Grand Slam Journey
This podcast discusses various topics around - sports, business, technology, mindset, health, fitness, and tips for growth. Topics range from what sports have taught us and how we transitioned from a singular focus and pursuit of our athletic goals and dreams to the decision to end our sports careers and move into the next phase of our lives. My guests share how they found their passion and purpose, tips for maximizing potential - holistically - physically and mentally, how they transitioned from one chapter of their lives to the next, and how to drive success in sport, business, technology, and personal life.
Grand Slam Journey
48. Lisa Litherland: From the Sports Field to the Startup World - A Journey of Passion and Tenacity
Ever wondered how grit and tenacity in sports can translate into business acumen and leadership? Meet Lisa Litherland, a former corporate leader turned entrepreneur who used her athletic background to launch her successful entrepreneurial journey. With a multicultural upbringing in Japan and an impressive stint in various contact and extreme sports, Lisa's unique perspective adds an exciting flavor to her tale.
Lisa shares her transition from the corporate world to entrepreneurship, painting a vivid picture of the joys and challenges that come with such a bold move. She delves into her experiences with Social Optics, her innovative Ed-Tech startup that seeks to foster social and emotional well-being. Lisa's sporty spirit doesn't just stop on the field – she brings the same competitive drive and discipline to developing her business.
Stay tuned as Lisa also gives us a peek into her book 'Live Your Passion: How to Leave the Corporate World and Begin Your Startup Journey,' providing a unique insight into the writing process with the aid of generative AI. She doesn't shy away from sharing her personal journey, instilling a sense of inspiration and encouraging others to chase their dreams and passions. Grab your headphones and join us on this enriching journey of passion, tenacity, and entrepreneurship, as Lisa Litherland shows us what it truly means to live your passion.
Social Optics website: https://www.mysocialoptics.com/
Best way to reach Lisa: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisalitherland/
Get Lisa's Book: https://a.co/d/cPITsHh
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But I took the same approach that I've taken with so many things in life in sports and business is that go out and do it. The best way to learn things is through experience.
Klara:Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Grand Slam Journey podcast, where I, together with my guests, discuss various topics related to finding our passion, maximizing our potential sports, life after sports and transitioning from one chapter of our lives to the next, growing our skills and leadership in whatever we decide to put our minds into For my guests today areas of ed tech, by making positive impact for students, teachers, administrators and parents, and enable teams to make choices that will lead them to the outcomes they want so they can live better lives. My today's guest is Lisa Litterland. Lisa specializes in building leaders. Whether guiding technology sales teams, running her early stage ed tech startup or raising her two kindergarten kids, lisa gets great joy out of helping others level up. She carries an infectious energy to inspire those around her. With a unique blend of fortune 200, startup, hyper growth and venture capital experience, lisa has the vision to understand the big picture and to see around corners and then flip into focused, operational near term execution. Her unique perspective was formed by growing up in Japan and attending an international school. This multicultural paradigm carries through to today, where Spanish is the second language in her household. She begun her career as an engineer in the power substation industry and was quickly given project management responsibilities. During patriotic after 9-11, she took a role with the FBI, managing technology projects across the division. Lisa subsequently joined CDW in their sales function and generated profitable new revenue streams in multiple capacities. Lisa also coached over 30 executives to promotions. She was part of a corporate startup within CDW, building an entirely new division within the corporation. In six short months, lisa took social optics her current startup from an in-classroom curriculum to a full web application product. She is focused on finding and selling into early adopters, working closely with customers and iterating the product to bring huge value to her end users. She runs several different parts of this early state startup, including operations, finance, legal sales, marketing and customer focus. Lisa earned an executive MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management after completing a Bachelor of Science program from the University of Illinois.
Klara:Girls were constant in Lisa's life from a young age. After playing soccer for years, she worked with friends to convince her school board to give them a high school girl's team. She then transitioned to Ragbin College where she led the University of Illinois Women's Ragbin Team to a third place finish in the two-tas-it national championship tournament. After college, she jumped into martial arts, knocking out a Chicago Golden Gloves Championship in 2007 and stepping into MMA. Before there was much opportunity for women to find fights. Lisa now calls the local CrossFit Box her home, competing with herself at 5 am.
Klara:During the conversation, lisa talks about her background and passion for sports, her experience living in Japan, her athletic journey and there's lots to cover transition from her corporate career to entrepreneurship and finding fulfillment. Lisa talks about the creation of social optics and the impact on social communication. We talk about the ability and need to launch the product to market quickly, the process of launching it and the differences between innovating in startups versus in large corporations. We compare some of the advantages and disadvantages of the two. Last but not least, we dive into Lisa's book named Live your Passion how to Leave the Corporate World and Begin your Startup Journey. Lisa shares the behind the scenes of writing the book and how she used generative AI to help her with the process.
Klara:If you enjoyed this conversation, the best way to support this podcast is to share it with someone you believe may enjoy it as well. Consider leaving a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify, and don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss the next episode. For context, this conversation was recorded on Friday, august 18th, before the Women's World Championship game. Thank you for listening, and now I bring you Lisa Litterland. Lisa, I want to thank you for joining the Grand Sun Journey podcast. I'm super thrilled to have you on and talk about your athletic journey, your corporate as well as entrepreneurial journey. Now, what are you creating with social optics and also your book, which is a lot about discovering our passion purpose, which is one big topic of my podcast. But before we dive into many of those fun topics, please, I want to give you an opportunity to introduce yourself to the listeners.
Lisa:Well, thank you very much. I appreciate you having me on your podcast. My name is Lisa Litterland and professionally, I'd say the best way I can describe myself is an entrepreneurial leader and a strategic executor. And on those two pieces on the leadership part, I am all about the big picture. I love building out long term vision and I really like taking complex things and simplifying them. And then on the execution part, I'm really good at getting stuff done. I love the expression plan your work and work your plan. So I'm all about organization and prioritizing and just working through what needs to be done. And by nature, I'm a builder and a problem solver.
