Improving Your Health, Well-Being, And Resilience To Reduce Burnout With Richard Ollis

 

Our energy can meet the moment’s challenge. As humans, we tend to deplete our energy, causing us to become more irritable, to face mental challenges, or experience burnout! In this episode, Richard Ollis, a Board Member of The Wellness Council of America, talks about improving health, well-being, and resilience to reduce burnout. He also shares the role of leaders in consensus building and collaboration to become successful. It is important to note that we have a role in becoming more resilient in the face of change and disruption of the status quo. Start your journey and face the ever-changing landscape with courage and resilience, beginning with this conversation.

—

Show Notes:

• 06:40 – The World Of Wellness Expands In Different Facets Of Health And Wellbeing
• 08:30 – The Point Of Inflection For Health And Wellbeing
• 12:46 – Serve Your Client At A Level You Can Perform At
• 18:54 – The Fourth Generation In The Business
• 22:42 – How To Be Resilient In The Public Forum Space
• 30:31 – The Natural Tendency Of Humans To Expend Positive Or Negative Energy
• 32:04 – The Umbrella Concept Of Resiliency And Creating Psychological Safety

—

Get the newest Change Proof Podcast episode delivered directly to you – subscribe here. And, if you’re enjoying the podcast, please give us a 5-star rating on iTunes! For instructions click here.

How do we leverage continuous uncertainty to thrive in this unprecedented new world? 
The answer is to build the resilience we need to power us through the challenges we face so that we become “Change Proof.” Prepare to tackle the future with confidence by reading Adam’s latest book Change Proof: Leveraging the Power of Uncertainty to Build Long-Term Resilience.

—

Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

Improving Your Health, Well-Being, And Resilience To Reduce Burnout With Richard Ollis

I have with me, Richard Ollis. He is a 4th generation insurance consultant focused on reducing risk and improving business results. He is also a board member of the Wellness Council of America where he advocates for improved health, well-being, and resilience for working Americans. I happen to know Richard quite well. I’ve done some work for an organization that has been around since 1885. They have been themselves a model of resilience. I know you’re going to love this conversation, as am I. Sit back and enjoy this episode.

—

Richard, I’ve been chomping at the bit to have this conversation with you since we met. Before we get into all the meat and the juicy stuff, I want to ask you a question about your bio or history. I’ve shared with our audience a bit about your background and all that thing. What’s one thing that is not in your standard introduction or bio that you would like for people to know about you?

I’d say I’m obsessed with being involved in my community. I have started that early in my career and, frankly, sometimes get a little too involved. In fact, I served on my last city council meeting, and bittersweet that I won’t be as involved as I have been in the community but also ready for a little bit of a break. It would be whatever you’re passionate about, and I’m passionate about Springfield, Missouri.

I’d encourage any of our audience to get involved in it and go for it. I had an issue come up that I was involved with and I told my wife, “Maybe, I should have faded into the sunset,” but that’s not me. It was quite the meeting, but when you’re passionate about something, I’m like you. You ought to go for it and be yourself.

We’re simpatico for a number of different reasons. Probably, some we could articulate and some we don’t have to. We don’t even need to know what those are. It’s a feeling you get about somebody. You just get them or they get you or something like that. Passion is one of those things we share. Without diving into the details of it, it was a bit of go out with a bang.

It was. We had the state director of our highway system down. There was a little bit of a disagreement about how the road should be managed given our economic growth. The good news is the outcome was positive and we’re going to collaborate on it moving forward. Needless to say, we had everybody. The crowd was packed, and we had the dignitaries there. Anyway, I’m glad it worked out well in the end. I got to go out on a high note.

That’s good. As I said before the interview, we’re going to follow the breadcrumbs. That’s the way that I like to proceed in these conversations. At least from the feedback I’ve gotten, our audience appreciates that part of it that it’s not a canned conversation. I have some questions I ask each time routinely. The answers are always different.

