How to Run a Profitable Business & Increase Productivity

And so if you're wondering how to drive your revenue, and do work that actually makes you not everybody else around you, you as the person doing the work and selling the creative makes you proud. And it's okay, it's okay. If you're making revenue, like that's a good thing. That means you're being a good business leader. And so today, we're gonna bring on Lisa McLeod. She is the global expert in selling with purpose. She's worked with firms all over the world to help them increase competitive differentiation, and emotional engagement. So Lisa, welcome to the show. Thank you. It's such a pleasure to be here. And I love how you started this off.
And the purpose have to go together? That's right. They did the PS. I'm all about like, all the PS. I'm like, Yeah, okay. It's about people and purpose and product. Like I love it all. Well, so before we dive in, and really start talking about how you have linked, you have linked all of this together the purpose, the prophet, we're going to talk all about that today. But before we jump jump into that, I would love for you to share with our audience, what was your background? How did you grow up? Were you always into this kinds of stuff? Did you learn this stuff like take us down that journey of how you have gotten to where you are today? Well, this connection between wanting to do good in the world, and do work you're proud of and do something exciting and creative, and make money, the back and forth and ultimate integration of those two has actually been the journey of my life. Wow. And I remember when I was in college, I was trying to decide between being a business major, I went to University of Georgia. And I'm actually not from the get go dogs but I'm originally from Washington, DC and had relatives down south the hated the cold always wanted to come down south. So I go to university, Georgia, and there I am, you know, early in my college trying to decide between being a journalism major, and being a business major. And on the first day of business school, they say the purpose of a business is to return a profit to shareholders. And I'm like, well, who are these shareholder people? I don't even know what it was like that. I mean, I grew up middle class, I've no idea what you're talking about. And then I go into journalism school, and they say the purpose of journalism is to safeguard democracy. And I'm like, well, damn, that sounds like something really good.
Like, it's my take on right, the shareholder people that I've never heard of, you know, or safeguard democracy. And it was emblematic of what I went through back and forth. And, and as a, you know, you mentioned that women were weird about money. And I sort of had the double whammy of being female. What we're taught, it's not nice talk about money. You shouldn't be out hustling up money. You know, that's just very unladylike and growing.
up in a middle class family that also had anxiety about money, where rich people didn't have good values. And so you get you load all that stuff on, it's a lot to then try and go out in the world to make a living. And so my, there was one side of me that really wanted to be successful. And I was in sales, and I did really well. And then there was this other side of me, this very feminine wanting to make a difference, wanting to care for others. And I literally took until I was 50 years old for those two sides to come together and me to stop separating them.
So was there like, was there a certain person? Was there a mentor? Was there somebody that helped break it down for you? Or was that just like, your own life experience of like, Okay, I'm not going to put up with this anymore. And I'm going to create some type of education pathway to teach other women this will tell you is really three things. One, my own life experience, too. I had a couple of good mentors, who were male mentors, mostly mine, too. But the thing that really did it, I'm a sales consultant. And I, about 1210 years ago, was asked by a team, big company, biotech company to do a study of their salespeople, and identify what was unique amongst the top performers. And, and we knew what would the difference was between good performance and poor performance? You know, you could, those are all pretty quantifiable things. But what was the so compelling about the top performers? We're doing the study, I'm writing with all these sales reps, when are they in the study? And I'm with this one representative in Phoenix, Arizona, or parks at the airports, how does the blazes I'm about to get out of car to host my web, the airport, I'm sitting there, the air conditioning? And I asked her question, and this is a salesperson, big corporate environment sells, you know, these bioengineered drugs, very sophisticated environment, we've analyzed all their numbers or call sheet everything. And finally ask this one question, what not our list of questions I said, What do you think about when you go on sales calls? And she looks around the car and she says, I always think about this one.
little lady, this grandmother.
