We are so excited to have Angela on our podcast!
You will hear her passion for human-centered leadership and why “Business is personal.”
Angela is the founder of Lift Bridge Strategy, a boutique consultancy focused on more personal and human-centered approaches to helping companies grow. She is known for building innovative teams to focus on people during periods of high growth, talent shortage, internal shifts in culture due to leadership or ownership transition, and M&A integration.
The Lift Bridge team helps businesses build and execute strategies to make sure they have the right people in the right places, performing at their best. Angela has nearly 20 years of experience leading teams and guiding leaders through all phases of business evolution and macroeconomic cycles.
The common thread is understanding that talent is a customer, the workplace is a product, and this dynamic creates a market. Prior to founding Lift Bridge, Angela led teams focused on talent and the team member experience at Marvin. Angela also held multiple leadership roles in Human Resources with Walmart, where she helped impact talent and engagement for associates across the business.
Angela holds a B.A. in Psychology from Coe College and an M.A. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from Minnesota State University, Mankato. When not working, Angela enjoys reading, traveling with her husband and spoiling her two springer spaniels, George and Grace.
Resources:
Liftbridge Strategy Website
Be Kind Leader Website
LinkedIn
Transcript
John Simon Sr. 00:06
John, welcome to Simon Says, inspire a podcast about life, leadership and building legacies. I'm John Simon, SR
Dina Simon 00:14
and I'm Dina Simon.
John Simon Sr. 00:16
Today, Angela chrismit is our guest. Angela is the founder of liftbridge strategies, business consulting, helping companies grow through modern, common sense approaches to getting and retaining people. Angela, welcome to the podcast.
Angela Christman 00:31
Thanks, John. I'm excited to be here.
John Simon Sr. 00:33
So after looking at some of your background information, you spent quite a few years with Walmart and quite a few years with Marvin, and it looks like a lot of it was in human resources.
Angela Christman 00:45
That's right. That's right. When I started at Walmart, I was in a really Junior HR manager role, overseeing HR for some stores, and just continued to grow my career there. And then, similarly, at Marvin, I joined to lead the talent acquisition team and grew to lead some different parts of the HR function, and had a great run at both places.
John Simon Sr. 01:06
What was it like in Bentonville, Arkansas?
Angela Christman 01:09
Oh my gosh. Well, all of the roles that I held at Walmart, I lived in Minneapolis. I was really fortunate to do that, but Bentonville is a really fantastic city. It's grown a lot. They've got a beautiful art museum and lots of great restaurants. And Walmart is built quite the quite the hub there. It's great place to be. Actually,
John Simon Sr. 01:29
Crystal Bridges is, I think, the the art museum that the Walden family, a very good friend of mine. His son was the superintendent of schools in Bentonville, Arkansas. Oh, cool. And he loved it there. And after that, he moved on to a different role at a different town in Arkansas, but he really enjoyed being in Bentonville.
Dina Simon 01:49
Yeah, yeah. And Angela. We've talked maybe for a moment about this, but I managed the national program for Walmart, for camp Blanchard organizations, doing leadership training and development for a while. So I've spent a bit of time in Bentonville, and it is actually just a lovely town, as you said. And I love, like, the the similarities, yeah, the differences of Walmart, so this huge, mega organization, right? But it started with a family, and so there is a lot of that entrepreneurial spirit I know firsthand based on the the people that I've met with, like, amazing tracks for leadership training and management training, and their investment in their people. So cool for you to work there. And then take all that to Marvin, which is a family owned company, you know, Great Minnesota success story. So talk maybe for a sec, just about the, you know, the differences or the similarities between those two companies? Yeah,
Angela Christman 02:43
that's a great question, and one that people one that people ask often. So the companies are different in some of the ways that you'd expect between fortune one, a publicly traded company, and a smaller Minnesota based company, right? That's still a large company. And I would say, you know, some of the bigger differences for me, coming from Walmart to a street, b to c organization, right? And learning a completely different aspect of the business with Marvin, a B to B Company was really, really interesting. And lots of differences there. The thing that people might find surprising is that people are people, everyone knows that, but there are more similarities between the companies than differences, because people are people. And, you know, so Ben, both are great companies, awesome brands, great experience, great leaders, yeah,
Dina Simon 03:35
yeah. I agree. People are people. So, so much applies from, you know, from an HR perspective, a training perspective, absolutely.
John Simon Sr. 03:43
You know, one of the most difficult things when I ran the business that I ran is not only getting people, good people, but retaining good people, which is very difficult to do and and in today's times, I would think it's even more difficult, because back in the years when I worked for the finance company that I worked for, we had a lot of people that were there 1015, 2030, years working for the company. And today, people don't seem to stay with companies quite that long anymore. They tend to be there two or three years, and then they want to move on to something a little different.
Angela Christman 04:16
Yeah, it's true. And you know, you bring up the challenges with retention. And earlier in my career, I had the opportunity to lead the HR team for northern Minnesota and the Dakotas for Walmart during the peak of the Bakken oil boom in the Dakotas. And it was just amazing experience. It was really, we called it extreme hiring because it was, it was, I mean, the labor market was just crazy there, right? But it was also extreme retention. We had to do everything that we could to retain people and really, honestly, kind of hire for retention too, right? Earlier, when the pandemic struck, we saw a big downturn in the economy, right? And then this massive. Recovery. And with the recovery, we saw like these hiring challenges like we had never seen before, just in economic situation that was kind of like what I'd seen in the Bakken boom in the Dakotas, but applied everywhere. And we faced, we faced really similar challenges. And in some sectors, you know, things have softened up a little bit, and people are staying where they are. But in other sectors, there just are never going to be enough people in that in the immediate future, or in our lifetimes at least. And so companies have to do everything that they can to attract and retain the folks who they need. So I agree, it's a different it's a different world. And add to that the way that people's expectations have changed, right? People? Just some of it's generational, and some of it is the way that the pandemic shifted things in people's lives.
Dina Simon 05:52
Yeah, absolutely. And
John Simon Sr. 05:54
the cost to train people becomes phenomenal after a while, especially when you're in a position where you always have training sessions going on to replace people that are leaving the cost to the organization is just phenomenal, and it's a critical part of running the company.