For me, what’s interesting and I assume what’s interesting for readers too is that this thing evolves in an organic way. I’m going to follow the thread on that for a moment more. In the last couple of years, the arena of the public meeting, the public forum, whether it’s city council or other meetings, has become contentious. Now, you’ve been doing this a minute, and I know you’ve been doing it for longer than over the last couple of years, even. My first question is it more contentious now over the last several years than it had been before or prior to the pandemic? Is that true or false?

That’s true. In fact, we were talking about that. I don’t know that I have the answer or can put my finger on the exact reason. As you can imagine, as a public body, we had to implement decisions about things that people frankly had a lot of different opinions on, whether it be masking or stay-at-home orders.

All of those things we were dealing with during the pandemic. Candidly, as an elected public official at the local level, I have no real clue. I have no experience in pandemics or what to do. You try to do your best with the information you have. We got through that pretty well. Coming out of it, people were on edge and a little bit more negative and critical. Frankly, we’ve seen that continue, not only at the local level but across our country and maybe the world. I don’t know that I can put my finger on it. It’s not true of every case as you know, but the atmosphere is different than it was before the pandemic.

It was wonderful. That topic came up briefly during the time I got to spend at your wellness conference. For background for our readers, I was invited, and it was a great privilege. It was an honor for me to show up and speak to an audience of folks that Ollis/Akers/Arney, your firm in Springfield, Missouri, gathered together to talk about wellness and to dive into how it is that we create a greater collective environment for wellness in our communities. This is not something that, all of a sudden, your firm decides, “I hear a lot of people are pretty tired and people are pretty anxious. We should do this thing.” If I’m getting it right, this was the 16th consecutive year that you guys have put on that conference.

That’s right. As we talked about, wellness has certainly evolved over that time. When we first began, it was about nutrition and fitness. Since then, the whole world of wellness has expanded in the many different facets of health and well-being, whether it be financial. We certainly had a big talk about resiliency, which frankly is right on point in this environment.

One thing we’ve all learned is all of those things fit together. Let’s say, “If you’re not eating a reasonable diet and you’re not getting some type of exercise or activity and you’re not drinking water regularly, those very basic things tend to catch up with you and bleed over into mental health, financial health, and all sorts of things.” Learning how to manage yourself and your body so that you can live in this unusual time that we’re in now is exceptionally important. I love your take and your input on resiliency. I got so much out of that session.

What I love about it is, as you said, it doesn’t have a boundary on it. It’s not a thing that’s in us, a box. I appreciate that because it makes it potentially relevant in almost any conversation or context. In that room for a brief period, I asked the audience. I said, “Why is it that we are experiencing what we are seeing in terms of people being as burned out as they appear to be? What are the signs of that burnout?”

People are angry. They’re anxious, apathetic, and feeling all these things. If we were going to point to anything that has changed or the point of inflection for the kinds of things that you were discussing earlier that have gone on in some of those public forums, it’s not that anybody has changed. As a community, we have not changed all that much. We are depleted.

It’s what you said, that people are showing up in these moments where we are in need of patience, where more listening is required and more empathy and compassion may be what is most important in that moment would meet the moment best. When we’re half empty, our tank is half empty, or it’s lower than half, we’re not able to utilize those best aspects of ourselves, the parts we know and the things we know better about. That’s where the conversation was intriguing to me when I could feel people’s energy leaning into that, heads nodding, and understanding that’s not ideological. That’s how we are mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually even as human beings.

We have to be in a charged state. I don’t mean emotionally charged but that our energy can meet the challenges of the moment. Everybody got that. Is it good to be thinking about your diet and your sleep? It is all those things, but the broader picture that we were able to and the conversation we were able to have that day was about how it is that we think of resiliency as less about gutting it out, gritting it out, grinding it out and more about how we make the time intentionally to create moments of recovery or pockets of recovery, the things that wouldn’t be any different than plugging your phone in when you see that the battery is low.

