Episode 7: This is How Your Values Drive Everything in Business

Episode Transcript

00:00 - 00:28

Erika [Intro]:  As health, wellness, and beauty experts, you know all about keeping a calm, peaceful space. But what about your business? Is that pretty calm? I'm Erica Dowell, business operations expert and your host of the Business Flow Formula podcast. Each episode, you'll get real-world advice and strategies from people who have been there and done that, and love to tell the tale, so you can clarify, streamline, and elevate your practice from the inside out.

00:29-03:22

Erika: As we begin, could you introduce yourself and what you do? 

Lisa: Absolutely. My name is Lisa. I'm a nurse practitioner and I'm the owner and founder of Empower Wellness in Elora, Ontario. 

Erika: Amazing. And how did you decide to first open IMpower?

Lisa: I don't know that it was much of a decision to open IMpower versus the path that life took me; that it kind of came to me instead of me coming to it.

I was in a season of life working in the acute care hospital system for about 17 years, and it didn't fill my bucket. I was in a season of burnout, and lots going on in the midst of COVID, all of these things. And it feels like a season of crisis kind of turned me into a place where I said, “What do I need to do for my life, for my kids, for my family?” and that was going to actually fill my bucket. 

And so I started doing Botox and fillers as a bit of a hobby. It was. Something that I was in a season of life, post four kids, where I was trying to feel a little bit better about myself. I kept going to different clinics, and it didn't fit my need. I would walk in, and I would feel like the people who greeted me at the door or the people who were taking care of me, they didn't look the way that I was hoping to look, for myself. And so I felt like I didn't really “fit in” in that group of people, but I knew that I still wanted some of these things. I wanted to feel better about my skin. I wanted to, you know, take care of some of my wrinkles and do some of these things. And so I sat and thought about it for a little bit.

And the other thing that I found was really difficult in that season was I would go in and these people, I would ask about, like my elevens, and then they would tear you apart and tell you all these things about yourself that I didn't think were bad about me. And so I found it strange that there was this industry that is supposed to be making people feel more confident and better about themselves, but it was actually forcing people to be some social media standard or ideal.

And it actually took advantage of their vulnerabilities and tore people apart. I sat and watched all of this stuff and went into a deep dive of learning about the science of the medicine and the technology, 'cause I'm a bit of a geek for evidence and science and medicine and pathophysiology and pharmacology and those things.

So I went into a dive of what this was all about, and I realized there was a gap in the industry of keeping it medical, keeping a diagnosis and an assessment, but also making sure that it was focused on the person at the other side when somebody's coming in. With vulnerability and needing to share, why aren't we sitting with them in that space and letting them guide what they actually need instead of us dictating and taking advantage of people as they sit in that season of vulnerability.

03:23-06:20

Erika: That makes a lot of sense. When you, I guess, opened your business and you were establishing some of these values and those kinds of things, how did you go about communicating them with clients and then eventually, as you brought on more team members and that kind of thing? How did you make sure to establish those values of making sure to empower?

Obviously, that is tied into your business name and everything, but like communicating that it's not about the superficialness or tearing people down, but building them up instead. 

Lisa: It was very conscious when I made the decision to start the business. I sat first with, “What's my personal why?” So why am I making this switch in career paths in my life? And I sat and thought about that, and then what is the business's why? So, what is its purpose for being? 

And I sat and I wrote my mission, vision, values, and I was very clear on that before I actually started any steps in the business. And then each step of the way, every decision of every product I bring in, any ad that we solicit, anything that we put on our social media, it always is a question to us of, does this align with our why and our mission, vision, values? Every employee that comes in through the interview process, it is a vetting of an alignment with our brand values. And I think we live our brand values every day in the client experience. 

I do find it tricky in terms of advertising and marketing, in terms of the noise in the industry, to get out there and put an ad up to solicit people to come see us and truly show who we are. But I think we've avoided traditional marketing pathways because it hasn't aligned with that “mission, vision, value”. So we're not doing paid ad, we don't do the meta ads. We, you know, we haven't been marketing in the traditional way because every time we think about turning that marketing dial on, it doesn't align with us living through the mission, vision, values. 