Dina Simon 06:10
Yeah, it really is. It is. I remember when I was doing sales training for volt Services Group, many years ago, myself and one other person was like a regional sales trainer, and just the constant churn, like, we'd have these great people in class and salespeople are certainly hard to keep, but every time we were called upon to say, hey, we have another class of 10, like, we need you to come in. Like, what? Like you just, we just did this. And so that retention is so important, and I think that's one of the things, you know, we've got a lot of different areas that you can focus on in this conversation. But I think you wanted to kind of share, you know, how businesses are showing up today in ways to reach higher and then ways to retain people. So what are some of your thoughts coming out of the pandemic and where we are today, on on how companies can can maybe do better and key and do the right things to keep people? Yeah,
Angela Christman 07:00
you know, kind of a build on to what you were saying about training earlier and the cost of training another cost of turnover. So a lot of companies are really grappling right now with what inflation has done and the demand in the market has done to wages, right, and they are really struggling with the cost of backfilling talent in the market, and the cost of people internally coming and saying, My raises haven't kept up with the market, right? I need more money. And something that I always encourage companies to think about is, when you have awesome talent that's performing well, it can feel like a lot of costs to start layering in more wage dollars to get, you know, certain roles to market when they've maybe fallen behind, but that's what you would pay if you had to backfill those roles right externally. So sometimes it can be a bit short sighted and and you know, companies are trying to be fiscally responsible, and that is certainly understandable and essential right for viability of a business. And at the same time, you also have to think of the long term cost of ultimately backfilling those people if they leave to go get my more money elsewhere, because, to your point, John, people are not staying with companies for the length of time that they used to, and we can't just assume that someone is going to stick around for five years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, if they could be getting more money out in the market elsewhere. So that's just another thing that I've been hearing a lot about. And would encourage leaders to talk about think about related to retention and just the way they think about the business and cost other things. You know, we talked about the shifting expectations of the workforce, and I think historically, we've been able to say, Okay, there's this issue out there that we need to solve for, and here's a one size fits all solution, right? Here's what we're going to do about it. Let's go spend a couple hours in a conference room, and let's hammer it out, and this is what we'll share with everyone. And I think those days are gone. People expect to be treated as individuals for their individual needs, to be recognized and addressed, and they expect a really personal engagement with their leader in a way that I think has maybe changed a bit, you know? And one of the things that I talk about a lot is the fact that business is personal. And a lot of people say, well, it's not, it's not, it's not personal, it's business, right? And the other way is, is actually kind of true, if you think about it, more so than ever, people want to be seen, heard and understood for who they are.
Dina Simon 09:42
Absolutely, yeah, I just had a cousin in town from New Jersey that has family here, and married a Minnesota boy. So they were in town, and we get the honor of spending time with them. And she is due in October with her second baby, and she actually gets six months off from maternity leave. I'm with the company that she works for. So we had this awesome, just kind of conversation, because her husband's like, hey, you know, we just kind of talked about, what's norm out there. And we talked about, you know, if you only have 468, weeks of maternity leave, like, there's all these different things that, you know, companies do. Obviously, he just said, the benefit now for like her to have six months off, she's going to be that much more vested in staying, obviously, with the company, it's that much easier on them as a family, because the baby's going to be older when they have to figure out, you know, another a new nanny with two kids, or, you know, schools and things that they would do. So it's just this really interesting conversation, not that every company can do six months, but really, as you said, like sitting back and saying, What can we do? How can we be different, and especially for women in, you know, business and making some of those decisions and or dads, like, Why can't dads have six months off? Yeah,
Angela Christman 10:56
exactly. And I think the key thing is to offer as much choice wherever you can, and to offer opportunities for people to make those choices for themselves, around things like how much time they take, and for companies where it might sound really, you know, out of reach to have a six month paid leave. What could they offer that gives more choice that maybe doesn't have the same financial right? So like getting creative, to come up with different solutions to meet individual needs is so important and that the parental leave topic is a big one right now, there are a lot of companies differentiating themselves in the market with really great parental leave offerings, and that's probably where we're headed in the longer term too, right?
John Simon Sr. 11:46
Angela, it all kind of fits into your six keys to long term success where number two is no. One size fits all. That's right. You always have to be flexible when when you're putting programs together like that. But I like number one probably the best fake marketing, not HR,
Angela Christman 12:02
yeah, yeah, that's my favorite too. I guess that's why it's number one.
Dina Simon 12:09
Yeah, will you share with us lift bridge and the story and how you got started and you went off on your own as an entrepreneur, was share with us that story?
Angela Christman 12:17
Yeah? So it probably actually goes way back. I came from a family of entrepreneurs. I had a great aunt and uncle who were like grandparents, who were very entrepreneurial and owned an electrical wholesale I'm originally from Iowa, small town in Iowa that had a square that in its day was not that much different from Bentonville, and has really actually kind of grown back again, and not as large as Bentonville, but you get that, you get the vibe, right? Yeah. And my uncle actually took a big chance, and he was in banking for a lot of his career, and was a bank president, and decided to buy this electrical wholesale company, and got some family members together to purchase it, and then kind of went from there, and my aunt and my mom ran the lighting store, and I started out working there as a young kid, and just hearing them talk about people at work who was really fascinating to me, and that's probably what ultimately led me down the HR path, because it was so interesting. And I became really interested in the psychology of work. I saw this thing called industrial organizational psychology in a career counselor's handbook that I was in high school, and I went, that's for me. So that's what brought me to Minnesota. I went to grad school at Minnesota State Mankato. They have a really good terminal master's program for IO nice. And then did an internship in HR, and that led me into that HR space. And we've talked about my time at Walmart, we've talked about my time at Marvin. At Marvin is really where I became immersed in human centered design. So Marvin was really working at the time to leverage human centered design, both in product innovation, but also culturally related to building, you know, and accelerating their innovation engine, they called it. And so I started to work with folks on what that might look like in HR and that is really where my passion for this idea of, why aren't we applying these principles, and why aren't we applying principles that a lot of people would recognize as marketing principles in the HR space. It's what we had essentially done when I was in the Dakotas during the oil boom, without calling it that. We did it again during the pandemic really strongly. And it's just kind of become the way that you need to think about talent. And a lot of times, people don't think of talent as the customer. And if we're going to be successful in HR, we have to think of talent as the customer, yes, and we have to get really, really good at understanding the needs of talent, even when they might not be able to articulate the needs themselves, right? Right? How? Many times do we talk about that related to things like product design? What's the next big thing that people don't even know they need, right, but that we're gonna come up with? How does that apply in the talent space? And then, how do you think about that? And how do you in the ways that we talk about getting really close with the customer, get really close to talent, and really understand and then design for those needs. And then, you know, we talk about customization in marketing a lot too. When we talk about product, we talk about experience, we talk about offering choices and alternatives, all of that stuff needs to be applied in the talent space. So you can probably tell I'm just a little bit passionate, passionate about that, which is, again, why it's number one job. It's
John Simon Sr. 15:41
a good call out. Yeah, well, you know, you talk about telling people what they need. That's how Federal Express got started. And we never needed things overnight. Years ago that, guess what? They created a business that, gee, we have to have that tomorrow. And it worked out. Look at the size of the company today. And we never needed things that quickly before in business,
Dina Simon 16:03
yeah. And now, now we order something, and you know, it comes to us within an hour if we need it, right? Yeah. And
Angela Christman 16:11
the mouse, right? I'm holding up my mouse, the computer mouse. I mean, who would have ever thought that we needed something like that? And now, like, can we imagine navigating without that
Dina Simon 16:21
a touch screen, right? Who would have thought exactly so you started lift bridge September of 22 That's right. That's right. Nice. So talk to us about that. So you're almost at a year. Yes, yes. Can you believe it? You know, I
Angela Christman 16:38
cannot believe how fast the time goes, I was fortunate to get some really good advice from all different folks who've been this path before, when I first started the business, and it's been super helpful. And I think the other thing that's been helpful is this entrepreneurial spirit and being willing to try different things and go into different parts of business. And, you know, I have, you know, one program that I've started, a leadership program called leader kind and it started out as something for managers, and has kind of evolved into an innovation group for HR people. So being willing to try things and then have them, you know, sort of evolve and change differently. The other thing that's cool is I have spent some time putting a little bit more definition around with bridge services, and had a year to kind of go, okay, what are the, what are the parts of work that we want to focus in? So that's been really cool. And I'll have some, you know, sort of rebranding of my website coming soon and some of those types of things. And another cool milestone is I now have more work than I can just do myself. Yeah, so I've been able to start bringing in team partners to help me, which is really, really been cool too. And, yeah, it's just, it's great. Yay.