Yeah. She said, I was standing on my doctor's offices with my name badge on. And this little old lady came up to me and said, Excuse me, miss, you know, are you the rep for this drug? And she said, Yes, ma'am. I am. She said, this woman looked up to me and said, Well, I want to thank you. Oh, thank you for giving me my life back. Oh, that was my reaction. Oh, my goodness, you know, I'm in this corporate environment. And she goes on, she says, I think about her every day. She told me how she can now get on a plane visit her grandkids, because of this, you know, drug that I sell that made her healthy again. And she said that is my purpose. And so that single moment, this anecdotal question just synched it all up for me. And we've since done several studies, and the data could not be more clear. sales people. And individuals who sell with what we call noble purpose, who are truly all in for their customers and want to make a difference actually outperform the traditional sales people that focus on targets and quotas. And the thing, the thing that I think happens to us is it happens to a lot of people, especially women is we define salesy as this negative set of behaviors, and it's one of the only professions that we let the people who do it badly define it.
Because the data tells us that the people that have that sense of noble purpose in their heart, whether it's because they sell this drug like she did, but it's held up in other studies, whether you're trying to create the most amazing wedding, whether you're trying to help somebody with their marketing, whether you're trying to help them with their accounting, when you have that sense of noble purpose in your heart, you can translate that to your customers, and you will actually drive more revenue.
That it's like to hear you say it out loud. I'm like, Yes. Yes. So do you think like, what is the magic link between? I feel like the link between purpose like if someone asked me like, what's the link between purpose and profit? I think I would say it's the stories. It's like the outcomes when people actually share with me that Oh, my gosh, like we had a horrible tornado right before COVID hit in 2020. And a lot of my friends lost every every part of their business flow away. But some of them had gone through one of my technology classes, and they're like, well, all my business documents are backed up in the cloud. Thanks to you. All of our computers are ruined. But thanks to you, they're all in the cloud.
So that write that in there, like that made me feel so good to know that, you know, I save something from them, you know, they had to go deal with all their personal stuff, but all their business stuff was at least backed up in the cloud. And they knew when they needed it, it would be ready for them. And so that makes like, a big difference. And then it makes me you know, want to do more and more and more of it. And so but what is your secret sauce? Like? What would you say that that link
is between purpose and profit? You're right, it's the story. And it's what we call your noble sales purpose. So I want to explain to people, profit is a lagging indicator. And all the data could not be more clear, we've done a couple HBr articles about it. Other authors have done articles about this. And you know, peer reviewed research, absolutely clear the sciences there, the purpose drives the profit, not the other way around. And so I'll give you something really simple you can do. So you mentioned you know, all their data is backed up in the cloud. That's the kind of thing that as a business person, that I helped you, I saved you, whatever it that makes your heart beat faster. And so what you, in your circumstance have already identified, what your listeners need to do is if you haven't identified yet, that thing, that really clear thing on how you make a difference to customers. And and in the book selling one noble purpose, we outlined the formula, what you want to do is identify how do we make a difference to customers? How do we do it differently than anyone else? And on your best day, what do you love about your job, and when you're clear on that, and you can say something like, I save businesses from ruin, I help them sleep at night, whatever it is, when you go in, to interact with a customer, you're not there to quote, sell, you're there to find out if there's a way that you can help them sleep better at night. Or you're there to find out if there's a way you can make their you know, virtual event. Be amazing, like whatever your purpose is, the thing that happens to us as women, men are sort of trained from birth to disassociate from their feelings. We're trying the opposite. We're trying to manage everyone else's feelings. And so one half seriously. Yeah. And so one of the things you have to understand is that is your greatest strength in selling is that the sellers, and know if you're listening to this thinking, oh my god, I can't sell, I don't want to sell this idea that we have that we have to go in and disassociate from our feelings. And do these techniques, know that if you do that, the only result you will get is mediocre. But if you lean in to how you make a difference to customers, and you start to say things like I'll give you you mentioned, the subtitle of the book, our company purpose is help leaders drive revenue and do work that makes them proud. So when I go meet with a customer, I need to say, so what's your revenue? Now? What could it be? What do you want it to be? What's the emotional engagement of your team? What do you want it to be? So I'm just asking questions around.
