Right Person, Right Time.
One of the themes that emerged loud and clear in our Sensemaker research project on mentorship is the importance of timing. The right mentors seem to come out of the woodwork at exactly the right time. When we need them, they show up.
This was certainly the case for me this time last year, when I bumped into an old acquaintance named Jill Payne.
Jill and I met by phone almost a decade ago. She was starting her own coaching practice in New York City and a friend suggested that Roy Group might be an interesting prototype for her to consider. It was exciting to hear about Jill’s experience as an elite athlete on Canada’s National Rugby Team and her first few years in the world of work as a fitness trainer.
I could tell she was going to bring a unique perspective to her work with clients needing her help. I just never guessed that one of those clients would be me.
***
Jill and I crossed paths again early in 2024 – at the book launch of a mutual friend. It was clear that a lot had happened in the past decade and there was a lot we had to catch up on. Jill was now a mom and had relocated back to Vancouver Island from NYC. Jill had published her own book, Be A Dime and very successfully navigated her way from the world of fitness training to working with a wide range of organizational clients in the much more complex arena of addressing their whole lives as leaders. I could again tell that Jill had a unique contribution to bring to this work. We decided to meet for lunch.
Over that lunch, I got my world rocked. I shared with Jill that I had made a bit of a mistake in 2023 – taking a 5-month sabbatical to write my book, but not actually finishing the writing of it. I had let my writing coach, my team and myself down in not keeping my promise. Now I was back in the thick of my work at Roy Group, and flailing to find hours here and there to drag my pen across the finish line and begin the work of finding a publisher. It all felt like I had tucked myself behind the 8-ball, and I expressed to Jill that I was exhausted.
Little did I know, I had just used a word that Jill has some clear convictions about.
“Are you exhausted, Chiz – or are you just not managing your energy like a pro?”
Jill went on to explain that one thing she always noticed – as an athlete, as a single mom, as a personal trainer to some very high-level clients in New York, and now as a coach – was that the people who were able to commit to doing important things in life and follow through on them, had engineered a way of replenishing and protecting their energy reserves. This idea captured Jill’s imagination, and she began creating her Be a Dime approach to help others do the same. She thought working together might be something that would add some exciting layers to my life. And I agreed.
And it has.
Jill doesn’t provide prescriptions – there is no workout regime, no strict diet, and no mandatory hours of meditation. She offered a wonderful online set of modules and showed up herself for a conversation with me every few weeks. She helped me grasp that before I get ready to plant the seeds of my intentions in life, I would be wise to pay attention to the conditions that I was placing those seeds into. Was I tending to the soil of my own physicality, my focus and my internal dialogue? Was I taking a reasonable amount of time to tend to myself before tending to my work? The short answer is that I was not. And that was the opportunity.
The biggest single change I have made in the last year was not dramatic. I choose not to touch my professional work until 9AM. For me, this was a huge departure from the norm. For decades, I prided myself on waking up early and getting as many emails in play as I could before the day started for everyone else. I thought I was really on to something. I still like getting up early – but now the combination of rising early and not touching work until 9AM gives me a solid block of time – for my life. I make Anne-Marie a coffee and take some time to enjoy it together. A natural appetite to move and stretch and sweat has landed me at the gym 240 times since 1 April 2024. (That is 20 times per month – a vast improvement over any streak I’ve ever been on before). I am paying more attention to what I feel like eating and what foods leave me feeling good after I eat them. A good night’s sleep is a big priority, whether I am at home or on the road.
I don’t feel exhausted by hard things anymore. I like the idea of being the sort of person who is capable of doing hard things when I need to. And also the sort of person who rests more, laughs more and enjoys life more.
I strongly recommend any opportunity of working with Jill – 1:1 or with your team. I’d be happy to make an introduction or have you reach out to Jill directly to find out more. She is the sort of person worth meeting.
Ian Chisholm
Partner and Co-Founder