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Leading Through Chaos With Futurist Thinking with Wendy White · Epic Entrepreneurs

• 0:28
  Bill Gilliland: Hi there.
• 0:29
  Bill Gilliland: Welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs.
• 0:32
  Bill Gilliland: I am your host, Bill Gilliland.
• 0:34
  Bill Gilliland: I am the principal at Action Coach Business Growth Partners and one of the founders of the Astral Business Summit.
• 0:40
  Bill Gilliland: And that's a mouthful, but it doesn't really matter because we're here to talk to my friend Wendy White of Continuum.
• 0:46
  Bill Gilliland: So, Wendy, tell us a little bit about you and Continuum and and what you're doing in our communities.
• 0:56
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah.
• 0:57
  Wendy White: Yeah.
• 0:57
  Wendy White: All right.
• 0:57
  Wendy White: Thank you so much for inviting me on to onto your podcast.
• 1:01
  Wendy White: I've been really looking forward to this.
• 1:02
  Wendy White: And uh so I'm Wendy White, I'm with Continuum Consulting Services.
• 1:06
  Wendy White: We're actually based in Colorado, although I am based in Asheville, North Carolina.
• 1:11
  Wendy White: We focus on leadership team, organizational development, so the people side of business.
• 1:16
  Wendy White: We started out, we've been in business for 30 years.
• 1:19
  Wendy White: So I'm one of the co-founders and CEO for Continuum.
• 1:23
  Wendy White: So we've been around a long time.
• 1:25
  Wendy White: Uh, have been consulting in all sectors, but especially in uh the biotech, bio, biopharma, bioscience, a lot of startups have helped a lot of people start businesses.
• 1:37
  Wendy White: Primarily, we consult in the US and over in Europe, is where our geography is.
• 1:42
  Wendy White: So yeah, I've been doing this a long time and really love it.
• 1:45
  Bill Gilliland: Perfect.
• 1:46
  Bill Gilliland: I love it.
• 1:47
  Bill Gilliland: I love it.
• 1:48
  Bill Gilliland: So tell us.
• 1:50
  Bill Gilliland: Well, you've done this 30 years.
• 1:54
  Bill Gilliland: So what what if you started over?
• 1:57
  Bill Gilliland: What would you do differently?
• 2:00
  Wendy White: Well, what would I do differently?
• 2:01
  Wendy White: Um, so I think one of the things is, you know, we we've been in and out with having like my business partner, Lise Murray Main and I kind of doing the business.
• 2:10
  Wendy White: And uh, you know, we did everything.
• 2:12
  Wendy White: We wore every single hat.
• 2:14
  Wendy White: And even when we our business grew and grew and grew, we brought in other consultants to deliver, but we still did everything.
• 2:21
  Wendy White: If chairs had to be moved, we would move chairs.
• 2:23
  Wendy White: If we need to do marketing, you know, we were trying to do financing.
• 2:27
  Wendy White: And I think if we did it differently, we would invest much earlier on in not only, you know, kind of solidifying in infrastructure that's replicatable, but hiring people that can come in and work on the business.
• 2:42
  Wendy White: So looking at somebody that's more like a contract CFO or somebody who can do marketing or sales operations so that we would be freed up to do the things that we do best, which is you know, interacting with clients and solve and solving kind of challenging problems and doing the consulting work and not trying to do everything.
• 3:02
  Wendy White: That would be the one thing we would definitely do differently.
• 3:05
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 3:06
  Bill Gilliland: That's a great learning.
• 3:07
  Bill Gilliland: I know you've seen a lot of things in the leadership field over the last 30 years.
• 3:13
  Bill Gilliland: So tell us some of the sort of things that you've learned and like what's what's changing now?
• 3:21
  Wendy White: Well, you know, we've learned how to adapt, you know.
• 3:24
  Wendy White: So I think, you know, when we got into business, we actually started out doing uh retreats incorporated.
• 3:31
  Wendy White: So we did adventure-based training and development.
• 3:33
  Wendy White: We were some of the first people that would take corporate groups out on ropes courses or learn about catamarans and kayaks and how we can use them to learn about change.
• 3:42
  Wendy White: So, very much, you know, an adventure-based program.
• 3:45
  Wendy White: And so, like when I talk about adapting, we did that and it was a lot of fun and we were very successful.
