Unlocking Your Noble Purpose: How Purpose-Driven Business Transforms Success With Lisa McLeod

The conversation dives into the concept of noble purpose and how it can transform the way we approach work and life. Tony Martignetti speaks with Lisa McLeod, a global expert on purpose-driven business, to explore how aligning our professional efforts with a higher purpose can lead to greater success and fulfillment. Learn how purpose-driven leadership and sales can differentiate you from the competition and make a lasting impact on your customers. Tune in to uncover how you can integrate noble purpose into your everyday work and inspire those around you.

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Unlocking Your Noble Purpose: How Purpose-Driven Business Transforms Success With Lisa McLeod

Introduction To Noble Purpose

It is truly my pleasure and my honor to introduce you to my guest, Lisa McLeod. Lisa is a global expert on purpose-driven business. She's the author of five books, including her bestseller, Selling With Noble Purpose: How to Drive Revenue and Do Work That Makes You Proud. Lisa helps leaders around the world increase competitive differentiation and emotional engagement. She developed the Noble Purpose Methodology after her research revealed that salespeople who sell with a noble purpose outsell salespeople who focus on targets and quotas. Nobody likes quotas and targets.

Lisa founded her own firm McLeod & More Incorporated in 2001. She works with teams at organizations like Salesforce, Cisco, Roche, Volvo, and Dave & Buster's. She has keynoted in 25 countries and authored over 2,000 articles. She is a regular contributor for the Harvard Business Review and Forbes and has made appearances on the Today Show and the NBC Nightly News. Her firm’s work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal and NPR. It’s truly a pleasure to welcome you to the Virtual Campfire, Lisa.

It is my pleasure to be here. After that intro, I feel like I have a lot to measure up to.

The bar has been set very high for you. I know you're going to be bringing a lot of fire to this campfire. Thank you so much for coming on the show, and I'm looking forward to understanding the journey that brought you to make such a big impact in the world. That's what we're going to do here. We're going to talk about these moments, these flashpoints that have revealed your gifts and the world. We'll be doing that in a moment. I'll turn it over to you. You can share the moments that have defined who you are. Along the way, we'll pause and see what themes are showing up. What do you think, Lisa? Are you ready?

I'm ready.

Why don’t you take it away with these flashpoints? What are the moments that have made you who you are?

Combining Spirituality And Business

I had flashpoints and I'll describe them in a second, but as I was listening to you introduce me, I heard this language of, “She's helped all these organizations with sales and competitive differentiation,” then you hear this noble purpose. I have a little bit of a need to explain myself sometimes. I was listening to a spiritual podcast the other day and in a nutshell, I am a person who works in business who believes that commerce can be a noble endeavor, and I am also a spiritual seeker.

Commerce can be a noble endeavor. You don't have to choose between profit and purpose—you can have both!

Oftentimes, those two things don't go together and I buy necessities. I had to put them together. I couldn't just sit on a rock and meditate my whole life. I make a living. I was listening to a spiritual podcast the other day and they were talking about, “All these people are trying to sell you something.” It's interesting because the word sales does not evoke a sense of spiritual well-being to people, or emotional well-being. It's because a lot of people are doing it very badly. It is because they are doing it unethically and manipulatively. The research tells us that those people not only are creating ill will in the profession but they're also not that successful.

You talk about these flashpoint moments and I remember one in particular. I was in college and I was at this presentation where they invited me. I'm old enough as you probably gather from my bio. This was before the internet was invented. That was a thing, people. I saw an ad in the newspaper which was this paper thing that you picked up and you got your hands dirty. There was this ad and it said, “For college students.” It was in the college paper for summer employment.

I go to this big meeting and they're talking to us about this opportunity. It's all college students and there's a very young woman who is just a year out of college herself talking about how she did this job. You go and you sell books. You go door to door selling books. What I found out from a friend of mine is that it was a bait-and-switch thing. A friend of mine had done this and it was like they dropped you in the city. He said it was terrible. Why is this a flashpoint moment? It’s because, within a minute, I realized, “That's that thing my friend Dale did.” I'm sitting in the front of the room so I can't leave.

I'm sitting there listening to her. I must have not been doing a very good job, I'm like nineteen years old, of controlling my body language because all of a sudden she stopped in the middle of this presentation. She has done all the things where she got all our names and everything. She looks straight at me and goes, “Lisa, if you're not comfortable or this isn't for you, you can leave.” I was like, “Holy sh*t. How did she know what I was thinking?” I wasn't doing the heavy sighs. I didn't think I was doing anything.

