Trust, Talk, and Toastmasters | Stories With Traction Podcast

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SHOW NOTES:

In this episode, Matt Zaun sits down with Lisa Dy, a mindset coach and public speaking advocate, to explore how leaders can create meaningful change by mastering communication, embracing vulnerability, and developing confidence from the inside out. With over 25 years of experience across multiple industries, Lisa now helps individuals and teams break through limiting beliefs, sharpen their leadership presence, and communicate more effectively.

In addition, they talk about:

 ✅ Why vulnerability is the hidden catalyst for building strong, high-performing teams.
 ✅ How Toastmasters helped Lisa go from painfully shy to speaking in front of thousands.
 ✅ Why public speaking skills are more important than ever in the age of AI.

BIOS:

Lisa Dy, CPA, MBA, is a mindset coach who helps individuals and teams create lasting change by addressing the root causes of their challenges. She leverages her 25+ years of experience in multiple business settings to guide her clients in overcoming limiting beliefs and developing the confidence, communication skills, and leadership presence necessary to excel. 

Matt Zaun is an award-winning speaker and storyteller who shows business leaders how to inspire action and drive results through the power of strategic storytelling. With a track record of catalyzing significant sales growth for over 300 organizations across industries—from financial services to health and wellness—Matt’s approach has been proven to deliver measurable impact.

 

*Below is an AI-generated transcript, which may contain errors

 

Matt Zaun 

I'm excited for today's conversation because today I'm joined by Lisa D. Lisa is a mindset coach. Helps individuals and teams create lasting change by addressing the root causes of their challenges.

She uses her 25-plus years of experience in multiple business settings to guide her clients in breaking through limiting beliefs and developing the confidence, communication skills, and leadership presence needed to excel.

Welcome to the show, Lisa.

 

Lisa Dy 

Thanks for having me, Matt. I'm super excited to be here today.

 

Matt Zaun 

Yeah, thanks for your time. I know you are busy, so I appreciate the time that you're spending with us today, and I love what you do.

I'm a huge believer in coaching. Coaching has fundamentally changed my business and my life. I have no idea where I'd be without coaching.

I'm actually horrified to think of where I'd be without coaching because I have focused on a lot of coaching definitely in the last decade, and it has been absolutely incredible in many, many ways.

So I want to dive into some of the things that you do for your clients. So what do you do on a day-to-day basis from a coaching?

 

Lisa Dy 

Well, it's really working together and understanding what is happening in the now, right? We talk about day-to-day things. It could be interactions, right?

It could be communications we're having. It could be struggles with the business. Maybe it's motivation, or what do I prioritize, or how do I keep them from being distracted?

So it's really running an effective team, right? Being an effective leader. How do you do that on a day-to-day basis with the routines and with things that pop up unexpectedly, right?

How do you handle either case? And handle it with ease, right? It's not a situation where it's like, oh, what do we do now?

It's more like, okay, this happened. Now what? And part of it is, too, the belief that, yeah, we're going to figure it out, and it's going to be okay.

Might we make mistakes? Yeah, it's possible, but how do we move? Those mistakes are probably inevitable in life, in business, on a team, and it's okay.

How do we keep moving past it and still have a successful outcome on the other side?

 

Matt Zaun 

Oh, 100%. I feel like if we're not making mistakes, we're not working hard enough. We're not focusing on building and developing and testing.

So mistakes are absolutely going to happen. But you mentioned communication. I do want to focus in on that for a moment because communication is so incredibly important.

I don't think anyone listening to this podcast would deny that. I think everyone would say having great communication skills is better than not having communication skills.

But what's interesting to me, especially when I work with leaders, everyone wants to talk about the ROI, and they want to talk about having solid business investments.

But there's not as much intentionality as it comes to the communication piece. And then it's amazing how a business's finances can erode based on communication disasters.

So can you talk about that? About some of the things that you do with managers and leaders as it pertains to communication skills.

 

Lisa Dy 

Yeah, if you think about it, you know, having a communication problem, you know, whether it be someone leading a team or even an individual contributor on the team, it can definitely cause productivity problems.

You know, you make mistakes, you send out something incorrectly to clients or to customers, and you said the wrong message, literally and figuratively, right?

You're saying something that, oh, wait, that didn't hit quite right. We were a little off on that. And that ends up causing maybe a lack of trust or a lack of loyalty.

A customer would think, oh, this didn't really land on me quite right. You know, I'm not sure about this organization.

I'm not sure about working with this group. And you definitely don't want that, right? That definitely hurts your bottom line.

And, you you mentioned ROI. Definitely want a don't want a bad hit to ROI. And I think a lot of times I also work with teams on things that aren't.

That's measurable, right? What happens when we have internal communications that aren't working quite right? And we might not be able to actually dollar for dollar measure those, but they might have even a deeper impact that we can't see until later in the game when the damage is done.