• 3:52
  Wendy White: But we realized that we weren't serving them as well as we could because we would have we would have a lot of individual awarenesses, but then we would send them into organizations where they had the awareness, but they didn't have the skills.
• 4:05
  Wendy White: So then we adapted and we started doing a lot of skill building and leadership development and communication, decision making, that type of skill building.
• 4:15
  Wendy White: And then we're like, okay, well, they have the skills, they have the awareness, they're really bought in, but then they they're sitting in organizations that don't support any of the things we're teaching.
• 4:25
  Wendy White: And so that's when we redesigned the business and we went from doing retreats, which we still do a lot of retreats, but then we we shifted to do more organizational development, high-level consulting work.
• 4:38
  Wendy White: We went into doing change management, developing and designing cultures, uh, employee engagement.
• 4:45
  Wendy White: So we started looking more at the systems and how can we get systems that support the organization and the people to do their very best work.
• 4:55
  Wendy White: And so that's an example how over the 30 years we just kept on adapting to what the client needs, but also really, really adapting to the changes.
• 5:06
  Wendy White: You know, if you think about it in 30 years, we went through the downside, you know, the crisis, financial crisis back and, you know, way back and we went through COVID and now like a lot of the changes that are happening now.
• 5:19
  Wendy White: And so, you know, we really learned how to be flexible and to and to sort of continually adjust and take advantage of the different changes so that we could stay strong and we can stay viable as a business over those decades.
• 5:33
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah.
• 5:34
  Bill Gilliland: So were your clients and potential clients coming to you with with problems, or you were, or you were you out in front of it?
• 5:42
  Wendy White: Uh both.
• 5:43
  Wendy White: So uh, you know, we were we're always very much in helping people solve problems.
• 5:48
  Wendy White: So we're not like, oh, we're going to develop this and people will come and and like, you know, we have like a one size fits all.
• 5:54
  Wendy White: We do we do a lot of customized consulting to meet people's needs in order to make the changes.
• 6:00
  Wendy White: However, what we see happening now, and this is what I'm talking about being kind of ahead of the curve, is that we're leading and working in times that are unprecedented.
• 6:11
  Wendy White: You know, we've never been in this level of disruption and chaos that we are in now, with what we're calling kind of novel unknowns.
• 6:19
  Wendy White: Uh, there it's also being called, you might have heard the word, polycrisis.
• 6:23
  Wendy White: It's like things are changing so rapidly, and they're things we never could have conceived of.
• 6:28
  Wendy White: Like we never could have conceived that we would have a pandemic and then all of a sudden within like a week, everybody's home and we're look, we're doing everything online.
• 6:37
  Wendy White: You know, that's kind of crazy.
• 6:39
  Wendy White: Or like the disruptions that are happening with climate change.
• 6:42
  Wendy White: We never could have, you know, we never really are thinking about on a regular basis.
• 6:47
  Wendy White: I guess we could have conceived it, but you know, that a hurricane would come right through Asheville and totally wipe everything out for a couple of months, you know, there's things that are happening that we haven't dealt with before.
• 6:58
  Wendy White: So one of the innovations and things that we're focused on now is is leveraging technology and thinking and philosophies from futurists.
• 7:08
  Wendy White: Futurists have usually been just in academia, but there's things that we can learn about how we can predict into the future.
• 7:16
  Wendy White: So, for instance, how this might work on an everyday kind of thing is one of the things you do as a futurist is you're always looking for signals.
• 7:25
  Wendy White: So I think what's challenging today is leaders of companies need to not only deal with the everyday things that are right in front of them, which a lot of times there's a lot because of the level of change.
• 7:38
  Wendy White: It's really hard not to just look inside your business.
• 7:41
  Wendy White: But I think leaders need to lift up their head and they need to start scanning the horizon for not only what's happening now, but what are some of the things they see coming down the pike?
• 7:53
  Wendy White: And what, and then how can they begin to adapt and prepare for that?
• 7:57
  Wendy White: What are the opportunities that could come with some of these rapid fire changes and how does that impact your business?
• 8:05
  Wendy White: I'm happy to give you some examples.
• 8:07
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah, no, I'd love it.
• 8:08
  Bill Gilliland: My next question was going to be how do you scan the horizon?
• 8:11
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah.