My face starts flaming red. I pick up my book and bag. It was awkward. I fumble and some things. I leave and I'm so embarrassed. The reason I remember it like it was yesterday, you can feel the shame rising in my voice, is that was my first experience of personal energy. That was my first experience. I called my father and I was like, “How did she know?” My dad said, “Number one, you were giving off a vibe and she's good enough to read it because you’re in the front row.”

He said, “Number two, she wants you out of that room because you were ruining what she is trying to do.” I remember opening a door for me that there was more to what was going on in any circumstance than the words being spoken. People uttered the phrase, “Good vibes.” I'm not so old. I was a teenager in the ‘60s. This is more like the late ‘80s when this thing happened. It was the first time I understood there was this other layer to what was going on, and good people could read it.

You were completely floored by this because of one of the things that this moment describes. It's also an interesting thing that you chose to be in the front of the room. There's something about the level of why you end up there. Was that something about you that said, “I'm a front-of-the-room type of person?”

I am very much a front-of-the-room type of person. When I do big speeches, if the seating has not been assigned, I make direct eye contact with the front-of-the-room people. I get there early and I say, “Do you mind if I call you to ask a question?” I know I found my kindred spirits. The people at the front of the room are the ones who are usually interesting, or they are hard of hearing.

It’s one or the other.

I learned that way later, but if I go to another person's presentation, I typically 90% of the time will sit in the front. The only time I'll sit in the back is if I am not interested, but I have to be there anyway.

One of the things this moment has me thinking about is that maybe unknowingly had decided that you wanted to be called out in this moment even though you didn't know it. That was like a wake-up call.

I wanted to make an impression and I wanted that job. I thought I had already learned. If you're at the front when the session ends, you can walk up fastest and ask your question. The people and I already had enough awareness to know that, but that was probably the first time I went to the front and said, “I don't want to be here.” It was interesting because when I look back, I can recall the moment very easily but I hadn't thought about it in a little while.

When you said what are those flashpoint moments, for me, that was a portal. My life's work ended up being about what are the undercurrents in the thoughts, the beliefs, and the things underneath that show up in the exterior that affect the outcome. This is why I'm in the leadership and sales space because I can handle all these scripted salespeople who are terrible. They might be lovely human beings, but they're terrible because their bodies are not in the moment. They're either not wanting to be there, reading you a script or they're so fear-based. They are trying to control the whole situation. They haven't calmed down enough to focus on you.

I love the way you described that too because it's like this presence that they need to embody. It's hard because now there are so many distractions that we can wield even in the moment of being in a room where the phone could be an easy distraction or a way for us to hide where we are. It's an energy drain. It's a distractor, and so you don't know whether they are just trying to be busy or taking notes, or are they here? You want people to be there.

I would challenge you. You do know. Your body knows everything is fine. You know it with your leader. You know it with a salesperson. Most of the work that I do is it's more than just being present. If you are a leader or you are a salesperson, if you are in a commercial business, being present is huge, but it's beyond that. You are there to improve the customers' condition. That is the whole point of business, whether you're in the machine shop, whether you're the salesperson, whether you're the CEO. Your true north or what I call your noble purpose has to be improving life for customers. We create this binary thing where I'm either in for the money or in to make a difference. There are tons of research that the best individual contributors do both.

Top sales performers don’t just sell—they improve their customers' lives. Purpose drives them forward.

I love that. Even coming back to what you said earlier, the spirituality and sales, those two lines do not cross. When you think about it, sales is about exchanging. It's an exchange and that exchange is about exchanging value. That could be a sense of exchanging or connecting with two different people. That can be a very spiritual thing. Even though money is one part of it, it's part of the underlying current. It's also about building a relationship that then allows two people to create something together.

It can be anything. Sales run the spectrum from a transaction, which is one up at the counter to order my coffee. We're never going to see each other again. You're going to give me my coffee. When I Infuse that with the sense that I'm the provider of the goods when I Infuse that with the sense that I want this moment, maybe this 30 seconds, I want to be good for you, the experience changes. More of the companies that I work with are selling multi-million dollar contracts. It's the exact same principle.

