You can always see the brotherhood in companies where the young new guy is being mentored by the older guys and there’s camaraderie. Sisterhood is staring to take roots as well with women like four-time US National champion gymnast and CEO and Founder of SheWorx Lisa Wang giving out her message of the power of collaboration between women instead of competition. She explains that collectively, women in business can create change, impact and abundance. By the age of 65, most career women would retire to a life of decorating the house or playing cards every Sunday. But this wasn’t an option for Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum because of her vibrant personality and constant yearning for learning. Even with no business skills, she started her business of corporate coaching that ties in functional medicine and positive psychology. She explains that when you combine curiosity with the love of learning, it becomes a powerful combination for a meaningful life.
We have Lisa Wang and Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum. Lisa Wang is a former four-time US National Gymnast and she is also a CEO of Forbes 30 Under 30 and a very interesting speaker. Then we’re going to talk to Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum Sandra, who is a licensed clinical psychologist and board-certified functional medicine expert. She created a company from scratch at the age of 65, so I’m very anxious to hear about that.
Listen to the podcast here
The Power Of Collaboration with Lisa Wang
I am here with Lisa Wang, who is the Founder and CEO of SheWorx where she helps companies build diverse and inclusive environments through workshops that attract, cultivate, and retain top female talent. As a leading motivational speaker, she has keynoted top conferences including World Entrepreneur Forum, CIO Summit, CES, IBM Think Leaders, World Summit on Innovation & Entrepreneurship, IAG Ascend Leadership Conference and more. She leverages her experience as a four-time US National Champion Gymnast, serial entrepreneur, and Forbes 30 Under 30 recipient to help teams understand the mindset all leaders need to help build and scale their vision with an inclusive mindset. She also has a podcast titled Enoughness with Lisa Wang. It’s so nice to have you here, Lisa.
Diane, thank you so much for having me.
I know you’re a friend of Kenny Nguyen, and he was great. I loved having him on the show. I appreciate that he introduced us. You know what else we have in common? We have the same birthday.
You’re a Libra as well.
Yes, September 24th. I saw that and I thought, “That’s interesting.” I was watching some of your older videos of when you were a gymnast. I saw the Brazil commercial and different things that you’ve been in. It’s fascinating that you had that background. Can you give a little bit about that before what led into SheWorx, but how you had that background?
I was a gymnast for a decade of my life from nine to nineteen and it certainly has shaped my life view, my work ethic, and discipline. Everything about me in many ways is derived from this experience in gymnastics. One of the things earlier on that I realized, and my coach has realized, is that I was an extremely hard worker to the point that even today, I have no fear of failure because I see every failure as a learning opportunity where I know that I’m going to work harder to achieve the next milestone. Specifically as it relates to SheWorx, my career was that I was a four-time US National Champion, I was a three-time World Championship team member, Pan-American Champion, and for a good four years, was the best gymnast in the United States. That brings with it its own set of pressures, its own set of psychological journeys that I had to go on.
One of the things that specifically was tough for me was the culture of gymnastics. At its core is zero‑sum game because if I win, you lose, and there’s one gold medal, which means that being number one didn’t always make me the most popular person amongst my teammates. I sometimes joke that I grew up in the Mean Girls movie. It’s not really a joke because sometimes the same girls who are cheering for you are also the ones who secretly hope that you’re going to fall. It’s definitely a toxic environment in many ways to grow up in. My turning point in my adult life was when I met one of my best friends, who remains one of my best friends today. When I got my first job on Wall Street after graduation, she was so happy for me. It was this interesting moment because I thought, “Is she envious? Does she not want me to get the job? Does she want the job?” When I realized that she was authentically happy that I was successful and happy, I was happy. It was this incredible moment where I realized, “This is the power of having women supporting other women,” and I never truly experienced that before.