Lisa:That problem solving piece probably goes back to my engineering background. And then, on the personal side, I am a mom of two young kids, so I've got a son that's four and a daughter that's two, and they are my world. And I've got a partner of almost 12 years now and she's Puerto Rican. So we have a bilingual household. We've got English and Spanish going on. We're teaching the kids both, and so we've got kids songs playing in both languages all the time. I'm still working on my Spanish. That's a work in progress, but you've always got to have something you're working on. And then the other piece is sports have been a big part of my life. I won't go too far into that now, but it's always been a part of my life participating in sports, and I am definitely more of a participator than a spectator and it's just a part of who I am. I can't imagine not having sports in my life.
Klara:Yeah, I know we talked previously about all your variety of sports, so I look forward to diving into that your athletic journey and your upbringing. I've actually read you grew up in a different country as well when you were a kid, and so I'm always curious about the background and I do believe that I'm bringing shapes a lot of who we are, and so if you can tell us a little bit more about that and how you found your passion for sports Absolutely so I spent the first nine years of my life in central Illinois, not really big town, kind of a smaller town.
Lisa:But then at nine years old my whole family moved to Kobe, japan, and so my dad works for Caterpillar, you know, on their tractors and all of that, and so our whole family moved over there and that truly shaped my outlook on so many different things. Just it really built a rich cultural perspective for me. I went to an international school. We had kids from 40 different countries right there learning alongside me, and so from an early age I built an appreciation for different cultures, different backgrounds. It's just shaped my worldview. And so you know, I know diversity, equity and inclusion is something that's been talked about for the last several years, but that's something that's just so deeply ingrained in me because of that experience and that belonging piece as well. I was a guy Jean, which is the Japanese word for foreigner, and so at a young age I was the oddball out. Okay, so for the listeners that can't see me, I'm a redhead. I was this young redhead running around in Japan and so I definitely stood out and so I had that perspective of being the oddball and kind of searching for that belonging was something that's been in my mind for life. Now, as far as sports go, I started sports at a very young age. My parents started me in all kinds of different sports. I played soccer and football and I did karate, and then volleyball and basketball and a little bit of tennis thrown in there, and no one really pushed me to play sports. I was given the opportunity, I had the privilege of being able to try a lot of different things and I liked it, and over the years I have used sports as a way to deal with stress, and so that's been very helpful. I want to talk a little bit more about the sports background. You'll humor me. Soccer was a favorite of mine and for the listeners, since she can't see me, I am wearing a US women's national team Soccer jersey is a nod to the World Cup that's going on right now.
Lisa:We got the finals on Sunday, so soccer was a big part of my life, and when I started high school we didn't have a girl's soccer team, which just absolutely blew my mind, and so a friend of mine and I got together petitions and we got signatures from a bunch of the girls in the school and we actually went to the school board meeting to petition to get a girl's soccer team and we won. We got one. This ties to so many different business lessons too. So we saw something wanted. It wasn't there, so we built it and I didn't realize until years later that that is very much an entrepreneurial type of approach and we hustled. They didn't give us funding, so we went and we bagged groceries and we did all kinds of different fundraisers to actually be able to buy uniforms.
Lisa:And it's funny, I was just going through some old clothing recently and I found our first high school soccer jersey. It was a t-shirt that my mom designed and we had printed out because that's what we could do at the time. But it's incredible that we got that going. And now the school district has not just one, but they've got three high schools and they all have girl's soccer teams and they're doing very well. That's kind of my soccer. I love that.
Klara:And thank you for sharing that example, because that connects to passion and, reading your book, you talk a lot about passion and how to uncover it. Actually, one of the questions that I've had in mind is it seems like passion is also something that is hard to explain. This is, as I talk to many of my guests, about understanding what passion is and how it evolves, especially when we're early on in our life. You know you like it, but if you're trying to explain it to somebody, even now, when I ask my guests, how do they uncover it? I just knew it fits, it just felt good and I just started doing it and one thing after another, it ends up being this, let's say, athletic journey or entrepreneurial journey.
Klara:So, just tying on your example, I mean there's so much courage in recruiting the kids and beauty, sometimes not thinking things through all the way and just acting on that passion. Was there a specific point that you decided let's recruit friends and we're really going to do this and we really have to pursue them to have women's soccer team, because we all want to do this? How was that decision making process, or even just that few first steps to get this into motion? Lisa?
Lisa:It started by talking to one of my best friends in high school, sarah Forger, and we were talking and we both liked soccer and we both wanted to play. We were both angry that they didn't have a girls team and so we just started talking to more people to see if there was any interest. And again tying it back to that entrepreneurial piece is very much like a founder doing early user interviews of like, hey, is this an idea that you might be interested in? Is this a problem? Like our problem was we didn't have a girls team and we wanted one. So we didn't give it much more thought than that. We identified the problem.
Lisa:We did some research and figured out the school board had to approve it. So we're like OK, we have to show that there's enough interest. So, similar to getting a letter of intent for a business or having a bunch of users sign up to get the first version of your software that comes out when it's ready, we got that list of interested players and took it to the board and said, hey, we have this interest, we leverage some regulations Title IX and said, hey, we need you to do this for us and they approved it.
Klara:I love it. You start talking to others. Hey, is this a problem? Do you feel the same way? And I also love that. You said I was angry and I think anger is sometimes such a great mobilizer.
Klara:I do want to go back to the Japan cultural transition Because I find that must be so hard. One of my guests on this podcast one of the earlier episodes was with my dear friend, an excellent athlete, olympic athlete, takashi Fujiwara, and he's Japanese and Salvadorian and he actually ended up competing even later on or recently for Japan and representing them in Olympics. But I do know that culture is so hard to accept any foreigners. I know you were an international school, had probably many other foreigners around, so there could have been some commonality.
