By LeAnn Thieman. This was originally published on LeAnn's blog.

I’m great at making up excuses not to exercise. But it’s hard to make excuses for not walking.

It’s free. You can do it anywhere! It’s a great time to share time with your friends and family. (And a great way to get away from those you want to avoid. ☺) 

Here are 10 ways to walk everyday:

1. Park at the far end of the parking lot. I know everyone suggests this, but do you do it? Yes, it means leaving home a few minutes earlier…. you can do that too. 
2. Take the stairs, even for a flight or two, then take the elevator.
3. Use the restroom on a different floor.
4. Make your next meeting a walking one. Tell them LeAnn said so.
5. Walk around the block while you wait for your child (instead of dozing off in the car in the sunshine or checking email on your phone.)
6. Stroll the length of the mall once before you start shopping. (No buying on this first run.)
7. If you have a desk job, set a timer to get up and walk around once every hour.
8. Make it a nightly (or daytime) habit to go for an after-meal walk with the family.
9. Listen to music when you walk to make the time go faster.
10. Pick a buddy to walk with you at a scheduled time to make it more fun and to hold each other accountable.

Ten is a lot. Pick 3 you will do. Start today!

Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event  a success!​​​​

By Chip Bell

Sunflowers face east before sunrise. Its face also looks bright yellow and cheery, just like the sun it faces. And, during the day, that face of the flower constantly turns to follow the sun with its flower ending the day facing west. 

Sunflowers symbolize loyalty in most countries, thanks to the myth of Clytie and Apollo (Google it).

In China, sunflowers symbolize vitality and good luck. And to Native Americans, sunflowers symbolized a good harvest. These symbols make the sunflower a powerful metaphor for a great customer experience.

I entered a small restaurant. The hostess told me to take any seat. As I moved toward a booth in the back left side of the restaurant, out of the corner of my eye I watched a waitress with menu in hand, moving with me from the other side of the room. By the time my bottom hit the seat, she was standing beside me, with her Steinway smile ready to take my order. It was sunshine service.

My wife and I entered the retail area of a Cracker Barrel restaurant. My wife spotted a nightlight that changed colors and made sparkles like a snow glow toy as the heat of the nightlight warmed the liquid inside. But she needed an electric outlet to see what it looked like plugged in.

The checkout clerk left the cash register and told her, “Follow me.”  On the other side of restaurant store was a receptacle. My wife bought two. It was sunshine service.

Sunshine service involves making the customer the center of your attention like the sunflower does the sun. It means channeling your service energy to best respond to the customer’s needs and expectations. It means not being distracted while maintaining your laser-like focus.

And customers are so warmed by the special attention they gladly give you their loyalty and their funds. 

​Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event  a success!

By Steve Gilliland

Work, relationships, family, health, friendships, and more. Don’t sacrifice any of these things, even if it feels impossible to have them all at once. All you need is a little perspective, an honest set of priorities, and some insight into your inner magic, and you’ll find every facet of your life coming together like a very wholesome jigsaw.

Too often, people look at themselves and see problems, which is understandable because we all face obstacles. Then again, maybe you’ve overcome every obstacle you’ve ever faced. When it comes to finding inspiration in life’s little challenges, nobody’s better equipped to face your hurdles than you. The proof? Any question or doubt that arises within you comes from the inner wisdom that something’s not right. Not with you, but with the direction you’re moving in.

Remember, you build your life for yourself, not the other way around.

When your mind and body give you the signal, don’t hesitate. Begin steering the wheel of change according to your compass. Here’s how to find yours:

1. Recognize What You Do For Yourself And What You Do For Others
Doing things for others is an amazing deed and not something you need to put an end to. If helping people, loved ones, or strangers brings you joy, don’t let anyone stop you. However, know where the boundary between “for me” and “for others” lies.

Helping someone out when they need it will bring happiness to you both, but if you’re going above and beyond for someone who doesn’t realize the difference, it’s time to reconsider.

For example, if you’re the go-to person in your workplace or household for anything that needs handling, you’re entitled to due credit. Completing tasks brings joy, but when your efforts aren’t recognized, let alone commended, not so much. The answer isn’t to drop the extra work.

Check in with yourself instead.