In SheWorx, our mission is to close the funding gap by collaborating and not competing. That has more significance to me because of my background, where I understood and experienced the opposite end of toxic competition and then going all the way to the other spectrum of realizing the power of collaboration, what it means for having behind every successful woman is another successful woman who has her back, to have a space where you can share your challenges and not feel like you’re being taken advantage of, where you can help, and not feel like someone else is going to take that for granted. That has driven the culture of SheWorx and what we stand for and all of that comes full circle with my gymnastics journey.
I took gymnastics when I was young, so I appreciate how good you were. I was watching you with the ball and the different things. I did enough flip flops landing on my head that I thought, “It might explain a lot of things for me now,” but it was so hard. You were so beautifully choreographed in everything you did. What’s interesting in watching and talking about all these things is that when you talk about people hoping you’ll fail, do you think that’s a more female thing or do you think men are like that as well?
Living in the world of jealousy and envy, those emotions come from a place of scarcity. Scarcity can come from male or female. It can be any age, it can be any industry, but in particular, the way that society has set women up, we have been forced to come from a place of scarcity, especially when it comes to business. In the space that I operate in, only 2.2% of venture funding went to companies with a female CEO. When you look at women in the C-Suite at Fortune 500, it’s still less than 5%. There’s this feeling of not having enough room for all of us that has been ingrained in society and the way that women have been almost programmed to think because we’re so used to being the only women in the room. I certainly experienced that when I was working at the hedge fund.
There’s something called the Queen Bee Syndrome, which is when a woman is used to being that queen bee and the only woman in the room. When another woman comes, it becomes a threat rather than “Here’s someone that I should help.” Brotherhood is there for men because there’s a chain, almost a senior man who’s mentoring and sponsoring the next generation, his brother, he’s bringing him up, and that sort of sisterhood culture hasn’t yet come to fruition amongst women. We’re finally getting to a point, especially with me too, where women are realizing that the power of our voices collectively can create such change. When left to our own devices, if we were coming from a place of abundance, women naturally want to collaborate. We want to bounce off each other, we love talking things through. It’s certainly something that can afflict anyone, but we’re working through centuries of cultural and societal norms that certainly do affect the way we interact with other women.
Do you think it’s different based on age? Do you think we’ve become less that way as we get older, we become more confident and don’t need to pick apart other women to succeed?
It depends on the individual. We are in a generation, especially millennials, where it’s almost contradictory because we live in a world that is increasingly driven by social media and comparison. We’re comparing other people’s highlight reels with our background on edited footage. Even with this comparison, there’s this feeling of camaraderie where we’re realizing there’re bigger things to tackle with everything that’s happening like lack of gun control. There’re bigger forces that we need to go up against. For the first time, there’s a feeling amongst women that we are a powerful together and a rising tide lifts all boats and that’s regardless of age.
Right now, there’s a special moment in history. That being said though, I have met older women who are still at a point where they see other women as competition. I don’t know if that’s a generational thing. We’re in the sharing economy and that’s what millennials have grown up used to and there is less of that zero sum. I definitely think it’s case by case, but it’s not like this generation is significantly better and this one is significantly worse. It’s that own developmental cycle of becoming more confident and willingness to embrace others and to champion others.
I was interested in what you had written or spoken about on one of your videos. You said people ask you if you feel good enough, would you feel complacent. Do you think that working on feeling good enough, that’s something we need to work on but can you feel complacent?
It depends on the person. I personally don’t think I will ever get to that point of complacency. Never say never, but I am naturally an extremely driven person to the point that I’m not even sure where that drive comes from. I’ve certainly objectively on an external level achieved a lot of things as a National Champion Gymnast, as a Forbes 30 Under 30, and as a serial entrepreneur. All of those things I achieved because I put pressure on myself to be the best version that I could possibly be and it’s not so much comparison. When that drive and also that feeling of not enoughness comes from within where you constantly want to be a better version of yourself and that better version of yourself is constantly evolving, it’s hard to be complacent.
You talked about being naturally driven, which is interesting to me because I’m writing a book on curiosity. You’re obviously a very curious person and you’re not sure where it came from. If you’re working with others who lack that natural drive or curiosity, what advice would you give them to help them have your drive? They are complacent and they don’t see the need to do much more than exist instead of go out there and drive. What can you do to help people? Maybe they’re bored in their jobs, maybe they’re not aligned properly, maybe they could do so much more with their lives, but they don’t have that inclination like you do to seek out new exciting things.