Klara:But how is that transition and even language barrier, which we actually started with languages right? I've never traveled to Japan. It's on my list, it's a fantastic country, but I feel like without that language it's so hard to get around and navigate. So how do you reflect on that time and how do you think that period of time actually helped you shape later on, like being OK, to feel that you don't fit in or understanding that the most important thing is follow your passion and what you enjoy doing Well, I have to admit that, being in Japan, I really had the privilege of being a celebrity minority.
Lisa:That's not the experience of every person. That's a minority in a place, so I want to call that out very specifically because I've realized there's a difference. But, that being said, it was difficult. The language barrier was incredible. I love languages, by the way, so I've learned in addition to English. I studied Japanese. I studied French and Spanish is the big one right now and a tiny bit of Portuguese when I was preparing for a trip to Brazil.
Lisa:I love languages, but in Japan I had to leverage what I kind of called sign language, especially at the early part of living there. I didn't know the language and so I had to leverage other things like body language, nonverbal cues and even pointing to things to get the message across. So if I wanted to go in and buy something at a store, there would be a lot of pointing, or if I had questions, I had to use context, like at the grocery store, ok, what do I know about other grocery stores? Where is such and such located in proximity to the other food items? So I learned to navigate through context, through proximity and abbreviated sign language.
Lisa:Also, overall, I found that the Japanese culture was very welcoming to me, and if I ever really needed help, there was always someone who knew English.
Lisa:So what I find about other cultures is a lot of other cultures is the norm for people to speak more than one language, and English seems to be a very popular one. A lot of people from non-English speaking countries learn English, and so I think I was very lucky in that perspective, and I was a kid that was there from nine to 14. So a lost kid in the middle of a country that she obviously didn't belong in. People were very willing to help and the Japanese culture in general is a very safe place. People look out for kids. You'll often see kids like five year old kids going to school on their own, walking to school or taking the train. My school was about an hour from my house. It took two trains to get there and I could travel safely on my own from my house to my school using public transportation, and that was incredible. So I was very lucky to be able to experience that culture.
Klara:Thanks for describing that. It sounds a bit different than some of the experiences that I've heard and maybe that's the difference If people know you're really standing out, that you're visiting, versus if you're actually embedded in the Japanese culture and they can see that you're not true Japanese. You still speak Japanese, but you're not born Japanese. Maybe there's a different nuance in that that people have to navigate. For reading your athletic journey. You've played so many sports. You said soccer really stuck with you Absolutely. You mentioned dosa, volleyball, tennis. I know we talked about MMA. Yeah, how has that transition been for you in athletics? And tell me a little bit how you uncovered the different sports and some of the extreme sports where you almost fighting for your life Really.
Lisa:Yeah, absolutely. So I played soccer throughout high school and then I went on to college and, unbeknownst to me until probably a couple of years ago, I actually did walk on fryouts for the University of Illinois soccer team. And I found out years later that the woman that I tried out for was Jillian Ellis, who coached the US Women's National Soccer Team. So that was pretty cool, but I didn't make it. I wasn't one of the best ones out there and that's fine. So I played club soccer for a year, but I didn't really click with the group, so I was searching for something different. So I was looking for something different and I found out that I was in a group that was playing on the field and I was like I was playing on the field and I was like, oh, I was playing on the field. And I looked over and I saw a group playing a different game. I'm like huh, I wonder what that is. And I found out it was rugby and I'm like huh, all right, well, maybe next semester I'll give that a try, maybe. Or ice hockey I don't know why I'm drawn to the contact sports, but that was appealing to me. The team piece is something, since I was in a place where I didn't feel that sense of belonging. I did want to find a place where I felt like it was home. So I went and I tried out. I'm not sure you can call it a tryout. The rugby team was very much a we welcome anyone group and I'm like oh, I like that. That sounds good and the sport in general is very open to people of all sizes, all body types and there's something really cool about that. So just very open and welcoming. And we went on to win third nationally with the rugby team. So that was. That was pretty cool. I have this sense of competitiveness in me and I don't know if that is what drew me to sports or if sports built that sense of competitiveness in me. So I'm not sure which way that goes, but either way they go well together.
Lisa:I played throughout college and then after college I was looking for something different by the kid I had done a little bit of karate. So I found a martial arts place and started training there and I just did the regular classes, nothing competitive, for a little bit. And then I got that competitive bug again and I'm like well, I wonder what I can do with this. And I think they actually have a term for that I think it's called yellow belt syndrome where you're no longer a white belt and so you've graduated to one level up and all of a sudden you think you know something when you don't really right. But I didn't care, I just went for it anyway.
Lisa:One of the women that was teaching the martial arts classes was a professional boxer and she put together a women's sparring group and I'm like I wonder what that's like. And I went and I tried it out and I loved it. You know, a lot of people think that to be able to do boxing or to do MMA, that you have to have a lot of anger and maybe even hate in you, but I found it to be the complete opposite. In fact, one of my sparring partners was like I don't know if I can actually punch somebody in the face, and I told her don't think of it Like you don't have to be mad at me. It's a sport. That's truly what it is. And she tried it and she fell in love with it so much that when I signed up for the Chicago Golden Gloves, she signed up too. But it was just a wonderful group. It was a group of women that got together, we sparred and we cheered each other on and we made each other better Again.
Lisa:It's a very much a contact sport and, like several of the other sports that I had participated in, it required a lot of different skills. That applied to business. With that, the one that really stands out is discipline, because whether you're boxing or fighting MMA, you do it by weight category, and so that was always the most difficult piece for me, because I didn't have the discipline with my nutrition, and nutrition is everything All right, you got to do all the technical and skills practice too, but it makes such a big difference, and so that forced me to really have that discipline with my nutrition in order to make weight for the fights. That was just a challenge on a whole nother level, and it required that discipline nonstop, because you can't go out and pig out like over the weekend and then expect to do well the rest of the week. It just doesn't work that way. Yeah, that always was interesting to me.
