Episode 172: Make Joy Your Job With Lisa Even
Your job should make your life more fulfilling and purposeful, not more miserable and depressing. Finding genuine joy in your professional life is never impossible, and it should be one of your top career priorities. Joining Amy Vetter is author, leadership coach, and keynote speaker Lisa Even, who provides strategies for creating joy in daily life as takeaways to remember in your own life. She looks back on her background growing up in a small farming community, her transformative college experiences, and her career journey from healthcare to leadership training and speaking. Lisa also talks about the power of active listening, the gift of being present, and the right way to address historical baggage to unlock a new personal transformation.
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Make Joy Your Job With Lisa Even
Welcome to this episode of Breaking Beliefs where I interview Lisa Even. Lisa is a Keynote Speaker, Bestselling Author and Leadership Coach who helps streamline what she calls a Good Ripple Effect. With a background in healthcare operations and team leadership, she now works with companies like ESPN, SHRM and Disney to teach leaders how to show up with presents, build trust fast and shape stronger cultures.
She's also the host of Have a Good Ripple Effect Show. In this episode, she's here to bring insight, energy and practical tools you won't want to miss. During this episode, we talk about Lisa's background, growing up in a small farming community, her transformative college experience and her career journey from healthcare to leadership training and now to speaking. Lisa provides strategies for creating joy in daily life and leave some takeaways to remember in your own life.
I hope you enjoy this episode. There's so many great tidbits in here to incorporate into your life. Remember, if you want to take any of this stuff into action, we have coaching programs on BusinessBalanceBliss.com. We have one spot left for our upcoming retreat in October, in San Diego. I hope to see you there.
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Growing Up In A Small Farming Community
Welcome to this episode of Breaking Beliefs. I'm here with Lisa Even from Des Moines, Iowa. Lisa, do you want to give a little background on yourself before we get started?
Yes. Thanks for having me. I am a corporate leader who went out on her own and now I do keynote speaking all around these two ideas. It’s this idea that we can have a good ripple effect. The second one is about making joy in your job. We often feel like after this project or after my kids are grown or after the thing that we can find joy. Those are the two areas that I love to keynote speak about.
Right up my alley. It’s great to have you on. Where did you start out? Where did you grow up? What did your parents do for their occupations?
My dad worked on cars and then worked at a car dealership pretty much my entire life. My mom was a hotel housekeeper. When I think about where it all started, it started in a tiny farming community in Northeast Iowa. It was like a beautiful little bubble. There was no crime, but you also didn't maybe go out and see the world. As my story unfolded, I was like, “I want to go out and see a few things.”
Did you have siblings?
I have a younger sister. I was the oldest of two and I have a large extended family. Mom was 1 of 11 and my dad is 1 of 8. I've got close to like 40 or 50 first cousins.
Were they all living near you?
A good portion of them.
You were the town.
Before you could date someone, you’re like, “Am I related to you?”
When you were growing up, what things did you play? What were you doing?
I worked a lot. It was a big deal. My parents were like, “You need a good work ethic.” My first job was washing dishes at a small cafe where farmers, locals and truckers would come, then I moved into a waitressing position. I also worked at a sandwich shop a few doors down some days a week. I did a lot of work. In small towns, you end up doing everything because they need everyone to play. I was in a lot of sports. I also was in a band, which was fun. You don't often find people that maybe do both.
What did you play? What instrument?
I played the trumpet.
That's where the cute boys were.
I know. We got to hang out in the back row.
You said that you knew you were in a small town. What got you thinking that there was something more out there? Did it start when you were a child? What is it when you have such a family insulated community like that?
I often use this in a lot of my keynote speaking. The first big ripple effect, meaning the first person to make an impact in my world. In high school, I had to do an internship because they made you. Everybody needed to do it. I think it was like an 8 or 9-week internship. I filled out the sheet and I just wrote, “Put me somewhere fun.” They paired me with our public relations lady in our small town hospital and her name was Brenda. I often say Brenda changed the entire trajectory of my life in a very quick way.
