Lisa Nichols on Courage, Faith, and Leading with Something Extra

In this episode of Courageous Crossroads, Jeff sits down with CEO, entrepreneur, and faith-driven leader Lisa Nichols to explore what courage looks like in real life, from building Technology Partners with her husband Greg to raising a family, leading with conviction, an learning leadership lessons from her daughter Allie, who was born with Down syndrome and lives with what Lisa calls “something extra.” Lisa shares her definition of courage as taking steps in spite of fear, tells stories ranging from singing the national anthem at a St. Louis Cardinals game to navigating moments where standing openly in her faith carried professional risk, and ultimately names the most courageous thing she’s ever done: leading with faith and love, especially in the workplace. Lisa Nichols is the co-founder and CEO of Technology Partners (an IT staffing, solutions, and leadership development firm), a longtime community and nonprofit advocate, and the host of the Something Extra podcast (launched in 2018), where she closes each
interview by asking leaders what “something extra” they believe every leader needs; she’s also the author of the book Something Extra, which distills lessons from hundreds of podcas conversations into practical leadership traits, includes reflection questions, and features memorable Allie stories throughout—listeners can find Something Extra wherever they get podcasts and can find the book Something Extra through major retailers, including Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Thank you for listening! We hope you feel inspired and encouraged by our conversation today. If you did, be sure to share this episode with others.

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See you in the next episode! Be blessed!

Full Transcript

Announcer: Welcome to Courageous by Crossroads Apologetics, a look into what motivates us to step out and courage, and the everyday bravery of men and women like you. In each episode, we hear a personal story of bravery centered around this question: What’s the most courageous thing you’ve ever done? And now your host, founder of Crossroads Apologetics, Jeff Johnson.

Jeff Johnson: Hey everybody, welcome back to another edition of the Courageous Crossroads Podcast. I am super excited for you to hear from our next guest, Lisa Nichols, is a friend of mine. I’ve known Lisa for 10-plus years, and not only is she an accomplished entrepreneur, a wonderful mother and wife, and she’s such a bright light. But she has published a book, she also runs her own podcast called Something Extra. You’re going to hear a lot more about that. And I started off with kind of prodding her a little bit that she owes me to come on to my podcast. She’s been doing her podcast a lot longer than I’ve been doing mine. And I was one of the first guests that she had on. I was grateful to be on her program. But anyway, Lisa is absolutely fantastic. And she has got a great answer to that question: What’s the most courageous thing you’ve ever done? You’re absolutely going to love her. And learn more about her too in our show notes. But without further ado, here is Lisa Nichols.

Jeff Johnson: Lisa, I’m so grateful that you’re coming on the Courageous Crossroads. You owe me because I was on your podcast, Something Extra, a long time ago. And so I’ve been after you because you’re so fantastic. And I want to have you on. So thank you so much for doing this.

Lisa Nichols: Oh, thank you for having me. Gosh, Jeff, that’d be interesting. You had to have been probably in the first 50 of mine. And I’ve done 370 now.

Jeff Johnson: How many have you done?

Lisa Nichols: 370.

Jeff Johnson: 370. And your podcast is called Something Extra. I’m not going to bounce around too much; I’m going to try to guide this in a linear fashion as much as I can. But Something Extra—tell our listeners about your podcast because they all need to be listening to it.

Lisa Nichols: Oh, you are so sweet. Well, thank you so much for that. So I started the podcast in 2018. I will say a strategy did not inspire the podcast—a person did. And that person is our youngest daughter, Ali, who you have met.

Jeff Johnson: She’s so fantastic.

Lisa Nichols: But instead of us—and certainly I don’t want to get into that story—but you know, when she was born, we had all the questions that anybody else would; we weren’t expecting it. I mean, and let’s just be really honest: there’s grief. There’s grief for what you thought you were going to have, right? But as we go along, what we realized is, Jeff, she was the gift that we didn’t know we needed. And she’s the gift that the world really needed too.

Jeff Johnson: 100%. That girl is a celebrity. I mean, she is everywhere.

Lisa Nichols: She is everywhere. Yes, I was at an event yesterday and she was just bringing joy to every person that interacted with her. But what we did was we said instead of being “something missing,” what we realized is that truly the “something extra” took on different meaning to us because she clearly has scientifically a 21st extra chromosome in every cell of her body. But she’s got lots of “something extra.” She’s extra joyful. She’s extra loving. She’s extra intuitive. All these different things. So it really kind of started reshaping the way I even thought about leadership.

Lisa Nichols: So Ali and I say—gosh, I mean more than any leadership book I’ve ever read, maybe besides the Bible, Jeff—I’m just going to say it. I think that’s the greatest leadership book that was ever written.

Jeff Johnson: I totally agree.

Lisa Nichols: But she’s taught me so much that people matter over performance. You know, your pace—being present with people is more important than the pace. I mean, when she is with you, she is with you. She’s not thinking about a million other things. She makes you feel like you’re the most important person in the world in the room. And so she just has taught me so much about leadership.

Lisa Nichols: And so in 2018 then, we had a lot of millennials—it’s good to have diversification of generations in your organization—and a lot of the millennials in our companies said, “Lisa, you need to be podcasting. You need to be podcasting.” And so we never podcasted before. And we didn’t even hire anybody, Jeff. We just like figured it out. So that’s what we did, started in 2018.

Lisa Nichols: And so what it really kind of framed for me—and you remember this—every leader that I’ve had on the podcast, the final question I ask is: “What is the ‘something extra’ that you believe every leader needs?” And it’s been really interesting because the words are different, but the anchors are kind of the same. And so yeah, so that’s where the podcast originated from. And now I’ve had, you know, like I said, 370 episodes. And we’re still going.

