The Bold and Brilliant Podcast with Tracie Root, with guest Lisa Condon

The Bold and Brilliant Podcast with Tracie Root, with guest Lisa Condon

🎧 Episode Summary: In this episode of the Bold and Brilliant podcast, Tracie is joined by Lisa Condon, a life strategist and business coach. Lisa shares her inspiring journey from corporate life to creating a fulfilling career helping others discover their purpose, values, and passions. Lisa also talks about the bold decision that transformed her work with clients and how she helps them achieve their personal and professional goals through value-based and gratitude-focused conversations.

✨ What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

--How Lisa made the bold decision to shift from corporate life to coaching and consulting
--The importance of identifying core values and how they guide life and business decisions
--How gratitude practices can transform the way we think, feel, and act in our businesses
--Lisa’s approach to breaking down layers and helping clients tap into their authentic selves
--The transformative impact of integrating personal values into professional life
--The ripple effect of self-care and living authentically in both personal and professional spheres

🛠️ Actionable Tips from Lisa Condon:

--Do the work to uncover your true values. Often, the values we think we have are influenced by others and not our authentic selves.
--Start small with change. Focus on your top one or two values to begin with and integrate them slowly into your life and business.
--Practice gratitude regularly to shift your mindset and create new neural pathways for innovation and growth.
--Embrace vulnerability and authenticity. When you show up as your true self, you're more likely to attract what aligns with your values and purpose.

🎤 Memorable Quote: "When you step into the world in your vulnerable, authentic way and space, that’s where you're going to make great change. And that’s where you're going to live into your purpose." – Lisa Condon

🔥 Bold Moment of the Episode: Lisa shares the bold moment when she decided to introduce a more personal and vulnerable approach to her corporate clients, starting with a woman who had been emotionally "shut down" by the demands of her corporate life. This decision led to transformative conversations and changes, both personally and professionally, for her client, who eventually left her corporate career to become an artist.

📱 Connect with Lisa Condon: You can connect with Lisa and learn more about her work by visiting her page on the Gather Community website: https://www.thegather.community/LisaCondon 

🚀 Join the Bold and Brilliant Podcast Community: Stay connected with the Bold and Brilliant podcast and be part of the movement of women making bold decisions in their lives and businesses. Join the community for exclusive updates, tips, and inspiration. Find links at https://www.tracieroot.com/podcast 

🌟 Rate & Review: If you enjoyed today’s episode, please take a moment to rate and review the podcast on your favorite podcast app. Your feedback helps us reach more amazing listeners and spread the message of living boldly and brilliantly!

Thank you for supporting The Bold and Brilliant Podcast!

Find out what's up with Tracie by connecting on your favorite social media channel, and with The Gather Community by joining us at an upcoming online event or receiving our mailing list. Go to:

https://www.tracieroot.com/links

to find upcoming events, workshops, courses and more!

We're just getting started, so I hope you subscribed, and please leave a review so we can start building some podcast-momentum!

xoxo
Your host,
Tracie Root

Transcript

Tracie Root: 0:00

Are you ready to take bold action and live a life of brilliance? Welcome to the bold and brilliant podcast where women leaders share inspiring stories about daring decisions that shape their businesses, their lives, and their careers. In this episode, I'm with the fabulous and amazing Lisa Condon. Lisa is a lover of life, adventurer of spirit, and cultivator of collaboration. As a business coach and life strategist, she thrives on helping businesses find their heart, and people discover their passion through value and gratitude based conversations. Lisa is an award winning international speaker and author. She is professionally trained as a Six Sigma black belt and scrum master and integrates tried and true processes into all the work she does. Diving into life headfirst, you can find Lisa with her husband, Nate, traveling the world or sitting by a fire, watching the stars. As we talk, you'll hear Lisa share one bold decision that has created her path on what was next. Her story of resilience, risk taking and transformation will inspire, encourage and support your personal and professional growth. Welcome Lisa to the Bold and Brilliant Podcast. All right, Lisa, welcome to the Bold and Brilliant podcast. I'm so glad you're here.

Lisa Condon: 1:34

Tracie, I'm so glad to be here with you. What a way to start my weekend. I'm so excited.