Dina Simon 17:59
So excited for you that's awesome, awesome, awesome. You also sit on the HR executive Forum Board.
Angela Christman 18:06
I do. I do, yes, yes. I joined that board last year right as they were coming out of the sort of pandemic slowdown where we weren't doing in person events and things like that, and we were able to grow our double our membership in a year. Essentially, we were able to bring on, I was the sponsorship chair for almost a year, maybe nine months. We were able to bring on some amazing partners to help us to grow the organization that way. And now we're really well positioned to keep growing. And we have a new event in September that I'm really excited about. I'm going to be moderating a panel with three leaders who I know pretty well, who are going to be talking about people centered approaches to HR. And our whole theme for next year is leading edge of HR. So it's going to be pretty cool, nice. So the question What advice would you give someone just starting out in your field? So many things come to mind. The first is, be open and flexible. And then there's something else. There's it's kind of a hierarchy of three hats that you need to wear in HR. The first is, Be a human. First, just be a human being, understanding other humans and working with other humans. The second is be a business person. Really understand your business. Always be a student of your business. Understand the strategy. You're just as responsible for understanding the strategy as anyone else around the leadership team table and bad like it, yeah, right, yes. And then the third is represent HR in, in the HR sense, with traditional HR things, yep, but human business, and then the things that you might think of as HR, those will come naturally, right?
Dina Simon 19:58
Yeah. Yeah, no, I love that. And the middle one, if you want to be recognized around that table, you have to know about the business. You can't just sit in your HR silo. I love that.
Angela Christman 20:09
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so important. It's so important, and you'll get so much more done for HR. And in that, in the function of HR, if you put that first, right,
Dina Simon 20:21
right? I believe so. Angela, so we talked a little bit about work, your HR background, your leadership passions and doing the right things for people. Share with us a little bit about just your personal life. So I think based on liftbridge and knowing where you live, but talk a little bit about your community and a little bit about that,
Angela Christman 20:40
yeah. So I live in Stillwater, hence the lift bridge. But a lot of people ask if I live in Duluth, because of the lift bridge, also in Duluth, which is always surprising to me, because I you know, we're in the cities in Stillwater, yeah. But my husband is actually from Stillwater originally. I met him right after grad school here in the cities, and we moved to Stillwater, I guess, seven years ago, and we lived in Woodbury for a long time. And I love the small town, but within a metro area, vibe of Stillwater just being from a small town myself, and I have an office right on Main Street in Stillwater. I mean, sometimes I feel like my life is like Mayberry, right? But it's just a very cool it's a very cool place to be. And hence, let's bridge, right? I love a good pun. And there are all sorts of puns related to bridges and strategy, yeah, elevation, and all sorts of things that are probably too cheesy to really use in Poppy, but are kind of fun to think about, right? Absolutely. So that's hence the liftbridge piece. And then, you know, like I said, I have a I have a husband. I have two Springer Spaniels, George and grace. We adopted a Springer Spaniel, sort of accidentally a springer through the Humane Society years ago, and just fell in love with that breed. And this is our first round with puppies. So that's been a whole, whole new experience. Thankfully, it's been really, really nice with them. And then I have, my family is in Iowa, and I have a sister and brother in law who have two little boys, my nephews, who are two and a half and almost three months. And so we spend a great deal of time in Cedar Rapids, getting the baby time in too, because there's at such fun ages.
Dina Simon 22:28
It is so much fun. Yeah, yeah.
Angela Christman 22:31
Really cool. So nice.
John Simon Sr. 22:34
We're planning on coming up to Minnesota for the Great Minnesota get together at the end of the month, and I'm looking forward, I think we're going to make a trip to Stillwater, because friends of mine, their brother owns the Water Street Inn and Charlie's Irish Pub. And I don't know if you've ever been to either one of those, but I understand they're pretty nice places right there on the St Croix River.
Angela Christman 22:57
They are, and the Water Street has, in my opinion, the best rooftop venue in the city. It's amazing. So you'll get to go to the roof of the Water Street, which is so much fun. And downtown Stillwater is just amazing. I think you'll have a great time.
Dina Simon 23:15
Yes, looking
John Simon Sr. 23:16
forward to it.
Dina Simon 23:17
We're excited to take him there. We've been a couple times, but yeah, we love Stillwater as well. When I talked to you, you know, a couple weeks ago, I was sharing with my husband, I go Angela's living my dream, as you said, it's like Mayberry, but it's just so much fun to it's such a great community, and so excited for you where your office is, and love that you did the lift bridge. I mean, just all of that from a branding perspective and stuff, super fun. So we'll let you know when we come to Stillwater, if we can, if we can grab you, I would love to see you both, yes, and so talk to us about being a pilot.
