Transcript

Joe Mills: What shared experiences, motivate today’s business leaders to keep growing and how have their unique stories impacted the way they enable others to do the same. I’m Joe Mills and I’m Reid Morris, and we’re investigating what and who it takes to build companies that foster growth in people and business.

Then we’re sharing those stories with you. This is 1,000 Stories, an original show from Element Three. So who are we talking to today, Reid?.

Reid Morris: So we are talking to. Lindsay Boccardo yeah. Who is a super interesting individual. And this is our first experience stepping outside of the walls development three mm-hmm right.

We’ve had some really interesting conversations. Yep. With Danielle, Darren, John, and Tiffany, this feels like a really natural extension for us, because there’s some connection between Lindsay’s business and ours. But do you wanna talk to me a little bit around like the inspiration behind going to talk to Lindsay specifically as sort of this first extension outside of Element Three?

Joe Mills: Yeah. One of the first pieces was simply. If you look at her website, it has a lot of similar phrasing and feel to it that our own culture has mm-hmm so it talks a lot about. Finding purpose in your work growing as an individual and collectively as an organization, which is a lot of the ethos that we try to bring into our world as well.

So it felt like a really natural position to understand. Okay. How did you get to a very similar mission to what we talk about mm-hmm or serving companies with a similar mission to what we’re talking about. That was really the impetus for it. And then Karen mentioned, as we were talking about the show and talking about the concept and what we had learned so far.

She had said, oh, you should go talk to Lindsay. She’d be somebody great to talk to about that. So that was really where it came from for me, just from a starting point. Yeah.

Reid Morris: I mean, when we talk about growth beyond the fact that she is working to build cultures and working with growth minded people, growth, minded, businesses, all those things, she herself right.

Has built this.

Joe Mills: Thing’s been a decade at this point, I think 10, maybe more years. Mm-hmm , which is also interesting to hear, like, what was the inflection point in your life that led you to starting your own business? Yeah. And how has. Evolved over time. What vision do you have now for it? What do you see?

The future looking like is a really interesting conversation and also understand, Hey, 10 years in the grand scheme of things, maybe isn’t that long, but you change a lot in 10 years. Think about where we were. 10 years ago, we were walking into college. I think would’ve been like freshman in college to now that is quite a different individual.

And so if you extrapolate that out for Lindsay, where were you? 10 years ago. And where are you now and how has the business changed your vision for it? What you want out of it? How has that evolved? Stayed the same? Is she somebody

Reid Morris: who always had the vision of building something for herself or was there some inflection point?

And, you know, we use that word all the time, but was there an inflection point where she was like, oh, it’s time for me to change and do something on my own. I mean at the end of the day, this is about people’s stories, their motivators and that kind of thing. And that’s her whole world. So yeah, it should be a really interesting conversation.

Yeah. I’m forward to it.

Joe Mills: Cool.

Lindsay Boccardo: Oh, we’re rolling. We’re rolling. It’s happening.

Joe Mills: Always everything you’ve said today, we’re putting on that

Lindsay Boccardo: crap. just kidding.

Joe Mills: awesome. Well, Lindsay, thank you for coming in. Yeah, I am very excited. We have, I feel like been trying to meet up and have a conversation for a little bit now.

Yeah. Like a year and a half COVID was kind of in the way the tail end was kind of in the way. And then. You’re busy. I’m busy. So I’m glad that we get over here on the microphone. It’s great. Typically I’m introing people a little bit on here, but I would love to have you just intro yourself to the people who maybe don’t know exactly what you do and what you spend your life investing in.

Lindsay Boccardo: Yeah. I am basically an executive coach that does much more speaking than coaching now. So my background is being a coach individually, one to one, usually. A decade ago, it was from millennials coming outta college. And then everything I was learning about the people I was working with, the people I was serving, I created, I did some research and I created keynotes and shared their stories on stage and shared the ways that they were growing and the things that are really working right now in the modern workplace.

And so most of my time now you’ll find me on stages, sharing, either research stories of the people that I’ve coached and. Really the stories of my life and what has shaped me to this point as a speaker and coach. So it’s a lot of fun. A lot of times organizations will say, we want an opening keynote about, you know, these gen Zs what’s going on with ’em.

How do we work with ’em and then they’ll call me. So it’s a lot of fun. Talk a lot about company culture and the human side of work and how to be humane when you’re working with others, the tension between authenticity and professionalism. They’ve done, which is really fun. And presenting that information and creating an environment where people go, huh?

Maybe I am different than I thought I was. Or maybe I do wanna do something different with my life. Just basically creating liminal space for people to consider their next steps in their career and the next steps in their company culture. That’s what I’m all about. How did you

Joe Mills: get into that space to begin with?

I

Lindsay Boccardo: made it up, Joe. Oh, I love it. I just made it up one day. I actually

Joe Mills: hoping you would say that. Cause I think it’s the most interesting

Lindsay Boccardo: conversation. Well, I created a job description for myself. That’s why, you know, and candidly, I’m in a transition right now in my business and how I spent my time. So even when people ask me what I do, I’m like, I am.