Klara:I used to do CrossFit at CrossFit CSA when I lived up in East Bay Actually, just by the time I ended up living close by, which is a fantastic place. I highly recommend it. They have some amazing coaches and it is called CrossFit CSA because it's also a combat sports academy, and so they have some of the best Muay Thai fighters and MMA. In fact, the Diaz brothers used to come there sometimes and train there in the gym, so you could see sometimes, nate coming in and aspiring with the different fighters there, but that was always impressive to me.
Klara:I remember one amazing lady I believe she was a champion in Muay Thai, miriam, if I remember her name correctly and just the discipline of cutting before the fight to me is always borderline unhealthy. I guess it depends which weight class you're fighting, but they literally it's so hot in East Bay still it's over 100 degrees in the summer and so before the fight you see them putting in almost like a raincoat and running outside and 100 degrees to sweat everything out and cut the weight, which is so impressive. So I can resonate with the discipline and I don't know if I would have that and I don't think they're really the reason you're with me. You mentioned the punching, which I'm always curious about boxing or MMA. It's really fascinating sport to me, but I was worried that would get punched in my face. And then there's also something I'm wondering taking it or not taking it personally? Have you fought against somebody who they actually take it personally, versus this is just a sport, and how you navigate it, that mindset, what's your reflection on that?
Lisa:Lisa, yeah, everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the face, right, it's so true and it depends on the person. I found that with people that I was going to say people that are amateurs but I was never a professional fighter, I only fought amateur but people that didn't have a lot of experience were more likely to take it personally because they didn't have that experience. So if we were just taking our martial arts classes and you punch them in the face, they were more likely to take it personally. But with actually training for and participating in a fight, wow, there's something just magical about it because you train and you train and you train.
Lisa:And when I did fight MMA, there were very, very few women that were actually fighting, and I remember I had a couple of fights canceled because something happened. The girl broke up with her boyfriend or something happened and there was nobody else really in the pipeline that could step up. So then to cut weight and not be able to fight, that's a whole nother like thing, right, because there's a lot of mental and physical preparation that goes into that. But when you actually step in the ring or step in the cage to fight, there is so much adrenaline going at that time and you don't really have an opportunity to think all that much because that adrenaline is pumping through your body. You almost black out a little bit because the energy is so high and there's so much at stake, because it's all on you.
Lisa:There are no excuses, it's just you and that one other person, and the results are who trained the hardest, who was the most disciplined and who wants it the most. And sometimes you can do all the right things and it's just not your night. But it's incredibly intense, and so during the fights I never ran into someone that was like oh, you punched me in the face. How dare you? Because you don't even have a chance to operate at that level. It really is your instincts take over and your training takes over, and so you better hope that you trained really really well for that fight, because if you didn't, there's no chance to recover because things happen so quickly. You just react.
Klara:Yeah, as you were describing, it reminded me a lot of tennis. It's very much the same feeling and what attracted me to tennis and also what you mentioned the instinct, because once you're on the court you really have to let the body do the work, and hoping that all the shots and the less you think I find the better because we tend to over analyze and overthink and the balls are coming so fast, so the first thought or instinct you always got to go with it. If you start to overthink and change in your mind, the ball always goes out. So it seems like there's a lot of similarities and just using the automated system, one to let the body perform and be present and stay in the game and be focused.
Lisa:Yeah, and the other piece of that too that ties back to business a lot, is the focus on the fundamentals. Right, like that is so important During those fights. I can't tell you how many times I heard my coach say keep your hands up. Right, that's a fundamental piece of fighting, but it's so important. But you get tired, right, like the adrenaline's pumping, and then that initial rush goes away and you get so tired so fast because you've got that spike and then you've got a dip of energy and you're giving your all to the fight and then you're out of energy. But guess what? You can't stop, you've got to keep going. So you've got to have really solid foundation so that you can allow those instincts to kick in.
Klara:And what really also resonates, as you said, there's this zoning in and focusing on yourself and knowing what you're good at and not be distracted Really what you described like walking into the ring. You have this laser focus and I think that also resonates with business or startups. Sometimes you have to see what's going on around you, but I believe, as an athlete or a business, if you always focus on what your goal is, what you're great at, what you're building towards, that's when you're going to be successful and also resonate. I work with some of the largest businesses. It seems like if you just do the basics, you will be so much better off and we often forget doing the most basic things right and if you continue to do those well, it will grow and thrive on all levels, whether you athlete, a leader or enterprise.
Lisa:Absolutely. One example of that is just doing what you say you're going to do. That puts you in the top 10% right there, and it's such a fundamental.
Klara:Yeah, holding your integrity. You say you're going to send an email by that day or specific time. Follow through and if you're unable, maybe let them know that plan changed. Yeah, I agree, that's a big part of credibility as well and trust, absolutely. I do want to one more time touch base on your athletic journey because I find myself quite adventurous when it comes to sport and trying new sports. But as I'm listening to you, I realized there are so many sports I've just been thinking about and I never tried. And it seems like, lisa, you're so great at exploring what fits and seems like keeping an open mind and checking things out and then, if it doesn't fit, maybe I'll try something else. How do you navigate that process?
Lisa:This goes back to our question on passion. So I think it's important to follow that passion and I think that, as part of the natural cycle in life, your passions change. What you want today is not what you wanted 10 years ago and it's not going to be what you want in 10 years, because we change as human beings and, lining up perfectly with that, our passions change. So I've tried to follow that passion throughout life and so now you know, I've kind of been through my heavy contact sports and I've transitioned into CrossFit now, which some people will say is not all that less intense, but I've gotten to a point in life where I have the teamwork thing down. I still like doing that and I do that a lot in business, but now with CrossFit I'm able to compete against myself and it's about how do I do better than I did yesterday. And the other piece is I realized that it aligns much more with who I am today and maybe who I always was asked my mom and she'll tell you that when I was a kid I would get up at 5am and join her and her friend that we're doing Jane Vonda workout videos. I love that, that's awesome. So you know, I did that as a kid and I've circled back to that piece of who I am, where I get up and I go do CrossFit at 5am. It just aligns with who I am. I've rediscovered myself and who I truly am at my core and I love that because, you know, I kind of figured out over the years like, hey, boxing and fighting thing was great, but those things happen at nights and I'm not my best at nights. I am my best first thing in the morning. And so I think it's important to listen to yourself and listen to what it is that you're pulled toward. Again, that's going to change at different points in your life.