So we've grown completely organically by word of mouth from our existing clientele and just our presence organically on social media because we show up exactly who we are, and I think that, that's how we continue to perpetuate the brand values is that clients come in and experience it and they live it and they have these great experience with us where they build trust and build relationships. 

And honestly, we say to people like, we scoop you up and you're part of our family, so we, you know, once you come in the door, we're not letting you go because our treatments are for a lifetime. We don't wanna sell you a quick one-and-done just to have the sales and the cash flow through the door. We often have consultations with people and then turn them away or make a referral first. And I think that still builds that trust and dependency to us, and that's how people continue to share. And then we're doing things like this, right? Sitting on podcasts and having opportunities to have discussions, local business, networking, and just really building and fostering the relationships to tell our story about what we're about and why we're different. 

06:20-10:19

Erika: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Would you be able to share any of like the core value pillars that you have with your team, or like, I know a lot of businesses, in your value statement, for example, you might be like, we value this, we value “this”. Do you have any examples of those pillars? 

Lisa: Empowerment is obviously one that's, that's in the name, and so that one becomes the very obvious. Our purpose for being is to help people see the power in themselves and to just give people that confidence. Our whole goal with every one of our team is, when you come in, we want to leave you feeling better, and we find often even just sitting with people, hearing them, making space for them, especially in the world that we're living right now, that, that's the most important service that we can provide for people is just a genuine, authentic care for people. And that's the thing that helps them feel better because they can feel seen, they can feel heard, and then we put in the quality piece. 

So the next pillar is our quality, where we're saying, “we are the experts”. We have, you know, our medical estheticians are trained and we have the best technology and we are looking at gold standard practice and the things that we do for continuing education and training the team to hold those standards so that clients, when they come and say, this is my concern, that we're actually recommending what's best based on science and evidence, and the services and technology that are in-house are the best that there is to offer out on the market currently.

As well, we want to make sure that we're an inclusive practice. That's something that, if you didn't look a stereotypical way, you didn't feel comfortable fitting in. So, we wanted to make sure that we had a practice where anybody could feel welcome coming through our door, and that was meant for all purpose. It's gender, it's race, it's sexual orientation, it's age. 

It's all of those things that this industry typically is meant for a 30-year-old female with Caucasian skin that wants to look a certain way, and we wanted to make sure that we have a safe space where men can walk in our door and feel like they can talk about their concerns, or skin of different colours can come in and we actually have technology that's here and available that's safe to treat skin of different colours because majority of the treatment pathways are actually made for white skin. And so, wanting to ensure that we can make sure anybody who comes through the door that we can offer best practice, or we have the expertise to be able to refer these people so that they're getting cared for instead of turned away or mistreated.

And then, family. Family was one that evolved over time with us. It wasn't an original brand pillar, but we sat with our team, and every year we do an annual process where we evaluate our personal values and our brand values and what we're doing and our purpose for being. And the key value that came across all of our team as an important top-five value was family. That we all chose this path in this life to be able to balance our personal lives and our families, and we wanted to make sure that that was lived in the experience coming through the door. That we want to treat you like you're a family member, we want to sit down. 

You're not a cheap sale, you're not a stranger; we get to know you, we want know about your monumental life events. We're gonna celebrate with you, we're gonna be here to cheer you on. And you know, we see the clients and we, you know, do happy dances in the hallway about things going on. And so we really wanted to embody that, that family piece in our journey.

And then the last brand pillar is wellness. Also, in the brand name that we're really focusing on the upstream thinking, the prevention, thinking about a state of wellness and being, and that that can be broader than just skin health. That there's places for mental health, physical health, preventative medicine, all those types of things. And that's shown in future things that are coming down the pipeline with IMpower, but also in some of the collaborations and partnerships that we're doing as well. 

10:20-15:01

Erika: I love that. It's important to me as well with my brand that I'm partnering with brands that value the same things that we do. Whether that's diversity, equity, and inclusion, or prioritizing living wages or those kinds of things, or just sustainability, not necessarily environmental sustainability, but also just work-life balance, sustainability and getting rid of the hustle culture and that kind of thing. Showing up authentically, you name it. So I love to hear other businesses doing the same. 