Obsessed with people connecting to themselves and connecting to other people and the skills that it takes to do that. I find coaching skills work really well for self-awareness and others’ awareness. And that’s what I’m all about, but I’m always kind of evolving and transitioning based on the work that I find.

Interesting, the things that peak my curiosity. So that’s a trade off. If you create your own job, you get to go any direction. You. But you have to, you know, you’re like keeping up with that. It’s not like I do the same thing every day. I go to the office every day is different. Yesterday. I was at a hotel training for three hours.

The day before that I was doing a keynote next week, I’ll be on a plane. So the way that I got here was as a musician, actually of all things, I was doing music and I was working in full-time ministry. So I was this combo platter of like connecting with people on a heart level, but using creative arts to do that music.

In this case, I found that fascinating. And I found that a lot of us don’t get time. To sit and reflect about our lives. I love those moments. I call them liminal spaces where you kind of get to zoom out on your life and think about it differently. And when I used to play for ministry and as a drummer, I would look over the audience and I’d see that same look.

And I’m like, I wonder how else I could recreate that. So my band broke up, I left ministry and I was like, This can’t just exist in this one kind of religious context. There’s gotta be a way to create that. And that’s what I try to do through keynotes really more as a performer than a, let me show you a slide deck and these three best practices that you will use tomorrow.

And I mean, I do some of that, but it really is more about creating that space for people to reconsider what they wanna do with their life and how they wanna spend it and how they wanna treat others. And. As a musician, I just kind of continued to evolve and say, I wanna create this environment for people.

Do I have to do it while hitting things with sticks? No, I could do these other ways. I left the road. I went back to school for coaching and I started to understand those kind of invisible levers that happen in our lives, values the things that actually charge us up, how we connect with people, how we shift our perspective to create the life we want.

I started to understand the power of our thought life and things like that. And as a coach, I said, I. If I just get 10 clients a month and help them work through these things and give them individual attention, it’ll change their life because I have these skills now, not cuz I’m magic, just cuz I learned these specific skills and it worked so as I built that, that was like 13 years ago as I built that bench of clients and worked with them.

That’s when I started to go, okay now how do I evolve? I’ve already done ministry. I’ve already done music. I’m doing coaching. The next thing is to take everything I’m learning and bring into a bigger stage and see like almost a social experiment. Can. Coach a thousand people at once. Is it possible to do that?

And so that’s where I live now. I like kind of playing in those different spaces and there’s a lot of ways to measure success. The biggest way that I measure success is freedom. The next way is the impact that I’m making. And then the third way obviously is like, can I buy groceries in income?

Joe Mills: I’m really curious, cuz I feel like a lot of times when people create a job yeah.

Or create an idea, new product, they’re solving a problem that they solve or are trying to solve for themselves. So as you got out of ministry and your band broke up, that’s a big turmoil spot I have to imagine. Oh yeah. Yeah. What were you solving at the time?

Lindsay Boccardo: Imagine if you’re like 24 years old. Okay.

You’re playing in front of a thousand soldiers. They’re screaming. You think you’ve arrived. That’s where I was at at 24. I’m like, I’ve arrived, I’m doing the music thing. Everything is working out. And then as we continue to tour, our bands started to fracture and you could feel it. You can feel the tension.

Have you ever been to a show? And you’re like, oh, this band isn’t actually getting along right now. It was like uncomfortable. I.

Joe Mills: Not a show, but I can see it in athletics. Oh. So I grew up as an athlete so I can see it in

Lindsay Boccardo: teams. Perfect exam, same thing. Right. You can have the best musicians. You can have the best athletes on your team, but if they aren’t connecting and if they don’t have trust in psychological safety as a group, the ship is going down, it just doesn’t matter.

You know, all like the basketball stories of this happening with superstars and stuff like that. There’s a ton of documentaries about it. Same thing with the band. The problem I was trying to solve. And the crisis I was in was really my lack of leadership skills and understanding how people worked. And so when my band broke up, part of it was definitely my responsibility.

We just weren’t really connecting anymore. We’re just kind of surviving, just like I gotta get through this. If you do that too many days in a row, as a team, you start to fracture. Small things become big things. Something that was an honest mistake, feels like a slight. So by the time we got back from our final tour, it was like, we didn’t even really wanna be in the same room together.

And most of the tension wasn’t even probably real, but we all were co-creating that together. And so the problem, when I went to coaching school, I thought I’ve gotta figure out how people work. I wanna understand this. I wanna be able to basically. Metaphorically, keep bands together. I wanna see if we can find ways to help teams understand each other and take care of each other and get the mission done.

Whatever the mission is. That’s what I was interested in. So the pain point is failure, which I think a lot of people have these pivots in their life when they’re like, my first dream is dead and I’m 26. So now what am I doing with myself? That’s really where I was coming

Joe Mills: from. Oh, that’s so interesting.