Often, it is that we are not programmed to do that, so it’s not habitual for a lot of folks. Also, there’s even a sense that grinding is a positive thing. Philosophically speaking, we may even be looking through the telescope from the wrong side at times. I thought it was cool, too, because you brought together a lot of your own clients as well as other people from the community as a way to bring about more awareness in this area.

We very strongly believe that in a company, in a community, in a family, if we’re all resilient and in better health and a better being and a better state, we’re all going to work together more effectively. We’re going to serve our clients more effectively. We’re going to serve our family members more effectively, all of those things.

We will work together more effectively if we're resilient, in better health, and in a better state. We will serve our clients and family members more effectively. Share on X

Your point is so relevant. That is if you’re depleted, tired, and irritable, you’re not going to be up to providing the best that you can. No matter who you are or how great you are, it’s not there. I know you and I, one of the things we immediately connected on was sleep. I’ll tell a quick story and I know many parents have gone through this.

Our second daughter, Sabrina, had colic for six months. My wife and I would struggle for six months to try to find a solution for our little infant to sleep. Over a period of months, I became very irritable and challenged mentally by the lack of sleep. I empathize with parents or anyone going through periods of time in their life where they’re not well rested and can’t get the rest that they need and deserve. I experienced firsthand how debilitating that can be.

You’re an entrepreneur. I want to talk about the firm and the firm’s history, but you operate a business and I operate a business. Business is like a crying baby, isn’t it?

It is. If you want to serve your clients and your fellow employees as well as the community, you need to be at a level that you can perform at. I know we compared this a lot to athletics. The top athletes have a regimen that they follow and stick to. They get rest and understand recovery and all of those things. They’re feeding both their body and mind. Even the top golfers have mental coaches, where they’re going over positive outcomes of shots in their minds and all things.

 

We’re not going to live our lives like a top ten golfer probably, but we can take some of those practices and learn from what they’re doing so we can live our best life. That’s so important. I’m pleased that we had the opportunity to be with you so we could expand that even further because that resiliency piece is so important.

I’m so glad you brought that up because, for a couple of weeks, I’ve been noodling on this thing when I was in the hotel in Springfield. For a half hour before bed, I was watching the golf channel, which is a great way for me to get ready to sleep before I do my final evening ritual, which includes legs up the wall and a few minutes of quiet thinking, stillness, prayer, and all that. Getting my body ready for the sleep that you mentioned is truly restorative. When I was 28, I didn’t get a good night’s sleep. I don’t know that I could have told much was different the next day and I might have been a little sluggish or whatever, but it was pretty much the same.

I get a crummy night’s sleep now. I feel it the next day. I then feel like there’s some part of what that next day is about and the blessing of that next day and its potentiality that I feel like I’m not ready to meet it. I’m not ready to maximize it and that doesn’t feel good. As you said, sleep is so paramount for that. I’m watching this golf thing, and it was the LPGA tour event somewhere in Arizona. The commentator is talking about this one particular athlete and how she has a specific person on her team that is in charge of helping her with her mindset.

What this other commentator who is a former professional golfer herself was saying that, “The thing about golfers is, outside of the fact you’re out there on that course alone and there are other sports where it’s a solo thing, you’ve got your caddy and your team but you’re out there swinging that club yourself. They lose most of the time. They lose all the time. In fact, they have a great year they might win three times. They win three PGA tournaments or LPGA tournaments in the year. It’s a very successful year financially and from sponsorships and any number of other things.”

You think about if they played dozens of events and you lose, 90% of the time or more, and you go, “How do you manage your mind and create a ritual for resiliency when you’re constantly facing defeat?” It’s defeat after defeat only to set yourself up for the opportunity to win at a later time. What I appreciated about that was the whole aspect of how you manage your thoughts and mind in those situations but also the long view. To me, that’s how I would define our particular brand of resiliency and the research that we share.

Our own philosophy about it is that you’ve got to see what the long-term impact is of depletion. We can see it now because in the environment we’re in, the long-term effects are showing themselves at this moment, 2 or 3 years of a pandemic and massive change, continuous change and uncertainty and anxiety over those unknowns have produced a lot of exhaustion and even burnout so we can see what that looks like. We have to think in terms of how, in the long term, we think that the problems that we’re dealing with now are somehow going to become simpler.