Angela Christman 23:50
Oh my gosh. So this happened because, well, I'll go back a little bit further. So I actually used to be terrified of flying, and then I got sort of desensitized to flying in big planes. And then I was afraid of small planes. And then when I worked for Walmart and had the Dakotas and northern Minnesota as part of my area, I got very used to writing in small planes, because of small delta planes and company planes and things like that. And my husband was going for his pilot's license. He was starting ground school. And I said, Well, you know, I think it'd be really fun to do if he said, you know, can you, well, you do you want to do Brown School with me? It's two nights a week. And I went, Yeah, it's like something kind of fun to do together. And I'd like to know what's happening in the plane, right when we should be flying when we shouldn't be flying. You know, I was thinking about like JFK, JR And Carolyn Bessette. So anyway, we were there was that piece, but I had two rules when I started ground school. One was that I would never ride in a plane that was older than I am, and one that I would never ride in a plane. That we could afford to buy. And when I was in ground school, there were two other women in the ground school, and both of them said, you know, Angela, you should really go for an introductory flight. You would just really like it. It would help you connect the dots. Because I really enjoyed learning about, you know, that the ways that the ways that the plane works. And I never thought I would have been really interested in that, but I was well for an intro flight, and I got hooked, and it was just something that I wanted to see through. It kind of conquered a fear, yeah, at the time, and it was just just really, really fun and a cool thing, kind of a cool skill to have. And now my husband does most of the flying, and I, you know, I'm, you know, kind of a co pilot at this point, but really a fun thing to do together and that I really enjoy. So after I took the intro flight, I went home and Googled the plane and found that it was my age and that it was very affordable, so,
John Simon Sr. 26:04
so most of your rules you ended up breaking
Angela Christman 26:07
Exactly, exactly, and then it kind of went from there, right? So, oh
Dina Simon 26:11
my gosh, do
Angela Christman 26:12
you guys fly a lot? My husband flies quite a bit. I fly sometimes. We go to Iowa, and actually we went to the biggest trip that I have personally taken. We bought our plane from somebody in the Bay Area, and he helped to fly back to Minnesota. At the time, he was still in training too, so he had to be kind of a student pilot on that one. But we flew out to Wyoming to visit friends in Jackson last summer. And that's the longest trip that I have that I've taken in the plane, and it was amazing and beautiful and an adventure.
Dina Simon 26:46
When I was in Northern California in the San Francisco Bay Area, working I had all of Northern California, and my boss had a plane and was pilot, and so I had the ability to travel quite a bit and just to see things from the sky like that, so amazing. And and the ease of it from like not having to hop in your car and drive five hours, it was just amazing. So anybody that gets the chance to do it, I love that you do that. They have done that, and the two of you together, so that's awesome.
Angela Christman 27:15
It was really fun to learn a new skill like that together, and to go through the training together. It was just great. After our flying lessons on Saturday afternoon, we'd stop at a Mexican restaurant locally and get a margarita and some chips and guac and debrief our lesson. I mean, we just had a we just had a blast doing it together. So, yeah, yeah, it was great.
Dina Simon 27:36
I love that. That's awesome.
John Simon Sr. 27:39
Much more fun to learn shopping.
Angela Christman 27:42
You know that is, that is true. That is true shopping together is not something that we enjoy. So that's a good point. John,
Dina Simon 27:51
so in our podcast about life, leadership and building legacies, and I know you've listened to the podcast, so to us, building legacies is, you know, things that we do on a daily basis is not something we just leave behind. Anything that you'd like to share with the listeners about, either more about life leadership or or building your legacy. Yeah.
Angela Christman 28:11
So I think listening to people and understanding the needs of people is one, and then the other thing I was thinking about the greatest leadership impacts, right? And it's it's been people who have definitely taken a chance on me at different points in my career, right? But one of the things that I love most about leadership is having the opportunity to take a chance on other people and watch how they grow. And so I just, and that is also such a fabulous way to weave a legacy and make an impact on people's lives, because a lot of and I guess what's coming, what's coming to me about this, and why this is fresh in my mind is I just had a conversation a couple of weeks ago with someone who was on my team many years ago, who, you know, had talked about how, you know, I had taken a chance on her, and I'm like the Chance was taken on your part. First of all, let's be clear, right? No chances were taken, but she really felt like there was a chance taken on her. And so it's which means that she didn't see in herself yet, right? Yet things that I saw in her as her leader. And so anytime you can see something more in someone than they see in themselves at the time and help them to build that confidence, and, you know, to move forward. I find that to be the most rewarding thing, and also I think it makes the greatest impact on people's lives.
Dina Simon 29:33
I completely agree with you, and as a leader, that's the that just is so rewarding. And then I also, as you talked about, I've been very fortunate to work for people that have thrown me in the deep end, and knew that I could not just only swim, but that I would, you know, make it to the end and come up for asking for more. So it's super impactful. I agree with you, that's awesome.
John Simon Sr. 29:56
And as a leader, it really makes you feel good when you. Take someone and bring them along and they surpass their own expectation. Yeah, yes,
Angela Christman 30:05
yes, it is the most rewarding thing.
Dina Simon 30:09
What are you most excited about for we're almost in fourth quarter, right? Like so we're kind of moving into the end of this year, and you'll celebrate one year at liftbridge, and then moving into your second year. What are you most excited about on the horizon for you? Oh
Angela Christman 30:23
my gosh, that's a great question. Well, there are a couple of things. So I mentioned to you that I had started this new HR Innovation Group, and I plan to do more of those soon. And that has just been it's been so much fun. I love it and I and I think the people who are involved in it, or finding it really helpful as well. So I'm excited about where that will go in the future. I'm also really excited because I've been able to add new capabilities to the team at Lethbridge. And, you know, I led a comp function for a year or so, right? And I've certainly led different parts of comp and different parts of my roles, and been really heavily into that, but I've been able to add a true like, compensation is all he's done, expert to my team who can help as a partner. And just adding more folks to the you know, sort of roster of partners to tap who have different capabilities and more expertise is really exciting and fun, yes. Just thinking about, what are the other needs in the market that are out there that are untapped, and how might we help? Those are, those are some of the things that are that are on my mind. I love it for fourth quarter and headed in the next year, because fourth quarter kind of becomes all about planning for the next year. But Right,
Dina Simon 31:39
yeah, and I love everything that you've talked about is, you know, leaning in. We you said that people are people. So it's leaning in with what do people need, how to listen. You talked about that a lot like listening and understanding what people need, anticipating what they might not even know that they need, and how to be ahead of that from an innovation perspective. But love that. So we are super excited that you wanted to be on our podcast. So we thank you for that, and just excited to watch you continue to grow. You're extremely involved in the community from all the HR stuff that you're doing. And just thank you also for giving back to the community, because everybody is excited to now be back at events and to have that opportunity to collaborate, not just on Zoom, but also in person. So thank you for all that you're doing for the community as well. Well, thank
Angela Christman 32:27
you. I really enjoyed talking with you, and thank you for having me on the podcast. It's always great to talk about these topics, right? Yeah, and so fun to learn from the two of you. I just love your podcast and what you're doing here.
John Simon Sr. 32:40
A number of people that we talked to about coming on a podcast their their key was, if someone walks away with a takeaway from this year that can help someone else, I'd be thrilled to be on your podcast, and that shows you how much people really want to try to help other people. Yes,
Unknown Speaker 32:57
yes,
Dina Simon 32:59
they do. We're all better together, right?
Angela Christman 33:01
That is true. Yeah, very true. Well, Angela,
Dina Simon 33:05
we thank you so much for joining us today. Thank
Angela Christman 33:08
you for having me. It's been great,
John Simon Sr. 33:10
and I hope we get to see you in Stillwater in about two and a half three weeks. So I'm looking forward to coming there.