Lisa:But I'm a big advocate of a strengths based approach. I love Marcus Buckingham's definition of a strength. It's not just what you're good at, but it's the thing that like hits you fired up and that you're excited about, and when you do it you just lose track of time, right. So I've tried to make a lot of experiments and explore a lot in life, and that's through my sports and it's also in my professional life. I've tried a lot of different things throughout my professional life and I think that's the best way to figure out what fits. What do I like and I don't like to look at the things that don't work out as failures. It's just okay. You know that was an experiment that I did and you take the good from each of those experiences and you build upon those.
Klara:And it does seem me listening to you, that the CrossFit what fits you, really nice, because there's some, obviously, commonalities that attracted me to it as well and kind of what I can see in you. You have the social group, so you can find a box with people that I really like minded and, it seems, especially the 5am people. There's only specific type of people who show up for the 5am class, they always every box I went to.
Klara:I wasn't the 5am one, but yeah, I feel the 5am Crossfitters. They have their own very niche personality and you cheer each other on, but you have all very still competitive and focusing on improving yourself and making yourself a better human, whatever those fitness goals are, which is definitely what it seems like. You're the type of driven and goal oriented person and that attracted me to the sport too. Kira, do you have a favorite CrossFit workout? Was your favorite wad or a lift?
Lisa:That is a great question. I do love the back squat. That's a favorite. I love hate relationship with burpees. Most people it's just a hate relationship, but it's kind of like a cold plunge or cryotherapy. Afterwards I feel really good, like I hate doing the burpees, but afterwards I'm like I feel awesome.
Klara:Would resonates from just these two and now connecting it, it seems like you're a person who suffers well, lisa. I guess that's why I became an entrepreneur, yeah you're good at suffering and sticking through the tough times. That's a definitely skill that transfers over creating your own startup. Maybe let's just transition. I think we can talk about sports forever trying to be mindful of time.
Klara:You've spent a number of years in corporate carriers and reading your book. There was actually a process that you followed that helped you prepare for now your entrepreneurial journey. So if you could tell listeners a little bit about that. And then, what made you decide to start and create social optics?
Lisa:I think it started when oh gosh, I've worked a lot in sales technology sales and then I transitioned into leadership. So it goes right back to that sports piece and I loved being a sales leader. I had some incredible years doing that and, again, always looking for a way to level up, I sent myself back to school. So while I was working full time, I went to get my executive MBA from Kellogg, one of the top MBA programs, and so through the Kellogg program, I took this course on innovation and it just rung and stuck with me and I'm like, hmm, I like this. So, again, it kind of ignited a little bit of passion within me and I'm like, hmm, I like this, solving big problems that need to be solved and trying things a little bit differently. And so I transitioned from sales leadership into a corporate entrepreneurial role and I loved it, I absolutely loved it. I loved the economy. I loved being able to build something from scratch and to really shape it the way that I thought it should be shaped.
Lisa:So once I did that, I was looking for an opportunity to work at a startup, to lead a startup, and magically, along the path, through a lot of networking, I was introduced to Carolyn Long, who had been building social optics and she was looking for a CEO. And so we talked and we had very complimentary skills and she told me about what she was building. And she told me about the autistic kids that she was working with and some of the challenges that they had around social communication and I said we've gotta help them. We've gotta help them. So once again, following that passion, I'm like okay, I want to do something to create an impact and I want to have an opportunity to leverage all of these things that I've learned over the years. And, keeping the musical Hamilton in the back of my head, I wasn't gonna throw away my shot. So I said let's do this. And so I jumped in and I joined Carolyn and so we're co-founders of social optics and we have been working very hard. So that was February 2022. And so we've been working on it for about a year and a half now. In less than three months, we had a prototype of the software built I guess I should rewind. So Carolyn had the outline of everything and then together we sketched out I actually sketched out with thick figures, because I'm not very artistic what we thought the software might look like. And in less than three months we had a prototype built and then four months later, we actually had the first version of the software built and we had it in our first school district, and so we've rolled that out.
Lisa:We have several more school districts, we're across the US and in Canada. Now we're just driven to help kids and we've found that there is much more need across a much more diverse group of students that need help around social communication. Kids in the pre-teens and teen years are facing so many challenges today, so many challenges In addition to all the regular teenage growing up challenges. They've got now the social media on their play. Now across the US there's school shootings happening all the time, and then COVID kicked in, and being away from friends for a year or two years really created a lot of challenges for those that missed that time face to face with their friends, and so there's a big challenge right now of how do we interact, and some people do it more naturally than others, but we all need help with this.
Lisa:Communication is so fundamental to everything. Going back to sports any team sport that I played in soccer and in rugby you have to communicate with your teammates. If they don't know where you are. No one can pass you the ball if they don't know you're open. So we are working really hard to provide a framework for students, a communication framework of how to approach social situations, and then we enable them to make their own decisions, just like everybody else, but to help them understand a little bit better of what the consequences of those decisions might be. So it's incredibly exciting and I've taken all of what I've learned through undergrad, through my MBA program, through work experiences and through sports and pulled it all together to build this company out.
Klara:I like so many things you said and I have so many questions just trying to figure out where we go next and just to comment I 100% agree. I actually feel that being a kid now is so difficult. I was growing up mostly in an era where I think I had my first cell phone when I was maybe 15 and trying to figure out how to text right and with the social media craziness, I just don't even know how you co-check it through that and some of the consequences that I see the society puts on kids or now adults, that they may have posted something on a social media four or five years ago when they were in a bad mood and they're being penalized for it later on in their career, which I actually find unfair. And also agree with the COVID. We thought that the older people will be impacted the most, but I think we totally forgot about the development and there are some very critical years in our life, especially in the childhood or even thinking about senior and elementary school or high schools or freshmen. There are some really important years that help shape the social context and I feel the kids had the worst of it, because I don't know how you learn through the COVID thing. So kudos for helping them through all of that, lisa.