How would you say that you want to impact your community, whether that's literally the community right outside your front door or just those around you and leaving that lasting legacy as you are building your business over the last few years, and of course, going into the future?

Lisa: So our purpose for being is to help people see the power within. That's, that is our grand vision for what we want to do. And so we're working to leave that legacy across the board for everybody who has contact with us. So the clients who come in, it may be something as simple as the confidence boost or somebody who sat with them, or, you know, you have something that you walk around and you're embarrassed about your whole life, and then we're able to help support, you know, correcting that or minimizing that so that you're, you're feeling good.

Some of that is preventative medicine things. So thinking about 80-year-old self and how we are taking a space in somebody's journey or path and how we are helping 80-year-old them be thankful for some of the steps that are being taken. But I think for me, as the owner of the business, you know, that was the stuff that was there because our clients are who we serve.

For me, the priority in this season has really been, how do we do this with our staff and our team? These industries, health and wellness industries, are quite toxic work environments. They are full of gossip and competition and cattiness and drama and all the things. Healthcare is as well. Anybody who is in the industry is probably like, hell yeah, right now. [Laughs] Um, but it was a very thoughtful process for me coming from the acute care hospital world and managing people about what leadership would look like for me in terms of bringing team members in, helping them find their power. Because I think a team that will serve clients the best are actually living in their power and not being confined by the box of traditional things.

Living those brand values of ensuring that we have balance of things like family, and that you have a work family. That you truly, you know, can love, hate, move through the motions with your work family because you spend a lot of waking hours with the people that you work with, and if you're miserable, that's an awful way to spend your days. So we're quite conscious about that. 

And then broader in terms of the industry, I think we're hoping to set the standard of that we can do better. We can start offering people best practice. We can put the medicine back in. We can stop forcing people to feel like they need to be this Instagram-cliche standard, and that we can really see this industry instead of a negative perspective as something that really builds people up instead of tears people apart or tries to make them, you know, fit the mold of something. 

And lastly, we look to partner and collaborate with people like yourself and other businesses down the hall, we have some subletters. We, we wanna have something called the “IMpowered Effect”. I, I say it all the time where, you know, the people down the hall, we’re working to cheer them on. They, they are people who are running small businesses and the struggle is real right now, of how do you start, how do you solicit, how do you market, how do you advertise, what help do you need? 

And by having a shared roof of people who share, like you said before, of the same mission, vision, values, by collaborating and finding ways to work together and support each other, we hope to have that empowered effect that we can cheer you on, we can offer the words of advice and hopefully we can send some clients down the hall and get you booked and busy. Because how amazing is it that I could be a part of somebody else's journey where I get to hear, like, I helped you, even if it was, you know, a fraction of a way that I had the impact, where I held up the mirror, I saw your power, and you know, maybe I sent you two clients and that helped you pay your bills for that date.

That feels amazing. That's a really great way to live through the world, and that's how I want to spend my days, is hearing that I've helped people feel good about themselves. 

15:01-19:00

Erika: I love that. Yeah. Just giving back in the, how do you make them feel better about themselves, help them be successful and that kind of thing. I wanted to revisit the drama that can sometimes come in health and wellness businesses. Um, it sounds like you've done a lot of work to make sure that you quell that in your business. 

What are some ways to make sure that there's a lack of gossip or drama in your business, and what do you do to make sure that it doesn't happen as much as possible?

Lisa: We are very clear in our hiring process that it is not welcome here. And so, that is a very pointed conversation in the interview process. We set that standard. I'm very fortunate for the team members who are already here because they were looking for that same thing. And so, as soon as they found a place that they aligned in, that becomes the workplace culture. That, instead of coming into the workplace culture where that already exists and you have to break that, our workplace culture started very different, and so it's easier to actually keep that momentum going. We have a no tolerance policy, so if it starts, it actually is grounds for termination in our place of employment.

It's, it's toxic. It will ruin your place of employment and it ruins client experience. Clients know, you can feel it, it's not a positive experience and it's exactly opposite to our brand values. So sitting and gossiping and drama and all of those things, it's opposite to seeing the power within. It's taking power away from people.

We've been very thoughtful about building up our employees, having one-on-one meetings. We do mentorship programs and leadership development and mindset coaching with the team to be able to have them really working on, where's their power? where's their long-term goal? 

