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Entrepreneur, Life Coach and Best-Selling Author,
A
Keeping Family First Exclusive Interview
by
Click "Play" to listen to the Audio version of this interview... Lisa Nichols is empowered. She's dedicated to helping empower others and I'm honored to interview her for "The Empowerment Issue" of Keeping Family First.
You know it’s one thing to be empowered and to empower oneself, but it’s an entirely different thing to help empower others. And that’s what’s so unique about what you’re doing. And just to give our readers and listeners a little background, you’re the founder and CEO of Motivating the Teen Spirit which as impacted the lives of over 55,000 teens, prevented over 1,100 suicides, reunited thousands of teens with their parents and it has influenced more than 850 teen drop outs to return to school. Lisa, tell us about Motivating the Teen Spirit, what it does and how it came about. Lisa: Thank you so much, Anita. Motivating the Teen Spirit is a self-development, personal development program. It’s very interactive (it’s not just a listen to a CD) but it’s an interactive experiential series of workshops and dialogue sessions designed to help teens fall more in love with themselves and to teach them how to make more integrity based decisions. We focus on emotional healthiness. Angry children don’t care about English. Frustrated children don’t care about math. Suicidal children don’t care about their GPA. Yet [society] focuses on their test scores and educational level but there’s no place in society where we’re able to focus on our emotional healthiness. How do we deal with the absentee father? How do we learn how to deal with being touched inappropriately? How do we learn how to deal with loving the skin we’re in? So my company is committed to creating a safe space where teens can look at the space that they are inside of—the life that they are living—and really look at their emotional healthiness, like their relationship with their parents. Many teens have a lot that they want to say but they don’t know how to say it. So we create a venue that helps them put words to their feelings so they just don’t act out on them. We’re really excited because we work alongside of the school system, the juvenile justice system, the faith based organizations and youth-servicing agencies. Everyone that works with teens, we support them. KFF: That’s awesome. Now where exactly are you located? Lisa: Well, we’re based out of San Diego and Los Angeles but our work is national and this year we go international—serving Jamaica. Our offices are in Southern California, but in three days we’re going to be in Michigan for 12 days. We just came back from Texas and we’re all over the map because we actually bring our work into your environment. So instead of you having to step out of your community and having to go to a hotel for a week, we actually bring the work inside the school systems, probation departments and inside the churches. KFF: That is so wonderful. How long have you been operating? KFF: Do your teenagers act as facilitators as well? Lisa: That’s what’s really exciting. Now we’ve been around long enough to where I’m hiring the teens that have been through the program many times before. They are coming back saying, “Can I work on staff?” And I say, “Of course, absolutely.” Now they are 24, 25, 22 and they’ve been in the program for the last seven or eight years and now they turn back around and they become teen facilitators. And believe it or not, Anita, they actually teach better than our adults. When I watch them I am just so excited. I’m like in tears in the back of the room. One they are like 21, 22 or 24, so they are closer the teens—but they also talk about the exact part that touched their lives. The exact part when they had their “Aha” moment or their shift—or how it was the moment after they were able to tell their father that they love him for the first time, or tell their mom, “I’m sorry. I apologize.” Or, “I take responsibility for making you think that you didn’t do a good job with me. I mean, “wow.” When they get into that conversation, it makes me believe that my work here is not in vain. KFF: That’s phenomenal. I understand that the Mayor of Henderson, Nevada has proclaimed November 20th as Motivating the Teen Spirit Day—what an accomplishment! Lisa: That was really exciting. The way that it came about was we were doing workshops at the Boys and Girls Club in Henderson, Nevada and they were having some problems with the local projects near them. The kids from projects would always come over and pretty much torment the Boys and Girls Club. So we campaigned to get all the boys, young men and young women to come take this program. We said, “We’re only going to be here three times, just do the program.” We came back once a month for three months. We put them through our intensive program and by the end of the program they were thankful. A lot of those gang bangers just wanted to belong to something. They didn’t necessarily want to be outcasts in the community and be looked down on. They didn’t want that, but they wanted to belong to something. They didn’t know how to open up. So we created a safe space for them. We had candid conversations and we put them through some really profound, interactive processes where they could see what they really felt and what they really believed. They were so thankful that they said, “You know what, if the Boys and Girls Club can help produce this for us, “Hands off the Boys and Girls Club. We’ll protect you. We’ll