• 8:12
  Wendy White: We'll share a couple of well, let me, I'll give I like to tell you.
• 8:15
  Wendy White: Yeah, do some case studies.
• 8:17
  Wendy White: So for our business, as soon, so a lot of our work was with um farm organizations.
• 8:27
  Wendy White: So back in um probably late December, January, we were working with um AstraZeneca at Teen from there, and we were get we were doing a lot of um strategic planning and some team development, and we were getting ready to set our next meeting, which was going to be the end of February, early March.
• 8:45
  Wendy White: And one of the leaders looked at me and says, Wendy, I don't think we should schedule anything right yet.
• 8:50
  Wendy White: And I looked at her like, why not?
• 8:52
  Wendy White: Because we've been working for like a year or so together.
• 8:55
  Wendy White: We were always scheduling.
• 8:56
  Wendy White: And so she said, Well, you know, this virus, so we were kind of keeping an eye out.
• 9:00
  Wendy White: This is a little different.
• 9:02
  Wendy White: And so that was sort of the first time I heard about the virus.
• 9:05
  Wendy White: And so I started, I looked that.
• 9:07
  Wendy White: So that's when I looked up and I said, Hmm, this is pretty interesting.
• 9:11
  Wendy White: If I have a leader from a company like AstraZeneca who is not planning in advance for March, um, I ought to take a look at that.
• 9:19
  Wendy White: So that's when I started looking and opening up my eyes and seeing what was happening in China.
• 9:25
  Wendy White: And I had enough of a global view to understand we're all connected, we're all interconnected.
• 9:30
  Wendy White: And so I watched as the virus started like escalating in China and I knew it was gonna jump.
• 9:38
  Wendy White: And then all of a sudden, I started started seeing cases in early like in February in uh Europe.
• 9:45
  Wendy White: And so we quickly came together as an organization and were like, it's gonna come to the US, it's gonna come quick.
• 9:54
  Wendy White: People are gonna say it's only gonna take a week or two, but looking at the signals, looking at the trends, not just what we're being told, what are we actually seeing happening?
• 10:05
  Wendy White: And then how do we prepare ourselves as a business for what we see is coming?
• 10:10
  Wendy White: So that's when you get into kind of scenario planning.
• 10:13
  Wendy White: So as soon as it started hitting the US, we had a pretty good idea we would head into shutdown at some point.
• 10:20
  Wendy White: And so we made a decision that we better we started learning about how to do things online and we heard about Zoom as a technology even before my financial investor knew about it because I tried to invest in Zoom.
• 10:34
  Wendy White: That's another example, is like when you see things coming down the pike, you can look at where areas you can invest that have a high likelihood of having a return because of what's happening.
• 10:46
  Wendy White: So we we ended up deciding that we do a lot of training, we do coaching.
• 10:51
  Wendy White: We figured we have to figure out how do we do what we do and be great with it online.
• 10:57
  Wendy White: And so we started pretty quickly, like even during the first couple weeks of shutdown, redesigning our business to look at how do we translate everything we do to do it virtually.
• 11:09
  Wendy White: And because of that, we were ahead of the curve.
• 11:12
  Wendy White: We were able to meet our clients' needs and be sort of first on the scene.
• 11:17
  Wendy White: And COVID ended up being one of our most successful times after kind of got going because we saw it happening and we started looking at what are the opportunities.
• 11:28
  Wendy White: That's an example.
• 11:29
  Wendy White: We've got to lift up and look at what's going on and then what are the opportunities with some of the disruptions that are happening in the world today.
• 11:37
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah, I love that.
• 11:38
  Bill Gilliland: We um we were pretty lucky in our business because we were already using Zoom.
• 11:43
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah, yeah, we were we were way ahead.
• 11:47
  Bill Gilliland: We had we were already using it in in in in scenarios.
• 11:51
  Bill Gilliland: What the what I think the reason we were lucky is because what it did was it, you know, our some of our clients didn't like it.
• 11:58
  Bill Gilliland: And uh yeah, but it everybody had to get used to it so um pretty fast if they were gonna continue to be in business or to learn or whatever.
• 12:10
  Bill Gilliland: And so um we were also lucky in that most of our uh clients were considered essential.
• 12:19
  Bill Gilliland: And so and so they they could still work, but uh yeah, it was yeah, yeah, it was we we were just lucky.
