling, you know, stressed, depressed, mad, angry, whatever it is, that we have some tools that we can go to to work on getting out of that stress response.

Absolutely, absolutely. And I don't know about you, sort of leads into my next question, which is, you know, I work with people with obviously different ages, but different generations. And I find a bit with the different generations that you start to see that different strategies. I don't want to make this a hard and fast rule, but different strategies seem to work for different generations of people. I don't. Now, I don't know if you feel the same way, but I know that some of your work is also will be in terms of employee engagement, is understanding different generations as well. I'd love to know your insights in terms of your studies through your experience actually in the workplace. But it just in general as well, what different generations are maybe looking for, what works for different generations and maybe what businesses can be doing better for the. For the next generation coming through. I know it's quite a broad question, but just any insights that you have around generations?

Well, the real short Cliff notes version is if you think about the traditionalists that were born before 1946, I mean, they worked to support their family, they didn't expect kudos. They didn't. They want. They didn't expect their boss to ever thank them or tell them they were doing a good job, they got a paycheck and they went home to their, you know, to their families. Boomers came in and they saw what the traditionalists had and they wanted that, but they wanted it much more quickly. So boomers were basically the generation of workaholics that they would come into the office way before their boss got there, work way afterwards, never take vacations, destroy their marriages in the process. So boomers did a lot of things to build on their career, but they didn't get thanked for it because that's not how their bosses were wired. So Gen X came into the workplace and they kind of saw what corporate America did to boomers. And they're like, you know what? I don't want me none of that. I want work, life, balance. So then we started seeing that coming in where they wanted to spend more time with their family because this was a generation of latchkey kids and raising themselves and very independent, also very small generation. Then we had the millennials come in. And if you think about it, the millennials are the offspring of the boomers. So here we have the boomers who were never thanked. And they didn't want their kids to necessarily feel that sense same, you know, abandonment. So they overthink. That's when we saw the participation ribbons and blah, blah, blah, all of that stuff. But the important thing to realize is that millennials and afterwards, these generations have gotten feedback their entire life. They got feedback on everything they ever did, every sports, every school, everything, as we had the whole. And boomers created them, helicopter parenting type of thing. But in the workplace, you can't just have a once a year personal performance review and think that that's enough feedback. Because generations now want to know how they're doing. And it's not like, everything, oh, everything you do is so good. Oh, my goodness, you're so awesome. No, they want to know how they're doing. Short check ins, how are you doing? How can I help recognizing when they're doing things well, letting them know what they can do to improve. Because this is a generation millennials, Gen Z, you know, they want to grow and develop in their career. That's what they're looking for. But the feedback is just different. Back in my day, you know, there was that corporate that, you know, that autocratic corporate ladder that I could just couldn't go talk to the president of the company. I had to talk to my boss who talked to her boss, who talked to his boss, who took to their boss to say, you know, can Lisa say good morning to Mort, the president now? You know, employees want immediate access. They want to be known, they want to be heard. So if you're an owner of a company and you just walk through the facility, don't say hi to anybody. Don't, you know, then they're not Going to have that same level of commitment to you. If you walk through that same, you know, the shop, the plant, the facility, whatever it is, and just are like, hey, Bob, how you doing today? Hey, how was Jimmy's baseball game yesterday? You know, that employee is going to be like, holy cow. He or she knows me. They're paying attention. And there's a different level of connection of wow, that makes that employee want to stay. So it's, you know, sometimes it's just walking through and saying, hello, how are you today? Knowing a little bit about your employees and then, you know, giving feedback but being much more accessible. Leadership needs to be much more accessible than they ever were before. So that would be the breakdown. But whatever generation, it's always about human connection and knowing how people want to be recognized. Some people like to be, you know, don't get, I don't care about the salary, Give me the plaque. Give me the recognition and the adulation of calling me up in front of the whole company and presenting me with a plaque. Other people are like, I don't care what I did. That would mortify me. Just come in my office and say. And quietly say thank you and leave. Yeah, it's individual. There's a part of it, I think with the generations, there's a part of it of just knowing that more is needed now as far as feedback, but as far as still making recognition in individual experience and knowing what people want and how they want to be recognized is where the magic happens.

And what do you think it's going to look like for the generation after this?