Jeff Johnson: It’s so fantastic Lisa and congratulations. And for the listeners, we’ll put links in the show notes for all of that stuff. And there’s more because you’ve got a book as well that we’ll talk about a little bit further on down the podcast here because we want to hear about that too.

Jeff Johnson: So we’re talking about courage here in the Courageous Crossroads. And we’re going to culminate with me asking you the question: What’s the most courageous thing you’ve ever done? But before we get there, I want the listeners to learn a little bit more about you. And I know some of your story, but I don’t know all of it. So can you go back to born and raised and grown? Give us a little bit of a background of who Lisa Nichols is.

Lisa Nichols: Oh, well, thanks for asking that. Now I’m happy to talk about this. So I was born in a really small Western town in Kentucky. Paducah, Kentucky. If any of your listeners have ever driven, you know, from north down to Florida, they’ve probably gone through the three exits that’s there. Wonderful family. My mom and dad were both really strong Christians. I grew up in the church, grew up singing, started singing when I was about four years old in the church. And yeah, the really significant thing is my current husband also grew up in that same church. And our families were friends.

Jeff Johnson: Now I didn’t know that.

Lisa Nichols: It is interesting. And what is really interesting—you know, he’s Greg, my husband and partner in life and partner in business—he is two years older than me. I don’t really remember him before sixth grade. But he has got stories, Jeff, about me that he can remember before that. And I’ll just tell you one really nice—I laugh every time he tells a story.

Lisa Nichols: So again, I grew up singing. So oftentimes, yeah, I’d be in the front and singing. I also danced all the way through high school—ballet, tap, all of that. And my ballet teacher was, you know, one of these sticklers like you don’t have any hair on your head. Everything is swooped back. It’s in a tight chignon. So a lot of times for church, my mom would do my hair that way. I hated my hair that way, but she would do my hair that way.

Lisa Nichols: So Greg said, he goes, “I think you were maybe in fourth grade. I was in sixth grade. Maybe you were third grade.” And he said I was singing a solo up front. And he said, “I said to Steve, my brother”—his brother’s a year older—Greg goes, “You know, I—and my hair was that way that day—and he goes, ‘You know, I really think Lisa is cute. What do you think?'” And Steve said, “Not me. She looks like an onion.” Because of this really tight chignon on top of my head. So Greg’s like, that did it for him. He’s like, “Well, I can’t like her if Steve thinks she looks like an onion.” But yeah. So I mean, it’s just really comical because he can remember now about sixth grade.

Jeff Johnson: That’s right. Did you have siblings?

Lisa Nichols: I am an only.

Jeff Johnson: Okay.

Lisa Nichols: I am an only. Yeah, we can talk about that if you want. So everything around me… yeah. Greg had a younger and an older. So brothers, brothers, three boys. But anyway, about sixth grade though, I really did take notice of him. And he was really cute. And, you know, it was funny—and I’m just going to tell on his family here a little bit—they were always late every Sunday. They were late. But then he insisted on sitting on the front row, which is really kind of funny. I’m just telling a little story on them. But, you know, his mom trying to get three boys out the door—I get it now, right? You know, why they were late.

Lisa Nichols: So I’d be sitting there with my mom on the row with some of my girlfriends. And we would all be elbowing each other when he was coming in the door because he was just so cute. So I did. I really started having eyes for him when I was in sixth grade. And Jeff, I even wrote in my diary—I wrote in my diary that, and I was sixth grade, you know, what, 12 years old: “I know that Greg really doesn’t know who I am. But I really think God has told me I’m going to marry him one day.”

Jeff Johnson: Wow. Wow. Isn’t that crazy? And we’re recording this on the day before Valentine’s Day. So you guys have a real love story.

Lisa Nichols: We do. We do. And let’s be real—it’s not always easy, right?

Jeff Johnson: No.

Lisa Nichols: Don’t think it’s like without bumps because there definitely are bumps and there are valleys on the journey. But the thing is we’ve stayed committed to one another and we are committed to Jesus. And Jesus has been the center.

Jeff Johnson: So you absolutely love Greg. But you don’t care at all for his older brother. You don’t like Steve at all.

Lisa Nichols: Yeah. He’s an… I know. I know. I absolutely love Steve. They are as different as night and day.

Jeff Johnson: Are they?

Lisa Nichols: Yes. But yeah, I love Steve. And he loves me. So everything’s fine. I don’t look like an onion anymore.

Jeff Johnson: Born and raised in Paducah. Dancer. Yeah.

Lisa Nichols: Yeah. All of that stuff. We started dating in high school, dated all the way through high school, all the way through college, got married. And we both—Greg’s two years older. I graduated in three years. He got a double major. So we graduated together. So he was there for five years. I graduated in three. So we graduated together. You know, we’re two years apart. But we got recruited by McDonnell Douglas, which of course is now Boeing.

Jeff Johnson: Yeah.

Lisa Nichols: And McDonnell Douglas was headquartered here in St. Louis. And that’s what moved us 40…

Jeff Johnson: And you both were recruited by McDonnell Douglas.

Lisa Nichols: We were both recruited. I actually…

Jeff Johnson: Independently or?

Lisa Nichols: I interned for McDonnell Douglas my senior year in college. And so they had said—yeah, the funny story—they said, “Hey, listen, when you graduate, if you want a job, we would love to hire you.” So that was kind of my in. Greg sent one resume. And he asked me to get the job done. And I went to McDonnell Douglas and got hired. And he’s a software engineer, technical guy. And of course, you know, I mean, it was a utopia for any kind of engineer. McDonnell’s… I always say it’s not just leading edge, they were on the bleeding edge. You know, when you’re manufacturing F-18s and F-15s. And they had the commercial line as well with DAC out in Long Beach.