We are very transparent from the beginning with our team members of we very much appreciate that sometimes work is for a season or for a lifetime, and we actually prefer you tell us where your path and your end goal is. Because if your end goal is to go and open up your own business, then we want to be the part that helps you find your power and goes to that season instead of being resentful of people who come in, then choose to leave and that they took this from us or did this to us. It's very realistic. People should do what's right for them. 

Number one, everybody's gotta take care of themselves. And so, finding a place where we can say, if you're here for two years, be honest with me. What do you need from me? How am I gonna support you? And then when you go do your own thing, how do I cheer you on and celebrate you? And we can do it in a way that is mutually beneficial so that that two years is the best serve for both of us. So instead of taking from the team, it's really a collaboration. 

We have lots of team meetings. Daily team meetings, monthly team meetings, you know, the weekly set up, the admin team meets, employee one-on-ones. Like, there's a lot of invested time in the team and the team development to keep the communication clear and open. And the team really leads the way. 

So my background is in lean philosophy, lean management, like Toyota style is how I learned to lead. And so it's very much that the answers are. With the people doing the work or with the customer. And so we sit and we listen to our clients. Our team members are the ones who are saying, this is what the clients are saying, or this is the feedback we're getting. And they're the ones who are helping implement the changes in here. So I think they're empowered to be able to have influence on the organization and how it goes, and I think that helps create a positive work environment.

And we also just call it out how it is. So, we have very candid conversations and instead of it being in back doors behind rooms, it's brought to team meetings and we all kind of air our dirty laundry out together sometimes because it's not all rainbows and sunshine. We're all people. So we sometimes need to have like little tiffs or disagreements and kind of work through the process, but…

Erika: Of course!

Lisa: we work very, very hard at it here. 

19:01- 22:57

Erika: Yeah. I think like the biggest thing is having that open communication. Something that I've been hearing in these conversations is having those open, honest communications, and as a leader in your business, being willing to hear that hard feedback from time to time and having arguments is very natural, very human or disagreements, not necessarily arguments, but disagreements. And then it's how we handle them, that we get through it in a positive way. And like you, in all of my interviews, I always ask like, Hey, where do you wanna be in two years, three years, five years? And how can I help you get there? Whether that's a role in my organization or you want to go do something else, but let me help you get there because I have the flexibility and I want to mentor people and guide them to where they want to go. It, it's no problem with me to help them get to their career goals, you know? So I think it's important to mentor. 

Lisa: Absolutely. I find so, especially in the injectors world, you'll hear a lot of people be a solo injector in a clinic, and they won't wanna bring on a second injector because the idea is you'll do the work to train them, support them, and then they come in and they build their clientele and then they go and they leave. And it's a loss for your business because clients are loyal to their provider and so they follow their provider. And so when I was thinking about how do I grow and expand, because you either stay small and you're one provider and you're, you're capped in what you can do or you do this perpetual cycle.

And so I sat before I brought anybody else in and I thought like, well, how do we do this then? And it felt right to just sit in honesty with people o,f are you entrepreneurial? Do you want to start your own business? Great. If that's the case, then why can't we have a relationship where we know that in the beginning that it's really positive? Because it also doesn't feel good to be that employee, right? Like we've all worked at jobs where we're like, this is a stepping stone that doesn't feel good to walk in that way. So how do we both serve each other in the season to be able to meet each other's needs and care for each other, but then also be like, okay, if you're going to go and you're going to do this, then here's some ground rules so that at the end of that, we can still be celebrating each other and lifting each other up.

How do we purchase together? How can I continue prescribing for you? Like what does that relationship look like so that nobody has to leave resentful because the world's hard enough as it is. Life is a struggle. There's so many things that come at you, and so why can't we just find ways to proactively be positive and support and fill the space with good energy? 

Erika: And have you navigated that yet where someone comes in and they're like, I do have that entrepreneurial spirit and I want to leave. How do you work through finding that positive and win-win scenario for both you and that employee that eventually wants to leave?