You talked about these moments that you have. I had a moment where selling with a noble purpose was born. Flash forward to my experience in college, I was a sales consultant. I have been a salesperson, a sales leader, and a sales trainer. I've been to VP of sales for this sales training company. I had a lot of experience in this. At this moment in time, I was out on my own and we had a family business that had gone bankrupt. That is my short-circuit way of telling you I was broke and needed the money, very much needed the money.

I agreed to do this thing. It wasn't a bad thing, but I agreed to do a big project. It was going to take me away from my family, but I needed the money. It was a project where we were trying to identify with this big biotech sales team what differentiated the top performers, and what made the top performers. I have a long history of sales. I was the next sales coach. I can spot sales behavior. We're doing this project and I did these two-day ride-alongs all over the country. It was a good project, but I had to be away a lot and ordinarily, I wouldn't be away that much, and I had to say, “Do it or don't. Don't do half of it.”

I said my little prayer to the universe, needing the money, and saying, “I'm going to do this thing. I like something meaningful to come out.” I opened myself up to that. We're out there. We assess all these salespeople. Just to be clear, in any organization, the difference between the good people and the bad people, they're not bad humans. They have never seen the top performers. It is obvious, especially in sales. The numbers are the numbers. What's harder to pin is the difference between the top performers and the good performers. It's a more nuanced space. They tend to do a lot of the same things. That's what we're looking for.

We're near the end of the study. I'm with this biotech rep. One thing you have to understand about these biotech reps is they're smart. You can't sell these things and talk to doctors unless you have a master's degree in Biology or something. These people are smart. They're not like the fluffy, “Do you want to buy one?” They're good. I'm with this one rep and I've observed her and she's good. It's like magic when she walks in. These physicians that nobody can see, “Welcome.”

We're at the end and I say, “What do you think about when you go on sales calls?” We were looking at behaviors and backgrounds. She said, “I always think about this one particular patient.” We both know exactly what I'm talking about. She describes early in her career a couple of years earlier. She had met this grandmother, this woman.

This patient had come up to her at the doctor's office and said, “Are you the rep for this drug?” She says, “Yes, ma'am, I am.” She said, “This drug gave me my life back. I can visit my grandkids. I can play with them. I’m on the plane. I just want to thank you.” This sales rep who is in this very scientific environment says, “I always hold her in my heart every day when I do my job. She's my purpose.” This was fifteen years ago. Purpose was not being talked about anywhere besides Whole Foods.

This was not in the mainstream. I don't even know if they were using words like conscious capitalism. They had written books or any of that stuff. I kept noodling it over and over in my mind. It's like that moment in the movie where somebody realizes their spouse is having an affair and they backfill about 50 events, and now something makes sense.

You see the light bulb above their head.

The Moment Noble Purpose Was Born

You watched their little flashbacks. What happened on the plane on the way home, I had twenty years of coaching salespeople. I back-filled it all and I went, “That's it.” At the end of the study, the biotech company asked us. It was a blind study. We didn't know who the top performers were. They said, “Who do you think the top performers are?” I found a couple of other people and referenced them in the interviews. I said, “I think it's these five,” and I was right. The one who had the vivid picture in her mind was a number one sales rep in the country three years in a row.

That started to study and it's now been proved by Dr. Valerie. Good at Michigan State University that salespeople have this noble purpose, and this could apply to anything, leaders, parents, and teachers. It's more obvious in sales where the self-agenda comes through. When they have this sense of higher purpose, I now understand why she glided into those offices. That's not to say some people didn't reject her or something should go away.

She didn't have her off day, but I now understand both, and I'm using the word spiritual very loosely here. This esoteric feeling of being part of something bigger than yourself, and also the brain science backs this because I could look at her brain. We didn't go that deep into the study, but I could look at her brain thinking about that grandmother all her frontal lobe lit up.

She's at her highest level of thinking, and I could look at the brain of a sales rep going into the call saying, “I have to close this or I'm going to be fired.” She is ignited more of her higher thinking self and is going to have a better sales call because she is operating from a different place in her brain. The same is true in any situation for the rest of us.

First of all, I can relate to your story very closely. I worked in the biotech industry for a number of years. I've had those moments where I've sat with someone. You said you work in this particular area, particularly with cystic fibrosis patients. It was rewarding, especially when you're not the scientist who developed it, but you've helped support and enable the science through another capacity. It is what drives you. It gives you that extra push, that sense of, “This is why we do what we do.” I think one of the things about this, which is interesting is that it has me thinking about how it doesn't make the work easier. It just makes it so that you have this ability to be resilient in the face of struggles.