And so I definitely work with them on, you know, the day-to-day communications with each other, with the leader and the team, with outside the team.

 

Matt Zaun 

So you mentioned measure. So though we can't maybe specifically measure the communication element from a financial perspective, what are some benchmarks that you might work on with a leader to improve their communication so you could at least measure progress?

 

Lisa Dy 

You know, I ask the leaders that I work with to really kind of open the door to communication. Sometimes it's, you can do, you know, surveys if you have a large group that you're working with, kind of engagement surveys, or if it's a more intimate setting, a small...

Smaller team or smaller group of leaders that you're leading, know, having those one-on-ones, right? Having those conversations and, you know, showing some vulnerability.

Talk about vulnerability in some of my talks, and it's a critical part of being a leader today. I think years ago we didn't talk about it, but vulnerability was weakness, and that's not really the case, right?

It's really being open to, hey, how can I be a better communicator, leader, delegator, whatever that looks like, and discussing that, right?

Because remember, you know, if you're thinking about others on your team and you want them to step up in their responsibilities, they're watching you, right?

They're watching your actions. They're going to really do what you do because they see that as the acceptable way.

So it's really having, you can have bigger conversations with larger groups through something like, you know, surveys or, you know, larger talks with them.

But I really work with them a lot more, I think, on the more intimate levels. Where it's smaller groups or even one-to-one.

And having those conversations that are tough to have, maybe showing a side of yourself that might seem a little scary, right?

That vulnerable side. But that's built a lot of trust with your team, with your organization. Very relatable, right? You're not in that ivory tower where people don't understand, you know, what's this guy about?

You hardly ever see him. Doesn't talk to anybody. And we definitely don't want that. I've been in plenty of organizations where that was the norm.

And it wasn't functional. It just wasn't functional. wasn't a great place to work.

 

Matt Zaun

Sure. I really appreciate you mentioning that. So I want to talk a little bit about the past. Let's backtrack for a moment.

want to talk about teenage Lisa. So if you could take us back to, you know, when you were 13 years old, did you foresee yourself being a coach?

Were you starting to have a little bit of leadership at an early age? Were you engaged in sports? Were you engaged in any kind of extracurricular?

Curricular activity, anything that might have persuaded you to do what you do now?

 

Lisa Dy 

That's a fabulous question, Matt, because I couldn't be any more different than how I saw myself at 13. I thought that I was going to be a dentist.

I spent a lot of years in the dentist chair. I got braces early as a kid. I really liked my orthodontist, and I thought, oh, maybe I'll go into dentistry.

And so for me, that's what I thought I would do, and I had family that were in the medical field, so that seemed like a very natural path to take.

But over time, as I thought about it and got into more science classes, I'm like, I don't think this is a good fit for me.

And I was a really super shy kid, did not see myself as a leader. I played music. I did piano.

I was in choir. I was not the type of person that was out there in front of me, et cetera, the time.

I remember having a ton of performance anxiety when I had to do recitals or concerts or things of those nature.

For me, I couldn't be any more different than I am today, but to your point before about coaching, that's what really changed me.

That's what really escalated me stepping out, leading in my own life, helping others to lead with years and years of kind of quietly observing best practices, watching people, observing people, seeing how they act, what impact your actions have on others.

I think it kind of leads me to having empathy as a superpower and active listening as a superpower, because that's definitely another part of communication that we don't always talk about.

 

Matt Zaun 

Wow. So I want to talk about the shyness. You mentioned you were a shy kid, and then I did see that you've been in Toastmasters for over half a decade.

So I do want to talk about that. So for anyone listening that's not familiar with Toastmasters, Toastmasters used to be the second largest nonprofit in the world, according to membership.

It was second after the Rotary Club. It's a massive organization. It's in, I don't even know how many countries, dozens and dozens of countries.

Every U.S. state, every major city has a Toastmaster Club organization. And I've been involved in Toastmasters for years myself.

Absolutely incredible organization. It's a way for people to get up and do a lot of speeches. So from being naturally a shy person to getting out there and doing talk after talk, I want you to talk a little bit about that.

For anyone listening, that their identity might be that they're shy, that they like to keep them themselves, they're an introvert.

What kind of words of wisdom would you give to that individual based on your experience at Toastmasters?

 

Lisa Dy 

Well, you know, it's really funny when I think back to why I joined Toastmasters, I heard it was really basically a networking group.

And there's some, for sure, there's some element of that. But I saw it primarily as working on your public speaking skills.

And so when I joined, honestly, the first year, I was kind of quiet, scared, watching. What do I do?

Oh, I don't want to give that first speech. I did get it over with, what I call get it over with.

I think I hyperventilated during my icebreaker, but that's a great memory for me to have because it reminds me of how far I have come since I joined.