Could I potentially help you in my area of expertise? Hmm, I'm not I'm not talking them into doing something they don't want to do. But we've been so damn socialized to think, you know, to ask a boy to dance weight on the side and make them want you that we've just like taken that into every aspect of our lives. Yep. It's, it's so true. It's so crazy. And like sometimes if I like go have a conversation with my mom, or even my sister who's very much in that we are nothing alike in that mom role with four kids and stay at home with the kids and you know, be married, and he has a great job and same job. It's same, just like my dad, same company for 32 years and retire, which is fine. There's nothing wrong with that. That's just not the way that I see life entrepreneur. But it's hard to even have these conversations with another woman or somebody who's not going through the same thing as you because they can't really add value or help validate like, what you what your need is. And so it's funny because you said most of your mentors were men mine were too. And but I almost think that I needed to hear that from a man to say that to a woman like you are a salesperson, get over yourself. I don't know why you think that that is a bad thing. Like that is a gift where you can go out and people can see your passion. And that makes them want to work with you because they know that they're going to get some type of an outcome because you care. And that's not a bad thing. But the whole my whole life. It's like the slimy car salesman, like that's just what we think because that's what I grew up around.
So we've defined it by the people who do it badly. We think about the person who sells us the event at the hotel is helping us. And the slimy guy as a car salesperson. And, again, I this, I can't repeat this often enough. Your passion for your firm making a difference to customers is your competitive edge. So you don't need all those slick sales tactics, there are some things you can do that will make that will bring your passion to life. Just like any mother knows, you're passionate about wanting to be a parent, and you love your kids. But there are certain things you can do that are better than other things. And so one of the first things you can do is define your noble sales purpose. And I'll give you some examples of companies and I think your listeners may find themselves in the so we work with a bank, and their purposes, we fuel prosperity, we worked with Dave and Busters and their purposes for their sales team is we champion laugh out loud, fun, like, How cool is that?
We worked with an IT company. And their purpose was so simple. It was we helped make small businesses more successful. Like that was it, it wasn't sexy, it was super clear, they grew 10x based on them saying, Well, when I call it a small business, I want to find out how to make them more successful, super authentic, crystal clear is that and the thing that people listening to this need to know is there has been a sea change, because of the internet transparency started to force it but with COVID with the the social and the health and all the emotional crisises customers are asking, Are you here to help me? Or are you just here to close me. And if you are showing up in an open hearted way to truly help them, that is your advantage?
I love that it's so true. And like so a lot. And the reason I keep saying women is because you know, I'm around a lot of women, and I hear this so many times is like what am I doing wrong? So even if the men are listening, like is there a difference between? Like, what are we doing wrong? About noble, noble purpose? And like having a purpose? Like, do you think it's a generational thing? Do you think it's a gender thing? Or do you think that it's, it's equally on both sides of what is really happening? Like, why do we keep getting it wrong? Well, I'll tell you why. And as human beings, we are hardwired to want to make a difference. This transcends age, race, sex, generational nationality, we want to things belonging, and significance, we want to know that we're part of something bigger than ourselves. And we want to know that our individual contribution matters. And the reason that we're getting this wrong in business, is because we're trying to manage to the lagging indicators of revenue and profit and deal size. They're lagging indicators, the leading indicators are your words and your beliefs. So the way that you talk about your business
in to others and to yourself, is 100% in your control and compare the difference between the company and they're very public about this, their results are in selling a noble purpose. And they they were cmit, they are out of Austin, Texas, and they grew exponentially. And they said the difference between
with two different things before they started this one was the people who showed up and said, I'm the IT guy, I will get your it and figure out how I can help you, I was pretty good. We are the guys that showed up and said, I want to try and do business with you. But when they switch to my noble purpose is to help you be more successful. Let's talk about
what success means to you, and what might be getting in your way. Just that shift at the beginning translates into a completely different customer interaction. So instead of focusing on closing, or instead of focusing on let me tell you all about my stuff and why it's so great. Your focus is on let's talk about within my area of expertise, what you're trying to do and how I might help you and that is a natural for women. Yes. And it's crazy if you just ask if you just ask. And like I learned this the hard way in learning about sales funnels and marketing and digital marketing like I really did. I took the hard route because I thought that I was like people are asking this, I know they need it. And I just flat out tell them how it is and