I'm reminded of a conversation I had recently with Marcus Collins. When people think about passion, they think it's something like, “This is so easy and everything is wonderful but passion has struggled. They are suffering in passion. The same thing with purpose. When you have a noble purpose, there is a sense that you're willing to tolerate some things like the noes that you get, the rejections, and things along the way because you know that you're doing this for the right reasons.

Aligning Passion With Purpose

You're doing this because you have a purpose that you would be willing to fight for because you believe in it. I think that is the power you're tapping into here. It is a sense that don't expect it to be an easy process, but do expect it to be so empowering and powerful that it has you one to get up in the morning and say, “Hell yes. Let's do this thing.”

There's actual research about this. You mentioned that you were supporting. It's not a coincidence that I landed on this truism. I didn't invent it. I spotted it, named it, and created a methodology around it. It's not coincidental that it was in biotech where they're saving lives, but I have to tell you, we work with a railroad company. Folks can't see you, but you would not have the beautiful bookcase behind you and some of the things that you're probably about to have for lunch if you did not have railroads in your life. I’ll tell you right now, they are very essential.

The same thing that happens to the railroad happens in the biotech company. You're not front and center to getting the stuff and seeing the larger impact. What happens is leaders manage to metric the sales numbers, the turnaround times, and how many we get. That doesn't inspire people to get out of bed. We want to do a good job. We want to provide for our families. It's not like we're slackers, but when things get hard, when there's no higher purpose, that's when you get people emotionally checked out.

The research is clear. Companies that have a purpose bigger than money outperform the market by 350% The money and the purpose are connected, but the purpose is the true north. The money is the lagging indicator. It's the measurement of how well you're delivering on your purpose. When you talk about purpose and passion, some research shows that passionate people about whatever they're doing and have a strong sense of purpose are top performers. People who are not passionate and not purposeful are worse performers.

Purpose-driven businesses outperform the market by 350%. Purpose isn't just nice to have—it's a competitive advantage!

Here's where it gets interesting. If you have passion as an individual, passion as I care about it, passion as I enjoy it, but I'm not sure it matters to anybody else. Purpose is it makes a difference if you just have one. Purpose wins and the reason, I'll give you the shortest example. Parenting. There's not a parent alive that didn't bring home that baby. We had trepidation but we also have passion and purpose because we love that baby and we are going to raise the next great scientist or the Martin Luther King or whatever, insert your thing here.

There are going to be moments of your parenting journey where it sucks. You hate that baby and that father, and the only thing that keeps you going is the sense of purpose. This matters, and the same thing applies to work. We got a glitch in the rail mechanism, “I just wanted to go home,” but people are waiting at the other end of this line and this matters to them. That's the thing as humans, we want two things, belonging and significance. We want to be part of something bigger than ourselves. We want to know that our contribution matters. That's where purpose comes in. We want to be part of something bigger than ourselves and we want to know that our contribution matters because it's not hard work that erodes our spirit. It's meaningless work.

It's so beautifully said. I want to get back to some more flashpoint moments but before we do that, I want to take a moment to talk about this idea of the desire we all have is this belonging and desire to feel significant. A lot of people work inside organizations or outside of organizations. They search their lives trying to find that sense of belonging and significance. It can be challenging. Maybe you have any ideas or tips for those who are inside organizations, and who are struggling to figure out, “How do I have that conversation of finding my significance, my belonging?”

You do it from any seat you're in because one that often happens to me is I’ll go up and I’ll talk about leading with a noble purpose or selling a noble purpose. People will come up to me afterward and go, “I believe everything you said but there's a problem.” What do you think they say? What do you think the problem is?

I am not empowered, I don't have the right people, or my boss won't let me.

My boss. I believe this but my boss doesn’t. To which case, I usually say, “Who do you think Harvey has come?” They might be doing it rather imperfectly. I've realized that is not a helpful answer. I have a better answer, which is how to do it. The problem when you work for a big company is it is very easy to feel like a cog in a machine. Truth be told, there might be people at the top who view you as nothing more than a cog in the machine. Bless their hearts because that's the way they've been trained. That's the way they've been trained in business school. That's the way the market trains them. Just because that's what they think doesn't mean you have to behave that way.