Tracie Root: 1:39

I know. It's Friday today and it is, it's like when you get to do something like this on a Friday, I feel like it's the pre celebration before. The life gets to really begin, which is not to say our work is not a fun also, but there's something about that break of having a really great conversation with a friend with a colleague that sets you up for what's to come. And of course, we're going to talk about bold decisions and those kinds of things as we go forward, which also sets us up for what's to come. So that's like a fun combination there. But before we do that, I want people who haven't met you yet to get to know a little bit about you. So tell us a little bit about your journey to doing what you're doing. I've already talked about, that you are a super adventurous spirit and you're working and you have all these trainings and like super. Like base of your skill set that you bring to your clients and everything, but tell us about you and how you got here.

Lisa Condon: 2:44

I would love to, and it's so funny when I hear that, I've got to tell people that haven't met me yet. I'm like, why haven't I met everybody yet? I want to meet everybody in the world. So so my journey, I would say interesting for me, but I also think there's a lot of. Things that people will resonate with because they've gone through it themselves, right? So I was in the corporate world in the newspaper industry. 1 day, because things weren't aligned. It didn't feel right anymore. And I've been climbing the corporate ladder at that point. I decided to leave and that was after a course of time where people kept asking me, do you consult? No, do you freelance? No. And then one day, the answer was, yes, I do. And that was after a pretty bad day. And so that just started that next trajectory of now, what do I do now? I said, yes, what does that look like? And so that was a lot of fun. But, as I progressed, and as I really expanded into the work that I really want to do, and I think like many entrepreneurs, We do things at the beginning that we can do it. Maybe we shouldn't be doing it. Maybe we don't love it, but it was the just because I can doesn't mean I should have. Now the work that I do, and this is, been going on for a really long time, right? The 17 years ish, where I do a lot of work in helping my clients, both in life and business around their core value systems and helping to identify that. I do a lot of work in the gratitude space as well, but we set that up as the foundation from which to build your strategic plan in both business and life. And walking through. That blueprint for them of how do we get from where you are now to the purpose filled work that you want to be doing while you're here on this earth and what are the steps to get there and then making them really incremental. So they can be truly impactful. And that just lights me up every day.

Tracie Root: 4:42

Love what I do. That's amazing. I have a question. So if you're working with people about what's their next step? What, how are they going to move forward? But then you start talking with them about what lights them up. Are you finding that people? Didn't like, do they expect that? Do they think that they just were looking for a checklist? I feel if I think back to my corporate days to who wouldn't recognize me, as I am today in a lot of ways, but if I think back there and like the executives in those companies, and if you started talking to them about. What's your passion and all of that? I think they're so compartmentalized. So what was that? To start to offer them those thought processes around what their expectation is like, more regimented.

Lisa Condon: 5:34

Yeah, that's a great question because number 1, it's scary. The 1st time you do it and start opening up that conversation. Especially when you have that corporate background, that people are going to have certain thoughts and certain feelings about those types of questions yet, being somebody that has really been very intuitive my entire life and really tapped into. Other things, just taking into account what's going on and energies and that type of stuff that it's really impactful. So I would use that work and just not tell people I was doing it. Once I started opening up those conversations, and usually it wasn't the 1st conversation, usually it was the 2nd or 3rd, it was amazing. How people they didn't expect it, even though some of them came to me after hearing me speak, right? You would think that they would expect it and anticipate it, but they didn't. And I think those tend to be those tipping points for a different type of conversation that gets very real and very deep. And that's where the magic starts to happen. So now it is an absolute must part of the work that I do. And even though again, stepping into that 1st conversation, there's still a little fear because you never know what the reaction will be and yet. And I've seen them all. Trust me. I've seen every reaction to it. But then we get real. It's stripping off the layers and getting to the true heart of the individual. And until we can get to that space, you're not going to build anything in life or business from a truly. Vulnerable authentic space and yeah, and so we spent years, Tracie, like building up these layers. I helped strip them off.