And the parallels do really follow on the athletic side of things. Yeah. Like, yeah. Did not succeed in my soccer career past, like, I always wanted to play professionally and I failed at some point in that. I didn’t know what was next mm-hmm and there’s like something else. And you brought it up with there’s so much emotion when you’re on performing stage.

Yeah. Right. And you’re looking out and the people are screaming and they’re loving it and they’re singing your songs. And there’s like that rush that is really hard to recreate. So it’s like what what’s next? Yeah,

Lindsay Boccardo: exactly.

Joe Mills: Exactly. You, you responded to that failure by saying like, I’m gonna go solve this problem for those following behind me and those who are maybe going through it.

Right.

Lindsay Boccardo: Exactly and kind of dissecting, like, how did I get here? Like actually drive towards what I wanted. I practiced the drums enough. I was blistered all the time. I love practicing, but obviously being a good drummer was not enough. What is the X factor that I’m missing? That’s why I went back to school to figure out like, it’s gotta be more than that.

Yeah.

Joe Mills: So you were very intentional at that point to go explore what can answer this question. Yeah. Yeah. And you went, you went coaching. Was that accidental or how did you find. I

Lindsay Boccardo: started to talk to therapists actually, cause I was like in a bad spot and I asked like one of my therapists, how do you do what you do?

He explained to me, obviously, if you wanna be a therapist, you have to go get your master’s degree. At least you’re going through all these. And I thought, okay. And I started to look at programs. I started to look at social work programs. I started to find every type of next step, next level of education that had to do with understanding humans more.

Basically. And as I met with different therapists, different coaches, all these kind of different realms and the people that knew me most said, you do not need to be a therapist. Don’t be a therapist. I think it’s so funny. I’m like, I wanna be you and I grow up and they’re like, no, don’t do that. That’s not gonna work for you.

And it’s also really great feedback. Isn’t it to have somebody tell you, like, you are not fit for this. This is not you aren’t gonna enjoy it. And it’s not the best and highest use of how

Joe Mills: your wife, what was the reason.

Lindsay Boccardo: That they were giving you? Um, well, I have big energy typically, you know, think about, I think you could potentially be an awesome speaker.

Bene brown is an example and a therapist, but I’m really more on the entertainment. Let’s have fun, let’s play side of things and we all have difficult things we’re going through and I’m probably not the best person to like walk through the heaviest elements. And I had my own kind of beliefs. The concept of the DSM, which is a diagnostic manual where we kind of figure out what’s going on in somebody and give them a label in my undergrad.

I thought, let me think about how I feel about that and how that’s helpful and how that’s not. So I was also having my own kind of moral, like, oh, what does this mean? How would I wanna use this? This feels like a lot of power over somebody. I don’t know I was going through my own process. So I kind of looked at these different veins.

What do I wanna do that kind of aligns with the way that I see the world and see people, what aligns with the energy that I typically show up in that people want to be around? What aligns with my personality, my temperament, and that’s how I got to coaching. And

Joe Mills: this was what, 24. You

Lindsay Boccardo: said 20 before 26. By that time I was like 26.

Yeah. And I started doing that. I started going to coaching school when I was the youngest person there by like a decade. Well, I was

Joe Mills: gonna say the thing that’s already apparent in the conversation is you’ve actually mentioned living into your values. Yeah. Multiple occasions. At mid twenties. Mm-hmm , that’s a lot of self-awareness.

Have you always been that

Lindsay Boccardo: self-aware I don’t know. I think I only like to do things that I find interesting. So maybe it’s more, I’m just like, I’m not gonna do that. I think one thing that my parents stopped me when I was little, is they let me quit everything I wanted to quit. Oh, we let’s unpack. Yeah. I mean, since I was a little kid, so I would try everything.

I could try horseback riding after like, I love the concept. Does anybody else love the concept of horseback riding, but then you do it and you’re like, uh, that does not feel like what it looks like. And I started playing the drums. I did girl Scouts. Didn’t like that. Like everything I wanted to try, they’re like, go have a buffet.

If you don’t like it, you can quit. And there was something about them stoking my curiosity and the value of like, you have to stick with it because you committed to it. I understand the context that that matters in, but when you’re eight, if your kid doesn’t like soccer anymore, let ’em quit and try something new.

This is the only time in your life where you can try anything without consequence. Go do it. This is genuinely

Joe Mills: wrecking my worldview, like honestly, cause oh, oh yeah. Honestly, no, it’s great. I love it. I definitely grew up in a house that was like, you don’t ever have to do anything twice, but if you’ve committed to the team, you must stick through it.

And in my old wisdom, all 29 years of me, Hey, if you have kids and they wanna quit, what are you doing? I’m like, absolutely not. I’m just really interested in. Like, what is the line of teaching commitment? Mm-hmm and also giving somebody the space to figure out what are their interests. Yeah. Which has clearly

Lindsay Boccardo: served you totally.