Lisa Nichols: Yeah, so that’s… and so we spent the first 10 years of our career in corporate America. And then it’ll be 32 years May the 4th, we said… and we’re very different. We’re wired very differently and God’s given to each of us strengths. I know what I’m good at, what I’m not good at; we just complement each other so well with that.

Lisa Nichols: And so 32 years ago we said, “What would it look like for us to pull our strengths and build a company?” And that’s what we did. And so 32 years ago we started Technology Partners and we’re still going today. And I always say, you know, the miracle, I think, Jeff… you know what is the stat, like that startups, only 30% of them make it to the 10-year mark?

Jeff Johnson: Yeah, which is pretty crazy.

Lisa Nichols: I mean, and we’re 32 years. So thank you, Jesus, for helping us be sustainable that long. So that’s a miracle in itself. But say what the real miracle is—is that we work together and we’re still married.

Jeff Johnson: That’s a special combination, Lisa, because people can’t do that.

Lisa Nichols: Oh, I get asked that all the time from people. They’re like, “How do you do that? There’s no way I could ever work with my spouse.” But we’ve learned a few things along the way, Jeff. We’ve not always done it right. Let me tell you, because we’re both very Type-A. But what really helped us—there’s a couple things that really helped us—is really defining our “swim lanes.” I’m the CEO, Greg is the President. I’m more externally facing; he is more internally, like our team reports ultimately up through him, you know, our various functional areas. But we make decisions in lockstep with each other. Big decisions—like we just made an acquisition in ’24—I mean, that was many, many discussions about that. But really defining the swim lanes and then respecting those swim lanes.

Jeff Johnson: Now, okay, I want to ask this—there’s a couple questions that I want to ask. But I would assume managing a company as partners has flavors of a marriage, but it’s different. It’s not a marriage. There’s definitely a covenant in a marriage between a husband and a wife that indicates when the love dissipates, or at least the liking dissipates, you stand on that covenant and say, “I’m going to push through,” otherwise there wouldn’t be any purpose for a covenant. And it’s a lifelong endeavor. So that’s that. But in a business, it might be a little bit different. There might be a time when God calls you to do this thing and God calls Greg to do this thing—who knows?

Jeff Johnson: But decision-making between a husband and a wife—I’ve often heard people say it’s a “yes and yes” is a yes. A “no and no” is a no. But a “no and a yes,” you don’t have it yet. So you’ve got to stay in that until you both agree with each other. Has it been the same way, decision-making in a company?

Lisa Nichols: Yeah, pretty much. There’s probably been a few times where I’ve talked him into a yes and he said yes, but he’s really going, “I know…” And there’ve been a few times where I’ve talked him into a yes and it really should have been a no. You know, that’s one really funny thing. Greg is very—he makes decisions based on data. I would imagine you do too, Jeff, just knowing you—like, more an engineering mind, I would say.

Jeff Johnson: Yeah, it’s based on data.

Lisa Nichols: Mine early on was more intuition. And sometimes my intuition is right and sometimes it was dead wrong. I have come to appreciate now that you really need both of those things. You really need both of those things. And so obviously when we’re making decisions and big… I mean certainly smaller decisions is not… but we are like praying over everything.

Jeff Johnson: Yeah.

Lisa Nichols: We’re praying over everything. And if you are trying to make a decision and you’re praying over it and you don’t have that peace, then it’s like, “Okay, let’s stop.” And I mean, listen, we’re not perfect in that either. I will tell you, we’ve made some decisions in the past where God has given us those red flags and we charged ahead anyway, and it was not the right decision.

Jeff Johnson: When you were back at McDonnell Douglas, were you both early in your career there thinking that you would venture out on your own? Or where did the catalyst to start your own company come from?

Lisa Nichols: That is so funny. That is so funny. My dad was an entrepreneur; my dad had his own business. And so even as a young girl, I was always trying to think about a business. We don’t have time for it, but I started a flower business when I was seven.

Jeff Johnson: Yeah? Okay.

Lisa Nichols: And the funny thing about it, I had this idea of selling corsages because I love flowers. I thought everybody else loved flowers too. So one day I had this bright idea that I would start this flower business and I would do corsages and I would go around and sell my corsages. The only problem with this is I got my flowers from our neighbor’s garden. So my cost of goods sold was nothing, right?

Lisa Nichols: But we go over… my neighbors had all these beautiful—we didn’t have flower gardens, we had huge vegetable gardens—my dad grew… I went over and picked up all the blooms off of our neighbor’s jonquils. So just imagine all these stems just stems sticking out. And got my little red wagon and stuck a pin in those and went around and yeah, I thought I was really hot stuff until my dad was like, “What have you done?” And you know, it’s one of the first leadership lessons. He goes, “You have to go over to their house and knock on the door and tell them what you did and apologize for taking all their blooms.” And then to top it off, I had to go give all the money back.

Jeff Johnson: Good business lesson.

Lisa Nichols: Yeah, it was a great business lesson. Yeah, taking ownership, right, for our mistakes. But so…

Jeff Johnson: You were the natural entrepreneur then?

Lisa Nichols: Well, I mean, I would… but then Greg did too. I mean, we were in high school. When we were in high school we would have discussions, and like I said we started dating in high school, but we would have these discussions, Jeff, and Greg would say, “Hey, Lise, if we could build a company one day,” he said, “and we could do well as the company, we could do a lot of good in the world.”

Jeff Johnson: Hmm.

Lisa Nichols: “Do a lot of good in the world.” And I will just… and that was his philosophy. Yeah, he was always something. The thing that I—there’s so many things I love about Greg, but one of the things that really attracted me to him early on was he was about more than himself. Like, “good in the world,” right? He wanted to make a difference in the world and you know, I decided right then and there that’s the wagon I want to be tethered to rather.