Angela Christman 33:17
Let's get it on the calendar.
Dina Simon 33:19
I want to thank Angela Chrisman for being on our podcast. We're super excited that she leaned in and wanted to be on with us. So thank you so much. We're so excited to continue to watch what she is doing with lift bridge strategies, and excited for her to celebrate her first year in business next month, and just excited to see what comes in her future. It will make sure in the show notes that you're able to find her, follow her and maybe collaborate and use her services as always. I would like to thank my father in law, John, for being a part of this podcast. And if you are interested in joining us, there will be links for you to schedule your own time to be on the podcast with us so until we meet again. Thank you so much. You.
John, welcome to Simon Says, inspire a podcast about life, leadership and building legacies. I'm John Simon, SR
Dina Simon 00:14
and I'm Dina Simon.
John Simon Sr. 00:16
Today, Angela chrismit is our guest. Angela is the founder of liftbridge strategies, business consulting, helping companies grow through modern, common sense approaches to getting and retaining people. Angela, welcome to the podcast.
Angela Christman 00:31
Thanks, John. I'm excited to be here.
John Simon Sr. 00:33
So after looking at some of your background information, you spent quite a few years with Walmart and quite a few years with Marvin, and it looks like a lot of it was in human resources.
Angela Christman 00:45
That's right. That's right. When I started at Walmart, I was in a really Junior HR manager role, overseeing HR for some stores, and just continued to grow my career there. And then, similarly, at Marvin, I joined to lead the talent acquisition team and grew to lead some different parts of the HR function, and had a great run at both places.
John Simon Sr. 01:06
What was it like in Bentonville, Arkansas?
Angela Christman 01:09
Oh my gosh. Well, all of the roles that I held at Walmart, I lived in Minneapolis. I was really fortunate to do that, but Bentonville is a really fantastic city. It's grown a lot. They've got a beautiful art museum and lots of great restaurants. And Walmart is built quite the quite the hub there. It's great place to be. Actually,
John Simon Sr. 01:29
Crystal Bridges is, I think, the the art museum that the Walden family, a very good friend of mine. His son was the superintendent of schools in Bentonville, Arkansas. Oh, cool. And he loved it there. And after that, he moved on to a different role at a different town in Arkansas, but he really enjoyed being in Bentonville.
Dina Simon 01:49
Yeah, yeah. And Angela. We've talked maybe for a moment about this, but I managed the national program for Walmart, for camp Blanchard organizations, doing leadership training and development for a while. So I've spent a bit of time in Bentonville, and it is actually just a lovely town, as you said. And I love, like, the the similarities, yeah, the differences of Walmart, so this huge, mega organization, right? But it started with a family, and so there is a lot of that entrepreneurial spirit I know firsthand based on the the people that I've met with, like, amazing tracks for leadership training and management training, and their investment in their people. So cool for you to work there. And then take all that to Marvin, which is a family owned company, you know, Great Minnesota success story. So talk maybe for a sec, just about the, you know, the differences or the similarities between those two companies? Yeah,
Angela Christman 02:43
that's a great question, and one that people one that people ask often. So the companies are different in some of the ways that you'd expect between fortune one, a publicly traded company, and a smaller Minnesota based company, right? That's still a large company. And I would say, you know, some of the bigger differences for me, coming from Walmart to a street, b to c organization, right? And learning a completely different aspect of the business with Marvin, a B to B Company was really, really interesting. And lots of differences there. The thing that people might find surprising is that people are people, everyone knows that, but there are more similarities between the companies than differences, because people are people. And, you know, so Ben, both are great companies, awesome brands, great experience, great leaders, yeah,
Dina Simon 03:35
yeah. I agree. People are people. So, so much applies from, you know, from an HR perspective, a training perspective, absolutely.
John Simon Sr. 03:43
You know, one of the most difficult things when I ran the business that I ran is not only getting people, good people, but retaining good people, which is very difficult to do and and in today's times, I would think it's even more difficult, because back in the years when I worked for the finance company that I worked for, we had a lot of people that were there 1015, 2030, years working for the company. And today, people don't seem to stay with companies quite that long anymore. They tend to be there two or three years, and then they want to move on to something a little different.
Angela Christman 04:16
Yeah, it's true. And you know, you bring up the challenges with retention. And earlier in my career, I had the opportunity to lead the HR team for northern Minnesota and the Dakotas for Walmart during the peak of the Bakken oil boom in the Dakotas. And it was just amazing experience. It was really, we called it extreme hiring because it was, it was, I mean, the labor market was just crazy there, right? But it was also extreme retention. We had to do everything that we could to retain people and really, honestly, kind of hire for retention too, right? Earlier, when the pandemic struck, we saw a big downturn in the economy, right? And then this massive. Recovery. And with the recovery, we saw like these hiring challenges like we had never seen before, just in economic situation that was kind of like what I'd seen in the Bakken boom in the Dakotas, but applied everywhere. And we faced, we faced really similar challenges. And in some sectors, you know, things have softened up a little bit, and people are staying where they are. But in other sectors, there just are never going to be enough people in that in the immediate future, or in our lifetimes at least. And so companies have to do everything that they can to attract and retain the folks who they need. So I agree, it's a different it's a different world. And add to that the way that people's expectations have changed, right? People? Just some of it's generational, and some of it is the way that the pandemic shifted things in people's lives.
Dina Simon 05:52
Yeah, absolutely. And
John Simon Sr. 05:54
the cost to train people becomes phenomenal after a while, especially when you're in a position where you always have training sessions going on to replace people that are leaving the cost to the organization is just phenomenal, and it's a critical part of running the company.