I put like all the emotions and the empathy aside, but then if I like, actually share some real stories of like things that actually happened to me, which has driven me to be the way that I am, when it comes to strategy and sales funnels, it's because of some of the bad experiences that I've had. But I never really knew to talk about that. I'm like, Why do people care. But now, like, I get it, like it's relatable. And some women that I've talked to, they don't want people to think they're stupid, because like they made a bad decision, or they made a wrong decision. But what I've learned from all these experiences is if you just ask your audience, or you ask 10 other women around you, like, Hey, is this a good idea? And then go test it, put it out there and test it before you actually launch something, which, again, that was so foreign to me, I'm like, why would I pre sell something like an online course, or even a book, if I'm not done with it, like, my brain just doesn't work that way. But people don't. They don't. Because the who teaches that nobody teaches that. And I think I was at a seminar or conference that I was attending. And, and that's why I every year, we have a certain amount of education dollars allocated for growth. And so a lot of this stuff is self taught. And you don't know these things. But as soon as I learn a technique, I'm like, oh, that actually makes more sense. And then as you're building something, you have the opportunity to pivot and change and add and take away based on your audience's input and like what they're saying to you. And so it's just it's been such a healthy pathway to becoming like a better leader, a better woman, a better person, all of that, in listening to everybody else in learning and listening to the empathy because I never really picked up on I didn't grow up with that. My dad's like, you know, I fall out of a tree, and he's like, get your ass up. You're fine. Yeah, no crying aloud. My mother was like that, but, but I think one of the things for women, so you mentioned earlier, getting mentored by men, and certainly most of us, especially of a certain age, because that's that's who was available as business leaders. But I think now is the time to I have a most of my clients are male. And I have a lot of great men in my life. Having said that, now is the time to lean on other women. Because your empathy, your compassion, those are your competitive advantages. And so you want to lean on people who understand the value that I tell you some of the interesting research that we found, and selling with noble purpose, and it's between passion and purpose. So people who have both passion and purpose are top performers and passion is I'm excited about something, I feel enlivened by it. And purposes, I know that this matters. So people who are both are at the top people who have neither or at the bottom. But here's the interesting thing. And this is particularly important, if you're a leader, even if you only have one other person on your team. If you have passion, but no purpose,
no sense of purpose, you're very susceptible to setbacks, and you don't perform as well as people who have purpose, but no passion. And most entrepreneurs have both. That's why they started. Totally reason this is so important from a scaling perspective, is if I have an employee working for me, and they're all excited about what they're doing, and our business and whatever we're doing, and they love it, and we but they don't see how it makes a difference. They're just excited about the subject matter area, they're going to wax and wane depending on the day.
The data tells us, you're better off finding an employee that you can instill a sense of purpose in that says, Here's why we matter to our customers. And here's why our work is important. Because that purpose will sustain them on the challenging days, when you have that sense of purpose that often turns into passion. But as a leader, it your passion may be personal purpose is the only thing that's actually scalable.
I love that. That's it's so true. Because if something and also to to, to me it like ties into this whole legacy thing of like, you have to have a purpose as you're growing something and then what do you want to be known for and what legacy Do you want to leave, which also ties back to the purpose? Yet the impact? You know, that is? It's It's crucial. So for people who are lacking now, this was probably me like five years ago, if I was listening to this episode, I would be like, hmm, my question is, like, if I don't, if I'm lacking, it's like, I know the purpose but if I'm lacking the
empathetic part. Is there something that business owners, entrepreneurs, women, men that they can do to tap in to that, because we all have it, yet some of us are uncomfortable, you know, like being vulnerable and, and going down the empathetic road. So do you have any suggestions for like how people can like tap into that sad? Yeah, and your your question is pretty astute because it is important, because the thing you got to remember is logic makes you think, emotion makes you act. Hmm. So we are and I just was listening to a Bernie brown podcast, and she was talking about, we think we're the guest, the the authors that were on there, were saying, we think we're logical beings that occasionally make emotional decisions. That's untrue. We're emotional mean, yeah, occasionally use logic. So let's get that on the table. So there's three things that you can do the first his name and claim your purpose, which is your version of we help small businesses be more successful, etc? And you answer that by how do you make a difference to customer. So that's the first thing you want to be explicit, instead of just implicit, within the second thing you can do to ignite the emotional piece of it the empathy piece, because that's where your instincts were, right? You want to tell stories. And there's two kinds of stories that you can tell as a business leader. One is, perhaps you have a founder story. Whenever I coach entrepreneurs, and I work with a lot of people that are trying to get VC funding, one of the questions I always ask is, why did you found this business? What Why was this important? And they'll tell some story about, well, you know, I went bankrupt, because I didn't know how to manage accounting. So I thought I'd help people with that, or I watched my grandmother struggle with figuring out how to get on Facebook. So we started this IT company, for seniors, like whatever the story is, you need to be telling that story. About what what was the moment when you went, Oh, that could be a thing, and show your vulnerability, because in a lot of cases, it's, you know, my own wedding sucked, and I didn't enjoy it. And that's what became a wedding, wanting people to have fun, you know, whatever it is show it, then there's a second kind of story that is equally important. And that is what we call a customer impact story. And in selling the noble purpose. We have several examples of these and ways to construct them. But I'll