Lisa Nichols: So you know, we would talk about this. We didn’t know what it would look like. We had no idea what it would look like. But this was kind of in our hearts that yeah, one day we will do something.

Jeff Johnson: Yeah, you usually don’t find that kind of altruism in somebody in high school. You know, when they’re finding their way they’re kind of looking for the stars and they’re not selfless for sure. So that is very unique and it sounds like it was in—you’re giving credit to Greg, but I imagine it was in both of you to do that.

Lisa Nichols: I mean it… yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely it was. Now again, you know, my motives were not always pure. Somebody asked me the other day, “Lisa, is your definition of success different today than it was then?” I’m like, “Absolutely. Absolutely.” Thank you, Jesus, that I’ve transformed. You know, I’ve grown and I’ve matured and I’ve changed, you know, because I mean when you’re young you are trying to build something, and it’s not always pure motives, right?

Jeff Johnson: Yeah, yeah. Okay, so you started Technology Partners, which does… and it’s been successful for three decades plus. So it does what?

Lisa Nichols: Full-service information technology. So what that means, we’ve got three pillars to the company. IT staffing—so if a company needs to scale up their IT workforce, we can help them do that either through contingent labor or full-time equivalents, either one, we do both. And then the second pillar is solutions—full solutions. So let’s say a company has a legacy system that needs to be modernized. That’s where we play really well in this space where our team can come in and from cradle to grave can build a brand new system. Sometimes we can build APIs and you know, we can patch and put band-aids on it, but then sometimes if it’s built on a tech stack that really is no longer supported, you may just want to start over, right? Cloud migration services.

Lisa Nichols: And then the big one right now is data—data analytics, data science, data governance, data management. Never before have we had as much data that we’re collecting, you know, sensors on machines and things like this. And then what our team is doing, we help companies with their data and maybe ingesting data. We’ve even got a product that we have that’s a SaaS product that helps ingest data from up to 250 different sources. And then you want to get your data… what is the big buzz right now is Artificial Intelligence and how can you leverage AI to help drive better insights. And so our team will help with AI road mapping.

Lisa Nichols: And then the third pillar is leadership development. And this is the company that we bought at the beginning of ’24. And yeah, it’s a leadership development company, but specific to technology people. So technology people that want to go to the next level. And we’re teaching things like… we did a study with Babson College to really look at the leadership traits that a technologist needs. And it certainly, you know, they got the hard skills, but sometimes it’s the other skills that they’ve never been trained on.

Lisa Nichols: In fact—and this was probably Jeff, this is probably in other industries as well—but the average age that a technologist starts leading a team is at the age of 27. But they don’t get leadership training until 41.

Jeff Johnson: Really?

Lisa Nichols: It’s a 14-year gap of, you know, you take your best technologist and you go, “Okay, you’re awesome at this, now lead a team.” And they’re like, “I’ve never led a team. How do I do that?” So we’re teaching things like: How do you communicate up and down and across in the organization? How do you lead change in the organization? How do you market the value of information technology to the rest of the business and the stakeholders, right? So it’s those kind of things that we’re really teaching them.

Jeff Johnson: Well, that’s fantastic. And you operate all around the country or just in the Midwest?

Lisa Nichols: All around. I mean, our solutions, we’re doing things in Atlanta, we’re doing things in Texas, we’re doing things in Boston, we’re doing things in KC. You know, technology really knows no boundaries really, so and our team travels.

Jeff Johnson: Well, congratulations. That’s a wonderful story, Lisa. And you’re also affiliated with—you don’t have to go through the list—but just to give our audience a flavor, you’re affiliated with a lot of charitable organizations and outreach and that sort of thing. You started quite a few things and been a part of a lot of things.

Lisa Nichols: I have, yeah, that’s been such a blessing. Yeah, I started a group, I co-founded a group here in 2015 called the Rooted Sisters. And this was just a gap that another CEO, female CEO, and I saw—that there’s no place for women in the workplace who have faith really to come together. And I think there’s some things for men, you know, like Christian Business Men’s Connection things like that, but there was really—we just saw a big gap. And so we prayed on it for about three or four months and then in August of 2015 I just said, “Cindy, I don’t know, let’s just start something, see what God does.” And it has just been phenomenal.

Lisa Nichols: We just last October we put on our 8th annual Christian Business Women’s breakfast here at St. Louis. We had friends come from all over the country—we had friends come from Houston, we had friends come from New York. But we sold out with 850 women at the Ritz Carlton.

Jeff Johnson: Wow. Wow, praise God. From something you started how many years ago?

Lisa Nichols: 10 years ago.

Jeff Johnson: Oh my.

Lisa Nichols: We started with three of us, Jeff, and Ali. Three of us plus Ali at a little breakfast place here in St. Louis. Yeah, I mean, it’s just now… I mean, it’s a big girl organization. We have a Board of Directors, we have governance, we have committees. And I don’t lead that anymore; we hired a full-time Executive Director, Sarah Goudain, who is doing a phenomenal job.

Lisa Nichols: So anyway, it just… that’s been a real blessing in my life just to see that because I just love seeing women get rooted deeper in their walk. And we just know that when that happens, Jesus changes everything, right? He changes what we lead and the impact that we can have in our organizations as well as our communities.

Jeff Johnson: You’ve got a real comet’s tail of success there, Lisa, and it’s very, very impressive. And I congratulate you and praise God for what He’s done through you, you know, because it takes people that are obedient that say yes and then they walk through that door that He’s opened for you, and you’ve certainly done that. I imagine there are a lot of places to stop off and address this topic of courage in your story, not to mention being an only child—I mean that would take some courage too, you know…

Lisa Nichols: Just, you know, courage for Greg to marry me. That’s it. Okay, sometimes only children…

Jeff Johnson: Well, he’s lined up to be on the program too. So I’m going to come after Greg after I’ve done interview you. But let’s start to talk about that topic of courage a little bit. Let’s start with a definition, Lisa. How would you define courage? What does that mean to you when you hear the word courage?