Tracie Root: 7:24

Yeah. Okay. So I'm imagining, you're working with this. I imagine it being a guy, right? You're working with this guy because when I think corporate executive who isn't in touch. With those kinds of thoughts, I think about this guy in a suit, right? It's just the image of my mind. And so you introduce the ideas without really saying you're going to introduce the ideas, but then one day you decide, look, I'm going to lead with this as part of how I'm going to help this new person who doesn't even know me yet. So that is, as we say, a super bold decision, because you don't know how that's going to be received by these, this client type that you've been working with already. So tell us about like the first time you decided consciously to make that shift with a new client.

Lisa Condon: 8:20

Sure. And it's interesting that you conjure up a man in a suit. Because the first time I did it was actually with a woman who was very corporatized and I, a woman in a suit and I saw so much of myself in her because when I was in the corporate space, there wasn't space for feelings or there wasn't space for any of that. type of conversation. It was about climbing the ladder and balancing the budget and doing all the things and checking all the boxes. And so this woman, while we were having a conversation I didn't even start out that way. We were having our conversation, we were doing the same old, or so it felt to me, and we weren't getting anywhere. The baby steps were happening. But there was a blockage and I finally just said, listen, we need to have a different type of conversation because there's something that's blocking you right now. And I think we just need to talk about it. And so it actually came from a place of knowing that there was more and I needed to pull it out. And all of these other techniques that I had been trained on and learned about and took classes on, none of it was working. And so I had to step into this other space of. Other work that I have done, very spiritual work, very, a lot of energy work, that type of thing. And I just, I had to just lay it on the table. And I finally was like, so are you open to that? So after I did this like deluge of we've got to do this and then it was, oh, wait, are you open to it? And the look on her face was priceless. She was a deer in headlights. And with some of the questions that I asked her about, what is your purpose? What are you feeling when you do this? She just looked at me deer in headlights and then very quietly, and this was a very bold woman said, nobody's ever asked me that. And did she have an answer? Not really, not in that moment, but as we started diving into it and having those conversations, she started really digging into who she was at the core and what still resonates with me, Tracie, too, is you could physically see. The hardness, the shell that she had built around herself from years and years of being in the space that she was in, it was melting like she just became softer. Her face became softer. Her words became kinder to herself and how she was describing the things that she wanted to do. It was beautiful. It was a really beautiful moment. And I, I still talk to her to this day. And her life is completely different, like 180 completely. What is she doing now? I just, I have to know. Yeah. So funny enough, she stepped into her artistic space. She had this whole creative side to her. So she's now, she's an artist just that kind of that world for herself. Now she came from a place of affluency. So she left the corporate world. She had done a lot of saving and. She was able to say, I don't want that anymore. And this is what I want for myself. So that's what she does. And she's a, I love that. My art geek self is happy. Oh, that's true. I didn't even think about that. Absolutely. Oh, that's so great. Yeah. So yeah, she's it's good. It's really good, but. But I think that's where when we talk about, especially with all we have gone through, and you and I were talking a little bit about this, it's been five years since our world's changed. And as we've come out of it, so many people had opportunity to go back to what they were doing and how they were doing it or create and continue the change that they started. And I'm watching. Unfortunately, a lot of people. Moving, going back to what they knew and the habits of what they knew. And those are the conversations I love to have. Because why let's talk about why you chose to do that and not live in this space. That was bringing you joy for so long. And. Yeah, and just dive into those discoveries, right? And have those conversations.

Tracie Root: 12:29

Yeah, it's so interesting. I think that, 1 year, the next year, you're holding on, you're trying to do the things and then, maybe it's not going as great as you imagined it would it's those unmet expectations and and then it's not what I thought it was going to be. It's too hard. And somehow going back to the way things were, which you can't really do seems easier to some people and it's, I think it's because just tell me what to do as opposed to creating it yourself. The whole, just tell me what to do. I can't make another decision today. Give me a job

Lisa Condon: 13:11

and I think I, yes, to everything you said, and I also think to really step out into the world as your true, vulnerable, authentic self is very scary because when there's that fear of rejection or people not understanding you, or people don't like it when you change and they want you to stay the same forever. So it's all of those things that come with it. And yet at the same time, when you step into the world in your vulnerable, authentic way and space, that's where you're going to make great change. And that's where you're going to live into your purpose. And people are going to see that and experience that. And you're bringing your. Slice of magic to the world that you're living in, and that's not easy, and it is scary in every sense of the word, but when you're able to do it and live it and breathe it day in and day out, it's so beautiful, and it actually is easier because then you've just shed off all the other stuff that you just don't need.