On the one hand, there’s this internal drive to be better but it’s driven by this feeling that, “I’m here to serve a bigger purpose, that I have the ability to change the world and I need to get on it and do it.” When your sole focus is yourself and your immediate surroundings, it’s very hard to find that drive, especially if that’s not something you naturally have. The drive comes from having a bigger why, a bigger purpose. My why now is that I know that this will be for the rest of my life and I wish it would come sooner, but it’s driving gender parity. It’s fundamentally transforming the cultural narrative of what girls tell themselves, of how men and boys perceive women and their role in the world. There’re so many societal and cultural and historical narratives that I’m pushing against, but that is not going to be something that’s going to happen overnight. Everything that I do, every moment that I have is driving towards making the world that I see in my mind that’s possible and I play a role in that greater purpose, so there’s no moment to waste. Having a greater why and asking yourself, “Why am I here?” If someone is saying like, “Why I’m here is to provide for my family and to make sure that my daughter and my son grow up and have every platform that they need to be able to go out and change the world.” There is no why that’s too small or too big. You have to define that for yourself.
You said you have no fear of failure and that’s very unusual for a lot of people. How do we get to that point?
I don’t fear failure only because I know how hard I work, that’s one. The second thing is that I see every “failure” as a learning experience. I don’t see things as a do-or-die because I have enough confidence in myself to know that if guided by my intuition, if I’m actively cultivating strong relationships with people who care for me, that I care for them, that they will have my back. If I’m driven by this larger mission, who’s to say that I’ve failed by? By whose standard? By whose metrics? I’ve learned through a lot of self-awareness and painful questions that I have to ask myself even growing up. I spent a decade of my life comparing myself to other people and trying to aim for that perfect ten, and every single move that I did is a deduction from that perfect ten. When you take a moment and you ask yourself, “By whose standards is this a success or failure? Is this a standard that I choose to accept? If not, let me create my own standard.” If by my standards, then there is no failure. There’re only learning experiences, and that’s why I don’t have that fear.
You made a good point that it’s our perception. All the work you’re doing is fascinating with helping women with the way they perceive things and helping them build and scale successful companies. Did I see you have three A values? Is that associated with SheWorx of how you help people?
The Triple-A values of SheWorx are ambition, action and altruism. Ambition is the idea that you have to dream bigger than anyone else says is possible. Action is that you execute on those dreams and not just sit there. Altruism is what makes this whole thing go around. It’s the idea that you have a duty as you become more successful to give back to female entrepreneurs and the next generation of young female entrepreneurs because this is how you create that circle of sisterhood that doesn’t exist yet, especially in the business world. Part of closing the funding gap by collaborating, not competing, that is these values, especially this value of altruism. Just because someone else gets money doesn’t mean that there’s less money for someone else. As every woman becomes more successful, that’s just more role models for us, more feelings of, “If she can do it, I can do it too. Let me support a sister.”
What do you think the Me Too Movement is going to have as an impact on women in general?
It’s certainly already having an impact. The most important on a fundamental level is that it’s made a lot of women feel like their voices are being heard. For the longest time, our voices have been undervalued or silenced or assumed as inferior and ignored. As a result, we’ve lost a lot of power and confidence in ourselves to believe that our voices matter, to believe that, especially in the business world, they’re the right voices. For a long time, as I was coming into the Founder and CEO role, I was comparing myself to the stereotype of the typical CEO, which is an aggressive and super confident white male, who’s much older than me and I would think, “What’s wrong with me?” My voice isn’t that aggressive, it doesn’t sound like that, and in fact, most of the time I’m more soft spoken because I would rather listen and learn than try to cut in the conversations for the sake of being the loudest voice in the room. I always thought that there was something wrong with me. As part of this Me Too Movement, it’s that realizing being able to speak up in whatever voice that you have, being able to share your experience without automatically being questioned about its validity, that’s powerful and that’s part of our process of taking back our power.