I was sitting at her computer. It was back before everybody had computers. We had to take turns using her computer, so I was at her computer and she was at her side table in her office. I was working and she was just chatting a bit. She's like, “Where are you going to college?” I looked at her and said, “It's expensive. I'm not. We don't have that kind of money.” My dad, always being fairly practical, wasn't against college per se, but was like, “You're going to take out a loan for a piece of paper for a job you're not guaranteed.”
He could not figure out how taking a big old batch of money out of the bank and then being like, “Hopefully, I get a job,” was going to be the way. When I said something like, “We don't pay for a piece of paper in our family.” She looked at me and laughed and was like, “The world is big out there,” and was the first person to stop me in my tracks and say, “You could.” It was before electronic applications. She helped me request paperwork and she's like, “Go see it. Go see a college.” As she knew, the rest would be history.
I ended up scheduling a visit day at a college that was right under an hour away from my house. My car was a beater and so I was like, “I can't go too far because I won't be able to get home.” I ended up going and it was the best thing. I was surrounded by kids from Chicago and all these amazing places. It opened my eyes to all sorts of things that you could do or be or see. Give it up for Brenda.
It also is something about belief systems, but you don't realize whether it's your belief or someone else's belief where you're repeating what your dad's saying.
It was very logical and a smart decision in many ways. It also was just limiting. I probably would have stayed in our small town, which there's nothing bad about that from a person who is a global thinker. It's fun to see more global type things like, “This connects to that.”
Your dad's way of thinking is like, “If you're just going to be in a small town, why would you pay for college?”
He had seen. A lot of the people in our town had gone away and then came back and were just financially strapped. It's almost like I got the gift of both like financial savviness along with a little bit of worldly, “Get out there and see it.”
When you are telling your dad that you're going to consider doing this. How did that conversation go?
He's not an overly emotional guy. He took it very well and was just like, “I guess we can go look at it and see, but I'm not sure about this.” They had never been to college. He was a little like, “I just don't know how to do this.” He hadn't taken a loan out other than buying their house. It was a big risk. Essentially, I applied for every financial, like Federal grant and scholarship that you could. I was like $5,000 short and he basically said, “I'm going to give you the money but if you don't finish, you pay me back and you might pay me back double.”
It was like enough. I got to college and some people did get to go. Even my husband was like, “I always knew I was going.” They get there and they're like, “This is so fun. I always knew I was going.” I got there with maybe a little bit of stress. I’m like, “I cannot mess this up because there's a lot on the line if it doesn't go well.” I always think college is awesome but also, I was a little stressed just because it was like, “Make it happen.”
What did your mom think about you going to college?
She is always excited. She's such a funny person. She's just more nervous that she wants us to be careful. She will hang up the phone even to this day and she's like, “Be good and be careful.” I think her mind was like I'm going to this big city, which the big city that I was going to was about 60,000 people. Depending on where you come from, that's either a giant or tiny. For her, it was like, “You're going to a place that has a mall and a movie theater.” All these things that maybe in our small town, you'd be like, “That's scary.”
Moving Out Of Town And Entering College
That takes a lot of guts to do that. How did you feel when you stepped foot in college?
I remember my parents carried Tupperware tubs or big tubs to my room. They're introverted, so they were like, “Have a great time. Bye.” I remember feeling like I don't know a mix of nerves. I was instilled with, “You can work hard,” so I know I could do that. Also, this idea that you can figure it out. I have kids and the biggest thing I hope to give them is that everything is figureoutable. I was carrying those two things of like, you can work hard and everything is figureoutable. I'm pretty extroverted, so I was like, “I'll just make a friend and they will know what to do.”
Joy: Always work hard. Everything in life is figureoutable.
Who was your first friend?
I had a couple. They had you do something like an activity. My friend Kelly, we went bowling and I remember sitting next to her on the bus. She was one of those kids that like it was always a thing that she was going to go to college. I was like, “She knows what to do.” Her older brother was at the college too, so that was nice because I was like, “There are people who do this. You can do this. Figure it out.”