I’m pretty pragmatic, and I would say I am a person that leans into what is right versus what’s wrong first. I see the world as being only going to accelerate in velocity in terms of change and innovation. Even since the time when I was with you, the whole conversation around AI has shifted into a whole other gear. The challenges and the problems that we’re likely to face will become more complex. The goal is not to use the gas you’ve got and make it ration it out for as long as you can.

What we have to do is fill up our tank because we’ve got to outperform those challenges. Meaning the level that we have to perform at will not stagnate or be static. That’s a dynamic thing. It is like in your business now. You’re in the insurance business and the business advisory space. This is an organization that, to the tune of another book another book title of mine, Pivot. This is a business that I would imagine had to pivot many times since its founding in 1885. People reading that, I want you to say it again so you read it right. 1885 is when this business began. Would you tell us a little bit about the origin story of your great-great-great-grandfather?

No, I guess I’m pretty old. It’s my great-grandfather that founded the company and his two brothers. Although, my great-grandfather was the survivor of three brothers. He was eighteen when he and his other two brothers founded our company. It passed through three generations. My father was in the business, then I am the last in the 4th generation to be in the business. As you said, our business has evolved and changed over time.

Frankly, Adam, it used to be that you sold basic property insurance. That is what people bought. In fact, you didn’t even buy liability insurance because people didn’t sue one another back when insurance was first developed. Liability became more of an issue with the advent of the automobile which created more risk.

You can imagine how health and life insurance have changed over the years, frankly in the last few years as far as health insurance. We have pivoted into more of an advisory role where we’re visiting about risk and health with our clients. Insurance is just an outcome of what we do. There have been many different changes. The world, as you say, is changing at a rapid pace and so is our company, along with many other companies. It’s invigorating, but as you mentioned, it can be exhausting, especially business people can get caught in that cycle of exhaustion if you’re not careful and not managing those things we talked about.

The world is changing. Many business people can really get caught in that cycle of exhaustion if they are not careful. Share on X

It’s interesting as we talk about all of these things and how some of the very basics of what yours and my grandmother may have taught us back when we were younger about basic things, health, and life. If you’ll remember those things about eating effectively, getting sleep, taking care of yourself, and supporting family members and all those things, how much those things can help all of us? In some cases, we’ve wandered away from those very basic things that could be beneficial for most of us.

On some level, it is a back-to-basics thing. Also, when we’ve moved into the age we’re in, where technology is driving so much of our daily interactions, we lose a bit of the rhythm of life that was simpler in the day that you’re talking about. I could think about a lot of things that my grandmother mentioned to me and many that I don’t remember or were mentioned to my dad or my mom that they either did or didn’t pass on. We have lost track of some of the basic stuff like in football terms, blocking and tackling. Those are things that if you forget them and you don’t do them, then you realize later on why they’re so important. I want to go back to the meeting. Is there a word of wisdom for somebody that might sit in that seat at some point? You were a part of that city council. How many years did you serve?

Six years.

That’s a good bit of time both before and during the pandemic. Is there some advice that you would give to people that might take your advice from earlier to say, “Get involved in those community meetings,” or maybe they’re already attending them or they’re on a board of some kind and maybe they’re exasperated because they’re seeing some of those things that we talked about before? Is there advice that you could give to folks like that for longevity? How to be resilient in that public forum space?

The one thing I missed a little bit out of the gate was I have always been very involved in the community. That part of my skillset was pretty good. I understood that. The part that I missed was focusing on building relationships with my fellow council people and also city staff, and not jumping out in front of something until I had collaborated with my fellow associates as well as the staff that supports us and the entire city.

In other words, you may be right about something or have a great idea about something, but if you haven’t built consensus and relationships around it, you’re not going to be successful in implementing a change or an objective. If I had to go back and replay it again, I would’ve focused a lot more time on building those relationships so that people not only support you but you can gain their input into an idea or a process.