• 12:25
  Bill Gilliland: I mean, I you know, I saw that's all I gotta say in in in in that realm.
• 12:31
  Bill Gilliland: Um you know, in in the global financial crisis earlier in the century, it was we were not lucky.
• 12:37
  Bill Gilliland: There was plenty of people that got hit in that.
• 12:40
  Bill Gilliland: So yeah, it was it it's it's the way it goes.
• 12:43
  Bill Gilliland: So what do you think some of the common misconceptions are around running a business?
• 12:50
  Wendy White: Oh well that and well, I won't say that anyone can do it, but there's lots of people that want to run a business.
• 12:59
  Wendy White: And there's lots of really talented people out there, probably like in consulting more talented than I than I am.
• 13:06
  Wendy White: But I think that what people don't get is that you have to be tolerant of risk.
• 13:13
  Wendy White: So if you're somebody that likes to have stability and likes to know where their paycheck's gonna be and wants consistency, and you're not comfortable with risk, not comfortable with knowing like when your paycheck's gonna come, that uh, you know, that that's running a business is not for you.
• 13:32
  Wendy White: Um, you know, so I think that's one of the misconceptions is is is that wow, you know, because a lot of people see other people in business and they're successful and they're like, I want that.
• 13:42
  Wendy White: And and so they they don't always realize that, yes, there might be somebody who's at the peak, but they were not there with them through all the ebbs and the flows and the valleys and the successes along the way, and to realize that there's a lot to it, and it's the best thing I've ever done.
• 14:01
  Wendy White: You know, I would never do anything differently.
• 14:03
  Wendy White: Um I really it's so playful and creative, and I love being able to think of things and making it happen.
• 14:10
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah, well, I've always said that we're different, people who run businesses are different, but um yeah, we just think differently, look at the world differently, the whole the whole thing.
• 14:19
  Bill Gilliland: So I I think it's good.
• 14:21
  Bill Gilliland: So I mean, you said you've had ebbs and flows, but in general, the trend's been up.
• 14:26
  Bill Gilliland: What what do you attribute your growth to?
• 14:30
  Wendy White: Well, I think one thing is always being flexible, um diversifying.
• 14:35
  Wendy White: So, you know, we where it seemed like because we were in so many different sectors, so we we would do a lot of consulting and public health, but then we would also do some with government and international NGOs as well as big business.
• 14:50
  Wendy White: So we work in like the Fortune 100 companies as well.
• 14:54
  Wendy White: And so it seems like whenever one kind of uh you know sector goes down, there's another one that's doing well.
• 15:03
  Wendy White: So having, you know, some flexibility and diversification, I think, is really an important way to be able to keep your company sustainable and to be able to kind of deal with the ebbs and flows.
• 15:15
  Wendy White: Like uh, you know, right now we well, last year was a tough year because there was a lot of changes in the geopolitical scene and a lot of policies that came down that hurt a lot of the types of sectors that we tended to serve.
• 15:31
  Wendy White: You know, we did a lot like in vi in environment uh with EPA and you know, healthcare and all that.
• 15:37
  Wendy White: And so uh, you know, so it's taken us a while.
• 15:41
  Wendy White: I don't think we saw that that that so many of our sectors would be impacted in such a quick time.
• 15:48
  Wendy White: And so uh, you know, we're we've been regrouping a lot lately, and now we're back on the up upward trend, but there was definitely a contraction, and now we're we're starting to grow again.
• 16:01
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah.
• 16:01
  Wendy White: Yeah.
• 16:02
  Bill Gilliland: So how do you balance the sort of demands of business and personal life?
• 16:11
  Wendy White: I don't know, I think that balance is sort of a it's one of those things we strive for.
• 16:16
  Wendy White: I don't think it's ever quite a reality.
• 16:18
  Bill Gilliland: Right.
• 16:19
  Wendy White: You know, so what I think it's more of an integration, you know.
• 16:22
  Wendy White: I think even with with even if you have a regular job right now, it's not so segmented like it used to be, like nine to five, go home, do something different.
• 16:31
  Wendy White: You know, that's kind of a thing of the past.
• 16:33
  Wendy White: It's more how do you bring things in that you love at the same time you're working?
• 16:40
  Wendy White: And so I think as an entrepreneur, I love what I do.
