A Conversation With: Lisa Mininni

Welcome to this installment of The Wellness Universe’s ‘A Conversation With …’ interview series! Each week, we will feature interviews from some of our amazing WU World Changers so you can learn about who they are as a person, their profession, mission, and their why!’

Welcome to A Conversation with Lisa Mininni –

Best Selling Author, President of Excellerate Associates, and Founder of the Business Innovation Lab.

The Wellness Universe directory is a resource and community filled with Change-Makers, we call WU World-Changers (Wellness Universe World-Changers). Today we want to introduce you to Lisa Mininni. Lisa is a Best-Selling author, President of Excellerate Associates, a business mentoring and organizational development company, and Lisa is also the Founder of the Business Innovation Lab, offering CoWorking, Executive Suites, Offices, and Conference Space.

1. Hello Lisa, will you please tell us about yourself?

To answer this question, it’s best that I share with you a life-changing moment that brought me to where I am today mentoring business owners and leaders on improving their personal and professional results.

One cold December day, I was driving down the freeway wondering if starting a business (and writing a book) was the “right” decision.  Just several months earlier, I had completed 18 years in the Corporate world dismantling a division where I worked as an Executive. I was thinking back about what a successful corporate career I had as an executive navigating significant organizational change through mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, and closures. Frequent promotions and exceeding goals and expectations were frequent for me but starting a business was an entirely different challenge.

At that moment, I saw something pop up from the freeway, and I instinctively crossed my hands over my face and waited for what I thought would be a painful moment. Suddenly, I heard a big whooshing sound and dinging going around in my front seat. I placed my hands on the steering wheel to see a shattered windshield, a softball-sized hole in the windshield, and a 4 ft 5 lb. semi-truck tire iron in the front seat of my car. I navigated to the side of the road and eventually landed in a parking lot off the main freeway. I called the police and while waiting for them to arrive, I got out of the car to inspect the damage. There was a six-inch gash in the steel hood of my car that, thankfully, changed the trajectory of the tire iron.

When each one of the three police officers came on the scene that day, they said, lady, you’re on this earth for a reason. Just moments before, I had been asking if starting a business (and writing a book) was the right decision. I got the answer from three officers who said I must be on this earth for a reason.

It was a pivotal moment where I made a commitment: to make sure I utilized my best talents and learned all I could about marketing, networking, and developing who I was as a person. But I didn’t want others to struggle like I had struggled with this new change. So, I put my education and quality improvement background to work. I wrote down the steps I was going through, solutions I found, and wrote Me, Myself, and Why? The Secrets to Navigating Change (which became a best seller). I also developed various systems and programs that helped thousands of people create the framework for their change. But that wasn’t enough.

I decided that I would use my innate talents and became an expert on how to build a sustainable business in alignment with who I was. I didn’t want to work 80 hours a week doing it. I had already done that and been there. I had the marketing and I had networking.

But I was missing something. The systematizing and monetizing to have the business work for me, not me for it. I had an “ah ha” moment.

Soon I learned about those systems that would fill my practice with 71 new clients in less than four months. Soon many entrepreneurs heard about my success and began to ask me about these systems and I made a commitment to show entrepreneurs how to increase their income, with less effort, and on purpose. I’ve been asked about what the “on purpose” means. What it means is that we all have special talents, wiring, and gifts and if we can use them to do work in alignment with who we are, it’s not work! You see, your natural wiring can interfere with building a sustainable business if you don’t develop a business model that supports it.

For years, I showed people their natural wiring, and now it is part of an important proprietary system that we show business owners how to get their preferred clients faster and more efficiently than ever.

We all have those tire iron experiences that wake us up, get us stuck, or prevent us from seeing all of the possibilities and reaching them. It took many years, but I did what I do best: empower others to live life fully.

I have an innate talent that connects seemingly disparate ideas and then create systems and use it to help others see these connections

2. Lisa, what is it that inspires you?

I’m inspired by contribution-conscious entrepreneurs. You see, everyone’s Contribution in the World™ has a ripple effect. My Contribution in the World™ is this: When business owners are successful, they give back. They give back to nonprofits and causes. Those causes go out and help their communities. Those communities know what it’s like to be helped and pay it forward. And, through this ripple effect, we can achieve global peace.

If global peace is to be realized, it will be through small business owners who know what it’s like to take a leap of faith every day. One thing that unites us globally is that every country has small business owners. Can you imagine if all of the business owners were abundantly successful in getting their genius into the world how we, as an entrepreneurial community, could transform the world?

3. Will you please tell us what you call yourself and explain what it is that you do?

I’m the owner of two businesses: I have a business mentoring company and the Business Innovation Lab.