Out of curiosity. Did your sister end up going to college?
Yes.
You broke through the generation shift.
We did. Even to this day, my parents are advocates of college. It was a mix of like they just hadn't been around it. When I say my dad talked about college more, it’s risky but also, now he talks about it in certain circumstances for the right reasons or like, it makes sense. That was exciting. She went to be a chemical engineer and she went for data analytics, so every college, academic technical degree, which was fun to see too.
That is very cool. Did what you wanted to be when you got to college?
No. I basically did what Brenda did. Brenda was public relations, so I literally majored in public relations due to Brenda being like, “You'd be good at it. You like to write, read and speak.” It's funny because I know in a way I didn't ever use it, but I also did. Post-college, I ended up deciding I was going to get a Masters because by then I'm like, “I love this.” I ended up falling into healthcare and that's where a lot of my career was spent. It was in the healthcare arena in more operations and project management. Nothing to do with public relations, but it was a great foundation of how you navigate and communicate thoughts and ideas.
Getting into college and seeing so many different viewpoints and worldliness and just different philosophies, how does that sit with you coming from such a small town? What were you going through personally as you're exploring that?
I think it was a little bit of culture shock because I had grown up one way and then all these kids had grown up a different way. My mom, my dad and my sister are pretty introverted and I'm an extreme extrovert. Even my mom was joking, she's like, “You look just like Grandma Madonna. If you didn't look like her, we wouldn't have known where you came from.” She was always alluding to I was just a little bit different.
Oftentimes, in my childhood, I was having to try on their glasses. I’m trying on my sister's glasses and I’m like, “Why are you like this?” I’m trying on my parents' glasses and being like, “Why are you saying that or why are you not saying that?” I spent a lot of time my first couple of years at college being in awe secretly. I was like, “That's normal for you,” then trying on their glasses. You rode the train to and from school or you've been all over the world. It was very normal for you to vacation somewhere fantastic like over Christmas break. That was probably most of what I felt. It was a little bit like, “This is your normal,” and it can be.
Getting Into The Healthcare Industry
How did you end up in healthcare?
I met my husband in college and he was going into healthcare. After college, we ended up moving in together. When he was studying in healthcare, I was going to do my Master’s program at night and on the weekends and I thought, “I need a job. Maybe I'll get something in healthcare because then I’ll know what he's talking about.” A lot of what I've done is like, “Emulate the people around you.” My first official job was at a staffing company for healthcare.
They were staffing healthcare professionals into positions and covering shifts in the emergency rooms. A lot of times, when you go to the doctor or the ER, a lot of those doctors are contracted. We were the company to contract those doctors to be at those hospitals. One of the only places in the hospital that's 24/7 aside from maybe your operating rooms is your emergency rooms. A little small town hospital struggles to find that many doctors to work that many hours in the year.
That's why they end up contracting out, which is way more than our readers want to know. Ultimately, I ended up working for a company that did that then I was doing a lot of projects on the side at that company. They were like, “You're good and organized. You should do some project work.” That's how I tip for staffing projects, then eventually into healthcare operations.
Moving Into People Management And Operational Leadership
Where did you go from there?
I moved into our health system. We live in Des Moines, Iowa, and so I worked for a health system doing a lot of project management. We ended up moving to Milwaukee, Wisconsin for about ten years. I had a senior leader, because I was doing project work. She was like, “Have you ever thought about leading people?” It was the second big ripple effect. I was like, “What do you mean leading people?” She’s like, “It’s an operation. They report to you. You have a budget and a cost center. Have you ever thought about that? I think you'd be good at it.” I was like, “Maybe.”