• 16:45
  Wendy White: It's very playful.
• 16:46
  Wendy White: So sometimes it doesn't even feel like work.
• 16:49
  Wendy White: And I think as an entrepreneur, you can develop a lot, you know, we develop a lot of friends.
• 16:53
  Wendy White: So we really have good relationships with the people that we are, so that feeds a lot of that need.
• 16:59
  Wendy White: And then I make sure that I keep something sacred.
• 17:03
  Wendy White: You know, I make sure that I create time for the things that are most important to me, like, you know, my relationships, that uh that I make sure that I'm spending time with them.
• 17:13
  Wendy White: I'm spending time with my kids, that I'm I'm doing my yoga and my bike riding and kayaking and the exercising that I love to do, that I'm I'm doing things that feed me.
• 17:25
  Wendy White: Cause the more that I so to me, the balance is that doing things that feed yourself, give you energy so you can continue to do the work.
• 17:34
  Wendy White: Um if it gets to be too dr much drudgery and it's not fun, I'm not gonna do it.
• 17:40
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah.
• 17:41
  Bill Gilliland: No, I I I really like that.
• 17:43
  Bill Gilliland: That's a that's a great I love the word you you used was integration.
• 17:46
  Bill Gilliland: So yeah, that was that's I've I've never I've never heard it put that way.
• 17:51
  Bill Gilliland: So so that's that's that's fantastic.
• 17:53
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah.
• 17:54
  Bill Gilliland: Well, um let me be epic is one of my taglines, and uh it's an acronym.
• 18:00
  Bill Gilliland: So I want to get this is a sort of a quick fire round, like maybe a word or two about each of the of the letters.
• 18:07
  Bill Gilliland: So the B, I kind of throw that together.
• 18:09
  Bill Gilliland: I say that's bring energy.
• 18:11
  Bill Gilliland: So put so bring energy.
• 18:13
  Bill Gilliland: So what are your thoughts around that?
• 18:15
  Bill Gilliland: Bringing energy.
• 18:18
  Wendy White: So my everybody on my team is is a high energy passion person.
• 18:23
  Wendy White: And so we've never had a hard time with bringing energy.
• 18:27
  Wendy White: Our our challenge is is keeping the energy tempered.
• 18:30
  Wendy White: Uh so I love that.
• 18:33
  Wendy White: We tend to have a lot of passion on our team.
• 18:37
  Wendy White: And so I think that, you know, part of the energy is one is I think one is personal, it's about taking care of yourself.
• 18:45
  Wendy White: The stronger you are, the healthier you are, the better you eat, the more you exercise, um, you know, have a deep spiritual um practice, which is really important.
• 18:54
  Wendy White: That's all about how I keep up my personal energy.
• 18:58
  Wendy White: And then I think the other part is doing things I love and that I'm passionate about, and doing things both at work as well as outside of work that help to give me energy, which then helps me to be better with the clients I serve and with the people I lead.
• 19:14
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah, I love that.
• 19:15
  Bill Gilliland: So the E in Epic is education.
• 19:19
  Wendy White: Yeah, keep on learning.
• 19:21
  Wendy White: You know, so I, you know, it's like you think you know things, you know.
• 19:26
  Wendy White: I I I've gotten to the point the more I learn, the more I realize I know nothing.
• 19:31
  Wendy White: I actually think that's a pretty good point to be at because, you know, I regard regardless of your age and how much your experience you have, it's about staying open and staying curious and always realizing that there's different ways of doing things than you've done before.
• 19:49
  Wendy White: And and I think that's what keeps things fresh, even after 30 years, is is being able to constantly educate yourself, learn.
• 19:58
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah, yeah, no, I love it.
• 20:00
  Bill Gilliland: Well, the P stands for planning.
• 20:02
  Bill Gilliland: So what are your thoughts around planning?
• 20:04
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah.
• 20:05
  Wendy White: Yeah.
• 20:05
  Wendy White: So I think, well, it make sure you always take time with your team, uh, take time out, probably a couple of times of year a year to look at not only what are you doing, but what is your vision?
• 20:17
  Wendy White: Again, what like that's part of opening up, scanning the horizon.
• 20:21
  Wendy White: And what are the opportunities that are that are that you hadn't even seen before?