Lisa Nichols: Oh, that is a great question. It’s not the absence of fear. It’s not the absence of fear, because you still have some fear. But it’s that you take those steps in spite of it, in spite of that fear. And Jeff, my courage comes from the Lord, it does. And it’s like what is the—even if I don’t know—one of my favorite scriptures is Jeremiah 33:3 that says, “Call on me and I will show you things you do not know.” Listen, in my six decades there’s been so many things I do not know. So many things. But I rely on Him.

Lisa Nichols: I mean, even like we talked about it before, starting the podcast—had no idea. We had no idea what we were doing. We didn’t hire an outside firm, we just figured it out. When we started Technology Partners—no idea. I mean really, we didn’t have… today there are boot camps and things like that that people can go through and the accelerators; there weren’t those 32 years ago. So it was like trial and error, right? It’s figuring it out by school of hard knocks.

Lisa Nichols: Writing the book took courage. I’ll tell you one thing that I did, and this took some courage—and of course I told you I grew up singing—but this took some courage: in 1999 I had the opportunity to sing the National Anthem at a Cardinals game.

Jeff Johnson: Oh wow.

Lisa Nichols: And there were 48,000 people there. Ha ha ha! And when I think about courage, that took courage to get out of it.

Jeff Johnson: Lisa, every time somebody flubs up the National Anthem you hear about it all across the country. It’s like people’s favorite thing is to poke fun at somebody who gets the words wrong or is off-key. That is a courageous thing. Wow.

Lisa Nichols: Yes. Yes. I mean it was courageous. I’ll tell you a really funny story, Jeff, on the way to the ball game that night, right? Jordan, whom you have met, was seven years old, Paige was six, Ali was five. And we’re on the way down there and Jordan had just done a piano recital. And afterwards he told me, he goes, “Mom, I don’t know how you did that.” He goes, “I would rather do a piano recital…”

Jeff Johnson: I don’t think what you just did. Yes, he hated the piano, right?

Lisa Nichols: But Greg—and this is another thing I love so much about my husband, he is just, he’s so humorous, he’s got such quick wit about him, but he doesn’t really try. You know, it’s like some people just try too hard; he doesn’t really try, it just comes out of him. But Jeff, the whole way down to the ball game that night, he’s like, “Lisa, do you know how many people get up there and forget the words?” Just completely trying to psych me out.

Jeff Johnson: Really?

Lisa Nichols: Yes! Yes! And I’m like, “Oh my goodness.”

Jeff Johnson: That’s a very courageous thing. Okay, so you’re talking about your courage being rooted in faith and you’ve had faith from the time that you were very young. Have you always identified yourself as a courageous person or has that not been a thought in your head? Because you have, from the outside looking in, these are courageous steps that you’ve taken all through your life. But did you identify as that, or no?

Lisa Nichols: Not really, not really. But I did, I mean, I just remember being in college and interning from McDonnell Douglas and I moved here in St. Louis by myself. And I was still, you know, I was at that time, I guess I was 19. I try not to be stupid about stuff. Like I see these downhill skiers and stuff like that, I’m like, “Oh, I don’t know.” I mean, I don’t know if I have courage to do that. I think the older I get I’m like, “Oh, I could hurt myself.” So I don’t know about that. I tried to not be… I tried to be… I’m not completely risk-averse though. I do guess. What’s the worst thing that can happen? What’s the worst thing that can happen? Yeah, I mean a lot could have happened that night if I had forgotten the words—that would have just been awful.

Jeff Johnson: Do you… are you surrounded by people that are a good representation of courage to you? Do you have people in your life that you could easily go, “That’s a very courageous person”?

Lisa Nichols: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I do. I mean I’ll just go back to Ali. Ali is very courageous. That girl. Oh my God. And Jeff, you know this, she… and there is an organization here in St. Louis that supports people with mental illness and their families called the Independent Center. And they do a phenomenal job. In fact, they’re almost like a gold standard for other metros and other countries, even, have come to watch how they deal with and how they support people with mental illness.

Lisa Nichols: Well, the big fundraiser every year for the Independent Center is Dancing with the St. Louis Stars. And what they do is, every year they’ll pick a leader like you, like me, and they pair you with a professional. And then the big night comes—it’s always in January—the big night comes and you go out and you dance. And you’re raising money the whole time, right?

Lisa Nichols: So they had asked me, they’d been asking me for years to please come dance. And I would just say, you know, I seriously did not feel like I had the bandwidth to do all the practicing because there’s so much practicing and stuff to prepare for this. It’s a big deal here in St. Louis, like seven, 800 people.

Lisa Nichols: So in 2018, the chair of that board said, “Lisa, we know you don’t have time to come dance, but would you be a judge?” I’m like, “I can do that, that’s a one-night commitment. Sure, I can be a judge.” You know, just sit up and say a few words about the people that are dancing. Well, the Friday before—and it’s a black-tie event—the Friday before that Saturday, Greg comes down with the flu. He’s in the bed all weekend long. Saturday rolls around and I’m like, “Oh, I gotta go to this black-tie event by myself.” So I’m like, “Ali, I have this Dancing with the Stars thing tonight.” I said, “Do you want to come with me?” She goes, “Yes! I love Dancing with the Stars!” And plus she just loves getting all dolled up.

Lisa Nichols: So anyway, we get all dolled up, we go. Well, the chairman of the board, Jeff—I can, you know, she had him right here, right in about five minutes.