Well, well, I think, you know, You may not remember this, but I have a 10 year old now. So I’m learning this vicariously when you’re like 8, 9, 10, the commitment is like a month and a half. It’s not like high school sports where you’re like going to sectionals and you’re like, eh, I don’t wanna be here anymore.

Sue you. It’s not like that. It’s like, you’re doing a soccer camp for a week and I would make it through the weekend. I’d be like, never doing that again. I’m out. I don’t wanna ever do that again. They’re like, And my cleats disappeared. There’s not a lot of commitments when you’re young, young, especially under 12, I would say before you get to like high school sports that are very long, my kid just finished swim club.

She kind of loved it cuz they got donuts on Friday. But like the essence of swimming, she wasn’t, she wasn’t loving, it was a month. We like, you can do this for a month and then you never have to do it again. Yeah. Gymnastics camp. The only reason I didn’t like gymnastics cause the room was too. But that was enough for me.

I was like that. Room’s too hot. I’m I finished it, but then I’m done. So you’re right. There is a balance of not being like, there’s a character element of saying, I know you don’t love this today. We’re gonna come back tomorrow and try it again. And all of these are really low commitments in the schema of life.

Mm-hmm imagine right now, if you were like, I wanna learn how to. The piano, you would have to carve out as a, like a grown adult. You would have to carve out time, give up other stuff. Yep. You’d be like, why am I doing this? What is the purpose? What am I trying to get as a kid? You can just be like, I’m gonna practice 20 minutes a day and see if I like it.

No consequence. It’s just like, you can try it. You cannot. And I think my parents did a good job of helping me keep that perspective. Mm-hmm I would make it to the recital. I would make it to those things. But after that, I just listened to my desire and I think there’s something really to that we don’t just quit everything.

But if you aren’t excited to practice an instrument, a sport, the play. The talk, whatever it is, you’re not gonna do it long term. Yeah. And I would stay downstairs and practice drums, four hours just have blisters all over. I didn’t even care. Yeah. And you can kind of feel it, you know, you’d probably go outside and kick the soccer ball around.

You didn’t even care. Like you weren’t like, Ugh, I gotta sit the timer. I gotta do. I gotta juggle for 15 minutes. Yeah. You’re like just out there having fun to the sun goes down 100 goal kicks.

Joe Mills: Yeah. No, it was just. Get me a bag of balls and I’ll be gone for the next three hours that’s and lose track when you’re losing track of time.

And you’re finding that flow in

Lindsay Boccardo: something exactly. That’s what I knew. That’s what I knew. Like these are things. That’s how I felt about drumming. That’s how I feel about writing content, like writing new talks, doing that, speaking on stages. That time is like, I go into a worm hole of like bliss and get to really love it and not everything is that way.

So I just kind of ruthlessly followed that

Joe Mills: yeah. The following your desire piece is really interesting to me. Mm-hmm because again, I just don’t think a lot of people know it.

Lindsay Boccardo: I don’t think we even think about it that way. We think like, go make money.

Joe Mills: Yes. And a lot of times people look at that and we start to say things like, ah, American culture go make money.

Oh, it’s this thing. But I mean, China is very much from the, from the outside, looking in, operates in a lot of the same sort of facets. So I don’t know that it’s like a independent cultural problem.

Lindsay Boccardo: I think it’s just like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Like. if you don’t have money, if you don’t have food shelter, water, you’re gonna be preoccupied with that.

Mm-hmm that just is like, you get stuck at that level. Yeah. And as you have your needs met and as you continue to go, oh, I have a secure job. I have health insurance. My basic survival needs are met. Now I can start to think about the next layer up, which is love and belonging. And then esteem. How do I get better?

The things I love ultimately ending in self-actualization. I think about this a lot. When I think of like economic disparity that some people are in, it’s very hard. You’re not gonna self actualize. If you’re worried about where your next meal is gonna come from. Yeah.

But

Joe Mills: you were moving out of two roles and in a moment where you might have been in that spot, when you designed this.

Lindsay Boccardo: Oh, my gosh. I would make like a thousand bucks a month. Yeah. And be like, well , what am I doing now? Health insurance is, uh, two 50. That’s gone at the time. I think my mortgage was like 500 bucks. You’re like I have $250 left for internet, for food, for like survival. So yeah, absolutely. I went through that. So how do

Joe Mills: you continue to allow your motivation to.

I’m gonna find this thing I’m passionate about.

Lindsay Boccardo: You know, what’s weird is like, I think sometimes there’s this myth that you like come up with a plan, you follow the plan, you get what you want. Mine was more like I’m watching the environment around me. I’m listening to my gut and my instinct, and I’m just going to make the next best decision.

And now I get to speak. I mean, almost my entire company is built on just me getting to go perform and speak and create these liminal space environments for people, which is super exciting to me. But that did take over a decade and all along the way though, I was making sure I was doing stuff I love. So practically speaking, when I was like, okay, I need to make more than a thousand dollars a month.