Tracie Root: 14:14

The thought that I had after this tale is. I know that you mentioned in the beginning gratitude values. So talk about, you ask these clients, these questions you've moved into really helping people crack through the shell that they had. I love that visual. It feels so absolutely spot on. So tell us about the gratitude and the value stuff and how that has morphed into where you are with it today, because it's. It's how you show up every day and tell it. So tell us how you use that when you're working with people and how that came to be.

Lisa Condon: 14:54

Yeah. And it came to be in 2 different ways. So the value piece is a little more it's an easier path to talk about, right? Because, yeah, it's more tangible, right? Because I was in a leadership program in Vermont and they did this value card exercise and it was life changing for me. Years later, I decided that I wanted to share that with the world, ultimately created my value cards, and now I use them with clients and it works. It truly walking through that work. I think a lot of people believe they know what their values are. And I always say, do the work. Because oftentimes the values that you think you have are actually other people's values that they think you should have not what you believe. So it's doing the work. The gratitude piece is something completely different, right? The gratitude piece is really around. You hear the term woo, right? You hear the term or will and the reality is once upon a time. I thought that about gratitude or about, any of the energy work. It was too fluffy. There's no place for that in business. But the reality is there's a huge place for that in business in the way that I look at business and in the way that I do. It's because for gratitude for me, I have a, I have 9 steps of gratitude that I believe wholeheartedly in and it's about being in this space in the now. Being able to make decisions based on the work that you have done, understanding that when you're looking ahead, or when you're looking at what has transpired, it doesn't allow you to really experience what is happening right now in your world, in your business, and other people's lives. And when you can be grounded in the now, it allows you to connect with other people. It allows you to connect with your business and the work that you're doing. And then moving forward. From that place and moving forward. There is a place for will in the professional world. It exists and that took a long time to be able to say that. And it still feels that whole corporate mind and voice in my head is like, Oh, you shouldn't be talking about that, but you should, and we all should, and we all should be having those conversations because when you are paying attention to sometimes what you call your gut instinct, or you hear that download or that voice that comes to you, pay attention, the answers are within you. They truly are.

Tracie Root: 17:27

Yeah. So my thought around that is, to different people have different definitions of what would be considered something that's woo, right? But what you're talking about is being present, being mindful, being aware, self aware, like all of these things that are all absolutely the normal emotional intelligence stuff that's studied out there in science and stuff. So it's not woo. Like people would dismiss it if they're sciencey, this is psychology and it's, because following your gut doesn't make you crazy. It makes you, it means that you're paying attention.

Lisa Condon: 18:10

It does. And there was a white paper that Harvard put out, I think it was 2017 about gratitude and there's a lot of white papers, but this one resonated with me because it talked about when you are in the active Active throws or of gratitude, right? If you're practicing gratitude, your synapses in your brain light up different colors. And so I'm like, there's a disco ball going on in your head. But what happens is it starts to transform you. It transforms your thoughts. It transforms the words that you use. You actually innovate differently when you are actively practicing gratitude. And when you consistently are practicing gratitude and consistently So sitting in that space, imagine, just how things will change for you and continuously change sometimes slower and sometimes quick, but it really is about in my mind, decide how fast it goes. It just no, definitely not. But it really is about combining authenticity and emotional intelligence and then bringing that into the workplace and into the professional world. That's truly what it is.

Tracie Root: 19:18

I love it. And, when we study personal and professional development, those are the things we're reading about, right? Those are the things that all of these authors who we respect, who we're, following the case studies that they bring in the stories that they tell the stories that we have in the case study you just talked about, it's all about being self aware, being aware of your world around you. And being aware of something feels off don't ignore it. It's there's a reason we're feeling that way and it's you're not making it up and it's not something out of left field. It's actually your biology in your brain. It's. It's how we were created. It's all of the things tied together.

Lisa Condon: 20:04

Absolutely. And you know what, Tracie? At the end,

Tracie Root: 20:07

I'm so excited to even talk about it. That's so beautiful.