You have some important points. You write for Forbes and different sites. I saw one of your articles and you said there hasn’t been a female Mark Zuckerberg and there’re reasons why. What do you think is the biggest reason for that?
That was an article that I was quoted in USA Today, specifically around some of the incidences that were coming up around sexual harassment. Separate to that, it goes back to a stereotype of what a CEO should be. If we’re taking this scale of masculine and feminine, it is more masculine. 95% of all CEOs and C-Suites are men. The side of more feminine traits of collaboration and care, empathy, and listening are often seen as weak, especially weak in a CEO and leader that should be aggressively making decisions and going forward and pushing through. We are finally moving into a place where we’re trying to find that balance. Certainly, there’re great things about both of those types of traits. You have to have strength, but also humanity, you have to be confident but also empathetic, and you have to have a healthy level of competition, but you also have to be able to collaborate with your team members. We’re finally coming to a place where we can start to balance that and value the traits that women have naturally brought to the table.
That’s why Susan Cain’s book was so popular. We need to hear a little bit more about the importance of introverts and listening and empathy. I studied emotional intelligence and that was a big focus for me. I noticed you went to Yale. Most of my family went there. What’s your degree?
I studied American studies with a concentration in literature. Like many college students, I went in trying to find my passion, trying to also balance that with being realistic, thinking ahead about what job I would get. I’ve always been someone who has been motivated by what makes me happy, what makes me feel fulfilled, which is hard to separate, and I don’t think enough people do that. I’ve always loved reading. I’ve always loved stories. I’ve always loved psychology and understanding why people are the way they are, why I am the way that I am. Not enough people are able to look at themselves and ask themselves those hard questions of why am I the way that I am because it is painful. You have to open up those past wounds and that baggage and it’s not always pretty.
It was interesting that you did that and then became a hedge fund analyst on Wall Street. You have quite a fascinating background. I would like to read something you said because you have advised to other women and you said, “There will always be critics, naysayers, doubters. Pay them no mind. What does success look and feel like to you? Formulate your vision, stick to your values, own your strengths, surround yourself with good people, and charge forward with all the energy and tenacity required to turn your dreams into reality. The rest is simply noise.” I like that. You have such great advice and I could see why you made the Forbes 30 Under 30. I have had quite a few of them on my show and you all continue to impress me. I know you speak and you do all these things, and if you could share how people can find out more about what you do, it would be great, like your website and how they can reach you.
My website is LisaWang.co. There you can find the Enoughness podcast. You can find my Forbes column, and then you can also go directly to SheWorx from there and find out about our next upcoming events for female entrepreneurs and male allies. My Enoughness podcast is focused on revealing the real stories behind what it means to be successful because I felt like there were so many narratives that have been created by men who are telling us, “You have to kill it and crush it and be great.” I thought, “How can I be great if I don’t even feel like I’m enough sometimes?” The Enoughness podcast was created because of my own journey of discovering that and I realized that, “No one has it together.”
In some ways, we’re all trying to figure out what successful enough means, what good enough means, so it takes people who are successful or have “made it” in certain ways. We peel back the layers and I ask people hard questions about those times when they feel like they’re not enough. It’s about humanizing the journey of becoming a leader because you see the highlight reels, but a lot of times it’s a big struggle. You can find the Enoughness podcast on iTunes as well as on my site, LisaWang.co/podcast. You can follow me on Twitter or Instagram @LisaWorx and then SheWorx on @SheWorx.
Lisa, this has been so much fun. I’m so glad Kenny recommended you because you’ve been so interesting and I appreciate having you on the show.
Thank you so much.
It was so nice having you on the show.
Functional Medicine in Corporate Coaching with Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum
I am here with Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum, who is a licensed clinical psychologist and a board-certified individual in Functional Medicine. She provides individual and corporate coaching focused on mind, body, health and positive psychology. What I find interesting is she started a business from scratch at the age of 65, so that’s pretty interesting. Welcome, Sandra.