What else do I love to do? I love playing the. . So I went and worked for school of rock. I did private lessons and I knew it wasn’t my end game. I knew it wasn’t the thing I was gonna do, but it super practically, it was like, well, can I make the most money per hour doing that? I actually enjoy. That’s not like something I hate like cleaning houses or sure.

I could never do like door dash now. I think I would mess up every single order. It was like, okay. I love kids. I love teaching music. We’re gonna make little rock bands. That’s fun. Yep. I’m gonna do that as my side

Joe Mills: hustle. So there’s a little bit of this. I know what I love. I allow it to guide the thing that I must do, but there’s also this truth of sometimes you need to go through the challenge in order to totally have that opportunity.

Lindsay Boccardo: Totally well, and I mean, honestly, the reason I brought up house cleaning is because when I was feeling really poor, I was like, I’m gonna start a house cleaning business. I’m just gonna do it. And everybody was like, you. Cleaning you hate it. And I’m like, yeah, but this is the way I could do it. I could make money.

Me and my friends could do it together. Maybe I could find a way to make it work. And I started to build out the structure for that. And then I had this moment of like, it doesn’t have to be this hard. This really isn’t something I enjoy it. Doesn’t have to be this hard. Maybe there’s something that even like walking dogs, I would love to walk your dog for 10 bucks.

You kidding me? That’d be like, anybody have a dog or a cat in here. They need me to walk. I’ll do it to this day for free. Yeah, I’m into it. Even on a Guana, probably . I was really trying to have integrity with myself and alignment with myself of how can I do something that brings me life. That also makes me money.

And I also recognize that that’s like a very privileged stance that I even get to think that way mm-hmm , you know, and I think about like my family legacy, my dad was a firefighter. My mom was a nurse. Like there was a lot of things that they did that they didn’t want to do. and they also spoke over us, like follow your desire, do something you love.

We worked hard so that you could work hard too and do something that you’re really excited about.

Joe Mills: Can I ask you something that it’s gonna come off sort of

Lindsay Boccardo: weird, please? That’s the best type of question. Um, let’s do it. There’s a

Joe Mills: cultural feeling around following your desires that, ah, I think it can feel selfish.

Lindsay Boccardo: Yeah, absolutely. How do you balance with that? That’s a good question. I think every job you’re just figuring out how you wanna interact with people. Do you wanna be a dentist? You love serving people in a critical way. You’re a science geek. You love that stuff. Go be a dentist and interact with people in that way.

You wanna be a real estate agent because you love the game and you love interior decorating. And you like this concept of being in your car and being out and about fantastic. I’m serving people. That’s the way I wanna serve people. The perfect example, which I keep going back to is house cleaning. Like, Ugh, does anybody like that?

Actually, there are, there’s some TikTok I love TikTok. There’s some people I follow on TikTok who love cleaning, who like semis inspire me to clean my grout and they have millions of followers. They were talking about scrub daddy and all these products. And I’m like, that’s cool. You spun what you love into like multiple streams of income.

And if you’re cleaning houses, the reason that you probably do is because you love for people to come in and go, oh, my brain can rest. Like, I love this. This is good. Like, thank you for this. I love to interact with people when they’re like in an existential painful spot. That’s when I wanna work with ’em and they’re like, what am I doing?

What do I want? I love working with people in that space. So when somebody says like, follow your desire, I think we live in an age too, where we have these weird examples of YouTube stars would be an example where it’s like, you’re just like absolute chaos. Like this is just chaotic and you’re making millions.

And I don’t want my kid to try to be a YouTube star and just follow their heart and their desire. And it’s like nothing that benefits humanity, you know, a lot of people have judgment around. How you should spend your time and how you should make money. So when I hear follow your desire, I’m more like, yeah, figure out how you wanna help the world and go do that thing.

Whether it’s being a dentist, being a lawyer, being a coach, figure out how you wanna help the world. That’s really what we’re asking. How does that sit with you? That idea of like, yeah. How do you wanna help other people? Well, it’s really

Joe Mills: interesting if I can be totally transparent about it. Yeah. It’s a little bit convicting because it’s like, I don’t know.

I know how I wanna help me and those that are immediately around me. Mm-hmm but I don’t know that I’ve totally understood. How do I want to help the world? Yeah. Cause it feels very grand. Yeah.

Lindsay Boccardo: What if you could nudge the world by like a half percent in a direction? The direction I choose is all of us raising our consciousness.

That’s the, what I wanna do. I wanna help raise the consciousness of the world by like a tiny little bit. That’s all. That’s how I should have started my talk. When you said, what do you do for Larry and back? I raised the consciousness of the world. Yeah, we, that so much, I’m not gonna meet 7 billion people and change each one of their lives.

I don’t even care if I’m the next Steve jobs or anything like that. It’s like, how do I wanna shift the world by even half a percent? How would I wanna make it a better place to be some people are into conservation, obviously like global warming there’s people that wanna help kids out of cyclical, poverty.