be there for you…” It created a new alliance between the projects and the Boys and Girls Club and the Mayor was very grateful. KFF: That’s wonderful. Now, in addition to your work with Motivating the Teen Spirit, you are also the Co-author of Chicken Soup for the African American Soul and the upcoming Chicken Soup for the African American Woman’s Soul. And I must add that the Chicken Soup series is THE record-holder for being the longest running anthology of books—ever. A perennial best seller, and here you are. What’s this experience been like for you? Lisa: Overwhelming, breathtaking, amazing, humbling. It has really been all of the above. And I have to tell you, Anita. Just so that your audience knows—I’m not one that comes from a long history of writing. So this has been one of those amazing stories. The last time I took a writing class, believe it or not, I got a fail. KFF: Wow. Lisa: Yeah. So I don’t come from a great writing background like a lot of people who are in this industry do. I’m one of those “C” average students. I struggled just to get by. My grades weren’t high enough to be considered an academically enriched student, but my grades weren’t low enough to be flagged to need help, so I was right in the middle struggling. KFF: Oh my gosh. Lisa: Yes. So I went 18 years not writing at all. I just spoke because I knew that I had the gift of gab very early on. Then I get a call from Chicken Soup. They saw my work that I had done with teens and was interested in considering me. But I just have to tell you, even to submit the application and the proposal I had to get over a huge fear of being judged in my writing. I know a lot of your readers, participants and those who subscribe may have had that at some point or may still be going through that. I had a huge fear storm around someone judging me again around my writing. And so believe it or not, I said “No,” to Chicken Soup…not once, not twice, not three times…I said “No” for five months because I was so afraid that someone would tell me again, that I was the weakest writer they had ever met in their entire life. So it was a huge breakthrough for me to finally after five months, to give myself permission to step out and possibly be a writer. And what was really amazing is that Jack Canfield, the CEO of Chicken Soup—when he read my pieces—called me back in seven days and said, “This is some of the best writing I’ve seen.” I need you to collect stories as powerfully as you write. But I’d never, ever in a million years had that reality about myself. So he was the wind in my sail. So of course I wanted to go right back and tell him, “Well you don’t know I got a “fail” in English.” And he just stopped me. He said, “I don’t know where that conversation came from or who started it but it is not the truth. The Chicken Soup conversation came about because again, it was one of those moments where we have to and I had to give myself permission to be bigger than I’d ever had before. And I hadn’t allowed myself to do that. So a lot of people may think that I come from this amazing writing background and I got this big break, but I have to say that many of the writers you’re affiliated with, they’ve done it longer than I have I came to this as a speaker and a facilitator who had to pray that my writing would be as powerful as my words hopefully are. Then when I started Chicken Soup, I made a pie chart of all of the things that made up the African American community. And I said—I made a commitment—this book would not be complete until every single one of those avenues were touched at least once…civil rights, hair stories, family stories, bigmomma and grandmomma stories, incarcerated black men stories, single mom stories…I wanted the book to be truthful. I wanted it to really be a reflection of us in our entirety. And that was a big pill to bite. So after I made the pie and I looked at everything that I to select, I have to tell you that I started crying. And I cried for like, two hours. I got on my office floor, laying on my face—which is my ultimate form of surrender— saying, “God do you really, really want me to do this because I don’t know how a little girl from South Central is going to pull all these stories out. I prayed for two hours. I just stayed there crying and praying. When I got up, I was given the insight, the inspiration to get on the email. I had gotten 480 plus emails from people who had heard about me being selected as the co-author of the upcoming Chicken Soup for the African American Soul. I had gotten all these emails saying, “You go, sister!” So I had all these people who had emailed me with this national “You go girl, campaign.” So I had my editor, Eve Hogan, reply back to all of them with this request: I said, “Thank you for all of your love, and I will do my best. And I gave them a date. Now I was prayerful that there would be ten people on the call. If there were fifteen, Anita, I was going to do the happy dance. If there were twenty people on it, I don’t know what I was going to do. Do you know that over 100 people joined that first call? KFF: That’s awesome! So we were the only book out of all the books in the Chicken Soup series—and now there are over a 101 different books—we’re the only title that’s ever created a national community that started and finished the book. And then we did the same thing for book number two—Chicken Soup for the African American Woman’s Soul that’s coming out in August. So, we’ve set a new precedent for how Chicken Soup books can be created. Lisa: Isn’t it amazing. I have to tell you that I