And I joined in 2019, so I got to experience the in-person club feel. And then, of course, the pandemic hit, so everything changed.

And we've been online, and now we're hybrid as a group. And really, nothing ventured, nothing gained. When I joined, I thought, well, I'll just do what I have to do to kind of move through the program.

And as I got further in, and I saw really the talent and was impressed and impacted by the speakers, watching them grow, or maybe I already met them, and they were great speakers.

And I thought, what an impact you can have as a great speaker. And it really knocked my socks off.

And I thought, wow, that is incredible. That's something that I want. And so luck would have it. can participate in speech contests.

And at the time, a friend who was the president of the club said, hey, why don't you give it a try?

And I thought, well, okay, it doesn't seem too bad. We were in the pandemic, so I knew it was going to be online.

And I thought, well, that seems easier than a person, so yeah, why not? And as it turns out, I grew immensely in the process.

I won a couple contests and haven't looked back since. It really changed the trajectory of my speaking skills, my confidence, my ability to impact people with speaking.

And so that kind of launched a lot of my speaking engagements. I started a few years ago, and now I've spoken in front of thousands and thousands of people at events in person and online.

And so I can't say enough about Toastmasters. I feel like I'm a poster child for Toastmasters. And it really did have a big impact on me as a person.

And my speaking skills. So that's my little pitch for Toastmasters.

 

Matt Zaun 

I love it. I love it. So I want to spend just a moment about the public speaking element, because I really want to inspire anyone listening, figure out how to hone in on your speaking skills, your public speaking skills.

It's so unbelievably important, and it will continue to get more important. I want people to grab a hold of this.

I firmly believe that due to AI technology, we will have to be better public speakers than not. And here's why.

Because one of the things that I'm seeing that's a huge danger, no one's talking about this, but more and more people are going to start to see this, is I will see a leader utilize AI for emails, memos, basically taking AI software and becoming better communicators in the written form based on AI.

So AI can do a lot from a structure perspective. Everyone listening understands that, right? The nuts and bolts of...

The perceived notion that they're a better communicator due to the written word. And then you meet with this person in real life, and they have difficulty connecting.

You'll see this leader in front of their team or in front of their company, and they're trying to – that's what public speaking is, right?

They're in front of everyone speaking, and they're really having a hard time connecting with their team. But yet everyone thinks they're a better communicator because of all the memos, the emails, the different blogs and articles that they've quote-unquote written due to AI.

So you mentioned trust earlier. This is a great way for trust to start fraying when people think, oh, this person is a great communicator, and then they actually open their mouth, and they're having great difficulty connecting with someone.

So I would challenge everyone listening. Figure out a way to sharpen your public speaking skills. There's multiple ways that you can do this.

I really appreciate what you had mentioned regarding Toastmasters. Toastmasters, like you heard Lisa say, is an incredible, incredible organization.

I highly recommend people check that. There's also two other avenues that I would recommend as well. There's story slams that take place across the U.S.

So story slam started from the moth in New York City, and now there's all kinds of chapters across the country.

So if you just Google story slam in your area, there's a lot of different local events that are put on where people can go and they can speak for five minutes in front of an audience.

That is an awesome avenue as well. And then also improv comedy. I highly recommend people check out improv comedy groups.

There's a lot of corporate trainings that can be done regarding improv. It's a great way to get on stage and get into a scene, and it really does help sharpen one's public speaking skills for sure.

So I appreciate what you mentioned regarding Toastmasters. It's really, really important that as we progress through this new AI world that we understand how important public speaking is.

So I really appreciate you mentioning that. Now, I do want to go back to what you said about, you know, you're a shy kid, you want to be, or at least...

You thought originally you wanted to be a dentist. So take us from that shyness as a teen. When you were transitioning through high school and then into college, what did you end up studying and focusing on?

 

Lisa Dy 

So I always loved numbers as a kid, and that seemed to fit well with picking accounting as a major.

And I ended up going into accounting, becoming an accounting major, graduating from school, and working in the accounting field as an accounting professional for a number of years.

And that worked with numbers and shyness, right? It was a good combination. And at the time, we could sort of, a lot of the roles I had were behind the scenes.

You didn't have to get out in front of people and a lot different than things are today, I think.

And so that worked for me. For many years, I was very analytical, still am, loved crunching the numbers, looking for trends, you know, and helping leadership in that way, but wasn't a big fan of stepping out and, you know, speaking up.

the meetings or anything of that nature. But I was able to grow into that more and more as my confidence grew in my craft, so to speak.

And so I did step into some leadership roles. You know, I had opportunity to speak at some meetings and I knew, you know, it was tough.

And I wish I kind of had Toastmasters back then and I wasn't aware of them at the time. But thinking back, I made it through a part of it.

was just, you know, confidence in my skills and knowing that I knew what I was doing in my area.