Well, the, with Gen Z and I think this next generation, I've heard Gen Alpha maybe because they're just starting at the beginning of the Alphabet. I have no idea but number, but we can't figure out like Gen Z, are they going to be more entrepreneurial because they, they, they have that blood and they, you know, they live in this gig economy, or are they looking for the stability of working for an organization that's going to give them benefits? So we're kind of seeing both ends of the equation. But knowing that, like in my talks, I will tell my participants, you have to look literally at every single area of your business differently today because it's not 8 to 5, it's not 9 to 5, because we're on 247 millennials and beyond. So Gen Z and Gen Alpha, they are the first generations where they're digital natives. You know, they have never not had a cell phone, not had access. So if you as their boss are Sending them an email at 3 o'clock in the morning because you can't sleep. They're like, oh, crap, I got to get back to this person. In 2.3 seconds. They're going to think that I'm slacking off. So it's a different level of stress that we don't have that delineation between personal life and business life. And it's the same thing in business. And I think with COVID 19, a lot of companies are discovering this because as Boomer led corporations would always be like, I have to see you. If you're not in the office working, then you must not be working because you can't work from home. Well, my husband worked from home. He's an accountant. For the first two weeks of this whole thing, he was working from home. They set him up and there's a whole bunch of companies are like, wow, people got a lot of work done without the constant interruptions of being called into meetings and people stopping in and they can work from home. But flexibility and time are some of the greatest gifts that companies can give to their employees. One of my favorite examples, I spoke to a roofing association a couple years ago, and one of the guys in the audience says that, you know, you think about putting on roofs, sun's out, it's not raining. Work putting on roofs seven days a week. That's how the business goes. This company had such a hard time finding employees. They put on roofs from Monday through Friday. They give their employees the weekend off, and it's like, well, have they lost business? Yeah, but have they actually been more profitable? Yeah, because they don't have the same turnover. These employees like having their weekends off, and they're more likely to put in longer hours during the week to get the jobs done so that they can do that. So we just look at those different aspects of our business, and COVID 19 has changed a lot of that. I do have time for one more quick story, please.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Okay. I'm actually doing some presentation skills coaching with a minister right now, and I was hired by this church before COVID 19 happened. So I was supposed to go to the service and watch the minister and then work with him after the service on, you know, just presentation delivery. Well, then Covid happened, and so now what they've done is they have gone to doing their services on Facebook Live and all of our our coaching is done via Zoom. Now, if I would have told this guy three months ago, hey, what I think you should do is put your services on Facebook because You'll have a wider audience. He would have said, oh no, congregation's not on Facebook, they'd never do it, nobody will like it. We have to meet in service. That's what we have a service church for. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Now, Instead of having 60 people in the pews, he has 350 people across the country and people saying, because they're in the chat, they're making comments during Facebook, they're connecting with each other, the minister is asking them to share things in the chat. So there's actually conversation going on where this would have never happened. And even when they go back to meeting live, they're still doing Facebook live. So these businesses that we get stuck in our head that this is the way it has to be, that has completely turned on its head right now, and these are some of the many benefits that I think are going to happen, is that we're looking at our business differently and we're seeing that there's a lot more creative things that we can do to be successful in business and to reach a lot more people than we ever thought possible before this all happened.

I totally agree with that. And in the uk, our sort of local doctors or GP surgeries, you know, people to get their sort of, you know, everyday kind of checkups and things like that, where none of that, none of it, forget video, it just wasn't online, it was all paperwork and just in the uk, just really realizing how have they existed doing it that way. And it's always the difference between do you want to change? People don't get what they want. It's sorry, they don't get what they want. They get what they have to have and businesses now have to, and, and now they're reaping the benefits and results and you know, these, these local surgeries and stuff, they'll start to see the benefits of doing that in terms of time, in terms of profit, in terms of all of these sorts of things. The final thing I wanted to ask you was, as I said, it's your 10 year anniversary of your business and what you've been doing and this really sort of kind of empowering journey that you've been on. Ten years ago you had an idea in terms of the sort of impact you wanted to make. So it's a sort of a twofold question. One is have, do you feel like you've made the sort of impact that you want to make? And secondly is whatever that impact it is that you want to make in terms of whatever the specific, the core message of what you have to say is I'd love for you to be able to share that with people listening as well. So I guess there are two parts of this question. Do you first, feel like you've made that impact that you thought of 10 years ago? And secondly, what is it in terms of the impact that you could share with everyone else?