It not only makes it better, but it also creates more buy-in. As I began learning a little bit more about that, I realized that I had been a little remiss in my own business in using that very philosophy. Now in my business, I spend more time building relationships, gaining input, and understanding different perspectives. Frankly, it’s a better outcome. You get far more buy-in when you do it.

Now, it does take a little bit longer, but the outcome is so much better and so much more positive. It is worth the additional time. That’s the piece of advice that I’d give myself as well as somebody else. Frankly, you can use that application in your family, your business, and with your friends in understanding their perspectives and working together collaboratively.

You answered my follow-up questions there, Richard, so I appreciate that. I was going to ask you, “Where does this show up?” that type of thing where does that also show up in some other area of your life or your business, and you’ve already answered that. I would say that that’s a strength that you’re working on. If I was going to point the finger at myself in terms of where I’ve been weak or it’s been a weakness of mine in my business and relationships, it has been sometimes being too much in a rush.

I am being impatient with the process of getting things accomplished and skipping over some of that which you described. It’s long ago. I don’t know why I remember this, but it was 1987 when I was first considering going to law school. I graduated from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. I remember reading an article that was in the magazine section of a Sunday, New York Times by Laurence Tribe, who was then the Dean of Harvard Law School.

As I was considering being a lawyer, I’m reading this article. He’s talking about lawyers as the wheel greasers of commerce and in society as these people that greased the wheel thing. I didn’t love that. Somehow, that didn’t seem that romantic to me. I ended up going to law school, so it didn’t dissuade me, but now I understand better what he was getting at there. That lubrication is vital because otherwise, things are abrasive. They are harder.

They are. Let’s face it, if you start with a relationship of trust and appreciation, things are a lot easier, aren’t they? When you start where you’ve already drawn a line in the sand and been combative and threatening, it’s hard to recover from. Much of this looking back and looking at my past mistakes can be vastly improved with positive relationships and positive collaboration. We won’t get into too much political stuff, but if you look at our political spectrum now, that is tough to recover from getting started off on a path like that.

 

Indeed. I’m not a fan of any time in history that you would study that I had looked at politics, for example. I don’t think there’s ever a time that’s like the golden age of politics. You go back to Julius Caesar. You’re never going to find a time when you went, “They had it. I knew what they were doing then. That was wow. How civil, organized, and flawlessly they communicated with one another.” We’re not going to do that, but I will say that, over time, what seems to be happening or has happened is that lubrication has gotten thinner.

Now, whereas that was a part of how things got done. This is what Laurence Tribe was getting at, so I’m glad this came up because somehow or another, this is proving for me to be on point. It is the idea that you have to keep the wheels greased that there’s a job there, an important function there of making sure there’s that lubrication, social lubrication, or whatever you call it.

That’s how things continue to move. They continue to evolve and move forward. I would daresay even improve, even if the improvement isn’t as fast as people would like or it’s not as far-reaching as might even be equitable. There’s still this discernible improvement when you look at it from the future and look back at it. Maybe that lubrication is civility. That’s a funny word but not in a world where people speak their minds and can say almost anything.

I’m a lawyer, so I’ll say it and call it okay. I’m safe here because it’s the First Amendment. I call my First Amendment right to say whatever I darn want. It’s just that it erodes that thing where people would go, “No, we’re going to be civil to one another,” because the bigger picture is that’s how we can continue to speak or collaborate, whereas where you don’t do that is that the collaboration starts to stop or seize up.

It does. We were talking about energy earlier. Think about the energy that it takes when you’re combative with someone or being civil and collaborative. It is the energy that you have to expend in either positive or negative thoughts and actions that are coming out. It’s a human-type of scenario. It’s not blaming one side or another or whatever debate is going on. It’s a natural human tendency to either expend positive energy and collaboration or negative energy in bickering.