give you one example now. So at Dave and Busters, they have a sales team that goes out and sells corporate events. And one of their customer impact stories was we had a group, they were a group of accountants, they were the senior partners. And all of the people underneath them came to an event at Dave and Busters they were they had ties on when they showed up. They were not the rule that they were being asked to go to Dave and Busters. Two hours later, I walked by somebody throwing balls into the chute, and I overheard someone saying next to them saying, I don't think I've ever seen you smile this big in your entire life. We know you knew how to laugh. And that's what we do it Dave and Busters. Like do you see like, it's just a clear story about like, people come there. Their purpose is we champion laugh out loud fun. So people come in, they have this event, and then we don't tell the story. Notice how I tell the story. While there were 50 people they had hot wings, they had this they had no The story is this moment when boss lab for that first time in public and three months. And so whatever it is, like the moment at the wedding, the moment when the people called you and said, Oh my God, my business is in the cloud. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Like those stories do two things. They demonstrate your purpose and action to other customers who go I want that. But the other thing that they do, is they reinforce it to you. Mm hmm.
It Yeah, that.
There's just I'm like sitting here thinking of multiple stories, like as you're telling this, and I'm like, Oh my gosh, there's this and this. And this, that I mean, even to myself, because I learned so much from you know, talking to people is that I'm thinking of client of a certain client situation where I'm like, I could have been more empathic.
And I could have said things a little bit differently. And I probably should have done it this way. But they don't teach us these things in school like
what you're saying.
I just, I think that So to me, like just to recap for anybody listening the steps is like, know your purpose. And it's typically what you love and what you're passionate about.
So when I go in speak a lot on technology and backing things up in the cloud and productivity, and I'm telling a few stories about when I worked in mental health, we had patients that came in that went through a fire, and it made them be suicidal. I mean, that's just the reality of it. And they lost their business, they lost everything, then we went through a flood in Nashville. I mean, there's just been so many things and opportunities where some people come up to me afterwards, they're like, you seem really mad, like, What? Why are you mad? And I'm like, No, no, you don't understand. I'm not mad, I am passionate about making sure that you all walk out of this room, knowing that I don't know how you sleep at night, if your computer and your stuff is not backed up in the cloud, like, How are you doing, you're putting your life and your heart and soul into being an entrepreneur, and you all have a passion and a purpose. And then the other half of it that I get really passionate about is when I asked a group of when I'm like, how many of you know your numbers? What are your operating costs? What's your overhead? And they're like, well, I'll work from home. And I'm like, No, no, you don't understand, like, you need a computer. You need a what I mean website, you've got your social media, there's all these things that if you didn't have a business, would you be doing it. And so then they start thinking differently. And we start making a list of things. I'm like, this is how you come up with your numbers of you have operating costs, you have overhead, no matter if you work from home or not, you're still doing it because you have a business. And let's take the emotion out of that. Because some people get really stressed out about it, especially single moms that I work with. They're like, Oh, my God, I have to have this much money. And my kids, this and my kids that I'm like, Listen, if you have a strategy, and you follow your heart, and I know it sounds so cheesy, and you follow your passion, and now purpose, the money comes, I don't know how like, I just know that God has always taken care of us, like when we deliver and we do a good job. And we say what we're going to do, and we give it our all that makes people happy. And they're going to either come back, or they're going to refer you to other people because you took care of them. So taking care of people emotionally, like you're saying like, it's not a bad thing. And I think that women need to embrace that more that we don't have a disadvantage. in corporate America, we are allowing the disadvantage, because we're stuck in the old days of acting a certain way, where we need to step up. And like owner, almost like own your own experience, as you would say, the entrepreneur station. So it's I'm just sitting here shaking my head, it's like several scenarios that I'm thinking of, well, you've said something really important here that I hope people are taking away. You want to take the emotion out of the money, and put the emotion in to making a difference to your customers. And it's really important because you detach your self esteem, your sense of self worth your confidence. You want to decouple that from the money, and you want to attach it instead to making a difference to customers. Because when the money goes down, as it will, it'll go up and down and wax and wane. You wake up, if you've defined yourself by the money, you're going to have a real trouble. That's when you're going to go oh my god, I can't sell I don't want to sell blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Instead, you want to attach yourself to making a difference to customers. And when I say decouple the emotion from the money, you still need to have rigor around it. And so I know a lot of women entrepreneurs are also mothers, you wouldn't think I'm just gonna feed my kids, you know, maybe one day I'll do it once another day, I might do it three times. Maybe they'll go to school three times, like you know your numbers on your family. You know, the times that you have to be a practice you know, the time the amount of money you got to send to the damn PTA like you know your donor. You know how many meals a day they need to eat, you know how many kids you have, you know, their allergies, you know, their medications.