Dina Simon 06:10
Yeah, it really is. It is. I remember when I was doing sales training for volt Services Group, many years ago, myself and one other person was like a regional sales trainer, and just the constant churn, like, we'd have these great people in class and salespeople are certainly hard to keep, but every time we were called upon to say, hey, we have another class of 10, like, we need you to come in. Like, what? Like you just, we just did this. And so that retention is so important, and I think that's one of the things, you know, we've got a lot of different areas that you can focus on in this conversation. But I think you wanted to kind of share, you know, how businesses are showing up today in ways to reach higher and then ways to retain people. So what are some of your thoughts coming out of the pandemic and where we are today, on on how companies can can maybe do better and key and do the right things to keep people? Yeah,
Angela Christman 07:00
you know, kind of a build on to what you were saying about training earlier and the cost of training another cost of turnover. So a lot of companies are really grappling right now with what inflation has done and the demand in the market has done to wages, right, and they are really struggling with the cost of backfilling talent in the market, and the cost of people internally coming and saying, My raises haven't kept up with the market, right? I need more money. And something that I always encourage companies to think about is, when you have awesome talent that's performing well, it can feel like a lot of costs to start layering in more wage dollars to get, you know, certain roles to market when they've maybe fallen behind, but that's what you would pay if you had to backfill those roles right externally. So sometimes it can be a bit short sighted and and you know, companies are trying to be fiscally responsible, and that is certainly understandable and essential right for viability of a business. And at the same time, you also have to think of the long term cost of ultimately backfilling those people if they leave to go get my more money elsewhere, because, to your point, John, people are not staying with companies for the length of time that they used to, and we can't just assume that someone is going to stick around for five years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, if they could be getting more money out in the market elsewhere. So that's just another thing that I've been hearing a lot about. And would encourage leaders to talk about think about related to retention and just the way they think about the business and cost other things. You know, we talked about the shifting expectations of the workforce, and I think historically, we've been able to say, Okay, there's this issue out there that we need to solve for, and here's a one size fits all solution, right? Here's what we're going to do about it. Let's go spend a couple hours in a conference room, and let's hammer it out, and this is what we'll share with everyone. And I think those days are gone. People expect to be treated as individuals for their individual needs, to be recognized and addressed, and they expect a really personal engagement with their leader in a way that I think has maybe changed a bit, you know? And one of the things that I talk about a lot is the fact that business is personal. And a lot of people say, well, it's not, it's not, it's not personal, it's business, right? And the other way is, is actually kind of true, if you think about it, more so than ever, people want to be seen, heard and understood for who they are.
Dina Simon 09:42
Absolutely, yeah, I just had a cousin in town from New Jersey that has family here, and married a Minnesota boy. So they were in town, and we get the honor of spending time with them. And she is due in October with her second baby, and she actually gets six months off from maternity leave. I'm with the company that she works for. So we had this awesome, just kind of conversation, because her husband's like, hey, you know, we just kind of talked about, what's norm out there. And we talked about, you know, if you only have 468, weeks of maternity leave, like, there's all these different things that, you know, companies do. Obviously, he just said, the benefit now for like her to have six months off, she's going to be that much more vested in staying, obviously, with the company, it's that much easier on them as a family, because the baby's going to be older when they have to figure out, you know, another a new nanny with two kids, or, you know, schools and things that they would do. So it's just this really interesting conversation, not that every company can do six months, but really, as you said, like sitting back and saying, What can we do? How can we be different, and especially for women in, you know, business and making some of those decisions and or dads, like, Why can't dads have six months off? Yeah,
Angela Christman 10:56
exactly. And I think the key thing is to offer as much choice wherever you can, and to offer opportunities for people to make those choices for themselves, around things like how much time they take, and for companies where it might sound really, you know, out of reach to have a six month paid leave. What could they offer that gives more choice that maybe doesn't have the same financial right? So like getting creative, to come up with different solutions to meet individual needs is so important and that the parental leave topic is a big one right now, there are a lot of companies differentiating themselves in the market with really great parental leave offerings, and that's probably where we're headed in the longer term too, right?
John Simon Sr. 11:46
Angela, it all kind of fits into your six keys to long term success where number two is no. One size fits all. That's right. You always have to be flexible when when you're putting programs together like that. But I like number one probably the best fake marketing, not HR,
Angela Christman 12:02
yeah, yeah, that's my favorite too. I guess that's why it's number one.
Dina Simon 12:09
Yeah, will you share with us lift bridge and the story and how you got started and you went off on your own as an entrepreneur, was share with us that story?
Angela Christman 12:17
Yeah? So it probably actually goes way back. I came from a family of entrepreneurs. I had a great aunt and uncle who were like grandparents, who were very entrepreneurial and owned an electrical wholesale I'm originally from Iowa, small town in Iowa that had a square that in its day was not that much different from Bentonville, and has really actually kind of grown back again, and not as large as Bentonville, but you get that, you get the vibe, right? Yeah. And my uncle actually took a big chance, and he was in banking for a lot of his career, and was a bank president, and decided to buy this electrical wholesale company, and got some family members together to purchase it, and then kind of went from there, and my aunt and my mom ran the lighting store, and I started out working there as a young kid, and just hearing them talk about people at work who was really fascinating to me, and that's probably what ultimately led me down the HR path, because it was so interesting. And I became really interested in the psychology of work. I saw this thing called industrial organizational psychology in a career counselor's handbook that I was in high school, and I went, that's for me. So that's what brought me to Minnesota. I went to grad school at Minnesota State Mankato. They have a really good terminal master's program for IO nice. And then did an internship in HR, and that led me into that HR space. And we've talked about my time at Walmart, we've talked about my time at Marvin. At Marvin is really where I became immersed in human centered design. So Marvin was really working at the time to leverage human centered design, both in product innovation, but also culturally related to building, you know, and accelerating their innovation engine, they called it. And so I started to work with folks on what that might look like in HR and that is really where my passion for this idea of, why aren't we applying these principles, and why aren't we applying principles that a lot of people would recognize as marketing principles in the HR space. It's what we had essentially done when I was in the Dakotas during the oil boom, without calling it that. We did it again during the pandemic really strongly. And it's just kind of become the way that you need to think about talent. And a lot of times, people don't think of talent as the customer. And if we're going to be successful in HR, we have to think of talent as the customer, yes, and we have to get really, really good at understanding the needs of talent, even when they might not be able to articulate the needs themselves, right? Right? How? Many times do we talk about that related to things like product design? What's the next big thing that people don't even know they need, right, but that we're gonna come up with? How does that apply in the talent space? And then, how do you think about that? And how do you in the ways that we talk about getting really close with the customer, get really close to talent, and really understand and then design for those needs. And then, you know, we talk about customization in marketing a lot too. When we talk about product, we talk about experience, we talk about offering choices and alternatives, all of that stuff needs to be applied in the talent space. So you can probably tell I'm just a little bit passionate, passionate about that, which is, again, why it's number one job. It's
John Simon Sr. 15:41
a good call out. Yeah, well, you know, you talk about telling people what they need. That's how Federal Express got started. And we never needed things overnight. Years ago that, guess what? They created a business that, gee, we have to have that tomorrow. And it worked out. Look at the size of the company today. And we never needed things that quickly before in business,
Dina Simon 16:03
yeah. And now, now we order something, and you know, it comes to us within an hour if we need it, right? Yeah. And
Angela Christman 16:11
the mouse, right? I'm holding up my mouse, the computer mouse. I mean, who would have ever thought that we needed something like that? And now, like, can we imagine navigating without that
Dina Simon 16:21
a touch screen, right? Who would have thought exactly so you started lift bridge September of 22 That's right. That's right. Nice. So talk to us about that. So you're almost at a year. Yes, yes. Can you believe it? You know, I
Angela Christman 16:38
cannot believe how fast the time goes, I was fortunate to get some really good advice from all different folks who've been this path before, when I first started the business, and it's been super helpful. And I think the other thing that's been helpful is this entrepreneurial spirit and being willing to try different things and go into different parts of business. And, you know, I have, you know, one program that I've started, a leadership program called leader kind and it started out as something for managers, and has kind of evolved into an innovation group for HR people. So being willing to try things and then have them, you know, sort of evolve and change differently. The other thing that's cool is I have spent some time putting a little bit more definition around with bridge services, and had a year to kind of go, okay, what are the, what are the parts of work that we want to focus in? So that's been really cool. And I'll have some, you know, sort of rebranding of my website coming soon and some of those types of things. And another cool milestone is I now have more work than I can just do myself. Yeah, so I've been able to start bringing in team partners to help me, which is really, really been cool too. And, yeah, it's just, it's great. Yay.