But yeah, that's kind of where I ended up after leaving dentistry kind of in the dust. I decided to pursue numbers and end up getting my CPA and then getting my MBA and things like that over the years.

So I enjoyed that quite significantly, but I kind of also had some other longing to do other things and have more of an impact on people.

And that is why I went into coaching. And a lot of people that I work with, not all of them, but a number of them are introverts.

So I understand that. Right. And maybe don't like speaking, maybe struggle with communication. And so that's something that I help them with, you know, either suggest host masters or working with a speaking coach.

You know, there's lots of options. There's a lot of speaking organizations nationally, locally that are great, too, that can help you improve your communication skills that way.

 

Matt Zaun 

Wow. Okay. So you went from being shy, CPA, MBA, and coaching. That's an incredible journey. So from a coaching perspective, what are some differences that you see?

So if we were to look, let's say, five years ago to today, what are some of the differences you might see in the coaching world?

 

Lisa Dy 

I think people are getting, as far as coaches are getting a little more specific in their offerings, right? Either whether it's who do they work with, what do they offer, what specific services do they offer?

Less in general, I think, is what I've seen over time. People have more than, you know, one or two needs, right?

They want something very specific, you know, in their life, whether it's a skill they're working on, maybe it's some issues that are, you know, causing them grief to some degree.

Maybe it's lack of confidence, not a good communicator, whatever the case may be. So they were, I think, over time looking for more specific things from coaches.

And I think a number of years ago, you know, we were kind of walking more and more into the idea of coaching as becoming more acceptable over time, thankfully.

And people weren't sure what to expect. And so they welcomed kind of any kind of improvements, trying different things.

And a lot of them were good. You know, some of them maybe didn't hit the needs quite as specifically.

But I think over time, it's just been more of a toning down, right? It's the coaching industry hasn't been around that long.

And so I think now we're kind of getting more into specific needs of clients.

 

Matt Zaun 

Okay. All right. So if we were to hit a rewind button five years and then bring it back to the present day today, more specific, absolutely, I can absolutely see that.

we went from general, help with anything, to today, more hyper-focused, kind of zooming in on specific issues. Where do you foresee it going in the next five years, especially with AI?

If you were to predict, and obviously, I feel like as a society, we've always been a terrible predictor of the future on multiple fronts, where we think we know exactly what the economy is going to look like.

But a lot of times, we're sadly or pleasantly surprised, mistaken. So I know we can't obviously see where the future is going, but where would you predict we would be in five years from now in the coaching world based on AI?

 

Lisa Dy 

You know, just like anything new that comes out, there's some resistance and fear. And I think we've kind of moved through some of that, maybe not entirely.

People feared AI. for a while, for a number of reasons, because it's an unknown. What's this going to do?

How's this going to impact me, my work, my organization, my life? And so I think we're moving through phases of, you know, kind of denial, fear.

Now we're getting maybe more into acceptance and even liking it in a lot of cases. And I think we're going to spend less time definitely on the mundane, right?

A lot of that is being eliminated, but really getting hyper-focused on what do you offer as a human? What are your best skills and how do you portray that?

How do you show that? And what's the proof, right? Let's see examples of what your real skills and talents are, what's your unique gift that you bring to your organization, to your community, know, to that, you know, any kind of group that you're working with.

 

Matt Zaun 

Wow. Okay. I like that. That's a really positive perspective that I haven't heard. So I really appreciate you mentioned that.

And I also really appreciate your time today. There are three different things. I'm going to take away from our conversation.

So the first is the element of trust. So a lot of leaders like to talk about ROI and trust.

But you had mentioned it could be very difficult to have a specific measurement for communication, that ROI piece. But from a trust perspective, as leaders are more and more vulnerable, it sets the tone and the environment for more vulnerability, which leads back to that trust, which ultimately affects the ROI in a positive way.

So I really appreciate you mentioning that. The second piece is what you said about public speaking. I really appreciate you sharing with us your Toastmasters journey, going from shy, going from not even wanting to be in a one-on-one situation to speaking to thousands of people.

It's an incredible testament to your work ethic and your ability to work on that and also Toastmasters. And also the third and final piece, that hyper-focus, that blend between solid coaching and AI.

I think that that is an incredible perspective. One that I had not heard, so I really appreciate you mentioning that.

And then, Lisa, if people want to get more information on you, they want to reach out to you for your coaching services, where's the best place they can go to get that information?

 

Lisa Dy 

You can reach out to me. Please connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn. And you can also check out my website as well.

And I'm happy to answer any emails that come across to you. I've checked my email frequently, so I'd love to hear from people, any feedback, questions, you know, responses to the things that we talk about today.

 

Matt Zaun 

I'd love to hear it. Perfect. I will include that in the show notes. People could just click and go from there.

Thanks again, Lisa. Really appreciate your time today.

 

Lisa Dy 

Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me today, Matt. It was great to be here.