IAM1105- Founder Builds into the Culture of Healthcare

Alison Waldman is a movement artist and wellness educator in healthcare spaces. As the Founder and Lead Facilitator of Available Wellness, she works with patients, providers, and industry leaders to incorporate creativity and community building into the culture of healthcare. She brings her expertise in trauma-informed facilitation to hospitals and clinics, leading engagements in mindfulness, yoga, dance, and joy practice onsite. She recently helped design and launch two new projects: A wellness support telehealth platform for cancer patients; and a series of creativity workshops for caregivers to build emotional resilience and prevent burnout.

• CEO Hack: Self-care
• CEO Nugget: (i) Figure out what success looks like for you and the steps toward it (ii) Word document- Praises and pick me up
• CEO Defined: Believing in an idea and diving into it creatively

Website: http://available-wellness.com/

Instagram: @alisoninmotion
TEDx talk (Sept 2020), “Should we be dancing with our doctors?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsBfEjxTgwU

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00:13 – Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:40- Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Allison Waldman of Available Wellness. Allison, great to have you on the show.

00:50 – Alison Waldman

Hi. Thanks so much for having me.

00:52 – Gresham Harkless

Super excited to have you on. And before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Allison so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. And Allison is a movement artist and wellness educator in health care spaces. And as the founder and lead facilitator at of available wellness, she works with patients, providers, and industry leaders to incorporate creativity and community building into the culture of health care.

She brings her expertise in trauma-informed facilitation to hospitals and clinics, leading engagement in mindfulness, yoga, dance, and joy practice on-site. She recently helped design and launch two project two new projects, a wellness support telehealth, platform for cancer patients and a series of creativity workshops for caregivers to build emotional resilience and prevent burnout. Allison, great to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:41- Alison Waldman

Yeah. Let's do this.

01:42 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Let's do it then. So to kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit and hear a little bit more about how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

01:51 – Alison Waldman

Sure. So my CEO's entrepreneurial story happened by accident. I never set out to I never had this idea that I was gonna run my own business, but I was doing a full-time job that wasn't doing it for me. And I realized I just wanted to do something else. So I set up the security to be able to, the financial and and time security to be able to take some time and leave my full time job and explore a little bit and learn about what I filled my cup and how I wanted to serve my community. And I dug into my my love of movement and community facilitation and just kept spending time doing that and finding myself in opportunities and situations to do that.

And from there, it turned into realizing that that was what I wanted to offer and that there was a hole that I could be filling with that, and that the best way for me to do that would be through a business. So I'm a one-woman show. I have collaborators, and people help me out, but for the most part, I'm running the show. I realized at the end of the day, like, that my passions and my skills led me to this entrepreneurial journey. So it was a bit of a surprise, and sometimes I forget that I'm a business owner because I'm just doing so many things.

03:37 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. That makes so much sense. But I love, that you shared about the stern journey and the way that you came across your business and were able to figure out what to put the time in to also fill up your cup and see how that's cyclical exercise and when that happens. But I think so many times we forget about that journey piece, and we forget about the time and the space just to try out different things and figure out what works best. And sometimes we can find that even though it seems like we're going farther in order to find it, sometimes we're going more within, and it's something that's always within and a part of us.

04:14 – Alison Waldman

Yeah. And something I looking back, I realize is that what was more informative for me in getting to this journey was knowing what I didn't wanna do. I wasn't exactly sure what my my own thing looked like exactly, but I knew what I was walking away from and what parts of the previous experiences that I had in that in other types of work that I didn't wanna bring with me. And that happened over time and also as the years went by and I just learned a little bit more about my conviction and my preferences and what I need to do my best work, both in an administrative internal way, but also in in the outward the outward part of my work, which is a big part of it.

05:00 – Gresham Harkless

I wanted to drill down a little bit more and hear about, where you found your thing and the things that you can do to fill up your cup. Could you take us through a little bit more on how you work with clients and how you make that impact?

05:11 – Alison Waldman

Sure. So my work is focused particularly in health care spaces. And what I offer are opportunities for creativity and community building within a hospital and health care community. It's take it's a big picture work of of talking to industry leaders and and people who are pushing and leading and guiding what the health care system looks like. It's talking to them on a larger level, around what are the needs of of the health care system and how it needs to evolve to the circumstances of our time now, which is quite relevant these days. There's I've gotten a lot busier over the past, few months because we're on the other side of the pandemic, and there's so much conversation about both the experience of the health care system as a patient and how this pandemic brought out the strengths and the weaknesses of health care.

But also I'm working a lot with staff right now and health care workers and also a hospital, workers who are administrative facilities, cleaning, kitchen, that whole kind of, ecosystem. And I give them, I lead workshops. I, come in and give stretch breaks. I do movement encounters, art encounters, and artist encounters in the hospital space during hospital hours, so to speak. And that's different than, I think, having a concert, for example, hosted by a hospital or health care system. What I'm doing is I'm going I'm doing it on-site and making it part of the experience of being a patient or being a health care worker.

And this work, again, came out of a growing curiosity and a little bit of circumstance for me as a person with a dance and movement and facilitation background. I was tired of preaching to the choir and the fairly homogeneous population I was working with, and I was interested in taking it further. And that came out of some just kind of personal preferences in growing up, but also out of, some illness in my family and an unexpected, relationship with the health care system both in both directly as a loved one, as someone, with a terminal illness, but also, seeing that family member go through the system and what she learned through that.