• 20:25
  Wendy White: And how do you how can you bring that into your business and plan?
• 20:29
  Wendy White: Um, so it's about having a strategy, it's about working your plan.
• 20:34
  Wendy White: But I think nowadays what's different, like it used to be we would do 30-year strategic plans, 10-year strategic plans.
• 20:41
  Wendy White: Now we do three-month strategic plans because things are changing so rapidly that I think planning is a little bit more of an ongoing process than it used to be, because you know, you have to have a direction, but you have to keep on tweaking that direction as you move forward based on the environment and what's going on in the world.
• 21:05
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah, I've always found that three-month, 90-day kind of goal or or plan to be critical because uh all the time.
• 21:14
  Bill Gilliland: So you could chunking down a longer-term plan into 90-day increments, I think works really well.
• 21:20
  Bill Gilliland: So that that makes that makes a lot of sense.
• 21:22
  Bill Gilliland: All right, I is inspiration.
• 21:25
  Wendy White: Inspiration.
• 21:26
  Wendy White: Um, so I think inspiration comes from it ties in with that, you know, education.
• 21:32
  Wendy White: But it's really it's it's listening to people, it's talking to people.
• 21:36
  Wendy White: I get inspiration from my clients.
• 21:38
  Wendy White: I love looking at where are there novel things that are happening that stretch my mind.
• 21:45
  Wendy White: I get inspiration by not just reading and studying the things in my field, but a lot of times inspiration comes when I'm picking up something totally new to learn it.
• 21:57
  Wendy White: So it might be like, you know, I'm kind of interested in quantum physics.
• 22:01
  Wendy White: You're like, that's kind of interesting to me.
• 22:03
  Wendy White: Or, you know, I'm interested in learning more about consciousness and what does that mean?
• 22:08
  Wendy White: You know, what are things around spirituality, bike riding and gardening?
• 22:13
  Wendy White: So it's so inspiration can come in a lot of ways.
• 22:17
  Wendy White: I think if we become all business and that's your only focus, that that it can become quite stale.
• 22:25
  Wendy White: And it's really hard to be inspired when you're doing the same thing and you're just totally goal-driven.
• 22:32
  Wendy White: You know, make sure I always like to make sure there's something outside of my sphere of career that I is giving that's juicing me up and stretching my mind.
• 22:44
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah.
• 22:44
  Bill Gilliland: I've always found that when I was working on something outside that really sort of had nothing to do.
• 22:51
  Bill Gilliland: For example, like I got a pilot's license one time.
• 22:54
  Bill Gilliland: I mean, working on that may help me with my businesses.
• 22:59
  Bill Gilliland: So it was, you know, it was so interesting to me that you know, achieving something outside of of the normal business was good.
• 23:07
  Bill Gilliland: So I I love that, you know.
• 23:09
  Bill Gilliland: I I love what you just said.
• 23:11
  Wendy White: Yeah.
• 23:11
  Wendy White: One of the things that that you know I've coined is like we really, really need geographical resets.
• 23:17
  Wendy White: So, like to intentionally take ourselves out of our current environment and put us some yourself someplace totally different.
• 23:25
  Wendy White: And it could be a day where maybe you go to a town you'd never been to before and just explore.
• 23:30
  Wendy White: It could be, you know, I'm a big fan of traveling over to other countries, you know, did a sail sailing trip around Greece, um, the islands with some of my girlfriends on a little charter boat.
• 23:42
  Wendy White: Uh, this past weekend, I went up to Boone to the Art of Living Center, and I took a writing workshop with Jedediah Jenkins, he's a New York Times bestseller.
• 23:53
  Wendy White: And and to me, that was a geographical reset.
• 23:56
  Wendy White: I left everything behind.
• 23:57
  Wendy White: We turned off our cell phones, we kind of got immersed into a very different environment.
• 24:03
  Wendy White: I ate vegan food all weekend, which I kind of like my meat.
• 24:07
  Wendy White: So vegan food was a little bit different for me.
• 24:11
  Wendy White: Um, and and and and that helps to shake things up a little bit and shift your perspective.
• 24:18
  Wendy White: And so I think those are also really, really important to keep yourself vital and alive so that you can do your work even better.
• 24:27
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah, yeah, I love that.
• 24:28
  Bill Gilliland: I love that.