We all wanna help in. Way when I’m dying. Am I gonna be like, did I make an impact? I’m not gonna look at my bank account. I’m not gonna be like, let me check my Jap. how long do you think I got doc in six hours? Look at, let me make sure I have bags. Yeah, let me go. Uh, how much do I savings? Let me check my investment portfolio.

Ugh. I’m not gonna do that. I’m not gonna really care about the money I made or the quote unquote job I had. I’m really gonna think about the impact I had and my deep relationships, where are my people and what impact did I have on the world? And that is like, when we look at developmental psychology, Eric Erickson talks about this in your latest stages of your life.

You’re gonna wonder, did I leave a legacy? You will naturally think that if we are lucky enough to get to the end of our life naturally, that’s what you’ll be asking. So I wanna figure that out. You

Joe Mills: said, quote, unquote job. Unpack that,

Lindsay Boccardo: well, that’s a good question. When I say job, I think it depends again on like the stage of life that you’re in.

When I think of my work that I get to do now that I’m lucky enough to do now. I don’t think of it as like a clock in clock out job. I really do have like a lifestyle job. So I say, quote, unquote job, because I think about work very differently. And some of us do have clock in clock out jobs. I also see, have you ever met somebody who has, they’re not necessarily business owners say I worked with these electricians the other day.

They were fixing a bunch of stuff on our house and I could tell they were having a blast. They loved it. They loved what they were doing. They were not in clock, in clock, out mode. They were like, Hey, how can we help you? Oh yeah, let’s take a look at that. They were super, you could tell they were living in the moment with me and enjoying it.

My dream would be, and I it’s a big dream, but. More and more of us could live that way. And I think about when I study generations, millennials already have side hustles. So it’s like your job. Most of us don’t have a single form of income anymore. We have multiple streams of income. That’s gonna continue.

The concept of a job originally was like nine to five clock in clock out. The company owns your attention and everything you do between that time. If you.

Joe Mills: On social media during that time you are stealing from your

Lindsay Boccardo: company. Yeah. If you take yeah. Ex that’s exactly it. When I say, quote, unquote job, I’m like we are leaving that land.

Some industries understand that better than others and some live that out more than others, but many of us outside of a few industries, like if you’re an ER nurse who can’t be like, I’m working from home today, you know, but you’re probably any R nurse cuz you’re passionate about saving people’s lives.

So it’s kind of. We’re shifting. We are in a revolution right now around work because of technology, because of the way we view leadership, the way we view belonging, the opportunity to make income in 10 different ways. There’s so many different opportunities. Now I hope that everybody’s thinking about how can I have like multiple streams of income, have my freedom, try things with low consequence.

Joe Mills: One of the things I’m like learning from you on this is the ability to live without guilt of percept.

Lindsay Boccardo: Oh, my gosh. That’s interesting

Joe Mills: because yeah. One of the pieces that you just mentioned on like the nurse side yeah. You said you’re probably an ER nurse, cuz you feel very passionately about saving people who are in very bad situations.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s true. And then I bet there are people who burn out.

Lindsay Boccardo: Oh yeah. I mean nursing social work. There’s a handful of ’em that have huge, massive, bad burnout

Joe Mills: rates. Yeah. And then my perception is that people who go through that beat themselves. Because they’re like, I’m no longer inspired to save people who am I?

Lindsay Boccardo: Yeah. That happened during COVID.

Joe Mills: And this is where I get back to the guilt thing where it’s like, this is who I am. It’s like my identity. I, I do that with my work mm-hmm and I don’t do anything that we say to each other, oftentimes like, Hey, there’s no emergencies in marketing. It’s all good. But even in that environment, I know, I certainly create part of my identity from the thing that I do professionally.

I’m curious. You seem like somebody who can shift easily mm-hmm without feeling the judgment. And my expectation is it’s because you don’t judge others for doing it. And so you’ve given yourself the, because you’ve given others the freedom, you can give it to yourself.

Lindsay Boccardo: Yeah. I admire people who do what they want to do.

I admire that. So. If somebody’s like, Hey, I’m doing a little bit of everything. Have you ever met somebody? Who’s like, oh, I, uh, clean horse stalls. I’ve got a flower business. I run a farm part-time and I sell my goods at the farmer’s market. I’m like, you’re a baller. You’re just doing the things you love to do.

Yeah. People that are, I know somebody who loves painting. So they paint. They’re a graphic designer. and they actually have a second job in a not-for-profit that they love. So they’re like, I’m just doing the things I love to do. That’s it. And I you’re right. I don’t have judgment. So I guess I don’t perceive if somebody’s judging me or not.

I don’t even like pick

Joe Mills: up on it. I never noticed how many micro judgments I make. Mm-hmm mm-hmm and for a very long time. Definitely made them without realizing I was making them mm-hmm and lately I went through a mindset course last year. Yeah. And it was probably the first time in my entire life. I learned how to be intentionally self-aware I love that.

Lindsay Boccardo: You’re nailing it.