Thank you. I’m excited to be here.
I know that you are part of the Genius Network. I’ve attended those as well and that’s quite an impressive group that he gets at those events that Joe Polish holds every year. You have done something well to show up in a group like that. It’s fascinating that you started a business from scratch at age 65. I want to know your background prior to that. Can you give me some background?
My career took many twists and turns. I started out many years ago in the early ‘70s thinking I was going to be a teacher, that was my major at Northwestern, and I thought I would be a classroom teacher. I didn’t do so well in student teaching. Those were the days of graduate college and get a job, so what I am going to do? I went back to school. I then majored in learning disability and got my masters and spent many years of teaching children with learning disabilities that morphed into teaching at the college level of how to teach children with learning disabilities, which led to an interest in behavior management. I then got my doctorate in clinical psychology and I became very interested in mind-body medicine, which at that time, was pretty radical, the idea that the mind and body talks to each other, but that was my specialty.
I spent many years in practice as a psychologist and I focused on panic attacks and anxiety primarily because I used to get terrible panic attacks when I was in my twenties. Then I always had an interest also in nutrition and how what you eat could make you feel better, not only physically but mentally. I then discovered Functional Medicine and I trained at The Institute for Functional Medicine and that sparked this idea. In my doctoral program I was involved early on with people who were just starting what was then called life coaching, which was a pretty new in the ‘80s. Health coaching evolved from humanistic therapy and life coaching evolved from humanistic therapy. That’s what I specialized in, humanistic psychotherapy, and that’s how I was trained.
I was involved early on in working with people who were starting with mid career development. They didn’t even have a name for executive coaching back then. I did then start a school to train health coaches because with my interest in mind-body medicine, positive psychology, and nutrition, I went to The Institute for Functional Medicine leadership and said, “You guys train doctors in Functional Medicine, but doctors need health coaches because health coaches are the ones who support people in creating wellness.” The last three years, our school has been in existence and I’m the Founder and CEO. I had had a very successful career as a psychologist and the logical next step would’ve been to just gracefully retire. That’s what all my friends were doing, retiring, and for me, that was not an option. One of the reasons, I always say is, “I never liked to play cards.” I didn’t want to sit around two to three times a week playing canasta.
I know a lot of people who like to stay home and read or decorate or sit out by the pool. I’m not one of those people. I hear what you’re saying, “I get to keep my mind active,” and that’s what you probably need too.
Stay vibrant and constantly learning. When I launched this business, I had zero business skills. I had no idea what I was doing and it grew very quickly and so I had to learn. Love of learning has always been one of my top strengths, so it came naturally to me to learn everything I could. Then being in Mastermind Genius Network, which is where we met, it’s one way to help strengthen those skills.
It’s interesting when you’re talking about how you found help for your panic attacks. I have had other people on the show that are mind-body experts, but I liked that you tied it into nutrition. What did you find was the worst thing that we could be eating for panic attacks? People probably are interested in that.
I remember I had been at a conference at the Stanford Research Institute when I was in my doctoral program. I was coming back to the hotel, walking around the shopping center, and there was this incredibly great candy store and they were offering these truffle samples. I bought them and brought them back to my room. They were delicious, but knowing that I was a sugar addict, I ate four of them, and then I woke up in the middle of the night in a total panic like, “I’m dying.” I was on the phone with my husband, who is a little older, who was back in Chicago and I was in Palo Alto. I was like, “I think I’m dying. I’m having a heart attack,” and I had to call somebody. Sugar can do that, too much caffeine sometimes. For me, it was sugar and lack of exercise. In Functional Medicine, we look not just in one piece, but many things put together. I was great at scaring myself and worrying, a lot of what ifs and then jumping to the most catastrophic conclusion, which is, “I must be having a heart attack. I’m dying, I can’t breathe,” and that’s what triggers those catastrophic types of thoughts. What sets you up for that is poor diet, lack of exercise, and poor sleep. It all comes together.