• 24:28
  Bill Gilliland: And I found the same thing.
• 24:30
  Bill Gilliland: I love it.
• 24:30
  Bill Gilliland: So the the last letter is C, which stands for commitment.
• 24:35
  Wendy White: Oh, well, you know, if you're not committed, you're not going to be able to do anything.
• 24:39
  Wendy White: And it's about being committed, not just when it's easy, but it's having the faith and having confidence in yourself that that, you know, you're following.
• 24:50
  Wendy White: I'm a big firm believer in following my intuition.
• 24:53
  Wendy White: So I think we have our head brain, we have our heart, and we have our gut.
• 24:58
  Wendy White: And so I'll often like um, you know, use my gut and my heart to kind of set my direction.
• 25:04
  Wendy White: And then my my mind sort of gives me the analytics and the details of how to make that happen.
• 25:10
  Wendy White: And then being committed to it, following where that's leading, even and and knowing that I you can do it even if you haven't done it before.
• 25:20
  Wendy White: So it's uh, or knowing that you can bring in other people or find people you can learn from that will support you in being able to get past any hurdles, but it's keeping that commitment to your vision and your goal and driving it forward and having fun along the way.
• 25:37
  Wendy White: Commitment to fun is essential.
• 25:40
  Wendy White: Playfulness is essential, I think, to success.
• 25:43
  Bill Gilliland: So, what's the next big thing for Wendy and continuum?
• 25:49
  Wendy White: Well, uh a couple things.
• 25:51
  Wendy White: Um, we we developed a process called Crossroads Collaboratories, and I'm pretty excited about this.
• 25:59
  Wendy White: So we're actually going back to our roots of retreats and and what we're calling transformational gatherings.
• 26:06
  Wendy White: So we're doing a lot more retreats because we feel that uh, you know, right now, especially because of Zoom and and all the technology and the and how AI is sort of uh taking over more and more of our work or or they're in partnership.
• 26:21
  Wendy White: I actually love artificial intelligence a lot.
• 26:24
  Wendy White: So this is not a ding about artificial intelligence.
• 26:27
  Wendy White: I think there's a lot that's going to happen that can be really positive.
• 26:30
  Wendy White: However, I think that that it's it's made us very disconnected as human beings.
• 26:36
  Wendy White: And if you look at the Surge in General, one of our leading epidemics right now is loneliness.
• 26:42
  Wendy White: And so I believe that that our disconnection from each other is a big problem.
• 26:49
  Wendy White: And so that's why we're actually going back to our roots and doing more things where we bring people together live to have conversations, to be able to connect on a human basis so we can more effectively do work together.
• 27:04
  Wendy White: But the crossroads collaboratories are taking it to another level.
• 27:09
  Wendy White: Um, we believe there's so many challenges out in the world today, whether we're looking at reinventing healthcare, reinventing the education system, dealing with the climate crisis.
• 27:20
  Wendy White: There's really gnarly issues that we're we're dealing with as a society right now.
• 27:25
  Wendy White: And so crossroads collaboratories are a gathering kind of methodology we developed where we bring multi-sectors together.
• 27:34
  Wendy White: So we did one in Asheville last summer.
• 27:36
  Wendy White: It was on our Earthshop moment.
• 27:39
  Wendy White: And we brought change makers, we brought climate scientists, youth, and then we brought representatives from the Sequoia Nation and the Cherokee nations together.
• 27:49
  Wendy White: And what we did is it was a two-day process where we really looked at how do we talk about climate change in a way that was not just doom and gloom and disaster, but that we could actually create a vision on how we can work together to begin to create solutions that are going to better our, you know, society and our communities and our environment.
• 28:12
  Wendy White: And it was so powerful.
• 28:15
  Wendy White: And we had actually formed different teams that were going to go out to lead efforts.
• 28:20
  Wendy White: One of them was going to be to reimagine Asheville as a climate city.
• 28:24
  Wendy White: And how do we create Asheville with circular economies and pull all these different people that do great work together in Asheville to unify around a common vision around the environment?
• 28:35
  Wendy White: And uh, thinking that, of course, Asheville was one of the best places to be from an environmental perspective.
• 28:42
  Wendy White: And then, like six weeks after our collaboratory, the hurricane hit, and uh that kind of like dashed a lot of the efforts that we started.