Joe Mills: Cause like forever. I was self-aware but I was only self-aware. Cause I was worried how other people would look at me. So you’re self-conscious so yeah. Monitor yourself point. Yes. Monitoring versus like understanding mm-hmm you know what I mean? Mm-hmm and it’s only been through that, that I catch myself when I’m like judging somebody.

Lindsay Boccardo: Self awareness is very freeing when you can do it, but you also go through like the shadow side of, wow. I am actually super I’m judging all day. Good or bad, good or bad, good or bad, good or bad. And that was something that coaching school helped me get through too, is like, everything is probably in the gray.

You can have a moral and truly leaving religion made me have to reexamine the way that I think about goodness. I had to rethink everything. I mean, I would just sit and be like, is it good to tell people this message? Do I really think it’s creating the outcome I wanted to? So I’ve had to what we call deconstruct.

I’ve had to break down everything that I think is true about life, the afterlife, how humans should be, how we were wired to be. And so, because I’ve done that exercise for the last decade, with the help of therapists. I think, I feel a lot more free from doing that. Mm-hmm from having to live in that space.

Joe Mills:

People are products of environments a lot of time. Absolutely. Yes. You were growing up and it sounds like your parents created an amazingly freeing environment, but you’re still, you’re taking influence from your teachers and your classmates and your friends and your teammates and people you played music with and everybody who’s around you.

Yeah. And you’re sort of creating the identity that you think. Yes. And then you broke all of that. And rebuilt your identity on what you

Lindsay Boccardo: thought. Yeah, it was definitely the most painful thing I’ve ever done. Extremely painful. So the hardest thing that I went through was during COVID actually, so two years ago, I came out to my parents and I knew that it was not gonna go well.

I knew that it was like, not gonna be like, we are so happy. This is fantastic. This is exactly the life we have carved out for you in our mind’s eye. And so at some point in your life, maybe you’re not gonna come out to your parents and maybe there’s something where. Feel like I’m about to disappoint everybody.

And because of my background and what I had done in my previous life in ministry, I knew that I was creating a ton of tension. And so I came out and then I like emotionally winced, like, oh, uh, what’s gonna happen to me. And I never wanted to do that. I was just gonna live underground. Most of my life. That was my plan was just to like live.

If I had a girlfriend at a time, they’d be great. If not, I would just kind of keep it on the DL unless I found the person I wanted to marry. And then I found them and I was like, I gotta do this. So she was by my side, which was super helpful. I had a therapist by my side and one or two friends and that was about it.

And I just had to sit in that emotional wince. What are people gonna think of me? How is this gonna go? You sit in that long enough and you start to come out of the cave. And you’re like, oh, I actually don’t care anymore. like, I just, I got myself down to the bones and then I just got tired of caring about what people thought.

Whenever you live counterculture, whenever you become the other and things make us the other all the time coming out. As one, if you go to jail, you become the other in the eyes of society. I’ve done enough work in prisons where I’m like, man, the perception of what’s happening to you and what’s actually happening are so different.

This is wild. So I’ve seen the other in different realms of my life. And once you become. You’re actually more free cuz you don’t have to live in the you’ve already disappointed everybody let’s move on. let’s see. Who’s still around at the end, you know? Yeah.

Joe Mills: So you mentioned at the very beginning, you’re like, I’m sort of in the transition right now.

Mm-hmm so as we start to wrap up, where are you growing into now? What’s the next piece that you’re, where’s your curiosity leading

Lindsay Boccardo: you? I love this. Okay. Kind of what we said in the beginning when you’re like, what do you do? I’m like, Hmm. I definitely speak for a living at conferences. Regarding company, culture and generations.

I definitely love coaching people and hearing their stories and helping them take the next step. What I’m trying to create now, which is. I’m just putting it out there into the world. I wanna create an experience where when people come, they leave and they understand something about themselves and they understand something about connection that they didn’t know before.

I think that the pain that I’ve had most of my life, that a lot of people have, the biggest pain is loneliness and disconnection from myself. Like what’s going on inside of me and from other people. How do I connect with this person in a healthy way and not feel like they’re in control of me and I’m not in control of them?

How do I really. Healthy relationships. I want people to go through this experience, walk out and kind of be in awe. I had no idea. This was true of me. Oh my gosh. That’s so true. Or I had no idea that we all really are deeply connected. I get it now. I totally get it in a deep, meaningful way. Like down to my DNA.

I understand. I love

Joe Mills: it. That’s fabulous. Well, thank you for an awesome conversation. I love the thread of knowing yourself, trusting your gut and your instinct and allowing your curiosity to help point that outwardly. Yeah, I think it’s an awesome lesson. So thank you for sharing.

Lindsay Boccardo: Yeah. I mean, there’s more opportunity than ever.

So if there’s something that’s like kind of pulling at you and you’re thinking, I wonder if I could do that. This is the season to go try it. We are living in a moment in human history where you could have never done this before. This is your moment to go try something new. Very cool. Awesome. Thanks for having me, Joe.

Yeah.