Lisa: So I think we're still in early enough infancy in the business that we haven't had people go in that pathway, but we definitely have those conversations with our current employees about what is their long-term goal, and that's very realistic with the team and those things of, you know, I want this life and I want this thing and I want these pieces. So I think we're very actively participating in people's journeys to help get them to their goals. But because of the transparency level, people aren't coming and going in a short season, that people are here and invested in the long term because of that support and that commitment and sometimes it's little things. Like one of my staff members, it's very important that she has dinner every night with her husband, and so our entire team knows that that's one of her important goals. And so it's the priority every day to make sure that she's scheduled in a way and that she can get home.

And, you know, one of our team members has young kids and so we work through the season of, how do we make sure that her young kids are the priority? And so everybody kind of knows some of these goals and priorities and important things, and, and we find a way that the team can support and balance around that.

22:58-25:59

Erika: That's amazing. So when you think long-term about IMpower, what are some of the goals that you might have? And then of course, how do you get buy-in from your team on those goals?  I've heard a lot, like my team doesn't care about my business as much as I ever will, or something like that, so how do you make sure to whatever your long-term goals are and also getting that buy-in from your team?

Lisa: So I think the feedback for anybody who's saying that their team isn't as invested in their business as they are, is they shouldn't be. They, it's your business for a reason, you are the entrepreneur, you're the CEO for a reason. You should care the most about it always and forever. And if, if your team cares about it more than you, you're going to lose your own business to the people underneath you. 

I think for me, the key is hiring a team that is invested in the same core values makes it easy because the decisions of the things that are what's next is led by our values. And so we're not doing anything out of alignment of what the team already feels because it's the values that are making the decision and the team aligns with the values. So I think that helps with the conflict of that type of transition.

Our next steps typically, you know, how do we engage those things? It comes from the team and from the clients.

We do so much feedback with our, our clientele, and so we chase them for feedback. We're constantly doing that. Part of our daily meeting question is, what were our learnings from yesterday? And we're talking about, oh, so and so told me this thing, and we're like, oh, that's a genius idea, and we then action it. And so it becomes a task on our ticket board and we put things in process with it. So I think a lot of the ideas actually come from the clients or from staff members of, “you know what, I ran into this hiccup”, or “this is a constant problem that we're seeing”. And so, that future state is pretty much directed from the front line. And so, buy-in's easy when it's their ideas. That I don't have to sell them anything. 

Do we have a broader vision? Yeah, we want to expand. We want to be doing more wellness. We want to expand past aesthetics, so we're thinking health, preventative medicine, we're thinking weight support hormones, those types of things that we're hearing from our clients that they need.

And that's always been the vision. We've always talked to our team members about, what do we see as the tenure and power vision? So, that has always been there as they're, when they're interviewing, when they're onboarding, it comes up frequently in our team meetings about future state and what's the next month, what's the next quarter, what's the next year plan?

They're engaged in all that process, and we typically are bringing them in for the building of it. So right now we're building out IMpowered body. It's gonna be managed mostly by our primary nurse, and she is doing 80% of the work of building this program and developing it herself and putting her ideas at the table.

She's sitting at every business meeting, and if she's not, she's getting flipped the emails that are going on so that she's completely in the loop and able to give her insight and feedback so that she can feel empowered that this is hers too, that she gets to own and be proud of the work that she's doing here too.

26:00-32:41

Erika: And I guess one of my final questions is one of learning because I believe in life-long learning journey. Has there ever been a time since you started your business that you may have learned a lesson the hard way? What was it and how did you recover from it? 

Lisa: I feel like we could do just 10 podcasts on this. I think, uh, you screw up more than you succeed in business. So like, big picture perspective, I would say the biggest learning is not being afraid to fail and not letting the fear of failure hold you back from taking action. Because if you sit and wait for everything to be in a pretty little package with a tidy little bow on the top, it's never going to be there.

You're in a constant evolution of failure and of making mistakes and making missteps, but I think the key is as long as you're making the decisions that are aligning with your values, then even the missteps are actually failing forward. It's the steps that help you redirect and guide your path so that you're always consistently moving forward.

I mean, if you want tangible ones, I have about a million, so give you other ones too, but, but I think, big picture, I think that's, that's kind of the biggest thing is if you are going out for business on your own, if you are in infancy of business, you're a solopreneur, you are a creative, you're gonna screw up so much.