• 28:51
  Wendy White: But I do think that this multi-sector approach to problem solving is a wave of the future.
• 28:58
  Wendy White: And so we're putting a lot of our efforts in positioning ourselves to be the go-to consulting firm to be able to design and lead those types of engagements.
• 29:11
  Wendy White: That really excites us.
• 29:13
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah, it should.
• 29:14
  Bill Gilliland: I mean, I think that's you're taking on really big problems and and uh looking for solutions.
• 29:20
  Bill Gilliland: I think that's uh I think that's amazing.
• 29:23
  Bill Gilliland: Uh yeah, that's that's that's very exciting.
• 29:25
  Bill Gilliland: So lastly, how can someone get a hold of you if they want to get involved in one of these um retreats or they just want to know more or they just want to find you?
• 29:37
  Bill Gilliland: How do they do it?
• 29:39
  Wendy White: Well, uh, we're on the web at continuumcs.com.
• 29:44
  Wendy White: Uh, you can also follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn, and I think you're you're gonna share some of those links um in the podcast.
• 29:53
  Bill Gilliland: 100%.
• 29:54
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah.
• 29:54
  Wendy White: Yeah, you can reach out to me, Wendy White, and um my phone number, you can reach me.
• 29:59
  Wendy White: I guess I'll give my email instead of the phone.
• 30:01
  Wendy White: It's Wendy at continuumcs.com.
• 30:05
  Wendy White: We're here to serve any any or any size organization if you're getting ready to have a retreat, a team building retreat, a planning retreat, new leader onboarding gathering.
• 30:17
  Wendy White: Uh, we would co create and design something for you.
• 30:21
  Wendy White: And the other thing that we're really excited about is we run a nonprofit that that I started.
• 30:26
  Wendy White: Started during COVID called Let's Choose Love.
• 30:29
  Wendy White: And you can check out let's choose love.org.
• 30:34
  Wendy White: And we fund people's give back dreams.
• 30:37
  Wendy White: And it's uh all over the United States.
• 30:39
  Wendy White: So we we give out money for people that have solutions on things that they want to do within their community to serve, and we fund that.
• 30:48
  Wendy White: We provide a coach from our consulting firm that volunteers time to be able to work with that person.
• 30:55
  Wendy White: And so we also have uh we just launched October 1st, a love on record podcast that you can find all over.
• 31:04
  Wendy White: And it's because we want to amplify stories of ordinary people doing good in the world.
• 31:08
  Wendy White: So if you want to feel good, listen to the let's listen to the podcast.
• 31:13
  Wendy White: Uh, and and so that's another another way that you can get it.
• 31:18
  Wendy White: And it's funded by a continuum.
• 31:20
  Wendy White: So 5% of every piece of money that comes through the door, not off our profit, has always been turned back to support things in our community.
• 31:31
  Wendy White: So we do 1% for the planet, we do 4% that goes to support Let's Choose Love.
• 31:36
  Wendy White: We've given out 120 mini grants across the country in the last couple of years.
• 31:42
  Wendy White: So we're all we're all for using our business to make a positive impact in the world.
• 31:48
  Bill Gilliland: Love it.
• 31:48
  Bill Gilliland: Love that.
• 31:49
  Bill Gilliland: Love that.
• 31:49
  Bill Gilliland: Love that.
• 31:50
  Bill Gilliland: That's great.
• 31:51
  Bill Gilliland: Listen, this has been fantastic.
• 31:53
  Bill Gilliland: Thanks for taking time.
• 31:54
  Bill Gilliland: Um, I've learned a lot.
• 31:56
  Bill Gilliland: I appreciate you being part of the communities, uh, and well, really the global community and all you're doing.
• 32:03
  Bill Gilliland: And uh I know that you're gonna continue to make a dent in the world and continue to uh continue success being successful in business because you're because I know all your three brains are in the right spots.
• 32:15
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah.
• 32:17
  Wendy White: Yeah, thank you.
• 32:18
  Bill Gilliland: Yeah, yeah.
• 32:19
  Wendy White: Well, I so appreciate you inviting me on and um and thank you for listening and look forward to hearing from you all.
• 32:26
  Bill Gilliland: That'll be great.
• 32:27
  Bill Gilliland: Hey, and until next time, all the best.
• 32:30
  Wendy White: Thank you.