Lisa Condon: 20:09

Yeah, no, I agree with you. And it's, I think people, when they think about woo, they think about it's the personal growth side. It's just, it's about personal growth. It's actually a professional advantage. So when you bring that space to the workplace and you're able to be a leader, an influencer, a contributor, a thought partner in and bring that to the table, then you're bringing that out in somebody else. And that just fuels something brand new and beautiful that you're bringing into the world.

Tracie Root: 20:42

And like you were saying about your, that first client, that woman when the, when the shell can come off and we're showing up for each other and caring about the people across the table from us, whether that's at a restaurant or in the boardroom whatever corporate trope you want to use, but imagine that kind of idea if people actually cared about each other and what could have happened, can happen in that kind of growth environment where if you actually are paying attention to what people need, how much more you can get done.

Lisa Condon: 21:23

Totally. And when people are transitioning, it's funny. One of my male clients, I remember he actually had come to my house and we were. We were doing some work and it was he had come to me because he was retiring out of his Long term, very high level, high stress job, and he decided to retire very early at 50, and then he wanted to step into being a coach, being an executive coach, and he worked with, he decided to hire me to help him through that transition. This was somebody who was a close friend of mine as well. And after we got him through the transition, and he flew from the nest and did his thing. Our very last call, he said to me, he goes, I just want to give you some feedback. He said, you are. You are a great business coach. He's and said all these wonderful kudos. And then he said, but Lisa, you are an exceptional life coach. He's I don't know what you did and how you did it, but you helped me find me. And that compliment and that feedback changed me. That was a tipping point for me, right? Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And, watching him today and the stuff he's doing, he was already incredible. He didn't, it's almost like he didn't need me, but. He did because he's now talking and speaking and doing things that are out, were outside of his comfort zone and his zone of genius when he's stepping into his true self and what he really wanted to be doing and his purposeful work. It's, you can hear me. I'm getting a little choked up because it's pretty amazing. Yeah.

Tracie Root: 23:02

He did need you because he needed a different, he needed someone outside of his own brain. Yeah. Not so much give permission, but there's a little bit of that for all of us. But also to just recognize the transition that was to come and show him. Look, it's right there. Go ahead. Exactly. I love it. So good. So good. I actually got one of my first awarenesses of your, the value card thing that you, the, doing the values work that you do because I went to a meeting, they use your cards as like icebreaker questions. This was at a meeting up in Petaluma and. So tell us, you said that, you went through a program, they were doing something similar, you created your own. So tell us how you use that exercise and a little bit about from a value standpoint, you're like, get to one or two, like a really people say, Oh, what's your top five or whatever, but you go a lot narrower. So talk about that a little bit.

Lisa Condon: 24:06

Sure. And I'll first start off with why I created mine versus using somebody else's. Because when I first started doing the values work and leading those workshops, I actually used somebody else's values cards because there's plenty out there. There are plenty of, there's some online stuff, there's cards, there's so many ways to do it. But what I found was there weren't cards that, they either had a word or they had definitions that I didn't resonate with. So I needed to do it in having the words and the definitions. And I also have a deck that's personal and then I have one for business and it's not you as a business person. It's actually giving your business its own personality. So 2 things. And what I do and why I go as narrow as I go. And I do make people go to the top two, that's so sorry, spoiler alert, for anybody that hasn't done that with me, because the way that I do it, I like to have fun with it. People get mad at me, but I don't care. And but think about it. If you are trying to make significant change in your life or your business, and you are given five things that you have to all of a sudden implement. How's that going to go for you? Not going to go very well, right? Too many choices. Too many things to change, gets overwhelming. You're not going to do any of it. Or, if you try to do it, you're not going to do it all well. Starting with the top one, or the top two, it's a lot easier to integrate it, sustain it, feel the change, understand the change, and then figure out how you're going to continue going down that path. Because the other piece that I do So what I have people really take stock of what a day in the life of looks like, and we actually come out with a metric. So we, I have, and it's a whole thing, but essentially at the end of the day, we figure out where you're spending your time and how much of that time is in alignment with your top two values. And I will tell you that most people, and when I say most people I've worked with, like over 90 percent of them. I'm sorry around 90 percent of them are 5 percent or less 5 percent or less of their time is spent in alignment with their value system. So if you have that number, that bottom or that starting point, then you can then look at, okay, how do I get it to 7%? How do I get it to 15%? What's that going to feel like? What's that going to change? And it's amazing because then when you do it again in the course of time. That percentage when it goes up. How are you showing up differently for your family, for your friends, for the communities you're a part of, for your business? What does that look like? Are you attracting different types of clients? And, it's that type of thing that starts to happen, but that's also why the way that I do the values work is I know we're going to know what your top 5 are. We're going to know what your top 10 are, but we're going to start with 2. We're gonna start with two, and then when we get that to a really good point, we can start introducing another one. And another one. But it takes time to even get the first two integrated.