I moved into people management operational leadership in the neurosciences service line and I loved it. I loved my cranky employees who were like, “I'm not doing it.” I’m like, “Before I get mad, why aren't we doing it? I just want to try on your glasses and see what you see.” Maybe they are mad about something from twenty years ago. Maybe they are nervous that everything's going to change or maybe they're just not feeling seen and heard. I spent probably that first year of people leadership just trying on glasses and trying to better understand like, “Where are you like this? How did it get like that? Got it,” then we can move from there.
What did you discover? Why were they like that?
It was a combination of historical baggage. We all carry the things that have occurred in our past. We learn from them and we say things like, “We've already tried that or this is scary.” It was partially that. The other thing too is, oftentimes leaders tell instead of ask. I was just trying to be a better asker of things like, do you think this would work? What would go wrong? How have you experienced this in the past?
That does open up a lot of dialogue between the people that want it. We all want to solve the problem, so why not ask them how we solve the problem instead of just telling them, “This is our solution,” and then sitting there thinking, “Leadership never listens. They don't know the job.” I'm like, “I don't. Could you tell me about that. I want to know about that.”
Joy: Leaders must learn how to ask about the problem instead of simply providing solutions.
What shift did you see taking that approach?
The first shift I saw was in my engagement score. Every year, in a lot of corporate companies, people take an engagement survey. By my second year, I had a lot of like yeses, essentially, where they were saying we feel valued and included. I also saw that trickle over into our patient satisfaction scores. When you go to the doctor, they usually ask you things like, “Did you enjoy the visit? Was it helpful?”
I was starting to see some of those metrics move. Probably the most exciting metric for me was that our turnover rate went down. It was like I am holding on to the talent. They don't want to go places and even the people that did end up leaving. A few of them came back and were like, “I thought I wanted to be closer to home. My commute was going to be less but it sucks over here. Can I come back?” I was like, “Yes, please. I would love to have you back.” Those were just three of them. I'm sure there are more, but from an official leadership metric standpoint. Those were the three that I was like, “If our people are happy, our patients are happy and I get to keep them longer.”
Which is a huge metrics that affect the bottom line.
Over and over.
Teaching People How To Lead People
When did you make this shift to do what you do now?
We were moving back to Iowa. We lived in Wisconsin for those ten years and decided to move back to Iowa. My husband looked at me and he's like, “Go teach people how to lead people.” I was like, “Really?” He's like, “You should do it. You have a great way of engaging with your team. Teach people that are out in the world.” I thought I was going to do workshops and training for frontline leaders, then COVID hit. We moved back to Iowa 3 or 4 months before COVID.
I was in a new city and no one knew me. I was like, “This is great.” What I ultimately did was I reached out to 10 or 15 friends and I said, “We're all at home. Who do you know that likes to talk about leadership? I just want to schedule a virtual coffee with them and learn a little bit about leadership and what they think about their perspective.” At the end of the conversation, I said to those ten people, “Who else should I talk to?”
Those 10 people sent me 10 people who sent me 10 people and before I knew it, I had done like 300 virtual coffees and inadvertently had spread my name across the community. I started getting booked for not only workshops, but I had a couple people say, “You'd be great as a keynote speaker. You have a ton of energy.” I’m like, “Yes, and way too much coffee.”
That's how I pivoted into the world of training and then speaking. Now I do probably more speaking than training, but it's been amazing to be able to not only share some stories and some strategies but also get to peek into organizations just doing some pretty amazing things and having a good ripple effect. I'm like, “This is where it's at.”
How Leaders Should Show Up And Be Present
What are some of the top strategies that you tell leaders?
I will ask them, “What's your favorite season?” I'll have people raise their hand like, “Is it fall? Is it spring? Is it summer or winter?” I'll say, “Follow me for just a second. We're going to put that aside and we're going to do two things. The first one was your favorite season. The second one, I want you to imagine that you are going to give someone at your next meeting a gift or maybe think of a meeting that's coming up. You get to give this human a gift and there are no rules. I am paying for the gift. It can be tangible or intangible. Things like trips to Mexico, a chef, a housekeeper or it can be perfect paperwork.”