Reid Morris: Great conversation

Joe Mills: with Lindsay. Yeah, that was good. It was really interesting. She’s a very fun, interesting individual. Yeah.

Reid Morris: And in your conversation with her, like she shares a lot of the motivators from the other people that we’ve talked to, but she’s also incredibly different from all of them.

Joe Mills: Yeah. The similarity was that she brought up gut and instinct and listening to yourself and following your own direction a lot, but the way she gets there completely different,

Reid Morris: completely different, totally different. We talk about the other people that we’ve had on the podcast so far feel like they’ve had this vision mm-hmm for themselves, that they.

You know, they relied on their intuition and that kind of thing, but they still like were building towards this goal. Yeah. And Lindsay comes in her and she’s like, oh, I mean, if I wanna do something different, then I’m gonna do something different. Right. And like, she does not feel this pressure. I mean, she even talked about this trajectory, this pressure that people feel to be like up and to the right.

Yeah. But she’s like, I’m gonna go and I’m gonna try different things. And then if I don’t like it, I’ll try another thing. And that feels like it’s very different,

Joe Mills: but it’s so true. Yeah. And I’m not sure which one is, I don’t think there’s a better version. She contrasts with Danielle in the sense of Danielle is somebody who strikes me as I’ve had a purpose and a mission my whole life.

They’ve been in different arenas as a kid and a college student, my purpose and my mission was really inside of the gymnastics arena. And then professionally, it’s been really up into the right sort of trajectory for her. And she even mentioned, I was hitting my limit at a prior agency and I didn’t have anywhere else to go.

So it was time to move. So that’s very different than the way Lindsay shows up with her journey. But what’s very similar about the two is this lack of worry of how outside people will. They just have a lot of comfort in showing up and being them. Yeah. And they both are very intentional about listening to what they feel and want and desire, but it just comes across in a completely different package.

Mm-hmm and different sort of message. So I’m

Reid Morris: curious from your perspective, right? You’ve heard the contrast in your chats from having a very clear direction and working towards that. And maybe it’s not always up into the right. There are ups and downs, but a clear directive versus shooting from the hip trying and things and experimenting.

Where do you see yourself landing on that spectrum? Hmm,

Joe Mills: naturally I’m more of a, up into the right. Clear directive. Like I’m a classic type, a like use whatever you wanna say. I’m classic type a high D on the disc profile. Agram three, whatever classification you wanna put me inside of mm-hmm , it’s very much like achievers driver that jam, but there’s also this.

Nagging at the back of my head that tells me the more you try to empower through the thing, the harder it becomes. And so also what Lindsay talked about, like holographic thinking mm-hmm and seeing these three different, intuitive, emotional and logical yeah. Sides of the thought it’s happening with me right now.

Cause like my natural logical brain is like up into the right and then. Intuitive. I’m not sure yet in my emotional side, it’s like, well, maybe there’s room for flow. So there’s sort of these contrasting ideas that I think work together. Mm-hmm and I’m just trying to figure it out. And I think that

tool

Reid Morris: is something that’s really tactical.

I mean, I told you away from the microphone, like I’ve already started thinking about that since that conversation around like decisions that I’m making and given some of them are veining like, well, do I really wanna buy this swatch? Right. Or whatever, but even thinking about it, just taking the time to sort of view the macro of which one of these three things be it logical.

Emotional or intuitive. Have I been leaning really heavily into one? Have I been leaning really heavily into logical and not giving myself room to let emotional habits play mm-hmm or am I just listening to my intuition and actually not even thinking logically about the decisions I’ve been making? Yeah.

It’s like a really different lens to put over your day to day and the big

Joe Mills: decisions that you’re making a hundred percent, I’m really interested in going to talk to more people. Follow their curiosity in the way that Lindsay does, because I think I’ve surrounded myself with a lot of directive thinkers.

And so getting that other perspective of like, well, here’s how I go and lean into other areas that I’m just interested in next guest that I’m interested in having on is Sarah Croft. She’s, uh, marketing partner at innovate map, which that’s their internal parlance for vice presidents. Mm-hmm so she’s a VP at innovate map in their structure.

That means not executive team, but leadership team mm-hmm . So she works directly with the executive team and with her own team internally as well. So she’s sort of the bridge between the two. Okay. Which actually is really synonymous with the reason that I’m really interested in having her on everybody we’ve talked to so far has been either C-suite or an owner we’ve had Tiffany owner.

We’ve had Lindsay Picardo owner. We’ve had Element Three executives. So I, I think getting into that, somebody who’s receiving the trajectory of a company and then growing within, that would be an interesting avenue to talk about. Yeah, for sure.

Reid Morris: That sounds like a great plan.

Joe Mills: 1,000 Stories is brought to you by Element Three, with production, by Share Your Genius. This show is part of our company mission to foster growth in people in business. So they can change the world. If you’re finding the show helpful or inspiring, please help us by leaving a review on apple or Spotify. If you’d like to stay in the loop for more updates from our show, and to hear other stories of growth, please head to elementthree.com/podcast.