The key thing that you want to do is we know that people who feel fully alive at work have three things. They believe in the larger purpose of the organization. They understand how their own job makes a difference, and they have some personal affinity for it. Let's say you work with the railroad company and it's not the great railroad company that we work with, which is amazing. You can Google their names. They're awesome.

You work for their competitor and the CEO says, “You're a cog in our money machine, get over it.” You don't want to change jobs. What you do is you do two things. First, you look at your job. Whatever it is you do, how does it make an impact? You might think, “I’ll just send these papers over to so and so.” What would happen if you didn't do it? What would happen if you did it poorly? What happens when you do it? You have to look at the ripple effect. We got a whole exercise on it. Here's your impact, but what's the ripple effect?

We are working with an IT company and we have coders sitting in a room. We take them through what happens if you don't do it. Somebody else will do it. What happens if it's not done? Let's go through this. They go through the through line and they realize they're helping people go home on time. They're helping people sleep better at night. They're helping people with their information be safer. It's more than just a mental game. It is the difference between a teacher looking at a student saying, “I have to teach you about the War of 1812,” versus a teacher looking at a student saying, “I got to teach you about the War of 1812 because you may be the one with their finger on the button for the war of 2037, and you better know how this stuff happened.”

We all know we'd rather have our kids that second teacher. We'd rather have that second teacher. It's you but so are the other two things. It's you, first of all, looking at your role and how it makes a difference. The second thing, and I'll give you a flashpoint moment about this. The second thing is to look at what your organization does, the things that you sell, the things that you make, accounting services, railroad services, whatever it is. Draw the through line to how what we sell makes a difference.

You may be sitting here in what you deem an unethical industry and that's a whole different story. If you are in an industry that you think doesn't make that big a difference, it's boring, I would challenge you because if your customers are buying from you, it's got to be doing something. You may not be doing it perfectly. There may be someone who does it better because you have to do something, but you have to have those two things. Here's how my job, my data processing makes a difference, then how does what we do make a difference?

I'll tell you a flashpoint that happened to me. Most of mine involved a time when I needed the money. This one does. There was a time period in my life and it shaped me and shaped the work that I did going forward. I was going out to do this training program for this company. This was probably 25 years ago. I did not have my own content. I was working for someone else and it was a very nice training company and I was running their training program. I don’t know if you went to Franklin Covey's seminar. Stephen Covey is not coming. You're getting another. Back in the day, but not now.

It was one of those and I was running a training program for someone else. It was a very good training program, but I was exhausted. I had gotten in late the night before. My flight had been late. I had little kids. Did I get in the afternoon before and give myself some grace? Hell, no. I took the last flight out. It was late. My materials hadn't shown up and I was like, “Oh my God.” I go in the ladies' room and I'm in the stall and a lot of the industries I work in are very male-dominated. Usually. I'm alone in the ladies' room, especially back then. This time I'm not.

Two young women come in and they're washing their hands and I'm in the stall. I am thinking, “If I can just get through this day. I've run this a thousand times, just put your brain on play, and just get through the day. You can fall asleep at 5:10. You can go back to your room. Just get yourself through the day.” These two young women come in and they're at the sink. One of them says, “I'm so excited that I got chosen to come to this training program.” Another one goes, “I know. I was on the waitlist for a year and I finally got my boss to approve it. I heard it's excellent.”

They don't know me. They just know the program. “I heard it's excellent. I'm behind in my quota and he almost let me come. I'm hoping I get some tips to catch up.” The other goes, “I bet you will. It's just the best.” I'm sitting there at the stall going, “Oh my God.” If you two little angels had not walked into this stall, you would have gotten this “Just phone it in.” It wouldn't have been bad because I’ve done it and it's a good program, but I thought, “Lisa, you got a choice at this moment. You're doing this thing. You're tired and you're doing this thing.”

 There are times when we need to bow out and put it in. I'm not saying push yourself to the point of exhaustion all the time, but you're standing up for your friends' group all day and you have a choice. You can focus on your content and doing it or you can make this matter. You can make it. You can. I felt myself lift out of my body. It was all whitey. Just get through module three. It's easy after that because they do role-plays. I could probably go in the back. I lift out of my body and go, “This is your chance to make a difference to them.”

It was a transformational moment because it wasn't that I was going to impose myself on them. It was this young woman who was behind and she was worried about her job. In what way could you be helpful? I felt it in that moment and I've been able to get there I'd say about 90% of the time for the rest of my career. This moment is about them and you being helpful. I got through the day. That's probably not even a language I would use. It was a good day. I probably wouldn't even say I got through the day.