Tracie Root: 27:19

Is it hard to get someone from 10 to five to two?

Lisa Condon: 27:23

The way that I do it the way that I do the entire exercise, it's. This is why the workshops that I do are hours long, like they're a half day session. If I do it one on one, it's two and a half hours, but there's a reason why all of that time exists, because you want to give people the time to have conversation, to ask questions, to figure out what I call the dependencies upon, and I'll give you an example. I, there's 1 person in particular that I can think of where their number 1 value is health. And they said to me, the reason that it's health is because if I'm not healthy, I cannot be anything to my family. I cannot show up authentically, I can't adventure the way that I want to if I'm not healthy. So they saw that as their dependency. But I think we're all so different and wired so differently that to get to the core of who we are it's how we see things and how we experience life and want to experience life. And and values are guiding principles. I was

Tracie Root: 28:26

going to say like someone else who has similar reasons for theirs might not choose the word health. But would choose, freedom or, whatever the word is that resonates for them. And they're like, if I'm not free to make these decisions, then I can't do this. And the things that they can't do might be the same.

Lisa Condon: 28:43

Yeah.

Tracie Root: 28:44

So that's really interesting to, cause that's your whole what are you bringing to the table from your childhood and your upbringing and your experiences and all that?

Lisa Condon: 28:52

Absolutely. Yeah. And that's all part of gratitude work too, right? One of the things when I'm talking about the nine steps of gratitude, I work through an individual's foundational garden and we build that out because every experience you've had, every person that has been in your life has planted a seed and how are you watering that? And how are you letting it grow? And maybe it shouldn't be growing. Maybe it's a weed, so we talk about those things as well. And I see them really as intertwined. They just, they show up differently in work life and and your, professional or personal world. Yeah, for sure.

Tracie Root: 29:29

Awesome. You know that I think that all of this work is so important and you're so smart and articulate to be able to share it with people where people might be like, oh, yeah, I'd like to work on that, but they don't know. Like where to start or even sometimes I don't even know why it sounds like a good idea. They just have this feeling, right? And so I know that you work one on one with people. You're also doing your workshops and stuff. We'll put things in the show notes, but tell us a little bit about how you're working with clients. We only have a couple minutes left, but how you're working with clients and how people can find out more about having a chance to work with you.

Lisa Condon: 30:11

No, I appreciate that. The best thing to do is to set up a discovery call with me because we're going to have a conversation about where you are and. And just where you want to be and where do you want to go and have, and just have that conversation. And the way to do that is to go to my website, which is Lisa Condon dot com, which I know you put in the information, but it starts with a conversation. It truly does. And because again, to raise your hand and say, you know what I want to feel differently or I want to feel more joy. Sometimes it can feel very selfish and the reality is it's not because if you aren't full, you can't pour into other people. Yeah. So it's really about your self love and self care.

Tracie Root: 30:57

Yeah, it is. Yeah. I love the phrase. Like you can't pour from an empty cup while you pour whatever's in the cup. That's the thing and if your cup is full of peace and gratitude and self love and holding to those core values that you have figured out are the most important things to you, then that's what you give to everyone else. And it's the ripple effect. Yeah, it really is. Fantastic. Lisa, I'm so grateful for our time to always every conversation we have, but this has been fantastic and I can't wait to get this episode out to the world. And that was a great wrap, so I'm going to say, thank you so much and I can't wait for us to get to be together again, but thank you for today.

Lisa Condon: 31:40

Thank you, Tracie. I always appreciate time with you.