I believe that I have. Maybe not to the extent or to the scale, but like we talked about a little bit earlier, I'm really good where I am right now as far as the number of events that I'm doing and the number of people that I am connecting with. And it's such a basic human connection when I have people connect with me afterwards. And like that was exactly what I needed to hear. And thank you so much. And they give me examples of how they've used it at home and how they've used it in the workplace and how it's working. I said with gratitude thought of the week. The responses that I get from that and what I have found is the more raw it is because I used to do when I first started Gratitude thought of the week, it was evergreen. You know, I would Write these like 10, 12 weeks out and because I turned a couple of those into a couple of my books, 52 weeks of gratitude and 52 more weeks of gratitude. But when I changed service providers, I do Gratitude thought of the week is in the week. It's like on Thursday mornings when it comes out, sometimes I wake up, I go, what am I going to write about today? And so the responses are real. And like I said, I found that the more just kind of raw it is, I don't overthink it. And I think that that message that goes out every week, you know, it does make a difference. So in the 10 years, yeah, you know what I have, I think that it's always bigger. Continuing to have that conversation. I speak with a lot of manufacturing and trade associations. So changing those, you know, just changing the conversation when it comes to encouraging people to go into manufacturing, to go into the trades. But I am, I try to live my life with no regrets. And I think what I did very well in my speaking business early is that number one, I niched on a topic which was gratitude, which turned into employee engagement. And now I've niched into an industry which is, you know, manufacturing in the skilled trades. Now will I speak to any organization? Yeah, I work with finance and long term care, but 100% of my outbound marketing goes to the, you know, my niche market. So I Think that that's the other tip is to figure out what your, your message is and figure out who your target market is very early. What was the second part of the question?

I'm actually going to change the second part of the question based on some of what you just said, which is actually because I think you answered the second part, which is it's always in the, in the niche, it's always in that, that people can find out, you know, how to share their message. The second part of the question actually changes into what does the next 10 years look like for you?

The next 10 years? Yeah, I think that there will be a lot more virtual. I believe that live events from now, from going forward will always now have some kind of virtual component. So I have changed my office into a film studio. I have green screen. I have, you know, the bookcase set that you're seeing in the back here. I have a couple different curtains. I want to get better as far as, you know, production where I'm doing part of it live and part of it pre recorded and just making my programs more of an experience, which I do now. But when I'm seeing what is coming in the world of using technology and making it more of a show show than just a boring voiceover slides. Because I will tell you what, in a year from now or a couple years from now, if the only thing that you are able to DO is a PowerPoint presentation with voiceover slides, you're going to fail. So my next 10 years are continuing to get better at the craft that I'm doing now. Continuing to invest in myself and my skills, but also to take my technology up a level so that it can be more of a production and people are getting, you know, they're engaged and having a good time, whether I am actually in the room or thousands of miles away from them.

Absolutely. Well, Lisa, thank you very much for your time and your insights. And I these conversations, aside from the people listening, it's great to hear from people who've got 10, 20, 30 years of experience and you can get all those top insights in a short space of time. So I really appreciate that. And for the people listening who have that passion, who are looking for that thing that lights them up in the way that Lisa spoken about how gratitude has for her is, you know, when you feel it and it's an incredible feeling when you find that. And I know my sister, for example, she was looking for that for a very long time. She then found that in yoga. And I always say to people, once as soon as you find that you have to. You know, you're absolutely right, Lisa, in the sense that you've got to find a way if you're going to make if that's going to be part of your career, you've got to find a way to be able to finance it and make money from it and everything else and understand the marketplace and do that kind of audience insights. But absolutely, I think when you find that thing at the level of kind of passion, excitement that you've, you've talked about and the way you've expressed it on this call, then you have to steer into it. You have to, because it's such a shame, you know, how you could think about how different your life would be if you hadn't steered into that. And so it's great to hear people with that level of passion. So, Lisa, I just want to say thank you very much and I wish you all the best with your virtual engagements in the time being as well.

Well, thank you very much again. It was great to, it was great to chat with you.

Yes, absolutely.