When sometimes you're exhausted, you do need to phone it in. What I realized at that moment, was that we have a book in our business that my business partner wrote called Leading Yourself. In one of the chapters, she says, “Know when to phone it in.” That was not a moment to phone it in. There are probably other low-stakes moments, but I'm like, “You got 25 people here. Are you going to phone it in? Are you going to think about who they are?”

I started after that and then through some of the spiritual work that I had done and some of the energy work. Now, before I get on a Zoom, whether it's one person or if I'm about to walk out to 1,000 people, I take a moment, I take a breath and I no longer say, “You got this, You can do this, Lisa. Give them your best.” I think about them. I think about, who are they. What do I want for them? It lifts me out of myself. There's a nuance here. I want them to feel loved. I want them to be successful. I want their anxiety to go down. When I do that, it puts me in a very different place and they can read it energetically, like that woman read me energetically years ago.

What you shared was so beautiful on so many levels. There's something about this which is to say that purpose is like an energy boost. When you connect with true purpose, it allows you to find that hidden capacity of energy that you need to bring to the next level when you need it.

When you connect to your purpose, you unlock a hidden source of energy that fuels resilience and passion.

Balancing Service And Customer Needs

I have not taken great care of myself over the years. I have had to learn to get my sleep if I want to be my best and not sacrifice my own well-being. It's not, “This is for the greater good. Your needs don't matter.” We tend to do this very creative dichotomy. I do want to say something about this as it relates to service to a customer. This is not indentured servitude to the customer because there is this model out there in the service environment that is very much.

A lot of people talk about customer-centricity. I am not a believer. Giving the customer everything they asked for because they sometimes ask for unreasonable things, especially if you're in sales and you're selling something that requires some level of expertise, they may not know. They're not always right. When I come in and someone says, “We want to do a leadership training because our mid-level managers don't make good decisions and they're not empowered and they're this,” I can do that, but let's talk about what the top people are doing. That didn't have it in a vacuum. That's what I mean, whatever your version of that is when I'm in the space, that if I'm in a business, my role is to improve you, not to please you. My role is to help you improve. Now if I am in a peer relationship or something else, that's not it.

In business that's the implied thing. You're here to help these people have a better day with their coffee or help this multi-million dollar system work better. In a peer relationship, it doesn't mean forcing yourself on someone. What it does mean is stepping out of your own agenda and at least holding space for who they are.

What you shared is important because it is something that a lot of people who do service customers in many ways, especially when it's work that is coming from maybe being a consultant, coach, leadership development, there's a lot of personal energy that goes into showing up and creating these things. It's hard to know the balance between wanting to please, delivering something that's going to give them what they want, and delighting them if you will.

At the same time, knowing that by you, being intentional about what's important and pulling back a little bit and saying, “Am I serving the greater good here? Am I getting it at the right place?” Because my anxiousness to give them all the delight that they want is actually not going to serve them.

I can tell you, if you are financially insecure as I have been as I've shared, it’s a lot harder to do. I have grown in that. Ten years ago if someone had said, “We want you to do this middle manager program,” I'm on that and I'm close to that today. It'll be good and they'll get some things out of it. Now, I would say the way through it is to say, “I absolutely can do that. Before we talk about that, it'd be helpful to talk a little bit about the conditions surrounding these folks and what's going on with that.” They can feel me.

I'm not saying, “That might be good for you.” They can feel my empathy and feel my genuine “I want to understand” energy. That’s how that can work. I'll share with you another transformational moment for me. Many years ago, I was the president of our church. If you ever want the least spiritual experience of your entire life, volunteer to be president of the church. If you want to make it a gnarly, unitarian church, where everybody in here has worth and dignity and there's no power structure. Everyone thinks they're paying matters, and the are pains to that. That's where I'm going.

We were going to paint the interior of the church. It was banged up. It was dingy and we didn't have a ton of money. The member said, “Are we going to vote on what color?” This is pre-whatever you’re doing, everything is all white. There was pale yellow maybe. I said, “Are we going to vote?” I thought about it for a second and I thought this was very judgmental of me. I was correct. I said, “I've been to your houses. I did not like this whole crew weighing interior design.” I wasn't wrong.