have to eat my bowl of humility every morning, ‘cause you know, being a Chicken Soup author is a pretty big title and it’s very easy to get caught up in the hoopla—especially in the literary community where everyone is self publishing and looking for that big deal—so I just really stayed inside surrender. And…remembered that our stories come from who we are as a people, not who we are as one person. Who we are as a people. That’s the magnificence of us. Who we are as a community. How we can walk into each other’s houses and we can just go right into the kitchen and start cutting up food together. How we can be in that beauty salon and just start talking. I was with a girlfriend of mine who is not African American and we were in a clothing store. This was many years ago and the cashier asked me, “Do you want to apply for our credit card?” I never would have thought about that, Anita. KFF: Wow. We’ve been used to a lot of “no’s.” Lisa: Yes. And to me the story in that is how we can begin to find community in whatever. We find community in dancing. We find community in soul food. We find community in struggle. Sometimes we stay stuck in those areas a little long, and we need to find community in possibility more, but we find community. We’re known as a culture to have community. KFF: That’s so true…What is your passion? Lisa: Well, other than celebrating community, my passion is helping and supporting people to turn breakdowns into breakthroughs. It’s not uncommon for us to have breakdowns and yet we treat it as if it’s an abnormality. We’re going to have breakdowns. We’re going to live within dysfunctional relationships. My excitement—I do personal coaching and I coach individuals on a personal level and on a professional level, and I love to help create breakthroughs. When I first became a CEO of my company, I was afraid to take in money—big money. When I got my first check for 15,000 from an investor, it sat on my dresser for like, ten days. I didn’t know what it meant for someone to write me a check for 15, 000 dollars to start a business that was in my head that dealt with teenagers. A lot of us have unhealthy relationships around money and around intimacy and honesty. And I really am passionate about helping people to turn their breakdowns into breakthroughs—helping people to find new possibility inside their personal relationship with themselves, their relationships with others, and with money. I get really excited when people have turned a corner. That really excites me. I’m also really passionate about teenagers. I think I’ve created a relationship with them that’s sacred. I love being with them and them saying, “She’s not like a regular adult. I love that because I am very much a regular adult. I’m just doing irregular things with them. I’m just being with them in an uncommon way. I’m a common woman doing uncommon things—which is how we define extraordinary—when you just choose to do things uncommonly. So, I’m with them in uncommon ways in somehow in the course of an hour I can get a teen to look at me and say, “I take responsibility for trying to find my personal love in a man.” And to get a sixteen year old girl to say that is an “Aha…” That’s a good day. Or to get a child to say, “Before I came to this workshop I wanted to commit suicide and as a result of what I’ve learned here I no longer choose to commit suicide.” They have to say it like that. They can’t just say yes or no. They have to make the statement. So that’s what I’m passionate about. KFF: I know you’re very busy now. And you have an 11 year old son. In the midst of it all, how do you manage to Keep Family First? Lisa: Number one, is that I remind everyone, that before I am a national speaker...before I’m a best-selling author, before I’m a CEO and life coach…I am a mother. I declare that out loud. I don’t keep it to myself. I don’t try to juggle all my demands with parenthood without letting the people who are in my life making the demands know that parenting is first. So what I do is I pull everyone into my commitment. I let everyone—my colleagues, my customers, my clients and my investors—I let everyone know, that I am a mother. And in order for this to work, you need to absolutely understand that I am a mother first. So then people begin to speak about my son, Jelani. So what I do is breathe my son into everything that I do. My world understands that I’m a mother first. That’s the key thing that I do. I don’t try to juggle it in my head without letting my clients or my partners know, “Listen, my son is home from school and we have this really great game that we play that helps us learn the states and the state capitols. So I need you to give me an hour, before you and I can conference. If that hour doesn’t work for you then let’s reschedule for another day, but that hour with him is non negotiable. KFF: That’s great. And that is so important. It’s no secret and it’s not hush-hush. It’s up front and clear and I think that is so important. I actually have that as one of the eight keys to keeping family first, that you have to make that commitment and make it known to others. Once you do that and uphold it then others will respect those boundaries as well and that’s exactly what you’re talking about. Absolutely, Anita. And can I say this…I just need to be completely candid with you. I only learned how to do that because I suffered so much when my son was young. And I believe my son suffered on some level as well. As a new CEO starting this new company, my son was three years old and I was working to get out of South Central