Are you picking up extra work because you feel like you’re expected to or as an attempt at recognition? Or are you sharpening your skillset and multitasking abilities in the name of personal growth? Both are noble endeavors, but if neither goal is met, it’s time to find a different route.

If you’re looking to build a name, then it’s time to speak up. Ask your manager for more responsibility so you can showcase your talents visibly. If you want to hone your skills, then perhaps it’s time to start finding time for personal growth outside of the office.

Many forget that what you learn outside of the classroom and workplace is the foundation for what you do with your career. Motivational speaker companies help people take control of their narratives, not by giving them a particular skillset or instruction, but by reminding them that time is of the essence and wising up and doing more for yourself is always a good move. In fact, it’s a trump card.

2. Ask Yourself What Life Is Giving You, Here And Now
You are a success story every day that you wake up and conquer the day. Some days, it might feel like the day conquered you, but that’s a success as well. It’s proof that you’re nurturing your skills and abilities.

To nourish your soul and ambitions, you need the 3 Ps of positivity. They also happen to be 3 ways to retain great practices. They are purpose, passion, and pride.

If your days feel more challenging than you’d like, identify what’s going wrong in your life. Ideally, your professional and personal life should be driven by passion. The results of your hard work should be something you can take pride in, and the driving factor that gets you going should be your inner purpose.

That purpose is different from your practical needs. To an extent, we all do a little for society and the bottom tier of Maslow’s pyramid, but you deserve more. When you make choices, look for the three Ps. If you don’t find them, then think twice about your direction. Positivity is food for the spirit. When you act with spirit, the difference is visible.

3. Detach Yourself From Previously Set Goals
Discover your personal superpower of vision, and use it wisely and often – partly because it’s a secret stash of solutions and partly because, as you grow, your destination changes. It doesn’t have to be a dramatic change. It could be that you always wanted to be a chef, but you ultimately find your true calling writing cookbooks. Or, later in life, you may stumble upon a newfound passion for architecture. It might always feel like the right time to change your life was yesterday, but think again.

There’s no such thing as wasted time. We all have our own timelines. Sure, you could’ve pursued your passion sooner, but who says you can only have one passion?

Follow your passions, but also give them room to grow and change. It might not be traditional to switch careers midway, but why not? When you feel your inner purpose respond, follow it no matter how unprecedented the path may be. After all, who says you weren’t born to be a trailblazer?

Especially with your career, don’t make the mistake of thinking your efforts are entirely for your employer. You’re contributing, of course, but the skills you create and the work ethics you gain are yours forever, no matter what your industry. These are the tools you need to win in unpredictable circumstances. Whether you move to an all-new country, pivot your career, or decide to rebuild your way of life from scratch, you’re right on time.

Maybe you’d have liked to have found the passions earlier, but maybe you needed to get a little stronger to be able to take them by the horns – because look at you now! If you’re embarking on a road less traveled with full faith in your vision and enough purpose, the life you’ve lived is what brought you here.


4. Get A New Comfort Zone
So how do we come upon these wild and thrilling moments that bring such joy, clarity, and awe? We search for them, of course! Your comfort zone is bigger than you think. Venture out in search of something that makes your blood pump. If you’ve ever seen a five-year-old walk into a candy store, then let that level of wonder be the benchmark.

It doesn’t matter if you do this professionally or casually, so long as you do it. There are things on this earth that have the potential to change your life. You never know when and where they’re waiting for you.
There’s a reason people find inspirational motivational speakers so helpful. Sometimes, you just need a little perspective to see the colors in your life, and once you start seeing them clearly, it’s easier to be honest with yourself about where you are and where you’d like to be.

Taking control of your life when it feels like the course is already set is just about the bravest thing you can do. It’s also the most rewarding. Make sure you’re leading with heart, and you’ll find the rest will come together just as it was meant to.

​Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event  a success!

​By Kenneth Kaufman

​For hospital providers across the country, the year 2022 was a big mess. A Kaufman Hall report prepared for the American Hospital Association predicts that 55% of hospitals will lose money from operations in 2022. And hospital margins have fallen by 31% from 2019 pre-pandemic levels. A very common question from hospital executives and board members alike is, “What happened? How and why did we fall from financial grace?”

The most obvious answer is that the critical relationship between revenue and expenses is unexpectedly broken. Inpatient revenue is flat, leading to year-over-year increase of net operating revenue of only 3%. Expenses, on the other hand, have increased by 8% in the past year, with labor expenses up, since 2019, by a remarkable 23%.