Jeff Johnson: Well, that doesn’t surprise me. No, Ali—that doesn’t surprise me at all. It’s her personality. You know, so much positive energy.

Lisa Nichols: So Bill calls me the next week and he goes, “Lisa, I have an idea for you.” And I said, “What’s the idea?” And he goes, “Next year, let Ali dance and you can raise the money.” And I’m like, at first, Jeff… I was like, “I don’t know, they’ve never done that before.” It’s always been a leader like you. No, and I’m like, now how does that fit, though? She’s got Down syndrome. She doesn’t have mental illness. It doesn’t really fit, right? Um, and so our marketing team at Technology Partners said, “Lisa, it’ll be okay. She can be the ‘something extra’ in next year’s.”

Lisa Nichols: So yeah, so I said, “I don’t know, Bill.” I said, “Let me go home and talk to her and just see—I don’t want to speak for her.” So, you know, Greg and I sat her down and we’re like, “Ali, you know how we just went to that dance and with the stars thing? Would you want to be one of the people up on the stage?” And she, without hesitation, Jeff, she goes, “Yes, because I’ve got moves!”

Jeff Johnson: Of course!

Lisa Nichols: Now, she never ballroom danced in her life.

Jeff Johnson: Yeah.

Lisa Nichols: But there’s just no hesitation there, right?

Jeff Johnson: You talk about ultimate courage.

Lisa Nichols: Total courage.

Jeff Johnson: Yeah, total courage.

Lisa Nichols: Total courage. And so then August of 2018 she starts taking lessons. The big day comes, January of 2019—Ali won the whole thing! There were four awards that night: there’s Judges’ Favorite, People’s Choice Award, MVP, and then one other that I can’t remember. She won everything but Judges’ Favorite. And the deal is always a member from the Independent Center always dances—they allow that member to dance, the person that has mental illness—and the Judges’ Favorite always goes to that member for sure. But she won three out of four categories that night and raised—you know, we raised $160,000 for the Independent Center.

Lisa Nichols: And yeah, but the cool thing about that—there’s so much to that story, though, Jeff. Because the cool thing about it is she has now gone on to dance—she never ballroom danced before, okay? Never had taken ballroom dancing. She’s gone on to dance and she has won… in September she did a dance competition and the judge was from Italy; she won Top Female Dancer. And these are with people—typical developing people. This is not a Special Olympics or special needs kind of competition. These are typical developing people.

Jeff Johnson: Wow.

Lisa Nichols: I mean, she’s good. She is really, really good, and she can entertain and she engages people, and people are drawn to her, and she’s got “that thing.”

Jeff Johnson: She does.

Lisa Nichols: She does, and it’s so… like, here’s what I have described it to her. We discovered through that whole process that dancing brings her so much joy. But what the other thing that brings Ali joy is bringing you joy.

Jeff Johnson: Yeah.

Lisa Nichols: So when she is out there on the dance floor and she sees this crowd that is really enjoying this performance, she gets a double portion of joy then. You know, so I mean, she’s happy just at her lesson dancing with her instructor. She’s happy, joyful doing that. But boy, when she gets in front of a crowd and she sees that it’s bringing them joy, it’s a double portion.

Jeff Johnson: What a courageous young woman. Totally courageous young woman.

Lisa Nichols: Yes, and so yeah.

Jeff Johnson: Do you think… well, so playing off of that, off of Ali’s courage and the courage that you’ve had that you say emanates from your faith, do you feel like we live in a courageous culture? Do you see courage as a surplus or not?

Lisa Nichols: I… in some cases, yes. But I think in a lot of cases—and I’m just going to go back to faith—sometimes I don’t think we have enough courage, enough boldness there. I would say that is another courageous thing that I think that I have done is—and I know you do too—I lead with my faith. And you know, I just think sometimes we are so afraid and we shrink back from that.

Lisa Nichols: And listen, I’ve had unkind things. Even on LinkedIn, I will say, “You know, I’m giving God all the glory for this.” Or I remember, Jeff—and it’s probably been six or seven years ago—we live on some property here and it was springtime and it was just beautiful. I mean, the flowers were starting to pop out and the green, and I just love it. It was my mom’s favorite time in the year, spring, and it’s mine too.

Lisa Nichols: And I had taken this picture of our property, just like with the flowers and it was just beautiful. And I said something like… on LinkedIn, and it was before Easter: “The heavens declare the glory of the Lord, and heaven and nature declare the glory of the Lord.” And I had this guy private message me from a large company here in St. Louis. And he private messaged me and said, “I don’t believe what you posted and I will not be doing business with Technology Partners.”

Jeff Johnson: Wow. Wow.

Lisa Nichols: Yeah, and at first, Jeff, I was like… it took my breath away. And I’m like, “This is not just Lisa Nichols. Oh my goodness, I’m going to hurt our whole company.” And it bothered me for about 10 minutes. And then, and then it was like, “Listen, freedom of speech for one thing, right? Practically what I believe, I’m just telling you what I believe, right?” And I’m like, you know, God was like, “You know, Lisa, it’s okay because you didn’t need to do business with that person anyway.”

Jeff Johnson: Mm-hmm. And then you get affirmed that the biblical narrative is true because Jesus said if they persecuted me, what do you think they’re gonna do to you too? That’s kind of how you know you’re on the right track.

Lisa Nichols: That’s how you know you’re on the right track! Exactly. You know, and I think back to the verse, Jeff, that says, “Be ashamed of me…”

Jeff Johnson: Yeah.

Lisa Nichols: Right, and I’m like, oh, I don’t want Him to be ashamed of me in front of my Father.