Sugar has a big impact on inflammation and so many of the things that they’re finding out is so bad for you. A lot of people don’t want to give it up. It’s a tough one because you get addicted. You’ve done all this interesting work with this mind-body work and being a psychologist. It is fascinating to me because I studied emotional intelligence for my doctoral dissertation and so I’m very interested in the psychological aspects in business and what makes us successful. I’m writing about curiosity and I assume you’re a very curious person if you wanted to figure out how to start a business from scratch at age 65. Have you always been curious?
I have delved into positive psychology. That’s the study of what’s right with you and what’s wrong with you. Often we look at character strengths and these are the traits that make us who we are. When we’re thriving, we’re using our character strengths, our signature strengths. Curiosity is one of them. It is associated with what we call the wisdom strengths. In order to learn something, you think of a young child. How do they learn? They need curiosity first and that drives them, that trait of being curious drives them to figure it out, “I wonder how this works. I would love to know about this. I’m curious.” Curiosity is what drives you to want to learn, so you pair curiosity with that love of learning and it’s a powerful combination.
As children, if you look at some of the research, they’re very curious at age four. At age five, it starts getting less. At age six, it starts dropping off the cliff. As we get older, our curiosity starts to decline. What do you think keeps us from being curious? What kinds of things do you think inhibits it? Being content with the status quo. Someone who is set in their ways and this is how they think things should be done, “I’ve always done it this way and I’m not curious to know if there’s a better way” or “I’m not curious to know what it would be like if I took a risk, if I did it this way and not that way.” They have the same routine. They eat the same way. They have the same friends, the same ideas. They are not stretching themselves. We know that new neural pathways are formed with new learning like, “I’m curious about to this,” so then you take that new knowledge, but it’s more being set in your ways that prevents that from happening.
It’s interesting you used the word ‘content’, which implies they’re happy. If you’re happy, why stretch? Why do you have to worry about getting new neural pathways? Should people not worry about being curious or stay the way they are? If you knew somebody that was just content, would you suggest that they try to become more curious or you think they’re okay and leave them alone?
That is a key tenet of health coaching. Coach helps someone get from where they are to where they want to be, but there are some people who might be pretty resistant to change. Sometimes a coaching process can be like helping them to have that spark of curiosity, “I’m curious how you might feel. You sit and watch TV and you’re sitting on the couch a lot. Have you ever been curious what it would feel like if you got out in the middle of the day and took a walk or went to that exercise class?” It’s getting or curious about what Japanese food might taste like that might be healthier for you, so it often is helping them to have that spark of curiosity, “I wonder if I could do this?” Sometimes we approach challenges with curiosity. I do Pilates and it was a harder one than I usually go to, level two. We were doing these tough things. I’m the oldest person and there were a few people in this class and everyone else is like 20 or 30. It took curiosity like, “I wonder if I could get into this position?” I asked myself that and took a risk to do that.
You’re painting a picture in people’s minds. I spent many decades in sales and to get people interested in buying your product, you paint a picture in their mind of what life would be like if they had your product. I liked that you do the challenges. That’s why I ended up with a PhD; I was curious how hard it would be. I wanted to see what was involved and I don’t think a lot of people get outside of their comfort zone because it is the way it has always been. It’s their assumptions that this is the way it should be. Their family has always done it this way and it’s assumptions they make about the world in general. I also think that there’s fear, there’s technology that will do things for you, and there’s the environment. Maybe school shoved you in this direction when maybe they had to teach towards the test or different reasons. When you’re dealing with people, how do you get people to recognize what’s holding them back?
What I teach, what we train health coaches and the way we train them is to keep it 100% centered on the client. It starts out with asking things like, “What matters most to you? What would make your life good? If you can go out ten years from now, what would you like your life to be like? If you didn’t have pain anymore, what would you like to be?” All those questions that spark a sense of what we call positive emotional attractors because that vision can feel so good. It’s a sense of your meaning and your purpose. From there, that can segue to a conversation about where you want to start and not focus on the obstacles and the stuck points, so that they’re now starting to question this decisional balance of if you stay exactly what you’re doing, what would that be like? Then what would happen if you took this risk and did it differently?