Dina Simon 17:59
So excited for you that's awesome, awesome, awesome. You also sit on the HR executive Forum Board.
Angela Christman 18:06
I do. I do, yes, yes. I joined that board last year right as they were coming out of the sort of pandemic slowdown where we weren't doing in person events and things like that, and we were able to grow our double our membership in a year. Essentially, we were able to bring on, I was the sponsorship chair for almost a year, maybe nine months. We were able to bring on some amazing partners to help us to grow the organization that way. And now we're really well positioned to keep growing. And we have a new event in September that I'm really excited about. I'm going to be moderating a panel with three leaders who I know pretty well, who are going to be talking about people centered approaches to HR. And our whole theme for next year is leading edge of HR. So it's going to be pretty cool, nice. So the question What advice would you give someone just starting out in your field? So many things come to mind. The first is, be open and flexible. And then there's something else. There's it's kind of a hierarchy of three hats that you need to wear in HR. The first is, Be a human. First, just be a human being, understanding other humans and working with other humans. The second is be a business person. Really understand your business. Always be a student of your business. Understand the strategy. You're just as responsible for understanding the strategy as anyone else around the leadership team table and bad like it, yeah, right, yes. And then the third is represent HR in, in the HR sense, with traditional HR things, yep, but human business, and then the things that you might think of as HR, those will come naturally, right?
Dina Simon 19:58
Yeah. Yeah, no, I love that. And the middle one, if you want to be recognized around that table, you have to know about the business. You can't just sit in your HR silo. I love that.
Angela Christman 20:09
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so important. It's so important, and you'll get so much more done for HR. And in that, in the function of HR, if you put that first, right,
Dina Simon 20:21
right? I believe so. Angela, so we talked a little bit about work, your HR background, your leadership passions and doing the right things for people. Share with us a little bit about just your personal life. So I think based on liftbridge and knowing where you live, but talk a little bit about your community and a little bit about that,
Angela Christman 20:40
yeah. So I live in Stillwater, hence the lift bridge. But a lot of people ask if I live in Duluth, because of the lift bridge, also in Duluth, which is always surprising to me, because I you know, we're in the cities in Stillwater, yeah. But my husband is actually from Stillwater originally. I met him right after grad school here in the cities, and we moved to Stillwater, I guess, seven years ago, and we lived in Woodbury for a long time. And I love the small town, but within a metro area, vibe of Stillwater just being from a small town myself, and I have an office right on Main Street in Stillwater. I mean, sometimes I feel like my life is like Mayberry, right? But it's just a very cool it's a very cool place to be. And hence, let's bridge, right? I love a good pun. And there are all sorts of puns related to bridges and strategy, yeah, elevation, and all sorts of things that are probably too cheesy to really use in Poppy, but are kind of fun to think about, right? Absolutely. So that's hence the liftbridge piece. And then, you know, like I said, I have a I have a husband. I have two Springer Spaniels, George and grace. We adopted a Springer Spaniel, sort of accidentally a springer through the Humane Society years ago, and just fell in love with that breed. And this is our first round with puppies. So that's been a whole, whole new experience. Thankfully, it's been really, really nice with them. And then I have, my family is in Iowa, and I have a sister and brother in law who have two little boys, my nephews, who are two and a half and almost three months. And so we spend a great deal of time in Cedar Rapids, getting the baby time in too, because there's at such fun ages.
Dina Simon 22:28
It is so much fun. Yeah, yeah.
Angela Christman 22:31
Really cool. So nice.
John Simon Sr. 22:34
We're planning on coming up to Minnesota for the Great Minnesota get together at the end of the month, and I'm looking forward, I think we're going to make a trip to Stillwater, because friends of mine, their brother owns the Water Street Inn and Charlie's Irish Pub. And I don't know if you've ever been to either one of those, but I understand they're pretty nice places right there on the St Croix River.
Angela Christman 22:57
They are, and the Water Street has, in my opinion, the best rooftop venue in the city. It's amazing. So you'll get to go to the roof of the Water Street, which is so much fun. And downtown Stillwater is just amazing. I think you'll have a great time.
Dina Simon 23:15
Yes, looking
John Simon Sr. 23:16
forward to it.
Dina Simon 23:17
We're excited to take him there. We've been a couple times, but yeah, we love Stillwater as well. When I talked to you, you know, a couple weeks ago, I was sharing with my husband, I go Angela's living my dream, as you said, it's like Mayberry, but it's just so much fun to it's such a great community, and so excited for you where your office is, and love that you did the lift bridge. I mean, just all of that from a branding perspective and stuff, super fun. So we'll let you know when we come to Stillwater, if we can, if we can grab you, I would love to see you both, yes, and so talk to us about being a pilot.
Angela Christman 23:50
Oh my gosh. So this happened because, well, I'll go back a little bit further. So I actually used to be terrified of flying, and then I got sort of desensitized to flying in big planes. And then I was afraid of small planes. And then when I worked for Walmart and had the Dakotas and northern Minnesota as part of my area, I got very used to writing in small planes, because of small delta planes and company planes and things like that. And my husband was going for his pilot's license. He was starting ground school. And I said, Well, you know, I think it'd be really fun to do if he said, you know, can you, well, you do you want to do Brown School with me? It's two nights a week. And I went, Yeah, it's like something kind of fun to do together. And I'd like to know what's happening in the plane, right when we should be flying when we shouldn't be flying. You know, I was thinking about like JFK, JR And Carolyn Bessette. So anyway, we were there was that piece, but I had two rules when I started ground school. One was that I would never ride in a plane that was older than I am, and one that I would never ride in a plane. That we could afford to buy. And when I was in ground school, there were two other women in the ground school, and both of them said, you know, Angela, you should really go for an introductory flight. You would just really like it. It would help you connect the dots. Because I really enjoyed learning about, you know, that the ways that the ways that the plane works. And I never thought I would have been really interested in that, but I was well for an intro flight, and I got hooked, and it was just something that I wanted to see through. It kind of conquered a fear, yeah, at the time, and it was just just really, really fun and a cool thing, kind of a cool skill to have. And now my husband does most of the flying, and I, you know, I'm, you know, kind of a co pilot at this point, but really a fun thing to do together and that I really enjoy. So after I took the intro flight, I went home and Googled the plane and found that it was my age and that it was very affordable, so,
John Simon Sr. 26:04
so most of your rules you ended up breaking
Angela Christman 26:07
Exactly, exactly, and then it kind of went from there, right? So, oh
Dina Simon 26:11
my gosh, do
Angela Christman 26:12
you guys fly a lot? My husband flies quite a bit. I fly sometimes. We go to Iowa, and actually we went to the biggest trip that I have personally taken. We bought our plane from somebody in the Bay Area, and he helped to fly back to Minnesota. At the time, he was still in training too, so he had to be kind of a student pilot on that one. But we flew out to Wyoming to visit friends in Jackson last summer. And that's the longest trip that I have that I've taken in the plane, and it was amazing and beautiful and an adventure.