Jeff Johnson: You don’t want to do that. See, that’s why my contention is that all men and women of faith have courage, because that’s what it entails for sure. And this is the same reason I wanted to do this podcast—was to pull out those little gems just like the one that you just gave us about professing your faith and your thanksgiving to God for everything that your eyes were being filled with in a moment. And then you get a little persecution jab back. You’ve got to be courageous just to press through that because you know…

Lisa Nichols: Yeah, you do. You do. And you just have to trust that God’s gonna take care of you, right? He’s gonna take care of Technology Partners. And if you follow me on LinkedIn, you know that I have not shrunk back. Right? That was five or six years ago that that happened, you know.

Jeff Johnson: Well, good for you. Okay, well, I want to—with that as a precursor—now I want to jump in, Lisa, and ask you the question. Lisa Nichols, what’s the most courageous thing you’ve ever done?

Lisa Nichols: I think most courageous thing I’ve ever done is leading with my faith. Leading with my faith. Leading with love. Leading with faith. Love is not something we talk about in the workplace, but I believe it’s one of the most powerful leadership quotes and leadership traits—is to love your people, to really love people.

Lisa Nichols: You know, and I think back—you know, Jeff, like in 2021—in fact, I’ve got a coffee mug back here that says this—but I always… every year I kind of come up with a word. I come up with an intention for the year. And in 2021, I’m like, “Gosh, if God says the two greatest commandments are ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul’ and ‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’ I probably should pay attention to that.”

Lisa Nichols: The two greatest commandments that Jesus cited, right? And so I came up with “Love More.” Love more. And asking God, “How do I do that? How do I love my family more? How can I show them love more? How can I love our people and truly love?” And then, even in your prayer life, asking God to increase your love for people. “Help me to love people like you love them, Lord. Help me see people like you see them.” Lisa, that helped me a lot with that, too. I mean, like I said, just every person is uniquely and wonderfully made and deserving. Leading with faith—that’s a beautiful answer to that question.

Jeff Johnson: What’s the most courageous thing you’ve ever done… give me an example. Have you run into a situation where in real time you’ve been confronted with a “I’ve got to be true to my faith on this, the world wants me to compromise and I can’t, I’ve got to do what God’s telling me to do”? And you went “Gulp” and you trusted the Lord and pushed through? Have you had a situation like that?

Lisa Nichols: Yeah, I mean, I’ll just give you one little recent one. Because I’m not like… here’s the thing. I think if we are… we can’t lead with our faith to the point where we are beating people over the head with what we believe. It’s like the word of our testimony, Jeff. It’s the word of our testimony, and nobody can refute that, right? Nobody can refute and say, “Well, here’s what anchors me.” You know, I mean, find out what anchors you, but here’s what anchors me. And nobody can refute that.

Lisa Nichols: But I had a situation about two months ago. And I had somebody on our team that came into my office—and I have an open-door policy, I’m sure you do too—had open-door policy, and she came in and I could just see from the look in her eye that it wasn’t just a chitchat like “How you doing, how was your weekend” kind of stuff. And she’s looking at me and just like tears in her eyes and she goes—like that—she goes, “I just want you to know something.” She said, “I love the Something Extra book.” She said, “I love it.” She goes, “I keep it on my nightstand.” And she said, “When I start feeling overwhelmed, when I start feeling unsure and uncertain about stuff,” she goes, “I just pick it up and start like reading.” And she goes, “I just want you to know,” she goes, “it has become a companion and a friend to me.”

Lisa Nichols: Wow. Well then, Jeff, I mean, she’s like got big tears. I always get big tears.

Jeff Johnson: Right, you know, even… we both are that… leak rusty.

Lisa Nichols: Yes, we are. Yes, we are. I just… I do, I just… but I’m like, “Wow.” I said, “You have no idea how much you’ve just blessed my heart.” But she’s telling me this, right? That it’s on her nightstand and it’s become a friend and a companion. And I’m sitting there and I’m like, “God, do I go there? Do I go there with this young lady or do I not?”

Lisa Nichols: And um, she’s not from… she’s from a different country, Jeff. And I’m like, “I don’t know, do I go there?” And I just courageously said, “You just blessed my heart so much. But,” I say, “can I tell you the book that is my companion and my friend that’s on my nightstand?” And I said, “It’s the Holy Word of God and the Bible.”

Lisa Nichols: And it was really—it was just really interesting because I’m like… it was… that was courageous because I could have like, completely cut her off, you know, completely. And like I said, she’s not from this country.

Jeff Johnson: That’s absolutely courageous, Lisa. Yeah, I mean, there’s an open door and you walk through it. Excuse me, go ahead.

Lisa Nichols: I did, I walked through. Well, I came home, Jeff, and the first thing I did was I ordered her a Bible. And I had her name inscribed on it. And I sent it to her. And it’s pink, you know? It’s not black or brown. It’s like a pink Life Application Study Bible. And I saw her a couple weeks later and she was like, “Oh my goodness, Lisa!” She goes, “I couldn’t believe it.” You know, “I opened that up.” And she goes, “I don’t even know where to start.” She goes, “Where would I even start?”

Lisa Nichols: And I said, “You know,” I said, “I know that you’re seeking wisdom right now in your career and everything that you’re doing.” She’s very smart, very smart young woman, has advanced degrees. I said, “Why don’t you start with the book of Proverbs?” I said, “So many of our months have 31 days, right? And there’s 31 chapters there.” And so she goes, “Okay, that’s where I will start.”

Jeff Johnson: So yeah, so I mean… yeah, that’s fantastic. That’s a very recent thing, right?

Lisa Nichols: Yeah.

Jeff Johnson: That’s a beautiful example. Now, before I let you go, Lisa, I want to hear all about this book you’re introducing in this story. So your podcast is Something Extra, and now you’ve authored a book—congratulations—called Something Extra, which everybody needs to have. Please tell us about that book.