Klara:But let's dive in a little bit more to social optics. What would you want people to know about it? We?
Lisa:are a communication toolkit for social, emotional wellbeing. We teach a framework of how to break down social situations. We give that framework and then we teach that framework to the kids and then we help them figure out how to apply that to situations. And you have to realize you can't teach students every situation that they're going to come across in life, because there's so many unexpected things. I mean, we didn't expect COVID to happen. Right, we had to leverage our tools in order to figure out how to handle that, how to deal with that and adapt to it. And so, in very much the same way, we leverage that framework to help kids figure out like, how do I break down this social situation? I'm seeing it like this, but maybe are there some things that I'm missing here. Or maybe they come across a situation and they don't even know how to process this. We give them the tools to figure out some different ways to look at those situations so then they can determine how can I better understand this? And then what action do I want to take as a result?
Klara:of that, so you're helping them evaluate also what the options are and how to make better decisions for themselves in life.
Lisa:Absolutely, and it's funny we're building this for students, but I use this framework every day now.
Klara:I was thinking that I think we all need some sort of that education, or most of us.
Lisa:Absolutely, and human-to-human interaction. Everybody's coming at life with different perspectives and there are always pieces that we don't understand. There's always background and baggage that the other person has, and maybe we say something that triggers something in the other person and we don't understand. Well, why did they go that way? I didn't think I said anything offensive or we were just talking about this, and they got upset with me and stormed off. What was that all about?
Lisa:And so this really gives you the tools to break that down and try to figure out what's going on, and then you can come back to that person and figure out. Okay, sometimes we all get upset with other people and so, after having broken down the situation, then you can determine what do I wanna do from here? Do I want to continue having an argument with this person? Do I want to resolve it? Do I want us to still be friends? Am I just pissed off? And I'm gonna say whatever I'm feeling at this moment and I don't care what the consequences are. We all have those options on the table and it's up to us to choose what we wanna do. But if we're armed with information so that we understand the likely outcome, it helps us get to the end result that we desire.
Klara:Yeah, I love that. You're really helping them emotionally process it and gain their emotional intelligence as well.
Lisa:It's about helping them build a positive self-identity, too, and think about who is the person that I want to be. Do I wanna take the high road here, or do I not even care, like I'm mad and we all have that option. Who do I want to be, though?
Klara:Yeah, one thing I'm really impressed by is the timeline with which you launched the product. It seems like it was really quick. How did you achieve it and what helped you roll this out so quickly?
Lisa:So, first off, I'll say that my co-founder, carolyn, had done a lot of the heavy lifting on the front end. So without that work we wouldn't have been able to move as quickly as we did, because she put a lot of the content and the pieces and the thought and research into it ahead of time. So without that we definitely wouldn't have been able to move that quickly, because she's been working on this since 2015. So that was a huge piece. Second, I want to say that I am not a technical co-founder, so I'm not a coder, I'm not a software engineer. I've done a tiny bit of programming in the past, but that was way back and it probably would have taken us 20 years at least to get to the point if I had tried to do it myself. So one of the things I did was analyze my strengths and our team strengths and we realized we didn't have the software skills. So we brought in a fractional PTO to build this out for us, and that's her specialty. So, katarina Thitnick, we brought her in to build out our MVP Minimally Viable product, and so she had the technical skills and Carolyn had the content, and so, as I talked about at the beginning here, I took this complex beast of an idea and brought it down to.
Lisa:We work together to figure out what are the priorities, what is the absolute minimum that we need in order to get this out to help the kids? And that's what was really pushing us. We know that kids only have four years in high school and then they graduate and they're off into the world, and good luck to you. That didn't sit well with us. So we knew we had to get this to market as quickly as possible. So we got the resources in place and prioritized and executed. With any minimally viable product. You want to get it out there as soon as possible. We knew we want to have all the bells and whistles and all the pieces that we want and as a high achiever, as a former perfectionist, I had to get over the idea that it wasn't going to be perfect.
Lisa:I'm trying to remember who said. It might have been Mark Andreessen who said if you're not embarrassed by your first version of the product, then you waited to late the launch. I might have been Paul Graham, I'm not sure. So we hustled, we pushed and we got it out there. And putting your ego aside in order to accomplish the mission was key there. I could have said that I'm not putting it out there because it's not good enough, but instead I took that MVP approach and we got it out into the market, which is great because we got it into the hands of students who could start and did start using it right away and start benefiting from it.
Lisa:So I think that's a big piece is putting your ego aside and just knowing your first anything is not going to be perfect and to be comfortable with the process of iteration. So you put something out there and it is what it is, and then you make it better, and then you make it better some more. And part of that is talking to your users and finding out what do you like, what do you not like. And that's hard. That's so hard because here's your baby, it's the thing that you created, and you put your heart and soul and blood sweat and there were a lot of tears that went into it too and you put it out there and you know it's not what you want it to be quite yet. And then put that ego aside and you ask what sucks about this right? And then they tell you and it hurts. And then you go and you fix it and then you make it better and then you get it out to them. And it's that iterative process.
Lisa:And I approach my career in very much the same way. I've gone and I've tried different things and some of the things worked. Some of the things didn't work, some of the things I was really good at, some things I really sucked at. And to be able to set aside that ego and say, okay, I'm taking the things that work and I'm going to enhance them and put aside the things that don't I think there's a very good parallel there and that's the only way to do things quickly, because otherwise you'd have this great thing that no one in the world ever sees.