“Maybe the thing is the screen on your computer. You're fixing that data field that always comes back with an error. Whatever it is. You can give unlimited PTO. You name it. What are we giving?” I have them tell me what they're perfect gift that they're going to give me is. I say, “What if you're already giving a gift? That gift is your presence. You walk into a room and people feel it and much like our favorite season, they prepare for you. Have you ever been in a meeting where someone comes walking down the hall and you think to yourself, “Not today.”
We prepare for the people around us and so people prepare for us. We essentially bring the weather into the room. I get them thinking about what weather they are bringing and what's the gift that they're giving. If you're cranky or maybe you've got some people on your team that are complaining a lot, how do you shift not only your presence but how do you help the people around you? We talked a little bit about values and what we think about, say and do comes from a lot of our values.
The third thing that we do, not to get too lengthy, but we talk about culture. They get to do a culture audit of like, what are the things in our team's culture that we like and what are we going to get rid of? How can we make this a place and a space that has a good ripple effect? If something is happening that's knocked, how are we going to kick that to the curb?
Joy: Identify which things in your team’s culture have a good ripple effect and must be maintained, as well as the bad things that must be kicked to the curb.
What Lisa Misses About Small Town Living
I have to ask you. Is there anything that you miss about small town living now that you've gotten this whole shift in your life, your world and living a whole different life than your parents could have expected? What things do you miss?
Those are good. A couple of things. I think back to where in a small town, you don't lock your doors. You know everybody and everybody knows everybody. I think about the experience that my kids are getting versus the experience that I have. You'll never know what it's like to leave your door unlocked. I could pretty much walk or bike to everything. If I wanted to get to the pool, I could. If I wanted to get to my friend's house, I could. I know that my kid’s friends don’t live next door because we're in a bigger city. I miss that probably and a little bit of the people.
The people in a small town are a lot more friendly than a big town. When we were living in Milwaukee, even just like moving back to Des Moines. I'll never forget. My son was in second grade and we stopped at a gas station in Des Moines. In Milwaukee, the gas station attendants are behind glass like bulletproof glass or whatever and you pay through a little hole. You put your credit card in. In Iowa, that would be weird.
I remember I went to get some gas and grab a snack. I said to my son, “What do you want?” We went to pay and the guy at the register was like, “It's so hot out there. Have you been outside?” He was asking three to four questions. We got out and my son was in second grade, has scrunched up eyebrows and is like, “Why was that guy so nice?” I was thinking to myself, “This is why we're moving back to Iowa,” even though we moved back to a large city. Those are some of the things that I'm like, “In a small town you don't even know.”
It's interesting because I grew up in the Midwest in Cincinnati. I have my kids in South Florida. All their cousins lived in Cincinnati, so by the time my son was eleven, we decided to move back. When we did, something similar happened where they had to get their physicals before school started. When we walked in, the attendant at the doctor's office was like, “Hi there,” and asked him all these questions or whatever.
We sat down and he's like, “They're so nice here.” I'm like, “No, that's how people are supposed to behave. I'm sorry you don't think that's normal.” We would talk about how if you rush and people would be an attendant and say, “How are you doing or how's your day going?” You have to pause and answer. They're not just like saying it. In South Florida, if they even said that, but you're constantly rushing past people. You have to calm yourself down. The ripple effect of being pregnant.
It's a gift. Sometimes, it's hard to give that gift when you’re busy and in a hurry, but it surely does make a difference. That was the biggest thing I took away from just being a leader. It’s like, if you give a little bit of your time to listen. The ripple effect of that truly does pay off. Sometimes, it feels like we have all their things to do, which we do. It also is like that impact later of compounding all the efforts together. It's like, “I can't do it all myself, so I need my team to be engaged and excited to do it together.”
Answering Rapid-Fire Questions About Family And Friends
I like to end our conversation with just a rapid fire question set. You pick a category, family and friends, money, spiritual or health.
Family and friends.
Things or actions that I don't have that I want to have.