You're gonna have so many failures and you're gonna have lots of days that you cry yourself to sleep and ask yourself, what am I doing? 

I think the irony is a lot of people, when we talked, you and I talked in a prep call, you said, you know, you're recommended to me because it looks like you've got everything going on and you're really put together, and I was like, girl [Laughs]. I was like, I'm the least put-together person. I just choose to go out and screw up every day. And instead of being negative about those failures, it's a, “whoops, okay, we can pout about this for a day, but tomorrow we're going to move forward with what learnings we have and we're going to correct the course”. So I think it's just a choice of, how do you look at every step that you take and every failure that you have as an opportunity of what's happening for you instead of what's happening to you. It's not a negative, it's an opportunity. 

Erika: Definitely. Have you always had that mindset or is that something that you learned to look at a failure as an opportunity rather than something that just happens to you? 

Lisa: I think it probably is fairly ingrained in me. I'm an Emerge nurse by trade, and so very much was a person of, “here's the situation that you've got, you've got no control over it, what are you going to do?”

And so it, I've always been the person of, I do well in crisis, like that is organic. I'm calm and cool and collected in a crisis because you never knew what was coming in. You could have a bus with a hundred people drop off at your front door, and that's the cards that you're dealt in that moment. And you can choose to panic, which doesn't serve you, or you can choose to make a plan and take action steps.

I was in that world long enough that when these really dramatic things happen, the process in the hospital is you do a quality of care review when any of these incidents happen and you sit and you analyze it, and you talk through, you know, what happened and why and what steps and was that the best thing or not.

And you need to remove the blame and the fault from these things, or you can't move forward with learnings for future, but then that makes you a stronger provider or organization as a whole. So I'd say it's organic, but it's trained, if that makes sense, that I think I've kind of worked to foster that. 

And in your own business, a lot of it becomes very personal. You really beat yourself up for every misstep. You feel very invested in each piece and each person, and so it's very emotionally tied with all those things. And so when you fail, it's not just a like, “oh, whoops”, you know, “we had this system failure”, where there's multiple layers of the Swiss cheese that line up and you have this incident fall through.

It often is like, “you suck, you shouldn't be doing this”. You know, like that negative talk gets in there. And so I would say that piece has been something that's been more of an evolution for me, that working on the mindset and the personal growth in that, to be able to do the skills that I knew from an organizational level that I would coach.

But to be able to do that for yourself, I think, has been a personal work. 

Erika: Did you, are you doing that work yourself? Do you have a business coach, therapy, even? Is it just you have a great team and support system? How do you make sure that you're working through all of those mindset things when the negative self-talk starts?

Lisa: All of the above. So. Therapy. Everybody should do therapy. You know, it's a piece that I wish was built into primary healthcare for people is just a check and balance, is you should have somebody who is your person who you can trust and you can be completely honest with and work through your stuff with.

And that also will hold up that mirror to you and hold you a little bit more accountable because sometimes we have blind spots in ourselves, so therapy is a must. I do a lot of business development, self-help, self-empowerment books, podcasts, like I, every time I'm driving I have those things on. If I'm in and cleaning the clinic and doing some other work, that's what's going constantly in the background for me is development pieces and it typically is in a space of like, ah, this thing happened, I need to find something about this. Who's got a recommendation of that? Or you know, sitting and doing a Google search of, what can I do? 

I've done business coaching for sure. I think, doing the coaching and the self-development work and finding people who help meet your needs and give you some tools and structure and insight to be able to have those things is fundamental. Because entrepreneurship is a lonely journey, and every business is going through the same things. So, even though we each have our own little nuance twist to things and experiences, the big picture themes are identical. And so, there's great opportunities to learn from different people, skills or tools or tips. And, sometimes I find the opportunity, it isn't always painted exactly the way. 