08:02 – Gresham Harkless

Truly, impactful. And so would you consider that to be what I like to call your secret sauce? And this could be for you personally or the business or a combination of both. But what do you feel sets you apart and makes you unique? Is it that ability to to bring that right to somebody's doorstep and meet them where they are?

08:19 – Alison Waldman

Yes. I think that I think that is part of the secret sauce. And I would add on top of that, which is related, is a very specific, understanding of facilitation and how to hold space for, an uncurated group of people, meaning the hospital is the best example. You walk into a hospital, and you don't know who you're going to encounter. And very often, you don't know why that person is there. And there might be an opportunity to ask them, but often that's not appropriate or the opportunity does not give itself or it doesn't matter.

08:58 – Gresham Harkless

Appreciate that, Allison. And I wanted to, switch gears a little bit, and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

09:09 – Alison Waldman

I am a big believer in, I honestly hate the word self care because it's so buzzy these days, but, for a lack of better word, health care. But the entrepreneurial and CEO experience can be incredibly isolating and lonely, and it takes a very particular person to be able to do it. And usually, that person is a go person.

09:35 – Gresham Harkless

What would you consider to be what I call a CEO nugget? You might have already touched on this, but this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice. It might be something if you were to happen to a time machine you would tell your younger business self.

09:46 – Alison Waldman

I would have learned a little bit more about running a business before I just decided to run a business. If you are listening to this or watching this and you are considering going on to that entrepreneurial pathway to find running a business for dummies or just some there are so many free resources out there. It doesn't have to put yourself through a grad school course, but read a book that touches on the different elements of it.

And I think the biggest thing that I wish I had done that I'm just doing now that I have, eight or nine years of this under my belt is realizing what success looks like for you and what are the steps to success. What are you building? What is the end game? And that doesn't have to be written in stone, but to have an understanding of what you're working towards. So what you're spending your time on in some way can take you in that. The wandering pathway is not the way to go, and I say that as someone who wandered for a very long time. That's one nugget. Can I give one more nugget?

11:12 – Gresham Harkless

Go for it. Yeah.

11:12 – Alison Waldman

Okay. Another entrepreneur gave me this advice some time ago, but I have a Word document on my desktop called Praises and Pick Me Ups. It is a place where if I get a great piece of feedback from a client, from a class participant, a comment, something that reminds me why I do what I do and what the impact of my work is and also, frankly, reminds me that I'm good at it. Because if you're working alone, you often don't have someone telling you, great job. You're doing it. I have this document of copy-paste from Zoom chats, from emails, I gave a TED talk, and I got a bunch of emails, so responses and comments to my TED talk.

And I keep that on my desktop, and if I'm having a day where I can't remember why I'm doing it or I have my confidence is low, I go in there and I read the words from peers and family members and colleagues and strangers who I maybe only met once. And it reminds me, oh, yeah. I got this. And I'm really glad that it's a gift that I give myself. It's putting five dollars in the mail and mailing it to yourself five years later. You just have it. It's nothing new. It's just a reminder, and I'm so glad that I have it readily available so I can go and I can pull from it. It's also great if someone asks for a testimonial for something. You have them all somewhere written down. You have the source. You have when it was, you have what it was about, so you don't have to dig around for those.

13:05 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome, awesome, awesome. So I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So, Alison, what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:17 – Alison Waldman

Being a CEO means believing in an idea and diving into it with creativity. I think creativity is such a huge part of running a business.

13:29 – Gresham Harkless

Allison, truly appreciate that definition again. I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and, of course, how best they can get ahold of you and find out about all the awesome things you're working on.

13:43 – Alison Waldman

I don't think I have anything to add except if you like that Albert Einstein quote, I have it written down, and I have it around my desk just as a reminder because I think it's a nice reminder that intelligence and creativity are, have a relationship with each other. The other piece of inspiration I have on my wall is the seven ways to be creative, which is by Liz Lerman, who is a MacArthur, grant foundation winner genius grant winner. And there are seven ways to be creative, but I think there are seven ways to live your life.

And I have found them to be incredibly useful in guiding me through my challenging moments and curious and curious moments of running a business. So look those up. And if you follow me on Instagram, they're on there somewhere. So my Instagram is Alison in motion. That's Alison in motion. My website is available at hyphenwellness.com, And you can learn more about my recent project, my caregiver's workshop, and my virtual caregiver's workshop at creative-dash caregivers.com. You can find me on my website, you'll find I teach some public classes that are free and accessible, and you can also see more. You can see my TED Talk, which is called Why We Should Be Dancing With Our Doctors. You can find that on my website or just search, Google and you'll find it there.

15:20 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Well, I truly appreciate you, Allison, for all the work that you do and for giving so much of yourself to make that change and that impact in the healthcare system. And I imagine it extends beyond when you start talking about the being and the people and the impact that they have in their lives and in their families and so on. But I appreciate you too for giving all that is wisdom and information to us today. We would have the links and information in the show notes so that everybody can check out all the awesome things that you're doing and meant things that you mentioned as well. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

15:51 – Outro