You want that same level of rigor in your business. And the reason you know those things about your home, is because you are trying to create an outcome. You are not trying to necessarily please your children, you're always trying to improve your children. And that's one of the distinctions that we make in selling with noble purpose. It's not about pleasing customers. It's about having a clear sight line to how you improve customers. And every mother alive knows that there's a big difference between those two things and the good mother
Others are always improving their children. And so if you think about it in that way, you know your numbers, you're just not allowing your own emotions to wax and wane with them instead, because that's just reactionary. Instead, you want to clear sightline, on how you make a difference to customers. And then you start telling those what we call customer impact stories about how you've done that you do it in your web copy, you do it in your conversations, you get curious about what we did that for so and so what might that look like for you, I said, there were three things. One is knowing your purpose, your noble sales purpose, the second is telling the stories. And the third is showing up for customer interactions, curious, you do those three things, you will make more money. I love it. That's awesome. And if you're driving and listening to this episode, we will put all this in the show notes. So don't pull over, don't worry. Because this is good stuff like this is really, really good stuff. And I love the analogy of you know, your kids, you know, I mean, I think of my sister's board at home with like her schedule with all of her four kids and what they're doing and where they have to be in the carpool. And I mean, it literally gives me a headache. But I think of it like it's just like running a business. And it's funny when people are like, do you have kids, I'm like, Well, I have nieces and nephews, that's a real big commitment from me. And I'm like, but at about 50 a year at a time, and they're like, Oh my god, what I'm like their clients, but I treat my clients as though they are my children, because I want the best for them. And like, I don't mean that in a demeaning way at all. I just mean it like in a loving way, like I want the best for them. And I'm not going to let anybody or anything, take advantage of what we're doing for them, because it is going to be a perfect outcome. And if it's not like we'll communicate, how do we need to get there together. And so it that correlation between like having kids and being a mom and knowing your numbers and knowing all that stuff. It's funny, it's the same thing. It's like in the gym, there's girls there that they work at the gym. So I used to work at a gym, and I used to be way more fit, but that's not my life anymore. So I can't compare that, you know, to the girls in the gym. And so the one thing that I want to say about that is like don't compare like you're today to like, what MMA today was like in the past, because I found a lot of people comparing themselves. And you can change your mindset, you can do better you can. One lady was like you didn't, I didn't think that you could teach an old dog new tricks, you know? And I hear these sayings. And I'm like, why do you have that mindset? Like if you love to learn, and you want to learn, and you want to do better, and you want to make more of a profit, guess what money is a tool. And it's not a bad thing. But the more that you can make, the more you can help, the more you can give. And the more you can make yourself available when you have a stable company. And you know your numbers, you got to know your numbers. You know if Yeah, you have to you have to? Well, I can tell you that I first wrote we haven't the new edition of selling with double purpose just came out last month, I wrote the I know, I'm so excited because we have so much data awesome, which I know doesn't make a book sound sexy, but we were able to put it in story form. And we have models for people we one of my clients said My favorite part of this book is the appendix. Because I don't have to read the whole thing. It just tells me exactly what to do.