The reason I shared this is it was a transformational moment for me because I realized I could hold space for two seemingly competing truths. Everyone has inherent worth and dignity. Everyone's opinion matters, but there are a couple of people who are experts. I said, “We're not going to vote. We got an architect. We have a preschool teacher and we have an interior decorator. Those three are going to choose.”

Holding Space For Others' Expertise

The architect is going to think about the light, the interior decorators are going to look, and the preschool teacher said, “We're not doing white because we had a lot of divorces.” I think that that applies to any model. Whether it is parenting, whether it is your spouse, whether it is sales, whether it is leadership, everyone has inherent worth and dignity, and sometimes one person has more expertise.

Even in a parent-child situation. Sometimes it might be the child. Because they know what they want. They know how they feel. They know that the tag on that shirt is itching up. They're not wrong. When I think about noble purpose, the way it all connects is the noble purpose of business is to improve life for customers. Your noble purpose as a human is to leave the world better than you found it. Sometimes that's going to mean you do have to step in and take the lead. Sometimes that's going to mean you have to go, “You are the expert in this.”

There are so many things I want to dive deeper into. I feel like it is a little taste of the power of what Lisa has been up to in the world here. I do need to wrap up today. I don’t want to get you out on time here. We have one last question that I want to touch on. What are 1 or 2 books that have an impact on you and why?

I'm going to name two books that probably have the biggest impact on me. One is Good to Great by Jim Collins. The other is A Return To Love by Marianne Williamson. When I read Jim Collins’s book, it's 30 years old now, I saw that there was a system to creating a great company and saw that these are the pieces, you put forth. He talks a lot about purpose and values. It wasn't the central point of the book, but it was a starting point. When he compared those two, the company that succeeded and the company that didn't, and you saw one was looking out the window at customers and the other was looking inward, that was so powerful.

There was a story in that book, and I'll jump to A Return To Love, and it was about a track team, a cross-country. He said these principles don't just apply to work. This cross-country team adopted a mantra, “We run best at the end.” That was their mantra and they trained for it, “We run fastest at the end.” They trained for it they did it, then when you're in that last mile, you go, “I'm on the team that runs fastest at the end.”

I never forgot the power of naming the thing and training for it. I'll tell you a transformational moment that causes and then I’m going to tell you why I love A Return To Love. Flash forward, I have a baby. I have my husband's last name which I was vacillating in my feminist state whether or not to take. I did, that's why I have a double name, but I have a baby whose last name is now McLeod and we are at the McLeod family gathering.

People are talking about we didn't do this, we didn't do that. I realized the story you're telling and it was a couple of people, but the story you're telling is not a story that I want this baby to step into. I searched the family history through anecdotal stories and things, and I came up with McLeods finished strong. There were some stories of some people who finished running. I said that is our family mantra, McLeods finished strong. It completely worked. My older daughter is now my business partner. I remember one time she said to me in college, “I did not think I could do this thing,” and then I realized McLeods finished strong and that wasn't bulsh*t, we actually do.

Thank you, Jim Collins, for that. Good to Great was super practical business advice beyond just the mantra. The other book that changed things for me was A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson, which is also a 30-year-old book. I'm rereading it now and realizing anew what a huge influence it had on me because she puts forward the idea that there are only two emotions, love and fear. We're operating on a thought system of love or a thought system of fear.

When I read it, I knew that that was true. I knew it applied to me. I can make decisions from a love base or a fear base, and being up from a love base doesn't mean I give my kids everything they want. It doesn't mean I do everything that my partner tells me. It doesn't mean I get the customer everything they want. Fear is what will cause me fear of being disliked, fear of not getting the sale. That will more cause me, but that was transformational for me.

Everything you shared blows my mind because it's spot on. Lisa, I want to go for another hour but of course we can't. Thank you.

We’ll do another one.

Thank you so much for sharing all of who you are in this space and thanks for all the insights and stories. We didn't even tap into all the books that you've written, but that's where the audience is going to go out and pick up your books, especially Noble Purpose. Thank you for coming on the journey. Before I let you go, where can people find out more about you?

Follow me on LinkedIn. I do a lot of LinkedIn Live for free. If you want to buy the book, google Noble Purpose and you will find them.

Thanks again for coming on the journey. Thanks to the audience for coming on the journey. That's a wrap.

Important Links

• Lisa McLeod
• Selling With Noble Purpose: How to Drive Revenue and Do Work That Makes You Proud
• Good to Great
• A Return To Love

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