Liz Lord

I attribute my success to passion, for sure. I'm incredibly passionate about the field of dentistry. You get to literally change people's lives. You know, people who have insecurities and don't smile, or are in pain, and you give them back their smile, or you give them hope that they can be comfortable in life again. So I'm incredibly passionate about the field. I think it's an incredible field to be in. You get to make a difference, you get to get paid well to do it. And I just love people. Because I started clinically, when you're a clinical person, you're chairside with somebody, you can see the difference you make for somebody immediately. It's very gratifying. When I stepped back into coaching, now I take care of the people who take care of all of those patients, so I can have a much bigger impact on so many more people having an amazing experience in their health. My passion was really to change the healthcare experience for the people providing the care, so that the patients have an experience that's uplifting and fulfilling, and not just leaving people frustrated and confused and upset.

The best career advice I've ever received was about patience: have it all, you just can't have it all now. Focus is really important, and if you are trying to have it all, you're probably not giving the right amount of focus to any one thing, and so you have a lot of incompletes versus achieving what you're out to achieve. Overachievers tend to jump in hard and fast, and not always with the right plan, or not always with a plan, but certainly not a well-thought-out one.

My advice to young women entering the industry is to seek first to understand before being understood. Ask a lot of questions. Find out what's the need out there, and then fill that need quickly and efficiently. The more curious you are, the better you're gonna get at your gift. Questions are the secrets to the universe, and so you've got to be curious to ask the question. The more you ask questions, the more knowledge you have. Never assume you know what's going on. Verify. I tell my clients I play dumb, because people love to help dumb people, and even though it's strategic and you know what you're doing, it's just like, I'm not sure, help me out. People love to help somebody who's confused.

The biggest challenge in my field is differentiation. Over the 23 years that I've been doing this, a lot of people have kind of come into the coaching and consulting realm, and so the challenge is differentiating yourself. Of course, people out there who are seeking somebody to help them in their business don't necessarily understand the differences. Just like patients think a dentist is a dentist, a consultant is a consultant. I always call myself a coach first and a consultant second, because a consultant's all about what you do, your systems and things like that. Coaching is about the people. So differentiation is the biggest challenge, but I think it's also the biggest opportunity. You can be super smart, you can have graduated at the top of your class and still struggle, because your systems don't operate, and people operate the systems. You take great care of the people, you put the systems in place that work, and the business is much more successful, and the people are happier, and a lot less stressed.

The values most important to me are integrity, right up at the top. I value open communication. Honesty. And being non-judgmental. And then curiosity is the other one that always comes up. Questions are the secrets to the universe, and so you've got to be curious to ask the question.