Klara:Yeah, and I love how you executed on it, because I do agree. It aligns to pretty much anything with you in life. I resonate, even remembering my very first podcast episode, not second guessing and judging yourself, or maybe you can't, but do it anyway. I think it probably is with anything new that we do in life, it's the setting the judgment aside and being courageous enough to do it anyways.
Lisa:Absolutely. That's what it's all about, and it's about sharing yourself with the world, because I believe that every person has something great that they can share with the world, but if you keep it to yourself, no one knows about it. I agree.
Klara:How do you reflect, lisa, on innovation in larger corporations because you have been part of those versus in startup journey? What do you see are some of the either obstacles or benefits of doing it by yourself and having a control of it, versus being part of innovation as a large corporation?
Lisa:So let's talk about the big one first. The elephant in the room is funding. Funding is the biggest one, where, when you're innovating within a corporation, you've got funding. It may not be all the funding that you want, but you've got something there, and having that funding in place from the corporation kind of gives you that security blanket. You can go ahead and work on the work without having to worry about feeding your family and paying your mortgage and all those things.
Lisa:That's a huge benefit to innovating in the corporate world, where the challenge is that there are those layers of hierarchy and so even the opportunity to innovate within a corporation.
Lisa:There's usually several approvals that have to happen before they even decide that, okay, we can build a group within the company that is going to be an innovative or entrepreneurial type group, and there's usually many more people to answer to.
Lisa:So not only do you have to make something that customers will want to buy, but you also have to make something that the higher ups, the executives within the organization, believe in and that you move quick enough for them to keep going. There's usually a clock on innovative groups within corporations, where you have to put up results by a certain amount of time, or at least they have to see a certain amount of traction or the group gets dissolved, which I've been a part of before. So there's that challenge where running your own startup, there's a lot more autonomy. You run on your own clock. That depends on how much time you have, how much money you have and runway to support the business. But you have the flexibility and the autonomy to make those decisions, to make those plans the way that you, beth, can fit, without having that overhand the overlords looking over you to see if they like the way that you're doing that you mentioned.
Klara:Precisely what I thought about is if you have a driver, co-founder or CEO in a startup. I feel like that actually allows you to move faster than through the hierarchy. So that's what I'm wondering maybe the timing discrepancy of to market. Because you have the autonomy, you can kind of go with your speed, instead of sitting in those meetings and reporting to the executives and to the executive or the executive and going all the way up to the chain. And by the time you get down to the chain you typically waste two, three weeks because you got to wait for everybody's availability. That's at best. So I wonder if actually really the faster and more effective way to innovate is in a startup and entrepreneurial journey.
Lisa:Absolutely, because that's the name of the game is speed in a startup, and so you don't have to go through the hierarchy. So you see something and you act on it, and it's very much an experimental environment where you go, try things, because not everything's going to work. You try things, you test things, you prototype things a lot and put it in front of people, get some feedback and see if it works or not. It's very free and it's just this great sense of freedom because you can just go and do and you'll figure out if it works or not, and you don't have that same stigma of failure. You just go and try it and it's more of an experiment. Did this work? Did this not work? Okay, let me try something different now.
Klara:I want to also transition to your book. I am three quarters through. But before we go there anything else, you want to mention any call to action, People who may be listening, specific things that may help you out to grow and scale.
Lisa:Call to action. For anyone that might be listening, that's involved in schools, specifically middle or high schools. Right now, we're focused on selling to the special education group and really supporting neurodivergent students. However, as we talked about, there's a ton of applications of any principles. Superintendents, SEL teams, please reach out to me through LinkedIn. That's the easiest way. Lisa Litherland and I'm happy to talk to you. We are looking at other distribution channels, but we're not quite there yet.
Klara:Excellent and I'll add those resources into the episode notes so they can easily reach out to you. But, transitioning to your book called Live your Passion how to Leave the Corporate World and Begin your Startup Journey, it seems like at least the first half of the book has been literally the process, lisa, you had gone through, because I also want to reflect back on kind of how you started your entrepreneurial journey and it seems like you're looking at the next step with a lens of opportunity. Yes, you beautifully described the transition for anyone who wants to find more passion or fulfilling career in their life. Maybe tell us a little bit more about that and what made you decide to write the book.
Lisa:So I'll start with just finding your passion. We are all unique human beings and what we are good at would drive us. What we're passionate about. It's different for everybody, and I strongly believe that focusing on those piece, piece that you're passionate about, that interest you. Maybe you don't know if you're passionate about it, but you're just interested in it. When you focus on the things that you're interested in and that you're drawn to, naturally you will go out on your own and learn about it Without any prompting from anyone. You just go do it because you're interested in it. It's the whole Montessori approach to school you follow your interest and then you do more research on it or you read about it or you listen to podcasts or watch videos about it, and then you get better at that thing, and so that's why I strongly encourage people to follow that passion and see where it takes you. We've only got one life to live, so you might as well spend it doing things that you like, and if you are interested in it and passionate about it, you're going to be better at that thing, which opens the door for you to be successful in that thing. It's really hard to be successful in something you hate. I don't know how you can do that. So there's that piece.
Lisa:The second part of your question is what drove me to write the book. A couple of things. We talked earlier about sharing yourself and sharing your own unique gifts, sharing your own unique challenges and journeys, and so I had gone through this process myself and I thought, well, why not share it with others? Because I'm sure there are other people going through the same process, trying to figure out what's next, what they want to do. Also, I started writing this last November, when there were a lot of tech layoffs going on.
Lisa:And I saw so much of myself and what was happening and I'm like, oh gosh, my heart goes out to these people and their families and they're searching right now for what's next. I know there's so many people that are. So I'm like, well, I'll share my journey, and if it helps one person figure out what that next thing is, or if it even helps them figure out, like well, that doesn't sound like something I want to do. I'm not going to do that. That's valuable too. So I wanted to share that value and just put it out there. The second part of this is perhaps more interesting. I did it as an experiment. I did it as an MVP and I'm not sure if I shared this with you, but this was an experiment in using generative AI as well. So I leveraged a software called Jaffer. It's a generative AI software and I wanted to play with it. So I'm like all right, how can I bring this value of this thing I'm going through and bring this message and play with AI and see how that works and learn about it in the process? So I pulled those two things. You see, just like you bring something you're interested in and something you're good at, here I brought together this potential value that I could share with the world and a learning journey for myself, and I put them together and I'm like, how can I bring these two together? I can learn something in the process, share some value out to the world, and it's my MVP.