That's a good one. A quick side note, we make joy our job. I wrote a book called JOY is My Job and it's all about this idea that if you wait for joy to find you, you'll wait forever. The joy that we had when our kids were little was easier. I wish I could slow down time and make more joy with my kids now. They're so busy in sports and school, but we still sneak it in. I feel like it's like a half answer of like yes/and.
JOY is My Job: A book to spark joy filled mindset, moments, and experiences!
Things or actions I do have that I want to keep.
We track our joy like a bank account, all of my family. That's fun. Our kids have a joy list. We put it on our calendar. My husband and I sit down once a month and look at our joy as if it was a bank account. We do have that. It’s getting harder and harder to sneak it in there. My son’s like, “I'm going to hang out with my friends. Bye.” Can you have joy with mom?
What type of things are on a joy list?
We started with simple things like good food, getting outside and music. Now, my daughter has a very specific list like, make this type of meal or go to this type of place. In the book, I give a ton of joy challenges like a one-hour joy challenge like being a tourist in your own town type of challenge. We're always coming up with new and fun ways. They should be, hopefully, inexpensive, easy enough to do and real-life stuff.
Do you have a designated day to do those things?
No. We try to sprinkle them throughout. We look at our calendar and say, “Where can we put some?” Usually, I try to do them in like 15 to 20-minute increments. I have a pond right near my house and I walk around. It takes me twelve minutes. I like to have a couple walk around the ponds on my calendar.
I've been trying to be better about exercising, so I have a couple of those. One of our focus areas is just to laugh more. I'm listening to some audiobooks while I walk past comedians. My husband and I have been trying to catch local comedians here. Those are just some of the examples. We try to do things like a staycation and a vacay. Before either of those, we usually like to do a themed meal or something that gets us excited about the thing that's coming up. We're just trying to sneak them here and there.
Next question. Things or actions I don't have that I don't want to have with my family.
I get nervous about like as I age, not being able to be as active. That's a fear. I don't want to not be able to be active. It is probably a little bit deeper than you think. I want to stay healthy. That's an answer but that's what I think about.
Last one. Things our actions that I do have that I don't want that I want to get rid of.
I wish I could get rid of my laundry and my dishes. If I just had a dish fairy and a laundry fairy to come to my house.
That will free up space for your joy list.
I know. I could do so many cool things.
Thank you so much for sharing your story and all of the tips you've had. Is there anything you want to make sure to share that you didn't get to share or maybe that you want to reiterate that you talk about during this time?
The only thing we didn't touch on is this idea that we all should live in the lab. I envisioned big science, geeky goggles and a big beaker. I tend to approach life like, “If I try it as if it was an experiment, if it fails, lots of experiments fail.” I think that's the one thing like, if you're interested in making more joy or creating impact, get out there and do a little experiment and see where it goes. That's how we get ourselves. There's a quote that says, “Feeling ready isn't a feeling. It's a decision.” I think it's a little bit like that. Do a little experimenting.
How did you day that, feeling ready isn't?
Feeling ready isn't an emotion. You're not going to ever feel right. It's a decision. Making the decision to live in the lab a little bit because a lot of us are perfectionists and we want it to go perfect and we think, “We'll just wait till we're ready then we'll be ready.” I'm like, “You can just do an experiment and see what happens.”
That’s for sure. Thank you so much for joining. I enjoyed our conversation and there'll be a lot for everyone to take away.
Thank you.
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Now for my mindful moments with this episode with Lisa Even, which I enjoyed and I hope you did too. You can tell that she lives her work in spreading joy. We talked about her beginnings in a small town and opening up her belief systems and how you go about life when you've had parents that have lived in a small town their whole life and an extended family that's as large as Lisa's. You grow up with a way of thinking and thinking that this is the world and this is your future. That's why people that come into our lives from the outside can be so important as reflections of maybe things we want to do or maybe things we don't want to do.