Excellerate Associates is the business mentoring and organizational development company that works with business owners showing them how to align and scale their business. We develop their Culture of Distinction™, develop a high-performance team, and scale their business giving them peace and ease. It’s a holistic framework of bringing all of the pieces together so it is running efficiently and in alignment with their (and their team’s) natural biological hardwiring.

The Business Innovation Lab is an extension of our work. It offers coworking, executive suites, office and conference space. We now have a headquarters and space making it convenient to hold our boot camps for business owners.

4. How exactly does that help someone?

Great question! The best way to explain it is to share about the outcomes from one of my clients. Like many business owners, she wanted to increase her revenue. Her company provides relation and organizational services.

Her team goes into the homes and organizes or sometimes has to clean out a house where a parent has passed away. In cases where they are on site with the client, the team had an aversion to “upselling.”

The team was exceptional at organizing. In fact, we measured their natural hardwiring so they could understand how they naturally executed their work. Once they understood the why, they did what they did based on their biological wiring, we dove into their beliefs about sales.

First, we enrolled them in the company’s Contribution in the World™. Their contribution wasn’t what they did rather the outcome of their work. Through our proprietary process, they discovered that they provided peace and ease to their clients.

Peace and ease. Wow! What an outcome!

Now, we had them get in touch with what peace and ease would mean in their own lives. Once they got in touch with it for themselves, we looked at how they could provide greater peace and ease in their client’s lives.

To summarize, they discovered their beliefs around selling and we reframed it so they were upservicing their clients. I helped them to distinguish how to approach the client (again based on their unique wiring and the wiring of the client) when upservicing.

Here’s the magic that happened: They increased their sales by 90% in 30 days and increased their revenue by 76% in 12 months simply by stepping into their Contribution in the World™.

5. Why are you so passionate about showing business owners how to be profitable and work in alignment with who they are?

Like I’ve said in my book, Me, Myself, and Why?, when you work in alignment with who you are innately, it’s not work. And, when you embrace your team’s uniqueness in their wiring and talents, you increase engagement, satisfaction, and productivity.

6. Did any specific life experience prompt you to follow this path?

Other than the tire iron? Yes, when the division I worked in was dismantled and I had to find another course of action. Looking back, I resisted going into business. Sometimes the universe has a way of delivering us to that crossroads so that we can fulfill our purpose. I’m clear that my Contribution will have a major rippled effect.

7. How long have you been doing this?

It has been over 17 years ago now when I started this journey. Back when I was at my low point, if someone said to me that I would one day I’d work with thousands of business owners all over the world, that I would grow a team of licensees, launch an app that has people transforms their lives, have several best-selling books, and own an 8,100 square foot office and conference facility, I wouldn’t have believed it. And, yet, here it is.

8. Will you share a story of how you have made a difference in someone’s life?

One day I was speaking to a group of business owners. I was explaining about human hardwiring. How if a person is biologically wired as an External Thinker – they verbalize to crystalize their thoughts. They also want a response.

Internal Thinkers are just the opposite– they internalize to crystalize their thoughts. When speaking with them, they will give you a blank processing stare. I gave each group ideas on how to best work with someone who may be your opposite.

When I was finished a woman approached me and blurted out, “You just saved my marriage.” I was speechless for a moment – which is unusual for a speaker.

She said when I was explaining about Internal and External Thinkers, that she saw herself as the External Thinker – she verbalized to crystalize. Her husband was the Internal Thinker. He always gave her a blank processing stare.

She made the stare mean, he wasn’t listening, didn’t love her, and didn’t care what she thought. In that moment, she realized that’s not what it meant at all! She realized that all she needed to do was wait for a response until he was done processing. If she needed to say anything, it was to ask him if he needed a minute to think about it.

I could see it opened up a whole new level of freedom for her and made a lasting difference in her marriage. I still am deeply moved by that experience.

I have no doubt it had her also connect with her husband at a much deeper level and give her and him greater peace, which, you see, is the Contribution in the World that I stand for and was, in this case, fulfilled.

9. What’s next on the horizon for you?

We are just beginning launching our Excelleration App and continuing to make strategic partnerships. We have several key events coming up, one of which the city mayor will be speaking at, and continuing our signature programs, like the Wake-Up Profitable Boot Camp, Create Your Signature Program (which is a new program), Wired to Win, and our Best-Seller Profit System Mentoring Program.

10. Thank you so much for sharing today, Lisa! Do you have any final thoughts?

When I distinguished for myself between being interested or committed to making an impact in the world, it shifted the action I took. So, ask yourself, are you just interested or are you committed? If you’re committed, then take inspired, courageous action.

If you would like to connect with Lisa Mininni, please visit: https://www.thewellnessuniverse.com/world-changers/lisamininni/

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