Yeah, but one of the things, the idea for it initially came when I my husband had lost his business. And we had to declare bankruptcy. So I can tell you if your back is up against the wall financially, that's where I was when I wrote this and implemented it with my clients. And I mean up against the wall like college tuition is due next month. I'm not I don't think we have the money like that kind of back up against the wall. And if you can ground yourself in these principles, and then use some of the things you can generate money because we went from that to within five years. Just the two of us having a seven figure business. That's amazing amount of time and if I if I could do it, scared out of my mind with kids. You know, my husband lost his business. He was about to go off the deep end. It was the middle of the recession. Like if I could do that whoever's listening with you, you got there, you can do it.
But you cannot sit back and feel sorry for yourself. You have to take action.
Like, be aware that there are other ways. And see that's that story for me just change the whole conversation. Because that's where it's like you really do know. And this is your passion and your purpose, because you have felt that you have felt what that feels like. And you can get back up and you can keep going. But you can't be you can't stay in bed. And I don't want to say lazy, but some people truly are depressed. And when I worked at the mental hospital, I'm like, do you really know what depression is? I'm like, I don't think people really know what that means. If you never experienced it, like in a mental hospital setting, and I'm like, you can do this, get yourself out of the bed. And we have so many resources at our fingertips. Now with the internet, I didn't have the internet growing up. And I went to the library to survivors business. And so we do have resources to help us get to where we need to go if we need to put something in the past. But look, if you if that hasn't that had not happened to your husband, do you think that you would be where you are today? Not in a million years. I even knew it at the time. I'll tell you one thing that somebody said I two things that I read actually, one at the time, this was happening to me. Like, I'd read an interview with a black entrepreneur, black woman CEO, and she said, I'll tell you one thing about women of color. We know you can always solve a money problem. And I just remember thinking, Oh, she's right. Now I should tell listeners, I'm white. But I remember thinking you're Ray, it's just a money problem like nobody died, you know, nothing. I this is like a solvable problem. It's a numbers problem. And then another thing I remember at the time, we went to a Dave Ramsey workshop.
I figured you did as you were in Nashville. Yeah, we went.
And I was actually on his podcast to his entre leadership podcast. But we went to this Dave Ramsey thing. And it was before I'd written the book, and he talked about taking a second job at night. And I thought, what if I considered my second job was to go in for two hours, two nights a week, which is not monumental just two hours, two nights a week, and, and send emails to my network. And say, here's what I'm doing. Now, I would love to catch up with you. And I do that for two hours a night, just twice a week. And consider that my second job. Yep, paid off in spades, like within a week started to pay off. And I just think the idea that that we wouldn't, when we tether ourselves to the finances, it's really easy to feel down and to feel powerless, and especially as a woman to feel like I can't do this.
But if you can tether yourself to that noble purpose, and think there is somebody out there that needs my help, there is somebody I can make a difference to, and dammit, I'm going to get out of bed and find them. That's an entirely different feeling. And it will galvanize you, and all the data tells us that that will actually make you more successful because we've worked with everything from solopreneurs to companies with hundreds of 1000s of employees. And the principle remains the same. When you have a purpose bigger than money when your aim is to make a difference to clients. And you put systems in place to do that. You will make more money, you will also experience a lot more happiness. Yeah, because money doesn't make you happy. It doesn't. I've seen it lack of a journal.