It can be either or both. It also opens our eyes to get to know ourselves a little better. We talked about the first person that came into her life and as she calls it had a ripple effect into her life. That was when she did an internship in high school and realized that college was something that she might want to explore. I thought this was interesting because her dad said, “Don't pay for a piece of paper,” and that being a family mantra. Their purview of that belief system was from their shoes. However, when we start opening up our world and getting to know other people and realizing that everybody has a difference of opinion based on what they've been through or the advantages that they've seen.
That is so important in our own growth. It also is important in the way that we get along with people that have different opinions as well. You saw in the story that she was just saying exactly what she had heard her whole life. The thing is, a lot of times when we repeat a belief that becomes our belief and we don't even know why. We just are repeating what we've always heard. When somebody has a belief that's the opposite like in this case that college was something that might open up her world. We have the option to get present and try to understand and ask questions or we have the option to argue it and plant firmly in what we believe or what we've been taught to believe.
This was an important part of the story because when I asked her when she went back to her dad about that she might be interested in going to college. That he was open to looking at it and exploring it with her. That's a key difference in how we approach life, where he could have confirmed his belief saying that this was a family belief and gotten angry with her because she wanted to do this. The fact that he was open to it also had a ripple effect in her life and also her sister's life, who ended up going to college as she broke that generational pattern to shift that thinking and opportunity that was available.
These things become so important in our lives because they also affect us in all the work that we do as well and that's where we started to talk about leadership. The same type of thing is where we can see how people show up. They might be frustrated, angry or complaining. We can take that outward behavior and pass judgment or you can step back and try to understand why they're feeling the way that they are. It may not be that you agree with it, but you've taken a moment to understand it.
She called that understanding that historical baggage of coming into a role and understanding what people have been through, what they've tried before and why they're negative on something so that you can push forward a new transformation, a new innovation and utilizing basically what she was talking about of readers ask instead of tell is active listening. It’s having that open dialogue and making sure that you understand how someone's feeling in their shoes before you end up pushing forward your ideas so that you can incorporate whatever those pain points are into your ideas so you get everyone bought in.
Now, a very important piece to this, because a lot of times we think that when we take the time to do these things, it doesn't have a business effect. When I asked her what business effect it had, her engagement scores went up as far as her team members. Also, in relation to that, the customer satisfaction rate went up and turnover rate went down. These immediately affect the bottom line. This is what I talked about in the fulfillment ROI.
It’s this metric that we can put into our businesses to show the benefit of training and programs that we put into place so people can feel better and feel more joy in the work that we do. Another strategy she talks about was giving the gift of being present. We get so busy that when people approach us a lot of times, we are too busy to answer it or get a full understanding of the issue. It's important that we set time boundaries around the times that we are available for our team members so that we're mentally prepared to be present, to not be distracted with other work, other meanings and other phone calls. We are actively present in those situations as we are meeting with people.
I do think that this last quote that she said is very important because so many times, as the world is changing and as businesses are changing. People feel like they're not ready. That was important what she said about that quote of, “Feeling ready isn't an emotion. It's a decision.” We can act like not doing anything isn’t a decision but it is a decision. Whether we respond or don't respond, we are making a decision whether we're holding back the people around us because that has a ripple effect into their energy or we are deciding to do something about it.
I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. I want to transform myself and make that decision for myself. That is what our coaching programs are all about at the B3 Method Institute. If you haven't seen that, definitely go on to BusinessBalanceBliss.com. Look at our offerings. We have self-paced offerings, life coaching offerings and we have our four-day retreat coming up in October. We have one room left with two beds. If you want to get in on it, this is your time. Make sure to contact us if you're interested. You can find out all that information on the website.
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About Lisa Even
Lisa Even believes that you happen to the world, not the other way around. Life isn’t about checking boxes—it’s about showing up, creating connections, making an impact (Have Good Ripple Effect), and making joy your job.
From serving farmers and truckers at a small café in high school to leading multi-million-dollar budgets—and juggling life—she’s passionate about helping people think beyond their backyards and build meaningful careers and lives.