Dina Simon 26:46
When I was in Northern California in the San Francisco Bay Area, working I had all of Northern California, and my boss had a plane and was pilot, and so I had the ability to travel quite a bit and just to see things from the sky like that, so amazing. And and the ease of it from like not having to hop in your car and drive five hours, it was just amazing. So anybody that gets the chance to do it, I love that you do that. They have done that, and the two of you together, so that's awesome.
Angela Christman 27:15
It was really fun to learn a new skill like that together, and to go through the training together. It was just great. After our flying lessons on Saturday afternoon, we'd stop at a Mexican restaurant locally and get a margarita and some chips and guac and debrief our lesson. I mean, we just had a we just had a blast doing it together. So, yeah, yeah, it was great.
Dina Simon 27:36
I love that. That's awesome.
John Simon Sr. 27:39
Much more fun to learn shopping.
Angela Christman 27:42
You know that is, that is true. That is true shopping together is not something that we enjoy. So that's a good point. John,
Dina Simon 27:51
so in our podcast about life, leadership and building legacies, and I know you've listened to the podcast, so to us, building legacies is, you know, things that we do on a daily basis is not something we just leave behind. Anything that you'd like to share with the listeners about, either more about life leadership or or building your legacy. Yeah.
Angela Christman 28:11
So I think listening to people and understanding the needs of people is one, and then the other thing I was thinking about the greatest leadership impacts, right? And it's it's been people who have definitely taken a chance on me at different points in my career, right? But one of the things that I love most about leadership is having the opportunity to take a chance on other people and watch how they grow. And so I just, and that is also such a fabulous way to weave a legacy and make an impact on people's lives, because a lot of and I guess what's coming, what's coming to me about this, and why this is fresh in my mind is I just had a conversation a couple of weeks ago with someone who was on my team many years ago, who, you know, had talked about how, you know, I had taken a chance on her, and I'm like the Chance was taken on your part. First of all, let's be clear, right? No chances were taken, but she really felt like there was a chance taken on her. And so it's which means that she didn't see in herself yet, right? Yet things that I saw in her as her leader. And so anytime you can see something more in someone than they see in themselves at the time and help them to build that confidence, and, you know, to move forward. I find that to be the most rewarding thing, and also I think it makes the greatest impact on people's lives.
Dina Simon 29:33
I completely agree with you, and as a leader, that's the that just is so rewarding. And then I also, as you talked about, I've been very fortunate to work for people that have thrown me in the deep end, and knew that I could not just only swim, but that I would, you know, make it to the end and come up for asking for more. So it's super impactful. I agree with you, that's awesome.
John Simon Sr. 29:56
And as a leader, it really makes you feel good when you. Take someone and bring them along and they surpass their own expectation. Yeah, yes,
Angela Christman 30:05
yes, it is the most rewarding thing.
Dina Simon 30:09
What are you most excited about for we're almost in fourth quarter, right? Like so we're kind of moving into the end of this year, and you'll celebrate one year at liftbridge, and then moving into your second year. What are you most excited about on the horizon for you? Oh
Angela Christman 30:23
my gosh, that's a great question. Well, there are a couple of things. So I mentioned to you that I had started this new HR Innovation Group, and I plan to do more of those soon. And that has just been it's been so much fun. I love it and I and I think the people who are involved in it, or finding it really helpful as well. So I'm excited about where that will go in the future. I'm also really excited because I've been able to add new capabilities to the team at Lethbridge. And, you know, I led a comp function for a year or so, right? And I've certainly led different parts of comp and different parts of my roles, and been really heavily into that, but I've been able to add a true like, compensation is all he's done, expert to my team who can help as a partner. And just adding more folks to the you know, sort of roster of partners to tap who have different capabilities and more expertise is really exciting and fun, yes. Just thinking about, what are the other needs in the market that are out there that are untapped, and how might we help? Those are, those are some of the things that are that are on my mind. I love it for fourth quarter and headed in the next year, because fourth quarter kind of becomes all about planning for the next year. But Right,
Dina Simon 31:39
yeah, and I love everything that you've talked about is, you know, leaning in. We you said that people are people. So it's leaning in with what do people need, how to listen. You talked about that a lot like listening and understanding what people need, anticipating what they might not even know that they need, and how to be ahead of that from an innovation perspective. But love that. So we are super excited that you wanted to be on our podcast. So we thank you for that, and just excited to watch you continue to grow. You're extremely involved in the community from all the HR stuff that you're doing. And just thank you also for giving back to the community, because everybody is excited to now be back at events and to have that opportunity to collaborate, not just on Zoom, but also in person. So thank you for all that you're doing for the community as well. Well, thank
Angela Christman 32:27
you. I really enjoyed talking with you, and thank you for having me on the podcast. It's always great to talk about these topics, right? Yeah, and so fun to learn from the two of you. I just love your podcast and what you're doing here.
John Simon Sr. 32:40
A number of people that we talked to about coming on a podcast their their key was, if someone walks away with a takeaway from this year that can help someone else, I'd be thrilled to be on your podcast, and that shows you how much people really want to try to help other people. Yes,
Unknown Speaker 32:57
yes,
Dina Simon 32:59
they do. We're all better together, right?
Angela Christman 33:01
That is true. Yeah, very true. Well, Angela,
Dina Simon 33:05
we thank you so much for joining us today. Thank
Angela Christman 33:08
you for having me. It's been great,
John Simon Sr. 33:10
and I hope we get to see you in Stillwater in about two and a half three weeks. So I'm looking forward to coming there.
Angela Christman 33:17
Let's get it on the calendar.
Dina Simon 33:19
I want to thank Angela Chrisman for being on our podcast. We're super excited that she leaned in and wanted to be on with us. So thank you so much. We're so excited to continue to watch what she is doing with lift bridge strategies, and excited for her to celebrate her first year in business next month, and just excited to see what comes in her future. It will make sure in the show notes that you're able to find her, follow her and maybe collaborate and use her services as always. I would like to thank my father in law, John, for being a part of this podcast. And if you are interested in joining us, there will be links for you to schedule your own time to be on the podcast with us so until we meet again. Thank you so much. You.