It's a natural human tendency to expend positive energy in collaboration or negative energy in bickering and fighting. Share on X

We’ve all heard it but surrounding yourself with people who do like to collaborate and are willing to challenge one another and provide different ideas but work together toward a common solution. It’s interesting how our conversation has evolved here, but it all fits together into this subject of resiliency, wellness, well-being, etc., that we’re all searching for, especially now.

I couldn’t agree more. You go innovation. You think about innovation and how it is that new solutions are created to existing challenges. That happens in many ways because people don’t accept the status quo. An obvious way that new things evolve is out of a problem or that needs a solution. Somebody goes, “The status quo isn’t going to work here,” even though we might have a bias towards the status quo, honestly, for safety reasons and all that stuff. Somebody’s got to be the one, not a person, but teams of people that go, “We’re going to try to do something different here. We’re going to look at this, explore this, etc.”

That in and of itself is a disruptive process. What environment will lead to somebody feeling safe enough to expend their energy in the pursuit of disruption and looking at the status quo and challenging it, but challenging it in a way that is not trying to take away something from someone else but additive where, ultimately, solutions for a business mean new sources of revenue and new opportunities in the marketplace and all that stuff?

I’m fascinated as you pointed out with the whole umbrella concept of resiliency because when you think about a company that’s made up of people, is there an environment or a culture in that organization that creates the psychological safety but creates that safe place where people can have vigorous debates about things for the purposes of disturbing the status quo, so we can continue to innovate where there is civility and not ignoring that I’m still collaborating with another human being, another divine being, or, as John Prine wrote in one of his beautiful songs, another child who’s grown old? That’s intriguing, those environments. I’m going to blow a little smoke at you now to say that when I spent time with your team. There are many of the people on your team over those couple of days I was in beautiful Springfield, Missouri.

We were at the Bass Pro Shops headquarters. Johnny Morris has done some wonderful things there for the community. You collaborated with him and his organization. I got to meet so many people that that’s what I felt. I felt that these were people that were so open to conversation, collaboration, and care for the person. That’s what I felt. I felt cared for and everybody in that space was also similarly being cared for. That didn’t happen by accident. That’s a by-design thing and that’s a credit to the culture at your company at Ollis.

Thank you. We work hard at it. I tell you, it wasn’t always that way. Meaning that we’ve learned a lot along the way. I’ve learned a lot along the way and still learning every single day. It gets back to where we talked originally. That is if you’ll focus on relationships, collaboration, and understanding the other’s point of view first, then what comes out of that is a much better and stronger team, environment, and caring philosophy.

 

I believe, going back to the lessons I learned on my little city council stint, that’s a piece I missed a little bit initially. I frankly got a little headstrong because of my experience in the community and business and thought, “I’ll come in here and change things.” The bottom line is that I miss that important piece. It’s one of the most important pieces to building an organization, a strong family, etc.

Richard, I enjoyed your company. Thank you very much for being on the show. This is an announcement to my readers out there and those in a community that may be even consuming this on other platforms. You can find out more about the advisory services that Ollis/Akers/Arney is at the forefront as well as blocking and tackling the stuff that everyday businesses and people require in the form of insurance. Are you guys all throughout Missouri?

We are. We’re all throughout Missouri. We’re based predominantly out of Southwest Missouri, but we travel the four-state region and continue to grow and expand and looking forward to the future. It’s always a pleasure to visit with you, Adam. I hope you’re enjoying your eye bag. Is that something that you’ve used some, I hope?

Richard, this may have been someone else’s. I’m not sure. I don’t recall if it was yours or it was your honeys that I ended up getting, but there’s a beautiful weighted thing. I don’t know what’s inside of it. Maybe it’s these little beads or something, but it sits over your eyes at night when you go to sleep. I use it for other things too. I use that eye bag when I do my legs up the wall and in the middle of the afternoon. I love that. It smells good. It’s lightweight. It was an ideal gift for me, and I so appreciate you did that.