So if you are coaching me, you might tell me your system or your tools, and that might not be perfect for me, but it's still a great way for me to look, oh, she does it like this and this is how she does it, and this is why she does it like that. I've learned this other way of doing it, or this is how I do it and this is how I'm going to make it mine and I'm going to personalize it. And I'm still getting a lot of gains from that. I think you should always be doing something for self-development, right? And so what season of life, what do you need? I think you do an evaluation, but I think it's fundamental and think once you graduate from one coach, you should just be looking for the next, to fill the next skill gap because you're either improving yourself or you're stagnating. Right? So…

32:42-35:41

Erika: And I guess one of my more final questions are, when you started growing your business, what was, other than maybe hiring another practitioner or provider, what was that first hire that was crucial to your business that was a game changer? Whether that's an admin, bookkeeper, accountant, social media person, who was that first hire that was game game-changer for you? 

Lisa: In hindsight, if I were to look back, I would think about hiring maybe a little bit differently and look for some of those gaps in buying back my time in a certain way.

But when I made the transition to doing this work, I used to have big teams at the hospital, I used to manage teams of 150 people. 90 people, like big, big teams unionized, super challenging work environments. And I knew that I loved to lead people, but I didn't like managing people. 

So in my season of transition to do this work, I intended to be alone. I was going to be a solo provider. I was just going to do my thing, and I was going do this awesome work by myself. I got booked and busy, fast, and one of my aestheticians came into my life. So somebody introduced me to this person who had fallen out of aesthetics because of toxic workplace culture and work-life balance, trying to balance kids and those things. And she was introduced to me as “aesthetics is her passion. It's all she talks about all day long. I think she needs to do this more. Do you have space for her?” And I was like, I'm not having people in, like, no, I'm not,  I'm going to do this alone. Anyway, she came in and it was a like one day a month thing, and she was living her passion.

We built a friendship in that, and how we, we started that, that role. And I, I tell her every day, I'm like, I blame you for why we have such a big team and people, and I give her hell for that because I was like, I was going to do this alone, and now I have this amazing team of people. And so I do this like joking blame with her, but she showed me that I am actually better for having more people and her collaboration and her passion, it makes my business stronger. It makes the service provided to clients better than what I could do alone, and I think I needed somebody to show me that in that season because I was so damaged from my previous experiences. It showed me what I was looking for in future hiring, and so it really showed me that her and I aligned in value.

We had that similar experience of this toxic culture, and we didn't want these things, but we had this passion for delivering exceptional service and taking great care of people and making them feel good. It really set the foundation for everything that we do next. And so, was she the most strategic hire in terms of taking off workload from like a CEO business perspective? No. I should have, should have had a bookkeeper. I should have had a lawyer. I should have done, I should have had a personal assistant. Lots of different things I should have done, but I also wouldn't be what I am if we didn't gravitate to each other organically. 

35:42-38:09

Erika: That makes sense. Last question is, if you could offer any tip to someone in the health and wellness space, what would it be? 

Lisa: If you are building your business, just really do the soul searching for your “why” and your mission, vision, values. I think it's a challenging space to be in to care and serve others. We get caught up in competing and looking at what other people are doing and trying to be everything for everyone or keep up with the Joneses or keep the sales going. 

But I think what will serve you best is to really figure out who you are and who you want to be and where your expertise is, what brings you joy, and I think that, that by being different and special and being really, truly aligned with that, it will help you serve a clientele that is more appropriate for you. It will help have better client experiences. It's a nicer way to spend your days, and so I think that's, that's the key. And I think there's then an opportunity for all of the other businesses in the same space to coexist where we can collaborate because each of us are gonna serve people a little bit differently. So even if we provide the same services on a piece of paper, our brand vision and values and our experience is going to be different, and so we're gonna attract different people. So, we never need to compete with each other. We, we could really just collaborate. We could look at shared purchasing so that we each are making a better profit margin and we're feeding our families more, you know, out of what we're doing.

And so I think the opportunity of living your vision values, living your brand identity, staying in your own lane, and being that, and then really focusing on collaboration over competition.  

Erika: Collaboration over competition. I preach that all the time. No sense being competitors. Let's support each other. 

Lisa: Yeah! We all, we all have families to feed. At the end of the day, we all have the same goals, and so instead of looking at people in a negative light, why don't we just find ways to celebrate people and positivity, and obviously, I believe in the work that I do, so is it wrong that somebody else is excited and about that same work? No, I think that's amazing. The more people that are doing shared work and living in shared experiences for clients, I think it's serving people better. 

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