I mean, you know, it can help with things but it's just like I've we've worked with some of the most wealthy people like in, in my former career with with luxury weddings, and we've had some very lovely people and we've had some very unhappy people. And it's in and more money. So what my dad said went out more money, more people, more stress, more problems. And I'm like, why don't we, I don't really want to look at it that way. Like I want to look at it, you know, to do things and do more and help more. But if you always put the people first does what I always say like the money will come and then you know you do have to put that business cap on sometimes in a if you don't want to do it. Get somebody get a business partner, get somebody around you that can be part of your team that can separate some of that emotion from taking the money. That's actually what I had to do. One of my mentors said, you don't need to be involved in the number process because you're not
a numbers person you don't understand. And your company's going to go bankrupt because you keep saying yes to everything. And so we kept up with it for an entire year. At the end of the year, he showed me how many things we actually did for free for clients. And then I went, I was like, Oh, those are the clients that were like the the hardest. They were not appreciative. They were they complained, you know, and I never take it personal. Because typically, there's something way bigger going on with a person. It's not me, I just happen to be the sounding board. And and taking in the negativity. And so that's when after it, but it took me a year and I had to see it before my eyes unfold. And I'm like, we're not doing this next year, we're never doing this again, like we have to prequalify better, we have to ask more questions, we have to get more clear and granular on our goals, as a company, as people and how we want to serve others. And so once we did that, and I'm not even gonna pretend in law, like the first few people we met with, and we were changing our business model, you know, they said, No, and I'm used to closing 100%. I'm like, Oh, God, I just don't know if this is gonna work. Like how am I going to live? But when you're stressed, and you're thinking like that people can see right through it, and say, Oh,
yeah, so I had to just get more confident. And I practiced with my mentor. And then the six person said, that sounds great, this seven person and eight person and then, you know, I was like, Okay, I'm onto something, this is gonna work. Like it's gonna be okay. It's all gonna be okay. But just keep the purpose and your passion. Number one, always keep it number one. So where can people find the book, Lisa? So it's at all the bookstores, if you google selling with noble purpose, love it, and we'll find it and we made it so easy to book, you can just pick up one chapter and just do one thing. I love it. I absolutely love it. So we'll put all that in the show notes. And then what's your favorite way for people to connect with you? Follow me on LinkedIn. We do videos, it's free. And we do videos every single week, I do a LinkedIn live every Friday. So that's the best thing. You'll get a lot of content from us absolutely free. That is awesome. And one more question as we wrap up. Do you have a favorite productivity hack? hack?
Yes. And I do it about 75% of the time.
And every time I do it, it works. I don't know why I don't do it 100% of the time.
It's the simple thing that everybody says, When I take 15 minutes at the beginning of every day, at my desk ready to work, but not opening my email yet. And I think, what do I want to accomplish today? What are the big things I need to accomplish? How do I want to do it? What would make today a win? How do I want to connect with the people that are important to me when I do that at the beginning of the day? I win the day?
So plan ahead, just yeah, I mean, it's the 15 minutes. Like I always have a calendar, I always have a plan. I always have a to do list. But the 15 minutes to really think, okay, I've got that meeting. How do I want to show up for that? What do I want to have happen? I've got this block of time to write How much do I want to get done like that 15 minutes of really thinking about the way I want to do these things, makes all the difference in the world. And be intentional with your time, right? Just be intentional work. So well, you think I do it all the time?
Well, I feel like especially with everything in 2020 it's like life happens and shit happens and stuff comes up. And it's just like, we can't always be perfect, like I do live by my calendar. But if something happened with my, within my family, or with one of the kids or something, it's like, you know, that's why I do have a great team in place. So I'm like, Hey, can you take this because I need to go do this. You know, it's sometimes it is more family is more important. And so I will just say like, be present when you when you aren't in that state of work. Sometimes it's hard to like leave the work at work. And if you're with your family and your with your friends, like just be present and like put the phone down and enjoy the time with them. This is not gonna be here forever. And again, I had to learn it the hard way with my dad when he got sick. And so being intentional with your time is so important, but at least you do it 75% of the time, you know, because I was your life before you didn't do it. Right. I'm a work in progress, like every Right, right. But that's awesome that you're like aware of it and you're doing it. And that's why we calendar block for everything and we batch everything because otherwise I wouldn't ever do it. It would never get done. Because I'd be so scattered. So I'm right there with you. So, everybody, thank you so much for listening today. I know you got lots of great nuggets. Make sure
Connect with Lisa on LinkedIn. We'll put all the links in the show notes, go check out her book. And thank you so much for your time. Be sure to tune in next week for another episode of business unveiled. Have a great day. Bye, everybody. That's it for this week's episode of business unveiled. Now that you have all the tools that you need to conquer the world and GSD get shit done. Would you share this with your friends and fellow business leaders? One thing that would really really help us and help new listeners is for you to rate the show. And leave a comment and Apple podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you tune in and listen to business unveiled. You can check out the show notes at Angela proffitt.com slash podcast and link up with us on social media so you can share your biggest insights. And I want to know your aha moments. Until next week, remember, the profitable shifts and structures you're creating in your business help you be more present in your life. So get out there and GSD