I thought you might enjoy that. I certainly hope that we’ll get together again soon. We are starting, not to the extent that you have but a little series here in 2024. I’d like to invite you to one of our shows and would love that if you join us.

That’s a yes. Folks out there, please, if you loved this episode, we’d love to hear about it. You can go to AdamMarkel.com/podcast and leave a comment for Richard or myself or a question if you’ve got it. We will be answering. It is not a bot or any other thing like that. If there’s somebody that you know who’s in business or not or somebody that you think could benefit from hearing some of the things that were shared on this episode, it’s always wonderful when you share that with a friend, a family member, or a colleague. That’s also greatly appreciated. Richard, thank you so much for your time. Everybody out there, I’ll say ciao for now, and stay resilient.

Take care, Adam.

—

As promised, the conversation with Richard Ollis was wonderful. He is a seasoned and experienced business owner, operator, and leader. What I love about Richard is his authenticity. I don’t normally love that word. I’m using it, but I feel like he’s so comfortably himself and a thoughtful person. He’s somebody that you just know when he speaks, he’s speaking from his heart and being transparent with his views and his feelings. He inspires me.

People like that are inspiring to me to be around. I feel like he helps all of us elevate our game. He’s been running a business advisory and insurance group in the state of Missouri for a number of years. He’s a 4th generation running this particular operation. They’ve acquired other businesses, so the name has changed or expanded over time, but they’ve been around since 1885. They’ve pivoted and been resilient and modeled that agility that we’re all after, both personally and professionally speaking.

We got to dig into some key things and important things that I didn’t expect that we would even get into, which is talking about community, community leadership, and his role on the city council and the city of Springfield, Missouri, and the lessons that he’s learned. Some of them were hard lessons. He was honest about mistakes that he’s made in that arena and the changes that he made to be more successful on how those particular lessons in leadership, consensus building, and collaboration expanded well beyond or outside of the scope of city council meetings and agendas but led to more collaboration in his office and the workplace at Ollis/Akers/Arney, his firm, as well as at home and his personal life.

I loved our conversation about how important that all is. I contributed on my end a few stories and things from my past as well and areas that I’ve been working on, I’ve struggled with, that have been weak, and the role that we all have in being more resilient. Not just for ourselves but for our communities and how it is that in the face of what seems to be greater and greater change, the greater velocity of change, and more disruption of the status quo, how we ourselves show up as those best versions that we are capable of being so that we are resilient ourselves but also helping other people around us to be resilient themselves.

I love the conversation that I got to have with Richard Ollis. He is an absolute gem of a human being. I know you’ve enjoyed it. Please share this episode with any one of your family, friends, or colleagues that you think would benefit from reading Richard’s wisdom. If you’ve not yet determined for yourself how resilient you are, all you have to do is go to ResilienceRank.com. In three minutes, entirely for free, you will get a snapshot of how mentally, emotionally, physically, and even spiritually resilient you are, how you’re doing, and where there is room for your own higher level, your own improvement, and your own increased capacity to get more of the stuff done in your life that you truly want to do, that you feel called and passionate about doing in the world.

That all depends on our energy levels and how it is that we are able to deal with this shifting landscape, the ever-greater challenges and problems, and the need for solutions and innovation to solve the most complex issues. All of that requires energy. I’m going to implore you to take good care of yourself and better care of yourself.

I hope we can be a resource to you. The work that we’re doing at WorkWell is helping organizations to operationalize resilience. We look forward to having a conversation with you anytime about that. You can always get in touch with me directly by leaving a comment at AdamMarkel.com/podcast. It will be me who responds, I promise you that. Take care. Have a great rest of your day. Stay resilient, and ciao for now.

 

Important Links

• Wellness Council of America
• Ollis/Akers/Arney
• Pivot
• ResilienceRank.com
• WorkWell

 

About Richard Ollis

Richard Ollis is a 4th generation insurance consultant focused on reducing risk and improving business results. He is also a board member for The Wellness Council of America where he advocates for improved health, wellbeing and resilience for working Americans.