Los Angeles and make something of myself, that I subjected myself and my son to very long, grueling hours, thinking that the carrot was always dangling out in front of me. And I never really tasted the carrot cake that was sitting right there with me in this beautiful three year old little boy. I’m always cognizant of coaches and experts who come on and you only feel like they’ve somehow arrived at that “expertness” but you don’t know what that journey felt like to get there. So I just have to tell you that there was a time when my 11 year old son was three that I worked sixteen hours a day. And my son was picked up from school by my assistant and brought back to my stay at my office. I had a blanket for him and I knew all the things he needed for the comforts of home—not at home. And he’d work very long hours with me. Or I’d be at home working, and not fully present to him when he wanted me to watch Barney with him. I understand what the value of family is by paying the price for some years for not putting it first. I just want to be honest with you. I saw the way that I was living was not okay and that I did not want to have any regrets when my son was a teenager or an adult and he was used to mom not being around. That wasn’t okay for me. So I made some radical, drastic changes and I had to be willing to pay the price for those changes. At first it was scary because it was the risk of my company. But the risk of my company to save the possibility of family, I began to see was a very low risk. The reality that I live in now with my son has been for the last five years…I just wanted to say that. KFF: That is so beautiful. And look where it’s gotten you. It doesn’t appear as though you’ve missed out. You put first things first and the right things will happen. Now you are reaping out of that space that you’ve sown and I think that’s fabulous. KFF: You’re a personal coach. What can you say to our readers out there who have dreams and ambitions but feel they are so far removed from them. They are either having trouble getting and staying motivated or maybe they feel their goals are unattainable. What would you say to encourage that woman or man? Lisa: Well number one I would say, don’t do it alone. Every great person that’s doing something, they have coach. They’ve got someone that keeps them going and keeps them reaching and stretching their boundaries. You’re not going to naturally make yourself uncomfortable all the time. Our job is to stay comfortable. We don’t really care for discomfort. Really, to push ourselves, it takes someone else to be in our space. When I look at all the great people that are doing great things—Michael Jordan has a coach, Nelson Mandela has a coach, Oprah Winfrey has a coach—so I always look to model people who are role models in terms of what they do. I have a coach that I’ve had for three years and at the beginning of this year she said, “Lisa, I think you’re on your own and you’ve done a great job. I’ve stretched you and I think that my time with you is really done.” So the number one thing I would say is get someone who is not headed in the same direction that you’re headed in…get someone who is already over there. Not someone who says, “Girl, we can walk together,” or “Brother, we can walk together,” but someone who says, And so with a coach, it is an investment—and I’m not saying that just for me—you go out and get a coach that resonates with you. They don’t have to be a coach in the trade of coaching (but people who are in the trade of coaching understand the art of coaching), but they can be someone whom you respect. Number one, you need to define for them what a win-win looks like. Meaning, what does a win look like for you and what win can you create for them? Always understand that people want to know “What’s in it for me?” And that’s okay. It’s okay to ask the question, “What’s in it for me?” and answer that. Number two; identify the areas that you’re struggling in that you would be willing to be coached in. Number three; identify what you would want to happen in those areas so that your coach understands where they are going to help you to get to. Coaching is becoming very popular and there are some really great coaches out there. If anyone is interested in me, of course, we’ll get my information out and you’re more than welcome to reach out to me. Have someone in your space. Number two; get in the mirror, look yourself in the eye and define what success really looks like to you. So here’s what I want you to say. Don’t look at your face, skin or hair. Look at your eyes and say, “Success to me is…” I want you to not just define the money but define family, define physical, define spiritual. There are four areas of prosperity in your life. There’s your financial prosperity, your physical prosperity, your relationship prosperity and your spiritual prosperity. What does each one of those areas look like to you? Clearly define them—more than one way—each one of them will have four or five definitions. Understand what that looks like and begin to make that happen. Don’t set unrealistic goals. We’re very unrealistic with ourselves. We set ourselves up for breakdown. At the beginning of very year we set about 10-15 goals, and it’s unrealistic and unattainable. We’re beating up on ourselves. Set two realistic goals. Don’t say, “I want to lose 60 pounds this year.” Say, “I want to lose 10 pounds and if you happen to lose 40, great! Make it realistic and doable. Those are the two key words that you have to keep inside your vocabulary—realistic and doable. Then the