You took a risk. You started a business from scratch later in life. What challenges did that pose for you? You are defying the norms, the stereotypical new entrepreneurs. What was the biggest challenge you faced with that?
Letting go of what was my comfort zone, which was do everything yourself. I’ve been in practice as a psychologist for over 35 years and it was just me. I did the billing, I answered every phone call and I listened to my voicemails four times a day and called everyone back. It was a one-person office. I paid the rent every month, so it was all myself. Now I’m launching a business. Initially, that was where I return to and I’m like, “How am I going to do this?” I had a partner, someone who had been my associate when I was a psychologist. Having her was helpful as my Co‑Founder and then gradually building a team. It was hard to let go. It was hard not to be in control, not to want to be in every meeting. That was one of the biggest lessons that I had to learn. Joe Polish says this a lot, “It’s not how you could do something, but who you go and ask when you have a problem. It’s not how, but who.” That’s been helpful to trust other people so that I can step back and don’t have to do everything.
It’s hard to let go if you’re used to doing it all. I’m one of those people that is used to doing a lot for myself and that’s very difficult for me. There’s something else that Joe’s group say that was important and that is to surround yourself with people who do things even bigger and more grand style than maybe you’re used to doing because if you’re around people who have done the same level of work that you’ve done or less, you don’t grow. Did you find that to be true when you worked with his group or any other?
I found that I had to take a risk and I had to make some painful choices. Even though I always worked when I was raising my children, I was very involved in community and book club and a knitting circle. I found that a lot of my relationships, I have nothing in common anymore or they don’t get what I’m doing that I’m running a company. We now have over 50 employees and they don’t get it because they’re retired. It was very challenging to have to back away from a lot of those friends because they were holding me down. I’m energized and connected with people who are in the same space and sometimes can’t believe that I have associations and friendships now with people who are these big influencers and I have to pinch myself about that.
I get a lot of amazing people on this show, so I know what you’re talking about. When you get to talk to them, it’s so funny how some things seem so easy for them at such a level. Through Joe’s group, I had met to Naveen Jain who’s like, “It’s much easier to run a billion-dollar company than a million-dollar company.” I’m like, “I’ll take your word for that,” because how do I know that? He’s already thinking at the next level. It’s fun to be around people who think at the next level because you haven’t experienced that. What do you think?
It’s funny that you brought up Naveen Jain because he’s become a good friend of mine and we are working together. We’re partnering. He is building a course on advanced technology for our students. I love hanging out with people, with hanging out I mean virtual, and being able to connect with people like that has been so thrilling and rewarding.
He is interesting. I did get to hang out with him in person and it was so fun to talk to him. He is very matter of fact of what he can learn. He teaches himself everything that he wants to learn. You have your traditional education and all that, but how important is it to continue to read everything you can about your industry?
It is so important. I find that being involved in mastermind groups, sharing in these private Facebook groups where our chief technology officer leaving, and I was able to just put out a post like, “I have a question about that,” and then I got all of these responses back that were so helpful. It’s feeling like you’re part of the community that you can give to and that’s also important because when I first entered these higher level communities, I thought, “What do I know? What can I possibly contribute?” That proved surprising when it wasn’t expected that people were coming to me and say, “I learned a lot from you,” so that was good.
I’m a Boomer like you are and our generation had its own unique challenges and the way we look at different things. I go to a lot of organizations and I speak to them about generational conflicts. How big is the challenge for you now dealing with a different generations and their perspective? Is that something that you have to rethink what you’ve been taught all along? Do you look at each generation as offering different value? How do you look at that?
I love hanging out with younger people and learning from them. Sometimes it’s challenging because they do not have the perspective. For example, I will hear people on a podcast and they’ll be talking about something and they think it’s unique. I’ll listen to what they’re saying and I will think, “I trained with Dr. Albert Ellis in the early ‘80s on Cognitive Behavior Therapy.” He was the Father of Rational Emotive Therapy. When they are talking about the dangers of using words like should and they’re talking about it as this is their original idea, this is the perspective of knowing where this came from. It’s like watching a remake of a movie and you know the original one. You know that the original one is good, and a younger person and some people gets surprised like, “It was a movie before?” It’s the same feeling that there are some series that some of the younger generation will pick up on and almost like they’re owning it or discovering it whereas they’re not doing their due diligence to credit the people who originated those theories.