As usual, statistics tell the story, but they don’t tell the entire story. The hospital industry is, for sure, bedeviled by a revenue-statement problem, but the range of operating and strategic problems within hospitals is much more nuanced.

One particular problem worth focusing on is what I call the “productization” of healthcare.

Historically hospitals offered what was loosely referred to as “healthcare,” which meant a series of diagnostic and treatment services for which there was sufficient patient demand from an associated market area. Those services could be occasionally connected into a “center” concept, with mammograms, breast surgery, and oncology being one example. In other situations, hospital services could be discrete and disconnected, and often developed from a particular physician’s unique expertise. But in no case were these connected or disconnected services referred to as products or operated as products.

Fast forward to now, and pretty much everything in healthcare has been organized into what is commercially known as products. The healthcare product list is long and comprehensive. Some services that are now products include urgent care, mammography, dermatology, ambulatory surgery, imaging centers, Walmart primary care, Walgreens primary care, and CVS primary care. That list is off the top of my head, but I am sure my reading audience can add many others to the “product” list.

Given the unsettled hospital environment, both financially and clinically, it is abundantly clear that hospitals struggle in a “productized” marketplace. Products require careful construction, and they require sophisticated and very close management. Products tend to operate as their own brand or under the aegis of a larger brand. Products tend to have close and individual financial management, because they tend to financially succeed or fail on their own.

All of this is counter-intuitive to many hospitals. Hospitals lean toward managing a patient population, and then selected services are enlisted for the benefit of those patients. Hospitals have “brands,” but their services generally don’t. Management is very sophisticated within the hospital ecosystem, but that management approach is generally operated with the entire enterprise in mind.

And finally, while more and more hospitals have capable cost accounting systems in place, hospital financial management tends to operate as a complex web of cross-subsidies based on profitable and unprofitable services, all operating on top of an ever changing payer mix. Such a financial structure was never designed to compete within a corporate or entrepreneurial product-centered market.

Hospitals are suffering in a “productized” world.

As more and more so-called services are segregated into discrete products by larger corporations, by start-ups, and by private equity and venture capital, it seems inevitable that hospitals are losing traditional utilization and the financial rewards of that utilization.

The statistics are not yet available to definitively prove this point, but the financial chaos of 2022 certainly suggests that hospitals find themselves at a significant competitive disadvantage in our fast changing “productized” healthcare world.

Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event  a success!

By Josh Linkner

​Ever get stuck on a problem, only to realize you’re solving for the wrong thing?

That’s exactly what happened when the rocket scientists at NASA were trying to make astronauts’ pens to work in the zero-gravity environment of space.
 
According to Scientific American, “During the height of the space race in the 1960s, NASA scientists realized that pens could not function in zero gravity. They therefore spent years and millions of taxpayer dollars developing a ballpoint pen that could put ink to paper without needing gravitational force to pull on the fluid.”

The Soviets, on the other hand, delivered us a nuclear warhead of embarrassment…they simply gave their astronauts pencils.
 
NASA was focused on the wrong problem – making a pen work in space.  The real issue at hand wasn’t a pen at all; it was providing astronauts a tool for writing.  When reframing the challenge, the soviets solved a multi-million dollar problem for the cost of a #2 pencil.
 
Innovation scholars refer to this as “jobs-to-be-done” theory. The classic example: when hanging a picture above your living room couch, the thing you need isn’t a 1/4″ drill bit but rather a 1/4″ hole.

Too often, we get caught up in the nuances and complexities of a specific solution rather than deeply connecting to the job-to-be-done. Once we zero in on the right problem, we can more easily apply inventive thinking to achieve the desired outcome.
 
If the brainiac rocket scientists at NASA can fall into this trap, so can we.

As we approach our own challenges – big and small – let’s direct our attention to the job-to-be-done and proceed unencumbered with conventional wisdom. Instead of blowing 38 months on a pen that defies gravity, let’s push our creative boundaries to discover simple, efficient, and inventive solutions instead.
 
Now that’s something to write home about. With your #2 pencil, of course.

Planning your next event? Get in touch with us at the Capitol City Speakers Bureau today to schedule your ideal speaker and make your event  a success!​​​