last thing is don’t forget to celebrate. A very great leader by the name of T.D. Jakes says, sometimes we have to bake ourselves our own cake, light our own candles, and throw ourselves our own party. We forget to celebrate. We forget to celebrate out loud. We forget to give ourselves a great big, “You go girl, you go, boy!” We’re so inside the race—so inside the list of to-do’s—that we forget to turn around and look at the list of “dones.” Just look at your list of what you’ve done in the last thirty days…the last six months…the last year… Look at what you’ve accomplished. Not only look at what you’ve accomplished. Write down what you’ve accomplished. Well if you won’t indulge in you, who will? It’s not in a braggadocios way, but our tanks are empty or half empty and we need to fill them back up. We need to lead the example of what it looks like to be acknowledged by acknowledging ourselves first. So write you list down of what you have accomplished—not just in the last year, do the last five years. The list may be really long and you need to see it—even the things like, “I’ve forgiven my father…” That’s big. It’s an intangible, but we think, “I bought a house. I bought a car. I got a job.” How about, “I’ve forgiven myself. I got out of that unhealthy relationship…I stopped eating so much sugar—” the little things that make a big difference. So you asked what I’d recommend—I’d recommend those things. KFF: That’s so wonderful. How much do we owe you for that? Lisa: I know, uh? You guys got the first coaching session for free! That is exactly what I go over but in greater depth and we talk about them. I do group coaching and individual coaching and our next group coaching session starts March 14th and we still have about five slots left for people who want to join. When I go out in the world, I’ve been blessed enough where I am among some of the movers and shakers on the planet. When I’m in those spaces and they ask me for life coaching and personal coaching, my fee to them is $1,200 a month and that’s what they pay and I make it worth their while. But whenever I’m inside my own community, and I’m reaching out and doing things like this, I like to make it available at a rate that’s more doable. So I normally do $850 but for your audience and readers I wanted to make it something that was extremely doable—almost a hands-down, you can do this—they can get coaching from me—four intensive sessions over eight weeks for $350. KFF: Thank you! KFF: That is so wonderful. That is great. Thank you so much, Lisa! Lisa: I believe in what you do and what you stand for. And anyway that I can create a greater value for what you’re bringing to the world, I would love to be a part of it. KFF: Thank you. What’s next for Lisa Nichols. Well, funny you should ask. Tomorrow I’m actually on my way to NBC studios here in Los Angeles, where I am taping some of the final footage for a show that many of your readers may know about. It comes on in the middle of the day. It’s called, “Starting Over” with Rhonda Burton and Iyanla Vanzant. It’s a life coaching program where six women move into a house and they stay there to make significant transformations. I was a guest on the show on December 19th and I’m going to shoot some additional footage right now so that it can air on May 10th. KFF: Wonderful. Lisa: So mark your calendars—Starting Over on May 10th on NBC. And this actually is just one of several conversations that I’m having with television, to begin to break into TV. But in addition to that, my company, Motivating the Teen Spirit, that’s who I am in the world. The Chicken Soup books and the television, are great projects, but what I do in the world is transformational workshops and life coaching. So I’ll just enhance that. No matter what other things that I do, I’ll always have a space for life coaching and workshops. One thing I want to announce is that Dudley cosmetics—we’ve just entered into a partnership with Dudley cosmetics where they will be sponsoring every other month, over two hundred teens to go through our workshop on the Dudley campus. Isn’t that amazing? Their mission for 2006 is saving teen lives on teen at a time. So on April 22-23 we will be hosting a comprehensive two-day workshop turning breakdowns into breakthroughs. If you’re interested you readers can email us at info@lisa-nichols.com. KFF: And we have your website listed so that folks can link to it. KFF: Lisa, thank you so much for your time. This has been fabulous. I’ve gleaned from you already. Thank you for the first free session. We wish you the very best in your future and I know that God has it for you! Lisa: Thank you so much…and just one thing in closing. Conviction is not a conviction unless it costs you something. Before it costs you something, it’s just a great idea. But a conviction may cost you some sleep. It may cost you some spare time. It may cost you some money. It may cost you some hours of hurt, frustration, or commitment…but a conviction isn’t a conviction until it costs you something. Look at Coretta Scott King, Rosa Parks, Maya Angelou, Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela… they all paid a hefty price for their conviction, and so you’re in really, really great company. KFF: Thank you. Thank you! Love you! Lisa: I Love you too, Girl.
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KFF: Lisa Nichols, it’s so good to have you with us today all the way from Los Angeles, California! I really wanted our readers to know more about you. March is our “Empowerment Issue” and empowerment is what you’re all about.