Lisa Nichols: Yeah, oh, well, I told you I felt called to write the book in 2017. I think I told you that. Put it on the shelf, took one month sabbatical, totally clueless what it would take to write a book. Thought I could really make a lot of headway in a month—wrong! Life got busy. I put it on the shelf, started it back in the summer of 2024.

Lisa Nichols: And so what the book is—I’ve had now 370 leaders on the podcast. So what we did was we took the most mentioned, the most common through-lines through that, and we distilled them down to 23 different leadership traits. So there’s 23 chapters and they’re all different leadership traits. There are four parts, Jeff.

Lisa Nichols: The first part is: “It starts on the inside.” And that’s things like identity—where are you putting your identity? If you’re putting your identity in a title, guess what? Titles can go away, right? Roles can go away. Don’t put your identity in another person. I mean, unfortunately we lose people, right? So where’s our identity? And it needs to be grounded in your values, whatever your values are. Self-awareness is a big one in there.

Lisa Nichols: And then the second part is: once you get that, then you can be other-centered. And so we start talking about generosity and servant leadership and how you are out there then serving.

Lisa Nichols: And then the third part is practical leadership.

Lisa Nichols: And then the fourth one is the resilience to keep going. Just keep going. Because we all know we’re gonna get knocked down. We’re gonna get knocked down. We’re gonna have setbacks. We’re gonna have really tough years—market conditions, geopolitical—we’re gonna have tough years. But keep going, keep pressing forward. And so it’s divided up in that.

Lisa Nichols: Then the other really special part of the book—and this was super important to me—I’m a voracious reader. You see the books behind me, this whole wall here are books. Yeah, my dream one day, Jeff—my dream one day is to have a library in my house like the West Wing and Beauty and the Beast. Right? Huge.

Jeff Johnson: Full of books.

Lisa Nichols: Yeah, yeah, with some really big comfy chairs and good lighting. That’s a dream.

Jeff Johnson: The ladder on rollers and all that kind of…

Lisa Nichols: Yeah, ’cause it’s floor to ceiling, right? And we could probably fill up that West Wing right now with books. But yeah, so what was really important to me is for people not just to blow past every chapter. So at the end of every chapter there’s five… four or five pages of reflection questions and exercises that you can do to really sit with that.

Lisa Nichols: So yeah, and then the really special part—the “something extra” in the Something Extra book—is there are Ali stories that are sprinkled throughout the book. And people have told me they bought the book and they’re like, “Lisa, it’s a great book, but I have to tell you, I keep skipping to all the Ali stories!” You know, they just want to go to the Ali stories. But yeah, it’s been… yeah, God called me to write the book and so it’s just been really fun how it’s being used. It’s being used in book clubs now.

Jeff Johnson: Well, I’ve known you—I’ve known you before the podcast, I’ve known you before the book. And I can’t tell you what a joy it is to see the culmination of everything that God has poured into you so faithfully stewarded by yourself to let it back out again and show people, “This is how much I love the Lord and this is what He’s done for me.” So I congratulate you on that book.

Jeff Johnson: And I also remember one of the first Christian leadership conferences I went to, there was the old author Charlie “Tremendous” Jones. And he’s passed away, but I remember seeing him—he was in front of like one of these old miller tables that just had a pile of books on it. And he would grab a book—part of his teaching was he’d grab a book and he’d kiss it and he’d hold it to his breast and he’d tell you about the book and what good was in this book and why you should read it.

Jeff Johnson: And then he said that quote, he said, “Ladies and gentlemen, five years from now you’ll be the same person you are today, making the same amount of money, doing the same stuff that you’re doing right now, except for the people you introduce yourself to and the books that you read.” And he was like, “This is why you got to read books!” And that’s lit a spark in me to read books. And I’m telling all of our listeners they need to embrace that and get this Something Extra book because you’ll be different five years down the road because of what you’ve read there. Where can they get it, Lisa?

Lisa Nichols: Amazon. Amazon. All the major book retailers—Barnes and Noble—but Amazon would probably be your best bet because it’ll be there tomorrow or the next day.

Jeff Johnson: Yeah, Something Extra. We’ll put all of that stuff in our show notes and stuff too. Lisa, you’ve been so generous with your time and I just love catching up with you. God, I love catching up with you. We are brothers and sisters in Christ and Greg is fantastic too. Any final thoughts on the idea of courage? Something to lift people up a little bit? Something that comes to mind?

Lisa Nichols: Yeah, I don’t know—and this is so cliché—but the thing that just came into my mind: if God is calling you to do something, just do it. Just do it. And if He puts something on your heart, don’t worry about how it’s all gonna come together. You know, just like, be obedient. And it’s that first step. I just, like I said, I think back to the Rooted Sisters and I’m just like, “Cindy, let’s just start something and see what God does.” It was a small little mustard seed of faith, Jeff, because we both felt God calling us to do it.

Lisa Nichols: And boy—but you know, here’s the cool thing: He gets all the glory for it. There’s no way on earth that I could have gathered 850 women. I mean, this year our… it’s more than a breakfast this year, we’re calling it a summit and we’re gonna have breakout sessions and everything afterwards. But we have had to move to the Convention Center. So we use the Convention Center that we can go up to 1,600 women.

Jeff Johnson: And there are probably about 20 dudes sneaking in there wanting to be a part of it. Lisa, I can’t imagine what is waiting for you another five or ten years down the road. We’re gonna have to keep an eye on you because you’re a faithful woman of God and a dear friend and a woman of tremendous courage. Thank you for your time today.

Lisa Nichols: Oh, thank you for having me, Jeff.

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