It’s interesting that you say that. If there’s anything great to say about getting old, it’s that all the experiences that we’ve had, I’ve had to reinvent myself many times, so I appreciate what you’ve gone through, reinventing with a new business and doing different things. They maybe changed the words a little bit or changed things a little bit, but a lot of it is repackaged from different things. I’d like to see some of it credited like you mentioned, but sometimes they don’t know. It’s interesting to get perspectives from every generation. We have so many people in the workplace from each of the generations out there that there’s so much a wealth of information to be tapped. I love to see when I get to speak to groups and they’re looking for that. That’s what makes such a quality experience to blend everybody’s input. If everybody were all the same, it would be much less interesting and the product that we can create.
I can mix people up.
Tell me the name of your company.
It is Functional Medicine Coaching Academy, FunctionalMedicineCoaching.org.
If people want to contact you, is that the best way for them to reach you or is there some other way?
FunctionalMedicineCoaching.org and that would be the way to reach me. We have people from all walks of life who are interested in learning to become a functional medicine health coach or they want to work with a coach. On our website, we find a coach. Our mission is also to serve the underserved, so we have coaches who work with a sliding scale. They are there ready to serve. We are a school, we are training coaches, but we’re also committed to helping our graduates get jobs.
Do they go to the actual physical school or is this virtual?
It’s virtual. It’s global, twelve months, all online, and when they graduate they can work in a doctor’s office. They can partner with a functional medicine or an allopathic doctor. Many of them want to start their own private business as a health coach.
I’ve written a lot of curriculum as part of my career working as an MBA Program Chair in other areas. It’s challenging to come up with all that, but I’m a huge fan of online education and online learning. What you’re doing is amazing and it was so nice to have you here. Thank you so much.
Thank you. It was great to be here.
I enjoyed it and you’re welcome.
I want to thank Lisa and Sandra. What great guests. We get so many wonderful people in the show. If you’ve missed any past episodes, please go to DrDianeHamilton.com or DrDianeHamilton.com/Blog if you want to go right to the blog to read it. You can listen to the radio version on the site or you can go to DrDianeHamiltonRadio.com to go right to that. It’s been a great show. I hope you join us for the next episode of Take The Lead Radio.
About Lisa Wang
Lisa Wang is the founder and CEO of SheWorx where she helps companies build diverse and inclusive environments through workshops that attract, cultivate, and retain top female talent. As a leading motivational speaker, she has keynoted top conferences including: World Entrepreneur Forum, CIO Summit, CES, IBM Think Leaders, World Summit on Innovation & Entrepreneurship, IAG Ascend Leadership Conference and more. She leverages her experience as a 4x US National Champion Gymnast, serial entrepreneur, and Forbes 30 Under 30 recipient to help teams understand the mindset all leaders need to help build and scale their vision with an inclusive mindset. She also has a podcast titled Enoughness with Lisa Wang.
About Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum
Dr. Sandra Scheinbaum is a licensed Clinical Psychologist and is Board-Certified in Functional Medicine. She provides individual and corporate coaching focused on mind-body health and positive psychology. She started a business from scratch at the age of 65.
Important Links:
- Lisa Wang
- SheWorx
- Enoughness with Lisa Wang
- Kenny Nguyen – previous guest of Take The Lead Radio
- Me Too Movement
- Susan Kayne
- LisaWang.co
- Enoughness Podcast on iTunes
- LisaWang.co/podcast
- Lisa’s Twitter
- Lisa’s Instagram – @LisaWorx
- SheWorx Twitter – @SheWorx
- Sandra Scheinbaum
- Naveen Jain
- Dr. Albert Ellis
- FunctionalMedicineCoaching.org