Lisa:I'd always thought about writing a book. So I'm like, well, here's the way to do it. Instead of thinking about maybe doing it for the next 10, 15 years, let's do it. Get the first one out of the way right, because we talked about the first thing of anything sucks, right. The first punch I threw sucked. The first soccer ball I kicked sucked. So let's do the first book. See what happens with it. If I can help somebody along the way cool. If I can learn something along the way cool. And let's just bring some more value to the world.
Lisa:So I did and it did not work anything like I thought it was going to work, let me tell you. I thought it was going to write itself for me, but it did not, which is probably a good thing, but I learned so much. What it allowed me to do is leveraging the power of generative AI. I was able to take all of those thoughts within me and get them out on paper a lot faster. I think they did like a 30 day challenge to try to get your book out in 30 days. Well, it took me two months instead. That's very good still.
Klara:I know it's still pretty good.
Lisa:And, oh my gosh, the things I learned about the process of writing a book and outlining things. And then, what kind of content do I want to put in this? And ooh, that AI spit out some stuff. But that is not the right thing, that's not the message I want to send. That doesn't sound like me right. So it was cool in that I got to learn the process, I got to play with it and then take it back and say no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not what I want to say. This is it. And then the publishing process as well.
Lisa:I thought once I wrote the book I was good, I published it through Amazon, kindle, direct Publishing. It was self published and to go through the publishing process of, oh okay, I wrote it in Word, and now I need to change the page size and add page numbers. And why is that messed up like that? And I think one of my friends even got one of the very first versions that I messed up the page numbers. They were on the inside instead of the outside or whatever. And it was a process. It was a learning process, but I took the same approach that I've taken with so many things in life and sports and business is that just try it, go out and do it. The best way to learn things is through experience, and so that's what I did. I went and I tried and I learned so much in the process and I was able to share some of the things that I had to say. Share some of myself with the world.
Klara:I love that and thanks for this premise. It really sounds like you found the AI as a collaborator. Yes, and sometimes you get it, even with people Like they suggest something you agree with them Don't agree, so that was interesting process that you had to go through. It's kind of like a thought partner, if you will. Yeah, what would you want people to know about the book?
Lisa:This is my perspective. There's no one way to take this kind of journey or to figure yourself out. I'd say with anything, take what's valuable for you, and this is a general overview of if you do want to go start a startup. Here are some of the basics that you need to know, and I've gathered this from courses I've taken over the years and a lot of researching and taking classes and just pulling the article together, and so I just took all of that information and consolidated it and put my spin on it, and these are the fundamentals. Back to those fundamentals of sports, of business. These are the fundamentals to start a startup.
Klara:Love it. I have to ask this one, lisa, again, as I reflect on our conversation You're really great at acting on whatever you're feeling interest to you the most. I feel like that's one of your superpowers. If I had to reflect on our conversation, acting on the emotion or a drive, or I want to try to explore it and you actually make the step and do it, any tips for people who might be hesitant with that step? How do you get yourself into action? You?
Lisa:know, for many years I wasn't that in tune with myself. I thought there was a certain path, a certain journey that I was supposed to take and I found that doing that didn't make me happy. I wasn't satisfied. I can find different things until I found some things that did satisfy me. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do that.
Lisa:Life is so short. We can't live someone else's dream or live someone else's plan. We've got to follow our own plan. So over the years I've tried to tune into myself more and more, tune into my heart, tune into my gut. And any big, big decision that I have to make of research, I'll get expert opinions on it, I'll get together as much data as I can about it.
Lisa:But ultimately I have to live with myself with whatever decision that has to be, and I don't want to have any regrets. Like I take all that information, I sleep on it, I sleep on those big decisions and then I go with my gut, I go with my heart and I'd say just go for it, because it's now or never. Tomorrow is not promised. So go for it, you can do it, you're good enough, you deserve it, and just go for it. It'll be better than you think. Don't let those doubts or hesitations or fear hold you back, because what you're imagining in your head is worse than anything that'll end up being reality. So just go give it a shot. You'll surprise yourself.
Klara:I love it. I have one more question. I feel like you answered a question I was going to ask next and I typically ask my guess of what you would want to inspire people to be doing more of or less of. I think if we all just did what you just said, we all would be better off. But I want to give you an opportunity. Maybe that was the answer to the question?
Lisa:Sure, no, that's a great question. What I would say is to all of the listeners you have your own unique talents. You are an incredible, beautiful person and you have a lot to offer. Tap into yourself and share that with the world, because we need that. So please bring all of yourself to what you do, to how you play, how you work, to the impact you make in this world. We need you. We need your own unique strengths. Please bring yourself and share it with the world.
Klara:I love that. Thank you so much, lisa. Last question anyone who wants to reach out to you, have a conversation about social optics or just everything you have shared today? What's the best way to find you? The best?
Lisa:way to find me is through LinkedIn, so if you type in Lisa Litherland, I think there's maybe a couple of us in this world Just one me, though Look for the one with red hair and for social optics. The website is mysocialopticscom. Check us out. You can fill out the form there and we'll follow up with you.
Klara:Fantastic, and I'll again make sure to add it to the episode notes. Thank you so much for your support.
Lisa:If you enjoyed this episode.
Klara:I want to ask you to please do a few things that would help me greatly. One, please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, spotify or any other podcasting platform that you use to listen to this episode. Two, please share this podcast with a friend who you believe might enjoy it as well. It is a great way to remind someone you care about them by sharing a conversation they might be interested in. Thank you for listening.